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Illustration: The Verge Ignite is Microsoft's chance to show why AI matters to developers and IT professionals. Continue reading...

Photo: Analogue Analogue seems obsessed with recreating the Game Boy family as faithfully as possible. For its latest endeavor, it's bringing the classic colorways of the Game Boy Advance and Pocket to the Analogue Pocket. These Classic Limited Edition Pockets have, according to the press release, been carefully color-matched" to resemble the colors of the Game Boys of old, offering blue, green, indigo, spice orange, pink, red, silver, and yellow.Just take a look at this. Don't you just feel somewhere between 10-15 years old again seeing that iconic indigo color? Photo: Analogue The Classic Limited Edition Pockets will go on sale on November 17th, retailing for $249.99. Expect them to start shipping a few days later on the 20th,... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is adding two new AI-powered features to Teams soon that will improve your voice and webcam. A new decorate your background" feature is coming to Microsoft Teams Premium in early 2024 and uses generative AI effects to clean up and replace clutter in the background when on a video call.While Microsoft Teams has long offered a variety of virtual backgrounds, this decoration feature will work in a real-world room, much like the augmented reality filters you find on Snapchat. It can even add plants, lights, and seasonal objects to the background behind you. We'll have to see how this functions in reality, but if it works as well as the GIF below, then it could be a good option to hide your messy background and avoid the... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft When I first used Microsoft Mesh, the company's mixed reality platform, I said it felt like the virtual future of Microsoft Teams meetings." Now, nearly three years later, Microsoft is making immersive 3D Teams meetings a reality. In January, Microsoft Mesh is being integrated into Teams to allow co-workers to meet together in a virtual space - no VR headset required.It's a big shift in Microsoft's original vision for Mesh - an entire platform built on top of Azure that Microsoft hoped developers would tap into - but then a lot has changed with Microsoft's VR / AR ambitions over the past few years. Microsoft's HoloLens boss, Alex Kipman, left the company last year following misconduct allegations. Six months later, Microsoft shut down... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Because the world wasn't frightening enough already, companies can now buy a security robot from Amazon to patrol their businesses. Lucky for humans, this thing looks like it's just a step above a Roomba - it's giving Wall-E instead of Terminator.Amazon launched Astro for Business for customers in the US today, a robot for sale for $2,349.99. It roves around autonomously or via remote control. It's also equipped with an HD periscope camera with night vision and offers a 24/7 live view and two-way talk. Along with the robot, Amazon is also offering three different subscription services to help companies monitor their facilities.It's giving Wall-E instead of Terminator.For $99 a month, its Virtual Security Guard subscription allows... Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo Nintendo may have a conflicted relationship with its history, but if there's one thing the company loves, it's selling you classic games over and over again. I've honestly lost count of the number of platforms on which I own games like Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros. 3. That lack of attention from Nintendo is part of what makes Super Mario RPG such a curiosity - and its new remake on the Switch such a welcome sight.In 1996, Nintendo teamed up with Final Fantasy maker Square Enix (then known as Squaresoft) to craft a roleplaying game set in the Mushroom Kingdom. Not only was this seemingly strange combination a hit, but it also spurred two separate Mario RPG franchises. Mario RPG was both beloved and influential - and yet, there are... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google announced a slew of updates to Maps, including improved transit directions, emoji reactions, and collaborative lists.With transit directions, Google Maps will now recommend different routes depending on what you want, with options such as best route," fewer transfers," less walking," wheelchair accessible," or lowest cost." The app will also clearly display station entrances and exits so you don't accidentally get on the wrong train.It's the latest feature in Google Maps' ongoing effort to make itself more user-friendly for commuters and transit riders. In 2019, it added new transit crowdedness predictions, allowing customers to see how crowded their bus, train, or tube is likely to be before heading out on their commute.... Continue reading...

Orders for the new Model 915 Cyberquad for Kids are expected to ship in late November. | Image: Tesla After being recalled last year for not meeting product safety standards, Tesla's $1,900 Cyberquad for Kids is once again available to purchase on the Tesla webstore in the US. The latest release of the Cybertruck-inspired ride-on toy - identified as Model 915 - is an updated version of the Model 914 Cyberquad for Kids that launched back in December 2021. Orders for the Model 915 are expected to begin shipping in late November.Like the Model 914, the new Model 915 Cyberquad for Kids was jointly created by Tesla and popular children's toy maker Radio Flyer, best known as the makers of the Little Red Wagon. The battery-powered Cyberquad for Kids has a 500W motor with a top speed of 10 mph (that parents can switch to 5 mph) and a max range... Continue reading...

Almost everything about the world of Pokemon revolves around humans and their magical monster buds fighting to near-death for fame and glory. But the first trailer for Netflix's upcoming Pokemon Concierge series from Dwarf Animation Studio is a reminder that in order to succeed in battle, one must also make time to relax.Set on a tropical island where pokemon travel for some much-needed downtime, Pokemon Concierge tells the story of Haru (Karen Fukuhara), a young woman working at resort that caters to the specific desires of its many pokemon guests. As new hires, there's a lot about tending to the needs of battle-hardened pokemon that Haru and her partner Psyduck have to learn. But as tricky as it can be figuring out what pokemon... Continue reading...

The Verge There's no shortage of ways to share files with other people, whether you want to send them in a group chat, attach them to an email, or ping them over via AirDrop or Nearby Share. These all work perfectly well, but they're all best for smaller files.If you've got a larger file to send to someone - like a high-res video or an archive of many different files, for example - you can start to run into problems. Email clients might reject your file for being too big, or you might be waiting a while for the file to transfer over a protocol like Bluetooth.In addition, if you're looking to limit the amount of time a file is available for download, or if you want to limit who has access and the kind of access they have, a more feature-filled... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The will-they-won't-they of Threads direct messages has been going on for a while now. Last we heard, Instagram (and Threads) head Adam Mosseri said that Threads was not planning to build DMs. That still appears to be true - but it's not the whole story.Mosseri said on Tuesday, in a Threads post replying to Platformer's Casey Newton, that his reluctance to build DMs into Threads stems from the fact that he thinks Instagram's messaging service might be the right one for Threads. Threads is, after all, build on top of the Instagram app and is already connected to Instagram in a number of ways. And Mosseri has been hinting for months that he thinks Instagram DMs can be the main place for private chat.My hope is that we can make the... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap must proceed with a lawsuit alleging their social platforms have adverse mental health effects on children, a federal court ruled on Tuesday. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected the social media giants' motion to dismiss the dozens of lawsuits accusing the companies of running platforms addictive" to kids.School districts across the US have filed suit against Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap, alleging the companies cause physical and emotional harm to children. Meanwhile, 42 states sued Meta last month over claims Facebook and Instagram profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans." This order addresses the individual suits and over... Continue reading...

The third-generation Echo Show 5 is running a new OS 1.1 instead of the standard Fire OS. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Last week, it was reported that Amazon is quietly developing its own operating system that will replace Android on its Fire TV devices before expanding to other products, including the company's many smart displays. Janko Roettgers spilled the details in his Lowpass newsletter. The report predicted that Amazon's software, codenamed Vega, could appear on Fire TV streaming hardware as soon as next year.But as discovered by Zatz Not Funny!, it turns out this new homegrown OS is already being used on the latest Echo Show 5, which displays its software as OS 1.1" instead of the expected Fire OS. The low number is an obvious indication that we're dealing with a brand-new platform; the Echo Show 8, by comparison, currently runs Fire OS... Continue reading...

Image: Getty American car buyers can't get enough big, tall SUVs and trucks - but new data suggests that the downsides of this trend are growing increasingly deadly.Crashes involving vehicles with hood heights that are 40 inches or higher are 45 percent more likely to result in a fatality as compared to vehicles with hood heights that are 30 inches or less with a sloping profile, according to a new report analyzing federal crash statistics by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).The data comes amid an ongoing pedestrian safety crisis in the US in which fatalities are at a 40-year high and the number of pedestrians killed has increased by 80 percent since hitting a low in 2009.The data comes amid an ongoing pedestrian safety crisis... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you buy something from a merchant that uses Amazon's Buy with Prime button, you'll now be able to track those orders on your Amazon account, access 24/7 customer service over live chat, and be able to return eligible" orders at more drop-off locations" without having to box them up or add a label, Amazon announced on Tuesday.Amazon's Buy with Prime initiative lets shoppers buy things from non-Amazon websites and merchants but still be able to take advantage of Prime benefits like free two-day shipping. The company launched it in April 2022 and expanded its availability earlier this year. However, until now, you couldn't track a Buy with Prime order from an Amazon account, which could be useful if you end up doing a lot of holiday... Continue reading...

The new Map View for the Alexa app should make managing devices in the app a little easier. | Image: Amazon Finally, no more scrolling through an endless list of devices named First Motion Sensor" or Fourth Light" in Amazon's Alexa app. The smart home controller is getting the option of a new user interface - Map View.Launching November 14th in public preview, the new map interface allows you to create a digital version of your home's floor plan and pin your Alexa-connected devices to each room. Now you have a single place where you can quickly check the status of everything, see which Echo is playing music, see the temperature, see if lights are on or off, and everything is controllable from the map," Amazon's Charlie French, director of smart home, explained in an interview ahead of the launch.First announced at Amazon's fall hardware... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo's showcasing all the indies you can expect to see on the Switch in late 2023 and 2024. Continue reading...

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Nothing Phone 2 owners get blue bubbles now. The company shared it has added iMessage to its newest phone through a new Nothing Chats" app powered by the messaging platform Sunbird. The feature will be available to users in North America, the EU, and other European countries starting this Friday, November 17th.Nothing writes on its page that it's doing this because messaging services are dividing phone users," and it wants to break those barriers down." But doing so here requires you to trust Sunbird. Nothing's FAQ says Sunbird's architecture provides a system to deliver a message from one user to another without ever storing it at any point in its journey," and that messages aren't stored on its servers.But you're giving them... Continue reading...

I'd be willing to bet that when you think of E Ink, you're picturing an Amazon Kindle. But E Ink has come a long, long way in the past few years. Outside of e-readers, there are E Ink tablets, laptops, desktop monitors, signs, dresses, color-changing cars, smartwatches, and a whole gaggle of devices that utilize the tech. You might say that there's been a bit of an electronic paper renaissance.Why now? Well, E Ink - the company behind the tech - and companies that build its electronic paper into consumer devices, like Onyx and Dasung, have made big strides in challenges like contrast, refresh rates, and color. The price to enter the market has also dropped. The tech itself also has some specific benefits over traditional LCD and OLED... Continue reading...

Photo Illustration by The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images As cars become computers on wheels, the former BlackBerry and Dyson executive is approaching Volvo's EV transformation with a consumer electronics mindset. Continue reading...

Image: Instagram Instagram's latest feature lets you limit your posts to just close friends. You could already share Stories and Notes with only the users on your close friends list, but including posts and Reels could drastically change how Instagram works.Since you no longer have to share posts with your entire follower list, and other users can do the same, your Instagram feed could start to feel like it's filled with posts from a more close-knit community. You see a green star next to the accounts of close friends, and expanding that green list" to Reels could go a long way toward making the app feel more private.Instagram took a stab at a close friends-only platform with the launch of its original Threads app in 2019, but now, it seems like it's... Continue reading...

Logitech has launched a crowdfunding campaign for its latest webcam, the Logitech Reach. Prices range from a discounted $259 Black Friday deal to $399, with shipping expected in July 2024.At first glance, it seems unusual to see a large brand like Logitech on Indiegogo, a platform normally associated with small startups that need the preorder money to put their projects into production. But Logitech said that the crowdfunding campaign would allow it to gain invaluable insights into the use cases for Logitech Reach in various environments" when it announced its decision to use Indiegogo Enterprise when it first promoted the webcam in early September.Indiegogo advertises that its Enterprise service is a way to de-risk and accelerate... Continue reading...

This follows earlier reports that verified X users are superspreaders of misinformation" regarding the Israel-Hamas war. | Illustration: The Verge The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a new report on Tuesday that suggests X (formerly Twitter) is failing to remove posts that violate its own community rules regarding misinformation, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other hate speech. Researchers in the CCDH study reported 200 hateful" posts about the Israel-Hamas war that breached platform rules to X moderators on October 31st, finding that 98 percent of the posts still remained live after allowing seven days to process the reports.According to the CCDH, the reported posts, which largely promoted bigotry and incited violence against Muslims, Palestinians, and Jewish people, were collected from 101 separate X accounts. Just one account was suspended over their... Continue reading...

Q&A tries to both answer your questions and cite its sources. | Image: Notion The first killer app of AI for businesses, it appears, is a simple thing: to be able to find information in the morass of files, folders, attachments, incompatible enterprise software apps, and everything else that constitutes modern knowledge work. Notion, which aims to replace most of those things in a single tool, is launching a feature it thinks can help. It's called Q&A, and CEO Ivan Zhao describes it to me as essentially an all-knowing AI executive assistant that knows everything about everything and can find it in a second or two.Notion Q&A is available to all Notion users, whether you use it alone or through work, and it'll cost between $8 and $10 per person per month. The tool has a lot in common with Microsoft's Copilot and G... Continue reading...

The Tadpole is meant to just clip right over top of your laptop's webcam. | Image: Opal Two years ago, Opal launched a camera with a tweet. (They were still called tweets back then.) It was the middle of a global pandemic, a work-from-home revolution, and a truly brutal time to start a hardware company - and Opal suddenly had tens of thousands of people signed up for the webcam that Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit co-founder and Opal investor, promised was mind blowing." Opal at the time had four employees, CEO Veeraj Chugh tells me, and it took all the company's time and attention just to ship cameras as fast as it could.The process of developing its second camera, which is called the Tadpole and is launching today, has apparently been much smoother. Opal has a real hardware team and supply chain now; it was able to go back... Continue reading...

Venmo groups debuts today and will roll out over coming weeks." | Image: Venmo / Crop: The Verge Venmo has started rolling out a new Venmo Groups" feature that aims to make it easier to organize and share common expenses with others. The company says the feature will let people track, split, and manage group expenses.Basically, the company is appealing to anyone who has had to deal with spreadsheets or turned to other apps like Splitwise or SettleUp to manage group expenses like dinner with your friends or that big group trip to Disney World. With this new groups feature, users can do it all right in Venmo, and it's something that probably should've been added a long time ago, considering the app's sort-of social media nature. Image: Venmo Venmo Groups. Like other standalone expense-sharing apps, Groups... Continue reading...

I guess that means your Uber driver can collect you from Ikea and then build your furniture when you get home. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber is experimenting with a new service that allows users to hire drivers from its app to complete everyday household chores and projects, in a bid to expand beyond its existing ridesharing and courier business. The service, called Uber Tasks, will launch as a small pilot" in the coming weeks in Fort Myers, Florida and Edmonton, Alberta.The news, first reported by Bloomberg, confirms an earlier report from the publication in September that found evidence for a new Chore" option within the Uber app's code. Uber Tasks is essentially an online marketplace for freelance laborers, much like TaskRabbit or Thumbtack - only you'd be advertising tasks specifically to Uber drivers and couriers who can opt-in to the program.Uber drivers and... Continue reading...

Photo by Prince Williams/Wireimage YouTube will have two sets of content guidelines for AI-generated deepfakes: a very strict set of rules to protect the platform's music industry partners, and another, looser set for everyone else.That's the explicit distinction laid out today in a company blog post, which goes through the platform's early thinking about moderating AI-generated content. The basics are fairly simple: YouTube will require creators to begin labeling realistic" AI-generated content when they're uploading videos, and that the disclosure requirement is especially important for topics like elections or ongoing conflicts.The labels will appear in video descriptions, and on top of the videos themselves for sensitive material. There is no specific definition... Continue reading...

Homes and businesses in Lahaina, Maui, are in ruins on August 16th, 2023, after a devastating wildfire swept through town. | Photo by Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Climate disasters are costing the US billions of dollars a year, and the damage isn't spread out evenly, according to a new national climate assessment.The assessment, produced about every four years, lays out the toll climate change is taking across every region in the United States. This is the fifth one - but for the first time, this year's report includes chapters dedicated to economic impact and social inequities. As floods, fires, heatwaves, and other calamities tied to climate change intensify, households pay the price with higher costs and worsening environmental injustices.As floods, fires, heatwaves, and other calamities tied to climate change intensify, households pay the price with higher costs and worsening environmental... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Meta is rolling out a way for you to delete your Threads profile without having to delete your Instagram account, too. You'll be able to access the new feature from the settings menu in a new Delete or Deactivate Profile" section, according to a post from Instagram boss Adam Mosseri. I don't have the feature yet myself, but I suspect Meta will make it available to everyone soon enough.This new ability to delete just your Threads profile addresses an early complaint with the app, which currently requires that you sign up with an Instagram account. However, shortly after the app's launch, Mosseri said the company was looking into" a way to be able to delete a Threads account on its own. (And if you don't want to permanently delete your... Continue reading...

Image: Adult Swim Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon and executive producer Scott Marder say that being in a healthier space personally is a big part of what's making the new season so sharp. Continue reading...

There is no calling shotgun in this truck because there are no seats for humans. | Image: Einride The Swedish autonomous trucking company Einride is using its cab-less electric delivery vehicles in Selmer, Tennessee, to move items from GE Appliances' manufacturing plant to a warehouse. This operation can run up to seven shuttles per day, Monday through Thursday, the press release states. In an email to The Verge, a PR representative for Einride, Matthew Klein, wrote that the distance for each trip is 0.3 miles (or 0.48km) and is all on private roads owned by GE.Einride first ran controlled operations at GE's Appliance Park headquarters in 2021. Later, the company moved on to a public road test with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approval in 2022, the first public road pilot in the US for a purpose built autonomous,... Continue reading...