The Verge

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Here's our coverage from the Summer Games. Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images The Paris 2024 Olympics are nearly here. The opening ceremony starts on July 26th, and this year's events run through August 11th. On the main NBC channel, you can see hours of live morning and afternoon coverage of events like swimming and gymnastics ahead of a three-hour primetime recap, to go along with livestreams of every sport and event and full event replays on Peacock.One key aspect of NBC's Peacock coverage will be an Olympics hub, which spotlights major events happening live, lets you browse by sport and by star athlete," offers an interactive schedule, and includes an up-to-date count of medal standings. Image: NBC Peacock's Olympics hub. NBC is also offering a way to catch up on the events of the... Continue reading...

Photo by Cooper Neill / Getty Images Legendary sportscaster Al Michaels is going to give daily, personalized recaps of the Paris Olympics on Peacock - well, an AI-generated Al Michaels voice will. In practice, the effect is a lot like hearing a sports announcer's voice in a video game like Madden, except it's spitting out lines about real-life sports, which, in this case, means custom Olympics coverage.Here's how it works. To set up what NBC is calling Your Daily Olympic Recap" in the Peacock app, you'll provide your name (the AI voice can welcome the majority" of people by their first name, NBC says in a press release) and pick up to three types of sports that are interesting to you and up to two types of highlights (for example, Top Competition" or Viral & Trending... Continue reading...

Image: Figma Figma is announcing a bunch of new features at its Config conference today, including a major UI redesign, new generative AI tools to help people more easily make projects, and built-in slideshow functionality.Let's start with the redesign, which is intended to lay the foundation for the next decade," according to a blog post. You'll see things like a new toolbar, rounded corners, and 200 new icons. As part of the design refresh, the company wants to focus the canvas less on our UI and more on your work" and make something that's approachable to new users while still being useful to Figma experts. Image: Figma Figma's UI3." Figma says this is the company's third significant redesign" since Figma's closed... Continue reading...

Image: Verizon Verizon has ditched its checkmark logo for a red and yellow V" and, with the change, introduced a new commercial that revisits its Can you hear me now?" tagline. It also announced updated home internet plans, now called myHome," that include a slew of service bundles like Disney Plus and Netflix as well as cloud storage options or a Walmart Plus subscription.In the ad spot, that now" turns into a lot more than just talking, with streaming video, filming TikToks, gaming, and FaceTiming shown to hammer home the point that this connection does a lot more than it did in 2002 when the campaign started. (That Paul Marcarelli, the original Verizon guy, defected to Sprint in 2016 goes unmentioned.)Here's the old logo and the new one in... Continue reading...

Google is addressing issues with its Find My Device network to help it actually find devices. | Image: Google Google launched its upgraded Find My Device network in April, giving Android users the equivalent of Apple's Find My network for locating trackers and offline devices. But some recent reviews have raised concerns over its ability to quickly and reliably find devices and trackers. Google says that it's aware of the issue and plans to address it in the coming weeks."In a statement provided to Mishaal Rahman, a senior contributor to sites like Android Authority and Android Police, which they shared on X, Google acknowledged the concerns over its Find My Device network. We are actively working to roll out enhancements to how the Find My Device network operates that will improve the speed and ability of locating lost items over the coming... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Microsoft and Qualcomm have convinced software developers to lean into their latest Arm push. Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos via Getty Images On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Murthy v. Missouri, a case spurred by conservative state attorneys general about whether the Biden administration illegally coerced social media companies to remove speech it didn't like. In a 6-3 decision, the court reversed the decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had found unconstitutional coercion in the government's conduct. The Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs did not adequately establish standing - that is, their right to sue in the first place - and has sent the case back to the lower courts, where a new decision will be issued that is consistent with the SCOTUS opinion.At its core, the case is about whether the Biden administration crossed the line... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images Udio and Suno are not, despite their names, the hottest new restaurants on the Lower East Side. They're AI startups that let people generate impressively real-sounding songs - complete with instrumentation and vocal performances - from prompts. And on Monday, a group of major record labels sued them, alleging copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale," claiming that the companies can only do this because they illegally ingested huge amounts of copyrighted music to train their AI models.These two lawsuits contribute to a mounting pile of legal headaches for the AI industry. Some of the most successful firms in the space have trained their models with data acquired via the unsanctioned scraping of massive amounts of... Continue reading...

Verne's robotaxi. | Image: Verne A new robotaxi service is coming to Croatia, courtesy of the country's leading supercar company, Rimac. The service will be called Verne, named for French novelist and poet Jules Verne, and will launch in Zagreb in 2026, the company said.It's an interesting pivot for a company that has been on a rocket-ship trajectory over the last few years. Founded by Mate Rimac in a garage as a one-man operation, Rimac has since become a highly desirable brand, with many legacy automakers calling upon the startup to help them build their own electric supercars. In addition to making the record-breaking Nevera hypercar, Rimac also took control of Bugatti from Volkswagen in 2021 in a surprise move that created a new company called Bugatti Rimac. ... Continue reading...

Image: Ultimate Ears How many Boom-branded speakers is too many? Can there even be such a thing? Ultimate Ears seems to be on a mission to find out. The company just announced the $249.99 Everboom - now the sixth speaker in its lineup. In both size and price, this one slots in between the Megaboom speaker and the $299.99 Epicboom released late last year.The Everboom has UE's typical traits: it's IP67 (dustproof and waterproof), it'll float should you drop it into a pool or lake, and it comes with a removable carabiner. There's an outdoor boost mode that adjusts the sound profile for wide open environments while also leveling up the bass response. The battery lasts for up to 20 hours and there's easy NFC pairing, but that's about it for the feature list.A... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The advanced voice mode for ChatGPT that sparked a tussle with Scarlett Johansson was an important element of OpenAI's Spring Update event, where it also revealed a desktop app for ChatGPT.Now, OpenAI says it will need one more month to reach our bar to launch" an alpha version of the new voice mode to a small group of ChatGPT Plus subscribers, with plans to allow access for all Plus customers in the fall. One specific area that OpenAI says it's improving is the ability to detect and refuse certain content."As for the new video and screen sharing capabilities that we saw during the event, OpenAI writes that it will keep you posted" on a timeline. OpenAI had said it would deliver the new capabilities in the coming weeks." Now, the... Continue reading...

Volkswagen is investing $1 billion in Rivian as part of a new joint venture that will give the German auto giant access to the buzzy California EV company's software and EV platform. Rivian will receive an additional $4 billion over time, for a total sum of $5 billion.The joint venture will be co-owned by Rivian and VW Group, which oversees brands like Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, and its flagship Volkswagen. The two companies will introduce vehicles developed from the joint venture in the second half of the decade," they announced.The new venture was announced in a post from Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, who noted the investment will help the company bring its next generation R2 electric vehicle to market starting in 2026. The R2 is... Continue reading...

Photo by Michael Tullberg / Getty Images Years after Twitch's ban, the streamer confirms it was due to messages he sent to a minor on the platform. Continue reading...

An Android phone minus the phone plus two giant cameras. | Image: Adi Robertson / The Verge Xreal is one of the few companies trying to sell mass-market augmented reality headsets without an existing big tech empire. But its latest product isn't a pair of glasses; it's a phone-sized Android tablet designed to keep you using them. At last week's Augmented World Expo (AWE) the company announced the Beam Pro, a combination battery, app repository, and 3D video recorder. It's a pragmatic solution to a very obvious problem - even if, at first glance, I wish it were weirder.Xreal's glasses - the Air 2 and Air 2 Ultra - have generally required some kind of third-party device like a phone, laptop, or Steam Deck. (There was a bare-bones control box called the Beam, but it wasn't a big focus for the company.) The Beam Pro is meant to... Continue reading...

Photo by Matt Thomas / San Diego Padres / Getty Images Guy Beahm, better known by his streamer persona Dr Disrespect, said he was banned from Twitch four years ago due to private messages he sent to a minor that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate."Beahm shared details of the ban in a lengthy post to X, marking the first time he's directly addressed the reason for his removal.Everyone has been wanting to know why I was banned from Twitch, but for reasons outside of my control, I was not allowed to say anything for the last several years," Beahm posted on X. Now that two former twitch employees have publicly disclosed the accusations, I can now tell you my side of the story regarding the ban."I should have never entertained these conversations to begin... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The latest feature headed to the Google graveyard is continuous scrolling on search results, according to a report from Search Engine Land. The user experience, which mirrored the endless scrolling behavior of social media feeds, was originally introduced for search results on mobile devices in October of 2021 and then brought over to desktop search results in late 2022.A Google spokesperson reportedly told Search Engine Land that continuous scroll is being removed today from desktop search results, while the feature will be removed from mobile results in the coming months."In its place on desktop will be Google's classic pagination bar, allowing users to jump to a specific page of search results or simply click Next" to see the next... Continue reading...

A huge panel becomes an AR projector powered by data from eye tracking sensors in this prototype. | Image: Adi Robertson / The Verge Car infotainment systems are getting ever bigger, but a startup's new prototype takes things further than even something like Ford's pillar-to-pillar touchscreen - by turning your windshield into a full-color 3D heads-up display.Distance Technologies, established by the co-founders of enterprise headset maker Varjo, showed off its design last week at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. The company's goal is to push heads-up displays beyond flat and simple overlays. Its early efforts are impressive but also illuminate how tough (and risky) putting it into a real car could be.The Distance Technologies prototype uses an LCD panel pointed up at a windshield with a reflective coating, projecting a transparent image onto it. It's... Continue reading...

The return capsule of the Chang'e 6 probe lands at the designated landing area on June 25th, 2024, in Inner Mongolia. | Photo by VCG / VCG via Getty Images The first soil samples ever taken from the far side of the Moon arrived on Earth today. China's Chang'e 6 spacecraft landed with the precious cargo in Inner Mongolia today at 2:07PM Beijing time, according to state media.The feat is expected to help scientists better understand the unfamiliar terrain of the Moon's far side and perhaps shed some light on the early history of the Moon and Earth. It's also a significant milestone in the escalating global space race to establish a presence on the Moon.A significant milestone in the escalating global space racePresident Xi Jinping congratulated the China National Space Administration, calling it a landmark achievement in our country's efforts at becoming a space and technological... Continue reading...

Photo: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you're waiting to see the Pixel 9, Pixel Watch 3, or other new Google hardware, then August 13th could be a big day for you because look what just hit our inboxes:

Image: Elgato The Elgato Stream Deck XL is once again selling for $199.99 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo. The jumbo-sized macro pad has 32 customizable LCD keys for controlling various functions on a Windows PC or Mac. It's a staple among enthusiast and high-level Twitch streamers, but its customizability makes it incredibly handy for all sorts of desktop and laptop users.Want a button for quickly muting yourself on a Zoom call or to promptly summon Spotify? No problem. How about a series of buttons for controlling audio functions or emotes in your favorite game? With 32 keys, you have enough for a whole bunch of helpful tools at your disposal, or you can fill some with silly and superfluous things like popping fake bubble wrap. (We're... Continue reading...

Blokus, Tumblin' Monkeys, and Uno are just three of the games Mattel is making colorblind accessible. | Image: Mattel In an effort to make its games accessible to a wider audience and create more inclusive play experiences," Mattel has announced that 80 percent of its gaming portfolio - including iconic titles like Uno - will be made accessible for those with a color vision deficiency by the end of the year, with a push to 90 percent by the end of 2025, as spotted by Polygon.For Uno and its many variants, the four colors used in the game will be distinguished by simple symbols added to each card: a circle for red, a square for blue, a triangle for green, and a star for yellow. For Blokus, a game that has players arranging Tetris-like shapes on a game board, each color will be distinguished by a unique three-dimensional pattern added to the plastic... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Threads will now let people like and see replies to their Threads posts that appear on other federated social media platforms, the company announced on Tuesday.Previously, if you made a post on Threads that was syndicated to another platform - like Mastodon, for example - you wouldn't be able to see responses to that post while still inside Threads. That meant you'd have to bounce back and forth between the platforms to stay up-to-date on replies. Thanks to this upgrade, you'll probably do less of that, though you'll still have to be on the other platform to actually reply to the replies.In a screenshot, Meta notes that you can't reply to replies yet," so it sounds like that feature will arrive in the future. Image:... Continue reading...

Image: Nomad Your outfit has been missing a little blurple, and The Verge is here to fix that. Continue reading...

Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge Since its launch in 2005, Etsy has become well-known as the place to go for handcrafted, one-of-a-kind items from a wide variety of creators. Unfortunately, over the last few years, that rosy reputation has changed a bit. A couple of years ago, buyers began noticing an influx of mass-market goods that were noticeably not handmade. I talked to more than one person who felt that Etsy had become less about selling handmade crafts and more about drop shipping - enterprises that advertise and sell a product and then pass the order on to a third party, which ships it.There was discontent online from sellers as well, due to both the increased number of manufactured goods and increased expenses such as mandatory market plans. Then, in April... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The archives of the MTV News website, which had remained accessible online after the unit was shut down last year by parent company Paramount Global, have now been completely taken offline. As Variety reported yesterday, both mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news now redirect visitors to the MTV website's front page.In May of last year, Showtime / MTV Entertainment Studios president and Paramount Media Networks groups CEO Chris McCarthy announced layoffs for 25 percent of its employees and said that MTV News, whose staff had already been reduced by previous layoffs, would be shutting down entirely.Although the MTV News website was no longer publishing new stories, its extensive archive, dating back over two decades to its launch in 1996,... Continue reading...

Photo by Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images The wait(list) is over.Waymo is opening up its robotaxi service to anyone who wants to ride in San Francisco. Previously, customers interested in taking a ride in one of the company's driverless cars needed to sign up for a waitlist, which could take weeks or months to open up.Waymo began its commercial test service in the city in August 2021 with a rollout to trusted testers" - preapproved riders, some of whom were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. In March 2022, Waymo began offering driverless rides for its staff. Since then its been giving rides to regular people who sign up for its waitlist, which the company says approximately 300,000 people have done since it first launched.Now, Waymo's driverless ridehail service will... Continue reading...

Image: Beats After several months of leaks and public sightings, the Beats Pill speaker has returned. Available to order beginning today for $149.99, this portable Bluetooth speaker looks very similar to past versions, but it now offers IP67 dust and water resistance and USB-C wired audio and supports native software features like Find My / Find My Device across both iOS and Android.The new Pill - available in black, red, or gold - will be in stores as of June 27th. Like many speakers in its price category, it's a mono speaker, though Beats claims the redesigned tweeter and woofer combo is sonically superior to the very old Beats Pill Plus. Other specs include battery life up to 24 hours," speakerphone functionality, and the ability to pair two... Continue reading...

More than just a lazy remaster, the new Pill includes unexpected features like lossless audio over USB-C. And like recent Beats products, it equally appeals to the iOS and Android crowds. Continue reading...

Imagine the exact middle between an iPhone and a Kindle. That's the Palma. | Image: Boox There are really only three things you need to know about the Boox Palma. One: it's about the size of a smartphone. Two: it runs Android, with the Play Store. Three: it has an E Ink screen. There are other specs and features I'll get to, but that combination - smartphone, Android, E Ink - is the Palma's whole reason for existence.In a couple of months of using the Palma, a $280 device that has been on sale since last fall, that combination has turned out to be exactly what I needed. Because it's smartphone-sized, with a 6.1-inch screen and an overall footprint just a smidge larger than the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, I can hold it in one hand and fit in my pocket. Because it runs Android, I can download any app I need. And because it's E... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge This year's Surface Pro and Surface Laptop really only needed to do one thing in order to be a success: work. After more than a decade of overpromising and underdelivering on all things Windows on Arm, Microsoft needed these new Qualcomm-powered devices to at least prove they could compete with the Intel- and AMD-powered chips on the market.So far, it looks like good news. On this episode of The Vergecast, we catch up with The Verge's Tom Warren and Nathan Edwards while they're mid-review on the new devices. We talk about processor performance, emulation issues, battery life, AI features, and much more. The overall takeaway? These new devices may not have changed the PC game just yet, but they can hang. And that's a start.Before we... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Patreon is gearing up to allow gifting on its subscription platform, alongside a host of new features to help content creators build their communities. Artists, writers, podcasters, and other content creators will also soon be able to sell individual posts and even set a countdown clock for the release of new work.Gifting is one of the all-time most requested tools for creators on Patreon - and now it's in the works," says the Patreon team in a blog post. We're testing the ability to gift membership to fans for a set amount of time." The gifting feature will be available in a new promotions tab on the subscription-focused creator platform and will be part of other new tools for discounted products and automated offers.Creators will... Continue reading...

The Cybertruck is suffering from real-world issues. | The Verge / Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images Tesla is again issuing a physical recall of its Cybertruck. This time it's recalling 11,688 of its electric pickups due to a faulty windshield wiper that could reduce visibility for the driver, and 11,383 Cybertrucks due to trim in the truck bed that could come loose and create a road hazard for others.These new recalls follow a recall in April affecting 3,878 Cybertrucks over the risk of a jammed accelerator pedal.Issues with the gigantic wiper had surfaced in owner forums in recent weeks and reportedly delayed Cybertruck deliveries on short notice. The NHTSA recall notice for the wiper says that excessive electrical current can cause the front windshield wiper motor controller to fail." Tesla service will replace the wiper motor,... Continue reading...

Photo: Aurora Uber's freight hauling business will use Aurora's driverless trucks on routes between Dallas and Houston as part of a new long-term" deal that builds on a three-year-old commercial pilot.Uber Freight will be one of Aurora's first customers on the Texas route launching later this year. Launched in 2017, Uber Freight connects truck drivers with shippers, much in the same way the company's ridehailing app pairs drivers with those looking for a ride.Aurora, which was founded by former executives from Google, Uber, and Tesla, has said it plans to deploy 20 fully autonomous trucks this year. When it does, those trucks will be hauling goods for Uber Freight customers.Uber Freight will be one of Aurora's first customersThe two companies... Continue reading...