The Verge

Image: The Washington Post The Washington Post is sticking a new climate-focused AI chatbot inside its homepage, app, and articles. The experimental tool, called Climate Answers, will use the outlet's breadth of reporting to answer questions about climate change, the environment, sustainable energy, and more.Some of the questions you can ask the chatbot include things like, Should I get solar panels for my home?" or Where in the US are sea levels rising the fastest?" Much like the other AI chatbots we've seen, it will then serve up a summary using the information it's been trained on. In this case, Climate Answers uses the articles within The Washington Post's climate section - as far back as the section's launch in 2016 - to answer questions. ... Continue reading...

Image: Sling TV Sling TV will now put ads on your screen when you pause live or on-demand content, according to an announcement from its parent company, Dish. But you won't have to deal with this extra dose of ads if you don't want to - the pause ad example shared by Sling TV says you can turn off Pause Ads" from the settings menu.That comes as a relief in an industry where it's getting harder and harder to escape intrusive pause ads. Want to stop a show to get a closer look at something on your screen? Or maybe you want to admire a close-up of your favorite actor for a little bit? Well, pause ads make that nearly impossible, as they often take up all or part of your screen. GIF: Sling TV The pause ads could contain a video or... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images Netflix is continuing its push into live events, this time with a comedy special from Joe Rogan. Called Burn the Boats," the event will stream live from San Antonio, Texas, on August 3rd at 10PM ET. Netflix says this will be Rogan's first comedy special in six years, and it will be the podcaster and former Fear Factor host's third with the streamer; he previously released two taped events in 2016 and 2018.The announcement is notable in particular as Netflix continues to make live events a major part of its service. Previously, that has included comedy specials from Chris Rock and John Mulaney, and last year, the company became a player in live sports. So far, it has signed broadcast deals with the NFL and WWE and will also livestream b... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images AI leaders are increasingly optimistic about the technology's potential in the health sector, especially when it comes to personalized bots that can comprehend and address individual health concerns.OpenAI and Arianna Huffington are now jointly funding the development of an AI health coach" through Thrive AI Health. In a Time magazine op-ed, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Huffington stated that the bot will be trained on the best peer-reviewed science" alongside the personal biometric, lab, and other medical data you've chosen to share with it."The company tapped DeCarlos Love, a former Google executive who previously worked on Fitbit and other wearables, to be CEO. Thrive AI Health also established research partnerships with several... Continue reading...

Aidan Monaghan After 24 years, Ridley Scott is back with a follow-up to Gladiator, and the sequel's new trailer promises bread, circuses, and buckets of blood.Set decades after the events of the first film, Gladiator II will tell a new legend about how a now-grown Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal) becomes an enslaved gladiator, despite his being the Roman empire's former heir. Though Lucius can vividly recall some moments from his childhood, his memories of his mother Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) seem to have faded by the time he's crossed paths with power broker Macrinus (Denzel Washington).As a man who deals in weapons and warriors, Macrinus can see great potential in Lucius as he watches him take on a rhino in the Coliseum. But as skilled as Lucius is at... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the board of The Vergecast Inc. The one and only item on the agenda for today? Build the greatest tech company in the history of the universe. We will borrow, steal, and buy the best products and businesses from tech companies around the world in order to offer the best possible line of products. Money is no object, though we'd like to make some at some point. Let's begin.On this episode of The Vergecast, our cohosts - Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce - ditch their mics and headphones for suits and ties and spend an hour starting a tech company. (Shout out to The Big Picture for some inspiration on the format.) The rules are simple enough: we get to take one product in each category we're... Continue reading...

The bigger, better cover screen is a delight to use - but familiar problems persist. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Etsy has long sold items that fall into one of two categories: handmade or vintage. Now, that fairly narrow categorization is changing.A policy update announced today creates four new classifications for items for sale on Etsy: made by," designed by," handpicked by," and sourced by." All products need to fall into one of the four to be eligible for the platform.Vintage items - a backbone of Etsy's offerings - will fall under handpicked by." Craft supplies like beads or clay are considered sourced by." A vase handmade by a ceramics artist would be in the made by" category, whereas a digital illustration would be considered designed by" the seller. These categories will be visible on Etsy product listings.The company says that... Continue reading...

Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge Leave the computer, take the hard drive. Continue reading...

Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge If you have a large collection of hardcover and paperback books, it can be hard to get rid of them - but not impossible. Continue reading...

The Logitech G309. | Image: Logitech I haven't thought about charging my Logitech wireless gaming mouse in two and a half years because I have a magic mousepad that does it automatically. But Logitech mice that work with the Powerplay mousepad are expensive, heavy, or both, and none of them double as a Bluetooth mouse so I can wirelessly pair them to my laptop, handheld, or phone.Today, Logitech is changing that with the Logitech G309, an $80 mouse that almost does it all. It's the first Powerplay mouse this inexpensive, the first with Bluetooth, the first that lets you use an AA battery when you're on the go - and the first Logitech wireless mouse with a supercapacitor inside so you don't necessarily need a battery at all.Even without Powerplay, the G309 is a dual-mode... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hulu was having an outage, with as many as 50,000 reports noted on Down Detector late on Monday night. There's no indication of what has caused the outage, but the official Hulu Support account on X acknowledged the issue, following up with posts from customers after about 11:15PM ET, saying, Our developers were able to put changes in place to mitigate the interruption. Please reboot your device to start streaming, and let us know if you run into any further trouble."Not everyone was having trouble accessing Hulu, but for the people who were, posts on social media said they either couldn't log in or that they didn't see any content listed on Hulu's website or apps for streaming. It didn't seem to exclusively affect people who have or... Continue reading...

Photo: David Pierce / The Verge Meta is now offering an interest-free $24.99 monthly payment plan to get its Quest 3 VR headset, along with two years' worth of a Meta Quest Plus gaming subscription and its extended warranty. That starting price is for the 128GB model, but 10 bucks more per month will get you the 512GB version. Whichever way you go, you could pay almost $200 less than you otherwise would by buying everything individually.The loans are supplied by Affirm, one of the more well-known buy now, pay later services that have cropped up in recent years. This Play Now, Pay Later" package could help Meta get headsets into the hands of people unwilling to pay the entire price upfront, but it's also a promotion for the Quest Plus service that adds two games to... Continue reading...

Imagine this wallpaper, but then it shifts colors. | Image: Apple iOS 18's third developer beta includes a dynamic" version of the default iOS 18 wallpaper that shifts colors, as reported by 9to5Mac. Previous betas had four color options (and dark mode counterparts) for the wallpaper, but this new dynamic option changes between colors over time.Check out this video from leaker ShrimpApplePro to see the wallpaper and some of the color shifts. I think it looks pretty good!

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The best deal in laptops is back again for a limited time, as Walmart is selling the M1 MacBook Air for just $649 ($250 off). Walmart currently requires a Walmart Plus subscription to get the discounted price, but everyone else can get in and buy it from the retailer's site at 5PM ET / 2PM PT today.We haven't seen the price drop this low since March, shortly after the newer M3 Air debuted. Since then, Walmart has become pretty much the exclusive seller of the M1 MacBook Air, usually offering the 13-inch laptop from 2020 for around $700. Even being nearly four years old and only offered in its base configuration with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, the aging MacBook remains a very good machine for everyday productivity and some very... Continue reading...

The QuietComfort Earbuds II are no longer the best from Bose, but they're still some of the best buds money can buy. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge I'm reeling from a weekend of guess that pop." Was it the endless stream of fireworks this time? Or gun-toting Texans spending their ammunition celebratorily in defiance of rules prohibiting such behavior? Thankfully, the guessing game didn't last long - I decided to give my noise-canceling earbuds of choice a pretty serious workout. If you need an excellent pair to do the same during public or private disturbances, you should check out the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II, which are on sale at Amazon and B&H Photo in black for a record-low price of $169.95 ($110 off).Although Bose now has a more substantial pair sitting on our list of the best wireless earbuds in the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, the QuietComfort Earbuds II are still... Continue reading...

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge A running list of all the longreads, shortreads, books, and everything in between that we're into - and think you might like, too. Continue reading...

Tesla's apparent Juniper" Model Y refresh in the wild. | Image: Reddit user JacklJack An apparent Juniper" Tesla Model Y was spotted under the veil in California, reigniting reports that the automaker is prepping a redesign of its popular electric SUV.A new image was posted on Reddit showing a black Model Y with its front and rear bumpers covered up and, as Not a Tesla App reports, a front-mounted camera that should help with parking assistance since Tesla had removed ultrasonic sensors years ago.The Model Y's sedan counterpart, Model 3, received the refresh treatment in the US at the beginning of this year, following a European debut in September. Tesla reworked the front and rear bumpers on the Model 3, gave it squinty headlights, added tines to the taillights, and switched to a spelled-out text logo.As for the... Continue reading...

Image: Tokyo Game Show Workers in the country enjoy greater protection thanks to employment laws, but that doesn't mean Japan is anything close to a proletariat utopia. Continue reading...

Image: FIA World Rallycross Championship After two seasons of all-electric racing, the World Rallycross Championship (or World RX) held its first mixed powertrain races between electric and internal combustion engine (ICE) cars this weekend in Holjes, Sweden. Unlike traditional point-to-point rally racing, rallycross puts those cars on a circuit, but with similar racing over dirt and gravel surfaces, as well as plenty of jumping and drifting through turns.There were six EVs and four ICE cars in this weekend's races, and by the end of the first weekend, EV racers took up three of the top five spots in the provisional championship standings. However, Johan Kristoffersson, who won the last two series titles in electric cars, put his internal combustion-powered Volkswagen Polo KMS... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Canva To her, AI is just an extension of what Canva has always done: make accessible design tools that cost less than Adobe's. Continue reading...

Image: CMF Nothing's affordability-focused subbrand, CMF, launched more than just a $199 smartphone today. It also debuted a new pair of $59 wireless earbuds and a $69 smartwatch that incorporate the unique flair that Nothing has become known for.The Buds Pro 2 are CMF's follow-up to the earbuds it released last year. Unlike CMF's first iteration of the Buds Pro (which are $10 cheaper), the Buds Pro 2 have a charging case with a smart" dial that you can twist to adjust the volume or manage playback, similar to the one on the CMF Neckband Pro. The dial is fully customizable, allowing you to press it to control noise cancellation, activate a voice assistant, or mute your microphone during a video call.Aside from that nifty switch, the Buds Pro 2... Continue reading...

Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft is finally rolling out spellcheck and autocorrect for its Notepad app in Windows 11, more than 40 years after the simple text editor was first introduced in Windows in 1983. The software giant started testing both features in March, and has now quietly started enabling them for all Windows 11 users in recent days.The spellcheck feature in Notepad is almost identical to how Word or Edge highlight misspelled words, with a red underline to clearly show mistakes. I say almost identical because when you right-click on a misspelled word in Notepad the spelling submenu isn't automatically expanded like Microsoft does in Word, so you have to click again to see a list of correct spellings.It's strange that Microsoft hasn't fully... Continue reading...

Skydance founder David Ellison is set to become Paramount's new chairman and chief executive. | Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Paramount Global has agreed to merge with Skydance Media in a deal that will see the joint enterprise, temporarily dubbed New Paramount," valued at approximately $28 billion.As part of the two-step agreement announced on Sunday, Paramount Chair Shari Redstone (the daughter of Sumner Redstone) will sell National Amusements - which holds her family's controlling stake in Paramount - for $2.4 billion. Skydance will then merge with Paramount, investing $8 billion to purchase Paramount's shares and pay off some of the company's balance sheet. Bloomberg reports that Paramount has $14.6 billion of debt as of March, partially attributed to streaming losses and a decline in the company's broadcast and cable TV business.Given the changes in... Continue reading...

You can now control the ROG lighting in Windows. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Asus is planning to support Microsoft's new Dynamic Lighting feature that allows Windows 11 users to control a motherboard's RGB lighting without needing a separate app. Asus has started testing new beta BIOS updates for both of its AMD 600 and Intel 700 series motherboards that include the Dynamic Lighting support.Microsoft added Dynamic Lighting to Windows 11 in September, providing native RGB lighting controls inside Windows for the very first time. The feature lets users control RGB lights using the open HID LampArray standard, and manufacturers like Acer, Asus, HP, HyperX, Logitech, Razer, and Twinkly have all partnered with Microsoft to support this.The Dynamic Lighting support on Asus' latest motherboards requires a BIOS update... Continue reading...

Boeing's plea deal must receive the approval of a federal judge to take effect. | Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge related to a pair of crashes of its 737 Max planes, as part of a plea deal with the US Department of Justice. Lawyers for the victims' families plan to object to the deal, which was forged on Sunday just before a midnight deadline and must still be approved by a federal judge.The two crashes, which happened in 2018 and 2019, killed more than 300 people. The planes malfunctioned because of software that was intended to correct for a design flaw - and that software, called MCAS, relied on just a single external sensor for its data. However, when Boeing launched the 737 Max, it didn't tell the Federal Aviation Administration, airlines, or pilots about MCAS in order to skirt... Continue reading...

Honestly, this is Nothing's best idea yet. I've never had so much fun taking a phone apart.That's a misleading statement; I haven't really taken any phones apart lately, but when CMF's Phone 1 arrived, that's the first thing I did. Because this one, my friends, is built different. It won't be widely available in the US, but if you're game, you can get one through Nothing's beta program - and for $199, that's seriously tempting.CMF, Nothing's budget-conscious but still extremely style-driven subbrand, is shipping its first phone, the aptly named Phone 1. While it shares a name and an operating system with Nothing's first own-brand phone, it comes to the table with a new modular approach to phone customizations. Why put a different case on your phone when you can put a whole new... Continue reading...

Is now the right time to say ka-chow," or should I wait? | Image: NASCAR NASCAR showed off a new EV prototype stock car at the Chicago Street Race today as part of a presentation on its sustainability initiatives, which it has a new partner for in Swedish electrification firm ABB. The car, which looks more like a performance crossover like the Ford Mustang Mach-E, is in many ways a total departure from the traditional stock car. Don't expect the ABB NASCAR EV Prototype to replace the fuel-burning V8 anytime soon, though.NASCAR says the car has three electric motors - one in the front and two in the back - powered by a 78-kWh liquid-cooled battery that can generate 1,000kW at peak power," according to today's announcement. Image: NASCAR NASCAR writes that the EV sits on a modified... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The Epic Games Store app for EU iPhones has passed Apple's notarization process, putting the alternative app store a step closer to selling apps directly to iOS users outside of the App Store. AppleInsider reports that while Apple confirmed the app had passed, it has asked Epic to fix the buttons" in a future submission to the company's app review process.But the approval is just temporary," posted Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who puts Apple's request differently. He says the company is demanding we change the buttons in the next version," vowing that the company will fight this." The apparently conditional approval is just the latest part of the back-and-forth saga between Apple and Epic. Previously, Apple reinstated Epic Games Sweden's... Continue reading...

Photo: Andrej Sokolow / Picture Alliance via Getty Images On June 19th, a Phoenix police officer pulled over an autonomous Waymo vehicle that had been driving in an oncoming traffic lane. The car was apparently confused by some construction signs and reportedly ran a red light before pulling over in a parking lot to let the officer talk to one of Waymo's support representatives.In about two-and-a-half minutes of bodycam footage published by AZCentral, the officer told Waymo the car was driving in a construction zone when it went into opposing lanes of traffic, which is real bad." He then told a curious bystander what had happened, adding, so I light it up and it takes off in the intersection." A dispatch record reportedly said the car drove through a red light and FREAKED OUT' before it... Continue reading...

GE Profile's newest nugget ice maker is an expensive upgrade to your summer drinks, but, for some, it may be worth it. Some smart home gadgets could be considered essential. A smart thermostat can save you money, and a smart door lock can prevent you from getting locked out. But, unlike those gadgets, it's hard to argue you need the smart GE Profile Opal Ultra 2.0 Nugget Ice Maker ($579, or $629 with the side tank). However, you may want this gadget - because it makes The Good Ice.Nugget ice is a hill many will die on - my family includedYes, $630 is a lot of money for any countertop gadget, let alone one that just freezes water. Spending this much on a connected gadget whose smarts are largely limited to scheduling and asking Alexa to make more ice feels like an even bigger stretch. But nugget ice is a hill many will die on - my family included. It... Continue reading...

E-bikes open up cycling sports to more people, and not just the cheaters. Continue reading...

I can hear the eerie, garbled radio chatter of the Combine soldiers just by looking at this. | Image: Valve The Steam Summer Sale is raging on, offering significant discounts on the Steam Deck and hundreds of PC games. While we rounded up a bunch of our top Summer Sale picks last week, one title that should definitely not fly under your radar is Valve's own Half-Life: Alyx - which is selling for its all-time low price of $20.39 (nearly $40 off) until the sale ends on July 11th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET.Now, Alyx is quite a unique game and experience. For starters, when it came out in 2020, it was the first time Valve returned to the world of Half-Life (the 26-year-old series that put it on the map) since 2007. It's a prequel to Half-Life 2, starring supporting-character-turned-protagonist Alyx Vance. And, notably, you take control of her through... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge YouTube has launched an improved eraser tool that lets creators remove copyrighted music from their videos while keeping other audio intact. The revamped tool, which was released this week, was first reported by TechCrunch.The Erase Song feature lets creators silence copyrighted music in their content, the company announced in a video. The tool had previously been in place as a beta feature, but it wasn't always accurate.The updated Erase Song feature uses an AI-powered algorithm" to help it more precisely identify and remove copyrighted songs without affecting other audio in a particular clip. That's the goal, at least.But even the new and improved version might not always produce perfect results. So in cases where the tool fails... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge From the Boox Palma to the Light Phone 2, it seems that everyone is looking for distraction-free reading, if only they had the right device. I don't blame them: every time I pull out my phone to mindlessly scroll, I know my time could be put to better use. But as the owner of many fine gadgets, I also don't really want another device in my life, so I was pretty excited to stumble upon a partial solution with a gadget I already have: the Playdate.Yes, I'm talking about that little yellow Game Boy from Panic and Teenage Engineering, the one with a crank jutting out of its side. Since the launch of its on-device store, Catalog, the handheld has become home to quite a range of experiences. I've been playing tiny city builders and dungeon... Continue reading...