The Verge

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg poses for a portrait at the Department of Transportation offices in Washington, DC. | Image: Cheriss May for The Verge The US Department of Transportation is making a big bet on smart city technology with the release of $94.8 million in federal funding. But in an interview, Secretary Buttigieg warned that not every project ‘is going to prove out.’ Continue reading…

WhatsApp users can soon search mutual contacts to check what groups they have in common, and admins have more control over who can join community groups. | Image: WhatsApp / Meta WhatsApp has announced two new features coming to the Meta-owned messaging app that are designed to improve the privacy of community group chats while also making it easier to find groups users have in common. Both new features will roll out globally “over the coming weeks.”The updates are related to the WhatsApp community tab — group chats designed for large collections of people (such as organizations and schools) to house multiple related sub-groups, akin to something like Slack or Discord. WhatsApp Communities rolled out last year and currently supports up to 5,000 users, video calls for up to 32 participants, and group-wide admin announcements.Admins will have more control over who can join a group through an invitation linkOne... Continue reading…

A screenshot from the Resident Evil 4 HD Project. | Image: Albert Martin / Capcom Albert Martin, one of the modders behind the eight-year Resident Evil 4 HD remaster project, has landed an industry job at a studio best known for its work remastering retro games.“I’m really happy because I’m finally and for the first time in my life working in the videogame industry,” Martin wrote in a blog post. “Thank you, Joel, for having faith in me, and thank you, Stephen, for the opportunity in Nightdive Studios.”It’s well deserved. The Resident Evil 4 HD Project was a mammoth task that Martin and co-creator Cris Morales started in 2014 in an attempt to overhaul the textures in the then-recent Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition re-release. In a NeoGaf thread from the time, Morales estimated that the job would take the two of... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Waymo published a paper today outlining a safety case for autonomous vehicles that the company says should serve as a blueprint for the entire industry.Waymo’s safety case would be “a formal way to explain how a company determines that an AV system is safe enough to be deployed on public roads without a human driver, and it includes evidence to support that determination,” the company says in an accompanying blog post.In other words, Waymo is presenting an argument for the safety of autonomous vehicles, along with evidence that it says backs up this argument. And the company wants other AV companies — essentially, its competitors — to adopt a similar approach in order to prove to regulators that AVs can safely be deployed at a wide... Continue reading…

It’ll cost you more than $2,000. It nearly cost its maker everything. Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge You know how researchers recently discovered that the Pixel’s built-in cropping tool didn’t actually get rid of the data you removed and that a little digging let you see the parts of the image that had been supposedly cut out? One of those researchers is now reporting that Microsoft’s Snipping Tool for Windows 11 as well as the Snip & Sketch tool in Windows 10 have a very similar exploit, which could mean that information people thought they’d gotten rid of is now floating around on the internet.According to a tweet from David Buchanan, if you take a screenshot with the tool, press the save button, and then crop it and save it to the same file, the data may still be available in the file. Buchanan says you can even use pretty much the... Continue reading…

People watch the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 second-generation Starlink satellites at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on February 27th, 2023. | Photo by Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images The swift rise of internet satellites, forming megaconstellations, and accumulating space junk are already starting to mess with astronomers’ research. The problem is growing exponentially, scientists warn in a series of papers published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy. And they want regulators to do something about it.The swarm of satellites functioning in low Earth orbit has more than doubled since 2019, when space-based internet initiatives really started to take off. That year, SpaceX and OneWeb launched their first batches of satellites with the goal of providing global internet coverage. Orbiting the planet at a closer range than other satellites is supposed to make those services faster, cutting down how far signals have... Continue reading…

Raja Koduri, wearing a jersey celebrating the Intel Arc GPUs and holding a silicon wafer. | Image: Intel After five years attempting to make Intel into a competitor for Nvidia and AMD in the realm of discrete graphics for gamers and beyond — with limited success — Raja Koduri is leaving Intel to form his own generative AI startup.

9to5Mac uncovered images showing a black and gold finish. | Image: 9to5Mac Beats is preparing to release an upgraded version of its wireless Studio Buds. In the latest iOS 16.4 beta released today, 9to5Mac uncovered details about new “Beats Studio Buds Plus” earbuds and images revealing a black and gold finish. The design is largely identical to the original Beats Studio Buds released in 2021.The Verge has learned from people familiar with the company’s plans that the upcoming earbuds will feature more powerful active noise cancellation and an improved transparency mode compared to the original Studio. Similar to the first model, the Studio Buds Plus will not contain an Apple audio chip like the H1. Nor will they include automatic device switching between Apple devices.If you’re after those Apple ecosystem... Continue reading…

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and their Oscars at the 95th Academy Awards. | Image: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images Disney and Lucasfilm have been tight-lipped about what exactly Jon Watts’ upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which stars Jude Law, is about, but we now know at least two of the directors who will be helming the series.Apropos of recent reports from The Hollywood Reporter that Everything Everywhere All at Once co-directing duo the Daniels were in talks to work on an unspecified Star Wars project, Daniel Kwan took to his Instagram page this week to clear up the speculation by announcing that he and Daniel Scheinert are slated to direct an episode from Skeleton Crew’s first season.In his post, Kwan assured fans any rumors of them “getting sucked up by the ‘corporate machine’” were wholly out of pocket and explained that their decision to... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Water resistance and lengthy battery life are now standard Continue reading…

Image: Jabra Jabra’s new entry-level Elite 4 earbuds offer active noise cancellation, but they still come at a budget-friendly price tag. For $99.99, the buds promise 5.5 hours of listening time with ANC switched on or 22 hours with the case.The Elite 4 offer a handful of upgrades over their $79.99 Elite 3 predecessors, which made our list of the best wireless earbuds. In his review of the buds, my colleague Chris Welch said the Elite 3 offer “good sound for the price” and a comfortable fit but noted two major drawbacks: the lack of ANC and multipoint.Fortunately, Jabra has addressed both of these weaknesses with the Elite 4. In addition to ANC, the Elite 4 now come with Bluetooth multipoint, allowing them to connect to multiple devices at the same... Continue reading…

Last week, we learned — from Bloomberg — that Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy tens of thousands of Nvidia A100 graphics chips so that partner OpenAI could train the large language models (LLMs) behind Bing’s AI chatbot and ChatGPT.Don’t have access to all that capital or space for all that hardware for your own LLM project? Nvidia’s DGX Cloud is an attempt to sell remote web access to the very same thing.Announced today at the company’s 2023 GPU Technology Conference, the service rents virtual versions of its DGX Server boxes, each containing eight Nvidia H100 or A100 GPUs and 640GB of memory. The service includes interconnects that scale up to the neighborhood of 32,000 GPUs, storage, software, and “direct... Continue reading…

Bard looks like a search engine, though Google says it isn’t one. | Image: Google “Bard is a complement to search.” That’s how Google describes the relationship between Bard, the new chatbot entering into beta testing today, and its monolithic search engine. The way the company sees it, Bard is less a tool for finding information and more a way to automatically generate ideas and emails. And poems. And poem-emails. You want answers to search queries? That’s what Google search is for. There’s even a “Google It” button at the bottom of most Bard responses.But the thing about Bard — and really the thing about every chatbot including ChatGPT and the new Bing — is that Google doesn’t actually get to choose how you use it. People have spent the last few months using ChatGPT to replace a search engine... and wondering what... Continue reading…

Google is stressing that Bard is an experiment rather than a finished product. | Image: Google Today, Google is opening up limited access to Bard, its ChatGPT rival, a major step in the company’s attempt to reclaim what many see as lost ground in a new race to deploy AI. Bard will be initially available to select users in the US and UK, with users able to join a waitlist at bard.google.com, though Google says the roll-out will be slow and has offered no date for full public access.Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, Bard offers users a blank text box and an invitation to ask questions about any topic they like. However, given the well-documented tendency of these bots to invent information, Google is stressing that Bard is not a replacement for its search engine but, rather, a “complement to search” — a bot that... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is adding an AI-powered image creator to its Bing search engine today. The Bing Image Creator will be powered by an “advanced version” of OpenAI’s DALL-E model and will let Bing users create images by simply writing what you want to generate.“For those in the Bing preview, Bing Image Creator will be fully integrated into the Bing chat experience, rolling out initially in Creative mode,” explains Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing. “By typing in a description of an image, providing additional context like location or activity, and choosing an art style, Image Creator will generate an image from your own imagination.” Image: Microsoft Bing’s chatbot can generate images for you. M... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Microsoft is building a cryptocurrency wallet for its Edge browser even as the crypto markets struggle. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the software giant has been testing the Microsoft Edge built-in crypto wallet internally in recent months, with plans to eventually ship it to consumers. It’s just the latest feature coming to Microsoft’s increasingly bloated Edge browser.Screenshots of the crypto wallet leaked online last week thanks to Twitter user Albacore, who regularly documents unreleased features in Windows. Microsoft’s description of the crypto wallet says it has “simplified experiences that make Web3 easier to interact with” and that it has “integrated security features to protect you from unsecure... Continue reading…

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge You bought your parents / grandparents / other relatives a new computer, set it up, and showed them all of its nifty new features. You’ve gone home, knowing that you’ve made them very happy. But deep down, you know that this isn’t the end of the story.It’s not going to be long before that dreaded call comes in asking for support. “I can’t find the draft of the email I started!” “Why can’t I get on that Zoom conference?” “My speaker / mouse / keyboard isn’t working!” They’re going to want you to talk them through a fix, which (depending on how computer-savvy they are) is probably going to take a minimum of several hours out of your day.But there is a solution. If both you and your troubled relative use the Chrome browser (or own a... Continue reading…

Sean Dong / The Verge Mike Vallejo, a 32-year-old technology entrepreneur and self-proclaimed multimillionaire from Portland, Oregon, had recently separated from his wife of four years. Their marriage had been on the skids for a while, the true downfall of which was spurred by Mike making out and getting “handsy,” as he put it, with a much younger woman named Lauren.This past August, Lauren pitched Mike, who was now officially single, on having a threesome with her and her friend Haley. Youthful and blonde, faces impeccably sculpted by makeup, the duo was freewheeling and eager for a good time. Mike readily agreed, and the three of them congregated at a swanky boutique hotel in downtown Portland. “I did a line of cocaine off of Lauren’s ass,” Haley said.... Continue reading…

The Momentum 4 can last more than two days on a single charge. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge Spring break is here, and before you know it, summer will be, too. That means airports and train stations are about to get a whole lot busier. If you often travel for business or plan on vacationing soon, it’s wise to pick up a pair of noise-canceling headphones in preparation for the chaos. Luckily, Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless are on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and direct from Sennheiser for $269.95 ($80 off), which is one of their better prices to date.In a nutshell, the Momentum 4 are our favorite pair of headphones for traveling. They last a whopping 60 hours on a single charge and their noise cancellation is excellent, meaning you’ll be able to tune out loud crowds, crying babies, and other unwanted sounds. True, they look more... Continue reading…

The Oppo Find X6 Pro in black, brown, and green. | Image: Oppo Oppo has joined the likes of Xiaomi and sister-company Vivo by including a massive 1-inch-type camera sensor in its latest smartphone, the Find X6 Pro, which also doesn’t skimp on the telephoto and ultrawide camera specs. It’s launching in China today alongside the regular Find X6.In China, the Find X6 Pro starts at 5999 yuan (around $872) for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, rising to 6999 yuan (around $1017) for 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage. Meanwhile the non-Pro Find X6 starts at 4499 yuan (around $654) for 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage. A spokesperson for the company was unwilling to confirm whether the X6 phones will see a broader international release in the future.The Find X6 Pro’s primary camera is the star of the show, and... Continue reading…

Photo by VES 2021 via Getty Images Zack Snyder, known for films like 300 and the four-hour “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, is working on an RPG set in the universe of his forthcoming Netflix sci-fi movie Rebel Moon, he teased in a podcast interview on Sunday.“The one thing that I’m really having a really good time with is — and I don’t even know if I’m supposed to talk about it — this RPG that we’re doing that is just literally insane and so immersive and so intense and so huge,” Snyder said in an interview on The Nerd Queens podcast.Snyder didn’t share many details beyond that and the Rebel Moon connection — he doesn’t even specify what kind of RPG it is, though it seems like a video game — but he mentioned that he didn’t want to make a “causal” game and that he... Continue reading…

Victoria Alonso at a screening of Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania at Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles, California. | Photo by Phillip Faraone/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images Though Victoria Alonso’s name will still be listed in the credits of a number of Marvel Studios’ upcoming projects like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, and Secret Invasion, the longtime producer is ready to make her exit.Per The Hollywood Reporter, after 17 years of working at Marvel Studios — originally as executive vice president of visual effects and post-production before going on to become president in the department — Alonso left the company last Friday for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. As a co-producer on a number of Marvel’s earliest films like the first Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, Alonso played a key role in shaping the MCU in its infancy, and 2012’s Avengers marked the beginning... Continue reading…

Image: Agility Robotics Agility Robotics has taken the wraps off its next-gen bipedal bot, which comes with some noticeable upgrades — namely, a cylindrical head and two animated LED “eyes.” In a press release, the company says it made the changes to its warehouse-friendly bot, called Digit, to improve “human robot interaction.”Agility Robotics first introduced the once-headless Digit in 2020, marketing the machine as useful in a wide range of industries, such as logistics, industrial inspection, and telepresence. The bot’s also been made to work in the same area and take up the same amount of space as humans, which is why it measures five feet, nine inches tall and walks on two legs.

The Vergecast logo is old, but Overcast, the app it’s playing on, has been charming us for years. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For the last four weeks, Ashley Esqueda has joined The Vergecast each Monday to talk with someone making something really cool on the internet all by themselves. She’s talked with the maker of Hive, the indie developer of the game Birth, the maker of tiny artisan keycaps, and even the person who built the McRib Locator. It felt fitting that, for the final episode of this miniseries, Ashley would talk to one of the original app makers.Marco Arment has been solo building really cool stuff on the internet for years. While he was the CTO of Tumblr, he launched Instapaper in 2008. He left Tumblr in 2010, sold a majority share of Instapaper in 2013, and then turned his focus to Overcast, one of the absolute best apps you can use for tracking... Continue reading…