How much MacBook is enough MacBook?

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Okay, so you want a 13-inch MacBook Air. But you probably want some more RAM, right? Maybe a storage bump since you’re hopefully going to have this computer for a decade? Okay, well, at that price, you might as well get the 15-inch Air. It’s basically the same price. But you probably want some more RAM, right? And maybe a storage bump?

The sneaky upgrade path is one of Apple’s most ingenious sales tools — and it applies almost across the board, whether the company is steadily upselling you from a base iPhone to a Pro Max model, a $329 iPad to an iPad Pro, a basic MacBook Air to a super-powered MacBook Pro, or a super expensive keyboard you didn’t even know you wanted.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about the new M3 MacBook...

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How to redo the Apple Vision Pro’s hand and eye tracking

Every once in a while, you’ll need to redo your hand and eye setup. | Samar Haddad for The Verge

Unlike other headsets, you don’t control Apple’s Vision Pro headset with any sort of input device. Instead, the headset tracks your hand and eye movements. When you want to select something, you simply look at it and tap your fingers together. Like Nilay Patel said in his review, it’s pretty magical — until it isn’t. And when hand or eye tracking feels off, the easiest thing to do is recalibrate it.

There are lots of reasons why you might want to recalibrate. Perhaps you bought a Vision Pro without the ZEISS optical inserts and decided later to add them. Maybe the prescription for your glasses got updated. Perhaps a friend really wants to try out the headset but doesn’t feel like schlepping to the Apple Store. Whatever the reason, here...

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We need a permanent solution for universal broadband access

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

In August 2020, during the heart of the covid-19 pandemic when many schools were closed, social media and news outlets were awash with a picture of two grade school students sitting outside of a Taco Bell, attempting to do their schoolwork. That one picture changed millions of minds about the necessity for everyone in the US, regardless of economic status or geographic location, to have an affordable broadband Internet connection.

It would not be hyperbole to say that this one photo was one of the motivating factors behind Congress including $14.2 billion for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The ACP currently provides over 23 million low-income households $30 each month to better...

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Denis Villeneuve is doing Dune 3

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

Variety reports that following the massive box office success of Dune: Part Two, Legendary has tapped Denis Villeneuve for a third installment that would presumably continue the story of how Paul Atreides goes on to conquer the galaxy. Earlier this year, Villeneuve told Empire that he had already “put words on paper” thinking about where he would like to take the Dune franchise going forward.

Legendary has yet to announce any sort of timeline for when production on Dune 3 might begin. But the studio intends for the movie to debut before its next project with Villeneuve — an adaptation of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen’s 2024 Pulitzer Prize-nominated nonfiction book about how nuclear war scenarios would likely play out. From the...

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Netflix’s live-action Avatar has lost its old showrunner and gained two new ones

Image: Netflix

Though Netflix just renewed its live-action Avatar: The Last Airbenderadaptation, showrunner Albert Kim is parting ways with the show.

Variety reports that Jabbar Raisani (Lost in Space) and Christine Boylan (Poker Face) have been tapped to executive produce the next two seasons of Netflix’s Avatar following former showrunner Albert Kim’s decision to step down. Though Netflix has yet to officially announce the change of guard, Kim is reportedly heading over to Disney Plus, where he will executive produce the streamer’s new Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and develop other fresh projects.

Kim first became Avatar’s showrunner back in 2020 following the unexpected exits of Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino — the...

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OpenAI’s ‘year of the enterprise’ includes new tools for increasing AI accuracy

Illustration: The Verge

OpenAI’s enterprise customers who want to use generative AI but prize accuracy might be able to get that with new customization options for the GPT-4 API.

They include the ability to connect to third-party platforms to share information on fine-tuning, save fine-tuned models during additional training without retraining the entire model, and a new user interface to compare model performance and quality. The OpenAI API was launched in 2020 to allow companies to connect and build on top of its large language models, which was followed last August by opening fine-tuning for GPT-3.5 and eventually GPT-4, too.

Highly customized models could provide better results internally. They could also keep responses to the public on track and avoid...

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YouTube is bringing NFL-style multiview to Coachella 2024’s livestream

YouTube’s Multiview will allow Coachella fans to stream four extra stages on one screen. | Image: YouTube

YouTube’s official livestream of this year’s Coachella music festival will feature a technology many football fans are familiar with. Multiview, which allows viewers to watch multiple livestreams on the same screen while tuning into one audio feed, will be available to viewers of the festival’s stream on any YouTube TV app — no need to subscribe to YouTube TV, the platform announced on Thursday.

Just as multiview on NFL Sunday Ticket enables audiences to watch four different games at once, the feature for Coachella will allow for up to four different stages at once. Viewers can switch between audio feeds and jump in and out of fullscreen view. There will be a total of six feeds — or six stages — to choose from. The festival this year...

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AI-generated Asians were briefly unavailable on Instagram

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Yesterday, I reported that Meta’s AI image generator was making everyone Asian, even when the text prompt specified another race. Today, I briefly had the opposite problem: I was unable to generate any Asian people using the same prompts as the day before.

The tests I did yesterday were on Instagram, via the AI image generator available in direct messages. After dozens of tries, I was unable to generate a single accurate image using prompts like “Asian man and Caucasian friend” and “Asian man and white wife.” Only once was the system able to successfully create a picture of an Asian woman and a white man — it kept making everyone Asian.

After I initially reached out for comment yesterday, a Meta spokesperson asked for...

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Roblox executive says children making money on the platform is ‘a gift’

Image: Roblox

Roblox, one of the most popular gaming platforms in the world, has taken a lot of heat from critics who accuse it of exploiting its users, the vast majority of whom are children and teenagers. In a recent interview with Eurogamer, however, Roblox’s studio head, Stefano Corazza, said the platform has actually been a gift to the young developers who make money by creating games on the platform.

“You can say, ‘Okay, we are exploiting, you know, child labor,’ right? Or you can say: we are offering people anywhere in the world the capability to get a job, and even like an income,” Corazza said. “So I can be like, 15 years old, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and then now with just a laptop, I can create something, make money, and then...

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Report: Israel used AI to identify bombing targets in Gaza

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

Israel’s military has been using artificial intelligence to help choose its bombing targets in Gaza, sacrificing accuracy in favor of speed and killing thousands of civilians in the process, according to an investigation by Israel-based publications +972 Magazine and Local Call.

The system, called Lavender, was developed in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7th attacks, the report claims. At its peak, Lavender marked 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza as suspected “Hamas militants” and authorized their assassinations.

Israel’s military denied the existence of such a kill list in a statement to +972 and Local Call. A spokesperson told CNN that AI was not being used to identify suspected terrorists but did not dispute the existence of the Lavender...

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The OnePlus Nord N30 5G, one of our favorite budget phones, is $50 off

OnePlus’ budget-friendly phone is on sale for only $20 more than it was during Black Friday. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

It can be easy to forget affordable champs like the OnePlus Nord N30 5G when you’ve got iPhone 15s and Galaxy S24s dominating store shelves and circulars. It’s our favorite budget smartphone under $300, and today, you can save even more on it. The budget smartphone is down to $249.99 for an unlocked model at Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from OnePlus, which is $50 off and only $20 more than its record low during Black Friday.

The OnePlus Nord N30 5G plays in the same arena as something like the Pixel 7A or Samsung Galaxy A54 5G. It’s considerably cheaper than both, but after reviewing it, we found it delivers well enough in most areas that it’d be hard not to recommend it for someone with a seriously cramped budget.

It covers the basics...

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The best robot vacuums

The Verge

Floor-sweeping robots are only getting better, with new mopping skills, better navigation chops, and more automation, so less work for you. We picked nine of the best bots you can buy right now.

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Star Wars’ next animated anthology explores the dark side

Image: Lucasfilm

Disney Plus is on a run of turning Marvel and Star Wars stories into animated anthologies, and that’s not stopping anytime soon. The latest is Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, a follow-up to 2022’s Tales of the Jedi, which, naturally, explores the dark side of the Force. It starts streaming on Disney Plus on May 4th.

The series will consist of six episodes, which will be split between two character perspectives: the Nightsister Morgan Elsbeth (who will be familiar to those who watched Ahsoka) and former Jedi Barriss Offee (previously featured in Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars). According to Disney, the series “focuses on previously untold events in the lives of the featured characters.”

Tales of the Empire joins a growing list of...

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The Disney Plus password-sharing crackdown starts in June

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Disney Plus already has rules in place to prevent subscribers from sharing their passwords — but now we have an idea when it will start making users pay to share them. In an interview on CNBC, Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company plans on “launching our first real foray into password sharing” in June.

Iger says the rollout will start in “just a few countries in a few markets” before expanding to all subscribers in September. Disney’s anti-password sharing rules initially went into effect for new subscribers on January 25th and were rolled out to existing members on March 14th. Netflix became the first streaming service to crack down on password sharing in 2023, as it began charging users an extra $7.99 per month to add an extra viewer...

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Tesla is dragging Apple into its upcoming fatal Autopilot crash trial

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla is going to court next week over the role its Autopilot system played in a fatal crash in 2018 — and it wants Apple to testify in its defense.

Tesla wants to prove that Apple engineer Wei “Walter” Huang was playing a video game on his phone at the time his Autopilot-enabled Model X smashed into a safety barrier along US Highway 101 in Mountain View, California, in 2018. And now, Huang’s family, which is suing Tesla for wrongful death, is claiming that Tesla is secretly working with Apple to aid in its defense.

In a pretrial motion filed this week, lawyers representing Huang’s family accused Apple of “engaging in a secret discovery ‘work around’ to help support Tesla in its defense of the pending case.”

Huang’s family accused...

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Avatar’s Paul Sun-Hyung Lee wants to geek out with the fans of the future

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Getty Images

As Paul Sun-Hyung Lee sees it, truly loving a genre franchise means wanting to share it and pass it along to the next generation of fans.

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Google’s expanded Find My Device network might arrive in a few days

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The launch of Google’s long-awaited Find My Device network is seemingly almost here. In an email spotted by 9to5Google, Google tells users it will turn on the feature in three days, which uses data from millions of other Android devices to find the location of missing phones and accessories — similar to the tracking tech used by Apple and Tile.

The email says users can use the network to “find any compatible Fast Pair accessories when they’re disconnected from your device” or offline, including earbuds, headphones, and trackers, 9to5Google reports. It adds that users will receive a notification on their device when the feature is enabled and that users can opt out of the network through Find My Device on the web.

Google first announced...

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Garmin’s new heart rate tracker pairs nearly perfectly with sports bras

Finally, a chest strap that doesn’t make me feel like a python is crushing my ribs. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Finally, a chest strap that works with my sports bra — not against it.

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Jeff VanderMeer is writing a fourth Southern Reach novel

Image: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Just like Area X itself, the mindbending Southern Reach story is set to grow even larger. Jeff VanderMeer has confirmed that he’s working on a fourth entry in the series, which to date has included the books Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. (The first was turned into a film by director Alex Garland.) In keeping with the alliterative titles, the new book will be called Absolution. It’s due out on October 22nd.

Absolution is coming around a decade after the series first started, and it’s billed as a prequel to the original trilogy, which followed a mysterious, dangerous, and expanding phenomenon known as Area X. There aren’t a lot of details about what ground the new book will cover, but VanderMeer had this to say in a statement:

A...

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Ford is delaying its next-gen electric three-row SUV and truck

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Ford is delaying the release of its electric three-row SUV until 2027, the company announced in an update. It will also begin work on its next electric truck in 2026 and will offer hybrid options for every model it has in production.

The unnamed SUV was supposed to go into production starting in 2025 at Ford’s plant in Oakville, Ontario, which is currently in the midst of pivoting from gas-car production to EVs. Ford gave several reasons for the delay, including a desire to wait until the three-row SUV market matures before introducing its own entrant.

“The additional time will allow for the consumer market for three-row EVs to further develop and enable Ford to take advantage of emerging battery technology, with the goal to provide...

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3 Body Problem stars on the show’s big question: would you push the button?

Image: Ed Miller / Netflix

One thing that confounds me after reading Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem and watching its Netflix adaptation is a simple button.

Spoilers for 3 Body Problem to follow.

I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around why Ye Wenjie, when faced with the choice to respond to or ignore transmissions from the San-Ti, an alien race, chose to respond. Throughout human history, first contact events rarely go well and go even worse when the two sides are technologically imbalanced. So, why would an ostensibly hyperintelligent woman pin her hopes on a race of beings that have already made their hostile designs on Earth clear?

In an interview with Ye’s actresses Rosalind Chao and Zine Tseng, who play the character throughout the different...

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How to automate tasks in Windows

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

If you find yourself repeating the same tasks in Windows over and over again, it’s likely you can automate the job, potentially saving you time and effort over weeks and months.

These tasks might encompass starting the day with a certain selection of programs and websites, for example, or renaming batches of files to match the same format. Or maybe you want to shut down your PC at the same time every day, or you need a bunch of images resized to the same standard (something I’ve been automating for a long time now).

There are lots of possibilities, and you’ve got a variety of tools to pick from. They all work in slightly different ways, so I will give you a sampling below, and you can choose the one that most closely matches what you’re...

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Microsoft Edge will let you control how much RAM it uses soon

Image: The Verge

Microsoft is working on a new feature for its Edge browser that will let you limit the amount of RAM it uses. Leopeva64, who is one of the best at finding new Edge features, has spotted a new settings section in test builds of the browser that includes a slider so you can limit how much RAM Edge gets access to.

The RAM slider appears to be targeted toward PC gamers, as there is a setting in Canary versions of Edge that lets you limit the amount of RAM when you’re playing a PC game or all of the time. While the slider lets you pick between just 1GB and 16GB on a system with 16GB of RAM, Microsoft warns that “setting a low limit may impact browser speed.” I can’t wait to witness the chaos of Edge trying to handle my 100-plus tabs on just...

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iRobot’s new Roomba vacuums start at just $250

Image: iRobot

iRobot is adding two new budget-friendly robot vacuum cleaners to its lineup that aim to provide the best of the cleaning basics, offering both vacuum-only and 2-in-1 vacuum plus mop models for less than $300.

Superseding the Roomba 694, iRobot claims the new $275 Roomba Combo Essential vacuum and mop model offers 20x more suction power than its predecessor and increases estimated battery life from 90 minutes to 120 minutes on a full charge.

The liquid and suction settings on the Combo Essential can be adjusted between three levels. It also features a V-shaped multi-surface brush, an edge-sweeping brush, and a pump-fed microfiber mop pad for use across different surfaces. Additional features include suggested cleaning schedules based on...

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Google sues alleged crypto scammers for luring people into investments they’d never get back

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is suing two alleged crypto scammers, accusing them of using its Play Store to offer fraudulent cryptocurrency trading apps and investment platforms thatinsteadsimply took users’ money. These apps were used in a type of romance scam commonly called “pig butchering” in reference to fattening a pig before it’s slaughtered.

The accused scammers — twoapp developers based in China and Hong Kong — allegedly uploaded87 different fraudulent apps to enable their schemes, luring in more than 100,000 people who downloaded them. Based on user complaints, Google alleges that users lost anywhere from $100 to tens of thousands of dollars each. Apps uploaded by the pair and their unnamed associateshave been used in versions of the scam since...

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Amazon still has a serious plastic waste problem in the US

Products on a conveyor belt are scanned at an Amazon fulfillment center, where they are being sorted and shipped out during Cyber Monday on November 27th, 2023, in Tampa, Florida. | Photo by Octavio Jones / Getty Images

Despite making pledges to cut down on plastic packaging, a new report from the nonprofit conservation organization Oceana estimates that Amazon’s plastic waste has continued to grow in the US.

The company created 208 million pounds of plastic waste from its packaging in the US in 2022 alone, which Oceana says is enough trash to circle Earth more than 200 times in the form of plastic air pillows. That’s a nearly 10 percent jump from the amount of plastic waste it generated the year before, according to the report.

The US is a worrying outlier for Amazon, Oceana says. Globally, the e-commerce giant says that it reduced its use of plastic packaging 11.6 percent in 2022 compared to the prior year. But the US is the company’s biggest...

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X’s ‘complimentary’ Premium push gives people blue checks they didn’t ask for

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Just as Elon Musk said, X is doling out free Premium and Premium memberships to accounts with a high number of verified followers.

Multiple X users on Wednesday reported seeing the familiar blue “Verified” checkmark next to their handles despite not paying for either paid X subscription tier. Musk last week announced that X accounts with over 2,500 “verified subscriber followers” would receive a free Premium membership; while accounts with over 5,000 would receive a free Premium Plus membership.

based on all the confused tweets i’m seeing, it looks like Twitter / X is starting to really ramp up the roll out of this now

if you suddenly have a blue checkmark even though you’re not paying for one, this is why: pic.twitter.com/T1XaBEeGgn

—...

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The App Store is down along with Apple TV, Apple Podcasts, and Apple Music

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple’s online services appear to be having some problems, with an outage cutting many of us off from the App Store, Apple TV, and Apple Music. The system status page for Apple’s online service has noted an outage beginning at 6:31PM ET affecting those services, as well as Arcade, Audiobooks, Books, Podcasts, Fitness Plus, and its new Apple Sports app. Others have noted problems accessing services like TestFlight and Apple Business Manager.

Apple:

Today, 6:31 PM - ongoing

Some users are affected

Users are experiencing a problem with this service. We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available.

Image: Apple.com

On DownDetector, it looks like the first reports of issues started...

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NASA picks three companies to develop a Moon car for Artemis astronauts

The Lunar Dawn LTV from Lunar Outpost, Lockheed Martin, General Motors (GM), Goodyear, and MDA Space. | Image: Lunar Outpost

NASA has selected Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab to develop the lunar terrain rover for its Artemis lunar explorations. All three companies are in the running for task orders with a potential value of $4.6 billion over the next 13 years.

The trio will develop their team’s ideas for a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) to help astronauts explore the Moon’s south polar region. It’s believed the area contains frozen water, so it makes sense for NASA to set up base camp there.

All three must design vehicles that can accommodate two suited astronauts and handle the area’s extreme conditions. They also must feature robotic, remote operation capabilities so NASA can continue to perform tests and explore even when astronauts...

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DALL-E now lets you edit images in ChatGPT

Nothing but respect for MY president. | Image: OpenAI

OpenAI’s DALL-E is getting a couple of upgrades today that help you shape your AI-generated masterpieces. First, you’ll now find image editing tools when using DALL-E within ChatGPT, both on the web and on mobile. Second, DALL-E now offers preset style suggestions to help inspire image creation — not unlike Android’s AI-generated wallpaper prompts. Because how else could you dream up a sci-fi polar bear on vacation?

DALL-E is on its third generation, and recent updates like this seem to be aimed at making it more user-friendly. DALL-E 3 added integration with ChatGPT, which takes the burden off the user to write a perfectly descriptive image prompt — just tell ChatGPT what you want, and it will do the rest. Today’s update is an extension...

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