The Verge

Photo by JASON HENRY/AFP via Getty Images Waymo's plan to expand its robotaxi service in Los Angeles and communities south of San Francisco has been put on hold by state regulators. The move follows several incidents involving the Alphabet-owned company's driverless vehicles, including one in which an autonomous Waymo vehicle struck a cyclist, causing minor injuries.The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which voted in favor of allowing robotaxi companies to operate 24/7 last summer, put a hold on Waymo's application for expanded service for further staff review," according to the agency's website. The hold is set to expire on June 19th, 2024 - 119 days from today.The suspension does not affect the company's ability to operate in its current service area, which... Continue reading...

The Apple Watch Series 8 offers similar health and fitness features to its successor. | Image: Apple We're officially one month away from spring. For a lot of us, that means the weather will finally be nice enough that we can exercise outside. If you want to continue to keep a close on eye on fitness and health metrics while away from indoor gym equipment, right now Walmart is selling the LTE-enabled Apple Watch Series 8 for $299.99 ($200 off) in select colors with a small / medium-sized band.Apple's last-gen flagship wearable isn't dramatically different from the newer Apple Watch Series 9. You'll miss out on the Series 9's double-tap feature and on-device Siri. However, you'll still be able to take advantage of many of the same health features, including EKGs, menstrual cycle tracking, irregular heartbeat alerts, fall detection, and... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge ChatGPT users began reporting odd responses from the chatbot last night that included switching between languages, getting stuck in loops, or even repeatedly correcting itself. Some of the responses were just pure gibberish.While discussing the Jackson family of musicians, the chatbot explained to a Reddit user that Schwittendly, the sparkle of tourmar on the crest has as much to do with the golver of the moon paths' as it shifts from follow."At 10:40PM ET, OpenAI acknowledged on its status page that it was investigating reports of unexpected responses from ChatGPT," and a few minutes later said it had found the issue and was working on a fix.As of this writing, the status page still features a yellow-bordered box at the top... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple's security team claims to have achieved a breakthrough that advances the state of the art of end-to-end messaging." With the upcoming release of iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, macOS 14.4, and watchOS 10.4, the company is bringing a new cryptographic protocol called PQ3 to iMessage that it purports to offer even more robust encryption and defenses against sophisticated quantum computing attacks.Such attacks aren't yet a broad threat today, but Apple is preparing for a future where bad actors try to unwind current encryption standards and iMessage's security layers with the help of massively powerful computers. Such scenarios could start playing out by the end of the decade, but experts agree that the tech industry need to start defending... Continue reading...

Image: FromSoftware Wake up, Tarnished. It's time to visit the Shadow of the Erdtree.In Shadow, it looks like we're going to a darker part of the Lands Between, and of course, there are all sorts of new lil' freaks to fight. But the biggest news is that the DLC's main antagonist appears to be Miquella, the twin brother of Malenia, meaning Let me solo her" might have to change his name soon.In 2023, FromSoftware confirmed the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was in development. No release date was given at the time, and FromSoftware went radio silent afterward, as we've had no significant updates on the DLC since its announcement almost exactly a year ago. But now, we know we can return to the Lands Between on June 21st.It's really hard to imagine that Elden... Continue reading...

The new formatting options each have an easily remembered shortcut. | Image: WhatsApp / Meta Four new text formatting options have been added to WhatsApp to help users communicate more effectively. Available starting today, WhatsApp users can now use bulleted and numbered lists, block quotes, and inline code to highlight and organize their messages, making it easier to break down large sections of text into something easier to read.These new formatting options have been in development for a while, but now they're available on WhatsApp for Android, iOS, Web, and Mac, alongside support for Channels. They join the existing bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace formats that were already available to all WhatsApp users. Image: WhatsApp / Meta Here's a handy visual guide for all the text formatting... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo offers news on releases for the first half of 2024. Continue reading...

Google's new model Gemma. | Image: Google Google has released Gemma 2B and 7B, a pair of open-source AI models that let developers use the research that went into its flagship Gemini more freely. While Gemini is a big closed AI model that directly competes with (and is nearly as powerful as) OpenAI's ChatGPT, the lightweight Gemma will likely be suitable for smaller tasks like simple chatbots or summarizations.But what these models lack in complication, they may make up for in speed and cost of use. Despite their smaller size, Google claims Gemma models surpass significantly larger models on key benchmarks" and are capable of running directly on a developer laptop or desktop computer." They will be available via Kaggle, Hugging Face, Nvidia's NeMo, and Google's Vertex AI.G... Continue reading...

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images In the seemingly endless fight between record labels and ISPs over music piracy, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia decided Tuesday that $1 billion is too much for Cox Communications to pay record labels in damages. Instead, as reported by Reuters, a new trial should be set in a federal district court to figure out what would be an appropriate amount.This new ruling overturns a 2019 US district court jury's decision siding with the record labels involved in the lawsuit, which includes Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and EMI. The companies accused Cox of not addressing over 10,000 copyright infringement notices and failing to take action against music pirates, such as cutting off their... Continue reading...

The Verge Disney is ending Disney Movie Club, the subscription service and online store where fans could buy Blu-ray or DVDs of films from the House of Mouse. The Digital Bits is reporting that the closure follows a new deal that Disney has signed with Sony, under which Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will take over all physical media production. The news of Disney Movie Club's shuttering was delivered to the service's 10 million US users by email, as well as the service's website on Tuesday.We've enjoyed serving you for the last 23 years, but consumer behavior and viewing preferences continue to evolve so we have made the tough decision to close Disney Movie Club," wrote Disney Movie Club in a statement viewed by The Wrap. Disney Movie Club... Continue reading...

Green Bay Packers vs. the San Francisco 49ers on January 20th, 2024. | Photo by Michael Zagaris / San Francisco 49ers / Getty Images Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery's surprise partnership to create a sports streaming platform hasn't sat well with the TV streaming service Fubo. Today, Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit against the three companies following what it calls a years-long campaign to block Fubo's innovative sports-first streaming business" at consumers' expense.Fubo CEO David Gandler said that the three companies had blocked our playbook for many years, and now they are effectively stealing it for themselves." Fubo has styled itself as a sports-focused" streaming service, but the company says restrictive licensing terms from sports networks have limited its options. It argues that unfair" bundling terms have made it pay for and distribute... Continue reading...

Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Hector H3CZ" Rodriguez, CEO of OpTic Gaming, is suing Activision Blizzard for alleged monopolistic practices regarding the publisher's Call of Duty esports league.Rodriguez - whose company owned and operated the Call of Duty League's OpTic Texas team - and now-retired OpTic player Seth Scump" Abner are seeking $680 million in damages. In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the pair claim that Activision Blizzard's unlawful 100 percent monopoly" over the league forced them into financially ruinous partnerships at the risk of being unable to compete in the League.Before the arrival of the Call of Duty League, competitive Call of Duty tournaments were hosted by independent third-party organizers and featured an open" structure whereby any team... Continue reading...

The Zenfone 10 was a little-ish phone with big ambitions. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge As phone sizes trended upward, one small device stood its ground year after year: the Asus Zenfone. That appears to be changing soon, and if you're a card-carrying member of the small phone fan club like me, then it's only appropriate to take a moment to observe its passing.Asus, to its credit, isn't keeping us waiting in suspense. The company posted a teaser for the Zenfone 11 Ultra that leaves little to the imagination: an animated graphic showing its display growing in size with text that reads, Expand your vision." Image: Asus A formal announcement is timed for March 14th, while a handful of other teaser clips tout its ultra size" and long-lasting battery life. It doesn't exactly keep you guessing. ... Continue reading...

Image: Y!Mobile Foldable phones generally aren't affordable, but maybe that's about to change? In Japan, the new ZTE Libero Flip is going on sale for just $420 - or $265 on preorder. That's a fraction of the $1,000 that Samsung charges for its latest Galaxy Z Flip, and nearly as low as the clearance-sale refurbished old Flips you can still find on Amazon and thereabouts.With a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7-series chip, the Libero Flip isn't exactly a high-end phone, but its 6.9-inch, 2790 x 1188 foldable OLED panel is slightly larger than the Samsung, and it may have a slightly larger battery at 4,310mAh vs. 3,700mAh. (Please ask your manufacturers to report those in watt-hours so we can properly compare.) Image: ZTE The ZTE Libero... Continue reading...

The Orca carbon removal and storage facility operated by Climeworks in Hellisheidi, Iceland. | Image: Arnaldur Halldorsson / Bloomberg via Getty Images The EU took a significant step toward legitimizing technologies that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by agreeing to set up a certification process.The European Council and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement today to create the first-of-its-kind certification framework for carbon removal technologies. The new climate tech has yet to prove itself at scale, but the EU is already folding it into its plan to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Net zero implies that the bloc would resort to capturing any remaining CO2 emissions that it hasn't been able to prevent, either by harnessing the natural ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide or by building technologies that filter CO2 out of the air or s... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Enforcers from the US and UK disrupted a ransomware group they say has targeted more than 2,000 victims and taken over $120 million in ransom payments. They even got the keys from seized LockBit assets to access data that was encrypted after the group's attacks, the US Department of Justice announced in a press release Tuesday.The US DOJ, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and UK National Crime Agency's Cyber Division said they managed to seize websites and servers used by LockBit to prevent them from stealing data that they allegedly use to extort victims for money.The NCA and FBI also came up with decryption strategies that they believe could help hundreds of victims globally regain access to systems that were attacked by LockBit,... Continue reading...

Image: Sean O'Kane / The Verge The Ford Mustang Mach-E just became a lot more affordable after the automaker announced a major price cut for the 2023 model year. The new adjustments will bring at least one version of the Mach-E below $40,000 for the first time.The Mustang Mach-E was the number two bestselling electric SUV in the US in 2023. But to get there, Ford had to wage a brutal price war with Tesla that is now entering its second year. The Elon Musk-run company has seen its market share in the US slip quarter over quarter, but Tesla still commands over 50 percent of the EV market.The price cuts are also a reflection of the new reality in which EV sales are not growing as fast as they were in prior yearsThe price cuts are also a reflection of the new reality... Continue reading...

Pound for pound and dollar for dollar, it's one of the best controllers you can buy. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge A sudden gout attack dictated that my long holiday weekend was full of gaming. Between fraught journeys across the high seas in Skull and Bones, I scratched my competitive itch with several rounds of Tekken 8 and Madden NFL 24. However, my game time was interrupted by a few too many dropped combos and misfires due to worsening button responsiveness in my controller.It would have felt good to exhaust my frustration by chucking the controller right through my TV, but a much less expensive (and less alarming) solution would have been to replace it with one of the official Xbox wireless controllers currently on sale. Amazon has core colors such as white, black, and red starting at $44 ($16 off). You can also pay $49 ($16 off) for blue, g... Continue reading...

There's plenty of tech still on sale for Presidents Day, from wireless earbuds to OLED TVs and everything in between. Presidents Day may be over, but it's not too late to take advantage of all the great sales we saw pop up in honor of the holiday. While some deals have expired, we're still seeing plenty of discounted tech at trusted retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, where you can find great deals on the gadgets we've tried, tested, and wholeheartedly recommend. The Roomba j7 and original Google Pixel Watch are still on sale for half off, for instance, while Apple's latest AirPods Pro with USB-C are currently matching their best price to date. We've put together a list highlighting the best deals below, all of which are still available even if the holiday is now a thing of the past.Headphone and earbud deals

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Last year was a big one for the right-to-repair movement, with California and other states passing laws that promised consumers they can fix their own stuff - or take that stuff to a third-party repair shop without breaking their warranty or their gadgets. This year, more states are considering laws to the same effect, and the tech industry appears to be more behind the effort than ever. (Some companies appear to be only begrudgingly behind it, but it's a win for the movement nonetheless.)But whenever you ask about the state of the right-to-repair fight, you tend to hear a lot of optimism and then two scary-sounding words: parts pairing. Those words, and what they mean for your ability to actually fix your stuff, are what might be... Continue reading...

John Oliver poses with his Emmy awards on January 15th, 2024. | Photo: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images HBO has long posted the main segment from new episodes of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver to YouTube on Monday to coincide with the episodes' premiere, but now you'll have to wait. John Oliver posted yesterday that HBO has decided they're going to wait until Thursday to post them to YouTube from now on," adding that he hopes HBO changes its mind.HBO confirmed the change to Variety yesterday, saying that when the show first premiered, the convenience of watching on Max did not exist," so it leaned on YouTube clips for exposure and promotion. The rep added that the company hopes fans choose to watch the entire show on Max."

The OnePlus Watch 2 sounds like a standard smartwatch. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus is making another run at a smartwatch with its Watch 2. The company claims in an announcement that the new watch will have up to 100 hours of battery life and said it will come in black and silver colors. It says it will share more at Mobile World Congress this Sunday, February 25th.The new watch has a stainless steel chassis and sapphire crystal watchface and will feature meticulous health monitoring." The 100-hour battery life claim requires what it's calling Smart Mode," which presumably is just a weird way of saying low-power mode." Image: OnePlus OnePlus wants to be an ecosystem builder." That's actually less battery life than the first OnePlus smartwatch, which made it about 10 days during T... Continue reading...

Image: Tinder In an effort to better combat catfishing, Tinder is adding an extra step to its verification process. Instead of just taking a video selfie to get a blue verification checkmark, you'll soon need to upload a photo of your driver's license or passport.Once you upload your ID, Tinder will check to see whether the picture on your ID lines up with your video selfie and the photos on your profile. Tinder will also look at the date of birth listed on your driver's license or passport to confirm your age. You should be able to use other forms of ID, as Match Group spokesperson Kayla Whaling tells The Verge that each market is different but state or government issued photo IDs will be accepted."You can still verify your profile by taking a... Continue reading...

Civil War's latest trailer shows off a whole lot of guns, tanks, and bombs. | Image: A24 A24 has dropped its second trailer for Civil War, a dystopian action movie from director Alex Garland that imagines a fractured near-future United States tearing itself apart. With a budget of $50 million, Civil War is A24's most expensive film to date.Civil War is now due to hit theaters on April 12th, two weeks ahead of its previous April 26th release date. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Nick Offerman, the movie follows a group of journalists navigating their way across the US as it descends into the second American Civil War.Just like the first trailer that was released in December 2023, the latest doesn't give us much else to go on. Portraying the US president, Offerman... Continue reading...

AI Assistant in Acrobat can recommend questions that you may have about the contents of a document and then answer those inquiries so you don't have to rummage through the file. | Image: Adobe Adobe is adding a new generative AI experience to its Acrobat PDF management software, which aims to completely transform the digital document experience" by making information in long documents easier to find and understand. Announced in Adobe's press release as AI Assistant in Acrobat," the new tool is described as a conversational engine" that can summarize files, answer questions, and recommend more based on the content, allowing users to easily chat with documents" to get the information they need. It's available in beta starting today for paying Acrobat users.The idea is that the chatbot will reduce the time-consuming tasks related to working with massive text documents - such as helping students quickly find information for... Continue reading...

The Verge Walmart is planning to acquire TV maker Vizio in a deal valued at approximately $2.3 billion. Rumors of the deal emerged last week, and now the retail giant says the acquisition is official and part of a move to boost its ad business.The acquisition of Vizio and its SmartCast Operating System (OS) would enable Walmart to connect with and serve its customers in new ways including innovative television and in-home entertainment and media experiences," says Walmart in a press release. It would also create new opportunities to help advertisers connect with customers, empowering brands with differentiated and compelling opportunities to engage at scale and to realize greater impact from their advertising spend with Walmart."Vizio has more... Continue reading...

The Forerunner 165 series knocks off $200 | Image: Garmin Garmin watches ain't cheap. While the running community loves them, they're often an investment, costing more than $500 for a midrange watch and going up from there. Which is why it's neat that the new $249.99 Forerunner 165 and $299.99 165 Music are pretty affordable by Garmin's standards.In terms of features, the 165 sits between the $200 Forerunner 55 and the $450 Forerunner 265. But for the extra $50 over the 55, the 165 series comes with a 1.2-inch OLED display instead of a transflective display, 11 days of estimated battery life, more running features, and contactless payments. The Music version also allows you to sync playlists with Spotify, Deezer, and Amazon Music.The design of the 165 is awfully similar to the 265, with... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung has detailed its expanded support for a range of audio technologies including Auracast, 360 Audio, and Auto Switch in a new blog post. None are appearing on Samsung's devices for the first time, but we now know how broadly they'll be supported across the lineup. Samsung says updates will be progressively available from the end of this month for Samsung's Galaxy Buds 2 and Buds FE, in addition to the Buds 2 Pro.Take Auracast, for example - a relatively new Bluetooth technology that allows one device to broadcast an audio stream to a theoretically unlimited number of endpoints like speakers and headphones. Last year Samsung announced support for the technology for its Galaxy Buds 2 Pro earbuds and latest high-end TVs, and it came... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Fujifilm's X100V became so wildly popular that it felt like the camera was endlessly backordered at every camera retailer around. On the secondary market, prices for the rangefinder-style mirrorless camera shot up into truly silly territory after it had a big viral moment on TikTok. The X100V was so in demand that Fujifilm could've taken the easy route for a successor and still been guaranteed to have a hit on its hands.The new model, being announced today, looks practically the same on the outside, but the X100VI includes meaningful improvements that will make it a more capable camera - in far more shooting environments - than any previous entrant in the X100 series. The flip side to those upgrades is that the price has climbed by... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This year's first Direct will take place Wednesday morning at 9AM ET, and, according to Nintendo, the 25-minute presentation will feature Switch games coming in the first half of 2024 from our publishing and development partners."We didn't need to consult the video game oracles to know a Nintendo Direct was on the way. Not only have Microsoft and PlayStation shared their upcoming release schedules, but taking a look at the dates of the last handful of Directs revealed that Nintendo is fond of the first week of February.

Getting water on phones happens to the best of us. Lucky for us, there's one household staple the internet consistently suggests will draw that liquid out and save phones: uncooked rice. But contrary to popular advice, Apple, like most people in tech support, explicitly advises against putting your wet phone in a bag of rice.Don't put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone," Apple support documents said.The support documents first spotted by Macworld are technically addressing what to do when you get the liquid detection alert on your iPhone. They're not just out to put a long lingering internet myth to bed.To that end they also suggested avoiding using an external heat... Continue reading...

Image: Wyze Wyze's problems with letting its security camera customers briefly see into other customer homes is a lot worse than we thought.Last week, co-founder David Crosby said that so far" the company had identified 14 people who were able to briefly see into a stranger's property because they were shown an image from someone else's Wyze camera. Now we're being told that number of affected customers has ballooned to 13,000.The revelation came from an email sent to customers entitled An Important Security Message from Wyze," in which the company copped to the breach and apologized, while also attempting to lay some of the blame on its web hosting provider AWS.

Image: Apple Slowly but surely, Apple TV Plus has morphed itself into arguably the premier destination for streaming science fiction. (Or at least streaming sci-fi not named Star Wars or Star Trek.) There are adaptations like Silo and Foundation; original stories like Invasion, For All Mankind, and Severance; and even a franchise spinoff with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. There's a nice range to the service's offerings - and now it's adding another flavor with the premiere of Constellation. In its first few episodes the show is dark, creepy, and will mess with your mind in a way that makes it just the thing for those already missing True Detective: Night Country.The first three episodes of Constellation premiere on February 21st, and they follow an... Continue reading...

A charging station outside of a Toyota Store in Blauvelt, New York, on February 5th, 2024. | Image: Kena Betancur / VIEWpress / Getty President Biden's administration plans to pull back on strict new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that would have forced US automakers to turn EVs into their main business by 2032. That's according to The New York Times, which wrote yesterday that industry players had moved the administration to give them more time to bring down EV costs, and for a nationwide charging infrastructure to be more fully built out.The Times writes that labor leaders pressured Biden to give them more time to extend union membership to those working in new US EV plants. As the article notes, labor union support is crucial as Biden faces re-election where he's straddling a dire climate situation and attacks from candidate and former President Donald... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge A Sunday morning report from the Financial Times says the 500 million (about $539 million USD) fine comes after regulators investigated a Spotify complaint that Apple policies prevent iPhone apps from telling users about cheaper alternatives to Apple's music service.The issue comes down to Apple's efforts to keep apps and users corraled inside its App Store payments system. Spotify complained in 2019 that Apple's policies muted competition against Apple Music, kicking off an EU investigation the next year. The EU whittled its objections down to oppose Apple's refusal to let developers even link out to their own subscription sign-ups within their apps - a policy that Apple changed in 2022 following regulatory pressure in Japan.$... Continue reading...

Illustration: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 26, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome. So psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been playing with the redesigned You.com for AI research, trying out the Phanpy Mastodon client, getting back into Zombies, Run after reading Vee Song's great story about Fantasy Hike, and reading the new lost chapter" of The Martian before probably just rereading The Martian again.I also have for you some non-earbud earbuds, a nerdy video about nerdy stuff, a new to-do list app, a new thing in ChatGPT, and much more. Let's do it.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What... Continue reading...

Not today. Update, February 18th, 12:40AM ET: The issue with Apple Pay and Chase credit cards has been resolved, according to Apple spokesperson Heather Norton, who further tells us that this was not an Apple Pay issue, and we saw no problems with our systems." (The not-so-subtle subtext there being that this was a Chase problem, of course.) That maintenance note on the status page was unrelated to this outage, she adds. Original story follows below.It appears that Apple Pay is down, particularly for Chase customers - Verge staffers have had their cards declined while trying to pay with Chase cards using Apple Pay, while using the same physical card works just fine. Several people on Threads confirmed the same issue when I asked - although... Continue reading...