The Verge

It has extended server maintenance due to an issue. | Image: Sony Gran Turismo 7, one of the biggest PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 releases of the year so far, suffered through server maintenance for over a day because of an issue found with the game’s latest update. “Due to an issue found with Update 1.07, we are extending the current server maintenance period,” reads a notice on the Gran Turismo website from Thursday morning. “We will confirm the completion time as soon as possible.”On Friday morning, a 354MB 1.08 patch was released and has been downloaded by players on PS5 and PS4 systems. However, even after downloading it and waiting through a lengthy installation/copying process, the game still wouldn’t connect to its servers. We tried it on our systems and could confirm it still showed an... Continue reading…

The price of compatibility Continue reading…

Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge At last, the rocket has arrived Continue reading…

This inexpensive indoor air quality monitor can only say, not do Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The free tier of Google Stadia launched back in 2020, so access to Google’s cloud game streaming service is readily available to a wide range of people across a list of countries. If you want to try it out yourself but don’t feel like ponying-up the $69 for the official Stadia Controller, you thankfully don’t need to let that stop you.You can, of course, buy one from Google if you choose to. And if you want to play wirelessly on the Chromecast Ultra, the company’s Stadia Controller is currently your only option to do that. But on PC and mobile, the service also works wirelessly with most popular console gaming controllers, including the Xbox Series X / S controller and the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 controller. Even controllers dating... Continue reading…

Sony’s noise-cancelling WH-1000XM4 are on sale among other headphone deals We’re all about headphones in today’s deals post. Regardless of your brand of choice, we’ve found a variety of models and styles available at sizeable discounts. All of these headphones occupy a spot in our roundup of the best noise-canceling headphones, so they’re definitely worthy of your consideration.First off, we’ve got the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones. Normally, these headphones cost $348, but they’re discounted to $278 at both Amazon and Best Buy. We’ve seen this model hit a slightly lower price before, but this is the best price we’ve seen since Black Friday. The XM4 features a number of improvements over Sony’s previous over-ear, noise-canceling headphones, including multi-point Bluetooth connectivity and better noise... Continue reading…

Everything’s great, apart from the typing feel Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Last month, Allison P. Davis wrote a widely read article in New York titled “A Vibe Shift Is Coming.” In it, she posited that the third year of our pandemic would reveal an obvious, and perhaps wrenching, evolution of the culture. A vibe shift, she wrote, is “a relatively simple idea: In the culture, sometimes things change, and a once-dominant social wavelength starts to feel dated.”I have been thinking about Davis’ piece more or less ever since. In particular, I’ve been working on how to apply it to my chosen field: tech journalism, which is driven as much by social wavelengths as any other part of our culture. For some time, I had been attempting to work out which stories felt relevant in 2022 that may not have in, say, 2020. Today,... Continue reading…

Image: Withings While Withings isn’t a stranger to wrist-based sleep tracking, the company announced today that it’s adding a new diary feature to its most novel sleep monitoring gadget — the Withings Sleep mat.The mat, which is placed under a person’s mattress, automatically collects biometric sleep data like heart rate, sleep stages, and snoring. The new Sleep Diary feature allows users to combine their own observations along with the data collected from the mat. That information is then compiled into a new dashboard that aggregates sleep data over time. Users can then generate a PDF report that can be shared with doctors.According to Withings’ press release, the diary feature was developed with the input of sleep physicians and is based on medical... Continue reading…

The Galaxy A73 5G in three colors. | Image: Samsung Alongside its Galaxy A53 5G and A33 5G, Samsung also snuck out an announcement for the Galaxy A73 5G, a new top-tier phone in the midrange A-series with a high resolution 108-megapixel camera. According to the company’s press release, the Galaxy A73 5G will be available in “select markets” from April 22nd, at a price that’s yet to be announced.Although the A73 also features a slightly bigger 6.7-inch display than the A53’s 6.5-inch panel, the big spec bump here appears to be its camera. At 108-megapixels, it’s one of the highest resolution phone cameras around. It outstrips the Galaxy A53, which only has a 64-megapixel main camera, and is the same as what Samsung has included on its flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra. High megapixel counts... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than half of the images on the web are missing alt text, according to Microsoft. Image labels (alternative text) are key for many who are blind or low vision, as they provide screen readers with text to read aloud. Microsoft is now attempting to fill the gap with auto-generated alt text for images on the web.Existing screen readers currently read out “unlabeled graphic” if there’s no description of an image at all which isn’t very helpful. Microsoft Edge has now been updated to improve the screen reader experience for all of the images on the web without alt text.“When a screen reader finds an image without a label, that image can be automatically processed by machine learning (ML) algorithms to describe the image in words and... Continue reading…

Pete Davidson playing Chad as an astronaut on SNL. | Photo By: Kyle Dubiel/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson is no longer scheduled to fly on Blue Origin’s space flight later this month, the space tourism venture has announced. No reason was given for Davidson’s departure, only that the date of the launch has shifted from its original March 23rd date.“Blue Origin’s 20th flight of New Shepard has shifted to Tuesday, March 29. Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission,” Blue Origin spokesperson Sara Blask said in a statement.Davidson was scheduled to be an “honorary guest” (an inclusion designed to build hype) alongside five paying customers on Blue Origin’s fourth crewed flight. Previous guests have included Star Trek actor William Shatner, GMA anchor and former football... Continue reading…

The NLRB says Gerald Bryson’s firing is a clear case of retaliation. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is facing a lawsuit in federal court from the National Labor Relations Board. The watchdog has asked a judge to issue an injunction forcing Amazon to give labor activist Gerald Bryson his job back. Amazon fired Bryson in April 2020, in what the NLRB says is a clear case of Amazon retaliating against him for protesting unsafe working conditions at its JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, NY.According to the NLRB, the Section 10(j) injunction it’s pursuing is intended to temporarily make a situation right when the court case could take too long to fix the alleged issue. In this case, Bryson has been fighting to get his job back for almost two years, according to The New York Times. The NLRB petition (which you can read in full below)... Continue reading…

There may soon be an extra step when switching carriers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile will be adding a new layer of security to its port-out process with the addition of a PIN, according to the company. According to The T-Mo Report, which obtained an internal document, the new number transfer procedure would require users to obtain a six-digit PIN from T-Mobile’s app or site and provide it when attempting to change their number to a different provider, which could make it harder for bad actors to steal phone numbers in “SIM swapping” attacks.In a statement to The Verge, T-Mobile Media Relations confirmed the company is “putting Number Transfer PINs in place to add an additional layer of security to protect customers from unauthorized port outs. These PINs will be put in place soon.”According to The T-Mo Report,... Continue reading…

Hogwarts Legacy, the upcoming open-world Harry Potter RPG, got its first proper gameplay reveal from developer Avalanche Software ahead of its release date later this year at a special PlayStation State of Play stream that showed off 14 minutes of footage from the game.(Despite the Sony-hosted debut, Hogwarts Legacy isn’t a PlayStation exclusive and will also be released on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X / Series S in addition to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.)Players will get to create their own character, be sorted into one of the four Hogwarts houses, and take classes (although they’ll be starting Hogwarts as a late-fifth-year student, presumably to avoid a serious RPG starring an 11-year-old.)Live your own Hogwarts... Continue reading…

Image: Respawn Entertainment Respawn has opened pre-registration on Android for Apex Legends Mobile, the upcoming mobile version of the battle royale hit. If you pre-register, Respawn says you’ll be “among the first” to play the game when it launches in your region, and you’ll also get exclusive in-game items.Respawn launched Apex Legends Mobile in 10 countries last month, and while it’s unclear when it will be available in the US or more widely, the studio indicated in a press email that the game is set to launch this year. However, if you’re in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, it’s unclear if you can pre-register. On the Apex Legends Mobile website, Respawn says that “Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau will be included in the global pre-registration” (emphasis Respawn’s),... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s experiment with Snapchat-style stories is continuing, with the company further rolling out the feature to a larger group of users today. If you’ve gotten the feature, you’ll be greeted with a new banner when you launch the app encouraging you to create a story.In a statement provided to TechCrunch, TikTok noted that “Currently, we’re expanding a pilot test, which provides creators with additional formats to bring their creative ideas to life for the TikTok community,” although that doesn’t say how many users are currently included in the test or what the future rollout of the feature will look like.Adding a video or photo to a story works extremely similarly to taking a photo or video for TikTok’s standard feature, with the... Continue reading…

Photo by John Lamparski / Getty Images Spotify’s production deal with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will finally result in a podcast series this summer with the launch of Meghan’s first show.The series is long overdue. Spotify signed a deal with Harry and Meghan’s production company, Archewell Audio, in December 2020 to produce and host podcasts for the service, but it’s so far only resulted in a single one-off episode.Archewell discussed policies to “minimize the spread of misinformation”It also seemed like the deal could be on the rocks. In January, as Spotify was being scrutinized for its deal with Joe Rogan, Archewell Audio released a statement saying it had raised “concerns” to Spotify about “the all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform.”... Continue reading…

The ESPN app has been updated with support for Apple’s SharePlay feature, which lets you watch videos over FaceTime together with family and friends. The feature is particularly well suited for live sports, which the ESPN app (by virtue of offering built-in access to Disney’s ESPN Plus streaming service) offers a fairly considerable amount of.Once updated, users will be able to watch ESPN Plus streams, along with original ESPN video content in the app and “TV Everywhere” content within the app that users have authenticated with an additional login. As is the case with most SharePlay content, everyone that’s participating in a shared stream has to have access to the service in question — so if you’re the only one with an ESPN Plus... Continue reading…

An instructor at the Fort Leonard Wood Chemical School, who is designated as an agent handler, carries the VX nerve agent to contaminate a jeep in one of the eight chambers used for training chemical defense on April 18, 2003 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. | Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images It took less than six hours for drug-developing AI to invent 40,000 potentially lethal molecules. Researchers put AI normally used to search for helpful drugs into a kind of “bad actor” mode to show how easily it could be abused at a biological arms control conference.All the researchers had to do was tweak their methodology to seek out, rather than weed out toxicity. The AI came up with tens of thousands of new substances, some of which are similar to VX, the most potent nerve agent ever developed. Shaken, they published their findings this month in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.The paper had us at The Verge a little shookThe paper had us at The Verge a little shook, too. So, to figure out how worried we should be, The... Continue reading…

The fully stacked vehicle is about to crawl to its launchpad Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix has for years ignored the fact that many of us are mooching off our friends’ and families’ accounts. But the streaming king now appears to be reconsidering its look-the-other-way policy, a shift that comes as Netflix’s growth slows and its annual production budget for churning out new hits creeps ever higher. In other words, Netflix needs more money.The company this week announced that it’s testing a password-sharing crackdown that could curb the number of accounts mooching off account holders outside their own households. As part of this test, Netflix will soon offer users in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru the ability to add up to two additional members to their Netflix membership as sub-accounts. In Costa Rica, this will cost... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap is banning anonymous messaging features from third-party apps that integrate with its platform over concerns that they could be used for bullying and harassment. The change comes after a lawsuit last year sought to hold Snap liable for misuse of its platform linked to the death of a teenager who was being bullied on two Snapchat-connected apps. The third-party apps, Yolo and LMK, both had anonymous messaging features and were suspended by Snap shortly after the suit was filed.“While we know that most Snapchatters used these anonymous integrations in fun, engaging, and entirely appropriate ways, we believe some users might be more prone to engage in harmful behavior — such as bullying or harassment — if they have the shroud of... Continue reading…

It costs as much as three DualSense controllers, and you can’t remap rear triggers to its paddles Continue reading…

Image: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Amazon’s purchase of MGM for $8.45 billion is complete, without a public response from the FTC on whether or not it will challenge the deal. Reports have suggested for months that the FTC was considering a challenge, and The Wall Street Journal noted earlier this month that Amazon certified it had given the FTC all necessary information, setting a mid-month deadline that it would close the deal, with or without a response from the agency and its new leader, Lina Khan.After initially declining to comment on the deal’s closure, the FTC did send a statement to The Verge. The FTC’s office of public affairs director, Lindsay Kryzak, says “The FTC does not comment on any particular matters. However, we reiterate that the Commission does not... Continue reading…

The company’s been focusing a lot on big screens lately... | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is making some tweaks to the Play Store to make it easier for people with big screen devices to find apps that’ll take advantage of the display real estate. According to a post on its Developers blog, the company has some changes planned for how apps are ranked and promoted, how reviews are displayed, and the alert messages you might see if you’re browsing apps on a tablet, foldable, or Chromebook.In the post, Google says that it will update how the Play Store ranks and features apps on big-screen devices, with the logic taking account of factors like the support of different device orientations, keyboard support, and more. The company says that the change, which will take place “in the coming months,” is meant to “prioritize... Continue reading…

Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves into its third week, unconventional actors continue to target Russian state-backed businesses with a string of hacks and data leaks — the latest apparently referencing pro-hacktivism comments made by Hillary Clinton.The targeted organization is Transneft, the Russian state-controlled oil pipeline giant. On Thursday, leak hosting website Distributed Denial of Secrets published a link to 79GB of emails from the Omega Company, the research and development division of Transneft.Headquartered in Moscow, Transneft is the largest pipeline company in the world. As a state-owned Russian enterprise, it is now blocked from receiving investments from the US market under the terms of sanctions against... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung We’re getting closer to seeing all the new TVs announced back at CES start making their way to consumers. Today, Samsung announced that it’s officially taking preorders for its sizable 2022 lineup. And for the first time, the company is sharing the full details and pricing on its long-rumored, semi-announced QD-OLED consumer TV, which is now officially called the S95B.The S95B is a 4K QD-OLED set that will come in two sizes: the 55-inch model runs $2,399.99, and the 65-inch model costs $3,499.99. (Amazon is already offering discounts on both sizes.) Those are significantly higher prices than you’d pay for a standard LG OLED, but Samsung Display’s QD-OLED panel should deliver superior color accuracy at high brightness levels, even... Continue reading…

Kaley Cuoco as Cassie Bowden in The Flight Attendant. | HBO Max Though Kaley Cuoco’s Cassie Bowden was still a mess by the end of The Flight Attendant’s first season when she’d become one of the top suspects in a high-profile murder, she had made a more than respectable amount of progress towards getting her life together on all fronts. In addition to helping find the real killer, Cassie also resolved to finally get sober after years of struggling with alcoholism, and it all seemed very much like things might be looking up for the well-meaning flight attendant.That may still be the case on some level, but in the first trailer for The Flight Attendant’s second season, Cassie once again finds herself smack dab in the middle of another convoluted set of circumstances despite all the work she’s put into... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Google is releasing the second Android 13 developer preview on Thursday, and it includes a major new feature: apps will have to ask your permission to post notifications. iOS has had a similar feature for years, and it’s a very useful way to make sure only certain apps send you notifications. I’m glad to see that Google plans to bring something like it to Android.Based on Google’s blog post, it sounds as if asking for permission will be a requirement for Android 13 apps. “Apps targeting Android 13 will now need to request the notification permission from the user before posting notifications,” Dave Burke, a VP of engineering for Android, says in the post. Image: Google Google’s example of what a notification... Continue reading…

Tile has announced that it’s rolling out its new “Scan & Secure” feature in its app this week, allowing anyone with the Tile app to run a scan to see if there are any unwanted Tile tags or trackers near you that shouldn’t be there.The safety feature (which was announced last fall alongside Tile’s newest tracking tags) has been a long time coming and offers both iOS and Android users the ability to check for unwanted tags. Apple offers a similar app for Android, which lets users scan for similarly malicious AirTag trackers, too.All trackers — whether they be Tile tag, Apple AirTags, or from another company — carry the potential for abuse by stalkers, and while these devices have been around for years, the recent surge in popularity h... Continue reading…

Image: Apple When Apple introduced the M1 Ultra — the company’s most powerful in-house processor yet and the crown jewel of its brand new Mac Studio — it did so with charts boasting that the Ultra capable of beating out Intel’s best processor or Nvidia’s RTX 3090 GPU all on its own. The charts, in Apple’s recent fashion, were maddeningly labeled with “relative performance” on the Y-axis, and Apple doesn’t tell us what specific tests it runs to arrive at whatever numbers it uses to then calculate “relative performance.”But now that we have a Mac Studio, we can say that in most tests, the M1 Ultra isn’t actually faster than an RTX 3090, as much as Apple would like to say it is.To hear Apple tell it, the M1 Ultra is a miracle of silicon, one that... Continue reading…

Anker’s impressive Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro earbuds, which illuminate when placed into the charging case, are on sale for just $129.99 today. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge This St. Patrick’s Day, you’re certainly in luck — that is, if you’re on the market for an affordable pair of noise-canceling earbuds. That’s because Anker is currently selling the excellent Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro for $129.99 on Amazon today, which is a $40 discount and the best price we’ve seen on the true wireless earbuds this year. These platform-agnostic earbuds deliver a lot of features and value for the price. We were impressed by their powerful sound quality as well as the fact they support LDAC (Sony’s higher-bitrate wireless streaming protocol) and multipoint Bluetooth, which allows you to connect them to two devices at once. That’s a feature not even Sony’s flagship 1000XM4 earbuds, which is our top pick for best... Continue reading…

Smokey the cat is his full glory on the Echo Show 15’s large display. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge As screens proliferate in our homes, it’s nice to put them to good use outside of when you’re using them. Just like your computer has a screensaver, your Echo Show smart display can be set to show pretty pictures when it’s not on active duty serving up YouTube recipes or streaming your favorite tunes and TV shows. In fact, all the smart displays in the Echo Show line double as more-than-capable digital photo frames.The current Echo Show range includes the Echo Show 5, Echo Show 8, Echo Show 10, and the newest picture-perfect addition, the Echo Show 15, The simplest way to use one of these devices as a digital photo frame is to use Amazon’s Photos service, which has free unlimited storage of photos for Amazon Prime members. But there... Continue reading…

Image: Supermassive Games Supermassive Games, the studio behind interactive horror games like Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, has announced its next foray into the genre: The Quarry.It’s described as a “teen-horror narrative game where your every choice, big or small, shapes your story and determines who lives to tell the tale.” Much like Until Dawn, the game appears to start from a very familiar place for horror fans, in this case a summer camp where players can control nine different counselors. It’ll also feature a multiplayer aspect: there’s a co-op mode where two players control different characters, and a mode for up to seven players where everyone can vote on the choices made. Image: Supermassive Games Until Dawn made a... Continue reading…

The rocket is headed to the launch pad with a lot of baggage Continue reading…

Bandai Namco The latest Elden Ring patch nerfs two extremely popular abilities, adds some sorely needed quality of life updates, and provides a significant buff to caster builds. Late last night, Bandai Namco announced patch 1.03 for Elden Ring. The patch fixes several bugs including one that prevented players from obtaining items after a boss kill. The developers have also seemingly heard the many complaints about the game’s lack of quest tracking, and while they didn’t add a quest log, they did make it easier for players to find the appropriate NPCs.

The Maserati GranTurismo will be the Italian automaker’s first electric vehicle. | Maserati Italian luxury automaker Maserati announced an all-electric range of vehicles called Folgore, including a next-generation GranTurismo sports coupe, an electric version of the best-selling Levante, the all-new Grecale SUV, and several other luxury sports cars and convertibles. The company said it would offer electric versions of all of its models by 2025 and shift to EV-only sales by 2030.In a press conference with reporters, Maserati CEO Davide Grasso said that the automaker will also aim to completely phase-out sales of its internal-combustion engine vehicles by 2030 — though that will depend on individual markets and customer demands.“That’s the landing spot,” Grasso said of the target date of 2030. “It will affect different parts... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The UK has outlined new legislation that could see top managers at tech companies sent to jail if they fail to meet the demands of regulators. The rules are part of the government’s mammoth Online Safety Bill, a new draft of which was introduced to Parliament today — a major milestone to the bill becoming law.Tech execs could be jailed if they fail to respond to requests for information from newly-empowered regulator Ofcom “in an accurate and timely manner,” according to the bill. The latest draft stipulates that senior managers will be liable for criminal prosecution just two months after the bill becomes law (instead of two years, as previously outlined).New offenses have also been added, including suppressing, destroying, or... Continue reading…

It may be best known for its regular bundles of games and other entertainment, but Humble Games is also an indie publishing label. And today the company detailed its upcoming slate of games which includes everything from a sequel to the classic heist game Monaco to a roleplaying musical called Stray Gods.We don’t know much about Monaco 2 — it doesn’t have a release date yet — but it is once again being developed by Pocketwatch Games, and is described as a game that “will test players’ skills in brain-bending 3D environments, procedurally generated by an AI mastermind designed to concoct high-stakes challenges and infinite sneaky, stealy fun.”Stray Gods, meanwhile, was previously known under the name Chorus, and is being developed by... Continue reading…

T-Mobile and BMW are partnering to debut the first 5G-connected cars available in the United States: as of today, the new 2022 BMW iX and i4 models now work with the company’s 5G network, essentially allowing owners to use their cars as a gigantic Wi-Fi hotspot.Adding a BMW to your T-Mobile plan will tack on $20 a month and will allow your car to get unlimited data and voice calls — even if you don’t happen to have a phone with you. (SMS, however, is not included.) In addition to unlimited data in the US, subscribers also will get 200MB of roaming data, should you be driving somewhere where T-Mobile’s network doesn’t reach, along with 5GB of 4G data per month in Canada and Mexico (once that 5GB allotment is used up, you’ll still get... Continue reading…

Margrethe Vestager | Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The European Commission’s competition watchdog is thinking bigger than lawsuits Continue reading…

Not much has changed on the outside, but there are a couple important tweaks under the hood. | Image: Samsung Last spring, Samsung announced a trio of Galaxy A-series phones that were all destined for US retailers’ shelves. This year, it’s promising just one new model for US customers: the Galaxy A53 5G. It offers some modest upgrades, which is fine because the A52 5G was a really good phone. But its best new feature is a $50 lower price tag, which at $449 for 128GB of storage, puts it juuuuust under Apple’s $479 iPhone SE with 128GB. Maybe that’s a coincidence! Probably not!The A53 5G’s most notable hardware change is the switch to Samsung’s new Exynos 1280 5nm processor. The version of the A52 5G sold in the US included a Qualcomm processor, so using the house-brand chip represents a shift in strategy, maybe to accommodate a lower price... Continue reading…

The Matter standard promises to unify the smart home. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Matter, the new smart home interoperability standard being developed by Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and others, has been delayed. Again. Expected this summer, the launch has been rescheduled for fall of 2022, Michelle Mindala-Freeman of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) which oversees Matter, told The Verge.The delay is needed to finalize the software development kit (SDK) device manufacturers will use to incorporate their products into the Matter ecosystem. According to Mindala-Freeman, because of a larger than expected number of platforms adopting Matter, the code for the SDK needs more work to ensure everything will operate together smoothly – which is the overall promise of the Matter standard.Additionally, she says... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge When Russia invaded Ukraine, Niki Proshin was already a year into making a living as a vlogger — he had a YouTube channel, a TikTok channel, and an Instagram. He also ran an online Russian club for anyone who wanted to learn the language. His website, like his videos, is in English.Instagram no longer functions in Russia. Google has stopped selling ads in Russia. It is no longer possible to subscribe to his Russian club via PayPal, which has suspended its services in Russia. Patreon, his other payment option for the Russian club, “kind of works,” but because many Russian banks have been kicked out of SWIFT, he can’t withdraw his money.“With everything going on in the world, you can officially call me hairy and bankrupt.”“It is quite... Continue reading…

MIT’s Mini Cheetah robot takes off running. | Image: MIT Quadrupedal robots are becoming a familiar sight, but engineers are still working out the full capabilities of these machines. Now, a group of researchers from MIT says one way to improve their functionality might be to use AI to help teach the bots how to walk and run.Usually, when engineers are creating the software that controls the movement of legged robots, they write a set of rules about how the machine should respond to certain inputs. So, if a robot’s sensors detect x amount of force on leg y, it will respond by powering up motor a to exert torque b, and so on. Coding these parameters is complicated and time-consuming, but it gives researchers precise and predictable control over the robots.AI uses trial and error to develop... Continue reading…

Lego has debuted a new Back to the Future DeLorean set, recreating the time-traveling car from the film series with its most accurate brick model yet — one that, unlike the original 2013 version, actually looks like the iconic vehicle.The $169 set has 1,856 pieces (compared to the 401 pieces in the original model) and is considerably bigger and more detailed in virtually every way. There’s functional gull-wing doors, a far less blocky hood, a brand-new windshield piece that Lego created specifically for the new set to match the real car, and a light-up flux capacitor (especially notable given the rarity of light-up pieces on Lego’s modern sets). Image: Lego The DeLorean set can be built in Back to the Future, B... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Valve’s Steam Deck has a lot of cool tricks up its sleeves — but one of them wasn’t exclusive to the gaming handheld PC for long. You know how the Steam Deck can turn on FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling for any game of your choice, no need for the game’s developers to formally offer support? As promised, AMD just brought that same driver-level version of the framerate-boosting tech to every Radeon RX 5000-series or newer graphics card as “Radeon Super Resolution.” Image: AMD Today, you’ll be able to download the new AMD Adrenalin drivers, turn on the in-game overlay with Alt + R, and lower your game’s render resolution to theoretically get a big framerate boost in most games — at the expense of some quality, of... Continue reading…

This computer is a historic achievement Continue reading…