Google will reportedly reveal a bunch of big AI updates at I/O

Illustration: The Verge

Google’s I/O event is less than two days away, and a new CNBC report might have just revealed some of the major AI-focused updates to be announced at the show.

One big component will be a new large language model (LLM), PaLM 2, which CNBC describes as a “general-use” LLM that is Google’s “most recent and advanced.” The LLM has apparently performed “a broad range of coding and math tests as well as creative writing tests and analysis,” according to CNBC, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google show off some of those capabilities onstage. (The first PaLM was announced in April 2022, months before the recent AI boom fueled by applications like ChatGPT.)

CNBC reports that Google will also announce “generative experiences” for search and...

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Virgin Galactic’s next crewed flight will blast to the edge of space later this month

Image: Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is gearing up for its first crewed flight in nearly two years. The space tourism company announced that it will launch its Unity 25 crew into space later this month but didn’t provide a specific date.

The upcoming spaceflight is “the final assessment of the full spaceflight system and astronaut experience” ahead of Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight that’s planned for the end of June. Unity 25 marks the company’s fifth spaceflight and will launch four Virgin Galactic employees — Beth Moses, Luke Mays, Jamila Gilbert, and Christopher Huie — to the edge of space.

#VirginGalactic is returning to space in late May. Meet the #Unity25 crew → https://t.co/7gKH6db8gg pic.twitter.com/lbGhF6BJB8

— Virgin Galactic...

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How to avoid spoilers online

I tried to pick the least spoiler-y screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that I could. | Image: Nintendo

Dodging spoilers is becoming more difficult than ever. Thanks in large part to the many algorithmic social media feeds you can scroll through at any given time, just hanging out on the internet means you might be unwittingly served new information about a show or game you haven’t experienced for yourself.

I’ve been particularly sensitive to this with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I can’t wait to explore all of the new secrets hidden around and above Hyrule. But because the full game leaked many days before its May 12th launch, every feed, news site, subreddit, forum post, and comment section is suddenly a potential minefield for spoilers that I want to discover on my own.

To protect myself, I’ve cobbled together a few tools...

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Production on Severance and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is stopping for the WGA strike

Severance. | Image: Apple

The Writers Guild of America’s current strike is shaping up to be a shining example of just how much power workers have when working collectively. Take, for example, the way production has been halted on Apple’s Severance and HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knightdue to picketing WGA members and allies refusing to cross the line.

Deadline reports that, in direct response to the organized demonstrations of striking writers, production on Severance’s second season in New York City and on The Hedge Knight— which is still being written — has stopped, with no clear date as to when things might ramp back up.

In addition to the writers themselves striking, Severance’s stoppage was partially...

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The airline system is melting down, so maybe we could at least get paid

Photo by Anthony Souffle/Star Tribune via Getty Images

Flying sucks. On the one hand, it still feels sort of miraculous to climb into a metal tube and be whisked across the country, flying hundreds of miles per hour through the clouds. But on the other hand, almost everything about that experience is bad and is getting worse over time.

The question of who should pay for airfare when things go awry has been lingering in the air for a while now. The obvious answer is the airlines, but the major carriers have been resistant, preferring instead to make passengers pay for all their own accommodations when flights get delayed or canceled. But that way of doing things may be coming to an end.

The question of who should pay for airfare when things go awry has been lingering in the air for a while...

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See the first five Lego sets designed in a competition anyone can enter

Image: BrickLink Designer Program

Today, five Lego fans are experiencing a dream come true — Lego will turn their design into an official limited-edition Lego set and pay them 5 percent of the proceeds when the sets go up for preorder (limit 20,000 each) in February 2024.

Here are the sets that the internet (and Lego’s panel of judges) have chosen to produce:

Parisian Street:

Image: BrickLink Designer Program

Click for larger image.

Image: BrickLink Designer Program

Click for larger image.

The Snack Shack:

Image: BrickLink Designer Program

Image: BrickLink Designer Program

Mountain Fortress:

Image: BrickLink Designer Program

Click for larger...

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Amazon’s biggest TV shows could soon land on other streaming services

Image: Nicole Rivelli / Amazon Studios

Amazon has plans to sell some of its original Prime Video content to other streaming platforms. In a press release posted on Monday (via Variety), the company announced that it’s forming Amazon MGM Studios Distribution to handle the placement of its shows and movies on outside services, including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Hunters, All the Old Knives, and more.

This means that some of the shows and movies that were once exclusive to Prime Video could land on cable networks and other streaming services, including those that offer free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) and advertising-based video on demand (AVOD). While Amazon has licensed its content to other services in the past, establishing a dedicated division signals that the...

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Oppenheimer’s new trailer is the sound of the Doomsday Clock winding up

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer. | Universal

In real life and in Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film Oppenheimer, the engineers working closest to the Manhattan Project knew there was a chance that the atomic bomb might ignite the entire planet’s atmosphere. That fear’s very palpable in the movie’s latest trailer but isn’t nearly enough to stop anyone from racing toward the invention of a bomb that shaped the arc of history.

Though it’s full of artful explosions and the deeply unsettling crackle of a Geiger counter, Oppenheimer’s latest trailer mainly focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) — the theoretical physicist and Los Alamos Laboratory director who oversaw the design of the atomic bomb — grappling with the gravity of what he and his colleagues are creating.

With...

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New renders leak for Fairphone’s first pair of over-ear headphones

Leaked Fairbuds XL headphones in green. | Image: WinFuture

Fairphone is one company that has followed through with building repairable and sustainable smartphones with extended support, and now, it’s looking like it’ll be entering a new product category with a set of over-ear Fairbuds XL noise-canceling headphones, which you can see in detail thanks to leaked images and details published by WinFuture (via Android Police).

The leaked Fairbuds images include black and green color options, and you can clearly see speckles in the finish of each cup’s structure that point to the company’s usage of recycled plastics. One side of the set has a button and a nub that looks like either a dial (a la Apple’s AirPods Max) or a mini joystick, and the headset can be folded inward toward its cushiony headband.

Y...

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Achewood is back, and it’s weirder than ever

Web comic artist Chris Onstad, creator of the Achewood comic, is photographed in his home in Portland, Oregon. | Photo by Christine Dong for The Verge

The cult hit web comic sprawled in literary scope, pushing author Chris Onstad to burnout. Now, he thinks an AI might help him manage it.

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Samsung gets FDA clearance for irregular heart rhythm notifications

The feature should eventually be available on the Galaxy Watch 5 (left) and Watch 4 (middle and right) lineups. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Samsung announced today that it received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for a forthcoming irregular heart rhythm notification feature for its Galaxy Watches. This is meant to work alongside its FDA-cleared EKG feature and first arrive on its upcoming Galaxy Watch 6.

Functionally, it’s more similar to Fitbit’s passive AFib monitoring feature that was introduced last year than the EKG spot-checks Apple introduced with the Series 4 in 2018. Unlike the EKG measurements, these irregular heart rhythm notifications don’t require the user to do anything. Once enabled, the Galaxy Watch will monitor for irregular heart rate rhythms in the background and will only alert users once a certain number of consecutive measurements are...

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Save on a PlayStation Plus membership before Sony removes these last-gen titles tomorrow

Take advantage of the PlayStation Plus Collection before it’s gone tomorrow. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Last call! Today presents the final moments in which PlayStation 5 owners can claim the PlayStation Plus Collection of last-gen hit games. And you can do so for cheaper by getting a one-year PlayStation Plus Essential membership for $48.43 (about $12 off) at Eneba with offer code USPlus. This deal from Eneba was initially set to expire today, but it’s been extended through May 9th at 7AM ET — just enough time to allow more gamers to claim games like Ratchet & Clank(2016), God of War (2018), Bloodborne, The Last Of Us Remastered (the PS4 version, not the PS5 remake), and Persona 5 (which, confusingly, went away and returned) from Sony.

And yes, you can just claim all 20 games being offered by adding them to your account (you don’t even...

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Something Awful is racing to save the best and worst of web history

Illustration by Hugo Herrera

A long-running web community enlisted its goons to stop an Imgur extinction event.

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Nintendo Live 2023 starts September 1st in Seattle, and the tickets are free

Nintendo Live 2023 event poster. | Image: Nintendo

Nintendo’s next big live event will take place in Seattle this September, and today, the company revealed dates and more details about Nintendo Live 2023. The event will run from September 1st through September 4th at the Seattle Convention Center and is intended to be an all-ages celebration of Nintendo’s games, as just one of many gaming companies planning events this summer in the shadow of E3 2023’s cancellation.

Nintendo Live 2023 is going to be a free event, and there are two ways to get tickets. You can register in a randomly selected drawing on Nintendo’s website at some point between May 31st and June 22nd, where you could get a one-day pass for a group of up to six people.

#NintendoLive 2023 will be held Sept. 1-4 at the...

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Google Pixel Tablet specs leak just days ahead of I/O

Image: Google

The expected launch of the Google Pixel Tablet is just days away, but its specs have already been leaked online, as spotted earlier by WinFuture. A now-removed listing from Amazon’s Japanese website reveals that the 11-inch tablet will feature Google’s Tensor G2 chip with 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage.

The listing also indicates that the device will come with an LCD display with a 2560 x 1600 resolution, 500 nits of brightness, up to 12 hours of video streaming, and USI 2.0 stylus support. Other notable features include two eight-megapixel cameras on the front and back of the device, quad speakers, three microphones, a USB-C charging port, and support for Wi-Fi 6.

Internet Archive got a snapshot before the listing went down, so...

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It’s time for Google to fix the Nest Hub

The Nest Hub interface has been essentially the same since 2020. But maybe not for long. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Google I/O is a couple of days away and, with it, the likely launch of the Pixel Tablet. By itself, the device is just another Android tablet, but when it’s connected to its charging dock, which has built-in speakers, it looks an awful lot like the Nest Hub Max. Like the Nest Hub Max, it can act as a smart home controller — and I sure hope it paves the way for a better smart home interface. It had better.

The Nest Hub exemplifies everything that’s gone wrong with smart home controls: its interface is unintuitive and inflexible, its responses are laggy, and its responses are unpredictable and often just plain wrong.

Google seems to be using the Pixel Tablet as a chance for a do-over. The Pixel Tablet will run Android, and from what...

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Google I/O 2023: how to watch and what to expect

Illustration: The Verge

Google I/O is almost here, and that means the launch of the highly anticipated Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet is right around the corner. While the annual conference is largely geared toward developers, the company always holds a keynote revealing the latest and greatest things that’ll wind up in consumers’ hands.

If you want to watch the keynote live but aren’t attending the event, here’s all the information about when and where you can stream it, as well as what you can expect.

When is the main Google I/O 2023 keynote?

The main Google I/O 2023 keynote kicks off on May 10th, 2023, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT and will feature remarks from Google CEO Sundar Pichai. This year, the event will take place in person with a limited live audience at the...

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What happens when Google Search doesn’t have the answers?

Illustration by Jason Allen Lee for The Verge

After controlling how information has been distributed for the past 25 years, Google Search faces a set of challenges that will change the company — and the internet — forever.

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How Google tried to fix the web — by taking it over

Google promised to create a better, faster web for media companies with a new standard called AMP. In the end, it ruined the trust publishers had in the internet giant.

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A day on the Gateway 14

I spent a day on a $279, bright blue, cow-spotted 14-inch laptop, and I’m seriously impressed by how much it has to offer.

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom preorder guide

This is what it must feel like to preorder for full price and not get at least some small gift or swag for free. | Image: Nintendo

If you’re looking to buy yourself a ticket aboard the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hype train and preorder the game ahead of its May 12th launch, you might as well get some cool extra bonuses. Some retailers are offering free preorder incentives like a wooden plaque or an art print, which are a nice bonus that doesn’t cost anything extra. Or, super-fans willing to plunk down extra money can get the fancy Collector’s Edition with lots of accouterments (if it ever becomes available again, sadly).

So which way to preorder nets you the most benefit? There’s already one method that allows you to save $20 on the game, but that’s only on the digital version and exclusive to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. Here, we’ll go over the...

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Apple’s third-gen AirPods have fallen to their best of the year

Apple’s latest pair of wireless earbuds offer improved sound and more features without sacrificing the great ease of use for which AirPods are known.

Happy Saturday, dear readers! In case you weren’t already aware, Mother’s Day is next weekend, which means you have about a week or so to pick up a gift if you were planning on doing so. We’ve assembled a wide array of picks in our Mother’s Day gift guide, but, if want a quick suggestion, Apple’s third-gen AirPods are on sale once again at Amazon and Best Buy for $149.99, nearly matching their best price to date.

In many ways, Apple’s latest pair of earbuds are tailor-made for iPhone users. The third-gen earbuds feature automatic device switching, head-tracking spatial audio, and deeper Find My integration than the prior model, helping you to better pinpoint their location if you happen to lose them. They also sound better than the...

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Discord’s username change is causing discord

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A race to reserve usernames is kicking off on Discord.

Starting in the next couple of weeks, millions of Discord users will be forced to say goodbye to their old four-digit-appended names. Discord is requiring everyone to take up a new common platform-wide handle. For Discord, it’s a move toward mainstream social network conventions. For some users, though, it’s a change to the basics of what Discord is — a shift that’s as much about culture as technology.

Discord has historically handled usernames with a numeric suffix system. Instead of requiring a completely unique handle, it allowed duplicate names by adding a four-digit code known as a “discriminator” — think TheVerge#1234. But earlier this week, it announced it was changing course...

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VanMoof S5 e-bike review: nice but twice the price

$4,000 and a long list of features, but how many do you really need?

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Please stop inviting heads of state to Bluesky

Image: Bluesky

Bluesky, the chaotic, invite-only “errors and asses” platform, told its users today there’s a new rule: no heads of state. I’m guessing the posters are too feral to be trusted.

In some sense, this is understandable. The thing is still in beta. The team is tiny, and actively juggling moderation while trying to ship features. I’m not sure who got invited, but something prompted today’s announcement.

An official skeet.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already there, as is Sen. Brian Schatz and Sen. Ron Wyden. There are celebrities there, as well — CNN’s Jake Tapper, filmmaker Rian Johnson, model Chrissy Teigen, and filmmaker Lilly Wachowski. But the more high-profile members that join, the more moderation challenges the...

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How to use a passkey to sign into your Google account

Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge

Passwords have always been a necessary evil, giving you the choice of either using one that is too simple (so you can easily remember it) or one obscure enough to be secure but complicated enough to require a password manager.

Until now, the best way to keep your accounts secure was to partner a password with two-factor authorization (2FA). But now, Google is offering another choice: using a passkey — a secure credential tied to the PIN or biometric authentication your device already uses. The passkey only exists on your device, not in the cloud, making it even safer.

Want to give it a try? Here’s how.

What are the hardware / software requirements?

Currently, you can create a passkey on any compatible hardware, including laptops /...

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Marissa Mayer figures Yahoo could’ve done better buying Netflix instead of Tumblr

Image: Yahoo

Marissa Mayer says Yahoo should’ve bought Netflix or Hulu, not Tumblr, during her time as CEO.

“We looked at a transformative acquisition, and we bought Tumblr,” Mayer said in an interview with Tech Brew. “At the same time, we were also considering whether it was possible to buy Hulu or, ironically, Netflix. And I think Netflix was $4 billion and Hulu was at $1.3 billion at the time. And either of those, with hindsight being 20/20, would have been a better acquisition.”

Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr in 2013 but struggled to make sense of the platform among its other media efforts. The company started bringing ads to Tumblr and pushed employees to meet unrealistic sales goals. In 2016, Yahoo wrote down Tumblr’s value by $230 million....

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Seagate’s expensive Xbox Storage Expansion Cards finally get price cuts

The proprietary connector on Xbox Series X / S consoles is convenient but at a price. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

The pricey Seagate Expansion Cards for Xbox Series X / S have finally received a much-needed price cut. The official Xbox Twitter account announced that the current selection of 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB memory cards from Seagate are now available at a lower price of $89.99, $149.99, and $279.99, respectively. This effectively takes the recent discounted sale prices of the cards and turns them into actual price cuts, which should be soon reflected at all retailers carrying them.

The recent frequency of discounts on the Seagate cards and now this price cut happen to come after a leak indicated cheaper storage is on its way from Western Digital. Isn’t it amazing what a small threat of competition can do?

Think of all the new games you’ll be...

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WHO declares an end to covid global health emergency

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Three years after the emergence of a novel coronavirus brought the world to a standstill, the World Health Organization announced that covid-19 no longer represents a global health emergency.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, said in a tweet that the organization’s covid emergency committee recommended “an end to the public health emergency of international concern” and that he accepted.

“With great hope I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” Ghebreyesus added.

The virus, which emerged from China and quickly spread to practically every country in the world, was first declared a public health emergency by WHO on January 30th, 2020. The organization was slow to recommend travel or trade restrictions,...

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Sleep gadgets to help you catch those Zzzs

Sleep trackers, earbuds, and smart beds | Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Sleep tech is more than tracking. It can also help you fall asleep, stay asleep, or wake up earlier.

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