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The Wyze Cam v4. | Image: Wyze You might think twice before buying a Wyze camera. The company's security practices are questionable enough that I personally boycotted them in 2022, and since then, they've twice briefly let strangers peek into another Wyze owner's home. In fact, The New York Times and CNET don't recommend Wyze cameras anymore, and we haven't done so for a while.But some Verge readers have told us that if you're pointing them outside of your home and recording to a local SD card, there's no better bang for your buck. So, we figure some will appreciate Wyze's announcement today of the Wyze Cam v4, on sale now.The $36 camera is getting a big spec bump over the v3: it now captures 2.5K (2560 x 1440) video with what Wyze is sometimes calling HDR and... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Google is releasing an optimized version of its Chrome browser for Windows on Arm this week, the search giant has announced alongside chipmaker Qualcomm. The official release comes two months after an early version of the browser was spotted in Chrome's Canary channel. Qualcomm says the release will roll out starting today."The release will be a big deal for any Chrome users with Windows machines powered by Arm-based processors, who'll now have access to a much faster native browser. That's in contrast to the x64 version of Chrome they've previously had to run in an emulated state with slow performance. Arm-based users have previously been able to turn to Microsoft's Edge, which is already available for Windows on Arm devices.Today's... Continue reading...

Photo by Larina Marina, Getty Images People bought 43 million vinyl records last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). That's 6 million more than the number of CDs sold in 2023, marking the second time since 1987 that's happened and reflecting the steady 17-year-running growth of vinyl sales.Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs. The RIAA's report shows that CD revenue was up, too, but in terms of physical products sold, people actually bought about 700,000 fewer CDs in 2023 than the year before. (If you're curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.) Image:... Continue reading...

Lake Mead, formed by Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the Southwestern United States, at 47 percent capacity as viewed on August 14, 2023 near Boulder City, Nevada. | Photo by George Rose/Getty Images The amount of hydropower generated in the Western US last year was the lowest it's been in more than two decades. Hydropower generation in the region fell by 11 percent during the 2022-2023 water year compared to the year prior, according to preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration's Electricity Data Browser - its lowest point since 2001.That includes states west of the Dakotas and Texas, where 60 percent of the nation's hydropower was generated. These also happen to be the states - including California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico - that climate change is increasingly sucking dry. And in a reversal of fortunes, typically wetter states in the Northeast - normally powerhouses for hydropower generation - were the... Continue reading...

The Verge Microsoft is improving the way its AI-powered Copilot works in Microsoft Teams with new ways to invoke the assistant during meeting chats, summaries, and more.Copilot is already able to summarize Teams meetings, but in the coming months, it will combine spoken transcripts and written chats into a single view to make it easier to catch up on meetings you might have missed.Copilot in Teams is also getting improvements to composing messages in chat, allowing Teams users to rewrite a message in new ways. Copilot can adjust your message to add a call to action, or like how a pirate would speak," says Microsoft in a blog post. Soon, you will also be able to generate a new message based on the context in the Teams chat." I... Continue reading...

Image: Capcom The sequel to Capcom's action RPG is big and chaotic, but the companion characters are what make it all work. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge / Photo courtesy of University of Washington The world is a noisy place. High-end headphones are getting better at shutting it out; solid noise-canceling headphones from Sony, Bose, and others are increasingly a must-have for anyone who spends a lot of time on planes and trains, or in coffee shops full of people pitching AI startups. It's a sanity thing, really.But there are already people working on a giant leap in active noise cancellation. Instead of just blocking all the sound around you, the next generation of headphones might block all the sound you don't want - but let in all the things you do want to hear. And someday, it might even be able to do that automatically. Your headphones could block out your annoying friend but not your cool friend; could hush the vacuum but not... Continue reading...

The old Disney Plus icon logo (left) compared with the updated teal one (right). | Image: Disney Disney has made some slight but notable updates to the logo and splash screen for its Disney Plus streaming service that likely nod to its looming merger with Hulu. The biggest change is the new teal / seafoam background color, which appears to be a rough mix between its original blue background and the green that Hulu uses.At face value alone, the updated design - which can already be seen on the Disney Plus website and various app stores - makes sense for the corporate giant. Aside from the obvious unity with Hulu, the new color also makes it stand out more against the sea of blue and black logos used by other streaming services like Prime Video, Max, and Paramount Plus. But I am actually sad to see the old logo go. I... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is introducing a new Community Game Help feature on the PS5 later this year that is designed to automatically create clips that can help other players. PS5 players will be able to automatically upload gameplay to help contribute to hint videos provided by game developers.The opt-in experience will let your PS5 automatically capture a game clip when you complete an activity in supported titles. Then, it will be reviewed by a moderator, and if approved, your video will be published as a Game Help hint for PlayStation players to watch, learn from, and rate," explains Sabrina Meditz, senior director of product management for the PS5 platform experience. Image: Sony PS5 players will get a notification if their... Continue reading...

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride The AI search tools are getting better - but they don't yet understand what a search engine really is and how we really use them. Continue reading...

Affinity's professional design software could give Canva the edge it needs to seriously compete against Adobe. | Image: Canva Web-based design platform Canva has acquired the Affinity creative software suite, positioning itself as a challenger to Adobe's grip over the digital design industry. Canva announced the deal on Tuesday, which gives the company ownership over Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher - three popular creative applications for Windows, Mac, and iPad that provide similar features to Adobe's Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign software, respectively.Official figures for the deal have not been revealed, but Bloomberg reports that it's valued at several hundred million [British] pounds." Nevertheless, the acquisition makes sense as the Australian-based company tries to attract more creative professionals. As of January this year, Canva's... Continue reading...

Image: Nissan Nissan has laid out a new plan to electrify 16 of the 30 vehicles it produces by 2026, with the rest using internal combustion instead. For those of us in North America, the company says it plans to release seven new vehicles in the US and Canada, although it's not clear how many of those will be some type of EV.Nissan says the US is getting e-POWER and plug-in hybrid models" - each of those uses a mix of electricity and fuel for power. At the moment, the only all-electric EVs Nissan is producing are the Ariya SUV and the perhaps endangered (or maybe not) Leaf.In 2021, Nissan said it would make 23 electrified vehicles by 2030, and that 15 of those would be fully electric, rather than some form of hybrid vehicle. It's hard to say if... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is naming Pavan Davuluri as its new Windows and Surface chief today. After Panos Panay's surprise departure to Amazon last year, Microsoft split up the Windows and Surface groups under two different leaders. Davuluri took over the Surface silicon and devices work, with Mikhail Parakhin leading a new team focused on Windows and web experiences. Now both Windows and Surface will be Davuluri's responsibility, as Parakhin has decided to explore new roles."The Verge has obtained an internal memo from Rajesh Jha, Microsoft's head of experiences and devices, outlining the new Windows organization. Microsoft is now bringing together its Windows and devices teams once more. This will enable us to take a holistic approach to building... Continue reading...

Please don't sign up for this program. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Telegram is offering a new way to earn a premium subscription free of charge: all you have to do is volunteer your phone number to relay one-time passwords (OTP) to other users. This, in fact, sounds like an awful idea - particularly for a messaging service based around privacy.X user @AssembleDebug spotted details about the new program on the English-language version of a popular Russian-language Telegram information channel. Sure enough, there's a section in Telegram's terms of service outlining the new Peer-to-Peer Login" or P2PL program, which is currently only offered on Android and in certain (unspecified) locations. By opting in to the program, you agree to let Telegram use your phone number to send up to 150 texts with OTPs to... Continue reading...

You can save $200 on Google's Pixel 8 and use the savings on a matching smartwatch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Spring is a season of refreshment and renewal. It's an upgrade season," if you will, and Amazon's Big Spring Sale offers a little something for everyone to add faster and better gadgets to their homes and everyday carry. The sale is slated to run through the end of today, March 25th, and unless Amazon surprises us with a last-minute extension, that means you only have a few hours left to shop.We've been surfacing great deals on a variety of tech over the past week, whether you're after a new pair of headphones or perhaps a robot vacuum to help with your spring cleaning duties. Many deals are still available, but some have started to whither. Below, we've compiled the best deals on devices and gadgets you can still find deep discounts... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta's executives have been saying for a while that they don't want to boost posts about politics in their apps. Now, an opt-out setting that limits recommendations of political content" has been added to Instagram and Threads.You can find it under your Content preferences" account settings in Instagram. From there, Limit political content from people you don't follow" is enabled by default. The setting applies to Threads as well since that app shares its account system with Instagram.Meta has framed this new setting as being good for user choice, and the company says it isn't limiting the reach of political content from accounts people choose to follow. While the change was first announced in early February, Meta spokesperson Andy... Continue reading...

The mechanical keyboard might sell out faster than its light-based optical switches can read your keystrokes. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge Amazon's Big Spring Sale ends today, March 25th, but you can find even more savings elsewhere. For example, Woot is discounting one of Razer's most popular mechanical keyboards, the Razer Huntsman V2, until April 3rd (or while supplies last). The version with analog optical switches is down to $99.99 ($50 off), which is $10 lower than we've seen it at retailers like Amazon and Best Buy. It comes with a 90-day limited warranty through Woot, and it also ships with a magnetic wrist rest that's meant to add comfort while typing or gaming.The Razer Huntsman V2 comes in both full and tenkeyless varieties. You'll get the former with this deal, so you'll have a full number pad and dedicated controls for media playback and volume. The big... Continue reading...

A coalition of tech companies, including Intel, Google, Arm, and Qualcomm, hopes to loosen Nvidia's grip on the AI market. | Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge Major tech companies are attempting to eliminate software advantages that have helped Nvidia dominate the artificial intelligence market. According to Reuters, a group formed by Intel, Google, Arm, Qualcomm, Samsung, and other tech companies is developing an open-source software suite that prevents AI developers from being locked into Nvidia's proprietary tech, allowing their code to run on any machine and with any chip.The group, called The Unified Acceleration Foundation (UXL), told Reuters that technical details for the project should reach a mature" state by the second half of this year, though a final release target wasn't given. The project currently includes the OneAPI open standard Intel developed to eliminate requirements like... Continue reading...

Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) just signed into law HB 3, a bill that will give parents of teens under 16 more control over their kids' access to social media and require age verification for many websites.The bill requires social media platforms to prevent kids under 14 from creating accounts, and delete existing ones. It also requires parent or guardian consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to create or maintain social media accounts and mandates that platforms delete social media accounts and personal information for this age group at the teen's or parent's request. Companies that fail to promptly delete accounts belonging to 14- and 15-year-olds can be sued on behalf of those kids and may owe them up to $10,000 in damages each. A... Continue reading...

The Format drive dialog in Windows 11. | Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge On a Thursday morning nearly 30 years ago at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, a software developer checked-in some code for a dialog box he was working on. The box was only supposed to be temporary, so he didn't worry that it was very basic. Except, nobody ever got around to changing it - and it's still the same to this day in Windows 11.Dave Plummer, a former developer at Microsoft, recounted the interesting tale of how the Format drive dialog box was created all those years ago in a post on X over the weekend.We were porting the bajillion lines of code from the Windows 95 user interface over to NT, and Format was just one of those areas where Windows NT was different enough from Windows 95 that we had to come up with some... Continue reading...

Photo illustration: The Verge / Photo by Bluesky The head of Threads and Mastodon competitor Bluesky on why she thinks decentralization is the way forward in a post-Twitter internet. Continue reading...

We're in a Gilded Age of fast, cheap, and trendy clothing. Anyone can purchase copies of expensive garments online that arrive at record speeds to their home, and for a fraction of the original price. This practice has made items affordable - often at the expense of the workers making the products - and created shopping habits that can be wasteful and impulsive. One e-comm giant, Shopify, estimates that 20 to 30 percent of online purchases are returned, while the National Retail Federation says around 18 percent of online orders are returned.The online fashion house, Finesse, is promising to change that. Their motives are to reduce overproduction by using AI to market and design their clothing exactly for their audience.Retailers have... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft has committed changes to Chromium that will improve text rendering on Windows machines. Following years of complaints, Chrome version 124 will finally support contrast and gamma values from the Windows ClearType Text Tuner for text rendering in Google's browser.This change should mean Chrome will finally match the improvements Microsoft made to Edge for font and text rendering, so you can apply text contrast enhancements and gamma correction to improve the readability of text on webpages. Chrome uses Skia for text rendering with hard-coded values for contrast and gamma, so it wasn't picking up the improvements that ClearType has to offer.Microsoft's ClearType font technology has long been used in Windows to improve text... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge The European Commission is opening five non-compliance investigations into how Apple, Google, and Meta are complying with its new Digital Markets Act antitrust rules, the regulator announced today. We suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA," the EU's antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. We will now investigate the companies' compliance with the DMA, to ensure open and contestable digital markets in Europe."In particular, the Commission plans to investigate Google and Apple's anti-steering rules in their app stores and whether Google is guilty of self-preferencing its own services within its search engine. Apple's browser choice screen for iOS is also... Continue reading...

The production line of Easy Mac Macaroni & Cheese Cups on March 27, 2020, at the Kraft Heinz plant in Champaign, Ill. | Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images The Biden administration today announced the largest investment in cleaning up industrial greenhouse gas emissions to date. The Department of Energy (DOE) selected 33 projects across more than 20 states to receive up to $6 billion in federal funding for clean energy technologies. It's a diverse cohort spanning from mac-and-cheese maker Kraft Heinz to manufacturers of chemicals, paper, and construction materials.Industrial emissions account for almost a quarter of the nation's planet-heating pollution. It's also widely considered the most difficult kind of climate pollution to prevent. Alternatives to fossil fuel-fired furnaces and industrial processes have lagged behind other clean energy technologies. The Biden administration thinks... Continue reading...

Image: Studio Ghibli Studio Ghibli fans who missed their shot at watching Spirited Away in theaters last year can try again between April 27th and May 1st at U.S. cinemas nationwide." The showings are part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2024, which will put 14 Ghibli films - with English dubbed and subtitled versions with the original Japanese voice work - back in theaters throughout the year. It's not clear how many theaters are involved, but in my area, five theaters are showing Spirited Away over the course of as many days.That's the largest list of movies since Ghibli Fest started in 2017. Others hitting theaters this year include Miyazaki classics like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke, as well as movies from other Ghibli directors,... Continue reading...

The world of Elden Ring expands on June 21st with a new world, items, and bosses to slay. | Image: Amazon We spent much of the time following Elden Ring's launch begging FromSoftware to expand the universe of its latest Game of the Year award-worthy soulslike. By now, you'll realize our prayers were answered. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will launch on June 21st for the PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC. It takes place in a whole new area separate from the game's standard map, one filled with new stories, characters, and bosses to slay. It sounds full enough to be a standalone game, but alas, you'll need the base game to enjoy the $39.99 expansion.When it comes to purchasing options, Shadow of the Erdtree is not your average piece of downloadable content - there are preorder bonuses, physical bundles, and special editions with collector's... Continue reading...

The first-generation Roam speakers. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sonos will launch the follow-up to its Roam wireless AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth speaker in June, along with a new app specifically for its portable speakers. That's according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who writes in his Power On newsletter today that the company has rejiggered the hardware to fix Bluetooth issues with the speaker.Gurman says the new app will also support the company's rumored $449 high-end headphones, which may also come in June. However, users will have to wait for the Move 1 and 2 and the first-generation Roam to gain support, as the company has reportedly had trouble getting the software up to snuff.The original Roam is a solid speaker with some quirks, like no stereo pairing over Bluetooth, which The Verge's Chris... Continue reading...

Image by Cath Virginia / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 31, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hi, sorry for my bad taste in TV, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading about LA crime rings and AI music tools, watching March Madness even though all my brackets are already busted, watching the story of Mickey Mouse and pretending I don't care about Love Is Blind while my wife watches even though I'm now kind of obsessed with Love Is Blind, and trying to understand all the basketball terms LeBron James uses in his new podcast.I also have for you a huge new Netflix show, a super-cheap USB charger, a newish messaging app, the new X-Men series... Continue reading...

Smart ceiling lights are finally becoming a thing and are great for lighting up your whole room with both fun and function. We compared two new options from Aqara and Nanoleaf to find out which is the best. Continue reading...

Yesterday, Square Enix released a trailer for The Rising Tide, the next paid DLC for Final Fantasy XVI, and gave the expansion a release date: April 18th. The update to the PS5 game will be available as a single purchase add-on or in the $24.99 Final Fantasy XVI PlayStation Store Expansion Pass. And besides adding the eikon Leviathan to the game, other content introduces a game mode as well as new weapons and abilities.For no good reason, I haven't played a new Final Fantasy game in years, but I trust Ash Parrish's conclusion that the Leviathan being missing has been an error in need of correction. PlayStation's blog post says in addition to fighting it in a new boss fight, Clive will get Leviathan Eikonic abilities, including summoning... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge While a lot of our files are stored in the cloud, there are still many ones and zeros that get stored locally. But as the capacity of the drives used by our desktops and laptops has increased, finding files has gotten that much harder. How many photos and videos do you have stacked up in your computer? How many documents and downloads?Personally, I tend to neglect file management because there's so much storage space available. But when I do need a file, especially one I haven't used for a while, the old phrase about finding a needle in a haystack comes to mind. It's even worse if I don't remember much about what it was called.Don't despair. Windows has the tools you need to track down what you're after. And if the built-in options... Continue reading...

The Verge The Financial Times has a new generative AI chatbot called Ask FT that can answer questions its subscribers ask. Similar to generalized AI bots (like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini), users can expect a curated natural language answer to whatever they want to know - but with answers derived from the outlet's decades of published information rather than sources that are harder to explain or are subject to ongoing legal action. So don't expect it to give you an answer for the best recipe for fettucini alfredo.When we asked, Who runs Microsoft's AI products?" the tool returned an up-to-date answer and referenced news that broke this week about Microsoft hiring DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of its new AI team:

Suno will happily sing you a tune. | Image: The Verge / Shutterstock I heard a new song last weekend called Soul Of The Machine." It's a simple, old-timey number in E minor with a standard blues chord progression (musicians in the know would call it a 1-4-5 progression). In it, a voice sings about being a trapped soul with a heart that once beat but is now cold and weak.Soul Of The Machine" is not a real song at all. Or is it? It's getting harder to say. Whatever it is, it's the creation of Suno, an AI tool from a startup of the same name focused on music generation. Rolling Stone said this song's prompt was solo acoustic Mississippi Delta blues about a sad AI." And you know what? I doubt I'd glance askance at it if I heard it in a mix of human-recorded Delta blues tunes. The track is technically... Continue reading...

Sunglasses that convert to reading glasses with a swipe. Continue reading...

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Emad Mostaque is stepping down from his role as CEO of Stability AI, the startup that helped bring Stable Diffusion to life. In a press release late on Friday night, Stability AI says Mostaque is leaving the company to pursue decentralized AI." Mostaque will also step down from his position on the board of directors at Stability AI.The board has appointed two interim co-CEOs to lead Stability AI - COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte - while it conducts a search for a permanent CEO. As we search for a permanent CEO, I have full confidence that Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte, in their roles as interim co-CEOs, will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI... Continue reading...

The Asus ROG NUC. | Image: Asus When Asus rescued Intel's NUC brand of compact computers from the dumpster, I held out hope that the company might also revive Intel's ambitious miniature gaming PCs. It did, but prepare for a little sticker shock - these systems may cost as much or more than a comparable gaming laptop.The company's website currently lists two models of the ROG NUC, with what Asus tells us are tentative prices of $1,629 and $2,199. The entry-level model sports an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics, 16GB of 5600MHz DDR5 RAM and 512GB of NVMe SSD storage, while the advanced config bumps that up to an Core Ultra 9 185H, RTX 4070, and 32GB / 1TB of RAM and storage respectively.Since you can easily find Asus' popular Zephyrus G14 and G16... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge It's all about Apple's vise grip over the smartphone market and the iPhone's locked-down ecosystem. Continue reading...

Image: Mozilla Mozilla is ending its partnership with Onerep after the company's CEO admitted to having ties to a data broker, as first reported by Krebs on Security. Though customer data was never at risk, the outside financial interests and activities of Onerep's CEO do not align with our values," writes Mozilla's vice president of communications Brandon Borrman, in a statement provided to The Verge.In February, Mozilla bundled Onerep's data removal service into its new $8.99 per month Monitor Plus subscription. The service let users hunt down their personal information on the web and submit takedown requests across dozens of websites - all through Mozilla's partnership with Onerep.However, an in-depth report from Krebs on Security found that... Continue reading...

Image: Mint If you've been using Intuit's Mint app to help you budget, automatically collect your expenses, put them in useful categories, and remind you to pay them, then you were probably a bit shocked to find out that Intuit will be folding Mint into its other financial service, Credit Karma. Originally, the final date was going to be January 1st, 2024, but now, Mint will officially disappear on March 23rd, 2024.Credit Karma's main service is to offer advice about financial products based on your credit score, which means this may be a good fit depending on how many of Mint's features will be moved to Credit Karma. But it's too soon to tell. (According to Intuit, some of the most popular Mint-like features are available on Intuit Credit Karma,"... Continue reading...

Photo by Taylor Hill / WireImage Two years after several legendary musicians broke with Spotify in protest over controversial remarks made on podcaster Joe Rogan's show, most have now returned to the music service - with Joni Mitchell as the latest example. As noted by The New York Times, several of the singer-songwriter's most pivotal albums, including Blue, are once again available to stream on Spotify. Mitchell's representatives haven't offered any comment on her quiet comeback.Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives," Mitchell wrote in 2022 amid an uproar directed at Rogan for misinformation that was repeated on his podcast.Neil Young, the musician who was most vocal in his criticism of comments on The Joe Rogan Experience... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge / Getty Images So, what do artificial teeth have to do with the Department of Justice's massive lawsuit against Apple? Well, they may be one of the reasons why the DOJ decided to file its lawsuit in the state of New Jersey - instead of, say, Virginia or Washington, DC, like it did for Google and Microsoft.The DOJ previously filed - and won - a similar antitrust case against a company that makes fake teeth in the Third Circuit, which includes New Jersey.In an interview with The Verge, William Kovacic, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission and a professor at the George Washington University Law School, explains that the Third Circuit is a jurisdiction with some pretty good law for plaintiffs on monopolization issues." He points to the DOJ's... Continue reading...