The Verge - All Posts

Mayor Eric Adams during a press conference at City Hall Blue Room on Tuesday, October 10th, 2023. | Photo by Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Daily News via Getty Images Thanks to artificial intelligence tools, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has sent a barrage of robocalls to residents in languages he doesn't speak.That includes thousands" of robocalls in Spanish, more than 250 in Yiddish, more than 160 in Mandarin, 89 in Cantonese, and 23 in Haitian Creole, The City reports. That's triggered pushback over how ethical it is for Adams to portray himself to potential voters as someone who speaks their native language when he actually doesn't.This is deeply unethical, especially on the taxpayer's dime. Using AI to convince New Yorkers that he speaks languages that he doesn't is deeply Orwellian," Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), said in a s... Continue reading...

EHang executives accept certification for the EHang 216-S. | Image: EHang Holdings Life is amazing in 2023 - we have tiny computers with amazing cameras in our pockets; massive, dirt-cheap (or free!) TVs; cars that (sort of) drive themselves - but where are our flying cars and jet packs? The flying cars are at least in China, or that's where they'll get their first real commercial flights, anyway. EHang Holdings said last week that the government there issued it a certification to start actual passenger trials in the country.The company will be allowed to take passengers on aerial tours, which Bloomberg reported it will offer through local partnerships in Xinjiang province and Shenzen. The type certificate," issued by CAAC, China's aviation authority, signifies that its E216-S air taxi fully complies with CAAC's... Continue reading...

Image: Snap It might've taken a few years, but now Snapchat will finally let you embed the videos, lenses, and stories from its platform onto the web. While Snapchat previously didn't allow users to embed videos due to the fleeting (and often private) nature of its posts, giving users this ability is another sign that it's trying to bolster its shortform video feed - Spotlight - to compete with TikTok and Instagram.That means you might come across playable content from Snapchat when scrolling through a website or reading an article online. Snapchat shows how this might look in its announcement of the feature, which contains an embedded lens and a spotlight video. You can click to view any embedded videos directly from the webpage you're on, as well... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge New York Times journalist Kashmir Hill comes on Decoder to discuss her new book, Your Face Belongs to Us, and what the spread of facial recognition technology means for the future of privacy. Continue reading...

With a traveler-friendly design and superb comfort, Bose's latest flagship headphones right the course after the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 - but they don't come cheap. Continue reading...

Workers erect a steel tower at the 220kV line project in Jiangsu Province, China, on October 16th, 2023. | Photo by Costfoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images Governments and utilities need to add or replace the equivalent of virtually all the world's power grids by 2040 to reliably keep the lights on while cleaning up pollution from the power sector. That's 80 million kilometers (nearly 50 million miles) of infrastructure that needs a major upgrade, according to a first-of-its-kind report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) today.Without that overhaul, countries risk missing their climate goals and worsening climate-related disasters like storms and fires that are already walloping power grids. Today's aging grids are often teetering on the edge of power shortages, something that could become an even bigger problem as homes, buildings, and transportation go all-electric.We... Continue reading...

The latest version of Samsung's 32-inch The Frame can turn itself off to conserve power like larger models. | Image: Samsung Halloween hasn't even arrived yet, but holiday sales are already starting to pop up everywhere. Best Buy and Target held their own last week to rival Amazon's fall Prime Day, and now, it's eBay's turn. Right now, eBay is taking 20 percent off select items as part of its Holiday Head Start Sale" through 11:59PM PT on October 22nd when you apply offer code HEADSTART at checkout.All kinds of items are on sale, including the very well-specced 17-inch LG Gram 17 laptop, which is $839.99 ($660 off), while refurbished headphones like Bose's QuietComfort 45 and QuietComfort II are just $159.20. One of the better deals available, however, is on Samsung's latest 32-inch The Frame TV, which is down to an all-time low of $478.39 ($119.60 off) via... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple has announced a cheaper Apple Pencil that comes with USB-C. The iPad accessory will cost $79 and comes with a sliding cap that reveals the USB-C port. It also attaches magnetically to the side edge of an iPad - even the 10th-generation model Apple released last year.The cheaper price means that the Pencil doesn't come with some of the more advanced features as the first- and second-generation accessories. The device doesn't support pressure sensitivity, wireless pairing and charging, or the double-tap feature that lets you switch between tools. However, it still supports hover with M2 models of the iPad Pro. Image: Apple The first Apple Pencil model used a Lightning connector that jutted out of it to plug... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Some Pixel 6 users are reporting strange issues after updating their devices to the new Android 14 OS, which launched on October 4th for Pixel devices. One critical-sounding bug that seems to have spread to multiple users is losing access to internal storage, which ends up in a complete loss of data. Others seem to have other odd issues, like repeat UI launcher crashes. A Verge tipster pointed out the reports, which show a pattern of striking users with multiple user accounts set up on their devices.The original poster reports storage is full" errors once they rebooted following an overnight update to Android 14, while another commenter said they lost access to internal storage entirely. The Android 14 update launched officially last... Continue reading...

Image: Disney Gargoyles, one of Disney's weirdest and best '90s cartoon experiments, is coming back. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Gary Dauberman and James Wan, who also made the whole Annabelle series of scary movies, are adapting the series as a live-action show for Disney Plus.Dauberman will write, executive produce, and showrun the series. The series will presumably follow a similar path to the original cartoon, also available on Disney Plus. The cartoon aired from 1994 to 1997 and followed a clan of gargoyles cursed to live as stone. A thousand years pass, and when a billionaire moves them and their castle to his skyscraper in Manhattan, the gargoyles awaken, team up with a local detective, and begin protecting the city from... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple may have a surprise iPad update announcement in store for this week. 9to5Mac initially said it corroborated a report from Supercharged that Apple will announce spec bumps for three of its iPads - the base model, the iPad Air, and the iPad Mini. Meanwhile, other rumors say we won't get any new iPads, or there is an announcement but it's actually a new stylus, or that maybe there is a new version of the iPad getting announced on Tuesday after all.However, MacRumors points out that the Japanese blog Mac Otakara reports a more likely announcement is a third-generation Apple Pencil instead of new versions of the tablets. Since then, 9to5Mac said its sources indicate only something" iPad-related is landing this week.In a story Sunday... Continue reading...

Monday's puzzle was rough - I should have looked at the new hints first. | Image: The New York Times The New York Times will now offer daily hints for Connections, its delightful yet sometimes frustrating daily word game.In Connections, you're tasked with finding four sets of associations between 16 words. Each solution" groups four words together, but the groupings can be tough to figure out. (I only got one correct grouping on Monday's puzzle.) If you're stuck, the new Connections Companion offers a difficulty rating (Monday's was 3.5 out of 5, which I strongly disagree with) and hints you can use to get help without spoiling the entire puzzle.Here's how the hints work. The game's solutions are grouped by color as an indicator of that group's difficulty, though you'll only see these colors after you correctly assemble a group.... Continue reading...

Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images President Joe Biden's reelection campaign launched its own account on former President Donald Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday, as first reported by Fox News.Well. Let's see how this goes. Converts welcome!" the campaign wrote in its first post to the platform on Monday under the handle @BidenHQ.Well. Let's see how this goes. Converts welcome!"Speaking with Fox, the campaign said that it was joining the site in a bid to reach conservative voters and correct any mis and disinformation" related to the president on the platform. So far, the campaign has posted several clips of GOP primary candidates like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley attacking Trump on issues like the federal debt or his comments on the war in... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp users on Android can say goodbye to insecure and annoying SMS two-factor authentication. The Meta-owned company announced on X (formerly Twitter) that it's rolling out support for a passwordless passkey feature to all Android users. The new security option allows WhatsApp users to use their device's face, fingerprint, or pin security to unlock and access their accounts - following Google's lead when it began prompting users last week to create passkeys.Passkeys were previously being tested by WhatsApp in its beta channel, but it's now coming to regular users of the app on Android. We've reached out to Meta about iOS compatibility as well as other questions, but the company has not responded at this time.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of the worst tech labor years ever continues with the news that roughly half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off. Bandcamp employees are reporting the news via social media.

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge My phone is absolutely littered with messages. I have a mess of messaging apps: Messages, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, GroupMe, Google Chat, Discord, Slack, Messenger, and Snapchat. Then there are all the apps that aren't necessarily for messaging but still offer it as a feature, like LinkedIn and Instagram and X. Reddit and TikTok both can act like messaging platforms; I get messages through Tumblr sometimes; Skype is still sort of around.Chat is a core part of the modern internet experience, which is why everyone wants a piece: if you can build the app in which people talk to their friends, you've built the stickiest thing in tech. But in reality, all that competition means we spend our days endlessly checking inboxes and trying to... Continue reading...

Sega had their own console?"That was a devastating comment I heard as I sat playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on a Sega Genesis Mini at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo (PRGE) this weekend. The Sonic games on Genesis were my favorites as a kid; one time, I played so much Sonic that I peed my pants. How could this person not know about Sega consoles?Thankfully, the person's friend was more charitable than I would have been. He used it as a teaching opportunity and showed him the game he was playing. (And I realized later that the person may have been asking about mini consoles.)The whole event was filled with that wonderful spirit about sharing the joy of classic games and generally nerdy stuff. I saw four friends huddled around a classic X... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Time to gird your browsers, y'all - Wi-Fi is getting another upgrade very soon. That's right: about four years after Wi-Fi 6 debuted and two years after Wi-Fi 6E followed it up, Wi-Fi 7 is picking up the baton. And as someone who got his start reviewing routers, I am so tired.Okay, but seriously - Wi-Fi 7 could be an even bigger speed boost than Wi-Fi 6E was, thanks in part to the wide open spaces of the 6GHz band that 6E unlocked. It's also supposed to deploy other tricks for speeding things up and bring new ways to cut through interference and drop the latency of your network.Does all of that sound familiar? Probably because the big headlining features of both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E have been their interference-busting abilities and -... Continue reading...

Pokemon Go's latest set of features aren't quite the fixes that players have been begging Niantic for, but they will give trainers new ways to compete and team up as they dig into a spooky season of shadowy raids.After a little bit of teasing toward the end of last week, Niantic has officially announced the arrival of Pokemon Go's Party Play, a new feature that allows groups of four players to link up and explore together somewhat similar to the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Union Circle. After connecting using either an alphanumeric or QR code, Pokemon Go players (who must be in close physical proximity to one another and at level 15 at minimum) can form teams that receive significant power boosts when taking on raid bosses together.As... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games announced a new program on Monday to try and incentivize developers to bring their older games to the Epic Games Store. Under the new Now On Epic" program, Epic will give developers 100 percent of the net revenue from user spending" for six months on products offered through the program, according to a blog post. Typically, Epic offers 88 percent of revenues while keeping 12 percent for itself, and the revenue split will go back to that level after the six months are up.To be part of the program, developers must commit to releasing at least three games that have come out before October 31st, 2023, and are currently live on another third-party PC storefront (or are included in a third-party subscription service)."... Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images LinkedIn is laying off about 668 employees across various teams, the Microsoft-owned company announced on Monday.It's the second time LinkedIn has announced cuts this year; it laid off 716 employees in May, saying at the time that the move was meant to re-organize for greater agility and growth." This time, the cuts are about streamlining our decision making," according to LinkedIn's statement. Microsoft has also announced multiple rounds of layoffs recently, including 10,000 positions it eliminated at the start of this year.LinkedIn, for its part, is growing. Its revenue surpassed $15 billion for the first time the last fiscal year. And there have been numerous headlines recently about its resurgence. Take, for example, this story... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google responded to congressional child online safety proposals with its own counteroffer for the first time Monday, urging lawmakers to drop problematic protections like age-verification tech.In a blog post, Google released its Legislative Framework to Protect Children and Teens Online." The framework comes as more lawmakers, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), are lining up behind the Kids Online Safety Act, a controversial bill intended to protect kids from dangerous content online.In the framework, Google rejects state and federal attempts at requiring platforms to verify the age of users, like forcing users to upload copies of their government IDs to access an online service. Some states have recently gone as far as passing laws... Continue reading...

Image: Analogue Analogue, the company best known for modern takes on retro hardware, is turning its attention to the 64-bit era with the Analogue 3D, a reimagining of the Nintendo 64. The company says the new console will have 100 percent compatibility" with N64 cartridges in every region and will even support 4K output. It will also include Original Display Modes featuring reference quality recreations of specific model CRTs and PVMs" for the purists out there, along with Bluetooth support and four controller ports.Today's announcement is mostly a tease. While we have some details, there's no word on price or a specific release date beyond 2024. Analogue isn't even showing the hardware yet - right now, we just have these brief glimpses of what... Continue reading...

The Roborock S7 may be a last-gen model, but it's still a great hybrid robovac that's now more affordable. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Even with last week's Amazon Prime Day behind us, it remains a pretty good time to buy a robot vacuum - especially if you'd like one that can mop your floors. The last-gen Roborock S7 hybrid robovac is currently selling for $359.99 ($290 off) at Amazon and direct from Roborock. This matches last week's Prime Day price and the bot's all-time low. The S7 may have been outdated by the newer S8 model, but it's still a formidable vacuum that maps your home using lidar and automatically switches between vacuuming and mopping.However, if you want the latest and greatest, the Roborock S8 is also on sale for $599.99 ($150 off) at Roborock and Best Buy (when added to your cart). The newer S8 gets an upgrade in the brush department and now has... Continue reading...

Photo by Christian Petersen / Getty Images Pete Hines, the head of publishing at Bethesda, is retiring after 24 years at the gaming company. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Hines announced that his time at Bethesda has come to an end." Hines first joined Bethesda in 1999 as the senior vice president of global marketing and communications, becoming a well-known figure at the company and the face of Fallout. Last year, Hines became Bethesda's head of publishing.Bethesda has seen some major shifts over the past couple of years. Microsoft completed its acquisition of the Skyrim developer in 2021. In August, Bethesda released the space exploration RPG Starfield following the rocky launch of Redfall in May.

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks to an employee at a solar farm in Hanstholm, Denmark. | Photo by Christoph Dernbach / picture alliance via Getty Images A new report compares climate initiatives by Apple, Dell, Google, HP, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Apple's far from perfect, but so far, it's ahead of the pack, according to today's report.It's the only company among the six tech giants that has set targets for its suppliers to switch to renewable energy. Other brands need to send similarly clear signals to their suppliers," Gary Cook, global climate policy director for the nonprofit Stand.earth that published the report, said in a press release.To be sure, a completely separate report published by a different environmental group last week casts some doubt on Apple's recent carbon neutral claims. Stand.earth's new report, however, puts Apple's broader climate initiatives in perspective by... Continue reading...

Laker legend-turned-actor Rick Fox has a new passion: sustainable concrete. | Image: Partanna A new house in the Bahamas is built with an alternative concrete that sucks CO2 out of the air. It's a home that's supposed to help in the fight against climate change, and the plan is to build 999 more like it.That's the slam dunk NBA Lakers legend-turned-actor Rick Fox is working toward now on the small island nation where he grew up. Fox is the CEO and co-founder of the sustainable building materials startup Partanna that unveiled its first home today. If they're successful in the Bahamas, the goal is to make its alternative concrete an everyday building material that could cut down pollution from construction.I shut down my entire career that was in Hollywood to pursue and create [climate] solutions," Fox tells The Verge. I had... Continue reading...

Image: Mojang Minecraft already has the distinction of being the bestselling video game of all time. Today, it adds more down to that particular feather in its cap with the announcement that it has sold a staggering 300 million copies.As we approach the 15th anniversary, Minecraft remains one of the best-selling games of all time, with over 300 million copies sold, a milestone no one could have dreamed of when we were all placing our first blocks," Helen Chiang, head of Mojang Studios, said in a statement.The new milestone was announced during Minecraft Live 2023, a Minecraft livestream event that shares news and community updates and features a neat voting event in which players can vote on which new creature should be added to the game. This... Continue reading...

Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg today that the more affordable follow-up to the Apple Vision Pro will likely" ditch the external display to help it reach an internally-discussed price point between $1,500 and $2.500. Gurman also reiterates what he wrote in June - that the more affordable version will probably run on an iPhone-grade chip, have fewer cameras, and get lower-resolution screens inside.Ditching the external display means Apple would lock one of the Vision Pro's marquee features - EyeSight - behind the paywall of the more expensive versions. EyeSight is the thing that lets you see an on-the-fly render of the wearer's eyes so they can look" at you when you're talking to them, and so you can tell,... Continue reading...

Illustration: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 10, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, hooray! I'm so happy you're here, and also, you can catch up on all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) We made it through 10 weeks! It's been so fun to make this every week and to talk to you all about the cool stuff you're into. Thanks for being part of the Installerverse (we're gonna make that a thing, it's gonna happen), and as always, tell me everything you think we can do to make it better!This week, I've been reading about Marvel's plan to fix its TV shows and all the wild testimony from the Sam Bankman-Fried trial, making lots of deranged art in the improved Bing Chat, watching the David Beckham... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Caltech has had some ups (winning $1.1 billion) and some downs (losing the $1.1 billion award and being ordered to a trial on damages) since suing Apple and Broadcom in 2016 over Wi-Fi patents. Reuters reported this week that Caltech is dropping its yearslong lawsuit against Apple and Broadcom, about two months after the companies came to a potential settlement."Caltech wrote in a filing with a US District Court in California that it would drop its claims with prejudice," meaning it can't refile its case, and asked that Broadcom do so as well, stating later that Broadcom does not oppose this request." Caltech also writes that it will dismiss its claims against Apple - again, with prejudice."The filing then says that Caltech... Continue reading...

Counter-Strike 2 players could get unceremoniously banned for using Anti-Lag Plus. | Image: Valve Counter-Strike 2 developers strongly warned players in a post that they'll be banned if they turn on AMD's Anti-Lag feature for CS2. According to the post, the features from the most recent driver updates are implemented by detouring engine dll functions," adding that when AMD updates the drivers, the team will work on identifying affected users and reversing their ban."AMD added support for Anti-Lag Plus in CS2 in the Adrenaline Edition version 23.30.1 driver. The feature is exclusive to Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs, so older hardware shouldn't be affected. We emailed AMD for a statement on the issue. Engadget notes that you can disable the feature by pressing Alt+L, and points out that you can verify the hotkey assignment in AMD... Continue reading...

The Verge CNBC reports that the National Labor Relations Board alleged, in a complaint filed Friday, that X violated labor law when it fired an employee who criticized the company. Elon Musk bought the company, then known as Twitter, in October and threatened to fire workers who didn't return to in-person office work. After Yao Yue encouraged others in the company's Slack to let the company fire them instead of quitting, she was fired for breaking an unspecified company policy.CNBC writes that in the complaint, the NLRB accuses X of keeping workers at the company from exercising their legal labor rights. Yue alleges the company laid her off in retaliation for her attempt to organize her co-workers not to resign, so they would have better legal... Continue reading...