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Companies have been cutting costs. | Photo by Natt Garun / The Verge
Companies across the tech industry have been laying off staff and reducing hiring after explosive growth during the pandemic.
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The A9 Plus comes in a 5G version that’s well under $300. | Image: Samsung
Samsung has quietly put its budget Galaxy Tab A9 Plus on sale following its launch in October last year. It starts at $219 for a Wi-Fi-only version, but unlike most other Android tablets around that price, you can pick up a version with 5G. The A9 Plus with a cellular connection costs $269, and you can take your pick from T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and US Cellular versions on Samsung.com. 9to5Google first spotted that the tablet had gone on sale.
The A9 Plus offers an 11-inch screen with a smooth 90Hz refresh rate — a rare feature at this price and definitely something you won’t find on an entry-level iPad. It has a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and comes with a 7,040mAh battery. The Wi-Fi version comes with...
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The Artifact news app. | Image: Artifact
Artifact, the news app created by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, is shutting down just a year after launch. The app used an AI-driven approach to suggest news that users might like to read, but it seems it didn’t catch on with enough people for the Artifact team to continue making the app.
“We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way,” CEO Kevin Systrom says in a blog post. The app is beginning to wind down today. Users can no longer add new comments or posts, and Artifact will still let you read news “through the end of February.”
Since launching at the end of January 2023, Artifact has added...
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Image: Sony
The Last of Us went from being a popular post-apocalyptic PlayStation series to a riveting TV show. Here’s all the news on the franchise.
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Google just announced a change for users in Europe that will let them decide exactly how much data-sharing they’re comfortable with. The new policy, which the company said was in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), allows users to opt out of data sharing across all, some, or none of a select number of Google’s services. The services listed include YouTube, Search, ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping, and Google Maps. But the policy isn’t watertight — Google will still share user data when it’s necessary to complete a task (e.g., if you’re paying for a purchase on Google Shopping with Google Pay) in order to comply with the law, stop fraud, or protect against abuse.
That’s not the biggest change that Google will...
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Select iPad models, including Apple’s latest iPad Mini, go on sale quite frequently. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
While the best iPad deals usually land during major sale events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Amazon’s various Prime Days, many of the best iPad deals from the holiday season have persisted into 2024. You can still take advantage of many of those discounts today, whether you’re after the high-end iPad Pro or the most affordable entry-level iPad. What’s more, prices are likely to drop even further when Apple ushers in a new slate of models, which, according to the latest rumors, is widely expected to happen within the next several months.
Forthcoming models aside, it’s difficult to know where exactly you can find the most notable iPad deals unless you’re scouring the major retailers on a daily basis. But that’s often what our deal...
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The Consumer Electronics Show brings thousands of visitors to Las Vegas every year to witness the latest innovations in tech — some practical and some jaw-dropping.
Our staff was on the ground, surrounded by thousands of smart rings, vacuums, concept cars, and everything in between. However, there were just a few standouts. The Verge highlighted our favorites from the show floor in the video above. Here are a couple sneak peeks of our top picks:
One of the standouts in the smart ring market was the Evie Ring. Verge reviewer Victoria Song found the ring to be clever, with an open gap up top that allows the ring to flex. No more struggling to get a ring off when your fingers swell! But the thing she...
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Illustration by Samar Haddar / The Verge
The products, trends, and promises that truly wowed.
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Fun new game just dropped! Go to the internet platform of your choice, type “goes against OpenAI use policy,” and see what happens. The bossman dropped a link to a Rick Williams Threads post in the chat that had me go check Amazon out for myself.
Screenshot by Liz Lopatto
Hell yeah, [product name]!
On Amazon, I searched for “OpenAI policy” and boy, did I get results! I’m not entirely sure what this green thing is but I’ve been assured that it will “Boost your productivity with our high-performance [product name], designed to deliver-fast results and handle demanding tasks efficiently, ensuring you stay of the competition.“ Phenomenal! Unfortunately, there are no customer reviews — yet, anyway!
...
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The 8-1 Qi2 charger announced by Anker during CES 2024. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge
Last year, you couldn’t mention CES without bringing up Matter. It was a pivotal year for the smart home standard, as big names like Samsung, GE, and Amazon promised better interoperability between their devices and a world of sensors, appliances, and accessories. But that promise largely started and ended with smart home tech.
This year, things were a little different at CES: the idea of making products work nicely across ecosystems bled into other areas of the showcase and rippled across a range of different devices — even putting rivals on the same page to better serve users.
Google, for instance, revealed several updates to Android that show a clear push toward interoperability. One of Google’s biggest updates was to Nearby Share,...
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Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro pack ANC, excellent sound, and plenty of exclusive features for Galaxy owners. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Samsung’s latest Unpacked event is scheduled for January 17th, though, surprisingly, we’ve heard few rumors concerning Samsung’s next pair of wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro. Even if Samsung doesn’t debut them next week, we still expect it to continue to roll out new software tricks for the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro — which happen to be on sale at Woot in black or white for $129.99 ($100 off), an all-time low.
Despite having launched nearly two years ago, the Buds 2 Pro remain a terrific pair of noise-canceling earbuds, particularly for Galaxy phone owners. They’re both smaller and better-sounding than the first-gen model, and they offer a notable selection of Samsung-only features, including one-touch setup, head-tracking spatial...
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Netflix
And the world is full of marks.
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Dell’s Alienware 27 QD-OLED gaming monitor (AW2725DF) has an outrageous 360Hz refresh rate. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
OLED monitors have gotten faster than ever. While LCD monitors have been pushing 500Hz for around a year now, CES 2024 saw similarly excessive refresh rates arrive on their OLED siblings, with multiple monitors hitting speeds of 360 and 480Hz.
Whenever we’ve written about these monitors, commenters have quite fairly asked what the point of this all is. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time manufacturers have battled over specs with debatable benefit to customers, whether that’s the “megahertz myth” or megapixel wars of the ‘00s or, more recently, smartphone display resolution.
Image: Asus
Asus’ CES 2024 monitor lineup.
It wasn’t just one or two manufacturers that had such high refresh rate OLEDs to show...
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Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
The best gadgets at CES are the ones you’d never see coming. Not the iterative updates, where everything gets a little brighter and a little faster but nothing fundamentally changes. No, we like the E Ink toilets and the crab-walking cars and the rolling projectors that show you what’s inside your fridge. Do you need all these things? Does anyone? Will they ever go on sale? Who knows?! That’s the fun of CES.
On this episode of The Vergecast, recorded from the Kia Connected Home right in the middle of the Las Vegas Convention Center parking lot, we discuss all the most important gadget stories from this year’s show. We talk about the Rabbit R1, which was easily the surprise hit of the show. We discuss Ballie, Samsung’s adorable robot...
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Image: NBCUniversal
Oppenheimer is coming exclusively to Peacock. If you haven’t gotten a chance to watch the three-hourlong epic from Christopher Nolan in theaters, now you can watch it from home starting February 16th.
Oppenheimer chronicles the life and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), a physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II. The film, based on a biography of Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, also stars Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife Katherine “Kitty” Puening, Matt Damon as Major General Leslie Groves, and Robert Downey Jr. as US Atomic Energy Commission commissioner Lewis Strauss.
In addition to Oppenheimer, several other films from Nolan...
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The Oh! by OhDoki is the company’s second interactive sex toy. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Every once in a while, you’ll turn a corner on the CES show floor and see crowds flocking around a high-tech sex toy. This year, the one that caught my eye was The Handy, an automated masturbator — mainly because it was moving in a way I don’t expect to see in polite company, let alone a public show floor. But right next to it was the Oh!, a $149.95 toy coming later this spring that had me also saying “Oh?”
Both sex toys are made by Norwegian sex tech company Ohdoki. The Handy, a motorized device that moves up and down to mimic masturbation for people with penises, is certainly the flashier of the two. At a glance, the Oh! is unassuming as far as vibrators go. What makes it different is how it vibrates.
Most vibrators are simple...
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Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Apple isn’t at CES, but it had a huge presence anyway. On Monday, just before a string of CES keynotes were set to kick off, the company announced that its Vision Pro headset would be launching on February 2nd. Apple had already promised that the headset would launch early this year. So the stage was set for its rivals to compete by making CES 2024 a showcase of new ideas about virtual and augmented reality.
Ultimately, that didn’t pan out. Lots of companies showed up with AR and VR tech. A lot of the headsets offered similar functionality to the Vision Pro, like an AR / VR monitor for your computer or a substitute TV. But none were as impressive a package as Apple’s headset, nor were most arriving nearly as soon.
Photo...
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It’s always frustrating to get caught in a traffic jam because of a lane closure or because everyone is rubbernecking a recent fender bender. But even if you’re stuck, you can gain some karmic points and help others avoid the situation by reporting it via Apple Maps or Google Maps.
Your report on its own may not be enough to get a warning placed on the map, but if enough people make the same report — Apple calls it having “a high level of confidence” — then Apple or Google will probably take action and add an update. These reports can be made from inside the mobile apps and on Apple CarPlay — though, at the time of writing, this couldn’t be done through Android Auto.
Bear in mind that keeping yourself and your passengers safe is much...
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J-Style is one of the many smart rings I stumbled upon on the show floor. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
For the past few years, the Oura Ring has been the most recognizable smart ring on the market. After what I saw on the CES show floor, it’s about to get some real competition.
The smart ring is a promising form factor, but it’s tricky to get right. It’s more discreet and comfortable for sleep tracking than a smartwatch. The underside of your finger is also a better place to take heart rate and blood oxygen readings than your wrist. The downside is that it’s challenging to create a device that’s stylish given how small and flexible the components need to be. Plus, they tend to be pricey, with fewer features than a smartwatch.
There are all reasons why I was surprised to see several working prototypes and products at CES. I genuinely can’t...
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Image: Microsoft
Microsoft has started testing a change to Windows 11 that will see its AI-powered Copilot feature automatically open when Windows starts on “widescreen devices.” The change is being tested as part of Microsoft’s latest Dev Channel preview of Windows 11, allowing Windows testers to provide feedback ahead of a broader rollout.
“We are trying out opening Copilot automatically when Windows starts on widescreen devices with some Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel,” says Microsoft in a blog post. The company doesn’t make it clear what exactly a “widescreen” device is, but the Windows 11 setting itself says Copilot will automatically open “when you’re using a wider screen.” So I’m assuming this is limited to ultrawide monitors and less...
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Hyundai Mobis e-Cornering system, as demonstrated on a Hyundai Ioniq 5.
When I was a boy, I wanted a Ferrari Testarossa. As a teen, I’d have told you James Bond’s tricked out Aston Martin DB5 would be my ride of choice. Today, I have a new answer: a Hyundai Ioniq 5 with magic wheels that turn sideways.
Because when you have four wheels that turn sideways, dear reader, tantalizing possibilities unfold.
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Rivian released the latest edition of its environmental impact report, in which the company commits to building a new generation of electric vehicles that are even less polluting than its current generation.
Rivian said its goal is to launch a product by 2030 “with half the lifecycle carbon footprint” as its 2022 R1 vehicles, which include the R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV. “Lifecycle carbon footprint” refers to all the greenhouse gas emissions, direct and indirect, associated with a product’s activities. For an EV, that would include its production, operation, and charging, from conception to junkyard.
Rivian said its goal is to launch a product by 2030 “with half the lifecycle carbon footprint” as its 2022 R1 vehicles
To accomplish...
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Image: Nintendo
Two classic Game Boy Advance role-playing games are coming to the Nintendo Switch next week: 2001’s Golden Sun and 2002’s Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The games will either be available on January 17th according to this tweet or the 16th according to this press release (presumably this confusion is timezone-related, and we’ve followed up with Nintendo for clarification). But regardless of the exact date, they’ll be available as part of a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription.
We’ve known at least one of these games was coming to the Switch ever since Golden Sun made an appearance as part of Nintendo’s original announcement about Game Boy games coming to its subscription service. But it’s taken roughly a year for that tease to...
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Platformer, the tech newsletter started by Verge alum Casey Newton, is leaving Substack over its policies around and response to pro-Nazi publications using the platform.
Newton notes that after identifying seven Substack publications “that conveyed explicit support for 1930s German Nazis and called for violence against Jews, among other groups,” the platform removed one on its own along with five others on the list. The other thing that happened was that the platform’s co-founders asked to keep their conversations off the record and then leaked those conversations to another publication.
The issue has been building up over the past several weeks. After The Atlantic published an article saying that Substack had been hosting and...
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Astrobotic
Astrobotic’s ill-fated Peregrine moon lander may soon be tumbling through space, but in the meantime, it’s collecting data for science. In an update on Thursday, NASA disclosed that payloads aboard the lander successfully collecting data. Astrobotic shared a similar update on X (formerly Twitter) earlier in the day.
NASA says the plan is to extend Peregrine’s mission for as long as possible in order to continue data collection efforts. “Measurements and operations of the NASA-provided science instruments on board will provide valuable experience, technical knowledge, and scientific data to future CLPS lunar deliveries,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration with NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in a statement...
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The Stelo CGM will look similar to the one pictured here and is based on the Dexcom G7. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Year in and year out, most of the blood glucose tech you see at CES are devices that may not come out for years, if ever. That’s why it was refreshing to see Dexcom roll up to CES 2024 to talk about something a bit more tangible: its forthcoming Stelo continuous glucose monitor (CGM), a wearable sensor that provides a real-time look at your blood sugar levels. Unlike most CGMs, the Stelo is specifically designed to be an affordable option for Type 2 diabetics who don’t use insulin.
Unlike Type 1 diabetes, where a person produces little to no insulin, Type 2 diabetes is when, over time, the body either doesn’t produce enough insulin or the body becomes insulin resistant. Roughly 90 to 95 percent of all diagnosed diabetics have Type 2....
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Image: eBay
eBay has agreed to pay $3 million in connection with a 2019 harassment campaign directed at a Massachusetts couple that had been critical of the e-commerce site. The US Department of Justice announced the maximum criminal penalty on Thursday and said the company committed six felony offenses.
Specifically, the DOJ charged eBay with two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of justice. The charges stem from a heinous harassment campaign carried out by a group of seven eBay employees, some of whom were company executives.
In 2019, the employees came up with a plan to target Ina and David Steiner, a couple...
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Wi-Fi 7 and an RGB touchpad? I’m in. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
The biggest names in laptops showed up to CES this week with new designs, new chips, and usually some way to sneak in the term “AI.” But most of them also quietly arrived with one of the most important upgrades of all for competitive gamers on the go: better Wi-Fi, with support for Wi-Fi 7. It’s about time, because router companies shoved Wi-Fi 7 routers out the door throughout 2023, and we’ve been waiting on machines that can put the standard’s ludicrous speed promises to the test.
Wi-Fi 7 came to gaming laptops first and foremost, and the focus on gaming makes sense. One of the biggest benefits of Wi-Fi 7 is that it allows for one device to connect to your router on multiple bands — a feature called Multi-Link Operation — which gives...
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One of Clicks’ own marketing images of its yellow keyboard case for iPhone. | Image: Clicks
Clicks came out of nowhere last week with a blast from the past — a BlackBerry-like physical keyboard for your iPhone, built into a snazzy protective case with colors that pop. Not only that, the first iPhone 14 Pro version is shipping in just a few weeks for $139. It’s from a team that knows a thing or two about keyboards, including CrackBerry Kevin, MrMobile, and the guys behind the F(x)tec phone.
As a known lapsed QWERTY devotee, I had to try it, and at CES 2024 I got my chance.
It feels great in the hand, with a nice subtly squishy silicone bumper feel, and seems well thought out in general. The phone fits so securely, and I...
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Discord is laying off 17 percent of its staff, a move that CEO Jason Citron said is meant to “sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.”
The cuts were announced today to employees in an all-hands meeting and internal memo I’ve obtained. They’ll impact 170 people across various departments.
Based on Citron’s message to employees and my understanding of the business, Discord isn’t in dire financial straits, though it has yet to become profitable and is still trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic. In his memo to employees, which you can read in full below, Citron said Discord grew its headcount too fast over the last few years — an admission that has become...