The Verge

AI, once an ambiguous science fiction trope, has become an ambiguous business buzzword, as every technology product races to implement what Silicon Valley thinks is the greatest innovation since the internet. But lost in the conversation are stories about the people building it and using it. If large language models and automated systems will, indeed, upend labor and capital, what does it actually look like in practice? In this package, we'll explore the ways AI functions today: how people are using it, where it fails and where it succeeds, and what it actually means when we say artificial intelligence." Continue reading...

Photo by Ashish Vaishnav/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Microsoft appears to be readying its own DLSS-like AI upscaling feature for PC games. X user PhantomOcean3 discovered the feature inside the latest test versions of Windows 11 over the weekend, with Microsoft describing its automatic super resolution as a way to use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details."That sounds a lot like Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, which uses AI to upscale games and improve frame rates and image quality. AMD and Intel also offer their own variants, with FSR and XeSS both growing in popularity in recent PC game releases. Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge A new AI super resolution feature has been discovered in Windows 11 test... Continue reading...

Super Bowl merchandise is ready at the NFL Super Bowl Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada. | Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images Art, AI, and everything in between. Continue reading...

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images You don't need to sign up for a pricey cable package just to watch the Super Bowl today, February 11th. Plenty of streaming services from Fubo to Philo TV are offering free trials, with Paramount Plus arguably offering the best deal.Today only, new subscribers can sign up for a free month of ad-free Paramount Plus with Showtime when they use offer code GOAT. The promotion means you'll have access to a whole library of content to keep you entertained once the Big Game is over. In addition to live sports, Paramount Plus and Showtime's catalog includes thousands of TV shows and movies such as Star Trek, 1923, Yellowjackets, Scream VI, Dexter, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and more. Just make sure to cancel your trial period... Continue reading...

Now you can turn your Apple Cash card into a Visa card. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge The iOS 17.4 beta lets iPhone users generate a virtual card number for Apple Cash, reports 9to5Mac, citing user reports on Reddit in the last couple of weeks. With a virtual card number, iPhone users can pay with Apple Cash even when Apple Pay isn't available, removing one of the big limitations of Apple's built-in Venmo-like service.I'm seeing the option in the 17.4 beta as well, but as 9to5Mac notes, its possible it hasn't been rolled out to every beta user. It's easy to check if you have it, though. Simply open the Wallet app, tap on your Apple Cash card, and look for a message below your balance invites you to set up a virtual card number - doing so is a simple, two-step procedure. Screenshots: Wes Davis / The... Continue reading...

Illustration: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 25, 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 Mr. & Mrs. Smith (which is awesome) and Argylle (which is not), reading about the tech vs. media wars, AI-created fake IDs, and multibillion-dollar arenas, debating canceling Amazon Prime, and trying out Crouton for managing recipes and grocery lists.I also have for you Google's new AI tools, a new-ish social network, a better take on Google Docs, a new weather app worth checking out, and a bunch more. Let's dig in.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What... Continue reading...

Image: LucasFilm / Disney Pod races, trade negotiations, and Darth Maul will be on the big screen once more when Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace comes back to theaters on May 3rd, 2024. The return is meant to celebrate the 1999 movie's 25th anniversary, reports Empire.The return to theaters comes during a renaissance for this part of the long-running franchise. In the last few years, Disney has given the prequel era the nod with series like Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Bad Batch. Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker in the second and third movies, told Empire in an interview that his experience with Star Wars has been a very heartwarming one," and that the response to them today feels like vindication for the work we did."Disney and... Continue reading...

Photo: Adrienn Szabo / Paramount Plus From the first trailer alone, I could tell Halo season 2 would go in a different direction than the first. Where season 1 was bogged down in strange storytelling choices that didn't leave much room for its characters - namely, the Spartans - to do what they do best - namely, kick Covenant ass - season 2 feels more in line with what a Halo show should be about.According to Pablo Schreiber, the difference mostly comes down to tone. The biggest place where we succeed on a level that we didn't quite reach in season 1 is that I think the tone of this season feels darker," he said in an interview with The Verge.Schreiber, who plays Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, thinks the action has gotten better, too - I agree - and attributes these... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced Friday that his company has logged 100 million subscriptions to Google One, its all-in-one subscription service that opens up additional storage for free services like Gmail, Drive, and Photos, as well as access to more features.Hitting the milestone highlights the company's efforts to move people away from its free plans, such as discontinuing unlimited Google Drive storage for photos. Google's YouTube Premium service took nine years to get there, but it, too, recently hit 100 million subscribers, thanks to ad removal and extra features like music or high-quality streaming (and at the same time as YouTube made changes to crackdown on ad blockers).

The Sushi Restaurant, by Brickproject. | Image via Bricklink Designer Program On Wednesday, Lego sold 30,000 copies of a Lego castle designed by a fan - the Mountain Fortress - earning him half a million dollars for his work. For a while, the company's website was flattened under the load, and my Verge story about these fan-designed sets was pretty popular, too.So I suspect you might also be interested in a future wave of limited-edition, fan-designed Lego sets - and the chance to vote on them yourself!Today marks one week before voting wraps in the Lego BrickLink Designer Program Series 4, where many incredible ideas are currently vying for the chance to become an actual product packaged, sold, and shipped by The Lego Group.And while Lego will have the final say, it wants to know which sets you prefer. Here... Continue reading...

Image: Peacock Another adaptation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem will be streaming for English audiences. While Netflix's 3 Body Problem is set to premiere on March 21st, today, Peacock announced that it has acquired rights to the original Chinese adaptation, dubbed simply Three-Body. And it's coming very soon - the series premieres on February 10th.Three-Body was produced by Tencent and originally premiered in China last year, and the Peacock version will be available in the original Chinese with English subtitles. Given that they're adaptations, 3 Body Problem and Three-Body will follow the same story, but the Chinese adaptation appears to be much more expansive; it spans 30 episodes in total, compared to eight episodes for the Netflix... Continue reading...

The update will allow users to see less political content in their recommended feeds. | Illustration: The Verge It'll soon be easier to avoid seeing political content across Instagram and Threads unless users explicitly choose to have it recommended to them. In a blog post published on Friday, Meta announced that it's expanding an existing Reels policy that limits political content from people you're not following (including posts about social issues) from appearing in recommended feeds to more broadly cover the company's Threads and Instagram platforms.Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person's appetite for it, said Instagram head Adam Mosseri, announcing on Threads that the changes will be applied over the next few weeks. Facebook is also expected to roll out... Continue reading...

Image: Brilliant Labs There's a new pair of smart spectacles in town - and this time, it's the $349 Frame glasses said to give you multimodal AI superpowers." The open-source eyewear comes from a startup called Brilliant Labs, which touts Frame as a way to get AI translations, web search, and visual analysis right in front of your eyes.As shown in a video posted by Brilliant Labs, you can use your voice to ask the glasses to do things like identify a landmark you're looking at, search the web for a particular pair of sneakers you're seeing, or even look up nutrition information for the food you're about to eat. The information appears as an overlay that shows up directly on the lens.Frame comes in three colors you can preorder now: black, gray, and clear.... Continue reading...

You can score a big TV at a big discount ahead of the big game, and most of them can hit your doorstep by Sunday. | Image: LG February is a star-studded month, with the Grammys, Oscar noms, and America's biggest sporting event taking center stage. This year, the Super Bowl will play out on February 11th between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. Whether you're hosting a party for the big game or simply want to equip a spare room in your home with a new 4K set, the days leading up to the Super Bowl remain one of the best opportunities of the year to add a new TV to your wall for cheap.You could just trek to your local big-box retailer and pick out the biggest, cheapest TV you can find, but the selection can be dizzying, and many of those sets aren't worth the trouble (even if they only cost a couple hundred dollars). To help you make sense of... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has started hinting at how it will further integrate AI features into Windows 11 ahead of a big update to the OS that focuses on AI. The software giant started testing a new experience" for Copilot in Windows this week, which includes an animated Copilot in the taskbar that appears when you copy text or images.The Copilot icon will change appearance and animate to indicate that Copilot can help," explains Microsoft in a blog post. When you hover your mouse over the Copilot icon, it will provide a menu of actions that you can take, such as summarizing or explaining the copied text."I've tested the experience in the latest Windows 11 Canary builds, and it works well for text, summarizing anything you copy. While the icon... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Stop me if you've heard this one before: Disney, in an effort to work in a complicated new media era, is partnering with its competitors in the hopes of creating a single destination where viewers can watch everything they want.You're shouting Hulu!" at your screen, right? Well, Disney's back at it again, launching a sports-specific streaming hub later this year that will combine all the channels and games of ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros.On this episode of The Vergecast, we dig into why these companies need to band together, why sports still rule TV, and why it took so long to get the one-stop sports shop fans have been looking for for years. Then we get into the other Disney news, including the company's $1.5 billion investment in Epic... Continue reading...

The price to record visitors at your Ring video doorbell is about to go up. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge In what is fast becoming a trend, another security camera company is raising the price of its subscription plan. According to a Ring support article, starting March 11th, 2024, it will cost $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly to subscribe to the Ring Protect Basic plan, an increase of $1 a month or $10 a year.The Basic is Ring's cheapest plan and gives you access to cloud storage of recorded videos from one camera or video doorbell. If you subscribe, you'll see the bump on your next renewal date after March 11th unless you cancel before then.Just last month, Arlo increased its single-camera subscription price to $7.99 monthly from $4.99. Google Nest's cheapest plan went up to $8 a month from $6 late last year, but that covers all cameras... Continue reading...

A rendering of the PACE spacecraft as seen from afar. | Image: NASA Who knew you could see plankton from space? NASA, of course. The space agency successfully launched a new mission today called PACE - short for the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem satellite - that will study its namesake.It'll examine microscopic plants and particles - things so small they're invisible to the naked eye - from hundreds of miles above Earth. The goal is to better understand how such teeny tiny things can actually impact the whole planet.PACE will help us learn, like never before, how particles in our atmosphere and our oceans can identify key factors impacting global warming," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, said in a press release.The goal is to better understand how such teeny tiny things can actually... Continue reading...

Image: Cory Hendrixson (YouTube) Windows 11 will soon have a built-in sudo command designed for developers. Sudo, short for superuser do," is widely used on Unix-based operating systems like Linux and macOS to run programs with higher security privileges or as another user. It's useful for developers wanting to test scripts, for example.Microsoft is using sudo inside Windows to let developers run elevated tools directly from an unelevated console session. It is an ergonomic and familiar solution for users who want to elevate a command without having to first open a new elevated console," explains Jordi Adoumie, a product manager at Microsoft. Image: Microsoft Sudo can be controlled in developer settings in a future version of Windows 11. S... Continue reading...

Lego Fortnite. | Image: Epic Games In 2021, Facebook's parent company got a new name and a new goal. Over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time. He later called the metaverse the successor to the mobile internet" and noted that the concept would be so big that it was too much for any one company to take on, spanning an entire industry.That hasn't happened yet. Even Meta employees barely use the company's flagship metaverse app, Horizon Worlds, and over the last few years, Zuckerberg's definition of the metaverse seems to have shifted from a Ready Player One-style virtual world to one that blends the real and the virtual as new buzzwords like AI have taken root. Either way, this vision of the internet hasn't exactly... Continue reading...

You can use the $50 to add the wireless charging functionality these earbuds should have shipped with. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge There are no better earbuds for muting the world than the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, which remain our pick for the best noise-canceling earbuds. While there aren't enough meaningful changes for QuietComfort Earbuds II owners to upgrade, the $249 price ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Bose makes them easier to recommend for newcomers or those whose QC II buds have failing batteries. Coincidentally, the original QuietComfort Earbuds II are also discounted by $80, bringing them down to $199 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Bose.It's been hard for Bose fans to swallow the $299 upgrade pill for the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, which unceremoniously kicked the QuietComfort Earbuds II off their perch to become the company's marquee earbuds.... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission is making it illegal for robocalls to use AI-generated voices. The ruling, issued on Thursday, gives state attorneys general the ability to take action against callers using AI voice cloning tech.As outlined in the ruling, AI-generated voices are now considered an artificial or prerecorded voice" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). This restricts callers from using AI-generated voices for non-emergency purposes or without prior consent. The TCPA includes bans on a variety of automated call practices, including using an artificial or prerecorded voice" to deliver messages, but it wasn't explicitly stated whether this included AI-powered voice cloning. The new ruling clarifies that... Continue reading...

A technician will be dispatched to your location for prices starting at 69/69. | Image: Cowboy Cowboy, the boutique Belgian maker of e-bikes, is taking the training wheels off its On-Demand offering of ad hoc services previously being tested in just a few cities.That means owners of Cowboy e-bikes across Europe can now request flat tire fixes, bike setup, general maintenance, and the installation of child seats or rear racks right in the Cowboy app with prices starting at 69 / 69. Best of all, you don't have to visit one of the company's bike store partners since a technician will be dispatched directly to your doorstep. The On-Demand service is meant to complement Cowboy Care, the company's subscription maintenance service. Image: Cowboy Appointments can be booked and managed directly in the Cowboy... Continue reading...

Image: Toei Animation Funimation is shutting down on April 2nd, 2024. The anime streaming service will start migrating existing subscribers to Crunchyroll - a move that will not only affect subscription prices, but will also wipe digital libraries.A support page on Funimation's website says the service will automatically transfer existing subscribers to Crunchyroll, noting that the transfer may vary depending on your specific payment platform, subscription type and region." But the page - unhelpfully - doesn't say how much subscribers will have to pay following the transition, only that legacy subscribers will see a price increase. You'll have to check your email to see how much you'll have to pay. Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge S... Continue reading...

Dyson's new Supersonic r will have RFID attachments. | Image: Dyson Dyson first launched its Supersonic hairdryer in 2016, but the high-tech hairdryer hasn't really changed much since then - until now. Just in time for New York Fashion Week, Dyson is announcing the Supersonic r, an upgraded $569.99 hairdryer for professional stylists.Right away, you can tell the Supersonic r is, well, r-shaped. Steve Williamson, Dyson's hair care category manager, says that's to accommodate the different ways pros use hairdryers compared to how you or I might use one. In short, the Supersonic r had to be lighter and more maneuverable. Compared to the original Supersonic, the r is 30 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter, weighing 325g or 11oz.If you're using it at home, maybe you do a half-hour blow dry session.... Continue reading...

JBL is the first to make Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant coexist on the same speaker, and it works quite well. But the price you pay for that convenience feels a little uneven. Continue reading...

Paramount's most recent Sonic movie really reinforced how its titular hedgehog is nothing without his friends, but the studio's new Knuckles spinoff series starring Idris Elba looks like it'll be a lesson in how echidnas handle business (mostly) by themselves.Set between the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the upcoming third movie, Knuckles zooms in on Knuckles' (Idris Elba) new life in Green Hills, Montana, where he, Sonic (Ben Schwartz), and Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessey) have become a kind of alien family. After years of trying to be a good parental figure to Sonic, Maddie Wachowski (Tika Sumpter) couldn't be happier to have people like Knuckles around, if only because he can actually keep up with the hedgehog. But as good as... Continue reading...

Photo by Jean Chung / Getty Images TikTok isn't just a place to offload your celebrity opinions, give strangers a complete home tour, or share a DIY hack. Each video - at least in TikTok's view - is also a possible advertisement.As I was scrolling through my feed this week, a video from an account I don't follow popped up discussing actor Hunter Schafer's Grammys afterparty outfit. The account has a modest 43,000 followers, and the video has less than 8,000 views. It followed the typical outfit breakdown format: identifying the designer of Schafer's dress, showing a few different angles, and adding close-up shots of her shoes.As the video was ending, a button popped up prompting me to view items in TikTok Shop related to the shoes. The blue and orange embellished heels... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is famous for having a million similar products with confusingly different names and seemingly nothing in common. (Can I interest you in a messaging app?) But when it comes to its AI work, going forward there is only one name that matters: Gemini.The company announced on Thursday that it is renaming its Bard chatbot to Gemini, releasing a dedicated Gemini app for Android, and even folding all its Duet AI features in Google Workspace into the Gemini brand. It also announced that Gemini Ultra 1.0 - the largest and most capable version of Google's large language model - is being released to the public.Gemini's mobile apps will likely be the place most people encounter the new tool. If you download the new app on Android, it can... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple is officially launching its Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Devices apps on Windows this week. The apps were originally launched in preview last year, but Apple has now removed the preview tag after working with Microsoft to launch the apps.The trio of apps, in combination with an overhauled iCloud for Windows app, are designed to move Windows users away from the reliance of iTunes, according to MacRumors. If you use Apple TV, Apple Music, and Apple Devices then iTunes is only required for access to podcasts and audiobooks on Windows. Image: Apple The Apple TV app on Windows. The Apple Music app provides access to the iTunes library, alongside song and album purchases. Apple TV also lets Windows users... Continue reading...

It's just as fast, the magnet is just as strong, but it costs half as much as those proprietary Apple mounts. Continue reading...