The Verge

Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Image: Getty Images Elon Musk is threatening to take legal action against Microsoft over claims that the company “trained illegally using Twitter data.” The billionaire’s statement came in response to a tweet noting that Microsoft’s advertising platform announced it would stop supporting Twitter, reportedly due to Twitter’s changes requiring payment to access its API.Musk’s threat is vague but appears to be over OpenAI using Twitter data to train the large language model behind products like ChatGPT. OpenAI, obviously, is not Microsoft, but it did recently receive a significant investment from the company, which is building AI into tools like Bing, Edge, and Microsoft 365.It’s unclear whether Musk will actually sue Microsoft at this point, as he has... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Stability AI, the company behind the AI-powered Stable Diffusion image generator, has released a suite of open-source large language models (LLMs) collectively called StableLM. In a post shared on Wednesday, the company announced that its models are now available for developers to use and adapt on GitHub.Like its ChatGPT rival, StableLM is designed to efficiently generate text and code. It’s trained on a larger version of the open-source dataset known as the Pile, which encompasses information from a range of sources, including Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, and PubMed. Stability AI says StableLM models are currently available between 3 billion and 7 billion parameters, with 15 to 65 billion parameter models arriving later. ... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla published its first quarter earnings report in which the company said it earned $2.9 billion in net income on $23.3 billion in revenue. That represents a 24 percent increase year over year compared to $18.7 billion in revenue in Q1 2022.Most importantly, the company’s gross margins fell to 19.3 percent, a sign that its rampant price cutting was starting to take a toll on its bottom line. Gross margins were down 18.9 percent quarter-over-quarter, and 33 percent year-over-year.Some analysts were dour about Tesla’s future in reaction to the earnings report. “Tesla’s underwhelming quarter is the latest sign that growing macroeconomic uncertainty is having some impact on demand for its electric vehicles,” Jesse Cohen, senior analyst... Continue reading…

Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black, Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen. | Image: Summit Entertainment It’s been years since people have worn T-shirts emblazoned with “#TeamEdward” or “#TeamJacob” with any regularity, but that might not stop Lionsgate from trying to resurrect Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga as a new TV series focused on supernatural love triangles.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate TV is in the earliest stages of development on a new take on Meyer’s Twilight novels that served as the basis for the studio’s previous film adaptations that broke all kinds of box office records and ultimately raked in $3.4 billion globally. The project is so far from coming to fruition (if it does) that currently, no creative team whatsoever has been announced. That said, Meyer is reportedly “expected to be involved,” and the new... Continue reading…

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge If you’re a US Facebook user who had an active account between May 24th, 2007, and December 22nd, 2022, you may be able to receive a portion of a multimillion-dollar class action settlement related to user privacy.Facebook parent company Meta agreed to pay $725 million to resolve a lawsuit accusing it of granting Cambridge Analytica and other third parties access to private user data, which a judge has tentatively approved. The tech giant also faced accusations it misled users about how much control they had over their private information. Meta, however, denies it did anything wrong.If you’d like to make a claim, you can do so online by August 25th, 2023. After answering a few questions, you’ll then be able to choose how you’d like to... Continue reading…

Image: Ghostwriter / YouTube The generative AI music hype train only needed about 48 hours to go from “oh, that’s interesting” to full Balenciaga pope territory, and while it’s clear someone is using the technology to run a scheme, we’re still not sure who it is.Here’s the short version:

Lego Sonic can spin. | GIF: Sean Hollister / The Verge, video by Lego Lego has made another fan toy dream come true: its new Sonic The Hedgehog sets actually let you send Sonic spinning through an entire miniature level.This isn’t the first time Sonic has been recreated in Lego form — we got a picture-perfect recreation of Green Hill Zone in 2021 that’ll look great on a bookshelf and a tie-in for the Lego Dimensions video game in 2016. But if you want a playset like Lego’s Mario line, that’s just now happening for the very first time.Each set has excellent references to the games: the flagship $100 Sonic’s Green Hill Zone Loop Challenge has classic fish and tree lizard foes, a two-part Dr. Robotnik boss that can float or stand on legs, forest creatures to rescue after he’s “defeated,” and a table where... Continue reading…

If young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gonna... tie you up in a decade of fair use litigation. Continue reading…

You can now change the look of Snap’s My AI. | Image: Snap Snap is releasing its “My AI” chatbot to all of Snapchat’s 750 million monthly users for free, a move that comes less than two months after the OpenAI-powered bot was first made available to the app’s more than 3 million paid subscribers.My AI is also becoming a more integral part of Snapchat. It can now be added to group chats by mentioning it with an @ symbol, and Snap will let people change the look and name of their bot with a custom Bitmoji avatar. In addition, My AI can now recommend AR filters to use in Snapchat’s camera or places to visit from the app’s map tab. And Snap plans to soon let people visually message My AI and receive generated responses; an example shown during the company’s annual conference today showed a photo... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Volkswagen’s flagship electric vehicle, the ID.4 crossover SUV, is eligible for the full $7,500 federal EV tax credit, the automaker announced Wednesday. The federal government’s list of eligible vehicles has since been updated to include all trim levels of the ID.4.Volkswagen is currently the only international automaker to have a full battery electric vehicle that is eligible for the full credit. The ID.4 is assembled in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is one of the prerequisites for eligibility. Earlier this week, the federal government released its list of EVs that qualify for the tax credit. The VW ID.4 was initially left off, but as of today, it’s back on.“This is great news for consumers in the U.S. because it expands the choice... Continue reading…

Google Fi has been rebranded as Google Fi Wireless, complete with a new logo for the service. | Image: Google / The Verge Google Fi is getting a new name and some new features. The service is now going by the name Google Fi Wireless, adding some much-needed clarity as to the nature of Google’s relatively unknown wireless carrier, and it’s adding new perks for subscribers as it rolls out the updated branding.The first big change is around smartwatches. Google Fi Wireless’ plans will now support Samsung’s Watch 5, in addition to the Pixel Watch. The service is also expanding smartwatch support to its Simply Unlimited plan, where previously it was only available on Google Fi’s Unlimited Plus and Flexible plans. All three plans support smartwatch connections at no additional cost, allowing the devices to stay connected without a phone. The device options here... Continue reading…

Massive Monster In case Tears of the Kingdom isn’t your thing or you need something to tide you over until May 12th, Nintendo put on a 20-minute Indie World presentation chock-full of new games, DLC, trailers, and more. Here are the highlights.Mineko’s Night MarketIn Mineko’s Night Market, you play as Mineko, who’s tasked with crafting all sorts of tchotchkes for the weekly Night Market. There’s also a fun, wide world to explore, allowing you to uncover the ancient secrets of the legendary cat-god. But be careful, as there are dubious-looking government agents who don’t want land’s secrets revealed. Mineko’s Night Market looks like a cuter version of Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin but without all the demon killing. Out already on Steam and Mac, it makes... Continue reading…

Image: Massive Monster Cult of the Lamb was one of my favorite games of 2022. When I spoke to the developers, they said they had all kinds of new content in the works, and that day has finally arrived. Revealed during today’s Nintendo Indie World event, Cult of the Lamb’s Relics of the Old Faith update adds tons more godly activities with which you can enrich the spiritual lives of your followers.In Relics of the Old Faith, the four bishops have new forms and abilities and stand guard over remixed versions of their dungeons. There are new weapons and spells to mix and match and a new quest to complete once you’ve finished the game. But more exciting than that, your lamb will now have new followers to save from blasphemy and new buildings to construct to keep... Continue reading…

Sidney Sweeney as Reality Winner. | HBO When former intelligence contractor Reality Winner pleaded guilty back in 2018 for leaking an NSA report detailing Russian attempts to interfere with the US’s 2016 election, the Espionage Act made it impossible for her to argue that she was acting out of concern for the American public. Even though it isn’t spelled out, the thorniness of that catch-22 is palpable in the first teaser trailer for Reality, HBO’s upcoming drama about the whistleblower and her interrogation by the FBI.Based on playwright Tina Sattler’s Is This A Room, which was based on transcripts of the FBI’s 2017 interrogation of Reality Winner, Reality — from Sattler and co-writer James Paul Dallas — tells the story of how Winner (Sydney Sweeney) ended up receiving the... Continue reading…

Image: JLR Jaguar Land Rover will invest £15 billion ($18.7 billion) over the next five years in electric and autonomous vehicle technology, the automaker announced Wednesday. The company identified its Halewood plant in the UK for conversion to an all-EV manufacturing facility. And by 2030, JLR says it will be an “electric first, modern luxury carmaker.”The first medium-size all-electric Range Rover will be out in 2025, and JLR will begin to take orders for it later this year. The vehicle will be built using JLR’s electrified modular architecture (EMA), which will power the company’s upcoming slate of EVs. JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, has previously committed to making its Jaguar-branded vehicles all-electric by 2025.JLR’s plans... Continue reading…

This show has a lot of nuns, but not a lot of guns. | Image: Colleen Hayes / Peacock A lot of people right now are wringing their hands about the rapid emergence and popularization of AI. There’s the way it threatens jobs — as anyone working at CNET will tell you — but there’s also the existential threat AI can create, as Elon Musk is wont to expound upon. Science fiction has been clanging alarm bells about AI since basically the birth of the genre. But too often, the upset about artificial intelligence seems to ignore the myriad of benefits it provides. The emergence of a new technology isn’t necessarily something to immediately villainize or praise but to carefully examine.Mrs. Davis, the new show executive produced by Damon Lindelof and created by Tara Hernandez, lets its main character wrestle with the glory and... Continue reading…

Image: Night School Studio It’s going to be a very supernatural summer. As part of its latest Indie World showcase, Nintendo announced that, after some delays, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals will be launching on July 12th. The game is coming to the Switch but also Steam, PlayStation consoles, and Netflix.Lost Signals is a sequel to the 2016 adventure game that was not only very creepy (with similar vibes to Stranger Things) but also had a novel dialogue system that made conversation very natural. The sequel moves things forward five years to continue the story. Here’s the official premise:

Illustration: The Verge Google employees repeatedly criticized the company’s chatbot Bard in internal messages, labeling the system “a pathological liar” and beseeching the company not to launch it.That’s according to an eye-opening report from Bloomberg citing discussions with 18 current and former Google workers as well as screenshots of internal messages. In these internal discussions, one employee noted how Bard would frequently give users dangerous advice, whether on topics like how to land a plane or scuba diving. Another said, “Bard is worse than useless: please do not launch.” Bloomberg says the company even “overruled a risk evaluation” submitted by an internal safety team saying the system was not ready for general use. Google opened up early access... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta has started its latest round of layoffs on Wednesday, and they affect employees in technical roles, according to CNBC.It’s unclear how many employees are being laid off in this round, but Vox reported Tuesday that the cuts would be “in the range” of 4,000 people. On LinkedIn, I found posts from people laid off in roles including senior engineering manager, user experience researcher, data scientist, technical program manager, gameplay programmer, and content designer.When reached for comment, spokesperson Elana Widmann pointed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s March 14th post announcing its plans to cut 10,000 more employees in addition to the 11,000 that the company already laid off. In that post, Zuckerberg said there would be three... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Microsoft is reportedly working on a smaller Surface Pro with an 11-inch display and an Arm-powered Surface Go 4 model. Windows Central reports that the smaller Surface Pro is codenamed Luxor and will be similar in size and shape to the Surface Go, the more budget 10.5-inch tablet that’s designed to look like a tiny Surface Pro.Currently, Microsoft only ships its Surface Pro 9 with a 13-inch screen, in both Arm- and Intel-powered models. A new 11-inch model will also reportedly include a 120Hz display, in keeping with the premium specs found on the current 13-inch models.A move to an Arm processor on the Surface Go 4 is reportedly in the works, too. Codenamed Tanta, the Surface Go 4 is said to ship with a chip based on Qualcomm’s... Continue reading…

Blue, pink, purple, space gray, starlight — they’re all on sale. | Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The 2022 iPad Air is on sale once again for its best price to date. Right now, you can get a 64GB iPad Air with Wi-Fi for just $499.99 ($100 off) in one of its five colors at Amazon once the $59 discount is automatically applied at checkout. The deals don’t stop there, however, as the same iPad Air with 256GB of storage is also on sale for $649.99 ($100 off) at Amazon (it, too, reaches this price with an automatic discount at checkout). The latter is a worthwhile upgrade for users who need more storage to fit larger games, lots of photos, etc.Apple’s latest iPad Air may not have a Mini LED display, Face ID, or some of the fancier features found on the newer iPad Pro models, but it has a similar, refined design and packs a more than... Continue reading…

Smart glasses in spy movies aren’t as outlandish as you might think. | Illustration: Kyle Ellingson for The Verge Obviously James Bond gets a bit of help from movie magic, but real-life smart glasses can do more than you might expect. Continue reading…

Microsoft’s new weather-themed naming for attackers. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has started naming hackers after the weather in a new naming taxonomy update. Hackers will now be named after events like storms, typhoons, and blizzards, as part of eight groups that Microsoft is using to track cyber attacks. That means the Lapsus$ hacking group that has targeted companies like Nvidia, Samsung, and Microsoft will now be referred to as Strawberry Tempest (no, it’s not a $15 cocktail).The new taxonomy will include five key groups: nation-state actors, financially motivated actors, private sector offensive actors (PSOAs), influence operations, and groups still in development. If a new cybersecurity threat is new or from an unknown source, then Microsoft will assign it a temporary “Storm” designation and a... Continue reading…

Netflix’s DVD business was once so big it was 1.3 percent of all US mail. | Photo by Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Netflix was never going to be a DVD shipper forever. But to win the streaming wars, it might need to recapture what made DVDs by mail so special. Continue reading…

On April 16th, 2023, people gather to attend an award ceremony on the outskirts of Mumbai, India. Heatstroke killed more than a dozen people as early summer temperatures soared. | Photo by AFP via Getty Images Record-shattering heat is cooking much of Asia. Brutal temperatures have been recorded across more than 12 countries in the past couple weeks. That includes oppressive heatwaves in India and China, which together represent a third of the world’s population.It’s a “monster” heat spell “like none before,” climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera tweeted today after describing it as the “worst” April heatwave in Asia’s history last week.A “monster” heat spell “like none before”Thailand beat its national heat record over the weekend, with a temperature of 45.4 degrees Celsius (113.72 degrees Fahrenheit) recorded in the province of Tak. Neighboring Laos also likely hit its “highest reliable temperature in its history”... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google Meet is rolling out the ability to switch off individual feeds. This should help block out any potential distractions during a meeting, such as a colleague’s obnoxious virtual background or maybe even an adorable cat that pops up in front of someone’s webcam.Google says it won’t notify anyone that you’ve turned off their feed, so you won’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings if you’re just not a fan of their virtual background (or cat). The meeting layout won’t change for anyone else on the call, either.You can turn off individual feeds on Meet’s mobile and desktop apps. To do this, pull up the list of people in the meeting and find the person you want to hide. From there, hit the three dots next to their name and... Continue reading…

You can now use the Roomba j7’s camera to check in on your home. Today, an alert popped up on my iRobot app telling me I could now use the j7 Combo robot vacuum to see a live view of my home, should I want to. A new beta feature called Remote Check In turns the company’s flagship robot vacuum into a livestreaming security camera. iRobot is playing catch-up here; lots of robot vacuum manufacturers have had the live view camera function for a while now (including Samsung’s JetBot AI and models from Roborock and Ecovacs). But I was intrigued to see how the Roomba would handle this new task.Part of the iRobot beta program (which you sign up for in the app), Remote Check In launched in a limited capacity in November 2022. Today, it became broadly available, according to Ryan Schneider of iRobot. Hence the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In 2014, a Colorado singer-songwriter accepted a seemingly innocuous friend request on Facebook. This morning, nearly a decade later, the Supreme Court will hear a case about the fallout — and it might redefine what’s legal to say online.Attorneys will present arguments today in Counterman v. Colorado, a closely watched case about the boundaries of unlawful “true threats.” The case’s petitioner, Billy Raymond Counterman, claims that he was convicted of stalking based on an overly broad definition of a threat. He argues that a series of Facebook messages weren’t intended to cause distress and shouldn’t be legally actionable. On the other side, the state of Colorado argues it should be sufficient for a reasonable person to find these... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Nintendo’s turn-based war series is back, and it feels as fresh as ever. Continue reading…

BMW’s 7 series has long held the place as the brand’s ultimate expression of luxury. | Photo by Abigail Bassett for The Verge Want a glimpse of the future of luxury cars? The BMW i7 is where it’s at. And the 31-inch, 8K drop-down movie screen for rear passengers is just the icing on the cake. Continue reading…

Tesla’s V4 Supercharger now supports non-Tesla EV charging, like this all-electric VW ID Buzz. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Tesla has only one V4 Supercharger in the world — it opened in March to Tesla drivers and was recently made available to all EVs. The V4 Supercharger is located in Harderwijk, the Netherlands, which is just an hour away from my home in Amsterdam where Tesla has its EMEA headquarters. And since I’ve been testing an all-electric VW ID Buzz for the past few weeks (review coming!), well, I just couldn’t resist a visit.Tesla has over 45,000 Superchargers worldwide. About 17,000 are in the US, and of those, only about a dozen stations in New York and California are open to other EVs. But in Europe most Supercharger stations are already available to other EVs, many have been for years. So it was no surprise to see Tesla open up its first V4... Continue reading…

The entire Model Y range has also been discounted by $3,000. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla has cut the price of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in the US for the second time this month, reducing the starting price of Tesla’s most affordable EV below $40,000 (before incentives). The adjusted pricing has been rolled out shortly before Tesla is expected to release its quarterly earnings report later today.The Model 3 Standard Range RWD has been reduced from $41,990 to $39,990. That’s not the cheapest price we’ve seen for the EV — Tesla had previously offered the Standard Range model for $35,000 in 2019 prior to its 2021 update. As noted by Electrek, the Model 3 is Tesla’s only vehicle to have seen its federal tax credit cut from $7,500 to $3,750 under new guidance from the US Treasury regarding battery sourcing... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge For a little bit on Tuesday evening, if you tried search for something on Google, your search results may not have looked quite right: the actual list of blue links was missing. In searches I did while the issue was happening, I would see things like the Top Stories box and the info box on the side, but list of links just wasn’t there.It wasn’t only me, either. There were nearly 20,000 reports of issues on Downdetector, and I saw lots of people reporting problems on Twitter, too. Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Here’s a screenshot of what I was seeing while the issue was happening. Google confirmed that something briefly went wrong in a statement to The Verge. “There was a very brief issue affecting the... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit announced new API changes today that will eventually pinch its content pipeline from being used to train artificial intelligence tools, including the models that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing AI. AI chatbots’ abilities to provide powerful answers have data resources like Reddit to thank — and now Reddit is planning to put that robot food behind a paywall.Social media resources, including Reddit, are some of the sources used to train large language models (LLM) that can provide cogent responses to human prompts. Some of this data can be scraped in an unstructured manner, but Reddit’s API has helped companies make it easy to directly find and package useful data.Reddit’s API, which has been available... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is pushing back its plans to crack down on password sharing in the US until sometime before July. In an earnings report released on Tuesday, the streamer says it “shifted out the timing of the broad launch from late Q1 to Q2.”Earlier this year, Netflix committed to cracking down on password sharing “more broadly” toward the end of the first quarter of 2023. While it did roll out new anti-password sharing rules in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain in February, these rules never reached the US.Now, Netflix says that it’s “pleased with the results” of its paid sharing implementation in these four countries so far and that it has helped build up Canada’s paid subscriber base, which is “now growing faster than in the US.”In... Continue reading…

This is what Google’s foldable Pixel smartphone might look like. | Image: OnLeaks and HowToiSolve When will we finally see Google’s first foldable phone? The smart money is now on May 10th, with availability in June. CNBC says it got hold of internal marketing materials showing Google will launch the repeatedly reportedly delayed smartphone at Google I/O.Most of CNBC’s report corroborates what leakers like Roland Quandt and OnLeaks have already told us. You should expect a closed-book 5.8-inch phone that folds out into a 7.6-inch tablet, powered by Google’s Tensor G2 processor, starting at north of $1,700 — making it a direct competitor to Samsung’s $1,800 Galaxy Z Fold 4.Unapologetically (slightly) heavierBut CNBC says they may differ in one important way: the Pixel Fold will have a larger battery “that Google says will last... Continue reading…

Image: Meta Meta is opening up its Horizon Worlds social VR platform to teens in the US and Canada in the coming weeks, the company announced on Tuesday. For teen players, which Meta defines as between the ages of 13 and 17, Meta will have some extra features in place to help provide a safer experience on the platform.Teen profiles will be private by default, for example, and Meta won’t show a teen’s online status unless they choose to flip that on. Its “voice mode” feature that turns voices of people you don’t know into “quiet, friendly sounds” and garbles your own voice will also be on for teens by default. Meta won’t show any adults that a teen player doesn’t know in the “people you might know” tab. And the company says it has expanded its VR... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Hello, Hot Podders! We’re kicking off the week with a big announcement.This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who attended Hot Pod Summit in February, but I am very pregnant. Like baby-keeps-kicking-the-laptop-out-of-my-lap pregnant. This is my last week at The Verge before I go on leave. I will be back in September with what will likely be a lot of catching up to do on the audio business since my plans for the next five months mainly entail diapers and not sleeping. So if you see a frizzy, bedraggled new mom pushing a sage green UPPAbaby around Ditmas Park this summer, feel free to say hi! It might be me or one of the dozens... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images The Fox News defamation case was not, in fact, as entertaining as Succession. On the first day of trial, Fox settled with Dominion Voting Systems, heading off a process that could have aired embarrassing revelations about the news giant. Dominion says the settlement included a $787 million payout — apparently enough to compensate it for months of false claims about the 2020 presidential election.As The New York Times reports, a Delaware judge announced the settlement after a morning of jury selection and just before attorneys’ opening statements. The dismissal means Fox Corporation won’t have to put some of its biggest names on the stand, including chairman Rupert Murdoch and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Dominion revealed the payment... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Netflix is making its $6.99 per month ad-supported plan a much better value. The company is upping the video quality from 720p to 1080p and will let subscribers watch two streams at once, Netflix said in its Q1 2023 letter to investors. Subscribers in Canada and Spain will get the improved features starting today and be available in all 12 of the markets where the company offers its ads plan sometime this month.Netflix says it is “pleased” with the progress of Basic with Ads, which launched in November, and notes that its total average revenue per membership in the US for the ads plan already exceeds that of the standard plan. It also says that recent licensing deals mean the ads tier now offers “on average ~95 percent content parity... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix, which started as a company that shipped DVDs by mail, is winding down its DVD business. It will ship its final discs from DVD.com on September 29th, the company announced on Tuesday.“After an incredible 25 year run, we’ve decided to wind down DVD.com later this year,” Netflix said in a blog post. “Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members but as the business continues to shrink that’s going to become increasingly difficult.”

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge A group of Republican lawmakers are calling on their colleagues to stop using TikTok as pressure mounts to ban the app nationwide.In letters to the Senate and House rules committees, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and more than a dozen other Republicans demanded that the panels ban elected officials from using TikTok. Last year, Congress and a handful of state legislatures banned the app on government-owned devices, but these rules do not currently apply to members’ personal phones and devices.“It is troublesome that some members continue to disregard these clear warnings and are even encouraging their constituents to use TikTok to interface with their elected representatives — especially since some of these users... Continue reading…

Image: Intel Intel just shipped its first Bitcoin-mining chip last June, the Blockscale 100 ASIC, but it’s already dead — the company has discontinued it less than a year later, reports Tom’s Hardware, without announcing a new chip to succeed it.Does that mean Intel’s already done with crypto chips after pumping the idea last February? Perhaps: Intel dodged a question from Tom’s Hardware about whether it’d exit the Bitcoin ASIC business, saying only, “We continue to monitor market opportunities.”Intel’s timing seems to have been... unfortunate. Between the time Intel announced the chip and the time it shipped, Bitcoin had fallen by more than half — from a high of over $47,000 per coin to under $19,000 each. That said, Bitcoin is back over... Continue reading…

The new HomePod and the HomePod Mini can now alert you to the sound of a smoke or CO alarm in your home. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Starting today, Apple HomePod smart speakers can alert you if a smoke or CO detector goes off in your home. The Sound Recognition feature, first announced when the second-gen HomePod was launched earlier this year, listens for the alarm sound and sends a notification to your phone. Apple says the capability is now rolling out on the first- and second-gen HomePods and the HomePod Mini, though we haven’t yet seen it in our apps.For this to work, you’d need to have smoke and CO alarms installed in your home; the speakers cannot detect actual smoke or carbon monoxide. But they don’t need to be smart smoke alarms or have any internet connection, which is good news. Currently, the only smart smoke alarms compatible with Apple Home in the US... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Apple’s long-rumored VR / AR headset might run adapted versions of iPad apps, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The mixed reality device’s new interface will also apparently let users access “millions” of already-available apps on the App Store.This, in my opinion, is very good news: a bunch of great apps could go a long way in making a compelling case for what’s expected to be a very expensive gadget in a device category that isn’t doing great right now.Here are some of the apps you can expect, according to Bloomberg:

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has quietly altered its Hateful Conduct Policy to remove long-standing protections for its transgender users, as spotted by the nonprofit organization Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). In a section that prohibits attacking other users with “repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category,” Twitter removed a line that specifically includes the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”According to Wayback Machine, the inclusion of misgendering and deadnaming was removed on April 8th — the day after Twitter announced it had updated the policy to clarify how it defines targeted harassment. The... Continue reading…

Image: Guerrilla Games The team at Guerrilla Games has released patch 1.21 for Horizon Forbidden West in the lead-up to the release of the Burning Shores DLC. The patch adds some neat quality-of-life updates including a sorely needed auto item pickup feature and the ability to increase subtitle size for increased legibility. But perhaps the most interesting feature coming with this patch is the addition of a thalassophobia mode.Thalassophobia, simply put, is the fear of deep water. Throughout Forbidden West, Aloy has the opportunity to do some deep-sea diving in the postapocalyptic San Francisco Bay and elsewhere. There’s a point in the story where she can develop essentially a scuba tank for extended periods of underwater exploration. Thalassophobia mode, a... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge General Motors recently made a decision that, depending on how you look at it, may come back to bite them in the ass.The company announced that for its future lineup of electric vehicles, it would no longer offer access to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. That means future owners of the Chevy Blazer EV or GMC Sierra EV Denali won’t be able to project their phone’s operating systems onto the infotainment screen of their vehicles.The backlash was swift. Car shoppers told the Detroit Free Press that the move was “a dealbreaker” and a “huge blunder.” Auto analysts were left scratching their heads, noting that demand for CarPlay and Android Auto was “massive” and that GM was taking a huge risk by cutting off access.But Scott Miller, vice... Continue reading…

Image: BMW BMW’s 7 Series vehicles have always been about interior space and ride comfort, and now, the newest electric version is the automaker’s “most powerful” EV ever. The new BMW i7 M70 xDrive was handed the title as the vehicle makes its debut this week at the Auto Shanghai international motor show in China.According to BMW, its bestselling model worldwide last year was the BMW i4 M50 — a performance version of the electric 4 Series sedan. Now, the company has three electric performance models, including the BMW iX M60 SUV (a faster version of an already high-tech beast) and this new i7 M70.BMW’s i7 M70 has a dual motor all-wheel drive system output of 485kW and 660 horsepower when the car’s M Launch Control or Sport Boost feature is... Continue reading…