Drones explainer
The drones have been seen above critical infrastructure like reservoirs, rail stations and military bases. The governor says there is "no known threat," but the FBI is still investigating.
Reblogged by xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins"):
NYTGuildTech@union.place ("NYT Tech Guild") wrote:
✊🎉WE HAVE A DEAL 🎉✊
We are thrilled to announce we have reached a tentative three-year agreement with #NYTimes, pending ratification by our members. There’s so much to share but here are just a few highlights of the deal:
#GuildBuilds #SolidarityStreak #BreakMyStreak #UnionStrong #UnionMadeNYC #Strike #Union #Unions #Tech #Election #Election2024 #Labor #CollectiveBargaining #Contract #NewsGuild #CWA #Solidarity
Attachments:
Mangione investigation latest
The New York police commissioner also said investigators matched Luigi Mangione's fingerprints with those found on items near the scene where the UnitedHealthcare CEO was fatally shot last week.
"Please don't use obvious AI slop on flyers for your event. I get hate mail."
"It's not AI, I got it from Adobe Stock!"
[ headdesk ]
https://jwz.org/b/ykec
Android is making it easier to find unknown trackers to prevent stalking
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google is rolling out two new updates to its unknown tracker alerts feature that should make it easier for Android device owners to detect unfamiliar trackers, the company announced on Wednesday. Introduced in July 2023, the safety feature automatically sends notifications if an unwanted Bluetooth tracker is traveling with you.
The first update lets Android phone owners temporarily stop sending location updates to the Find My Device network if an unknown compatible tracker is detected. Google will pause these updates for up to 24 hours, so your location will no longer be visible to whoever could be monitoring your location via the tag.
Second, anybody who receives an unknown tracker alert will be able to locate the unwanted Find My Device-compatible tracker using the “Find Nearby” feature. Once you’ve found it, Google will also offer instructions for how to physically disable the tag.
Over the years, Bluetooth trackers have been increasingly misused. Domestic abusers and stalkers have, for example, used it to keep tabs on victims, with one class action lawsuit claiming AirTag stalking had contributed to “multiple murders.” In response, Apple and Google have made various efforts to combat stalking, including an announcement earlier this year indicating support for a new industry specification, Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers, that works on both iOS and Android.
How to responsibly get rid of the stuff you’ve decluttered
Graphic by James Bareham / The Verge
While we’re always being told how to simplify our cramped living spaces and get rid of all the stuff we’re no longer using or wearing, it’s often hard to figure out just how to do it responsibly without adding to the world’s excess trash.
Because just dumping them isn’t an option, reusing and recycling old and unneeded stuff has become an important aspect of the push to preserve the world’s environment. Many states and urban areas have mandated the recycling of tech, metals, paper goods, or other substances, but even if you live in an area where the law doesn’t require it, you probably still want to do the right thing.
The problem is finding how and where you can get rid of your stuff with the greatest advantage to you and the least amount of damage to the environment. This may have been more difficult than usual over the past few years because many resources for recycling were suspended during the covid-19 pandemic, and some were slow to come back — or never did. However, there are still a number of online services that can help you figure out how to responsibly get rid of things — and possibly make some money in the process.
Here are some resources to check out, depending on...
NYT tech workers win tentative union contract after election week strike
Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images
The NewsGuild of New York announced Wednesday that it has reached a tentative deal with The New York Times on behalf of the Times Tech Guild. The tentative three-year contract would be the first for the guild, which was initially formed in 2021.
The tentative deal follows a strike that kicked off the day before the US presidential election in November and lasted for just over a week. During the strike, the guild asked people not to play NYT games like Wordle and Connections and made a page dedicated to strike-themed versions of games to play instead. In its press release, the NewsGuild says that the site saw “more than a half million page views and more than 320,000 active users.”
The guild will vote to ratify the contract on December 19th. Here are some of the highlights of the contract, from the NewsGuild’s press release:
Enhanced job security with ‘just cause’ protections
Guaranteed wage increases for the first time of up to 8.25% (plus additional base rate discretionary compensation) that prioritize the largest wage increases for the lowest paid members over the life of the contract
Additional compensation for on-call work
Important protections that lock in guardrails on additional variable compensation (including stocks and bonuses)
Improved protections for workers on visas
Language guaranteeing flexible hybrid work schedules
Process and transparency protections related to career growth, performance reviews and other workplace issues
“We’re pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with the Tech Guild,” NYT spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha says in a statement to The Verge.
Update, December 11th: Added NYT statement.
Harley Quinn Season 5 Trailer Is The Batman/Superman Mash-Up We Needed
Gotham’s biggest problem is now going to be giving Superman mallet-sized headaches. In the first trailer for the fifth season of Max Original Harley Quinn, the titular queen of mischief (Kaley Cuoco) and Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) have left the grimy streets of Gotham and make their way to Metropolis in a Batman/Superman…
Specific Suggestions: Simple Sabotage for the 21st Century.
The most potent tools for fighting injustice are the ones already in your hands. The enemy has a new form. Today's wars are fought from computer consoles; climate disinformation campaigns are...
https://jwz.org/b/ykea
Attachments:
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
Fool me once shame on you. Fool me as an integral part of attracting mass adoption to any start-up service, then slowly walking back your promises once the network effect is achieved, shame on... shame on me? I don't even know anymore.
The best doorbell cameras
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
We picked the best video doorbell cameras for keeping an eye on people, packages, and anything else that comes across your front porch.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
Last Week in the ATmosphere – 2412.b – The Fediverse Report:
"During an interview earlier this year with Wired, Graber said that Bluesky would not ‘Enshittify the Network With Ads‘. In this week’s interview with TechCrunch, Graber did not rule out advertising completely either, saying that “the ways we would explore advertising, if we did, would be much more user intent-driven”."
Here we go. https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-the-atmosphere-2412-b/
The end of Cruise is the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
Eight years and $10 billion later, GM has decided to pull the plug on its grand robotaxi experiment.
The automaker’s CEO, Mary Barra, made the surprise announcement late on Tuesday, arguing that a shared autonomous mobility service was never really in its “core business.” It was too expensive and had too many regulatory hurdles to overcome to make it a viable revenue stream. Instead, GM would pivot to “privately owned” driverless cars — because, after all, that’s what the people really wanted.
“Customers like to drive,” Barra said in a call with investors. “And there’s times they don’t like to drive.”
If some of this sounds familiar, Ford essentially made the same decision two years ago when it pulled its funding for Argo AI, the autonomous driving startup it had financed since 2017. It cited as one of its reasons a belief that partial autonomy — often described as Level 3 or Level 3-plus — will have more near-term payoffs.
Automakers are tapping out of the robotaxi business
Automakers are tapping out of the robotaxi business. With all the money being spent on electric vehicles, the auto industry has decided to cut its losses on autonomous mobility. Only one transformational, prohibitively expensive, once-in-a-generation shift at a time.
“I think this is more a recognition that autonomous vehicle technology is going to take a decade or more to provide driverless rides at a national scale,” said Phil Koopman, an AV expert from Carnegie Mellon University. “GM decided that they would rather make money selling private cars while waiting for the technology to mature than continue to invest billions of dollars standing up robotaxi businesses city by city.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25785743/1238159557.jpg)
Turmoil behind the scenes
To be sure, there’s been a lot of technological progress. Not too long ago, Cruise had driverless cars ferrying passengers across San Francisco. The company even said it was on the cusp of winning government approval to deploy its steering wheel- and pedal-less Origin shuttles in a bid to move even more people.
But Cruise moved too aggressively, and it paid the price. The company had 5 million miles of real-world testing under its belt, but the embarrassing incidents were starting to pile up. Its driverless vehicles were blocking traffic or running into emergency vehicles in San Francisco. The city’s fire chief said that the vehicles were “not ready for prime time,” citing over six dozen incidents in which robotaxis interfered with fire trucks.
“GM decided that they would rather make money selling private cars while waiting for the technology to mature”
Behind the scenes, Cruise was also a mess. The company’s first CEO, Dan Ammann, was sacked after sparring with Barra over the future direction of the company. Barra thought GM should be using Cruise’s technology to power everything from luxury self-driving Cadillacs to commercial vans, according to Bloomberg. Ammann wanted to get the robotaxi service right before spreading resources to other parts of the company. He also wanted to take Cruise public so it could use its public stock to lure in top talent. Barra wanted to keep it in-house, so GM could eventually reap the rewards.
Meanwhile, Cruise was continuing to rack up huge losses. The robotaxi subsidiary lost a staggering $3.48 billion in 2023. Kyle Vogt, Cruise cofounder and Amman’s successor as CEO, was under mounting pressure to expand the service and bring in more money to help cover the losses. Plus, he was directly competing with Alphabet’s Waymo, which had more vehicles and seemingly better technology. And Google’s parent company was more willing to spend billions of dollars, without any near-term profits, to win the robotaxi race. With the screws tightening, Vogt publicly drew a line in the sand: Cruise would bring in over $1 billion in revenue by 2025.
Instead, Cruise never made it to the end of 2024.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25785744/2181130864.jpg)
Drag and drop
It all culminated in an incident on October 7th, 2023, when a Cruise vehicle in San Francisco struck and dragged a pedestrian over 20 feet, seriously injuring her. The victim was initially struck by a hit-and-run driver, which launched her into the path of the Cruise car.
Cruise disclosed to regulators that its vehicle had struck a pedestrian but omitted key details about the accident. As a result, the California DMV suspended the company’s permit to operate self-driving cars in the state, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission launched separate investigations. Cruise later agreed to a $1.5 million penalty.
But more importantly, the incident damaged Cruise’s effort to win the public’s trust. San Francisco residents were already annoyed by the frequency with which the company’s cars were blocking their intersections and bumping into their emergency vehicles. Urbanists and supporters of car-free transportation were peeved at the suggestion that robot cars, and not fewer cars altogether, were what was needed to improve street safety. And regulators didn’t like being misled about a dangerous incident.
The incident damaged Cruise’s effort to win the public’s trust
But even in the aftermath of the pedestrian-dragging event, GM still stuck with Cruise. It wasn’t until the automaker realized it going to have to take a $5 billion hit on restructuring its business in China that Cruise was ultimately cut loose.
“Total ownership by a century old manufacturing giant controlled by stock buyback-seeking value investors was never going to be successful,” Ray Wert, former communications director at Cruise, said on Bluesky.
Ex-CEO Vogt was even more succinct: “In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies.,” he wrote on X.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25785746/1744505949.jpg)
Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP via Getty Images
What’s next?
With Cruise out of the picture, Waymo is one of the only ones left aiming to prove that robotaxis can work in the real world. (Amazon’s Zoox and Hyundai’s Motional are also still in the game, albeit far behind Waymo.) Tesla is also pursuing its own robotaxi project, which it claims will launch in 2026.
Meanwhile, GM will tackle a new risky experiment: personally owned autonomous vehicles. GM knows how to sell cars to people, and the company already has a hands-free highway driving feature called Super Cruise. Why not just leverage Cruise’s fully autonomous technology to make Super Cruise even better?
GM may have scrapped its “Ultra Cruise” branding to develop a partially autonomous system that covers “95 percent” of driving scenarios, but it still thinks that people want a fully autonomous car of their own — on their own terms.
“I think the application of what the customer wants in a privately owned vehicle is very different,” Barra said on Tuesday. “But I also think... there’s a lot of commonality [with Cruise’s technology]. How it seamlessly moves back and forth, I think is something different in a personal autonomous vehicle.”
“I think the application of what the customer wants in a privately owned vehicle is very different”
Driver-assistance technologies, especially so-called Level 3 systems, carry their own risks. There have been studies that show that the handoff between a partially automated system and a human driver can be especially fraught.
When people have been disconnected from driving for a longer period of time, they may overreact when suddenly taking control in an emergency situation. They may overcorrect steering, brake too hard, or be unable to respond correctly because they haven’t been paying attention. And those actions can create a domino effect that has the potential to be dangerous — perhaps even fatal.
The safety implications are enormous, as are the liability concerns. GM may eventually decide that robotaxis aren’t such a bad bet after all.
Every mainstream news outlet is currently running a story about the rash of CEO "wanted" posters all over New York. As far as I can tell, every one of these articles is sourced to a single shaky TikTok video showing three (3) posters on one (1) pole...
https://jwz.org/b/ykeU
Attachments:
FBI Director Wray to resign at end of Biden administration
Wray told employees at an FBI town hall that he is resigning next month to "avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray." President-elect Donald Trump has already made a new pick for FBI director.
Sony Confirms It Wants To Buy Elden Ring Developer FromSoftware
Reuters is reporting that Sony is in talks to buy Kadokawa Corporation, the company that owns FromSoftware, Spike Chunsoft, and many other Japanese businesses. If successful, it would be a big move for Sony, gaining names as big as Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Danganronpa, and be a strike back against Microsoft’s…
Trump’s DOJ broke policy to try to learn journalist’s sources, inspector general alleges
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
The Department of Justice during the Trump administration defied agency policy in an attempt to identify journalists’ sources, the agency’s inspector general alleges in a new report.
The IG alleges the agency sought “non-content communications records” — information like email logs, rather than the content of those conversations — on eight journalists across The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN. The Times had previously reported that Trump’s DOJ was looking into whether former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey had been the source of classified information that leaked in 2017 about Russian hackers.
The report comes just over a month before President-elect Donald Trump is set to resume office following his election win and raises questions about how his administration will handle similar information requests in the future. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attempted to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act by unanimous consent on Tuesday, but was blocked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). If passed, it would help protect reporters from having to reveal their sources.
“In our judgment, the Department’s deviation from its own requirements indicates a troubling disparity”
The IG found that Trump’s DOJ in his first term failed to follow policy in seeking the journalist’s records, including neglecting to convene a committee to review the compulsory records requests. The alleged violation happened just a few years after the department under the Obama administration “overhauled” its policy regarding the news media following backlash over its aggressive tactics toward journalists. “We were troubled that these failures occurred only a few years after this overhaul,” the IG’s office writes.
Trump’s DOJ also sought similar kinds of records from two members of Congress and 43 congressional staffers across the political spectrum, the IG allegedly found, though the department did not have a policy at the time addressing this kind of information gathering.
“In our judgment, the Department’s deviation from its own requirements indicates a troubling disparity between, on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy for the role of the news media in American democracy and, on the other hand, the Department’s commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role,” the IG’s report says.
In a memo from DOJ Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer included in the report, the agency noted that much of the report focuses on matters “undertaken before the Department’s revised News Media and Congressional Investigations policies were put into place that changed the operative requirements.” Still, the DOJ agreed with the core recommendations from the IG, including considering changes to how certain information requests are escalated to more senior officials.
The iPhone 16 Pro now lets you layer recordings in Voice Memos
Image: Apple
Apple is bringing layered recordings to the Voice Memos app on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. With the new feature, you can record vocals while listening to an instrumental track out loud in iOS 18.2.
Even though the microphone will technically pick up the instrumentals, Apple says the iPhone 16’s A18 Pro chip allows it to isolate vocals with “advanced processing and machine learning,” letting Voice Memos create a separate track with just your voice. From there, you can mix the two layers, as well as edit or listen to them separately.
Apple first announced this feature with the launch of the iPhone 16 Pro in September. On a support page, Apple notes that you can still listen to multitrack recordings on any device with iOS 18.2, but they won’t work with devices running anything earlier. You’ll have to separate the tracks for them to work on a device with an older version of Apple’s operating systems.
The addition of layered recordings should make Voice Memos even more useful to musicians and creators, especially since they sync to Voice Memos on Mac and iPad, letting you drop them into Logic Pro for editing.
Now you can visit Roku City in 1080p
Image: Roku
Roku City, the purple-tinted cityscape screensaver that debuted in 2018, might look a little sharper and more detailed the next time you see it scrolling by. This week, Roku is increasing the screensaver’s resolution to 1080p; it was still stuck at 720p until now — despite running on millions of 4K Roku TVs and 4K-capable streaming players. That’s blasphemous, if you ask me, so it’s nice to see some progress.
The surprisingly popular, fictional skyline is also being updated with an “expanded color palette” and more activity and Easter eggs that you’ll spot if looking closely. Apparently there’s a train station in there somewhere, so the denizens of Roku City have gained a mass transit system. Billboards “will now feature a new star button that allows viewers to learn about things like original Roku content, Roku Zones, and more.” (If I had to guess, the “more” at the end there is probably referring to ads and sponsored content.)
It took six years for us to reach full HD. So if this cadence stays on track, maybe we’ll all be experiencing Roku City in native 4K by 2030.
The tundra keeps burning and it’s transforming the Arctic
Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge
For millennia, the Arctic tundra has helped stabilize global temperatures by storing carbon in the frozen ground. Wildfires have changed that, according to the latest Arctic Report Card released yesterday at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference.
Fires, intensified by climate change, release carbon trapped in soil and plants. More frequent infernos have now transformed the tundra into a net source of carbon dioxide emissions. It’s a dramatic shift for the Arctic, and one that will make the planet even hotter.
“Climate change is not bringing about a new normal. Instead, climate change is bringing ongoing and rapid change,” Twila Moon, lead editor of the Arctic Report Card and deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said at the conference yesterday.
“Climate change is not bringing about a new normal.”
The Arctic’s permafrost, which stays frozen year-round, has kept planet-heating carbon sequestered for thousands of years. Northern permafrost has been estimated to hold about twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere. Tundra describes the Arctic’s tree-less plains, where shrubs, grasses, and mosses grow and take in carbon dioxide through...
Just In Time For The Holidays, PlayStation Plus Gets Sonic, Star Wars, And Jurassic World Games
This month Sony is adding a recent Sonic game, Jurassic World Evolution 2, the divisive Forspoken, and a Star Wars VR experience to its large PlayStation Plus Game Catalog. All these games arrive just in time for being stuck indoors due to snow and family gatherings.
The U.S. is facing a severe housing shortage. Will Trump's proposals help?
The U.S. is short approximately four million homes. Wharton economist Ben Keys traces the beginning of the housing crisis to the 2008 financial meltdown — and says climate change is making things worse.
Krispy Kreme got cyberattacked
Image: Krispy Kreme
Krispy Kreme is currently dealing with a cybersecurity breach that has brought down parts of its online donut ordering service in the US. The company has been working to resolve the issue for over a week now after detecting unauthorized access to its systems on November 29th.
In a filing issued to the SEC on Wednesday, Krispy Kreme says it was “notified regarding unauthorized activity on a portion of its information technology systems” and pulled in “leading cybersecurity experts” for remediation.
The event took down Krispy Kreme’s consumer online ordering operations but it has not affected its commercial distribution business. However, the company says there’s “a material impact” on its business operations and that there will be significant financial implications stemming from the incident due to cybersecurity experts’ and advisers’ fees. Otherwise, Krispy Kreme says it has cybersecurity insurance and it does not expect “long-term material impact on its results of operations and financial condition.”
Krispy Kreme did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the cause of the cybersecurity incident. As speculated in a report by Bleeping Computer, the timeline may suggest the company is negotiating with possible threat actors so as not to leak internal data.
Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
SrRochardBunson@universeodon.com ("Sir Rochard 'Dock' Bunson") wrote:
Attachments:
Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io ("Jenniferplusplus") wrote:
Some of the most neoliberal people I know are displaying a shocking level of class consciousness in the last week. It's kind of amazing
It is entirely appropriate that the oligarchy is just shitting itself right now
Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
lrhodes@merveilles.town ("L. Rhodes") wrote:
"If all technology requires AI, and only a handful of companies are equipped to handle the computational power that Al requires, then computation becomes a moat too deep for competition to cross. The Computational Web grows stronger." https://fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/the-computational-web/
The Vision Pro’s ultrawide Mac display is very close to being a killer app
My favorite dynamic wallpaper floating in the desert. | Screenshot: Mac Virtual Display
Since its release, I’ve mostly used Apple’s Vision Pro like a movie theater. The VR headset is an amazing way to watch Dune — but beyond that, it hasn’t really lived up to its potential as a general-purpose computing device.
Today, that’s finally starting to change. With the update to visionOS 2.2, Apple is seriously upgrading the headset’s ability to work with a Mac. It’s probably the closest thing the Vision Pro has to a killer app.
The Vision Pro has been able to mirror the screen of a Mac since day one, but I found the original Mac Virtual Display feature limiting. Text was sharp at low resolutions, but the screen was cramped. I could get more space at higher resolutions, but the text was too small and blurry to read. Yes, I can blow it up to the size of a bus to make things readable, except then, I’m craning my head around way too much to see everything. My normal three-monitor setup lets me see the most important stuff with slight movements, but that just hasn’t been possible before now.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25772222/IMG_0311.PNG)
Screenshot: Mac Virtual Display options
The Vision Pro now has three Mac Virtual Display options.
In visionOS 2.2, the standard Mac display is now curved, and it seems sharper. It’s not Retina-sharp at the highest resolutions, but I no longer have to make it gigantic to get legible text. The default virtual display becomes one of three options — Standard, Wide, and Ultrawide — once your Mac is updated to macOS 15.2, which lets it take over foveated rendering from the Vision Pro. Those two extra modes instantly made the virtual display viable for me, giving me the space I’m accustomed to in my three-monitor life.
You can crank the resolution in Ultrawide all the way up to 10240 x 2880 if you’d like, but the sweet spot for me has been the Wide display’s maximum 6720 x 2880 resolution, which lets me see everything I need to without constantly rotating my Vision Pro-laden head. It ends up feeling more like a real monitor and not some fantasy display that evokes Weird Al Yankovic’s song “Frank’s 2000” TV.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25772218/Ultrawide_display.gif)
GIF: Mac Virtual Display in Ultrawide
So much room for activities!
This has made it much easier for me to relocate to another room in my house, or even outside if I wanted. I wouldn’t take it to a coffee shop for a number of reasons (do I leave it behind when I go to the restroom or wear the Vision Pro in there like a maniac?), but I’d absolutely bring it on a work trip. Apple has also made it so that the audio is sent through the headset instead of your computer’s speakers, as it did before.
The widescreen options came in handy recently, when I strained my back in a way that made it painful to sit upright. I hate doing work on a laptop, but reclining in bed with the Vision Pro on was suddenly a real option for me.
There are quirks, though. Switching between the display modes can be sluggish, and your Mac doesn’t always remember what resolution you set, so if you switch from Wide to Ultrawide and back, you might find all your windows piled on top of each other. And the Keyboard Awareness feature, which shows your keyboard even if you have one of Apple’s immersive environments fully turned on, works great with my Magic Keyboard but doesn’t reliably show the mechanical one I prefer.
Still, those are minor issues. The expanded virtual display is a critical upgrade, and if it’s not in killer app territory, it’s at least right next door to it. It still doesn’t help the Vision Pro with its biggest issues, like that our bodies are all different and not everyone will find it comfortable to use for long stretches of time. And it doesn’t make Apple’s headset any less expensive.
But it does help that my Vision Pro is now more than a personal movie theater. Now, it’s a gigantic, high-res curved display with perfect viewing angles, too. That makes the price feel a little closer to right.
The Verge’s 2024 holiday gift guide for moms
Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
From smart ovens and calendars to color-changing nail polish, here are some of our favorite gadgets and goods to gift mom this year.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
Decentralized social media, block chain, and crypto are part of Web 3.0 but its computation and privatization that defines the era.
The Computational Web:
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
What makes the shift towards a more closed and private Internet so dubious is congruently, whether they know it or not, open web evangelists express a false sense that the web is becoming more "open." It's not. The first couple of layers are opening but infrastructure layers are tightening.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
So if even our most trivial web tools require massive amounts of computational power, and only four companies can meet those demands, then Web 3.0 is defined by compute and privatization.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
One of many consequences of the privatization of the internet is how expensive it's becoming to operate our tools on the web.
By shoehorning AI into all our apps, Big Tech is setting the expectation that even our note-taking apps require cloud computing from servers hundreds of miles away.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
There is a persistent lie in cyberspace lore that suggests the Internet is ownerless. We rationalize the fact that four companies own most of the internet's infrastructure by calling it "the cloud," but really, *that's just the Internet!*
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
The expense to build massive data centers and thousands of miles of deep sea fiber optic cables has become a competitive moat.
Currently, 3 companies control 75% of the cloud market. But even that's misleading as Meta, arguably the largest cloud company in the world, is not included in the figure.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
Our businesses, homes, cars, even our sunglasses require increasingly larger gulps of compute to run out daily lives.
What makes the requirement so ominous is the scarcity and complexity of scaling computing power for retail consumption.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
The Computational Web is the successor to Web 2.0. It not only advances the continued privatization of the Internet's technology stack, in many ways, it defines a whole new layer—computation.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
I'm defining The Computational Web by the increasingly massive amounts of computing required to run the modern Internet, thanks to AI and decentralized technologies, and the elite group of tech firms that can meet those demands.
Cyberpunk 2077 Has A Balatro Crossover Quest, Here’s How To Start It
CD Projekt Red dropped a new update for Cyberpunk 2077 that added customization options for your cars and character, photo mode features, and a few “surprises” the team is hoping fans will find themselves. One thing the team didn’t mention in its live stream or patch notes was that update 2.2 would also bring a quest…
Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are down
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
A bunch of Meta apps are down right now. For many staffers at The Verge, apps like Facebook and Instagram haven’t been loading or, when they do, show older posts. Threads seems to be recovering, though it sometimes is loading slowly for me.
“We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps,” Meta says on X. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”
“We know there’s a technical issue impacting some people’s ability to access Instagram,” Instagram says on X. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience.”
Hi, we know there’s a technical issue impacting some people’s ability to access Instagram.
We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience.#instagramdown
— Instagram (@instagram) December 11, 2024
Downdetector is showing big and sudden spikes for Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, indicating a lot of people have been affected by the outages. The Instagram Downdetector page, for example, shows a peak of more than 70,000 reports of issues with the platform. The Facebook peak exceeded 100,000.
This big outage follows another large Meta outage from March that took down Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta also saw a major outage affecting Instagram and Facebook in October 2022.
Update, December 11th : Added Meta and Instagram comments.
Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
molly0xfff@hachyderm.io ("Molly White") wrote:
Incredible essay about the importance and challenges of digital archival by Maxwell Neely-Cohen, as well as the various imperfect strategies to achieve “century-scale” digital archives.
https://lil.law.harvard.edu/century-scale-storage/
"We picked a century scale because most physical objects can survive 100 years in good care. It is attainable, and yet we selected it because the design of mainstream digital storage mediums are nowhere close to even considering this mark."
1/
5 Things I Love And 4 Things I Loathe About Indiana Jones And The Great Circle
I’m having such a good time with Indy and his splendid circle. My hopes for the game were incredibly raised when I saw the first in-game footage at Gamescom this year, but even that didn’t properly convey that this was going to be a full-fledged immersive sim adventure. It’s tremendous fun, and a big part of that is…
Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 FIFA World Cup — a controversial pick
FIFA's selection of Saudi Arabia to host the World Cup was celebrated in the kingdom but criticized by human rights groups, who fear residents, visitors and migrant workers will be at risk of abuse.
Wisconsin kayaker who faked his death is back in the U.S. and in custody, police say
Ryan Borgwardt disappeared in August while kayaking in Wisconsin, but an investigation revealed he intended to fake his death and had fled to Europe. Police said he willingly returned to the U.S.
Homey adds new energy management features and a dongle
The Homey smart home platform, which works with the Homey Pro or Homey Bridge hubs, has launched a Home Energy Dongle and energy management tab for its app.
Smart home company Homey has added a new energy management tab to its app to track and monitor energy use from compatible smart devices such as plugs, appliances, thermostats, and EV chargers. This week, the company also announced the Homey Energy Dongle for Europe, which can connect directly to a smart meter to monitor a home’s energy consumption.
Together, the software and hardware are a big step toward a full home energy management system. Homey says it plans to bring support for automatic dynamic energy pricing next year, so users could set up automations to do things like charge their EV when electricity prices are low.
The new energy management tab is available in public beta to all Homey Pro and Homey Cloud customers, and the dongle can be preordered for €39 if you’re in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Austria, Switzerland, and Hungary, with shipping expected in March 2025.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25785060/Homey_Energy_Dongle___4.png)
Image: Homey
The Homey Energy Dongle works with European smart meters and uses the P1 standard to monitor electricity and gas usage.
Homey is a smart home platform centered around a smart home hub, either the powerful, locally based Homey Pro ($399) or the lighter Homey Bridge ($69). Depending on which hub you have, Homey can connect to and control a wide range of smart home devices thanks to radios for Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Thread, IR, and more; there’s also the option of cloud-based connections and compatibility with other bridges, such as Philips Hue. Homey also supports the Matter smart home standard.
“The Energy Management functionality works with all devices connected to a Homey setup, no matter if they use a proprietary local/cloud API, Zigbee, Z-Wave or Matter to connect to Homey,” explained Homey commercial director Stefan Witkamp in an email to The Verge. A full list of currently compatible devices is on Homey’s website.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25785054/Mobile_App___Energy__Dark_.png)
Image: Homey
The new energy management tab in Homey can track energy usage across connected devices in your home.
The energy tab uses charts to show a home’s live electricity, gas, and water usage (with compatible hardware) and can provide historical data. Homey says it “can also track solar generation, monitor EV charging, and show energy supply to, or consumption from, the grid.” It’s compatible with smart batteries and can show a list of your top energy consumers, helpful for figuring out where to cut down on usage. You can enter your energy price to get cost estimates, and Homey says it plans to add support for dynamic pricing next year.
LG acquired Homey earlier this year and has said it plans to incorporate Homey’s connectivity and software into its ThinQ platform. However, Homey will continue to operate independently. While LG plans to integrate its appliances with Homey, official support is still on the roadmap, says Witkamp.
Energy management is set to play a key part in the smart home as a compelling reason to connect all your devices. Allowing a system to automate energy use in your home could save you energy and money. Several smart home companies already offer some functionality here. Samsung’s SmartThings Energy platform, which works with its appliances and several partner devices, was the first platform to be recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency as an Energy STAR Smart Home Energy Management System. Others, such as Home Assistant, offer some energy management features, and Apple introduced an electricity usage page to its Home app this year (although it’s limited to PG&E customers).
The new Matter smart home standard just added energy management to its spec along with support for several key devices in the space — electrical vehicle supply equipment, solar panel inverters, home batteries, and more. All of this shows significant momentum in home energy management, and Homey’s latest move is another option for people looking to use smart home tech to maximize the efficiency of their energy use and minimize their costs.
Microsoft starts testing iPhone file sharing for Windows PCs
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Microsoft has started testing some improvements to its Phone Link app for iPhone users. Windows Insiders can now try out a new way to share a file from an iPhone to a PC and vice versa, making the experience a little more like file sharing with an Android device.
Windows Insiders can download the latest Phone Link app update, version 1.24112.89.0 or higher, and it will include a new setup dialog to enable sharing files between iPhones and PCs. The sharing works by using the share sheet on iOS to send files to the “Link to Windows” app, which then lets you select a Windows device to share the file with.
On a Windows PC you can also share local files by right clicking on a file and selecting share and then “my phone” to get a file from your PC to your iPhone.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25785677/phone_link_ios_setup.png)
Image: Microsoft
The new file sharing dialog for iPhone users.
Microsoft has been gradually improving its Phone Link app for both iOS and Android in recent years, but the iOS version is still very limited thanks to Apple’s OS restrictions. Last year Microsoft did manage to update Phone Link with the ability to send and receive messages via iMessage. Even this integration is limited though, only supporting sending and receiving messages to single contacts and not groups (via iMessage).
You still can’t use the Phone Link app to mirror phone apps onto your PC like you can with Android, and you have to have the app open for messages to be sent over iMessage as Microsoft is using a Bluetooth and system notifications workaround to read send messages.
The latest file sharing update is live now for Windows Insiders and should start rolling out to all Phone Link users in the coming months.
Xbox tests streaming your Xbox games to your Xbox
Image: The Verge
Microsoft is going to let Xbox Insiders who also subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate test the ability to stream some Xbox games they already own to their Xbox starting today. The feature could be useful if you want to jump into a game without having to install the whole thing; given how big game file sizes can be nowadays, streaming a game via the cloud might be a faster way to play or save you from hitting a data cap.
Microsoft has published a list of games that support the feature on its website. There are some great games on the list, including Animal Well, Balatro, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Price of Persia: The Lost Crown.
You’ll be able to stream games on Xbox Series X / S and Xbox One consoles, Microsoft says, and the feature is set to come out of testing next year. The company started letting Xbox players stream select games they own on TVs and browsers last month.
Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
zzclaybourne@wandering.shop ("Zig Claybourne") wrote:
sometimes
the only poem worth writing
concerns
how glad and surprised
it's ok to be
to see the sun
another day
Nvidia must face lawsuit alleging it downplayed crypto’s impact on its success
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
Nvidia must face an investor lawsuit claiming it misled shareholders about the impact of the cryptocurrency market on its sales after the Supreme Court dismissed the company’s appeal.
The court said it had “improvidently granted” Nvidia’s petition, meaning it decided it shouldn’t have taken it up in the first place. That means the case will have to continue on in the lower courts. During oral arguments last month, some justices seemed skeptical about whether it was appropriate for them to weigh in on the case, wondering if it was more of a dispute over facts than a legal question, according to Reuters.
The case stems from a pair of 2018 investor lawsuits claiming Nvidia recklessly misled investors about how closely tied its revenue growth was to cryptocurrency performance. Investors alleged that Nvidia and its top executives made materially false claims downplaying the impact of the volatile cryptocurrency market on its revenue growth, and exaggerating its ability to adapt its changes. An appeals court had allowed at least a portion of the consolidated case to move forward.
In a separate case in 2022, Nvidia settled charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $5.5 million over claims it obscured how its success was linked to the volatile cryptocurrency market. The company did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.
Nvidia is facing increased legal scrutiny alongside its business success. The company is reportedly facing antitrust investigations from both Chinese authorities and the US Department of Justice.
“We would have preferred a decision on the merits affirming the trial court’s dismissal of the case, but we are fully prepared to continue our defense,” Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo says in a statement. “Consistent and predictable standards in securities litigation are essential to protecting shareholders and ensuring a strong economy, and we remain committed to supporting them.”
Microsoft wants to make the Xbox app the home of PC gaming
Image: The Verge
Microsoft is updating the Xbox app on Windows today with hundreds of PC games that weren’t previously available and a new home experience. It’s part of a broader effort to make the Xbox app the place to find PC games, regardless of whether they’re part of PC Game Pass or not.
“Earlier this summer, we began working with partners to bring all PC games with Xbox features into the Xbox app,” explains Chris Charla, general manager of content curation and programs at Xbox. “We’re super excited to see what Xbox games come to Windows PC from game creators in the future and to welcome nearly 400 titles that previously weren’t discoverable or purchasable in the Xbox app.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25785345/XboxAppInsiderHERO.png)
Image: Microsoft
The new Xbox app homescreen.
The 400 new games include titles from Japanese studios like Kemco and Kairosoft, alongside games like The Invincible by Double 11. More than 100 of these new titles are also Xbox Play Anywhere, so if you buy the Xbox console version then you can play the Xbox PC version too. “Universal Xbox ownership, as well as universal cloud saves on Xbox, and cross-play between Xbox versions on console and PC (and other platforms, at the developer’s discretion) are awesome features players love,” says Charla.
What’s not immediately clear from Microsoft’s blog post is exactly what “bring all PC games with Xbox features into the Xbox app,” means. Microsoft has been trying to tempt game developers over to its Windows-based store in recent years, even lowing its cut from 30 percent to just 12 percent to try and shake up PC gaming.
Despite these efforts, there are plenty of PC games that have cross-play between the Xbox and PC version of the game but aren’t part of the Microsoft Store currently or the Xbox app. Microsoft now appears to be working to bring even more of these games into the Xbox app, and it will be interesting to see whether the company makes the bold move of listing Steam, Epic Games Store, or itch.io games in the Xbox app soon, too. Microsoft says it will have more to share about its Xbox app plans at the game developers conference in March.
Microsoft is also rolling out a new home UI for the Xbox app on Windows today. The home UI now includes featured content from PC Game Pass and the Microsoft Store, alongside collections of deals and discounts. Microsoft has also added a “jump back in” section that lets you quickly get back into recent games just like you can on an Xbox console.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
We can debate what Web 3.0 will be, but it's been here the whole time, and it's not Web3.
The PS5 disc drive is back in stock, but only for GameStop Pro members
We never thought such a simple attachment would be so difficult to come by. | Image: Sony
Sony’s detachable disc drive for the PlayStation 5 has been hard to come by as of late, and it’s disappointing that the $700 PS5 Pro doesn’t include one. However, GameStop is now offering a rare window for GameStop Pro members to pick one up for its original MSRP of $79.99.
GameStop’s loyalty program costs $25 a year, so you can consider that an added premium if you’re not interested in its other benefits. Those include a $5 welcome reward, two percent cash back rewards, free shipping, exclusive deals and discounts, and an extra $5 monthly reward.
Whether you already own or anticipate purchasing a digital-only PS5, such as the newest Digital Edition or recently released PS5 Pro, it’s a good idea to pick one up while you have the chance. Neither console requires the disc drive, but with no future guarantee that your favorite games will be available for download after the console generation runs its course, it offers nice peace of mind. The add-on also ensures that physical media preservationists can continue using physical game copies, although you may still have to download extra data to play many of them. It also allows you to play your entire Blu-Ray and DVD collection.
What’s neat about the PS5’s Disc Drive is that it hides away under a cover that makes it look like a seamless piece of the overall hardware. Setup is easy, too, and only requires connecting a cable before pairing it to your console. You’ll need an internet connection for the initial setup, but that’s a small inconvenience to gain the long-term benefit.
Watching sports: a special series from The Verge
It should be simple to stream live TV at home.
But depending on the sport, you might be signing up (and paying handsomely) for a lot of different services just to keep up.
There are the rare leagues, like Major League Soccer, that can be watched on a single channel. (In the US, every match can be viewed live on Apple TV Plus.) But keeping up with most sports resembles, say, tennis, where the rights for its four major tournaments are scattered across several different platforms.
And in general, as the large streaming platforms go toe-to-toe with the legacy broadcast companies transitioning to digital, the much-sought-after rights have positioned leagues to make a lot of money. The adverse effect for viewers is that many professional sports are now available “exclusively” in many different places.
Basically, watching sports has never been easier. And it’s also never been harder.
The high cost of NFL streaming options
In the US, you can stream the majority of live NFL games through Sunday Ticket, a full season of which costs $349, plus you’ll need to be subscribed to YouTube TV at $72.99 a month. For six months of football ($437.94), from week one to Super Bowl Sunday, that brings...
Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
cmconseils ("Laura :bongoCat:") wrote:
To Major Tom
Attachments:
In South Korea, insurrection charges are closing in on the president
Police, prosecutors and investigators have deemed President Yoon Suk Yeol as a suspect in a rare investigation into a sitting president for possible insurrection charges.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a soulless return to Middle-earth
Image: Warner Bros. Animation
Director Kenji Kamiyama’s new Lord of the Rings anime film feels like what happens when you try to turn a footnote into a feature-length story.
Every Team-Up Attack In Marvel Rivals, Explained
It certainly feels appropriate that a cooperative game based on superheroes and villains would let them work together to take out the opposition. Marvel Rivals takes that to heart with its Team-Ups mechanic, which allows certain character combinations to unlock stat boosts or even special moves.
Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Early Impressions Are Calling It The Best In The Series
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 had its official premiere in London yesterday, December 10. While full reviews won’t be out until closer to the movie’s December 20 launch, early impressions are trickling out on social media from people who attended early screenings. It sounds like the Year of Shadow is ending on a high note, as…
The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars was blocked by a judge
Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images
The Onion’s acquisition of InfoWars isn’t happening — at least for now. In a ruling on Tuesday, a Texas bankruptcy judge rejected The Onion’s purchase of the conspiracy-ridden website founded by Alex Jones, according to a report from The New York Times.
Last month, The Onion announced that it had purchased InfoWars during a bankruptcy auction of Jones’ assets. It had the support of the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, who successfully sued Jones for more than $1 billion for spreading false claims. However, Judge Christopher Lopez halted the sale shortly after the auction.
As reported by The Times, Lopez disagreed with the sealed bidding process used to sell Jones’ assets, saying that the auction didn’t “maximize” the amount of money Jones’ creditors could’ve gotten from the sale of InfoWars. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said when handing down his decision, according to The Times. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding.”
A statement from The Onion about InfoWars.
— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) 2024-12-11T05:14:01.469Z
The Onion bid $7 million to acquire InfoWars, which included $1.75 million from its parent company Global Tetrahedron, while the remainder would come from money Sandy Hook families won from their lawsuit against Jones, The Times reports. Despite this roadblock, Global Tetrahedron still intends to pursue an acquisition of InfoWars, with the goal of replacing the site with “a relentless barrage of humor for good.”
“We are deeply disappointed in today’s decision but The Onion will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured,” The Onion CEO Ben Collins said in a post on Bluesky. “We will also continue to seek a path toward purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks.”
Astro Bot Gets A New Holiday-Themed Winter Level Tomorrow
Astro Bot, one of the best games released in 2024, is getting a new snowy, holiday-themed level as part of a free update for the PlayStation 5 platformer. The wintery level will include some new bots to collect, and it (sadly) sounds like it might be the last bit of Astro Bot DLC we get.
Kimberly Guilfoyle is the latest Trump family ally chosen for an ambassadorship
Kimberly Guilfoyle, who got engaged to Trump's son in 2020, is the latest appointee he's chosen from his family tree. There's a long and controversial history of presidents picking relatives for jobs.
Apple Watch Series 10’s record low price from Black Friday is back
The Series 10 has the biggest display of any non-Ultra Apple Watch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
If you happened to miss out on the **Apple Watch Series 10’**s all-time low Black Friday price, now is a good chance for redemption. The 42mm GPS model of Apple’s latest smartwatch has dropped to $329.99 (about $70 off) at Amazon when you click a coupon. The 46mm GPS Series 10 is also on sale for $359.99 ($70 off) at Amazon with a coupon and matching its lowest price.
The Apple Watch Series 10 would be a great jump from older models if your last upgrade happened more than a few cycles ago, and certainly a viable alternative to the Watch Ultra 2 if you’re not interested in spending $800. Compared to the Series 9, it offers a slightly bigger wide-angle OLED display while being about 10 percent thinner and a touch lighter. It also has faster wireless charging than any Apple Watch before it (up to 80 percent in 30 minutes or eight hours of use from 15 minutes of charging). New to the Apple Watch lineup as of the Series 10 are underwater depth and water temperature sensors for tracking your aquatic activities. You can also play music over its speaker and enjoy clearer calls thanks to a voice isolation feature.
Everything else will mostly feel familiar if you’re coming from a Series 9, including the new FDA-approved sleep apnea feature that debuted late into its launch. We haven’t had enough time to judge its effectiveness, but note that it uses the accelerometer instead of the blood oxygen sensors Apple was forced to remove from its watches in the US.
A few more mid-week deals
- Looking for a different aesthetic to drive the point home in a PC gaming setup? The 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard can certainly do the trick. You can get the NES-inspired design with a matching joystick and dual oversized super buttons for $84.99 ($15 off) at Best Buy. The tenkeyless wireless board works over Bluetooth or 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, or via USB-C. It’s nice to look at and type on with its Kailh White switches and PBT-capped keys, but the package offers nice versatility for playing retro games. You can even reconfigure every button on the keyboard and customize the super buttons with any macro you want.
- The Sonos Ace are very good noise-cancelling headphones on their own merit, but they’re especially intriguing for an all-time low $349 ($100), a deal Amazon, Best Buy, and Sonos are repeating from Black Friday. They look and sound the part for a premium pair of headphones, with great comfort, good audio quality, and solid ANC performance. Unfortunately, the Ace doesn’t fully blend into the wider Sonos ecosystem right now. The unique TV Audio Swap feature is iOS-only and not fully compatible across its full range of soundbars or any other Sonos speaker, for example. That said, they’re worthy of consideration at this price if you’re into the brand. Read our review.
- You can get the Anker PowerCore 548 Power Bank for $79.99 ($70 off) at Amazon with a coupon, which is an all-time low price. It offers two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports with up to 87W charging speeds available between them. The 192Wh (60,000mAh) capacity is enough to charge laptops, tablets, and smartphones several times over. It has an integrated retractable LED lamp with adjustable brightness and an SOS mode, which turns the light on automatically during a blackout while plugged in. It also has a carrying handle and solar inputs, making it ideal for both in-home and outdoor needs.
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle: Should You Focus On Just The Main Story?
MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes you, as Indy, on a trip through the heart of the growing fascist movement in 1930s Europe. While you’re searching for clues in Indy’s main investigation, you’ll catch sight of a few dozen smaller, optional mysteries. But is it worth taking the time to check them…
Albertsons sues Kroger and ends failed grocery megamerger
The lawsuit over a deal to combine the two largest U.S. supermarkets came just a day after it was blocked in both federal and Washington state courts.
Google’s AI enters its ‘agentic era’
Image: Google
I stepped into a room lined with bookshelves, stacked with ordinary programming and architecture texts. One shelf stood slightly askew, and behind it was a hidden room that had three TVs displaying famous artworks: Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon, and Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. “There’s some interesting pieces of art here,” said Bibo Xu, Google DeepMind’s lead product manager for Project Astra. “Is there one in particular that you would want to talk about?”
Project Astra, Google’s prototype AI “universal agent,” responded smoothly. “The Sunday Afternoon artwork was discussed previously,” it replied. “Was there a particular detail about it you wish to discuss, or were you interested in discussing The Scream?”
I was at Google’s sprawling Mountain View campus, seeing the latest projects from its AI lab DeepMind. One was Project Astra, a virtual assistant first demoed at Google I/O earlier this year. Currently contained in an app, it can process text, images, video, and audio in real time and respond to questions about them. It’s like a Siri or Alexa that’s slightly more natural to talk to, can see the world around you, and can “remember”...
Google built an AI tool that can do research for you
Illustration: The Verge
Google has just revealed a new AI tool called Deep Research that lets you call upon its Gemini bot to scour the web for you and write a detailed report based on its findings.
Deep Research is currently only available in English to Gemini Advanced subscribers. If you have access, you can ask Gemini to research a particular topic on your behalf, and the chatbot will create a “multi-step research plan” that you can either edit or approve. Google says Gemini will start its research by “finding interesting pieces of information” on the web and then performing related searches — a process it repeats several times.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25784204/deep_research.gif)
GIF: Google
When it’s finished, Gemini will spit out a report of its “key findings” with links to the websites where it found its information. You can ask Gemini to expand on certain areas or tweak its report, as well as export the AI-generated research to Google Docs. This all sounds a bit similar to the Pages feature offered by the AI search engine Perplexity, which generates a custom webpage based on your prompt.
Google took the wraps off Deep Research as part of a broader announcement for Gemini 2.0, its new model for an era of “agentic” AI, or the AI systems that can perform tasks for you. Deep Research is just one example of Google’s agentic push, and it’s something other AI companies are seriously exploring as well.
Along with Deep Research, Google announced that it’s making Gemini Flash 2.0 — a speedier version of the next-gen chatbot — available to developers. Deep Research is currently only available for Gemini Advanced subscribers on the web. You can try it by heading to Gemini and then changing the model dropdown to “Gemini 1.5 Pro with Deep Research.”
Google is testing Gemini AI agents that help you in video games
Clash of Clans. | Image: Supercell
Google just announced Gemini 2.0, and as part of its suite of news today, the company is revealing that it’s been exploring how AI agents built with Gemini 2.0 can understand rules in video games to help you out.
The agents can “reason about the game based solely on the action on the screen, and offer up suggestions for what to do next in real time conversation,” Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu write in a blog post. Hassabis and Kavukcuoglu also say that the agents can also “tap into Google Search to connect you with the wealth of gaming knowledge on the web.”
Google is testing the agents’ “ability to interpret rules and challenges” in games like Clash of Clans and Hay Day from Supercell_,_ according to Hassabis and Kavukcuoglu.
I’m not surprised Google is chasing these ideas: in theory, an AI agent coaching you through a strategy or puzzle could be useful. It sounds like this work is very early, though, and I have many questions about whether or not these agents actually give sound advice.
Google is also investing in video games and AI in another way: creating playable virtual worlds on the fly from a prompt image using a “foundation world model” called Genie 2 that it showed off last week. That work seems early, too: Genie 2 can only generate consistent worlds for “up to a minute,” Google says.
It sure sounds like Google is planning to actually launch some smart glasses
Here’s what Google’s latest smart glasses prototype looks like. | Image: Google
Google is working on a lot of AI stuff — like, a lot of AI stuff — but if you want to really understand the company’s vision for virtual assistants, take a look at Project Astra. Google first showed a demo of its all-encompassing, multimodal virtual assistant at Google I/O this spring and clearly imagines Astra as an always-on helper in your life. In reality, the tech is somewhere between “neat concept video” and “early prototype,” but it represents the most ambitious version of Google’s AI work.
And there’s one thing that keeps popping up in Astra demos: glasses. Google has been working on smart facewear of one kind or another for years, from Glass to Cardboard to the Project Iris translator glasses it showed off two years ago. Earlier this year, all Google spokesperson Jane Park would tell us was that the glasses were “a functional research prototype.”
Now, they appear to be something at least a little more than that. During a press briefing ahead of the launch of Gemini 2.0, Bibo Xu, a product manager on the Google DeepMind team, said that “a small group will be testing Project Astra on prototype glasses, which we believe is one of the most powerful and intuitive form factors to experience this kind of AI.” That group will be part of Google’s Trusted Tester program, which often gets access to these early prototypes, many of which don’t ever ship publicly. Some testers will use Astra on an Android phone; others through the glasses.
Later in the briefing, in response to a question about the glasses, Xu said that “for the glasses product itself, we’ll have more news coming shortly.” Is that definitive proof that Google Smart Glasses are coming to a store near you sometime soon? Of course not! But it certainly indicates that Google has some hardware plans for Project Astra.
Smart glasses make perfect sense for what Google is trying to do with Astra. There’s simply no better way to combine audio, video, and a display than on a device on your face — especially if you’re hoping for something like an always-on experience. In a new video showing Astra’s capabilities with Gemini 2.0, a tester uses Astra to remember security codes at an apartment building, check the weather, and much more. At one point, he sees a bus flying past and asks Astra if “that bus will take me anywhere near Chinatown.” It’s all the sort of thing you can do with a phone, but nearly all of it feels far more natural through a wearable.
Right now, smart glasses like these — and like Meta’s Orion — are mostly vaporware. When they’ll ship, whether they’ll ship, and whether they’ll be any good all remains up in the air. But Google is dead serious about making smart glasses work. And seems to be just as serious about making the smart glasses itself.
Google launched Gemini 2.0, its new AI model for practically everything
Illustration: The Verge
Google’s latest AI model has a lot of work to do. Like every other company in the AI race, Google is frantically building AI into practically every product it owns, trying to build products other developers want to use, and racing to set up all the infrastructure to make those things possible without being so expensive it runs the company out of business. Meanwhile, Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI are pouring their own billions into pretty much the exact same set of problems.
That may explain why Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind and the head of all the company’s AI efforts, is so excited about how all-encompassing the new Gemini 2.0 model is. Google is releasing Gemini 2.0 on Wednesday, about 10 months after the company first launched 1.5. It’s still in what Google calls an “experimental preview,” and only one version of the model — the smaller, lower-end 2.0 Flash — is being released. But Hassabis says it’s still a big day.
“Effectively,” Hassabis says, “it’s as good as the current Pro model is. So you can think of it as one whole tier better, for the same cost efficiency and performance efficiency and speed. We’re really happy with that.” And not only is it better at doing the old things Gemini could do but it can also do new things. Gemini 2.0 can now natively generate audio and images, and it brings new multimodal capabilities that Hassabis says lay the groundwork for the next big thing in AI: agents.
Agentic AI, as everyone calls it, refers to AI bots that can actually go off and accomplish things on your behalf. Google has been demoing one, Project Astra, since this spring — it’s a visual system that can identify objects, help you navigate the world, and tell you where you left your glasses. Gemini 2.0 represents a huge improvement for Astra, Hassabis says.
Google is also launching Project Mariner, an experimental new Chrome extension that can quite literally use your web browser for you. There’s also Jules, an agent specifically for helping developers find and fix bad code, and a new Gemini 2.0-based agent that can look at your screen and help you better play video games. Hassabis calls the game agent “an Easter egg” but also points to it as the sort of thing a truly multimodal, built-in model can do for you.
“We really see 2025 as the true start of the agent-based era,” Hassabis says, “and Gemini 2.0 is the foundation of that.” He’s careful to note that the performance isn’t the only upgrade here; as talk of an industrywide slowdown in model improvements continues, he says Google is still seeing gains as it trains new models, but he’s just as excited about the efficiency and speed improvements.
Google’s plan for Gemini 2.0 is to use it absolutely everywhere
This won’t shock you, but Google’s plan for Gemini 2.0 is to use it absolutely everywhere. It will power AI Overviews in Google Search, which Google says now reach 1 billion people and which the company says will now be more nuanced and complex thanks to Gemini 2.0. It’ll be in the Gemini bot and app, of course, and will eventually power the AI features in Workspace and elsewhere at Google. Google has worked to bring as many features as possible into the model itself, rather than run a bunch of individual and siloed products, in order to be able to do more with Gemini in more places. The multimodality, the different kinds of outputs, the features — the goal is to get all of it into the foundational Gemini model. “We’re trying to build the most general model possible,” Hassabis says.
As the agentic era of AI begins, Hassabis says there are both new and old problems to solve. The old ones are eternal, about performance and efficiency and inference cost. The new ones are in many ways unknown. Just to name one: what safety risks will these agents pose out in the world operating of their own accord? Google is taking some precautions with Mariner and Astra, but Hassabis says there’s more research to be done. “We’re going to need new safety solutions,” he says, “like testing in hardened sandboxes. I think that’s going to be quite important for testing agents, rather than out in the wild… they’ll be more useful, but there will also be more risks.”
Gemini 2.0 may be in an experimental stage for now, but you can already use it by choosing the new model in the Gemini web app. (No word yet on when you’ll get to try the non-Flash models.) And early next year, Hassabis says, it’s coming for other Gemini platforms, everything else Google makes, and the whole internet.
Google’s new Jules AI agent will help developers fix buggy code
Illustration: The Verge
Google has announced an experimental AI-powered code agent called “Jules” that can automatically fix coding errors for developers. Jules was introduced today alongside Gemini 2.0, and uses the updated Google AI model to create multi-step plans to address issues, modify multiple files, and prepare pull requests for Python and Javascript coding tasks in GitHub workflows.
Microsoft introduced a similar experience for GitHub Copilot last year that can recognize and explain code, alongside recommending changes and fixing bugs. Jules will compete against Microsoft’s offering, and also against tools like Cursor and even Claude and ChatGPT’s coding abilities. Google’s launch of a coding-focused AI assistant is no surprise — CEO Sundar Pichai said in October that more than a quarter of all new code at the company is now generated by AI.
“Jules handles bug fixes and other time-consuming tasks while you focus on what you actually want to build,” Google says in its blog post. “This effort is part of our long-term goal of building AI agents that are helpful in all domains, including coding.”
Developers have full control to review and adjust the plans created by Jules, before choosing to merge the code it generates into their projects. The announcement doesn’t say that Jules will spot bugs for you, so presumably it needs to be directed to a list of issues that have already been identified to fix. Google also says that Jules is in early development and “may make mistakes,” but internal testing has shown it’s been beneficial for boosting developer productivity and providing real-time updates to help track and manage tasks.
Jules is launching today for a “select group of trusted testers” according to Google, and will be released to other developers in early 2025. Updates about availability and how development is progressing will be available via the Google Labs website.
Donald Trump Will Need a Police State to Implement His Agenda
Mr. Smith, please come in, have a seat. Our records show you’ve been with the State Department for 17 years, the past five in the Bureau of National Security and Nonproliferation. Now it has come to our attention through an anonymous tip to the America First Compliance Program that you made a derogatory comment about […]
bcantrill ("Bryan Cantrill") wrote:
Today is the day of dtrace.conf(24), our quadrennial DTrace conference! It's online and it's free -- join @ahl and me and a terrific slate of presenters starting at 9a Pacific!
https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2024/12/05/dtrace.conf24/
The Onion’s Bid to Buy Infowars Is Rejected in Court
After a grueling hearing that stretched over two days, a federal bankruptcy judge declined to approve the sale of Infowars to Global Tetrahedron, LLC, the Onion’s parent company late on Tuesday. The result was precisely what the conspiracy mega-peddler hoped for. Last month, Infowars was sold at bankruptcy auction to the company; Onion CEO Ben […]
Wallace & Gromit studio Aardman is working on a Pokémon project
TCPi / Aardman
Aardman Animation, the studio behind the Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, and Shaun the Sheep, and Chicken Run franchises, is working with The Pokémon Company International on a mysterious new project.
In a surprising turn of events, TCPi and Aardman announced today that they’re teaming up for “a special project” that’s set to be released some time in 2027. In a press release about the collaboration, TCP marketing and media VP Taito Okiura described it as “a dream partnership for Pokémon.” Aardman’s managing director Sean Clarke added that it was both a huge honor and privilege to be tasked with presenting the Pokémon world in a new way.
Pokémon × @aardman
Coming in 2027! pic.twitter.com/DQPbtekKXo— Pokémon (@Pokemon) December 11, 2024
“Bringing together Pokémon, the world’s biggest entertainment brand, together with our love of craft, character and comedic storytelling feels incredibly exciting,” Clarke said. “Aardman and TPCi share an emphasis on heritage and attention to detail as well as putting our fans and audiences at the heart of what we do, which we know will steer us right as we together create charming, original and new stories for audiences around the world.”
Aside from the projected release year, there aren’t all that many details about what the collaboration is or how we’ll be able to consume it. Clearly, stop-motion claymation will be involved, but what’s less obvious is whether this will end up being a movie, a series, or perhaps a game — which wouldn’t be a first for Aardman. This sort of team-up makes a lot of sense for TCPi after the success of Detective Pikachuand surprise delights like Pokémon Concierge. And the closer we get to 2027, it’s feels like there’s a very strong chance this will be something that has people buzzing.
Dominate the Battlefield With the Best Scorestreaks in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
The moment you find yourself on a kill streak in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, slaying opposing forces with reckless abandon, tallying up kills to unlock a streak reward, is one of the greatest feelings in the competitive first-person shooter. You’re helping your team, sure. But who cares about them?! You’re about to…
Why every company wants a podcast now
Image: The Verge. Photos: Getty
Hello, and welcome to Decoder! I’m David Pierce, editor-at-large of The Verge. As you may have noticed, we’re dropping some extra episodes in the feed this week. You’ll have Nilay back on Friday and for next week, as we run toward the end of the year.
But I’m really excited to be here with you all today because I’m getting to talk about one of my favorite things: podcasts. There’s something strange happening these days in the podcast world — well, actually, there are kind of a lot of things happening. It’s been a wild year.
One thing I’ve noticed recently is the way companies that deal in money have been using podcasts not just as an entertainment medium but also as a weird hybrid of marketing, thought leadership, and networking. It’s something we’ve seen for a few years now with venture capital firms, for example: not only do most of the top-level VC companies have their own podcasts but also people who do podcasts about venture capital end up going into it after meeting and talking to all these folks.
It’s kind of a weird, complicated web that goes both ways, and it’s not getting any less weird or less complicated once you add stuff like crypto and politics to the mix. So I...
We asked our staff for their 2025 predictions
2024 had some stand-out moments in tech: from AI-generated images to TikTok’s near ban, to beigecore, Windows BSOD, the best smart ring of them all, and the list goes on. If you want to see the technology that we just couldn’t ignore, check out our video here.
But now, we’re looking toward 2025, and it’s gearing up to be another eventful year. Will we have an actual fulfilling X replacement? Will more health and wellness features be cleared by the FDA on wearables? Will nothing really change but everything will just get more expensive? While we’re not fortune tellers, we can probably take some educated guesses about what’s to come.
We asked Verge staff for their biggest predictions on trends we could see in 2025. Take a look, and spoiler alert, some are already coming true.
The 10 Worst Movies Of 2024 According To Metacritic
2024 has been a solid, if somewhat strange year for movies. This year saw the release of some great films across both streaming platforms and in theaters.
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Has A Hidden Way To Recover From Softlock Nightmares
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a fantastic time, and I’m playing it in every spare second I can find. But another thing it is, on PC at least, is buggy. I’ve had a bunch of freezes, which suck, but worst was the moment when companion Gina just refused to follow her script, and my game—which offers no way to…
pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
Common sense about American health care mismanagement.
YouTube is a hit on TVs — and is starting to act like it
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube just released some new stats that show how the service is being consumed on televisions, and the numbers are enormous. Watch time on TV for sports content was up 30 percent year over year; viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts on their TVs every month.
This is YouTube we’re talking about, though, so of course the numbers are huge. The living room has been YouTube’s fastest-growing platform for years — Alphabet’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, said on the company’s most recent earnings call that watch time is growing across YouTube “with particular strength in Shorts and in the living room.” Even as YouTube continues to dominate basically all facets of the entertainment business, the arrow on your TV still points up.
The trend hasn’t changed in forever, but YouTube has spent the last couple of years finally doing something about it. It launched a way to sync your phone and your TV, so you can watch a video on the big screen and interact with it on the small one. Earlier this year, the company redesigned the TV interface to make it easier to find comments, links, and channel pages while you’re watching a video. It redesigned those channel...
pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
The skeptics are going to disown me, because I don't think tagging logical fallacies is an argument.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/12/11/do-we-really-need-a-taxonomy-of-idiots/
Attachments:
iOS 18.2 is out now, adding ChatGPT integration and more Apple Intelligence tools
iOS 18.2 is now available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. | Image: Apple
Apple has released iOS 18.2,iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, which add a bunch of new Apple Intelligence features, including Image Playground, Genmoji, and integration with ChatGPT.
With Image Playground, users can generate an image from a prompt or make something based on one of Apple’s suggestions. However, Image Playground seems to opt for cartoony or stylistic photos instead of photorealistic images, which could prevent potential misuse. Image Playground is available as a standalone app, alongside being integrated into Messages, Freeform, and Keynote.
Genmoji allows users to generate their custom emoji images (Emojipedia calls them “emoji-like stickers”) that I think could be a big hit in group chats. The Notes app is also getting an “Image Wand” tool that transforms rough drawings into more detailed images, with preset styles available for animation, illustration, and sketch.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25784989/Apple_Intelligence_ChatGPT_integration.jpg)
Image: Apple
ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence
The ChatGPT integration, which has been one of the most notable Apple Intelligence features in the works, lets you access the OpenAI tool from Siri or when using Apple’s Writing Tools. Features include a compose tool that generates text based on what the user is already writing about and ChatGPT’s text-to-image generation to insert images directly into the document. You don’t need to have a ChatGPT account to use it, but you are able to log in to your account if you want.
Other new features in iOS 18.2 include Visual Intelligence, the ability to share AirTag locations with a link, daily sudoku puzzles in Apple News Plus, and more. Localized English language support has also been expanded to Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK, with support for additional languages like Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The expanded language support will roll out throughout 2025, with the initial set launching in April at around the same time Apple Intelligence features are scheduled to start rolling out in the EU, according to Apple.
Clues to Luigi Mangione's ideology. And, courts halt Kroger and Albertsons megamerger
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione's digital footprint could provide clues to his ideology and possible motive. And, what's next for Kroger and Albertsons after courts halt megamerger.
This Florida County Just Adopted a New Sex-Ed Curriculum—Minus the Sex
This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here. A new middle school sex education curriculum in Orange County, Florida, obtained by Popular Information, eliminates previous lessons on the reproductive system, contraception, and consent. What remains is a discussion of the benefits of abstinence and a cursory review of […]
Eleven Organizations to Support if You Care About Climate Change
This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you’re reading this, chances are you care a lot about fighting climate change, and that’s great. The climate emergency threatens all of humanity. And although the world has started to make some progress on it, our global response is still extremely lacking. […]
Hospitals Gave Women Medications During Childbirth—Then Reported Them for Using Illicit Drugs
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Amairani Salinas was 32-weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they prepped her for an emergency cesarean section, they gave […]
Hospitals Gave Women Medications During Childbirth—Then Reported Them for Using Illicit Drugs
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook. . Amairani Salinas was 32-weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they […]
With Assad regime out, Syrians grapple with what comes next
Under Syria's president, a vast jail complex in the capital Damascus was known as a place where Syrians were disappeared without trial. Now it's crowded with with families searching for loved ones.
Trump's withdrawn nominees latest in a long line of Cabinet members who never were
Many presidents face failed Cabinet picks so when former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration for President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet, it wasn't unprecedented, though Trump's style has been.
One family thought they had left Syria forever. After Assad's fall, they plan to return
Rehab Alkadi and her husband, Feras, fled Syria's war with their young son in 2013. They and other Syrian refugees in the U.S. are now hopeful for their country's future, even as uncertainty remains.
UncleDuke1969@universeodon.com ("Uncle Duke") wrote:
"Are you going to take off those headphones so we can discuss this like mature adults, Harry? Or, are you just going to sit there like a petulant child?”
Attachments:
Dreaming of a Black Utopia in Trump's America
In his new book, The Black Utopians, author Aaron Robinson tells the story of how Black folks have created many different versions of utopian communities throughout history — and why those communities tend to be especially meaningful during times of political tension and racial unrest.We want to hear from our listeners about what you like about Code Switch and how we could do better. Please tell us what you think by taking our short survey, and thank you!
Through 'The Loss Mother's Stone,' mothers share their grief from losing a child to stillbirth
Through her work, photographer Nancy Borowick says she hopes to draw awareness to women's stories, educate Americans and destigmatize the conversation that occurs between doctors and patients.
Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:
Generative AI is an abomination.
Reblogged by keul@fosstodon.org ("Luca Fabbri"):
bluebabbler ("Bluebabbler") wrote:
Solo per oggi nella casellina del Calendario dell'Avvento #Indie trovate 'Terrestre non umana' in download gratuito.
https://app.myadvent.net/calendar?id=d4cdr5z8z71fz0rz2u135g618ivy7m0w&door=10
(e ringraziate @Scaffarini, porca miseria!)
GM to retreat from robotaxis and stop funding its Cruise autonomous vehicle unit
The automaker will focus on development of partially automated driver-assist systems for personal vehicles like its Super Cruise, which allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel.
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
Welcome to The Computational Web (a short note)
Bankruptcy judge rejects The Onion's bid for Infowars
The bidder that lost last month's auction of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' assets had complained that the process was rigged and "fatally flawed."
Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
leaverou@front-end.social ("Lea Verou") wrote:
Looking at the candidates [1] and considering the needs of the TAG, these would be my top 3 recs for those voting:
1. Dan Clark: the TAG desperately needs folks with JS and UI expertise
2. @christianliebel We need people who believe the Web can be a viable alternative to proprietary native platforms, and he also seems to have the kind of energy the TAG needs.
3. @marcosc Marcos Caceres: his past TAG tenure and extensive standards experience make this a no brainer
cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:
Ben Folds released a Christmas album back in October: "Sleigher". Or as the description on the bandcamp page says:
"The result is not so much a Ben Folds Christmas record as it is a Ben Folds record set at Christmas..."
Anyway, if you're interested: