The Verge

Illustration by The Verge After a tease in a blog post on Tuesday, Substack officially shared details about its redesigned app on Wednesday, which offers a new Home" tab and some adjustments to the app's current layout.The biggest change is the Home tab, which is intended to help people find stuff to read by providing entry to an exciting universe of stories, ideas, and people" on the platform. At the top, there's a queue of big cards highlighting posts from your subscriptions that you can swipe through. (The cards remind me of Apple's Up Next" suggestions in its Podcasts app.) Under those cards, you'll see a feed of Substack's tweet-like Notes feed, and you can sort them by Explore" (recommendations) and Following."Home, inbox, chatIn a blog post,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is gearing up to share its vision for what's ahead" with AI integration into Windows, Microsoft 365 services, Surface, and more at a special event on Thursday. The event will take place just days after former Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay publicly announced his resignation.In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's head of consumer marketing, described Panay as a champion of our consumer business and our engineering teams." He also teased that Thursday's special event" will build on the existing OpenAI partnership and is only the beginning" of an AI-powered vision for Microsoft's key products.We have innovated on and shipped this incredible technology inside of Edge and Bing. Microsoft... Continue reading...

LG's last-gen Gram 17 offers a spacious screen without sacrificing portability. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Laptops are useful for many things, but your typical 13-inch screen just isn't spacious enough for hardcore multitaskers. If you want more screen real estate at a reasonable price, Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air is an obvious choice, as is LG's Gram 17 when you can find it at a steep discount. Thankfully, last year's version of the latter is currently on sale at Best Buy with 16GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and a 12th Gen Core i7-1260P processor for $999.99 ($800 off), one of its best prices to date.LG's 17-inch Gram 17 was once one of our favorite laptops for fans of big screens thanks to its quiet performance and spacious, high-resolution display. That extra screen real estate doesn't translate to extra weight, either, which is impressive... Continue reading...

Nick Offerman and Seth Rogen as dumb money in Dumb Money. | Image: Lacey Terrell / Sony Pictures Dumb Money thinks you're stupid - the title might as well be a reference to anyone paying to see the film.It's a bummer, too. I had such high hopes! The GameStop saga, which is the basis for the movie, is genuinely bizarre, and anyone with a flair for the absurd would have a fantastic time with it. To recap: a bunch of Redditors (and others) bought the stock of a flailing retailer that was heavily shorted, sending it soaring - and burning the shorts in the process.A financial Love Actually, minus the charmThink about the story of Keith Roaring Kitty / Deep Fucking Value" Gill for even a moment and you have one of the funniest possible superhero arcs of all time. By day, Gill is giving people decent, reasonable, sensible financial... Continue reading...

We currently have no ideas what the Security Tag looks like, but it'll be compatible with Arlo's new video doorbell (pictured). | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Arlo is adding a new gadget to its smart home security lineup that should make it easier to disarm its Arlo Home Security system without digging through the company's companion app or using its keypad once you're in the house. The press release for Arlo's new Essential product series - which includes a new video doorbell, outdoor camera, indoor camera, and XL security camera - mentions an Arlo Security Tag" that can be held against the new doorbell itself to swiftly disarm the company's security system when the little fob launches in Q4 2023."When asked for comment about the product, Arlo spokesperson Hannah Block said that the Arlo Security Tag will be the first NFC Touchless Disarm device," and that further details would be... Continue reading...

T-Mobile has yet to offer an explanation for the issue. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge There's some weirdness happening over at T-Mobile this morning. Multiple T-Mobile customers on X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit have reported that they're able to see other users' account data - including their current credit balance, purchase history, credit card information, and home address - when signing into their own T-Mobile accounts.Some T-Mobile customers have mentioned seeing information from several other accounts, but the scale of the issue isn't yet clear. It's prevalent enough that the T-Mobile subreddit has asked its users to avoid posting any further information for security reasons."A few hours after initial reports, T-Mobile's support account on X says it's investigating the issue, but didn't provide any further... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Happy Tuesday! Got a super-packed issue of Hot Pod today for everyone. First off, I'll take a look at Spotify's chief public affairs officer's lengthy new blog post about Apple's App Store policies. Also, Apple's iOS 17 will bring episode art to Apple Podcasts. What will that mean for podcasters?Before I hit the news, a couple of new developments. First off, Freakonomics Radio unveiled a new premium subscription today called Freakonomics Radio Plus. Members will pay $4.99 per month for a number of perks, including ad-free episodes of every podcast in the Freakonomics Radio Network. This includes Freakonomics Radio, No Stupid... Continue reading...

Go ahead, wear that new jersey right out of the store. | Image: Amazon Amazon's Just Walk Out technology is both extremely cool - just grab what you want and walk out the door, no checking out or paying necessary - and extremely complicated. Amazon's system uses computer vision, which requires a complex system of cameras and sensors just to make the whole thing work.But now, Amazon is rolling out a new, simpler way to Just Walk Out. It built a system that uses radio-frequency identification, known as RFID, to track your purchases as you leave the store. Amazon first tested the system at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle (so named by Amazon, which purchased the arena's naming rights in 2020) and is now also testing it at Lumen Field, the home of the Seattle Seahawks.The system is pretty straightforward:... Continue reading...

Microsoft's new core gamepad, codenamed Sebile, may become the new default Xbox gamepad in May 2024. | Image via court documents, text removed by The Verge New Xbox for 2024! New hybrid Xbox for 2028! But can we just appreciate Microsoft's leaked Sebile controller for a sec?The $70 pad could arrive in 2024 chock-full of the best parts of Sony's DualSense, Valve's Steam Controller, Google Stadia, and - here's hoping - 8BitDo. Image: FTC v. Microsoft Sebile - The New Xbox Controller." Obviously, it's taking the Sony DualSense's precision haptic feedback."Right, here's hoping! It's the thing I'm most excited about because it seriously does add a new dimension to some of Sony's games, which just aren't the same when you take it away.Check out our DualSense X-ray below, versus this one of an Xbox pad, to see the difference in their haptic motors:

Illustration: The Verge A few lucky WhatsApp beta testers got a surprising treat this week: the company appears to be testing a version of its iOS app that is also optimized for the iPad. As first spotted by WABetaInfo, version 23.19.1.71 of WhatsApp's TestFlight app includes the new iPad app as well.From what we can see in screenshots, the iPad app works exactly like you'd expect. You connect to it by scanning a QR code the same way you'd link your account to any other device. You'll see a list of your conversations on the left and your current chat on the right. It's pretty much the iOS app, but instead of seeing one pane at a time, you see both. It almost makes you wonder what took so long, especially when WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said all the way back... Continue reading...

Neuralink's N1 implant is ready for its first human users. | Image: Neuralink A few months after getting FDA approval for human trials, Neuralink is looking for its first test subjects. The six-year initial trial, which the Elon Musk-owned company is calling the PRIME Study," is intended to test Neuralink tech designed to help those with paralysis control devices. The company is looking for people with quadriplegia due to vertical spinal cord injury or ALS who are over the age of 22 and have a consistent and reliable caregiver" to be part of the study.The PRIME Study (which apparently stands for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, even though that acronym makes no sense) is set to research three things at once. The first is the N1 implant, Neuralink's brain-computer device. The second is... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Max, the streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, is adding a live sports tier in the US on October 5th. The Bleacher Report Sports add-on will cost $9.99 per month, with current Max subscribers getting the tier for free until February 29th, 2024.The upcoming sports tier will feature live games from Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey League (NHL), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and US soccer. These games will continue to air on Warner Bros. Discovery's cable networks, including TNT, TBS, and TruTV.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is responsible for the huge trove of leaked documents that revealed things like a new disc-less Xbox Series X design, unannounced games from Bethesda, and executive musings about buying Nintendo, according to a new filing from the FTC v. Microsoft judge on Tuesday.In the filing, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley says that the court ordered the Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft to provide the court with a secure cloud link" to trial exhibits with redactions that met the court's recent orders. Microsoft provided a link on September 14th, and the court uploaded the exhibits from there, Judge Corley says.The parties in the case have since told the court that the version of the exhibits provided contained non-public... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A huge amount of unredacted Microsoft emails and documents have leaked online. Continue reading...

Epomaker's TH80 Pro is a great entry-level mechanical keyboard, regardless of which switches you opt for. | Image: Epomaker It's hard to beat the tactile feel and durability of a good ol' fashioned mechanical keyboard. Fortunately, if you're someone who's looking to kick their membrane keyboard to the curb, Epomaker's TH80 Pro represents a great entry-level model, one that's on sale at Amazon for $71.99 ($18 off) and comes with your choice of linear, clicky, or tactile switches.The Epomaker TH80 Pro, like the standard model featured in our guide to the best mechanical keyboards, is a 75 percent mechanical keyboard with a volume knob and hot-swappable switches that let you easily adjust the keyboard's look and feel. It also offers the same plastic case and steel switch plate, the same PBT keycaps and per-key RGB lighting, and the same great typing... Continue reading...

Image: Apple It's rare that I ever encounter any bugs or software problems with the Apple TV 4K that stop me in my tracks. But in the event you do have trouble, restoring Apple's streaming box has always been something of a hassle. With the older Apple TV HD, you've got to plug it into a Mac via the rear USB port. But this isn't even an option for the 4K model, leaving customers little choice but to contact Apple for servicing. That hassle is finally changing with the release of iOS 17 and tvOS 17, which can now use your iPhone to restore an Apple TV and reset its software.As noted by MacRumors, Apple has outlined this new troubleshooting step in a support document. If your Apple TV HD or later with tvOS 17 or later is experiencing problems, an... Continue reading...

Symbiosis between its Fire TVs and its Alexa smart home ambitions could help Amazon create a smart home that works for everyone. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon's fall hardware event is taking place this week, and the company will undoubtedly be searching for its next big hardware hit. But how about making its existing hardware (and software) better? Continue reading...

Photo by Christopher Dilts / Bloomberg via Getty Images The latest fashion trend in the UK seems to be brands charging customers to return items. While that sucks for consumer pocketbooks, it probably has a positive environmental impact. Free returns come with an environmental cost, namely more pollution and waste.H&M is the latest brand to start charging for returns in the UK, BBC reported today. It joins Zara, Uniqlo, and several other clothing brands cutting their own costs by nixing free returns. The parent company that owns Zara, Inditex, and H&M make up the two biggest clothing retailers worldwide. If these policies start gaining traction outside of the UK, they could make a significant dent in the fashion industry's environmental footprint.Before you buy a thing, it has probably been... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge It's been a rocky and chaotic decade - and now digital media is on the brink of yet another existential crisis thanks to generative AI. Continue reading...

An artistic rendition of Intel's next chip. | Image: Intel For many months, Intel has spared no opportunity to remind us that its Meteor Lake chips would be the ones to watch - its first CPU with different chiplets for each component; its first on its Intel 4 process node; its first with a dedicated AI coprocessor inside. Today, Intel is revealing a whole lot more.Meteor Lake will launch" on December 14th, the company now says, as the most power-efficient client processor the company's ever made - and with up to twice the graphics performance, a low power island" that can run tasks independently, and hooks into Microsoft Windows to intelligently control the new chips. In no particular order, here are the highlights of Intel's Core Ultra - because yeah, this one's not called a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung has debuted the IoT card, a credit card that works with SmartThings Find, the company's version of Find My (via SamMobile). That's great if you live in South Korea, where the company offers it in partnership with KB Kookmin Card and American Express - so far, Samsung hasn't announced a similar offering in the US. We've asked if it plans to and will update this post if the company responds.The IoT card works like you'd expect it to. You add it to SmartThings Find, and then, like with Apple Find My, other Samsung devices that detect it will report its location back to you. This works whether the card is nearby or its owner has left it in another country. Samsung says the card uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for this, rather than... Continue reading...

Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge YouTube has blocked Russell Brand from making money off the videos posted to his channel, as reported earlier by The New York Times. The decision to demonetize Brand's account comes just days after several reports detailing sexual assault allegations against the actor emerged.Last week, a joint investigation from The Times of London, The Sunday Times, and Channel 4's Dispatches found that four women accused Brand of sexual assault and abuse. Brand has since posted a video on YouTube refuting the allegations, calling them a coordinated attack."While Brand has become known for his career as an actor and comedian, he has also amassed a large following on YouTube, with over 62 million subscribers. Many of his more recent videos focus on... Continue reading...

Photo by Lane Turner / The Boston Globe via Getty Images Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's foundation is funding the construction of a massive computing system for medical research. It'll be made up of more than 1,000 GPUs. And these aren't just any graphics card - they're top-of-the-line H100 GPUs that are highly sought after for AI-focused servers.The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is making really bold claims about what it hopes this computing system will be able to do. A press release claims the computing system will lead to groundbreaking new discoveries that could help cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century."The aim is to give researchers access to generative AI to study healthy and diseased cells. Using predictive models of human cells can help... Continue reading...

Nicolas Cage as Paul Matthews in Dream Scenario. | Image: A24 For many people, the concept of achieving viral fame has become the definition of success worth aspiring to - if not for simple popularity, then for the brand deals and endorsements that can come along with it. But in the first trailer for A24's mind-bending new comedy Dream Scenario from writer / director Kristoffer Borgli, becoming a worldwide phenomenon overnight is just the beginning of one man's descent into madness.Dream Scenario tells the strange tale of evolutionary biologist Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage), an ordinary man whose quiet life of teaching apathetic college students about the behaviors of ants and other animals is upended one day when he starts inexplicably appearing in people's dreams. Like his wife Janet (Julianne... Continue reading...

Image: CD Projekt Red Cyberpunk 2077 will become the first game to support Nvidia DLSS 3.5, the latest version of the chipmaker's upscaling technology. The update will arrive on September 21st with Update 2.0 - just days before the launch of the game's Phantom Liberty expansion.DLSS 3.5 uses a new technology called Ray Reconstruction, which Nvidia describes as an AI-powered technique that enhances the quality of ray tracing. Ray Reconstruction swaps hand-tuned denoisers" with an AI network trained by a supercomputer that should result in higher-quality pixels between sampled rays.Additionally, DLSS 3.5 is trained using five times more data than DLSS 3. It should also be able to identify different ray-traced effects to make smarter decisions about using... Continue reading...

AST SpaceMobile used an ordinary Samsung Galaxy S22 to make the call. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge AST SpaceMobile - a cellular satellite company backed by AT&T - has placed a satellite call over 5G, marking the first ever" 5G connection between an unmodified smartphone and a satellite in space.To conduct the test, AST SpaceMobile used a Galaxy S22. It made the call on September 8th, 2023, from a wireless dead zone in Maui, Hawaii, with its recipient located in Madrid, Spain. AST SpaceMobile got the cell signal to its destination by leveraging its low Earth orbit test satellite, called BlueWalker 3 (BW3), and AT&T's 5G spectrum. Vodafone, Nokia, and AT&T all validated the call.There have been a few tests leading up to this latest milestone. In April, SpaceMobile routed its first space-based phone call on AT&T's 2G network. It later... Continue reading...

Allen Media Group CEO and founder Byron Allen. | Photo: Allen Media Group. Allen Media Group CEO and founder Byron Allen is coming to the Code Conference this month, where he'll be talking about the state of the media industry with CNBC senior media and tech correspondent Julia Boorstin.Allen's sprawling media company includes local broadcasters across the US, cable networks including Cars.TV and Comedy.TV, and the film distribution group Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures. In 2018, the company acquired The Weather Channel for $300 million, and last year, it launched a Weather Channel streaming service.The group continues to look for opportunities to grow. Allen looked at buying BET earlier this year, and just last week, he made a $10 billion offer to acquire ABC, FX, National Geographic channels, and... Continue reading...

Arlo's new line of Essential cameras and doorbells includes a wired/wireless video doorbell. | Image: Arlo Arlo announced the second generation of its Essential camera and doorbell line on Tuesday, and they all have more affordable starting prices than their predecessors. The lineup includes a new XL outdoor camera, a new outdoor camera, a new indoor camera, and a new video doorbell.The second-generation Essential indoor camera starts at $39.99, which is much cheaper than the $99.99 starting price for the first-generation model and is cheaper than Ring's $59.99 indoor camera. For the base $39.99 price, the new wired Arlo Essential indoor camera only gives you HD / 1080p resolution, but if you want 2K resolution, you can spring for that at a more expensive $79.99.Like its predecessor, the updated indoor camera offers features like a... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is holding a special event" in New York City later this week where it's expected to debut three new Surface devices and AI-powered features for Windows, Office, Bing, Surface, and more.The event is taking place just days after Panos Panay, Microsoft's former head of Windows and Surface, resigned in a surprise announcement. We'll now see how the new leaders of Windows and Surface push ahead with Microsoft's big AI plansHere, we'll cover how and when you can follow the event live, along with the new product announcements we're expecting to see from Microsoft.When is Microsoft's special event" happening?The press event will kick off at 7AM PT / 10AM ET on Thursday, September 21st, making it the first in-person Surface... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is holding a special event" in New York City later this week where it's expected to debut three new Surface devices and AI-powered features for Windows, Office, Bing, Surface, and more.The event is taking place just days after Panos Panay, Microsoft's former head of Windows and Surface, resigned in a surprise announcement. We'll now see how the new leaders of Windows and Surface push ahead with Microsoft's big AI plansHere, we'll cover how and when you can follow the event live, along with the new product announcements we're expecting to see from Microsoft.When is Microsoft's special event" happening?The press event will kick off at 7AM PT / 10AM ET on Thursday, September 21st, making it the first in-person Surface... Continue reading...