The Verge

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Waymo is issuing a voluntary software recall after one of its driverless vehicles collided with a telephone pole in Phoenix, Arizona, last month, the company said. The vehicle was damaged, but no passengers or bystanders were hurt in the incident.The company is filing the recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) after completing a software update to 672 vehicles - the total number of driverless-capable vehicles in Waymo's fleet. The update corrects an error in the software that assigned a low damage score" to the telephone pole, and updates its map to account for the hard road edge in the alleyway that was not previously included.This is Waymo's second recall everThis is Waymo's second recall ever,... Continue reading...

The Jabra Elite 10 gen 2 wireless earbuds (pictured) will still be available, serving as a final farewell to the Elite lineup. | Image: Jabra Immediately after introducing upgraded versions of its Elite 10 and Elite 8 Active earbuds, Jabra says it's departing the consumer earbuds market entirely. Jabra's parent company GN announced that it's winding down its Elite and Talk audio product ranges in order to increase focus and resources on more attractive parts" of its business, citing the rising costs of competition.The markets have changed over time, and it is today our assessment that we cannot generate a fair return on investment compared to the many other opportunities we have within our Hearing, Enterprise, and Gaming businesses," said GN CEO Peter Karlstromer. I am very grateful to our retail partners, who have supported us on the Elite and Talk product lines, as well... Continue reading...

The sky, as observed from Zeytinburnu, Istanbul, Turkiye on May 25, 2024. | Photo: Getty Images A major environmental group is reportedly set to funnel millions of dollars into research on solar geoengineering, a proposed fix for climate change that has garnered skepticism and even fears about unintended consequences.Solar geoengineering encompasses a range of tactics to cool the planet down by reflecting sunlight, perhaps by artificially brightening clouds or thrusting reflective particles into the atmosphere. Rogue efforts to test these theories have raised alarm because scientists don't know much about what other effects it could cause. It's led to calls for more research to close those knowledge gaps before more trials move forward.The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) plans to dole out millions of dollars" in grants for... Continue reading...

With Apple Intelligence features coming to older MacBooks, you shouldn't feel the need to wait for Apple's M4 chips. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It's not surprising that the M3 MacBook Air's value is strengthening the longer it's been out, but the laptop is becoming increasingly hard to overlook when compared to the 13-inch M2 model - especially since you can get a 13-inch MacBook Air with an M3 chip for only $70 more than the current sale price of the base M2 model. Right now, the base M3 configuration with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage is going for just $899 ($200 off) at Amazon and B&H Photo.The 2024 Air is the most recent entrant in Apple's lightweight laptop line, one that continues to offer all-day battery life, a sleek design, and excellent performance for carrying out everyday computing tasks. The performance bump over the previous generation isn't major, but it... Continue reading...

This is probably how the fool would look thinking they're getting away with a steal. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is now testing Android 15's automatic theft detection features announced at the I/O developer conference in May. The company tapped Brazil to play host for the initial testing grounds on account of local feedback from users in the country, which is an apparent hotbed for smartphone snatching. You can sign up to try the feature right now if you happen to live there.Theft Detection Lock, as it's called, uses AI to determine whether certain jerky movements are indicative of an ongoing theft attempt. In addition to relying on motion, it can also use other tells, such as someone attempting to use it on a different network or if it notices it's off a frequently used network for an extended time.Google announced the automatic... Continue reading...

Image: Voodoo BeReal, the app known for its fleeting photo sharing window, has been acquired. On Tuesday, the French app developer Voodoo announced that it purchased the company for 500 million (about $537.23 million).Launched by French developers Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau in 2020, BeReal started gaining traction in 2022 when more users started partaking in the random, once-per-day opportunity to share photos with friends. But the hype surrounding BeReal quickly died down. Last year, a report from Platformer revealed the app suffered a steep drop in monthly active users, going from 15 million in October 2022 to 6 million in March 2023 as people became less enamored with the concept.

Image: Best Buy Best Buy carried out another round of layoffs and job restructurings last week, with the company cutting some of its sales staff and reducing the pay for others, according to current and former employees who spoke with The Verge. Multiple people said their new pay will be much lower due to the changes.The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers' homes to help identify products that would work in their space. It's not clear how many were let go, but designers who weren't laid off have been moved into a different, largely in-store role. Also, pay scales for a similar, existing in-store consultant" position were revamped.Best Buy confirmed the layoffs in an email to The... Continue reading...

Image: Flow Computing Flow Computing is making a tough to believe claim: it says it can 100x the performance of any CPU by shifting work to a special parallel processing unit (PPU) inside or outside the chip. And, it claims, it can double the performance of any existing computing code overnight, even if programmers don't lift a finger to optimize for its new tech. The PPU could even fit into phones and watches, it says, dramatically improving their performance and battery life by offloading work from the CPU.But the company can't quite show any of that today - because Flow hasn't built a chip and doesn't necessarily intend to build one, its co-founders tell The Verge.The company is a spinoff of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and it's... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is finally rolling out the ability for creators to test and compare how multiple video thumbnails perform, the company announced on Tuesday. The feature was first announced last June, but at the time, it was only available to a few hundred creators.With the new tool, which YouTube calls Thumbnail Test & Compare," creators can test up to three thumbnails for a video. YouTube will show your chosen thumbnails evenly across your video's viewers, and then will select a winning thumbnail based on which one generates the most watch time share," according to a post bylined from Meaghan" on the YouTube team. (This idea is also known as A / B testing.)Creators will be able to see data about how thumbnails performed, though it may... Continue reading...

The Apple HomePod will soon support SharePlay with Apple Music. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple's SharePlay is expanding to include speakers in your home. Soon, the HomePod, HomePod Mini, Apple TV, and any Bluetooth speaker will work with SharePlay and Apple Music, meaning you can share control of the music in your home with friends and family. Apple's music service is also getting Music Haptics to allow those with hearing difficulties to experience music on iPhone. Both new features were announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this week and should arrive with the tvOS and iOS updates this fall.Similar to the way SharePlay works in Apple CarPlay, this new SharePlay ability will let you give other people access to what's playing on the speakers in your home. It's the same concept as Spotify Jams, which lets... Continue reading...

Doom: The Dark Ages. | Image: Bethesda Softworks Doom, Dragon Age, Civilization, Star Wars, and a whole lot more. Continue reading...

Image: Cruise General Motors is investing $850 million into Cruise to help cover the company's operational costs after it was forced to shut down its robotaxi service when one of its driverless cars struck a pedestrian.GM chief financial officer Paul Jacobson announced the investment onstage at Deutsche Bank's Global Auto Industry Conference in New York City today. The money would be used to cover Cruise's operational costs as it slowly resumes testing its autonomous vehicles in several US cities. The company says it is also looking for new external investors to help bolster its financial situation.Cruise was a big money loser for GM, even prior to the incident last year in which one of its driverless vehicles dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in San... Continue reading...

The newer second-gen Backbone One looks much like the original (pictured here). | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Apple talked about big-budget games coming to the iPhone at its recent WWDC 2024 keynote, but if you choose to play upcoming titles like Resident Evil 7 on your phone, you might want something better than touch controls - something much better. Thankfully, the second-gen Backbone One controller is currently discounted to $79.99 during Backbone's Father's Day sale, saving you $20 on your model of choice through June 16th. You can pick from the standard ABXY button layout with a USB-C port (Amazon / Best Buy / Backbone), the same style with the older iPhone Lightning connector (Amazon / Backbone), a white PlayStation layout with USB-C (Amazon / Best Buy / Backbone), or the PlayStation Edition with Lightning (Amazon / Backbone).The... Continue reading...

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Google's latest feature drop for Pixel devices is a big one for people who want to run its AI tech on cheaper phones, folks who constantly misplace their phones, and photographers who want a little more control.The latest update, which starts rolling out today, will make the mobile-ready Gemini Nano model that was already available to Pixel 8 Pro owners available as an option on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8A phones, too. Apple just announced a slew of new AI features for its platforms, but similar to Google's initial announcement that it eventually walked back, Apple has restricted Apple Intelligence to people with the latest iPhone 15 Pro.However, on those slightly lower-specced devices, you will have to go into the developer options to... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple is rebranding Apple accounts from Apple ID to (the arguably more straightforward) Apple Account. With the releases of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11, Apple ID is renamed to Apple Account for a consistent sign-in experience across Apple services and devices, and relies on a user's existing credentials," Apple wrote in a Tuesday post on its Newsroom.The change doesn't come as a total surprise, as it was rumored earlier this year. And even though Apple IDs have been around for a very long time, I'm personally fine with the change - Apple Account" feels a lot clearer to me than Apple ID."In its Tuesday post, Apple also detailed a few changes coming to other Apple services this fall. Apple Maps users can browse... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge New York has become the next state to introduce a mobile ID program, giving residents the option to digitize their driver's license or non-driver ID.Beginning today, the New York Mobile ID app is available from Apple's App Store and Google Play. The app can be used for identity verification at airports. A physical license, permit, or non-driver ID is required to activate a mobile ID; you'll need to take a photo of the front and back with your phone during the enrollment process.The news was announced during a media briefing at LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday that included New York's Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Mark J.F. Schroeder and Transportation Security Administration federal security director Robert Duffy, among other... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is announcing some changes to Outlook for consumers that will further safeguard accounts. The software maker plans to end support for Basic Authentication for Outlook personal accounts starting on September 16th, it's removing the light version of the Outlook web application on August 19th, and it will no longer support Gmail accounts in Outlook.com on June 30th. All of these changes are part of Microsoft's Secure Future Initiative overhaul of its security practices.Outlook.com, Hotmail, and Live.com users will need to access their email accounts through apps using Modern Authentication starting on September 16th. Support for third-party email apps that don't use Microsoft's own login prompt will end later this year.... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge There were almost two different WWDCs this year. First, Apple did its classic platform whiparound, detailing all the new ways you can add stuff to your homescreen, share stuff with your friends, watch stuff on your TV, calculate stuff on your tablet, and more. In a normal year, that would have been the show. We would have talked about app icons for 45 minutes and gone home.The second act of WWDC was the Apple Intelligence show, in which Apple began to unveil its AI strategy. We saw a lot of features and ideas about how things might work - including a new and pretty exciting vision for Siri - but also got a sense of how Apple is planning to approach this potentially disruptive new category. We heard a lot of buzzwords! But also a lot of... Continue reading...

Image: Yahoo Yahoo is updating Yahoo Mail on the desktop with new AI capabilities and other features to help simplify email and task management.One of the highlights is brief AI-generated summaries of emails. These summaries come complete with bulleted lists that highlight proposed tasks and other actions. It's located under the new Priority inbox tab, which - like Gmail's - uses AI to highlight what Yahoo thinks are your most important messages. Gmail recently announced a similar summaries feature for its mobile app, but it's behind a paywall for Workspace and Google One AI Premium subscribers. Image: Yahoo The new AI-generated feature attempts to summarize any potential responses needed. Along with AI-powered... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge As slick and polished as macOS is, it can slow down over time, as you add file after file and program after program to your Apple system. After a few years of heavy use, the idea of wiping your Mac and starting again from a factory-fresh clean slate starts to make more and more sense.This isn't just something to do if you want to clear out the clutter and fix persistent problems, though: resetting your Mac is also important when you're selling it or passing it on. You don't want anyone else poking around in your files or your web browsing data, and a reset stops that from happening.Resetting a Mac is fairly straightforward, but you do need to make sure everything on it is backed up before you get started (or at least everything you... Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch users can no longer link the console with their X accounts. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge As of June 10th, Nintendo has officially discontinued support for the Switch console's integration with X (formerly Twitter), making it the last of the current-gen consoles to do so after Microsoft and Sony disabled their own access last year.The integration was removed as part of the Nintendo Switch's 18.1.0 update, taking away the ability for users to link their X account with the console, or post in-game screenshots from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate directly to the social media platform. The removal of these features comprised the majority of the 18.1.0 update, which also includes some general stability improvements and ditches support for linking social media accounts via the Switch's Friend Suggestions feature.Nintendo announced... Continue reading...

We've all had at least one flight where this really would've saved the day. | Image: Jabra Jabra is refreshing its earbuds lineup today with upgraded versions of the Elite 10 and Elite 8 Active. Both, now known as Gen 2," come with the expected improvements to sound quality, noise cancellation, and other fundamentals. But the real game changer, if there is one, is the LE Audio charging case that comes with both earbuds. You can plug the case into an external device - a treadmill, in-flight video screen, etc. - and the case will transmit that audio over to the buds.LG's wireless earbuds have offered a similar feature as their signature trick for several years now. But Jabra is trying to stand out with the technology it's using: the Elite 10 and 8 Gen 2 both connect to the case over LE Audio and use the still-new LC3... Continue reading...

People are watching this stuff, and advertisers can now buy targeted ads on Google TV channels. | Image: Google Google is launching a new advertising network that serves targeted ads to Google TV-powered streaming boxes and smart TVs. The ads service, known as the Google TV network, lets advertisers place unskippable in-stream ad spots across more than 125 live channels - many that are FAST, or free ad-supported streaming TV channels that Google's been hell-bent on getting users to notice.Google says there are 20 million monthly active Google TV and Android TV OS devices, a significant figure for advertisers to consider. The reach can go even further when including YouTube, which reaches over 150 million monthly active viewers in the living room. Google Ads and Google Display & Video 360 users can expand their campaigns to include the Google TV... Continue reading...

The open-world Outlaws could be the biggest single-player Star Wars game ever made. | Screenshot: Star Wars Ubisoft announced in April that Star Wars Outlaws will launch on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on August 30th. If you've been on the fence about buying it in advance, then there's some new material to help you make the decision. We recently got a closer look at its open-world gameplay at Ubisoft Forward 2024, including the title's combat, space travel, and branching story dialogue. And, thankfully, there's still plenty of time to secure various exclusive preorder incentives.Developed by Massive Entertainment, Outlaws follows main character Kay Vess and her trusty alien companion Nix as they navigate a galactic criminal underworld. It takes place throughout a range of familiar locales, including Tatooine and Canto Bight,... Continue reading...

Image: Summer Game Fest The hype is real, the hype is here, but Geoff Keighley has warned viewers not to get too hyped for what to expect during the showcase. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Adobe is overhauling the terms customers must agree to when using its apps in an effort to win back trust - and clarify that it won't train AI on their work. The change, announced via a new blog post, comes after a week of backlash from users who feared that an update to Adobe's terms of service would allow their work to be used for AI training.The new terms of service are expected to roll out on June 18th and aim to better clarify what Adobe is permitted to do with its customers' work, according to Adobe's president of digital media, David Wadhwani.We have never trained generative AI on our customer's content, we have never taken ownership of a customer's work, and we have never allowed access to customer content beyond what's... Continue reading...

Screenshot: The Verge Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote has come to a close - and the company had a whole lot to share. We got our first look at the AI features coming to Apple's devices and some major updates across the company's operating systems.If you missed out on watching the keynote live, we've gathered all the biggest announcements that you can check out below.Apple's first AI system is coming to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac Screenshot: Apple With almost all of big tech getting in on the AI boom, it's no surprise that Apple is launching an AI system of its own. Apple Intelligence is the company's new personal intelligence system that puts powerful generative models right at the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac."... Continue reading...