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Memory-erasing technology but for your inbox. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Have you looked at your email inbox lately? Here’s a suggestion: don’t. I can tell you what it looks like without even seeing it. For starters, there’s a big red badge on your email app icon with a five-digit number that you ignore a hundred times a day. It’s stuffed full of promotional emails, spam, newsletters you don’t read, and a sprinkling of bills and credit card notices. Maybe there are a couple of legitimate messages from acquaintances or your parenting group buried in there somewhere, but the prospect of locating and responding to them is too daunting, so you ignore them forever.Your email inbox, like mine, is a wasteland. If there’s anything useful in there, it’s under a pile of digital garbage so thick most of us would... Continue reading…

The Sony ZV-E1 is pretty dang small for a full-frame camera. We know what most vlogs and YouTube videos look like in this, our Age of Content. So does Sony, and it’s starting to make cameras built to spit out exactly the style of video you’re looking to mimic.The new Sony ZV-E1 is a compact mirrorless full-frame system camera that’s dedicated to content creators and aimed squarely at vloggers. It’s the new flagship offering of Sony’s established ZV line of vlog-centric cameras, taking a similar 12-megapixel backside-illuminated full-frame sensor as the pro-focused FX3 and mixing in the A7R V’s AI autofocus smarts to reduce the friction in making high-quality video content.My colleague Becca Farsace spent a week with the camera and tested many of its vlog-centric automated features for you to... Continue reading…

The Verge We’ve all got to eat, and unless you’re the type of person who lives on instant meals and takeout, you probably need to cook as well. Most of The Verge’s staff not only cook but enjoy cooking, so we asked them to tell us what type of kitchen tools they are using these days.We got a wide variety of answers — and at least one debate. We have recommendations for instant thermometers, rice cookers, and toaster ovens as well as a back-and-forth about the best way to grind your coffee beans, and more.So check out how our writers and editors hone their foodie skills, and if you like, let us know in the comments what your favorite kitchen tool is. (And if you’re really into this kind of thing, feel free to check out last year’s favorite... Continue reading…

Image: Insta360 Insta360 is getting into the smartphone gimbal market with a device that aims to make it easier to film slick, stabilized, and well-framed video with your smartphone’s camera. The Insta360 Flow is a $159.99 gimbal with three-axis stabilization that’s available starting today across the US, Europe, and Japan.The obvious competitor for the Flow is DJI’s $159 Osmo Mobile 6 lineup of smartphone gimbals. And on paper at least, Insta360 has made a decent effort to match DJI’s features spec for spec. DJI includes a tripod in the box with the Osmo Mobile 6, so Insta360 has built one into the Flow. DJI has its ActiveTrack 5.0 automatic subject tracking feature; Insta360 has Deep Track 3.0. The Flow even has a built-in 215mm (8.5-inch) selfie... Continue reading…

Day One is a great app. It also asks you to trust it in a big way. | Image: Day One I have written in my journal 86 days in a row. It was my New Year’s resolution to actually commit to keeping a diary of my days, and every day since January 2nd, I’ve sat down and done so. This is the longest I’ve ever kept a journal — and almost certainly the longest I’ve ever stuck to a resolution of any kind. I’m probably more proud of myself than I should be.I’ve been using the Day One app, which is the giant of the digital journal space. Day One works on practically every platform, is fast and simple, and lets me write text as well as save photos, audio, and links into my journal. It’s a great app!But I had this moment, about a month into pouring my heart and soul (and hundreds of pictures of my newborn son) into Day One, where I... Continue reading…

Image: Naughty Dog I was expecting to write about how The Last of Us Part I arriving on PC is the latest example of a great PC port of a Sony PlayStation title. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The Last of Us Part I arrived on PC yesterday and players aren’t happy. Out of more than 9,000 reviews in the Steam store, 67 percent are negative.PC players are reporting issues that range from random crashes and stuttering, all the way up to long shader compilation times and characters randomly becoming dripping wet in cut scenes. The game also appears to be poorly optimized, taking up large amounts of VRAM on systems and dropping frames. I’ve personally experienced crashes and random frame rate drops on my own test system, which is a top-end gaming PC... Continue reading…

Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has lent his voice to a Ukrainian air raid app to warn citizens of incoming attacks during the ongoing conflict with Russia. “Attention. Air raid alert. Proceed to the nearest shelter,” says Hamill over Air Alert, an app linked to Ukraine’s air defense system. When the threat has passed, Hamill signs off with “The alert is over. May the Force be with you.”Invoking his beloved Luke Skywalker character, some of the lines contain recognizable quotes from the Star Wars franchise like “Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.” You can hear a few lines in the following video starting around 56 seconds in:

London Underground advising people not to travel in record-breaking heat on July 19th, 2022. | Image: Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images Google plans to roll out new alerts in search for extreme heat events, the company announced in a blog post today. Eventually, users should be able to find important information about extreme temperatures in their area when they search relevant terms like “heatwave.”The alert will bring up information like when a heatwave is forecast to start and end in an area, local news on the event, and recommended actions to stay safe. The feature is expected to be available in the US and “a number of countries” including parts of Europe in the second half of the year, according to Hema Budaraju, senior director of product for health and social impact at Google search.“We feel a great sense of responsibility as we continue to scale this work... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images A number of well-known AI researchers — and Elon Musk — have signed an open letter calling on AI labs around the world to pause development of large-scale AI systems, citing fears over the “profound risks to society and humanity” they claim this software poses.The letter, published by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, notes that AI labs are currently locked in an “out-of-control race” to develop and deploy machine learning systems “that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control.”“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”“Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge The Communications Workers of America union is alleging that Apple fired five workers in Kansas City, and disciplined another in Texas, in retaliation for organizing. The union has also accused the company of interrogating employees, promising those employees better working conditions if they don’t support the union, and threatening them with worse conditions if they do.A press release from the CWA quotes D’lite Xiong, one of the workers who was fired:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This article was originally published in June 2022. We’re reviving it today since Apple has finally gone through with its plans to launch the service.Apple is getting into the “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) business with its new Pay Later service built into Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. While Apple bills the service as “designed with users’ financial health in mind,” BNPL is a practice that has come under scrutiny by government regulators as something that could potentially harm customers.Apple’s Pay Later service, which has been in the works since at least last year, lets users make a purchase with Apple Pay and then pay it back in four equal installments over the course of six weeks. There’s no interest on these installments, but it... Continue reading…

Image: Tesla The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently investigating (pdf) two separate non-crash-related seatbelt failures that occurred in newer Tesla Model X vehicles (via NBC News).NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) notes two complaints from Model X owners saying their front safety belts failed to stay connected to the seat belt anchor pretensioner. Both owners reported that the separation occurred while driving their 2022 and 2023 model-year Model X SUVs. The investigators write that “both vehicles were delivered to the owners with insufficiently connected anchor linkages.”NHTSA first opened the investigation on March 24th and says up to 50,000 or so Model X vehicles could be affected by the issue.... Continue reading…

Photo by Tim Stevens for The Verge Lucid, the EV startup behind the Air sedan that competes with the Tesla Model S, has announced that it’s laying off around 1,300 employees, or 18 percent of its workforce, within the next few months. According to an email from CEO Peter Rawlinson, which was attached to a regulatory filing, the cuts will affect employees and contractors “in nearly every organization and level, including executives.”Rawlinson says employees will hear more about the layoffs over the next three days, and the filing says the restructuring should be complete “by the end of the second quarter of 2023.” The email says that employees who are let go will receive “career resources, Lucid-paid healthcare coverage continuation, and acceleration of equity,” and the... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google is adding a new carousel in search results to help you see different perspectives on certain search topics. The feature, called “Perspectives,” is a new box showing “insights from a range of journalists, experts, and other relevant voices” that will appear under the “Top Stories” box in results.In a blog post, the company shared a GIF of what the box looks like for perspectives on this year’s Oscars. It includes tweets from Mark Hamill and Jamie Lee Curtis as well as a few articles. It looks fine, but I’m annoyed that it will be yet another thing cluttering up Google’s search results. (I may just be nostalgic for the good old days.) GIF: Google The perspectives, in this instance, are fairly inoffensive. But... Continue reading…

Image: Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Adnan Syed’s murder conviction has been reinstated just months after he was freed from prison, as reported earlier by the Associated Press and The Baltimore Sun. Syed, whose case was featured in the popular Serial podcast, was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999 and spent over 20 years behind bars.The Appellate Court of Maryland ruled in favor of the victim’s family after they filed an appeal, claiming that they weren’t given the proper notice to attend the hearing that resulted in Syed’s release. The court ordered a new hearing with sufficient notice given to Lee’s brother, Young Lee. It will reexamine the question of overturning Syed’s conviction, which, for now, is back in force.“This court has the power... Continue reading…

Image: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.It’s a busy news day, so I won’t waste time: Adnan Syed’s murder conviction has been reinstated, NPR cancels some of its standalone podcasts, and Slate takes its podcasts to YouTube.NPR cuts result in the cancellation of four podcastsLast week, NPR enacted its deepest layoffs since the Great Recession in order to make up for a $30 million shortfall. Ten percent of the staff — more than 100 people — were laid off, and all but one job vacancy was removed from the network’s careers site. The cuts touched all sectors of the organization, including the business side and radio production, but podcasting appears to have been hardest hit.N... Continue reading…

Image: Kia Kia is ready to pull the wraps on its next big electric vehicle (emphasis on big): the EV9 three-row SUV. The EV9 will have a proper North American debut at the New York International Auto Show next week, but before it does, the automaker is rolling out a list of key specifications to whet our appetite.Kia revealed the production version of the EV9 earlier this month in South Korea, but in doing so, it left out a lot of crucial details. We’ve seen the interior with its swiveling second-row seats as well as the very Soul-like exterior design. Today, the company is filling in some of the gaps as well as outlining its strategy to dominate the full-size electric SUV segment, which it claims is totally up for grabs.Full-size three-row... Continue reading…

Titmouse’s 5 Second Night 2023 poster. | Image: Titmouse Animation studio Titmouse’s annual showcase of shortform stories returns this month with a new batch of original cartoons created during artists’ time off. Continue reading…

Image: Substack Substack is desperate, huh? That’s what I understand from their fundraising email, anyway. They’re now hitting up retail investors for millions of dollars after they failed to raise last year.After certain recent historical events, I have become skeptical of the term “financial inclusion,” a set of buzzwords for making financial services more available to people who are not stratospherically rich. Maybe my cynicism is because Facebook tried to launch a stablecoin for the “unbanked” that you nonetheless needed (at least, according to the now-scrapped plan) a credit card to use. Maybe it is because Robinhood made a big fuss about how many brand-new retail investors it brought onto its gambling platform. Or maybe it’s the proliferation of... Continue reading…

I’ve got an order ready for Saul A. Is there a Saul A here? | Image: Jeremy Moeller/Getty Images If you’ve received a cryptic notification from the Starbucks app, you’re not alone — dozens of people say they got a message reading “Hello test1 from seank” from the coffee app on Tuesday.It’s unclear how many people the notification went out to. Twitter is flooded with screenshots of it, with posts often tagging the official Starbucks account asking what’s going on. However, every single one I saw showed an iOS notification, so it’s possible Android users were spared Sean K’s greeting. So far, the company hasn’t responded to any of the reports or put out a statement about what’s going on. We’ve also reached out for comment and will let you know if we hear back.

A visitor to a ceremony celebrating the commissioning of a research plant has a bottle of e-fuel in his hand at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). | Image: Marijan Murat/picture alliance via Getty Images Luxury carmakers’ push for synthetic e-fuels has weakened the European Union’s plan to get internal combustion engines off the road in the future. After weeks of delay, the Council of the European Union adopted regulations today to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and vans by 2035. That would have amounted to an effective ban on cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) if not for a last-minute update that carves out an exemption for ICE cars that swap out gasoline for e-fuels.E-fuel is a synthetic alternative that can be made from air and water using electricity. While running on e-fuel instead of gasoline might reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it’s still costly and inefficient. And some experts worry that making... Continue reading…

Image: Spotify / The Verge Spotify has launched Niche Mixes, a new set of personalized playlists that combine familiar songs and new recommendations into weirdly specific categories. Niche Mixes is an expansion of the music platform’s existing Spotify Mixes playlist feature (such as Mood Mixes or Decades Mixes) that grants users more precision to shape their listening habits.Some examples provided by Spotify are fairly self-explanatory, like the Feel Good Morning Mix (full of songs with a positive vibe), and the ’80s Running Mix that provides a retro soundtrack for your workout. There’s also a new Night Time Mix for tunes you can “wind down and relax” to, and the Driving Singalong Mix for some personalized in-car karaoke.Personalized Spotify Mixes combine... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s latest baffling change makes replies a lot more difficult to sift through. Now, when you’re looking at replies, tweets don’t actually show who the user is replying to, making them look like a confusing string of out-of-context missives.The change muddies up the ever-worsening Twitter experience in a bunch of small ways. If you click on a tweet with replies, you’ll see those listed under the tweet as you used to, but they don’t have as obvious of a connection to the parent tweet. Replies to your tweets will still show up in your Notifications tab, but they just look like random tweets that might not be there intentionally.Basically, as my colleague Tristan Cooper put it, “I love how every reply now looks like a vague subtweet... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo As the high from watching Nintendo’s Tears of the Kingdom gameplay video fades, I’m left with a staggering thought: “this game is going to ruin lives.”As much as I enjoy The Legend of Zelda, it’s never really been a series that I get out of bed for. Before today’s TotK (pronounced “tok”) presentation, I figured I’d invest however long it’d take for me to finish a review and never pick it up again. But seeing Link take a monster eye and fuse it to an arrow to create a homing missile, I felt my brain crack open and spill everywhere. It was an “oh... oh no” kind of moment. I could see the nigh limitless potential of the kinds of shenanigans I could get up to running around Hyrule. And I know that, just like I did with Elden Ring, I will... Continue reading…

Maat Mons is displayed in this computer-generated 3D perspective of the surface of Venus. | Image: NASA/JPL The recent discovery of volcanic activity on the planet should have been a cause of celebration. But instead, the scientific community is in shock after NASA delayed funding for a key mission to Venus. Continue reading…

Image: Getty Images The US Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s antitrust division say they’ll scrutinize the new field of artificial intelligence-powered tools for signs of anti-competitive behavior. FTC Chair Lina Khan and Justice Department antitrust head Jonathan Kanter made remarks about the issue at the agencies’ joint Enforcers Summit, raising the fear of large companies leveraging AI’s economies of scale to crush competition.“As you have machine learning that depends on huge amounts of data and also depends on huge amounts of storage, we need to be very vigilant to make sure that this is not just another site for the big companies becoming bigger and really squelching rivals,” Khan said at the summit, according to The Wall... Continue reading…

An iPhone showing Apple’s Pay Later interface. | Image: Apple Apple is finally launching Apple Pay Later, the company’s take on the buy now, pay later (BNPL) business. The company has announced that users can use the service to apply for Pay Later loans of $50 to $1,000 and then repay those loans through four payments over the course of six weeks with no interest or fees.Apple Pay Later exists within the Apple Wallet and is supposed to let you avoid paying the full price for a product right away. The service, which Apple first announced during WWDC last year, has been in the works for quite a while. It was supposed to debut with iOS 16; however, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in September that developers were contending with “technical and engineering issues,” delaying its rollout.According to... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge After announcing an AI-powered Copilot assistant for Office apps, Microsoft is now turning its attention to cybersecurity. Microsoft Security Copilot is a new assistant for cybersecurity professionals, designed to help defenders identify breaches and better understand the huge amounts of signals and data available to them daily.Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative AI and Microsoft’s own security-specific model, Security Copilot looks like a simple prompt box like any other chatbot. You can ask “what are all the security incidents in my enterprise?” and it will summarize them. But behind the scenes, it’s making use of the 65 trillion daily signals Microsoft collects in its threat intelligence gathering and security-specific skills to let... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Although Elon Musk has previously stated that Twitter should treat “everyone equally,” Platformer has found that the network maintains a list of users whose visibility it has secretly been boosting. The eclectic group includes a mix of high-profile figures like LeBron James and President Joe Biden, internet standbys like YouTuber MrBeast and viral Twitter account Dril, and political commentators like Matthew Yglesias and Ben Shapiro.Some of the other interesting “VIP” users Platformer mentions include the conservative Twitter account @catturd2, Twitter investor Marc Andreessen, comedian Jaboukie Young-White, the Tesla-focused account @teslaownerssv, menswear writer Derek Guy, and a handful of other journalists.

Nintendo Tears of the Kingdom is only a scant 44 days away. To celebrate the game’s impending arrival, Nintendo dropped a 13-minute mini Direct featuring gameplay and a sneak peek at Link’s new abilities.Tears of the Kingdom, formerly known as The Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was originally slated for a 2022 release. (It’s now coming out on May 12th.) Eiji Aonuma, the game’s producer, released a video in March 2022 stating that Nintendo decided to work on the development a little bit longer “in order to make this game’s experience something special.” We can see some of that specialness in today’s gameplay presentation.One of the biggest, most interesting features shown off today was Link’s new Fuse ability, whereby he can... Continue reading…

Amazon’s fourth-gen Echo smart speaker sounds better than the new fifth-gen Echo Dot and is currently only $15 more. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge My favorite thing about deals on smart speakers like Amazon’s fourth-gen Echo? They double as so many things — alarms, speakers, and more — that you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck. That is why today’s deal on Amazon’s 2020 Echo smart speaker is a standout. Right now, you can buy the versatile gadget for $64.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, which is its best price this year.Not only does the orb-like smart speaker sound even better than the new fifth-gen Echo Dot, but it also acts as a Wi-Fi extender for Eero mesh networks so you can boost your internet coverage. Like other Alexa-enabled smart speakers, you can also use the gadget to control various smart home devices as well as a range of other tasks including... Continue reading…

Big news for Chromebook users. | Image: Google Google has announced a laundry list of classroom-focused updates to its services, across ChromeOS, Google Classroom, Docs, and more. Many of the tools center around teachers — in particular, using AI to save teachers time.It’s safe to say that Chromebooks are a classroom staple, with many tens of millions currently circulating in schools. But demand in that space has slowed, and the past few years have seen various OEMs release a number of flashy, premium Chromebooks in efforts to target older (and perhaps deeper-pocketed) audiences.Google itself appears to have its eye on one such demographic: educators. The company has spent the past year speaking to teachers about their computing habits and computing needs. “A lot of teachers were... Continue reading…

Say hello to the new HP family. | Image: HP For those (like myself) who get a little pit in their stomachs every time they see how much any given year’s best gaming laptops cost, the HP Victus series — a budget line that has become one of Best Buy’s most popular products in the two years since its release — is a welcome breath of fresh air.HP made a bunch of flashy announcements at its Amplify Partner Conference today, but buried within them is one I actually think could make a difference for a lot of shoppers: the Victus 16 has been refreshed for 2023, and it’s gone a little bit wild.Specifically, the Victus 16 is now available with an RTX 4070 graphics card. The 2021 Victus 16 only went up to an RTX 3050 Ti (a model currently listed at $949). Even if you include the older... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney’s next generation storytelling and consumer experiences division, which had been exploring how the company could enter the so-called metaverse, has been eliminated according to The Wall Street Journal. The team is thought to have been made up of around 50 employees, and was exploring how Disney could use its existing intellectual property in what former CEO Bob Chapek called “the next great storytelling frontier.”The team has reportedly been axed in the first of a planned three rounds of layoffs at Disney. A total of 7,000 employees are expected to be made redundant across the company, helping it cut around $5.5 billion in costs. Rumors of layoffs began to swirl shortly after Bob Iger replaced Bob Chapek as Disney CEO last... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple Music Classical, Apple’s long-in-the-works app for listening to classical music with an Apple Music subscription, is now available to download from the App Store.Apple Music Classical was born from Primephonic, which Apple acquired in 2021 with the intent of launching a classical music-focused app in 2022. The promise of Apple Music Classical is that it will be better at handling the complex metadata often associated with classical recordings, and the app will also have things like curated playlists and composer biographies to help people get more acquainted with the genre.Apple says the app’s catalog houses more than 5 million tracks and that you can listen to music at up to 192 kHz/24 bit hi-res lossless. However, there are a... Continue reading…