The Verge

Komatsu's 930E mining truck | Image: Komatsu General Motors announced a new partnership with Japanese construction vehicle manufacturer Komatsu to build heavy-duty mining trucks powered by the automaker's hydrogen fuel-cell technology.The company will work with the Japanese firm to install its Hydrotec-branded power cubes," each containing 300 individual hydrogen fuel cells with an output of 80 kW of new power, into the mining trucks.The amount of power needed for each truck will be immense. Komatsu's 930E mining trucks weigh over 500 tons, are capable of generating 3,500 horsepower, and can carry a nominal payload of 320 tons.The amount of power needed for each truck will be immenseHydrogen fuel cells use compressed hydrogen as their fuel, releasing water vapor as its only... Continue reading...

Sarah Jeong @Sarah JeongI've had a really good time on here. I've also had a really bad time on here lolThe first tweet was already unsettling. It was a composite image of things I'd said - largely dug up from five years earlier - screencaps of posts with tiny archive links appended to each one. Out of context, some of my old posts looked bad. The bulk were obviously jokes. Most of them were about white people.Then came another tweet. And another. It became a flood of tweets, nearly all with the same composite image being tweeted and retweeted. It was a coordinated online harassment campaign, the kind that Twitter was uniquely good at powering.I was fair game because The New York Times had just announced that I was being hired as a... Continue reading...

In the early '10s, Twitter was at the height of its power. The company had yet to turn a profit, but it had played a crucial role in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, which was nearly as effective for recruiting. While it would never reach the scale of its competitors, the platform dominated in terms of cultural and political relevance. Twitter was fast, its reach was far, and its influence was shaping the world in ways that seemed progressive.Menotti Minutillo, an engineer from Long Island with dark hair and a warm smile, was working as an analyst at Goldman Sachs when he decided to apply for a job at Twitter. At Goldman, there was no illusion about what employees were there to do. The company's mission was to make money.... Continue reading...

The Creator Micro is designed to be used alongside traditional peripherals like a mouse and keyboard. | Image: Figma Design software company Figma is launching its first dedicated piece of hardware. The Figma Creator Micro is effectively a small mechanical keyboard (aka, a macro pad) equipped with 12 keys and two dials for quick access to your most commonly used Figma tools and shortcuts. It's up for preorder for $139 starting today, with shipping expected in the first half of next year.The Creator Micro isn't an entirely original Figma creation. The design company has collaborated with Work Louder on the peripheral, which is a rebranded version of the existing Creator Micro. But this isn't just a Creator Micro with a Figma-branded coat of paint. Figma product manager Rob Bye tells me the company has worked to preconfigure its version of the Creator... Continue reading...

Illustration by Erik Carter for The Verge Here is a very dumb truth: for a decade, the default answer to nearly every problem in mass media communication involved Twitter. Breaking news? Twitter. Live sports commentary? Twitter. Politics? Twitter. A celebrity has behaved badly? Twitter. A celebrity has issued a Notes app apology for bad behavior? Twitter. For a good while, the most reliable way to find out what a loud noise in New York City was involved asking Twitter. Was there an earthquake in San Francisco? Twitter. Is some website down? Twitter.The sense that Twitter was a real-time news feed worked in both directions: people went on Twitter to find out what was going on, and reporters, seeing a real-time audience of people paying attention to news, started talking directly... Continue reading...

Twitter was so many things.Elon Musk killed Twitter. First, he did it figuratively: firing most employees, destabilizing it as a technology and a business, leaving the platform virtually unusable for those who remained. Then, he killed it literally: renaming it X, giving Twitter a final ending after 15 years of chaotic existence.But in death, there is understanding - now that it's over, we can reckon with what Twitter really was: a news cycle accelerator, a tool of mass harassment, an idealistic money-losing workplace, and an infinite joke machine.2023 will go down as...THE YEAR TWITTER DIED

This is a preservation effort, attempting to capture the funniest, weirdest, and most memorable posts before Twitter completely burns down.Buttons break, functions disappear, power users flee, site errors abound: Twitter fell apart faster than even the pessimists anticipated. By the time we arrived on the scene, the damage was already irreversible: many of the tweets that made Twitter so iconic were already deleted, removed, or made private. It happened so quickly, we could barely comprehend what it was that we actually lost.Not all of this information decay is the result of the Twitter acquisition. The famous Zola thread only exists in screenshots; the same goes for all-time great four eels." As more and more users delete their... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple rolled out a revamped Apple TV app as a part of its suite of new software releases on Monday. The tvOS 17.2 update includes a new sidebar for the TV app, which is designed to better showcase non-Apple TV Plus offerings and let users easily jump to other Apple content like MLS Season Pass. It also makes for a quick shortcut to apps like Disney Plus, Max, Prime Video, or Apple's store, where you can purchase or rent digital titles to stream.Prior to the update, it was easy for live sports and other streaming sources to get buried under Apple's TV Plus original programming. The new interface does more to highlight this third-party content, which is part of the tech giant's rumored plan to make the Apple TV app a streaming hub for... Continue reading...

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Ford told its dealers that it was reducing weekly production of its F-150 Lightning pickup truck next year in response to slowing customer demand, Automotive News reports.According to a memo viewed by the outlet, Ford told its dealers to prepare for an average production volume of 1,600 electric trucks from its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, starting next year. The company currently churns 3,200 trucks out of that factory each week.Emma Bergg, a spokesperson for Ford, declined to comment on the numbers published in the report. We will continue to match Lightning production to customer demand," she said in an email.We will continue to match Lightning production to customer demand."EV sales are continuing to... Continue reading...

Google and Actiontec worked together to make this Wi-Fi 7 router to with with the 20-gig service. | Image: Google Google is rolling out its 20-gig internet service offering to Fiber customers in select markets, with installations starting in Q1 2024. The ridiculously high-speed residential connection, first announced in October, also throws in the latest (though not yet certified) Wi-Fi 7 wireless networking hardware for customers who truly feel inclined to join in on the bleeding edge of connectivity.The new 20Gbps internet service, which comes through Google's GFiber Labs, won't come cheap: it'll cost customers $250 per month. Google plans to offer the connection initially in Kansas City, North Carolina (Triangle Region), Arizona, and Iowa. The service availability coincides with last-mile infrastructure upgrades by Google that include the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is about to fully move on from the Google Play Movies & TV. It had already moved Android and iOS users to the Google TV app, removed the app from every Roku and most smart TVs, and pulled the app from Android TV in October. In a recently published support document, however, Google detailed the ways you'll be able to watch the shows and movies you've bought through Google Play Movies & TV once the brand is gone for good in January.If you have a TV or streaming device powered by Android TV, you can watch things you've purchased or things you want to rent from the Shop tab starting January 17th, according to Google. If you have a cable box or a set-top box that runs Android TV, you'll watch / rent from the YouTube app starting that... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Reddit says it has restored services" after a major outage that, depending on the situation, stopped posts and comments from loading.I had observed a few different issues. When logged out, I couldn't see any posts or comments at all; I would just get an error message or a blank page under the Reddit search bar. When logged in on an account that's not on the old Reddit layout, posts loaded on the homepage, but when I clicked into a post from the homepage, comments didn't. (When using that account, posts wouldn't load in specific subreddits, either.) Weirdly, on my account that uses the old Reddit layout on my desktop browser, I was able to browse the platform just fine.Reddit confirmed there was an issue in a post at 12:47PM ET. We're... Continue reading...

Alex Jones in 2022. | Photo by Joe Buglewicz / Getty Images Elon Musk reinstated the X account of Alex Jones over the weekend, then welcomed the conspiracy-spreading radio host back to the platform by participating in a live interview with him. During the course of Musk's hour-and-a-half appearance on the call, Jones blamed his reputation as a fabulist on the media and PR firms" and praised Musk for allowing him to return to X and tell his own story.Jones was banned from the platform then known as Twitter in 2018 for abusive behavior" that involved comparing a CNN reporter to the Hitler Youth." At that point, he was already well known for spreading lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting, where 20 children and six adults were killed, baselessly claiming it was fake or part of a government... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The autonomous vehicle industry is in trouble and is looking for help from an unlikely source: US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.A coalition of lobbying groups sent Buttigieg a letter last week imploring him to support AV development or risk being outpaced by China. The subtext, of course, is the crisis facing GM subsidiary Cruise, which grounded its fleet recently in the aftermath of a crash involving one of its driverless cars.The letter makes no mention of the situation with Cruise, instead focusing on the looming threat of competition from China. Signatories include the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, which represents Cruise, Waymo, Zoox, Motional, and others, as well as the US Chamber of Commerce and the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Most of today's biggest music releases already come with a Dolby Atmos mix alongside the traditional stereo version, but Apple is apparently determined to increase the format's adoption even further. Bloomberg is today reporting that the company is planning to give added weighting" to songs that offer an Atmos mix; this could potentially increase the royalties that artists receive from Apple Music. Intriguingly, the report notes that listeners wouldn't necessarily have to play the Atmos version of a song for artists to benefit. It only matters that the song is offered in that format."The change in weighting hasn't yet been announced by Apple. But with more and more artists and studios churning out spatial audio mixes like clockwork,... Continue reading...

The Era 100 is a sharp-looking little speaker in either white or black. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of our top picks of all Black Friday deals was the Sonos Era 100 smart speaker, and we're happy to report that deal has returned. Right now, you can get the Era 100 in black or white for its lowest price of $199 ($50 off) at Amazon Best Buy, B&H Photo, or direct from Sonos.The Era 100 is one of Sonos' latest Wi-Fi-connected speakers, offering some impressive sound in a compact package. It may not have the spatial audio tricks of its much bigger Era 300 cousin, but the Era 100 can fit just about anywhere in your home, and if you own a turntable, you can even pump that audio through a multiroom Sonos system by way of a simple USB-C adapter.Read our review of the Sonos Era 100.If you want to score a sizable deal on some of the many... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned the public against scanning any old QR code in a consumer alerts blog last week. Naturally, the warning comes down to security and privacy - bad actors can put QR codes in inconspicuous places or send them via text or email, then just sit back and wait for a payday in the form of money, logins, or other sensitive information.The New York Times reported that John Fokker, who heads threat intelligence at cybersecurity company Trellix, says Trellix found over 60,000 samples of QR code attacks" in the third quarter this year alone. The Times wrote that the most popular scams involved payroll and HR personnel impersonators and postal scams, among others. Early last year, police in several Texas... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple is reportedly making some changes next year that it hopes will make it easier for people to fit a specific iPad to their needs. For instance, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman wrote in his Power On newsletter today that the next iPad Air will get an M2 chip in addition to the larger second model that's been rumored.One of the other ways Apple is reportedly tackling the issue is to drop the 9th-generation model that's been dangling off of the front of the lineup since last year's pricier 10th-generation iPad redesign launched. Gurman says sending the 9th-gen iPad out to pasture will let the company slowly phase out some of its older Pencils." Presumably, the 2015 Apple Pencil will be the first to go, once there's no Lightning port... Continue reading...

Image: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 17, 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 watching A Murder at the End of the World and (finally!) Barbie, reading about Gary Gensler's war on crypto, robot trucks, and Taylor Swift's world takeover, playing Puzzmo's Really Bad Chess, and catching up on all the super-popular TikToks I missed this year.I also have for you a new Mastodon app, a bunch of new AI tools, a whole new Fortnite universe, an espresso maker, and much more. And I have some thoughts about messaging. Let's dig in.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas... Continue reading...

Beeper Mini brought iMessage to Android. It didn't last long. | Image: Beeper A few days after the team at Beeper proudly announced a way for users to send blue-bubble iMessages directly from their Android devices without any weird relay servers, and about 24 hours after it became clear Apple had taken steps to shut that down, Apple has shared its take on the issue.The company's stance here is fairly predictable: it says it's simply trying to do right by users, and protect the privacy and security of their iMessages. We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage," Apple senior PR manager Nadine Haija said in a statement.Here's the statement in full:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla will release its 2023 Holiday Update next week with a few big changes, including one that lets Teslas call 911 automatically if the car's airbags deploy in a crash. On Thursday, the company announced the update is coming next week, and it highlighted other coming features like Apple Podcasts support, rear-screen Bluetooth headset support, an updated version of the park assistance with 3D visuals, and new blind spot indicators.Apple Podcast support joins Apple Music, which Tesla added last year. Not a Tesla App reported yesterday that Tesla owners can sync podcasts with Apple devices. The site added other details about update 2023.44.25; for instance, Tesla owners won't need a separate USB stick for every light show they want to... Continue reading...

Image: Epic Games You could say that Fortnite is entering a new phase. With the launch of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival, the game is now more than a popular battle royale - it's a platform designed to house lots of different kinds of experiences. That shift was preceded by an event that brought the game back to its roots with Fortnite OG, which returned to the original battle royale map alongside classic weapons and vehicles. And that was a very intentional strategy from Epic Games.According to Epic's executive VP Saxs Persson, the launch of Fortnite OG was meant to create a stir ahead of this rollout of new games. We had a goal of re-activating a lot of our 500 million accounts that maybe weren't playing Fortnite anymore, and... Continue reading...

Image: Epic Games Epic released a trilogy of new games inside of Fortnite this week. It started with Lego Fortnite, continued with Rocket Racing, and is wrapping up today with Fortnite Festival, developed by Guitar Hero studio Harmonix (which Epic acquired in 2021). It's all part of an ambitious plan to turn Fortnite from a hit battle royale into a platform filled with all kinds of different experiences. And in the case of Fortnite Festival, it's a full-blown music game inside of Fortnite. Think of it like Rock Band - but without the plastic instruments.What that means is you'll be hitting notes along to popular songs, but instead of doing that on a toy guitar or drum set, you're using a game controller or mouse and keyboard. The basic flow is identical,... Continue reading...

Mario Wonder is just so gosh darn charming I didn't want to stop playing. | Image: Nintendo My mission to 100 percent Super Mario Bros. Wonder officially started a couple of weeks ago, but really it began in the late 80s.As a kid, I was certifiably bad at Mario. We didn't have our own Nintendo console, so any time I spent playing Mario prior to that was at a friend's or cousin's house. I'd hold the second controller and wait my turn, marveling at how they just knew where the hidden boxes were, where to jump to the top of the screen and skip ahead three levels, and how to get to the very top of the flagpole every single time. As I struggled to clear the first few stages before running out of lives, it seemed obvious to me that I lacked some instinct that made my friends good at Mario and made me objectively terrible.A few... Continue reading...

Well Go USA The director of Monster talks about the complexities (and simplicities) of portraying multiple points of view Continue reading...

Fire and ice make everything nice. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge One feature added to Microsoft's AI Copilot in the Edge browser this week is the ability to generate text summaries of videos. But Edge Copilot's time-saving feature is still fairly limited and only works on pre-processed videos or those with subtitles, as Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft's CEO of advertising and web services, explained.As spotted by MSPowerUser, Parakhin writes, In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn't preprocess it yet - then it won't work," in response to a question.

The earliest that we will likely see these rules come into force is 2025. | The Verge Following a round of intense negotiations this week, lawmakers in Brussels have now reached a provisional agreement" on the European Union's proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). The EU's AI Act is anticipated to be the world's first comprehensive set of rules to govern AI and could serve as a benchmark for other regions looking to pass similar laws.According to the press release, negotiators established obligations for high-impact" general-purpose AI (GPAI) systems that meet certain benchmarks, like risk assessments, adversarial testing, incident reports, and more. It also mandates transparency by those systems that include creating technical documents and detailed summaries about the content used for training" - something... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge It appears that Beeper Mini, an easy iMessage solution for Android, was simply too good to be true - or a short-lived dream, at least. On Friday, less than a week after its launch, the app started experiencing technical issues when users were suddenly unable to send and receive blue bubble messages. The problems grew worse over the course of the day, with reports piling up on the Beeper subreddit. Several people at The Verge were unable to activate their Android phone numbers with Beeper Mini as of Friday afternoon, a clear indication that Apple has plugged up whatever holes allowed the app to operate to begin with.Beeper Mini was the result of a comprehensive attempt to reverse engineer Apple's messaging protocol. A 16-year-old high... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is suing a naughty but enterprising group called REKK for offering a paid service to willing shoppers looking to get big-ticket items like laptops and game consoles for cheap by exploiting its return and refund system.This isn't like the times you try to return a small item purchased from Amazon, like a pair of socks, and the system refunds you without telling you to send it back. As reported by Bloomberg, Amazon's lawsuit accuses REKK of using social engineering and phishing attacks on Amazon fulfillment employees or bribes to get millions of dollars in refunds without actually sending the items back. Image: US District Court A text exchange shows REKK recruiting an Amazon employee. REKK advertised... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Say goodbye to the Chevy Bolt EV... again.General Motors won't be bringing over the original hatchback Bolt to the automaker's Ultium platform, just the larger Bolt EUV, GM confirmed after InsideEVs first reported the news. That comes after GM said it was discontinuing Bolt production but later confirmed that it would resurrect the EV as an Ultium vehicle for 2025.The original Bolt EV was built on GM's older and soon-to-be-obsolete BEV2 platform. The automaker has since shifted to the Ultium battery architecture for its next-generation EVs, including the Cadillac Lyriq, Hummer EV, and GMC Sierra EV. Chevy is building a trio of Ultium-built EVs, including the Silverado EV, Blazer EV, and Equinox EV.We are glad to see the enthusiasm... Continue reading...

The lengthy delay in Threads European rollout has been attributed to the EU's DMA rules. | Illustration: The Verge Following its rollout in countries like the US and UK this past July, Threads will finally be expanded to users in the European Union on December 14th. Meta hasn't made an official announcement yet, instead opting to sneakily update the Threads website with an untitled countdown timer (which won't be viewable in countries where Threads is already available) with just under six days remaining on the clock.European Instagram users can also search for the term ticket" within the app to discover a digital invitation to Threads, alongside a scannable QR code and a launch time - which may vary depending on the country in which the user is based. We have contacted Meta to confirm the details, like which EU countries Threads might launch in,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Artificial intelligence-powered drive-thru company Presto Automation described itself as one of the largest labor automation technology providers in the industry," and boasted its ability to increase sales and save" human labor time.But according to recent filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, off-site human workers are stepping in and completing over 70 percent of orders.Despite the company's branding and marketing suggesting magical drive-in tech, Presto Automation uses workers in places like the Philippines, according to Bloomberg. The AI drive-thru technology is used by fast food restaurants including Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Del Taco, and Checkers across the country, promising to lower labor costs and increase... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge NotebookLM, Google's experimental AI-powered note-taking app, is now widely available in the US. It's also getting several new features and is starting" to use Google's Gemini Pro AI model to help with document understanding and reasoning," according to the company.NotebookLM can already do things like summarize the documents you import into the app, come up with key points, and even answer questions about your note-taking sources. But now, Google is adding a way to transform your notes into other types of documents, too. Once you select all the notes you want to include, NotebookLM will automatically suggest formats, such as an outline or study guide. However, Google notes that you can also tell NotebookLM to transform your notes... Continue reading...