The Verge

Image: Nintendo Even though he doesn't speak, in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Mario says more than he ever has in any game previous. Beyond his wahoos" and okey dokeys," this Mario has a real personality, facilitated by a suite of power-ups and Nintendo's meticulous attention to detail. Though we've seen a bit of this new personality in the movie, the Mario in Wonder is the most expressive I've ever seen him, reinventing a character that has largely remained a blank-ish slate for the last 30 years.Wonder's positive reviews will undoubtedly make it a staple on every game of the year ballot. As my colleague Andrew Webster wrote, Wonder manages to pull from classics like Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, while firmly updating the formula with a... Continue reading...

The mobile app isn't for everyone, but for one insomniac, Pikachu and Snorlax made a big difference. Continue reading...

X's community notes feature isn't doing much to prevent the spread. | Illustration: The Verge The vast majority of viral misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war being posted on X (formerly Twitter) is being pushed by verified users, according to a recent study by NewsGuard - a for-profit organization that rates the trustworthiness of news sites. After analyzing the 250 most-engaged X posts between October 7th and October 14th that promoted incorrect or unverified information relating to the war, researchers at NewsGuard found that verified X accounts were behind 74 percent of it.The 250 posts analyzed within the study promoted one of 10 false or unsubstantiated war narratives identified by NewsGuard, including claims that CNN had staged footage of its news crew under attack in Israel, and videos claiming to show Israeli or... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Slack is retiring its status account on X that previously shared updates about issues and outages on the platform, the company announced on Thursday. We made the decision to retire the @SlackStatus account in order to consolidate our communications around incidents and focus resources on those most widely used by our customers," Kevin Albers, VP of customer experience at Slack, said in a statement to The Verge.The account was a useful way to be notified when Slack was investigating problems, especially for those of us at The Verge who end up writing about those issues. (It was also a good account to monitor with TweetDeck - which is now called XPro and is only available to paying X Premium subscribers.) If you want to keep tabs on... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The war in Israel presents content moderation challenges for the most popular social media sites. Continue reading...

Photo by Steven Ferdman / Getty Images Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is among a group of authors suing Meta, Microsoft, and other companies over the use of their work in building AI tools.In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Huckabee and other authors including Christian writer Lysa TerKeurst allege that their books were pirated and used in datasets that trained AI models. EleutherAI, an artificial intelligence research group, is also named in the suit, as is Bloomberg.The proposed class action suit is the latest example of authors alleging tech companies used their work without permission to train generative AI models. Over the past several months, a string of popular authors including George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and Michael Chabon have sued OpenAI for copyright... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Amazon, Microsoft, and India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country's federal enforcement agency, have announced a major crackdown on tech support fraud.The CBI's post details two instances where scammers pretended they were customer support agents for two well-known multi-national companies" (Amazon and Microsoft) through pop-ups that falsely appeared to be security alerts" from the companies.Through their scheme, the scammers would get people to call a toll-free number to one of their call centers, take over a user's computer remotely, convince users of the pretense of non-existing problems," and make them pay hundreds of Dollars for unnecessary services" while impersonating as workers for Amazon and Microsoft.M... Continue reading...

Amazon's paper mailers. | Image: Amazon Amazon is fulfilling a small part of its promise to switch from using plastic bubble mailers and air pillows to all recyclable paper packaging for its shipments. The company announced that it has outfitted one facility in Euclid, Ohio, with an upgraded packaging machine that can automatically fold custom-fit boxes to wrap some products, use paper mailers for small items, and slide in paper fillers instead of plastic ones in standard boxes.Amazon's efforts to switch to nonplastic materials come after the company's promise in July to cut out plastic mailers in favor of recyclable alternatives. Non-padded paper mailers are largely not as durable as plastic ones, but Amazon says it developed paper rolls that can stretch, seal with heat,... Continue reading...

Image: OpenAI OpenAI is launching wider availability of its latest text-to-image generator. On Thursday, the company is giving ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers access to the new DALL-E 3 model that works within the ChatGPT app. OpenAI says it has prepared a safety mitigation stack for the model that makes it ready for an expanded release.DALL-E 3 was first announced last month, and OpenAI showed how it improved upon the previous DALL-E 2 by allowing users to leverage ChatGPT to write longer and more visually descriptive prompts for them to feed the image generator. DALL-E 3 was added to Bing Chat and Bing Image Generator, making Microsoft's platform the first to introduce wider public access to the model - even before ChatGPT.The advertised... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge 23andMe is investigating reports of a new data leak involving millions of user records. On Wednesday, TechCrunch reported that a hacker claims to have leaked 4 million genetic profiles belonging to people in Great Britain, along with the wealthiest people living in the U.S. and Western Europe."The hacker, who goes by Golem," is the same one that stole 1 million lines of genetic data from 23andMe earlier this month, according to TechCrunch. Golem posted this latest round of data on the hacking site BreachForums.Katie Watson, the vice president of communications at 23andMe, tells The Verge the company was made aware" that the same hacker claims to have leaked another trove of what they claim is customer information. We are currently... Continue reading...

Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Autonomous vehicle operator Cruise, which is backed by General Motors, will launch a robotaxi service in Japan by 2026. It's another sign that GM does not intend to back down from its commitment to get driverless cars in more cities as rapidly as possible.Japan would be Cruise's second international market, after Dubai. The announcement is being portrayed as a possible answer to the country's driver shortage, which has been exacerbated by Japan's aging population. Cruise currently operates robotaxis in several US cities and has said it plans to launch in 12 more in the years to come.Japan would be Cruise's second international market, after DubaiGM made the announcement alongside Honda, which has a three-year-old partnership to... Continue reading...

The OnePlus Open finds a happy medium between the Pixel Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 5 size-wise, but it's too close in price to the incumbent foldables. Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Discord is overhauling the way it moderates its platform with a new warning system and teen safety assist feature. Both are part of a round of feature additions coming to Discord in the coming months, including an in-app shop for Discord members, a new Midnight dark theme on mobile, and new ways to launch apps.The new Discord warning system has been totally revamped to be far more transparent, educating Discord users how they've broken rules and are restricted from parts of the service rather than permanently banning them. The new system gives users more room to learn from their mistakes and correct misjudgments," explains Savannah Badalich, Discord's senior director of policy, in a briefing with The Verge. We're moving away from... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Images PayPal co-founder, venture capitalist, Republican megadonor, and disputed vampire Peter Thiel may also have been an FBI informant - at least according to a new report from Insider.Insider spoke to multiple people who claim Thiel became a confidential human source" for a Los Angeles-based agent named Johnathan Buma - a term that indicates a long-running relationship with the FBI, allegedly beginning in 2021. While Thiel was once a high-profile supporter of former President Donald Trump, a subject of multiple FBI investigations, the deal is said to have excluded any information about Thiel's domestic political contacts. Insider says it focused instead on foreign contacts and Silicon Valley intrigue," potentially including foreign... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Commission is formally requesting information from Meta and TikTok on how they're handling illegal content and disinformation related to the war in Israel. The inquiry comes as part of the European Union's newly enacted Digital Services Act (DSA), which holds large online platforms legally accountable for the content posted to them.Both platforms have until October 25th to respond to the Commission's request. From there, the Commission will evaluate their responses and assess next steps."Under the terms of the DSA, the Commission can impose fines of up to 6 percent of a company's global turnover if they're in violation of the rules. The Commission can also impose fines for incorrect, incomplete or misleading information... Continue reading...

YouTube has not yet announced a release date or name for the AI voice cloning tool. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is currently developing an AI-powered tool that allows users to replicate the voice of famous musicians while recording audio, according to a new report by Bloomberg. The video streaming giant has reportedly approached music companies to obtain the rights to train its new AI tool on songs from their music catalogs. No deals have yet been signed by any major record label, but Bloomberg's sources claim that discussions between parties are currently ongoing.YouTube unveiled several new AI-powered tools for creators last month, including AI-generated photo and video backgrounds and video topic suggestions. According to Bloomberg's report, YouTube had hoped to include its new audio cloning tool among those announcements but was... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Douglass Mackey, a Twitter user who posted memes and misinformation throughout the 2016 election, was sentenced this week to seven months in prison. Mackey was originally charged in early 2021, was convicted in March of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote, and faced up to 10 years in prison.Mackey, who was known as Ricky Vaughn" on Twitter, spent the months leading up to the 2016 election posting misinformation to his more than 58,000 followers and working with other Twitter users to figure out how to swing the election in favor of Donald Trump. Most of what Vaughn and others posted was just memes, and most of the activity was free speech covered by the First Amendment.But one of Mackey's tactics crossed a different... Continue reading...

The HyperX Cloud III Wireless in all-black (left) and its Cloud II predecessor in black and red (right). | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge The HyperX Cloud III Wireless gaming headset just came out in the summer, but it hasn't gone on sale at all until very recently. The wireless headset for PC, PlayStation, and the Nintendo Switch is selling for $149.99 ($20 off) at Amazon and direct from HyperX. It may look a lot like the last-gen model, but the Cloud III Wireless has made some huge gains in the battery life department. It offers up to 120 hours of use with its 2.4GHz wireless dongle - a dongle, mind you, that also has improved range and a USB-C plug with included USB-A adapter.Overall, the Cloud III is an upgrade over the Cloud II in just about every way. Our own Sean Hollister came away impressed by it in his hands-on time with the new headset, noting that there are... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing three cryptocurrency companies - Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group (DCG) - over claims they misled investors, leading to the loss of over $1 billion. In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, James says their alleged fraudulent schemes affected over 230,000 investors.The lawsuit targets Gemini, the crypto exchange owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and its Earn program. The firm marketed Gemini Earn as a high-yield program that involved customers investing with Genesis Global Capital, which is owned by DCG. However, James alleges that Gemini knew investing with Genesis was risky and misled customers as a result.

If you're an urban-dwelling electric vehicle owner, your public charging options are often limited to slow AC chargers found in tight parking spaces that are too small for typical DC fast chargers. Now Gravity, the company that started an EV taxi fleet in New York City in 2021, designed a compact and super fast DC charging system for big dense cities that can reduce your charging time from hours to just minutes.Gravity's system includes small dispenser boxes that the company calls Distributed Energy Access Points," which can be mounted above or in front of a parking spot and deliver up to a ridiculously high 500kW of energy. That compares to DC fast charging stations from other companies, which have larger stall units and max out at... Continue reading...

Here's something to stop you from hiding your tired face in early morning meetings. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A highly requested feature, according to Google, is finally being introduced in Google Meet that allows users to apply beauty' effects during video calls. Announced in a Google Workspace update on Wednesday, portrait touch-up is currently rolling out to Google Meet on mobile devices for early adopters, with an extended rollout to remaining accounts scheduled to begin on October 28th. Google said it also plans to bring the portrait touch-up feature to Google Meet on the web by the end of 2023."There are two portrait modes available that provide different levels of complexion smoothing, under-eye lightening, and teeth whitening. Subtle" mode, as the name suggests, provides very light cosmetic adjustments, while Smoothing" mode is a... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp is beta testing the ability to send voice messages that can only be listened to once by their intended recipient, WABetaInfo reports.The feature, which is currently only available to a limited number of Android and iOS users running the beta version of the app, is reportedly accessible by tapping a small 1" icon that appears to the right of the voice note waveform when recording. After sending the voice note with the view once mode enabled, you won't be able to listen to it and the recipient can no longer listen to the voice note after dismissing it," WABetaInfo reports.The Meta-owned messaging service already has a similar View Once" feature for photos and videos that it launched in 2021, so it makes sense it would expand... Continue reading...

Solar panels, part of renovations done under the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, sit on the roof of New York City Housing Authority's Ocean Bay Apartments in New York, NY. | Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Biden administration on Thursday announced $100 million in funding to make low-income homes in the US more energy efficient and resilient to climate change. It will also start taking applications Thursday for a new credit program aimed at making it more affordable for low-income communities to install small solar and wind projects. Both programs are funded through the Inflation Reduction Act.New technologies like heat pumps and solar panels that can save energy, lower utility bills, and prevent greenhouse gas emissions often come with a hefty price tag initially. While costs tend to drop over time with greater adoption, this usually leaves low-income households last in line. These programs aim to flip that on its head by offering... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge If you use two different WhatsApp accounts, you'll soon be able to access both from just one device. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that WhatsApp is rolling out the ability to switch between accounts on Android, and you won't need to lug around an extra device or continuously log out of your account to be able to do so.This new feature should make it easier to manage your conversations across multiple accounts, like if you have one WhatsApp account for work and another for messaging friends and family members. It's rolling out in the coming weeks.Meta notes that you'll still need a separate phone number and SIM card (or a phone that accepts multi-SIM or eSIM) if you want to set up a second account. You'll also need the... Continue reading...

The Ayaneo Flip DS. | Image: Ayaneo Boutique handheld gaming company Ayaneo has announced the Ayaneo Flip DS - a 7-inch 120Hz handheld gaming clamshell with a second screen that's clearly inspired by the Nintendo DS, and might let it play games like one too.According to Liliputing's Brad Linder, who deserves kudos for calling out the company's attempt to plant a leak," both the Flip DS and a similar Flip KB will be powered by AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U. That's the same chip that's in practically every other flagship Windows gaming handheld at the moment, including quite a few from Ayaneo itself. Image: Ayaneo The Ayaneo Flip DS... Image: Ayaneo ...vs. the Ayaneo Flip KB. While that AMD chip sounds like overkill for Nintendo... Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo Stay up to date on Mario's latest adventure. Continue reading...

The Hydro Flask Tracker lets you find your fancy water bottle. | Image: Nomad If you're in the club of people who spend too much money on water bottles (hey, no judgments - I own a $90 water bottle), you probably get irrationally upset when you can't find it. To keep that from happening, phone accessories maker Nomad has a new solution: the Hydro Flask Tracker. It consists of a small disc with a pocket just for your Apple AirTag - but Nomad is counting on you to provide the rest of what you need to track your water bottle: a Hydro Flask bottle (32oz or 40oz), an AirTag, and a Hydro Flask Medium Flex Boot.That's right: it's an accessory (the Tracker) for you to put an accessory (AirTag) in so you can put those accessories (the Tracker and the AirTag) inside the accessory (Flex Boot) for your accessory (Hydro... Continue reading...

Here's what broadcast channels will look like. | Image: Meta Meta's broadcast channels," previously available for Instagram and WhatsApp, will be coming to Facebook and Messenger in the coming weeks," according to a Meta blog post. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also shared the news in a post from his personal Facebook account.Broadcast channels function a bit like giant but limited group chats. A creator can invite their followers and then blast things like voice notes, polls, text posts, videos, and photos to anyone who joins. Channel members receive notifications whenever the creator drops content.Specifically, these channels will be available for Pages on Facebook, and they're in testing now. Those who manage the official page for a celebrity or a company, for example, will be able to start a channel... Continue reading...

Tesla Cybertruck prototype. | Image: Tesla The Tesla Cybertruck finally has a delivery date, according to a company post on X (formerly Twitter). Along with its third quarter earnings today, Tesla announced the long-delayed Cybertruck electric pickup will have its first deliveries during an event on November 30th at the company's Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. The company is also expected to announce pricing then, which was originally pegged at $39,900 when first announced in 2019.On Tesla's Q3 earnings call Wednesday evening, CEO Elon Musk said he wanted to temper expectations" as production ramp-up for Cybertruck will be extremely difficult. Musk says Tesla is targeting a quarter million Cybertrucks per year in the future, but that won't happen until after 2024, and confirmed... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla continues to see its margins slip due to price cuts. Today the company reported earnings of $1.9 billion in net income on $23.4 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2023. The figures represent a small bump in revenue, from $21.4 billion the same time last year, but a big dip in profits, falling from $3.3 billion on close to the same amount of revenue.Tesla also missed its target date for a Cybertruck delivery event. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had planned for a handover event sometime in the third quarter, and the company now plans for its first deliveries to occur on November 30th. During an earnings call, Musk said the Cybertruck will take 18 months before it's a significant cash flow contributor."The company's operating... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Windows 11 will soon let some users with hearing aids take calls, listen to music, and stream audio from their PCs, Microsoft announced on Wednesday.The recently rolled out Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25977 now supports hearing aids equipped with Bluetooth LE Audio technology, Microsoft revealed. Consequently, people can directly pair hearing aids with Windows 11 PCs.The feature is currently only available on select Windows devices with Bluetooth LE Audio support, though Microsoft says more PCs will offer it in the future. The tech giant also says it will add more capabilities for hearing aids over time, such as the ability to control audio presets within Windows.Microsoft announced it was adding support for Bluetooth LE in... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is getting another price increase. As part of the streamer's third quarter earnings results, Netflix announced that starting today, users on its $9.99 per month Basic plan will now have to pay $11.99, and those paying $19.99 per month for Premium will have to pay $22.99. Netflix's $6.99 ad-supported plan and $15.49 Standard tier will stay the same price.Netflix last raised its prices in January 2022 and stopped offering its $9.99 Basic ad-free plan to new and relapsed users in July, forcing them to fork out more to avoid ads. Prices for the Basic and Premium plans in the UK and France are going up as well, with the ad-supported and Standard plans remaining unchanged. In the UK, the Standard and Premium plans will cost 7.99 and... Continue reading...

It may not offer stereo sound or in-line playback, but the first-gen Sonos Move remains a great portable speaker. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge In case you somehow weren't aware, we're in the thick of gadget season, with Apple, Google, and Meta having all recently released a trove of new devices. Sonos, not to be outdone, has also launched a new portable speaker in the form of the Sonos Move 2. And now, unsurprisingly, Sonos has dropped the price of the first-gen model to make way for the updated version. Right now, the Sonos Move is on sale direct from Sonos for $299 ($100 off), matching its best price to date.While not as capable as the $429 Move 2, the original model still offers plenty of power and portability. The hefty speaker is close to the original in terms of design, and while its battery doesn't last quite as long and it doesn't offer stereo sound like the new... Continue reading...

Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images An Internal Revenue Service pilot might just eventually bring US citizens a free direct-file alternative to commercial options like TurboTax and H&R Block. Yesterday, the agency announced that 13 states are joining its pilot program for the 2024 filing season, four of which will also be able to integrate their state taxes into the pilot.Since 2001, a partnership between companies like TurboTax maker Intuit and the IRS called the Free File Alliance has given consumers a free alternative to paying for tax preparation. However, it turned out that when you try to get companies to offer an alternative to giving you money, they will do their best to hide that option. When the IRS updated the agreement to forbid companies from doing that - and... Continue reading...