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Joe Biden arriving to pardon the National Thanksgiving turkeys on November 20, 2023. | Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images US President Joe Biden signed up for a Threads account today, as did the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the second gentleman, Douglas Emhoff.Biden's first post on Meta's X (formerly Twitter) competitor harkens back to his 2020 presidential victory speech with references to the country's divisions and its current inflection point." Harris gestured to her travels throughout the US and her having met over 100" world leaders, and Emhoff wrote about gender equity and countering hate of all kinds."Meanwhile, the White House wrote, The wait is Joe-ver." Yes, I suppose it is. Former President Obama also posted a birthday message to Biden on Threads today.Biden and company signing up is a good sign for the platform.... Continue reading...

Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media Last week, Elon Musk appeared to endorse antisemitic conspiracy theories and posted about supporting white pride on his social platform X, formerly Twitter. Musk's tweets were then highlighted by a Media Matters article that found advertising from major companies had shown up next to pro-Nazi content. Major advertisers then halted their ad spends on the platform. To address the controversy, CEO Linda Yaccarino sent a memo titled Our Work Is Meaningful," reiterating her commitment to X.As pressure mounts for the company to distance itself from supporting antisemitism, Forbes reported that advertisers are urging Yaccarino to resign as well. A former NBCUniversal chairperson with close ties to the ad industry, Yaccarino had been brought... Continue reading...

NewJeans performs at the 2023 League of Legends World Championship in Seoul. | Image: Christina Oh / Riot Games The opening ceremony for the annual League of Legends championship was another impressive blend of music and tech. Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Sam Altman's surprise move to Microsoft after his shock firing at OpenAI isn't a done deal. He and co-founder Greg Brockman are still willing to return to OpenAI if the remaining board members who fired him step aside, multiple sources tell The Verge.Update 6:18PM ET: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg TV tonight. Asked directly by CNBC's Jon Fortt if Sam Altman would be a Microsoft employee and the 700 OpenAI staffers would join him at the company, Nadella said only that is for the OpenAI board and management and employees to choose." He followed by saying Microsoft chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI [and] obviously that depends on the people at OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft, so I'm open to... Continue reading...

The Buds FE come in a simple black or white. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Early Black Friday deals keep coming in hot, and even new devices that were released mere weeks ago are getting price slashes. Case in point: Samsung's new Galaxy Buds FE earbuds in white or black are selling for a nice $69.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Samsung - a whole $30 / 30 percent off. These noise-canceling earbuds offer a good value at their full price of $99.99, but it definitely doesn't hurt to save even more.The Galaxy Buds FE are kind of a reincarnation of the older Galaxy Buds Plus, especially in the design and fit department. The new Buds FE sport wing tips that may offer a more secure fit in your ears (depending on your ear shapes, of course). But the real appeal here is that you get some solid audio performance and good... Continue reading...

Amazon's Skill Builder site. | Image: Amazon Amazon is starting to offer free educational courses on generative AI with an aim to extend critical skills" to adults and young learners everywhere. The company's initiative, called AI Ready," is an extension of current AWS-based AI skills training programs offered by Amazon but now includes eight free courses that cover AI project management and development. Amazon says 21 million people have already trained on AWS cloud computing skills through its programs, and it hopes 2 million will use its AI courses by 2025.Amazon says that demand for talent for AI jobs is increasing, and companies are willing to pay higher salaries for those with the skills, but the courses are also geared toward promoting Amazon's own AI products. Amazon... Continue reading...

Then Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt introducing the company's driverless Origin shuttle. | Photo By Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images Two years ago, General Motors presented a vision for the future that involved zero crashes, zero traffic, and zero emissions." Today, that future seems further away than ever.The automaker's driverless car subsidiary, Cruise, announced last night the resignation of Kyle Vogt as CEO. The decision came over a month after an incident in which a hit-and-run victim became pinned under a Cruise vehicle and then was dragged 20 feet to the side of the road. As a result, California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's permit to operate driverless cars in the state.The company subsequently paused driverless operations nationwide, appointed a new chief safety officer, recalled all 950 of its vehicles, and retained an outside group... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After FTX's collapse led to financial woes for CoinDesk's parent company, the cryptocurrency news site is getting acquired. Bullish, a crypto exchange run by former New York Stock Exchange president Tom Farley, purchased the entire site in an undisclosed all-cash deal, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.The acquisition won't affect CoinDesk's existing management team, with the outlet operating as an independent subsidiary within Bullish." CoinDesk will also launch an editorial committee led by former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray.While CoinDesk first exposed the hole in FTX's balance sheet last November, the aftermath caused issues for its parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG). DCG is a... Continue reading...

Emmett Shear at TED 2019. | Photo by Lawrence Sumulong/Getty Images OpenAI has a third CEO in three days: Emmett Shear. After a shock firing of former CEO Sam Altman on Friday, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear is officially taking over as interim CEO of OpenAI. The Information first revealed Shear's appointment on Sunday night. The official announcement comes just an hour after Microsoft confirmed it had hired Sam Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman to form a new advanced AI research team.Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of OpenAI," says Emmett Shear in a post on X (formerly Twitter). After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted."Shear resigned as Twitch CEO earlier this year, after... Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Microsoft is hiring former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman.Altman was fired from OpenAI on Friday, after the board said it no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." After a weekend of negotiations to potentially bring Altman back to OpenAI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman will be joining to lead Microsoft's new advanced AI research team. Altman will have the CEO title of this new group.We're extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team," says Nadella. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed... Continue reading...

Sam Altman at OpenAI's first conference on November 6th, | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images After a weekend of negotiations to potentially bring back Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO following his shock firing, the company's nonprofit board has gone another way entirely and named former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear as interim CEO, according to a person familiar with the matter. He will take over as CEO from Mira Murati, who was publicly aligned with Altman.That's three CEOs in three days, if you're keeping track.Shear's surprise appointment comes after OpenAI's four-person board refused to step down and let Altman return, according to multiple sources. The news was first reported by The Information, which said that employees were told Sunday that removing Altman was the only path" to achieving the company's mission of... Continue reading...

The Verge Most of ESPN's accounts were inactive yesterday after Disney announced on Friday that it was done advertising on X, formerly Twitter. Disney's decision followed posts by platform owner Elon Musk agreeing with antisemitic and white power accounts. AwfulAnnouncing spotted the inactivity yesterday, noting that the main ESPN account has almost 50 million followers.While a handful of the accounts had some activity, the primary ESPN account, NBA on ESPN, First Take, NFL on ESPN, ESPN Plus, and others have not posted, replied, or liked anything since at least Friday as of this writing. Other accounts, like ESPN FC, ESPN College Football, and SportsCenter, each posted or reposted once yesterday, while some, like the ESPN Desportes and ESPN PR... Continue reading...

I would love to be proven wrong about this baffling wearable. | Image: Humane Before you disrupt everything, you have to deeply consider the current cultural norms or no one will wear your wearable. Continue reading...

Image: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 15, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, hello, sorry in advance for all my terrible jokes, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been watching Andre 3000 talk about life after Hey Ya," reading this fun profile of Marques Brownlee and this wild story about the Mirai hackers, finally conquering all 48 Mario Kart 8 courses, watching unhinged Phil Collins music videos on repeat, and trying to find the silliest possible custom GPTs. (Add a walrus is a tough one to beat.)I also have for you a new webcam, a new word game, a new show about monsters, a new iMessage hack, and a whole bunch more. Oh, and a favor... Continue reading...

Sam Altman speaking on behalf of OpenAI at the APEC CEO Summit the day before he was fired. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images The OpenAI board is in discussions with Sam Altman to return to the company as its CEO, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. One of them said Altman, who was suddenly fired by the board on Friday with no notice, is ambivalent" about coming back and would want significant governance changes.Update November 18th, 5:35PM PT: A source close to Altman says the board had agreed in principle to resign and to allow Altman and Brockman to return, but has since waffled - missing a key 5PM PT deadline by which many OpenAI staffers were set to resign. If Altman decides to leave and start a new company, those staffers would assuredly go with him.Update November 19th, 11:50AM PT: Last night, after we learned OpenAI was trying to... Continue reading...

Nothing Chats shown in a promotional image. | Image: Nothing Nothing has pulled the Nothing Chats beta from the Google Play store, saying it is delaying the launch until further notice" while it fixes several bugs." The app promised to let Nothing Phone 2 users text with iMessage, but it required allowing Sunbird, who provides the platform, log into users' iCloud accounts on its own Mac Mini servers, which... isn't great?The removal came after users widely shared a blog from Texts.com showing that messages sent with Sunbird's system aren't actually end-to-end encrypted - and that it's not hard to compromise it. The app launched in beta yesterday after being announced earlier this week.

Photo by Eddie Costas / The Verge Google is racing headlong into the AI future, and that means different parts of the company are destined to collide with one another - Search is now generating AI-powered summary results, but flooding the web with AI-generated text is going to make search that much harder, for example. It's going to be messy and complicated and fascinating all at the same time. In general, the parts of Google that are charged with moderating platforms (like YouTube and Search) are going to end up colliding with the parts of Google that help people create content (like Gmail and Bard.) You can really just put them in two lists, draw a line from one to another, and predict a long list of interesting problems that will inevitably come up. I... Continue reading...

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge While a new tentative agreement with the AMPTP has given many people hope of SAG-AFTRA's ongoing labor strike nearing its end, the contract's verbiage regarding the use of artificial intelligence seems to be cause for concern. Continue reading...

The Last of Us Part II Remastered | Image: Naughty Dog Naughty Dog officially announced The Last of Us Part II Remastered for PS5 on Friday evening following a bunch of leaks about the game earlier in the day. The game will be released on January 19th, 2024 - just like the leaks said.The biggest new addition seems to be a roguelike survival mode" called No Return that's designed to let players prove their mettle in randomized encounters and experience The Last of Us Part II's combat in a fresh experience," Naughty Dog's Jonathon Dornbush said in the announcement blog post. You'll be able to play as some new characters and work through various stealth and combat encounters that will pit you against a range of enemies, with unique twists that can add new, unexpected factors to any given... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Sam Altman isn't the only major OpenAI executive leaving the company on Friday. Hours after Altman was fired, with the board saying it no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," co-founder and former board chair Greg Brockman revealed on X that he is also quitting.When OpenAI announced the leadership transition" and that CTO Mira Murati would take over as interim CEO, it said that Brockman would step down as chairman but remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO. Just a few hours later, that's no longer true.In the post on X (formerly Twitter), Brockman said he sent the following message to OpenAI staffers:

Illustration: The Verge Apple has reportedly followed IBM by pulling advertising from X, formerly Twitter, as the platform's owner Elon Musk made posts agreeing with antisemitic conspiracy theories, supporting white pride, and continued a fight with the Anti-Defamation League.Axios cites unnamed sources in a report that Apple is pausing advertising on X, and the list is growing - later on Friday, the New York Times reported Disney would pause advertising on X, while CNBC noted the same for Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount and Comcast / NBCUniversal have paused their ads as well, Axios says in a separate report.The nonprofit Media Matters highlighted his statements yesterday, as well as advertisements from corporations that X placed next to pro-Nazi and... Continue reading...

Ivan the Space Biker" and Proto-Barney," who Valve says were used in the alpha builds of Half-Life. You can now play as them in multiplayer. | Image: Valve. Valve just released a 25th anniversary update for Half-Life that adds a whole bunch of new content, some welcome quality-of-life upgrades, and even Steam Deck support, according to an announcement on the Half-Life website. Also, you can download the game for free for a limited time.Let's start with the added content. The game now includes Half-Life Uplink, a mini-campaign" that was originally available only on CDs from magazines and hardware manufacturers, the company says. There are four new multiplayer maps that Valve says push the limits of what's possible in the Half-Life engine." Valve also added maps and multiplayer character models from a CD called Half-Life: Further Data.Valve added some new settings, too, including the... Continue reading...

The new Sonos Era 100 replaced the Sonos One when it was released early this year. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of the best things about Black Friday is that we often find deals on products that rarely go on sale any other time of the year. Case in point? Sonos and other retailers have dropped some great deals on Sonos smart speakers and soundbars ahead of Black Friday next week. There's a lot on sale, from the Sonos Ray (on sale for $223, reg.$279) to the Sonos Move (on sale for $299, reg. $399), and below we've rounded up some of the highlights.First up, right now you can buy the Sonos Era 100 smart speaker for $199 ($50 off) at Best Buy and directly from Sonos. Released earlier this year, the new Sonos smart speaker replaces the older Sonos One. Compared to the One, the Sonos Era 100 delivers better sound thanks to new capabilities like... Continue reading...

How exactly does this thing show me a funny cat picture so I can momentarily escape the drudgery of a visit to the DMV? | Image: Humane Last week, Humane debuted its AI Pin as a phone replacement without a screen. You interact with it through voice, and a tiny projector displays things like media controls and incoming calls on the palm of your hand. The idea is to allow you to simply move through the world, unencumbered by digital devices constantly demanding your attention. To wear the AI Pin is to live in a world beyond screens.It's a beautiful vision that I'd love to buy into. But here's the thing: screens are great, and I don't think we can, or even should, ditch them quite yet.Humane's whole deal centers on the screenless-ness of its product - founder Imran Chaudhri said as much in his TED talk earlier this year. In Humane's view, screens are a barrier between us... Continue reading...

National climate advisor Ali Zaidi holds a press briefing on Thursday, December 16th, 2021, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House. | Image: White House Climate change is already taking its toll on the US economy, according to the most sweeping national assessment yet that was published earlier this week. Conducted every four years, this was the first national climate assessment to dedicate an entire chapter to economics. Its conservative estimate" is that extreme weather supercharged by global warming already costs the US $150 billion in damages a year. That's just one example of how our changing planet will affect Americans' pocketbooks.Extreme weather supercharged by global warming already costs the US $150 billion in damages a yearHow is the Biden administration coping with this new reality? And are new technologies like AI helping or hurting the cause? The Verge spoke with Ali... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The social network failed to hit the growth targets its new owner set in 2019. But were they ever compatible with what Tumblr does best? Continue reading...

Illustration by Nico H. Brausch for The Verge AI could become a major source of planet-warming emissions. How can the smart home industry build products more sustainably? Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Discord is shutting down Clyde, its experimental AI chatbot. In a support note, Discord says the chatbot will be deactivated" at the end of the month, and that by December 1st users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in DMs, Group DMs or server chats."Discord first started testing Clyde's AI features earlier this year, using OpenAI's models to let the chatbot answer questions and have conversations with Discord users. It has been in limited testing ever since, and the company had planned to make it a fundamental part of its chat and communities app. Image: Discord The Clyde AI chatbot. It's not clear why Clyde is suddenly shutting down. It's possible the chatbot may return as a paid Nitro-only feature... Continue reading...

Image: Valve Valve's new Steam Deck OLED just went on sale today, but there are goodies for the original LCD model, too - the company is now rolling out a stable build of SteamOS 3.5.5 with a hefty list of fixes, changes, and upgrades.Some of the biggest are ones we've already seen in a September beta, like support for VRR and HDR external displays, the ability to tweak your screen's color and undervolt your processor with new firmware, and a graphics driver update with a big performance improvement for Starfield (though it still looks like mud in cities).But there's one thing on the list I didn't expect: The update gives the official $79 Steam Deck Dock the new ability to support VRR external monitors itself. (Last I checked, the Steam Deck Dock... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has adjusted its ad-friendly content guidelines to allow breastfeeding videos with nudity - but only in cases when a child is present - as well as videos with twerking, grinding, and other sensual" types of dancing. The platform updated its guidelines on Thursday with the changes, which will carry over to gaming videos as well.Previously, breastfeeding videos on YouTube that showed a visible areola were not eligible to earn ad revenue. Similarly, choreography videos that showed twerking, grinding, or in which the dancer wore minimal clothing were demonetized under YouTube's policy.The new updates read as follows:

Illustration: The Verge Google has shared an updated timeline about Manifest V3, the latest version of its Chrome extension specification that has faced criticism for putting limits on ad blockers. After putting the update on pause last year, Google announced on Thursday it will continue the transition to Manifest V3 with some key changes.One of those changes is improved content filtering support" for the Declarative Net Request API used by ad-blocking extensions. Google previously proposed putting restrictions on the functionality of this API for security reasons, potentially impacting the effectiveness of ad-blockers across all Chromium-based browsers including Chrome and Microsoft Edge.Developers and privacy advocates pushed back on the change, and F... Continue reading...