The Verge

Image: Cadillac Cadillac has a new convertible concept EV that's longer than some SUVs, has giant pillar-to-pillar infotainment screens, and can keep you cool for the summer with a refrigerator in the back seat.It's called the Sollei, and it's a new electric vehicle concept that looks like a convertible version of Cadillac's bespoke Celestiq" - the automaker's answer to exclusive luxury vehicles like the Rolls-Royce. The new vehicle converts the $340,000 full-size electric sedan into a manilla cream" coupe that tries to evoke the sun with ray patterns emanating from the center of every seat and from the wooden panels on the back of them.The Sollei was shown off at the Cadillac House at Vanderbilt in Warren, Michigan - the same place high-rolling... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amazon's Prime Video is fixing one of the most frustrating things about its interface. Its redesigned UI comes with a new tab dedicated to all the content included with your Prime Video subscription - no paid movies or series mixed in.You'll find the new Prime" tab in the main navigation bar that's now situated at the top of the screen, rather than on the left side. Alongside options for movies, TV shows, sports, and live TV, there are tabs dedicated to other services you're subscribed to, such as Max, Crunchyroll, and Paramount Plus. If you don't have any services linked to Prime, you'll see a subscriptions" tab with other services you can sign up for. GIF: Amazon The redesign, which has started to roll out now,... Continue reading...

The Roomba Combo 10 Max is the company's first robot vacuum with a charging dock that can wash the bot's mop as well as empty its bin and refill its mopping tank. | Imge: iRobot The Roomba Combo 10 Max is a new robot vacuum and mop from iRobot that can wash its mop, empty its bin, and refill its mopping tank - meaning less manual labor on your part. The company's new flagship robot vacuum will also be its first to support the smart home standard Matter. The vacuum is available for preorder starting today at irobot.com for $1,399.99, and in the UK for 1,499 and Europe for 1,499. Shipping starts in August, when it will also come to other retailers.Building on the Roomba Combo j9 Plus' retractable mopping system that picks itself up when it vacuums carpet, the Roomba Combo 10 Max robot and Auto Wash Dock is the company's first robot vac with a fully multifunction charging dock. In addition to emptying the... Continue reading...

Apparently AI-generated artwork that was first used to promote California Forever's city. | Image: California Forever California Forever tech billionaire-backed plan to build a new city 60 miles away from San Francisco is on hold for at least two years, pending an environmental impact study, reports The New York Times.Last year, the Times reported that a group of Silicon Valley investors (including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Andreessen Horowitz investors Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs) had secretly bought up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of farmland in Solano County to build their own city.With former Goldman Sachs trader named Jan Sramek spearheading the project, it filed for permission to develop the land only months after its plans became known. A... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz was called to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee over the major outage affecting Windows PCs spurred by a faulty update that brought flights, hospital procedures, and broadcasters to a halt on Friday, The Washington Post reported.Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking," Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-TN) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) wrote in a letter later shared with The Verge. They asked that CrowdStrike schedule a hearing with the subcommittee by end... Continue reading...

Along with being an excellent fitness tracker, Amazfit's GTR 4 is a good smartwatch with a sharp OLED display. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge From the Apple Watch Series 9 to Samsung's Galaxy Watch 6, many of the best wearables on the market received steep discounts during Prime Day. While those deals have since disappeared, those who missed out now have the opportunity to score an excellent deal on the Amazfit GTR 4, our favorite fitness tracker and the best budget Android watch on the market. If you're a My Best Buy Plus member, you can buy the smartwatch on sale for $139.99 at Amazon and Best Buy, which marks a new all-time low from its regular price of $199.99.For its price, the GTR 4 offers an impressive number of features. It does a good job of tracking all kinds of health and fitness metrics, from heart, sleep, and stress to your menstrual cycle, while boasting over... Continue reading...

Image: Hugo J. Herrera for The Verge If you can't tell the difference between AGI and RAG, don't worry - we're here for you. Continue reading...

Apple's illustrious original programming may face tighter budgets. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is known to spend billions of dollars on its Hollywood projects, but that could be set to change following production losses across the wider streaming industry. According to Bloomberg, Apple's senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, is pushing studio chiefs Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht to oversee project budgets more closely in a bid to make its Apple TV Plus streaming business more sustainable.Apple invests heavily in individual projects compared to larger streaming companies like Netflix, having spent over $500 million on movies from directors Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), Ridley Scott (Napoleon), and Matthew Vaughn (Argylle). While its original projects get plenty of attention during award seasons, B... Continue reading...

A Mac app for true notch-heads. | Image: NotchNook There's a new app for Macs called NotchNook that transforms the notch on your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro into, basically, the iPhone's Dynamic Island. And after using it for a day, I'm not sure I can do without it.Just like the Dynamic Island, NotchNook expands out from the notch, revealing a Nook" with basic media controls (sort of like Live Activities in iOS) and other customizable widgets. Then there's a Tray" tab that you can drop files or apps into; it's similar to the macOS dock, except that the tray empties when you quit NotchNook. GIF: NotchNook NotchNook made my MacBook Air's notch useful. You access this by clicking on a tab that blends in with the notch, or by swiping downward on your trackpad... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images Joe Biden and Donald Trump were expected to face off on Tuesday, November 5th. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The CrowdStrike outage that hit millions of Windows machines on Friday has left IT workers scrambling to get their organizations' computer infrastructure back up and running. Images and stories shared online are illustrating just how tedious and overwhelming this task is.Microsoft and CrowdStrike don't have a way to push a fix for the issue to crashed computers. And in many cases, systems administrators can't repair the machines remotely, either. That leaves them working in person to do things like use a Microsoft-created tool on a USB drive, delete a specific file while in Safe Mode, or restart affected computers over and over again, hoping an update comes through.And these things must be done for every individual computer affected.... Continue reading...

Image: Samar Haddad for The Verge On the infinite list of possible uses for AI, getting selfie advice from a Kylie Jenner voice clone" seems both completely off-the-wall and also pretty inevitable. So of course it does exist. It's not a widely-available app, at least not yet; it's an experiment from artist and programmer Dries Depoorter.With access to a couple of APIs from OpenAI and ElevenLabs, and a little knowledge of Python, you too can up your selfie game. The app will take a photo through your webcam, then feed it to ChatGPT with a prompt asking for funny advice in the voice of Ms. Jenner. The text output is then passed to an ElevenLabs voice clone of the selfie maven, and out pops the advice:Ok, love the candid vibe, but let's add some drama. Turn towards the... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge CrowdStrike has published a new Remediation and Guidance Hub" that collects details related to its faulty update that crashed 8.5 million Windows computers across the globe on Friday.The page includes technical information on what caused the outage, what systems are affected, and CEO George Kurtz's statement. It contains links to Bitlocker key recovery processes and to various third-party vendor pages about dealing with the outage, as well.The page points to a knowledge base article (which only logged-in customers can access) for using a bootable USB key. Microsoft released such a tool yesterday that automatically deletes the problematic channel file that caused machines to blue screen.CrowdStrike also published a blog yesterday... Continue reading...

The Suunto Sonic (left) and Wing give Shokz some real competition. Usually, I'm all about the bass for workout headphones, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Suunto Sonic and Wing. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft has released a recovery tool that's designed to help IT admins repair Windows machines that were impacted by CrowdStrike's faulty update that crashed 8.5 million Windows devices on Friday. The tool creates a bootable USB drive that IT admins can use to help quickly recover impacted machines.While CrowdStrike has issued an update to fix its software that led to millions of Blue Screen of Death errors, not all machines are able to automatically receive that fix. Some IT admins have reported rebooting PCs multiple times will get the necessary update, but for others the only route is having to manually boot into Safe Mode and deleting the problematic CrowdStrike update file.Microsoft's recovery tool now makes this recovery... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge There are going to be times when you've only got one hand free to use your phone. You may be walking the dog, carrying groceries, hanging on to a subway pole, or you just don't have another hand available. But with just about every modern phone sporting a screen at least six inches corner to corner, using one hand to work your phone could be a difficult balancing act.Luckily, both Android and iOS phones come with integrated features to make one-handed phone use less tricky. There are also some helpful options inside individual apps you can turn to.Methods for Android phonesOne-handed modeAndroid has a dedicated one-handed mode that lets you shrink any app down to the bottom half of the screen to make it easier to reach. The way to... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge CrowdStrike's faulty update caused a worldwide tech disaster that affected 8.5 million Windows devices on Friday, according to Microsoft. Microsoft says that's less than one percent of all Windows machines," but it was enough to create problems for retailers, banks, airlines, and many other industries, as well as everyone who relies on them.Separately, the technical breakdown from CrowdStrike released Friday explains more about what happened and why so many systems were affected all at once.CrowdStrike's breakdown explains the configuration file that was at the heart of the issue:

Image: Capcom Despite its confusing trailers, Kunitsu-Gami is a highly stylized and pleasantly challenging maiden defense' game. Continue reading...

Image: Happiest Baby The Snoo, a very expensive but widely regarded smart bassinet, now has some of the best features of its app locked behind a new $19.99 monthly premium subscription. The change, which went into effect this week, has infuriated many Snoo owners, as the subscription puts some previously free features that new parents rely on behind a pricey paywall.A bunch of threads in the Snoo subreddit have exploded with complaints since the plan was announced last month. Wild choice," wrote one user. It's actually disgusting to take advantage of parents who are just trying to get their kids to sleep and already paying a large sum for the pleasure of something that a) may not work, b) can only be used for a short period before becoming useless, c)... Continue reading...

Image: Bethesda Game Studios More than 200 developers at Bethesda Game Studios, the studio behind hit franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, have unionized with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). 241 workers, including artists, engineers, programmers and designers," have signed union authorization cards or indicated that they wanted union representation via an online portal," according to a CWA press release.Microsoft has recognized the union, the CWA says; the company has already recognized unions formed by Activision QA workers and ZeniMax Studios QA workers. The CWA describes this as the first wall-to-wall union at a Microsoft video game studio," meaning that all eligible job titles will be represented by the CWA instead of just one type of... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Police in the UK have arrested a 17-year-old boy in connection with last year's cyberattack on MGM Resorts, as reported by the BBC and 404 Media. With the help of the FBI and the UK's National Crime Agency, the West Midlands Police took the teen into custody on Friday on suspicion of violating the UK's laws on hacking and blackmail.The West Midlands Police say the suspect has been released on bail while the department investigates. It will also perform a forensic examination on a number of digital devices" recovered from the teen's address in Walsall, England.