The Verge

Moment's new T-Series lens collection. | Image: Moment Moment is refreshing its whole lineup of smartphone camera lenses, which promise to improve your photography with custom glass that goes on top of your phone's existing camera. The eight lenses in its new T-Series lineup rework each of the options in the company's previous M-Series line with improvements like thicker glass for better optics and updated dimensions that reflect just how gargantuan the cameras on our phones have become since the M-Series debuted in 2017.These are the lenses and their prices:

At least the Fossil Gen 6 has everything now. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge If you're still holding onto a Wear OS 2 smartwatch, it may be time to consider making the leap to Wear OS 3. In the latest update to the Wear OS 2 companion app, 9to5Google spotted a string urging users to upgrade to Wear OS 3 because Google Assistant support is ending soon."This technically isn't official yet, and there's no concrete timeline for when the feature will start disappearing from older watches. However, the planned depreciation of Google Assistant illustrates how messy the transition to Wear OS 3 has been. Google Assistant was among the highlighted features when Google and Samsung announced the platform in May 2021, but it didn't actually appear on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 series until a year later. It was then... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is already facing a potential lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, and now, a group of authors, booksellers, and an antitrust think tank is calling on the agency to investigate the e-commerce giant's stranglehold on the bookselling market, as previously reported by The New York Times.In the letter, the Authors Guild, American Booksellers Association, and Open Markets Institute urge the FTC to look into Amazon's monopoly in its role as a seller of books to the public." The three organizations accuse Amazon of dominating almost every aspect of the book market," citing data that the company sells over 50 percent of all physical books in the retail market, 90 percent of physical books sold online, and over 80 percent of all... Continue reading...

GM's current Ultium cells are NCMA-based. | Image: GM GM is leading a $60 million investment round for battery research company Mitra Chem. The California-based startup could help spur the development of more cathode active materials (CAM) for GM's electric vehicles.Mitra Chem's battery research and design facility touts the use of AI to test out thousands of different cathode designs every month. It can potentially finalize chemistries for new battery cells quicker, including for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.GM is looking to update its Ultium battery chemistry with Mitra Chem's in-progress lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) chemistry and get them to market quicker. Speaking to CNBC, GM VP of technology acceleration and commercialization Gil Golan said that if Mitra Chem... Continue reading...

Are you ready for some football live chat? | Image: YouTube YouTube's first priority for the 2023 NFL season is simple: show the games it paid billions to broadcast without buffering or blackouts. But as we wind toward the first season of NFL Sunday Ticket as a YouTube property, the company says it's making football broadcasts a little more native to the platform.On Wednesday, YouTube announced a bunch of new features coming to Sunday Ticket this year. You'll be able to see live chat and polls as you watch games, which seems guaranteed to be total chaos but in a way that will feel familiar to anyone who watches YouTube livestreams of any sort. And if you want to catch up on highlights, you'll be able to do so through the Shorts tab: YouTube says that real-time highlights from every single NFL... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games is expanding its crossplay tools available as part of Epic Online Services from PC to PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, the company announced on Wednesday. The change could mean that developers will be able to more easily bring crossplay multiplayer to their games.The company first introduced the crossplay tools in June 2022, but at the time, they only worked to let games support crossplay across the Epic Games Store and Valve's Steam. The tools offer a special overlay that offers a ubiquitous way to authenticate players, streamline friend management, and provide game invite and joinability functionality that's designed to be compliant with native platform requirements," Epic wrote in its Wednesday blog post.Epic has... Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Ever wonder what it's like to work at Tesla, the biggest, most exciting car company in the world? Elon Musk is known for setting lofty goals and expecting nothing short of perfection from his workers. He often urges his employees to go super hardcore" or ultra hardcore" - an ethos he recently brought to X / Twitter.But that ethos has real-world implications for the people who work at Tesla. For the second episode of Land of the Giants: The Tesla Shock Wave, we talked to the employees who often bear the brunt of this hardcore" work culture. And their stories may shock you: extremely long hours, unsafe working conditions, harassment, scandals, fines, lawsuits, and above all else, a fear that one false slip will lead to termination.... Continue reading...

Adobe Express is rolling out its latest AI-powered features for general use. | Image: Adobe Following several months in beta, Adobe is now rolling out AI-powered features to Adobe Express, its cloud-based all-in-one design platform, courtesy of the company's Firefly generative AI model. Designed to make content creation more accessible for those without professional design experience, Adobe Express (formerly known as Adobe Spark) resembles similar design platforms like Canva and Microsoft Designer - providing quick and easy templates for users to create social graphics and posters, edit videos, decorate PDFs, and more.Users can now access the latest version of Express on desktop web for free, with plans to roll out the latest version to mobile soon." The Adobe Express Premium plan - a $9.99 monthly subscription that unlocks... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel has officially terminated its acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, the Israeli chipmaking company it announced its intention to buy for $5.4 billion in February 2022. In a press release Intel blamed its inability to obtain... the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement" in a timely manner, adding that both parties agreed to terminate the deal. Intel had originally hoped to close the transaction in 12 months, but will now pay a termination fee of $353 million to Tower.Although Intel's press release doesn't mention the regulator directly, Bloomberg reports that it was the Chinese authorities who hadn't approve the deal ahead of the transaction's deadline at midnight California time on August 15th. Sure enough, Intel's... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge I can't believe I've been struggling with apps in the Task Manager randomly moving around without realizing there's a simple keyboard shortcut to pause the Task Manager and stop its contents in their tracks. Yup, all you have to do is hold down the CTRL key and it will pause the Task Manager on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, and perhaps even older versions of Windows, too.This legitimately useful tip comes from Jen Gentleman, a Microsoft employee on the Windows engineering team that regularly shares helpful shortcuts and tips for Windows. I've used Windows for more than 20 years, and I'm still learning the many ways you can do tasks in the operating system on a monthly basis.

Dell's new 24 Touch USB-C Hub Monitor is a new 23.8-inch 1080p monitor that can effectively transform into a touchscreen tablet thanks to its articulating stand. Dell is pitching the monitor for use in retail or warehouse environments, in addition to homes and offices. The company has produced monitors with a similar form-factor in the past, such as the P2418HT which dates back to at least 2017.Like the P2418HT before it, the new P2424HT's design can't help but remind me of Microsoft's lineup of Surface Studio computers, which also feature touchscreens and articulating stands that allow them to be used like graphics tablets. But at just $519.99, Dell's new monitor is clearly in a completely different league from last year's Surface... Continue reading...

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Apple has moved end call button once again with the latest iOS 17 developer beta. Now, it lives in the lower middle of the call screen instead of on the lower right. It's a little change, but it might mean that iOS 17's new call controls won't feel quite as different once Apple officially rolls out the new software sometime this fall.The end call button has been in a new place since the first iOS 17 beta that was released in June, but it got some attention recently after some publications reported on the right-aligned. If the comments in our article on the change from last week are any indication, many didn't like the button's new position, and the negative reaction may have contributed to Apple's decision to put the end call button... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon Music Unlimited is getting another price hike, and this one affects people who pay for the music service and Amazon's Prime subscription.The cost of Amazon Music Unlimited's individual plan for Prime members will go up from $8.99 to $9.99 per month, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. The price of the family plan is going up, too, increasing from $15.99 to $16.99 per month.The costs of the annual plans for individuals that are Prime subscribers and families are increasing as well, each by $10, THR says. That means the annual individual plan will now cost $99 per year, while the family plan will cost $169 per year.Amazon spokesperson Rebecca Silverstein confirmed the changes to The Verge. Silverstein also said that... Continue reading...

The Verge X, the social network formally known as Twitter, appears to be finally following through on its promise to make TweetDeck a paid service. Many users on X, including social media consultant Matt Navarra, say that they're seeing a sales page for X Premium (the subscription formerly Twitter Blue) when they try to load up TweetDeck, which is technically now called XPro.A few of us at The Verge haven't run into the block yet, but given how many people are saying that they can't access XPro unless they pay, we're guessing it's only a matter of time.Unfortunately, we knew this was coming, as X announced on July 3rd that it would be making XPro a subscriber-only feature. It said at the time that the transition would happen in 30 days," so the... Continue reading...

Some kids watching TV, back when that was a thing kids regularly did. | Photo by Michel BARET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images It finally happened, at least according to a new metric Nielsen began using two years ago: linear TV now accounts for less than 50 percent of all TV usage. This probably isn't a surprise unless you're reading this on the couch while watching the NBC Nightly News. Between YouTube, TikTok, and streaming channels, people have a lot of ways to occupy their video-viewing time.Approximately two years ago, Nielsen started using a new metric for measuring how people spend their TV-watching time. It built in buckets for broadcast TV, cable TV, streaming, and a catchall called Other" that accounted for people using gaming consoles and media players. The latest report shows broadcast and cable TV each dropping about one percent from June 2023 to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hey, remember Helium Network, the project that was praised by The New York Times for its cryptocurrency-powered approach to public internet before it was revealed that it had been misleading people about its partner companies and that insiders had disproportionately profited from the token? Well, Helium now says it is offering a $5 / month unlimited wireless plan in Miami.You may be wondering how this is possible. Certainly I am! I have read their explanation several times, and I absolutely have not understood it. I will reproduce it here, in case it makes sense to you:

Illustration: The Verge Iowa's Mason City Community School District is pulling 19 books from school libraries that administrators found to contain a description or depiction of a sex act" in order to comply with Republican-backed state laws. A key arbiter of whether the books should be banned: ChatGPT.The news that the district had used AI software in its decisions was first reported by the Mason City Globe Gazette last week, but it wasn't clear what tool was used - or how exactly officials went about doing it - until Popular Science reported that ChatGPT was used. The banned books include The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.According to Popular Science's reporting,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI is convinced that its technology can help solve one of tech's hardest problems: content moderation at scale. GPT-4 could replace tens of thousands of human moderators while being nearly as accurate and more consistent, claims OpenAI. If that's true, the most toxic and mentally taxing tasks in tech could be outsourced to machines.In a blog post, OpenAI claims that it has already been using GPT-4 for developing and refining its own content policies, labeling content, and making decisions. I want to see more people operating their trust and safety, and moderation [in] this way," OpenAI head of safety systems Lilian Weng told Semafor. This is a really good step forward in how we use AI to solve real world issues in a way that's... Continue reading...

The third-gen AirPods feature shorter stems than the prior model, making them a little more discrete. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The AirPods Pro are an excellent pair of wireless earbuds, but they're not for everybody. In fact, if you don't need noise cancellation or superior sound quality, they might actually be overkill for many Apple users. Thankfully, you can save yourself some money by picking up the third-gen AirPods, which are currently on sale at Amazon with a Lightning charging case for just $139.99 ($30 off).If you're an Apple aficionado looking for a terrific pair of wireless earbuds, you can't go wrong with Apple's newest entry-level earbuds. They feature automatic device switching, allowing you to quickly swap between your iPhone or iPad, as well as perks like IPX4 water resistance so you'll be able to sweat it out at the gym or run in the rain.... Continue reading...

Image: Lamborghini Lamborghini will reveal an electric supercar concept on August 18th for Monterey Car Week. Ahead of the event, the Italian automaker posted a teaser image on social media that, while not revealing much, still retains that classic Lamborghini shape.While it's just a concept, the vehicle will give us our first impressions of what an EV looks like to Lamborghini. It's been two years since the Italian automaker outlined its electrification plans, which will proceed in two distinct phases over the next decade. By the end of 2024, the company said it would roll out gas-electric hybrid versions of its entire lineup. Following that, Lamborghini will debut its first all-electric model sometime before the end of the decade.

AMD CEO Lisa Su | Photo: AMD AMD CEO Lisa Su is coming to the Code Conference next month to talk AI, supply chains, the PC market, and more with The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel.Su has already transformed AMD once. When Su was named CEO of the chipmaker in 2014, AMD was struggling. The company was losing money, and its main moneymaker - desktop and graphics chips - was slipping. Fast-forward a few years, and Su had successfully shepherded in a new era for AMD, turning around its fortune in PC products and building out a robust business in enterprise and semi-custom chips.Now, Su is working to bring AMD into the AI era. The company recently announced its big play in AI, the Instinct MI300 family of AI chips, and plans to ramp up sales by the end of the year.... Continue reading...

The Share button is gone, making room for Memories. | Image: Google Google is adding a new Memories tab to its Photos app to create a dedicated place for auto-generated collections of pictures. The company is adding new generative AI titling features that can help you name your photo collections, too.These Google-generated collections have shown up at the top of the Photos app for years, but they'll now have a dedicated button at the bottom of the app. Default titles for memories are often location-based names using images' GPS metadata. The new AI titles feature helps to summarize the Instagram Stories-like style presentations with a bit more fun and detail. GIF: Google The new generative AI title maker. When looking at a memory collection, you can select a new help me... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Your iPhone's aging lithium-ion batteries will eventually start to lose their ability to retain a charge - and that can be highly frustrating, especially if you're out and about all day. And that's not to mention reports that some iPhone batteries - specifically those belonging to the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro - may be experiencing more battery degradation than their users expected.If this is happening to you, there are several solutions available. You can switch over to the latest iPhone, start carrying a battery charger around with you, or simply replace the battery. Battery Health & Charging will tell you the current capacity of your iPhone's battery. To first identify whether your battery is ready for a... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) is getting a major new feature: it will be able to summarize articles you're reading on the web, according to a Google blog post. SGE can already summarize search results for you so that you don't have to scroll forever to find what you're looking for, and this new feature is designed to take that further by helping you out after you've actually clicked a link.You probably won't see this feature, which Google is calling SGE while browsing," right away. Image: Google Google says it's a new feature that's starting to roll out Tuesday as an early experiment" in its opt-in Search Labs program. (You'll get access to it if you already opted in to SGE, but if you... Continue reading...

Elon Musk. | Illustration by Lille Allen / The Verge This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer. Sign up here.I.Today let's talk - for the last time, I hope - about the derailed martial arts bout between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and the latter's reckless threats to visit the Meta CEO at his home and broadcast it to the world.Part of me hesitates to spill yet more ink on a battle that no part of me has ever believed would take place. Last week I wrote here about the importance of bringing skepticism to Musk's posts on X, the former Twitter, and encouraged my peers in the press to consider not covering them at all. It's clear that Musk seeks attention for attention's sake, and given that so many of his... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Today, a new strike-based enforcement program is coming to Xbox. The system is meant to clear up confusion regarding how Xbox enforces its community standards and help players keep track of enforcement actions made on their accounts.In an interview with The Verge, Xbox player services corporate vice president Dave McCarthy explained the new enforcement system and its place in Xbox's overall community management strategy. This is all about player transparency," McCarthy said. We didn't have a way to show our players what their standing was in our community. And this makes it completely clear."In the new system, if a player violates the Xbox community standards, they'll receive a strike. The severity of the violation determines the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The day after California regulators handed driverless car companies a major victory, allowing them to expand their services without restriction in San Francisco, a herd of robotaxis decided to celebrate by breaking down in the middle of a busy street.According to several local news reports, 10 Cruise vehicles sat paralyzed in a busy intersection near the Outside Lands Music Festival, causing a traffic jam and drawing exasperation from witnesses. The company told KPIX that the music festival caused wireless connectivity issues" with its vehicles. In other words, festivalgoers were overwhelming the cellular networks, making it difficult for Cruise's vehicles to send and receive information.It was a bizarre end to a week that otherwise... Continue reading...

Image: LG Electronics This is one of those products that I truly cannot wait to experience and review firsthand: LG is bringing the quirky, one-of-a-kind StanbyME Go to the United States later this month for $999.99. If you missed its international launch, which flew under the radar for many, let me catch you up: the StanbyME Go is a 27-inch 1080p LCD TV housed in a large suitcase that also contains a built-in battery and 20-watt speakers.The idea is that this thing can be a portable entertainment solution whether you're at a picnic, on a family vacation, or just hanging out on the back patio. Maybe you'll bring it tailgating with all your pals during football season. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and the StanbyME Go's three-hour... Continue reading...

Kneron KL730. | Image: Kneron In the world of generative AI, it's a battle of computing power and getting the fastest and most powerful chips. Now, AI edge company Kneron announced it will ship its new neural processing units (NPU) chips by the end of the year.Kneron said the NPU chips, called the KL730, would make it cheaper to run large language models (LLMs) as the processor is built specifically for machine learning and AI applications.The KL730 is the next generation of previous processors from Kneron. In 2021, the company shipped out the KL530 chips that supported transformer models that underpinned some generative AI models.Albert Liu, CEO of Kneron, tells The Verge that NPU chips are specifically designed for AI and aren't forcing something originally... Continue reading...

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge It's a computer, a monitor, an internet communicator, and one of the most iconic lines of tech in history. Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Between the Apple Watch Series 8, the Ultra, and the second-gen SE, there are more options than ever. We'll help you sort through them. Continue reading...

Over 200 interim contracts have been granted by SAG-AFTRA since the strike began last month. | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge In an act of solidarity with the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) will no longer grant permission to independent projects that fall under WGA contracts to continue production during the ongoing strike. On July 14th SAG-AFTRA announced via a statement on its website that going forward, WGA-covered projects will now be excluded from its Interim Agreement policy - which allows approved independent productions with no direct connection to the actors union to continue filming.According to the statement, the decision was made following several meetings with the WGA alongside the recommendation of our NED & chief negotiator" Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. We have been advised by the WGA that this modification... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta-owned WhatsApp has started testing a new AI-generated stickers feature. WABetaInfo reports that some testers in the Android WhatsApp beta program have spotted the new AI-powered stickers, allowing WhatsApp users to generate a sticker based on a text description.Android Police points out that it's not clear which generative AI model WhatsApp has picked for this feature, as WABetaInfo's report only notes that the stickers are generated using a secure technology offered by Meta."The feature looks like it will work similarly to how Midjoureny or OpenAI's DALL-E models generate images based on text alone. It seems you'll be able to use this WhatsApp feature to create a basic and personalized image that can be shared as a sticker with... Continue reading...