Verizon and AT&T are charging a new fee to customers on older unlimited plans

Verizon would very much like you to switch to its new Unlimited Welcome plan. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The carriers are at it again: Verizon and AT&T are both notifying customers on older unlimited plans to expect a new fee on their bill soon. Customers on Verizon’s 5G Start and AT&T’s Unlimited Elite plans are affected, and the fees go into effect in August. It’s a classic move from the “wireless carrier shenanigans” playbook designed to push customers to newer, more profitable plans.

Verizon customers on Reddit and Twitter report that the company has just sent notice of a new monthly “Plan Rate Adjustment” charge of $3 per line. Older plans are affected, including 5G Start, which Verizon introduced as Start Unlimited four years ago and costs $70 per month for a single line. Verizon would very much like customers on that legacy plan to s...

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Intel CEO: ‘We’re going to build AI into every platform we build’

Image: Intel

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was very bullish on AI during the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call — telling investors that Intel plans to “build AI into every product that we build.”

Later this year, Intel will ship Meteor Lake, its first consumer chip with a built-in neural processor for machine learning tasks. (AMD recently did the same, following Apple and Qualcomm.)

But while Intel previously suggested to us that only its premium new Ultra chips might have those AI coprocessors, it sounds like Gelsinger expects AI will eventually be in everything Intel sells.

Gelsinger often likes to talk up the “four superpowers” or “five superpowers” of technology companies, which originally included both AI and cloud, but today, he’s suggesting that AI a...

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Driverless car legislation is still stuck in neutral in the US

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

At a recent House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on self-driving cars, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) kicked off her five minutes of questions for the panelists with a quick appraisal of the toaster-shaped autonomous shuttle that has puttered around her district in Gainesville, Florida, for the past three years.

“It moves not very fast,” Cammack said with a grimace. “So there’s a lot of frustrations with it, I’ll say that.”

That’s something that the Gainesville Autonomous Shuttle has in common with Congress: neither seems to be much in a hurry.

“So there’s a lot of frustrations with it, I’ll say that”

The hearing on Wednesday, entitled “Self-Driving Legislative Framework: Enhancing Safety, Improving Lives and Mobility, and Beating...

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Lionel Messi is already giving Apple’s MLS streaming service a boost

Photo by Hector Vivas / Getty Images

Lionel Messi has taken MLS by storm, and that’s good news for Apple. The league partnered with Apple for a streaming service called MLS Season Pass, which kicked off this season and will continue for the next decade. And though Messi only played his first match for his new club, Inter Miami, on July 21st, it seems that viewership has already improved.

While Apple did not release specific numbers, in a statement, Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr explained that the week of July 19th–26th had “the 3 most-watched matches ever on MLS Season Pass, with viewers in almost 100 countries and regions around the world. And the fans for those matches were roughly split between the MLS Season Pass English and Spanish language broadcasts.”

Considering...

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Mark Zuckerberg isn’t being held in contempt of Congress after all

Image: Getty Images

So, it looks like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to be held in contempt of Congress after all — at least for now.

The House Judiciary Committee was supposed to vote to hold Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress on Thursday, but chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) canceled the vote shortly before it was scheduled to take place, as first reported by Bloomberg. The vote was originally a play to get Meta to hand over additional documents as part of a committee investigation into alleged collusion with the White House to censor conservative speech.

But according to a tweet from Jordan on Thursday, Meta must have provided enough new material to calm his concerns.

“Based on Facebook’s newfound commitment to fully cooperate with the Committee’s...

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LinkedIn seems to be working on an AI ‘coach’ for job applications

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

LinkedIn appears to be developing a new AI tool that can help ease the effectively robotic task of looking for and applying to jobs. According to a new leak, the Microsoft-owned company seems to have a new “LinkedIn Coach” assistant in testing that could support you through the application processes, teach you new skills, and help you network on your LinkedIn network.

The news comes from app researcher Nima Owji, who uncovers features from various developers that haven’t been deployed yet. In an email, LinkedIn spokesperson Amanda Purvis tells The Verge the company is “always exploring” new ways to improve user experience on the platform. Purvis adds that the company “will have more to share soon.”

#Linkedin is working on LinkedIn...

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Xbox Games with Gold ends with a whimper

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft revealed the final games you’ll be able to claim with an Xbox Live Gold subscription before Gold is replaced with the Xbox Game Pass Core, and, well, they’re games you may not have heard of before. Throughout the month of August, Xbox Live Gold subscribers will be able to snag Blue Fire, a 3D platformer, and Inertial Drift, an arcade racer, according to an Xbox Wire blog post.

If you claim the games, you’ll be able to play them and others you’ve grabbed from the Games with Gold program as long as you have an Xbox Game Pass Core or Ultimate subscription.

Image: Microsoft

Xbox Live Gold will be discontinued on September 1st, and current subscribers will be moved to Xbox Game Pass Core on September 14th. Xbox...

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Artifact is getting an AI-powered text-to-speech feature to read you the news

There are other options available if you don’t want to use voices from Snoop Dogg or Gwyneth Paltrow. | Image: Artifact

Artifact — the new-ish news app from Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — is adding an AI-powered text-to-speech feature that will read you news articles.

The company is offering the new feature as part of a partnership with Speechify. Snoop Dogg and Gwyneth Paltrow are among the voices that can read you the news, and if you want an idea of what that might sound like, you can hear their AI voices on Speechify’s website. There are more than 30 English voices available, according to Artifact spokesperson Robby Stein.

To turn on the text-to-speech player, you can tap on a “play” icon you’ll see on the bottom bar while reading an article, and the player will let you choose things like reading speed (up to 4.5x!) and which...

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Chronological feeds won’t fix platform polarization, new Meta-backed research suggests

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Facebook and Instagram users see wildly different political news in their feeds depending on their political beliefs, but chronological feeds won’t fix the problem with polarization, new research published Thursday suggests.

The findings come from four papers produced through a partnership between Meta and more than a dozen outside academics to research the impact of Facebook and Instagram on user behavior during the 2020 election. The company supplied data from around 208 million US-based active users in aggregate, totaling nearly all of the 231 million Facebook and Instagram users nationwide at the time.

Turns out, users Meta previously classified as “conservative” or “liberal” consumed wildly different political news during the the...

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Elon Musk says Twitter will soon only offer dark mode because it’s “better in every way”

Image: The Verge

Just when you think Elon Musk can’t get any more divisive, he’s weighed in on the light mode versus dark mode debate — and Twitter, currently undergoing a rebranding to X, is apparently going all in on the latter. Early this morning, Musk posted that “this platform will soon only have ‘dark mode’. It is better in every way.”

That immediately brought about the usual responses that you might expect, with several people making the case that light text on black can be harder to read. Many are asking Twitter to preserve a light mode option even if it switches to dark mode as the default for X’s new design identity.

As someone whose phone only enters dark mode in the rarest of circumstances, that seems like the right path to me. All those...

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These city maps show how much hotter it is from neighborhood to neighborhood

People gather at Barton Springs Pool on June 21st, 2023, in Austin, Texas as extreme temperatures across the state prompted excessive heat warnings | Photo by Brandon Bell / Getty Images

Seeing how much hotter certain neighborhoods can get compared to others nearby blows my mind, and I report on this kind of thing for a living.

I live in New York City, which tops a new list of places in the US where temperature spikes because of urban sprawl. It’s a problem called the urban heat island effect. Basically, areas with more paved surfaces and less greenery trap heat. That raises temperatures in cities compared to more rural locations. It also makes certain neighborhoods within a city hotter than others.

A new analysis ranks 44 major cities that altogether are home to a quarter of the country’s population. More than half of the population in these cities live in census tracks that can feel at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit...

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Google delays its upgraded Find My Device network until Apple can add safety alerts

Image: Google

Google is delaying the broad expansion of its Find My Device feature, and it says it’s doing so with personal safety in mind. “User safety and the prevention of unwanted location tracking is a top priority for Android,” Google’s Erik Kay announced in a blog post today. “At this time we’ve made the decision to hold the rollout of the Find My Device network until Apple has implemented protections for iOS.”

Need to catch up? Back at its I/O 2023 keynote, Google revealed plans to leverage millions of current Android devices to help track down your missing gadgets, including phones, compatible accessories, and a new wave of Bluetooth item trackers. If that sounds similar to Apple’s Find My network, that’s because the execution is very...

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Roblox is now available to try on Meta Quest VR headsets

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Roblox is now available in open beta on Meta’s Quest VR headsets. Roblox and Meta had announced earlier in July that the social metaverse platform would be arriving on the headsets soon, and now, you can try it for yourself.

To check out Roblox experiences on your Quest, you can grab the app from the Quest Store. (Technically, it’s available through Meta’s App Lab.) Once it’s on your headset, you can sign in to your Roblox account and explore from there. Note that you can’t make a Roblox account on Quest just yet, according to a Roblox developer forum post.

Because the app is still in beta — Roblox and Meta are launching this in beta to give developers a chance to test and optimize their experiences for VR — there are some issues that R...

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Aporia feels like it’s going to be a different and devastating kind of time travel thriller

Judy Greer as Sophie and Edi Gathegi as Mal in Aporia. | Well Go Entertainment USA

Like many of the movies debuting at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Well Go USA’s new sci-fi thriller Aporia from writer / director Jared Moshériffs on well-known sci-fi tropes to tell a deeply personal story about — among other things — devastating emotional loss. But whereas most time travel narratives about people trying to change the past focus on figuring out how to get there and then deal with the repercussions that come with changing history, Aporia revolves around one grieving woman’s desperate attempt to put her life right by sending a bullet back to the exact point when it all went wrong.

Aporia tells the tale of how a woman named Sophie (Judy Greer) is blindsided by the sudden death of her husband Mal (Edi...

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Why charge an EV when you can just swap its battery?

Ample says it can swap an EV battery in just five minutes. | Image: Filmtwist Productions

We like to talk about range anxiety, but the reality is we’re dealing with charging anxiety when it comes to EVs. It’s great that an electric vehicle can cover 300 miles on a charge, but if the infrastructure is sparse and, in many cases, not working correctly, the ability to cover hundreds of miles on a single charge just means you’re hundreds of miles from home if things go sideways.

Yes, the infrastructure is improving, and a big driver of that is government-funded financial initiatives for charging station companies to improve uptime. Automakers are adopting Tesla’s NACS (North American Charging Standard) after the initial push by Ford — a company that sent employees out into the field to see how well the charging network was...

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Tesla EVs are apparently overestimating range when fully charged — on purpose

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

According to a new report by Reuters, Tesla performed “intentional inflation” about the range estimates of its electric vehicles under the guidance of CEO Elon Musk.

An anonymous source said the automaker had started to use algorithms about a decade ago that would inflate projections at a full charge. Then, once Teslas reach a 50 percent state of charge, the numbers get a bit more realistic so drivers have a better chance of avoiding getting stranded, along with a 15-mile buffer that allows the vehicle to drive on battery after it reaches zero. According to the source, “Elon wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged.”

The Reuters report also claims that Tesla created a dedicated “Diversion Team” last summer focused solely on...

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Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra review: a lean, mean Windows machine

Samsung’s 16-inch workstation aims to be the go-to for Windows fans with graphics-heavy workloads.

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Senate panel advances bills to childproof the internet

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Congress is closer than ever to passing a pair of bills to childproof the internet after lawmakers voted to send them to the floor Thursday.

The bills — the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and COPPA 2.0 — were approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday by a unanimous voice vote. Both pieces of legislation aim to address an ongoing mental health crisis amongst young people that some lawmakers blame social media for intensifying. But critics of the bills have long argued that they have the potential to cause more harm than good, like forcing social media platforms to collect more user information to properly enforce Congress’ rules.

In his past two State of the Union addresses, President Joe Biden has insisted that Congress enact...

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Castlevania: Nocturne’s first trailer puts Richter Belmont in the revolutionary spotlight

Richter Belmont getting ready to take some vampires down. | Image: Netflix

When Netflix’s first Castlevania animated series drew to a close in its fourth season, the vampiric menace threatening to plunge the world into darkness had only been beaten into submission rather than outright destroyed. It was only a matter of time before Dracula and the demons under his thrall returned to terrorize ordinary humans helpless to stop them. But in the first trailer for Castlevania: Nocturne — a new spinoff series from showrunner Kevin Kolde and writer Clive Bradley — humanity isn’t alone in its fight against Dracula and his fellow bloodsuckers.

Set during the French Revolution, Castlevania: Nocturne revolves around Richter Belmont (Edward Bluemel) as he follows in the footsteps of his ancestors by taking on the elite...

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WhatsApp adds a quicker way to send short videos to your friends

Image: Meta

WhatApp’s latest feature is the ability to quickly send short video messages, similar to the voice messages the service already supports. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a short clip of the feature in action, showing the circular videos sent via the feature.

According to an accompanying blog post from WhatsApp, video messages can be up to 60 seconds in length and will automatically play on mute when a recipient opens a chat. That’s in contrast to voice messages, which don’t auto-play and can be as long as you want. You can send a video message by tapping the existing voice message icon to put it into video mode.

WhatsApp has long offered the option of sending videos, but the new video message feature removes a couple of steps in the...

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The ad-free Kindle Paperwhite Kids is $55 off

The Kindle Paperwhite Kids is just like the standard model pictured above but with some kid-friendly extras. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

If you’re looking for an e-reader you can safely take to the beach, right now, the latest Kindle Paperwhite Kids is on salefor $114.99 ($55 off) with 16GB of storage at Amazon and Best Buy. That’s one of its better prices this year and just $4 shy of the standard, ad-free Kindle Paperwhite’s all-time low price.

It might seem strange to say, but the latest Kindle Paperwhite Kids is a bargain for children and adults alike. That’s because, at its core, it’s the Kindle Paperwhite — our favorite Amazon e-reader — just with parental controls you can turn off and no ads. Like the standard model, the kid-friendly Kindle Paperwhite offers IPX8 waterproofing, so you won’t need to worry it’ll break if it gets wet as you lounge by the pool. With...

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GoodRx launches digital ‘medicine cabinet’ that rewards people for taking their meds

The Medicine Cabinet feature aims to tackle more than forgetfulness when it comes to medication adherence. | Image: GoodRx

There’s no shortage of apps designed to remind people to take their medications. But GoodRx, an online pharmacy and telehealth app, is trying to take it a step further by launching a digital “medicine cabinet.” The idea is to create a one-stop shop that allows people to check price comparisons, get reminders and refills, and even earn financial rewards for taking their meds.

The name of the game is to improve medication adherence — or how well you follow your doctor’s orders when it comes to treatment. That includes things like regularly taking antidepressants, antibiotics, or statins to reduce cholesterol, etc. To get the best results, the pharmaceutical journal US Pharmacist says you need an adherence rate of around 80 percent. You...

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Sony has sold 40 million PS5s

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony announced it has sold over 40 million PlayStation 5 consoles despite the “unprecedented challenges of COVID” and supply chain issues. Unlike the press release shared when the PS5 crossed 10 million units sold as of July 2021, Sony didn’t call its flagship console out as the “fastest-selling console in the history of Sony Interactive Entertainment,” reflecting a slower pace of sales even as supply issues ebbed.

PlayStation 5 shipments have begun to ramp up this year. Sony nearly hit 40 million consoles sold earlier this year and tripled the number of consoles it shipped from January to March 2023 at 6.3 million units. At the same time last year, it shipped just 2 million PlayStation 5 consoles.

Thanks to you, PS5 has surpassed 40...

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Peacock adds just 2 million subscribers ahead of price hike

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Peacock added just 2 million subscribers over the past three months, bringing the service up to 24 million subscribers in the US. That number was included in Comcast’s earnings report today, which says Peacock nearly doubled its subscribers year over year.

In addition to the small bump in subscribers, Peacock’s revenue grew 85 percent year over year to $820 million. The service still lost $651 million, however, up from $467 million at the same time last year.

Earlier this month, Comcast announced that it’s raising the price of Peacock on August 17th. While the ad-supported Premium plan is going from $4.99 to $5.99 per month, the ad-free Premium Plus plan is going from $9.99 to $11.99 per month. Comcast also took away the free tier for...

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Niantic’s Monster Hunter Now is launching on September 14th

Image: Niantic

The next major release from Pokémon Go developer Niantic is launching very soon. The studio announced today that Monster Hunter Now, a collaboration with Capcom, will be available globally on September 14th, launching on both iOS and Android.

The announcement was made as part of a lengthy presentation detailing more about how the game will actually work, including the weapons that’ll be available at launch (sword and shield, great sword, long sword, hammer, light bowgun, and bow) and how the cycle of hunting and gearing up will play out. Monster Hunter Now also has a clever feature called paintball, where players can mark monsters they come across so they can fight them later.

You can check out the full video below:

The launch comes at...

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The Witcher season 3’s big finale is a wasted opportunity

Image: Netflix

In the finale of The Witcher’s third season — which also happens to be the final episode where Henry Cavill will play the lead role — our hero, Geralt of Rivia, spends most of his time in bed. This is not an exaggeration: after getting his ass thoroughly kicked in a previous episode, he’s stuck recuperating in a forest, trying his best to get healthy so he can continue his quest. It’s a bizarre choice that sidelines Geralt in what should, in theory, be an important moment for the series, the character, and the actor. Instead of sending Cavill out on a high note, the season just kind of... ends.

It didn’t have to be this way. When it debuted way back in 2019, Netflix’s adaption of The Witcher proved to be a surprisingly faithful version...

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Two of the most underrated Zelda games are now available on Nintendo Switch Online

Thank you Nintendo, now can we please have some GameCube titles? I miss playing Twilight Princess. | Image: Nintendo / Jess Weatherbed

Nintendo has announced that two new retro Zelda games — The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons — are now available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers on the standard $3.99-per-month package.

I’ve been patiently waiting for this moment since Nintendo announced it was introducing Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games to the service back in February. Released back in 2001, Oracle of Ages/Seasons are two of the most underrated titles within the retro Legend of Zelda franchise, often overshadowed by Majora’s Mask and Ocarina of Time. Each version has its own unique gameplay mechanics that changed the world around them: Oracle of Ages being more puzzle-based and allowing Link to travel...

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EU opens Microsoft antitrust investigation into Teams bundling

Illustration: The Verge

The European Commission is opening a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its Teams software with its Office productivity suite. Slack originally filed an anti-competitive complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission in July 2020, just months after a global pandemic began and the Microsoft Teams userbase started to grow rapidly.

The European Commission will now carry out an in-depth investigation into whether Microsoft may have breached EU competition rules by tying or bundling Microsoft Teams to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites.

“Remote communication and collaboration tools like Teams have become indispensable for many businesses in Europe,” explains Margrethe Vestager, executive...

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Slack is down, it’s not just you

Slack has now acknowledged the issues and is investigating the cause. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Slack, the workplace chat app, is having some issues this morning, with messages failing to send on the service. Reports began spiking on DownDetector at around 5AM ET and the service’s status dashboard acknowledged the issues with a post at 5:35AM ET. It notes that “Users may be experiencing trouble with sending messages in Slack,” and says that the company is investigating the issue.

Slack elevated the status to an “outage” about 30 minutes later, at 5:57AM ET:

Slack experiencing an outage across the app. Users may be experiencing trouble with sending messages, using workflows and various other actions in Slack. We’re investigating and will let you know as soon as we know more. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Numerous...

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to build a new agency to police Big Tech

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There’s a new bipartisan bill to establish a new federal agency tasked with regulating online platforms.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would create a new agency called the Digital Consumer Protection Commission that would be empowered to go after giant tech firms for a slew of anti-competitive behaviors and failing to protect consumer privacy.

“For years I have been trying to find ways to empower consumers against Big Tech,” Graham said in a statement Thursday. “I have heard too many stories from families who feel helpless in the face of Big Tech. Stories about children being bullied to the point of committing suicide. Human trafficking. Exploitation of minors. All the while the social...

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