The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A redesigned Halo service was due this fall with an AI-powered personal trainer, celebrity-led fitness classes, and even Apple Watch support. But Amazon threw in the towel on Halo before it got there. Continue reading…

Bowser gazing at a Super Star. | Image: Universal The writing’s been on the wall basically from the moment The Super Mario Bros. Movie first hit theaters, but after weeks of sitting comfortably at the top of the domestic box office, Universal, Illumination, and Nintendo’s big movie collaboration has officially made $1 billion.It’s been less than a full month since co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie premiered, but in those few short weeks, the project’s already raked in a cool $490 million domestically and $532 million internationally, making it the fifth pandemic-era movie to cross the $1 billion mark. Given how the film only just opened in markets including South Korea and Japan within the past few days, it’s all but assured to make quite a... Continue reading…

Image: Elgato Stream Deck fever has hit The Verge — here are some of the uses that we put ours to. Continue reading…

Geoffrey Hinton (foreground) has left Google to speak out on the dangers of AI. | Image: Getty Geoffrey Hinton, who alongside two other so-called “Godfathers of AI” won the 2018 Turing Award for their foundational work that led to the current boom in artificial intelligence, now says a part of him regrets his life’s work. Hinton recently quit his job at Google in order to speak freely about the risks of AI, according to an interview with the 75-year-old in The New York Times.“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” said Hinton, who had been employed by Google for more than a decade. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”Hinton notified Google of his resignation last month, and on Thursday talked to CEO Sundar Pichai directly, according... Continue reading…

Whoops. It’s a long-standing belief here at The Verge that copyright law is the only real law on the internet, because it’s the only speech regulation most people on most platforms will accept. (At least in the United States.)Post something that blatantly infringes someone else’s copyright, and most platforms will spring into action to take it down, because they are protected from liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if they take action in a reasonable amount of time upon request. And the way the DMCA influences user behavior on platforms is really well-known: we have been writing about “no copyright intended” for over a decade now. There are lots of and lots of people out there who know how it works.Anyway, Elon Musk isn’t... Continue reading…

The Pixel Fold in 4K. | Image via Evan Blass (@evleaks) You’ve seen renders. You’ve seen a little footage. You’ve heard the marketing leaks. Now, you can feast your eyes on what are almost certainly the first images from Google itself of the leaked Pixel Fold. And if you haven’t looked at this story in a while, there’s a new third image as well: Image via Evan Blass (@evleaks) A third Pixel Fold render Those are the sorts of images that are the bread and butter of Evan Blass, aka @evleaks, and while his Twitter account is still private, he’s a friend of The Verge who’s happy to let us share them with you this fine evening. (Evening for me, anyhow, I’m in California.) Image via Evan Blass (@evleaks) Click here for the full 4K image. ... Continue reading…

FAST TV makes it very easy to just zone out and not stress, like broadcast TV did once before. | Photo by François LOCHON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images I’ve been watching TV on demand for over 20 years. Well before streaming, I was picking up the whole run of The Sopranos from the college library and making my way through the seasons. When I graduated, I kept the habit, preferring to watch things from DVD box sets rather than just zoning out in front of the television. Even when I visit family now, I’m the obnoxious one who always has a show they want to watch on Netflix or HBO Max instead of 12 episodes in a row of House Hunters on HGTV. But lately, I’ve been using Pluto TV, and I’ve found myself realizing just how relaxing it is to just let go.Pluto TV is part of a subcategory of streaming called Free Ad-Supported Television, or FAST. There’s some on-demand content and features, but... Continue reading…

The iRobot Roomba j7 is our favorite robot vacuum. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Whew, April really flew by fast! Believe it or not, Mother’s Day is now just two weeks away, so unfortunately, we can no longer keep putting off the search for a gift. Thankfully, though, retailers — likely highly aware of this fact — are discounting a bunch of items today that Mom will love.First up, some of our favorite robot vacuums are on sale. The cream of the crop, the iRobot Roomba j7, for example, is going for $399 ($200 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from iRobot. You can also buy the iRobot Roomba j7 Plus, which is the same robovac but with an auto-emptying docking station included, at Amazon, Best Buy, and from iRobot directly for $599 ($200 off).The vacuum is our top pick for many reasons. It features obstacle... Continue reading…

Watching TV has always been mostly ad-supported. And easy to do. Free streaming is bringing that back. | Illustration by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images Call it FAST, call it AVOD, call it whatever you want. Free ad-supported streaming is having a moment, and it’s only going to get bigger from here. Continue reading…

Photo by Stefan Sauer / picture alliance via Getty Images Bluesky might be the Twitter-like we’ve been waiting for.Yes, I know it’s still invite-only. Yes, I know there are only thousands of people on the platform right now. Yes, I know that it’s still missing table-stakes features like video uploads and DMs.Still, I’m starting to feel that Bluesky is where it’s at.It happened over the last few days. Bluesky — the decentralized Twitter alternative spun up by Twitter itself — has suddenly filled up with tech media and other people I follow on Twitter. Over and over again, I would check Twitter for one thing or another and see somebody begging for a Bluesky invite, then just a little while later, that person would be in my Bluesky skyline (timeline) and skeeting (tweeting). While that means I... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Just two days after a substantial leak pegged the price of Asus’ Steam Deck competitor at $699.99 with a Z1 Extreme chip and 512GB of storage, an extremely similar leak says the entry-level model with a vanilla Z1 processor and a 256GB SSD will cost $599.99.As before, SnoopyTech was the first to spot the leak — and we similarly corroborated with Roland Quandt, who showed me the data so I could see it.

Photo by Unique Nicole/Getty Images Damon Lindelof, known for his work on shows like Lost and the new Peacock show Mrs. Davis, was “asked to leave” the Star Wars universe, he said in an interview with Esquire. Word went around last year that he was developing a new Star Wars movie, but Variety reported in March that he left the project, and when Disney announced its three new Star Wars films earlier this month, Lindelof wasn’t attached to any of them.“I was in more than talks to join the Star Wars universe,” he said. “I joined the Star Wars universe. I was asked to leave the Star Wars universe.”Lindelof had been working on a film with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who directed two episodes of Ms. Marvel and is helming one of the three new movies. Obaid-Chinoy’s movie follows... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The IssueIt’s probably happened to all of us: you want to link to a really interesting factoid in a really long article — but you can’t be sure that the people reading your social network or blog entry will be able to find the factoid in all that text. You could simply take a screenshot of the factoid, but then you’re not linking to the original article, which is both bad internet etiquette and not as effective in showing your source material. Or you can take the screenshot and throw in the link, which is better but awkward. Or...Quick FixUse the Chrome browser’s Copy Link to Highlight feature. Right click on a highlighted section to see the Copy Link to Highlight option. The full storyWhen you’re a writer or... Continue reading…

GIF by Sean Hollister / content from Roddenberry Archive Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, left us a long time ago — but his archive is slowly being digitized so it can live forever. The latest batch includes an official website that lets you set foot on almost every Enterprise bridge. GIF by Sean Hollister / content from Roddenberry Archive Spoiler alert: While this story won’t spoil anything, the website in question does contain a spoiler for Star Trek: Picard.It’s not a particularly robust or mobile-friendly website at the moment, perhaps because of all the fans attempting to live out their dreams simultaneously — but if you navigate to roddenberry.x.io, click on Bridge View and then pick a ship, you might see a “Click Anywhere to Continue” message. ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Brave, the company that develops its own privacy-focused web browser and search engine, announced that it will no longer use Microsoft’s Bing search as a source for its web searches.“Every Web search result seen in Brave Search is now served by our own index,” reads a Thursday post on Brave’s company blog. “We’ve removed all search API calls to Bing.” The news comes a couple of months after Microsoft introduced some enormous price hikes for third parties using its search API. Brave’s blog post calls the price increase “unprecedented.”Brave claims that its Brave Search engine was only leveraging Bing for about 7 percent of query results. It also noted that, at Brave Search’s inception in 2021, it only used third parties for about 13... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is testing a new feature that will let you add songs to the photo carousels you post to the platform. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news on his Instagram broadcast channel, noting that it’s already available in a “few countries with more to come.”While Instagram already has a similar feature that lets you add songs to individual photos, I feel like it makes more sense to add to a carousel of pictures. Instead of listening to a music clip while looking at a single photo, you now have more time to listen to the song as you swipe through multiple photos in a carousel. Image: Instagram Here’s how it looks when you add a song to a Note. Aside from that, Zuckerberg also mentioned that Instagram is... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge ChatGPT maker OpenAI has restored access to its service in Italy, saying it has implemented changes to satisfy Italian regulators. “ChatGPT is available again to our users in Italy,” it said in a statement published by The Associated Press and also sent to The Verge. “We are excited to welcome them back, and we remain dedicated to protecting their privacy.”OpenAI said it had “addressed or clarified” the issues raised by the Italian Data Protection Authority (or GPDP) in late March. The GPDP accused ChatGPT of unlawfully collecting users’ data and failing to prevent underage users from accessing inappropriate material, leading OpenAI to block ChatGPT in the country. The company was given 20 days to address the issues, and regulators said... Continue reading…

Pedestrians walk past the front of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. headquarters office in Tokyo on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005. | Photo by Haruyoshi Yamaguchi / Bloomberg via Getty Images Mitsubishi wants to be the world’s biggest dealer of carbon removal credits. Keep in mind that the company has its hand in many of the most polluting industries out there — from producing cars to natural gas, coal, petrochemicals and plastics. And carbon credits have become a popular way for corporations to keep on polluting while claiming to fight climate change.This week, the company announced a joint venture to set up what it says is the world’s biggest portfolio of carbon removal credits. The credits represent tons of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere through a range of still contentious tactics for dealing with climate change.Carbon credits have become a popular way for corporations to keep on polluting while claiming to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is piloting new chat channels where you can hold real-time conversations with other users. The Discord-like channels will live within various subreddits, allowing you to swap between browsing through posts and chatting with other Redditors about a range of topics.While this may sound a bit like Reddit’s Live Chat feature, the platform notes that chats “will be dedicated spaces, rather than a one-off post.” As shown in the below screenshot, it looks like you can tap into different conversations embedded inside of a subreddit, with each dedicated to a specific topic, like “Tickets” or “Songwriting.” You can also access your conversations within the main Chat tab on Reddit’s bottom menu bar. Image: Reddit The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the best and easiest ways to keep your online accounts secure. It works by issuing an authentication code on your phone when somebody tries to access the account; if that person doesn’t have the code, they (or you) don’t get in. By using a 2FA app, such as Google Authenticator or Authy, you can prevent somebody from accessing your data by getting your password. (You can have a code texted to you, but that is considered far less secure due to the rise of so-called SIM hacking.)Google Authenticator lets you establish 2FA by using your phone to scan a QR code generated by the app on a separate device or by entering a key code. It’s a relatively easy process.Except there used to be a catch.... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The current AI boom, from Bing and Midjourney, relies on free access to training data, much of it scraped from the web and often protected by copyright. The use of this data has led to both criticism and lawsuits, particularly in the art world, with rights owners arguing that their work is being exploited without their permission.Some of the AI world’s biggest players, like OpenAI, have avoided scrutiny by simply refusing to detail the data used to create their software. But legislation proposed in the EU to regulate AI (the long-building and far-reaching AI Act) could force companies to disclose this information, according to reports from Reuters and Euractiv.The amendment was reportedly a late addition to the draft AI ActReuters... Continue reading…

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge A former Apple employee has been sentenced to three years in prison and must pay back over $19 million in restitution for stealing around $17 million from the tech giant through mail and wire fraud schemes. Dhirendra Prasad, 55, was originally charged in March 2022 and later pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Apple and related tax crimes back in November last year.Prasad was employed at the company between 2008 and 2018, mostly working as a buyer in Apple’s global service supply chain, purchasing parts and services from vendors. In his written plea agreement, Prasad admitted he started siphoning money from his employer around 2011 by accepting kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating invoices, and fraudulently charging Apple for goods... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix’s Sweet Tooth is Bambi meets The Last of Us. It inserts adorable animal characters into an increasingly harrowing world, where the skin of civilization is being pulled back by the nails of abnormality. This is a world unmade by a respiratory disease, while simultaneously reeling from the sudden births of hybrid children: half-human, half-animal. Amid this chaos, we meet the titular sweet tooth, Gus (Christian Convery), a half-deer boy. Raised in isolation in Yellowstone National Park, Gus found himself alone and hunted. With the help of a reluctant protector, Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), a mountain of a man carrying an equal amount of weight on his shoulders, and a terrifying teen named Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen), Gus journeys... Continue reading…

OnePlus’ first tablet brings high-end features and specs to a midrange price point. It reminds me of the OnePlus we used to know. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hackers have reportedly been breaking into AT&T-provided email addresses, and using this access to steal large quantities of cryptocurrency, TechCrunch reports. While it’s not clear how many people have been impacted, one alleged victim claims to have lost $134,000 from a Coinbase account associated with a compromised email address. Email addresses with att.net, sbcglobal.net, and bellsouth.net domain names have all reportedly been affected.The vulnerability revolves around mail keys, which are meant to allow users to log into AT&T email accounts via clients like Outlook or Thunderbird. Somehow, attackers appear to have found a way to generate these keys without the knowledge of the owner of an email account. Once they have access,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has revealed the number of active monthly users for various versions of its App Store in Europe in order to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The disclosure published on Apple legal resources site reveals that the iOS App Store has 101 million users in Europe, with the iPadOS App Store trailing behind with 23 million users. The macOS App Store has six million users and the tvOS App Store has one million.The tech giant also provided estimated figures for the watchOS App Store, Apple Books, and Podcasts paid subscriptions, which have fewer than one million monthly users in Europe.Platforms with over 45 million users are beholden to stricter regulations under Europe’s DSA rulesThe recently-enacted DSA legislation... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony says it shipped 6.3 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the three months ending March 31st 2022, bringing total sales of the console to 38.4 million, the company reported in its latest earnings release. That’s more than triple what the company shipped in the same quarter the previous year (2 million), and means the Japanese electronics giant shipped 19.1 million PS5 during fiscal 2022, beating its earlier forecast of 18 million.On the software side things were more mixed, Bloomberg notes. Revenue from game software was up overall, but units shipped fell from 70.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 68 million in the same quarter of 2022. PlayStation Network monthly active users were up slightly from 106 million to 108 million,... Continue reading…

Elden Ring tips. | Image: Valve Valve has just shipped a huge UI overhaul to Steam’s In-Game Overlay in the Steam Beta, among other fresh coats of paint. It also comes with one particularly awesome idea: a traveling notepad.Yes, you’ve probably already got a notepad app on your PC, but does yours automatically pop up the correct file that corresponds to each game you play? Can you overlay it on top of your game so it’s visible while you play? Does it automatically sync from PC to PC via the cloud? Valve says its new Notes app does all of that, and works offline too. Image: Valve It’s not the only window you can newly pin atop a game: Valve says Guides, Discussions, and the Steam web browser can all be summoned into your game with adjustable... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will no longer post service alerts and information on Twitter, citing doubts about the platform’s reliability. It’s directing riders to its website, apps, and email or mobile alerts instead.“We’ve loved getting to know you On Here, but we don’t love not knowing if we can to communicate with you each day,” the MTA account tweeted in a thread on Thursday evening. “For the MTA, Twitter is no longer reliable for providing the consistent updates riders expect. So as of today, we’re saying goodbye to it for service alerts and information.”

Image: Bluesky Look. I know that most people aren’t on Bluesky yet, but when you get there, you should know that you won’t be posting. You’ll be skeeting.I could do some explanation of it being a portmanteau of “sky” + “posting” but I think we just hit the sicko event horizon and a bunch of shitposters logged on over the last 24 hours, including a bunch who didn’t bother with Mastodon. Anyway it’s skeeting now. Sorry if you don’t like it. Skeet, skeet, motherfucker.Also, it’s not the timeline, it’s the skyline. Dril is there. There’s been a main character incident. Quote tweets are happening but you can’t block anyone and muting doesn’t work. It’s pure PVP and no Elon Musk. Also no DMs, so you’re going to have to be horny on main.

Image: Microsoft Will the UK’s decision be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Continue reading…