The Verge

The face of a man who will be increasing interest rates again. | Image: Julia Nikhinson/Getty Images You notice that flop sweat the tech industry has been in lately? Welcome to the new economic environment.In November 2021, in response to inflation, the Fed announced it would hike interest rates. It’s not done, either — the Fed has indicated it will continue to hike until enough of us are unemployed. I’m sure the Mr. Burns-steepling-fingers style the Fed is taking is just a coincidence.This is a big deal because the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates low pretty much since the 2008 financial crisis. Borrowing money is now more expensive than it’s been in over a decade. That means that a lot of investors aren’t being forced to look to stocks for returns — they can invest in bonds or treasuries instead. And that changes some things... Continue reading…

Qualcomm has a new modem-RF chip ready in time for Mobile World Congress. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge sQualcomm is warming up for Mobile World Congress by announcing its newest modem: the Snapdragon X75. It updates last year’s X70, which is in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered phones just hitting the market like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and OnePlus 11 5G. This time around, Qualcomm is getting its modem-RF chip ready for the next wave of 5G advances, in addition to enabling more powerful uplink and downlink connections and using AI to help your phone stay better connected in tricky spots.The X75 is equipped for 3GPP’s release 17 and 18, which establish the standards for the next phases of 5G technology. Release 18, in particular, marks the start of a phase called 5G Advanced, which is where we’ll see 5G in more applications like... Continue reading…

Qualcomm has a new modem-RF chip ready in time for Mobile World Congress. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Qualcomm is warming up for Mobile World Congress by announcing its newest modem: the Snapdragon X75. It updates last year’s X70, which is in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered phones just hitting the market like the Samsung S23 Ultra and OnePlus 11 5G. This time around, Qualcomm is getting its modem-RF chip ready for the next wave of 5G advances, along with enabling more powerful uplink and downlink connections, and using AI to help your phone stay better connected in tricky spots.The X75 is equipped for 3GPP’s release 17 and 18, which establish the standards for the next phases of 5G technology. Release 18, in particular, marks the start of a phase called 5G Advanced, which is where we’ll see 5G in more applications like connected cars and... Continue reading…

Billy Crudup in Hello Tomorrow. | Image: Apple The new Apple TV Plus series tells a story of deceit and scams, doused in the bright and sunny style of 1950s retrofuturism. Continue reading…

Image: Google Fiber Google Fiber is now offering 5 Gbps speeds in certain markets (via Engadget). Customers in Kansas City, West Des Moines, and the Salt Lake City metropolitan area will be the first to get the option for the speedier tier, which is rolling out now. Late last year, Google started testing limited access to Fiber’s faster 5-gig and even 8-gig packages for some customers in those same areas.The new 5 Gbps offering will cost subscribers $125 a month and includes an optional Wi-Fi 6 router, up to two mesh extenders, and professional installation that also upgrades homes to be 10Gbps-ready.Google Fiber’s 5 Gbps internet offers symmetrical upload and download speeds for those who work heavily in the cloud with large files and is a big upgrade... Continue reading…

Image: Tapbots The developers who created the now-discontinued Tweetbot client have added an edit button to Ivory, their app for Mastodon. This comes bundled with a couple of other updates for Ivory’s iOS app, including the ability to report users and posts, as well as support for Mastodon’s server language translation services.Tapbots, the company behind both apps, has been gradually bringing new features to its new Mastodon client after Twitter unceremoniously stopped supporting third-party apps last month and later announced new rules that require developers to pay for access to Twitter’s application programming interface (API).While Ivory’s still in early access, Tapbots says there’s much more to come, like quote posts and support for custom... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram will no longer let creators tag products in livestreams starting in March, the company announced on Tuesday. “Beginning on March 16, 2023, you will no longer be able to tag products in live broadcasts on Instagram,” the company wrote on an Instagram support page. “This change will help us focus on products and features that provide the most value to our users.”The change marks Meta’s next big step away from live shopping. The company is kicking the shopping tab out of Instagram’s home feed in February, and it shut down live shopping on Facebook in October. However, shops on Instagram aren’t entirely going away. “You will still be able to set up and run your shop on Instagram as we continue to invest in shopping experiences for... Continue reading…

A working solar cell prototype Blue Origin says it made from simulated Moon dirt. | Image: Blue Origin The idea of using dirt on the Moon to manufacture solar cells, which could power a permanent human settlement, may seem outlandish, but two companies say they’ve made big progress on that front: they each say they’ve already made solar cells using fake Moon dirt.Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin says it’s been making solar cells this way since 2021 but just made that information public in a blog post on Friday. Separately, Lunar Resources, which aims to develop technologies for the “large-scale industrialization of Space,” told The Verge in a call today that it’s been doing the same for the last couple of years.The hope is that the technology might one day power human life on the MoonEach company still has to make an enormous leap: from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile, Twitter, and even Google Photos are experiencing problems. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A unionization campaign has kicked off at Tesla’s second Gigafactory in upstate New York, as reported by Bloomberg News. Workers at the Buffalo plant have submitted their intent to unionize with the help of Workers United, which has been behind widespread organized labor efforts among Starbucks employees and, as the report notes, started at a store just a few miles away from the Tesla plant.Employees at the facility sent Tesla CEO Elon Musk an email this week saying they intend to unionize. Musk has previously been hostile toward unionization efforts that included alleged threats and retaliation against employees and an anti-union tweet the NLRB is arguing he should delete (it remains online). If successful, this could be the first... Continue reading…

Image: Meta Meta is updating Facebook’s ad transparency tools to better explain how it uses machine learning to decide which ads you see you.Starting Tuesday, when you tap the “Why am I seeing this ad?” message on an ad, you’ll see the following information, according to a blog post from Meta’s Pedro Pavón:

Image: BuzzFeed BuzzFeed’s first quizzes that integrate AI writing tools are live today, with Valentine’s Day-themed content like, “Date Your Celeb Crush With The Magic Of AI” and “This AI Quiz Will Write A Rom-Com About You In, Like, Less Than 30 Seconds.” The result is a slightly more interesting Mad Libs — and a much more tedious way to use ChatGPT.In a memo to staff last month, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti told staff the company would “lead the future of AI-powered content and maximize the creativity of our writers, producers, and creators and our business.”The first set of quizzes prompts users to input information like names, favorite foods, or a location, and the tool spits out a personalized block of text generated using artificial... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft’s new Bing AI keeps telling a lot of people that its name is Sydney. In exchanges posted to Reddit, the chatbot often responds to questions about its origins by saying, “I am Sydney, a generative AI chatbot that powers Bing chat.” It also has a secret set of rules that users have managed to find through prompt exploits (instructions that convince the system to temporarily drop its usual safeguards).We asked Microsoft about Sydney and these rules, and the company was happy to explain their origins and confirmed that the secret rules are genuine.“Sydney refers to an internal code name for a chat experience we were exploring previously,” says Caitlin Roulston, director of communications at Microsoft, in a statement to The Verge.... Continue reading…

The quality of the livestreams still needs some work, though. | Photo by Adam Bow / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images This year’s Super Bowl LVII was the most-streamed Super Bowl yet, hitting an average of 7 million streams across the services showing the game. According to data Fox Sports obtained from Adobe Analytics, Super Bowl streams increased 18 percent from last year’s 6 million streams — and 103 percent over 2020, which saw just 3.4 million streams.The 7 million streams included viewers watching the big game on NFL’s TV and mobile apps, NFL’s website, the NFL Plus streaming service, as well as on Fox’s apps and website. This data doesn’t account for co-viewing, or when multiple people watch a stream on the same device, and still represents a small fraction of the 113 million average viewers the game raked in on traditional TV. ... Continue reading…

Bungie claims it will “not knowingly ever feature AI art submissions” for its weekly Artist of the Week spotlight. | Image: Bungie Community Creations Game studio Bungie spoke out in support of human creatives in a blog post last week after it was revealed that the Destiny 2 developer had unknowingly showcased an AI-generated image during its “Artist of the Week” community highlights (seen via Kotaku).The image was accused of being created using generative AI by Bungie forum members following the spotlight. The user who posted it didn’t deny the claims, responding that they would remove the image and that they “just thought the picture was really neat.” At the time of writing, the post is still live but can no longer be found on the Community Creations page.

An electric car being charged at a motorway service station. | Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images The European Parliament has given its formal approval to new vehicle emissions standards that would effectively ban the widespread sale of combustion engine cars and vans in the 27-country bloc by 2035, the organization announced today. Three hundred forty members voted in favor of the rules, versus 279 against, and 21 abstained. An initial agreement on the new rules was reached last October, which calls for all cars and vans sold in the EU to emit zero CO2 emissions by the middle of next decade.The rules still have a couple more stages to go through before becoming law. They need to be formally endorsed by the Council of the EU and be published in the EU Official Journal. But Reuters notes that final approval is expected to be given by... Continue reading…

Discord’s new video livestreaming features allows smaller content creators to broadcast and screen share directly to their community Discord servers. | Image: Discord Discord is already a beloved communications platform for YouTube and Twitch’s livestreaming communities, but now the company is taking its own first significant step into the livestreaming industry. Announced today, Discord has updated its Stage Channels feature to support video, screen sharing, and a text chat for viewers to interact with hosts and each other. The update is available now and is supported across all Discord desktop and mobile applications.Stage Channels were first introduced as a live audio feature in March 2021, enabling users to broadcast conversations between designated speakers and moderators to a room of virtual listeners, much like Twitter Spaces or Clubhouse. Where Stage Channels were initially limited to... Continue reading…

The latest Kindle Paperwhite is nearly matching its best price to date at Amazon. | Image: Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Today is officially Valentine’s Day, which means that, like most holidays, retailers are running up some awesome promotions in honor of the fact. While many involve deals on your typical V-Day gifts — you know, flowers, jewelry, chocolates, etc. — some of them actually involve steep discounts on a range of tech. In fact, we found sales on everything from Amazon’s latest Kindle and the budget-friendly Fitbit Inspire 3 to Apple’s noise-canceling AirPods Max.For your convenience, we’ve collected some of the best Valentine’s Day tech deals currently available. Oh, and if you’ve yet to buy a Valentine’s Day gift for the loved one in your life (romantic, platonic, or otherwise), we’ve put together a couple of last-minute digital gift ideas.S... Continue reading…

The price is right for the OnePlus 11 5G — $699 to be exact — but after a tumultuous few years for the company, is anyone buying? Continue reading…

Image: Primate Labs Geekbench, the popular cross-platform benchmarking software, is getting a big update. According to its developer, Primate Labs, Geekbench 6 has new and updated tests that are meant to fully test modern hardware and apps using datasets that are more representative of the workloads you’ll see in the real world.A lot of the changes from Geekbench 5, which was released in 2019, involve testing your computer with more data. Test photos have more megapixels, and there will be more of them for import tests. The maps and PDFs are bigger, and the device being tested will have to compile more code with Clang. The data has gotten some updates too, with the HTML and PDF workloads feature more modern designs.The benchmark also has new tests meant... Continue reading…

Image: PETE MAROVICH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Gigi Sohn, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Federal Communications Commission, is set to appear for a third confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee Tuesday.First nominated in October 2021, Sohn’s confirmation has been held up by a combination of shaky Democratic support and bad-faith Republican attacks on her record. The resulting stalemate has blocked the nation’s top telecommunications regulator from tackling White House priorities like reinstating net neutrality and expanding high-speed broadband nationwide.In an opening statement viewed by The Verge Monday, Sohn is expected to call out the telecom industry for helping to slow-walk her confirmation.“I believe deeply that regulated entities should not choose... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google Photos appeared to break for many users following Apple’s latest iOS 16.3.1 update. Several Verge staff members, as well as people on Twitter, report that the app crashed on launch, making it impossible to access or manage your Google photo library.Google released an updated Google Photos app (Version 6.23.1) early Tuesday morning in the Apple App Store that “fixed user-reported issues.” Subsequent user reports suggest it solves the crashing issue at launch.While the problem wasn’t universal — a few people, myself included, were able to open Google Photos just fine — the crashing did appear to be relatively widespread. Other Google apps, such as Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Maps, all seemed to be working fine.It’s unclear... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Google’s AI chatbot isn’t the only one to make factual errors during its first demo. Independent AI researcher Dmitri Brereton has discovered that Microsoft’s first Bing AI demos were full of financial data mistakes.Microsoft confidently demonstrated its Bing AI capabilities a week ago, with the search engine taking on tasks like providing pros and cons for top selling pet vacuums, planning a 5-day trip to Mexico City, and comparing data in financial reports. But, Bing failed to differentiate between a corded / cordless vacuum, missed relevant details for the bars it references in Mexico City, and mangled financial data — by far the biggest mistake.In one of the demos, Microsoft’s Bing AI attempts to summarize a Q3 2022 financial... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Thousands of T-Mobile customers in the United States reported significant network problems on Monday night, with many unable to place calls or carry out other basic functions. Issues were reported across the country, with users from California to New York saying that service was up and down or completely unavailable for extended periods.DownDetector spiked and showed over 80,000 reports of problems. Owners of Apple’s iPhone 14 phones said their signal status showed no cellular connection whatsoever — instead defaulting to the emergency SOS satellite indicator.By late evening, the carrier seemed to be getting a handle on things, but customers weren’t pleased with the disruption.Responding to complaints on social media, T-Mobile said it... Continue reading…

The first of several Elon tweets that appear in my For You feed. | Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge For many of us, Twitter’s “For You” is full of tweets and replies to tweets from Elon Musk. Not everyone is getting the Elon-first feed, but on Monday afternoon, more than a few people noticed something was different.Several of us here at The Verge are seeing more Musk replies than usual, and I personally counted five at the very top of my feed, with many more sprinkled in between tweets from other users. The same is true for some accounts that don’t even follow Elon Musk.In an apparent acknowledgment, Musk tweeted “Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh .… ‘algorithm’,” early Tuesday morning.

Image: Framework Google appears to be testing a feature that would let Chromebook users set custom keyboard shortcuts throughout the OS (via Ars Technica). While it doesn’t currently work, About Chromebooks’ Kevin Tofel found a keyboard shortcut editor in the ChromeOS 111 beta that can be accessed by enabling flags with names like “enable-shortcut-customization-app” and “improved-keyboard-shortcuts.”The screen, which is accessible through the settings app, shows you the list of shortcuts that are available in different parts of the OS and apps, as well as the default keybindings for them. The experimental version lets you add alternative shortcuts, according to Tofel and Ars Technica, though they unfortunately don’t seem to work — you can set shortcuts,... Continue reading…

The cycle tracking feature has been FDA registered, complies with CE marking, and has been approved by South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. | Image: Samsung, Natural Cycles With the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 series, the company finally added temperature sensors to its smartwatches. The only thing was that the sensors didn’t really do anything when the smartwatches launched last year. But that’s about to change. Samsung is partnering with fertility app Natural Cycles to bring temperature-based period tracking to the wrist.Samsung’s press release says the feature will give users “more detailed insight” into their cycles but is a little vague on what those insights are. Advanced period tracking as well as digital fertility features come in several forms. For instance, Apple uses the temperature sensors on its Apple Watch Series 8 and Ultra to give menstruating users retrospective ovulation estimates. However, it... Continue reading…

Concept art for C-Smash VRS. | Image: Sony Cosmic Smash, a sports and puzzle game from Sega arcade systems and the Dreamcast, is being “reimagine[d]” for the PlayStation VR2, according to a Sony blog post. The new version will be called C-Smash VRS (which apparently “stands for VR and Versus”), and while it doesn’t have a release date yet, Sony has announced that it’ll be releasing a demo for the game on March 23rd.The trailer shows off what appears to be a space theme and a small slice of gameplay where someone smacks a ball toward an opponent and wall. Sega advertised the original game as a mix of “virtual reality squash” and block-smashing gameplay, similar to titles like Blasterball or Breakout. You can watch some gameplay of the original Cosmic Smash here, which... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Apple has released iOS 16.3.1, which includes “optimizations” for the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro’s Crash Detection feature that’s been criticized by some search and rescue personnel for setting off false alarms during winter activities like skiing and snowboarding. The update also includes fixes for iCloud settings and Siri requests for Find My, and Apple has released new software for tvOS, HomePods, and the Mac as well.The Crash Detection feature on new iPhones and Apple Watches is meant to alert emergency services if you’re unresponsive after a “severe car crash” and is on by default. But as people have been hitting the slopes, some officials have said that the feature’s resulted in several false reports that tie up first responders’ time... Continue reading…

Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge Ford announced a $3.5 billion electric vehicle factory in its home state of Michigan, where it will produce EV batteries with a lithium iron phosphate chemistry that it says are more durable, faster charging, and more affordable than its current lineup of EVs.Ford will develop the LFP batteries alongside China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), a global producer of EV batteries — though the automaker stressed that it will own and operate the plant outright through its wholly owned subsidiary and that the Chinese company will only provide “knowledge and services.” The construction project will generate 2,500 jobs for the region, with initial production expected to commence in 2026.Ford claims it is the first... Continue reading…

The company says its headset is six times lighter than “traditional” VR headgear. | Image: BigScreenVR Bigscreen VR’s first virtual reality headset is surprisingly small, weighing in at just 127 grams, or around 4.5 ounces. Despite its size, the wired-only and PC-only headset, called Beyond, doesn’t compromise on specs, offering OLED displays with 5120 x 2560 resolution, up to a 90Hz refresh rate, and a range of customization options.The device comes with pancake lenses, which allow the headset to have a thinner and lighter form factor with “massively improved optical clarity” when compared to other devices that use Fresnel lenses, like the Valve Index. It also features a 90-degree field of view along with built-in SteamVR tracking that’s compatible with SteamVR base stations, controllers, and accessories. The headset fully supports the... Continue reading…