The Verge

Surprisingly, Ecobee's smartest thermostat also makes for a decent air quality monitor / smart speaker. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge The temperatures are about to soar now that summer is almost upon us - and so are our cooling bills. If you want to keep comfy while saving money on your energy bills, it's worth investing in Ecobee's Smart Thermostat Premium now that it's down to its best price of the year. Normally $249.99, right now you can buy it at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Ecobee for $219.99, which is $10 shy of its all-time low.Ecobee's smart thermostat is our favorite on the market, one that goes beyond your typical heating and cooling needs. It can adjust your HVAC system based on where you are in your home (if you're home at all), and even keep your pets safe as you travel thanks to its support for various temperature alerts and reminders - a... Continue reading...

Image: Apple For most of its first season, Sugar on Apple TV Plus was a fairly typical if slickly produced detective story. It starred Colin Farrell as John Sugar, a private investigator with a number of charming quirks - obsessed with old movies, unable to get drunk, beloved by dogs - who was determined to solve a missing persons case involving the granddaughter of a famous Hollywood director. Then, at the end of episode six, the show introduced a twist that threatened to change it into something very different. But now that Sugar's finale is out, it's clear that the twist didn't alter what the show already was - it just added some new flavor.Spoiler warning for the first season of Sugar, including the final episode.Okay, let's get it out of the... Continue reading...

Workers walk in Glencore's Mutanda Mine, which Tesla sources cobalt from, in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on June 19th, 2023. | Photo by Emmet Livingstone / AFP via Getty Images Mining for minerals used to make EVs and batteries is plagued with allegations of abuse, the latest report from the nonprofit Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) shows. And automakers continue to source materials from some of the worst offenders, The Verge finds.BHRRC has documented 631 allegations of human rights abuses since 2010 for seven key minerals used in electric vehicles, rechargeable batteries, and renewable energy technologies. Many of the allegations were made against a small group of companies, which The Verge was able to link to three of the world's biggest EV manufacturers: Volkswagen Group, Tesla, and BYD.Things are not improving," said Caroline Avan, head of natural resources and just transition at... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Canada's security agency is trying to dissuade Canadians from using TikTok, telling users that their data is available to the government of China."In an interview with CBC News set to air on Saturday, David Vigneault, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said that there is a very clear strategy on the part of the government of China ... to be able to acquire ... personal information from around the world," the CBC reports.They're using big data analytics, they have amazing computer farms crunching the data, they are developing artificial intelligence ... based on using this data," Vigneault added.The Chinese government's ability to access user data is at the forefront of US efforts to regulate - and potentially... Continue reading...

Delta Emulator is abandoning its current logo for a different, yet-to-be-revealed mark - because Adobe thinks Delta's stylized letter D" is a bit too close to its stylized letter A" for comfort.It's not every day you see an app changelog that includes news of a legal threat, but get a load of this: Image via iOS App Store Adobe threatened legal action unless we changed our app icon - so we did!" it reads. The situation unfolded quickly, according to emails Delta creator Riley Testut shared with The Verge:On May 7th, Adobe's lawyers reached out to Delta with a firm but kindly written request to go find a different icon, an email that didn't contain an explicit threat or even use the word infringement - it... Continue reading...

Image: Tyler McVicker Valve's next game appears to be a multiplayer hero shooter known as Deadlock. This is according to leaks from playtesters posted on social media earlier today, with some of the details verified by known Valve dataminer @GabeFollower and Valve watcher Tyler McVicker.Since testers started sharing Deadlock screenshots all over the place, here's ones I can verify, featuring one of the heroes called Grey Talon," @GabeFollower posted on X.The post included four screenshots allegedly from the game, which features characters (one of which looks like the Sniper from Team Fortress 2) battling in a city map that seems reminiscent of Half-Life 2's City 17. Another image shows a hero named Grey Talon and includes the character's weapon and... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Since the iPhone X's introduction of OLED and Face ID in 2017, Apple's phones haven't changed their look significantly, but now The Information reports a major redesign is underway for a new Slim" iPhone. The outlet says it could arrive in 2025 as part of the iPhone 17 refresh, with a price even higher than Apple's current most expensive model, the iPhone Pro Max.9to5Mac reported on a rumor from Haitong International analyst Jeff Pu saying the new iPhone 17 models could have a refreshed design with a smaller Dynamic Island. Following a rumored size increase and a new side button for the iPhone 16 lineup later this year, the Slim" iPhone 17 would feature a 6.6-inch display that falls in between the 6.1-inch screen of the smallest... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Jan Leike, a key OpenAI researcher who resigned earlier this week following the departure of co-founder Ilya Sutskever, posted on X Friday morning that safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products" at the company.Leike's statements came after Wired reported that OpenAI had disbanded the team dedicated to addressing long-term AI risks (called the Superalignment team") altogether. Leike had been running the Superalignment team, which formed last July to solve the core technical challenges" in implementing safety protocols as OpenAI developed AI that can reason like a human.The original idea for OpenAI was to openly provide their models to the public, hence the organization's name, but they've become... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge A note from OpenAI says that you may no longer have to download files you have on Google Drive or OneDrive if you want to use ChatGPT to analyze your data. You will be able to add those files directly to the chatbot. The feature, rolling out to paying ChatGPT users over the next few weeks, will save people from the annoyance of having to first download a file and then upload it again on the chatbot.Once they've got access to the feature, ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, and Teams users will only need to give the chatbot access to their Google Drive or OneDrive account. OpenAI says in a blog post that the integration means ChatGPT can read through Excel, Word, PowerPoint files, and their Google equivalents more quickly." So far, the improved... Continue reading...

Photo: Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Sony Music sent letters to hundreds of tech companies and warned them against using its content without permission, according to Bloomberg, which obtained a copy of the letter.The letter was sent to more than 700 AI companies and streaming platforms and said that unauthorized use" of Sony Music content for AI systems denies the label and artists control and compensation" of their work. The letter, according to Bloomberg, calls out the training, development or commercialization of AI systems" that use copyrighted material, including music, art, and lyrics. Sony Music artists include Doja Cat, Billy Joel, Celine Dion, and Lil Nas X, among many others. Sony Music didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.The music industry... Continue reading...

Photo by Valerie Macon / AFP via Getty Images Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies says that bringing a bit more fantasy to the sci-fi show was key to making the new season feel fresh. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has reportedly decided to add the next installment of Call of Duty to Xbox Game Pass. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft will announce that Call of Duty is coming to its game subscription service during the company's Xbox showcase on June 9th.I reported earlier this month that Microsoft had been debating whether to put new releases of Call of Duty into Game Pass, with concerns from some at the company that the revenue generated from typical Call of Duty sales would be undermined by Game Pass. Activision traditionally sells copies of Call of Duty for around $70 or more, selling more than 20 million copies on average.The brief Wall Street Journal report doesn't make it clear whether Microsoft plans to charge extra... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge AI. AI? AI! AI... A. I. This has been a week filled with AI announcements from some of the biggest and most important companies in tech, all of whom seem totally convinced that we're due for a revolution in virtual assistants. If Silicon Valley gets its way, you might never have to write an email, a line of code, or a joke ever again. All you'll do is ask your all-knowing, ultra-helpful, maybe slightly too flirty virtual assistant, and it'll get everything done for you.On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss all the AI assistant stuff OpenAI announced at its Spring Update event and the very similar stuff Google announced at its I/O developer conference the next day. Since the early days of Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa, the... Continue reading...

Reddit awards are (kinda) back - with a few notable changes. | Illustration: The Verge Reddit is re-introducing a revised version of the awards system it phased out last year after acknowledging the golden upvote system had missed the mark."We tried something new, it wasn't great (you called it)," Reddit said in its announcement post on Wednesday. So we're (re)launching awards, not-so-new but definitely improved. Rollout starts today on reddit.com and Reddit's iOS and Android apps."Most of the previous award system mechanisms will remain the same, according to Reddit, with a few tweaks - such as an award button placed under eligible posts, an updated UI to minimize clutter, and an awards leaderboard that displays the top gold and awards earned for a comment or post. New safety features have been introduced to keep... Continue reading...

The Verge The social network formerly known as Twitter has officially adopted X.com for all its core systems. That means typing twitter.com in your browser will now redirect to Elon Musk's favored domain, or should. At the time of publication, we're seeing a mix of results depending upon browser choice and whether you're logged in or not.A message also now appears at the bottom of the X login page that reads, We are letting you know that we are changing our URL, but your privacy and data protection settings remain the same."The domain transition has been one of the more awkward aspects of Elon Musk's move to rebrand the company. Although many aspects of X migrated to the new branding long ago - including its official account, its mobile apps,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge On Thursday evening, many iPhone owners (including some here at The Verge) saw the not delivered" flag when trying to send texts via iMessage. People reported the problem across multiple wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile), countries, and even continents.The Apple services status page didn't show any indication of trouble while the problems were going on, but now it has been updated after the fact, reflecting a resolved issue where Users were unable to use this service" for iMessage, Apple Messages for Business, FaceTime, and HomeKit. According to the note, the problems went on from about 5:39PM ET until 6:35PM ET. Screenshot: Apple.com Apple has not responded to inquiries or otherwise commented on... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google will soon offer schools access to Gemini AI - specifically for educators and students over the age of 18 - and promises not to use their data for AI model training or share it with anyone.Google will include the extra Gemini data privacy protections on Workspace for Education accounts at no additional charge. However, it does mean relying on the older Gemini 1.0 Pro model instead of newer, more updated models like Gemini 1.5 Pro or Flash, which is designed to provide more accurate answers.Gemini for Google Workspace launches on May 23rd and will come in two packages for institutions. The first is the lower-cost Gemini Education, which has a monthly usage limit, and the second tier is Education Premium, which opens full access to... Continue reading...

Photo: Getty Images Gannett, the media company that owns hundreds of newspapers in the US, is launching a new program that adds AI-generated bullet points at the top of journalists' stories, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge.The AI feature, labeled key points" on stories, uses automated technology to create summaries that appear below a headline. The bottom of articles includes a disclaimer, reading, The Key Points at the top of this article were created with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reviewed by a journalist before publication. No other parts of the article were generated using AI." The memo is dated May 14th and notes that participation is optional at this point.The summaries appear to already be live on some USA... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge OpenAI has signed a deal for access to real-time content from Reddit's data API, which means it can surface discussions from the site within ChatGPT and other new products. It's an agreement similar to the one Reddit signed with Google earlier this year that was reportedly worth $60 million.The deal will also enable Reddit to bring new AI-powered features to Redditors and mods" and use OpenAI's large language models to build applications. OpenAI has also signed up to become an advertising partner on Reddit.Redditors have been vocal about how Reddit's executives manage the platform before, and it remains to be seen how they'll react to this announcement. More than 7,000 subreddits went dark in June 2023 after users protested Reddit's... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge TikTok is experimenting with 60-minute video uploads, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The feature is available only to certain users, with no immediate plans to expand widely.The company has gradually bumped up the length of videos: in January, it gave some creators access to 30-minute clips, and as of now, users can upload content as long as 10 minutes long. Content creators who sell subscriptions also have access to 20-minute-long uploads.TikTok's arrival kicked off an era of shortform vertical video content, but these days, the platform has been leaning into longer, more YouTube-like material. Earlier this year, some TikTok creators got notifications that their content would get a boost" if they shared horizontal clips... Continue reading...

GTA 6 artwork | Image: Rockstar Games The hype has never been higher for one of the most anticipated games of the decade. Continue reading...

Image: Rockstar Games In Take-Two's Q4 2024 earnings report, the company stated when gamers can expect the next entry in the GTA series. What was previously a nebulous calendar year 2025 for Grand Theft Auto VI is now a more specific but still a bit vague fall 2025."

Image: Google Coinciding with Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is highlighting a number of new accessibility features across its software and enhancements to others that were already part of Android. First is a significant upgrade to Android's Lookout tool, which helps people who are blind or have low vision find out more information about their surroundings. Google is leveraging AI and adding the ability for Lookout to search for specific objects, including seating, bathrooms, and more, making up seven total categories.As you move your camera around the room, Lookout will notify you of the direction and distance to the item," Eve Andersson, Google's senior director of product inclusion, equity, and accessibility, wrote in the blog post.A... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon and Harvard University have created a quantum network" that transmitted an entangled photon from one quantum computer to another over 35 kilometers of fiber-optic cable.Researchers from Harvard and Amazon's AWS Center for Quantum Networking put a set of nodes around the Boston area to build a network capable of efficiently catching, storing, and transferring information initially stored in light." Like the internet we know, quantum networks send information carried by light - in this case, quantum-entangled photons. But they need repeaters" to prevent those photons from scattering across long distances, as light is wont to do, and the repeaters have to be able to send the photon without breaking its entanglement and modifying... Continue reading...

A family subscription is also coming to Strava. | Image: Strava There's new leadership at Strava, and they want everyone to know the platform is about to get a bunch of new features, starting with the highly requested dark mode, a family subscription plan, night heatmaps, and, of course, AI.Dark mode as a concept has been around for ages, but it's been a recurring source of consternation for Strava users on Reddit forums. For those folks, the good news is dark mode will arrive later this summer, and users can choose between permanently keeping the app in dark mode or matching a user's phone settings. More good news: it'll be available for both subscribers and free users.There's been a lot of investment that had to go in for an app that launched in 2009 to be able to get to a place where we could... Continue reading...

Image: Annapurna Interactive I've probably spent more time in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes jotting down notes and theories than I have actually playing the game. The latest release from Simogo - the Swedish studio behind eclectic titles like Year Walk and Device 6 - is a mystery game that is absolutely dense with puzzles. The sheer scale of it is initially intimidating. Everything in the game is locked behind a door of some kind, and figuring out how to open them involves navigating a deluge of cryptic, strange, and often confusing clues. But once I gave myself over to the game's logic, it all made a certain kind of sense. Eventually, it was all I could think about, and I have the notebook full of scribbled solutions to prove it.There's very little setup. You arrive... Continue reading...

Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut debuts on PC today, and it's the first game to feature Sony's new PlayStation PC overlay and shared Trophies system. I've had a chance to get a first look at this new overlay, and my initial impression is that it's really unobtrusive, clean, and simple.There are five main sections here: search, friends, Trophies, profile, and settings. Search lets you find other PlayStation players and add them as friends, whereas the friends section lists both your online and offline friends. You can see your friends' Trophies, but you can't message friends or party chat from this overlay, unfortunately. You'll have to use in-game chat if you want to speak to a console friend, or just use Discord. GIF... Continue reading...

The new Ricoh GR III HDF has a highlight diffusion filter instead of an ND filter. | Alex Parkin, The Verge When Ricoh launched its very first office copier, the Ricopy 101, in 1955, the product's popularity sparked a term - supposedly folks would say make a Ricopy" instead of make a copy." And with the company's current camera lineup, the GR III, they have made a lot of Ricopies, making only slight changes to each of the pocket-sized point-and-shoot cameras year over year.The latest of which is the $1,066.95 Ricoh GR III HDF. It has the same 24.2-megapixel APS-C sensor and external hardware as all of the other GR III cameras, including the first GR III camera that was released in 2019. But what makes it worth talking about today is the new HDF" part of its name. It stands for high diffusion filter." Whereas previous Ricoh cameras had a... Continue reading...

Photo by David Gray / AFP via Getty Images The House passed the TICKET Act 388-24 on Wednesday, which would force ticket sellers to show consumers total prices (including fees) upfront and guarantee refunds when events are canceled or postponed.The bill would still need to pass the Senate and be signed by the president to become law, but the overwhelming support in the House is a positive sign. The legislation comes after the Ticketmaster fiasco around Taylor Swift's Eras Tour tickets, where the ticket-selling platform canceled general sales after high demand it later partially blamed on bots. That prompted lawmakers to haul its top exec from its parent company, Live Nation, into a hearing. In the wake of the disaster, The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta is starting to test a TweetDeck-like experience for Threads today. It will allow Threads users to create customizable feeds that are stacked in a column interface on the web - just like TweetDeck did before it became a paid service and was rebranded to X Pro last year.If you're in the test, you can choose to keep things simple with a single feed, or add separate columns for your favorite searches, tags, accounts, saved posts, and notifications," explains Meta spokesperson Seine Kim in a statement to The Verge. You can choose to have specific columns auto-update in real time." Image: Meta The new TweetDeck-like web experience for Threads. Meta will be selecting Threads users to test this new experience... Continue reading...

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge A June 3rd deadline is approaching to either file a claim connected to this class action lawsuit against Apple or opt out. If you purchased an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus that suffered from microphone audio issues, you may be eligible to claim from a settlement pool of $35 million, with amounts ranging from at least $50 to as much as $394.Customers who have used one of the devices between the dates of September 16th, 2016, and January 3rd, 2023, are potentially eligible to make a claim, but the requirements are pretty strict. Eligible parties fall into one of two groups: people who paid out of pocket for repairs on their iPhone 7 or 7 Plus due to audio issues or customers who are on the books as having reported a problem that didn't pay for a... Continue reading...

Venu Sports is supposedly the next big thing in sports streaming. | Image: Venu Sports A new sports streaming service is coming later this year. We've known for months who is working on the service; it's a co-venture from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Now, we also know what it's going to be called: Venu Sports.The naming announcement comes a few months after the three networks said they were planning to launch a differentiated sports-centric service," a much-needed simplification of an increasingly chaotic sports streaming landscape. Sports rights are more expensive than ever and are being split up among more partners than ever, so having a way to share costs, infrastructure, and content makes a lot of sense.Initially, insiders took to calling the service Hulu For Sports, or Spulu for short. The actual name - which I'm... Continue reading...

Sony has introduced the Xperia 1 VI, the sixth generation of the company's flagship smartphone that could tempt photography enthusiasts away from rivaling iPhone and Pixel devices. Some of those perks include a true optical zoom, AI-assisted autofocus, and a unified app experience.It has three cameras on the back: a 24mm main camera with a 48-megapixel Sony Exmor T sensor, a 16mm ultrawide, and an 85-170mm variable zoom telephoto camera that provides magnification around 3.5x to 7.1x that of the main camera. The Xperia 1 VI also utilizes this new telephoto camera for its macro mode.The device comes with auto-focus human pose estimation" AI technology that can recognize a subject's body and head position and supports filming video in... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft isn't launching a new version of Windows next week, but what it's about to unveil could be just as significant. After nearly four years of falling behind Apple's MacBooks, sources inside Microsoft tell me that the company is confident it can finally beat Apple's own chips that power the MacBook Air.On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will detail the company's AI vision across hardware and software" at an event hosted at Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington. It's a pivotal moment for Microsoft and Windows because it won't involve the typical chip partnership with Intel that we've seen for decades. Instead, Microsoft will set the stage for a summer of Arm-powered laptops thanks to a close collaboration with Qualcomm.I... Continue reading...

As usual, Bose's audio processing makes this speaker sound excellent. But for $400, it's fair to expect more features and more smarts. Continue reading...