The Verge

Fourth- and fifth-gen Echo Dots will soon be able to automatically adjust your lights for you using their built-in ambient light sensor and ultrasound motion detection. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Amazon Echo smart speakers are getting a new feature soon: automatic lighting. Smart lighting is one of the most popular use cases in the smart home, but it can be fiddly to set up and frustrating to control. With this new capability, Amazon is looking to make it as easy as just buying and screwing in a lightbulb.Later this year, with any compatible Echo or motion and ambient light sensor, Alexa will be able to automatically detect both brightness levels and activity in a room and intelligently decide whether to turn the lights on or off. The announcement came during an event held at Amazon's new headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and via a blog post on Amazon.com from Melissa Cha, VP of smart home at Amazon.The feature requires no... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amazon Alexa is getting Emergency Assist, a new feature announced during the company's 2023 hardware event that allows users to contact emergency services through their Echo device by saying, Alexa, call for help." The service costs $5.99 per month or $59 for an entire year.While Alexa can't contact 911 directly, it will connect users with an agent who can alert emergency services on their behalf. Additionally, users can pre-save essential information in the Alexa app, such as their home address, gate code, the medications they're taking, and any allergies they may have, which Emergency Assist will relay to first responders. The service will also inform responders which device the call was made from.

Image: Amazon Today, Amazon is introducing its latest streaming players, the upgraded Fire TV Stick 4K ($49.99) and Fire TV Stick 4K Max ($59.99). During the company's fall hardware event, Amazon's Daniel Rausch said both devices feature upgraded processors for faster performance compared to their predecessors.The standard Fire TV Stick 4K is 30 percent more powerful than the previous model, offers Wi-Fi 6, and 4K streaming along with broad HDR support for Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HDR10 Plus. The Max builds on top of that with Wi-Fi 6E and twice the storage (now 16GB) than the prior version. For a difference of just $10, I'm not sure who wouldn't opt for the Max over the regular stick, but not everyone needs those frills for all of their TVs, I... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More authors sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, joining other writers in pursuing legal action against generative AI companies for using their books to train AI models.The Authors Guild and 17 well-known authors like Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, and Jodi Picoult filed the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs hope to get the filing classified as a class action.According to the complaint, OpenAI copied plaintiffs' works wholesale, without permission or consideration" and fed the copyrighted materials into large language models.These authors' livelihoods derive from the works they create. But the Defendant's LLMs endanger fiction writers' ability to make a living in that the LLMs... Continue reading...

Image: CD Projekt Red I was genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed revisiting Cyberpunk 2077 as part of its major new update.I dutifully played through Cyberpunk 2077 in the weeks after its rocky December 2020 launch, but I always felt that it was aggressively fine. I loved sneaking through levels as a netrunner that stealthily hacked into enemies. But things like the cringey edginess that permeated nearly every line of dialogue, a clothes / gear system that forced me to look like an absolute clown to get the best stats, and even small details like a frustratingly zoomed-in mini-map all brought down the experience.Nearly three years in, a lot of those quibbles are now fixed, and after spending more than a dozen hours with the new update 2.0 and Phantom... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The iPhone 15 and 15 Pro have several features that aren't on past iPhones, and now we can add new battery information and control features to the list. As pointed out in this post by @Tech_Reve, a new section in the iOS 17 About" screen shows how many charge cycles your battery has been through as well as its manufacturing date and when it was first used (via MacRumors).Those on older phones still have third-party options like CoconutBattery for the Mac to get more information about the battery, but it would be nice to just, you know, have it already there. iOS Shortcuts are also an option for accessing this information, though Verge editor Dan Seifert says the one he's been using for years no longer works after updating his phone to... Continue reading...

Iterative updates aren't flashy, but these smartwatches are mainly for folks who don't have Apple Watches yet. Continue reading...

The Bambu A1 Mini. Hands-on: Bambu's first mini might show the future of consumer 3D printing. Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Businesses on Meta platforms will soon be able to purchase a blue check to get exclusive features and support.The expansion was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an event today. Earlier this year, the company announced Meta Verified for creators, a $12 per month subscription that gives creators a blue check and access to features like priority customer support and impersonation protection. Businesses can buy verification on Facebook or Instagram for $22 a month or $35 for both - an increase over creator pricing that ranges from $12 to $15. Testing on Facebook and Instagram will begin in the coming weeks, with WhatsApp to follow.Paying businesses will get similar perks as creators, including account security features and... Continue reading...

The Nikon ZF is the company's latest camera. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge After nine years of occasionally chasing the retro-camera-with-modern-features unicorn, Nikon may have finally gotten the formula right.The Japanese camera maker is announcing the Nikon ZF, a modern mirrorless camera packed with fairly high specs - like a 24.5-megapixel full-frame sensor, 299-point tracking autofocus with subject detection, in-body image stabilization, and dual card slots (of a sort) - in a body that looks just like one of the camera's analog forebears. Nikon may have done this dance before with its trifling ZFC and long-forgotten Df DSLR, but it's correcting its main mistakes with those cameras by giving the ZF a full-frame sensor and competitive price of $1,999.95 when it launches mid-October.While the Df may look a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge The Justice Department has removed access to publicly posted trial documents in US v. Google amid a dispute over how files should be made available online, according to reporter Leah Nylen of Bloomberg. Nylen, reporting from the courtroom, said that Judge Amit Mehta will make a decision in the morning on future online access to exhibits.The Big Tech On Trial newsletter reported more details of the exchange, which apparently occurred during an exchange between the Justice Department and Google over whether an exhibit could be submitted as evidence. Google's attorneys apparently raised the fact that the Justice Department had been posting documents online, a fact Mehta said he hadn't been aware of. (The Verge has linked to the now-removed... Continue reading...

Image: Roblox Roblox is now rolling out the ability for developers to create subscriptions that they can sell in their experiences, according to a forum post. The company announced in July that it was working on these tools, saying that they could help developers establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earning," and now developers can actually start to plan out their offerings.Roblox users won't be able to buy subscriptions just yet, however; that won't be possible until sometime in November, according to the post. When they can, users will pay for subscriptions in their local currency, but the money will make its way to developers as Robux, Roblox's on-platform currency.It's... Continue reading...

Screenshot from Vincent Zhong's iPhone 15 Pro review. In a recent interview with IGN, an Apple executive claimed that the iPhone 15 Pro was going to be the best game console." I was skeptical; although Apple boasted about the capabilities of its new GPU in its A17 Pro chip and said high-fidelity games like Resident Evil Village, the Resident Evil 4 remake, and Death Stranding would all be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro, I didn't believe they would run very well in practice.But after actually seeing footage of Resident Evil Village in action on an iPhone 15 Pro, I'm coming around to the idea that Apple's vision isn't as far out as I thought.You can see the game in a video from YouTuber Vincent Zhong, starting at 13:48. First, Zhang plays Village on the 15 Pro on a mobile game controller... Continue reading...

Is that a Charge 6 I see? | Image: Fitbit It's been a big day for Fitbit fans. On Tuesday morning, the Google-owned subsidiary started rolling out its new Fitbit app, and later in the day, it teased news on September 28th about a new Fitbit device.The news teaser is brief: it's a six-second video on X (formerly Twitter) showing a person swinging their arms and wearing a wrist tracker of some kind that looks a lot like something from the Charge family.A new Fitbit tracker crossed the FCC recently, so it's not a total surprise that Fitbit has something new in the works. 9to5Google reported last week that Fitbit is working on a Fitbit Charge 6 that will bring back the physical button, so the timing seems to check out for this new device being a new Charge. And the device in the... Continue reading...

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge Xbox chief Phil Spencer has just emailed Microsoft employees about the massive Xbox leak that happened earlier today. In the internal memo, obtained by The Verge, Spencer says Microsoft's Xbox plans were unintentionally disclosed" as part of the FTC v. Microsoft case. Documents revealed a lot: a disc-less Series X redesign, a 2028 Xbox that could deliver cloud hybrid games," a new Xbox controller, unannounced Bethesda games, and even discussions about acquiring Nintendo.Spencer hints that Microsoft's plans may have changed, particularly as some documents were from last year, but others were from years prior. I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are well over a year old and our plans have evolved," says Spencer... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The UK's Online Safety Bill is ready to become law. The bill, which aims to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online," passed through the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday and imposes strict requirements on large social platforms to remove illegal content. It will be enforced by UK telecom regulatory agency Ofcom.Additionally, the Online Safety Bill mandates new age-checking measures to prevent underage children from seeing harmful content. It also pushes large social media platforms to become more transparent about the dangers they pose to children, while also giving parents and kids the ability to report issues online. Potential penalties are also harsh: up to 10 percent of a company's global annual revenue. The bill has... Continue reading...

An object lesson in filial piety! | Illustration: The Verge; Image: Getty Images The lawyers who represent what's left of FTX filed suit against Sam Bankman-Fried's parents, saying they exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars." The point of the suit is to get that money back so it can be paid out to the people FTX owes.Before all this, Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman were already well-known and respected Stanford Law School professors. Last week, Bloomberg dropped a fascinating profile of the two of them.Fried has written extensively on questions of distributive justice, in the areas of tax policy, property theory and political theory," according to her Stanford profile. She also ran a donor network for Democratic... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge iFixit is dropping the repairability score on the iPhone 14. While the organization originally gave the phone a seven out of 10 to indicate high repairability, iFixit has lowered that rating to a four after taking into account parts pairing requirements that make fixing the device a hassle.When iFixit announced its score for the iPhone 14 last year, it said it was looking mainly at the repair-friendly design of the device. Unlike its other devices, Apple included a rear glass panel that you can pop off with basic repair tools, including a heating mat, suction handle, and an opening pick. While this design change was notable at the time, iFixit acknowledges that it missed the significant hurdles to repairability programmed within iPhones... Continue reading...

Image: Epic Games You can now apply to receive a refund from Fortnite maker Epic Games' $245 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC alleged that Fortnite players bought in-game goods on accident because of design tricks, and the two parties agreed to the settlement, which was announced as part of a broader $520 million settlement in December.You can visit www.ftc.gov/Fortnite to apply for the refund and learn more information. The FTC says that you can apply if any of the following is true:

Do you want some frittata? | Image: Toyota Research Institute Yeah, so Toyota Research Institute (TRI) used generative AI in a kindergarten for robots" to teach robots how to make breakfast - or at least, the individual tasks needed to do so - and it didn't take hundreds of hours of coding and errors and bug fixing. Instead, researchers accomplished this by giving robots a sense of touch, plugging them into an AI model, and then, as you would a human being, showing them how.The sense of touch is one key enabler," researchers say. By giving the robots the big, pillowy thumb (my term, not theirs) that you see in the video below, the model can feel" what it's doing, giving it more information. That makes difficult tasks easier to carry out than with sight alone.Ben Burchfiel, the lab's manager... Continue reading...

Image: TikTok TikTok is introducing a new way for creators to label content that was made using artificial intelligence tools. The feature was first spotted by users last month and was announced by TikTok today in a blog post.TikTok's user guidelines already require creators to disclose when content is made using AI tools. The new feature will prompt a creator to turn on the labeling feature so viewers know when videos and photos were created using AI software. The AI label appears below the username in the corner of videos. The prompt also includes a reminder that content could be removed if it's not disclosed that AI tools were involved. The company also says that, this week, it will begin testing a way to automatically label content as... Continue reading...