The Verge

Illustration by Tony Johnson / The Verge These days, there are dating apps for just about everything you can imagine: from specific religions, ethnicities, and political beliefs to various lifestyles and hobbies. You can find a dating app for vegans, one for rock climbers, and even one for professional clowns.But these apps face a particular challenge. They have to find enough users and build a strong enough community to survive. And they have to do that in the face of Tinder-owner Match Group, which has its own growing portfolio of narrowly-focused apps, too.The most successful niche dating app outside of the Match Group umbrella is Grindr, a publicly traded company with 11 million monthly active users. AJ Balance, Grindr’s chief product officer, says that the app has... Continue reading…

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge TikTok is adding new features to its advertising portal, Promote, including the ability to boost the videos of other users, the company announced today.The in-app tool, geared toward small businesses and creators, is getting several updates around audience targeting, campaign objectives, and boosting posts. The Promote feature allows brands and users to turn their content into ads without leaving the app, and TikTok encourages brands and creators to use the platform as a way of reaching customers and audiences.Among the more notable features announced today is a “Promote for Others” option, which allows brands working with influencers to throw money behind the content creator’s post or live video. Creators can also, in turn, promote... Continue reading…

Satya Nadella CEO Microsoft | Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge I’m coming to you from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, where just a few hours ago, Microsoft announced that the next version of the Bing search engine would be powered by OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT. There’s also a new version of the Edge web browser with OpenAI chat tech in a window that can help you browse and understand web pages.The in-depth presentation showed how OpenAI running in Bing and Edge could radically increase your productivity. They demo’d it making a travel itinerary, posting to LinkedIn, and rewriting code to work in a different programming language.After the presentation, I was able to get some time with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella has been very bullish on AI. He’s previously talked about AI as... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Hey, everybody! Nice to be back, though I do miss the sunshine and sick waves (that I did not ride) of Hawaii. I also, quite literally, ate too much tuna. It was worth it. Thanks to Jake for covering on a particularly busy week.Anyway, on to the news: Google alters its podcast search, Crooked Media forms a union, and Disney Channel stars are back en masse for rewatch pods.Google is sunsetting its podcast carousel“Podcast carousel” may sound like some technodystopian theme park ride, but it’s actually that featured bar of podcast episodes you get when you search for a show. When you click on episodes, they direct automatically to the Google Podcast player. It’s a pretty intuitive functionality, so it is curious that Google has... Continue reading…

Wyze’s systems will be down for maintenance tonight taking all its cloud services offline, including its security system’s connection to 24/7 monitoring. | Image: Wyze If you have Wyze cameras or a Wyze home security system, you will need to make other arrangements to monitor your property from 12AM PT to 2AM PT tomorrow morning.The smart home company sent an email to its customers this week stating that system maintenance on February 8th at 12AM PT will impact every feature of the system that relies on the app or website. That includes being able to alert Noonlight, the professional monitoring company Wyze uses for its Sense security system, about a potential break-in.Not only will your security system be down, but if you use Wyze cameras to keep an eye on things going bump in the night, you’ll have to stay awake. Wyze cameras won’t be able to upload any video to the cloud or send alerts for motion... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Something seems to be wrong with Samsung’s 980 and 990 Pro SSDs. Owners of the highly regarded M.2 solid-state drives are reporting rapid degradation, with some users sending their 990 Pros back to Samsung. And for the older 980 Pro, Samsung is reportedly recommending owners to update to the latest firmware (via PC Gamer).The issue was first reported by Neowin writer Robbie Khan, whose new, recently released 990 Pro 2TB module dropped to 94 percent health status at just over 4TB of written data. Prior to the article, Khan posted the findings on Reddit, which was met with owners voicing similar issues.Samsung has acknowledged an issue but says so far it hasn’t received widespread complaints. “We are aware of limited reports concerning... Continue reading…

A slide announcing AI chat features in Bing and Edge. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Microsoft’s new ChatGPT-powered Bing experience will be available today for everybody as a “limited preview” on desktop. You’ll have a limited number of queries that you can use with it, but you will be able to sign up for full access soon.If you visit Bing.com, you may see some example searches that you can try out, if it shows you the new interface. Clicking on them will lead you to a Bing search page with traditional results on the left, and a chat window on the right with the AI-generated answer. Until you have full access, you won’t be able to ask follow-up questions or clarify the results. Searching for your own query will give you Bing’s traditional search results, despite the homepage using the new chat-style UI. ... Continue reading…

Mill’s waste bin turns food scraps into food grounds. | Image: Mill Industries The numbers on food waste are staggering. Globally, about a third of the world’s food production is lost or wasted — roughly 1.3 billion tons each year — and most of it ends up rotting in landfills leaking methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it first enters the atmosphere.One way to tackle those problems is to reuse that food waste, turning it into more food. It’s an option that’s even more effective than composting when it comes to tackling climate change, but it’s not always so easy to do at home. So a newly launched startup called Mill Industries wants to change that.“I just started getting obsessed”“I just started getting obsessed with waste. It’s like this problem that once you start thinking... Continue reading…

Photo by Carter Mathisen; Photo illustration by Will Joel / The Verge Authors Felix Gillette and John Koblin explain how your favorite shows kept HBO afloat. Continue reading…

Here’s what you get when you throw out any idea of a reasonable budget for a gaming laptop in 2023. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After six years of peace, the two tech giants are on course to butt heads again over the future of artificial intelligence. Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft Authenticator is ending support for the Apple Watch. Unfortunately, this means you’ll no longer be able to conveniently log in to your connected accounts using just the wearable, as reported earlier by MacRumors.While the app’s 6.7.3 iOS update states that it “removes Microsoft Authenticator from Apple Watch,” it also notes that you can still mirror any Microsoft Authenticator notifications you receive on your iPhone to your Apple Watch.Microsoft first introduced Authenticator for the Apple Watch in 2018, and it’s proven useful for anyone looking to streamline their multi-factor authentication (MFA) sign-ins. Instead of having to open the Microsoft Authenticator app on your phone to verify your identity, you could instead... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission will not appeal a recent federal court order allowing Meta to purchase VR startup Within, an agency official told reporters on Monday.The FTC sued to stop Meta’s acquisition of Within, the company behind the popular fitness app Supernatural, last July. The agency argued that the purchase would expand Meta’s dominance in the VR market, pointing to the Oculus maker’s previous 2019 merger with the company behind Beat Saber. Meta fought the suit but later agreed to delay closing the deal until January 31st.Shortly after the court greenlit the impending merger on Friday, Meta spokesperson Stephen Peters told The Verge the company is looking “forward to closing the transaction soon.” Meta declined to comment on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Twitch is rolling out a new chat history feature that should make it a lot easier to catch up on what’s been going on in a streamer’s chat.When you jump into a stream, you’ll be able to see either the last 50 messages or the last hour of what’s been said in chat, depending on which option has fewer messages. That may sound like a potentially large gulf between options, but I think it serves both large and small streams well.For many larger streams, chat flies at a mile a minute, with discussions happening and changing at a rapid rate. Fifty messages is probably enough to get you up to speed ahead of chat moving on to something else. Smaller streams may have just a few dedicated chatters that may not post enough to hit that 50-message... Continue reading…

Overwatch 2 | Image: Blizzard Other than a new map, a dating sim, and a tie-in with One Punch Man, Blizzard is also touching up practically every aspect of Overwatch 2 with the introduction of the game’s third season. A blog post provided an overview of the big changes players will see when the game is updated tomorrow, February 7th, but now the patch notes have all the details.Major changes include a health reduction for tank characters during non-role queue modes, the return of the Workshop Editor, and an update to the game’s ping system so you can tell your allies if an ability like Immortality Field or Resurrection is on cooldown and for how long and allows players to choose any Ping to place on their Ping wheel menu. It’s a small change, but it should make it... Continue reading…

An illustration from Getty Images’ lawsuit, showing an original photograph and a similar image (complete with Getty Images watermark) generated by Stable Diffusion. | Image: Getty Images Getty Images has filed a lawsuit in the US against Stability AI, creators of open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion, escalating its legal battle against the firm.The stock photography company is accusing Stability AI of “brazen infringement of Getty Images’ intellectual property on a staggering scale.” It claims that Stability AI copied more than 12 million images from its database “without permission ... or compensation ... as part of its efforts to build a competing business,” and that the startup has infringed on both the company’s copyright and trademark protections.The lawsuit is the latest volley in the ongoing legal struggle between the creators of AI art generators and rights-holders. AI art tools require illustrations,... Continue reading…

Image: Fitbit No, it’s not you — Fitbit is currently experiencing a major outage.According to Downdetector, the outage started at about 8AM ET, with most reports indicating the problem was with the Fitbit mobile app. However, some users are also reporting issues with the Fitbit website.The main problem appears to be that users can’t sync their data, set up devices, or view updates. Essentially, anything related to using the Fitbit app appears to be borked. Other users on Twitter have said that uninstalling and reinstalling the app effectively locks them out, as the app will not let them log in or re-pair their devices.