Twitter upgrades DM replies, Musk claims encrypted DMs launch on Wednesday

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is making some big changes to direct messages and expects to introduce encrypted DMs on Wednesday, according to Tuesday evening tweets from the company and owner Elon Musk.

Let’s start first with the immediate changes. As detailed in a tweet from the company’s support account, you can now reply to specific messages (which work like the in-line replies you might be familiar with in iMessage) and react to messages with any reaction instead of a limited few. I just downloaded the iOS app to my phone and both features were there. You can access them by pressing and holding on a specific message.

We’re excited to launch two new features in Direct Messages today!

Introducing DM Replies! You can now reply to any message you receive...

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‘PlugwalkJoe’ pleads guilty for the massive 2020 Twitter hack and other crimes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

PlugwalkJoe, aka Joseph James O’Connor, a UK citizen connected to the 2020 Twitter hack affecting many high-profile accounts, including Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Apple, has pled guilty to cyberstalking and other crimes. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that O’Connor has been extradited to the US.

In 2020, PlugwalkJoe and unnamed co-conspirators gained access to Twitter’s administrative tools. Using that access, the co-conspirators were able to tweet from several accounts belonging to major companies and celebrities. This allowed them to promote a Bitcoin scam that raked in almost $120,000.

DOJ:

In some instances, the co-conspirators took control themselves and used that control to launch a scheme to...

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Unannounced Beats Studio Pro headphones revealed in iOS beta

Beats could release multiple new products in the coming weeks. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Beats seems on the cusp of having a fairly busy spring. We already know that Studio Buds Plus earbuds are on the way (and likely soon), thanks to a premature Amazon listing. And now 9to5Mac is reporting that a refreshed set of Studio Pro noise-canceling headphones are also in the works after being spotted in the release candidate build of iOS 16.5 that went out to developers yesterday.

Citing sources familiar with the headphones, 9to5Mac says we can expect more powerful noise cancellation and an improved transparency mode. The $350 Studio 3 headphones — still being sold by Apple as of now — don’t offer any passthrough / transparency mode whatsoever. But Beats did a pretty good job with the feature on the Solo Pro headphones released in...

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Live audio is getting another go on Bluesky

Photo by Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images

This is Hot Pod_,_ The Verge_’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry._ Sign up here for more.

This week is an exciting one for the audio industry, with Podcast Upfront around the corner and awards season underway. This week, we’ll look at a new community audio project on Bluesky and Spotify’s expansion of its audio ad network in Europe. I also briefly connected with journalist Connie Walker, who won a Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting yesterday.

SkySpaces is bringing live audio to Bluesky

It’s been a rough few months for live audio. Spotify shut down Spotify Live. Clubhouse cut half its staff. And Twitter Spaces seems to be at the bottom of Elon Musk’s ever-shifting priorities list (not to mention he’s fired most of the team...

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Tucker Carlson is taking his show to Twitter

Image: Tucker Carlson via Twitter

Just weeks after leaving Fox News amid the wreckage of its $787 defamation lawsuit settlement with Dominion over lies about the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson has announced his show is coming back soon in “a new version,” but this time, it’s on Twitter.

In a three-minute video haranguing the mainstream media circus he’s spent his career as a part of, Carlson insists that “the only one remaining” platform allowing free speech is Twitter, as opposed to the cable news outlets that he calls propaganda outlets.

“We bring some other things too, which we’ll tell you about. But for now we’re just grateful to be here. Free speech is the main right that you have. Without it, you have no others,” says Carlson.

We’re back. p...

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Pokémon studio Game Freak is making an action-adventure game codenamed Project Bloom

Image: Private Division

Game Freak is best known as the studio behind the mainline Pokémon games, including recent releases like Sword / Shield, Legends: Arceus, and Scarlet / Violet. But the developer is expanding its repertoire for a new release currently codenamed Project Bloom. There isn’t much detail on the game, but it’s described as “a brand-new action-adventure IP.” The studio released a single piece of concept art, which you can see above.

To release the game, the studio has partnered with Private Division, a publishing label under the Take-Two umbrella, which previously published titles ranging from The Outer Worlds to OlliOlli World. “We’re ready to help Game Freak unleash their potential and we’re honored to be the first Western publisher to work...

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Humane’s new wearable AI demo is wild to watch — and we have lots of questions

Image: TED

Buzz has been building around the secretive tech startup Humane for over a year, and now the company is finally offering a look at what it’s been building. At TED last month, Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri gave a demonstration of the AI-powered wearable the company is building as a replacement for smartphones. Bits of the video leaked online after the event, but the full video is now available to watch.

The device appears to be a small black puck that slips into your breast pocket, with a camera, projector, and speaker sticking out the top. Throughout the 13-minute presentation, Chaudhri walks through a handful of use cases for Humane’s gadget:

• The device rings when Chaudhri receives a phone call. He holds his hand up, and the device...

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DAZN joins anti-piracy coalition to crack down on bootleg sports streams

Photo by Zac Goodwin / PA Images via Getty Images

International online sports broadcasting company DAZN has joined a global task force that aims to shut down pirated and unauthorized sports streaming operations worldwide. The new group is operated by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which counts giants like Amazon, Apple, NBC Universal, Netflix, Disney, Sony, and Warner Bros. among its members.

Unauthorized streaming sources can often be the only available option for people to watch certain teams and matches subject to complicated broadcasting deals, locked into high-priced bundles, and blackouts. With more tech and entertainment companies using sports as a sweetener for their services (NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube, MLS / MLB for Apple TV Plus, and Thursday Night...

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Pokémon’s art exhibition celebrating Japanese craftwork is coming to Los Angeles

Taiichiro Yoshida’s “Jolteon” | Taku Saiki / The Pokémon Company

We’re still quite a ways out from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s big DLC drops, and it’s not clear when the newest Pokémon anime will start airing outside of Japan. But anyone looking for an artful Poké-fix might want to start thinking about visits to Los Angeles this summer to take in The Pokémon Company’s upcoming Pokémon × Kogei craftwork exhibition.

Today, The Pokémon Company announced its new collaboration with Japan House Los Angeles to bring Pokémon × Kogei_,_ a collection of over 70 pieces of handcrafted art from 20 different artists working in a variety of mediums, to the US for a five-month-long exhibition. In a press release about the exhibition, The Pokémon Company president and CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara said that it was an honor to...

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Amazon could be hiding Anywhere

Image: Amazon

Amazon’s new “Amazon Anywhere” shopping experience lets you shop for real-world goods inside of games and virtual worlds. The company shared some details of the experience on Tuesday, and you can already try it inside Niantic’s just-launched Peridot game.

In Peridot, once you’ve linked your Amazon account, you’ll be able to buy things like shirts and a Peridot-themed pillow right inside the app. (With the shirts, you can even specify things like fit type, color, and size.) Once you’ve made your selection, the app will show you the final price and an estimated delivery date before you check out.

You can get an idea of how it all works in this video from Amazon.

“We’re creating a new landscape for shoppable entertainment and digital...

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‘I can’t make products just for 41-year-old tech founders’: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is taking it back to basics

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Airbnb is revamping its Rooms feature while eyeing AI and betting on work from anywhere.

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AI startup Anthropic wants to write a new constitution for safe AI

Image: Anthropic

Anthropic is a bit of an unknown quantity in the AI world. Founded by former OpenAI employees and keen to present itself as the safety-conscious AI startup, it’s received serious funding (including $300 million from Google) and a space at the top table, attending a recent White House regulatory discussion alongside reps from Microsoft and Alphabet. Yet the firm is a blank slate to the general public; its only product is a chatbot named Claude, which is primarily available through Slack. So what does Anthropic offer, exactly?

According to co-founder Jared Kaplan, the answer is a way to make AI safe. Maybe. The company’s current focus, Kaplan tells The Verge, is a method known as “constitutional AI” — a way to train AI systems like...

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Wendy’s tests an AI chatbot that takes your drive-thru order

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Wendy’s is partnering with Google to create an AI chatbot that can take orders at its drive-thrus, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. The fast-food chain has plans to bring its first “Wendy’s FreshAI” enabled drive-thru to a Columbus, Ohio, restaurant in June.

The chatbot will be able to take verbal orders from customers who line up at Wendy’s drive-thru kiosks, all with the hope that it will help reduce long wait times. Wendy’s worked with Google to build a tailored chatbot on top of the company’s existing large language model (LLM), which it’s bound to reveal updates about at its Google I/O event on Wednesday. This all goes along with Google’s push into AI, as its Cloud unit sells the idea of companies commissioning their...

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Chinese authorities arrest ChatGPT user for generating fake news

Illustration: The Verge

Chinese authorities have detained a man in the Gansu province in Northern China for allegedly using ChatGPT to write fake news articles. The move appears to be one of the first arrests made under China’s new anti-AI guidelines, which (among other restrictions) prohibit artificial intelligence services from being misused to distribute “false information.”

The suspect, identified only by his surname Hong, is accused of using OpenAI’s chatbot to generate news articles describing a fatal train crash that officials say was “false information,” according to a police statement reported by South China Morning Post. After discovering the article on April 25th, authorities found multiple versions of the same story with different accident locations...

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Quick fixes: take a screenshot on your streaming video service

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

The issue

Streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, and HBO Max have chosen to protect their copyright by placing a black overlay over any screenshot made of one of their videos.

Quick fix

Shut off hardware acceleration on any Chromium-based browser.

The full story

Back in 2018, before I was on staff at The Verge, I was working as a freelance writer. Things had gotten a little slow when a friend sent me an ad from a production company looking for extras to play “Jewish Resort Guests” for an episode in the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It sounded like fun, so I applied — and was offered two days of work in two separate scenes.

Cut to today. Recently, I was telling the story, and a friend asked if I had...

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Don’t let Tesla Cybertruck’s new tool rack distract from its oversize windshield wiper

Forget the tool rack; stay focused on the wiper. | GIF: Tesla

We here at The Verge are committed to delivering to you hard-hitting journalism that touches on the defining issues of our times. Issues like climate change, artificial intelligence, free speech, and, of course, the Tesla Cybertruck’s comically oversize windshield wiper.

Yesterday, Tesla teased a new accessory for the Cybertruck: a tool rack that attaches to the bed of the electric pickup truck. At first glance, this would seem to be an obvious accessory to offer to truck customers, many of whom are contractors and tradespeople with a wide variety of tool storage needs. The Cybertruck aspires to be a truck for all types of people, and a tool rack helps illustrate the types of accessories that will be available when it eventually comes...

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Best gaming laptop in 2023: seven laptops to get your game on

All the best gaming laptops at every size and price

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Meta open-sources multisensory AI model that combines six types of data

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Meta has announced a new open-source AI model that links together multiple streams of data, including text, audio, visual data, temperature, and movement readings.

The model is only a research project at this point, with no immediate consumer or practical applications, but it points to a future of generative AI systems that can create immersive, multisensory experiences and shows that Meta continues to share AI research at a time when rivals like OpenAI and Google have become increasingly secretive.

The core concept of the research is linking together multiple types of data into a single multidimensional index (or “embedding space,” to use AI parlance). This idea may seem a little abstract, but it’s this same concept that underpins the...

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Researchers hope this tiny wearable could become Smell-o-Vision for VR

These odor generators can either be stuck into a wearable mask or on a pill-shaped holder that adheres underneath the nose. | Image: Nature Communications

Smells have always been hard to recreate in virtual reality, but researchers may have figured out a solution: wearable odor generators.

Researchers from Beihang University and the City University of Hong Kong detailed two types of device formats in a paper published today in Nature Communications. The first type is a wearable that attaches to the skin directly under the nose. The other is a soft mask. (You can see both demoed in the videos below.) The former can create two scents while the latter can create up to nine scents. Both generators contain scented wax that can be heated in about 1.44 seconds to release the desired scent in a localized area.

Altogether, the researchers were able to generate 30 different scents, including...

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — all the latest on Nintendo’s huge sequel

Link in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom_._ | Image: Nintendo

Nintendo’s sequel to Breath of the Wild launches on May 12th.

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Redfall is a blood-sucking shooter with soul-crushing problems

Image: Microsoft

I have not felt genuine devastation about a game in some time. Devastation at the state of this game, devastation that one of the best studios seemed forced to push out a product before it was ready, and devastation at having to continue playing. Arkane Austin’s co-op first-person vampire shooter Redfall drained any enjoyment, even from its early hours.

Arkane is a studio renowned for innovative, clockwork-like designed games, promoting player intellect over destruction. Games like Dishonored and Prey see players in carefully crafted worlds, with multiple approaches to solving a problem in precisely designed levels. Their worlds feel alive, dark, and unique. All of that is missing from Redfall.

Redfall feels like a game from the Xbox...

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Starfield will let you do drugs and have sex (with a jetpack on, maybe)

Image: Bethesda

We know so little of Starfield, only that it’s from Bethesda, involves stars and fields in some configuration, and that Microsoft and Xbox desperately need it to be a hit after Redfall’s pretty terrible launch. But now, thanks to a new ESRB description, we know... honestly, not that much more, but at least we now know there’s plenty of drugs, lots of blood, and possibly jetpack sex.

The ESRB summary starts with a description of who we’ll be playing as: “players assume the role of a miner tasked with finding Artifacts across the galaxy.” From the 15-minute gameplay showcase last year, we know these mysterious artifacts are a key plot point but still have no clues about what they are, what they do, or why they’re so important.

After that,...

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Bose is slashing prices on earbuds and headphones ahead of Mother’s Day

Bose’s QC Earbuds II boast multipoint Bluetooth support, phenomenal ANC, and plenty of other notable features. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Just in case you’ve been living under the proverbial rock for the past couple of weeks, you should know that Mother’s Day is right around the corner. Thankfully, if you have yet to pick up a gift — or fancy a pair of noise-canceling earbuds for yourself — Bose is currently discounting a slew of our favorite devices in the run-up to Sunday, March 14th.

There’s quite a bit on offer, including some of the best discounts we’ve seen on the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II and QuietComfort 45 headphones, both of which offer excellent comfort, a natural-sounding transparency mode for letting outside noise in, and some of the best noise cancellation you can get regardless of form factor. Bose’s ongoing promo drops the QC Earbuds II to $249 ($50...

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Apple launches Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro on iPad with new subscription pricing

Image: Apple

Apple is bringing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to the iPad. Both apps will be available for $4.99 per month or $49 per year on iPad starting on May 23rd. For comparison, buying Logic Pro on a Mac costs $199.99, and buying Final Cut Pro normally costs $299.99.

The video and music editing apps will come with enhancements specifically for iPads. Final Cut Pro, for example, will come with a new jog wheel that’s supposed to make the editing process “easier than ever,” allowing you to navigate the magnetic timeline, move clips, and perform edits using just your finger and multi-touch gestures.

Image: Apple

A new feature called Live Drawing lets you use your Apple Pencil to draw and write directly on top of video content....

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These Cync bendable smart lights are now available to buy

Cocktails are fine, but please, we beg you, no penises. | Image: GE Lighting

Announced at CES back in January, Cync’s smart rope lights that can uniquely be bent into shapes of your choosing are now available to buy.

The so-called Dynamic Effects Neon-Shape Smart Lights are available in 10- ($79.99) and 16-foot ($119.99) lengths. It’s the type of product naming you’d expect from Cync, formerly known as C by GE, a GE Lighting brand now owned by Savant, not GE.

No bridge or hub required

Anyway, the rope lights can be cut to your desired length, support 16 million colors, work over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi or BLE (no bridge or hub required), have a built-in mic to sync with music and gaming audio, and are compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant. They can also be controlled from outside the home using the Cync app to adjust...

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Microsoft 365’s AI-powered Copilot is getting more features and paid access

Image: _H0x0d_ (Twitter)

Microsoft is expanding preview access to its Microsoft 365 Copilot, a digital assistant based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 that brings AI-powered capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps and services. The tech giant has also announced a new indexing tool that lets Copilot more accurately report on internal company data, alongside some new Copilot features for apps like Microsoft Whiteboard, Outlook, and PowerPoint.

The company is launching the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program — an invitation-only paid preview that will initially be rolled out to 600 global customers. Prior to this expansion, just 20 customers have been able to test the Microsoft 365 Copilot. Those new customers will be asked to pay an unspecified amount for the privilege,...

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Niantic’s adorable pet game Peridot is a next-gen Tamagotchi

Image: Niantic

It’s startling when a cuddly little critter, called a dot, stares at you with its gigantic eyes — even if it’s happening through a screen. Dots are the stars of Peridot, the latest release from Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs, and they’re sort of like puppies, only a lot weirder. Depending on their type, they can have fuzzy bellies or huge horns or feathers like a peacock. Some look like walking bananas. No matter what, though, they all have those big puppy dog eyes to lure you in.

Peridot is essentially a high-tech version of a Tamagotchi. It takes what Niantic is known for — location-based games and augmented reality — and applies it to the virtual pet genre. Initially, the appeal is undeniable. They’re just so cute. Raising a little...

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WhatsApp now available on Wear OS for beta testers

Illustration: The Verge

WhatsApp has released an official app for Wear OS, 9to5Google reports, giving beta testers of its Android app the ability to send text and voice messages from their wrist. The functionality was added with version 2.23.10.10 of the beta Android app, which also reportedly contains hints that the service might soon let Android users edit previously sent messages. The Wear OS app reportedly supports smartwatches including the Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch 5, 9to5Google notes.

Android Police notes that the Meta-owned messaging service previously offered a smartwatch app for Android Wear prior to its Wear OS rebrand, but says that it was eventually discontinued due to a lack of adoption. Since then, Wear OS users have only been able to respond...

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VanMoof S4 e-bike review: the one to buy

More simple, more accessible, more reliable, less money.

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Volvo’s next electric vehicle is a small SUV called the EX30

Image: Volvo

Volvo’s new, next-generation electric vehicle, the luxuriously appointed, three-row EX90 SUV, isn’t even out yet, but the Swedish company is already talking about the follow-up. The Volvo EX30 will be a small SUV that will have its global debut on June 7th. US reservations will also open up on that date.

The EX30 name had been floating around for a few weeks now, but knowing that the EV will be getting a proper debut relatively soon is sure to excite fans of Swedish design and the company’s commitment to leveraging technology to enhance the vehicle’s safety.

Interestingly, Volvo is going all in on the size of the vehicle

Interestingly, Volvo is going all in on the size of the vehicle. “Thinking small is one of our biggest ideas,” the...

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