Netflix is getting a beautiful new wingsuit game on May 2nd

Image: Snowman

Tears of the Kingdom isn’t the only upcoming game about soaring through the skies. Today, developer Snowman, the studio behind the Alto series, properly unveiled its next release: Laya’s Horizon, which was first teased last month. The debut trailer shows off a beautiful world where players soar through forests, mountains, and towns utilizing something like wingsuit flying. It seems like a natural evolution of the Alto games, switching the 2D snow (and sand) boarding gameplay for three-dimensional flying.

Laya’s Horizon is also notable as it’s coming to Netflix, where it will be free to subscribers on both iOS and Android. It’ll be Snowman’s second release on the service following the jump-free platformer Lucky Luna. The streaming service...

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Verizon plans to speed up rural 5G service later this year

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Rural customers subscribed to Verizon’s 5G network could see a jump in their speeds later this year. The telecommunications giant revealed plans during its quarterly earnings call this week to extend its C-band 5G network — which uses a radio spectrum that enables faster speeds on a wide scale — to more rural and suburban areas by December 2023.

We don’t know specifically which areas the expansion will cover. During the earnings call, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg mentioned that the company’s C-band 5G coverage has so far been deployed to 70 out of the 406 available markets, mostly in urban and suburban areas. “It’s 330 markets left, we will get the C-band,” said Vestberg. He didn’t clarify how many of these markets would be covered by the...

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Apple’s Weather chaos is restarting the weather app market

Apps like Weather Fit are coming up with new ways to think about the forecast. | Image: Weather Fit

Forecast Advisor might be the best-kept secret in the weather business. It’s a website, run by a company called Intellovations, that compares the accuracy of a dozen of the largest weather forecasters. You put in your ZIP code (it only works in the US), and it spits back a ranking of the services based on how correctly they predicted the weather over the last month and the last year. You might be shocked at how different the various sources are and how bad some of them are at predicting the weather.

Depending on which weather app you use, this is extremely actionable information. Many third-party weather apps allow you to switch between data sources, so you can pick the one that’s most accurate near you — AccuWeather, in my case — and...

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How BeReal missed its moment

Is it still Time to BeReal? | Image: BeReal

The ongoing collapse of Twitter has lots of folks wondering when an all-consuming new social app will rise up to take its place. This week, I want to talk about how things are going at one such upstart — and what it tells us about how new social products win and lose in 2023.

That upstart is BeReal. In July of last year, the photo-sharing app had a breakout moment when frequent discussions of the app on TikTok pushed it to the top of the app store charts. Like most insurgent social networks, BeReal arrived with a novel creative constraint: a once-a-day window to post, delivered at a different time each day via push notification, that attempts to create a less performative social experience by inviting you to post your life at its most...

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Motorola’s first co-branded Lenovo phone is here, and it’s nice as heck

The ThinkPhone features a big 6.6-inch screen and top-notch build quality.

Nine years after Lenovo purchased the Motorola brand, the first co-branded phone is hitting store shelves. The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is available in the US starting today for $699, offering a suite of productivity features designed to work with ThinkPad laptops. But don’t expect to waltz into your wireless carrier’s retail location and find it on a shelf — it’s available first to enterprise customers and then, on April 28th, becomes available unlocked via Motorola.com. That puts it out of consideration for a lot of people, and that’s too bad — in my experience, it’s shaping up to be a really nice phone.

The ThinkPhone has a lot of the same stuff as a mainstream flagship phone, even though it’s priced just below the likes of the...

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Playing Tears of the Kingdom is like riding a tricked-out bike you built with your Ultrahand

The Hero of Time gazing at his fancy new hand. | Image: Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom builds on Breath of the Wild’s brilliance by turning everything into an open-ended puzzle of the imagination.

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Tesla’s carbon footprint is finally coming into focus, and it’s bigger than the company let on in the past

In an aerial view, Tesla cars sit parked in a lot at the Tesla factory on April 20th, 2022, in Fremont, California. | Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Tesla released its 2022 Impact Report this week, and it gives the clearest picture yet of the electric car company’s carbon footprint. Tesla disclosed numbers on its supply chain emissions for the first time, which makes its overall carbon footprint much bigger than it has reported in the past.

Last year, the company only disclosed how much greenhouse gas pollution it generated from its direct operations and from customers charging their EVs. Altogether that was roughly equivalent to 2.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. But that missed the big picture since supply chain pollution — considered indirect emissions — often make up a major chunk of a company’s carbon footprint.

This year, Tesla finally released data on its supply chain...

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Where have all the spy gadgets gone?

Illustration: Kyle Ellingson for The Verge

Over the last few years, a spy’s gadgets have disappeared, and they’ve been replaced by the hacker.

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Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition blocked by UK regulators

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard has been blocked by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). After months of analyzing 3 million Microsoft and Activision documents and more than 2,100 emails from the public, the CMA has concluded that the deal could “alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come.”

Microsoft says it will appeal the decision, but it’s a blow to Microsoft’s hopes of acquiring Activision Blizzard and will likely prevent the company closing its giant deal if an appeal is unsuccessful.

“Microsoft has a strong position in cloud gaming services and the evidence available to the CMA showed that...

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GM killed the Chevy Bolt — and the dream of a small, affordable EV

Goodnight, sweet prince. | Image: Will Joel

The Chevy Bolt’s demise underscores a trend toward larger, heavier, more expensive EVs. But the Bolt was always more practical than dramatic. And that’s why it will be missed.

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The new Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C is a color E Ink tablet with a 16-megapixel rear camera

Image: Onyx

Onyx today announced a new tablet with an E Ink display capable of showing colors: the 10.3-inch Boox Tab Ultra C. The E Ink tablet is the first in the Tab series to feature a Kaleido 3 E Ink screen, which is the latest version of E Ink’s color electronic paper display technology. It’s still limited to 4,096 colors but allows for a higher color resolution.

Don’t expect colors that are as vibrant as an iPad’s, though. The new color screen offers a sharp 300ppi resolution when you’re in black-and-white mode but drops to 150ppi when you view content in color. As a result, colors look more subtle and pastel-like, yet should still look more vivid than last year’s Onyx Boox Nova Air C’s screen. That color E Ink came equipped with a...

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Google is making it much easier to search for tools in Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is adding a new feature to some of its Workspace apps that will help users quickly locate commonly used tools without needing to sift through various menus and toolbars. The “enhanced tool finder” is starting to roll out across Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides today, appearing as a search bar — identified by a magnifying glass icon and a “Menus” label — at the top-left of the app’s usual toolbar.

The search bar features a pill-shaped design that’s in keeping with the recent Material Design 3 overhaul. It’ll automatically offer up commonly used suggestions that vary depending on which Google Workspace app you’re using, such as “Page setup” in Docs, “Insert rows/columns” in Sheets, and “Edit theme” in Slides. Alternatively, users can...

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Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5 could be far thinner while folded

Last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 4. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Ice Universe, an anonymous Twitter account with a habit of accurately leaking details about unannounced smartphones, has tweeted what they claim will be the physical dimensions of Samsung’s upcoming foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Perhaps the most interesting figure is its thickness while folded, which will reportedly sit at 13.4mm. That’s notable, because the thickness of the current Z Fold 4 ranges from 14.2mm to 15.8mm, because of the hinge gap and the angle of the screens while folded. That could make the Fold 5 both thinner and flatter than its predecessor, potentially as a result of the improved “droplet”-style hinge Samsung is rumored to be using.

Exclusive！Size contrast

Fold5 Fold4 gap
长 154.9mm ...

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Tinder is implementing video verification to further curb creepy scammers

Tinder’s new video verification process. | Image: Tinder

Tinder is fortifying its photo verification system with video — specifically, by asking members to take a series of video selfies to prove they’re actually the real person they claim to be and not just some AI hound dog. The new feature, announced today, is rolling out globally as the new method to verify your account — and will be needed to earn the coveted verified blue-checkmark (no, a billionaire is not going to just give it to you).

The new Tinder process to verify yourself with a video selfie involves recording a video of yourself in the app using your smartphone’s front camera to make sure you’re a person. It sounds similar to other modern digital verifications, including Apple’s and Google’s State ID process and even other dating...

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Honda’s making a bigger electric SUV to follow the Prologue — atop its own platforms

Honda’s Prologue all-electric SUV announced last year. | Image: Honda

Honda’s working on a new mid to large-sized electric SUV for the US market, the automaker announced today. The new vehicle, slated for release in 2025, will be built atop the automaker’s new Honda e Architecture EV platform. Honda had previously announced vehicles on its own platform would be coming in 2026, so it looks like the automaker’s a year ahead of schedule.

The release of Honda’s new SUV will follow after the automaker’s upcoming Prologue and Acura ZDX SUVs, which are planned for release in 2024. Honda’s Prologue will be a mid-sized SUV that’s about the size of a Passport, and a bit larger than a compact CR-V. Honda could use a bigger electric SUV with three-row seating, which is becoming a hot segment with the incoming f...

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Amazon just spoiled the next Beats earbuds before Apple could even announce them

The Studio Buds Plus look phenomenal in this transparent style. | Image: Amazon

Well, there's not much left for Beats to "announce" after this. On Tuesday evening, Amazon prematurely published a retail listing for the rumored Beats Studio Buds Plus. The page contains every last detail about the buds: among other upgrades, they have more powerful active noise cancellation than the original Studio Buds, better air venting, and an improved transparency mode.

The Studio Buds Plus will sell for $169.95 when they're released on May 18th, according to Amazon. That's a $20 upcharge compared to the standard Studio Buds released in 2021. The buds and case share a very similar design to the original pair. That'll be a good thing for many; I didn't love their sound quality or find the ANC super effective, but the Studio Buds...

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Leak: TikTok is launching generative AI avatars and here’s what they look like

Matt Navarra discovered the feature in a TikTok build. | Images: Matt Navarra

TikTok is working on a feature that will create AI-generated profile pictures, according to social media consultant Matt Navarra, who shared images and video of the tool with The Verge. At first glance, the tool creates headshots that look a lot like what you might see from Prisma Labs’ Lensa app, but since it would be built right into TikTok, you might soon be seeing a lot more AI-made avatars as you’re scrolling through your feed.

Here’s how it works. The tool asks you to submit three to ten photos and then pick from two to five different styles for the eventual AI-made photos, Navarra says. Once you do, it takes some time for the photos to actually be generated. When they’re ready, you can download them, set one of them as your...

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Artifact can now summarize and explain articles to you like you’re five

You can compare this summary to the actual article if you’d like. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Artifact, the recently launched news app from Instagram’s co-founders, announced a new AI feature on Tuesday that can summarize articles for you. But the best part about the feature is that it can summarize in different tones that are varying amounts of silly and surprisingly useful.

If you’re on the latest version of the app, you can summarize an article you’re reading by tapping the “Aa” icon at the top of the screen and then on “Summarize.” After a moment, the summary will appear at the top of your screen in a black box. You can also ask Artifact to summarize in different tones, including “Explain Like I’m Five,” “Emoji,” “Poem,” and “Gen Z,” by tapping the three dots menu in that black box.

Image: Artifact

A...

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Japan’s first Moon landing has ended in failure

The Hakuto-R lunar lander. | Image: Getty Images

What would have been the first private Moon landing has ended in failure after Japanese startup ispace lost contact with its lunar lander, as reported earlier by The Washington Post. As the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander inched closer to the Moon’s surface, engineers found that they were no longer able to communicate with the spacecraft.

“Currently, we have not confirmed communications from the lander,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during a livestream of the mission. “So we have to assume that we could not complete the landing.”

Our engineers and mission operations specialists in our MCC are currently working to confirm the current status of the lander. Further information on the status of the lander will be announced as it becomes...

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Google ups Chromebook privacy with new camera and mic switch

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google is adding new systemwide camera and microphone access toggles in ChromeOS settings that can instantly block all apps and sites from being able to use them.

The new systemwide privacy controls cut off the rest of the computer’s access to the hardware, which, for all intents and purposes, is a software replacement to the physical camera and mic kill switch one can find on various PC laptops.

But instead of adding hardware switches that cut power to the camera, like on Framework’s Chromebook or even a simple plastic sliding gate that obscures the lens, Chromebook manufacturers can simplify the laptop design and use the built-in ChromeOS solution instead. Of course, there’s nothing more secure than a full-on severance of power to the...

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You can play all of Jedi: Survivor in bullet time

Image: Respawn Entertainment

Ahead of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s launch in a few days, the developers at Respawn Entertainment are showing off some of the accessibility features they’ve added to the game. There is, of course, the typical subtitle size toggle and visual options including a colorblind mode and field of vision options. You can see more details on the settings here. But there was one accessibility feature that stood out among the rest: slow mode. I’ll let the developers explain.

One of the options that we’re most excited for our players to discover is our Slow Mode toggle, which allows players to slow down the action of the world in order to ease the challenge of both combat and platforming.

Simply put, Jedi: Survivor has an option that will let you...

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Google’s search business is feeling the heat

Illustration: The Verge

Google’s search revenues inched upward in the first quarter of 2023 after years of rapid growth, suggesting the tech giant might be facing some difficulties with its golden goose. In an earnings release today, Google reported its “search & other” revenues were up 1.87 percent year over year (jumping from about $39.6B to $40.4B), which is much smaller growth than the 24.28 percent jump the company saw in Q1 2022 and the 30.11 percent bump in Q1 2021.

Right now, search is seeing significant competition from all sides. Microsoft is trying to steal users away from Google with its AI-powered Bing chatbot, which became more widely available last month. And many people are turning to other tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to search for and learn...

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Netflix doubles down on K-dramas with a $2.5 billion investment

Squid Game was a monster hit for Netflix, so it’s not surprising the platform is looking to repeat that success. | Image: Netflix

After a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol yesterday, Netflix announced it’s planning to invest $2.5 billion into “the creation of Korean series, films, and unscripted shows over the next four years” — which is a fancy way of saying Netflix is about to make a crapload of K-dramas.

The amount is double what Netflix has invested in K-dramas since 2016 — and it’s no surprise given the monumental success of Squid Game as well as The Glory and Physical: 100. In a statement, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company had “great confidence that the Korean creative industry will continue to tell great stories,” noting that Korean entertainment was “now at the heart of the global cultural zeitgeist.”

As a second-generation...

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OpenAI will let you turn off your chat history in ChatGPT

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

OpenAI now gives you the option to switch off your chat history when using its ChatGPT chatbot. As explained in a blog post, OpenAI says it won’t save your previous conversations when you turn this setting off, nor will it use those conversations to help train its AI models.

The company will still store new ChatGPT conversations for up to 30 days to “monitor for abuse” before it permanently deletes them, however. It also notes that the settings won’t apply to any existing conversations you had with chat history turned on, which means OpenAI may still use them for model training.

Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge

Your conversations won’t save to your account when you disable chat history.

You can adjust your...

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Microsoft Q3 2023: Windows, devices, and Xbox down again

Image: The Verge

Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2023 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $52.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $18.3 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 7 percent, and net income has increased by 9 percent. While Windows, Xbox, and devices revenue have all been hit hard this quarter, Microsoft’s cloud, office, and server businesses have made up for weaknesses elsewhere.

Microsoft had a tough quarter for Windows and devices revenue last quarter, and Q3 isn’t much different. Windows OEM revenue, the price that PC manufacturers pay Microsoft to put Windows on laptops and PCs, fell by 28 percent in Q3.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Microsoft’s devices revenue has dropped...

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This NES cartridge brings an eight-bit Smash Bros. demake online

Image: Broke Studios

Despite the final officially licensed cartridge for the NES being released back in 1995 (the PAL-exclusive The Lion King, for those curious), indie developers have continued to breathe some modern innovation into the retro gaming platform through homebrew titles. One particularly recent and notable example — Broke Studio’s Super Tilt Bro., previewed by Gizmodo — introduces Wi-Fi-enabled online multiplayer to the NES almost 30 years after the console was discontinued.

Super Tilt Bro. is an open-source eight-bit fighting game with platform mechanics. It’s essentially just a demake of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series, albeit without any of its recognizable characters — probably best not to poke the Nintendo copyright lawsuit dragon after...

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Apple is reportedly building a paid AI health coach

Image: The Verge

Apple is working on a paid AI-powered health coach that could help you improve your exercise, sleep, and eating habits, according to Bloomberg. Codenamed “Quartz,” the service will apparently “use AI and data from an Apple Watch to make suggestions and create coaching programs tailored to specific users,” Bloomberg reports. However, Quartz won’t be announced this year and is instead set to come out next year.

The new Quartz service (and app) are just one of a few new health initiatives outlined in Bloomberg’s report. The iPad, for example, will finally be getting a dedicated version of the Health app as part of iPadOS 17. Apple is also apparently working on an emotion tracker (which Bloomberg says is different from Apple’s rumored...

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Spotify promises not to ‘overpay’ for podcasts

Daniel Ek from Spotify

It’s the last week of the cruelest month and sure to be an eventful one for the audio world. Spotify posted its first quarter earnings this morning, reporting that the service in April finally reached over half a billion (or 515 million) monthly users. But first quarter revenue fell short of expectations — even though the platform’s podcast ad revenue saw a significant (20 percent) boost from this time last year. Still, the era of big spending by Spotify on podcasts is likely done, CEO Daniel Ek explained during the call. I’ll dive into more detail below.

We can expect even more financial news from the podcast industry on Thursday, with both SiriusXM and Cumulus Media scheduled to hold earnings calls.

Hot Pod can also exclusively...

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Diablo IV will let you chase your fantasy

Blizzard Entertainment

Forget BK — you can also have it your way in Diablo IV,too. Blizzard released a video highlighting the various customization options available to players to ensure every new arrival to Sanctuary is unique. The Verge also had the opportunity to speak to some of Diablo IV’s developers about what went into the Diablo franchise’s first character customization feature and the dizzying choices available to ensure no two sorcerers, necromancers, druids, rogues, or barbarians are the same.

I am a connoisseur of character creators, and one of the first things I noticed in my time with the Diablo IV betas was the all-new character creator. In previous Diablo games, whichever class you chose dictated your physical appearance throughout the game....

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The latest viral Drake AI hit is just a repurposed SoundCloud rap

Photo by Prince Williams/Wireimage

AI Drake has struck again, and the latest track shows just how easy it is for someone to use a familiar celebrity voice to make a song go viral. The track, called “Not a Game,” first emerged on SoundCloud and YouTube late last week and arrived only days after a song from someone named Ghostwriter went viral for featuring Drake’s AI-generated voice. “Not a Game” got mentions in both TMZ and the Daily Mail, shining even more of a spotlight on the track.

But it turns out, “Not a Game” isn’t exactly a brand-new song. The Verge found that the track is composed of multiple preexisting elements, with the primary new addition being the Drake voice.

The fakers took the vocals from this a cappella rap posted to Looperman, a site that hosts audio...

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