The Verge

Screenshot by Wes Davis / The Verge Google's Pixel launch event is next week, but the company can't stop the bleeding when it comes to leaks on product reveals. This latest leak gives us a peek at new Fitbit features included on the upcoming Pixel Watch 2, which leaker Evan Blass shared on X, the social platform previously known as Twitter (via 9to5Google).One of the leaked Pixel Watch 2 images shows support for Fitbit Sense 2's Body responses" feature, which is supposed to tell when you're feeling stressed. While the current Pixel Watch doesn't have the electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor that's required to enable this feature, it looks like the Pixel Watch 2 will come with it. EDA sensors measure minuscule amounts of sweat on your skin to detect when you're stressed... Continue reading...

Photo by Celal Gunes / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images The Supreme Court announced Friday that it would be taking up two major First Amendment cases, challenging a pair of Florida and Texas laws allowing states to control how large social media companies moderate content.The GOP-backed laws, both passed in 2021, make it illegal for social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to suspend or punish users in many cases, particularly in instances Republican lawmakers characterize as being biased against conservatives.Two tech industry trade groups, NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), challenged the laws in short order, accusing the states of violating the First Amendment by unlawfully instructing how private platforms moderate speech on their platforms.... Continue reading...

The ad-supported tier will cost $4.99 monthly. | Screenshot by Wes Davis / The Verge AMC Networks says it's introducing an ad-supported version of its AMC Plus streaming service. The plan will cost $4.99 per month and provide users access to the same content library as the $8.99 ad-free version.According to the press release, the service's light" ad load will be limited to less than five minutes per hour." Series and films included on AMC Plus include The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, Dark Winds, and Interview with a Vampire, as well as classics like Mad Men. The ad-supported version will also enable access to Shudder, Sundance Now, and IFC Films Unlimited.This ad-supported version of AMC+ gives consumers more flexibility while bringing ads to the only piece of our distribution ecosystem that wasn't already... Continue reading...

The special Photos Edition" of the new Show 8 costs extra to show your photos as the primary content." | Photo by Alex Cranz / The Verge Amazon is finally turning its Echo Show into a proper digital photo frame, but you have to pay extra for the privilege. Announced at its fall hardware event this week, the new Echo Show 8 Photos Edition costs $10 more than the standard edition of the new smart display but lets you make your photos the primary home screen content."The Show 8 Photos Edition is coming this Fall for $159.99 and has all the same features as the new Echo Show 8 (third-gen). But for the extra $10, you get a six-month subscription to Amazon's new PhotosPlus service, which enables this new enhanced photo mode."

Image: EA EA Sports FC 24 - or FC24, for short - is a huge release for Electronic Arts, launching today on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Switch. But you wouldn't necessarily know its importance from playing the new game. FC24 is the first title since the publisher's split from FIFA, the sport's global governing body, a chance for EA to break out on its own with one of the most popular franchises in gaming. But the game also feels like well, FIFA. Instead of a whole new franchise, it plays a lot like the one that came before it, with the kinds of updates and additions that are typical of an annualized sports game. It's not a jarring change if you've spent a lot of time with FIFA 23.This is not to say that FC24 is a bad game. I've mostly been enjoying... Continue reading...

Ring's flagship doorbell records in a square aspect ratio for a full porch view. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge One of the best video doorbells you can get is matching its all-time low price. The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2, the highest-end model offered by the Amazon-owned company, is on sale for $149.99 ($100 off) at Wellbots - matching its Lightning Deal price from the most recent Prime Day. If you're already invested in Amazon's smart home ecosystem, or if you don't mind allying your home with Alexa, Ring's wired Pro 2 offers excellent video quality in a helpful square format (for seeing more of your porch) with HDR, motion detection, and package detection. That last feature requires Ring's $3.99 per month service subscription, but it may be worth it if you often have packages landing at your front door.And coupling nicely with this deal is a... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge At this year's Code Conference, the CEO of one of the world's largest computer chip companies discusses competing with Nvidia's leading GPU, AI regulation, and the global supply chain. Continue reading...

Photo by Leonardo Munoz / VIEWpress New York City's delivery workers will get a significant pay bump after a judge rejected a request by Uber, DoorDash, and Grubhub to block the city's new minimum wage rules from going into effect.The ruling by New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne will allow the law to go into effect, which requires companies to pay gig workers a minimum wage of $17.96 per hour. That wage will rise to $20 an hour by 2025.Delivery worker advocates celebrated the ruling, claiming it puts them one step closer" to earning a living wage for their work. New York City has the largest delivery workforce in the country, comprised of at least 65,000 mostly undocumented immigrants who earn less than $8 an hour after expenses.

Image: Alvaro Bernis / The Verge This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer. Sign up here.Today, let's consider the implications of a truly profound week in the development of artificial intelligence and discuss whether we may be witnessing the rise of a new era in the consumer internet.I.On Monday, OpenAI announced the latest updates for ChatGPT. One feature lets you interact with its large language model via voice. Another lets you upload images and ask questions about them. The result is that a tool which was already useful for lots of things suddenly became useful for much more. For one thing, ChatGPT feels much more powerful as a mobile app: you can now chat with it while walking... Continue reading...

Apple may be forced to remove apps that haven't registered with the Chinese government from its App Store in the region. | Photo by Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images Apple is looking for ways to circumvent incoming legislation in China that would prevent the company from listing foreign apps on the iPhone App Store in the region unless they've been given government approval. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Apple has met with Chinese officials over the last few months to express concerns about how the new rules will be implemented and how the changes could affect its Chinese customers.In August earlier this year, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced that all mobile app providers in the country would be required to file business details with the government. The change would effectively close a prominent loophole in China's Great Firewall... Continue reading...

Lincoln Center's annual two-week lineup features new works from household-name filmmakers, as well as a strong slate of international debuts. Continue reading...

Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media On Wednesday evening, X CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared onstage at the Code Conference with frustration and protest. I think many people in this room were not fully prepared for me to still come out on the stage," she told interviewer Julia Boorstin, senior media and tech correspondent at CNBC.Yaccarino sounded rattled. She'd found out earlier in the day that Kara Swisher, a Code Conference co-founder, had booked a surprise guest to appear an hour before her: Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety. He has been an outspoken critic of the direction Elon Musk has taken the site.In his interview with Swisher, Roth recounted how Musk put him personally in danger. Musk suggested on Twitter that Roth had advocated for sexualizing... Continue reading...

That's a lovely blue on the Prologue. | Image: Honda Honda revealed that the upcoming 2024 Honda Prologue is expected" to get an EPA-estimated 300 miles of range on a single charge while announcing a slew of new specs for its first all-electric SUV. Built on GM's Ultium platform, it achieves this range thanks to the 85kWh battery inside, which is the same size as the Chevy Blazer EV.The two vehicles have many similarities inside and out, from the 121.8-inch wheelbase to the 11-inch driver instrument display. However, the official EPA range for Chevy's SUV is already known, at 279 miles on a full charge.Both the Prologue and the Blazer have Google built-in software, but Honda's EV includes the wireless Apple Carplay and Android Auto support that GM has decided its EVs will do without.H... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Executives from Microsoft and Apple met in 2020 to discuss a possible sale of Bing, according to a new report from Bloomberg. But the talks failed to progress beyond the exploratory phase, indicating that Apple's top brass - including Eddy Cue, who was involved in the meetings - never seriously pursued the idea.Testimony in the ongoing FTC antitrust suit against Google has made clear that Apple has never given much thought to replacing the leading search engine as the default on iPhones. Rather, Microsoft believes Apple has only raised the possibility to extract more money from Google to retain its spot. It is no secret that Apple is making more money on Bing existing than Bing does,'' Microsoft's Mikhail Parakhin said Wednesday in US... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nvidia's France offices were raided by the country's competition authority this week, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. While the French agency doesn't mention Nvidia by name, it confirms it carried out a raid over concerns about anti-competitive practices in the graphics cards industry.Sources tell the WSJ that French authorities specifically targeted Nvidia, which has seen demand for its chips skyrocket in recent months. Several companies, including Microsoft and OpenAI, have purchased thousands of the company's high-end AI chips to power large language models.That massive demand resulted in a lot more money for Nvidia. The chipmaker reported earning a record revenue of $13.51 billion in its latest report, marking a... Continue reading...

Image: Spotify Spotify is rolling out auto-generated podcast transcripts to more creators in the coming weeks, the company announced Thursday.The text transcripts will also be time-synced so listeners can visually follow along as a podcast episode progresses. Transcripts are available by scrolling down below the podcast player and tapping into a read along" section. A transcription of a show makes the podcast more accessible to users and allows listeners to skip around and skim an episode without listening through.Spotify says millions" of podcast episodes will get the tool, and in the future, creators could add media to transcripts - a useful feature if a creator is describing an image on the show, for example.Beyond transcripts, mobile... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google just announced it's giving website publishers a way to opt out of having their data used to train the company's AI models while remaining accessible through Google Search. The new tool, called Google-Extended, allows sites to continue to get scraped and indexed by crawlers like the Googlebot while avoiding having their data used to train the company's present and future AI models.The company says Google-Extended will let publishers manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs," adding that web publishers can use the toggle to control access to content on a site." Google confirmed in July that it's training its AI chatbot, Bard, on publicly available data scraped from the web.Google-Extended is... Continue reading...

Journalism and other fields are dealing with a new wave of tools like Google Bard. | Image: Google The arrival of generative artificial intelligence has accelerated the use of AI in different fields, including journalism. AI is most visible in journalism when things go wrong. Some newsrooms have published AI articles riddled with errors or offensive suggestions. There's widespread anxiety that AI will be used to replace journalists on the cheap. But a new global survey demonstrates the ways that AI has worked its way into the business, even as journalists worry about its implications - and they don't just involve writing articles.The report was published this week by JournalismAI, an initiative from Polis, the London School of Economics and Political Science's journalism think tank. It is supported by the Google News Initiative.... Continue reading...

On Wednesday, Meta didn't announce an obvious killer app alongside the $499 Meta Quest 3 headset - unless you count the bundled Asgard's Wrath 2 or Xbox Cloud Gaming in VR.But if you watched the company's Meta Connect keynote and developer session closely, the company revealed a bunch of intriguing improvements that could help devs build a next-gen portable headset game themselves.Graphics - look how far we've comeThis is the obvious one, but it's also stunning to see just how much better the same games can look on Quest 3 vs. Quest 2. A lot of that's thanks to the doubled graphical horsepower and increased CPU performance of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, though there's additional RAM, resolution per eye, and field of view as well: ... Continue reading...

Google's Jamboard software and the hardware are both shutting down starting October 1st, 2024. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge It's never a dull day at the Google graveyard - the company has blogged a Workspace update today announcing the end of its collaborative Jamboard whiteboarding software. Google plans to wind down the app in late 2024 and is introducing the next phase" of whiteboarding solutions: pointing users toward third-party apps that work with Workspace services like Google Meet, Drive, and Calendar.Google says it will offer support to help transition customers to use other whiteboard tools, including FigJam, Lucidspark, and Miro. According to the blog post, Workspace customer feedback indicated the third-party solutions worked better for them thanks to feature offerings like an infinite canvas size, use case templates, voting, and more. So... Continue reading...

Image: Creative Assembly / Sega Sega is canceling the live-service shooter Hyenas before the game's launch. Sega announced the news in a press release, stating the cancellation was due to the lower profitability of the European region." In addition to Hyenas, Sega will also cancel other unannounced in-development projects.Hyenas was billed as a live-service extraction shooter that looked similar to the Payday games. However, instead of robbing banks for cash, players in Hyenas would steal high-value collectibles, some of which were based on various video game properties, including a Sonic the Hedgehog doll or an Atari 2600.Hyenas was apparently a source of friction within Sega. During a quarterly earnings call back in August, Sega executives said they were... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Last night, former President and current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump appeared before a crowd in suburban Detroit and tried out his new attack lines against electric vehicles.EVs are too expensive, the former president argued (via The Detroit News); they don't have enough range and will spur American job losses. EV batteries were another target. They get rid of them," Trump said, according to Discourse Blog, and lots of bad things happen, and when they're digging it out of the ground to make those batteries, it's going to be very bad for the environment." But those trying to protect the environment by promoting EVs are environmental lunatics," he said.His comments were the latest attempt to make electric vehicles a major... Continue reading...

College basketball player Lyric Swann poses in the official Nerfball gear. | Photo: Hasbro Here's Nerfball, the first official sport' from the company behind the blasters. Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Bloomberg reports that Fortnite developer Epic Games is expected to lay off 16 percent of its workforce.In a statement from Tim Sweeney, Epic has confirmed the layoffs will impact around 830 employees. He wrote that the company intends to divest from Bandcamp - an independent music storefront company Epic acquired just last year - and spin off SuperAwesome, a kid-tech" company that specializes in creating safe online experiences for kids. He also explains that the layoffs are a result of the company spending way more money than we earn." Notably, Sweeney does not apologize to his employees for making the business decisions that have resulted in the disruption of over 800 lives, saying only that his optimism" that such spending would... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge SpaceX has won its first contract with the US Space Force to provide satellite communications via Starshield, Bloomberg reports. Announced last December, SpaceX describes Starshield as a secured satellite network for government entities," offered alongside its civilian-focused Starlink satellite internet service. Bloomberg notes that the Starshield services will be provided over SpaceX's existing Starlink satellites.The existence of the one-year contract was confirmed to Bloomberg by Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek, who said it was awarded on September 1st. Under the deal, SpaceX will provide Starshield end-to-end service via the Starlink constellation, user terminals, ancillary equipment, network management and other related... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge After years of back-and-forth battling between Fortnite publisher Epic Games and Apple, the gaming company filed a writ of certiorari asking the US Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling in their antitrust case. Epic has argued that Apple unfairly monopolizes the mobile app space with iOS and its in-app purchasing system, thereby making billions on commissions.Epic is asking the Supreme Court to review its case by way of clarifying points of antitrust law that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals relied on in making its ruling in April. On Thursday, Reuters reported Apple has filed an argument asking the Supreme Court to throw out the order from the lower courts that requires changes to its App Store rules.The companies' beef... Continue reading...

Two of these case makers guessed right, two did not. Between Apple no longer making leather products and the utter disappointment of the new FineWoven case, there's more opportunity this year for third-party iPhone case makers than perhaps ever before. But for a lot of manufacturers, the new Action Button in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max is throwing a big old wrench into their plans.Over the past week, I've received case samples from a number of companies, and it's clear which ones bet correctly on the Action Button's existence and which ones hedged their bets a little too hard on Apple sticking with the traditional ringer switch. Some brands, such as Nomad and MOFT, bet that Apple would replace the ringer switch with a button this year and designed their cases accordingly: there's a... Continue reading...

Apple You might think that it would take a lot of effort to make Henry Cavill look like a huge dork, but the first trailer for Apple TV Plus' new meta spy comedy Argylle from director Matthew Vaughn proves that all it takes is a velveteen sweater and an unforgiving trip to SuperCuts.Rather than focusing entirely on its namesake himself, Argylle tells the story of how reclusive spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is suddenly pulled into the very legit world of espionage after a criminal organization realizes that the plot of her book series is somehow matching up eerily closely to their latest nefarious plan.Despite creating Argylle (Cavill) - a lantern-jawed operative with a widow's peak situation so high and tight you'd think it... Continue reading...

Reddit says most users shouldn't see a noticeable difference after the update is live. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is removing the ability for some users to opt out of ad personalization based on their activity on the platform. Announced on Wednesday alongside several incoming updates to its privacy, advertising, and location settings, Reddit's head of privacy, Jutta Williams, justified the change by saying that Reddit requires very little personal information" from its users and that it would allow the company to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you."Williams contends that the vast majority of Reddit users will see no change to their ads," and users who had previously opted out of ad personalization will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers." The updates to the platform's... Continue reading...

You can get God of War Ragnarok for free if you pick up a PS5 before October 20th. | Image: Santa Monica Studio We're now less than a month away from the release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Thankfully, if you have yet to pick up a PlayStation 5 and need a refresher as to what all the fuss is about, Sony is offering a terrific deal on its flagship gaming console through October 20th.Right now, Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Spider-Man Remastered are among the many games you can download for free when you pick up a disc-based PS5 or the PS5 Digital Edition at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, or GameStop. There are 12 games to choose from in all, including notable console exclusives like God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Returnal, The Last of Us Part I, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and the excellent Demon's Souls remake from 2020.To take... Continue reading...

Ive (pictured) has been brainstorming ideas for the device with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. | Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media Apple's former chief design officer, Jony Ive, is reportedly in discussions with OpenAI to build the iPhone of artificial intelligence," aided by over $1 billion in funding from Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son. According to a new report by the Financial Times, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is looking to use Ive's design firm LoveFrom to develop OpenAI's first consumer device, with the duo having discussed what such a product would look like during brainstorming sessions at Ive's San Francisco studio. News of the venture was first reported by The Information on Tuesday.According to three people familiar with the plan, Ive and Altman are aiming to create a device that provides a more natural and intuitive user experience" to interact with artificial... Continue reading...

Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge Despite doubts that the Raspberry Pi 5 would launch this year, the latest version of the microcomputer has arrived with some notable upgrades at a $60 starting price. Not only is it supposed to perform better than its predecessor but it's also the first Raspberry Pi to come with in-house silicon.Powering the brain of the Raspberry Pi 5 is a 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor that runs at 2.4GHz, allowing for two to three times the performance boost when compared to the four-year-old Raspberry Pi 4. The device also comes with an 800MHz VideoCore VII graphics chip that the Raspberry Pi Foundation says offers a substantial uplift" in graphics performance.I got to try out the device for myself. While I didn't have time to do much... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge California Northern District Judge Jeffrey White partially denied (PDF) Apple's request to dismiss a proposed federal class action lawsuit over Apple Pay, reports Reuters. Three credit unions argued Apple violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by charging too much in processing fees and being too exclusionary by not letting other digital wallets access its NFC-scanning hardware.The judge agreed with the credit unions' argument that because QR code payment apps (like Venmo) lack Apple Pay's convenience and functionality, and it's too expensive to switch to Android, iOS tap-to-pay is a market unto itself. And Apple is the only player in a certain market that would have other competition if not for that little NFC reader detail that makes it... Continue reading...

Adobe says it no longer has plans for a free-to-use version of the online photo editing software. | Image: Adobe After almost two years in beta, Adobe's Photoshop on the web service - a simplified online version of the company's desktop photo editing app - is now generally available starting Wednesday, September 27th. According to information Adobe shared with The Verge, Photoshop on the web is launching with the popular Generative Fill and Generative Expand tools that were recently released for the desktop version of Photoshop.Powered by Adobe's Firefly generative AI model, these features are available for commercial use and allow users to quickly add to, remove from, or expand an image using text-based descriptions in over 100 languages, all while matching the original image's lighting conditions and perspective. Image: Adobe... Continue reading...

A comparison of Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat' and Vincent Van Gogh's Self Portrait with Grey Felt Hat' | The Pokemon Company, the Van Gogh Museum If the Pokemon Company's video teasing its upcoming collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum was already enough to have you thinking about booking a ticket to Amsterdam, the promise of an impressionistic Pikachu promo card might just do the trick.In celebration of the Van Gogh Museum's 50th anniversary, it has teamed up with the Pokemon Company for a special event designed to introduce young artists to Van Gogh's work, and to teach people about the way he was profoundly influenced by Japanese art.This collaboration will allow the next generation to get to know Vincent van Gogh's art and life story in a refreshing way," the Van Gogh Museum's general director Emilie Gordenker said in a press release. The Van Gogh Museum and The Pokemon... Continue reading...

Jim Ryan, the head of PlayStation and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, is stepping down. In a press release on Wednesday, Sony announced that Ryan will retire in March 2024, while Sony Group Corporation president and chief operating officer Hiroki Totoki will take on the interim CEO role starting April 1st, 2024.After 30 years, I have made the decision to retire from SIE in March 2024. I've relished the opportunity to have a job I love in a very special company, working with great people and incredible partners," Ryan says in a statement. But I've found it increasingly difficult to reconcile living in Europe and working in North America. I will leave having been privileged to work on products that have touched millions of lives... Continue reading...

Disney CEO Bob Iger foreshadowed the move last month. | Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images Starting on November 1st, Disney Plus will begin restricting password sharing. In Canada.The company announced the change in an email sent to Canadian subscribers. Disney has not provided many details on how it plans to enforce this policy - its email merely states that we're implementing restrictions on your ability to share your account or login credentials outside of your household". The announcement reads more like a strong finger-wag than anything else: You may not share your subscription outside of your household," reads the company's updated Help Center.A new account sharing" section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that the company may analyze the use of your account", and that failing to comply with the... Continue reading...