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by Tom Warren on (#6MZ9C)
Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft launched a range of Copilot Plus PCs yesterday that includes new AI features built directly into Windows 11. Behind the scenes, the company now has more than 40 AI models running on Windows 11 thanks to a new Windows Copilot Runtime that will also allow developers to use these models for their apps.At Microsoft Build today, the company is providing a lot more details about exactly how this Windows Copilot Runtime works. The runtime includes a library of APIs that developers can tap into for their own apps, with AI frameworks and toolchains that are designed for developers to ship their own on-device models on Windows.Windows Copilot Library consists of ready-to-use AI APIs like Studio Effects, Live Captions Translations,... Continue reading...
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The Verge
Link | https://www.theverge.com/ |
Feed | http://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml |
Updated | 2025-07-10 11:45 |
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by Sheena Vasani on (#6MZ9D)
The stylish Sonos Ace come in black and white. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge At long last, the eagerly anticipated Sonos Ace have arrived. On Tuesday, the company announced that its first pair of wireless headphones will be available on June 5th. Even better, you can already preorder them ahead of launch for $449.We're still testing the Sonos Ace, but in our limited time playing around with them during a recent demo session, we came away impressed. The plush noise-canceling headphones are exceptionally comfortable to wear, with magnetic ear pads made of vegan leather and a memory foam headband. Plus, if you own a Sonos soundbar, you can quickly transfer TV audio from the soundbar to the headphones with a push of a button, allowing for a more immersive audio experience nobody else can hear.Of course, we have... Continue reading...
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6MZ9E)
Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Like parent company Disney, Pixar is now laying off employees as part of Bob Iger's big plan to get the company's spending under control.According to Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter, Pixar is laying off 175 staffers - 14 percent of its workforce - as it shifts its focus back to projects meant for theatrical rather than streaming releases. These layoffs come months after Disney began dismissing employees by the thousands in an effort to reduce spending by around $5.5 billion. Though Pixar was never guaranteed to be shielded from the layoffs, it was able to avoid them last year due to production schedules that were already in place at the time.In a memo sent to staff on Tuesday, Pixar president Jim Morris stressed that the... Continue reading...
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by Emma Roth on (#6MZ9F)
Illustration: The Verge Google only just rolled out AI summaries in search results - and now they're getting ads. In an update on Tuesday, Google says it will soon start testing search and shopping ads within AI Overviews for users in the US.In the example shared by Google, the search engine's AI overview lists a response to the question: how do I get wrinkles out of clothes?" Beneath the AI-generated suggestions, there's a new Sponsored" section with a carousel showing wrinkle spray you can buy from places like Walmart and Instacart. GIF: Google Google says it will display ads in AI Overviews when they're relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview." Advertisers that already run certain campaigns through Google... Continue reading...
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by Andrew Webster on (#6MZ9G)
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge It seems no industry is safe from consolidation, and the latest target is gaming media. IGN Entertainment has acquired the website portfolio of UK publisher Gamer Network, which operates a number of beloved games-focused publications. That list includes Gamesindustry.biz, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, and the tabletop site Dicebreaker. The network also holds shares in sites like Nintendo Life and Digital Foundry.Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gamesindustry.biz reports that some redundancies" have been made across the sites, though it's not clear how many workers have been impacted. According to several posts on X, editors at both Rock Paper Shotgun and Gamesindustry.biz have been laid off. IGN Entertainment is owned by... Continue reading...
by Sean Hollister on (#6MZ9H)
The Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows in a transparent shell; most if not all units will be black. | Image: Qualcomm Excited for an era of long-lasting powerful Windows laptops with Arm chips and 45 TOPS for AI but would rather pay less and plug into the wall? Qualcomm has just revealed a Mac Mini-esque box that's ostensibly just for developers.The new $899.99 Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows" houses the most powerful of Qualcomm's lineup of Snapdragon X Elite chips - the one with the 4.6 TFLOP GPU - as well as 32GB of LPDDR5x RAM, 512GB of NVMe storage, and lots of ports, all within roughly the same volume as Apple's mini desktop. Image: Qualcomm Image: Qualcomm While the spec sheet unfortunately suggests the two-pound PC will only ship in black - not the transparent model at the top of this post - the eight-... Continue reading...
by Wes Davis on (#6MZ5S)
Image: Microsoft Microsoft's new Surface Laptop could be the most impressive laptop the company has ever made. It has a modern chassis with thin display bezels and a new Arm-based CPU that might just give Apple laptops a run for their money when it comes to performance. That's no mean feat, considering Apple's striking lead since 2020, but we won't know how it compares until we get a Surface Laptop in hand. That didn't stop me from diving deep on their specs to see how they compare on paper.Before we get to the real nitty-gritty, let's take a look at some of the most obvious differences you'll see between the Surface Laptop and the MacBook Air.What's it gonna cost you?The M3 MacBook Air starts at $1,099 for an 8GB model, which already puts it at a... Continue reading...
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by Richard Lawler on (#6MZ5Y)
Image: The Verge Expect a bunch of new developer tools to go along with Microsoft's fresh Copilot Plus PCs announcement. Continue reading...
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6MZ5X)
Microsoft is adding custom emoji to Teams. | Image: The Verge Microsoft is adding a new feature to its Teams communications platform that enables users to upload their own custom emoji to use in reactions and messages. Announced during its Build developer conference on Tuesday, Microsoft says the new custom emoji will be available to try next month via the Teams public preview, with the goal of helping Teams users collaborate and express themselves more creatively and authentically."IT admins for businesses that use Teams will have the ability to limit which users can upload or delete custom emoji, or they can turn the feature off entirely. Once custom emoji are uploaded into Teams, they'll only be visible within the same organization domain. Microsoft says that general availability for custom... Continue reading...
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by Emma Roth on (#6MZ5W)
Image: The Verge Microsoft Edge will soon offer real-time video translation on sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Coursera, and more. As part of this year's Build event, Microsoft announced that the new AI-powered feature will be able to translate spoken content through both dubbing and subtitles live as you're watching it.So far, the feature supports the translation of Spanish into English as well as the translation of English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. In addition to offering a neat way to translate videos into a user's native tongue, Edge's new AI feature should also make videos more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.Edge will also support real-time translation for videos on news sites such as Reuters, CNBC, and B... Continue reading...
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by Emilia David on (#6MZ5V)
Illustration: The Verge Microsoft announced a new version of its small language model, Phi-3, which can look at images and tell you what's in them.Phi-3-vision is a multimodal model - aka it can read both text and images - and is best used on mobile devices. Microsoft says Phi-3-vision, now available on preview, is a 4.2 billion parameter model (parameters refer to how complex a model is and how much of its training it understands) that can do general visual reasoning tasks like asking questions about charts or images.But Phi-3-vision is far smaller than other image-focused AI models like OpenAI's DALL-E or Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. Unlike those models, Phi-3-vision doesn't generate images, but it can understand what's in an image and analyze it for a... Continue reading...
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by Tom Warren on (#6MZ5T)
Image: The Verge Microsoft will soon allow businesses and developers to build AI-powered Copilots that can work like virtual employees and perform tasks automatically. Instead of Copilot sitting idle waiting for queries, it will be able to do things like monitor email inboxes and automate a series of tasks or data entry that employees normally have to do manually.It's a big change in the behavior of Copilot in what the industry commonly calls AI agents, or the ability for chatbots to intelligently perform complex tasks autonomously.We very quickly realized that constraining Copilot to just being conversational was extremely limiting in what Copilot can do today," explains Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president of business apps and platforms at... Continue reading...
by Ash Parrish on (#6MZ5Z)
Image: Bandai Namco With only a month until release day, there's a new story trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree, and the Elden Ring lore hounds have their work cut out for them.FromSoftware has been slowly teasing Shadow of the Erdtree and its story beats ever since the gameplay trailer was released back in February. All we knew then was the DLC would take place in the Land of Shadow and feature a bunch of new horrors straight from the slightly warped imagination of game director Hidetaka Miyazaki.This new Land of Shadow was connected somehow to Miquella - the dude in the egg with the withered arm. The trailer mentions him prominently, giving the impression we'll learn more about him, his connection to the Land of Shadow, and what events led him to abandon... Continue reading...
by Emma Roth on (#6MZ60)
Image: Comcast Get ready for yet another streaming bundle: Comcast is launching a new $15 per month subscription that combines Netflix, Apple TV Plus, and Peacock. The StreamSaver" bundle will be available to Xfinity Internet and TV customers on May 29th - and it offers monthly savings of around $8.If you do subscribe, expect to sit through some commercials, as the bundle includes Netflix's ad-supported plan ($6.99 / month), Peacock's ad-supported Premium plan ($5.99 / month), and Apple TV Plus, which is ad-free by default ($9.99 / month). Variety first reported on rumors of the bundle last week.Comcast is also bundling its bundle with its $20 per month Now TV service, which offers over 40 live TV channels and comes with a Peacock Premium... Continue reading...
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6MZ2V)
Photo by Monica Schipper / Getty Images for IMDb To understand Jane Schoenbrun and their new film, I Saw the TV Glow, you have to appreciate how Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolved in its second season. Continue reading...
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by Tauriq Moosa on (#6MZ2W)
Image: Xbox Traversing the nightmare realms of the human mind has always been central to horror. The stories we tell ourselves about what's moving in the darkness, the creation of monsters out of unknown sounds - from this emerges our fascination with terror. In Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, players navigate a cold, dark ninth-century Iceland in the often wet shoes of the Pictish warrior Senua on her second adventure in the third-person action-horror franchise. I was very fond of the first Hellblade, which saw Senua journey into Hel to save the soul of her lover. But the sequel pulled me in even further, with some of the most unforgettable and unsettling psychological horror I've ever experienced.Senua, who lives with psychosis that causes her to... Continue reading...
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by David Pierce on (#6MZ2X)
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge We've heard the story so many times, that this is the time that Windows on Arm will work and we'll get a revolution in powerful, portable, long-lasting PCs. For a decade, the story has been fiction. This time, though... I don't know. It sort of seems real.On this episode of The Vergecast, Tom Warren joins from Seattle to tell us all about Microsoft's latest event, what a Copilot Plus PC is, how the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop feel, why Recall could be the AI killer app Microsoft needs, and more. If Microsoft is right about how good the Qualcomm X chips are, this could be one of the biggest weeks in Windows history. Don't forget to subscribe to Notepad!After that, Kylie Robison comes on the show to talk about all things OpenAI.... Continue reading...
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6MZ30)
Adobe is adding more mobile app-like AI editing tools to Lightroom. | Image: Adobe Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to Lightroom that aim to make the photo editing platform easier to use for both professional creatives and inexperienced users alike, even from a phone. These include an in-development object removal feature that's rolling out in beta and new AI lens-blurring effects that are now generally available to all Lightroom users.Generative Remove" - powered by the company's Firefly AI model - is now available to try in early access across Lightroom's mobile, web, and desktop apps. Described as Lightroom's most powerful remove tool yet," the feature allows users to paint" over unwanted objects or people in images and then delete them with a click of a button.It's pretty similar to the Magic... Continue reading...
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by Chris Welch on (#6MZ2Z)
Image: Sonos Sonos is refreshing its small portable speaker, the Roam, with a second-generation model that mostly adds some minor quality-of-life improvements. It's reasonable to think of the new Roam 2, available today for $199, as more of a Roam 1.5: this is really what Sonos should've released in the first place.As I reported earlier this month, the Roam 2 can be used right out of the box like any other Bluetooth speaker. That differs from the original, which awkwardly required an initial setup process with the Sonos app - on your home Wi-Fi network, no less - before you could use it on the go. Seems silly for a portable audio product, right? Thankfully Sonos now agrees.The Roam 2 also gains a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button on the back,... Continue reading...
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by Chris Welch on (#6MZ2Y)
The company's app redesign fumble threatens to steal the thunder from what otherwise looks (and feels) like a strong debut in a new category. Continue reading...
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by Thomas Ricker on (#6MYXK)
The Aqara Wall Outlet H2 can trigger scenes based upon real-time power usage. | Image: Aqara Aqara just announced the 39.99 Wall Outlet H2, which offers a one-for-one smart replacement for standard 16A wall sockets used in Europe. Its party trick is the ability to monitor the real-time power usage of connected devices and appliances to initiate automations around the home.For example, if you charge your phone when going to sleep you could automatically activate a nighttime scene - arm motion detectors, lock the door, close blinds, and turn off lights - just as soon as the H2 begins pulling more than 10W of power. Or, it can detect when the laundry cycle ends to shut the machine off and send you a notification - that way you don't have to listen to it beep incessantly until you finally walk upstairs with heavy regret for having... Continue reading...
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by Jacob Kastrenakes on (#6MYN1)
Photo by Nathan Congleton / NBC via Getty Images Scarlett Johansson says that OpenAI asked her to be the voice behind ChatGPT - but that when she declined, the company went ahead and created a voice that sounded just like her. In a statement shared to NPR, Johansson says that she has now been forced to hire legal counsel" and has sent two letters to OpenAI inquiring how the soundalike ChatGPT voice, known as Sky, was made.Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system," Johansson writes. She says that Altman contacted her agent as recently as two days before the company first demoed the ChatGPT voice asking for her to reconsider.
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by Andrew J. Hawkins on (#6MYPJ)
Image: Aurora Volvo revealed its first production-ready" self-driving truck that it's making with Aurora, the autonomous driving technology company founded by former executives from Google, Uber, and Tesla.The truck is based on Volvo's new VNL, which is a Class 8 semi truck built for long-haul transportation. The autonomous version of the truck features an array of sensors and cameras to power Aurora's Level 4 autonomous driving system, which enables the truck to operate without a human behind the wheel. The companies say the truck is purpose-designed and purpose-built" for Aurora's self-driving hardware and software stack.This truck is the first of our standardized global autonomous technology platform, which will enable us to introduce... Continue reading...
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by Ash Parrish on (#6MYN0)
Image: X / Belle Delphine Belle Delphine, the woman who went viral in 2019 for selling jars of her bathwater, revealed earlier this month that the stunt earned her $90K in profits. In a thread on X, the adult content creator and model also explained that because of PayPal, the payment processing system she used for the sale, she never saw a dime of that money.PayPal, without any warning closed my PayPal account and took the $90,000 that I earned from selling my bathwater," Belle Delphine wrote. Image: X / Belle Delphine Now, according to a report from Business Insider, PayPal has reversed this decision, with the company returning to Belle Delphine all the proceeds from the bathwater bonanza five years later.Mary-Belle Kirschner, known as... Continue reading...
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by Victoria Song on (#6MYJS)
Disclosure is part of a good privacy policy. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Earlier today, Apple issued a fix in iOS and iPadOS 17.5.1. Patching buggy software is a good, normal thing. But that's not the issue here. The issue is that the fix addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted" - and that's all Apple has to say about it.On iOS, deleted photos technically spend 30 days in the Recently Deleted folder before disappearing for good, but the intent to send a photo to digital oblivion is still there. A reasonable person would expect a deleted file to stay that way. That's why it's understandable that people freaked out last week when photos deleted years ago had suddenly reappeared in their iPhone photo library. ... Continue reading...
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by Emilia David on (#6MYJT)
Image: OpenAI OpenAI says it has been in touch with representatives for Scarlett Johansson after the company pulled one of the voices on ChatGPT for sounding too similar to the actress.We've been in conversations with ScarJo's team because there seems to be some confusion. We want to take the feedback seriously and hear out the concerns," says Joanne Jang, model behavior lead at OpenAI.Johansson has since responded with a statement of her own, saying, Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system... After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named Sky"... Continue reading...
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by Emma Roth on (#6MYJV)
Image: Intel Intel has revealed a release window for its Lunar Lake laptop processors. The new x86 chips will arrive in the third quarter of this year, and they're designed to enable the new AI experience in Copilot Plus PCs.Intel's announcement coincides with Microsoft's Surface and AI event, where Microsoft leaned on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips for Copilot Plus PCs that promise high performance and longer battery life. However, Intel claims its Lunar Lake processors are capable of 1.4 times faster performance in Stable Diffusion 1.5 compared to the Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite.The Lunar Lake chips will feature a CPU, an integrated Xe2 GPU, and a neural processing unit (NPU). Intel says the Lunar Lake processor offers three times... Continue reading...
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by Joanna Nelius on (#6MYGQ)
The Copilot Plus PCs announced during Microsoft's Surface event. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge In addition to the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, Microsoft announced a crop of Copilot Plus PCs from all the major OEMs. Here are all the Copilot Plus PCs announced at Microsoft's Surface event on Monday.Acer Swift 14 AINot to be confused with the other Swift 14 laptops with AI chips, the Swift 14 AI is the only one with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processor. This one comes with either the base 12-core Snapdragon X Elite chip or the 10-core X Plus chip and goes up to 32GB of memory and 1TB of M.2 SSD storage.Asus Vivobook S 15Asus is starting its Copilot PC adventure with its Vivobook S 15. It will have two Qualcomm processor options - the base 12-core Snapdragon X Elite and 10-core Snapdragon X Plus - and both options will... Continue reading...
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by Nathan Edwards on (#6MYGR)
Image: Samsung Microsoft announced a whole passel of Copilot Plus PCs at its Surface event on Monday, and Samsung's entries are a 14-inch laptop and two 16-inch ones, known collectively as the Galaxy Book4 Edge. If you preorder them today, Samsung will throw in a free 50-inch TV! Come on down!The 14-inch Galaxy Book4 Edge starts at $1,349.99 with a 12-core 3.4GHz Snapdragon X Elite processor with 4.0GHz Dual Core Boost, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD (up to 1TB). It has a 14-inch, 120Hz 2880 x 1800 AMOLED touchscreen capable of up to 500 nits brightness, with HDR and VRR and 120 percent of the P3 gamut. It has two USB 4 Type-C ports, HDMI 2.1, and a combo audio jack. It weighs 2.6 pounds. Image: Samsung That's pan-Galactic... Continue reading...
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by Quentyn Kennemer on (#6MYGS)
Microsoft's 13.8-inch Surface Laptop starts at a cool $999.99. | Image: Microsoft It feels like forever ago that we got new Surface laptops, but Microsoft has taken the wraps off a handful of 2024 refreshes at its hardware event on Monday. We're getting consumer-centric versions of the newest Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, both starting at $999.99 and launching June 18th. Microsoft calls the Copilot Plus PCs the most powerful Windows PCs ever built." They'll be first in line to benefit from Windows 11's next-gen AI features, which we expect to hear about during Microsoft's annual Build conference this week.Microsoft announced business-oriented versions of both laptops in March, each sporting an Intel Core Ultra CPU. The consumer versions come with Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon X chipsets, which have a dedicated... Continue reading...
by Sheena Vasani on (#6MYDY)
Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air currently starts at just $949.99. | Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Chris Welch Apple's new iPad Air and iPad Pro are impressive, but personally, I prefer laptops with built-in trackpads and keyboards for getting work done. If you feel the same way, the new M3-powered MacBook Air is our top pick for most people, and right now, you can buy the 13-inch base model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for an all-time low of $949.99 ($150 off) at Amazon. If you want a few extra years of service, you can also buy the higher-specced model at Amazon with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM for $1,349.99 ($150 off) when you clip the on-page coupon.Thanks to Apple's newer M3 chips, the 13-inch Air offers even better performance than its fantastic predecessor. It comes with a few minor upgrades that make it easier to use, too,... Continue reading...
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by Tom Warren on (#6MYDZ)
Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft has just announced a new Surface Pro, which is part of the new wave of Copilot Plus PCs. The new Pro, which is technically the 11th edition," starts at $999, comes in four colors, and is powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X processors. The base model comes with a 13-inch LCD screen, but you can upgrade to an OLED in some of the higher-end models. The chip is the star of the show here: it's what enables a lot of the AI features Microsoft touted onstage, what makes possible the 14-hour battery life Microsoft promises, and more.The basic silhouette of the hardware hasn't changed much, save for the new Flex Keyboard attachment. The tablet with an integrated kickstand has been a Surface staple for years now, and Microsoft... Continue reading...
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by Wes Davis on (#6MYE0)
Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge The Surface Laptop for non-business types is here, and Microsoft hopes that after four years of Apple Silicon, its new Arm-based Copilot Plus PC" has a shot at MacBooks.The sapphire and slightly pink dune color options are fetching in person, and the 13.8-inch screen size feels generous for the machine's small footprint. I spent a few minutes playing around with the new Recall feature, which lets you search for things you were looking at on your computer - whether they were in an email, on a website, or in a slide deck. AI-powered search helps you find the right information and presents it in a kind of everything-timeline so you can (hopefully) find the info you're after and see it in its context. Honestly, it looks like a super... Continue reading...
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by Tom Warren on (#6MYE1)
Image: Microsoft Microsoft is confident that it finally nailed the transition to Arm chips - so confident that, this time around, the company spent an entire day pitting its new hardware against the MacBook Air.On a recent morning at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft representatives set out new Surface devices equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips inside and compared them directly to Apple's category-leading laptop. I witnessed an hour of demos and benchmarks that started with Geekbench and Cinebench comparisons, then moved on to apps and compatibility.Benchmark tests usually aren't that exciting to watch. But a lot was at stake here: for years, the MacBook Air has been able to smoke Arm-powered PC chips - and Intel-based... Continue reading...
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by Emma Roth on (#6MYE2)
Image: Allison Johnson Microsoft just wrapped up its special event ahead of Build 2024, and it had a lot of exciting news to share. Along with updates to its Surface lineup, Microsoft made some major announcements related to AI and a new era of PCs in partnership with Lenovo, Asus, Dell, and others.Microsoft didn't livestream this event, so if you want to catch up with everything it revealed, check out our roundup below.The launch of Copilot Plus PCs Image: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed how Microsoft is bringing the AI wave to PCs," and that involves a new category of computers called Copilot Plus. These devices come with the Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors from Qualcomm and will later... Continue reading...
by Joanna Nelius on (#6MYE3)
Photo: Asus Following Microsoft's Windows event, Asus announced its first Copilot Plus PC laptop, the Vivobook S 15 (S5507), driven by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X-series processors. Asus says the Arm-based chip will not only improve a few current Vivobook features but also make new AI-driven programs and workloads fly with 45 TOPS of neural processing power.The new Vivobook S 15 will have the same OLED display as the previous Intel generation (15.6-inch, 16:9, 2880 x 1620, 120Hz refresh rate, and 600 nits peak HDR brightness), but this specific version will have a thinner chassis and display bezels. The S 15 is configurable with either a 12-core Snapdragon X Elite or 10-core X Plus processor, although the Elite chip will be the base version - the one... Continue reading...
by Richard Lawler on (#6MYE4)
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge iOS 17.5 arrived last week with one of the weirder problems we've seen - users reported that deleted photos on their iPhones and iPads were suddenly reappearing. Apple has refused requests to comment on the issue publicly, but on Monday afternoon it released iOS and iPadOS 17.5.1 updates to fix the problem.According to the notes, This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted." Screenshot: iPadOS The supposedly-deleted photos popping to the top of user's recent" photos included nude pictures in some cases, and at least one person reported they reappeared on an iPad that had been... Continue reading...
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by Wes Davis on (#6MYE5)
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images Google is pouncing on Microsoft's weathered enterprise security reputation by pitching its services to government institutions. Pointing to a recent report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) that found that Microsoft's security woes are the result of the company deprioritizing" enterprise security, Google says it can help.The company's pitch isn't quite as direct as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying he made Google dance, but it's spicy all the same. Repeatedly referring to Microsoft as the vendor" throughout its blog post on Monday, Google says the CSRB showed that lack of a strong commitment to security creates preventable errors and serious breaches." Platforms, it added, have a responsibility" to hold to strong... Continue reading...
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by Wes Davis on (#6MYB3)
Microsoft has taken the wraps off the new Surface Laptop - an Arm-based laptop for consumers. It's got one big difference from the Surface Laptop 6 for Business announced in March - it's equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chip instead of Intel's Core Ultra, leveling the playing field, the company hopes, with Apple's powerful and efficient MacBook laptops.The new Surface laptop comes in four colors and 13.8- and- 15-inch options for its 600-nit displays. The company says it's 80 percent faster than our previous generation" and offers up to 22 hours of local video playback." It's got a haptic touchpad, just as Apple's MacBooks have had for years. Unlike the MacBook Air, Microsoft said it will support three 4K monitors - on top... Continue reading...
by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#6MYB4)
Hims and Hers is the latest pharmacy to offer GLP-1 drugs from compounding pharmacies. | Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge Hims & Hers Health, one of the online pharmacies that got its start prescribing dick pills, is now offering knockoff versions of GLP-1 weight loss drugs. Hims & Hers says it will offer drugs that mimic Ozempic and Wegovy, the active ingredient of which is semaglutide.The copycat versions are made by compounding pharmacies. The formulations aren't the same as the FDA-approved versions of the drug and haven't been directly evaluated by the FDA, either. But they're cheaper than the real thing: $199 a month, compared to the branded version, which can cost more than $1,000 a month without insurance.Compounding pharmacies can make knockoff versions of branded drugs when they are in shortage, as the GLP-1 drugs - prescribed for diabetes and... Continue reading...
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by Umar Shakir on (#6MYB5)
Image: The Verge Microsoft's launching Recall for Windows 11, a new tool that keeps track of everything you see and do on your computer and, in return, gives you the ability to search and retrieve anything you've done on the device.The scope of Recall, which Microsoft has internally called AI Explorer, is incredibly vast - it includes logging things you do in apps, tracking communications in live meetings, remembering all websites you've visited for research, and more. All you need to do is perform a Recall" action, which is like an AI-powered search, and it'll present a snapshot of that period of time that gives you context of the memory.As a matter of fact, everything you do on the PC appears on an explorable timeline you can scroll through. You can... Continue reading...
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by Jacob Kastrenakes on (#6MYB6)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduces the Copilot Plus PC branding. | Image: Allison Johnson Microsoft is making a major push to put AI into laptops. It's introducing a new branding today called Copilot Plus PCs" that'll highlight when Windows laptops come with built-in AI hardware and support for AI features across the operating system.All of Microsoft's major laptop partners will offer Copilot Plus PCs, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at an event at the company's headquarters on Monday. That includes Dell, Lenovo, Samsung, HP, Acer, and Asus; Microsoft is also introducing two of its own as part of the Surface line. And while Microsoft is also making a big push to bring Arm chips to Windows laptops today, Nadella said that laptops with Intel and AMD chips will offer these AI features, too.We get to reimagine the platform... Continue reading...
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by Richard Lawler on (#6MWXW)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge At Microsoft's big AI and Surface event on May 20th, the company takes another shot at Arm Windows PCs. Continue reading...
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by Tom Warren on (#6MYB7)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Are you ready for Microsoft's latest Windows on Arm push? That's what we're expecting at today's Surface and Windows AI event.Rumors suggest Microsoft will unveil a new Arm-powered Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices and a host of new AI features for Windows. Microsoft has been building up to this moment for quite some time, so expect to hear a lot about its transition to Windows on Arm.Things kick off at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. Microsoft isn't livestreaming this event, so follow our live blog for all the very latest as it happens. Continue reading...
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by Andrew Webster on (#6MY8B)
Image: Apple You won't need to travel too far into the future to see Apple TV Plus' next adventure series. The streamer just announced that Time Bandits, an adaptation of the 1981 Terry Gilliam film of the same name, will premiere on July 24th. The TV version of the story will span 10 episodes and, according to Apple, is about an unpredictable journey through time and space with a ragtag group of thieves and their newest recruit: an 11-year-old history buff named Kevin."The show has some comedy bona fides at least, with Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris serving as co-showrunners and Taika Waititi also on board as co-creator and executive producer. The cast, meanwhile, is led by Lisa Kudrow and a young Kal-El Tuck and also features the likes of Tadhg... Continue reading...
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by Nilay Patel on (#6MY5T)
Photo illustration by The Verge The head of Google sat down with Decoder last week to talk about the biggest advancements in AI, the future of Google Search, and the fate of the web. Continue reading...
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by Emma Roth on (#6MY5V)
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge You may not have even thought about replacing your AirTag yet, but Bloomberg reports that Apple is working on a new one that could arrive in mid-2025. The new AirTag will reportedly feature an updated chip with better location tracking - an improvement it might need as competition among tracking devices ramps up.By the time Apple rolls out its refreshed AirTag, the Bluetooth tracking landscape will look a lot different on both Android and iOS. Last month, Google revealed its new Find My Device network, which lets users locate their phones using signals from nearby Android devices. Even Life360, the safety service company that owns Tile, is creating its own location-tracking network that uses satellites to locate its Bluetooth tags.In... Continue reading...
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6MY5W)
OpenAI says AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice." | Photo: Warner Bros. OpenAI is pulling the ChatGPT voice that sounds remarkably similar to Scarlett Johansson after numerous headlines (and even Saturday Night Live) noted the similarity. The voice, known as Sky, is now being put on pause," the company says.We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice- Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice," OpenAI wrote this morning.OpenAI CTO Mira Murati denied that the imitation of Johansson was intentional in an interview with The Verge last week. Even if Johansson's voice wasn't directly referenced, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was seemingly already aware of the similarities,... Continue reading...
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by Wes Davis on (#6MY5X)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge One of Microsoft's most consequential hardware events in years is about to take place. It's not Microsoft Build - the company's developer conference - which kicks off on Tuesday. Instead, Microsoft is holding a small event today, May 20th, to talk about its next Surface devices.At the event, we're expecting Microsoft to announce new versions of the Surface Pro 10 and the Surface Laptop 6, both running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processors. It's Microsoft's latest attempt to switch to Arm - and one that the company believes is finally going to stick. The change should deliver far better battery life; and if early rumors are true, Qualcomm's chip should be powerful enough to keep up with the Intel processors it's replacing. ... Continue reading...
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6MY5Y)
LG CEO William Cho and home entertainment company president Park Hyoung-sei met with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February to discuss the collaboration. | Image: LG LG is reportedly pausing its partnership with Meta to develop an extended reality (XR) device that would take on Apple's Vision Pro headset, just three months after announcing the joint venture.While multiple Korean news outlets are reporting that the Meta partnership has broken down entirely due to a lack of synergy" between the companies, LG has denied terminating the deal. LG Electronics continues the XR partnership with Meta forged in February but is controlling its pace," LG said in a statement to Korea JoongAng Daily.Products from the collaboration, set to combine Meta's Horizon Worlds mixed reality platform with content and service capabilities from LG's TV business, were expected to hit the market next year. The potential... Continue reading...
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