The Verge

Apple’s HomePod Mini can now monitor temperature and humidity. While the sort of new HomePod grabbed all the attention this week, the HomePod Mini is also getting some new features. With the launch of iOS 16.3 (likely later this month), the Mini will get all the same smart home capabilities as the new, bigger HomePod second-gen. The differences between the two Apple speaker siblings are now mainly in size and sound capability. From new temperature and humidity sensing tricks to the ability to find your family for you and even set up automations with just your voice, these new features should make the HomePod Mini a little more useful around the house.These new features bring some much-needed functionality to the HomePod lineBoth HomePods are also getting a Sound Recognition feature later this... Continue reading…

Image: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images The US Federal Aviation Administration has made some changes to prevent outages similar to the one that disrupted thousands of flights earlier this month, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg. In a letter to lawmakers viewed by the outlets, FAA administrator Billy Nolen says the agency’s system now has safeguards in place to stop corrupt files from interfering with its backup database.The outage took place on January 11th and involved a computer glitch affecting the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system. This system provides pilots and other personnel with essential status updates, including information about runway closures, flocks of birds in the airspace, and other safety hazards. The outage lasted more than two... Continue reading…

An example of a TravelCenters of America EV charging station built by Electrify America | Image: TravelCenters of America TravelCenters of America is working with Electrify America to get much-needed EV fast chargers installed at its rest stops across the US. The agreement has Electrify America deploying a sizable 1,000 charging stalls across 200 TravelCenters of America (TA), TA Express, and Petro shopping center locations nationwide.TA’s goal is to install the chargers over the next five years, with the first ones showing up in 2023. The first installations are slated for locations in Texas and Ohio, according to TA’s senior director of communications, Tina Arundel.This isn’t TA’s first foray into providing EV chargers; the company has Tesla Supercharger stations in Washington, Minnesota, and Nevada, as well as FreeWire EV stations in California and... Continue reading…

Image: SpaceX A SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle currently docked to the International Space Station (ISS) could be used to transport extra crew members back to Earth in the event of an emergency, NASA announced.Following a coolant leak in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the ISS in December, international space agencies including NASA and Roscosmos worked together to come up with a plan to safely transport crew members home. The plan they settled on was to use a replacement Soyuz craft that will be launched in February.However, observers were concerned about what would happen in the event of an emergency that required the ISS to be evacuated between now and the arrival of the replacement Soyuz. Usually, crew members would evacuate in the vehicles in... Continue reading…

The Kid Laroi’s avatar performing in Fortnite. | Image: Epic Games Checking out The Kid Laroi might be the first time I ever died during a concert — virtually, of course. The Australian singer is the latest artist to headline an interactive Fortnite experience, but this one differs a bit, adding a touch more of the shooter action that’s core to the game. The result is a strangely compelling experience that further expands what these kinds of virtual concerts can be. It even has a miniature raid.Called “Wild Dreams,” the virtual music experience is billed as an “immersive sonic experience portraying Laroi’s journey from humble beginnings to headlining sold-out performances as a worldwide superstar.” Unlike virtual concerts from the likes of Travis Scott and Ariana Grande, which took over the entire... Continue reading…

Holding a silicon wafer with microchips. | Photo by Michael Matthey/picture alliance via Getty Images And hear Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong in the latest Mario movie trailer. Continue reading…

These Notes are all wasted opportunities to post vague lyrics that are definitely not targeted toward your crush. | Image: Meta Instagram Notes, the social network’s recently launched text status feature that reminds me of the AOL Instant Messenger away messages of my youth, is expanding to the EU, UK, and Japan this week, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced Monday. The rollout is beginning on Monday, spokesperson Christine Pai said in an email to The Verge.Notes are short text posts of up to 60 characters that float above your profile icon and disappear after 24 hours. The feature officially launched in December, and Mosseri says it’s done “really well” in Asia, North America, and Latin America and “specifically with teens.” The later launch in Europe and Japan was to ensure the feature complied with local regulations, Mosseri said.

Last year’s Nothing Phone 1. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Nothing’s next smartphone, the Phone 2, will be getting an official US release, the company’s CEO Carl Pei has confirmed in an interview with Inverse. Although the Phone 1’s transparent rear design and flashing light strips didn’t see a US release after the company chose to focus its attention on Europe and Asia, Nothing has decided to change its focus for its 2023 flagship. “We decided to make the U.S. our No. 1 priority in terms of markets,” Pei tells Inverse.Hints of a US launch came earlier this month when Nothing announced a beta program for American buyers, which would supply them with a Phone 1 handset for a $299 fee. But the program is a far cry from an official US release, with Nothing cautioning that devices won’t support 5G... Continue reading…

Image: Sean O’Kane / The Verge A little more than six months after it raised prices on the Mustang Mach-E, Ford said it would now be slashing prices on its flagship electric vehicle as well as increasing its production targets for the year.The Mach-E will drop by an average of around 5.85 percent, depending on the trim level. (Some versions are seeing steeper discounts than others.) According to Marin Gjaja, chief customer officer for Ford Model e division, the “center cut” discount was roughly $4,500.Here’s a breakdown of the new prices:The company also said it was expanding the production capacity for the Mach-E, opening new space in its factory and adding new equipment. As such, Ford says it expects to produce 130,000 vehicles for customers in North America... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony says it should now be a lot easier to find PS5 stock at retailers. After two years of supply challenges, Sony has thanked fans for their patience as it delt with “unprecedented demand” since the PS5 launch in November 2020.“If you’re looking to purchase a PS5 console, you should now have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally,” says Isabelle Tomatis, VP of brand, hardware, and peripherals at Sony Interactive Entertainment.Sony recommends its own PlayStation direct store for those looking for a PS5 in the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. There are a variety of bundles available, alongside the base digital and disc PS5 consoles.

Image: Internet Archive I never thought I’d actually have fun with a calculator emulator. But here I am, toying with the old-school graphing calculators that the Internet Archive has freed from their plastic chassis and put in a digital form for all to enjoy.The Internet Archive calls this new collection the Calculator Drawer. There are 14 calculators to choose from, including the HP 48GX, TI-82, TI-83 Plus, and even the Electronic Number Muncher, which is an 80s-era toy calculator. The Internet Archive doesn’t just emulate the interface of each device, either; it incorporates their physical design and buttons, making it feel like you have the actual device right in front of you. Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge Doing some tough math... Continue reading…

Cruise and Waymo are causing traffic issues in San Francisco. | Image: Getty Images San Francisco transportation officials want Waymo and Cruise to slow the expansion of their robotaxi services in the city due to safety concerns, as reported earlier by NBC News. In two letters written to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the officials on San Francisco County’s Transportation Authority say the expansion of either service “is unreasonable,” citing recent incidents involving stopped driverless vehicles blocking traffic and obstructing emergency responders.The GM-backed Cruise and Alphabet-owned Waymo are currently the only companies permitted to offer driverless rides to passengers in San Francisco. In June, Cruise won a permit to charge for rides in its autonomous vehicles (AV) between 10PM and 6AM,... Continue reading…

Image: Capcom Capcom will exclusively use PCs to power its upcoming Capcom Cup tournament, which has the world’s top Street Fighter 5 players battling it out for a $300,000 prize pool. In a post on Twitter, Capcom Fighters says all matches will be played on PCs with the displays set to 144Hz.The company doesn’t provide any information on the hardware going into these PCs (or if they’ll just use gaming laptops), but the move’s expected to reduce input lag — the time it takes for a system to translate your button press on a keyboard or controller to an action displayed on the screen. Low input lag is a necessity for pros in the fighting game scene, where a delayed punch or kick can greatly affect the outcome of a match.

Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI claim the lawsuit doesn’t hold up. | Photo: Jens Büttner/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB (Photo by Jens Büttner/picture alliance via Getty Images Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI want the court to dismiss a proposed class action complaint that accuses the companies of scraping licensed code to build GitHub’s AI-powered Copilot tool, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a pair of filings submitted to a San Francisco federal court on Thursday, the Microsoft-owned GitHub and OpenAI say the claims outlined in the suit don’t hold up.Launched in 2021, Copilot leverages OpenAI’s technology to generate and suggest lines of code directly within a programmer’s code editor. The tool, which is trained on publicly available code from GitHub, sparked concerns over whether it violates copyright laws soon after its release.Things came to a head when programmer and lawyer, Matthew Butterick, teamed... Continue reading…

The deal likely won’t be announced publicly. | Image: Getty Following years of lobbying from Washington, Japan and the Netherlands agreed on Friday to tighten restrictions on the export of chip manufacturing technology to Chinese companies. News of the agreement was reported by Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and The New York Times.The controls are designed to limit China’s ability to ramp up its own domestic chip production and come after the Biden administration announced similar restrictions in October 2022. The fear is that easier access to advanced semiconductors will allow China to shore up its military and artificial intelligence capabilities.There aren’t any plans for a public announcement about the agreement, and it may take “months” for Japan and the Netherlands to “finalize legal... Continue reading…

Frankly, you’re not losing out on much if you opt for Apple’s last-gen wearable. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Apple Watch remains the go-to smartwatch for iPhone users, but unless you absolutely need some of the new features found on the Apple Watch Series 8, the last-gen Series 7 remains an attractive wearable — that is, when you can find it. Thankfully, you can currently pick it up at Walmart in the 45mm, LTE-equipped configuration for $329, which is $200 less than its newer counterpart typically goes for.In terms of specs, the Series 7 is a lot like the newer Series 8. It features better dust resistance and a larger display than its predecessor, along with all the fitness-tracking metrics you expect and compatibility with watchOS 9. What it doesn’t offer is things like menstrual tracking and crash detection, two features unique to the... Continue reading…

Song of the bots. | Illustration: The Verge Google researchers have made an AI that can generate minutes-long musical pieces from text prompts, and can even transform a whistled or hummed melody into other instruments, similar to how systems like DALL-E generate images from written prompts (via TechCrunch). The model is called MusicLM, and while you can’t play around with it for yourself, the company has uploaded a bunch of samples that it produced using the model.The examples are impressive. There are 30-second snippets of what sound like actual songs created from paragraph-long descriptions that prescribe a genre, vibe, and even specific instruments, as well as five-minute-long pieces generated from one or two words like “melodic techno.” Perhaps my favorite is a demo of “story... Continue reading…

Suppression, not suspension. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is promising that it’ll take “less severe actions” when disciplining accounts that break its rules; it’ll only suspend Twitter accounts that engage in “severe or ongoing, repeat violations” of its rules. The company also says it’ll be letting anyone appeal suspensions starting February 1st, and that those doing so will be judged using updated standards.What will Twitter do instead of suspending your account? The “less severe actions” are things that Twitter has been doing for years, such as limiting visibility of a tweet, or telling a user to remove a tweet before they can get back onto the site. Today’s change is that Twitter is promising to reach for those tools more often, instead of going straight for the ban button.The... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Department of Justice announced this week that FBI agents successfully disrupted Hive, a notorious ransomware group, and prevented $130 million worth of ransom campaigns that targets no longer need to consider paying. While claiming the Hive group has been responsible for targeting over 1,500 victims in over 80 countries worldwide, the department now reveals it had infiltrated the group’s network for months before working with German and Netherlands officials to shut down Hive servers and websites this week.“Simply put, using lawful means, we hacked the hackers,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco remarked during a press conference.The FBI claims that by covertly hacking into Hive servers, it was able to quietly snatch up over... Continue reading…

Jonathan Majors as Killian Maddox in Magazine Dreams. | Tall Street Productions When Jonathan Majors takes to the bodybuilding competition stage in writer / director Elijah Bynum’s arresting new drama Magazine Dreams, it’s impossible not to feel as if the movie’s in direct conversation with the way that its lead star’s fame has become wrapped up in the public’s fascination with his body. Magazine Dreams’ deep dive into the life of an obsessive, aspiring pro lifter longing for a shot at fitness fame is one of the most difficult pieces of cinema to debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But as it’s breaking your heart and making you sweat, Magazine Dreams is also laying bare many painful truths about what it means to be trapped in a world where objectification and dehumanization are the prices you have to pay... Continue reading…

The Verge How Matter works, when it’s coming, what you’ll need to use it, and how it integrates with Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. Continue reading…

She apparently won’t be the star of the show. | Photo by Dominique Charriau / WireImage Earlier Friday, The Hollywood Reporter said that Amazon is developing a TV series based on the Tomb Raider video game franchise with scripts written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But that’s apparently not all: later in the day, Deadline corroborated the report about the TV series and added that a new Tomb Raider movie is in the works at Amazon Studios, too.Details are light on these new Tomb Raider adaptations, but THR says that while Waller-Bridge will serve as a writer and executive producer on the show, she won’t be starring. The show is apparently still in the development stages, so we probably shouldn’t expect to see it anytime soon.This new series and movie could end up as more big video game franchise adaptations for Amazon, which... Continue reading…

Comcast revealed that the service lost $978 million in Q4 despite gaining 5 million new subscribers. | Image: Peacock Comcast published its fourth quarter 2022 earnings on Thursday, reporting that the company had managed to exceed analyst projections for the year despite losing broadband and video subscribers and widening losses from its Peacock streaming service.Peacock — the streaming platform for Comcast-owned NBCUniversal — reported a loss of $978 million during the company’s fourth financial quarter, a sizable jump from the $559 million loss reported in the same quarter last year. Comcast expects Peacock’s total losses to peak at around $3 billion. “We believe 2023 will be peak losses for Peacock and, from there, steadily improve,” said Comcast president Michael Cavanagh during a company earnings call (via CNBC).Peacock’s annual revenue has... Continue reading…

Image: Rare Goldeneye 007 and Dead Space both make a return, and Google makes some upgrades. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge MoviePass is back in control of its founder, Stacy Spikes, and is beta testing a new points-based setup for subscription moviegoing. The company announced everyone who signed up for its relaunch waitlist has been accepted and said it’s reopening the waitlist for other interested subscribers to join but only until January 30th or once it’s full (via Axios).This time around, it also has backing from Animoca Brands, which is well known for its crypto investments, but it’s unclear what the blockchain or the metaverse has to do with this version of MoviePass.Pricing for new MoviePass starts at $10 per month in most locationsIn 2019, MoviePass flamed out spectacularly thanks to a $9.99 per month all-you-can-eat subscription price that... Continue reading…

Image: Mercedes-Benz AG Mercedes-Benz announced that it was the first automaker to receive government approval in the US for a Level 3 driving feature. The company said it had self-certified in Nevada for use of its Drive Pilot feature, in which the car does all the driving but the driver needs to stand by to take control at a moment’s notice.Mercedes certified that its technology meets Nevada’s “minimal risk condition” requirement that requires Level 3 or higher “fully autonomous” vehicles to be able to stop if there is a malfunction in the system.“Nevada law allows all automation levels to operate on public streets,” a spokesperson for the state’s DMV said in an email. “Nevada does not issue any permit or license based on an autonomous vehicle’s level of... Continue reading…

“Hey Siri, make an AR version of the Apple logo.” | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple is apparently working on a way to let you make apps for its long-rumored mixed reality headset using Siri, according to a new report from The Information. Yes, that Siri, the one that routinely messes up basic requests or errors out in frustrating ways, will apparently be able to create entire augmented reality (AR) apps that you’ll be able to share with others on the App Store.The technology behind this app-building tool comes from a 2017 acquisition of a startup named Fabric Software, which The Information is the first to report on. According to The Information, the development tool could “allow users to build an app with virtual animals moving around a room and over or around real-life objects without the need to design the... Continue reading…

There’s more The Last of Us on the way. | Image: HBO The Last of Us will be getting a second season, HBO announced on Friday.There are no details about when we can expect season 2 or how many episodes it might be — HBO only accompanied the announcement with a brief video trailer — but now we know that there’s more of the show to come.

Image: City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) Brace yourselves, bear lovers. We have a new star.One special black bear recently discovered a wildlife camera set up by City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP), managing to take hundreds of selfies with it.“Of the 580 photos captured [on the camera], about 400 were bear selfies,” OSMP shared on Twitter and Facebook this week, along with a laughing emoji and several of the selfies.

The Disney logo. | Nathan Ingraham / The Verge Less than a day into his second run as Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger told employees last November that he was planning to restructure key parts of the company in order to walk back some of the changes implemented by his predecessor, Bob Chapek. Now, the shape of that restructuring is beginning to become more clear ahead of the company’s next earnings report, and it sounds like a round of layoffs is on the way.Deadline reports that Disney is contemplating how it might consolidate a number of its different TV production arms, as well as merge its marketing departments as part of a larger initiative to get on top of the company’s accounting concerns. Disney’s also reportedly moving forward with its plan to dissolve its Disney Media and... Continue reading…

Isaac Clarke in the Dead Space remake. | Image: EA The Dead Space remake is a very good game, and if (like me) you haven’t sprung for a next-generation console, you’ll need to play it on PC. But Dead Space is a series I’ve found much more fun with a controller than a mouse and keyboard, and I’ve developed an attachment to couch gaming over the past few years — so I’d hoped I might get it to run on my recently acquired Steam Deck, which would easily provide both. Unfortunately, publisher EA has confirmed to The Verge that the remake doesn’t support the Steam Deck, and my own experience backs that up.Steam listed Dead Space’s support level as unknown when I got my review key for the remake, and out of an abundance of optimism, I gave it a try. The game proceeded to protest this decision... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft You may have seen headlines like “DirectStorage causes 10 percent performance hit on RTX 4090 in Forspoken” or “Careful — Microsoft DirectStorage could kill your frame rate,” all based on a single test from German YouTube channel PC Games Hardware. Microsoft’s new DirectStorage feature is designed to boost load times in PC games massively, but it’s not supposed to tank your all-important frame rates.So what’s going on? The reality is that the DirectStorage implementation in Forspoken does not affect frame rate performance at all. It’s a case of bad test data.I saw the headlines and immediately started testing Forspoken on an RTX 4090 rig coupled with Intel’s Core i9-13900KS and a SATA SSD and PCIe 4.0 SSD. While PC Games Hardware... Continue reading…

The PlayStation 5 version of God of War Ragnarök is on sale for just $47.99. | Image: Santa Monica Studio Winter is an ideal time for many things — gaming included. And if you’re currently looking for a PlayStation 5 title to carry you through the cooler months, God of War Ragnarök is on sale via CDKeys for just $47.99, a $22 discount and the title’s steepest price cut to date.Despite its delays and rocky development, God of War Ragnarök was one of our favorite PS5 games of 2022. The blockbuster exclusive is bold and ambitious, much like its 2018 predecessor, with great set pieces, solid combat, and a tearjerker of a story that helped it rack up numerous awards since its debut in November. As my colleague Ash Parrish put it in her review, the third-person action title offers “the very best of what video games can be in both narrative and... Continue reading…

Representative Jake Auchincloss speaks to reporters in 2020. | Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images We’ve reached the political stunt stage of AI-generated text, it seems.As reported by WBZ NewsRadio, CBS Boston, and others, the Democratic Representative for Massachusetts, Jake Auchincloss, has become the first member of congress to deliver an AI-written speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. Appropriately enough, the speech was in support of a bill that would establish a joint AI research center run by the US and Israel.The speech was written using ChatGPT, and is as dull and anodyne as you might expect for a political speech filtered through an AI system based on probabilistic averages. That’s not to say AI text tools can’t generate unusual and creative outputs, but that usually requires a little bit more... Continue reading…

Outside of providing more transparency for its customers, Google is still under pressure to fully comply with the EU’s geo-blocking regulations. | Illustration: The Verge Many of Google’s offerings will soon be updated to provide clear and accurate information in compliance with consumer protection laws in the EU. Announced by the European Commission on Thursday, the Alphabet-owned company has agreed to introduce changes to Google Store, Google Play Store, Google Hotels, and Google Flights following discussions with the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPC) in 2021.“We see an increasing number of consumers turn to the internet to book their holidays, make purchases, or consult a review. EU consumers are entitled to clear, complete information so that they can make informed choices,” said EU Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, in a statement. “The commitments made by Google are a step... Continue reading…