The Verge

The cover art for Taylor Lorenz's Extremely Online. This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer. Sign up here.When Taylor Lorenz turned in the draft of her new book, Extremely Online, she found that she had written 60,000 words on the history Vine.My editor was like, what the hell," she says, laughing. Lorenz's incisive commentary on the app's rise and fall captures the fundamental tension between social platforms and the creators they rely on - a dynamic that been a central focus of her reporting over the past decade. Vine was TikTok before TikTok," Lorenz writes. In 2014, Vine owned the market despite challenges from multiple rivals. The company's only problem was itself."It would not be the last social... Continue reading...

The new Nanoleaf Essentials string lights work with Apple Home, Alexa, Google Home, and SmartThings through Matter. | Image: Nanoelaf The latest product from smart lighting company Nanoleaf is less about jazzing up your YouTube streaming setup and more about bringing some holiday cheer to your home this winter. The new Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Smart Holiday String Lights cost $120 and are designed to decorate your Christmas tree, Festivus pole, fireplace, or anywhere a set of twinkly string lights would add some festive cheer. They're also IP44-rated, so they can look pretty strung on your porch. And they have tunable white light as well as color, making them potentially useful year-round.The Wi-Fi string lights are available to order now at Nanoleaf.me (early enough to put them to work for Halloween, too) and come in a pack with two 33-foot (10-meter) strings... Continue reading...

Did they just tape it on there? | Image: Hyundai Another major automaker is jumping on the Tesla bandwagon. Hyundai announced today its plans to adopt the North American Charging Standard (NACS), aka the Tesla plug," for its future electric vehicles.Hyundai models compatible with Tesla's NACS plug will start arriving in the fourth quarter of 2024. In the first quarter of 2025, the automaker will also provide adapters to its current customers so they can access Tesla Supercharger stations. Hyundai's current EV lineup, which includes the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6, both have charging ports that are compatible with the Combined Charging Standard, or CCS, for DC fast charging.So let's just look at the scoreboard really quickNACS adoptees include Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Nissan, M... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge When Google announced the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro today, it added a feature no other phone can compete with: both devices will get Android OS updates, security updates, and new feature updates for the next seven years. That's a very big deal! Ongoing support is the difference between a phone that works and a phone with gaping security holes that needs to be thrown out. There's a very real argument to be made that this is the biggest thing Google announced today.The promise is particularly notable for an Android phone, where OS support can often drop off after just a few years. By way of comparison, the Pixel 7A and Pixel Fold, both phones Google announced this year, will lose software support in 2026 and security updates in 2028 -... Continue reading...

Even the defense's opening statement was a bad look for Sam Bankman-Fried | Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge The prosecution came out swinging. Oddly, Bankman-Fried's defense didn't. Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amp Amp, the live radio app launched by Amazon just last year, will soon be no more. Bloomberg reports that Steve Boom, the vice president of Amazon Music, sent a memo announcing the shutdown.The Amp app still appears to be available for download and is still airing live radio shows as of the time of publication. The Verge has reached out to both Amp and Amazon Music for more details on when the service will officially sunset.This decision was not made quickly or easily," Boom wrote, according to Bloomberg. It only became clear after months of careful consideration determining the investments Amazon wants to make for the future."Amazon's experiment in live audio only lasted about a year and a half - the app was first launched in March... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amazon will launch two Project Kuiper test satellites into space on Friday, October 6th. The pair of satellites - dubbed KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 - will shoot into space aboard the United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas V rocket as part of Amazon's internet satellite initiative.The launch will take from the Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with the two-hour launch window opening at 2PM ET. According to the Project Kuiper team, the Atlas V rocket will deploy the two satellites at an altitude of 311 miles, where they'll enter low-earth orbit.From there, the Project Kuiper team will perform various tests to establish first contact with the satellites, as well as deploy solar arrays to generate... Continue reading...

Image: Blizzard Entertainment Diablo IV, one of the biggest games of the year, is coming to Steam on October 17th. The news comes via video game news and deals account Wario64, who spied a listing for the hellish RPG on Steam.

The Google Pixel 8 Pro comes with a 6.7-inch display and starts at $999. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge In addition to officially rolling out Android 14, Google introduced the Pixel Watch 2 and a new lineup of phones during its Made by Google Event on Wednesday. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro start at $699 and $999, respectively, and will be available on October 12th.On the spec front, both phones sport Google's new Tensor G3 chip, which is an upgrade over the G2 chip that marked Google's Pixel 7 lineup. Each also comes with a 120Hz max refresh rate and seven years of software support and security updates. The Pro 8 touts a maximum of 1TB of storage as well, along with a new sensor for measuring the temperature of beverages, surfaces, and - perhaps one day - maybe even people.Of course, we've yet to fully test the Pixel 8 models, so we... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Over the weekend, Apple blamed several factors for reports of iPhone 15s running hot, pointing to problems with specific apps like Instagram and Uber, post-transfer background processing, and unspecified bugs in iOS 17. Today, the company released a new software update with patch notes saying that iOS 17.0.3 addresses an issue that may cause iPhone to run warmer than expected." Image: Wes Davis iOS 17.0.3 patch notes Checking for the newest update from your device should snag the update, which is shown as a 423.2MB download from Apple.There had been some speculation that hardware issues, perhaps from the iPhone 15's more powerful processor or titanium components, contributed to the sweaty iPhone experience,... Continue reading...

Osterloh onstage announcing Zoom Enhance." | Image: Google During an onstage presentation at today's Pixel 8 Pro launch, Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh showed off how the smartphone is able to retroactively add detail to a photograph when you pinch to zoom in. So the kind of zoom enhancement you used to see in science fiction? It's right in the phone in your hand," Osterloh said after introducing the feature, which Google is calling Zoom Enhance."Osterloh is referring, of course, to the countless sci-fi movies and police procedural shows that have shown characters zooming impossibly far into photos to reveal clues and details that simply could not have been present in the original image. Often, these scenes hinge on enhancing" unbelievably small reflections, inevitably revealing the... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google's latest Pixel launch event has come to an end. Even though some of the products Google revealed were leaked well in advance, the company still managed to throw in a couple of surprises.Here are all the biggest announcements from the Made by Google event.The Pixel 8 Pro gets a price bump and a temperature sensor Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google has officially announced the Pixel 8 Pro, and it comes with quite a few upgrades. That includes a Tensor G3 chipset, along with an updated rear camera array with a 50MP main sensor, a 48MP telephoto lens with 5x zoom, and a 48MP ultrawide camera. It will even have a new Zoom Enhance feature that can retroactively add detail to an image when you pinch to zoom... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge While the AI industry has focused on making its algorithms less biased based on the lightness or darkness of people's skin tones, new research from Sony is calling for red and yellow skin hues to also be taken into account. In a paper published last month, authors William Thong and Alice Xiang from Sony AI, as well as Przemyslaw Joniak from the University of Tokyo, put forward a more multidimensional" measurement of skin color in the hope that it might lead to more diverse and representative AI systems.Researchers have been drawing attention to skin color biases in AI systems for years, including in an important 2018 study from Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru that found AI was more prone to inaccuracies when used on darker-skinned... Continue reading...

Would you believe this was probably the safest image we could have used here? | Image: Meta / @Pioldes Some early user tests for Meta's new AI-generated sticker tool have resulted in some dubious (and rather hilarious) creations. After gaining access to the new AI-generated sticker tool on Facebook Messenger, X user @Pioldes was able to create a host of inappropriate sticker images - including child soldiers, gun-wielding Nintendo characters, Mickey Mouse taking a crap, and nude illustrations of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.Other examples show that Meta's AI-sticker tool will also happily slap a pair of breasts onto...well, just about anything, judging by the busty images of Sonic the Hedgehog and Karl Marx. There's even a sticker that depicts a woman breastfeeding Pikachu.

Image: Meta Meta's text-based chat feature for Horizon Worlds will be available for all users beginning this week, Meta said in a blog post on Tuesday. The text chat, which Meta dubs world chat," offers a way to communicate with other people inside a Horizon Worlds experience without using your voice. Meta first launched world chat in a limited way in June.The world chat feature is accessible from the options you can pick from when you lift your left wrist while in VR; it's a little world icon inside a speech box. And to make text chat a bit easier, Meta says it offers quick replies so that you don't have to take the time to manually spell out messages, which can be a big pain in VR.Unfortunately, I don't have access to world chat myself just... Continue reading...

Everybody do the pinchy pinch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Double tap, which lets Apple Watch users tap their thumb and index finger together twice to contextually control the watch, is one of the coolest features of the latest Apple Watch models. It wasn't included at launch, but 9to5Mac reports that it's available now in the watchOS 10.1 developer beta. The public beta and general release are almost certainly not far behind, but if you have an Apple Watch Series 9 or Ultra 2 and you're feeling mildly adventurous, you can try it out today - it's easy to sign up for the developer betas these days. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Double tap does have some customizability, though mainly for the widget stack and music controls. The contextual pinchy pinch lets... Continue reading...

This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Ariel and Amrita coming to you with another joint issue today. It's a jam-packed Tuesday, with Spotify debuting its biggest audiobook development yet, an exclusive interview with the writer of the Audible Original Six Sermons, and Malcolm Gladwell's Pushkin Industries laying off a third of its staff.Spotify gets serious about audiobooksAt a company event this afternoon, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced that Spotify subscribers in the UK, Australia, and, in the winter, the US will be able to stream 15 hours of premium audiobooks each month. It's a big leap from Spotify's initial a la carte audiobook model and has the potential to... Continue reading...