Can you watch a solar eclipse in the Apple Vision Pro?

Image: Apple

This morning, remembering I’d forgotten to order eclipse glasses, I wondered out loud: Would it be an absolutely awful idea to watch today’s solar eclipse on the Apple Vision Pro? I’m extremely not a camera expert, but I seem to recall that pointing a camera at the sun is bad. However, online answers vary widely, so I put the question to The Verge’sEmmy-winning senior video producer Becca Farsace.

Her answer was that the Vision Pro is expensive; it has a lot of cameras; and it isn’t worth the risk. She added: “Wes, you are a free soul! you can do whatever you please, but if I saw this on the internet I would be so mad that someone who spent that much money was out there doing this.”

She’s right; I am a free soul! Challenge accepted,...

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Tesla is settling with the family of the Apple engineer who died in an Autopilot crash

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

This week, Tesla was scheduled to appear in court to defend its Autopilot system against a claim of wrongful death — but it looks like the company will pay the family of Apple engineer Wei “Walter” Huang instead.

Court documents show that Tesla is trying to seal the amount of a potential settlement payment to the Huang family. While it’s not clear how much the company might be offering or what other terms the settlement includes, lawyers for Tesla state that both parties have already agreed to the settlement and want it to be confidential.

You can read that document below; The Washington Postand Bloomberg reported the news earlier. Lawyers for the Huang family didn’t immediately respond to our email.

The settlement has not yet been...

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The Supercut app brings good Netflix to the Vision Pro

The service selector in Supercut. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

Netflix said last year that it had no plans for a native app for the Apple Vision Pro — a disappointment for owners, given how well-suited it is for the task. Now, a new app called Supercut brings Netflix streaming to Apple’s headset without letterboxing bars on the top and bottom of the video; it also supports 4K streaming with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision.

Made by developer Christian Privitelli, Supercut offers playback controls — including subtitles, audio output, playback speed, and the ability to skip ahead or back a few seconds — plus the ability to switch between profiles on the fly. It even gives you a visual indicator telling you whether your video is outputting in one or both of the Dolby formats and what resolution you’re...

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Sennheiser’s new fitness buds do heart rate tracking right

These buds are a more comfy replacement for a chest strap.

For once, I didn’t have to worry about a fiddly fit getting in the way of heart rate tracking.

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TikTok is getting closer to launching an Instagram rival

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok is planning to release a new photo-sharing app that could take on Instagram. In a notification sent to users, TikTok says it’s launching “a new app for photo posts” called TikTok Notes, as reported earlier by TechCrunch.

The notification says it will share “existing and future public TikTok photo posts” to TikTok Notes while also giving users the ability to opt out. A new photo.tiktok.com URL (archived version) spotted by TechCrunch also briefly appeared online with a prompt to open a post in the TikTok Notes app. Judging by the image included on the site, it looks like you’ll be able to write a caption alongside your photo, too.

In a statement to TechCrunch, TikTok says it’s “exploring ways to empower our community to create...

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We now have a better look at what’s inside the Humane AI pin

Photo by Amelia Holoway Krales / The Verge

The Humane AI pin promises to give users a way to use generative AI in the physical world. You can clip the pin to your shirt, talk to it, and project answers from chatbots onto any surface, most often your palm. We know a little bit about what powers the tiny square pin, and thanks to a new report, we have a much better view of what goes on under the hood.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) included a photographic teardown of the AI pin in a new report. The photos show the clearest look so far into what comprises the Humane AI pin, as well as a close-up of the Snapdragon processor it uses.

The FCC must certify devices that use wireless communications to ensure they follow regulations before they are releasedto the public....

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An adult version of scented markers exists… as thermal paste

Image: Clock Work Tea Party

Before today, I had never heard of Japanese thermal paste maker Clock Work Tea Party. But I’ll never forget them thanks to this Tom’s Hardware article; the company makes limited-edition scented thermal paste. It previously released apple- and strawberry-scented pastes, and on April 12th, it’s releasing a new scent that supposedly smells like an Osmanthus plant in full bloom. All its scented pastes are part of the company’s Ekusuri Mugurisu series, which also includes standard thermal paste.

Osmanthus, also known as sweet osmanthus or tea olive, is a sweet-smelling, fragrant plant native to eastern Asia that blooms a seemingly endless amount of tiny flowers every spring (and sometimes the fall). It’s part of the olive family, and the...

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Google’s Nest Secure is shutting down today — and you’ve got options besides ADT

Google’s smart home security system Nest Secure will stop working today, April 8th. | Image: Google Nest

As we’ve warned you, on April 8th, Google is turning off support for its once-excellent Google Nest Secure home security system. This means that, as of today, your Nest Secure will no longer connect to the internet, and you won’t be able to control it from the Nest app or receive notifications from the alarm system. It’s basically a paperweight (albeit one that can be recycled).

Google announced it was discontinuing Nest Secure in 2020, so you’ve had plenty of time to shop for an alternative. But if you’ve been putting off the giant pain of switching out a home security system until the last minute, that last minute is here.

So, what are your options? When it announced it was killing Nest Secure, Google, a substantial investor in ADT,...

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Nothing’s next set of earbuds might include a Playdate-inspired glow-up

Image: Android Headlines

Consumer tech startup Nothing, which is expected to launch its newest earbuds later this month, will also debut a new color variant that evokes a certain yellow handheld, according to leaked renders shared by Android Headlines. Nothing previously announced that it would be dropping numbers in its naming strategy, so instead of the Ear 3, the successors to the Ear 2 will be simply called the Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a).

According to the images, both earbuds will include the same clear, square case as earlier models. The Ear and the more compact Ear (a) will be available in black and white, with the latter also available in a Playdate yellow variant that applies to the case and the earbuds themselves. Like previous Nothing buds, both...

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WWE went big on AR at WrestleMania 40

Photo by WWE / Getty Images

AR effects have become a key part of entrances and other aspects of WWE TV over the last several years — far outlasting the company’s experiments with VR.

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The total eclipse shows us how important solar energy is to the US

View of the solar eclipse from the Dudley Observatory on Monday, August 21st, 2017, in Schenectady, New York. | Photo by Lori Van Buren / Albany Times Union via Getty Images

You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, and the total eclipse is a stark reminder of that adage when it comes to the key role solar energy currently plays in the US.

More than 31 million people — nearly 10 percent of the population in the US — live in an area that will experience the total solar eclipse today. Millions more live near dirty power plants that could be tapped to make up for a loss of solar power.

Grid managers have had to find backup sources of energy to cope with the eclipse. It shows us how far the nation has come in cleaning up its power grid — and what we’re still in dire need of to complete that task.

All 50 states will experience some degree of disruption

All 50 states will experience some degree of...

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Roborock’s Q5 Pro, the best robovac for families with pets, is nearly half off

Roborock’s entry-level robot vacuum is down to just $260, which is a new all-time low. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

If you’re looking for a way to quickly wrap up your spring cleaning, robot vacuums make for great cleaning assistants that can help you do so with just the press of a button. And right now, one of our favorite models has plunged to a new all-time low, with both Amazon and Roborock selling the Roborock Q5 Pro for $259.99 ($170 off).

The midrange Q5 Pro is a powerful cleaning machine with dual rubber roller brushes and 5,500Pa of suction power, which allows it to suck up pet hair, dirt, and debris from carpets exceptionally well without getting tangled up. It also comes with a removable mopping pad so you can clean up the finer dust the vacuum didn’t catch, along with a large 770ml bin that prevents you from having to empty it every...

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It’s true: people like leaving their TVs on in the background

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

The rise of free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) seems to have little to do with what’s playing — and more like how it’s playing. Metrics compiled by Bloomberg suggest that people really do just like to leave their TVs running in the background while working around the house or scrolling through social media.

As shown in the below chart from Bloomberg, viewers are spending more time watching Tubi, the FAST service owned by Fox, than Max, Peacock, and Paramount Plus. Tubi’s viewership has spiked within the past year, accounting for 1 percent of time spent watching TV in February 2023 to 1.7 percent in February 2024. It may even shoot past Disney Plus if the trend continues, Bloomberg reports.

Image: Bloomberg ...

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Lawmakers unveil new bipartisan digital privacy bill after years of impasse

Image: Getty Images

A pair of bipartisan lawmakers released a new comprehensive privacy proposal on Sunday, the first sign in years that Congress could have a shot at breaking the long-standing impasse in passing such protections.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) unveiled the American Privacy Rights Act, the most significant comprehensive data privacy proposal introduced in years. The draft bill would grant consumers new rights regarding how their information is used and moved around by large companies and data brokers while giving them the ability to sue when those rights are violated.

The bill will still need to be introduced into both chambers and advanced...

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Microsoft says it’s cracked the code on an important quantum computing problem

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft says it’s figured out how to improve error rates in quantum computing, bringing quantum computing closer to a commercial state.

The company worked in collaboration with quantum computing hardware maker Quantinuum to improve the performance of the qubit — the very basic unit of quantum computing. Qubits work by holding two different phases at once (instead of just a one and a zero, it’s both), but they aren’t very stable, making it easy for them to lose data. Researchers can now create several “logical qubits,” or qubits that are more stable while holding these different states.

Krysta Svore, vice president of advanced quantum development at Microsoft, told The Verge in an interview that because qubits are prone to errors,...

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Microsoft is confident Windows on Arm could finally beat Apple

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Microsoft is getting ready to fully unveil its vision for “AI PCs” next month at an event in Seattle. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft is confident that a round of new Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple’s M3-powered MacBook Air both in CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks.

After years of failed promises from Qualcomm, Microsoft believes the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors will finally offer the performance it has been looking for to push Windows on Arm much more aggressively. Microsoft is now betting big on Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors, which will ship in a variety of Windows laptops this year and Microsoft’s latest consumer-focused Surface hardware.

Microsoft...

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Google’s Pixel 8 and 8 Pro can now be located even with a dead battery

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Google’s Pixel 8 series phones can now be located even when they’re powered down or after their batteries have run down. The convenient new capability was announced as part of today’s rollout of the upgraded, more advanced Find My Device network. Google says this offline tracking is made possible by “specialized Pixel hardware” in its latest two phones, and I’ve asked for more details on that.

Hopefully, the company will extend this same functionality to the future Pixel Fold 2 and Pixel 9 / 9 Pro, though it’s less certain if the budget-tier Pixel 8A (rumored to arrive at next month’s I/O) would offer offline location finding or if it’ll be a premium-only perk.

Apple’s recent iPhones can similarly be located when they’re without a data...

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Android’s upgraded Find My Device network is here

A wide range of Android devices will get offline finding, but the Pixel 8 gets a special feature. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

We had plenty of signs it was coming; now, Android’s enhanced Find My Device network is officially here. It’s rolling out starting today, and it uses a crowdsourced network to help Android device owners find their stuff — much like iOS’s Find My network.

With the update, you’ll be able to find your phone even if it’s offline by using help from other Android devices silently relaying your phone’s approximate location. If your lost device is nearby, you can get visual cues in the Find My Device app as you move closer to it. And Google’s Pixel 8 phones get a bonus feature, too: they can be located even if they’re powered off.

Starting in May, the network will also support new Bluetooth tracker tags from Chipolo and Pebblebee so you can...

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I can’t recommend this Animal Crossing Switch Lite bundle enough

Image: Nintendo

The release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons couldn’t have been better timed, very specifically for me. The Christmas before, my partner bought me a Switch, and for about a decade before that, the only console I’d owned was a modded Wii because I’d sold the roughly two dozen systems I’d collected in an effort to reset my relationship with gaming.

But there was also the fact that just days before, I was furloughed from my job at a brewery because of a pandemic and businesses throughout my city had shut down. I spent hundreds of hours paying Tom Nook his blood money, gaming the turnip market and carefully laying out my island, complete with a theme park and a Halloween land. My partner played, too, and after a short while, I bought her a...

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A farewell to Wii U and Nintendo 3DS online services

Image: The Verge

Nintendo is officially closing the chapter on the Wii U and 3DS. Today is the final day to play online on either console, and it’s kind of making me want to dust off the Wii U just to play the original Splatoon online one last time.

The Wii U was far from Nintendo’s most popular console, but I still have a lot of great memories with the machine. It was the first console I used to play competitively. As someone who never really liked the pressure of playing with complete strangers in games like Halo or Call of Duty, the Wii U allowed me to break through that.

It let me jump right into Mario Kart 8 with players from all over the world while raging behind my TV screen as the blue shell ruined my first-place finish. I didn’t have to worry...

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Welcome to the wasteland: all the news on Amazon’s Fallout TV series

Image: Amazon

Everything you need to know about the upcoming streaming show.

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Why Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince is the internet’s unlikely defender

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Cloudflare

What free speech, war zones, and Aristotle have to do with internet infrastructure.

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Elon Musk and Brazil are beefing over X

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Brazil has opened an investigation into Elon Musk over a potential obstruction of justice after the X owner said he reactivated accounts on the social media platform Brazil had ordered the platform to block.

The inquiry opened by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Sunday follows a string of heated interactions between Musk and the Brazilian government. On Saturday, X’s global government affairs team announced that “court decisions” had forced the platform to block “certain popular accounts” in Brazil and would face daily fines (of up to $20,000, according to The Associated Press) if it failed to comply.

“We are prohibited from saying which court or judge issued the order, or on what grounds,” said the affairs team....

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Kia EV9 review: third row’s the charm

Kia’s big electric SUV goes where very few EVs have gone before: into the third row.

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A new bill would try to make tools like Zoom and Teams work together securely

Cath Virginia / The Verge

A new proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) would require videoconferencing and messaging tools used by the federal government to be able to communicate with each other, even if made by different companies. It would also enforce high security standards for government collaboration tools, including end-to-end encryption.

The Secure and Interoperable Government Collaboration Technology Act, a discussion draft shared exclusively with The Verge, would make it so that a government user on Teams, for example, would be able to talk to a colleague at a different agency using Zoom. While the bill would only implement the requirement for tools used by the government, if passed, it could push the industry toward greater interoperability across their...

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A24’s horror trilogy heads to the ’80s in first Maxxxine trailer

Image: A24

It’s shaping up to be a promising summer of horror. Last week, we got a first glimpse at Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo, which comes out in August, and this week is starting off with the first trailer for Ti West’s Maxxxine. The movie will round out a trilogy that kicked off in 2022 with the release of both X and its prequel Pearl; it hits theaters on July 5th.

As the title implies, the new movie follows aspiring actress Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) as she attempts to make it big in Hollywood in 1985 following the gruesome events of X. Much like Pearl before her (also played by Goth), she seems willing to do anything to make it happen. But bad news: a mysterious killer known as the “night stalker” is on the loose, complicating those plans.

Despite...

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Spotify’s latest AI feature builds playlists based on text descriptions

Spotify says it will continue working on its generative playlist feature “over the coming months.” | Image: Spotify / Verge

After experimenting with AI playlist generation in its DJ feature last year, Spotify is now launching a beta tool that allows users to create a curated tracklist based on text descriptions. Its new AI Playlist beta is initially rolling out to Spotify Premium subscribers on mobile devices in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Android and iOS users in those locations can find the AI Playlist generator by heading into “Your Library” and tapping the “+” button at the top-right of the page. After selecting the AI Playlist option from the drop-down menu, users can type in a prompt — such as “music to read to on a cold, rainy day” — to get a playlist of 30 songs that match that vibe. The results can be tweaked using additional prompts like “more...

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Unlock Donghua Jinlong’s food grade glycine

Donghua Jinlong’s factory. | Image: Donghua Jinlong Chemical Co.

TikTok isn’t just useful for videos on robotic tape storage, Radiohead songs on step motors, and regretful congressmen. It’s also a place where businesses can go viral by marketing their industrial products.

Because of that, I now know that a company called Donghua Jinlong Chemical makes food-grade glycine which, as the company reminds us in its TikTok marketing video, is “suitable as a flavor enhancer, sweetener, and nutritional supplement.” Not only that, but it’s “also used in pickles, sweet sauces, soy sauce, vinegar, and juices to improve taste.” And, bonus, it’s “a well-established brand in a large factory.” If that doesn’t get you ready to get some Donghua Jinlong food-grade glycine, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do for...

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AI is taking over your web browser

Image: The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 33, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been writing about the end of Google Podcasts and the rise of AI gadgets, watching Girls5evaand rewatching Middleditch and Schwartz, reading about the ubiquity of AllTrails and Danny McBride’s comedy compound, listening to Ezra Klein’s podcasts about AI, seeing if 5K Runner can finally make me like running, and playing altogether too much Retro Goal.

I also have for you a lot of people’s smart thoughts on AI, a bunch of new AI tools in web browsers, a fun new newsletter about good stuff on the...

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Who is Apple’s rumored OLED iPad Pro for?

Image: Wes Davis / The Verge

Earlier this year, there were enough rumors about imminent new Apple products to make for a big spring event, but the company instead announced its new M3 MacBook Airs via press release — and new iPads haven’t shown up since. Today, Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg that the big spring iPad update, which includes new OLED iPad Pros, is due on May 6th — about 19 months since the last one.

But why upgrade? My 2021 model still feels like new, and I know at least one person who says the same of the 2018 iPad Pro. Unless it does more than what’s been rumored, which is precious little at this point in the grand scheme of things, it narrows who it’s for to just the very specific subset of people who like iPadOS a lot...

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