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Updated 2025-07-10 11:45
Paramount Plus is trying to carve out a safe streaming space for kids
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge There are two types of parents I'm friends with: those who let their kids watch YouTube and those who work very hard to keep their kids as far from YouTube as possible. Given I know at least one small child who developed an obsession with dictators after getting around the YouTube parental controls, I understand the divide. Streaming services seem to understand that divide, too, and are eager to provide an alternative to YouTube that gives parents all the set-and-forget appeal of YouTube without, hopefully, the questions about Kim Jong Un's rise to power.Paramount Plus, with its massive library of Nickelodeon shows, is a little more primed than other streamers that have had to create a library of kids content from scratch. In a... Continue reading...
Apple’s new AI model hints at how AI could come to the iPhone
Illustration: The Verge Apple has been quiet about its plans for generative AI, but with the release of new AI models today, it appears the company's immediate ambitions lie firmly in the make AI run locally on Apple devices" realm.Researchers from Apple released OpenELM, a series of four very small language models on the Hugging Face model library, on Wednesday. Apple said on its Hugging Face model page that OpenELM, which stands for Open-source Efficient Language Models," performs very efficiently on text-related tasks like email writing. The models are open source and ready for developers to use.OpenELM is even smaller than most lightweight AI modelsIt has four sizes: 270 million parameters; 450 million parameters; 1.1 billion parameters; and 3 billion... Continue reading...
Feds charge Iranian nationals for cyberattacks against US government
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US government has charged and sanctioned four Iranian nationals over claims they carried out a yearslong hacking campaign against US government agencies and companies. It also accuses the group of waging these attacks on behalf of the Iranian government.An indictment unsealed on Tuesday alleges that from around 2016 through at least April 2021, the four individuals waged cyberattacks against more than a dozen" US-based companies, along with the US departments of the Treasury and State. The companies targeted by the attacks were primarily" contractors for the US Department of Defense that had access to sensitive information.The indictment names Hossein Harooni, Reza Kazemifar, Komeil Baradaran Salmani, and Alireza Shafie Nasab as... Continue reading...
Another Crab’s Treasure is a cheery, accessible take on Dark Souls
Image: Aggro Crab The underwater adventure is a rare glimpse into a more accessible soulslike experience. Continue reading...
Reddit is updating its app to focus more on comments
Illustration: The Verge Reddit is updating its mobile app on iOS and Android to emphasize comments, the company said today. The handful of changes announced are aimed at removing hurdles and reducing friction points," the company wrote in a blog post.The changes are subtle but add up to comments becoming more of a focal point in the user experience. Comments will now load faster and open in an instant" when users click on the comment icon of a post. Clicking the comments icon takes users straight to the top comment, essentially bypassing the original post. GIF: Reddit A context bar" with the original post will be pinned to the top of the screen with the text, image, or video content compressed. Clicking on the thumbnail will take the... Continue reading...
Our pick for the best fitness tracker is down to its best price of the year
Amazfit's GTR 4 offers an impressive feature set for its price, including an OLED display and dual-band GPS. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Smartwatches like the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic are some of the best on the market. Yet, at almost $400, they're not for everybody, especially since you'll need to be tapped into a particular operating system to make the most of either wearable.Thankfully, for everybody else, there's the platform-agnostic Amazfit GTR 4, which is currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Amazfit's online storefront for $169.99 ($30 off). That's the best price we've seen it go for so far this year and only $10 shy of its all-time low, which we last saw during the holidays.From period tracking to monitoring your heart rate, sleep, stress, and SpO2 levels, the GTR 4 offers an impressive feature set for $170 - which is... Continue reading...
Nissan’s Iruyo knows when your baby is sleeping, knows when they’re awake
Just look at the abject horror on that kid's face. | Image: Nissan Almost seven years ago, my partner and I took an ill-advised road trip for a wedding with our nearly one-month-old child. In those early days, our kid cried. A lot. Loudly. In the confines of an SUV, this meant a nightmare of constantly pulling over to try, desperately and often in vain, to quell the woes of this tiny fleshy sack full of our combined genetics that has no understanding of our world.That's where things like the intelligent puppet" Iruyo, a two-piece, fluffy animatronic toy with the claimed ability to recognize when a child is sleeping, ostensibly comes in. Iruyo was designed by Nissan in partnership with an ad agency and a retail baby product chain (so we're already off to a great start) as part of a marketing campaign... Continue reading...
Elon Musk wants to turn Tesla’s fleet into AWS for AI —would it work?
Image: Getty During last night's earnings call with investors, Elon Musk threw out an all-time late-night dorm room bong sesh of an idea: what if AWS, but for Tesla?Musk, who loves to riff on earnings calls, compared the unused compute power of millions of idle Tesla vehicles to Amazon's cloud service business. If they're just sitting there, he mused, why not put them to good use to run AI models? (Also, have you ever really looked at your hands? No, I mean really looked?)There's a potential... when the car is not moving to actually run distributed inference," Musk said. If you imagine the future perhaps where there's a fleet of 100 million Teslas and on average, they've got like maybe a kilowatt of inference compute. That's 100 gigawatts of... Continue reading...
Biden signs TikTok ‘ban’ bill into law, starting the clock for ByteDance to divest it
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year.The divest-or-ban bill is now law, starting the clock for ByteDance to make its move. The company has an initial nine months to sort out a deal, though the president could extend that another three months if he sees progress.While just recently the legislation seemed like it would stall out in the Senate after being passed as a standalone bill in the House, political maneuvering helped usher it through to Biden's desk. The House packaged the TikTok bill - which upped the timeline for divestment from the six months allowed in the earlier version - with foreign aid to US... Continue reading...
‘PBS Retro’ is coming to Roku as a FAST channel
It's where Mister Rogers' Neighborhood lives. | Image: PBS Distribution via The Wrap. Parents, it's time to green-light more screen time.PBS classics from the '70s, '80s, and '90s, including titles like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Thomas and Friends, are coming to streaming. PBS Distribution is making the edutainment programming available for free in the form of a FAST (free, ad-supported streaming) channel called PBS Retro, which is accessible through The Roku Channel.We identified an interest in connecting audiences with the content they grew up watching," PBS distribution president Andrea Downing told The Wrap. The Roku Channel is home to other PBS FAST channels as well, including PBS Antiques Road Show, Antiques Road Trip, PBS Food, Julia Child, and PBS Nature.The Roku Channel is becoming increasingly... Continue reading...
Stellar Blade on PS5 has flash and fun but is mostly dull
Image: Shift Up While the combat is challenging and rewarding, it takes far too long to get to the good stuff. Continue reading...
A morning with the Rabbit R1: a fun, funky, unfinished AI gadget
The Rabbit R1 is a fun little thing -and oh boy, is it orange. There were times I wasn't sure the Rabbit R1 was even a real thing. The AI-powered, Teenage Engineering-designed device came out of nowhere to become one of the biggest stories at CES, promising a level of fun and whimsy that felt much better than some of the more self-serious AI companies out there. CEO Jesse Lyu practically promised the world in this $199 device.Well, say this for Rabbit: it's real. Last night, I went to the swanky TWA Hotel in New York City, along with a few hundred reporters, creators, and particularly enthusiastic R1 buyers. After a couple of hours of photo booths, specialty cocktails, and a rousing keynote and demo from Lyu - in which he made near-constant reference to and fun of the Humane AI Pin - we all got our... Continue reading...
Qualcomm strong-arms its way into Windowslaptopsthis summer
Image: Joanna Nelius / The Verge On Wednesday, Qualcomm announced the impending arrival of its Snapdragon X Plus laptop processor alongside more information for its previously announced Snapdragon X Elite chips. While this is not the first time we've seen Qualcomm processors in a laptop, it's the first time the company could have a chip that rivals Apple, Intel, and AMD on speed.The Snapdragon X Plus is Qualcomm's entry-level laptop chip. It has 10 cores, 42MB of cache, a maximum multithreaded frequency of 3.4GHz, and an NPU with 45 tera operations per second (TOPS, or how many mathematical calculations it can solve in a second) to assist with fancy-smancy generative AI applications. But keep in mind, TOPS is an arbitrary measurement that can sound more impressive than... Continue reading...
App Store video game emulators: all the news on retro console ports for iOS
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge iPhone users can finally enjoy retro gaming emulators without jailbreaking their phones. Continue reading...
Lamborghini’s popular Urus SUV grows a plug —and goes hybrid
Lamborghini's mission to produce gas-electric hybrid versions of all of its models continues with today's release of the plug-in hybrid Urus SE. The SUV is the top selling vehicle in Lamborghini's lineup, and a hybrid version is sure to draw a lot of interest from the Italian automaker's customer base of luxury-minded one-percenters.The electrified luxury SUV's hybrid powertrain can put out a total of 800 CV (a metric unit of horsepower that translates to 789 hp), or 588 kW, thanks to its 25 kWh battery. It can also travel as far as 60 km (37 miles) on battery power alone, which is certainly a healthy step up over the hybrid Revuelto's 10 km of electric-only driving. And, as befitting its Lambo-ness, the... Continue reading...
What happens after your country runs on 99 percent renewable electricity?
Kenneth Lobo Mendez, director of planning and sustainability in electricity management, and Marco Jimenez Chavez, an engineer, at the state-run electricity utility Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE). | Collage by Israel Vargas | Photos by Justine Calma Costa Rica gets more than 99 percent of its electricity from renewables - it's still not enough. Continue reading...
Adobe’s impressive AI upscaling project makes blurry videos look HD
Adobe claims its new VideoGigaGAN generative AI model can upscale video clips more consistently and in higher quality than other VSR methods. | Image: Adobe Adobe researchers have developed a new generative AI model called VideoGigaGAN that can upscale blurry videos at up to eight times their original resolution. Introduced in a paper published on April 18th, Adobe claims VideoGigaGAN is superior to other Video Super Resolution (VSR) methods as it can provide more fine-grained details without introducing any AI weirdness" to the footage.In a nutshell, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are effective for upscaling still images to a higher resolution, but struggle to do the same for video without introducing flickering and other unwanted artifacts. Other upscaling methods can avoid this, but the results aren't as sharp or detailed. VideoGigaGAN aims to provide the best of both worlds -... Continue reading...
Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone
The app recommendations in the Windows 11 Start menu. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes recommendations" for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps," says Microsoft in the update notes of its latest public Windows 11 release. These apps come from a small set of curated developers." The ads are designed to help Windows 11 users discover more apps, but will largely benefit the developers that Microsoft is trying to tempt into building more Windows apps.Microsoft only started testing... Continue reading...
The Mercedes G-Wagen, the ultimate off-road status symbol, goes electric
Image: Mercedes-Benz AG Mercedes' box-shaped luxury off-roader finally gets an electrified makeover. Continue reading...
Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden’s desk
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images A bill that would force China-based company ByteDance to sell TikTok - or else face a US ban of the platform - is all but certain to become law after the Senate passed a foreign aid package including the measure.It now heads to President Joe Biden, who already committed to signing the TikTok legislation should it make it through both chambers of Congress. The House passed the foreign aid package that includes the TikTok bill on Saturday.Once signed by the president, ByteDance would have up to a year to complete a sale of TikTok or face an effective ban for the platform in the US. The bill gives ByteDance an initial nine months and gives the president discretion to extend it another three should there be progress toward a deal. Still,... Continue reading...
Steam will stop issuing refunds if you play two hours of a game before launch day
Eight years ago, Valve began offering no-questions-asked refunds for any game you buy on Steam - as long as you asked for that refund within 14 days of purchase and hadn't played more than two hours of a game.But when Valve started letting you play games ahead of their release dates with its Early Access" and Advanced Access" programs, it introduced a loophole: people could play for many, many hours ahead of launch and still request a refund after.Today, Valve's closing the loophole: Your Advanced Access and Early Access playtime now counts against the two-hour refund limit.Here's what Valve's updated refund policy says about that as of today:
This Game Boy-looking phone stand is why MagSafe is good
That's a nice looking charger. | Image by Elago MagSafe isn't a particularly controversial standard, but I've heard people grumble about it. They get upset because it doesn't charge quite as efficiently as an old-fashioned cable and they get annoyed that any phone case needs to be MagSafe-compatible. But could charging by cable provide you with something as stupidly fun as this new phone stand from Elago?The Elago MagSafe MS W5 Charging Stand is a mouthful of a name for what's just a Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP shaped MagSafe stand. Do the buttons and switches work? No! Does it fold close? Absolutely not! It's merely a piece of plastic you slot a MagSafe charger into. It's so simple you could probably 3D print something similar at home. Image by Elago Don't... Continue reading...
The EU’s new right-to-repair rules make companies fix your device after a warranty expires
Cath Virginia / The Verge The European Union has officially adopted a new set of right-to-repair rules designed to encourage people to repair broken devices, rather than replace them. One of the rules extends a product's warranty by one year if it's repaired while still covered.The European Union already requires companies to offer a two-year minimum warranty on products, but these new rules take things a step further. Even after the warranty period ends, companies are still required to repair common household products," including smartphones, TVs, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and other items. If a product breaks while under warranty, consumers can choose between a replacement or a repair. If they choose to repair, the warranty will be extended for a... Continue reading...
A cheaper Tesla is back on the menu
The Model 3 might get an affordable younger sibling in 2025. | Image: Tesla Tesla says it will build more affordable electric vehicles - perhaps as soon as 2025 - refuting recent reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had canceled plans for a cheaper Model 2" vehicle in favor of getting a robotaxi out the door. But Musk didn't clarify whether the lower-cost EV would be a brand new model for Tesla or simplified versions of its current vehicles.In terms of a new product roadmap, there's been a lot of talk," Musk said during the company's first quarter earnings call, addressing the concerns investors have expressed over the past month about the delayed plans for a low-cost EV. We've updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models." Musk said we might see the vehicles in early 2025, if not... Continue reading...
Jabra’s noise-canceling Elite 5 are on sale for 40 percent off right now
Jabra's latest midrange earbuds aren't the best at any one thing, but they do offer a lot of bang for your buck. | Image: Jabra At this point, it's safe to say that Jabra makes some of the most reliable earbuds you can buy, especially for the price. The Jabra Elite 5, like the company's prior midrange models, are good example of a pair that checks all the right boxes, offering up ANC, multipoint, and a host of other welcome features at a competitive price point. And now, thanks to a $60 discount from Amazon and Jabra, you can grab them for a mere $89.99, which nearly matches their second-best price to date.We've long considered the Jabra Elite 3 one of the best pairs of sub-$100 earbuds you could buy, though, at the current price, I'd argue the Elite 5 are the better value. The comfy, teardrop-shaped buds don't excel at any one thing but rather offer a laundry... Continue reading...
The FTC has banned noncompete agreements
Illustration by The Verge | Photo via Getty Images The Federal Trade Commission has voted to ban noncompete agreements nationwide, saying that they are an unfair method of competition."Noncompete agreements - which attempt to prevent employees from working for or starting competing businesses - are especially prevalent in the world of tech, where we've seen companies like Amazon enforce and then retract a noncompete agreement for warehouse workers. Acer even sued its former CEO for allegedly breaching a noncompete policy by becoming a consultant for Lenovo.The change will force companies to reverse existing noncompete agreements and notify employees about the change. Existing noncompete agreements for senior executives can stay in place, but companies can't enter or enforce new... Continue reading...
Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore
Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Today, Framework is the modular repairable laptop company. Tomorrow, it wants to be a consumer electronics company, period. That's one of the biggest reasons it just raised another $18 million in funding - it wants to expand beyond the laptop into additional product categories."Framework CEO Nirav Patel tells me that has always been the plan and that the company originally had other viable ideas beyond laptops, too. We chose to take on the notebook space first," he says, partly because Framework knew it could bootstrap its ambitions by catering to the PC builders and tinkerers and Linux enthusiasts left behind by big OEMs and partly because it wanted to go big or go home.If Framework could succeed in laptops, he thought, it would be... Continue reading...
Tesla teases robotaxi ridehailing function in its app
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla provided a sneak peek of its upcoming ridehailing mobile app in the company's latest earnings report. The company's CEO, Elon Musk, has said that Tesla will unveil a long-gestating robotaxi in August.The company revealed five screens from the forthcoming feature. The first screen shows a big button that says Summon" with a lower message for the possible wait time. The next screen has a 3D map with a little virtual vehicle following a route to the waiting passenger. It looks a lot like the Uber app - but more Tesla-y. Image: Tesla Tesla's ridehailing app looks like your average ridehailing app. While they wait, the passenger can set the vehicle's climate to a preferred temperature. Other details, like... Continue reading...
Apple reportedly cuts Vision Pro production due to low demand
Demand for Vision Pro is falling. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple is reportedly cutting its Vision Pro headset shipment forecast for the rest of the year due to cooling demand.Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo writes that Apple cut orders for the Vision Pro even before it launched outside of the US. His sources claim that Apple now expects to sell only around 400,000 to 450,000 units in 2024, compared to what Kuo says was a market consensus" of 700,000 to 800,000. Demand for the $3,500 Vision Pro dropped much lower than the company was expecting.Facing the unanticipated drop in steam, Apple is now adjusting its headset roadmap, possibly pushing the future of a lower-cost entry mixed reality headset beyond 2025 (if at all). Apple's Vision Pro has largely wowed early adopters due to its technical... Continue reading...
Tesla’s profits sink as the company struggles with cooling demand
Photo by VCG / VCG via Getty Images Tesla reported its first quarter earnings during an incredibly shaky moment for the company in which sales numbers and the stock price have both fallen. Against this backdrop, Tesla reported $1.1 billion in net income on $21 billion in revenue, down 9 percent from $23.3 billion the same time last year.The company's profits, once the envy of the auto industry, are at their lowest in six years thanks to rampant price cutting and slowing demand. Earlier this week, the company approved its latest price cuts for the US, China, and Germany - all major markets for the EV maker.Tesla's Q1 operating margins are 5.5 percent, down from 11.4 percent in Q1 2023. In a call with investors, the company's CEO, Elon Musk, blamed an industrywide shift... Continue reading...
Wattpad has a community problem, so it’s killing DMs
Wattpad says DMs will be shut down on May 6th, alongside the deletion of all existing messages. | Image: Wattpad Community publishing platform Wattpad is removing the ability for users to send each other direct messages, claiming that the feature has only been relevant to a small percentage" of its global user base. Users will retain access to their DMs until May 6th, after which all existing messages will be deleted and the feature will no longer be available, according to Wattpad's help center.Wattpad is instead encouraging its users to communicate via the public commenting feature on stories or the conversation section of profile pages. There is currently no means for users to download their existing DMs, and Wattpad says that it's unable to retrieve such data. The feature will still exist in a limited capacity solely for Wattpad to... Continue reading...
T-Mobile’s new 5G internet plan lets you take your Wi-Fi on the road
Home internet for when you're not at home. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile has announced two new home internet plans: Home Internet Plus and Away. Well, technically that's one home internet plan and one anywhere-but-home plan. These new flavors of T-Mobile's 5G-powered internet service aim to address different customers, but both serve the same goal: leveraging that sweet 5G spectrum to do more than just keep our phones connected.The new Away plan, importantly, does not allow for extended use in the same location," according to a footnote in T-Mobile's press release. It's basically a Starlink competitor designed for campers and RV owners, but instead of using satellite connectivity, it's more like a supercharged cellular hotspot. It can connect up to 64 devices at a time, which seems like way more... Continue reading...
Apple will likely ‘Let Loose’ new iPads at its May event
Apple's next event will be all about iPads. | Image: Apple Apple has gone and announced a spring event for May 7th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET. While the company didn't say what the event is about, the Apple Pencil in its graphic suggests we're finally about to hear about new iPads - but which ones? Well, almost certainly OLED iPad Pros, which we've been hearing about for months, but the company might also announce a new iPad Air in two sizes for the first time.Rumors have also circulated in the last few months about a new Apple Pencil and updated Magic Keyboard accessories that would give iPad Pro owners a more laptop-like feel. Because more accessories are all the iPad needs, right? It doesn't seem likely that there will be an update of the 10th-generation vanilla iPad or the iPad Mini quite yet, so... Continue reading...
The biggest AI companies agree to crack down on child abuse images
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images Tech companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Amazon committed today to reviewing their AI training data for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and removing it from use in any future models.The companies signed on to a new set of principles meant to limit the proliferation of CSAM. They promise to ensure training datasets do not contain CSAM, to avoid datasets with a high risk of including CSAM, and to remove CSAM imagery or links to CSAM from data sources. The companies also commit to stress-testing" AI models to ensure they don't generate any CSAM imagery and to only release models if these have been evaluated for child safety.Other signatories include Anthropic, Civitai, Metaphysic, Mistral AI, and Stability AI.G... Continue reading...
Atlus’ new fantasy-meets-Persona RPG launches in October
Image: Atlus Metaphor: ReFantazio is the inscrutable name for Atlus' next RPG project. The company launched a new trailer and a 30-minute video introducing players to the story, gameplay, and social elements of the game, and at first blush, it looks pretty damn intriguing. Check out the gameplay video below.Metaphor: ReFantazio is an action RPG from Studio Zero, a new internal studio spun up in 2016 and headed by Katsura Hashino. Atlus really wants you to know the bona fides of the developers working on Metaphor. Hashino himself worked on Shin Megami Tensei III, Persona 3, 4, and 5. The game's mechanical designer is Ikuto Yamashita, who helped design the mechs in Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Shoji Meguro, who did the music for the Persona series,... Continue reading...
You don’t know your K-pop persona, do you?
Image: Spotify Spotify has launched a colorful personality quiz designed to help K-pop fans determine their persona. For those unfamiliar with the K-pop term or its Jungian roots, a persona" refers to the distinct, public-facing role of each member of a band. The feature leans into K-pop's status as a major area of growth in the global music industry, which Spotify has been eager to tap into.The five-question quiz, which fans can take inside the Spotify app, will identify whether you're a Main Visual, a Main Vocal, a Main Rapper, a Main Dancer, or a Trainee. In a callout to K-pop fan culture, the quiz will also generate a photocard (similar to the band-specific trading cards) with your results that you can share on social media. The feature will be... Continue reading...
How 14 tribes plan to use the Biden administration’s solar grants
Cody Two Bears attends the Stand With Standing Rock Benefit at ABC Home & Carpet on December 15th, 2016, in New York City. | Photo by Mark Sagliocco / WireImage A coalition of 14 tribes received $135,580,000 for solar energy, part of a Biden administration program to help more households run on renewable energy. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation, which is leading the coalition, says the funding will bring jobs to their communities and make electricity more affordable.The Environmental Protection Agency announced $7 billion in Solar for All" grants yesterday for 60 awardees, including the MHA Nation. The money, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, is supposed to bring residential solar systems to some 900,000 low-income and disadvantaged" households. Six of the grants, totaling $500 million, are going to tribes.Funding for the MHA Nation is expected to bring solar energy... Continue reading...
Luminar starts shipping lidar for Volvo EX90 — while readying its next-gen sensor
Luminar's new Halo lidar sensor is expected to be less than one inch thick. | Image: Luminar Luminar is shipping out orders of its lidar sensors to Volvo as the automaker is preparing to start production of its EX90 electric vehicles, the company said today. Volvo will use the laser sensor to enable safety and self-driving features in the EX90, making it the first global consumer vehicle to standardize this technology," Luminar notes in a press release.The news comes during a Luminar Day" webcast, where the company is also announcing a new next-generation Halo" lidar sensor - one that's designed for mainstream adoption, including in affordable vehicles, at half the cost of its current system.The order of lidar sensors to Volvo, which Luminar notes is worth $4 billion, comes after Volvo announced last year that it had to p... Continue reading...
This could finally be the year the iPad gets a built-in calculator app
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge It's been over a decade since the release of the very first iPad - and it may finally get Apple's Calculator app. MacRumors reports that Apple plans to introduce its native calculator in iPadOS 18, which Apple will likely introduce during its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10th.For years, iPad users have had to download third-party calculator apps or access a web browser just to do math. Many of these third-party apps aren't all that pleasant to use, as some of them come filled with ads or just don't mesh well with the iPad's interface. Not to mention that the better calculator apps, like PCalc, cost money to download.This isn't the only calculator rumor we've heard recently, either. Earlier this month, a report from A... Continue reading...
The VWFNDR Keirin is an expansive new concept for the future of cameras
The The VWFNDR Keirin camera concept. This past weekend, a local startup held an exhibition not too far from where I live in Tokyo to show off its idea for an entirely new take on camera hardware. That's not the sort of thing that happens every weekend, even in Tokyo, so I biked on over to take a look.VWFNDR is a project started by UX designer Alvaro Arregui Falcon of Nuevo.Tokyo and independent industrial designer Mireia Gordi i Vila. The team later brought on London-based engineer Lucas Seidenfaden, who developed the first working prototype for their concept.That concept is called Keirin.Named after the Japanese cycling discipline that takes place on a similarly oval track, the Keirin is a camera focused on panorama photography. Its standout visual feature is a curved... Continue reading...
Bringing Fallout’s gritty retrofuturism into the real world
Image: Amazon For production designer Howard Cummings, Fallout wasn't just the name of his most recent project - it also became a verb. As he was working on Amazon's live-action adaptation of the game series, Cummings and his team used the word Fallout as a shorthand to describe the particular retrofuturistic, post-apocalyptic style the franchise is known for. Everything had to be Fallout-ed," he tells The Verge. For locations, I'd say: How do I Fallout this grocery store?'"Initially, though, that wasn't the plan. Going into the project, Cummings - who previously worked on shows like Westworld and Lovecraft Country - didn't know all that much about the games and thought he might have to update the visual style to make it slicker." That changed... Continue reading...
Samsung’s new glare-free OLED TV is receiving its first discount
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Don't kick yourself if you missed out on Samsung's free TV preorder promo from earlier this month. The company is now offering a much better cash discount on one of its most notable new models: the glare-free Samsung OLED S95D TV. The smallest TV in the lineup, the 55-inch model starts at $2,299.99 ($300 off) at Best Buy and Samsung, while the 77-inch is also $300 off for $4,299.99 (Best Buy, Samsung). The 65-inch TV, meanwhile, is receiving an even steeper $400 discount for $2,999.99 (Best Buy, Samsung).Back in January, we saw for ourselves how well the S95D OLED eliminated most noticeable reflections, even as the TV sat right next to a light source. At the same time, the TV's display is brighter than ever, with the OLED screen... Continue reading...
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses get video calling, Apple Music, and a new style
There's a new cat-eye frame called the Skyler. | Image: Meta Meta just announced a slew of new updates for its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg just dropped an Instagram reel showing off a new cat-eye frame style for the glasses and a video calling feature. You can also now connect the glasses with Apple Music, and last but not least, the multimodal AI assistant is live for everyone in the US and Canada.You can peep a pretty clear demo of the video calling feature from Zuckerberg's reel. In it, he talks to Eva Chen, who runs fashion at Instagram, about the new Skyler frames and... chain lengths, of all things. The existing Wayfarer and Headliner models are also getting some new colors. The Headliner, which has rounder lenses, is also getting a low-bridge fit for folks who have... Continue reading...
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses have multimodal AI now
Overall, pulling out your phone is still faster, but it is handy for identifying things when you're out and about. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It can be handy, confidently wrong, and just plain finicky - but smart glasses are a much more comfortable form factor for this tech. Continue reading...
Razer’s Viper V3 Pro mouse puts its dongle where it belongs
The white Razer Viper V3 Pro next to its large bundled HyperPolling Wireless Dongle. | Image: Razer Does your gaming mouse track its own position 8,000 times per second? If you're the kind of person who cares, I suspect you might also want that mouse to track that fast out of the box - instead of having to buy an extra dongle for that feature.That's the most obvious difference Razer is announcing today with its flagship Viper V3 Pro mouse for esports pros and those who aspire to be one. For $160, the new Viper V3 Pro includes the $30 Razer HyperPolling Wireless Dongle, where the $150 Viper V2 Pro did not.Mind you, the 58-gram Viper V2 Pro was already an impressive piece of kit, taking the crown for the lightest wireless gaming mouse at its debut, and the V3 Pro now sheds an extra four grams to hit 54 grams and firmly cement itself... Continue reading...
Asia is officially the most ‘disaster-prone’ region in the world
Residents clean debris of their destroyed houses at the Khaung Dote Khar Rohingya refugee camp in Myanmar's Rakhine state on May 15th, 2023, after Cyclone Mocha made landfall. | Photo by Sai Aung Main / AFP via Getty Images No other region on Earth experiences more climate, weather, and water-related disasters than Asia, according to a new report. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its 2023 State of the Climate in Asia today, which found that risks are only rising.From heatwaves to flooding and storms, climate change makes all kinds of disasters more intense all over the world. But the problem is particularly acute in Asia, which is heating up faster than the global average thanks to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.The report's conclusions are sobering."Climate change exacerbated the frequency and severity of such events, profoundly impacting societies, economies, and, most importantly, human lives and the environment... Continue reading...
Amazon launches an unlimited grocery delivery subscription
Image: Amazon Amazon is bringing back free(ish) grocery deliveries for orders over $35 in the form of a new monthly subscription program the company announced today. It's $9.99 per month for Prime members and includes unlimited one-hour grocery delivery where it's available, as well as unlimited 30-minute grocery pickups, with a half-cost option for low-income non-Prime members who qualify.Amazon launched a trial of the subscription in three cities last year but now says it's available in 3,500 cities across the US. Deliveries include groceries from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh but also local grocers and specialty retailers that it's partnered with. Subscribers get priority access" for recurring weekly groceries, too.This new subscription could be... Continue reading...
Netflix’s Atlas is looking more and more like a buddy cop movie about working with AI
At first glance, Netflix's upcoming action thriller Atlas, starring Jennifer Lopez, seemed like it was going to be a rather serious movie about a mech pilot fighting to survive on an inhospitable planet. That could still be the case, but the movie's latest trailer makes it out to be a bit more of a sci-fi buddy cop affair with an emphasis on human / robot alliances.Though a maniacal machine (Simu Liu) dead-set on eradicating humanity presents the biggest threat in Atlas, the movie's new trailer puts a spotlight on how an AI-powered battle armor will join Atlas Shepherd (Lopez) in her fight to save the world. With so many killer robots on the loose and doing a bang-up job of destroying cities, it makes sense that Atlas would be... Continue reading...
Apple announces May 7th event for new iPads
Illustration: The Verge After kicking off 2024 with the launch of the Vision Pro, the next act in Apple's 2024 script is a May product launch event. Apple has started inviting members of the media to a special Apple Event" on May 7th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET. The invite's image includes the Apple Pencil, making it abundantly clear that iPads will be the focus of this virtual event.Rumors suggest the iPad Pro will get some of its most significant improvements since the 2021 M1 overhaul, including an OLED display (with a slight size bump to 13 inches for the bigger model), an updated M3 chipset, and the long overdue horizontal repositioning of its front-facing camera. There might also be a new Apple Pencil and a redesigned Magic Keyboard with an aluminum build and a... Continue reading...
Anker’s minimalistic home backup batteriesare ready for blackout season
If you can afford this home, you can probably afford Anker's whole-home battery backup solution. | Image: Anker Nearly a year since it was first announced, Anker is finally selling its Solix whole-home battery backup solution in North America. The Solix X1 is just 5.9 inches thick and attaches to a wall like a Tesla Powerwall. It's a more permanent and minimalist alternative to Anker's modular F3800 kits, which can be quickly detached to power a weekend away.The Solix X1 can be configured to deliver between 3kW and 36kW of power with a stackable design that supports between 5kWh and 180kWh of LFP battery capacity. It's covered by a warranty of 10 years or 16.5MWh throughput, whichever comes first. Cutover from the grid to the battery happens in less than 20ms, so you might not even notice the next power outage.Calculating how much power and... Continue reading...
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