Google’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are matching their best prices to date

Right now, you can save up to $200 on Google’s latest flagship phones. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

We’re firmly living in 2024, and if there’s no other tradition to lean on after setting your New Year’s resolutions, you invariably can rely on Samsung’s tone-setting phone announcements to make early ripples. Rumor has it we’ll see the Galaxy S24 series in short order, and phones like the Pixel 8 family may lose a bit of sheen in its wake. The Pixel 8 and 8 Pro aren’t suddenly obsolete, however, and that’ll only lead to sharper discounts. In fact, this dream duo (we think they’re two of the best Android phones you can buy right now) is already seeing substantial price cuts despite being just a few months old.

Right now, the 128GB Pixel 8 is back down to its Black Friday price of $549 ($150 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store....

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Corsair, Asus, and others are making it easier to build a beautiful PC

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

I hate cables. I hide them in the walls behind my TV, I make them disappear around my desk, and I try to eradicate them everywhere else in my life. So every time I hear about something in the PC building community that involves hiding or removing cables, I get excited. Over the past few years, some of the biggest names in PC building have been making it easier to hide cables away and build a PC that showcases your skills.

I’ve built a lot of PCs over the past 25 years, and the main part of the process I hate the most is cable management. It often takes me longer to tidy up cables and route them properly than it does to put all the parts of a PC together. It’s especially bad if you’ve decided to build a PC with a bunch of RGB fans and an...

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Hertz is selling 20,000 EVs so it can buy more gas guzzlers

Don’t be sad, Tom Brady. I’m sure the EVs will find a nice home. | Image: Hertz

Hertz went from scaling back its electric vehicle ambitions to selling off its actual EVs in the span of three months. The rental car agency said in a regulatory filing today that it will sell 20,000 vehicles, or roughly one-third of its global EV fleet, and use that money to buy gas guzzlers.

The decision was made after Hertz reported higher depreciation and damage than expected to its EVs, amounting to $245 million in costs for the company. Also, Hertz apparently couldn’t find enough customers for the EVs in its fleet, so selling a huge chunk of them will “better balance supply against expected demand of EVs,” the company said. The company had previously set a target for 25 percent of its fleet to be electric by the end of 2024.

The...

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Microsoft briefly overtakes Apple to become the world’s most valuable company again

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft has surpassed Apple’s market cap to become the world’s most valuable public company again. The software giant’s stock has been rallying in recent months thanks to its AI announcements. Meanwhile, there are concerns about Apple’s iPhone sales, leading to the two tech giants swapping top places for market value during trading on the Nasdaq today.

Apple stock has been trending down over the past month on the back of iPhone sale concerns in China and a potential weakness of iPhone 15 sales. Rating firms have downgraded Apple stock in recent days, wiping around $162 billion off Apple’s market capitalization in 2024 alone.

Microsoft has been riding the AI hype train for more than six months now. The company’s stock saw a noticeable...

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WhatsApp’s custom sticker maker on iOS is here to spice up your chats

Illustration: The Verge

WhatsApp is rolling out a custom sticker maker for users with iOS 17 or later. While you can already make stickers by dragging and dropping images from your gallery into the app, this takes things a step further by letting you draw on top of them, add text, or slap on another sticker.

To create a sticker from an existing image, open the app’s sticker tray, select create sticker, and then choose an image from your gallery. From there, you can proceed to customize your sticker by choosing a cutout, adding text, and drawing on it. You can also edit any previously made stickers by opening the sticker tray, long-pressing on the sticker you want to change, and then choosing edit sticker.

Image: WhatsApp

You can add text...

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The best ebook reader to buy right now

Image: Will Joel / The Verge

From reading in the bath to scribbling notes in the margins, from diving into the Amazon ecosystem to avoiding it outright, there’s an e-reader for everyone.

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Reach will fall in Halo’s season 2 trailer

Paramount Plus

Halo season 2 is less than a month away, and Paramount Plus has just revealed the season’s latest trailer. Master Chief and the Spartans (excellent name for a Halo cover band, by the way) will return to face off against the Covenant on one of the most important locations in the Halo universe: the planet Reach.

The trailer lets you know immediately what the stakes are for Halo season 2, with a voiceover addressing the people of Reach. The voice — possibly belonging to Makee (Charlie Murphy), Master Chief’s girlfriend — continues, saying she will be the instrument of their extinction. We’re treated to gloomy scenes of Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) outnumbered by covenant elites and Kai-125 (Kate Kennedy) watching Covenant orbital strikes...

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The latest mini-console is this adorable Atari 400

Image: Plaion / Retro Games Ltd.

The mini-console trend that started with the tiny NES Classic has largely slowed down, but there are still some cute game-filled gadgets coming. Case in point: the 400 Mini from Plaion and Retro Games Ltd. It’s exactly what it sounds like — a shrunken-down version of the Atari 400 — and like its contemporaries, it comes with a bunch of games preinstalled.

The device itself is about half the size of the 1979 original, and it comes bundled with an updated version of the CX40 Atari joystick, which supports USB so that you can use it with other devices. The console also has five USB ports — so you can connect joysticks or keyboards as well as sideload games — along with an HDMI port so this little piece of yellow plastic can connect to a...

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28 Years Later is coming from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

Cillian Murphy as Jim in 28 Days Later_._ | Image: Searchlight Pictures

Filmmakers Alex Garland and Danny Boyle — the writer / director duo who gave us 2002’s 28 Days Later — have been talking about wanting to make a third film in the apocalyptic zombie franchise for years now. But it seems as if the pair is finally going to get a shot at making that dream a reality, all while potentially launching an entirely new series of movies.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Garland and Boyle are reuniting for 28 Years Later, a new film set in a (presumably) ruined world that’s been ravaged by a strange virus responsible for turning people into rage-filled, fast-running zombie-like beings. As was the case with 28 Days Later — which starred Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, and Christopher Eccleston —...

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Sony’s Afeela needs to be more than a feeling

A look into the latest Sony Afeela prototype car, from the driver’s side. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It’s been four years since we called Sony’s concept car the best surprise of CES. And I get it: one does not build a car company overnight. But here at CES 2024, it feels like Sony Honda Mobility is still building a concept car — dare I say, a Vision — rather than a vehicle focused on the road. Maybe that’s part of the charm?

The Afeela has gotten more car-like in some ways since last year’s full announcement: big side mirrors, wireless phone chargers, and some more actual car specs. The all-wheel drive prototype has two 180kW motors (roughly 483 horsepower), a 91kWh lithium-ion battery pack, and up to 150kW fast DC charging.

But when we climbed inside the Afeela’s cabin for the first time at CES, as you’ll see in our embedded gallery...

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Google removes 17 features from Google Assistant

Users will be notified if an Assistant feature is being removed when they activate one of the utilities affected. | Illustration: The Verge

Several “underutilized” Google Assistant features will soon be joining the infamous Google graveyard — such as the ability to use your voice to send an email, video, or audio messages — as the search giant introduces changes it says will make the feature easier to use. The company is also changing how the microphone works in the Google app and Pixel Search bar.

Starting January 26th, users who activate any of the 17 Assistant features being removed will be notified that it’s being discontinued, with most features departing for good on February 26th, according to 9to5Google. This news comes less than a day after Google announced it was laying off around a thousand employees, some of whom worked on Google Assistant.

The Assistant features...

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Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees

Illustration: The Verge

Turns out Google’s postpandemic reckoning didn’t just hit the Google Hardware team this evening — it’s taken similarly sized bites out of Google Assistant and Google’s core engineering teams too. Google just confirmed to The Verge that it’s eliminated “a few hundred” roles in each of these divisions, meaning Google has confirmed layoffs of around a thousand employees on Wednesday alone, if we use a reasonable definition of “few”.

And those are only the cuts we know about. We asked Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini to say if this was the complete and total number of job cuts in this round of layoffs, but she stopped replying at that point, only confirming existing layoff reports at 9to5Google and Semafor. The New York Times reported...

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Google is losing its Fitbit leaders and laying off hundreds of AR employees

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google’s hardware division just took a body blow. The company has confirmed it’s laying off hundreds of hardware workers, especially in its augmented reality division — and 9to5Google is reporting that Fitbit co-founders James Park, Eric Friedman, and other Fitbit leaders are leaving the company entirely.

Here’s Google’s statement to 9to5Google:

A few hundred roles are being eliminated in DSPA with the majority of impacts on the 1P AR Hardware team. While we are making changes to our 1P AR hardware team, Google continues to be deeply committed to other AR initiatives, such as AR experiences in our products, and product partnerships.

Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini confirmed the numbers to The Verge.

This is likely the end of...

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Here’s what we know about the SAG-AFTRA AI voice acting licensing deal

Photo by Isaac Brekken/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images

During CES 2024, SAG-AFTRA announced an agreement with AI voice technology company Replica Studios. The agreement would permit SAG-AFTRA members, specifically voice performers, to work with Replica to create digital replications of their voices. Those voices can then be licensed out for use in video games and other interactive media projects with SAG-AFTRA authored protections.

In the announcement, SAG-AFTRA characterized the deal as a “way for professional voice over artists to safely explore new employment opportunities for their digital voice replicas with industry-leading protections tailored to AI technology.” However, as news of the deal reached the voice performer community at large, the reaction was less positive with performers...

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Here are the best deals on headphones and wireless earbuds we could find

The Beats Studio Pro are nearly half off right now, which doesn’t happen all that often. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge

When it comes to headphones and true wireless earbuds, there are a ton of brands and products to choose from. However, the sheer range of available models can also make them difficult to shop for, especially since many of them cater to different lifestyles, budgets, and priorities. Some are better suited for long-haul flights and vigorous workouts, for instance, while others let you tune out noise so you can focus better.

That’s why we’ve curated a list of the best headphone and earbud deals available. Here, you’ll find sales on all kinds of earbuds and over-ear headphones, all of which come with their own strengths and weaknesses. And if you want to do even more research before making a buying decision, we’ve put together guides to...

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Kia gets its first customer for the PV5 modular electric vehicle: Uber

Image: Kia

Kia and Uber have signed an memorandum of understanding to use the automaker’s newly announced PBV modular electric vehicles for ridehailing.

PBV, which stands for Platform Beyond Vehicle, was introduced during CES in Las Vegas as a family of EVs built on a flexible vehicle architecture, with different swappable body types. The vehicle can be transformed from a minivan to a full-size van to a small truck, depending on the specific need. The driver cab remains fixed while the rest of the vehicle is interchangeable, like a real-life Duplo set.

One of the possible variations is the PV5, a midsized electric van that Kia says is designed for ridehailing, delivery, and utilities. Uber wants to add the PV5 as an option for its drivers, in the...

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First Bitcoin ETFs approved by US regulators

Take that, Satoshi! | Nick Barclay / The Verge

Fifteen years after the genesis block was mined (and after one false announcement), the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Bitcoin has fully joined the financial system it was built to challenge. The decision will make 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs available to investors, such as those from Grayscale, Fidelity, BlackRock, and more.

“While we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse Bitcoin,” said SEC chairman Gary Gensler, in a statement. “Investors should remain cautious about the myriad risks associated with bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto.”

For the last 10 years, the SEC has denied every attempt to create a Bitcoin ETF,...

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Rabbit sells out 10,000 units of its R1 pocket AI companion in one day

Rabbit R1. | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge

The R1, the pocket-size gadget from Rabbit that’s supposed to use your apps for you, has already sold out of its first batch. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the startup Rabbit announced that it sold 10,000 units in just one day.

“When we started building r1, we said internally that we’d be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day,” Rabbit writes. “In 24 hours, we already beat that by 20x!”

When we started building r1, we said internally that we'd be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day. In 24 hours, we already beat that by 20x!

10,000 units on day 1!

Second batch available now at https://t.co/R3sOtVWoJ5
Expected delivery date is April - May 2024. pic.twitter.com/XqaHqqk36L

— rabbit inc. (@rabbit_hmi) January 10, 2024

R...

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The TVs, monitors, and laptops of CES 2024

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Another year, another CES, another batch of big and strange ideas about displays. CES may not be quite the TV-centric show it once was, but you practically can’t turn around in the Las Vegas Convention Center without encountering a new way to use LEDs.

For the first of our two Vergecast episodes live from the Kia Connected Home at CES this week, we dug into the most important new screens of the year. That means TVs, monitors, laptops, smartphones, and all the other display-centric things we’ve seen so far. (On Friday, we’ll get to all the cars, smart home sensors, massage chairs, and everything else that’s not quite so screen-y.) Then, we get to the biggest CES-adjacent news of the week: Apple’s ship date announcement for the Vision Pro...

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How to sue a hacker using Bitcoin

The easiest way to drop papers on someone! | Nick Barclay / The Verge

Friends, I believe we’ve found the most compelling use of the blockchain yet: serving people with legal documents. It is, in fact, even easier to serve notice of a lawsuit to someone using blockchain technology than it is in real life, because you don’t need a person’s identity to do it. What a breakthrough!

The case in question is a lawsuit by Ryan Dellone, who has served a wallet belonging to an unknown individual with notice that they’re being sued, Krebs on Security reports. (The wallet contains Bitcoin allegedly stolen from Dellone in a SIM-swapping attack.) Dellone used a short message and about $100 worth of Bitcoin to serve notice of the suit. It is the first of its kind.

Now, one of the fun ways that cryptocurrency wallets work...

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The first Steam Deck competitor with SteamOS is almost here

The Ayaneo Next Lite. | Image: Ayaneo

The first non-Valve device with SteamOS preinstalled is about to ship: Ayaneo just announced its next handheld gaming PC, the Next Lite, is running the open-source operating system.

Ayaneo is pitching the Next Lite as a cost-effective option, but we don’t know too much about the device just yet or how much it will cost. It has a seven-inch 800p screen, a 47Wh battery, and Hall effect joysticks, according to an Ayaneo blog post. The company is also advertising “vibrant colors” that include a good-looking seafoam green and “high-end craftsmanship.”

But we don’t yet know what chip powers the handheld, so it’s hard to know how its performance might stack up against other devices.

Image: Ayaneo

I like the orange...

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These smart binoculars can identify birds and animals for you

First, we got AI-powered bird feeders that can tell you who is visiting your backyard, and now, a new pair of AI-supported binoculars can identify over 9,000 species of birds and other wildlife while you’re hiking in the woods or roaming the halls of CES. Okay, there are no birds at CES (and not many around the Las Vegas Strip, which may not be by accident), but I did get to test out the smart binos and do some twitching (of the birding kind) on the show floor.

These Marc Newson-designed Swarovski Optic AX Visio binoculars look and feel like standard high-end binos, but when I trained them on a nearby avian (actually, a cardboard cutout on the top of a wood pole), they told me its species.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison...

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Slack’s Catch Up feature is like Tinder for your work messages

Catch Up is supposed to make it faster to get up to speed on all the Slack stuff you care — and don’t care — about. | Image: Slack

Slack is adding a new feature to its mobile app, meant to help you triage all your unread stuff a little faster. It’s called Catch Up, and the only way I can describe it is Tinder for Enterprise Messaging. When you tap on Catch Up at the top of the app’s homescreen, it’ll show you one channel or DM at a time; swipe left to mark it read, right to leave it unread.

Catch Up is a response to two things Akshay Bakshi, a product management director at Slack, says the company sees a lot. First, there’s just a lot going on in Slack, and opening every channel one by one just to check in on it and mark it read in the sidebar is a pin. Second, a lot of people use their phone as a Slack-triage device. “Before they get to their desk in the morning,...

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OpenAI’s custom GPT Store is now open for business

Illustration: The Verge

OpenAI’s GPT Store, where users can share their custom chatbots, finally launched Wednesday after a monthslong delay. The store brings more potential use cases to ChatGPT and expands OpenAI’s ecosystem beyond what the company builds for customers.

Since announcing the GPT Builder program in November, OpenAI said more than 3 million bots — called GPTs — have been created by users. (Yours truly included; I made a GPT that suggests synonyms for common words). The company said it plans to highlight useful GPTs weekly inside the store.

The company originally planned to open the GPT Store in November before delaying it to December and finally to January. The platform lets people who’ve created their own chatbots publicly share their versions...

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FTC bans major data broker from selling invasive location tracking details

The settlement comes over three years after Google and Apple banned X-Mode Social’s tracking software from their app stores. | Image: The Verge / Alex Castro

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has prohibited Outlogic, the massive US data broker formerly known as X-Mode Social, from selling or sharing sensitive information that can be used to track people’s locations as part of the regulator’s first data tracking settlement. The settlement is intended to resolve accusations made by the FTC that Outlogic “did not implement reasonable or appropriate safeguards” to prevent the location information it sold from being mishandled by third parties and potentially endangering consumers.

According to the FTC, the data associated with mobile advertising that Outlogic sold to hundreds of clients wasn’t anonymized and was capable of tracking specific individuals to sensitive locations like domestic...

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Snowpack is shrinking across the Northern Hemisphere

Skiers descend a slope of artificial snow below Grubigstein mountain during unseasonably warm weather on January 16, 2023 near Ehrwald, Austria. | Photo by Philipp Guelland/Getty Images

Snowpack is shrinking across the Northern Hemisphere thanks to climate change, and many communities could soon face a “snow-loss cliff,” according to the most comprehensive assessment yet.

The effects of climate change can vary dramatically from place to place, which is why it’s been difficult to suss out the bigger picture with snowpack until recently. Now we can see that many of the hardest hit places also happen to be those that depend on snowpack for their water. Other communities that have seen relatively little impact so far are on track to pass a temperature threshold that would suddenly speed up snow loss, new research published in the journal Nature shows.

“Where the majority of people live and where the majority of people...

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Victrola’s Sonos-compatible turntables are down to their best prices to date

Victrola’s Stream Onyx, a turntable that can stream vinyl straight to your Sonos system, is down to just $360. | Image by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

At CES this week, Victrola announced the forthcoming Stream Sapphire, a new Works with Sonos turntable that can also stream records to thousands of devices, including your smartphone, soundbar, or laptop. Yet, at $1,499, it’s not exactly affordable. Luckily, Victrola sells two cheaper alternatives: the Stream Carbon and the Stream Onyx, both of which are on sale from Victrola thanks to promo code SPIN10. Right now, you can pick up the former for $630 ($170 off) and the latter for $360 ($240 off), which is an all-time low on the entry-level model.

Unlike the Stream Sapphire, you can’t use either of the two turntables to stream records to just about any device. However, you can use them to wirelessly transmit audio from your turntable to...

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Twitch is cutting one-third of its staff

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Twitch is laying off more than 500 employees, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy announced this morning, reportedly accounting for around 35 percent of its staff. Bloomberg first reported that the video game streaming platform was planning layoffs on Tuesday, and the company confirmed today that the cuts were happening.

“I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch,” Clancy wrote. “This will be a very hard day.”

In March 2023, Twitch cut 400 roles as part of larger layoffs at parent company Amazon that saw 18,000 people lose their jobs. Additionally, several Twitch executives including chief product officer Tom Verrilli, chief customer officer Doug Scott, and chief content...

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VinFast shows off a midsize truck and small utility EV for North America

Image: VinFast

Vietnam’s VinFast must really want a slice of the EV market in the US based on the vehicles it brought to CES in Las Vegas this year: a midsize pickup truck that looks to be about the same size as the Toyota Tacoma, and a small utility EV called the VF3 that was first introduced last year.

Theoretically, both of these vehicles could sell really well in the US. Trucks are some of the most popular vehicles in the country, and a midsize electric truck could do quite well given most of the segment is dominated by full-size ones. A small, affordable crossover like the VF3, which aims for mass-market appeal, could help folks who are on a budget go fully electric.

Theoretically, both of these vehicles could sell really well in the US

But all...

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YouTube will now direct you to the right first-aid videos during an emergency

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you search YouTube for what to do if someone is suffering a heart attack, the platform will now display credible first-aid explainer videos at the very top of the search results.

The brief, step-by-step videos, made in partnership with Mass General Brigham and the Mexican Red Cross, cover a series of basic health emergencies and first-aid procedures, prioritized to provide timely advice right away. Tutorials will cover how to perform the Heimlich maneuver, do CPR, identify the first signs of a heart attack, and other emergency healthcare topics.

Before performing any first-aid, the American Red Cross instructs calling 911 and alerting emergency services immediately — many health conditions are time-sensitive. After that, one can...

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