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Using WowMouse to control a computer mouse. | Image: Doublepoint A company called Doublepoint announced a new app during CES this week called WowMouse that turns Android smartwatches like the Samsung Galaxy Watch into a gesture-based mouse for your computer. That means waving your arm around to move the mouse and pinching your fingers to click (similar to the Double Tap feature on the Apple Watch Series 9). The app is available now on the Google Play store.WowMouse works by broadcasting the watch as a Bluetooth Human Interface Devices (HID) mouse, allowing it to work with a variety of operating systems, by just pairing it like you would any other Bluetooth mouse. According to Doublepoint's site, that includes Windows, Linux, macOS, and iPadOS. It's confirmed that it works on certain Wear OS watches,... Continue reading...

The Quest 2 offers lower specs than Meta's latest headset, true, but it also costs half the price. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In case you haven't heard, the Meta Quest 2's $249 holiday pricing is sticking around for good. That's a natural progression for the second-gen VR headset, which launched in 2020 and was recently outclassed by the newer Meta Quest 3. What's more, if you pick up a 128GB Quest 2 at Walmart right now, you'll receive a $50 Meta Store credit to help you build up your game library, essentially making it a $200 purchase.At launch, the Quest 2 was an excellent little device thanks to its standalone nature. As far as mainstream VR headsets go, it remains one of the easiest and most affordable devices to pick up and play, especially since you don't have to worry about external depth sensors and wires. You won't be able to engage in unique... Continue reading...

From AI-powered robots to face-scanning smart locks, the gadgets that will power the homes of the future are here and were on display at CES 2024, the annual consumer tech show in Las Vegas. This is where tech companies show off their latest innovations in cars, TVs, laptops, smart home gear, and more. The Verge went to Vegas to take a closer look at all the new tech poised to bring our homes into the future.After seeing hundreds of gadgets over three days, smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy rounded up the tech that caught her eye. In the video above, she goes through them room by room, showing how this smart home technology can make life more convenient, comfortable, and energy-efficient. Here are a few of the products she... Continue reading...

Mochi Mayhem and the Indigo Disk are lightyears away from perfection, but they offered a satisfying conclusion to the parts of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet that worked best. Continue reading...

Image: Samsung This year at CES was the year AI took over. From large language model-powered voice assistants in cars to the Rabbit R1, the technology you heard about everywhere was AI. It was a little too much.It may be the year of AI at CES, but many of these AI" features have been around for a while - it's just that companies are only now embracing the branding of artificial intelligence. AI has entered the public consciousness: it's cool and hip to place it front and center in a product, a sign that companies are ambitious and forward thinking. That's led the term to be adopted wherever possible, even when it's not strictly the AI most people know.But as more companies rebrand anything involving algorithms as AI, how are we meant to separate... Continue reading...

Companies have been cutting costs. | Photo by Natt Garun / The Verge Companies across the tech industry have been laying off staff and reducing hiring after explosive growth during the pandemic. Continue reading...

The A9 Plus comes in a 5G version that's well under $300. | Image: Samsung Samsung has quietly put its budget Galaxy Tab A9 Plus on sale following its launch in October last year. It starts at $219 for a Wi-Fi-only version, but unlike most other Android tablets around that price, you can pick up a version with 5G. The A9 Plus with a cellular connection costs $269, and you can take your pick from T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and US Cellular versions on Samsung.com. 9to5Google first spotted that the tablet had gone on sale.The A9 Plus offers an 11-inch screen with a smooth 90Hz refresh rate - a rare feature at this price and definitely something you won't find on an entry-level iPad. It has a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and comes with a 7,040mAh battery. The Wi-Fi version comes with... Continue reading...

The Artifact news app. | Image: Artifact Artifact, the news app created by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, is shutting down just a year after launch. The app used an AI-driven approach to suggest news that users might like to read, but it seems it didn't catch on with enough people for the Artifact team to continue making the app.We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn't big enough to warrant continued investment in this way," CEO Kevin Systrom says in a blog post. The app is beginning to wind down today. Users can no longer add new comments or posts, and Artifact will still let you read news through the end of February."Since launching at the end of January 2023, Artifact has added... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google just announced a change for users in Europe that will let them decide exactly how much data-sharing they're comfortable with. The new policy, which the company said was in response to the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), allows users to opt out of data sharing across all, some, or none of a select number of Google's services. The services listed include YouTube, Search, ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping, and Google Maps. But the policy isn't watertight - Google will still share user data when it's necessary to complete a task (e.g., if you're paying for a purchase on Google Shopping with Google Pay) in order to comply with the law, stop fraud, or protect against abuse.That's not the biggest change that Google will... Continue reading...

The Consumer Electronics Show brings thousands of visitors to Las Vegas every year to witness the latest innovations in tech - some practical and some jaw-dropping.Our staff was on the ground, surrounded by thousands of smart rings, vacuums, concept cars, and everything in between. However, there were just a few standouts. The Verge highlighted our favorites from the show floor in the video above. Here are a couple sneak peeks of our top picks:Best wearable: Movano's Evie RingOne of the standouts in the smart ring market was the Evie Ring. Verge reviewer Victoria Song found the ring to be clever, with an open gap up top that allows the ring to flex. No more struggling to get a ring off when your fingers swell! But the thing she... Continue reading...

The 8-1 Qi2 charger announced by Anker during CES 2024. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge Last year, you couldn't mention CES without bringing up Matter. It was a pivotal year for the smart home standard, as big names like Samsung, GE, and Amazon promised better interoperability between their devices and a world of sensors, appliances, and accessories. But that promise largely started and ended with smart home tech.This year, things were a little different at CES: the idea of making products work nicely across ecosystems bled into other areas of the showcase and rippled across a range of different devices - even putting rivals on the same page to better serve users.Google, for instance, revealed several updates to Android that show a clear push toward interoperability. One of Google's biggest updates was to Nearby Share,... Continue reading...

Samsung's Galaxy Buds 2 Pro pack ANC, excellent sound, and plenty of exclusive features for Galaxy owners. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung's latest Unpacked event is scheduled for January 17th, though, surprisingly, we've heard few rumors concerning Samsung's next pair of wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro. Even if Samsung doesn't debut them next week, we still expect it to continue to roll out new software tricks for the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro - which happen to be on sale at Woot in black or white for $129.99 ($100 off), an all-time low.Despite having launched nearly two years ago, the Buds 2 Pro remain a terrific pair of noise-canceling earbuds, particularly for Galaxy phone owners. They're both smaller and better-sounding than the first-gen model, and they offer a notable selection of Samsung-only features, including one-touch setup, head-tracking spatial... Continue reading...

Netflix And the world is full of marks. Continue reading...

Image: NBCUniversal Oppenheimer is coming exclusively to Peacock. If you haven't gotten a chance to watch the three-hourlong epic from Christopher Nolan in theaters, now you can watch it from home starting February 16th.Oppenheimer chronicles the life and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), a physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II. The film, based on a biography of Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, also stars Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife Katherine Kitty" Puening, Matt Damon as Major General Leslie Groves, and Robert Downey Jr. as US Atomic Energy Commission commissioner Lewis Strauss.In addition to Oppenheimer, several other films from Nolan... Continue reading...

The Oh! by OhDoki is the company's second interactive sex toy. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Every once in a while, you'll turn a corner on the CES show floor and see crowds flocking around a high-tech sex toy. This year, the one that caught my eye was The Handy, an automated masturbator - mainly because it was moving in a way I don't expect to see in polite company, let alone a public show floor. But right next to it was the Oh!, a $149.95 toy coming later this spring that had me also saying Oh?"Both sex toys are made by Norwegian sex tech company Ohdoki. The Handy, a motorized device that moves up and down to mimic masturbation for people with penises, is certainly the flashier of the two. At a glance, the Oh! is unassuming as far as vibrators go. What makes it different is how it vibrates.Most vibrators are simple... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple isn't at CES, but it had a huge presence anyway. On Monday, just before a string of CES keynotes were set to kick off, the company announced that its Vision Pro headset would be launching on February 2nd. Apple had already promised that the headset would launch early this year. So the stage was set for its rivals to compete by making CES 2024 a showcase of new ideas about virtual and augmented reality.Ultimately, that didn't pan out. Lots of companies showed up with AR and VR tech. A lot of the headsets offered similar functionality to the Vision Pro, like an AR / VR monitor for your computer or a substitute TV. But none were as impressive a package as Apple's headset, nor were most arriving nearly as soon. Photo... Continue reading...

The Verge It's always frustrating to get caught in a traffic jam because of a lane closure or because everyone is rubbernecking a recent fender bender. But even if you're stuck, you can gain some karmic points and help others avoid the situation by reporting it via Apple Maps or Google Maps.Your report on its own may not be enough to get a warning placed on the map, but if enough people make the same report - Apple calls it having a high level of confidence" - then Apple or Google will probably take action and add an update. These reports can be made from inside the mobile apps and on Apple CarPlay - though, at the time of writing, this couldn't be done through Android Auto.Bear in mind that keeping yourself and your passengers safe is much... Continue reading...

J-Style is one of the many smart rings I stumbled upon on the show floor. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge For the past few years, the Oura Ring has been the most recognizable smart ring on the market. After what I saw on the CES show floor, it's about to get some real competition.The smart ring is a promising form factor, but it's tricky to get right. It's more discreet and comfortable for sleep tracking than a smartwatch. The underside of your finger is also a better place to take heart rate and blood oxygen readings than your wrist. The downside is that it's challenging to create a device that's stylish given how small and flexible the components need to be. Plus, they tend to be pricey, with fewer features than a smartwatch.There are all reasons why I was surprised to see several working prototypes and products at CES. I genuinely can't... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft has started testing a change to Windows 11 that will see its AI-powered Copilot feature automatically open when Windows starts on widescreen devices." The change is being tested as part of Microsoft's latest Dev Channel preview of Windows 11, allowing Windows testers to provide feedback ahead of a broader rollout.We are trying out opening Copilot automatically when Windows starts on widescreen devices with some Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel," says Microsoft in a blog post. The company doesn't make it clear what exactly a widescreen" device is, but the Windows 11 setting itself says Copilot will automatically open when you're using a wider screen." So I'm assuming this is limited to ultrawide monitors and less... Continue reading...

Hyundai Mobis e-Cornering system, as demonstrated on a Hyundai Ioniq 5. When I was a boy, I wanted a Ferrari Testarossa. As a teen, I'd have told you James Bond's tricked out Aston Martin DB5 would be my ride of choice. Today, I have a new answer: a Hyundai Ioniq 5 with magic wheels that turn sideways.Because when you have four wheels that turn sideways, dear reader, tantalizing possibilities unfold.

Image: Nintendo Two classic Game Boy Advance role-playing games are coming to the Nintendo Switch next week: 2001's Golden Sun and 2002's Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The games will either be available on January 17th according to this tweet or the 16th according to this press release (presumably this confusion is timezone-related, and we've followed up with Nintendo for clarification). But regardless of the exact date, they'll be available as part of a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription.We've known at least one of these games was coming to the Switch ever since Golden Sun made an appearance as part of Nintendo's original announcement about Game Boy games coming to its subscription service. But it's taken roughly a year for that tease to... Continue reading...

The Ayaneo Next Lite. | Image: Ayaneo Ayaneo's attempt to launch a bargain-price competitor to the Steam Deck has been confusing, to say the least, but the company has now published a product page that clears most things up. The Ayaneo Next Lite will cost $299, will not ship with an official build of SteamOS but rather an unofficial fork, and come with a four-year-old AMD processor that's arguably less potent than the one in the original Steam Deck LCD.While the company originally advertised that subscriptions" for the handheld will open on Thursday night, that may have been a case of Chinese to English translation getting too literal - the final product page only has a Subscribe" button so you can get emailed with more information about the handheld. A new blog post has... Continue reading...

Illustration by The Verge Platformer, the tech newsletter started by Verge alum Casey Newton, is leaving Substack over its policies around and response to pro-Nazi publications using the platform.Newton notes that after identifying seven Substack publications that conveyed explicit support for 1930s German Nazis and called for violence against Jews, among other groups," the platform removed one on its own along with five others on the list. The other thing that happened was that the platform's co-founders asked to keep their conversations off the record and then leaked those conversations to another publication.The issue has been building up over the past several weeks. After The Atlantic published an article saying that Substack had been hosting and... Continue reading...

Rabbit R1. | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge The R1, the pocket-sized AI gadget from Rabbit that's supposed to use your apps for you, has already sold out of its first batch - and its second batch, too.In a Wednesday post on X (formerly Twitter), the startup Rabbit announced that it sold through its first 10,000-unit production run in just one day. When we started building r1, we said internally that we'd be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day," Rabbit writes. In 24 hours, we already beat that by 20x!" The first batch of preorders is expected to start shipping in March.

The Stelo CGM will look similar to the one pictured here and is based on the Dexcom G7. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Year in and year out, most of the blood glucose tech you see at CES are devices that may not come out for years, if ever. That's why it was refreshing to see Dexcom roll up to CES 2024 to talk about something a bit more tangible: its forthcoming Stelo continuous glucose monitor (CGM), a wearable sensor that provides a real-time look at your blood sugar levels. Unlike most CGMs, the Stelo is specifically designed to be an affordable option for Type 2 diabetics who don't use insulin.Unlike Type 1 diabetes, where a person produces little to no insulin, Type 2 diabetes is when, over time, the body either doesn't produce enough insulin or the body becomes insulin resistant. Roughly 90 to 95 percent of all diagnosed diabetics have Type 2.... Continue reading...

Image: eBay eBay has agreed to pay $3 million in connection with a 2019 harassment campaign directed at a Massachusetts couple that had been critical of the e-commerce site. The US Department of Justice announced the maximum criminal penalty on Thursday and said the company committed six felony offenses.Specifically, the DOJ charged eBay with two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of justice. The charges stem from a heinous harassment campaign carried out by a group of seven eBay employees, some of whom were company executives.In 2019, the employees came up with a plan to target Ina and David Steiner, a couple... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Discord is laying off 17 percent of its staff, a move that CEO Jason Citron said is meant to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization."The cuts were announced today to employees in an all-hands meeting and internal memo I've obtained. They'll impact 170 people across various departments.Based on Citron's message to employees and my understanding of the business, Discord isn't in dire financial straits, though it has yet to become profitable and is still trying to revive user growth after a surge during the pandemic. In his memo to employees, which you can read in full below, Citron said Discord grew its headcount too fast over the last few years - an admission that has become... Continue reading...

Right now, you can save up to $200 on Google's latest flagship phones. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge We're firmly living in 2024, and if there's no other tradition to lean on after setting your New Year's resolutions, you invariably can rely on Samsung's tone-setting phone announcements to make early ripples. Rumor has it we'll see the Galaxy S24 series in short order, and phones like the Pixel 8 family may lose a bit of sheen in its wake. The Pixel 8 and 8 Pro aren't suddenly obsolete, however, and that'll only lead to sharper discounts. In fact, this dream duo (we think they're two of the best Android phones you can buy right now) is already seeing substantial price cuts despite being just a few months old.Right now, the 128GB Pixel 8 is back down to its Black Friday price of $549 ($150 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store.... Continue reading...

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge I hate cables. I hide them in the walls behind my TV, I make them disappear around my desk, and I try to eradicate them everywhere else in my life. So every time I hear about something in the PC building community that involves hiding or removing cables, I get excited. Over the past few years, some of the biggest names in PC building have been making it easier to hide cables away and build a PC that showcases your skills.I've built a lot of PCs over the past 25 years, and the main part of the process I hate the most is cable management. It often takes me longer to tidy up cables and route them properly than it does to put all the parts of a PC together. It's especially bad if you've decided to build a PC with a bunch of RGB fans and an... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft has surpassed Apple's market cap to become the world's most valuable public company again. The software giant's stock has been rallying in recent months thanks to its AI announcements. Meanwhile, there are concerns about Apple's iPhone sales, leading to the two tech giants swapping top places for market value during trading on the Nasdaq today.Apple stock has been trending down over the past month on the back of iPhone sale concerns in China and a potential weakness of iPhone 15 sales. Rating firms have downgraded Apple stock in recent days, wiping around $162 billion off Apple's market capitalization in 2024 alone.Microsoft has been riding the AI hype train for more than six months now. The company's stock saw a noticeable... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp is rolling out a custom sticker maker for users with iOS 17 or later. While you can already make stickers by dragging and dropping images from your gallery into the app, this takes things a step further by letting you draw on top of them, add text, or slap on another sticker.To create a sticker from an existing image, open the app's sticker tray, select create sticker, and then choose an image from your gallery. From there, you can proceed to customize your sticker by choosing a cutout, adding text, and drawing on it. You can also edit any previously made stickers by opening the sticker tray, long-pressing on the sticker you want to change, and then choosing edit sticker. Image: WhatsApp You can add text... Continue reading...

Paramount Plus Halo season 2 is less than a month away, and Paramount Plus has just revealed the season's latest trailer. Master Chief and the Spartans (excellent name for a Halo cover band, by the way) will return to face off against the Covenant on one of the most important locations in the Halo universe: the planet Reach.The trailer lets you know immediately what the stakes are for Halo season 2, with a voiceover addressing the people of Reach. The voice - possibly belonging to Makee (Charlie Murphy), Master Chief's girlfriend - continues, saying she will be the instrument of their extinction. We're treated to gloomy scenes of Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber) outnumbered by covenant elites and Kai-125 (Kate Kennedy) watching Covenant orbital strikes... Continue reading...

Cillian Murphy as Jim in 28 Days Later. | Image: Searchlight Pictures Filmmakers Alex Garland and Danny Boyle - the writer / director duo who gave us 2002's 28 Days Later - have been talking about wanting to make a third film in the apocalyptic zombie franchise for years now. But it seems as if the pair is finally going to get a shot at making that dream a reality, all while potentially launching an entirely new series of movies.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Garland and Boyle are reuniting for 28 Years Later, a new film set in a (presumably) ruined world that's been ravaged by a strange virus responsible for turning people into rage-filled, fast-running zombie-like beings. As was the case with 28 Days Later - which starred Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, and Christopher Eccleston -... Continue reading...

Users will be notified if an Assistant feature is being removed when they activate one of the utilities affected. | Illustration: The Verge Several underutilized" Google Assistant features will soon be joining the infamous Google graveyard - such as the ability to use your voice to send an email, video, or audio messages - as the search giant introduces changes it says will make the feature easier to use. The company is also changing how the microphone works in the Google app and Pixel Search bar.Starting January 26th, users who activate any of the 17 Assistant features being removed will be notified that it's being discontinued, with most features departing for good on February 26th, according to 9to5Google. This news comes less than a day after Google announced it was laying off around a thousand employees, some of whom worked on Google Assistant.The Assistant features... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Turns out Google's postpandemic reckoning didn't just hit the Google Hardware team responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit products - it's taken similarly sized bites out of Google's core engineering and Google Assistant teams too. Google just confirmed to The Verge that it's eliminated a few hundred" roles in each of these divisions, meaning Google has confirmed layoffs of around a thousand employees on Wednesday alone, if we use a reasonable definition of few".And those are only the cuts we know about. We asked Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini to say if this was the complete and total number of job cuts in this round of layoffs, but she stopped replying at that point, only confirming existing layoff reports at 9to5Google and S... Continue reading...

Photo by Isaac Brekken/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Update January 10th, 9:02PM ET: Shortly after we published this post, SAG-AFTRA shared the full text of its agreement with Replica Studios as well as an FAQ document and a summary. Our original story follows.During CES 2024, SAG-AFTRA announced an agreement with AI voice technology company Replica Studios. The agreement would permit SAG-AFTRA members, specifically voice performers, to work with Replica to create digital replications of their voices. Those voices can then be licensed out for use in video games and other interactive media projects with SAG-AFTRA authored protections.In the announcement, SAG-AFTRA characterized the deal as a way for professional voice over artists to safely explore new employment opportunities for their... Continue reading...

Image: Kia Kia and Uber have signed a memorandum of understanding to use the automaker's newly announced PBV modular electric vehicles for ridehailing.PBV, which stands for Platform Beyond Vehicle, was introduced during CES in Las Vegas as a family of EVs built on a flexible vehicle architecture, with different swappable body types. The vehicle can be transformed from a minivan to a full-size van to a small truck, depending on the specific need. The driver cab remains fixed while the rest of the vehicle is interchangeable, like a real-life Duplo set.One of the possible variations is the PV5, a midsized electric van that Kia says is designed for ridehailing, delivery, and utilities. Uber wants to add the PV5 as an option for its drivers, in the... Continue reading...