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The Galaxy S23 Ultra’s camera system is at the center of the recent Moon-gate controversy. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung’s faked Moon photos are a small step for smartphone photography — not a giant leap. Continue reading…

Increasing accessibility is always good, but so is fixing the issues your customers have been complaining about. | Image: The Verge Fitbit users haven’t been too pleased as of late, but while there’s a lot that Google could do to make things better, its latest announcement ain’t it.At its The Check Up event earlier today, Google announced it’s opening up more of Fitbit’s Health Metrics Dashboard to nonsubscribers. The company says that any user with a compatible device — aka a Pixel Watch or Fitbit device — will be able to view their daily, weekly, monthly, and 90-day trends for breathing rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature, oxygen saturation, and resting heart rate. Nonsubscribers will also get personalized insights whenever their data deviates from their long-term baselines.It’s always nice to see companies add extra value to free tiers. That said,... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is currently experiencing a big outage affecting its websites and apps, according to the company’s status page. I’m consistently seeing an error message when trying to load Reddit on my Chrome browser.“We’ve identified an internal systems issue and are working to determine a fix,” the company wrote at 12:56PM ET on its status page. The preceding message, from nearly 40 minutes before, notes that Reddit is “is currently offline.”

Floating solar panels in Hapcheon, Gyeongsangnam-do province, South Korea, on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. More than 92,000 solar panels floating on the surface of a reservoir are able to generate 41 megawatts, enough to power 20,000 homes. | Image: SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg via Getty Images Thousands of cities around the world could power themselves entirely with solar panels floating atop water reservoirs, according to new research. It’s a relatively easy way to generate renewable energy locally while also conserving water.Solar arrays suspended over water, or floatovoltaics, work similarly to those spread out over land. The panels sit on a raft instead of on parking lots, rooftops, or other grounded mounts. But they haven’t been deployed in many places around the world yet and only produced as much electricity as less than 1 percent of the world’s land-based solar farms in 2020. Now, a new study published in the journal Nature Sustainability shows just how much potential cities could tap into with this emerging... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI just announced its next-generation GPT-4 AI language model, but it turns out that there’s already been a major application using it: Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing.“We are happy to confirm that the new Bing is running on GPT-4, customized for search,” according to a blog post from Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing. “If you’ve used the new Bing in preview at any time in the last six weeks, you’ve already had an early look at the power of OpenAI’s latest model.”The AI-powered Bing chatbot provides summarized answers to your search queries in a way that’s intended to feel more conversational than a list of blue links. Microsoft has previously said that the new Bing is powered by what it called the “Prometheus” model,... Continue reading…

Image: OnLeaks and Smartprix Google’s upcoming Pixel 8 Pro may have a redesigned camera bar and a flat display, according to new renders of the unannounced device from OnLeaks and Smartprix.The most noticeable change to the camera bar is that all three cameras will be visible in one big oval cutout instead of being partially separated like they are on the Pixel 7 Pro. Per the renders, the 8 Pro’s camera bar will also have a mysterious new sensor under the flash. Smartprix speculates that the sensor could be a macro or depth sensor but says that its “specific function remains unknown.” Image: OnLeaks and Smartprix If you look closely, you can see a second oval for what’s presumably the wide and ultrawide. As for the Pixel 8 Pro’s screen,... Continue reading…

Image: OnLeaks and HowToiSolve The Google Pixel Fold could be available as soon as the second week in June, according to WinFuture’s Roland Quandt. The reliable leaker tweeted on Tuesday that the phone will come with 256GB base storage and that you’ll be able to get it in either a black / dark gray color or white.The foldable has been rumored for a long time, and there have been whispers that it would be announced sometime in the next few months. However, a January report from The Elec threw some cold water on that idea, saying that the screen wasn’t even set to go into production until July or August.

Illustration: The Verge After months of rumors and speculation, OpenAI has announced GPT-4: the latest in its line of AI language models that power applications like ChatGPT and the new Bing.The company claims the model is “more creative and collaborative than ever before” and “can solve difficult problems with greater accuracy.” It can parse both text and image input, though it can only respond via text. OpenAI also cautions that the systems retain many of the same problems as earlier language models, including a tendency to make up information (or “hallucinate”) and the capacity to generate violent and harmful text.OpenAI says it’s already partnered with a number of companies to integrate GPT-4 into their products, including Duolingo, Stripe, and Khan... Continue reading…

The refurbished base iPhone 13 Pro‌ model starts at $759 rather than $999, its original price when sold new. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge One of the best things about new Apple phones is how quickly prices on older models start to fall shortly after. If you’ve been waiting for a good deal to drop on the iPhone 13 lineup, you might want to head on over to Apple’s online store because Apple’s just added a bunch of discounted refurbished iPhone 13 devices.In case you’re unfamiliar with what buying refurbished entails — basically, Apple thoroughly cleans, tests, and repackages each preowned product. It also throws in a one-year warranty for extra peace of mind, making these good options for bargain hunters.The best deals are available on the 6.1-inch iPhone 13 Pro and ‌ 6.7-inch iPhone 13 Pro‌ Max, which Apple no longer sells in new condition. The refurbished base iPhone 13... Continue reading…

Multiview early access is arriving in time for March Madness. | Image: YouTube Today, YouTube TV is launching early access testing for multiview, a feature that will allow subscribers to watch up to four different programs at the same time. “Those who are part of early access will receive an email and see an alert about this feature in their YouTube TV experience,” YouTube wrote in a blog post. There’s no way to manually opt in at the moment. “We’ll gradually roll out availability to all members over the coming months,” the company said.But don’t get too excited. While multiview will heavily factor into YouTube’s plans for NFL Sunday Ticket coverage, right now, it’s very limited. Like, strictly limited to sports. YouTube says early access customers will be able to “watch up to four, pre-selected different streams... Continue reading…

The upcoming speakers from Sonos usher in a new... period for the smart audio company. | Image: Sonos Sonos’ new hotly anticipated Wi-Fi-connected bookshelf speakers, the Era 100 and Era 300, are inching closer to their March 28th release and can now be preordered at multiple retailers. There’s been quite a bit of hype and buildup for these new speakers, thanks in no small part to a mountain of leaks and teases but also because the Era 100 and 300 are kicking off new lines for Sonos while the sun will set on popular models like the Sonos One and Play:3.The new Sonos Era speakers will incorporate more features into the meatier parts of the Sonos home speaker lineup, like Bluetooth, line-in, and new spatial audio capabilities. So if you’re hyped and want to get your own at launch, here’s more about the Era 100 and Era 300 speakers,... Continue reading…

Christian Convery in season 2 of Sweet Tooth. | Image: Netflix The coziest dystopia around is coming back for its second season very soon. Netflix announced that season 2 of Sweet Tooth, the postapocalyptic series based on Jeff Lemire’s graphic novels, will start streaming on April 27th.For the uninitiated, Sweet Tooth takes place in a world ravaged by a pandemic but also one where hybrid children — adorable creatures that are half-human, half-animal — have started to appear. The coincidental timing means that most humans blame the pandemic on the hybrids, and the world predictably descends into chaos. What makes the show unique isn’t just the hybrids but also its star: Gus (Christian Convery) a little boy with antlers, an insatiable desire for sweets, and a contagious level of hope and optimism.T... Continue reading…

Image: OnLeaks via The Tech Outlook Nothing’s latest pair of wireless earbuds have leaked just one week ahead of their launch. In a set of images shared by @OnLeaks with The Tech Outlook, we get our first glimpse at what appears to be the Nothing Ear 2 earbuds, which look nearly identical to the Ear 1 buds, complete with a partially transparent stem and wireless charging case.The only noticeable difference between the design of these new buds and their predecessors is, of course, the “Nothing ear (2)” branding on the stem. However, if you look closely, you can see that Nothing moved the noise-canceling microphone to the top of the stem instead of the very bottom.As you can see in the below gallery, the Nothing Ear 2s also feature a red and white dot to indicate which one... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Microsoft is now rolling out its Bing AI-powered chatbot in a sidebar inside its Edge browser. The Bing sidebar was initially only available in dev versions of Edge, but it’s now rolling out to stable versions of Microsoft Edge on both Windows and macOS.The new sidebar appears as a big Bing button at the top left of Edge, and hovering over or clicking on it will activate the new Bing chatbot experience. If you’re a member of the Bing preview, you can use the chat function to ask the chatbot questions or the compose option to generate text for emails, blog posts, letters, and much more. Image: Microsoft The new Bing sidebar in Microsoft Edge. As the sidebar is based on the context of the page you’re viewing in... Continue reading…

Netgear’s new NightHawk RS700 Wi-Fi 7 router. | Image: Netgear Netgear’s releasing a new Nighthawk router that trades in the sci-fi spaceship look the line adopted in 2018 for a more monolithic tower design. The new Nighthawk RS700 will cost $699.99 when it launches this spring with looks that are more akin to the AmpliFi Alien or Linksys Velop routers. This is also the first of the line that’s equipped with Wi-Fi 7 — the upcoming IEEE specification that promises the lowest latency wireless connections yet.Other devices we’ve seen announced with support for the new spec include a few from TP-Link and Asus; however, just like this one, they’re not available in stores yet.The yet-to-be-adopted Wi-Fi 7 standard (known as 802.11BE) is designed to succeed Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7’s biggest... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is finally adding its 3D avatars for all Microsoft Teams users starting in May, according to an update to its Microsoft 365 roadmap. Microsoft originally announced the avatars feature in 2021 and has been testing it privately in recent months.Avatars in Microsoft Teams are designed to let people avoid appearing on camera during meetings. If you don’t feel for video or you need a break from constant calls then you can swap in a 3D avatar that will animate based on your vocal cues alone — no camera needed at all. Image: Microsoft Microsoft Teams is getting 3D avatars in May. “It’s not binary, so I can choose how I want to show up, whether it’s video or an avatar, and there’s a variety of customized... Continue reading…

Images show an app drawer, browser, and YouTube running on the Find N2 Flip’s cover display. | Image: Jagan2 CoverScreen OS is a piece of software that attempts to turn the Oppo Find N2 Flip’s small 3.26-inch cover display into a “fully functional mini phone.” Crucially, this means being able to access the app drawer and launch “almost any app” on the cover screen, massively increasing the amount you can do on the foldable flip phone without having to open it up. The software is downloadable from the Google Play Store.CoverScreen OS has been available for awhile for the Samsung Z Flip 3 and 4. In fact, my colleague Allison tried it out on the Z Flip 4 last August. But while the app’s usefulness was limited on Samsung’s tiny 1.9-inch cover display, the Find N2 Flip’s portrait-oriented 3.26-inch, 720 x 382 cover display feels like it has a lot... Continue reading…

Silicon Labs’ xG27 chips can be as small as 2.3mm by 2.6mm — and yes, this image is to scale. | Image: Silicon Labs Miniaturizing tech is a perpetual challenge for wearable makers. The smaller the device, the better it is for wearability. The thing is, that usually comes at the expense of battery life. However, Silicon Labs is hoping its latest xG27 chipset is small and energy-efficient enough to spark some big ideas in the medical tech space — like a saliva reader that’s so tiny it can be mounted onto a tooth.According to Silicon Labs, the xG27 family of SoCs consists of the BG27 and the MG27. Both are built around the ARM Cortex M33 processor, but the BG27 focuses on Bluetooth, while the MG27 supports Zigbee and other protocols. As for how small these chips are, the xG27 SoCs range from 2mm-squared to 5mm-squared — roughly the width of a No. 2... Continue reading…

The law has been controversial for gig workers. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images An appeals court in California has ruled that the state’s Proposition 22 should mostly be allowed to stand, after a judge ruled to strike it down in 2021, declaring it unconstitutional, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The law, which passed in 2020 following a massive and expensive campaign, made it so companies like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash can classify their workers as independent contractors instead of employees.The three appeals judges did recommend removing sections 7465(c)(3) and (c)(4) from the law, which were seen as preventing workers from collectively bargaining. Two of the judges said it should otherwise said it should remain as-is, while one wrote a dissenting opinion saying that the... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Microsoft laid off its entire ethics and society team within the artificial intelligence organization as part of recent layoffs that affected 10,000 employees across the company, Platformer has learned.The move leaves Microsoft without a dedicated team to ensure its AI principles are closely tied to product design at a time when the company is leading the charge to make AI tools available to the mainstream, current and former employees said.Microsoft still maintains an active Office of Responsible AI, which is tasked with creating rules and principles to govern the company’s AI initiatives. The company says its overall investment in responsibility work is increasing despite the recent layoffs.“Microsoft is committed to developing AI... Continue reading…

It’s like the eye-level finders of old medium format film cameras, but now for a compact digital camera — with lasers. | Image: Sony Giant frickin’ laser beams get all the buzz and sci-fi love, but it’s our little laser bros that are putting in the work: taking measurements, entertaining our cats, and now, in the case of a Sony camera, helping people with vision problems see clearly through an electronic viewfinder and take pictures.Sony is working with fellow Japanese company QD Laser to release the HX99 RNV Retina Projection Camera kit, a compact camera with an add-on retinal laser housing for projecting the camera’s focused live view image into the user’s eye. The low-power laser projection is designed to effectively bypass the focusing of the eye, helping users with visual impairments like shortsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism see a clear image.A 2018... Continue reading…

The Verge The fall of Silicon Valley Bank, explained Continue reading…

Image: Mr. White via 9to5Mac There’s a chance we just got a look at some cables and sensors for Apple’s upcoming and much-rumored virtual / augmented reality headset. Photos from MrWhite128, a protected Twitter account, which were reposted by MacRumors and 9to5Mac, appear to show ribbon cables that look like they’d fit perfectly in a set of eye-shaped goggles.It’s not obvious from the pictures what exactly the cables would do beyond connecting the left and right sides of the headset — without context, there’s not a ton to be gleaned from them. The leaker also shared pictures of a cable that has three bulbous sections, which could be some sort of sensor or camera array. The headset is rumored to have color-passthrough capabilities that let you see the real world... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge All of The Verge’s coverage, including the repercussions of SVB, all in one place Continue reading…

The Pixel 7A has leaked. | Image: Zing News I can’t quite say it was inevitable, but — in some of the least surprising yet amusing tech news in the world — a Vietnam gadget enthusiast has managed to obtain a developer unit of the unannounced Pixel 7A smartphone.Seriously: we called the Pixel 4 the most-leaked phone ever — and that was after multiple Russian-speaking bloggers obtained the Pixel 3 XL. The Nexus 4 was fully reviewed before it was ever announced. The Pixel 4A and Pixel 5 leaked like a sieve, and Google itself tipped the 6A in a coloring book, not unlike how it accidentally revealed the Nexus 5 in a YouTube video. The Pixel 6 got unboxed, and the Pixel 6 Pro even got a teardown before the phone launched. It’s not hard to see why Google tends to tease its gadgets... Continue reading…

Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us. | Image: HBO The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us is over — and there’s a lot to dig into. Between the show’s heavy themes, its long-controversial ending, the way it changed and adapted the game, as well as the games themselves, we’ve got plenty of different stories to read after the finale. They span the last 10 years, from the onset of the original PS3 game all the way up to the TV show’s season 1 finale. Here are reviews, interviews, deep dives, and more to explore while we wait to see Ellie and Joel hanging out in the post-apocalypse once again.The show Image: HBO Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in The Last of Us. Our review of the entire first seasonCo-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann on adapting the story... Continue reading…

A bloater surrounded by clickers in HBO’s The Last of Us. The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin says that future seasons may feature way more of the games’ monstrous fungal mutants to bring an interesting kind of balance to the show. Continue reading…

Image: VW Volkswagen announced that its first gigafactory in North America will be located in the city of St. Thomas in the Canadian province of Ontario. By establishing a battery plant in North America, Volkswagen hopes to meet a major requirement to enable its EVs to be eligible for the US federal tax credit of $7,500.The St. Thomas factory will be a joint venture between VW and Power Co, a new independent company created by the automaker to oversee its massive $20 billion battery initiatives. After starting construction on two other gigafactories, this will be the third plant worldwide and PowerCo’s first cell factory in North America. Production at the St. Thomas factory is set to kick off in 2027.According to VW, the St. Thomas plant... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a massive supercomputer to help power OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, according to a report from Bloomberg. In a pair of blog posts published on Monday, Microsoft explains how it created Azure’s powerful artificial intelligence infrastructure used by OpenAI and how its systems are getting even more robust.To build the supercomputer that powers OpenAI’s projects, Microsoft says it linked together thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) on its Azure cloud computing platform. In turn, this allowed OpenAI to train increasingly powerful models and “unlocked the AI capabilities” of tools like ChatGPT and Bing.Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s vice president of AI and cloud, said the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge It happens to the best of us. You’ve just purchased a new PC, and you’re excited about all the blessed empty storage that’s there for you to load with your favorite programs. But why is so much of the drive already full? What are all these notifications you’re getting from apps you’ve never heard of? And why is some antivirus program trying to scan everything you download?It sounds like your new device may have a bad case of bloatware. It’s quite common for PCs (even fairly expensive ones) to come preloaded with a bunch of third-party software. Some will be free trials included with the hope that you will upgrade to paid services. There may be apps here and there that you actually want and find useful, but many will likely be garbage... Continue reading…

Night Sight on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro is getting up to speed with the latest Pixel generation. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Google’s making good on its promise to bring a much-touted photo feature to all of its phones and has a couple of other goodies for Pixel owners in its latest feature drop. The update is being made available now to Pixel phones, and it includes Magic Eraser for all devices, a faster Night Sight for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, and a Direct My Call enhancement for older Pixels.Magic Eraser debuted on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro and was also available on last year’s Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. That means it’s only been available on phones with Google’s custom Tensor chipset, which might lead you to believe it could only run on phones with Tensor. That’s clearly not the case — last month, Google announced the feature would be offered with older Pixel devices... Continue reading…

This is one of Tinymakesthings’ artisan keycaps, sculpted in clay. | Image: Tinymakesthings Mechanical keyboard love lovers have created a small boom in small businesses. People are making a living designing and building PCBs, switches, caps, and whole keyboards. They’re partnering with small factories to bring their creations to life. But some artisans are building the products themselves — no factory involved. The artist who goes by the name Tinymakesthings is one of those creators.She’s a keycap artist, crafting individual keycaps that are truly tiny works of art. She uses a few mediums to build her keycaps but relies primarily on clay and resin. She broadcasts her work on Twitch and sells her caps in her own shop, and she felt like a perfect person to speak with for the next episode of Solo Acts.Solo Acts is a five-part V... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon Rivian’s looking to exit from its agreement to exclusively provide delivery vans to Amazon, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and CNBC. As part of a deal made in 2019, the online retailer signed on to purchase 100,000 delivery vans from Rivian, but with Amazon reportedly only meeting the bare minimum of ordering 10,000 vehicles this year, the two are renegotiating.The terms of the original deal said Amazon would have the exclusive rights to the electric delivery vans for four years after Rivian provided the first batch of vehicles, which Rivian started delivering last year. However, the fine print states that Rivian could cut the exclusivity deal short if Amazon doesn’t purchase 10,000 of its vehicles in each of the... Continue reading…