Image: Ford
Ford is the No. 2 seller of electric vehicles in the US. It’s very proud of that fact, but the amount of cash it had to burn to get there is enough to make you wonder whether it can keep that title.
The company reported its first quarter earnings last night, and woo boy, it’s rough
The company reported its first quarter earnings last night, and woo boy, it’s rough. Ford said it lost $1.3 billion on the sale of 10,000 electric vehicles in the first three months of the year — a staggering figure that amounts to $130,000 lost for every EV sold.
Ford’s Model e division, which oversees some of the company’s EV sales as well as software, reported $100 million in revenue, an 84 percent drop from the same period last year. The number of...
Illustration: The Verge
Google is making it a lot easier to move between devices during a meeting. The new “Switch here” feature allows you to move an active Meet call from your computer to your smartphone or vice versa. This means you can swap devices as you sit down at your desk or get up to go somewhere during a full group session without your tile bouncing in and out of the window.
There’s also a new function that allows you to join a call in two places. So, you can have your call active on the kitchen tablet and office computer while you run back and forth, flipping an egg and pulling an espresso shot (note for boss: I do not do this).
GIF: Google
While another call is active, the same meeting window on another device now has a...
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
It was going to happen, and then it wasn’t going to happen, and then it happened. The United States Congress passed a bill that would either ban TikTok or force it to be sold, and President Joe Biden signed it.
So... what now? TikTok could sue, and win, and go back to normal. TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, could just decide to shut it down and move on. Or it could sell TikTok US. Those are really the only three outcomes, and we have a year or less to figure out which it’s going to be.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss all the possible outcomes for TikTok. Then we try to figure out which companies might buy the platform — and which definitely won’t, despite desperately wanting to. There’s no easy, obvious choice, but there are a...
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
The world’s largest tech company has a security problem. A series of high-profile security incidents have rocked Microsoft over the past few years, and a scathing report from the Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that “Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul.” Inside Microsoft, there is concern that the attacks could seriously undermine trust in the company.
Sources tell me that Microsoft’s engineering and security teams have been scrambling to respond to new attacks from the same Russian state-sponsored hackers that were behind the SolarWinds incident. Known as Nobelium or Midnight Blizzard, the hacking group was able to spy on the email accounts of some members of Microsoft’s senior leadership...
Image: Supercell
Supercell doesn’t release a lot of games, but the studio’s mobile releases tend to be big hits. Think Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars, and Clash Royale. Now, the developer is gearing up for its next major release: Squad Busters, which will be out globally on both Android and iOS on May 29th.
It’s a competitive multiplayer game, but one on a larger scale than a typical mobile release. In each match, 10 players compete to collect the most gems while building up a squad of computer-controlled characters. It’s sort of like a simplified MOBA: you move your team around fighting minions, earning cash that lets you improve and grow your squad before you eventually start fighting other players and going for the big gem pile in the middle of the map....
A power plant in Thompsons, Texas, U.S. that’s home to the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. | Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just finalized rules aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. But it still doesn’t crack down on the nation’s fleet of gas-fired power plants. That’s a big omission considering the US gets 43 percent of its electricity from gas, more than from any other source of energy.
EPA administrator Michael Regan says the agency is taking more time to strengthen rules for today’s existing gas power plants. But waiting too long risks leaving the decision up to a possible forthcoming Trump administration, which tried to gut environmental protections the last time. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for the US to meet climate commitments it set under the Paris agreement. The Biden...
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images
Here’s a roundup of all the news about a new law requiring parent company ByteDance to sell off its platform.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The generative AI gold rush is underway — just don’t expect it to create profits anytime soon.
That was the message from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to investors during Wednesday’s call for the company’s first-quarter earnings report. Having just put its ChatGPT competitor in a bunch of places across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, much of the call focused on exactly how generative AI will become a money-making endeavor for Meta.
The company is already quite profitable, having grown net income to more than $12 billion on $36.5 billion in revenue in the last quarter alone. But its revenue growth is expected to slow going forward. At the same time, it’s spending more than ever on AI and the metaverse.
“Historically, investing to build...
Image: The Verge
Threads is testing the option to automatically hide your old posts. Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the feature is only available to a “small number” of users for now, but it will let you choose to archive individual posts manually or have them automatically archived after a certain amount of time.
You can see an example of how the feature might look in Mosseri’s post on Threads. Users with access to the test should be able to manually archive their content by hitting the three dots in the top-right corner of a post and selecting “Archive now.” This will give users the option to hide certain posts on their profiles, similar to the archive option on Instagram.
Mosseri says that users can make their posts public again at any time. He...
BattleGC Pro in limited-edition crystal. | Image: Retro Fighters
This new BattlerGC Pro controller looks like it could be the ultimate GameCube gamepad — one with drift-resistant Hall effect joysticks, hybrid analog / digital triggers, programmable back buttons, a rechargeable battery with a USB-C port, and the ability to use it across different consoles and systems thanks to Bluetooth support. And of course, it’s the latest controller to host the best face button layout ever, and I will fight to the Final Destination defending it!
I do, however, acknowledge the GameCube controller layout is not everyone’s favorite, so it’s no surprise there aren’t a lot of great modern GameCube controller options besides the PowerA-made licensed one that runs on AA batteries, which is my current go-to for docked...
Photo by Prince Williams / Wireimage
While Drake’s fans have been having a ball with the Canadian rapper’s recently released track dissing fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, the legal team representing Tupac Shakur is threatening to take legal action if the song isn’t pulled off the internet.
Billboard reports that late rapper Tupac’s legal team is ready to take Drake to court over the release of “Taylor Made,” Drake’s recently released song featuring the AI-generated voices of Shakur and Snoop Dogg. In a statement about Drake’s creation of “Taylor Made,” litigator Howard King called the song a “blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time” and said the Shakur estate never cleared the use of Tupac’s voice.
“The Estate is deeply dismayed and...
Photo by Urbanandsport / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Department of Transportation (DOT) finalized rules that will soon require airlines to quickly refund passengers if they cancel or delay flights or make significant changes.
Airlines must pay passengers back either in cash or in the original form of payment, no matter the reason they cancel their flight. Alternatively, passengers can choose to accept travel credit, other kinds of transportation, or another flight offered by the airline.
Airlines must also refund passengers if their flight itinerary is “significantly changed” and they don’t accept the airline’s alternative travel options. Specifically, this means that you can get your money back if your flight changes its arrival or departure time by three or more hours for domestic...
Illustration: The Verge
One more app joins the passwordless future we’ve been promised. WhatsApp says it’s now rolling out support for passkeys in the iOS version of the app. With the feature enabled, users of Meta’s encrypted messaging app can use iPhone biometrics for login — that is, Face ID or Touch ID — or their phone’s passcode.
WhatsApp already supports unlocking its iOS app with one of these options, but this takes that a step further. Passkey support comes to the iPhone version several months after Meta started distributing it to Android WhatsApp users in October.
Passkeys are supposed to be the secure (or, at least, more secure; even passkeys have tradeoffs) wave of the future — a version of authentication that does away with passwords and SMS...
The Digital Services Act strikes again. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
TikTok Lite users in Europe will have to find another way to earn an extra 38 cents a day.
The light version of the TikTok app, which launched in two EU countries a couple of weeks ago, included a reward feature that paid users a small amount each day to engage with videos. European regulators launched an inquiry soon after, citing the feature’s potential for encouraging addiction — particularly in young people. TikTok responded today by suspending the feature in the EU while it addresses the investigation.
TikTok Lite is designed as a lightweight alternative to the main TikTok app for easier use on slow internet connections. It has been available in parts of Asia for years and became available in France and Spain earlier this month....
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote to restore net neutrality on Thursday in the latest volley of a yearslong game of political ping-pong.
The commission is expected to reclassify internet service providers (ISPs) — e.g., broadband companies like AT&T and Comcast — as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. That classification would open ISPs up to greater oversight by the FCC. The vote is widely expected to go in favor of reinstating net neutrality since FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, controls the agency’s agenda. Rosenworcel moved forward with the measure after a fifth commissioner was sworn in, restoring a Democratic majority on the panel. (Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media,...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
There are two types of parents I’m friends with: those who let their kids watch YouTube and those who work very hard to keep their kids as far from YouTube as possible. Given I know at least one small child who developed an obsession with dictators after getting around the YouTube parental controls, I understand the divide. Streaming services seem to understand that divide, too, and are eager to provide an alternative to YouTube that gives parents all the set-and-forget appeal of YouTube without, hopefully, the questions about Kim Jong Un’s rise to power.
Paramount Plus, with its massive library of Nickelodeon shows, is a little more primed than other streamers that have had to create a library of kids content from scratch. In a...
Illustration: The Verge
Apple has been quiet about its plans for generative AI, but with the release of new AI models today, it appears the company’s immediate ambitions lie firmly in the “make AI run locally on Apple devices” realm.
Researchers from Apple released OpenELM, a series of four very small language models on the Hugging Face model library, on Wednesday. Apple said on its Hugging Face model page that OpenELM, which stands for “Open-source Efficient Language Models,” performs very efficiently on text-related tasks like email writing. The models are open source and ready for developers to use.
OpenELM is even smaller than most lightweight AI models
It has four sizes: 270 million parameters; 450 million parameters; 1.1 billion parameters; and 3 billion...
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Spotify submitted a new version of its iOS app that should give users in the European Union in-app pricing information for subscriptions made outside of Apple’s payment system — provided the update doesn’t get stonewalled by Apple again.
According to TechCrunch, the latest version of the app doesn’t contain a direct link to subscription plans on Spotify’s website, something the company hoped would allow it to skirt the 30 percent cut Apple takes on subscriptions made via the App Store. Instead, EU users will be directed to manually visit Spotify’s website via a web browser in order to purchase cheaper subscription plans.
"Apple continues to break European law,” and unfortunately that means we still can’t give EU consumers the...
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The US government has charged and sanctioned four Iranian nationals over claims they carried out a yearslong hacking campaign against US government agencies and companies. It also accuses the group of waging these attacks on behalf of the Iranian government.
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday alleges that from around 2016 through at least April 2021, the four individuals waged cyberattacks against “more than a dozen” US-based companies, along with the US departments of the Treasury and State. The companies targeted by the attacks were “primarily” contractors for the US Department of Defense that had access to sensitive information.
The indictment names Hossein Harooni, Reza Kazemifar, Komeil Baradaran Salmani, and Alireza Shafie Nasab as...
Illustration: The Verge
Reddit is updating its mobile app on iOS and Android to emphasize comments, the company said today. The handful of changes announced are aimed at “removing hurdles and reducing friction points,” the company wrote in a blog post.
The changes are subtle but add up to comments becoming more of a focal point in the user experience. Comments will now load faster and open in an “instant” when users click on the comment icon of a post. Clicking the comments icon takes users straight to the top comment, essentially bypassing the original post.
GIF: Reddit
A “context bar” with the original post will be pinned to the top of the screen with the text, image, or video content compressed. Clicking on the thumbnail will take the...
Image: Aggro Crab
The underwater adventure is a rare glimpse into a more accessible soulslike experience.
Amazfit’s GTR 4 offers an impressive feature set for its price, including an OLED display and dual-band GPS. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Smartwatches like the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic are some of the best on the market. Yet, at almost $400, they’re not for everybody, especially since you’ll need to be tapped into a particular operating system to make the most of either wearable.
Thankfully, for everybody else, there’s the platform-agnostic Amazfit GTR 4, which is currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Amazfit’s online storefront for $169.99 ($30 off). That’s the best price we’ve seen it go for so far this year and only $10 shy of its all-time low, which we last saw during the holidays.
From period tracking to monitoring your heart rate, sleep, stress, and SpO2 levels, the GTR 4 offers an impressive feature set for $170 — which is...
Just look at the abject horror on that kid’s face. | Image: Nissan
Almost seven years ago, my partner and I took an ill-advised road trip for a wedding with our nearly one-month-old child. In those early days, our kid cried. A lot. Loudly. In the confines of an SUV, this meant a nightmare of constantly pulling over to try, desperately and often in vain, to quell the woes of this tiny fleshy sack full of our combined genetics that has no understanding of our world.
That’s where things like the “intelligent puppet” Iruyo, a two-piece, fluffy animatronic toy with the claimed ability to recognize when a child is sleeping, ostensibly comes in. Iruyo was designed by Nissan in partnership with an ad agency and a retail baby product chain (so we’re already off to a great start) as part of a marketing campaign...
Image: Getty
During last night’s earnings call with investors, Elon Musk threw out an all-time late-night dorm room bong sesh of an idea: what if AWS, but for Tesla?
Musk, who loves to riff on earnings calls, compared the unused compute power of millions of idle Tesla vehicles to Amazon’s cloud service business. If they’re just sitting there, he mused, why not put them to good use to run AI models? (Also, have you ever really looked at your hands? No, I mean really looked?)
“There’s a potential... when the car is not moving to actually run distributed inference,” Musk said. “If you imagine the future perhaps where there’s a fleet of 100 million Teslas and on average, they’ve got like maybe a kilowatt of inference compute. That’s 100 gigawatts of...
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year.
The divest-or-ban bill is now law, starting the clock for ByteDance to make its move. The company has an initial nine months to sort out a deal, though the president could extend that another three months if he sees progress.
While just recently the legislation seemed like it would stall out in the Senate after being passed as a standalone bill in the House, political maneuvering helped usher it through to Biden’s desk. The House packaged the TikTok bill — which upped the timeline for divestment from the six months allowed in the earlier version — with foreign aid to US...
It’s where Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood lives. | Image: PBS Distribution via The Wrap.
Parents, it’s time to green-light more screen time.
PBS classics from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, including titles like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Thomas and Friends, are coming to streaming. PBS Distribution is making the edutainment programming available for free in the form of a FAST (free, ad-supported streaming) channel called PBS Retro, which is accessible through The Roku Channel.
“We identified an interest in connecting audiences with the content they grew up watching,” PBS distribution president Andrea Downing told The Wrap. The Roku Channel is home to other PBS FAST channels as well, including PBS Antiques Road Show, Antiques Road Trip, PBS Food, Julia Child, and PBS Nature.
The Roku Channel is becoming increasingly...
Image: Shift Up
While the combat is challenging and rewarding, it takes far too long to get to the good stuff.
The Rabbit R1 is a fun little thing — and oh boy, is it orange.
There were times I wasn’t sure the Rabbit R1 was even a real thing. The AI-powered, Teenage Engineering-designed device came out of nowhere to become one of the biggest stories at CES, promising a level of fun and whimsy that felt much better than some of the more self-serious AI companies out there. CEO Jesse Lyu practically promised the world in this $199 device.
Well, say this for Rabbit: it’s real. Last night, I went to the swanky TWA Hotel in New York City, along with a few hundred reporters, creators, and particularly enthusiastic R1 buyers. After a couple of hours of photo booths, specialty cocktails, and a rousing keynote and demo from Lyu — in which he made near-constant reference to and fun of the Humane AI Pin — we all got our...
Image: Joanna Nelius / The Verge
On Wednesday, Qualcomm announced the impending arrival of its Snapdragon X Plus laptop processor alongside more information for its previously announced Snapdragon X Elite chips. While this is not the first time we’ve seen Qualcomm processors in a laptop, it’s the first time the company could have a chip that rivals Apple, Intel, and AMD on speed.
The Snapdragon X Plus is Qualcomm’s entry-level laptop chip. It has 10 cores, 42MB of cache, a maximum multithreaded frequency of 3.4GHz, and an NPU with 45 tera operations per second (TOPS, or how many mathematical calculations it can solve in a second) to assist with fancy-smancy generative AI applications. But keep in mind, TOPS is an arbitrary measurement that can sound more impressive than...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
iPhone users can finally enjoy retro gaming emulators without jailbreaking their phones.
Lamborghini’s mission to produce gas-electric hybrid versions of all of its models continues with today’s release of the plug-in hybrid Urus SE. The SUV is the top selling vehicle in Lamborghini’s lineup, and a hybrid version is sure to draw a lot of interest from the Italian automaker’s customer base of one-percenters.
The electrified luxury SUV’s hybrid powertrain can put out a total of 800 CV (a metric unit of horsepower that translates to 789 hp), or 588 kW, thanks to its 25 kWh battery. It can also travel as far as 60 km (37 miles) on battery power alone, which is certainly a healthy step up over the hybrid Revuelto’s 10 km of electric-only driving.
And, as befitting its Lambo-ness, the Urus SE will...
Kenneth Lobo Méndez, director of planning and sustainability in electricity management, and Marco Jiménez Chavez, an engineer, at the state-run electricity utility Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE). | Collage by Israel Vargas | Photos by Justine Calma
Costa Rica gets more than 99 percent of its electricity from renewables — it’s still not enough.
Adobe claims its new VideoGigaGAN generative AI model can upscale video clips more consistently and in higher quality than other VSR methods. | Image: Adobe
Adobe researchers have developed a new generative AI model called VideoGigaGAN that can upscale blurry videos at up to eight times their original resolution. Introduced in a paper published on April 18th, Adobe claims VideoGigaGAN is superior to other Video Super Resolution (VSR) methods as it can provide more fine-grained details without introducing any “AI weirdness” to the footage.
In a nutshell, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are effective for upscaling still images to a higher resolution, but struggle to do the same for video without introducing flickering and other unwanted artifacts. Other upscaling methods can avoid this, but the results aren’t as sharp or detailed. VideoGigaGAN aims to provide the best of both worlds —...
The app recommendations in the Windows 11 Start menu. | Image: Microsoft
Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.
“The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps,” says Microsoft in the update notes of its latest public Windows 11 release. “These apps come from a small set of curated developers.” The ads are designed to help Windows 11 users discover more apps, but will largely benefit the developers that Microsoft is trying to tempt into building more Windows apps.
Microsoft only started testing...
Image: Mercedes-Benz AG
Mercedes’ box-shaped luxury off-roader finally gets an electrified makeover.
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images
A bill that would force China-based company ByteDance to sell TikTok — or else face a US ban of the platform — is all but certain to become law after the Senate passed a foreign aid package including the measure.
It now heads to President Joe Biden, who already committed to signing the TikTok legislation should it make it through both chambers of Congress. The House passed the foreign aid package that includes the TikTok bill on Saturday.
Once signed by the president, ByteDance would have up to a year to complete a sale of TikTok or face an effective ban for the platform in the US. The bill gives ByteDance an initial nine months and gives the president discretion to extend it another three should there be progress toward a deal. Still,...
Eight years ago, Valve began offering no-questions-asked refunds for any game you buy on Steam — as long as you asked for that refund within 14 days of purchase and hadn’t played more than two hours of a game.
But when Valve started letting you play games ahead of their release dates with its “Early Access” and “Advanced Access” programs, it introduced a loophole: people could play for many, many hours ahead of launch and still request a refund after.
Today, Valve’s closing the loophole: Your Advanced Access and Early Access playtime now counts against the two-hour refund limit.
Here’s what Valve’s updated refund policy says about that as of today:
REFUNDS ON TITLES PURCHASED PRIOR TO RELEASE DATE
When you purchase a title on Steam...
That’s a nice looking charger. | Image by Elago
MagSafe isn’t a particularly controversial standard, but I’ve heard people grumble about it. They get upset because it doesn’t charge quite as efficiently as an old-fashioned cable and they get annoyed that any phone case needs to be MagSafe-compatible. But could charging by cable provide you with something as stupidly fun as this new phone stand from Elago?
The Elago MagSafe MS W5 Charging Stand is a mouthful of a name for what’s just a Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP shaped MagSafe stand. Do the buttons and switches work? No! Does it fold close? Absolutely not! It’s merely a piece of plastic you slot a MagSafe charger into. It’s so simple you could probably 3D print something similar at home.
Image by Elago
Don’t...
Cath Virginia / The Verge
The European Union has officially adopted a new set of right-to-repair rules designed to encourage people to repair broken devices, rather than replace them. One of the rules extends a product’s warranty by one year if it’s repaired while still covered.
The European Union already requires companies to offer a two-year minimum warranty on products, but these new rules take things a step further. Even after the warranty period ends, companies are “still required to repair common household products,” including smartphones, TVs, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and other items. If a product breaks while under warranty, consumers can choose between a replacement or a repair. If they choose to repair, the warranty will be extended for a...
The Model 3 might get an affordable younger sibling in 2025. | Image: Tesla
Tesla says it will build more affordable electric vehicles — perhaps as soon as 2025 — refuting recent reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had canceled plans for a cheaper “Model 2” vehicle in favor of getting a robotaxi out the door. But Musk didn’t clarify whether the lower-cost EV would be a brand new model for Tesla or simplified versions of its current vehicles.
“In terms of a new product roadmap, there’s been a lot of talk,” Musk said during the company’s first quarter earnings call, addressing the concerns investors have expressed over the past month about the delayed plans for a low-cost EV. “We’ve updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models.” Musk said we might see the vehicles in early 2025, if not...
Jabra’s latest midrange earbuds aren’t the best at any one thing, but they do offer a lot of bang for your buck. | Image: Jabra
At this point, it’s safe to say that Jabra makes some of the most reliable earbuds you can buy, especially for the price. The Jabra Elite 5, like the company’s prior midrange models, are good example of a pair that checks all the right boxes, offering up ANC, multipoint, and a host of other welcome features at a competitive price point. And now, thanks to a $60 discount from Amazon and Jabra, you can grab them for a mere $89.99, which nearly matches their second-best price to date.
We’ve long considered the Jabra Elite 3 one of the best pairs of sub-$100 earbuds you could buy, though, at the current price, I’d argue the Elite 5 are the better value. The comfy, teardrop-shaped buds don’t excel at any one thing but rather offer a laundry...
Illustration by The Verge | Photo via Getty Images
The Federal Trade Commission has voted to ban noncompete agreements nationwide, saying that they are an “unfair method of competition.”
Noncompete agreements — which attempt to prevent employees from working for or starting competing businesses — are especially prevalent in the world of tech, where we’ve seen companies like Amazon enforce and then retract a noncompete agreement for warehouse workers. Acer even sued its former CEO for allegedly breaching a noncompete policy by becoming a consultant for Lenovo.
The change will force companies to reverse existing noncompete agreements and notify employees about the change. Existing noncompete agreements for senior executives can stay in place, but companies can’t enter or enforce new...
Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge
Today, Framework is the modular repairable laptop company. Tomorrow, it wants to be a consumer electronics company, period. That’s one of the biggest reasons it just raised another $18 million in funding — it wants to expand beyond the laptop into “additional product categories.”
Framework CEO Nirav Patel tells me that has always been the plan and that the company originally had other viable ideas beyond laptops, too. “We chose to take on the notebook space first,” he says, partly because Framework knew it could bootstrap its ambitions by catering to the PC builders and tinkerers and Linux enthusiasts left behind by big OEMs and partly because it wanted to go big or go home.
If Framework could succeed in laptops, he thought, it would be...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Tesla provided a sneak peek of its upcoming ridehailing mobile app in the company’s latest earnings report. The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has said that Tesla will unveil a long-gestating robotaxi in August.
The company revealed five screens from the forthcoming feature. The first screen shows a big button that says “Summon” with a lower message for the possible wait time. The next screen has a 3D map with a little virtual vehicle following a route to the waiting passenger. It looks a lot like the Uber app — but more Tesla-y.
Image: Tesla
Tesla’s ridehailing app looks like your average ridehailing app.
While they wait, the passenger can set the vehicle’s climate to a preferred temperature. Other details, like...
Demand for Vision Pro is falling. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple is reportedly cutting its Vision Pro headset shipment forecast for the rest of the year due to cooling demand.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo writes that Apple cut orders for the Vision Pro even before it launched outside of the US. His sources claim thatApple now expects to sell only around 400,000 to 450,000 units in 2024, compared to what Kuo says was a “market consensus” of 700,000 to 800,000. Demand for the $3,500 Vision Pro dropped much lower than the company was expecting.
Facing the unanticipated drop in steam, Apple is now adjusting its headset roadmap, possibly pushing the future of a lower-cost entry mixed reality headset beyond 2025 (if at all). Apple’s Vision Pro has largely wowed early adopters due to its technical...
Photo by VCG / VCG via Getty Images
Tesla reported its first quarter earnings during an incredibly shaky moment for the company in which sales numbers and the stock price have both fallen. Against this backdrop, Tesla reported $1.1 billion in net income on $21 billion in revenue, down 9 percent from $23.3 billion the same time last year.
The company’s profits, once the envy of the auto industry, are at their lowest in six years thanks to rampant price cutting and slowing demand. Earlier this week, the company approved its latest price cuts for the US, China, and Germany — all major markets for the EV maker.
Tesla’s Q1 operating margins are 5.5 percent, down from 11.4 percent in Q1 2023. In a note to shareholders, the company blames an industrywide shift from...
Wattpad says DMs will be shut down on May 6th, alongside the deletion of all existing messages. | Image: Wattpad
Community publishing platform Wattpad is removing the ability for users to send each other direct messages, claiming that the feature has “only been relevant to a small percentage” of its global user base. Users will retain access to their DMs until May 6th, after which all existing messages will be deleted and the feature will no longer be available, according to Wattpad’s help center.
Wattpad is instead encouraging its users to communicate via the public commenting feature on stories or the conversation section of profile pages. There is currently no means for users to download their existing DMs, and Wattpad says that it’s unable to retrieve such data. The feature will still exist in a limited capacity solely for Wattpad to...
Home internet for when you’re not at home. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
T-Mobile has announced two new home internet plans: Home Internet Plus and Away. Well, technically that’s one home internet plan and one anywhere-but-home plan. These new flavors of T-Mobile’s 5G-powered internet service aim to address different customers, but both serve the same goal: leveraging that sweet 5G spectrum to do more than just keep our phones connected.
The new Away plan, importantly, does not allow for “extended use in the same location,” according to a footnote in T-Mobile’s press release. It’s basically a Starlink competitor designed for campers and RV owners, but instead of using satellite connectivity, it’s more like a supercharged cellular hotspot. It can connect up to 64 devices at a time, which seems like way more...
Apple’s next event will be all about iPads. | Image: Apple
Apple has gone and announced a spring event for May 7th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET. While the company didn’t say what the event is about, the Apple Pencil in its graphic suggests we’re finally about to hear about new iPads — but which ones? Well, almost certainly OLED iPad Pros, which we’ve been hearing about for months, but the company might also announce a new iPad Air in two sizes for the first time.
Rumors have also circulated in the last few months about a new Apple Pencil and updated Magic Keyboard accessories that would give iPad Pro owners a more laptop-like feel. Because more accessories are all the iPad needs, right? It doesn’t seem likely that there will be an update of the 10th-generation vanilla iPad or the iPad Mini quite yet, so...
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
Tech companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Amazon committed today to reviewing their AI training data for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and removing it from use in any future models.
The companies signed on to a new set of principles meant to limit the proliferation of CSAM. They promise to ensure training datasets do not contain CSAM, to avoid datasets with a high risk of including CSAM, and to remove CSAM imagery or links to CSAM from data sources. The companies also commit to “stress-testing” AI models to ensure they don’t generate any CSAM imagery and to only release models if these have been evaluated for child safety.
Other signatories include Anthropic, Civitai, Metaphysic, Mistral AI, and Stability AI.
G...
Image: Atlus
Metaphor: ReFantazio is the inscrutable name for Atlus’ next RPG project. The company launched a new trailer and a 30-minute video introducing players to the story, gameplay, and social elements of the game, and at first blush, it looks pretty damn intriguing. Check out the gameplay video below.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is an action RPG from Studio Zero, a new internal studio spun up in 2016 and headed by Katsura Hashino. Atlus really wants you to know the bona fides of the developers working on Metaphor. Hashino himself worked on Shin Megami Tensei III, Persona 3, 4, and 5. The game’s mechanical designer is Ikuto Yamashita, who helped design the mechs in Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Shoji Meguro, who did the music for the Persona series,...
Image: Spotify
Spotify has launched a colorful personality quiz designed to help K-pop fans determine their persona. For those unfamiliar with the K-pop term or its Jungian roots, a “persona” refers to the distinct, public-facing role of each member of a band. The feature leans into K-pop’s status as a major area of growth in the global music industry, which Spotify has been eager to tap into.
The five-question quiz, which fans can take inside the Spotify app, will identify whether you’re a Main Visual, a Main Vocal, a Main Rapper, a Main Dancer, or a Trainee. In a callout to K-pop fan culture, the quiz will also generate a photocard (similar to the band-specific trading cards) with your results that you can share on social media. The feature will be...
Cody Two Bears attends the Stand With Standing Rock Benefit at ABC Home & Carpet on December 15th, 2016, in New York City. | Photo by Mark Sagliocco / WireImage
A coalition of 14 tribes received $135,580,000 for solar energy, part of a Biden administration program to help more households run on renewable energy. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation, which is leading the coalition, says the funding will bring jobs to their communities and make electricity more affordable.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced $7 billion in “Solar for All” grants yesterday for 60 awardees, including the MHA Nation. The money, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, is supposed to bring residential solar systems to some 900,000 “low-income and disadvantaged” households. Six of the grants, totaling $500 million, are going to tribes.
Funding for the MHA Nation is expected to bring solar energy...
Luminar’s new Halo lidar sensor is expected to be less than one inch thick. | Image: Luminar
Luminar is shipping out orders of its lidar sensors to Volvo as the automaker is preparing to start production of its EX90 electric vehicles, the company said today. Volvo will use the laser sensor to enable safety and self-driving features in the EX90, making it the “first global consumer vehicle to standardize this technology,” Luminar notes in a press release.
The news comes during a “Luminar Day” webcast, where the company is also announcing a new next-generation “Halo” lidar sensor — one that’s designed for mainstream adoption, including in affordable vehicles, at half the cost of its current system.
The order of lidar sensors to Volvo, which Luminar notes is worth $4 billion, comes after Volvo announced last year that it had to p...
Tesla
On the cusp of what’s expected to be a very not-good earnings report, Tesla decided to shuffle its search results a bit with the reveal of the 2024 Model 3 Performance, with a specially tuned chassis and a 2.9 second 0–60 mph acceleration time.
Interestingly, Tesla did not give this updated Model 3 the “Plaid” performance badge, which, so far, it has reserved for its more premium vehicles, the Model S and Model X. For the Model 3, it’s sticking to Performance.
The performance trim of the company’s top-selling electric sedan will get 510 horsepower and 741 Nm of torque — a step above the 470 horsepower that was achievable in the 2019 performance trim — and can hit a top speed of 163 mph.
Interestingly, Tesla is not give this updated...
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
It’s been over a decade since the release of the very first iPad — and it may finally get Apple’s Calculator app. MacRumors reports that Apple plans to introduce its native calculator in iPadOS 18, which Apple will likely introduce during its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10th.
For years, iPad users have had to download third-party calculator apps or access a web browser just to do math. Many of these third-party apps aren’t all that pleasant to use, as some of them come filled with ads or just don’t mesh well with the iPad’s interface. Not to mention that the better calculator apps, like PCalc, cost money to download.
This isn’t the only calculator rumor we’ve heard recently, either. Earlier this month, a report from A...
The The VWFNDR Keirin camera concept.
This past weekend, a local startup held an exhibition not too far from where I live in Tokyo to show off its idea for an entirely new take on camera hardware. That’s not the sort of thing that happens every weekend, even in Tokyo, so I biked on over to take a look.
VWFNDR is a project started by UX designer Álvaro Arregui Falcón of Nuevo.Tokyo and independent industrial designer Mireia Gordi i Vila. The team later brought on London-based engineer Lucas Seidenfaden, who developed the first working prototype for their concept.
That concept is called Keirin.
Named after the Japanese cycling discipline that takes place on a similarly oval track, the Keirin is a camera focused on panorama photography. Its standout visual feature is a curved...
Image: Amazon
For production designer Howard Cummings, Fallout wasn’t just the name of his most recent project — it also became a verb. As he was working on Amazon’s live-action adaptation of the game series, Cummings and his team used the word Fallout as a shorthand to describe the particular retrofuturistic, post-apocalyptic style the franchise is known for. “Everything had to be Fallout-ed,” he tells The Verge. “For locations, I’d say: ‘How do I Fallout this grocery store?’”
Initially, though, that wasn’t the plan. Going into the project, Cummings — who previously worked on shows like Westworld and Lovecraft Country — didn’t know all that much about the games and thought he might have to update the visual style to make it “slicker.” That changed...
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Don’t kick yourself if you missed out on Samsung’s free TV preorder promo from earlier this month. The company is now offering a much better cash discount on one of its most notable new models: the glare-free Samsung OLED S95D TV. The smallest TV in the lineup, the 55-inch model starts at $2,299.99 ($300 off) at Best Buy and Samsung, while the 77-inch is also $300 off for $4,299.99 (Best Buy, Samsung). The 65-inch TV, meanwhile, is receiving an even steeper $400 discount for $2,999.99 (Best Buy, Samsung).
Back in January, we saw for ourselves how well the S95D OLED eliminated most noticeable reflections, even as the TV sat right next to a light source. At the same time, the TV’s display is brighter than ever, with the OLED screen...
There’s a new cat-eye frame called the Skyler. | Image: Meta
Meta just announced a slew of new updates for its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg just dropped an Instagram reel showing off a new cat-eye frame style for the glasses and a video calling feature. You can also now connect the glasses with Apple Music, and last but not least, the multimodal AI assistant is live for everyone in the US and Canada.
You can peep a pretty clear demo of the video calling feature from Zuckerberg’s reel. In it, he talks to Eva Chen, who runs fashion at Instagram, about the new Skyler frames and... chain lengths, of all things. The existing Wayfarer and Headliner models are also getting some new colors. The Headliner, which has rounder lenses, is also getting a low-bridge fit for folks who have...
Overall, pulling out your phone is still faster, but it is handy for identifying things when you’re out and about. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
It can be handy, confidently wrong, and just plain finicky — but smart glasses are a much more comfortable form factor for this tech.
The white Razer Viper V3 Pro next to its large bundled HyperPolling Wireless Dongle. | Image: Razer
Does your gaming mouse track its own position 8,000 times per second? If you’re the kind of person who cares, I suspect you might also want that mouse to track that fast out of the box — instead of having to buy an extra dongle for that feature.
That’s the most obvious difference Razer is announcing today with its flagship Viper V3 Pro mouse for esports pros and those who aspire to be one. For $160, the new Viper V3 Pro includes the $30 Razer HyperPolling Wireless Dongle, where the $150 Viper V2 Pro did not.
Mind you, the 58-gram Viper V2 Pro was already an impressive piece of kit, taking the crown for the lightest wireless gaming mouse at its debut, and the V3 Pro now sheds an extra four grams to hit 54 grams and firmly cement itself...
Residents clean debris of their destroyed houses at the Khaung Dote Khar Rohingya refugee camp in Myanmar’s Rakhine state on May 15th, 2023, after Cyclone Mocha made landfall. | Photo by Sai Aung Main / AFP via Getty Images
No other region on Earth experiences more climate, weather, and water-related disasters than Asia, according to a new report. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its 2023 State of the Climate in Asia today, which found that risks are only rising.
From heatwaves to flooding and storms, climate change makes all kinds of disasters more intense all over the world. But the problem is particularly acute in Asia, which is heating up faster than the global average thanks to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
“The report’s conclusions are sobering.”
“Climate change exacerbated the frequency and severity of such events, profoundly impacting societies, economies, and, most importantly, human lives and the environment...
Image: Amazon
Amazon is bringing back free(ish) grocery deliveries for orders over $35 in the form of a new monthly subscription program the company announced today. It’s $9.99 per month for Prime members and includes unlimited one-hour grocery delivery where it’s available, as well as unlimited 30-minute grocery pickups, with a half-cost option for low-income non-Prime members who qualify.
Amazon launched a trial of the subscription in three cities last year but now says it’s available in 3,500 cities across the US. Deliveries include groceries from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh but also local grocers and specialty retailers that it’s partnered with. Subscribers get “priority access” for recurring weekly groceries, too.
This new subscription could be...
At first glance, Netflix’s upcoming action thriller Atlas,starring Jennifer Lopez, seemed like it was going to be a rather serious movie about a mech pilot fighting to survive on an inhospitable planet. That could still be the case, but the movie’s latest trailer makes it out to be a bit more of a sci-fi buddy cop affair with an emphasis on human / robot alliances.
Though a maniacal machine (Simu Liu) dead-set on eradicating humanity presents the biggest threat in Atlas, the movie’s new trailer puts a spotlight on how an AI-powered battle armor will join Atlas Shepherd (Lopez) in her fight to save the world. With so many killer robots on the loose and doing a bang-up job of destroying cities, it makes sense that Atlas would be...
Illustration: The Verge
After kicking off 2024 with the launch of the Vision Pro, the next act in Apple’s 2024 script is a May product launch event. Apple has started inviting members of the media to a “special Apple Event” on May 7th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET. The invite’s image includes the Apple Pencil, making it abundantly clear that iPads will be the focus of this virtual event.
Rumors suggest the iPad Pro will get some of its most significant improvements since the 2021 M1 overhaul, including an OLED display (with a slight size bump to 13 inches for the bigger model), an updated M3 chipset, and the long overdue horizontal repositioning of its front-facing camera. There might also be a new Apple Pencil and a redesigned Magic Keyboard with an aluminum build and a...
If you can afford this home, you can probably afford Anker’s whole-home battery backup solution. | Image: Anker
Nearly a year since it was first announced, Anker is finally selling its Solix whole-home battery backup solution in North America. The Solix X1 is just 5.9 inches thick and attaches to a wall like a Tesla Powerwall. It’s a more permanent and minimalist alternative to Anker’s modular F3800 kits, which can be quickly detached to power a weekend away.
The Solix X1 can be configured to deliver between 3kW and 36kW of power with a stackable design that supports between 5kWh and 180kWh of LFP battery capacity. It’s covered by a warranty of 10 years or 16.5MWh throughput, whichever comes first. Cutover from the grid to the battery happens in less than 20ms, so you might not even notice the next power outage.
Calculating how much power and...
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
The TikTok ban appears to be for real this time. (Technically, “the TikTok ban or divesture but hopefully divesture” is probably more accurate, but everybody’s just calling it a ban.) Only a few weeks ago, all momentum for the ban seemed gone. Now, it’s back with a vengeance, with a couple of small tweaks and a new political strategy. And it could get a vote in the Senate in the next few days.
There’s also a new bill, known as the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), starting to gain some traction among important people looking to pass comprehensive privacy regulation in the US. Of course, we’ve heard that before. Many times. So will the APRA succeed where other bills have failed?
On this episode of The Vergecast, we chat with The Verge’...
Image: Epic Games
If you still have your old Rock Band guitars lying around, it’s now possible to use them in Fortnite’s Rock Band-like music mode. As promised at launch, Fortnite Festivalnow supports a handful of guitar controllers across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. The announcement comes as part of a fresh update headlined by Billie Eilish.
The supported controllers include the Riffmaster Wireless Guitar Controller, Rock Band 4 Rivals Wireless Fender Jaguar Guitar, and Rock Band 4 Wireless Fender Stratocaster Guitar. They can be used for playing both lead and bass guitar in Festival. Epic also says that “we’ll have more instrument controller news to announce in the future,” so don’t toss that plastic drum set just yet.
While it may seem a bit weird, the...
Image: Sonos
Today, Sonos is officially introducing the redesigned mobile app that I showed you earlier this month. It’ll roll out for both Android and iOS on May 7th, but the company’s desktop apps aren’t coming along for the ride: Sonos will discontinue its controller apps for Windows and macOS in the near future. Taking their place is a new web app that will allow you to control and access your Sonos speakers from anywhere — not just when you’re home on Wi-Fi.
But for now, let’s get back to the smartphone app. It’s been rebuilt from the ground up to be more reliable. Sonos’ fundamental goal was making everything feel faster and getting you where you want to be without relying on a tabbed navigation bar. Now, everything is on the homescreen, and...
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Image: Getty Images
Elon Musk is currently embroiled in a battle with Australian authorities over demands for X to remove violent content of a stabbing that took place during a livestreamed service at a church in Sydney last week. Musk is arguing that such decisions could give countries the power to control “the entire internet,” while the Australian government is arguing that geoblocking content isn’t enough in its plea for decency and social responsibility.
“Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian ‘eSafety Commissar’ is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?” said Musk, noting that the objectionable content is already geoblocked in Australia...
SimpliSafe’s new live guard outdoor protection service allows its agents to monitor your outdoor security cameras for potential intruders. | Image: SimpliSafe
SimpliSafe is bringing live monitoring to its outdoor cameras, adding to the indoor live monitoring service it launched last year. The new live guard outdoor protection service lets SimpliSafe’s human agents view a live feed from its outdoor camera when the system is armed, the camera detects a person, and its AI and facial recognition algorithms determine that person is likely to be a stranger. The idea is that SimpliSafe could more proactively prevent someone from breaking in than traditional alarm systems, which typically only trigger after a home's perimeter has been breached.
The DIY smart home security company’s new service uses a combination of on-device AI, cloud-based computer vision, and facial recognition to determine when...
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Grzegorz Wajda, Getty Images
When Tesla releases its first quarter earnings this afternoon, the company’s CEO Elon Musk will field the usual questions about new products, new factories, and progress toward its futuristic vision of self-driving cars and robot workers. But Musk will also face increasingly urgent questions about its current state of affairs — and why everything seems to be going to shit.
Earlier this month, the company reported its first year-over-year sales drop in four years, a sign of rougher waters ahead. Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 40 percent since the start of the year, including a 13 percent drop in the last week. The company laid off over 14,000 employees last week, 10 percent of its global workforce — which could end up being closer to...
Unlike other Firefly-powered tools that generate sections of an image, Photoshop’s new Generate Image tool will fill the entire canvas. | Image: Adobe
Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to its Photoshop creative software that aim to give users additional ways to control the designs they generate. Powered by Adobe’s new Firefly Image 3 foundation model, these new tools are available today via the Photoshop beta desktop app, and will be generally available “later this year” according to Adobe’s Press release.
The most notable tool is Reference Image, which uses user-uploaded images to inspire the output generated by Adobe’s AI, matching similar elements in style and color. For example, instead of repeatedly tweaking a prompt description like “a blue vintage truck with flower decals,” users can instead provide a reference image that Photoshop will use as a guide.
“Prompting is a...
Illustration: The Verge
Microsoft launched the next version of its lightweight AI model Phi-3 Mini, the first of three small models the company plans to release.
Phi-3 Mini measures 3.8 billion parameters and is trained on a data set that is smaller relative tolarge language models like GPT-4. It is now available on Azure, Hugging Face, and Ollama. Microsoft plans to release Phi-3 Small (7B parameters) and Phi-3 Medium (14B parameters). Parameters refer to how many complex instructions a model can understand.
The company released Phi-2 in December, which performed just as well as bigger models like Llama 2. Microsoft says Phi-3 performs better than the previous version and can provide responses close to how a model 10 times bigger than it can.
Eric Boyd,...
YouTube
Fortnite is rolling out an update on Tuesday that includes a new setting that filters out “confrontational” emotes. The v29.30 update will let players “choose not to see” the following emotes: “Laugh It Up”, “Take the L”, “Whipcrack”, and “Make it Plantain.”
The four emotes won’t exactly be hidden per se, they’ll appear as still images in the game — but players performing them won’t dance and they won’t play music. Players can opt to only see these emotes from friends, or hide them altogether.
Though Fortnite has hundreds of different emotes, this group of four are controversial because of how and when players will use them. Fortnite players will often play emotes like “Laugh it Up” and “Take the L” after killing another player or...
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
DolphiniOS, a fork of the popular Dolphin emulator for Nintendo Wii and GameCube games, has confirmed that it’s not coming to the Apple App Store even though emulators are now supported. In a post on Friday, the developer behind the emulator says it’s because Apple doesn’t allow DolphiniOS to use its underlying performance-boosting tech.
As explained by developer OatmealDome, DolphiniOS — along with other Wii and GameCube emulators — uses something called Just-in-Time (JIT). This is a compiler that “translates” the GameCube and Wii’s PowerPC-based code into a language other devices can understand, making emulations run a lot smoother.
Even with the recent App Store policy changes, DolphiniOS still cannot be submitted to the App Store...
This drone might migrate south to a new location in Arizona. | Image: Amazon
Amazon is winding down its Prime Air drone delivery program in Lockeford, California — an early testing zone for a service that allowed local residents to order products weighing up to five pounds and get them delivered to their location via drone in 30 minutes.
In the same press release, Amazon also announced that the company is launching a new Prime Air location in Tolleson, Arizona. The new location is expected to provide “same-day” deliveries to residents in the West Valley Phoenix metro area. Amazon expects to begin operations in Arizona starting later this year.
The press release doesn’t provide a clear reason as to why the Lockeford location, which opened for business in 2022, is closing, though it does say employees at the...
Anker’s versatile charging orb functions as both a power strip and a StandBy-ready phone stand. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge
A cluttered desk can easily hijack your focus, which is why Anker’s Qi2-certified MagGo Magnetic Charging Station (8-in-1)can prove helpful. It’s small, but it can quickly clear up space by replacing a good chunk of your chargers while doubling as a sturdy phone stand. It normally runs $99.99, but now until 4:45PM PT / 7:45PM ET on April 28th, you can pick up the charger at its all-time low of $69.99 ($30 off) at Amazon and Anker (with promo code WS7DV2GPRWSL).
The speedy orb-shaped charger can supply up to 15W of power to MagSafe-equipped iPhones — specifically iPhone 12, 13, 14, and 15 models — while functioning as a versatile power strip that can charge up to seven other devices. It supports up to 67W total power output and comes...
Illustration: The Verge
Former Meta executive Jason Taylor is joining Microsoft’s AI supercomputing team. In a LinkedIn post on Monday, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott says Taylor will take on the role of corporate vice president and deputy CTO to help “build the next set of systems that will push the frontier of AI forward.”
Taylor worked at Meta from 2009 to 2022, where he most recently served as the company’s vice president of infrastructure. He handled AI, data, and privacy infrastructure, as well as managing the company’s server budgets, according to his LinkedIn profile. Taylor was also the chair of the Open Compute Project Foundation from 2015 to 2017, an organization that promotes open-source designs in data centers.
Microsoft and OpenAI need more robust...
Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge
Europe is warming up at twice the global average, leading to deadly heatwaves and severe flooding, according to the European State of the Climate (ESOTC) report for the year 2023, released Monday.
According to the report, temperatures in Europe are rising 2.3 degrees Celsius (or 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, according to a five-year average, compared to 1.3 degrees Celsius (roughly 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) globally. The report, jointly issued by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization, covers the year 2023, which was the second warmest year on record for Europe. Parts of southern Europe experienced between 60 and 80 days of “strong heat stress,” with...
Mark Zuckerberg onstage at Meta Connect 2023. | Getty Images
Meta has started licensing the operating system for its Quest headset to other hardware makers, starting with Lenovo and Asus. It’s also making a limited-run, gaming-focused Quest with Xbox.
On the theme of opening up, Meta is also pushing for more ways to discover alternative app stores. It’s making its experimental App Lab store more prominent and even inviting Google to bring the Play Store to its operating system, which is now called Horizon OS. In a blog post, Meta additionally said that it’s working on a spatial framework for developers to more easily port their mobile apps to Horizon OS.
Crucially for Meta, Horizon OS includes the Horizon social layer, a 3D, Roblox-meets-The Sims open-world platform. After a buggy and sluggish...
Maybe your home should be dumb! | Illustration by Adrián Astorgano
It turns out your TV can actually mess up your computer — at least if you’re using a Hisense TV and Windows.
Kevin Snow, a video game narrative designer, wrote on Cohost that they’d been having trouble with their PC. The “Display Settings” menu didn’t open. The “Task Manager” started hanging. Then things necessary to making the computer work started to fail. Spelunking in hidden comments on Microsoft forums revealed the problem: Snow’s TV.
“I felt like I’d solved a murder.”
Basically, the TV had been generating Universal Plug and Play IDs and had, over the course of several years, convinced Snow’s computer that there were essentially an infinite number of devices on their network. Snow’s smart TV, a Hisense 50Q8G, had inadvertently...
How Meta envisions an Xbox-branded VR headset. | Image: Meta
Microsoft is teaming up with Meta to create a limited edition Meta Quest VR headset that’s “inspired by Xbox.” While both Microsoft and Meta aren’t sharing full details on this VR headset, it sounds like it’s simply going to be a skinned Meta Quest 3 (or future unannounced version) that comes bundled with an Xbox controller.
“We’re working together again [with Microsoft] to create a limited-edition Meta Quest, inspired by Xbox,” says Meta in an announcement today. It’s part of Meta opening up its operating system that powers its Quest VR headsets to third-party hardware makers. Asus and Lenovo are creating dedicated headsets that run the Meta Horizon OS, but the partnership with Microsoft sounds like it’s simply a limited-edition headset...
Image: Epic Games
Finally, you can bury a friend as Billie Eilish. Fortnite has revealed its next major musical collaboration, and it will see Eilish become a playable character starting on April 23rd. You should see her in a Victory Crown.
There aren’t many details just yet, but the singer will be the featured artist for the next season of Fortnite Festival, the Rock Band-like in-game experience that launched last year. That means you can expect her songs to be playable in that mode and her neon green character skin to appear in the in-game shop (presumably with a Lego variant).
Of course, this is far from the first big-name star to be featured in the game. Eilish follows the likes of Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, and Eminem; more recently, Fortnite held its...
Image: Cath Virginia | The Verge
Open platforms keep gaining support out there — newsletter platform Ghost just published what amounts to a manifesto in support of the ActivityPub protocol with plans to ship ActivityPub integration “in 2024.”
That’s a big shot of support for the fediverse — the network of open and interoperable social services that have all been gaining momentum over the past year. Ghost founder John O’Nolan recently said that federation over ActivityPub was the platform’s “most requested feature over the past few years” — a comment he made on Meta’s Threads, which itself is slowing beginning to federate.
The idea here is that all these networks will allow users to follow and share content between them, keeping you from needing to have multiple accounts...
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
A new report from Stanford’s Internet Observatory said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline needs to improve its technology if it wants to meet the influx of AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The report said CyberTipline, the first defense against CSAM on the internet, already struggles to handle the high volume of calls it receives. According to the center, the tip line received 36.2 million CSAM reports in 2023, a 12 percent increase from 2022.
The rise of AI-generated CSAM would only make things worse. The tip line receives reports from online platforms like Facebook and Google through a manual reporting API, but this API doesn’t ensure all important fields are filled out. Stanford also...
Photo by Ulrik Pedersen / DeFodi Images via Getty Images
It looks like Apple’s foray into streaming soccer could be getting even more ambitious. According to a report from The New York Times, Apple is close to a deal with FIFA — the sport’s global governing body — for worldwide rights for an expanded version of the Club World Cup that will take place in the US in 2025. The Times says that the deal could be worth upward of $1 billion and that an official announcement could happen sometime this month.
If the deal goes through, it would mark Apple’s second major broadcast partnership in the sport. In 2022, the company signed a 10-year deal for streaming rights to Major League Soccer, which got a big boost a year later with Lionel Messi’s arrival in Miami. The deal with FIFA would be more notable,...
Image: Weta Workshop / Private Division
One of the most famous pieces of literature in the world starts with, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” and now, technology has advanced to the point where we can be that hobbit with our own holes in the ground. Private Division and Weta Workshop have released the first official trailer for Tales of the Shire, a cozy, hobbit life sim where players can live out the fantasy of being one of Bilbo’s halfling neighbors.
The premise of Tales of the Shire is extremely simple: make your hobbit hole the picture of comfort. Seems like there will be other activities like cooking for your neighbors, fishing, and exploring the greater world of The Shire — kinda like Stardew Valley meets The Hobbit. The trailer seemed to leak ahead of...
The price of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving package is trending downward. | Image: Owen Grove / The Verge
The price for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software package was supposed to get more expensive over time — but instead, it’s getting cheaper.
Tesla has discounted the $12,000 feature — that has been marketed as eventually enabling fully autonomous capabilities despite just being a Level 2 driver-assist system — to $8,000. The price cut comes ahead of Tesla’s earnings on April 23rd, in which Elon Musk is sure to face questions about the adjustment. For years, Musk has insisted that the software package would only grow in value, possibly to a price over $100,000.
In reality, the cost of FSD peaked in 2022 when it was raised to $15,000 and later fell to $12,000. Earlier this month, Tesla also reduced the price of the subscription version...
Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Discord
For teens and gamers, Discord has become their entire online social lives. Co-founder Jason Citron thinks the internet is headed more in that direction.
Deadpool & Wolverine has seemed fairly lighthearted in most of the teasers Marvel has dropped so far, but the movie’s latest trailer has a promising edge to it.
Rather than focusing on Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), Deadpool & Wolverine’s new trailer is actually more about a Wolverine variant (Hugh Jackman) who somehow failed his universe’s team of X-Men before the whole thing was obliterated. It’s still wildly unclear how Wolverine and Deadpool manage to end up fighting in the ruins of the 20th Century Fox lot or which reality the movie’s Wolverine comes from.
But the trailer makes it seem like it all has something to do with Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), a powerful mutant with a complicated relationship to Charles Xavier and a penchant...
Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Wear OS is much better than it used to be, so there’s never been a better time to consider a smartwatch.
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
Political strategists aren’t throwing away TikTok, even after their election candidates try to force its sale on national security grounds.
Doris Ríos is a Cabécar leader who has fought to reclaim Indigenous territory in Costa Rica. | Collage by Israel Vargas | Photos by Justine Calma
These women took back their land in Costa Rica, and now they plan to reforest it.
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge
Microsoft is starting to improve the experience of downloading Windows store apps from the web. The software giant has built what it calls an “undocked version of the [Microsoft] Store” that works like a typical executable to install apps from the Microsoft Store. It should cut down on the complexity involved in finding Windows store apps on the web and installing them.
Instead of launching the Microsoft Store and a mini window, now when you download apps from the web version of the Microsoft Store it will download a standalone installer instead. This means you don’t have to click install on the web, then allow Chrome or Edge to open the Microsoft Store, and finally hit install to actually install the app. A lightweight installer will be...
Embracer Group will house major properties like the Lord of The Rings under its new Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends company. | Image: Warner Bros.
Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group announced plans on Monday to split itself into three distinct games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. These will be separate, publicly listed companies, according to Embracer’, which says the move will allow “each entity to better focus on their respective core strategies and offer more differentiated and distinct equity stories for existing and new shareholders.”
“This move towards three independent companies reinforces Embracer’s vision of backing entrepreneurs and creators with a long-term mindset,” says Lars Wingefors, co-founder and Embracer Group CEO, “allowing them to continue to deliver unforgettable experiences...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A couple of weeks ago, I ran out of screen on the one external monitor my work-issued MacBook Air can run. So I switched to my five-year-old Windows desktop and plugged in another monitor. Love it. Productivity through the roof. But it means that I’m finally spending significant time in Windows 11, and gosh, is it janky.
There are some things that Windows does very well compared to macOS and Linux. All the games are there, for one thing, and Windows runs on all sorts of hardware without a lot of fiddling. You do not have to spend a thousand dollars minimum on a non-upgradable machine to use it. You also generally do not have to download a bunch of drivers or spend six hours in the command line hand-assembling the goddamn operating...
Streaks aren’t the only way to be consistent. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Six weeks ago, I was having a tough time sticking to my running routines and goals. Physically, I was mostly fine. Mentally, the thought of running — a sport I usually love — made me roll into a blanket burrito and never leave my bed. I started hating myself, but none of my usual fitness apps and trackers were helping. After building a weeklong streak, I couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed one Saturday. I broke it and spent the next day wallowing in guilt and self-pity.
Fed up, I went digging around the internet and ended up downloading the Gentler Streak app.
Gentler Streak is what it sounds like. It’s an iOS and Apple Watch app with a more compassionate approach toward building a fitness habit. You can set an activity status:...
It’s phones, y’all. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
At any given time, there are between five and eight phones on my desk. And by “my desk,” I mean any combination of tables and countertops throughout my house. So when I watched the Humane AI Pin reviews start pouring in last week, I did what any logical person would do: grab the closest phone and try to turn it into my own AI wearable.
Humane would like you to believe that its AI Pin represents consumer tech at its most cutting edge. The reviews and the guts of the pin say otherwise: it uses a Snapdragon processor from four years ago and seems to run a custom version of Android 12.
“It’s a midrange Android phone!” I declared at our next team meeting, waving around a midrange Android phone for effect. “You could just download Gemini and...