Nintendo confirms it won’t be part of E3 2023

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nintendo has confirmed to The Verge that it will not be attending E3 2023.

“We approach our involvement in any event on a case-by-case basis and are always considering various ways to engage with our fans,” the company said in a statement. “Since this year’s E3 show didn’t fit into our plans, we have made the decision to not participate. However, we have been and continue to be a strong supporter of the ESA and E3.”

Nintendo’s participation had been in doubt since IGN reported that it, Sony, and Microsoft would all be skipping E3, and now we know for certain that Nintendo won’t be at the show. E3 is set to take place in-person from June 13th through 16th in Los Angeles, which is just over a month after the release of The Legend of Zelda:...

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Meta has a new machine learning language model to remind you it does AI too

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

The buzz in tech these last few weeks has been focused squarely on the language models developed and deployed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. But Meta, Facebook’s parent company, continues to do significant work in this field and is releasing a new AI language generator named LLaMA today.

LLaMA isn’t like ChatGPT or Bing; it’s not a system that anyone can talk to. Rather, it’s a research tool that Meta says it’s sharing in the hope of “democratizing access in this important, fast-changing field.” In other words: to help experts tease out the problems of AI language models, from bias and toxicity to their tendency to simply make up information.

To this end, Meta is releasing LLaMA (which is not actually a single system...

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Geoengineering startup’s claim it got ‘OKs to launch’ from the FAA doesn’t stand up to scrutiny

Photo by George Rose / Getty Images

Controversial solar geoengineering startup Make Sunsets says it released three balloons carrying atmosphere-altering particles in Reno, Nevada, this month. It’s an escalation of the company’s questionable climate change-fighting tactics, which got it banned from launching balloons in Mexico in January. And while the company says it got the green light from the FAA and local authorities, officials say no such authorization was granted.

The way Make Sunsets explains it, this kind of geoengineering is a solution to humanity’s epic failure to stop planet-heating pollution. But experts say Make Sunsets has jumped the gun with its experiments — even those who are optimistic about solar geoengineering. There are still way too many questions...

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The Verge Wins the 2023 ASME Award for Design for its Homeland Anthology; Receives Two National Magazine Award Nominations

Amelia Krales / The Verge

The Verge was recognized yesterday by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) with the ASME Award for Print Design for its Homeland anthology. Additionally, the digital publisher was named a finalist in two categories at the 2023 National Magazine Awards. The Verge is nominated for General Excellence, News, Sports and Entertainment; and for Profile Writing, for “Searching for Susy Thunder,” by Claire L. Evans (in partnership with Epic Magazine).

The Verge’s Homeland anthology explores twenty years of technology, surveillance, and bureaucracy under the Department of Homeland Security. Through narrative features that unmask the policies that have shaped the United States over the past two decades, the series highlights some of The...

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Would you let ChatGPT control your smart home?

Josh.ai showed off a proof-of-concept ChatGPT integration using its voice assistant. The Josh system is currently only available through professional installers. | Image: Josh.ai

Today, you can ask Alexa to turn on the lights or have Siri tell you the temperature in your bedroom, and sometimes they’ll get it right. Or you may hear, “You have 15 devices named lights; which one would you like to control?” or “The current temperature in Kathmandu is 53 degrees.” But what if your voice assistant was not only always accurate but could also respond to nebulous comments like “I’ve had a rough day; what’s a good way to unwind?” with “intelligent” responses? For example, by lowering the shades, dimming the lights, adjusting the thermostat, and queuing up some goodies on Netflix?

That’s the potential of voice assistants powered by new AI language models, according to Alex Capecelatro, co-founder of the Josh.ai home...

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The best entertainment of 2023

Natasha Lyonne in Poker Face_._ | Image: Peacock

Right now, we are absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to entertainment. TV shows, movies, and games all come out at such a fast and furious pace that it’s hard to keep up. Not all of them are worth your time, of course — which is where we come in.

Our team spends a lot of time immersed in the various realms of pop culture so that we can handpick our favorites for you. That could mean a hot new indie game you might’ve otherwise missed or the streaming series that will become your new obsession. Either way, if you’re finding it hard to sort through the flood, this is the place to find a curated selection of the best stuff.

And like last year, this page will be updated regularly throughout the year — so make sure to check back in...

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The Beats Fit Pro earbuds in their new bright yellow color are already $30 off

Highlighter yellow earbuds in your ears may do a good job of subtly telling others not to bother you. | Image: Beats

The colorful new variants of the Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds just came out yesterday, and today, the yellow model is already on sale. You can pick up a pair of “volt yellow” Beats for $169.83 at Amazon, $30.12 off their regular $199.95 price. New products and colorways usually take a little longer than one day before they start seeing some discounts, but if you dig a tennis ball-like color for your electronics (the electric volt Xbox controller says hi!), then you’ve got yourself a nice deal here on something new and fresh.

Not only are the Beats Fit Pro now brighter than ever but they’re also one of our favorite pairs of Bluetooth earbuds — especially for running and fitness. They sadly lack the convenience of wireless charging in...

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On the internet, nobody knows you’re a human

Illustration by Brian Scagnelli / The Verge

Last April, 27-year-old Nicole posted a TikTok video about feeling burned out in her career. When she checked the comments the next day, however, a different conversation was going down.

“Jeez, this is not a real human,” one commenter wrote. “I’m scared.”

“No legit she’s AI,” another said.

Nicole, who lives in Germany, has alopecia. It’s a condition that can result in hair loss across a person’s body. Because of this, she’s used to people looking at her strangely, trying to figure out what’s “off,” she says over a video call. “But I’ve never had this conclusion made, that [I] must be CGI or whatever.”

Over the past few years, AI tools and CGI creations have gotten better and better at pretending to be human. Bing’s new chatbot is...

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Twitter shut off its internal Slack, and now ‘everyone is barely working’

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Today, let’s check in on Elon Musk’s Twitter, where sudden software outages and another dubious transparency effort have left the company’s remaining workers more beleaguered than usual.

On Wednesday, Twitter employees had the tech equivalent of a snow day: the company’s Slack instance was down for “routine maintenance,” they were told, and the company was implementing a deployment freeze as a result.

That same day, Jira — a tool Twitter uses to track everything from progress on feature updates to regulatory compliance — also stopped working. With no way to chat and no code to ship, most engineers took the day off.

“There is no such thing as ‘routine maintenance.’ That’s bullshit.”

Jira access was restored on Thursday. But_Platformer..._

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Meet the couple that built an EV rock crawler for King of the Hammers

Photo by Emme Hall for The Verge

Electrified powertrains are not favored by many fans of rock-crawling, off-roading events like California’s King of the Hammers. But Keith and Melissa Silva pushed themselves and their rig to the limit at this year’s Every Man Challenge.

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Friday’s top tech news: 1080p but better

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Plus LumaFusion comes to Android and ChromeOS, and PlayStation holds another trailer showcase.

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Google-parent Alphabet shuts down yet another robot project

Alphabet is shutting down its Everyday Robots project — another casualty of job cuts at Google’s parent company and the latest in a long list of failed hardware ventures.

According to a report from Wired, Everyday Robots will no longer exist as a discrete team at the tech giant. “Everyday Robots will no longer be a separate project within Alphabet,” Denise Gamboa, director of marketing and communications for Everyday Robots, told the publication. “Some of the technology and part of the team will be consolidated into existing robotics efforts within Google Research.”

We’ve contacted Alphabet for confirmation and will update this story if we hear more details about the exact number of jobs affected.

Alphabet has been cutting costs this...

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What is going on with Fitbit?

Once the king of fitness trackers, Fitbit’s recent outages and a decision to shutter Challenges have left users disgruntled. | Illustration: The Verge

These days, Fitbit users seem to be asking each other the same question: is it me, or is the app down for everybody else, too? Between frequent server outages and a recent decision to shutter popular social features, frustrated Fitbit customers say they’re weighing their options.

Earlier this month, Google-owned Fitbit suffered a massive server outage that left users unable to sync trackers or view their data within the app or on Fitbit’s website. If it had been a one-off server outage, it’s likely users would’ve written it off as a fluke. But it extended into a second day and then a third. Then, around 1PM ET yesterday, over 1,600 users reported yet another outage, according to Downdetector. Others reported the outage to the @...

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Popular video editing app LumaFusion now widely available for Android and ChromeOS

Image: LumaTouch

LumaFusion, a popular video editing app for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, is now widely available on Android and ChromeOS devices following an early access beta in November last year. Comparable to other well-regarded video editors like Final Cut Pro for macOS and Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve for iPad, LumaFusion provides powerful editing features like green screen and chroma key VFX effects, a magnetic timeline, color correction tools, and more to Chromebooks and Android tablets and phones.

The app has already proved to be a hit with filmmakers and content creators on Apple hardware, winning the App Store Award for iPad App of the Year in 2021. The developer LumaTouch also claims that LumaFusion has been downloaded 1.1 million times...

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Google blocks news content for some Canadians in response to proposed rules

Illustration: The Verge

Google is running tests that block access to news for some Canadian users in response to a new bill that could force it and other large platforms like Meta’s Facebook to negotiate deals with news publishers to pay them for content, Reuters reports. The tests will reportedly impact less than four percent of Canadian users, run for around five weeks, and will “limit the visibility of Canadian and international news to varying degrees.”

The tests come in response to Canada’s Online News Act, also known as “Bill C-18,” which is currently being considered by the Canadian Senate, according to The Globe and Mail.

In a tweet, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said Canadians won’t be intimidated by Google’s behavior. “It’s...

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Ampler Axel e-bike review: this is the way

After a year-long struggle, the boutique maker of stealthy electric bikes finally gets it right.

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Creed III brings Adonis’ story full circle by trading in one set of daddy issues for another

Image: Eli Ade

Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut feels like an experimental remake of Rocky V that finally lets Adonis Creed step outside of his mentor’s shadow.

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YouTube says it isn’t messing with 1080p — ‘1080p Premium’ is higher-bitrate

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube has confirmed that it’s experimenting with a higher-quality 1080p option for Premium subscribers after some Reddit users noticed a new “1080p Premium” option in the quality settings menu. The option is currently available to “a small group of YouTube Premium subscribers,” according to Paul Pennington, a spokesperson for the company.

“1080p Premium is an enhanced bitrate version of 1080p which provides more information per pixel that results in a higher quality viewing experience,” said Pennington, adding that “there are no changes to the existing quality offerings for 1080p (HD) resolution on YouTube.” There have been concerns that YouTube is nerfing the standard 1080p mode to make the Premium version more appealing, but the...

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SEC comes out against Binance.US’s $1 billion deal to buy a bankrupt crypto firm’s assets

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Binance.US’s proposed deal to purchase the assets from the collapsed cryptocurrency brokerage Voyager Digital is facing scrutiny from federal and state regulators, as reported earlier by CoinDesk. In a set of court filings submitted on Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and New York’s financial regulator expressed opposition to the $1 billion deal.

Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy last year after the now-defunct crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital defaulted on a $670 million loan provided by Voyager. Binance.US — the US version of the Binance trading platform — later announced its plans to purchase Voyager’s assets for $1 billion, stating at the time it could help free up some of the funds locked up in the...

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The biggest news from PlayStation’s State of Play

Image: KO_OP

Sony’s first State of Play of 2023 gave fans a little bit of everything. Some neat VR games were shown off. Resident Evil 4 made a brief appearance, along with a new puzzle game from the makers of Tetris Effect, a heaping helping of the Suicide Squad, and more. Here are some of the highlights from the presentation.

Destiny 2: Lightfall

It always looks like the Guardians of Destiny 2 are having so much fun with their cool spaceships and guns with impossible names and backstories. With a new trailer for the next expansion Lightfall, the Traveller is under attack (again) by a malevolent force (of course), and it’s poor Zavala’s job to rally the troops with the help of new human-adjacent allies. You can protect the big, white, fancy ball...

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The best phone to buy right now

Photo Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Bad news: flagship phones cost a small fortune these days. Good news: we can help you pick the right one and get the most for your money.

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Warner Bros. is making ‘multiple Lord of the Rings movies’

Image: New Line Cinema

Warner Bros. Discovery will be working on “multiple Lord of the Rings movies” with the production company behind the original film trilogy, New Line Cinema. The deal was announced by Warner Bros.’ CEO David Zaslav during the company’s Q4 earnings call on Thursday, though he didn’t provide any additional details about what those movies will look like or what they’ll be based on.

The two companies have already been working together on an animated movie called The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, which is due out in 2024. The announcement confirms that the anime won’t be the only film we see from the partnership (or, should I say, fellowship).

Of course, Warner Bros. and New Line won’t be the only companies producing content set...

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David Zaslav wants you to know the Warner Bros. Discovery merger is ‘working’

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav touted the success of the company’s turbulent megamerger during the company’s earnings call on Thursday, with repeated assurances that things are “working” — even though the company axed several shows and lost another $2.1 billion over the past few months, according to the company’s Q4 2022 earnings report. The combined company earned $11 billion in revenue this past quarter.

“It’s working in an increasingly challenging environment,” Zalslav affirms. “It’s working on direct-to-consumer — we are making meaningful progress on our goal to achieve real profitability in streaming... It’s working, and our new studio heads are hard at work putting their unmatched creative stamp on our future slate.”

HBO,...

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Humanity tasks you, a Shiba Inu, with guiding humans through Lemmings-like puzzles

Image: Enhance

Humanity, the newest game from Tetris Effect publisher Enhance, has you play as a glowing Shiba Inu to direct crowds of marching humans through Lemmings-like puzzles. Yes, it sounds strange, but you’ll be able to get your hands on it starting Thursday, so at least you can pass judgment on it for yourself.

I’d recommend watching the trailer first, though. As the dog, it seems you’ll help direct the faceless humans across all sorts of environments, obstacles, and opposing humans to lead them to safety. The game’s campaign mode will include 90 levels, but you’ll also be able to make your own maps and puzzles for others to try.

The game, which was first announced in 2019, is coming to PS4, PS5, the original PSVR (yes!), PSVR 2, and PC. A...

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The Suicide Squad enters the Borderlands

Image: Rocksteady Games

During Sony’s first State of Play of 2023, we were offered an extended look at Rocksteady’s first game in a handful of years — Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.

In Kill The Justice League, the titular doomed heroes are tasked with saving Metropolis from a Justice League corrupted by Brainiac. Despite the fact you won’t be playing as Batman, Kill The Justice League knows what players want, and that’s to swoop around a dark metropolis — one of the first scenes of gameplay is Harley Quinn grappling through the air. It looks like the villains you’ll get to play as (Harley Quinn, King Shark, Captain Boomerang, and Deadshot) will have their own unique flying mechanics, which looked pretty sick in the featurette.

Kill The Justice League...

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Resident Evil 4 remake’s latest trailer is packed with iconic faces and places

Image: Capcom

Capcom just released a new trailer for the Resident Evil 4 remake as part of Thursday’s PlayStation State of Play presentation, and to me, it’s looking more and more like it will be an excellent recreation of an all-time classic.

The trailer is chock-full of iconic moments from the original game, making me think that it’s going to do justice to the classic horror title. Here are just a few that I saw: Leon and Ashley dodging catapulted debris on the castle walls; Leon taking on two El Gigante enemies at once; Leon coming face-to-face with Major Jack Krauser; and even a showdown in what appears to be that giant pool-filled hall in the castle. I can’t wait to play it myself.

The game is set to release in just over a month on PS4, PS5,...

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Crypto collapse: FTX’s fall is one piece of a long, cold, contagious crypto winter

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

FTX is just the latest company facing an uncertain future as cryptocurrency values drop, revealing flaws in risky financial strategies that fueled the recent crypto and NFT boom.

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Before Your Eyes comes to PSVR 2 in March

A screenshot from Before Your Eyes on Steam. | Image: Skybound Games

Before Your Eyes, the critically acclaimed first-person narrative title, is coming to PlayStation VR2 on March 10th, Sony revealed during its PlayStation State of Play presentation on Thursday. We already knew the game was part of the just-released headset’s launch window, but now we know exactly when we can play it.

The game appears to use the PSVR 2’s eye-tracking capabilities to great effect. “Utilize the PlayStation VR2’s advanced eye-tracking technology to control the flow of the story as you relive precious memories of family, first love and the rise of an artistic career, all without the need of a controller,” according to the description for a trailer shown during the show. “The headset’s front-facing camera immerses you in a...

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Twitch is now (mostly) telling everyone which experiments it’s running

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Twitch has a new “experiments” support page where it will share details on many of the experimental features it’s testing on its platform. The Twitch experiments page explains some of the ways the company tests new features and has a list of some of the tests it’s currently running, what they change, and how long the experiment will last. The company says it will update that list monthly.

Many platforms run experiments with small groups of users, but it’s not exactly common for them to have a public list that users can check to see if the button or screen they’re seeing is new or if everyone’s seeing it. Now, Twitch users will have somewhere to go if they see something that looks unfamiliar or if they just want to check in on some of the...

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Twitter has removed captions from Spaces on iOS, and they don’t work on the web or Android

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter Spaces, the company’s social audio rooms, no longer lets you use captions if you’re listening on iOS. Twitter still advertises that you can turn on captions through the three-dot menu in a Space, but on iOS, that option currently isn’t there.

On other platforms, it seems like captions should work but don’t. When listening to a Space on the web, captions don’t show, and while the “CC” closed captions button is present, clicking it on or off doesn’t change anything. On Android, the option to turn on captions is there, but it didn’t work for one Verge staffer.

The loss of captions in Spaces is a major blow to accessibility on the platform, as captions can be useful for those who are hard of hearing or who may want to follow a...

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