Tech
WireGuard VPN developer can’t ship software updates after Microsoft locks account
WireGuard, the major software project and VPN that underpins popular security software including Mullvad and others, has found itself locked out of a key part of its Microsoft developer’s account and unable to ship software updates to Windows users.
Jason Donenfeld, the creator of the open source WireGuard VPN software, told TechCrunch that he has been locked out of his Microsoft developer account, and as a result cannot sign drivers or ship updates for WireGuard for Windows users, which are critical for its software to run. Donenfeld said in a post on X on Wednesday that the account termination stopped a WireGuard update from shipping.
It’s the second such incident of a high-profile and widely used open source project being shut out from its customers due to a seemingly abrupt account termination from Microsoft, with popular encryption software VeraCrypt facing a similar circumstance. Both developers said Microsoft locked them out of their accounts without first alerting them.
In the case of VeraCrypt, which is used by hundreds of thousands of users to encrypt files and operating systems, its developer Mounir Idrassi told TechCrunch that being locked out of his account means he is unable to update the software in time for a crucial certificate authority expiry, which he said may prevent some users from booting up.
Donenfeld, the WireGuard developer, told TechCrunch in an email: “If there were a critical vulnerability to fix right now — there isn’t! I just mean hypothetically — then users would be totally exposed.”
WireGuard is an open source VPN software used around the world to connect devices over the internet. WireGuard’s code is highly popular for its simplicity and security, as it serves as the foundation of many VPN implementations and commercial services that rely on its code, like Proton and Tailscale.
Donenfeld told TechCrunch in an email that he has spent the past few weeks modernizing WireGuard’s Windows code and was ready to send a copy update to Microsoft for checks before it can ship out to users, but was met with an “access restricted” error when logging into the developer portion of his Microsoft account.
Despite going through the process to verify his driver’s license or passport with Microsoft (the third party Microsoft uses for verification said he was “verified”), Donenfeld said his access was still suspended.
Donenfeld told TechCrunch that he found a page on Microsoft’s website saying that the company had been carrying out “mandatory account verification for all partners in the Windows Hardware Program who have not completed account verification since April 2024,” but that the verification program had since closed.
Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Program allows developers like Donenfeld and VeraCrypt’s Idrassi to “deploy hardware and device drivers for Windows PCs and other devices.” The ability to develop and release drivers for Windows users is restricted to known and vetted developers, as drivers can grant vast access to an operating system and its data and are known to be abused by hackers for that reason.
That account verification process meant that developers were required to upload their government-issued ID before they were allowed to publish potentially highly sensitive code to the broader Windows user base.
“Microsoft never sent me any notification at all about this. I’ve looked in every inbox in every spam folder in every mail log, and zero, nothing, zilch,” Donenfeld said.
The Windows Hardware Program’s verification program has “now concluded” and developers who have not uploaded their documents had their accounts “suspended,” the page reads, meaning that these accounts can no longer send updates.
Donenfeld said that he was referred to Microsoft’s executive support team, which handles customer service and account requests for high-profile individuals, which confirmed his appeal had been received but that they had to wait as long as 60 days for review.
By late Wednesday, there was a glimmer of hope in Donenfeld’s case. He told TechCrunch that he was finally in contact with Microsoft and that hopefully the issue would be resolved soon.
Microsoft did not immediately comment when reached by TechCrunch.
Donenfeld and Idrassi are not alone, with the account lockout issues affecting others as well.
Windscribe, a maker of VPN and other consumer privacy tools, said in a post on X that it had also been locked out of its Partner Center account. The company said it had a verified account for over eight years in order to sign its drivers.
“We’ve been trying to resolve this for over a month, and getting nowhere. Support is non-existent,” Windscribe said in its post. “Anyone know a human with a brain that still works at Microsoft and can help?”
Tech
Tesla brings its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston
Tesla is expanding its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, according to a social media post from the company.
The post says simply that “Robotaxi is now rolling out in Dallas & Houston 🤠” and includes a 14-second video showing Tesla vehicles driving without human monitors or drivers in the front seat.
The company now offers robotaxi service in three cities, all of them in Texas, after launching in Austin last year and starting to offer rides without safety drivers in January 2026. In a February filing, Tesla said that its Austin robotaxis have been involved in 14 crashes since launch.
It also offers a more limited ride service with human drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tesla may not be running many vehicles in either of these new markets yet, with crowdsourced data on the Robotaxi Tracker website only registering a single vehicle in each city (compared to 46 active vehicles logged in Austin).
Tech
Netflix plans to add a vertical video feed, use AI for recommendations
Netflix is going to launch a TikTok-like vertical video feed within its apps this month, and plans to use AI broadly for content creation and recommendations, the company said on Thursday.
Netflix has been testing a vertical video feed since last year. The short video feature could aid users with discovering video podcasts, along with the current slate of shows and movies. The company is also leaning more into using AI for recommendations after launching a ChatGPT-powered search feature last year.
“We have been in personalization and recommendation for two decades, but we still see tremendous room to make it better by leveraging newer technologies,” Netflix co-CEO Gregory Peters said during the company’s first-quarter conference call. “Recommendation systems based on new model architectures not only improve current personalization but also let us iterate and improve more quickly — adding support for different content types much more efficiently.”
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said he sees AI tools improving the entire content creation process. “In general, we expect GenAI to make content better; better tools, better processes […] It takes a great artist to make great art, and AI won’t change that. But AI will give those artists better tools to bring those visions to life,” he said.
Last month, Netflix bought Ben Affleck’s AI creation company InterPositive, which, Sarandos said, has garnered interest from creators.
“With our acquisition of InterPositive, we think it accelerates our GenAI capability because it is proprietary technology created specifically for filmmakers and filmmaking, different from other GenAI video applications. While our ownership of InterPositive is very new, we have generated interest with creators who have spent time with the tools, and we are seeing momentum build around adoption,” he noted.
Netflix also mentioned that it wants to use AI to improve its ad suite, and allow for new formats and customization to get better returns. The company expects to generate ad revenue of $3 billion this year.
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Netflix reported revenue of $12.25 billion in Q1 2026, up 16.2% year-year-year, and said profit jumped 83% to $5.28 billion. Alongside the first-quarter results, Netflix said its co-founder and chair, Reed Hastings, is leaving the company’s board this summer.
Notably, the company hiked subscription prices in the U.S. late last month, which could have a positive impact next quarter. The company said it ended 2025 with 325 million paying subscribers.
Tech
Bluesky confirms DDoS attack is cause of continued app outages
Bluesky’s website and app are still struggling on Friday after experiencing service interruptions that chief operating officer Rose Wang attributed to an ongoing cyberattack.
On Thursday evening, the social media company confirmed that a “sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack” was to blame for the issues, which had originally started on April 15 at around 8:40 p.m. ET.
Distributed denial-of-service attacks often involve pummeling apps or websites with large amounts of junk web traffic aimed at overloading and knocking its servers offline. While these kinds of cyberattacks do not involve intrusions into a company’s systems, these incidents can still be disruptive to both the company and its users.
In a post on the Bluesky account, the company shared the cause of the problem and noted that the attack was “impacting our operations, with users experiencing intermittent interruptions in service for their feeds, notifications, threads, and search.”
Bluesky said that it has not seen any evidence of unauthorized access to private data, however.
When originally reached for comment on Thursday, Bluesky only pointed us to the status.bsky.app page and account (@status.bsky.app) for updates. The company did not provide an estimated time for a fix.
The network’s status page is currently not working, however.
Bluesky said it will provide another update on the status of the attack and its mitigation by 1 p.m. ET on Friday.
Because the outages are intermittent, the Bluesky site and app will load at times, slowly, and other times will display error messages.
For instance, switching to a particular feed within the app could display a message that says, “This feed is currently receiving high traffic and is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. Message from server: Rate Limit Exceeded.”
Popular feeds like Discover or the official Bluesky Team’s feed often see this problem, even as users’ own personal feeds are functional.
Other times, like when trying to visit a user’s profile, the site will display an error message, forcing you to refresh and try again.
Bluesky protocol engineer Bryan Newbold remarked around 3:46 a.m. ET on Wednesday, “oof, our services are getting hit pretty hard tonight.”
Notably, the service disruptions are impacting Bluesky, but other communities, like Blacksky, that run their own infrastructure on the underlying protocol that powers the decentralized social network, are still functioning.
Blacksky’s team told TechCrunch that the Bluesky outage has led to a “significant spike” in migration requests from Bluesky users over the past 12 hours, as users, devs, and other ATmosphere founders like Sebastian at Eurosky have been promoting its services.
It was clear that Bluesky’s team was in a hectic state this week while facing these issues, as one message on its status page had a typo: ” investigating an incident with service in one of our reginos [sic].”
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