The best thing about my Mac Studio is its mustache

Not to be all Marie Kondo about it, but my Mac Studio sparks joy in me every day, and it’s not because it’s the fastest computer I’ve ever owned. It’s also not strictly about the front-facing ports Apple gave it, nor is it the village of ports that live in the back.

It’s the mustache.

See, I found this mustache sticker in the back of a drawer in my house. I don’t know where it came from, only that it was there, and the moment I found it, I knew immediately where to put it: smack-dab in the middle of my Mac Studio. I’d been thinking for awhile that the Studio has this goofy face on the front, and slapping a curly ‘stache on it just drove that home. It delights me, and recently, I’ve been thinking about why this goofy twee addition to my...

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Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley

Christopher Nolan at a screening of Oppenheimer at the Whitby Hotel in NYC. | Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images For Universal Pictures

Around the time J. Robert Oppenheimer learned that Hiroshima had been struck (alongside everyone else in the world) he began to have profound regrets about his role in the creation of that bomb. At one point when meeting President Truman Oppenheimer wept and expressed that regret. Truman called him a crybaby and said he never wanted to see him again. And Christopher Nolan is hoping that when Silicon Valley audiences of his film Oppenheimer (out June 21) see his interpretation of all those events they’ll see something of themselves there too.

After a screening of Oppenheimer at the Whitby Hotel yesterday Christopher Nolan joined a panel of scientists and Kai Bird, one of the authors of the book Oppenheimer is based on to talk about the...

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Those new M3-equipped iMacs may be coming in October.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple may do a new product launch in October, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter today, and he speculates that the focus of the presumably-post-iPhone 15 launch will be new Macs, hinting the M3-powered iMac may be among them. Gurman has previously written that Apple is planning to release an M3-powered iMac at the end of this year.

Gurman hedges pretty hard on this prediction, but the timing feels right. The last time we saw a new iMac was when Apple released its colorful redesign more than two years ago.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll see any changes to the form factor this time around. In last week’s Power On, Gurman wrote that larger, potentially up to 32-inch iMacs won’t show up until late 2024, so...

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Sony agrees to a Call of Duty deal with Microsoft

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sony has agreed to a deal for Call of Duty with Microsoft to keep the franchise on PlayStation after the proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says Sony and Microsoft have agreed to a “binding agreement” to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. It’s not immediately clear if this is a 10-year deal, like Microsoft has signed with Nintendo and other cloud providers.

This ends a bitter battle between the companies that has been waged both privately and publicly over the past year after Microsoft announced its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard in January 2022.

We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and @PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following...

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There’s no wrong way to load this dishwasher

Bosch’s PowerControl spray arm gives you control over where you want it to clean the hardest. | Image: Bosch

Bosch is claiming its new 800 and Benchmark Series dishwashers could finally lay to rest the debate over the right way to load the dishwasher.

The new thing is a PowerControl spray arm that can find the dirtiest dishes wherever you put them (as long as that place is on the bottom rack):

The PowerControl™ spray arm provides a targeted intensive wash from anywhere in the bottom rack – no matter where the dishes are loaded.

Basically, you can target specific quadrants of the lower rack for extra attention. According to the manual for one of the new dishwashers, it looks like you’ll need the Bosch Home Connect app to actually set those quadrants; otherwise, your options are to split more intensive cleaning between the front and back half....

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Reddit removed your chat history from before 2023

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit users have noticed the site unexpectedly removed everyone’s chat history prior to January 1st of this year. Those asking why have been directed to a changelog update from June announcing feature updates to chats (via Mashable). The update’s headline didn’t say anything about data going away, and burying any reference to removal at the bottom with a vague, single line:

In an effort to have a smooth and quick transition to this new infrastructure, we will migrate chat messages sent from January 1, 2023 onward.

Assuming anyone read the note and made it all the way to the bottom, they apparently should’ve understood this meant everything before that date would disappear.

And for some, there was no warning.

The day before the...

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The Beats Studio Buds Plus are still available at an all-time low

The translucent pair of Beats Studio Plus are on sale this weekend, along with other shades. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Technically, Amazon Prime Day ended a couple of days ago, but it appears Amazon and other retailers didn’t get the memo. Quite a few of the best deals are still kicking around, including one on the Beats Studio Buds Plus that’s available to Prime members and non-Prime members alike. Right now, you buy the terrific wireless earbuds at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for just shy of $150 ($20 off).

In addition to a unique translucent option, the Studio Buds Plus offer better sound and noise cancellation than their predecessor, the Beats Studio Buds. They also offer longer battery life and are designed to be platform-agnostic, so you can use Android features like Fast Pair. Of course, as Beats is an Apple-owned company, they can take...

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I almost can’t believe it, but Google Tasks is finally kind of good

Tasks is still pretty basic — but at least it now has all your tasks! | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google has spent the last half-decade cruelly teasing me with its to-do list app. Google Tasks first launched as a standalone app in 2018, and Google seemed to have big plans for its task manager tool. And then… nothing. Actually, worse than nothing: Google launched and developed so many disconnected reminder-setting products that it became nearly impossible to figure out where your tasks were, what they are, and how you were supposed to get anything done.

But in the last couple of months, something miraculous happened: Google actually fixed it. The company spent this spring combining all its many Tasks and Reminders products into a single tool that is accessible almost everywhere and via almost any Google product. There are still some...

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Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is the next brilliant sci-fi anthology you’ve been looking for

Disney Plus’ new anthology series is a wonderful showcase of the African animation industry’s brilliance.

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Infrared may no longer be a punchline, as IEEE approves 9.6Gbps wireless light

The Light Antenna One promises up-to-gigabit network connections with infrared light.

We’ve known for over a decade that blinking light bulbs can transfer substantial quantities of wireless data, not just dumb infrared commands to your TV. Now, the IEEE standards body behind Wi-Fi has decided to formally invite “Li-Fi” to the same table — with speeds of up to 9.6 gigabits per second using invisible infrared light.

As of June 2023, the IEEE 802.11 wireless standard now officially recognizes wireless light communications as a physical layer for wireless local area networks, which is a fancy way of saying that that Li-Fi doesn’t need to compete with Wi-Fi. Light can be just another kind of access point and interface delivering the same networks and/or the same internet to your device.

In fact, IEEE members have already been...

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Court denies FTC’s last-ditch attempt to stop Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard

Image: Getty Images

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has lost what may be its final attempt to block Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard. It’s the second loss for the FTC after a US federal judge denied its request for a preliminary injunction earlier this week to block Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard until the conclusion of a separate FTC administrative case.

The FTC appealed the decision by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, and now the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied its request for emergency relief to prevent Microsoft from closing the deal until the result of the FTC’s appeal is complete.

Image: US Courts

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals filing.

This means Microsoft is now free to close its...

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The Biden administration can talk to social media sites again — for now

Ten days after a federal judge in Missouri barred the Biden administration from contacting tech companies about posts protected by the First Amendment, the White House is temporarily no longer under that ban. Today, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals paused that judge’s order — at least until the higher court has time to weigh in more fully itself.

Originally, Judge Terry Doughty suggested that the Biden administration may be suppressing “millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens,” writing that the government had already “used its power to silence the opposition” by suppressing speech opposed to covid-19 vaccines and the validity of the 2020 election, among other things.

(It’s true that, for a time, social networks...

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Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family plan ends in August

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is ending its Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family plan. The plan had already spread to eight countries as of February, allowing Xbox Game Pass members to share benefits with up to four other friends or family members. There’s no sign if it will ever return.

A Microsoft spokesperson has now confirmed to Eurogamer that the Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family plan will come to a close on August 15th:

The Friends & Family Preview will end on August 15, in all participating countries (Ireland, Colombia, New Zealand, Sweden, Israel, Chile, Hungary, and South Africa). We are no longer accepting new registrations and new member additions to existing plans will no longer be accepted after July 17. The Friends & Family preview was announced in...

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro are currently $50 off, matching their all-time low.

If you know where to look, there are often some great discounts available on Apple’s ever-popular AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods toward the end of 2021, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model slowly dip to around $100. And now that the second-gen AirPods Pro have been on the market for nearly a year, we’re seeing their price fall more often, too.

Here, we’ve curated the best deals currently available on each model, including the entry-level AirPods, the AirPods Pro, the third-gen AirPods, and the AirPods Max.

The best AirPods (second-gen) deals

In 2021, Apple lowered the list price of the second-gen AirPods — now the entry-level model — from $159 to $129. It now only sells the...

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Xbox’s Major Nelson is leaving Microsoft after 22 years

Image: Getty Images

Larry Hryb, an Xbox employee perhaps better known by his “Major Nelson” alias, is leaving Microsoft, he announced on Friday. Hryb has been a major face for many of Xbox’s marketing activities since the days of the original Xbox and Xbox Live online service, through the launch of the Xbox 360 and all of the years since.

“After 20 incredible years, I have decided to take a step back and work on the next chapter of my career,” he tweeted. “As I take a moment and think about all we have done together, I want to thank the millions of gamers around the world who have included me as part of their lives.”

In January, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said coming changes would reduce the company’s workforce by 10,000 employees, or about 5 percent of...

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The unions of Hollywood are trying to save it from itself

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

With both writers and actors on strike, the future of Hollywood is at stake.

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Bob Iger’s big ideas for Disney involve cost-cutting at Marvel

Image: CNBC

Bob Iger has a lot to say about Disney’s future. During a 40-minute interview with CNBC, the CEO talks about what the company could look like over the next four (or more) years under his control — and it could drastically change some of Disney’s biggest brands.

One of those changes includes slashing the company’s spending on Marvel and Star Wars-related content. As for why, Iger says the influx of Marvel TV shows “diluted focus and attention,” on its films, resulting in disappointing performances at the box office.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was one of those films. It raked in just $463 million, making it one of the lowest-grossing Marvel movies of all time. Although that performance improved with the release of Guardians of the...

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Summer of spam

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

“Feels like the spam calls are picking up,” my editor said to me today. Yes, it does. A glance through my call log from this week showed one incoming real call and 10 incoming spam calls.

We wrote a bunch about this in 2019 — here are some ideas for protecting yourself, and yes, I have chosen the nuclear option — and if anything, the situation has gotten worse. The FCC has made some idle threats against carriers, but I have yet to see any real action. At this point, I despair. The FCC doesn’t care; the carriers don’t care; the cost of spam is low for spammers, and the fact that they are ripping apart networks? Doesn’t seem to matter.

It feels like a tide of bullshit is rising

I didn’t use to avoid the phone. As a teenager, I spent hours...

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Here are the best iPad deals right now

Select iPad models go on sale quite regularly. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

While the best iPad deals usually come around during major sale events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and even the recent Amazon Prime Day, you can still find plenty of great discounts at all times of the year if you know where to look. Whether you’re after the high-end iPad Pro or the most affordable entry-level iPad, there’s likely a sale going on somewhere that you may be interested in.

Of course, it’s difficult to know exactly where you can find the most notable deals unless you’re scouring the major retailers on a daily basis. But that’s often what our deal hunters at The Verge are doing each and every day, so let us help you out. Below, we’ve listed the best deals you can get on each iPad model that is currently available,...

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Microsoft has at least one more big Windows 11 update coming up

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

As rumors mount for a “Windows 12” release for next year, Microsoft confirmed and named a new Windows 11 23H2 update planned for the fourth quarter of 2023.

Microsoft hasn’t yet revealed what’s in it, but the company does have many unreleased features in the beta testing pipeline that could be included. One of the big new items is Windows Copilot, which takes the GPT generative AI tech being used in Bing and Microsoft (Office) 365 and gives users an OS-wide personal assistant — and is available to test now.

Another feature to look out for is the release of the next File Explorer: it includes tabs, favorites, and a modernized look. Meanwhile, gamers may enjoy native RGB lighting settings coming to Windows 11 to make clunky...

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Studio Ghibli’s mysterious new film will be out in North America later this year

Image: Studio Ghibli / GKIDS

The mysterious new film from legendary animation studio Studio Ghibli and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki will be titled The Boy and the Heron in North America, according to an announcement from distributor GKIDS. The movie came out on Friday in Japan under the title Kimitachi wa Do Ikiruka (translated as How Do You Live?), but GKIDS is only saying that it will be out in theaters “later this year.”

Ahead of the film’s release, Studio Ghibli only shared the Japanese title and a couple of images of some kind of bird-like creature — there hasn’t even been a trailer — so there are a lot of unknowns about what the film might actually be about. That was an intentional strategy.

“A poster and a title — that’s all we got when we were children,” Studio...

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How to put widgets on your desktop in macOS Sonoma

Widget, widget, widget, weee. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

The macOS Sonoma public beta is now live, and if you fancy being an early adopter, you can go ahead and download it.

A whole bunch of new features are baked into this release, several of which are essentially ported over from iOS and will make your Mac computer look a heck of a lot more like an iPhone while you’re using it. One of these is widgets. You can now place a variety of interactive widgets right on your desktop, including Podcasts, Weather, and Calendar, and it’s very easy to do.

There are a couple ways to do it, but I’m going to show you the easiest one. Seriously, it will take you maybe two minutes.

How to add desktop widgets in macOS Sonoma

• Right-click anywhere on your desktop.
• Select Edit Widgets in the menu that comes...

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Almost 90 percent of classic games are ‘critically endangered,’ say archivists

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

It is impossibly hard to play games released before 2010.

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Editing photos on Google’s Pixel Fold has totally sold me on the form factor

Yes, that burger was as good as it looks.

I don’t particularly love editing my photos on a regular old slab phone anymore. Even on something large like the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the aspect ratio demands more zooming and panning than I’d like. Slapping on a quick filter or making some light tweaks is fine, but anything more than that and I’m itching for my Mac or an iPad. None of this is the fault of software, mind you; Adobe’s been on a run of some phenomenal Lightroom updates this year, and indie developers like the team behind Pixelmator are impressively keeping pace. That aspect of editing has never been better or more capable; it’s having to work within the confines of a small screen that’s the real limitation.

So as I was helping with our Google Pixel Fold review last month,...

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I switch phones once a week — here’s how I manage the chaos

Phones rule everything around me.

I don’t have hard data on this, but most people probably rank switching to a new phone somewhere around “dental cleaning” and “trip to the DMV.” A few years ago, I felt that way, too. Dozens of phone reviews later, switching devices has become just as routine as taking out the recycling every week.

Sure, sometimes things get mucked up and I have to tag in my wireless carrier (thanks a bunch, eSIM), but I’m living proof that it’s possible to switch to an entirely new phone every week without suffering any serious emotional or social consequences. And you can, too! I promise it’s not as painful as it seems.

I’m living proof that you can switch to a new phone every week without suffering any serious emotional or social consequences

Most...

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Media execs haven’t learned a thing from these AI tests

Image: The Verge

Over the last eight months, disparate segments of the public have clamored to integrate generative AI software like OpenAI’s ChatGPT into their daily lives — and especially into their work.

Everyone from doctors and online marketers to students and tennis announcers is experimenting with bringing AI tools into the fold. Aspiring millionaire spammers are using chatbots to speed up their junk generation, while artists are using AI art tools like Midjourney to beat out human competition. At least one lazy lawyer tried — and failed — to cut down on the research they needed to do. The promise of maximizing output and saving time is driving much of the “experimentation.”

News outlets are among the institutions that have latched onto this...

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China mandates that AI must follow “core values of socialism”

Photo by Vernon Yuen / NurPhoto via Getty Images

China has released new guidelines on generative AI services, limiting their public use while encouraging industrial development.

Reuters reported the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) softened its stance compared to draft rules in April. These new interim regulations will take effect on August 15th. The guidelines only affect organizations offering generative AI services to the public. Other entities developing the same technology but not for mass-market use do not fall under the measures.

The rules (translated via Google Translate) retain some wording from the April proposal. They continue to mandate generative AI services must “adhere to core values of socialism” and not attempt to overthrow state power or the socialist...

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The Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 are cheaper now than during Amazon Prime Day

The green version of the Buds 2 will save you more green today. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Even two days after Amazon Prime Day, there are still some lingering deals sticking around, but here’s one that somehow got slightly better. The Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 in olive green are on sale for $79.96 ($70 off) at Amazon (with slightly delayed shipping). That about matches the all-time low price of the very capable noise-canceling earbuds. They may not be as fancy as “Pro” models from Samsung or Apple, but they nail the essentials for Bluetooth wireless earbuds, and they sound good. The Buds 2 even have a great feature that much pricier earbuds from the likes of Beats and Bose often omit — wireless charging.

If olive green isn’t your jam, the graphite and lavender colors are also available at Amazon for $10 more — still a very...

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Hello Kitty Island Adventure is real but has nothing to do with South Park

Image: Sanrio / Sunblink

The makers of Hello Kitty Island Adventure want you to know the game has nothing to do with South Park.

Back in 2006, South Park finally made itself relevant to me with its World of Warcraft episode. In the episode, the boys take up the MMO and try to recruit Butters to join them. He refuses, explaining that he has simpler tastes, preferring to play Hello Kitty Island Adventure instead.

It’s a throwaway line, meant to elicit nothing more than a sneer from the gamers watching that Butters would dare admit aloud to playing something so childish. But though the game sounded exactly like a PlayStation 2 Japanese-only launch title or something that was on a CD-ROM for Windows 98, it didn’t actually exist.

That is until now.

Announced late...

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Ridiculous Fishing is back, and it is still very ridiculous

Image: Apple

Some video game experiences are simply timeless, whether that’s matching up blocks in Tetris or blowing away fish with a shotgun. Good news for fans of the latter: Ridiculous Fishing, a mobile classic, is back in an updated form on Apple Arcade. And it’s just as obscenely engrossing and silly as the original.

The new version is called Ridiculous Fishing EX, and for the most part, it plays the same as the one that launched way back in 2013 and inspired an army of clones. If you haven’t played before, the game is basically divided into three segments. First, you drop your line into the water and tilt your phone back and forth to avoid the various fish and other sea creatures swimming around. The goal is to get as deep as possible before...

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