The Verge

It took about a month for the finance world to start freaking out about DeepSeek, but when it did, it took more than half a trillion dollars a or one entire Stargate a off Nvidiaas market cap. It wasnat just Nvidia, either: Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft tanked. DeepSeekas two AI models, released in quick [...]

X is one step closer to finally launching its payments platform. According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, the X Money service will debut later this year" with Visa announced as its first partner. In her announcement, Yaccarino says the service will support secure + instant funding to your X Wallet via Visa Direct," allowing users [...]

Nvidia is launching its next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards tomorrow, and it looks like there will be low stocks of both cards. After rumors of the RTX 5090 being in short supply for retailers and card manufacturers, Nvidia has now admitted it believes stock-outs may happen." We expect significant demand for the [...]

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Gov, a version of its flagship chatbot that's tailored to government agencies. The company says the tool will let US government agencies securely access OpenAI's frontier models, like GPT-4o. As noted by OpenAI, government agencies can deploy ChatGPT Gov within their own Microsoft Azure cloud instance, making it easier to manage [...]

After spending three years in early access and releasing officially on August 3rd, Baldur's Gate 3 is on the short list for 2023's Game of the Year. It's a beefy Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG and the successor of the Baldur's Gate series developed by BioWare. The game features some of best, most memorable characters this [...]

Mythic Questas ability to spin some of the gaming industryas ugliest aspects into genuinely funny comedy was what made it such a surprising delight when it first hit Apple TV Plus back in 2020. Even when it was joking about chaotic streamers or Nazi server takeovers, you could feel the respect Mythic Questas creative team [...]

Amazon's first UK drone deliveries will take flight in Darlington, England, the company announced on Monday. The e-commerce giant is taking the initial steps to get Prime Air deliveries off the ground in the area, working with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for authorization to fly its drones in the airspace. Once Amazon has approval, [...]

Illustration: The Verge Google said today that it plans to update Google Maps to reflect President Trump's January 20th executive order to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley, respectively.The company noted on X the updated nomenclature will appear once the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated.We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources," the company posted on X. It added that when name changes vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too."Denali was named Mount McKinley until 2015.The US Department of the Interior said last week it plans to follow the executive order to implement the name changes.The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, under the purview of the Department of the Interior, is working expeditiously to update the official federal nomenclature in the Geographic Names Information System to reflect these changes, effective immediately for federal use," the Department of the Interior said on Friday.An Apple spokesperson wasn't immediately available to comment on its plans for Apple Maps.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Without going into detail about what might happen to the $52 billion in subsidies from the CHIPS Act under his administration, Donald Trump said tariffs on foreign computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals are coming in the near future." He also namechecked DeepSeek's AI releases, saying, ...coming up with a faster method of AI and less expensive, that's good. I view that as a positive if it is fact and it is true, and nobody knows, but I view that as a positive."In the speech at the House GOP Issues Conference held at the Trump National Doral Resort in Miami Monday afternoon, he said that to return the production of these goods to the US, we don't want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program Biden has." Instead the incentive for manufacturers will be they will not want to pay a tax."Bloomberg reports that later, in comments to reports, Trump said he wanted a tariff rate much bigger" than 2.5 percent.This is despite the outcome of the trade war with China during his first administration that expanded China's trade surplus with the US between 2018, when the tariffs began, and 2021. A CTA report from last year cited by TechCrunch said Trump's proposed tariffs could increase prices on laptops and tablets by 46 percent, game consoles by 40 percent, and smartphones by 26 percent.He also said that we will have more plants built in the next short period of time than ever before because the incentive will be there," however it's unclear how many of those will be like The Stargate Project's first datacenter in Texas, which was in the works well before the start of his administration. Last fall, the Commerce Department said that by then, it had announced over $30 billion in proposed CHIPS private sector investments spanning 23 projects in 15 states" with 16 new manufacturing facilities in the works.He also said of DeepSeek that instead of spending billions you will spend less and hopefully come up with the same solution," even as OpenAI, Softbank & co. say they're preparing to spend $500 billion on AI datacenters.Update, January 27th: Added details from Bloomberg.

Image: Sony Sony is upping the limited warranty on some InZone gaming monitors to three years and is tossing in OLED burn-in coverage for the 27-inch M10S. The company announced the additional coverage today after launching both the InZone M10S OLED and M9 II LED in September with only one-year limited warranties out of the box. Sony says other than that, the limited warranties remain as they were.Manufacturers have long been averse to talking about burn-in or have outright categorized the phenomenon as normal use," denying warranty claims to fix it on various panel types. However, OLEDs have historically been more susceptible to burn-in, especially when used with many static images like those from a PC. In recent years, OLED has improved to be less sensitive to burn-ins.Sony is the latest in a trend of manufacturers adding burn-in coverage. Alienware was one of the first to specifically include OLED burn-in within its three-year coverage on the QD-OLED monitor launched in 2022, and for its latest 27-inch 4K model coming this year. And in 2023, The Verge's Sean Hollister asked LG to explicitly warrant the company's OLED monitors against burn-in and they agreed and changed their verbiage. Screenshot: The Verge A Samsung representative on this Best Buy product listing says the three-year warranty on the 32-inch Odyssey OLED G8 covers burn-in. Since then, companies like MSI and Asus have also pledged to cover OLED burn-in on some models, including their latest ones (in some countries). It's important to research the warranty included in the model you're buying to determine whether burn-in coverage is included. For instance, Samsung's website shows a general policy for its warranty that excludes burn-ins, however, an online rep confirmed it does cover it on a 32-inch Odyssey OLED G8. However, the company still hasn't clarified if burn-ins are covered for its latest 27-inch Odyssey OLED G8 gaming monitor.

To update the firmware on your AirPods, first put them in the case. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple updated its AirPods firmware support page today with a more detailed step-by-step guide on how to upgrade the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max with their latest firmware, according to MacRumors. While most Apple devices, like the iPhone or Apple Watch, can start updates in the settings, with the AirPods, you have to wait for the update process to happen on its own.The AirPods firmware support page still includes Apple's original summary of the conditions needed for the update process but has now added an expanded step-by-step guide to help ensure the process happens automatically.Although most of the steps have been previously known, there are some specific suggestions added, including charging with a USB cable and waiting at least 30 minutes for the update to happen. Those clarifications may help you if you've been struggling to get firmware updates to work.The following steps are specifically for the AirPods and AirPods Pro. The instructions for the AirPods Max are nearly identical, but with the charging case steps omitted.

The Pebble Time Round just got a new lease on life. | Photo: Chris Welch / The Verge Eric Migicovsky still wears his Pebble. Thirteen years after he founded the wearables company and found huge success on Kickstarter, and more than eight years after he sold the company to Fitbit, which was then acquired by Google, Migicovsky's watch still works. (In case you're wondering: when I saw him at CES a few weeks ago, he appeared to be wearing a white Pebble Time Round model. But he has a box full of them at home.) It hasn't gotten a software update since December 2016, though, and he's been worried for a while that it will eventually stop getting notifications, or connecting to his phone, or run into some other show-stopping problem.Rather than buy another smartwatch, Migicovsky decided to try and get Pebble going again. He sold his most recent startup, a messaging app called Beeper, to Automattic last year and left the company in the fall. Since then, he'd thought about starting a Pebble-like product from scratch, figuring it'd be easier to do the same thing again a second time. But then I was like, what if I just asked Google to open-source the operating system?" he says. It felt like a long shot, but he knew the code was just sitting dormant inside Mountain View somewhere. So he asked. A few times.To Migicovsky's surprise, Google agreed to release Pebble OS to the public. As of Monday, all the Pebble firmware is available on GitHub, and Migicovsky is starting a company to pick up where he left off.The company - which can't be named Pebble because Google still owns that - doesn't have a name yet. For now, Migicovsky is hosting a waitlist and news signup at a website called RePebble. Later this year, once the company has a name and access to all that Pebble software, the plan is to start shipping new wearables that look, feel, and work like the Pebbles of old. Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge Pebbles were always gadget-y gadgets, which is still part of their appeal. The reason, Migicovsky tells me, is simple. I've tried literally everything else," he says, and nothing else comes close." Sure, he may just have a very specific set of requirements - lots of people are clearly happy with what Apple, Garmin, Google, and others are making. But it's true that there's been nothing like Pebble since Pebble. For the things I want out of it, like a good e-paper screen, long battery life, good and simple user experience, hackable, there's just nothing."The core of Pebble, he says, is a few things. A Pebble should be quirky and fun and should feel like a gadget in an important way. It shows notifications, lets you control your music with buttons, lasts a long time, and doesn't try to do too much. It sounds like Migicovsky might have Pebble-y ambitions beyond smartwatches, but he appears to be starting with smartwatches.If that sounds like the old Pebble and not much else, that's precisely the point. Migicovsky tells me over and over that the plan is not to reinvent Pebble, or AI the bejesus out of the concept, or do whatever else you'd do starting a hardware company in 2025. The fact that the Pebble on his wrist still works, and still works for him, is evidence that maybe Pebble had already finished its job. We're building a spiritual, not successor, but clone of Pebble," he says, because there's not that much I actually want to change."A lot of other things have changed in eight years, though. Google, Apple, and Samsung all now have good smartwatches that are tied tightly to their other devices - Pebble always had trouble getting access to features on iOS, in particular, and that's not getting easier. Smartwatches are currently health and fitness devices above all else, and they're getting vastly more complex and powerful in pursuit of those features. Google obviously doesn't see any form of Pebble as a threat; its best chance is to chart another path entirely.The biggest difference this time will be how the company itself operates. Migicovsky wrote a long blog post in 2022 explaining what went wrong at Pebble the first time and ascribed its failure in part to taking a bunch of investment money and letting it change the company. Since then, Migicovsky has made plenty of money from Beeper and during a stint as an investor at Y Combinator; his new company is his alone. Right now, it's just Migicovsky and a few part-time employees - it'll grow, he says, but not too much. The core thing here is: sustainable."They could even use it in random other hardware. Who knows what people can do with it now?"Migicovsky also hopes to be part of a broader open-source community around Pebble OS. The Pebble diehards still exist: a group of developers at Rebble have worked to keep many of the platform's apps alive, for instance, along with the Cobble app for connecting to phones, and the Pebble subreddit is surprisingly active for a product that hasn't been updated since the Obama administration. Migicovsky says he plans to open-source whatever his new company builds and hopes lots of other folks will build stuff, too. There's going to be the ability for anyone who wants to, to take Pebble source code, compile it, run it on their Pebbles, build new Pebbles, build new watches," he says. They could even use it in random other hardware. Who knows what people can do with it now?"This whole project will take time, Migicovsky cautions. He only found out for sure that Google would open-source the software a few days ago, and he hasn't been able to use it at all yet. But he's already working on hardware prototypes, and he's crystal clear on what he wants the new Pebbles to be. He knows he can do it because he already did it once. The evidence is right there on his wrist. All he's trying to do is make sure it can stay there.

The Apple Sports app has been updated with broadcast information for users in the US. | Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge Apple updated its iOS Sports app today with several new features, including a faster way to navigate the app, support for a handful of additional soccer tournaments, and information about where you can watch games that are being nationally broadcast in the US.According to the release notes for the update, you can now quickly swipe left or right to browse all of the leagues and teams you follow." When on a page for a specific game, below each team's name and record for the season you'll now find an additional line listing broadcast information such as Live on NHL Network," or Live on TNT, Max, truTV," if there are several ways to watch it. Screenshot: Richard Lawler / The Verge The Apple Sports app now provides brief details on where to watch nationally-televised games in the US. The update also expands the Sports app's soccer coverage with the addition of the UK's FA Cup, EFL Championship, and League Cup tournaments.Apple Sports launched in February, giving fans of several different major sports leagues - including the NBA, NHL, and MLS - a one-stop solution for keeping tabs on scores, stats, upcoming games, and even betting odds. In August, the app added live scores and play-by-play info for NFL and college football games and expanded its Live Activities support for all teams and leagues available in the app," making it easier to track games on an iPhone's lock screen and the Apple Watch.In December, it also introduced summaries of scoring plays and big moments in a game called Key Plays, plus league standings that made it easier to track which teams qualified for the postseason.

The 2021 Kindle Paperwhite isn't significantly different than its successor, rendering this an excellent deal if you want a waterproof Amazon e-reader. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge If you're feeling bored because it's too cold to go outside, here's an e-reader deal that might help: Woot is selling a refurbished 2021 Kindle Paperwhite with 16GB of storage and ads for just $89.99 with a 90-day warranty, saving you about $60 off the latest model. New Woot customers can also score an additional $10 off when they use code FIRETENOFF at checkout until February 1st at 1AM ET, lowering the price further to $79.99.It may no longer be Amazon's newest Kindle Paperwhite, but the 2021 version is still one of my favorite Amazon e-readers. Unlike the entry-level Kindle, which starts at $109.99, it boasts IPX8 waterproofing so it's perfect if you read in the bath. Its 300ppi display is sharp with adjustable color temperature, so you can read just as easily at night as you can during the day. The 6.8-inch e-reader also offers exceptional battery life, allowing you to read for months on a single charge. You can quickly charge it thanks to USB-C support.There are trade-offs you'll make buying the 2021 Paperwhite over the 2024 version, which starts at $159.99. The latest Paperwhite, for instance, is noticeably faster with a slightly larger 7-inch screen and richer contrast levels.Read our 2021 Kindle Paperwhite review.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge After surging to the top of Apple's App Store charts in the US, DeepSeek's AI Assistant is now restricting new user sign-ups. According to an incident report page, registrations are being temporarily limited due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek's services," though it's unclear how these limitations are being applied.Existing users can log in as usual," DeepSeek said in its update. Thanks for your understanding and support." An alert banner on the DeepSeek web sign-up page says that registration may be busy," rather than entirely restricted, however, and encourages users to wait and try again" if their application is unsuccessful.Outages and performance issues were reported by DeepSeek earlier today, which prevented users from signing in or creating new accounts. That incident has now been marked as resolved, but no information has been provided about the reported attacks against DeepSeek's chatbot app. It was previously thought that DeepSeek's systems may be under strain due to a huge influx of new users downloading the app, which is said to rival Western AI services like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropics Claude.An earlier update said that only registration with a mainland China mobile phone number" is currently supported in an attempt to ensure continued service." The specific requirement for Chinese numbers has since been deleted; however, I and other Verge staff have been able to successfully create new accounts via sign-in options for Google and Apple ID. Email registration is also still currently listed as available on the web-based DeepSeek signup page.

Cath Virginia / The Verge Spotify and Universal Music Group have signed a new multi-year agreement that could result in a tiered subscription approach aimed at providing extra perks for superfans." The two didn't announce any specifics, including the number of years the deal lasts, but UMG says it's consistent with a Streaming 2.0" vision it presented to investors last year.UMG chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge called the agreement precisely the kind of partnership development" the company hoped for when describing Streaming 2.0. That presentation envisioned a Super-Premium" subscription for superfans that could mean things like early access to music, exclusive deluxe editions, hi-res audio, and artist Q&As. The companies have been rumored to be discussing such a deal for months. Screenshot: Universal Music Group UMG's concept for a new subscription tier for superfans. UMG also referenced Streaming 2.0 when it signed an agreement with Amazon Music last month, as World Music Business pointed out when it broke news of the Spotify agreement prior to Sunday's announcement.The deal also appears" to increase royalty rates, the National Music Publishers Association told Variety. The outlet pointed out yesterday that the NMPA and others had criticized Spotify over changes last year that led to lower mechanical royalty rates for songwriters, spurring an NMPA complaint to the FTC.Sony Music Publishing also criticized Spotify's royalty changes, and even considered options to challenge them. It's not clear if Sony or any other publishers are in talks for similar deals with Spotify, but that could change in light of the UMG deal, which Billboard notes is Spotify's first direct deal with a music publisher since the Music Modernization Act passed in 2018.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Some Slack users are finding that their notifications aren't showing up on the platform this morning, or that their corresponding messages are harder to find than usual. A few of my colleagues are reporting similar issues on The Verge's Slack channels, and I've been receiving repeated notifications for thread messages that I've already marked as read. The issues also seem to be affecting tags for other users - if a colleague hasn't responded to your pings, DM them directly for now.Slack is aware that notifications may be missing for some users" and logged an incident report at 7:52AM ET today, later confirming that the issue is impacting threads. We're currently investigating the issue and we'll be back when we have more information," Slack announced on its status page. We're sorry for any interruption to your day."It's unclear what's causing the disruption to notifications or how many Slack users have been impacted. There's a visible spike on Downdetector, but very few reports have been logged.For myself, at least, some notifications are coming through, but several minutes after a message has been sent. As of 10:10AM ET, Slack said that other notifications should be working as expected, but threads may not be loading correctly." It also logged a separate note that reports some users are having trouble adding new members to multi-person DM's (group chats for up to nine people.)Developing...Update, January 27th: Added more updates from Slack.

Photo Illustration: The Verge | Photo: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images One of the biggest tech companies you've never heard of is helping you listen to this podcast. Read the full story at The Verge.

The market value of US AI companies is taking a tumble. | Image: DeepSeek A chatbot made by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has rocketed to the top of Apple's App Store charts in the US this week, dethroning OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app. The eponymous AI assistant is powered by DeepSeek's open-source models, which the company says can be trained at a fraction of the cost using far fewer chips than the world's leading models. The claim has riled financial markets, with Nvidia's share price dropping over 12 percent in pre-market trading.Downloads for the app exploded shortly after DeepSeek released its new R1 reasoning model on January 20th, which is designed for solving complex problems and reportedly performs as well as OpenAI's o1 on certain benchmarks. R1 was built on the V3 LLM DeepSeek released in December, which the company claims is on par with GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and cost less than $6 million to develop. By contrast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said GPT-4 cost over $100 million to train.DeepSeek also claims to have needed only about 2,000 specialized chips from Nvidia to train V3, compared to the 16,000 or more required to train leading models, according to the New York Times. These unverified claims are leading developers and investors to question the compute-intensive approach favored by the world's leading AI companies. And if true, it means that DeepSeek engineers had to get creative in the face of trade restrictions meant to ensure US domination of AI.Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta are investing billions into AI data centers - $500 billion alone for the Stargate Project, of which $100 billion is thought to be earmarked for Nvidia. Investors and analysts are now wondering if that's money well spent, with Nvidia, Microsoft, and other companies with substantial stakes in maintaining the AI status quo all trending downward in pre-market trading.

The new iPhone SE will likely be limited to a single rear camera. | Image: Majin Bu We might have just gotten our best look yet at Apple's next affordable iPhone SE, shown in both video and photographs of what's either a real phone or a convincing dummy unit. Despite some reports that the next SE would adopt recent iPhones' Dynamic Island design, this model appears to stick with the older notch.Leaker Majin Bu shared a short video over the weekend that shows the new phone in bright daylight, following it up a day later with photos of both white and black versions. Like previous iPhone SE models there's only a single rear camera, though this appears to be the first in the line to feature a USB-C port - now a requirement for the phone to be sold in the EU.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 68, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, hope you're staying warm and sane, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading about Kieran Culkin and insomnia and the eBay for fancy startup stuff, finally watching The Wild Robot, thinking a lot about my shopping habits while watching The Mega-Brands That Built America, adding a bunch of Baseus retractable cables to my travel kit, playing an amazing browser-based rendition of the Atari game Pitfall!, testing out the new Spark calendar for Android, and trying to copy Babish's delicious-looking breakfast sandwich.I also have for you the biggest new phone in the Android world, the GPU every gamer's going to want, an impossible test for AI tools, a clever Google alternative, and much more. It's been a somewhat quiet week for new stuff, honestly, since it's both post-CES doldrums and utter political chaos. But we've still got great stuff to talk about! Let's do it.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / cooking / downloading / building... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Fubo Fubo has raised its English-language streaming plan prices by $5 each, with a Fubo spokesperson citing rising costs from our programming partners," reported The Streamable yesterday. Fubo's Essential and Pro plans now start at $85 a month, while its Elite plan has gone up to $95 monthly.We only make adjustments when necessary," a Fubo spokesperson said to The Streamable, and we're committed to keeping Fubo competitive while ensuring our subscribers have access to the channels, features and live events they enjoy."

Image: Second Dinner Mobile card game Marvel Snap is coming back to app stores, starting with Google Play. That's according to Developer Second Dinner, which announced yesterday it was starting the process of restoring the game to Google's Android app store at 6PM PT / 3PM ET that day. The developer said in another post it expects the game to return to both Google's and Apple's app stores as early as next week."Marvel Snap was caught up in the TikTok outage last weekend because its original publisher, Nuverse, is owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance. The game came back online for players on Monday and Second Dinner said it planned to bring more services in-house and partner with a new publisher." As of now, Marvel Snap is still provided, operated, and managed by Nuverse," according to the privacy policy on the game's website.An admin of the Marvel Snap Discord server also announced a set of compensation packages for players affected by the outage. As seen in screenshots posted to Reddit, that includes in-game credits, tokens, and special variants for accounts that were created in the US or that showed US activity in the 30 days prior to the outage. Non-US players will also get a Global Gratitude Package" with similar, though fewer, benefits.Other apps that went down last weekend, such as CapCut and Lemon8, have since come back online but still aren't listed in the iOS and Android app stores. Although President Donald Trump has directed the US Attorney General not to enforce the US TikTok ban, it's unclear whether he can shield Apple or Google from legal liability if they host the apps in defiance of the law.

Image: Letibus Design and Icedrop Games At a glance, Lok Digital seems like another cute and clever word game, a perfect distraction to keep on your phone for idle moments. But look closer, and it's clear something just isn't right. Yes, it's a game about creating words to fill out a puzzle board. Except those words aren't actually real - and they all have special powers. Think of it like an alien take on Scrabble. It takes a while to wrap your head around, but Lok's surreal setup makes for an excellent brain-scratching puzzler.There is actually a story of sorts here. Lok takes place in a black-and-white fantasy realm, and your goal is to help little worm-like creatures progress through each level. The stages are grids of squares, and your goal is to turn each one black. (I have no idea how this helps the creatures move, but just stay with me here.) You turn them black by placing letters to spell out words. Completed words will black out squares, and certain words also have the ability to black out even more.It sounds kind of weird at first, and that feeling is only exacerbated by the dictionary of words you're working with. They are gibberish. The game eases you into this fictional language, though, slowly... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images All I know is I'm good for my $80 billion."Rarely does a one-liner so perfectly capture the state of the moment. Here, you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying he's not in the details" about Stargate, the supposedly multi-hundred-billion AI infrastructure project driven by his marquee investment, OpenAI.Nadella not being read in on the nebulous details of Stargate says a lot about how much Microsoft and OpenAI have drifted apart. Microsoft is mentioned in the Stargate press release since OpenAI's models are still exclusive to Azure. But the most striking aspect of Stargate is not that the money isn't there for it yet; it's that OpenAI's biggest backer has decided to not participate in what Sam Altman is calling the most important project of this era." As Nadella made clear on CNBC this week, he's running his own, $80 billion AI infrastructure buildout and, going forward, OpenAI can get additional compute - with his blessing - elsewhere.While it received fewer headlines this week, I found Nadella's response to Elon Musk on X even more illuminating. In his response to Musk saying, on the other hand, Satya definitely does have the money," Nadella responded: And all... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Apple is making an executive change to try and improve its AI efforts and Siri. Kim Vorrath, who recently helped get the Vision Pro software out the door and has been at Apple for 36 years, has been brought over to Apple's artificial intelligence and machine learning division and will serve as a top deputy" to AI boss John Giannandrea, Bloomberg reports.The company made a big splash about its AI / Apple Intelligence efforts at WWDC last year, but they haven't had the same impact as things like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. Apple has also been slowly rolling out what it announced, and a big Siri upgrade that lets it understand what's happening on your screen and take action may not arrive until iOS 18.4. And the company's AI-powered news notification summaries will be put on pause with iOS 18.3 after criticism that the summaries were incorrect.By bringing on Vorrath, whose resume at Apple includes work on the original iPhone software group, over to the AI team, it appears Apple wants to bring more rigor to Apple's AI development. It also indicates that Apple may see AI as a bigger deal for its future than the Vision Pro.Bloomberg also reports that the artificial intelligence group is focused on revamping the underlying infrastructure of Siri and improving the company's in-house AI models" this year, per a memo from Giannandrea.

Looking like a true brute of an off-roader. | Image: Audi Audi has revealed a new dual-motor electric off-road vehicle concept based on the Q6 E-tron that looks ready for a snowpocalypse. The automaker built a working prototype that lifts the vehicle by 6.3 inches and widens it by 9.8 inches, giving it a stance that wouldn't be out of place if it appeared in Truck Country, USA.Audi's CEO Gernot Dollner calls the Q6 E-Tron Off-road concept" a reinterpretation of Quattro," which is the company's marketing term for its all-wheel-drive models.The extra ride height is courtesy of four bespoke portal axles integrated into the wheel hub assemblies at the front and rear that Audi says increase torque at the wheel by 50 percent. Each axle is powered by an electric motor with a combined power output of 380kW and up to 9,883 lb ft of torque at its peak. That's up 3,245 lb ft of torque from the normal Q6 E-tron, which is Audi's first vehicle built on Volkswagen's modular Premium Platform Electric (PPE) platform (also used in the new A6 E-tron and Porsche Macan EV).The vehicle is designed to climb hills as steep as 45 degrees but the company did nerf the Q6's top speed a bit down to 108 mph. Still, no one should drive that fast anyway in a vehicle lifted this high. This also makes the Off-road concept a much more realistic one compared to more sci-fi Audi concepts like the Activesphere coupe / pickup truck combo with a mixed reality cockpit or the truly apocalyptic all-terrain AI:Trail" that has drones for headlights.Audi's Q6 E-tron Offroad concept will be featured at the FAT International Ice Race in Austria on February 1st. The company will also show it in action via its social media channels.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Ever since Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter he's claimed the company, now called X, is in a very dire situation from a revenue standpoint."Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that banks are preparing a coordinated move to sell off some of the $13 billion in debt they loaned Musk to finance the deal. It mentions an email sent to employees this month, also confirmed by The Verge, where the Chief Twit said, ...we've witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes," but also claimed, Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even."Part of the reason Bank of America, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley are holding so much of the debt is from trying to avoid selling at a loss after economic conditions changed, and Musk had an extended court battle attempting to get out of the deal. While equity investors have reportedly slashed the value of their stakes by as much as 78 percent, the Journal reports, banks hope to sell senior debt at 90-95 cents on the dollar, while retaining more-junior holdings."As Musk referenced in his email, the report says the banks hope to use the narrative of Musk's link to Donald Trump, as some unnamed investors may be interested in buying based on a belief that its financials are on the way up.However, Musk also said that the company could become cash-flow positive within months" nearly two years ago, and it still faces over $1 billion in annual interest payments on the loans. The platform is increasingly turning into a testing ground for his AI ambitions, as we reported earlier this month, and while X has added some features, like job listings and a new video tab, there's little sign of the service he'd said would be able to someone's entire financial life" by the end of 2024.

Image: The Verge Nearly a week after it was removed, the TikTok app is still missing from Apple and Google's app stores.The app was pulled from both stores after the US' ban-or-divest law went into effect last weekend, which resulted in the service going dark within the United States. While TikTok came back online shortly after the ban, the app didn't return to either mobile store. Apple and Google are at risk of paying billions in fines if they make TikTok available, and it's unclear if President Donald Trump's executive order refusing to enforce the ban actually removes that risk.Apple and Google haven't replied to multiple requests for comment from The Verge - including requests I made today - about if or when the app might be available again. Apple and Google do have statements about the removal of TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps like Lemon8 and Marvel Snap, but otherwise, no comment since.TikTok didn't immediately reply to a request for comment, either, however, Marvel Snap developer Second Dinner posted Friday evening on X, saying, Our current estimation is that Marvel Snap will be back in the app stores as early as next week barring any setbacks." Without explaining further, Second Dinner co-founder Ben Brode answered a question on Bluesky about what would happen for next month's updates, saying, we're hoping to have it back before then."Because these app stores are the primary way many people get the software, TikTok's absence basically means you can't newly install the app - at least, for the time being - without jumping through a lot of hoops. It also means they can't deliver updates to add new features or address any bugs, including potential security flaws.If you had TikTok on your phone before the ban kicked in, however, the app should work for you as normal. (As a result, people are trying to sell used phones with the TikTok app still on them.) You can also use TikTok in a browser - including on your phone.Update, January 24th: Added new details about Marvel Snap.

The battery icon in Windows 11 is getting a colorful update. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is releasing a new Windows 11 Insider Preview Build today with some welcome improvements to the operating system's battery icon - possibly sparing you the realization that you've chosen a dead outlet, or improperly plugged in your power adapter, or let your battery drain too much, before it's far too late.Windows' battery icon, which has traditionally been black, is being updated with three colors designed to communicate battery status of your PC with just a quick glance," the company writes today on its Windows Blog. A green icon will indicate your computer is charging and in a good state," but will turn yellow when your battery has dropped below 20 percent charge and has entered energy saving mode. A red icon indicates you have a critically low battery" and will need to plug in your computer as soon as possible before it dies.The new colored battery icons will appear on the taskbar's system tray, in the quick settings flyout, and in the general Windows Settings. Microsoft says they'll also eventually be used on the Lock screen, but that functionality is coming in a future build.Today's preview release includes two additional improvements to the battery icon. Microsoft has simplified overlays, such as the lightning bolt charging icon, so that they won't block the icon's progress bar, and added the ability to show the battery's charge percentage next to the icon in the system tray. It can be enabled by going to Settings > Power & battery and turning on the new Battery Percentage" setting.Microsoft says this is a highly requested feature by Insiders and customers" and it should be a welcome upgrade over the battery icon Windows currently uses that provides minimal information and a vague representation of a battery's remaining charge.The colors should make it immediately obvious that a laptop has started charging when plugged in, and it's a lot harder to ignore (or forget about) a near-dead battery when it's bright red with a single digit charge percentage right next to it.The battery icon updates should already be available to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel who have opted to get the latest updates as soon as they're available. It'll take longer to reach general release and might even get tweaks before it reaches other early adopters:Microsoft says the experience isn't available to all Insiders just yet as we plan to monitor feedback before pushing it out to everyone."

Ayaneo builds the best-looking handheld PCs in the business, but they've always been boutique. The 2023 Ayaneo 2, for example, cost $1,300 for an arguably worse experience than the $400 Steam Deck. But that experience isn't dampening my excitement for the new 7-inch Ayaneo 3.Not only does this one start at $900, within striking distance of the highest-end handhelds you'll find at retail, it's the most feature-packed portable I've seen - with two USB4 ports and OcuLink and RGB-ringed Hall effect joysticks and your choice of two seemingly killer screens. Perhaps most exciting: a way to finally fix a handheld's joystick and button layout to match your ergonomic preferences!Just watch: Animation by Ayaneo Finally. Ayaneo is calling the Ayaneo 3 the world's first modular handheld," because there'll be other modular options too. An extra $139 buys a set of six modules that let you swap out your joysticks for analog sticks, a six-button microswitch pad for fighting games, or even D-pads and face buttons with conductive silicone underneath for a different feel. Image: Ayaneo Six modules and extra joystick toppers come with the Magic Module" kit. But importantly, that basic module that lets you change joystick and button orientation and swap joystick caps comes with the handheld by default, and it's not the only feature Ayaneo is impressively cramming into the $900 kit.While you'll only" get a Ryzen 8840U, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and 512GB of storage that that price - no Z2 option, and the HX 370 model starts at $1500 - you do get your choice of OLED or IPS right away.That OLED screen is a 1080p 144Hz HDR OLED panel promising 800 nits of global brightness and 110 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, specs which suggest it could even beat the Steam Deck OLED's excellent screen. Image: Ayaneo An actual photo of the Ayaneo 3. Like the Deck OLED, it unfortunately doesn't have variable refresh rate for added smoothness - but if that's important, the IPS panel option does! That one's a 120Hz, 500-nit, native landscape 1080p display, according to the company, with 7ms response time and only 100 percent sRGB coverage (read: nowhere near as colorful as the OLED panel).On top of all that, the Ayaneo 3 comes standard with both top and bottom USB4 ports, both of which are capable of 65W PD charging, plus the still-rare-on-handhelds Oculink port for eGPUs, and it takes full-length M.2 2280 SSDs for easy storage upgrades. Plus, there's a dedicated hardware mode switch on the bottom edge to switch the controller and virtual-mouse-and-keyboard modes. I doubt that will make up for the current state of Windows, but it could help! Also, new trigger locks for its Hall effect triggers, if you want to switch them into a hair trigger mode.I do have a few hesitations, even without having touched the Ayaneo 3. First, the company says its modules electronically latch into the frame - you have to eject them by pressing a software button, which activates a motor to release the latch. Sounds potentially fiddly? Second, I'm sorry to report that this 1.5-pound handheld only fits a 49 watt-hour battery, even though the Asus ROG Ally X manages to fit an 80 watt-hour pack into roughly the same weight. Fingers crossed, but I wouldn't expect great battery life here with neither a giant battery pack nor a particularly handheld-optimized chip.Lastly, it's always important to point out that these products are crowdfunded, and while Ayaneo has a history of delivering its promised handhelds, they haven't always been great - and this is the most ambitious one yet. If that sounds worthwhile, you can find the Ayaneo 3 on Indiegogo here.The company says the handheld should ship at the end of April; here's the whole price breakdown. Image: Ayaneo

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Rivian is planning to launch a hands-free driving assistant system for its electric R1T and R1S vehicles later this year, followed by an eyes-off" version in 2026, reveals Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe in a press roundtable interview according to a post on Rivian Forums and reported by Electrek. The first part of the system sounds like it will work similarly to Ford's Blue Cruise or GM's Super Cruise software, which are Level 2 assistants that only work on highways fully mapped by each manufacturer.It's unclear if current Gen 1 and Gen 2 Rivian vehicles will support the upcoming hand-free assistant software or if it will come to upgraded models or the upcoming R2 SUV.Gen 2 vehicles already come with exclusive features like matrix headlights and an upgraded light bar that can change colors, which Scaringe says could be used as an indicator to let others know a Rivian is operating autonomously, according to a Rivian Forum user. Gen 2 vehicles also come with a newer Rivian Autonomy Platform, which might mean Gen 1 vehicles aren't going to get some of the upcoming advanced ADAS features.Currently, Rivian trucks have available Driver Plus" advanced driver assistant systems (ADAS) that work similarly to Tesla's standard Autopilot software in that they enable lane keeping and auto speed up / slow down on highways. However, like other Level 2 systems, you still need to pay attention to the road.In an email to The Verge, Rivian's product communications manager, Courtney Richardson, confirms Scaringe's comments about the upcoming ADAS upgrades in the interview yesterday. Richardson says there are no further details to add at this time. Currently, only Mercedes-Benz ships a Level 3 autonomous system that works in some states in the US, which allows drivers to look away from the road.