Today on the flagship podcast of staring directly down the barrel of a camera, The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, Richard Lawler, and Monica Chin start the show with an inside look at our M2 MacBook Pro and Mac Mini reviews. After that, the crew breaks down the case the US Department of Justice has filed against Google's ad business and of course we try to make sense of the latest Elon Musk shenanigans.

Further reading:

• The Vergecast - YouTube
• Apple Mac Mini (2023) review: Mac Studio junior 
• Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2023) review: the core count grows
• Google is being sued by the US government and eight states over online advertising 
• Google plans to demo AI chatbot search as it panics about ChatGPT
• More details come out on which departments saw layoffs at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon 
• Tesla made more money in 2022 than ever before, but its future still looks rocky
• Elon Musk is theoretically sad that Tesla investors lost money because of his tweets
• Elon Musk thinks Twitter is real life
• Elon Musk’s Twitter is caving to government censorship, just like he promised 
• Elon Musk gets serious about 420 at securities fraud trial - The Verge  
• Tesla’s new $3.6 billion Nevada investment includes a ‘high-volume’ Semi factory 
• Tesla Cybertruck mass production won't start until 2024
• Microsoft Q2 2023: Windows, devices, and Xbox down as cloud holds strong
• Senators and Swifties take on Ticketmaster in Washington 
• GoldenEye 007 is coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox on January 27th
• TikTok confirms that its own employees can decide what goes viral

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