The Verge - All Posts

The Era 100 is a great starter speaker for anyone new to Sonos. | Image: Sonos I've been reluctant to jump into the Sonos game because I know just how addictive it can be once you've crossed over - like Pringles, I know I won't stop at just one. It's hard to keep resisting deals like the one we're seeing at Woot today, though. Now through February 29th (or while supplies last), you can buy a two-pack of Sonos Era 100 speakers with a 90-day warranty for $409.99, which is about $90 off the price if you were to buy two speakers separately.I'm eying the Era 100s as starters for building out my dream home theater, which I intend to pair with something like the Sonos Arc and Sonos Sub. Each Era 100 features two tweeters and a built-in woofer for drivers, which makes it a powerful speaker on its own. While the allure... Continue reading...

Image: Blizzard Diablo IV will be the first Activision Blizzard game coming to Xbox Game Pass, launching on the service on March 28th.Once Microsoft completed its billion-dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard, fans speculated that its games would arrive immediately on the subscription service. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in October of last year, right when the deal closed, that fans would have to wait until 2024 before games like Call of Duty would start showing up on the service. That time is now, but instead of Call of Duty, we're getting Diablo IV.Diablo IV was one of last year's big hits and its seasonal updates - we're now on Season of the Construct - continues to provide a fresh experience for players. Bringing the game to Game... Continue reading...

The Verge Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service now has 34 million subscribers. That's up 36 percent from the 25 million Microsoft previously reported more than two years ago. Microsoft revealed the new 34 million figure in an official Xbox podcast today, as part of an announcement that some Xbox exclusives are coming to the PS5 and Nintendo Switch.It's the first time Microsoft has disclosed fresh Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers since announcing its Activision Blizzard acquisition in January 2022.Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer previously admitting he had been seeing growth slow on Xbox Game Pass for consoles. We're seeing incredible growth on PC ... On console, I've seen growth slow down, mainly because at some point you've reached everybody... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube now lets creators add and remix music videos in their Shorts. In its post announcing the feature, YouTube points out that creators can use music videos from artists like Beyonce and Maggie Rogers - even as TikTok fights with the record label representing them. The timing suggests it's a direct response to TikTok's current music licensing battle.Earlier this month, TikTok lost tracks from artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, and Olivia Rodrigo due to a dispute with Universal Music Group (UMG). TikTok and UMG never renewed their licensing deal after the music label accused TikTok of trying to bully" it into a bad deal and claimed the social platform wants to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music."... Continue reading...

The Verge As part of my job as a tech writer, and as part of my ongoing efforts to get organized at some point, I've tested a whole pile of note-taking apps through the years: the simple, the sophisticated, the quirky, the AI-powered, and on it goes. It's a popular app category, and there's no shortage of options.Amid all these different choices, one of the apps that I find myself regularly coming back to is Google Keep. It's fast and easy to get around, it works on just about any device, and once you dig a little deeper into its colorful sticky note interface, there are plenty of useful features to take advantage of.Whether you're a current Google Keep user looking to do more with the app or you're wondering whether Google Keep has enough to... Continue reading...

Photo by Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images New York City is the latest government to go after big tech companies for allegedly addicting kids to their platforms.Several city agencies, including NYC's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and Department of Education, filed suit against Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google, accusing them of fueling the nationwide youth mental health crisis." The city charged them with public nuisance and negligence.The city claims that the platforms' design features, including recommendation algorithms and likes, addict children to the services and manipulate them into spending more and more time online.The lawsuit adds to a growing wave of litigation from state and local governments that target tech platforms for allegedly addictive features... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Our new Thursday episodes of Decoder are all about deep dives into big topics in the news, and for the next few weeks, we're going to stay focused on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI.There's a lot going on in the world of generative AI, but maybe the biggest is the increasing number of copyright lawsuits being filed against AI companies like OpenAI and Stability AI. So for this episode, we brought on Verge features editor Sarah Jeong, who's a former lawyer just like me, and we're going to talk about those cases and the main defense the AI companies are relying on in those copyright cases: an idea called fair use.All the big generative AI models from every company are tried on huge swaths of data that are scraped from... Continue reading...

With a design that clings to your outer ear, these earbuds are unlike anything the company has made before - and Bose hopes they'll find more success than its unconventional products of the past. Continue reading...

Following its successful deployment, the Nova-C spacecraft now faces a two-week journey to reach the Moon's south pole. | Photo by GREGG NEWTON/AFP via Getty Images A robotic lunar lander built by private aerospace company Intuitive Machines was successfully launched by SpaceX on Thursday, with hopes of being the first American spacecraft to successfully touch down on the Moon's surface since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. The Nova-C lander named Odysseus" was carried into orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Cape Canaveral at 1:05AM ET on February 15th.The launch was originally scheduled to take place on Wednesday but was delayed due to concerns regarding the temperature of the rocket's methane fuel. Shortly after liftoff, SpaceX confirmed that the IM-1 mission's Odysseus lander had been successfully deployed and that the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that delivered it into... Continue reading...

Transparent screens, touch-sensitive keyboards, and stylus support. | Image: Evan Blass / Lenovo Leaker Evan Blass has offered another look at Lenovo's transparent laptop concept ahead of its presumed unveiling at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. The new leaked press image shows two of the concept laptops on a desk, with one of the devices being visible through the transparent screen of another. This is our second look at the concept device, after WindowsReport published leaked press shots of it earlier this month.See-through screens aren't exactly a new technology. They've been cropping up in concept devices for over a decade, and Samsung even showed off a transparent laptop concept back at CES 2010. But 14 years later it seems like companies are ready to actually commercialize the technology. We've already... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nvidia surpassed Alphabet in market capitalization on Wednesday, only a day after it overtook Amazon. Bloomberg is reporting that the chip maker's stock is now worth $1.83 trillion, beating the Google owner's $1.82 market cap by a hair. This makes Nvidia the world's fourth most valuable company in the wake of the AI boom, after Microsoft ($3.04T), Apple ($2.84T) and Saudi Aramco. The company is currently making the H100 chip, which powers the majority of LLMs in use today, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and the majority of AI projects from Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon.The world's largest tech companies are involved in an AI chip arms race, with each of them hoping to create their own GPU chip to topple Nvidia's virtual monopoly. Ironically,... Continue reading...

Collage of Stabie Cascade art | Stability AI Stability AI's newest model for image generation is Stable Cascade promises to be faster and more powerful than its industry-leading predecessor, Stable Diffusion, which is the basis of many other text-to-image generation AI tools.Stable Cascade can generate photos and give variations of the exact image it created, or try to increase an existing picture's resolution. Other text-to-image editing features include inpainting and outpainting, where the model will fill edit only a specific part of the image, as well as canny edge, where users can make a new photo just by using the edges of an existing picture. Image: Stability AI Stable Cascade images generated from the prompt Cinematic photo of an anthropomorphic... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge A report from the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project (TTP) alleges that X has been selling premium subscriptions to subjects of US sanctions, including leaders of the US-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah. The TTP report identifies 28 accounts that were granted checkmarks under owner Elon Musk's paid verification plan, evading rules that formally state they're banned from using it. The allegations raise new questions about how strictly social media platforms should vet users - after the Supreme Court ruled just last year that the platform formerly known as Twitter was not responsible for abetting a terrorist attack.The TTP report lists the full series of sanctioned entities that got verified on Twitter. The wide range of names... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla rolled out two changes in its latest vehicle software update - 2024.2.6 - that appear to be aimed squarely at battery issues that immobilized cars during an extreme cold weather event in January. One of those new features will tell Tesla drivers how much time they can expect until their battery is warm enough for DC fast charging, while the other will automatically defrost the charge port.According to the update's release notes published by Not a Tesla App, the charge port will start warming automatically when drivers use the car's navigation feature to get to a charging station. Frozen charge ports could be one of the issues that left drivers stranded during an extreme cold snap in Chicago earlier this year, especially if the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft tweeted that its annual Build conference for developers will take place in Seattle from May 21st through 23rd. The announcement tells everyone to expect to hear updates about AI, Copilots, and more."The 2023 event marked a return to the in-person portion, and this year's event promises to take place both in Seattle and online. Last year, Microsoft ramped up AI efforts that now include tools for developers like Copilot Studio and Windows AI Studio, while its growing AI ambitions around Windows and Microsoft 365 will surely be front and center again.No schedule of events for this year's gathering has been posted yet, and the page is currently inviting potential attendees to sign up to find out when registration opens. On the... Continue reading...

The Asus ROG Ally, with the Xbox app on Windows. This is not enough. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge The Nintendo Switch is on track to become the bestselling game console of all time. Sony's PS5 will likely surpass the Xbox One's entire lifetime sales later this year. Meanwhile, Microsoft's newer Xbox Series X and S, with their comparatively disappointing exclusive games, are firmly in third place yet again - and it doesn't look like Xbox Game Pass will ever fill the gap.Microsoft isn't planning to take this lying down. It's among the largest video game companies in the world now that it owns Activision Blizzard, and it's going to act. This Thursday, we expect the company to reveal a seismic shift in strategy, one where it could bring Xbox exclusives like Hi-Fi Rush, Starfield, even Indiana Jones to PlayStation and / or Switch.To... Continue reading...

Image: Aspyr I have been waiting for Tomb Raider I-III Remastered for 21 years. That's when I first played the second entry in the series, it having been a gift" from my mother's boyfriend who gave me both his PlayStation and a handful of games - sans jewel cases - for no other reason than wanting to free up some space in his closet. I played it ceaselessly, enamored with the game's action and puzzles and the fact it was the first game I ever owned that starred a woman. But after reconnecting with the Tomb Raider II portion of Aspyr's remaster, I'm left asking: what in the natural hell was 15-year-old Ash thinking?Playing Tomb Raider II on the Switch - it's also available on Xbox, PC, and Playstation - was an exercise in self-flagellation, with the... Continue reading...

SVG images and text descriptions fed into Keyframer are automatically converted into animation code. | Image: Apple Researchers at Apple have unveiled Keyframer, a prototype generative AI animation tool that enables users to add motion to 2D images by describing how they should be animated.In a research paper published on February 8th, Apple said that large language models (LLMs) are underexplored" in animation despite the potential they've shown across other creative mediums like writing and image generation. The LLM-powered Keyframer tool is being pitched as one example of how the technology could be applied.Utilizing OpenAI's GPT4 as its base model, Keyframer can take Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) files - an illustration format that can be resized without interfering with quality - and generate CSS code to animate the image based on a text... Continue reading...

Image: Google Chatbots occupy a tricky space for users - they have to be a search engine, a creation tool, and an assistant all at once. That's especially true for a chatbot coming from Google, which is increasingly counting on AI to supplement its search engine, its voice assistant, and just about every productivity tool in its arsenal.Right now, the ultimate version of Google's AI is Gemini Advanced, which launched last week for users willing to pay $20 per month for the privilege - the same price OpenAI charges for its upgraded ChatGPT Plus. So I plunked down $20 and decided to see how Gemini Advanced stood up to the rival service.The older Gemini was already pretty good. It could summarize Shakespeare, give tea recommendations, and create a... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple appears to be turning off the ability to use web apps right from the iPhone's homescreen in the European Union. Support for progressive web apps appeared to be broken inside in the EU during the first two betas of iOS 17.4, but today developer Maximiliano Firtman said in a post on X that web apps are still turned off in the third beta, which arrived yesterday. At this point, it's a feature disabled on purpose," Firtman wrote.Now, instead of opening in a full-screen window, web apps open in your web browser, making them act more like shortcuts. Developers Mysk found that when you select a web app for the first time, it will trigger a pop-up that asks to open the app in your default web browser. Once the app opens, the browser's... Continue reading...

Image: Slack Slack is launching a suite of built-in AI features that serve up summaries of threads and channel recaps, while also allowing you to ask questions about what's been going on at work. The workplace management platform first started testing Slack AI last year, but now it's rolling out as a paid add-on for Slack Enterprise users.In case you've fallen behind on a particular thread someone has tagged you in, you can use Slack AI to get a full summary of the conversation, as well as who has said what. There's also a way to get a recap of the chatter that has been going on in channels. Image: Slack You can receive summaries of unread messages or messages from within a particular timeframe. You can select the star... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft and OpenAI are revealing today that hackers are already using large language models like ChatGPT to refine and improve their existing cyberattacks. In newly published research, Microsoft and OpenAI have detected attempts by Russian, North Korean, Iranian, and Chinese-backed groups using tools like ChatGPT for research into targets, to improve scripts, and to help build social engineering techniques.Cybercrime groups, nation-state threat actors, and other adversaries are exploring and testing different AI technologies as they emerge, in an attempt to understand potential value to their operations and the security controls they may need to circumvent," says Microsoft in a blog post today.The Strontium group, linked to Russian... Continue reading...

Photo by Patrick Smith / Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.I hope all you East Coasters had a cozy nor'easter. By the time the snow stopped this morning and I tried to take my baby outside for some winter frolicking, it had already turned to slush. He doesn't know the difference, but I am bummed!Today, we're looking at layoffs at SiriusXM, a new podcast deal for Meghan Markle, and how the Swift Effect" made Travis Kelce's podcast a top 10 hit. But first, one more programming announcement for Hot Pod Summit!SiriusXM and The Trade Desk are coming to Hot Pod SummitOne thing we keep hearing from readers and Hot Pod Summit attendees is a desire to understand what on earth is going on with... Continue reading...

Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Walmart is eyeing a $2 billion deal to buy the TV maker Vizio, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The deal would put the retail chain in a better position to compete with the affordable smart TVs from Roku and Amazon than its existing Onn house brand. It would also give Walmart access to the breadth of customer data collected by Vizio's smart TV platform and the revenue stream created by serving up personalized ads and taking a cut of subscription fees.After years of putting its Roku operating system on other TVs, Roku finally launched its own line of smart TVs last year and is ramping up its efforts with plans to release more expensive Mini LED TVs this spring. Meanwhile, Amazon is steadily building out its lineup of... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge A California court has partially dismissed a copyright case against OpenAI brought by several authors, including comedian Sarah Silverman, who allege OpenAI's ChatGPT is pirating their work.The case against OpenAI combines complaints filed by Silverman, Christopher Golden, Richard Kadrey, Paul Tremblay, and Mona Awad. (Awad left the suit in August.) It made six claims: direct copyright infringement; vicarious infringement; violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by removing copyright management information; unfair competition; negligence; and unjust enrichment. OpenAI asked to dismiss all counts but the first and main complaint: direct copyright infringement.The court ruled yesterday on OpenAI's request to dismiss all... Continue reading...

The endangered Steppe Eagle is one of the migratory species that has become even more threatened in the past 30 years, according to a new UN report. | Photo by: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images More than one in five migratory species officially deemed in need of international protection are now in danger of extinction. That's according to the most comprehensive report of their populations yet, released as a United Nations wildlife conservation conference kicks off this week in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.Human activity is pushing these species to the brink. But that also means there are concrete steps people can take to safeguard their futures. The first-of-its-kind stocktake of the world's migratory species isn't all doom and gloom - there are some success stories sprinkled in there. It just goes to show that it's not too late to act; it just has to be fast because the clock is ticking for many of the billions of animals that... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Talking to an AI chatbot can feel a bit like Groundhog Day after a while, as you tell it for the umpteenth time how you like your emails formatted and which of those fun things to do this weekend" you've already done six times. OpenAI is trying to fix that and personalize its own bot in a big way. It's rolling out memory" for ChatGPT, which will allow the bot to remember information about you and your conversations over time.Memory works in one of two ways. You can tell ChatGPT to remember something specific about you: you always write code in Javascript, your boss's name is Anna, your kid is allergic to sweet potatoes. Or ChatGPT can simply try to pick up those details over time, storing information about you as you ask questions and... Continue reading...