The Verge

Illustration: The Verge Kids will soon be able to download the Google Wallet app on their Android phone, allowing them to buy things in store via Google's tap-to-pay feature, reports 9to5Google. The news comes after Google first added the feature to its kid-focused Fitbit Ace LTE fitness tracker in August.In a statement given to 9to5Google, the company said there will be ways for parents to supervise usage, with control over approving new cards, removing cards, and viewing transaction history. Parents can supervise children's accounts via the Google Family Link app that lets parents set restrictions for content and screen time, and added the ability to see when kids leave school and arrive home in 2022.Kids will be able to make tap-to-pay purchases using... Continue reading...

Image: Ubisoft Ubisoft has quietly released its own NFT game to join the ranks of other vaunted, widely-played blockchain enabled titles like Axie Infinity and...uh, Ember Sword. Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles launched earlier this month with relatively little fanfare or marketing. The game comes two years after Ubisoft's failed bid to make NFTs work in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, a solid three years after NFT prices and purchases fell off a cliff, and barely a week after it announced it would disband the team behind the critically acclaimed Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.Surface level, Champions Tactics is a PC strategy game where players assemble teams of champions to fight their way up the rankings. Teams are composed of three champions,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge I usually have at least half a dozen or more projects going at once: I can be writing or updating several short pieces, editing one or two others, getting ready for Apple or Google or some other company to announce their latest and greatest tech, or dealing with some other project. Each of these projects usually involves several tabs on my Chrome browser so my tab bar can get really crowded.Once upon a time, I would have had to create bookmarks, and bookmark folders, for all of those tabs in order to make sure I didn't lose them when I stopped work at the end of the day. But these days, tab grouping is what keeps me sane. It lets me keep together the tabs that belong together, remove them if I don't need them for a while, and save them... Continue reading...

Now that Apple has finished announcing its slate of new M4-equipped Mac computers, we've finally been able to see them in person. The Verge's Vjeran Pavic got some hands-on time with the new products and took some gorgeous photos that you can peruse below.I'm blown away by how small the new Mac Mini is; the old Mac Mini, which was already small, seems giant in comparison. Vjeran tells me that, in person, the smaller Mac Mini is cute but that it's more like a mini Mac Studio than a mini Mac Mini." He also says there's no way to reach the power button, which is on the underside of the computer, without lifting it up.As for the other computers, the new colors of the iMac really pop when they're lined up together in these photos, if you... Continue reading...

Image: Activision Comcast is boasting about what it's calling its biggest week in internet history," which it pegs on Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 downloads and Thursday Night Football streams. The company says the Call of Duty game, which it released on October 25th, was responsible for a whopping 19 percent of its overall traffic last week.It's not really possible to quantify that further, given Comcast didn't provide any specific numbers - either about how many customers were downloading the game or how big their downloads were. Ranging between 84.4GB for the PlayStation version and 102GB for the PC edition Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is, in the grand tradition of Call of Duty games, a hefty download. It can be as much as 300GB if players choose to go... Continue reading...

Image: OnLeaks via Android Headlines Google appears to be planning to put a bigger display on its entry-level Pixel 9A, according to a report from Android Headlines. The forthcoming phone will reportedly get a 6.3-inch display to match the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro.The 6.3-inch size would make it larger than the past few generations of A-series Pixel phones, including the 8A, 7A, and 6A - all of which came with a 6.1-inch display. Along with a screen size increase, the Pixel 9A is also rumored to come with a top refresh rate of 120Hz, Google's Tensor G4 chipset, 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of storage.Renders of what appears to be the Pixel 9A suggest that Google is making some big design changes to the phone as well. The Pixel's prominent camera bar is absent from the rear of the... Continue reading...

Image: Dropbox Dropbox is cutting its workforce by 20 percent today - laying off 528 people - amid slowing growth for its core cloud storage business. The latest round of cuts comes after Dropbox laid off around 500 people in early 2023 to redirect efforts to its AI division.We're making more significant cuts in areas where we're over-invested or underperforming while designing a flatter, more efficient team structure overall," writes Dropbox CEO Drew Houston in a blog post titled An update from Drew. At the same time, Houston mentions that the market is moving towards where the company placed its biggest bets," which includes Dropbox's Dash AI search product.For its second-quarter earnings this year in August, Dropbox reported an increase of... Continue reading...

Impossibly small, incredibly convenient. Continue reading...

The latest video shared by Boston Dynamics demonstrates the new Atlas robot's autonomous navigation and handling capabilities. | Screenshot: YouTube Boston Dynamics has shared another look at the latest version of its humanoid robot, Atlas. Earlier videos of the all-electric robot demonstrated its unique range of motions, but this time Atlas is shown using machine learning and its upgraded sensors to perform sorting tasks in a simulated factory environment.The task of moving engine covers between supplier containers and a mobile sequencing dolly" isn't especially exciting, but it demonstrates several of the new robot's capabilities working together. After being provided with only a list of bin locations to move parts between," Atlas uses various sensors and machine learning models to determine the location of bins and how it needs to manipulate its body, arms, and three-fingered... Continue reading...

Image: CD Projekt Red Cyberpunk 2077 is making the jump to Macs. According to Apple's announcement video for the new M4-equipped MacBook Pros, CD Projekt Red's sci-fi RPG will be available on Macs early next year."Taking full advantage of Apple silicon and advanced technologies of Metal, the world of the dark future is available to Mac gamers for the very first time," CD Projekt Red says in an announcement. Players can enjoy advanced features like path tracing, frame generation, and built-in Spatial Audio for even more immersive gameplay and stunning visuals.The game will be available on the Mac App Store and Steam when it launches next year. The version launching on Mac is the Ultimate Edition, which includes the very good Phantom Liberty expansion,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge This week's new Macs all have one thing in common: a minimum of 16GB of RAM. That's true of the new Mac Mini, MacBook Pros, and iMac, which were all refreshed with M4 processors this week. The MacBook Air was updated to start at 16GB of RAM, too, even though it didn't get a bump up to the M4 chip. The change brings an end to the long-running era of 8GB of RAM as the default on consumer-grade Macs.Apple had transitioned most of its Macs to 8GB of RAM by 2016. But now, after eight years, that quantity feels increasingly insufficient. Reviewers have criticized the entry-level RAM as limited since at least 2022. Local AI features like Apple Intelligence, which need constant RAM to work, have only accentuated the need to change things.That... Continue reading...

Screenshot: Apple Apple appears to have wrapped up its week of Mac announcements - and it had a lot to share. Along with updating several devices across its Mac lineup with a more powerful M4 chip, Apple showed off some revamped accessories, too.If you want to catch up on all the news, here's a quick rundown.The M4 iMac adds new colors and 16GB of RAM Image: Apple The new iMac comes with an upgraded M4 chip, offering up to a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU. It comes with a 24-inch display with an optional nano-texture glass" to help reduce glare, along with a base 16GB of RAM.The entry-level iMac starts at $1,299 and has two Thunderbolt 4 ports. There's also a more expensive $1,499 model with four Thunderbolt 4 ports. The new iMac... Continue reading...

Jay Maidment For folks who have been waiting to stream Deadpool & Wolverine from the comfort of their couches, the time is nigh.Today, Disney announced that Deadpool & Wolverine is finally making its way to Disney Plus on November 12th along with a commentary track from writer / director Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds. In... celebration of the film's streaming debut, Disney is also rolling out a series of Deadpool & Wolverine bathroom makeovers" at a handful of sports venues in Philadelphia, Memphis, and Columbus beginning today. Marvel / Disney Plus A mockup of Disney's new Deadpool & Wolverine bathroom ad campaign. Only Disney knows why it's leaning so hard into potty humor for one of its most successful successful films yet.... Continue reading...

Avride, the robotics company that spun out of Russian search giant Yandex, has a new sidewalk delivery robot to show off.The company currently has plans to operate a fleet of six-wheeled delivery robots in Austin, Texas, delivering Uber Eats orders to customers, as well as South Korea. Now Avride's next generation model is shedding a couple of wheels - and showing big gains in efficiency.The new robot only has four wheels, which Avride says is more energy efficient than its six-wheeled model. The six-wheeled versions were simple to build, and could turn confidently on a variety of surfaces. But they also created a lot of friction, which ate up a lot of energy from the robot's internal battery.The new four-wheeled designs are much... Continue reading...

Only 1,000 units of the Phone (2a) and Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition will be produced. | Image: Nothing Nothing has announced a new version of its Phone 2A Plus featuring a customized glow-in-the-dark design and packaging created in part by some of the company's most talented followers." The Phone 2A Plus Community Edition is the result of a contest held by the company encouraging its community to build a smartphone of their own imagination."The Phone 2A Plus Community Edition is Nothing's first major pilot to co-create hardware," the company says, and resulted in over 900 entries from its community customizing everything from its look to how it will be marketed. The phone will be available to purchase starting on November 12th through Nothing's website for $399 but is being limited to just 1,000 units. Image: Nothing... Continue reading...

The Profile Wireless microphones can be clipped or magnetically attached to clothing. | Image: Sennheiser Sennheiser has announced a new portable wireless microphone kit designed to be an affordable and flexible all-in-one solution for content creators and videographers. The Profile Wireless system features a wireless receiver that can be connected to various devices, a pair of compact clip-on transmitters with built-in microphones that can also be used as handheld or tabletop mics, and a mobile charger.The Sennheiser Profile Wireless kit isn't expected to start shipping until late 2024 or early 2025, but it's available for preorder starting today for $299. That's cheaper than both the popular $349 DJI Mic 2 kit, which includes similar hardware, and the Shure MoveMic system, which is $499 when bundled with a wireless receiver. Rode's... Continue reading...

Canon's budget-friendly VR lens will be available in November with an estimated retail price of $449.99. | Image: Canon Canon has officially announced its new RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual lens, which features stereoscopic elements that have been squeezed into a body no larger than a traditional 2D camera lens. It was originally teased during the Apple WWDC 2024 keynote last June and is designed to work with a Canon EOS R7 as a more affordable tool for creators making 3D VR content for headsets like the Meta Quest 3 or spatial videos for the Apple Vision Pro.The company hasn't set a specific date for when the new 3D lens will be available, but it says it will be sometime in November 2024, with an estimated retail price" of $449.99. That's considerably cheaper than Canon's existing dual-fisheye lenses designed to capture 3D video content, including the $1,999 R... Continue reading...

An AMD Radeon GPU. | Image: AMD AMD's Q3 2024 earnings call today wasn't bullish on gaming revenue overall, but it did confirm a hot new rumor on GPUs - specifically, the launch of AMD's next-gen RDNA 4 parts early next year. We are on track to launch the first RDNA4 GPUs in early 2025," said AMD CEO Lisa Su, and the company confirmed to PCWorld that it's the first time it's shared those plans publicly.In addition to a strong increase in gaming performance, RDNA 4 delivers significantly higher ray tracing performance and adds new AI capabilities," Su said on the call.AMD's confirmation of those chips might help lend credibility to other leaks, too. Earlier today, a Chiphell leaker rumored that AMD would announce its RDNA 4 graphics at CES 2025 in January,... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Reddit just turned a profit for the first time. As part of its third-quarter earnings results released on Tuesday, the company reported a profit of $29.9 million, along with $348.4 million in revenue - a 68 percent increase year over year.The company hasn't been profitable at any point in its nearly 20-year history. Since going public, Reddit lost $575 million during its first quarter on the market, but it decreased that loss to $10 million last quarter, and is now finally in the green.Reddit also grew to 97.2 million daily users over the past few months, marking a 47 percent increase from the same time last year. That number exceeded 100 million users on some days during the quarter, Reddit says.Reddit's advertising revenue grew to... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is building a bunch of AI products, and it's using AI quite a bit as part of building those products, too. More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers," CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company's third quarter 2024 earnings call. It's a big milestone that marks just how important AI is to the company.AI is helping Google make money as well. Alphabet reported $88.3 billion in revenue for the quarter, with Google Services (which includes Search) revenue of $76.5 billion, up 13 percent year-over-year, and Google Cloud (which includes its AI infrastructure products for other companies) revenue of $11.4 billion, up 35 percent year-over-year.Operating incomes were also... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The Alphabet Workers Union filed a charge against Google with the National Labor Relations Board after Google management asked workers to refrain" from talking about its ongoing Search antitrust case.The union charges that Google issued an overly broad directive" on discussing the case to employees, according to a copy of the charge filed in August and viewed by The Verge. On August 5th, just after US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued his decision finding Google to have an illegal monopoly, president of global affairs Kent Walker sent an email (also reviewed by The Verge) directing employees to please refrain from commenting on this case, both internally and externally." Walker sent a similar message at the start of the trial... Continue reading...

Getty Miramax is ready to put a new Scary Movie into theaters, and this time around, the studio is doing the sensible thing by keeping the Wayans brothers directly involved.Deadline reports that Marlon, Shawn, and Keenen Ivory Wayans have signed on to co-write / co-produce a new Scary Movie reboot for Miramax that will, like earlier installments, spoof a variety of other horror films. Rick Alvarez (White Chicks, Little Man) is also set to co-write and produce.

Image: OpenAI OpenAI is reportedly working with Broadcom to develop new custom silicon designed to handle its large AI workloads for inference and secured manufacturing capacity with TSMC, according to sources speaking to Reuters. OpenAI has reportedly built a chip development team of about 20 people, including lead engineers who previously worked on Google's Tensor processors for AI.Still, on its current timeline, the custom-designed hardware may not start production until 2026.In the meantime, the sources also said OpenAI is incorporating AMD chips into its Microsoft Azure setup. AMD introduced its MI300 chips last year, which was a big part of the news this summer that its data center business has doubled in a single year as it chases market... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is rolling out some new Chrome memory management features aimed at helping you wrangle out-of-control tabs more easily. The updates include new Performance issue alerts" and some tweaks to the existing Memory Saver mode, which already tries to free up the resources of inactive tabs in the background.The new alerts appear when a new Performance Detection tool finds that one of your tabs is using more resources than it should. The notification appears next to your account thumbnail in Chrome's toolbar as a tiny graphic that looks like a speedometer. (If I didn't know about it already, I might think I'd accidentally added an Ookla Speedtest extension to my browser.) If you click the graphic, it will list the offending tabs and give... Continue reading...

Image: Universal Netflix will bring even more Universal films to its lineup thanks to a new deal that will send the studio's live-action movies to the streamer starting in 2027. Under the agreement, Universal and Focus Features' live-action titles will appear on Netflix no later than eight months after their release in theaters. The new arrangement also includes renewing their exclusive licensing agreement for animated films from the Universal-owned Illumination and DreamWorks Animation (DWA).Netflix will get to stream Universal's live-action films exclusively for 10 months following its debut on Peacock - but the movies will return to the NBC-owned service at the end of this window. This will eventually replace Amazon's existing deal with the studio... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft's Recall feature, which creates screenshots of mostly everything you see or do on a Copilot Plus PC, has been mired in controversy ever since it was announced earlier this year. After security researchers found that a pre-release version of the Recall database wasn't encrypted, Microsoft moved to delay the feature and overhaul it with a big focus on security.Recall still isn't even available to test yet on Copilot Plus PCs, but some good old fashioned fear, uncertainty, and doubt is spreading about Microsoft supposedly secretly installing it on the latest version of Windows 11.IT manager and YouTuber Chris Titus first discovered that Microsoft's latest update to Windows 11, version 24H2, has references to Recall that... Continue reading...

Sony's WH-1000XM5s, our favorite noise canceling headphones, are $100 off. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It can be hard to get some peace and quiet even on an average day, but with the holidays slowly yet steadily approaching, it's about to become impossible. Luckily, though, today, Sony's WH-1000XM5 have dropped to one of their best prices yet, selling for $299.99 ($100 off) at Amazon, Target, and directly from Sony in almost every colorway. That's about $5 shy of their 2024 all-time low and $50 shy of their best price ever.When it comes to noise-canceling headphones, few can rival Sony's WH-1000XM5, which is why they're our favorite pair on the market. Along with canceling out noise impressively, they deliver clear, detail-rich sound with support for LDAC, Sony's codec for higher-quality wireless audio. The over-ears also have a number... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge GitHub is going multi-model for its Copilot code completion and programming tool. Developers will soon be able to choose models from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI for GitHub Copilot. GitHub is also announcing Spark, an AI tool for building web apps, and updates to GitHub Copilot in VS Code, Copilot for Xcode, and more at its GitHub Universe conference today.GitHub Copilot users on the web or VS Code can select Claude 3.5, with Gemini 1.5 Pro in the coming weeks. OpenAI's GPT-4o, o1-preview, and o1-mini models will also be available in GitHub Copilot soon. Developers will be able to toggle between models during a conversation with Copilot Chat to find the model that's best for a particular task.There is no one model to rule every... Continue reading...

Image: Disney Disney is releasing an experience tied to Fortnite - but it's not the big persistent universe" featuring all things Disney that was teased earlier this year. This new experience launching today is instead all about ESPN, and it's called ESPN Football Island.In the experience, you'll be able to participate in activities, challenges, mini-games, and a big Payload-style game called Touchdown Rush" where you guard a football from your opponents as it moves toward an end zone. ESPN Football Island will also have persistent progression and its own unlockable cosmetics that will be exclusive to the experience.ESPN Football Island was built using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), a powerful set of development tools Epic launched last... Continue reading...

Image: Apple As part of the company's week of Mac-focused announcements, Apple has just introduced a smaller, yet even more powerful Mac Mini. It's now equipped with Apple's latest M4 silicon, supports ray tracing for the first time, and ships with 16GB of RAM by default - seemingly the new normal in the Apple Intelligence era. The machine still starts at $599 with the regular M4 chip, while the more powerful M4 Pro model has a starting price of $1,399. Like the refreshed iMac announced yesterday, the Mac Mini is available to preorder immediately and will be in stores on November 8th.The first thing you'll notice is the new design. As rumored, the Mini has been shrunken down considerably - and it was already a relatively small desktop machine to... Continue reading...

Volvo and Polestar - two Swedish car brands owned by China's Geely - are now offering their electric vehicle customers access to Tesla's Supercharger network. The companies are taking orders for adapters that will allow its EV customers to charge at over 17,800 Supercharger stalls across the country.Tesla's superior charging experience and the ubiquity of its Superchargers has spurred the entire auto industry to announce support for the company's North American Charging Standard (NACS). All non-Tesla EVs will require adapters at first, but automakers have said they intend to start producing vehicles with native NACS ports installed at the factory starting as soon as 2025.All non-Tesla EVs will require adapters at firstFord, GM,... Continue reading...

So long for now, Playdate Stereo Dock. | Screenshot: Playdate Well, we finally know what's up with Panic's Playdate Stereo Dock. It's not coming - at least, not for a while. In an update to the Stereo Dock's page, the company describes the challenges it faced in getting a good prototype, but says that, in the end, the device didn't meet its standards.The Stereo Dock was going to be a small desktop Bluetooth speaker and pen holder that you could attach a Playdate to. Panic first announced the Stereo Dock in 2021, when it was still working toward releasing the Playdate.On the web page, the company describes the unexpected challenges it faced getting the Stereo Dock to market:

The 2026 Cadillac Lyriq-V | Image: Cadillac Cadillac is launching a new performance version of its all-electric Lyriq SUV. The new 2026 Lyriq-V, the luxury automaker's first EV to get a V-Series badge, will come to North America, Australia, and New Zealand to start, plus other markets later. The specific launch date and pricing have not yet been revealed, but we can expect 2026 model-year vehicles to be available this time next year.In an email to The Verge, Cadillac production communications representative Katie Minter wrote that the company will share more information on the features and specifications of Lyriq-V in early 2025.Although we barely know anything about the Lyriq-V, GM says that V-Series vehicles are AWD standard and have instantaneous acceleration," which is also... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Photo by: CHONA KASINGER/Bloomberg and ULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images It matters which story you tell about the future of artificial intelligence. Is AI just a tool for humans to use, like any other software? Is it a malignant force acting to destroy creativity? Will it create robots bent on destruction? Or will it make the world incredible, beautiful, equal, perfect in ways we can't even begin to imagine?This will shock you, but some of the men running the biggest companies in AI think it's the latter. Both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have recently written blog posts - Altman's short and pithy, Amodei's long and thorough - about the AI-powered world they hope to help create. These are powerful men with huge teams and vast resources at their disposal; it matters a lot what they... Continue reading...