The Verge

Illustration: The Verge Bluesky might be on the rise, but Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri wants you to know that Threads is still much bigger. In a post on Thursday, Mosseri said that Threads has gotten more than 15 million signups in November alone," seemingly trying to throw some cold water over Bluesky crossing 15 million users total on Wednesday.Mosseri also reiterated that the platform has been getting more than a million signups per day - a stat that CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during last month's earnings call - and noted that the platform has been seeing that volume of signups for going on three months."Many people have been jumping to Bluesky looking for a new place to post that's not X, which is owned by Donald Trump supporter Elon... Continue reading...

Illustration: Cath Virginia / The Verge After an open beta that rolled out last month, Arc Search is now available to all Android users. The Browser Company's search engine - which describes itself as the fastest way to search" - has been positioning itself as a better alternative to Chrome.Arc Search not only blocks ads but also has an AI feature called browse for me" that summarizes search results. In a September Decoder interview, Browser Company CEO Josh Miller described Arc as a laptop-first search engine, but the company is clearly leaning in to mobile.Over 100,000 Android users participated in the Arc beta, according to a press release. Arc says it's fixed some of the issues that bothered users most during the beta test - as a result, the browser now has full... Continue reading...

Alex Jones in 2022. | Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images The satirical news outlet The Onion has acquired Infowars, the conspiracy theory-riddled site run by Alex Jones, in a bankruptcy auction. In a press release posted to X Thursday, The Onion announced that it plans to end Infowars' relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion's relentless barrage of humor for good" when it relaunches in January 2025.The Onion purchased Infowars' assets with the support of the families in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, who sued Jones for spreading lies about the victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Jones was ordered to pay more than $1 billion in 2022 and filed for bankruptcy later that year. In September, a judge approved... Continue reading...

Alex Parkin / The Verge Cassette tape sales are at a 20-year high, the vinyl market is on a 17-year growth streak, and CDs have caught the attention of Gen Z. After a resurgence of retro physical media, tech companies have now jumped in to provide new hardware to play these formats.Companies like We Are Rewind, Fiio, and others offer updated designs for new cassette and CD players, with some additional functionality like USB-C charging and Bluetooth.But after a quick glance at these updated music gadgets in person, we found that they are seemingly not as advanced as some of their vintage counterparts. The dimensions of We Are Rewind's Bluetooth cassette player are roughly the same as Sony's first-ever Walkman from 1979 - but by the time the cassette Walkman... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge / Getty Images What Elon Musk really wants from a Trump presidency. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is taking a page out of the TikTok playbook by adding jewels" you buy to exchange for gifts for your favorite creators during livestreams. The feature, announced in September's Made on YouTube event, is rolling out in the US over the next few weeks for eligible creators in the YouTube Partner Program.The feature is reminiscent of TikTok's livestream gifting, which essentially works the same way, except you buy coins." On YouTube, gifts you send to live streamers appear onscreen and add to their earnings called rubies," valued at one cent each. YouTube says there's no fixed revenue share since the cost of jewels can change based on promotions, so the amount of rubies earned can vary. For the next three months, YouTube will... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amazon is today introducing its latest Fire TV Omni TV series, and it's the first to feature Mini LED backlighting for improved contrast, less blooming, and greater brightness than past models. The Fire TV Omni Mini-LED Series" features up to 1,344 dimming zones (depending on screen size) and delivers up to 1,400 nits of peak brightness. That's respectable, but falls short of top Mini LED contenders like TCL's QM8 and Hisense's U8N, which can push all the way to 3,000 nits.Still, Amazon's TV is priced quite a bit lower than those models and includes Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10 Plus Adaptive, and Dolby Atmos audio. This also sounds like the first Fire TV Omni that's truly cut out for gaming. It's got AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certification,... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Wordle's success has caused an explosion in newspaper-style puzzle games, and now Words With Friends is getting in on the action. The long-running word game is adding four solo modes that can be played daily, and they'll sound familiar to those who use The New York Times' gaming app.The new games include a mini crossword puzzle; a word search; Word Wheel, which is about connecting letters to create words; and a word guessing game called Guess Word. You can see what they all look like in the gallery below:Zynga, which owns Words With Friends, says that each of the games will have new puzzles daily and can be played either solo or in multiplayer. Our players asked if they could do even more, so we've added a whole new layer of... Continue reading...

In the AI chatbot world, ubiquity is everything. Companies have raced to build desktop and mobile apps for their bots, in order to both give them new capabilities but also to make sure they're right in front of your face as often as possible.There's no better example of that than Google's new Gemini app for iPhone, which quietly hit the App Store around the world this week. The free app is simple and straightforward: it's just a chat window and a list of your previous chats. You can query the bot with text, voice, or your camera, and it'll give you answers. It's effectively identical to the Gemini section of the Google app, or what you'd get by opening a browser and going to the Gemini website.The Gemini app does have one newish... Continue reading...

The Verge Google has added some new travel and shopping features to Maps that aim to make it easier to find local products and stay on time during busy periods. Starting today, Maps now allows users to search for items like home goods, clothing, and electronics, and find stores nearby that sell them - a useful feature to have for any last-minute holiday shopping.The search results in Maps will display individual product listings alongside locations where generic examples of desired items can be found (showing nearby stores that sell holiday sweaters," for example). The product listings are presented similarly to products in Google Shopping, only with useful information like store distance and if the item is currently in stock. G... Continue reading...

PayPal is making it easier to collectively pool together funds on the platform. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images PayPal is introducing a new money-pooling feature that aims to make it easier to collect and pay for things as a group. The feature is free and allows PayPal users to create a pool online or via the platform's app, invite friends and family to contribute, track contributed funds, and transfer that cash to their own PayPal balance.Provided you trust the pool organizer who will hold the power to spend or withdraw those funds, the pooling feature should provide a simple way to gather cash for things like gifts and group traveling collectively. Pool organizers can share pool joining links via text, email, WhatsApp, and more" to people regardless of whether they have a PayPal account or not. Contributions can be made using a PayPal balance... Continue reading...

It's been 25 years since the first Final Cut Pro was announced. More than a decade after the launch of Final Cut Pro X, Apple's video editing software is taking a step forward. The app is now being updated to Final Cut Pro 11, after dropping the number in its name for the past few years. The update includes new AI masking tools, the ability to generate captions directly in your timeline, spatial video editing features, and a set of workflow improvements. The new version is free for existing users and a $299 one-time purchase for new users. Final Cut Pro for iPad and Final Cut Camera are also getting some updates today, too.I've spent the last week testing out these new features, and many of them are great improvements. I've been particularly impressed by the speed and accuracy of one new feature... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Sonos is still trying to climb out from the hole it dug itself earlier this year by recklessly shipping an overhauled mobile app well before the software was actually ready. Today, just a couple weeks after the release of its latest hardware products - the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 - Sonos reported its fiscal Q4 2024 earnings. And the damage done by the app debacle is clear.Revenue was down 8 percent year over year, which Sonos attributed to softer demand due to challenging market conditions and challenges resulting from our recent app rollout." During the quarter, the company sank $4 million into unspecified app recovery investments." (Sonos previously estimated it could spend up to $30 million to resolve all of the trouble that has... Continue reading...

Google versus the bad guys. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google is beefing up its malware detection with new protections designed to suss out ever-sneakier bad actors.Android's Google Play Protect service is getting an update called live threat detection which seeks out potentially harmful apps on your phone by analyzing app behavior and alerts you in realtime if something looks fishy. The update was first announced at Google I/O earlier this year and is available now to Pixel 6 and newer phones. It should come to additional non-Pixel Android phones from Lenovo, OnePlus, Nothing, and Oppo, among others in the coming months."Live threat detection targets particularly hard-to-spot malware apps that hide their intentions well. Rather than just scanning apps for malicious code when you... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The Wall Street Journal is experimenting with AI-generated article summaries that appear at the top of its news stories. The summaries appear as a Key Points" box with bullets summarizing the piece. The Verge spotted the test on a story about Trump's plans for the Department of Education, and the Journal confirmed it's trialing the feature to see how readers respond.The Key Points" box has a message explaining that an artificial intelligence tool created this summary" and that the summary was checked by an editor. The box also points to a page about how the WSJ and Dow Jones Newswires use AI tools. Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge The AI-generated Key Points" from this WSJ article. We are always... Continue reading...

PC game platform GOG has launched a new preservation program dedicated to keeping beloved older games playable, now and in the future."If a game is part of the Preservation Program, it means that we commit our own resources to maintaining its compatibility with modern and future systems," the announcement blog reads.The program is launching with 100 games including Diablo, System Shock 2, and Resident Evil 1-3, with GOG planning to add emore titles in the coming months. Games featured in the program will come with a number of perks. GOG says that when you buy a game from the program, you can:

Cath Virginia / The Verge Spotify is going all in on video.The company will soon begin paying creators based on how much engagement their videos receive from paid subscribers. Automated ad breaks in videos will also be turned off for paid Spotify subscribers to encourage more consumption. Both of these changes go into effect starting January 2nd, 2025 in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada.Paying video creators directly based on engagement puts Spotify on more of a collision course with YouTube, which is also leaning into podcasts and already pays its creators billions a year in shared ad revenue. We can provide an experience for your audience that is superior to any other platform," CEO Daniel Ek said onstage Wednesday at a Spotify creator event in Los Angles.... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Meta could bring ads to Threads as soon as next year, according to a report from The Information. As part of its plan, Threads will reportedly allow a small number of advertisers to make and publish ads in January.That tracks with what my colleague Alex Heath reported about the rollout of ads in July. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has also confirmed that Meta is definitely" planning to bring ads to Threads. I get why people have concerns, but at the end of the day we're a business and Threads needs to make enough money to pay for the people and servers that it takes to run the service and provide it to people for free," Mosseri said at the time.In its most recent earnings report, Meta said it earned $39.8 billion in advertising revenue... Continue reading...

Image: Meta The YouTube app on Meta Quest is getting a nice upgrade: instead of only being a way to watch videos by yourself, the app will now let you co-watch videos with up to seven other people.To turn on the feature, which is launching in beta, make sure you have the latest version of the YouTube app and look for the Co-watch" icon at the top of the screen (it looks like three people grouped together). Select that, and then in the window that pops up, select Invite people" and then you can invite people from your followers list to watch things with you. (The people you invite will also have to follow you back.)There are a few limitations. You can only co-watch 2D content, for example. And if you want to watch paid content like a movie, every... Continue reading...

Vogtle, a nuclear power plant located in Burke County, near Waynesboro, Georgia. | Photo: Getty Images The US has a new roadmap for massively ramping up how much electricity it gets from nuclear reactors.The Biden administration released the document on Tuesday, but with President-elect Donald Trump heading back into the White House, there's no telling whether the plan will ever become a reality. That said, the nuclear industry has gained a fair amount of bipartisan support - not to mention buy-in from big tech.For now, nuclear energy makes up nearly 20 percent of the US's electricity mix. That's roughly the same amount of electricity the US gets from renewables like wind and solar. The rest - 60 percent of electricity in the US - comes from fossil fuels. Another way to think of it is that nuclear reactors generate nearly half of the... Continue reading...

The Lightfoot scooter's 120W solar panels can extend its range by up to 20 miles in the Summer, its creators claim. | Image: Otherlab Otherlab has announced a new electric scooter called the Lightfoot that can extend its range not by fast charging or quick battery swaps, but by soaking up the sun. The scooter is shrouded in two large solar panels that Otherlab says can extend its range by an extra three miles for every hour it's left in the sun.The company, which describes itself as an independent research & design lab" bringing new solutions in renewable energy," is planning to make the Lightfoot available for preorder starting today. It will sell for $4,995 and delivery is expected as early as January, 2025.The Lightfoot is powered by a pair of 750W brushless DC motors paired with a 48-volt, 1.1kWh battery that provides a range of up to 37 miles on a full charge... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amazon has launched a store where every product costs $20 or less in a bid to take on popular low-cost shopping apps like Temu and Shein. The new Amazon Haul" service is available in the US via Amazon's app or mobile website, and offers a wide range of similar fashion, home, lifestyle, and electronics products that you'd expect to find on the rival Chinese platforms.Finding great products at very low prices is important to customers, and we continue to explore ways that we can work with our selling partners so they can offer products at ultra-low prices," Amazon's vice president of worldwide selling partner services, Dharmesh Mehta, said in Amazon's announcement.The Haul storefront has a visually similar layout to Temu and Shein,... Continue reading...

Image: Bethesda Softworks The members of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA, one of the largest video game unions in the United States, have gone on strike. The action involves workers in ZeniMax offices in Texas and Maryland, who do quality assurance work for games including Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Workers are striking over claims that ZeniMax leadership has failed to address employee issues regarding remote work and outsourcing.Today, we are on strike," ZeniMax Workers United posted on X. We are not afraid to do what's necessary to make sure that Microsoft meets us at the bargaining table over key issues like remote work options and outsourcing."

Sony designed its flagship headset to pair perfectly with a PlayStation household. | Image: Sony It's inordinately rare to find the PlayStation Pulse Elite on sale, but Black Friday season is always a good opportunity for retailers to break the rules. Sony's flagship wireless headset is discounted to $129.99 ($20 off) at Walmart right now as part of its early Black Friday sale. Although the discount doesn't appear massive, that still represents the lowest price we've seen so far.The Pulse Elite launched in late 2023 alongside a slate of other mid-cycle PlayStation 5 accessories, including the $199.99 Pulse Explore earbuds and the once-elusive PlayStation Portal handheld companion.While many third-party wireless headsets support 3D Audio (PlayStation's take on simulated spatial audio), Pulse Elite supports what Sony considers the... Continue reading...

Image: Apple The first season of Silo ended on a truly great cliffhanger. The Apple TV Plus series, an adaptation of Hugh Howey's trilogy of postapocalyptic novels, tells the story of the remnants of humanity, who live deep underground in silos designed to protect them from a poisoned planet. Season 1 had the feeling of a small-town mystery, as mechanic-turned-sheriff Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) stumbled upon a secret that completely upended her worldview. Her quest to uncover that mystery ultimately led her outside of the silo's protective walls, which is right where the season ended. Silo's second season picks up in the aftermath and ramps things up by both raising the stakes and raising a big heap of new mysteries to obsess over.This piece... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images The Tesla Cybertruck was recalled for the sixth time this year - and the fix won't involve an easy software update.Tesla voluntarily issued a recall for approximately 2,431 Cybertrucks manufactured between November 6, 2023 and July 30, 2024. The issue is related to something called the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, or MOSFET, in which the inverter has the potential to stop creating torque, resulting in a loss of propulsion for the truck.A loss of propulsionThere isn't any warning prior to the loss of propulsion, but a visual alert will appear on the center touchscreen instructing the driver to pull the truck over to the side of the road. Tesla is sending notices out to affected Cybertruck owners and plans to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the last couple of months, some people have started watching YouTube on their phones to find something a little different: an endless, TikTok-like feed of videos underneath. These weren't Shorts, but full-length videos, the ones YouTube tends to refer to as longform." If you swiped up, instead of returning you to the homepage, another video would start playing. Swipe again: another video.So far, this is just a small test of a possible feature, the kind YouTube runs all the time. This one has been live since August and is one of several ongoing tests of new ways for users to find content on YouTube. If you're a viewer in the experiment," a forum post describing the test says, these new discovery experiences could include a mix of... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge As Google continues to navigate its relationship with publishers, regulators, and news readers, the company is starting a pretty drastic test: it will remove news articles from European Union-based publishers from Search.While the test" is supposed to determine how it will impact traffic and the overall search experience, it won't show up for everyone. Google will only remove EU news articles from search results, Google News, and Discover for one percent of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain.Google says it's running the time-limited" test because EU regulators and publishers have asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search." The company says it will... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Just Eat is selling off Grubhub to fancy food hall delivery startup Wonder in a deal worth $650 million. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025, subject to regulatory approvals. Wonder is owned by businessman Marc Lore, the former Walmart e-commerce CEO and part-owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves.Wonder started as a multi-restaurant food truck service delivering fine dining and evolved into food hall hubs where staff quickly cook pre-prepared foods crafted by big-name chefs like Bobby Flay. Customers can order from upwards of 30 restaurants" from the Wonder app, combining them into one delivery.With Grubhub coming under Wonder's belt, the company plans to integrate the delivery app into its platform. In a... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Short-form posting platform Bluesky crossed the 15 million user mark today amid a recent surge of user signups in the wake of the US presidential election. That's according to a stat-tracking site put together by Bluesky developer Jaz, using the Bluesky API.The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the majority" of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. The Bluesky app is currently at number one in the iOS app store, followed by Threads, ChatGPT, and the Google app. Screenshot: iOS App Store Bluesky is the number one free iOS app this morning. Meta's Threads is still... Continue reading...

Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge The Vision Pro VR headset is such an Apple product - meticulously designed and packed with incredible tech, but designed to be used Apple's way, whether you like it or not. For many, that means the headset is aggressively uncomfortable to wear due to its weight distribution. For the last several days, though, I've been testing a solution Apple now sells that's so simple, so obvious, that I'm actually miffed at Apple for not including something like it from the very beginning: the Belkin Head Strap.Belkin's strap works in tandem with Apple's Solo Knit Band. The Solo Knit Band wraps around your head with an elastic cushion, clamping the headset to your face but putting a lot of strain on your neck. Belkin's strap gives you more support... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Subscriptions are the main way creators on Patreon make money, as they must build an audience willing to shell out a few dollars a month to access their writing, podcasts, or videos. The company announced today that creators and their fans can now give away gift memberships, which could be a powerful way for creators to grow their subscriber base.Patreon said earlier this year it was working on a gifting subscription feature similar to what already existed on other subscription-powered platforms like Substack (which, incidentally, has been pushing deeper into the creator space beyond newsletters). Gifting is also a core part of Twitch's streaming platform, where fans and streamers often give away subscriptions based on specific goals... Continue reading...

Image: Capcom The Monster Hunter franchise is bringing, well, monster hunting to your smartphone. Capcom has announced that it's teaming up with TiMi - the studio behind games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Pokemon Unite - for a spinoff called Monster Hunter Outlanders. It's described as an open-world survival game" that's playable either solo or co-op with up to four players. It sounds like Outlanders will feature the core aspects of a MonHun experience (namely, the exploring, hunting, and crafting) but with live service and social elements typical of a mobile game.MonHun has become a huge global franchise since the launch of Monster Hunter World in 2018, which went on to become Capcom's bestselling game. Since then, there's been a live-action movie,... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by STR / NurPhoto, Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead what he calls the Department of Government Efficiency - yes, the acronym is DOGE - to pave the way" for his administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."The department will somehow operate outside of Government" and work with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget, according to the statement posted on Truth Social. Musk and Ramaswamy have until July 4th, 2026, to complete their work, the statement says.Trump had said during his presidential campaign that he would appoint Musk to head up a government efficiency commission if he was elected.... Continue reading...

Image: Freevee Amazon is going to shut down Freevee, its free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service. The service's content has already been migrated over to Prime Video and new episodes of Freevee shows will be available to people who don't pay for Prime, Deadline reports. The brand will be phased out over the coming weeks," Deadline says.Freevee originally launched out of Amazon-owned IMDb in 2019 as IMDb Freedive and was rebranded a few months after launch to IMDb TV and then to Freevee in 2022. The service had some of its own original content, like Bosch: Legacy and Jury Duty, Amazon also added some Prime Video content to the service starting in 2023.But Adweek reported in February that Amazon was planning to sunset the brand -... Continue reading...