Netflix drops its cheapest ad-free plan in Canada

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Netflix has stopped offering its cheapest ad-free tier in Canada, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. In a statement to The Verge, Netflix spokesperson Kumiko Hidaka confirmed Netflix will no longer offer the $9.99 CAD per month basic plan to new members but says existing subscribers aren’t affected.

The removal of Netflix’s basic plan means users in Canada now only have three plans to choose from: the $5.99 CAD / month standard with ads plan, the $16.49 CAD / month standard ad-free plan, and the $20.99 CAD / month premium ad-free tier. At $9.99 CAD per month, the ad-free basic plan helped bridge that gap between Netflix’s ad-supported and more expensive tiers, even if it only let users watch in HD and on one device at a time.

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Hiya, Barbie, you wanna go for a ride?

Come on Barbie_, let’s go party._ | Image: Microsoft

I guess Xbox is everything and PlayStation is Ken — leaks about the Barbie movie car coming to Microsoft’s wildly fun Forza Horizon 5 have come true. Starting today, Forza players can go download Barbie’s 1956 Chevrolet Corvette EV convertible and Ken’s ridiculous 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup.

Microsoft is giving some actual physical Barbie crossover stuff away, too, so look for five colorful Xbox Wireless Controller faceplates modeled after Barbie and Ken’s on-screen outfits, and the company made a very pink Xbox Series S that lives in the basement (just like mine!) of its own Barbie Dreamhouse. They’ll be given away starting July 10th on the Xbox Twitter account and on Microsoft Rewards.

Also, there will be 10 Xbox-themed Barbie dolls —...

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The Directors Guild of America has ratified a new labor contract

Image: Directors Guild of America

The Directors Guild of America has voted to ratify a new labor contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

On Friday evening, as the seventh week of the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing strike was drawing to a close, members of the Directors Guild of America “overwhelmingly” ratified a new labor agreement with the AMPTP that guarantees pay increases and larger residual payouts and includes some language about protections against artificial intelligence tools.

According to the DGA, out of the organization’s 16,321 members who were eligible to vote on the new deal, only 6,728 individuals (41 percent) participated, but the vast majority — 87 percent — of those people voted in favor of the contract. Along with a...

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Which devices work with Matter and what’s coming soon

The Verge

All the Matter-compatible devices you can buy now, plus what’s coming soon to the new Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung-backed smart home standard.

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AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born

Image: The Verge

In recent months, the signs and portents have been accumulating with increasing speed. Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links. Twitter is being abandoned to bots and blue ticks. There’s the junkification of Amazon and the enshittification of TikTok. Layoffs are gutting online media. A job posting looking for an “AI editor” expects “output of 200 to 250 articles per week.” ChatGPT is being used to generate whole spam sites. Etsy is flooded with “AI-generated junk.” Chatbots cite one another in a misinformation ouroboros. LinkedIn is using AI to stimulate tired users. Snapchat and Instagram hope bots will talk to you when your friends don’t. Redditors are staging blackouts. Stack Overflow mods are on strike. The Internet Archive is...

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Meta’s new Quest Plus subscription gets you two free VR games per month

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced Quest Plus, the company’s new “virtual reality subscription” that gives users access to “the best titles on the platform,” he said. “With a combination of VR’s biggest hits, hidden gems, and back-catalog classics, this is the most affordable way to grow your library with killer content,” Meta wrote in a blog post about the subscription.

A video from Meta notes that Quest Plus subscribers will get “two titles every month,” which should feel like a familiar perk if you pay for services like PlayStation Plus that also give free titles to subscribers. According to the blog post, July’s titles are Pistol Whip and Pixel Ripped 1995, and in August, you’ll be able to claim Walkabout Mini Golf and M...

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Amazon will now pay your coffee shop to deliver packages

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon has started recruiting small businesses across the US to deliver packages and build out its network. Axios reports Amazon is interested in connecting with a range of small businesses, including small grocery stores, coffee shops, florists, clothing stores, and more. This means your local barista could finish a pour-over and then jump in a car to take an Amazon package to your neighbor.

Last year, Vox reported that Amazon was secretly recruiting mom-and-pop shops in Alabama, Mississippi, and Nebraska to join a pilot delivery program. At the time, businesses like florists and restaurants were asked to handle Amazon’s delivery loads within a 10-mile radius for a per-package rate. Participating businesses will need to be available for...

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The Verge and Vox Media Release New Consumer Research on Artificial Intelligence

Results show that Americans are cautiously optimistic, yet artificial intelligence is dominating our conversations

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The Elgato Stream Deck XL and its boatload of programmable keys is $50 off

32 keys is a lot of customized functions. | Image: Elgato

Elgato’s Stream Deck holds a tiny place in the hearts of many here at The Verge. We just love buttons, and we love tinkering, so its programmable LCD buttons are kind of a perfect fit. And today, you can get the Elgato Stream Deck XL, which has 32 of those excellent macro buttons, for $199.99 ($50 off) at Amazon or for $3 more at Best Buy.

A Stream Deck is a perfect companion for anyone doing extensive Twitch streaming on a Windows PC or Mac, but it’s also versatile enough to control just about anything on your computer — even smart home stuff. While most people may feel fine opting for the six or 15-key Stream Decks, the XL can help you go full Sicko Mode. Think of all the things you can control and program with 32 buttons — that gives...

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YouTube reportedly tests adding playable games to its video platform

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

“Playables” is a new feature in development for YouTube that could add interactive games to the video platform, The Wall Street Journal reports. The feature was apparently detailed in an email Google sent to its employees asking them to test it. Games could either be playable via the YouTube app on iOS and Android or through the browser on desktop.

The WSJ’s report only contains details on one game the service could include, Stack Bounce, which it describes as “an arcade game in which players attempt to smash layers of bricks with a bouncing ball.” It sounds a little bit like Atari classic Breakout to me, but it’s hard to tell without seeing screenshots.

In a statement, a YouTube spokesperson declined to confirm the existence of the...

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Hope, fear, and AI

Who’s using AI?

AI is suddenly everywhere. Image generators and large language models are at the core of new startups, powering features inside our favorite apps, and — perhaps more importantly — driving conversation not just in the tech world but also society at large. Concerns abound about cheating in schools with ChatGPT, being fooled by AI-generated pictures, and artists being ripped off or even outright replaced.

But despite widespread news coverage, use of these new tools is still fairly limited, at least when it comes to dedicated AI products. And experience with these tools skews decidedly toward younger users.

Most people have heard of ChatGPT. Bing and Bard? Not quite.

Only 1 in 3 people have tried one of these AI-powered...

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Lucid Motors strikes deal to power Aston Martin’s future lineup of EVs

Photo by Tim Stevens for The Verge

Lucid Motors will supply powertrain technology to Aston Martin for the British brand’s future lineup of electric vehicles, the two companies announced Monday. The deal brings together two companies with deep ties to motorsports, as well as brand identities centered on performance luxury.

Under the deal, Lucid will supply Aston Martin with its electric motors and batteries that have been used to power the California-based company’s only model, the Lucid Air sedan. Aston Martin will then take that technology and plug it into its own bespoke EV models. Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson hailed the deal as “a landmark collaboration.”

Under the deal, Lucid will supply Aston Martin with its electric motors and batteries that have been used to power...

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WinGPT is a new ChatGPT app for your ancient Windows 3.1 PC

ChatGPT running on Windows 3.1. | Image: dialup.net

Someone has created a ChatGPT app for Windows 3.1 PCs. WinGPT brings a very basic version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT responses into an app that can run on an ancient 386 chip. It’s built by the same mysterious developer behind Windle, a Wordle clone for Microsoft’s Windows 3.1 operating system.

“I didn’t want my Gateway 4DX2-66 from 1993 to be left out of the AI revolution, so I built an AI Assistant for Windows 3.1, based on the OpenAI API,” says the developer in aHacker News thread.

WinGPT is written in C using Microsoft’s standard Windows API and connects to OpenAI’s API server using TLS 1.3, so there’s no need for a separate modern PC. That was a particularly interesting part of getting this app running on Windows 3.1, alongside managing...

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UK police blame Android SOS feature for influx of false emergency calls

Android’s Emergency SOS feature is so easy to activate that users in the UK are accidently calling emergency services. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

An Android feature designed to help users contact emergency services is making life difficult for first responders in the UK. The BBC reports that police forces across the nation have reported an influx of false emergencies to the 999 switchboard (The UK’s equivalent of 911) in recent weeks which have largely been attributed to the Emergency SOS feature for Android phones.

Law enforcement in Scotland, and the English counties of Wiltshire, Devon, Cornwall, and Gloucestershire have reported receiving a higher number of silent or abandoned calls since an Android update released between October 2022 and February 2023 introduced an Emergency SOS calling feature to more Android phones. The BBC reports that each errant call can take around 20...

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Here come the electric buses

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Make way for the electric buses.

The US Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration is sending out $1.7 billion from President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to 46 states and territories to fund the acquisition of 1,700 buses — over half of which will be zero-emission models.

The new awards will bring the total number of zero-emission buses funded by the infrastructure law up to 1,800, which is more than double the number of clean buses on the roads today. That still only represents a fraction of the roughly 60,000 buses that are currently in operation in the US, but officials hailed it as an important step toward updating the nation’s aging transit fleet with an eye toward fighting climate change.

T...

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White House announces $40 billion in broadband funding

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

President Joe Biden is getting closer to distributing more than $40 billion in funding to support broadband expansion nationwide as part of his administration’s goal to connect all Americans to high-speed internet by 2030.

The funding, authorized in Biden’s 2021 bipartisan infrastructure package, will be distributed proportionally to states based on need with each state receiving at least $100 million. Monday’s allocations were made using broadband coverage maps that were recently updated to include more than one million new locations.

“Just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered electricity to every home in America through his Rural Electrification Act, the announcement is part of President Biden’s broader effort to deliver...

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An upcoming 5G deadline could cause airline delays starting July 1st

With the 5G C-band rollout complete, there may be some flight delays. | Image: The Verge

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday there may be some airline delays or cancellations starting July 1st if the last remaining passenger jets haven’t upgraded their altimeters to deal with 5G interference, per a report from The Wall Street Journal report. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) maintains that 5G C-band signals could interfere with radio wave emitters passenger jets use to measure how far they are from the ground, which pilots rely on when landing with low visibility.

Though airlines aren’t actually required to get the new equipment in place until February 2024, those passenger jets that haven’t been certified for operation around C-band 5G signals by the first of July will not be allowed to land in...

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Reddit says accessibility upgrades for moderators are coming to its mobile apps soon

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit will make “accessibility improvements” to many moderator tools in its official mobile apps by July 1st, the company announced on Friday.

Some moderators rely on third-party apps because Reddit’s apps have what they characterize as “significant accessibility challenges,” and the accessibility community has expressed concerns over how they will moderate on mobile after popular apps like Apollo shut down on June 30th due to potentially expensive API pricing changes. It seems this roadmap, which promises improvements to features like the moderation queue and the ModMail messaging system on Android and iOS, is intended to assuage those fears.

Based on the replies to the announcement post, however, many are still unhappy with the...

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Formula E team caught using RFID scanner that could grab live tire data from other cars

Stoffel Vandoorne drives in the Portland ePrix today. | Image: John Lamparski/Getty Images

During the Formula E qualifying round in Portland, Oregon, today, the DS Penske team was fined €25,000 after it surreptitiously installed an RFID scanner at the entrance to the pit, which the FIA stewards said could collect data from other race cars and give them an advantage. The team’s racers, Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Éric Vergne, were also hit with a pit lane start penalty for today’s race — meaning they will have to wait at the end of the pit lane until all of the other cars have driven past before entering the race.

The FIA Stewards explanation for the penalty was provided to The Verge via email:

The Stewards were advised by the Technical Delegate that the competitor had installed RFID scanning equipment in the pit lane entry this...

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Tesla’s NACS plug will be required at EV charging stations in Washington and Texas

Tesla’s North American Charging Standard is gaining steam. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla has had a very good month, at least when it comes to its EV charging standard. Washington state wants to require electric car charging companies to use Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) in order to be part of the state’s program to support electric vehicles, according to Reuters. The state’s proposed mandate would put Tesla’s technology in state- and- federally-funded charging sites in the future, though Washington hasn’t decided quite how that will look.

At the moment, the federal government requires at least four Combined Charging System (CCS) chargers at taxpayer-funded charging sites, and Tonia Buell, the alternative fuels program manager at Washington state’s Department of Transportation (DOT), told Reuters the...

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Has Xbox really lost the console wars?

Xbox chief Phil Spencer. | Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

FTC v. Microsoft day two was all about console wars and whether Xbox is really in a distant third place.

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This weekend is your last chance to save on a bunch of fantastic Switch games

With the help of a little visual trickery and a fox clad in green threads, Tunic is every bit as clever as it is adorable. | Image: Finji

Happy Saturday, y’all. The weekend is here, bringing with it deals, discounts, and savings on everything from e-bikes and smart plugs to portable speakers that are designed to soundtrack your next shindig. First up, however, is something a little more time-sensitive.

As part of its ongoing Hyper Max Sale, Nintendo is offering discounts on both digital titles and DLC for the Nintendo Switch. The sale ends on Monday, June 26th, and Amazon and Best Buy are continuing to match Nintendo’s prices in most instances, making now a good time to prep your backlog for when that Tears of the Kingdom high finally subsides.

If you haven’t had a chance to peruse Nintendo’s virtual shelves, you should know that the best deals available during the...

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How to tell everyone on Gmail if you’re in — or not

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Recently, a friend who has been on Gmail for a long time suddenly noticed the chat availability settings in the upper right of the web app. This notice was actually added to the Gmail page about two years ago when Google Chat was integrated into Gmail. It notifies anyone whom you’ve ever used Chat with that you’re at your computer (or phone) and available — or not.

Even though most people may not receive notification of your availability (especially if you don’t tend to use Google Chat), you may find the idea that somebody may know when you’re using your account... irritating. (At least, my friend did, and I can sympathize.) However, you can turn the notification off — or, at least, mark yourself “away” so that your presence will not be...

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Google Pixel devices finally have a real default weather app

Finally, a real Pixel Weather app. This particular forecast is for the birds, though.

Google finally has a default weather app to compete with Apple and Samsung. Though Pixel phones have long been able to display the current weather in widgets, tapping on those widgets just launched a basic screen with a cute weather frog and a handful of stats. It felt like a web page because that’s basically what it was.

With the launch of the Pixel Tablet earlier this week, Google has rectified that situation. Its new weather app — which is accessed via the same widgets as before, as there’s no icon to launch it — has a much nicer design without losing the playfulness of the older experience. It has 10-day and 24-hour forecasts; wind, humidity, barometric pressure, and UV index reports, plus current sun position and sunrise / sunset...

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Russia invades Ukraine: the latest news on connectivity, cryptocurrency, and more

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

This even has implications for the ISS

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Making sense of the EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

Image: Apple

The European Parliament recently voted on regulation that would, among other things, require smartphone manufacturers to make their device’s batteries more easily user-replaceable. Here’s the fine print.

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Google is launching its Perspectives search feed that’s designed to show results from humans

Illustration: The Verge

Google’s new search feature that shows you different perspectives (ideally, human ones) in search results will be available on Friday, the company said on Twitter. The perspectives will show up in a tab called, well, “Perspectives.”

“Tap the filter, and you’ll exclusively see long- and short-form videos, images and written posts that people have shared on discussion boards, Q&A sites and social media platforms,” Google wrote in a blog post about the feature from May. Based on a video in Google’s blog post, that includes things like TikTok videos, YouTube videos, websites, tweets, Quora results, and Reddit posts. My colleague David Pierce described the Perspectives results as something that looks “more like Pinterest than a typical set of...

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E3 is dead — how big was it, anyhow?

The letter “E” and number “3” hung over the escalators at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. | Photo: The Verge

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is dead. Following cancellations in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and Thursday’s revelation that it won’t return to Los Angeles in 2024 or 2025 either, you can safely stick a fork in the world’s former most influential gaming show. It’s done, replaced by events that stream online like the Summer Game Fest, Nintendo Direct, PlayStation Showcase, Xbox Games Showcase, and Ubisoft Forward.

But given how seemingly easily it’s been replaced, you might be wondering: how big a deal was it, really?

In 2016, I wrote for CNET how it was actually becoming less of a gamer’s mecca every year, and you aren’t really missing that much. But when I ran the numbers today, they told a slightly different story — E3 had...

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Microsoft acquired Bethesda after hearing Starfield would be exclusive to PlayStation

Image: Bethesda

Microsoft’s Xbox chief has revealed one of the key reasons behind the acquisition of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax: potential Starfield PlayStation exclusivity. Speaking at the FTC v. Microsoft hearing today, Phil Spencer revealed that Sony regularly pays competitors to “skip our platform” and Microsoft felt it needed to own Bethesda to compete.

“When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire... to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox,” said Spencer. “So the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content...

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My Garmin’s fatal flaw is it refuses to acknowledge my naps

The Epix Pro is $1,000 and will not acknowledge my naps. Rude. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Ask any coach, athlete, personal trainer, or doctor: sleep is an important, if not the most important, part of recovery. You cannot get those gains without regular, quality sleep. But life happens, and sometimes regular, high-quality sleep isn’t possible. In those instances, studies have found naps can be an effective way to boost your recovery and athletic performance. So, knowing this, somebody please explain why none of the Garmin smartwatches in my review closet will acknowledge my naps.

Miraculously, my occasional bouts of insomnia and Garmin training haven’t overlapped much. It makes sense. I never sleep better or more regularly than when I’m training for something. That streak ended these last few weeks when my insomnia came back...

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