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by Chris Welch on (#6A7CK)
When you find a good spatial audio song, Sonos’ new speaker can blow your mind and sounds like nothing else. But it trails the Sonos Five at stereo playback and suffers from the wildly inconsistent state of Atmos mixes. Continue reading…
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The Verge
| Link | https://www.theverge.com/ |
| Feed | http://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml |
| Updated | 2025-12-23 00:18 |
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by Chris Welch on (#6A7CJ)
The more affordable Era speaker improves upon the Sonos One by nearly every measure and will likely find the same success and popularity among Sonos customers. Continue reading…
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by Jon Porter on (#6A74E)
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge Parts of Twitter’s source code were recently leaked online via GitHub, the New York Times reports, but were taken down after the social media platform filed a DMCA request. The request, which GitHub has published online, notes that the leaked information included “proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.”The NYT notes that the source code maybe have been public for several months before being removed — the GitHub profile associated with the DMCA takedown lists a single (non-public) code contribution from early January. The name of the account is listed as “FreeSpeechEnthusiast,” in an apparent reference to Twitter CEO Elon Musk calling himself a “free speech absolutist” in the past.Twitter has asked for the... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#6A6VH)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has stopped its $1 trial offer for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. The trial has been available for years, with brief periods where it wasn’t always available in certain markets, and it now looks like Microsoft is considering new promotions instead.“We have stopped our previous introductory offer for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass and are evaluating different marketing promotions for new members in the future,” says Kari Perez, head of global communications at Xbox, in a statement to The Verge.The $1 trial has allowed people to sign up to Xbox Game Pass for a month, before the full Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription kicks in at $14.99 per month or $9.99 a month for the PC- or console-only subscriptions.... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6A6SQ)
Image: The Verge Although the expected launch of Apple’s mixed-reality headset is just months away, some employees don’t seem to think the device is ready yet, according to a report from The New York Times. While some employees reportedly exited the project due to their doubts, others remain skeptical about the headset’s potential for success — especially at a price point of $3,000.Apple’s widely expected to reveal the headset at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple recently demoed the device in front of Apple’s top 100 executives at the Steve Jobs Theater in California, “suggesting that a public unveiling is getting close.”But behind the “glitzy” presentation, the Times suggests that there has... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6A6SR)
Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS digital storefronts are shutting down today, March 27th, 2023 at 8PM ET. While you’ll no longer be able to purchase games or DLC from either eShop, you’ll still be able to redownload the games you’ve already bought and play online for the time being.Nintendo first warned us of the shutdown last year and started barring users from loading money into the Wii U and 3DS eShops in August. Sadly, this imminent shutdown means we’ll have to bid farewell to the hundreds of great digital-only titles available on either store, such as Dr. Luigi, Pokémon Rumble U, Pushmo, Pokémon Picross, and many others.The closures will also make it impossible to purchase the full range of Virtual Console games on the 3DS and Wii U,... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6A6NQ)
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk has put a $20 billion value on Twitter, making up less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid to acquire the site, according to reports from Platformer and The Information. In a memo sent to staff viewed by Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer, Musk reportedly says that employees will receive stock grants based on Twitter’s $20 billion valuation.Musk stated last year that he’s “obviously overpaying” for Twitter at $54.20 per share. Price was also one of the reasons why he attempted to back out of the deal last year, claiming that the company made false and misleading statements about the presence of bots on the platform.
by Emma Roth on (#6A6KB)
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple could soon launch a USB-C version of its second-gen AirPods Pro. That’s according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who believes the company could start shipping the earbuds with a USB-C case during the second and third quarters of this year.This apparently doesn’t apply to Apple’s standard AirPod models, though, as Kuo notes that the company “currently appears to have no plans for USB-C versions of the AirPods 2 & 3.” Kuo hinted at the change in response to a tweet from Twitter user @aaronp613, who spotted references to a new AirPods model number (A3048), along with a new AirPods case model number (A29680) in iOS 16.4.
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6A6GQ)
Brian Cox as Logan Roy. | HBO While Succession’s fourth and final season makes good on the series’ name, it does so while feeling comfortably stuck in a familiar holding pattern of treachery and ‘gotcha’ backstabbing. Continue reading…
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by David Pierce on (#6A6GR)
Tired: the metaverse. Wired: the message-verse? | Image: OpenAI / David Pierce It’s pretty obvious that nobody saw ChatGPT coming. Not even OpenAI. Before it became by some measures the fastest growing consumer app in history, before it turned the phrase “generative pre-trained transformers” into common vernacular, before every company you can think of was racing to adopt its underlying model, ChatGPT launched in November as a “research preview.”The blog post announcing ChatGPT is now a hilarious case study in underselling. “ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. We are excited to introduce ChatGPT to get users’ feedback and learn about its strengths and weaknesses.” That’s it! That’s the whole pitch! No waxing poetic about... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6A65P)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has pushed an update to fix a screenshot editing vulnerability in Windows 10 and 11, as spotted earlier by Bleeping Computer. The security flaw, dubbed the “aCropalypse,” could let bad actors recover the edited portions of screenshots, potentially revealing personal information that had been cropped out or concealed.According to Microsoft, the issue (CVE-2023-28303) affects both the Snip & Sketch app on Windows 10 and the Snipping Tool on Windows 11. However, it only applies to images created in a very specific set of steps. That includes those that have been taken, saved, edited, and then saved over the original file, as well as the ones opened in the Snipping Tool, edited, and then saved to the same location. It doesn’t have... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6A63V)
Illustration: The Verge Microsoft doesn’t want its rivals to use Bing’s search index to power their AI chatbots, according to a report from Bloomberg. The company reportedly told two unnamed Bing-powered search engines that it will restrict them from accessing Microsoft’s search data altogether if they continue using it with their AI tools.As noted by Bloomberg, Microsoft licenses out Bing’s search data to several search engines, including DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and the AI search engine You.com. While DuckDuckGo, for example, uses a combination of Bing and its own web crawler to provide search results, You.com and Neeva also pull some of their results from Bing, helping to conserve some of the time and resources that come along with crawling the entire web.M... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6A5Z3)
Image: Netflix Arrested Development isn’t leaving Netflix anymore. The streamer announced on Twitter that the show will remain on the platform after licensing issues nearly resulted in its removal.While Netflix initially planned on taking down all five seasons of the show on March 15th, including the two produced by Netflix, that never happened. That’s because Netflix reached a deal with the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios, which still holds the rights to the series after it originally premiered on Fox in 2003, according to a report from Vulture.
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by Andrew Webster on (#6A5Z4)
Naiad. | Image: Hiwarp The Game Developers Conference was a chance to check out some fascinating new indie games, ranging from a charming family story told through cooking to a strategy game about building a city on top of a giant beast. Continue reading…
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6A5VE)
Image: Paramount Pictures and eOne Engaging, comical, and unapologetically dorky, Honor Among Thieves occasionally stumbles under its own ambition but ultimately proves that high fantasy doesn’t always have to be highbrow. Continue reading…
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by Sheena Vasani on (#6A5VF)
The ad-supported Kindle Paperwhite with 8GB of storage is $40 off. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Whether you’re looking to relax and unwind this weekend or simply pass some time while flying out for spring break, today’s deals on the Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Scribe will help you do so. First up, the Kindle Paperwhite is on sale in various configurations, starting at $99.99 with ads and 8GB of storage at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target ($40 off). The model with 16GB of storage is on sale for just $10 more, while the 8GB model without ads costs $20 extra.Not only are those the best discounts we’ve seen this year, but it also brings the Paperwhite down to the price of the base Kindle. Unlike that entry-level e-reader, though, the Paperwhite is waterproof with monthslong battery life, so you can enjoy reading for hours on end in the... Continue reading…
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by Victoria Song on (#6A5VG)
This affordable fitness band stuffs in an impressive amount of features, but these budget trackers aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be. Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6A5HS)
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Gordon Moore, one of Intel’s co-founders and a Silicon Valley titan, died today at 94 years old, according to a press release from the company. He was part of the “traitorous eight” who founded Fairchild Semiconductor, which became an incubator for many other Silicon Valley companies — including AMD. Moore and Robert Noyce, a fellow member of the eight, went on to found Intel, originally named Integrated Electronics, in 1968. He eventually became chairman and CEO of the company in 1979, and served as CEO for eight years.While Moore obviously played a large role in the development of the tech that powers modern computing devices, many people will also be familiar with his name because of “Moore’s law,” his 1965 prediction that processors... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6A5G9)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hachette v. Internet Archive, a lawsuit brought against it by four book publishers, deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library.Judge John G. Koeltl decided that the Internet Archive had done nothing more than create “derivative works,” and so would have needed authorization from the books’ copyright holders — the publishers — before lending them out through its National Emergency Library program.The Internet Archive says it will appeal. “Today’s lower court decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve,” Chris Freeland, the director of Open Libraries at the Internet... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6A5GA)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge OpenAI has announced new details about why it took ChatGPT offline on Monday, and it’s now saying that some users’ payment information may have been exposed during the incident.According to a post from the company, a bug in an open source library called redis-py created a caching issue that may have shown some active users the last four digits and expiration date of another user’s credit card, along with their first and last name, email address, and payment address. Users also may have seen snippets of others’ chat histories as well.This isn’t the first time caching issues have caused users to see each other people’s data — famously, on Christmas Day in 2015, Steam users were served pages with information from other users’ accounts.... Continue reading…
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by Sean Hollister on (#6A5GB)
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge “My old Dell XPS 15 has gotten sluggish. The battery dies easily. It’s heavy to cart around, anyhow. Now that I’m going out in public again, I need a new work machine.”These were the thoughts circling my head at yesterday’s Framework event — where the company known for its easily-upgradable laptops announced new chips and a new, longer-lasting battery. “Battery life has consistently been the main negative for the Framework laptop,” said CEO Nirav Patel, hitting on the one reason I’d only ever admired the company’s laptops from a distance. This morning, without that one reason to hold back, it was time to put down a $100 deposit for my own Framework Laptop 13.But I didn’t — because Framework wouldn’t sell me that battery unless I... Continue reading…
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by Alex Cranz on (#6A5E3)
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Yesterday continued Congress’s recent history of calling tech executives into a hearing to berate them about their excessive collection of users’ private data for financial means. But where Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai suffered through the hearings only to face little to no repercussions for their potentially egregious collection of data and anti-competitive practices, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was met with something far more defined — and the users of his platform immediately picked up on it.“Your platform should be banned,” was one of the first things Chew heard when the hearing started. That was from Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) in her opening statement. Her mind seemed made up, as did many of the members of Congress on the... Continue reading…
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by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#6A5E4)
I have a lot of questions! | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
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by Jay Peters on (#6A5E5)
This is from Epic’s Unreal Editor for Fortnite, but it’s not from any Mario Kart track that I’m aware of. | Image: Epic Games Epic Games’ new Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) toolset has only been out for two days, but the company is already having to threaten permanent bans for creators making content that violates copyright. That even goes for violating content that creators post about on social media and content that they aren’t going to actually publish.“All content in Fortnite must adhere to Fortnite’s game rating, Fortnite Island Creator Rules and intellectual property and DMCA guidelines,” Epic wrote in a blog post on Friday. “Those who create violating content in UEFN — even if they never intend to publish it in Fortnite — or share violating content on social media, will face content takedowns and enforcement actions, up to and including permanent... Continue reading…
by Mitchell Clark on (#6A5B6)
Screenshot: Mitchell Clark / The Verge Microsoft continues to add AI features to its Bing search engine, even outside of the GPT-powered chat features it’s been pushing. According to a feature roundup blog post, Bing will now “craft AI-generated stories” for some searches, giving you a small multimedia presentation about the thing you looked up. The company says it’s a way to let you “consume bite-sized information” while searching certain topics.The stories look similar to the ones you’d find on social media platforms like Instagram or Snapchat, with a progress bar to tell you when it’s going to advance to the next slide. Slides have text explaining the thing you’ve searched as well as related images and videos. You can also unmute the story to have a voice read out the... Continue reading…
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6A5B7)
Unlike the Wacom Cintiq Pro 27, the Xencelabs Pen Display 24 includes a stand and ExpressKey accessory as standard. | Image: Xencelabs Graphics hardware manufacturer Xencelabs has announced the Pen Display 24 Studio Series, a new display drawing tablet designed for creative professionals. The 24-inch display is the company’s first drawing tablet with a built-in display to join its range of standard pen tablets and comes equipped with features that rival Wacom’s Cintiq series.The biggest advantage that Xencelabs has against Wacom is affordability — at $1,899, the Pen Display 24 is considerably less expensive than the $3,500 Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 and includes accessories like a stand and a shortcut remote that Wacom doesn’t include as standard.Like the Cintiq Pro 27, the Xencelabs Pen Display 24 features edge-to-edge tempered glass that’s been etched to provide friction... Continue reading…
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6A5B8)
Francesco Francavilla’s Us poster. | Image: Francesco Francavilla / Mondo It wasn’t a good sign when Funko announced earlier this month its plans to straight up destroy somewhere between $30 and $36 million worth of its collectible vinyl figurines due to dwindling demand that’s tanked their value. But Funko’s recent decision to lay off about half of the staffers at subsidiary Mondo paints a clear picture of a company struggling to secure its financial footing.Though Funko only acquired Mondo — the Austin-based nostalgic memorabilia outfit known for its small-batch movie posters and vinyl records — from Alamo Drafthouse last summer, The Wrap reports that “most of” Mondo’s staff, including co-founders Rob Jones and Mitch Putnam, were laid off this week. Along with the layoffs, Funko is said to be shuttering... Continue reading…
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by Andrew J. Hawkins on (#6A57M)
Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Ford provided an update Friday on the construction of its massive new EV manufacturing complex in western Tennessee, where it says it will build its next electric truck, codenamed “Project T3.”The so-called BlueOval City campus won’t come online until 2025, but when it does, Ford has said it will be a “mega campus” that houses a vehicle-production facility for Ford’s F-series pickup trucks and a battery assembly division. Now, the company says it will also serve as the main production line for its next electric truck.Details are still scarce, but the new truck will sit alongside an electric Europe-only Ford Explorer, as well as the automaker’s Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning, and E-Transit van, as Ford’s family of electric vehicles... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6A57N)
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Photo: Getty Images Twitter may be working on a feature that lets you hide the blue checkmark you got by paying for its Blue subscription. A screen found by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi shows that the company is working on a control panel for verification settings, with one of the options being “Show or hide your blue checkmark on your profile.”This report should definitely be taken with a grain of salt, given that it appears to be an in-development feature that Twitter hasn’t announced (and that the company’s taking a long time to ship things it has said are coming). However, I can see why Twitter might want to add it. Depending on what part of the site you’re on, the blue verified checkmark can make you as much of a pariah as having an NFT profile... Continue reading…
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by Justine Calma on (#6A57P)
An air conditioning unit is seen in a window seal during a heatwave on July 21st, 2022, in Houston, Texas. | Image: Brandon Bell/Getty Images Window air conditioners and portable air purifiers will need to get more efficient to comply with new federal standards in the US. The new rules are expected to cut consumer electricity bills by $1.5 billion a year, according to the Department of Energy (DOE), which finalized the standards yesterday.On top of saving consumers’ money, making air conditioners more energy-efficient can help take pressure off power grids during heatwaves and cut down on the greenhouse gas pollution causing climate change. This is also the first time the DOE has issued federal efficiency standards for portable air purifiers, which became a more common household fixture as a result of the covid-19 pandemic and worsening wildfires in the American West.“These... Continue reading…
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by Ash Parrish on (#6A57Q)
Image: Blizzard Diablo IV is coming soon, and ahead of the full release, players can now access the open beta. You can check out all the important details on Blizzard’s website, but here’s a rundown of the most pertinent information.Diablo IV’s general open beta has just kicked off, and it runs through March 27th at 3PM ET. You can access the open beta on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and Xbox One. Last week, there was an “early access” open beta for players who have prepurchased the game or sacrificed their blood pressure to the almighty chicken gods.However, now that the beta is live to whoever wants to join, you might run into some long queues to get into a game — something that Blizzard is already warning players about. If you want to play, be... Continue reading…
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by Alexis Ong on (#6A57R)
Image: Showtime The gruesome mystery returns, but it’s lacking some of the punch that made the first season so potent. Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6A53S)
Image: Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips and two other Linus Media Group YouTube channels have been restored after a major hack allowed a bad actor to do things like livestream crypto scam videos, change channel names, and even delete videos. In a new video, owner Linus Sebastian explains that the breach bypassed things like password and two-factor protections because the bad actor targeted the session tokens that keep you logged in to websites.According to Sebastian, someone on the Linus Media Group’s team downloaded “what appeared to be a sponsorship offer from a potential partner” and launched the included PDF with the terms of that offer. But Sebastian says this offer actually included malware that accessed “all user data from both their... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#6A3PY)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Update March 24th, 12:24PM ET: Linus Tech Tips, TechLinked, and Techquickie have been restored, and owner Linus Sebastian has shared a video about what happened. Our original story follows.Popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked this morning, with the channel’s 15.3 million subscribers seeing videos for crypto scams instead of tech hardware reviews. It’s the latest breach in a series of high-profile YouTube accounts being hacked, with scammers regularly gaining access to prominent accounts to rename them and livestream crypto scam videos.The main Linus Tech Tips channel was breached earlier this morning, with several live videos broadcast before the hacker started making old private videos public. The account was... Continue reading…
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by Antonio G. Di Benedetto on (#6A53T)
It brings me much joy that we’re well beyond the limited availability of PS5s. May we never experience that Wild West of restocks again (at least not until the next thing). | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Whoa, Nelly! We’ve got some hot deals in herre on this Friday. The Sony PlayStation 5 console bundle with God of War Ragnarök is on sale for $509 at Walmart and $509.99 at Best Buy, Amazon, GameStop, and direct from Sony. That’s right, the hottest console with one of the best games of last year is actually discounted by $50. You’re essentially buying the standard PS5 with a disc drive and getting God of War Ragnarök for just $10.Sony’s site indicates that this deal is running through April 16th, so you have a little time to ponder it — but frankly, if you’ve been contemplating a PS5 and even remotely interested in Santa Monica Studio’s latest epic, it’s an easy recommendation. The PS5 may be in its third year, but it remains a... Continue reading…
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6A53V)
Liko and her Sprigatito falling towards the ground together. | The Pokémon Company If there was any doubt about the upcoming Pokémon anime’s new incoming protagonists being a very different kind of unit than Ash Ketchum and all his various companions, the series’ newest trailer makes it crystal clear that Liko and Roy are going to be breaths of fresh air.Just hours after the Japanese airing of Ash’s last episode as the Pokémon anime’s main character, The Pokémon Company today announced that the upcoming series will be titled Pokémon Horizons here in the West and debuted a full-length trailer detailing some of the show’s early episodes.Though Liko’s one of many students getting their first taste of pokémon battles, the trailer spotlights how the mysterious crystal pendant she wears wherever she goes seemingly has a... Continue reading…
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by James Vincent on (#6A4ZH)
Illustration by Álvaro Bernis / The Verge The web is full of chattering bots, but which is the most useful and for what? We compare Bard, Bing, and ChatGPT. Continue reading…
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by Casey Newton on (#6A4ZJ)
Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge On Thursday morning, the chief executive of what is perhaps the world’s most popular social app went before Congress. Like so many social media CEOs before him, Shou Zi Chew’s mission was to persuade skeptical lawmakers that his company, TikTok, operates responsibly and within the bounds of the law. In the face of doubts and outright hostility, Chew would have to remain calm and genial, attempting to make his case while in the straitjacket of Congress’ hearing format: an hours-long series of mostly yes-or-no questions, his answers preempted by most lawmakers before he could begin a second sentence.It is a ritual previously endured by Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey, among others. And while each of them... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#6A4ZK)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has now sided with Microsoft over concerns the software giant could remove Call of Duty from PlayStation if its proposed Activision Blizzard deal is approved. The regulator still has concerns about the deal’s impact on the cloud gaming market and will complete its investigation by the end of April.“Having considered the additional evidence provided, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action,” says Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts conducting the... Continue reading…
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6A4ZM)
Social media companies have until March 1st, 2024, to comply with or appeal Utah’s new regulations. | Image: Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP Utah has enacted controversial restrictions that will require minors to obtain the consent of a guardian to use social media platforms, the first US state to introduce such measures. Two laws signed by Governor Spencer Cox on Thursday — H.B. 311 and S.B. 152 — form part of the new Utah Social Media Regulation Act, aimed at protecting children from addictive features and targeted ads on social platforms.The H.B. 311 bill prohibits social media companies from broadly “using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction” to their platform and grants minor account holders the right to collect damages for addiction, physical, or emotional harm incurred as a result of using a social media platform. The S.B. 152 bill requires... Continue reading…
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by James Vincent on (#6A4TN)
Image: Getty Now here’s a path not taken: according to a new report from Semafor, Elon Musk tried — and failed — to take over ChatGPT creator OpenAI in 2018.Musk was part of a small group that founded the AI lab in 2015 as a nonprofit, intending the firm to share research for the wider benefit of society. But by early 2018, says Semafor, Musk was worried the company was falling behind Google. He reportedly offered to take direct control of OpenAI and run it himself but was rejected by other OpenAI founders including Sam Altman, now the firm’s CEO, and Greg Brockman, now its president.Crucially, when Musk walked away from the company — he resigned from its board in 2018 citing a conflict of interest with his work at Tesla — Semafor says he also... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6A4TP)
Meta’s promotional art for Direct Touch. | Image: Meta Meta is testing what could become a foundational upgrade to its Quest VR headsets: a way to tap and scroll on virtual elements with only your hands, no controllers required. The idea is that you’ll be able to do actions you might already be familiar with from your smartphone, like swiping up and down a page, pressing a button to activate it, or typing on an onscreen keyboard, using just your fingers in the air.The new experimental feature is called “Direct Touch,” and it’s included with the Quest v50 software update that’s rolling out now. After weeks of waiting, the update finally arrived for me, so, of course, I immediately flipped it on.When hand tracking is on, the Quest 2 uses its external-facing cameras to follow your hands, and... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#6A4TQ)
Image: Microsoft Microsoft is gradually rolling out an updated Phone Link app that finally lets you couple an iPhone to a Windows PC. I got access to the new Phone Link version yesterday and immediately paired my iPhone 14 Pro with my PC to send and receive messages via iMessage, make calls, and see the notifications from my phone alongside my usual PC ones.Android users have been able to do all of this this and much more with Phone Link for years, but iPhone users like myself have had to sit by and watch on with envy. The new Phone Link update for iOS is very basic though and literally only supports making and receiving calls, sending and receiving messages to single contacts and not groups (via iMessage), and viewing and dismissing notifications. You... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6A4TR)
Imagine this but around 10 times grander. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or anything like it takes a lot of research and gear. So what would a research and weight-obsessive tech writer bring? Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6A4EQ)
Image: PayPal Android users should soon be able to log in to PayPal’s website using passkeys, the password-free login system that’s being pushed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, the FIDO alliance, and more. According to an announcement post, the feature is currently rolling out, and will be “more widely available over the coming year.”PayPal says that the rollout will start on its website, rather than its app, and that you have to be running Chrome on Android 9 or up to access passkeys. If it’s available for your account, you may get a prompt asking if you want to create a passkey, which you can authenticate using the biometric system or passcode that you use to unlock your phone.Passkeys are based on FIDO authentication standards, and are generally... Continue reading…
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by Richard Lawler on (#6A3WP)
Do Kwon, the founder of Terraform Labs and creator of the collapsed stablecoin Terra, has been charged with eight counts of fraud by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, including “wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and engage in market manipulation,” according to The New York Times. Prosecutors have told the media that they will seek Kwon’s extradition.The charges follow his apparent arrest in Montenegro on Thursday, which was first reported through social media posts by Montenegro Minister of the Interior Filip Adzic on Twitter (where he’s unverified, whether by Twitter Blue or legacy means), and on Facebook (where he is verified, but Facebook’s blue checks have been wrong... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6A4CR)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has announced that it’ll start “winding down” its legacy verified program and removing “legacy verified checkmarks” starting on April 1st, and is telling users to subscribe to its Blue subscription if they want to keep their blue check.There’s a lot to unpack here. First, the announcement isn’t necessarily a surprise. CEO Elon Musk has been promising to get rid of “legacy” blue check marks, or verification badges that were given under Twitter’s previous rules, since November, and he’s reiterated that they’d be going away “in coming months” several times. According to Musk, those verification badges were given out in a “corrupt and nonsensical” manner (though they are in fact quite useful for letting users confirm that the... Continue reading…
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by Makena Kelly on (#6A49Z)
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appears before Congress to defend the platform against a ban. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, seemed to arrive at the Capitol well-prepared.Taking his seat before dozens of House Energy and Commerce Committee members Thursday, he opened a packet of notes, diligently indexed with sticky notes. In the packet, there appeared to be a sheet matching the names and faces of the lawmakers preparing to question him — many of whom had already made up their minds over whether the app was safe for Americans.“Your platform should be banned,” Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) said in her opening statement Thursday. “I expect today you’ll say anything to avoid this outcome.”For more than three years, TikTok has been operating under the looming threat of a nationwide ban. But what was once a GOP-led campaign... Continue reading…
by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#6A4A0)
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge How’s our favorite Bitcoin maxi Jack Dorsey doing? Well, the short sellers at Hindenburg Research published an absolute barn-burner of a report alleging widespread fraud at his company, Block. Besides that, Hindenburg says Block misled its investors and is engaging in predatory lending practices.Oh, okay! Block is threatening to sue. Its shares closed down almost 15 percent on March 23rd, the day the report was released, from the day before.Sure, it’s rude to bet on someone’s failure and profit off it, but rude isn’t the same as immoralIf you aren’t familiar with Hindenburg Research, they are bad motherfuckers! Like, they wrote a whole report alleging that the electric vehicle company Nikola was “intricate fraud built on dozens of... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6A468)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge People all over the world can now pay for Twitter, as the company has announced that its Twitter Blue subscription service is now available globally. While the subscription has been pretty widely available before (you could sign up for it in almost 50 countries), the expanded availability reflects the company’s drive to make Twitter Blue an increasingly important part of the service.Part of those efforts, however, includes making promises that it hasn’t kept yet. The company’s announcement tweets list some of the benefits of Twitter Blue, such as getting a checkmark, the ability to write longer tweets, getting prioritized ranking in conversations, and seeing half as many ads. Those last two, however, haven’t actually rolled out yet.... Continue reading…
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