Apple now lets you sync your passwords with Firefox, but not on Windows

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you keep your passwords stored on Apple’s iCloud, you can access those passwords on Firefox through an official iCloud Passwords extension, as spotted by MacRumors. However, the extension only supports macOS Sonoma or later, so you won’t be able to use it with Windows.

If you do need to access your iCloud passwords on Windows, you can access them by downloading iCloud for Windows and the iCloud Passwords extension for Chrome or Edge instead. We’ve asked Apple if it plans to add support for Windows to its Firefox extension.

Another developer originally made the Firefox extension, but Apple has taken it over, according to a notice on the extension’s GitHub page. Apple is “now the sole owners in charge of maintaining their own official iCloud Passwords extension,” the developer says. The extension’s repository and source code aren’t linked to it anymore except for “historical reasons.”

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Nissan needs a little something extra to connect the Ariya to Tesla’s Superchargers

I’m sorry, I put that thing in what? | Image: Nissan

Nissan put out a tutorial video for Ariya owners today that shows how to use a Tesla NACS adapter with the vehicle, and it includes a step completely out of left field: shove a small piece of plastic into your car’s CCS port before you connect the adapter.

The Ariya is Nissan’s first EV with a CCS port, and the automaker just activated the vehicle’s ability to connect to Tesla’s vast Supercharger network in October. Other manufacturers have also adopted Tesla’s NACS standard, with companies like Ford and Rivian already shipping adapters to current EV owners. But none of those EVs need you to take a confusing extra step to make the adapter work.

As explained in the video, the NACS adapter available through Nissan includes a “plug adapter” that must be installed into the hourglass-shaped cavity between the two DC pins at the bottom before charging at NACS-capable fast charging stations. Nissan assures the viewer that its “simple” and requires no tools. However, you will need to use the adapter it provides or from a US dealership, which may mean other third-party options like the Lectron adapter might not work. (Probably for the best, considering the Lectron adapter was recently recalled.)

What’s odd about the Ariya’s charge port is that despite being a standard that works at many CCS-capable fast charging stations, there is some negative hollow space between the two direct current pins at the bottom that isn’t present on most other EVs. The plastic piece that Nissan wants you to stuff into the opening fills in the gap to look more like other CCS ports. We asked Nissan what the purpose of the opening is and why the insert is needed, but have not heard back at time of publication.

Nissan’s other EV model is the pioneering Leaf, which uses the all-but-obsolete CHAdeMO standard and probably won’t get some magic adapter to connect to Tesla’s Supercharger network (although there are some CHAdeMO to CCS adapters now).

EV ownership is already rife with competing standards, janky software, and fragmented confusion. Somehow, Nissan managed to add another step that leaves customers juggling multiple pieces of plastic just to get their $40,000 electric SUV to operate properly.

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Trump picks two nominees who could decide the fate of Big Tech and crypto

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

President-elect Donald Trump made two nominations Wednesday that will shape significant parts of his administration’s tech enforcement, if confirmed by the Senate.

Former Republican Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins is Trump’s pick to lead the agency, replacing Biden-appointed chair and crypto foil Gary Gensler. The selection of Atkins, who co-chairs the Token Alliance at the Digital Chamber, a group dedicated to the use of digital assets, suggests a sharp divergence from Biden-era crypto policy. In his announcement, Trump says Atkins “recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

Trump also selected Gail Slater to lead the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, which is currently litigating two anti-monopoly suits against Google, and a third against Apple, as well as reportedly probing AI-chipmaker Nvidia. Slater has previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission, in Trump’s National Economic Counsel, and most recently as Vice President-elect JD Vance’s economic policy advisor in his Senate office. She’s also worked at Fox, Roku, and the now-defunct Internet Association, whose member included several Big Tech companies.

Trump is borrowing a favorite term of Marc Andreessen’s in with his reference to “Little Tech”

In his announcement on Truth Social, Trump writes that, “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump is borrowing a favorite term of Marc Andreessen’s in with his reference to “Little Tech.” Andreessen — a venture capitalist and crypto supporter who publicly backed Trump in the election — has pushed for the recognition of a contrast between policies that benefit startups versus the largest tech players.

Slater has historically worked across the aisle, having served as an attorney advisor to former Democratic FTC Commissioner Julie Brill (who now works as Microsoft’s chief privacy officer). Her history working for Vance — who has publicly praised Biden’s FTC Chair Lina Khan for her aggressive approach toward tech — suggests Big Tech is likely to remain a key target of antitrust scrutiny in the years to come.

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Sam Altman lowers the bar for AGI

Sam Altman. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

Nearly two years ago, OpenAI said that artificial general intelligence — the thing the company was created to build — could “elevate humanity” and “give everyone incredible new capabilities.”

Now, CEO Sam Altman is trying to lower expectations.

“My guess is we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think and it matter much less,” he said during an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday. “And a lot of the safety concerns that we and others expressed actually don’t come at the AGI moment. AGI can get built, the world mostly goes on in mostly the same way, things grow faster, but then there is a long continuation from what we call AGI to what we call super intelligence.”

This isn’t the first time Altman has downplayed the now-seemingly-imminent arrival of AGI, which OpenAI’s charter once said will be able to “automate the great majority of intellectual labor.” He has recently teased that it could arrive as soon as 2025 and will be achievable on existing hardware. We at The Verge have heard OpenAI intends to weave together its large language models and declare that to be AGI.

At the DealBook Summit, Altman made it sound...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Threads takes an important baby step toward true fediverse integration

Illustration: The Verge

You can now follow fediverse accounts on Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced. Threads rolled out fediverse users’ likes and replies in a very limited way at first, and it’s the same here — fediverse posts won’t appear in your feeds, and you can only follow those accounts if they’ve interacted with a post on Threads.

While fediverse posts won’t show in feeds, Instagram head Adam Mosseri says their profile and posts do appear on Threads, and you have the option to get notifications when they publish. That’s something, at least. Mosseri posted a video of what the process looks like:

Zuckerberg says you can follow fediverse accounts when you see they’ve “liked, followed, or replied” to a federated Threads profile, but there’s one other way you might find them.

“On web and android today (and iOS soon), we’ll start linkifying Fediverse usernames in posts,” wrote Threads developer Peter Cottle among a series of posts about the new integration. Cottle added that your account will need to be federated and that the fediverse account must be “eligible to be followed.”

Cottle also demonstrated that you can tag fediverse accounts, linking to Star Trek actor and activist George Takei’s Mastodon account:

Meta’s Seine Kim tells The Verge in an email that the platform’s “goal remains to grow the fediverse responsibly, prioritizing the success of a safe, diverse, content-rich, and interoperable community.” Kim added that the change is another step in Threads’ plan to become fully interoperable with the fediverse in time.

Notably though, new Threads features have picked up the pace in recent weeks. Maybe that’s got something to do with all the attention Bluesky’s been getting lately?

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Nokia’s classic Snake game is now a Nothing widget

A new Nothing Community Widgets app has launched with a Snake game as its first offering. | Image: Nothing

Nothing has released a new Android app called Nothing Community Widgets that will highlight home screen tools and games co-created by its users. The first widget it includes is a recreation of Snake which was the most memorable of the three games pre-installed on the Nokia 6110 when it launched 26 years ago.

Although the original game was played by pressing buttons as cellphones lacked touchscreens, the snake in Nothing’s version is steered using directional screen swipes, while a double tap pauses the action, according to Retro Dodo. But the gameplay is the same, with players scoring points by eating red dots while trying to avoid colliding with themselves as the snake grows longer and longer.

10/10!

I learned a lot from this project and enjoyed every minute of it✨

Note: These are just concepts, The idea of this project was to explore the possibilities, bringing them to life is an incredibly hard job.

Thanks everyone for the support❤️

(Project files below ) pic.twitter.com/JGEV9YIp1N

— Rahul Janardhanan (@raonehere) January 21, 2024

The inspiration for the new widget came from Rahul Janardhanan, an artist who earlier this year designed and shared a collection of 10 concepts for potential Nothing OS widgets. Janardhanan’s work caught the eye of the company and Nothing’s software team worked with a community developer to create the widget.

The new Snake game widget, and Nothing’s new widgets app, follow a similar initiative by Nothing to work with its community of users. In October, the company announced its Nothing Phone 2A Plus Community Edition featuring an updated glow-in-the-dark design, new wallpapers, and even packaging that was created by the company’s “most talented followers.”

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Dune: Prophecy’s showrunner wants you to think beyond the hero / villain binary

Image: Max / HBO

Alison Schapker sees Dune: Prophecy as a story about the ebb and flow of institutional power.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Donald Trump picks billionaire Jared Isaacman to lead NASA

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

President-Elect Donald Trump has nominated billionaire Jared Isaacman to head up NASA, he announced on Wednesday. Isaacman funded and partook in the Polaris Dawn mission, in which he and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis performed the first commercial spacewalk.

Isaacman is set to replace former Florida Senator Bill Nelson as NASA Administrator, who President Joe Biden tapped to lead the agency when voted into office. Aside from Polaris Dawn, Isaacman also funded Inspiration 4, a mission that took him and three other non-professional astronauts to space atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in 2021.

Most of Isaacman’s fortune comes from Shift4, the payment-processing business he founded when he was 16. He still serves as CEO of the company, which recently acquired the Canadian gift card platform Givex and struck a payments deal with Elon Musk’s Starlink in 2021.

I am honored to receive President Trump’s @realDonaldTrump nomination to serve as the next Administrator of NASA. Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history.

On my last mission…

— Jared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) December 4, 2024

“With the support of President Trump, I can promise you this: We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place,” Isaacman wrote on X. “Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars and in doing so, we will make life better here on Earth.”

Isaacman joins the other group of unconventional nominees Trump has chosen to head up various government agencies and advisory committees, including the new “Department of Government Efficiency“ led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

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You can try Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s excellent character creator for free

Image: EA

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has an incredible character creator, and starting today, you can mess around with it without having to buy the full game. EA will be releasing a free, standalone version of the character creator for all platforms the game is available on (PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC), and you’ll be able to bring the character you make in the free creator over to the full game if you decide to buy it.

If you have any interest at all in The Veilguard, I really recommend checking out the free character creator when it’s available and seeing all of the options. (Hair looks particularly good.) And if you end up making a character, transfer them to the game, and want to make some tweaks, you’ll be able to do so early on in your adventure, so don’t sweat your decisions too much.

EA is also releasing a fourth patch for the game, which adds a mission that will reward you with in-game items themed around the Dragon Age II protagonist, Hawke.

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Amazon secretly excluded neighborhoods from Prime delivery, DC AG alleges

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon quietly carved out two Washington, DC zip codes from being serviced by its fastest Prime delivery service with its own branded trucks, outsourcing deliveries to slower services like UPS and the Postal Service, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleges in a new lawsuit.

The alleged decision led to about 48,000 Prime members living in two zip codes east of the Anacostia River receiving fewer benefits than they were actually paying for (at $14.99 a month or $139 a year), according to Schwalb. The neighborhoods that were allegedly affected include majority-Black and low-income areas. But even when customers noticed and complained about the slower delivery times, the AG alleges, Amazon “misled the consumers to believe it was a coincidence.”

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel tells The Verge in a statement that Amazon changed how it serviced the zip codes cited in the lawsuit due to “specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages” in those areas. “We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers.” Nantel calls the AG’s claims “categorically false” and says Amazon is “always transparent with customers during the shopping journey and checkout process about when, exactly, they can expect their orders to arrive.”

But while Amazon has the right to protect its workers through these changes, Schwalb says it can’t deceive customers while doing so. “Amazon is charging tens of thousands of hard-working Ward 7 and 8 residents for an expedited delivery service it promises but does not provide. While Amazon has every right to make operational changes, it cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one ZIP code is worth less than a dollar in another,” he says in a statement.

Schwalb is suing under DC’s consumer protection law. He’s seeking to stop Amazon from continuing its allegedly deceptive behavior and collect an unspecified amount of civil penalties, restitution, and damages.

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Meta turns to nuclear energy for its AI ambitions

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Meta is turning to nuclear energy to power its AI ambitions with the release a request for proposals to partner with nuclear energy developers.

It’s the latest announcement in a string of recent deals Big Tech companies have made to secure nuclear energy for their data centers. Developing new AI tools is an energy-intensive endeavor that risks derailing Silicon Valley’s sustainability goals unless it can find less polluting sources of electricity. Meta now joins Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in efforts to get more nuclear reactors up and running.

Meta now joins Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in efforts to get more nuclear reactors up and running

That’s much easier said than done. The first all-new nuclear reactor to be built in the US in decades started running in 2023 — seven years overdue and $17 billion over budget. Developers are now designing next-generation technology called small modular reactors (SMRs) that are supposed to make it easier to build and site a project, ostensibly cutting down costs. Those advanced reactors aren’t expected to become commercially viable until the 2030s.

Meta says it’s interested in both SMRs and larger reactors, and is searching for partners...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The new Gundam anime looks great and sounds like it was named by a cat on a keyboard

Sunrise/Khara

There’s a new Mobile Suit Gundamshow right around the corner, and while Bandai hasn’t revealed much about its story, its production studio and creative team bode very good things for the project.

Sunrise has collaborated with Khara, the Hideaki Anno-founded studio behind the Rebuild of Evangelion films, to produce Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, a new series co-written by Anno and Yōji Enokido, and directed by Kazyua Tsurumaki.

Set in a reality where humanity has taken to living in massive space colonies, GQuuuuuuX follows as highschooler Yuzuriha “Machu” Amate (Tomoyo Kurosaw) and courier Nyaan (Yui Ishikawa) are drawn into the world of underground mech fights called Clan Battles. A new trailer for the series teases how, after meeting Gundam pilot Shuji Ito (Shimba Tsuchiya), Machu learns to co-pilot the gMS-Ω GQuuuuuuX. Designer Take’s (best known for her work on the Pokémon franchise) distinctive style shines through in the trailer’s shots of the show’s human characters, and mechanical designer Ikuto Yamashita’s take on the classic Gundam aesthetic feels fresh.

Though Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is set to air on Nippon Television in the new year, the series does not yet have a concrete premiere date. But ahead of its TV debut, a theatrical cut of some of its episodes will screen in Japanese theaters on January 17th.

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ChatGPT now has over 300 million weekly users

Image: The Verge

ChatGPT now has over 300 million people using the AI chatbot each week. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed the milestone during The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, which comes just months after ChatGPT hit 200 million weekly users in August.

“Our product has scaled ... now we have more than 300 million weekly active users,” Altman said. “We have users sending more than 1 billion messages per day to ChatGPT.”

ChatGPT has grown rapidly since its launch in 2022 as OpenAI continues to add more capabilities, such as its AI search engine that surfaces and summarizes results from across the web (though they may not always be accurate), and a new “Canvas” interface that lets users more easily adjust code written by the chatbot.

Apple is also building ChatGPT directly into Siri as part of iOS 18.2, which is now available in beta and is poised to help the chatbot reach even more users.

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Misinformation researcher admits ChatGPT added fake details to his court filing

Image: The Verge

A misinformation expert accused of using AI to generate a legal document admitted he used ChatGPT to help him organize his citations, leading to “hallucinations” that critics said called the entire filing into question. Jeff Hancock, the founder of the Stanford Social Media Lab who wrote the document, says the errors don’t change the “substantive points in the declaration.”

Hancock submitted the affidavit in support of Minnesota’s “Use of Deep Fake Technology to Influence an Election” law, which is being challenged in federal court by Christopher Khols — a conservative YouTuber who posts under the name Mr Reagan — and Minnesota state Rep. Mary Franson. After discovering that Hancock’s filing seemed to contain citations that didn’t exist, attorneys for Khols and Franson said it was “unreliable” and asked that it be excluded from consideration.

In a subsequent declaration filed late last week, Hancock acknowledged that he used ChatGPT to draft the declaration but denies he used it to write anything. “I wrote and reviewed the substance of the declaration, and I stand firmly behind each of the claims made in it, all of which are supported by the most recent scholarly research in the field and reflect my opinion as an expert regarding the impact of AI technology on misinformation and its societal effects,” Hancock wrote.

As for the citation errors, Hancock explained that he used Google Scholar and GPT-4o “to identify articles that were likely to be relevant to the declaration so that I could merge that which I knew already with new scholarship.” Hancock says he used GPT-4o to create a citation list, not to write the document, and didn’t realize the tool generated “two citation errors, popularly referred to as ‘hallucinations’” and added incorrect authors to another citation.

“I did not intend to mislead the Court or counsel,” Hancock wrote in his most recent filing. “I express my sincere regret for any confusion this may have caused. That said, I stand firmly behind all the substantive points in the declaration.”

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2024 in review: AI

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

In 2024, you couldn’t escape hearing about AI. From smartphones to wearables to the smart home, it seemed every tech company wanted to pitch their next great AI innovation.

The year was filled with impressive technological leaps and useful new tools, endless hype and frequent misfires, and implications for the future that range from truly exciting to unpredictable. This is the year we got a sense of what AI might actually do — and just how unprepared we still are to grapple with it.

Here at The Verge, we thought a lot about AI’s impacts on the industries and people we cover. From strikes across industries like gaming to its impact on our climate to the desire for policy protections for Hollywood and the AI Act, AI is already reshaping nearly every area of our lives.

So let’s take a look back at some of the biggest, boldest, weirdest AI stories from the last year — and look ahead to what could be in store for 2025.

Read the full story at The Verge.

GM and EVgo now have over 2,000 EV charging stalls and counting

One of the co-branded GM Energy / EVgo fast chargers. | Image: General Motors

General Motors and EV charging company EVgo announced that they’ve installed their 2,000th public EV charging stall, in Murrieta, California. With that, GM has met a deadline it set in September to have the bulk of its planned 2,850 DC fast-charging stalls set up by the end of this year.

GM says the new station, which is near Interstate 215 in Riverside County, serves five 350kW fast chargers for as many as 10 EVs simultaneously. It doesn’t mention whether these are strictly CCS chargers or if they include Tesla’s NACS ports, which have emerged as the de facto standard over the last year and a half. We’ve asked GM for more information and will update if it responds.

EVgo president Dennis Kish said that its relationship with GM has helped his company “bring public charging to communities in more than 30 states across the US,” and that the company is working toward deploying its “first flagship destinations next year.”

GM said back in September that this network, which is distinct from another planned 2,000-strong network of DC fast chargers at Flying J and Pilot truck stops, will include 400 “flagship” gas station-style charging locations. Those will be built out in major metropolitan areas of states like Florida, California, Texas, and Michigan, the company said today. That’s all in addition to another EV charging network consortium called Ionna that GM is participating in along with car companies like Hyundai, Kia, BMW, and Stellantis.

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Xreal’s new glasses are a surprisingly good TV for your face

The Xreal One. | Image: Xreal

During a recent flight from Los Angeles to New York City, I put a headset on my face to watch a movie.

I wasn’t wearing the Vision Pro or a Meta Quest. I was trying the latest pair of AR glasses from Xreal, a Chinese startup taking an unusually focused approach to face computers.

To call the Xreal One, which is available for preorder starting on Wednesday for $499, a pair of AR glasses feels like a stretch. While they do technically overlay graphics onto your field of vision, they really just function as a display mirror for your phone, laptop, or gaming console. But given the display advancements in the One over Xreal’s last Air 2 glasses, that may be enough.

The Xreal One uses a custom birdbath lens system to achieve what the company says is equivalent to a 1080p display with a 50-degree field of view. Practically, based on my experience watching Netflix’s Rebel Ridge from my plane seat (a very good movie), that translates to a fairly immersive viewing experience.

It’s not like watching something in the Vision Pro. But the fact that I was wearing an 84-gram pair of glasses that didn’t fully occlude my vision more than made up for the difference. The only time I felt the...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Govee’s smart Christmas tree lights are cheaper than ever

Govee’s Christmas Lights 2 adds some holiday cheer to your home with color-changing smart lights that sync to music. | Image: Govee

Ornaments are nice and all, but few Christmas tree decorations are as magical as Govee’s Christmas Lights 2. If you want your tree to truly dazzle this year, then you might want to check out Govee’s 66-foot smart string lights while they’re stillavailable at their all-time low price of $63.99 ($36 off) from Govee and at Amazon when you clip the on-page coupon.

Govee’s string lights add a touch of color to your Christmas tree while making it come alive with 200 lamp beads that can dance to the beat of holiday tunes, and over 130 preset lighting effects to set the mood. What really make the lights shine, though, is their level of customizability. Govee lets you exercise your creative muscles, adding shape matching and AI features to design your own custom light displays.

Aside from cool effects, Govee also added other features that make the lights a good investment. They’re IP65 waterproof-rated, which means you can install them indoors or hang them up outside if you prefer. They’re also compatible with Matter, allowing you control them via Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and any other major smart home platform.

A few more deals worth checking out

• You can buy the Divoom Ditoo Plus Bluetooth speaker directly from Divoom starting at an all-time low of $65 (about $70 off) when you apply the code BF40 at checkout, with Amazon matching that price. Divoom’s retro-inspired speaker features 3.55-inch display you can customize with pixel art and even control with a joystick or mechanical keys. The speaker also combines a clock and calendar into one, making it a cute and handy desktop companion.
• The iFixit Pro Tech is still available at its record low price of $59.99 ($15 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from iFixit. The toolkit comes with everything you need to make repairs to small electronics like smartphones, tablets, laptops, and consoles, including tweezers, spudgers, a 64-piece driver kit, a SIM removal tool, and a magnetic case that doubles as a sorting tray. It also comes with with basic Phillips and flatheads, so you can use it to repair other objects like bikes.
• Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless headphones are on sale for $229.95 ($150 off) at Amazon, which is their second-best price to date. You can also buy them for $20 more at Best Buy and Walmart. The noise-canceling headphones deliver impressive battery life and can last a whopping 60 hours on just a single charge, which is why they’re among our favorites. The over-ears also offer other impressive capabilities, including excellent noise cancellation, comfort, and sound. Read our review.

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OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘shipmas’ include Sora and new reasoning model

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Happy holidays from OpenAI. The AI startup plans to kick off a “shipmas” period of new features, products, and demos for 12 days, starting on December 5th. The announcements will include OpenAI’s long-awaited text-to-video AI tool Sora and a new reasoning model, sources familiar with OpenAI’s plans tell The Verge.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed the 12 days of announcements onstage at The New York Times’ DealBook conference on Wednesday morning, though he didn’t say exactly what was coming. OpenAI plans to launch or demo something every day for 12 days straight.

12 days.
12 livestreams.
A bunch of new things, big and small.

12 Days of OpenAI starts tomorrow.

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 4, 2024

Just ahead of the launch, a few OpenAI employees began teasing the coming releases on social media: “What’s on your Christmas list?” a member of the technical staff posted. “Got back just in time to put up the shipmas tree,” another staffer wrote. Sora lead Bill Peebles responded to a staffer who posted that OpenAI is “unbelievably back” with one word: “Correct.” The startup’s senior vice president also responded with IYKYK (if you know, you know).

The imminent launch of Sora comes just...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Verge picks out the most memorable tech of 2024

As far as tech goes, 2024 was a strong year for some innovative, interesting, and unforgettable moments.

We kicked off the year with the Apple Vision Pro — Apple’s long-awaited entry into the world of “spatial computing.” It was impressive, with The Verge’s editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, describing the device as “magic, until it’s not.” But it still remains to be seen if Apple’s first MR device can kick off this new age of computing.

Meta also showed us what it developed after investing billions into its metaverse division. Deputy editor Alex Heath got a demo of Project Orion — a pair of AR glasses that won’t make you look like a super dork (okay, maybe a little). More importantly, though, we got a sense of where AR is heading, which arguably puts Meta in pole position in this space.

This was also the year of wearable AI assistants. At CES 2024, we were introduced to the cute Rabbit R1 that stole our hearts. And we got to see Humane’s highly anticipated AI Pin. Even though the devices were big disappointments when they finally released, they do represent a turning point in the future of AI interactions.

We can never go a year without the biggest smartphone upgrades. Samsung,...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Skeleton Crew is a kid-friendly reminder of who Star Wars is for

Image: Disney Plus / Lucasfilm Ltd.

Disney Plus’ latest Star Wars series is trying to speak directly to a new generation of young fans.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Instagram creators can now turn on replies in broadcast channels

Broadcast channel replies allow participants to respond to messages as they can on Instagram posts. | Image: Meta

Instagram is adding some new features to broadcast channels that give platform creators more ways to directly interact with their followers. Meta announced in its latest blog post that creators can enable “Replies” in their broadcast channel limited group chats, allowing participants to respond to messages and each other’s comments — just like they already can on Instagram posts.

Creators can also publish time-sensitive “Prompts” to their channels, presented as questions like “what are you having for dinner today?” to encourage audience engagement. Channel participants have 24 hours to respond with text or photos, and can like their favorite comments left by other users. Instagram is also rolling out new metrics for creators to track, including total number of interactions, story shares, and poll votes, alongside “personalized, actionable guidance” that can help them grow and manage their audiences.

Image: Meta

Prompts work like open-response polls or sub-threads, allowing channel members to engage in a contained conversation.

We’ve asked Meta to clarify when these new broadcast channel features will be available for Instagram creators. Instagram head Adam Mosseri initially teased the update by enabling it on his own “IG Updates” channel earlier this week.

While Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp also support broadcast channels, these new features have only been announced for Instagram. Meta hasn’t mentioned if they’ll eventually be rolled out to its other platforms, but given Instagram was the first to launch broadcast channels it may be being used as a testing ground.

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ESPN is coming to the Disney Plus app starting today

Image: Disney

After bringing Hulu content to the Disney Plus app earlier this year, Disney is now doing the same for ESPN Plus programming.

A new ESPN tile is being added to the app’s homescreen. The tile just says “ESPN,” because for right now, it’ll only include the live games and shows that are normally part of ESPN Plus. But next year will mark the long-awaited debut of a true ESPN streaming service — you know, the actual cable channel with shows that sports fans can’t live without — and that’ll eventually be accessible through this Disney Plus portal, too.

Disney’s reasoning for putting all this content under one umbrella is simple: it wants to get more people signed up for the Disney Plus / Hulu / ESPN Plus triple-package bundle. And the less friction there is, the more appealing that bundle becomes for customers who might only be paying for the core service right now. To help push the bundle even harder, Disney Plus subscribers can now access “a curated selection of live sports events and shows from ESPN Plus and movies and series from Hulu.” The tiles for both services will now appear in the main navigation even if you’re not paying for Hulu or ESPN.

Image: Disney

If you’re a bundle subscriber, you get all the stuff! If you’re not, you get a small sampling of stuff... to help tempt you into the bundle.

“This gives our bundle subscribers one place to consume everything they love from all our brands.” Alisa Bowen, president of Disney Plus, said in a press release. ESPN Plus offers access to “over 30,000 live sports events each year” along with plenty of original content. But this is really just a half-step towards the end goal of bringing real, linear ESPN to the service. Disney says what we’re seeing today is “the groundwork for an expanded sports offering on Disney Plus in the US upon the launch of ESPN’s flagship direct-to-consumer product, expected in fall of 2025.”

That ESPN streaming service is expected to launch as early as August and has been rumored to cost upwards of $30 per month. Yes, just for ESPN. You’ll be able to view it through Disney Plus, but CEO Bob Iger has said the ESPN app will offer a more feature-packed sports experience with integrated betting and fantasy leagues. The Disney option is there for people who want the convenience of everything being crammed into a single app.

Disney is determined to make its streaming business a reliable profit maker, and the real money is in bundles and ad-supported plans. On the ad front, advertisers will have the ability to purchase inventory “by sport, league, team, within live events, and across all marketplaces” now that ESPN content is streaming within Disney Plus. The company has also taken steps to tackle password sharing and now charges customers between $6.99 and $9.99 for letting others sign into their Disney Plus account from a different location.

The cost of subscribing to Disney Plus is inevitably going to keep climbing higher. And Disney will no doubt cite the app’s value as an all-encompassing entertainment hub — now with sports — as the rationale for those hikes. For the end user, it can all feel reminiscent of cable, but that’s the streaming era we find ourselves in.

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An air pressure sensor lets this bike computer calculate wind resistance

An air pressure sensor inside the Elemnt Ace bike computer can determine wind speeds while you ride. | Image: Wahoo Fitness

Wahoo Fitness announced a new bike computer featuring a built-in air pressure sensor that’s used to calculate the speed of the wind during a ride. The Elemnt Ace’s added metric lets cyclists better understand their performance during a ride and how their times and speeds may have been affected by the conditions outside.

It’s available now through the company’s online store for $599.99 and includes an aluminum alloy mount for attaching it to a bike’s handlebars. It’s the most expensive bike computer Wahoo Fitness currently offers, but competitors like Garmin still offer even pricier alternatives.

Image: Wahoo Fitness

A small vent on the front of the Elemnt Ace leads to its air pressure sensor inside.

Air speed is measured using an air pressure sensor located just inside a small vent on the front of the computer. By comparing that to the bike’s ground speed as determined by the Elemnt Ace’s dual-band GPS system, the speed of the wind can be calculated.

The computer’s Aero Awareness system gives cyclists two additional metrics to take into consideration. AeroBoost which factors in both performance improving tailwinds and drafting effects, and AeroDrag for the negative effects of riding into the wind.

Image: Wahoo Fitness

A 3.8-inch touchscreen works alongside several buttons for easier navigation during a ride.

Other features include a relatively large 3.8-inch full-color touchscreen display that works alongside several physical buttons that make navigating menus and selecting options a little easier while a bike is in motion. Battery life is rated at up to 30 hours, while Wi-Fi and Bluetooth allow settings and ride data to be synced to the cloud and Wahoo Fitness’ mobile apps.

The Elemnt Ace is also a fully-featured GPS navigation device with voice-guided turn-by-turn directions and an option to retrace your route to get right back to where you started a ride.

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How to find your 2024 Spotify Wrapped

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge

One of the more popular end-of-year items is music service recaps, and one of the best known is Spotify Wrapped. The company puts together a roundup of everything you listened to that year in various statistical formats, wrapped up (well, that’s what it’s called, right?) in bright, swirling graphics. For 2024, you’ll be shown what music categories you followed, how your listening habits changed over the year, get a list of your top 10 songs and artists, check out your top artist of the year, and even see a short video interview with one of the featured artists.

This year’s Wrapped also lets you access separate segments, such as a personalized podcast with two AI “hosts” (compliments of Google’s NotebookLM) who chat about your listening habits.

It’s easy to find Spotify Wrapped on your mobile app. (Interestingly, while 2023’s Wrapped was available on the Spotify website as well, this year, you can only find it on the Android or iOS app.)

The simplest way is to just open the app and look at the top menu — you should find a button labeled “Wrapped” that will lead you straight to a Wrapped homepage. From there, you can watch your Wrapped timeline (by tapping the “Let’s go” button)...

Read the full story at The Verge.

A universal ‘Plug and Charge’ protocol for EV charging is coming in 2025

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge

The fragmented and frustrating nature of our current EV charging landscape has been widely — and correctly — cited as one of the most significant barriers to EV adoption. Why buy a plug-in car when every time you plug it in, you have to sign up for another EV charging app, fumble through your payment information, authorize the account, and pray it results in a successful charging experience?

What if you could instead plug in and everything just worked automatically? That’s the goal of a partnership between nonprofit SAE International, a consortium of automakers and EV charging operators, and the Biden administration, which just announced a new framework for “universal Plug and Charge” that will be officially rolled out early next year.

“You just go anywhere you want, boom, you plug in, it accounts for everything in the cloud, charges your card, and you walk away,” said Gabe Klein, executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.

“You just go anywhere you want, boom, you plug in, it accounts for everything in the cloud, charges your card, and you walk away.”

“It’s a security solution for EV charging,” added Tim Weisenberger, project manager for emerging technologies standards at SAE International.

The framework aims to deliver a truly seamless and hassle-free charging experience in which every electric vehicle can plug into any public charger without any additional steps required from the vehicle owner.

This was the intention of the official international standard (ISO 15118), also called Plug & Charge, that enables automatic charging and payment as soon as the car is plugged in. In vehicles with Plug & Charge, the charger communicates securely with the vehicle and bills the owner without the need for app signups or additional billing information.

The technology is currently available in dozens of models but hasn’t been embraced universally. Tesla helped originate the Plug & Charge experience by making its Superchargers interoperable with its passenger vehicles from the very beginning. But Tesla is a unique example as both a vehicle manufacturer and EV charging operator.

The framework aims to deliver a truly seamless and hassle-free charging experience

To adopt Plug & Charge, other automakers need to make individual deals with third-party charging companies to ensure their vehicles can communicate seamlessly with the charging companies’ equipment.

This new framework developed by SAE International and its partners aims to complement and enhance the ISO standard with a universal protocol that is both secure and simplified. This works because the SAE-led effort includes several unique features, including a Certified Trust List to enable secure, automated authentication right at the onset, when the vehicle is plugged in.

“A little bit more robust system would probably be appropriate,” said Sarah Hipel, acting chief technology officer at the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. “This group... they are focused on that authorization and authentication mechanism specifically, and that is unrelated to the ISO owned 15118-2 standard.”

And the trust list enables roaming, meaning the technology can use multiple PKIs, or Public Key Infrastructure, which describes a collection of tools and procedures that help secure digital communications and transactions. These PKIs can be used interoperably, meaning there can be competition in the marketplace. (The current ISO standard only describes one nonroaming PKI.)

“The trust list is kind of like a big file folder.”

“The trust list is kind of like a big file folder,” Hipel said. “And once you put your anchor in it and it’s been audited — it’s a very rigorous process in order for you to be able to put your anchor in there — but once you put your anchor in there... and they’ve signed their commercial business agreements that they want to access the different routes in the file folder, then you can free roam with anyone.”

Hipel said she expects most manufacturers to use the existing ISO standard for their charging controls and then the PKI mechanism to secure the charge through authorization and authentication.

The framework was an agreement reached between SAE International’s Industry Technologies Consortia, the group’s Electric Vehicle Public Key Infrastructure Consortium, and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which consists of employees of both the US Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy. Members of the SAE consortium include major charging providers, like BP Pulse, ChargePoint, and Electrify America as well as automakers like Ford, General Motors, Tesla, Rivian, Toyota, and BMW. More are expected to join over time.

But ultimately, this is an industry-led project that was initially requested by the automakers and is being funded by them, Weisenberger said. Thus far, the project has cost around $1.5 million, and future funding will be provided by the participating companies.

“Nobody’s free riding,” he added. “Everybody’s involved, working hard. It’s really cool to see that they’re all just in it to make this all work.”

And there will be benefits beyond seamless charging for EV owners, such as secure vehicle-to-grid (V2G) communication and bidirectional charging that will enable EVs to send energy back to the grid to help balance out power loads. This will help create a more resilient grid and should also head off criticism that the current energy system can’t tolerate an all-electric vehicle fleet.

And since it’s been an industry-led project, the participants believe it will survive through the next Trump administration, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s stated goal of rolling back his predecessor’s EV funding projects.

“The ship has sort of sailed, if you will,” Klein said. “And the market dynamics I think have taken over, which is great.”

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The new Surf browser shows why everyone’s trying to connect AI to the web

Surf’s “contexts” are like folders, only AI-powered and more automated. | Image: Deta

Let me just explain the demo that got me excited about Surf, a new browser coming from a startup called Deta. Max Eusterbrock, one of Deta’s cofounders, shared his screen with me over Zoom and asked me to pick a YouTube video. I told him to search for Cleo Abram’s latest, about digging through the center of the Earth. “Do you have a question for the video?” Eusterbrock asked. I took a second to figure out what he meant, then remembered Abram had mentioned something about exactly how deep the Earth is. Eusterbrock opened the browser’s built-in chat window and typed in my question. A moment later, it returned the answer, plus a timestamp and a link to the exact spot in the video that addressed it.

What Surf did was both very cool and, in an AI-processing sense, actually pretty straightforward. It grabbed the automatically generated transcript from the YouTube page and quickly used an AI model — a combination of OpenAI tech and Deta’s own — to run my question as a semantic search to see where the video answered it. It found the right spot, generated the answer and the link, and was done.

Surf is still in its early stages. Deta is calling it version 0.1, with a full public release planned for next year. It’s only a desktop browser for now, and Eusterbrock says he expects most people won’t use it as their only browser anytime soon. Other than all the AI stuff, it’s pretty basic — it’s based on Chromium, shows a bunch of horizontal tabs at the top, you already know the drill. It’s a browser.

But inside that demo is the big idea behind this browser, and a peek at why everyone’s so interested in connecting AI to the open web. Surf’s main character is the chatbot, which lives in the sidebar and has total access to everything you see and do in your browser. (Terrifying security nightmare? Maybe! Deta’s planning to do as much processing as possible locally, which should help.) You tell the chatbot what to look for, and you tell it which things to care about. Because it’s a browser and not a ChatGPT clone, it can also see your private docs, your email, and everything else you see online.

Image: Deta

By adding sites and files to your stuff, you give Surf’s AI more to work with.

Surf’s core construct is the “context.” A context is like a folder — in early versions of the app, it’s actually called a folder — and you can fill each one with notes, links, and even screenshots and files, all of which live natively in your browser. Surf’s chat can then query anywhere from a single file to an entire context all at once. It’s a bit like Google’s NotebookLM — another way to find things and ask questions across links and documents — but it’s built right into the browser. When you save something to your “stuff,” the app’s space for unsorted things, Surf can automatically suggest you add it to a related context.

There are lots of other AI-powered features inside of Surf, too. When you select text in a PDF, rather than copy and paste the gobbledygook that sometimes comes out, the browser will use OCR to take a screenshot, read the text, and paste it out more cleanly. You can use the chatbot to tweak webpages, too; Eusterbrock navigated to Hacker News, told the bot to hide everything other than “Show HN” posts, and it automatically did so. Surf can’t actively use web apps on your behalf, but it can see everything currently on the page and make use of it however you’d like.

Deta has been working on future-of-computing stuff for a while, starting with a whole cloud-based operating system called Space that could run in a browser tab. But Eusterbrock and his colleagues discovered that building a new OS also required building countless new apps and services. “We had all these apps — like a Notion clone, but a lot worse than Notion,” he said. “And the big limitation of being a browser tab is you can’t support Notion inside a browser tab.”

Instead of building the whole OS from scratch, Deta decided that the most powerful thing to be was actually the browser itself, able to operate across tabs and apps and websites. (This is roughly the same theory that animates The Browser Company’s work on Arc and Dia, it’s why OpenAI is looking into building a browser, and you could even say the same about Google and Chrome. If you control the browser, you can control the web.) There is some Space DNA in Surf, though, like the desktop-style homescreen where you can pin stuff for easy access and a universal search system.

Deta’s plan is ultimately to charge for the AI features, Eusterbrock says. He compares it to apps like Obsidian, which have a basic app for free but charge for extra and connected services like sync and publishing. “Once we have costs on the cloud side,” he says, “that’s where we think we can make a business out of this.” Deta has a lot of feature ideas, a lot of new ways to organize your life through AI. And if it can build a browser you’re willing to use, it can do almost anything.

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Apple’s ‘HomePod with a screen’ may come later in 2025

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple’s rumored smart display, sometimes reported as a “HomePod with a screen,” could come as late as next year’s third quarter, according to Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. It’s previously been pegged for a March 2025 release.

The display, which Kuo notes is expected to have a 6 or 7-inch screen and A18 chip like the current iPhone 16 line, has been rumored to be a square, magnetically mountable iPad-like device. It may run some Apple apps and Apple Intelligence, unlike the current lineup of HomePods and Apple TVs.

Kuo writes that Apple could ship between 500,000 and a million of the displays in the second half of next year. The display could be part of a new push into the smart home world by Apple. Beyond the affordable tablet-style screen, Apple’s plans may also include a pricier tabletop device with a screen on the end of a robotic arm, cameras, and potentially a TV.

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Max is testing always-on HBO channels

Curb Your Enthusiasm is just one of the HBO shows that will play on the 24/7 channels. | Image: John Johnson / HBO

Max is joining the growing list of streaming services that offer 24/7 cable-like channels. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it’s testing a set of always-on channels that mirror the shows and movies playing on its linear HBO channels, and it’s rolling them out to a small group of ad-free subscribers in the US.

That includes HBO Comedy for original series like Curb Your Enthusiasm, documentaries about comedians, and comedy films. There’s also the HBO Signature channel for dramas, HBO Zone for classic series and movies, and HBO and HBO 2 channels dedicated to premieres and current content.

Image: Warner Bros. Discovery

The live channels will appear on the Max homepage.

Just like the free ad-supported streaming services like Pluto, along with the curated channels on Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video (RIP Freevee), Paramount Plus, and Peacock, the new HBO channels on Max are supposed to make it easier to jump into content when you’re not sure what exactly you want to watch (or maybe just want to listen to something in the background). Max has already launched a similar always-on channel feature in Europe.

The test opens up the opportunity for Max to experiment with curated or themed channels, which it plans on bringing to the service next year. It’s also considering live channels tailored to users’ preferences. “We’re excited about even longer term, about personalizing more of that experience and potentially bringing channels oriented to the specific interests of a specific user,” Tyler Whitworth, Warner Bros. Discovery’s chief product officer, said during an interview with The Verge. He added that this would roll out in the “later phases” of the channels experience.

If you’re included in the test, you’ll see a row called “Channels” on your Max homepage. When you select a channel, you’ll jump into the show or movie that’s playing and have controls to restart, rewind, and fast-forward the content.

Update, December 4th: Clarified that the content will mirror live HBO channels.

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Spotify Wrapped 2024 adds an AI podcast to recap your listening habits

Image: Spotify

This year, Spotify teamed up with Google to let you generate a podcast with two AI ‘hosts’ based on what you’ve listened to.

This year’s Spotify Wrapped has arrived. As you look at your stats for 2024, you’ll find a few new features you can use to interact with your data, including one that lets you listen to and share an AI-generated podcast summarizing your listening habits.

Spotify built this feature using Google’s AI note-taking tech, NotebookLM, which can generate a podcast with two AI “hosts” based on your research. On Spotify, the AI hosts will tailor their conversation to your top songs, artists, and genres of the year. This feature is available to free and Premium users in English across the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and Sweden.

Image: Spotify

The NotebookLM-powered AI podcast will recap your yearly stats.

“At Spotify, of course, we love audio, we love podcasts, and we’re always looking to be where our users are listening,” Molly Holder, Spotify’s senior director of product for personalization, said during a press briefing. “This partnership with Google seemed like a very exciting integration and a way for us to do just that.”

Spotify Wrapped will also attempt to track how your taste evolved throughout the year with a new feature that will assign you up to three musical phrases for each month, like “heatwave,” “beach,” and “reggaeton.” The app will come up with a personalized “music evolution” playlist as well, containing your favorite songs throughout the year and new music tailored to your taste.

Image: Spotify

Spotify will show how your tastes changed throughout the year.

Spotify’s AI DJ will again have a role in this year’s Wrapped, as Premium subscribers can use it to create playlists based on the year’s data with prompts like “Make me a playlist of songs that represent my music journey over the year.”

Some other changes include the ability to see your longest listening streak for your top five artists and an update to the “share” button that will show you whether the audio you’re sharing is in your top 100 songs, top 20 artists, or top five podcasts.

Apple Music, YouTube Music, and even Amazon Music all got the jump on Wrapped this year, releasing personalized recaps before Spotify. Still, there’s no doubt which entry in recap season is the most discussed one.

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