Stephen King’s It is getting an HBO Max prequel series set in Derry

A painting of a young Mrs. Kersh and her “father” Bob Gray. | Image: Warner Bros.

In both Stephen King’s original It and Warner Bros.’ recent adaptations of the novel, one of the most alarming things the Losers Club discovers about Pennywise the Dancing Clown is just how long the extra-dimensional being has been terrorizing the people of Derry, Maine. The tiny taste of Pennywise’s history featured in 2019’s It Chapter Two was one of the most memorable moments in the film, and one imagines that’s part of why HBO Max is working on a new It prequel series set in the same world.

Today, HBO Max announced that Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Jason Fuchs are developing Welcome to Derry, a new series that “expands the vision” that Andy Muschietti first began crafting while directing It and It Chapter Two.

In a...

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Bing, Bard, and ChatGPT: AI chatbots are rewriting the internet

Álvaro Bernis / The Verge

How we use the internet is changing fast, thanks to the advancement of AI-powered chatbots that can find information and redeliver it as a simple conversation.

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Mozilla study lambasts Google over ‘misleading’ privacy labels on top Android apps

Eighty percent of the 40 most downloaded Android apps were found to have discrepancies between their actual privacy policies and the information listed on Google Play’s data safety section. | Photo: STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images

An investigation into data safety labels on the Google Play Store has allegedly uncovered “serious loopholes” that allow apps like Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook to easily provide false or misleading information regarding how user data is shared. The study, conducted by the Mozilla Foundation, identified 40 of the most globally downloaded Android apps on the Google Play Store and discovered almost 80 percent had discrepancies between their privacy policies and the information listed on Google Play’s data safety section.

Google launched its data privacy section for the Play Store last year, noting that developers had sole responsibility to provide “complete and accurate declarations” for the information collected by their apps by filling...

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How to automate your personal finances

Automating your finances can make it more convenient to pay bills, save, and budget. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Few things are more stressful than money. Between paying bills, buying necessities, investing for retirement, and saving up for a rainy day, personal finance can feel like a full-time job. But it doesn’t have to be. The best part about online banking is that everything can be automated — even if you’re living paycheck to paycheck.

There are several benefits to automating your money. You’ll always pay your bills on time, which in turn eliminates late fees and protects your credit score. If you’re bad at saving money, you can automatically transfer a set amount per week or month to a savings or retirement account. Budgeting sound like a total nightmare? That can be automated, too.

But while automating your finances can be convenient,...

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A Signal group is at the center of Bankman-Fried’s latest woes

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Federal prosecutors hit FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with four new charges Thursday as part of their criminal case against the former crypto wunderkind.

The new 12-count superseding indictment adds new bank fraud and money laundering counts against Bankman-Fried as well as modified campaign finance charges. In the new document, prosecutors describe how Bankman-Fried and two unnamed defendants conspired to defraud the Federal Elections Commission by using straw donors to “evade contribution limits on individual donations to candidates to whom” the former CEO had already donated.

Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators are alleged to have organized the straw donor scheme in a Signal group chat called “Donation Processing.” The chat is said...

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Google’s bringing Magic Eraser to all Google One subscribers — including iPhone users

Illustration: The Verge

Google has announced that the Magic Eraser feature, which tried to automatically remove unwanted parts of a picture and debuted with the Pixel 6, will no longer be exclusive to phones with its custom chips. Starting on Thursday, it’s going to be rolling out to Google One subscribers who use the Google Photos app on Android or iOS as well as “all Pixel users.”

Magic Eraser, as well as the “Camouflage” function that lets you desaturate potentially distracting background objects rather than erasing them from a picture completely, will come with any level of Google One plan. If you have a Pixel, you won’t have to have a plan at all to get it.

Google says it’s also adding editing features like an HDR effect for videos and exclusive collage...

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Your Google docs are about to look a little bit different

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google’s Workspace apps are getting a makeover. Google plans to refresh the design of Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides in the coming weeks to more closely align with its Material Design 3 design system, the company announced on Thursday.

If you’re familiar with Gmail’s refreshed look, the new designs take a lot of cues from that. Google appears to be adding a few more darker hues to things like the toolbar and comments to make them stand out from the white page of a document. The “Share” button is also more rounded, a change from the rounded-corner rectangle Google currently uses for the button.

You can get an idea of what the changes will look like in the image below of Google Docs.

Image: Google

You can get a look...

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Google TV overhauls navigation and adds new family and Español sections

Image: Google

When it comes to browsing entertainment, is there really a big difference between organizing content in different tabs or splitting it into totally separate pages? Google seems to think so. Today, the company is announcing some tweaks to the Google TV interface. “Movies” and “Shows” are being dropped from the main navigation bar at the top and will now be found beneath the row of your favorite streaming apps in the “For You” tab.

In that spot, they’ll be joined by two new sections: Family and Español. Both are pretty self-explanatory. “With content ratings of PG or lower, it’s easy to find something the whole family can watch together,” Google says of the family page. (Kids will still be able to have their own profiles that are limited...

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YouTube Music is adding podcasts

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Podcasts are coming to YouTube Music. The streaming music service plans to add podcasts “in the near future,” YouTube’s head of podcasting, Kai Chuk, told Ariel Shapiro at Hot Pod Summit this morning. The addition will pit YouTube Music even more directly against Spotify, which has looked to podcasts — and big exclusives like Joe Rogan — as a way to retain users and grow its audience.

“If someone wants to watch a podcast, we have a solution,” Chuk said. “If someone wants to listen to a podcast only, we should have a great experience for that as well.”

“Our focus is on creators”

YouTube Music will allow free ad-supported background listening to podcasts and offer “enhanced library tools,” Chuk said. There’ll also be a podcast badge to...

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The best free (or low-cost) tools for video editors

The Verge

Outside of tech blogging, my background is mainly film, and my main gig is primarily as a video editor and producer. If you, like me, have spent more than 15 years in front of a computer pulling your hair out trying to fix problems, you’ll probably end up accruing a go-to list of problem-solving programs to install on every computer you use.

Interestingly, these tend to be free, probably because most of the common problems are universal, and that usually means someone has thought of that already and gotten mad enough to fix it. And if someone on GitHub or an obscure video encoding forum has not solved the issue, there’s some great shareware software out there that won’t break the bank.

So here are the programs that have saved my bacon...

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How to manage multiple Google accounts in your browser

Samar Haddad / The Verge

Many of us have more than one Google account, whether it’s for work, a side hustle, or simply a backup email address — and with modern browsers now keen to manage all of our logins for us, navigating sites such as Gmail and Google Docs with multiple accounts can get complicated.

It needn’t be: Google actually has a straightforward switching mechanism built into its websites and web apps that works in any browser. In addition, the browsers themselves (and especially Chrome) have features for keeping different accounts separate so you always know which one you have open.

Basic account switching

Whichever browser you use, you can manage multiple Google accounts inside it.

• Log in to one of your Google accounts on a site such as Gmail or...

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Microsoft has been secretly testing its Bing chatbot ‘Sydney’ for years

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot history dates back at least six years, with Sydney first appearing in 2021.

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Samsung’s PS5-ready 2TB 980 Pro SSD falls to a new low price of $159.99

Don’t be afraid to take advantage of your PlayStation 5’s expandable storage — it’s easy! | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

It’s the 23rd day of the second month of the year 2023. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing. So let’s get to today’s deals.

The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD with an included heatsink is selling for a new low price of $159.99 at Amazon and Best Buy on a one-day deal. That beats its previous low by $10, saving you an outright $110 off its full price. While this is a speedy drive for a desktop PC, you can use it to upgrade the storage of your PlayStation 5, especially since it includes the requisite heatsink. If you haven’t opened up your PS5 and given it a storage boost yet, we can’t recommend this SSD enough because it’s very easy to install, and the 667GB of available built-in storage runs out quickly when you install 100GB-plus...

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Qualcomm demos fastest local AI image generation with Stable Diffusion on mobile

Qualcomm is showing off its AI chops on mobile, demonstrating what it claims is the fastest-ever deployment of AI image generator Stable Diffusion on a smartphone.

In a demo video, Qualcomm shows version 1.5 of Stable Diffusion generating a 512 x 512 pixel image in under 15 seconds. Although Qualcomm doesn’t say what the phone is, it does say it’s powered by its flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset (which launched last November and has an AI-centric Hexagon processor). The company’s engineers also did all sorts of custom optimizations on the software side to get Stable Diffusion running optimally.

Some context: it takes a lot of computing power to run a program like Stable Diffusion (which is a staple in AI image generation), and most...

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Building Hello Tomorrow’s playfully retrofuturistic world

Dewshane Williams in Hello Tomorrow. | Image: Apple

Production designer Maya Sigel talks about creating an optimistic version of 1950s sci-fi, with cute bots and lots of superfluous gadgets.

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Samsung S23 and S23 Plus review: say ‘yes’ to the S

The Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus are the very definition of iterative updates. They’re still some of the best high-end mobile devices out there, but the competition from Google is heating up.

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Tango Gameworks CEO Shinji Mikami to leave studio

Photo by Christian Petersen / Getty Images

Shinji Mikami, the founder of Tango Gameworks and game director for The Evil Within franchise, has announced he’s leaving the company after 12 years. Bethesda confirmed the news in a tweet early this morning.

pic.twitter.com/yP6WaSxOun

— Bethesda (@bethesda) February 23, 2023

Mikami started his career at Capcom working on the Resident Evil series and other Capcom favorites like the cult classic beat ‘em up God Hand, Dino Crisis, and Ace Attorney. Mikami left the developer in 2006 for PlatinumGames to direct the influential, if somewhat forgotten, third-person action shooter Vanquish. In 2010, Mikami founded Tango Gameworks, which was almost immediately acquired by ZeniMax Media, bringing Tango into the vast Bethesda household.

T...

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Netflix is lowering prices in dozens of countries — but not the US

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix is lowering the price of its subscription in over three dozen countries, except for the US, Canada, and the majority of Europe, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. These reductions reportedly only affect specific Netflix tiers but sometimes cut the price of the subscription in half.

Netflix spokesperson Kumiko Hidaka confirmed that the company’s “updating” the pricing of its plans in “certain countries” but didn’t specify which ones. As noted by the Journal, some of the countries expected to receive price cuts include Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Iran, Kenya, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. However, an earlier report from Cord Cutters News indicates...

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Glass Onion is getting a director’s commentary on Netflix today

Janelle Monáe in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery_._ | Image: John Wilson / Netflix

Later today, Netflix will be releasing a director’s commentary for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery; subscribers will be able to check it out starting at 1PM ET. This isn’t the first time Netflix has released a commentary track, but the feature is something of a dying art, with DVD and Blu-ray releases largely supplanted by streaming, where special features are much less common.

When the news was first announced, writer and director Rian Johnson, who signed on to direct a pair of Knives Out sequels for Netflix, wrote: “Sorry it took a minute but it’s a good one I think.” And given the sheer number of Easter eggs and cameos in the film — including an appearance from this very website — the commentary track will likely make it worth a...

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YouTube will let many more creators dub their videos in multiple languages

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is going to let thousands more creators include multi-language audio tracks with their videos. The company was already testing the feature with a small number of creators, and beginning Thursday, many more will be able to include multi-language dubs with their videos to make them accessible to broader audiences.

If you want to try this feature for yourself, check out this video on MrBeast’s YouTube channel. If you click on the gear icon, you’ll see an option for “audio track,” and if you click that, you’ll see the different language options available. Videos will also default to a user’s preferred language.

In its early tests, YouTube says that, as of January, “we’ve already seen over 3,500 multi-language videos uploaded in...

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Google’s bringing Magic Eraser to all Google One subscribers — including iPhone users

Illustration: The Verge

Google has announced that the Magic Eraser feature, which tried to automatically remove unwanted parts of a picture and debuted with the Pixel 6, will no longer be exclusive to phones with its custom chips. Starting on Thursday, it’s going to be rolling out to Google One subscribers who use the Google Photos app on Android or iOS as well as “all Pixel users.”

Magic Eraser, as well as the “Camouflage” function that lets you desaturate potentially distracting background objects rather than erasing them from a picture completely, will come with any level of Google One plan. If you have a Pixel, you won’t have to have a plan at all to get it.

Google says it’s also adding editing features like an HDR effect for videos and exclusive collage...

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Valve bans 40,000 accounts after laying a trap for cheaters in Dota 2

The developer used information it had gathered about a prevelant third-party cheating software to catch and punish players using it red-handed. | Image: Valve

Over 40,000 Dota 2 accounts have been permanently banned in the last few weeks after they were caught red-handed using third-party software to cheat the game. In a blog post published on Tuesday, Valve revealed that it had recently patched a known issue used by third-party software to cheat in Dota while simultaneously setting a honeypot trap to catch players using the exploit.

According to Valve, the cheating software gave its users an unfair advantage by accessing information used internally by the Dota client that shouldn’t be visible during gameplay. After investigating how it worked, the developer then decided to identify and remove the “bad actors” from the active Dota playerbase.

Cheaters Will Never Be Welcome in Dotah...

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Spotify’s new AI-powered DJ will build you a custom playlist and talk over the top of it

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Spotify’s newest feature is an AI-powered DJ that curates and commentates on an ever-changing personalized playlist. Spotify describes it as an “AI DJ in your pocket” that “knows you and your music taste so well that it can choose what to play for you.”

We’ll have to test the feature for ourselves to see how well these claims stand up, but in a launch trailer and clips shared on social media, the feature seems to rather accurately mimic a radio station presenter, dropping in little bits of trivia and commentary about the artist or track while smoothly transitioning between songs.

The playlist is endless, but users can apparently switch genres or artists by hitting the on-screen DJ button. Based on this feedback, the feature should...

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Thursday’s top tech news: Copyright and AI are a complicated mix

Illustration by William Joel

Plus more musical features come to Snapchat, and the Dynamic Island could come to an Android phone.

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An exciting new lineup of smartphones is on the horizon… for Europe at least

The Fira de Barcelona convention center during last year’s Mobile World Congress. | Image: David Zorrakino/Europa Press via Getty Images

In less than a week, some of the world’s biggest mobile players will be crowded into the Fira de Barcelona convention center, ready to show off their latest generation of mobile devices. In previous years, that’s meant everything from flagship smartphone announcements from Samsung and LG (RIP), smartwatches, and even the launch of the original HTC Vive.

These days, however, things feel a little different. Despite the “World” in Mobile World Congress, MWC Barcelona feels increasingly focused on Europe. The global smartphone market has never been a cohesive whole, but the US and China feel more than ever like they’re diverging from everywhere else. And that’s left MWC in a weird spot.

I mean, just look at what we’re expecting from Honor,...

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Snapchat is adding audio recommendations and song syncing

Image: Snap

Snapchat users will soon have a handful of new tools to make content that includes trending songs or sounds.

First, the company is introducing a sound recommendation system for Lenses, its popular augmented reality (AR) filters. Users will be able to discover which sounds other people are using with the lens they’ve applied and add popular audio to their own photos or videos. The feature is now available to US users and rolling out globally.

Snapchat is also adding a feature that automatically syncs uploaded photos and videos to the beat of songs when making a montage. Users can add anywhere from four to 20 photos and videos; the feature could be helpful when making content based on trending audio or challenges.

Snap has been gradually...

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The US Copyright Office says you can’t copyright Midjourney AI-generated images

A reproduction of the cover page and the second page of Zarya of the Dawn, from the US Copyright Office’s letter. | Image: Zarya of the Dawn — Kris Kashtanova / Midjourney

The US Copyright Office has reconsidered the copyright protection it granted last fall to Kristina Kashtanova for her comic book Zarya of the Dawn, reports Reuters. It featured pictures created by feeding text prompts to Midjourney, an artificial intelligence image generator.

According to this letter (PDF) sent to her lawyer by Robert Kasunic, the associate Register of Copyrights, the US Copyright Office has decided that Kashtanova “is the author of the Work’s text as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work’s written and visual elements.”

The images themselves, however, “are not the product of human authorship,” and the registration originally granted for them has been canceled. To justify the decision, the...

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Google is still trying to fix Gmail’s Outlook syncing issues

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you typically access your Hotmail or Outlook account using the Gmail app, there’s a reason you probably haven’t seen any new emails today: Google says it’s investigating an issue it’s having syncing with Microsoft’s servers. According to Google’s status page, the company has been working to figure out what’s wrong since around noon ET, and has been in touch with Microsoft about the problem.

At first glance it seems like this partial outage would be a pretty niche issue — Outlook has its own app, who’s using the Gmail one? But for many Android phones the Gmail app is the default mail client, and it encourages you to add email address from any service, not just Google’s. If you’ve gone that route, it is worth noting that Outlook itself...

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You can now play the original Half-Life with beautiful beams of ray-traced light

Look at that beautiful crowbar. | Screenshot: Valve via game mod by sultim_t

It’s time to dust off your trusty crowbar and see it in a new light, complete with colorful reflections. A PC mod of the original Half-Life from 1998 that adds realtime path-traced ray tracing to the game is now available, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. First teased by its creator sultim_t (Sultim Tsyrendashiev) over a year ago, the mod pack is now available to download on GitHub to install and play with the original Half-Life on Steam.

While a proper remake of Half-Life already exists in the form of Black Mesa, let’s say this falls more in the “remaster” camp — much like sultim_t’s other projects, adding ray tracing to original Doom and Quake titles. The ray-traced Half-Life has elements that still look very late-90s, but greatly...

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Here are the dates for the major Steam sales in 2023

The Verge

Valve has shared a schedule of when the big sales on Steam will take place in 2023, meaning you now have some advance notice about when you should get ready to open your wallet to snap up some great deals.

As established last year, there will be a major sale every season, so look forward to big spring, summer, autumn, and winter deals. There will be a handful of themed sales and events, like Puzzle Fest, Visual Novel Fest, and SHMUP Fest, which all sound very promising. And Valve is also sharing details about the next two Next Fests, where you can try a bunch of free demos of upcoming games. (If you want an idea of what a Next Fest is like, you can check out the February Next Fest, which is happening now through February 28th.)

Here’s...

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