The Verge

Illustration: The Verge Google may be gearing up to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT by letting people “interact directly” with its “newest, most powerful language models as a companion to search,” according to CEO Sundar Pichai. It would be a big move for the company — as systems like ChatGPT and DALL-E have gone viral, Google — a company that’s been flexing its AI muscles for years and producing tons of research in the area — hasn’t had a public answer to those sorts of tools, some of which could threaten its core businesses.During an earnings call today, Pichai talked about how the company plans to “unlock the incredible opportunities AI enables,” saying the tech is “reach[ing] an inflection point.” He also says that it was Google’s earlier AI research that... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Apple has reached a new milestone on how many people are actively using iPhones, iPads, Macs, and its other hardware products: 2 billion. The number highlights fast growth for the company, which hit 1.5 billion active devices at the start of 2020 and only surpassed 1 billion back in 2016.Apple was trekking quickly toward the 2 billion milestone after it hit 1.8 billion active devices only a year ago thanks to record device sales in 2021 that dodged supply chain challenges stemming from the pandemic.The news comes as Apple releases its first quarter earnings that highlights its performance during the holiday months. “During the December quarter, we achieved a major milestone and are excited to report that we now have more than 2 billion... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Qualcomm thinks the world won’t be buying very many Qualcomm phones in the first half of this year. On today’s Q1 2023 earnings call, the company says it sees “broadening demand weakness among handsets and IoT products” and expects its customers simply won’t bother shipping as many phones in its second and third fiscal quarters (through June 2023) because they don’t expect people to buy them.Qualcomm already saw an 18 percent drop in phone sales this past quarter (ending December 25th), with research firm IDC calling it the “largest-ever decline in a single quarter” for phones in general, not just in Qualcomm-powered handsets.Next quarter, Qualcomm actually doesn’t expect its phone sales to decline all that much; they’ll be down... Continue reading…

Amazon reported its Q4 earnings on Thursday. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon had better net sales during its holiday quarter than even its best projections, but the results still show a company struggling with economic slowdowns across its divisions.Net sales were up 9 percent year over year, according to Amazon’s just-released Q4 2022 earnings, surpassing the company’s guidance it gave last quarter that growth would be up between 2 and 8 percent year over year. That said, it was its least profitable Q4 ever; the company earned $0.3 billion for quarter, a sharp drop from $14.3 billion a year before.And for the full year, the company posted a net loss of $2.7 billion, its first since 2014 and reversing a trend of rising annual profits and booming growth during the pandemic. Substantially at fault for... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai opened his company’s latest earnings announcement by boasting about “great momentum in Cloud, YouTube subscriptions, and our Pixel devices.” But read a little further, and the numbers show a company is struggling to grow: its revenue for the holiday quarter — the big one for many companies, especially those in the ad business — was essentially flat compared to 2021. It also had worse margins, meaning it was earning less on the money it did spend.Alphabet, Google’s parent company, had an incredible run during the pandemic, posting incredible revenues in 2021 and achieving record profits several quarters in a row. But throughout 2022, its momentum has cooled; its revenue has grown at a slower pace, and its... Continue reading…

Granular Insurance, part of Verily, part of Alphabet, which is Google. | Image: Granular I’ve heard people joke that Google only has a couple of successful businesses, primarily advertising. But it may have found another hit: insuring other companies against their workers’ potentially pricey medical care.The Information is reporting that its healthcare company, Verily, more than doubled its revenue to become the biggest Alphabet subsidiary after Google proper — and that its health insurance business, Granular, is the biggest contributor to that growth. Granular’s revenue “rose nearly sixfold through the first nine months of last year to $151 million, from $27 million a year earlier,” writes The Information.

The data was allegedly used to target GoodRx’s users with personalized advertisements specific to their medications and health on Facebook and Instagram. | Image: GoodRx The Federal Trade Commission has issued a $1.5 million fine against online pharmacy and telehealth provider GoodRx for allegedly sharing the private health data of its customers with Google, Facebook, and other third parties without consent. GoodRx has additionally agreed to an unprecedented provision that will ban the company from further sharing consumer health data with third parties for advertising. The FTC’s complaint comes after investigations by Consumer Reports and Gizmodo first discovered in 2020 that GoodRx was nonconsensually sharing the private health information of its customers with more than 20 companies.In a complaint filed by the Department of Justice on Wednesday, the FTC accuses GoodRx of violating its own privacy... Continue reading…

A color pairing from Colorschemer, which may shut down next week. | Image: Colorschemer / Twitter Twitter says it’s cutting off free access to its third-party API next week, replacing it with a “paid basic tier” for an unspecified price on February 9th. The news potentially affects a lot of Twitter services, and one of them is bots — not the spammer armies that new owner Elon Musk claims he’s been purging but the myriad automated accounts posting cute animals, fictional character quotes, and accessibility aids through Twitter’s API. While Twitter has left users in the dark about the details of its coming change, many bot creators have resigned themselves to shutting down.“My read of those tweets from Twitter is that it’s going to stop working,” says V Buckenham of their service Cheap Bots Done Quick. Launched in 2015, Cheap Bots... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Based on info from Netflix’s support pages, a report published by The Streamable appeared to confirm details about how it will roll out anti-password sharing features in the US and elsewhere. However, Netflix hasn’t announced the details of its plan yet or what it may look like when it rolls out more widely this year.Netflix spokesperson Kumiko Hidaka said in a statement given to The Streamable and The Verge that “For a brief time on Tuesday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries. We have since updated it.”We already know that Netflix is planning to roll out password sharing more broadly within the coming months. Netflix has been testing the... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Microsoft is encouraging developers to start using Microsoft Store Ads, which allow people and companies to boost their app’s placement in the Windows store. The company writes in its blog that the ads are “designed to help developers grow their business by getting their apps or games in front of the right customers at the right time, and to inspire Microsoft Store customers with great content,” but similar systems for iOS and Android haven’t always provided the best experience.Microsoft Store Ads have been a long time coming — the company announced it was going to start piloting them in May 2022 and posted about them rolling out on its advertising blog in January. But now, it’s posting about them on its developer blog, telling devs... Continue reading…

You can buy the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra in purple, black, green, and cream colorways. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Apple’s iPhone 14 now has a new rival: the Samsung Galaxy 23. Announced during the company’s recent Unpacked event alongside a slate of new Galaxy Books, the S23 series is available for preorder starting this week with a street date of February 17th. The new phones arrive with faster performance, bigger batteries, and updated selfie cameras, with the Ultra offering an even higher resolution camera than its predecessor.But before you throw down upwards of $799 on a preorder, you may want to know how Samsung’s forthcoming smartphones measure up to Apple’s latest and greatest handsets. While both lineups include phones with impressive specs, there are a couple of key differences to be aware of.The most obvious, perhaps, is the fact that... Continue reading…

Frozen power lines are seen hanging near a sidewalk on February 1st, 2023, in Austin, Texas. | Photo by Brandon Bell / Getty Images Power outages hit hundreds of thousands of Texans during a winter storm this week, bringing to mind deadly blackouts the state suffered in a 2021 cold spell. More than 400,000 customers had no electricity today as the icy storm that started Monday entered its final stretch.This week’s blackouts, however, played out much differently than the 2021 disaster. And fortunately, the ice storm is forecast to finally ease up today. But it was another reminder of the work left to do to shore up Texas’ fragile grid.This week’s blackouts played out much differently than the 2021 disasterThe hashtag #TexasFreeze trended once again with scenes of vehicles skidding on ice-covered roadways and frozen trees wrecking power lines. There’s also... Continue reading…

Evans Hankey won’t be replaced. | Image: The Verge Apple won’t name a new head of hardware design to replace outgoing exec Evans Hankey, according to Bloomberg. Hankey took over hardware design leadership in 2019 after former chief design officer Jony Ive left to start LoveFrom, his own design company, but Bloomberg reported in October that Hankey would be leaving early this year.Going forward, the company’s group of “about 20” industrial designers will instead report to Apple COO Jeff Williams, and many of the team’s veteran designers will get bigger roles, Bloomberg reports. The change will notably broaden Williams’ purview; he already manages “global operations, the supply chain and AppleCare customer support, as well as software engineering for the watch and health efforts,” B... Continue reading…

The blue and green Paperwhite models are both down to $109.99. | Image: Amazon Getting bored staying indoors because it’s too cold to venture outside? We feel you, which is why we found some good deals today that’ll keep you entertained while inside. First up, Amazon is discounting the new green and blue versions of its latest Kindle Paperwhite. Both are on sale with ads and 16GB of storage for $109.99 ($40 off), or you can buy them without ads for $129.99 ($40 off). The new color configurations were announced just yesterday, yet today’s discount is only $10 shy of the Paperwhite’s lowest price to date.This is the same Paperwhite we reviewed (and loved) upon its debut in late 2021 — just a little more colorful. It’s got the same IPX8 waterproofing and months-long battery life, allowing you to read uninterrupted... Continue reading…

Fagiani / The Verge CNET built a trusted brand for tech reporting over two decades. After being acquired by Red Ventures, staff say editorial firewalls have been repeatedly breached. Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft Teams Premium is now available with features powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 AI language model. The new premium tier of Microsoft Teams includes an intelligent recap feature that automatically generates notes, tasks, and highlights of meetings thanks to GPT-3.5, alongside branded meetings, custom meeting templates, and features like watermarking to better protect meeting contents.Intelligent recap is the big new addition to Microsoft Teams Premium, and it may tempt users to pay the $7 per month per user introductory price ($10 per month from June 30th) just to get an idea of how useful it will be. Intelligent recap uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model to generate meeting notes and highlights even if you weren’t present in a meeting. ... Continue reading…

Thousands of small developers have created useful tools that utilize Twitters free API access, which are now in danger of being shut down. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter will no longer provide free access to the Twitter API from February 9th. As announced by the official Twitter Developer account late Wednesday night, Elon Musk’s social media hobby will stop supporting free access to the Twitter API and will instead provide a “paid basic tier.” Twitter hasn’t provided any information regarding pricing, but said that it will provide “more details on what you can expect next week.”“Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week,” said the Twitter Developer account. “Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us.”

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Plus a cool concept car from Nissan Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony wasn’t lying when it said the PlayStation 5 shortage was over earlier this month. Its latest earnings release has revealed that the console just had its strongest quarter yet, with 7.1 million PS5s shipped in the three months leading up to December 31st, 2022. That’s almost double the 3.9 million it sold in the same quarter the previous year.According to Sony’s earnings releases, the company has now shipped 32.1 million units of its latest generation console, which is in line with the 30 million lifetime sales figure it revealed at the beginning of January. It’s a big turnaround after production was hit hard by the global chip shortage, making it difficult for the company to keep up with demand for its new console throughout much... Continue reading…

Amazon’s hexagonal MK27-2 delivery drone. | Image: Amazon It’s been nearly a decade since Amazon’s Jeff Bezos promised us delivery drones, but they aren’t off to a particularly impressive start. Roughly a month after Amazon Prime Air made its first deliveries in California and Texas, it’d served fewer than 10 households — and it’s already laid off more than half the employees at those locations.That’s according to a pair of new reports at The Information and Business Insider, and Amazon isn’t denying it. Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti didn’t contest those numbers in an email to The Verge when we asked. But she also said that Prime Air is actually working to expand drone deliveries in both California and Texas, with the FAA’s approval.And there may be a very good reason why Amazon... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge You can get a great 1080p webcam for under $75. If you want to spend more, you can get 4K recording, AI head tracking, and even a real gimbal. Continue reading…

Pictured: a phone that you can’t contact people with when you’re not near a cell tower. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge When Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon Satellite tech that will let Android phone makers compete with Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite, I was almost certain we’d see the feature on Samsung’s then-upcoming S23 phones.I mean, why wouldn’t we? Qualcomm said the feature would be available this year for phones using its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, and Samsung is launching the first big Android flagship of 2023 with that processor — surely, it’ll build in this potentially life-saving functionality, like analysts have been predicting for months.And then Samsung’s Unpacked event came and went, with no mention of satellite messaging at all, and CNET posted an interview with TM Roh, president and head of Samsung’s mobile experience... Continue reading…

We may have to squint to see some of the differences in this iterative update. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung announced a new batch of Galaxy S flagship phones at its Unpacked event this week, all of which are set to arrive soon. As expected, the new class to choose from this year includes the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23 Plus, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. Samsung’s trio of flagships for 2023 offer some refined designs — which look a little iPhone-like, if I’m being candid — with some camera, battery, and processor improvements over last year’s S22 generation. But which one is the right one for you?It may be a no-brainer if you don’t want a phone that’s too big (the S23 is the smallest of the three) or if you want a stylus (the S23 Ultra is your only option for S Pen use). But if you’re in the margins and need to contemplate which phone is the... Continue reading…

Fans who want to attend Beyoncé’s world tour will have to get tickets through Ticketmaster. | Photo by Mason Poole / Parkwood Media / Getty Images for Atlantis The Royal Ticketmaster is about to face its next big test. Just over three months after the Taylor Swift debacle, Ticketmaster will be the place to buy tickets for Beyoncé’s upcoming Renaissance World Tour that was announced on Wednesday.Like with the Taylor Swift presale, people who want to get tickets for Beyoncé’s shows in North America will have to register with Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform. Ticketmaster notes in a blog post that registering does not guarantee that you’ll get tickets, and the Verified Fans who actually get a code to buy tickets will be determined by a lottery system.If you want to register as a Verified Fan for the tour, you can do so on this Live Nation site. (Ticketmaster technically lives under Live Nation... Continue reading…

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Another day, another company announces it’s laying off 6 percent of employees. Today, that company is Rivian, the EV automaker that had one of the biggest IPOs of 2021 but has since struggled to hit its targets as manufacturing and supply chain problems mount.The layoffs also come amid a looming EV price war, in which Tesla and Ford have lowered prices on their flagships vehicles. Other automakers have said they are not ready to slash prices on their own EVs, but analysts predict that more companies will follow. Rivian currently sells three models: the R1T truck and the R1S SUV, as well as the EDV, which stands for electric delivery van.According to Reuters, the layoffs are expected to effect 840 employees at the Irvine,... Continue reading…

From left to right: the Samsung Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra. The latest Galaxy trio is available for preorder | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Another year, another round of flagship Samsung phones. This time around, Samsung used its Unpacked event to announce a new line of Galaxy Books, in addition to the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra. The latter probably feels familiar to last year’s S22 generation, as there are once again three models to choose from: a big-ish one, a bigger one, and the biggest one. That last one, the S23 Ultra, features souped-up specs, a stylus, and some big megapixel gains. However, each member of the S23 family is promising faster performance than last year’s model thanks to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processors.The S23 flock starts at $799.99 and goes up to $1,199.99 (unless you opt for pricey storage upgrades), and all three models are set... Continue reading…

Only the Ryzen 9s will be coming in February. | Image: AMD AMD has announced the pricing for its flagship 7000X3D chips as well as when you’ll be able to get them. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D will cost $699, with the 7900X3D coming in at $599. Both chips will be available on February 28th. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D, meanwhile, has seemingly been delayed a bit and will be released on April 6th for $449.When AMD announced the chips last month, it was exciting to see that the company was bringing 3D V-Cache technology to even more chips in its lineup. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D was the previous standard-bearer for the tech, and that chip received a lot of praise — what would chips with up to double the number of cores be capable of?

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung just held its first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, where it took the wraps off its new Galaxy S23 devices and the Galaxy Book3.In case you weren’t able to watch the event live, you can catch up on all the biggest news from Galaxy Unpacked here.Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S23 Ultra gets a small boost Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The Samsung S23 Ultra comes with a 200-megapixel camera sensor. The S-Pen-equipped Galaxy S23 Ultra comes with a slew of small but notable upgrades, including a 200-megapixel camera sensor, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, and a more battery-efficient display. The base Ultra model now also comes with 256GB of storage, which is a nice addition.The S23 Ultra starts at... Continue reading…

Peloton’s Q2 2023 losses were the narrowest they have been since 2021. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge “If you’ve been wondering whether or not Peloton can make an epic comeback, this quarter’s results show the changes we’re making are working,” Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy wrote Wednesday in an investor letter accompanying the company’s Q2 2023 earnings report.McCarthy is no stranger to bold claims, but a year after taking the helm of the troubled company, it seems like the numbers are starting to back him up. In its Q2 2023 earnings report, Peloton reported a loss of $335.4 million compared to $439.4 million this time last year. On the surface, a loss doesn’t seem like a win — especially since it’s Peloton’s eighth consecutive quarter without turning a profit. However, it’s the narrowest loss Peloton’s reported ever since it started... Continue reading…

Photo by Rob Tringali / MLB Photos via Getty Images YouTube TV might be working to refine and improve its user experience, but like every other subscription TV service, its customers are always at risk of losing channels out of the blue. MLB Network is the latest to vanish from the service with little warning. YouTube TV emailed subscribers yesterday, giving them the heads-up that the channel would be going away… by the end of that same day. Now it’s February, and MLB Network is gone.Subscribers are raising the usual complaints, asking the right questions, and threatening to cancel. Shouldn’t the monthly price go down? (Sadly, it never works that way.) Will they get things figured out by the regular season? (Maybe, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.)Any cloud DVR recordings from MLB... Continue reading…

The iPad Air from 2022 is a great buy unless you really prefer a bigger screen or the Face ID found on the Pro models. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s February, folks. For many of us, that means a month of dreary weather and seasonal depression, but today, we can cheer ourselves up with coverage of Samsung’s impending Unpacked event and some sick tech deals.Starting us off, Apple’s latest iPad Air is on sale in its base 64GB configuration for $499.99 ($100 off) at Best Buy and Amazon — or $649.99 ($100 off) for 256GB at Best Buy and Amazon if you prefer more storage. This return to its lowest prices makes this iPad one of the best values across the whole range of Apple’s tablets, in part because it’s the cheapest way to get the speedy M1 processor. At this price, it’s just $50 more than the 10th-gen “entry-level” iPad, but it’s faster, has a laminated 10.9-inch screen that is... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon The latest Kindle Paperwhite has finally caught up with the new Kindle, which sounds weird, so let me explain: Amazon is making the 16GB Kindle Paperwhite and 32GB Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition available in new soft “denim” blue and “Agave Green” shades in addition to the standard black colorway.That means now you can buy both the 2021 Kindle Paperwhite and the new base Kindle — which Amazon released in October — in multiple colors.Previously, you could only buy the base Kindle in black and blue, while the Paperwhite was only available in black. That was a strange move as the Kindle Paperwhite is supposed to be the more premium e-reader, adding extra features like waterproofing. Naturally, thus, you’d expect it to offer more... Continue reading…