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The Boy and the Heron. | Image: GKIDS
Longtime Evangelion animator Takeshi Honda had already signed up to work on another film when The Boy and the Heron director came calling. “When Miyazaki says that to you, really there’s no way to say no,” Honda says.
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Kodak’s new Super 8 camera. | Image: Kodak
Kodak is gearing up to actually sell the Super 8 film camera it announced way back at CES 2016. It’s updated the camera’s product page with a new “sign up to buy” button to allow potential customers to register their interest. Kodak’s global managing director for motion picture, Vanessa Bendetti, tells The Verge that the company expects the camera to go on sale in limited quantities in the US on December 4th, before releasing in Canada, the UK, and other European markets.
When it goes on sale, the camera will cost a whopping $5,495. That’s not just expensive when you consider that, as 404 Media notes, vintage Super 8 cameras can generally be had for a few hundred bucks — it’s also expensive compared to Kodak’s previously announced...
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Participants in Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge_._ | Image: Netflix
The most dystopian thing about Netflix’s new Squid Game reality show is how much fun its contestants seem to be having.
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Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge, Shutterstock
We pick the best video doorbell cameras for keeping an eye on people, packages, and anything else that comes across your front porch.
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Image: Epic Games
The leaks were true: Eminem is coming to Fortnite as part of the game’s Chapter 4 finale. Epic Games has confirmed Eminem will appear during the live finale, while players will get to purchase a few different skins modeled after the rapper.
Fortnite’s finale event, called The Big Bang, kicks off on December 2nd at 2PM ET. In an updated page on Fortnite’s website, developers say you can “watch Eminem... as Eminem” during the event, which marks the end of the Fortnite OG chapter that brought the game back to its roots. Fortnite is calling this event a “new beginning” for the game, potentially hinting at a new island.
Image: Epic Games
The Rap Boy, Slim Shady, and Marshall Never More skins.
Meanwhile, Fortnite is...
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Niantic attempted to avoid the sexual bias lawsuit going to trial. | Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge
A California judge ruled that a class-action sexual bias lawsuit against Niantic could proceed, blocking the Pokémon Go creator’s attempt to move the suit into arbitration.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle found that allegations raised by two female former employees regarding exposure to a hostile gender-based work environment were protected under the 2021 Ending Forced Arbitration Act.
Attorney Genie Harrison described the outcome as a “watershed moment for sexual harassment and gender bias cases.”
“The ruling is a watershed moment for sexual harassment and gender bias cases, because it clarifies that the protections of the 2021 Ending Forced Arbitration Act do indeed encompass cases in which sexual overtures are not...
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Floor-sweeping robots are only getting better, with new mopping skills, better navigation chops, and more automation, so less work for you. We picked nine of the best bots you can buy right now.
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Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge
Whether you need a stocking stuffer or a white elephant present, we’ve got an inexpensive gift idea for nearly every occasion.
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The EP-133 KO II is a synth in the image of an old-school calculator. | Image: Teenage Engineering
The Swedish tech and design company Teenage Engineering is known for lots of things — helping create the look and feel of devices like the Playdate and the Nothing Phone, creating outrageously expensive voice recorders coveted by every reporter you know, building knobs and buttons better than anyone else — but above all it’s a music company. And it’s now launching its latest music device: the EP-133 KO II synthesizer. (The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so we’re going to call it the KO II.)
The KO II is something like a higher-end version of the Pocket Operator, the extremely cool and customizable $59 synthesizers Teenage Engineering launched in 2015. The Pocket Operator line has been a huge hit for Teenage Engineering, and...
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Illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Chromebooks are getting better, and good ones are getting cheaper.
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A year of ad-supported Hulu is less than $12 right now. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
If it feels like every streaming service received a price hike this year, it’s probably because most of them have. Netflix, Apple TV Plus, Discovery Plus, and Disney Plus are just a few recent examples, though there are still ways to weather the price increases. Black Friday brings all sorts of deals, after all, including ways to save on your monthly streaming bill.
In fact, some streaming services are offering deals that offset their recent price hikes — well, at least temporarily. Paramount Plus, for example, might have raised the price of its cheapest plan to $5.99 a month, but at the moment, it starts at just $1.99. What’s even better is that both new and returning subscribers are eligible for the deal, which is a bonafide rarity...
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‘Tis the season to snatch up some discounted wearables. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Thinking of setting some new health goals or records in the coming year? Smartwatches and fitness trackers can be a helpful tool, but sifting through the dozens of models, metrics, and styles can be a headache.
Even so, Black Friday is one of the best times to snag wearable deals for the year ahead. We’ve rounded up the best deals spanning smartwatches, multisport watches, and fitness trackers alike.
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It’s nearly Thanksgiving, which means it’s time for some wild Black Friday weekend deals. And the official Verge store is no exception: today through Monday, you can save big on merch from The Verge.
Here’s a quick breakdown of our major offers:
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Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Microsoft is allowing Windows 10 users to try out the Copilot feature that was previously only available in Windows 11. The software giant announced last week that Copilot would be making its way to Windows 10, and now there’s a Release Preview version of the OS available for testers with Copilot baked in.
Copilot in Windows 10 works very similar to how it appears in Windows 11, with a button on the right-hand side of the taskbar that lets you bring up the AI-powered chatbot to answer queries and generate text. There are some slight differences in features simply because some of the skills or actions available in Windows 11 don’t exist in Windows 10.
Windows 10 Home or Pro users that are in the Release Preview channel can test Copilot...
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A row of Tesla charging stations. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Tesla is using a new fee to encourage people not to charge their cars to 100 percent at busy Supercharger locations. In the US, the Supercharger Congestion Fee kicks in after a car hits 90 percent charge, at which point drivers will be hit with a $1 fee for each minute they continue to charge their vehicles. The company’s support page says the fee will apply at “certain Supercharging locations” when they’re busy.
The launch of the fee arrives ahead of Thanksgiving in the US, which is traditionally a time when lots of people travel to see family. But it also comes as Tesla is opening up its Supercharging locations for use with non-Tesla EVs, which has the potential to increase demand for its charging network (though in the longer term...
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Image: Microsoft
Microsoft’s Windows Hello fingerprint authentication has been bypassed on laptops from Dell, Lenovo, and even Microsoft. Security researchers at Blackwing Intelligence have discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the top three fingerprint sensors that are embedded into laptops and used widely by businesses to secure laptops with Windows Hello fingerprint authentication.
Microsoft’s Offensive Research and Security Engineering (MORSE) asked Blackwing Intelligence to evaluate the security of fingerprint sensors, and the researchers provided their findings in a presentation at Microsoft’s BlueHat conference in October. The team identified popular fingerprint sensors from Goodix, Synaptics, and ELAN as targets for their research, with a...
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Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 6th, 2023. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, overcoming an attempted boardroom coup that sent the company into chaos over the past several days. Former president Greg Brockman, who quit in protest of Altman’s firing, will return as well.
The company said in a statement late Tuesday that it has an “agreement in principle” for Altman to return alongside a new board composed of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo. D’Angelo is a holdover from the previous board that initially fired Altman on Friday; he remains on this initial small board to give the previous board some representation.
A source with direct knowledge of the negotiations says that the sole job of this initial board is to vet and appoint a new formal board of up to 9...
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The Apple Watch Series 9 isn’t a massive step up from the prior model, but it does offer a few new features. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
A couple of months ago, Apple launched its latest batch of smartwatches, introducing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 ($799) alongside the new Apple Watch Series 9 ($399). Each wearable has its own pros and cons, as does the second-gen Apple Watch SE ($249), but the introduction of the new wearables also means there are now more Apple Watch models on the market than ever before — and a lot more deals to be had.
But with all of those options, which one should you pick? Generally speaking, you want to buy the newest watch you can afford so that it continues to receive software updates from Apple. The latest update, watchOS 10, just launched on the Apple Watch Series 4 and newer, though no one can say with certainty whether the Series 4 will get...
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Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
This is Hot Pod_,_ The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.
Happy Thanksgiving week! I will be out tomorrow making twice baked potatoes, putting together holiday baby outfits (many tiny overalls will be worn!!), and attempting a night drive to Long Island without hitting Southern State traffic or eliciting baby rage. This is to say, there will be no Hot Pod Insider this week and I will return next Tuesday. But if you want to be able to say “Yeah, I heard about that” at your own bipartisan Thanksgiving gathering, I had a piece last week for Insiders diving into the Ben Shapiro / Candace Owens feud roiling the conservative podcast space. Enjoy (?)!
Got a bunch of Spotify news today, including...
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Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
Users on Reddit and Hacker News are complaining that YouTube seems to have inserted an intentional five-second delay before video pages will load in Mozilla’s Firefox and occasionally some other browsers. YouTube tells The Verge that these users are right about the delay, but the browser has nothing to do with it — it’s part of the company’s efforts to quash ad blockers across all platforms.
“In the past week, users using ad blockers may have experienced suboptimal viewing, which included delays in loading, regardless of the browser they are using,” YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton wrote in an email. Lawton wrote that disabling the ad blocker should resolve the issue, though users “may still experience a temporary delay...
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ChatGPT’s voice feature is now available to all users for free. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI announced users can now tap the headphones icon to use their voice to talk with ChatGPT in the mobile app, as well as get an audible response.
OpenAI first rolled out the ability to prompt ChatGPT with your voice and images in September, but it only made the feature available to paying users.
The release comes as OpenAI’s staff struggle with the sudden ousting of their CEO and messy negotiations for him to return. The demo included in OpenAI’s post on X even jokes about the ongoing drama, which has unfolded late into the night over the past few days.
In the example, someone asks ChatGPT, “It’s been a long night for the team, and...
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From midsized and midrange stars to big, beefy monsters, these are the best technically portable gaming rigs you can get.
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Flipboard is the latest company to end its presence on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a Medium post published Tuesday, the company said it would no longer be “actively monitoring or posting updates on X,” save for the occasional retweet. Instead, Flipboard will be refocusing its efforts on Mastodon and other open social platforms.
The reasons for Flipboard’s departure from X appear to be two-fold: X’s more lax moderation policies under Elon Musk’s leadership, which has led to a sharp spike in hate speech and misinformation; and Flipboard’s goal of working with federated social media services. Over the past several months, Flipboard has joined a growing list of companies, including Mozilla, Tumblr, and Medium, that are...
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Image: Devolver Digital
Christmas has come early for indie / solo game developers. GameMaker, the game engine software program used to make Undertale, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Hotline Miami 2, and more, has announced that it’s making significant changes to its pricing structure — but don’t worry, they’re the good kind of changes.
Starting today, GameMaker will be free to use for noncommercial, non-console projects, and the company is eliminating its indie / creator tier monthly subscription fee in favor of a one-time paid licensing fee of $99. Additionally, if you’re currently enrolled at the indie / creator tier and wish to pay the licensing fee, the subscription fees you’ve paid will be discounted from the price. Check out the FAQ page for details.
Russell...
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Dave Filoni in April at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London. | Photo by Jeff Spicer / Getty Images for Disney
Dave Filoni just got rewarded for the success of Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, and other Star Wars shows with a promotion to chief creative officer of Lucasfilm. According to details in a new Vanity Fair interview, he’ll work alongside head developer Carrie Beck, reporting directly to Kathleen Kennedy, and together, the duo will determine the direction of Star Wars overall — not just the streaming shows.
Filoni told Vanity Fair he’ll now be involved “at the inception” of everything that happens in the franchise. He’ll keep his executive vice president title and his director role on the New Republic film that connects to the stories of Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett. For many fans, that’ll be a thrilling prospect — I know...
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Image: Getty
As Tesla prepares to deliver its first Cybertrucks to customers, a new report paints a grisly picture of the Texas factory where the truck is being built, including a casting machine explosion and a robot allegedly goring a worker.
The Information reported some of the gruesome incidents that have occurred at the Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, where one out of every 21 workers were reportedly hurt in 2022. The data is derived from the required injury reports Tesla submits to OSHA.
One incident in 2021 involved an engineer who approached a supposed shutdown robot arm but got clawed and pinned to the wall by the machine performing its programmed motions. A witness said the engineer bled from his back and arms, and after someone hit the...
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Image: The Verge
Making sense of Apple’s messy MagSafe charging ecosystem, where the first-party options are far from the best.
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Anthropic gives Claude more abilities. | Image: Anthropic
While OpenAI is in the middle of an existential crisis, there’s a new chatbot update from Anthropic, the Google-backed AI startup founded by former OpenAI engineers who left over disagreements about the company’s increasingly commercial direction as its Microsoft partnership went on.
Anthropic has announced that the latest update of its chatbot, Claude 2.1, can digest up to 200,000 tokens at once for Pro tier users, which it says equals over 500 pages of material.
Our new model Claude 2.1 offers an industry-leading 200K token context window, a 2x decrease in hallucination rates, system prompts, tool use, and updated pricing.
Claude 2.1 is available over API in our Console, and is powering our https://t.co/uLbS2JNczH chat experience. p...
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
From basic and affordable to premium and ultra-customizable, these are the best controllers for Xbox. And they work with PCs, too.
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As the company has strongly hinted in recent weeks, Sonos will indeed release its first-ever pair of headphones next year. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who pegs a release as early as April. The over-ear headphones are rumored to cost between $400 and $500 — very premium territory for a company that’s brand new to the category.
At least one marquee feature will be their ability to synchronize music with other Sonos products in your home. The headphones will also include Sonos Voice Control, which is already heavily focused on music-related commands, unlike other broader voice assistants from Amazon, Apple, and Google. Bloomberg says Sonos has been working on the headphones since 2019 but has canceled earlier versions of...