8BitDo’s NES-inspired mechanical keyboard hits all-time low price

It’s not an official Nintendo accessory, but everything about 8BitDo’s Retro Mechanical Keyboard screams NES regardless. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

If you’re craving all things Nintendo after yesterday’s Indie World showcase event, right now, 8BitDo’s Retro Mechanical Keyboard has plunged to a new all-time low price. Normally $99.99, right now, you can buy the keyboard for $83.69 from Amazon. The Famicom-inspired Fami Edition, meanwhile, is available for about $2 more.

From “Super Buttons” labeled “A” and “B” right down to the color scheme, everything about the keyboard is designed to mimic the original NES controller’s style. Yet, while it looks like it’s straight from the ’80s, it’s got modern conveniences like programmable Super Buttons and clicky, hot-swappable switches you can easily replace. It also sports multiple connectivity modes, including Bluetooth, 2.4GHz wireless via...

Continue reading…

Apple is making progress cleaning up its dirty supply chain

Photo by Christian Charisius / picture alliance via Getty Images

Apple’s latest sustainability report shows that its greenhouse gas emissions are falling as it pushes suppliers to clean up their operations.

Dig into the data in the report, and you’ll find that Apple’s gross carbon dioxide emissions dropped from 20.6 million metric tons in 2022 to 16.1 million metric tons in 2023. That’s a 22 percent reduction over the year.

The progress is mostly thanks to its suppliers using cleaner sources of electricity, the company says in a press release today. Looking back further, Apple says it has reduced its gross emissions by more than 55 percent since 2015. If it keeps up, Apple could be well on its way toward meeting its commitment to slash emissions by 75 percent by 2030.

A dirty supply chain is probably...

Continue reading…

Transformers One turns Cybertron’s greatest warriors into bumbling youths in first trailer

Paramount’s live-action Transformers movies have always made its alien robots seem like they were born ready for battle and knowing how to navigate the world, but the first trailer for director Josh Cooley’s Transformers One animated prequel reveals that to be anything but the case.

Set in the distant past on the Cybertronian homeworld, Transformers One tells the story of how Orion Pax / Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 / Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from being best friends to mortal enemies soon after discovering their powers to turn into various kinds of vehicles.

Cybertron’s surface seems to be a mysterious, dangerous place where young transformers are forbidden to go in the new trailer, but Orion and D-16 have much more...

Continue reading…

Make robots hairy

A less creepy iteration. | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos courtesy of Boston Dynamics and Getty Images

On Wednesday, Boston Dynamics announced the new version of its Atlas robot with a characteristically unsettling video. In it, a humanoid android lifts itself up from the floor by bending its legs backward and then swivels its fathomless void of a head a full 180 degrees like it’s Linda Blair in The Exorcist. The footage is obviously creepy.

In a press release, the company said that it decided to make the new, fully electric Atlas robot move like an undead Cirque du Soleil performer (paraphrasing) because it can more efficiently complete tasks when it is not “constrained by a human range of motion.” I am OKAY with this! Boston Dynamics is doing exciting things with technology!

I do, however, have a novel suggestion for Boston Dynamics:...

Continue reading…

Apple is finally rolling out AirPlay in hotel rooms

Image: IHG

After some delay, Apple is finally bringing AirPlay to hotel room TVs — but you can only use it if you’re staying in one of the “more than” 60 IHG hotels it’s available in starting today.

Apple first announced the ability to use AirPlay in hotels with LG TVs during its Worldwide Developer Conference in 2023. The feature lets you stream shows, movies, and music from your phone to your hotel TV, as well as view photos or play games from a bigger screen.

Although Apple previously said AirPlay in hotels would arrive by the end of 2023, it ended up pushing back its launch until this year. The feature finally popped up with the release of iOS 17.3 earlier this year.

For now, AirPlay is currently only supported in select IHG hotels — such as...

Continue reading…

Apple’s new series Sunny pairs Rashida Jones with a mystery-solving robot

Rashida Jones as Suzie. | Image: Apple

Apple TV Plus has been killing it on the sci-fi front lately, but this summer, the streamer’s taking another stab at the murder mystery genre with Sunny, a new A24-produced series from showrunner Katie Robbins, director Lucy Tcherniak, and executive producer Rashida Jones.

Based on Colin O’Sullivan’s novel The Dark Manual, Sunny revolves around Suzie Sakamoto (Jones), an American woman living in Kyoto whose life is thrown into turmoil following the disappearances of her roboticist husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and their son in a catastrophic plane crash.

Though all Suzie wants is her family back, what she receives (as a gift from the company Masa works for) is Sunny (Joanna Sotomura), an experimental robot designed to assist...

Continue reading…

US Air Force confirms first successful AI dogfight

Image: DARPA

The US Air Force is putting AI in the pilot’s seat. In an update on Thursday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) revealed that an AI-controlled jet successfully faced a human pilot during an in-air dogfight test carried out last year.

DARPA began experimenting with AI applications in December 2022 as part of its Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program. It worked to develop an AI system capable of autonomously flying a fighter jet, while also adhering to the Air Force’s safety protocols.

After carrying out dogfighting simulations using the AI pilot, DARPA put its work to the test by installing the AI system inside its experimental X-62A aircraft. That allowed it to get the AI-controlled craft into the air at the Edwards...

Continue reading…

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man looks like a goofy roleplaying romcom in new trailer

A woman standing behind a man close enough to lean her head over his shouler as he stretches his arm outward. | Image: Netflix

The idea of pretending to be a contract killer while working undercover for the police sounds stressful as hell, but the first trailer for Richard Linklater’s Hit Manmakes the gig seem like a fun way to work out those improv muscles.

Loosely based on journalist Skip Hollandsworth’s 2001 Texas Monthly article by the same name, Hit Man tells the tale of Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), an unassuming college professor who spends his free time pretending to be a mercenary to help police flush out folks who intend to put hits on people. Though Gary’s disguises make him look like a cheesy character out of a film or show about shady criminals, that seems to be what convinces people that he’s legit before the officers he works for (Retta, Sanjay...

Continue reading…

Chevy Silverado EV turns into a mobile generator with GM’s new home energy bundle

Image: GM

General Motors’ initial new home energy products are now available to purchase, including the equipment necessary to turn your GM-made electric vehicle into a mobile power generator for your home.

GM has been teasing its new home energy products for months, including a home EV charger and vehicle-to-home (V2H) kit that enables a home to pull energy from an EV battery in the event of a blackout. That equipment is now available to customers but only those who live in California, Florida, Texas, Michigan, and New York. The company says it plans to expand to more states in the months to come.

GM has been teasing its new home energy products for months

The new bundle, which includes the GM Energy Powershift Charger ($1,699) and GM Energy...

Continue reading…

Elgato won over creators — its new Neo line is for everyone else

The Neo family of devices. | Image: Elgato

If you watch a Twitch streamer, it’s almost guaranteed that they will be using at least one Elgato product. After dominating this part of the market for years, Elgato is now shifting its primary focus away from gaming with its new Neo line while also preparing a bevy of AI features to improve new and existing gear.

Neo is a collection of Elgato’s most popular products made simpler, more affordable, and more compact so they can be used easily with a laptop or iPad. “They look more accessible, they look more friendly,” says Julian Fest, general manager of Elgato, in an interview with The Verge. “The entire industrial design is focused on being more appealing to a less technical audience.”

The $99.99 Stream Deck Neo is the star of the show,...

Continue reading…

Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to ‘inject a sense of crisis’

The Korean tech giant is now expanding the previously voluntary policy to executives across its entire workforce. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Samsung is introducing a companywide six-day workweek policy for executives as the Korean tech giant takes emergency measures to tackle ongoing business uncertainty. This new policy comes off the back of Samsung’s disappointing financial results last year, alongside wider economic concerns like rising borrowing costs and oil prices and a rapid depreciation of Korean currency.

As reported by The Korea Economic Daily, a Samsung Group executive said, “Considering that performance of our major units, including Samsung Electronics Co, fell short of expectations in 2023, we are introducing the six-day work week for executives to inject a sense of crisis and make all-out efforts to overcome this crisis.”

Samsung is also facing increased...

Continue reading…

Playdate has sold 150,000 games in the last year

Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Last March, Panic launched a curated game shop called Catalog for its Playdate handheld. And one year later, the company says it has sold more than 150,000 games through the store. “We want to let everyone who enjoys games know that there is a vibrant game dev community making hundreds of inventive and thoughtful games for Playdate,” Arisa Sudangnoi, head of Playdate developer relations, said in a statement. The news comes exactly two years after the handheld first launched.

At the beginning of 2024, Panic revealed that it had sold 70,000 Playdate units, and it now says that more than half of those users — 38,000 — have purchased a game through Catalog. For context, the Playdate launched with a “season” of 24 games from notable...

Continue reading…

Gmail’s tabs are actually useful now that I’ve found this extension

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

I’ve always hated the fact Gmail only gives us five predefined categories — “Inbox,” “Social,” “Promotions,” “Updates,” and “Forum” — that we can’t customize. When the feature first launched in 2013, it felt like such an obvious omission I assumed Google would address it with a future update. But it’s been over 10 years, and the tabs are still as limiting as they were back then.

That’s why I felt like I hit the jackpot last week when I stumbled upon CloudHQ’s Gmail Tabs, a free extension that adds flexibility Gmail should have had from the beginning.

Basically, the desktop app extension lets you turn labels you’ve created or search queries into tabs you can pin at the top of your inbox right above Gmail’s useless “Social,”...

Continue reading…

MrBeast and T-Series are battling for the most-subscribed YouTube channel

MrBeast’s 252 million YouTube subscribers are nipping at the heels of T-Series. | Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Despite his immense popularity and online presence, Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) has never been the most subscribed channel on YouTube — though that may not be the case for long. T-Series, India’s largest music label and movie studio, currently holds the top spot with 263 million YouTube subscribers, but MrBeast is rapidly closing in on that figure with 252 million subs.

With its leading position now threatened, T-Series published a new video on Monday encouraging viewers to subscribe to the channel. It opens with the quote “I want to put India and my people at the top of the international platform,” attributed to T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar (who passed away in 1997), before calling for prospective subscribers to “make history...

Continue reading…

ChatGPT is coming to Nothing’s earbuds

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Nothing has announced that it plans to more deeply integrate ChatGPT with its smartphones and earbuds. The move will give the company’s customers quicker access to the service. “Through the new integration, users with the latest Nothing OS and ChatGPT installed on their Nothing phones will be able to pinch-to-speak to the most popular consumer AI tool in the world directly from Nothing earbuds,” the company wrote in a blog post. And yes, the new Nothing Ear and Ear (a) are both supported.

Spokesperson Jane Nho told me by email that “gradual rollout of the integration will commence on April 18th with Phone 2 followed by Phone 1 and Phone 2A in the coming weeks.” Once the update lands, you’ll be able to query ChatGPT using the company’s...

Continue reading…

Nothing’s new earbuds prove that it can (mostly) hang with the heavyweights

Nothing is churning out new earbuds at a faster clip than smartphones. The company just introduced the Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a), priced at $149 and $99, respectively. Together, they mark Nothing’s fourth and fifth products in the headphone category. First came the original Ear 1, which stood out for its partly transparent design but suffered from bugs and inconsistent audio performance. Then, Nothing went after a different audience with the open-style (and oddly named) Ear Stick. And a year ago, the company shored up reliability and sound quality concerns with the Ear 2. Now it’s back for another go-round.

And guess what? Yep, they still look pretty much exactly the same.

The Nothing Ear and Ear (a) both preserve the design that...

Continue reading…

Senate Democrats urge crackdown on autonomous vehicles and driver assist

Image: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Two prominent Senate Democrats are calling for increased scrutiny of autonomous vehicles and advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) like Tesla’s Autopilot, arguing that the unimpeded flow of highly automated vehicles on public roads in recent years risks exacerbating the traffic safety crisis in the US.

Automakers and tech companies say the technology can lead to safer streets. But there have been a number of high-profile incidents in recent years involving fully autonomous vehicles, as well as hundreds of crashes and dozens of fatalities in vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assist systems. The two senators, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Ed Markey (D-MA), argue that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s regulatory...

Continue reading…

Google fires 28 employees after sit-in protest over Israel cloud contract

Illustration: The Verge

Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests by employees at two of its offices this week, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. The firings come after 9 employees were suspended and then arrested in New York and California on Tuesday.

The fired employees were involved in protesting a Google contract for Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government cloud contract that Amazon is also involved in. Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement. Last month, Google fired another employee for protesting the contract during a company presentation in Israel.

In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of...

Continue reading…

Coding bootcamp Lambda School — now BloomTech — is finally getting punished

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In 2020, we wrote how coding bootcamp Lambda School seemed like a bit of a bait-and-switch. Four years later and one rebranding to “BloomTech” later, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is finally slapping it on the wrist — it’s permanently banning it from issuing any more student loans, fining the company and its CEO $164,000, and releasing some students from some of their debt.

Why? Among other deceptive practices, the “Bloom Institute of Technology” didn’t call them loans. It advertised a way for students to get high-paying tech jobs “risk free” with “no loans” by paying 17 percent of their future income for five years — rather than the $20,000 sticker price of tuition.

But those Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs)...

Continue reading…

Twitch is bringing its TikTok-style feed to everyone this month

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

After nearly a year of testing, Twitch’s new TikTok-style discovery feed will finally roll out to all users later this month. During a Patch Notes livestream on Wednesday, Twitch announced the new feed that will let you scroll through separate feeds dedicated to clips and current livestreams.

The new discovery feed will launch as a tab within the mobile app, and next month, some users might see this feed as the homepage of their mobile app. Twitch says all livestreams and clips are eligible to appear in its discovery feed as long as they meet its content guidelines.

When scrolling through the live feed, you’ll find live content from creators you follow, as well as streams recommended by Twitch. If you find something you like, you can...

Continue reading…

Sega is turning Golden Axe into an animated series

Bleeeeeaaaagggghhhhh. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

Comedy Central has ordered 10 episodes of Golden Axe, an animated show based on the fantasy beat ’em up sidescroller games. Deadline writes that it will be both “hilarious and loving” in its adaptation of the game. If I remember my Sega Genesis days well, I think that means there’ll be fighting over who gets to ride the purple bird dinosaur and that, at some point, a gigantic hairy skull will float down and hotbox everyone.

Who’s big idea was this, you ask? You can blame producers Mike McMahan (Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Joe Chandler (American Dad!), who will also write the first episode together, with Chandler serving as the showrunner afterward. A timeline for the show’s release hasn’t been announced yet.

According to Deadline, Gilius...

Continue reading…

TikTok to restrict users who repeatedly post problematic topics from ‘For You’ feed

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok will make entire accounts temporarily ineligible for its For You feed if users have a pattern of posting about extreme fitness, conspiracy theories, sexually suggestive material, and a wide range of other topics that the platform won’t promote on the feed. The change was included in an update to TikTok’s Community Guidelines issued on Wednesday. While videos about such topics are still technically allowed on TikTok, the content itself and the accounts of those who post them could be temporarily restricted.

“We’re introducing a policy to make an entire account temporarily ineligible for recommendation in the For You feed if a creator repeatedly posts content that goes against our For You feed standards. Their account and content...

Continue reading…

A real privacy law? House lawmakers are optimistic this time

Image: Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

We might really do it this time.

That was the takeaway that House lawmakers were eager to impart at a hearing in the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on innovation, data, and commerce (IDC). Comprehensive data privacy legislation is on the table yet again — but this time, it’s different.

Lawmakers also touched on children’s online safety proposals like the Kids Online Safety Act, which recently got a House companion to the popular Senate bill, and COPPA 2.0, which would update and raise the age for protections for a long-standing online privacy bill for children.

But privacy reform was the focus of much of the hearing, as a discussion draft for the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) revived the issue after years of inaction. This...

Continue reading…

TikTok Notes starts rolling out as a new rival to Instagram

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

TikTok has started rolling out its Instagram rival, TikTok Notes, to select Android and iOS users “for download and limited testing in Australia and Canada.” A tweet announcing the launch, as well as the App Store and Google Play listings, showed off some official images of the app that offer insights about how it works for those of us who don’t have access yet.

In them, we see that you can write up headlines for images above your captions, which is a feature Instagram doesn’t natively offer.

Image: TikTok

The homepage also seems to be divided into two sections, with a separate page where you can view posts from people you follow and another “For You” page. It’s organized a bit like Pinterest’s homepage but with a...

Continue reading…

Dwarf Fortress goes on an adventure

Image: Bay 12 Games

Though you could always go on adventures in Dwarf Fortress, with the game’s Adventure Mode expansion entering public beta today, you can now sally forth with a full complement of updated graphics.

In Adventure Mode, there are all sorts of shenanigans to get up to in the ridiculously large and detailed procedurally generated world. It’s an RPG campaign complete with character creation, quests to complete, and bandits to fight.

With the public beta, your adventures on the surface world will look a lot more detailed than smiley faces and ASCII art. There’s still the same level of granular detail in combat, allowing you to stab, punch, kick, throw, and bite just about anything on your enemies right down to their eyeballs. Check out a demo...

Continue reading…

NBA bans player for life over online sports betting

Photo by Brian Sevald / NBAE via Getty Images

The NBA has permanently banned Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter from the league for violating its gambling rules, the league said in a statement on Wednesday. According to an internal investigation conducted by the NBA, Porter bet on NBA games, disclosed confidential information to other gamblers, and adjusted his participation in certain games to influence the outcome of certain bets.

The league started looking into Porter after a March 20th game against the Sacramento Kings in which Porter played for just three minutes. Porter left the game after saying he felt ill. Ahead of that game, Porter told “an individual he knew to be an NBA bettor” about his health status, according to the NBA’s statement. Another person then put an...

Continue reading…

The Pixel 7A is a knockout at its record-low $349

The Pixel 7A is a standout midrange smartphone that nearly performs like a flagship, now for an entry-level price. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Google is expected to introduce the new Pixel 8A at its I/O developer conference next month. That’s probably a contributing factor for the new all-time low price we’re seeing on the midrange Pixel 7A we were introduced to during last year’s event. Amazon, Best Buy, and Google all have it down to $349, which is $150 off the original price.

Buying it directly from Google is the better deal, as you’ll also get three months of YouTube Premium and Google One, the latter supplementing the device’s 128GB of storage with 100GB of extra cloud storage.

The Pixel 8A’s impending arrival could cause a deeper price drop, or perhaps Google will cement today’s discount as a permanent change. But if you need a new phone right now, you shouldn’t...

Continue reading…

Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas robot is a swiveling, shape-shifting nightmare

Image: Boston Dynamics.

It’s alive! A day after announcing it was retiring Atlas, its hydraulic robot, Boston Dynamics has introduced a new, all-electric version of its humanoid machine. The next-generation Atlas robot is designed to offer a far greater range of movement than its predecessor.

Boston Dynamics wanted the new version to show that Atlas can keep a humanoid form without limiting “how a bipedal robot can move.” The new version has been redesigned with swiveling joints that the company claims make it “uniquely capable of tackling dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks.”

“We designed the electric version of Atlas to be stronger, more dexterous, and more agile,” the company said in its press release. “Atlas may resemble a human form factor, but we are...

Continue reading…

Apple TV Plus’ For All Mankind is getting a fifth season and a new spinoff series

Tyner Rushing as Samantha Massey in For All Mankind_._ | Image: Apple

Folks hoping to see more of Apple TV Plus’ For All Mankindseries are in for a treat, but the streamer is working on more than just a new season.

Today, Apple announced that For All Mankind has been renewed for a fifth season that will continue to chronicle the alternate history of a world in which the Soviet Union is the first nation to put a man on the Moon and the United States set out to catch up with its rival. Following the show’s season 4 finale, news of the renewal doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, but Apple also revealed that executive producers Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi are working on a new series titled Star City, which will dig deeper into the live of the Soviets who changed the arc of human history.

In a statement about...

Continue reading…

The OnePlus Watch 2 is what redemption looks like

OnePlus could be a strong alternative to Google or Samsung for Wear OS smartwatches.

Continue reading…