The Verge

An Aiwit" doorbell camera. There are many like it. | Image via Amazon Does your video doorbell look anything like the one in the picture? Perhaps you bought it for cheap at Amazon, Temu, Shein, Sears, or Walmart? Does it use the Aiwit app?Consumer Reports is reporting the security on these cameras is so incredibly lax, anybody could walk up to your house, take over your doorbell, and permanently get access to the still images it captures - even if you take control back.The cameras are sold by a Chinese company called Eken under at least ten different brands, including Aiwit, Andoe, Eken, Fishbot, Gemee, Luckwolf, Rakeblue and Tuck. Consumer Reports says online marketplaces like Amazon sell thousands of them each month. Some of them have even carried the Amazon's Choice badge, its dubious seal of... Continue reading...

Unofficial renders of what the Z Flip 6 could look like. | Image: OnLeaks / SmartPrix Yesterday was the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, now it's the Z Flip 6's turn to have its alleged design leak in a series of unofficial renders from OnLeaks and SmartPrix ahead of its rumored July unveiling.While the overall form-factor of the device is similar to last year's Z Flip 5, including a 6.7-inch inner folding display and 3.4-inch cover screen, SmartPrix reports that its thickness could increase from 6.9mm to 7.4mm, prompting speculation about what the extra internal space could be used for. The front-running theory comes from a GalaxyClub report from last year, which said the Z Flip 6's battery capacity could increase from 3,700mAh to 4,000mAh. It's a move that could (hopefully) address the so-so battery life we experienced on the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Spaces, the live audio feature for X, is now letting hosts turn on their video during chat sessions. The platform formerly known as Twitter announced the news on Wednesday as owner / CTO Elon Musk reposted a walkthrough from a user named "Dogedesigner."Spaces users will notice a new option to enable video" when they first create a new Spaces session. Hosts can opt for either their phone's front or back-facing cameras as well as either a landscape or vertical view of their video feed.The Video Spaces are available on the iOS version of the X app, but we haven't seen them available on Android or the web yet. Multiple users reported significant lag while trying out the feature so far.

William Gibson. | Photo by Elisabetta A. Villa/WireImage Another sci-fi adaptation is making its way to Apple TV Plus. The streamer announced that it's adapting William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer into a 10-episode series. Graham Roland (Lost, Jack Ryan) will serve as showrunner, while JD Dillard (Utopia) will direct the first episode. (Both will also be executive producers on the series.)That's about all we know right now. There are no details on when the series might start streaming or who will star. In a press release, Apple said that the show will follow a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes aiming to pull a heist on a corporate... Continue reading...

Tubi's new logo and signature shade of turple." | Image: Tubi Tubi knows that people fire up its app just to see what happens to be streaming rather than to search for one specific thing, and the platform is trying to embrace that reality about itself in the form of a playful new brand identity.Today, Tubi began rolling out a new look and feel for its login-free service that's meant to emphasize how the streamer wants viewers falling down rabbit holes as they search through the thousands of films and series it has to offer. That was also the concept behind Tubi's 2023 Super Bowl ad in which people were thrown down literal holes by anthropomorphic rabbits, and while the new branding is nowhere near as unsettling, chief marketing officer Nicole Parlapiano said in a press release that it's meant to... Continue reading...

Illustration by The Verge Substack writers and readers can now send private one-on-one direct messages to others on the platform, the company announced today. The highly requested feature works similarly to DMs found on social networking apps like X and Instagram, though it is optional and can be disabled.Just as you can from X or Facebook, users can initiate direct messages from a writer's or reader's profile page. You can also start a message via the website's or app's Chat tab. In addition, writers have the option to add a Send a message" button on a post or note. Substack will then notify recipients via the app or email.Only readers and writers you're connected to can send messages directly to your inbox. Other messages will just land in a Requests"... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Three more news organizations have sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement, including the removal of author, title, and other copyright information while training AI models.The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet filed separate lawsuits in the Southern District of New York. All three cases are being litigated by the same law firm.The publications said ChatGPT at least some of the time" reproduces verbatim or nearly verbatim copyright-protected works of journalism without providing author, title, copyright or terms of use information contained in those works." According to the plaintiffs, if ChatGPT trained on material that included copyright information, the chatbot would have learned to communicate that... Continue reading...

Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel shared a new proposal Wednesday that would make it harder for domestic abuse survivors to be stalked through their cars' location tracking systems.The notice of proposed rulemaking would kick off a process for the FCC to consider how it can use existing authority to create new protections for domestic abuse survivors. It seeks more information on available connected car services and whether changes to the way the agency implements the Safe Connections Act are necessary to address how those tools could be used for abuse. The agency is expected to take up the issue in the next month.The Safe Connections Act, which was signed into law in late 2022, requires mobile service... Continue reading...

Google For anyone who has ever wished for the ability to hand annotate directly on a Google Doc, Google announced on Tuesday it's rolling out a new markup feature for Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and personal Google accounts that will allow users to write directly on a Google Doc with a stylus or their finger. The new feature includes a few standard pen and highlighter colors (black, blue, red, green, yellow), and an eraser. If you don't like any of those colors, you can add your own.There are so many use cases for a feature like this, across age groups, industries, and professional and personal work. Google calls out some good ones in its announcement, especially for educators giving students feedback... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung says its new, faster microSD cards will help enable on-device AI, allowing people to use more data-heavy AI-related apps.In a press release, the company explains it began sampling its 256GB SD Express microSD card and started mass production of the 1TB microSD card. The 256GB SD Express version will be available later this year, while the 1TB UHS-1 microSD will launch in the third quarter of 2024.Samsung says the 256GB SD Express microSD card can read data up to 800MB/s, 1.4 times faster than SATA SSDs (up to 560 MB/s) and more than four times faster compared to traditional UHS-1 memory cards." But because faster speeds from SD Express cards can hit temperatures of up to 96 degrees Celsius, Samsung introduced dynamic thermal... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge In 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed what the global auto industry had long feared: the tech giant was working on a driverless car.We're focusing on autonomous systems. And clearly, one purpose of autonomous systems are self-driving cars," Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg. And we sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. It's probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on and so autonomy is something that's incredibly exciting for us, but we'll see where it takes us."Where it took Apple was essentially nowhere. On Tuesday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman confirmed that Apple was scuttling its secretive car project, with most of the team's workers moving over to generative AI initiatives. Others would... Continue reading...

Photo by Bruce Bennett / Getty Images In response to reports that Wendy's plan for new digital menu boards that can update throughout the day might increase prices of spicy chicken nuggets and other menu items at busy times, the fast food chain now claims this isn't the case. Instead, Wendy's says its dynamic" pricing model will only result in discounts and value" during the slowest times of the day - leaving other times of the day with higher standard prices unaddressed.Earlier this month, Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner said the company wants to start testing dynamic pricing in 2025 - a system that would use Wendy's digital menu boards to adjust pricing throughout the day. In terms of comparisons to Uber surge pricing, Wendy's claims this isn't the case and that media reports... Continue reading...

Project Music GenAI Control is an early-stage" prototype tool, so it may be some time before Adobe officially launches it. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Adobe's latest generative AI experiment aims to help people create and customize music without any professional audio experience. Announced during the Hot Pod Summit in Brooklyn on Wednesday, Project Music GenAI Control is a new prototype tool that allows users to generate music using text prompts and then edit that audio without jumping over to dedicated editing software.Users start by inputting a text description that will generate music in a specified style, such as happy dance" or sad jazz." Adobe says its integrated editing controls then allow users to customize those results, adjusting any repeating patterns, tempo, intensity, and structure. Sections of music can be remixed, and audio can be generated as a repeating loop for... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge President Joe Biden has issued an executive order authorizing the US attorney general to prevent the large-scale transfer of Americans' personal data to countries of concern." According to the US Department of Justice today, those countries could include China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.The White House says it's targeting data brokers, which it says collect more personal data than ever before - data that includes things like personal health and financial data. The scale can be staggering: in a recent extreme example from a Consumer Reports study, 48,000 companies had sent Facebook data on a single user.Several departments will be required to roll out new protections under the order. The White House writes that the Department of... Continue reading...

People have been trying to talk to computers for almost as long as they've been building computers. For decades, many in tech have been convinced that this was the trick: if we could figure out a way to talk to our computers the way we talk to other people, and for computers to talk back the same way, it would make those computers easier to understand and operate, more accessible to everyone, and just more fun to use.ChatGPT and the current revolution in AI chatbots is really only the latest version of this trend, which extends all the way back to the 1960s. That's when Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor at MIT, built a chatbot named Eliza. Weizenbaum wrote in an academic journal in 1966 that Eliza makes certain kinds of natural language... Continue reading...

Image: Ken Pillonel via YouTube For AirPod Max owners, engineer Ken Pillonel has beaten Apple to the punch by swapping the four-year-old headphones from a Lightning port to USB-C. In a new video posted to YouTube, Pillonel shows how to install his custom printed circuit board (PCB) with USB-C support without drilling any new holes, as well as how he designed it to fit comfortably inside the headset.He's made the board available for purchase on his website for around $45, along with detailed installation instructions - if you feel brave enough to mod the $549 headset, of course. Pillonel also considered adding support for USB-C audio but dropped that idea after finding that you'd need an extra chip to make it happen, which would make the mod more expensive.Pillonel... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge It can happen all too easily, especially if you've got an Android phone with less than 128GB of storage: one day, you try to install a cool new game or an intriguing new app, and you can't. You've run out of space.Don't panic. If you're not ready to buy a new phone, and your phone doesn't have a handy microSD slot for some extra storage, you can probably still pick up a decent amount of free space with some simple house cleaning. Here are suggestions on how to get back some of that storage.Note: These were tested using a Pixel 6 phone and a Samsung Galaxy S23, both running Android 14. Depending on your phone's make and operating system, your directions may vary slightly.Free up space with a cleaning toolBoth Pixels and Galaxy phones... Continue reading...

If Justin Bieber can figure out how to leave his phone behind, so can I. | Photo by Bellocqimages / Bauer-Griffin / GC Images It was, of all people, Justin Bieber who first opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about my phone. See, Bieber isn't into phones. He ditched his a while back and became an iPad guy. According to a 2021 Billboard article, he wakes up in the morning, grabs his tablet, and checks in with his management to see what's going on for the day. The idea was to limit who can reach him." This is something you hear a lot from phone-free celebs: they're not trying to disconnect from everyone, but they are trying to get away from that feeling of being tapped constantly on the shoulder by all the calls, texts, and emails.I've been obsessed with celebrity technology usage, or lack thereof, for years. In so many cases, it seems that once you become... Continue reading...

Aqara's U200 smart lock is a retrofit, Matter-over-Thread door lock, with support for Apple Home Key promised. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Aqara has launched its Smart Lock U200 on Kickstarter, where you can currently nab the device for $209, down from the $249.99 it'll cost you when it goes on sale later this year. According to the Kickstarter page, it will ship to backers in April.The company debuted its new retrofit lock at the IFA 2023 tech show last summer; showcasing its Matter-over-Thread connectivity and separate Bluetooth keypad with a fingerprint reader and NFC built in. This gives you the option to unlock with digital codes, Aqara NFC cards, the Aqara app on your phone, and voice control with compatible voice assistants. That's in addition to still being able to use your existing key.Uniquely for a retrofit lock (where you don't need to replace your... Continue reading...

Eufy Anker's Eufy brand has started shipping a new 4K security camera that should offer 360-degree views, panning 344 degrees and tilting up to 70 degrees. It could also run indefinitely without wired internet or power.That's because in addition to Wi-Fi, the $249.99 Eufy 4G LTE Cam S330 can connect to nearby LTE towers instead, and comes with a detachable solar panel that supposedly needs just two hours under the sun to keep the 36.2Wh battery charged. Since the battery also lasts up to a month on a full charge, according to Anker, it could keep going even through the rainy season.On paper, the S330 seems to address many of the pain points we encountered with earlier LTE-capable cameras from both Eufy and Arlo for around the same... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you've ever seen a Steam Deck playing a Legend of Zelda game, chances are you were seeing the Yuzu emulator at work. Now, Nintendo has sued the developers of Yuzu in US federal court, with the intent of squashing Yuzu for good.In the lawsuit, spotted by Stephen Totilo, Nintendo alleges that Yuzu violates the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as accusing the creators of copyright infringement. It alleges Yuzu is primarily designed" to circumvent several layers of Nintendo Switch encryption so its users can play copyrighted Nintendo games....immediately transfer the domain name yuzu-emu.org ... to Nintendo's control"The company's not only asking for the courts... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI has claimed in a motion filed Monday that The New York Times used deceptive prompts" to get ChatGPT to regurgitate its content. For that and other reasons, the company is asking the US District Court in southern New York to dismiss several of the claims in the outlet's copyright infringement lawsuit.OpenAI asserts that the Times exploited a bug that it's currently working to fix and that the outlet fed articles directly to the chatbot to get it to spit out verbatim passages. Normal people do not use OpenAI's products this way," the company says, citing an April 2023 Times article titled 35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now." This is all very similar to the arguments OpenAI made in its public response in January.Times... Continue reading...

MWC's venue, the Fira de Barcelona Grand Via. | Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images Europe's big smartphone show is here, and big players like Xiaomi, OnePlus, HMD, Honor, and Lenovo have a new generation of devices to show off. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com is in talks with AI companies Midjourney and OpenAI to provide training data scraped from users' posts, a report from 404 Media alleges. The report, based on an anonymous source inside the company, says that deals between Automattic and the two AI companies are imminent." It follows nebulous rumors that have spread on Tumblr over the past week, suggesting a deal with Midjourney could provide a new revenue stream for the site.According to 404's report, Automattic plans to launch a new setting Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies." But it cites internal posts that suggest the company scraped an initial data dump" containing all... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple has halted its long-rumored Project Titan" work on developing an electric car, according to Bloomberg. The company reportedly announced the news internally on Tuesday and said many people in the 2,000-person team behind the car will shift to generative AI efforts instead.Apple's chief operating officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the project, informed employees of the project's discontinuation, Bloomberg reports. The outlet adds that there will also be layoffs, but it's not clear how many workers it will affect.Apple's efforts to build its own electric car have been rumored for years, and recent reports suggested Apple was still working on the project. Earlier this month, Wired reported that A... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Hello! I am very excited to see so many of you at Hot Pod Summit and On Air Fest this week. I'll be back on Tuesday with a recap of the events. But first, I've got a look at the layoffs at WAMU, the IAB's new podcast guidelines, and the ticking clock on union contract negotiations at Spotify.WAMU shuts down DCist and lays off 15 staffersAnother NPR member station has conducted layoffs, this time at WAMU in Washington, DC. While some public radio organizations have addressed budget shortfalls by cutting podcasts (NPR, WNYC), WAMU is leaving its audio operation intact as it lays off 15 staffers and shuts down DCist, the local news... Continue reading...

The company's most recent new product was the Move 2 portable speaker. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sonos plans to release its first pair of wireless headphones in June after dealing with some late-stage software setbacks, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The headphones will tie into the company's ecosystem of speakers and home theater soundbars and are expected to be priced at $449, putting them firmly in the premium market of mainstream consumer headphones.There's a lot riding on these upcoming headphones for Sonos. CEO Patrick Spence has made it clear that the company has high hopes for its latest hardware category. This is the beginning of a multi-year product cycle where we expect to reap the rewards of our R&D investments," Spence said on an earnings call in November. This cycle begins with our entry into a new... Continue reading...

Life beyond a phone screen? Or just a neat gadget? Look, I'm a Humane AI Pin doubter as much as the next person. And I still think the wearable, AI-powered assistant suffers from a case of this-thing-could-have-been-an-app. But I finally got to spend a little face-to-face time with the pin this morning, and you know what? It's a darn cool gadget. It's just buried under a layer of marketing so thick that it's hard to appreciate what it actually could be if Humane wasn't so self-serious.If you spend time on Tech Threads or the like, you probably already know what the pin does: you clip it to your shirt, talk to it, and it uses generative AI to answer. It's a standalone device with its own SIM card, and there's no screen - just vibes. That, and a little laser that projects menus and text... Continue reading...

The PlayStation 5 version of Persona 5 Tactica is down to just $29.99. | Image: Atlus Spring may be just around the corner, but it's still cold and rainy in many parts of the US. If you're looking for ways to keep yourself entertained while indoors, GameStop is currently taking up to 50 percent off select titles as a part of its "OMG" sale. The ongoing promotion includes steep 50 percent discounts on newer hits like Persona 5 Tactica for the PlayStation 5 ($29.99) and Sonic Superstars ($29.99) for the PS4. The deluxe edition of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which comes with a handful of in-game items, is also on sale for the PS5 for $44.99 (half off).While the best deals are on new PlayStation games, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch players can also get in on the savings. Modern classics like Octopath Traveler II ($29.99... Continue reading...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the company behind Pornhub for not complying with state-level age verification rules. The suit, filed in Travis County District Court against Pornhub parent Aylo, accuses Aylo of failing to implement reasonable age verification methods" on Pornhub and other adult sites that it owns. It seeks millions of dollars in damages under a law that was initially blocked as unconstitutional, then allowed to take effect last year.Texas is one of numerous states that have pushed for stricter age verification on either pornographic sites specifically or large parts of the internet as a whole. Its version of the law, HB 1181, requires that pornographic sites use either their own methods or a third-party... Continue reading...

Image: Lego The transformation of Fortnite into a gaming platform continues with the addition of some new games from Lego. Following the release of the Minecraft-like survival game Lego Fortnite in December, Lego has launched two more titles inside of Fortnite. One is a multiplayer title called Lego Raft Survival; the other is an obstacle course called Lego Obby Fun. Both games were built with the Unreal Editor for Fortnite tool.The launches come as Epic is attempting to expand Fortnite beyond its battle royale roots, with a series of different experiences inside of the game. Lego Fortnite's launch was quickly followed by the arcade racer Rocket Racing and the music game Fortnite Festival.Epic and Lego first announced their partnership in 2022,... Continue reading...

Image: Wendy's Imagine waiting in line at your local Wendy's drive-thru during the lunch rush, only to pull up to the menu board and realize that the spicy chicken nuggets you've been craving all day will cost you a dollar extra. That nightmare may soon become a reality, because Wendy's plans on testing surge pricing that will increase the price of its spicy nuggets, burgers, Frostys, and other favorites during its busiest times.During an earnings call earlier this month, Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner said the fast food chain plans on investing $20 million to roll out digital menu boards to US-based restaurants by the end of 2025. As part of the change, Wendy's will also introduce something called dynamic prices" that will change the prices on the digital... Continue reading...

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge Crypto miners have successfully blocked the Department of Energy's (DOE) survey of Bitcoin's energy consumption in the US. A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the DOE from moving forward with data collection.More Bitcoin is mined in the US than anywhere else in the world, a trend that has sparked legal battles over the impact energy-hungry crypto mines have on the power grid, nearby communities, and the environment. The DOE announced last month that it would start to collect data on the electricity consumption of crypto mines, mandating that companies comply with the emergency collection of data request."Industry groups were quick to challenge the move in court. The Texas Blockchain Council and... Continue reading...

Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and Tesla occupy the top three spots in a new ranking of 18 global automakers based on their efforts to eliminate carbon emissions, environmental harms, and human rights violations from their supply chains. US automakers in particular made the most progress in cleaning up their supply chains, with Tesla showing the biggest increase of all the automakers.The rankings were compiled by Lead the Charge, a global coalition of leading climate, environment, and human rights organizations that includes the Sierra Club, The Sunrise Project, and Public Citizen, among others. The group started evaluating automaker supply chains last year, with the goal to release an updated ranking each year.Overall, automakers made a lot... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos via Getty Images During Monday's Supreme Court arguments in a pair of consequential social media cases, the justices prodded for ways they could rule without giving either side everything they asked for.The justices seemed largely skeptical of the most sweeping provisions in Florida's and Texas' social media laws, which would force certain tech platforms to carry speech even when they don't want to. But they also looked for the boundaries of tech companies' First Amendment rights - seeking to understand when they become conduits for the transfer of information, rather than expressive platforms themselves.The laws at the center of the fight, Florida's SB 7072 and Texas' HB 20, were created in the name of countering what conservative legislators have... Continue reading...