The Verge

Image: The Verge / Android Google's second developer preview for Android 15 has arrived, bringing long-awaited support for satellite connectivity alongside several improvements to contactless payments, multi-language recognition, volume consistency, and interaction with PDFs via apps.These developer-focused betas are a proving ground for features that will likely make it into the final public release scheduled for later this year. According to Google, public beta releases should be available to test between April and July. Image: Google Here's Google's release timeline for Android 15, which may see a full release between August and October this year. The latest developer preview addresses some nuisances and security concerns... Continue reading...

Incorrect spelling will be a thing of the past in Notepad soon. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is bringing the spellcheck feature to its Notepad app on Windows 11. Testers can now access the new spellcheck support in Notepad, which will be available to all Windows 11 users later this year.Spellcheck in Notepad works much like it does in Microsoft Word or inside the Microsoft Edge browser. Misspelled words are automatically underlined in red, and you can fix mistakes with a right-click to see suggestions for spellings. Microsoft has even added autocorrect, so mistakes are fixed as you continue typing. Spellcheck in Notepad will also support multiple languages, and you can ignore words in documents and add them to a dictionary.This feature is enabled by default for some file types but is off by default in log files and... Continue reading...

The new Surface Pro 10 for Business is easier to repair. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is making it easier to service and repair its new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices. The software giant is adding QR codes on the internal components of both new Surface devices, alongside internal markings on the Surface Pro 10 for Business, to make it easier to identify the screws and driver types for certain components.They have easy serviceability with clear visual icons and built-in repair instructions," explains Nancie Gaskill, general manager of the Surface business, in an interview with The Verge. These changes make the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 the most easily serviceable Surface devices ever," according to Gaskill.On the Surface Pro 10, you'll be able to replace the following components:

ED MILLER/NETFLIX Check out all of The Verge's coverage of Netflix's upcoming 3 Body Problem series based on Cixin Liu's epic sci-fi novel. Continue reading...

We could've had it all, Motorola. There are some phones that just feel nice to pick up, and the 2024 Moto G Power is one of them. It's sitting on my desk and even though I don't need to do anything with it right now, I pick it up anyway. That soft-touch back! The flat-yet-slightly-contoured edges! I turn it to look at the headphone jack on the bottom edge, just to remind myself if it's there. If the battery is even a little low, I set it on my wireless charging stand just for the thrill. All this on a $300 phone! Imagine!But after spending a little more time with the Moto G Power, I come crashing back down to reality. The LCD panel isn't as nice and contrast-y as an OLED (that's forgivable). The camera is underwhelming and suffers from Motorola's unusual image... Continue reading...

Neuralink's N1 implant. | Image: Neuralink Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company has released a video purporting to show the first human patient using Neuralink's brain implant to control a mouse cursor and play a game of chess.The patient, identified as 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, said he was injured in a diving accident eight years ago that paralyzed him below the shoulders. Arbaugh describes using the Neuralink implant as like using the Force from the Star Wars franchise, allowing him to just stare somewhere on the screen" and move the cursor where he wants.Elon Musk, who founded Neuralink in 2016, retweeted the video of Arbaugh and said it demonstrated telepathy."

Photo by John Moore / Getty Images Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just released updated data on migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border, and the results are staggering. At least 895 people died at the border during the 2022 fiscal year - a 57 percent increase from the previous fiscal year. This grim statistic makes 2022 the deadliest year on record for migrants attempting to come to the US, and it's possible that the figure is an undercount.For years, CBP has blamed the persistent rise in deaths on three factors: the summer heat, the ruggedness of the desert terrain, and the cruelty of smugglers who leave migrants to die there.Climate change has indeed made summers hotter and drier, which means migrants who spend days or weeks trekking through remote stretches of... Continue reading...

C'mon, how cute is that little ghost in the window? | Image: Sago Mini / The Verge Kids entertainment can be a special kind of hell if you're not a kid. For every Bluey - a show that's thoughtful, funny, and thoroughly watchable if you're over the age of five - there's a Blippi. If you're not familiar, he's a kind of MrBeast for toddlers. But he's hardly alone: YouTube Kids is littered with low-grade, algorithm-optimized videos of colorful trucks and Cocomelon knock-offs. It's weird out there.While prepping for our first cross-country flight with our toddler, I stumbled across a true gem: a collection of iPad games that aren't just tolerable, they're actually good.They're made by Sago Mini, and every one of its games is just so goddamn cute. Some of them are structured as play sets," which are little interactive,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple is not living up to the letter or spirit of an order issued by a California federal judge in its trial against Epic Games. That's what Meta, Microsoft, Match Group, and X told the court in an amicus brief on Wednesday.Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told Apple in 2021 that it could not prevent app developers from using buttons, external links, or other calls to action" informing users of payment options outside of their apps. Epic and other developers have taken issue with Apple's 15 to 30 percent fees on in-app purchases, which Apple makes difficult to avoid by also preventing them from directing users to payment options at a lower price outside of the iOS ecosystem. Apple has defended the fees as reasonable compensation for its... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube TV subscribers can now watch several programs at once on smaller devices - not just big TV screens. As noted by 9to5Google, the service's multiview feature has rolled out on iOS and iPadOS, although the Android crowd will have to wait for it to arrive in the coming months." So, Google's leaving its own crowd out of watching several March Madness games while on the go. Ouch.Multiview lets you watch four different things at the same time. The feature started out focused squarely on sports, and... that very much remains the case. YouTube TV has made it slightly more flexible and customizable, but you still can't just pick any four cable channels you'd like to have on-screen together, which would be my preference.If you're using... Continue reading...

Image: Epic Games At GDC last year, Epic launched a robust new creative tool called the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). And this year, the company announced some major new features that are on the way for it. To start, the company's MetaHumans - hyperrealistic human characters that can be animated using only an iPhone - will be available in UEFN beginning today. Epic says that users can import any characters made using the MetaHuman Creator tool and the MetaHuman Animator into UEFN, where they can then be used as NPCs in player-made games.While MetaHumans are the highlight, a couple of other notable features are coming as well. Epic says that UEFN will be getting more camera options later this year, including a much-requested first-person perspective.... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge From Fortnite to UE5. Continue reading...

Photo by Kevin Carter / Getty Images The Biden administration announced new automobile standards aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2032 while also allowing automakers to meet their targets at a slower pace than originally proposed.The new standards were not as strict as the proposal laid out by the Environmental Protection Agency last year, in which automakers would have been required to reduce emissions by over two-thirds by 2032. Car companies and the autoworkers union opposed the plan, citing recent slower sales growth of electric vehicles and the popularity of some hybrid vehicles as proof that customers were still not ready to make the full switch to fully electric vehicles.The new standards were not as strict as the proposal laid out by the... Continue reading...

The Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, PA (pictured) was targeted by a cyber attack last year. | Image: AP Photo / Gene J Puskar The Biden administration is asking states to bolster security for water and wastewater systems, warning that utilities across the country are being targeted by disabling cyberattacks."In a letter sent to all US governors on Tuesday, the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cited ongoing threats from hackers linked with Iranian and Chinese governments, warning that similar attacks could disrupt access to clean drinking water and impose significant costs on affected communities."Environmental, Health, and Homeland Security secretaries have been invited to a meeting on March 21st to discuss safeguarding requirements to protect critical water infrastructure against cyber attacks. The EPA is additionally forming a... Continue reading...

Photo courtesy of: Becca Farsace We know how much you'll miss the icy streets, freezing temperatures, and misbehaving radiators that the winter season brings, but spring is right around the corner, which means that while you no longer have to worry about shoveling snow off your driveway, it is time to start thinking about plants - whether it's in your garden or on your windowsill. We asked the staff members of The Verge what they are planning to grow over the coming spring and summer months and how they are planning to care for those flowers, vegetables, and other flora. Here's what they told us about starting new plants and caring for the seedlings - although some are using rather unusual gardening tools.Rare heirloom seedsMia Sato, reporterThere are some fruits,... Continue reading...

Image: Beeper Beeper needed a fresh start. Late last year, the company bet big on a hacked-together iMessage app for Android, only to be shut down by Apple within days. Beeper tried to fight back, but it ultimately threw in the towel just weeks later in a widely covered defeat.December was a wild ride," Eric Migicovsky, the co-founder of Beeper, tells The Verge.With dreams of an iMessage app dead, Beeper went back to square one to figure out its next steps. And the answer was to stop fighting Apple and return to its original goal: bringing every chat app - iMessage excepted - into a single place. We've refocused on our primary mission," Migicovsky says, which is to build the best chat app on earth."The new Beeper app launched in beta last week,... Continue reading...

Patch 1.6 gives Stardew Valley players masses of new content, including this new Meadowlands" farm biome. | Image: Stardew Valley / @pearblossoms_ Stardew Valley's massive 1.6 update has been out on PC for less than 24 hours, and it's already taken the game's popularity to staggering new heights. The cozy farming simulator hit 146,159 concurrent players on Steam according to SteamDB data, smashing the game's previous record as players flock to enjoy new content - including a new farm, festivals, and pets.Stardew Valley's previous peak of 94,875 concurrent Steam players was achieved back in January 2021, shortly after the 1.5 update was released. By contrast, its new record is higher than any of the concurrent player stats reported for Palworld this week - which is pretty impressive for a near-decade-old indie RPG. Developer Eric Concerned Ape" Barone had teased some of the new... Continue reading...

The Cowboy Cross in mushroom" with the inverted front suspension fork clearly visible. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Cowboy - the independent and financially healthy maker of sophisticated and highly advanced e-bikes - just took the wraps off its first all-roader that lets riders more easily escape cobblestoned city streets for greener pastures.To do that, Cowboy's new Cross e-bike features fatter 60mm tires and suspension systems built into the front fork and seat post to soak up bumps along the way. It's also fitted with grippier pedals to avoid foot slips when bouncing around, a large 540Wh removable battery for a 120km (75 miles) max range, and an integrated rear rack to carry more stuff.I spent some time test riding the Cross e-bike on a variety of surfaces, and it's truly a beast in all the best possible ways. To start, the seat suspension is... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Threads is coming to the fediverse - and we just got our first official look at how that might work from Meta itself. During the FediForum conference on Tuesday, Meta's Peter Cottle showed off a brief demo of how users will eventually be able to connect their accounts and posts to the fediverse. The integration will let users share their posts across different platforms through Threads, letting them reach multiple audiences at once. Meta is just one of the many platforms aiming to join the fediverse, a group of decentralized social networks aiming to become interoperable with one another.As you can see in the video below, which FediForum shared with The Verge, Cottle can navigate to his Threads account settings and toggle on an option... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.The common wisdom goes that video is the key to podcast discovery: you take the juiciest clips from your show, hope one goes viral every now and then on TikTok, and then that wider (and younger) audience becomes your new listeners. Uncah jamz is the prime example of this, sending a bunch of new attention to Call Her Daddy. But even podcasters who have cracked the code on TikTok have found the relationship between on-app engagement and actual listening to be weak, at best.That issue may soon be moot. Last week, seemingly out of nowhere, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would force Chinese company ByteDance to sell... Continue reading...

Some of the heroes added to Overwatch | Image: Blizzard Overwatch 2 heroes will no longer need to be unlocked through Battle Pass or via purchase, taking some of the grind out of the now free-to-play team FPS. Starting in Season 10, players will be able to unlock all existing and future heroes for free. This will include Venture, the latest hero joining Overwatch's roster next season.New players to the game will still need to complete the first-time user experience. Only when novice players have unlocked the heroes from the first Overwatch roster will all Overwatch 2 heroes then be at their disposal, , as game director Aaron Keller explains in the latest Developer's Update video.Free heroes are a return to form for the game, as that heroes were automatically granted in Overwatch 1. But... Continue reading...

Segway's new Navimow i robot lawn mower is now available in the US on Amazon. | Image: Segway Following its launch in Europe earlier this month, Segway's Navimow i series robot lawn mower is now available in the US. As one of the first robotic mowers under $1,000 that can navigate autonomously without a boundary wire, its arrival could be the beginning of the robot lawn mower going mainstream.The Navimow i series has two models: the i105N costs $999 and covers 0.125 acres, and the $1,299 i110N can manage up to 0.25 acres. It uses Segway's Exact Fusion Locating System 2.0, a vision-enhanced real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS system with a camera for outdoor mapping. It can also avoid obstacles and navigate around trees, shrubs, garden borders, and even animals and people as it cuts your lawn.According to the company, the new lawn... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Microsoft has hired Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. In a post on X, Suleyman announced that he's joining Microsoft as the CEO of a new team that handles the company's consumer-facing AI products, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.Suleyman will also serve as executive vice president of Microsoft AI and join the company's senior leadership team that reports directly to CEO Satya Nadella. Suleyman co-founded the AI lab DeepMind in 2010, which was later acquired by Google in 2014.DeepMind has remained a pioneering AI force within Google. However, Suleyman hasn't been part of the division in many years. He was placed on leave in 2019 over controversy surrounding some of the projects he led, according to a report from Bloomberg.... Continue reading...

Lego's Dungeons and Dragons set is ready to roll. Tap here to ENHANCE. | Image: Lego Grab your dice and get ready to (literally) assemble your adventuring party next month - Lego has finally unveiled the 3,745-piece Dungeons & Dragons set it co-developed with Wizards of the Coast as the tabletop roleplaying game celebrates its 50th anniversary.The $360 set, called Red Dragon's Tale," was inspired by Lucas Bolt's fan design, Dragon's Keep: Journey's End," and retains many of the same features. There's a tower, a bridge, a tavern with a removable roof, and yes - both a dungeon and a dragon. Image: Lego / Lucas Bolt This is Bolt's original fan design... Image: Lego ...and the official Lego set that's available to buy from April 1st. Image: Lego... Continue reading...

Image: Aleksandar Vaci For years, there's been a dedicated community of tech tinkerers who've built unofficial Macs" out of PC hardware or successfully gotten macOS running on a laptop that ran Windows in a past life. But now, some of those enthusiasts believe the Hackintosh dream is becoming more and more untenable.This blog post by Aleksandar Vaci, highlighted by 9to5Mac, runs through some of the difficulties that seem to be growing by the day. In a nutshell, macOS Sonoma removed support for many drivers that were found in Intel Macs a decade ago. Vaci says these drivers were the key ingredient to many fully functional Hackintosh builds." It's still possible to cobble together a Hackintosh with the Sonoma OS, but you'll have to be comfortable with some... Continue reading...

Passion. You can feel it, can't you?" begins Bloom, an AI NPC from Ubisoft in collab with InWorld, and Nvidia. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge For the past three months, ever since I spoke to the AI NPCs in Nvidia's cyberpunk ramen shop, I've been wondering: Which game developer will take a flying leap on this controversial and intriguing tech? If you said Ubisoft," the company that's always raising its hand to play with VR, NFTs, interactive TV shows, secondary screens and more, you'd be half right.Last night, I played three prototype segments of an experimental Ubisoft demo featuring the company's just-announced Neo NPCs" - one of whom tried to convince me to join the resistance against powerful megacorps by playing on my emotions. Another walked me through an infiltration plan on a whiteboard, letting me convince" her that we should knock out the lights or hack the... Continue reading...

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images The speed in which automakers will have to phase out their gas-powered vehicles in favor of ones that are all-electric will be determined Wednesday, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to release its new vehicle emissions rules.Environmental groups are hoping for a sped-up timeline that will put the country on the path to an all-electric fleet by the early part of next decade, while automakers are pushing for a slower adoption that allows the industry to meet consumers' needs.First announced in April 2023, the EPA's original proposal would have resulted in battery-electric vehicles accounting for 37 percent by 2027, 60 percent by 2030, and 67 percent by 2032 - a dramatic increase over the current EV sales... Continue reading...

The Covert Protocol demo shows how AI is being used to create unique NPC interactions. | Image: Nvidia Nvidia is showing off how developers have started using its AI digital human" tools to voice, animate, and generate dialogue for video game characters. At the Game Developers Conference on Monday, the company released a clip of Covert Protocol, a playable tech demo that showcases how its AI tools can allow NPCs to respond in unique ways to player interactions, generating new responses that fit the live gameplay.In the demo, players take on the role of a private detective, completing objectives based on conversations with AI-powered NPCs. Nvidia claims that each playthrough is unique," with players' real-time interactions leading to different game outcomes. John Spitzer, Nvidia's vice president of developer and performance... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge There are few bigger jobs at Google than being the person who runs Search. As of today, there's a new person in that seat: Liz Reid, who has been at Google for more than 20 years and has most recently been leading the company's efforts with AI search, known as Search Generative Experience (SGE).Reid's promotion is part of a bigger change within Google's Search team. Pandu Nayak, a longtime executive overseeing ranking and quality, is now going to be chief scientist of Search. He'll be replaced by Cheenu Venkatachary, who has also been working on AI products in Search. Meanwhile, Cathy Edwards, who led a lot of the work on Google News and Google Discover, is taking a job on Google's long-term bets team.In some ways this is just a lot of... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Delivery apps seem like a good idea, and it's obvious why they're handy to have around. It's also often unclear whether delivery apps actually work for anyone involved. They make your stuff more expensive, often in hard-to-see ways. They take huge fees from restaurants that need it to survive. Drivers don't get the pay or benefits they should. And in many cases, even the apps themselves don't make any money! What are we doing here?Into that messy equation comes a man named Tony Delivers. Tony Illes has become something of a folk hero in the Seattle area by advertising a much simpler and more human strategy. With a bunch of simple signs and a $5 delivery fee, he's starting something of a delivery revolution from the seat of his bike.O... Continue reading...

All three chargers deliver up to 15 watts of power to compatible iPhones. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge Few things test my patience more than waiting for my phone to charge when I'm in a rush, which is why Qi2 chargers are a godsend. They deliver fast, certified MagSafe charger speeds without the price tag, and right now, many of Anker's new, Qi2 certified versions are down to all-time lows. Amazon's selling the new version of our favorite MagSafe-compatible battery pack, the Anker MagGo Power Bank, for $47.99 ($22 off). That's just $8 more than its predecessor and a discount you can also find at Anker with code WSTDMXPG8FSD. Amazon is also selling the MagGo Wireless Charging Station (Foldable 3-in-1) for $82.49 ($28 off) and the 8-in-1 MagGo Orb for $69.99 ($30 off). Anker's matching prices as well, though you'll have to apply the code W... Continue reading...