The Verge

Image: Hello Games Things are about to get a little quieter in the No Man's Sky universe. Developer Hello Games just released the sci-fi adventure's latest update - it's called Adrift," and it introduces an alternative universe that's completely devoid of other characters. That means no NPCs to chat or trade with. The studio calls it the first time players can be truly alone in No Man's Sky."In addition to making the game lonelier and heightening the sense of isolation that was very present in the early days of the game, Adrift" will also make the experience more challenging. Here's how the studio explains it:

Using Apple's RoomPlan Controller for HomeKit has added a map view for Apple Home to its app. | Image: Controller for HomeKit Controller for HomeKit, a third-party app for controlling your Apple Home smart home, has a new Floor Plan feature that adds a map interface for interacting with connected devices like lights, locks, shades, sensors and more. I got some time with the new feature ahead of its launch this week and it's a compelling way to control your smart home. A 3D scan of your house becomes an interactive map filled with all your connected devices providing an intuitive way to control them: Just tap the lamp next to the sofa on the map and that light will turn on.For those unfamiliar, Controller for HomeKit is a well-regarded app that can manage and control any Apple Home and HomeKit compatible devices, scenes, automations, and so on. It uses the... Continue reading...

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, pictured on its current owner's website. | Image: PleasrDAO Very few people have heard the only copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the Wu-Tang Clan album that disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli bought at auction in 2015. Starting next month, though, you'll be able to hear a curated, 30-minute excerpt of the album, provided you can get to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania, between June 15th and June 24th, reports The Washington Post.The MONA's playback of Shaolin excerpts will be part of a months-long exhibit called Namedropping" centered on rare and significant pop culture objects. Tasmanian residents can get into the museum for free, but tickets go for as much as AUS$38 for anyone else.

The NPU inside Copilot Plus PCs takes the stage at a Microsoft Surface and AI event. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge When you launch a game on a Snapdragon on a Windows laptop, you might get an AI frame rate boost from Microsoft's mysterious Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature. But while Microsoft hasn't fully explained how the feature works, The Verge can now confirm it's not Qualcomm technology, not exclusive to Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X chips, and not exclusive to specific games, either.You'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise! Microsoft's new Automatic Super Resolution help page bluntly states that a Snapdragon X chip is required - see screenshot - and that all of its processing occurs on-device using the integrated GPU and Neural Processing Unit." Image: Microsoft But Qualcomm now tells us that Super Resolution is... Continue reading...

Image: Lego If your little Lego town has grown big enough, it may be time to add an officially sanctioned Lego Apple Store, something that's vaguely possible if a recently submitted fan build gets the requisite 10,000 votes for Lego to consider it. The immaculately detailed creation has what most people would expect from a modern Apple Store: floor-to-ceiling glass front, tables full of Macs and iPhones, and shelves resplendent with neatly arranged white boxes.One of the project's designers is Truman, aka Legotruman, a Hong Kong-based fan who was behind the Lego Starry Night build and whose Gundam, Lego Anatomy, and Spirited Away ideas Lego is currently considering. Their collaborator, 2A2A, won a Disney-themed Lego design challenge with a design... Continue reading...

Image: YouTube Everybody's getting into gaming these days. YouTube joins the slowly growing list of companies with gaming initiatives, rolling out its Playables program across mobile and desktop. To play, simply visit YouTube's website or Android / iOS app and look for Playables in the sidebar. YouTube will let players save their progress and keep track of high scores. There are over 75 games to choose from, including chess and crossword games to more popular casual mobile titles like Angry Birds Showdown!, Trivia Crack, and Cut the Rope.YouTube began its foray into gaming last year, offering Playables to YouTube Premium subscribers. That initial phase had far fewer games and was only around for a relatively limited amount of time, with the phase... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge In 2020, Epic Games sued Apple for antitrust violations. It's been years since the trial wrapped and judgment was rendered, but for the past few weeks, Apple and Epic Games have been back in front of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers once more. Gonzalez Rogers mostly ruled in favor of Apple last time. Things might not go so well for the company this time.As a reminder, this whole case got started when Epic challenged Apple's up to 30 percent fees to developers for in-app purchases through a splashy campaign where it basically ignored Apple's App Store guidelines and put in its own mobile payment processing system in its popular game Fortnite. That got the Fortnite app kicked off of the App Store, setting up the perfect scenario for Epic to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Opera browser users can get more up-to-date information and more conversational responses as it integrates Google's Gemini AI models into its existing Aria AI extension.Aria, released last year, acts like an AI assistant to answer user queries, write code, and perform other tasks. According to Opera, Aria does not rely on one AI model to respond to users but chooses the AI model it feels will work best for the specific task. With this new integration, Aria can tap into Gemini, which the company says provides Opera users with the most current information at high performance."Aria is available on all Opera browsers, including its gaming browser, Opera GX.The Gemini family of large language models consists of several models of... Continue reading...

At just $299.99, Apple's entry-level iPad offers even better value if you're looking for a powerful tablet for basic entertainment purposes and light productivity. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge I got a nice sunrise surprise this morning. Sure, trees and power lines in my little corner of Texas were being hewn to the ground by the storms ripping across the central South, and I'm still without power as of this writing - but I have just enough juice in my power bank to inform you that we've found the best deal yet on the 10th-generation iPad. The 64GB / Wi-Fi configuration is down to $299.99 (about $34 off) at Amazon in select colors when you clip the on-page coupon. That's a new price record for Apple's entry-level iPad.The latest baseline iPad now looks more like the pricier ones in Apple's lineup, although it's lost the home button and headphone jack and switched out the Lightning port for USB-C. And while it's still on the... Continue reading...

Image: Activision Microsoft is confirming today that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the next installment in the popular franchise, will be available day one on Xbox Game Pass. After a premature notification earlier today, an official Xbox Wire blog post has now revealed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be available on Microsoft's game subscription service later this year.We're excited to confirm that Game Pass members will be able to jump into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on day one with Game Pass," says Megan Spurr, senior community lead of Xbox Game Pass. In a separate trailer from Xbox, Microsoft confirms Black Ops 6 will be available on both Xbox Game Pass for consoles and PC Game Pass.The confirmation of a Game Pass release for the next Call of Duty... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Netflix isn't just programming content only a small group of people would like - it's intent on having a little something for everyone. During an interview with The New York Times, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos says he regrets comparing Netflix to HBO and its more limited selection of content in the past.Here's the quote, published in this 2013 GQ profile of Reed Hastings:

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge From the earliest pixelated games to the outrageously realistic experiences of today, flight simulators have always been pushing the boundaries of what can be visually recreated in a video game. It's one thing to make space look good; it's another thing entirely to faithfully recreate the cockpit of a 747 and the whole world around which it might fly.On this episode of The Vergecast, the fourth and final installment of our series on the five senses of video games, we asked Polygon's Charlie Hall to help us make sense of the current state of the art in flight simulation. Hall, who once spent more than four months in VR mapping the edge of the Milky Way galaxy in Elite: Dangerous, has more experience in a virtual cockpit than most. We... Continue reading...

Bambu P1P vs. Creality K1C: an easy' 3D printer showdown. Continue reading...

Image: Bungie A jury found on Friday that Phoenix Digital, which owns the cheat mod site AimJunkies, is guilty of violating Bungie copyrights when it created cheats for Destiny 2, reported Stephen Totilo, who has written about Bungie's cheating lawsuits for Axios. The landmark decision may be the first time a jury has agreed that a cheat creator violated a gaming company's copyrights.Yesterday's jury decision awarded Bungie (PDF) a tidy sum of $63,210. Bungie counsel James Barker said in a statement emailed to The Verge that the company is committed to our players and will continue to protect them against cheats, including taking this and future cases all the way to trial."In 2021, Bungie sued AimJunkies and four defendants (here's a PDF of the... Continue reading...

Image: Big Mode / Shared Memory About midway through Animal Well, I felt I had been lied to. I read all the glowing reviews of the game and heard the breathless praise heaped upon it on social media. But my expectations did not match my reality... until I beat the game. Now, I'm well on my way to 100 percent completion for a game I was seriously considering abandoning.Spoilers for Animal Well are below.Though I loved Animal Well's novel take on traditional movement abilities - the tools it provides possess multiple clever uses - platforming itself often felt demoralizing. Initially, Animal Well's platforming felt like it had difficulty spikes that were both too great and too frequent. I could often see where I had to go and how to get there (and I often looked up... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Philip Pacheco, Bloomberg, Getty Images Despite Epic Games' surprise win at trial, I was skeptical that Judge James Donato would seriously consider forcing Google to let the Epic Games Store live inside its own Google Play Store, and give it access to every app inside Google Play. Those were two of the biggest demands that Epic revealed in April.But Judge Donato is indeed considering them. He's ordered Google to calculate the costs of complying with those demands by June 24th, one month from today:

Stacker for iPod is a Tetris clone that never made it to retail models. | Image: Apple Demo YouTuber Apple Demo has found a prototype third-generation iPod that contains a game called Stacker, which never made it to retail models. In addition to Apple's own version of Tetris, the engineering sample iPod also came loaded with other unreleased titles, including games called Block0 and Klondike, as noted by Engadget.On the back of the prototype iPod, a DVT" (Design Validation Testing) label is etched where the storage capacity normally goes, which, Apple Demo explains indicates it was from the middle stage of development. Two songs still in its storage and a helpfully-named playlist suggest this device was used for battery testing.After some tinkering and transplanting the internal hard disk into a second-generation iPod Apple... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Getty Images The UK could subject big tech companies to hefty fines if they don't comply with new rules meant to promote competition in digital markets. On Thursday, lawmakers passed the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill (DMCC) through Parliament, which will let regulators enforce rules without the help of the courts.The DMCC also addresses consumer protection issues by banning fake reviews, forcing companies to be more transparent about their subscription contracts, regulating secondary ticket sales, and getting rid of hidden fees. It will also force certain companies to report mergers to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).The European Union enacted a similar law, called the Digital Markets Act (DMA).Only the companies... Continue reading...