Oppenheimer, Succession, and The Bear win big at the 2024 Golden Globes

This year’s Golden Globes didn’t feature all that many surprising upsets, and host Jo Koy lost the audience on more than one occasion, but the awards ceremony was marked by a number of heartfelt acceptance speeches and memorable moments that made it feel like Hollywood’s ready to get back to work.

Setting aside the messiness of Koy throwing the Golden Globes writers under the bus as his terrible jokes bombed, the evening was sprinkled with a handful of genuinely funny moments as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association handed out its latest batch of golden statues. Though director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie appeared to be the odds-on favorite in multiple categories with its 10 nominations, the film ultimately only came away with two wins: Best...

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Supreme Court rejects decade-old Twitter First Amendment case

Illustration: The Verge

The Supreme Court has declined a long-running legal challenge from X Corp., formerly Twitter, over whether it can publicly reveal US government demands for user data. X Corp. v. Garland was on a list of denied petitions released this morning. That leaves X with a March 2023 ruling that the First Amendment doesn’t protect Twitter from limits on reporting national security demands — a ruling civil liberties organizations say sets a disappointingly low bar for censorship.

Twitter filed its original suit in 2014, the year after whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed details of extensive secret US telecoms surveillance. In the wake of those disclosures, social networks won the option to report how many demands agencies like the Federal Bureau...

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Getty and Nvidia bring generative AI to stock photos

Image: The Verge

Getty Images and Nvidia are deepening their AI partnership with the launch of Generative AI by iStock, a text-to-image platform specifically designed to make stock photos.

Generative AI by iStock builds on Getty’s first foray into AI image generation, Generative AI by Getty Images. The difference is that the image platform from iStock — a stock photo service owned by Getty — helps individual or single-seat users, unlike Getty Images, which is more of a multiuser enterprise solution.

Trained using Nvidia’s Picasso model, Generative AI by iStock only learned from Getty’s creative library and iStock’s stock photo library. It did not train on Getty’s editorial image library to prevent it from generating trademarks or known personalities.

“...

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Appliance makers are teaming up to reduce your electricity usage — and save you cash

Smart fridges, washing machines, and more can connect to the smart grid to adjust energy use based on demand and save you cash. | Image: HCA

The question “Why does my fridge / washing machine / dryer need an internet connection?” is a good one: a phone notification that your wash is done is far from life-changing. But if adding smarts to your white goods could save you some cash, it might be another story.

With a connection to the internet, appliances can automatically shift and reduce their energy use through demand response programs to save you money. But today, this can be fiddly and confusing to set up; it’s also not widely available.

This is a problem the Home Connectivity Alliance (HCA) is trying to solve with a new Energy Management Interface specification it launched at CES this week — and it could be a big step toward expanding demand response adoption.

HCA members...

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Volkswagen says it’s putting ChatGPT in its cars for ‘enriching conversations’

Illustration: The Verge

Volkswagen is jumping on the generative AI bandwagon by announcing plans to install OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its vehicles starting in the second quarter of 2024.

The chatbot will be available across VW’s lineup, including in Tiguan, Passat, and Golf as well as the automaker’s ID family of electric vehicles. The feature will come to Europe first, and is being considered for customers in the US, though plans have yet to be finalized.

VW is using ChatGPT to augment its IDA in-car voice assistant to enable more naturalistic communication between car and driver. Vehicle owners can use the new super-powered voice assistant to control basic functions, like heating and air conditioning, or to answer “general knowledge questions.” (Though, given...

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BMW turns inward for CES, announcing new gaming, streaming, AR, and AI features

After back-to-back years of bringing unique, compelling concepts to the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show, BMW is turning inward in 2024 and focusing on the interior of the vehicle — namely, the types of technology and media content the automaker thinks its customers will want to interact with as they drive their high-priced, high-powered vehicles into the future.

In a statement, Frank Weber, chief technology officer and member of the board of management responsible for BMW Group development, said that the company was showing “more content, more customization, and more gaming.” And coming soon, the company’s operating system will feature “perfectly aligned” augmented reality and “strong, reliable” AI to enable better communication...

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Waymo’s driverless cars are finally ready for the highway

Image: Waymo

Waymo’s days of avoiding freeways are finally coming to an end. The Alphabet-owned company announced today that its fully driverless vehicles would begin tackling the higher speeds of Phoenix’s freeways, all while ferrying passengers to and from their destinations.

Waymo says it will approach freeway trips with some degree of slowness — not in terms of vehicle speed, but with regard to which passengers it accepts. The company will start by offering driverless rides to just employees and their friends. Later, paying passengers who use the company’s Waymo One ridehailing app will get to travel on the freeway if their trip requires it.

Self-driving cars typically skip freeways, preferring to stick to lower-speed local roads. This has not...

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This iPhone fell out of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282

This phone fell from a commercial jet airliner while it was in flight and lived to tell the tale. | Image: @SeanSafyre (X)

Game designer Sean Bates found an iPhone in a bush Sunday that had fallen from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 when it lost a part of its fuselage shortly after takeoff. The phone was undamaged, still on, and had the end of a sheared-off charging cable plugged in. Bates posted pictures of his discovery that afternoon, one of which included the screen showing a still-open email with a baggage receipt.

The phone fell out of the plane when, just a few minutes after takeoff, the Boeing 737 Max 9 explosively decompressed, sending a fuselage plug flying off of the plane and forcing it to turn around and make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport, where it had originally taken off.

The National Transportation Safety Board...

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AMD’s Ryzen 8000-series chips get an AI upgrade

Image: AMD

Not long after AMD announced new AI-focused silicon, the company is back with more. AMD finally revealed its Ryzen 8000-series desktop processors at CES 2024, and like the Ryzen 8040 mobile APU series announced in December, these chips are also built to, according to AMD, better handle AI.

The highest-specced chip of the bunch is the $329 Ryzen 7 8700G, which sports eight Zen 4 cores, 16 threads, and an up to 5.1GHz boost clock. It also comes with AMD’s flagship Radeon 780M integrated graphics with RDNA 3 architecture as well as an XDNA neural processing unit (NPU), which enables AI-powered features in Zoom, Blender, apps from Adobe, and more.

Image: AMD

When it comes to gaming on integrated graphics, AMD claims...

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AMD’s new $329 Radeon RX 7600 XT is ‘ready to take on 1440p’

Image: AMD

AMD is launching a new 1080p GPU that can also stretch to handle up to 1440p. The $329 Radeon RX 7600 XT will be available on January 24th, offering a performance bump over the existing Radeon RX 7600 that was firmly designed for 1080p gaming.

I’ve been waiting for sub-$400 cards to really push the bar on 1440p gaming, but AMD’s original Radeon RX 7600 failed to do so. While that $269 card shipped with just 8GB of memory, AMD is doubling this to 16GB on the RX 7600 XT and promising the card is “ready to take on 1440p.” It’s a surprise choice, particularly as the RX 7700 XT ships with 12GB of memory.

Image: AMD

AMD is promising 1440p gaming on the RX 7600 XT.

Unfortunately, the new RX 7600 XT remains at 32...

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This new robovac has an arm and can phone home

Robots are growing appendages... The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is the first robovac with an arm. It’s also one of the first to support Matter. | Image: Roborock

While we wait impatiently for robot vacuums to grow legs to tackle our stairs, Roborock has added an arm to its newest flagship model. Launching at CES 2024 in Las Vegas this week, the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra has an (admittedly very small) arm that pushes the robot’s side brush out further to get into corners. Okay, so it’s not going to be picking up your slippers and bringing them to you, but hey, it’s an arm! On a robot! In your house!

The $1,800 (gulp) S8 MaxV also includes a new voice assistant for controlling the vacuum without another smart device, 10,000 Pa of suction power, support for Matter, and a new camera — enabling AI-powered obstacle avoidance and video calling.

The robot’s mopping system is getting an upgrade, too,...

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Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro headset

Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Apple’s long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset Vision Pro headset launches in February. Here’s a timeline of all the details that have emerged about the device over the years and what we know so far.

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Apple Vision Pro prescription lenses will cost $149 extra

Apple’s Vision Pro headset. | Image: Apple

When the Apple Vision Pro headset goes on sale on February 2nd, anyone who needs some vision-correcting lenses will need to account for an extra charge to add optical inserts from Zeiss. Apple says that readers will cost $99, while prescription lenses are $149. Footnotes from Apple indicate that both are available only online, not in stores, a “valid prescription is required,” and not all prescriptions are supported.

For those with vision correction needs, ZEISS Optical Inserts are available with a prescription or as readers that magnetically attach to Vision Pro, allowing users to take full advantage of the display’s incredible sharpness and clarity.

Image: Apple

Zeiss optical inserts for Apple Vision Pro.

W...

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You can now live that RGB gamer lifestyle while you cook

Imagine this, but gamerified. | Image: Savant

If you had “install gamer lights in the kitchen” on your list of New Year’s resolutions, well, you’re in luck — GE Lighting is introducing its first full-color under-cabinet smart lights. The Cync Reveal HD Plus fixtures and pucks are arriving soon, starting at $59.99.

Not looking for that RGB gamer vibe? The Cync under-cabinet lights offer a full range of whites, and you can connect up to 10 fixtures together to give your countertops an ethereal glow that just screams Architectural Digest. They can be plugged in or hardwired, and they’re Matter compatible — helpful for futureproofing in the event that Matter sorts itself out.

We had the chance to check out a prototype of Cync’s under-cabinet lights at last year’s CES, and they looked...

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Thread Group is finally fixing Thread border routers

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge

Thread Group is finally fixing one of the biggest problems facing the adoption of the Matter smart home standard. Soon, when you have, say, a Google Nest Hub, an Apple TV, and an Eero Wi-Fi router, instead of each creating its own proprietary Thread network and messing up the communication between all of your Thread devices, they should all join together to form a big happy, meshy Thread network.

Thread is one of the two main wireless protocols that Matter works over. It’s a dedicated smart home wireless protocol designed to create a mesh network that reduces latency, eliminates points of failure, and improves battery life in smart home devices like sensors, locks, and lights.

Thread Group’s plan to fix the multi-network problem is...

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Clear 2 is a whimsical to-do list app a decade in the making

Clear 2 has a huge set of styles, icons, and even in-app sounds you can choose from. | Image: Clear

Clear was one of the most interesting, innovative, and beautiful to-do list apps around. It used clever swipes and gestures instead of buttons and settings, and it had a colorful panache that you just don’t find in a typical productivity tool. Clear was popular, it was cool, it worked well, and it seemed to have a bright future.

That was a decade ago. Back then, co-creator Phill Ryu says, the team stopped working on Clear because it felt… finished, or at least close enough. “It’s so minimalist and simple and charming,” Ryu says now, “it’s not an app where you want to keep adding onto it over the years.” Now, in hindsight, he allows that there was another factor as well. “I think we were all a little burned out.” After years of building...

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The Apple Vision Pro will launch in February

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

It’s finally time: Apple has announced it will start shipping its Vision Pro headset on February 2nd in the United States. Pre-orders begin January 19th.

Apple first revealed the Vision Pro headset during its Worldwide Developer Conference last June. The $3,499 Vision Pro offers a 4K display for each eye and lets you switch between augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) using a dial located on the side of the headset. It’s powered by a dual-chip setup featuring Apple’s in-house M2 chip and the new R1 chip, which is dedicated to processing data from built-in sensors, cameras, and microphones. Users can also navigate the interface without a controller, as the device supports eye, head, and hand tracking.

Apple has mainly...

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Wi-Fi’s next big upgrade is officially here

The TP-Link Archer BE800 is a not-yet-certified Wi-Fi 7 router. | Image: TP-Link

The Wi-Fi Alliance is now officially certifying devices that support Wi-Fi 7, the next generation of wireless home internet. With certification, Wi-Fi 7 devices are guaranteed to interoperate, and in 2024, we will see new tech products like phones, laptops, and routers endowed with the standard, which could represent huge speed and efficiency gains compared to even Wi-Fi 6E.

The alliance says in its announcement that Wi-Fi 7 will be better than existing standards for things like high-bandwidth streaming and low-latency wireless gaming, and that’s crucial as virtual reality gains popularity and people continue commuting to their kitchen tables or home offices to commune with co-workers over Zoom. Kevin Robinson, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance,...

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The Perfect Webpage

Richard Parry for The Verge

Description of this list

• Google shapes everything on the web.
• With huge amounts of traffic coming through the search engine, website operators will do anything to get noticed.
• Site designs, organization, and even the subheadings on specific pages are crafted with Google in mind.
• The changes start small, but they can quickly transform a website — until it’s optimized for Google first and readers last.

As the 14th season of Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York City came to a close this fall, I found myself on Reddit, reading rumors about the marriage and divorce timeline of one of the show’s stars. Redditors wanted more clues about a fishy relationship history to see if they could uncover a cheating scandal.

Were divorce papers public...

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Mophie’s Juice Pack is back for iPhones

Image: Mophie

Mophie is reviving the Juice Pack battery case for iPhones. As part of its announcements for CES, the company (which is owned by Zagg) announced that it will be releasing a new version of the Juice Pack for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Each version of the case has a different-sized battery that can be used to help give your phone a little extra, well, juice. The iPhone 15 version has a 2,400mAh internal battery, the iPhone 15 Pro version has a 2,600mAh internal battery, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max version has a 2,800mAh internal battery.

Mophie’s last Juice Pack case was the Juice Pack Access, which introduced for the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR in 2019. But with this new lineup, you may have noticed that there...

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The Home Depot is trying to make its own smart home ecosystem happen

The Home Depot’s Hubspace smart home platform is growing. | Image: The Home Depot

An old-school hardware store has been quietly building out one of the most complete lines of smart home products on the market. At CES this week, it’s adding a smart thermostat, smart hose timer, smart bathroom fan, smart freezer, and smart security system to its more than 150 connected products. You probably know the brand (and maybe even shopped there before): The Home Depot.

In late 2021, the US retail giant launched the Hubspace app, designed to control smart devices from its store brands in one app and with compatibility across Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Learning from competitors’ missteps in the space (cough, Lowe’s, Staples), The Home Depot opted not to go the hub route nor focus on just one brand (a la Best Buy and its smart...

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HP’s Omen Transcend 14 is a gaming laptop meant to do double duty as a normal one

The Omen Transcend 14 looks like a normal laptop, and that’s the point. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Gaming laptops, as a rule, look like gaming laptops. They usually have RGB lighting, a splash of vibrant color, and a hyper-stylized design. At a glance, you can almost always tell a gaming laptop from a regular one — and that’s before you even consider less visible but crucial features like discrete GPUs and superfast displays. But many of us, as much as we love to game, do not need to announce that we love to game every time we crack open our laptop, and HP’s new Omen Transcend 14 is supposed to cater to us.

This new 14-inch laptop is designed to bridge the gap between gaming and normal usage. That means more subtle flashes of color and RBG lighting that can switch from bright colors to all white in a few clicks.

The new laptop comes...

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US launches its first moon-bound lander since the Apollo 17 mission

The successful launch marks the maiden flight for the ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket. | Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched its new Vulcan Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral on Monday at 2:18AM ET, carrying a US-made moon lander with NASA science and research payloads onboard. The Peregrine lander is built by Pittsburgh-based private space tech startup Astrobotic and marks a US return to the moon for the first time in over 50 years.

The uncrewed Peregrine Mission One launch is the first of a series of missions to fly under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) scheme, an initiative that enables the agency to pay private companies to carry its scientific equipment into space. Astrobotic was paid $108 million — just a fraction of the $25.8 billion that NASA spent on the trailblazing Apollo program...

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Garmin’s new chest strap actually works with sports bras

The HRM-Fit clips onto the bottom of your sports bra. | Image: Garmin

While Garmin is known for its big, bulky fitness watches, it’s taking a different tack for CES 2024. The theme of this year’s announcements is prioritizing comfort and wearability with a chest strap that finally works with sports bras, and the Lily 2, a revamp of its smallest smartwatch.

The $149.99 HRM-Fit addresses a real problem with chest straps. If you need to wear a sports bra, regular chest straps can be uncomfortably tight since you have to slot the entire thing under your sports bra band, especially if you need more support. And while everyone’s body is different, underboob sweat is a menace that can make removing standard chest straps unpleasant.

Instead, the HRM-Fit has a clip-on design that snaps onto the bottom band and is...

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CES 2024: all the TVs, laptops, smart home gear, and more from the show floor

CES is the tech world’s biggest event of the year. The Verge is on the ground covering the biggest news in tech, gaming, transportation, and more.

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Oppo’s Find X7 Ultra pairs a 1-inch sensor with not one but two periscope cameras

The Find X7 Ultra in black, blue, and brown. | Image: Oppo

Oppo’s latest flagship, the Find X7 Ultra, is the first smartphone to include two periscope cameras, the company announced today as it launched the device in China. One offers a 3x zoom and uses a 1/1.56-inch sensor that Oppo says is “the biggest telephoto sensor in any smartphone.” Large sensors typically make for better low-light photographs, which can be an issue for some phones’ secondary cameras. The second periscope lens offers a 6x optical zoom with a 1/2.51-inch sensor.

The zoom lenses make up two of the four 50-megapixel cameras Oppo has built into the rear of the phone. These also include a main camera that’s the first in the market to use Sony’s second-generation 1-inch-type sensor (the LYT-900), alongside an ultrawide camera...

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I’ve looked through LG’s new transparent OLED TV, and seen something special

The Signature OLED T is a 77-inch TV with a very unique gimmick. But it’s hard to imagine the pricey novelty wouldn’t wear off over time.

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The Frame has become such a hit that Samsung is making a speaker version

Image: Samsung

Samsung’s The Frame TV has enjoyed huge success in recent years because it blends into the home in a way that’s much more aesthetically pleasing than the drab black rectangles you get from conventional TVs. With customizable bezels (including stylish wood options), a matte screen, and a huge collection of renowned artwork that appears on The Frame’s display when it’s idle, it pulls off convincing double duty as a design piece. It has become the TV for people who don’t want their TV to look like a piece of technology.

For 2024, Samsung is extending The Frame branding with the new Music Frame. This version isn’t actually a TV at all; it’s a music speaker. It’s fair to think of it as Samsung’s version of the Sonos / Ikea Symfonisk frame...

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Samsung’s new OLED TV could make annoying glare a thing of the past

Image: Samsung

Samsung’s third-generation QD-OLED TV, the new S95D, comes with a unique trick compared to its predecessors: it’s got a glare-free display that the company claims all but eliminates any noticeable reflections. This should prevent annoying distractions when you’re watching the TV on a sun-drenched day and trying to enjoy your content.

Anti-reflective coatings are nothing new on high-end TVs — Samsung, LG, and Sony are all pretty good at them as it stands — but Samsung seems to have gone a step beyond that with the special panel treatment being used here, and it insists there are no negative impacts on viewing angle or color distortion as a result.

“The OLED-optimized, low-reflection technology uses a new, specialized hard-coating layer...

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Belkin made an iPhone dock that can track you around the room

Image: Belkin

Belkin is releasing a motorized iPhone dock that swivels and tilts to track your movements while on camera. The device, called the Belkin Stand Pro, costs $179.99 and appears to be the first to adopt Apple’s DockKit framework, allowing you to connect the device to your iPhone without having to install a third-party app.

The Stand Pro’s cylindrical base is capable of rotating 360 degrees, while the MagSafe-equipped motorized arm can tilt up and down with 90 degrees of movement. Once you pop an iPhone 12 or newer onto the stand, you can pair it to your device with NFC. From there, you can open any app with a camera — like FaceTime, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, or Microsoft Teams — and the dock will automatically shift the iPhone to keep...

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