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Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Jerod Harris, Chesnot, Getty Images
During an employee all-hands, Musk said that Twitter became X to replace YouTube, LinkedIn, FaceTime, dating apps, and even your bank.
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The new PS5 (right) is a bit shorter than the original (left). | Image: @phantompainss
The launch of the slimmer PlayStation 5 is just weeks away, and one user seems to have already gotten their hands on the updated console. In a series of images posted to X (formerly Twitter), user @phantompainss shows how the updated console stacks against its chunkier counterpart.
The new PS5 looks like it’ll have a slightly smaller footprint when compared to the original console. Not only does it have a slimmer profile than the standard PS5, but it’s also a couple of inches shorter as well. Despite the thinner design, the back of the device appears to retain the same ports as its predecessor, including an HDMI port, two USB ports, a power connector, and an ethernet port.
Image: @phantompainss
The images also appear...
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Match Group and Google announced a settlement on Tuesday in Match’s lawsuit against the company. The last-minute decision leaves Google scheduled to go up against Fortnite publisher Epic Games alone in an antitrust trial that starts next week, with Epic alleging that Google Play’s payment policies are anticompetitive.
Match sued Google in May 2022, alleging the company “illegally monopolized the market” for app distribution with Google Play and imposed an “extortionate tax” with the fees it takes from transactions on the marketplace. Its claims dovetailed with an existing complaint from Epic as well as a coalition of state attorneys general. Google and the states announced their own settlement in September.
Under the terms of this latest...
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Image: Apple
In addition to a new iMac, Apple announced new M3-powered versions of the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro during its “Scary Fast” event on Monday. The new laptops can be configured with either the M3, M3 Pro, or M3 Max chip, all of which should offer larger performance gains than the last-gen M2 chip. Each MacBook Pro is currently available to preorder online ahead of its release date in November, with the M3 and M3 Pro models due to arrive on November 7th, while the M3 Max will ship later.
If you’re wondering how the new laptops compare with the M2 models on paper, we’ve rounded up everything we know so far based on specs and statements from Apple. Stay tuned as well for our full reviews, in which we’ll let you know how well the laptops...
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MFW my supervisees tell me to stop asking questions because it is distracting. | Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images
His employees told him he ‘should stop asking questions because it was distracting.’
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
DoorDash has added a pop-up in its app this week warning customers that orders with no tip might take longer to get delivered. Upon seeing the prompt in a since-deleted tweet on X, formerly Twitter, The Verge confirmed that if you enter $0 in the tip amount in the DoorDash app while placing an order, an alert appears with the below warning, prompting you to add a tip or continue without a tip:
Orders with no tip might take longer to get delivered — are you sure you want to continue? Dashers can pick and choose which orders they want to do. Orders that take longer to be accepted by Dashers tend to result in slower delivery.
The move appears to be an effort by DoorDash to show customers that drivers are likely going to prioritize more...
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Image: Toby Fox
Deltarune fans, consider your bones trousled. On Tuesday, the fifth anniversary of Deltarune’s release, Undertale and Deltarune developer Toby Fox shared some wonderful news worthy of a spooky celebration. In a development update, Fox shared that Deltarune’s third chapter is “nearing completion” and outlined his plans for the game’s full release.
“Chapter 3 is pretty much content complete! There will be essentially no more changes to dialogue or gameplay from here,” Fox wrote on his website, interspersed with cute Halloween-themed sprites of everyone’s favorite monster crew.
Though Fox explained that there is still more work to be done on Chapter 3 before it can be released in full, he said that his team has mostly transitioned to...
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Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge
Twitch is pulling the plug on its Nintendo Switch app; the streaming company is “ending support” for the app, according to a support page. It will be removing the app from the Nintendo eShop on November 6th and people who already have it downloaded will “lose access” on January 31st, 2024.
Twitch launched its Switch app in late 2021, but users have voiced some complaints with the app. You can’t see a stream’s chat, for example, meaning you have to use another device if you want to see what other people are talking about or type a message of your own. You can’t subscribe to creators if you want to support them. And you also can’t use the app to broadcast your own gameplay.
I’ve asked Twitch if it can share more information about why it’s...
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Tesla was found not to be liable for the death of a Model 3 owner whose vehicle crashed while driving in Autopilot, a jury decided Tuesday.
The case centered on a crash in California in 2019 in which a Tesla Model 3 veered off the road, crashing into a palm tree before catching fire. The crash killed the driver, 37-year-old Micah Lee, who was reportedly using Autopilot at the time of the incident. Lee’s family, who were passengers in the vehicle, accused Tesla of knowing that Autopilot was defective when it sold them the car.
The case centered on a crash in California in 2019
But in a 9-to-3 decision, the California jury found in favor of Tesla, Reuters reports. Tesla’s lawyers argued that the crash was caused by human error.
It was...
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Photo by Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post via Getty Images
President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence is a first-of-its-kind action from the government to tackle some of the technology’s greatest challenges — like how to identify if an image is real or fake.
Among a myriad of other demands, the order, signed Monday, calls for a new set of government-led standards on watermarking AI-generated content. Like watermarks on photographs or paper money, digital watermarks help users distinguish between a real object and a fake one and determine who owns it.
It’s a seemingly simple solution that has support from the White House and the tech industry. Watermarking technology has promise. But it’s not infallible, and experts fear that it won’t be enough on its own.
Many of the...
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube is broadening its efforts to crack down on ad blockers. The platform has “launched a global effort” to encourage users to allow ads or try YouTube Premium, YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton says in a statement provided to The Verge.
If you run into YouTube’s block, you may see a notice that says “video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled.” It also includes a prompt to allow ads or try YouTube Premium. You may get prompts about YouTube’s stance on ad blockers but still be able to watch a video, though, for one Verge staffer, YouTube now fully blocks them nearly every time.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
YouTube confirmed that it was disabling...
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Google Registry is launching a new and really fun top-level domain: .ing. I am guessing you are already think.ing about some of the domains you might end up buy.ing.
You can now register .ing domains as part of Google’s early access period, though you’ll have to pay “an additional one-time fee,” Google’s Christina Yeh wrote in a blog post. That fee will go down daily through December 5th. At 16:00 UTC (noon ET) on that date, .ing domains will officially be publicly available.
A few of us at The Verge have had some fun plugging different words into GoDaddy’s domain search to see what .ing domains are up for grabs. Some common words with -ing endings are really expensive; think.ing and buy.ing cost $38,999.99 and $129,999.99, respectively,...
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The Magic Mouse continues to be a helpless turtle. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
It’s 2023, and I have a port complaint. Apple’s “Scary Fast” event came and went, and new M3-powered iMacs were born. Yet there was a curious tidbit the company didn’t mention: the Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad still have Lightning ports. In a USB-C iPhone world, what is that old port still doing there?
It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock that Apple didn’t update the crucial accessories. Tim Cook is like a supply-chain-and-logistics Legolas, always ready with a quiver full of old products and designs to maximize their value to Apple. Often, that’s a good thing for customers, too. It means there are iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches with years-old designs but solid performance at more downright affordable prices.
B...
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Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge
Microsoft is releasing its Windows 11 2023 Update today, which was originally supposed to be one of the biggest updates to Windows 11. But Microsoft went ahead and released a lot of the features in the Windows 11 2023 Update (23H2) a little early last month, including the new Windows Copilot, AI-powered updates to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Photos, RGB lighting support, a modernized File Explorer, and more. So, the main change to the Windows 11 2023 Update is the removal of the Microsoft Teams integration named Chat.
“Chat is now Microsoft Teams (free) and is pinned by default to the taskbar,” explains John Cable, VP of program management for Windows servicing and delivery. “When you click to launch Microsoft Teams, you will discover a...
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Illustration: The Verge
More than three years after Microsoft gutted its news divisions and replaced their work with AI and algorithmic automation, the content generated by its systems continues to contain grave errors that human involvement could, or should, have stopped. Today, The Guardian accused the company of damaging its reputation with a poll labeled “insights by AI” that appeared in Microsoft Start next to a Guardian story about a woman’s death, asking readers to vote on how she died.
The Guardian wrote that though the poll was removed, the damage had already been done. The poll asked readers to vote on whether a woman took her own life, was murdered, or died by accident. Five-day-old comments on the story indicate readers were upset, and some clearly...
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Get to popular sites like example.com without having to stretch your thumbs. | Image: Google
Google’s Chrome browser on iOS is officially getting the option to move the address bar from the top of the screen to the bottom, the search giant has announced. Early signs of the feature were spotted in a beta version of the browser this year, but as of this week, it’s getting a wide release. Without having to update my browser, I already have access to the feature on my phone.
It’s an optional change, and judging by my own Chrome app, the default is still the top-oriented address bar. But if you want to move it down to the bottom, you can do so using the “address bar” option in the Settings menu or by long-pressing on the bar itself and tapping “move address bar to bottom.”
Image: Google
You can move the...
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A little extra hardware, a handful of Linux commands, and boom, the vacuum is free. | Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
Conceptually, I love robot vacuums. A little friend who cleans up my floor? Fantastic. Into it. The issue is, unfortunately, I don’t trust them. They constantly report back to the external servers, and they can be a huge security liability. I don’t want that. Someone has to have hacked these things, I reasoned. A quick search revealed I was correct. This is how I came across Valetudo, a project that aims to liberate robot vacuums from the cloud.
Valetudo is a firmware replacement for your robot. It integrates with a vacuum’s existing software and acts like a cloud replacement that allows you to control your robot vacuum locally. Instead of having to use a proprietary app on your phone, which connects to a distant server, which then...
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Walk down Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, and you might stumble on something that seems out of place: a robot, about waist high, with headlights shaped like blinking eyes and its own name stenciled on the side.
These robots are owned by Serve Robotics, a company that spun out of app-based delivery service Postmates about six years ago. For over a year now, Serve has been working with Uber Eats to deliver food to thousands of people in Los Angeles as part of its ongoing experiment to see how AI and robotics can transform the way we get our food.
Serve likes to promote its robots as “Level 4” autonomous, meaning they are able to make all their own decisions under certain circumstances. But behind the scenes, a small army of human helpers...
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Apple’s latest pair of AirPods Pro are nearly identical to the last-gen model, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Apple’s “Scary Fast” Mac event came and went with little mention of the company’s flagship wireless earbuds — or few other products, for that matter. That isn’t all that surprising given Apple introduced a new pair of AirPods Pro just over a month ago. And now, shortly after receiving a steep Prime Day discount, the second-gen AirPods Pro with USB-C support are back down to $189.99 ($60 off) at Amazon and Target.
On the spec front, there’s little separating the new AirPods Pro from the second-gen model Apple launched last year. The latest edition adds dust resistance for some added peace of mind, though their marquee feature is undoubtedly a new MagSafe case that charges via USB-C instead of a Lightning port. The new AirPods Pro, like...
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Image: Apple
The Touch Bar was too ahead of its time. This happens occasionally. We finally reach the point we can make a really cool idea technologically feasible but not feasible enough for widespread adoption. Think 3D TVs or augmented reality headsets. The Touch Bar, which is no longer available on any Mac sold by Apple, was like that. A really cool idea, executed pretty well, and never embraced by anyone but us diehards.
When the Touch Bar launched, it felt like touching the future. It was an OLED strip that recognized touch and replaced the function row of keys on the 2016 MacBook Pro. You could easily scrub through video and audio files in QuickTime. You could choose really pretty bookmark buttons in Safari. Preview had a whole array of useful...
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Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge
The publisher behind the songwriting copyrights to some of the most popular music ever recorded doesn’t think AI spells doom for the industry.
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Image: Genvid Entertainment
Silent Hill: Ascension has been billed not as a game but, rather, as an interactive streaming series. And now, ahead of the show’s premiere on Halloween night, we finally have some sense of what that means. Developer Genvid Entertainment has just released a new explainer video that, well, explains how Ascension will actually work.
Essentially, the experience sounds like a mix of choice-based games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead and “choose your own adventure” shows like Netflix’s Bandersnatch. (Notably, the team at Genvid consists of a number of ex-Telltale staff.) Each evening, part of the story streams live, and there are various ways that players can interact with the experience. The most basic are quick-time events — called...
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Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
[Note: we’ve gotten reports that a recent Chrome update has removed the Enable download bubble flag — so you may find that this fix is no longer available.]
Suddenly, Chrome downloads are no longer showing at the bottom of the window.
Change a download flag.
Earlier this month, Google made some changes to its Chrome browser, one of which was switching the download notifications from a bar at the bottom of the browser window to a drop-down icon at the top right of the address bar. Some users may like this new way of finding downloads — certainly, it’s neat, out of the way, and lets you quickly see all of your downloads from the last 24 hours.
However, I found it rather disconcerting. I’ve got a lot of...
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The Pixel Watch 2 adds some new personal safety features. | Image: The Verge
With the Pixel Watch 2, Google introduced Safety Check and Safety Signal — two personal safety features that are a little different from the typical emergency SOS features we see on smartwatches.
Safety Check is a proactive timer that alerts your predesignated emergency contacts of your location if you don’t make it to where you’re going. Meanwhile, Safety Signal allows you to use emergency SOS features without an active LTE plan on your smartwatch.
Hopefully, you never really need either feature, but here’s how to set them up and use them.
Google just began rolling out Wear OS 4 to the original Pixel Watch — which means both the Pixel Watch and Pixel Watch 2 are compatible with Safety Check. If you have...
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Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Independent artists using DistroKid to share their music will now have another avenue on TikTok.
A deal announced today between the video platform and DistroKid could bring millions of songs by independent artists to TikTok Music, the platform’s subscription-driven streaming service launched earlier this year. The service, so far, is limited to just a handful of countries — Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and Singapore — but could be appealing to up-and-coming musicians looking for a viral breakout.
DistroKid artists already had the option to add their music to TikTok’s library, but today’s announcement expands that feature to TikTok Music. Additionally, artists have had the option to upload their music to TikTok’s Commercial...
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Image: Atari
Atari is acquiring Digital Eclipse, a studio that specializes in preserving and rereleasing retro games on modern hardware. The releases are often rich in additional materials and historical content. Think the Criterion Collection but for video games. In a press release, Atari says it’s paying up to $20 million for the studio, including an initial $6.5 million paid in a combination of cash and shares and a further $13.5 million, which is due to be paid in cash over the next decade subject to Digital Eclipse’s performance. It expects to complete the deal in the coming days.
The two companies previously worked together on last year’s excellent Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, which included ports of over 90 classic games as well as...
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There’s a reason the event footage looked as good as it did, and that’s likely down to the fancy equipment used alongside the iPhone 15 Pro Max. | Image: Apple via Halideapp
Behind-the-scenes footage of Apple’s Monday evening Scary Fast event reveals how it was filmed using an iPhone 15 Pro Max... with the aid of a full suite of professional recording equipment and studio lighting. Still images and a video reveal that (unsurprisingly) a great deal of fancy equipment — from drones, gimbals, dollies, industrial set lighting, and other recording accessories — is still required to make iPhone footage look this good.
Apple has utilized similar but far less extreme setups for previous events that were filmed using iPhones, including the Burberry spring / summer 2014 fashion show. It’s a neat way to promote the recording quality of iPhone cameras, but it’s not like everyday folks can recreate these kinds of results...
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The keyboard and buttons are an ode to all things Nintendo.
The retro NES styling of the mechanical keyboard is one thing, but the accompanying programmable buttons steal the show.
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Image: Belkin
Belkin has a new 2-in-1 charging dock that’s all about the looks. Yes, it offers the types of features you’d expect from a $129.95 charger, including letting you fast charge iPhones with MagSafe as well as Apple Watches. But if you do pay up for the new charging dock, you’re probably buying it because it looks great.
Offered in two neutral colors, sand or charcoal (basically white and black), “the dock achieves a stunning stone-like appearance, blending seamlessly into its environment whether it’s placed on a nightstand, kitchen counter or desk,” Belkin writes in its press release. Take Belkin’s marketing language there with a grain of salt, but I do think the charger has a really nice aesthetic.
Image: Belkin
B...
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The 24-inch iMac is back with a refresh, and it’s bringing a slate of M3 MacBook Pros with it. | Image: Apple
Apple’s first foray into the world of prime-time product launches (for those of us on the East Coast, that is) kicked off with a new generation of Apple Silicon, the M3 processor. And announced alongside the new M3 chips were the handful of computers Apple is putting them in — including a new 24-inch iMac, an upgraded 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro, and a new 14-inch MacBook Pro with a base M3 that kills off the controversial Touch Bar for good (pour one out for an Apple flop).
This may have been a somewhat low-stakes Apple event for the evening before Halloween, but even if none of these new Macs are radically different, a new generation of M-series chips is nothing to sneeze at. The $1,299 iMac shows that Apple hasn’t totally forgotten...