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by Wes Davis on (#6M9HD)
Image: Amazon Amazon is bringing back free(ish) grocery deliveries for orders over $35 in the form of a new monthly subscription program the company announced today. It's $9.99 per month for Prime members and includes unlimited one-hour grocery delivery where it's available, as well as unlimited 30-minute grocery pickups, with a half-cost option for low-income non-Prime members who qualify.Amazon launched a trial of the subscription in three cities last year but now says it's available in 3,500 cities across the US. Deliveries include groceries from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh but also local grocers and specialty retailers that it's partnered with. Subscribers get priority access" for recurring weekly groceries, too.This new subscription could be... Continue reading...
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The Verge - All Posts
| Link | https://www.theverge.com/ |
| Feed | http://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml |
| Updated | 2024-05-08 15:06 |
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6M9HE)
At first glance, Netflix's upcoming action thriller Atlas, starring Jennifer Lopez, seemed like it was going to be a rather serious movie about a mech pilot fighting to survive on an inhospitable planet. That could still be the case, but the movie's latest trailer makes it out to be a bit more of a sci-fi buddy cop affair with an emphasis on human / robot alliances.Though a maniacal machine (Simu Liu) dead-set on eradicating humanity presents the biggest threat in Atlas, the movie's new trailer puts a spotlight on how an AI-powered battle armor will join Atlas Shepherd (Lopez) in her fight to save the world. With so many killer robots on the loose and doing a bang-up job of destroying cities, it makes sense that Atlas would be... Continue reading...
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by Quentyn Kennemer on (#6M9DZ)
Illustration: The Verge After kicking off 2024 with the launch of the Vision Pro, the next act in Apple's 2024 script is a May product launch event. Apple has started inviting members of the media to a special Apple Event" on May 7th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET. The invite's image includes the Apple Pencil, making it abundantly clear that iPads will be the focus of this virtual event.Rumors suggest the iPad Pro will get some of its most significant improvements since the 2021 M1 overhaul, including an OLED display (with a slight size bump to 13 inches for the bigger model), an updated M3 chipset, and the long overdue horizontal repositioning of its front-facing camera. There might also be a new Apple Pencil and a redesigned Magic Keyboard with an aluminum build and a... Continue reading...
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by Thomas Ricker on (#6M9E0)
If you can afford this home, you can probably afford Anker's whole-home battery backup solution. | Image: Anker Nearly a year since it was first announced, Anker is finally selling its Solix whole-home battery backup solution in North America. The Solix X1 is just 5.9 inches thick and attaches to a wall like a Tesla Powerwall. It's a more permanent and minimalist alternative to Anker's modular F3800 kits, which can be quickly detached to power a weekend away.The Solix X1 can be configured to deliver between 3kW and 36kW of power with a stackable design that supports between 5kWh and 180kWh of LFP battery capacity. It's covered by a warranty of 10 years or 16.5MWh throughput, whichever comes first. Cutover from the grid to the battery happens in less than 20ms, so you might not even notice the next power outage.Calculating how much power and... Continue reading...
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by David Pierce on (#6M9E1)
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge The TikTok ban appears to be for real this time. (Technically, the TikTok ban or divesture but hopefully divesture" is probably more accurate, but everybody's just calling it a ban.) Only a few weeks ago, all momentum for the ban seemed gone. Now, it's back with a vengeance, with a couple of small tweaks and a new political strategy. And it could get a vote in the Senate in the next few days.There's also a new bill, known as the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), starting to gain some traction among important people looking to pass comprehensive privacy regulation in the US. Of course, we've heard that before. Many times. So will the APRA succeed where other bills have failed?On this episode of The Vergecast, we chat with The Verge'... Continue reading...
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by Andrew Webster on (#6M9E3)
Image: Epic Games If you still have your old Rock Band guitars lying around, it's now possible to use them in Fortnite's Rock Band-like music mode. As promised at launch, Fortnite Festival now supports a handful of guitar controllers across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. The announcement comes as part of a fresh update headlined by Billie Eilish.The supported controllers include the Riffmaster Wireless Guitar Controller, Rock Band 4 Rivals Wireless Fender Jaguar Guitar, and Rock Band 4 Wireless Fender Stratocaster Guitar. They can be used for playing both lead and bass guitar in Festival. Epic also says that we'll have more instrument controller news to announce in the future," so don't toss that plastic drum set just yet.While it may seem a bit weird, the... Continue reading...
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by Chris Welch on (#6M9E2)
Image: Sonos Today, Sonos is officially introducing the redesigned mobile app that I showed you earlier this month. It'll roll out for both Android and iOS on May 7th, but the company's desktop apps aren't coming along for the ride: Sonos will discontinue its controller apps for Windows and macOS in the near future. Taking their place is a new web app that will allow you to control and access your Sonos speakers from anywhere - not just when you're home on Wi-Fi.But for now, let's get back to the smartphone app. It's been rebuilt from the ground up to be more reliable. Sonos' fundamental goal was making everything feel faster and getting you where you want to be without relying on a tabbed navigation bar. Now, everything is on the homescreen, and... Continue reading...
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6M9E4)
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Image: Getty Images Elon Musk is currently embroiled in a battle with Australian authorities over demands for X to remove violent content of a stabbing that took place during a livestreamed service at a church in Sydney last week. Musk is arguing that such decisions could give countries the power to control the entire internet," while the Australian government is arguing that geoblocking content isn't enough in its plea for decency and social responsibility.Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian eSafety Commissar' is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?" said Musk, noting that the objectionable content is already geoblocked in Australia... Continue reading...
by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on (#6M9B7)
SimpliSafe's new live guard outdoor protection service allows its agents to monitor your outdoor security cameras for potential intruders. | Image: SimpliSafe SimpliSafe is bringing live monitoring to its outdoor cameras, adding to the indoor live monitoring service it launched last year. The new live guard outdoor protection service lets SimpliSafe's human agents view a live feed from its outdoor camera when the system is armed, the camera detects a person, and its AI and facial recognition algorithms determine that person is likely to be a stranger. The idea is that SimpliSafe could more proactively prevent someone from breaking in than traditional alarm systems, which typically only trigger after a home's perimeter has been breached.The DIY smart home security company's new service uses a combination of on-device AI, cloud-based computer vision, and facial recognition to determine when... Continue reading...
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by Andrew J. Hawkins on (#6M9B6)
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Grzegorz Wajda, Getty Images When Tesla releases its first quarter earnings this afternoon, the company's CEO Elon Musk will field the usual questions about new products, new factories, and progress toward its futuristic vision of self-driving cars and robot workers. But Musk will also face increasingly urgent questions about its current state of affairs - and why everything seems to be going to shit.Earlier this month, the company reported its first year-over-year sales drop in four years, a sign of rougher waters ahead. Tesla's stock has fallen more than 40 percent since the start of the year, including a 13 percent drop in the last week. The company laid off over 14,000 employees last week, 10 percent of its global workforce - which could end up being closer to... Continue reading...
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6M978)
Unlike other Firefly-powered tools that generate sections of an image, Photoshop's new Generate Image tool will fill the entire canvas. | Image: Adobe Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to its Photoshop creative software that aim to give users additional ways to control the designs they generate. Powered by Adobe's new Firefly Image 3 foundation model, these new tools are available today via the Photoshop beta desktop app, and will be generally available later this year" according to Adobe's Press release.The most notable tool is Reference Image, which uses user-uploaded images to inspire the output generated by Adobe's AI, matching similar elements in style and color. For example, instead of repeatedly tweaking a prompt description like a blue vintage truck with flower decals," users can instead provide a reference image that Photoshop will use as a guide.Prompting is a... Continue reading...
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by Emilia David on (#6M979)
Illustration: The Verge Microsoft launched the next version of its lightweight AI model Phi-3 Mini, the first of three small models the company plans to release.Phi-3 Mini measures 3.8 billion parameters and is trained on a data set that is smaller relative to large language models like GPT-4. It is now available on Azure, Hugging Face, and Ollama. Microsoft plans to release Phi-3 Small (7B parameters) and Phi-3 Medium (14B parameters). Parameters refer to how many complex instructions a model can understand.The company released Phi-2 in December, which performed just as well as bigger models like Llama 2. Microsoft says Phi-3 performs better than the previous version and can provide responses close to how a model 10 times bigger than it can.Eric Boyd,... Continue reading...
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by Amrita Khalid on (#6M923)
YouTube Fortnite is rolling out an update on Tuesday that includes a new setting that filters out confrontational" emotes. The v29.30 update will let players choose not to see" the following emotes: Laugh It Up", Take the L", Whipcrack", and Make it Plantain."The four emotes won't exactly be hidden per se, they'll appear as still images in the game - but players performing them won't dance and they won't play music. Players can opt to only see these emotes from friends, or hide them altogether.Though Fortnite has hundreds of different emotes, this group of four are controversial because of how and when players will use them. Fortnite players will often play emotes like Laugh it Up" and Take the L" after killing another player or... Continue reading...
by Emma Roth on (#6M8X3)
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge DolphiniOS, a fork of the popular Dolphin emulator for Nintendo Wii and GameCube games, has confirmed that it's not coming to the Apple App Store even though emulators are now supported. In a post on Friday, the developer behind the emulator says it's because Apple doesn't allow DolphiniOS to use its underlying performance-boosting tech.As explained by developer OatmealDome, DolphiniOS - along with other Wii and GameCube emulators - uses something called Just-in-Time (JIT). This is a compiler that translates" the GameCube and Wii's PowerPC-based code into a language other devices can understand, making emulations run a lot smoother.
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by Umar Shakir on (#6M8X4)
This drone might migrate south to a new location in Arizona. | Image: Amazon Amazon is winding down its Prime Air drone delivery program in Lockeford, California - an early testing zone for a service that allowed local residents to order products weighing up to five pounds and get them delivered to their location via drone in 30 minutes.In the same press release, Amazon also announced that the company is launching a new Prime Air location in Tolleson, Arizona. The new location is expected to provide same-day" deliveries to residents in the West Valley Phoenix metro area. Amazon expects to begin operations in Arizona starting later this year.The press release doesn't provide a clear reason as to why the Lockeford location, which opened for business in 2022, is closing, though it does say employees at the... Continue reading...
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by Sheena Vasani on (#6M8X5)
Anker's versatile charging orb functions as both a power strip and a StandBy-ready phone stand. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge A cluttered desk can easily hijack your focus, which is why Anker's Qi2-certified MagGo Magnetic Charging Station (8-in-1) can prove helpful. It's small, but it can quickly clear up space by replacing a good chunk of your chargers while doubling as a sturdy phone stand. It normally runs $99.99, but now until 4:45PM PT / 7:45PM ET on April 28th, you can pick up the charger at its all-time low of $69.99 ($30 off) at Amazon and Anker (with promo code WS7DV2GPRWSL).The speedy orb-shaped charger can supply up to 15W of power to MagSafe-equipped iPhones - specifically iPhone 12, 13, 14, and 15 models - while functioning as a versatile power strip that can charge up to seven other devices. It supports up to 67W total power output and comes... Continue reading...
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by Emma Roth on (#6M8T3)
Illustration: The Verge Former Meta executive Jason Taylor is joining Microsoft's AI supercomputing team. In a LinkedIn post on Monday, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott says Taylor will take on the role of corporate vice president and deputy CTO to help build the next set of systems that will push the frontier of AI forward."Taylor worked at Meta from 2009 to 2022, where he most recently served as the company's vice president of infrastructure. He handled AI, data, and privacy infrastructure, as well as managing the company's server budgets, according to his LinkedIn profile. Taylor was also the chair of the Open Compute Project Foundation from 2015 to 2017, an organization that promotes open-source designs in data centers.Microsoft and OpenAI need more robust... Continue reading...
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by Amrita Khalid on (#6M8T4)
Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge Europe is warming up at twice the global average, leading to deadly heatwaves and severe flooding, according to the European State of the Climate (ESOTC) report for the year 2023, released Monday.According to the report, temperatures in Europe are rising 2.3 degrees Celsius (or 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, according to a five-year average, compared to 1.3 degrees Celsius (roughly 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) globally. The report, jointly issued by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization, covers the year 2023, which was the second warmest year on record for Europe. Parts of southern Europe experienced between 60 and 80 days of strong heat stress," with... Continue reading...
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by Alex Heath on (#6M8T5)
Mark Zuckerberg onstage at Meta Connect 2023. | Getty Images Meta has started licensing the operating system for its Quest headset to other hardware makers, starting with Lenovo and Asus. It's also making a limited-run, gaming-focused Quest with Xbox.On the theme of opening up, Meta is also pushing for more ways to discover alternative app stores. It's making its experimental App Lab store more prominent and even inviting Google to bring the Play Store to its operating system, which is now called Horizon OS. In a blog post, Meta additionally said that it's working on a spatial framework for developers to more easily port their mobile apps to Horizon OS.Crucially for Meta, Horizon OS includes the Horizon social layer, a 3D, Roblox-meets-The Sims open-world platform. After a buggy and sluggish... Continue reading...
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by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#6M8T6)
Maybe your home should be dumb! | Illustration by Adrian Astorgano for The Verge It turns out your TV can actually mess up your computer - at least if you're using a Hisense TV and Windows.Priscilla Snow, a sound designer and composer for games, wrote on Cohost that they'd been having trouble with their PC. The Display Settings" menu didn't open. The Task Manager" started hanging. Then things necessary to making the computer work started to fail. Spelunking in hidden comments on Microsoft forums revealed the problem: Snow's TV.I felt like I'd solved a murder."Basically, the TV had been generating Universal Plug and Play IDs and had, over the course of several years, convinced Snow's computer that there were essentially an infinite number of devices on their network. Snow's smart TV, a Hisense 50Q8G, had... Continue reading...
by Tom Warren on (#6M8T7)
How Meta envisions an Xbox-branded VR headset. | Image: Meta Microsoft is teaming up with Meta to create a limited edition Meta Quest VR headset that's inspired by Xbox." While both Microsoft and Meta aren't sharing full details on this VR headset, it sounds like it's simply going to be a skinned Meta Quest 3 (or future unannounced version) that comes bundled with an Xbox controller.We're working together again [with Microsoft] to create a limited-edition Meta Quest, inspired by Xbox," says Meta in an announcement today. It's part of Meta opening up its operating system that powers its Quest VR headsets to third-party hardware makers. Asus and Lenovo are creating dedicated headsets that run the Meta Horizon OS, but the partnership with Microsoft sounds like it's simply a limited-edition headset... Continue reading...
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by Andrew Webster on (#6M8T8)
Image: Epic Games Finally, you can bury a friend as Billie Eilish. Fortnite has revealed its next major musical collaboration, and it will see Eilish become a playable character starting on April 23rd. You should see her in a Victory Crown.There aren't many details just yet, but the singer will be the featured artist for the next season of Fortnite Festival, the Rock Band-like in-game experience that launched last year. That means you can expect her songs to be playable in that mode and her neon green character skin to appear in the in-game shop (presumably with a Lego variant).Of course, this is far from the first big-name star to be featured in the game. Eilish follows the likes of Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, and Eminem; more recently, Fortnite held its... Continue reading...
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by Nilay Patel on (#6M8PZ)
Image: Cath Virginia | The Verge Open platforms keep gaining support out there - newsletter platform Ghost just published what amounts to a manifesto in support of the ActivityPub protocol with plans to ship ActivityPub integration in 2024."That's a big shot of support for the fediverse - the network of open and interoperable social services that have all been gaining momentum over the past year. Ghost founder John O'Nolan recently said that federation over ActivityPub was the platform's most requested feature over the past few years" - a comment he made on Meta's Threads, which itself is slowing beginning to federate.The idea here is that all these networks will allow users to follow and share content between them, keeping you from needing to have multiple accounts... Continue reading...
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by Emilia David on (#6M8Q0)
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images A new report from Stanford's Internet Observatory said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline needs to improve its technology if it wants to meet the influx of AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM).The report said CyberTipline, the first defense against CSAM on the internet, already struggles to handle the high volume of calls it receives. According to the center, the tip line received 36.2 million CSAM reports in 2023, a 12 percent increase from 2022.The rise of AI-generated CSAM would only make things worse. The tip line receives reports from online platforms like Facebook and Google through a manual reporting API, but this API doesn't ensure all important fields are filled out. Stanford also... Continue reading...
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by Andrew Webster on (#6M8Q1)
Photo by Ulrik Pedersen / DeFodi Images via Getty Images It looks like Apple's foray into streaming soccer could be getting even more ambitious. According to a report from The New York Times, Apple is close to a deal with FIFA - the sport's global governing body - for worldwide rights for an expanded version of the Club World Cup that will take place in the US in 2025. The Times says that the deal could be worth upward of $1 billion and that an official announcement could happen sometime this month.If the deal goes through, it would mark Apple's second major broadcast partnership in the sport. In 2022, the company signed a 10-year deal for streaming rights to Major League Soccer, which got a big boost a year later with Lionel Messi's arrival in Miami. The deal with FIFA would be more notable,... Continue reading...
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by Ash Parrish on (#6M8Q2)
Image: Weta Workshop / Private Division One of the most famous pieces of literature in the world starts with, In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," and now, technology has advanced to the point where we can be that hobbit with our own holes in the ground. Private Division and Weta Workshop have released the first official trailer for Tales of the Shire, a cozy, hobbit life sim where players can live out the fantasy of being one of Bilbo's halfling neighbors.The premise of Tales of the Shire is extremely simple: make your hobbit hole the picture of comfort. Seems like there will be other activities like cooking for your neighbors, fishing, and exploring the greater world of The Shire - kinda like Stardew Valley meets The Hobbit. The trailer seemed to leak ahead of... Continue reading...
by Umar Shakir on (#6M8M0)
The price of Tesla's Full Self-Driving package is trending downward. | Image: Owen Grove / The Verge The price for Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software package was supposed to get more expensive over time - but instead, it's getting cheaper.Tesla has discounted the $12,000 feature - that has been marketed as eventually enabling fully autonomous capabilities despite just being a Level 2 driver-assist system - to $8,000. The price cut comes ahead of Tesla's earnings on April 23rd, in which Elon Musk is sure to face questions about the adjustment. For years, Musk has insisted that the software package would only grow in value, possibly to a price over $100,000.In reality, the cost of FSD peaked in 2022 when it was raised to $15,000 and later fell to $12,000. Earlier this month, Tesla also reduced the price of the subscription version... Continue reading...
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by Nilay Patel on (#6M8GY)
Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Discord For teens and gamers, Discord has become their entire online social lives. Co-founder Jason Citron thinks the internet is headed more in that direction. Continue reading...
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6M8GZ)
Deadpool & Wolverine has seemed fairly lighthearted in most of the teasers Marvel has dropped so far, but the movie's latest trailer has a promising edge to it.Rather than focusing on Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), Deadpool & Wolverine's new trailer is actually more about a Wolverine variant (Hugh Jackman) who somehow failed his universe's team of X-Men before the whole thing was obliterated. It's still wildly unclear how Wolverine and Deadpool manage to end up fighting in the ruins of the 20th Century Fox lot or which reality the movie's Wolverine comes from.But the trailer makes it seem like it all has something to do with Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), a powerful mutant with a complicated relationship to Charles Xavier and a penchant... Continue reading...
by Victoria Song on (#6947P)
Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge Wear OS is much better than it used to be, so there's never been a better time to consider a smartwatch. Continue reading...
by Lauren Feiner on (#6M8H0)
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images Political strategists aren't throwing away TikTok, even after their election candidates try to force its sale on national security grounds. Continue reading...
by Justine Calma on (#6M8F0)
Doris Rios is a Cabecar leaderwho has fought to reclaim Indigenous territory in Costa Rica. | Collage by Israel Vargas | Photos by Justine Calma These women took back their land in Costa Rica, and now they plan to reforest it. Continue reading...
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by Tom Warren on (#6M8F1)
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Microsoft is starting to improve the experience of downloading Windows store apps from the web. The software giant has built what it calls an undocked version of the [Microsoft] Store" that works like a typical executable to install apps from the Microsoft Store. It should cut down on the complexity involved in finding Windows store apps on the web and installing them.Instead of launching the Microsoft Store and a mini window, now when you download apps from the web version of the Microsoft Store it will download a standalone installer instead. This means you don't have to click install on the web, then allow Chrome or Edge to open the Microsoft Store, and finally hit install to actually install the app. A lightweight installer will be... Continue reading...
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#6M8CN)
Embracer Group will house major properties like the Lord of The Rings under its new Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends company. | Image: Warner Bros. Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group announced plans on Monday to split itself into three distinct games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. These will be separate, publicly listed companies, according to Embracer, which says the move will allow each entity to better focus on their respective core strategies and offer more differentiated and distinct equity stories for existing and new shareholders."This move towards three independent companies reinforces Embracer's vision of backing entrepreneurs and creators with a long-term mindset," says Lars Wingefors, co-founder and Embracer Group CEO, allowing them to continue to deliver unforgettable experiences for... Continue reading...
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by nathan.edwards on (#6M834)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A couple of weeks ago, I ran out of screen on the one external monitor my work-issued MacBook Air can run. So I switched to my five-year-old Windows desktop and plugged in another monitor. Love it. Productivity through the roof. But it means that I'm finally spending significant time in Windows 11, and gosh, is it janky.There are some things that Windows does very well compared to macOS and Linux. All the games are there, for one thing, and Windows runs on all sorts of hardware without a lot of fiddling. You do not have to spend a thousand dollars minimum on a non-upgradable machine to use it. You also generally do not have to download a bunch of drivers or spend six hours in the command line hand-assembling the goddamn operating... Continue reading...
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by Allison Johnson on (#6M7XX)
It's phones, y'all. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge At any given time, there are between five and eight phones on my desk. And by my desk," I mean any combination of tables and countertops throughout my house. So when I watched the Humane AI Pin reviews start pouring in last week, I did what any logical person would do: grab the closest phone and try to turn it into my own AI wearable.Humane would like you to believe that its AI Pin represents consumer tech at its most cutting edge. The reviews and the guts of the pin say otherwise: it uses a Snapdragon processor from four years ago and seems to run a custom version of Android 12.It's a midrange Android phone!" I declared at our next team meeting, waving around a midrange Android phone for effect. You could just download Gemini and... Continue reading...
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by Victoria Song on (#6M7XW)
Streaks aren't the only way to be consistent. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Six weeks ago, I was having a tough time sticking to my running routines and goals. Physically, I was mostly fine. Mentally, the thought of running - a sport I usually love - made me roll into a blanket burrito and never leave my bed. I started hating myself, but none of my usual fitness apps and trackers were helping. After building a weeklong streak, I couldn't muster the energy to get out of bed one Saturday. I broke it and spent the next day wallowing in guilt and self-pity.Fed up, I went digging around the internet and ended up downloading the Gentler Streak app.Gentler Streak is what it sounds like. It's an iOS and Apple Watch app with a more compassionate approach toward building a fitness habit. You can set an activity status:... Continue reading...
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by David Pierce on (#6M7XY)
Image: The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 35, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, get ready to open some tabs, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been rewatching Killing Eve now that it's on Netflix, reading about Maggie Rogers and flying cars and the Today in Tabs newsletter, nodding along as MKBHD talks about gadget reviews, testing the Godspeed to-do list app, talking to everyone I know about the Papyrus 2 sketch, listening on repeat to The Tortured Poets Department, and playing with the Plaud AI voice recorder.I also have for you a surprisingly gadget-y week! We have a new set of earbuds to try, a new handheld camera, an AI memory... Continue reading...
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by Richard Lawler on (#6M7PF)
Tesla's drilling holes in Cybertruck accelerator pedals. | Image: Tesla (PDF) Tesla temporarily halted deliveries and recalled every single Cybertruck after a viral video showed how the pad on its accelerator pedal could slip off and get stuck in the interior trim, leaving the pedal depressed down 100 percent, full throttle." Now, video from a Tesla event in California taken today and Tesla's own documentation confirm the riveting installation that secures the pad with a rivet, and they show us exactly how it's done.While Aaron Cash's video posted to X says it's a 35 second recall fix," demonstrated at the Cyber Takeover" event in Long Beach, the video starts with the required drilling jig already in place.
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by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on (#6M7KE)
With a new ownership structure, Home Assistant is making big plans for the future. | The Verge How Home Assistant plans to transition from an enthusiast platform to a mainstream consumer product. Continue reading...
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by Lauren Feiner on (#6M7KF)
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images The House once again passed a bill that could ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance divests it - but this time, it's in a way that will be harder for the Senate to stall.The bill passed 360-58 as part of a larger bill related to sanctions on foreign adversaries like Russia. It's part of a package of foreign aid bills that seek to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Due to the urgency of the funds, packaging the TikTok bill with these measures means that the Senate will need to consider the proposal more swiftly that it would as a standalone bill. The earlier TikTok bill, which passed the House 352-65 just last month, has so far lingered in the Senate, with lawmakers... Continue reading...
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6M7KG)
Image: Netflix Netflix's Rebel Moon films both feel like Zack Snyder trying to celebrate sci-fi classics by gently riffing on them in some of the least inspired ways possible. Continue reading...
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by Kevin Nguyen on (#6M7KH)
Courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder Horror films live and die by their conceits. And sometimes, the best way to make a movie scary is to place it in an environment that's not scary at all.Is there anything further from spooky than a brightly lit TV studio? The surprise box office darling Late Night with the Devil, which hit horror streamer Shudder this weekend (and might be more suited to home viewing), tries to make one of the most innocuous American broadcast traditions into a terror. David Dastmalchian, a character actor who you'll recognize from the margins of half a dozen Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve movies, gets a rare star turn as Jack Delroy, the host of late-night talk show Night Owls. But in an era where Johnny Carson rules after-hours broadcast,... Continue reading...
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by Brandon Widder on (#6M7J0)
It may not offer obstacle avoidance and the same specs as the Pro model, but the Mini 3 still easily folds down when it's time to hit the road. | Image: DJI Happy Saturday, dear readers! The big news on the drone beat this month was the official launch of DJI's Avata 2, a new FPV drone that's slicker, more stable, and longer-lasting than the original model released in 2022. That said, I wouldn't consider it a beginner drone at $999, even if it is noticeably cheaper than its last-gen counterpart. If you are after a true beginner drone, however, the DJI Mini 3 is currently on sale at Amazon and Best Buy with DJI's screen-equipped RC controller for around $549 ($60 off) - an all-time low.While not as capable as the DJI Mini 4 Pro or even the DJI Mini 3 Pro, the consumer-focused Mini 3 remains an excellent entry-level drone for budding aerial photographers or anyone who is simply... Continue reading...
by Sheena Vasani on (#6M7GS)
Photo by Sheena Vasani / The Verge Skip Crossrope unless you really love skipping rope. Continue reading...
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by Barbara Krasnoff on (#6M7F5)
The Verge There are more digital subscriptions around than ever, and among them, you may well have a music streaming service (or two or three). What with free" trials and trying to find a service you really like, it's easy to suddenly realize you're oversubscribed. Luckily, canceling a music subscription - or switching to a free tier - isn't too difficult. And remember that you can always sign up again. It doesn't have to be goodbye forever.Here's how it's done on the four best-known platforms. The options will be similar on other services.Spotify Spotify has a variety of plans for individuals, families, and even two people. Spotify has a free tier with ads, without downloads, and with limits on playlists, while the... Continue reading...
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by Gaby Del Valle on (#6M7AJ)
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images The Senate has passed a bill reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a controversial program that allows warrantless spying on foreign targets," but a long, knock-down, drag-out fight over amendments kept the Senate in session past midnight on Friday, when the surveillance program officially expired.To be clear, the spying wasn't actually going to stop. As Sen. Mike Lee (R-OH) pointed out on the Senate floor on Friday afternoon, the FISA court recently granted a government request to allow the program to continue until April 2025.Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) claimed that the FISA court's extension of Section 702 certification doesn't mean the program can continue uninterrupted for another year."... Continue reading...
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by Sheena Vasani on (#6M76G)
Valve says each unit has received over 100 tests and meets the same performance standards as new Steam Decks. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Steam Deck LCD might be inferior to the newer OLED model, but it's still a great handheld gaming PC, and you can now get a certified refurbished LCD model (with a one-year warranty) direct from Valve for a better price than ever before.The refurbished Steam Deck now starts at $279 for the base model with 64GB of eMMC storage, $70 less than Valve currently charges for it brand-new. If you need more storage, the 256GB NVMe model and the 512GB model with antiglare screen are both on sale, too, for $319 and $359, respectively. That's an $80 savings for the 256GB model and a $90 savings for the 512GB model.The Steam Deck OLED, meanwhile, still starts at $549 for 512GB. That's nearly twice the price of the 64GB LCD refurb.Value says... Continue reading...
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by Emilia David on (#6M74W)
Image: Nintendo If you're the kind of Mario Kart 8 player who cares about winning and not just playing their favorite characters (Daisy and Peach supremacy), choosing the best combination of driver, vehicle, and wheels gets tricky.Luckily, thanks to data science and 19th-century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, there's a way to figure that out. Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz applies one of Pareto's principles, the Pareto front, to plot the best combination among the 703,560 possible decisions players must make in Mario Kart. Eurogamer helpfully explains that a Pareto front finds the best possible solution to a problem with different objectives.In a cool piece of data visualization you should definitely check out, Mayerowitz narrows down the... Continue reading...
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by Umar Shakir on (#6M74X)
Kia's lineup of electric vehicles are growing. | Image: Kia The Kia EV2, the automaker's small, affordable electric crossover, has been spotted on the street in camouflage. It's the first time the model has been seen in the wild, although the EV2 is not currently confirmed for the US.The timing of the sighting is particularly significant given recent news that Tesla may have canned its plans for a $25,000 mass-market Model 2" vehicle. Elon Musk reportedly mothballed the affordable EV in favor of going all in on the company's plans for a fully autonomous robotaxi.No official price has been set for the Kia EV2, but Electrek says it could be 20 million won, or about $15,000. Other reports have it under $30,000 - which would be considerably more affordable than the current average retail price... Continue reading...
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