The new Mac Mini is great — now do the iPhone SE

This could be so much better. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

We could argue all day about the merits of iOS versus Android, but there’s one thing the Android ecosystem offers that you definitely won’t find from Apple right now: a decent midrange phone.

By “decent,” I mean something I can enthusiastically recommend. Not “Eh, if it’s literally your only option, then it’s fine,” which is how I’ve caveated my recommendations of the iPhone SE over the past couple of years. Remember the SE? Apple released the first version in 2016, putting a then-current A9 chip into an older body design for $399 compared to $649 for the iPhone 6S. I still have mine, and it rules.

Two generations later, and the SE is still Apple’s most affordable iPhone, now starting at $429. For that price, you get a well-built phone...

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Casio’s first smart ring has innovative features like a stopwatch and flashing alarm

Casio’s smart ring is a tiny digital watch. | Image: Casio

Not to be outdone by its longtime rival, Casio has announced its own digital ring watch that brings more functionality than Timex’s wearable that debuted last month. Created to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of Casio getting into the digital watch business, the CRW-001-1JR will be available in Japan starting in December for ￥19,800, or around $128.

Although the tiny watch’s case is just shy of being an inch in size, Casio has managed to squeeze in a retro six-segment LCD screen that can display hours, minutes, and seconds. The ring also includes three functional buttons that can control additional features like displaying the date or the time in a different time zone, and a stopwatch.

Image: Casio

Casio’s new...

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Cruise fined $500k for submitting a false report after last year’s pedestrian crash

Image: Cruise

GM’s Cruise will pay a criminal fine of $500,000 to resolve a federal investigation and accept a deferred prosecution agreement after the company admitted to falsifying a report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation” of a crash where one of its driverless vehicles struck and dragged a pedestrian in 2023.

NHTSA had already fined Cruise $1.5 million in September for submitting incomplete reports that failed to disclose that the robotaxi dragged the pedestrian 20 feet after they were hit by another vehicle and knocked into its path. The dragging wasn’t in a verbal summary Cruise employees gave to NHTSA the next day, video of the accident shown to...

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The best robot vacuums

Image: The Verge

Floor-sweeping robots are only getting better, with new mopping skills, better navigation chops, and more automation, meaning less work for you. We picked the best bots you can buy right now.

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Facebook is changing its primary metric to ‘views’

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Facebook is making “views” its primary metric to measure the performance of content, bringing it in line with Instagram metrics.

Views will be measured not just on video content but also on photos, text posts, and more. When Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the switch to views this summer, he said that having one consistent metric across the platform would make it easier for creators to understand how their content was performing. For reels, a view is how many times the video was played. For everything else, a view is how many times a piece of content shows up on a user’s screen, and if the same user looks at it multiple times, each instance counts as a view.

Meta has also added a view count to posts on Threads, saying it’s an...

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Threads is testing custom feeds for your favorite topics

Image: The Verge

Threads is testing a way to create custom feeds for certain profiles or topics, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday. The upcoming feature should make it easier to keep tabs on different interests, such as your favorite sports team or even technology-related news.

It sounds similar to the custom feeds feature Bluesky rolled out last year — but Threads’ version seems a lot simpler. To create a custom feed, just search and tap into a topic. From there, select the three-dot icon beside the search term and choose “create new feed.”

GIF: Meta

You can create feeds that track soccer or men’s fashion.

You can also add profiles to your custom feed by selecting the three-dot icon above someone’s profile photo and...

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Elon Musk targets Microsoft in amended OpenAI lawsuit

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk has updated his fraud, breach of contract, and racketeering lawsuit against OpenAI to make antitrust claims against Microsoft, accusing the two companies of attempting to “monopolize the generative AI market.” The amended complaint filed on Thursday names Microsoft as a new defendant, as well as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton, a former OpenAI board member.

Microsoft has invested $14 billion in OpenAI since 2019 and holds exclusive rights to commercially license the AI startup’s technology and a 49 percent stake in its for-profit subsidiary. Musk’s lawyers say that former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “engaged in rampant self-dealing” to create a “de facto merger” between the two companies to promote...

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The Rabbit R1 now lets you remake its whole interface

Photo: David Pierce / The Verge

The Rabbit R1 can now use AI to redesign the device’s entire interface based on a prompt. Some examples shared by Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu show a Legend of Zelda-inspired interface, another made in the style of Windows XP, and one using a “dark green scanline background.”

Though this seems like a fun way to customize the R1, Rabbit says responses on the AI-generated interfaces are “slower than the default UI on R1 and can take over 30 seconds to appear.” It suggests disabling this feature if you want the fastest responses possible.

''Generate UI in the style of The Legend of Zelda'' pic.twitter.com/uDGhgg5pbg

— Jesse Lyu (@jessechenglyu) November 14, 2024

You can turn on generative UI by logging into your rabbithole account, selecting...

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The Verge’s 2024 holiday gift guide for new parents

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Some of us freshly anointed moms and dads pooled together our top tech picks that make early days with baby just a touch easier (or more fun and nerdy).

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Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max has plunged to a record-low for Black Friday

Amazon’s latest Fire TV Stick 4K Max is a snappy streaming stick with impressive Alexa integration. | Image: Amazon

If you missed out on Amazon’s fall Prime Day event, the retailer’s early Black Friday sale is offering everybody another chance to score steep discounts on Amazon devices. One of the best deals currently available is on the latest Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which has dropped to an all-time low of $32.99 ($25 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.

Amazon’s latest streaming device is nearly identical to the last-gen model — which was once one of our top recommendations — only it features a number of iterative upgrades, including Wi-Fi 6E support and twice the storage (16GB). It can also display widgets and artwork when idle, much like recent TV offers from Hisense and TCL, and you can use it to create your own backgrounds using voice prompts...

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Bluesky’s quest to be the next Twitter

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Bluesky hit 15 million users this week. And then 16 million. The vibes on Bluesky are immaculate, and it seems to have a real and renewed chance to be the place that replaces Twitter for a lot of people. But then there’s Threads, which grew by approximately one Bluesky just this month. There’s also Mastodon, which is still hanging around, and of course there’s X. There are more options than ever, and it’s more confusing than ever.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we try and make sense of all this change. Will all this new growth and momentum help Bluesky grow not just as an app but as a decentralized protocol? Is it a real threat to ActivityPub and the notion of the fediverse? Do we know yet what kind of social network wants to be? And...

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Dune: Prophecy is a slow and cerebral meditation on the power of patience

Image: HBO

HBO’s new Dune prequel series sharpens the Bene Gesserit’s history into pointed drama that calls for some patience.

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Bitfinex hacker receives five-year sentence for record-breaking crypto heist

Nick Barclay / The Verge

The hacker behind one of the biggest-ever cryptocurrency heists will serve five years in prison for conspiring with his wife to launder billions in stolen Bitcoin. Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein was sentenced in Washington federal court Thursday after he admitted to hacking the Bitfinex crypto exchange in 2016 and stealing almost 120,000 Bitcoin tokens.

Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan were arrested in 2022, and in August last year both pled guilty to conspiring to commit money laundering. The stolen cryptocurrency, worth around $71 million at the time of the theft, had soared in value to approximately $4.5 billion by the time Lichtenstein and Morgan were arrested. Valued at today’s prices, the stolen funds would be worth an even more...

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Google Photos Partner Sharing is less of a snitch now

Illustration: The Verge

Google has placed some new limitations on a Google Photos feature that allows users to automatically share images and videos in their library with a partner. The update to Partner Sharing now means that users can only share photos or videos that were taken using their device’s default camera app, meaning partners are unable to see screenshots or images shared on services like WhatsApp.

Some Reddit users who utilize Partner Sharing initially reported the issue as a bug, but several comments made by a presumed Google employee say the change was intentionally made “to better align with most users’ expectations.” This is backed up by an updated Partner Sharing help article that says “photos from other apps on Android aren’t shared with your...

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The world’s biggest battery maker says Elon Musk’s 4680 cell ‘is going to fail’

Image: Tesla

Robin Zeng, the founder of the world’s largest EV battery company, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big bet on 4680 cylindrical cell technology “is going to fail and never be successful.” Zeng, the chairman of China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), tells Reuters that when Musk visited China in April, “We had a very big debate, and I showed him. He was silent. He doesn’t know how to make a battery.”

Tesla’s “tabless” 4680 cells, which are used in some of its cars, including the Cybertruck, are supposed to have “five times” more energy capacity, and the company announced in September it had produced 100 million of them. A recent report by The Information said Musk had given the team working on the batteries an end of the year deadline...

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The best instant cameras you can buy right now

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

We found the best cameras for your budget and needs.

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NASA’s AI Earth Copilot will take your questions about our planet

Image: NASA

NASA is teaming up with Microsoft to create an AI chatbot designed to make it easier to access and understand scientific data about the Earth. The tool, called Earth Copilot, will be able to answer questions about our planet by condensing NASA’s wide swath of geospatial information into easy-to-digest responses.

To create the tool, NASA is integrating AI into its data repository, allowing Earth Copilot to refer to this information when answering questions, such as “What was the impact of Hurricane Ian in Sanibel Island?” or “How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect air quality in the US?”

NASA aims to “democratize” access to scientific data with the launch of Earth Copilot, as obtaining and understanding the information within NASA’s...

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Pokémon TCG Pocket will let you trade cards starting early next year

The Pokemon Company

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket has been a big hit since its worldwide launch last month, and the team behind it has shared a brief roadmap of a couple updates to come — including the ability to trade cards with other people.

“We are aiming to add a feature that allows certain cards to be traded starting in January, 2025,” according to an update from the team on the official Pokémon forums. “We are planning to gradually expand the selection of cards that are able to be traded.” It’s unclear what cards will initially be available to trade, and hopefully the expansion of the list doesn’t take too long.

The game will also get new booster packs by the end of this year. And there are other new features in the works in addition to trading,...

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Teenage Engineering’s new OP–XY makes me wish I had a bigger budget for music gear

The Teenage Engineering OP-XY feels like an upgraded version of the company’s six-year-old OP-Z. | Image: Teenage Engineering

Teenage Engineering’s new OP-XY is a portable synthesizer and sequencer that looks similar to the company’s OP–1 Field. But functionally it’s instead a more capable upgrade to the company’s six-year-old OP-Z, with a stronger focus on layering sounds with various effects and a steeper $2,299 price tag.

With an “anodized, all-black finish,” the OP-XY is yet another delightful example of Teenage Engineering’s design chops. Its black and white motif accented with a grayscale gradient running across its 16 sequencer inputs is the antithesis of the bright yellow Playdate handheld that Teenage Engineering helped Panic design. Unlike the $429 OP-Z that relied on a mobile device like a smartphone for its screen, the OP-XY now has a black and...

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TikTok plugs Getty Images into its AI-generated ads and avatars

Image: The Verge

TikTok will let advertisers pull in content from Getty Images when using the platform’s AI ad creation tool. With the integration, advertisers can use Getty’s licensed images and videos to make ads containing AI-generated content, including AI avatars that look like real people.

The integration will be available through TikTok’s Symphony Creative Studio — an AI-powered video generation tool that rolled out today for all advertisers. This tool can generate a video based on a product description, add an AI avatar to “speak” about it, and even incorporate AI-powered dubbing in different languages. Advertisers can also use the tool to generate multiple versions of an ad, as well as “remix” an existing one.

GIF: TikTok

T...

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You can save up to $270 on the Garmin Fenix 7S Pro and other Garmin watches

It’s hard to find a fitness watch that tracks as many workouts and metrics as the Fenix 7 Pro series. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Garmin makes some of the best traditional multisport fitness watches, and one of its top models still commands a spot on our list of the best fitness trackers: the Garmin Fenix 7S Pro. Now through Cyber Monday, you can get that watch for just $529.99 ($270 off) at Wellbots when using the Verge-exclusive code VERGEBF270. That code will also work on the base Fenix 7 Pro ($529.99 after the discount), the Fenix 7X Pro (down to $629.99), and the Garmin Tactix 7 ($829.99). These are some of the lowest prices recorded yet.

Wellbots is also offering all-time low prices on other Garmin wearables and devices as part of its early Black Friday promotion. You can save $120 on the Garmin Forerunner 265 (now just $329.99) and Forerunner 965 ($479.99)...

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Twinkly’s smart holiday string lights have dropped to a new low price

Twinkly’s colorful string lights are more than half off at Amazon.

Believe it or not, but it’s almost time to put up the holiday lights. If you’re looking for string lights that’ll really make your house stand out this year, Twinkly’s Strings deliver some of the most dazzling effects available. They typically run $199.99, but right now, you can buy the 105-foot string with 400 LED lights at Amazon for a new low of $79 thanks to an on-page coupon.

Each of Twinkly’s LED lights can display more than 16 million colors and are individually addressable, allowing them to produce a festive “twinkly” effect. You can also choose from dozens of universal effects, along with some more advanced animations that are unique to Twinkly’s platform. You can, for instance, create your own effects, and Twinkly will even...

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Fortnite’s new TMNT roguelike shows the potential for user-made games

Image: Epic Games

Fortnite’s next big partnership with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is here. Epic Games already lets players dress up as the Turtles, and now, creators can publish experiences built with TMNT assets and the Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

As a demonstration of what’s possible, Paramount teamed up with Spiral House (which has made other Fortnite experiences), to make a TMNT-themed beat-em-up / roguelike, TMNT Dimensions [Rougelike], that you can play inside Fortnite right now. (You can find it by searching for code 8651-4809-2485.) A lot of user-made Fortnite experiences look somewhat amateur, but this seems like a game you might actually want to play outside of Fortnite, especially if you’re already a fan of TMNT’s other arcade-y brawlers.

E...

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CFPB is reportedly trying to put Google under bank-like supervision

Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is seeking to put Google under federal supervision, a move that could impose the same kinds of monitoring and inspections used on banks, The Washington Post reports.

The CFPB’s concerns are not totally clear and the order may still change, according to the Post, citing two unnamed sources. Both the agency and Google declined to comment on the report. But, plenty could change once President-elect Donald Trump reassumes office in January and puts forward his own pick to lead the agency.

The CFPB was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from unfair practices by financial institutions. While it already inspects more traditional finance businesses like banks,...

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Ford penalized $165 million over moving too slowly on a rearview camera recall

The 2020 Ford Explorer is one of the vehicles affected by the recall. | Image: Ford

Ford has agreed to pay a fine that could go up to $165 million after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found the automaker took too long to recall vehicles with faulty rearview cameras and failed to “provide accurate and complete recall information.”. This penalty is the second largest, only behind the $200 million Takata was ordered to pay.

Originally issued in 2020, the recall impacts more than 600,000 vehicles from 2019 onward, including the Ford F-150, Mustang, Escape, Ranger, and Expedition, along with the Lincoln Nautilus and Lincoln Corsair. Affected vehicles have a rearview camera that sometimes shows a “blank or distorted image.” Ford says no accidents or injuries were reported due to the defect.

Under the...

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Nike’s new easy open backpack was designed to prioritize accessibility

The fabric interior of Nike’s Elite EasyOn backpack is printed with instructions on how to use and customize it. | Image: Nike

Nike’s new Elite EasyOn backpack was designed with innovative features making it accessible for as many athletes as possible, including those with low dexterity or motor skills. Originally developed for athletes competing in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, the backpack is now available to everyone through the company’s online store for $150.

The bag’s most unique feature is a full clamshell opening that fully exposes its exterior. That eliminates the need to empty the backpack or dig through its contents to reach items at the bottom or those stashed in several of its internal pockets.

But securing the large flap with a zipper would require a long continuous path that could challenge some Paralympic athletes. “A comment we were...

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Bluesky has been acting up today

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Bluesky is growing quickly in popularity, but if you’re trying to use it today, the site might be acting up. As I was writing this article, my feeds and notifications were very slow to load on the web and mobile while logged in, and that has similarly been the case for a few of my Verge colleagues.

Things seem to be working now, but Bluesky developers have already warned that things might not work as expected today. Earlier this morning, developer Samuel Newman shared that the site would be briefly going into read-only mode because “something fell over.” After the site recovered, another developer, Paul Frazee, posted that “today will get interesting” and suggested that if the site goes down to “maybe grab a soda, pet the kitty.”

When...

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Google says it will stop serving political ads in the EU

Illustration: The Verge

Google has announced it will stop showing political ads to users in the European Union next year due to uncertainties around the bloc’s new transparency regulations. In a new blog post, Google says the upcoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) rules that aim to prevent election interference and help voters make informed choices will introduce significant “operational challenges and legal uncertainties.”

Google says the definition of political advertising in the TTPA, which is set to come into force in October 2025, is too broad and makes it difficult to reliably identify what content should be restricted across different EU regions at scale. The search giant is planning to stop serving political ads before the...

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Mythic Quest is getting a spinoff anthology series

Apple TV Plus

Mythic Quest’s upcoming fourth season finally has a release date, but Apple’s future plans for the series aren’t stopping there.

Today, Apple announced that Mythic Quest will return on January 29th with a two-episode premiere picking up Ian Grimm (Rob McElhenney,) Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao,) David Brittlesbee (David Hornsby,) Brad Bakshi (Danny Pudi,) Rachel Ashly Burch, Dana Bryant (Imani Hakim,) Jo (Jessie Ennis) and Carol (Naomi Ekperigin) adjust to a new status quo. In the new season, the Mythic Quest team will find their attempts at maintaining healthier work / life balances disrupted by stars rising, egos clashing, and new relationships blooming.

Though season 4 is set to conclude on March 26th, Mythic Quest’s world will get a...

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Threads grew by a Bluesky this month

Illustration: The Verge

Bluesky might be on the rise, but Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri wants you to know that Threads is still much bigger. In a post on Thursday, Mosseri said that Threads has gotten “more than 15 million signups in November alone,” seemingly trying to throw some cold water over Bluesky crossing 15 million users total on Wednesday.

Mosseri also reiterated that the platform has been getting more than a million signups per day — a stat that CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during last month’s earnings call — and noted that the platform has been seeing that volume of signups for “going on three months.”

Many people have been jumping to Bluesky looking for a new place to post that’s not X, which is owned by Donald Trump supporter Elon...

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