Shut up and mint the coin

It should be the size of a hubcap, and it should glow in the dark. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s time to mint the coin, sickos!

If you have not been paying attention to the most tragically online sectors of the financial internet, here’s a summary: the government is about to grind to a halt — yes, again — to argue over the national debt. But there is a way out, and it’s been known for years. What we do is mint a $1 trillion platinum coin.

Nobody in Congress appears capable of even pretending to act like an adult. So in that spirit, I present to you the coin

Since 2003, there’s been an increasing level of dumbfuck nonsense from our elected officials around the debt ceiling. The “debt ceiling” is a limit on government spending that was instituted in 1917. When there’s a Democrat in the White House — and sometimes, even when there...

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Ford decides it won’t kill AM radio after all

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Ford is reversing course on AM radio.

In a tweet today, CEO Jim Farley announced the company was backing off its decision to release new vehicles without AM radio broadcast capabilities. Instead, all 2024 Ford and Lincoln models will be able to tune in to AM radio. And for the two electric vehicles released without AM radio capabilities, a software update would be pushed to restore it.

The announcement came after Farley said he spoke with policy leaders on the “importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system.” A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation in Washington last week that would require automakers to keep AM radio in all their vehicles. The bill was proposed in response to an increasing...

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Ahoy, matey! Windows 11 will soon have native RAR support

Photo by Ashish Vaishnav / SOPA Images/ LightRocket via Getty Images

Pour one out for WinRAR because Microsoft just announced Windows 11 will natively support RAR and a bunch of other archive formats that Windows users have been waiting decades for. Perfect if ye be swimmin’ in lots o’ files, if ye catch me drift.

“We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project,” says Windows chief Panos Panay in a blog post today. “You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.”

Microsoft tells us support for the new formats should roll it in a new work-in-progress build later this week.

Either way, the addition of tar, 7-zip, rar, gz, and others is great for Windows 11 users....

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Netflix’s Skull Island is a Titan-filled terror in first series trailer

COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Netflix has been so quiet about its upcoming Skull Island animated show set in Legendary’s MonsterVerse that it’s been easy to forget since it was first announced two years ago. While it hasn’t been all that clear in the past when the Powerhouse Animation-produced series was meant to debut, it turns out that your next trip to Skull Island’s coming much sooner than you might think.

From executive producers Brian Duffield and Jacob Robinson, Skull Island chronicles the adventures of a group of shipwrecked researchers who wash ashore on a remote island paradise, only to discover that it’s teeming with gargantuan, seemingly impossible monsters. Rather than introducing any of Skull Island’s human characters like Annie (Mae Whitman), Charlie...

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The best Memorial Day deals you can already get

You can now brighten up your home for a little less thanks to Nanoleaf’s ongoing Memorial Day sale. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Memorial Day isn’t just the unofficial start of summer — it’s also a good time to save money on everything from outdoor furniture to the latest tech accessories. And while many retailers are likely going to launch their Memorial Day sales closer to the weekend, retailers like Walmart have already begun offering deals on streaming devices, noise-canceling earbuds, video doorbells, gaming headsets, and a range of other popular tech. What’s more, Amazon and other retailers are currently matching the discounted prices, making now one of the best times of the year to save on certain categories.

Below, we’ve rounded up some of the top Memorial Day deals you can get in the run-up to the holiday on Monday, May 29th. We’ve also peppered in a few...

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The App Store had 1,783,232 apps as of 2022

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As of 2022, Apple had 1,783,232 apps in total on the App Store, according to a 2022 App Store Transparency Report published on the company’s website (via 9to5Mac). It’s the first report published as part of the company’s $100 million settlement with App Store developers in 2021.

At that time, Apple said the report would include “meaningful statistics about the app review process, including the number of apps rejected for different reasons, the number of customer and developer accounts deactivated, objective data regarding search queries and results, and the number of apps removed from the App Store.”

In this first report, in addition to details like the number of total apps, how many app submissions were reviewed (6,101,913), and how...

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Coinbase One subscriptions launch as the crypto company squares off with the SEC

Coinbase hopes its new subscription service will make up for lost revenue. | Image: Coinbase

Hey, look at that; Coinbase brought its subscription service, Coinbase One, out of beta. TechCrunch reports the program is available in the US, UK, Germany, and Ireland, with plans to roll out in 31 more countries in the coming months. Coinbase’s senior director of product management, Phil McDonnell, told TechCrunch, “Maybe 18 months ago, it was very transactional. People come in, trade, pay a fee, and that was the relationship.”

The subscription brings benefits like no trading fees (under a per-user trading volume limit), boosted staking rewards, and more, over a year and a half after Coinbase began testing it in November 2021. In exchange, it brings more recurring revenue streams at a time the company might need them because the...

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NASA picks Blue Origin to make a second human-crewed lunar lander

A concept image of the Blue Moon lander. | Image: Blue Origin

NASA has picked Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to make a lunar lander for an upcoming Artemis mission to the Moon, the agency announced on Friday. As part of the $3.4 billion contract, there will be one uncrewed “demonstration mission” ahead of a human-crewed demo that’s set to take place in 2029 for the Artemis V mission, according to a press release.

Currently, the plan for the Artemis V mission is for four astronauts to first fly to the Gateway space station on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Then, two astronauts will go to the Moon on Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander for “about a weeklong trip to the Moon’s South Pole region,” NASA said.

Honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the...

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Big Tech is already warning us about AI privacy problems

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

So Apple has restricted the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, The Wall Street Journal reports. ChatGPT has been on the ban list for months, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman adds.

It’s not just Apple, but also Samsung and Verizon in the tech world and a who’s who of banks (Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan). This is because of the possibility of confidential data escaping; in any event, ChatGPT’s privacy policy explicitly says your prompts can be used to train its models unless you opt out. The fear of leaks isn’t unfounded: in March, a bug in ChatGPT revealed data from other users.

Is there a world where Disney would want to let Marvel spoilers leak?

I am inclined to think of these bans as a...

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Fast X’s running on the highest-octane fumes you’ve ever huffed

Vin Diesel as Dom Toretto and Daniela Melchior as Isabel Neves. | Image: Universal

Universal’s 11th Fast & Furious movie is essentially a thinly plotted telenovela that’s way more fixated on feelings and family than cars.

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This is Instagram’s new Twitter competitor

Image: Lia Haberman

We finally have an idea of what Instagram’s rumored text-based Twitter competitor might look and feel like, as reported by Lia Haberman in her ICYMI Substack newsletter, who shared what appears to be a leaked marketing slide and details about the app.

The slide doesn’t give the app a separate name — instead, it calls it just “Instagram’s new text-based app for conversations” — but the app is apparently codenamed P92 or, alternately, Barcelona, according to Haberman. Users will be able to sign in with their Instagram username and password, and your followers, handle, bio, and verification will transfer over from the main app.

Based on a (somewhat blurry) example I got, Meta's new app looks a lot like Twitter.

So, could this take over...

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Why don’t the iPhone Pro models come in fun colors?

My deep purple iPhone is deeply disappointing. Here it is next to some purple items within arm’s reach of my desk. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

I go through color phases — pink when I was little, forest green throughout high school and college, and teal throughout my 20s. There was a dalliance with mint green (or sage, as Google calls it; it’s mint, okay?) but we don’t speak of that dark time. But once I bought the lavender Beats Fit Pro last year, I entered my purple era.

So you can see why I was stoked when Apple announced that the iPhone 14 Pro lineup would come in purple. Sorry, deep purple. My iPhone 12 Pro Max’s battery was on its last legs, and from the pictures, deep purple felt like an acceptable exchange for pacifica blue.

Friends, I’ve been bamboozled.

Is my iPhone 14 Pro Max technically purple? Maybe. If you hold it at the exact right angle in the right lighting....

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Meta’s next round of layoffs will start next week

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta employees are bracing for another round of layoffs. In a recording of a company meeting obtained by Vox, Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg told employees that a “third wave is going to happen next week.”

After laying off 11,000 employees last November, Meta later announced job cuts affecting an additional 10,000 workers by the end of May. Meta started by cutting workers in recruiting roles in March and slashed an additional 4,000 jobs in its technology department in April. This latest round of layoffs is expected to affect workers in business-focused positions.

“It’s just a time of great anxiety and uncertainty,” Clegg says in the meeting recording obtained by Vox. “I wish I could have some easy way of providing solace or...

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What’s the best student laptop? We asked students

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptops for high school and college students. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Shopping for a laptop can be stressful — doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as the choices for best laptop and best Chromebook evolve, so do students’ needs. So I spoke to some experts on the subject: students themselves.

My recommendations here are meant to accommodate a variety of preferences and price ranges. But they’re a jumping-off point rather than an exhaustive list: every student is different. Before making a decision, you’ll want to make sure you read reviews and try out devices yourself if you can. I’ll do my best to keep this article up to date with items that are in stock.

Best laptop...

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Meta Quest will now let you customize your home virtual world

The new Custom Skybox View includes a few environments for your home to get you started. | Image: Meta

Meta’s got a new update for its Meta Quest VR headset, and it includes new features like the ability to change up your home environment’s Skybox with a custom image, get push notifications for 2D apps, and some other items like controller improvements. The features come in the new version 54 of the Quest’s software, which is rolling out now to all headsets.

The new Custom Skybox View feature lets you bring your own high-resolution images to your home environment as a VR backdrop and finally lets you teleport somewhere that’s not part of the default set. Unfortunately, it’s just experimental for now, so visiting friends aren’t going to be able to see what you have up — though, if someone decides to make their home a dark room lined with a...

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Microsoft exec tells employees to improve its stock performance in lieu of raises

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft’s chief marketing officer has a solution for employees frustrated with the company’s decision to do away with raises: make the stock price go up.

According to a report on Wednesday from Fortune, CMO Chris Capossela wrote in a message to employees that “the most important lever for almost all our employees’ compensation upside is the stock price.” Capossela cashed out $1.55 million worth of Microsoft stock earlier this month and sold another $2.85 million last week.

“So great quarterly results contribute to making the stock attractive which in turn drives everyone’s total compensation up,” Capossela tells employees in a message viewed by Fortune. “We are still investing heavily in our people as well as in our data center...

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Apple’s Prehistoric Planet 2 is full of feathery and ferocious new faces

Image: Apple

Ever since The Blue Planet debuted more than two decades ago, we’ve been living in a particularly fruitful era of nature docs from the likes of the BBC and all of the various streamers. With all of that celebrity-voiced competition, it’s hard to do something new in the space, but Apple TV Plus managed it by looking at something old — really old.

The first season of Prehistoric Planet had all the trappings of a traditional wildlife documentary, right down to the reassuring voice of Sir David Attenborough, but used them to explore the lives of dinosaurs 66 million years ago. And it worked, offering such a fully realized vision of the past that it almost seemed real. So naturally, we have a sequel, which doesn’t do a lot new aside from...

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The Senate’s hearing on AI regulation was dangerously friendly

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. | Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images

The most unusual thing about this week’s Senate hearing on AI was how affable it was. Industry reps — primarily OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — merrily agreed on the need to regulate new AI technologies, while politicians seemed happy to hand over responsibility for drafting rules to the companies themselves. As Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) put it in his opening remarks: “I can’t recall when we’ve had people representing large corporations or private sector entities come before us and plead with us to regulate them.”

This sort of chumminess makes people nervous. A number of experts and industry figures say the hearing suggests we may be headed into an era of industry capture in AI. If tech giants are allowed to write the rules governing this...

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is almost $20 off thanks to Epic’s latest Mega sale

Cue the lightsaber noises. | Image: EA

Today, in sales figures that should surprise no one: Star Wars Jedi: Survivorbecame April’s bestselling video game within two days of release. And if you’re a PC gamer who has yet to play Respawn’s excellent follow-up to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, you can pick up a digital copy on the Epic Games Store for $52.49 (about $18 off) as part of Epic’s ongoing Mega sale, which runs until June 15th.

We praised the game in our review, namely for the way the Star Wars title builds upon the original without completely rejiggering what made the first game such a joy. The puzzles, frantic lightsaber battles, and Force antics are still there, and although the PC version was notoriously buggy upon release, it’s in noticeably better shape now that E...

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Twitter’s biggest ad buyer no longer considers it ‘high risk,’ says report

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The world’s biggest ad agency no longer considers Twitter as a “high risk” platform now that Linda Yaccarinoc — NBCUniversal’s former head of advertising — is lined up to replace Elon Musk as Twitter CEO. According to sources speaking to the Financial Times, WPP-owned GroupM removed its “high risk” classification on Monday, and has informed its clients that the company is “cautiously optimistic” about Yaccarino’s appointment.

GroupM designated Twitter as “high risk” last November and warned its clients against buying ads on the platform following Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover. At the time, the ad agency cited concerns like the numerous “verified” users impersonating high-profile Twitter accounts, and the exodus of Twitter executives l...

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You can nab three months of Hulu for just $6 today

Typically, Hulu’s base subscription tier runs $7.99 a month. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Another day, another made-up holiday. In honor of National Streaming Day on May 20th — a holiday I, too, recently found out existed — Hulu is basically giving away two months of its ad-supported plan for free.

Let me explain. Until May 27th at 11:59PM PT (or May 28th at 2:59AM ET), you can subscribe to Hulu’s ad-supported plan for just $2 a month for the first three months. Usually, the base plan runs $7.99 a month or about $24 for three months, which means you’re saving $18 — or, in essence, getting about two months for free. Moreover, the deal isn’t just available to new subscribers but also to returning subscribers who canceled at least a month ago.

If you don’t mind a few ads popping up every now and then, the entry-level...

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New AI research lets you click and drag images to manipulate them in seconds

No, it’s not over yet: the ability of AI tools to manipulate images continues to grow. The latest example is only a research paper for now, but a very impressive one, letting users simply drag elements of a picture to change their appearance.

This doesn’t sound too exciting on the face of it, but take a look at the examples below to get an idea of what this system can do.

Not only can you change the dimensions of a car or manipulate a smile into a frown with a simple click and drag, but you can rotate a picture’s subject as if it were a 3D model — changing the direction someone is facing, for example. One demo even shows the user adjusting the reflections on a lake and height of a mountain range with a few clicks.

Here’s an overview on...

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Disney will remove over 50 shows from Disney Plus and Hulu this month

Willow is among the shows being pulled despite the fact it only finished airing in January. | Lucasfilm Ltd.

If there’s a show on Disney Plus or Hulu that you’ve been meaning to watch then you might want to do so quickly before it is pulled from the platforms for good. According to a report by Deadline, Disney is about to remove dozens of series (and a few films) from both streaming services, including Willow, Y: The Last Man, and Turner & Hooch, as part of the entertainment giant’s broader cost-cutting measures.

During Disney’s Q2 earnings call earlier this month, Disney CEO Bob Iger and chief financial officer Christine McCarthy announced plans to remove some content from its streaming services after revealing Disney Plus had lost 4 million subscribers in the first three months of 2023.

Well, you work on something for years, pour your...

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Apple restricts employees from using ChatGPT over fear of data leaks

ChatGPT launched on iOS this week. | Image: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Apple has restricted employees from using AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT over fears confidential information entered into these systems will be leaked or collected.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple employees have also been warned against using GitHub’s AI programming assistant Copilot. Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman tweeted that ChatGPT had been on Apple’s list of restricted software “for months.”

Apple has good reason to be wary. By default, OpenAI stores all interactions between users and ChatGPT. These conversations are collected to train OpenAI’s systems and can be inspected by moderators for breaking the company’s terms and services.

In April, OpenAI launched a feature that lets users turn off chat...

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Montana TikTok users file lawsuit challenging ban

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies before Congress in March. | Photo by Becca Farsace /The Verge

A group of TikTok creators have sued to block a recently signed law that bans the app’s operation in Montana. The suit, filed last night and announced today, alleges that Montana’s SB 419 is an unconstitutional and overly broad infringement of their right to speech.

“Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing what it believes should be the United States’ foreign policy or its national security interests, nor may Montana ban an entire forum for communication based on its perceptions that some speech shared through that forum, though protected by the First Amendment, is dangerous,” says the suit, filed by law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. “Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban the W...

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Meta is working on a new chip for AI

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta is building its first custom chip specifically for running AI models, the company announced on Thursday. As Meta increases its AI efforts — CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said the company sees “an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful” — the chip and other infrastructure plans revealed Thursday could be critical tools for Meta to compete with other tech giants also investing significant resources into AI.

Meta’s new MTIA chip, which stands for Meta Training and Inference Accelerator, is its “in-house, custom accelerator chip family targeting inference workloads,” Meta VP and head of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan wrote in a blog post. The chip apparently provides “greater...

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Elon Musk’s lawyer accuses Microsoft of abusing its access to Twitter data

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Elon Musk’s personal lawyer Alex Spiro sent a letter on behalf of Twitter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella that accuses Microsoft of violating Twitter’s developer agreement, as reported by The New York Times. In the Thursday letter (available in full below), Spiro claims that Microsoft may have been in violation of “multiple provisions” of Twitter’s developer agreement “for an extended period of time.”

Until recently, Microsoft had integrated Twitter’s APIs with some of its products — Twitter’s letter claims Microsoft operated “eight separate Twitter API apps” integrated with products like Xbox, Bing, and its ads platform. But it began pulling support for those APIs in April, including dropping clip sharing to Twitter from Xbox, likely due...

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Hyundai and Kia agree to $200 million settlement over TikTok car theft challenge

Image: The Verge

Hyundai and Kia agreed to a $200 million settlement stemming from a class-action lawsuit related to a rash of car thefts inspired by a viral social media challenge on TikTok.

The so-called “Kia Challenge” on the social media platform has led to hundreds of car thefts nationwide, including at least 14 reported crashes and eight fatalities, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Thieves known as “the Kia Boyz” would post instructional videos on YouTube and TikTok about how to bypass the vehicles’ security system using tools as simple as a USB cable.

The thefts are reportedly easy to pull off because many Hyundai and Kia vehicles manufactured between 2015-2019 lack electronic immobilizers that prevent would-be...

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Disney’s absurdly expensive Star Wars hotel is shutting down

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

Disney World is shutting down the Galactic Starcruiser, the immersive Star Wars-themed hotel that costs around $5,000 for a two-night stay. In an update on Disney’s website, the company says the Starcruiser will host its final guests from September 28th to the 30th.

“We are so proud of all of the Cast Members and Imagineers who brought Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser to life and look forward to delivering an excellent experience for Guests during the remaining voyages over the coming months,” Disney’s update says. “Thank you to our Guests and fans for making this experience so special.”

Disney’s Galatic Starcruiser hasn’t been around for long, as it only first opened its doors to guests in March 2022. The lavish hotel is modeled after...

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Amazon Prime Air hoped for 10,000 drone deliveries this year — it’s only done 100

Amazon’s drone deliveries are stuck in regulatory mud. | Image: Amazon

Amazon is having a tough time with Prime Air, its drone delivery program. CNBC is reporting that it’s learned Amazon’s drones have made just 100 deliveries in the two locations in California and Texas the company is operating Prime Air.

The company had projected in January it would send 10,000 deliveries to customers via its fleet of flying robots by the end of 2023. It started off slow, with a report in February saying that Amazon had served fewer than 10 households. But the pace doesn’t seem to have picked up.

In light of its flagging progress, Amazon has now admitted to CNBC it has adjusted its delivery goal. The program has been in the works for close to a decade, with Prime Air was then Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announcing plans for...

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