The Verge

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…

Image: Square Enix Nixing people of color in service to making a game ‘rooted in reality’ not only runs contrary to the game’s own goal of having broad appeal but also to the game’s own internal world-building. Continue reading…

An assembly line of Huawei Seres Aito M7 electric SUVs on February 3rd, 2023, in Chongqing, China. | Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images SUV sales soared in 2022, a trend that makes it much harder to reach global climate goals, experts say. And while car buyers flocked to electric SUVs along with their gas-guzzling counterparts, supersize EVs pose their own environmental challenges.When it comes to slashing pollution from passenger vehicles, bigger is the opposite of better. SUVs burn through about 20 percent more oil on average than medium-size cars. Electric SUVs also require larger batteries than other EVs, and experts are already warning that we won’t have enough raw materials to meet skyrocketing demand for lithium-ion batteries.Bigger is the opposite of betterNevertheless, SUVs outcompeted their smaller counterparts in 2022. While car sales overall slumped last... Continue reading…

The 2020 Motorola Razr is the most recent one released in the US. | Photo: Dieter Bohn / The Verge Motorola’s launching yet another Razr this year, according to a report from CNBC. Yang Yuanqing, the CEO of Motorola’s parent company Lenovo, told the outlet that the next-gen foldable would arrive “very soon” with some improvements to the device’s hinge.In an interview with CNBC, Yang didn’t expand much on what’s new with the upcoming Razr but said its inner display could have a less notable crease when unfolded — an issue that just about every foldable maker has to contend with. “I think it’s much better,” Yang told CNBC in reference to the new device.“As YY [Yang Yuanqing] mentioned, we are committed to the foldable space and dedicated to expanding the Razr franchise offerings soon,” Motorola spokesperson Luciana Vedovato tells The... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Tesla owners pulling up to certain Supercharger locations in the US are being greeted with an unfamiliar sight: electric vehicles from other car companies, parked in the spots previously reserved just for them, sipping up electrons alongside Model 3s and Model Ys.Tesla’s Supercharger network, once exclusive to customers of Elon Musk and only Elon Musk, is now open to non-Tesla EVs. The company, which has been allowing other companies’ EVs to use its chargers in Europe for months, is now doing the same in the US — as per the instructions laid out in the Biden administration’s $7.5 billion plan to expand EV charging options to more Americans.“It’s always been our ambition to open the Supercharger network to non-Tesla EVs, and by doing... Continue reading…

Image: PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images Tesla’s first ‘Master Plan’ was widely seen as a success. But the second is where things started to go off the rails. In advance of the release of the third version, let’s go through the previous two with a fine-tooth comb and assign some grades. Continue reading…

The LG A2 is a great TV if you want an OLED on a slightly tighter budget. | Image: LG If you’re more of a movie and TV show watcher than a gamer and you want a TV with deep black levels and better viewing angles, LG’s A2 OLED is on sale at Best Buy starting at $599.99 ($700 off) for a 48-inch model. The main difference between the A2 and LG’s pricier models is that the A2 lacks HDMI 2.1 ports and is capped at a 60Hz refresh rate, which makes it less ideal for gaming with a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X.There’s nothing wrong with putting more emphasis on picture quality than speed if your budget can’t be stretched far enough to have both, especially if one of your gripes with your current TV is an inability to see details in dark scenes. Also, many new console games are still played at 60Hz in 4K anyway, so the A2 isn’t... Continue reading…

Image: Tesla Tesla’s first Investor Day event is today, at which Elon Musk will pull back the curtain on the company’s third “Master Plan.” It’s a sequel to a 2016 blog post in which Musk said the company would expand its EV offerings to more vehicle segments and make them autonomous.The third plan is expected to include “the path to a fully sustainable energy future for Earth,” Musk wrote on Twitter.It will likely also include details on a new next-generation vehicle platform that will cost less to manufacture, updates to its Full Self-Driving technology (which is currently on hold due to a recall).When is Tesla’s Investor Day?Tesla’s Investor Day begins on March 1st at 4PM ET / 1PM PT at the company’s Austin, Texas-based Gigafactory.How to... Continue reading…

After making the unusual decision to wait until after CES to announce its latest TVs, Sony is finally introducing the 2023 lineup of Bravia XR sets. The new lineup includes a wickedly bright QD-OLED at the top of the pile, but this is otherwise mostly a year of iterative refinement and modest improvements. Several of the TV models have gained more dimming zones and slight brightness improvements compared to the sets from last year that they’ll be replacing.As always, image processing is being positioned as a major draw for Sony’s TV portfolio. The company is as confident as ever that its Cognitive Processor XR is what makes Sony TVs stand out from the field in the way they handle challenging scenes. New this year is a feature called XR... Continue reading…

Image: IO Interactive IO Interactive, the developer known for the long-running Hitman franchise, is working on a new game in the fantasy RPG genre it says it will “expand for many years to come.”The title, codenamed “Project Fantasy,” won’t have anything to do with the Hitman franchise (although it would be hilarious to see Agent 47 wielding a bow and arrow on horseback). In its announcement, IO Interactive shared an image showing three World of Warcraft-esque characters looking out into a sprawling landscape and says the team takes inspiration from roleplaying books and tabletop games.

Mohan revealed upcoming features for Shorts and YouTube TV in his first public address as head of YouTube along with new generative AI tools expected to roll out to creators in the coming weeks. | Image: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for YouTube Neal Mohan, the new head of YouTube, outlined his key priorities and teased some upcoming features for the media platform in his first address to the community since stepping up to the role last month. In his letter, Mohan opens by saying that he’ll “continue to put [creators] first” and recapping some of the recent features the platform has added. He also teased one particularly interesting new one: YouTube is developing generative AI tools for content creators.“Creators will be able to expand their storytelling and raise their production value, from virtually swapping outfits to creating a fantastical film setting through AI’s generative capabilities,” said Mohan in a letter published today. “We’re taking the time to develop these... Continue reading…

Image: Rad Power Bikes Rad Power Bikes’ RadRunner is an e-bike designed to appeal to the broadest number of people. A utility bike with fat, comfy tires, a beguiling design, a simplified but not underpowered drivetrain, and an affordable price tag, the RadRunner is one of the company’s consistently most popular models. And now, it’s getting a major facelift.The RadRunner 3 Plus, announced today, has a radical new look that borrows heavily from the sharply angled frame designs of the latest versions of the RadCity commuter and RadRover models. That means it comes with a bevy of new parts, including integrated battery, hydraulic disc brakes, a custom geared hub motor, a new ergonomic frame, and an improved LED display that’s easier to use.But the accessories... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Both Intel and Microsoft seem to be preparing for the as yet unannounced Windows 12. The hardware leaker @leaf_hobby, known for revealing the full specs of Intel’s Xeon chips before launch, has published details about Intel’s Meteor Lake desktop platform. Intel reportedly mentions internally that its next-gen CPUs will support Windows 12.While the tweet has since been deleted, VideoCardz notes that Meteor Lake is expected to include 20 PCIe Gen5 lanes and support for Windows 12. We asked Intel to comment on the leak, but the company refused. Microsoft also declined to comment on the reports of Intel preparing to support Windows 12.While Microsoft hasn’t announced any plans for Windows 12, there are already signs the company is looking... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter was having difficulties this morning, with users reporting that the site’s timelines were inaccessible. After hours of intermittent service, they seem to have been fixed.The problems were limited in scope: the site itself was still accessible and users were able to tweet, but the “Following” and “For You” timelines weren’t loading. There was a spike of reports for the site on DownDetector starting around 5AM ET, with users in the US, UK, and elsewhere reporting outages. But, as of around 7:45AM ET, it seems these problems have been mostly fixed. Feeds are loading once more and normal misery service is resumed.Here’s what Twitter looked like this morning. What happened? Well, we don’t know. Image: The Verge ... Continue reading…

Image: VW If you’ve long felt like the one thing missing from your Audi was in-car TikTok, fret no more. Volkswagen Group is the latest to join the in-car app party, and it’s doing it in a big way. And it’s a preview of the conglomerate’s big plans for a unified in-car software platform that will govern how its cars operate for years to come.The world’s second-largest vehicle manufacturer announced today that it will soon roll out an app store designed to serve its wide portfolio of car brands. Inside, drivers will find familiar third-party apps optimized for car-friendly usage.The initial rollout includes big names like TikTok, Spotify, Yelp, and more, all optimized for in-car use and designed to run from an infotainment system screen. The... Continue reading…

Image: CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP via Getty Images The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is taking its next steps into esports competitions, and it’s adding chess and Just Dance to the mix.In June, the IOC will host Olympic Esports Week, which expands upon the Olympic Virtual Series it put on in 2021 with some new events. Like the Olympic Virtual Series, Olympic Esports Week will focus on virtual representations of physical activities. While that means you won’t see any Overwatch 2 gold medalists, the IOC is adding some entries to the lineup that adhere less to the traditional concept of “sport.”New for Olympic Esports Week are archery, tennis, tae kwon do, Just Dance (Ubisoft’s hit dancing franchise), and chess, which will sit alongside returning competitions in motorsport (via G... Continue reading…

Actress Shirley Henderson at a special screening of Stan & ollie. | Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic Dune: The Sisterhood — HBO Max’s Dune prequel series about the origins of the Bene Gesserit — already appeared to be in a bit of trouble back when it lost its original co-showrunners, hired two more, and then lost one again. Now, though, things seem to be getting worse.Deadline reports that Shirley Henderson, one of Dune: The Sisterhood’s lead actors, and director Johan Renck, who was slated to direct the first two episodes, have both decided to pull out of Dune: The Sisterhood just as the show enters a lengthy production hiatus. In a statement to Deadline, an HBO Max spokesperson emphasized that The Sisterhood’s hiatus had already been scheduled before two of the series’ key figures chose to part ways with the project, and that “there... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter announced that it has “officially launched” a new Violent Speech policy that outlines its “zero-tolerance approach towards Violent Speech.” Its content is similar to Twitter’s previous violent threats policy, though it manages to be both more specific and more vague.Both policies ban you from threatening or glorifying violence in most scenarios (each version has carve-outs for “hyperbolic” speech between friends). However, the new set of rules appears to expand on some concepts while cutting down on some others. For example, the old policy stated:

Image: Bluesky Bluesky, the decentralized project that originated within Twitter, has arrived on the Apple App Store as an invite-only social network, as first reported by TechCrunch. The listing also gives us one of our very first glimpses at the app, which closely resembles Twitter down to the timeline and profile pages.The project’s backed by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, and has been working on an app powered by its open-source social protocol for months now, called the Authenticated Transfer Protocol, or “AT Protocol” for short. Bluesky describes it as a “federated social network” where separate networks exist within a single hub.According to Bluesky, AT Protocol is built based on four main ideals: account portability;... Continue reading…

This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.I hope you all had a great week! Hot Pod Summit was a lot of fun — it was great to meet so many of you in person and chat about some of the biggest issues in the industry.We’ll have more on that below, but first, some acknowledgments. Big thanks to our partners at work x work and the whole On Air Fest team for bringing the event together as well as to the Wythe Hotel for hosting us. Also, I absolutely would not have made it through this without the help of my Verge colleagues Kara Verlaney, Esther Cohen, T.C. Sottek, Helen Havlak, and, of course, Jake Kastrenakes. Plus, we were so lucky that the Decoder team was down to put on their... Continue reading…

Views of the sunset and stormy skies on September 9th, 2021 in La Paz, Mexico. | Photo: Alfredo Martinez/Getty Images Buyer beware: there’s a dubious new kind of climate credit for sale.Traditional carbon offset credits, say, for planting trees or protecting forests, have a record of failing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a startup is selling credits for its attempts to manipulate the planet’s ability to reflect sunlight, a controversial response to climate change called solar geoengineering.A group of prominent scientists published a letter yesterday that warns that this kind of climate intervention is nowhere near ready to be commercially deployed and probably never should be. A big name on the letter is James Hansen, a former NASA scientist who’s now at Columbia University and is famous for sounding the alarm on climate change... Continue reading…

Fibbage 4 has you try to tell a convincing lie to your friends... en Español. | Image: Jackbox Games Jackbox Games has released a free update that localizes the games in its Party Pack 9 bundle. That means that party games like Fibbage 4, Roomerang, and Quixort are now available in French, Italian, German, Latin American Spanish, and Castilian Spanish.The translations cover pretty much every aspect of the games, from the intro videos and songs playing in the credits to the actual content of the games themselves. In a post on Monday, the company writes that it chose which translations to focus on based on “existing demand.”It’s not the company’s first run at localizing the content of its party games. In 2020 and 2021, it released versions of Quiplash 2 and Drawful 2 with extra languages, and the 2022 Jackbox Party Starter includes... Continue reading…

A Ford F-150 Lightning caught fire in a holding lot near the automaker’s Michigan factory. | Photo: DR/SP/Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Ford F-150 Lightning fire that broke out at a Michigan factory in early February wasn’t caused by a battery defect, according to a report from Bloomberg. In a statement to the outlet, Ford’s South Korean battery supplier SK On calls the incident a “rare” occurrence and says it’s working on a fix.Ford abruptly halted production of its flagship electric pickup on February 4th after one of the trucks caught fire in a holding lot affiliated with its Dearborn, Michigan, factory and spread to two other vehicles. Both Ford and SK have been investigating the issue for weeks and still haven’t resumed F-150 Lightning production. SK has once again started to build batteries in its Georgia factory, however.“We believe this was a rare... Continue reading…

Image: Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge Lidar maker Luminar held an investor day event in Orlando, Florida, during which it unveiled a new version of its Iris sensor that will be included in production vehicles from Mercedes-Benz. The company also announced a series of ambitious expansion plans, including a new factory in Mexico, a semiconductor subsidiary, and the acquisition of a data hardware startup’s lidar division.Lidar, a key ingredient in autonomous driving, is a laser sensor that uses near-infrared light to detect the shapes of objects. This helps autonomous vehicles “see” other objects on the road, like cars, pedestrians, and cyclists, all without the help of GPS or a network connection.Luminar revealed its Iris Plus lidar, which it said will further “the mission... Continue reading…

It is 28 degrees Fahrenheit on top of this mountain, before you factor in the wind that’s blowing snow sideways into my face. I’m sitting on a rock with my soda can-sized backpacking stove the size of a soda can trying to make lunch and regretting my decision to go hiking in the middle of February. I press a small button on a pen-size rod that I’m holding over the burner, bringing a spark to life for just an instant. The familiar whoosh of gas igniting means I can start heating up ramen — lucky me.But wait, how did pressing that button cause a spark? My lighter doesn’t have a flint and steel or any batteries. It’s not even solar powered (not that I remember what sunlight looks like; it’s winter in Washington). So how can it start a... Continue reading…

Population: One, Meta’s VR battle royale shooter it acquired in 2021, is becoming a free-to-play game, developers BigBox VR announced on Tuesday. The title currently starts at $30 on the Quest Store, but you’ll be able to play it for free starting March 9th.Population: One first launched in October 2020, and it’s proven to be a popular title, with a more than four-star average score from an excess of 11,000 ratings on the Quest Store. (It’s also available on Steam, where it has more than 2,000 reviews.) But in going free-to-play, Meta seems to be making a push for the game to attract a much wider audience than it already has. It worked for PUBG: Battlegrounds, after all.And if Population: One really blows up after moving to... Continue reading…

Screenshot by Jay Peters / Jay Peters More than six and a half years after No Man’s Sky was first released, I took my first trip into the game last week, wearing the brand-new PlayStation VR2 headset. It’s probably not the only way I’d choose to play the game, but about three hours in, it’s a mind-bending and overwhelming experience.No Man’s Sky got optional full virtual reality support back in 2019, letting players navigate its huge procedurally generated universe in PC VR and the original PlayStation VR. But the VR mode got an overhaul last week with the new Fractal update and the launch of the PSVR 2, where it’s one of Sony’s big-name launch titles alongside games like Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil Village. No Man’s Sky adds support for things like the new Sense... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Dish has told employees that it’s “investigating a cybersecurity incident” and that it’s “aware that certain data was extracted” from its IT systems as a result of this incident, according to an internal email sent by CEO Erik Carlson and obtained by The Verge. This comes on the fifth day of an internal outage that’s taken down some of the company’s internal networks, customer support systems, and websites such as boostinfinite.com and dish.com.The email doesn’t contain any details about whether the data was Dish internal information or customer data, though it does say that “it’s possible the investigation will reveal that the extracted data includes personal information.” The extent of the leak may not be fully known yet, as the... Continue reading…

Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US Marshals Service has fallen victim to a ransomware attack, according to reports from NBC News, The New York Times, and Reuters. On February 17th, hackers gained access to and stole sensitive information related to the agency’s employees and the subjects that it’s investigating.In a statement to NBC News, Drew Wade, the Marshals Service public affairs chief, called the ransomware attack a “major incident,” while adding that the affected system “contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative information, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of USMS investigations, third parties, and certain USMS employees.”According to NBC News, the attack didn’t... Continue reading…