The Verge

Image: Bethesda Starfield, the biggest upcoming title from Microsoft-owned Bethesda, has been delayed to the first half of 2023, according to a tweet from the studio. The game was originally set to launch on November 11th, 2022, an homage to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s release date. The new space exploration game, which Bethesda has released precious few details about (and, to this date, no actual gameplay footage of), will get some extra development time, as will Redfall, the vampire co-op shooter coming from the team at Arkane that was surprise-announced last year.It’s likely that both games will be shown off in Bethesda’s upcoming games showcase on June 12th, so this early announcement is likely meant to set expectations ahead of time. Speaking of... Continue reading…

Image: Hasbro Optimus Prime is officially a Lego set, and not just in statue form — with 19 points of articulation, the Danish brickmaker has created a 1,508-piece Optimus Prime G1 action figure you can actually transform.OK, yes, you’ll still need to do that conversion yourself — it’s no walking, talking robot like the $750 self-transforming Optimus Prime we played with last year. But for $169.99 this June 1st, the Lego version is a lot more affordable and doesn’t require electricity just to stand. Image: Hasbro Speaking of which, Optimus stands 13.5 inches tall, then folds down into a 27-inch long semi truck — and comes with instructions and pieces to build his ion blaster, translucent orange Energon axe, jetpack, an Energon... Continue reading…

That’s the Studio on the right. | Image; HP HP’s ZBook Studio is widely acknowledged as one of the best workstation laptops on today’s market. Last year’s model came with a stunning OLED touchscreen, a customizable RGB keyboard, and a versatile set of features that you’ll be hard-pressed to find in too many other business lines. Most impressively, it takes the powerful specs many professionals need and crams them into a chassis that’s under four pounds.Studio fans will be happy to hear that HP has refreshed the device. The new ZBook Studio G9 can be configured up to a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or an RTX A5000. (The two are comparable in terms of raw power, but the A5000 is meant for heavier production workloads like machine learning and simulation.)HP says that ZBook Studio models... Continue reading…

OnePlus’ latest set of wireless earbuds is also the first to get its Nord branding, which the company uses for its cheaper products. The new Nord Buds are being announced today alongside teases for two new entries to OnePlus’ European Nord smartphone lineup: the Nord 2T 5G, and the Nord CE 2 Lite 5G.The Nord Buds actually have a fair amount going for them, even at $39.99. They don’t have active noise cancellation, and they only have two mics in each stem rather than three like the $99 Buds Z2, but they’re rated for the same seven hours of battery life (38 hours combined with the case), and promise the same low latency — especially when connected to a OnePlus phone with ProGaming mode on — and fast charging.The Nord Buds also have... Continue reading…

This morning, a collaboration of scientists with the Event Horizon Telescope initiative is set to unveil a “groundbreaking discovery” about our Milky Way galaxy. The team has provided little details about what they’re announcing, but the mysterious news will be livestreamed at 9AM ET.You may remember the Event Horizon Telescope team from 2019, when the group revealed the first picture ever taken of a black hole’s shadow. Back then, the team showed off an image of a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy called Messier 87, or M87. It was a massive undertaking that entailed observing the black hole for a week in April of 2017, using eight radio telescopes stationed in Chile, Hawaii, Antarctica, and elsewhere, and then... Continue reading…

The alleged design of the Galaxy Z Flip 4. | Image: OnLeaks / 91Mobiles Just hours after we got our first glimpse at the potential design of Samsung’s Z Fold 4, unofficial renders of its smaller sibling — the Z Flip 4 — have also leaked via 91Mobiles and OnLeaks. But while the next Fold might get a redesigned camera bump, the Z Flip 4’s design looks almost identical to its predecessor. Externally it still has a two-tone color scheme with a pair of cameras and small notification display, while inside there’s still a 6.7-inch foldable display with a hole-punch selfie cutout in the top middle.That’s not necessarily much of a surprise, nor is it definitely a bad thing. Samsung followed up its first Z Flip with the almost-identical Z Flip 5G just months later, so it’s already proved it’s happy to update the... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The coolest feature of the Steam Deck — bar none, if you ask me — is how the portable gaming PC lets you get the absolute most from its AMD RDNA 2 graphics and 40 watt-hour battery. As of the last update, you could lower the screen’s refresh rate to increase your effective framerate and lower latency, and you’ve been able to throttle the CPU, GPU and frame limiter since launch. The catch: even if you figured out a great combination that gave you the battery life and/or performance you crave, the Steam Deck wouldn’t save those settings per game.You’d have to memorize them, and flick the toggles appropriately, every time you switched to a different game. That changes today.Wednesday’s update now comes with per-game performance... Continue reading…

Activision Blizzard said on Twitter Wednesday that its Battle.net service was suffering from a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A little over an hour later, reported that the attacks it was monitoring have ended.In the initial tweet, sent at 7:11PM ET from the @BlizzardCS Twitter account, the company cautioned that the attack “may result in high latency and disconnections for some players.” That first tweet mentioned a singular attack, but a second one reporting that things had ended, sent at 8:29PM ET, referenced attacks — plural.

Look closely: no headphone jack. | Image: Google Google just revealed the Pixel 6A at Google I/O on Wednesday, and while it has a number of impressive specs for a midrange device, it’s missing one that the company has celebrated on its A-series line for years: a 3.5mm headphone jack.As many smartphone manufacturers have moved on from the headphone jack — a trend largely kicked off by Apple with the iPhone 7 in 2016 — its presence on the A-series line has become more and more of a distinguishing feature. Google even made a ridiculous two-minute ad celebrating the headphone jack in the Pixel 5A that parodied Apple’s elaborate design videos. That video was titled, in part, “The Circle Comes Full Circle.” Well, it seems the circle is coming full circle again, as now Google is the one set... Continue reading…

Image: Disney On an earnings call earlier today, Disney CEO Bob Chapek sounded like someone who has clear ideas of ESPN’s fully streaming future. He told analysts and investors that “when it comes time to actually pull the trigger,” he believes ESPN can create “the ultimate fan offering that will appeal to the superfan who loves sports,” and “I think there’s nobody but ESPN who could frankly pull that off.”This isn’t the first time we’ve heard a Disney exec reference the potential of ESPN streaming — former CEO Bob Iger said in 2015 that it will happen eventually but projected the possibility as more than five years out. In contrast, Chapek said Disney isn’t ready to share the specifics of its model on how long it would take to reach profitability or... Continue reading…

Pictured: probably not the future CEO of Twitter. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Jack Dorsey is trying to squash rumors that he’ll be reinstated as Twitter’s CEO once Elon Musk takes charge. On Wednesday he tweeted “nah I’ll never be CEO again” in response to someone predicting he would be returning to lead the company he co-founded, before going on to say that he doesn’t want the role.In another response, Dorsey says that “no one ultimately” should be Twitter’s CEO, perhaps referring to Bluesky, a project meant to turn Twitter into a decentralized protocol, rather than a traditional social network. Dorsey has a contentious history with the leadership role at Twitter. The company’s board fired him from his role as CEO in 2008, just two years after he helped start the company (though he stayed on the... Continue reading…

This is the front of the forthcoming Pixel Tablet | Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge Big white bezels. Matte, looks-like-plastic back. Thick profile. 2023. Android.That’s about all we know about Google’s forthcoming Pixel Tablet, which the company teased during its keynote presentation for the I/O 2022 developer conference this week. Rick Osterloh, Google’s senior vice president of devices and services and head of the Pixel program, confirmed to my colleague David Pierce that the tablet is coming to fill out the range of Pixel devices and provide a complete ecosystem in Google’s lineup.But as I saw the image of the Pixel Tablet pop up in the livestream during the keynote, I couldn’t help but react with, “That? That’s Google’s big return to tablet hardware?” The device that Google showed off brings to mind the front of... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images The controversial Texas social media law HB 20 will take effect following a ruling today from a US appeals court. The tech industry trade groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) managed to block HB 20 in court last year, but that victory has been undone by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which today granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request for a stay in NetChoice and CCIA v. Paxton. NetChoice and the CCIA were successful in blocking a similar law in Florida last year.HB 20 allows Paxton’s office or Texas residents to sue social networks that moderate based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person,” among other offenses — language that potentially makes basic moderation... Continue reading…

Struggling EV company Lordstown completed the sale of its Ohio factory to Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles Apple’s iPhone. The factory, which sold for $230 million, will now become the site of a joint venture between the two companies.The deal was originally set to close last month, but Lordstown kept pushing back the deadline. If the sale wasn’t completed before May 18th, the company would have had to pay back the $200 million that Foxconn put down as a deposit — an amount that Lordstown has said it does not have.The deal was originally set to close last month, but Lordstown kept pushing back the deadlineThe new joint venture will be called MIH EV Design LLC and will be 55 percent owned by Foxconn and 45 percent by... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Disney added 7.9 million new subscribers to its Disney Plus streaming service during the first three months of 2022, the company announced in its Q2 earnings report on Wednesday. That brings the total to around 87.6 million worldwide, excluding the 50.1 million people subscribed to Disney Plus Hotstar internationally. In the US and Canada alone, Disney Plus now has 7.1 million more subscribers than it did a year ago, with 44.4 million.The company also said that the number of subscribers for all of its streaming offerings — including Hulu and ESPN Plus — had grown to over 205 million, an increase from the 196.4 million it reported in January.That’s better news than Netflix’s had recently. Last month, the streaming company reported that... Continue reading…

Google’s new Pixel Buds Pro sell for $199, while the Pixel Buds A-Series go for $99. | Image: Google During its annual developer conference, Google I/O, Google announced a new pair of true wireless earbuds, the Pixel Buds Pro, which will be available for preorder starting on July 21st and in stores on July 28th. The new Buds Pro offer more features than last year’s Pixel Buds A-Series, however, at $199, they’re also twice the price. So are they worth the extra cost or should you stick with the entry-level $99 Pixel Buds A-Series?To help you answer that question, we’ve compared the features and specs of both models so you can find the right fit for you. Note that while we have reviewed the Pixel Buds A-Series, we’ve not tested the Pixel Buds Pro as of yet. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get some hands-on time with the earbuds ahead of... Continue reading…

LiveWire, the electric motorcycle company spinoff from Harley-Davidson, announced its most affordable model yet, the S2 Del Mar. The initial batch of Del Mar motorcycles, dubbed Launch Edition, will sell for $17,699, while base model versions will start at $15,000.The S2 Del Mar is a middleweight motorcycle, making it more approachable than last year’s LiveWire One. It’s being built on LiveWire’s Arrow platform, which includes battery, electronics, and motor, in a single unit that the company can then plug various model types into.The Del Mar will use the S2 version of the platform, designed for middleweight motorcycles, LiveWire says. However, Arrow is designed to be scalable, and future versions are expected to include a... Continue reading…

The Pixel 6A follows the 6 and 6 Pro’s design cues. | Image: Google Google is officially announcing the Pixel 6A, which embraces the company’s new design language and custom chipset but keeps the 5A’s $449 price tag. The announcement comes as Google kicks off its I/O developer conference, but if you’re itching to snag the new device, you’ll have to wait a little while longer since it won’t actually ship until July 28th. (Preorders will begin a week earlier, on July 21st.)The 6A follows the pronounced design trend that the 6 and 6 Pro set when they arrived last year with a raised horizontal camera bump and a two-tone body. Following suit, the fingerprint sensor is under the screen rather than on the back panel. And there’s good news if you think the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are too big — the 6A comes with a... Continue reading…

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Rivian, the buzzy electric vehicle company backed by Ford and Amazon, reported a net loss of $1.59 billion in the first quarter of 2021 based on $95 million in revenue. The company said it delivered 1,227 vehicles to customers during the past three months, bringing its total number of deliveries to 2,148.Rivian said it now has over 90,000 reservations for its R1T and R1S electric vehicles, up from 83,000 as of its last update in March.The company released its first-quarter earnings after a particularly bad week, with its stock dropping to all-time lows on the news that one of its prominent investors, Ford, was selling about 8 percent of its shares in Rivian. The company’s stock price was down over 78 percent since the start of the... Continue reading…

Image: Google The Pixel 6A is the latest phone to join the competitive upper tier of midrange phones, also occupied by Samsung, Apple, and more. Google announced the new phone onstage at its I/O 2022 keynote, detailing just a few key things about it. First thing you should know: it isn’t coming out immediately. Unlike how many announcements take place as products are on their way to retailers, this one won’t be available to preorder until July 21st, 2022, with orders shipping the following week.Unsurprisingly, this new (and smaller) 6.1-inch Pixel phone borrows many of the same design features from the pricier Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, with a raised camera section and a two-toned color scheme. The Pixel 6A is a big deal, as it’s the first Google... Continue reading…

Graphics by Michele Doying / The Verge Fintech is in its flop era, and it would be funny, except that it’s dragging real people down with it.It’s true that stocks are down generally — the S&P 500 has fallen 10 percent in the last 30 days, the Nasdaq is down 14 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 6.5 percent. But fintech is, by comparison, down bad.Coinbase dropped almost two-thirds in the last 30 days. Block, the Jack Dorsey-led company formerly known as Square, fell by 40 percent. PayPal shares dropped by a third. Robinhood has fallen less, shaving off more than a quarter of its value.The meme stocks are down bad, too. GameStop fell more than 40 percent in the last month. AMC also lost more than 40 percent of its value. Bed, Bath and Beyond is worth... Continue reading…

Google Assistant is coming. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge After almost a year of waiting, we finally know when Google Assistant will arrive on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 lineup. Kind of. In a blog, Samsung executive vice president Patrick Chomet announced the long-awaited feature will arrive this summer. As for when this summer, it’s anybody’s guess.Chomet writes that Google Assistant on Wear OS 3 will enable “faster and more natural voice interactions” as well as the ability to look up quick answers while on the go. He also noted that it would be possible to control Spotify with Google Assistant on the watch.A big reason why Samsung opted to work with Google to create a unified Wear OS 3 platform was the Google Play Store. Samsung’s smartwatches had historically been a way for it to push its... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge OpenSea is rolling out features to “improve authenticity” on the digital marketplace, the company announced in a series of blog posts today. The updates include a new system to detect and remove copycat NFTs and an overhaul to the account verification process.“Copymints” are tokens ripping off other NFTs and have proved to be a problem for platforms like OpenSea. Last year, the platform banned two collections that mimicked Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs by flipping them so the image is mirrored. And though the owner of an NFT is recorded on the blockchain, fakes are rampant. In February, OpenSea said that over 80 percent of items it removed for violations were created with its free minting tool.OpenSea says it’s implementing a new two-part... Continue reading…

Image: Sonos Sonos will roll out its very own voice control assistant on June 1st in the United States. As The Verge reported earlier this month, Sonos Voice Control will be added to all of the company’s voice-enabled smart speakers through an upcoming software update. Once it arrives, owners of those devices will be able to start music playback, skip tracks, adjust volume, and send audio to other Sonos speakers in their home using “Hey Sonos” voice commands. Sonos Voice will expand to France later in 2022, but the company hasn’t announced rollout plans beyond those two initial countries.Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora, Deezer, and Sonos Radio are the supported services at launch. Some will be disappointed by the absence of Spotify, but during a... Continue reading…

The Sonos Ray is smaller than the Beam and Arc. Sonos this afternoon officially announced its Sonos Ray soundbar. Matching the specs and design that The Verge first reported last month, the company’s new entry-level soundbar will be priced at a slightly higher-than-initially-planned $279 when it goes on sale on June 7th. (Hey, maybe Sonos is feeling inflation just like the rest of us.)The Ray is being positioned as ideal for first-time soundbar buyers who want to upgrade their TV’s lackluster built-in speakers. It’s capable of outputting Dolby Digital audio — there’s no Atmos — and connects to TVs via an optical cable. Sonos is leaving HDMI and eARC for its more expensive Beam and Arc products. Gamers should note that soundbars that rely on an optical connection can sometimes exhibit... Continue reading…

Some of Google’s latest hardware announcements are coming in the summer, while others are further off. | Image: Google Google just announced a batch of new Pixel products at its I/O 2022 keynote. Among them is a new midrange Pixel phone, the Pixel 6A; some new premium wireless earbuds, the Pixel Buds Pro; and Google’s first wearable, the Pixel Watch. This is a healthy amount of new tech to come out of the online developer conference, in addition to what’s coming soon for Android 13 and other Google services, but let’s not start camping out in lines at the Google Store and various Best Buy locations just yet.In typical Google fashion, much of what it boasted onstage during I/O are things that are coming soon. If you missed the keynote, here’s where you can catch up on all the nitty-gritty details. But if you’re in the market for Google’s new phone, buds,... Continue reading…

On Wednesday, the Senate voted to confirm privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya to the Federal Trade Commission. The confirmation secured a Democratic voting majority at the agency tasked by the Biden administration with investigating big tech companies like Facebook and Google over potential data privacy and competition violations.Vice President Kamala Harris voted to break a 50-50 tie on the Senate floor to finalize Bedoya’s confirmation.“The confirmation secured a Democratic voting majority at the agency”Bedoya will replace former Commissioner Rohit Chopra who left the FTC last year to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before his confirmation, Bedoya was a Georgetown law professor with a focus on privacy law, founding the... Continue reading…

The new Pixel 6A in its three color options: charcoal, chalk, and sage. | Image: Google Google’s new Pixel 6A, announced at its I/O 2022 keynote, may seem like just another budget-focused A-series model, but the latest midrange Pixel is a little different than its forebears. In the past, the Pixel A-line opted for a cheaper, plastic build and slower processor to hit a lower price point. This time, the Pixel 6A uses the same Google Tensor processor that first debuted in the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, and yet it still undercuts its flagship brethren to sell at the same $449 price as the outgoing Pixel 5A when preorders go up on July 21st and it hits stores on July 28th.So if you’re not giving up slower performance, what are you giving up? And why would anyone still spend more on a Pixel 6 or 6 Pro? Image: Google ... Continue reading…

Google wrapped up its I/O presentation with one big surprise: a look at its latest AR glasses. The key feature Google showed off was the ability to see languages translated right in front of your eyes, which seems to me like a very practical application for AR glasses. While a big part of Silicon Valley is heavily invested in making AR glasses a reality thus far no has suggested a truly “killer” app for AR that would let you overlook the wide variety of privacy concerns inherent with the tech. Live translating the spoken word would definitely be a killer feature.The company didn’t share any details on when they might be available, and only demonstrated them in a recorded video that didn’t actually show the display, or how you would... Continue reading…

The Pixel 6A is one of the many Pixel devices Google showed off today. | Image: Google Google has wrapped up its two-hour-long I/O keynote, which was absolutely packed with news. We heard about AI, Android, and, of course, a plethora of Pixel hardware. Here are the biggest announcements we saw on Wednesday. Image: Google Google isn’t bumping the price of its A lineup. The Pixel 6A features Google’s flagship chip but not its best cameraGoogle announced its new mid-tier phone, the Pixel 6A, which will cost $449 when it’s available for preorder on July 21st. The company seems to be flipping its usual script for this phone — previous A models have featured a camera comparable to the one found on Google’s flagship Pixels but had weaker processors. The 6A, though, has the Pixel 6’s Tensor chip and... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Making ambient computing happen is forcing Google to change how it does everything Continue reading…

The Pixel Watch will support turn-by-turn navigation on Google Maps | Image: Google After weeks of rumors and leaked photos, Google finally confirmed that the Pixel Watch is real. Today’s announcement is more of a tease than a full reveal, however, with the watch arriving later this fall alongside the Pixel 7.Given that the Pixel Watch is the worst-kept wearable secret of 2022, there wasn’t anything too surprising in terms of design. As suspected, the Pixel Watch has a circular, domed design and features a “tactile” crown and side button. It’s made of recycled stainless steel and has swappable proprietary bands. It’ll also run on an “improved” Wear OS 3 that features a “refreshed UI” with better navigation and smart notifications. You’ll also have the option to pick a cellular version of the device for standalone... Continue reading…

That device there on the right? That’s Google’s upcoming Android tablet. | Image: Google Google is getting back in the tablet game. The company’s internal hardware division plans to release an Android-powered tablet in 2023, senior vice president of devices and services Rick Osterloh announced on Wednesday at its I/O developer conference. Osterloh was light on details, except to say it’ll run on the same Tensor processor inside Google’s latest Pixel phones and that he imagines it as a consumer-focused gadget focused on entertainment and consumption rather than work. (The Verge’s Dan Seifert, who briefly saw a picture during a product briefing ahead of I/O, immediately said “it looks like an old Samsung tablet.”) But Osterloh’s overall message is clear: Google cares about Android tablets. For real this time.The announcement... Continue reading…

The Pixel 7 (with a pill-shaped camera cutout) and Pixel 7 Pro (with two camera cutouts). | Image: Google Google couldn’t let its I/O keynote pass without teasing its next flagship phones: the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, arriving this fall. It’s a modest update of last year’s design that keeps the horizontal camera bar but tones it down a little with updated camera cutouts. The 7 and 7 Pro will include a next-gen Tensor chipset and ship with Android 13.This year’s Pixel phones feature an updated version of the design introduced on the 6 and 6 Pro, hanging onto the prominent horizontal camera bump wrapping around the back. This time, the camera bar is made of aluminum that flows into the device’s side rails, rather than having a big black bar that cuts off at the edges like last year. The renders also suggest that Google will ditch the two-tone color... Continue reading…

Image: Google Today, after several attempts at making wireless earbuds, Google is announcing its most premium product in the category yet: the $199 Pixel Buds Pro. Designed as a direct answer to Apple’s AirPods Pro, the Pixel Buds Pro offer active noise cancellation, a transparency mode, multipoint Bluetooth connectivity, and an IPX4 water resistance rating, among other features. They’ll be available to preorder alongside the also new Pixel 6A smartphone starting July 21st and in stores a week later on the 28th.Both the earbuds and case closely resemble the 2020 Pixel Buds — the carrying case looks practically identical — and the Pro earbuds will come in black, blue, green, or red. Compared to the older buds, you’ll notice more microphone inlets... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For Google, a company that built its reputation on organizing the world’s information, the latest sales pitch to users is that it will try to do more with less of it.At its I/O 2022 developer conference on May 11th, the tech giant announced a range of privacy measures that it says will help users retain more control over how their data is used by Google applications and displayed to the world through search.One new change introduced at the conference is the My Ad Center interface: a hub that will let users customize the types of ads they see by selecting from a range of topics they are interested in or opt to see fewer ads on a given topic. Screenshot of the My Ad Center interface, via Google. Google says that My... Continue reading…

Image: Google There’s a good chance you’ve spent much of the last two-plus years sitting at home, cycling through endless days of virtual meetings staring into your laptop’s webcam and talking into your built-in mic. This means you’ve spent much of the last two-plus years appearing to everyone else like a mushy pile of poorly lit pixels, sounding like you’re shouting from inside a tin can. It’s not your fault: your laptop’s webcam just sucks. And so does its mic. But Google thinks it can fix them both with AI.Google announced on Wednesday at its annual I/O developer conference that its Workspace team has been working on a couple of AI-powered ways to improve your virtual meetings. The most impressive is Portrait Restore, which Google says can... Continue reading…

Google is partnering with a Harvard professor to promote a new scale for measuring skin tones with the hope of fixing problems of bias and diversity in the company’s products.The tech giant is working with Ellis Monk, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard and the creator of the Monk Skin Tone scale, or MST. The MST scale is designed to replace outdated skin tone scales that are biased towards lighter skin. When these older scales are used by tech companies to categorize skin color, it can lead to products that perform worse for people with darker coloring, says Monk.“Unless we have an adequate measure of differences in skin tone, we can’t really integrate that into products to make sure they’re more inclusive,” Monk tells The... Continue reading…

The Test Kitchen is one of Google’s new AI experiments. | Image: Google After mistakes and challenges, the company is moving a little slower with AI language models Continue reading…

“Near me” lets you search for pictures of objects locally. | Image: Google At Google I/O, Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan announced new enhancements for its Lens Multisearch tool, which lets you conduct a search with just an image and a couple of words.A new mode, called “near me,” will let users take a photo of an object and then find results locally. As Raghavan explained, you’ll be able to take a photo of a dish and then search for restaurants that serve that specific food. Google will then display a list of relevant restaurants near you. To make this feature happen, Google scans relevant photos from websites, as well as those posted by reviewers, and then matches them to the one you uploaded. Near me will be available in English later this year, and will expand to more languages “over... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge The Nest Hub Max’s latest updates let you use Google Assistant without having to say “Hey Google” ahead of every request.One of the ways that’ll work is with a new feature Google calls “Look and Talk.” Once it’s turned on, you’ll be able to look at the Nest Hub Max’s display and ask a question, no “Hey Google” prompt required. The feature could be a handy way to save some time when you’re already looking at a Nest Hub Max’s screen — I could see it being a useful way to ask for recipes.Look and Talk is an opt-in feature, and you’ll need to have both Google’s Face Match and Voice Match technologies turned on to use it, according to a blog post from Sissie Hsiao, Google’s vice president of Assistant. Audio and video from the Look and... Continue reading…

The dream of a central hub to manage your streaming services is getting closer. | Image: Roku Roku users are now able to subscribe to Discovery Plus through the Roku Channel’s Premium Subscriptions feature, the company announced on Tuesday. The streaming service has been available to watch on Roku from day one, but now there’s an option to manage your subscription to it from Roku’s hub.When you subscribe, you can choose either the ad-free version of Discovery Plus, or the ad-supported tier. Like with the standalone subscription (as in, the one not done through the Roku Channel), there’s a week-long free trial. Some of the Roku Channel’s premium offerings. This is the first time Roku’s offering a premium subscription with an ad-supported tier. While the difference for Discovery Plus is only a few bucks ($4.99... Continue reading…

Bandai Namco / Klein Tsuboi The tale of “Let me solo her” has reached an epic milestone — 1,000 Malenias defeated. The Elden Ring folk hero live streamed the event, dispatching the thousandth Goddess of Rot in manner that demands it be recounted to the masses.The tale of “Let me solo her” began last month, when whispers of a strange warrior started making the rounds on Reddit. Players, stymied by a boss considered one of the hardest in FromSoftware history, would call for help, summoning a pot-helmeted, semi-nude warrior who would dispatch Malenia with relative ease. After that, “Let me solo her” would return to his world with a cheerful wave to await the next summons from a Tarnished in trouble. And from there, the legend was born.“I chose Malenia to help... Continue reading…

Image: EA Several years after we first heard that EA and Respawn Entertainment would bring their battle royale shooter to mobile platforms, there’s a global release date for Apex Legends Mobile, which will launch for Android and iOS on May 17th. Beta testing for the game started over a year ago and has slowly expanded to include more players worldwide, but now its limited regional launch period is over. If you’re wondering what devices it will run on, this FAQ from the beta has more information.EA isn’t ready to share more details, but beta testers have been able to experience a game that looks fairly close to the experience players get on PCs and consoles. In an earlier trailer provided for the regional launch, you can see how the game has... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube TV is rolling out two new Spanish-language offerings: Spanish Plan and Spanish Plus. While the $34.99 / month standalone Spanish Plan provides access to an all-Spanish lineup of channels on YouTube TV, Spanish Plus is a $14.99 / month add-on for users already subscribed to the YouTube TV Base Plan.Spanish Plan subscribers gain access to over 28 channels (all of which you can view on this page) including ESPN Deportes, Fox Deportes, CNN Español, and Discovery en Español. The Spanish Plus add-on is advertised as having a slightly more limited selection of over 25 networks, but that’s just because YouTube TV already bundles Univision, UniMás, and Galavisión in its Base Plan.YouTube TV announced the addition of these three channels... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Join us for all the news and announcements from Google’s developer keynote Continue reading…

You can play Twitter Data Dash right now. | Image: Twitter Twitter released a new browser game on Wednesday that’s intended to help explain some of its privacy settings. You can play the game, called Twitter Data Dash, right here.“Welcome to PrivaCity!” reads a description of the game on the site. “Get your dog, Data, safely to the park. Dodge cat ads, swim through a sea of DMs, battle trolls, and learn how to take control of your Twitter experience along the way.”When you start Twitter Data Dash, which was made by Momo Pixel, you’ll first pick the language you want to play in, and then pick from one of four characters who will accompany Data the dog on a couple of the levels. (That character will otherwise appear in text boxes.) The game itself is a pretty straightforward side-scrolling... Continue reading…

Finally, a body composition gadget that won’t tell you to just lose weight Continue reading…

The first model, a 1961 Scout 80, in pickup style with removable hardtop. | Dutchtower Volkswagen is considering resurrecting the SUV pioneer Scout as an off-road electric vehicle brand, according to The Wall Street Journal. The brand would be focused on the US market, where it would likely compete with popular nameplates like the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco.According to the Journal, VW’s board of directors is set to approve the plan on Wednesday. The plan envisions Scout operating as a subsidiary of VW, much like Audi, Skoda, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Bentley. (A VW spokesperson declined to comment, noting that the report refers to actions taken by Volkswagen Group’s supervisory board.)VW is one of the largest automakers in the world but only holds a small share of the US market. The plan to bring back Scout as an... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge It’s for the developers, but we all know it’s really for Pixel fans Continue reading…