Microsoft addresses the huge Xbox leaks: here’s Phil Spencer’s full memo

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

Xbox chief Phil Spencer has just emailed Microsoft employees about the massive Xbox leak that happened earlier today. In the internal memo, obtained by The Verge, Spencer says Microsoft’s Xbox plans “were unintentionally disclosed” as part of the FTC v. Microsoft case. Documents revealed a lot: a disc-less Series X redesign, a 2028 Xbox that could deliver “cloud hybrid games,” a new Xbox controller, unannounced Bethesda games, and even discussions about acquiring Nintendo.

Spencer hints that Microsoft’s plans may have changed, particularly as some documents were from last year, but others were from years prior. “I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are well over a year old and our plans have evolved,” says Spencer...

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Microsoft’s new Xbox controller borrows great ideas from Stadia, Steam, and Sony

Microsoft’s new core gamepad, codenamed Sebile, may become the new default Xbox gamepad in May 2024. | Image via court documents, text removed by The Verge

New Xbox for 2024! New hybrid Xbox for 2028! But can we just appreciate Microsoft’s leaked Sebile controller for a sec?

The $70 pad could arrive in 2024 chock-full of the best parts of Sony’s DualSense, Valve’s Steam Controller, Google Stadia, and — here’s hoping — 8BitDo.

Image: FTC v. Microsoft

“Sebile — The New Xbox Controller.”

Obviously, it’s taking the Sony DualSense’s “precision haptic feedback.”

Right, here’s hoping! It’s the thing I’m most excited about because it seriously does add a new dimension to some of Sony’s games, which just aren’t the same when you take it away.

Check out our DualSense X-ray below, versus this one of an Xbox pad, to see the difference in their haptic motors:

V...

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WhatsApp appears to be about to launch its long-overdue iPad app

Illustration: The Verge

A few lucky WhatsApp beta testers got a surprising treat this week: the company appears to be testing a version of its iOS app that is also optimized for the iPad. As first spotted by WABetaInfo, version 23.19.1.71 of WhatsApp’s TestFlight app includes the new iPad app as well.

From what we can see in screenshots, the iPad app works exactly like you’d expect. You connect to it by scanning a QR code the same way you’d link your account to any other device. You’ll see a list of your conversations on the left and your current chat on the right. It’s pretty much the iOS app, but instead of seeing one pane at a time, you see both. It almost makes you wonder what took so long, especially when WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said all the way back...

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The UK passes massive online safety bill

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The UK’s Online Safety Bill is ready to become law. The bill, which aims to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online,” passed through the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday and imposes strict requirements on large social platforms to remove illegal content. It will be enforced by UK telecom regulatory agency Ofcom.

Additionally, the Online Safety Bill mandates new age-checking measures to prevent underage children from seeing harmful content. It also pushes large social media platforms to become more transparent about the dangers they pose to children, while also giving parents and kids the ability to report issues online. Potential penalties are also harsh: up to 10 percent of a company’s global annual revenue. The bill has...

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Neuralink is recruiting subjects for the first human trial of its brain-computer interface

Neuralink’s N1 implant is ready for its first human users. | Image: Neuralink

A few months after getting FDA approval for human trials, Neuralink is looking for its first test subjects. The six-year initial trial, which the Elon Musk-owned company is calling “the PRIME Study,” is intended to test Neuralink tech designed to help those with paralysis control devices. The company is looking for people with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or ALS who are over the age of 22 and have a “consistent and reliable caregiver” to be part of the study.

The PRIME Study (which apparently stands for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, even though that acronym makes no sense) is set to research three things at once. The first is the N1 implant, Neuralink’s brain-computer device. The second is...

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The best stuff Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents bought using FTX money

An object lesson in filial piety! | Illustration: The Verge; Image: Getty Images

The lawyers who represent what’s left of FTX filed suit against Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents, saying they “exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars.” The point of the suit is to get that money back so it can be paid out to the people FTX owes.

Before all this, Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman were already well-known and respected Stanford Law School professors. Last week, Bloomberg dropped a fascinating profile of the two of them.

Fried “has written extensively on questions of distributive justice, in the areas of tax policy, property theory and political theory,” according to her Stanford profile. She also ran a donor network for Democratic...

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Max will start offering a live sports tier in October

Illustration: The Verge

Max, the streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, is adding a live sports tier in the US on October 5th. The Bleacher Report Sports add-on will cost $9.99 per month, with current Max subscribers getting the tier for free until February 29th, 2024.

The upcoming sports tier will feature live games from Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey League (NHL), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and US soccer. These games will continue to air on Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable networks, including TNT, TBS, and TruTV.

Your ticket to live sports is now on us for a limited time. Starting October 5, catch all the biggest sports moments from @MLB, @NHL_on_TNT, @NBAonTNT,...

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Climate Week NYC: news and protests surrounding the UN Climate Ambition Summit

Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks to a crowd ahead of the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City on September 17th, 2023. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Hundreds of governments and thousands of protesters descended upon New York City this week to ramp up action on climate change.

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Microsoft leaked its own Xbox documents, court says

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is responsible for the huge trove of leaked documents that revealed things like a new disc-less Xbox Series X design, unannounced games from Bethesda, and executive musings about buying Nintendo, according to a new filing from the FTC v. Microsoft judge on Tuesday.

In the filing, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley says that the court ordered the Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft to provide the court with “a secure cloud link” to trial exhibits with redactions that met the court’s recent orders. Microsoft provided a link on September 14th, and the court uploaded the exhibits from there, Judge Corley says.

The parties in the case have since told the court that “the version of the exhibits provided contained non-public...

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iFixit retroactively dings the iPhone 14 over Apple’s parts pairing requirement

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

iFixit is dropping the repairability score on the iPhone 14. While the organization originally gave the phone a seven out of 10 to indicate high repairability, iFixit has lowered that rating to a four after taking into account parts pairing requirements that make fixing the device a hassle.

When iFixit announced its score for the iPhone 14 last year, it said it was looking mainly at the repair-friendly design of the device. Unlike its other devices, Apple included a rear glass panel that you can pop off with basic repair tools, including a heating mat, suction handle, and an opening pick. While this design change was notable at the time, iFixit acknowledges that it missed the significant hurdles to repairability programmed within iPhones...

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You can now apply for a refund from Epic Games’ Fortnite FTC settlement

Image: Epic Games

You can now apply to receive a refund from Fortnite maker Epic Games’ $245 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC alleged that Fortnite players bought in-game goods on accident because of design tricks, and the two parties agreed to the settlement, which was announced as part of a broader $520 million settlement in December.

You can visit www.ftc.gov/Fortnite to apply for the refund and learn more information. The FTC says that you can apply if any of the following is true:

You were charged in-game currency for items you didn’t want between January 2017 and September 2022

Your child made charges to your credit card without your knowledge between January 2017 and November 2018

Your account was locked between...

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Epomaker’s TH80 Pro mechanical keyboard is down to just $71.99

The TH80 Pro is a great entry-level mechanical keyboard, regardless of which switches you opt for. | Image: Epomaker

It’s hard to beat the tactile feel and durability of a good ol’ fashioned mechanical keyboard. Fortunately, if you’re someone who’s looking to kick their membrane keyboard to the curb, Epomaker’s TH80 Pro represents a great entry-level model, one that’s on sale at Amazon for $71.99 ($18 off) and comes with your choice of linear, clicky, or tactile switches.

The Epomaker TH80 Pro, like the standard model featured in our guide to the best mechanical keyboards, is a 75 percent mechanical keyboard with a volume knob and hot-swappable switches that let you easily adjust the keyboard’s look and feel. It also offers the same plastic case and steel switch plate, the same PBT keycaps and per-key RGB lighting, and the same great typing...

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Your iPhone can now restore your Apple TV if the streaming box has problems

Image: Apple

It’s rare that I ever encounter any bugs or software problems with the Apple TV 4K that stop me in my tracks. But in the event you do have trouble, restoring Apple’s streaming box has always been something of a hassle. With the older Apple TV HD, you’ve got to plug it into a Mac via the rear USB port. But this isn’t even an option for the 4K model, leaving customers little choice but to contact Apple for servicing. That hassle is finally changing with the release of iOS 17 and tvOS 17, which can now use your iPhone to restore an Apple TV and reset its software.

As noted by MacRumors, Apple has outlined this new troubleshooting step in a support document. “If your Apple TV HD or later with tvOS 17 or later is experiencing problems, an...

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The Fire TV should be at the heart of Amazon’s smart home

Symbiosis between its Fire TVs and its Alexa smart home ambitions could help Amazon create a smart home that works for everyone. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Amazon’s fall hardware event is taking place this week, and the company will undoubtedly be searching for its next big hardware hit. But how about making its existing hardware (and software) better?

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Toyota is making AI-trained breakfast bots in a ‘kindergarten for robots’

Do you want some frittata? | Image: Toyota Research Institute

Yeah, so Toyota Research Institute (TRI) used generative AI in a “kindergarten for robots” to teach robots how to make breakfast — or at least, the individual tasks needed to do so — and it didn’t take hundreds of hours of coding and errors and bug fixing. Instead, researchers accomplished this by giving robots a sense of touch, plugging them into an AI model, and then, as you would a human being, showing them how.

The sense of touch is “one key enabler,” researchers say. By giving the robots the big, pillowy thumb (my term, not theirs) that you see in the video below, the model can “feel” what it’s doing, giving it more information. That makes difficult tasks easier to carry out than with sight alone.

Ben Burchfiel, the lab’s manager...

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TikTok introduces a way to label AI-generated content

Image: TikTok

TikTok is introducing a new way for creators to label content that was made using artificial intelligence tools. The feature was first spotted by users last month and was announced by TikTok today in a blog post.

TikTok’s user guidelines already require creators to disclose when content is made using AI tools. The new feature will prompt a creator to turn on the labeling feature so viewers know when videos and photos were created using AI software. The AI label appears below the username in the corner of videos. The prompt also includes a reminder that content could be removed if it’s not disclosed that AI tools were involved. The company also says that, this week, it will begin testing a way to automatically label content as...

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Read the full unredacted email where Microsoft reacts to Sony’s PS5 reveal

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Last night, the biggest Xbox leak in history revealed multiple new Xboxes, including plans for an ambitious hybrid Xbox that could arrive in 2028. It also revealed communications from Microsoft’s top execs — including one conversation from a joyous Phil Spencer to CEO Satya Nadellaabout the just-announced Sony PlayStation 5.

That email is now available completely unredacted, so you can see just how confident Microsoft seemed in March 2020 right after the PS5 spec reveal.

According to an executive summary prepared by former Xbox CVP Elizabeth Hamren for Microsoft’s Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and forwarded to Nadella, the company believed the Xbox Series X would have up to 30 percent higher real-world performance compared to the PS5 — a...

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H&M is the latest brand to charge for returns — and that might be good for the planet

Photo by Christopher Dilts / Bloomberg via Getty Images

The latest fashion trend in the UK seems to be brands charging customers to return items. While that sucks for consumer pocketbooks, it probably has a positive environmental impact. Free returns come with an environmental cost, namely more pollution and waste.

H&M is the latest brand to start charging for returns in the UK, BBC reported today. It joins Zara, Uniqlo, and several other clothing brands cutting their own costs by nixing free returns. The parent company that owns Zara, Inditex, and H&M make up the two biggest clothing retailers worldwide. If these policies start gaining traction outside of the UK, they could make a significant dent in the fashion industry’s environmental footprint.

Before you buy a thing, it has probably been...

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After 10 years covering startups, former TechCrunch editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino tells us what’s next

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge

It’s been a rocky and chaotic decade — and now digital media is on the brink of yet another existential crisis thanks to generative AI.

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Intel will launch Meteor Lake on December 14th — this is Intel’s Core Ultra

An artistic rendition of Intel’s next chip. | Image: Intel

For many months, Intel has spared no opportunity to remind us that its Meteor Lake chips would be the ones to watch — its first CPU with different chiplets for each component; its first on its Intel 4 process node; its first with a dedicated AI coprocessor inside. Today, Intel is revealing a whole lot more.

Meteor Lake will “launch” on December 14th, the company now says, as the most power-efficient client processor the company’s ever made — and with up to twice the graphics performance, a “low power island” that can run tasks independently, and hooks into Microsoft Windows to intelligently control the new chips.

In no particular order, here are the highlights of Intel’s Core Ultra — because yeah, this one’s not called a...

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Samsung’s new Amex card works with SmartThings Find, but it’s only in South Korea

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Samsung has debuted the IoT card, a credit card that works with SmartThings Find, the company’s version of Find My (via SamMobile). That’s great if you live in South Korea, where the company offers it in partnership with KB Kookmin Card and American Express — so far, Samsung hasn’t announced a similar offering in the US. We’ve asked if it plans to and will update this post if the company responds.

The IoT card works like you’d expect it to. You add it to SmartThings Find, and then, like with Apple Find My, other Samsung devices that detect it will report its location back to you. This works whether the card is nearby or its owner has left it in another country. Samsung says the card uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for this, rather than...

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YouTube stops letting Russell Brand earn money on the platform

Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge

YouTube has blocked Russell Brand from making money off the videos posted to his channel, as reported earlier by The New York Times. The decision to demonetize Brand’s account comes just days after several reports detailing sexual assault allegations against the actor emerged.

Last week, a joint investigation from The Times of London, The Sunday Times, and Channel 4’s Dispatches found that four women accused Brand of sexual assault and abuse. Brand has since posted a video on YouTube refuting the allegations, calling them a “coordinated attack.”

While Brand has become known for his career as an actor and comedian, he has also amassed a large following on YouTube, with over 62 million subscribers. Many of his more recent videos focus on...

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Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is building an expensive new AI GPU cluster for medical research

Photo by Lane Turner / The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s foundation is funding the construction of a massive computing system for medical research. It’ll be made up of more than 1,000 GPUs. And these aren’t just any graphics card — they’re top-of-the-line H100 GPUs that are highly sought after for AI-focused servers.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is making really bold claims about what it hopes this computing system will be able to do. A press release claims the computing system “will lead to groundbreaking new discoveries that could help cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century.”

The aim is to give researchers access to generative AI to study healthy and diseased cells. Using predictive models of human cells can help...

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Google quietly raised ad prices to boost search revenue, says executive

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

As the second week of the US v. Google antitrust trial gets underway, the Department of Justice is focusing on the real moneymaker behind Google Search: ads. It alleges that Google’s dominance lets it raise prices for advertisers with few repercussions — a claim backed up by Google ads executive Jerry Dischler on the stand.

Bloomberg’sLeah Nylen has the details of Dischler’s testimony, where he describes statements he made under oath in 2020. Dischler says Google tweaks its auction process in ways that may have raised prices in the past by 5 percent for the typical advertiser and could potentially have raised them by 10 percent for some queries. The parties buying the ads would have been unaware of these “tunings” of prices; “we tend...

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Digimarc adds copyright information to digital data

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Software company Digimarc will now let copyright owners add more information to their work, which the company said will improve how AI models treat copyright in training data.

In a statement, Digimarc said its newDigimarc Validate service lets users include ownership identification in the metadata. The company said this means that when copyrighted material becomes part of a generative AI training dataset, users can point to the digital watermark with intellectual property information.

For example, an image with Digimarc Validate adds a © symbol that is machine-readable and includes information on who owns the copyright. The company said Digimarc Validate is powered by its digital watermark detection software, called SAFE, or secure,...

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Dream Scenario’s new trailer makes viral fame seem like the nightmare it is

Nicolas Cage as Paul Matthews in Dream Scenario_._ | Image: A24

For many people, the concept of achieving viral fame has become the definition of success worth aspiring to — if not for simple popularity, then for the brand deals and endorsements that can come along with it. But in the first trailer for A24’s mind-bending new comedy Dream Scenario from writer / director Kristoffer Borgli, becoming a worldwide phenomenon overnight is just the beginning of one man’s descent into madness.

Dream Scenario tells the strange tale of evolutionary biologist Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage), an ordinary man whose quiet life of teaching apathetic college students about the behaviors of ants and other animals is upended one day when he starts inexplicably appearing in people’s dreams. Like his wife Janet (Julianne...

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Ray tracing is improved with Nvidia’s DLSS 3.5, and it’s cruising to Cyberpunk 2077 this week

Image: CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077 will become the first game to support Nvidia DLSS 3.5, the latest version of the chipmaker’s upscaling technology. The update will arrive on September 21st with Update 2.0 — just days before the launch of the game’s Phantom Liberty expansion.

DLSS 3.5 uses a new technology called Ray Reconstruction, which Nvidia describes as an AI-powered technique that enhances the quality of ray tracing. Ray Reconstruction swaps “hand-tuned denoisers” with an AI network trained by a supercomputer that should result in higher-quality pixels between sampled rays.

Additionally, DLSS 3.5 is trained using five times more data than DLSS 3. It should also be able to identify different ray-traced effects to “make smarter decisions about using...

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Apple iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max review: by the numbers

Apple didn’t choose the USB-C life, but boy are we glad it got here anyway.

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Apple iPhone 15 and 15 Plus review: mainstream crossovers

Apple’s standard iPhone gets a lot of nice upgrades this year, but it’s not anything we haven’t seen before.

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AT&T helped connect the first satellite 5G phone call

AST SpaceMobile used an ordinary Samsung Galaxy S22 to make the call. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

AST SpaceMobile — a cellular satellite company backed by AT&T — has placed a satellite call over 5G, marking the “first ever” 5G connection between an unmodified smartphone and a satellite in space.

To conduct the test, AST SpaceMobile used a Galaxy S22. It made the call on September 8th, 2023, from a wireless dead zone in Maui, Hawaii, with its recipient located in Madrid, Spain. AST SpaceMobile got the cell signal to its destination by leveraging its low Earth orbit test satellite, called BlueWalker 3 (BW3), and AT&T’s 5G spectrum. Vodafone, Nokia, and AT&T all validated the call.

There have been a few tests leading up to this latest milestone. In April, SpaceMobile routed its first space-based phone call on AT&T’s 2G network. It later...

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