The Verge

Image: NASA NASA and Sierra Space blew up another space habitat in June, and everyone is smiling about it. That's because the full-size inflatable structure in this ultimate burst pressure" test only failed after exceeding NASA's recommended x4 safety levels by 22 percent.Sierra Space's inflatable structure, known as a Large Integrated Flexible Environment, or LIFE, had its last stress test in January. LIFE is built from basket-weaved Vectran fabrics" that strengthen once inflated. It's intended to be used as a component in the Orbital Reef space station project involving NASA, Blue Origin, and Sierra Space.This second burst test will get us the design, repeatability, and architecture as we go towards our certification of the pressure shell of... Continue reading...

Apple's UWB trackers remain a cheap, convenient way to keep tabs on all your belongings. | Photo: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Over the past month or so, we've seen a flurry of new Bluetooth trackers, from Motorola's forthcoming Moto Tag to ESR's Find My-compatible wallet. That being said, if you're an iPhone user, Apple's AirTag remains the best option - one you can still grab at Amazon and Walmart for an all-time low of $23.99 ($5 off). You can also buy a four-pack of trackers at Amazon and Walmart for around $89 ($10 off), though be aware that you can often buy the bundle for $15 less.Despite having launched several years ago, Apple's AirTags pack plenty of utility. The ultra wideband (UWB) location trackers provide ultra-precise tracking if you're embedded in the Apple ecosystem, as they allow you to easily leverage the company's extensive Find My network... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today on his WhatsApp channel that WhatsApp now has 100 million monthly active users in the US as of July 25th.According to WhatsApp, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Seattle are among the fastest-growing markets in the country. However, the company says it's experienced significant growth" in Southern states as well, with more than 10 million users in Texas.This is the first time data pertaining to users has been released since Meta's acquisition of the messaging app and demonstrates how the messaging platform, already the biggest messaging app in the world, has experienced tremendous growth in the U.S.," WhatsApp spokesperson Ashley O'Reilly wrote in a press release.Since purchasing WhatsApp... Continue reading...

The Nutribullet Flip's high-torque motor is strong enough to blend ice and most fruits. | Image: Nutribullet Nutribullet's new Flip incorporates a blender into an insulated stainless steel tumbler that looks no larger than a typical travel mug. If you don't have enough time in the morning to blend your breakfast, the rechargeable Flip works anywhere you don't mind making a bit of noise. (Maybe skip the crowded subway.)The $99.99 Flip isn't Nutribullet's first single-serve blender, nor is it the company's first rechargeable one. What sets it apart from past offerings is that the blender part - including blades, an 11.1-volt electric motor, and a rechargeable battery - are all incorporated into the Flip's lid, instead of into a removable base that gets left behind. Image: Nutribullet You can drink and pour from the Flip's... Continue reading...

Runway CEO Cristobal Valenzuela onstage at Vox Media's 2023 Code Conference. | Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media Runway trained its AI text-to-video generator on thousands of YouTube videos and pirated films, according to a report from 404 Media. A spreadsheet of training data obtained by the outlet includes links to YouTube channels belonging to major entertainment companies, such as Netflix, Disney, Nintendo, and Rockstar Games, along with creators like MKBHD, Linus Tech Tips, and Sam Kolder.There are also links to channels owned by news outlets like The Verge, The New Yorker, Reuters, and Wired. The channels in that spreadsheet were a company-wide effort to find good quality videos to build the model with," a former Runway employee tells 404 Media. This was then used as input to a massive web crawler which downloaded all the videos from all... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge OpenAI is announcing its much-anticipated entry into the search market, SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine with real-time access to information across the internet.The search engine starts with a large textbox that asks the user What are you looking for?" But rather than returning a plain list of links, SearchGPT tries to organize and make sense of them. In one example from OpenAI, the search engine summarizes its findings on music festivals and then presents short descriptions of the events followed by an attribution link.In another example, it explains when to plant tomatoes before breaking down different varieties of the plant. After the results appear, you can ask follow-up questions or click the sidebar to open other... Continue reading...

Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images The Associated Press has apparently retracted a fact-check published yesterday with the headline, No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch." As of Thursday morning, the article page displayed a page unavailable" error message.The fact-check references a few joke social media posts that have been circulating that claim the Republican vice presidential nominee wrote in his book Hillbilly Elegy about having sex with a couch.One tweet reads, In his dreadful novel, Hillbilly Elegy,' JD Vance described having sex with a rubber glove secured between cushions on his couch. Republicans chose him to be one heartbeat away from becoming POTUS. Voters in NC, the U.S. furniture capital, should be particularly horrified." (Fact-check: H... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google's Gemini AI chatbot will be able to respond to you more quickly and process more content in prompts thanks to an upgrade to the company's Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model.With the upgrade to 1.5 Flash, you'll see across-the-board improvements in quality and latency, with especially noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding," Amar Subramanya, VP of engineering for Gemini, says in a blog post. Gemini's context window, or the amount of chunks of text that an AI model can process at once, is also getting quadrupled to 32K tokens, Subramanya says.1.5 Flash, which was announced at Google I/O in May, will be available in the free version of Gemini on the web and mobile starting today, according to Subramanya.Google is... Continue reading...

The set perfectly recreates the pixelated 16-bit Mario and Yoshi sprites from Super Mario World. | Image: Lego Lego has announced its latest collaboration with Nintendo at San Diego Comic-Con: a pixelated recreation of Mario and Yoshi from the 16-bit Super Nintendo classic, Super Mario World. Like Lego's Art sets, it's a 2D creation meant for display but also includes hidden moving mechanisms, bringing Yoshi to life.The 1,215-piece set stands over 15 inches tall when assembled and features a yellow-caped Mario riding Yoshi atop a grass-covered hill. The front of the set is assembled from Lego tiles and looks to be a very accurate recreation of the 16-bit sprites used in Super Mario World. Image: Lego The mechanisms powering the display piece's animations are all left exposed on the back. But when you turn the set... Continue reading...

Image: Android Headlines Google's Pixel Buds Pro 2 could bring back the wing tip design we saw on the first generation of the Pixel Buds. A series of images shared with Android Headlines by reliable leaker OnLeaks show the buds with a slight bulge opposite the ear tip.The wing isn't as prominent as the so-called stabilizer arc" that protruded from the original Pixel Buds. Our review of those buds from 2020 mentioned that the arc could cause discomfort after wearing them for long periods of time. Hopefully, the more subdued wing on the Buds Pro 2 won't do the same. Image: OnLeaks via Android Headlines Other than the wing tip, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 appear to trade their predecessor's black grills for larger ones that match the color of the... Continue reading...

Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images Southwest Airlines is about to change how it handles customer seating by switching to assigned and premium ones, a significant change from the sit-anywhere-you-want setup it's had for over 50 years. The transformation comes as Southwest reported some turbulence in its earnings, with a 46 percent drop in profits for the second quarter, as reported by WSJ.In a press release, Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan said the changes will be based on employee and customer feedback. Jordan called offering seats with premium legroom and assignments transformational" but did not offer a timeline or how it would look. The Airline said it has conducted simulation and live trials that helped it make the decision, and that customer preferences have... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The ClaudeBot web crawler that Anthropic uses to scrape training data for AI models like Claude has hammered iFixit's website almost a million times in a 24-hour period, seemingly violating the repair company's Terms of Use in the process.If any of those requests accessed our terms of service, they would have told you that use of our content expressly forbidden. But don't ask me, ask Claude!" said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens on X, posting images that show Anthropic's chatbot acknowledging that iFixit's content was off limits. You're not only taking our content without paying, you're tying up our devops resources. If you want to have a conversation about licensing our content for commercial use, we're right here."

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos via Getty Images On today's episode of Decoder, we're talking about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Chevron deference and what it means for the future of the internet.I've been covering the fight over net neutrality for almost my entire career as a tech reporter - over 15 years now. The idea is that internet service providers shouldn't be able to discriminate between what services you access on the internet: AT&T shouldn't be able to slow down X and speed up Threads, and Verizon shouldn't be able to block Zoom because it owns BlueJeans.It's pretty basic stuff, and after all this time, the Biden administration's Federal Communications Commission once again made it the law. But big telecom companies truly hate the idea that anyone would... Continue reading...

Image: Elgato Elgato is launching two new docks for its Stream Deck Plus device that can add XLR microphone support or a USB hub. The Stream Deck Plus originally launched in 2022 with the usual Stream Deck buttons, a new LCD display, and additional knobs, but these docks extend the functionality even further.The $119.99 XLR Dock slots into the rear of the Stream Deck Plus and delivers up to 75dB of gain, enough to power Shure's popular SM7B microphone. Just like Elgato's dedicated Wave XLR, it even has a headphone jack for zero latency monitoring.The XLR Dock means you only need a single USB cable routing to your laptop or PC and a single device instead of having to combine an XLR interface and Stream Deck. The knobs on the Stream Deck Plus can... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Early termination fees are a bit like heroin for Adobe," according to an Adobe executive quoted in the FTC's newly unredacted complaint against the company for allegedly hiding fees and making it too hard to cancel Creative Cloud. There is absolutely no way to kill off ETF or talk about it more obviously" in the order flow without taking a big business hit," this executive said.That's the big reveal in the unredacted complaint, which also contains previously unseen allegations that Adobe was internally aware of studies showing its order and cancellation flows were too complicated and customers were unhappy with surprise early termination fees.In a short interview, Adobe's general counsel and chief trust officer, Dana Rao, pushed... Continue reading...

Image: Google Yet another Google Pixel 9 leak has surfaced, and this time, it's in the form of marketing materials shared with 91mobiles by reliable leaker OnLeaks. The marketing images offer a detailed look at the specs and features that could come with the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, leaving us with very little we don't know about the new devices.As shown in the leaked images, the base Pixel 9 may feature a 6.3-inch display and 12GB of RAM, while the Pixel 9 Pro may come in 6.3-inch and 6.8-inch sizes with 16GB of RAM. The materials suggest that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold could arrive with an upgraded 6.3-inch display when folded and an eight-inch display when unfolded, along with 16GB of RAM. All devices are expected to come with... Continue reading...

Image: Disney / Warner Bros. Discovery The Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max streaming bundle jointly assembled by Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery is now available in the US. Prices start from $16.99 per month for an ad-supported tier (as opposed to the monthly $25.97 price to pay for each service's ad-supported tier separately), or $29.99 per month to go ad-free (versus $47.97).Some details about the Disney / Hulu / Max bundle offer were initially revealed back in May, which was followed by Comcast's announcement of a similar streaming bundle for Xfinity customers that combines Netflix, Peacock, and Apple TV Plus. Disney-owned ESPN is also set to offer a live sports streaming service with Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox later this year.If large streaming bundles like these... Continue reading...

Image: Team FOLON It'll be some time before Bethesda releases a new Fallout game, but in the meantime, some enterprising fans have taken it upon themselves to release a big expansion for Fallout 4. The long-in-development mod Fallout: London is available now to download for free via GOG and is also compatible with the Steam version of Fallout 4. There is a catch, however: you need to be using the version of the game before the recent next-gen update. (A next-gen compatible version is also in the works, though it doesn't have a date yet.)In development since 2019, the London mod introduces a new location and story to the postapocalyptic world, complete with fully voiced characters and 200 different quests. There's an estimated 90 hours of gameplay... Continue reading...

It's not so much a standalone health tracker or a smartwatch alternative as an accessory for your Galaxy Watch. Continue reading...

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images FBI director Christopher Wray said on Wednesday that the person who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump searched the web for How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?" one week before the rally shooting, as reported by the The New York Times.Investigators recovered the search from a laptop linked to 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, which refers to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald. That's a search that's obviously significant in terms of his state of mind," Wray said during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. That is the same day that it appears that he registered for the Butler rally."As reported by the NYT, Wray said Crooks visited the site of the Butler,... Continue reading...

Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Amazon's Prime Video has inked an 11-year deal that will bring NBA and WNBA games to the streaming service starting with the 2025-2026 season. Prime Video will air a total of 66 regular-season games and 20 playoff games each year. The league's new agreements also include Disney and Comcast-owned NBC Universal, which will keep some games on the linear ESPN, ABC, and NBC channels.They'll air on Disney's upcoming standalone ESPN streaming service and NBC's Peacock as well. As reported by The New York Times, all three companies have agreed to shell out billions for the rights, with Disney paying $2.62 billion annually, Comcast paying $2.45 billion, and Amazon paying $1.93 billion. Image: Amazon The deal represents a... Continue reading...

A new Nest Learning Thermostat appears to be imminent. | Image: MysteryLupin via X Leaked images posted on X by @MysteryLupin show a fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat and new temperature sensors, as well as several other thermostats: Nest E, Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd Gen). Missing from the pictures is the Nest Thermostat (2020), presumably because it's not compatible with Nest's room sensors.The new addition looks similar to the third-generation model but appears to have a more curved display while retaining the physical dial, as pointed out by 9to5Google. The display is likely a touchscreen, as with the third-generation model, and the image shows a new icon with three wavy lines.This indicates that the new thermostat is also an indoor air quality monitor, which would be a new feature for Nest... Continue reading...

A graphic representation of a laser communications relay between the International Space Station, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration spacecraft, and the Earth. | Image: NASA/Dave Ryan NASA researchers have successfully tested laser communications in space by streaming 4K video footage originating from an airplane in the sky to the International Space Station and back.The feat demonstrates that the space agency could provide live coverage of a Moon landing during the Artemis missions and bodes well for the development of optical communications that could connect humans to Mars and beyond. NASA normally uses radio waves to send data and talk between the surface to space but says that laser communications using infrared light can transmit data 10 to 100 times faster than radios. GIF: NASA Demonstration of the transmission's journey. Engineers fitted an airplane with a portable laser terminal,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Bing's new search experience puts AI-generated answers front and center while pushing traditional search results to the side. The new layout, which is rolling out for a small number of queries, fills your search results page with AI-generated summaries addressing various aspects of your question.Microsoft has shared an early look at what this search experience will look like... and it's a lot. For the query What is a spaghetti western?" Bing displays a summary explaining that it's a subgenre of western films produced by Italian filmmakers," along with a series of bullet points of the genre's key characteristics. Image: Microsoft I know that this feature isn't fully rolled out yet, but as a Bing and Edge user (we... Continue reading...

An image representing AMD's new Ryzen 9000 desktop parts. | Image: AMD AMD was set to launch its new Zen 5 processors on July 31st, including the 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X, a chip it's calling the world's most powerful desktop consumer processor." Instead, it's now announcing a one- to two-week delay out of an abundance of caution." The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X will now launch on August 8th, while the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X will go on sale on August 15th.This is not because AMD's found any issues with the actual chips, spokesperson Stacy MacDiarmid tells The Verge. Rather, AMD discovered some of its chips didn't go through all of the proper testing procedures, and the company wants to make sure they do.Here's the full statement from AMD computing and graphics SVP Jack Huynh:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on World of Warcraft have voted to form a union. The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, formed with the assistance of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), is composed of employees across every department, including designers, engineers, artists, producers, and more. Together, they have formed the largest wall-to-wall union - or a union inclusive of multiple departments and disciplines - at Microsoft.This news comes less than a week after the formation of the Bethesda Game Studios union, which, at the time of the announcement, was itself the largest wall-to-wall Microsoft union.In a statement emailed to The Verge, Microsoft spokesperson Delaney Simmons wrote, We... Continue reading...

Little phone, how I miss you. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We've already heard rumblings about an iPhone Slim model taking the place of the iPhone Plus in 2025, making it the iPhone 17 Slim. Now, a new report from Apple supply chain expert Ming-Chi Kuo corroborates earlier claims, suggesting that the company's incredible shapeshifting non-Pro iPhone is about to evolve yet again.Kuo agrees it will come with a 6.6-inch screen and adds that it'll have just one rear-facing camera along with the company's beleaguered in-house 5G chip. Kuo says that the Slim model won't be a direct replacement for the Plus; instead, it represents new design trends beyond the existing iPhone lineup." That tracks with rumors that it might cost more than the $1,200 Pro Max.Apple has had one heck of a time trying to... Continue reading...

The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottomancan now be ordered with plant-based upholstery made from bamboo. | Image: Herman Miller Can you finally feel guilt-free about buying an iconic piece of furniture that starts at $6,395? For the first time in 68 years, Herman Miller is offering its Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman with a plant-based upholstery option that looks and feels like leather but is primarily made from bamboo.The plant-based fabric, called Banb, was developed by von Holzhausen and first launched back in 2020 as a durable alternative to both leather derived from animals and vegan leathers made using plastic-based materials like polyurethane. Banb is made by chopping up bamboo and extracting fibers that are spun into a yarn that can be woven into fabrics. Those fabrics are then treated with a plant-based topcoat sealant, according to von Holzhausen's... Continue reading...

Photo by Samuel Corum / Getty Images The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday letting victims of nonconsensual intimate images created by AI - or deepfakes" - sue their creators for damages.The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE) Act lets victims of sexually explicit deepfakes pursue civil remedies against those who produced or processed the image with the intent to distribute it. Victims who are identifiable in these kinds of deepfakes can receive up to $150,000 in damages under the bill and up to $250,000 if the incident was connected to actual or attempted sexual assault, stalking, or harassment" or the direct and proximate cause" of those harms. It's now up to the House to take up the bill before it can be moved to the... Continue reading...

Image: Apple / RapidSOS First responder networks are lining up to support a major new emergency feature in iOS 18: Live Video support. Now, 911 support platforms, including RapidSOS Unite and Prepared, are integrating with Apple's Emergency SOS Live Video, which was announced at WWDC in June.The new feature lets you video chat with 911 dispatchers and emergency responders, aiding them in finding you fast when you need help. Apple's Emergency SOS could already relay a voice call and send texts to responders, as well as share your location.This is all part of Apple's bigger push to add safety features in recent years, including Crash Detection, which was introduced on the iPhone 14 and newer and later added to the Apple Watch Series 8, Ultra, and the second... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Reddit is ramping up its crackdown on web crawlers. Over the past few weeks, Reddit has started blocking search engines from surfacing recent posts and comments unless the search engine pays up, according to a report from 404 Media.Right now, Google is the only mainstream search engine that shows recent results when you search for posts on Reddit using the site:reddit.com" trick, 404 Media reports. This leaves out Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other alternatives - and that's likely because Google has struck a $60 million deal that lets the company train its AI models on content from Reddit.It's a bold move for a massive website like Reddit to block some of the most popular search engines, but it's not all that surprising. Over the past year,... Continue reading...

Canadian soccer coach Bev Priestman will miss the Olympic team's opening match against New Zealand. | Photo by Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images A member of the Canadian Olympic women's soccer team was caught using a drone to spy on New Zealand's practice session on Monday. It's said to be the second drone incident" at a New Zealand practice over the past week.As a result, the Canadian Olympic Committee has announced that soccer coach Bev Priestman will not coach the Olympic team's opening match tomorrow. Two other staffers have been removed from the team and are being sent home from the games.The Canadian women's soccer team is the defending Olympic champion after winning gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021. According to TSN, the New Zealand team is currently ranked 28th. Taking Priestman's place as head coach during tomorrow's match will be the team's assistant coach, Andy... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google has updated the suspicious file warnings Chrome displays for why it might have blocked a potentially suspicious or dangerous file download to hopefully give users clearer explanations. For people who turn on the anti-phishing Enhanced protection feature, opting in to upload suspicious files for scanning in the cloud, it's also shifted to automatic scans, saying files sent for deep scans are 50 times more likely to be marked as malware.In response to widespread targeted cookie theft attacks on YouTube channels and other groups, like the Linus Tech Tips hacker takeover last year, Chrome has also added a prompt to scan encrypted archive files such as .zip files that have a password. Users will be prompted to enter the password so... Continue reading...

The Ace have an understated design that's very sleek, especially in white. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you're looking to be an early-ish adopter of some fancy headphones and you like the color white, you're in luck. The porcelain-colored Sonos Ace are on sale for $409.99 ($40 off) at Amazon.Sonos' first wireless headphones feature top-notch sound quality, noise cancellation, and a transparency mode. These features may be par for the course among its equally pricey competition, but what makes the Ace unique is its integration with the Sonos home audio ecosystem. If you're invested in Sonos speakers or soundbars, the Ace uses the Sonos app and has a nifty extra where you can instantly swap your TV audio from an Arc soundbar to the privacy of your headphones (if you're on iOS, since the feature has been delayed for Android). This... Continue reading...

Apple executives Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi have made it well known that the company has little interest in getting the iPad prepared for macOS software. During an event following Apple's 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Federighi said, We want to keep making iPad the best iPad it can be. We are not trying to create a Windows 8 PC or whatever." But that hasn't stopped Apple users from craving something more out of their iPads.Across our articles, videos, and podcasts, we see comments asking about what it would take to get macOS on their devices or asking for predictions of the day Apple will change its mind. So, we decided to try to find the answer.In this latest video from The Verge, video director Owen Grove... Continue reading...