Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon have launched their open-source mapping project

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and the mapping company TomTom have launched an initiative to take on Google Maps and Apple Maps. The four companies formed the Overture Maps Foundation last year with the goal of creating interoperable map products — and now, the group has released its first open map dataset.

With this data, third-party developers can create global mapping or navigation products of their own, allowing them to go head-to-head with Google Maps and Apple Maps. According to Overture, the release includes over 59 million places of interest, along with data on buildings, transportation networks, and administrative boundaries.

Image: Overture Maps Foundation

Overture collected over 59 million places of interest...

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How to preorder Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S9 tablets

Each tablet comes with the S Pen stylus included. | Image: Samsung

During Samsung’s Unpacked event today, the company announced the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 phones, but that wasn’t all — it also presented a new Galaxy Tab S9 tablet lineup. The Galaxy Tab S9 starts at $799.99, while the S9 Plus and S9 Ultra start at $999.99 and $1,199.99, respectively. While they won’t be available until August 11th, you can preorder them — with the Galaxy S Pen included — starting today.

Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy version of Qualcomm’s top-tier processor, the new tablets are expected to be faster than the Tab S8 series from 2021. The Tab S9 tablets and S Pens are now IP68-rated for dust and water resistance, which is a feature we don’t often see in non-ruggedized tablets. Along with a more durable...

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Good Omens season 2 is a lovey-dovey shipper’s delight

Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and David Tennant as Crowley. | Image: Amazon

The second season of Amazon and the BBC’s Good Omens adaptation joyously marches into familiar yet unexplored territory with a love story that feels like it was crafted with Neil Gaiman fans in mind.

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Citi Bike is for sale

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Lyft is exploring a sale of its bike and scooter business, which includes New York City’s popular Citi Bike. The news comes several months after the struggling ridehail company laid off a third of its workforce in an effort to reduce costs.

Lyft has “received strong inbound interest in our bikes and scooters business,” the company said in a statement. “It’s only logical for Lyft to listen to credible proposals and explore strategic partners and options in several forms to serve more riders in more cities.”

Whether Lyft strikes a partnership with an investor that infuses cash into the division or sells the business outright remains to be seen. Either way, Lyft wants the rental bikes and scooters to continue to be listed on its app so...

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USB-C iPhone modder makes AirPods case battery easier to replace

For his latest project, Ken Pillonel — the modder best known for creating an iPhone with a USB-C port — is attempting to improve the design of the charging case of Apple’s AirPods Pro. The true wireless earbuds have been criticized by right-to-repair advocates for a construction that relies heavily on glue, which makes it difficult to replace components without breaking the case.

“I am taking on a significant project to demonstrate how one of the most popular gadgets today — Apple’s AirPods Pro — could have been easily made repairable with minimal effort,” Pillonel says in a press release. “My primary objective is to encourage consumers to be more mindful of their choices and to motivate manufacturers to prioritize sustainability.”

With...

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Why it’s impossible to compete with Google Search

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride / The Verge

A couple of ex-Googlers set out to create the search engine of the future. They built something faster, simpler, and ad-free. So how come you’ve never heard of Neeva?

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How to preorder the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 lineup offers a larger display. | Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge

Alongside Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 phones, Samsung introduced its newest wearables to the world: the Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic. Both smartwatches are available to preorder today starting at $299.99 and $399.99, respectively, ahead of their release on August 11th.

The new Galaxy Watch 6 Classic brings back rotating bezels, which its predecessor lacked, while the standard watch comes with a touch bezel that’s slimmer. In both cases, the screen is larger and should be easier to read. The wearables are also the first in Samsung’s lineup to launch with Google’s Wear OS 4 platform and Samsung’s One UI 5 Watch skin. That allows for new features like personalized heart rate zones, passive irregular heart rhythm alerts,...

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Everything announced at Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5 event

The new Galaxy Z Flip 5. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Samsung has just finished up its second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, where it revealed a whole bunch of updates across its line of folding phones, Galaxy smartwatches, and tablets.

If you couldn’t watch the event live, we’ve rounded up all the most exciting announcements here.

The Galaxy Z Flip 5 gets a bigger cover display

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

The Galaxy Z Flip 5 has a larger 3.4-inch cover screen.

After months of rumors and leaks, Samsung has finally taken the wraps off the Galaxy Z Flip 5, and it comes with some pretty major changes. The first thing you’ll notice about the new device is its much larger 3.4-inch cover display that stretches from the device’s hinge to its dual cameras. Like...

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How to preorder the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5

Are these iterative Flip and Fold updates compelling enough for you? | Image: Samsung

Samsung kicked off a new generation of foldable phones at its latest Unpacked event, and it’s already taking preorders for those looking to punch their tickets to hot foldable summer. This time around, the announcements of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5 were accompanied by a pair of new smartwatches and new tablets, but the foldables were the star of the show — even if some of the annual improvements are feeling mostly iterative.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is the new folding flagship, clocking in at a $1,799.99 starting price and featuring an outer 6.2-inch screen with a 7.6-inch display on the inside. If that sounds familiar from the Z Fold 4 last year, well, it is, though there are bigger changes on the $999.99 Galaxy Z Flip...

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NFL Sunday Ticket now free for some Verizon customers — beware the fine print

New and upgraded customer deals start from tomorrow, with discounts for existing Verizon Mobile customers available from August 11th. | Photo by Jeff Speer/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Attention football fans — Verizon is running a limited-time promotion that’ll hand out free (or discounted) NFL Sunday Ticket subscriptions to new mobile and home internet customers, and those who upgrade. From July 27th, new customers enrolling in select Verizon home internet packages or purchasing select smartphones within the Unlimited Plus Mobile plan will be eligible for an NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV, saving fans up to $449 for the season.

This deal won’t apply to all new Verizon customers — just those who sign up for specific products. For example, the deal only applies to Unlimited Plus Mobile customers who purchase a new Samsung Galaxy S23 Series, Galaxy Z Flip 5, Galaxy Z Fold 5, Google Pixel Fold, Pixel 7,...

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The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 series is all about the bezels

Samsung brought the rotating bezel back for the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic (right), while the bezels on the regular Watch 6 are 30 percent thinner.

The Classic’s rotating bezel is back — and the display bezels are a lot thinner all around. Oh, and here comes Wear OS 4.

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The Galaxy Z Fold 5 is last year’s phone with a new hinge

The Z Fold 5 is a little slimmer and lighter this time around. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Samsung saved this year’s biggest advancements for the flip phone. As for the bigger Z Fold 5, it gets a new hinge, a brighter inner screen, and not a whole lot else.For better or worse, that includes the price: still $1,799.

There’s an updated processor, of course — the sameoverclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset in Samsung’s S23-series flagship phones — and it’s a bit thinner and lighter than the Z Fold 4 thanks to the new teardrop-shaped hinge that allows it to close flat. The Z Fold 5 measures 13.4mm thick when closed; at its slimmest point, the Fold 4 was 14.2mm thick. It’s also about 10g lighter (two nickels), down to 253g from 263g. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s six nickels lighter than the Google Pixel Fold.

...

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The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 gets a big little screen upgrade

Samsung’s Z Flip 5 has arrived with a much bigger — and probably much more useful — cover screen. | Image: Samsung

The Motorola Razr Plus’ reign as the best flip phone might be short-lived.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is officially here, complete with a 3.4-inch cover screen — still small by modern smartphone standards but much bigger than the Z Flip 4’s 1.9-inch front display. There’s a new hinge design that closes totally flat, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset tuned for Samsung, and 256GB of storage in the base model. Even with these substantial upgrades, it’s still $999. That puts it toe-to-toe with Motorola’s new Razr Plus — also $999 with 256GB of storage. But given Samsung’s experience making folding phones and some of the hardware upgrades included in this year’s Z Flip, the Razr Plus is in a tough spot.

The Z Flip 5’s inner screen is unchanged —...

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Samsung goes OLED all the way with the Galaxy Tab S9 tablets

The Tab S9 family is Samsung’s latest version of its high-end productivity tablets. | Image: Samsung

Samsung has announced its latest high-end Android tablets: the new Galaxy Tab S9, S9 Plus, and S9 Ultra. The new models follow the Tab S8 series from 2022, with similar designs and features. As before, the smallest Tab S9 starts at $799.99, while the two larger models are $999.99 and $1,199.99, respectively. All of the tablets are available for preorder starting today, July 26th, and are slated to ship starting on August 11th.

What is different is the environment. Samsung has effectively had free reign of the high-end Android tablet market (or whatever scraps Apple’s iPad leaves behind) for the last decade or so. But this year, there are a surprising number of other options from companies like Google, OnePlus, and Lenovo, all bringing...

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Samsung’s Unpacked event spoiled by major leak

Press images of the Galaxy Z Flip 5, which is expected to be announced today. | Image: EVLeaks

Just hours before Samsung’s latest Unpacked event where the company is expected to announce its latest foldables, wearables, and tablets, leaker Evan Blass has shared a more or less complete look at the company’s forthcoming lineup via his restricted Twitter account. All that’s missing are the official prices.

Blass has published over a dozen images in total, which appear to show Samsung’s promotional webpages for the devices ahead of their official unveiling. The pages show a pair of foldables (the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5), a new Galaxy Watch 6 smartwatch lineup, and a range of Galaxy Tab S9 tablets. There are images aplenty of the new devices, as well as confirmation of key features that have been rumored for months.

...

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The ‘monster’ car that almost broke Tesla

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stood on a stage in Los Angeles to introduce the company’s new car to the world: the Model 3. There was just one problem. The car didn’t exist yet.

In episode one of Land of the Giants: The Tesla Shock Wave, we’re diving into the tumultuous production of the Model 3, Tesla’s first electric car for the masses. Tesla became a giant in the auto industry based off the success of the Model 3, an affordable EV that seamlessly blended cool tech with an affordable price. But the car very nearly drove Tesla out of business — and, along with it, the company’s capricious, bombastic leader, Elon Musk.

Remember that in 2016, Tesla had only ever made three cars: the niche Roadster, and the premium-priced Model S and...

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The Futurama crew touches down in Fortnite

Image: Epic Games

Planet Express, meet battle royale. As was teased yesterday, a collaboration between Futurama and Fortnite kicked off today, which mostly involves three characters from the show being available in the item shop. You can now fight your way through the game as Fry, Leela, or Bender, and the Planet Express ship is also available as a glider. Also in the shop: an emote that lets you shuffle like Dr. Zoidberg. Curiously, there is no emote related to the show’s most famous meme.

Here’s everything that’s available in the shop starting today:

Outside of things to buy, the most recent update also adds a pair of weapons: Bender’s Shiny Metal Raygun, which fires an unlimited amount of plasma but will overheat after prolonged use, and the new...

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GitHub and others call for more open-source support in EU AI law

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In a paper sent to EU policymakers, a group of companies, including GitHub, Hugging Face, Creative Commons, and others, are encouraging more support for the open-source development of different AI models as they consider finalizing the AI Act. EleutherAI, LAION, and Open Future also cosigned the paper.

Their list of suggestions to the European Parliament ahead of the final rules includes clearer definitions of AI components, clarifying that hobbyists and researchers working on open-source models are not commercially benefiting from AI, allowing limited real-world testing for AI projects, and setting proportional requirements for different foundation models.

“The AI Act holds promise to set a global precedent in regulating AI to address...

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T-Mobile says its ultrafast 5G capable of up to 3.3Gbps is rolling out now

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile has started the rollout of its new 5G tech that can deliver speeds of up to 3.3Gbps using carrier aggregation, which combines four different 5G channels into one for devices that can handle it (only Samsung’s newer Galaxy S23 phones at the moment), similar to a trick used by Wi-Fi routers to create a faster connection.

That’s even faster than what you’d get out of mmWave 5G, which is more heavily touted by Verizon and AT&T as also being capable of extremely high speeds — Ookla recently reported download speeds of up to 1.6Gbps in the US. However, it has limited range and device support and is easily hampered by common impediments like trees and buildings.

The four channels T-Mobile is using include repurposed 1,900MHz spectrum...

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Amazon’s new page alerts buyers to recalled or unsafe products

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon has a new place to share product recall info for products purchased on its site. The personalized alert page can help consumers learn if anything they’ve bought on Amazon has known issues that make it dangerous to keep using.

Amazon says it “always proactively” notifies customers about items purchased on its site that are part of a recall or otherwise have safety alerts. But now the company is creating a dedicated place where it says customers can be more aware of recalls issued on items ordered from Amazon. Customers will also get a “personalized email” with details on the product recall, plus an alert banner plastered on their “your orders” page.

Image: Amazon

A sample of how the new recall and safety...

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Why you won’t see any new TV rewatch podcasts during the Hollywood strike

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

Today, I’ll dive into Spotify’s second quarter earnings call this morning. Despite layoffs and the shutdown of a number of podcasts, it’ll be a while until we see the benefits from a thriftier company. I also have an update on actor-hosted rewatch podcasts — and news of a new podcast coming to public radio.

Your favorite TV rewatch podcast is here to stay — but don’t expect any new ones

Gossip Queens and Pod Meets World aren’t going anywhere during the Hollywood strike. After a number of TV rewatch podcasts halted their programming due to confusion over whether they break the Hollywood strike’s rules, the SAG-AFTRA union clarified its...

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PS5 exclusive Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will officially run on Steam Deck

Image: Sony

Originally, Sony and Insomniac claimed that PS5 exclusive Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart wouldn’t even be possible without the console’s blazing-fast SSD. But not only is the game now coming to PCs with traditional hard drives — it’s also going to be playable on the Steam Deck.

Insomniac just tweeted that the game is officially Steam Deck Verified, and sure enough, it’s displaying that way in Valve’s storefront, too:

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

This game’s default graphics configuration performs well on Steam Deck

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is Steam Deck Verified! ✅

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) July 25, 2023

This isn’t a huge surprise: Sony has been a fantastic friend to the Steam Deck,...

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OpenAI can’t tell if something was written by AI after all

Image: OpenAI

OpenAI shuttered a tool that was supposed to tell human writing from AI due to a low accuracy rate. In an (updated) blog, OpenAI said it decided to end its AI classifier as of July 20th. “We are working to incorporate feedback and are currently researching more effective provenance techniques for text,” the company said.

As it shuts down the tool to catch AI-generated writing, OpenAI said it plans to “develop and deploy mechanisms that enable users to understand if audio or visual content is AI-generated.” There’s no word yet on what those mechanisms might be, though.

OpenAI fully admitted the classifier was never very good at catching AI-generated text and warned that it could spit out false positives, aka human-written text tagged as...

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General Hospital is using scab writers, and it’s complicated

Image: ABC / Christine Bartolucci

General Hospital, the longest-running American soap opera, is turning to scab writers to keep the show going amidst the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing strike. One of the show’s writers, Shannon Peace, shared the news on her Instagram account, saying, “Starting next week, the show will be penned exclusively by scab writers which is heartbreaking.”

According to Peace, the show has run through all the scripts that were written before the strike began and has now employed non-union writers in order to keep the show on the air. Typically, people who cross picket lines to perform struck work are met with derision, but Peace acknowledged that the current situation is unique for soap operas. (Disclosure: The Verge_’s editorial staff is also..._

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Google’s CFO just got a promotion

Illustration: The Verge

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is promoting chief financial officer Ruth Porat into a new role, according to a press release about Alphabet’s Q2 earnings. As part of the newly created role of president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, Porat will oversee Alphabet’s “Other Bets” investments and work more closely with policymakers and regulators.

The new role will be effective on September 1st, 2023, and the company will search for a successor as the CFO of Google and Alphabet. Porat will still report to CEO Sundar Pichai.

Porat’s promotion comes at an important time for Alphabet / Google. Policymakers around the world are working on potential regulations over artificial intelligence, and it seems likely that...

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Twitter Blue subscribers can now download videos posted to X

Image: The Verge

Starting today, Twitter Blue members can download videos shared on X by other subscribers. That’s according to an update to an X Help Center article titled “How to share and watch videos on Twitter.”

The update says all new videos will be eligible for downloads unless the poster specifically opts out. There’s also an age limit — if your “account is under the age of 18,” then downloads won’t be turned on. (Presumably, that means any person whose account says they’re under 18.)

And of course, if your Twitter Blue-subscribing account is set to private, no one other than subscribers you’ve allowed to follow you can see the video, let alone download it. To opt out of having your videos be downloadable, you can do that on a per-tweet basis —...

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Elon Musk just changed Twitter’s logo again — sort of

Emma Roth / The Verge

After replacing Twitter’s little blue bird with an X logo, Elon Musk is now changing it again — well, kind of. In a video Musk reposted from @DogeDesigner, Musk shows off a version of the logo with slightly thicker lines. You can see the differences between the two in the image embedded above.

The new version of the logo has already made its way to Twitter’s homepage, and Musk has changed his profile picture to match. We’re still not seeing the X branding anywhere on Twitter’s mobile app, however.

pic.twitter.com/dxbsqwcYv7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2023

While the new logo is only slightly different, it looks closer to the design included in a follow-up tweet from Twitter user Sawyer Merritt, who Musk got the new logo from...

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Windows and devices take a hit in Microsoft’s Q4 earnings, but Xbox is mostly up

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft just posted the fourth and final quarter of its 2023 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $56.2 billion in revenue and a net income of $20.1 billion during Q4. Revenue is up 8 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent. As expected, Windows and devices revenue has been hit hard again this quarter, but Xbox has rebounded somewhat. Microsoft’s cloud, office, and server businesses continue to make up for a weaker PC market.

Microsoft’s entire fiscal 2023 hasn’t been great for its Windows and devices revenue compared to fiscal 2022. Windows OEM revenue, the price that PC manufacturers pay Microsoft to put Windows on laptops and PCs, has dropped significantly for the entire fiscal year, or four quarters in a...

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You can’t just leave Threads in the Following feed

Image: The Verge

The brand-new Following feed in Meta’s Threads won’t always stick around if it’s your preferred way to use the app.

The much-needed Following feed is unfortunately a bit hidden: you can make it appear by tapping the home icon at the bottom of the screen or the Threads logo at the top. Once you see it, you can switch between “Following,” which shows posts in reverse-chronological order, and “For You,” which is the algorithmically sorted feed the app has offered since launch.

But a few of us at The Verge noticed that Threads will occasionally rehide the Following feed and bring you back to the For You feed after you open the app. (You can test it for yourself by force closing and reopening the app.) Unfortunately, it sounds like that’s by...

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How to use Safari Tab Groups

Tab Groups live here. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

If you’re using Safari but you’re not using Tab Groups, well, it’s time to change that.

Tab Groups, as the name implies, allows you to group a selection of tabs together and essentially set them aside for future use. For example, if you have a bunch of tabs you use for work and a bunch of tabs you use after work, you can cordon these tabs off into batches so that they don’t get in each other’s way. You can use your work tabs at work and, when you’re finished, swap them for your “after work” tabs with just one click.

You might also have different Tab Groups for different assignments at work or different school projects. Folks who share a computer might have different Tab Groups for each user. The possibilities are endless.

Here’s how...

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