Former Android leaders are building an ‘operating system for AI agents’

Image: The Verge

A new startup created by former Android leaders aims to build an operating system for AI agents. Among them is Hugo Barra, Google’s former VP of Android product management, who says the new company — named “/dev/agents” — will revisit the leaders’ “Android roots.”

AI companies are pushing AI agents as the next big leap in AI tools, promising digital assistants that can carry out tasks and make decisions autonomously and with little human input. Companies like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI each have plans to launch some version of this concept as a product in the next few months.

Excited to announce my new company: /dev/agents. I’m building the next-gen operating system for AI agents, joining my former colleagues @hbarra, @alcor, and...

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Walmart made a whole Christmas movie just to sell you stuff

Will New Kids on the Block’s Joey McIntyre find love again, or will he just shop at Walmart? | Image: Roku

Walmart is linking up with Roku to release a full-length Christmas movie that will let viewers buy products on their TV during specific parts of the story, Business Insider reports. It’s the retailer’s second go at the idea of shoppable TV after previously trying out a social media romcom series. Walmart learned customers seemed likelier to buy something the longer they watched, so a feature was the next move.

This time Walmart will make it easier to buy products on the TV screen by enabling account connections between Walmart and Roku so payment information can be filled out automatically. Walmart received feedback for its last production that it was too much work to buy stuff.

The film is titled Jingle Bell Love and stars Joey...

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A Chinese ship is suspected of sabotaging undersea cables

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

A Chinese commercial ship is suspected of deliberately dragging its anchor to cut undersea cables that connect countries over the internet, The Wall Street Journal reports.

International investigators reportedly believe the crew aboard Yi Peng 3, a bulk carrier full of Russian fertilizer, dragged its anchor for more than 100 miles across the Baltic seabed, damaging the cables that run across it. Two different internet links — one between Sweden’s Gotland Island and Lithuania, and another between Finland and Germany — stopped working earlier this month, prompting the investigation by authorities from all four countries and other nations, according to the Journal.

Investigators are now trying to figure out if Russian intelligence...

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Google’s new chess game lets you customize pieces with AI

Google’s generation for the prompt “Make a classic chess set inspired by geometric sci-fi art.” | Screenshot: The Verge

Google has released a new chess website that puts one fun twist on the game: it uses custom pieces that are created each time by generative AI. The game starts by letting you type in a short description for what the white pieces should look like; it’ll generate the set using its Imagen 3 AI model, then automatically come up with a related idea for black. When I asked for sci-fi-themed pieces for myself, it made fantasy-themed pieces for the opponent.

From there, you can play the game. It’s functional, but it’s far from a fully featured chess app. You can choose three difficulty settings and two time controls, but you can’t review past moves or see what pieces have been captured. The game also defaults to an isometric view of the board...

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Breaking down the DOJ’s plan to end Google’s search monopoly

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Selling Chrome might not be the most painful part of the DOJ’s antitrust demands for Google.

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The UE Miniroll speaker is super portable and down to its best price ever

The Ultimate Ears Miniroll speaker is pocketable with a built-in strap for extra portability. | Image: Logitch / Ultimate Ears

If you need a good portable speaker, we’ve highlighted plenty in our larger Black Friday deals roundup — but the UE Miniroll is one of our favorites and one of the best deals of the week. Normally $79.99, right now it’s down to $49.99 ($30 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Ultimate Ears, which is an all-time low price.

The Miniroll is similar to Ultimate Ears’ discontinued Roll and Roll 2 products, with the same disc design. However, the Bluetooth speaker is smaller, so you can store it in small bags and even some pockets if you need to. Like the Roll products, the Miniroll features a built-in strap so you can attach it to your bag and other objects. Combined with its robust IP67 rating against dust and water, you can easily...

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GM eliminated Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from its EVs — this upgrade adds them back

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge

What GM takes away, the aftermarket restores.

General Motors’ controversial decision to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from most of its electric vehicles now has a possible workaround. As noticed by InsideEVs, a company called White Automotive and Media Services (WAMS) is advertising a new aftermarket upgrade kit that restores the popular phone-mirroring features back into Chevy and GMC EVs.

On its website, the company promises “fully integrated wired and wireless CarPlay and Android Auto in all the ways you’ve come to expect (and some you haven’t!) without compromising any existing features or functionality.” The upgrade is currently compatible with the Chevy Equinox, Blazer, and Silverado EVs, as well as the GMC Sierra EV. (Sorry...

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The best Bluetooth trackers for finding your stuff

Bluetooth trackers come in all shapes and sizes. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

For those of us who don’t ever seem to know where our keys, wallets, and remote controls have gone.

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Uber for AI labeling

Image: The Verge

Uber is using gig workers to get into the AI labeling business, Bloomberg reports. It’s a sign that the ridehail and delivery company is interested in expanding its independent contractor-powered business model to meet the demands of the fast-growing world of machine learning and large-language models.

The company’s new “Scaled Solutions” division claims it can connect businesses to “nuanced analysts, testers, and independent data operators” using its platform. It’s an extension of an internal team with members based in the US and India that do new feature testing and other tasks like converting restaurant menus to Uber Eats selections.

Uber was already using artificial intelligence and machine learning for its own business and is now...

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The Verge’s 2024 holiday gift guide for moms

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

From smart ovens and calendars to color-changing nail polish, here are some of our favorite gadgets and goods to gift mom this year.

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Starlink’s direct-to-cell satellite service is the first to receive FCC approval

Image: Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The Federal Communications Commission cleared SpaceX to use its Starlink broadband satellites to provide T-Mobile customers with direct-to-phone service. The T-Mobile license is the first collaboration between a satellite operator and wireless carrier to be approved by the FCC to provide supplemental cell coverage from space.

“The Commission recognized that satellite-to-device connectivity can support critical public interest benefits, including ubiquitous connectivity, access to 911 service from remote areas, technological advancement, and innovative spectrum use,” the FCC said in the filing.

The announcement follows SpaceX and T-Mobile being granted temporary clearance in October to provide Starlink satellite service in areas affected...

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You can now wear Apple’s running shoe emoji

The Shoe 1’s design was inspired by Apple’s running shoe emoji. | Image: Jose Wong

Artist and designer Jose Wong has turned Apple’s running shoe emoji into a real sneaker that’s now available through their website in sizes ranging from five to 12. The Shoe 1, released through Wong’s ABCD brand, will set you back $219.90 for a pair, with shipping expected to start in about a week.

The shoes feature an upper section made of full-grain nubuck leather combined with mesh for breathability, while the midsole and heel are made from lightweight EVA foam paired with a polyurethane rim to deliver a mix of comfort and “all-day support.”

The Shoe 1’s rubber outsole is made using five percent recycled rubber, and the foam insoles inside feature an electronics print that references an A(BCD)5 processor — a nod to the A series chips...

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Samsung Galaxy S24 FE review: not enough fan fare

The S24 FE feels less like a ‘Fan Edition’ and more like an exercise in retail positioning.

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TikTok will block beauty filters for teens over mental health concerns

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

TikTok is placing age restrictions on some of its beauty filters to address concerns about how they impact the mental health of its teenage users. Some of the changes rolling out “in the coming weeks” include preventing under-18s from using certain appearance-altering effects, and expanding filter descriptions to specify what the filters adjust when applied.

The press release says that age restrictions won’t apply to filter effects that are “designed to be obvious and funny,” such as adding animal ears or comically exaggerating certain features. The change likely aims to address beautifying effects like Bold Glamour that give users smoother skin, longer eyelashes, and slimmer faces — which can be more difficult to detect.

As the...

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No, Microsoft isn’t using your Office docs to train its AI

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

Microsoft says it isn’t using customer data from its Microsoft 365 apps to train its AI models. The clarification addresses reports circulating online in the last few weeks claiming Microsoft required Word and Excel users to opt out of training the company’s AI systems.

The confusion arose from a privacy setting in Microsoft Office that toggles “optional connected experiences” — a feature that helps users “search for online pictures” or “find information available online,” according to Microsoft. This toggle is switched on by default, and fails to mention AI training in the disclosure. Similarly, a Microsoft learning document posted on October 21st, 2024 seems to have contributed to the confusion by describing a long list of connected...

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Porsche is holding on to gas cars for a bit longer

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Porsche is not ready to turn in its gas caps for charging ports just yet. The company reportedly plans to launch more internal combustion engine models due to a slowdown in EV sales, according to Automotive News Europe. The automaker’s CFO, Lutz Meschke, told the outlet, “What is clear is that we are sticking with the combustion engine for much longer.”

As Car and Driver notes, he also said there’s a “clear trend in the premium luxury segment” that is leaning towards gas engines, and as a result, Porsche will “react” in its product cycle.

Porsche sells two pricey electric vehicles: the Taycan and the recently launched Macan. It planned to bring more EV-only models, including a Cayenne 718 and a new high-performance SUV. But now Meschke...

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Max, Hulu, and Paramount Plus are all heavily discounted for Black Friday

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

If you’re looking to catch up on recent shows and movies — including Shogun, The Penguin, and Dune: Part Two — the upcoming holiday weekend is the perfect time to do so. Thankfully, multiple streaming services are slashing subscription prices ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, including Max, Hulu, and others. Right now, for example, you can sign up for a year of Hulu for less than $12. What’s more, you don’t have to be a new subscriber to take advantage of the ongoing promo, which is a rarity in the world of streaming.

Hulu is just one of many platforms currently offering a holiday discount, though. We’ve rounded up a selection of other streaming deals below, many of which will run through November 2nd.

Hulu and Disney Plus deals

...

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Artists say they leaked OpenAI’s Sora video model in protest

A still from a video generated by OpenAI’s Sora. | OpenAI

OpenAI first teased its text-to-video AI model, Sora, back in February and hasn’t provided any meaningful updates on when it will be released since then. Now, it looks like some artists leaked access to the model in protest of being used by the company for what they claim is “unpaid R&D and PR.”

On Tuesday, a group of Sora beta testers claimed to have leaked early access to Sora with a working interface for generating videos. In a post on Hugging Face, a public repository of AI models, they say that people were able to create lots of AI videos — all of which resemble OpenAI’s own Sora demos — before the company intervened to shut down access. (TechCrunch first reported on the alleged leak.)

From the group’s open letter:

DEAR CORPORATE...

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ISPs say there’s no need for new customer service rules; everything is great

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

Trade associations involved in US broadband and wireless service say competition forces them to have good customer service, which may be news to many customers. The comments are in response to the FCC’s October inquiry reviewing the quality of internet and phone providers’ customer support.

Ars Technica quotes a filing from NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, which says that in order to “attract and retain customers, NCTA’s cable operator members continuously strive to ensure that the customer support they provide is effective and user-friendly.”

USTelecom, which has AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, and SpaceX among its members, says customers already get “high-quality customer service” because of the “competitive broadband market.”...

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Google’s connecting Spotify to its Gemini AI assistant

Cath Virginia / The Verge

Spotify is getting support for Google’s Gemini Extensions, which will allow users to search for and play music using the generative AI assistant with natural language requests. The extension was first spotted in the code of the Google app in June, and now it’s rolling out to compatible Android devices, as reported by 9to5Google.

Gemini can play music found by song titles, artist names, album names, playlist names, or for a particular activity, but at the moment, it won’t create playlists or radio stations on Spotify. One thing to be aware of is that if you’ve already linked another music service like YouTube Music, you’ll need to verbally say (or type in) which service you want Gemini to use as part of your initial request, and from...

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More retractable cables, please

The Charger by Counterpart has a built-in 4-foot USB-C cable that can be retracted with the press of a button. | Image: Counterpart

The switch to USB-C has vastly simplified my life, and I am very grateful for it, but I still struggle with cable clutter. Dealing with gadgets and gizmos for a family of four means the outlets on my kitchen counter resemble an unappealing bowl of silicon spaghetti, which is why this new $44 Counterpart Charger caught my eye.

This compact charger includes a built-in 4-foot USB-C cable that — here’s the handy part — retracts with the press of a button, leaving you cable-free. It delivers 35 Watts of GaN charging, which is enough for most phones, tablets, Switches, and the occasional pair of headphones that invariably collect on my counter in search of power. It would even do for my MacBook Air in a pinch.

I’ve been using retractable...

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Mercedes-Benz now has an Apple Watch version of its mobile app

Mercedes-Benz’s new Apple Watch app replicates the functionality of its mobile app so you don’t need to always reach for your phone. | Image: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz announced today it’s bringing popular features from its mobile app to the Apple Watch so owners can interact with their vehicles from their wrists without having to reach for their smartphone. The company joins a growing number of automakers adding watchOS capabilities, including Honda, Ford, and Volvo.

The new app, available now through the Apple Watch App Store, is compatible with Apple Watches running watchOS 9 or later, but requires Mercedes-Benz’s mobile app to be installed on the iPhone the wearable is connected to.

MercedesBenz owners can use the watch app to monitor their vehicle’s charge or fuel levels and its estimated range, lock and unlock it remotely, check that the windows are closed, and locate it when...

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Hulu’s best Black Friday deal is back with $.99 a month for an entire year

You can’t even buy a bag of chips for $1 anymore. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Hulu is again running one of the best streaming deals we’ve seen in Black Friday sales. Now through December 2nd, new and returning (after more than one month) Hulu subscribers can get ad-supported access to the streaming service for $.99 a month ($9 off) for an entire year at Hulu.

You can also find the Disney Bundle Duo Basic, which includes Hulu and Disney Plus eachwith ads, at the same link for $2.99 a month over the next 12 months, saving you $8 per month. Your charges will jump back to $9.99 and $10.99, respectively, if you don’t cancel before then. The deal comes as part of a promotion from ABC.

From a price standpoint, Hulu alone is an attractive offer, and there’s more content to dig into than you’d probably have time to...

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Threads says 35 million users signed up in November

Image: The Verge

Meta’s Threads has accrued over 35 million signups so far in November and is “going on three months with more than a million signups a day,” Meta spokesperson Alec Booker told The Verge in an email today.

20 million of those signups have come since November 14th, as Axios notes. That’s on top of the 15 million that Instagram head Adam Mosseri said it had gathered in the two weeks prior.

At the same time, Bluesky has seen a surge of interest. The platform grew to 15 million users earlier this month and continued to add about a million signups per day for several days. It now sits at over 22 million users.

That hasn’t gone unnoticed by Threads, with Mosseri confirming yesterday that several recent changes the platform has rolled out are...

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Amazon’s new Madden doc is a startup story — and a cautionary tale

Christian McCaffrey is on the cover of Madden NFL 25_, looking as real as ever._ | Image: EA

A small, ragtag group of coders with a big idea builds something special. It’s a smash hit, bigger than their wild expectations. Competitors emerge, and the team suddenly has to scramble to keep up. But with a little hard work (and a lot of biz dev), they manage to reassert and maintain their dominance. Then, years go by, the product doesn’t seem to get any better, and you start to wonder if maybe a little competition was a good thing after all.

You can tell this story up and down Silicon Valley, across several decades and some of the most iconic products in tech history — Google Search, Facebook, the iPhone — but few hit the marks quite as cleanly as Madden. In a new four-part documentary on Prime Video, It’s in the Game: Madden NFLt...

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Bang & Olufsen’s new $499 earbuds have better ANC and replaceable batteries

The Bang & Olufsen Beoplay Eleven wireless earbuds will be available in natural aluminum and copper tone colorways. | Image: Bang & Olufsen

Bang & Olufsen announced its new Beoplay Eleven wireless earbuds today, carrying forward a stem design similar to Apple’s AirPods that the company first introduced with its Beoplay EX. The Beoplay Eleven will be Bang & Olufsen’s first wireless earbuds with replaceable batteries, making them compliant with EU sustainability regulations coming into effect in 2027, as Engadget points out. They still maintain an IP57 dust and water rating, meaning the buds can survive submerging up to one meter.

But unlike Fairphone’s Fairbuds that have a user-replaceable battery, Bang & Olufsen says the Beoplay Eleven’s design “allows for battery replacement by service,” which means you might have to send them in for battery repairs instead of doing it...

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Anthropic says Claude AI can match your unique writing style

Anthropic is adding custom styles to Claude that quickly adjust the tone and length of responses. | Image: Anthropic

Anthropic is adding a new feature to its Claude AI assistant that will give users more control over how the chatbot responds to different writing tasks. The new custom styles are available to all Claude AI users, enabling anyone to train it to match their own communication style or select from preset options to quickly adjust the tone and level of detail it provides.

This update aims to personalize the chatbot’s replies and make them feel more natural or appropriate for specific applications, such as writing detailed technical documents or professional emails.

Three preset styles are available: Formal for “clear and polished” text, Concise for shorter and more direct responses, and Explanatory for educational replies that need to include...

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This killer translucent keyboard kit is on sale for $95

Buying a new keyboard probably won’t make you happy. But this one is orange. | Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

The Omnikeys Bauer Lite, one of my favorite keyboards of the year, is down to just $95 ($25 off) this week as part of Omnitype’s ongoing Black Friday sale. I paid full price for mine earlier this year, and it was a steal. It feels great to type on, it has a great layout, it’s customizable and fun to build, and it’s colorful. What’s not to love?

The Bauer Lite has a plastic case that comes in a bunch of fantastic translucent colors, from clear to atomic purple to bright blue, seafoam, coral, dark red, and my personal favorite: neon orange. This is great news if your brain, like mine, can sometimes be tricked into feeling a little happier by a jolt of fluorescent color.

It comes as a barebones kit, which means you need to supply your own...

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Elon Musk learns how EV charging works from Pete Buttigieg

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge

You’d think Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and its wide-reaching Supercharger network, would already know about the workings of the federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program that has dedicated $7.5 billion to building a national charging network. However, he needed Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to chime in on X yesterday to stop some Republican leaders from spreading misinformation about the program.

“Please post the rebuttal,” Musk asked Buttigieg under a Donald Trump Jr. post quoting Ohio congressperson Michael Rulli, who accuses Buttigieg of “squandering billions” to build “8 EV charging stations.” Buttigieg tells Trump the post is “false.”

As Buttigieg explained, the $7.5 billion is “the entire program...

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Atlantic hurricane season is coming to an end — will the US be ready for the next one?

A hurricane specialist works on tracking Hurricane Beryl at the National Hurricane Center on July 1st, 2024, in Miami, Florida. | Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

This is the last week of a truly shitty Atlantic hurricane season. It was record-breaking. People are still recovering. Misinformation managed to make things even worse. Now, we get a six-month-ish break before it starts over again — perhaps with fewer federal resources to respond in the US.

At the very least, we knew what was coming this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast an “above normal” season before it started in June. The agency published a recap yesterday with some data on how it all played out; the TLDR: these are some big numbers.

There’s also some subtext in there. It took a huge coordinated effort within the agency to put out forecasts and communicate risks to the public. Any efforts to...

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