The Verge

The Verge Roughly a month ago, Michael Sayman realized he could finally build the app he'd been thinking about for years: a social network where everyone but you is an AI bot. Large language models are finally good enough and cheap enough that the experience might actually feel social and useful, and not like a gimmick or a game. And so, after years of waiting and months of testing the latest models, Sayman got to work.The app he built is called SocialAI, and it has become something of a viral phenomenon since it launched. (All he'd tell me is that it was downloaded 20,000 times in the first couple of days - but says the number has gone up substantially since then.) Some people thought it seemed fun and useful; other people thought it felt deeply... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Apple, the most valuable company in the world, will have to work this weekend to meet a legal deadline on Monday. That's after Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson on Friday denied the company's request for more time to produce 1.3 million documents related to App Store changes it made in January to comply with a 2021 court order.Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who presided over the Epic lawsuit that resulted in those changes, told Apple's legal team on May 31st it would need to produce all documents related to how it decided the new App Store rules after Epic challenged them. Document discovery was then referred to Hixson, who quoted part of a transcript from the hearing when he set Monday's deadline back in August:

Samsung's Galaxy Book4 Edge offer a vibrant OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. | Photo: Joanna Nelius / The Verge The portability of a laptop is nice and all, but oftentimes, the tradeoff is a smaller screen that can feel cramped if you've got a lot of tabs open. Thankfully, there are laptops like Samsung's Galaxy Book4 Edge, which offers a 16-inch display in a thin and lightweight package. It typically starts at $1,499.99, but right now, Best Buy is selling it with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for just $999.99 ($450 off), which is a new all-time low price. If you prefer a slightly smaller display, the 14-inch model is also on sale for $899.99 ($450 off).We were struck by how stunning the Galaxy Book4 Edge is. Along with being spacious, the laptop boasts a lovely OLED display that makes colors pop, while its chassis is beautiful. The screen... Continue reading...

See that little circle? That's a camera. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge All around Meta's Menlo Park campus, cameras stared at me. I'm not talking about security cameras or my fellow reporters' DSLRs. I'm not even talking about smartphones. I mean Ray-Ban and Meta's smart glasses, which Meta hopes we'll all - one day, in some form - wear.I visited Meta for this year's Connect conference, where just about every hardware product involved cameras. They're on the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that got a software update, the new Quest 3S virtual reality headset, and Meta's prototype Orion AR glasses. Orion is what Meta calls a time machine": a functioning example of what full-fledged AR could look like, years before it will be consumer-ready.But on Meta's campus, at least, the Ray-Bans were already everywhere. It... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images The US Department of Justice has charged three Iranian nationals linked with a cyberattack against Donald Trump's presidential campaign, according to an indictment on Friday.The three hackers, all of whom have ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, allegedly gained access to the accounts of campaign officials using social engineering and spear phishing, a tactic that attempts to trick victims into disclosing sensitive information. They then used the hijacked accounts to steal nonpublic campaign documents and emails, which they shared with the press.As outlined in the indictment, the US linked the hackers to an Iranian internet service provider, Respina Networks, which allegedly allowed them unrestricted" internet access... Continue reading...

An illustration of DRACO getting destroyed in Earth's atmosphere. | Image: ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch a satellite into Earth's orbit in 2027 to watch it get wrecked as it reenters the atmosphere. The project is intended to help understand how exactly satellites break apart so that scientists can learn how to prevent the creation of more space debris.Space junk is becoming a bigger problem as we send more satellites into orbit, but there are efforts to try and address it. This mission is part of the ESA's Zero Debris Charter initiative to stop the creation of additional space debris by 2030.The mission is called the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object (DRACO), and the insides of the satellite will collect data as the craft gets destroyed during reentry into the atmosphere. It... Continue reading...

Trains are cool but aren't always cheaper to ride. | Image: Amtrak Amtrak fares and trip suggestions are getting integrated into Google Search as part of Google's efforts to offer greener ways of travel over flights. Now, when you search for airline fares on Google or Google Flights between destinations with Amtrak terminals, you'll also get suggestions for train rides that you can click through to Amtrak's site for purchase.Google has been working on offering sustainable transport options for a while now, and it has previously shown train ride suggestions but without the fares and the easy redirection to Amtrak's site to purchase the specific tickets - although it didn't work every time I tried it.Google also calculates how much more carbon emissions are saved when taking a train to your destination.... Continue reading...

The EufyCam S3 Pro security camera has a built-in spotlight but can also display nighttime footage as if it were daytime without the spotlight. | Image: Eufy The newest security camera from Eufy - Anker's smart home company - can see clearly in the dark, uses radar motion sensing for fewer false alerts, and records 24/7 when wired. As with other Eufy cams, the new S3 Pro has free facial recognition, package, vehicle, and pet detection, and locally stored recorded video with no monthly fees.Unlike most other Eufy cameras, the S3 Pro will work with Apple Home and is compatible with Apple's HomeKit Secure Video service.The EufyCam S3 Pro launches this week as a two-camera bundle with one HomeBase S380 for $549.99. The HomeBase 3 enables smart alerts and local storage (16GB onboard storage, expandable up to 16TB). It also connects the S3 Pro to Apple Home, making it the first Eufy camera to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images X is preventing users from posting links to a newsletter containing a hacked document that's alleged to be the Trump campaign's research into vice presidential candidate JD Vance. The journalist who wrote the newsletter, Ken Klippenstein, has been suspended from the platform. Searches for posts containing a link to the newsletter turn up nothing. A search with the result No results for https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier" A screenshot of a search for a link to Ken Klippenstein's newsletter. The document allegedly comes from an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign. Though other news outlets have received information from the hack, they declined to publish. Klippenstein says in his newsletter... Continue reading...

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Nvidia is reportedly planning to ship its upcoming GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card with 32GB of GDDR7 memory. Hardware leaker Kopite7kimi has published rumored specifications for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 today, and both cards will reportedly be more power-hungry as Nvidia looks to debut more capable next-gen GPUs.The RTX 5090 is said to have a 600-watt spec, although as VideoCardz points out it's not clear if this refers to how much the entire GPU board draws, or how much power the chip itself consumes. Either way, it looks like the RTX 5090 will draw 150 watts more than the 450 watts that the RTX 4090 pulls. The RTX 5090 will also reportedly include 32GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, with 21,760 CUDA cores.

Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge The recently launched Google Nest Learning Thermostat has its first notable discount, as Wellbots is offering it in all three color options for $259.99 ($20 off) with checkout code NLT4VERGE. Google took nearly nine years to replace the last model with this sleeker, Pixel Watch-looking design, but you only had to wait about a month and a half to save a few bucks.The new Nest isn't just a prettier face, as it also brings Matter and Apple Home support - making it more flexible if you don't want to solely live in Google's smart home ecosystem. As indicated by its name, the Learning Thermostat familiarizes itself with your habits and preferences for how to heat and cool your home and starts to anticipate your needs to keep you comfy and... Continue reading...

Image: Volvo Earlier this month, Volvo became the latest automaker to announce that it was delaying its plans to sell only electric vehicles. The decision was a reflection of the stark reality of the market: the demand was just not there.We reduced the ambitions we had set to go 100 percent electric by 2030," Vanessa Butani, head of global sustainability at Volvo, said in an interview. We're pushing that back a bit, not committing fully to a year right now, because we see that even though we're fully ready to do it, the market's not really with us."We're pushing that back a bit, not committing fully to a year right now"Several years ago, automakers were tripping over themselves in a rush to declare their intentions to go all in on EVs. Volvo... Continue reading...

Courtesy of Lionsgate The first trailer for director Len Wiseman's awkwardly named From the World of John Wick: Ballerina spinoff film is here, and while it doesn't feature a premiere date, it does have an unhinged spin on Elton John's Tiny Dancer" that honestly kinda works.Set some time between John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum and Chapter 4, Ballerina revolves around Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), an orphan-turned-assassin who is taken in by Continental hotel owner Winston Scott (Ian McShane) after the loss of her family. Rather than keeping Ballerina's connections to the larger John Wick universe rather subtle, the new film brings Eve directly into the orbit of John Wick (Keanu Reeves) as she becomes an increasingly high-profile contract killer.The... Continue reading...

The new 2025 Rav4 Plug-in Hybrid." | Image: Toyota Toyota's Prius had its full glow-up redesign for 2023, and now the automaker is switching up what it's called, too. The 2025 Prius Prime will now go by a more straightforward name: the Prius Plug-in Hybrid. The same goes for the Rav4 Prime, which is now called the Rav4 Plug-in Hybrid.Toyota says the name change is intended to help consumers more easily identify the powertrain choices" among Prius and Rav4 models. The 2025 versions of the Prius Plug-in will also have an updated PHEV" (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) badge on the rear. The Rav4, meanwhile, will no longer have a blue halo in the Toyota logo on both the front and rear.The specs for the new 2025 Prius models seem unchanged otherwise - the plug-in version still has a... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Google took a page out of a familiar playbook in court this week, defending itself from claims of anticompetitive conduct by raising security concerns. While the government argues it locked up the ad tech market to make more money, Google's witnesses say that a more closed ecosystem is often safer for users - echoing a defense both it and Apple have made of their mobile app stores.Google's attorneys have spent the last few days mounting its defense against the Department of Justice. The company argues that conduct the Department of Justice paints as anticompetitive - like locking customers into its services and exerting control over the rules of the industry through its dominance - actually has justifiable business purposes. The point... Continue reading...

Now there are two of them! | Image: Leica Camera Leica's Q series of full-frame compact cameras have had the same 28mm f/1.7 lens since the original in 2015, but now the company is shaking things up. The Leica Q3 43 launching today is nearly identical to the 60-megapixel Q3, but it's got a 43mm f/2 lens for a tighter field of view that's more appropriate for close-ups and portraits - and, of course, it's even more expensive, coming in at $6,895 compared to the $6,295 standard model.The Q3 43 has mostly the same specs since it's basically a Q3 camera with a new aspherical APO-Summicron 43mm f/2 lens permanently attached and a gray leatherette (I imagine so deep-pocketed users who inevitably buy both can tell them apart in a bag). It uses the same backside-illuminated sensor with an... Continue reading...