The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile has begun notifying customers that it's hiking their rates by as much as $5 per line per month. The company's help account on X confirmed the price increase, telling one person that it was adjusting prices to respond to rising costs." Reports suggest the hike applies to older plans, including One, Magenta, Magenta 55 Plus / Military, and Simple Choice, but the full extent isn't known.T-Mobile told employees that it is notifying the small fraction of customers" who are affected by the change today, May 22nd, according to an internal document and slides published by The Mobile Report. The company added that the increases, which are either $2 or $5 depending on which plan customers are on, will show up on their next bill as... Continue reading...

Image: Entertainment Weekly / Netflix A new actor, but the same white wig. We already knew that Liam Hemsworth was taking over as Geralt of Rivia in Netflix's adaptation of The Witcher, replacing Henry Cavill. But now we have our first (official, anyway) look at the actor in the role, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly. And he looks like, well, Liam Hemsworth with Geralt's iconic white hair. It's not clear if the shift between actors will be referenced in the show itself, but this early image makes it seem like the transition might be relatively seamless.Here's how he looks in motion:Cavill exited the role following season 3 (though it wasn't the most fitting send-off). Hemsworth will take up the wig and double swords starting in season 4 - which is currently in production... Continue reading...

Here are a few examples showing how Spotify Mix can be changed to suit different playlist covers. | Image: Spotify Spotify's latest update is visibly changing the audio streaming service to improve the experience for your eyeballs, rather than your ears. Spotify Mix - the company's new bespoke typeface - is being rolled out starting today, replacing the Circular typeface variant that Spotify currently uses across its app and desktop experiences.The confusing name is an homage to the dynamic and evolving nature of audio culture over the years," according to Spotify's global head of brand design, Rasmus Wangelin. Spotify Mix was developed in collaboration with Berlin-based foundry Dinamo Typefaces, with Wangelin saying the new variable font design is quite literally, a remix" born from merging elements from a variety of different typeface styles.... Continue reading...

Nothing's official just yet, though. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The Samsung Galaxy Ring might end up costing around $300 to $350. As far as smart rings go, that's par for the course. It might also come with a monthly subscription of $10 or less. That, unfortunately, is also increasingly common for wearable tech.None of this is official yet. The rumored prices were posted by leaker Yogesh Brar on X and have been making the rounds in the hours since. But say it were true, it mostly shows that Samsung is looking to follow market trends rather than buck them.Right now, the Oura Ring Gen 3 is the smart ring that most people have heard of. That starts at $299, with the fully round Horizon version starting at $349. And while you can buy the ring as a standalone device, the vast majority of its features... Continue reading...

A level 2 ChargePoint station might attract new guests to this Airbnb location. | Image: ChargePoint Airbnb is partnering with ChargePoint to provide hosts a discounted option to buy, install, and manage a home EV charger that can help attract EV owners as guests.Airbnb hosts can purchase these special EV charging packages through a new dedicated online store that offers the charging hardware, installation services, and support services, all in one place. Hosts will get up to 36 percent off the cost of select ChargePoint hardware models, with prices starting at $399. There's also discounts on other stations, and $100 off on installation services through the site.The first 1,000 hosts to buy a home charger from ChargePoint will also get an early bird discount of $200, courtesy of Airbnb. It could be a helpful incentive since Level 2... Continue reading...

The Panasonic Lumix S9 is a new $1,500 full-frame camera that comes in four colors. LUTs. The people want LUTs! Or at least that is what Panasonic thinks with its new $1,500 Lumix S9. The S9 is a full-frame, interchangeable lens, mirrorless camera that has most of the guts of the Lumix S5 II, but with a new slimmed-down body and a dedicated LUT" button on the back. The LUT" button on the S9 is located above the articulating screen. A LUT, which stands for Look Up Table," is a way to alter the color or look of an image via a mathematical formula. In the most basic terms, you can think of it as a fancy way to say filter." And the New Lumix S9 can internally store up to 40 different LUTs, though one is reserved for a permanent V-log to 709 LUT.Using the new Lumix Labs app, you can make custom... Continue reading...

Walmart's Onn Google TV 4K Pro streaming box (pictured) already supports the feature. | Image: Walmart A useful perk has been included in the latest Android update for Google TV that should make it easier to find missing remotes. Android Authority reports that the beta release for Android 14 for TV - announced during last week's Google I/O conference - contains references to a new find my remote" feature.One text string found within the update reads as follows:

Images: OneXPlayer Steam Deck, ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go a bit too simplistic for you? The OnePlayer X1 Mini is the most gadget-y handheld yet. The upcoming 8.8-inch, 144Hz Windows gaming tablet has:

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images A Wisconsin software engineer was arrested on Monday for allegedly creating and distributing thousands of AI-generated images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).Court documents describe Steven Anderegg as extremely technologically savvy," with a background in computer science and decades of experience in software engineering." Anderegg, 42, is accused of sending AI-generated images of naked minors to a 15-year-old boy via Instagram DM. Anderegg was put on law enforcement's radar after the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children flagged the messages, which he allegedly sent in October 2023.According to information law enforcement obtained from Instagram, Anderegg posted an Instagram story in 2023 consisting of a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With Microsoft's new Surfaces leading a wave of Copilot Plus PCs powered by Arm chips that could reshape our expectations of Windows laptops, you might be wondering: do they game?We'd already seen a few examples, like Baldur's Gate 3 and Control - but at Build, Microsoft and Qualcomm just revealed a new website with far more examples. WorksOnWoA.com has apparently already tested 1,481 games on the Surface Laptop and other devices with Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chips, and it lets you search to see whether your game of choice falls into one of four categories: Perfect," Playable," Runs," or Unplayable."Here's what each of those terms mean, according to Linaro, the Arm engineering group that built the website and counts... Continue reading...

The wireless Yale Keypad Touch provides fingerprint and key code access for the new Yale Approach lock and several August smart locks. | Image: Yale August makes excellent smart locks, but careful observers may have noticed that the company hasn't released any new hardware in four years. Owners of August locks may be relieved to know that a new wireless keypad finally brings them the option of fingerprint unlocking.The Yale Keypad Touch is a fingerprint-enabled wireless keypad for Yale and August retrofit locks that works with the fourth-gen August Wi-Fi Smart Lock, third-gen August Smart Lock Pro, third-gen August Smart Lock, and the new Yale Approach Lock with Wi-Fi. In addition to fingerprint and code unlock, it offers one-touch locking on your way out. It's available now for $109.99 at ShopYaleHome.com and August.com.That's a steep upgrade for those who already have an August... Continue reading...

A chunky electric spoon for your chunky low-sodium foods. | Image: Kirin If you're cutting salt out of your diet, either for medical reasons or just trying to be healthy, low-sodium foods can be a letdown. But don't despair - Japanese company Kirin claims to have a solution in its Electric Salt Spoon, which uses electrodes to electrify your tongue to give you a little salty shock.The idea, as Reuters puts it, is that it passes a small electric current to concentrate sodium ion molecules on the tongue," enhancing salty flavor. It's like techno-umami. The company says the goal is to get people to eat healthier by letting them eat low-sodium food without being sad about how unsalty it is. Image: Kirin Kirin partnered with Professor Homei Miyashita from Japan's Meiji University School of... Continue reading...

Recall, one of Windows' new AI features, on a Surface Laptop. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft's new Windows on Arm push is a milestone moment. It's taken nearly five years to get to the point where the software maker is confident it has the upper hand over the MacBook Air on performance, battery life, and app compatibility.But behind the scenes, Microsoft has been working on something even bigger. While Microsoft has spent years working toward an Arm transition that will now play out throughout the summer and beyond, it's the AI overhaul at the heart of this new generation of Copilot Plus PCs" that could fundamentally change how we use Windows on a daily basis.I recently got the chance to hear from the leaders behind Microsoft's big AI push, and they made it clear that this isn't just a silicon change. Microsoft has... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is adding a new Advanced Paste feature to PowerToys for Windows 11 that can convert your clipboard content on the fly with the power of AI. The new feature can help people speed up their workflows by doing things like copying code in one language and pasting it in another, although its best tricks require OpenAI API credits.Advanced Paste is included in PowerToys version 0.81 and, once enabled, can be activated with a special key command: Windows Key + Shift + V. That opens an Advanced Paste text window that offers paste conversion options including plaintext, markdown, and JSON.If you enable Paste with AI in the Advanced Paste settings, you'll also see an OpenAI prompt where you can enter the conversion you want -... Continue reading...

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge You can already beam your flat Windows desktop and its VR games onto your Meta Quest headset - but what if Windows could send HoloLens-like 3D apps and digital objects to the headset, too?At Build, Microsoft has just announced Windows Volumetric Apps on Meta Quest," a way to extend Windows apps into 3D space."Details are slim, but the company showed off a digital exploded 3D view of an Xbox controller from the perspective of a Meta Quest 3 headset, a digital object you could manipulate with your hands - and says it took its software partner Creo a single day to bring that interactive visualization to Quest. Screenshot: Microsoft Screenshot: Microsoft Microsoft says devs can sign up for the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Here's one more way to stay on top of your favorite programming projects: have them sync to the same File Explorer you already use to navigate your hard drive in Windows.At Build, Microsoft now says it's adding native version control to File Explorer by integrating systems like Git, letting you see new changes and comments directly from the app. Image: Microsoft Here's a cropped and zoomed version of the provided screenshot so you can get a better look: I wonder if this would also let non-programmers keep the latest copies of a project they like synced to their hard drive. I can think of a few projects I like where that'd come in handy.Microsoft says it's also letting File Explorer natively... Continue reading...

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft launched a range of Copilot Plus PCs yesterday that includes new AI features built directly into Windows 11. Behind the scenes, the company now has more than 40 AI models running on Windows 11 thanks to a new Windows Copilot Runtime that will also allow developers to use these models for their apps.At Microsoft Build today, the company is providing a lot more details about exactly how this Windows Copilot Runtime works. The runtime includes a library of APIs that developers can tap into for their own apps, with AI frameworks and toolchains that are designed for developers to ship their own on-device models on Windows.Windows Copilot Library consists of ready-to-use AI APIs like Studio Effects, Live Captions Translations,... Continue reading...

The stylish Sonos Ace come in black and white. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge At long last, the eagerly anticipated Sonos Ace have arrived. On Tuesday, the company announced that its first pair of wireless headphones will be available on June 5th. Even better, you can already preorder them ahead of launch for $449.We're still testing the Sonos Ace, but in our limited time playing around with them during a recent demo session, we came away impressed. The plush noise-canceling headphones are exceptionally comfortable to wear, with magnetic ear pads made of vegan leather and a memory foam headband. Plus, if you own a Sonos soundbar, you can quickly transfer TV audio from the soundbar to the headphones with a push of a button, allowing for a more immersive audio experience nobody else can hear.Of course, we have... Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Like parent company Disney, Pixar is now laying off employees as part of Bob Iger's big plan to get the company's spending under control.According to Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter, Pixar is laying off 175 staffers - 14 percent of its workforce - as it shifts its focus back to projects meant for theatrical rather than streaming releases. These layoffs come months after Disney began dismissing employees by the thousands in an effort to reduce spending by around $5.5 billion. Though Pixar was never guaranteed to be shielded from the layoffs, it was able to avoid them last year due to production schedules that were already in place at the time.In a memo sent to staff on Tuesday, Pixar president Jim Morris stressed that the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google only just rolled out AI summaries in search results - and now they're getting ads. In an update on Tuesday, Google says it will soon start testing search and shopping ads within AI Overviews for users in the US.In the example shared by Google, the search engine's AI overview lists a response to the question: how do I get wrinkles out of clothes?" Beneath the AI-generated suggestions, there's a new Sponsored" section with a carousel showing wrinkle spray you can buy from places like Walmart and Instacart. GIF: Google Google says it will display ads in AI Overviews when they're relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview." Advertisers that already run certain campaigns through Google... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Expect a bunch of new developer tools to go along with Microsoft's fresh Copilot Plus PCs announcement. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft Edge will soon offer real-time video translation on sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Coursera, and more. As part of this year's Build event, Microsoft announced that the new AI-powered feature will be able to translate spoken content through both dubbing and subtitles live as you're watching it.So far, the feature supports the translation of Spanish into English as well as the translation of English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. In addition to offering a neat way to translate videos into a user's native tongue, Edge's new AI feature should also make videos more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.Edge will also support real-time translation for videos on news sites such as Reuters, CNBC, and B... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft announced a new version of its small language model, Phi-3, which can look at images and tell you what's in them.Phi-3-vision is a multimodal model - aka it can read both text and images - and is best used on mobile devices. Microsoft says Phi-3-vision, now available on preview, is a 4.2 billion parameter model (parameters refer to how complex a model is and how much of its training it understands) that can do general visual reasoning tasks like asking questions about charts or images.But Phi-3-vision is far smaller than other image-focused AI models like OpenAI's DALL-E or Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. Unlike those models, Phi-3-vision doesn't generate images, but it can understand what's in an image and analyze it for a... Continue reading...

Photo by Monica Schipper / Getty Images for IMDb To understand Jane Schoenbrun and their new film, I Saw the TV Glow, you have to appreciate how Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolved in its second season. Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge We've heard the story so many times, that this is the time that Windows on Arm will work and we'll get a revolution in powerful, portable, long-lasting PCs. For a decade, the story has been fiction. This time, though... I don't know. It sort of seems real.On this episode of The Vergecast, Tom Warren joins from Seattle to tell us all about Microsoft's latest event, what a Copilot Plus PC is, how the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop feel, why Recall could be the AI killer app Microsoft needs, and more. If Microsoft is right about how good the Qualcomm X chips are, this could be one of the biggest weeks in Windows history. Don't forget to subscribe to Notepad!After that, Kylie Robison comes on the show to talk about all things OpenAI.... Continue reading...

Image: Sonos Sonos is refreshing its small portable speaker, the Roam, with a second-generation model that mostly adds some minor quality-of-life improvements. It's reasonable to think of the new Roam 2, available today for $199, as more of a Roam 1.5: this is really what Sonos should've released in the first place.As I reported earlier this month, the Roam 2 can be used right out of the box like any other Bluetooth speaker. That differs from the original, which awkwardly required an initial setup process with the Sonos app - on your home Wi-Fi network, no less - before you could use it on the go. Seems silly for a portable audio product, right? Thankfully Sonos now agrees.The Roam 2 also gains a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button on the back,... Continue reading...

The company's app redesign fumble threatens to steal the thunder from what otherwise looks (and feels) like a strong debut in a new category. Continue reading...

The Aqara Wall Outlet H2 can trigger scenes based upon real-time power usage. | Image: Aqara Aqara just announced the 39.99 Wall Outlet H2, which offers a one-for-one smart replacement for standard 16A wall sockets used in Europe. Its party trick is the ability to monitor the real-time power usage of connected devices and appliances to initiate automations around the home.For example, if you charge your phone when going to sleep you could automatically activate a nighttime scene - arm motion detectors, lock the door, close blinds, and turn off lights - just as soon as the H2 begins pulling more than 10W of power. Or, it can detect when the laundry cycle ends to shut the machine off and send you a notification - that way you don't have to listen to it beep incessantly until you finally walk upstairs with heavy regret for having... Continue reading...

Photo by Nathan Congleton / NBC via Getty Images Scarlett Johansson says that OpenAI asked her to be the voice behind ChatGPT - but that when she declined, the company went ahead and created a voice that sounded just like her. In a statement shared to NPR, Johansson says that she has now been forced to hire legal counsel" and has sent two letters to OpenAI inquiring how the soundalike ChatGPT voice, known as Sky, was made.Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system," Johansson writes. She says that Altman contacted her agent as recently as two days before the company first demoed the ChatGPT voice asking for her to reconsider.