NHTSA opens investigation into Ford’s BlueCruise after software linked to fatal crash

A Mustang Mach-E running Ford’s hands-free software. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an official investigation into Ford’s BlueCruise advanced driver-assistance software after it’s been linked to multiple fatalities while in use. It includes two 2024 incidents that the National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating — one in San Antonio and another in Philadelphia.

The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation notes that the Ford vehicles involved in the fatal crashes hit stationary objects including vehicles stopped in a driving lane on the highway. Ford’s BlueCruise enables hands-free driving on pre-mapped highway roads and uses cameras to both watch drivers and keep its vehicles in the lane. The system was introduced in 2021 in vehicles...

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The legal challenges that lie ahead for TikTok — in both the US and China

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

Having lost its fight in Congress, TikTok faces a tough battle in US courts and with China’s own export controls.

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iPads join iPhones in requirement to follow strict EU rules

iOS, Safari, and the App Store were already designated as Gatekeeper services under the DMA in September 2023. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Following an almost eight-month investigation into whether Apple’s iPadOS holds enough market power to warrant stricter regulation, the European Commission has now designated the iPad operating system as a Gatekeeper service under its flagship Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules.

“The Commission concluded that iPadOS constitutes an important gateway for business users to reach end users, and that Apple enjoys an entrenched and durable position with respect to iPadOS,” reads a statement published by the Commission on Monday. “Apple now has six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations as applied to iPadOS.”

Under the DMA, which came into force on March 7th, iPadOS will now have to comply with a broad range of rules that allow...

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Fiido Air review: so lightweight you’ll forget it’s an e-bike

‘The world’s lightest city e-bike’ claim is worth a test, if not your $1,799.

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Financial Times signs licensing deal with OpenAI

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

The Financial Times has struck a deal with OpenAI to license its content and develop AI tools, the latest news organization to work with the AI company.

The FT writes in a press release that ChatGPT users will see summaries, quotes, and links to its articles. Any prompt that returns information from the FT will be attributed to the publication.

In return, OpenAI will work with the news organization to develop new AI products. The FT already uses OpenAI products, saying it is a customer of ChatGPT Enterprise. Last month, the FT released a generative AI search function on beta powered by Anthropic’s Claude large language model. Ask FT lets subscribers find information across the publication’s articles.

Financial Times Group CEO John...

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Phone cooler makers need to chill with all the ice

That’s too cold! | Image: Amazon

I don’t know about you, but when I have a nasty case of the hot phone, I have to get rid of that heat this instant. Just kidding, I usually just put it down for a while or restart it when it’s being especially stubborn. But there are companies out there marketing a different solution: little stick-on phone-cooling fans that purport to draw all that heat away. And their product images are a little, uh, excessively icy.

How did it come to this? What kicked off this arms race of increasingly frosty phones? I have to assume things started innocently enough, but these RGB-riddled things are pretty squarely aimed at gamers — I’d guess it didn’t take long for these product shots to snowball into the wildly unrealistic pictures on Amazon today.

...

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The best movie trailers for the week of April 21st

Image: Marvel Studios

I’ve been making more of an effort to keep up with movies lately and even managed the rare feat of seeing one in an actual movie theater. I saw Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which stars Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Elza González, Babs Olusanmokun, and others in what I interpreted as a goofy spaghetti western / spy / heist film.

I suppose it’s also a war movie, being based (very loosely) on a true story about a collection of unstoppable guys set on an unsanctioned secret mission to destroy a German U-boat resupply ship during World War II. It doesn’t try to ruminate on the weight of the mission, which was to clear the way for American ships to cross the Atlantic and join the war effort. Ministry is...

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Meta’s ‘set it and forget it’ AI ad tools are misfiring and blowing through cash

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

It was Valentine’s Day when Meta’s ad platform started going off the rails. RC Williams, the co-founder of the Philadelphia-based marketing agency 1-800-D2C, had set one of Meta’s automated ad tools to run campaigns for two separate clients. But when he checked the platform that day, he found that Meta had blown through roughly 75 percent of the daily ad budgets for both clients in under a couple of hours.

Williams told The Verge that the ads’ CPMs, or cost per impressions, were roughly 10 times higher than normal.A usual CPM of under $28 had inflated to roughly $250, way above the industry average. That would have been bad enough if the revenue earned from those ads wasn’t nearly zero. If you’re not a marketer, this might feel like...

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The Delta emulator will soon turn your iPad into a giant Nintendo DS

Delta is about to get better on the iPad. | Image: Riley Testut

The Delta emulator made a huge splash when it hit the Apple App Store earlier this month, quickly rocketing to the top spot in Apple’s free apps, where it remains today. Now, developer Riley Testut says an iPad-specific version is “near completion,” and will be released with Delta version 1.6. Testut says the app is already available for his Patreon supporters through “the regular AltStore,” which I take to mean the non-EU-specific one, rather than the Apple-approved AltStore PAL.

Of course, the iOS version already works on the iPad (and the Vision Pro, where I’ve been playing Metroid Prime Hunters). But a native version would let it take advantage of the full iPad screen real estate for better skins, including one that turns your tablet...

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Where to get started with Fallout

Image: Bethesda Game Studios

A sampling of the four modern games in the series for those jumping in after the Amazon show.

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The OLED iPad Pro could launch with an M4 chip

Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge

Apple is preparing for its big AI coming out party in this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference; that much you can count on. But apparently, the company is going to start that party a little early with the OLED iPad Pro that it’s expected to unveil on May 7th. According to _Bloomberg’_s Mark Gurman, there’s “a strong possibility” the tablet will launch with an M4 chip and its accompanying neural engine, making it Apple’s “first truly AI-powered device.”

Writing in his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the company could use its May event to explain “its AI chip strategy without distraction,” freeing it to focus on exactly how the iPad Pro and its other M4 devices will use the company’s AI offerings in iPadOS 18. Those could include...

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Battle of the best robovacs (that iRobot doesn’t make)

We put the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra head-to-head against the DreameBot X30 Ultra to find out which of these Roomba competitors’ flagship robot vacuums is the best.

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In the first Autonomous Racing League race, the struggle was real

Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

The first race of the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) took place on the Yas Marina Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Formula 1 track today, and I’m pleased to report that a race both began and ended. But the event was not without strife — far from it. During qualifying time trials, the driverless Dallara Super Formula racers outfitted with cameras and software seemed to struggle mightily to complete a full lap.

During the trials, cars randomly juked:

Image: A2RL

Or spun:

Image: A2RL

Or turned into walls:

Image: A2RL

Or just pulled off the track to take a little break:

Image: A2RL

You get well-acquainted with the interstitial music during these highlights....

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The Apple Vision Pro’s eBay prices are making me sad

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

I paid a lot of money for the privilege of getting an Apple Vision Pro brand-new in February. All-in, with optical inserts and taxes, I financed a little over $3,900 for the 256GB version of the headset. A day or so ago, I made a mistake that I’m sure many early adopters are familiar with: I looked up how much it’s been selling for on eBay.

On Wednesday, a 1TB Vision Pro, complete with all the included gear, Apple’s fluffy $200 travel case, $500 AppleCare Plus, and claimed to have been “worn maybe about an hour” sold for $3,200 after 21 bids. The listed shipping estimate was $20.30. Brand new, that combination is $5,007.03 on Apple’s site for me. Another eBay listing, this one with my headset’s configuration (but sans optical inserts) w...

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Have a look at this Terminator 2 fan restoration project

Still one of the coolest shots in all of sci-fi, even in orange. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge

Terminator 2: Judgment Day was — and is, for some — the standard-bearer for bombastic tentpole action films after it was released in 1991, but many of its fans have been less than enthusiastic about its Blu-ray releases. In recent years, though, people who love the movie have been restoring it using 35mm prints, and one of those efforts has been making the rounds over on X.

Jon W., who frequently posts about movies and projects like these, compiled a few screenshots in a thread comparing the new version with other transfers. They didn’t credit the person working on this directly, but did post a screenshot of text from “the person who restored Terminator” — Googling some of it verbatim led me to Rob’s Nostalgia Projects.

...

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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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Bose’s excellent QC Ultra Earbuds are matching their all-time low

The QuietComfort Ultra offer the best noise cancellation you can get in a pair of wireless earbuds, full stop. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If the bar for noise-canceling earbuds seems high right now, that’s because Bose and Sony seem to raise it with every addition to their respective lineups. The QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are a great example of just how impressive ANC has become in the last few years, particularly in the earbuds space. And now, thanks to a $50 discount, you can pick them up at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart for $249.

If noise cancellation is your top priority when selecting a pair of wireless earbuds, there’s no better choice than the Ultra. Bose’s latest earbuds do a terrific job masking the sounds of traffic, talking, and other noisy facets of everyday life, allowing you to soak in your playlists and podcasts without unwanted distractions. When you dow...

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Many people say their Apple IDs were inexplicably reset last night

Illustration: The Verge

Overnight, many people reported on social media that they were inexplicably logged out of their Apple IDs and then required to reset their passwords when they tried to sign in again, and nobody seems to know why. Some reported needing to enter their iPhone passcode to connect to iCloud again, while others with Stolen Device Protection enabled said they had to wait an hour before being able to log in.

Apple’s System Status webpage shows no current issues with any of its services, so it’s not clear if this was a widespread issue. That said, 9to5Mac reports that even a few of its staff members were also affected by the issue. At least one Forbes contributor apparently experienced the issue as well. The outlet saw no indication that this...

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The walls of Apple’s garden are tumbling down

Brick by brick. | Illustration by Myriam Wares for The Verge

Apple’s reckoning isn’t just the end of an era for the company — it’s a reflection of the smartphone’s fall from beloved gadget to commodity.

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They turned cattle ranches into tropical forest — then climate change hit

Collage by Israel Vargas

They brought forests back to life in Costa Rica. Their next challenge? Restoring ecosystems in a warming world.

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FTC says Amazon executives destroyed potential evidence by using apps like Signal

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

FTC lawyers submitted a filing on Thursday that claims Amazon’s top execs used Signal’s disappearing messages feature to destroy evidence relevant to the agency’s massive antitrust lawsuit. (You remember the one? The FTC accused Amazon of creating a secret “Project Nessie” pricing algorithm that may have generated more than $1 billion in extra profits.)

Now, The Washington Post (which is owned by Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos) reports that Amazon is just one of several companies recently accused of turning to encrypted messaging apps like Signal that can permanently erase messages automatically.

You may recall the government making similar arguments about Sam Bankman-Fried’s use of Signal during his trial for fraud and how...

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Eken fixes ‘terrible’ video doorbell issue that could let someone spy on you

Image: Eken

A company that manufactures video doorbells found by Consumer Reports to contain serious security vulnerabilities has issued a fix, the consumer advocacy group is reporting. Eken Group has issued a firmware update for the affected security products under its own name, as well as those from other brands it has licensing deals with, including Fishbot, Rakeblue, Tuck, and others. All the video doorbells use the Aiwit smartphone app and could be purchased from popular online retailers like Amazon, Shein, Temu, and Walmart.

Back in February, CR reported that it found vulnerabilities in Eken-produced video doorbells that “could allow a dangerous person to take control of the video doorbell on their target’s home.”

Gaining access to the...

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Google is officially a $2 trillion company

Illustration: The Verge

Google has spent the past year dealing with two of the biggest threats in its 25-year history: the rise of generative AI and the growing drumbeat of regulation. AI, in particular, has shaken the company to its core: it’s made big search changes, realigned the Search, Android, and hardware teams around AI, and launched its own Gemini AI model to capitalize on the opportunity.

Google execs cut projects and laid off employees to refocus, and yesterday, it announced its first-ever dividend and a $70 billion share buyback alongside its Q1 2024 earnings.

Investors, at least, are eating it up: Google parent company Alphabet has finally officially hit and maintained a $2 trillion market cap for a whole day of trading after briefly touching $2...

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I traded in my MacBook and now I’m a desktop convert

You can forget a lot about desktops if you use laptops exclusively for 23 years. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

When the M3 MacBook Airs came out last month, I did a good ol’ double facepalm that Captain Picard would be proud of. The wedge shape was no more (kinda). My M2 MacBook Air 15 was slightly too big, too heavy, and no matter what certain people say, 8GB of RAM was not cutting it. Analyzing the various MacBook Air and MacBook Pro configurations and prices made my head hurt. Thinking about lugging around a heavier laptop made my back hurt.

So I said, “Screw it. I’m going back to the desktop life.” I traded in my M2 Air and got myself a Mac Mini.

It made sense. I have a work-issued M1 MacBook Air — a delightfully lightweight wedge that’s more than enough for occasional trips to the office. At home, I use my phone for everything except...

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How to delete the data Google has on you

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Think about everything you do across Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and everything else Google owns, and you get some idea of how much data you’re giving up to the company each day. For most of us, it’s... a lot.

Whether or not you think the data collection and targeted advertising is a worthwhile trade for the free apps you get in return, Google does at least provide a comprehensive online dashboard you can use to see some of what’s being gathered.

You can use it to delete everything Google has already collected, stop it from collecting anything in the future, or automatically delete your data after a set period (like three months). You can also use these features to clear the records if you’re planning to delete your Google...

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Google adds AI conversation practice for English language learners

Illustration: The Verge

Google is testing its AI listening skills with a feature that lets people speak into their phones and practice English with a conversational AI bot. Google first rolled out the speaking practice experience in October 2023. Originally, the feature only provided feedback on spoken sentences. Now, users can practice having ongoing conversations in the language they’re learning.

TechCrunch reports that the feature is currently available for Search Labs users in Argentina, Colombia, India, Mexico, Venezuela, and Indonesia. Search Labs is Google’s sandbox for potential new Search features; however, the feature may also pop up based on translating to or from English with Google on an Android device.

For now, the feedback and conversation...

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Apple’s last-gen MacBook Pro 16 is on sale for its best price to date

Even now, the last-gen MacBook is a speedy machine with a stunning, spacious display. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It’s been a good week for Apple fans. Not only did Apple announce its forthcoming “Let Loose” event, but the entire M3-powered 13-inch MacBook Air lineup received a notable discount. And now, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip has plunged to an all-time low. If you require a laptop capable of handling more intense workloads than the Air, authorized Apple retailer Expercom is selling the last-gen MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, a 12‑core CPU, and a 19‑core GPU for $1,998.99 ($500 off) via Amazon.

Like the new M3-powered MacBook Pros, Apple’s last-gen MacBooks can tackle tasks like video editing and photo processing while lasting well over a full workday, which makes them better suited for creative professionals...

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Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land makes a better show than game

Image: Bandai Namco

Between Dune, Fallout, and Mad Max, it’s a good year for stories with lots of sand and little water. Now, you can add Sand Land — an adaptation of the late Akira Toriyama’s manga of the same name — to that list. The difference here is that Sand Land comes in two new flavors. There’s an anime streaming on Hulu (or Disney Plus if you’re outside the US) and a video game that turns the story into an open-world RPG. Both follow a similar plot, have the same characters, and even look nearly identical. Which means that if you’re looking to jump into this postapocalyptic wasteland, you have a choice to make — and it turns out, the animated series is a much tighter, more exciting adaptation.

The first thing you should know is that, whichever...

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Drake has taken down his diss track featuring AI Tupac

Photo by Carmen Mandato / Getty Images

Tupac Shakur’s lawyers warned Drake that they would take him to court if he did not take down his “Taylor Made” diss track featuring AI-altered vocals made to sound like the late rapper. And it seems like the message was received loud and clear.

Following Tupac’s lawyers giving Drake 24 hours to pull “Taylor Made” or risk being sued, the Canadian rapper has apparently chosen the former option and removed the song from his X profile. Drake first posted “Taylor Made” on April 19th as the latest response in his ongoing beef with fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, whose fondness for Snoop Dogg and Tupac is thought to be the reason Drake used recreations of their voices in his song.

Because “Taylor Made” was never officially released on any...

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Space Vacation’s gorgeous prints celebrate fan-favorite movies

Art by Samar Haddad / Space Vacation

A look at Samar Haddad’s bold homages, from sci-fi to comedy.

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