The Verge

Image: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 24, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading Kyle Chayka's great book about algorithms, Filterworld, getting nostalgic about Tecmo Bowl, seeing if this show can get me into NASCAR like Drive to Survive got me into Formula 1, catching up on old Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend episodes, spending too much time debating whether I want a Vision Pro, trying to make my basement look more like Peter McKinnon's studio, and trying desperately to figure out why everyone's so worked up about rice cookers.I also have for you a new AI search... Continue reading...

Image: Samsung Seeing something on my phone screen that I want to know more about is a regular occurrence, and Google always wants to make it easier to get to, well, Google. And so we have Circle to Search, a new way of looking up information on mobile devices.The idea is pretty simple - and in fact, simplicity is its main selling point. In a video, Samsung (which makes one of the phones that has this feature) gives the example of someone who sees an orange dog lamp in an image, and instead of running a text search describing what they're looking at, they find out they can just circle the lamp with their finger to get matches from the web.Shopping is the obvious use case here, but you can also identify plants and animals, look up words, and get... Continue reading...

Callum at home NOT annoying his partner. | Photo by Callum Booth / The Verge As convenient as e-readers are, I can't quit actual books. Maybe it's their reassuring weight, the satisfying crinkle of their pages, their beguiling musk; but there's something addictive about that combination of paper, ink, and glue.Despite this - and as much as it pains me to say it - physical books aren't perfect. One issue that's been a particularly large albatross around my neck is reading in low-light environments. When I do so, I'm either keeping my partner awake with a blazing bedside lamp, twisting my body into awkward positions to illuminate the pages, or - worst of all - having to turn on the dreaded Big Light.But you know what? That's all history. I've seen the light! More specifically, a neck light. And the longer I use... Continue reading...

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, showing off its cameras. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge How does Samsung defend itself against the notion that its phone cameras are spitting out fake AI photos of not only the Moon, but most anything else you'd care to aim them at these days? For starters, the company's head of product is saying that every photo is fake.Samsung EVP Patrick Chomet told TechRadar recently:

Image: iFixit We thought the 12-pin plug connecting the Vision Pro to its battery pack was the final boss of Lightning cables - but there's one that's even bigger. Hiding within the strap on the Vision Pro headset is what I can only call a Mega Lightning plug.You can see the beefy 10-pin connector in this photo posted by iFixit, which is currently in the process of tearing down the Vision Pro. iFixit has already managed to get the front display off, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else the team might uncover when they post the full teardown over the weekend.

Finding the one true perfect" wall charger seems like an impossible task. We're all carrying different gadgets around. Our laptops have power needs that can vary widely from one to the next. Some people make an effort to lighten the load of tech in their bag when possible; others don't mind lugging an arsenal of accessories around as long as they're prepared for any situation. (I've used the Mini USB-to-USB-C cable in my backpack maybe twice over the course of four years, but it's still got a permanent spot in there just in case.)If you're traveling light with only a phone and / or tablet, I'm not sure Anker's 30-watt charger can be beaten. Where it gets complicated is when you start needing more power than that - or more ports to work... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As first reported by the Financial Times, independent labels Beggars Group, Secretly Group, and Partisan Records are pushing back against Apple's preferential payouts for spatial audio. They say independent artists who can't afford to record in spatial audio would make less because of how streaming music payouts work.Apple said artists on Apple Music can get bonuses of up to 10 percent for creating music with spatial audio. The company will pay out artists with pro rata shares from a pool of subscription money, calculated using a factor of 1.1, instead of just 1 for non-spatial audio tracks, which will be left to split a smaller remaining portion of the money.Unnamed music executives told the Financial Times that producing songs in... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC via Getty Images Joe Rogan, podcasting's biggest star, has renewed his deal with Spotify. The new multiyear deal will allow his show, which is currently exclusive to the streamer, to be distributed to YouTube, Apple, and other podcasting platforms.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by Spotify, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal is estimated to be worth $250 million, including revenue share. His previous deal was estimated to be worth between $100 million and $200 million.The news confirms what insiders told The Verge last year, which is that Rogan would be likely to stay, but with greater flexibility. Even while being exclusive to Spotify, Rogan managed to have the No. 1 podcast in the world. With the new arrangement, during... Continue reading...

With its newest devices, Samsung cleverly mixes original AI features with some familiar concepts. Continue reading...

Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Tesla's latest massive recall is a weird one. It's not about reported problems with sudden braking or driver monitoring alerts or seat belts. Nope, this one is all about font size.It turns out that the font size for Tesla's brake warning system is a bit too small. How small? Smaller than 3.2 millimeters, or one-eighth of an inch, as prescribed by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). So the company has to recall all 2.19 million vehicles it has on the road today - again.It may seem minor, but font size can correlate to safety when all your vehicle's controls are ported through a touchscreen. According to the recall notice filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), visual warning indicators... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft has started internally testing a new custom emoji feature for its Microsoft Teams communications platform. Multiple sources tell The Verge that Microsoft employees learned about the surprise new capability after animated emoji of Pepe the Frog - a meme with a troubled past - started appearing in reactions and messages on early internal versions of Microsoft Teams.The Pepe the Frog emotes, which are now widely used in Discord servers and on Amazon's Twitch streaming platform as lighthearted responses, appeared alongside other custom emoji that don't ship in Microsoft Teams right now. We're told Microsoft is testing the custom emoji feature in early so-called dogfood" versions of Microsoft Teams.Microsoft Teams currently... Continue reading...

I don't know why it has to be like this. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Last month, I traded in my ludicrous New York City rent for a more affordable life in Hackensack, New Jersey. (Yes, it's all my money got me.) Many of my friends who'd migrated to Jersey warned me about the NJ Transit app. It's not good, they said. I didn't take them too seriously. I was forged in the fires of the Metropolitan Transit Authority's continually broken website circa 2001. After a seven-year stint in Tokyo navigating the labyrinthian Tokyo subway and bus system, what public transit app could ever befuddle me?Hubris is a bitch.Upon opening the NJ Transit app, I was bombarded with more menus than I knew what to do with. Nothing is uniformly named. App navigation is a matryoshka doll of ill-organized tabs. Would you like to... Continue reading...

I can already hear the Swifties roaring. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge To the delight of Swifties and the chagrin of her detractors, the 2024 Super Bowl will feature the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. We're anticipating record-high camera cuts to the rich seats whenever Taylor Swift's beau (Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce) makes a big play, so why not prepare with an equally big home theater upgrade?Regardless of where you look, you're bound to find a great TV deal leading up to the big game on February 11th, but Sonos is a good place to start if it's booming audio you're after. The company is running a promo through February 11th that saves you 20 percent on the Sonos Arc, bringing the soundbar down to $719 ($180 off) at Sonos, Best Buy, and B&H Photo for a limited time. The Arc offers a... Continue reading...

YouTube, now on the Vision Pro. | Image: Christian Selig Google said it isn't putting out a YouTube app for Apple's new Vision Pro headset, so a third-party developer has stepped in to make one instead. Juno is the work of Christian Selig, the developer behind the now defunct Reddit app Apollo. It costs $4.99 and is already available from Apple's App Store.Although it's an unofficial third-party app, Juno supports most of the features you'd expect out of a native YouTube app. You can watch videos (obviously), scrub and skip through them using pinch gestures, and it'll even respect the videos' aspect ratios. Browsing YouTube's catalog is also supported (though you can't see video comments), and Juno is also set up to show YouTube ads to avoid making Google grumpy," Selig writes.Juno... Continue reading...

The discontinued cache button. | Image: Google Google has removed links to page caches from its search results page, the company's search liaison Danny Sullivan has confirmed. It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading," Sullivan wrote on X. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it."The cache feature historically let you view a webpage as Google sees it, which is useful for a variety of different reasons beyond just being able to see a page that's struggling to load. SEO professionals could use it to debug their sites or even keep tabs on competitors, and it can also be an enormously helpful news gathering tool, giving reporters the ability to see exactly what information a company has... Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Thanks to new regulations, Apple is technically enabling the creation of alternative iPhone app stores in the European Union. But that doesn't mean large developers like Meta will bite.CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his company's view on Apple's new policies during Meta's fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday:

Image: 343 Industries Black History Month is that special time when video game companies try to show consumers how inclusive they are with special Black / African themed in-game cosmetics and messages of appreciation for the three or four Black employees they keep on staff at any one time.In Halo's case, it's offering players a special set of armor shaders in colors and patterns typically associated with African art and culture. As a concept, these shaders are totally fine. Individual cosmetics players can use to zhuzh up their armor; cool, I dig it. But the way 343 slapped all these individual pieces together, like a ridiculous Voltron of Blackness, is darkly hilarious in a way I don't think the company intended.

The standard Nintendo Switch can be played on the go or while docked on a TV. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge While the Nintendo Switch 2 is widely expected to drop this year, it's anybody's guess when. That means if you don't want to wait to play games like the Mario vs. Donkey Kong demo and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the existing Switch lineup is still your best bet. Luckily, the Nintendo Switch console with neon blue and red Joy-Cons is on sale right now for just $269 when you check out at Amazon, which is a rare $30 discount given it typically goes for $299.99.If you're looking for a console you can take on the go or play docked on a TV, the Nintendo Switch remains an excellent option. True, the Switch 2 might come with a bigger eight-inch screen, but the 6.2-inch touchscreen found on the original Switch is still spacious... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge During Apple's quarterly earnings call on Thursday afternoon, CEO Tim Cook mentioned that the company is working on generative AI software features that will make their way to customers later this year." That aligns with reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who said recently that iOS 18 could be the biggest" update in the operating system's history. Cook's teases - he mentioned generative AI several times, but never got specific - seem to confirm that we're in for a big release this fall.As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in these and other technologies that will shape the future. That includes artificial intelligence, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we're excited to share the... Continue reading...

Let's check out the specimens! | photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images The most important thing to know about social media is this: Most people don't post.You know this. I know this. God knows this. I am going to limit my analysis to text-based sites because video sites such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are not my ministry. This analysis may transfer in whole or in part to those platforms, for all I know.The silent majority of every successful text-based social media site is lurkers. These are sane, normal people with sane, normal lives. They are well-balanced and have hobbies. One of those hobbies is visiting social media sites, where they are usually looking for either information or entertainment. They're the audience.The development of trolls appears to be the internet's version of... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Every time another Google app or feature bites the dust - even a small, relatively inconsequential one - I get annoyed. Really annoyed.Here's the thing: there are Google Assistant-equipped devices in three rooms of my relatively small house: living room, bedroom, and office. Which means, unfortunately, that when I say Hey, Google" out loud to my phone, I am just as likely to get a reaction from one - or more - of those three devices. (Yes, I know that's not supposed to happen and no, we haven't been able to fix it yet.) And they sometimes offer different answers simultaneously, which makes things even more confusing. This is what I got when I hit the mic icon in Search. To avoid this unfortunate state of affairs,... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Tomorrow, Apple will launch its Vision Pro headset, marking the company's most high-profile product launch since the original Apple Watch. And later this year, it will open up the iPhone's App Store (at least in the EU) in new ways, offering developers more freedom - even if some of them are already displeased with the approach Apple is taking. There are enormous moments ahead for this company, and in the run-up to all of that, today Apple announced its Q1 2024 earnings. At least for now, the pivotal question surrounding Apple's business remains the same as always: how's the iPhone doing?Pretty well, it turns out. This was the first full quarter of iPhone 15 sales, and Apple reported iPhone unit revenue of $69.7 billion. (Just a few... Continue reading...

Image: OpenAI OpenAI's GPT-4 only gave people a slight advantage over the regular internet when it came to researching bioweapons, according to a study the company conducted itself. Bloomberg reported that the research was carried out by the new preparedness team at OpenAI, which was launched last fall in order to assess the risks and potential misuses of the company's frontier AI models.OpenAI's findings seem to counter concerns by scientists, lawmakers, and AI ethicists that powerful AI models like GPT-4 can be of significant help to terrorists, criminals, and other malicious actors. Multiple studies have cautioned that AI can give those creating bioweapons an extra edge, such as this one by the Effective Ventures Foundation at Oxford that looked... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amazon has taken the wraps off of an AI shopping assistant, and it's called Rufus - the same name as the company's corgi mascot. The new chatbot is trained on Amazon's product library and customer reviews, as well as information from the web, allowing it to answer questions about products, make comparisons, provide suggestions, and more.Rufus is still in beta and will only appear for select customers" before rolling out to more users in the coming weeks. If you have access to the beta, you can open up a chat with Rufus by launching Amazon's mobile app and then typing or speaking questions into the search bar. A Rufus chat window will show up at the bottom of your screen, which you can expand to get an answer to your question, select... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube reached an important milestone on Thursday for its paid music and video tiers, crossing the 100 million subscriber benchmark globally. That figure includes trial subscriptions, so the real number of paid subscribers is fewer. YouTube's subscription tiers have been a primary revenue generator for Google's subscriptions services, which hit $15 billion in revenue (including YouTube TV and Google One) in 2023. It's been roughly nine years since YouTube launched a paid, ad-free subscription service; it later decided to divide YouTube Red into YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium.YouTube Music is the company's streaming music service; the ad-free Premium tier costs $10.99 per month. YouTube Premium, at $13.99 per month, includes... Continue reading...

The Abode Lock is a retrofit Wi-Fi smart door lock that comes with a Bluetooth keypad with a fingerprint reader. | Image: Abode Hot on the heels of launching the first Wi-Fi HaLow security camera, DIY smart home security company Abode is leaning into Wi-Fi as its primary smart home protocol with the arrival of its first smart door lock.The Abode Lock ($159.99) is a Wi-Fi-powered retrofit lock that replaces the rear portion of a deadbolt but keeps the front lock the same, so you can continue to use your keys but also have digital access through an app and with a fingerprint reader and keypad.The smart lock works on 2.4 or 5 GHz Wi-Fi and is now available to buy. It comes with a Bluetooth-connected keypad you place on the outside of your door for PIN and fingerprint unlocking. The whole package costs $159.99 on Goabode.com, which is currently running a launch... Continue reading...

Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images It's not you, it's the interest rates.The reasons are probably more nuanced than that, but a number of prominent car tech companies are finding themselves in the unenviable position of being dumped by the bigger companies that they've relied on for funding. It's especially harsh when you consider we're a few weeks away from Valentine's Day.It started earlier this week, when auto parts giant Aptiv said it was pulling funding from Motional, the robotaxi joint venture it started with Hyundai in 2020. The reason? Money, of course. And how long it was taking to commercialize the technology.Aptiv said it was incurring millions of dollars in losses while waiting for Motional to launch its fully driverless ridehail vehicles. The company... Continue reading...

Image: Meta The Meta Quest 3 will soon give wearers the ability to easily view spatial videos as well as use new pinching gestures for control, features that are similar to what you'll find in Apple's much more expensive Vision Pro headset that launches this week. Both changes are starting to roll out gradually as part of update v62, which should get to most owners of Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro headsets starting the week of February 7th.The spatial video support will allow wearers to view 3D footage captured with Apple's headset or an iPhone 15 Pro / Pro Max. Image: Mark Zuckerberg (Instagram) A short clip from Mark Zuckerberg's early look" at spatial video playback on a Quest 3. Apple's spatial 3D videos are... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google is bringing generative AI to - where else? - Google Maps, promising to help users find cool places through the use of large language models (LLM).The feature will answer queries for restaurant or shopping recommendations, for example, using its LLM to analyze Maps' detailed information about more than 250 million places and trusted insights from our community of over 300 million contributors to quickly make suggestions for where to go."Google says the feature will first become available in the US, but there's no word yet on when other countries will also get it.It's a natural place for Google to flex its AI musclesIt's a natural place for Google to flex its AI muscles, as the company has been laboring for years to turn its... Continue reading...

The Snap Pixy. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Snap gave up on its Pixy flying selfie camera drone after just four months, but it turns out the company sold under 71,000 drones - and now the company is recalling every one of those drones because their batteries pose a fire hazard. Yes, the entire drone is being recalled, not just the removable battery, likely because Snap doesn't make those batteries anymore.Snap and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission say you should immediately stop using the Pixy Flying Camera, remove the battery and stop charging it" now that there have been four reports of the battery bulging, one fire, and one minor injury."Then, you can get a full refund for the entire drone and / or any batteries you own - sounds like we're talking at least $185... Continue reading...

Anker's Soundcore Sport X10 offers wraparound hooks and an IPX7 rating for water and sweat resistance for less than $60. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you've already broken your New Year's health-related resolutions, today's lead deal might get you back on track. Right now, Anker's Soundcore Sport X10 - an excellent budget-friendly pair of workout earbuds - are on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and B&H Photo for $55.99 ($24 off). That's just $5 shy of their all-time low price and the best price we've seen so far this year.For a pair of earbuds that cost less than $60, the X10 offers a lot. Their flexible, wraparound hooks, for example, ensure they'll stay comfortably in place even during the most vigorous workouts. At the same time, they can handle sweaty gym sessions and even runs on rainy days thanks to their IPX7 rating for water and sweat resistance. And, of course, they offer... Continue reading...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks at a press conference following the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with five tech CEOs. | Lauren Feiner During an unusually emotional hearing on Wednesday, senators spent hours trying to get a group of five tech CEOs to confront the harms their platforms have caused and submit to more checks on their power.The Senate Judiciary Committee invited the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snap, X, and Discord to face the families of children who'd died following cyberbullying, sexual exploitation, or other harmful events on their platforms. They asked why Section 230, the law that shields online platforms from being held liable for their users' posts, should stop these families from facing them in court.The CEOs expressed condolences for the families hurt on their services but reiterated the work and investment they've already made to keep users safe.... Continue reading...

Comcast can still use 10G" to describe products and services, so long as it's being used accurately. | Image: Xfinity Creative Comcast has agreed to abandon its Xfinity 10G network" product branding after advertising watchdogs concluded that it could cause consumers to think they will all experience significantly faster speeds than are available on 5G networks," which isn't true.On Wednesday, the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) ruled that Comcast should discontinue the term 10G" both when describing the Xfinity network and within the name of its Xfinity 10G Network service itself. The decision stems from challenges raised by T-Mobile and AT&T that highlighted the confusing differences in the terminology being used by cellular networks, where the G" in 5G stands for generation," and the 10G branding used by cable companies, which instead represents... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google's Bard chatbot is adding AI image generation, catching up on a feature that rival ChatGPT Plus has had for months.Users can prompt Bard to generate photos using Google's Imagen 2 text-to-image model. Bard, now powered by Google's Gemini Pro large language model, was always going to have image generation. It was assumed the more powerful Gemini Ultra model would power it; however, that model remains in development.Google has been positioning Bard as a worthy competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus, which runs GPT-4 and lets users generate images thanks to DALL-E 3 integration. Both chatbots perform well, but Bard's lack of text-to-image features gave ChatGPT Plus a bit of an edge. People can use the updated Bard with Imagen 2 at no... Continue reading...

The Verge is delighted to announce that Hot Pod Summit is returning for another day of must-hear interviews, crucial panels, and intimate networking with leading creators and decision-makers from across the audio world. Now in its third year with The Verge, Hot Pod Summit has become the leading event for exploring the buzziest and most important topics in the podcasting industry. This year's invite-only summit, presented by AdsWizz and Simplecast, will feature This American Life creator Ira Glass, Throughline hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei, Israel Story co-founder Yochai Maital, and more exciting guests to be announced soon. It'll also include breakout sessions discussing some of the biggest topics of the... Continue reading...