Microsoft is bundling its AI-powered Office features into Microsoft 365 subscriptions

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft appears to be stepping back from charging Microsoft 365 Personal and Home subscribers another $20 per month to get access to AI-powered Office features. The software giant quietly announced it’s making Copilot Pro features part of its Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions last week, but only in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand for now.

“It’s been nine months since we introduced consumers to Copilot in our Microsoft 365 apps via Copilot Pro. We’ve spent that time adding new features, improving performance, and listening carefully to customer feedback,” says Microsoft in a press release spotted by ZDNet. “Based on that feedback, we’re making Copilot part of our Microsoft 365 Personal and...

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Take-Two is selling its indie games label Private Division

Pokemon developer Game Freak’s unreleased Project Bloom game is included in the sale. | Image: Private Division

Take-Two Interactive is selling off its indie games label Private Division, which published titles such as The Outer Worlds and OlliOlli World, following rumors over the summer that Take-Two laid off most of Private Division’s staff.

Take-Two did not disclose the buyer of Private Division or how much they paid. In an emailed statement to The Verge, Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis wrote:

We recently made the strategic decision to sell our Private Division label to focus our resources on growing our core and mobile businesses for the long-term. As part of this transaction, the buyer purchased our rights to substantially all of Private Division’s live and unreleased titles.

Take-Two will continue to support No Rest for the Wicked, which...

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The FTC orders Sitejabber to stop faking product reviews

Image:Cath Virginia / The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission has charged Sitejabber, an online review platform, with violating its new fake reviews rules by using point-of-sale reviews to misrepresent what customers think about products. In one of its first enforcement actions under new rules banning companies from making or selling fake reviews, the FTC is ordering the company to stop.

The FTC says Sitejabber “deceptively” punched up businesses’ review counts by incorporating responses to point-of-sale questionnaires asking customers to rate and review their shopping experience, before they’d actually gotten any products or services. It also alleges that by giving its clients tools to publish that feedback on their own sites, Sitejabber enabled them to mislead people...

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NYT tech workers are making their own games while on strike

Striking New York Times tech workers have created a “Guild Builds” page dedicated to strike-themed games you can play, including a spin on Wordle, a word search, and the custom Connections I reported on earlier today.

As part of its strike announcement on Monday, the New York Times Tech Guild requested that people don’t cross the digital picket line to play the NYT’s daily puzzle games. This collection of five other games offers an alternative if you want to support the striking workers but also do some brain teasers.

There are currently five games on the page:

• Strikle, the twist on Wordle
• Connections: Strike Edition, which is a puzzle made in a Connections creator
• Word Search
• Match Strike, a memory game
• Frogger 8th Avenue

They...

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Microsoft’s new emulator could bring more games to Windows on Arm

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Microsoft is testing a big Windows on Arm update to let more x64 software and games run under Prism emulation on Copilot Plus PC with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus processors. The capability comes as part of the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27744, rolling out to testers in the Canary Channel.

This way, Qualcomm’s new chips can run more kinds of apps that don’t have native ARM64 versions and, until now, weren’t usable with emulation. It could even enable games that use AVX2, like Starfield and Helldivers 2, to work on Windows on Arm.

With this update, Microsoft’s emulator will open up support for 64-bit x86 software to use processor extensions like AVX, AVX2, BMI, FMA, and F16C. However, it says 32-bit software still won’t...

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Roblox is banning kids from ‘social hangout’ spaces

Illustration: The Verge

Roblox is going to block kids from accessing certain types of experiences following reports alleging that the platform has enabled child abuse.

One new measure will stop kids under 13 from accessing experiences with “certain types of interactive features,” Roblox says in a post on its developer forum. Those include “social hangouts,” where the primary purpose is to communicate with others over text or voice chat, and “free-form 2D user creation” experiences, where players can do things like draw on a chalkboard or whiteboard. This change goes into effect beginning November 18th.

Another change stops kids under 13 from playing, searching for, or being able to discover unrated experiences. This change goes into effect after December 3rd....

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Galaxy S25 ‘Slim’ rumors suggest a skinny phone showdown next year

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Samsung might be working on a “Galaxy S25 Slim” model, with similar rumors to the ones about a “Slim” iPhone 17 in 2025 that may replace the iPhone Plus. South Korea’s ET news first reported on it, saying Samsung might release a slim smartphone during the second quarter of 2025 (April – June) as a follow-up a few months after the rest of the Galaxy S25 family makes their debut.

And now Smartprix has shown the listing for a smartphone with the market name “Galaxy” and model number SM-S937U in the GSMA IMEI database. Smartprix says Samsung typically adds smartphones it’s working on testing internally to the database before launching it six to seven months later, and this model number lines up with others that line up with the usual Galaxy...

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The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

These days, we are all dealing with huge amounts of information, from meeting notes to social media, to photos and videos, to whatever else we’ve collected — and we are all trying to find some way to store it, organize it, and find it when we need it.

If you want to get really basic, you can use a spreadsheet or create a simple set of word-processing documents. Otherwise, you can try what is somewhat inaccurately described as a note-taking app. These apps, at their simplest, store your notes and other thoughts and, at their more complex, are capable of manipulating any and all content you want to drop into them.

One of the most well-known has been Evernote, which has gone through quite a few changes over the years, both financially and...

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Did OpenAI just spend more than $10 million on a URL?

Image: OpenAI

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a simple URL on X: chat.com. It automatically routes to OpenAI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

Prior to this, the domain was owned by Dharmesh Shah, the founder and CTO of HubSpot. In early 2023, Shah purchased the chat.com domain for $10 million. However, just a few months later, he announced that he had sold the domain, though he wouldn’t disclose the details of the sale or the buyer. Notably, he did confirm that he sold the domain for more than he had originally paid for it.

“The reason I bought chat.com is simple: I think Chat-based UX (#ChatUX) is the next big thing in software. Communicating with computers/software through a natural language interface is much more intuitive. This is made...

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The best smartphone you can buy for under $500

You can get a great device for less than $500 these days if you know how to pick your priorities. | Image: The Verge

You can’t have everything at this price, but you can get a great smartphone. Whether you want an iPhone, a 120Hz screen, or water resistance, you’ve got options.

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The best noise-canceling headphones to buy right now

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Get some peace and quiet with any of our top picks for noise-canceling headphones. Sony’s still the best overall, but there are reasons to go elsewhere, too.

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Mercedes-Benz’s electric future starts with this CLA prototype

The all-electric CLA. | Image: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz is showing off its all-electric CLA prototype and sharing a few new details planned for the upcoming 2025 production version. The CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group, Ola Källenius, provides a limited tour of the car, in which he talks to its new AI assistant, and takes it for a spin in a new video posted by the automaker.

The CLA is camouflaged like the one spotted in September, but now we’re getting a look at the likely final version of Mercedes’ star logo headlights and a small look at the CLA’s interior. Mercedes-Benz says much of the tech from the EQXX Concept revealed in 2022 is incorporated into the CLA.

Källenius says this CLA “ushers in an era of a whole generation of new vehicles from Mercedes” that uses its newest...

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Soon you can let Microsoft’s Notepad rewrite text for you

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is adding AI-powered text editing to Notepad. The feature, called Rewrite, is rolling out in preview to Windows Insiders and will let you use AI to “rephrase sentences, adjust tone, and modify the length of your content,” according to the Windows Insider Blog.

If you’re a Windows Insider with early access to the feature, you can try it by highlighting the text you want to adjust in Notepad, right-clicking it, and choosing Rewrite. Notepad will then display a dialogue box where you can decide how they want to change their text — for example, if it needs to be longer or shorter. Rewrite will then offer three rewritten versions that you can replace your work with.

Image: Microsoft

You can try out Rewrite by...

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Apple’s iOS 18.2 public beta starts opening up access to more AI features

Illustration: The Verge

Apple has released iOS / iPadOS 18.2 into public beta, as spotted by MacRumors. It includes access to the second wave of Apple Intelligence features that were already available to developers, like the AI-generated custom emoji feature Genmoji and the Image Playground feature that generates pictures.

It also adds ChatGPT integration, Visual Intelligence for searching using iPhone 16 cameras, a more robust Siri with improved responses to queries, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT is an option to step in and answer instead. ChatGPT access is free and doesn’t require an account to use it.

Access to some of the Apple Intelligence features is still behind a secondary waitlist — if you already had access to test them, you will immediately be able to use...

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Striking NYT tech workers made a custom Connections so you don’t cross the picket line

Striking New York Times tech workers have created a custom Connections puzzle so fans can get their daily fix without crossing the digital picket line.

The “Strike Edition” puzzle was made on a website that lets people create their own Connections. The workers, part of the New York Times Tech Guild, specifically asked NYT readers not to play NYT games when the strike began on Monday, so the custom puzzleoffers a way to play while still respecting the Guild’s wishes.

“We have seen a groundswell of support from subscribers who have been proudly tweeting about purposely breaking their game streaks to support our strikers,” says Jen Sheehan, spokesperson for the NewsGuild of New York.

The Guild didn’t make the website themselves; the site...

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Nintendo’s next generation is off to a great start

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Nintendo’s next console is going to have a kickass library of games to start. Last night, when there was absolutely nothing else of note happening in the world, Nintendo announced that its still-unannounced Switch successor would be backward-compatible with existing Switch games. The announcement is an early sign that Nintendo might be able to avoid the painful transition between consoles and better unify its growing ambitions.

Backward compatibility is not a guarantee of success. The Wii U could play most Wii games, and it still ended up being a failure. But it’s a feature that benefits both consumers and the industry at large. In Nintendo’s case, its inclusion was never a sure thing. While bestselling hardware like the Wii and DS were...

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All the Big Tech leaders congratulating Donald Trump

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

Big Tech leaders from across the industry are lining up to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory in the US presidential election. Trump has butted heads with many of the executives now cozying up to the soon-to-be president, who recently threatened to throw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in prison and said Google could be broken up because its search results are “rigged.”

Despite these comments (and the conflicts during Trump’s previous presidency), many of the tech CEOs targeted by Trump in the past are now coming forward with statements about his win. Here’s what some of the biggest names in tech are saying:

Apple CEO Tim Cook

“Congratulations President Trump on your victory! We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to...

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Life is Strange: Double Exposure ends with a disappointing finale

Image: Square Enix

The game’s final episode also teases a larger Life is Strange universe to come.

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What does Trump’s election mean for EVs, Tesla, and Elon Musk?

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump said a lot of things about electric vehicles. He said he would “end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” that EVs “don’t work,” and that they benefit China and Mexico while hurting American autoworkers.

But he has also closely aligned himself with Elon Musk, who runs the biggest EV company in the US. And he will likely have Musk continuing to whisper in his ear on important policy matters moving forward, even going so far as to promise to appoint the mercurial billionaire to a role in his administration.

So now that he’s the president-elect, what will he actually do that will affect the auto industry and its tenuous shift to electric vehicles?

First off, he said he would “rescind all unspent...

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Google’s Pixel Watch 3 is available at a new record low price for Verge readers

Google’s Pixel Watch 3 is an excellent upgrade over its predecessor, with a wealth of new fitness features and smarts. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you thought you needed to wait until Black Friday to score a steep discount on the new Google Pixel Watch 3, we’ve got some good news: right now, Wellbots is giving readers of The Verge an exclusive $75 discount, dropping the wearable down to a new all-time low price until November 12th. The 41mm, Wi-Fi-enabled configuration starts at $274 ($75 off) from Wellbots when you apply code VERGEBF75, while the same code drops the price of the 45mm Pixel Watch 3 with Wi-Fi down to $324 ($75 off).

Google managed to pack an impressive number of noteworthy features into its latest wearable, which is why it’s our favorite fitness smartwatch for Android users. It’s an even better fitness and health tracker than before, with custom running...

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Here’s the first 240W USB-PD charger you can actually buy

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge

You can now buy a USB-C charger that finally hits the promised power spec for beefy laptops at a max rate of 240W. You probably do not need this charger, and you may not have a device that even supports its peak power, but it’s here now if you want one to future-proof your office setup.

Delta Electronics’ ADP-240KB charger is an AC power supply that supports the maximum charge speeds possible on the USB-C Power Delivery (USB-PD) standard. It’s available from US component distributor Mouser Electronics for $126.37 plus shipping, or slightly less if you want at least 10. It’s advertised as a desktop AC adapter and comes as a dull black brick with a standardized three-prong AC in port (the AC cable is not included).

Image:...

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Another Trump presidency is literally toxic — his opponents are gearing up for battle

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images

Donald Trump clinched a presidential victory, ushering in another term of environmental rollbacks that’ll make it more difficult to safeguard our air, water, and climate.

“Environmental [regulation] is the biggest tool for stopping growth ... it costs much more to do things environmentally clean,” Trump said in a rambling three-hour interview with Joe Rogan on October 25th, when he falsely claimed the US had “the cleanest air and cleanest water” under his watch.

The last time he was president, Trump slashed air and water protections, replacing them with weaker rules that, over time, were expected to lead to thousands more deaths from pollution. Now, his administration could take even more extreme action if it follows eye-popping...

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The Verge’s guide to Black Friday 2024

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

These days, Black Friday isn’t so much a single-day shopping holiday as it is an ever-expanding, monthslong event that often begins as early as October. The 24-hour deal blitz that once was the focus of newspaper headlines and mobs outside of stores is no more, which makes knowing when and where you should be spending your cash all the more confusing.

Luckily, we’re here to help. Over the next month or so, we’ll be poring through scores of presale spreadsheets and thousands upon thousands of deals to separate the real discounts from the unexciting, made-up bargains every retailer seems to hawk around the holidays. We’ll have tips on how to find the best deals and when to shop, and we’ll continue to flag the most compelling sales in the...

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How to schedule your Mac to start up and shut down on its own

Mac Mini power button got you down? Try a power schedule! | Screenshot: YouTube

Apple’s new Mac Mini looks like someone hit the Mac Studio with a shrink ray, and I love it. But there is at least one, uh, hot-button issue: you have to reach underneath it to power it on. If that bothers you (and you’re not into flipping it upside down so it looks like it’s wearing a little hat), you can automate when it starts up and shuts down by creating a power schedule. I’ll tell you how.

There are plenty of reasons you might want to do this. I did it on my MacBook Air because I don’t use it that often, and I got tired of opening its lid only to find a dead laptop. Someone else might want their computer to wake up in the middle of the night to perform scheduled backups. Others might need to shut down their Mac for business...

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Netflix confirms Stranger Things season 5 is coming in 2025

Image: Netflix

We still don’t have a firm premiere date, but Netflix has officially confirmed that the fifth — and final — season of Stranger Things will start streaming next year. Aside from that, the streamer also released the titles for all eight episodes in the new season, which might provide some hints as to what to expect:

• Episode 1 - “The Crawl”
• Episode 2 - “The Vanishing of …” (note: this one is intentionally left incomplete, presumably for spoiler reasons)
• Episode 3 - “The Turnbow Trap”
• Episode 4 - “Sorcerer”
• Episode 5 - “Shock Jock”
• Episode 6 - “Escape from Camazotz”
• Episode 7 - “The Bridge”
• Episode 8 - “The Rightside Up”

That’s not a lot of info, but then again we haven’t heard much since season 4 wrapped up in 2022. Sarah Connor has...

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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D: the best gaming CPU

AMD’s 7800X3D successor is also better at non-gaming workloads this time around.

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Lyft is also partnering with robotaxi companies

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Lyft is teaming up with a trio of autonomous driving startups as it races to keep up with Uber, which has also struck a number of deals to put robotaxis on its platform.

Today, the ridehail company said it was teaming up with three different autonomous driving companies: Mobileye, May Mobility, and Nexar. Mobileye and May Mobility plan on deploying autonomous vehicles on Lyft’s network, while Nexar, which makes smart dash cams, will work with Lyft on using its “video telematics to create data-driven solutions that accelerate the deployment of AV technologies.”

Nexar said it has “over 45 petabytes of real-world footage, spanning 200 million miles driven monthly, with over 5 trillion images and over 59 million videos,” which it says...

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I flew DJI’s $199 drone with its new $229 Goggles N3

The DJI Goggles N3 headset, DJI Neo drone, and RC Motion 3 controller. | Photo: The Verge

I’m hoping DJI’s affordable new FPV goggles will be the missing puzzle piece — a way to cheaply buy the “It feels like I’m flying!” experience I had with the DJI Avata for maybe $400 or $500 tops, rather than the current $800 to $1,000 you might have to pay.

See, the company announced its budget $199 Neo drone in September that works with goggles, and today it’s announcing the $229 DJI Goggles N3. Add a $99 RC Motion 3 controller and you get airplane-like flight, with first-person video that puts you in the virtual cockpit.

But I can’t quite confirm that it’s worth your money yet — because DJI says my unit likely shipped with a defect, and I’ll need a little more testing time. More on that below.

At $229, the Goggles N3 are definitely...

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Corning’s Gorilla Glass under EU antitrust investigation

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Corning to determine whether it has broken antitrust rules with its dominant Gorilla Glass product. Corning’s Alkali-aluminosilicate glass is used to protect most of the top phones and tablets, with both Samsung and Apple using it extensively across their range of devices. The EU is concerned that Corning has used a variety of exclusivity contracts to exclude rival glass makers from the phone market.

“It is very frustrating and costly experience to break a mobile phone screen. Therefore, strong competition in the production of the cover glass used to protect such devices is crucial to ensure low prices and high-quality glass,” says outgoing EU competition chief Margrethe...

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Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Donald Trump has been declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Trump, who announced his reelection campaign in 2022, is the second president in US history to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms. Trump declared victory early on Wednesday, followed by the AP, The New York Times, and other outlets.

Trump has made immigration, the border, and the economy hallmarks of his reelection campaign. As the Republican nominee, he promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, suggested that he’d sign a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and pledged to embrace Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. His allies at the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute have drafted hundreds of executive orders ahead of Trump’s...

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