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Photo taken during the Eta Aquarid meteor shower in Ratnapura, Sri Lanka on May 5th. | Photo: Thilina Kaluthotage / NurPhoto via Getty Images If you've got clear skies and want an excuse to get away from town, the Eta Aquarid meteor shower is roughly at its peak and should be going strong tonight. Made up of remnants of Halley's Comet that the Earth passes through, this annual shower is active from April 15th to May 27th and can show up at a rate of about 10-30 meteors per hour, according to the American Meteor Society.You can see the Aquarids starting around 2AM local time in the Northern Hemisphere, radiating from the Aquarius constellation (though you'll want to look 40-60 degrees around Aquarius to see them). Weather permitting, conditions are pretty good for watching them since the moon is in its late waning period and won't be reflecting much light. Try to plan your... Continue reading...

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 36, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, hello, I'm thrilled you found us, the Installerverse loves you, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)I missed you all last week! I was at a friend's bachelor party in South Carolina, playing golf and eating burgers and mostly staying offline. Thanks to everyone who reached out to say you missed the newsletter! But I'm back now, and so is Installer. We are so back. This week, I've been writing about AI gadgets and iPads, watching Baby Reindeer and The Fall Guy, reading A Drink Before the War, and listening to the excellent Challengers score.I also have for you a new browser for... Continue reading...

Know just how steep that hill is before you go. | Screenshot: Komoot Getting into cycling in my late thirties has been humbling.I'm responsible for my own medical costs, which really makes me consider things differently than when I was a kid tearing through the neighborhood park on a twelve-speed Huffy. I've also discovered you can spend infinite money on bike stuff if you have the resources, which I do not.Most of all, I've learned that knowing how to get from point A to point B in a car or on a bus does not mean you know the best way to get there on a bike. For this particular bit of cycling logistics, I've found a tremendous - and mercifully free of charge - solution: Komoot.Komoot helps adventurers plan and follow routes - by bicycle or on foot. There are iOS, Android, and smartwatch apps in... Continue reading...

May the Fourth be filled with awesome deals on games, toys, and collectibles. | Image: Star Wars Peruse these awesome deals on Star Wars stuff, you must, because today is May the Fourth. Fans of Lucasfilm's iconic franchise have long celebrated this day as a kind of borderline-religious holiday of sorts, one that recognizes an ever-growing franchise that has been adapted for almost every type of media - and product - you can think of.Since its debut in 77, Star Wars lore has been doled out in films, TV series, books and graphic novels, video games, and plenty of other mediums we're surely oblivious to. It's also inspired board games, toys, apparel, and enough merch to fill a galaxy far, far away. Many retailers commemorate May 4th by discounting the latter, and we've gone deep into the heap so you can see all of the best Star... Continue reading...

The tiny Flextail pump inflated this city bike tire in 45 seconds. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Social media's algorithms know that I ride a bike almost every day. My quiver includes a city bike, mountain bike, and gravel bike, in addition to one or two e-bikes I'm always in the process of reviewing. I'm also the family mechanic, which makes me responsible for no less than 16 to 18 tires that I must keep inflated. So, you'd better believe I took notice when Instagram served me several ads for the Flextail Tiny Bike Bump.The mini rechargeable pump works with Presta (the thin one) or Schrader (the old fatty) valves and promises ultra-fast inflation that maxes out at 100psi (about 7 bars) - enough for any bike that doesn't require a stretchy wardrobe coordinated with your shoes and helmet.The origins of the pump are suspect, as I... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The fate of Google's search business is now in the hands of Judge Amit Mehta, as closing arguments concluded in the landmark trial on Friday.The Department of Justice and plaintiff states made their last arguments Thursday on Google's alleged anticompetitive conduct in the general search market, and on Friday focused on its allegedly illegal conduct in search advertising. Google was also under fire (separately) for failing to retain chat messages that the DOJ believes could have been relevant to the case.The government is trying to show that Google locked up key distribution channels for the general search engine market, so that would-be rivals could not grow into significant threats. It says it did so through contracts with phone... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google has had a longstanding ban on sexually explicit ads - but until now, the company hasn't banned advertisers from promoting services that people can use to make deepfake porn and other forms of generated nudes. That's about to change.Google currently prohibits advertisers from promoting sexually explicit content," which Google defines as text, image, audio, or video of graphic sexual acts intended to arouse." The new policy now bans the advertisement of services that help users create that type of content as well, whether by altering a person's image or generating a new one.The change, which will go into effect on May 30th, prohibits promoting synthetic content that has been altered or generated to be sexually explicit or... Continue reading...

I wouldn't call portable in the traditional sense, but it sure as hell beats lugging a 65-inch OLED around. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge As my colleague Chris Welch pointed out in his review of the LG StanbyME Go, there's something refreshing about a TV that takes a chance on a less familiar concept, especially at a time when beastly OLED panels and art-inspired TVs seem to dominate the landscape. And now, thanks to a $200 discount, you can pick up LG's suitcase TV at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo starting at $996.99.In terms of design, the StanbyME Go is basically a 27-inch touchscreen TV that's built directly into a 28-pound, military-grade briefcase you can tote around with you. The panel itself is nothing to write home about - it's a basic 1080 LCD with an HDMI/eARC port and a peak brightness of 500 nits - but it's the concept itself that makes it a fun... Continue reading...

Image: Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge Luminar, which makes lidar sensors for autonomous driving systems, announced today plans to lay off 20 percent of its workforce amid a broader restructuring of its production process.The company, which just announced shipments of its next-generation laser sensors to Volvo, said that it will transition to an asset light" business model that will see more of its production outsourced to its partners. As part of the restructuring, at least 147 people will lose their jobs. Luminar has at least 730 employees based in the US, according to LinkedIn.Many of these team members have been on our journey with us for years, which is why this is so difficult," Luminar CEO Austin Russell said in a statement. We have also made the decision to... Continue reading...

Rufino Choque, from the Urus Indigenous community, stands over a boat in the middle of the extinct Poopo Lake, which disappeared in 2015. | Photo by Manuel Seoane Attacks against environmental journalists have risen dramatically across the world, according to a report released by UNESCO to commemorate World Press Freedom Day.UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists surveyed 905 journalists across 129 countries. Between 2009 and last year, more than 70 percent of reporters experienced attacks while working on environmental stories ranging from mining and deforestation to protests and land grabs.There were more than 300 attacks reported over the past five years alone, a 42 percent jump from the previous five-year period. The attacks come in many forms, from legal threats and online harassment to physical violence and death threats - although physical attacks were most common. They... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Images The TSA's been planning to expand facial recognition to a whopping 430 US airports over the next several years - but a bipartisan group of 14 senators is now challenging that.Facial recognition poses significant threats to our privacy and civil liberties, and Congress should prohibit TSA's development and deployment of facial recognition tools until rigorous congressional oversight occurs," reads part of the May 2nd letter (via Gizmodo) from Sens. Merkley, Kennedy, Markey, Marshall, Cramer, Wyden, Warren, Daines, Braun, Sanders, Lummis, Van Hollen, Welch, and Butler.They add later that this powerful surveillance technology as deployed by TSA does not make air travel safer" and suggest that the TSA's current error rate of 3 percent... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple CEO Tim Cook has made it clear that AI features are coming soon, and a new report from AppleInsider offers more details about what we might see in the next version of iOS. One of the big focuses will be on Siri, which will reportedly gain the ability to analyze and summarize texts within the Messages app.AppleInsider previously said a similar Intelligent Search" feature is coming to Safari in iOS 18, allowing users to summarize webpages. Apple's large language model (LLM), called Ajax, will power these features. Several papers published by Apple suggest that the company is working on bringing on-device AI processing to the iPhone, and AppleInsider's report further aligns with this.The report says that Ajax uses on-device... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last week, I placed a big dinner order for myself and several friends through DoorDash. There was no way to add a tip when I placed my order, but I wasn't too worried - DoorDash assured me I'd be able to tip after the order was placed or delivered.It was the first time I had used the service since last November, and since then, DoorDash made some big changes: in protest of a New York City law guaranteeing a minimum wage for delivery drivers, the platform removed the ability to add a tip when you place an order. Now, in New York City, customers like myself who want to continue tipping must do so after their order is placed.It wasn't until I went back to add a tip to that dinner order that I realized just how difficult DoorDash has made... Continue reading...

Image: Arrowhead Game Studios Attention, Democracy Defenders: Helldivers 2 will soon require players on Steam to link their account to a PlayStation Network account. According to the announcement, all new players on Steam will be required to link to a PSN account starting May 6th, while current players will have a little bit longer, with mandatory enforcement delayed until June 4th.According to Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios, linking to a PSN account was always going to be a requirement for Steam players, and the policy is there to ensure players are protected from griefing and other in-game abuses. But the game's community isn't buying it, vociferously protesting the decision on social media and on Steam itself.

Image: Hisense Hisense is launching the CanvasTV, a matte television designed to display artwork and photos, letting it blend in with the rest of your decor when not in use. If it sounds similar to The Frame by Samsung, that's because it is - but the difference is that the CanvasTV's starting price is several hundred dollars cheaper.The CanvasTV is available in 55 and 65 inches, each costing $999 and $1,299, respectively. To compare, The Frame costs $1,499 for 55 inches and $1,999 for 65 inches. Like The Frame, Hisense's CanvasTV offers a 4K QLED anti-glare display. It also comes with a 144Hz refresh rate, an RGB sensor for ambient light adaption, and multi-channel 2.0.2 surround sound. Image: Hisense The CanvasTV comes with... Continue reading...

Photo by Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill on Wednesday banning the sale of lab-grown meat in the state. The legislation is a clear handout to the state's cattle industry: the state's commissioner of agriculture said it was about protecting our incredible farmers and the integrity of American agriculture." But DeSantis' statements make it clear that, like many of his other pet causes, the lab-grown meat ban is a culture war issue.Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals," DeSantis said in a statement the day the bill was signed. A press release declared Florida was taking action to stop the World Economic Forum's... Continue reading...

The carriers are at it again. | Illustration: The Verge AT&T has a new optional feature for some of its plans. It's called Turbo, and for $7 per month, it provides better speed and stability" for a line of service by upgrading your data plan to performance data." AT&T pitches it as an add-on to help with demanding applications, like gaming. Okay, but what exactly is performance data?" It's kind of unclear. But we can sort of piece it together based on what it isn't.If you were hoping Turbo could help boost service on a prepaid or entry-level postpaid plan, I have bad news. It's only available on a handful of AT&T's postpaid plans: Unlimited Premium PL, Unlimited Extra EL, and Unlimited Elite. They're already some of AT&T's fanciest and priciest plans, with lots of hotspot data and... Continue reading...

Image: Instagram Instagram announced a handful of new features to Stories, including new interactive ways to share music, photos, and videos.The most intriguing new feature is called Reveal and, when applied, blurs the contents of a story post. The only way viewers can see the post is by DMing the person who shared it. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said that direct messages are an increasingly important part of the platform and that stories and DMs account for most of Instagram's growth. Requiring a DM to view content is the next evolution of that - and will no doubt be used as an engagement hack by creators hoping to boost their stories' engagement. Image: Instagram Another feature, Frames, puts a Polaroid overlay on to images... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft is making security its number one priority for every employee, following years of security issues and mounting criticisms. After a scathing report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that Microsoft's security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul," it's doing just that by outlining a set of security principles and goals that are tied to compensation packages for Microsoft's senior leadership team.Last November, Microsoft announced a Secure Future Initiative (SFI) in response to mounting pressure on the company to respond to attacks that allowed Chinese hackers to breach US government email accounts. Just days after announcing this initiative, Russian hackers managed to breach Microsoft's... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge The Rabbit R1 is not good. Neither is the Humane AI Pin. Does that signal the end of the AI gadget revolution before it ever really got started? Or is it just that two companies shipped too little, too soon? The whole AI industry is moving fast, and it sometimes makes you wonder where it's actually headed - or if there's anywhere at the end of the road.On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss our reviews of these new devices, their potential going forward, and whether there's ever going to be an AI gadget that isn't just your phone. Because the phone AI is coming.We also discuss the latest news in Google's antitrust trial as it finally starts to come to a close. After months of arguments and mountains of evidence, what happens... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After slamming the Switch emulator Yuzu with a $2.4 million lawsuit that caused it to shut down, Nintendo is now taking aim at its copies. The gaming giant submitted a total of 8,535 takedown notices for Yuzu emulator forks on GitHub, as spotted earlier by TorrentFreak and PCGamer.When news of Nintendo's lawsuit against Yuzu first broke, users began preserving the emulator's code by making copies and uploading it to places like GitHub. But now, a copy of Nintendo's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown request says GitHub took action against the entire network of 8,535 repositories, inclusive of the parent repository."The request says the repositories in question offer and provide access to the yuzu emulator or code,"... Continue reading...

We've been teased for long enough, Spotify. Just drop the HiFi update already. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge After years of waiting for Spotify to release the lossless audio tier it promised, some leaked UI elements suggest the project is alive and kicking, if not (dare I say) possibly close to release.Spotify's current bitrate tops out at 320kbps, but that could soon change if screenshots taken from version 1.2.36 of Spotify by Redditor OhItsTom are accurate. They show what users could expect from the lossless feature, including a device compatibility checker and lossless streaming quality of up to 1,411kbps, and it could go even higher.Another section mentions lossless quality of up to 2,117kbps can be achieved, which could consume 15.9MB of data per minute. Listening support of up to 24-bit/44.1kHz may also be available for limited... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google has not one but two Department of Justice antitrust trials this year - and the first one, over Google Search, is finally coming to a close. On Thursday, lawyers showed up at the district court in Washington, DC, for the first of two days of closing arguments in the bench trial before Judge Amit Mehta.This was the first tech anti-monopoly lawsuit the government had filed in two decades since US v. Microsoft. Its outcome directly affects one of the most valuable companies in the world. At this stage, the judge will only determine whether Google is liable for the antitrust charges brought against it. If so, there will be a separate proceeding to determine appropriate remedies. These could be court-ordered constraints on Google's... Continue reading...

CMPR In an interview with The Verge, the director explains why you need to see his new film, Evil Does Not Exist, multiple times to understand the ending. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge A new report from Microsoft outlines the steps the company took to release responsible AI platforms last year.In its Responsible AI Transparency Report, which mainly covers 2023, Microsoft touts its achievements around safely deploying AI products. The annual AI transparency report is one of the commitments the company made after signing a voluntary agreement with the White House in July last year. Microsoft and other companies promised to establish responsible AI systems and commit to safety.Microsoft says in the report that it created 30 responsible AI tools in the past year, grew its responsible AI team, and required teams making generative AI applications to measure and map risks throughout the development cycle. The company... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Less than a week ahead of its much-anticipated iPad hardware event, Apple shared its Q2 2024 earnings today, and the numbers paint a predictable picture for the increasingly dated tablet line. iPad revenue fell substantially yet again (by 17 percent year over year) amid the longest-ever wait for new models - something Apple is days away from finally rectifying. At the same time, iPhone sales tapered off a bit (down 10 percent), while the company's services business remains the star of the show. It was up 14 percent compared to the year-ago quarter.Apple also released its Vision Pro headset during this quarter, but CEO Tim Cook didn't offer any indication of how things are going. During the quarter, we were thrilled to launch Apple... Continue reading...

Photo by Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images My breaking point with promotional emails and desktop alerts finally happened a few weeks ago. I woke up at 7AM to an automated Legacy.com email with my friend's death-a-versary in the subject line. The email itself was annoying enough, but what it said made it a cold, thoughtless annoyance: Being remembered matters. The flowers you sent last year were a comforting gesture of sympathy and support."I didn't send flowers. I planted a tree. That's what my friend wanted. It was right there on the obituary guestbook Legacy.com was asking me to sign again.Actually, the Legacy.com email was just the last straw. Things were kicked off a few months earlier by a Microsoft OneDrive notification. I had just switched from Google Drive, and... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Apple Watch's atrial fibrillation (AFib) history feature, which records and alerts the wearer's relevant heart events, has been qualified to join the FDA's Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program - a first for a digital health technology." That means the Apple Watch is now usable in clinical studies that need estimated data on how much time the wearer spent in atrial fibrillation while wearing the device, 9to5Mac reports.The FDA announcement describes using it as a noninvasive way to collect the data both before and after treatment:

Satya Nadella, the executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation speaks during the Microsoft Build: AI Day" event. | Photo by Peerapon Boonyakiat / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images Microsoft just agreed to support the development of 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity around the world, a massive amount of electricity to fuel its AI ambitions and climate goals.For comparison, 10.5 GW of renewable energy amounts to nearly half the amount of solar and wind capacity California had in 2022. This is quite literally a very big deal - effectively the largest corporate agreement to purchase renewable energy to date, according to BloombergNEF. Microsoft inked the agreement yesterday with Brookfield Asset Management, which said the deal is almost eight times bigger than what was previously the single largest corporate power purchase agreement ever signed.Microsoft is pumping a lot of its resources into AI o... Continue reading...

Image: University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO) officially opened on Tuesday after 26 years of planning and construction. Sitting 18,500 feet high on Mount Chajnantor in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the 6.5-meter optical-infrared TAO telescope is now the highest in the world.TAO replaces a smaller version of itself called MiniTAO, which held the highest telescope distinction before it. It beats the Chacaltaya Observatory, owned by the University of Madrid and sitting 17,191 feet on Mount Chacaltaya in Bolivia.The next three record holders in the top five are also in Chile's Atacama desert: the James Ax Observatory (17,100 feet); the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (17,030 feet); and the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory (sources vary;... Continue reading...