‘Spirited Away’ returns to theaters in April for Studio Ghibli Fest 2024

Image: Studio Ghibli

Studio Ghibli fans who missed their shot at watching Spirited Away in theaters last year can try again between April 27th and May 1st at “U.S. cinemas nationwide.” The showings are part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2024, which will put 14 Ghibli films — with English dubbed and subtitled versions with the original Japanese voice work — back in theaters throughout the year. It’s not clear how many theaters are involved, but in my area, five theaters are showing Spirited Away over the course of as many days.

That’s the largest list of movies since Ghibli Fest started in 2017. Others hitting theaters this year include Miyazaki classics like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke, as well as movies from other Ghibli directors,...

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Where to preorder Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (and what’s included)

The world of Elden Ring expands on June 21st with a new world, items, and bosses to slay. | Image: Amazon

We spent much of the time following Elden Ring’s launch begging FromSoftware to expand the universe of its latest Game of the Year award-worthy soulslike. By now, you’ll realize our prayers were answered. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will launch on June 21st for the PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC. It takes place in a whole new area separate from the game’s standard map, one filled with new stories, characters, and bosses to slay. It sounds full enough to be a standalone game, but alas, you’ll need the base game to enjoy the $39.99 expansion.

When it comes to purchasing options, Shadow of the Erdtree is not your average piece of downloadable content — there are preorder bonuses, physical bundles, and special editions with collector’s...

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The Sonos Roam 2 may launch in June

The first-generation Roam speakers. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Sonos will launch the follow-up to its Roam wireless AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth speaker in June, along with a new app specifically for its portable speakers. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who writes in his Power On newsletter today that the company has rejiggered the hardware to fix Bluetooth issues with thespeaker.

Gurman writes that the new app will also support the company’s rumored $449 high-end headphones, which may also come in June. However, users will have to wait for the Move 1 and 2 and the first-generation Roam to gain support, as the company has reportedly had trouble getting the software up to snuff.

The original Roam is a solid speaker with some quirks, like no stereo pairing over Bluetooth, which The Verge’s...

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The biggest new battle royale is ready for your phone

Image by Cath Virginia / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 31, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hi, sorry for my bad taste in TV, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about LA crime rings and AI music tools, watching March Madness even though all my brackets are already busted, watching the story of Mickey Mouseand pretending I don’t care about Love Is Blind while my wife watches even though I’m now kind of obsessed with Love Is Blind, and trying to understand all the basketball terms LeBron James uses in his new podcast.

I also have for you a huge new Netflix show, a super-cheap USB charger, a newish messaging app, the new X-Men series...

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Belkin’s fast-charging Apple Watch power bank is down to its best price yet

Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro — the white whale of travel chargers — is down to $79.99 as part of Amazon’s ongoing Big Spring Sale. | Image: Belkin

Happy Saturday, dear readers! In case you haven’t heard, Amazon’s spring sales event is in full effect through March 25th, letting you save on wireless earbuds, Bluetooth trackers, smartwatches, and all manner of tech. Truth be told, the deals are a bit better than we had anticipated, especially when it comes to Qi2 chargers and portable battery packs. Right now, for example, you can snag Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro power bank at Amazon and B&H Photo for $79.99 ($20 off), an all-time low.

When my colleague Victoria Song waxed poetic about the BoostCharge Pro last year, it wasn’t without good reason. Good, travel-friendly offerings that let you fast-charge Apple’s latest Apple smartwatches — specifically the Series 7, 8, 9, and both Ultra...

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Smart ceiling light showdown: Aqara T1M versus Nanoleaf Skylight

Smart ceiling lights are finally becoming a thing and are great for lighting up your whole room with both fun and function. We compared two new options from Aqara and Nanoleaf to find out which is the best.

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Final Fantasy XVI’s next DLC gets a trailer and a release date

Yesterday, Square Enix released a trailer for The Rising Tide, the next paid DLC for Final Fantasy XVI, and gave the expansion a release date: April 18th. The update to the PS5 game will be available as a single purchase add-on or in the $24.99 Final Fantasy XVI PlayStation Store Expansion Pass. And besides adding the eikon Leviathan to the game, other content introduces a game mode as well as new weapons and abilities.

For no good reason, I haven’t played a new Final Fantasy game in years, but I trust Ash Parrish’s conclusion that the Leviathan being missing has been an error in need of correction. PlayStation’s blog post says in addition to fighting it in a new boss fight, Clive will get Leviathan Eikonic abilities, including summoning...

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3 Body Problem VR headset review: magical tech in need of more apps

Image: Netflix

Arthur C. Clarke famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and that’s never been more true than with the 3 Body Problem VR headset. It’s so far ahead of everything else on the market that it doesn’t seem possible. There’s really no doubt: this is the best way to experience virtual reality. Sadly, there’s far too little software to take advantage of all of that advanced tech; at launch, there’s only a single app available. And even though that one app is a game that could alter the fate of mankind forever, that doesn’t quite nudge the headset into “must buy” territory.

But let’s start with that hardware because it is indeed incredible. It’s a sleek metallic headset that’s so light you can...

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Financial Times tests an AI chatbot trained on decades of its own articles

The Verge

The Financial Times has a new generative AI chatbot called Ask FT that can answer questions its subscribers ask. Similar to generalized AI bots (like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini), users can expect a curated natural language answer to whatever they want to know — but with answers derived from the outlet’s decades of published information rather than sources that are harder to explain or are subject to ongoing legal action. So don’t expect it to give you an answer for the best recipe for fettucini alfredo.

When we asked, “Who runs Microsoft’s AI products?” the tool returned an up-to-date answer and referenced news that broke this week about Microsoft hiring DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of its new AI team:

Mustafa...

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How to find any file on Windows

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

While a lot of our files are stored in the cloud, there are still many ones and zeros that get stored locally. But as the capacity of the drives used by our desktops and laptops has increased, finding files has gotten that much harder. How many photos and videos do you have stacked up in your computer? How many documents and downloads?

Personally, I tend to neglect file management because there’s so much storage space available. But when I do need a file, especially one I haven’t used for a while, the old phrase about finding a needle in a haystack comes to mind. It’s even worse if I don’t remember much about what it was called.

Don’t despair. Windows has the tools you need to track down what you’re after. And if the built-in options...

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AI-generated blues misses a human touch — and a metronome

Suno will happily sing you a tune. | Image: The Verge / Shutterstock

I heard a new song last weekend called “Soul Of The Machine.” It’s a simple, old-timey number in E minor with a standard blues chord progression (musicians in the know would call it a 1-4-5 progression). In it, a voice sings about being a trapped soul with a heart that once beat but is now cold and weak.

“Soul Of The Machine” is not a real song at all. Or is it? It’s getting harder to say. Whatever it is, it’s the creation of Suno, an AI tool from a startup of the same name focused on music generation. Rolling Stone said this song’s prompt was “solo acoustic Mississippi Delta blues about a sad AI.” And you know what? I doubt I’d glance askance at it if I heard it in a mix of human-recorded Delta blues tunes. The track is technically...

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32°N’s liquid lens sunglasses double as reading glasses for GenXers

Sunglasses that convert to reading glasses with a swipe.

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Stability AI CEO resigns to ‘pursue decentralized AI’

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Emad Mostaque is stepping down from his role as CEO of Stability AI, the startup that helped bring Stable Diffusion to life. In a press release late on Friday night, Stability AI says Mostaque is leaving the company “to pursue decentralized AI.” Mostaque will also step down from his position on the board of directors at Stability AI.

The board has appointed two interim co-CEOs to lead Stability AI — COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte — while it conducts a search for a permanent CEO. “As we search for a permanent CEO, I have full confidence that Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte, in their roles as interim co-CEOs, will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI...

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Asus’ tiny 2.5-liter gaming NUC tentatively starts at $1,629 in the US

The Asus ROG NUC. | Image: Asus

When Asus rescued Intel’s NUC brand of compact computers from the dumpster, I held out hope that the company might also revive Intel’s ambitious miniature gaming PCs. It did, but prepare for a little sticker shock — these systems may cost as much or more than a comparable gaming laptop.

The company’s website currently lists two models of the ROG NUC, with what Asus tells us are tentative prices of $1,629 and $2,199. The entry-level model sports an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics, 16GB of 5600MHz DDR5 RAM and 512GB of NVMe SSD storage, while the advanced config bumps that up to an Core Ultra 9 185H, RTX 4070, and 32GB / 1TB of RAM and storage respectively.

Since you can easily find Asus’ popular Zephyrus G14 and G16...

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United States v. Apple is pure nerd rage

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

United States v. Apple is a lawsuit written for the general public, an 88-page press release designed to be read aloud on cable news shows.

A lawsuit is, functionally speaking, a communication between lawyers and a judge. Because it is a specialized missive to a specialized audience, it can become highly technical and jargonistic — this is especially so when it comes to niche areas of law like antitrust or complex sectors of litigation like technology. Tech lawsuits are often obscure even to techies, interspersed with bizarre software terminology that is pretty much meaningless outside of a court of law. (For example, antitrust law loves “middleware,” and copyright law loves “technological protection measure.”)

Although the dreaded...

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Mozilla just ditched its privacy partner because its CEO is tied to data brokers

Image: Mozilla

Mozilla is ending its partnership with Onerep after the company’s CEO admitted to having ties to a data broker, as first reported by Krebs on Security. “Though customer data was never at risk, the outside financial interests and activities of Onerep’s CEO do not align with our values,” writes Mozilla’s vice president of communications Brandon Borrman, in a statement provided to The Verge.

In February, Mozilla bundled Onerep’s data removal service into its new $8.99 per month Monitor Plus subscription. The service let users hunt down their personal information on the web and submit takedown requests across dozens of websites — all through Mozilla’s partnership with Onerep.

However, an in-depth report from Krebs on Security found that...

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Mint is going away, but these easy budgeting apps can take its place

Image: Mint

If you’ve been using Intuit’s Mint app to help you budget, automatically collect your expenses, put them in useful categories, and remind you to pay them, then you were probably a bit shocked to find out that Intuit will be folding Mint into its other financial service, Credit Karma. Originally, the final date was going to be January 1st, 2024, but now, Mint will officially disappear on March 23rd, 2024.

Credit Karma’s main service is to offer advice about financial products based on your credit score, which means this may be a good fit depending on how many of Mint’s features will be moved to Credit Karma. But it’s too soon to tell. (According to Intuit, “some of the most popular Mint-like features are available on Intuit Credit Karma,”...

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Joni Mitchell is back on Spotify just like Neil Young — because Joe Rogan isn’t going anywhere

Photo by Taylor Hill / WireImage

Two years after several legendary musicians broke with Spotify in protest over controversial remarks made on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show, most have now returned to the music service — with Joni Mitchell as the latest example. As noted by The New York Times, several of the singer-songwriter’s most pivotal albums, including Blue,are once again available to stream on Spotify. Mitchell’s representatives haven’t offered any comment on her quiet comeback.

“Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” Mitchell wrote in 2022 amid an uproar directed at Rogan for misinformation that was repeated on his podcast.

Neil Young, the musician who was most vocal in his criticism of comments on The Joe Rogan Experience...

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How an artificial tooth monopoly put the DOJ’s blockbuster Apple antitrust suit in New Jersey

Image: The Verge / Getty Images

So, what do artificial teeth have to do with the Department of Justice’s massive lawsuit against Apple? Well, they may be one of the reasons why the DOJ decided to file its lawsuit in the state of New Jersey — instead of, say, Virginia or Washington, DC, like it did for Google and Microsoft.

The DOJ previously filed — and won — a similar antitrust case against a company that makes fake teeth in the Third Circuit, which includes New Jersey.

In an interview with The Verge, William Kovacic, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission and a professor at the George Washington University Law School, explains that “the Third Circuit is a jurisdiction with some pretty good law for plaintiffs on monopolization issues.” He points to the DOJ’s...

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‘Even stronger’ than imagined: DOJ’s sweeping Apple lawsuit draws expert praise

Cath Virginia / The Verge

The Department of Justice’s antitrust division has come into its own, having filed its third tech monopoly lawsuit in four years.

The accumulated experience shows up in the complaint, according to antitrust experts who spoke with The Verge about the complaint filed Thursday accusing Apple of violating antitrust law. The DOJ describes a sweeping arc of behaviors by Apple, arguing that it adds up to a pattern of illegal monopoly maintenance. Rather than focusing on two or three illegal acts, the complaint alleges that Apple engages in a pattern of behaviors that further entrench consumers into their ecosystem and make it harder to switch, even in the face of high prices and degraded quality.

“I think that they made an even stronger case...

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Apple reportedly gives up on its MicroLED dream for now

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple is scrapping plans to build a MicroLED display for the Apple Watch, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company reportedly stopped working on the display “around the same time as the company’s decision to cancel work on a self-driving car,” writes Gurman, after finding it too costly and complex to develop.

This corroborates an earlier rumor from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said the company canceled the in-house MicroLED display because “the production costs are too high to make it economically viable.” As a result of the project’s discontinuation, Apple cut “several dozen” engineering jobs, some of which were at the company’s own screen manufacturing facility in California_, Bloomberg_ reports.

Rumors about...

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X-Men ‘97 is Marvel’s omega-level nostalgia play

Image: Marvel Animation

Disney Plus’ new X-Men animated series is a throwback to the days when comics adaptations could focus on their own stories instead of cinematic franchises.

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Confirmed: the S Pen smells kind of bad

The stinky stylus in question. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

I smelled the S Pen, and the reports are true: it kind of stinks.

The S Pen is one of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s signature features — it’s a stylus that lives in the phone. A report from Reddit user LatifYil kicked off the S Pen aroma discussion earlier this week, noting that the S Pen on their Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra “absolutely reeks.” Dozens of commenters with S24 Ultras (and earlier stylus-toting Galaxy phones) responded in affirmation: their styli stank.

As noted by SamMobile, a moderator on Samsung’s EU community forums offered a reasonable explanation for the smell:

This isn’t anything to be concerned about. While the S Pen is in its holster, it is close to the internal components of the phone, which will generate heat while...

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Victrola’s cheapest Sonos-ready turntable has fallen to yet another low

The stylish Victrola Stream Onyx is on sale for $334.20 as part of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale. | Image by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

We’re two days into Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, and we’ve already seen some pretty good deals on personal audio gear and home theater equipment, including a new low on Apple’s latest AirPods Pro and a rare discount on the Sonos Ray and second-gen Sonos Beam. The sale has gotten even better since it kicked off, too, especially now that Amazon is selling the Victrola Stream Onyxfor a new low of $334.20 ($266 off).

Victrola’s entry-level Works with Sonos turntable lets you stream all your records to your Sonos speakers like its pricier siblings — including the forthcoming Stream Sapphire and midrange Stream Carbon. What you don’t get is the Sapphire’s unique ability to stream records to practically anything or the Carbon’s high-end Ortofon...

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Boom’s first test flight could signal the return of supersonic air travel

Boom’s XB-1 demonstrator took off for the first time last week. | Image: Boom

Aviation startup Boom Supersonic took a major step today toward its goal of returning commercial supersonic aviation to the skies, after the company’s prototype aircraft, the XB-1, left the ground for the first time this week. The short, subsonic flight over the Mojave Desert came years later than expected, but it shows that Boom is at least still making progress.

The XB-1 took off Thursday at 7:28AM PT, reached a maximum altitude of 7,120 feet, and a top speed of 246 knots (283 mph). It landed 12 minutes later at 7:40AM.

Boom’s overall mission is to launch Overture, the first supersonic commercial aircraft since the Concorde ended operations 20 years ago. The company has secured contracts with major airlines like American and United,...

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Dozens of countries pledge support for nuclear power, despite lingering concerns

Attendees arrive for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Nuclear Energy Summit at the Brussels Expo on March 21st, 2024. | Photo by Nicolas Maeterlinck / BELGA / AFP via Getty Images

More than 30 countries have pledged to pursue nuclear energy as one way to meet global climate goals. Even so, nuclear energy is still a controversial energy source that’s bogged down by concerns about radioactive waste, safety, and high costs.

At a nuclear energy summit in Brussels yesterday, the countries pledged “to work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy by taking measures such as enabling conditions to support and competitively finance the lifetime extension of existing nuclear reactors, the construction of new nuclear power plants and the early deployment of advanced reactors,” The Associated Press reports. The US, China, Japan, France, Britain, and Saudi Arabia were among the 34 countries to sign the pledge.

It’s a...

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Truth Social is going public

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images

Shareholders of the Digital World Acquisition Corporation approved a long-awaited merger with Truth Social, former President Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media app, on Friday — potentially boosting Trump’s net worth by $3 billion.

As a result of the merger, shareholders of publicly traded DWAC will become shareholders of the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company behind Truth Social. Trump’s media company will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol DJT as early as next week, The Associated Press reports.

Trump owns nearly 79 million shares in the company, meaning the merger could give him a much-needed inflow of cash. The former president owes more than $454 million in legal penalties. But a so-called...

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Baldur’s Gate 3 developer is moving on from Dungeons and Dragons

Image: Larian Studios

With the sheer popularity surrounding Baldur’s Gate 3, the game is ripe for an expansion — but if it ever happens, it won’t be made by its developer Larian Studios. During a panel at the Game Developers Conference on Thursday, Larian founder Swen Vincke revealed that the studio plans on moving away from Dungeons & Dragons games, as first reported by IGN.

“We’re not going to make new expansions, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re not going to make Baldur’s Gate 4, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re going to move on,” Vincke said. He added that Larian is also going to “move away from D&D” and start a new project.

Counter expectations but I’ve never been more sure about a strategy shift. This is the right thing for...

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Senators push to declassify TikTok briefings

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Michael Duva, Getty Images

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal and Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn are calling for TikTok briefings to be declassified so the government can “better educate the public on the need for urgent action.” The briefings come as support grows for a forced sale of TikTok due to national security concerns around ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the app.

“We are deeply troubled by the information and concerns raised by the intelligence community in recent classified briefings to Congress. TikTok is a weapon in the hands of the Chinese government, and poses an active risk to our democratic institutions and national security,” Blumenthal and Blackburn wrote.

Last week, in an unusually speedy process, the House passed a bill that...

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Batman spinoff The Penguin is pure crime drama in first trailer

Image: Max

We may be waiting a while to see Robert Pattinson return as Batman, but the franchise isn’t going totally quiet. Max just released the first teaser trailer for The Penguin, which sees Colin Farrell reprise the titular role from the 2022 film The Batman. As a teaser, the short clip doesn’t give much away, but the vibes are clear: this is going to be a crime drama, only set in Gotham.

Matt Reeves, who directed The Batman, will serve as an executive producer, while Lauren LeFranc (Agents of SHIELD) is showrunner. And while we don’t know much of the premise just yet, the rest of the cast includes Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, Clancy Brown, and Michael Zegen.

The eight-episode-long show...

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