The Verge

Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge IssueGoogle’s Discover page, which is the leftmost page on many Android phones, can be a useful source of news, or it can be an irritating list of clickbait headlines and repetitive articles. And because it is an intrinsic part of the OS on many phones, unless you actually installed it yourself, you probably can’t uninstall it.You can try to adjust the content by selecting the two dots at the bottom right of each article and letting the algorithm know you’re not interested, but that doesn’t always work. Or you can simply get rid of it. Sometimes, you’ve seen enough rats. You can try to tweak the Discover page algorithm; it doesn’t always work. Quick fixLong-press on any homepage screen... Continue reading…

Another addition to a tweet’s report card — this bar is getting full. Twitter is adding yet another public metric to measure posts by. There’s now a counter for how many bookmarks a tweet has gotten that lives beside the retweet, quote retweet, and like numbers. The counter is currently only showing up for iOS users who visit the tweet details page, but a help document says there are “plans to expand.”Unlike other metrics, you can’t tap the bookmarks counter to see who’s added it to their list. According to the Twitter Support account, “bookmarks are still private” and the company will “never display which accounts have added a Tweet to their Bookmarks.”

Flooded strawberry fields in Pajaro, California, on Wednesday, March 15th, 2023. | Image: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images An extremely wet winter has lifted much of California out of drought, and more rain is on the way. The deluge of rain and snowfall this season has “wiped out exceptional and extreme drought in California” for the first time since 2020, according to a spring outlook published today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).The agency forecasts more improvement throughout spring, with even more regions potentially seeing their drought conditions end. Even so, California’s recovery will be patchy, and it’ll take years to replenish some crucial water sources. And as recent storms have already shown, the state will continue to face new dangers from flooding.“Climate change is driving both wet and dry extremes”“Climate... Continue reading…

V2 of Celsys’ art and animation software provides new features for automatic illustration adjustments and referencing. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Celsys has released Clip Studio Paint 2.0, the first major update for its popular digital illustration app that introduces new 3D referencing tools, brush effects, and additional language support.Some of the most notable additions for the update build on the app’s existing support for 3D models, which can be imported into the app and used as drawing references. Version 2.0 of Clip Studio Paint introduces a customizable head model within the 3D section of the Material palette that can be freely positioned to find the desired angle. There are nine preset faces to choose from that cover realism, anime, ultra-masculine superhero, and more. Head size, shape, lighting, and facial features are all adjustable.

Image: VW Volkswagen unveiled its affordable, mass-market electric vehicle in the form of a concept called the ID. 2all. With a starting price of 25,000 euros ($26,600) and an estimated range of 450 kilometers (279 miles), the Golf-looking electric hatchback is intended to be that most elusive thing: a plug-in vehicle for the people.VW revealed the ID. 2all during an investor event in Germany — calling to mind Tesla’s own investor day event, in which Elon Musk was expected to show off his own affordable EV but didn’t. Tesla’s share price dropped after the event as investors griped about the absence of the promised EV. And less than two weeks later, VW has responded with its own spin on what an EV for the mass might look like.The Golf-looking... Continue reading…

Valve’s Steam Deck portable gaming PC. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge It’s been just over a year since Valve launched its Steam Deck portable gaming PC — and it’s just now going on sale.Until March 23rd at 10AM PT, you can get a Steam Deck for 10 percent off — in the US, that translates to $359.10 for 64GB, $476.10 for 256GB, or $584.10 for the 512GB model, before tax. Shipping is free. Prices for the Steam Deck with the 10 percent discount. Why now, instead of exactly at the one-year mark? It might be that it coincides with Valve’s Spring Sale or that it took some time to put together this Happy Birthday video...It also might be that sales of the always-improving portable have finally begun to drop.While the Steam Deck has spent staggering nonconsecutive weeks atop Steam’s... Continue reading…

Microsoft Business Chat | Image: Microsoft One of the new Copilot AI features coming to Microsoft 365 apps and services is dubbed Business Chat. It’s a chatbot experience that’s able to summarize information pulled from meeting transcripts, recent contacts with customers, entries in your calendar, and more that you can plug into emails for the team or as slides in a presentation.According to Microsoft, by using grounding to focus the AI on your business’ trove of data, it can create relevant, accurate responses to natural language prompts, like “Did anything happen yesterday with [customer X]?” The bot is accessible from Microsoft365.com, Bing when signed in with a work account, or via Microsoft Teams. Image: Microsoft Microsoft Business Chat The... Continue reading…

Image: Lawrence Sumulong/Getty Images Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning, effective immediately, he announced in a blog post on Thursday.Shear has been at Twitch since before it was Twitch. He was a co-founder of Justin.tv, the platform where Justin Kan streamed his life 24/7. That became Twitch in 2011 to focus on popular gaming livestreams, and just three years later, the platform was acquired by Amazon for nearly a billion dollars.

The artwork itself may not be for everyone, but Ikea sells easy drop-in, drop-out alternates. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Maybe Ikea is feeling buoyed by the hype around the new Sonos Era 100 and 300 speakers, especially now that the speakers are up for preorder; the flat-pack furniture maker has dropped the price even further on its art-like smart speaker you can hang on your wall.The Ikea Symfonisk picture frame Sonos speaker is now on sale for $169.99 ($90 off) direct from Ikea until May 29th or “while supplies last.” We don’t know if that means the unusual speaker is on its way out or that a new one is coming, but we do know this is a great deal. Now, I know I said the Symfonisk was a screaming deal last month at $194.99, but surprisingly, it is now another $25 cheaper. Don’t worry if you bought one last month — Ikea offers a 90-day price protection if... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is announcing a new AI-powered Copilot for its Microsoft 365 apps and services today, designed to assist people with generating documents, emails, presentations, and much more. The Copilot, powered by GPT-4 from OpenAI, will sit alongside Microsoft 365 apps much like an assistant (remember Clippy?), appearing in the sidebar as a chatbot that allows Office users to summon it to generate text in documents, create PowerPoint presentations based on Word documents, or even help use features like PivotTables in Excel. Microsoft’s Copilot leaked earlier today.“It works alongside you, embedded in the apps millions of people use everyday: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more,” said Microsoft 365 head Jared Spataro.... Continue reading…

Venus beside a crescent Moon on July 15th, 2018. | Image: NASA / Bill Dunford We’ve been getting fooled by photos of the night sky for years; now, tech is making it even easier. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition is at the messy stage. After recruiting Nvidia, Nintendo, and two other cloud gaming companies to help convince regulators to approve its $68.7 billion deal, Microsoft is now criticizing the UK’s Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) math calculations.The CMA published a financial model that calculated Microsoft could turn a profit by withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation to draw former Sony fans to Xbox, basing its calculations on profits and losses from Xbox hardware, subscriptions, and games over a period of five years.Microsoft argues that the CMA’s financial modeling is flawed. The CMA’s model compares gains on a five-year basis to losses on just a one-year basis, and... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Parkin / The Verge CEO James Daunt explains how Barnes & Noble is different than Amazon. Continue reading…

Leaked images of what could be the Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds. | Image: The Walkman Blog Sony could be on the cusp of announcing a successor to the excellent WF-1000XM4 true wireless earbuds, if a series of leaked images published by The Walkman Blog are any indication. The new earbuds will reportedly be called the WF-1000XM5, which shouldn’t be confused with the over-ear WH-1000XM5 headphones Sony released last year. The Walkman Blog has a pretty good track record with these kinds of leaks given it published similar photos of the XM4 earbuds prior to their announcement in 2021.Although it’s great to see evidence of a potential successor to the best true wireless earbuds available today, the images themselves suggest any changes could be minimal. The Walkman Blog notes that the earbuds seem to be more compact overall, with... Continue reading…

Image: TikTok TikTok is adding a way for users to “refresh” For You page content when they want to switch up their feed. In February, the company previously said it was testing the feature. Now, the Refresh button is set to roll out to users globally over the coming weeks.When users turn on the reset feature, the recommendations algorithm will revert back as if they just signed up for TikTok. As the user watches and interacts with content, the algorithm will begin to serve up recommendations based on the user’s actions after hitting Refresh.The app’s closely guarded recommendations system takes in user signals like watch time, comments, and likes to suggest related content. TikTok says users may want to reset their feed if they lose interest in the... Continue reading…

Image: H0x0d (Twitter) Microsoft is holding a big AI event later today, but one of the announcements appears to have just leaked. Twitter user h0x0d has published details of a PowerPoint Copilot feature, which appears to include ChatGPT-like AI that will create presentations for you.The Copilot appears in a sidebar in an online version of PowerPoint where you can ask the assistant to create a presentation based on a Word document. PowerPoint then immediately drafts a presentation, complete with a full slide deck based on the contents of the Word document supplied.

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is holding a special “future of work with AI” event today, where the company says it’ll be “reinventing productivity with AI.” Microsoft is expected to demonstrate how its ChatGPT-like AI will work in Microsoft 365 and Office apps like Teams, Word, and Outlook. CEO Satya Nadella and head of Microsoft 365 Jared Spataro will host the event starting at 8AM PT / 11AM ET.The event takes place just two days after Google announced AI features in Gmail, Docs, and more to rival Microsoft, in what looks like another front in the battle between the two companies over the future of productivity apps.The Verge revealed last month that Microsoft was planning an AI event in March to demo how its new ChatGPT-like AI will transform its Office... Continue reading…

Photo by Brandon Sloter / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images The next time a coach or umpire calls for a review, they’ll get the results beamed in from the Major League Baseball (MLB) replay center in New York over Zoom, creating one more meeting that could’ve been an email.Starting this season, umpire crew chiefs on the field will use the new “Zoom Replay Operations Center” to beam into replay reviews taking place at the league’s replay center in New York. Previously, umps only had access to audio of review conversations, and now they’ll have video, too, even though the remote umpires’ decision will be the one that’s final. Once an umpire or team manager calls for a review, the results depend on the person watching the replay.Naturally, it won’t just be umps that will see more Zoom branding... Continue reading…

Snapchat’s latest safety feature allows parents to filter out sensitive content on their children’s devices. | Image: Snapchat Snapchat has rolled out new parental Content Controls to help prevent minors from being exposed to potentially inappropriate content while using the app. Announced on Tuesday, parents and guardians can now access new content filtering capabilities through Snapchat’s Family Center supervision tool to block “sensitive or suggestive” content from appearing on their child’s Snapchat Stories or Spotlight feed.The feature can be enabled by selecting “Restrict Sensitive Content” within the Family Center settings. Snap notes that enabling the feature won’t restrict the content your child can view elsewhere on the app outside of Snapchat’s Stories and Spotlight sections, such as Chat, Snaps, and Search.Snapchat has publically released its... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Have you ever spent money on microtransactions or in-game items and then regretted it? Bernard Kim, CEO of Match Group, has. During a talk at New Street Research’s online dating summit, he dropped this anecdote while talking about mobile games (emphasis mine):

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge ChipMixer, a cryptocurrency mixing service with ties to the hacks targeting FTX and Axie Infinity, has been pulled offline by the FBI, Europol, and other international authorities. In a press release published Wednesday, the Justice Department says authorities seized $46 million worth of cryptocurrency along with the service’s domains and GitHub account.Crypto mixing services like ChipMixer make it more difficult for third parties, such as law enforcement, to trace crypto transactions, as they funnel different payments into a single pool of crypto before splitting up each amount and sending them to designated recipients. According to law enforcement, unlike crypto services registered to operate in the US, it naturally didn’t collect... Continue reading…

The girls are fightinggggggg. | Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week, a lot of companies and entrepreneurs have been making the flight to — at least perceived — safety. That means the biggest banks have been getting more deposits: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo.“Everyone is asking, ‘Where should we bank? Where is it safe to bank?’” Ryan Gilbert, founder of Launchpad Capital, told Silicon Valley Business Journal. “When you think you bank with the safest bank in your ecosystem, and they disappeared overnight, you realize it’s impossible to predict an earthquake.” He moved his account to Chase.“Where should we bank? Where is it safe to bank?”Startups such as Brex, Mercury, and Meow have also benefited. Brex specializes in... Continue reading…

The Brother HL-L2305DW is a laser printer that just prints. It is fine. | Image: Brother Here’s the best printer in 2023: the Brother laser printer that everyone has. Stop thinking about it and just buy one. It will be fine!Seriously, ask around or just look in the background of Zoom calls: there’s a black Brother laser printer sitting there. Some people have the bare-bones Brother HL-L2305DW, which costs like $120. We have the $270 Brother MFC-L2750DW, which adds a sheet-fed scanner, because my wife is a lawyer and scans things for judges or whatever she does with it. It doesn’t matter. We only bought that one to replace our previous Brother laser printer that we lost in a move, and even then, I didn’t even look at the model numbers. It has been connected to our Wi-Fi for like six years straight, and I have never replaced... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google Glass largely went off sale to consumers in 2015, and Google has since been focusing on how the headset could be useful for businesses and developers. But even those efforts have come to an end. The company is no longer selling Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, Google spokesperson Patrick Seybold told The Verge. A help document spotted by 9to5Google says the company will end support for the AR headset on September 15th.According to the company, the devices should still work after that date, but it’s not planning on releasing any software updates. The support cutoff also extends to the built-in Meet app and repair service. “The app may stop working at any time after September 15, 2023,” warns Google’s support page, before saying... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft appears to have removed the waitlist for its new Bing Chat feature, so now anyone can sign up and use the GPT-4-powered chatbot. Windows Central spotted that if you try and sign up for the new Bing, it will simply unlock immediately. The Verge has tested this on multiple Microsoft accounts, and access was granted immediately with an email confirmation.If you want to try and get access to the new Bing, then head over to bing.com/new and hit the “join waitlist” button and sign in with your Microsoft Account. You should get access immediately.We asked Microsoft whether it has fully removed the waitlist or if it’s a bug, and communications director Caitlin Roulston said, “During this preview period, we are running various tests... Continue reading…

Wemo’s smart home light switches work well... but now only with HomeKit. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Wemo, Belkin’s smart home company, has paused development of Matter smart home devices. In an email exchange, Jen Wei, Vice President of Global Communications and Corporate Development at Belkin, confirmed that, while the company remains convinced that “Matter will have a significantly positive impact on the smart home industry,” it has decided to “take a big step back, regroup, and rethink’’ its approach to the smart home. Wei went on to write that Wemo will bring new Matter products to market when it can find a way to differentiate them. It seems like Wemo might be concerned its smart home gear is becoming commoditized.During CES 2022, Wemo announced it would bring Thread-compatible, Matter-compliant products to market when that new... Continue reading…

Ali Wong as Amy Lau and Steven Yeun as Danny Cho in Beef. | Netflix For many people, the waves of rage that take hold whenever someone cuts them off in traffic come as quickly as they go, but that could not be further from the truth for the aggrieved strangers in the first trailer for Netflix and A24’s upcoming series Beef from Lee Sung Jin starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.Before the pair first meets one fateful day, neither Danny Cho (Yeun) nor Amy Lau (Wong) have any way of knowing just how hopeless, burned out, and adrift the other is feeling about their personal lives. Though Amy seemingly has it all — a loving husband named George (Joseph Lee), kids, and a beautiful home — she can’t help but feel there’s something deeply important missing in her life that her family can’t fix. Danny, a contractor... Continue reading…

Photo by Mark Felix / AFP via Getty Images NASA has revealed the new spacesuit that astronauts will wear to explore the Moon under the Artemis program. Created by Axiom Space, the new suit is designed to improve mobility for astronauts working on the lunar surface.Developed for the Artemis III mission, which will see the first woman and person of color walking on the Moon, the prototype suit was revealed at an event on Wednesday, March 15th. The prototype includes a dark gray cover, which was designed by costume designer Esther Marquis, who worked on the TV series For All Mankind, but the actual suit will be white for thermal reasons.The prototype includes a dark gray cover, which was designed by costume designer Esther Marquis, who worked on the TV series For All Mankind“... Continue reading…

Image: OpenAI Yesterday, OpenAI announced GPT-4, its long-awaited next-generation AI language model. The system’s capabilities are still being assessed, but as researchers and experts pore over its accompanying materials, many have expressed disappointment at one particular feature: that despite the name of its parent company, GPT-4 is not an open AI model.OpenAI has shared plenty of benchmark and test results for GPT-4, as well as some intriguing demos, but has offered essentially no information on the data used to train the system, its energy costs, or the specific hardware or methods used to create it.Should AI research be open or closed? Experts disagreeMany in the AI community have criticized this decision, noting that it undermines the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro outperform the Beats in sound quality and noise cancellation, but the Beats Fit Pro have some strengths of their own — especially if you’ve got an Android phone. Continue reading…

The smart ring is adding a number of features that center around circadian rhythms. | Image: Victoria Song / The Verge Over the past year, wearable makers have started adding sleep profiles, or chronotypes, associated with cute cartoon animals to help users better understand their circadian rhythms. For instance, Fitbit Premium users can discover whether their wonky sleep patterns mean they’re a giraffe or a tortoise, while Samsung Galaxy Watch owners can find out whether they’re a sun-averse mole or a nervous penguin. So it’s hardly a surprise that the feature is now coming to the Oura Ring sleep tracker — though, regrettably, it doesn’t come with any adorable animals. Image: Oura The new body clock feature will tell you how well your sleep habits align with your chronotype’s “optimal” schedule. Starting this week, Oura users... Continue reading…

Zipline’s P2 Zip drone can dock at a partnered facility to charge and let down a “droid” for workers to drop a package into. | Image: Zipline Zipline is revealing its new drone delivery platform today that the company says is capable of making a 10-mile delivery in 10 minutes, precisely placing packages on small targets like a patio table or the front steps of a home.The new drone, which Zipline calls the Platform 2 (P2) Zip, uses a system of wires that lets down the package inside a cute little mini-bus-looking container the company describes as a “delivery droid.” The P2 Zip hovers more than 300 feet above the ground at the delivery point, keeping its blades and noise away from people (and trees and wires and buildings) to let down its tethered droid instead.The droid has the ability to steer with propellers as it’s coming down, then lands and softly drops its payload.... Continue reading…

Image: Mojang Microsoft is launching an early access version of Minecraft: Bedrock Edition on ChromeOS today. The game will run on Chromebooks thanks to the Android support of ChromeOS, and Minecraft will include cross-device play with friends, the marketplace, and support for playing on Realms.Mojang, the Microsoft-owned developer of Minecraft, originally launched Minecraft: Education Edition on Chromebooks in 2020, but this special edition required a school license or an Office 365 Education account. The early access version of Minecraft that’s launching today is limited to Chromebooks that meet these minimum specifications.“Early access means that in this first stage, only selected Chromebook devices that meet the minimum requirements will get... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge LinkedIn is expanding its suite of artificial intelligence features, this time adding tools that will generate content for user profiles and job descriptions.One tool announced today will scan user profiles for skills and experiences and spit out suggested copy or summaries to add to other profile sections. The company says it still recommends users review and edit what the tool has generated “to ensure it is accurate and aligns with your tone and experience.” LinkedIn will begin testing the tool starting today and expand access to all LinkedIn Premium subscribers over the course of the next few months.Another employment tool promises to make writing job descriptions “faster and easier” and “streamline” the hiring process. Employers... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI’s latest language model, GPT-4, has officially been announced, but what can it do that its predecessors couldn’t? Here are some of the biggest features and use cases to emerge so far. Continue reading…