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.

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TCL’s new AI short films range from bad comedy to existential horror

A screenshot from TCL’s The Audition. | Screenshot: TCLtv Plus

Earlier this year, TCL released a trailer for Next Stop Paris — an AI-animated short film that seems like a Lifetime movie on steroids. The trailer had all the hallmarks of AI: characters that don’t move their mouths when they talk, lifeless expressions, and weird animation that makes it look like scenes are constantly vibrating.

I thought this might be the extent of TCL’s experimentation with AI films, given the healthy dose of criticism it received online. But boy, was I wrong. TCL debuted five new AI-generated short films that are also destined for its TCLtv Plus free streaming platform, and after the Next Stop Paris debacle, I just had to see what else it cooked up.

Though the new films do look a little better than Next Stop Paris, they serve as yet another reminder that AI-generated videos aren’t quite there yet, something we’ve seen with many of the video generation tools cropping up, like OpenAI’s Sora. But in TCL’s case, it’s not just the AI that makes these films bad.

Here are all five of them, ranked from tolerable (5) to “I wish I could unsee this” (1).

5. Sun Day

This futuristic short film basically has the same concept as Ray Bradbury’s short story “All Summer in...

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LG’s brilliant B4 OLED TV is on sale with a $50 gift card for its best price ever

You’d be hard-pressed to find an OLED TV for less right now. | Image: LG

One of the best Black Friday deals has returned — and this time, it’s done so with an added perk. Right now, LG’s B4 Series OLED TV is matching its all-time low at Best Buy, where you can pick it up in the 48-inch configuration for $599.99 ($200 off) with a $50 digital gift card. The larger 55-inch panel, meanwhile, is on sale at Best Buy with a $100 digital gift card for $999.99 ($400 off), its best price yet.

Although LG is likely to introduce its 2025 lineup at CES in a few short weeks, the B4 is likely going to remain a bargain, especially at this price. You don’t get the same brightness levels or performance speeds as LG’s flagship C4 or G4 — the B4 lacks the AI-focused a11 processor found in the latter — but it provides all the core benefits you’d expect from an OLED panel. It offers deep blacks and wide viewing angles, along with four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports that are capable of 4K 120Hz gaming, making it a great pick for use with modern consoles like the PS5 or Xbox Series X.

Personally, as the current owner of a 48-inch OLED, I find the smaller size more than big enough for my entertainment needs. It’s not as much of an eyesore in my living room as my previous 65-inch panel, yet I have little trouble watching movies and playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth from my couch. The real question is whether you need all the bells and whistles on LG’s high-end TVs or if an entry-level OLED will suffice.

More weekend deals and discounts

• Twelve South’s quirky Butterfly charger is on sale at Amazon for a cool $103.99 ($26 off), which is the first discount we’ve seen. The travel-friendly 2-in-1 charger consists of two aluminum-clad discs connected via a vegan leather strap, one of which can fast-charge an Apple Watch and another that can supply 15 watts of power to any MagSafe-compatible phone. Moreover, it comes with a 30W power supply, complete with swappable international prongs.
• If you’re not concerned regarding the shipping timeline, Apple’s latest entry-level iPad is matching its all-time low of $249.99 ($100 off) in select colors at Amazon thanks to an on-page coupon (it’s also on sale at Walmart and Best Buy for $279). The 64GB base model isn't as capable as the newer Air or Pro models, but it offers USB-C charging, plenty of power, and enough battery life to burn through The Penguin, the second season of Silo, or whatever else is on your holiday watch list this year. Read our review.
• If you’re a bike commuter, investing in a proper tail light this time of the year is a must. Thankfully, the Garmin Varia RTL515 is down to $149.99 ($50 off) at Amazon and Target, matching its best price to date. The bright, IPX7-rated light can be seen from up to a mile away and offers up to 16 hours of battery life in select modes; however, the main attraction is its ability to alert you of rear-approaching vehicles via the Garmin app or a Garmin Edge computer, which is done using a combination of visual, vibration, and tone alerts.

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10 excellent shows and movies from 2024 to stream on Max

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Between The Penguin, Dune: Prophecy, and I Saw the TV Glow, Max has you covered when it comes to last-minute streaming options to get you through the holidays.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google’s counteroffer to the government trying to break it up is unbundling Android apps

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

The Department of Justice’s list of solutions for fixing Google’s illegal antitrust behavior and restoring competition in the search engine market started with forcing the company to sell Chrome, and late Friday night, Google responded with a list of its own (included below).

Instead of breaking off Chrome, Android, or Google Play as the DOJ’s filing considers, Google’s proposed fixes aim at the payments it makes to companies like Apple and Mozilla for exclusive, prioritized placement of its services, its licensing deals with companies that make Android phones, and contracts with wireless carriers. They don’t address a DOJ suggestion about possibly forcing Google to share its valuable search data with other companies to help their products catch up.

According to Google’s lawyers, the ruling pointed to arrangements with Apple and Mozilla for their browsers, the companies that make Android phones, and wireless carriers. Google regulatory VP Lee-Anne Mulholland writes on the company blog, “This was a decision about our search distribution contracts, so our proposed remedies are directed to that.

For three years, its proposal would block Google from signing deals that link licenses for Chrome, Search, and its Android app store, Google Play, with placement or preinstallation of its other apps, including Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini AI assistant.

It would also still allow Google to pay for default search placement in browsers but allow for multiple deals across different platforms or browsing modes and require the ability to revisit the deals at least once a year.

While the company still plans to appeal Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling that said, “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” first, it says it will submit a revised proposal on March 7th, ahead of a two-week trial over the issue in April.

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Josh King’s viral slide-out MagSafe gamepad found a home at OhSnap and looks amazing

Image: Josh King / OhSnap

When 19-year-old Josh King suggested he would single-handedly redefine mobile gaming with his 3D-printed gamepad, drawing a direct line from himself to Steve Jobs, I have to admit I thought it was a bit much!

But it’s no longer just a 3D-printed controller. OhSnap, the company behind the excellent magnetic PopSocket alternatives I showed you in October, is now officially turning his design into the coolest looking gamepad attachment I’ve ever seen for a phone:

It’s no taller or wider than an iPhone, so it should slide into a pocket. It’s got a MagSafe pattern of magnets to attach it to your magnetic ring device. You don’t have to remove it to use your phone like a phone, because the whole gamepad retracts underneath_,_ a little like the slide-out keyboard phones (or PlayStation Phones) of old — and now, it’s mounted on a spring-loaded arm that pops out at the push of a button and also slightly angles your device towards your face.

Video by Josh King / OhSnap

The OhSnap Mcon’s hinge in action.

OhSnap even found room for a pair of Nintendo Switch-esque analog sticks, with drift-resistant Hall effect sensors, and pair of fold-out grips so you can (theoretically) hold it more like a full-size gamepad. The sticks are clickable buttons, and it’s got a full set of shoulder buttons and triggers as well.

Image: OhSnap

An illustration with the grips unfolded.

Two months ago, Retro Game Corps came away impressed with a prototype, and it seems King has been very busy since then. As he explains on YouTube, he initially tried to start his own company around the gamepad, even attracted a few investors, manufactured some boards and was working toward injection molding, before he started running out of money and reached out to OhSnap about a partnership.

Image: OhSnap

It’ll be available in black and white at launch, though King says they’re working on different mix and match colorful parts so you can style it.

Speaking of money, we don’t have any idea how much it’ll cost, particularly at retail — OhSnap is planning to launch a Kickstarter on January 2nd to raise funds. It’s taking signups here for now.

I should be getting my own hands on a prototype next month at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, and I’ll let you know how it feels.

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Pegasus spyware maker NSO Group is liable for attacks on 1,400 WhatsApp users

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

NSO Group, the organization behind the Pegasus spyware, has been found liable in a lawsuit brought by Meta’s WhatsApp over attacks on about 1,400 devices, as reported by The Record.

WhatsApp originally filed the suit in 2019, and investigations have found that Pegasus has been used to hack phones belonging to groups like activists, journalists, and government officials.

NSO Group is liable for charges of violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, violation of the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and breach of contract, according to today’s ruling. A trial will now move forward “only on the issue of damages.” The spyware maker has argued that it isn’t liable because Pegasus was operated by clients investigating crimes and cases of national security but the judge rejected those arguments, which could establish a precedent for other companies in the same business.

“This ruling is a huge win for privacy,” Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, says in a Threads post. “We spent five years presenting our case because we firmly believe that spyware companies could not hide behind immunity or avoid accountability for their unlawful actions. Surveillance companies should be on notice that illegal spying will not be tolerated.”

NSO Group didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

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Qualcomm wins a legal battle over Arm chip licensing

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A federal jury in Delaware determined on Friday that Qualcomm didn’t breach its agreement with Arm through its 2021 acquisition of Nuvia, a startup founded by three former Apple engineers. As reported earlier by Bloomberg and Reuters, the decision stems from a two-year-long legal battle that accused Qualcomm of misusing the chip designs Arm licensed to Nuvia before its acquisition.

Despite delivering a win for Qualcomm, the jury couldn’t determine whether Nuvia breached its agreement with Arm, meaning the case can be tried again. “I don’t think either side had a clear victory or would have had a clear victory if this case is tried again,” US District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika said, according to Reuters.

Qualcomm bought Nuvia for $1.4 billion to bolster the company’s lineup of next-generation chips, like the Snapdragon X chips inside current Copilot Plus laptops. Still, testimony during the trial revealed that Qualcomm's internal documents also showed the company projected it could save as much as $1.4 billion every year on payments to Arm.

Split decision

In 2022, Arm ignited a legal battle after Qualcomm continued to pay its existing royalty fees to Arm, which were allegedly much lower than what Nuvia was paying. After the two failed to come to an agreement, Arm argued the designs licensed to Nuvia were no longer valid, and that Qualcomm should destroy the technology created with them.

During an interview on Decoder this week, Arm CEO Rene Haas couldn’t share much about the trial, but said, “The principles as to why we filed the claim are unchanged.”

The jury ultimately sided with Qualcomm after viewing Arm’s internal documents that estimate Arm could’ve lost $50 million in revenue as a result of Nuvia’s acquisition, according to Reuters. This week, Nuvia co-founder Gerard Williams also testified that the startup only used “one percent or less” of Arm technology in its finished technology, Reuters reported.

“The jury has vindicated Qualcomm’s right to innovate and affirmed that all the Qualcomm products at issue in the case are protected by Qualcomm’s contract with ARM,” Ann Chaplin, Qualcomm’s general counsel and corporate secretary, said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “We will continue to develop performance-leading, world class products that benefit consumers worldwide, with our incredible Oryon ARM-compliant custom CPUs.”

The Verge reached out to Arm with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

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The best Xbox controller to buy right now

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

From basic and affordable to premium and ultra-customizable, these are the best controllers we’ve tested for Xbox. And they work with PCs, too.

Read the full story at The Verge.

US reveals charges against alleged LockBit ransomware developer

Illustration: Beatrice Sala

The US government has charged a dual Russian and Israeli national with allegedly building and maintaining LockBit’s malware code, while receiving over $230,000 in cryptocurrency for his work. The 51-year-old Rostislav Panev was arrested in Israel pending extradition to the US, making him the third member of the LockBit ransomware group in custody.

Authorities previously arrested other alleged members of the LockBit group, including Mikhail Vasiliev and Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov, both of whom have pleaded guilty to various charges, including conspiracy to commit computer fraud.

Authorities are still searching for Lockbit’s alleged ringleader, Dmitry Khoroshev, with a reward worth up to $10 million. The DOJ claimed in May that “Khoroshev alone allegedly received at least $100 million in disbursements of digital currency through his developer shares of LockBit ransom payments,” based on a 20 percent share of ransom payments extorted by affiliates who used the group’s software.

As outlined in the complaint, Panev is accused of working as a developer for LockBit since the group first formed in 2019, helping to wage ransomware attacks on hundreds of entities around the globe, including hospitals, businesses, government agencies, and more.

Law enforcement linked Panev to LockBit after finding login credentials on his computer for a dark web repository housing “multiple versions of the LockBit builder,” which is the tool that allowed members “to generate custom builds of the LockBit ransomware malware for particular victims.”

Panev allegedly admitted to writing and maintaining LockBit’s malware code in interviews with the Israeli police. Some of the code he’s said to have created can disable Windows Defender antivirus software, run malware on multiple computers on a network, and print LockBit’s ransom note on all the printers in a victim’s network. Panev claimed he didn’t realize he was involved in illegal activity at first, according to the complaint.

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Here are the shipping and return policies for all the big-name retailers

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

As people scramble for last-minute gifts and late-year bargains, everyone is double-checking their lists and figuring out the fastest way to get their purchases. Thankfully, many retailers are offering generous shipping policies for their products, with some offering free two-day shipping or even same-day delivery if you pay extra. And just in case the gift you choose isn’t quite right, many retailers are also offering extended return policies so your giftee can get something more to their liking.

For your convenience, we’ve collected the current holiday shipping cutoff windows for items that can still arrive by Christmas. We’ve also checked the latest return policies for several major retailers below, highlighting which will give you a little more time to place that order or start a return. Hopefully, knowing more about how much leeway you have will help lessen that inevitable holiday angst (fingers crossed).

Amazon

Shipping: Same-day delivery is not available on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. However, Prime members can get free same-day delivery on select products in qualifying ZIP codes through December 24th, provided they meet the “minimum threshold” (which varies by location) of eligible items in their cart. One-Day Delivery with no minimum purchase amount required is also available to Prime members for qualifying products through December 23rd, while Two-Day Delivery is available through December 22nd. Non-Prime buyers will find shipping options on the order page of each specific product.

Returns: During the holidays, most items purchased between November 1st and December 31st can be returned until January 31st, 2025. Apple products, however, must be returned by January 15th, 2025. Note that this policy applies to both Prime and non-Prime buyers.

Apple Store Beijing

Apple

Shipping: Apple offers free delivery of in-stock items by Christmas Eve if you order by 9PM ET on December 21st, though engraved items won’t ship in time by Christmas. Apple also offers two-hour delivery for an added fee from local stores in most metro areas, or you can opt to pick up purchases yourself by visiting your local Apple Store.

Returns: Except for T-Mobile- and Verizon-financed iPhones, all products purchased online between November 8th and December 25th can be returned through January 8th, 2025. Purchases made after December 25th are subject to the usual terms and conditions, and must be returned within 14 calendar days of your initial purchase date.

Target

Shipping: Target offers free two-day shipping on many orders if you spend $35 or more or use your Target RedCard. Select purchases made by December 23rd at 1PM ET will arrive before Christmas. You may also be able to take advantage of same-day shipping or in-store pickup on December 24th. Same-day delivery costs $9.99 per order, but it’s included with a Target Circle 360 membership ($10.99 a month or $99 a year). Your mileage may vary for same-day delivery availability based on the item and your location.

Returns: Target allows electronics and entertainment items (excluding Apple products) purchased from November 7th through December 24th to be returned as late as January 24th, 2025, for a full refund. Mobile phones and Apple products (including Beats products) purchased during the same window must be returned by January 8th, 2025. Target’s standard return policy applies for most other items, with a generous 90-day window for third-party products and up to a year for Target-branded products with a receipt.

Walmart

Shipping: For eligible orders of $35 or more, Walmart provides free next-day delivery in eligible ZIP codes, free two-day delivery, or free standard shipping. However, be aware you must order your gifts by 12:30PM local time on December 23rd to get them in time for Christmas. Walmart Plus subscribers also get free next-day and two-day shipping with no order minimum.

Same-day delivery and pickup is available on December 24th for orders made by 12PM local time. If you’re willing to pay a $10 Express Delivery fee and order by 4PM local time, Walmart will also deliver your packages in less than two hours on Christmas Eve. Walmart Plus subscribers may be exempt from paying this fee, however, as members get one Express Delivery for free during the month of December.

Returns: Most items purchased between October 1st and December 31st may be returned until January 31st, 2025. Some exceptions, like phones, may apply.

B&H

Shipping: During the holidays, B&H offers free two-day and next-day shipping on select items, including discounted products. Most other products are eligible for free standard shipping (that’s one to seven business days), and free expedited shipping (one to three business days) is generally available for items over $49.

Returns: B&H allows purchases bought after November 3rd through December 31st to be returned or exchanged through January 30th, 2025 (with the usual exceptions of non-returnable items such as computers or TVs whose packaging has been opened).

Photo by Umar Shakir

Best Buy

Shipping: Best Buy is offering free next-day and two-day shipping on qualifying orders for My Best Buy Plus and My Best Buy Total members. Non-members, meanwhile, can get free next-day shipping on qualifying orders totaling $35 or more.

If you’re ordering a gift for Christmas, Best Buy’s extended holiday shipping window gives you until 11:30AM ET on December 23rd if you want your gift to ship for free and arrive before December 25th. You can also get free same-day delivery by 7PM on December 24th if you place an order by 12PM local time. The cutoff for placing curbside or in-store pickup orders is 5PM local time through December 24th. Stores will close at 7PM that day.

Returns: Purchases made November 1st through December 31st can be returned through January 14th, 2025. This doesn’t include items that come with a third-party contract, such as phones, cellular tablets, and wearables (which have a 14-day return period), or holiday products, such as tree decorations and major appliances, which have a 15-day return window. My Best Buy Plus and My Best Buy Total members also have until January 14th, 2025, to return any purchases made between October 24th and November 16th; otherwise, there’s a 60-day return window for purchases made on November 17th or later.

Costco

Shipping: At Costco, shipping fees depend on the product and the shipping method, though in many cases, shipping is free. The wholesale retailer also offers a variety of delivery options, including “white glove” service for larger appliances. You can get your gift in time for Christmas without paying for shipping when you place a qualifying order by 5:59PM ET on December 20th. Same-day delivery is also available on some items via Costco’s partnership with Instacart.

Returns: Costco generally has an open return policy, except for electronics such as TVs and computers, which have a 90-day return window. There are other exceptions, though, which are listed on its return page.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

GameStop

Shipping: GameStop currently offers free shipping on orders over $35. It also offers same-day delivery in certain locations if you order from your local store at least three hours before closing.

Returns: Products purchased between November 17th and December 24th can be returned until January 18th, 2025. The package must be unopened, however, and certain items like trading cards, clearance items, and seasonal products can’t be returned.

Dell

Shipping: Most of Dell’s products come with free standard shipping (no minimum purchase necessary), and some gifts may ship for free in time for Christmas if you place your order by December 21st. The delivery window can vary based on your order, but Dell does offer expedited shipping options as well as a delivery date estimate based on the zip code you provide at checkout. Orders placed by December 23rd with qualifying express delivery windows should arrive before December 25th.

Returns: Dell offers a 30-day return policy with some exceptions; a restocking fee of up to 15 percent may be charged.

DJI

Shipping: DJI offers free shipping on purchases of $149 or more. Otherwise, shipping fees are specified on the order form. Shipment times can vary for each product depending on availability.

Returns: DJI offers returns within 14 days of receiving the purchase, provided it remains in like-new condition or suffers from some type of manufacturing defect.

Google

Shipping: All standard orders qualify for free shipping with no minimum. Just note that this applies to the lowest-cost shipping available, which may not be the fastest.

Returns: Google will accept returns through January 15th, 2025, for all purchases made between November 21st and December 31st. Standard return dates for products purchased within that window that extend beyond January 15th will be eligible for the later return date. All purchases made after January 1st, 2025, are subject to the standard return policy, which allows you to return most items up to 15 days after receipt (or 14 days for AT&T phones). However, Nest Thermostats and Verizon contract phones have an extended, 30-day return window.

HP

Shipping: For many items, standard (three- to six-day) shipping is free. You can get ready-to-ship gifts in time for Christmas with free express shipping if you place an order by 3AM ET on December 21st. Orders placed by December 23rd can still arrive by Christmas, though you’ll have to pay extra for priority shipping. HP will not ship or deliver items on Christmas, Thanksgiving, or New Year’s Day.

Returns: Items purchased between December 1st and December 25th can be returned until January 15th, 2025, or 30 days after delivery, whichever is later. There are exceptions, however, and select items may be subject to a restocking fee of up to 15 percent. Returns totaling more than $250 may also require additional review before your return request is approved.

Microsoft

Shipping: Most products sold through the online Microsoft Store include free two- to three-day shipping with express shipping available for an additional fee. To receive your gifts by Christmas Eve, however, you’ll have to place your order by 2PM ET on December 23rd.

Returns:You can return most physical products purchased online from the Microsoft Store within 60 days of receiving the product, provided they’re in like-new condition. The item must also be in its original packaging with all parts, manuals, and anything else that was originally sent with the product included. Items exempt from this policy include digital gift cards and gift cards for services and subscriptions, as well as select hardware (including the HoloLens 2).

Newegg

Shipping: Many of Newegg’s items come with free shipping and are delivered within one to five business days; for details, check the individual product page. If you want your gifts to arrive in time for Christmas, you’ll have to place your order by 12PM local time on December 23rd and opt for next-day delivery.

Returns: Qualifying items purchased between October 7th and December 31st can be returned or replaced until January 31st, 2025.

Sam’s Club

Shipping: According to the Sam’s Club FAQ, the shipping cost for most items varies based on the item’s size, weight, shipping method, and delivery address. Plus Members get free shipping on many online items, and same-day delivery or curbside pickup is available for free if you’re a Plus member ($110 a year) and place a qualifying order totaling $50 or more by 1PM local time. Club members ($50 a year) can pay $12 for same-day or next-day shipping, or get free curbside pickup on orders of $50 or more.

Returns: Sam’s Club has no specified return period; some return periods may be stated for specific products. For example, electronics and major appliances have a 90-day return window, while phones are subject to a 14-day return policy.

Sonos

Shipping: Sonos offers free shipping on all of its products, with in-stock items typically shipping the same day if they’re purchased by 11AM local time. If you want to receive your items by Christmas, though, you’ll likely have to pay extra for two-day or express shipping.

Returns: Sonos gives you 30 days to return a purchase and even offers free return shipping. However, you must have bought the product directly from Sonos and the return must be initiated within 30 days of receiving your purchase. The product must also include the original packaging and be in new or as-new condition to be eligible.

Update, December 20th: Updated the shipping deadlines and return policies as they pertain to the 2024 holiday season.

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The AI talent wars are just getting started

Naveen Rao, VP of AI at Databricks. | Naveen Rao / The Verge

For my last issue of the year, I’m focusing on the AI talent war, which is a theme I’ve been covering since this newsletter launched almost two years ago. And keep reading for the latest from inside Google and Meta this week.

But first, I need your questions for a mailbag issue I’m planning for my first issue of 2025. You can submit questions via this form or leave them in the comments.

“It’s like looking for LeBron James”

This week, Databricks announced the largest known funding round for any private tech company in history. The AI enterprise firm is in the final stretch of raising $10 billion, almost all of which is going to go to buying back vested employee stock.

How companies approach compensation is often undercovered in the tech industry, even though the strategies play a crucial role in determining which company gets ahead faster. Nowhere is this dynamic as intense as the war for AI talent, as I’ve covered before.

To better understand what’s driving the state of play going into 2025, this week I spoke with Naveen Rao, VP of AI at Databricks. Rao is one of my favorite people to talk to about the AI industry. He’s deeply technical but also business-minded, having...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Reduce strain on your ports with this 240 USB-C cable that rotates and bends

Sanwa Supply’s new USB-C cable’s design solves a common point of cable failure. | Image: Sanwa Supply

Japanese accessory maker Sanwa Supply has released a new 240W USB-C cable with a flexible design that could help prevent damage, as spotted by Tom’s Hardware. The USB-C connectors on either end of the cable can rotate 360 degrees and bend from side-to-side up to 180 degrees, reducing strain on ports and minimizing bending that could eventually cause wires inside to break.

The company sells a lot of its peripherals through Amazon in the US and Japan, but the new flexible USB-C cable doesn’t appear to be available there yet. For the time being you’ll need to try to import it from Sanwa Supply’s own online store where it’s available in two lengths: one meter for ￥2,580 (around $16.53) or 1.8 meters for ￥2,780 (around $17.80).

Image: Sanwa Supply

The flexible cable can potentially be used in places where other USB-C cable won’t fit.

Although there are still very few devices that can actually charge at 240W speeds, Sanwa’s new cable could help future-proof your charging kit. However, data transfers with the cable are limited to USB 2.0 speeds and will max out at 480mbps. That’s much slower than the 40Gbps transfer speeds offered by other 240W USB-C cables.

It’s not an ideal solution for those frequently copying mountains of data, but if you’ve got USB ports located in tight spots, or want more freedom of movement when using your smartphone while it’s plugged in, this could be a solution.

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YouTube is cracking down on clickbait

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube is taking a tougher stance on clickbait, saying it will remove content with titles or thumbnails that promise viewers “something that the video doesn’t deliver,” as spotted earlier by TechCrunch. This change will “slowly” roll out in India first, according to YouTube’s blog post, but will “expand to more countries” in the “coming months,” YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon says in a statement to The Verge.

YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.

As the policy rolls out in India, YouTube will remove content that violates the rules without giving a strike to creators, at least at first. “And as we continue to educate creators, our enforcement efforts will prioritize new video uploads moving forward,” YouTube says.

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OpenAI teases new reasoning model—but don’t expect to try it soon

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

For the last day of ship-mas, OpenAI previewed a new set of frontier “reasoning” models dubbed o3 and o3-mini. The Verge first reported that a new reasoning model would be coming during this event.

The company isn’t releasing these models today (and admits final results may evolve with more post-training). However, OpenAI is accepting applications from the research community to test these systems ahead of public release (which it has yet to set a date for). OpenAI launched o1 (codenamed Strawberry) in September and is jumping straight to o3, skipping o2 to avoid confusion (or trademark conflicts) with the British telecom company called O2.

The term reasoning has become a common buzzword in the AI industry lately, but it basically means the machine breaks down instructions into smaller tasks that can produce stronger outcomes. These models often show the work for how it got to an answer, rather than just giving a final answer without explanation.

According to the company, o3 surpasses previous performance records across the board. It beats its predecessor in coding tests (called SWE-Bench Verified) by 22.8 percent and outscores OpenAI’s Chief Scientist in competitive programming. The model nearly aced one of the hardest math competitions (called AIME 2024), missing one question, and achieved 87.7 percent on a benchmark for expert-level science problems (called GPQA Diamond). On the toughest math and reasoning challenges that usually stump AI, o3 solved 25.2 percent of problems (where no other model exceeds 2 percent).

OpenAI

OpenAI claims o3 performs better than its other reasoning models in coding benchmarks.

The company also announced new research on deliberative alignment, which requires the AI model to process safety decisions step-by-step. So, instead of just giving yes/no rules to the AI model, this paradigm requires it to actively reason about whether a user’s request fits OpenAI’s safety policies. The company claims that when it tested this on o1, it was much better at following safety guidelines than previous models, including GPT-4.

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NHTSA finally releases new rules for self-driving cars — but there’s a twist

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a new “voluntary national framework for the evaluation and oversight” of autonomous vehicles, a bureaucratic first step that could eventually open the floodgates for fully driverless cars. But there’s a twist: the agency wants self-driving car companies to cough up more data.

The proposed rules were first announced last year as the ADS-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency and Evaluation Program, also known as AV STEP. This program would allow the agency to authorize the sale and commercialization of more vehicles without traditional controls, like pedals and steering wheels, without hitting the annual cap on the number of exemptions to safety requirements. NHTSA is promising “an exemption pathway that is tailored for ADS-equipped vehicles,” suggesting a less onerous, time-consuming process for the release of fully driverless vehicles.

In exchange, the agency is requesting more data from the companies that operate driverless cars, arguing that greater transparency is needed to foster public trust in the technology.

“AV STEP would provide a valuable national framework at a pivotal time in the development of [automated driving system] technology. Safe, transparent, and responsible development is critical for this technology to be trusted by the public and reach its full potential. This proposal lays the foundation for those goals and supports NHTSA’s safety mission,” NHTSA Chief Counsel Adam Raviv said in a press release. “We encourage everyone to comment on our proposed program.

By kick-starting the rulemaking process, the Biden administration is giving a pretty big end-of-the-year holiday gift to the companies that have been laboring for decades on autonomous vehicle technology without any national regulatory framework to guide them.

The federal government has largely taken a back seat to in regulating autonomous vehicles, leaving states to develop their own rulebooks for safe deployment. Legislation that would dramatically increase the number of AVs on the road has been stalled in Congress for over seven years, with lawmakers at odds over a range of issues, including safety, liability, and the right number of exemptions from federal motor vehicle safety standards.

The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards is the government’s official checklist for everything a car needs before it can be sold to customers, including steering wheels, pedals, and sideview mirrors. Driverless cars typically don’t need these controls, forcing companies to request exemptions to safety rules from the federal government before they can put their vehicles on the road.

Safety regulators keep a tight grip on these exemptions

But safety regulators keep a tight grip on these exemptions. There is a cap of 2,500 exemptions that each company is allowed to request. And to date, only one company, Nuro, has received an FMVSS exemption for its low-speed delivery robots that aren’t large enough for human passengers. General Motors tried for two years to get an exemption for its driverless Cruise vehicles before eventually giving up. (Earlier this month, GM said it would stop funding Cruise.)

Whether AV STEP survives into the next Trump administration, though, is an open question. For one, the incoming president is reportedly looking to quash a Biden-era transparency rule that requires companies operating vehicles with driver assist, as well as self-driving cars, to report crashes and injuries to the federal government. Scrapping the crash reporting rule would greatly benefit Tesla, which to date, has reported the highest number of crashes. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a close advisor and donor to Trump.

The fact that NHTSA is choosing to highlight the “enhanced transparency” under AV STEP could lead some to conclude that this rule is dead on arrival. After all, Trump is currently trying to kill the only transparency rule currently on the books for self-driving cars. Still, Musk is also lobbying Trump to ease restrictions on fully autonomous vehicles in advance of Tesla’s plans to produce its own robotaxi in 2026. So anything’s possible.

Safety advocates are calling the notice of proposed rulemaking “premature” and unnecessary. In a statement, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase notes that the proposal is oddly timed, coming after the auto industry said it was lobbying NHTSA to scrap a new rule requiring automatic emergency braking in new vehicles by 2029.

“With the auto industry vociferously stating it is not feasible to comply with parts of the AEB rule with widely used braking technologies in five years, allowing far more complex technology to control more driving functionalities without meeting minimum safety standards is incongruous at best and potentially deadly at worst,” Chase said.

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Three of the biggest US banks are facing a lawsuit for ‘widespread fraud’ on Zelle

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has filed a lawsuit against Zelle and three banks that own it — Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase — claiming they failed “to protect consumers from widespread fraud.” Zelle is a payment network designed to compete with payment platforms like Venmo and Cash App, but the CFPB says the banks “rushed” it to market, enabling fraud that’s cost consumers more than $870 million since it launched in 2017.

The lawsuit cites Zelle’s designs and features, including a “limited” identity verification process that involves assigning a “token” to a user’s email address or mobile phone number that they can use to verify their account with a one-time passcode. This setup makes it easier for scammers to take over accounts, as well as hide their own identities or pretend to be other institutions, the CFPB alleges.

CFPB complaint

Some of the problems the CFPB cites in Zelle’s design.

One of the most common Zelle scams involves bad actors impersonating a financial institution or a federal agency, who then trick customers into sending them money. After facing pressure from the CFPB, the banks backing Zelle started issuing refunds to victims of this type of scam last year. This latest lawsuit follows other CFPB actions to tighten regulation around digital wallet apps and payment networks.

The CFPB accuses Zelle and the banking trio of failing to track and quickly stop criminals on the platform, as they allegedly didn’t relay information about known fraudulent transactions with other institutions in the payment network. It also alleges Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo didn’t properly address the risk of fraud despite the “hundreds of thousands” of complaints they received.

Zelle pushed back on the lawsuit in a statement published on Friday. “The CFPB’s attacks on Zelle are legally and factually flawed, and the timing of this lawsuit appears to be driven by political factors unrelated to Zelle,” Zelle spokesperson Jane Khodos said. “The CFPB’s misguided attacks will embolden criminals, cost consumers more in fees, stifle small businesses and make it harder for thousands of community banks and credit unions to compete.”

The CFPB is asking the court to stop Zelle’s parent company, Early Warning Services, and the banks from violating consumer protection laws, and compensate users, among other penalties.

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The proposed climate fix tech companies just spent millions on? Rocks.

Terradot’s pilot program in Brazil involves spreading crushed basalt over farmland. | Image: Terradot

To try to counteract the impact their pollution has on the climate, Google and other big companies have bought into a plan to trap carbon dioxide using rocks. They recently announced multimillion dollar deals with a Sheryl Sandberg-backed startup called Terradot.

Google, H&M Group, and Salesforce are among a gaggle of companies that collectively agreed to pay Terradot $27 million to remove 90,000 tons carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The deals were brokered by Frontier, a carbon removal initiative led by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability.

Separately, Google announced its own deal to purchase an additional 200,000 tons of carbon removal from Terradot. Both companies declined to say how much that deal is worth. If the cost is similar to the Frontier agreement — roughly $300 per ton of CO2 captured — it could add up to $60 million, although Google says it expects the price to come down over time for this larger deal.

“It’s a big deal.”

Google says it’s the biggest purchase yet of carbon removal through enhanced rock weathering (ERW), the strategy Terradot uses to try to slow climate change. It’s a relatively low-tech tactic for taking carbon dioxide out of...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Squid Game: Unleashed is a fun game and a terrible adaptation

Image: Netflix

In Squid Game, schoolyard games are turned into nightmares, as players compete to survive and — if they’re lucky — earn a massive cash prize. But in Unleashed, a new mobile spinoff that’s part of the streamer’s fledgling gaming efforts, those games are fun. It’s a strange experience that sands off much of the appeal of Squid Game in service of making a multiplayer party game.

Unleashed is sort of like Fall Guys but in a Squid Game wrapper. You compete against 31 other players across three random games pulled from the show, like “red light, green light” or racing across a bridge made of glass. Slowly other players die off, and by the end one wins a whole bunch of money.

Aesthetically, the game mostly follows the show. There are a bunch of characters to play as — some pulled from the show, others new for the game — and even though there’s a cartoon aesthetic, things still get bloody, with players being shot for breaking the rules or crushed under some obstacle. There are the familiar green track suits and masked guards.

But the connections to the show are really only surface level. There’s no story element, so if you haven’t watched the show, you’d have no idea the kind of personal anguish many of the characters are going through.

In fact, many of the elements that make Unleashed a pretty fun mobile game are also what keep it from being a good adaptation of what Squid Game is all about. In order to reduce frustration, most of the games have respawning. So even if you fail at “red light, green light” and get shot by a guard, it’s not game over. It simply slows you down in a race to be one of a pre-determined number of players to cross the finish line and move on.

Similarly, the games can all be completed in a few minutes. This is great for playing short sessions on the go; being stuck in a 30 minute multiplayer match on your phone typically sucks. But when you put elements like the short run time and respawning together it, completely erases any of the tension that’s so core to Squid Game’s appeal.

And despite having no in-app purchases — Unleashed is completely free for Netflix subscribers and, for a limited time, non-subscribers — it’s still structured like a typical free-to-play game. You earn cash from winning matches and completing various goals, which is used to unlock new characters, costumes, and emotes. Every time I log on I’m greeted with a jarring number of pop-ups and notifications letting me know I just unlocked a zombie costume or that there’s a Christmas-themed event going on. Just this morning I was gifted a twerking emote.

Yes, now I can make Kang Sae-byeok, whose death was one of the most tragic moments of season 1, twerk in the middle of a deadly obstacle course.

Unleashed isn’t a bad game. In many ways, it’s a clever reinterpretation of online party games for mobile. But, like most of Netflix’s expansions of the Squid Game universe, it also completely misses the point of the show. It’s sort of like what Fortnite is to the original movie Battle Royale: a playful, colorful take on a brutal, piercing story.

Fortnite largely avoided the tonal dissonance by creating a cartoon-ish, multiversal world that is far away from an island full of kids killing their classmates. Unleashed, on the other hand, is another part of S_quid Game_ — one that doesn’t seem to understand why the series exists.

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Apple begins pulling iPhone SE, 14, and 14 Plus from EU

The iPhone 14 and 14 Plus lack USB-C ports. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Starting December 28th, all new phones sold in the European Union must have USB-C. And while that deadline is still about a week away, Apple has begun pulling the iPhone SE, iPhone 14, and iPhone 14 Plus — the last models with Apple’s proprietary lightning port — from its Swiss online store.

The removal was first spotted by MacRumors, based on a report earlier this month from French publication iGeneration. The Verge has since confirmed that the Swiss online Apple Store will state that any configuration of the iPhone SE, iPhone 14, and iPhone 14 Plus is “currently unavailable” if you try to put it in your cart. However, other online Apple Stores in EU countries, such as France and Spain, currently still have the phones in stock.

Screenshot: Apple

The Swiss online Apple Store says the iPhone 14 is currently unavailable.

Given the December 28th deadline, Apple’s other EU stores will soon follow suit. That said, it’s unclear why Apple decided to pull stock from Switzerland a week early or if it will do the same with other countries. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.

The EU regulation is also why Apple finally switched over the USB-C for the iPhone 15 in 2023. As for the iPhone SE, a fourth-gen model is rumored for early 2025 with USB-C and other upgrades like an OLED display.

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Google Fiber’s internet plans are getting simpler

Image: The Verge

Google Fiber is changing up its internet plans in Huntsville, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee. The new Core 1 Gig, Home 3 Gig, and Edge 8 Gig plans appear to have launched last month and streamline the company’s existing options, as spotted earlier by 9to5Google.

These options replace the 1 Gig, 2 Gig, 5 Gig, and 8 Gig plans currently available in other supported cities. Like the existing 1 Gig plan, Google Fiber’s new Core 1 Gig option costs $70 / month with symmetrical 1 gigabit per second upload and download speeds. It comes with GFiber’s Multi-Gig Wi-Fi 6E Router and supports up to one mesh extender.

Screenshot: Google

The $100 / month Home 3 Gig plan sits between the $100 / month 2 Gig and $125 / month 5 Gig options, offering up to 3-gig speeds, a GFiber Multi-Gig Wi-Fi 6E router, up to two mesh extenders, along with priority room optimization that brings “additional wired connectivity to the rooms that matter most.” Subscribers can also add an internet battery backup for an extra $10 per month, which offers up to two hours of “full-bandwidth uptime, with no internet slow downs” in case a power outage knocks out your router or fiber jack.

Lastly, Google’s $150 / month 8 Gig Edge “always-on” plan comes with upload and download speeds of up to 8 gigabits per second, the same GFiber Wi-Fi 6E router, and up to two mesh extenders. It also offers up to 5,000 square feet of coverage, priority room optimization, an included internet backup battery, and a 25 percent refund if your internet goes down for over 45 minutes.

It’s not clear whether Google will bring these plans to more cities, and the company didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for more information. Since Google Fiber’s inception in 2010, the company has been gradually expanding its fiber footprint across the US while achieving faster speeds. Google rolled out a 20-gig Wi-Fi 7 plan in select cities last year.

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The MacBook Pro with M4 is matching its record low with $200 off

The 14-inch MacBook Pro looks just as nicely as it performs. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

In recent years, base MacBook Pro models have felt like an automatic skip. It made more sense to pay just a few hundred more for upgrades that truly justify the “Pro” moniker, or save money by stepping down to a MacBook Air without many sacrifices. But that’s changed as of the M4 model. With the base MacBook Pro with M4 matching its all-time low price of $1,399 ($200 off) at Amazon and B&H Photo right now, it’s quite possibly the best value of any MacBook available.

The 10-core M4 chipset has a decent speed advantage over the 8-core M3 inside last year’s MacBook Pro, of course. Apple claims its CPU has the strongest single-threaded performance of anything out there, not to mention a neural engine that’s two times faster than the M3’s. Our benchmarking certainly corroborates that it’s faster_,_ although depending on what you’re doing on the laptop, you may not notice much difference. But what really sets the 2024 model apart is its starting allotment of 16GB of RAM, which is double that offered by previous generations. That helps with the Apple Intelligence features seeding into macOS Sequoia and also makes it suitable for heavier tasks than most average workloads require.

The M4 MacBook Pro also picked up a third Thunderbolt 4 port this cycle, plus an upgraded 1080p webcam that has a taller field-of-view for the new Desk View feature. Those are all very good advantages for the money, and you should only feel compelled to step up further if you have stronger needs such as heavy 4K or 8K video editing, photo editing, programming, or other intensive tasks.

Read our Apple MacBook Pro M4 review.

More fun Friday deals

• The Beats Studio Buds Plus in silver are matching their all-time low of $119.99 ($50 off) at Amazon, which is only $10 more than the lowest price to date. If you want to join the translucent revolution and get it in clear (or other colors), those are just $129.99 ($40 off) right now at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The wireless earbuds offer pretty good sound quality and effective noise cancellation, though not quite as good as the second-gen AirPods Pro. They last longer than Apple’s flagship earbuds, however, with up to nine hours of battery life in the buds and 36 hours total with the case. They also pair nicely with both iOS and Android devices, supporting several native features for each platform. Read our review.
• You can get a four-pack of Apple AirTags for $69.99 (about $29 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which is matching the lowest price to date. These Bluetooth trackers can be a popular stocking stuffer option for the iPhone owners in your life, or to pair with your own keys, bags, luggage, and other things you’d rather not lose. Not only will they constantly report their last known location, but on iPhones with ultra wideband radios (iPhone 11 and newer), Precision Find My will offer guided compass directions that’ll lead you within inches of the item once you’re in range.
• If you want some floral home decor that doesn’t need babysitting, Lego’s flowers are a fun alternative to artificial plants. Take the 608-piece Lego Icons Poinsettia set, which is down to $34.98 (about $15 off) at Amazon right now. The resulting construction depicts a bouquet of the popular flowers sprouting from a woven basket, and you can adjust its various petals and leaves for posing however you like. As of this writing, it’s still shipping fast enough to arrive before Christmas, making it a great option for last-minute gifts or to add to your festive holiday decorations.

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We repaired an iPhone to see if iOS 18 fixes iPhone repair

Image: Alex Parkin/ The Verge

We started making this video with one question in mind: “What makes iPhone repair so difficult?” And immediately the answer was: a lot.

I’ve never repaired a phone before, so I was particularly nervous that the first one I was opening was an iPhone. This wasn’t just because I didn’t want to destroy a phone with a mistake but also because I was somewhat familiar with Apple’s reputation with repairability. However, I wanted to test out a new repair feature Apple introduced recently with iOS 18 called “repair assistant” to see if it fixes a years-long practice of Apple’s that makes iPhones incredibly difficult to repair.

Before iOS 18, replacing components of an iPhone like the display or battery without going through Apple’s repair channels would reduce the functionality of the device because iPhones are programmed to recognize when parts are swapped out. This is because of a design choice called “parts pairing.”

Apple uses parts pairing to assign serial numbers to parts inside a device and tie those parts to the logic board. This means you can’t replace any of these parts on your own or at a repair shop without having a way to pair a new part’s serial number to the device. If a...

Read the full story at The Verge.

How to screen calls on an iPhone

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Life’s busy enough without wasting time on calls that are trying to scam you or sell to you. Unfortunately, stats from Hiya show that 28 percent of the calls you get are going to be suspected spam or fraud.

On an iPhone, you don’t have the option to have an AI assistant answer calls for you, as you can on Android — at least not yet. But there are ways to screen calls to some extent and cut down on the number of scammers, sellers, and robots you have to talk to.

These guidelines have been written using an iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18.2.

Identify incoming calls

Screenshot: Apple

iOS gives you several options for managing incoming calls.

Screenshot: Apple

You can choose to silence unknown callers and send them straight to voicemail.

A good place to start when it comes to avoiding unwanted calls is to flag calls from numbers that aren’t in your contacts list. It’s not a perfect way of spotting spam but will catch quite a lot of it.

From Settings on your iPhone:

• Tap Apps > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers.
• Toggle on Silence Unknown Callers.

Any calls that aren’t from a registered contact won’t make a sound or create a...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Verge’s 2024 in review

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Looking back at a very busy year.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Answering your biggest Decoder questions

Photo illustration: The Verge

Our end-of-year special, featuring guest Nilay Patel.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Robert Eggers wants you to see his Nosferatu as both a lover and a biter

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

To get Nosferatu’s nightmarish love triangle right, Robert Eggers looked to Wuthering Heights for inspiration.

Though the Dark Universe might be dead, Robert Eggers has crafted something like its spiritual successor with a series of disturbing horror features. The Witchleft you wondering how real its demons were, The Lighthouse’s tentacled sea creatures were always slithering somewhere just off-screen, and The Northmanwas a mythologically charged study of people’s ability to become monsters and how that transformation can rob someone of their humanity. Those films presented their otherworldly elements as reflections of characters’ superstitions and their need to make sense of the worlds around them. But Eggers wants the undead ghoul at the center of his new Nosferatu remake to leave you feeling something much more basic (though not necessarily simple) and carnal.

Eggers’ Nosferatu is brimming with visual and tonal nods to F.W. Murnau’s groundbreaking 1922 silent film. But through his new takes on the vampiric Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) and bedeviled housewife Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), you can feel Eggers tapping into the darkly sexual energy that made Bram Stoker’s Dracula such a uniquely transgressive horror novel for the Victorian era. The new Nosferatu is arriving at a time when the idea of getting down and dirty with monsters has come much, much more into fashion — so much so that we’ve seen entire cinematic franchises built on the concept.

Viewed through that lens, it’s easy to look at Nosferatu as a story that’s trying to speak to this moment in on-screen monster-fucking. But when I recently sat down with Eggers to discuss the movie, he told me that, as much as vampire tales might feel like manifestations of societal anxieties, channeling the zeitgeist wasn’t at all his goal.

As a lifelong Dracula fan fascinated by the way death and sexual desire define vampire mythos, Eggers knew that he wanted his Nosferatu to be as erotic as it was haunting. But Eggers also wanted his Nosferatu to feel like a decidedly feminist, macabre romance, which is why he took some inspiration from Emily Brontë.

“It was always clear to me that N_osferatu_ is a demon lover story, and one of the great demon lover stories of all time is Wuthering Heights, which I returned to a lot while writing this script,” Eggers explained. “As a character, Heathcliff is an absolute bastard towards Cathy in the novel, and you’re always questioning whether he really loves her, or if he just wants to possess and destroy her.”

Nosferatu leaves you to ponder those same questions as it introduces Ellen, a perceptive woman whose brilliance is being stifled by the social mores of 19th-century Germany. Though Ellen desperately loves her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), he struggles to understand how years of being plagued by strange visions have left her convinced that the embodiment of death is stalking her. It’s easier for Thomas and Nosferatu’s other male characters like Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to dismiss Ellen’s nightmares as delusions. But whenever Ellen goes to sleep, it is never long before a monstrous presence reaches out to her mind, urging her to let it inside.

In Depp’s tremulous Ellen, you can see traces of Mina Harker, the sole heroine in Stoker’s novel, whose cleverness winds up being instrumental in Dracula’s ultimate demise. But Eggers wanted this version of Ellen to feel like a woman who, despite “understanding things on a very deep level, doesn’t have the language to articulate her experiences.” It was also important to him that this story emphasize how men’s misogynistic preconceptions of women are a kind of monster in and of themselves.

“Ellen’s husband loves her, but he can’t understand these ‘hysteric’ and ‘melancholic’ feelings she’s experiencing, and he’s dismissive of her,” Eggers said. “The only person she really finds a connection with is this monster, and that love triangle is so compelling to me, partially because of how tragic it is.”

In the same way that Ellen knows that something is out there watching her as it stalks through the shadows, Count Orlok — a long-dead Transylvanian nobleman — can feel that there’s something very special about Ellen. Much of the new Nosferatu’s unsettling strangeness is crystallized in the pair’s unusual psychic connection. It’s alarming to see Ellen seize up and convulse in fits as her mind seemingly leaves her body. But there’s also an increasingly orgasmic quality to the sound of Ellen’s fits that immediately clues you into how, as scary as Orlok is, he also elicits something deeply pleasurable in some of his victims.

More so than many other recent vampire stories, Eggers’ Nosferatu leans into the fact that creatures like Orlok feast on the blood of the living because they themselves are very dead. Whatever magic it is that’s brought Orlok back is impressive, but you would never mistake him for a model with a beating pulse. He’s supposed to read as a reanimated corpse; a once-suave and debonaire one, but a corpse all the same.

Because Nosferatu is a very horny love story, though, Eggers felt Orlok needed to be at least somewhat sexy in order to sell his raw magnetism and “help the audience to know on some level that there’s a beautiful man beneath all that makeup.”

“In my mind, Orlok was definitely handsome when he was alive,” Eggers said. “I wanted him to have strong features, and for there to be a kind of beauty in his brows, cheekbones, and nose because those are the parts of himself that he can show a little bit of in the light to a house guest before they realize that he’s actually rotting and falling apart.”

Nosferatu starts piling the horrors on as Orlok and Ellen’s link strengthens. The air is already thick with death and fear as the film introduces Willem Dafoe’s Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz and Simon McBurney’s Herr Knock. It isn’t long before the men start to understand just how endangered all of their lives are because of their proximity to Ellen. But Eggers also wanted Nosferatu’s male characters to bring a bit of whimsy to the film, if only to help audiences deal with all the tension and appreciate how monsters can have senses of humor.

“Some of those scenes with Thomas and Orlok are definitely scary and intense, but they’re also moments where Orlok is playing with his food,” Eggers explained. “When Louise Ford and I were editing those scenes, we would be in stitches at times because of how pithy Orlok is when you really pay attention.”

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Netflix will stream the Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031

Photo By Joaquin Corchero/Europa Press via Getty Images

Netflix’s push into live sports has snagged another major event. Today the streamer announced that it has acquired US streaming rights for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in both 2027 and 2031. FIFA is calling the deal “a landmark announcement for women’s football.”

The 2027 edition of the tournament will take place in Brazil, while the following World Cup doesn’t yet have a host nation. The Netflix coverage in the US will include both English- and Spanish-language broadcasts, and the streamer says that it will be creating more coverage in addition to the live matches:

Studio shows and top-tier talent will supplement coverage with commentary and entertainment. And in the lead-up to the tournament, Netflix will produce exclusive documentary programming spotlighting the top players, their journeys, and the explosion of the sport around the globe.

The World Cup is the most ambitious addition to Netflix’s growing sports lineup, which to date has mostly included one-off events like the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight, or a pair of NFL games that will stream on Christmas day. The World Cup, meanwhile, spans a month of matches with 32 national teams competing. It will be a huge test for Netflix’s fledgling live infrastructure.

It’s all part of a growing trend of streaming services looking to live events — and sports in particular — as the next frontier. Apple has gone all-in in MLS, Amazon airs NHL games and is getting into the NBA next year, while the likes of Max, Roku, and pretty much every service have gotten into sports in some way.

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Google Search will reportedly have a dedicated ‘AI Mode’ soon

Illustration: The Verge

Google is planning to add a new “AI Mode” to its search engine, according to a report from The Information. The company will reportedly display an option to switch to AI Mode from the top of the results page, allowing you to access an interface similar to its Gemini AI chatbot.

The new AI Mode tab would live on the left side of the “All,” “Images,” “Videos,” and “Shopping” tabs, The Information reports. When you receive a response in AI Mode, The Information says Google will display links to related webpages and “a search bar below the conversational answer that prompts users to ‘Ask a follow-up...’”

This tracks with Android Authority’s report from earlier this month, which spotted an AI Mode in a beta version of the Google app_._ 9to5Google also dug up code suggesting you can use AI Mode to ask questions using your voice. The Verge reached out to Google with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

With OpenAI rolling out search in ChatGPT for all users, Google is likely under increased pressure to consolidate search and AI. The company already displays AI search summaries for some queries and recently expanded the feature to dozens of more countries in October.

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2025 will be the year of the smart lock

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

In 2024, smart locks got better; in 2025, they’re going to be truly great.

Read the full story at The Verge.