The Verge

In another sign generative AI has pierced through mass consciousness, Dictionary.com has added generative AI, GPT, and LLM to its list of words.It also expanded the definition of hallucinate in the context of generative AI, where it means to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present the information as if it were true.The site, which also runs Thesaurus.com (aka my best writing friend), announced 566 new entries and 348 new definitions for the fall of 2023 as the dictionary works to keep pace with the ever-changing English language."Other new words or expanded definitions include nepo baby (a celebrity with a famous parent), jawn (something or someone that doesn't need a specific word), biohacking... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is rolling out a new feature to Google Workspace customers: the ability to lock Google Drive files.While a file is locked, no one with any level of access can make edits, comments, or suggestions; essentially, it's in read-only mode until you unlock it. The company wrote in a blog post announcing the change that file locking started rolling out to Rapid Release domains yesterday and will do so over the next 15 days, while those on Scheduled Release domains will start seeing it on September 20th, also with a 15-day rollout period.Restricting a file in Google was already something you could do with the Google Drive API or through file approvals - a similar feature that lets you, say, request approval for a draft that's locked... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is trying out games as its next experimental offering. The company is adding a new Playables" section on the site that will include games that can be played on both the desktop website and mobile devices. Playables will only appear for a limited number of users to start," and there was no list of game titles published at this time.9to5Google reports that one of the games to grace the new YouTube Playables experiment includes Stack Bounce, which involves a 3D ball bouncing on top of rings you must smash through with well-timed clicks. If you've heard of the game before, it's because Google already offers it on its minigames service, GameSnacks.To check if you're included in the games experiment, look for a new Playables"... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Polestar has found another product to slap its logo on, and it's not an electric car.The Swedish-based, Chinese-owned EV maker will launch its own smartphone in December, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath told CNBC at the IAA Mobility auto show in Munich, Germany, this week. The phone will be produced by Xingji Meizu, a smartphone company owned by Polestar's parent company, Geely.It doesn't sound like this will be an attempt to challenge China's major smartphone makers like Apple and Oppo. Rather, this will become a way to highlight all the ways in which Polestar's technology-packed cars are basically just computers on wheels, Ingenlath told the network.It doesn't sound like this will be an attempt to challenge China's major smartphone... Continue reading...

Image: Sonos The Sonos Move 2 will be released on September 20th for $449, the company announced this morning. I've already reported extensively on the new product, which is Sonos' third portable speaker after the original Move and much smaller Roam. There are several meaningful improvements to the second-generation Move: it will output stereo audio (the original was only capable of mono), offer more than twice the battery life of its predecessor, and the speaker has redesigned controls that match those of the recent Era 300 and Era 100.The external design is very similar to the original Move. This is still a hefty portable" speaker, but at least there's still a built-in handle for carrying it around your home (and outside). Inside the Move 2 are... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I'm not going to lie: it sucks that Disney Plus is going to increase the price of its ad-free plan next month. But today, Disney softened the blow somewhat. First, the company introduced a new ad-free Disney Plus and Hulu plan for $19.99 per month, which is about $12 cheaper than buying both separately. And now - even better - Disney's offering a good Disney Plus deal.Through September 20th, new and eligible returning subscribers can get three months of Disney Plus (with ads) for $1.99 per month instead of $7.99 a month. Altogether, that's $18 in savings, which is kind of like getting two months free.Again, though, the deal just applies to the ad-supported tier - which isn't increasing in price. Still, it's a good deal, even if you... Continue reading...

AMD's latest GPUs will put even more pressure on Nvidia's RTX 40-series pricing. Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Roku will be laying off 10 percent of its employees - more than 300 people - in its third round of workforce cuts in under a year. As reported by Variety, Roku revealed the move in an 8-K SEC filing early on Wednesday and says it made the decision in an effort to reduce operating expenses.The company determined to implement additional measures to continue to bring down its year-over-year operating expense growth rate," the filing reads. Roku said these measures will include consolidating office space, cutting back on outside expenses, and limiting new hires - the typical steps companies take in these moments.Roku has had three rounds of layoffs in under a yearRoku expects the workforce reduction" to be largely complete by the end... Continue reading...

The investigations should take a maximum of five months. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple and Microsoft have managed to temporarily prevent iMessage and Bing being subjected to obligations under the EU's strict new Digital Markets Act. Instead, the European Commission announced on Wednesday that it's opened four market investigations into Bing, Edge, Microsoft Advertising, and iMessage, to determine whether they should be designated as "core platform services" under the DMA.The DMA - one of several new EU laws designed to restrict the power of tech companies and help create a level playing field - creates a host of new obligations for large tech companies. Messaging services like iMessage are required to offer other companies some level of interoperability if they're deemed to be big and important enough. Bing would be... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft MSI has started issuing BIOS updates to fix Windows 11 Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) unsupported processor" errors that started appearing with its Intel 700 and 600 Series motherboards last month. Microsoft initially investigated reports of errors that appeared after the latest KB5029351 update, and MSI now confirms it has found and fixed the source of the problems.MSI had been issuing updates for its 600 and 700 series motherboards in preparation for Intel's upcoming 14th Gen desktop CPUs, codenamed Raptor Lake-S Refresh. These BIOS updates were marked with a support next-gen CPUs" update note, which clearly introduced the BSOD problem.The BSOD will only appear with the latest Intel componentsMSI and Intel found the root cause of... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is holding a special OneDrive event on October 3rd where the company plans to offer a sneak peek at our AI plans" for the cloud storage service. The future of file management" event will be live streamed on Microsoft Teams and looks like it will include a redesigned OneDrive interface, alongside new AI-powered search and sharing features.Join Jeff Teper and the OneDrive product team as they showcase the next generation of file management across Microsoft 365," reads Microsoft's announcement of the OneDrive event. We'll give a sneak peek at our AI plans which include new search, sharing, and information queries across all your files in OneDrive." Image: Microsoft Microsoft's OneDrive teaser. The... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Waymo is using insurance data to make the case that its self-driving cars are safer than human drivers. The report, a result of the collaboration first announced last year between the Alphabet-owned company and the insurer Swiss Re, is intended to show how driverless vehicles crash less often and damage less property than human-driven vehicles.Waymo's data comes at a time of increased scrutiny of self-driving vehicles after California regulators voted to dramatically expand the ability of robotaxi companies to operate in San Francisco despite warnings from city officials about driverless vehicles blocking roads and delaying emergency responders.The study compares Waymo's liability claims data with those claims filed by human drivers... Continue reading...

A graphic showing the companies and services being designated as gatekeepers. (Click here for higher resolution image.) | Image: European Commission The European Commission has officially confirmed which tech companies, and which of their services, count as gatekeepers" under its strict new Digital Markets Act (DMA). The companies listed all appeared on a provisional list released in early July, and mostly consist of American tech giants. There's Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft from the US, plus ByteDance from China. 22 core platform services provided by gatekeepers must now comply with the DMA's obligations by March 2024.Broadly, the DMA is the EU's attempt to rein in the market power of Big Tech by opening up entrenched platforms and curbing ecosystem lock-in and anti-competitive behavior, making them compete on the merits of their products and services alone. Major... Continue reading...

Image: Ultimate Ears Where do you go next after branding your speakers with names like the Boom, Megaboom, Hyperboom, and Wonderboom? Well, apparently the natural progression has led Ultimate Ears to none other than Epicboom." That's the new speaker that the company just announced today. It's a chunky device that gives off more of a Sonos Move aura as opposed to UE's signature cylindrical Bluetooth speakers. Priced at $349.99, the 4.36-pound Epicboom promises 360-degree audio output from its 4.6-inch woofer and two high-frequency 45mm transductors.This speaker is rated IP67 against dust and water - that's a win over the Move's IP56 rating and means you can submerge it for up to 30 minutes - and it'll last for 17 hours of playback on a charge, the company... Continue reading...

A composite of images from Google's Pixel 8 Pro simulator. | Images: Google If you had any remaining questions about what the Pixel 8 Pro looks like, Google is here to answer them. The company has put online a 360-degree simulator that lets you turn the device over back to front and top to bottom, with helpful indicators pointing out where various sensors and ports are located. The simulator shows the phone in three colors and confirms that the Pixel 8 Pro will be getting a new temperature sensor on the back beside the cameras.The simulator was spotted by Jose Ruben and highlighted by Mishaal Rahman, who both posted about it on X. Google doesn't appear to have published a link to the website - but all you have to do is plug the new phone's name into the URL of Google's other Pixel simulators, and the new phone... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple has struck a deal with the chip design company Arm that goes past 2040, as reported by Reuters. A disclosure noting the arrangement appeared in new documents Arm filed as part of its planned IPO.The statement about the deal doesn't have much additional detail. We have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing our longstanding relationship of collaboration with Apple and Apple's access to the Arm architecture," Arm said in the document. But given how much Apple relies on Arm's designs for the custom chips powering its most popular and profitable products, like the iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch, in addition to the upcoming Vision Pro, it signals that Apple plans to continue... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google usually celebrates its birthday on September 27th for no particularly obvious reason, but for its 25th anniversary, the company's getting out ahead - with CEO Sundar Pichai kicking off celebrations" with a 2,400-word public memo reflecting on where the company's been.There's very little in here that will surprise anyone who's heard Pichai speak at length, and... it's mostly brags, which makes sense. But I expect you'll want to hear what the second-highest paid CEO of the world's fourth-most valuable company has to say in this moment of transition!Before I present the whole memo, here are a few passages that caught my eye:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hot on the heels of the EU forcing Microsoft to stop bundling Teams into Office in Europe, Zoom's CEO is suggesting that the US Federal Trade Commission might want to look into doing the same stateside.Bloomberg reports that Zoom CEO Eric Yuan made the remark at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in response to a question about Microsoft unbundling Teams in Europe. The unbundling comes after EU regulators opened an investigation in July in response to a complaint by Slack, another Teams competitor that Microsoft more or less crushed by adding Teams to Office 365 for no additional cost. You should ask this question to the FTC as well," Bloomberg quotes Yuan as saying.He's got a point about bundling! Vox Media... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The attorneys general from all 50 US states want lawmakers to establish a commission dedicated to investigating the impact of AI on child exploitation, as reported earlier by The Associated Press. In a letter to Congress, the attorneys general say that the proposed commission should come up with solutions to prevent the creation of AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM).As outlined in the letter, the attorneys general point out that bad actors can train an AI using images of abused and non-abused children to create deepfakes while also animating new and realistic sexualized images of children who do not exist, but who may resemble actual children." The letter adds that readily available AI tools make this process easier than... Continue reading...

GIF by DeckButtons Would you spend $40-$60 on artisan buttons for your Steam Deck? What if they were cast by hand from custom resin molds, made by just one guy in the USA?I imagine it would depend on how they look - but thankfully, they look amazing. GIF by DeckButtons Such shimmer. Today, Greg Leddy is following up his TouchProtect touchpad and button skins and custom-painted ColoredControllers with the new DeckButtons.com, a shop where he exclusively sells buttons and D-pads for your Steam Deck. Each one is cast in a custom two-part silicone mold of his own design, itself created from a master button he 3D prints from resin, hand-sands, and finishes to emulate the Steam Deck's own slightly sandy shell texture.Leddy sent me... Continue reading...

Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple's upcoming App Store for its Vision Pro headset will include all compatible iPhone and iPad apps by default." In an update on Tuesday, Apple said it will release the new App Store with the developer beta of visionOS this fall.Both iPad and iPhone apps will appear alongside visionOS apps in the new App Store. As Apple has said previously, it will automatically import iOS and iPadOS apps to its new mixed reality operating system with no additional work required." Developers can still optimize their apps if needed.By default, your iPad and/or iPhone apps will be published automatically on the App Store on Apple Vision Pro," Apple notes. Most frameworks available in iPadOS and iOS are also included in visionOS, which means... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon will charge $1.99 per delivery for in-garage deliveries that used to be free if the customer wants to get them made outside of their designated weekly Amazon Day," as described in an update to Amazon's blog post. Screenshots of in-app notifications posted on X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit by subscribers note the new policy kicks in starting on October 4th.Amazon spokesperson Amanda Gan confirmed the new policy and said in an email to The Verge, We will change the free default option for Amazon Key In-Garage Delivery to Amazon Day with Key Delivery. Customers will have more flexibility and control over their Amazon deliveries using Amazon Day with Key Delivery, including the ability to choose their delivery day and combine... Continue reading...

Getty Images Nintendo's going to let us figure out who the next voice of Mario is on our own. In an interview with IGN, Nintendo of America's president, Doug Bowser, said that the company doesn't plan on revealing Charles Martinet's replacement until folks roll credits on Super Mario Bros. Wonder.I think people have recognized this when they see Super Mario Bros. Wonder, they'll hear a different voice," Bowser told IGN. And we'll let that play out and that'll be within the credits, and people will learn who the new person is at that point in time, but we don't plan to make any announcement in advance of that."Last month, Nintendo announced that Martinet, the longtime voice of video games' most iconic character, would be stepping back from the... Continue reading...

Image: Maxon Cinebench, the classic benchmark test that PC enthusiasts (not to mention Verge laptop reviewers like myself) use to measure the CPU performance of their devices, has gotten a major update, developer Maxon announced. The main thing to know is that the new release, dubbed Cinebench 2024, will introduce GPU benchmarking. This is a feature that Cinebench hasn't had since version 15, which came out a decade ago.The way Cinebench has worked in the past, for those unfamiliar, is that it renders an image over and over for a set period of time and measures how quickly your hardware can do it. Interestingly, it looks like Cinebench will use the same image (Maxon calls it a consistent scene file") for both CPU and GPU testing. This means you'll... Continue reading...

Animated Neelix! | Image: CBS Studios CBS Studios just announced Star Trek: very Short Treks, a set of five animated shorts from Casper Kelly (the Too Many Cooks" guy). The first of them will debut this Friday - Star Trek Day - in honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek: The Animated Series. You can catch the (brief) trailer below.The shorts will feature characters from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, The Original Series, Discovery, and The Lower Decks. Animation styles visible in the trailer run the gamut from indistinguishable from The Animated Series" to just the regular Lower Decks style."After the first episode (Skin a Cat") launches Friday, the rest will follow on Wednesdays, starting on September 13th; they'll stream on StarTrek.com and the Star Trek... Continue reading...

Apple's latest iPad Mini is one of many Labor Day deals still kicking around. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Labor Day may mark the unofficial end to summer and the beginning of the school year for many students, but it's also one of the last big sales weekends before the holiday shopping season ramps up ahead of Black Friday (and Amazon's next not-Prime Day event).Thankfully, if you didn't get a chance to cash in on the Labor Day sales over the weekend, there are a number of deals still available. We've combed through the various Labor Day sales and promos still on offer, compiling a list of the best deals here. Not every item is on sale for its best price to date, but there are some solid deals available on a range of quality, Verge-approved devices and accessories you can't go wrong with.Earbud, headphone, and speaker deals

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge This summer, Google began rolling out its new Topics API, which allows a browser to share information with third parties about a user's interests while preserving privacy." A part of Google's new Privacy Sandbox, the API is supposed to replace the third-party cookies that have been following us around for many years now, reporting where we go and what we buy, among other info.The Topics API was included in July's Chrome 115 release, and if you don't have it yet, you will soon. If the idea of sharing information about your interests with third parties doesn't thrill you, you can easily turn it off. Here's how:In Chrome, start at the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. (Or just... Continue reading...

Meta didn't build those massive offices in the Bay Area just for them to sit empty, you know? | Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Starting today, Meta's offices are going to be full again. The company has been saying since June that any employee assigned to an office - which means anyone not formally designated as a remote employee - will be required to be in that office at least three days a week. Now, CNBC reports that the mandate has gone into effect.Over the last three years, Meta went through the same cycle of remote work as an increasingly large number of other tech companies. When the pandemic began, the company found it was surprisingly productive even with everyone at home, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others began to wax poetic about the remote and distributed future of work. Zuckerberg himself estimated that in the next decade, we could get to about... Continue reading...

Image: Larian Studios You're gonna be spending a lot of time down, down, down by the river. Continue reading...

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit's moderator purge could have real impacts on reliability and information safety as it rushes to replace mods with inexperienced, poorly vetted volunteers, according to Ars Technica. With testimony by both expelled former moderators and some of those who replaced them, Ars Technica's report shows the trouble with the company's push to quickly replace the mods who sent their subreddits dark, marked them NSFW, or turned them into jokey John Oliver fan forums earlier this year.Reddit began removing protesting moderators in June and said it would continue doing so until morale improves unless subreddits opened back up. Since then, Reddit has been trying to replace those it's expelled.The Ars Technica piece lists several examples... Continue reading...

Larian Studios The companions in Baldur's Gate 3 have redefined the term player-sexual," or the idea that a character's romantic and sexual orientation are firmly and solely fixed on the player. Usually, in a game that allows you to romance other characters, it takes a moment for the sparks to really start flying. There's a general buildup of flirtations before you get to have a romantic interlude with your chosen somewhere around a game's climax. (See what I did there?)In Baldur's Gate 3, there is so little time between the initial I like you" and visiting Boning's Gate that a whole speedrun category has been developed around getting to a sex scene as quickly as possible, with the world record currently sitting at two minutes and four seconds.... Continue reading...

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images On the heels of the Labor Day weekend, United Airlines briefly issued a nationwide ground stop order, citing a systemwide technology issue." The order was lifted around 10 minutes later.We are experiencing a systemwide technology issue and are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights that are already airborne are continuing to their destination as planned. We will share more information as it becomes available," the airlines said in a tweet on X (formerly Twitter). Thank you for your patience as we work on a resolution to get you on your way as soon as possible."United did not immediately provide any details about why it issued a ground stop and how it was able to lift it so quickly.

Not our finest moment. | Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge Baldur's Gate 3 sounds like a fantastic single-player experience. I wish I'd tried that instead of playing with my closest friends!This isn't about difficulty: I fully expected to be beaten, shot, stabbed, and otherwise destroyed for taking on enemies too fast. I just wish developer Larian had designed a multiplayer experience that gave me the first freaking clue what's going on.Want to make sure you don't miss an important conversation that might determine the course of the game? Better make sure you're watching your companions' character portraits on the left of the screen like a hawk! At any moment, they might click on something or walk somewhere that triggers a cutscene, and a tiny conversation indicator is the difference... Continue reading...

I, too, charge my devices in a blank void of solitude. | Image: Nomad After toying with lower-cost magnetic Qi wireless charging for a minute, Nomad is back on its proper MagSafe charger kick. The premium accessory maker is announcing a new multi-charger that's meant to charge your iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch all at once and look good doing it.Nomad's Base One Max 3-in-1 is a $170 MagSafe charger that can simultaneously fast-charge a compatible iPhone at 15W (hey, it's fast for an iPhone, okay?), an Apple Watch, and a set of AirPods or other wireless earbuds with Qi charging built into their case. The 3-in-1 weighs a hefty 1.7 pounds (755 grams), comes with a detachable 6.6ft / 2m USB-C cable, requires a 30W power adapter (not included), and comes in black or silver colors that can both be ordered... Continue reading...

Oh, hey, a strawberry. | Photo by Wes Davis / The Verge Niantic has a new Pikmin AR experiment for your mobile browser, called Pikmin Finder, that lets you pluck pikmin from any old place and send them off to collect treasure for you (via Nintendo Life). It's basically a cute, distilled version of 2021's Pikmin Bloom, and unless you're just hopelessly charmed by Shigeru Miyamoto's imaginary garden creatures, it's only good for a couple minutes of diversion. And the only official acknowledgment that it exists appears to be a support article.Niantic has had trouble lately, so it's not a surprise this was released so quietly. Between summer layoffs, a studio closure, and a lawsuit alleging internal sexual bias, the beleaguered company hasn't put its best foot forward lately. Niantic has a lot... Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo It's September, so naturally, it means it's time to announce all the holiday video game bundles. And as inevitable as Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You" being the number one song in America in October, Nintendo is releasing yet another Mario Kart 8 Deluxe holiday bundle.This non-Switch OLED bundle comes with three months of Nintendo Switch online. But, if you want all the extra courses and characters added over the years, like Birdo, Kamek, and Petey Piranha, you'll have to purchase the Booster Course DLC for $25 or sign up for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack at $50 for a year's subscription.This year, Nintendo's also offering an Animal Crossing: New Horizons bundle for the Switch Lite. (Remember that game? It... Continue reading...

The camera isn't much bigger than the E-mount itself. | Image: Sony Sony's got a teeny-tiny new box camera that's small and light enough to be sent into the sky on a drone, and it's packing the high-resolution 61-megapixel full-frame sensor of its A7R V camera.The Sony ILX-LR1 is a new E-mount full-frame mirrorless camera that's only a bit larger than an average deck of playing cards and weighs just half a pound, yet it has the latest Bionz XR processor and supports 4K video up to 60 fps. That's an incredibly small package for a lot of imaging output, but it also lacks an electronic viewfinder, a screen of any sort, a standard handgrip, and even a battery. This $2,950 camera, expected to launch in December, is tailor-made for flying on high-end drones and specialty industrial uses - like surveying and... Continue reading...

The gap between the keyboard's two halves gives you so much room for activities (or a trackball). | Image: ZSA Ever wonder what it might feel like to be an astronaut who's concerned about avoiding carpal tunnel while working their nine-to-five desk job? Now there's a keyboard to help you live that fantasy.ZSA is today releasing another Space Age-looking mechanical keyboard: the $365 Voyager. Like the similarly priced Moonlander Mark I before it, the ZSA Voyager is a split ergonomic keyboard. It's designed to relieve some wrist and shoulder stress by allowing you to type with your hands further apart than traditional boards, fine-tune the height and tenting angle of each side, and reduce the overall amount of movement necessary to type. But what's unique to the Voyager is just how short and compact it is for an off-the-shelf keyboard.The... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft will finally stop forcing Windows 11 users in Europe into Edge if they click a link from the Windows Widgets panel or from search results. The software giant has started testing the changes to Windows 11 in recent test builds of the operating system, but the changes are restricted to countries within the European Economic Area (EEA).In the European Economic Area (EEA), Windows system components use the default browser to open links," reads a change note from a Windows 11 test build released to Dev Channel testers last month. I asked Microsoft to comment on the changes and, in particular, why they're only being applied to EU countries. Microsoft refused to comment.Microsoft has been ignoring default browser choices in its... Continue reading...