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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Coinbase execs revealed today that the crypto exchange has received a “Wells Notice” from the Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating that after an investigation, the agency’s staff plan to recommend some kind of enforcement action. That could include charges or lawsuits, but none of that has happened yet.Last month, the SEC reached a settlement with Kraken over its crypto staking operation, where the company paid a $30 million fine and shut down US operations right around the same time it sent another Wells Notice to the crypto firm Paxos over its minting of the Binance USD (BUSD) token.

Image: MSCHF If you still haven’t filed your taxes (tax day is April 18th!), MSCHF’s free dating simulator that’s launching soon might be able to help. The art collective’s latest stunt is Tax Heaven 3000, a “visual novel dating game that actually prepares your 2022 US federal tax return,” according to the game’s now-removed Steam page (and I’ll talk more about removal in a second).The game’s description, which seems to be written from the point of view of the game’s anime waifu, Iris, is largely a rant against the infuriatingly complex tax filing process in the US, and Tax Heaven 3000 seems like it could make the process easier. When I used to use TurboTax, the experience was largely just answering a series of questions about my finances. Preparing... Continue reading…

If you do the math, that factors out to just over $22 a pop. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’re someone who has a penchant for losing everything you own — your keys, fanny pack, what have you — a set of ultra-wideband Bluetooth trackers is a good bet for keeping tabs on your belongings. And right now, Apple’s handy AirTags are on sale in a four-pack at Amazon and Walmart for $89.99, a slight $10 discount but one we seldom see.If you’re unfamiliar with Apple’s hyper-accurate trackers, there are a couple of things to note. Even though you can detect them using an Android device, they’re really an ideal option for those already invested in the Apple ecosystem since they make use of Apple’s extensive Find My network to locate your lost items. They also carry an IP67 water and dust resistance rating and boast end-to-end... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games has just wrapped its State of Unreal 2023 keynote, where it showed off new enhancements coming to Unreal Engine 5.2, stunning new MetaHuman technology, a big push to unify its disparate assets marketplaces, and Fortnite’s long-awaited Unreal Editor tools. Given the popularity of Unreal Engine and Fortnite, the day’s announcements could have a major impact on the games we play in the future.Here are the biggest announcements from the show.Epic showed off a stunning, foliage-filled Unreal Engine 5.2 demo One of Unreal Engine 5.2’s biggest additions is new procedural generation tools, which Epic showed off in a gorgeous “Electric Dreams” demo that took place in a dense, foliage-filled forest partially created... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games’ next big plan for the metaverse is to unify all of its disparate asset marketplaces under one brand, Fab. The new store will include assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace, Quixel Bridge, Artstation Marketplace, and Sketchfab, and Epic will give creators 88 percent of earnings on the store, like it does for the Epic Games Store.“In the old days, every game developer built all of the content in their product from the ground up. Increasingly, content marketplaces such as Unreal Engine Marketplace and Unity’s Asset Store have provided huge libraries of content which game developers can license from independent content creators and use in their games,” Epic said in a blog post. “We think this trend will grow significantly as... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Amazon Luna, the cloud gaming service, is expanding to Canada, Germany, and the UK. I certainly didn’t have that on my bingo card.Remember: Google Stadia is dead as a doornail, and Amazon Luna, the company’s rival cloud gaming service, wasn’t doing much better. It lost a lot of games, and that was after the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority estimated it had less than 5 percent of the cloud gaming market. Oh, also, Amazon’s in the middle of layoffs so brutal that even iconic camera review site DPReview is about to shut its doors.But this? This feels like a sign that the company’s planning to take advantage of the gap left by Stadia instead of throwing in the towel. Image: UK Competition and Markets Authority ... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games Epic Games is trying to make a better economy for Fortnite creators with what its calls “Creator Economy 2.0,” which it announced at its State of Unreal keynote on Wednesday.Previously, Epic creators participated in the company’s “Support-A-Creator” program. In the program, creators were issued individual codes, and if somebody bought something in the Fortnite store with that code, that creator would get 5 percent of your purchase. But the significant downside of that model is that creators would have to promote their code and just hope that people would remember to use it when making purchases.Fortnite generates “billions” of dollars of revenue per year from purchases of outfits and items from the game’s in-game shop, Saxs Persson,... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games Epic Games finally showed off the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) at its State of Unreal 2023 presentation on Wednesday. It’s a new PC application that’s set to launch Wednesday on the Epic Games Store as a public beta, and it will also feature a new scripting language called “Verse.”UEFN has “many of the same features” Epic uses to make Fortnite proper, the company said in a video demo. You’ll be able to import custom assets to create worlds that may end up looking nothing like Fortnite’s usual cartoony vibe. In a live demo onstage, Epic showed a gritty, largely brown world, which significantly contrasts with the brightly-colored Fortnite player characters. Epic also wants interoperability between Fortnite and Unreal Engine assets so... Continue reading…

Customers can link their MyPanera membership to the Amazone One service to collect rewards and pay for purchases in a single action. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has announced that Amazon One — the e-commerce giant’s palm-reading payment technology — will be deployed at Panera Bread locations around the US. The restaurant chain will be the first to leverage Amazon One’s new loyalty card linking capabilities, allowing customers to connect a MyPanera loyalty membership to their Amazon One account and collect rewards when paying for purchases with their palm.Linking the two accounts is completely optional. Customers can decide to use Amazon One just for payments, just for loyalty rewards, or for both, though Amazon claims that linking a MyPanera membership will allow restaurant staff to greet customers by name and provide a “highly personalized experience.” Some folks (like myself) would... Continue reading…

Hipstamatic’s social network recaptures the experience of using early versions of Instagram (better late than never). | Image: Hipstamatic Back in 2010, Hipstamatic was one of the most popular apps for early smartphone photography before it was superseded by Instagram’s vibrant social network. Now, over a decade later, Hipstamatic is attempting a comeback, relaunching with new networking features similar to those that originally drove Instagram’s success.In fact, the new Hipstamatic social network looks very similar to early versions of Instagram — allowing photographers to publish images to a chronological feed and share their snaps with friends or like-minded users. It’s a simple format that Instagram itself has long since abandoned in favor of stuffing its platform with algorithms and features like Reels. Hipstamatic seemingly has little interest in any of that, which... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Apple Music users have started noticing a strange issue that’s causing other people’s playlists and songs to show up in their libraries, as reported earlier by 9to5Mac. Several users on Reddit have reported this problem over the span of several weeks, with some saying that they have even lost some of their songs or entire playlists as a result.In some cases, these random playlists and songs are actually replacing the ones already in users’ libraries, leaving them unable to access the music they once had. Meanwhile, others say unknown music was simply added to their library without erasing any of their content.As noted by 9to5Mac, it seems that this issue is only affecting the Apple Music app on iOS. We still don’t know why this is... Continue reading…

Bard prominently tells users it’s an experiment, but that doesn’t mean they’ll listen. | Image: Google If you don’t believe the rushed launch of AI chatbots by Big Tech has an extremely strong chance of degrading the web’s information ecosystem, consider the following:Right now,* if you ask Microsoft’s Bing chatbot if Google’s Bard chatbot has been shut down, it says yes, citing as evidence a news article that discusses a tweet in which a user asked Bard when it would be shut down and Bard said it already had, itself citing a comment from Hacker News in which someone joked about this happening, and someone else used ChatGPT to write fake news coverage about the event.(*I say “right now” because in the time between starting and finishing writing this story, Bing changed its answer and now correctly replies that Bard is still live. You... Continue reading…

The budget Fire TV 2-Series sticks to HD resolution. | Image: Amazon Amazon announced today that it has sold a total of over 200 million Fire TV devices. That number is a combination of Fire TV streamers, third-party TVs that run Fire TV software, and the company’s own televisions that debuted in 2021 (with new models introduced last year). The last update came at CES 2022, when Amazon said it had crossed 150 million sales.Alongside that news, Amazon is introducing new TVs at the top and bottom of its lineup. It’s adding new sizes of the flagship Fire TV Omni QLED series and launching a new cheaper TV lineup called the 2-Series. These smaller-size budget sets are limited to HD resolution, but the entire pitch here is that you’re getting the Fire TV experience built in for prices that start at just $199.... Continue reading…

Image: GitHub Microsoft-owned GitHub is overhauling its Copilot system today to integrate OpenAI’s GPT-4 model and bring chat and voice support to its AI pair programmer. GitHub Copilot X is a giant upgrade that includes a new ChatGPT-like experience inside code editors, allowing the chatbot to recognize and explain code and recommend changes and fix bugs.“With Copilot X we’re laying out our future vision of Copilot, which means AI is at every step of the developer lifecycle,” explains GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke in an interview with The Verge. “It will fundamentally influence the developer experience.”GitHub Copilot X, which enters technical preview today, goes beyond Copilot’s basic auto-complete comments and coding. It’s closer to a true coding... Continue reading…

Nanoleaf’s low-cost LED smart bulbs have been reengineered to work with Matter. | Image: Nanoleaf After a slow rollout of devices that support Matter, the first Matter-over-Thread light bulbs are finally here. You can preorder Nanoleaf’s Essentials Matter smart lighting line starting today at Nanoleaf’s site. Its new A19 smart bulb ($19.99) and light strip ($49.99) feature full-color and tunable white light and will ship in early April. A BR30 bulb ($49.99 for a three-pack) will be available next month, and a GU10 bulb ($49.99 for a three-pack) and recessed downlight ($34.99) will join the lineup later this year.Anyone looking to add Matter and Thread devices to their smart home will be excited by the launch of these inexpensive smart lights. Thread is a wireless protocol that promises faster response times and a stronger local... Continue reading…

Image: Mozilla.ai Mozilla is creating a new startup called Mozilla.ai, which the company hopes “will build a trustworthy and independent open-source AI ecosystem.” Moez Draief, a longtime AI researcher and scientist, is leading the new startup, and Mozilla is investing $30 million to get it started.As products like ChatGPT, Bing, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion have become hugely popular, they’re also encountering huge problems with misinformation and are being put to use creating deepfakes and copyright problems. Plus, they’re already beginning to change the way the internet works. If chatbots become our primary interface to information and inspiration, that has huge ramifications for user privacy, copyright, and much more. Mozilla has been tracking this... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games is nearly ready to reveal its latest updates to Unreal Engine, its hugely popular suite of development tools. The company is just about to host its 2023 State of Unreal keynote, where the company plans to “take a look at some new projects, dive into the latest Epic tech, and have some fun along the way.”The keynote is taking place as part of this year’s Game Developers Conference, and the company’s tech talks following the keynote give some clues as to what might be discussed. A few sessions include Unreal Engine 5.2 in the title, so you can expect Epic will share some news on that during the keynote. If you want to see what’s possible with Unreal Engine 5.1, just hop into a match of Fortnite. And speaking of Fortnite, Epic... Continue reading…

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg poses for a portrait at the Department of Transportation offices in Washington, DC. | Image: Cheriss May for The Verge The US Department of Transportation is making a big bet on smart city technology with the release of $94.8 million in federal funding. But in an interview, Secretary Buttigieg warned that not every project ‘is going to prove out.’ Continue reading…

WhatsApp users can soon search mutual contacts to check what groups they have in common, and admins have more control over who can join community groups. | Image: WhatsApp / Meta WhatsApp has announced two new features coming to the Meta-owned messaging app that are designed to improve the privacy of community group chats while also making it easier to find groups users have in common. Both new features will roll out globally “over the coming weeks.”The updates are related to the WhatsApp community tab — group chats designed for large collections of people (such as organizations and schools) to house multiple related sub-groups, akin to something like Slack or Discord. WhatsApp Communities rolled out last year and currently supports up to 5,000 users, video calls for up to 32 participants, and group-wide admin announcements.Admins will have more control over who can join a group through an invitation linkOne... Continue reading…

A screenshot from the Resident Evil 4 HD Project. | Image: Albert Martin / Capcom Albert Martin, one of the modders behind the eight-year Resident Evil 4 HD remaster project, has landed an industry job at a studio best known for its work remastering retro games.“I’m really happy because I’m finally and for the first time in my life working in the videogame industry,” Martin wrote in a blog post. “Thank you, Joel, for having faith in me, and thank you, Stephen, for the opportunity in Nightdive Studios.”It’s well deserved. The Resident Evil 4 HD Project was a mammoth task that Martin and co-creator Cris Morales started in 2014 in an attempt to overhaul the textures in the then-recent Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition re-release. In a NeoGaf thread from the time, Morales estimated that the job would take the two of... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Waymo published a paper today outlining a safety case for autonomous vehicles that the company says should serve as a blueprint for the entire industry.Waymo’s safety case would be “a formal way to explain how a company determines that an AV system is safe enough to be deployed on public roads without a human driver, and it includes evidence to support that determination,” the company says in an accompanying blog post.In other words, Waymo is presenting an argument for the safety of autonomous vehicles, along with evidence that it says backs up this argument. And the company wants other AV companies — essentially, its competitors — to adopt a similar approach in order to prove to regulators that AVs can safely be deployed at a wide... Continue reading…

It’ll cost you more than $2,000. It nearly cost its maker everything. Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge You know how researchers recently discovered that the Pixel’s built-in cropping tool didn’t actually get rid of the data you removed and that a little digging let you see the parts of the image that had been supposedly cut out? One of those researchers is now reporting that Microsoft’s Snipping Tool for Windows 11 as well as the Snip & Sketch tool in Windows 10 have a very similar exploit, which could mean that information people thought they’d gotten rid of is now floating around on the internet.According to a tweet from David Buchanan, if you take a screenshot with the tool, press the save button, and then crop it and save it to the same file, the data may still be available in the file. Buchanan says you can even use pretty much the... Continue reading…

People watch the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 second-generation Starlink satellites at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on February 27th, 2023. | Photo by Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images The swift rise of internet satellites, forming megaconstellations, and accumulating space junk are already starting to mess with astronomers’ research. The problem is growing exponentially, scientists warn in a series of papers published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy. And they want regulators to do something about it.The swarm of satellites functioning in low Earth orbit has more than doubled since 2019, when space-based internet initiatives really started to take off. That year, SpaceX and OneWeb launched their first batches of satellites with the goal of providing global internet coverage. Orbiting the planet at a closer range than other satellites is supposed to make those services faster, cutting down how far signals have... Continue reading…

Raja Koduri, wearing a jersey celebrating the Intel Arc GPUs and holding a silicon wafer. | Image: Intel After five years attempting to make Intel into a competitor for Nvidia and AMD in the realm of discrete graphics for gamers and beyond — with limited success — Raja Koduri is leaving Intel to form his own generative AI startup.

9to5Mac uncovered images showing a black and gold finish. | Image: 9to5Mac Beats is preparing to release an upgraded version of its wireless Studio Buds. In the latest iOS 16.4 beta released today, 9to5Mac uncovered details about new “Beats Studio Buds Plus” earbuds and images revealing a black and gold finish. The design is largely identical to the original Beats Studio Buds released in 2021.The Verge has learned from people familiar with the company’s plans that the upcoming earbuds will feature more powerful active noise cancellation and an improved transparency mode compared to the original Studio. Similar to the first model, the Studio Buds Plus will not contain an Apple audio chip like the H1. Nor will they include automatic device switching between Apple devices.If you’re after those Apple ecosystem... Continue reading…

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and their Oscars at the 95th Academy Awards. | Image: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images Disney and Lucasfilm have been tight-lipped about what exactly Jon Watts’ upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which stars Jude Law, is about, but we now know at least two of the directors who will be helming the series.Apropos of recent reports from The Hollywood Reporter that Everything Everywhere All at Once co-directing duo the Daniels were in talks to work on an unspecified Star Wars project, Daniel Kwan took to his Instagram page this week to clear up the speculation by announcing that he and Daniel Scheinert are slated to direct an episode from Skeleton Crew’s first season.In his post, Kwan assured fans any rumors of them “getting sucked up by the ‘corporate machine’” were wholly out of pocket and explained that their decision to... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Water resistance and lengthy battery life are now standard Continue reading…

Image: Jabra Jabra’s new entry-level Elite 4 earbuds offer active noise cancellation, but they still come at a budget-friendly price tag. For $99.99, the buds promise 5.5 hours of listening time with ANC switched on or 22 hours with the case.The Elite 4 offer a handful of upgrades over their $79.99 Elite 3 predecessors, which made our list of the best wireless earbuds. In his review of the buds, my colleague Chris Welch said the Elite 3 offer “good sound for the price” and a comfortable fit but noted two major drawbacks: the lack of ANC and multipoint.Fortunately, Jabra has addressed both of these weaknesses with the Elite 4. In addition to ANC, the Elite 4 now come with Bluetooth multipoint, allowing them to connect to multiple devices at the same... Continue reading…

Last week, we learned — from Bloomberg — that Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy tens of thousands of Nvidia A100 graphics chips so that partner OpenAI could train the large language models (LLMs) behind Bing’s AI chatbot and ChatGPT.Don’t have access to all that capital or space for all that hardware for your own LLM project? Nvidia’s DGX Cloud is an attempt to sell remote web access to the very same thing.Announced today at the company’s 2023 GPU Technology Conference, the service rents virtual versions of its DGX Server boxes, each containing eight Nvidia H100 or A100 GPUs and 640GB of memory. The service includes interconnects that scale up to the neighborhood of 32,000 GPUs, storage, software, and “direct... Continue reading…