The Verge

You can save $170 on the mic-less version of the Sonos Arc when you buy it refurbished today. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge Sonos makes some of the best speakers and soundbars you can buy, but they come at a high price and are typically only on sale during major shopping holidays. Thankfully, Sonos is currently running a sale on a range of refurbished goods, making today a great opportunity to snag speakers like the Sonos One SL for cheap before the forthcoming Sonos Era 300 and 100 hit shelves, presumingly later this month.If you’re new to buying refurbished electronics, know that Sonos cleans and tests each product and that they come with a one-year warranty in case anything breaks. Sonos offers a 45-day money-back guarantee if you’re unhappy with your purchase as well, in addition to free shipping and the same accessories you’d get if you’d purchased the... Continue reading…

Get your laptop with actual ports, and get a great deal. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Ever since the release of the M2 generation of the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, we’ve been waiting for some huge discounts on the previous-gen M1 models from 2021. That day is here now and in two flavors. The M1 Pro-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro with expanded 1TB SSD is on sale for $1,999.97 ($500 off) in space gray at Amazon. Or, if you prefer more screen real estate, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and base 512GB of storage is $1,999 (another $500 off) at Best Buy.While two grand is no small amount for a laptop, these are the best discounts to date on these excellent computers. You’d be hard-pressed to find other offerings with this much performance at these prices. The newer M2 generation chips may offer some refinements to both... Continue reading…

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images Last September, the world watched in delight as NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a test of planetary defense. The idea of the DART mission was to see whether an impact from a spacecraft could change the trajectory of an incoming asteroid in case such a looming disaster ever threatened the Earth.The impact and its aftermath were observed by telescopes all across the planet and by several in space, including the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, and preliminary data showed that the test had been successful in changing the orbit of this asteroid. Then scientists got to work analyzing all the data they had collected for more insights.This week, five new papers in the journal Nature reveal more about what... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Today, let’s talk about a subject that crosses my mind with every generative-AI startup pitch that lands in my inbox: who’s going to make the real money off artificial intelligence?Last week the productivity startup Notion announced that Notion AI, a suite of tools based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, had entered general availability. For $10 per user per month, Notion can now summarize meeting notes, generate lists of pros and cons, and draft emails.Notion AI is among the first in a wave of companies that are racing to capitalize on growing interest in generative AI. This week Snapchat made available a ChatGPT-based chatbot called My AI for subscribers to its $4-a-month Snapchat Plus offering. The educational app Quizlet announced a... Continue reading…

There’s even a new windows shortcut to directly open the audio menu without clicking the taskbar. | Image: The Verge A new enhanced audio mixer is coming to Windows 11 that allows users to make individual volume and audio output adjustments directly from the taskbar. The updated volume mixer was officially revealed as part of the new Preview Build 25309 which is being rolled out to testers in the Windows 11 Insider Dev channel.When released, the updated mixer will be located inside the Quick Settings panel on the Windows taskbar, which can be accessed by clicking on the volume icon. Microsoft has also added a new Windows keyboard shortcut (Win + Ctrl + V) to open the mixer directly. The mixer allows users to quickly switch between audio outputs (i.e. headphones, speakers, etc), as well as adjust the volume of individual apps and toggle spatial audio... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony might be forced to detail its PlayStation exclusivity deals and how much it pays for “blocking rights” to keep games off rival services like Xbox Game Pass. The FTC has sued to try and block Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition and kicked off a legal discovery process with Microsoft sending subpoenas to Sony to force it to reveal records, internal documentation, and emails from the company’s PlayStation unit.Kotaku spotted that the FTC’s chief administrative judge D. Michael Chappell has now sided with Microsoft’s request for details of Sony’s PlayStation exclusivity deals. The request cover deals made after January 1st, 2019, including fees or agreements that prevented publishers from placing games on Xbox Game Pass. The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Following monthslong questions about how CNET uses artificial intelligence tools, longtime CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo will step down from her role and take on a new job: senior vice president of AI content strategy and editor-at-large, according to an internal draft memo circulated today, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge.In her new role, Guglielmo will work on machine learning strategy at Red Ventures, the private equity-backed media company that acquired the tech news site in 2020. Adam Auriemma, the former editor-in-chief of a different Red Ventures outlet, NextAdvisor, will become editor-in-chief. NextAdvisor, a personal finance outlet, appears to no longer be active — the site’s Twitter account hasn’t posted... Continue reading…

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham. | Image: Paramount Plus Star Trek: Discovery both carved out a foothold for the franchise in the streaming space and gave people a compelling reason to sign up for Paramount Plus back when it was still CBS All Access. But with its upcoming fifth season, the series will be coming to an end.This evening, CBS Studios announced that Star Trek: Discovery’s fifth season, due out sometime in “early 2024,” will be its final one and that the show’s cast and crew are gearing up for a year of “celebrations and appearances at key events in markets around the world” in the build-up to the season’s premiere. In a statement about bittersweet news, executive producers and co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise expressed their gratitude to Discovery’s fans and said... Continue reading…

The Galaxy Z Fold 4’s U-shaped hinge might make way for a new shape this year. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge We have good reason to believe that Samsung will put a new kind of hinge in its next flagship foldable, and a South Korean trade publication has just supplied more confirmation. Spotted by 9to5Google, The Elec reports that Samsung has started reliability testing a new water drop-style hinge for the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 5.The new hinge design would make the folded phone thinner and help reduce the appearance of a crease with the main screen unfolded. But according to this report, Samsung is testing the hinge to withstand 200,000 folds like the last one, which falls short of longevity claims from recent competitors like the Honor Magic VS and Oppo Find N2 — both rated to 400,000 folds.The Elec’s report does mention that the hinge... Continue reading…

It’s expensive, yes, but not unreasonably so for the world’s fastest gaming display. | Image: Dell / Alienware Time to ready your bank account — Dell has just revealed the price of its 500Hz Alienware gaming monitor. The Alienware AW2524H will launch in North America on March 21st for $829.99 (or $1,099.99 CA), making this the fastest gaming monitor in the world that you can actually buy… at least for now.The 24.5-inch Alienware AW2524H technically has a native refresh rate of 480Hz (which is still blisteringly fast), but this has been overclocked to hit 500Hz. That speed comes with a few caveats — namely that it’s limited to a 1080p resolution, though that’s to be expected, as most high refresh rate screens are similarly capped because of bandwidth limitations. And speaking of screens, this comes equipped with an anti-glare IPS screen rather... Continue reading…

Google’s Keep’s new single note widget on Android | Image: Google Google is introducing a new widget for its notes and lists app Keep, which lets you put a single interactive note on your home screen. With it, you can check items off a list, which could be handy for a to-do or grocery list.While you can force one of Keep’s current widgets to show just a single note using the tags system, doing so isn’t as simple as just selecting one to display on your home screen. Plus, Keep’s existing widgets don’t have the level of interactivity that Google’s promising with its new widget; if you try to mark off checkboxes, it’ll just open the app instead of actually checking it off like the single note widget does. Gif: Google The new Keep single note widget will let you keep a checklist on... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Online counseling company BetterHelp has agreed to pay $7.8 million to settle charges from the Federal Trade Commission that it improperly shared customers’ sensitive data with companies like Facebook and Snapchat, even after promising to keep it private. The proposed order, announced by the FTC on Thursday, would ban the same behavior in the future and require BetterHelp to make some changes to how it handles customer data.According to the regulator, the sign-up process for the company’s service “promised consumers that it would not use or disclose their personal health data except for limited purposes.” However, the FTC alleges that the company instead “used and revealed consumers’ email addresses, IP addresses, and health... Continue reading…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the unveiling of the new Tesla Model Y in Hawthorne, California, on March 14th, 2019. | Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images Last night, as he presented Tesla’s latest “Master Plan” to investors, Elon Musk attempted to cast his company as one that would usher in “a sustainable energy Earth.” But that’s going to be really hard to do if Musk doesn’t get his own house in order first.Tesla makes electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries to store renewable electricity. A transition to clean energy will need those things. But making those things also needs to be done sustainably and humanely. That requires transparency and accountability, the kind of thing we’re not used to seeing from Musk and his companies.Let’s start with some basics. For any company that says it cares about the planet, divulging how much pollution it produces is one of the first steps... Continue reading…

Fagiani / The Verge Just weeks after news broke that tech site CNET was quietly using artificial intelligence to produce articles, the company is doing extensive layoffs that include several longtime employees, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. The layoffs total around a dozen people, a CNET staffer says, or about 10 percent of the public masthead.The layoffs began Thursday morning and were announced internally via email by Red Ventures, the private equity-backed marketing-turned-media company that bought CNET in 2020. In the email, a Red Ventures executive suggested the cuts were made to focus CNET on areas where the site can succeed at bringing in traffic on Google search — a top priority for the company.“To prepare ourselves... Continue reading…

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images The White House has issued a new cybersecurity strategy that addresses, among other things, the role of large tech companies in preventing cyberattacks. The strategy document calls to “rebalance the responsibility to defend cyberspace,” shifting responsibility for things like ransomware attacks off of individuals, small businesses, and local governments. It also singles out China as “the broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks.”President Joe Biden’s plan outlines goals rather than immediately implemented rules. But if passed into laws and regulations, it would expand cybersecurity requirements for companies that run digital infrastructure the White House deems critical. That could... Continue reading…

Image: Behaviour Interactive The video game film adaptation machine keeps merrily chugging along with Blumhouse Productions and Atomic Monster teaming up with Behaviour Interactive to produce a feature-length film adaptation of Dead By Daylight.The announcement of the new venture comes days after Blumhouse shared that it’s starting its own gaming division. Atomic Monster founder and CEO James Wan said in the announcement, “In Dead by Daylight the Behaviour team has created a love letter to the world of horror, building an incredible environment teeming with atmosphere and terrifying villains — perfect for a scary cinematic adaptation.”A Dead by Daylight adaptation makes more sense than whatever Pixels was or whatever the live-action Pac-Man movie might be. If... Continue reading…

Image: Movies Anywhere Movies Anywhere has proven to be one of the most pro-consumer things to emerge from the entertainment world in ages. You buy a movie on one digital service, and then you get to watch it across numerous other services and hardware platforms. It’s one of those cases where “it just works” actually rings true — though Paramount Pictures, MGM, and Lionsgate deserve to be shamed in perpetuity for never getting behind the cross-studio effort.But occasionally there’s news that makes me at least a little worried about the future of Movies Anywhere. Take today, for example: as noted by Cord Cutters News, Disney-owned Movies Anywhere has announced that it will end its Screen Pass feature as of May 1st. Screen Pass allowed Movies Anywhere users to... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Ford announced the creation of a new wholly owned subsidiary called Latitude AI to lead its efforts to develop a hands-free, eye-off, unsupervised driving system. The company has rehired about 550 employees from Argo AI, the autonomous vehicle operator that shut down last year after Ford pulled its funding.Latitude AI will be based in Pittsburgh, which is where Argo AI was previously headquartered and has emerged in recent years as a hub of AV research and startups. Additional engineering hubs will be set up in Dearborn, Michigan, and Palo Alto, California. The company also will operate a highway-speed test track facility in Greenville, South Carolina.Latitude AI will be based in Pittsburgh, which is where Argo AI was previously... Continue reading…

Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Panic, the company behind the adorable Playdate handheld, is holding an event next week to share some updates on new games and the device’s upcoming storefront. The update — called Playdate Update — will be 13 minutes long and take place on March 7th at 12PM ET. The company says that it “will be focusing on some new games coming very soon to the handheld,” along with Catalog, an upcoming storefront for new releases.Playdate first started shipping handhelds last April (though not everywhere), and Panic says that more than 25,000 units have been shipped to date. At launch, the device came bundled with a season of games from notable developers like Zach Gage and Keita Takahashi, but Playdate owners could also sideload games released... Continue reading…

Photo by Joel Kowsky/NASA via Getty Images NASA has successfully launched four astronauts on a journey to the International Space Station (ISS). The Crew-6 astronauts launched in a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle carried by a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:34AM ET on Thursday, March 2nd.The crew will travel throughout the day and arrive at the ISS at around 1AM ET on Friday, where they will join the four members of Crew-5 plus three more crew members, for a total of 11 people on board the station. This won’t last for long, however, as the Crew-5 astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth in another Crew Dragon in a few days’ time.“Congratulations to the NASA and SpaceX teams for another history-making mission to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard is likely to be approved by EU regulators, Reuters reports. The software giant struck licensing deals with Nintendo and Nvidia recently, and Reuters says these deals are likely to satisfy lawmakers in Europe to help Microsoft clear its $68.7 billion deal.The European Commission is reportedly unlikely to demand that Microsoft sell any Activision Blizzard assets as a condition of regulatory approval. That’s a contrast to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which offered up possible remedies last month that include Microsoft being forced to sell off Activision Blizzard’s business associated with Call of Duty.EU regulators are scheduled to decide on Microsoft’s... Continue reading…

A hapless idiot (me) replacing the battery in HMD’s Nokia G22. | Photo by Owen Grove / The Verge Hands-on with HMD’s repairable Nokia and three more phone trends from MWC we hope are here to stay. Continue reading…

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s fourth wave of DLC tracks will be released on March 9th, Nintendo has announced. As with previous updates, the wave will include eight tracks that are mostly returning from previous entries in the series. However, it’ll also include an additional playable character, Birdo. This fourth wave was initially teased during a Nintendo Direct last month with a vague “Spring 2023” release date.The fourth wave includes a brand-new course called Yoshi’s Island. This will sit alongside Riverside Park from the Game Boy Advance game, DK Summit from the Wii version, Mario Circuit from the DS, Waluigi Stadium from the GameCube, and three tracks from the Mario Kart Tour smartphone game — Amsterdam Drift, Bangkok Rush, and Singapore... Continue reading…

Image: Evil Empire Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania is a meaty Dead Cells DLC update that adds things like bosses, stages, and even characters from Konami’s vampire-hunting series. But behind it all are more than 60 Dead Cells-themed Castlevania songs, including 51 remixes of classic tracks and 12 original compositions. I got to speak with composer Yoann Laulan about bringing Castlevania’s music to Dead Cells.“I was really excited to be able to add a little bit of something to these amazing, very important tracks in video game history,” Laulan said. “But at the same time, [it wasn’t] that easy, because it’s something that’s kind of sacred. I wouldn’t say it was an easy task to do.”The Castlevania series has a rich library of fantastic music from... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft has added a new feature to its Bing chatbot that lets you toggle between different tones for responses. There are three options for the AI-powered chatbot’s responses: creative, balanced, and precise. The creative mode includes responses that are “original and imaginative,” whereas the precise mode favors accuracy and relevancy for more factual and concise answers.Microsoft has set the default for the Bing chatbot to the balanced mode, which it hopes will strike a balance between accuracy and creativity. These new chat modes are rolling out to all Bing AI users right now, and around 90 percent of users should be seeing them already.The new modes should help counter the wild outbursts we originally saw with the Bing AI... Continue reading…

A look at the interface for restoring streaks. | Image: Snap Snapstreaks, a Snapchat feature that tracks how long you’ve been trading daily snaps with a friend, are about to get a little more forgiving. In a short blog post, the company says it’s testing the option to let users restore broken streaks. “Starting today, we’re making it easier to take a break with a new feature we’re testing to let you reignite the spark and restore one Streak for free with just one tap,” it writes.The keen eyed may have spotted a key qualifier in Snap’s sentence, which is that the company is saying you’ll currently only be able to restore a single streak for free. After the first restore, TechCrunch reports that users will have to pay $0.99 per streak. And if you want to be able to freely pause streaks when you... Continue reading…

The Fujifilm Instax Mini 12 comes in a variety of colors. | Image: Fujifilm Fujifilm has announced the newest instant camera in its Instax Mini lineup: the Fujifilm Instax Mini 12. The Instax Mini 12 is a new iteration of the Instax Mini 11 — our current top instant camera pick — and will be available around mid-March for $79.95.Save for a few minor feature and design updates, the Instax Mini 11 and Instax Mini 12 look identical. However, the lens structure is the most notable change. You can now, for instance, twist the lens to enter the Close-Up Mode instead of pushing a button, much as you would a traditional point-and-shoot. I’ve only just started testing the camera, but based on my first impression, this makes zooming in just a little more fun and intuitive as a result.You can also now power the instant... Continue reading…

Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that the company will build its next Gigafactory in Mexico. The news came during the live Q and A sessions after Tesla’s Investor Day event, where it has announced its Master Plan part three.During the event, Musk revealed that the facility will be built in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, which shares a small border with Texas — home of Tesla’s Austin Gigafactory. Yesterday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador confirmed the project will be built in the city of Monterrey, which is about 387 miles away from Tesla’s headquarters in Austin.The announcement confirms earlier reporting that Tesla was planning its sixth Gigafactory in Mexico. Musk had reportedly toured three Mexican states... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Elon Musk revealed the third part of Tesla’s “Master Plan,” in which the company will lead the global effort to eliminate fossil fuels and convert the world to sustainable energy. The plan was outlined during an investor event Wednesday held at the company’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.Master Plan 3 includes adding renewable power to the existing grid, producing more electric vehicles, installing heat pumps in homes and buildings, using high-temperature heat delivery and hydrogen for industrial applications, and building sustainably fueled planes and boats. Musk’s plan is to create “a sustainable energy civilization.”Tesla projects it will take $10 trillion in investments to bring about this sustainable future powered by renewable... Continue reading…

Grogu and Mando chilling out while zooming through hyperspace. | Image: Lucasfilm The Mandalorian’s Chapter 17: The Apostate is a big, breezy, and action-packed reminder that Star Wars has always been a magical space adventure for new fans first and everyone else second. Continue reading…

Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge Part three of the company’s Master Plan is here. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla is holding its first-ever Investor Day event at its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, during which Elon Musk is expected to unveil the third iteration of the company’s “Master Plan.” The event will be livestreamed on YouTube and Twitter, but just in case you don’t feel like subjecting yourself to Musk’s stereotypical bluster, you’ll want to follow The Verge’s live blog for all the announcements and updates.Tesla stopped inviting members of the mainstream press to its event right after the Cybertruck reveal in 2019. It was around the same time that the company disbanded its media relations department, leaving Musk’s Twitter account (and a sporadically updated blog) as the sole outlet for information about Tesla.That said, there’s... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge OpenAI has announced that it’s now letting third-party developers integrate ChatGPT into their apps and services via an API and that doing so will be significantly cheaper than using its existing language models. The company is making Whisper, its AI-powered speech-to-text model, available for use through an API and making some important changes to its developer terms of service.OpenAI says its ChatGPT API can be used for more than just creating an AI-powered chat interface — though it also highlights several companies that have been using it for that purpose, including Snap’s My AI feature, which was announced earlier this week. The company says its new model family, called gpt-3.5-turbo, is the “best model for many non-chat use... Continue reading…