Clean energy is officially ‘unstoppable’ now

Photo by VCG via Getty Images

By 2030, transportation and electricity around the world will be far greener than it is today, according to the latest forecast from the International Energy Agency. Imagine 10 times more electric vehicles on the road. Renewables make up half of the world’s electricity mix. Solar panels alone generate more electricity globally than the entire US power sector does today.

That’s the picture the International Energy Agency (IEA) paints in the World Energy Outlook it published today, which is based on governments’ current energy policies. The IEA was established to help safeguard global energy supplies after the 1970s oil crisis. Now, shoring up energy systems means bringing renewables online to prevent more extreme climate change —...

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Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig on why AI and social media are causing a free speech crisis for the internet

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge

After 30 years teaching law, the internet policy legend is as worried as you’d think about AI and TikTok — and he has surprising thoughts about balancing free speech with protecting democracy.

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Amazon will now let you access Crunchyroll’s anime library right from Prime Video

Image: Crunchyroll

If you’re a Prime Video subscriber, beginning today, you can start streaming Crunchyroll, the popular anime service, right from inside the Prime Video app. The companies have announced a global distribution agreement that allows Amazon to offer Crunchyroll as one of its Prime Video Channels. Prime Video Channels are optional add-on services that come at an extra monthly cost. But there’s a convenience aspect in that Amazon handles all billing, and more importantly, you can watch these channels directly inside Prime Video without having to hop between numerous entertainment apps.

In the case of Crunchyroll, that’s a good thing, as its app available for smart TV and set-top platforms can be buggy and annoying to navigate. Now, you can skip...

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Mario Wonder’s online mode is opening my mind to tricks and secrets

Image: Nintendo

Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s online multiplayer keeps making me think of Elden Ring.

Nintendo’s latest Super Mario game has a clever online multiplayer mode. When you connect online, you’ll see near-invisible versions of other players throughout the game’s islands and levels as they also travel the Flower Kingdom. It’s a lot like how you see the outlines of other players as you traverse the Lands Between, and in Wonder, Nintendo created some smart ways for your fellow compatriots to help you out.

While in a level, you’ll see up to three other players jumping and elephanting their way through whatever series of dastardly obstacles Nintendo has cooked up for that location. But these aren’t just Mario Kart-like specters to measure yourself...

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Xreal’s Air 2 glasses put a big screen on your face and ship in the US next month

The Air 2 glasses in their graphite and red models. | Image: Xreal

Xreal is opening preorders for its latest generation of augmented reality glasses, the Xreal Air 2 and Air 2 Pro, for a November release in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Italy. The glasses are a follow-up to the first-generation Air glasses released last year under the company’s former name Nreal. Starting at $399, they plug into phones, computers, and a variety of gaming devices to project a display through a pair of sunglasses.

The Air 2 glasses are an iterative upgrade from the original $379 Air. They use Micro OLED displays to project a 1920 x 1080 pixel display in front of your eyes, the same resolution as the original Air. But they promise a brighter image than their predecessors (500 nits, compared to 400 nits on the Air) and...

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Spotify profits from more subscribers and price hikes

The number of people paying for Spotify Premium rose threepercent to 226 million on a quarterly basis as the streaming service announced price increases across the US and several other global markets. Spotify’s monthly active users (MAUs) also rose to 574 million as of September 30th, a four percent increase from last quarter. Both rises were slightly above Spotify’s forecast.

Comparing performance year over year, Premium subscribers were up 16 percent while MAUs were up 26 percent. Spotify says the net growth in monthly active users was the second largest third-quarter increase in its history.

Spotify’s latest subscriber figures came as part of today’s earnings report, which covers the three months ending September 30th. In the midst...

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Workers training AI demand protections from Congress

Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Data workers urged lawmakers to protect their rights ahead of a Senate meeting with artificial intelligence leaders on Tuesday.

In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), workers and civil society groups demanded Congress guard against a “dystopian future” of surveillance and low wages for the people in charge of training AI algorithms.

“The contributions of data workers, often invisible to the public, are critical to advancements in AI,” the letter read. “Congress should develop a new generation of economic policies and labor rights related to prevent corporations like Amazon from leveraging tech-driven worker exploitation into profit and outcompeting rivals by taking the low road.”

The letter was sent ahead...

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Automattic is acquiring Texts and betting big on the future of messaging

Texts is a messaging app... for all your messaging apps. | Image: Texts

Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and a number of other popular web properties, just made a different kind of acquisition: it’s buying Texts, a universal messaging app, for $50 million.

Texts is an app for all your messaging apps. You can use it to log in to WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, iMessage, and more and see and respond to all your messages in one place. (Beeper is another app doing similar things.) The app also offers some additional features like AI-generated responses and summaries, but its primary purpose is to unify your many inboxes into a single interface.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s CEO, says Texts is not just a product acquisition but also the beginning of a huge new...

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Massive facial recognition search engine now blocks searches for children’s faces

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

PimEyes, a public search engine that uses facial recognition to match online photos of people, has banned searches of minors over concerns it endangers children, reports The New York Times.

At least, it should. PimEyes’ new detection system, which uses age detection AI to identify whether the person is a child, is still very much a work in progress. After testing it, The New York Times found it struggles to identify children photographed at certain angles. The AI also doesn’t always accurately detect teenagers.

PimEyes chief executive Giorgi Gobronidze says he’d been planning on implementing such a protection mechanism since 2021. However, the feature was only fully deployed after New York Times writer Kashmir Hill published an article...

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Toyota made a Land Cruiser EV concept that probably won’t see the light of day

Toyota’s Land Cruiser Se concept. | Image: Toyota

Toyota is bringing the content for its 2023 Japan Mobility Show showcase that includes an all-electric Land Cruiser SUV concept that could either be a serious contender to duke it out with competing three-row EVs or just a premature look for things to come.

The Toyota Land Cruiser “Se” has an angular boat-like appearance with a long hood, swooping windshield, and rounded rear end with a visor taillight design. The seven-seater concept also comes with some size specs: it has a 120.08-inch wheelbase and is 202.76 inches long, 78.35 wide, and 67.13 tall. It’s got a wider stance and a shorter height than the real gas-powered 2024 Land Cruiser, which has a wheelbase of about 112 inches.

The extra space between the wheels likely accounts for...

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EU may fail to pass its AI Act in 2023

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The long-awaited EU AI Act is still under debate as European lawmakers can’t agree on how to regulate foundation models, and it’s unlikely to pass regulation before December.

As first reported by Reuters, Spain, which currently heads the EU, is pushing for more regular vetting for vulnerabilities and the creation of a tiered system of regulation depending on the number of users a model has.

European lawmakers have had three trilogues (a three-party discussion between the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission) around the AI Act, with a fourth expected to happen this week.

Another meeting has been set for December, if none of the parties agree on anything this month. This has sparked concern...

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Murena Kickstarter pulls in more than $150K for new phone with a built-in privacy switch

Image: Murena

The Murena 2, the follow-up to last year’s de-Googled and privacy-focused Murena One smartphone, is now available to back on Kickstarter and has pulled in more than $156,000, far exceeding its $26,437 goal.

The big update for this new model is a physical privacy switch that, when toggled on, disconnects the front and back cameras as well as the microphones. (It’s kind of like the privacy switches we’ve seen for some laptops.) The Murena 2 also has a second physical switch that, when activated, flips on airplane mode to disconnect the phone from networks and turns on do not disturb mode.

As for other hardware specs, the Murena 2 has a 6.43-inch screen with a 1080 x 2400 resolution, 128GB of storage, a 4,000mAh battery, and a MediaTek...

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Nvidia and AMD plan to launch Arm PC chips as soon as 2025, Reuters reports

AMD and Qualcomm Surface devices. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Nvidia and AMD are both reportedly planning to launch Arm-based CPUs for Windows-based PCs. Reuters reports that Nvidia has started designing Arm-based CPUs in what could be a major expansion of Microsoft’s Windows on Arm work. Nvidia and AMD could both be ready with PC chips as soon as 2025, according to Reuters.

Microsoft has so far exclusively partnered with Qualcomm for Arm-based versions of Windows 11, and the Reuters report comes on the eve of Qualcomm’s next big Snapdragon launch for Arm-based chips that will likely power Samsung’s upcoming flagship phone. Reuters reports that Microsoft executives will be part of Qualcomm’s announcement tomorrow, including vice president of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri.

Microsoft’s first...

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Samsung TVs had Steam Link, but now the game streaming app is going away

Illustration: The Verge

In a post earlier this month, Valve announced the Steam Link app will “no longer be available on Samsung TV after November 30th, 2023.” The service lets users wirelessly stream PC games from their Steam library to other devices, such as a TV or phone. It launched with the Steam Link dongle in 2015, which was discontinued in 2018 in favor of the app.

Samsung brought the Steam Link app to its TVs in 2017 but stopped supporting it on newer TVs after the launch of its Gaming Hub, which focused on cloud gaming services like the ones from Xbox and Nvidia GeForce Now. However, Steam says users can access the Steam Link app on Apple TV and Android hardware, including the Nvidia Shield or Amazon Fire TV.

While the Steam Link app might’ve seemed...

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Final Fantasy XIV has a new class and a couple of new crossovers coming soon

Image: Square Enix

Earlier this year, Final Fantasy XIV fans were treated to a first look at the next expansion, Dawntrail. Over the weekend, during the London leg of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival event, Square Enix shared a bit more detail about the expansion, including a new trailer revealing the newest class: Viper.

Viper will be a melee DPS class that seems similar to the Ninja class already present in the game. Vipers will dual-wield swords that can be fused together into one big sword for more damage a la Zidane from Final Fantasy IX. (Remember his Butterfly Sword?) As is tradition, the Viper was introduced by game producer Naoki Yoshida dressed up as the class, and as also is tradition, the look was pretty damn cool.

(Eat your heart out, Todd...

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Stellantis drops out of CES, blames UAW strike

Here’s a Ram truck at CES 2018. | Image: Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Stellantis — the gigantic international automotive conglomerate that owns everything from Jeep to Ram to Alfa Romeo and Opel — has canceled its plans for CES 2024, we are told via a short press release. The company blames the current United Auto Workers (UAW) strikes, which today expanded to include 6,800 workers at the factory that makes Ram 1500 trucks, which is the largest Stellantis factory in the United States. Stellantis has “the worst proposal on the table regarding wage progression, temporary worker pay and conversion to full-time, cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), and more,” the UAW said in a statement to Axios.

“As the costs of the ongoing UAW strikes against Stellantis continue to mount, the Company has decided to cancel its...

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Instagram tests a verified-only feed

A screenshot of the Meta Verified toggle. | Image: Meta

Instagram is testing a toggle that lets you only see posts from Meta Verified users, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri on Monday. “We’re exploring this as a new control for people and a way for businesses and creators to get discovered,” Mosseri wrote on his broadcast channel.

The new Meta Verified toggle will appear as an option under “Following” and “Favorites” when you tap the Instagram logo at the top of the app. The prominence of the toggle could make paying for Meta Verified, which costs $11.99 on the web or $14.99 in an app, a more attractive proposition as it gives people a new way to try and appear more prominently in an Instagram feed. That said, Mosseri’s post didn’t say how big the test is or who might have access to...

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Magic is gathering Marvel heroes for giant crossover event

Image: Marvel / Wizards of the Coast

The great IP crossover experiment continues with Marvel showing up in yet another place you don’t typically expect Marvel to be. Today, Wizards of the Coast announced that Marvel’s bringing its iconic (and inescapable) heroes to _Magic: The Gatherin_g with new “collectible products and tentpole sets” that will hit your Local Game Store in 2025.

Crossovers are not new to Magic: The Gathering. It just launched the card game’s Doctor Who-themed Commander set. Earlier this year, Magic released a Lord of the Rings set (complete with its own One Ring bonanza that caught the attention of prolific Magic collector Post Malone). Throughout the years, Magic has released tons of smaller, collectible sets based on everything from My Little Pony to Bob...

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Google Play Games for PC is getting support for 4K and some console game controllers

Illustration: The Verge

Google is adding some new features to the Google Play Games Beta on PC, its service that lets you play Android games on a PC, including support for 4K screen resolution on “supported monitors” and for popular console gaming controllers. Google detailed the updates in a blog post from Arjun Dayal, Google Play Games’ director of product.

With the new support for 4K, you can now pick your screen resolutions while in game. “Simply press Shift + Tab in any game to select from a menu of supported resolutions,” according to Dayal.

The game controllers that are now supported include the Xbox Series X / S controller, the Xbox One controller, Sony’s DualSense controller for PS5, and its DualShock controller for PS4. Google isn’t the only company...

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Nvidia might have an RTX 4080 Super with 20GB of VRAM soon

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Nvidia is rumored to be preparing Super versions of some of its RTX 40-series cards, including an RTX 4080 Super with 20GB of memory. VideoCardz reports that hardware leakers have been teasing out information about possible RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Super cards recently, with reliable hardware leaker kopite7kimi backing up the claims.

Nvidia canceled a 12GB variant of the RTX 4080 a year ago before announcing it as the RTX 4070 Ti at CES earlier this year. Now, the company might be preparing a 20GB variant of the RTX 4080 with the Super moniker that we haven’t seen since the RTX 20 series. Nvidia is also rumored to be working on an RTX 4070 Super, too.

The new RTX 40-series Super GPUs might have a higher memory bus

Both RTX 40-series Super...

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League’s new boy band looks ripped out of Arcane

Image: Netflix

The first music video from Heartsteel, Riot Games’ new virtual boy band starring characters from League of Legends, is here.

The video, for the band’s first song, “Paranoia,” has a slick look that harkens back to the awesome art style of Arcane, Netflix’s animated series set in the League of Legends universe. While a second season for that show in the works, it’s not set to release until Q4 2024, so this new video will have to tide you over for now. It helps that the song is pretty catchy. (You can hear it on music streaming services, too.)

Heartsteel is just one of many virtual League bands, a roster that already includes K-pop group K/DA, Pentakill (heavy metal), and hip-hop group True Damage. Riot collaborates with real-life artists...

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Junji Ito has a terrifying new short story collection just in time for Halloween

Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge│Art by Junji Ito│Original story by Hirokatsu Kihara and Ichiro Nakayama

It’s been an interesting year for fans of Junji Ito. 2023 will be bookended by animated adaptations of the famed horror master’s work; it started with Netflix’s anthology in January, while Adult Swim’s take on Uzumaki is expected by the end of the year. And right in the middle is a new collection of his work in English with Mimi’s Tales of Terror. It’s a series of short stories inspired by urban legends — just the thing for dark, cold October nights.

The book is actually an adaptation itself, taking nine stories from Shin Mimibukuro — a collection of Japanese urban legends written by Hirokatsu Kihara and Ichiro Nakayama — and turning them into Ito’s particular brand of horror manga. They follow the story of a university student named...

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More than 130 companies including Ikea, Volvo ask world leaders to ‘phase out’ fossil fuels

A “Together Towards Zero” projection during the Volvo AB news conference at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, September 19th, 2022. | Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg via Getty Images

More than 130 companies, including Volvo Cars, Ikea, Unilever, Nestlé, and AstraZeneca, signed a letter calling on governments to adopt a global plan to phase out fossil fuels without carbon capture during upcoming international climate negotiations.

“Our businesses are feeling the impacts and cost of increasing extreme weather events resulting from climate change,” the letter says. “We have an important role to play in sending a clear signal about our future energy use, which is rapidly becoming cleaner through renewables.” It was coordinated by the We Mean Business Coalition that advocates for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Together, the signatories represent close to $1 trillion in global annual revenue from diverse industries,...

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Amazon’s live-action Fallout series will start streaming in 2024

Until we get some official stills of Amazon’s Fallout series, we’ll have to rely on games like Fallout 4 (pictured) to get us in the mood. | Image: Bethesda / The Verge

Amazon has yet to release a public trailer for its highly anticipated Fallout series, but at least we now know when it’ll arrive on our TV screens. The streaming giant has revealed that Fallout — a live-action adaptation of Bethesda’s popular RPG video game franchise — will premiere on April 12th, 2024, exclusively via Prime Video.

The announcement was made on October 23rd, otherwise known to Fallout fans as “Fallout Day” — the in-game date that marks the beginning of the Great War that turns the world into an irradiated nuclear wasteland. Bethesda’s executive producer and game director Todd Howard is an executive producer on the series, which stars Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets), Walton Goggins (The Hateful Eight), Aaron Moten (E...

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Amazon enables passwordless passkeys on iOS and the web

Amazon.com on iPhone supports passkeys so people can log in with Face ID. | Image: Amazon

Amazon’s rolling out passkey support for its online site and mobile shopping apps. Customers can log in to Amazon using just their devices’ biometrics and start shopping without the need to enter a password or follow through with two-factor authentication (2FA) through email or text.

Amazon dipped its toes into passkey support earlier this month for its web experience, but it wasn’t ready for primetime yet since the implementation still required a 2FA code and wasn’t enabled for the mobile apps. If you’re interested in enabling passkey support with Amazon, you can enroll by going to Amazon.com, visiting your account settings, clicking “Login & Security,” and using the “Set up” button next to “passkey.”

Screenshot: Umar...

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Amazon’s noise-canceling Echo Buds are on a clearance sale for $56.99

These buds are even cheaper than they were during the recent Prime Day. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Amazon’s second-gen Echo Buds may not be at the top of the pack for the best earbuds you can get in 2023, but they’re quite good when they can be had for a song. That usually happens during sales events like Amazon Prime Day or Black Friday, but currently (on a random Monday), you can get the Echo Buds in black with a wireless charging case for just $56.99 ($83 off) on clearance at Best Buy. That’s a new all-time low for these noise-canceling earbuds and almost as cheap as the lowest price we’ve seen on them with a wired charging case. It’s also just $6 more than Amazon’s newer, basic-looking Echo Buds for 2023, but those have a semi-open design that lacks noise cancellation.

The Echo Buds came out in 2021 and offer a good value for...

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The poster’s guide to the internet of the future

The social future is more open and connected – but what are you supposed to do with it? | Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge

The platform era is ending. Rather than build new Twitters and Facebooks, we can create a stuff-posting system that works better for everybody.

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DOJ probing Tesla’s EV range after reports of exaggerated numbers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating the range of Tesla’s electric vehicles after reports surfaced that the company was relying on exaggerated numbers.

In documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla said that it had “received requests for information, including subpoenas from the DOJ, regarding certain matters associated with personal benefits, related parties, vehicle range and personnel decisions.”

Customers were incensed that their Tesla vehicles were falling well short of the advertised range

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Tesla had received so many customer complaints about range that it created a special “diversion team” to cancel their service appointments. Customers were incensed...

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Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is now the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game

Image: Insomniac Games

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has become the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios title in the 24 hours following its release, Sony announced on Monday. The game sold over 2.5 million copies in just one day.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 wasdeveloped by PlayStation Studios’ Insomniac Games. As the fastest-selling first-party PlayStation title, it dethrones God of War Ragnarok, which sold 5.1 million copies during its launch week last year. The first Marvel’s Spider-Man also got the fastest-selling first-party crown following its release in 2018, selling 3.3 million copies in its first three days.

Great news, Spidey fans -- Marvel's #SpiderMan2PS5 has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the first 24 hours. Thanks for making this a high-flying launch! p...

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Qualcomm’s next big Snapdragon chip has leaked, and it’s full of AI features

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The next big Snapdragon chip headed to Android phones is likely to be announced this week — and details have leaked early revealing a heavy focus on AI. According to MSPoweruser, Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will support some handy and creative AI camera tools, including the ability to remove objects from videos, expand areas of a photo, and generate fake backgrounds.

The leaked marketing materials also boast about the chip’s ability to run various AI models, including both Stable Diffusion and Meta’s Llama 2. Making that happen is supposed to be an upgraded Hexagon neural processor, which the leaked document says is 98 percent faster (presumably than last year’s processor, but the image doesn’t clarify). Qualcomm showed off t...

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