The Verge

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s latest baffling change makes replies a lot more difficult to sift through. Now, when you’re looking at replies, tweets don’t actually show who the user is replying to, making them look like a confusing string of out-of-context missives.The change muddies up the ever-worsening Twitter experience in a bunch of small ways. If you click on a tweet with replies, you’ll see those listed under the tweet as you used to, but they don’t have as obvious of a connection to the parent tweet. Replies to your tweets will still show up in your Notifications tab, but they just look like random tweets that might not be there intentionally.Basically, as my colleague Tristan Cooper put it, “I love how every reply now looks like a vague subtweet... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo As the high from watching Nintendo’s Tears of the Kingdom gameplay video fades, I’m left with a staggering thought: “this game is going to ruin lives.”As much as I enjoy The Legend of Zelda, it’s never really been a series that I get out of bed for. Before today’s TotK (pronounced “tok”) presentation, I figured I’d invest however long it’d take for me to finish a review and never pick it up again. But seeing Link take a monster eye and fuse it to an arrow to create a homing missile, I felt my brain crack open and spill everywhere. It was an “oh... oh no” kind of moment. I could see the nigh limitless potential of the kinds of shenanigans I could get up to running around Hyrule. And I know that, just like I did with Elden Ring, I will... Continue reading…

Maat Mons is displayed in this computer-generated 3D perspective of the surface of Venus. | Image: NASA/JPL The recent discovery of volcanic activity on the planet should have been a cause of celebration. But instead, the scientific community is in shock after NASA delayed funding for a key mission to Venus. Continue reading…

Image: Getty Images The US Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s antitrust division say they’ll scrutinize the new field of artificial intelligence-powered tools for signs of anti-competitive behavior. FTC Chair Lina Khan and Justice Department antitrust head Jonathan Kanter made remarks about the issue at the agencies’ joint Enforcers Summit, raising the fear of large companies leveraging AI’s economies of scale to crush competition.“As you have machine learning that depends on huge amounts of data and also depends on huge amounts of storage, we need to be very vigilant to make sure that this is not just another site for the big companies becoming bigger and really squelching rivals,” Khan said at the summit, according to The Wall... Continue reading…

An iPhone showing Apple’s Pay Later interface. | Image: Apple Apple is finally launching Apple Pay Later, the company’s take on the buy now, pay later (BNPL) business. The company has announced that users can use the service to apply for Pay Later loans of $50 to $1,000 and then repay those loans through four payments over the course of six weeks with no interest or fees.Apple Pay Later exists within the Apple Wallet and is supposed to let you avoid paying the full price for a product right away. The service, which Apple first announced during WWDC last year, has been in the works for quite a while. It was supposed to debut with iOS 16; however, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in September that developers were contending with “technical and engineering issues,” delaying its rollout.According to... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge After announcing an AI-powered Copilot assistant for Office apps, Microsoft is now turning its attention to cybersecurity. Microsoft Security Copilot is a new assistant for cybersecurity professionals, designed to help defenders identify breaches and better understand the huge amounts of signals and data available to them daily.Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative AI and Microsoft’s own security-specific model, Security Copilot looks like a simple prompt box like any other chatbot. You can ask “what are all the security incidents in my enterprise?” and it will summarize them. But behind the scenes, it’s making use of the 65 trillion daily signals Microsoft collects in its threat intelligence gathering and security-specific skills to let... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Although Elon Musk has previously stated that Twitter should treat “everyone equally,” Platformer has found that the network maintains a list of users whose visibility it has secretly been boosting. The eclectic group includes a mix of high-profile figures like LeBron James and President Joe Biden, internet standbys like YouTuber MrBeast and viral Twitter account Dril, and political commentators like Matthew Yglesias and Ben Shapiro.Some of the other interesting “VIP” users Platformer mentions include the conservative Twitter account @catturd2, Twitter investor Marc Andreessen, comedian Jaboukie Young-White, the Tesla-focused account @teslaownerssv, menswear writer Derek Guy, and a handful of other journalists.

Nintendo Tears of the Kingdom is only a scant 44 days away. To celebrate the game’s impending arrival, Nintendo dropped a 13-minute mini Direct featuring gameplay and a sneak peek at Link’s new abilities.Tears of the Kingdom, formerly known as The Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was originally slated for a 2022 release. (It’s now coming out on May 12th.) Eiji Aonuma, the game’s producer, released a video in March 2022 stating that Nintendo decided to work on the development a little bit longer “in order to make this game’s experience something special.” We can see some of that specialness in today’s gameplay presentation.One of the biggest, most interesting features shown off today was Link’s new Fuse ability, whereby he can... Continue reading…

Amazon’s fourth-gen Echo smart speaker sounds better than the new fifth-gen Echo Dot and is currently only $15 more. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge My favorite thing about deals on smart speakers like Amazon’s fourth-gen Echo? They double as so many things — alarms, speakers, and more — that you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck. That is why today’s deal on Amazon’s 2020 Echo smart speaker is a standout. Right now, you can buy the versatile gadget for $64.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, which is its best price this year.Not only does the orb-like smart speaker sound even better than the new fifth-gen Echo Dot, but it also acts as a Wi-Fi extender for Eero mesh networks so you can boost your internet coverage. Like other Alexa-enabled smart speakers, you can also use the gadget to control various smart home devices as well as a range of other tasks including... Continue reading…

Big news for Chromebook users. | Image: Google Google has announced a laundry list of classroom-focused updates to its services, across ChromeOS, Google Classroom, Docs, and more. Many of the tools center around teachers — in particular, using AI to save teachers time.It’s safe to say that Chromebooks are a classroom staple, with many tens of millions currently circulating in schools. But demand in that space has slowed, and the past few years have seen various OEMs release a number of flashy, premium Chromebooks in efforts to target older (and perhaps deeper-pocketed) audiences.Google itself appears to have its eye on one such demographic: educators. The company has spent the past year speaking to teachers about their computing habits and computing needs. “A lot of teachers were... Continue reading…

Say hello to the new HP family. | Image: HP For those (like myself) who get a little pit in their stomachs every time they see how much any given year’s best gaming laptops cost, the HP Victus series — a budget line that has become one of Best Buy’s most popular products in the two years since its release — is a welcome breath of fresh air.HP made a bunch of flashy announcements at its Amplify Partner Conference today, but buried within them is one I actually think could make a difference for a lot of shoppers: the Victus 16 has been refreshed for 2023, and it’s gone a little bit wild.Specifically, the Victus 16 is now available with an RTX 4070 graphics card. The 2021 Victus 16 only went up to an RTX 3050 Ti (a model currently listed at $949). Even if you include the older... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney’s next generation storytelling and consumer experiences division, which had been exploring how the company could enter the so-called metaverse, has been eliminated according to The Wall Street Journal. The team is thought to have been made up of around 50 employees, and was exploring how Disney could use its existing intellectual property in what former CEO Bob Chapek called “the next great storytelling frontier.”The team has reportedly been axed in the first of a planned three rounds of layoffs at Disney. A total of 7,000 employees are expected to be made redundant across the company, helping it cut around $5.5 billion in costs. Rumors of layoffs began to swirl shortly after Bob Iger replaced Bob Chapek as Disney CEO last... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple Music Classical, Apple’s long-in-the-works app for listening to classical music with an Apple Music subscription, is now available to download from the App Store.Apple Music Classical was born from Primephonic, which Apple acquired in 2021 with the intent of launching a classical music-focused app in 2022. The promise of Apple Music Classical is that it will be better at handling the complex metadata often associated with classical recordings, and the app will also have things like curated playlists and composer biographies to help people get more acquainted with the genre.Apple says the app’s catalog houses more than 5 million tracks and that you can listen to music at up to 192 kHz/24 bit hi-res lossless. However, there are a... Continue reading…

A deep-water fish, called a Rattail, brought up as part of research into the effects of mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean. | Image: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images From electric vehicles to renewable energy, the future runs on batteries. That’s driving soaring demand for raw materials used to make batteries, including nickel, cobalt, and copper. By next year, mining companies could start harvesting those materials from the deep sea at an industrial scale for the first time.But the damage that would do to ethereal ecosystems on the seafloor could be catastrophic and irreversible, a new report warns. Ocean researchers and advocates are intensifying calls for a deep seabed mining moratorium before it’s too late.Ocean researchers and advocates are intensifying calls for a deep seabed mining moratoriumHeated negotiations over a new “mining code” for the deep sea are underway this week in Kingston,... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Uber Eats is delisting some of the delivery-only restaurants on its app to help weed out low-quality listings, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company has confirmed to The Verge that it’s introducing a new set of standards for virtual restaurants that should help cut down on listings that sometimes contain the same menu.Virtual restaurants, which are also known as ghost kitchens, don’t have a physical location where you can actually sit down and eat. Instead, they’re often run out of existing restaurants, warehouses, and sometimes even parking lots and exist solely to sell food on delivery apps like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash. While some of these locations are independently run, others belong to larger companies... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Ubisoft is backing out of its planned attendance at the E3 2023 in-person expo in favor of its own show in LA on June 12th, the company confirmed to VGC.“E3 has fostered unforgettable moments across the industry throughout the years,” Ubisoft spokesperson Heather Haefner says in a statement to The Verge. “While we initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we’ve made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction, and will be holding a Ubisoft Forward Live event on June 12 in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon.” E3 organizer ReedPop didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.With Ubisoft backing out, E3 2023, which runs from June 13th through June 16th,... Continue reading…

MultiVersus. | Image: Warner Bros. Games Warner Bros. Games is shutting down MultiVersus’ open beta ahead of a full release targeted for early 2024. The open beta for the WB-themed free-to-play Super Smash Bros.-like brawler will be taken offline on June 25th.While MultiVersus is offline, you can still play the game’s training room and local matches, and you can use any characters and in-game cosmetics you have unlocked. (If you want to be able to mess around with the offline features, you’ll need to download the game from digital storefronts before April 4th.) Any progress you have already made will carry over when the game is available again in 2024. But you won’t be able to get refunds due to the closure, according to an FAQ page, which might be frustrating for players who... Continue reading…

Levi’s will experiment with Lalaland’s realistic AI-generated models later this year. | Image: Levi Strauss & Co. / Lalaland.ai Levi’s will begin testing AI-generated clothing models later this year in a bid to diversify the iconic denim company’s online shopping experience. The planned experiment was revealed last week alongside Levi’s partnership with Lalaland.ai, a digital fashion studio that creates realistic AI-generated fashion models.Currently, most products advertised on the Levi’s app or website can only be viewed on a single clothing model. The AI clothing models created by this partnership could be more body-inclusive, allowing customers to view what an article of clothing would look like on a multitude of models spanning a wide range of body types, ages, sizes, and skin tones. In theory, that should help consumers who are frustrated when clothing... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Disney’s planned job cuts that will eliminate 7,000 jobs are about to begin, as the first of three rounds of layoffs will start this week, CEO Bob Iger said in a memo to employees obtained by CNBC.Staff affected by this first round will hear from leaders “over the next four days,” according to Iger. The second round of cuts, which is set to encompass “several thousands” of people, will happen sometime in April. The third round will happen “before the beginning of the summer.”Iger first revealed in February that the company was planning the cuts, meaning that employees have been waiting for weeks to know if they’ll still have a job at Disney. And given that rumors of potential layoffs surfaced soon after Iger came back as CEO in... Continue reading…

I never expected to see a non-Tesla EV charging at a Tesla Supercharger. The electric vehicle market is growing by leaps and bounds every month in the US, but most of these new EV owners are quickly figuring out they have one big thing in common: our public charging infrastructure sucks very badly.EV drivers face everything from illogical charging station placement and broken equipment to being forced to use a hodgepodge of payment apps. The fact that America is still in the Wild West days of EV charging becomes readily apparent the moment your range starts dwindling and you’re far from home.There’s one exception to this, of course: Tesla’s Supercharger network. The automaker claims it’s built the largest public fast-charging network in the world, and there’s no evidence to the contrary. It’s also... Continue reading…

The new avatars inside Microsoft Teams. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is now allowing Teams users to create a 3D avatar to use in meetings instead of being on camera or even needing a webcam. Originally announced in 2021, Microsoft has been testing these 3D avatars over the past year and is now ready to allow Microsoft Teams users to try them out in public preview today.“Avatars for Microsoft Teams offers an alternative to the current binary option of video or no video,” says Avery Salumbides, a product marketing manager at Microsoft, in a blog post today. “Avatars for Teams gives you that much-needed camera break, while still allowing you to collaborate effectively.” Image: Microsoft The avatars are fully customizable. These new avatars in Microsoft Teams will animate... Continue reading…

The new and updated Microsoft Teams client. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is overhauling its Teams app today to make it faster and easier to use. Microsoft Teams has been rebuilt from the ground up, with a new preview available today for businesses to try out this radical rework that has been years in the making.“The new Teams is faster, simpler, and more flexible than ever before,” says Sumi Singh, CVP of engineering for Microsoft Teams, in an interview with The Verge. “We’ve made tremendous strides in performance and usability. The new Teams is 2x faster while using 50 percent fewer resources.”Installing the new Microsoft Teams app should be 3x faster and launching or joining meetings two times faster. Microsoft says the new Microsoft Teams should also consume 50 percent less memory and 70... Continue reading…

The Nintendo Switch OLED rarely ever is $30 off. | Image: Nintendo If you’ve been eyeing the Nintendo Switch OLED but stayed away because of its price, good news: you can now buy the popular hybrid console with white Joy-Cons for $319.99 ($30 off) at Woot. The rare deal will be available until 10PM PT today, March 27th, or 1AM ET March 28th, as long as supplies last.As the premium model in the Switch lineup, the Nintendo Switch OLED offers a number of improvements over the standard Switch. For one thing, it features a larger and more vibrant seven-inch 720p OLED display that’s richer in color quality and contrast. For another, its wider and adjustable kickstand is much more stable and is therefore actually useful, unlike the one the original Switch sports. The console can also store more games thanks... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom has become the latest productivity app to expand its use of artificial intelligence. In a blog post published on Monday, the company announced a partnership with OpenAI that brings AI-generated summaries, message drafts, and more to the video conferencing app through its Zoom IQ AI-powered assistant.While Zoom IQ can already do things like create chapters and highlights for recorded meetings, Zoom’s giving the assistant even more features, including a way to catch up on meetings that you may have been late to. That means you’ll be able to ask the tool to summarize what you’ve missed as well as “ask further questions.” Image: Zoom Zoom IQ will soon let you generate responses to colleagues. Additionally,... Continue reading…

The proposed court order follows a lawsuit opened by the FTC last year that sought to charge operators of an “extended vehicle warranty” telemarketing scam. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Regulators in the US are cracking down on operators of an “extended vehicle warranty” telemarketing scam with action that could see the responsible parties face a lifetime ban from the vehicle warranty industry. Under proposed court orders drawn up on March 23rd, three companies — American Vehicle Protection Corporation (AVP), CG3 Solutions, and Tony Gonzalez Consulting Group — and their owners would be permanently banned from both the extended automobile warranty industry and all outbound telemarketing.In February 2022, the FTC charged AVP and the two affiliated companies with violating the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule. In its complaint, the FTC alleged that AVP falsely claimed to represent dealers and manufacturers,... Continue reading…

The original viral image (left) and another AI-generated fake from the same batch (right). | Image: via Reddit / u/trippy_art_special AI-generated images have gone viral before, but none have spread so far and wide as a picture of the pope wearing what can only be described as a swagged-out puffy jacket. Call him the Supreme pontiff. The Balenciaga bishop. The vicar of drip.The picture seems to have been first posted online on Friday, submitted to a subreddit for the AI image generator Midjourney. Over the weekend, it spread on Twitter and other social networks, first as a meme and then as the subject of debunking. By Sunday, Chrissy Teigen was tweeting about it — a reliable indicator that an internet joke has gone mainstream.“I thought the pope’s puffer jacket was real and didnt give it a second thought. no way am I surviving the future of technology,” Teigen... Continue reading…