The Verge

Dr. Vivek Murthy hopes that introducing warning labels to social media platforms will help address mental health concerns among adolescents. | Photo by Bryan Bedder / Getty Images for Project Healthy Minds US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is urging Congress to introduce warning labels for social media platforms that regularly warn parents and adolescent users about the potential mental health harms associated with using them. The proposed warning labels, similar to those already introduced for tobacco and alcohol products, would aim to increase awareness and encourage social media users to change their behavior.The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency - and social media has emerged as an important contributor," Murthy said in a guest essay published by The New York Times. The surgeon general cited studies that found almost half of adolescents say social media gives them body image issues and that those who spend... Continue reading...

TikTok says the new tools are aimed at helping brands and creators develop global audiences. | The Verge TikTok is introducing some new generative AI tools that aim to help organizations and content creators grow their global audiences using customizable digital avatars and language dubbing features. Building on the Symphony generative AI ad suite unveiled last month, TikTok says these new tools are intended to break down language barriers in marketing and allow brands to add a human touch to their content" where real models or presenters wouldn't otherwise be used.The first of the new offerings is Symphony Digital Avatars, which are available in two varieties: stock or custom. Stock avatars are based on paid actors from a diverse range of backgrounds, nationalities, and languages. They are available for commercial use. Custom avatars,... Continue reading...

Nikon's new $2,500 Z6 III has the world's first partially stacked CMOS sensor. | Image: Becca Farsace / The Verge At the beginning of a recent photo walk with a Nikon representative, I was told it was only a matter of time before I became a birder." Because eventually, every photographer runs out of things to take photos of and is left with only one subject to master: birds. Which, because of advancements in camera technology, have become a much easier target. The Nikon Z6 III has an articulating back screen that is typical of hybrid photo / video cameras. It was on this same photo walk that I got a few hours with the new $2,500 Nikon Z6 III. And the big news in this camera is its 24.5-megapixel partially stacked CMOS sensor. This is the first camera ever to employ this technology. Instead of the circuit parts and pixel area... Continue reading...

Nikon's new $2,500 Z6 III has the world's first partially stacked CMOS sensor. | Becca Farsace / The Verge At the beginning of a recent photo walk with a Nikon representative, I was told it was only a matter of time before I became a birder". Because eventually every photographer runs out of things to take photos of and is left with only one subject to master: birds. Which, because of advancements in sensor technology, have become a much easier target. The Nikon Z6 III has an articulating back screen that is typical of hybrid photo / video cameras. It was on this same photo walk that I got a few hours with the new $2,500 Nikon Z6 III. And the big news in this camera is its 24.5-megapixel partially stacked CMOS sensor. This is the first camera, ever, to employ this technology. Instead of the circuit parts and pixel area... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is rolling out a new option called Listen to this page" that can read a webpage out loud to you from within the Android Chrome browser. The feature comes with playback controls similar to those you'd find in music or podcast players, letting you pause, change the reading speed, scrub forward, or skip ahead or back by 10 seconds at a time.You can also change the voice it uses, as well as the language. The feature supports several, including English, French, German, Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish, according to a Google help page about the feature. To see if you have it, head to a page with a lot of text, then tap the three dots menu and Listen to this page," which should appear just below the Translate option. S... Continue reading...

A McDonald's in Pittsburgh. | Photo: Paul Weaver / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images If your local McDonald's has been getting your order confidently wrong with an AI chatbot at the drive-thru, I have good news for you: The company is ending the program for now. The company told franchisees that it's winding down an AI drive-thru ordering partnership with IBM no later than July 26th, 2024," according to trade publication Restaurant Business.The company will reportedly remove the tech from the over 100 restaurants it's been testing the system in after partnering with IBM in 2021. It's not clear why the company is ending the IBM deal, though. It told Restaurant Business it was testing whether the voice ordering chatbot could speed up service and that the test left it confident that a voice-ordering solution for... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Siri may do more than make the edges of your iPhone a glowy rainbow when iOS 18 drops this fall. Apple Intelligence features won't be out until 2025 for anyone not testing them in beta this year, but reports suggest that Siri itself will still get natural language updates and other key features before the year is out.For instance, users will be able to type to Siri without diving into accessibility settings, and it will be more conversational, understanding you even when you trip over your words, according to Mark Gurman in today's Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. Image: Apple Apple could offer instructions for how to do things in iOS this year. He also writes that Siri will have greater knowledge of... Continue reading...

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 42, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been writing about Excel, reading about tin foil hats and the song Smooth," obsessing over Francis Ford Coppola's note-taking system, watching Anyone But You, Hit Man, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol because I had a bunch of plane rides, and debating buying Jabra headphones even though Jabra is quitting the headphone game.I also have for you a new minimalist phone, a book to read, a documentary to watch, a fun hack for your Rabbit R1, and much more. Let's get into it.(As always, the best... Continue reading...

Image: NASA Voyager 1, the farthest human-made craft from the Earth, is finally sending back data from all four of its scientific instruments, NASA said this week. That means the agency is once more receiving its readings on plasma waves, magnetic fields, and space-bound particles.Voyager 1 stopped sending back good data in November, and fixing it was fraught as engineers had to wait 45 hours to hear anything back. In April, the agency got it to start sending back health and status information, then science data from two of its instruments in May.Now, NASA says Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles from Earth, is conducting normal science operations" and the agency just needs to resync its timekeeping software and do some maintenance on a... Continue reading...

One of the affected Intel processors. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge For months, Intel's highest-end desktop gaming processors have had a strange tendency to occasionally make games crash - and despite what you might have seen earlier today, Intel says it doesn't have a final fix for its 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core i9 Raptor Lake" and Raptor Lake S" chips just yet.Contrary to recent media reports, Intel has not confirmed root cause and is continuing, with its partners, to investigate user reports regarding instability issues on unlocked Intel Core 13th and 14th generation (K/KF/KS) desktop processors," reads a statement via Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford.It continues: The microcode patch referenced in press reports fixes an eTVB bug discovered by Intel while investigating the instability... Continue reading...

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Asus' reputation for customer support has been tarnished, and the company is now pledging a long list of concrete fixes to Gamers Nexus. Chief among them: if you've ever been denied a warranty repair or charged for a service that was unnecessary or should've been free, Asus wants to hear from you at a new email address. It claims those disputes will be processed by Asus' own staff rather than outsourced customer support agents.And, after failing to even acknowledge the ROG Ally handheld's SD card reader issues for over a year, the company will be finally be issuing a formal statement about the defect next week, Gamers Nexus is reporting.One month ago, GN revealed that Asus could in some instances charge customers for unwanted and... Continue reading...

I wonder what this 3D logo could mean... | Image: Yacht Club Games Shovel Knight might be bouncing into 3D. Developer Yacht Club Games just announced a new mainline game in the hit series that started as a retro-inspired 2D platformer, and the studio says this new game will launch Shovel Knight into an entirely new dimension of gaming," according to a blog post.If that wasn't enough of a clue about the move to 3D, the Yacht Club Games' Friday livestream celebrating the 10th anniversary of Shovel Knight featured an even more pointed hint: a 3D version of the Yacht Club Games logo.The studio is staying mum about many specifics - there's no release window - but did tease that the game will bring electrifying action, richer mechanics, and all the timeless charm you expect from a Shovel Knight title."W... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge Apple and Meta could soon face charges from the European Commission for violating Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules. The Financial Times reported Friday that the Commission is planning to charge Apple, and Reuters reported later that Meta could be charged as well.The Commission is reported to be targeting Apple over its steering" rules that charge developers for pointing to third-party purchase options. Meta's charges will reportedly revolve around its ad-free subscription for Facebook and Instagram in the EU.The Commission will be issuing preliminary findings, according to Reuters, meaning that the companies can make changes to try and correct things before the Commission makes a final decision. Apple is set to be charged first, R... Continue reading...

With iOS 18, Apple Home users will finally be able to insist the smart home platform use their hardwired Apple TVs as the primary Home hub. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge While Apple barely mentioned its smart home platform during its WWDC 2024 keynote this week, Apple Home users can still rejoice over an update discovered in the first iOS 18 beta: they're getting the option to choose a Preferred Home Hub." This fixes the problem of your smart home deciding" to run over Wi-Fi through a HomePod when there's a perfectly good Apple TV using ethernet sitting right there.Eagle-eyed Redditors on the HomeKit subreddit spotted that, in the iOS 18 beta, there's a new option to select your preferred Home hub instead of relying on Apple's automatic selection, the current choice.HomeKit users took to the thread to express their joy at this move, saying, among other things, that This is the most important... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images I generally find Elon Musk useful, in that he makes it clear which things in America are actually hard boundaries (contract law, maybe copyright law) and which are merely conventions (most everything else). You can take ketamine, smoke weed, ask your subordinates to have your babies, and run your companies like your own personal fiefdom; if you are wealthy and powerful enough, no one can stop you.Musk is entwined with his companies in a particularly unusual way. In the case of Tesla, he is probably responsible for its survival in a dicey period following the 2008 financial crisis. His involvement and fame have allowed Tesla to save significant money on advertising. For this service, Tesla shareholders voted him a massive pay package in... Continue reading...

Image: Ice Universe We already have a sense of potential specs for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, but now we might have a closer look at the foldable's design, too. Images shared by reliable leaker Ice Universe show a prototype of the Z Fold 6 with sharper edges and a slight change to its camera design, as reported earlier by 9to5Google.The look of the dummy model tracks with the leaked marketing materials and renders we've seen so far, which show off a similarly boxy design and black rings around each rear camera sensor instead of silver. You can see how the Galaxy Z Fold 6 may compare to the Galaxy Z Fold 5 in the below image from Ice Universe. Image: Ice Universe The Galaxy Z Fold 5 (left) next to a potential prototype of the... Continue reading...

Air conditioners in windows during a heat wave in New York, US, on Thursday, July 27, 2023. | Photo: Getty Images Household electricity bills could climb with rising temperatures this summer in the US, according to an analysis by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).Americans' monthly electricity bills will likely average $173 between June through August, compared to $168 last summer, the EIA predicts. The slight bump in costs comes from consumers cranking up their air conditioning more to cope with a warmer season than last year. Bills would have jumped higher, if not for lower residential electricity prices helping to balance out some of the increased energy use from air conditioning.Some regions are likely to be harder hit by the weather than others. Because of heat and humidity along the Gulf Coast, residents in Southern states... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge It's been a rocky couple of months for Sonos - so much so that CEO Patrick Spence now has a canned autoreply for customers emailing him to vent about the redesigned app. But as the company works to right the ship, restore trust, and get the new Sonos Ace headphones off to a strong start, it finds itself in the middle of yet another controversy.As highlighted by repair technician and consumer privacy advocate Louis Rossmann, Sonos has made a significant change to its privacy policy, at least in the United States, with the removal of one key line. The updated policy no longer contains a sentence that previously said, Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers." That pledge is still present in other... Continue reading...

Photo by David Madison / Getty Images The Stanford Internet Observatory, a small but prominent research group studying abuse on social media platforms, looks to be in crisis, according to a report by Platformer.Some key staff have departed recently, including founding director Alex Stamos and research director Renee DiResta, Platformer reports. A handful of staff have left recently after not having their contracts renewed, and other members have been told to look for other jobs. Platformer describes the turmoil as a dismantling" of the research group.Stanford Internet Observatory research centers on some of the most pressing types of abuse online, including threats to democracy and elections, artificial intelligence, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The group's... Continue reading...

Disney's new Beat the Clock" ad format will let you play golf with your remote. | Image: Disney Disney is sprinkling a new kind of playable ad across Hulu and ESPN. The new ad format, called advergames," will let you interact with the ads using your remote, as reported earlier by Adweek.You might see two different advergames to start: Quiz Show and Beat the Clock. While Quiz Show presents a series of trivia questions, Beat the Clock challenges viewers to land golf balls into specific targets using their remote. Of course, they're branded experiences, as the Beat the Clock ad features branding for Topgolf, and the Quiz Show game will prominently display an ad for a company while you play. Image: BrightLine Quiz Show replaces your traditional ad break with a sponsored trivia game. The pitch for this... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge So, Apple reportedly isn't paying OpenAI to handle its users' ChatGPT queries, and OpenAI isn't paying Apple for its massive distribution. (A billion pockets, y'all!) If that's the case, what do these two companies get out of their blockbuster partnership for all things iOS and AI? And can OpenAI and Apple actually afford to do this, economically and reputationally? It's a strange pairing, but it's coming to a device near you this fall.On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about Bloomberg's reporting on the business deal behind Apple Intelligence before rolling through some of Apple's new features that didn't get much (or any) stage time at WWDC. It's pretty clear Apple is hoping AI will convince you to buy a new iPhone, but it's... Continue reading...

Apple's Siri voice assistant has a new look and a new brain. | Image: Apple Voice assistants hold so much promise, but in the decade-plus since Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa first wormed their ways into our lives, their most compelling use is still setting timers. Competition from Google's Assistant (and if we're being charitable, Samsung's Bixby) failed to light the spark of innovation in this space, and in many ways, voice control has regressed. These assistants regularly misunderstand, mishear, and sometimes just don't listen at all. They're a far cry from the proactive, actually smart digital assistants they were originally pitched as.Enter generative AI: the technology voice assistants need to transform them from novel to necessary. This week at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced plans... Continue reading...

Picsart's AI image generator will be available some time later this year. | Image: Picsart Image and video-editing platform Picsart has teamed up with Getty Images to launch a responsible, commercially-safe" AI image generator that's trained exclusively on the stock image platform's licensed content.Picsart says its AI lab is building a custom model from scratch that will power the tool, allowing the platform's paid subscribers to generate images with full commercial rights - which aims to address long-standing concerns regarding AI-generated potentially content violating copyright laws. The Picsart / Getty Images generator tool is expected to launch later this year," and will be accessible through Picsart's API services.This collaborative project shares similarities with Adobe's Firefly AI model, which initially launched... Continue reading...

Why read the article when you can just AI-generate takeaways? | Image: Yahoo Artifact is dead, long live Yahoo's version of Artifact. The architecture behind Artifact, the news aggregation app built by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, will live on inside the body of a brand-new Yahoo News app.Available to download today on iOS and Android, the new Yahoo News app brings an AI-powered personalized news feed for users based on their interests, while a feature called Key Takeaways can give a bullet summary of a news article when a reader is feeling TL;DR.Other features of the Yahoo News app include Top Stories, which picks up on trending stories for users to read and will soon include key takeaway summaries. You can block stories with undesired keywords as well as filter out certain publishers... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is planning to launch its new Copilot Plus PCs next week without its controversial Recall feature that screenshots everything you do on these new laptops. The software maker is holding back Recall so it can test it with the Windows Insider program, after originally promising to ship Recall as an opt-in feature with additional security improvements.We are adjusting the release model for Recall to leverage the expertise of the Windows Insider community to ensure the experience meets our high standards for quality and security," says Microsoft in an updated blog post. When Recall (preview) becomes available in the Windows Insider Program, we will publish a blog post with details on how to get the preview."This means that... Continue reading...

Photo: NSA OpenAI has appointed Paul M. Nakasone, a retired general of the US Army and a former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), to its board of directors, the company announced on Thursday.Nakasone, who was nominated to lead the NSA by former President Donald Trump, directed the agency from 2018 until February of this year. Before Nakasone left the NSA, he wrote an op-ed supporting the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the surveillance program that was ultimately reauthorized by Congress in April.OpenAI says Nakasone will join its Safety and Security Committee, which was announced in May and is led by CEO Sam Altman, as a first priority." Nakasone will also contribute to OpenAI's efforts to better... Continue reading...

Apple Early photos from Apple TV Plus' upcoming series Sunny left little question about it being a comedy, but the show's new trailer makes it seem like it's also going to be a solid (if goofy) whodunit that leaves you guessing.Set in a semifuturistic modern-day Japan, Sunny follows as Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones) sets out to uncover the truth behind her husband Masa's (Hidetoshi Nishijima) presumed death. Between Masa's plane crashing under mysterious circumstances and the disappearance of his body, life already feels weird for Sunny as she settles into her new identity as a widow. But when a colleague of Masa's shows up at Suzie's door with a bobble-headed domestic robot named Sunny (Joanna Sotomura) as a bereavement gift, things start to... Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images LinkedIn is rolling out new AI-powered features to help users find jobs, tailor their resumes, and even get advice from AI chatbots. But these new features come at a cost, as they'll be available to Premium subscribers beginning in English worldwide.One tool lets you search for jobs on LinkedIn by typing a prompt in natural language. In a blog post, LinkedIn chief product officer Tomer Cohen gives the example of find me a remote marketing job in Detroit that pays at least $110,000." If the results are good, I could see this being a useful way to seek out potential jobs. GIF: LinkedIn LinkedIn can also review your resume and provide personalized suggestions for improving it for a specific job post. You'll be able to... Continue reading...

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Google has announced on its Pixel Help Community portal that it's extending the Pixel 8's repair program for phones displaying vertical lines and exhibiting flickering. This policy update allows Pixel 8 owners to get this problem fixed under warranty, for up to three years after purchase, if their phone Exhibits a vertical line running from the bottom of the display to the the top or a display flicker."Google isn't promising that every phone with the issue will qualify, though - Google or an authorized repair partner will need to determine that it qualifies for the extension based on the serial number of your phone.The Pixel 8 Pro is not included in this repair extension, though there are user claims out there that it can exhibit... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Tesla shareholders voted today to reapprove Elon Musk's gigantic pay package, after a Delaware court judge voided it earlier this year. Investors also approved a proposal to move the company's legal home from Delaware to Texas and to reappoint two board members: James Murdoch and Kimbal Musk, Elon's brother.The vote was widely seen as a referendum on Musk's leadership during a time of great upheaval for Tesla, which has seen its stock price slide on news of shrinking sales, softening demand, and declining revenue. The company has laid off at least 10 percent of its workforce, its vehicle lineup is aging and in need of a shake-up, and the success of Musk's bet on AI and robotics is far from certain.In spite of all this, Tesla... Continue reading...