Shazam on Wear OS now works without your phone

It’s pretty fast, too. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

The Shazam app for Wear OS just got a neat update: it can now work independently of your Android phone.

The update, which was spotted by 9to5Google, basically removes the need for the wrist app to confer with the app on your phone. You don’t even need the app downloaded on your Android for it to work. I downloaded it directly onto the OnePlus Watch 2 that I’m testing without doing so on the Pixel 8 Pro it’s paired to. It still works! And quickly at that. It was able to correctly identify some bangers on my K-pop playlist within a second or two. (To be fair, there wasn’t any background noise in my office. Your mileage may vary in a coffee shop.)

Another neat update is that if your watch is offline, the app will save a clip of the song...

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How Nintendo made Super Mario Bros. Wonder so weird

Super Mario Bros. Wonder director Shiro Mouri (left) and producer Takashi Tezuka (right). | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a game filled with oddball ideas. Thanks to magical flowers that, once collected, introduce some unexpected new element, players experience everything from a bunch of Piranha Plants simultaneously bursting into song to Mario turning into a sentient pile of goo. It has so many ideas, in fact, that director Shiro Mouri wasn’t sure the team could pull it off. “At first when I heard that we’d be creating one wonder effect per course, and that all of the courses are going to have different wonder effects,” he tells The Verge, “I thought: ‘That’s stupid. That’s impossible.’”

As it turns out, the problem wasn’t so much coming up with ideas. The developers at Nintendo brainstormed a lot of potential powers — around...

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The US tightens greenhouse gas emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles

The Cross Bronx Expressway, a notorious stretch of highway in New York City that is often choked with traffic and contributes to pollution and poor air quality on November 16, 2021 in New York City. | Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the toughest US standards yet for greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty vehicles like big rigs and buses. The rules apply to model year 2027 to 2032 heavy-duty vehicles and are meant to slash emissions from a major source of the pollution causing climate change.

Heavy-duty vehicles are responsible for a quarter of the nation’s transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA says its new standards will avoid a billion tons of those emissions by 2055, which would be like eliminating the pollution from 13 million tanker trucks’ worth of gasoline.

“On behalf of everyone who breathes, thank you.”

Transportation makes up the biggest chunk of the country’s carbon footprint and has...

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Sam Bankman-Fried is still gambling

“I’ve never seen a performance quite like that.” | Collage by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Victor J. Blue, Bloomberg, Getty Images

‘It’s his nature.’

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Apple sues former iOS engineer for allegedly leaking Vision Pro, Journal app details

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Apple is suing a former employee for leaking confidential information, including unknown details about Apple’s Journal app, the development of the VisionOS headset, and more, to journalists and employees of other companies. The lawsuit, filed ten days ago in California state court (24CV433319, pdf), says Andrew Aude also leaked regulatory compliance strategies, employee headcounts, and other product hardware characteristics.

As reported previously by MacRumors, in at least one message, the company says Aude claimed he leaked information “so he could “kill” products and features with which he took issue.”

Apple referenced many of the communications in the lawsuit:

Between June and September 2023 alone, Mr. Aude connected with a Wall...

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Algorithms can aid price collusion, even if no humans actually talk to each other, US enforcers say

Getty

Algorithms might help hotels illegally collude on prices, even if no humans from those businesses actually talk to each other about them, according to US antitrust enforcers.

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission jointly submitted a statement of interest in Cornish-Adebiyi v. Caesars Entertainment, a case brought before the US District Court of New Jersey. The class action case was brought by New Jersey residents who rented rooms in Atlantic City hotels and alleged that several of those hotels engaged in an illegal price-fixing conspiracy through the use of a common pricing algorithm.

The plaintiffs are trying to show that the hotels violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits “conspiracy in restraint of...

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NYC will test AI gun detectors on the subway

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images

New York City will soon start testing out technology that uses AI to detectguns at subway turnstiles, Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday. Adams’ announcement comes one week after an altercation at a subway station in Brooklyn in which a man was shot with his own gun after pulling it on another passenger.

Adams said the city is partnering with Evolv, a Massachusetts-based weapons detection company whose detectors are used in schools and venues across the country. Evolv, however, has faced scrutiny over the accuracy of its machines, as well as two government probes and a class action lawsuit by shareholders.

The pilot will start in 90 days, in accordance with the POST Act, which requires the New York City Police Department to disclose the...

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Microsoft’s new safety system can catch hallucinations in its customers’ AI apps

Illustration: The Verge

Sarah Bird, Microsoft’s chief product officer of responsible AI, tells The Verge in an interview that her team has designed several new safety features that will be easy to use for Azure customers who aren’t hiring groups of red teamers to test the AI services they built. Microsoft says these LLM-powered tools can detect potential vulnerabilities, monitor for hallucinations “that are plausible yet unsupported,” and block malicious prompts in real time for Azure AI customers working with any model hosted on the platform.

“We know that customers don’t all have deep expertise in prompt injection attacks or hateful content, so the evaluation system generates the prompts needed to simulate these types of attacks. Customers can then get a...

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Apple’s OLED iPad Pro will reportedly arrive in May

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Apple plans to release a new lineup of iPad Pros with OLED displays in early May, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company is also reportedly planning to launch an iPad Air with a larger 12.9-inch display for the first time.

According to Gurman’s sources, the new iPad Pro models will feature Apple’s in-house M3 chip, along with a revamped Magic Keyboard with a bigger trackpad. The iPad Air, on the other hand, is rumored to come with the last-generation M2 chip and two display sizes: the standard 10.9-inch option and a larger 12.9-inch one.The current iPad Pro models use M2 chips, while the Air has an M1.

It’s been nearly two years since Apple released an updated iPad. Bloomberg says that, though the company...

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Hulu with Live TV adds MLB Network just as baseball season gets underway

Photo by Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Hulu’s subscription TV service has added MLB Network to its core channel lineup in the nick of time for the league’s Opening Day 2024. This will provide customers with access to “over 100 MLB games nationally broadcast over the course of the season,” along with the network’s original programming and studio shows.

YouTube TV, one of Hulu with Live TV’s primary competitors, abruptly dropped MLB Network early last year after it was unable to reach a new carriage agreement with Major League Baseball. And with no announcement of a return ahead of today’s opening games, it appears that YTTV subscribers will go without it for another year.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising after the company shelled out $2 billion for the rights to NFL...

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SteelSeries’ multi-platform Arctis Nova Pro Wireless headset is nearly $70 off

There are few PS5-compatible gaming headsets that do everything as well as the Nova Pro Wireless. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

When I can’t crank up the volume and bass on my Dolby Atmos system while gaming, I rely on the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless to inject immersive, crisp, and well-balanced audio directly into my eardrums. I own the Xbox version and would still happily buy it for $350 if I needed a replacement. Lucky for you, the version designed to work with the PS5 and PC is nearly matching its all-time low at Amazon and Best Buy, where you can grab it for about $281 ($70 off). The Xbox version is also on sale for $299.99 ($50 off) at Best Buy.

I’ve found the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless to be well worth the money. In addition to a comfortable ski band design and satisfying 40mm drivers, the headset connects to a base station with line-in and two USB...

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How a Windows shake-up could position Microsoft to capitalize on AI PCs

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

After Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay departed Microsoft last year, the software giant quickly split his two divisions into two different teams. It was a move designed to push Windows engineers to focus on more web and AI features under Mikhail Parakhin, who was previously responsible for Bing and ads. It didn’t work out.

Six months after that shake-up, Windows and Surface are back together under a new leader, following frustrations from the very top of Microsoft. The shuffling comes just as Microsoft gets ready for a big “AI PC” push.

Pavan Davuluri, who’s currently in charge of Surface hardware, will now lead both Windows and Surface. Mustafa Suleyman, the DeepMind co-founder who Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just hired, will now...

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New York’s first offshore wind hub to be built with union labor

A wind turbine at the South Fork Wind Farm in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island, New York, on December 7th, 2023. | Photo by Steve Pfost / Newsday RM via Getty Images

Labor groups inked a first-of-its-kind deal to support local hiring and union jobs with the developer of New York’s first offshore wind port. It’s an agreement for the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, envisioned as a crucial onshore staging area for some of America’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farms.

The US gets very little electricity from offshore wind today, even though the resource has the potential to meet up to a quarter of the nation’s power needs by 2050. The very first set of offshore wind farms are being built off the east coast, a key part of the Biden administration’s efforts to transition the country to clean energy.

Policymakers say good jobs are another pillar of that transition. And they hope this new agreement...

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Amazon’s palm-scanning service now lets you sign up from your phone

Image: Amazon

Amazon now lets you sign up for its palm recognition service directly from your phone. It’s launching a new Amazon One app on iOS and Android you can use to take a photo of your palm and set up your account, allowing you to start scanning your palm at locations that support the verification tech.

Previously, Amazon required users to visit physical locations to enroll in Amazon One, which lets you make a purchase or verify your age based on the palm print linked to your Amazon account. The service is available at all Whole Foods stores across the US and some Panera Bread locations, as well as more than 150 stadiums, airports, fitness centers, and convenience stores.

Amazon One uses generative AI to analyze your palm vein structure to...

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Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years for FTX fraud

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried once bragged that he had a 5 percent chance of becoming president of the United States | Collage by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Victor J. Blue, Bloomberg, Getty Images

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to a total of 300 months, or 25 years, in prison for seven counts of conspiracy and fraud charges stemming from the collapse of the crypto exchange he started. The judge applied a 240-month sentence and a 60-month sentence to be served consecutively.

Judge Lewis Kaplan’s sentence was shorter than the 40 to 50 years requested by prosecutors, which he said was more than necessary, but longer than the six and a half years Bankman-Fried’s lawyers asked for and far less than the maximum sentence of 110 years.

Before announcing the sentence, Inner City Press reports that Judge Kaplan called the defense’s claims that people would be paid back speculative, finding that customers of FTX lost $8...

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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire overdoes it all

Image: Legendary

Director Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong sequel is big on bombastic spectacle and new lore but woefully lacking in terms of story and substance.

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8BitDo’s latest retro keyboard is an ode to the Commodore 64

8BitDo’s new keyboard draws inspiration from the Commodore 64’s brown and beige color scheme. | Image: 8BitDo

8BitDo’s latest mechanical keyboard riffs on the design of a 1980s computer with one of the most iconic-looking keyboards of all time: the Commodore 64. 8BitDo’s Commodore 64 edition of its Retro Mechanical Keyboard series is available to preorder starting today for $109.99, with plans to ship it on May 26th.

Underneath its beautifully chunky brown keycaps (ABS plastic with double-shot legends) and Commodore-style rainbow logo, this is basically the same peripheral as 8BitDo’s previous NES keyboard. It comes with clicky Kailh Box White V2 switches as standard, but they’re hot-swappable if you want to swap them out for something a little less loud down the line. It can connect to devices via a choice of USB, Bluetooth, or with a 2.4GHz...

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is about to be sentenced for committing fraud

Photo illustration by Cath Virgina / The Verge

The former crypto billionaire’s punishment could have huge implications for the industry.

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Surprise! Google will let the Pixel 8 run on-device AI after all

Google Pixel 8 owners can have a little on-device AI, as a treat. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

We did it, y’all. We bullied Google into letting the Pixel 8 run on-device AI. Starting with the next Pixel feature drop, the Pixel 8 will use Gemini Nano for a couple of AI features.

Google announced Gemini Nano as its mobile-optimized large language model in December and said it would be a core part of Android in the future — but in its own device lineup, only the Pixel 8 Pro was able to use it. Despite using the same Tensor G3 chipset, the Pixel 8 wasn’t getting on-device AI because of “hardware limitations.” Pixel fans and watchful Android experts asked the same question: what the heck, Google?

The Pixel 8 will get support for Gemini Nano in the next Pixel feature drop as a developer preview, powering on-device recorder summaries...

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Meta is adding AI to its Ray-Ban smart glasses next month

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Meta will bring AI to its Ray-Ban smart glasses starting next month, according to a report from The New York Times. The multimodal AI features, which can perform translation, along with object, animal, and monument identification, have been in early access since last December.

Users can activate the glasses’ smart assistant by saying “Hey Meta,” and then saying a prompt or asking a question. It will then respond through the speakers built into the frames. The NYT offers a glimpse at how well Meta’s AI works when taking the glasses for a spin in a grocery store, while driving, at museums, and even at the zoo.

Although Meta’s AI was able to correctly identify pets and artwork, it didn’t get things right 100 percent of the time. The NYT...

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A quarter of YouTube’s paid creators are earning money with Shorts

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

One year after YouTube turned on revenue sharing for its shortform video feature, a growing chunk of creators are getting paid for it. More than 1 in 4 creators in YouTube’s Partner Program are now earning money with YouTube Shorts, the company announced on Thursday. Given there are over 3 million creators in YouTube’s ad sharing program, that amounts to roughly 750,000 Shorts creators in total.

The company doesn’t break out how much it has paid Shorts creators specifically. It has paid $70 billion to creators in total over the last three years, with the bulk of that going to longform content.

By all measures, Shorts are getting more popular. The number of Shorts uploaded on YouTube has grown by 50 percent year over year, and the...

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The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is a photography nerd’s dream

It’s a beaut.

For most people, the compact camera is long since dead; a camera is a phone and a phone is a camera. But despite all of the technological developments over the past few years, phones still leave something to be desired if you’re the kind of person who likes to go take photos.

Traditional cameras — especially of a certain size and shape — are still alive and kicking, partly because there’s nothing that beats real buttons, dials, and a sturdy grip. They’re things that phones generally don’t have — except for the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. It’s the camera-iest phone camera I’ve used in the last decade (RIP the Nokia Lumia 1020), and I dearly wish it was available in the US.

We love to see an exposure comp dial.

The Xiaomi 14...

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Embracer is selling Borderlands developer Gearbox to Take-Two

Two in-development Borderlands projects will continue to be led by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford under Take-Two’s 2K division. | Image: 2K

Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group has entered an agreement to sell Gearbox Interactive to Rockstar parent company Take-Two for $460 million. In a press release published on Thursday, Embracer announced that Take-Two will acquire full ownership over the Borderlands (including Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands), Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms, and Duke Nukem franchises in the deal, which is expected to be finalized by June 2024.

Take-Two Entertainment will also acquire the Gearbox studios based in Quebec, Montréal, and Frisco, Texas. Embracer will, however, retain several Gearbox assets, including Gearbox Publishing San Francisco (which will be renamed), Cryptic Studios, Lost Boys Interactive, the Remnant franchise, Hyper Light...

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Every US federal agency must hire a chief AI officer

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

All US federal agencies will now be required to have a senior leader overseeing all AI systems they use, as the government wants to ensure that AI use in the public service remains safe.

Vice President Kamala Harris announced the new OMB guidance in a briefing with reporters and said that agencies must also establish AI governance boards to coordinate how AI is used within the agency. Agencies will also have to submit an annual report to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) listing all AI systems they use, any risks associated with these, and how they plan on mitigating these risks.

“We have directed all federal agencies to designate a chief AI officer with the experience, expertise, and authority to oversee all AI technologies...

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New York City welcomes robotaxis — but only with safety drivers

Image: Getty

New York City announced a new permitting system for companies interested in testing autonomous vehicles on its roads, including a requirement that a human safety driver sit behind the steering wheel at all times.

As cities like San Francisco continue to grapple with the problems posed by fully driverless for-hire vehicles, New York City is trying to get ahead of the problem by outlining what it calls “a rigorous permitting program” that it claims will ensure applicants are “ready to test their technology in the country’s most challenging urban environment safely and proficiently.”

“This technology is coming whether we like it or not,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement to The Verge, “so we’re going to make sure that we get it right.”

“...

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Israel quietly rolled out a mass facial recognition program in the Gaza Strip

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Israel has deployed a mass facial recognition program in the Gaza Strip, creating a database of Palestinians without their knowledge or consent, The New York Times reports. The program, which was created after the October 7th attacks, uses technology from Google Photos as well as a custom tool built by the Tel Aviv-based company Corsight to identify people affiliated with Hamas.

The facial recognition program was built in tandem with Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, according to the Times report. After the October 7th attacks, officers within the Israeli military’s Unit 8200, the Israeli Defense Forces’ main intelligence unit, identified potential targets by watching security camera footage and videos Hamas had uploaded to social...

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Dbrand tried and failed to fix the Ghost Case — replacements will take longer

The Dbrand Ghost Case for the iPhone 15 Pro. | Image: Dbrand

Dbrand is scrapping plans to fix its anti-yellowing Ghost Case, but not because it yellows — it’s that it scratches very easily. The company had promised in November to ship free replacements with scratch-resistant coatings, but now it’s telling customers via email they’ll have to wait. Most of its production run of those ended up “unshippable,” the company says, so instead it’s sending a redesigned “Ghost 2.0” this summer. Essentially, it’s a delay.

The company says that its first test runs of the newly-coated cases looked good, but when it tried to manufacture them at scale, the coatings got all gloppy at the edges:

As you can imagine, after developing a zero-yellowing anti-scratch solution that was the first of its kind, we were...

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Leaked images reveal Microsoft’s white disc-less Xbox Series X console

Image: Exputer

Microsoft appears to be readying a white version of its Xbox Series X console without a disc drive. Exputer has published a series of leaked images of the white Xbox Series X, showing that it’s a disc-less system with the same design on the exterior as the existing black Xbox Series X.

The white coating appears to be identical to the Xbox Series S “robot white” that Microsoft uses on its smaller $299 console. Exputer reports that this white Xbox Series X will have some internal components upgraded, including the heatsink used to cool the console. The Verge has seen additional documents detailing changes to this white Xbox Series X that suggest these leaked photos are genuine, but we’ve reached out to Microsoft to comment.

Exputer claimed...

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Oregon’s governor signs right-to-repair law that bans ‘parts pairing’

Oregon joins Minnesota, California, and New York in giving consumers and repair shops more control over device repairs. | Image: iFixit

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has now signed one of the strongest US right-to-repair bills into law after it passed the state legislature several weeks ago by an almost 3-to-1 margin. Oregon’s SB 1596 will take effect next year, and, like similar laws introduced in Minnesota and California, it requires device manufacturers to allow consumers and independent electronics businesses to purchase the necessary parts and equipment required to make their own device repairs.

Oregon’s rules, however, are the first to ban “parts pairing” — a practice manufacturers use to prevent replacement components from working unless the company’s software approves them. These protections also prevent manufacturers from using parts pairing to reduce device...

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The new MacBook Air M3 is $100 off for the first time

The new M3-powered MacBook Air is faster than its predecessor with GPU upgrades. | Image: Apple

It’s a good day for Apple deals. Not only can you get $150 off the Apple Vision Pro for the first time, but the new MacBook Air,released earlier this month, is already $100 off at Amazon and B&H Photo. That’s a new all-time low available on the midnight base models, which come with 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. Note that Amazon is temporarily out of stock, but you can still place an order, and it will ship when it’s available.

Apple’s latest entry-level laptop is powered by Apple’s M3 chips and is therefore faster than its predecessor, which was already a fantastic performer. It’s also a little more useful for productivity purposes, as it can now power up to two external displays when the laptop is closed, as opposed to just one...

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