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by Sean Hollister on (#6BDDW)
Image: Epic Games Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games, has also become a de facto test of the public’s interest in streaming games like they stream YouTube or Netflix. It’s been completely free to stream from Nvidia’s GeForce Now or Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming to almost any device you own, no download and no paid subscription required.Today, Amazon Luna is joining them. “Fortnite has been the most requested game from Luna customers in the U.S. and we’re thrilled to bring the title to the service,” reads a statement from Amazon devices and services VP Daniel Rausch. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge. Google thinks free streaming is important enough to give it a dedicated section in Fortnite search results.... Continue reading…
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The Verge - All Posts
| Link | https://www.theverge.com/ |
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| Updated | 2024-11-26 14:00 |
by Monica Chin on (#6A420)
Two Frameworks enter... | Image: Framework Framework has announced the 2023 edition of its modular 13-inch laptop. The big news is that not only is there a 13th-Gen Intel configuration for sale, but there’s also an AMD Ryzen 7040 option available. That’s right. Finally, an AMD option.One of the difficulties I had in reviewing last year’s Framework Laptop was that the Intel processor didn’t quite measure up to everything else that was great about the device. I’m obsessed with the Framework as a concept — what’s not to love about a repairable, fully upgradable notebook? — but as a daily driver, it was a bit unremarkable, and battery life was particularly disappointing.We’ve seen great battery life from the Ryzen 7000 series so far this year, and that could be just what this... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6BDBE)
Image: Snap Snap has already begun experimenting with sponsored links in its My AI chatbot. During the NewFronts advertising event on Tuesday, the company announced that the bot will start surfacing paid links that are relevant to a conversation.For example, Snap says if you’re using My AI to figure out what to have for dinner, the bot might suggest a sponsored link that leads to a local restaurant or delivery app after providing an initial response. It might even surface links for an airline or hotel if you’re chatting with My AI about planning a trip.Snapchat just revealed its ChatGPT-powered My AI chatbot in February, which can do things like hold conversations, suggest AR filters, and generate photos. After initially releasing My AI... Continue reading…
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by David Pierce on (#6BDBF)
The BlackBerry started as a messy prototype — and eventually kind of took over the world. | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge; Image: IFC Films You probably already know the story of BlackBerry. Its demise was as spectacular and public as anything you can think of, from a top-of-the-world gadget that people referred to as an addiction — the CrackBerry phenomenon was no joke — to just another of the many things left for dead by the iPhone. Talking about the BlackBerry now is like talking about, I don’t know, the Walkman or the Flip camera. They lived, they died, the end.And yet, I was totally riveted by BlackBerry, the new movie directed by Matt Johnson about the rise and fall of Research In Motion (RIM) and the epic product it created. The movie is stylistically somewhere in the middle of The Social Network, General Magic, and Silicon Valley, following a ragtag bunch of... Continue reading…
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by Sean Hollister on (#6BDBJ)
A render of an AMD Ryzen 7000 chip. | Image: AMD It’s no secret that AMD has a new low-power laptop chip with potent integrated graphics. Companies like Asus, Aokzoe, and Ayaneo are sticking it — or its Z1 Extreme spinoff — into their handheld gaming PCs. But the AMD 7840U was originally designed for thin and powerful laptops, and the company’s finally beginning to share that story today.AMD claims the new chip can give Apple a run for its money, besting the 2022 MacBook Air’s M2 processor in “application performance” by up to 75 percent and taking on the Intel Core i7-1360P by even more than that in both productivity and graphics, as you’ll see stated fairly vaguely in the charts below. Image: AMD Versus Apple M2. Image: AMD Versus... Continue reading…
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6BDBH)
Tichina, a character from PunkRobot’s Visions Volume 2 short “In the Stars.” | Image: Disney Plus / Lucasfilm Star Wars: Visions’ second season is a breathtaking reminder of how freeing living outside of the canon can be. Continue reading…
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by Umar Shakir on (#6BDBG)
Dashlane’s new Passwordless Login uses device authentication, so you can log in to your vault on your computer by scanning a QR code. | Image: Dashlane Password manager company Dashlane is replacing the master password with a new device-based / biometric “Passwordless Login” solution to better protect users’ password vaults. That means Dashlane users will no longer have to create and remember a single password that must be guarded from the world — lest it succumbs to a dastardly phishing scheme that compromises your whole digital life (and probably your identity).Dashlane’s Passwordless Login follows the company’s early support for the rising cryptographic keys solution known as passkeys. However, while Dashlane’s new master password replacement solution also uses cryptographic keys, it's not the same as passkeys, which is the password-free authentication solution developed by FIDO... Continue reading…
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by Amrita Khalid on (#6BD9Q)
The real Joe Rogan at a comedy club in 2019. | Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images On a recent podcast episode, you can hear Joe Rogan ask OpenAI founder Sam Altman whether society should be concerned about fake AI content. “How will we be able to tell what’s real and what’s not?” It was a particularly fitting question for the episode — since the entire hourlong conversation was generated by AI.Depending on whom you ask, AI is either an existential threat to every creative industry, a groundbreaking technology that will advance human civilization, or a kind of fun, dumb toy that is ultimately a pale imitation of the real deal. The creator of The Joe Rogan AI Experience, a sort of AI-generated fanfic YouTube podcast that depicts imaginary conversations between Rogan and a new guest every episode, kind of believes all... Continue reading…
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by Justine Calma on (#6BD9P)
The wall of a giant warehouse comes right up to a homeowner’s property on April 26th, 2021, in San Bernardino, California. | Photo by Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images With millions of Americans now living in close proximity to a warehouse, it’s time to start treating these drab, feature-less buildings like pollution hotspots, says a recent report by the Environmental Defense Fund. Warehouses are quickly popping up all over the US, bringing truck traffic and tailpipe emissions with them. And yet there is no federal database to see where current or proposed warehouses are located, unlike other major sources of pollution like oil and gas facilities.In the absence of federal data, the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) completed its own analysis of warehouses in the 10 states where they’ve gained tremendous ground recently. Over the past decade, warehouses have surpassed office spaces to become... Continue reading…
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6BD9R)
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Google’s next step into a passwordless future is here with the announcement that passkeys — a new cryptographic keys solution that requires a preauthenticated device — are coming to Google accounts on all major platforms. Starting today, Google users can switch to passkeys and ditch their passwords and two-step verification codes entirely when signing in.Passkeys are a safer, more convenient alternative to passwords being pushed by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and other tech companies aligned with the FIDO Alliance. They can replace traditional passwords and other sign-in systems like 2FA or SMS verification with a local PIN or a device’s own biometric authentication — such as a fingerprint or Face ID. This biometric data isn’t shared with... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#6BD41)
Illustration: The Verge Microsoft Edge is a good browser but for some reason Microsoft keeps trying to shove it down everyone’s throat and make it more difficult to use rivals like Chrome or Firefox. Microsoft has now started notifying IT admins that it will force Outlook and Teams to ignore the default web browser on Windows and open links in Microsoft Edge instead.Reddit users have posted messages from the Microsoft 365 admin center that reveal how Microsoft is going to roll out this change. “Web links from Azure Active Directory (AAD) accounts and Microsoft (MSA) accounts in the Outlook for Windows app will open in Microsoft Edge in a single view showing the opened link side-by-side with the email it came from,” reads a message to IT admins from Microsoft.W... Continue reading…
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by Jon Porter on (#6BD2Y)
Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta’s VR social platform is getting a new feature to help you show off what a fun time you’re having in the so-called “metaverse” with all your Instagram and Facebook followers. With its v108 update, Horizon Worlds can now share photos and videos directly to your story on either platform. Meta is also using the update to test a couple of tweaks to the service’s safe zone feature.It’s previously been possible to share content from Horizon Worlds to Reels — Instagram and Facebook’s TikTok-style vertical video feed feature — as reported by TechCrunch last October. But now you also have the option of posting Horizon Worlds’ Wii-level graphics to Meta’s stories, where they can sit alongside real-world photographs of holidays, meals, and... Continue reading…
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by Monica Chin on (#6BCSD)
Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images Today in partnerships that I did not at all see coming, Zillow has announced the launch of a new plug-in for ChatGPT. It is called, as you might expect, the ChatGPT plug-in. And if you enable it, you will be able to do what you’d expect something called the Zillow ChatGPT plug-in to allow you to do: search for a house.Specifically, those who have the plug-in enabled can tell ChatGPT what kind of property they’re looking to purchase or rent, sharing criteria like location, price, and bedroom count. ChatGPT will then dive into Zillow’s database and spit out some options for you.Generative AI is changing the way people search for informationThe plug-in is available for “a select number of ChatGPT users today, with broader access... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6BCPJ)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After putting its API behind a paywall, Twitter is now reversing course and making an exception for emergency and transportation agencies — some of which have already left the platform.In a tweet sent out from the Twitter Dev account on Tuesday, the platform says “verified gov or publicly owned services who tweet weather alerts, transport updates and emergency notifications” can continue to use the API free of charge. Exactly what the company means by “verified” is unclear. Does it only apply if the agency has enabled a new “verified” account, and do they have to pay to get checkmarks on any sub accounts that may require API access?We already started seeing the effects of these API changes last month when several emergency and... Continue reading…
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by Umar Shakir on (#6BCRB)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit’s blog post today admits it “didn’t make it easy” to share content like cool conversations and memes to other social platforms — but now it’s finally doing something about it. Reddit is enhancing link embeds for messaging apps and adding more sharing functions like sharing directly to Instagram stories right from Reddit’s app.If you’ve ever tried to share a Reddit link from the official app on, for instance, iMessage on an iPhone, you might recall it not having a particularly content-rich preview. Now the company is enhancing it with a more robust visual preview of the content, its subreddit name, and the number of upvotes and comments it has. Image: Reddit The new preview for Reddit shares in iMessage. ... Continue reading…
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by Alex Heath on (#6BCMS)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s head of trust and safety for the US, Eric Han, is leaving the company on May 12th, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal memo to employees I’ve seen.His departure comes as TikTok is still trying to clench a deal to avoid a ban by the US government. Han has been leading TikTok’s safety teams in the US for several years, and in December, he was named the head of trust and safety for TikTok US Data Security (USDS), a separate entity created to convince the government that the app shouldn’t be banned.In the memo to employees announcing his departure, Andy Bonillo, interim USDS general manager, said he will be “stepping in to lead USDS T&S on an interim basis” until “we identify Eric’s replacement for the... Continue reading…
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by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on (#6BCC7)
The fourth-gen Echo smart speaker is now a Thread Border Router. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Today is a make-or-break day for Matter as Amazon rolls out a big update to its support for the new smart home standard. The company has now switched on Matter in over 100 million Echo smart speakers, Thread support has arrived, and the Alexa iOS app now works with Matter. All of which should make it easier to connect any device to your smart home, no matter who made it.Amazon had opted for a slow and steady approach to Matter, which launched late last year, wanting to make sure it actually worked before unleashing it on its ginormous customer base. But starting today, Amazon’s Alexa smart home platform is Matter-ready. The fourth-gen Echo smart speaker is now a Thread border router, supporting Thread devices such as Eve smart plugs... Continue reading…
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by David Nield on (#6BCGZ)
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The right-click menu in Windows 11 is an essential shortcut to a host of features and tools, adapting to the context of what you’re clicking on along the way. You can use it to copy and paste files, edit images, interact with the clipboard, pull up the properties of a file, print documents, share files with other people, and lots more besides.What you might not know is you can customize this right-click menu for yourself, bringing in the applications and the shortcuts you use the most and getting rid of those you don’t need. It makes the menu more useful than ever, with the potential to ramp up your computing productivity even further.There are a couple of ways to go about making changes to what you see in the Windows 11 right-click... Continue reading…
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by Victoria Song on (#6BCH0)
iCloud Shared Photo Libraries let up to six people contribute photos and videos to a single place. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Almost everyone has been guilty, at some point or another, of forgetting to send a picture or video to friends and family. The good news is that iOS 16 now lets you create an iCloud Shared Photo Library to make it easier to share memories with loved ones on their iPhones, iPads, and Macs.An iCloud Shared Photo Library is exactly what it sounds like: it allows up to six people to contribute photos and videos to a single collection. Everyone who has access to the shared library can add, edit, or delete content. You can also choose to either upload photos to the shared library manually or automatically when your phone detects you’re near other members. For example, if you invited Mom and Dad to a shared library, you can set it up so that... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6BCEP)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Law enforcement agencies from around the globe arrested 288 people suspected of buying or selling drugs on the dark web. In a pair of press releases posted on Tuesday, the US Department of Justice and Europol said the joint effort also resulted in the shutdown of the dark web marketplace, Monopoly Market.The operation, codenamed SpecTor, was done in collaboration with nine countries, including the US, UK, Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, and Switzerland. While 155 of the arrests took place in the US, authorities seized $53.4 million in cash and digital currencies, 850kg (or 1,873 lbs) of drugs, and 117 firearms worldwide.
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by Justine Calma on (#6BCEQ)
| Photo by Sean Gallup / Getty Images Google is still turning a buck on climate disinformation on YouTube. The company pledged not to sell ads on content that rejects mainstream climate science more than a year ago. And yet, in April, researchers were able to find hundreds of videos promoting misinformation about climate change that Google monetized with ads.The Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition, a group that includes more than 50 nonprofit organizations, published the report today. It points to 100 different videos spouting lies about climate change on which Google ran ads, violating its own policy on disinformation. These are videos that outright deny what mountains of evidence tell us about climate change: that it’s caused by greenhouse gas... Continue reading…
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by Makena Kelly on (#6BCER)
Image: Álvaro Bernis / The Verge A phony AI-generated attack ad from the Republican National Committee (RNC) offered Congress a glimpse into how the tech could be used in next year’s election cycle. Now, Democrats are readying their response.On Tuesday, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) introduced a new bill to require disclosures of AI-generated content in political ads. Clarke told The Washington Post Tuesday that her bill was a direct response to the RNC ad that launched last week. The video came out soon after President Joe Biden announced his 2024 reelection campaign, depicting a dystopian future where Biden reinstates the draft to aid Ukraine’s war effort and causes China to invade Taiwan if reelected.“The upcoming 2024 election cycle will be the first time in U.S.... Continue reading…
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by Andrew J. Hawkins on (#6BCES)
Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Ford is reopening orders for its all-electric Mustang Mach-E while also bumping up the crossover’s EPA-estimated range and slashing prices all the way down the lineup. The move comes as EV prices remain in flux amid Tesla’s own price cuts and ongoing uncertainty around the federal tax credit.The Mustang Mach-E is currently Ford’s bestselling electric vehicle and third best in the overall category, which has helped propel the automaker to its status as the No. 2 seller of EVs in the US. Ford recently said it was aiming to double the number of Mach-Es built per hour in 2023 to hit a run rate of 210,000 by the end of the year.Orders for the Mach-E were briefly closed as the company completed renovations at its plant in Mexico. And to... Continue reading…
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by Andrew Webster on (#6BCET)
Image: Snowman The latest game release on Netflix manages to capture the thrill of flying — while somehow also turning it into something chill.Laya’s Horizon is the newest game from Snowman, the studio best known for serene snowboarding games like Alto’s Odyssey. And in many ways, it’s an experience that builds on what the team has done in the past. Instead of boarding through procedurally generated 2D worlds, in Laya’s Horizon, players are soaring through a handcrafted 3D open-world island full of secrets to uncover. It’s one of the best games to hit Netflix’s fledgling gaming service to date.In Laya’s Horizon, you don’t exactly fly but, rather, glide around using a wingsuit. You start out from a perch that oversees much of the idyllic island where... Continue reading…
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by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on (#6BCC6)
The first Matter-over-Thread smart lighting line, Nanoleaf’s new lights promise a lot and mostly deliver. Continue reading…
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by Chris Welch on (#6BC9P)
It feels like you’re making genuine eye contact with the person you’re talking to. The chic videoconferencing experience was built in collaboration with Steelcase and provides lifelike scale, natural eye contact, and no distractions. Sure beats my work-from-home setup. Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6BC9Q)
Photo by Adrien Fillon / NurPhoto via Getty Images Pornhub has blocked all users in Utah in protest of the state’s online age verification law that’s set to go into effect on Wednesday, as reported earlier by Vice. Users trying to access Porhub from Utah won’t be able to access any content and will instead see a message read by adult performer Cherie Deville explaining why the site has shut down in the state.“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and, in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” Deville says. “Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in... Continue reading…
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by Nilay Patel on (#6BC9R)
Former BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith on what’s next — and his new book, Traffic. Continue reading…
by Tom Warren on (#6BC7J)
Image: Microsoft Microsoft is launching a new Xbox Game Pass friend referral program that lets you invite friends to try out PC Game Pass. The friend referral offer is available for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass members to invite up to five friends for free 14-day trials of PC Game Pass.The friend referral invitations are available on the Game Pass homescreen and are only available to be sent to friends who are new to Game Pass. Microsoft is launching this offer just as Redfall debuts on Xbox and PC today, allowing Game Pass members to get friends playing the co-op vampire shooter.Microsoft has been focusing on PC Game Pass growth recentlyIf a friend that’s new to Game Pass does accept this offer, then it means they cannot use another... Continue reading…
by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6BC7K)
Sony There have been a number of video games that made for fantastic cinematic adaptations, but everything about the first trailer for Sony’s upcoming Gran Turismo film from director Neill Blomkamp makes the movie seem like a showcase of reasons why racing sims don’t need to be turned into movies.Caught somewhere between being a video game adaptation and a coming-of-age narrative, Gran Turismo tells the true story of how teenage Gran Turismo player Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) actually became a professional race car driver after winning a series of driving game competitions. The trailer introduces Jann pre-fame while he’s still living at home with his father Steve (Djimon Hounsou) and his mother Lesley (Geri Halliwell) and spending... Continue reading…
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6BC7M)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile has experienced another data breach, reporting that personal information belonging to hundreds of account holders was exposed in an attack between late February and March 2023. The company disclosed in notification letters issued to impacted customers on April 28th that a hacker managed to access information such as full names, dates of birth, addresses, contact information, government IDs, social security numbers, and T-Mobile account pins.The company has not revealed how the hacker managed to access its systems. According to a data breach notification posted to the Maine attorney general’s office, 836 customers were impacted before T-Mobile discovered the breach on March 27th.T-Mobile has reset the account pins of the users... Continue reading…
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by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on (#6BC7N)
Security system Abode now works with all Google Nest cameras and thermostats. | Image: Abode Starting today, users of the smart home security system Abode can now control and automate Google Nest products natively inside the Abode app. This new feature will let you do things like set your alarm system to arm automatically when your Nest Thermostat switches to “away” and have your Google Nest Cam with floodlight send an alert to a professional monitoring service if it spots someone lurking on your property.Long-term users of Abode will note that some of these features aren’t strictly new. They used to be able to have their Nest Thermostat’s mode control their security system — and more — before Google disabled its popular Works With Nest (WWN) program way back in 2019. (Some legacy connections still work, but those will be shut... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6BC57)
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge, Shutterstock Apple and Google have teamed up on a proposed industry specification aimed at combatting the safety risks associated with AirTags and other Bluetooth-enabled tracking devices. The companies announced Tuesday that the new standard requires the implementation of “unauthorized tracking detection and alerts” across Android and iOS devices.The proposed specification lists a number of best practices for the creators of Bluetooth tracking devices, which are supposed to help prevent the “misuse” of location trackers that put users at risk for stalking, harassment, and theft. As outlined in the document, the unwanted tracking detection should “detect and alert individuals” when a tracker that’s separated from its owner is traveling with them and... Continue reading…
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by Casey Newton on (#6BC59)
The logo for Bluesky’s AT Protocol. | Bluesky Last week, we talked about how BeReal missed its moment. This week, let’s discuss how Bluesky might avoid the same fate.Bluesky, of course, is the decentralized social network that surged in popularity over the weekend as the app opened up invitations to more beta testers and quickly sped past its first 50,000 users. Suffice to say it has been a long time coming: I first wrote about the company here in 2019, when Jack Dorsey woke up one day and decided he would try to rebuild Twitter on an open protocol and funded a team to do just that.Elon Musk’s reign of error over the past six months has led to a flood of talent and money into social networking companies. Among the apps attempting to capitalize on Twitter’s decline are Post, T2,... Continue reading…
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by Victoria Song on (#6BC58)
I will be tackling all six of those Tody to-do’s later. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge By the end of 2021, my apartment looked like a tornado had run through it. The messiness made me anxious, but keeping a tidy home hadn’t been my priority that year. My mom was fine in February, and by November, ALS had robbed her of quite literally everything. After her funeral, I came home to my disaster apartment, looked at my mountains of clutter, and realized I didn’t even have a comfortable place to cry.I threw myself a pity party and then downloaded the Tody app — a to-do app dedicated solely to cleaning — the next day.The Tody app (Get it? To-do, tidy, Tody) came recommended by a friend with an immaculate house. Looking at their spotless home reminded me of something a college friend told me when she first saw my pigsty of a... Continue reading…
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by Allison Johnson on (#6BC5A)
This year’s Edge Plus boasts all the right specs to take it to Samsung and Google. | Image: Motorola We asked, and we received: Motorola is bringing its newest slab-style flagship to the US as the Motorola Edge Plus (2023). It’s priced at $799 for a base model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, undercutting the $899 Google Pixel 7 Pro and $999 Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus by a significant margin, and it’s equipped with plenty of things you might expect from a flagship Android phone in 2023: a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, a big, smooth 165Hz screen, a stabilized main camera, a robust IP68 weather resistance rating, and wireless charging.Weirdly, though, none of the three major US wireless carriers will sell the device — Motorola’s carrier partners for the Edge Plus include Boost Infinite (yep, that one) and Consumer Cellular. It’ll be... Continue reading…
by Sheena Vasani on (#6BC5B)
Amazon’s current $20 discount applies to both the standard and clock-equipped models. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Right now, you can get Amazon’s latest Echo Dot smart speaker, which has some good sound for such a tiny device, for just $29.99 ($20 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. The LED-equipped model is also on sale at Amazon and Best Buy for $39.99 ($20 off), matching the smart speaker’s best price to date.The fifth-gen Dot is as versatile as the prior model but features better sound and a new temperature sensor that’s capable of triggering Alexa Routines — meaning you can program it to turn on your air conditioner when it gets too hot in the kitchen. It also functions as a Wi-Fi extender, much like the last-gen model, allowing you to boost your internet coverage if you own an Eero Wi-Fi system. This is on top of a host of Alexa-enabled tasks,... Continue reading…
by Patrick George on (#6BC35)
Photo by Patrick George for The Verge The Ioniq 6 looks more interesting than it drives. That’s not a bad thing. Continue reading…
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6BC1F)
The 2007 writers' strike (pictured above) lost California an estimated $2.1 billion and was credited with tipping the state into a recession. | Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images As of today, thousands of Hollywood television and movie writers are going on strike for the first time in 15 years.The Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted unanimously to strike on Tuesday after contract negotiations with the major Hollywood studios collapsed. The WGA is attempting to secure higher wages and better working conditions from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) — a group representing around 350 major studios and streaming services like Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple, and Sony — for the thousands of movie and television writers the union represents. Picket lines are expected to form starting Tuesday afternoon.The last WGA strike in 2007 and 2008 lasted 100 days and was credited with tipping... Continue reading…
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by James Vincent on (#6BC1G)
Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images AI chatbots are being used to generate news stories and blog posts for online content farms in the hopes of attracting a trickle of ad revenue from the stray clicks of web users.Experts have been warning for years that such AI-generated content farms will soon become commonplace, but the wider availability of tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has now made these warnings a reality. NewsGuard, a for-profit organization that rates the trustworthiness of news sites, highlighted the problem in a recent report identifying 49 sites “that appear to be almost entirely written by artificial intelligence software.”Said NewsGuard:
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by Jon Porter on (#6BC04)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung has banned the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT on its internal networks and company-owned devices over fears that uploading sensitive information to these platforms represents a security risk, Bloomberg News reports. The rule was communicated to staff in a memo which describes it as a temporary restriction while Samsung works to “create a secure environment” to safely use generative AI tools.The biggest risk factor is likely OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT, which has become hugely popular not only as toy for entertainment but as a tool to help with serious work. People can use the system to summarize reports or write response to emails — but that might mean inputting sensitive information, which OpenAI might have access too.“... Continue reading…
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by Sean Hollister on (#6BBNB)
The Redfall intro screen, with the Steam Deck’s performance hud above it. | Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge Nearly four hours in, I am not at all convinced that Redfall is a good game — unless there’s a lot of hidden depth, it feels like a rare miss from Arkane.But unlike that other recent big release, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, you can make it playable on Steam Deck with a few easy tweaks.I’m not saying it’ll look good, but it’s a heck of a lot better than the default setting!Before: 24fps for this grainy mess below. Tap here for full image. After: 43fps, and things look smoother, too! Tap here for full image. Before: Tap here for full image. After: Note: the time of day was changing as I was taking screenshots, sorry! Tap here for full image. S... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6BBJS)
Photo by Fabian Sommer / picture alliance via Getty Images BeReal is releasing another feature that seems to counter the purpose of the app: a feed dedicated to famous people. Instead of exchanging daily photos with your friends, now you’ll get to see what the top athletes, artists, and activists of the world are up to.BeReal, the app that markets itself as “Your friends for real,” gives you different windows of time each day to take a selfie and front-facing photo that gets shared with friends. The whole point of the app is to randomly share what you’re up to with friends, whether you’re doing something as boring as laying in bed or sitting in front of your computer at work.But now, BeReal is throwing strangers into the mix. Its new feed, called RealPeople, is a “curated timeline of the... Continue reading…
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6BBJT)
Val Zod punching an enemy. | DC Comics / Bruno Redondo, Alejandro Sánchez, Juan Albarran With all of the reorganization of priorities that came with Warner Bros. Discovery tapping James Gunn and Peter Safran to oversee DC Studios, it felt like some of the studio’s previously announced projects might have been taken off the table. News of Gunn writing and directing Superman: Legacy, for example, seemed like a bad sign for the Ta-Nehisi Coates-written Superman film, but according to DC Studios’ co-CEO, that may not be the case just yet.Back in 2021, it was reported that We Were Eight Years in Power author Ta-Nehisi Coates was penning a new Superman script described as “a 20th century period piece” that would revolve around a Black version of the Man of Steel. While details about the project were thin at the time, J.J. Abrams... Continue reading…
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by Justine Calma on (#6BBH8)
Debris litters the ground on April 22nd, 2023, after the SpaceX Starship liftedoff on April 20th for a flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. | Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images Environmental groups and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas have filed suit against the Federal Aviation Administration after SpaceX’s Starship blew up during a launch at its Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, last month.The explosion obliterated the launch pad, sending dust and debris flying for miles. Ash scatted over areas where endangered species live, according to the complaint filed in federal district court in Washington, DC, today. The explosion also sparked a 3.5-acre blaze, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.The suit alleges that the FAA failed to “take a hard look” at the environmental risks posed by SpaceX’s operations in Boca Chica, as it was required to do under the National Environmental Policy Act. The groups... Continue reading…
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by Richard Lawler on (#6BBFH)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter had plenty of problems in February (the rate limit debacle) and March (when it broke all links and pictures), but through April, the service didn’t register outages of similar significance. Now it’s May, and the streak has ended early as a number of people (including many Verge staffers) report the Twitter.com desktop website has logged them out without warning and won’t let them log back in.It’s unclear what’s causing the problem, and in place of a functional PR department, Twitter responds to press inquiries with only a poop emoji, so who knows when things may be fixed or if a single engineer has managed to crash something big... again.The outage is, coincidentally, occurring exactly at the same time it’s becoming a little... Continue reading…
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by Andrew J. Hawkins on (#6BBFJ)
Image: Getty Embattled electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors says it could run out of money if its deal with iPhone manufacturer Foxconn fails to go through. The deal is in jeopardy after Foxconn notified Lordstown that it’s in breach of its investment deal because its stock has fallen under $1 a share.Lordstown traces its origins to GM’s announcement in 2018 that it would be closing down its Lordstown, Ohio, factory. Then-President Donald Trump assailed GM over the decision, leading to the automaker’s decision to sell the plant to a struggling electric truck startup called Workhorse.Instead, Workhorse’s founder and former CEO, Steve Burns, started a new company called Lordstown Motors with the plan to build electric pickup trucks, centered on... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6BBFK)
Image: Mastodon Mastodon is making it easier for newcomers to create an account on the platform. On Monday, the decentralized network announced that it will start directing new users to create an account on mastodon.social instead of prompting them to choose from one of the thousands of other servers on the platform.This update doesn’t mean that Mastodon’s taking away the ability for new users to sign up for an account in a specific community, though. It will simply present two separate options on its signup page: “Join mastodon.social” or “Pick my own server.” The service’s flagship mastodon.social server is the platform’s largest, but the network notes that users can swap instances at any time.Prior to this change, creating a Mastodon account wasn’t... Continue reading…
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by Richard Lawler on (#6BBFM)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple announced the new “Rapid Security Response” updates for iPhones, iPads, and Macs last year at WWDC, and today, the first publicly released patch on the system started to roll out. After rough going initially when the new update claimed every iPhone was “offline,” the new patch is now installed on our devices without a problem.The Rapid Security Response system is supposed to make things easier, adding security fixes in between larger system updates that could install on some devices without a reboot as well as allowing users to opt out of receiving them entirely or uninstall them if they caused any issues.
by Monica Chin on (#6BBFN)
If you’re looking for a Windows-based alternative to Apple’s MacBook Air, the Zenbook S 13 is what you want. It’s even thinner and lighter than last year’s version, too. Continue reading…