The Verge

Apple Early photos from Apple TV Plus' upcoming series Sunny left little question about it being a comedy, but the show's new trailer makes it seem like it's also going to be a solid (if goofy) whodunit that leaves you guessing.Set in a semifuturistic modern-day Japan, Sunny follows as Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones) sets out to uncover the truth behind her husband Masa's (Hidetoshi Nishijima) presumed death. Between Masa's plane crashing under mysterious circumstances and the disappearance of his body, life already feels weird for Sunny as she settles into her new identity as a widow. But when a colleague of Masa's shows up at Suzie's door with a bobble-headed domestic robot named Sunny (Joanna Sotomura) as a bereavement gift, things start to... Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images LinkedIn is rolling out new AI-powered features to help users find jobs, tailor their resumes, and even get advice from AI chatbots. But these new features come at a cost, as they'll be available to Premium subscribers beginning in English worldwide.One tool lets you search for jobs on LinkedIn by typing a prompt in natural language. In a blog post, LinkedIn chief product officer Tomer Cohen gives the example of find me a remote marketing job in Detroit that pays at least $110,000." If the results are good, I could see this being a useful way to seek out potential jobs. GIF: LinkedIn LinkedIn can also review your resume and provide personalized suggestions for improving it for a specific job post. You'll be able to... Continue reading...

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Google has announced on its Pixel Help Community portal that it's extending the Pixel 8's repair program for phones displaying vertical lines and exhibiting flickering. This policy update allows Pixel 8 owners to get this problem fixed under warranty, for up to three years after purchase, if their phone Exhibits a vertical line running from the bottom of the display to the the top or a display flicker."Google isn't promising that every phone with the issue will qualify, though - Google or an authorized repair partner will need to determine that it qualifies for the extension based on the serial number of your phone.The Pixel 8 Pro is not included in this repair extension, though there are user claims out there that it can exhibit... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Tesla shareholders voted today to reapprove Elon Musk's gigantic pay package, after a Delaware court judge voided it earlier this year. Investors also approved a proposal to move the company's legal home from Delaware to Texas and to reappoint two board members: James Murdoch and Kimbal Musk, Elon's brother.The vote was widely seen as a referendum on Musk's leadership during a time of great upheaval for Tesla, which has seen its stock price slide on news of shrinking sales, softening demand, and declining revenue. The company has laid off at least 10 percent of its workforce, its vehicle lineup is aging and in need of a shake-up, and the success of Musk's bet on AI and robotics is far from certain.In spite of all this, Tesla... Continue reading...

Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge New technologies and changes in consumer habits could limit the use of controversial carbon capture to fight climate change, new research shows.Efforts to capture carbon from polluting sources or to filter CO2 out of the air have picked up steam as a way for companies to meet their climate goals. But those strategies are still unproven at a large scale and could come with other unintended consequences. Some environmental advocates also worry that focusing on cleaning up pollution after the fact could lure companies away from transitioning to renewable energy to prevent emissions in the first place.To stop climate change and meet the goals of the Paris agreement, planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions need to reach net zero around... Continue reading...

I suspect GuliKit's gamepad sticks will require soldering, though... this DualSense, for example, has sticks soldered to the board. | Image: iFixit The Nintendo Switch's infamous Joy-Con drift" showed us that we deserve more from joysticks and that one company is only too happy to help. Now, GuliKit is officially bringing its drift-resistant magnetic Hall effect joysticks to a PS5, PS4, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch Pro gamepad near you in the form of upcoming upgrade kits.They'll be available for the Sony DualSense, DualShock 4, Xbox Series gamepad, and Nintendo's own official Switch Pro controller. But surprisingly, GuliKit is no longer bringing it to Sony's modular DualSense Edge like it originally promised and won't offer it for Xbox Elite controllers, either. GuliKit business director Jack He tells me that's because neither Sony nor Microsoft offer working calibration tools for... Continue reading...

You won't have to force a smile with the Qudi Mask 2 strapped to your face. | Screenshot: YouTube The Qudi Mask 2 could let privacy seekers who still want to be social have their cake and eat it, too. It's a wearable digital avatar that hides a user's real face behind an LED display and can automatically trigger a handful of emotive - but somehow also emotionally empty - expressions using head tracking and a mic.LED face masks aren't a new idea - you've probably seen teenagers running around with them on Halloween - but the Qudi Mask 2 does more than just cycle through a preloaded collection of pixelated faces and colorful animations. Its faces can automatically change their expressions by reacting to what the wearer is doing. The sound of their voice will cause the animated mouth to move in real time so it appears like it's... Continue reading...

Breaking streaks no longer has to be something you worry about. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge When I had covid, I was miserable, hacking up my lungs and confined to bed for several days with horrible brain fog. I don't remember much from that time. I do, however, remember waking up bleary-eyed and feverish to an Apple Watch notification. It said I hadn't made much progress on my rings. I should take a brisk 27-minute walk. You can still do it," it said. No, I could not.It wasn't my fault I'd gotten sick, but my 85-day streak was broken anyway. Since then, I've had nasty shin splints, migraines, and multiple cross-country flights that make it hard to hit exercise goals - all excellent reasons to prioritize rest or build some extra flexibility into my schedule. Despite knowing better, I still felt disappointed whenever I listened... Continue reading...

Now any dealership can sell Ford EVs. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Ford's Model E dealership certification program is getting stripped down to allow all locations access to EV inventory. As reported by CNBC, Ford is revising its strategy of requiring dealerships to invest up to $1.2 million for certification that includes mandatory on-site EV chargers, upgrades, and advanced staff training.In an email to The Verge, Ford Model E COO Marin Gjaja wrote that starting July 1st, the company is expanding EV sales and service to all 2,800 of its US dealers," which replaces the Model E dealership program first introduced in 2022. Gjaja wrote that approximately 1,400 dealerships had enrolled in the old program.The move to dismantle EV certification requirements was rumored to be underway last month in... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos via Getty Images The Supreme Court maintained access to the abortion pill mifepristone, unanimously refusing to hear a case brought by a number of anti-abortion organizations and doctors over the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of the pill.The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA's relaxed regulation of mifepristone," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion issued Thursday. But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justiciable case or controversy in federal court."In 2022 - after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade - a newly... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta is making some improvements to WhatsApp video calls that should make them more useful for conversations with large groups of people.One feature is a speaker spotlight, which automatically highlights the speaker and makes them appear first on-screen, according to a Meta blog post. The company is also improving screen sharing to make it easier to watch videos as a group: if you're screen sharing and showing a video with audio, the audio is now shared as well. Image: WhatsApp Meta's promotional image about its updates to WhatsApp calls. In addition, video calls will also let you have 32 people, no matter what device you're on. That cap had already been in place for video calls on mobile devices, but not when... Continue reading...

Image: HBO Ahead of the premiere of House of the Dragon's second season, HBO has confirmed that the Game of Thrones spinoff will be getting a third season. Naturally, there are no real details on what the new season will entail or when it will start airing on HBO or Max. We'll need to get through season 2 for that kind of info.House of the Dragon premiered in 2022 and is set 200 years before the original Game of Thrones series. It's focused primarily on House Targaryen and stars the likes of Matt Smith and Emma D'Arcy. The second season kicks off on June 16th on both HBO and Max. It's also not the only extension of Game of Thrones in the works: HBO has another spinoff called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: the Hedge Knight in development, though... Continue reading...

Dave Burke presenting at Google I/O 2024. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Android's leadership team at Google is losing another key leader. Dave Burke, the VP of engineering for Android, is stepping away" from heading up Android engineering and is shifting into an advisory position while exploring AI / bio projects," he said in an email he posted to LinkedIn.AI has the potential to play a pivotal role in accelerating drug discovery, with wide applicability, including in hard-to-treat pediatric cancers, a topic close to my heart," Burke said. I'm working with Sundar to explore relevant roles at Alphabet." Burke has been on the Android team for 14 years.Burke's departure follows Google's recent move to combine its Android and hardware teams into a new Platforms and Devices" team run by Rick Osterloh. As... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft delivered the best Xbox showcase I've seen in years over the weekend. Layoffs, studio closures, and Xbox exclusives coming to PS5 had fans worried about the future of the platform, but Sunday's showcase put many of those fears to rest.Xbox chief Phil Spencer kicked off the show with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - cementing that Xbox is now the home of Call of Duty - before moving on to new reveals and gameplay. Three titles stood out for me personally: Perfect Dark; Fable; and Gears of War: E-Day.Last week, I revealed most of the first-party games that would be part of this showcase, but one I didn't name was Perfect Dark. Reports had suggested it was in rough shape." I hadn't heard about a potential release window, so I wasn't... Continue reading...

We're hoping for a big overhaul on this iconic pair, but they're still the best Beats headphones you can buy. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you're not an audiophile and can't otherwise afford to splurge on a substantial pair of headphones like the AirPods Max or the new Sonos Ace headphones, a pair of Beats can do the job just fine. The brand's headphones consistently sound pretty good and have kept up well with the times under Apple's stewardship. You can consider the Beats Studio Pro the pinnacle of the line right now, and the flagship over-ear pair are nearly matching their all-time low price at around $179.95 ($170 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That's only $10 more than the all-time low price we saw during Black Friday.At launch, we felt the Beats Studio Pro couldn't quite measure up to the competition in the price arena they played in. In terms of audio... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge TikTok is introducing a new way for musicians on the platform to promote their music - this time through a video series.The series, called Off the Record," is produced by TikTok and features musical artists like Shakira, Charli XCX, and Meghan Trainor. The short clips are similar to series like Song Exploder or The New York Times' Diary of a Song," where artists talk about their inspiration behind songs, the writing and recording process, and more. The videos - some of which have already gone live - are shared by artists over the course of June.TikTok also announced a hub on the app where Off the Record videos live. Users can find the page by searching for #OfftheRecord.Off the Record is part of TikTok's continued efforts to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge You may see Microsoft's upcoming Recall feature, which screenshots everything you do (and has now become an opt-in feature) as a convenient way to keep an eye on your history or a problematic privacy violation. However, it's not the first time your activity on a Windows computer will have been recorded.As XDA Developers has pointed out, Windows 10 and 11 computers already contain an activity tracker, which was introduced in Windows 10 as part of its Timeline feature. And although Timeline was removed in Windows 11, the tracker apparently was not. Screenshot: Microsoft Activity history may still be enabled in Windows 11, even though Timeline has disappeared. It's a simple matter to see if the tracker is still... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge, Getty Images At WWDC on Monday, Apple revealed Apple Intelligence, a suite of features bringing generative AI tools like rewriting an email draft, summarizing notifications, and creating custom emoji to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Apple spent a significant portion of its keynote explaining how useful the tools will be - and an almost equal portion of time assuring customers how private the new AI system keeps your data.That privacy is possible thanks to a twofold approach to generative AI that Apple started to explain in its keynote and offered more detail on in papers and presentations afterward. They show that Apple Intelligence is built with an on-device philosophy that can do the common AI tasks users want fast, like transcribing calls and... Continue reading...

Apple and Google have already been named designated providers" and will be impacted by the law. | Photo by Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images Following in the footsteps of the European Union, Japan has now passed a law that will restrict Apple and Google from blocking third-party app stores for Japanese users on their platforms. The legislation is expected to come into force by the end of 2025 and aims to reduce app prices and create a more equitable market by forcing the tech giants to compete with smaller challengers.Dubbed the Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software, Japan's law shares some similarities with the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), enforcing strict rules against designated providers." That includes requiring their platforms to allow third-party app stores, allowing app developers to offer third-party billing services, and making it... Continue reading...

Image: Lego Two years after Lego revealed a buildable model of the Transformers' Optimus Prime that actually transformed, the heroic Autobot leader is finally getting backup with his second-in-command, Bumblebee, debuting as a 950-piece set that transforms into a Volkswagen Beetle - or at least a close facsimile thereof.In recent years, thanks to the run of big-budget Transformers movies, Bumblebee is best known for transforming into a bright yellow Chevrolet Camaro. But in the original '80s toy line and animated series, Bumblebee's alternate vehicle mode was the iconic Volkswagen Beetle. Image: Lego Lego Bumblebee's vehicle mode appears to be a mashup of several different vehicles. As with its Optimus Prime set, Lego is... Continue reading...

Arlo's new security tag can disarm its security system via its video doorbell. | Image: Arlo Last year, smart security company Arlo launched a home security system with several features that rivaled the excellent Google Nest Secure (RIP) - including multifunction sensors and an all-in-one hub / keypad. It then promised an NFC security tag that would let you disarm the system with a tap. This week, it delivered on that promise with the launch of the Arlo Security Tag.The new key fob lets you arm and disarm the system with a tap on the keypad hub inside your home, similar to what was possible with the Nest Secure. But Arlo has also added a handy option to disarm the system by tapping the tag on an Arlo video doorbell before you even enter your house.The NFC-enabled tag is available now for $19.99 for a two-pack and works with... Continue reading...

The Galaxy Watch FE will retail for $199.99 with Bluetooth and $249.99 with LTE. | Image: Samsung The leaks were right. Samsung just announced it's launching a third smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch FE. It's meant to be the company's new entry-level smartwatch, offering a more affordable option compared to its flagship Galaxy Watch models.It makes sense that Samsung's doing this now. The Galaxy Watch series used to be relatively affordable compared to the competition, but in the past two years, Samsung's raised the starting price of its watches by $50 to keep up with inflation. The FE will retail at $199 for the Bluetooth-only version and at $249.99 for the LTE version - which is more in line with what its watches used to cost. This also makes Samsung's smartwatch lineup look a bit more like Apple's, with a budget model, flagship model,... Continue reading...

The new Discord integration on PS5. | Image: Sony Sony is improving its Discord integration on the PS5 so that you can join voice calls directly from the console. First launched last year, Discord support on PS5 currently requires you to manually transfer a call to a console by using the Discord app on mobile or PC. Sony is now rolling out an update that integrates Discord directly into the PS5 dashboard so you can select the server or DM group you want to join.The update is rolling out gradually over the coming weeks, starting with PS5 owners in Japan and Asia followed by Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, and then finally the US and Canada. You'll need to update your PS5 to the latest system software to get this new Discord integration, and a PlayStation Network account... Continue reading...

Linda Yaccarino. | Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media During an internal all-hands meeting led by X CEO Linda Yaccarino on Wednesday, concerned employees tuned in to hear if she would address the pressing issue on their minds: performance reviews.Sources inside the company confirm that a promotions process was recently delayed without explanation and that X's sales team doesn't expect to meet its revenue targets for the quarter. Given how the company formerly called Twitter has continued to struggle under Elon Musk's ownership, employees have been bracing for more layoffs.One of Musk's key lieutenants, The Boring Company CEO Steve Davis, has been reviewing finances at X's headquarters in San Francisco over the past several weeks, according to multiple employees who requested anonymity to... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge ChromeOS will soon be developed on large portions of the Android stack" so that it can roll out AI features at a faster pace, Google announced on Wednesday. The company says it will be embracing things like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks as part of the foundation of ChromeOS."The changes won't just mean more AI features, according to Google. The company also noted that they will help simplify engineering efforts" and help different devices like phones and accessories work better together with Chromebooks," as detailed in a blog post.Google surely wants to have Chromebook users trying as many AI-powered features as possible, so these changes will probably accelerate that. But the company cautions that while the... Continue reading...

Takeru Kobayashi (L) and Joey Chestnut (R) competed during the 92nd Annual Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2007. | Photo by Bobby Bank / WireImage Netflix has scheduled Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef on September 2nd as another one of its live events, along with Christmas Day NFL games, WWE Monday Night Raw, and the delayed Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight.A press release from Netflix takes the whole thing very seriously, quoting Kobayashi saying, Retiring for me will only happen after I take him down one last time... Competing against Joey live on Netflix means fans all over the world can watch me knock him out." Chestnut, meanwhile, says, It's time to give the people what they want!"The competition will have extra intrigue because Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi will both have to skip the annual July 4th Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest that made their rivalry... Continue reading...

Now that's a compact camera. | Image: MiNT The analog film resurgence continues marching forward, as MiNT's Rollei 35AF camera seems poised to release this year. The Hong Kong-based camera manufacturer first carved its niche making boutique instant film cameras that remixed classics like the Polaroid SX-70. Now, it's launched a website with a waitlist for potential customers interested in this diminutive 35mm camera.The Rollei 35AF is a reincarnation of the original Rollei 35 from 1966, but while one foot remains in the analog past, the new design incorporates lidar-based autofocus for its 35mm f/2.8 lens and options for automatic exposures. It's still built with a boxy metal body like the original and seems to keep a very compact size. According to MiNT, via PetaPixel and K... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge OpenAI and Microsoft are teaming up with Oracle to get more compute capacity to run ChatGPT. As part of a partnership announced this week, the three companies are working together so that OpenAI can use the Microsoft Azure Al platform on Oracle's infrastructure.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hasn't shied away from the fact that his company needs substantially more infrastructure to power its services. He has even been in discussions to raise billions of dollars for an AI chip venture. In the press release for the Oracle deal this week, he said Oracle's chips will enable OpenAI to continue to scale."To date, OpenAI has relied fully on Microsoft for its compute needs. In turn, Microsoft has invested $13 billion for a 49 percent stake in OpenAI's... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Somebody, call Tom Cruise - several Roku TV owners say that motion smoothing is suddenly enabled on their TVs with no way to turn it off.Contributors on Reddit and in Roku's community forum reported seeing the change on TCL TVs running on Roku OS 13, as did a few staffers on The Verge. However, for others who have access to Expert" picture settings, the same update is in place without a change, and the settings to control it are still available.For some people experiencing the problem, they said this is the first time their TV offered Roku's motion smoothing feature at all and that there's nowhere in any menu (either the standard settings or the picture settings available while watching TV) to turn it off. The update notes for Roku OS... Continue reading...

Photo by Walid Berrazeg / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm are the household names in chips - but in 2025, the popular but lesser known MediaTek might make a play to join them. Reuters reports that the Taiwanese chip company is now preparing an AI PC chipset to launch in late 2025 specifically for Windows PCs. Currently, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is the alleged MacBook Air-beating talk of the town, and MediaTek wants a piece of that action.According to Reuters, the new MediaTek chip will reportedly be aimed at the same Microsoft Copilot Plus PC program that Qualcomm helped kick-start with Microsoft. There's apparently an opening for chipmakers like MediaTek there now that Microsoft's exclusivity arrangement with Qualcomm for Arm-based versions of Windows is... Continue reading...

Illustration: Lille Allen / The Verge On Thursday, Tesla shareholders will face a stark choice: approve Elon Musk's enormous pay package, the largest ever awarded to a chief executive, or risk him picking up his ball and going home.The shareholder meeting on Thursday is a referendum on Musk's tumultuous leadership, in which he took a relatively niche startup, wrested it away from its founders, and turned it into what is arguably one of the most consequential car companies in modern history. To reward him for this feat, shareholders are being asked to cast an unprecedented vote on Musk's compensation - to the tune of $50 billion - for the second time.Last January, a Delaware court judge invalidated Musk's pay package, first approved in 2018, arguing that the process was... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by STR / NurPhoto, Getty Images Eight former SpaceX engineers filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Wednesday alleging sexual harassment and retaliation.Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community," says the employees' complaint, which was earlier reported by Bloomberg.The complaint - which cites many of Musk's Twitter posts making sexually explicit jokes - claims that Musk fostered a perversely sexist culture at SpaceX." Several of the plaintiffs say they experienced direct harassment that mimicked Musk's posts." According to the suit, senior engineers... Continue reading...

Image: Xbox Microsoft is rolling out an Xbox update that lets you view game art with any Xbox Home background. That means you'll continue to see your dynamic or regular background when you're not scrolling through different games.Previously, Microsoft only let you view game art with the default Xbox Home background. Now, you can keep your background and view game art without having to decide between the two. Microsoft first started testing this feature in April, and you can see how it looks in this embedded post from my colleague Tom Warren.

Image: Netflix It's going to be a busy few weeks for Zack Snyder on Netflix. Just a day after Netflix announced the director's cut of Rebel Moon would start streaming on August 2nd comes the news that another Snyder project will hit the service soon after. Twilight of the Gods, an animated series based on Norse mythology, will start streaming on September 19th. You can get a first glimpse at the show in action in the brief new teaser trailer above.The animation is being handled by Snyder's own Stone Quarry studio, and the show itself was created by Snyder, along with Jay Oliva (executive producer on Netflix's Trese) and Eric Carrasco (a writer on Apple TV Plus' Foundation). Here's the basic premise:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An unofficial site tracking titles in the Epic Games library may have just leaked a ton of upcoming games, as reported earlier by Wccftech. The site, called EpicDB, was taken offline shortly after it posted information scraped from the Epic Games Store catalog on Monday, but that didn't stop people from scanning the list and posting their findings.You can see the list of games from publishers like Bethesda, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, and others in a series of screenshots posted by a user on a ResetEra forum. While some, like Turok, are easy to spot, others are listed under previously rumored codenames, such as Parkside" or BioShock 4.There are still other titles under codenames we haven't heard about. Some users speculate that Momo"... Continue reading...

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge A hacker breached the systems behind Tile device trackers and stole customer data, including names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers. According to reporting from 404 Media, the hacker was able to collect customer information by accessing a tool made for responding to law enforcement requests about Tile trackers. The stolen information did not include precise Tile location data.Life360, which owns Tile, published a statement by CEO Chris Hulls acknowledging the hack. Hulls confirmed the data included Tile tracker IDs and said that the hacker had attempted to extort Life360 and that the company reported it to law enforcement.In an email to The Verge, Hulls wrote, From what I gather, very little was accessed." Hulls did not respond... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The company's Elite earbuds hit at the right time and had their moment, but the end was inevitable. Thanks for pushing multipoint until it became the norm, Jabra. Continue reading...