Overwatch 2 unlocks all of its heroes

Some of the heroes added to Overwatch | Image: Blizzard

_Overwatch 2 h_eroes will no longer need to be unlocked through Battle Pass or via purchase, taking some of the grind out of the now free-to-play team FPS. Starting in Season 10, players will be able to unlock all existing and future heroes for free. This will include Venture, the latest hero joining Overwatch’s roster next season.

New players to the game will still need to complete the first-time user experience. Only when novice players have unlocked the heroes from the first Overwatch roster will all Overwatch 2 heroes then be at their disposal, , as game director Aaron Keller explains in the latest Developer’s Update video.

Free heroes are a return to form for the game, as that heroes were automatically granted in Overwatch 1. But...

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Segway brings a sub-$1,000 smart robot mower to the US

Segway’s new Navimow i robot lawn mower is now available in the US on Amazon. | Image: Segway

Following its launch in Europe earlier this month, Segway’s Navimow i series robot lawn mower is now available in the US. As one of the first robotic mowers under $1,000 that can navigate autonomously without a boundary wire, its arrival could be the beginning of the robot lawn mower going mainstream.

The Navimow i series has two models: the i105N costs $999 and covers 0.125 acres, and the $1,299 i110N can manage up to 0.25 acres. It uses Segway’s Exact Fusion Locating System 2.0, a vision-enhanced real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS system with a camera for outdoor mapping. It can also avoid obstacles and navigate around trees, shrubs, garden borders, and even animals and people as it cuts your lawn.

According to the company, the new lawn...

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Google DeepMind co-founder joins Microsoft as CEO of its new AI division

Image: Getty

Microsoft has hired Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. In a post on X, Suleyman announced that he’s joining Microsoft as the CEO of a new team that handles the company’s consumer-facing AI products, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.

Suleyman will also serve as executive vice president of Microsoft AI and join the company’s senior leadership team that reports directly to CEO Satya Nadella. Suleyman co-founded the AI lab DeepMind in 2010, which was later acquired by Google in 2014.

DeepMind has remained a pioneering AI force within Google. However, Suleyman hasn’t been part of the division in many years. He was placed on leave in 2019 over controversy surrounding some of the projects he led, according to a report from Bloomberg....

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How AI companies are reckoning with elections

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

The US is heading into its first presidential election since generative AI tools have gone mainstream. And the companies offering these tools — like Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft — have each made announcements about how they plan to handle the months leading up to it.

This election season, we’ve already seen AI-generated images in ads and attempts to mislead voters with voice cloning. The potential harms from AI chatbots aren’t as visible in the public eye — yet, anyway. But chatbots are known to confidently provide made-up facts, including in responses to good-faith questions about basic voting information. In a high-stakes election, that could be disastrous.

One plausible solution is to try to avoid election-related queries altogether....

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The best deals on MacBooks right now

Some of the latest M3 MacBooks are on sale, and you can find great discounts on older models, too. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple sells MacBooks equipped with its own M-series chips in a wide range of sizes and price points. The offerings start with the 13-inch M1 MacBook Air from 2020 at $999 (which is being replaced by the M2 Air — at the same price point — now that Apple has officially discontinued it to make room for the M3 MacBook Air) and go all the way up to the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 starting at $2,499. But finding a deal on a current Mac with an M1, M2, or even the new M3 chip — as well as the higher-end M3 Pro and M3 Max — is actually not that difficult.

While Macs may not experience perpetual discounts, it’s not uncommon to see various current models discounted by as much as $400. Alternatively, purchasing refurbished options...

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Lego’s 3,745-piece D&D set comes with its own playable adventure

Lego’s Dungeons and Dragons set is ready to roll. | Image: Lego

Grab your dice and get ready to (literally) assemble your adventuring party next month — Lego has finally unveiled the 3,745-piece Dungeons & Dragons set it co-developed with Wizards of the Coast as the tabletop roleplaying game celebrates its 50th anniversary.

The $360 set, called “Red Dragon’s Tale,” was inspired by Lucas Bolt’s fan design, “Dragon’s Keep: Journey’s End,” and retains many of the same features. There’s a tower, a bridge, a tavern with a removable roof, and yes — both a dungeon and a dragon.

Image: Lego / Lucas Bolt

This is Bolt’s original fan design...

Image: Lego

...and the official Lego set that’s available to buy from April 1st.

Image: Lego...

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Hackintosh enthusiasts worry that the end is near

Image: Aleksandar Vacić

For years, there’s been a dedicated community of tech tinkerers who’ve built unofficial “Macs” out of PC hardware or successfully gotten macOS running on a laptop that ran Windows in a past life. But now, some of those enthusiasts believe the Hackintosh dream is becoming more and more untenable.

This blog post by Aleksandar Vacić, highlighted by 9to5Mac, runs through some of the difficulties that seem to be growing by the day. In a nutshell, macOS Sonoma removed support for many drivers that were found in Intel Macs a decade ago. Vacić says these drivers were “the key ingredient to many fully functional Hackintosh builds.” It’s still possible to cobble together a Hackintosh with the Sonoma OS, but you’ll have to be comfortable with some...

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Ubisoft let me actually speak with its new AI-powered video game NPCs

“Passion. You can feel it, can’t you?” begins Bloom, an AI NPC from Ubisoft in collab with InWorld, and Nvidia. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

For the past three months, ever since I spoke to the AI NPCs in Nvidia’s cyberpunk ramen shop, I’ve been wondering: Which game developer will take a flying leap on this controversial and intriguing tech? If you said “Ubisoft,” the company that’s always raising its hand to play with VR, NFTs, interactive TV shows, secondary screens and more, you’d be half right.

Last night, I played three prototype segments of an experimental Ubisoft demo featuring the company’s just-announced “Neo NPCs” — one of whom tried to convince me to join the resistance against powerful megacorps by playing on my emotions. Another walked me through an infiltration plan on a whiteboard, letting me “convince” her that we should knock out the lights or hack the...

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The EV revolution hinges on upcoming emissions rule

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

The speed in which automakers will have to phase out their gas-powered vehicles in favor of ones that are all-electric will be determined Wednesday, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to release its new vehicle emissions rules.

Environmental groups are hoping for a sped-up timeline that will put the country on the path to an all-electric fleet by the early part of next decade, while automakers are pushing for a slower adoption that allows the industry to meet consumers’ needs.

First announced in April 2023, the EPA’s original proposal would have resulted in battery-electric vehicles accounting for 37 percent by 2027, 60 percent by 2030, and 67 percent by 2032 — a dramatic increase over the current EV sales...

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The Acolyte’s first trailer teases a deadly disturbance in the Force

All of Disney Plus’ Star Wars spinoff series have been focused on Jedi and other heroes aligned with the light side of the Force. But the first trailer for The Acolytefrom executive producer Leslye Headland is a reminder that, in order for there to be true balance, sometimes darkness has to win.

Set in Star Wars’ High Republic era long before the events of The Phantom Menace, The Acolyte will tell the story of how a revered Jedi Master’s (Lee Jung-jae) investigation into a string of grisly murders brings him face-to-face with a lethal warrior (Amandla Stenberg) from his past. Stenberg’s character definitely seems like they might be the murderer in question as they pull knives on yet another Jedi (Carrie-Anne Moss) in a canteen on what...

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Here are the best Kindle deals right now

The Kindle Paperwhite, our favorite Kindle, is on sale with a power adapter and one of three fabric covers starting at $174.97 ($20). | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon looks to be moving...

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Nvidia is using AI to turn game characters into chatbots

The Covert Protocol demo shows how AI is being used to create unique NPC interactions. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia is showing off how developers have started using its AI “digital human” tools to voice, animate, and generate dialogue for video game characters. At the Game Developers Conference on Monday, the company released a clip of Covert Protocol, a playable tech demo that showcases how its AI tools can allow NPCs to respond in unique ways to player interactions, generating new responses that fit the live gameplay.

In the demo, players take on the role of a private detective, completing objectives based on conversations with AI-powered NPCs. Nvidia claims that each playthrough is “unique,” with players’ real-time interactions leading to different game outcomes. John Spitzer, Nvidia’s vice president of developer and performance...

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Google has a new head of Search — and she’s all in on AI

Illustration: The Verge

There are few bigger jobs at Google than being the person who runs Search. As of today, there’s a new person in that seat: Liz Reid, who has been at Google for more than 20 years and has most recently been leading the company’s efforts with AI search, known as Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Reid’s promotion is part of a bigger change within Google’s Search team. Pandu Nayak, a longtime executive overseeing ranking and quality, is now going to be chief scientist of Search. He’ll be replaced by Cheenu Venkatachary, who has also been working on AI products in Search. Meanwhile, Cathy Edwards, who led a lot of the work on Google News and Google Discover, is taking a job on Google’s long-term bets team.

In some ways this is just a lot of...

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Indie, rocked

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Assets from Turbosquid

Pitchfork exploded as the music industry changed, then was cut down to size by another wave of technological change. Was that it?

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DoorDash, Uber Eats — and Tony

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Delivery apps seem like a good idea, and it’s obvious why they’re handy to have around. It’s also often unclear whether delivery apps actually work for anyone involved. They make your stuff more expensive, often in hard-to-see ways. They take huge fees from restaurants that need it to survive. Drivers don’t get the pay or benefits they should. And in many cases, even the apps themselves don’t make any money! What are we doing here?

Into that messy equation comes a man named Tony Delivers. Tony Illes has become something of a folk hero in the Seattle area by advertising a much simpler and more human strategy. With a bunch of simple signs and a $5 delivery fee, he’s starting something of a delivery revolution from the seat of his bike.

O...

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Anker’s speedy Qi2 MagSafe chargers have dropped to new all-time low prices

All three chargers deliver up to 15 watts of power to compatible iPhones. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge

Few things test my patience more than waiting for my phone to charge when I’m in a rush, which is why Qi2 chargers are a godsend. They deliver fast, certified MagSafe charger speeds without the price tag, and right now, many of Anker’s new, Qi2 certified versions are down to all-time lows. Amazon’s selling the new version of our favorite MagSafe-compatible battery pack, the Anker MagGo Power Bank, for $47.99 ($22 off). That’s just $8 more than its predecessor and a discount you can also find at Anker with code WSTDMXPG8FSD. Amazon is also selling the MagGo Wireless Charging Station (Foldable 3-in-1)for $82.49 ($28 off) and the8-in-1 MagGo Orb for $69.99 ($30 off). Anker’s matching prices as well, though you’ll have to apply the code W...

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Ad-free Facebook might get way cheaper to appease EU regulators

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta says it’s offered to reduce the price of its ad-free subscription for Instagram and Facebook in Europe to address regulatory concerns, Reuters reports. Speaking in a hearing with the European Commission, Meta lawyer Tim Lamb said the company has “offered to drop the price from €9.99 to €5.99 for a single account and €4 for any additional accounts” in its discussion with privacy regulators in an attempt to “get to a steady state.”

Lamb said €5.99 is “by far the lowest end of the range that any reasonable person should be paying for services of this quality” and hoped that the “regulatory uncertainty” will “settle down quickly.” It reportedly made the offer to cut its prices to data protection authorities earlier this year.

The...

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Nuclear weapons in space are bad news for the entire planet

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

‘The old fear has come back.’

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We’re one step closer to a global cybersecurity standard for smart home devices

The Verified Product Security Mark is a new labeling program from the CSA designed to help users easily identify what cybersecurity protections an IoT device has in place. | Image: CSA

As useful as connected devices like video doorbells and smart lights are, it’s wise to exercise caution when using connected tech in your home, especially after years of reading about security camera hacks, fridge botnet attacks, and smart stoves turning themselves on. But until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to assess a product’s security chops. A new program from the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the group behind the smart home standard Matter, wants to fix that.

Announced this week, the CSA’s IoT Device Security Specification is a baseline cybersecurity standard and certification program that aims to provide a single, globally recognized security certification for consumer IoT devices.

Device makers who adhere to the s...

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Steam streamlines its family sharing features

Image: The Verge

Today, Steam launched Steam Families, an overhaul of its family sharing system. The new system gets rid of limits on how many people can play games from one library, makes buying games for your kids easier, and adds new parental controls and sharing options.

Before, you needed to use two different systems — Family Sharing and Family View — if you wanted to share your library but limit which games your kids could play. Also under the old approach, only one person at a time could play a game from another’s library. Now — to use Steam’s example — if you’re playing your copy of Portal 2 and someone else wants to play Half-Life from your library, that’s fine. They’ll only be booted if you start up Portal 2 while they’re playing it from your...

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The best Android phones for everyone

Image: The Verge

Whether you want everything but the kitchen sink or top-tier performance for a midrange price, you’ve got options.

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

The third-gen AirPods start at $139.99 ($40 off). | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If you know where to look, you can often score discounts on Apple’s ever-popular AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods at the end of 2021, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model slowly dip to under $100. And now that the latest AirPods Pro has been on the market for over a year, we’re also seeing their price fall more often, too. We’re even seeing great deals land on the newer updated AirPods Pro with USB-C.

Here, we’ve curated the best deals currently available on each model, including the entry-level AirPods, the AirPods Pro, the third-gen AirPods, and the AirPods Max.

The best AirPods (second-gen) deals

In 2021, Apple lowered the list price of the second-gen AirPods — now the...

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Nvidia reveals Blackwell B200 GPU, the ‘world’s most powerful chip’ for AI

The Blackwell B200 GPU. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia’s must-have H100 AI chip made it a multitrillion-dollar company, one that may be worth more than Alphabet and Amazon, and competitors have been fighting to catch up. But perhaps Nvidia is about to extend its lead — with the new Blackwell B200 GPU and GB200 “superchip.”

Image: Nvidia

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds up his new GPU on the left, next to an H100 on the right, from the GTC livestream.

Nvidia says the new B200 GPU offers up to 20 petaflops of FP4 horsepower from its 208 billion transistors and that a GB200 that combines two of those GPUs with a single Grace CPU can offer 30 times the performance for LLM inference workloads while also potentially being substantially more efficient. It “reduces...

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Cyberpunk is out and solarpunk is in, according to Figma’s CEO

Photo by Rick Kern / Getty Images for Vox Media

Cyberpunk design has been all the rage for several years now — this very website was once awash in neon colors and hard edges, you might recall — but Figma CEO Dylan Field says he sees glimmers of optimism taking over.

@decoderpod

Figma CEO Dylan Field talks to Nilay live at SXSW about the rise of Solarpunk as a counter to cyberpunk aesthetics, using the example of the Tesla Cybertruck and the Rivian R3. #sxsw #cyberpunk #solarpunk #design #dystopia #tesla #cybertruck #rivian #cars

♬ original sound - Decoder with Nilay Patel

“I think that we were really futurist, really cyberpunk for a while,” the founder of the popular design tool company told the crowd at a live taping of Decoder at SXSW when asked to compare the Cybertruck...

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The Supreme Court sounds skeptical of imposing broad limits on how the government can speak with social media platforms

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos via Getty Images

During oral arguments on Monday, both liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court appeared wary of imposing broad limits on how the government can communicate with social media companies about problematic content it thinks should be removed.

The case at issue is called Murthy v. Missouri, and it asks the court to determine whether the Biden administration’s communications with platforms coerced the companies to take down content, like misinformation about covid vaccines, thereby violating the First Amendment. It also asks the court to consider whether the government’s encouragement to take down such posts actually transformed the platforms themselves into state actors.

But several justices seemed skeptical of the arguments...

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MrBeast’s $5 million game show for Prime Video could one-up Netflix’s Squid Game

Photo by Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

YouTuber MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) has struck a deal with Prime Video to host a new reality competition series called Beast Games. The show will have 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million reward, which the press release claims is “the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming.” There aren’t any details yet about what kinds of challenges Beast Games contestants will participate in.

It’s a remarkable turn of events, even for someone who’s hosted many similar competitions on his YouTube channel, like recent ones where people from every country competed for $250,000 or a group of people from ages 1 to 100 went head-to-head for $500,000.

In 2021, Donaldson made a Squid Game in real life video for his YouTube...

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The return of Gamergate is smaller and sadder

A group of gamers has mobilized a harassment campaign against a story consultant company, marginalized developers, and journalists in protest of what they see as ‘forced’ diversity in gaming.

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Pixel 8 drops below $500 for the first time

There aren’t many smartphones that can do what the Pixel 8 does at this price. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If you’re in need of a solid smartphone upgrade without the bill creeping into mortgage territory, there aren’t many better options than the Google Pixel 8. When you can get one for under $500? Even better. The 128GB unlocked model is down to $499 ($200 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store. That’s $50 cheaper than the price we saw during Black Friday last year. The 256GB model is also $200 off at those retailers, bringing it down to $559.99. Both are down to the lowest prices we’ve seen so far.

The Pixel 8 is really solid, especially if you’re not interested in the gimmicky extras that can bloat the user experience on other devices. Google has optimized the software specifically for its custom Tensor G3 chipset, which offers...

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Microsoft to hold a special Windows and Surface AI event in May

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Microsoft is holding an AI event in the morning on Monday, May 20th — right before Build 2024 starts. In an invite emailed to media, Microsoft says CEO Satya Nadella will talk about the company’s “AI vision across hardware and software.”

The event won’t be livestreamed and will only be open to journalists who attend the event in person. Microsoft’s special event will focus on upcoming Surface hardware and changes to Windows that are all focused on AI. While the software giant is holding a business-focused Surface event later this week, sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the May 20th event will include the consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6.

These consumer Surface devices will run on...

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Homeland Security is testing AI to help with immigration, trafficking investigations, and disaster relief

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is rolling out three $5 million AI pilot programs across three of its agencies, The New York Times reports. Through partnership with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, DHS will test out AI models to help its agents with a wide array of tasks, including investigating child sex abuse materials, training immigration officials, and creating disaster relief plans.

As part of the AI pilot, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will use generative AI to streamline the hazard mitigation planning process for local governments. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — the agency within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that investigates child exploitation, human trafficking, and drug smuggling —...

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