This Week in Tech: Meta Kills the Metaverse, Musk Loses in Court, Ubuntu Shows Asterisks + More

A lot happened this week. Meta officially moved on from the metaverse, a jury said Musk intentionally tanked Twitter's stock, and Ubuntu fixed something that's been annoying people for 45 years. Here's the rundown.

Meta's Metaverse Era Is Effectively Over

Mark Zuckerberg's original metaverse vision is dead. After spending about $80 billion on Reality Labs and renaming the whole company to Meta, the focus has fully shifted to AI. Can Meta make AI its second act or was that hole was just too deep to climb out of?

Jury: Musk Misled Twitter Shareholders

A federal jury found Elon Musk liable for misleading Twitter shareholders back in 2022. The ruling says he intentionally drove down the stock price with those 'deal on hold' tweets so he could renegotiate the price. It's a rare legal loss for him. He's appealing, but the verdict establishes that the Twitter chaos wasn't just impulsive. It was calculated.

Ubuntu Finally Shows Asterisks When Typing Sudo Passwords

For over 40 years, typing a sudo password meant staring at a blank screen while you prayed your keystrokes were registering. Ubuntu 26.04 changes that. You'll see asterisks now. Password manager pasting might be next.

Nvidia DLSS 5 and the AI Graphics Debate

DLSS 5 is here, and the reception has been interesting. Gamers love the performance gains, but there's a resentment building about frame generation becoming a crutch. Others just want their games to run.

OpenAI Superapp: ChatGPT, Codex, and Browser Become One

OpenAI is merging ChatGPT, Codex, and its browser tool into a single desktop app. The goal is a unified workspace for engineering and business users. No launch date yet. If they pull this off, OpenAI becomes a platform, not just a tab. If they overcomplicate it, we've seen that rodeo before.

Microsoft MAI-Image-2 Hits #3 on the Leaderboard

Microsoft dropped a new image model called MAI-Image-2, and it's already sitting at number three on the Arena leaderboard behind Google and OpenAI.

Firefox Adds a Free Built-In VPN

Firefox 149 lands March 24 with a free VPN built right into the browser. 50GB monthly cap, browser traffic only, and only in the US, UK, France, and Germany to start. Mozilla is leaning on the trust angle, saying this isn't one of those free VPNs that sells your data. The reception has been surprisingly warm. Firefox might actually get people to switch back.

Google's New Android Sideloading Rule

Google is adding a mandatory 24-hour wait for sideloading apps from unverified developers. The rule starts rolling out August 2026. Power users are annoyed. Security people are sort of supportive. We'll see how this goes.

That's this week. Farewell, dearest reader.