Samsung launches premium S Pen to tempt iPad artists in the US

The slightly thicker shape of the Creator Edition S Pen should feel more natural to grip — like a real pencil. | Image: Samsung

The S Pen Creator Edition tablet stylus that Samsung unveiled alongside its Galaxy Tab S9 series in July is now available to buy in the US for $99.99. Designed with writing, sketching, and digital painting in mind, the S Pen Creator Edition is a more premium stylus compared to the standard $59.99 S Pen that ships with Galaxy Tab S9 devices, providing more benefits for creative professionals like additional tilt-sensitivity and a thicker shape for improved grip.

The S Pen Creator Edition is compatible with Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and higher, Galaxy Note10 and higher, Galaxy Tab S Series, and PCs that already support the existing S Pen. It cannot be used with any Galaxy Z series of folding devices. The stylus is battery-free and doesn’t...

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The WeWork soap opera’s latest episode includes filing for bankruptcy

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Co-working office space provider WeWork has filed for bankruptcy covering its locations in the US and Canada, and in a filing, it said it had liabilities of between $10 and $50 billion.

It’s the latest turn for a company that went from being valued at $47 billion in January 2019 to unsuccessfully attempting an IPO later that year. Investors were unimpressed with a company that counted its founder and CEO, Adam Neumann, as a significant risk factor.

As Elizabeth Lopatto eventually described it:

That paperwork revealed, all in one place, the following things: that Neumann was renting his own buildings to The We Company, that Neumann had secured loans from The We Company, and that to change its name to The We Company from WeWork, the...

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PS5 ‘slim’ teardown shows the clever engineering of its detachable disc drive

The new PS5. | Image: Sony

The new PlayStation 5 hasn’t come out yet — it doesn’t even have a specific release date — but a few YouTubers have gotten their hands on it, including Dave Lee from the Dave2D channel. Lee posted his teardown of the console yesterday, and if you’ve been curious about how that detachable disc drive works, this is the best look you’ll get at it without buying the $499.99 PS5 yourself later this month.

After Lee pries off the PS5’s plastic side cover, you can see the drive sitting there with three screws staring back at you. I thought they were pentalobe screws at first, but a later zoomed-in shot shows they’re just standard crosshead screws. Philips head, if you like. Okay, no surprises there. Good.

Clip: Dave2D / GIF:...

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The fix is in for the Pixel’s nasty multi-user bug on Android 14

Android 14 wreaked havoc on some Pixel phones with multiple user profiles. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Google’s November update should be coming very soon to Pixel phones, providing some relief for a critical bug affecting people with multiple user profiles on their devices. The update — spotted by 9to5Google — contains a fix for an issue “occasionally causing devices with multiple users enabled to show out of space or be in a reboot loop,” which was affecting Pixel 6 phones and later running Android 14. The update will start arriving on Pixel phones beginning today, with the rollout continuing through the next week.

This particular bug was a nasty one. In some cases, people were unable to access their media storage, while others were entirely shut out of their phones in a boot cycle that required a factory device reset. For people with...

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro are often on sale.

If you know where to look, there are often some great discounts available on Apple’s ever-popular AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods toward the end of 2021, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model slowly dip to around $100. And now that the second-gen AirPods Pro has been on the market for a year, we’re also seeing their price fall more often, too.

With Black Friday quickly approaching, we’re starting to see a number of great deals trickle in — including those on the new AirPods Pro with USB-C. We’ll likely see even steeper discounts as we get closer to the main event, too, which is why we’ve started tracking the best early Black Friday deals. In the meantime, however, here are the best deals...

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TikTok’s $1 billion creator fund is shutting down

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok’s $1 billion creator fund will come to an end on December 16th, 2023, the company told users today.

Creators in the US, UK, Germany, and France will no longer be able to monetize their content through the original fund, TikTok spokesperson Maria Jung says. TikTokers in Italy and Spain aren’t affected by the change.

The creator fund was originally introduced in 2020, with the company promising to pay out $1 billion over the course of three years to people making the app’s viral content. Along the way, influencers and other content creators have noted the low payouts — sometimes just a few dollars for millions of views — making it impossible to earn a living through the creator fund alone. TikTok didn’t respond to questions about...

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PlayStation is cutting off X sharing options

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony is terminating its X (formerly Twitter) integrations for PS5 and PS4, meaning you soon won’t be able to post screenshots and clips to X from those consoles.

“As of November 13, 2023, integration with X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer function on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles,” Sony said in a support message on its website. “This includes the ability to view any content published on X on PS5/PS4, and the ability to post and view content, trophies, and other gameplay-related activities on X directly from PS5/PS4 (or link an X account to do so).” Wario64 posted a screenshot of a similar message on Threads that appears to have popped up on a PS5 console.

Sony didn’t elaborate on why it’s cutting off its X...

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Marvel’s new Spotlight branding will help you cut through the MCU’s noise

The Marvel Spotlight logo. | Image: Marvel Studios

In an effort to help viewers understand which of its spinoff projects will have significant connections to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe and which are really meant to work as standalone stories, Marvel’s rolling out a new kind of branding just in time for its upcoming Echo series.

Ahead of Echo’s debuts on both Disney Plus and Hulu, Marvel announced today that it will be the first series to arrive under the studio’s new Marvel Spotlight banner: the brand consisting of all the MCU’s spinoffs that while set in the same universe where the Avengers exist are not required watching to understand what’s happening in the next Avengers movie, for example.

Speaking to Marvel.com, Marvel’s head of streaming, Brad Winderbaum, likened the...

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Blizzard’s president on the studio’s ‘new era’ under Xbox

Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Ybarra and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer at BlizzCon 2023. | Photo by Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

Mike Ybarra is confident about the studio’s future.

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OpenAI is letting anyone create their own version of ChatGPT

Illustration: The Verge

The GPT platform is a no-code way to make custom AI agents for all sorts of tasks, and it’s available exclusively for ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

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OpenAI turbocharges GPT-4 and makes it cheaper

Illustration: The Verge

OpenAI announced more improvements to its large language models, GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, including updated knowledge bases and a much longer context window. The company says it will also follow Google and Microsoft’s lead and begin protecting customers against copyright lawsuits.

GPT-4 Turbo, currently available via an API preview, has been trained with information dating to April 2023, the company announced Monday at its first-ever developer conference. The earlier version of GPT-4 released in March only learned from data dated up to September 2021. OpenAI plans to release a production-ready Turbo model in the next few weeks but did not give an exact date.

GPT-4 Turbo is cheaper to run for developers

GPT-4 Turbo will also “see” more data,...

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OpenAI says ChatGPT has 100 million weekly users

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

One hundred million people are using ChatGPT on a weekly basis, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced at its first-ever developer conference on Monday. Since releasing its ChatGPT and Whisper models via API in March, the company also now boasts over two million developers, including over 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

OpenAI announced the figures as it detailed a range of new features, including a platform for building custom versions of ChatGPT to help with specific tasks and GPT-4 Turbo, a new model that has knowledge of world events up to April 2023 and which can fit the equivalent of over 300 pages of text in a single prompt.

ChatGPT was widely seen as the fastest growing consumer internet app of all time after its launch nearly a...

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Logitech’s custom-fitting G Fit earbuds and G303 Shroud mouse are on sale

Logitech’s G Fit earbuds uniquely conform to the shape of your ears. | Image: Logitech

While it might seem like every sale going on right now is somehow related to Black Friday, some retailers are still discounting things because, well, why not? Case in point, right now, Amazon seems to have randomly decided to discount a bunch of Logitech gaming accessories — and we’re here for it.

Amazon’s slashing prices on a bunch of items, taking $40 off Logitech’s last-gen G Pro X Superlight($109.99) and even offering Logitech’s G915 Lightspeed TKL wireless mechanical keyboard at a new record low price of $149.99 ($80 off). Heck, even one of our favorite gaming mice — the minimalist ambidextrous Logitech G303 Shroud — is on sale for $99.99 ($30 off).

Our favorite deal, however, is available on the Logitech G Fits wireless gaming...

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All the news from OpenAI’s first developer conference

Illustration: The Verge

ChatGPT changed everything. What comes next?

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Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is stepping down as CEO

Photo by Jerod Harris / Getty Images for Vox Media

Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd is stepping down from the chief executive role of Bumble Inc., the company announced on Monday. Wolfe Herd will be succeeded by Lidiane Jones, the current CEO of Slack, who took the role at that company in January. Jones will start at Bumble on January 2nd, 2024. Wolfe Herd will remain at Bumble as its executive chair.

Wolfe Herd was initially a co-founder at Tinder; after being pushed out of the company, she went on to found Bumble in 2014. Bumble started as a dating app where women would kick off conversations, and the company has since expanded into friendships and networking. Bumble Inc. is the parent company of more than just Bumble; it also oversees Badoo, Fruitz, and Official.

“This move...

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YouTube tests a ‘play something’ button for when you don’t know what to watch

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube appears to be testing a new “play something” button on its mobile app that directs you to a random video when you don’t know what to watch. As first spotted by Android Police, the prompt shows up between content as you scroll through the feed on your homepage — but only some users are seeing it.

While Android Police mentions that the button only directs users to YouTube Shorts, one of my colleagues here at The Verge found that the feature also shows them random full-length videos. It’s still not clear if YouTube takes your watch history into account when picking the random videos it plays or how widely Google is rolling out this feature. The Verge reached out to Google for more information, and we’ll update this article if we...

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Robotaxi companies have a serious trust issue

Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images

The recent woes of robotaxi company Cruise bring to light many interesting problems currently plaguing the autonomous vehicle industry, most importantly issues around transparency and public trust.

How are we supposed to trust these companies with our lives — and indeed, you are putting your life in the hands of a company when you ride in their driverless cars — when they don’t see fit to disclose all of the information we need to best understand the technology?

Last month, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s license to operate robotaxis after a Cruise vehicle struck a woman who was flung into its path by a hit-and-run driver. The driverless Cruise vehicle ran over her, stopped briefly, then proceeded to drag...

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Epic v. Google: a battle over Fortnite fees goes to court

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Philip Pacheco, Bloomberg, Getty Images

In a redux of a case against Apple and iOS, Epic aims to dismantle barriers that could spell higher fees for app makers — and, Google argues, keep Android safe and competitive.

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Instagram’s paid creator subscriptions are still a tiny business

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

There are now 1 million paid subscriptions to creators on Instagram, slowly transforming the platform into a space where creators can get paid directly by their fans. It’s a big milestone but a small number for Instagram: the service has around 2 billion monthly users. Patreon, meanwhile, is estimated to have more than 30 million paid subscriptions — albeit with about a decade’s head start.

Meta announced the milestone today alongside some other news related to creators getting paid. The company is going to start promoting subscriptions in Instagram’s feed, putting a big “Subscribe” button at the top of every post so that non-paying followers know it’s available. Creators will be able to offer 30-day free trials, and Instagram is adding...

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The Finals beta was a hit, and I already miss the destructive chaos

Image: Embark

I’m a big first-person shooter fan, but I’m bored of the likes of Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Valorant. So when I saw The Finals, one of the hottest first-person shooters, blowing up on Steam and Twitch, I had to drop in and see what all of the hype was about. A week later, and I’m sad that the open beta has ended but glad that 7.5 million people got to experience the pure destructive chaos and joy that The Finals offers.

The Finals isn’t your typical shooter thanks to Battlefield-style building destruction. This destruction is the most impressive element of the game, which pits teams of three against each other in an objective-based arena where collecting cash is king. It’s also styled like a game show, so if you play the competitive...

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Fortnite’s new season shows just how much the game has changed

Where are we dropping? | Image: Epic Games

This weekend, I experienced something that I hadn’t in quite some time: a queue to play Fortnite. The long-running battle royale hit players with a dose of nostalgia in its latest season — called Fortnite OG — which brings back the game’s original map for the next month. Players have shown up in droves; developer Epic claims that Saturday was the biggest in the game’s history, with more than 44 million players. Amid all of the reminiscing that comes from dropping back into Tilted Towers or drinking an entire Chug Jug, the new season also helped me realize just how far the game has come over the years.

Going back to the original map is a pretty big deal for Fortnite. This is a game that constantly speeds ahead without looking back. When a...

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All the biggest news from Netflix Geeked Week 2023

Gordon Cormier as Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender_._ | Image: Netflix

Avatar: The Last Airbender, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Devil May Cry, Stranger Things, and 3 Body Problem are all showing out at Netflix’s Geeked 2023 showcase.

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Nintendo’s latest Switch OLED has Smash Bros.-themed controllers

Image: Nintendo

Nintendo is giving its OLED Switch a Smash Bros.-themed paint job. The latest version of the console comes as part of a new bundle with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and includes gray Joy-Cons that feature the game’s logo.

The makeover still isn’t as exciting as the Super Smash Bros.-inspired Switch that Nintendo launched when the game first came out, as it doesn’t include a dock that shows detailed illustrations of Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Link, and other favorite fighters. This Switch comes with just a plain black dock instead.

Image: Nintendo

The bundle comes with the redesigned Switch OLED model, a full game download of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and three months of Nintendo Switch Online’s Individual membership....

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Microsoft is bringing AI characters to Xbox

Image: Inworld AI

Microsoft is partnering with Inworld AI to develop Xbox tools that will allow developers to create AI-powered characters, stories, and quests. The multiyear partnership will include an “AI design copilot” system that Xbox developers can use to create detailed scripts, dialogue trees, quest lines, and more.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” explains Haiyan Zhang, general manager of gaming AI at Xbox. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team...

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Revel bails on electric mopeds in favor of more cars

Revel shifts focus to its charging stations and EV rideshare. | Image: Revel

There will be fewer electric scooters strewn about the streets of New York City and San Francisco soon. Electric moped sharing company Revel has decided to shut down its two-wheeler rentals to focus on its EV rideshare business, comprised of Tesla and Kia models. The 3,000 mopeds the company has left will be gathered up over the next couple of weeks for recycling.

Despite the growing popularity of similar services like Citi Bike’s bike share program, Revel spokesperson Robert Familiar told TechCrunch that its moped rides had fallen by 30 percent since last summer. The company had already pulled out of Washington, DC, and Miami in November last year. Revel will lay off “about 67 staffers” as it closes its moped rental side.

TechCrunch n...

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Handheld gaming is the future — again

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

In 1989, ancient history in the gaming era, Nintendo released a three-and-a-half-minute commercial for its new device. A kid shouts angrily because he has to stop playing games so the family can leave on vacation; the car sags, and its tire deflates when his dad shoves a giant CRT TV into the back seat. “The secret to Nintendo’s success lies in bringing arcade games forward, into the home,” says the jaunty narrator. “Taking it out of the home is another story.”

And then, the grand reveal: the Game Boy! The gaming system you can take with you. After that comes a song I’d rank somewhere in the range of “unaired musical SNL sketch” in which our emcee narrates the Game Boy going to the lake, on a date, a movie theater, a baseball diamond, a...

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Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2023) review: entry-level enigma

The long-awaited replacement for the 13-inch MacBook Pro is here, and it’s exactly as expected. But the line between Air and Pro users is blurrier than ever.

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Apple has no plans to make a 27-inch iMac with Apple Silicon

The 2020 version of the 27-inch iMac is the last of its kind. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

Apple will not be making an Apple Silicon version of the 27-inch iMac to replace the Intel-equipped model that it discontinued in 2022. The company is instead focusing the iMac line around the 24-inch model that was first released in early 2021 and just updated with the new M3 processor this fall.

Apple PR representative Starlayne Meza confirmed the company’s plans to The Verge. The company encourages those who have been holding out hope for a larger iMac to consider the Studio Display and Mac Studio or Mac mini, which pair a 27-inch 5K screen with a separate computer, compared to the all-in-one design of the iMac.

For many years, the 27-inch iMac was Apple’s flagship consumer desktop computer, and its reach spread far beyond the typical...

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Please make more USB-C cables like this

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Elgato hasn’t just made an excellent teleprompter, it’s also made a great USB-C cable that ships with it. Professional audio engineer Matt “Spike” McWilliams spotted that Elgato’s latest USB-C cable has the bandwidth and USB type imprinted on the connector, and now I wish all manufacturers did this.

I recently spent too many hours sorting my USB-C cables into ones that are high speed, ones that can deliver fast charging, and ones that can do both. None of them had any marker to let me know the speed or type of USB-C cable without me having to test them. It’s a common issue for people switching to USB-C right now, and even a small indicator like Elgato’s can certainly help. The writing on Elgato’s cable tells me it’s USB 3.0 compatible...

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Bored Ape NFT event attendees report ‘severe eye burn’

Several event attendees saught medical attention after experiencing eye and skin injuries. | Image: @CryptoJune777 / Yuga Labs

Several people have reported experiencing eye pain, vision problems, and sunburnt skin on Sunday after attending ApeFest, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection event in Hong Kong that ran from November 3rd-5th. Some ApeFest attendees posted on X (formerly Twitter) after seeking medical attention, with one person reporting that they had been diagnosed with Photokeratitis — aka, “welder’s eye,” a condition caused by unprotected exposure to ultraviolet radiation — and another saying the issue was a result of UV from the stage lights, leading to speculation that the injuries were caused by improper lighting used at the event.

“I woke up at 04:00 and couldn’t see anymore,” said @CryptoJune777. “Had so much pain and my whole skin is burned....

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