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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Not even authority, just the signifiers of authority Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images This year's Prime Video streaming content was led by adaptations and spinoffs like Fallout and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Read the full story at The Verge.

A Google Nest doorbell camera. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Apple is working on a new smart doorbell camera that uses Face ID to unlock your door, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in today's Power On newsletter. The camera could be released by the end of 2025 at the soonest," Gurman writes.The lock would work just like your iPhone, automatically unlocking your door when you or another resident looks at it. Like biometric login info on other Apple devices, the camera would be equipped with the company's Secure Enclave chip that stores and processes Face ID information separately from the rest of the system's hardware.Gurman writes that this device will likely" work with existing third-party HomeKit smart locks and that the company may also partner with a smart lock company to offer a complete system on day one." He expects the camera will make use of Apple's in-house Proxima" combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth chip that's rumored for new HomePod Mini and Apple TV devices next year.This doorbell camera joins a broader collection of rumors surrounding a renewed Apple push into the smart home that's centered around Apple Intelligence. Those include another new smart home camera, a possible Apple-branded TV, and new smart home displays - one a simple iPad-like device that magnetically attaches to wall mounts or speaker bases, while another display sits on the end of a robotic arm attached to a larger base.

Do we really need all this? | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The grid is a comfortable place to live.The app grid, I mean: the rows and rows of app icons on your iPhone's homescreen. It's familiar. Safe. It's how I've lived with my various phones over the past decade. But at some point, it started to feel oppressive.All those icons staring at me in the face, vying for my attention. The clutter! The distracting little notification badges! The grid was a reasonable way to organize apps when I had like, ten of them. There are sixty on the iPhone I'm using now, and I set it up from scratch a few months ago.Naturally, living off-grid or in a non-traditional homescreen arrangement has been possible for much longer on Android. Google's OS lets you keep your screen clear and just find your apps in the app drawer, which is always a swipe away. You can even replace the launcher entirely. But iOS - where every new app you download winds up on your homescreen by default - hasn't exactly made it easy to abandon the grid.That started to change when iOS 14 added widgets, an app library, and the ability to hide apps from your homescreen - though I haven't developed the muscle memory to use it much. Now, iOS 18 adds even more flexibility. You... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Our staff writes about the best books they read over the course of the year. Read the full story at The Verge.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Commerce Department has awarded Samsung and Texas Instruments with a combined over $6 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS Incentives Program's Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication," according to a pair of announcements published on Friday.Samsung will get the larger of the two awards at $4.745 billion. The Commerce Department says the company will use this as part of its planned $37 billion investment in Texas chip facilities that include two new leading-edge logic fabs and an R&D fab" in Taylor, Texas, and the expansion of its plant in Austin.The company was originally slated to receive $6.4 billion. In a statement reported by Bloomberg, the company said that its mid-to-long-term investment plan has been partially revised to optimize overall investment efficiency," which suggests the company has dialed back its plans, according to the outlet.Texas Instruments will receive $1.61 billion to bolster the $18 billion it plans to spend on projects like constructing two wafer fabs in Texas and a third in Utah. The Commerce Department announced smaller awards this week too, including $407 million in funding for Amkor Technology, a US-based company that... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Asus Asus has announced the Asus NUC 14 Pro AI, the first Copilot Plus-capable AI mini PC that crams an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor into a form factor resembling a black M4 Mac Mini. First introduced at IFA in September, Asus is providing a little more detail about the mini PC's specs than it did before, but still isn't saying it will become available or how much it will cost.The NUC 14 Pro AI will come in five CPU configurations, from the Core Ultra 5 226V processor with 16GB of integrated RAM to a Core Ultra 9 288V processor with 32GB of RAM. The company says it has up to 67 TOPS of GPU performance and 48 NPU TOPS, and that its M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x 4 slot supports 256GB to 2TB NVMe SSDs.All of that is packed into a PC that measures 130mm deep and wide and just 34mm tall; comparatively, the Mac Mini is 127mm deep and wide and 50mm tall. Here are some pictures from Asus' website:The Asus NUC 14 Pro AI features a fingerprint sensor on top and a Copilot button on the front for speaking voice commands to Microsoft's AI assistant. Also on the front are two USB-A ports, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a headphone jack, and a power button. Around the back, you'll find a 2.5Gbps ethernet jack, another Thunderbolt 4 port, two more USB-A ports, and an HDMI port. For connectivity, it features Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.Asus still hasn't said when the NUC 14 Pro AI will be available, nor how much it will cost.

Stellar hardware from a controversial figure. Read the full story at The Verge.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an OLED TV for less right now. | Image: LG One of the best Black Friday deals has returned - and this time, it's done so with an added perk. Right now, LG's B4 Series OLED TV is matching its all-time low at Best Buy, where you can pick it up in the 48-inch configuration for $599.99 ($200 off) with a $50 digital gift card. The larger 55-inch panel, meanwhile, is on sale at Best Buy with a $100 digital gift card for $999.99 ($400 off), its best price yet.Although LG is likely to introduce its 2025 lineup at CES in a few short weeks, the B4 is likely going to remain a bargain, especially at this price. You don't get the same brightness levels or performance speeds as LG's flagship C4 or G4 - the B4 lacks the AI-focused a11 processor found in the latter - but it provides all the core benefits you'd expect from an OLED panel. It offers deep blacks and wide viewing angles, along with four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports that are capable of 4K 120Hz gaming, making it a great pick for use with modern consoles like the PS5 or Xbox Series X.Personally, as the current owner of a 48-inch OLED, I find the smaller size more than big enough for my entertainment needs. It's not as much of an eyesore in my living room as my previous 65-inch panel, yet I have little trouble watching movies and playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth from my couch. The real question is whether you need all the bells and whistles on LG's high-end TVs or if an entry-level OLED will suffice.More weekend deals and discounts

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Between The Penguin, Dune: Prophecy, and I Saw the TV Glow, Max has you covered when it comes to last-minute streaming options to get you through the holidays. Read the full story at The Verge.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge The Department of Justice's list of solutions for fixing Google's illegal antitrust behavior and restoring competition in the search engine market started with forcing the company to sell Chrome, and late Friday night, Google responded with a list of its own (included below).Instead of breaking off Chrome, Android, or Google Play as the DOJ's filing considers, Google's proposed fixes aim at the payments it makes to companies like Apple and Mozilla for exclusive, prioritized placement of its services, its licensing deals with companies that make Android phones, and contracts with wireless carriers. They don't address a DOJ suggestion about possibly forcing Google to share its valuable search data with other companies to help their products catch up.According to Google's lawyers, the ruling pointed to arrangements with Apple and Mozilla for their browsers, the companies that make Android phones, and wireless carriers. Google regulatory VP Lee-Anne Mulholland writes on the company blog, This was a decision about our search distribution contracts, so our proposed remedies are directed to that.For three years, its proposal would block Google from signing deals that link licenses for Chrome, Search, and its Android app store, Google Play, with placement or preinstallation of its other apps, including Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini AI assistant.It would also still allow Google to pay for default search placement in browsers but allow for multiple deals across different platforms or browsing modes and require the ability to revisit the deals at least once a year.While the company still plans to appeal Judge Amit Mehta's ruling that said, Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," first, it says it will submit a revised proposal on March 7th, ahead of a two-week trial over the issue in April.

Image: Josh King / OhSnap When 19-year-old Josh King suggested he would single-handedly redefine mobile gaming with his 3D-printed gamepad, drawing a direct line from himself to Steve Jobs, I have to admit I thought it was a bit much!But it's no longer just a 3D-printed controller. OhSnap, the company behind the excellent magnetic PopSocket alternatives I showed you in October, is now officially turning his design into the coolest looking gamepad attachment I've ever seen for a phone:It's no taller or wider than an iPhone, so it should slide into a pocket. It's got a MagSafe pattern of magnets to attach it to your magnetic ring device. You don't have to remove it to use your phone like a phone, because the whole gamepad retracts underneath, a little like the slide-out keyboard phones (or PlayStation Phones) of old - and now, it's mounted on a spring-loaded arm that pops out at the push of a button and also slightly angles your device towards your face. Video by Josh King / OhSnap The OhSnap Mcon's hinge in action. OhSnap even found room for a pair of Nintendo Switch-esque analog sticks, with drift-resistant Hall effect sensors, and pair of fold-out grips so you can (theoretically) hold it more like a full-size gamepad. The sticks are clickable buttons, and it's got a full set of shoulder buttons and triggers as well. Image: OhSnap An illustration with the grips unfolded. Two months ago, Retro Game Corps came away impressed with a prototype, and it seems King has been very busy since then. As he explains on YouTube, he initially tried to start his own company around the gamepad, even attracted a few investors, manufactured some boards and was working toward injection molding, before he started running out of money and reached out to OhSnap about a partnership. Image: OhSnap It'll be available in black and white at launch, though King says they're working on different mix and match colorful parts so you can style it. Speaking of money, we don't have any idea how much it'll cost, particularly at retail - OhSnap is planning to launch a Kickstarter on January 2nd to raise funds. It's taking signups here for now.I should be getting my own hands on a prototype next month at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, and I'll let you know how it feels.

Illustration: Beatrice Sala The US government has charged a dual Russian and Israeli national with allegedly building and maintaining LockBit's malware code, while receiving over $230,000 in cryptocurrency for his work. The 51-year-old Rostislav Panev was arrested in Israel pending extradition to the US, making him the third member of the LockBit ransomware group in custody.Authorities previously arrested other alleged members of the LockBit group, including Mikhail Vasiliev and Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov, both of whom have pleaded guilty to various charges, including conspiracy to commit computer fraud.Authorities are still searching for Lockbit's alleged ringleader, Dmitry Khoroshev, with a reward worth up to $10 million. The DOJ claimed in May that Khoroshev alone allegedly received at least $100 million in disbursements of digital currency through his developer shares of LockBit ransom payments," based on a 20 percent share of ransom payments extorted by affiliates who used the group's software.As outlined in the complaint, Panev is accused of working as a developer for LockBit since the group first formed in 2019, helping to wage ransomware attacks on hundreds of entities around the globe, including hospitals, businesses, government agencies, and more.Law enforcement linked Panev to LockBit after finding login credentials on his computer for a dark web repository housing multiple versions of the LockBit builder," which is the tool that allowed members to generate custom builds of the LockBit ransomware malware for particular victims."Panev allegedly admitted to writing and maintaining LockBit's malware code in interviews with the Israeli police. Some of the code he's said to have created can disable Windows Defender antivirus software, run malware on multiple computers on a network, and print LockBit's ransom note on all the printers in a victim's network. Panev claimed he didn't realize he was involved in illegal activity at first, according to the complaint.

The Echo Popis a tiny speaker with Alexa-enabled smarts, and is currently down to its best price. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Believe it or not, we're now just a few days away from Christmas. Don't panic if you've yet to start your holiday shopping, though! While it might be too late to order some of the gifts on your holiday wish list, plenty of other great presents will arrive in time.. if you know where to look.After doing some digging at various retailers, we've found a bunch of gadgets and goods you'll still be able to tuck under the tree if you order them soon enough. They encompass a wide range of categories, too, from noise-canceling earbuds and fitness trackers to smart lights, e-readers, and smart speakers. Best of all, a bunch of them are currently on sale, so you can save some money while you're at it.However, keep in mind that Amazon purchases are not likely to arrive on time unless you've signed up for a Prime membership. Don't worry, though, because there are plenty of other retailers - including Best Buy, Target, and Walmart - that will ship your gift in time without requiring you to sign up for a premium subscription.Headphones, earbuds, and speakers

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a new voluntary national framework for the evaluation and oversight" of autonomous vehicles, a bureaucratic first step that could eventually open the floodgates for fully driverless cars. But there's a twist: the agency wants self-driving car companies to cough up more data.The proposed rules were first announced last year as the ADS-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency and Evaluation Program, also known as AV STEP. This program would allow the agency to authorize the sale and commercialization of more vehicles without traditional controls, like pedals and steering wheels, without hitting the annual cap on the number of exemptions to safety requirements. NHTSA is promising an exemption pathway that is tailored for ADS-equipped vehicles," suggesting a less onerous, time-consuming process for the release of fully driverless vehicles.In exchange, the agency is requesting more data from the companies that operate driverless cars, arguing that greater transparency is needed to foster public trust in the technology.AV STEP would provide a valuable national framework at a pivotal time in the development of [automated driving system] technology. Safe, transparent, and responsible development is critical for this technology to be trusted by the public and reach its full potential. This proposal lays the foundation for those goals and supports NHTSA's safety mission," NHTSA Chief Counsel Adam Raviv said in a press release. We encourage everyone to comment on our proposed program.By kick-starting the rulemaking process, the Biden administration is giving a pretty big end-of-the-year holiday gift to the companies that have been laboring for decades on autonomous vehicle technology without any national regulatory framework to guide them.The federal government has largely taken a back seat to in regulating autonomous vehicles, leaving states to develop their own rulebooks for safe deployment. Legislation that would dramatically increase the number of AVs on the road has been stalled in Congress for over seven years, with lawmakers at odds over a range of issues, including safety, liability, and the right number of exemptions from federal motor vehicle safety standards.The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards is the government's official checklist for everything a car needs before it can be sold to customers, including steering wheels, pedals, and sideview mirrors. Driverless cars typically don't need these controls, forcing companies to request exemptions to safety rules from the federal government before they can put their vehicles on the road.Safety regulators keep a tight grip on these exemptionsBut safety regulators keep a tight grip on these exemptions. There is a cap of 2,500 exemptions that each company is allowed to request. And to date, only one company, Nuro, has received an FMVSS exemption for its low-speed delivery robots that aren't large enough for human passengers. General Motors tried for two years to get an exemption for its driverless Cruise vehicles before eventually giving up. (Earlier this month, GM said it would stop funding Cruise.)Whether AV STEP survives into the next Trump administration, though, is an open question. For one, the incoming president is reportedly looking to quash a Biden-era transparency rule that requires companies operating vehicles with driver assist, as well as self-driving cars, to report crashes and injuries to the federal government. Scrapping the crash reporting rule would greatly benefit Tesla, which to date, has reported the highest number of crashes. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a close advisor and donor to Trump.The fact that NHTSA is choosing to highlight the enhanced transparency" under AV STEP could lead some to conclude that this rule is dead on arrival. After all, Trump is currently trying to kill the only transparency rule currently on the books for self-driving cars. Still, Musk is also lobbying Trump to ease restrictions on fully autonomous vehicles in advance of Tesla's plans to produce its own robotaxi in 2026. So anything's possible.Safety advocates are calling the notice of proposed rulemaking premature" and unnecessary. In a statement, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase notes that the proposal is oddly timed, coming after the auto industry said it was lobbying NHTSA to scrap a new rule requiring automatic emergency braking in new vehicles by 2029.With the auto industry vociferously stating it is not feasible to comply with parts of the AEB rule with widely used braking technologies in five years, allowing far more complex technology to control more driving functionalities without meeting minimum safety standards is incongruous at best and potentially deadly at worst," Chase said.

Terradot's pilot program in Brazil involves spreading crushed basalt over farmland. | Image: Terradot To try to counteract the impact their pollution has on the climate, Google and other big companies have bought into a plan to trap carbon dioxide using rocks. They recently announced multimillion dollar deals with a Sheryl Sandberg-backed startup called Terradot.Google, H&M Group, and Salesforce are among a gaggle of companies that collectively agreed to pay Terradot $27 million to remove 90,000 tons carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The deals were brokered by Frontier, a carbon removal initiative led by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability.Separately, Google announced its own deal to purchase an additional 200,000 tons of carbon removal from Terradot. Both companies declined to say how much that deal is worth. If the cost is similar to the Frontier agreement - roughly $300 per ton of CO2 captured - it could add up to $60 million, although Google says it expects the price to come down over time for this larger deal.It's a big deal."Google says it's the biggest purchase yet of carbon removal through enhanced rock weathering (ERW), the strategy Terradot uses to try to slow climate change. It's a relatively low-tech tactic for taking carbon dioxide out of... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Netflix In Squid Game, schoolyard games are turned into nightmares, as players compete to survive and - if they're lucky - earn a massive cash prize. But in Unleashed, a new mobile spinoff that's part of the streamer's fledgling gaming efforts, those games are fun. It's a strange experience that sands off much of the appeal of Squid Game in service of making a multiplayer party game.Unleashed is sort of like Fall Guys but in a Squid Game wrapper. You compete against 31 other players across three random games pulled from the show, like red light, green light" or racing across a bridge made of glass. Slowly other players die off, and by the end one wins a whole bunch of money.Aesthetically, the game mostly follows the show. There are a bunch of characters to play as - some pulled from the show, others new for the game - and even though there's a cartoon aesthetic, things still get bloody, with players being shot for breaking the rules or crushed under some obstacle. There are the familiar green track suits and masked guards.But the connections to the show are really only surface level. There's no story element, so if you haven't watched the show, you'd have no idea the kind of personal anguish many of the characters are going through.In fact, many of the elements that make Unleashed a pretty fun mobile game are also what keep it from being a good adaptation of what Squid Game is all about. In order to reduce frustration, most of the games have respawning. So even if you fail at red light, green light" and get shot by a guard, it's not game over. It simply slows you down in a race to be one of a pre-determined number of players to cross the finish line and move on.Similarly, the games can all be completed in a few minutes. This is great for playing short sessions on the go; being stuck in a 30 minute multiplayer match on your phone typically sucks. But when you put elements like the short run time and respawning together it, completely erases any of the tension that's so core to Squid Game's appeal.And despite having no in-app purchases - Unleashed is completely free for Netflix subscribers and, for a limited time, non-subscribers - it's still structured like a typical free-to-play game. You earn cash from winning matches and completing various goals, which is used to unlock new characters, costumes, and emotes. Every time I log on I'm greeted with a jarring number of pop-ups and notifications letting me know I just unlocked a zombie costume or that there's a Christmas-themed event going on. Just this morning I was gifted a twerking emote.Yes, now I can make Kang Sae-byeok, whose death was one of the most tragic moments of season 1, twerk in the middle of a deadly obstacle course.Unleashed isn't a bad game. In many ways, it's a clever reinterpretation of online party games for mobile. But, like most of Netflix's expansions of the Squid Game universe, it also completely misses the point of the show. It's sort of like what Fortnite is to the original movie Battle Royale: a playful, colorful take on a brutal, piercing story.Fortnite largely avoided the tonal dissonance by creating a cartoon-ish, multiversal world that is far away from an island full of kids killing their classmates. Unleashed, on the other hand, is another part of Squid Game - one that doesn't seem to understand why the series exists.

Image: The Verge Google Fiber is changing up its internet plans in Huntsville, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee. The new Core 1 Gig, Home 3 Gig, and Edge 8 Gig plans appear to have launched last month and streamline the company's existing options, as spotted earlier by 9to5Google.These options replace the 1 Gig, 2 Gig, 5 Gig, and 8 Gig plans currently available in other supported cities. Like the existing 1 Gig plan, Google Fiber's new Core 1 Gig option costs $70 / month with symmetrical 1 gigabit per second upload and download speeds. It comes with GFiber's Multi-Gig Wi-Fi 6E Router and supports up to one mesh extender. Screenshot: Google The $100 / month Home 3 Gig plan sits between the $100 / month 2 Gig and $125 / month 5 Gig options, offering up to 3-gig speeds, a GFiber Multi-Gig Wi-Fi 6E router, up to two mesh extenders, along with priority room optimization that brings additional wired connectivity to the rooms that matter most." Subscribers can also add an internet battery backup for an extra $10 per month, which offers up to two hours of full-bandwidth uptime, with no internet slow downs" in case a power outage knocks out your router or fiber jack.Lastly, Google's $150 / month 8 Gig Edge always-on" plan comes with upload and download speeds of up to 8 gigabits per second, the same GFiber Wi-Fi 6E router, and up to two mesh extenders. It also offers up to 5,000 square feet of coverage, priority room optimization, an included internet backup battery, and a 25 percent refund if your internet goes down for over 45 minutes.It's not clear whether Google will bring these plans to more cities, and the company didn't immediately respond to The Verge's request for more information. Since Google Fiber's inception in 2010, the company has been gradually expanding its fiber footprint across the US while achieving faster speeds. Google rolled out a 20-gig Wi-Fi 7 plan in select cities last year.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro looks just as nicely as it performs. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge In recent years, base MacBook Pro models have felt like an automatic skip. It made more sense to pay just a few hundred more for upgrades that truly justify the Pro" moniker, or save money by stepping down to a MacBook Air without many sacrifices. But that's changed as of the M4 model. With the base MacBook Pro with M4 matching its all-time low price of $1,399 ($200 off) at Amazon and B&H Photo right now, it's quite possibly the best value of any MacBook available.The 10-core M4 chipset has a decent speed advantage over the 8-core M3 inside last year's MacBook Pro, of course. Apple claims its CPU has the strongest single-threaded performance of anything out there, not to mention a neural engine that's two times faster than the M3's. Our benchmarking certainly corroborates that it's faster, although depending on what you're doing on the laptop, you may not notice much difference. But what really sets the 2024 model apart is its starting allotment of 16GB of RAM, which is double that offered by previous generations. That helps with the Apple Intelligence features seeding into macOS Sequoia and also makes it suitable for heavier tasks than most average workloads require.The M4 MacBook Pro also picked up a third Thunderbolt 4 port this cycle, plus an upgraded 1080p webcam that has a taller field-of-view for the new Desk View feature. Those are all very good advantages for the money, and you should only feel compelled to step up further if you have stronger needs such as heavy 4K or 8K video editing, photo editing, programming, or other intensive tasks.Read our Apple MacBook Pro M4 review.More fun Friday deals

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Life's busy enough without wasting time on calls that are trying to scam you or sell to you. Unfortunately, stats from Hiya show that 28 percent of the calls you get are going to be suspected spam or fraud.On an iPhone, you don't have the option to have an AI assistant answer calls for you, as you can on Android - at least not yet. But there are ways to screen calls to some extent and cut down on the number of scammers, sellers, and robots you have to talk to.These guidelines have been written using an iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18.2.Identify incoming calls Screenshot: Apple iOS gives you several options for managing incoming calls. Screenshot: Apple You can choose to silence unknown callers and send them straight to voicemail. A good place to start when it comes to avoiding unwanted calls is to flag calls from numbers that aren't in your contacts list. It's not a perfect way of spotting spam but will catch quite a lot of it.From Settings on your iPhone:

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Looking back at a very busy year. Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images To get Nosferatu's nightmarish love triangle right, Robert Eggers looked to Wuthering Heights for inspiration. Though the Dark Universe might be dead, Robert Eggers has crafted something like its spiritual successor with a series of disturbing horror features. The Witch left you wondering how real its demons were, The Lighthouse's tentacled sea creatures were always slithering somewhere just off-screen, and The Northman was a mythologically charged study of people's ability to become monsters and how that transformation can rob someone of their humanity. Those films presented their otherworldly elements as reflections of characters' superstitions and their need to make sense of the worlds around them. But Eggers wants the undead ghoul at the center of his new Nosferatu remake to leave you feeling something much more basic (though not necessarily simple) and carnal.Eggers' Nosferatu is brimming with visual and tonal nods to F.W. Murnau's groundbreaking 1922 silent film. But through his new takes on the vampiric Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) and bedeviled housewife Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), you can feel Eggers tapping into the darkly sexual energy that made Bram Stoker's Dracula such a uniquely transgressive horror novel for the Victorian era. The new Nosferatu is arriving at a time when the idea of getting down and dirty with monsters has come much, much more into fashion - so much so that we've seen entire cinematic franchises built on the concept.Viewed through that lens, it's easy to look at Nosferatu as a story that's trying to speak to this moment in on-screen monster-fucking. But when I recently sat down with Eggers to discuss the movie, he told me that, as much as vampire tales might feel like manifestations of societal anxieties, channeling the zeitgeist wasn't at all his goal. As a lifelong Dracula fan fascinated by the way death and sexual desire define vampire mythos, Eggers knew that he wanted his Nosferatu to be as erotic as it was haunting. But Eggers also wanted his Nosferatu to feel like a decidedly feminist, macabre romance, which is why he took some inspiration from Emily Bronte.It was always clear to me that Nosferatu is a demon lover story, and one of the great demon lover stories of all time is Wuthering Heights, which I returned to a lot while writing this script," Eggers explained. As a character, Heathcliff is an absolute bastard towards Cathy in the novel, and you're always questioning whether he really loves her, or if he just wants to possess and destroy her."Nosferatu leaves you to ponder those same questions as it introduces Ellen, a perceptive woman whose brilliance is being stifled by the social mores of 19th-century Germany. Though Ellen desperately loves her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), he struggles to understand how years of being plagued by strange visions have left her convinced that the embodiment of death is stalking her. It's easier for Thomas and Nosferatu's other male characters like Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to dismiss Ellen's nightmares as delusions. But whenever Ellen goes to sleep, it is never long before a monstrous presence reaches out to her mind, urging her to let it inside.In Depp's tremulous Ellen, you can see traces of Mina Harker, the sole heroine in Stoker's novel, whose cleverness winds up being instrumental in Dracula's ultimate demise. But Eggers wanted this version of Ellen to feel like a woman who, despite understanding things on a very deep level, doesn't have the language to articulate her experiences." It was also important to him that this story emphasize how men's misogynistic preconceptions of women are a kind of monster in and of themselves.Ellen's husband loves her, but he can't understand these hysteric' and melancholic' feelings she's experiencing, and he's dismissive of her," Eggers said. The only person she really finds a connection with is this monster, and that love triangle is so compelling to me, partially because of how tragic it is." In the same way that Ellen knows that something is out there watching her as it stalks through the shadows, Count Orlok - a long-dead Transylvanian nobleman - can feel that there's something very special about Ellen. Much of the new Nosferatu's unsettling strangeness is crystallized in the pair's unusual psychic connection. It's alarming to see Ellen seize up and convulse in fits as her mind seemingly leaves her body. But there's also an increasingly orgasmic quality to the sound of Ellen's fits that immediately clues you into how, as scary as Orlok is, he also elicits something deeply pleasurable in some of his victims.More so than many other recent vampire stories, Eggers' Nosferatu leans into the fact that creatures like Orlok feast on the blood of the living because they themselves are very dead. Whatever magic it is that's brought Orlok back is impressive, but you would never mistake him for a model with a beating pulse. He's supposed to read as a reanimated corpse; a once-suave and debonaire one, but a corpse all the same.Because Nosferatu is a very horny love story, though, Eggers felt Orlok needed to be at least somewhat sexy in order to sell his raw magnetism and help the audience to know on some level that there's a beautiful man beneath all that makeup."In my mind, Orlok was definitely handsome when he was alive," Eggers said. I wanted him to have strong features, and for there to be a kind of beauty in his brows, cheekbones, and nose because those are the parts of himself that he can show a little bit of in the light to a house guest before they realize that he's actually rotting and falling apart." Nosferatu starts piling the horrors on as Orlok and Ellen's link strengthens. The air is already thick with death and fear as the film introduces Willem Dafoe's Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz and Simon McBurney's Herr Knock. It isn't long before the men start to understand just how endangered all of their lives are because of their proximity to Ellen. But Eggers also wanted Nosferatu's male characters to bring a bit of whimsy to the film, if only to help audiences deal with all the tension and appreciate how monsters can have senses of humor.Some of those scenes with Thomas and Orlok are definitely scary and intense, but they're also moments where Orlok is playing with his food," Eggers explained. When Louise Ford and I were editing those scenes, we would be in stitches at times because of how pithy Orlok is when you really pay attention."

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images In 2024, smart locks got better; in 2025, they're going to be truly great. Read the full story at The Verge.

The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition is the first hardware from the open-source smart home platform that's designed for voice control. | Image: Nabu Casa There's a new voice assistant in town, and this one can work locally in your home without phoning home to its corporate overloads. This week, the popular hobbyist smart home platform Home Assistant officially launched its first voice assistant hardware - Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition.Built for the open-source smart home platform, Voice PE costs $59 and brings a locally controlled, privacy-focused voice assistant to Home Assistant in a plug-and-play package. Once connected to Home Assistant, you can use voice to control any connected device, with commands such as Turn on the living room lights," Lock all the doors," Create a timer for 5 minutes," and many more.While Home Assistant users have been able to control their smart homes with voice using either Home Assistant's Assist on less capable third-party hardware or through the cloud by connecting to third-party services like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, this is the first dedicated Home Assistant voice hardware product.Voice PE is the culmination of Home Assistant's Year of the Voice, an effort from Nabu Casa, the organization behind Home Assistant, to let users control their homes locally, privately, and in their own language. It currently supports over 50 languages, compared to eight for Alexa and 20 for Google Assistant. Image: Nabu Casa The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. The Voice PE is a small white box, about the size of your palm, with dual microphones and an audio processor. An internal speaker lets you hear the assistant, but you can also connect a speaker to it via a 3.5 mm headphone jack for better-quality media playback.Out of the box, you can talk to Assist with the wake words Okay Nabu," Hey Jarvis," or Hey Mycroft."A colored LED ring on top of the Voice PE indicates when the assistant is listening. It surrounds a rotary dial and a physical button, which is used for setup and to talk to the voice assistant without using the wake word. The button can also be customized to do whatever you want (because this is Home Assistant). A physical mute switch is on the side, and the device is powered by USB-C (charger and cable not included). There's also a Grove port where you can add sensors and other accessories.Speaking of wake words, out of the box, you can talk to Assist with the wake words Okay Nabu," Hey Jarvis," or Hey Mycroft." If you want to get fancy, you can program a custom wake word.The assistant can run locally in your home without an internet connection on Home Assistant hardware (such as the Home Assistant Green hub), or it can use the Home Assistant cloud. According to Nabu Casa, the latter is faster and supports more languages. The company says your data is not stored on the cloud nor used for training.For those who don't like the idea of always-listening microphones in their home from companies such as Amazon and Google, but who still want the convenience of controlling their home with their voice, the potential here is huge. But it may be a while until Voice PE is ready to replace your Echo or Nest smart speaker.The Verge's Callie Wright, a Home Assistant superuser, has been testing the Voice PE for a few weeks. While they are impressed with its capabilities (although it had some trouble understanding them when there was background noise), they aren't quite ready to kick Alexa to the curb. I think Amazon's Alexa is still worth the privacy tradeoffs for me just because there are key things for me that Voice PE can't pull off," they say. But the progress Home Assistant has made in its Year of the Voice has been incredible, and I'm more hopeful than ever that that future is coming."While the intention is to surpass Big Tech voice assistants," Paulus Schoutsen, founder of Home Assistant, recognizes it's not there yet. Hence, Voice is launching as a Preview Edition. For some, the current capabilities of our voice assistant will be all they need, especially those who just want to set timers, manage their shopping list, and control their most used devices," says Schoutsen. For others, we understand they want to ask their voice assistant to make whale sounds or to tell them how tall Taylor Swift is - our voice assistant doesn't do those things... yet."In the meantime, if you want more features, Voice PE can connect to supported AI models, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, to fully replace Assist or use it as a fallback for commands it doesn't understand. But for many smart home users, there will be plenty of value in a simple, inexpensive device that lets you turn your lights on and off, start a timer, and execute other useful commands with your voice without relying on an internet connection.