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Nick Barclay / The Verge More and more Americans are getting their news from TikTok, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.The percentage of people getting news from TikTok has tripled since 2020; around 10 percent of all US adults now regularly get news on the app. For adults under 30, that number jumps to 26 percent.People already on TikTok are also shifting how they use the app, in this case increasingly as a source of news. One-third of adult users on the app say they get their news on the platform, up from 22 percent in 2020. TikTok becoming more of a news app is in contrast with other platforms, where Pew found that news consumption was stagnant or trending downward. On Facebook, for example, 54 percent of adults on the platform said they were... Continue reading…

Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror. | Marvel Studios Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania’s first trailer makes it clear that the movie’s going to be a family affair that brings back all of Scott Lang’s loved ones for an adventure that looks more than a bit like whatever’s going on in Strange World. But the trailer also reveals something rather interesting about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next big Avengers-level villain, Kang the Conqueror, is stepping onto the scene and setting the stage for what’s to come.Director Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania will tell the story of how Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and Hope’s mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), all end up getting transported to the Quantum Realm after Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple has released macOS 13, also known as Ventura, the latest version of its desktop operating system. It includes features like the Stage Manager window management system, the ability to edit and unsend iMessages like you can in iOS 16, and the Continuity Camera feature that turns your iPhone into a webcam.Ventura, announced earlier this year at Apple’s WWDC conference, also includes a variety of improvements to stock apps and utilities. Mail, for instance, will let you schedule emails and undo sending one, and the Spotlight search system is now able to take actions like setting alarms and running shortcuts. Safari is also getting the ability to login to websites using PassKeys, a standard being pushed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and... Continue reading…

You can pick between the Trail Loop, Alpine Loop, and Ocean Band based on the type of athlete you are, but it’s got to fit your daily life, too Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is launching its own version of the Mac Mini today with a $599 PC that’s designed for developers to build native Arm apps for Windows 11. Known previously as Project Volterra, the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (what a name) will be available today in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the US. Developers will be able to purchase the device, but really anyone wanting a miniature Windows on Arm machine can buy one, too.The Windows Dev Kit 2023 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 platform with 32GB of RAM and 512GB of NVMe storage. There are also two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports at the side and three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports at the rear, alongside an Ethernet port and Mini DisplayPort.There’s also a... Continue reading…

A series of AI-generated selfies created using the Facetune app, with the prompt used to create the selfie written below. From left to right, the images are in the style of M.C. Escher, the Top Gun movie, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. | Image: The Verge Like any novel technological development, text-to-image AI models are slowly moving from the R&D stage to the phase of “making weird stuff for social media.”Case in point is the phenomenon of the AI-generated selfie, which splices your likeness with different artistic styles and themes using machine learning. Think of it like the next Snapchat filter: a quick way to make your face look goofier than normal. Or goofy in a different way.There are a few methods to make your own AI-generated portrait right now, like the free web tool DrawAnyone. Just head to the site and upload some selfies, let the system process your likeness, and then pick an output style for your new portrait. A fair warning: you’ll probably have to wait a few hours... Continue reading…

Image: Bethesda Game Studios Unlike Skyrim, which has seen a launch on just about every console generation three times over, Fallout 4 has been, until now, contained to one console generation. But today, Bethesda announced Fallout 4 will be getting a next-gen refresh. According to the announcement on Fallout’s website, the update is due for release in 2023 and will feature a high-performance mode, bug fixes, and bonus content.Accompanying the next-gen news was also a wealth of updates for Fallout 76. There’s a Halloween event going on from now till November 8th, and starting on October 25th, Fallout 76ers will be able to pick up one free item per day that celebrates the series’ 25th anniversary. Since the Fallout series is apparently old enough to rent a car,... Continue reading…

Rose Winters can use her magic powers to help fend off zombies. | Image: Capcom Resident Evil Village’s DLC made me scared of the doorways in my own home. It happened after an intense sequence in Shadows of Rose, the story campaign included with the new Winters’ Expansion. I figured there was no way Capcom could top the horrifying baby monster from Village, but here we are.Note: light spoilers about the premise of Shadows of Rose and a vague description of one moment follow.In Shadows of Rose, you play as Rose Winters, the daughter of protagonist Ethan Winters from Resident Evil 7 and Village. Unlike those two games, Shadows of Rose features a third-person perspective, which was a bigger change than I expected. In Village’s standard first-person view, I was laser-focused on what was in front of me and fearful of... Continue reading…

YouTube’s redesigned UI shown on TV, laptop, and phone | Image: YouTube YouTube announced some new design changes that are rolling out now, including pinch-to-zoom for everyone and precise seeking with a more usable preview to help you find the section of the video you’re looking for.YouTube’s new pinch-to-zoom feature lets you zoom in on videos the same way you do on photos. If this sounds familiar, it’s because YouTube started testing the feature with YouTube Premium subscribers in August. It’s (finally) getting precise seeking as well, which should help you rewind (or fast-forward) videos to an exact location. When scrolling through a video, YouTube will open up a frame-by-frame view, making it a lot easier to find and watch a certain section. Image: YouTube This will make it a... Continue reading…

Apple’s latest base-model iPad cribs a lot of features from the more expensive iPad Air. But it also is considerably more expensive than before, making it a tough sell. Continue reading…

The multi-color anodized and sandblasted finish on this keyboard is quite a sight to behold in person. Angry Miao’s new anime-inspired keyboard with user-adjustable stiffness is made by sickos, for sickos, and it instantly made me want to bust out my Master Grade Gundam model kits from the early aughts and get painting. But sometimes, I did feel like this keyboard was better to look at than to use.The Angry Miao Adjustable Flex Alice (AM AFA) is the company’s first Alice layout keyboard (a newer ergonomic style with contoured keys, a gap in the middle, and a split space bar). It’s also another over-the-top science fiction-inspired design — this time drawing a likeness from the transforming VF-19 Advance fighter jet of Macross. It’s very on-brand in its over-engineering and obscene price, being machined from a 4.4-pound block of solid... Continue reading…

Nick Barclay / The Verge The Wire, an independent news outlet based in India, retracted its story that accused Meta of granting an Indian politician special permissions to remove posts on its platforms. In an update posted on Sunday, The Wire says it has decided to retract its report after “certain discrepancies” emerged in the evidence it used to back up its claims.“Our investigation, which is ongoing, does not as yet allow us to take a conclusive view about the authenticity and bona fides of the sources with whom a member of our reporting team says he has been in touch over an extended period of time,” the outlet explains. “We are still reviewing the entire matter, including the possibility that it was deliberately sought to misinform or deceive The Wire.”So... Continue reading…

Nick Barclay / The Verge Facebook might ban news sharing in Canada if the country passes legislation forcing the company to pay news outlets for their content (via The Wall Street Journal). In a post shared on Friday, Facebook parent company Meta says Canada’s proposed Online News Act falsely presumes that it “unfairly benefits from its relationship with publishers.”First introduced in April, the Online News Act compels online platforms like Facebook and Google to share revenue with the publishers they aggregate their news from. The goal of the bill is to ensure news outlets are fairly compensated for their work. Canada’s House of Commons Heritage Committee held a meeting about the legislation last week, but Meta says it wasn’t invited.If this type of law... Continue reading…

Vincent Kilbride / The Verge From the very beginning, people on the internet have been obsessed with sex.That’s the argument laid out in a new book by journalist Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. Cole digs through early internet history to show how sexual content and communities were part of the internet from its earliest days and had a profound effect on how the online space deals with identity, community, and consent. From identity play on early bulletin board sites to the rise of online pornography as an industry unto itself, Cole makes the case that you can’t make sense of the internet without sex — even if today’s major platform companies would like to.Content note: This interview describes multiple sexual practices in... Continue reading…

Congratulations to Morgan Stanley, Bank of America. and Barclays! You are holding the beer | Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty IMages Elon Musk’s antics have made it hard for his banks — Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays — to sell the debt required to do the Twitter deal. So they’re just going to hold it, all $13 billion of it, The Wall Street Journal reports. Truly a next-level “hold-my-beer” move, because it threatens to bring leveraged buyouts to a halt.Typically, a bank sells the debt used to create a buyout, and moves on to the next deal. But since they’re holding Musk’s beers, they don’t have a free hand to hold anyone else’s. Or, as The WSJ puts it, “The Twitter move threatens to bring the faltering leveraged-buyout pipeline to a standstill by tying up capital that Wall Street could otherwise use to back new deals.”Part of the reason for holding... Continue reading…

Image: Masahiro Sakurai Masahiro Sakurai is a YouTuber now, and in his latest video, he showed off a “never-before-seen” clip of the prototype that would eventually become Super Smash Bros. You can feast your eyes on Dragon King: The Fighting Game beginning at 1:25 in the video at the top of this post or jump directly to that moment by clicking this link.The Dragon King footage is clearly from an early stage of development, but you can already see elements that are now core to the Smash franchise, like percentages representing health, the iconic three-platform “Battlefield” stage layout, and characters flying off the edges of the screen to their deaths. Fighters were just polygonal humans — not Nintendo characters — and they could use moves like smash... Continue reading…

Image: John Chaney / Comedy Wildlife 2022 I learned today that there is a contest called the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, which selects the funniest animal photos submitted by professional and amateur photographers each year. The gallery of finalists includes some true gems, like a bear getting hit in the face by a fish, a zebra falling over, and a waving penguin.The competition is for a good cause — every year, it supports a conservation organization, and this year, it’s working with the Whitley Fund for Nature, a charity in the United Kingdom.It also seems like great fodder for memes. But I am only medium funny, so I’ll leave it to others to come up with some better ideas than I possibly could. These are some of my personal favorites from the finalists! I hope that... Continue reading…