The Verge

A radio device exploded in the city of Baalbek is seen as wireless communications device explosions continued for a second day across Lebanon. | Photo by Suleiman Amhaz / Anadolu via Getty Images A day after exploding pagers targeting Hezbollah members killed 12 people, including two children, and injured nearly 3,000 people in Lebanon and Syria, the attacks started again. The New York Times reports 14 people have died, along with hundreds injured in the second wave of explosions. Lebanese state media agency NNA reports they resulted from wireless devices like walkie-talkies and fingerprint analysis devices that also damaged cars and motorcycles and started fires, including one at a lithium battery store.At least one of the exploding devices on Wednesday went off in the middle of a funeral procession for several of the people killed in the previous attack, causing additional panic as people ran for safety and were asked to... Continue reading...

It can't be used as a speakerphone, but at $24.99, Soundcore's new Select 4 Go Bluetooth speaker is claimed to have 20 hours of battery and can be paired for stereo sound. | Image: Soundcore Soundcore has launched another ultralight wireless speaker called the Select 4 Go. It's priced at $24.99, making it the most affordable option in Soundcore's current lineup of Bluetooth speakers and much cheaper than similarly sized options such as Ultimate Ears' recently launched $79.99 Miniroll. Image: Soundcore A cutaway illustration of the Select 4 Go revealing a 1.75-inch speaker with a passive radiator next to it. The Select 4 Go pairs a 1.75-inch 5W full-range speaker driver with a passive radiator to help bolster the intensity of lower frequencies. That's only a slightly smaller speaker than you'll find inside the pricier Miniroll, which has a claimed 12 hours of battery life. Soundcore says the Select 4... Continue reading...

Image: PayPal Roughly 25 years after it launched payment processing, PayPal is ushering in a new era for customers" with some generic black text. The company has a new logo, designed by Pentagram, that looks incredibly plain - especially compared to previous iterations of the logo that featured a rakish slant, two shades of blue, and prominent PayPal P's. Image: PayPal The evolution of PayPal's logo. The company justifies the change by saying that the new black standalone wordmark won't be confused with the rest of the payments processing world - especially the blue that has become synonymous with fintech."And yet: Image: PayPal That is a very blue word. Image: PayPal Also... Continue reading...

The Focus Vision looks like it's a bit of a chonker! | Image: HTC HTC has announced the Vive Focus Vision, a new VR headset that builds on the Vive Focus 3 with features like color passthrough and better PC tethering support. The $999 Focus Vision is available for preorder from now until October 17th on HTC's website.The Focus Vision can be used either as a standalone device or tethered to your PC using USB-C. It's essentially a beefed-up version of the Focus 3, which the company released in 2021 - it has the same 2448 x 2448 per-eye resolution and 120-degree field of view and also uses a Snapdragon XR2 chip. But it gains features like dual 16MP cameras with color passthrough, and it can now automatically adjust the lenses to compensate for the distance between your eyes.HTC is going for gamers... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube creators can now break their videos up into different seasons and episodes to make them easier for viewers to navigate - and binge-watch - on TV. The upcoming feature comes as YouTube has increasingly been pushing into the living room, with YouTuber revenue on TVs up 30 percent year over year, according to the company.Content creators can soon tailor their uploads for viewers in a format that looks very similar to Netflix and other streaming services when viewed on the TV, with full-screen episode descriptions and a hierarchy of seasons and episodes to navigate. GIF: Google YouTube has not described how the new formatting will translate to desktop and mobile UI, but expect to see it in some form on all... Continue reading...

As long as there's a breeze, the Shine 2.0 wind turbine can generate power all night long. | Image: Aurea Technologies Unlike solar panels that can only generate power while the sun's shining, Aurea Technologies' new Shine 2.0 portable wind turbine can potentially work all day long. That is, as long as the weather cooperates and provides an 8mph breeze needed to keep the turbine's blades spinning.Now available for preorder through a Kickstarter campaign offering discounts on its full $571 retail pricing for early backers, the Shine 2.0 is an improved version of the company's first portable wind turbine that arrives with several welcome upgrades. Image: Aurea Technologies The Shine 2.0 folds down into a portable package that looks like an elongated football. The Shine 2.0, and an included three-foot-tall support with stability... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon's warehouse workers and delivery drivers, the people critical to the company's ability to get you things fast via Amazon Prime, will soon get Prime subscriptions as part of their employment. The new perk was revealed along with other benefit updates, including an average pay raise, announced by the company on Wednesday.The free Prime subscription will be part of the benefits package for front-line" workers starting early next year," according to a blog post. They'll have free Prime for as long as they are a part of the Amazon team." Amazon Prime typically costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year.As for pay, Amazon says that the frontline workers will be getting at least" $1.50 more per hour beginning next month, which the... Continue reading...

Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal / Getty Images The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a bill Wednesday requiring new cars to have AM radio, which was introduced in response to an increasing number of vehicles coming out without the first-generation radio broadcast technology. The bill passed the committee on a roll-call vote of 45-2 and now heads to the full House for final approval.The bill, titled the AM for Every Vehicle Act, would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a rule that requires automakers to maintain AM broadcast radio in their vehicles without a separate or additional payment, fee, or surcharge."Supporters say they are pushing the bill out of a concern that the slow demise of AM radio could make it more difficult to... Continue reading...

Adrian Wojnarowski looks on during the 2024 NBA Draft | Photo by Michelle Farsi / NBAE via Getty Images Adrian Wojnarowski has been reporting insider NBA news for ESPN since 2017, but he's best known for his news-breaking tweets about trades, free agency signings, and other deals. Now Wojnarowski says he's retiring from the NBA beat.For basketball fans, Woj bombs" became a reason to have your phone on and Twitter notifications set, both to get instant updates about player movement and to avoid getting sucked in by fake accounts and rumors. In a 2015 GQ interview, Wojnarowski said his Twitter stardom got started with the 2009 NBA draft:

Photo: Nilay Patel Apple rolled out updates to all of its major operating systems this week, and the Vision Pro was no exception. With visionOS 2, the company has a chance to show the relative few who bought its spendy headset - and those who might yet - that it's still committed to the new platform.After a few months of using it in beta, visionOS 2 isn't a dramatic change - it's more like a smoothed-out version of the software the headset launched with. The addition of things like new gestures, better device support, and a couple of splashy features has removed a lot of the friction of using the Vision Pro and should give people who own it a reason to dust it off and take it for another spin.Improving the basicsLet's start with updates that really... Continue reading...

Communities are for creators to talk to their fans - and for fans to talk to each other. | Image: YouTube Many creators post videos on YouTube but take to other platforms to actually interact with their fans and viewers. With a new feature called Communities, YouTube is hoping to offer those types of interactive options right on the platform, so creators might not need to take to Discord, WhatsApp, or maybe Instagram or Reddit anymore.The Communities feature, which YouTube launched today at the Made on YouTube event in New York City, is sort of a mix of old-school forum, subreddit, and Facebook group. Once a creator turns on their community, anyone who joins can post, and people can reply to each other. The idea is presumably that you'll all talk about things related to the creator whose community you're in, but if you've ever been in a... Continue reading...

The Hype leaderboard is supposed to be all great videos all the time. | Image: YouTube It's a new way for viewers to share the stuff they really like - and for creators to grow on an increasingly busy platform. Continue reading...

YouTube's Inspiration tab will happily tell you exactly what to make next. | Image: YouTube Artificial intelligence is running rampant across Google's entire product portfolio, and YouTube is adopting some of the company's newest tech in service of helping creators create. On Wednesday, at its Made on YouTube event in New York City, the company announced a series of AI-related features on the platform, including a couple that might change how creators make videos - and the videos they make.The first feature is the new Inspiration tab in the YouTube Studio app, which YouTube has been testing in a limited way over the last few months. The tab's job is, essentially, to tell you what to make: the AI-powered tool will suggest a concept for a video, provide a title and a thumbnail, and even write an outline and the first few lines... Continue reading...

Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge The Tesla Cybertruck gets a lot of hate for its polarizing design and even more polarizing creator. However, the Cybertruck also appears to be extremely popular, more popular than all the other electric trucks on the market, and Elon Musk may end up laughing all the way to the bank.Tesla's Cybertruck registrations in July almost match overall EV truck registrations in July, suggesting strong demand for the stainless steel low-poly truck, according to data from S&P Global Mobility (via Automotive News). Tesla's overall vehicle sales also rose in July thanks to a boost from the Cybertruck.Tesla delivered 5,175 Cybertrucks in July, compared to a combined 5,546 registrations of every non-Tesla electric truck, which includes the Ford F-150... Continue reading...

Garmin's upgraded inReachMessenger Plus lets adventurers stay connected and share memories. | Image: Garmin Garmin's new inReach Messenger Plus is an upgraded version of the company's satellite communicator that expands the original's text messaging capabilities with the ability to now send photos and audio clips through the Iridium satellite network.The original Garmin inReach Messenger debuted in 2022 and is still available for $299.99 for those content with relying on just text messages. The new multimedia capabilities of the inReach Messenger Plus come with a significant price bump to $499.99, which doesn't include service. inReach subscriptions range in price from $11.95 to $49.95 per month for consumers (with a 12-month commitment), with even pricier plans available for pros (search and rescue teams, for example) and larger groups.S... Continue reading...

The 80HE takes the 60HE formula and makes it bigger and better, with a new light bar and 8kHz polling. Continue reading...

Classic for a reason. | Photo: Nathan Edwards / The Verge A charming $89 DIY mechanical keyboard kit with thoroughly modern features. Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge You've spent the last couple of days tweaking the icons on your iOS 18 homescreen and luxuriating in your rest days with WatchOS 11. Now Apple's hoping you'll upgrade even further. The company is getting ready to start selling the new iPhone 16 lineup, the new Apple Watch Series 10, and the new AirPods 4 headphones.We've been using all the devices since they were announced last week, and we're here to answer the question that matters most: is any of this new stuff worth the money?On this episode of The Vergecast, it's wall-to-wall Apple reviews. First, we start with the iPhones, which The Verge's Allison Johnson and Nilay Patel have been reviewing. We talk mostly about the camera, because, well, the camera's most of what there is to... Continue reading...

Image: GM General Motors says it has updated the software in its electric vehicles so its customers can finally use Tesla's Supercharging network.To gain immediate access, owners of electric Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC vehicles will need to purchase GM approved" Tesla adapters through each brand's smartphone app for $225. Future GM vehicles will come with Tesla's charging port natively installed.The announcement comes more than 15 months after GM first announced it would adopt Tesla's EV charging plug for its vehicles. The automaker had originally said it expected to complete the software coordination with Tesla by early spring" 2024, but production bottlenecks and layoffs at Tesla have delayed the process. Image: GM GM... Continue reading...

It's a good year for Apple's basic iPhone, even if its AI is MIA. Continue reading...

The iPhone 16, which Apple claims is built from the ground up" for AI. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Apple Intelligence's list of forthcoming supported languages just got a little longer. After an October launch in US English, Apple says its AI feature set will be available in German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and others" in the coming year. The company drops this news just days before the iPhone 16's arrival - the phone built for AI that won't have any AI features at launch.Apple's AI feature set will expand to include localized English in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand in December, with India and Singapore joining the mix next year. The company already announced plans to support Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish next year as well.Apple announced the iPhone 16 series last week with a... Continue reading...

Backup by BioLite doesn't require an electrician to install it. | Image: BioLite Instead of wiring into a home's breaker box, the Backup by BioLite home backup power solution relies on thin battery panels that can fit behind appliances to keep them running for days at a time. It's built around two 1.5kWh lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4, or LFP) batteries, the Backup Core and Backup Extend. Like any uninterruptible power supply, the Backup Core keeps itself perpetually charged from a wall outlet while power is available, then switches to keep whatever's plugged into it running during a power outage.If you need more backup power, up to five Backup Extend units can be connected to a Backup Core unit to expand the total capacity to 9kWh, and you don't need a contractor or electrician to install any of it.BioLite's... Continue reading...

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Saida on September 17th. | Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP via Getty Images Thousands of people have reportedly been injured by exploding pagers across Lebanon and Syria. Lebanon's health minister, Firass Abiad, said nine people, including a child, have been killed, and around 2,800 others have been injured, as reported by Lebanese state media agency NNA.Later Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported:

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures It may have been delayed until next year, but at least we now have our first look at Mickey 17. The debut trailer for the sci-fi film - which is helmed by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho and stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes - premiered Tuesday evening. According to the trailer's description, Barnes has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job... to die, for a living."The movie is based on the novel Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, about a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim." The book follows the seventh incarnation of the titular Mickey, but it appears in the movie he dies quite a few more times. In addition... Continue reading...

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge iOS 18 has a new feature that lets you wirelessly restore an iPhone 16 using another iPhone or an iPad, 9to5Mac reports.9to5Mac says it was able to simulate the new recovery method. Essentially, when the iPhone 16 enters Recovery Mode for some reason, users can simply place it next to another iPhone or iPad to start the firmware recovery," according to 9to5Mac. The other device will download a new iOS firmware and transfer it to the bricked device."Apparently, any device on iOS 18 can do the restoration, but only the iPhone 16 lineup of phones can actually be restored using this method. You can already use an iPhone to wirelessly restore an Apple Watch or an Apple TV, so it's nice to see a similar feature come to the iPhone, too.i... Continue reading...

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images California governor Gavin Newsom has signed two bills that will protect performers from having their likeness simulated by AI digital replicas.The two SAG-AFTRA supported bills, AB 2602 and AB 1836, were passed by the California legislature in August and are part of a slate of state-level AI regulations. AB 2602 bars contract provisions that would let companies use a digital version of a performer in a project instead of the real human actor, unless the performer knows exactly how their digital stand-in will be used and has a lawyer or union representative involved.AB 1836 says that if a performer has died, entertainment companies must get permission from their family or estate before producing or distributing a digital replica" of... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google is taking away a Pixel Buds Pro feature that lets users touch and hold an earbud to hear unread notifications. In an update on Tuesday, Google confirmed that Assistant will no longer read unread notifications when using the press Assistant feature."Additionally, Google says Assistant will stop automatically alerting you to unread notifications on the Pixel Buds, nor will it let you reply. Instead, Google says you can hear notifications by activating Assistant and saying Read my notifications."The touch and hold" gesture on the Pixel Buds Pro currently lets wearers switch between active noise cancelation and Transparency mode by default. Before this change, users could configure this gesture to have Assistant read... Continue reading...

Image: MysteryLupin (Twitter) The next flagship soundbar from Sonos will be called the Arc Ultra, and marketing images of the product have been posted on X today. They line up with the photos I published back in July and offer yet more confirmation that the Arc Ultra will support Bluetooth audio playback.Sonos itself has managed to leak details about the Arc Ultra in recent days; the company's online store briefly featured a few tidbits about the Arc Ultra and mentioned the inclusion of Sound Motion technology." This is presumably the branding that Sonos has chosen for the technology that it obtained through an acquisition of Mayht in 2022.

The Eufy Smart Lock E30 is a Matter-compatible smart lock with a fingerprint reader. It's Eufy's first lock to work with Apple Home. | Image: Eufy The latest smart lock from Eufy is its first product to support Matter. The Eufy Smart Lock E30 ($169.99) works over Thread, which should allow for faster responsiveness, longer battery life, and better connectivity than locks that work over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.The E30 is also the first smart lock from Anker's smart home arm that works with Apple Home, although Home Key is not supported. While Eufy offers a handful of older security cameras with HomeKit compatibility, it hasn't released a new Apple Home product for years.The E30 can use a traditional key but also has a fingerprint reader for biometric access and a keypad for keycode access. It can be controlled through the Eufy app over built-in Wi-Fi, including out-of-home control,... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge The word of the day in US v. Google was parking." As in: did Google buy some of its most ascendant and dangerous competitors in the online advertising business, all the while planning on parking them off in some far-flung corner of the company so that no one could possibly upset Google's dominance? That is a central question of the government's entire case against Google, and it came up over and over on Monday morning.To kick off the second week of the landmark antitrust trial over Google's control of online advertising, the Department of Justice called Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube and a longtime Google advertising executive. Mohan came to Google in 2008 through Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, which formed the basis of Google's... Continue reading...

Image: Epic Games The Epic Games Store has arrived on the iPad for users in the European Union, making games like Fortnite and Fall Guys available to play from the device.The launch comes as part of Monday's iPadOS 18 update, which lets EU users download apps from third-party app stores on the iPad. The Epic Games Store - and several other alternative app marketplaces - launched on the iPhone in the EU last month.

Illustration: The Verge Google is planning to roll out a technology that will identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software like Photoshop, or produced by generative AI models. In the coming months, Google's search results will include an updated about this image feature" to let people know if an image was created or edited with AI tools.The system Google is using is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), one of the largest groups trying to address AI-generated imagery. C2PA's authentication is a technical standard that includes information about where images originate and works across both hardware and software to create a digital trail. Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Arm, OpenAI, Intel, Truepic, and Google... Continue reading...

Image: Meta Starting today, Instagram will begin putting new and existing users under the age of 18 into Teen Accounts" - a move that will affect how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a set of protections to young users, and only users 16 years of age and older can loosen some of these settings.For starters, the accounts of all minors on Instagram will be private by default (not just teens under 16) and will come with some of Instagram's existing restrictions for young users, such as those that prevent strangers from direct messaging them. But other new features are coming, too, including a Sleep Mode that silences notifications from 10PM to 7AM.This really standardizes a lot of the... Continue reading...

Apple announced a new set of AirPods Max during its event last week, updating them with USB-C and in a new set of colors. The switch to USB-C is a welcome one, to be sure, but Apple changed nothing else about them. And that feels weird, right? What gives?Apple's high-end luxury headphones were impressive when they launched in 2020. They had all the features of the AirPods Pro and made clever use of the Apple Watch's digital crown for volume control. They also sounded fantastic - still do, in fact! But the rest of the market didn't sit still; alternatives from Sony, Bose, and more recently, Sonos, all offer comparable features and sound - most notably, they each compete with the AirPods Max when it comes to noise cancellation (Bose does... Continue reading...

Setapp Mobile is now available in open beta in the EU following invite-only testing. | Image: Setapp The Setapp Mobile alternative app store is now available in open beta for iPhone users in the European Union, featuring 50 different productivity- and lifestyle-focused apps at launch. While most of these apps, like the Tripsy itinerary planner and MindNode mind mapping tool, are already available on the official iOS App Store, Setapp creator MacPaw says its own platform provides a simplified user experience and a fair, performance-based compensation model for app developers.Setapp was originally released as an app marketplace for macOS before the company launched a mobile version for iOS users. Setapp Mobile launched as a closed beta in May, shortly after the European Union's Digital Markets Act forced Apple to start allowing iPhones... Continue reading...