DeepMind says its new AI coding engine is as good as an average human programmer

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

DeepMind has created an AI system named AlphaCode that it says “writes computer programs at a competitive level.” The Alphabet subsidiary tested its system against coding challenges used in human competitions and found that its program achieved an “estimated rank” placing it within the top 54 percent of human coders. The result is a significant step forward for autonomous coding, says DeepMind, though AlphaCode’s skills are not necessarily representative of the sort of programming tasks faced by the average coder.

Oriol Vinyals, principal research scientist at DeepMind, told The Verge over email that the research was still in the early stages but that the results brought the company closer to creating a flexible problem-solving AI — a...

Continue reading…

The best deals on Nintendo Switch games right now

The most colorful shooter in recent memory,Splatoon 2, is one of the many Nintendo Switch titles currently on sale. | Image: Nintendo

The overwhelming popularity of the Nintendo Switch means there’s no shortage of games in its library. If there’s a game that's capable of working with the Switch hardware, odds are it's already available or will be soon. Thankfully, having a massive library of games also means there are regular price breaks on a variety of titles, from first-gen offerings like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, to remasters like Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2.

If you’re looking for deals on Nintendo Switch games, we’ve rounded some of our favorites below. The Nintendo eShop is typically the best place to find deals on digital downloads, especially if you prefer the indie variety, but there are some exceptions where retailers will...

Continue reading…

Star Wars has a Luke Skywalker problem

Image: Lucasfilm Ltd.

The Book of Boba Fett — much like all of Disney’s current and future Star Wars shows — has a Luke Skywalker problem. And it’s one that no amount of expensive CGI technology can solve.

Spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett, episode six ahead

The issue goes something like this: Luke is, obviously, a hugely important character to Star Wars as a franchise. Star Wars’ current plan for its future is heavily focused on Disney Plus TV shows set in the post-Return of the Jedi era, like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, set five years after Return of the Jedi, where Luke is roughly 28 years old.

Mark Hamill — who is still portraying Skywalker — is 70, meaning that a vast array of de-aging technology and body doubles are needed to allow the...

Continue reading…

Dell XPS 17 review: big screen dream

Master of the multitask

Continue reading…

NFT money laundering is a small but growing sector, says Chainalysis report

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Money laundering through the buying and selling of NFTs is a small but growing sector of criminal activity, according to a Chainalysis report released Wednesday.

The report found a small but growing portion of activity on NFT marketplaces that could be attributed to money laundering, which quantified this amount by tracking value sent to NFT marketplaces from cryptocurrency addresses known to be associated with scams, theft, malware operators, and accounts under legal sanctions. In total the amount tracked was small — around $1.4 million in Q4 2021 — but had grown significantly from the beginning of the year.

“All of this activity represents a drop in the bucket compared to the $8.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency-based money...

Continue reading…

LogMeIn rebrands as GoTo, still plans to spin off LastPass

The refreshed GoTo Meeting app. Yes, there’s officially a space between ‘GoTo’ and ‘Meeting’ now. | Image: GoTo

LogMeIn, the company that owns remote collaboration software like GoTo Meeting and password management company LastPass is changing its name to GoTo. The rebranding comes after the company reported over $1 billion in revenue and that “GoTo” product usage is growing — including a 36 percent year-over-year sales increase of its GoTo Connect VoIP, video conferencing, and collaboration platform.

With remote working spiking during the pandemic, the GoTo suite of Software as a Service (SaaS) products is a popular choice. In a statement emailed to The Verge, the company claims GoTo Meeting has 300 million participants, along with 50 million for GoTo Webinar and 5 million for GoTo Training.

Image: GoTo

New company, new...

Continue reading…

Google Maps review moderation detailed as Yelp reports thousands of violations

Google explains how it keeps user-created reviews on Google Maps free of fraud and abuse in a new blog post and accompanying video. Like many platforms dealing with moderation at scale, Google says it uses a mix of automated machine learning systems as well as human operators.

The details come amidst growing scrutiny of user reviews on sites like Google Maps and Yelp, where businesses have been hit with bad reviews for implementing COVID-related health and safety measures (including mask and vaccine requirements) often beyond their control. Other reviews have criticized businesses for supposedly leading them to contract COVID-19 or for not keeping to usual business hours during a global pandemic.

Earlier today, Yelp reported that it...

Continue reading…

Sony planning more than 10 live service games before March 2026

Sony’s surprise acquisition of Bungie earlier this week for $3.6 billion was about a lot more than just Destiny. In an investor call today, Sony has revealed it plans to launch more than 10 new live service games by March 2026. That’s a hugely ambitious plan, and marks a major expansion for Sony’s PlayStation games beyond its traditional console exclusives.

“The strategic significance of this acquisition lies not only in obtaining the highly successful Destiny franchise, as well as major new IP Bungie is currently developing, but also incorporating into the Sony group the expertise and technologies Bungie has developed in the live game services space,” says Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki. “Through close collaboration between Bungie and...

Continue reading…

Samsung Galaxy A13 5G review: functional, no-frills 5G

A low-cost phone with meaningful 5G connectivity

Continue reading…

SpaceX’s new Starlink Premium tier promises up to 500Mbps for $500 a month

The new Starlink Premium dish. | Image: SpaceX

SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink is getting a pricey new high-performance tier called Starlink Premium. Announced by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the new service includes a larger high performance antenna and advertises speeds of between 150 and 500Mbps (20 to 40ms latency), up from the 50 to 250Mbps (20 to 40ms latency) promised by its regular service. Premium also claims roughly double the upload speeds at 20 to 40Mbps, compared to 10 to 20Mbps for the standard tier.

This increase in performance doesn’t come cheap. While the base Starlink service costs $499 for the hardware and $99 a month, Starlink Premium will cost $2,500 for the antenna, and $500 a month. Deliveries are due to start in the second quarter of this year....

Continue reading…

Polestar’s ‘Arctic Circle’ performance EV can shred a snowy track

Polestar, the electric automaker jointly owned by Volvo and Geely, likes one-offs. There was the more powerful version of its electric fastback Polestar 2 sedan made for the Goodwood Festival of Speed. And now there’s the Arctic Circle, a high-riding, studded winter-tire-sporting, icy blast of winter racing prowess from the company’s Swedish engineers (who know how to design a vehicle for snow riding).

The one-off was designed by Polestar chief chassis engineer – and trophy winning rally driver – Joakim Rydholm, who said he took on the challenge in order to improve the accuracy of the Polestar 2’s handling. “With such low levels of grip, we can feel and analyze the dynamics at a much slower pace than on tarmac, which means we can really...

Continue reading…

Sony is still struggling with PS5 supply

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony shipped just 3.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in its all-important holiday quarter, a slight bump over the previous quarter’s figure of 3.3 million, demonstrating how the electronics giant is still struggling to meet demand during the ongoing global supply chain crunch. 17.3 million units in total have been shipped as of December 31st, nearly three million fewer than the PlayStation 4 had managed at the equivalent point after its release. The PS4, however, was easily found on store shelves during its first year on sale, whereas we don’t yet have a good measure of true demand for the PS5.

The gaming division’s revenue was down 8 percent year on year to 813.3 billion yen (~$7.09 billion), but operating profit rose 12.1 percent to...

Continue reading…

Resident Evil 4’s fan-built HD remaster is finally complete

After seven years in development, Albert Marin and his small team have completed their exhaustive reworking of Resident Evil 4’s graphics on PC. Compared to some other projects where developers upscale or otherwise modernize the visuals for a new generation or platform of hardware, this team pored over every image asset, using funds donated by fans of the project to improve how the 2006 classic originally looked.

In some cases where old textures just didn’t look all that good at a higher resolution, the team remade many of them from scratch using photos or AI, while striving to remain faithful to the aesthetic of the original game. When I interviewed Albert Marin in early 2021, the team had amassed over 4,500 Photoshop files and had put...

Continue reading…

It’s pronounced “neft”

Illustration by Alex Castro (modified Corin Faife) / The Verge

Okay, so here’s the deal.

We’re a month into 2022 and the NFT market is still scorching hot. Already this year we’ve had Coachella NFTs, Lamborghini NFTs, NFT profile pics on Twitter, NFT teasers from YouTube and Meta, and the usual raft of ill-advised NFT projects that were announced and then quickly canceled. The NFT projects keep on rolling.

It’s pronounced “neft”

As a security reporter, I tweeted that I get DM’d about NFT scams more quickly than I can write about them, a state of affairs that (sadly) looks like it’ll keep rolling too. Apparently this year I’m going to be writing “NFT” a lot, you’re going to be reading “NFT” a lot, and before we all get completely sick of it let’s get something straight:

It’s pronounced “neft.”

L...

Continue reading…

YouTube’s video player is getting a new look on Android and iOS

The new fullscreen UI makes it easier to like a video or add it a playlist.

YouTube is rolling out a new interface for its mobile app’s full-screen player, which should make it easier to like or dislike a video (privately, of course), view comments, and share what you’re watching. The old version hid most of those features behind a swipe-up gesture on the “more videos” section, where the new version puts them front and center, relegating related videos to a button in the corner.

The change only shows up when you’re watching in full screen — the app looks largely the same when you’re watching a video in portrait mode. Doing so, however, used to come with the upside of having easy access to the share button and other controls. Now, you’re getting that when watching in landscape view as well.

W...

Continue reading…

Microsoft’s take on task management is available for a test run

Image by Microsoft

Microsoft Lists is now available as a free preview to users with personal Microsoft accounts — but only for the first 200,000 people who sign up to try it. Lists, which is a sort of task management meets to-do list app, has only been available to business and enterprise users up until now.

Image by Microsoft

Gallery view in Microsoft Lists.

Microsoft says the preview is built off “the core of Microsoft Lists,” and comes with some new features, including tabbed views and the ability to add images in-line. The preview isn’t a feature-complete version of Lists, unfortunately, as Microsoft mentions that it’s missing some functionalities of the standard app (although it’s not clear exactly what). It’s also not...

Continue reading…

The best wired or wireless gaming mouse you can buy

Whatever your budget or grip style is, we’ve found the best gaming mouse for you. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Multiple picks for all budgets

Continue reading…

EA says Battlefield 2042 ‘did not meet expectations’

For the most part, EA’s most recent quarterly earnings statement was a positive one. The games publisher says that the fiscal quarter ending on December 31st, 2021 was “the largest quarter in the company’s history for net bookings, underlying profitability and cash generation,” according to CFO Blake Jorgensen. Games like Apex Legends and FIFA continue to be hits. But there was one noticeable issue: Battlefield 2042. “The launch of Battlefield 2042 did not meet expectations,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said during the earnings call.

The game, which launched in November after a last-minute delay, was built on the idea of scale, with gigantic multiplayer battles and even features like dynamic weather in the form of tornadoes. According to...

Continue reading…

Another gaming company just gave up on NFTs

MetaWorms | Image: Team17

Yesterday, Team17, the developer and publisher of many beloved indie games, announced a “MetaWorms” project tied to its series of Worms games that stretches over 23 years and has sold over 75 million copies. Team17 said the generative NFTs would be “giving fans the chance to own a unique piece of video game memorabilia.” 24 hours later, Team17 now says it “is today announcing an end to the MetaWorms NFT project. We have listened to our Teamsters, development partners, and our games’ communities, and the concerns they’ve expressed, and have therefore taken the decision to step back from the NFT space.”

How did things change so much, so quickly? As we’ve seen in the response to the announcement of NFTs forS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Ubisoft’s G...

Continue reading…

Riot’s latest League of Legends spinoff hits Netflix Games as a mobile exclusive

Netflix has announced that it’s adding two new titles to its small but steadily growing lineup of mobile games — including Riot’s newest League of Legends spinoff. Starting today, users can play Dungeon Dwarves and Hextech Mayhem on Android and iOS devices for free with a Netflix subscription.

Dungeon Dwarves, developed by Hyper Hippo, is an idle dungeon crawler that continues to play if the app isn’t active. You control a party of five dwarves who beat down walls and monsters to reclaim their underground home bit by bit. They continue their dungeon dive even if you aren’t actively playing the game, rewarding you with the loot and weapons they found whenever you return.

The more notable of the two releases is Hextech Mayhem, a rhythm...

Continue reading…

Google parent company Alphabet broke $200 billion in annual revenue for the first time

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google parent company Alphabet hit a new record for annual revenue in 2021, showing no ill effects from the lingering coronavirus pandemic or ongoing issues with the global supply chain. For full-year 2021, the company saw a 41 percent year-over-year jump in revenue to $257 billion. The company reported revenue of $75.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 32 percent from the year earlier.

“Q4 saw ongoing strong growth in our advertising business, which helped millions of businesses thrive and find new customers, a quarterly sales record for our Pixel phones despite supply constraints, and our Cloud business continuing to grow strongly,” Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement accompanying the earnings release....

Continue reading…

Joby’s Spin and Swing gadgets let you add a little motion to smartphone videos

Joby even has an accessory that lets you get two-axis movement. | Image: Joby

Joby, the company behind the bendy GorillaPod tripods, has come out with two new gadgets aimed at content creators who shoot with their phones but still want to get some professional-looking shots. The $90 Spin and $130 Swing (hardware to mount your phone to them is sold separately, but some creators may already have what they need) are designed to act as small, relatively inexpensive devices that you can use to mimic the movements that a motion-control head or slider can produce without the need for a trained operator or heavy mounting equipment. Oh, and they charge with USB-C, which is always a plus.

For those unfamiliar with the video production process, adding motion to your shots can be a bit of a bear to deal with — you have to...

Continue reading…

Netflix finally lets you remove the shows and movies haunting your ‘Continue Watching’ row

Netflix has finally added the option for users to manually delete shows and movies from their “Continue Watching” row. That means you can finally get rid of the half-finished documentaries that you gave up on or binge-watched TV shows that you never quite got around to finishing that haunt the row of Netflix’s user interface.

The new feature is already out on Netflix’s web, mobile, and TV apps. To remove a show or movie, all you have to do is select the offending card in the row and scroll down to the new “Remove from Continue Watching” option to clear it. Clicking a second time will quickly undo the removal, in the event you accidentally remove that octopus documentary that you’ve been really, truly meaning to get around to watching...

Continue reading…

Ford will spend up to $20 billion more in shift to electric vehicles

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Ford will spend as much as $20 billion to reorganize its business for the electric future, according to Bloomberg. The automaker is also mulling whether to spin off some of its EV business as a special acquisition company (SPAC) in order to attract more investment. Ford has previously stated that it would spend $30 billion on electric and autonomous vehicle development by 2025.

Ford is reportedly putting former Apple and Tesla executive Doug Field in charge of the reorganization, which will include converting its factories from gas-powered to electric vehicle production and hiring more engineers. (General Motors, which is reporting its fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday evening, recently announced an initiative to hire 8,000 people to help...

Continue reading…

Android Auto is looking more like CarPlay in new leaked images

Android Auto’s new UI, codenamed “Coolwalk,” seen in leaked image. | Image by u/RegionRat91 via Reddit

More images of Android Auto’s next major redesign have been leaked, and it looks like Google has been taking some notes from Apple CarPlay (via XDA Developers). As seen in images from AndroidWorld and Reddit user u/RegionRat91, the redesign, codenamed “Coolwalk,” could come with several practical changes.

Image by AndroidWorld

The new UI may show the map side-by-side with other panels.

For one, the redesign eliminates the status bar, which contains your phone’s battery life, cell reception, and time and instead places it in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Meanwhile, on the left side is a home screen button that appears to open up retractable widgets when long-pressed. Similar to CarPlay, the new UI may...

Continue reading…

Wordle will be free forever because you can right-click to save the whole game

Wordle is the pandemic game we didn’t know we needed, so there’s understandably some fear that its brand-new owner, The New York Times, will eventually ruin it somehow.

But as technologist Aaron Rieke brilliantly explains in a Twitter thread, there’s little chance of that — because Wordle is a webpage, and webpages can be saved. You could download a complete copy of the game right now that contains all the answers, cycles to the proper new puzzle each day, and still comes with the same “Share” button so you can share those all-important little squares with fellow players.

So you could save copy of the website right now, *unplug your computer from the internet,* and play Wordle every day for years.

2/x

— Aaron Rieke (@aaronkbr) February...

Continue reading…

The Google One VPN is now available on iPhones

Google’s VPN is available for Premium subscribers. | Image: Google

The VPN service that’s included with a Google One Premium subscription is finally available on iPhones after Google’s promise in October 2020 that it would come to iOS. While a Google-run VPN has been available on the platform for months via the Google Fi cell service, today’s update means that anyone who pays for 2TB or more of Google One storage should now also get a VPN for their phone.

The VPN is available to people in 18 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, and Mexico. iPhone users may be familiar with the idea of an upgraded storage plan that also comes with a way to keep your IP and internet traffic private — Apple includes its Private Relay service in all of its paid iCloud plans.

Google’s VPN doesn’t let Americans watch...

Continue reading…

Coachella will sell lifetime festival passes as NFTs

Image: Coachella

Coachella is selling lifetime festival passes for the first time — but you have to buy an NFT to get one. The music festival today launched an NFT marketplace built by FTX, with three collections of NFTs going on sale on February 4th.

The company will auction the Coachella Keys Collection, a group of 10 NFTs that allow holders lifetime tickets to the festival. Owners of the token will get passes to Coachella every year, plus “access to Coachella-produced virtual experiences forever.” NFT purchases also include special perks at the 2022 festival like front row access and a celebrity chef dinner.

That the festival is dipping into the NFT craze is perhaps unsurprising — in November, Coachella parent company AEG renamed the Staples Center...

Continue reading…

Big Tech drove record clean energy purchases in 2021

Solar panels sit on the roof of Google headquarters in Mountain View. | Photo by Kimberly White/Corbis via Getty Images

Tech companies drove a surge in corporate purchases of clean energy last year, according to a new analysis by BloombergNEF.

Overall, corporations bought a record 31.1 GW of clean energy in 2021, equivalent to more than 10 percent of all new renewable energy capacity added worldwidethat year. Over half of the power purchase agreements for clean energy made by corporations were signed by tech giants, including Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google.

Agreements with utilities or developers to purchase enough clean power to matchannual electricity use are one strategy that companies use to claim they are running their operations on 100 percent clean energy. In reality, that clean energy usually isn’t flowing directly into corporate offices...

Continue reading…

Drag Her brings drag culture to fighting games

Street Fighter meets Drag Race, now on Kickstarter

Continue reading…