The Verge

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a new voluntary national framework for the evaluation and oversight" of autonomous vehicles, a bureaucratic first step that could eventually open the floodgates for fully driverless cars. But there's a twist: the agency wants self-driving car companies to cough up more data.The proposed rules were first announced last year as the ADS-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency and Evaluation Program, also known as AV STEP. This program would allow the agency to authorize the sale and commercialization of more vehicles without traditional controls, like pedals and steering wheels, without hitting the annual cap on the number of exemptions to safety requirements. NHTSA is promising an exemption pathway that is tailored for ADS-equipped vehicles," suggesting a less onerous, time-consuming process for the release of fully driverless vehicles.In exchange, the agency is requesting more data from the companies that operate driverless cars, arguing that greater transparency is needed to foster public trust in the technology.AV STEP would provide a valuable national framework at a pivotal time in the development of [automated driving system] technology. Safe, transparent, and responsible development is critical for this technology to be trusted by the public and reach its full potential. This proposal lays the foundation for those goals and supports NHTSA's safety mission," NHTSA Chief Counsel Adam Raviv said in a press release. We encourage everyone to comment on our proposed program.By kick-starting the rulemaking process, the Biden administration is giving a pretty big end-of-the-year holiday gift to the companies that have been laboring for decades on autonomous vehicle technology without any national regulatory framework to guide them.The federal government has largely taken a back seat to in regulating autonomous vehicles, leaving states to develop their own rulebooks for safe deployment. Legislation that would dramatically increase the number of AVs on the road has been stalled in Congress for over seven years, with lawmakers at odds over a range of issues, including safety, liability, and the right number of exemptions from federal motor vehicle safety standards.The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards is the government's official checklist for everything a car needs before it can be sold to customers, including steering wheels, pedals, and sideview mirrors. Driverless cars typically don't need these controls, forcing companies to request exemptions to safety rules from the federal government before they can put their vehicles on the road.Safety regulators keep a tight grip on these exemptionsBut safety regulators keep a tight grip on these exemptions. There is a cap of 2,500 exemptions that each company is allowed to request. And to date, only one company, Nuro, has received an FMVSS exemption for its low-speed delivery robots that aren't large enough for human passengers. General Motors tried for two years to get an exemption for its driverless Cruise vehicles before eventually giving up. (Earlier this month, GM said it would stop funding Cruise.)Whether AV STEP survives into the next Trump administration, though, is an open question. For one, the incoming president is reportedly looking to quash a Biden-era transparency rule that requires companies operating vehicles with driver assist, as well as self-driving cars, to report crashes and injuries to the federal government. Scrapping the crash reporting rule would greatly benefit Tesla, which to date, has reported the highest number of crashes. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a close advisor and donor to Trump.The fact that NHTSA is choosing to highlight the enhanced transparency" under AV STEP could lead some to conclude that this rule is dead on arrival. After all, Trump is currently trying to kill the only transparency rule currently on the books for self-driving cars. Still, Musk is also lobbying Trump to ease restrictions on fully autonomous vehicles in advance of Tesla's plans to produce its own robotaxi in 2026. So anything's possible.Safety advocates are calling the notice of proposed rulemaking premature" and unnecessary. In a statement, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase notes that the proposal is oddly timed, coming after the auto industry said it was lobbying NHTSA to scrap a new rule requiring automatic emergency braking in new vehicles by 2029.With the auto industry vociferously stating it is not feasible to comply with parts of the AEB rule with widely used braking technologies in five years, allowing far more complex technology to control more driving functionalities without meeting minimum safety standards is incongruous at best and potentially deadly at worst," Chase said.

Terradot's pilot program in Brazil involves spreading crushed basalt over farmland. | Image: Terradot To try to counteract the impact their pollution has on the climate, Google and other big companies have bought into a plan to trap carbon dioxide using rocks. They recently announced multimillion dollar deals with a Sheryl Sandberg-backed startup called Terradot.Google, H&M Group, and Salesforce are among a gaggle of companies that collectively agreed to pay Terradot $27 million to remove 90,000 tons carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The deals were brokered by Frontier, a carbon removal initiative led by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability.Separately, Google announced its own deal to purchase an additional 200,000 tons of carbon removal from Terradot. Both companies declined to say how much that deal is worth. If the cost is similar to the Frontier agreement - roughly $300 per ton of CO2 captured - it could add up to $60 million, although Google says it expects the price to come down over time for this larger deal.It's a big deal."Google says it's the biggest purchase yet of carbon removal through enhanced rock weathering (ERW), the strategy Terradot uses to try to slow climate change. It's a relatively low-tech tactic for taking carbon dioxide out of... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Netflix In Squid Game, schoolyard games are turned into nightmares, as players compete to survive and - if they're lucky - earn a massive cash prize. But in Unleashed, a new mobile spinoff that's part of the streamer's fledgling gaming efforts, those games are fun. It's a strange experience that sands off much of the appeal of Squid Game in service of making a multiplayer party game.Unleashed is sort of like Fall Guys but in a Squid Game wrapper. You compete against 31 other players across three random games pulled from the show, like red light, green light" or racing across a bridge made of glass. Slowly other players die off, and by the end one wins a whole bunch of money.Aesthetically, the game mostly follows the show. There are a bunch of characters to play as - some pulled from the show, others new for the game - and even though there's a cartoon aesthetic, things still get bloody, with players being shot for breaking the rules or crushed under some obstacle. There are the familiar green track suits and masked guards.But the connections to the show are really only surface level. There's no story element, so if you haven't watched the show, you'd have no idea the kind of personal anguish many of the characters are going through.In fact, many of the elements that make Unleashed a pretty fun mobile game are also what keep it from being a good adaptation of what Squid Game is all about. In order to reduce frustration, most of the games have respawning. So even if you fail at red light, green light" and get shot by a guard, it's not game over. It simply slows you down in a race to be one of a pre-determined number of players to cross the finish line and move on.Similarly, the games can all be completed in a few minutes. This is great for playing short sessions on the go; being stuck in a 30 minute multiplayer match on your phone typically sucks. But when you put elements like the short run time and respawning together it, completely erases any of the tension that's so core to Squid Game's appeal.And despite having no in-app purchases - Unleashed is completely free for Netflix subscribers and, for a limited time, non-subscribers - it's still structured like a typical free-to-play game. You earn cash from winning matches and completing various goals, which is used to unlock new characters, costumes, and emotes. Every time I log on I'm greeted with a jarring number of pop-ups and notifications letting me know I just unlocked a zombie costume or that there's a Christmas-themed event going on. Just this morning I was gifted a twerking emote.Yes, now I can make Kang Sae-byeok, whose death was one of the most tragic moments of season 1, twerk in the middle of a deadly obstacle course.Unleashed isn't a bad game. In many ways, it's a clever reinterpretation of online party games for mobile. But, like most of Netflix's expansions of the Squid Game universe, it also completely misses the point of the show. It's sort of like what Fortnite is to the original movie Battle Royale: a playful, colorful take on a brutal, piercing story.Fortnite largely avoided the tonal dissonance by creating a cartoon-ish, multiversal world that is far away from an island full of kids killing their classmates. Unleashed, on the other hand, is another part of Squid Game - one that doesn't seem to understand why the series exists.

Image: The Verge Google Fiber is changing up its internet plans in Huntsville, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee. The new Core 1 Gig, Home 3 Gig, and Edge 8 Gig plans appear to have launched last month and streamline the company's existing options, as spotted earlier by 9to5Google.These options replace the 1 Gig, 2 Gig, 5 Gig, and 8 Gig plans currently available in other supported cities. Like the existing 1 Gig plan, Google Fiber's new Core 1 Gig option costs $70 / month with symmetrical 1 gigabit per second upload and download speeds. It comes with GFiber's Multi-Gig Wi-Fi 6E Router and supports up to one mesh extender. Screenshot: Google The $100 / month Home 3 Gig plan sits between the $100 / month 2 Gig and $125 / month 5 Gig options, offering up to 3-gig speeds, a GFiber Multi-Gig Wi-Fi 6E router, up to two mesh extenders, along with priority room optimization that brings additional wired connectivity to the rooms that matter most." Subscribers can also add an internet battery backup for an extra $10 per month, which offers up to two hours of full-bandwidth uptime, with no internet slow downs" in case a power outage knocks out your router or fiber jack.Lastly, Google's $150 / month 8 Gig Edge always-on" plan comes with upload and download speeds of up to 8 gigabits per second, the same GFiber Wi-Fi 6E router, and up to two mesh extenders. It also offers up to 5,000 square feet of coverage, priority room optimization, an included internet backup battery, and a 25 percent refund if your internet goes down for over 45 minutes.It's not clear whether Google will bring these plans to more cities, and the company didn't immediately respond to The Verge's request for more information. Since Google Fiber's inception in 2010, the company has been gradually expanding its fiber footprint across the US while achieving faster speeds. Google rolled out a 20-gig Wi-Fi 7 plan in select cities last year.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro looks just as nicely as it performs. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge In recent years, base MacBook Pro models have felt like an automatic skip. It made more sense to pay just a few hundred more for upgrades that truly justify the Pro" moniker, or save money by stepping down to a MacBook Air without many sacrifices. But that's changed as of the M4 model. With the base MacBook Pro with M4 matching its all-time low price of $1,399 ($200 off) at Amazon and B&H Photo right now, it's quite possibly the best value of any MacBook available.The 10-core M4 chipset has a decent speed advantage over the 8-core M3 inside last year's MacBook Pro, of course. Apple claims its CPU has the strongest single-threaded performance of anything out there, not to mention a neural engine that's two times faster than the M3's. Our benchmarking certainly corroborates that it's faster, although depending on what you're doing on the laptop, you may not notice much difference. But what really sets the 2024 model apart is its starting allotment of 16GB of RAM, which is double that offered by previous generations. That helps with the Apple Intelligence features seeding into macOS Sequoia and also makes it suitable for heavier tasks than most average workloads require.The M4 MacBook Pro also picked up a third Thunderbolt 4 port this cycle, plus an upgraded 1080p webcam that has a taller field-of-view for the new Desk View feature. Those are all very good advantages for the money, and you should only feel compelled to step up further if you have stronger needs such as heavy 4K or 8K video editing, photo editing, programming, or other intensive tasks.Read our Apple MacBook Pro M4 review.More fun Friday deals

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Life's busy enough without wasting time on calls that are trying to scam you or sell to you. Unfortunately, stats from Hiya show that 28 percent of the calls you get are going to be suspected spam or fraud.On an iPhone, you don't have the option to have an AI assistant answer calls for you, as you can on Android - at least not yet. But there are ways to screen calls to some extent and cut down on the number of scammers, sellers, and robots you have to talk to.These guidelines have been written using an iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18.2.Identify incoming calls Screenshot: Apple iOS gives you several options for managing incoming calls. Screenshot: Apple You can choose to silence unknown callers and send them straight to voicemail. A good place to start when it comes to avoiding unwanted calls is to flag calls from numbers that aren't in your contacts list. It's not a perfect way of spotting spam but will catch quite a lot of it.From Settings on your iPhone:

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Looking back at a very busy year. Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images To get Nosferatu's nightmarish love triangle right, Robert Eggers looked to Wuthering Heights for inspiration. Though the Dark Universe might be dead, Robert Eggers has crafted something like its spiritual successor with a series of disturbing horror features. The Witch left you wondering how real its demons were, The Lighthouse's tentacled sea creatures were always slithering somewhere just off-screen, and The Northman was a mythologically charged study of people's ability to become monsters and how that transformation can rob someone of their humanity. Those films presented their otherworldly elements as reflections of characters' superstitions and their need to make sense of the worlds around them. But Eggers wants the undead ghoul at the center of his new Nosferatu remake to leave you feeling something much more basic (though not necessarily simple) and carnal.Eggers' Nosferatu is brimming with visual and tonal nods to F.W. Murnau's groundbreaking 1922 silent film. But through his new takes on the vampiric Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) and bedeviled housewife Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), you can feel Eggers tapping into the darkly sexual energy that made Bram Stoker's Dracula such a uniquely transgressive horror novel for the Victorian era. The new Nosferatu is arriving at a time when the idea of getting down and dirty with monsters has come much, much more into fashion - so much so that we've seen entire cinematic franchises built on the concept.Viewed through that lens, it's easy to look at Nosferatu as a story that's trying to speak to this moment in on-screen monster-fucking. But when I recently sat down with Eggers to discuss the movie, he told me that, as much as vampire tales might feel like manifestations of societal anxieties, channeling the zeitgeist wasn't at all his goal. As a lifelong Dracula fan fascinated by the way death and sexual desire define vampire mythos, Eggers knew that he wanted his Nosferatu to be as erotic as it was haunting. But Eggers also wanted his Nosferatu to feel like a decidedly feminist, macabre romance, which is why he took some inspiration from Emily Bronte.It was always clear to me that Nosferatu is a demon lover story, and one of the great demon lover stories of all time is Wuthering Heights, which I returned to a lot while writing this script," Eggers explained. As a character, Heathcliff is an absolute bastard towards Cathy in the novel, and you're always questioning whether he really loves her, or if he just wants to possess and destroy her."Nosferatu leaves you to ponder those same questions as it introduces Ellen, a perceptive woman whose brilliance is being stifled by the social mores of 19th-century Germany. Though Ellen desperately loves her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), he struggles to understand how years of being plagued by strange visions have left her convinced that the embodiment of death is stalking her. It's easier for Thomas and Nosferatu's other male characters like Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to dismiss Ellen's nightmares as delusions. But whenever Ellen goes to sleep, it is never long before a monstrous presence reaches out to her mind, urging her to let it inside.In Depp's tremulous Ellen, you can see traces of Mina Harker, the sole heroine in Stoker's novel, whose cleverness winds up being instrumental in Dracula's ultimate demise. But Eggers wanted this version of Ellen to feel like a woman who, despite understanding things on a very deep level, doesn't have the language to articulate her experiences." It was also important to him that this story emphasize how men's misogynistic preconceptions of women are a kind of monster in and of themselves.Ellen's husband loves her, but he can't understand these hysteric' and melancholic' feelings she's experiencing, and he's dismissive of her," Eggers said. The only person she really finds a connection with is this monster, and that love triangle is so compelling to me, partially because of how tragic it is." In the same way that Ellen knows that something is out there watching her as it stalks through the shadows, Count Orlok - a long-dead Transylvanian nobleman - can feel that there's something very special about Ellen. Much of the new Nosferatu's unsettling strangeness is crystallized in the pair's unusual psychic connection. It's alarming to see Ellen seize up and convulse in fits as her mind seemingly leaves her body. But there's also an increasingly orgasmic quality to the sound of Ellen's fits that immediately clues you into how, as scary as Orlok is, he also elicits something deeply pleasurable in some of his victims.More so than many other recent vampire stories, Eggers' Nosferatu leans into the fact that creatures like Orlok feast on the blood of the living because they themselves are very dead. Whatever magic it is that's brought Orlok back is impressive, but you would never mistake him for a model with a beating pulse. He's supposed to read as a reanimated corpse; a once-suave and debonaire one, but a corpse all the same.Because Nosferatu is a very horny love story, though, Eggers felt Orlok needed to be at least somewhat sexy in order to sell his raw magnetism and help the audience to know on some level that there's a beautiful man beneath all that makeup."In my mind, Orlok was definitely handsome when he was alive," Eggers said. I wanted him to have strong features, and for there to be a kind of beauty in his brows, cheekbones, and nose because those are the parts of himself that he can show a little bit of in the light to a house guest before they realize that he's actually rotting and falling apart." Nosferatu starts piling the horrors on as Orlok and Ellen's link strengthens. The air is already thick with death and fear as the film introduces Willem Dafoe's Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz and Simon McBurney's Herr Knock. It isn't long before the men start to understand just how endangered all of their lives are because of their proximity to Ellen. But Eggers also wanted Nosferatu's male characters to bring a bit of whimsy to the film, if only to help audiences deal with all the tension and appreciate how monsters can have senses of humor.Some of those scenes with Thomas and Orlok are definitely scary and intense, but they're also moments where Orlok is playing with his food," Eggers explained. When Louise Ford and I were editing those scenes, we would be in stitches at times because of how pithy Orlok is when you really pay attention."

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images In 2024, smart locks got better; in 2025, they're going to be truly great. Read the full story at The Verge.

The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition is the first hardware from the open-source smart home platform that's designed for voice control. | Image: Nabu Casa There's a new voice assistant in town, and this one can work locally in your home without phoning home to its corporate overloads. This week, the popular hobbyist smart home platform Home Assistant officially launched its first voice assistant hardware - Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition.Built for the open-source smart home platform, Voice PE costs $59 and brings a locally controlled, privacy-focused voice assistant to Home Assistant in a plug-and-play package. Once connected to Home Assistant, you can use voice to control any connected device, with commands such as Turn on the living room lights," Lock all the doors," Create a timer for 5 minutes," and many more.While Home Assistant users have been able to control their smart homes with voice using either Home Assistant's Assist on less capable third-party hardware or through the cloud by connecting to third-party services like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, this is the first dedicated Home Assistant voice hardware product.Voice PE is the culmination of Home Assistant's Year of the Voice, an effort from Nabu Casa, the organization behind Home Assistant, to let users control their homes locally, privately, and in their own language. It currently supports over 50 languages, compared to eight for Alexa and 20 for Google Assistant. Image: Nabu Casa The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. The Voice PE is a small white box, about the size of your palm, with dual microphones and an audio processor. An internal speaker lets you hear the assistant, but you can also connect a speaker to it via a 3.5 mm headphone jack for better-quality media playback.Out of the box, you can talk to Assist with the wake words Okay Nabu," Hey Jarvis," or Hey Mycroft."A colored LED ring on top of the Voice PE indicates when the assistant is listening. It surrounds a rotary dial and a physical button, which is used for setup and to talk to the voice assistant without using the wake word. The button can also be customized to do whatever you want (because this is Home Assistant). A physical mute switch is on the side, and the device is powered by USB-C (charger and cable not included). There's also a Grove port where you can add sensors and other accessories.Speaking of wake words, out of the box, you can talk to Assist with the wake words Okay Nabu," Hey Jarvis," or Hey Mycroft." If you want to get fancy, you can program a custom wake word.The assistant can run locally in your home without an internet connection on Home Assistant hardware (such as the Home Assistant Green hub), or it can use the Home Assistant cloud. According to Nabu Casa, the latter is faster and supports more languages. The company says your data is not stored on the cloud nor used for training.For those who don't like the idea of always-listening microphones in their home from companies such as Amazon and Google, but who still want the convenience of controlling their home with their voice, the potential here is huge. But it may be a while until Voice PE is ready to replace your Echo or Nest smart speaker.The Verge's Callie Wright, a Home Assistant superuser, has been testing the Voice PE for a few weeks. While they are impressed with its capabilities (although it had some trouble understanding them when there was background noise), they aren't quite ready to kick Alexa to the curb. I think Amazon's Alexa is still worth the privacy tradeoffs for me just because there are key things for me that Voice PE can't pull off," they say. But the progress Home Assistant has made in its Year of the Voice has been incredible, and I'm more hopeful than ever that that future is coming."While the intention is to surpass Big Tech voice assistants," Paulus Schoutsen, founder of Home Assistant, recognizes it's not there yet. Hence, Voice is launching as a Preview Edition. For some, the current capabilities of our voice assistant will be all they need, especially those who just want to set timers, manage their shopping list, and control their most used devices," says Schoutsen. For others, we understand they want to ask their voice assistant to make whale sounds or to tell them how tall Taylor Swift is - our voice assistant doesn't do those things... yet."In the meantime, if you want more features, Voice PE can connect to supported AI models, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, to fully replace Assist or use it as a fallback for commands it doesn't understand. But for many smart home users, there will be plenty of value in a simple, inexpensive device that lets you turn your lights on and off, start a timer, and execute other useful commands with your voice without relying on an internet connection.

Image: Paramount Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures is planning to extend the Sonic The Hedgehog trilogy by yet another movie. Sonic The Hedgehog 4 has been greenlit with a target release window of spring 2027.The news comes mere hours before Sonic The Hedgehog 3 releases in theaters on Friday December 19th. The movie once again stars Ben Schwartz as Sonic, Colleen O'Shaughnessey and Idris Elba as his friends Tails and Knuckles, with Jim Carey returning as their nemesis Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Sonic 3 will also feature the arrival of Keanu Reeves playing Sonic's on-again off-again enemy-turned-friend Shadow The Hedgehog.With Sonic 3 anticipating tidy profits as North America prepares for the Christmas / New Year's moviegoing season, developing a fourth movie makes sense. There are several rogue characters from the Sonic universe aiming for their silver screen debut. (See what I did there?) Neither Variety nor Paramount Pictures have confirmed any plot details or who might get their Sonic movie debut. We'll probably get a hint though, in the post-credits for Sonic 3.

Image: Evan Blass Lenovo showed off a laptop concept with a rollable display last year, and in 2025, it might release one that you can actually buy. Leaker Evan Blass just shared images of what he says is a sixth-generation Lenovo ThinkBook Plus, and based on two of the images, it has a display that extends upward to reveal more display underneath.It seems pretty similar to the concept from 2023, which also extended upward to show more screen. In these images from Blass, Lenovo is showing how the extended screen can be used for multitasking, such as by watching a YouTube video in the lower half of the screen or having a document on hand under a PowerPoint presentation. Image: Evan Blass Image: Evan Blass Blass' leak doesn't include any specs, so we don't yet know many important details about this rumored laptop. But if it's real, and it does debut at CES, it could be one of the most interesting products at the show.Here's a video of the 2023 concept:We're fairly confident Blass knows what he's talking about when he says it'll debut at CES in January; not only does Blass have a very long track record of accurate leaks, he tends to leak products shortly before they're announced, and appears to have a bead on Lenovo in particular right now.Last week, we exclusively shared Blass's images of a new revamped Lenovo Legion Go handheld, as well as a Lenovo Legion Go S that might wind up being the company's first SteamOS handheld.

The puppet influencers are coming...in 2025. | Image: The Verge / Adam Mosseri Instagram is planning to introduce a generative AI editing feature next year that will allow users to change nearly any aspect of your videos." The tech is powered by Meta's Movie Gen AI model according to a teaser posted by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and aims to provide creators with more tools to help transform their content and bring their ideas to life without extensive video editing or manipulation skills.Mosseri says the feature can make adjustments using a simple text prompt." The announcement video includes previews of early research AI models that change Mosseri's outfit, background environments, and even his overall appearance - in one scene transforming him into a felt puppet. Other changes are more subtle, such as adding new objects to the existing background or a gold chain around Mosseri's neck without altering the rest of his clothing.

Image: The Verge I'm guessing I'm not alone in getting more scam and spam calls than ever before. As a result, Google and the other Android phone makers have gradually added a range of built-in features to detect and deal with unwanted callers. These include having suspicious numbers flagged before you answer, being able to block nuisance callers, and even getting AI to answer incoming calls for you. Putting these protections in place should go a long way toward dealing with unwanted calls.As usual on Android, different models offer different features. The guide below was written using a Google Pixel phone with Android 15 and a Samsung Galaxy phone with One UI 6.1. Other Android-based phones may differ slightly, but you should find a similar set of tools available.Spotting scam calls in advanceUsing a Pixel or other Android phoneWhen a call comes in that isn't from a number in your contacts, the Google Phone app preinstalled on Pixel phones can send it to Google for checking. (If you're not on a Pixel phone, you can still install the app on other Android phones.) Google says it gathers various signals about the call" during the check - which I presume means cross-referencing it against a... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images There weren't many exclusives this year, but Apple's subscription service still had some notable new releases. Read the full story at The Verge.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Browsing Amazon Haul, the online shopping giant's new $20-and-under bargain bin section, I immediately recognize not just a product, but a specific image. The photo is on a listing for Timeless Black Dress for Both Casual and Formal Gatherings," and it is stolen.The image actually belongs to a New York-based independent brand called Mirror Palais, which sold the Daisy Dress" for $545 a few years ago. Elevated by social media algorithms and its celebrity fans, Mirror Palais' images have traveled from the brand's website, to tweets, to Pinterest mood boards, and finally, to the discount section of the world's largest online retailer, where it is - obviously - not for sale. On Amazon, it's listed for $7.49. When I add it to my cart, I realize it's even cheaper: inexplicably and improbably, it is an additional 65 percent off.This one image of a black mini dress does not just appear on random listings on Amazon Haul - you can find it on Walmart and AliExpress as well as smaller sites with names like Mermaid Way and VMzona - all selling dupes (short for duplicates) of the original Mirror Palais dress. I even find a separate listing on Amazon, in the typically but not unbelievably... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Smart rings had a resurgence this year. The question is whether the renaissance will continue. Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: One NZ SpaceX's satellite-to-cell Starlink service has hit a nationwide coverage milestone in New Zealand - albeit with a few limitations. One NZ says it's the first telecommunications company globally to power a nationwide satellite text messaging service via Starlink. Starlink has also signed up partners in Canada, Australia, Japan, Peru, Switzerland, and Chile, partnering with T-Mobile in the US.Only four phone models are currently supported: the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and OPPO Find X8 Pro. Eligibility is expected to expand to more devices next year. Most text messages can be sent and received within three minutes during the initial rollout, according One NZ, though that may increase to 10 minutes or longer" during the first few months.We continue to test the capabilities of One NZ Satellite TXT, and this is an initial service that will get better. For example, text messages will take longer to send but will get quicker over time," One NZ's Experience and Commercial Director Joe Goddard said. We're beginning with a small number of phones as part of the staggered rollout of the technology. And critically, from today customers can send and receive text messages only, but in the future, we expect voice calling and data to also be available."The One NZ Satellite TXT service will be free for existing customers on paid-monthly plans. One NZ hasn't revealed if new customers or those on other contracts will be required to pay an additional fee to access satellite-to-cell coverage.Starlink's text-by-satellite service was previously piloted with T-Mobile customers in areas affected by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in October. T-Mobile was granted FCC approval for the service in November, and is now signing up customers to test the US Starlink beta program early next year."

Some Samsung fridges are getting hybrid cooling tech in 2025. | Image: Samsung Samsung just announced new hybrid cooling tech coming to its refrigerators in 2025. They'll use a traditional compressor alongside a new Peltier module - a semiconductor device that transfers heat from one side to the other when current passes through it. This approach results in a fridge with reduced temperature variations inside to keep foods fresher longer while better utilizing interior space, according to Samsung.The Peltier effect is something we've seen harnessed by wearable personal air conditioners, microclimate chairs, and hobbyist coolers in the past. This is the first time we can recall seeing it used in a full-sized refrigerator sold by a major brand.Samsung says the Peltier module is only called into action when significant cooling is needed. This might be after loading the weekly shopping haul into the fridge or when adding hot leftovers. In these situations the Peltier module works alongside the compressor to avoid a big internal temperature spike. Otherwise, the fridge relies exclusively on the compressor for optimal cooling efficiency. Samsung says its hybrid cooling tech will be introduced into a fridge (model RM80F23VM) that can be recognized as the most efficient of Energy Star in 2025."Samsung's fridges featuring the new hybrid cooling tech will be available with 900-liter capacities. The company says they have a 25-liter increase in usable internal space as a result of using a Peltier module instead of traditional heating elements. And according to Samsung, its hybrid cooling can keep foods fresher for longer, with tests showing pork lasting 1.4 times longer and salmon 1.2 times.Expect to hear more from Samsung about its hybrid cooling fridges in early January when the big CES trade show kicks off in earnest from Las Vegas.

New logo up top and old one on the bottom. | Image: Sandisk SanDisk is now SANDISK. It's also now Sandisk. The company is announcing a fresh rebranding this week with a new logo that drops the inter-capped styling it's generally maintained since 1995 with one that is inspired by a single point of data" or a pixel."In a new video, Sandisk says its slab serif is back and bolder" and it maintains its open D" letter, but pairs it with a new pixel-driven S." The company says the letters symbolize the collaboration and partnership required to actualize our purpose and tap into new possibilities." As noted in a report by Fast Company, the Sandisk rebranding comes ahead of a spinoff from its parent company Western Digital planned for next year (it was originally planned for this year). Western Digital had originally acquired Sandisk back in 2016.Last year, Western Digital was embroiled in controversy surrounding the popular, pricey portable SanDisk Extreme SSD, in which publications reported that the product would wipe owners' data erroneously. It happened to our supervising producer Vjeran Pavic, and Western Digital refused to answer our questions at the time to explain what was happening.Controversy aside, we're big fans of unfinished" logo styles here at The Verge, and it looks like Sandisk did alright with its rebrand. It certainly could do worse -- just look at PayPal, Kia, Paramount. or JaGUar.