Tag: News

• Social Security benefits will increase by about $60 in 2026 due to a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment.
• Eligibility rules and benefit amounts depend on Americans' age, income, and work history.
• Seniors can expect more tax relief and higher Medicare premiums in 2026.

For millions of older Americans, Social Security is a financial lifeline.

The program is the country's largest social safety net program, providing monthly payments to nearly 74 million people. Business Insider has heard from hundreds of seniors living check to check without retirement savings and 80-somethings working to supplement their Social Security income.

Here's what you need to know about benefits heading into the new year.

Who will qualify for Social Security in 2026

Americans pay into Social Security throughout their careers. The program is largely funded by payroll taxes, and each individual's monthly checks are based on the income they made during their working years. Qualification rules will remain unchanged in January.

Older adults must be at least 62 years old to enroll in the program — but those who enroll before full retirement age typically receive smaller checks and may experience benefit deductions if they're still employed.

The national retirement age is 66 or 67 for most baby boomers, which is the age that beneficiaries can collect their full Social Security amount. And those who delay filing for benefits until age 70 will receive the highest monthly allotment.

Depending on income and filing age, Social Security beneficiaries typically take home between $800 and $3,000 a month. Widows and widowers can claim benefits based on their spouses' income.

The Social Security Administration also offers benefits for low-income Americans and those with disabilities at any age. Supplemental Social Security is generally available for individuals earning less than $2,000 a month, roughly 130% of the federal poverty line. Social Security Disability provides monthly payments to people experiencing at least one year of disability that affects their ability to work.

Beneficiaries will see higher checks to keep up with inflation

Social Security beneficiaries will receive about $60 more monthly in 2026, thanks to the program's annual cost-of-living adjustment. That 2.8% increase is based on third-quarter inflation data.

The latest COLA announcement, tied to year-over-year increases in the consumer price index, mirrors the past several years. Raise percentages skyrocketed during high pandemic-era inflation, but have hovered around 2% and 3% since 2023.

Older Americans have told Business Insider that, while this COLA raise helps cover the rising cost of groceries, rent, and healthcare, it can present another problem. Low-income retirees often rely on other aid programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and Medicaid. This slight cost-of-living raise can push some older adults over the qualifying threshold for those other aid programs, so lower-income retirees should carefully check those criteria.

Social Security income will still be taxed

Social Security income is typically taxed. Depending on household income, Americans may pay taxes on up to 85% of their Social Security payments.

Those who take home less than $25,000 as an individual and $32,000 as a couple, however, will not have their benefits taxed. Need-based Supplemental Social Security also isn't subject to tax.

Under President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act — signed in July — taxpayers 65 and older can claim up to $6,000 in addition to their normal standard deduction. This new rule is set to last through 2028 and builds off of an existing tax exemption for seniors.

In practice, this means that older Americans filing their 2025 tax returns can write off as much as $23,750. Joint filers over 65 will be able to claim as much as $46,700.

Out-of-pocket Medicare costs will rise

Most Social Security beneficiaries are also enrolled in Medicare, a federal health insurance program available to Americans over 62 and some people with disabilities. Open enrollment began in November and ends December 7.

The program's structure will not change in the new year, but beneficiaries can expect higher out-of-pocket costs because the price of US healthcare is climbing and more baby boomers are needing care as they age. Premiums for Medicare Part B plans will jump by about 10%.

Medicare has four main plan types. Parts A and Part B are standalone insurance plans that cover inpatient and outpatient care; Medicare Advantage allows older Americans to join private plans governed by Medicare rules and out-of-pocket caps; and Part D is typically supplemental insurance that covers prescription drugs and basic provider visits.

Medicare is based on age and Medicaid is based on income, so some Americans qualify for both insurance programs.

The Social Security fund is in jeopardy

America's Social Security fund is expected to become insolvent in the mid-2030s. This doesn't mean checks will stop entirely, but retirees could see smaller benefit amounts unless Congress secures more money. Social Security is supplemented by the federal government, even though individuals pay into the program throughout their careers.

Programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP that some older Americans rely on are funded separately from Social Security and will not be impacted.

• Reddit is retiring r/popular as its default feed.
• CEO Steve Huffman said the feed "gives the false impression of a singular Reddit culture."
• He said removing the feature would promote a more personalized and relevant user experience.

Reddit is getting rid of one of its oldest fixtures.

The platform's CEO, Steve Huffman, said in a post that Reddit would be removing its r/popular feed from the homepage for new users to promote a more personalized and relevant user experience.

The popular feed, located on the left sidebar of the website, displays the most liked recent posts across the platform.

"In theory, it's what's most popular on Reddit, but it's actually what is liked by the most active users on Reddit—which is not the same thing," he said. "Having it as a default feed gives the false impression of a singular Reddit culture, one that is neither representative of Reddit nor appealing to new users (or anyone at all, IMO)."

He summed up his disdain for the feature by saying, "r/popular sucks, and we're moving away from it, and towards better, more relevant and personalized feeds."

Huffman, who has been the platform's CEO since 2015, said Reddit would stop showing the popular feed in the sidebar unless users read it regularly.

He said his favorite part of Reddit was that every community on the platform had its own unique culture, rules, and sense of humor.

"And if your perspective isn't represented, you can create the community you want to see," he said. "The freedom to build your own corner of the internet is what makes Reddit, Reddit."

The platform gets 116 million visitors daily, he said. Reddit's stock price has risen about 44% in the past year.

In the post, he announced a few other changes, like limiting the number of high-traffic communities a single person can moderate, and changing the way it shows community sizes.

"These changes are all part of the same goal: making Reddit more conducive to how people actually use it today," he said.

This is not Reddit's first effort to nudge its users into smaller community groups, as it recalibrates its platform alongside competitors like Quora, and beyond that, the likes of Meta.

In October, Reddit removed its public chat feature and urged users to chat on private group chats as a way to "connect with communities in smaller, focused spaces."

• LinkedIn is dismantling its associate product manager program.
• It's replacing it with an associate builder track that trains hires to code, design, and product manage.
• LinkedIn's chief product officer said the company has adopted small "pods" of full-stack builders.

LinkedIn is dismantling one of Silicon Valley's most familiar early-career tracks: the associate product manager program.

It will be replaced with a new program that trains people to code, design, and build products end-to-end.

LinkedIn's chief product officer, Tomer Cohen, said on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" published Thursday that the company's long-running associate product manager program will end this year.

Starting in January, new hires will enter the associate product builder program, he said.

"We're going to teach them how to code, design, and PM at LinkedIn," he added, referring to product management.

The shift is part of a broader internal transformation built around what LinkedIn calls the full-stack builder model. Instead of splitting responsibilities among product managers, designers, and engineers, the company wants employees who can bring a product from idea to launch themselves, "regardless of their role in the stack," Cohen said. These builders can combine skills that were once separated across different job functions.

Cohen said he wants these builders to develop vision, empathy, communication, creativity, and judgment — especially the ability to make "high-quality decisions in what is complex, ambiguous situations."

"Everything else, I'm working really hard to automate," he added.

The model is also reshaping how teams are structured. Instead of large groups split by function, LinkedIn has adopted small "pods" of cross-trained builders, allowing it to be more nimble, adaptive, and resilient.

"They can actually match the pace of change to the pace of response," Cohen said.

It's "less about an engineer, designer, PM working together" and more about people "who can flex across," he added.

Cohen, who has worked at LinkedIn for nearly 14 years, said in a post on the platform last month that he is leaving the company in January.

The end of product managers?

Business Insider's Amanda Hoover reported last year that product managers are increasingly seen as critical in the tech world, but some remain skeptical about the role's value.

Some companies have reevaluated their need for product managers. Business Insider's Ashley Stewart reported in March that Microsoft wants to shift its workforce composition by increasing the number of engineers relative to product or program managers to run leaner. Other companies, like Airbnb and Snap, have been rethinking the need for product managers.

Surge AI CEO Edwin Chen said on an episode of the "No Priors" podcast published in July that early-stage teams don't need product managers at all.

Engineering leaders should drive product direction until they no longer have the bandwidth. "Your engineer should be hands-on. They should be having great ideas as well," he said.

Others take the opposite view. Google Brain founder Andrew Ng said in an episode of the "No Priors" podcast published in August that product management, not engineering speed, has become the bottleneck in AI startups.

In the past, building a prototype might have taken three weeks, so waiting another week for user feedback was acceptable. But when AI tools let teams build a prototype in a day, having to "wait a week for user feedback" is "really painful," Ng said.

That pressure forces startups to make faster product decisions, the kind of calls product managers are trained to make, he added.

• Fei-Fei Li criticized extreme AI rhetoric as misleading and unhelpful for public discourse.
• She urged balanced, factual communication about artificial intelligence and its impact.
• Other AI leaders, including Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun, have also called for balanced AI messaging.

The current rhetoric around AI is far too dramatic, says the Godmother of AI.

"I like to say I'm the most boring speaker in AI these days because precisely my disappointment is the hyperbole on both sides," Fei-Fei Li said in a talk at Stanford University published on Thursday.

"We've got the total extinction, doomsday, and all that talk about AI will ruin humanity, machine overlord," she said. On the other hand, she said, there is the "total utopian" scenario where people use words like "post-scarcity" and "infinite productivity."

Li is a longtime Stanford computer science professor famous for inventing ImageNet. Last year, she cofounded World Labs, a company building AI models to perceive, generate, and interact with 3D environments.

At the Stanford talk, she added that this "extreme rhetoric" is filling tech discourse and misinforming vulnerable people.

"The world's population, especially those who are not in Silicon Valley, need to hear the facts, need to hear what this truly is," she said. "Yet that kind of discourse, that kind of communication, that kind of public education is not as good as I hope it is."

Li is among the top computer scientists who are advocating for more balanced messaging around AI and its impact on society.

In July, Google Brain founder Andrew Ng said that he thinks artificial general intelligence is overrated.

AGI refers to a stage when AI systems possess human-level cognitive abilities and can learn and apply knowledge just like people. The execs of leading AI labs are often asked when they think AGI is coming and what it will mean for human workers.

"AGI has been overhyped," Ng said in a talk at Y Combinator. "For a long time, there'll be a lot of things that humans can do that AI cannot."

Meta's former chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, has said that large language models are "astonishing" but limited.

"They're not a road towards what people call AGI," he said in an interview last year. "I hate the term. They're useful, there's no question. But they are not a path towards human-level intelligence."

Last Month, LeCun announced on LinkedIn that he was leaving Meta after 12 years to launch an AI startup.

• Roblox and Snapchat are now blocked in Russia over what it said were concerns about extremism.
• They're now added to an extensive list of blocked or restricted platforms in Russia for such reasons.
• Apple's FaceTime also faces restrictions for what Russia said was "terrorist" activity.

Russia's internet and media regulator said this week that it has blocked Snapchat and Roblox, saying both platforms were used for "extremist and terrorist" activity.

Roskomnadzor announced its decision to block Snapchat on Thursday, but said it had already made the social media app unavailable in Russia since October 10.

"According to law enforcement agencies, Snapchat is being used to organize and conduct terrorist activities in the country, recruit perpetrators, and commit fraud and other crimes against our citizens," it said in a statement, per state media.

The federal agency made a similar announcement on Wednesday regarding Roblox, accusing the gaming platform of enabling the distribution of propaganda advocating for extremist or terrorist activities.

It also said that users were using Roblox to spread "LGBT information," which Russia legally considers extremist.

Meanwhile, Roskomnadzor said on Thursday that it is also imposing "restrictive measures" on Apple's FaceTime video calling service.

State media outlet TASS wrote that the agency said that "FaceTime is being used to coordinate terrorist activities in the country, recruit terrorists, and commit fraud and other crimes against citizens."

A Roblox spokesperson told Business Insider that the company has a "deep commitment to safety" and enacts proactive measures to catch and prevent harmful content on the platform.

"We respect the local regulations in the countries where we operate and believe Roblox provides a positive space for learning, creation, and meaningful connection for everyone," they said.

The gaming firm's CEO, Dave Baszucki, said in September 2022 that Russia contributed roughly 2 million active daily Roblox users at the time, compared to 11 million in the US.

Apple and Snap Inc. did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Since it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has stepped up internet regulation by placing varying degrees of restrictive measures on international social media and messaging platforms, including bans on Signal and Meta's WhatsApp and Instagram.

Telegram, a messaging app founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, has been partially restricted in Russia, with voice and video calls limited in the country. The Kremlin is also suspected of throttling YouTube traffic in the country.

The Kremlin has cited extremism and terrorism concerns for internet restrictions since before 2022, but now also uses these terms to describe Ukrainian or anti-Kremlin partisan attacks on its territory.

It's unclear, however, whether the latest restrictions are related to such attacks at all. Ukraine's defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Additionally, Russia has been dealing with domestic attacks and threats that don't have strong links to Ukraine.

In March 2024, at least 149 people were killed, and another 609 were injured during a coordinated attack at a concert venue in Moscow. An Afghanistan-based branch of ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

• Ulta Beauty has been making a strong push into K-Beauty, and it appears to be paying off.
• CEO Kecia Steelman said that K-beauty is driving sales and bringing in new customers.
• The company inked exclusive sales partnerships with K-beauty brands like Medicube and Peach & Lily.

Ulta Beauty's bet to expand its South Korean beauty collection is paying off, driving sales and bringing in new customers.

In a Thursday earnings call, Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman said the company's K-beauty assortment "continues to resonate and drive skincare sales."

She said that aside from its long-standing exclusive sales partnership with skincare and beauty brand Peach & Lily, it expanded its K-beauty brand portfolio in 2025.

"We saw space for growing K-beauty trends in both skincare and makeup," Steelman said to investors. "We moved with agility to build a complementary and largely exclusive pipeline, including a portfolio of new and many exclusive brands throughout 2025, like a new Medicube, TIRTIR, Fwee, and Unleashia."

Ulta Beauty is the only US retailer selling products from beauty-tech company Medicube, which has been promoted by celebrities such as Kylie Jenner and Hailey Bieber.

Steelman added that some K-beauty brands, like pimple-patch brand Starface, "benefited from newness and social media virality." The brand sells cute, colorful pimple patches, shaped like stars and cartoon characters.

She said the brands are attracting "the next generation" of customers.

Ulta Beauty posted third-quarter results on Thursday, reporting net sales of $2.9 billion, a 12.9% increase from the same period a year ago. Its same-store sales increased 6.3% year-on-year.

The company's stock price rose by almost 6% in after-hours trading on Thursday. It's up about 33% in the past year.

This comes as K-beauty is establishing a strong fan base in the US. Data from marketing research firm NielsenIQ showed that K-beauty was a $2 billion industry in the US in the year leading up to July 2025, a 37% from the same period the year before.

Beauty retail experts told Business Insider in October that the draw of K-beauty was their affordable price point.

Anna Keller, a principal analyst from London-based market research firm Mintel, told Business Insider, "They're super affordable, so you're getting high-quality, effective products without breaking the bank."

Ulta Beauty and Sephora are attempting to secure exclusive sales partnerships with K-beauty brands before the mega South Korean beauty retailer, Olive Young, makes its highly anticipated debut in the US next year.

• Tesla's Full Self-Driving driver-assistance system requires users to pay full attention to the road.
• Elon Musk says the latest FSD software will be lenient on that requirement in certain contexts.
• Police agencies told Business Insider that texting and driving is against the law.

Elon Musk says Tesla's Full Self-Driving software will enable users to glance at their phones in certain driving scenarios.

On Thursday, Musk said drivers can use their phones while driving with FSD activated "depending on context of surrounding traffic" after an X user asked if they're able to "text and drive on FSD v14.2."

The only issue: It's still pretty illegal to text and drive.

There are no state jurisdictions that have exceptions for cellphone use if an advanced driver-assistance system is activated. And many state laws are still playing catch-up to address the rise of autonomous cars.

FSD is also not considered a fully autonomous system, according to standards set forth by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Tesla attaches "Supervised" to the FSD name to emphasize that the technology requires the driver's full attention.

State law enforcement representatives from Arizona, New York, and Illinois confirmed to Business Insider that there are no exceptions for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and that texting and driving remain illegal. Arizona, New York, and Illinois are among the top 10 states with the highest number of EV registrations, according to data from the Department of Energy.

The only carve-out for cellphone use could be in cases of emergencies, or when a driver needs to dial 911, spokespeople for Illinois State Police and the Arizona Department of Public Safety said.

"In all other cases, texting and driving/talking (while holding a phone) is still illegal, along with using any other portable wireless communication device while driving," a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Public Safety wrote.

A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla owners don't want to supervise FSD Supervised

Tesla, in recent weeks, released an update to its FSD Supervised software, which Musk previously said in July would see a "step change improvement" as the company integrates some of the "upgrades" seen in the Tesla Robotaxi fleet in Austin. The EV company is currently operating a pilot robotaxi service in the Texas capital with a safety monitor in the front passenger seat.

Tesla has an attention-monitoring system that alerts the driver to keep their eyes on the road whenever it detects they're not paying attention. The vehicle features a safety system that temporarily suspends FSD access if the driver consistently diverts their attention away from the road.

Some users have reported online their frustrations with the monitoring system.

In August, Musk said that FSD version 14 will "nag" the driver "much less" once the system's safety is confirmed.

Tesla also has faced legal challenges around its Autopilot and FSD systems.

In October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe into 2.9 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD due to reports of the system violating traffic rules, including "proceeding through red traffic signals and driving against the proper direction of travel on public roadways."

That hasn't stopped some users from putting their full trust in FSD and brushing off basic traffic rules.

Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff told Business Insider last month that he does emails while commuting to work in his Tesla Model Y and that he'd figured out exactly where to position his phone so he could use it without the car pinging him.

"The problem with that is you have to keep it pretty high on the wheel," he said. "So I would say about every other month or two, I get a ticket for being on the phone in the car."

Siminoff said he's talked his way out of some tickets, but that police officers can be skeptical when he says he's not the one driving. "You get a dirty look," he said.

Business Insider's Alistair Barr tested on Thursday whether the latest FSD software on his Tesla would allow him to use his phone while driving.

The vehicle sent two alerts, but the Tesla kept driving, Barr reported.

• Meta's top lawyer, Jennifer Newstead, is leaving to become Apple's next general counsel.
• Newstead led Meta's legal team through major regulatory battles, including an FTC antitrust win.
• Apple's leadership reshuffle includes Newstead overseeing legal and government affairs.

Apple has hired Meta's top lawyer, Jennifer Newstead, as its next general counsel, extending a broader reshuffle of the iPhone maker's senior ranks.

Newstead will join Apple in January as a senior vice president, reporting to CEO Tim Cook, and is set to become general counsel on March 1, 2026, succeeding longtime legal chief Kate Adams, who plans to retire late next year, Apple said in a press release.

In the same announcement, Apple said Lisa Jackson, its vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, will retire in late January 2026. Her Government Affairs organization will first move under Adams and then to Newstead after Adams departs, while Apple's environment and social initiatives teams will report to Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan — effectively putting both legal and government affairs under Newstead once the transition is complete.

The move is the latest in the leadership pipeline dance between Apple and Meta. On Wednesday, Meta poached Apple's longtime human interface design chief Alan Dye, who is set to become Meta's chief design officer at the end of the year.

Newstead's jump to Apple means Meta is losing the lawyer who has overseen its most sensitive legal and regulatory battles for more than six years. She has served as Meta's top lawyer since 2019, overseeing the company's historic win against the FTC in November when a federal judge rejected the agency's bid to force Meta to unwind its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.

At Meta, her remit has also included steering the company through fast-changing privacy rules, including cross-border data transfers in Europe and legal questions tied to content moderation and elections.

Before joining Meta, Newstead served as the State Department's legal advisor, a Senate-confirmed role in which she led the legal team advising the Secretary of state on US foreign policy.

Business Insider obtained Newstead's internal memo announcing her departure. Read it here:

Hi everyone –

I want to share with you that after six and a half years at this remarkable company, I have made the difficult decision to leave Meta at the end of this year to pursue my next adventure.

Serving as Meta's Chief Legal Officer has been a privilege. I am deeply grateful to Mark for his visionary leadership, friendship, and trust in me to champion Meta's cause. I'm also grateful to Sheryl Sandberg, for helping to recruit me, for her empathetic leadership and friendship, and to all my colleagues and friends in Mark's leadership team, who guide the teams building the products that billions of people use and love.

I am proud of the exceptional work of Meta's legal team. It has been an honor to work with colleagues of such talent and integrity. Your expertise and deep belief in the mission will continue to be foundational to Meta's future.

I joined Meta in 2019 from the State Department after a long career in law, government, and policy because I believed in our mission and wanted to help the company navigate an important set of changes in the legal and regulatory landscape. Over the last seven years, we've hit many milestones, including our recent win in a historic antitrust trial. We have deepened our compliance culture and commitment to responsible innovation as we build for the exciting future ahead.

As for me, I will be joining Apple next year as Senior Vice President, serving as General Counsel and overseeing the Government Affairs function. This new role is a unique opportunity for me to continue shaping legal and policy issues around the world.

Thank you all for making this journey so meaningful. I look forward to seeing all that you achieve in the years ahead.

Jen

• Thursday was Luigi Mangione's third day of evidence suppression hearings in Manhattan.
• It was also the anniversary of the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
• Mangione watched as bodycam video showed his arrest processing, including an "in-depth" search.

Luigi Mangione spent the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Brian Thompson in a Manhattan courtroom, watching video of his arrest in the UnitedHealthcare CEO's murder — including his disrobing for an "in-depth" strip search.

"We don't do in-depth searches very often, no," Altoona Pennsylvania Patrolman Tyler Frye testified during a third day of state-level evidence-suppression hearings. He also said he'd never before seen a strip search used for an arrest relating to forgery — Mangione's initial charge, for what police alleged was a false ID.

Before Mangione was strip-searched, however, a small knife had been recovered from his pocket, according to police bodycam footage aired on the courtroom's five overhead screens.

Moments later in the footage, an officer searching through Mangione's backpack could be heard saying, "There's a gun." A weapons possession charge would be added to his arrest complaint.

Mangione's strip search followed five minutes after the gun was found. When asked to describe the rarely conducted search, Frye only said, "He's naked, and they do a more thorough search."

The search was not recorded on police body cameras, as per protocol, Frye said in court.

Before the cameras were turned off, however, they recorded Mangione disrobing, a lengthy process given that he was arrested wearing multiple layers of clothing, including two heavy winter jackets, two pairs of jeans, and a pair of what police in the footage called "long johns."

Large blurry rectangles popped up at times to obscure Mangione's torso, hips, and legs as he removed the multiple layers of clothing, including two pairs of jeans and a pair of long underwear. Prior to being arrested, Mangioni tried to throw police off his scent by claiming to be a homeless man named Mark, earlier testimony revealed.

As Mangione removed his clothing, an intake officer asked a series of questions.

"What's your date of birth, Luigi?" the officer asks, recording the answer — May 6, 1998.

"Are you right or left-handed?"

"Right," Mangione answers.

"What are the color of your eyes?"

"Brown."

When the officer asks, "Single?" Mangione answered, "Yeah."

Thompson was fatally shot from behind on a Midtown sidewalk shortly after dawn on December 5, 2024, as the 50-year-old father of two was about to attend an annual investor conference. The assassination-style shooting sparked a nationwide manhunt that captivated the nation.

Federal and state prosecutors say that the 9 mm ghost gun Mangione had in his backpack when he was arrested five days later in the small Pennsylvania town matches the shell casings and single spent bullet recovered from the sidewalk.

In hearings set for this week and next, defense lawyers are challenging how Altoona police gathered evidence from Mangione. The lawyers have asked New York State Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro to bar prosecutors from showing the disputed evidence to a jury in the yet-to-be-scheduled 2026 trial.

Throughout the day on Thursday, Frye sat in the courtroom's witness chair, providing a narration as police bodycam footage showed multiple angles of Mangione's arrest and post-arrest processing.

Frye, 26, told the judge, the prosecutor, and the crowded courtroom that he was still a probationary officer on the morning of December 9, 2024, when the call came in that a "suspicious male" at the Altoona McDonald's looked like "the New York City shooter."

The five-day, nationwide manhunt sparked by Thompson's shooting ended when Mangione lowered his face mask for the two cops as they surrounded his seat near the restrooms in the back of the restaurant.

"I knew it was him immediately," Frye's partner, Patrolman Joseph Detwiler, told the judge in testimony Tuesday.

Some of the footage screened in court showed police officers rummaging through Mangione's backpack at the McDonald's and later at the police station. Defense attorneys say that the police failed to get the requisite search warrant, and that the contents — including the gun — must be suppressed. Prosecutors counter that Pennsylvania law allows law enforcement to search a suspect and their belongings as part of an arrest.

New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro has not said when he will make a decision on what evidence can be shown to a jury. No trial date has been set in either Mangione's federal or state murder cases.

• The Tesla FSD update now allows drivers to text while the vehicle is in self-driving mode.
• I tested this out on Thursday, using my 2024 Tesla Model 3 with FSD v14.2.1.
• I was driven to a local salon, and I typed live updates to my colleagues with my iPhone.

Elon Musk confirmed on Thursday that Tesla FSD will now let you text while the software drives you around.

This is part of a recent FSD update, and the CEO said it allows texting in certain situations.

So, I decided to test this out with my 2024 Tesla Model 3, to see how far the system would go and whether it performed under this new scenario.

I have a new version of the FSD software, v14.2.1 2025.38.9.6. And I'm using Tesla's free FSD trial, which it rolled out to millions of vehicles in recent days. FSD usually costs $100 a month, but the company is promoting its latest software for free right now.

I started in my driveway in Silicon Valley and picked a short route to the local salon to get my hair cut. I pressed a new blue button on the screen that says "Start Self-Driving," and off it went.

To make the test feel more real, I used my iPhone while being driven to send live updates via Slack to my colleagues at Business Insider. Here's the action I shared during the trip:

"I'm typing this as I'm being driven by FSD."

"The car hasn't stopped me doing this or alerted me."

"I'm in Chill Mode, so not an aggressive mode."

"Ok it just asked me to apply slight pressure to the steering wheel."

"Then it beeped at me to pay attention to the road."

"But it kept on driving anyway."

"Ok I've arrived at my haircut. It's parking for me. I'm still typing."

"Ok the trip ended."

The FSD drive lasted about seven minutes, and it took me through my hometown during a clear, sunny afternoon.

My Tesla went down a tricky road at one point that's just wide enough for two-way traffic, but gets tight because residents park their vehicles on either side.

While I was typing, my Tesla was pausing and dipping in and out of gaps between these parked cars and oncoming traffic, which included a large trash-hauling truck doing its rounds.

There were no incidents during the trip. The car maneuvered smoothly and carefully, giving way at the right times and stopping at all stop signs.

Just because Musk says you can text behind the wheel with the latest FSD, that may not mean you can do this in California. There are well-established rules about distracted driving, and pretty hefty fines. Now, these regulations are based on humans driving cars, not being driven by autonomous vehicles, so we've just entered new territory.

After my haircut, on the way home, I repeated the FSD test and texted my wife while being driven.

"I went to get a haircut and I'm texting you while Tesla fsd drives me home."

No response…

"You can text while driving now."

No response…

"Wdyt? Good idea?"

No response…

Smart lady.

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