The Verge

ChatGPT running on Windows 3.1. | Image: dialup.net Someone has created a ChatGPT app for Windows 3.1 PCs. WinGPT brings a very basic version of OpenAI's ChatGPT responses into an app that can run on an ancient 386 chip. It's built by the same mysterious developer behind Windle, a Wordle clone for Microsoft's Windows 3.1 operating system.I didn't want my Gateway 4DX2-66 from 1993 to be left out of the AI revolution, so I built an AI Assistant for Windows 3.1, based on the OpenAI API," says the developer in a Hacker News thread.WinGPT is written in C using Microsoft's standard Windows API and connects to OpenAI's API server using TLS 1.3, so there's no need for a separate modern PC. That was a particularly interesting part of getting this app running on Windows 3.1, alongside managing... Continue reading...

Android's Emergency SOS feature is so easy to activate that users in the UK are accidently calling emergency services. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge An Android feature designed to help users contact emergency services is making life difficult for first responders in the UK. The BBC reports that police forces across the nation have reported an influx of false emergencies to the 999 switchboard (The UK's equivalent of 911) in recent weeks which have largely been attributed to the Emergency SOS feature for Android phones.Law enforcement in Scotland, and the English counties of Wiltshire, Devon, Cornwall, and Gloucestershire have reported receiving a higher number of silent or abandoned calls since an Android update released between October 2022 and February 2023 introduced an Emergency SOS calling feature to more Android phones. The BBC reports that each errant call can take around 20... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge President Joe Biden is getting closer to distributing more than $40 billion in funding to support broadband expansion nationwide as part of his administration's goal to connect all Americans to high-speed internet by 2030.The funding, authorized in Biden's 2021 bipartisan infrastructure package, will be distributed proportionally to states based on need with each state receiving at least $100 million. Monday's allocations were made using broadband coverage maps that were recently updated to include more than one million new locations.Just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered electricity to every home in America through his Rural Electrification Act, the announcement is part of President Biden's broader effort to deliver... Continue reading...

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Make way for the electric buses.The US Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration is sending out $1.7 billion from President Joe Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to 46 states and territories to fund the acquisition of 1,700 buses - over half of which will be zero-emission models.The new awards will bring the total number of zero-emission buses funded by the infrastructure law up to 1,800, which is more than double the number of clean buses on the roads today. That still only represents a fraction of the roughly 60,000 buses that are currently in operation in the US, but officials hailed it as an important step toward updating the nation's aging transit fleet with an eye toward fighting climate change.T... Continue reading...

With the 5G C-band rollout complete, there may be some flight delays. | Image: The Verge US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday there may be some airline delays or cancellations starting July 1st if the last remaining passenger jets haven't upgraded their altimeters to deal with 5G interference, per a report from The Wall Street Journal report. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) maintains that 5G C-band signals could interfere with radio wave emitters passenger jets use to measure how far they are from the ground, which pilots rely on when landing with low visibility.Though airlines aren't actually required to get the new equipment in place until February 2024, those passenger jets that haven't been certified for operation around C-band 5G signals by the first of July will not be allowed to land in... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit will make accessibility improvements" to many moderator tools in its official mobile apps by July 1st, the company announced on Friday.Some moderators rely on third-party apps because Reddit's apps have what they characterize as significant accessibility challenges," and the accessibility community has expressed concerns over how they will moderate on mobile after popular apps like Apollo shut down on June 30th due to potentially expensive API pricing changes. It seems this roadmap, which promises improvements to features like the moderation queue and the ModMail messaging system on Android and iOS, is intended to assuage those fears.Based on the replies to the announcement post, however, many are still unhappy with the... Continue reading...

Stoffel Vandoorne drives in the Portland ePrix today. | Image: John Lamparski/Getty Images During the Formula E qualifying round in Portland, Oregon, today, the DS Penske team was fined 25,000 after it surreptitiously installed an RFID scanner at the entrance to the pit, which the FIA stewards said could collect data from other race cars and give them an advantage. The team's racers, Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Eric Vergne, were also hit with a pit lane start penalty for today's race - meaning they will have to wait at the end of the pit lane until all of the other cars have driven past before entering the race.The FIA Stewards explanation for the penalty was provided to The Verge via email:

Tesla's North American Charging Standard is gaining steam. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla has had a very good month, at least when it comes to its EV charging standard. Washington state wants to require electric car charging companies to use Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) in order to be part of the state's program to support electric vehicles, according to Reuters. The state's proposed mandate would put Tesla's technology in state- and- federally-funded charging sites in the future, though Washington hasn't decided quite how that will look.At the moment, the federal government requires at least four Combined Charging System (CCS) chargers at taxpayer-funded charging sites, and Tonia Buell, the alternative fuels program manager at Washington state's Department of Transportation (DOT), told Reuters the... Continue reading...

With the help of a little visual trickery and a fox clad in green threads, Tunic is every bit as clever as it is adorable. | Image: Finji Happy Saturday, y'all. The weekend is here, bringing with it deals, discounts, and savings on everything from e-bikes and smart plugs to portable speakers that are designed to soundtrack your next shindig. First up, however, is something a little more time-sensitive.As part of its ongoing Hyper Max Sale, Nintendo is offering discounts on both digital titles and DLC for the Nintendo Switch. The sale ends on Monday, June 26th, and Amazon and Best Buy are continuing to match Nintendo's prices in most instances, making now a good time to prep your backlog for when that Tears of the Kingdom high finally subsides.If you haven't had a chance to peruse Nintendo's virtual shelves, you should know that the best deals available during the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Recently, a friend who has been on Gmail for a long time suddenly noticed the chat availability settings in the upper right of the web app. This notice was actually added to the Gmail page about two years ago when Google Chat was integrated into Gmail. It notifies anyone whom you've ever used Chat with that you're at your computer (or phone) and available - or not.Even though most people may not receive notification of your availability (especially if you don't tend to use Google Chat), you may find the idea that somebody may know when you're using your account... irritating. (At least, my friend did, and I can sympathize.) However, you can turn the notification off - or, at least, mark yourself away" so that your presence will not be... Continue reading...

Finally, a real Pixel Weather app. This particular forecast is for the birds, though. Google finally has a default weather app to compete with Apple and Samsung. Though Pixel phones have long been able to display the current weather in widgets, tapping on those widgets just launched a basic screen with a cute weather frog and a handful of stats. It felt like a web page because that's basically what it was.With the launch of the Pixel Tablet earlier this week, Google has rectified that situation. Its new weather app - which is accessed via the same widgets as before, as there's no icon to launch it - has a much nicer design without losing the playfulness of the older experience. It has 10-day and 24-hour forecasts; wind, humidity, barometric pressure, and UV index reports, plus current sun position and sunrise / sunset... Continue reading...

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge This even has implications for the ISS Continue reading...

Image: Apple The European Parliament recently voted on regulation that would, among other things, require smartphone manufacturers to make their device's batteries more easily user-replaceable. Here's the fine print. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google's new search feature that shows you different perspectives (ideally, human ones) in search results will be available on Friday, the company said on Twitter. The perspectives will show up in a tab called, well, Perspectives."Tap the filter, and you'll exclusively see long- and short-form videos, images and written posts that people have shared on discussion boards, Q&A sites and social media platforms," Google wrote in a blog post about the feature from May. Based on a video in Google's blog post, that includes things like TikTok videos, YouTube videos, websites, tweets, Quora results, and Reddit posts. My colleague David Pierce described the Perspectives results as something that looks more like Pinterest than a typical set of... Continue reading...

The letter E" and number 3" hung over the escalators at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. | Photo: The Verge The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is dead. Following cancellations in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and Thursday's revelation that it won't return to Los Angeles in 2024 or 2025 either, you can safely stick a fork in the world's former most influential gaming show. It's done, replaced by events that stream online like the Summer Game Fest, Nintendo Direct, PlayStation Showcase, Xbox Games Showcase, and Ubisoft Forward.But given how seemingly easily it's been replaced, you might be wondering: how big a deal was it, really?In 2016, I wrote for CNET how it was actually becoming less of a gamer's mecca every year, and you aren't really missing that much. But when I ran the numbers today, they told a slightly different story - E3 had... Continue reading...

Echo Show devices can now show your local news weather forecast. | Image: Amazon If you're of a certain age and / or geographical location, then you likely rely on your local TV news station's weather forecast. A new feature on Echo Show smart displays looks set to make it easier to watch these on demand. Amazon has partnered with local news channels to automatically surface their most recent weather news videos when you say Alexa, what's the weather?"I live in a coastal city with frequent hurricane, flood, and severe weather warnings, and our local meteorologists are by far the best source of info for staying safe and dry (significantly better than any weather app - I've tried them all). But tuning in on the 8s isn't always feasible (especially for cord-cutters!), and finding videos on local news station websites... Continue reading...

Image: Bethesda Microsoft's Xbox chief has revealed one of the key reasons behind the acquisition of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax: potential Starfield PlayStation exclusivity. Speaking at the FTC v. Microsoft hearing today, Phil Spencer revealed that Sony regularly pays competitors to skip our platform" and Microsoft felt it needed to own Bethesda to compete.When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire... to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox," said Spencer. So the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can't be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge r/TranscribersOfReddit, a Reddit community of volunteers who write transcriptions for media that appears on subreddits like r/ProgrammerHumor and r/technicallythetruth, will be closing down in a matter of days, according to a post from a moderator. The community's final day will be June 30th, 2023.Our role in the Reddit community has always been to point out inadequacies in the platform - namely, the lack of accessibility features such as alt text - and provide a temporary, constructive solution while raising awareness of these problems," wrote Rebekah Ginsburg, who goes by u/halailah on Reddit and is chairwoman of the board of Grafeas Group, the nonprofit that operates the system powering r/TranscribersOfReddit. Users on the subreddit... Continue reading...

Image: Square Enix Early in Final Fantasy XVI's marketing cycle, producer Naoki Yoshida was asked about the apparent lack of inclusion of people of color in the game. His answer wasn't great, essentially stating that including people of color would violate the narrative boundaries established by the fantasy world the developers created.Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to follow up with Yoshida about that answer, asking him if he had the opportunity to hear the response to his words and if he had anything to say to the fans of color that he upset with them.I believe that with Final Fantasy XVI, we weave together a variety of peoples and cultures set in this kind of sweeping fantasy narrative and world, and one that we strived to create with care... Continue reading...

Illustrator by Alex Castro / The Verge Satellite internet competitors OneWeb and SpaceX are in the running to reconnect Alaskans after ice damaged a sub-sea fiber-optic cable in the Arctic Ocean, as reported by numerous local outlets. While repairs are expected to take an additional six to eight weeks, satellites could help locals weather the widespread outage.Last week, residents in the rural towns of Utqiavik, Point Hope, Wainwright, Kotzebue, Nome, and other communities found themselves without internet or cellular connectivity when the 1,200-mile fiber cable owned by the Alaska-based broadband company Quintillion suffered a break. Quintillion says the cable broke as a result of an ice scouring event."Our sub-sea system is currently out of service," Quintillion... Continue reading...

Miles Morales going on a trip. | Image: Sony Pictures In the years-long buildup to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse's release, Sony - for understandable reasons - proudly touted how it had hired over 1,000 animators in order to bring the artistically ambitious project to fruition, and all of that intensive human labor definitely shows. According to a number of artists who contributed to the film, however, the working conditions they were made to operate under during the film's production were unsustainable, erratic, and largely the result of producer Phil Lord frequently overriding Across the Spider-Verse's three directors in order to make endless last-minute changes.In a rather damning new report from Vulture, four animators who worked directly on Across the Spider-Verse described the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Since President Joe Biden took office, the Senate has held four confirmation hearings for two separate nominees to break the ongoing deadlock at the Federal Communications Commission. The latest one was yesterday - and it might get the FCC closer to a full staff, but it's a sad landmark to celebrate.The Senate Commerce Committee held a confirmation hearing for several positions on Thursday, including Biden's latest pick for FCC commissioner, Anna Gomez. (You may remember his previous three-time nominee, Gigi Sohn, dropped out in March.) She's a veteran telecom lawyer who's been working for the government for the better part of her career. Gomez has stayed out of the spotlight, so her opinions on controversial issues like net neutrality... Continue reading...

Photo by Eric Lee / Bloomberg via Getty Images The EPA is assembling its first-ever National Environmental Youth Advisory Council, a group of young people to weigh in on issues that affect their communities.We can't tackle the environmental challenges of our time without input from our younger communities, who've long been at the forefront of social movements," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a press release yesterday.The worst effects of climate change are still ahead as greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels keep building up in Earth's atmosphere. The actions policymakers take today to curb that pollution will decide what kind of planet younger generations will inherit. So it makes sense for the EPA to create seats for them at the table.We can't tackle the... Continue reading...

Several thousand disgruntled SmileDirectClub customers are almost certainly smiling now. | Image: SmileDirectClub SmileDirectClub, a mail-order orthodontic provider that sells cheap teeth aligners online, has agreed to release 17,000 US customers dissatisfied with its service from nondisclosure agreements that prohibited them from leaving negative reviews as part of a settlement with the District of Columbia's attorney general. Announced on Thursday, the settlement requires SmileDirectClub to make changes to the company's refund guarantee policy and inform customers who had signed such NDAs that they were now free to discuss their experiences.A report from The New York Times back in 2020 revealed that SmileDirectClub had asked customers requesting a refund beyond the company's 30-day guarantee policy to sign an NDA promising that they will not... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Day one of the FTC v.Microsofthearing was all about a surprise email,Xboxexclusives, and a costly cloud. Continue reading...

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Under David Zaslav's leadership, we've seen Warner Bros. Discovery cancel a lot of its programming while also memory holing other chunks of its IP for tax breaks, but now the company is reportedly looking to sell off a sizable portion of its catalog of music from films and television shows.Both Hits and Variety are reporting that Warner Bros. Discovery is hoping to secure about $500 million by selling off the rights to slightly less than half" of its movie and TV music catalog to a record label. Though it hasn't been reported exactly which songs from which shows and films Warner Bros. Discovery is ready to part ways with, Sony is said to be one of the frontrunners who might close on the deal.Given WBD's recent focus on paying down... Continue reading...

The OceanGate Titan submersible underwater. | Image: OceanGate Crews believe the small sub carrying five passengers suffered a catastrophic implosion' on its way to view the wreckage of the HMS Titanic. Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge If you've got an active Google account - or especially if you've got one you haven't used in a while - you've probably got more apps and services hooked up to your account than you realize. There are all those places where you've signed in with Google," all those browser extensions you've given permissions to, all those add-ons that you've installed on top of Gmail and Google Drive, and so on.While it's always a good idea to be selective and cautious in choosing which apps and sites get these privileges, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using your Google account instead of an email address and password combination or in giving another app that may be useful access to your emails or Google storage (depending on the app, of... Continue reading...

Image: Sony There's no shortage of movies already based on real-life, historical incidents surrounding the Stock Market, but everything in the first trailer for Sony's upcoming Dumb Money film - a biographical comedy-drama covering the events of the GameStop short squeeze - beautifully demonstrates why we have such an appetite for them. Especially when it involves a David vs Goliath-like plot where the little guy" takes on the Wall Street establishment.Directed by Craig Gillespie of I, Tonya (2017) and Cruella (2021), Dumb Money is a dramatized retelling of how a bunch of amateur investors on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit intentionally inflated struggling GameStop's stock to screw over the hedge funds who were shorting it while getting rich at... Continue reading...

Apple Pay uses NFC technology, and it requires you to effectively touch the terminal to make a connection. | Image: The Verge Tap-to-pay services like Apple Pay may soon no longer need the actual tapping part to work. That's because NFC, the technology that enables you to pay at shops by touching your phone to a payment terminal, is getting new capabilities over the next next two to five years, such as a communications range boost, more powerful wireless charging for tiny devices like earbuds, and more (via Android Authority).NFC, which stands for Near Field Communication, is inside thousands of devices today ranging from smartphones to video game-enhancing figurines. Now the body that decides how to standardize the technology, the NFC Forum, is outlining key areas that will move NFC tech forward through 2028. The Forum is comprised of hundreds of companies,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit appears to be ramping up the pressure on moderators to open communities that closed in the blackout protest against recently announced platform changes. A Reddit admin - an employee of Reddit - has told unpaid volunteer moderators of a subreddit that the expectation here is that communities reopen," according to a message shared publicly by a moderator of r/DIY.The pressure worked. The community was closed, but it reopened on Thursday, and a mod said that fears of Reddit actions forced the team's hand: We're re-opening because if we don't, the mods that Reddit appoint may not care about the subreddit the way we do," the mod wrote.The mod's post also announced a vast number of changes to the subreddit's rules that hew more... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube wants to make it easier to dub your videos in other languages by giving you some help with AI. The company announced Thursday at VidCon that it's bringing over the team from Aloud, an AI-powered dubbing service from Google's Area 120 incubator.Here's how it works, according to Aloud's website. The tool first transcribes your video, giving you a transcription that you can review and edit. Then, it translates and produces the dub. This video has the details.YouTube is already testing the tool with hundreds" of creators, YouTube's Amjad Hanif says in a statement to The Verge. And Hanif says that Aloud currently supports a few" languages, with more to come"; according to spokesperson Jessica Gibby, Aloud is currently... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube now requires users who run fan accounts to make it obvious" in their channel name or handle that they don't actually represent the company or artist that their account revolves around. That's according to an update spotted earlier by 9to5Google, which says the new impersonation policy goes into effect on August 21st, 2023.Previously, YouTube's policies never carved out rules for fan accounts. It simply stated that channels designed to impersonate other channels or specific people aren't allowed on the platform. But now, fan accounts must be clear that they aren't affiliated with whoever their accounts are dedicated to or else risk having their account or channel deleted.Content intended to impersonate a person or channel is... Continue reading...

Image: Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images E3 is dead, and it's not coming back for at least a few more years. According to a report from the Los Angeles City Tourism Commission, E3 won't be back in LA in 2024 or 2025.The news was contained in a footnote on a chart highlighting the city's projected and actual number of hotel rooms booked for fiscal year 2022 and 2023. Apparently, the city does not expect E3 to return in 2024 or 2025. This news seems at odds with the messaging from E3's organizers, ReedPop and the ESA. Earlier this year, the ESA - the trade organization that runs E3 - announced it was partnering with ReedPop, the entertainment company that runs large fan conventions like New York Comic-Con and Penny Arcade Expo, to run E3 2023. After the covid-19... Continue reading...

Image: Apple The Apple Vision Pro may come equipped with settings specifically for plane rides. When digging into the first beta of visionOS, MacRumors found that the device's operating system may have a Travel Mode option that you can use during a flight.Several text strings uncovered by MacRumors indicate that you'll be able to turn on the feature, with one noting, If you're on an airplane, you'll need to keep Travel Mode on to continue using your Apple Vision Pro." It also prompts the user to remain stationary in Travel Mode," likely to avoid wearers flailing around while wearing the headset and disturbing whoever's sitting next to them.Other lines of text in visionOS state that some awareness features will be off," MacRumors notes,... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft was working on a separate version of Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) that wouldn't have been tied to its premium Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. During the FTC v. Microsoft hearing today, the FTC's counsel revealed that Microsoft had been working on a dedicated xCloud SKU" last year.Xbox would very much like to do it," said Sarah Bond, head of Xbox creator experience, in September 2022 - the same month Google announced its Stadia shutdown. Microsoft has now strangely changed its mind amid regulatory concerns over cloud gaming. So what's changed since September 2022?We've continued to get more data about the success and the popularity of xCloud. We've gotten more clear on the costs related to it, and we have signed... Continue reading...

This September, Code Conference enters a new era with a lineup of the most prestigious names in tech, business, and beyond. Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, will interview Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott and Getty CEO Craig Peters - in two 1:1 conversations, they'll tackle the latest in AI, from innovations and competition to what the immediate and long-term futures for these companies might look like. Roblox CEO David Baszucki will sit down with Alex Heath, deputy editor of The Verge, to discuss the impact of AI in gaming, how it will affect Roblox's creator-backed economy, and more.Kevin Scott | CTO & Executive Vice President of AI, Microsoft Kevin Scott Kevin Scott is EVP of AI, and the CTO of Microsoft.... Continue reading...

Image: OceanGate via Twitter The Titan submersible, which disappeared after setting off to tour the wreckage of the Titanic on Sunday, experienced a catastrophic implosion," US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger announced during a press conference on Thursday afternoon.This morning, an ROV, or remote-operated vehicle from the vessel Horizon Arctic discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the seafloor," Mauger stated. The ROV subsequently found additional debris. In consultation with experts from within the unified command, the debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."The Titan is a 22-foot long, 20,000-pound submersible owned by OceanGate Expeditions, a Titanic... Continue reading...

Image: Klobrille (Twitter) Bethesda's upcoming Indiana Jones game will be exclusive to Xbox and PC. Pete Hines, Bethesda's head of global publishing, confirmed the exclusivity during the FTC v. Microsoft case today. Indiana Jones will also be available day one on Xbox Game Pass.The game was originally announced in 2021, just months before Microsoft finalized its $7.5 billion deal to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Doom and Fallout studio Bethesda Softworks. The Indiana Jones game is being developed by MachineGames, the same studio behind the Wolfenstein franchise. It's being created under a new Lucasfilm label, which is part of an increased focus on games from Disney.All we've seen so far is a teaser video and no details on when the Indiana Jones... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Ford will receive $9.2 billion as part of a conditional loan from the US Department of Energy to aid in the construction of three huge electric vehicle battery factories, the agency announced Thursday. The mammoth loan represents the biggest government offering to an automaker since the bailouts following the Great Recession of 2009.The loan originates from the DOE's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (AVTM) program, which famously helped put Tesla on the map and more recently provided a boost for a joint venture of General Motors and LG Energy Solution to help fund the construction of a new lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility. Another recent recipient was Redwood Materials, the electric vehicle battery recycling and... Continue reading...

Photo by Nitashia Johnson / Bloomberg via Getty Images Heatwaves are pushing power grids to their brink around the world - a risk that can make an already dangerous situation deadly.When temperatures spike, people tend to need air conditioning the most. But that can put a lot of pressure on a power grid, potentially triggering a blackout if there isn't enough electricity on hand. That's the worst-case scenario grid operators across the world are scrambling to prevent.The worst-case scenario grid operators across the world are scrambling to preventClose to 28.8 million people are under heat alerts today in the US. Texas grid operator ERCOT broke its June record for electricity demand on Monday after issuing a weather watch" for June 15th through 21st and asking residents to voluntarily... Continue reading...