Ever since the Chevrolet Impala first rolled off the assembly line in 1958, it has been a massively popular car. Not only was the Impala supremely cool in its design, but it was also immediately embraced by pop culture. Films like American Graffiti and Up in Smoke featured Impalas, and the Beach Boys even wrote a song about the car.
Within its first three years on the market, the Impala sold around 68,000 units. After only five years, the count increased to over 800,000. Given that the Impala was sold for over 60 years — from 1958 to 2020 — it’s not surprising that the ending tally wound up in the millions. It turns out that Chevrolet sold nearly 17 million Impalas before the car was discontinued in 2020.
The generational Impala had quite a run, including various design improvements and options. From the Impala Super Sport in 1961 to coupe, sedan, convertible, and wagon models in the 1970s, there was an Impala for just about every taste. However, despite the Impala’s massive popularity over multiple decades, there are cars that have outsold the iconic Chevy. Using a variety of data from manufacturers themselves, along with other sources, we’ve compiled a list of cars that outsold the Chevrolet Impala. Stick around after the list for more on our methodology.
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Honda Accord
Its styling may not be as iconic as the Chevrolet Impala, but the sheer number of Honda Accords on the road these days has to count for something. As it turns out, Honda claims that the Accord is “America’s best-selling car over the past 50 years.” The first Accord was manufactured much later than the first Impala, but the Accord has definitely racked up more sales.
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Honda rolled out its first Accord in 1982, and the car has performed exceedingly well in sales over the years. Although improvements and changes have occurred over 11 iterations of the car (in 11 different generations), there’s still a lot to love — at least, if the sales figures are any indication. In 2026, Honda celebrated its 15 millionth Accord sale in the United States.
However, beyond its 15 million domestic sales, Honda has also sold around 3.7 million Accords internationally, according to data collected and organized by Good Car Bad Car. With a total of 18.7 million sales, the Accord easily beats the Impala’s record. Plus, since the Accord is still manufactured today, that number will only increase over time. Honda Accords are generally considered reliable, and they can last a long time, even as the model is updated. Accord buyers also have options; the 2026 model year is available in various trims, including multiple hybrid trims.
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Toyota Camry
As a former Toyota Camry driver, I had a feeling that the Camry would outperform the Impala, and it turns out the data supports that theory. In my experience, Camrys are comfortable, reliable, and economical, and it seems that might be its primary selling points. In any case, millions of drivers have bought a Camry, outpacing the number of Impala owners by many millions.
In 2017, Toyota marked a milestone with over 18 million global Camry sales; 10 million were within the U.S. At that time, the car was manufactured in 10 different facilities around the world. At the time, Toyota claimed that the Camry was the “best-selling car in America” and had been for 15 years in a row. Since then, Toyota has added around 300,000 Camry sales per year to that figure. By our estimate, based on 2025, 2023, 2021, and 2020 year-end reports from Toyota, drivers have bought an estimated 20.4 million or more Camrys.
Like other modern vehicle models, the Toyota Camry has been in production for a long time and continues to be available. The first-generation Camry rolled out in 1983, and it’s still manufactured today. In 2026, the Camry was only available as a hybrid, with various customizable trims available.
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Volkswagen Beetle
Like the Chevrolet Impala, the original Volkswagen Beetle was discontinued after multiple decades. However, unlike the Impala, the Beetle had a revival — multiple, in fact. The original Beetle body got another chance on the assembly line in the Beetle 1600i from 1970 to 2003. That version, nicknamed the Mexican Beetle for its assembly location, overlapped with various iterations of the New Beetle, which ranged from 1997 to 2010. The third and last generation of Beetle lasted from 2011 until the Beetle was eventually retired.
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Though VW nearly replaced the Beetle design, newer iterations of the Bug kept similar styling elements. For example, the Beetle 1600i’s design later inspired the New Beetle’s final trim option, and the third generation echoed the design of the original Beetle. All told, Volkswagen manufactured various Beetles for 70 years, ending with the 2019 Final Edition.
Kelley Blue Book estimated the total Beetle sales to be about 21.5 million, which put the Beetle on our radar as a contender against the Impala. However, a Volkswagen newsroom release confirms that globally, more than 23 million VW Beetles were manufactured and sold. These days, it may be hard to find an older version, especially in decent condition. For that reason, split-window VWs can be worth a lot of money, as can other rarer models.
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Ford Fiesta
Like many fan favorite vehicles, the Fiesta was discontinued, with production ending as of 2019. Thus, the Fiesta could have been considered a flop — except that its sales figures were pretty impressive. Having numerous options available, including sedans and hatchbacks with either three or five doors, may have helped the Fiesta’s case.
Plus, the Fiesta first rolled out in the 1970s and lasted until 2019. Especially when compared to the fan-favorite Chevy Impala, the Ford Fiesta’s sales record is nothing to scoff at. A figure quoted from Kelley Blue Book first piqued our interest in the Ford Fiesta. KBB estimated the vehicle has sold more than 22 million units. We found that figure confirmed by a BBC report that documented the production of the final Ford Fiesta in the UK in 2023.
Although the Ford Fiesta was also very popular in the U.S., it was the best-selling vehicle in the UK for over a decade. In 2022, 1.5 million Fiestas were registered in the UK. The very last Fiesta rolled off an assembly line in Cologne, Germany, and it marked the end of an era. After the Fiesta was finished, the facility turned to producing electric models. According to the BBC, the final two Fiesta models were kept by Ford for its collection.
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Honda Civic
Another vehicle that is as ubiquitous as the Honda Accord or Toyota Camry is the Honda Civic. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the Civic surpasses several vehicles in sales. As Kelley Blue Book noted, over 27 million have been produced to date. Yet the Civic does not seem to be slowing down, so it will continue to surpass the Chevrolet Impala in its sales records. As of 2025, over 27 million Civics have been sold around the world, with a few hundred thousand going to North America each year.
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The Civic is a long-lasting part of the U.S. driving landscape in more ways than pure sales figures, too. Honda pointed out that the 11th-generation Civic earned the North American Car of the Year award twice. With each generation of Civic having its own concept, the 11th generation was deemed “exhilarating” by Honda. While non-hybrid Civics are still available, Honda noted in 2025 that it expected hybrid-specific sales to increase.
For 2026, the Honda Civic was still available in standard and hybrid trims, but you may not need a brand-new model if you’re in the market for a Civic. There are plenty of great Honda Civic models to buy used, as long as you do your homework.
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Volkswagen Passat
As beloved as the Volkswagen Beetle was, that model was apparently not the only one from Volkswagen to smash the Chevrolet Impala’s record. Based on Kelley Blue Book’s data, Volkswagen has sold more than 34 million Passat units. Though the Passat is no doubt a popular model, we weren’t able to confirm the figure, which was also quoted by WhichCar.
CarExpert, a site which compiles data on vehicle sales, estimates over 47,000 Passats have sold throughout the vehicle’s global run. However, totaling the sales data from GoodCarBadCar results in an estimate of about 9.9 million sales. Even Wikipedia doesn’t seem to agree with any of those estimates, so take these numbers with a grain of salt.
Data directly from Volkswagen is also hard to come by. For example, VW noted that U.S. sales of Passat, Dasher, and Quantum models totaled 1.76 million from 1974 to 2020, but no global figure was available. Notably, the Passat is one of VW’s discontinued models, so whatever its total sales, they won’t increase any further, just like the Impala.
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Volkswagen Golf
Unlike the Volkswagen Passat, the Volkswagen Golf has a well-documented sales history that VW appears to be quite proud of. We first noticed the Golf thanks to Kelley Blue Book’s estimate of over 37 million vehicles sold, and it turns out that the Golf does entirely eclipse the Chevy Impala’s record. Volkswagen confirmed in 2023 that the Golf hit over 37 million sales between 1976 and 2023.
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While global sales data for 2024 and 2025 is hard to come by, we can only assume that the Golf continues to grow its sales record. Of course, if we’re looking back all the way to 1974, when it first came out, the original Golf was actually called a Rabbit in the U.S.
Today, the Golf is still available, with the 2026 Golf GTI Hatchback receiving MotorTrend’s Car of the Year award. If you’re in the market for an earlier year (or generation) of Golf, not all Volkswagens have great resale value. However, you can still find many on the road, and the fact that VW continues to manufacture them is a good sign the model will stick around in the future.
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Toyota Corolla
Amid the list of quintessential cars beloved by many generations, the Toyota Corolla is a standout. Before seeing Kelley Blue Book’s estimate of more than 42 million units in sales, it was clear the Corolla was a serious contender. Compared to the Corolla’s sales record, the Chevy Impala amounted to peanuts.
Although the Impala had a run of 60 years, the Corolla is at 50-something and counting, with more sales adding on each year. In fact, Toyota confirmed in 2021 that the Corolla had hit 50 million sales globally. Since then, Toyota has sold nearly one million more Corollas in the U.S. alone, according to sales reports spanning 2025 to 2022.
The 12th-generation Corolla has changed a lot since its first rollout in 1966. In fact, the original Corolla cost only about $1,700 (when gas was only 35 cents per gallon). While times have surely changed, the Corolla is Toyota’s cheapest model in 2026, starting at around $23,125. That’s cheaper than other bestsellers on this list, including the Honda Civic (starting at $24,695) and pricier options like the VW Golf (at $34,590).
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Methodology
Sue Thatcher/Getty Images
We began by estimating total Impala sales, then identifying cars that outsold the Impala. Our search led us to a piece by Kelley Blue Book, which was the basis for our list. Where possible, we confirmed or adjusted the sales estimates with external sources. Then we explored other popular vehicle models, confirmed their total sales, and ranked them accordingly.
Though we did our best to compile the most recent data possible, not every manufacturer publicly posts data in a consumer-friendly format. Thus, our estimates may be rough, as well as slightly behind current counts due to the timing of yearly sales releases (for example, 2026 data may not be available until well into 2027).
There are a ton of fantastic games available on the Playdate (with more on the way), but devs keep finding increasingly creative ways to push the little yellow machine to the max. Today, we spotted a neat demo that showcases some tech the game platform wasn’t expected to be capable of.
Game developer Cristina Ramos posted a video on social media of a work in progress that takes the Playdate into 3D. The slice of gameplay begins with platforming upwards through an interior space and then emerging onto a rooftop for some Mirror’s Edge style jumping around under the open sky.
I was told you couldn’t do 3D on the Playdate, so I did it.
Then I was told there was no way I could create exterior levels like those in Mirror’s Edge, so I proved them wrong again.
It’s a great showcase of why we’re such big fans of the Playdate. Working within limitations is one of the best ways to really flex your imagination, and Playdate comes with plenty of them. With enough ingenuity, Ramos and other enterprising devs can make it do the seemingly impossible. We recently learned that the Playdate is even being used to help Big Ben ring on time, which is pretty rad.
The combination of hardware required to make use of this project is specific enough that we imagine only a relatively limited number of readers will actually be able to try it out. But if you do happen to own a YubiKey and either a laser engraver capable of marking it or a fancy UV printer, [madeinoz67] has put together an awesome tool for adding some visual flair to your two-factor authentication device.
Running it is as simple as opening a web page, because that’s exactly how it’s implemented. You can either host it yourself or just launch it right from the GitHub repository. After opening the HTML file, you’re presented with a fairly intuitive user interface that lets you draw on top of a 2D outline of the YubiKey itself so you can get a better idea of what the final product will look like.
You can pick from an array of vector icons, upload your own images, and add custom text. There’s a pull-down at the top that lets you pick which specific YubiKey you want to work with, and there are different views depending on whether you plan on blasting your handiwork onto the device with a laser, doing a full-color UV print, or cutting it out of vinyl with something like a Cricut.
Even if you don’t have a YubiKey that’s begging for some custom artwork, we think there’s a lot to learn from this project. Obviously there are some very valid reasons to be concerned about how much of our modern software can only be accessed through a browser. If you’re going to use web technologies to create a piece of software, the least you could do is make it offline and self-contained like [madeinoz67] has.
Amazon Music has never lacked catalog depth or audio quality; the harder problem has been giving listeners a reason to choose it over Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube Music once the trial period ends and the monthly charge starts feeling less hypothetical.
Alexa+ is Amazon’s latest attempt to close that gap. The company has expanded the feature inside the Amazon Music mobile app to all U.S. customers, including listeners on free and paid tiers, with support on both iOS and Android at no additional charge.
Users can type or speak conversational requests, identify songs from partial clues, ask questions about artists and recordings, create playlists, refine them through follow-up instructions and save the results directly to their libraries. Amazon is not merely improving search; it is trying to replace it with a music assistant that can understand what listeners mean when they remember everything about a song except the title, artist and half the lyrics.
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Alexa+ Is More Than an AI Playlist Generator
Creating a playlist from a text prompt is no longer particularly novel. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Deezer already offer some variation of that feature.
Amazon is trying to make Alexa+ broader.
Listeners can ask it to identify a song from remembered lyrics, an artist, a film or television appearance, or some other incomplete clue. Amazon’s examples include finding the track used during the opening credits of The Sopranos or identifying a song from a partial lyric.
Alexa+ can also answer follow-up questions about:
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Genres and regional music scenes
Artist influences and discographies
Song meanings
Samples and their origins
Album and release history
Chart performance
Band membership changes
Festival lineups
Relationships between artists and musical styles
A listener could begin by requesting contemporary electronic music, ask for more information about one of the recommended artists, remove slower tracks, increase the tempo, and then save the finished selection.
That moves the feature closer to a conversational music guide than a conventional recommendation engine. Whether it is a knowledgeable guide or the person at the record store who confidently invents an answer rather than admitting they do not know will depend on accuracy.
Amazon has not published an accuracy rate for Alexa+ music responses, so claims about samples, credits, chart history, release dates, and song meanings should still be treated as useful starting points rather than digital liner notes carved into stone.
Alexa+ Can Build and Edit Playlists
Alexa+ can create playlists from specific combinations of mood, era, genre, geography, tempo, language, and activity.
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Amazon suggests prompts such as:
Music for driving along the Pacific Coast Highway at sunset
French-language songs that sound appropriate for a Parisian café
Ambient electronic music combined with light classical piano and no lyrics
Contemporary jazz that will not overpower a dinner party
1990s pop featuring Madonna but excluding boy bands
The resulting playlists can be renamed, saved to an Amazon Music library, shared, and edited later by asking Alexa+ to add or remove specific tracks.
That last part is useful. Many generative playlist tools produce a list and then leave the listener to repair it manually when the algorithm decides that “quiet Sunday morning” requires Imagine Dragons.
Alexa+ allows the user to continue the conversation and adjust the result rather than starting again.
Available Across Every Amazon Music Tier
The most important competitive distinction is availability.
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Amazon says Alexa+ is available to all U.S.-based Amazon Music customers across every subscription tier, at no additional cost, through the iOS and Android apps.
That does not mean Alexa+ erases the differences between Amazon Music plans.
The underlying subscription still determines which songs can be played on demand, whether advertising is included, how skipping works, and which audio-quality formats are available. Amazon Music’s paid Unlimited and Standard plans provide access to HD, Ultra HD, Dolby Atmos, and Sony 360 Reality Audio where available; adding Alexa+ to a free account does not quietly turn it into a lossless subscription.
Amazon has also not announced when the Amazon Music integration will expand beyond the United States or reach desktop and web versions of the music service.
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How Amazon Music Alexa+ Compares
Music Service
AI Music Feature
Current Availability
What It Does
Main Limitation
Amazon Music
Alexa+
All U.S. Amazon Music tiers on iOS and Android
Conversational search, song identification, music questions, playlist creation, follow-up editing, playback and library actions
U.S. mobile rollout only; plan restrictions still apply
Spotify
Talk to Spotify
Gradual beta for eligible Premium users aged 18 and older in the U.S., Ireland, and Sweden
Typed or spoken conversation, playback control, music context, listening-history questions, podcast and audiobook discovery
Premium only and limited beta availability
Apple Music
Playlist Playground
Beta for U.S. Apple Music subscribers aged 13 and older, in English
Creates and refines playlists from moods, genres, activities, and eras
Primarily a playlist tool rather than a broad music assistant
YouTube Music
Ask Music
YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium subscribers in select countries
Generates personalized radio stations and playlists; now includes podcast recommendations
Paid subscribers only and limited regional availability
Deezer
Playlist with AI and Flow Tuner
Playlist with AI began as a beta for 5% of paying subscribers; Flow Tuner is more broadly available
Text-generated playlists and direct control over genres used by the recommendation system
The conversational playlist beta has not been confirmed as a universal rollout
TIDAL
My Mix
Available to subscribers after sufficient listening history
Produces up to six algorithmic mixes based on recent listening and saved music
No comparable prompt-based conversational music assistant is publicly documented
Qobuz
Discover and personalized mixes
Available through Qobuz apps
Combines DailyQ, WeeklyQ, personalized radio, recommendations, and extensive human editorial curation
No conversational playlist assistant; Qobuz deliberately emphasizes human curation
Spotify Offers the Closest Direct Rival
Spotify’s new Talk to Spotify feature is the closest comparison to Alexa+.
Eligible Premium users can type or speak to Spotify from the Home and Now Playing screens, request unfamiliar artists, adjust the mood or tempo, add music to the queue, save tracks, follow artists, and ask questions about songs, albums, genres, podcasts, and audiobooks. Spotify can also answer questions about the user’s listening history, including when they first heard a song or which genres they have explored recently.
It is a deeper listener-history tool than Amazon has described so far, particularly because Spotify can examine years of personal playback behavior.
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The limitation is availability. Talk to Spotify is rolling out gradually in English to selected Premium users aged 18 and older in the United States, Ireland, and Sweden. Amazon is offering its music assistant to every U.S. customer, including people who are not paying for Amazon Music.
Spotify also warns that the beta remains a work in progress and that responses will not always be correct. That is unusually honest language from a technology company introducing AI and should probably be printed on the front of every device containing a microphone.
Apple Music Keeps Its AI Focus Narrower
Apple Music’s Playlist Playground creates playlists from text requests involving moods, genres, activities, and musical eras. Users can refine the results, rearrange songs, accept suggested additions, rename the playlist, and save it to their libraries.
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It is available in beta to Apple Music subscribers aged 13 and older in the United States and currently works only in English.
Playlist Playground competes directly with Alexa+ for playlist generation, but Apple does not currently describe it as a broader conversational music expert. It is designed to build playlists rather than explain musical relationships, identify tracks through extended dialogue, or answer detailed questions about what is playing.
Apple’s approach is cleaner and more focused. Amazon’s is more ambitious.
Ambition is useful, provided Alexa+ does not explain that John Coltrane joined Black Sabbath in 1973.
YouTube Music Uses AI for Radio and Podcast Discovery
YouTube Music’s Ask Music allows paid YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium subscribers in selected countries to describe what they want to hear and generate a personalized radio station or playlist.
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Google has expanded the feature to include podcast recommendations based on mood, genre, or programs the listener already enjoys.
YouTube Music has an enormous advantage when a request involves live performances, remixes, covers, rare recordings, and material that may not exist in a conventional streaming catalog.
Alexa+ appears to provide a more extensive conversational layer and more direct playlist editing, while Ask Music remains primarily focused on generating something to play.
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Deezer Gives Listeners More Control Over the Algorithm
Deezer began testing Playlist with AI globally in 2024, allowing selected paying subscribers to create playlists through text prompts involving activities, decades, genres, and moods. The initial test was limited to 5% of Deezer’s paying audience.
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More recently, Deezer introduced Flow Tuner, which allows users to activate, deactivate, or add genres and subgenres that influence the service’s recommendation algorithm. Deezer also excludes identified AI-generated recordings from Flow recommendations.
Flow Tuner may be less theatrical than asking a chatbot to build “music for driving through New Jersey while wondering why the Garden State Parkway is not moving,” but direct control over the recommendation engine is arguably more useful over time.
TIDAL and Qobuz Are Taking Different Paths
TIDAL continues to rely on My Mix, which creates as many as six personalized mixes from recent listening behavior and saved music. Those mixes change gradually as the service learns more about the listener.
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TIDAL does not currently document a consumer-facing conversational playlist assistant comparable to Alexa+, Spotify’s new chat feature, or Apple’s Playlist Playground.
Qobuz has moved even further in the opposite direction. Its redesigned Discover section combines personalized mixes, radio stations, listening history, and recommendations with extensive human editorial content, including reviews, interviews, Essential Discography selections, and curated playlists.
Qobuz uses technology to personalize discovery but continues to make human curation part of its identity. In a market racing to replace the record-store employee with a language model, Qobuz is betting that some listeners still want advice from people who have actually heard the album.
What Makes Amazon Music Alexa+ Different?
Alexa+ combines four capabilities that competitors usually separate:
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Natural-language music search
Contextual questions about artists and recordings
Dynamic playlist generation and editing
Direct playback and library control
The feature is also available across all U.S. subscription tiers rather than being reserved for paying customers or a small test group.
Amazon reports that Alexa+ users explore music three times as often as users of the original Alexa, while customers who request recommendations listen to almost 70% more music. Those are Amazon’s internal engagement figures, and the company has not disclosed the sample size, time period, or methodology behind them.
The numbers still explain why every major streaming company is investing heavily in conversational discovery. More questions lead to more recommendations, which lead to more listening, more data, and a lower chance that a subscriber remembers they are paying for four music services.
Who Is It For?
Alexa+ will be most useful for listeners who know what they want emotionally or stylistically but cannot express it through artist names and conventional search terms.
It should also appeal to people who frequently use Amazon Music through Echo products and already think of Alexa as the front door to their music library. The mobile integration allows those users to continue the same kind of interaction without standing within shouting distance of a smart speaker.
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It is less compelling for listeners who prefer choosing complete albums, already maintain carefully organized libraries, or view algorithmic playlists as the musical equivalent of allowing a supermarket to plan dinner.
Audiophiles should also understand that Alexa+ is a discovery and control feature, not an audio upgrade. It does not improve the mastering, increase the bit depth, repair a poor recording, or stop the Amazon Music app from occasionally making basic navigation feel like filing a tax return.
The Bottom Line
Amazon Music Alexa+ is one of the more complete AI music assistants currently available because it goes beyond generating playlists. It can search conversationally, identify partially remembered songs, explain artists and recordings, refine selections through follow-up requests, and make direct changes to playback and the user’s library.
Making it available to every U.S. Amazon Music customer gives Amazon a wider launch audience than Spotify, Apple, YouTube Music, or Deezer currently offer for their closest comparable tools.
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That does not automatically make Alexa+ the best music-discovery system. Spotify knows more about the listening history of many users, YouTube Music has access to a wider universe of rare and unofficial material, Apple’s implementation is more focused, and Qobuz still understands that human editorial judgment has value.
The larger shift is impossible to miss. Music streaming services no longer want listeners to browse catalogs or build playlists by hand. They want us to describe a mood, surrender the queue, and keep listening while the assistant learns enough about our habits to become increasingly difficult to leave.
Convenient? Absolutely.
A little unsettling? Alexa already knows what is in the shopping cart. It may as well know which album we play while regretting the purchase.
from the this-time-we-could-wait-for-discovery dept
We’ve written in the past that people online often get way too excited about theoretical pending “discovery” in frivolous lawsuits filed by bad actors. Because while there are certainly a few cases where (1) a frivolous case even reaches discovery and (2) some elements of that discovery are revealed to the public, in the vast majority of cases, that doesn’t happen. The legal strategy for most defendants is to get a case thrown out before it reaches discovery because discovery is incredibly expensive. And, even then, most often what is handed over in discovery never goes public.
But… hey, sometimes, “can’t wait for discovery” turns out to be an accurate sentiment.
Last year we noted that Donald Trump had filed an obviously frivolous lawsuit against the BBC, asking for $10 billion. At issue was an edit in the documentary he didn’t like which might be considered mildly misleading (though Donald Trump repeatedly falsely claimed that the BBC used AI to fabricate quotes, the reality was they edited two separate parts of the same speech to sound like they were said together, when they were really many minutes apart). That’s not defamation, though.
Either way, the case has not been going well for Trump. Because he argued that this documentary (which was only shown once in the UK and not in the US) harmed Trump’s business interests in Florida (where he sued), the BBC asked for Trump’s financial records as part of their discovery requests. Given that Donald Trump made more money last year (around $2 billion) than ever before, even as he remains the President of the United States, it seems like a reasonable request.
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Trump and his (not very bright) lawyers tried to wriggle out of this by dropping some of the initial claims that were about how much harm the documentary did to his business, saying instead that it just harmed his reputation. The BBC said it still needed his financial records anyway. And now, Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett has agreed, noting in court that the financial records would be relevant to the claims of reputational harm as well.
“All of President Trump’s brand, properties and businesses are impugned or said to have been impugned. Reputational, economic damages, all of that is now at issue in this case,” Lett said at the conclusion of a three-hour hearing.
Of course, Trump’s lawyers can (and almost certainly will) ask the Article III Judge (Roy Altman, who is a Trump appointee) to overrule the magistrate, but it might not work. After all, earlier in the case, Trump’s lawyers had sought to remove Lett from the case, claiming that she was biased against him, because before she became a Magistrate Judge, she had represented a client in a case against Trump. Judge Altman rejected that claim back in May, siding with his colleague, Magistrate Judge Lett:
The Plaintiff asks us to withdraw our referral of discovery matters from Magistrate Judge Lett and reassign them to a different Magistrate Judge. … He advances two arguments in support of this request: First, he cites our unrelated referral of discovery matters in Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust et al. v. Capital One…. Second, he argues that “Magistrate Judge Lett had appeared as counsel of record on behalf of a party directly adverse to President Trump in active federal litigation: Trump v. Clinton… The Plaintiff’s first argument is unavailing. “Effective April 19, 2026,” Magistrate Judge Hernandez replaced Magistrate Judge Lett as our “paired” Magistrate Judge for Miami-based cases…. We reassigned discovery in Capital One the next day based on case workload and the parties’ compressed discovery period…. Nothing about that decision mandates a withdrawal of the referral in the different circumstances of this case. The Plaintiff next argues that Magistrate Judge Lett previously “represent[ed] [a] defendant directly adverse to President Trump.” … Despite his claim to the contrary, the Plaintiff effectively seeks Magistrate Judge Lett’s recusal. … But 28 U.S.C. § 455 is clear that: “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Accordingly, we’ll leave any decision regarding Magistrate Judge Lett’s recusal to her sound judgment. Signed by Judge Roy K. Altman on 5/19/2026.
So, at this point, Judge Altman seems willing to trust Magistrate Judge Lett’s judgment on the recusal question — and that deference may well carry over to the financial-records dispute too.
Of course, even if discovery does move forward, Trump could still file for a protective order to keep most of the records secret, outside of whatever has to be used in court. Alternatively, he could try to dismiss the case to get out of having to provide discovery.
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Either way, this was a stupid, vexatious, obvious SLAPP suit designed to punish the BBC and waste its time and money. So it’s quite nice to see that backfiring on the censorial bully that is the President of the United States.
Drivers who’ve been blinded by the lights, it’s not just your imagination. There are cars on the road with headlights that are so bright they’re illegal.
Two years after Tesla informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that low-beam headlights on some Tesla EVs exceed brightness limits, the company’s move to make those headlights street-legal has failed. The NHTSA denied Tesla’s petition to avoid a recall, meaning the company will need to issue a fix for nearly 20,000 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from 2017 to 2023 for a problem the company called “inconsequential.”
A representative for Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tesla argued in its petition that because the bright lighting in question falls outside of the field of vision of oncoming drivers, “noncompliance is inconsequential as it relates to motor vehicle safety.”
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In its response, NHTSA associate administrator for enforcement Eileen Sullivan wrote, “NHTSA disagrees with Tesla’s conclusion that there is no increased risk of glare for surrounding traffic or the driver of the subject vehicle in any driving conditions.”
The agency argued, citing public comment, that the headlights can still produce glare that could affect other drivers.
The group referenced a similar decision it made in 2022 involving GM Terrain vehicles.
For Tesla owners, the NHTSA ruling means the company must provide a free fix for the affected cars.
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Additional steps are possible
The NHTSA isn’t commenting on pending legislation, including its denial of Tesla’s petition, but in an email to CNET, a spokesperson said that the organization is assessing studies about LED-headlamp glare and may take additional steps based on what it finds.
“Some issues may arise from the inappropriate use of high beams, illegal aftermarket lamps, improperly maintained lamps or misaligned lamps,” the spokesperson wrote.
Extra-bright headlights are illegal, and devices that don’t comply can be outlawed from sale on platforms like Amazon, while drivers using overbright headlights can face escalating fines, the suspension of their driver’s license or civil liability.
“Although headlight technology has changed over the years, NHTSA’s lighting standard has remained constant in limiting the amount of glaring light directed toward traffic both coming and going,” the spokesperson said.
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SUVs, which sit taller on the road than sedans, have become the most popular vehicles in the US. That, combined with LEDs taking over as the prime technology for headlights, has led more people to notice that high-intensity low beams seem brighter and harder to avoid.
Some modern cars have benefited from adaptive lighting technologies that can adjust brightness, direction or lighting pattern as driving conditions change, but many cars on the road aren’t equipped with these systems.
Headlights in the congressional spotlight
Earlier this year, the US House of Representatives joined the discussion about bright headlights with the introduction of a bill from Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from Washington state.
The LIGHT Safety Act would set maximum allowable brightness limits for low-beam headlamps on vehicles in the US. So far, the proposal has only been sent to committee, meaning it’s been assigned to a House panel for initial review, with no further action taken on it since March.
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The bill seeks to revise existing federal standards by establishing a maximum allowable brightness for low beams.
U.S. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent doubled down on his warnings to Chinese AI companies on Wednesday, saying that sanctions remain on the table after a White House official accused Moonshot of improperly distilling Anthropic’s Fable model.
Model distillation is a common AI training technique in which a smaller model learns from the outputs of a larger one. While this process can infringe on intellectual property rights, it’s also widely used as a legitimate optimization method.
“Open source is not open season on American IP,” Bessent posted on X. “When [Chinese] firms conduct covert, industrial-scale distillation attacks that cross the line into IP theft, sanctions and Entity List designations will be on the table.”
Earlier this week, Bessent stated that the U.S. government would examine open source models from China for signs of intellectual property theft and impose sanctions if found.
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Bessent’s latest remarks come hours after the White House’s science and technology policy chief Michael Kratsios accused the China-based Moonshot of conducting large-scale distillation against U.S. models. He alleged that Moonshot had acquired Nvidia’s “GB300-equipped servers and has accessed GB300s in Thailand, likely to train its AI models,” raising questions about whether the firm violated U.S. export-control rules.
The GB300 servers are part of Nvidia’s Blackwell generation, which are banned from being sold to Chinese companies.
Some experts dispute the idea that Kimi K3 could have been developed primarily through distillation from Fable, which has only been publicly available since July 1. Moonshot released K3 last week as an open-weight model, and its advanced capabilities have called into question the underlying business models of leading U.S. AI labs, casting doubt on whether they can continue to justify the enormous capital requirements underpinning the frontier AI race.
The episode has also intensified a broader debate in Washington over the influx of Chinese open models. Some, including former White House AI adviser and current OpenAI Head of Strategic Futures, Dean Ball, have argued that the U.S. should restrict or effectively ban the use of Chinese open-weight models to preserve America’s technological advantage and mitigate potential national security risks.
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TechCrunch has reached out to Moonshot and the Treasury for comment.
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Toyota is the latest automaker accused of invading drivers’ privacy — and then selling personal information. The popular Japanese carmaker is facing a class action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court over “trap and trace” claims, a kind of privacy breach that’s becoming far more common. According to lead plaintiff Brittany Conner, Toyota is secretly tracking and selling personal information it gets on its official website, all without consent.
When consumers head to Toyota’s website, they will see a consent banner where they can choose to “accept” or “decline” tracking cookies. Conner found that Toyota installed tracking technology on her device without her knowledge — despite her declining — allowing the company to collect her online activity and then send her marketing and advertising it believes are related to her interests and the websites she visited. This isn’t the first time that Toyota has been sued for collecting and selling driver data: In January 2026, a man claimed Toyota sold his driving data to insurance companies.
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Websites keep getting sued for trap-and-trace data collection
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Website tracking has become a hot legal topic as of late, with more than 800 claims filed under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) in 2025. This law includes a section on “trap and trace” tactics, stating that it’s illegal to install a trap-and-trace device — which captures information without someone’s knowledge — without first obtaining a court order. This originally referred to wiretaps and hidden recording equipment when it was written in 1967, but it’s since been used for website tracking in recent years. And it has worked.
In 2025, Google had to pay over $425 million for collecting users’ phone data despite them opting out of the tracking. This lawsuit included 98 million Google accounts. But even those who didn’t use Google-branded apps or devices found they were getting tracked by Google’s software. In March 2026, the Los Angeles Times paid $3.85 million after violating California’s privacy laws by tracking users’ data without their knowledge. The lawsuit claimed the media outlet was using three website trackers. Forbes followed in May 2026, agreeing to a $10 million settlement after being accused of tracking, collecting, and selling private data from people who visited any websites owned by Forbes — without consent, of course.
“General Motors has been pulling a Tim Cook and boosting its software and subscription business,” reports Business Insider. During the automaker’s Tuesday earnings call, executives said they’re increasingly leaning on software subscriptions like OnStar and Super Cruise to generate high-margin recurring revenue long after customers buy their vehicles. GM says OnStar brought in about $800 million in the second quarter, while Super Cruise revenue grew about 70% year over year. From the report: GM says its software business keeps roughly 70 cents of every dollar it brings in. That’s a rare level of profitability in the auto industry, as many car sales generate just four to 10 cents per sales dollar. […] GM expects to add about 1 million OnStar subscribers this year, bringing the total close to 13 million. Super Cruise, GM’s hands-free, eyes-on driving system, is growing even faster. GM added about 70,000 subscribers during the quarter and expects to end the year with more than 850,000. Revenue from the service increased about 70% from a year earlier.
And a lot of drivers are sticking around after the free period ends. GM said between 30% and 40% of eligible owners continue paying after their included three-year Super Cruise subscription expires. [..] “We do think we have tremendous levers, multiple levers of growth,” Barra said on the call. “We definitely think there’s a lot of opportunity at GM to grow, improve margins, and become less cyclical.”
“Software and services are becoming increasingly important to how customers experience GM vehicles and how we deliver value beyond the initial purchase,” a spokesperson previously told Business Insider. “As vehicles become more software-defined, we can introduce new digital experiences through updates and optional services rather than hardware changes.”
Lacie Thompson previously worked in marketing at Expedia, Blue Nile and New Engen, and is now putting those skills to work at MediaPact.
As AI changes how people discover products online, marketers are rethinking the traditional digital advertising playbook. With AI-generated answers reducing clicks on search results and display ads, brands are looking for new ways to reach customers.
Seattle startup MediaPact wants to capitalize on that shift.
Founded in 2026 by online marketing veteran Lacie Thompson, MediaPact makes finding and signing ad deals quicker, painless, and accountable for both publishers and companies. It has raised $200,000 in a small friends and family round, and recently added companies like BroBible, Gadget Review and Penske Media to the platform.
We caught up with Thompson for GeekWire’s Startup Spotlight to learn more about her one-person startup, how AI helped her build the business despite having no coding experience and what surprised her most about launching in a market she thought she already knew.
In 50 words or less, give us your startup’s elevator pitch?
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MediaPact is a marketplace and workflow for flat-fee direct media. Buyers discover publishers, newsletters, and creators, then negotiate terms, sign the IO (insertion order), and pay, all in one place. Seller inventory is standardized to list inventory in a searchable format. It is the direct media buy without the 40-email thread.
Flat-fee media is a massive market that still runs on emails, PDFs, calls, bespoke IOs and a Google Sheet named “final_FINAL_v3.”
Nine out of ten publishers I have interviewed described their flat-fee workflow as exactly that: manual email threads, hand-built IOs, invoices they chase for 60 days. Meanwhile, the buyer on the other side of that thread is sitting on budget and cannot find them.
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Programmatic solved this for banner ads 15 years ago. Nobody has ever solved it for this type of media: sponsored articles, newsletters, or podcast reads. I am obsessed with making a direct media buy as easy as booking a flight.
What surprised you after talking to customers?
Two things:
Supply is not the problem. I have spent 15 years in this industry, so I can sign publishers all day. Demand is the hard part. Every marketplace founder reads The Cold Start Problem and still thinks they are the exception. I was not the exception.
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The buyers are much more broad than I thought. I come from affiliate and performance. Those teams live and die on click-based measurement. While they often purchase flat-fee media, they sometimes avoid the risk of guaranteed placement because of over-scrutinized click-based attribution (especially on a last click).
One hyper-performance-based agency told me flatly that this was not for them. Brand marketers who understand top of funnel growth get it. They are typically at a mid-stage consumer brand that has plateaued on Meta and Google and needs somewhere else to go. Shopper marketers are also very focused on working with partners that can reach their audience, even if they are influencing in-store behavior in ways that are difficult to measure. Said another way, MediaPact is for the marketer who uses art, the marketer who uses science and the marketer who uses both.
How has AI changed the way you build your company?
Two ways, and the second is a strategic angle for the platform, not just an operational efficiency.
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The obvious one: I built and shipped (and am continuing to do so) the entire platform with Claude Code. React, TypeScript, Supabase, Stripe Connect, the whole thing. I have zero experience writing code, managing dev teams, or product management. And now I can ship features to production within less than a day. I don’t say this to boast, but rather to show that this is a structural change in who gets to start what kinds of companies.
AI is eating the click. When ChatGPT answers the question, nobody clicks. And the content is so trusted that conversion happens at 4.4 times the rate. So brands stop competing for rankings and start competing to be inside the source material that the models cite, which is high-authority editorial. That is not just SEO anymore. It is Answer Engine Optimization, and the only way in is to be in the content. MediaPact allows buyers to do this.
What’s one thing people misunderstand about your startup?
That it is for affiliate marketers. My résumé makes people assume rev-share, cookies, and last-click attribution.
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It is the opposite. Flat fee, guaranteed placement, signed IO, and automated payment. Sellers get paid for their audience and their authority, not for whatever the attribution model felt like giving them that month. Publishers have been shortchanged by last-click for decades and everyone in our industry knows it.
What’s the toughest decision you’ve made in the past year?
Launching the company and determining the real TAM.
My network is affiliate. Those are warm calls, fast meetings, and lots of enthusiastic nodding. It would have been very comfortable to build for them. But the customer discovery data pointed toward brand marketers, shopper marketers, and media planning and buying teams—audiences who don’t know me.
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Even though I know this challenge, I’m tackling it by figuring things out as I go, in the same way I did before: by building partnerships and relationships that grant me access to the right opportunities.
What’s the one piece of advice you give to other entrepreneurs?
Ask for help. The key, though, is that you have to give help, you must be someone people want to help and that isn’t just granted—it’s earned over years. I naturally think of asking my network for help: my friends, my family, and my advisors. But now you can also ask Claude (or your preferred AI) for help. While it’s definitely not the same, knowing when to ask whom or what for help is probably the most powerful needle-mover.
We’ll know our company has made it when…
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I’m the most proud when I know the platform has benefited someone. Usually when that’s the case, they want to tell their friends about it. That part of the growth cycle is always the most fun for me because I have the luxury of getting out of hustle mode and into innovation mode, pushing beyond the beta, dreaming big and taking things beyond my current scope.
When sellers tell brands “just send it through MediaPact” without me anywhere in the conversation, that will be a milestone. The day the marketplace works without the founder in the middle is the day it is actually a marketplace.
On Wednesday, IBM officially reported earnings and the news was as bad as everyone knew it would be.
While the 115-year-old company still generates boatloads of cash — $17.2 billion in revenue, $9.9 billion in gross profit, nearly 58% margins, and $2.2 billion in net earnings for the quarter — its results fell well short of Wall Street’s expectations.
It was such a bad miss that IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and the board took an unprecedented step of warning investors ahead of time that the earnings “was worse than our expectations,” offering everyone a sneak peek.
He published a “letter to investors,” last week sharing preliminary results. It warned of abysmal revenue in the company’s all-important “infrastructure” category and said that profit margins were also going to take a hit. The company’s stock instantly tanked 25%, it’s biggest single-day decline ever. Until then, the stock had performed well under Krishna’s six years of leadership, buoyed by the AI data center boom that had been lifting all boats.
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On Wednesday, IBM also lowered its full-year growth forecasts, meaning this horrible quarter would impact the rest of the year. The culprit? IBM’s cash-cow mainframe business was down 42%.
That’s a cascading problem, because as CFO Jim Kavanaugh explained on the quarterly call with investors, IBM earns $3 in software revenue for every $1 of mainframe hardware it sells.
However, the CEO and CFO spent the call insisting that this was a temporary blip and all would be well soon.
What happened, they said, was that “tens” of customers that were due to buy a new mainframe during the quarter opted not to do so. That may not sound like a lot of customers, but mainframes are systems that cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and with maintenance contracts and software, generate many millions more.
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The same AI boom that lifted IBM’s boat also sank it.
Instead of buying a new mainframe, these clients bought other hardware, Krishna explained. They were faced with astronomically high cost increases of 15% to 30% for data center gear and PCs.
“When they were faced with that issue, then they decided to move budget to those areas where they were having that extreme price,” Krishna said.
But Krishna promised that those customers will still buy their new mainframes eventually — along with their new software contracts. In fact, he said some of them have already done so this quarter. “We see no evidence of clients moving off the mainframe,” he said.
We’ll have to wait and see. But the tech industry has predicted the death of the mainframe for many decades now. Maybe even AI won’t kill it.
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