The Verge

This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Today I will cover a controversial ad campaign that has raised questions at LAist, a pivot at Clubhouse, and a group of late night hosts who are taking their podcast to Las Vegas.Before I start with the news, one brief side note: Herb Scannell, the head of Southern California Public Radio, announced his retirement just yesterday. Nick Gerda of LAist does a good job of laying out what Scannell's exit means for SCPR - which includes LAist 89.3 (formerly KPCC), LAist.com, and the podcast unit LAist Studio - in a reported piece that I suggest you read.LAist avoids questions on audio ads sponsored by Bari Weiss' The Free PressLAist's... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, and Brave have each issued critical security patches, reports Stack Diary. The patches address a vulnerability that an attacker could use to gain access to or run malicious code on your computer, and the companies acknowledge it's been actively exploited in the wild. NIST classifies the vulnerability as severe. Other companies' applications are affected - the vulnerability is linked to code used to render WebP images, which are widely used.The software version numbers containing the fix are below.

Yes, you can even create a strawberry koala. | Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge You can now create your own emoji combinations directly in Google Search. The company has launched its Emoji Kitchen feature on the web (via 9to5Google), which lets you mash up existing emoji to create different combinations, like an angry pumpkin or a panda wearing a cowboy hat.To start using the tool, all you need to do is type Emoji Kitchen" into Google Search and click on the Get cooking" prompt. From there, you pick from dozens of different emoji to combine or play around with the randomizer. Once you're done experimenting, you can click on the resulting emoji to copy it to your device's clipboard, allowing you to paste it as a sticker into a message or document.The emoji maker also works on mobile browsers and the Google app,... Continue reading...

Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images Tech leaders called for regulation that balances innovation and safety as the Senate conducted one of the many insight forums" to inform potential rulemaking.Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) invited leaders in the AI space, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Nvidia president Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and X chair Elon Musk to a bipartisan AI Insight Forum.The forum was closed to the public and media, but some tech leaders prepared remarks or spoke to reporters outside the event.Zuckerberg said in prepared remarks that Congress should engage with AI to support innovation and safeguards." He said there are two defining issues for AI: safety and access.M... Continue reading...

Zach Katz, FaZe Nickmercs, and Lee Trink at Parq Nightclub in San Diego, California. | Photo by Cassidy Sparrow/Getty Images for FaZe Clan Faze Clan, a merchandising and influencer marketing agency that was once synonymous with the esports space, has fired CEO Lee Trink. CFO Christoph Pachler will take over for Trink on an interim basis, Bloomberg reports.Faze Clan cultivated a lavish and freewheeling image during its early years. The firm maintained teams across many different esports titles, created gaming-adjacent content for social media platforms like Twitch and Snapchat, and sold branded apparel. Trink, who had no esports background when he became Faze's CEO in 2018, aimed to position it as a youth-oriented culture and lifestyle company. We are the voice of this current gaming generation," he said on an episode of The Vergecast in 2019, during which he also compared... Continue reading...

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Starlink, the SpaceX satellite internet service, generated $1.4 billion in revenue last year, documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal. That's up from $222 million in 2021 but $11 billion short of its original projections, according to the Journal.Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal's report comes the same day SpaceX exec Jonathan Hofeller said at a conference that it's no longer incurring losses for producing Starlink's satellite antennas, reports CNBC. According to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal, profitability took a hit in 2022, but a report by the outlet last month said SpaceX did manage to turn a profit in the first quarter of 2023.In a 2015 presentation to investors, the Elon Musk-founded company... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is hosting a State of Play presentation on Thursday, September 14th, the company announced on Wednesday. This State of Play will be focused on indie and third-party titles from around the world," Sony said, so don't hold your breath for big new reveals from the company's PlayStation Studios.Tomorrow's broadcast will focus on updates to previously announced games coming to PlayStation consoles," Sony's Shawne Benson wrote on the PlayStation blog. From indie and PSVR2 highlights, to major upcoming titles from our third-party partners, our latest show has something for everyone!" The event kicks off at 5PM ET / 2PM PT.Thursday is quickly shaping up to be a big day for gaming news. Nintendo will be kicking off the day with its next... Continue reading...

Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis promoted the Stoner Cats NFTs. | Photo by Axelle / Bauer-Griffin / FilmMagic The Stoner Cats NFTs, associated with a cartoon including the voice talent of Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, were actually unregistered securities, the Securities and Exchange Commission said today. The company behind the NFTs, called Stoner Cats 2, paid $1 million in fines and agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in its possession without admitting guilt.This is the second action the SEC has taken against NFTs, and unlike the last one, it may have broad consequences for the industry. Between the two cases, the SEC is drawing a picture where all NFTs are within their jurisdiction," says Hermine Wong, the former head of policy at Coinbase and a former SEC regulator. The order is likely to have a chilling effect on the industry, she says.... Continue reading...

Every version of the iPhone 15 includes a brighter display and Apple's Dynamic Island feature. | Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge To the surprise of no one, Apple announced the new iPhone 15 during its Wonderlust event on Tuesday, introducing it alongside the new Apple Watch Series 9 and an updated pair of AirPods Pro that come with a USB-C charging case. That means, as of today, Apple's iPhone lineup consists of the iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max, as well as the last-gen iPhone 14, iPhone 13, and the third-gen iPhone SE. The iPhone 15 lineup won't be available until September 22nd, but you can preorder the phones on September 15th, starting at $799.Every phone in the new iPhone 15 lineup comes with a USB-C port and does away with the notch in favor of Apple's Dynamic Island feature. Meanwhile, the more premium phones - specifically the iPhone 15 Pro... Continue reading...

Image: Polestar More video streaming, weather, and web conferencing capabilities are coming to Android Auto and cars with Google built-in. And that includes digital key functions as well.It's a bit mix-and-match for this announcement. Android Auto users are getting some new stuff, Google built-in customers getting others, and a lot is dependent on which make and model you own. So bear with me here.Web conferencingAndroid Auto, the system that allows you to mirror your Android-powered smartphone on your car's interior dash display, is getting some new web conferencing features. These include WebEx by Cisco and Zoom - but both are audio only. That means you can join your meetings from the road without being worried about how you appear or about being... Continue reading...

A screenshot from the video game Starfield. | Image: Bethesda Softworks We've never seen a killer app for cloud gaming yet - but Starfield might be the next best thing. It has now arrived on Nvidia's GeForce Now, the first cloud gaming service that might do it justice, and the only one with a completely free trial, no credit card required.Both the Steam and Microsoft Store versions of Starfield are live right now. That means Xbox Game Pass subscribers don't need to purchase a copy, and even if you've already started the game, your savegames should come along for the ride.Why is Starfield such a big deal for cloud gaming? On PCs, the game is notoriously hard on both CPUs and GPUs and requires an SSD to play. It controversially didn't launch with Nvidia's frame rate-enhancing DLSS tech to ease the load,... Continue reading...

A previous IVAS prototype sent to the Army by Microsoft. | Image: US Army The US Army is awarding Microsoft with another order of advanced mixed reality goggles designed for combat situations, Bloomberg reports. Microsoft had sent the Army a batch of 20 updated prototype headsets in late July, which were tested by two squads of soldiers in August who responded positively to improvements in its design: namely, they no longer felt nauseous and pained while wearing them.Microsoft, in the past year, has worked with the US Army to create HoloLens-like mixed reality headsets known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), but initial reports in 2022 indicated it was causing headaches, nausea, and eyestrain in testing. The problematic headsets were part of an order of 5,000 headsets the Army started... Continue reading...

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge EV owners fed up with the often broken, discombobulated charging experience in the US are about to get a lifeline from the federal government.The US Department of Transportation is authorizing $100 million to repair and replace existing but non-operational, electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure." The investment comes from a $7.5 billion pot of money for EV charging that was approved as part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The department has already approved around $1 billion for the installation of thousands of new EV chargers along major highways in the US.Broken EV chargers remain a major barrier to broader EV adoption. And it tends to mar the experience of owning an EV, as many EV owners told JD Power earlier... Continue reading...

Assistive Touch is a new accessibility feature introduced in watchOS 8. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Starting with watchOS 8, Apple introduced a new accessibility feature called Assistive Touch. The cool thing about this feature is that it allows you to control the watch via gestures and your arm movements. Meaning, now you don't even need to touch the Apple Watch screen to use it.The tech behind it is pretty neat. Using on-device machine learning, the feature makes use of the watch's accelerometer, gyroscope, and optical heart rate sensor to read how your muscles and tendons move. The result is that the watch can tell when you're pinching your fingers or clenching your fists. You can also enable a motion-based cursor that works like a mini-mouse when you tilt your arm.To be clear, Apple developed Assistive Touch to make the Apple... Continue reading...

Cold medications on a shelf pictured in Miami, Florida, on September 12th, 2023. | Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images The FDA's 16-member advisory panel unanimously voted yesterday that oral phenylephrine, a common active ingredient in cold medications, is no better than a placebo for treating congestion. The call by the panel sets up potential FDA action that could force the removal of certain over-the-counter medications containing the ingredient - including certain formulations of Mucinex, Sudafed, Tylenol, and NyQuil - from store shelves.As noted by The New York Times, the panel's vote doesn't necessarily mean the FDA will take action, but it usually follows panel recommendations. That said, the FDA may hold off for many months, pending contested findings by drug makers and other considerations.The panel tossed out several older studies that... Continue reading...

The Links tab looks a lot like Instagram - but it's not pictures, it's links. (With pictures.) | Image: Artifact Artifact, the algorithmic news-reading app started by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, was never really meant to just be a news-reading app. Systrom and Krieger have talked about their bigger idea being TikTok for text," but so far, all that has meant is a bunch of algorithmically ranked news articles with in-app comments sections. Artifact is a good news app, but that didn't feel as big as TikTok.With a new feature called Links, Artifact is getting a little closer to that vision. Links is a new section in the Artifact app, and it's for far more than news. It's for, well, links. You can post a link in Artifact to just about anything - an article, a video, a recipe, a real estate listing, a game where all you do is m... Continue reading...

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, which are now made of titanium chassis. | Photo by NIlay Patel / The Verge Apple finally got with the program and put USB-C on its new iPhones, but how do they compare to Android phones from the likes of Samsung and Google, where USB-C is nothing but old hat?The iPhone 15 and 15 Pro models Apple announced at its Wonderlust" keynote have various other updates and niceties aside from a new port - like new cameras, Dynamic Islands up and down the line, Roadside Assistance through the satellite function, and an Action Button and lighter titanium build on the Pros - but these still look quite like iPhones until you plug in a charger. And just like many years prior, USB-C represents yet another iPhone adoption that Android phones have had for years.So it's a good opportunity to look at how the iPhone 15 and... Continue reading...

Powerwall 3 could enable a much cleaner install for Tesla energy fans. | Image: Tesla Tesla introduced its newest home battery backup system, the Powerwall 3, which comes with more power throughput and its own built-in solar inverter. The setup makes for a more vertically integrated home solar power installation for new setups compared to the Powerwall 2, which is just a battery.Early details of the Powerwall 3 trickled out in April when we learned it'd come with an easier-to-install process. But the product is still similar to the existing Powerwall 2, starting with the squared-off slate design with a glossy white front. Battery capacity is still 13.5kWh, same as Powerwall 2. There's now a T" logo in the front instead of the spelled-out Tesla logo, and it seems to lack the more visually appealing black finishes on the... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold replacement, Xbox Game Pass Core, is launching tomorrow with 36 games in total. The Xbox maker originally announced Game Pass Core in July, promising more than 25 games. Microsoft is now revealing that the full list of 36 games includes Fallout 4, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Vampire Survivors, and more.Xbox Game Pass Core launches tomorrow, September 14th, and existing Xbox Live Gold members will be automatically transferred across to the new subscription, which is priced at the same rate of $9.99 per month (or $59.99 per year) as Xbox Live Gold.Microsoft has discontinued its Games with Gold perk in favor of these 36 games that come bundled with the subscription. The list will be updated two to three times... Continue reading...

Photo by Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images Stability AI, a company mostly known for AI-generated visuals, launched a text-to-audio generative AI platform called Stable Audio.Stable Audio uses a diffusion model, the same AI model that powers the company's more popular image platform, Stable Diffusion, but trained with audio rather than images. Users can use it to generate songs or background audio for any project.Audio diffusion models tend to generate a fixed length of audio, which is terrible for music production as songs can vary in length. Stability AI's new platform lets users make sounds at different lengths, requiring the company to train on music and add text metadata around a song's start and end time.Previously, audio taught on a 30-second clip can only generate 30... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, Nintendo announced a 40-minute fall Direct showcase focusing on games scheduled for release this winter, set to stream on September 14th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET.Ever since Nintendo had its Super Mario Bros. Wonder Direct earlier this month, rumors circulated saying that a bigger, more general Direct would follow. Those rumors strengthened when the Gotham Knights ESRB rating page added Nintendo Switch as one of the game's platforms.Additionally, news circulated that Nintendo had a patent for new Joy-Cons that would attempt to address the current controller's problems with stick drift. But the biggest Nintendo rumor out now is the fact that several developers have claimed to see a Switch 2 out in the wild and that developer kits... Continue reading...

Larian Studios Lots of menus, controls, and buttons to parse, but fundamentally, the game is still the same and still very worth it. Continue reading...

The Pet Tag attaches to a collar. | Image: Ring Amazon-owned Ring is launching a $9.99 Pet Tag today to make it easier to bring lost pets back home. The Ring Pet Tag essentially puts a QR code on your dog or cat's collar, which links up to an app. If the unthinkable happens, someone can scan the QR code and help reunite the lost pet with its owner.The QR code is linked to a pet profile that can include information like health conditions and, most importantly, an optional contact me" feature that starts a two-way communication with the pet owner. While you could easily put a regular collar tag on your pet with your phone number, this QR code shields your number, ZIP code, or any other personal information that people frequently place on pet tags. Image: Ring Y... Continue reading...

Photoshop's Generative Fill tool is finally available outside of the beta app. | Image: Adobe Following several months of beta testing, Adobe has announced that its Firefly generative AI model is now commercially available across Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Express, and Adobe Experience Cloud.That means the Firefly-powered workflows that have so far been limited to the beta versions of Adobe's apps - like Illustrator's vector recoloring, Express text-to-image effects, and Photoshop's Generative Fill tools - are now generally available to most users (though there are some regional restrictions in countries with strict AI laws like China). Adobe is also launching a standalone Firefly web app that will allow users to explore some of its generative capabilities without subscribing to specific Adobe Creative Suite applications. Adobe... Continue reading...

Adobe is making it easier to improve and clean up the audio quality of your recorded footage in Premiere Pro. | Image: Adobe Adobe is introducing some new AI and 3D features in beta for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Frame.io - its popular suite of video and audio editing applications that are designed to improve workflow and speed up time-intensive tasks.To start, Premiere Pro is adding an AI-powered Enhance Speech feature that Adobe claims can make poorly recorded dialogue sound like it was recorded in a professional studio." Enhance Speech automatically removes background noise and provides Premiere Pro users with a mix slider to customize how much of it they'd like to incorporate in their projects. A new Audio Category Tagging feature is also available that automatically flags clips that contain dialogue, music, and sound effects or ambient noise. ... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is rolling out a big new PS5 update today, just over a month after it first started testing the changes in a beta. The update adds Dolby Atmos, lets you mute that annoying bootup beep, and even supports pairing a second controller as an assist one to let you help friends or family complete a game. Sony is also expanding its PS Remote Play app to Google's Chromecast with Google TV (4K), allowing you to stream games from a PS5 or PS4 to Android TV OS 12 devices.The Dolby Atmos support comes in the form of Sony's 3D Audio implementation (Tempest 3D AudioTech). It's compatible with Dolby Atmos devices like sound bars, TVs, or home theater systems. Media apps like Netflix can also update their apps on PS5 soon to support Dolby Atmos... Continue reading...

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge SpaceX said Tuesday evening that it fixed an outage with Starlink, the company's satellite internet service. The network issue has been fully resolved," the company wrote at 9:39PM ET.At 8:33PM ET, the company acknowledged the issue and said it was working on a fix. Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution," SpaceX wrote on X (formerly Twitter). We appreciate your patience, we'll share an update once this issue is resolved."

Women Plus Connect is a new feature in the Lyft app that lets women and nonbinary drivers and riders opt to prefer women and nonbinary drivers and riders. | Image: Lyft On Tuesday, rideshare service Lyft launched Women Plus Connect, an in-app feature that matches women and nonbinary drivers with more women and nonbinary riders." The move is an effort to improve safety and encourage more women and nonbinary drivers to work with the company. A report by The Verge found that female rideshare drivers frequently face harassment and sexual assault and feel unsupported by rideshare companies.The feature offers Lyft drivers an option to turn on a preference in the Lyft app to prioritize matches with other nearby women and nonbinary riders. It's not a guarantee, however, and if no riders that match that description are nearby, drivers will still be matched with men. Image: Lyft The... Continue reading...

The ringtones might be good enough to keep you from using that Action Button to turn off the ringer. | Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Apple's iPhone is finally getting some new ringtones with iOS 17. As reported by 9to5Mac, the iOS 17 release candidate (RC) has a bunch of additional ringtones, and assuming nothing changes between the RC and the update's official release, you're going to have a few additional sounds to choose from very soon.iOS 17 includes more than 20 new ringtone options and sound alerts," 9to5Mac says. I've installed the RC and listened to many of the new sounds, and I'm a big fan. I'm particularly drawn to the new Journey" ringtone, which sounds like something out of a classic RPG. If you want to hear a few of the new tones, 9to5Mac has a short video you can check out.Some older sounds have been slightly remastered" as well, according to 9... Continue reading...

The iPhone 15 and 15 Pro phones will be the first to support the Qi2 open charging standard, but they aren't Qi2-certified yet. | Image: Apple The iPhone 15 and 15 Pro are the first phones to ship with the new Qi2 magnetic wireless charging standard. Well, sort of: it turns out they aren't Qi2-certified yet. But neither is anything else.Qi2 is an update to the Qi wireless charging standard that adds a ring of magnets to ensure proper alignment of the charging coils. You know, like MagSafe. Unlike MagSafe, Qi2 is an open standard - Apple even contributed its magnetic power profile" to it - and Android phone makers are expected to adopt it as well. That's great. Few things are more frustrating than waking up to a dead phone because you plopped it on the charger a few millimeters off-center, and magnetic alignment fixes that. (So does plugging it in, but bear with me.)Qi2 a... Continue reading...

Apple brings satellite-powered Roadside Assistance to the iPhone 15 and iPhone 14 in a partnership with AAA. | Image: Apple During the iPhone 15 launch event in Cupertino, Apple announced it's adding satellite-powered Roadside Assistance to the iPhone in a partnership with AAA. Buying and activating a new iPhone 14 or iPhone 15 series device will include two years of Emergency SOS and Roadside Assistance access for free. The services they connect you to are covered under the AAA membership terms or available on a pay-per-use basis for non-AAA members.The Roadside Assistance service - which is US only - is an expansion of the Emergency SOS via satellite feature launched with iPhone 14 last year. If you have car trouble, you can text AAA for assistance for your emergencies, such as being locked out, running out of fuel, or a flat tire (you know, those times... Continue reading...

The noble Apple Polishing Cloth. | Image: Apple It's that time of year again - the time when millions around the world nail their eyeballs to the Apple Store website and wait, unblinking, to find out whether the new iPhones and Apple Watches are compatible with the $19 Polishing Cloth Apple launched in 2021. After all, you bought the cloth as soon as Apple announced it, and you know all about planned obsolescence. Did you waste 19 bucks two years ago?I did some digging, and I am pleased as punch to report that, no, you didn't. Even the brushed titanium-framed iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are supported. Apple updated its website this afternoon to add no less than six new devices to the cloth's diverse stable of compatible screen-having Apple products. That brings the grand total to... Continue reading...

Unity Popular video game engine Unity is making big changes to its pricing structure that's causing confusion and anger among developers. Today, Unity announced that on January 1st, 2024, it would be implementing a pay-per-download pricing scheme that would charge developers a flat fee any time a game using Unity software is installed.We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user," the company shared on its blog. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share."Unity went on to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile is buying airwaves from Comcast in a deal valued at up to $3.3 billion. In a blog post on Comcast's site, the company explains that it will sell spectrum in the 600MHz band as it is unlikely" to need it.Comcast announced plans to build out a 5G network for its Xfinity Mobile service last year using spectrum in the 600MHz band and CBRS - an unlicensed spectrum in the 3.5GHz range that companies can use for free. However, Comcast says 5G field tests with CBRS spectrum exceeded" its expectations and that it's found the band to be highly efficient and a significant part of a 5G network."That's why Comcast no longer sees a use for its 600MHz spectrum, which it says T-Mobile will lease to purchase. As part of the deal, T-Mobile... Continue reading...