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Image: Intel Intel's new Arrow Lake CPUs came out in October promising high performance at lower power levels, but reviews, including ours, noted surprisingly lackluster gaming performance. Tom Warren said of the Core Ultra 9 285K, ...in many titles, it provides worse performance than the 14th Gen chips it was designed to replace."Now, the troubled chipmaker says it has been gradually releasing updates that fixed most of the issues it identified, as reported earlier by Tom's Hardware.At the end of the day, there were four root issues that we needed to address, and fixes for those are actually already in the field right now," Robert Hallock, Intel's VP and GM of client AI and technical marketing said during an interview with HotHardware. They've been coming out over the last two weeks or so in drips and drabs, as update schedules allow."One issue stemmed from a mistimed" update that was supposed to optimize Windows' processor power management (PPM) system for Intel's Core Ultra 200S-series processors. (PPM adjusts the performance of a CPU based on the current power plan, such as Balanced, High Performance, Power Saver, etc).Instead of releasing the PPM update before reviewers got their hands on the processors, Intel says it scheduled the update to go out when it became widely available, which may have caused reviewers to see worse-than-expected performance. Due to the missing PPM update, Intel's performance-boosting Application Performance Optimizer (APO) also couldn't take effect in games, while misconfigured" performance settings also had a negative impact on reviewers' benchmarks. Image: Intel A fix was already applied for these issues in Windows 11 build 26100.2161. Intel also says Epic Games resolved a driver compatibility issue causing the blue screen of death when running games with Easy Anti-Cheat, such as Star Wars Outlaws.Intel is planning to release another set of performance upgrades for Arrow Lake CPUs in January, and it will provide a comprehensive performance update" at CES. For now, Intel recommends updating Windows and applying the latest BIOS update to your motherboard if you haven't already. Otherwise, you can wait until the final" performance update next year.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images So far, possible answers include aliens, an international conspiracy, secret military tests, or just planes. 2024's drone hysteria has gone on for weeks across the East Coast, and we still have far more questions than answers. The sightings may have started in New Jersey, but reports of possible drone sightings have continued to spread.The usual authorities haven't helped much, with bland statements like There continues to be no known threat to public safety," failing to tamp down anxiety and interest. What we do know so far is that this is a perfect storm for clout-chasing politicians and that our phone cameras aren't really up to the task of taking pictures of stuff flying around in the sky.Meanwhile, social media-fueled misinformation has rushed to fill the information vacuum about what people are seeing. Even if, in many cases, what they've seen are planes, stars, meteors, or drones sent up by drone hunters to try to find the mystery drones.We'll keep track of the best information we can pull together right here.

Not a Switch 2. Think bigger. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Last Friday, we brought you leaked dimensions of the next Nintendo Switch from the most likely source yet: a 3D scan of the actual hardware" obtained by case manufacturer Dbrand. But case manufacturers aren't the only source of leaks.A Redditor named NextHandheld" claims to have seen and touched an actual final retail unit of the Nintendo Switch 2. I spoke with them, and I've now heard and seen enough to think they might be legit.In particular, I've seen two photos of a possible Nintendo Switch 2 dock, and one photo of the inside of a possible Switch 2 controller rail, covered in certification logos and with copper contacts exposed, which also shows its metal kickstand hinge open at an angle. Notably, the dock was not included in the 3D scan that's circulating among case manufacturers.If NextHandheld is telling the truth, we now know a good bit more about Nintendo's next console. For example: as much as we'd love it to be called the Super Nintendo Switch," it'll likely be introduced as the Nintendo Switch 2.Name and dateOfficially, Nintendo has only called it the successor to Nintendo Switch," promised to formally announce the new console by March 31st, 2025, and... Read the full story at The Verge.

You'll need to remove an AirTag's battery door to install it inside the TimeCapsule. | Image: Elevation Lab Elevation Lab's new TimeCapsule is a protective case for an Apple AirTag that turns it into a waterproof, dustproof tracker with a ten-year battery life. It's available now for $19.99, but you can also get a pair for $29.99, or a heavily-discounted four-pack for $39.99.The TimeCapsule is a candy bar-sized enclosure that replaces an AirTag's CR2032 coin cell battery with an electrical contact and slots for a pair of AA batteries. It's made of fiber reinforced polycarbonate" that won't block or reduce the range of Bluetooth or UWB signals, according to Elevation Lab's Casey Hopkins. The case also has an IP69 rating, which offers the highest protection against water, dust, and dirt ingress. No point in a ten-year tracker that can't handle a puddle. Image: Elevation Lab The TimeCapsule can also help camouflage an AirTag, making it look more like an external storage drive instead of a tracking device. There are tradeoffs, of course. The TimeCapsule weighs 3.5 ounces with the batteries installed, compared to .39 ounces for a regulation AirTag. And the case does muffle the volume of the AirTag's chirps by about a third, potentially making it harder to locate by ear. But for situations where you really don't want to be replacing your AirTag's battery every year, that seems like a small price to pay.The company recommends using Energizer Ultimate Lithium AAs to maximize battery life and avoid the leaks and corrosion that alkaline batteries are known for. You can also use nickel-metal hydride batteries, but they won't quite last as long before needing to be recharged.

A station render with Chargepoint-built GM Energy chargers. | Image: GM GM is partnering with ChargePoint to build out a new EV charging network under the GM Energy brand, the companies announced today.GM plans to install up to 500 DC fast-charging ports at stations deployed in strategic" places across the US, with some equipped with ChargePoint's Express Plus platform that supports charge speeds up to 500kW. GM and Chargepoint plan to open the stations rapidly, with the locations deployed by the end of 2025."ChargePoint will bring its Omni Port charging hardware for the project, which can connect with vehicles fitted with either CCS or Tesla's NACS ports so that owners generally would not need to carry an adapter.With ultra-fast charging, Omni Port technology, and excellent customer experiences, this collaboration should be another reason why EV drivers and the EV-curious should be excited," GM Energy VP Wade Sheffer said in a statement.This isn't GM Energy's only EV charger partnership. The automaker also has an ongoing deal with EVgo that has already installed 2,000 DC fast chargers as of December. GM is also building stations with Flying J and Pilot truck stops, while also taking a role in the EV charging consortium Ionna with major players like Hyundai, Kia, BMW, and Stellantis.

Image: Ram Ram brand owner Stellantis is delaying its long-awaited all-electric Ram 1500 Rev pickup truck from the first half of 2025 to 2026. The automaker is now prioritizing the launch of its gas-extended hybrid Ramcharger truck, which is also being delayed beyond the first half of 2025 that it originally targeted.Stellantis says launching the Ramcharger first is a decision driven by overwhelming consumer interest" and a slowdown in demand for heavy all-electric models. Stellantis' CEO Carlos Tavares, stepped down earlier this month following a sharp decline in the automaker's sales. The company has been accused of degrading its US brands and failing to release more affordable models.The Ramcharger and the Rev are both built on Stellantis' STLA Frame body-on-frame platform designed to handle electric, gas, hybrid, and hydrogen powertrains. The platform helps stretch the Ramcharger gas-extended EV range up to 690 miles on a full charge and tank.Stellantis and battery partner Samsung SDI just secured a federal loan from the Biden administration to build domestic EV batteries.

Image: The Verge Threads is rolling out a new feature that lets you share someone's photos and videos without including the original post. You'll be able to add your own text alongside the reshared media, which will include a credit to the creator, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri.This is a quick, easy way to add your creative takes to trending images and clips without quote posting," Mosseri says. The original poster's username will appear in the top left corner of the photo or video, with a repost counter in the lower left. Threads spokesperson Alec Booker tells The Verge that tapping on the username will show a list of posts using the media, with the original post appearing at the top.Besides making it a little cleaner to reshare media, the feature is likely designed to help cut down on complaints about users reposting content without credit. Creators will receive a notification when their posts are reused, and will also have the ability to turn resharing off from their account settings.To repost an image or video on Threads, you can long-press the media (or the repost button) and select use media. From there, you can add your own text and share the post. X has a similar option, though only for videos, which includes a credit beneath the video and a link to the original post.Update, December 18th: Added more information from Threads.

Image: Amazon Amazon today announced that its Dual Audio feature for Fire TV, which lets viewers listen through a hearing aid while others in the room experience standard sound from a TV's speakers, will be rolling out in the next several weeks. It'll be available first on the company's latest Fire TV Omni Mini LED. Dual Audio uses the audio streaming for hearing aids (ASHA) protocol.In a blog post, Amazon said this marks the first time Fire TV customers with ASHA-enabled hearing aids will be able to listen to streaming content simultaneously with others using two different audio outputs" for a more communal viewing experience. The company is also expanding ASHA support to include all Widex Moment Behind-The-Ear (BTE) and Receiver-In-Canal (RIC) hearing aids" with compatibility across a range of devices including the Fire TV Omni Mini LED Series, Fire TV Omni QLED Series, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV 4-Series, Fire TV 2-Series, and Fire TV Omni Series.Amazon is also taking steps to make its packaging and included start guides more accessible. New QR codes on the latest packaging include tactile, raised UV dots to improve discoverability."Scanning that QR code will bring you to Amazon.com for more in-depth product information and steps for setting up a device. That's critical so that customers who are blind or have low vision can easily find the code by touch," Amazon's Maiken Moeller-Hansen wrote in a blog post. Separate from these accessibility measures, Amazon is introducing new packaging for Echo, Kindle, and Fire TV hardware that uses 30 percent more recycled fiber (on average") and 60 percent less ink.How to enable Dual Audio on the Fire TV Omni Mini LED:

This is such a weird episode of The X-Files. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Phone cameras are incredible little machines, capable of way more than their tiny lenses and sensors would lead you to believe. They can capture core memories at the beach and northern lights in the sky. But even with all of their computational smarts, they have their limits, including one that's particularly obvious at the moment. You know all those clear, high-quality pictures you've seen of the drones hovering over New Jersey at night? No? Exactly.You are probably aware by now that there are drones of mysterious origins visiting the New Jersey skies at night. And if you've watched or read a report on the drone situation, you've probably seen a grainy photo of distant lights in the sky, maybe with blurred trails from red and green navigation lights. You know the type, because they all basically look the same. But this isn't happening in some remote part of the country, this is a seemingly nightly occurrence in one of the most densely populated parts of the country. And considering that everyone has a camera in their pocket, why is every photo of these drones so bad? Image: Getty This could be anything. I had my suspicions, but I asked Sten Odenwald,... Read the full story at The Verge.

OpenAI For the 10th day of ship-mas," OpenAI rolled out a way to call ChatGPT for up to 15 minutes for free over the phone using 1-800-CHATGPT.The feature was a project spun up just a few weeks ago, OpenAI's chief product officer Kevin Weil said on the livestream. Users can now call ChatGPT in the US and message via WhatsApp globally at 1-800-242-8478. The 15-minute limit is per phone number per month, so really, you could spin up a few Google Voice numbers to get as much time with it as you want.The phone number is built using OpenAI's Realtime API, and the WhatsApp feature is powered by GPT-4o mini through an integration with the WhatsApp API. OpenAI OpenAI sees this feature as an important stepping stone for newcomers to AI, since the service represents a simplified version of ChatGPT compared to its web-based counterpart and offers a low-cost way to try it out through familiar channels." The company notes that existing users seeking more comprehensive features, higher usage limits, and personalization options should continue using their regular ChatGPT accounts through traditional channels.Funnily enough, Google launched a similar tool in 2007 called GOOG-411, which offered free directory assistance by voice. The service was discontinued in 2010 without an official explanation from Google, but some speculate that it was shut down because the company had already achieved its underlying goal: collecting a sufficient database of voice samples to advance its speech recognition technology.At the time, Google VP Marissa Mayer said it outright: The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. ... So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we're trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high accuracy."OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson said the company won't be using these calls to train large language models.

LG's Signature OLED T, the transparent TV that was the company's big flashy reveal at CES 2024, now has an official price: $59,999. It's available beginning today in the United States at select LG-authorized retailers including Best Buy, Video & Audio Center and via LG.com" the company said in a press release. You can't just walk into your local Best Buy and get this thing, mind you; it's a special order kind of situation. LG says the first purchase will be made later tonight at a gala at Video & Audio Center.The OLED T lets you switch between its mind-boggling transparent mode, where you can clearly see whatever's behind the OLED panel, and an opaque mode that eliminates distractions when enjoying content on the 77-inch screen.

Sony is furthering its partnership with AMD so they can create more AI-powered technology to make games look and play better - and not just on PlayStation hardware. The two companies are establishing a deeper collaboration" to work on Machine Learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay," lead architect of the PS5 and PS5 Pro Mark Cerny announced on Wednesday.The two already partner on the PS5 and PS5 Pro's GPUs, which are based on AMD's RDNA 2 architecture, and the PS5 Pro uses a feature called PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) to improve image clarity and frame rates.Sony also released a 37-minute presentation by Cerny discussing technical aspects of the PS5 Pro and some additional information about the multi-year" project with AMD, which is codenamed Amethyst." The two are vague about how, when, and where the tech resulting from Project Amethyst will be used, but general it sounds like it's something we could see on the next PlayStation and other future hardware that AMD is a part of.These components should be key in increasing the richness of game graphics"The companies have two goals with Project Amethyst, according to Cerny. The first goal is a more ideal architecture for machine learning," Cerny said, including something that's particularly good at dealing with the lightweight convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for game graphics.The second goal is to develop a set of high-quality CNNs for graphics," Cerny said. Both SIE and AMD will independently have the ability to draw from this collection of network architectures and training strategies, and these components should be key in increasing the richness of game graphics as well as enabling more extensive use of ray tracing and path tracing."Sony and AMD don't want this technology to be exclusive to PlayStation. Through this technology collaboration we're looking to support broad work and machine learning across a variety of devices," Cerny said. That means something that can be used broadly across PC and console and cloud," Cerny said to IGN.The fruits of this work seem like they're a ways out, though: Don't expect some massive hardware announcement immediately coming out of this," Cerny told Digital Foundry. And since creating a console is roughly a four year-journey," Cerny said during the presentation, it's possible we might not see hardware that uses tech from Project Amethyst until the PlayStation 6. (Cerny dodged a direct question from IGN about when we should expect a potential PS6.)If you want to read more of what Cerny said about Amethyst in his presentation, here's the transcript of that part (which starts at around 34:32 in the video):

Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images While its rivals have been stuck in perpetual testing or forced to shut down completely due to dry coffers, Waymo has quietly amassed a legitimate robotaxi business that continues to grow and evolve. And today, it showed off a few numbers that underscore just how far ahead of the rest of the industry it is.Chief among those is the number 4 million, which is how many driverless rides the company provided in the three cities in which it operates: Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Waymo says it has provided a total of 5 million driverless rides in its three key markets, which means nearly all of its growth took place this year alone.Waymo's service area is small but growing - the company says that it services 500 square miles cumulatively across all three of its main cities, as well as Austin, where it is still operating with a waitlist. The company plans to launch in Atlanta and Miami and recently said it would test its vehicles in Japan.Four million driverless trips in 2024Waymo riders spent a cumulative 1 million hours in the company's autonomous vehicles. And since switching over to electric vehicles only, Waymo has helped avoid over 6 million kilograms of CO2 emissions. (Assuming an avoided emissions rate of 237g / passenger mile, vehicle occupancy of 1.5 passengers, and average trip length of 4.1 miles.)Today, every Waymo customer will receive their own personalized Year in Review through the company's Waymo One app. Think of it as a Spotify Wrapped for fully driverless vehicles. They'll see their own stats, including miles traveled, emissions avoided, favorite destinations, and more. The most popular destinations in each city this year were Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and The Grove shopping center in LA. The company only started providing 24/7 service to Phoenix's airport in August 2024, so its ranking as the top destination in that city just goes to show how important airport service will be for the company.The fact that Waymo has facilitated 4 million trips in three cities, while only serving one airport, is pretty amazing and could speak to the company's future prospects as its technology continues to mature. Airports are a major source of revenue for human-powered ridehail companies like Uber and Lyft.But Waymo is also facing an uncertain future with mounting regulatory and financial pressures. Tariffs on Chinese vehicles and software could stymie its growth plans. President-elect Donald Trump is said to want a regulatory framework for AVs - whatever that means. But lowering costs is going to be increasingly important for Waymo as it looks to expand to new cities.Waymo is also facing an uncertain future with mounting regulatory and financial pressuresAlphabet doesn't break out Waymo's costs in its earnings report, but its Other Bets" unit, which includes the robotaxi company, brought in $388 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2024, up from $297 million a year ago. And the unit's losses decreased slightly to $1.12 billion from $1.94 billion in the year-earlier period. Alphabet recently led a $5.6 billion funding round for Waymo to help it cover costs as it eyes its next phase of growth.As it grows, pricing will become a bigger challenge. So far, Waymo has settled into the premium" tier of ridehail services like Uber Black. Those retrofitted Jaguar I-Pace vehicles cost a lot to equip with all the sensors and hardware that help them navigate the roads autonomously. And the 175,000 trips a week that Waymo is doing aren't nearly enough to recoup those costs.Another challenge will be expanding the types of service it provides. Right now, it's only providing trips to one airport, in Phoenix. It will need to expand in its current and future markets if it wants to remain a viable mobility option. And it will need to get more comfortable riding on the highway, which it only does in limited cases.Safety is also a big hurdle. While Waymo has published a number of studies that indicate its vehicles are safer than human drivers, there are still a lot of lingering questions around passenger safety. Waymo vehicles have been targeted for harassment and vandalism. And they have occasionally come into conflict with emergency vehicles.But Waymo has novelty on its side - and its customers often give it high marks for the ability to customize their rides, such as playing their own music and setting the temperature to their liking. It may be enough to propel the company to another huge year in 2025.Update, December 18th: A previous version of this story said Waymo customers spent 11 million hours riding in its vehicles. The correct figure is 1 million. Waymo initially shared the wrong number of hours.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Okay, I get it, we're all sick of the drones. I went to two holiday parties over the weekend in the New Jersey suburbs, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about. The news coverage has been breathless, all-consuming, and most importantly, completely unhinged.No one knows anything. The cops don't know anything. The feds sure don't sound like they know anything. Sure, everyone has a theory. Depending on where you fall on the DSM-5 spectrum for conspiracy-addled nonsense, they could be a few DJI Mavic enthusiasts having a laugh, a bunch of small planes, or a full-on alien invasion of our nation's most consequential state. Image: Getty Is it a bird? Is it a plane? But the people who are supposed to know things - the ones whose jobs are to have access to all the technology and equipment afforded by bloated law enforcement budgets, the ones who have security clearance and subpoena power and all the various trappings of authority that the vast majority of us can only dream of - don't know shit. Actually, it's worse than that: they think they know shit, and they are willing to confidently stand before the public and say as much, even when they actually don't know shit.Here are the best examples I could find of current and former elected leaders and government officials spouting utterly deranged nonsense about the drone sightings.Jeff Van Drew

Surf's homepage is just feeds. It's feeds all the way down. | Image: David Pierce / Flipboard Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard and an internet entrepreneur since the Netscape days, is a true believer in the fediverse. He doesn't love the word: he'd much rather call it the social web." But whatever you want to call the open, decentralized, interconnected social networking experience that apps like Mastodon and Bluesky promise, McCue is absolutely convinced it's the future.For the last year or so, McCue and his team have been completely overhauling the Flipboard platform to make it a part of the social web. Once the change is done, Flipboard will be a fully decentralized way to discover and read stuff from across the internet. The process seems to be going fine, though it doesn't seem poised to take over the fediverse the way Threads could if it fully opened up.At the same time, though, the Flipboard team has been working on something even bigger. That something is an app called Surf (not to be confused with the other recently launched Surf), which McCue called the world's first browser for the social web." He first said that to me a little over a year ago, when Surf was mostly just a bunch of mock-ups and a slide deck. Now, the app has been in beta for the last few months - I've been using it most of that time - and a public beta is launching today. Not everyone can get in; McCue says he wants to bring in some curators and creators first, in order for there to be lots of stuff in Surf when everyone else gets access. And he promises that's coming soon.But wait, sorry, back to the whole browser for the social web" thing. McCue's best explanation of Surf's big theory is this: in a decentralized social world, the internet will be less about websites and more about feeds. You won't put in, like, theverge.com and go to the website for The Verge, but you can put in the verge' and go to the ActivityPub feed for The Verge." Your Threads timeline is a feed; every Bluesky Starter Pack is a feed; every creator you follow is just producing a feed of content.Surf's job, in that world, is to help you discover and explore all those feeds. The app can see three kinds of feeds: anything from ActivityPub, which means things like Mastodon and Threads and Pixelfed; anything from AT Protocol, which means Bluesky; and any RSS feed. You can search for feeds by topic, publisher, or creator; you can curate your own feeds by combining other feeds. And then you can share those feeds, which other people can combine and recombine. It's all a little confusing. Just imagine a nicely designed, vertically scrolling feed, somewhere between a Twitter timeline and the Apple News homepage. Image: David Pierce / Surf You can have any kind of content in Surf - which means the app has to be good at absolutely everything. A feed can be made up of almost any kind of content, which presents a tricky design problem for Surf. It has to be equally adept as a social network, a news app, a video platform, and a podcast player. Combining all that stuff into one place isn't just the goal; it's the whole point. And it's very hard to do all of those things well.Personally, the most eye-opening moment in my time testing Surf has been the way the app lets you automatically filter a feed. I set up a feed that's just all my favorite stuff: my go-to podcasts, must-read blogs, a couple of can't-miss YouTube channels, and my favorite folks on Bluesky. I can open that feed and see everything, in order, no matter what it is or who it came from. But I can also filter it to just show all the videos in the feed or tap on Listen" to turn it into a podcast queue.Surf isn't yet a full-featured app for any of these uses, much less all of them, but it's already a pretty useful app for all kinds of media. It presents videos like an endlessly scrolling TikTok feed, which is actually a pretty fun way to flip through a YouTube channel. Posts with links are formatted like news stories, with big images and headlines. It's not a particularly dense timeline-scrolling experience, either - the whole thing is more like Flipboard's flippy magazines than the For You pages we're used to. Because it's trying to compile a bunch of disparate platforms into one, search can be messy - I found five profiles with my name and picture, for instance, and it's not obvious which one is the one you're looking for. Surf is also designed to be interactive, but right now, that pretty much only works if you're a Mastodon user liking Mastodon posts. For most other things, it's either kind of broken or entirely broken. For now, and probably for a while, Surf is going to be much better as a consumption tool than a social one.McCue sees the social web as the beginning of an entirely new internet. He even uses old-web metaphors to explain these early products: the current era we're in is like AOL back in the day, a walled garden that contained all the innovation in the walled garden"; Surf is like old-school Yahoo, a collection of feeds that other people have made." He wants to enable paid feeds, so publishers, creators, and curators can make money on the platform. He has big ideas about custom designs for feeds, so they can look more like homepages.There's an awful lot left to build - not to mention a lot of protocols and tools left to convince all the internet's platforms and publishers to work with. But I've been talking to McCue about this for two years now, and his conviction and optimism haven't wavered a bit. When I tell him that I definitely wavered - that I was once all in on ActivityPub as the future but am worried seeing Bluesky grow on another protocol and hearing some of the issues Threads and others are having with ActivityPub - he just laughs. One, he says, that's how it always goes in these early phases. Two, that's what Surf is meant to fix.To prove his point, McCue opens up a feed full of basketball content, created by David Rushing. Rushing was a big figure in early NBA Threads, a community that has splintered thanks to some of Threads' moderation and community policies. Now, people are posting with #nbathreads on Bluesky and elsewhere, too. It's messy. But Surf, McCue says, can bring it back together. He starts scrolling Rushing's custom feed: You're seeing Bluesky posts, Mastodon posts, Threads posts, Flipboard posts, anything with the hashtag #nbathreads across the whole social web. If you post a podcast, if you post a YouTube video, anything with the hashtag #nbathreads, it'll show up in this feed." Rushing can add or remove individual posts or even use Flipboard's filtering systems to get rid of anything that feels political, mentions gambling, or whatever else he wants to do.McCue is practically giddy as he scrolls through all this basketball content. This is the whole thing, right here. Ultimately," he says, you're just not going to care whether something is on Threads - I don't write you a separate kind of email because you're on Gmail, right?" People will use lots of apps, there will be lots of communities, and that's good. There are nerds on Bluesky, there are nerds on Threads. How can all the nerds gather together?" That's the question for the fediverse - sorry, the social web - and Surf looks like it might be the best answer anyone's come up with so far.

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on whether a bill that could ban TikTok violates the First Amendment. The arguments will take place on January 10th, just over a week before a potential ban could take effect.While the outcome is far from guaranteed, SCOTUS' decision to take up the case is a small win for TikTok, which is barreling toward expulsion from the US unless the court throws out or pauses the law, or its China-based parent company ByteDance agrees to sell it in time. The law at the center of the case, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, seeks to prohibit apps like TikTok from being owned by companies in a set list of foreign adversary countries.The Department of Justice successfully defended the law as constitutional before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by arguing the government had a compelling interest in protecting US national security from foreign influence. Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill after classified briefings in which intelligence officials shared concerns over how China could potentially use the app to exert influence over the kinds of content US users see, and potentially access sensitive data - though publicly, the government has not come forward with declassified information showing such dangers are already happening.The arguments before the Supreme Court will consolidate two cases against the law, from both TikTok and a group of creators on the platform. The parties will get a total of two hours to make their cases. The court said it would defer a decision on whether to halt the law until after the oral arguments. The lower court had declined to stop the law from taking effect pending the Supreme Court's review.TikTok filed for an emergency injunction to the Supreme Court just two days ago. That same day, CEO Shou Zi Chew was set to meet with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, who has noted his success on TikTok in the campaign, at one point seemingly promised to save the app, although his more recent comments post-election make it less clear how exactly he'd plan to do that. The deadline for the ban - unless the court stops it - is the day before Trump's inauguration. The president has discretion to extend the deadline 90 days, though one big remaining question is whether China would even agree to let ByteDance sell the app.

Skateboarder Carlos Ribeiro during X Games Ventura 2024. | Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images Roku got the exclusive US streaming rights to next year's X Games Aspen and a soon-to-be-announced" X Games event in the summer, the company announced on Wednesday. Both events will air on Roku's free 24/7 sports channel as the service continues its push into live sports.Though the X Games were founded by ESPN in the 90s, the sports network sold majority ownership to MSP Sports in 2022. Since then, the X Games have streamed on various platforms, including YouTube, Twitch, ESPN, ABC, and the VR app Xtadium.But now, X Games Aspen will appear on the Roku Sports Channel, a newly launched hub for Roku's live Sunday MLB games, Formula E races, and other sports-related content. This channel lives within the overarching Roku Channel that comes pre-installed on most Roku devices and is also available on the web, as well as an app on third-party smart TVs and mobile phones.Additionally, Roku launched a free ad-supported streaming TV channel dedicated to the X Games, which will air programming highlights, clips, interviews, archival content, and more" leading up to the event. X Games Aspen takes place from January 23rd to the 25th, with more details to come on an additional" X Games coming this summer.Roku is just one of many streaming platforms getting into sports, with Netflix airing live NFL games on Christmas Day, Max launching a live sports add-on, and Amazon Prime Video picking up streaming rights to NBA games. Even the tournament series Street League Skateboarding signed a deal with the right-wing streaming platform Rumble.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump's second term is a regulatory wild card hanging over Big Tech. Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Wing Wing, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, is expanding its drone delivery service to DoorDash customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Starting today, 50 merchants from malls in Frisco and Fort Worth will be available for drone delivery through the DoorDash app, dropping meals and items to homes in as little as 15 minutes," according to Wing.The drones can fly at up to 65mph and reach a cruising height of about 150 feet before stopping to hover and safely lower orders to the ground at their delivery destinations. DoorDash customers will need an eligible address" in Dallas-Fort Worth for the drone delivery option to appear on the checkout page. Locals can check the Wing website to see if they qualify. Image: DoorDash / Wing This option will only appear at the DoorDash checkout if the order is being delivered within the service catchment area. Wing says the company has now completed more than 400,000 commercial deliveries worldwide following its first US pilot in 2019. The Alphabet drone service trialed similar DoorDash partnerships in Australia and Christiansburg, Virginia, though the latter was limited to delivering Wendy's.This isn't the first service Wing has introduced to Dallas-Fort Worth, having previously teamed up with Walgreens to airdrop local deliveries. Walmart also operates its own drone delivery program in the area via partnerships with Wing and Zipline.

Image: Seagate It's been more than two decades since Seagate began working on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) - and now the company may finally be ready to release a hard drive using the technology. A new product page spotted by Tom's Hardware shows an Exos M hard drive sporting up to 32TB of storage using Seagate's Mozaic 3 Plus HAMR platform.Seagate's Mozaic 3 Plus technology allows for bigger hard drive capacities by making data bits smaller and closer together on each disk. To write data, a laser diode attached to the drive's recording heads heats small areas of the disk. Each bit is heated and cools down in a nanosecond, so the HAMR laser has no impact at all on drive temperature, or on the temperature, stability, or reliability of the media overall," Seagate writes on its website.Seagate says its Exos M hard drive has a 3TB per platter density, making it useful for enterprise applications like powering AI systems. We still don't know when Seagate could release its Exos M hard drive, as its product page currently shows a link to Stay Informed," but a launch seems imminent.As pointed out by Tom's Guide, Seagate said in a filing earlier this month that it had successfully completed qualification testing" for its HAMR hard drives with several customers within the Mass Capacity markets, including a leading cloud service provider." It says it will start shipping its HAMR-based hard drive to the unnamed cloud provider in the coming weeks."The Verge reached out to Seagate with a request for more information but didn't immediately hear back.Seagate isn't the only company working on high-capacity hard drives. In October, Western Digital launched a 32TB hard drive using energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR), while Toshiba recently demonstrated high-capacity hard drives with HAMR and microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR).

Image: LG Often at CES, you'll see a very impressive new technology debut at exorbitant prices before trickling down to more affordable models a couple years later. Lo and behold, that's exactly what we're seeing with LG and its Zero Connect Box. We got our first look at it with the M Series OLED in 2023. Now the company is bringing that Zero Connect Box, which beams audio and video to the TV panel, to one model of its still-terribly-named QNED Evo Mini LED lineup.The box can transmit 4K video at up to 144Hz, and by all accounts from reviews last year, it works as advertised and poses no issues for gaming. The only cable that runs to the TV screen itself is the power cable.LG says the QNED Evo series is also ditching quantum dots this year for a proprietary wide color gamut technology, Dynamic QNED Color Solution" that supposedly produces pure colors that are as realistic as they appear to the eye in general life."Unfortunately, I predict we're going to see a lot of hype about AI on TVs at CES 2025 - even more than usual - and LG is already backing up my theory. It's even putting a new AI button right on the Magic Remote for this year's TVs. In what's destined to be a controversial decision, the AI button actually takes the place of the traditional inputs button:

Image: Shelly European smart device manufacturer Shelly is launching 11 automation devices that can connect to the home from over a mile away. Shelly says its new and updated Wave devices are built around the Z-Wave Long Range (Z-Wave LR) specification, and will be available in the US in the first half of 2025.The benefits of Z-Wave LR are similar to those offered by Amazon's Sidewalk IoT network in that both can extend connectivity to devices beyond your home Wi-Fi network, without the need for expensive LTE data.Z-Wave LR was announced back in 2020, but products that actually use it are only just starting to hit the market. The wireless protocol touts several features that are beneficial for large homes and commercial environments, such as eradicating the need for a mesh network with multiple signal repeaters. Instead, Z-Wave LR devices operate on a star network topology, which connects directly to devices via a central gateway hub.Z-Wave LR has a maximum line-of-sight wireless range of 1.5 miles when operating at full power with support for up to 4,000 devices on a single network. Supported devices also automatically adjust the radio output power, providing up to 10 years of battery life on a single coin-cell battery.The upgraded Shelly Wave products include a smart plug, a humidity and temperature sensor, a door/window sensor, a motion detector, a remote controller for motorized blinds, and a range of lighting dimmers and smart switches. Three of the devices are battery-powered. Shelly hasn't revealed the price of these new products yet.Z-Wave LR is backward compatible with older Z-Wave products and networks, but a Z-Wave LR-supported hub (built on the Z-Wave 700 or 800 series platform) is required to take advantage of the extended range benefits.

Michelle Rohn / The Verge The internet is forever. But also, it isn't. What happens to our culture when websites start to vanish at random? Read the full story at The Verge.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I opened the App Store today to find an emulator I'd read about, and a new prompt appeared under the search bar inviting me to search the way you talk." I hadn't seen the prompt before on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, and quite frankly, I had missed the iOS 18.1 update note about it.As it describes, Apple's update in October added, App Store search lets you use natural language to find what you're looking for more easily." It's also not the only place Apple is adding natural language search with iOS 18, in addition to Photos, Music, and Apple TV.While some others had seen a splash screen in October, I'd only spotted the same simple search prompts as before. When I asked around at The Verge, several others hadn't seen it before, although closing the app and relaunching it caused the message to appear in at least one case, and a few social media posts have popped up from other people noticing it for the first time.The prompt in the hint bubble suggested trying something like Apps that help me work out," so of course, I gave it a try. Screenshot: iOS App Store How well does it work? When I searched emulators that feature multiple consoles," the top result was the multi-console Delta app. Cool. Apps that only emulate single consoles" gave me the PS Remote Play, PlayStation, and Xbox apps - less good, but it did follow those with Gamma, a PS1 emulator app. And when I asked for Video games that can help me work out," well... Screenshot: iOS App Store This isn't exactly what I was looking for, but I certainly would never have found this otherwise. Overall, it seems like an improvement to me. Twerk Race 3D is not an app that would help me work out, but it does seem like the search engine worked in spirit. I never felt like the App Store's search was helpful for anything besides finding an app I already knew the name of. Plus, searching with the usual one-or-two-word terms might not give me the same variety as switching up how I phrase a natural language prompt.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Grubhub has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that claimed the food delivery service misled customers and drivers while also damaging the reputation of restaurants. The proposed settlement will require Grubhub to make several changes to the platform, such as showing the total delivery cost when customers place an order.Along with advertising highly inflated hourly pay rates for drivers," the FTC's initial complaint accused Grubhub of hiding the true cost of its services" by adding delivery fees that raised the price of customers' final orders. The agency claimed that starting around 2019, Grubhub began advertising lower delivery fees to attract more customers but then began tacking on a service" fee that increased the cost of orders anyway.The FTC also alleged the company charged Grubhub Plus members for delivery despite advertising the subscription as having free" or $0" deliveries. The agency claimed Grubhub makes the plan easy to sign up for but difficult to cancel while also allegedly blocking the accounts of users with large gift card balances. Screenshot: FTC The FTC claimed Grubhub charged customers hidden fees, raising their total order price. Additionally, the FTC accused Grubhub of adding restaurants to the platform even if they never signed up to sell food on the service. Grubhub has had as many as 325,000 unaffiliated restaurants on its platform - more than half of all of the available restaurants on Grubhub," the FTC claims. As a result, many customers wound up having issues with their orders, resulting in bad feedback for unaffiliated restaurants.Grubhub is now required to show customers the full cost of delivery and can no longer add junk fees" to orders. It's also banned from listing unaffiliated restaurants on the platform, and can only make driver earnings claims that it can back up with evidence and in writing." Grubhub must also notify customers when they're banned and offer a way to appeal the decision, as well as make it easier to cancel Grubhub Plus.While we categorically deny the allegations made by the FTC, many of which are wrong, misleading or no longer applicable to our business, we believe settling this matter is in the best interest of Grubhub and allows us to move forward," Grubhub spokesperson Najy Kamal said in a statement to The Verge. The company also responded to the settlement in a post on its website.Though Grubhub was initially ordered to pay $140 million, it is partially suspended based on the company's inability to pay the full amount." The company's $25 million will go toward refunding affected customers, but the FTC says the full judgment will be due immediately" if Grubhub is found to have misrepresented its financial status."

Image: The Verge Threads is about to begin testing the ability to schedule posts, according to Instagram's Adam Mosseri. Replies cannot be scheduled," he added, explaining that we want to balance giving people more control to plan their Threads posts while still encouraging real-time conversation."Mosseri also makes sure to note that Instagram has been working on this feature for months." I'm choosing to take as a sign that the Instagram chief is fed up with the notion that Bluesky is the motivating factor behind every new improvement that comes to Threads. Last week, Threads introduced curated collections of people to follow, which drew comparisons to Bluesky's starter packs.Yesterday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads now has over 100 million daily active users, marking the first time that the company has revealed a DAU figure for its Twitter / X competitor. Threads also has more than 300 million monthly active users. No matter how Meta is calculating those figures, Bluesky objectively remains far smaller.Instagram has long offered the option to schedule feed posts, and this week it announced the same convenience is being extended to DMs.

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is partnering with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to help creators identify content using their AI-generated likenesses on the platform and submit removal requests. The company will test the controls with celebrities and athletes early next year before rolling it out to top YouTube creators, creative professionals, and other leading partners representing talent."In September, YouTube announced plans for tools that would help manage AI-generated depictions of creators and their voices. Now, the company says it can give celebrities (and soon, creators) the ability to manage AI copies of their likeness, such as their face, at scale."Last year, CAA introduced the CAAVault, which scans and stores the digital likenesses of its clients, including their faces, bodies, and voices.YouTube is also working on synthetic-singing identification technology" that will detect AI content that attempts to replicate creators' singing voices. YouTube has already started letting music labels request the removal of AI content that simulates an artist's voice, and also began requiring creators to label videos containing AI-generated content earlier this year.

Image: Amazon Amazon's push into video game adaptations shows no signs of letting up. Today the company announced that Secret Level - an anthology of animated shorts all based on different video game properties - has been renewed for a second season on Prime Video. No other details about the new season have been announced yet.Secret Level actually just premiered on Prime Video, and comes from the same team behind Netflix's animated sci-fi anthology Love, Death and Robots. Its 15 episodes span a range of notable video game franchises, including Warhammer 40,000, Dungeons & Dragons, Mega Man, and the recently-shuttered Sony shooter Concord. It also awkwardly straddled the line between TV show and advertisement. In fact, one of Secret Level's most infamous episodes - a bloody, dark reimagining of Pac-Man - turned out to be tied to an upcoming game.Seriously, just look at it:The news comes as Amazon continues to find its footing both developing and publishing video games, as well as adapting them for its streaming service. This year the company had a major hit with Fallout on Prime Video (which is also getting a second season) and followed it up with a live-action take on Yakuza. A Tomb Raider series is also in the works.

Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida with Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe at a press conference in March. | Image: Honda Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan are in talks to merge to better compete with electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla, BYD, and others. As reported by Nikkei Asia, the two have discussed signing a memorandum of understanding that outlines plans to split equity into a new holding company from which both will do business, according to anonymous sources.Both Honda and Nissan are also discussing a plan to pull Mitsubishi into the party, which would be akin to how various Japanese electronics brands banded together - such as Konica Minolta, JVCKenwood, and others. Honda and Nissan were already working together to develop EV technology and software and had invited Mitsubishi to that party as well.Of the two companies, it's Nissan that's really in trouble and reportedly will only survive another year unless another company (Honda) swoops in to buy Nissan shares. According the Reuters, Nissan's net earnings in the middle of 2024 were down more than 90 percent year over year, and it had to cut its annual operating profit forecast by nearly 70 percent. Nissan and Honda relased statements to Reuters saying:

Image: Riley Testut The Delta gaming emulator is now providing a link to sign up for Patreon-exclusive membership perks directly within the iOS app in Apple's US App Store. Developer Riley Testut is heavily encouraging users to click that external link by tripling the price you'd otherwise pay to Apple for In-App Purchase versions of those same Patreon tiers. Testut calls it the do not buy sale."The update both embraces and protests the External Purchase Link Entitlement that Apple introduced in January, which allows developers to link to outside payment platforms in exchange for giving Apple a slightly reduced 27 percent cut of sales. The App Store policy change was made following rulings in the Epic vs Apple lawsuit that found Apple had acted anticompetitively by preventing developers from telling users about payment methods that bypassed its own payment system. Image: Delta Clicking this link within the Delta app settings will take you to the Patreon page to sign up directly. Testut says Delta is likely the first app to use the entitlement. The $3, $5, and $10 monthly memberships on Patreon - which provide additional benefits like iPad and SEGA Genesis support, and private Discord access depending on the subscription tier - are listed in the iOS app at $10, $15, and $30, respectively.We really don't want people to use in-app purchase," Testut told The Verge. We've been using Patreon for years, and it allows us to do things Apple's IAP system can't - such as issuing refunds and handling customer support - making it much more convenient for creators like us."

Image: The Verge I was driving home the other day and wanted to call my partner and let him know that I was stuck in traffic. (Not an unusual event on Brooklyn's Belt Parkway.) I've got a relatively old car (it's a 2007 model, so we're talking no real smarts), and so I depend on my phone rather than any built-in intelligence to deal with calls, music, etc. Usually, there's no problem, but this time, when I called out, Hey Google - call Jim on his mobile!" my phone informed me - in a very long-winded paragraph - that Gemini doesn't do that:

Colin Angle, the former CEO of iRobot, is launching a home robot startup. | Photo by Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Colin Angle, the co-founder of iRobot and its CEO for three decades, is getting back into robotics with a new startup called Familiar Machines & Magic. According to The Boston Globe, the company is developing a new kind of home robot focusing on health and wellness that might take the form of an animal or a familiar."The company is currently in stealth mode, Angle tells The Globe, and includes the former CTO of iRobot, Chris Jones, as well as iRobot's Ira Renfrew, who left the company to work on robotics at Amazon, including the shuttered Scout delivery robot.Angle was working to turn iRobot and its Roomba robot vacuum cleaners into the brains of the smart home before he left the company following the collapse of its sale to Amazon in January of this year. Since then, iRobot has slashed its R&D budget, cut almost 50 percent of its staff, and refocused its business on home cleaning machines.Familiar Machines & Magic has raised $15 million from eight investors and is looking for $15 million more, according to TechCrunch. A job listing for the company on LinkedIn describes it as a well-funded, new embodied AI and robotics startup based outside of Boston."It's an interesting pivot for Angle to go from the practical to the personal. To date, robots that can do things for you, such as robot vacuum cleaners, robot litter boxes, and robot lawnmowers, have been more successful than companion bots." Jibo, Moxie, and Anki are just a few that have powered down over the years.However, advances in generative AI could bring more potential to the space. These technologies could make robots such as the lovable Lovot or Sony's Aibo, which the company recently resurrected, seem more human-like, have conversations with you, and be more useful than simply being cute.For example, Israeli startup Intuition Robotics has been working on ElliQ, an AI-powered social robot designed to keep the elderly and home-bound company, since 2017. I've tested a couple of versions of the tabletop robot, and its third-generation model, which incorporates generative AI, is significantly more lifelike and engaging.What exact type of magic Angle and his Familars will conjure up remains to be seen. One investor described furry pets to address loneliness" to The Globe. However, some combination of personality and practicality that positively impacts the health and well-being of household members feels like a good place to start.