Google’s Pixel 9 lineup appears in hands-on photos five months early

Image: Rozetked

It’s a day that ends in Y, so naturally, we’re dealing with yet another Google Pixel hardware leak. This time, the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, and 9 Pro XL can be seen side by side in new images from Rozetked — a full five months before Google’s typical October release timeframe.

I have many questions about how and why these units are out in the world so early, but here we are. And I know a lot of you are no doubt eyeing that regular 9 Pro, which will finally put Google’s very best camera chops into a normal-sized phone. Meanwhile, the 9 Pro XL looks a fair bit taller than Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Image: Rozetked

Yep, that’s an XL-sized phone.

l’m a bit curious as to whether Google will still call this a “camera bar”...

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Roku will start streaming live MLB games for free

Photo by Stacy Revere / Getty Images

Roku will exclusively stream Major League Baseball Sunday Leadoff games starting with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox on May 19th. The games will air live on The Roku Channel — no subscription or sign-up required.

To watch the games, you’ll have to download The Roku Channel on your Roku device or TV. The app is also available on Amazon Fire devices, Samsung TVs, and Google TVs, as well as via The Roku Channel website. You’ll be able to watch replays of the games up to six hours after they end.

“With free games available to anyone, MLB games on Roku will be widely accessible to fans,” Noah Garden, the MLB’s deputy commissioner of business and media, said in a statement. Roku will stream Sunday Leadoff games every week until...

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The new Apple iPad Air is great — but it’s not the one to get

The iPad Air is an excellent iPad — and that’s all. | Photo: David Pierce / The Verge

The iPad Pro is a beast. The two-year-old iPad is more compelling than ever. So what is the Air even for anymore?

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Apple iPad Pro (2024) review: the best kind of overkill

Apple’s latest high-end tablet is a marvel of hardware design still in need of the software and accessories to really make it sing. But wow is it fun to use.

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RFK Jr. sues Meta for ‘election interference’ after it temporarily removed a campaign video

Photo by Lev Radin / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images

Independent presidential candidate and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing Meta for allegedly violating the First Amendment and engaging in “election interference” because it removed a video about him.

The lawsuit is not likely to advance far, considering that the First Amendment bars the government — not companies — from censoring speech. Plus, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act effectively insulates online platforms from being sued for how they choose to remove or limit content on their sites.

Keep in mind this is the same candidate who has claimed that part of his brain had been eaten years ago by a parasitic worm (he told The New York Times he’s recovered from symptoms including memory loss related to the...

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Melinda French Gates to leave the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Photo by Noam Galai / Getty Images for Clinton Global Initiative

Melinda French Gates has stepped down from her position as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

French Gates, who will officially leave on June 7th, will continue her philanthropy elsewhere, to the tune of $12.5 billion. The money stems from an agreement with her ex-husband, Bill Gates, and does not come from the foundation’s endowment. In her X post, she says she will focus on programs “on behalf of women and families.”

“This is not a decision I came to lightly,” French Gates says. “I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together, and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequalities around the world.”

French Gates and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates divorced in 2021. At the time, the two...

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Apple finally adds iPhone alerts for third-party Bluetooth trackers

Apple and Google collaborated on the new Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers industry standard. | Image: Apple

A new industry specification devised by Apple and Google to address the safety risks of Bluetooth tracking devices is now live. Apple announced this week it has implemented alerts for unknown third-party Bluetooth trackers in iOS 17.5, following Google starting to roll it out across Android devices running 6.0 and higher last December.

The Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers (DULT) standard is a cross-platform initiative designed to prevent Bluetooth trackers like Apple AirTags from being misused to track people without their knowledge. The specification allows iOS and Android devices to detect and alert you when a tracker that conforms to the standard is traveling with you and its owner is not.

Apple said in a press release that...

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Square Enix plans to ‘aggressively pursue’ multiplatform game releases

Image: Square Enix

Everybody’s getting bitten by the multiplatform bug; now, it’s Square Enix. In its earnings report released earlier today, the publisher shared plans to increase profits, stating that it will “aggressively pursue a multiplatform strategy that includes Nintendo platforms, PlayStation, Xbox, and PCs.”

Right now, Square Enix’s biggest games, like Final Fantasy XVIand Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, have been restricted to the PlayStation, with PC releases for select titles including Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade following some time after console launch. However, smaller new releases, like the forthcoming Visions of Mana, are seeing simultaneous release on Xbox.

The company wrote that it hopes bringing its major franchises, including its...

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ChatGPT will be able to talk to you like Scarlett Johansson in Her

Photo: Warner Bros.

OpenAI is releasing a Her-inspired voice assistant feature that can read your facial expressions and translate spoken language in real time — and hopefully do it all without abandoning you like in the movie.

During a livestream demonstration on Monday, OpenAI engineers and CTO Mira Murati gathered around a phone to show the new capabilities. They encouraged the assistant to be more expressive while making up a bedtime story, then abruptly requested it to switch to a robotic voice, before finally asking it to conclude the story with a singing voice. Later, they asked the assistant to look at what the phone’s camera is seeing and have it respond to what’s visible on-screen. The assistant was also able to be interrupted while speaking and...

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Zelda: Majora’s Mask is now a native PC game, and every N64 title could follow its lead

I thought opening the impossible door in Mario 64 was the coolest thing that’d happened to the Nintendo 64 in years, but Mr. Wiseguy’s just-released N64 Recompiled blows me away. It’s a tool that theoretically lets you turn any N64 game into a native PC port, the better to play and preserve N64 games — and to showcase its abilities, you can already download Windows and Linux-native apps for The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Maskthat seem to run incredibly well.

It almost seems too good to be true: I just double-clicked an EXE file on my Windows laptop, told the app where to find a Majora’s Mask ROM file, and was immediately playing a copy of the game that felt incredibly responsive to my every press on a 165Hz variable refresh rate screen,...

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Apple News Plus is ready to work offline

Image: Apple

Even if subscribers are outside cellular or Wi-Fi range (or if there’s a massive outage), Apple News Plus on iOS 17.5 can still supply them content now that it’s added Offline Mode — this must’ve been farther down the list from Apple Maps, which added offline navigation last year in the iOS 17 update. Top Stories, Apple News Today audio briefings, magazines, narrated articles, and puzzles can automatically download to your iPhone or iPad, all optimized to maximize space on the devices.

As promised, the latest updates across macOS, iPadOS, and other platforms also add another word game for News Plus subscribers called Quartiles, competing with The New York Times’ growing library of games and even LinkedIn. The New Plus Puzzles section...

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Cruise is back driving autonomously for the first time since pedestrian-dragging incident

Photo: Getty Images

Cruise’s autonomous vehicles are officially back on the road and driving autonomously for the first time since one of its driverless vehicles dragged a pedestrian over 20 feet in San Francisco.

Cruise said last month that it would resume testing with manually driven vehicles focused on mapping and gathering road information — minor tasks for a company with as many autonomous miles as Cruise. But Cruise needs to show local officials that it is suitably apologetic for the pedestrian-dragging incident by going slow and talking a lot about safety and trust. The company is deploying its vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona, which has long been a hotbed for autonomous vehicle testing.

Cruise needs to show local officials that it is suitably...

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Denon adds Siri to its smart speakers

Denon Home smart speakers now support Apple’s Siri voice assistant. | Image: Denon

Way back in 2021, Ecobee’s thermostats became the first non-Apple device to integrate Siri voice control into its hardware, following Apple’s making the voice assistant available to third-party devices at WWDC that year. Fast-forward a few years, and there’s finally another device with Siri on board: Denon smart speakers.

While primarily known for its receivers, Denon’s line of wireless whole-home audio and music-streaming smart speakers position it as a competitor to Sonos and Bose. Denon also happens to be owned by Masimo Consumer Audio, a division of Masimo, the company whose patent infringement case around its pulse oximetry tech is currently blocking some of the Apple Watch’s health features.

The hardware support for Siri on Denon...

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Tile owner Life360 picks satellites over partnering with Apple or Google

Life360 owns Tile, which makes popular location trackers like the Tile Pro. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Tile is promising satellite connectivity for its Bluetooth trackers in a move that could boost the company as an independent alternative to its Big Tech rivals: Apple’s Find My network and Google’s newly revamped Find My Device network.

Life360, the family locator and safety service company that bought Tile in 2021 announced a partnership with the satellite company Hubble Network as it introduces “Find with Life360,” a global location tracking network rival with an API that’s open for use by other developers. They say that using Hubble’s satellites, Tile trackers will eventually be able to find items on both Android and iPhone devices even outside the range of cellular connectivity.

Hubble says it has two satellites operating already,...

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Apple is almost ready to sell the Vision Pro outside the US

The Vision Pro could be available in some international regions shortly after Apple’s WWDC event next month. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple is reportedly preparing to launch its $3,499 Vision Pro outside of the US for the first time, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, with the mixed reality headset’s international rollout expected to start shortly after the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference early next month.

On Monday, Gurman reported that Apple has flown “hundreds of employees from its international stores” over to its offices in Cupertino, California, to show them how to demonstrate the device. Training sessions reportedly started last week, with courses taking up to four days to complete according to Gurman’s sources.

Apple staffers from Germany, France, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and China are included in the training, but apparently, the...

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You can already save up to $50 on the forthcoming iPad Pro and iPad Air

The screen on the 2024 iPad Pro is a hair bigger, yet the tablet is somehow thinner and lighter than the prior model. | Photo: David Pierce / The Verge

The newest iPad Pro and iPad Air models don’t hit store shelves until Wednesday, May 15th, but we’re already seeing preorder discounts on select colors ahead of the launch. The 11-inch iPad Air is down to $569.99 ($30 off) with Wi-Fi and 128GB of storage at Amazon, while the base 13-inch iPad Air is going for 769.99 ($30 off) at Amazon. Meanwhile, the 256GB 11-inch iPad Pro with the M4 chip / Wi-Fi is down to $949.99 ($50 off) at Amazon; you can also save $50 on all 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models at Best Buy if you’re a My Best Buy Total or Plus member (which itself starts at $49.99 a year).

We can’t speak to their worth just yet, but the 2024 iPad Air and iPad Pro are likely to be safe bets. On paper, neither rock the boat so much...

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OpenAI’s custom GPT Store is now open to all for free

Screenshot: YouTube

OpenAI is making a number of its previously subscription-only features available to free users of ChatGPT, with the biggest being the ability to create custom chatbots and browse its GPT Store.

The company opened its GPT Store to paid subscribers just four months ago on January 10th. The store lets users create their own chatbots, called GPTs, and share them. Some of the trending bots right now include an image-generating bot, a chatbot called Consensus that’s geared toward helping with scientific research, and a logo-making bot.

The company said it would offer an engagement-based revenue sharing program for GPT builders — that started testing in March. But the audience for the bots has been limited due to the feature’s restriction to...

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ChatGPT is getting a Mac app

Image: OpenAI

ChatGPT now has a desktop app — but it’s only available on macOS for now. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced the news during an event on Tuesday, where she also said that ChatGPT is getting a refreshed UI.

In the demo shown by OpenAI, users could open the ChatGPT desktop app in a small window, alongside another program. They asked ChatGPT questions about what’s on their screen — whether by typing or saying it. ChatGPT could then respond based on what it “sees.”

Image: OpenAI

OpenAI says users can ask ChatGPT a question by using the Option + Space keyboard shortcut, as well as take and discuss screenshots within the app. Both free and paid users will be able to access the new app, but it will only be available to...

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OpenAI releases GPT-4o, a faster model that’s free for all ChatGPT users

Screenshot: OpenAI

OpenAI announced the launch of GPT-4o, an iteration of its GPT-4 model that powers its hallmark product, ChatGPT. The latest update “is much faster” and improves “capabilities across text, vision, and audio,” OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said in a livestream announcement on Monday. It’ll be free for all users, and paid users will continue to “have up to five times the capacity limits” of free users, Murati added.

In a blog post from the company, OpenAI says GPT-4o’s capabilities “will be rolled out iteratively (with extended red team access starting today),” but its text and image capabilities will start to roll out today in ChatGPT.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted that the model is “natively multimodal,” which means the model could generate...

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Ikea is adding energy monitoring to its Home Smart app

Ikea’s new Energy Insights feature will offer real-time data on energy consumption and electricity spot prices. | Photo: Ikea

Energy management is a big benefit of the smart home, and more companies are starting to offer easier ways to monitor and control your home’s energy use through their app on your phone. The next level is offering intelligent ways to automate the process to save you money without you having to think about it.

Swedish furniture giant Ikea just took a small step toward providing that to users of its smart home platform, Home Smart. This week, it launched an Energy Insights feature to monitor your home’s energy use and announced its first energy-monitoring smart plug, the Inspelning, is coming in October.

Image: Ikea

The Inspelning is Ikea’s first energy monitoring smart plug.

Ikea says the Inspelning can monitor...

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How to type special characters on a Windows PC

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Here’s the situation: you’re typing a report for work, and you suddenly have to write the phrase “Jones née Berkowitz.” Or you are adding a phrase in Spanish and need to use the word “años.” How do you add the special characters to the letters?

Special characters (also known as diacritical marks) may be more common in certain languages, but there are plenty of circumstances in which English speakers may need to use them. But because they are so rare in English, native English speakers may not have learned how to add those marks to documents, emails, or other writings. It’s not difficult to add them to your Windows document, although it’s not quite as smooth an operation as on a Mac, where all you have to do is hold the appropriate key...

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Meta Quest’s new Travel Mode will put more glassholes on your next flight

Photo: Meta

Meta Quest headsets are ready to go on flights with you as Meta has announced a new Travel Mode. The company is rolling out the experimental feature to Quest 2 and 3 headsets running Quest software version 65 or later, allowing owners to use the headset in passthrough on a flight without windows drifting away from them.

To try it, opt in under Settings > Experimental features. Then the new mode will live in the Quick settings panel, where you can toggle it from the Quest’s universal menu. Travel Mode isn’t without limitations — it’s not designed to account for the motion of a car or train, for instance; Meta says support for other transportation methods is coming. Also, if a game or app requires an internet connection, your plane will...

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VW releases battery and motor details for upcoming ID Buzz electric microbus

The North American ID Buzz. | Photo: Volkswagen

Volkswagen is one step closer to delivering the ID Buzz in the US, today revealing initial battery, powertrain, and trim options available when the all-electric microbus goes on sale later this year.

To start, the automaker will offer a First Edition model that comes with exclusive wheels, badging, and extra unknown “gifts.” Alongside that, VW has a Pro S model that is rear-wheel drive only (282 horsepower) and a Pro S Plus that can option in all-wheel drive (335 horsepower) and comes with standard premium features like a heads-up display.

While European customers have had fun going on road trips and camping for a year, Volkswagen has been slow to bring the retro-inspired microbus stateside. Last summer, the automaker confirmed the...

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Google is bringing Project Starline’s ‘magic window’ experience to real video calls

Image: Google

Google’s futuristic videoconferencing technology will soon become a reality. In an update on Monday, Google shared that it’s working on integrating Project Starline with common videoconferencing setups like Google Meet and Zoom.

Google first took the wraps off Project Starline during Google I/O in 2021. Its first iteration involved a 3D video chat booth where you see a projection of the person you’re chatting with and they see a projection of you — almost like you’re talking to each other in the same room.

But Google later fit the technology into what looks like a large TV with a camera system mounted on the top, rather than an entire booth, making it more practical for offices and conference rooms.

Image: Google

N...

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Microsoft Places uses AI to find the best time for your next office day

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is attempting to solve the hassle of coordinating with colleagues on when everyone will be in the office. It’s a problem that emerged with the increase in hybrid and flexible work after the recent covid-19 pandemic, with workers spending less time in the office. Microsoft Places is an AI-powered app that goes into preview today and should help businesses that rely on Outlook and Microsoft Teams to better coordinate in-office time together.

“When employees get to the office, they don’t want to be greeted by a sea of empty desks — they want face-time with their manager and the coworkers they collaborate with most frequently,” says Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI at work, Jared Spataro, in a blog post. “With Places, you...

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Microsoft Word just fixed its default paste option

Illustration: The Verge

Have you ever pasted text into your beautifully formatted Microsoft Word document, only for it to ruin everything? Well, the days of the should finally be over, as Microsoft Word will now merge the text’s formatting with your document by default.

Unlike the previous “keep source formatting” default, the “merge formatting” option preserves the original bold and underlined text, along with list and table structure. But it also changes the visual aspects of the text, such as font family, size, and color, to match the document you’re working on. That should save you from messing up the formatting of your entire document when pasting in text from another source.

You could previously choose the “merge formatting” option from Word’s pasting...

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TCL’s new Mini LED TVs offer blazing brightness on a budget

Image: TCL

5,000 nits. That’s the incredible peak brightness of TCL’s latest flagship QM8 Mini LED TV, and there’s no better example of how the company is hoping to stand out from competitors like Samsung, LG, Hisense, Sony, and others. That’s just on a different level than what OLED can offer. Are we getting to a point where TVs are getting too bright? No such thing, right?

Starting at $1,999.99 for a 65-inch size (and ranging up to an enormous 115-inch model), the QM8 contains thousands of dimming zones — “up to over 5,000,” to be specific. Combined with TCL’s image processing, the company is confident that people will get an enthralling home theater experience from this Mini LED set for significantly less than, say, a top-tier OLED would cost.

...

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Why Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is confident we’ll all adapt to AI

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Adobe

The tech and the consumers both might not be quite ready yet, but he’s betting big on an AI future.

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The Pixel 8A and the camera you have with you

You know, normal backyard nighttime stuff.

Sometimes you travel thousands of miles from home to see something amazing. And every once in a while, that something appears right in your backyard.

That’s what happened on Friday. “What’s the aurora forecast for tonight?” I asked a friend who keeps up with those things. “Amazing,” he said. He wasn’t lying. At 9:30PM, my husband and I went to the backyard to check the sky — nothing but hazy light pollution on the northern horizon. But just an hour later, the sky erupted.

I didn’t think twice about what camera to use to photograph the event since I already had my SIM card in the Pixel 8A — it had arrived a couple of days ago fresh off its announcement. I handed my husband the Pixel 8 Pro; he left his night mode-less iPhone XR in the...

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Amazon’s robotaxi company is under investigation after two crashes with motorcyclists

Image: Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

US safety regulators are looking into two crashes involving Amazon’s robotaxi company, Zoox. The Office of Defects Investigation, under the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, opened a preliminary evaluation into Zoox after two separate reports of the vehicles suddenly braking and causing motorcyclists to crash into their rear end.

NHTSA confirms that the Zoox vehicles were operating in driverless mode without safety drivers when the incidents occurred. The vehicles involved in both crashes were Toyota Highlander SUVs, which Zoox uses for testing and data gathering. According to the Office of Defects Investigation, the investigation covers an estimated 500 vehicles.

The crashes did not involve Zoox’s unique toaster-looking...

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