The Verge

The photo shared by Isaacson showing concept images of the Cybertruck, and the pop culture that inspired them. Click to see full-sized image. | Image: Walter Isaacson Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson has shared a photograph of the Tesla CEO during an early meeting about the Cybertruck that sheds interesting light on the alternative designs considered, as well as the pop culture that ultimately inspired it. On the left of the image we can see several concept images of Tesla's electric pickup truck, while on the right is a mood board showing images from various movies and video games, including many sci-fi and cyberpunk titles. In the foreground Musk can be seen in conversation with Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen.This isn't the first time we've seen an alternative design for Tesla's eye-catching pickup truck. During the company's launch event for the Tesla Semi in 2017, Musk teased the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube Premium's price has increased to $13.99 a month in the US, a $2 increase compared to what it used to cost. That's according to Google's signup page for the service, which has been quietly updated to reflect the new pricing, which was first spotted by 9to5Google. Alongside the monthly price increase, the cost of an annual subscription to YouTube Premium is increasing by $20 to $139.99.YouTube Music - the music streaming service that's available standalone or as part of a Premium subscription - is also seeing a price increase in the US. It will now cost $10.99 a month, mirroring similar price increases we've seen for Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal. Spotify is a notable holdout for still charging $9.99 a month, but CEO Daniel... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The New York Times cites anonymous sources in a report saying Google demonstrated Genesis for media execs from the Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal owner News Corp, presenting responsible" technology that takes in facts and spits out news copy. Two execs mentioned in the article said it seemed to take for granted the effort that went into producing accurate and artful news stories," while another saw it as more of a personal assistant / helper.Asked about the report, Google spokesperson Jenn Crider provided the following statement to The Verge:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Changes to the Reddit API have forced beloved apps like Apollo to shut down, and following the protests, mods are feeling threatened by Reddit. Continue reading...

A Cybertruck being tested around the world" for final certification and validation. | Image: Tesla Tesla revealed new measurements for its long-delayed Cybertruck in its Q2 earnings report. The polarizing truck will be less than 19 feet long and will have a bed that's longer than six feet, which is shorter than Ford's best-selling F-150 Lighting, which is 19.25 feet long with a 5.5-foot bed.We continue to build release candidates of the Cybertruck on our final production line in Austin," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on an earnings call today. Musk claims it's the first four-door pickup that comes in that bed and length size combination and that there's a lot of new technology" in the vehicle.Tesla claims Cybertruck will break a lot of boundaries" technologically and architecturally in its earnings press release today. ... Continue reading...

Mom took away your favorite toy because she said you weren't playing fair. | Image: Blizzard Nothing brings together a community of gamers quite like a balancing patch to their favorite numbers-go-up game, does it? That's what Blizzard's new version 1.1.0 patch is doing for Diablo IV players, and the chorus being sung in unison by hardcore players is quite the tantrum.But here's the thing: Blizzard really has mucked things up at a very inopportune time.Diablo IV's patch 1.1.0 dropped yesterday, just two days before the start of the game's first seasonal content drop, the Season of the Malignant, which will have players start fresh characters to run through a new quest line and premium battle pass. But within the lengthy patch notes were a large swath of changes significantly shaking up the potency of many popular character... Continue reading...

Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge Tesla is in discussion" to license its Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver-assist technology to another major automaker, Elon Musk said in an earnings call Wednesday. He did not reveal the name of the company, though he did say that licensing FSD was always part of the plan.We're not we're not trying to keep this to ourselves," Musk said on the call. We're more than happy to license it to others."Musk has spoken about licensing FSD to competitors in the past. Last month, he tweeted that Tesla aspires to be as helpful as possible to other car companies" - adding, Also happy to license Autopilot/FSD or other Tesla technology."We're not we're not trying to keep this to ourselves"Most automakers' driver-assist systems are for limited... Continue reading...

Image: Tesla Tesla says it has started production of its Dojo supercomputer to train its fleet of autonomous vehicles.In its second quarter earnings report for 2023, the company outlined four main technology pillars" needed to solve vehicle autonomy at scale: extremely large real-world dataset, neural net training, vehicle hardware and vehicle software."We are developing each of these pillars in-house," the company said in its report. This month, we are taking a step towards faster and cheaper neural net training with the start of production of our Dojo training computer." Image: Tesla The automaker already has a large Nvidia GPU-based supercomputer that is one of the most powerful in the world, but the new Dojo... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla published its second quarter earnings report in which the company said it earned $3.1 billion in net income on $24.9 billion in revenue. That represents a 47 percent increase year over year compared to $16.9 billion in revenue in Q2 2022.The company's gross margins fell to 18.2 percent for the second quarter in a row, signaling that Tesla's rampant price cutting is continuing to take a toll on its bottom line. Gross margins were down 5.6 percent quarter over quarter and 27 percent year over year.Investors are glum about Tesla's profit margins, even while cheering its recent delivery report that revealed the company delivered 466,140 vehicles to customers during the past three months. That's an 83 percent increase over the number... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix says its password-sharing crackdown is working. In its second quarter earnings report posted on Wednesday, the streamer says it saw the addition of 5.9 million subscribers globally, with the US and Canada making up 1.17 million new members from April to June.Now, Netflix will start to address password sharing in all its remaining countries. The company's password-sharing policy only went into effect in the US in late May after the streamer started alerting users of the extra $7.99 per month charge. Data from the analytics company Antenna suggests that the company saw a dramatic spike in subscribers in the days following the crackdown. In addition to the US, Netflix also rolled out paid sharing in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit has had something of a contentious relationship with many of its moderators as of late, but now, the company is trying to make amends. A Reddit admin (employee) identifying themselves as the company's VP of community reached out to moderators through a new post on Wednesday, inviting them to participate in things like weekly feedback sessions, an accessibility feedback group, and in-person moderator road shows.Reddit and many moderators have been at odds since the June protests over API pricing changes that ultimately forced some third-party apps to shut down. At one point, more than 8,000 communities went dark in protest, but as the protests wore on, Reddit began sending messages to moderators pushing them to reopen, and in an... Continue reading...

An Amazon Prime packet at a plastic scrapyard in Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, India. | Image: Prashanth Vishwanathan / Bloomberg via Getty Images Amazon says it'll eventually quit sending packages in plastic padded bags in an effort to cut down on packaging waste, according to a sustainability report the company released Tuesday.We are phasing out padded bags containing plastics in favor of recyclable alternatives," the report says. But it's missing an important detail: a deadline for when the company plans to make the change.The company didn't answer questions about its plan from The Verge. Our first goal is to eliminate packaging altogether wherever possible, and when additional Amazon packaging is required to ship a product, we strive to optimize that packaging for increased recyclability and reduced carbon emissions," Amazon spokesperson Elizabeth Fine said in an email.... Continue reading...

Oh, goody! Wait, I've ordered nothing. | Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge It's been a long time since I personally ordered from Starbucks, but today, I thought the streak was broken when my iPhone buzzed with a gleeful Your order is ready!" notification.But wait a minute - I didn't order anything!I turned to social media and quickly found that a bunch of other people were getting the same message stemming from their Starbucks app.Starbucks is now sharing that the notification was a glitch. Earlier today, a push notification from the Starbucks app was sent as an error, customers were not charged for an order if one was not placed," reads a company statement sent to Insider. The company says it was due to the app suffering a partial outage.

The Alienware Area-51m. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge In 2021, Dell got sued - because one year after hyping up an Alienware laptop that supposedly let you upgrade its discrete GPU, the company didn't follow through.The story of the Alienware Area-51m is pretty dang relevant today because Framework just opened preorders for another laptop that offers the same.But it turns out Dell never had to meaningfully face that lawsuit. Area-51m buyers never successfully banded together in a class action case. Dell was able to force them into binding arbitration, I found, when I went looking to see what happened to the suit.In July 2022, Judge Vince Chhabria told plaintiffs they had already agreed to binding arbitration when they clicked Accept' on the start-up screen of their computers," and... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Bloomberg reports a regional director for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint alleging that DoorDash illegally fired an office employee who tried to organize a union in Arizona. The complaint also says DoorDash threatened to reprimand workers who attempted to assemble and lied to them, saying it's unlawful to discuss worker conditions on days off.The NLRB specifically accuses DoorDash of violating employees' federal rights by interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees," the May 30th filing reads. DoorDash denies making any attempts to block unionization efforts. These allegations are part of a personally motivated attack and entirely without merit," DoorDash representative Liz Jarvis-Shean wrote in a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram isn't liable for copyright infringement when images are embedded on third-party websites, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on Monday (via Torrent Freak). The decision came in response to a class action lawsuit filed by two photographers, Alexis Hunley and Matthew Brauer, who accused Instagram of violating copyright laws by enabling Time and BuzzFeed News to embed their copyrighted photos in online articles.In 2016, Time published an article titled These Photographers Are Covering the Presidential Campaign on Instagram," which included Brauer's embedded Instagram photo of Hillary Clinton. BuzzFeed News similarly posted an embedded photo taken by Hunley in its 2020 article about the Black Lives Matter... Continue reading...

Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images Federal antitrust enforcers released new draft guidelines for evaluating anti-competitive mergers Wednesday, redoubling their aggressive scrutiny over digital markets.The rules, proposed by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission, direct enforcers to examine mergers by online platforms more broadly than ever before. The proposal doesn't explicitly name tech companies like Amazon, Meta, or Google, but many of the rules implicate parts of their merger and business strategies.We are updating our enforcement manual to reflect the realities of how firms do business in the modern economy," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement Wednesday.Specifically, the rules set a new focus on multi-sided" platforms, or online companies... Continue reading...

Photo by Roland Krivec / DeFodi Images via Getty Images Starting tomorrow, my sleep schedule is going to be in complete disarray. The 2023 Women's World Cup kicks off in Australia and New Zealand on July 20th, which means that I'll be getting up very early - and staying up pretty late - in order to catch as much of it as I can. It's an exciting moment because the women's game has never been as popular as it is today, and the field for this year's tournament truly feels wide open. There's just one problem: I have no idea where to post about it.For years, the answer was obvious. Twitter may not have been the global town square it aspired to be, but during live sporting events, it was pretty darn close. World Cups, the Olympics, and the NBA Finals turned into two-screen experiences. While you... Continue reading...

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer. | Image: Universal Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer epic offers a series of visceral glimpses into the life of the father of the atomic bomb but gets too busy to reach its full potential. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is bringing back r/Place - a collaborative project where individual users can edit pixels on a giant canvas - at a time when users are still furious over things like Reddit's API pricing that forced beloved third-party apps to shut down, the company's decision to remove chat history from before 2023 with hardly any warning, and its recent announcement that it would be sunsetting the current system to give Reddit Gold. The 2023 version of r/Place kicks off on Thursday, July 20th.As you might expect, users are already using the announcement post to air their grievances toward the company. The current top comment in reply to the post just says fuck u/spez" (spez" is CEO Steve Huffman's Reddit username), and many of the other... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Apple is creating its own AI-powered chatbot that some engineers are calling Apple GPT," according to a report from Bloomberg. The company reportedly doesn't have any solid plans to release the technology to the public yet.As noted by Bloomberg, the chatbot uses its own large language model (LLM) framework called Ajax," running on Google Cloud and built with Google JAX, a framework created to accelerate machine learning research. Sources close to the situation tell the outlet that Apple has multiple teams working on the project, which includes addressing potential privacy implications.As other tech giants, including Meta, Microsoft, and Google, have moved quickly releasing generative AI products of their own to businesses and the... Continue reading...

I want to be very clear: this is not my car. An Audi E-tron parked across multiple spots in order to access a Tesla Supercharger. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Earlier this year, I purchased my first electric vehicle, a 2023 Volkswagen ID.4 Pro S - moonstone gray, moon roof, all-wheel drive. I knew that the car would start losing value as soon as I drove it off the dealer lot - just like the old saying goes. What I didn't realize was that the whole charging system that my shiny new EV relied on was about to become obsolete.In May, Ford and Tesla announced a surprise deal in which the Blue Oval would adopt Elon Musk's charging connector, named the North American Charging Standard (NACS). Tesla's Supercharger network is widely considered vastly superior to the junky, bug-riddled public charging network in the US. Ford made a strategic decision to throw its lot in with the winners.The dominoes... Continue reading...

WhatsApp is now a Wear OS 3 app. | Image: Meta First teased at Google I/O, Meta just announced that WhatsApp is officially rolling out to Wear OS smartwatches starting today, provided you have a Wear OS 3 smartwatch.The app itself isn't complicated. It'll allow users to start new conversations, reply to messages, and take calls from the wrist. They'll also be able to respond with voice messages, emoji, regular text, and quick replies. And if you have an LTE-capable Wear OS 3 watch, you'll be able to respond to messages without needing your phone nearby.The main thing here is timing and reach. For starters, the Samsung Unpacked event is next week, where we're expecting to see the new Galaxy Watch 6 and, if rumors are to be believed, the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. There's a good... Continue reading...

Samsung is first out of the gate with GDDR7, but it might be a while before we see it installed into market-ready products. | Image: Samsung On Wednesday, Samsung announced that it has completed the development of the industry's first GDDR7 DRAM, the next generation of graphics memory that will feature in future computing, vehicle, and gaming hardware releases. The company's key partners can expect to install the new chips into their next-gen systems later this year for testing. If all goes well, we could see products running Samsung's GDDR7 memory hitting the market sometime next year.Our GDDR7 DRAM will help elevate user experiences in areas that require outstanding graphics performance, such as workstations, PCs and game consoles, and is expected to expand into future applications such as AI, high-performance computing (HPC) and automotive vehicles," said Yongcheol Bae,... Continue reading...

You can order the Studio Pros beginning today. | Image: Beats For the first time since 2017, Beats is announcing a brand-new pair of flagship headphones. Today, the Apple-owned company is introducing the $349.95 Beats Studio Pros. They're available to order beginning today and will be in Apple retail locations (and other stores) on July 20th.As recent leaks have given away, the external design is largely a carryover from the prior Studio 3 headphones. But looks can be deceiving, and Beats has made a number of upgrades to the Studio Pros focusing on sound, noise cancellation, comfort, and more. Technically, these are the first Apple headphones to support lossless USB-C audio playback. And they continue Beats' efforts to appeal to both iPhone and Android users by including support for native... Continue reading...

They look like a lazy refresh from the outside, but the noise-canceling Studio Pros include a ton of new features like transparency mode and lossless USB-C audio. And they solidify Beats' unique appeal as a dual-ecosystem brand. Continue reading...

Nothing CEO Carl Pei knows better than most how hard it is to make a dent in the hardware world. | Image: Nothing Nothing wants to invent the future. But you don't get to invent the future if you can't first make it in the smartphone biz. Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo If you haven't played a Pikmin game before, you might be surprised to learn that the series can get quite dark. Sure, it stars a bunch of adorable plant-like beings - the titular pikmin - who navigate a huge world full of similarly cute creatures. It's bright and colorful in the way that Nintendo games tend to be. But it's also pretty creepy at times, with unsettling enemies to go up against, dark caverns to explore, and the way the pikmin will throw themselves into battle, with hordes able to overwhelm and kill larger creatures, whose corpses they then cart off to be repurposed. Pikmin is light on the surface but darker the more you think about it - and the latest entry takes things a step further with a survival mode and some ghostly... Continue reading...

Photo by Hakan Nural / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have agreed to extend their merger agreement pending the outcome of negotiations with UK regulators. Both parties will now have until October 18th to finalize the transaction, after missing yesterday's original deal deadline.The recent decision in the US and approvals in 40 countries all validate that the deal is good for competition, players, and the future of gaming," tweeted Lulu Cheng Meservey, Activision Blizzard's CCO and EVP of corporate affairs. Given global regulatory approvals and the companies' confidence that CMA now recognizes there are remedies available to meet their concerns in the UK, the Activision Blizzard and Microsoft boards of directors have authorized the companies not to... Continue reading...

ME GRIMLOCK. How much would fans pay for the ultimate action figure? A company named Robosen seems determined to find out - with Transformers toys that transform themselves like they do in the classic cartoon.First, it was a $750 self-transforming Optimus Prime robot, then a $750 transforming trailer to go with it - $1,500 total to bring the leader of the Autobots to life.Now, Hasbro and Robosen are introducing Grimlock so you can own the king of the Dinobots, too, for a cool $1,700 all by itself.

ByteDance hasn't yet announced when TikTok Music will be launching to US markets. | Image: TikTok / The Verge / Canva TikTok is rolling out its new subscription-based music streaming platform - aptly named TikTok Music - to new markets, almost two weeks after the service first debuted in Indonesia and Brazil. According to a press release shared with The Verge, TikTok is inviting select users from Australia, Mexico, and Singapore to join a closed beta test starting today, providing participants with a three-month free trial for the TikTok Music service.TikTok Music is a new kind of music service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a music streaming service offering millions of tracks from thousands of artists," the company said via its press release. Participating users can join the beta by downloading the TikTok Music app, either... Continue reading...

Image: Intel Intel announced earlier this week that its compact and upgradable NUC computers were being discontinued, but now Asus is stepping in to manufacture and develop future NUC systems instead. While Intel won't be making its cute small form factor PCs anymore, Asus will receive a non-exclusive license to Intel's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) product designs.As we pivot our strategy to enable ecosystem partners to continue NUC systems product innovation and growth, our priority is to ensure a smooth transition for our customers and partners," says Sam Gao, general manager of Intel Client Platform Solutions. I am looking forward to ASUS continuing to deliver exceptional products and supporting our NUC systems customers." P... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge I am not big on blurring out or replacing my office background with premade images, but then again, I'm fortunate enough to have a small environment I'm completely in control of at my disposal, and I want people to see the Doctor Zhivago DVD on the shelf behind me. I could, however, see myself using the new AI-generated backgrounds Google is now testing in its Workspace Labs (via XDA-Developers / 9to5Google).The feature was spotted by Artem Russakovskii, who tweeted about it this afternoon. For those who already have the feature enabled on their account, activating it is as simple as either clicking on the effects icon in the bottom right of your preview video prior to joining a meeting, typing in a prompt describing what you'd like,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Roblox is developing tools that will let developers offer subscriptions within their experiences, according to a blog post published Tuesday, which could prove to be a major new way for developers to make money in their experiences.Roblox already offers developers a lot of ways to monetize their experiences, including the ability to sell virtual items in an experience or on the Roblox marketplace, offering in-experience passes to certain content and gating experiences behind paid access. However, those examples are all one-time fees, and Roblox argues that subscriptions would offer a way for developers to establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earnings." (Other... Continue reading...