The Verge

Squid Game. | Image: Netflix Things have been a little quiet for Netflix so far this year when it comes to television, but the streamer has at least a few heavy hitters in store. Today, it revealed its upcoming TV slate for 2024 - alongside similar lists for film and games - and, while there aren't a lot of surprises or new reveals, the lineup is shaping up pretty well.In addition to soon-to-premiere series like Avatar: The Last Airbender and 3 Body Problem, this year will also feature the return of some of Netflix's biggest series, including Arcane, Squid Game, and Bridgerton, alongside quite a bit of reality television. Also, the Terminator anime is due this year, and Girls5eva is making the transition from Peacock to Netflix for its third season in March.Of... Continue reading...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is seen after the senate luncheons in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, January 23, 2024. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Intuit, maker of TurboTax, is in another row with lawmakers - this time over how it spent $94 million in tax breaks. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) sent a letter to Intuit yesterday blasting the company for not answering questions they have about how Intuit used the tax credits.SEC filings show that Intuit received $94 million in federal research and experimentation credits in 2022, which grew to $106 million in 2023. The credit is supposed to support research that the company otherwise might not have been able to afford. The four lawmakers initially sent a letter to Intuit on January 2nd, demanding to know how the money was spent and setting a... Continue reading...

The company's pre-existing Phone 2. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The Nothing Phone 2A is official... sort of. The company confirmed the name of the upcoming device during its most recent community update YouTube video, but that's about all it announced. It didn't show off much more about the phone, including its appearance, specs, or price. The name of the device was one of several announcements made in the video, which also included news of a new SDK to let third-party developers integrate with Nothing's illuminated Glyph interface.With Phone 2A we've really doubled down on the core user needs - performance, camera, you name it," Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis said, adding that the device includes some of the most loved features of Phone 2." He doesn't explicitly say that the Phone 2A is... Continue reading...

The Gocycle CX+ cargo e-bike has a unique Flofit handlebar. | Image: Gocycle Gocycle, the British e-bike company founded by a former McLaren car designer, has just taken the wraps off an innovative new electric cargo bike for families. The CX series of longtails are lightweight and foldable, as you'd expect from Gocycle, with an intriguing new handlebar on the CX Plus model that can be quickly adapted for rider comfort.Gocycle calls it Flofit, and it's probably the most adjustable-for-comfort handlebar ever developed!" says company founder and designer Richard Thorpe in a press release. Adjustable in reach, grip angle, offering multiple hand positions, and of course foldable - it's a game-changer for discerning urban e-bikers." Image: Gocycle Fold the chassis, handlebar, then remove... Continue reading...

Major artists like Swift have been removed from TikTok. | Photo by Buda Mendes/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management Universal Music Group (UMG) has started removing the music catalogs of performers the label represents - including Taylor Swift, Drake, and Olivia Rodrigo - from TikTok after negotiations to renew licensing agreements broke down this week. The previous licensing agreement between UMG and TikTok expired on January 31st.On Tuesday, UMG accused the video platform of attempting to bully it into accepting a bad deal" that didn't soothe the record labels' concerns regarding adequate compensation for artists and songwriters, protections against AI-generated music, and online safety on the platform to protect artists from hate speech, bigotry, bullying and harassment." TikTok responded saying that it was disappointing" that UMG had chosen... Continue reading...

Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images Today's hearing on child safety was - mostly - an unusually focused affair. The Senate Judiciary Committee called up the CEOs of X, Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Discord and grilled them for four hours on the potential dangers their services posed for children. Many of the lawmakers emphasized emotional impact, playing to an audience filled with families who'd had kids targeted by predators or otherwise harmed online.But midway through the hearing, it was dragged off course by a predictable tangent: the fact that TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. And a meeting ostensibly about keeping kids safe dipped into a now-familiar attempt to make TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew answer questions utterly unrelated to the rest of the day.Although... Continue reading...

Image: Konami Silent Hill, the town in desperate need of a city council or something, showed up during PlayStation's State of Play in a big way with two new trailers and a stealth drop of a new, free-to-play game.The first game was the debut of Silent Hill: The Short Message, an all-new entry in the Silent Hill franchise. According to PlayStation's blog, The Short Message is a short, experimental, free-to-play game meant to introduce newcomers to the joys of that idyllic foggy city. Though the name was only just revealed, details on The Short Message including screenshots and the names of the main characters - Anita and Maya - were leaked in 2022. Based on the trailer below, the leaks were accurate.After The Short Message, Konami showed off a new... Continue reading...

Image: Kojima Productions The sequel to Death Stranding is shaping up to be just as strange as the original. At its State of Play showcase today, Sony showed off a new trailer for the game that... starts out with a particularly disturbing bit of surgery. The lengthy clip features a whole bunch of new locations outside of the US, as well as the return of a villain who has been given a Joker-esque makeover. And yes, the baby makes an appearance - along with a new, talking doll.The sequel also has an official title now: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. It's due to launch in 2025. Here's the premise:

The Vision Pro's not-a-Lightning-connector connector. | Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge Ray Wong of Inverse discovered a hidden joy today: The Apple Vision Pro power cable connects to the battery with what may well be Lightning's final form. Using a SIM removal tool, he pushed into a small hole in the silver external battery pack of the Vision Pro next to the cable, and...Out it popped, revealing what looks like a bigger, 12-pin version of the connector Apple's iPhone moved away from last year.

Illustration: The Verge During the January Microsoft Research Forum, Dipendra Misra, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research Lab NYC and AI Frontiers, explained how Layer-Selective Rank Reduction (or LASER) can make large language models more accurate.With LASER, researchers can intervene" and replace one weight matrix with an approximate smaller one. Weights are the contextual connections models make. The heavier the weight, the more the model relies on it. So, does replacing something with more correlations and contexts make the model less accurate? Based on their test results, the answer, surprisingly, is no.We are doing intervention using LASER on the LLM, so one would expect that the model loss should go up as we are doing more approximation,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge During the roughly 40-minute presentation, expect to hear new info on Rise of the Ronin, Death Stranding, Sonic Generations, Judas, and more. Continue reading...

Image: Philips Philips is halting sales of its recalled sleep apnea machines in the US after finding they were pumping foam particles into users' airways. In its earnings report on Monday, the company says it will not sell new CPAP or BiPAP devices in the US until it meets the requirements outlined by the Food and Drug Administration.Philips first issued a recall on its sleep apnea machines in 2021 over potential health risks." The recall includes devices made between 2009 and April 21st, 2021, and stems from a polyester-based polyurethane foam Philips included in the machines to minimize sound and vibration. As noted by Philips, that foam can break down," leading the person using the device to breathe it in or swallow it, resulting in potential... Continue reading...

The newest Roomba vacuum - the Combo j9 Plus - faces stiff competition. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge By abandoning its deal to buy iRobot, Amazon has left the robot vacuum maker stuck under the couch. Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is starting to roll out a new design for its OneDrive cloud storage service for consumers. The software maker first unveiled a Fluent design refresh for OneDrive last year, and it will be available to all OneDrive personal users by the end of February.It's both a visual and functional upgrade designed to help you get to your files quickly and keep your content organized in multiple ways," says Miceile Barrett, a Microsoft product manager. The improved visual design reduces clutter and distractions, allowing you to focus on what's important - your content." Image: Microsoft The before and after. The new visual interface for OneDrive more closely matches Windows 11 and changes to Microsoft's various... Continue reading...

Bitcoin mining machines in a warehouse at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 10, 2021. | Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP /AFP via Getty Images The US Department of Energy (DOE) will begin collecting data on crypto mines' electricity use, following criticism from environmental advocates over how energy-hungry those operations are.We will specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving, identify geographic areas of high growth, and quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand," Joe DeCarolis, administrator of the Energy Information Administration (EIA), said in a press release today.We will specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving."The EIA, the statistical agency of the Department of Energy, announced that it is initiating a provisional survey of electricity... Continue reading...

You can make Alexa and Google Assistant fight for your love with JBL's retro-styled speakers. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge I know that someone, somewhere, shares my thinking that the virtual assistants we've grown fond of are mortal enemies somewhere in a digital parallel universe. But JBL's new line of Authentics speakers has warped everything I thought I knew about the ancient rivalry, allowing you to call on either assistant without toggling a setting.Right now, you can pay as little as $274.95 ($75 off) for the JBL Authentics 200 at Amazon, Best Buy, and JBL's online storefront, which is the best discount we've seen on the travel-friendly speaker. The Authentics 300 is also available for $349.95 ($100 off) from Amazon, Best Buy, and JBL, while the larger Authentics 500 can be had for $549.95 ($150 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from JBL.JBL is... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is launching a suite of its Microsoft 365 apps on Apple's Vision Pro headset later this week. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Loop, and Microsoft Teams will all be available in the App Store for Apple Vision Pro on February 2nd - the same day Apple's new headset is available in stores.Apple Vision Pro owners will also be able to access an AI-powered version of Copilot while using the headset, including the ability to create drafts, summarize documents, and generate PowerPoint presentations with your voice. Image: Microsoft Microsoft Word on the Vision Pro. Word on the Vision Pro includes a focus mode much like the reader mode found in the desktop versions, alongside a ribbon... Continue reading...

Shopify Magic Media Editor. | Image: Shopify The Shopify Magic suite of generative AI tools that launched in April last year is adding a media editor that brings generative image fill to its platform and conversational search powered by AI. Merchants can prompt the image editor to change photo backgrounds without Photoshop experience to match whatever theme they have in mind.Shopify's AI editor can also suggest backgrounds and styles that match existing product images in the merchant's library once it rolls out this spring.Glen Coates, Shopify's vice president of product, says many sellers on the platform don't have access to big studios or professional photographers, but they still need to set their items up for success. Since there's no additional cost to use this tool, it... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge FTX says it will repay investors after the cryptocurrency exchange's collapse led to the loss of billions of dollars. During a court hearing on Wednesday, FTX lawyer Andrew Dietderich said the company expects to have sufficient funds to pay all allowed customer and creditor claims in full."The company will recompense customers based on the price of the cryptocurrency they purchased as of November 2022 - when the exchange filed for bankruptcy. There are still some challenges associated with getting the lost funds back to customers, though, as Dietderich notes the company will need to comb through all the claims to determine whether they're legitimate.I would like the court and stakeholders to understand this not as a guarantee, but as... Continue reading...

There's no word yet on how Bullitt-produced phones like the Cat S75 (pictured) will be affected. | Image: Cat Bullitt Group, the UK-based smartphone manufacturer behind the rugged handsets of Cat, Land Rover, and Motorola, has seemingly shut down. On Monday, Mobile World Live spotted several Bullitt Group employees on LinkedIn saying that the company folded on January 26th after a critical planned restructuring" failed. The Telegraph reported earlier this month that the company was on the brink of insolvency.Bullitt Group has yet to issue an official statement confirming the closure. The manufacturer previously told The Telegraph that it planned to transfer its satellite connectivity business and all 100 of its employees to a new company owned by its creditors, though one former employee now claims the entire workforce has been laid off. We... Continue reading...

Image: US Capitol / Flickr The CEOs of five major tech companies will make a case for why their platforms are safe for kids. Continue reading...

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge One of the most impressive parts of Samsung's new Galaxy S24 Ultra is the anti-glare display, which is made of Corning Gorilla Armor glass that Samsung touts as its most scratch-resistant yet." Although it's easy to dismiss that claim as marketing speak, a new durability test from JerryRigEverything proves Samsung really isn't exaggerating after all.During his video, JerryRightEverything tests the S24 Ultra's durability by scratching the screen with different picks according to Mohs hardness scale - ranging from the softest materials at level one and the hardest at level 10. The YouTuber's pick only started leaving scratches at level seven, but it didn't create grooves in the glass that typically start appearing at that level.... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Epic is not pleased with how Apple has responded to court orders. It thinks Apple's new 27 percent tax on developers that link to non-Apple payment methods defies a court order to let developers provide those links and yesterday notified the court that it plans to lay out exactly how.To refresh, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple in 2021 to let developers link to outside payment methods, and it immediately appealed (despite having called it a resounding victory"). Apple's final appeal of the court order was denied earlier this month, and the company was forced to change its tune on in-app payments. But it barely did so - the 27 percent commission isn't much less than Apple's 30 percent in-app payments fee, while... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is ending the first month of the year with a big ol' livestream full of gaming news. The next PlayStation State of Play kicks off this afternoon, and the company is promising 40 minutes that will cover quite a few video games - more than 15, in fact.Only two titles have been confirmed, with Team Ninja's Rise of the Ronin and the anime-style adventure game Stellar Blade. But with Sony saying the event will include other titles coming to PS5 and PS VR2 in 2024 and beyond," it's not hard to guess some of the games that could make an appearance. There's Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which is launching very soon; the remake of Silent Hill 2; a rumored PS5 remake of horror game Until Dawn; the sequel to Death Stranding that we haven't... Continue reading...

It's not Zuckerberg's first time in front of Congress. | Photo by Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images Today, the US Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from five CEOs of major tech companies: Linda Yaccarino of X, Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, Evan Spiegel of Snap, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Jason Citron of Discord. The executives will answer questions on the topic of Big Tech and the online child sexual exploitation crisis," an ongoing issue for a Congress that's introduced numerous child safety bills in recent years.The hearing has been months in the making and apparently involved a little strong-arming from Congress, which reportedly sent US Marshals to subpoena Yaccarino and Citron. It begins at 10AM ET and will likely last several hours as lawmakers seize their opportunity to yell at some of both parties' favorite betes... Continue reading...

Photo by Kathryn Riley/Getty Images US lawmakers have proposed letting people sue over faked pornographic images of themselves, following the spread of AI-generated explicit photographs of Taylor Swift. The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act would add a civil right of action for intimate digital forgeries" depicting an identifiable person without their consent, letting victims collect financial damages from anyone who knowingly produced or possessed" the image with the intent to spread it.The bill was introduced by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), joined by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Josh Hawley (R-MO). It builds on a provision in the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022, which... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google spent $2.1 billion on severance and other expenses as it laid off more than 12,000 employees over the course of 2023. And the layoff charges keep coming: in just the one month of 2024 so far, the company has already spent $700 million on employee severance charges as part of layoffs targeting another 1,000-plus roles. Alphabet, Google's parent company, revealed the figure alongside its fourth-quarter earnings release on Tuesday.Despite the cuts, Google ended 2023 with growth across most of its core business lines. Google posted $86 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023, a 13 percent increase year over year. The search giant's core digital ads and cloud computing businesses also showed steady growth, which CEO Sundar... Continue reading...

Tomo, the AI avatar | Luka, Inc. AI companion company Replika partnered with the team behind the AI dating simulator Blush to release Tomo, a wellness and meditation app with an AI-generated avatar guiding users. Its the kind of concept that seemed destined as soon as generative AI took off, but in the time I've spent with Tomo, I found myself wondering if I can ever open up to an AI like I can with a real therapist.Tomo, now generally available on the Apple iOS store, brings users to a virtual island retreat, greeted by an AI-generated avatar guide named... Tomo. Tomo offers programs to help people explore personal growth, mental well-being, and fulfillment. It also provides guided meditation, yoga, affirmation classes, and, most of all, talk therapy.Users can try out... Continue reading...

Fantasy players and sports bettors should be salivating right now. | YouTube Since its launch last spring, YouTube TV's multiview functionality has been a huge quality-of-life improvement for sports fans. You can use it to watch multiple games concurrently without making space for extra TVs - but until now, you could only watch the predetermined sets of games that YouTube thinks would appeal to most viewers. An incoming update changes that, finally letting you customize multiview with your preferred combination of broadcasts, as spotted by 9to5Google.While a big improvement over the curated multiview feeds YouTube TV launched with, it sounds like you're still bound by certain limitations. For instance, although you can build your own bundle of specific games, you can still only choose them from a predetermined... Continue reading...

Arlo's cloud subscription plan for a single camera or video doorbell is increasing to $7.99 a month. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge In more things are just getting expensive" news, the Arlo Secure subscription service is climbing. Again. This time, it's going from $4.99 to $7.99 for a single camera or video doorbell. This 60 percent price hike comes on the heels of an increase early last year from $2.99 to $4.99.According to an email sent to single-camera users from Arlo and posted on Reddit, the change is due to increasing costs and investment in developing innovative solutions." The updated plans are now live on Arlo's site, and the lowest-tier Arlo Secure plan, which includes 30 days of cloud storage and smart alerts for people, pets, packages, and vehicles, costs $7.99 monthly for one camera.If you have multiple Arlo cameras, the subscription costs $12.99... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft just posted the second quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $62 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q2. Revenue is up 18 percent, and net income has increased by 33 percent.This is the first quarter Microsoft is reporting earnings as a $3 trillion company and also the first time the company has reported additional revenue from its Activision Blizzard acquisition. This additional revenue has made gaming Microsoft's third largest business this quarter, above Windows.Office and cloud revenue still reign supreme, contributing nearly 60 percent of Microsoft's overall revenue. While Windows OEM revenue is bouncing back, devices revenue from Surface sales has continued to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Location tracking can be very handy - it's convenient when an app can tell you, say, where the nearby restaurants or gas stations are - but it's also a privacy issue (something that at least one of Google's competitors has used in its sales pitch).You probably know that Google can track your location and movements through its Google Maps app. But you may not realize that your Android phone is also tracking your movements and activities through several other built-in apps.If you really don't want your phone to be tracking any of your movements and activities, there is a way to turn tracking off for all (well, most) of them. You just need to be aware that you're probably going to render many of your apps (such as rideshare apps, weather... Continue reading...

The New York Times will begin building a team to explore the use of generative AI in its newsroom. Zach Seward, who was recently hired by the publication to head AI initiatives, posted on Threads that the team will be focused on prototyping uses of generative AI and other machine-learning techniques to help with reporting and how the Times is presented to readers."Seward's post said the Times plans to hire a machine learning engineer, a software engineer, a designer, and a couple of editors to round out the AI newsroom initiative. So far, the Times has posted job listings for an associate editorial director for AI initiatives and a senior design editor.The team, led by the editorial director for A.I. initiatives, will also include... Continue reading...

Image: Sega Infinite Wealth is several different games wrapped up in a hard-hitting social commentary package. Continue reading...