Hertz said in its first quarter earnings report today that it plans to sell an additional 10,000 Teslas, after committing to off-loading 20,000 of the electric vehicles earlier this year. That means the rental car company plans on selling 15 percent of the initial 200,000 EVs it said it was going to buy from Tesla and Polestar back in the heady days of 2021.

Alphabet’s first-ever dividend will pay shareholders 20 cents per share on June 17th, and the Google owner “intends to pay quarterly cash dividends in the future” too. Meta made a big splash when it announced a 50 cent per share dividend in February, and Microsoft increased its dividend to 75 cents per share last September.

Because this guy apparently was quoted at $30,000 to activate the truck’s bidirectional vehicle-to-home Powershare capabilities. That’s about twice the amount that GM said it would cost to do the same with the Chevy Silverado EV.

In her Soundbite newsletter this week, Ashley Carman covers Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee. Lee is bucking the system by keeping the album, which earned a stellar Pitchfork review, off all the big music services like Spotify.

Instead, you can download WAVs from this Geocities site — I love that I just wrote that — or listen to it on YouTube.

Meanwhile, sources tell The Information that ByteDance is “internally exploring scenarios for selling.” It’s been literally one day since the divest-or-ban ultimatum became law, so I hope you’re ready for another nine to twelve months of spin.

The decentralized social network has awarded an $800 grant to SkyBridge, an “in-progress proxy web server that translates Mastodon API calls into appropriate Bluesky ones,” which will let people use their favorite Mastodon apps on Bluesky.

The funds came from Bluesky’s rather modest ($10,000 in its initial allocation) grant fund for developers on the AT Protocol.

Ahead of its earnings call today, T-Mobile announced a new joint venture with Swedish investment firm EQT to buy Lumos Fiber, which reaches over 350,000 households.

Once the deal closes, T-Mobile will invest $950 million for a 50 percent stake in Lumos and acquire all of its existing fiber customers, with plans to expand even further. The T-Mobile Fiber network is currently in 16 markets.

Our latest episode of Decoder is about the brand-new TikTok ban — and how years of congressional inaction on a federal privacy law helped lead us to this moment of apparent national panic about algorithmic social media.

This is a thorny discussion, and to help break it all down, I invited Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner on the show. Lauren has been closely covering efforts to ban TikTok for years now, and she’s also watched Congress fail to pass meaningful privacy regulation for even longer. We’ll go over how we got here, what this means for both TikTok and efforts to pass new privacy legislation, and what might happen next. 

‘Scuderia Ferrari’ is changing its name to ‘Scuderia Ferrari HP,’ and HP’s logo will appear on the cars from Maranello for the Miami Grand Prix in May.

I can’t see it being on the wheels like McLaren’s Google logo, but at least it’s not a cigarette brand in camouflage.

An overnight email from Apple said the company can’t complete the trade-in process... even though the people getting it, like our reader Kevin, traded in their iPhones last year. Apple has since sent a follow-up message saying, “Please disregard the previous email we sent:”

You recently received an email with incorrect information regarding your Apple Trade-in. Please disregard our email. There are no issues with your order or Apple Trade-in. We apologize for any confusion this caused.

The Comcast-owned streaming service says it added 3 million paid subscribers over the past few months, bringing it to 34 million total members. In addition to airing the “most-streamed event ever in the US” in January, Peacock also added Oppenheimer and other Christopher Nolan flicks to its lineup.

Stellar Blade launches tomorrow on PS5 and just in time for release day, PlayStation is sharing a new launch trailer and information on the game’s New Game + mode. Eve’s weapons, HP, and healing items will get level boosts. Skill trees will be expanded and there will be harder difficulties for players looking for a challenging fight. But most importantly, New Game + will add over 30 new outfits to collect.

Microsoft has started reminding Xbox owners that it will start deleting game captures from its Xbox Network after 90 days, starting on May 30th. If you don’t want to lose game clips and screenshots, then you’ll need to back up any old ones to OneDrive or an external drive over the next month. There’s more information over on Microsoft’s support site.

Post-Barbie, Mattel has been making a lot of noise about its plans to keep the toy-to-movie ball rolling with projects based on IP like Hot Wheels and Magic 8 Ball. But the company also wants to channel that energy into series meant for the small screen, and it has just hired Sidney Clifton, Cory Bennett Lewis, and Amy Suh to spearhead those efforts.

The two companies say their partnership “has never been stronger,” possibly calming any fears after Google merged its Android and hardware teams. It sure looks like we’re going to see more AI in both Samsung and Google devices soon beyond Circle to Search, which is something to watch for as more AI-powered devices like the Rabbit R1 come to market.

Earlier this month, Bethesda announced that Fallout 4 would be getting a next-gen update (y’know because everybody wants to play a Fallout game now). That update is out today granting console players performance and quality modes along with other bug fixes and PC players get wide and ultra-widescreen support and the much-coveted Steam Deck verification.

Amazon continues to bolsters its sports offerings, this time by nabbing regional streaming rights for the NHL’s Seattle Kraken. Starting next season, Prime Video will be home to the team’s “non-nationally televised” games in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, including “preseason, regular season, and the first round of playoffs.” Bad news for subscribers if the Kraken make a deep run in 2025.

Nvidia is adding the Battle.net versions of these classic Blizzard games to its cloud streaming service this week, alongside StarCraft II and Diablo III.

AV1 support (which provides higher streaming quality at lower bitrates) is also being rolled out for GeForce Now users with Mac M3 devices.