The FTC warns influencers to disclose when they’re paid to be sweet on aspartame

It’s fine to say aspartame is safe — but not to obscure that you’re being paid to do it. | Photo by Long Wei/VCG via Getty Images

The first rule of sponsored content: You have to tell people it was paid for.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission publicly admonished over a dozen health influencers for publishing videos on TikTok and Instagram about sugar and the artificial sweetener aspartame without disclosing that the posts were paid for by the American Beverage Association and The Canadian Sugar Institute.

The FTC says this makes each of them potentially on the hook for fines over $50,000 if they continue posting without disclosures. Samuel Levine, who heads the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, called it “irresponsible for any trade group to hire influencers to tout its members’ product” without making sure content creators are clear about the deal. The FTC...

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Sonos teases a major new product coming next year

Illustration: The Verge

Sonos is in a bit of a rough patch with its consumer hardware business. Demand isn’t nearly on the same level that it was a few years ago, and CEO Patrick Spence has used the word “challenging” more than once when discussing the company’s last several financial quarters. Today’s earnings, which saw revenue decrease by 5.5 percent year over year, are another example.

“While it was a challenging year in the categories in which we play, the strength of the Sonos brand and product portfolio enabled us to retain a strong market share position,” Spence said in Sonos’ press release.

But Spence and the Sonos team predict big things ahead in 2024. Namely, some sort of significant new product is on the roadmap for later next year that Sonos...

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SpaceX cleared for second Starship and Super Heavy launch test

Here’s hoping this Starship test flight ends better than the first attempt. | Image: SpaceX

The second test flight for SpaceX’s Starship rocket has now been given the all clear by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA said in a statement that it “has given license authorization for the second launch of the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy vehicle. The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.”

SpaceX confirmed it’s now targeting November 17th for the test, with a two-hour launch window starting at 8AM ET.

The launch was initially grounded following an investigation into the first orbital launch test for the Starship and Super Heavy booster in April, which burst into flames and fired detonators to self-destruct about four minutes into its flight. SpaceX said in...

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Adobe is using AI to break apart messy audio

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Adobe is working on a new audio tool designed to break apart different layers of sound within a single recording. The tool is called Project Sound Lift, and it can use AI to separate elements like applause from the sound of someone’s voice.

As shown in a demo sent to The Verge, all you have to do is import an audio file into the application, then choose which sound you want the tool to filter out. There are quite a few options to choose from, including applause, laughter, alarms, speech, crowds, traffic, typing, and more. Project Sound Lift will automatically detect each sound and spit out separate files containing the background noise and the track you want to prioritize, like someone’s voice or the sound of an instrument.

You can...

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Tesla’s back seat audio update keeps the kids’ content quiet

The Bluetooth headphones feature is coming to just the new Model 3, at least for now. | Image: Tesla

A Tesla software update is adding the ability to connect Bluetooth headphones so kids in the back seat can enjoy streaming movies and shows without disturbing their parents in the front. As Not a Tesla App notes, so far, the 2023.38.8 software update with the new feature for content viewed from Tesla’s Theater app is rolling out only for the redesigned Model 3 that offers an infotainment screen for back seat passengers. The new vehicle launched in Europe in September but has not yet reached the US market. The latest Model S and Model X vehicles in the US do have rear screens, but we have not heard about the update becoming available for them yet.

For now, those who own a redesigned Model 3 can connect up to two Bluetooth headphones by...

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The new What If...? season 2 trailer loves a Marvel callback

It was basically a foregone conclusion that Marvel’s animated What If...? series would return to Disney Plus with even more stories from far far corners of Marvel’s ever-expanding cinematic universe. But the show’s new season 2 trailer also makes it seem like its next chapter is going to jack directly into the big multiverse moment that most of the studio’s recent live-action films and series have become entangled in, which suggests some interesting things about the future.

Though tinkering with people’s lives in season 1 damn near led to reality falling apart, The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) is up to his old tricks in the new season 2 trailer. And he’s once again keeping a close eye on unique variants of characters from films like Black...

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Amazon is merging the Comixology app with Kindle

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Beginning in December, the Comixology app won’t work anymore — you’ll have to read your comics in Amazon’s Kindle app instead. Amazon announced that the apps will merge on December 4th, meaning that, from that point on, “you can continue to access your Comixology comics, graphic novels, and manga titles in the Kindle app,” the company says in a support document.

You will need to download any Comixology books you were reading into the Kindle app, but Amazon says that any progress in a book you read in Comixology will automatically sync over to Kindle. You can also continue to buy comics from Amazon’s Comixology section on its store. But after December 4th, you won’t be able to read comics in the Comixology app anymore.

In an email,...

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Meta will fight the EU over regulating Messenger

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Meta is challenging the European Commission’s decision to regulate two of its services, Messenger and Marketplace, as gatekeepers under the bloc’s tough new restrictions on tech platforms. The company filed an appeal over the two services today arguing that neither should qualify, Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro told The Verge.

Reuters reported earlier Meta will not fight the European Commission’s gatekeeper designation from being applied to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Being designated as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act means that tech platforms have to abide by certain neutrality and openness rules. Messaging services like Meta’s Messenger need to be made interoperable with other messaging services; sales platforms like...

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Instagram gets new filters for the first time in forever

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Instagram is changing a lot these days, especially when it comes to the ways in which we can share our content with others and segment different audiences. But today, the Meta-owned app is bringing the focus back to its creative tools — adding a handful of features including Instagram’s first new filters in ages. And there are a ton of them: I count 25 new filter additions on iOS before you reach the ones that were present before.

“From subtle color edits to options for expressive styles, these updates make it easy for you to try various looks for your posts,” Meta’s blog post reads. As always, you can adjust the intensity of any filter with a slider. For the first time, some of these filters (like “wide angle” and “wavy”) make...

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Verizon wants to back up your entire life for $13.99 per month

Honestly? Unlimited storage is tempting. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Verizon’s cloud storage options are growing: today the company unveiled a new individual plan for its unlimited storage tier. It’s an add-on available for existing Verizon subscribers and costs $13.99 per month. It is — I’ll repeat — unlimited, so you can upload all the photos, videos, documents, PDFs, and PNGs that your heart desires, from your phone and your computer. That’s an unusual offering when most other cloud storage services come with data caps, but this is a wireless carrier after all, so it’s worth considering a couple of words of caution.

Carriers, including Verizon, often have funny definitions of “unlimited,” and there are indeed a few limitations. Individual files can’t exceed 10GB, and you can only upload 50GB per day....

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Google’s new Titan security keys are ready for a world without passwords

Google Titan security keys (2023) | Image: Google

The latest iteration of Google’s Titan Security Key is here, ready to work alongside the new passwordless passkey technology that’s rolled out with support from Apple, Microsoft, Google, and many others. Two new versions of the key are available in the Google Store starting today with either a USB-C connection ($35) or USB-A connection ($30), and — like the previous versions released in 2021 — both also have NFC to connect wirelessly to phones and other mobile devices.

I’ve been using the USB-C version for a few days, and it works just as well as other keys I have, like the older Titan hardware and other FIDO2 keys from Yubico. Having NFC support on both versions is convenient so that you don’t have to choose, especially since when...

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YouTube Premium’s better-looking 1080p is now on Android and TVs, too

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube has officially rolled out its YouTube Premium-exclusive “enhanced bitrate” 1080p resolution option on Android and TVs, the company announced on Wednesday. The improved video quality launched on iOS first earlier this year and became available on the web in August.

I don’t subscribe to Premium, so I can’t vouch for whether the enhanced bitrate makes much of a difference. But YouTube says that the improved video quality is turned on automatically “based on your connection and viewing settings,” so if you pay for Premium and your videos now look a little bit nicer, that might be why.

YouTube also detailed a few other improvements that are now available to Premium subscribers. You can now pick up videos where you left off when...

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Niantic is using AI to make Peridot’s fake pets feel more real

Image: Niantic

Peridot, Niantic’s original augmented reality pet game, will start using generative AI designed to make the game’s cute technicolor aliens behave more like your cat.

Here’s how it works. Starting with today’s update, Niantic’s algorithm will analyze real-world objects captured in game with your phone’s camera and then convert those objects into words to be parsed by a large language model (LLM) — in this case, a customized version of Meta’s Llama 2 program.

Additionally, each pet, called Dots, will have their personality profile — which is similar to the different natures of pokémon — also fed to the LLM. Peridot will then ask the LLM how a dot with its specific personality type would interact with the objects around it. Its answers...

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Here are the best Kindle deals right now

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite is often on sale when purchased as a part of a bundle. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon looks to be moving...

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Mercedes-Benz opens its first 400kW EV charging station in the US

Image: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz cut the ribbon on its first EV fast-charging hub in the US, complete with a swanky waiting area and 400kW charging speeds courtesy of ChargePoint.

The hub is located at the automaker’s US-based headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, meaning most of the early users are likely to be Mercedes employees. But the company says that owners of non-Mercedes EVs are welcome to use the chargers as well.

The charging station is the first of a proposed 2,000 hubs that Mercedes plans on installing worldwide as part of a $1 billion, multiyear plan. But the company isn’t shouldering the whole cost itself; 50 percent will be covered by MN8 Energy, an offshoot of Goldman Sachs Asset Management focused on solar power and energy storage.

The new...

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Apple is giving iPhone 14 owners an extra year of free Emergency SOS services

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

iPhone 14 and 15 buyers won’t need to pay for Apple’s satellite-powered Emergency SOS safety feature anytime soon. This morning, the company announced that it’s extending the free phase of Emergency SOS for an additional year for iPhone 14 owners. That means that the service will now lapse at the same time for both iPhone generations in November 2025.

Emergency SOS makes it possible to reach emergency services via a satellite connection in areas where Wi-Fi or a regular cellular signal are unavailable. Apple says the feature has “helped save lives around the world.”

“From a man who was rescued after his car plummeted over a 400-foot cliff in Los Angeles, to lost hikers found in the Apennine Mountains in Italy, we continue to hear...

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Microsoft’s planning tools will soon be less confusing

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft is overhauling its project management services to help small teams and businesses better keep track of work. During the company’s Ignite event on Wednesday, Microsoft announced that some of its existing task management and planning tools — Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner, and Microsoft Project for the web — will be combined into a single, unified experience next year under the name Microsoft Planner.

The new Microsoft Planner experience will first be available within the Planner app in Microsoft Teams in spring 2024, with a web experience to follow later that year. The existing Tasks by Planner and To Do apps in Microsoft Teams are being renamed to just “Planner.” Microsoft Project for the web is also expected to be renamed...

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Microsoft debuts new unified security solution with Security Copilot

Unified Microsoft Defender dashboard with analytics and Sentinel on the sidebar. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is combining its Sentinel security analytics and Microsoft Defender XDR platforms into an “industry first” unified security operations platform — with the company’s Security Copilot chatbot stationed centrally for IT and security personnel to administer everything easily. During the company’s enterprise-focused Ignite conference today, Microsoft is announcing expanded conversational AI abilities to better centrally manage its security platforms.

Microsoft originally announced Security Copilot in March, demonstrating how its generative AI system can summarize all the alerts and data points that typically inundate security professionals. At the time, it had not been made available beyond “a few customers” to test. Microsoft...

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Microsoft Ignite 2023: all the AI news from Microsoft’s IT pro event

Illustration: The Verge

Ignite is Microsoft’s chance to show why AI matters to developers and IT professionals.

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Google’s new Photos features try to declutter your library

As the amount we store in image form increases, so does the need to categorize it. | Image: Google

Google’s latest features for its Photos app on iOS and Android are an attempt to tame an unruly gallery filled with duplicate photos, endless screenshots, and photos of receipts and ID cards.

The first feature, called Photo Stacks, automatically groups similar photos that were taken close together into a single panel in your gallery. It’s a handy feature if, like me, you tend to “spray and pray” when taking photographs in the hope that at least one of them turns out okay. Although Google says its software will attempt to pick out the best of the collection to show in your gallery, thankfully, you can also make your own top pick. You can also manually modify the stacks or turn the feature off entirely if you want to be faced with the...

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Microsoft Teams is about to go 3D with VR meetings

Image: Microsoft

When I first used Microsoft Mesh, the company’s mixed reality platform, I said it felt “like the virtual future of Microsoft Teams meetings.” Now, nearly three years later, Microsoft is making immersive 3D Teams meetings a reality. In January, Microsoft Mesh is being integrated into Teams to allow co-workers to meet together in a virtual space — no VR headset required.

It’s a big shift in Microsoft’s original vision for Mesh — an entire platform built on top of Azure that Microsoft hoped developers would tap into — but then a lot has changed with Microsoft’s VR / AR ambitions over the past few years. Microsoft’s HoloLens boss, Alex Kipman, left the company last year following misconduct allegations. Six months later, Microsoft shut down...

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Microsoft Teams’ latest AI trick cleans and decorates your messy webcam background

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is adding two new AI-powered features to Teams soon that will improve your voice and webcam. A new “decorate your background” feature is coming to Microsoft Teams Premium in early 2024 and uses generative AI effects to clean up and replace clutter in the background when on a video call.

While Microsoft Teams has long offered a variety of virtual backgrounds, this decoration feature will work in a real-world room, much like the augmented reality filters you find on Snapchat. It can even add plants, lights, and seasonal objects to the background behind you. We’ll have to see how this functions in reality, but if it works as well as the GIF below, then it could be a good option to hide your messy background and avoid the...

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Bing Chat is now Microsoft Copilot, to better compete with ChatGPT

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft launched its big AI push earlier this year as part of its Bing search engine, integrating a ChatGPT-like interface directly into its search results. Now less than a year later, it’s dropping the Bing Chat branding and moving to Microsoft Copilot, the new name for the chat interface you might have used in Bing, Microsoft Edge, and Windows 11.

Microsoft initially talked up the Google search competition for its AI ambitions earlier this year, but it now looks like it has its sights set on ChatGPT instead. The Bing Chat rebranding comes just days after OpenAI revealed 100 million people are using ChatGPT on a weekly basis. Despite a close partnership worth billions, Microsoft and OpenAI continue to compete for the same customers...

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The Analogue Pocket now comes in a rainbow of classic Game Boy colors

Photo: Analogue

Analogue seems obsessed with recreating the Game Boy family as faithfully as possible. For its latest endeavor, it’s bringing the classic colorways of the Game Boy Advance and Pocket to the Analogue Pocket. These Classic Limited Edition Pockets have, according to the press release, been “carefully color-matched” to resemble the colors of the Game Boys of old, offering blue, green, indigo, spice orange, pink, red, silver, and yellow.

Just take a look at this. Don’t you just feel somewhere between 10–15 years old again seeing that iconic indigo color?

Photo: Analogue

The Classic Limited Edition Pockets will go on sale on November 17th, retailing for $249.99. Expect them to start shipping a few days later on the 20th,...

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Qi2’s MagSafe-like wireless charging is finally almost here

Okay, this is a MagSafe charger, not Qi2, but it’s the same idea, and there’s a skeleton for some reason. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Qi2 — the next version of the wireless charging standard, now with more magnets! — is more almost-here than ever. The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) announced today that the first Qi v2.0 devices are nearly through the certification process, with the first available “in time for the holiday season” and more than 100 either in certification testing or waiting in line. The iPhone 15 series will be the first Qi2-certified phones.

Qi is the open wireless charging standard that pretty much everyone uses. It’s in Androids and iPhones, and MagSafe is built on top of it. Version 2.0 includes updates to the non-magnetic Qi standard, which we’ll get to, but it also introduces Qi2.

Qi2 promises faster, less finicky wireless charging using...

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Apple’s new iMac and MacBook Pros are matching their all-time low prices

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is more powerful than ever and now comes in space black. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Were you waiting until Black Friday to score a good deal on Apple’s new M3-powered MacBook Pros or iMacs? Well, you might not need to. Right now, the new Apple desktop and laptops have returned to their all-time low price at B&H Photo. While it’s possible they could drop in price even more next week, this is a good deal to grab if you’d rather not wait and see.

First up, if you’re shopping for laptops, the gray 14-inch MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM now starts at $1,449 ($150 off), while the black M3 Pro-equipped version with 18GB of RAM is $1,799 ($200 off). Meanwhile, the even more powerful 16-inch M3 Pro-powered laptop starts at $2,299 ($200 off). All of these discounts will show up after you add the laptops to your cart.

Except for a...

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Meta doesn’t want to control how teens use the internet — it wants to make app stores do it

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta just laid out its position in the fight over controlling what kids see online, and it, unsurprisingly, doesn’t want to play the central role. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Meta’s global head of safety Antigone Davis argues app stores should implement age controls and parental consent requirements for social media — not Meta.

The reason for that, according to Davis, is because the age verification methods proposed by lawmakers across the US vary from state to state, creating an inconsistent experience across social media platforms. To solve this, Meta says parents should instead approve the apps that their teens download directly from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

“With this solution, when a teen wants to...

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Madame Web’s first trailer will leave you wondering what the hell is going on

The idea of Sony actually following through with its plans to make a standalone Spider-Man spinoff movie about the elderly clairvoyant hero Madame Web has always been a little hard to believe. But the film’s new trailer is the surest sign yet that Madame Web is definitely coming to theaters.

Seemingly set in a chunk of Sony’s spider-centric multiverse where neither Peter Parker nor Miles Morales are a big deal, Madame Web chronicles the origin story of Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson), a paramedic whose chance encounter with death while saving someone on the job leaves her with the ability to predict the future. At first, in the trailer, Cassandra can’t make heads or tails of what it means when she vividly envisions how scenarios around...

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Who owns AI art?

In 2022, James Allen filed a copyright application for an image titled “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” or “Space Opera Theater.” While the picture had the look of a detailed sci-fi painting, Allen had actually created it through painstaking experimentation in the AI image generator Midjourney; he described using over 600 prompt variations to get the look he wanted. But the US Copyright Office wasn’t impressed. In a series of decisions, Allen’s work became one of the first copyright requests rejected specifically for using AI tools — and an example of how these tools are raising new copyright conundrums at virtually every turn.

Generative AI programs — particularly image generators like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E — have raised...

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The Verge’s 2023 holiday gift guide for dads

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge

We’ve pulled together a king’s ransom of fun and unique gift ideas for all the dads in your life so you can spoil them no matter your budget.

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