The Verge - All Posts

Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images Creators fundraising for projects on Kickstarter will soon be able to collect money even after their campaign ends.Currently, Kickstarter projects can last anywhere from one to 60 days, and creators hoping to continue fundraising after meeting their goal have had to go off-platform to keep raising money.The new late pledge feature will allow crowdfunding campaigns to collect money indefinitely if the creator chooses. Late pledges could also be helpful for fans who learn about projects after the fundraising window has closed but want to support the creator. Creators who are offering something in exchange for a certain level of monetary support - a digital download of an album or physical items, for example - will need to end late... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon Music may soon let you create playlists with a text prompt using Maestro, its new AI playlist maker.Maestro, which is currently available in beta to a small number of Amazon Music subscribers in the US, will let users put together playlists using any prompt, including emojis, Amazon said in a blog post. According to the company, listeners will be able to save the AI-created playlists and share them with other Amazon Music users. In the post, Amazon Music's suggested prompts included and eating ," Music my grandparents made out to," and I tracked my friends and they're all hanging out without me."The feature is similar to Spotify's AI Playlist, which was rolled out to Premium users in the United Kingdom and Australia this... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is proposing a $7 million fine against Cerebral, a mental telehealth firm that it says not only was careless with patients' data but actively shared it with third parties for advertising purposes. The company and its CEO, Kyle Robertson, are also accused of lying to customers about how their data is shared and of having a misleading cancellation policy.The FTC notes that Cerebral shared the sensitive data of nearly 3.2 million consumers" with third parties like LinkedIn, TikTok, and Snapchat through trackers on its website or apps - something the company admitted to last year. That apparently included details like home and email addresses, phone numbers, pharmacy and health insurance details, and... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Images Parcast founder Max Cutler left Spotify last February as part of a wave of high-profile departures from its podcast vertical, and he's now launching Pave Studios to create content across multiple formats. Storytellers who successfully engage audiences and create fandoms through written, audio, and video content have led the charge in cultivating their robust communities into diverse businesses," said Cutler.The company has two new brands to start, with OpenMind, which focuses on wellness, and the true crime-geared Crime House. Image: Pave Studios Spotify acquired the true crime and horror-focused studio Parcast in 2019 as part of a $1 billion investment in original podcasts. After the sale, Cutler went on to serve... Continue reading...

A sign warns of elevated fire danger in the Oakland Hill area of Oakland, California, on Thursday, October 29th, 2020. | Photo by Philip Pacheco / Bloomberg via Getty Images Hate to break it to you, baby - but if you were born in the US this year, climate change could wind up costing you around $500,000 over the course of your lifetime. That's according to a new study commissioned by Consumer Reports and conducted by consulting firm ICF.The study counts up higher bills for climate-related calamities that drive up housing, food, and healthcare costs, for example. On top of that, there's the prospect of higher taxes and lost income over the years in a warming world.While there's a lot of uncertainty built into the study, it's an attempt at breaking down all the big and little ways that climate change can affect daily life. Each stifling heatwave, flooded road, and downed power line costs consumers... Continue reading...

The Beatles in the United Kingdom, circa 1960. | Photo by Keystone-France / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images It has been hard to find physical copies of director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 Beatles documentary Let It Be in the years since its theatrical release, but Disney Plus is getting ready to debut a remastered version of the film.Disney Plus announced today that Let It Be - a chronicle of the Beatles recording their Let It Be album in 1969 before breaking up the following year - will stream on May 8th. Like the docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, Let It Be will feature original film footage remastered by Peter Jackson's Park Road Post Production and remastered audio created using the same de-mixing tools that recently led to the release of the Beatles' final song. In a statement about Let It Be's streaming premiere, Lindsay-Hogg recalled... Continue reading...

Image: GMC The 2024 GMC Sierra EV is almost here, and to celebrate, the automaker is giving it the gift of more range.When it was first announced two years ago, GMC said the Sierra EV Denali would get an EPA estimated range of 400 miles, thanks to a massive battery that was expected to top 200kWh. Now, GMC says the electric truck's maximum range at launch will be actually closer to 440 miles - a staggering amount in the nascent world of electric pickups.Most electric trucks on the road today struggle to exceed 300 miles of range. Weather, terrain, and road type can also affect range and sap battery life. And once they start doing truck stuff, like hauling or towing, that range can drop even lower. GMC's claims about the Sierra EV's range will... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Hundreds of cables. Hundreds of thousands of miles. The internet runs, in vastly more ways than we realize or think about, through a series of garden-hose size tubes on the ocean floor. Without those tubes, the modern world sort of collapses. And the folks responsible for keeping them functioning have bigger, harder, stranger jobs than you might think.On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk to The Verge's Josh Dzieza, who has been reporting on the undersea cable world and just published a feature about some of the folks who keep it running. It's a story worthy of a high-seas action movie, and it's all about cables.Then, we chat with The Verge's Tom Warren and Joanna Nelius about the new generation of PCs that Microsoft and others... Continue reading...

Photo by Go Takayama for The Verge On the afternoon of March 11th, 2011, Mitsuyoshi Hirai, the chief engineer of the cable maintenance ship Ocean Link, was sitting in his cabin 20 miles off Japan's eastern coast, completing the paperwork that comes at the end of every repair. Two weeks earlier, something - you rarely knew what - damaged the 13,000-mile fiber optic cable connecting Kitaibaraki, Japan, and Point Arena, California. Alarms went off; calls were made; and the next day, Hirai was sailing out of the port in Yokohama to fix it. The repair was now nearly done. All that remained was to rebury the cable on the seafloor, which they were doing using a bulldozer-sized remotely operated submersible named Marcas - and, of course, the paperwork.Suddenly,... Continue reading...

Photo by Ashok Kumar / TAS24 / Getty Images for TAS Rights Management The Department of Justice is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The lawsuit could reportedly come as early as next month and will target the company's alleged monopoly in the live ticketing industry.Live Nation drew antitrust scrutiny when it merged with Ticketmaster in 2010. But those concerns boiled over in November 2022 when a Ticketmaster crash blocked thousands of Taylor Swift fans from purchasing tickets for the Eras Tour due to unprecedented demand." The DOJ opened an investigation into Live Nation shortly after, The New York Times reported.Lawmakers also levied heavy criticism against the ticketing company, with Sen. Amy... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge When you load your music streaming app of choice onto your mobile device, your audio quality settings are worth taking a minute or two to configure. If you don't have these set to as high a quality as possible, you're missing out on the best audio experience your streaming apps can offer.Because they are managed separately for streaming music over cell and Wi-Fi networks and for downloading tracks to your device for offline listening, there is a tradeoff. Increased sound quality and fidelity means more data gets used (which might be a concern if you're not on an unlimited cellular plan), bigger file sizes (which take up more room on your device), and a longer wait for downloads. But even if you have to compromise some settings, it's a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is working on a new high-end version" of the PS5, codenamed Trinity and likely to debut as the PS5 Pro later this year. The Verge confirmed leaked specs about the PS5 Pro earlier this week, and we've also obtained details on how existing and new PS5 games can be enhanced" to take advantage of the PS5 Pro hardware. Sony is also working on an ultra-boost mode for older games to make them run better on the PS5 Pro.Sources familiar with Sony's plans tell The Verge that Sony is asking developers to create a new PS5 Pro-exclusive graphics mode in games that combines Sony's new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling to 4K resolution with a 60fps frame rate and ray-tracing effects. Insider Gaming first reported on some of... Continue reading...

The Soundcore Sleep A20 are decent passive earbuds that are great for side sleepers, even if Anker overpromises. Continue reading...

The four-inch-tall metal object tore through a roof in Naples, Florida, last month. | Image: Alejandro Otero NASA has confirmed suspicions that the strange object that crashed into a Florida home last month did indeed come from the International Space Station (ISS). The agency analyzed the cylindrical object after it tore through the roof and two floors of a house in Naples on March 8th and established that it came from a cargo pallet of aging batteries that was released from the ISS back in 2021.More specifically, NASA revealed in a blog post on Monday that the offending object was a support component used to mount the batteries on the 5,800-pound (2,630-kilogram) pallet released from the space station. Made from Inconel (a metal alloy that can withstand extreme environments like high temperature, pressure, or mechanical loads), the recovered... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images Officials at the UK's Department of Science, Innovation and Technology have started drafting legislation to regulate AI models, Bloomberg reports. It's unclear how any future regulation will intersect with the UK's already-extant AI Safety Institute, which already conducts safety tests of the most powerful AI models.After hosting the first global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November 2023, which was attended by many world leaders, the UK established an AI Safety Institute the following November. The institute began evaluating AI models for safety this year, though some technology companies requested more clarity on the timelines and what would happen if AI models are found risky. The UK also agreed to do joint safety testing... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to propose new regulations that would require data brokers to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In a speech at the White House earlier this month, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said the agency is looking into policies to ensure greater accountability" for companies that buy and sell consumer data, in keeping with an executive order President Joe Biden issued in late February.Chopra said the agency is considering proposals that would define data brokers that sell certain types of data as consumer reporting agencies," thereby requiring those companies to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The statute bans sharing certain kinds of data (e.g., your credit report) with... Continue reading...

Image: Parker Ortolani / The Verge Over the last few days, Tesla has delayed some Cybertruck deliveries. The company hasn't specified why or even publicly commented on the delays, but commenters in the Cybertruck Owners Club forum have reported receiving texts or calls telling them their deliveries were being rescheduled.One user said they'd been told by their dealer that the truck was recalled over its accelerator pedal. Another claimed Tesla sent them a text saying it's not scheduling deliveries at the moment for the same reason. Several others reported receiving texts about issues with the preparation of your vehicle."An Elon Musk fan account called @WholeMarsBlog posted on X that deliveries have been halted for seven days, but that hasn't been confirmed, and Tesla... Continue reading...

Keanu Reeves as John Wick. | Image: Lionsgate The third Sonic movie already seemed like it was going to kick all kinds of ass by bringing Shadow the Hedgehog into the picture, but Paramount's just upped the ante by adding one Keanu Reeves to its cast.According to both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, Keanu Reeves has been tapped to voice Shadow, the anthropomorphic hedgehog best known for his jet-powered sneakers and fondness for guns. While the studio's yet to make an official announcement, news of Reeves' casting comes after director Jeff Fowler teased that the next Sonic movie will be inspired by Sonic Adventure 2, the Dreamcast game that first introduced Shadow in 2001.Shadow's cinematic arrival was also teased at the end of the last Sonic movie, where he appeared to be... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is bringing its ad blocker fight to mobile. In an update on Monday, YouTube writes that users accessing videos through a third-party ad blocking app may encounter buffering issues or see an error message that reads, The following content is not available on this app."Last year, YouTube launched a global effort" to encourage users to allow ads while watching videos or upgrade to YouTube Premium. It also began disabling videos for users with an ad blocking extension enabled.But now, YouTube says its policies don't allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership." This appears to target mobile ad blockers like AdGuard, which lets you open YouTube within the ad... Continue reading...

Pigeon River Country State Forest in Vanderbilt, Michigan, U.S., on Wednesday, April 20th, 2022. State and local governments in the US are enrolling public-owned forests in carbon projects that could earn them tens of millions of dollars but provide little new help in the fight against climate change. The charity that serves as a major watchdog on corporate climate commitments faces allegations that it's caving to industry pressure to relax standards.The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) assesses companies' sustainability pledges and develops standards for how companies can set goals to fight climate change that are backed by science. SBTi's policies are supposed to prevent greenwashing, which is when companies make misleading statements about their environmental impact.One way SBTi has tried to crack down on greenwashing is by limiting the use of carbon offsets. Offsets are supposed to cancel out some of a company's carbon footprint, even though that's often only reflected on paper and not in the real world. SBTi's tough... Continue reading...

The new Blink Mini offers both better image quality and audio quality than before. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Whether you're away at work or on vacation, a security camera can offer some extra peace of mind by allowing you to keep an eye on your pet, packages, and other valuables at home. And right now, one of the least expensive security cameras you can buy is even more affordable. Normally $39.99, the new Blink Mini 2 is down to just $29.99 ($10 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, which is the first deal we've seen on the wired camera since it launched last month. You can also buy it at Amazon with a weather-resistant adapter for just $39.98 ($10 off).While the Blink Mini 2 remains a basic 1080ps camera like its predecessor, it's now a lot more useful if you're already locked into the Amazon ecosystem. You can use it outside thanks to its... Continue reading...

The layoffs follow the company's first drop in year-over-year vehicle deliveries since 2020. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A few weeks after reporting its first year-over-year decline in vehicle deliveries since 2020, Tesla is now planning to lay off over ten percent of its global workforce, according to an internal company-wide email seen by Electrek. That works out to at least 14,000 of the 140,473 employees that Tesla reported in its latest annual earnings. It's not clear which teams at Tesla will be impacted.There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done," said CEO Elon Musk in the email published by Electrek. In a later post on X, Musk said that about every 5 years, we need to reorganize and streamline the company for the next phase of growth."

Sony's flagship earbuds are smaller, lighter, and better-sounding than the last-gen model. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Whether you need some peace while working from home or plan on taking some summer travels, a good pair of wireless earbuds is crucial for preserving and protecting your sanity. My favorites have been from Sony's flagship line. I started with Sony's WF-1000XM4 before the dastard battery drain bug rendered them unusable. They were great otherwise, and I liked them so much that I took a chance on the WF-1000XM5, which so far haven't thrust the same thorns in my side. They retail for $299.95, but Amazon is selling them starting at $229.95 right now, which is only a few dollars shy of their all-time low.The XM5 are Sony's latest flagship pair of noise-canceling earbuds. They're comfortable and offer excellent sound quality, not to mention... Continue reading...

The Limitless Pendant comes in a bunch of colors and doesn't really look like an AI gadget. | Image: Limitless The Limitless Pendant doesn't exactly scream AI." As Dan Siroker, the CEO of the company behind the new device, lifts it up to show me over Zoom, the round, rubbery-looking gizmo reminds me more of an old-school clippable Fitbit. But what Siroker is actually showing me is a device that can be clipped onto your shirt or worn on a string around your neck that is meant to record everything you hear - and then use AI to help you remember and make sense of it.The Limitless Pendant is part of the whole Limitless system, which the company is launching today. (Oh, and in case you're wondering: yes, it's very much a reference to the movie.) Siroker's last AI product, Rewind, was an app that ran on your computer and would record your screen and... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Dropbox Leaders can't keep mashing the go back to 2019 button.' Continue reading...

Generative AI-powered tools for quickly removing objects in video clips will be arriving in Premiere Pro later this year. | Image: Adobe Adobe is working on a generative AI video model for its Firefly family that will bring new tools to its Premiere Pro video editing platform. These new Firefly tools - alongside some proposed third-party integrations with Runway, Pika Labs, and OpenAI's Sora models - will allow Premiere Pro users to generate video and add or remove objects using text prompts (just like Photoshop's Generative Fill feature) and extend the length of video clips.Unlike many of Adobe's previous Firefly-related announcements, no release date - beta or otherwise - has been established for the company's new video generation tools, only that they'll roll out this year." And while the creative software giant showcased what its own video model is currently capable... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is getting ready to release a more powerful PS5 console, possibly by the end of this year. After reports of leaked PS5 Pro specifications surfaced recently, The Verge has obtained a full list of specs for the upcoming console. Sources familiar with Sony's plans tell me that developers are already being asked to ensure their games are compatible with this upcoming console, with a focus on improving ray tracing.Codenamed Trinity, the PlayStation 5 Pro model will include a more powerful GPU and a slightly faster CPU mode. All of Sony's changes point to a PS5 Pro that will be far more capable of rendering games with ray tracing enabled or hitting higher resolutions and frame rates in certain titles. Sony appears to be encouraging... Continue reading...

Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has written a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, saying that TurboTax continues to relentlessly upsell" customers while also directing them away from services that would otherwise be free.As noted in the letter, Warren's staff analyzed TurboTax's services using a sample taxpayer and found that the company attempted to upsell the customer eight times during the tax filing process. Warren writes that in several cases," these solicitations appear to be efforts to mislead customers into thinking that they must pay the extra fees in order to file their taxes when that is not the case." Some show up as full-screen prompts, forcing users to scroll to the bottom to deny the upgrade.In one instance,... Continue reading...

Ikea's Brannboll range is just the right mix of neutrals and bright colors to match most modern homes. | Image: Ikea Ikea is introducing a new range of gaming furniture that subverts the usual dark, edgy gamer" aesthetic for designs that are more likely to blend in with your existing home decor.The company's Brannboll collection is a lineup of 20 items, including a desk, chairs, accessories, and various storage solutions. Following the mostly-black ROG collaboration Ikea released back in 2021, which was similarly free from overly aggressive gamer" flourishes, the new Brannboll collection instead focuses on the kind of designs that Ikea does best - simple and recognizably Scandinavian.Seating is the main focus. There's an armchair that folds out into a lounging position, a rocking-style chair designed to swing with your body's movement, and an... Continue reading...

A screenshot from iGBA. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge I played Game Boy Advance games on my iPhone this weekend thanks to a new emulator called iGBA, which appears to be the first Game Boy Advance emulator on the App Store since Apple started allowing emulators worldwide. The only trouble is, it doesn't look like iGBA is developer Mattia La Spina's own work. Something seemingly confirmed by Apple after it pulled the app for violating its copyright and spam rules, according to MacRumors.In an email to The Verge, developer Riley Testut said the app is an unauthorized clone of GBA4iOS, the open-source emulator he created for iOS over a decade ago (and recently resurrected for the Vision Pro). He said his app uses the GNU GPLv2 license. A Mastodon user found that iGBA does not reference the... Continue reading...

Image: OnLeaks / 91Mobiles Google could be adding a feature very similar to Apple's Emergency SOS feature to the Pixel 9 and the next Pixel Fold. That's according to leaker Kamila Wojciechowska, who writes for Android Authority that the company would partner with T-Mobile to offer the feature but may add other providers later.Just like Apple's system, Google's SOS feature would reportedly present future Pixel owners with a series of questions to ascertain what's happening, rather than let users thumb one out. A video in the Android Authority article features the animation Google will display to users to help them get the phone aligned with a satellite.According to Wojciechowska, these are some of the questions the feature will ask:

The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 34, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been writing about the Humane AI Pin and the Aboard app, reading about the Com World War and why studios cancel already-made movies, watching Ripley and a deep dive into the Game Boy's incredible sturdiness and power, listening to The Rest is History take on Martin Luther, and seeing if Amazon's Echo Frames can replace my headphones.I also have for you an excellent new video game show, a new ebook reader worth a look, yet another doc about how bad tech is, a sweet new drone, and much more.I also... Continue reading...

Image: Bluesky Bluesky is apparently ready for a bigger challenge. It says it's allowing heads of state to sign up now, a little over two months after it opened for general signups. In May last year, the site asked its users not to give invitation codes to recent/prominent heads of state," stating that it was its policy not to accommodate them.When Bluesky instituted its heads-of-state policy, the site was still in its showing-everyone's-ass phase, and its moderation approach wasn't in place, yet. So instead of the varying degrees of controlled chaos that social networks are, Bluesky was filled with, well, lots of unsettlingly sexy pictures of the cat-eating alien puppet star of the 1980s sitcom Alf, which The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto pointed out... Continue reading...

The Xgimi MoGo 2 Pro is an excellent Android TV projector with Chromecast built-in. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Let's face it, a big TV isn't always an option, especially if you live in a tiny apartment or prefer a more nomadic lifestyle. In those instances, it might be wiser to buy the Xgimi MoGo 2 Pro, a portable Android TV projector that's small enough to toss in your backpack before heading out the door. Thankfully, Xgimi's 1080p smart projector is currently on sale at Amazon for $399.99 ($200 off) when you clip the on-page coupon, which drops it to one of its lowest prices to date.Despite its small stature and modest 400 ANSI lumens, the MoGo 2 Pro can project large, 200-inch images while delivering surprisingly good picture quality at smaller sizes (think 30 inches). It looks best when viewed in the dark, like most projectors, which... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Samsung is planning to bring select Galaxy AI features to several older flagship phones and tablets next month via the One UI 6.1 update, according to 9to5Google and Android Central, both of which referred to a post from a Samsung representative who posted on the company's community forum in Korea. The Verge has reached out to Samsung for further comment.A slightly trimmed-down version of Galaxy AI (sans Instant Slow-Mo) will be coming to Samsung's flagship lineup from 2022, specifically the S22, S22 Plus, S22 Ultra, Z Fold 4, Z Flip 4, Tab S8, and Tab S8 Ultra. Each device will receive the same version of Galaxy AI as Samsung's lower-priced Galaxy S23 FE. Instant Slow-Mo, which automatically plays a video in slow motion once you tap... Continue reading...