The Verge

Image: Google Google ended its contract with Appen, an Australian data company involved in training its large language model AI tools used in Bard, Search, and other products, even as the competition to develop generative AI tools increases. Our decision to end the contract was made as part of our ongoing effort to evaluate and adjust many of our supplier partnerships across Alphabet to ensure our vendor operations are as efficient as possible," Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said in a statement sent to The Verge.Appen notified the Australian Securities Exchange in a filing, saying it had no prior knowledge of Google's decision to terminate the contract."Human workers at companies like Appen often handle many of the more distasteful parts... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This last weekend I was sitting in a hotel room in Memphis, staring out at the parking lot turned ice skating rink, wanting to just have a couple of hours with my brain turned off. I opened Netflix hoping to find a movie that would give me an evening's respite. Scrolling down to the top 10, I was met with a who's who of the 2010s and 2020s. Cowboy & Aliens, the 2011 flop with a great cast, was on the list. Queenpins, the 2021 flop with a great cast, was also there. At the top of the list was The Legend of Tarzan, a 2016 flop with a great cast. Rounding out the top 10 was a Sylvester Stallone flick from 2019 and a handful of new releases I'd heard nothing about until I saw them in the top 10 list.In a highly competitive streaming market... Continue reading...

ADT has a new smart home security on the works that looks like it will launch next month. | Screenshot: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge All signs are pointing to an imminent launch of ADT's new Smart Home Security System, a DIY security system born of a collaboration between Google and ADT. This could be a better home security option for those of us who loved and lost the excellent but expensive Google Nest Secure system, which Google is sunsetting for good on April 8th, 2024.As The Verge reported in October 2023, hidden support pages on ADT's website indicated the company - which Google invested $450 million into in 2020 - was getting ready to launch a new DIY security system called ADT Smart Home Security.From the leaks, it appeared that the new product had better features and a nicer industrial design than the ADT Self Setup option Google was offering its Nest... Continue reading...

Image: OnLeaks via MySmartPrice The Pixel 8 has only been out for a few months, but that isn't stopping leakers from getting early images of the forthcoming Pixel 9. Reliable leaker OnLeaks shared a set of renders with MySmartPrice, showing what appears to be Google's Pixel 9 Pro flagship with completely flat edges framing the phone and giving off iPhone vibes.That's not the only major design change on this phone - it looks like Google may have also redesigned the rear camera bar. Instead of stretching the camera bar across the entire width of the phone, the renders show the three-camera setup inside of a bulging, oval-shaped island, similar to the Pixel Fold. It also appears to come with a slightly smaller 6.5-inch display (down from 6.7 inches on the Pixel 8 Pro),... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge France's National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) has fined Amazon 32 million, or about $35 million USD, for excessively intrusive" worker surveillance that the commission says puts continuous pressure" on employees in Amazon's warehouses. Amazon called its conclusions, which put the company in violation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), factually incorrect."Following an investigation prompted by press reports, CNIL said that Amazon's systems measuring and restricting scanning speed (including a stow machine gun" indicator that activates when workers are scanning too fast), along with the company's data collection and retention practices, were excessive" and violated several GDPR articles. So did... Continue reading...

Image: Blizzard We are, as the kids say, so friggin' back.In November, the Overwatch League announced its end after six seasons. At the time, Overwatch League associate PR manager John Nomis said, We are transitioning from the Overwatch League and evolving competitive Overwatch in a new direction," confirming that while the League itself was dead, Overwatch esports would return. Today, we know what shape competitive Overwatch will take in 2024 with the announcement of the Overwatch Champions Series or the OWCS.The OWCS is our new premiere international competitive circuit open to players across North America (NA), Europe, Middle East, and North Africa (EMEA), and Asia," read the announcement post.The Overwatch Champions Series will have an open... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.On Friday, Insiders got part one of a Q&A with NPR's new podcasting chief, Collin Campbell, who led new show development at Gimlet before the studio was dismantled by Spotify. We discussed how his strategy for NPR differs from his predecessor and how the network is moving forward after last year's layoffs and cancellations. Today, I have the second part of the interview, in which we got into how NPR is operating in the new, competitive podcasting landscape, and what (if anything) he learned from the tumult at Gimlet.But first, some more Hot Pod Summit news!Throughline and Israel Story are coming to Hot Pod SummitIt's shaping up... Continue reading...

LG's C3 OLED TVs offer bright, vivid displays along with several gamer-friendly features. | Image: LG Super Bowl season traditionally brings with it steep discounts on last year's TVs, and while it's still some time away, the deals are starting to trickle in. If you want to upgrade your TV ahead of the event, BuyDig is throwing in up to $200 in gift cards when you buy the last-gen LG C3 OLED TV in various configurations. You can, for instance, buy the 77-inch model at its all-time low price of $2,296.99 ($200 off) with a $200 gift card, while the 65-inch is $1,596.99 ($1,000 off) with a $100 gift card included. If you prefer a different retailer, Amazon and Best Buy are also discounting the TVs but without a gift card.The forthcoming LG C4 is brighter and has more processing power, but the last-gen TV is still an impressive... Continue reading...

Wyze has announced the second generation of its inexpensive floodlight camera, and it's even cheaper. | Image: Wyze Budget smart home company Wyze announced its second generation wired floodlight camera this week, and it brings some significant upgrades over the first gen. These include bumping up the video resolution to 2K HD from 1080p, increasing the camera's field of view to 160 degrees, and delivering up to 2800 lumens of light with the two floodlights, plus the option for using them as ambient lighting and not just security lighting.The Wyze Cam Floodlight V2 is available to buy now for $83.99 plus shipping ($10 less than the V1 is currently listed for but the same price it launched at). But a launch special of $53.99 plus shipping makes it one of the cheapest floodlight cameras you can buy. Blink has a wired floodlight camera for $100, but... Continue reading...

Chrome's AI features are simple for now - but bigger things are coming. | Image: Google Google's Chrome browser is leaning into AI in a big way. Rather than just shove a Bard sidebar into the browser, Google is rolling out a couple of features that tap into its models in order to hopefully make your browser a little more pleasant to use. They're launching today in an experimental mode (you can go to settings and turn on Experimental AI" to get them), and Google says they're just the beginning of the AI browser takeover.Chrome's new Tab Organizer feature is the most compelling: you can right-click on a Chrome tab and select organize similar tabs," and Chrome will attempt to create a tab group filled with similar stuff. If you're shopping for something, deep diving some esoteric subject, or just opening all your news... Continue reading...

Image: Netflix We're about a month away from the live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix, which can only mean one thing: it's time for a trailer.This clip is focused almost entirely on setting up Aang (played by Gordon Cormier) - the titular Avatar - as a young hero preparing to, well, save the world. It's full of dramatic lines, some cool special effects, and at least one very cute critter. If nothing else, the trailer makes it seem like the live-action series will be a good entry point for newcomers who haven't seen the animated series.It's been a long road to this new take on the franchise. The adaptation was first announced in 2018, and in 2020, the show's original creators stepped away from the project citing creative... Continue reading...

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decided to keep its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight. | Image: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Despite a horrific war in Gaza and growing conflict in the region, the hottest year on record, and the hype surrounding artificial intelligence - the Doomsday Clock will stay put this year at 90 seconds to midnight.Last year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the time each year, moved the clock forward to 90 seconds from midnight - AKA doom. That was the closest the clock has ever been set to annihilation, and it will stay there this year.Ninety seconds to midnight is profoundly unstable and must not engender complacency."There are two key messages in our statement and they are one: that 90 seconds to midnight is profoundly unstable and must not engender complacency and two: the advancement of technology is... Continue reading...

The OnePlus 12 in green. | Image: OnePlus A little over a month and a half after its Chinese launch, OnePlus has officially announced pricing and a release date for its latest flagship in global markets. The OnePlus 12 will ship in the US on February 6th, starting at $799.99 (949 / 849) for its most affordable model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It's one of a trio of devices OnePlus is launching today, with the other two being the lower-end OnePlus 12R and the OnePlus Buds 3 true wireless earbuds.You can check out my colleague Allison Johnson's full review of the OnePlus 12 right here, but the TL;DR is that this is a phone with flagship specs that does a good job of nailing the basics. It offers great battery life, a big screen with an impressively high claimed peak... Continue reading...

How much will you forgive for a one-of-a-kind notebook? Continue reading...

While Samsung and Google were busy shipping AI features as fast as possible, OnePlus doubled down on the essentials. Continue reading...

A portrait of Rep. Ro Khanna. | Photo illustration: The Verge | Photo Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The Democratic representative from California, whose district includes Apple and Nvidia, discusses the future of tech regulation and the 2024 election. Continue reading...

The TurboTax website on a laptop in an arranged photograph in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, on Friday, September 3rd, 2021. | Image: Tiffany Hagler-Geard / Bloomberg via Getty Images The Federal Trade Commission cracked down on TurboTax, issuing a final order that prohibits the company from calling its services free" when most customers end up having to upgrade to paid services.Parent company Intuit had advertised TurboTax as Free, free free free," even though a majority of customers were in fact ineligible for free services. The Federal Trade Commission sued TurboTax in 2022 over misleading advertising, and the FTC's chief administrative law judge announced an initial decision in September saying Intuit engaged in deceptive advertising in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act."The character of the past violations is egregious."The character of the past violations is egregious. For at least six years, Intuit... Continue reading...

Nvidia's second RTX 40-series Super card isn't as impressive as its first. Continue reading...

Photo by Michelle Farsi/Zuffa LLC Netflix has dabbled in live broadcasts over the last year or so, and now the company has announced a long-term deal with the WWE to broadcast its headline weekly show, Monday Night Raw, starting next year. This is the first time Monday Night Raw, which broadcasts live every week, is leaving traditional linear television, as it has been the No. 1 rated program on NBCUniversal's USA Network, and it has tie-ins to NBCU's streaming platform, Peacock.The deal is even more comprehensive outside of the US, where Netflix is also obtaining the rights to WWE shows like SmackDown and NXT, plus monthly premium live events like WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and the Royal Rumble. NBCUniversal's Peacock service still has the rights locked up for those... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge After last year saw over 9,000 layoffs in the video game industry, 2024 is continuing the trend, and League of Legends maker Riot Games is the latest example. On Monday night, the company announced that we are refocusing on fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future," which means eliminating roles for 530 people globally, or about 11 percent of its total workforce.This news arrives just days after the results of a Game Developers Conference (GDC) survey showed 56 percent of respondents felt layoffs were in store for their studios due in large part to a post-pandemic course correction."Legends of Runeterra and Riot Forge cuts are part of the adjustments'Some of the significant investments we've made... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Artists on Apple Music will earn a bonus payout of up to 10 percent in royalties for all songs that are also available in spatial audio. That's according to an update sent to record label partners and seen by 9to5Mac. Quoted by Music Business Worldwide, it says that starting with January's month-end payout, pro-rata shares for Spatial Available plays will be calculated using a factor of 1.1 while Non-Spatial Available plays will continue to use a factor of 1." Pro rata refers to the one big pot" of pooled subscription money that's divided based on the number of streams.Bloomberg reported in December that Apple planned to offer financial incentives for musicians and record labels to release songs in the Dolby Atmos-supported format.... Continue reading...

LG's MyView smart monitor | LG Electronics You can now purchase the entire slate of LG's webOS-powered MyView monitors, which debuted at CES earlier this month, including one with a 31.5-inch 4K IPS panel (model 32SR85U) that starts at $599.99. Sure, gamers can find better value for their money than a monitor that maxes out with 5ms response times and a 60Hz refresh rate, but visual creatives might appreciate a 95 percent DCI-P3 color gamut. And when your office work is done, you can fire up a full suite of entertainment apps or stream directly from another device with AirPlay 2 and Miracast support.It could be an ideal monitor for movie watching at your desk without loud fans (or Slack notifications) ruining the immersion, and it's easier to fit into your home office than... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Securities and Exchange Commission has linked a SIM swapping attack to its account breach on X earlier this month, which led to the creation of a fake post announcing approval of Bitcoin ETFs that caused the cryptocurrency's price to spike. In an update on Monday, the SEC says an unauthorized party obtained control of the SEC cell phone number associated with the account in an apparent SIM swap' attack."A SIM-swapping attack occurs when a bad actor obtains a victim's phone number through techniques like social engineering. That allows the attacker to intercept calls and texts intended for the victim, including two-factor authentication codes, which they can then use to sign in to their victim's accounts.In the SEC's case, a bad... Continue reading...

Image: MrBeast Exactly how much money can you make by uploading a video to X? The going assumption has been that X - like Twitter before it - is a poor platform for video creators that can't compete with YouTube and TikTok in terms of monetization and reach. So there's been a lot riding on the results of a recent test by MrBeast, who aimed to see whether he could actually make money on Elon Musk's platform.Last week, MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, posted a video to Musk's platform with the explicit goal of seeing how much ad revenue a video on X would make." Musk had previously encouraged MrBeast to post to X, and he sent out an excited message shortly after the test went up. First MrBeast video posted directly on !" Musk wrote. Now, a week... Continue reading...

An electric delivery vehicle plugged into a new charging station at a USPS sorting and delivery center. | Image: Christian Lilakos The US Postal Service debuted its first EV charging stations in Atlanta, Georgia, today, the first of many expected to be deployed at hundreds" of new sorting and delivery centers this year. It's a key step in the Postal Service's plan to put together one of the nation's biggest EV fleets, made up of more than 66,000 delivery vehicles.The work USPS is doing to electrify those vehicles is making EVs commonplace on every road and street in our country," John Podesta, senior advisor to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation, said in a press release.The work USPS is doing to electrify those vehicles is making EVs commonplace on every road and street in our country."USPS is working on converting around 400 sites... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge General Motors is getting rid of the Ultra Cruise" brand and merging the team that was working on it with the team responsible for Super Cruise, as the automaker reconsiders its goals for advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS).Last week, CNBC reported that GM was ending the Ultra Cruise program," focusing instead on the current Super Cruise system that is available across the company's vehicle lineup. GM spokesperson Aimee Ridella clarified that the ultimate intention is to improve Super Cruise but that no one is being laid off as a result of this decision.GM is not scaling back its advanced driver assistance programs," Ridella said in an email. We have reallocated our ADAS-focused resources to bring even more capability to Super... Continue reading...

Motorola's classic clamshell modernized with a flexible OLED display finally feels worth the money after a $450 discount. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Between foldable smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Flip 5, the Pixel Fold, and the OnePlus Open, it's easy to forget the Motorola Razr Plus exists. The flip phone is a throwback to Motorola's roots, only the sharp-edged number pad departs to make room for the 6.9-inch OLED display that greets you when opening it. (You can still ride the nostalgic wave with a software-based dialer resembling the classic design.) Thanks to a steep 45 percent discount at Woot that's only around for the next couple of days (or while supplies last), you can buy the newest Razr Plus in black for just $549.99 ($450 off). That price is even cheaper than the $699.99 base model and about $150 cheaper than we've seen at other retailers during last... Continue reading...

Image: Nvidia Nvidia's RTX Remix tool is now available for modders to try. The game remastering tool, currently out in open beta, allows modders to give older games a makeover with AI-powered texture tools, ray tracing, and Nvidia DLSS 3.This is the same tool that was used to give Portal a visual boost with upgraded textures, models, and improved lighting. It's also what a community of modders are using to remaster Half-Life 2 with some realistic-looking headcrabs and way better textures. But now that it's available for all modders to try, it should make for an even wider range of upgraded games.Not every classic game is compatible with RTX Remix, though. Nvidia says that the tool works best with DirectX 8 and 9 games with fixed function... Continue reading...

Whether it's from reading Patricia Highsmith's original 1955 novel, or seeing any of the films inspired by it, we're all familiar with at least some of the beats from The Talented Mr. Ripley. But even if you've been a fan of all the past Ripley adaptations, Netflix's new series from writer / director Steven Zaillian looks like it's going to be something inspired.Set in 1960s New York City, and cities across Italy, Ripley tells the tale of Tom (Andrew Scott), a talented and cunning man whose relatively ordinary life starts to take a turn when he meets the father of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), a wealthy playboy who has run off to Europe with his good friend Marge (Dakota Fanning). Though The Talented Mr. Ripley focuses on how Tom... Continue reading...

The Verge When you want to check out your favorite news sites or other online information sources, you can take the time to go directly to each site, clog your email with newsletters and announcements, check the updates on your favorite social media app(s) - or you can use an RSS feed reader.RSS readers allow you to collect the articles of specific sources in one app, making it a lot easier to find the content you're interested in without crawling through a lot of noise. RSS (which may stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, or one of several other possibilities - nobody seems sure) has been around a while, having been first developed in 1999, although it wasn't more widely adopted until a few years later.Since then, the idea... Continue reading...

Controlling your smart home on your TV - something Samsung's new SmartThing's Map View lets you do more intuitively - could make it simpler for everyone in the home to use smart devices. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge From map views and smart TVs to smart buttons and generative AI, controlling your smart home is getting simpler and smarter - and less dependent on your smartphone. Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple is kicking off the week with the first trailer for its sci-fi series Constellation.The show stars Noomi Rapace as an astronaut who returns to Earth after a disaster in space - only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing." In the trailer, this appears to manifest itself as a series of mysteries - a strange piano, an unknown voice on a tape recorder - along with plenty of unsettling hallucinations. The rest of the cast includes Jonathan Banks, James D'Arcy, Julian Looman, William Catlett, and Barbara Sukowa, and the series is being helmed by creator and writer Peter Harness (Doctor Who).Constellation premieres with three episodes on February 21st, and new episodes stream on Wednesdays after that. (Between this... Continue reading...

The Magic Mouse's new shoe. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge This past Christmas, there was a box in my stocking that held something I had half-jokingly added to my wishlist: an ergonomic" grip that raises, widens, and adds wireless charging to Apple's Magic Mouse 2. It's like a little boot with a Lightning adapter tongue that plugs right into your Magic Mouse's underbelly. Best of all, it's magnetic, making it perfect for use with a MagSafe puck.Does this thing totally ruin the sleek Apple aesthetic? Absolutely! And I'm not even remotely convinced by its cheap-feeling plastic that it will last longer than a few months before it just stops working. Yet, somehow, it's exactly what the Magic Mouse needs.What it's called doesn't really matter, because this isn't a product any company you've ever... Continue reading...