Anker is amongst the first accessory makers to rerelease MagSafe-compatible accessories that now support the Qi2 standard. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge
Qi2 brings MagSafe-like fast magnetic wireless charging for any device.
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
The next generation of Meta’s large language model Llama, which releases today to cloud providers like AWS and to model libraries like Hugging Face soon, performs better than most current AI models, the company said in a blog post.
Llama 3 currently features two model weights, with 8B and 70B parameters. (The B is for billions and represents how complex a model is and how much of its training it understands.) It only offers text-based responses so far, but Meta says these are “a major leap” over the previous version. Llama 3 showed more diversity in answering prompts, had fewer false refusals where it declined to respond to questions, and could reason better. Meta also says Llama 3 understands more instructions and writes better code...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
This is Hot Pod_,_ The Verge_’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry._
Today is my last day at The Verge, and this will be my final issue of Hot Pod. I’ll have one more story coming out in the next week or two. But until then, I wanted to offer some parting thoughts on the industry I have covered so closely for the past two years.
I have this thing in my career where I always get to the party too late. I joined my college newspaper just as it was becoming clear that printing a daily no longer mathed out. I had a good year at the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC shortly before the beloved executive producer left and the program imploded. I missed the heady old days at Forbes when magazine writers would drink champagne on a...
As funny as it was when the AI Pin utterly failed at translating Korean and Japanese, it also broke my heart. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Of all the things the Humane AI Pin promised, I was most intrigued by translation. In a demo, a man speaks to Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri in Spanish. The AI Pin automatically translates it to English. Chaudhri replies in English. Again, the AI Pin translates his words back into Spanish. There are notable pauses when the AI is processing, but it’s a powerful concept. Unlike with Google Translate, there was solid eye contact between both people. The AI voice sounded more natural and less robotic. And crucially, there were no screens. The language barrier was still there, but it was much more permeable.
That’s not what happened when I tried it myself.
I spoke some simple phrases in Japanese and Korean. Instead of translating, the AI...
When was the last time your friends made you a playlist? | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
Writing about the decline of Pitchfork made me sad about the music industry — and also about the state of music discovery. Besides the fact that TikTok doesn’t prioritize music as anything other than background noise, it means that artists have to win the viral lottery in order to make a hit. And that’s entirely out of their control.
But about two weeks ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Music League, a game where everyone in the league submits a song to a playlist, and a group of us started playing. About a day after the first one formed, I made two more: one for another friend group and one for family.
Music League makes music social in a way that social media algorithms, ironically, do not
I’ve enjoyed hearing new songs. The...
Illustration: The Verge
Meta is rolling out real-time AI image generation in beta for WhatsApp users in the US. As soon as you start typing a text-to-image prompt in a chat with Meta AI, you’ll see how the image changes as you add more detail about what you want to create.
In the example shared by Meta, a user types in the prompt, “Imagine a soccer game on mars.” The generated image quickly changes from a typical soccer player to showing an entire soccer field on a Martian landscape. If you have access to the beta, you can try out the feature for yourself by opening a chat with Meta AI and then start a prompt with the word “Imagine.”
GIF: Meta
Additionally, Meta says its Meta Llama 3 model can now produce “sharper and higher quality” images...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
When I reviewed the Xbox Series X nearly four years ago, I called the console a “next-gen PC.” Not only did the Xbox look like a PC with its boxy, rectangular, tower-like case but it also felt like one thanks to hardware upgrades that allowed it to run games with a variety of PC-like graphical modes. Now, as we approach the next generation of Xbox, it looks like Microsoft is about to close the gap between Xbox and PC even further.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has teased some potentially massive Xbox platform changes in recent weeks. At the same time, leaked internal memos have revealed an increased focus inside Microsoft on Xbox game preservation and forward compatibility. When you put all the breadcrumbs together, it feels like...
Henry Cavill as Geralt. | Image: Netflix
We still don’t know what Liam Hemsworth will look (or sound) like when he takes up the role of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. But we do know how long he’ll be wearing the white wig: Netflix has confirmed that the show’s fifth season will be its last.
The news comes as Netflix has confirmed that it has started production on season 4 of The Witcher — the first that won’t feature Henry Cavill in the lead role — and that it and season 5 will be filmed back to back. The two upcoming seasons will “complete the adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books,” according to Netflix. That means they will cover a trio of Witcher books: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, and Lady of the Lake.
Netflix first announced that Hemsworth would be taking...
Image: The Verge
Disney has big decisions to make about streaming, sports, Marvel, and more.
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images
A bill that could oust TikTok from the US looked like it could linger for months in the Senate, even after the House overwhelmingly voted to approve it. But a move by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) could change that.
An updated version of the bill, which would enforce a ban of TikTok unless it divests from its China-based parent company, ByteDance, appears in a bill about sanctions on Russia and Iran. A separate bill that would prohibit data brokers from transferring US users’ information to foreign adversaries is also included. It’s part of a package on foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza. By combining the legislation, it could make the TikTok bill harder for the Senate to ignore.
The foreign aid bill still needs to be approved...