Screens are good, actually

How exactly does this thing show me a funny cat picture so I can momentarily escape the drudgery of a visit to the DMV? | Image: Humane

Last week, Humane debuted its AI Pin as a phone replacement without a screen. You interact with it through voice, and a tiny projector displays things like media controls and incoming calls on the palm of your hand. The idea is to allow you to simply move through the world, unencumbered by digital devices constantly demanding your attention. To wear the AI Pin is to live in a world beyond screens.

It’s a beautiful vision that I’d love to buy into. But here’s the thing: screens are great, and I don’t think we can, or even should, ditch them quite yet.

Humane’s whole deal centers on the screenless-ness of its product — founder Imran Chaudhri said as much in his TED talk earlier this year. In Humane’s view, screens are a barrier between us...

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Joe Biden’s top climate adviser on how climate change will shape the US economy

National climate advisor Ali Zaidi holds a press briefing on Thursday, December 16th, 2021, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House. | Image: White House

Climate change is already taking its toll on the US economy, according to the most sweeping national assessment yet that was published earlier this week. Conducted every four years, this was the first national climate assessment to dedicate an entire chapter to economics. Its “conservative estimate” is that extreme weather supercharged by global warming already costs the US $150 billion in damages a year. That’s just one example of how our changing planet will affect Americans’ pocketbooks.

Extreme weather supercharged by global warming already costs the US $150 billion in damages a year

How is the Biden administration coping with this new reality? And are new technologies like AI helping or hurting the cause? The Verge spoke with Ali...

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The best early Black Friday tech deals you can shop right now

Illustration by Aaron Fernandez for The Verge

It’s official: the 2023 early holiday shopping season has arrived. And if you want to get a head start on your holiday shopping, major retailers like Amazon, Target, Best Buy, and Walmart have already launched their early Black Friday promos, dropping prices on tablets, wireless earbuds, laptops, smart home tech, and even OLED TVs.

We may see a whole bunch more deals arrive as we get closer to November 24th, but what’s discounted so far is still very much worth a look. For example, Bose’s noise-canceling QuietComfort 45 headphones and its new QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds have dropped to new all-time lows. A range of other gadgets and gizmos are also on sale, from the Google Pixel Buds Pro and 15-inch MacBook Air to the new slim...

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The creators of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters aren’t just trying to make a Godzilla spinoff show

Image: Apple

Monarch co-creators Chris Black and Matt Fraction and director Matt Shakman open up about why their new MonsterVerse series is so focused on ordinary humans.

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The Verge’s 2023 holiday gift guide for moms

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

A collection of cool, calming, and creative gifts to show your appreciation for that special maternal figure in your life.

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This is the keyboard that will convert you to the low-profile life

The Lofree Flow is a low-profile keyboard that types and sounds like a full-height one.

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Tumblr is betting big on going small

Illustration: The Verge

The social network failed to hit the growth targets its new owner set in 2019. But were they ever compatible with what Tumblr does best?

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The best early Black Friday deals on Amazon devices

Amazon’s quirky Echo Pop makes for a good budget-friendly gift... especially when it’s on sale for less than $20. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

For what feels like the billionth time this year, Amazon is once again throwing a massive sale on an assortment of its own devices. This time, however, it’s in honor of Black Friday, even though the marquee shopping event doesn’t actually take place until November 24th.

Not that we’re complaining. A lot of the standout deals we last saw during Amazon’s recent Prime Day event are back, after all, giving you yet another opportunity to save on the new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max, the Echo Pop, and the Kindle Scribe, among other tech. In some cases, Amazon is even offering steeper discounts than we saw in October, which is also the case at Best Buy, Target, and other retailers.

Here, we’ve rounded up the best Black Friday deals you can...

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Cadillac’s new Optiq compact electric SUV will be its cheapest EV

How cheap are you exactly, Optiq? | Image: Cadillac

Cadillac announced a new electric vehicle model called Optiq, which it says will “act as the entry point” for the automaker’s EV lineup in the US. Previously, the $64,000 Cadillac Lyriq was the automaker’s cheapest electric vehicle option, so the Optiq’s price could start in the sub-$60,000 range, although the company has not announced any details in that regard.

As a matter of fact, Cadillac hasn’t provided any details whatsoever, including key specifications like battery range, dimensions, powertrain options like whether it has AWD standard, charging speed, and more. Although unconfirmed, the Optiq is likely built on GM’s Ultium electric vehicle platform. What we do know is it will at least come in an orange color, has frontal design...

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Tires are saving us — and killing us, too

Illustration by Nico H. Brausch for The Verge

Tires are the most important safety component on a car, yet there’s increasing research that they’re doing a good deal of harm, too. Slowly, surely, one mote of black dust at a time, tires are leaving their mark on the environment.

According to researchers at Imperial College London, our cars and trucks emit 6 million tons of tire wear particles every year, transportation detritus that goes into the air, the land, and the water. That’s a massive figure that ignores the nearly 250 million tires that are disposed of annually in North America, roughly half of which are burned.

It’s a depressing state of affairs, but there is room for optimism. Every major tire manufacturer globally is raising its game — not only in terms of performance in...

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The secret environmental cost hiding inside your smart home device

Illustration by Nico H. Brausch for The Verge

Vijay Janapa Reddi runs a lab at Harvard University where he and his team attempt to solve some of the computer world’s greatest challenges. As a specialist in artificial intelligence systems, the technology he studies even follows him home, where his two daughters love to talk to their Amazon Alexa.

“They put a person inside that black box,” Janapa Reddi likes to joke with his four-year-old.

Janapa Reddi may be teasing when he tells his daughter a person is squeezed into their machine, but isn’t that where we’re headed? Smart home devices may never host a miniature human being inside of them — this isn’t that one episode of Black Mirror — but as the AI ecosystem evolves, voice assistants will quickly begin to feel hyperrealistic....

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Discord is shutting down its AI chatbot Clyde

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Discord is shutting down Clyde, its experimental AI chatbot. In a support note, Discord says the chatbot will be “deactivated” at the end of the month, and that by December 1st “users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in DMs, Group DMs or server chats.”

Discord first started testing Clyde’s AI features earlier this year, using OpenAI’s models to let the chatbot answer questions and have conversations with Discord users. It has been in limited testing ever since, and the company had planned to make it a fundamental part of its chat and communities app.

Image: Discord

The Clyde AI chatbot.

It’s not clear why Clyde is suddenly shutting down. It’s possible the chatbot may return as a paid Nitro-only feature...

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Bellroy’s iPhone 15 Pro case has a proper Action Button now

A traditional button in place of a cutout. | Image: Bellroy

Two months after some case makers were wrong-footed by Apple’s decision to replace the mute switch with an Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro lineup, Bellroy has released an updated range of cases. Unlike the first run, which had a cutout over the Action Button that could make it hard to reach in and press, the new designs have a more standard integrated button.

“The new design includes another button on the case to give the same functionality and experience as the actual device. It’s a lot more natural and seamless,” says Bellroy’s head of product development Arya Ghavifekr. Bellroy says anyone who bought its first run of cases with the cutout will be able to exchange them for the new model. It’s continuing to sell the old cases that...

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A hefty stable Steam Deck update gives the Dock a brand-new feature

Image: Valve

Valve’s new Steam Deck OLED just went on sale today, but there are goodies for the original LCD model, too — the company is now rolling out a stable build of SteamOS 3.5.5 with a hefty list of fixes, changes, and upgrades.

Some of the biggest are ones we’ve already seen in a September beta, like support for VRR and HDR external displays, the ability to tweak your screen’s color and undervolt your processor with new firmware, and a graphics driver update with a big performance improvement for Starfield (though it still looks like mud in cities).

But there’s one thing on the list I didn’t expect: The update gives the official $79 Steam Deck Dock the new ability to support VRR external monitors itself. (Last I checked, the Steam Deck Dock...

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Fortnite is blocking some outfits in experiences made for kids

Image: Epic Games

Fortnite just started showing age ratings for every experience you can play in the game, but as a result of those changes, some in-game outfits can’t be used in experiences that are rated Everyone or Everyone 10 Plus, according to a blog post from the Fortnite team.

For example, while writing this article, got my game set up to visit the E-rated experience themed around The Game Awards while wearing one of the outfits you can earn from this season’s battle pass. When in the Fortnite lobby, there was a notice that “your selected outfit can’t be worn in experiences of this age rating” — which was surprising to me, because nothing about the outfit struck me as particularly offensive.

But when I tabbed over to my locker, where Epic lets...

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YouTube loosens ad guidelines around breastfeeding nudity and twerking

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube has adjusted its ad-friendly content guidelines to allow breastfeeding videos with nudity — but only in cases when a child is present — as well as videos with twerking, grinding, and other “sensual” types of dancing. The platform updated its guidelines on Thursday with the changes, which will carry over to gaming videos as well.

Previously, breastfeeding videos on YouTube that showed a visible areola were not eligible to earn ad revenue. Similarly, choreography videos that showed twerking, grinding, or in which the dancer wore minimal clothing were demonetized under YouTube’s policy.

The new updates read as follows:

Breastfeeding: Breastfeeding content where a child is present, even with visible areola, can now earn ad...

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TikTok is ‘aggressively removing’ videos promoting an Osama bin Laden manifesto

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok is taking action against content promoting the manifesto Osama bin Laden wrote discussing his supposed motivations for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), TikTok says it’s “proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”

Dozens of videos about the manifesto, titled “Letter to America,” have surfaced on TikTok over the past several days, with CNN reporting the topic amassed “at least” 14 million views by Thursday. Originally published in 2002, the manifesto criticizes the US government’s presence in the Middle East and support of Israel. However, some creators are now trying to apply that criticism to the US government’s response to the ongoing...

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Google’s revised Chrome extension standard loosens restrictions on ad blockers

Illustration: The Verge

Google has shared an updated timeline about Manifest V3, the latest version of its Chrome extension specification that has faced criticism for putting limits on ad blockers. After putting the update on pause last year, Google announced on Thursday it will continue the transition to Manifest V3 with some key changes.

One of those changes is “improved content filtering support” for the Declarative Net Request API used by ad-blocking extensions. Google previously proposed putting restrictions on the functionality of this API for security reasons, potentially impacting the effectiveness of ad-blockers across all Chromium-based browsers, including Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox.

Developers and privacy advocates pushed back on the...

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Twitter’s decentralized offshoot Bluesky now has 2 million users

A Bluesky sign-in screen. | Image: Bluesky

Bluesky, a decentralized social media app alternative to X (formerly Twitter), has announced that it has now crossed 2 million users — doing so just two months after crossing 1 million users. The company is also finally about to add a public web interface, which might help make it a more attractive destination for journalists and other users.

One big hurdle for Bluesky to reach a bigger audience is that people can’t view links to posts without being signed in, so the upcoming public web interface should finally help alleviate that problem. The public interface is slated for launch “around the end of this month,” according to the company’s blog post.

Bluesky will also open the floodgates for federation early next year. Bluesky is...

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Using your iPhone to start your car is about to get a lot easier

Image: Apple

Digital keys could become more popular and more ubiquitous after automakers and the consumer tech industry came together to announce the formation of a new working group to develop industrywide standards for ultra wideband (UWB) connectivity.

The working group is the result of two consortiums teaming up (don’t you love it when consortiums consort with other consortiums?): the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC), which includes Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, and most major car companies as members; and FiRa Consortium, a nonprofit that supports UWB and includes Apple, Google, Cisco, Samsung, Qualcomm, and others as members.

The result is a working group with a name that truly defies comprehension: the Joint Ultra-wideband (UWB) MAC PHY Working...

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IBM pulls X ads as Elon Musk endorses white pride

Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

IBM has pulled its advertising presence from X, formerly Twitter, as Elon Musk continues to endorse far-right talking points — agreeing with posts this week that promoted antisemitism and pushed support for white pride. The nonprofit Media Matters drew attention to those statements and noted that IBM, Apple, Comcast, and other companies all had ads placed next to pro-Nazi and pro-Hitler content (not posted by Musk) on X. IBM told the Financial Times and confirmed to The Verge that “IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”

On the platform today, Musk called it “super messed up” that white people are not, in...

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Baldur’s Gate 3: Deluxe Edition on Xbox and PS5 is coming on a ‘fuck-ton of discs’

Image: Larian Studios

Larian Studios has announced that a physical deluxe edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for preorder now, and just like my bear boyfriend, it’s friggin’ huge.

Image: Larian Studios

“On both PS5 and Xbox, the game will be playable on disc, with the PS5 version sporting two discs, and Xbox a whopping three discs to house the chonky epic,” reads the press release.

Knowing just how massive the game is, I’m pretty sure one of those discs houses Act 3 alone. Massive size aside, the developers at Larian Studios understand that now more than ever, it’s worth offering players physical versions of games.

“We understand the value of physical media, and while there are clearly increasingly significant challenges when it...

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Kia brings EV3 and EV4 concepts to the LA Auto Show and is launching an all-new hybrid Sorento

The 2025 Kia Sorento PHEV. | Image: Kia

Kia is stationing its latest concept EV3 and EV4 electric vehicles at the LA Auto Show and is launching all-new 2025 Sorento hybrid and plug-in hybrid SUVs that will hit dealerships next year.

Kia’s EV3 crossover and EV4 sedan were first announced in October only as concept vehicles, and that hasn’t changed today. The EV3 is inspired by the Kia’s soon-to-launch EV9 three-row electric SUV but is smaller. The EV3 also gives off that boxy Soul-ful essence, complete with the high and slightly sloping roof.

The EV4 concept, meanwhile, is a sedan that you could totally mistake for an EV6 when looking at it from the front. The EV4 has a “cocoon-like” interior, but really, both concepts have cabins styled in sci-fi-minimalism, with a Tesla...

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Amazon announces online car sales for the first time, starting with Hyundai

Starting next year, you’ll be able to buy a car on Amazon for the first time. The company announced a deal with Hyundai that will allow dealerships to sell cars through the site.

Previously, customers could browse car showrooms and compare prices on Amazon but not actually buy a car. That will change next year when several Hyundai dealers start to list models for sale on the site.

Customers can browse cars on the site, and make a purchase using their preferred payment methods. Customers can then choose to pick the car up at a nearby dealership or have it delivered to their home.

“This new shopping experience will create another way for dealers to build awareness of their selection and offer convenience to their customers,” Amazon said...

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The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

These days, we are all dealing with huge amounts of information, ranging from meeting notes to social media to photos and videos to whatever else we’ve collected — and we are all trying to find some way to store it, organize it, and find it when we need it.

If you want to get really basic, you can use a spreadsheet or create a simple set of word-processing documents. Otherwise, you can try what is somewhat inaccurately described as a note-taking app. These apps, at their simplest, store your notes and other thoughts and, at their more complex, are capable of manipulating any and all content you want to drop into them.

One of the most well-known has been Evernote, which has gone through quite a few changes over the years, both...

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Valve’s Steam Deck OLED store is broken

Photo by The Verge

If you’re having trouble ordering Valve’s new Steam Deck OLED, you’re not alone. Orders opened at 1PM ET on Thursday, and many people are already running into issues actually completing a purchase. Some Verge staffers who tried to purchase a Steam Deck OLED have been able to put the device in their cart but haven’t actually been able to check out.

Valve acknowledged that there are problems and says it’s trying to address them. “We’re working on the Steam Store checkout issues,” Valve wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Apologies for the inconvenience — please hang on while we fix things on our end.”

Hi, we're working on the Steam Store checkout issues. Apologies for the inconvenience - please hang on while we fix things on our end.

— Steam...

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The best fitness trackers to buy right now

Photo illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

From simple fitness bands and rugged sports watches to rings, these are the best trackers you can get.

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The best Fitbits for your fitness and health

Fitbit makes an array of fitness trackers, from basic fitness bands to full-fledged smartwatches, though the best Fitbit smartwatch isn’t technically a Fitbit. | Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Whether you want a basic fitness tracker or a smartwatch, there’s a Fitbit for everyone — though the best Fitbit smartwatch isn’t technically a Fitbit.

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Apple says iPhones will support RCS in 2024

The Verge

The blue versus green bubble debate may finally be winding down. Apple says, in 2024, the iPhone will add support for RCS messaging, the messaging standard used by most Android phones, according to a report from 9to5Mac.

“Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association,” an Apple spokesperson tells 9to5Mac. “We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.”

The iPhone adopting RCS could enable support for read receipts, typing indicators, high-res images and videos, and more,...

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The EU will finally free Windows users from Bing

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Microsoft will soon let Windows 11 users in the European Economic Area (EEA) disable its Bing web search, remove Microsoft Edge, and even add custom web search providers — including Google if it’s willing to build one — into its Windows Search interface.

All of these Windows 11 changes are part of key tweaks that Microsoft has to make to its operating system to comply with the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act, which comes into effect in March 2024. Microsoft will be required to meet a slew of interoperability and competition rules, including allowing users “to easily un-install pre-installed apps or change default settings on operating systems, virtual assistants, or web browsers that steer them to the products and services of...

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