The Verge

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is attempting to solve the hassle of coordinating with colleagues on when everyone will be in the office. It's a problem that emerged with the increase in hybrid and flexible work after the recent covid-19 pandemic, with workers spending less time in the office. Microsoft Places is an AI-powered app that goes into preview today and should help businesses that rely on Outlook and Microsoft Teams to better coordinate in-office time together.When employees get to the office, they don't want to be greeted by a sea of empty desks - they want face-time with their manager and the coworkers they collaborate with most frequently," says Microsoft's corporate vice president of AI at work, Jared Spataro, in a blog post. With Places, you... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Have you ever pasted text into your beautifully formatted Microsoft Word document, only for it to ruin everything? Well, the days of the should finally be over, as Microsoft Word will now merge the text's formatting with your document by default.Unlike the previous keep source formatting" default, the merge formatting" option preserves the original bold and underlined text, along with list and table structure. But it also changes the visual aspects of the text, such as font family, size, and color, to match the document you're working on. That should save you from messing up the formatting of your entire document when pasting in text from another source.You could previously choose the merge formatting" option from Word's pasting... Continue reading...

Image: TCL 5,000 nits. That's the incredible peak brightness of TCL's latest flagship QM8 Mini LED TV, and there's no better example of how the company is hoping to stand out from competitors like Samsung, LG, Hisense, Sony, and others. That's just on a different level than what OLED can offer. Are we getting to a point where TVs are getting too bright? No such thing, right?Starting at $1,999.99 for a 65-inch size (and ranging up to an enormous 115-inch model), the QM8 contains thousands of dimming zones - up to over 5,000," to be specific. Combined with TCL's image processing, the company is confident that people will get an excellent viewing experience from this Mini LED set for significantly less than, say, a top-tier OLED would cost.G... Continue reading...

You know, normal backyard nighttime stuff. Sometimes you travel thousands of miles from home to see something amazing. And every once in a while, that something appears right in your backyard.That's what happened on Friday. What's the aurora forecast for tonight?" I asked a friend who keeps up with those things. Amazing," he said. He wasn't lying. At 9:30PM, my husband and I went to the backyard to check the sky - nothing but hazy light pollution on the northern horizon. But just an hour later, the sky erupted.I didn't think twice about what camera to use to photograph the event since I already had my SIM card in the Pixel 8A - it had arrived a couple of days ago fresh off its announcement. I handed my husband the Pixel 8 Pro; he left his night mode-less iPhone XR in the... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Adobe The tech and the consumers both might not be quite ready yet, but he's betting big on an AI future. Continue reading...

Image: Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images US safety regulators are looking into two crashes involving Amazon's robotaxi company, Zoox. The Office of Defects Investigation, under the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, opened a preliminary evaluation into Zoox after two separate reports of the vehicles suddenly braking and causing motorcyclists to crash into their rear end.NHTSA confirms that the Zoox vehicles were operating in driverless mode without safety drivers when the incidents occurred. The vehicles involved in both crashes were Toyota Highlander SUVs, which Zoox uses for testing and data gathering. According to the Office of Defects Investigation, the investigation covers an estimated 500 vehicles.The crashes did not involve Zoox's unique toaster-looking... Continue reading...

Image: John Deere The solar storms that have been wowing people with the Northern Lights across the United States the last two nights have also been disrupting GPS satellites, crippling some Midwest farmers' operations, reports 404 Media. The issues have forced many to stop planting just as a crucial planting deadline for corn farmers approaches.The storms reportedly knocked some GPS systems" offline temporarily, which messed with the accuracy of Real-Time Kinematic" (RTK) systems. Tractors from John Deere and other brands use RTK for centimeter-level positional accuracy" when carrying out farming work like crop-planting or fertilizing, 404 Media writes.The extremely compromised" systems caused drastic shifts in the field and even some heading... Continue reading...

Time for some Abe's Oddysee! | Screenshot: Gamma iPhone users without a penchant for jailbreaking can finally enjoy the blocky polygons and shifty textures of the original PlayStation with Gamma, a free PS1 emulator that hit the iOS App Store last night. Gamma comes courtesy of developer ZodTTD, which has been creating emulators for the iPhone since the earliest days of third-party iOS apps.The app has both iPhone and iPad versions with support for Bluetooth controllers and keyboards, as well as customizable on-screen controller skins. It uses Google Drive and Dropbox syncing for backing up your game files and save states (those are the snapshots you can save at any time and reload, a little like pausing your game - great for old-school games that don't let you save any time you... Continue reading...

Despite its name, the Pocket 3 isn't exactly comfortable to stuff in tighter pockets. | Photo by Quentyn Kennemer / The Verge I can't think of anything permeating mainstream camera culture as aggressively as the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. The Fujifilm X100VI has stolen some of its thunder among film simulation enthusiasts, but DJI's still having somewhat of a cultural moment on YouTube, Instagram, and the troubled TikTok by spurring all sorts of creator glee.Of course, the camera buffs are all over it, but serious and casual creators from other genres have paused their usual programming to rave about how it transcends amateur vlogging pursuits, whether you're filming a wedding or self-shooting a scene for a Sundance-hopeful short film.Some of us at The Verge are excited, too: Vjeran liked it enough to call it his favorite gadget of 2023, and Sean just bought one... Continue reading...

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 37, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, send me links, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been writing about iPads and LinkedIn games, reading about auto shows and typewriters and treasure hunters, watching Everybody's in LA and Sugar, looking for reasons to buy Yeti's new French press even though I definitely don't need more coffee gear, following almost all of Jerry Saltz's favorite Instagram accounts, testing Capacities and Heptabase for all my note-taking needs and Plinky for all my link-saving, and playing a lot of Blind Drive.I also have for you a thoroughly impressive new iPad, a clever... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI has been showing some of its customers a new multimodal AI model that can both talk to you and recognize objects, according to a new report from The Information. Citing unnamed sources who've seen it, the outlet says this could be part of what the company plans to show on Monday.The new model reportedly offers faster, more accurate interpretation of images and audio than what its existing separate transcription and text-to-speech models can do. It would apparently be able to help customer service agents better understand the intonation of callers' voices or whether they're being sarcastic," and theoretically," the model can help students with math or translate real-world signs, writes The Information.The outlet's sources say... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google is preparing to hold its annual Google I/O developer conference next week, and naturally, it will be all about AI. The company has made no secret of that. Since last year's I/O, it has debuted Gemini, its new, more powerful model meant to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, and has been deep in testing new features for Search, Google Maps, and Android. Expect to hear a lot about that stuff this year.When Google I/O will happen and where you can watchGoogle I/O kicks off on Tuesday, May 14th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET with a keynote talk. You can catch that on Google's site or its YouTube channel, via the livestream link that's also embedded at the top of this page. (There's also a version with an American Sign Language interpreter.) Set a... Continue reading...

Google's annual developer conference kicks off on Tuesday. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The past few months have made one thing crystal clear: phones remain undefeated.The AI gadgets that were supposed to save us from our phones have arrived woefully underbaked - whatever illusions we might have held that the Humane AI pin or the Rabbit R1 were going to offer any kind of salve for the constant rug burn of dealing with our personal tech is gone. Hot Gadget Spring is over and developer season is upon us, starting with Google I/O this coming Tuesday.It also happens to be a pivotal time for Android. I/O comes on the heels of a major re-org that put the Android team together with Google's hardware team for the first time. The directive is clear: to run full speed ahead and put more AI in more things. Not preferring Google's... Continue reading...

Photo by IDA MARIE ODGAARD/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images GameStop, the used video game retailer that's become increasingly associated with other kinds of speculative investments, wants to cash in on the resurgent card collecting craze - staffers have told Pokebeach, Polygon, and The Verge that stores will begin buying and selling rare Pokemon cards, and possibly other cards, as soon as next week.GameStop apparently doesn't want just any cards, though: employees across multiple states say they'll only be buying cards that have already been graded by Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) at an 8, 9, or 10, meaning they're in near-mint condition or better with only slight imperfections. And yet, GameStop won't accept the rarest cards valued at over $500, either, Pokebeach and Polygon report.... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile will pay a combined $10.22 million to a group of states to settle claims that the carriers lied to customers about their unlimited" plans and free" phone offers. The settlement, which follows an investigation from a coalition of 50 attorneys general, requires the three companies to make their advertisements more transparent.Under the terms of the agreement, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T can only advertise their plans as unlimited" if there are no limits on how much data someone can use during a billing cycle. The ads must clearly and conspicuously" say that restrictions on speed may apply, as well as specify the amount of data customers can use before triggering the slowdown.Additionally, the attorneys... Continue reading...

Matter Casting is now rolling out to most Fire TVs on FireOS 7 or higher. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge If the Fire TV is your streaming stick of choice, I have good news. There's now an easy way to cast content from your phone or tablet to your TV - as long as you're watching Prime Video. Matter Casting, a new protocol for casting content from an app on your phone to an app on a TV or display, is rolling out now to compatible Fire TVs and could one day be available on more screens in our homes.Unlike Apple's AirPlay or Google Cast, Matter Casting is an open standard with no requirement for proprietary hardware. I got some hands-on time with the feature on a Fire TV at Amazon's Day 1 HQ in Seattle last week and, according to Amazon spokesperson Connor Rice, Matter Casting will be arriving on most Fire TVs running FireOS 7 or higher... Continue reading...

Photo by Zhang Dagang / VCG via Getty Images Who's afraid of China's electric vehicles? President Joe Biden.The president is preparing to announce higher tariffs on imported Chinese EVs, effectively closing out the possibility that the country will be able to afford to import its much cheaper and, in many cases, more desirable plug-in vehicles to the United States.According to The Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration will announce plans to roughly quadruple tariffs, to 100 percent from the current 25 percent, as well as tack on an additional 2.5 percent duty.Who's afraid of China's electric vehicles? Joe BidenSo far, the current tariffs have been effective at preventing Chinese companies from importing their EVs to the US. But officials are reportedly nervous about... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Electronic Arts has a long, storied history of trying to wring more money out of gamers after they've purchased a game - now, it appears, the company's hard at work on its next generation of in-game ads.EA CEO Andrew Wilson admitted as much on the company's Q4 earnings call: when an analyst asked about the market opportunity for more dynamic ad insertion across more traditional AAA games," he said the company's already working on it.We have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences," said Wilson.I don't want to take Wilson out of context. If you read the full question and answer (page 12), you'll see that in-game ads aren't the thing he's most... Continue reading...

The Kobo Elipsa 2E is a better value than Amazon's less capable Kindle Scribe. | Image: Kobo I'll be honest: every model in Amazon's discounted Kindle lineup is fantastic for those embedded in the Amazon ecosystem, but it's Kobo that makes my absolute favorite e-readers. If you don't mind buying ebooks outside of Amazon, Kobo's e-readers offer fantastic value for the money, which is why I'm excited by today's sale. The Kobo Sage and Kobo Clara 2E are up to $30 off at Target, but it's the Kobo Elipsa 2E, which is matching its all-time low of $349.99 ($50 off) at Target and Rakuten Kobo, that stands out the most. Even better, Rakuten Kobo is throwing in a $10 credit when you buy a $50 gift card, which can be used toward an ebook or audiobook from the Kobo store.Kobo's ad-free Elipsa 2E is my favorite e-reader for taking notes,... Continue reading...

A smartphone camera will provide better views than your own eyes if you're lucky enough to witness the aurora this weekend. | Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images Those of you looking to the skies this weekend may bear witness to a cosmic visual experience typically reserved for regions near the Arctic Circle. Various global weather agencies are reporting that the aurora borealis could be visible as far south as Alabama and Northern California over the coming days thanks to unusually strong solar flares.On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a G4 geomagnetic storm watch - the first to be declared in almost 20 years. G4 geomagnetic storms (which are the second-strongest variety and considered severe") can potentially interfere with power infrastructure and navigation systems, but they can also trigger the aurora borealis. That means parts of the world could... Continue reading...

An aurora borealis glows a faint purple in the night sky in the district of Markisch-Oderland in East Brandenburg. | Photo: Getty Images The National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a rare severe" geomagnetic storm watch for the US for Friday night. The Met Office weather service also issued a similar watch for the UK for Friday and Saturday. They're worried about coronal mass ejections (CMEs), explosions of plasma and magnetized particles coming from the Sun, that could potentially impact critical infrastructure, including the power grid, internet cables, and satellites.This is the first time since 2005 that the SWPC has issued a watch for a storm rated as G4, which is the scale's second-highest rating. Critical infrastructure operators have been notified so they can take precautions, the center says.Worst-case scenario, all those... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple's plans for AI on the iPhone could bring real-time transcription to its Voice Memos and Notes apps, according to a report from AppleInsider. The new feature is expected to arrive with iOS 18 and will reportedly let you see a running transcription of your audio recordings in either app.While Notes currently doesn't let you record audio, a separate rumor from AppleInsider suggests Apple plans on adding this capability in iOS 18 as well. Audio transcription in either app sounds especially handy for students or journalists, who can save time transcribing a lengthy lecture or interview. It should also be helpful for anyone who just wants to take a quick look at their Voice Memos without having to listen to their recordings.As for... Continue reading...

Photo: 20th Century Studios Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes remixes beats from the franchise's previous films to tell a story about how myths evolve. Continue reading...

Image: Fisker Fisker has another braking issue on its hands, prompting US safety regulators to open a fourth probe on the automaker's electric Ocean SUV.This time, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into customer claims that the Ocean would unexpectedly activate its automatic emergency braking (AEB) without any forward obstruction. Reuters reports three of the claims involved someone getting injured.This is the second probe opened for the 2023 Ocean that has to do with the vehicle's braking system. The first, which was announced last January, was based on complaints that the vehicle would lose braking power. Now the regulator's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is opening a preliminary evaluation based on... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge You may not spend much time thinking about the default apps you've got set up on macOS until they suddenly get configured the wrong way - and you find that, say, the app that pops up when you click on an image file is not the one you want to use.Out of the box, your Mac will use Apple's own tools for most tasks: click on a web link in Mail and you'll see Safari, for example, or double-click on an image you've downloaded to your system and up pops Photos. However, you might want to use different apps, or maybe a freshly installed app has decided to make itself the default and you want to undo the change (web browsers often do this, asking to become the default when they launch for the first time).So it's useful to know how to set the... Continue reading...

Cardiovascular age is a proxy for how stiff" your arteries are. | Image: Oura Oura's been busy this past year launching several new features - and folks with the Gen 3 version of the smart ring are about to get two more. At the end of May, the company will roll out cardiovascular age and cardiovascular capacity metrics for gauging long-term heart health. Emphasis on long-term.The thing about cardiovascular age and cardiovascular capacity is that these are both metrics that you can actually impact," explains Shyamal Patel, Oura's head of science. Right now, Patel says, Oura's current feature set has been much more focused on your near-term metrics. With these features, we're sort of introducing this idea of longer-term health. What are the things that you're doing today? How are they contributing to your health... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge People seem to like Apple's new iPad Pro, with its better screen and impressive design. People also seem to really hate Apple's new ad in which the company crushes centuries of creative tools because, in the future, there is only iPad. And after all the iPad stuff this week, people are still asking the same question: what is the point of the iPad?On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about the week in Apple news: the iPad Pro, the iPad Air, the Pencil Pro, the Magic Keyboard, the new apps, and much more. We also wonder if any of this changes anything about what the iPad is, how it works, and where it's headed - or if the answers will only come at WWDC next month. Then we talk about that ad everyone's mad about and why it seems like... Continue reading...

Image: Supergiant Games Now that the Hades II early access period has started, opening up a more complete but still early build of the game, I've been fighting against the urge to gorge myself on it - and losing. To be fair, I have a weak spirit since I loved the first Hades, which introduced me to the concept of roguelikes, a genre I avoided out of disdain for repetition. Also, and this is the biggest factor in my spiritual war against the game: I have a Steam Deck, which makes not playing the game all but impossible.Slight spoilers for Hades II follow.Hades II is Steam Deck-verified with a comfortable control scheme that reminds me of playing on the Switch. I did fiddle with the button mapping a little bit, swapping the buttons for dash and attack. (It's... Continue reading...

Apple's noise-canceling AirPods Max are $100 off for the first time since December. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Not too long ago, it seemed like every retailer was offering a steep discount on Apple's AirPods Max. Then, suddenly, they all stopped. For the past few months, we've rarely seen the AirPods Max drop below $500 - that is, until this week. Now, for the second time this year, you can grab Apple's on-ear headphones at Amazon for $449.99 ($100 off), which matches one of their best prices to date.Even if they are still stuck with Apple's aging Lightning port, there's no better pair of headphones on the market for iPhone owners than the AirPods Max. They pair exceptionally well with other Apple devices, and their sound quality easily rivals other pairs of premium headphones. Yes, their noise cancellation isn't quite as impressive as that of S... Continue reading...

The Riffgat offshore wind farm, around 15 kilometers north of the island of Borkum. | Photo: Getty Images Data centers and offshore wind farms could prove to be a perfect pair as AI grows increasingly energy-hungry.Many of the companies racing to roll out new generative AI tools have also made big commitments to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions. A rush of new AI data centers could throw those climate goals off - unless they find a clean source of energy.Conveniently, some of the quirks with AI data centers make them a good match for wind farms at sea. And the offshore wind industry, which has already cozied up with Big Tech, could certainly use a boost as it looks ahead to more uncertain economic waters.Data centers and AI ... We are excited about that opportunity," Mads Nipper, CEO of leading offshore wind developer Orsted, said... Continue reading...

OpenAI has allegedly been trying to poach Google employees to work on its own search product offering. | Illustration: The Verge OpenAI is reportedly gearing up to announce a search product powered by artificial intelligence on Monday that could threaten Google's dominance. That target date, provided to Reuters by two sources familiar with the matter," would time the announcement a day before Google kicks off its annual I/O conference, which is expected to focus on the search giant's own AI model offerings like Gemini and Gemma.This new rumor tracks with earlier reports from both Bloomberg and The Information that also suggest OpenAI is developing an AI-based product capable of searching the internet. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI's search feature will be built into its ChatGPT chatbot and include citations, while The Information reports OpenAI's search service... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has been talking about plans for an Xbox mobile gaming store for a couple of years now, and the company now plans to launch it in July. Speaking at the Bloomberg Technology Summit earlier today, Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed the launch date and how Microsoft is going to avoid Apple's strict App Store rules.We're going to start by bringing our own first-party portfolio to [the Xbox mobile store], so you're going to see games like Candy Crush show up in that experience, games like Minecraft," says Bond. We're going to start on the web, and we're doing that because that really allows us to have it be an experience that's accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what and independent of the policies of closed... Continue reading...

Photo by Kena Betancur/VIEWpress Now that they've got an extra $100 billion worth of premium airwaves and Sprint no longer nipping at their heels, how can the big three cellular carriers continue to consolidate and grow? Well, T-Mobile and Verizon are in discussions to carve up U.S. Cellular," The Wall Street Journal reports.The report suggests this is about harvesting even more wireless spectrum; my colleague Allison pointed out in 2022 that US Cellular tends to offer service where some of the major carriers don't." (It would certainly be nice for T-Mobile and Verizon customers to have better coverage, but I would prefer competition to lower my wireless bill.)T-Mobile would reportedly pay over $2 billion for wireless spectrum licenses and take over some... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple plans to start its foray into generative AI by offloading complex queries to M2 Ultra chips running in data centers before moving to its more advanced M4 chips.Bloomberg reports that Apple plans to put its M2 Ultra on cloud servers to run more complex AI queries, while simple tasks are processed on devices. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Apple wanted to make custom chips to bring to data centers to ensure security and privacy in a project the publication says is called Project ACDC, or Apple Chips in Data Center. But the company now believes its existing processors already have sufficient security and privacy components.The chips will be deployed to Apple's data centers and eventually to servers run by third... Continue reading...

Image: Mob Entertainment The horror puzzle game Poppy Playtime is getting a live-action film adaption. Developer Mob Entertainment says it struck a deal with the entertainment company Legendary after fielding several competitive offers." Transformers producer Don Murphy and filmmaker Susan Montford will develop and produce the adaptation.Poppy Playtime is a first-person adventure game, where players take on the role of a former toy factory worker who returns to their now-abandoned workplace. As players explore Playtime Co., they have to solve several puzzles while trying to avoid Huggy Wuggy, the monstrous toy lurking in the factory. The base version of Poppy Playtime is free to play across PC and console, but its developers released chapters players can... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple has apologized after a commercial meant to showcase its brand-new iPad Pro drew widespread criticism among the creative community. In a statement provided to Ad Age, Tor Myhren, Apple's vice president of marketing, said the company missed the mark."Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it's incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world," Myhren told Ad Age. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we're sorry."On Tuesday, Apple introduced the M4-powered iPad Pro, which the company described as its thinnest product ever. To advertise all the creative possibilities... Continue reading...

Image: Albacore (X) Microsoft has quietly started testing an intriguing change to the Windows 11 Start menu that could introduce a floating panel full of companion" widgets. Windows watcher Albacore discovered the new Start menu feature in the latest test versions of Windows 11 that Microsoft has released publicly.While Microsoft has not yet announced this feature, the Start menu Companions" appear to be a way to allow developers to extend the Windows 11 Start menu with widget-like functionality that lives inside a floating island that can be docked next to the Start menu. It looks like developers will be able to build apps that provide widget-like information through adaptive cards - a platform-agnostic way of displaying UI blocks of information.

Image: Asus The Asus ROG Ally was the first true Steam Deck challenger; while I'd argue it fell a little short, it legitimately improved the state of affordable Windows handheld gaming with its plugged-in performance boosts and smooth variable refresh rate screen. Now, Asus is beginning to reveal its successor: the ROG Ally X.Don't call it an Ally 2: when it ships in the second half of the year, the Windows-based Ally X will have the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset and the same 7-inch 48-120Hz VRR screen. It's not quite like the Steam Deck OLED, where Valve got AMD to revise its chip for better battery life and stability and added a larger, brighter, gorgeous new OLED panel with improved response time and slimmer bezels.We're not looking at 30 to 40... Continue reading...