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A developer build of Microsoft’s Edge browser displays an invitation to use the new Bing if the user is on Google’s Bard page. | Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge Microsoft’s Edge can be a great Chromium browser alternative to Google’s Chrome, but the former is displaying some annoying new rivalry antics: advertising Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot while you’re trying out Google’s Bard AI. As pointed out by developer and Twitter user Vitor de Lucca, a new developer version of Edge will now display a new Bing ad next to the Google Bard URL.When pointing Edge to bard.google.com, a new animated “compare answers with the AI-powered new Bing” slide appears in the upper-right side of Edge’s address bar. Then, the text slides back to the right and leaves behind a Bing icon that seems pretty redundant considering a similar icon is off to the right by default. Screenshot: Tom Warren / The... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge A new Washington state law will require companies to receive a user’s explicit consent before they can collect, share, or sell their health data. Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed the My Health, My Data bill into law on Thursday, giving users the right to withdraw consent at any time and have their data deleted.The law should help shield users’ health data from the companies and organizations not included under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which prevents certain medical providers from disclosing “individually identifiable” health information without consent. The HIPAA Privacy Rule doesn’t cover many of the health apps and sites that collect medical data, allowing them to freely collect and sell this information to advertisers.Under... Continue reading…

Donkey Kong peeks out of his Lego tree house. | Image: Lego Donkey Kong has been around as long as Mario himself, but this August will be the first time he’s officially appeared in Lego form — on August 1st, the Danish toymaker is adding four Lego Donkey Kong sets to the ever-widening Lego Super Mario lineup.They aren’t filled with ladders, hammers, and fireballs like the original arcade game, mind; these sets are straight out of Donkey Kong Country, with the gorilla’s relatives along for the ride.If you want Donkey Kong with the trademark red DK tie around his neck, that’ll set you back $60 for a tree house that comes with grandpa Cranky Kong as well, plus a hammock and some conga drums for Donkey to play. Image: Lego Some of these parts appear to be from other sets;... Continue reading…

Image: Will Joel We found a wide range of gifts that’ll help graduates as they embark upon their next adventure, whether that’s college or a career. Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta’s v53 update for Quest devices adds a very welcome new feature: the headset will be able to update apps when you shut down your headset. If it works as intended, that means you’ll be able to download updates at a time when you aren’t planning to use the device, which I will appreciate — I’ve found myself stuck waiting for an update when I want to use an app more times than I can count.How does it work? “You can simply take off your headset, plug it in, and go about your business while the headset does its thing,” Meta says in a blog post. Sounds great! I’m really looking forward to trying this out myself.v53 includes a few other improvements as well. The update moves what Meta calls “Advanced Camera Settings” for capturing your... Continue reading…

Image: Lionsgate Lionsgate just released a trailer for the Hunger Games prequel movie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and it promises to be a star-studded return to the land of Panem.The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place 64 years before the events of the main series. Instead of featuring Katniss Everdeen, this movie follows the story of a young Coriolanus Snow (who later goes goes on to become the villain of the original trilogy) and a Hunger Games tribute named Lucy Gray Baird, who he mentors.I haven’t read the book this movie is based on, but based on this trailer, the film seems like it will be a dramatic return to Panem and the battle royale-style Hunger Games that made the original series such a sensation. It helps that the movie... Continue reading…

EQE and EQS electric sedans. | Image: Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz has new finalized pricing on its vexing “Acceleration Increase” subscription revealed last year that can eke out more electric performance — without any physical modification — from the automaker’s current EQE and EQS EV models, Car and Driver reports.The updated Acceleration Increase pricing starts at $60 per month, or you can save about $120 and pay $600 per year instead. That pricing only applies to the AWD EQE 350 sedan and its SUV counterpart. Meanwhile, the pricier AWD EQS 450 car and SUV command a higher $90 per month (or $900 per year) rate for their own boost.Mercedes-Benz had initially set the subscription at $1,200 per year, but now it’s been reduced a bit to a slightly-less-unreasonable rate. The automaker is... Continue reading…

Image: Playstack The Case of the Golden Idol, a point-and-click murder mystery game that was one of my favorite titles of 2022, is getting its first expansion in just a few days. The new DLC, The Spider of Lanka, adds three new scenarios and will be available starting May 4th.The Spider of Lanka promises to be just as mysterious as the main game if a description from a press email is anything to go by. “The Spider of Lanka begins in 1741, one year before the first scenario in The Case of the Golden Idol,” according to the description. “The new story follows Albert Cloudsley and Oberon Geller on their maiden voyage to the fictional Kingdom of Lanka, as they visit [REDACTED], the Raja whose Priest has some startling information concerning the location of... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Forza Motorsport is arriving later this year with all the usual improvements in visual immersion and fidelity you’d expect from the latest Forza. But it’s also going to let players who are blind or have low vision race around tracks by listening for beeps and boops. These clever audio cues make Forza Motorsport the most accessible Forza title ever created.Turn 10 Studios has teamed up with accessibility consultant and blind gamer Brandon Cole to tune these audio cues and make racing blind in Forza Motorsport a reality. In the past, Cole has worked with Naughty Dog to improve accessibility in The Last of Us on PlayStation and has been pushing for game developers on this issue for more than a decade.Prior to this work, Cole wasn’t super... Continue reading…

Image: Meta Meta is introducing new body shapes and improved textures for hair and clothing for its avatars, the company announced on Thursday. The updates seem like good steps forward in helping people better represent themselves, but while you’re roaming around Meta’s Horizon Worlds VR social platform, you still won’t see other people’s legs.For the new body types, Meta says that you’ll be able to select from “a wider range of body shape options, including two curvier body shapes” beginning this month, according to a blog post. The company is also “refining” some existing body types to make them more differentiated from the rest.For hair and clothing, the company is adding “additional detail and realism,” and you might see more sparkle in... Continue reading…

The Dyson Zone is not the most practical device, but then again, did you really expect that from air-purifying noise-canceling headphones? Continue reading…

Bumblebee driving alongside Cheetor. | Paramount Pictures Despite what you might have heard, Beast Wars has always been the crowning jewel of the Transformers franchise, and the latest trailer for Paramount’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts makes it seem like the Steven Caple Jr. film is going to do the Maximals and Predacons (now called the Terrorcons) justice.It’s still 1994 in Rise of the Beasts’ latest trailer that reintroduces Anthony Ramos’ Noah Diaz and Dominique Fishback’s Elena Wallace — two humans who find themselves unexpectedly pulled into yet another Cybertronian conflict after making contact with Transformers. As new as the concept of transforming humanoid robots like Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and Autobot MVP Arcee (Liza Koshy) are to Noah and Elena, they’re old hat to Rise... Continue reading…

Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge What if the real GDC was the friends we made along the way? Continue reading…

LG’s 15.6-inch Gram SuperSlim laptop. | Image: LG LG’s Gram line of laptops have always been designed to be lightweight and thin, and now the company has released a new “SuperSlim” model that’s a strong competitor to the likes of Apple’s MacBook Air in the portability department (via Engadget).LG officially calls its new laptop the Gram SuperSlim (formerly the Ultraslim), which the company touts in its press release as the “thinnest LG Gram ever.” It measures just 0.43 inches thick — thinner than the M2 MacBook Air — and has a 15.6-inch OLED display compared to Apple’s 13.6-inch IPS one. Oh, and LG’s is also lighter at just 2.2 pounds, compared to the MacBook Air at 2.7 pounds. Image: LG It is pretty thin, huh? LG’s Gram Superslim is available now, and it s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta sees “an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors today.While he was vague about how exactly Meta will add generative AI to its apps, Zuckerberg gave the most detailed preview yet during the company’s earnings call for the first quarter of this year, when it reported $28.6 billion in revenue and a record 2 billion daily users of the Facebook app, beating Wall Street’s estimates. Meta’s profit for the quarter was $5.7 billion, a 24 percent decrease from the same time last year.“We’re exploring chat experiences in WhatsApp and Messenger, visual creation tools for posts in Facebook and Instagram and ads, and over time video and multi-modal... Continue reading…

WiZ’s inexpensive smart lighting line now works with Apple Home through Matter. | Image: Signify Smart lighting company WiZ has updated all its smart bulbs, lamps, and plugs manufactured in early 2021 or later to Matter, beating its sister brand Philips Hue to the punch. The company’s new app, WiZ v2, now lets users migrate any compatible product to the new smart home standard directly in the app and, from there, add them to any Matter-compatible platform, including Apple Home.Previously, the WiZ smart lighting line was only compatible with Apple’s smart home platform through Siri Shortcuts. Now, with Matter, many of its products can be added to the Apple Home app and controlled along with any other product supported by Apple Home. Signify, which owns both brands, has said Philips Hue will also be Matter compatible, but that u... Continue reading…

Image: AST SpaceMobile A groundbreaking phone call between Texas and Japan has occurred that could eventually help set the stage for a globally accessible space-based cellular network. AST SpaceMobile — a Texas-based satellite manufacturer — announced on Tuesday that it had successfully routed an audio call between two standard smartphones directly through its BlueWalker 3 (BW3) satellite in low Earth orbit, a breakthrough that could improve global cellular connectivity in remote regions without access to cell towers.AST SpaceMobile claims this is “the first time anyone has ever achieved a direct voice connection from space to everyday cellular devices.” The phone call was made from an unmodified Samsung Galaxy S22 in Midland, Texas, using mobile spectrum... Continue reading…