Trump’s DOJ broke policy to try to learn journalist’s sources, inspector general alleges

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

The Department of Justice during the Trump administration defied agency policy in an attempt to identify journalists’ sources, the agency’s inspector general alleges in a new report.

The IG alleges the agency sought “non-content communications records” — information like email logs, rather than the content of those conversations — on eight journalists across The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN. The Times had previously reported that Trump’s DOJ was looking into whether former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey had been the source of classified information that leaked in 2017 about Russian hackers.

The report comes just over a month before President-elect Donald Trump is set to resume office following his election win and raises questions about how his administration will handle similar information requests in the future. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attempted to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act by unanimous consent on Tuesday, but was blocked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). If passed, it would help protect reporters from having to reveal their sources.

“In our judgment, the Department’s deviation from its own requirements indicates a troubling disparity”

The IG found that Trump’s DOJ in his first term failed to follow policy in seeking the journalist’s records, including neglecting to convene a committee to review the compulsory records requests. The alleged violation happened just a few years after the department under the Obama administration “overhauled” its policy regarding the news media following backlash over its aggressive tactics toward journalists. “We were troubled that these failures occurred only a few years after this overhaul,” the IG’s office writes.

Trump’s DOJ also sought similar kinds of records from two members of Congress and 43 congressional staffers across the political spectrum, the IG allegedly found, though the department did not have a policy at the time addressing this kind of information gathering.

“In our judgment, the Department’s deviation from its own requirements indicates a troubling disparity between, on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy for the role of the news media in American democracy and, on the other hand, the Department’s commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role,” the IG’s report says.

In a memo from DOJ Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer included in the report, the agency noted that much of the report focuses on matters “undertaken before the Department’s revised News Media and Congressional Investigations policies were put into place that changed the operative requirements.” Still, the DOJ agreed with the core recommendations from the IG, including considering changes to how certain information requests are escalated to more senior officials.

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The iPhone 16 Pro now lets you layer recordings in Voice Memos

Image: Apple

Apple is bringing layered recordings to the Voice Memos app on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. With the new feature, you can record vocals while listening to an instrumental track out loud in iOS 18.2.

Even though the microphone will technically pick up the instrumentals, Apple says the iPhone 16’s A18 Pro chip allows it to isolate vocals with “advanced processing and machine learning,” letting Voice Memos create a separate track with just your voice. From there, you can mix the two layers, as well as edit or listen to them separately.

Apple first announced this feature with the launch of the iPhone 16 Pro in September. On a support page, Apple notes that you can still listen to multitrack recordings on any device with iOS 18.2, but they won’t work with devices running anything earlier. You’ll have to separate the tracks for them to work on a device with an older version of Apple’s operating systems.

The addition of layered recordings should make Voice Memos even more useful to musicians and creators, especially since they sync to Voice Memos on Mac and iPad, letting you drop them into Logic Pro for editing.

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Now you can visit Roku City in 1080p

Image: Roku

Roku City, the purple-tinted cityscape screensaver that debuted in 2018, might look a little sharper and more detailed the next time you see it scrolling by. This week, Roku is increasing the screensaver’s resolution to 1080p; it was still stuck at 720p until now — despite running on millions of 4K Roku TVs and 4K-capable streaming players. That’s blasphemous, if you ask me, so it’s nice to see some progress.

The surprisingly popular, fictional skyline is also being updated with an “expanded color palette” and more activity and Easter eggs that you’ll spot if looking closely. Apparently there’s a train station in there somewhere, so the denizens of Roku City have gained a mass transit system. Billboards “will now feature a new star button that allows viewers to learn about things like original Roku content, Roku Zones, and more.” (If I had to guess, the “more” at the end there is probably referring to ads and sponsored content.)

It took six years for us to reach full HD. So if this cadence stays on track, maybe we’ll all be experiencing Roku City in native 4K by 2030.

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The tundra keeps burning and it’s transforming the Arctic

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge

For millennia, the Arctic tundra has helped stabilize global temperatures by storing carbon in the frozen ground. Wildfires have changed that, according to the latest Arctic Report Card released yesterday at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference.

Fires, intensified by climate change, release carbon trapped in soil and plants. More frequent infernos have now transformed the tundra into a net source of carbon dioxide emissions. It’s a dramatic shift for the Arctic, and one that will make the planet even hotter.

“Climate change is not bringing about a new normal. Instead, climate change is bringing ongoing and rapid change,” Twila Moon, lead editor of the Arctic Report Card and deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said at the conference yesterday.

“Climate change is not bringing about a new normal.”

The Arctic’s permafrost, which stays frozen year-round, has kept planet-heating carbon sequestered for thousands of years. Northern permafrost has been estimated to hold about twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere. Tundra describes the Arctic’s tree-less plains, where shrubs, grasses, and mosses grow and take in carbon dioxide through...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Krispy Kreme got cyberattacked

Image: Krispy Kreme

Krispy Kreme is currently dealing with a cybersecurity breach that has brought down parts of its online donut ordering service in the US. The company has been working to resolve the issue for over a week now after detecting unauthorized access to its systems on November 29th.

In a filing issued to the SEC on Wednesday, Krispy Kreme says it was “notified regarding unauthorized activity on a portion of its information technology systems” and pulled in “leading cybersecurity experts” for remediation.

The event took down Krispy Kreme’s consumer online ordering operations but it has not affected its commercial distribution business. However, the company says there’s “a material impact” on its business operations and that there will be significant financial implications stemming from the incident due to cybersecurity experts’ and advisers’ fees. Otherwise, Krispy Kreme says it has cybersecurity insurance and it does not expect “long-term material impact on its results of operations and financial condition.”

Krispy Kreme did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the cause of the cybersecurity incident. As speculated in a report by Bleeping Computer, the timeline may suggest the company is negotiating with possible threat actors so as not to leak internal data.

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The Vision Pro’s ultrawide Mac display is very close to being a killer app

My favorite dynamic wallpaper floating in the desert. | Screenshot: Mac Virtual Display

Since its release, I’ve mostly used Apple’s Vision Pro like a movie theater. The VR headset is an amazing way to watch Dune — but beyond that, it hasn’t really lived up to its potential as a general-purpose computing device.

Today, that’s finally starting to change. With the update to visionOS 2.2, Apple is seriously upgrading the headset’s ability to work with a Mac. It’s probably the closest thing the Vision Pro has to a killer app.

The Vision Pro has been able to mirror the screen of a Mac since day one, but I found the original Mac Virtual Display feature limiting. Text was sharp at low resolutions, but the screen was cramped. I could get more space at higher resolutions, but the text was too small and blurry to read. Yes, I can blow it up to the size of a bus to make things readable, except then, I’m craning my head around way too much to see everything. My normal three-monitor setup lets me see the most important stuff with slight movements, but that just hasn’t been possible before now.

Screenshot: Mac Virtual Display options

The Vision Pro now has three Mac Virtual Display options.

In visionOS 2.2, the standard Mac display is now curved, and it seems sharper. It’s not Retina-sharp at the highest resolutions, but I no longer have to make it gigantic to get legible text. The default virtual display becomes one of three options — Standard, Wide, and Ultrawide — once your Mac is updated to macOS 15.2, which lets it take over foveated rendering from the Vision Pro. Those two extra modes instantly made the virtual display viable for me, giving me the space I’m accustomed to in my three-monitor life.

You can crank the resolution in Ultrawide all the way up to 10240 x 2880 if you’d like, but the sweet spot for me has been the Wide display’s maximum 6720 x 2880 resolution, which lets me see everything I need to without constantly rotating my Vision Pro-laden head. It ends up feeling more like a real monitor and not some fantasy display that evokes Weird Al Yankovic’s song “Frank’s 2000” TV.”

GIF: Mac Virtual Display in Ultrawide

So much room for activities!

This has made it much easier for me to relocate to another room in my house, or even outside if I wanted. I wouldn’t take it to a coffee shop for a number of reasons (do I leave it behind when I go to the restroom or wear the Vision Pro in there like a maniac?), but I’d absolutely bring it on a work trip. Apple has also made it so that the audio is sent through the headset instead of your computer’s speakers, as it did before.

The widescreen options came in handy recently, when I strained my back in a way that made it painful to sit upright. I hate doing work on a laptop, but reclining in bed with the Vision Pro on was suddenly a real option for me.

There are quirks, though. Switching between the display modes can be sluggish, and your Mac doesn’t always remember what resolution you set, so if you switch from Wide to Ultrawide and back, you might find all your windows piled on top of each other. And the Keyboard Awareness feature, which shows your keyboard even if you have one of Apple’s immersive environments fully turned on, works great with my Magic Keyboard but doesn’t reliably show the mechanical one I prefer.

Still, those are minor issues. The expanded virtual display is a critical upgrade, and if it’s not in killer app territory, it’s at least right next door to it. It still doesn’t help the Vision Pro with its biggest issues, like that our bodies are all different and not everyone will find it comfortable to use for long stretches of time. And it doesn’t make Apple’s headset any less expensive.

But it does help that my Vision Pro is now more than a personal movie theater. Now, it’s a gigantic, high-res curved display with perfect viewing angles, too. That makes the price feel a little closer to right.

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The Verge’s 2024 holiday gift guide for moms

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

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

Read the full story at The Verge.

Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are down

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

A bunch of Meta apps are down right now. For many staffers at The Verge, apps like Facebook and Instagram haven’t been loading or, when they do, show older posts. Threads seems to be recovering, though it sometimes is loading slowly for me.

“We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps,” Meta says on X. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”

“We know there’s a technical issue impacting some people’s ability to access Instagram,” Instagram says on X. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience.”

Hi, we know there’s a technical issue impacting some people’s ability to access Instagram.

We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and are sorry for any inconvenience.#instagramdown

— Instagram (@instagram) December 11, 2024

Downdetector is showing big and sudden spikes for Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, indicating a lot of people have been affected by the outages. The Instagram Downdetector page, for example, shows a peak of more than 70,000 reports of issues with the platform. The Facebook peak exceeded 100,000.

This big outage follows another large Meta outage from March that took down Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta also saw a major outage affecting Instagram and Facebook in October 2022.

Update, December 11th : Added Meta and Instagram comments.

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Homey adds new energy management features and a dongle

The Homey smart home platform, which works with the Homey Pro or Homey Bridge hubs, has launched a Home Energy Dongle and energy management tab for its app.

Smart home company Homey has added a new energy management tab to its app to track and monitor energy use from compatible smart devices such as plugs, appliances, thermostats, and EV chargers. This week, the company also announced the Homey Energy Dongle for Europe, which can connect directly to a smart meter to monitor a home’s energy consumption.

Together, the software and hardware are a big step toward a full home energy management system. Homey says it plans to bring support for automatic dynamic energy pricing next year, so users could set up automations to do things like charge their EV when electricity prices are low.

The new energy management tab is available in public beta to all Homey Pro and Homey Cloud customers, and the dongle can be preordered for €39 if you’re in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Austria, Switzerland, and Hungary, with shipping expected in March 2025.

Image: Homey

The Homey Energy Dongle works with European smart meters and uses the P1 standard to monitor electricity and gas usage.

Homey is a smart home platform centered around a smart home hub, either the powerful, locally based Homey Pro ($399) or the lighter Homey Bridge ($69). Depending on which hub you have, Homey can connect to and control a wide range of smart home devices thanks to radios for Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Thread, IR, and more; there’s also the option of cloud-based connections and compatibility with other bridges, such as Philips Hue. Homey also supports the Matter smart home standard.

“The Energy Management functionality works with all devices connected to a Homey setup, no matter if they use a proprietary local/cloud API, Zigbee, Z-Wave or Matter to connect to Homey,” explained Homey commercial director Stefan Witkamp in an email to The Verge. A full list of currently compatible devices is on Homey’s website.

Image: Homey

The new energy management tab in Homey can track energy usage across connected devices in your home.

The energy tab uses charts to show a home’s live electricity, gas, and water usage (with compatible hardware) and can provide historical data. Homey says it “can also track solar generation, monitor EV charging, and show energy supply to, or consumption from, the grid.” It’s compatible with smart batteries and can show a list of your top energy consumers, helpful for figuring out where to cut down on usage. You can enter your energy price to get cost estimates, and Homey says it plans to add support for dynamic pricing next year.

LG acquired Homey earlier this year and has said it plans to incorporate Homey’s connectivity and software into its ThinQ platform. However, Homey will continue to operate independently. While LG plans to integrate its appliances with Homey, official support is still on the roadmap, says Witkamp.

Energy management is set to play a key part in the smart home as a compelling reason to connect all your devices. Allowing a system to automate energy use in your home could save you energy and money. Several smart home companies already offer some functionality here. Samsung’s SmartThings Energy platform, which works with its appliances and several partner devices, was the first platform to be recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency as an Energy STAR Smart Home Energy Management System. Others, such as Home Assistant, offer some energy management features, and Apple introduced an electricity usage page to its Home app this year (although it’s limited to PG&E customers).

The new Matter smart home standard just added energy management to its spec along with support for several key devices in the space — electrical vehicle supply equipment, solar panel inverters, home batteries, and more. All of this shows significant momentum in home energy management, and Homey’s latest move is another option for people looking to use smart home tech to maximize the efficiency of their energy use and minimize their costs.

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Microsoft starts testing iPhone file sharing for Windows PCs

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft has started testing some improvements to its Phone Link app for iPhone users. Windows Insiders can now try out a new way to share a file from an iPhone to a PC and vice versa, making the experience a little more like file sharing with an Android device.

Windows Insiders can download the latest Phone Link app update, version 1.24112.89.0 or higher, and it will include a new setup dialog to enable sharing files between iPhones and PCs. The sharing works by using the share sheet on iOS to send files to the “Link to Windows” app, which then lets you select a Windows device to share the file with.

On a Windows PC you can also share local files by right clicking on a file and selecting share and then “my phone” to get a file from your PC to your iPhone.

Image: Microsoft

The new file sharing dialog for iPhone users.

Microsoft has been gradually improving its Phone Link app for both iOS and Android in recent years, but the iOS version is still very limited thanks to Apple’s OS restrictions. Last year Microsoft did manage to update Phone Link with the ability to send and receive messages via iMessage. Even this integration is limited though, only supporting sending and receiving messages to single contacts and not groups (via iMessage).

You still can’t use the Phone Link app to mirror phone apps onto your PC like you can with Android, and you have to have the app open for messages to be sent over iMessage as Microsoft is using a Bluetooth and system notifications workaround to read send messages.

The latest file sharing update is live now for Windows Insiders and should start rolling out to all Phone Link users in the coming months.

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Xbox tests streaming your Xbox games to your Xbox

Image: The Verge

Microsoft is going to let Xbox Insiders who also subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate test the ability to stream some Xbox games they already own to their Xbox starting today. The feature could be useful if you want to jump into a game without having to install the whole thing; given how big game file sizes can be nowadays, streaming a game via the cloud might be a faster way to play or save you from hitting a data cap.

Microsoft has published a list of games that support the feature on its website. There are some great games on the list, including Animal Well, Balatro, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Price of Persia: The Lost Crown.

You’ll be able to stream games on Xbox Series X / S and Xbox One consoles, Microsoft says, and the feature is set to come out of testing next year. The company started letting Xbox players stream select games they own on TVs and browsers last month.

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Nvidia must face lawsuit alleging it downplayed crypto’s impact on its success

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

Nvidia must face an investor lawsuit claiming it misled shareholders about the impact of the cryptocurrency market on its sales after the Supreme Court dismissed the company’s appeal.

The court said it had “improvidently granted” Nvidia’s petition, meaning it decided it shouldn’t have taken it up in the first place. That means the case will have to continue on in the lower courts. During oral arguments last month, some justices seemed skeptical about whether it was appropriate for them to weigh in on the case, wondering if it was more of a dispute over facts than a legal question, according to Reuters.

The case stems from a pair of 2018 investor lawsuits claiming Nvidia recklessly misled investors about how closely tied its revenue growth was to cryptocurrency performance. Investors alleged that Nvidia and its top executives made materially false claims downplaying the impact of the volatile cryptocurrency market on its revenue growth, and exaggerating its ability to adapt its changes. An appeals court had allowed at least a portion of the consolidated case to move forward.

In a separate case in 2022, Nvidia settled charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $5.5 million over claims it obscured how its success was linked to the volatile cryptocurrency market. The company did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Nvidia is facing increased legal scrutiny alongside its business success. The company is reportedly facing antitrust investigations from both Chinese authorities and the US Department of Justice.

“We would have preferred a decision on the merits affirming the trial court’s dismissal of the case, but we are fully prepared to continue our defense,” Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo says in a statement. “Consistent and predictable standards in securities litigation are essential to protecting shareholders and ensuring a strong economy, and we remain committed to supporting them.”

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Microsoft wants to make the Xbox app the home of PC gaming

Image: The Verge

Microsoft is updating the Xbox app on Windows today with hundreds of PC games that weren’t previously available and a new home experience. It’s part of a broader effort to make the Xbox app the place to find PC games, regardless of whether they’re part of PC Game Pass or not.

“Earlier this summer, we began working with partners to bring all PC games with Xbox features into the Xbox app,” explains Chris Charla, general manager of content curation and programs at Xbox. “We’re super excited to see what Xbox games come to Windows PC from game creators in the future and to welcome nearly 400 titles that previously weren’t discoverable or purchasable in the Xbox app.”

Image: Microsoft

The new Xbox app homescreen.

The 400 new games include titles from Japanese studios like Kemco and Kairosoft, alongside games like The Invincible by Double 11. More than 100 of these new titles are also Xbox Play Anywhere, so if you buy the Xbox console version then you can play the Xbox PC version too. “Universal Xbox ownership, as well as universal cloud saves on Xbox, and cross-play between Xbox versions on console and PC (and other platforms, at the developer’s discretion) are awesome features players love,” says Charla.

What’s not immediately clear from Microsoft’s blog post is exactly what “bring all PC games with Xbox features into the Xbox app,” means. Microsoft has been trying to tempt game developers over to its Windows-based store in recent years, even lowing its cut from 30 percent to just 12 percent to try and shake up PC gaming.

Despite these efforts, there are plenty of PC games that have cross-play between the Xbox and PC version of the game but aren’t part of the Microsoft Store currently or the Xbox app. Microsoft now appears to be working to bring even more of these games into the Xbox app, and it will be interesting to see whether the company makes the bold move of listing Steam, Epic Games Store, or itch.io games in the Xbox app soon, too. Microsoft says it will have more to share about its Xbox app plans at the game developers conference in March.

Microsoft is also rolling out a new home UI for the Xbox app on Windows today. The home UI now includes featured content from PC Game Pass and the Microsoft Store, alongside collections of deals and discounts. Microsoft has also added a “jump back in” section that lets you quickly get back into recent games just like you can on an Xbox console.

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The PS5 disc drive is back in stock, but only for GameStop Pro members

We never thought such a simple attachment would be so difficult to come by. | Image: Sony

Sony’s detachable disc drive for the PlayStation 5 has been hard to come by as of late, and it’s disappointing that the $700 PS5 Pro doesn’t include one. However, GameStop is now offering a rare window for GameStop Pro members to pick one up for its original MSRP of $79.99.

GameStop’s loyalty program costs $25 a year, so you can consider that an added premium if you’re not interested in its other benefits. Those include a $5 welcome reward, two percent cash back rewards, free shipping, exclusive deals and discounts, and an extra $5 monthly reward.

Whether you already own or anticipate purchasing a digital-only PS5, such as the newest Digital Edition or recently released PS5 Pro, it’s a good idea to pick one up while you have the chance. Neither console requires the disc drive, but with no future guarantee that your favorite games will be available for download after the console generation runs its course, it offers nice peace of mind. The add-on also ensures that physical media preservationists can continue using physical game copies, although you may still have to download extra data to play many of them. It also allows you to play your entire Blu-Ray and DVD collection.

What’s neat about the PS5’s Disc Drive is that it hides away under a cover that makes it look like a seamless piece of the overall hardware. Setup is easy, too, and only requires connecting a cable before pairing it to your console. You’ll need an internet connection for the initial setup, but that’s a small inconvenience to gain the long-term benefit.

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Watching sports: a special series from The Verge

It should be simple to stream live TV at home.

But depending on the sport, you might be signing up (and paying handsomely) for a lot of different services just to keep up.

There are the rare leagues, like Major League Soccer, that can be watched on a single channel. (In the US, every match can be viewed live on Apple TV Plus.) But keeping up with most sports resembles, say, tennis, where the rights for its four major tournaments are scattered across several different platforms.

And in general, as the large streaming platforms go toe-to-toe with the legacy broadcast companies transitioning to digital, the much-sought-after rights have positioned leagues to make a lot of money. The adverse effect for viewers is that many professional sports are now available “exclusively” in many different places.

Basically, watching sports has never been easier. And it’s also never been harder.

The high cost of NFL streaming options

In the US, you can stream the majority of live NFL games through Sunday Ticket, a full season of which costs $349, plus you’ll need to be subscribed to YouTube TV at $72.99 a month. For six months of football ($437.94), from week one to Super Bowl Sunday, that brings...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a soulless return to Middle-earth

Image: Warner Bros. Animation

Director Kenji Kamiyama’s new Lord of the Rings anime film feels like what happens when you try to turn a footnote into a feature-length story.

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars was blocked by a judge

Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images

The Onion’s acquisition of InfoWars isn’t happening — at least for now. In a ruling on Tuesday, a Texas bankruptcy judge rejected The Onion’s purchase of the conspiracy-ridden website founded by Alex Jones, according to a report from The New York Times.

Last month, The Onion announced that it had purchased InfoWars during a bankruptcy auction of Jones’ assets. It had the support of the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, who successfully sued Jones for more than $1 billion for spreading false claims. However, Judge Christopher Lopez halted the sale shortly after the auction.

As reported by The Times, Lopez disagreed with the sealed bidding process used to sell Jones’ assets, saying that the auction didn’t “maximize” the amount of money Jones’ creditors could’ve gotten from the sale of InfoWars. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said when handing down his decision, according to The Times. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding.”

A statement from The Onion about InfoWars.

— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) 2024-12-11T05:14:01.469Z

The Onion bid $7 million to acquire InfoWars, which included $1.75 million from its parent company Global Tetrahedron, while the remainder would come from money Sandy Hook families won from their lawsuit against Jones, The Times reports. Despite this roadblock, Global Tetrahedron still intends to pursue an acquisition of InfoWars, with the goal of replacing the site with “a relentless barrage of humor for good.”

“We are deeply disappointed in today’s decision but The Onion will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured,” The Onion CEO Ben Collins said in a post on Bluesky. “We will also continue to seek a path toward purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks.”

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Apple Watch Series 10’s record low price from Black Friday is back

The Series 10 has the biggest display of any non-Ultra Apple Watch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you happened to miss out on the **Apple Watch Series 10’**s all-time low Black Friday price, now is a good chance for redemption. The 42mm GPS model of Apple’s latest smartwatch has dropped to $329.99 (about $70 off) at Amazon when you click a coupon. The 46mm GPS Series 10 is also on sale for $359.99 ($70 off) at Amazon with a coupon and matching its lowest price.

The Apple Watch Series 10 would be a great jump from older models if your last upgrade happened more than a few cycles ago, and certainly a viable alternative to the Watch Ultra 2 if you’re not interested in spending $800. Compared to the Series 9, it offers a slightly bigger wide-angle OLED display while being about 10 percent thinner and a touch lighter. It also has faster wireless charging than any Apple Watch before it (up to 80 percent in 30 minutes or eight hours of use from 15 minutes of charging). New to the Apple Watch lineup as of the Series 10 are underwater depth and water temperature sensors for tracking your aquatic activities. You can also play music over its speaker and enjoy clearer calls thanks to a voice isolation feature.

Everything else will mostly feel familiar if you’re coming from a Series 9, including the new FDA-approved sleep apnea feature that debuted late into its launch. We haven’t had enough time to judge its effectiveness, but note that it uses the accelerometer instead of the blood oxygen sensors Apple was forced to remove from its watches in the US.

A few more mid-week deals

• Looking for a different aesthetic to drive the point home in a PC gaming setup? The 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard can certainly do the trick. You can get the NES-inspired design with a matching joystick and dual oversized super buttons for $84.99 ($15 off) at Best Buy. The tenkeyless wireless board works over Bluetooth or 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, or via USB-C. It’s nice to look at and type on with its Kailh White switches and PBT-capped keys, but the package offers nice versatility for playing retro games. You can even reconfigure every button on the keyboard and customize the super buttons with any macro you want.
• The Sonos Ace are very good noise-cancelling headphones on their own merit, but they’re especially intriguing for an all-time low $349 ($100), a deal Amazon, Best Buy, and Sonos are repeating from Black Friday. They look and sound the part for a premium pair of headphones, with great comfort, good audio quality, and solid ANC performance. Unfortunately, the Ace doesn’t fully blend into the wider Sonos ecosystem right now. The unique TV Audio Swap feature is iOS-only and not fully compatible across its full range of soundbars or any other Sonos speaker, for example. That said, they’re worthy of consideration at this price if you’re into the brand. Read our review.
• You can get the Anker PowerCore 548 Power Bank for $79.99 ($70 off) at Amazon with a coupon, which is an all-time low price. It offers two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports with up to 87W charging speeds available between them. The 192Wh (60,000mAh) capacity is enough to charge laptops, tablets, and smartphones several times over. It has an integrated retractable LED lamp with adjustable brightness and an SOS mode, which turns the light on automatically during a blackout while plugged in. It also has a carrying handle and solar inputs, making it ideal for both in-home and outdoor needs.

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Google’s AI enters its ‘agentic era’

Image: Google

I stepped into a room lined with bookshelves, stacked with ordinary programming and architecture texts. One shelf stood slightly askew, and behind it was a hidden room that had three TVs displaying famous artworks: Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon, and Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. “There’s some interesting pieces of art here,” said Bibo Xu, Google DeepMind’s lead product manager for Project Astra. “Is there one in particular that you would want to talk about?”

Project Astra, Google’s prototype AI “universal agent,” responded smoothly. “The Sunday Afternoon artwork was discussed previously,” it replied. “Was there a particular detail about it you wish to discuss, or were you interested in discussing The Scream?”

I was at Google’s sprawling Mountain View campus, seeing the latest projects from its AI lab DeepMind. One was Project Astra, a virtual assistant first demoed at Google I/O earlier this year. Currently contained in an app, it can process text, images, video, and audio in real time and respond to questions about them. It’s like a Siri or Alexa that’s slightly more natural to talk to, can see the world around you, and can “remember”...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google built an AI tool that can do research for you

Illustration: The Verge

Google has just revealed a new AI tool called Deep Research that lets you call upon its Gemini bot to scour the web for you and write a detailed report based on its findings.

Deep Research is currently only available in English to Gemini Advanced subscribers. If you have access, you can ask Gemini to research a particular topic on your behalf, and the chatbot will create a “multi-step research plan” that you can either edit or approve. Google says Gemini will start its research by “finding interesting pieces of information” on the web and then performing related searches — a process it repeats several times.

GIF: Google

When it’s finished, Gemini will spit out a report of its “key findings” with links to the websites where it found its information. You can ask Gemini to expand on certain areas or tweak its report, as well as export the AI-generated research to Google Docs. This all sounds a bit similar to the Pages feature offered by the AI search engine Perplexity, which generates a custom webpage based on your prompt.

Google took the wraps off Deep Research as part of a broader announcement for Gemini 2.0, its new model for an era of “agentic” AI, or the AI systems that can perform tasks for you. Deep Research is just one example of Google’s agentic push, and it’s something other AI companies are seriously exploring as well.

Along with Deep Research, Google announced that it’s making Gemini Flash 2.0 — a speedier version of the next-gen chatbot — available to developers. Deep Research is currently only available for Gemini Advanced subscribers on the web. You can try it by heading to Gemini and then changing the model dropdown to “Gemini 1.5 Pro with Deep Research.”

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Google is testing Gemini AI agents that help you in video games

Clash of Clans. | Image: Supercell

Google just announced Gemini 2.0, and as part of its suite of news today, the company is revealing that it’s been exploring how AI agents built with Gemini 2.0 can understand rules in video games to help you out.

The agents can “reason about the game based solely on the action on the screen, and offer up suggestions for what to do next in real time conversation,” Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu write in a blog post. Hassabis and Kavukcuoglu also say that the agents can also “tap into Google Search to connect you with the wealth of gaming knowledge on the web.”

Google is testing the agents’ “ability to interpret rules and challenges” in games like Clash of Clans and Hay Day from Supercell_,_ according to Hassabis and Kavukcuoglu.

I’m not surprised Google is chasing these ideas: in theory, an AI agent coaching you through a strategy or puzzle could be useful. It sounds like this work is very early, though, and I have many questions about whether or not these agents actually give sound advice.

Google is also investing in video games and AI in another way: creating playable virtual worlds on the fly from a prompt image using a “foundation world model” called Genie 2 that it showed off last week. That work seems early, too: Genie 2 can only generate consistent worlds for “up to a minute,” Google says.

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It sure sounds like Google is planning to actually launch some smart glasses

Here’s what Google’s latest smart glasses prototype looks like. | Image: Google

Google is working on a lot of AI stuff — like, a lot of AI stuff — but if you want to really understand the company’s vision for virtual assistants, take a look at Project Astra. Google first showed a demo of its all-encompassing, multimodal virtual assistant at Google I/O this spring and clearly imagines Astra as an always-on helper in your life. In reality, the tech is somewhere between “neat concept video” and “early prototype,” but it represents the most ambitious version of Google’s AI work.

And there’s one thing that keeps popping up in Astra demos: glasses. Google has been working on smart facewear of one kind or another for years, from Glass to Cardboard to the Project Iris translator glasses it showed off two years ago. Earlier this year, all Google spokesperson Jane Park would tell us was that the glasses were “a functional research prototype.”

Now, they appear to be something at least a little more than that. During a press briefing ahead of the launch of Gemini 2.0, Bibo Xu, a product manager on the Google DeepMind team, said that “a small group will be testing Project Astra on prototype glasses, which we believe is one of the most powerful and intuitive form factors to experience this kind of AI.” That group will be part of Google’s Trusted Tester program, which often gets access to these early prototypes, many of which don’t ever ship publicly. Some testers will use Astra on an Android phone; others through the glasses.

Later in the briefing, in response to a question about the glasses, Xu said that “for the glasses product itself, we’ll have more news coming shortly.” Is that definitive proof that Google Smart Glasses are coming to a store near you sometime soon? Of course not! But it certainly indicates that Google has some hardware plans for Project Astra.

Smart glasses make perfect sense for what Google is trying to do with Astra. There’s simply no better way to combine audio, video, and a display than on a device on your face — especially if you’re hoping for something like an always-on experience. In a new video showing Astra’s capabilities with Gemini 2.0, a tester uses Astra to remember security codes at an apartment building, check the weather, and much more. At one point, he sees a bus flying past and asks Astra if “that bus will take me anywhere near Chinatown.” It’s all the sort of thing you can do with a phone, but nearly all of it feels far more natural through a wearable.

Right now, smart glasses like these — and like Meta’s Orion — are mostly vaporware. When they’ll ship, whether they’ll ship, and whether they’ll be any good all remains up in the air. But Google is dead serious about making smart glasses work. And seems to be just as serious about making the smart glasses itself.

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Google launched Gemini 2.0, its new AI model for practically everything

Illustration: The Verge

Google’s latest AI model has a lot of work to do. Like every other company in the AI race, Google is frantically building AI into practically every product it owns, trying to build products other developers want to use, and racing to set up all the infrastructure to make those things possible without being so expensive it runs the company out of business. Meanwhile, Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI are pouring their own billions into pretty much the exact same set of problems.

That may explain why Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind and the head of all the company’s AI efforts, is so excited about how all-encompassing the new Gemini 2.0 model is. Google is releasing Gemini 2.0 on Wednesday, about 10 months after the company first launched 1.5. It’s still in what Google calls an “experimental preview,” and only one version of the model — the smaller, lower-end 2.0 Flash — is being released. But Hassabis says it’s still a big day.

“Effectively,” Hassabis says, “it’s as good as the current Pro model is. So you can think of it as one whole tier better, for the same cost efficiency and performance efficiency and speed. We’re really happy with that.” And not only is it better at doing the old things Gemini could do but it can also do new things. Gemini 2.0 can now natively generate audio and images, and it brings new multimodal capabilities that Hassabis says lay the groundwork for the next big thing in AI: agents.

Agentic AI, as everyone calls it, refers to AI bots that can actually go off and accomplish things on your behalf. Google has been demoing one, Project Astra, since this spring — it’s a visual system that can identify objects, help you navigate the world, and tell you where you left your glasses. Gemini 2.0 represents a huge improvement for Astra, Hassabis says.

Google is also launching Project Mariner, an experimental new Chrome extension that can quite literally use your web browser for you. There’s also Jules, an agent specifically for helping developers find and fix bad code, and a new Gemini 2.0-based agent that can look at your screen and help you better play video games. Hassabis calls the game agent “an Easter egg” but also points to it as the sort of thing a truly multimodal, built-in model can do for you.

“We really see 2025 as the true start of the agent-based era,” Hassabis says, “and Gemini 2.0 is the foundation of that.” He’s careful to note that the performance isn’t the only upgrade here; as talk of an industrywide slowdown in model improvements continues, he says Google is still seeing gains as it trains new models, but he’s just as excited about the efficiency and speed improvements.

Google’s plan for Gemini 2.0 is to use it absolutely everywhere

This won’t shock you, but Google’s plan for Gemini 2.0 is to use it absolutely everywhere. It will power AI Overviews in Google Search, which Google says now reach 1 billion people and which the company says will now be more nuanced and complex thanks to Gemini 2.0. It’ll be in the Gemini bot and app, of course, and will eventually power the AI features in Workspace and elsewhere at Google. Google has worked to bring as many features as possible into the model itself, rather than run a bunch of individual and siloed products, in order to be able to do more with Gemini in more places. The multimodality, the different kinds of outputs, the features — the goal is to get all of it into the foundational Gemini model. “We’re trying to build the most general model possible,” Hassabis says.

As the agentic era of AI begins, Hassabis says there are both new and old problems to solve. The old ones are eternal, about performance and efficiency and inference cost. The new ones are in many ways unknown. Just to name one: what safety risks will these agents pose out in the world operating of their own accord? Google is taking some precautions with Mariner and Astra, but Hassabis says there’s more research to be done. “We’re going to need new safety solutions,” he says, “like testing in hardened sandboxes. I think that’s going to be quite important for testing agents, rather than out in the wild… they’ll be more useful, but there will also be more risks.”

Gemini 2.0 may be in an experimental stage for now, but you can already use it by choosing the new model in the Gemini web app. (No word yet on when you’ll get to try the non-Flash models.) And early next year, Hassabis says, it’s coming for other Gemini platforms, everything else Google makes, and the whole internet.

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Google’s new Jules AI agent will help developers fix buggy code

Illustration: The Verge

Google has announced an experimental AI-powered code agent called “Jules” that can automatically fix coding errors for developers. Jules was introduced today alongside Gemini 2.0, and uses the updated Google AI model to create multi-step plans to address issues, modify multiple files, and prepare pull requests for Python and Javascript coding tasks in GitHub workflows.

Microsoft introduced a similar experience for GitHub Copilot last year that can recognize and explain code, alongside recommending changes and fixing bugs. Jules will compete against Microsoft’s offering, and also against tools like Cursor and even Claude and ChatGPT’s coding abilities. Google’s launch of a coding-focused AI assistant is no surprise — CEO Sundar Pichai said in October that more than a quarter of all new code at the company is now generated by AI.

“Jules handles bug fixes and other time-consuming tasks while you focus on what you actually want to build,” Google says in its blog post. “This effort is part of our long-term goal of building AI agents that are helpful in all domains, including coding.”

Developers have full control to review and adjust the plans created by Jules, before choosing to merge the code it generates into their projects. The announcement doesn’t say that Jules will spot bugs for you, so presumably it needs to be directed to a list of issues that have already been identified to fix. Google also says that Jules is in early development and “may make mistakes,” but internal testing has shown it’s been beneficial for boosting developer productivity and providing real-time updates to help track and manage tasks.

Jules is launching today for a “select group of trusted testers” according to Google, and will be released to other developers in early 2025. Updates about availability and how development is progressing will be available via the Google Labs website.

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Wallace & Gromit studio Aardman is working on a Pokémon project

TCPi / Aardman

Aardman Animation, the studio behind the Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, and Shaun the Sheep, and Chicken Run franchises, is working with The Pokémon Company International on a mysterious new project.

In a surprising turn of events, TCPi and Aardman announced today that they’re teaming up for “a special project” that’s set to be released some time in 2027. In a press release about the collaboration, TCP marketing and media VP Taito Okiura described it as “a dream partnership for Pokémon.” Aardman’s managing director Sean Clarke added that it was both a huge honor and privilege to be tasked with presenting the Pokémon world in a new way.

Pokémon × @aardman
Coming in 2027! pic.twitter.com/DQPbtekKXo

— Pokémon (@Pokemon) December 11, 2024

“Bringing together Pokémon, the world’s biggest entertainment brand, together with our love of craft, character and comedic storytelling feels incredibly exciting,” Clarke said. “Aardman and TPCi share an emphasis on heritage and attention to detail as well as putting our fans and audiences at the heart of what we do, which we know will steer us right as we together create charming, original and new stories for audiences around the world.”

Aside from the projected release year, there aren’t all that many details about what the collaboration is or how we’ll be able to consume it. Clearly, stop-motion claymation will be involved, but what’s less obvious is whether this will end up being a movie, a series, or perhaps a game — which wouldn’t be a first for Aardman. This sort of team-up makes a lot of sense for TCPi after the success of Detective Pikachuand surprise delights like Pokémon Concierge. And the closer we get to 2027, it’s feels like there’s a very strong chance this will be something that has people buzzing.

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Why every company wants a podcast now

Image: The Verge. Photos: Getty

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! I’m David Pierce, editor-at-large of The Verge. As you may have noticed, we’re dropping some extra episodes in the feed this week. You’ll have Nilay back on Friday and for next week, as we run toward the end of the year.

But I’m really excited to be here with you all today because I’m getting to talk about one of my favorite things: podcasts. There’s something strange happening these days in the podcast world — well, actually, there are kind of a lot of things happening. It’s been a wild year.

One thing I’ve noticed recently is the way companies that deal in money have been using podcasts not just as an entertainment medium but also as a weird hybrid of marketing, thought leadership, and networking. It’s something we’ve seen for a few years now with venture capital firms, for example: not only do most of the top-level VC companies have their own podcasts but also people who do podcasts about venture capital end up going into it after meeting and talking to all these folks.

It’s kind of a weird, complicated web that goes both ways, and it’s not getting any less weird or less complicated once you add stuff like crypto and politics to the mix. So I...

Read the full story at The Verge.

We asked our staff for their 2025 predictions

2024 had some stand-out moments in tech: from AI-generated images to TikTok’s near ban, to beigecore, Windows BSOD, the best smart ring of them all, and the list goes on. If you want to see the technology that we just couldn’t ignore, check out our video here.

But now, we’re looking toward 2025, and it’s gearing up to be another eventful year. Will we have an actual fulfilling X replacement? Will more health and wellness features be cleared by the FDA on wearables? Will nothing really change but everything will just get more expensive? While we’re not fortune tellers, we can probably take some educated guesses about what’s to come.

We asked Verge staff for their biggest predictions on trends we could see in 2025. Take a look, and spoiler alert, some are already coming true.

Read the full story at The Verge.

YouTube is a hit on TVs — and is starting to act like it

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube just released some new stats that show how the service is being consumed on televisions, and the numbers are enormous. Watch time on TV for sports content was up 30 percent year over year; viewers watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts on their TVs every month.

This is YouTube we’re talking about, though, so of course the numbers are huge. The living room has been YouTube’s fastest-growing platform for years — Alphabet’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, said on the company’s most recent earnings call that watch time is growing across YouTube “with particular strength in Shorts and in the living room.” Even as YouTube continues to dominate basically all facets of the entertainment business, the arrow on your TV still points up.

The trend hasn’t changed in forever, but YouTube has spent the last couple of years finally doing something about it. It launched a way to sync your phone and your TV, so you can watch a video on the big screen and interact with it on the small one. Earlier this year, the company redesigned the TV interface to make it easier to find comments, links, and channel pages while you’re watching a video. It redesigned those channel...

Read the full story at The Verge.

iOS 18.2 is out now, adding ChatGPT integration and more Apple Intelligence tools

iOS 18.2 is now available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. | Image: Apple

Apple has released iOS 18.2,iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, which add a bunch of new Apple Intelligence features, including Image Playground, Genmoji, and integration with ChatGPT.

With Image Playground, users can generate an image from a prompt or make something based on one of Apple’s suggestions. However, Image Playground seems to opt for cartoony or stylistic photos instead of photorealistic images, which could prevent potential misuse. Image Playground is available as a standalone app, alongside being integrated into Messages, Freeform, and Keynote.

Genmoji allows users to generate their custom emoji images (Emojipedia calls them “emoji-like stickers”) that I think could be a big hit in group chats. The Notes app is also getting an “Image Wand” tool that transforms rough drawings into more detailed images, with preset styles available for animation, illustration, and sketch.

Image: Apple

ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence

The ChatGPT integration, which has been one of the most notable Apple Intelligence features in the works, lets you access the OpenAI tool from Siri or when using Apple’s Writing Tools. Features include a compose tool that generates text based on what the user is already writing about and ChatGPT’s text-to-image generation to insert images directly into the document. You don’t need to have a ChatGPT account to use it, but you are able to log in to your account if you want.

Other new features in iOS 18.2 include Visual Intelligence, the ability to share AirTag locations with a link, daily sudoku puzzles in Apple News Plus, and more. Localized English language support has also been expanded to Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK, with support for additional languages like Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The expanded language support will roll out throughout 2025, with the initial set launching in April at around the same time Apple Intelligence features are scheduled to start rolling out in the EU, according to Apple.

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Trump’s pick for FTC chair promises to go after ‘censorship’ from tech companies

Image: FTC

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Andrew Ferguson to be the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Ferguson will take over for Lina Khan, who has earned praise from Vice President-elect J.D. Vance for her efforts to fight big tech.

“Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country,” Trump says in a post on Truth Social.

According to a document obtained by Punchbowl News’ Ben Brody, Ferguson’s pitch for the job included intentions to “reverse Lina Khan’s anti-business agenda,” “hold big tech accountable and stop censorship,” and “protect freedom of speech and fight wokeness.” The document also said Ferguson would “fight back against the trans agenda.”

Ferguson was first sworn in as an FTC commissioner in April, but Trump says that Ferguson will begin his role as chair on “day one” of his administration.

“At the FTC, we will end Big Tech’s vendetta against competition and free speech,” Ferguson writes in a post on X. “We will make sure that America is the world’s technological leader and the best place for innovators to bring new ideas to life.”

Trump also announced that he is nominating Mark Meador, currently a partner at an antitrust law firm, to be an FTC commissioner.

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