Google’s gigantic San Jose campus is on hold

The real historic water building faces the Guadalupe River; an artist took some liberties. | Image: Google

Google has been gobbling up bigger and bigger patches of Silicon Valley for as long as we’ve reported on the company, but it may be pulling back from its biggest development yet — after razing small parts of San Jose to the ground.

CNBC reports that following the first demolition phase, Google has halted construction on its “Downtown West” campus, which was slated to turn 80 acres of downtown San Jose, California into 7.3 million square feet of offices, 4,000 housing units, 50,000 square feet of retail and cultural space, and 15 acres of parks. The city believed the project could reach a value of $19 billion and offer 20,000 jobs after more than a decade of work.

Google isn’t denying the report, with spokesperson Bailey Tomson providing...

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Tesla wins lawsuit that blamed Autopilot for crash

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla has won a lawsuit that tried to blame the company’s Autopilot driver assist software for a 2019 crash, Reuters reports. The jurors in the case found that the software wasn’t at fault in a crash where the car turned into a median on a city street while Autopilot was engaged. The jury awarded plaintiff Justine Hsu, who sued Tesla in 2020, no damages.

The trial is believed to be the first regarding Autopilot, and could prove to be an important case if Tesla faces future lawsuits over the technology. While Reuters reports that the result of the trial “is not legally binding in other cases,” Tesla is under intense scrutiny for its Autopilot and its Full Self-Driving driver assistance features, which don’t make its cars fully autonomous...

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Steam Deck, ROG Ally and more: all the news about the handheld PC gaming revolution

Valve’s Steam Deck and its carrying case. | Image: Valve

Catch up on our coverage of PC gaming handhelds, starting with Valve’s category-defining Steam Deck.

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How to follow live sports scores on your iPhone lock screen

With a few steps, you can put live sports scores on your iPhone lock screen and stay on top of your team’s race to the playoffs. | Samar Haddad / The Verge

With iOS 16, Apple added a feature called Live Activities as part of a broader update to notifications and the lock screen. Live Activities are a little different from a standard push notification or widget — they offer a way for apps to put real-time information in a persistent notification bubble on your lock screen. They’re especially useful for sports scores if you want to keep tabs on a game without committing your full attention to it (there are, after all, 162 games in a baseball season). Better yet, if you have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max, you’ll see live scores in the Dynamic Island when you’re following a game.

Enabling Live Activities to follow a game on your lock screen isn’t hard, but it’s not exactly intuitive, either. The...

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The Pixel Tablet has been captured on video at a special Google event

The Pixel Tablet in a coral color. | Image from @saori_vj’s video on Instagram

The Pixel Tablet is supposed to launch sometime this year — Google I/O in May feels like a pretty good venue! — and ahead of its eventual release, somebody captured a video of the tablet in real life at Google’s “Shaped by Water” installation currently happening as part of Milan Design Week (via 9to5Google).

In the Instagram video from Saori Masuda (you’ll need to browse over to the very last video in the gallery), you can see many Google and Pixel devices laid out along a table, including some Pixel Tablets, Pixel Watches, different versions of Pixel Buds, and Pixel phones.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Saori Masuda (@saori_vj)

For the Pixel Tablet specifically, the video doesn’t...

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The Mandalorian’s season 3 finale didn’t need to answer every question

Din Grogu piloting IG-12. | Image: Lucasfilm / Disney Plus

Rather than dotting every single i and crossing all of its t’s The Mandalorian spent its extremely adequate third season trying to forge new lore for lore’s sake.

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Schools bought millions of Chromebooks in 2020 — and three years later, they’re starting to break

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Back in early 2020, as the covid pandemic drove classrooms online, school districts found themselves needing to bulk purchase affordable laptops that they could send home with their students. Quite a few turned to Chromebooks.

Three years later, the US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund concludes in a new report called Chromebook Churn that many of these batches are already beginning to break. That’s potentially costing districts money; PIRG estimates that “doubling the lifespan of Chromebooks could result in $1.8 billion in savings for taxpayers.” It also creates quite a bit of e-waste.

One of the big problems is repairability. Chromebooks are harder to upgrade and repair, on average, than Windows laptops. That’s in part,...

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AMD is quietly arming an entire new wave of Steam Deck competitors

AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series will apparently add some lower power chips for handhelds. | Image: AMD via Aokzoe

You’ve obviously heard of the Steam Deck, and perhaps Asus drew your attention to the upcoming ROG Ally with its not-an-April-Fools’-joke. But that’s apparently just the tip of the iceberg for AMD-powered Steam Deck rivals, which have at least four handhelds based on slivers of silicon the chipmaker has yet to reveal.

One of the reasons we got so excited about the Asus ROG Ally is that Asus hinted it might be the first handheld since Steam Deck to offer a custom part specifically tuned for portables — and a growing body of leaks suggests that collaboration with AMD is called the Ryzen Z1.

pic.twitter.com/Mu6kcCxXmi

— Hifihedgehog (@hifihedgehog) April 18, 2023

And today, Geekbench leaks (which should always be taken with a grain...

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To capture CO2 in the US, climate tech startups partner with oil and gas

Collector containers at the Orca direct air capture and storage facility, operated by Climeworks AG, in Hellisheidi, Iceland, on September 7th, 2021. | Image: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Climeworks, the Swiss company that’s capturing CO2 emissions for Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify, is crafting plans to expand across the US, which is becoming the destination for companies that want to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

“The US is a very interesting place, perhaps the most interesting place at the moment ... from a market perspective, but also from a policy perspective,” says Christoph Beuttler, Climeworks’ chief climate policy officer. The Inflation Reduction Act more than tripled tax credits for direct air capture (DAC) and storage projects. And the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes $12 billion for capturing and storing carbon dioxide.

Together with other partners, Climeworks has applied for a slice...

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Google’s smart speakers are finally smart enough to shut up

Google Nest speakers will soon speak less. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that smart speakers should just shut up. I don’t want to know when Siri / Alexa / Google has locked my front door — I just asked it to do that and I expect it to happen. (We’ll put a pin in the fact that it doesn’t always do this). So Google’s announcement this week that it’s taking more steps to stop its Google Assistant from chattering away to you every time you send a command to a Nest smart speaker is a welcome one.

The Assistant already stays schtum when you ask it to turn the lights off in the room you’re in, sending a gentle chime to let you know it was successful. (You know, in case THE LIGHTS TURNING OFF didn’t alert you to this fact.) However, it still loves to have a good old chat when...

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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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Mullvad VPN maker says police tried to raid its offices but couldn’t find any user data

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Mullvad, the Swedish company behind Mullvad VPN (virtual private network), says police walked away with nothing after attempting to seize computers from its office. According to an update on Mullvad’s site, the authorities left and didn’t take anything after it informed them that the company doesn’t store customer data.

“We argued they had no reason to expect to find what they were looking for and any seizures would therefore be illegal under Swedish law,” Mullvad writes. “After demonstrating that this is indeed how our service works and them consulting the prosecutor they left without taking anything and without any customer information.”

The National Operations Department (NOA) of the Swedish police has visited Mullvad VPN with a...

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Elon Musk’s wealth plummets by $12.6 billion after chaotic 24 hours at Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk’s coffers became a smidge lighter on Thursday after his net worth plummeted by $12.6 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, the biggest drop in Musk’s wealth so far this year. That fall comes on the heels of a fairly tumultuous 24 hours for SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter, three of the largest businesses under Musk’s leadership.

Tesla’s share price fell by 9.8 percent on Thursday following disappointing first quarter results

Tesla published disappointing first quarter results on Thursday morning, reporting an almost 20 percent decline in the company’s gross margins. The EV manufacturer has made several aggressive price cuts to its vehicle lineup in recent months, a move that increased sales despite the struggling EV...

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Redbox wants to save Netflix’s DVD business

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Redbox wants to give Netflix’s DVD business a second chance at life, but Netflix isn’t budging. That’s according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter (via NextTV), which says that Redbox’s parent company has already expressed interest in acquiring Netflix’s DVD business, only to get turned down by the streamer several times.

Bill Rouhana, the CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul, which acquired Redbox for $370 million last year, tells The Hollywood Reporter that Netflix has brushed off his attempts to purchase its DVD business “three or four times” before Netflix announced its decision to sunset the offering on Tuesday. “I’d like to buy it,” Rouhana says. “I wish Netflix would sell me that business instead of shutting it down.”

After 25...

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Here are the best Kindle deals right now

The 2021 Kindle Paperwhite is on sale at Amazon with a power adapter and a fabric cover starting at $169.97. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon looks to be moving...

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The best tech gifts for under $50

The Original Tamagotchi is one of many budget-friendly gifts you can buy for kids and adults alike. | Image: Tamagotchi

If “budget-friendly” and “high-quality” sound like oxymorons to you, you’re in for a surprise. As it turns out, youcan buy a number of great gifts without completely draining your savings account, which makes it easy to pick up a present for your anniversary, a birthday party, or one of the many other gift-giving occasions strewn throughout the year.

Finding the right gift can still be tough, though, even when there is a sea of inexpensive items for under $50 to choose from. That’s why we’ve put together a selection of techy gift ideas, ranging from disposable cameras and wireless earbuds to the latest video doorbells. We’ve also highlighted an array of last-minute gifts that are more unique than your run-of-the-mill gift card —...

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Can Snap snap back?

For more than a decade, Snapchat has been a fixture in the lives of young people. But the business side of the app has been much less stable. This week I flew down to LA to check in on the company — and while Snap still has plenty of big ideas, I was struck by how much the company’s ambitions seem to be limited at the moment by the recent downturn in the economy.

The occasion for my visit was the annual Snap Partner Summit. For the past three years, due to the pandemic, the event had been online-only. But this year the company gathered together its business partners and the press together in person again, in a giant airplane hangar in Santa Monica.

It was an inspired location for a tech event. Instead of bringing people together in some...

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YouTube TV is testing significant picture quality improvements

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Considering how much it costs, YouTube TV is sometimes knocked by customers for offering only so-so picture quality. This can vary depending on your location or the specific feed that YouTube TV is serving you, but if you scan the YouTube TV subreddit, you’ll see picture quality as a common grievance. It wasn’t always this way. Now, the company is doing something about it — for certain content, at least.

In a post to the aforementioned Reddit community yesterday, YouTube TV shared details on recent (and upcoming) enhancements to the app. The change that easily received the most attention was this one:

Picture quality experiments: We’re testing transcoding changes, including a bitrate increase for live 1080p content over the next several...

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Disney has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with fired VFX head Victoria Alonso

Victoria Alonso attends the 33rd annual GLAAD Media Awards. | Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for GLAAD

When Disney suddenly fired Marvel Studios’ former VFX and postproduction head Victoria Alonso earlier this year, it was widely reported that the decision came down as a result of her violating company policy by working on and promoting another studio’s film without permission. It was also suggested that the middling response to some of Marvel’s recent VFX-heavy spectacles Alonso oversaw, like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,might have played a role in her dismissal. But in the latest turn of events, rather than letting a legal battle play out (publicly) in court, Marvel has agreed to settle with Alonso.

While the specific details of Disney’s settlement with Alonso haven’t been made public, Deadline reports it as being a...

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Elon Musk removes Twitter’s ‘government-funded media’ labels after outlets flee the platform

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has removed the “government-funded” and “state-affiliated” labels that led several news outlets to stop tweeting on the platform. When asked why Twitter has dropped the labels, Elon Musk says it was a “suggestion” from Walter Isaacson, the author of his upcoming biography, according to NPR reporter Bobby Allyn.

The labels have already disappeared from the profiles of NPR, PBS, CBC, and BBC, all of which publicly criticized the move. NPR became the first major media organization to leave the platform after getting slapped with the “state-affiliated” label and was later followed by PBS and CBC.

NPR’s profile no longer has a “state-affiliated” media label.

The labels have also been removed from state-controlled...

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Google’s Bard AI chatbot can now help you code and create functions for Google Sheets

Illustration: The Verge

Google is updating its Bard AI chatbot to help developers write and debug code. Rivals like ChatGPT and Bing AI have supported code generation, but Google says it has been “one of the top requests” it has received since opening up access to Bard last month.

Bard can now generate code, debug existing code, help explain lines of code, and even write functions for Google Sheets. “We’re launching these capabilities in more than 20 programming languages including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python and Typescript,” explains Paige Bailey, group product manager for Google Research, in a blog post.

You can ask Bard to explain code snippets or explain code within GitHub repos similar to how Microsoft-owned GitHub is implementing a ChatGPT-like...

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Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham to host Apple musical holiday special

Hannah Waddingham pictured performing onstage at the 2023 Olivier Awards. | Image: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for SOLT

Hannah Waddingham, the Emmy-winning actor best known for her role as Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso, is set to host a musical holiday special on Apple TV Plus later this year. Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas will be recorded live in front of an audience at the London Coliseum and will feature Waddingham performing festive classics and musical numbers alongside a big band and some “special surprise guests.”

Big holiday-themed releases have become something of a tradition for Apple in recent years. Last year saw the streamer release Spirited, a retelling of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol starring Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell. Home for Christmas is being produced by Done+Dusted and will be directed by BAFTA award winner...

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The Chromecast with Google TV (HD) is down to just $19.99

The Chromecast with Google TV (HD) is a good streaming device if you can get away with 1080p. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If you’re looking for a Mother’s Day gift that’s cheap in price but not quality, today’s lead deal is a good one to consider. Right now, you can pick up the Chromecast with Google TV (HD) on sale for $19.99 ($10 off) from Best Buy, Google, and B&H Photo. That’s just $1 shy of the device’s all-time low.

Google’s entry-level streaming device is the budget-friendly version of one of our favorite models, the Chromecast with Google TV (4K). Like its pricier sibling, it’s uniquely capable of curating recommendations across a variety of streaming services and provides an array of helpful info, including Rotten Tomatoes ratings. It can also play HDR videos, supports casting, and comes with the same Google Assistant-compatible voice remote as...

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Disaster alert accounts are preparing for a world after Twitter

A resident holds a phone while walking on debris following Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida, on October 2nd, 2022. | Image: Eva Marie Uzcategui / Bloomberg via Getty Images

For years, Twitter has been a go-to for agencies that need to warn people during a rapidly changing crisis. The National Weather Service uses it to share hurricane and tornado alerts. Firefighting agencies tweet updates about where a blaze is headed. It’s supposed to give people a heads-up so that they can take precautions to keep themselves safe.

Recently, though, agencies have started facing the real possibility of losing that resource. Twitter announced in February that it would restrict access to its previously open API, and over the past week, it’s cut off public service accounts for agencies such as the National Weather Service, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Bay Area Rapid Transit. The accounts were later...

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Microsoft’s latest DirectStorage 1.2 works on HDDs to boost PC game load times

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has released version 1.2 of its DirectStorage SDK and has a surprise addition that will help speed up old hard drives. While DirectStorage initially launched as a way to stream data from the latest speedy NVMe solid state drives to your GPU without a CPU slowing things down, Microsoft has heard from developers that improved support for legacy hard drives would also benefit games.

Parts of DirectStorage have always worked on hard drives, but developers have had to use separate methods for NVMe devices and HDDs. That complicates the process of supporting an API that’s really designed for high-speed SSDs that aren’t always used by PC gamers to store and play games.

With DirectStorage 1.2, developers can now use the same code on...

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Apple is reportedly developing its own journaling app for the iPhone

Last year’s iPhone 14. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple could offer its own journaling app with the next update to iOS, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. The software, codenamed “Jurassic,” will attempt to tap into the apparent mental and physical benefits of logging your thoughts and activities on a regular basis. The WSJ reports that the app could be announced as early as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June as a feature for iOS 17, the iPhone software update expected to be released this autumn.

According to the WSJ, Apple’s ideas for the app include having it pull usage data from the user’s iPhone to make suggestions about what they might like to journal about. It might spot when someone’s daily activity has changed and suggest writing about specific...

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Seagate fined $300 million for shipping 7.4 million hard drives to Huawei

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Computing storage manufacturer Seagate has agreed to pay a $300 million penalty imposed by the US Department of Commerce (DOC) for shipping over $1.1 billion worth of hard disk drives to Huawei, violating export control restrictions. An investigation by Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) determined that Seagate shipped 7.4 million hard drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021 without obtaining an export license, despite a rule introduced in August 2020 that restricts sales to the Chinese company.

The $300 million penalty is the largest fine ever imposed by the BIS that isn’t tied to a criminal case. The BIS says it’s more than double Seagate’s profits in selling the hard drives.

Seagate became Huawei’s sole...

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Watch the first demo of buzzy startup Humane’s wearable AI assistant in leaked clips

Chaudhry wearing Humane’s device in his breast pocket, activating it with the press of a button. | Image: TED

Humane, the startup founded by ex-Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, has given a first live demo of its new device; a wearable gadget with a projected display and AI-powered features intended to act as a personal assistant.

Chaudhri, who serves as Humane’s chairman and president, demoed the device onstage during a TED talk, a recording of which has been acquired by Inverse and others ahead of its expected public release on April 22nd.

“It’s a new kind of wearable device and platform that’s built entirely from the ground up for artificial intelligence,” Chaudri says in comments transcribed by Inverse. “And it’s completely standalone. You don’t need a smartphone or any other device to pair with it.”

Thanks to the...

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Now WhatsApp can save ‘disappearing’ messages if the sender consents

Image: The Verge

Something to consider before sending a risky text via WhatsApp is that now, disappearing messages are a bit more optional. Mark Zuckerberg is announcing a new tweak to the service’s burn-after-reading feature, which allows the recipient to long-press a message and choose to keep it.

WhatsApp describes the adjustment as a “sender superpower,” and assuming it all works as designed, it still keeps the sender in control of what ultimately happens to the message. That’s because the sender is sent a notification when a recipient tries to save a message, and the sender can then choose if it will disappear or be saved.

According to the company’s blog post, this gives senders the ability to “veto” a recipient’s attempt to save a message....

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Dota 2’s ‘meta-defining’ New Frontiers update makes the map 40 percent bigger

Dota 2 has a 40-percent larger map. | Image: Valve

Dota 2, one of the world’s most popular esports titles serving over 300,000 concurrent players on Steam as I write these words, has just dropped a massive update called New Frontiers that will likely change the free-to-play game forever. And the biggest difference by far is real estate: the game’s entire map is now 40 percent larger, letting you explore around the edges.

“The core objective of the game remains the same,” assures Valve — “your lanes aren’t further away from each other, and everything you need to win is still in the center of the map.”

Image: Valve

A few of the new goodies.

But Valve goes on to describe “meta-defining new features,” new locations, new Tormentor mini-bosses, vision-granting...

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