Apple’s Card partnership could move from Goldman Sachs to American Express

Illustration: The Verge

The Apple Card may soon no longer be backed by Goldman Sachs. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Goldman Sachs is in talks to offload its partnership with Apple to American Express.

Apple launched its credit card in partnership with Goldman Sachs in 2019 and, more recently, made its new Pay Later service available to users in March. While Apple’s new financial division is handling the lending side of its buy now, pay later service, it’s still working with Mastercard and Goldman Sachs to enable the program.

But now, sources tell the Journal that Goldman Sachs wants to exit from both of these partnerships and have American Express take its place. According to the Journal, a deal with American Express isn’t “imminent or...

Continue reading…

You don’t have to freak out about aspartame in your diet soda

I repeat, the IARC is not a food safety agency. | Photo by Yui Mok / PA Images via Getty Images

Yesterday, Reuters broke the news that the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) will declare aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic” next month. However, that doesn’t mean you have to raid your pantry and toss any sugar-free foods containing the artificial sweetener.

Why? Because this is not the agency that consumers should listen to with regard to food safety. The IARC only assesses the hazard of a given substance, not the risk. For example, there is a hazard of a meteor destroying the Earth or the sun causing skin cancer. But that’s not what matters to the average person. What matters is the actual risk of a hazard happening. There are thousands of meteors in space, but only the ones hurtling...

Continue reading…

More Reddit developers announce their apps will switch to a subscription model

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you’re looking for a third-party Reddit app for Android after rif is fun for Reddit (RIF) goes away soon, you’re going to have a few options. The developer of Relay for Reddit announced Friday that the app would continue to be available after July 1st, while the developer of Now and Nara for Reddit said those apps will continue on, too.

Relay will be moving the app to a subscription model, developer DBrady announced in a Reddit post. Reddit will start charging for its paid API on July 1st, and the potential costs of that are forcing apps like RIF and Apollo for Reddit to shut down. But DBrady seems to have found a way to make the numbers work with subscriptions — something they said they were contemplating earlier this month.

Relay...

Continue reading…

Sony’s Mocopi system is bringing affordable motion tracking to the US

Mocopi is fully wireless and only requires a Bluetooth connection to your phone, so you can use it anywhere. | Image: Sony

Sony is introducing Mocopi, its wireless, phone-based motion capture system for controlling virtual avatars, to the US following the product’s Japanese debut earlier this year. Mocopi is available to preorder now for $449 exclusively via the Sony web store and is expected to ship to customers starting July 14th. Japan has long been a popular market for virtual streamers (also known as “Vtubers”), content creators who portray fictional, animated characters — usually through motion capture — so it made sense for the company to test the water there. Now Mocopi could provide an accessible way for more creators in the US to adopt the hobby, too.

The system is ultimately designed to record a user’s movements and then mirror them in digital...

Continue reading…

Spielberg, Scorsese, and Anderson have swooped in to save Turner Classic Movies

Image: TCM via Twitter

About a week after the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO gutted the leadership team of Turner Classic Movies, a group of famed directors — Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson — has been brought on board to curate films for the network, as reported earlier by CNBC.

TCM is the commercial-free cable channel that runs a library of curated classic films on a 24/7 loop. Since its launch in the ’90s, TCM has been regarded as a staple in the film industry, specifically among those dedicated to film preservation and history.

That’s why Warner Bros. Discovery sparked outrage last week after slashing the TCM team from 90 to about 20, according to The Wrap, and laid off film veteran Pola Changnon, the executive vice president of...

Continue reading…

UK regulators have serious doubts about Adobe’s Figma acquisition

The CMA isn’t convinced that Adobe doesn’t compete against Figma in a meaningful way. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

The UK’s competition watchdog has concluded its initial investigation into Adobe’s $20 billion acquisition of cloud-based product design platform Figma, warning that the merger could cause a “substantial lessening of competition” for UK designers by removing a “significant competitive threat to Adobe” from the market. The Competition and Markets Authority announced on Friday that unless Adobe or Figma can offer “acceptable undertakings” to address its concerns by July 7th, the acquisition will be subject to a deeper investigation that risks derailing the deal entirely.

“We’re worried this deal could stifle innovation and lead to higher costs for companies that rely on Figma and Adobe’s digital tools — as they cease to compete to provide...

Continue reading…

Jsaux’s ultimate RGB dock stretches to fit Steam Deck, ROG Ally and more

Image: Jsaux

Jsaux is currently the Steam Deck accessory company — but their latest dock isn’t exclusively for Valve’s handheld. Remember the new RGB dock we mentioned earlier this week? Turns out it’s got a push-to-open expanding stand that not only fits the Steam Deck, but also the Asus ROG Ally, handhelds from Ayaneo, OneXPlayer, Ayn, cloud devices from Razer and Logitech, and any USB-C tablets you’d care to insert.

Today, Jsaux’s taking the wraps off its $89.99 HB1201 and $59.99 HB0801 (via Overkill.wtf) with the former its most advanced dock yet. It’s a 12-in-1 dual-monitor dock offering up to 4K120 over both HDMI and DisplayPort, plus 100W passthrough USB-C PD charging, both full-size SD and microSD readers, and a bunch of standard USB ports...

Continue reading…

Reddit users are saying goodbye to their favorite apps with tributes and memes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Many popular third-party Reddit apps will be shutting down on Friday because of the platform’s forthcoming paid API, and fans of the apps are sending them off with heartfelt posts and memes.

The Apollo for Reddit subreddit, for example, is filled with posts celebrating the app. “So long and thanks for everything,” said one post for an Apollo-themed version of the “was I a good boy” meme. This morning, someone posted a “Dawn of the Final Day” image. Even Carrot Weather seems to be mourning Apollo. Seriously, just scroll through them all.

It's been a great run. So long and thanks for everything.
byu/plastic_femur inapolloapp

Apollo and developer Christian Selig were rallying points for the protests...

Continue reading…

The best early Prime Day deals

The Fire HD 10 is one of many early Prime Day deals you can get, one that’s available at a steep 50 percent discount. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Amazon Prime Day may not start until July 11th, but early deals are already trickling out. We’re expecting to see some worthwhile discounts on wireless earbuds, noise-canceling headphones, tablets, TVs, smart home tech, games, and other gadgets on the actual days of, with the early deals functioning as a kind of small temperature check.

As the ghosts of Prime Days past can tell us, the ahead-of-schedule deals are almost always on Amazon-owned devices and brands. There are sure to be more deals coming online in the days ahead — especially since Amazon has promised discounts from brands like Sony and Bose — but early bird shoppers already have some decent discounts to take advantage of.

Usually, these early deals will hold through the...

Continue reading…

Humane’s first gadget is named the ‘Humane Ai Pin,’ and it’s coming this year

This is our best look at the Ai Pin yet. | Image: Humane

Humane, the buzzy company started by former Apple employees that has been making big promises about an AI-first and post-smartphone future, announced today that its first gadget will be called the Humane Ai Pin. It’ll be powered by “an advanced Snapdragon platform” in partnership with Qualcomm, and it’s coming later this year.

That’s really all we know so far. Humane continues to be mysterious about how the Ai Pin works, what exactly it will do, and even what it looks like. (Most mysterious of all: why in the world is “AI” not capitalized? What is “Ai?” Am I supposed to pronounce it like “eye?” I am confident this will infuriate The Verge’s copy desk and me in equal measure for years to come.)

The last we saw of this gadget was at the...

Continue reading…

The FTC wants to put a ban on fake reviews

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you, too, are so very tired of not knowing which reviews to trust on the internet, we may eventually get some peace of mind. That’s because the Federal Trade Commission now wants to penalize companies for engaging in shady review practices. Under the terms of a new rule proposed by the FTC, businesses could face fines for buying fake reviews — to the tune of up to $50,000 for each time a customer sees one.

You know those one-line reviews on Amazon listings that don’t quite seem legitimate? Like the ones that rate a product five stars and say something incredibly vague, like “This is such a great item,” without expanding on any specifics? Well, that’s just one type of fake feedback that the FTC wants to crack down on.

The FTC’s...

Continue reading…

This beautiful modded Game Boy Camera fits entirely inside a cartridge

The “Game Boy Mini Camera” by Christopher Graves.

Twenty-five years ago this month, the Game Boy Camera arrived in the United States and Europe. Now, a modder has made the chonky 118 x 112-pixel greyscale digital imager fully fit inside a standard Game Boy cartridge. And it’s so damn clean.

Photo by Christopher Graves

Photo by Christopher Graves

Christopher Graves is calling their creation the Game Boy Camera Mini, and here’s some video of it in action:

Videoooo - just ignore any embarrassing bits pls k thx pic.twitter.com/ux5mKmcII9

— @gameboycamera@glitch.lgbt (@thegameboycam) June 30, 2023

As a refresher, the original Game Boy Camera was an absolute unit. Here’s how far we’ve come in a single image:

Photo by...

Continue reading…

Microsoft’s FTC fight comes down to Call of Duty

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

FTC v. Microsoft is over, but who won?

Continue reading…

IRL’s ex-CEO says he’s ‘shocked’ about the company’s fake users

IRL’s company logo. | Photo illustration by William Joel/The Verge

I have a packed issue this week, starting with the implosion of a once-hot social media startup called IRL. It raised $200 million at over a $1 billion valuation, and now its board is dissolving the company after finding that most of its users were fake. The SEC is investigating. It’s a whole mess. I have ex-CEO Abraham Shafi’s first public comments on the situation since he was ousted by the board.

Also in this issue: a convo with the earliest investor in MosaicML, the AI startup that just sold to Databricks for more than $1 billion; some notes on Google’s AR strategy; a scoop about Meta getting into the app distribution game; drug use in Silicon Valley; a Musk-versus-Zuckerberg cage match update; and more…

But first: Thanks to Roblox...

Continue reading…

The world is about to miss a key deadline to craft rules for deep-sea mining

Heavy-metal band “The Polymetallic Nodules” played to protest against deep-sea mining outside Dutch ministerial buildings in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 8th, 2023. | Photo by Charles M Vella / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

When the island nation of Nauru announced that it would sponsor a deep-sea mining effort for battery materials, the country sent scientists and world leaders into a panic. It meant that companies might soon start harvesting minerals like nickel, cobalt, and copper from the ocean’s deepest depths for the first time. Scientists raised the alarm: what havoc would that do to ecosystems that humans are barely starting to understand?

The move set a deadline for the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to decide on regulations for deep-sea mining by July 2023. Thatdeadline to craft regulation is nearly here — and the ISA, an international organization established by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is expected to miss...

Continue reading…

Lumen review: a metabolism breathalyzer for the patient

I got results when trying to improve my athletic performance, but it took time, dedication, and a lot of patience with macro logging.

Continue reading…

LG’s A2 entry-level OLED TV is back down to its best price of $599.99

The A2 is about as affordable as it gets for an LG OLED TV. | Image: LG

It’s the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend, which means a couple of things: fly-by-night fireworks sellers are probably popping up in mall parking lots around you, and there are deals to be had (ones that don’t risk you any bodily harm).

As for today’s deals, one of the best is the $700 discount Best Buy is currently offering on the 48-inch LG A2 OLED TV. That knocks the price of the entry-level OLED down to $599.99 — an all-time low we’ve seen once or twice before. While the A2 may be considered entry-level compared to LG’s other OLED models, it’s still an excellent panel. The A2 has the rich color contrast expected of OLEDs, and though it may not stack up to the brightness and features of newer, higher-end models like the C2 or...

Continue reading…

A troll challenged the world’s greatest Mortal Kombat player, and it goes about how you’d expect

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

EVO doesn’t start until August, but the best fighting game match of the year has already happened.

Dominique “SonicFox” McLean is a fighting games legend. They’ve won numerous tournaments in numerous games, including six EVO championships across five different titles. They are, unequivocally, one of the best fighting games players to have ever picked up a fight stick.

But apparently, Twitter user BradonNinjaaa was unaware of this. Because only a person who has either been completely absent from the fighting games scene for the last 10 years or is so thoroughly confident in their own abilities to the point of self-delusion would ever do to SonicFox what BradonNinjaa did — challenge them to Mortal Kombat.

Yesterday evening, SonicFox...

Continue reading…

Supreme Court rules for web designer who wanted to discriminate against gay clients

Image: Getty Images

The Supreme Court has ruled that a graphic designer can’t be required to make a website celebrating the wedding of a (possibly hypothetical) gay couple, saying it would violate First Amendment protections against compelled speech. It’s a decision that isn’t necessarily surprising for the current court but one that could intersect strangely with the coming fight over online moderation.

Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the majority opinion in 303 Creative v. Elenis, and it was supported in a 6 to 3 vote, with the court’s liberal minority dissenting. Gorsuch determined that Colorado graphic and web designer Lorie Smith could legally refuse service to a same-sex couple looking to commission a wedding website, something that Smith found morally...

Continue reading…

How Reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history

Illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge

Third-party apps are shutting down, API pricing has arrived, and protesting mods are begrudgingly giving in. But at what cost?

Continue reading…

Apple is a $3 trillion company — again

Illustration: The Verge

The world’s most valuable company briefly crossed the $3 trillion mark on January 3rd, 2022, and today is the first time its market cap has reached that bar again, as individual AAPL shares showed a price above $192 soon after trading began on Friday.

In May, CEO Tim Cook reported an all-time high for its installed base of active devices, as well as “an all-time record in services and a March quarter record for iPhone.” That was despite other divisions like Mac and iPad showing results that were down from the previous year, and since then, the company has launched a new 15-inch version of the MacBook Air laptop.

Image: Yahoo Finance

Five-day chart of AAPL stock price.

Analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities has...

Continue reading…

Twitter has started blocking unregistered users

The new sign-in prompt now appears as soon as you try to access Twitter and removes the previously available background preview. | Image: Twitter / The Verge

If you currently try to access Twitter without logging in to your user account, you may find you’re unable to see any of the content that was previously available to the wider public. Instead, you’ll likely be met with the Twitter window that asks you to either sign in to the platform or create a new account, effectively blocking you from viewing tweets and user profiles or browsing through threads unless you’re a registered Twitter user.

Several members of The Verge team have been able to replicate the issue, and it appears to be affecting web access on both desktop and mobile devices. Prior to this change, Twitter allowed people limited access to the platform without an account — you could view public tweets and user profiles, for...

Continue reading…

Google is in hot water over video ads

Illustration: The Verge

Google is facing scrutiny over claims it misled advertisers about where it places video ads — and whether it violated US sanctions. As reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, research from the analytics company Adalytics suggests that Google “may have cost media buyers up to billions of digital ad dollars” by putting ads on sites in ways that violate Google’s own standards.

The report centers around one of Google’s video ad formats, called TrueView, which the company places on YouTube and other sites across the web, called Google video partners. These ads appear during videos and give viewers the option to skip the entirety of the advertisement after five seconds. Advertisers only pay for the ad if a viewer watches at least 30...

Continue reading…

Meta’s Nick Clegg on how AI is reshaping the feed

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

This is Platformer_, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer._ Sign up here.

Last July, as the Instagram feed began to fill up with recommended posts, the company was thrown briefly into crisis. The once-familiar landscape of friends, family, and influencers you had chosen to follow had begun to be replaced by algorithmic guesses. “Make Instagram Instagram again,” opined Kylie Jenner. Many viral tweets followed in the same vein.

“When you discover something in your feed that you didn’t follow before, there should be a high bar — it should just be great,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told me at the time. “You should be delighted to see it. And I don’t think that’s happening enough...

Continue reading…

WhatsApp makes it easier to transfer chat histories between devices

Image: WhatsApp

Transferring your WhatsApp messages and large attachments between phones running the same operating system could soon be a little easier. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a new chat transfer feature that bypasses any cloud backups simply by scanning a QR code shown on your old phone with your new phone. “Data is only shared between your two devices, and is fully encrypted during transfer,” WhatsApp’s announcement of the new feature says.

The new process has the potential to be a lot quicker and easier than the existing cloud-based alternative, which involves backing up a history of your chats to iCloud or Google Drive and then downloading it to a new device. And it handily avoids any cloud storage limits you might run into if your...

Continue reading…

Why influencers love a free trip — even a controversial one from Shein

Photo by Xavi Torrent / Getty Images

Thousands of influencers post content online with one goal: getting a brand deal. It’s affirmation that they’ve “made it” as an influencer, that they’re interesting enough to be paid to post, and that content creation could be a job. It’s usually a good thing — until, of course, it blows up in your face.

It’s not clear to me why anyone involved in Shein’s recent PR campaign thought it was a good idea to send influencers on a free trip to try to beat the labor exploitation accusations that plague the company. There’s an unseriousness to sponsored content — the cheery, upbeat music, the approval process videos go through before they can be posted — that makes it an insufficient response to workers who say they’re subjected to illegally...

Continue reading…

Apple’s alien show Invasion returns for season 2 in August

Image: Apple

The summer of sci-fi continues over on Apple TV Plus. Just as season 1 of Silo ends and a new season of Foundation is about to begin, Apple has confirmed that its alien series Invasion will be back very soon. The first episode of a 10-episode-long season 2 will premiere on August 23rd, with new ones dropping on Wednesdays. As part of the announcement, we also got some early images of season 2 that include a cool spacesuit and what seems like a pretty war-torn version of Earth.

Invasion originally premiered in October 2021 and told a planet-wide story about an alien invasion, letting viewers see things unfold from multiple perspectives. It took a bit to get going but eventually ended up as a great start to a sci-fi story once it got...

Continue reading…

Who killed Google Reader?

Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge

Ten years after its untimely death, the team that built the much-beloved feed reader reflects on what went wrong and what could have been.

Continue reading…

European companies claim the EU’s AI Act could ‘jeopardise technological sovereignty’

The letter warns that the strict rules for generative AI outlined in the AI Act have ‘consequences.’ | Photo by Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images

Some of the biggest companies in Europe have taken collective action to criticize the European Union’s recently approved artificial intelligence regulations, claiming that the Artificial Intelligence Act is ineffective and could negatively impact competition. In an open letter sent to the European Parliament, Commission, and member states on Friday, and first seen by the Financial Times, over 150 executives from companies like Renault, Heineken, Airbus, and Siemens slammed the AI Act for its potential to “jeopardise Europe’s competitiveness and technological sovereignty.”

On June 14th, the European Parliament greenlit a draft of the AI Act following two years of developing its rules, and expanding them to encompass recent AI...

Continue reading…

Reddit will remove mods of private communities unless they reopen

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit has informed moderators of protesting communities that are still private that they will lose their mod status by the end of the week, according to messages seen by The Verge. If a moderator tells Reddit they are interested in “actively moderating” the subreddit, the company says it will “take your request into consideration.”

Here is the full message, which we have confirmed was sent to moderators of at least two subreddits:

After sending a modmail message on June 27, 2023, your mod team indicated that you do not want to reopen the [name of subreddit] community. This is a courtesy notice to let you know that you will lose moderator status in the community by end of week. If you reply to let us know you’re interested in actively...

Continue reading…