AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation hit new all-time low with $40 off

You should definitely skip the base AirPods 4, which are only $9 cheaper right now. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The AirPods Pro stole the spotlight recently with an incredible discount that made them even cheaper than the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation. But now the script is flipped and the AirPods 4 are currently discounted to $139 ($40 off) at Amazon. That’s a new record low for Apple’s newest pair of wireless earbuds and just $9 more than the version without ANC.

The AirPods 4 are a substantial upgrade over the previous generation, with better overall sound quality and a stronger bass profile. They also borrow a couple more features from the AirPods Pro, like the Voice Isolation feature that analyzes your voice to separate it and cancel out the environment, resulting in clearer voice calls. Other features include a wireless charging case with a speaker that lets you trigger a sound from Apple’s Find My app, spatial audio with head-tracking, and adaptive audio.

Active noise cancellation is solid in the upgraded pair, but since there are no canal-sealing ear tips, they won’t offer the same dampening. That’s where you’d opt instead for the AirPods Pro, which ultimately sound better and offer a few extra capabilities, like more intuitive volume controls and the ability to use them as hearing aids. But if you don’t mind making some tradeoffs, the entry-level AirPods 4 offer a lot for the money.

Read our Apple AirPods 4 review.

A few more deals to kick the weekend off

• If you need a solid pair of earbuds but you can’t justify spending close to $100 or more, the JLab Go Air Pop should have your attention right now. They’re just $9.88 ($15 off) at Walmart, which is their lowest price to date. They don’t do much but play music, but they sound decent, they’re reasonably comfortable, and you can get them in a variety of fun colors. You’ll get eight hours of runtime per charge, with an extra 24 hours available in the charging case.
• Today only, you can get a two-pack of black Xbox Core Wireless Controllers with a USB-C cable from Woot for $73.59 (about $46 off) with code 20PERCENT. The controllers are often on sale for $40 on their own, so you’re getting a better deal compared to buying them separately. Although Microsoft created the controllers specifically for the Xbox Series X/S launch, you can use them with older Xbox One consoles and on Windows PCs.
• The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus, which we think is the best battery-powered video doorbell, is matching its all-time low of $99.99 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The doorbell boasts an impressive 1536p video resolution as well as a head-to-toe view that offers better visibility for packages and visitors. While there are cheaper wireless options from Ring and competitors, they’re not quite as responsive as the Doorbell Plus. Other handy features include color night vision, live view, and two-way audio, though you’ll need to pay $4.99 a month for others like recorded video and package alerts.

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Anthem BCBS is reversing its anesthesia policy after online outrage

Beginning in February, health insurer Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield was planning to set a time limit for anesthesia coverage during surgeries and procedures. Now, following days of widespread outrage at the health insurance industry generally, Anthem is walking that policy back, the insurer announced on Thursday.

In mid-November, the American Society of Anesthesiologists issued a press release about the policy, which was set to take effect in February in states like Connecticut, New York, and Missouri.

“If an anesthesiologist submits a bill where the actual time of care is longer than Anthem’s limit, Anthem will deny payment for the anesthesiologist’s care,” they group writes. “With this new policy, Anthem will not pay anesthesiologists for delivering safe and effective anesthesia care to patients who may need extra attention because their surgery is difficult, unusual or because a complication arises.”

The letter appears to have garnered little public attention until this week when several posts on social media about the policy change began circulating. The posts gained traction after the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot and killed in New York on Wednesday in what police say was a targeted attack.

Outrageous. I’m going to make sure New Yorkers are protected. https://t.co/Mqtjeu0ZD7

— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) December 5, 2024

A spokesperson for Anthem’s parent company, Elevance Health, told The New York Times that “misinformation” about the plan contributed to Anthem’s reversal.

“We realized, based on all the feedback we’ve been receiving the last 24 hours, that our communication about the policy was unclear, which is why we’re pulling back,” Janey Kiryluik, staff vice president for corporate communications, is quoted as saying.

Thompson’s shooting shocked the public, but it also ignited discussions about the havoc wreaked by the US healthcare system and insurers like UnitedHealthcare. United specifically has been the subject of investigations by outlets like Stat, which found the company uses algorithms to cut off payments and deny rehabilitation care for patients. The rate at which insurers deny patient claims is a closely guarded secret, but ProPublica last year followed one chronically ill patient’s fight to get coverage from United. In some online forums, there was little sympathy for the company and Thompson’s death: Americans carry at least $220 billion in medical debt, which upends lives as insurance companies profit.

The shooter’s motives are not yet clear, but shell casings discovered at the scene were found to have the words “delay” and “deny” written on them. Following the murder, healthcare companies like CVS Health began taking down webpages about corporate leadership.

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Researchers put bird legs on a drone so it can take off by jumping

EPFL’s RAVEN drone trades traditional landing gear for a pair of legs that function similar to a bird’s. | Image: Alain Herzog

Researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and UC Irvine have developed a drone capable of landing and taking off in areas that would otherwise leave a fixed-wing aircraft stranded. Their Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments (RAVEN) trades traditional landing gear for a pair of bird-inspired articulated legs that allow the drone to walk around, hop over obstacles, and even leap into the air to take flight without the need for a runway.

Quadcopter drones may offer more flexibility when it comes to where they can take off and land, but most rely on four motors which are less energy-efficient than fixed-wing drones that use a single motor paired with gliding for flight. To expand the capabilities of fixed-wing drones, the researchers took inspiration from birds like crows and ravens which can easily maneuver on the ground using a scrawny pair of legs, as detailed in a paper published in Nature this week.

Image: Alain Herzog

RAVEN’s legs and feet use a simplified design but still offer enough articulation for the drone to maneuver on the ground.

Recreating the strength and capabilities of a bird’s legs mechanically without adding significant weight to a drone and reducing its operating range required a mix of “mathematical models, computer simulations, and experimental iterations.”

The final design for the legs uses a combination of springs and motors to mimic “powerful avian tendons and muscles” while its simplified feet use “two articulated structures” plus toes with a passive elastic joint. The toes not only prevent RAVEN from constantly face planting, they’re also critical for walking and positioning the drone at the right angle of attack for an effective takeoff.

Fixed-wing drones that take advantage of legs for short takeoffs and landings aren’t an entirely new idea. In 2019, a South African startup called Passerine demonstrated a drone called Sparrow that used a pair of spring-loaded legs to leap into the air and take flight from a standstill. What sets RAVEN apart is the complexity of its legs that allow the drone to walk across rough terrain, jump over gaps, and hop onto obstacles as high as 10 inches — in addition to being able to leap into flight.

RAVEN’s operations aren’t limited to airports or areas with smooth surfaces, which traditional wheeled landing gear requires. It also doesn’t require human intervention to get airborne again. It’s capable of landing and exploring areas that may be dangerous or restricted to humans, and then repositioning itself to an area that’s safe for takeoff. And it does it all using less power than a quadcopter drone would, giving it a larger operational range.

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Amazon just completed its first delivery by drone in Italy

Image: Amazon

Amazon completed its first drone flight test in Italy on Wednesday. The test used its MK30 drone, which can carry up to five pounds (or 2.27 kilograms) of packages through light rain and, in the US, is licensed to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS).

Italian regulators ENAC and ENAV, which are like the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), authorized Amazon to carry out the test in San Salvo.

Last year, the company announced its intention to expand to Italy and the UK in 2024. Amazon says it plans to launch its Prime Air delivery service commercially in Italy in 2025, pending regulatory approval. According to Reuters, Britain has selected six drone testing projects, including Amazon, however, there’s no word on when testing will take place.

In the US, Amazon’s drone deliveries are up and running in College Station, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, with plans to operate in more areas next year.

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Netflix’s Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld is a fresh remix of Buffy-style monster slaying

Image: Netflix

Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s first season feels like a classic monster slaying story remixed for a new generation.

Though it has been decades since Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s final episode aired, the show’s lasting cultural impact can still be felt through the stories being told by people who were impacted by it. Netflix’s Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld feels like the kind of show that might not exist if it weren’t for the way an entire generation of kids grew up watching a teenage girl fight monsters from week to week. The new Titmouse-produced animated show’s world of magic, and its focus on a young warrior who just wants to be a regular high schooler, makes it impossible not to see it as a tribute to Sunnydale’s finest.

But as often as it riffs some of Buffy’s signature beats — teen angst, supernatural love triangles, a town full of normies who kinda know something weird is going on around them — Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld uses them to tell a much more dynamic tale about who gets to be an “all-American girl.”

Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld tells the story of how its titular Chinese American teen is yanked out of her boarding school in South Korea and dragged to a small Texas town to fulfill a destiny she doesn’t want any part of. Things are good for Jentry in Seoul, where her friends have basically become her family and people that she can trust with some of her dark secrets. They know about Jentry’s uncontrollable ability to start fires and that it is part of why her feisty elderly aunt Gugu (Lori Tan Chinn) sent her to study abroad. But as dangerous as Jentry might be, her friends don’t care because they, like Gugu, love her. And with Jentry’s powers having seemingly gone dormant since she left the US, she assumes her days of literal bridge-burning are all in the past.

All Jentry wants for her 16th birthday is for things to stay as they are and to keep building a new life that feels like it’s really hers. But when she’s attacked by Ed (Bowen Yang), a Twilight-obsessed shapeshifting vampire tasked with delivering her to his master Mogui (Kenton Chen), Jentry knows that her wish for a blissfully mundane childhood isn’t coming true anytime soon.

While younger viewers might not initially pick up on just how much Jentry Chau borrows from Buffy, the ’90s monster-of-the-week show’s influence on showrunner Echo Wu shines through in Jentry’s journey back to Texas to enroll in a school run by a paranoid administrator. Jentry’s being new-ish in town is all it takes for vice principal Wheeler (Sean Allan Krill) to be suspicious of her sudden arrival, and she tries to keep quiet about her extracurricular monster hunting. But because Jentry’s reignited powers lure so many mythological ghouls out of the woodwork, there’s enough day-to-day chaos that it’s kind of easy for her to pretend she’s just another student who can’t believe how her high school seems to be situated on top of a hellmouth.

The show’s monsters — a cavalcade of demons and spirits plucked from Chinese mythology — are a huge part of what makes Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld feel like such an inspired spin on the monster-of-the-week genre. Almost every supernatural creature Jentry faces speaks to the series’ focus on exploring her cultural heritage, rather than using its aesthetics as superficial set dressing. Jentry’s powers make her formidable, but it’s because of Gugu’s years of teaching her about Chinese folklore that she’s able to outsmart the ghosts she encounters when she journeys into the underworld.

Image: Netflix

One of the series’ funnier episodes follows Jentry and her classmates on a field trip to the Alamo, where a tour guide summons a bunch of dead American soldiers to scold the kids about how “rude” it is for them to want to know more about the monument’s actual history. It’s one of the instances where Jentry Chau more explicitly reminds you that, in addition to centering Jentry’s Chinese heritage, it’s telling a story about an American girl who has been encouraged to think about her country’s past and how that shapes some people’s perceptions of her.

Jentry has far more interesting things to deal with than racism, like her complicated love triangle situation with her childhood friend Michael (A.J. Beckles) and Kit (Woosung Kim), another mysterious transfer student. But it’s clear the show wants you to appreciate that there’s more to telling relatable yet culturally specific stories than simply putting a few characters of color onscreen.

Even though the Buffy vibes only grow stronger with each episode — Jentry ends up with a Scooby Gang of her own who all have their own supernatural stuff going on — the show remixes them just enough to make this first season feel like a refreshing addition to the Chosen Girl™ canon. You can see that Wu and the rest of Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s creative team have poured their hearts into this first chapter, and it would be great to see what else they might want to conjure up.

Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s first season is now streaming on Netflix.

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TikTok divest-or-ban law upheld by federal court

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

A bill that could ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese parent company divests it is constitutional, a panel of judges for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled.

The decision comes soon before ByteDance’s January 19th deadline to sell the popular video app, or face its expulsion from the US. That deadline now falls one day before President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for the second time — thanks in part to donations from ByteDance investor Jeff Yass. Though Trump sought to ban TikTok during his first term, he changed his tune on the campaign trail this year, saying a ban would just help a different target of his ire: Meta.

While Trump allies reportedly expected him to try to halt the ban, the options for recourse are somewhat limited. The law allows for a 90 day extension at the president’s discretion, but only if progress is being made toward a spin-out. Trump could direct the Department of Justice not to enforce the bill, but that still leaves app store companies like Google and Apple — tasked with being the gatekeepers to the app — in a precarious spot, should Trump change his mind or a future administration decide to enforce the law.

The court decided that the law could survive even strict scrutiny under the First Amendment, and did not find TikTok’s arguments that it violates equal protections under the Fifth Amendment compelling. “We emphasize from the outset that our conclusion here is fact-bound,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg writes in the opinion for the court. “The multi-year efforts of both political branches to investigate the national security risks posed by the TikTok platform, and to consider potential remedies proposed by TikTok, weigh heavily in favor of the Act. The Government has offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that the Act is narrowly tailored to protect national security.” These risks included both fears that China could use TikTok for data collection and that it could covertly manipulate the recommendation algorithms.

Despite Trump’s opposition, many Republicans in Congress voted to pass the bill earlier this year. It received overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers, before President Joe Biden signed it into law. Proponents of the law say that it’s necessary protect the privacy of Americans and protect them from foreign influence campaigns. That’s because Chinese law lets the government compel companies headquartered there to hand over internal information for national security reasons. And while TikTok has repeatedly asserted its independent operations from ByteDance and says US data is not stored in China, many lawmakers still feared Chinese officials could have a say in what information Americans do and don’t see.

During oral arguments in September, TikTok and a group of creators also suing to block the law argued that it would stifle Americans’ speech, and unfairly limit the information they’re able to access. The DOJ defended the law as appropriately tailored to address a national security risk. The three-judge panel that heard the case appeared skeptical of the company’s arguments, prodding at the practicality of a more restrained approach.

The ruling could still appealed en banc to the full panel of judges on the DC Circuit, and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

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Asus teaser hints at ‘world’s first’ 27-inch 4K OLED gaming monitor

Image: Asus via TFTCentral

It looks like Asus may be gearing up to release one of the first 4K OLED gaming monitors with a 27-inch display, as reported earlier by VideoCardz. In a now-removed teaser posted to Instagram, Asus mentioned a “ROG Swift OLED PG27UCDM” monitor, suggesting this display could be a smaller version of its existing Rog Swift 32-inch OLED 4K monitor, which shares nearly the same product name (PG32UCDM).

As shown in a reposted version of the ad shared by TFTCentral, Asus doesn’t reveal much about the new display other than its name. Currently, most 27-inch OLED gaming monitors sport a 1440p resolution — not 4K.

Previous rumors suggest that display manufacturer Samsung Display has already begun work on a 27-inch 4K OLED monitor. Even with a smaller size, a 27-inch 4K OLED monitor from Asus likely won’t come cheap, as its 32-inch ROG Swift OLED costs $1,299.99.

Aside from this monitor, TFTCentral also mentioned some broader display trends we might see next year, including 45-inch ultrawide OLED displays with better resolution, 500GHz QD-OLED panels, and monitors that use DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity.

If Asus is planning on releasing a new monitor, it will probably reveal it during CES 2025, which kicks off on January 7th.

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Muppet History was a bright spot online — now it’s embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal

Photo by Julio Donoso / Sygma via Getty Images

For years, a fan-run account called Muppet History has been central to the Muppets fandom. It shared little-known facts, memes, and wholesome messages, amassing half a million followers on Instagram and more than 280,000 on X. Publicly, it was a wholesome and sweet platform, a passion project that took off. It became an unofficial ambassador of Jim Henson’s iconic cast of characters — inside and outside the world of diehard fans.

But on Monday night, a post on the account’s Instagram page had an ominous tone. “Good Evening,” the message started. “We wanted to take a moment to address some concerns that have arisen as of late.” The vague post — on which comments had been disabled — mentioned “overstepped” boundaries, the “harm” caused, and that people were made “uncomfortable.” It did not specify exactly what had happened.

Since that post, however, a rough sketch has come into focus. Fans claim that Muppet History’s co-runner Joshua Gillespie, who operates the account with his wife, Holly, was sending unwanted sexual messages to other people. Now, it’s gone from a bright spot on the internet to another soured piece of online culture, leaving a small community navigating the...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google Photos now has its own version of Spotify Wrapped

Every company is trying to copy Spotify these days. | Image: Google

The Google Photos app is rolling out a throwback experience that highlights some of your most memorable moments from this year. The “2024 Recap” presentation feature announced today combines a collection of photos and insights with graphics and cinematic effects that summarize what users have been doing over the last 12 months — a similar concept to Spotify Wrapped.

The 2024 Recap insights include information like how many photos you snapped, the longest photo streak length, most photographed colors, who you took the most photos of, and the people you smiled the most with. Google says that “select users in the US” who have Gemini enabled in the Photos app can also opt-in to receive a version of Recap that adds personalized captions highlighting the “two biggest moments from your year.”

Gif: Google

Here’s an example of the Wrapped-like insights that appear in Recap.

The Recap will appear in the Google Photos Memories carousel throughout December before relocating to the photo grid in January, and can be shared to messaging and social media apps. There are some caveats though — Recap is only available to Photos users who have the Face Groups setting enabled, which uses facial recognition to identify and group similar faces together. This feature has some regional restrictions, so the end-of-year highlights won’t be available globally.

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AGI is coming and nobody cares

Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been saying for years — years! — that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, would be something like a singularity. When we achieve AGI, Altman and others have said, it will fundamentally reshape society.

At the New York Times DealBook Summit this week in New York City, Altman said never mind. AGI is coming really soon, he said, but it’s not going to be a huge deal. Also this week: OpenAI began its “12 days of shipmas” campaign with a new $200 monthly subscription for its latest model. The stakes are lower, the prices are higher. Strange times in the AI race.

On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Kylie Robison joins the show to talk about Altman’s about-face, shipmas, and everything else happening in the AI world this week. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had a spicy take on Gemini, Amazon launched some models of its own, and the models just keep making mistakes.

But before we get to AI, Nilay and David spend some time talking about the world of subscriptions. Starting with ours! We launched a subscription for The Verge this week, and we’re grateful to everyone who has signed up to support us and be part of our community. Thanks also to everyone who has offered feedback, found bugs, and asked for ad-free podcasts. We’re still new at this whole subscription thing, but we’re learning fast. (And if you have questions, you have a little more time to get them in for next week’s episode! Email vergecast@theverge.com or call 866-VERGE11 to get them in.)

That takes us into a conversation about the ongoing cable-ification of the streaming world, which this week included Disney bundling ESPN into Disney Plus and Max launching always-on channels for HBO content. You know, like cable.

After all that it’s AI time. And finally, in the lightning round, we talk about bitcoin, AI browsers, the fediverse, Intel, Spotify Wrapped, and much more. It may be December, but there’s still an awful lot going on.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with streaming and cable:

• ESPN is coming to the Disney Plus app starting today
• Max is testing always-on HBO channels
• Streaming is cable now
• Walmart bought Vizio

And in AI news:

• OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘shipmas’ include Sora and new reasoning model
• Sam Altman says AGI will “matter much less” than people expect
• ChatGPT’s search results for news are ‘unpredictable’ and frequently inaccurate
• Stop using generative AI as a search engine
• Misinformation expert admits ChatGPT added fake details to his anti-deepfake court filing
• Amazon announces its own set of Nova AI models
• From The New York Times: Sundar Pichai Hits Back at Criticism of Company’s A.I. Leadership

And in the lightning round:

• Bitcoin just hit $100,000
• Dia is the The Browser Company’s AI-powered follow-up to Arc
• Threads takes an important baby step toward true fediverse integration
• Threads’ next update is a search feature that finds the post you’re looking for
• Meta says it’s mistakenly removing too many posts
• Intel’s CEO is out after only three years
• What happened to Intel?
• Trump picks two nominees who could decide the fate of Big Tech and crypto
• Verizon is once again raising its fees
• Spotify Wrapped 2024 adds an AI podcast to recap your listening habits

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Microsoft ends Surface Studio 2 Plus production with no successor in sight

The original Surface Studio. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Microsoft is ending production of its Surface Studio 2 Plus all-in-one PC two years after introducing the latest model. Surface Studio 2 Plus stock started running out in recent weeks, and now Microsoft has confirmed to Windows Central that it’s no longer manufacturing the device.

“Customers can continue to purchase Surface Studio 2 Plus through retailers and partners with stock” says Microsoft in a statement. “For areas reaching out of stock, Surface Studio 2 Plus will no longer be available for new purchases.”

The Surface Studio started off life as a surprise addition to Microsoft’s Surface lineup, with a touchscreen and unique hinge that allowed the 28-inch display to transform into a giant tablet for drawing purposes. It targeted creatives, one of Apple’s strongholds, at a time when Microsoft had just shipped Windows 10 and was looking to make desktop PCs exciting again.

The original Surface Studio display folding down.

It now looks like the end of the road for Microsoft’s innovative Surface Studio, once considered the ultimate all-in-one Windows device. While the Surface Studio was always an expensive and niche device, there was nothing else quite like it on the market. Microsoft has been gradually exiting various areas of its Surface business, with no successors planned for the Surface Duo or Surface Earbuds either.

This year Microsoft has largely focused on its Copilot Plus range of devices, including a new Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7. The company also launched business-focused versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 earlier this year with Intel chips inside. It looks like Lunar Lake variants of the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 will arrive in 2025, after a prototype Surface Laptop appeared on a Chinese second-hand marketplace in October.

As someone who has pleaded for a Surface Studio monitor, I’m still holding out hope that Microsoft might one day release a standalone folding and transforming screen so we can turn any laptop or PC into a Surface Studio.

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Uber’s first international robotaxi service is live in the UAE

Image: Uber

Uber launched a robotaxi service with its partner WeRide in Abu Dhabi, its first international effort to make a wide number of autonomous vehicles from different operators available on its platform.

Customers who use Uber to book a ride will be presented with the option to hail an autonomous vehicle from WeRide. Fares will be upfront and equal to UberX and Uber Comfort prices. The vehicles will include safety drivers, so it won’t be a fully autonomous service at launch. But Uber and WeRide said they aim to offer driverless vehicles to passengers in 2025.

The vehicles will include safety drivers

Uber first announced its partnership with WeRide, a startup based in Guangzhou, China, last September. WeRide holds driverless operation permits in the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, China, and the US — though Uber has said it isn’t currently considering extending the partnership beyond the UAE.

WeRide’s autonomous vehicles in Abu Dhabi have been available to customers through the TXAI app. The company was first granted a permit to test and operate AVs on public roads in the country in July 2023.

WeRide was planning on listing its shares in the US at a valuation of $5 billion, but its initial public offering has been delayed, with the company citing a need to complete all the documentation.

The company also develops self-driving technology that powers shuttle buses and freight equipment. It first launched in Silicon Valley in 2017 and subsequently was incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

Since ending its own efforts to develop self-driving cars in 2020, Uber has sought to become a clearinghouse for any company operating autonomous vehicles in the world. In addition to WeRide, Uber has deals with Cruise, Waymo, Motional, and Avride for self-driving cars and Serve, Cartken, and Nuro for delivery robots.

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Donald Trump says David Sacks will be the ‘White House A.I. & Crypto Czar’

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump says that VC and All-In Podcast co-host David Sacks will be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

The appointment of Sacks, who hosted a $300,000-a-person dinner at his mansion to fundraise for Trump’s campaign this past July, follows fellow PayPal Mafia member Elon Musk’s appointment to co-lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” According to Bloomberg, like Musk, Sacks will be “a special government employee” who can serve up to 130 days a year without divesting or publicly disclosing his assets.

It also comes a day after Trump announced former Republican Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins will lead the SEC.

Here’s what Sacks will be tasked with in his role, according to the post:

In this important role, David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas. He will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.

He will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.

Trump says Sacks will also head up the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology, an independent advisory committee that exists today. In a second Truth Social post, Trump highlighted Sacks’ history at PayPal and his founding of Yammer.

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iFixit now sells official Xbox parts

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

iFixit now sells genuine Xbox parts you can use to repair your Xbox Series X or S and offers official guides to help with fixes. You can browse what’s available from iFixit’s Microsoft Repair Hub.

“We’re excited to be working with Microsoft to keep Xboxes running longer and out of the waste heap,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s director of sustainability, says in a statement to The Verge. “We now offer official Microsoft parts and step-by-step repair guides for Xbox Series S and Series X, including both the all-digital and disk drive editions.”

iFixit’s Microsoft Repair Hub also features iFixit’s parts for repairing Microsoft Surface devices, which it started selling in 2023. “Since we launched our Surface parts collaboration with Microsoft last year, we’ve been helping our customers repair their own Microsoft laptops and tablets — and it’s awesome to be able to offer Xbox owners the same opportunity,” Chamberlain says.

Microsoft isn’t the only gaming company that iFixit has partnered with; iFixit sells nearly every part of the Steam Deck and offers a bunch of repair guides for Valve’s handheld PC, too. Microsoft itself offers first-party parts for the standard and Elite Series 2 Xbox controllers.

iFixit also offers genuine repair parts for Google’s Pixel phones and the Pixel Tablet. The company had sold genuine parts from Samsung, but that partnership ended earlier this year.

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Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

The new AirPods 4 deliver better sound and voice call quality than prior entry-level models. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

If you know where to look, you can often score discounts on Apple’s ever-expanding AirPods lineup. The new AirPods 4 and the AirPods Max are just starting to receive discounts, for instance, while both the second- and third-gen AirPods can often be found at a steep discount. The same goes for the original Max, which are nearly indistinguishable from the last-gen model aside from the switch to a USB-C connector.

Here, we’ve rounded up the best deals currently available on each model, including the second-gen and third-gen AirPods, both iterations of the AirPods 4, the latest AirPods Pro with USB-C, and the last-gen AirPods Max.

The best AirPods (second-gen) deals

Before they were discontinued alongside the AirPods 4 announcement, the second-gen AirPods were Apple’s entry-level earbuds. Despite being released in 2019, they still offer terrific wireless performance, great ease of use, and reliable battery life, making them a solid pick if you can live without a wireless charging case or some of the more advanced software features afforded by Apple’s newer H2 chip.

The second-gen AirPods originally launched for $159; however, Apple eventually lowered their list price to $129, and we now often see them on sale for far less. Right now, for instance, you can buy them for $89 ($49 off) at Walmart, which is $20 more than their all-time low.

Read our AirPods (second-gen) review.

The best AirPods (third-gen) deals

With support for the company’s MagSafe charger and an asking price of $179, Apple’s third-gen AirPods were once considered the middle child in the AirPods lineup. The shorter stems made for a more subtle design, too, while improved sound and features like sweat and water resistance, support for head-tracking spatial audio, and improved battery life rendered them a nice upgrade over their predecessor.

However, the AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation have since replaced the third-gen AirPods in Apple’s lineup. The new earbuds run $129 and $179, respectively, with the step-up model offering a few perks once reserved for the Pro models, including ANC, a helpful transparency mode, and a case with a built-in speaker. You can also squeeze the stem to control media playback — a feature also available on the entry-level AirPods 4.

We recently saw the third-gen AirPods with a Lightning charging case drop to $94 at Walmart. However, the best deal you can get right now is only available at Costco, where members can buy them with a MagSafe charging case for $129.99 ($40 off). That said, it’s worth noting that you can buy the AirPods 4 at Amazon for $119, which is a far better deal.

Read our AirPods (third-gen) review.

The best AirPods 4 deals

During Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event in September, the company introduced the AirPods 4, a pair of wireless earbuds available in two flavors: a $129 standard model and a noise-canceling version for $179. Both models represent significant upgrades over the second-gen AirPods, with a more comfortable design and improved audio performance. They’re also better for taking calls thanks to Apple’s Voice Isolation feature, which better isolates your voice so that you can more clearly be heard in noisy environments.

For $50 extra, you can also buy the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, which offer ANC, a helpful transparency mode, and several more Pro-like features. Admittedly, the latest AirPods Pro do a better job of tuning out noise, but Apple’s newest pair of wireless earbuds still do a good job of reducing sound. They also offer other perks formerly reserved for Apple’s highest-end earbuds, including wireless charging and a case with a built-in speaker that allows you to easily track it down via Apple’s Find My app.

Although they just launched, we’re already starting to see slight discounts on both versions of the AirPods 4. Right now, for instance, Amazon is offering the standard AirPods 4 for $119 ($10 off) and the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation for $164.99 ($15 off).

Read our AirPods 4 review.

The best AirPods Pro (second-gen) deals

In 2022, Apple released the second-gen AirPods Pro, which feature a similar build to the first-gen model but offer better noise cancellation, swipe-based controls, and an extra-small pair of swappable silicone ear tips for smaller ears. Apple followed them up last year with a minor refresh, one that features a USB-C charging case and an upgraded IP54 rating for water and dust resistance. The newest model also supports lossless audio when used with Apple’s new Vision Pro headset and now double as FDA-approved hearing aids.

Apple’s updated AirPods Pro are currently available at Walmart for $169.99, which is just $1 shy of their all-time low. You can also buy them at Amazon for the same price, though they’re temporarily unavailable and Amazon hasn’t provided a shipping estimate.

Read our AirPods Pro with USB-C impressions.

The best AirPods Max deals

The AirPods Max aren’t the iconic in-ears that have become synonymous with the AirPods name. They’re large and luxurious, comprised of aluminum, steel, and mesh fabric that remains comfortable during extended listening sessions. They also sport excellent noise cancellation, Apple’s spatial audio feature, and expansive, balanced sound, even if they lag behind some of their peers when it comes to bass response and features. They’re not the best noise-canceling headphones for most people — blame the sticker price — but it’s hard to find a better pair of Bluetooth headphones if you’re an iPhone user.

At the beginning of September, Apple replaced the first-gen Max with a new model that features support for USB-C charging and a few new color options. They’re currently on sale at Amazon starting at $529.99 ($20 off) — which matches their second-best price to date — while the first-gen model is on sale at B&H Photo starting at $429 ($120 off). That’s about $34 shy of the lowest price we’ve seen on the original model, which dropped to $394.99 several times this year.

Read our original AirPods Max review.

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Riot is making a League of Legends card game

Image: Riot Games

The League of Legends universe is expanding once again — this time with a physical card game. Riot Games announced today that it’s developing a physical trading card game set in the League universe. The game is currently known as “Project K,” and Riot says it’s working with an unnamed partner in China to release the game there in early 2025. As for a global release, Riot says, “We are taking our time to find the right publishing partners.”

There aren’t a lot of details about Project K. According to Riot, the game “has unique gameplay and is best when played with friends and in person,” and development is being led by director Dave Guskin and producer Chengran Chai. You can get a sense for the game in the images below:

Of course, this is far from the first spinoff from League. So far, that has included mobile games like Teamfight Tactics and Wild Rift, the Netflix series Arcane, and the competitive fighting game 2XKO, which is expected to launch next year. Not all of these bets have paid off. In January, Riot announced that it was cutting more than 500 jobs, which included shutting down Riot Forge Games, a publishing label for indie games set inside of League. Also impacted was Legends of Runeterra, a mobile card game that launched in 2020, which Riot said “hasn’t performed as well as we need it to.”

The Project K news comes as card games are having another moment, led largely by the new smartphone version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would’ve been better as a movie

Image: Bethesda

The game’s most interesting bits are trapped in cutscenes while its boring bits are the stuff you actually have to play out.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google will support the Pixel 6, 7, and Fold with two extra years of OS updates

Two more OS upgrades are on the way for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Owners of Pixel 6-series, 7-series and Pixel Fold phones can look forward to a couple extra years of OS upgrades than initially expected, as discovered by Android expert Mishaal Rahman and confirmed by Google on X. When they were introduced, Google originally promised three years of OS upgrades and five years of security patches for each device, starting from the time they went on sale. But a quiet update to a support page confirms that these phones will get two additional OS upgrades, giving them a full five years of OS and security support that “may also include new and upgraded features with Pixel Drops.” That, my friends, rules.

Google’s three-and-five policy wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best either — after the Pixel 6 arrived in 2021, Samsung did one better by offering four years of OS updates for the Galaxy S22. Google got its act together with the Pixel 8, announcing a class-leading seven years of OS and security update support. Which is great! But you wouldn’t blame a Pixel 6 or 7 owner for feeling like they were unfairly left behind. Google seems to be making up some of the shortfall by offering these additional OS upgrades, and it’s a welcome change.

And ICYMI, #PixelFold along with #Pixel6 and #Pixel7 generation users will now get two additional years of OS updates! This extended support will total five years starting from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the US: https://t.co/Y50A92TiqC

— Made by Google (@madebygoogle) December 5, 2024

Of course, an ‘OS update’ isn’t quite what it used to be — for better and worse. Google is emphasizing pushing out more updates across older versions of Android through its Play framework. That’s a great thing, but it does mean that the yearly OS upgrade isn’t quite as important as it once was. The company can also gate certain features to pricier or more recent models, as it has with Night Sight Video and Zoom Enhance. Google’s mention of new features via Pixel Drops for the next couple of years is promising, though.

Going by Google’s original schedule, the Pixel 6 should have gotten its last OS platform upgrade with this year’s Android 15. Inquiring minds wondered if something was up when the Pixel 6 series was deemed eligible for the Android 16 beta, and now we know: Pixel 6 phones are on track to get Android 16 and 17 when they become available. Not too shabby.

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Google just made it easier to turn off personalized search results

Illustration: The Verge

Google is making it easier to switch off personalized search results thanks to an option that sometimes appears at the bottom of the results page, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable. After searching for something, scroll all the way down and look for a link to “Try without personalization.” Click or tap that and Google will load a new page without personalized results.

The link might not be present for you in all searches. Some results for me include a message at the end of the results page that already says “Results are not personalized.” This might be user error — maybe I have other settings that prevent it from appearing or am not using the right queries. But I did get the option to turn off personalized results much more often for searches on my iPhone than on my Mac, for some reason.

“This change makes it easier for people to get an accurate understanding of whether their results have been personalized, while also providing them with the opportunity to explore non-personalized results,” spokesperson Ned Adriance says in a statement. “We also make it easy for people to adjust their personalization settings at any time.” Adriance adds that “while we previously showed this information in About this result on individual results, this display is more accessible and clear.”

You have already been able to get unpersonalized search results for a very long time; as Search Engine Roundtable reported in 2007, you can see unpersonalized results by appending a parameter, “&pws=0,” to the end of a Google search URL. You can also turn off personalized search from your Google account settings.

Update, December 5th : Added context from Google.

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US phone companies could face fines for weak security under a proposed new rule

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Following news that foreign hackers may still be in US telecom networks, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a new rule that would require telecom companies to secure their networks from “unlawful access or interception of communications.” It would also force providers to submit an annual certification to the FCC stating they have implemented a plan to counter cybersecurity threats.

On Wednesday, US officials recommended Americans use encrypted apps to make phone calls and texts in response to the ongoing infiltration of telecom networks linked to the Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon. Deputy national security advisor Anne Neuberger confirmed that at least eight telecom providers have been impacted by the hack, as reported by Bleeping Computer.

“We cannot say with certainty that the adversary has been evicted because we still don’t know the scope of what they’re doing,” Neuberger said during a press briefing, Bleeping Computer reports. Neuberger added that the attack has been going on for “likely one to two years” but doesn’t “believe any classified communications has been compromised.”

The Wall Street Journalreported in October that Chinese hackers had broken into AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen’s networks and even targeted members of President-Elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaigns. In a letter on Wednesday, Senators Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) urged Department of Defense Inspector General Robert Storch to investigate the DOD’s “failure to secure its unclassified telephone communications from foreign espionage.”

If the FCC’s proposed rule is adopted, it will go into effect immediately.

“While the Commission’s counterparts in the intelligence community are determining the scope and impact of the Salt Typhoon attack, we need to put in place a modern framework to help companies secure their networks and better prevent and respond to cyberattacks in the future,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in the press release.

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The PC Gaming Show’s best trailers: creepy aliens, strategic turtles, and desktop platformers

MainFrames. | Image: The Arcade Crew

Before we all settle in for The Game Awards next week, this year’s PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted had its own assortment of interesting reveals and excellent trailers. It was an indie-focused showcase, which means that there was quite a bit of inventiveness on display; everything from a unique take on TMNT to a platformer where you jump around computer windows. If you missed the show live — which also included some news updates, like PlayerUnknown’s ambitious plans for the future — here’s a curated list of some of the best stuff that was on display.

Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault

The original Moonlighter mixed action RPG gameplay with the mundanity of running a shop, and the sequel looks like much of the same: only this time, players are transported to another dimension they need to escape. The Endless Vault launches in 2025 on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown

One of the biggest surprises was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown, from indie studio Strange Scaffold. It’s billed as a turn-based take on the turtles, which is billed as an experience designed in part for “quick-play sessions that feel meaningful.” It takes place in a timeline without icons Shredder and Splinter. Given the studio’s history — see Clickolding and An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs — it will hopefully also be weird in a good way. Tactical Takedown launches on PC in 2025.

Cairn

This rock-climbing adventure / survival game has been looking good for a while now, and you can finally check it out for yourself: Cairn just got a free demo on Steam.

Sol Mates

There can never be enough co-op games. This release from Daruma Games supports local and online co-op for up to four players, who are tasked with surviving in the great expanse of space by doing “odd jobs through the galaxy.” It’s also pretty darn cute. Sol Mates launches in early access next year.

The Legend of Baboo

Billed as a “heartfelt nod to Middle Eastern fables,” this game looks like a potentially great mix of adventure, action, and puzzle solving, with a great big fluffy dog to ride on. In fact, you play as both the boy and the dog, who form a bond over the course of the game. Let’s hope it has a happier ending than The Last Guardian. The Legend of Baboo is launching in 2025 on both PC and Xbox.

Abyssus

Thanks to this game, I’ve learned of a fictional genre called “brinepunk,” where tech is powered by sea brine. It sounds weird, but this co-op shooter does take place in the fascinating underwater ruins of a long-gone civilization. Developer DoubleMoose says Abyssus will go into alpha on December 6th, with a full release next year.

MainFrames

All you really need to know is that this is a platformer where you’re jumping across a desktop PC interface, rearranging icons to solve puzzles, and fighting bosses controlled by the OS. It launches on both PC and the Nintendo Switch on March 6th.

Deepest Fear

Developed by Variable State, the indie studio behind games Virginia and Last Stop, Deepest Fear is an immersive sci-fi horror title with distinct shades of Alien and The Thing. The developers say that it “combines Metroidvania level design in the context of a classic FPS immersive sim, where the game’s setting is a puzzle to unravel and where creativity and improvisation are your greatest assets.” There’s no release date yet, but Deepest Fear will (obviously) be launching on PC whenever it’s ready.

Blue Prince

It looks a bit like a more colorful take on Myst, and Blue Prince is described as a game that “combines compelling mystery, strategy, and puzzle elements to create an unpredictable journey through Mt. Holly, a peculiar manor with ever-changing rooms.” It doesn’t have a release date yet, but according to the new trailer, it’s due out next spring.

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Sundar Pichai says Google Search will ‘change profoundly’ in 2025

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the company’s search engine will “change profoundly” in 2025. “I think we are going to be able to tackle more complex questions than ever before,” Pichai said during the NYT’s DealBook Summit on Wednesday_._

“I think you’ll be surprised, even early in ‘25, the kind of newer things Search can do compared to where it is today.”

Pichai also responded to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comment from earlier this year, in which he said Google should’ve been the “default winner” in the AI race. “I would love to do a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft’s own models and our models,” Pichai said. He added that Microsoft is “using someone else’s models,” alluding to the company’s partnership with OpenAI.

“When I look at what’s coming ahead, we are in the earliest stages of a profound shift,” Pichai said. “I just think there’s so much innovation ahead. We are committed to being at the state of the art in this field, and I think we are.”

Google started its big AI overhaul of Search this year, which included the addition of AI search summaries and a Lens update that lets you search the web with a video. The company is also preparing to launch a major update to its Gemini model as it aims to compete with Microsoft, OpenAI, and the AI search engine Perplexity.

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PUBG’s creator has an ambitious plan for multiple new games

Prologue: Go Wayback. | Image: Krafton

It’s been a while since we heard from Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, best known as the creator of the global battle royale hit PUBG. But now, Greene’s studio, PlayerUnknown Productions, is detailing what it’s working on — and there are multiple games in the works, all pointing toward a big final project.

First up is a game called Prologue: Go Wayback!, described as a “single-player open-world emergent game within the survival genre,” which was previously teased in 2021. The big hook, it seems, is technical, as the game is being built with “machine-learning-driven terrain generation technology, allowing the instant creation of millions of maps.” Prologue is expected to launch in early access on Steam in 2025, following a series of playtests. To showcase what players can expect, the studio is launching a free tech demo on Steam today called Preface: Undiscovered World. You can check it out right here.

According to the studio, these games are building blocks on the way to a more ambitious game currently codenamed “Artemis,” which will be a “massive multiplayer sandbox experience.” Greene previously talked about Artemis back in 2022; it was originally billed as a game with NFT support, though today’s announcement has no mention of NFTs. Here’s Greene on what players can eventually expect as the studio builds toward its big game:

My vision for Artemis is challenging, but we plan to take it one step at a time and the three games aim to give us a solid tech foundation on which to scale up. After Prologue, two more games are planned for release in the coming years, each addressing critical technical challenges that will bring the studio closer to the final product. With Prologue, we aim to engage players and introduce them to the emergent mechanics and expansive worlds we’re developing.

Greene first stepped away from PUBG with a new studio in 2019 — it was known under the name “PUBG Special Projects” — and two years later announced that he was leaving PUBG parent company Krafton to go independent. “Today, I’m excited to take the next step on my journey to create the kind of experience I’ve envisaged for years,” he said at the time.

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Nearly 80,000 Anker speakers recalled due to fire hazard

Anker’s Soundcore Bluetooth Speaker was recalled due to a fire hazard.

Anker is recalling its Soundcore and PowerConf Bluetooth Speakers after receiving 33 reports of the speakers’ lithium-ion batteries overheating and, in some instances, emitting smoke or causing small fires.

The affected models — A3102016, A3302011 and A3302031 — were sold exclusively on Amazon in 2023 and cost between $28 and $130, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Approximately 69,000 speakers were sold in the US, and an additional 9,764 were sold i Canada.

Anker and Amazon have contacted all known purchasers, according to the CPSC. The affected speakers can be identified by an SN code that is printed on the underside of the speakers. To check whether your devices were affected, type the SN code on Anker’s website. Anker said it will offer free replacement speakers to those affected.

Consumers who own the recalled speakers are advised to stop using them immediately, power them off, and disconnect them from chargers or other external power sources.

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The Verge’s 2024 holiday gift guide

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

A collection of fun, affordable, and unique gifts fit for everyone on your list.

Read the full story at The Verge.

NASA’s mission to return humans to the Moon has been delayed again until 2026

Photo by GREGG NEWTON/AFP via Getty Images

NASA has, once again, postponed the Artemis missions that will return humans to the Moon. The Artemis II mission, which will have astronauts orbiting the Moon, had already been pushed from 2024 to September 2025 but is now planned for April 2026. Artemis III, which will return astronauts to the surface of the Moon near its south pole, is now planned to launch the following year in mid-2027.

The 10-day Artemis II mission will send four astronauts to the Moon, including Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen. The mission won’t include a landing, but it will be the first time astronauts launch aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket inside the Orion crew capsule that will orbit the Moon before returning to Earth with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

It will follow the uncrewed Artemis I mission that finally launched in November 2022 after years of delays due to technical difficulties and even a few hurricanes. Although Artemis I was a success, investigations into unexpected charring on the Orion capsule’s heat shield, critical to protecting astronauts when re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, have contributed to the additional delays.

Following extensive analysis, NASA says it has determined that the Orion capsule’s heat shield “did not allow for enough of the gases generated inside a material called Avcoat to escape,” causing some of it to unexpectedly crack and break off during the Artemis I mission, instead of wearing away gradually as it heats up. Despite the charring, temperature sensors indicated the interior of the Orion capsule remained comfortable and safe for astronauts.

For Artemis II, NASA engineers have decided the capsule “can keep the crew safe during the planned mission with changes to Orion’s trajectory as it enters Earth’s atmosphere” and are preparing the capsule using the heat shield already attached. “The updates to our mission plans are a positive step toward ensuring we can safely accomplish our objectives at the Moon and develop the technologies and capabilities needed for crewed Mars missions,” said Catherine Koerner, associate administrator Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

However, for the more ambitious Artemis III mission, the agency says it is “implementing enhancements to how heat shields for crewed returns from lunar landing missions are manufactured” based on what it learned from Artemis I.

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Spotify suddenly cut off app developers from a bunch of its data

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Spotify pulled the rug out from developers last week, announcing sudden changes to its API policies just before Thanksgiving that cut new apps and apps in development off from access to the platform’s data.

As of November 27th, the day Spotify revealed the changes, new “Web API use cases” will lose access to certain kinds of music data, according to the announcement. The data includes the ability to access Spotify’s catalog information about related artists and Spotify’s algorithmic and editorially-curated playlists. This change affects apps that are in development mode, meaning they’re under construction or used by up to 25 people, and new apps registered on or after the day of the announcement.

If you already have an app that’s widely available, it appears that your app can still access the affected endpoints as it could before. But for developers who have been working on an app or building one for more limited use, this is a major and disheartening change.

“Without warning and on a major holiday, Spotify cut access to a bunch of very useful API endpoints”

“Basically, without warning and on a major holiday, Spotify cut access to a bunch of very useful API endpoints that they’d been providing for years,” Faisal Alquaddoomi, who had been working on an app to visualize music on a DIY LED display, tells The Verge. Alquaddoomi wasn’t aware of the changes until seeing the blog post and says that Spotify didn’t send a proactive notification.

Douglas Adams, a software engineer (who is not the famous author), uses Spotify’s APIs to “measure the therapeutic impact of music on patients undergoing life saving treatments” as part of a project he’s working on with UCLA. He says the APIs are “critical” to the study and that he had to work through the holiday weekend to mitigate the impact of the changes on the project. “The alternative is not a straight-forward replacement and will take weeks of work to approach the capability I had before Spotify’s change,” Adams says.

Broken Holiday, a lo-fi producer, has been working on an app for artists to manage multiple playlists using automation. But with the API changes, the app can’t see what’s on a given playlist, Broken Holiday says.

Spotify has vaguely attributed the need for the API changes to improving security:

• In its blog post, Spotify says that it rolled out the changes with “the aim of creating a more secure platform.”
• In a community forum post, a Spotify employee says that “we want to reiterate the main message from the blog that we’re committed to providing a safe and secure environment for all Spotify stakeholders.” The post has many pages of replies from frustrated developers.
• In a statement to The Verge, Spotify spokesperson Brittney Le Roy says that “as part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges that many companies navigate today, we’re making changes to our public APIs.”

The company hasn’t explained why it changed its policies so suddenly and with no warning. But like with Strava’s recently-announced API changes that restrict data sharing to other apps and Reddit’s API pricing changes that sparked protests last year, Spotify’s API changes are yet another reminder of the tenuousness of building apps for other platforms.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s early access period won’t include full ray tracing

Image: Bethesda Softworks

If you pay the premium to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle early on PC, the game won’t initially include full ray tracing. The game’s early access period for Premium Edition and Collector’s Edition buyers launches at 7PM ET today, but full ray tracing won’t be added until December 9th, when the game launches for everyone else.

“Following the release of the update, shadows, reflections, and global illumination will all be accurately rendered in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle using Full Ray Tracing, elevating image quality,” Nvidia says in a blog post. And DLSS Ray Reconstruction will be “coming soon,” according to an emailed media alert.

The belated addition of the graphics options could sting for early access buyers, especially given that early access isn’t cheap: the Premium Edition, for example, costs $99.99, a $30 increase over the game’s standard $69.99 price.

The game already has hefty PC specs, including that GPU hardware ray tracing is required even at minimum. Jim Kjellin, the CTO of Great Circle developer MachineGames, gave us a reason for as to why that’s the case:

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle uses a technique called global illumination to light the environment and characters. Our engine MOTOR, used by MachineGames, uses hardware raytracing to calculate this. While this isn’t what players may typically think of as “ray tracing,” the compatible hardware is required to do this is in a performant, high fidelity way.

Great Circle will also be available on Xbox Series X / S, and it’s coming to PS5 in spring 2025.

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OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘ship-mas:’ all the new announcements

Image: The Verge

OpenAI is planning to launch new features, products, and demos for 12 days straight — starting with the full release of its o1 reasoning model.

OpenAI’s 12 days of “ship-mas” have officially begun, with the company set to reveal some new features, products, and demos during all 12 days starting December 5th, just a few days shy of the second anniversary of ChatGPT’s explosive launch in 2022. According to the company, ChatGPT now has over 300 million weekly users.

The event started with the release of its improved OpenAI o1 reasoning model out of preview, along with a new $200 ChatGPT Pro subscription that offers unlimited access to GPT-4o, Advanced Voice Mode, and an exclusive version of o1 that Sam Altman says “can think even harder for the hardest problems.”

Sources tell The Verge that OpenAI will also launch Sora, its text-to-video AI generator. There’s likely a lot more to come, and we’re keeping track of all the announcements from OpenAI.

You can follow along below as we continue to report on all the latest updates.

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James Gunn wants DC Studios to be able to make a little bit of everything

Max / Warner Bros.

Between its reanimated corpses and humanoid animals, HBO’s new Creature Commandos series doesn’t really look or sound anything like Warner Bros.’ other upcoming projects featuring characters from DC’s comics. But DC Studios co-head James Gunn says that’s by design and part of his plan to make the studio a place where any kind of story can be greenlit if it’s got the right script.

While DC Studios has plans for fresh, live-action takes on Batman, Superman, the Green Lanterns, it’s kicking off its latest cinematic universe with Creature Commandos, an animated series about Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) secret squad of monster mercenaries. The show will feature a couple of nifty connections to previous DC shows like Peacemaker and films like The Suicide Squad, but its offbeat characters and TV-MA rating are part of why Gunn (DC Studios’ co-hed alongside Peter Safran) sees it as the start of something new.

In a recent interview with Variety, Gunn described Creature Commandos as a “soft intro” that will waste no time establishing how metahumans, monsters, and magic are all core parts of DC Studios’ interconnected world. It took the old DCEU a while and cost it quite a bit of money to introduce some of its more fantastical heroes and villains in ways that felt organic for the big screen. But Gunn noted that part of the reason he felt so bullish about greenlighting Creature Commandos (which he also wrote) boiled down to the simple fact that, in animation it basically “costs as much to create a battlefield as it does to create a kitchen.”

Gunn also explained that Creature Commandos felt like a good jumping off point because of its ability to convey to audiences that DC Studios isn’t limiting its output to family-friendly fare.

“We can make something that’s for general audiences, like Superman,” Gunn said. “We can make something that’s violent and sexual, like [Creature Commandos] — which I didn’t think was that violent and sexual; Peacemaker is both more violent and more sexual — but I want every project to have its own voice. It isn’t about creating a world in which everything is all sex and violence. It’s about creating a world in which we can tell the story about, you know, one type of character in different genres.”

DC Studios wouldn’t exactly be the first to test that idea out — Marvel’s been trying to pull it off for the past few years with mixed results — but it’s interesting to hear that Gunn intends for it to be central to the studio’s brand. And after Creature Commandos premieres tonight on Max, we’ll have a chance to see how the idea actually plays.

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