The Verge

Heirloom's technology filters CO2 out of the air. | Image: Heirloom Microsoft is helping to fund one of the US's first hubs for pulling planet-heating carbon dioxide out of the air. It struck a deal with California-based startup Heirloom, which says it will capture up to 315,000 metric tons of CO2 for Microsoft over the next decade or so.The partnership fits into Microsoft's climate goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030, meaning it plans to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits as pollution. The company has made other deals with startups breaking ground on new industrial facilities that filter CO2 out of the air, called direct air capture (DAC) plants. Now, it's also involved in the Biden administration's push to build big hubs for DAC plants across the US.The partnership... Continue reading...

One more exec has pleaded guilty. | Illustration: The Verge Ryan Salame, who ran FTX's Bahamas subsidiary, pleaded guilty to two criminal charges on Thursday. They are conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Election Commission and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transferring business.I made political contributions in my name that were funded by transfers from an Alameda subsidiary," Salame said in court, according to CoinDesk.The former FTX executive also agreed to turn over more than $1.5 billion in assets. Salame - like Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang, the other three executives who've already pleaded guilty to fraud charges - was a member of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle. He also spent millions on Republican election campaigns.... Continue reading...

Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images Microsoft is telling customers it will assume legal responsibility if they get sued for copyright infringement while using the company's AI Copilot services.In a blog post about an initiative called the Copilot Copyright Commitment, Microsoft chief legal officer Brad Smith said the company will take the heat for any potential legal risks as more copyright holders question how AI companies handle protected works. Microsoft said the policy is an extension of its overall AI customer commitments, announced earlier this year.Microsoft said it chose this path for three reasons: it wants to stand behind customers when using its services; it understands the concern of copyright holders; and it has built guardrails against the possibility of... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is testing a new background removal tool in Paint. The feature is rolling out now to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels (version 11.2306.30.0) and lets you remove an image's background with a single click.To use the tool, testers can open an image with Paint and then hit the background removal button on the left side of Paint's toolbar. From there, Paint will automatically detect the subject of an image and cut away the background. Microsoft notes that you can also manually select the portion of the background that you want to remove. Image: Microsoft Bringing background removal to Paint would make the app even more useful. While I often use Paint for quick image edits, such as cropping,... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge GM-backed Cruise is just days away" from regulatory approval to begin mass production of its fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, the company's CEO, Kyle Vogt, said at an investor conference Thursday.Cruise first unveiled the Origin robotaxi in early 2020 as a bus-like vehicle built for the sole purpose of shuttling people around in a city autonomously. But since then, the company has been mired in a lengthy regulatory process before it can begin mass production.The vehicle's lack of traditional human controls means that Cruise needs an exemption from the federal government's motor vehicle safety standards, which require vehicles to have a steering wheel and pedals. The Origin has neither.The National... Continue reading...

Oak saplings grow in tree guards in Montmorency Forest in France on Thursday, September 17th, 2020. | Image: Cyril Marcilhacy / Bloomberg via Getty Images A lot of companies that have pledged to restore ecosystems aren't showing results, according to a new analysis of 100 of the world's biggest businesses. They might have promised to plant trees and help dwindling forests gain more ground, but many of those companies have made vague commitments and aren't sharing enough information to track their progress.There's so little transparency that it's virtually impossible to know whether companies' environmental commitments are having any positive impact. Put simply, the evidence base supporting large corporations' claims about ecosystem restoration is wholly insufficient," says the analysis published today in the journal Science.There's so little transparency that it's virtually impossible... Continue reading...

Want a scary story? | Image: Elizabeth Lopatto The creators are little more than boys" and clean and neat, like salespeople or bankers. They are looking for manuscripts for their Library. No fiction - none of that inauthentic literature. They want diaries, people's deepest, innermost thoughts: true, authentic documents reflecting the real spirit of the people." The promise is that the Library will connect lonely souls, bringing them together, letting them make friends. For a fee, a reader can be put in touch with the writer of the documents. How fast, almost explosive, its growth was!"It is after the Library opens that the grisly murders begin.A lure for the morbidly isolatedI read The Twenty Days of Turin more than a month ago, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about... Continue reading...

Image: Google After leaking the Pixel 8 Pro, Google has finally revealed an official look at the flagship device, along with the standard Pixel 8, ahead of its hardware launch event scheduled to take place on October 4th in New York City. A pair of video teasers and a new Google Store landing page give a glimpse at what the Pixel 8 lineup will look like, which includes the porcelain" 8 Pro seen previously and a pink color option on the smaller phone.The pictures and videos shared by Google show how much smaller the Pixel 8 is in comparison to the 8 Pro. While the Pixel 8 Pro is rumored to retain the same 6.7-inch display size as its predecessor, the standard Pixel 8 could have a smaller 6.17-inch display (instead of 6.3 inches on the Pixel 7),... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Instagram's Threads is rolling out the ability to search through posts more widely. In a post on the platform, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the feature is rolling out in most" English- and Spanish-speaking countries with more to come soon.In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Seine Kim confirmed that the feature is coming to both the US and the UK, and is also rolling out on the platform's web app. Threads first started testing the feature in Australia and New Zealand in August, which lets you search through the platform's posts based on a specific keyword. Previously, Threads only let you search through users. Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge Hitting the Search for" option will let you scroll... Continue reading...

You just know that thing is going to hurt your teeth. | Image: Tesla / McDonald's You can now add cutlery to the list of official Cybertruck-inspired products that have hit the market before Tesla has managed to launch the actual vehicle. On Wednesday, Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt spotted that the automaker's Chinese business arm has teamed up with McDonald's to produce 50,000 limited-edition Cyber Spoons."The spoons sport the EV's angular design and brushed silver finish and reportedly cost 30 yuan (around $4). It comes with its own storage tube that has powered by Tesla" stamped on the end. Oh, and the spoon itself says DON'T PANIC," a nod to the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy written by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's favorite philosopher," Douglas Adams. McDonald's in China has also made... Continue reading...

One more nail in the tracking cookie coffin. | Illustration: The Verge Google's Chrome browser is now one important step closer to its goal of phasing out third-party cookies by the end of 2024. In a press release today, the search giant announced that its relevance and measurement APIs for Privacy Sandbox - its privacy-preserving alternative to cross-site tracking cookies - are now generally available. That means that the APIs are available by default in Chrome, without setting any browser flags and without participating in a trial.Google says that 3 percent of Chrome users will remain unaffected for now to allow the company to run A/B tests, expanding general availability of the APIs to 100 percent of users over the coming months."Chrome also released new ad privacy controls that allow users to manage... Continue reading...

If you can stretch your budget from a MacBook Air, the 14-inch MacBook Pro will more than reward you. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple's big iPhone event announcing a new iPhone may be just five days from now, but the best Apple thing you can buy today is its M2 Pro-powered MacBook Pro for a new all-time low. The base configuration of the latest 14-inch MacBook Pro is on a one-day deal at B&H Photo for $1,699 ($300 off). It's packing a 10-core M2 Pro processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of built-in SSD storage, and all the other modern accoutrements of the latest MacBook Pros - excellent battery life, MagSafe charging, an SD card slot, a notched 3024 x 1964 resolution Mini LED screen, and a slew of ports.If you're in the market for a workhorse laptop for everyday tasks and some extensive creative workflows, you can't go wrong with the 14-inch MacBook Pro. It's powerful... Continue reading...

Image: Patreon Beginning today, Patreon creators who want a dedicated space to interact with fans will have a built-in option: group chats.Content creators who share their work via Patreon will be able to set up and host chat rooms for their fans to interact with each other, the company announced today. Creators can have up to four chats going at once and can restrict access to chats based on subscriber tiers - for example, having a thread open only to paying members. Chats will be available on mobile to start, with a desktop version in the works.Community chats will be familiar to many Patreon creators and subscribers: the feature is essentially a simpler, in-app Discord server. Creators will be able to customize chat names and topics, and users can... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Anthropic, the AI company backed by Google, has launched a paid version of its Claude chatbot in the US and UK. Priced at $20 (or 18) per month, the new Claude Pro option offers priority access when the bot is busy, early access to new features, and the ability to send more messages.The main draw is that you'll get five times more usage with Claude Pro when compared to the free tier, which means you can send more messages in a shorter period of time. Anthropic says the typical user will get at least 100 messages every eight hours depending on Claude's capacity. The company says it will warn you when you have 10 messages remaining, with its limits resetting every eight hours.Anthropic's new Claude Pro offering puts it on track to... Continue reading...

The Surface Duo streaming Xbox games. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge With Steam Deck competitors on the rise, Microsoft has been focused on phones for Xbox Cloud Gaming so far. Continue reading...

Did you ever think you'd watch Patrick Mahomes play by opening the YouTube app? | Photo by Michael Owens / Getty Images For the first time in almost three decades, football fans are about to turn on NFL Sunday Ticket in a new place. Sunday Ticket, which broadcasts out-of-market games to fans willing to pay a couple hundred bucks a season to watch games they wouldn't otherwise get on TV, was a DirecTV product from its launch in 1994 until this year, when YouTube plunked down a reported $2 billion a year to get the rights. Now, you can subscribe to Sunday Ticket through YouTube or YouTube TV starting at $350 for the season, and it will start showing games tonight.When I ask Christian Oestlien, the VP of product management at YouTube, what to expect from YouTube's first season as the official home of Sunday Ticket, I expect him to say what everybody always... Continue reading...

Books, yes. Magazines - maybe. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge I like short stories. I read them, and I write them. I grew up subscribing to and reading The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, Asimov's, and a bunch of others, some genre, some not. And as I got older, I began to understand the financial tightrope that many of these independent periodicals walk - a tightrope funded by contributions, subscriptions, the occasional ad, and perhaps a second mortgage.I also understood that any resource that makes it a bit easier for these pubs to find and keep readers - like the ability to gather subscribers through Amazon's Kindle Periodicals program - can make all the difference in keeping the books (and their walk on that tightrope) balanced.Until that resource goes away. ... Continue reading...

With this redesign of its popular Pico wireless remote, Lutron is transitioning its Caseta smart lighting line to a more classic look. | Image: Lutron Smart lighting manufacturer Lutron is expanding its line of smart switches that don't look like smart switches, adding a new Pico Paddle Remote ($19.99) to its Caseta smart lighting line. The wireless remote looks just like a wired switch but can control all Caseta switches, Lutron Serena smart shades, wired fans, Sonos speakers, and more.For those unfamiliar, the Caseta line is one of the best DIY solutions for smart switches to control regular LED lighting. This is thanks to Lutron's rock-solid Clear Connect RF technology, wide integrations (Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, SmartThings, and more), and no need for neutral wires, making the switches compatible with more homes.However, the line is expensive, starting at around $... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Honda announced today that it's adopting Tesla's electric vehicle charging connector for its future vehicles. The Japanese automaker was one of the holdouts to accept the competing (and winning) standard, joining the likes of Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, and Fisker.Honda is planning to implement Tesla's plug, now known as the North American Charging Standard (or NACS) in a new electric vehicle slated for 2025. The automaker, like every other manufacturer on board with NACS, is promising the availability of a CCS Combo to NACS adapter before 2025 so existing models (and soon-to-be-released ones like the Prologue) will have access to Tesla's vast and reliable Supercharger network.Before its plans to adopt... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Chrome on the desktop is about to get a new look. Google's widely used browser is getting an update based on its Material You design language in the coming weeks, and in this case, that will include refreshed icons with a focus on legibility" and new color palettes that better complement your tabs and toolbar," according to a blog post from Chrome VP Parisa Tabriz.You can get an early peek at the new look in the image and GIF below. To me, the most noticeable change is that things look a bit more rounded, like the new corners near the top of the window. Image: Google More rounded corners, Google's favorite new thing. GIF: Chrome Chrome itself isn't the only thing that's getting a new... Continue reading...

The Boy and the Heron. | Image: Studio Ghibli The festival is led by Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron, but there will be plenty more to see when things kick off in Toronto on September 7th. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google will soon start requiring political advertisers to prominently disclose" when they made their ads with AI, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Starting in November, Google says advertisers must include a disclosure when an election ad features synthetic content" that depicts realistic-looking people or events."That includes political ads that use AI to make someone look as if they're saying or doing something they never did, as well as changing the footage of an actual event (or fabricating a realistic-looking one) to create a scene that never happened.Google says these types of ads must contain a disclaimer in a clear and conspicuous" place, noting that it will apply to images, videos, and audio content. The labels will need... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is making some notable changes to the ad controls available to creators. Beginning in November, YouTube is dropping individual ad controls in YouTube Studio for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads on new videos, according to a support document from the company bylined by Rob," a member of the YouTube team.Instead, creators will only be able to choose between having ads before or after a video on or off. If you choose to have those ads on, YouTube will choose whether to show pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, or non-skippable ads when appropriate," per a notice on another support document.YouTube argues that this won't be too big of a deal. Most creators shouldn't notice a change as they already have many of... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge In the first half of July, Microsoft disclosed that the Chinese hacking group Storm-0558 had gained access to emails from around 25 organizations, including agencies in the US government. Today, the company is explaining how that happened thanks to a series of internal errors while sharply underscoring just how serious a responsibility it is to maintain massive, growing software infrastructure in an increasingly digitally insecure world.According to Microsoft's investigation summary, Storm-0558 was able to gain access to corporate and government emails by obtaining a Microsoft account consumer key," which let them create access tokens to their targets' accounts.Storm-0558 obtained the key after a Rube Goldberg machine-style series of... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nikolas Kokovlis / NurPhoto via Getty Images A few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp was in the process of rolling out HD photo sharing, with HD video soon to follow. As of today, the process is complete: Meta has confirmed to The Verge that both HD photos and HD videos are available to everyone.Both HD photos and HD videos have rolled out globally," WhatsApp spokesperson Ellie Heatrick told The Verge in an emailed statement. The company also posted a promotional video to Threads earlier today encouraging users to share epic moments" with the new feature, which has been available to beta testers for the past few months.After you select a photo or video to send from your camera roll, you should see an HD" button at the top of your screen (to the left of the... Continue reading...

Image: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images Apple is investing millions of dollars per day into artificial intelligence, according to a new report from The Information. The company is reportedly working on multiple AI models across several teams.Apple's unit that works on conversational AI is called Foundational Models," per The Information's reporting. It has around 16" members, including several former Google engineers. It's helmed by John Giannandrea, Apple's head of AI, who was hired in 2018 to help improve Siri. (Giannandrea has reportedly expressed skepticism to colleagues about the potential usefulness of chatbots powered by AI language models.")Additional teams at Apple are also working on artificial intelligence, per The Information. A Visual Intelligence unit is... Continue reading...

Image: Clubhouse Clubhouse is back, kinda. The app that popularized social audio rooms is reinventing itself to be more like a messaging app" with new voice-only group chats called chats," as detailed in a blog post from the company.Think of a chat as something like a group Instagram story that you contribute to with your voice. You kick off a chat by recording a voice message, and then you can send that chat around to your friends. They can then hop in and add their own voice recordings to create a kind of voice collage / conversation.The app has been totally redesigned around these new chats. When I opened up the newly updated app, it prompted me to start a new chat and share it. Chats are also what I'm seeing first in the new home tab in the app,... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge This might finally be the end of the hurricane street shark phenomenon. X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, updated its crowdsourced fact-checking Community Notes feature to tag videos directly and automatically populate those notes onto any matching videos. The same tagging was recently added to images with Community Notes, and last week, the platform added the ability to see the number of matching images that apply to each fact-check. Now, approved Community Notes will automatically show up every time a flagged video is posted or reshared.According to a post on the tool's X account, a select group of Community Notes power users, known as Top Writers" (if you have to ask what that is, you're probably not a part of the club),... Continue reading...

Slack AI can summarie channels and threads. | Image: Slack Slack is launching a built-in AI tool that can do things like summarize threads, recap channel highlights, and search for answers within your messages. In an update on Wednesday, Slack says it will start testing the new feature, called Slack AI, this winter.One of the features that Slack AI will offer is channel recaps, which can automatically generate summaries of messages sent on a particular channel. This could likely help you sift through unrelated chatter and catch up on important conversations you might've missed. The tool will be able to summarize threads, too. Image: Slack This is what it might look like when you ask Slack AI to search your messages. Another handy feature coming with Slack AI is the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Whenever I get a new phone and eventually install Instagram, the first thing I do is dig through the app's settings menu for a toggle that reads Upload at highest quality." According to the app, when enabled, this ensures you'll Always upload the highest quality photos and videos, even if uploading takes longer. When this is off, we'll automatically adjust upload quality to fit network conditions."But here's the weird part: by default, this setting is switched off. Aren't we in the 5G era? Isn't this the social media platform where people obsess over presenting themselves in the best possible light? Why would the highest-quality uploads be an opt-in feature in 2023? And how come they buried this several layers deep in settings?... Continue reading...