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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Watch this space to find some great indie games. Read the full story at The Verge.

It's all about the vibes. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge There are a lot - and I mean a LOT - of fitness trackers out there, many of which can provide a surprising amount of insight into your health and fitness. That being said, the bare-bones Casio WS-B1000, which is currently on sale at Amazon and Walmart for an all-time low of $39.10 (about $17 off), is not exactly one of them.At its core, the WS-B1000 is a lightweight wristwatch with some basic smarts, retro styling, and a few different color options. There's no optical heart rate monitor or fancy-schmancy OLED display, though it does boast an onboard accelerometer for tracking your steps, up to two years of battery life on a single CR2016 coin cell battery, and Bluetooth for pairing it with your phone. Doing so lets you view a basic activity log in the Casio app while ensuring you always have the correct time on hand (a wild concept, I know).You get some basic wristwatch functionality as well - including a stopwatch, a timer, and an alarm - but the appeal of the WS-B1000 isn't what it offers but what it lacks. For someone like me who's burnt out on push notifications and rarely tracks anything beyond steps, a cheap tracker with some Y2K vibes is a welcome reprieve.Read our Casio WS-B1000 review.Other ways to save this weekend

The $150 RGB laptop stand can keep any laptop cool, and on a few Razer Blade 16 gaming laptops, it can even improve 1080p performance. Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects to spend as much as $65 billion on AI in 2025 as part of a massive effort" to further the company's AI ambitions. Part of the plan includes a Louisiana data center that Zuckerberg says is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan," he wrote on Threads today.The announcement reads like a response to the big AI data center news touted by competitors earlier this week. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump joined OpenAI's Sam Altman, Softbank's Masayoshi Son, and Oracle's Larry Ellison as they announced Project Stargate, a $500 billion joint venture that will build sprawling AI data centers in Texas and other parts of the country. City documents seen by Bloomberg suggest the Texas data center will be as big as New York's Central Park.Meta started building its $10 billion AI data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana last December, and its construction is expected to continue through 2030. The data center is one of many Meta started working on last year to power its open-source large language model Llama. Aside from Meta, tech giants including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are spending billions to scale up their data-hungry AI efforts.Zuckerberg said he expects to end the year with over 1.3 million GPUs, while significantly" growing the company's AI team. This will be a defining year for AI," Zuckerberg wrote. In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model, and we'll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D [research and development] efforts."

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge Earlier this week, several posts on the Instagram page of Aid Access, an abortion pill provider, were inaccessible to the public. Some images were blurred out, with no option to click through and view the post. Others appeared simply as a gray square with nondescript alt text, as if the image didn't load.Aid Access connects patients with doctors who provide abortion pills via telehealth appointments, and the posts that were blocked from being viewed included instructions for performing at-home abortions using pills. The issues on Instagram - first reported by Jessica Valenti - also reportedly made it difficult to find the Aid Access account using the app's search function.By Thursday evening, Meta had restored a handful of Aid Access posts, though some appear to still be missing. This latest incident is just another example of how Meta has restricted abortion information online for years. It also comes in the middle of Meta's right-wing pivot, as the company has begun allowing more transphobic, racist, and otherwise hateful content on its platforms as it courts Donald Trump. Image: Meta The Aid Access Instagram account as of Wednesday evening. Image: Meta An example of how Aid Access posts appeared on Instagram. Medication abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy can safely be done at home, according to the World Health Organization. Licensed providers like those working with Aid Access have prescribed abortion pills to hundreds of thousands of patients. Thanks to shield laws, which protect healthcare workers who provide the procedure, patients in states where abortion is banned or restricted can also order abortion medication.Social media is an important place for patients to seek information about abortions, says Rebecca Davis of Hey Jane, which offers virtual reproductive care like abortions and birth control.[Patients] will often turn to social media to just make sure we're legit," says Davis, who leads marketing at the company. We've spent a lot of time and energy to really build up our social presence, so we're verified on Instagram, we're verified on TikTok."Hey Jane encountered restrictions on Instagram in recent days as well. Davis says the group has gotten messages that its Instagram profile was not easily accessible through the app's search features. The Verge was able to replicate the issue: typing in heyjane" or hey jane" did not display the account as suggested. Users would need to know the account's full handle, @heyjanehealth, in order for it to appear as a suggestion.We know that by not showing up in these searches we're directly impacting people who are actively seeking this very timely, essential healthcare from getting the information that they need to make decisions," Davis told The Verge.Meta spokesperson Erin Logan told The Verge in an email that abortion rights groups are experiencing a variety of issues - some due to correct enforcement, as well as over enforcement." Logan said the company prohibits the sale of pharmaceutical drugs on Meta platforms without a LegitScript certification. (Hey Jane is among the providers certified with LegitScript.) Logan said these incidents were not the result of recent Meta policy updates.We've been quite clear in recent weeks that we want to allow more speech and reduce enforcement mistakes - and we're committed to doing that," Logan added, though no specifics were mentioned. Regarding issues encountered by Hey Jane, Logan directed The Verge to Meta's policies, which state that content promoting the use of pharmaceutical drugs is allowed on the platform but may not be eligible for recommendation.In recent weeks, Meta has rolled back its policies for what users can and can't say on its platforms, opening the floodgates for more hate speech and offensive content under the guise of free expression." But providers have long had information about abortion restricted or removed, according to groups like Amnesty International and Repro Uncensored. Davis from Hey Jane says this isn't the first time the group's Instagram profile has been invisible in search: something similar happened in 2023, when fake Hey Jane accounts were appearing in search instead.Even though abortion access groups have encountered issues on Meta platforms, Davis says it's not as simple as moving to another social media site. Many patients use Instagram and other platforms like TikTok to find urgent information.While this moment certainly points to the value in diversifying the platforms that we're on, that doesn't necessarily mean that people who are seeking abortion care are going to be off of these platforms," Davis says.

Live translations work decently well, but trip up on things like slang and faster speech. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge I was in middle school the last time I took a Spanish class. I remember enough for toddler talk - phrases like Donde esta el bano?" and mi gato es muy gordo" - but having a meaningful conversation in Spanish without a translator is out of the question. So I was genuinely surprised the other day when, thanks to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, I could have a mostly intelligible conversation with a Spanish speaker about K-pop.Live translations were added as part of a feature drop last month, alongside live AI and Shazam. It's exactly what it sounds like. When you turn the feature on, you can have a conversation with a Spanish, French, or Italian speaker, and the glasses will translate what's being said directly into your ears in real-time. You can also view a transcript of the conversation on your phone. Whatever you say in English will also be translated into the other language. Screenshot: Meta Missing is the bit where we both start singing APT APT APT!" Full disclosure, my conversation was part of a Meta-facilitated demo. That's not truly the same thing as plopping these glasses on, hopping down to Barcelona, and trying it in the wild. That said, I'm a translation tech skeptic and intended to find all the cracks where this tech could fail.The glasses were adept at translating a basic conversation about K-pop bands. After my conversation partner was done speaking, the translation would kick in soon after. This worked well if we talked in measured, medium-speed speech, with only a few sentences at a time. But that's not how people actually speak. In real life, we launch into long-winded tirades, lose our train of thought, and talk much faster when angry or excited.To Meta's credit, it considered the approach to some of these situations. I had my conversation partner speak at a faster speed and a longer duration. It handled the speed decently well, though there was understandably some lag in the real-time transcript. For longer speech, the glasses started translating mid-way through before my partner was done talking. That was a bit jarring and awkward, as you, the listener, have to recognize you're a bit behind. The experience is similar to how live interpreters do it on international news or broadcasts.I was most impressed that the glasses could handle a bit of Spanglish. Often, multilingual speakers rarely stick to just one language, especially when in mixed-language company. In my family, we call it Konglish (Korean-English), and people slip in and out of each language, mixing and matching grammar that's chaotic and functional. For example, my aunt will often speak several sentences in Korean, throw in two sentences in English, do another that's a mix of Korean and English, and then revert to Korean. I had my conversation partner try something similar in Spanish and... the results were mixed. Screenshot: Meta You can see the transcript start to struggle with slang while trying to rapidly switch between Spanish and English. On the one hand, the glasses could handle short switches between languages. However, longer forays into English led to the AI repeating the English in my ear. Sometimes, it'd also repeat what I'd said, because it started getting confused. That got so distracting I couldn't focus on what was being said.The glasses struggled with slang. Every language has its dialects, and each dialect can have its unique spin on colloquialisms. You need look no further than how American teens have subjected us all to phrases like skibidi and rizz. In this case, the glasses couldn't accurately translate no manches." That translates to no stain," but in Mexican Spanish, it also means no way" or you're kidding me!" The glasses chose the literal translation. In that vein, translation is an art. In some instances, the glasses got the correct gist across but failed to capture some nuances of what was being said to me. This is the burden of all translators - AI and human alike.You can't use these to watch foreign-language movies or TV shows without subtitles. I watched a few clips of Emilia Perez, and while it could accurately translate scenes where everyone was speaking loudly and clearly, it quit during a scene where characters were rapidly whispering to each other in hushed tones. Forget about the movie's musical numbers entirely.You wouldn't necessarily have these issues if you stuck to what Meta intended with this feature. It's clear these glasses were mostly designed to help people have basic interactions while visiting other countries - things like asking for directions, ordering food at a restaurant, going to a museum, or completing a transaction. In those instances, you're more likely to encounter people who speak slower with the understanding that you are not a native speaker.It's a good start, but I still dream of the babel fish from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - a little creature that when plopped in your ear, can instantly and accurately translate any language into your own. For now, that's still the realm of science fiction.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images When the Supreme Court upheld a law that banned TikTok from the US, it seemed well aware that its ruling could resonate far beyond one app. The justices delivered an unsigned opinion with a quote from Justice Felix Frankfurter from 1944: in considering the application of established legal rules to the totally new problems' raised by the airplane and radio, we should take care not to embarrass the future.'"Last Friday, the court tried to accomplish this with a narrow ruling: a decision that upheld the government's ability to ban one service on a tight timeline, while stressing a limited scope concerning new technologies with transformative capabilities." Yet, amid a confounding political circus over TikTok, some legal experts believe the Supreme Court's ruling could have a broad ripple effect on speech and tech law - they're just not agreed on what it would be.Even though it's narrowly written, it also seems clear that they want to make a mark on these kinds of questions," says Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University's public policy school. University of Chicago law professor Genevieve Lakier put it more bluntly on Bluesky: The Court... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Pordenone Cartoon Museum The celebrated cartoonist talks anxiety, process, and the final installment of his Acme Novelty Datebook series. Read the full story at The Verge.

Better late than never. | Image: Apple Now that we've almost hit the second month of 2025, Apple has finally updated its CarPlay webpage to say it won't be arriving in 2024. As noted by MacRumors, the 2024 timeframe for the first vehicles to support CarPlay 2 has been removed from the website without adding a new launch date.Apple first announced the next generation of CarPlay" back in 2022, but updates about its arrival have been sporadic. Porsche and Aston Martin haven't provided any launch dates despite saying their cars would be the first to get the new CarPlay. Some automakers like Ford and Mercedes were slow to confirm support, while others like General Motors and Rivian have snubbed CarPlay entirely in favor of having more control over their vehicles.Despite not posting a revised date, there are indications that Apple will launch it eventually. There are references to next-generation CarPlay in the iOS 18.3 beta released last month, for example, and Apple has recently filed new images of it in an EU database. Apple also told 9to5Mac that it's working closely with several automakers that will implement the new CarPlay experience.Each car brand will share more details as they near the announcements of their models that will support the next generation of CarPlay," Apple told the outlet.

Google's Nest Learning thermostat. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Google is bringing smart home controls in Gemini to everyone. The Google Home extension in the Gemini app is adding a few new features, in addition to letting you adjust your smart lighting, thermostat, speakers, and other compatible devices as long as they're connected to your Google account.Google first previewed the extension last November. With it, you can use natural language to control your smart home when interacting with Gemini, such as saying The sun is too bright in the living room" to close your smart blinds. But now, Gemini can also carry out multiple requests, like Turn the armchair light on too, but dim the kitchen lamp." You'll be able to use the Google Home extension to ask Gemini about the status of your devices too, such as whether you've left your porch light on.Additionally, Google will let you control non-sensitive" smart home devices, like your lights, from your phone's lock screen. Other updates include the ability to adjust the volume, pause, and resume media on smart speakers, displays, and TVs within the Gemini app, as well as an updated thermostat control design that matches the one inside Google Home. Gemini will also automatically open the Google Home app for security-related actions for cameras and locks (it previously only linked you).The launch of the Google Home extension follows a big update to Gemini, which lets it perform more complex tasks across multiple apps. You can try out the integration for yourself by signing into Gemini with the same account you use for Home and turning on the Google Home extension. It launches today but is rolling out over the coming weeks."

A screenshot from a video of TerraPower's groundbreaking ceremony for its demonstration project in Wyoming. TerraPower, a nuclear energy startup founded by Bill Gates, struck a deal this week with one of the largest data center developers in the US to deploy advanced nuclear reactors. TerraPower and Sabey Data Centers (SDC) are working together on a plan to run existing and future facilities on nuclear energy from small reactors.Tech companies are scrambling to determine where to get all the electricity they'll need for energy-hungry AI data centers that are putting growing pressure on power grids. They're increasingly turning to nuclear energy, including next-generation reactors that startups like TerraPower are developing.The energy sector is transforming at an unprecedented pace."The energy sector is transforming at an unprecedented pace after decades of business as usual, and meaningful progress will require strategic collaboration across industries," TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque said in a press release.A memorandum of understanding signed by the two companies establishes a strategic collaboration" that'll initially look into the potential for new nuclear power plants in Texas and the Rocky Mountain region that would power SDC's data centers.There's still a long road ahead before that can become a reality. The technology TerraPower and similar nuclear energy startups are developing still have to make it through regulatory hurdles and prove that they can be commercially viable.Compared to older, larger nuclear power plants, the next generation of reactors are supposed to be smaller and easier to site. Nuclear energy is seen as an alternative to fossil fuels that are causing climate change. But it still faces opposition from some advocates concerned about the impact of uranium mining and storing radioactive waste near communities.I'm a big believer that nuclear energy can help us solve the climate problem, which is very, very important. There are designs that, in terms of their safety or fuel use or how they handle waste, I think, minimize those problems," Gates told The Verge last year.TerraPower's reactor design for this collaboration, Natrium, is the only advanced technology of its kind with a construction permit application for a commercial reactor pending with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the company. The company just broke ground on a demonstration project in Wyoming last year, and expects it to come online in 2030.Electricity demand from data centers has tripled over the past decade, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). That demand is only expected to grow with the rise of AI, a trend that could prolong the lives of aging fossil fuel power plants and revive retired nuclear plants.Microsoft made a deal in September to help restart a retired reactor at Three Mile Island. Both Google and Amazon, meanwhile, announced plans last year to support the development of advanced reactors to power their data centers.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Meta and YouTube aren't the only platforms looking to benefit from TikTok potentially disappearing - Substack wants in on the action, too.The company announced Thursday it's launching a $20 million creator accelerator fund," promising content creators they won't lose revenue by jumping ship to Substack. Creators in the program also get strategic and business support" from Substack, and early access to new features.We established this fund because we've seen creators who specialize in video, audio, and text expand their audience, revenue, and influence on Substack, where the platform's network effects amplify the quality and impact of the work they're doing," the company said in a blog post.This pivot on Substack's part has been in the works for a while - for months, the company has been marketing itself not as a newsletter delivery service but as a creator platform similar to Patreon.On Substack, [creators] can build their own home on the internet: one where creators, not platform executives or advertisers, own their work and their audience," the blog post reads. The post also cites bans, backlash, and policies that change with the political winds" as a reason creators can't depend on traditional social media services.That's all fine (we at The Verge have been saying this for a while). But creators focusing on Substack are also subject to ebbs and flows depending on what the company is prioritizing: first, it was newsletters, then it was tweet-like micro blogs, followed by full-on websites and livestreaming. For some, Substack's initial stated mission of giving more freedom to independent writers is fading. And TikTok creators looking to move to Substack will need to rebuild their following all over again - you obviously can't export your TikTok followers.Substack's business is not immune from political winds," either. Just a year ago the company found itself in hot water over Nazi newsletters that were being monetized on the platform. Substack eventually banned some of the newsletters, but only after sustained and public pressure from high-profile writers. In 2022, when Substack's promise was to be a better version of a newsroom, the company abruptly fired an editor who had worked on a newsletter critical of Substack.The $20 million fund isn't the first time Substack has offered a pool of money meant to entice creators. Under a program called Substack Pro, the company poached top media talent from traditional newsrooms with higher pay, health insurance, and other perks. That program ended in 2022, with Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie saying the deals weren't employment arrangements but seed funding deals to remove the financial risk for a writer in starting their own business." In other words, welcome to Substack. Now that you're here, you're on your own - which is more or less the deal other platforms offer.

Image: id Software After revealing its next Doom game last summer, id Software is almost ready to release it: the studio announced that Doom: The Dark Ages is launching on May 15th.The news came as part of Xbox's most recent Developer Direct livestream, which provided the best look yet at the prequel. As the name implies, The Dark Ages is set in a medieval fantasy realm and takes place long before the events of Doom Eternal and the franchise's 2016 reboot. The developers say that the new game features a much bigger world with a larger emphasis on story - including plenty of cutscenes - but the most important changes appear to be with how The Dark Ages will play.A big focus this time around is on melee combat. Since this is a Doom set in medieval times, that means players will get access to brutal new melee weapons like a spiked mace and iron flail. The scale of battles also seems to have ramped up. We already knew that players would get a mount in the form of a cybernetic dragon, but today's reveal also showed off a skyscraper-sized mech suit so that the Doomslayer can fight enemies the size of kaiju.Another big change is a greater emphasis on accessibility through a series of gameplay sliders. These let you adjust things like the game speed or parry timing, either ramping them up or down. Essentially, these options should give players the ability to really customize the experience, either making it more approachable or a whole lot harder. There are standard difficulty options as well.Doom: The Dark Ages is coming to the PS5, Xbox, and PC when it launches in May.

The Surface Laptop Go 3 could get a replacement very soon. | Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It's been less than a year since Microsoft launched its first Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered Surface devices, and now a new rumor says followups could debut as soon as this spring. A report from Windows Central updates rumors that have circled since 2023, citing sources who say that new versions of the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro 2-in-1 are in the works, with 11- to 12-inch size screens, Windows on Arm, and lighter but still premium" designs.Microsoft has already scheduled a major" Surface for Business event next week. There, we're anticipating variants of the current Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 CoPilot Plus PCs that have Intel's Lunar Lake chips inside and are aimed at business customers.According to Windows Central, it's unclear where these smaller devices might launch, but they will have cheaper chipsets, like the Snapdragon X Plus or possibly the Snapdragon X that launched earlier this month at CES, to keep prices in the $800 - $900 range. When Microsoft last updated its Surface Laptop Go lineup with a third-generation in 2023, we thought it no longer made sense at the asking price, but the battery life and performance supported by Qualcomm's hardware might change things for a new replacement.The smaller Surface Pro is described as a competitor for Apple's 11-inch iPad Pro. However, Windows Central reports it's unclear if it is positioned to replace the old Surface Go series, which was last updated with the business-focused Surface Go 4.

Image: Google Google is changing the way visible URLs show up on mobile search results worldwide. Search results since 2009 have shown breadcrumbs" or the hierarchy of a webpage's URL using >" after the domain name, but starting today, it will only show the domain on your smartphone or tablet.Web developers have had some control over how results show up according to Google's structured data guidelines that also control how info shows up in its snippets and other areas, and the breadcrumbs will still show up in searches from your desktop. Image: Google Example of the new URL result structure on mobile (top) and desktop (bottom). Google says it's making this change because the breadcrumb element isn't as useful to people who are searching on mobile devices, as it gets cut off on smaller screens."It's certainly true on much smaller screens, like on the discontinued iPhone 13 Mini, which can only show part of the first section of the URL. Screenshot: The Verge On desktop: Structured websites show the URL hierarchy where the page exists after the domain name. Screenshot: The Verge On mobile: The trail after the URL will start getting suppressed, although some breadcrumbs are still showing up for now. (This is an iPhone 13 Mini screen). But the changes Google is making also affect much larger mobile device screens that would otherwise have no issue displaying the breadcrumbs, which are useful for seeing at a glance what section of a site you're browsing.