Maybe I don’t want a Rosey the Robot after all

Friend or foe? The Jetsons’ Rosey the Robot has long been an inspiration for developing home robots. But should it be? | Image: Warner Bros. Television, Hanna-Barbera

As a child of the 1980s, my perception of the smart home has been dominated by the idea that one day, we will all have Rosey the Robot-style robots roaming our homes — dusting the mantelpiece, preparing dinner, and unloading the dishwasher. (That last one is a must; we were smart enough to come up with a robot to wash our dishes; can’t we please come up with one that can also unload them?)

However, after seeing Boston Dynamics’ latest droid, Atlas, unveiled this week, my childhood dreams are fast turning into a smart home nightmare. While The Jetsons’ robot housekeeper had a steely charm, accentuated by its frilly apron, the closer we come to having humanoid robots in our home, the more terrifying it appears they will be. Not so much...

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AirPlay turns the Delta emulator into a full-on retro console

Image: Riley Testut

The launch of the Delta emulator on iPhones is a big deal in a lot of ways. But for users, it’s also just really cool. Here’s an excellent piece of software that can emulate the NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, GBA, and Nintendo DS so that you can play classic games on a device that’s always in your pocket. Even better: even though there’s no Delta app for the Apple TV (yet), it’s still really easy to use it to play games on your television.

This is because Delta supports AirPlay so that you can stream video and sound from your phone to another Apple device, like an Apple TV or computer. For Delta, this means that the game itself plays on the bigger screen while your phone becomes a touchscreen controller. Or, if you connect a Bluetooth...

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Taylor Swift gets custom collab with TikTok as UMG battle continues

Photo by Ashok Kumar / TAS24 / Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

TikTok has launched a new hub to promote Taylor Swift’s new album where you can earn in-app rewards for completing certain tasks, like following Swift’s account on the platform. The update comes just days after Swift’s music returned to TikTok as the app continues to feud with the singer’s record label, Universal Music Group (UMG).

Image: TikTok

You can access the hub by searching for The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) and then clicking on the banner that appears at the top of the results. There, TikTok displays a list of “challenges” to complete, which will let you unlock a TTPD profile frame, among other rewards. TikTok will also give users the chance to show up in its “fan spotlight” on the hub by posting a...

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How planning and infrastructure failed during Maui wildfires

A recovery vehicle drives past burned structures and cars two months after a devastating wildfire on October 9th, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. | Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images

New details surfaced this week about cascading failures that led to wildfires ripping through Maui last August. While investigations confirming the cause of the blaze are ongoing, officials are recognizing how unprepared agencies were for the inferno.

The wildfires killed at least 101 people and scorched some 2,200 structures — most of them residential. Downed power lines, blocked evacuation routes, and poor communications all added to extreme conditions that allowed blazes to grow into a monstrous conflagration.

“Questions linger about the adequacy of warning systems, evacuation planning, and the preparedness of communities for such extreme events”

“In the aftermath of this catastrophe, questions linger about the adequacy of warning...

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A 14-year-old is charged in fire that destroyed a driverless Waymo vehicle

The Waymo vehicle was set on fire with fireworks. | Image: Frisco Live 415

The San Francisco Police Department has identified and served a search warrant on a teenager who is suspected of starting a fire in a Waymo self-driving taxi vehicle earlier this year.

On March 27th, investigators entered the suspect’s residence and seized evidence that connects the 14-year-old male with the February incident in which a crowd destroyed the driverless car.

The investigation was conducted by the SFPD Arson Task Force, which identified the suspect and developed probable cause for the search warrant. The district attorney’s office has filed charges against the minor while the juvenile probation department is deciding whether to put the suspect in custody before a court hearing.

The February 10th fire was reportedly caused...

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The Verge’s 2024 Mother’s Day gift guide

Illustration by Manon Louart for The Verge

We found a collection of unique gift ideas that go beyond the flowers and chocolates that typically rule the day.

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Emulators are taking over the App Store

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Delta, an app for emulating and playing retro games on your iPhone, has been at the top of the App Store rankings for days. Apple spent years keeping apps like this off its platforms before reversing course earlier this month in the face of European regulation and the threat of a whole bunch of new third-party app stores.

Obviously, there was huge pent-up demand for Delta. But is this a singular phenomenon or the start of a new more open future for the iPhone? What else might Apple allow in the App Store if it means keeping you in the App Store?

On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss how Delta got into the App Store and what it might mean for the future of the iPhone. We don’t really talk about all the thorny legal issues around...

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Tesla recalls all 3,878 Cybertrucks over faulty accelerator pedal

Tesla isn’t aware of any collisions, injuries, or fatalities attributed to the defective pedals. | Image: Parker Ortolani / The Verge

Tesla has issued a recall for effectively every Cybertruck it’s delivered to customers due to a fault that’s causing the vehicle’s accelerator pedal to get stuck.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Wednesday, the defect can result in the pedal pad dislodging and becoming trapped in the vehicle’s interior trim when “high force is applied.”

The fault was caused by an “unapproved change” that introduced “lubricant (soap)” during the assembly of the accelerator pedals, which reduced the retention of the pad, the recall notice states. The truck’s brakes will still function if the accelerator pedal becomes trapped, though this obviously isn’t an ideal workaround.

The recall impacts “all Model Year...

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DJI’s first power stations can fast charge its drone batteries

DJI’s Power 1000 (left) and Power 500 (right) ready to be worshipped. | Image: DJI

DJI just launched its first power stations that feature a new proprietary SDC — aka Smart DC — port that can fast charge (some) DJI drone batteries and supports lots of input and output accessories. The $699 Power 1000 and smaller $379 Power 500 both offer a bevy of AC and DC inputs and outputs with more available if you’re willing to fully commit to living DJI’s SDC dongle life.

The Power 500 has one SDC Lite port, while the larger Power 1000 has both regular SDC and SDC Lite. Both power stations are fitted with batteries that use LFP chemistry, which is safer and lasts longer (80 percent capacity after 3000 cycles) than traditional NMC, and both offer a 0.02-second cutover making them suitable for use as a UPS on unstable grids. They...

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Razer’s Kishi Ultra gaming controller brings haptics to your USB-C phone, PC, or tablet

Razer

Razer’s latest mobile gaming controller just released today, the Kishi Ultra, is an all-rounder that can switch between multiple devices. The controller has a built-in USB-C port that can work with the iPhone 15 series as well as most Android smartphones (Razer says it’s compatible with the Galaxy 23 series, Pixel 6 and up, the Razer Edge, and “many other Android devices.”) It also seems to work perfectly fine with Galaxy Z Fold 5 and other foldables. The controller can expand to fit your iPad Mini and any 8-inch Android tablets, and you can also tether it to your PC.

Razer

Razer’s Kishi Ultra can also work on tablets.

One interesting feature in the Kishi Ultra is the inclusion of Razer’s Sensa HD immersive...

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Amazon’s Fallout has been renewed for season 2

Image: Amazon

Just a week after the show first premiered, Amazon has confirmed that there’s more of its live-action Fallout series on the way. As of now there are no details available other than the fact that the show has been renewed for season 2.

While there are no specific numbers about how well the show has done on Prime Video, Amazon says that “in its first four days, the high-octane fueled series has become a hit with its global audience, ranking among the service’s top three most-watched titles ever and the most-watched season globally since Rings of Power.” The aforementioned Lord of the Rings show premiered back in 2022.

Set in LA, Amazon’s take on Fallout is told through three different perspectives: vault dweller Lucy (Ella Purnell),...

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The Meta Quest 2 gets a permanent price cut to $199

The Meta Quest 2 and its bundled controllers. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Meta Quest 2 has been on sale for nearly a month, and today, Meta’s making that price permanent — $199 is the new sticker price for the virtual reality headset, the company announced today. That’s half what it originally cost in 2020, and Meta is permanently cutting the price of Quest 2 accessories like the Elite Strap with Battery (which I highly recommend) in half as well.

The Quest 2 is currently being supplanted by the $500 Quest 3, of course, but it’s still an incredible entry point to VR, one that plays every Quest game except for a single Quest 3-exclusive title announced last month. It doesn’t have color passthrough vision or good mixed reality gaming, and I definitely prefer the Quest 3 for comfort and immersion, but I...

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Netflix is all about the money, not the members

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Netflix is moving beyond subscriber numbers. In its first quarter earnings results released on Thursday, Netflix announced that it will stop reporting quarterly membership numbers in 2025 because subscribers are “just one component” of its growth. The change comes after a quarter where it added 9.3 million subscribers, growing to more than 270 million members globally.

Subscriber count meant everything in the early days of streaming. It allows investors, studios, and everyone else to gauge just how well a streaming service is doing compared to the competition, and Netflix has leaned on its lead in that area.

But now, Netflix says it is flipping this idea on its head because it has multiple sources of revenue that don’t hinge solely on...

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Senate advances vote on reauthorizing warrantless surveillance program

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

The Senate is moving forward on a vote to reauthorize a controversial program that allows warrantless surveillance of foreign “targets.” Before voting on the reauthorization bill, senators had to vote on a cloture motion to begin voting. The cloture motion passed 67–32, just one day ahead of the program’s expiration.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is set to expire at midnight on April 19th, a deadline some senators emphasized as they urged their colleagues to vote in favor of reauthorization. “It’s hard to overstate either the importance — the gravity — of allowing it to sunset, yet we are 36 hours away from that happening,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said on the Senate floor. “I understand that some of my...

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Your Happy Hacking Keyboard deserves some fresh caps

Ursa is a new keycap profile for Topre keyboards. I want it. | Render: FKCaps

Listen, I don’t want to be the guy who always posts about weird keyboard stuff. I have other interests. But I need to tell the dozens of Verge readers with Topre keyboards about these keycaps. Ursa is a new spherical doubleshot keycap profile for Topre that is available for group buy until May 15th.

Reactions to the previous sentence will likely fall into three camps:

1. I recognize some of those words
2. Already smashed that checkout button
3. A keycap group buy? In 2024? In a new profile? For Topre boards? What could go wrong?

I am usually a group three, but today, I am in group two. If you’re in group one, here is what some of those words mean. Topre keyboards, like the Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional, use different switches than...

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All the news on Qi2 wireless charging

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.

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Meta says Llama 3 beats most other models, including Gemini

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...

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The podcast industry keeps reinventing itself

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...

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The Humane AI Pin is lost in translation

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...

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You should be playing Music League

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...

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Meta is adding real-time AI image generation to WhatsApp

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...

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The future of the Xbox looks a lot like a PC

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...

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Netflix’s The Witcher will end with season 5

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...

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Everything you need to know about Disney, ESPN, and Bob Iger’s return as CEO

Image: The Verge

Disney has big decisions to make about streaming, sports, Marvel, and more.

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TikTok divest-or-ban legislation could suddenly be fast-tracked in the Senate

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...

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At Kernel, your veggie burger will be served by a robot

Its robotic arm heats vegan burgers and crispy potatoes while relegating humans to assembly line jobs.

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Meta’s battle with ChatGPT begins now

Mark Zuckerberg announcing Meta’s AI assistant at Connect 2023. | Image: Meta

Meta’s AI assistant is being put everywhere across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Meanwhile, the company’s next major AI model, Llama 3, has arrived.

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How to tame notifications on your Android phone

Quiet, please. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Notifications are the soundtrack to modern digital life. When they’re out of control, they make it hard to hear anything else going on. But if you manage them well, you can turn them into a subtle background noise. App developers want you to opt in to every notification possible, but thankfully, Android provides a lot of tools to help you tune in to the helpful stuff and tune out the distractions. It takes a little work upfront, but the payoff is worth it.

I used a Google Pixel 8 Pro running Android 14 and a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 running One UI 6.1 to write the following guide — steps may be slightly different on other Android phones.

Notifications in the settings menu

On either a Pixel or Galaxy phone, a good place to start is by...

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Stability AI lays off roughly 10 percent of its workforce

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

Stability AI laid off 20 employees just a day after announcing the expansion of access to its new flagship model. This comes after weeks of upheaval that saw its founding CEO leave the company.

CNBC reports that the layoffs at the UK-based AI company, which runs the Stable Diffusion text-to-image model, represent roughly 10 percent of its workforce. In a memo to staff, interim CEOs Shan Shan Wong and Christian LaForte say the decision to let go of employees is part of a “strategic plan to reduce our cost-base, strengthen support with our investors and partners, and enable teams to continue developing and releasing innovative products.”

The company did not say which departments were affected by layoffs, according to reports.

Stability...

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Google is combining its Android and hardware teams — and it’s all about AI

Illustration: The Verge

AI is taking over at Google, and the company is changing in big ways to try to make it happen even faster. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced substantial internal reorganizations on Thursday, including the creation of a new team called “Platforms and Devices” that will oversee all of Google’s Pixel products, all of Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Photos, and more. The team will be run by Rick Osterloh, who was previously the SVP of devices and services, overseeing all of Google’s hardware efforts. Hiroshi Lockheimer, the longtime head of Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS, will be taking on other projects inside of Google and Alphabet.

This is a huge change for Google, and it likely won’t be the last one. There’s only one reason for all of it,...

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