The Verge - All Posts

Photo by Edie Leong for The Washington Post via Getty Images Tesla is reducing the subscription fee for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver-assist software in a reflection of the company's continuing financial hardships. The company slashed the price to $99 / month, down from $199 where it has been since at least 2021.Tesla announced the price adjustment in a post on X, in which it described the Level 2 driver-assist system as FSD (Supervised)" - a name tweak that's meant to convey the fact that drivers are required to pay attention to the road and stand ready to take control of the vehicle. (The company has been criticized for failing to include proper driver monitoring and other protections against overreliance on the system.)

I failed converting Wes to K-pop, but we agreed that Cowboy Carter slaps. | Screenshot: Victoria Song / The Verge The inside of an Apple Vision Pro is a lonely place to be. My spouse and I can't watch movies together. It's hard to describe what the world looks like in there to curious friends. Even if I'm standing next to you, even if there's a ghostly projection of my eyes on the front display - there's a barrier between me and you.Unless you also have a Vision Pro headset and have enabled Spatial Personas.Apple debuted Spatial Personas last week. It unleashes your uncanny digital avatar from the FaceTime window and into any SharePlay-enabled app as well as your virtual space. Call me intrigued. Loneliness was a con of the Vision Pro that reviewer after reviewer pointed out. Would this help that? I called up our weekend editor, Wes Davis, who... Continue reading...

It wasn't our favorite fitness tracker at $150, but the Fitbit Charge 5 is a looker at $75. | Image: Fitbit With nearly a third of 2024 behind us now, you might think it's out of season to talk about resolutions and fitness goals. But for me, the renewal of the Earth's vegetation and the prospect of pool parties encourages me to get out and move after a cold, muggy winter. If the same is true for you, a fitness tracker can be a great motivator that can help you chart your progress. Thankfully, Walmart is currently selling the Fitbit Charge 5 starting at just $75, which is 50 percent off and easily one of the best prices we've ever seen.We weren't big fans of some of Fitbit's design choices for the last-gen Charge 5. The biggest offender was its lack of a physical navigation button, which made using the finicky touch-based user interface more... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft says it's starting to test ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11. The software maker will use the Recommended section of the Start menu, which usually shows file recommendations, to suggest apps from the Microsoft Store.This will appear only for Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel in the US and will not apply to commercial devices (devices managed by organizations)," says Microsoft in a blog post.The app promotions can be disabled in the Settings section of Windows 11, but it appears that Microsoft will enable these by default. Microsoft is seeking feedback on the changes, so it's possible the company could decide to ditch these ads in development builds of Windows 11 if there's enough feedback that suggests they're... Continue reading...

Well, hello there, Ghoul. | Image: Bethesda Softworks The new Amazon adaptation of Fallout is excellent, nailing the goofy yet grim vibe of the series, all while telling a new story. It's so good, in fact, that after the eight episodes were over, I was left with a strong urge to head back into the wasteland. But where to start? An open-world RPG like Fallout 4 felt like too much of a commitment (even with a next-gen update on the way), so I turned to something simpler: the mobile strategy game Fallout Shelter. And now I can't seem to stop.Now, to be clear, Fallout Shelter isn't a new game. It launched in 2015, and while it started as a mobile release, it's been subsequently ported to PC and consoles. It's a bit like a city-builder, just one that takes place mostly underground. You're the... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Roku says it found another cyberattack on Friday that affected 576,000 users. This is the second breach to affect the company since March.Roku says the attackers used the login information of account holders, a technique called credential stuffing, to gain access to the streaming service and the payment methods of some users. The hackers were then able to use partial credit card numbers from about 400 cases" to make unauthorized purchases for subscriptions to streaming services and Roku devices. But the company said the hackers did not get sensitive information like full credit card numbers and addresses.The hackers used a method called credential stuffing, in which malicious actors take stolen usernames and passwords and try these... Continue reading...

Image: Android Headlines We're a month out from Google I/O, where the company will likely announce its new Pixel 8A phone. At this point, there have already been plenty of renders and even some real-world shots. And now, courtesy of Android Headlines, it appears official marketing images of the device have leaked.If accurate, they show that Google plans to offer the Pixel 8A in four colors: black, porcelain, blue, and a very vibrant green. It's certainly more saturated than the subdued mint" that Google added to the Pixel 8 color choices earlier this year.Like its predecessor, the phone is rumored to have a 6.1-inch display, though it's not yet clear whether it'll top out at 90Hz or 120Hz. The 8A still has thicker bezels than the flagship Pixel 8 and 8 Pro -... Continue reading...

A 20-foot chunk of Newport, Rhode Island's beloved Cliff Walk broke off and dove into the depths of the ocean in a significant landslide and partial collapse, pictured on March 4th, 2022. | Photo by Jonathan Wiggs / The Boston Globe via Getty Images The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) is doling out nearly $830 million in grants to 80 different projects aimed at strengthening US infrastructure against climate change.The funding will fan out over 39 states and territories to projects ranging from refurbishing aging bridges to expanding emergency evacuation routes. The grants are the first of their kind," according to USDOT, which is partnering with state, local, and tribal governments thanks to funding made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.Climate change is intensifying risks to the nation's transportation infrastructure. The number of billion-dollar weather disasters reached a record high last year. And even slow-moving calamities like rising seas are... Continue reading...

Google is piloting removing links to California news websites for a small percentage of users. | Illustration: The Verge Google says it will start removing links to California news websites in a short term test for a small percentage of California users." The move is in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would require Google to pay a fee for linking Californians to news articles.If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers," Jaffer Zaidi, Google VP of global news partnerships, wrote in a blog post announcing the decision. The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience."Zaidi adds that... Continue reading...

Photo by Sean O'Kane / The Verge The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating an incident involving Ford's hands-free driver-assist system after a Mustang Mach-E driver crashed into another vehicle in Texas, killing the occupant. A second fatal crash involving a Mach-E took place in Philadelphia, although it's not known whether the driver-assist system played a role. Both crashes involved Mach-Es crashing into stationary vehicles.The first incident took place at 9:50PM on February 24th outside of San Antonio, Texas. According to a preliminary report from NTSB, the 44-year-old driver of the Mustang Mach-E was traveling eastbound on Interstate 10 when he rear-ended a stationary Honda CRV. The 56-year-old Honda driver was killed in the crash.Based on data... Continue reading...

Image: Western Digital It wasn't that long ago when we were impressed by a 400GB microSD card, but now, Western Digital is showing off a full-size SD card with 10 times the storage capacity. The new SanDisk Extreme Pro 4TB SD card is designed for cameras and laptops, and it's the first time we've seen this storage size on an SD card.While Western Digital is previewing its four-terabyte SD card at the NAB Show this week, it won't actually be available until 2025. AnandTech notes that the card uses the Ultra High Speed-I (UHS-I) interface, which supports up to 104MB/s data transfers in the UHS104 (SDR104) mode. It also has minimal sequential write speeds of 30MB/s, enough for 8K video recording.The SD Association first announced its Secure Digital Ultra... Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo In 2015, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker for the Wii U, a game that allowed players to make and share their own 2D Mario levels. In 2021, the company ended the ability to upload courses, the game having been eclipsed by its sequel on the Switch. But in January 2024, Nintendo announced an end to all online services for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS games on April 8th. For Super Mario Maker, that meant the millions of player-made levels would be unceremoniously shuttered.Or at least, it would have been unceremonious, if it weren't for a group called Team 0%. The group had been trying to beat every uncleared level in the game for years, which was made easier once they had a fixed target in 2021. When the announcement came that the Wii U's... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Unpkg, a content delivery network (CDN) that powers more than 4 billion requests per day, went down for several hours on Friday morning. The outage broke the thousands of websites that use the open-source CDN, leaving developers scrambling for a fix.The outage appeared to have started around 4AM ET, with sites returning a 520 error from Cloudflare, which powers Unpkg. Many developers affected by the outage switched to jsDelivr, another open-source CDN for GitHub and the package manager npm, in order to keep their sites online. Unpkg started coming back online at around 9AM ET. That's when Fly.io - the service that Unpkg's origin server uses to provide auto-scaling infrastructure - announced that it deployed a fix" to recover affected... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Seven. Hundred. Dollars. After a year of asking questions about this much-hyped AI wearable, the Humane AI Pin is here, and, well, we still have lots of questions. We're also still trying to figure out how it all works - and where it goes from here.On this episode of The Vergecast, we dive deep into our review of the AI Pin and try to figure out what went wrong with this device and whether there's a real future for it or any other AI-powered gadget. The trouble, we discover, is that these devices are stacking new technology on top of new technology, and until it all works perfectly, none of it will work very well. Also, did we mention the AI Pin is seven hundred dollars?After that, we talk about the growing rift between OpenAI and... Continue reading...

The tools could open new revenue streams for artists who otherwise wouldn't see money from unauthorized remixes. | Cath Virginia / The Verge Spotify is working on some seemingly TikTok-inspired remixing features in its latest attempt to capitalize on the social media platform's explosive popularity. According to the Wall Street Journal, Spotify is developing tools that would allow paid subscribers to speed up, mash-up, and otherwise edit" tracks from their favorite artists, which could then be saved for repeat listening.One use case for the tools is to allow Spotify users to adjust the speed of the songs they listen to. These music modifications are already popular with teens and young adults on TikTok, with content analysis firm Pex finding that 38 percent of songs on the platform had their speeds or pitches modified in 2023, compared to 25 percent the year prior.A... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge X giveth, and now X taketh away. The platform is eliminating the ability for Premium users to hide their blue checkmarks, according to a notification received by multiple users on Thursday. X made displaying the blue check optional last summer, and it's unclear exactly why the platform plans to remove the feature - or when.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images, The Verge Discord has shut down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi and has completely disabled their lead developers' accounts - and the company isn't answering our questions about why it went that far. Both Suyu and Sudachi began as forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th.Discord responds to and complies with all legal and valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act requests. In this instance, there was also a court ordered injunction for the takedown of these materials, and we took action in a manner consistent with the court order," reads part of a statement from Discord director of product communications Kellyn Slone to The Verge.The developers of Suyu and Sudachi only... Continue reading...

Image: Dbrand Dbrand, the phone case company known for its sassy attitude toward users and tech companies, gave $10,000 to a customer as an apology after it made a racist comment about their last name.On Tuesday, Dbrand reposted a complaint from a customer, Bhuwan Chitransh, who said that the skin they purchased for their MacBook changed color after just two months. Dbrand replied with a crude message that rhymed the customer's name with rash." Chitransh later responded, saying Dbrand's post reflects its racist perspective toward Indian customers.The following day, the company said that it had made a huge fumble." Dbrand said it apologized to Chitransh and offered him $10,000 as a gesture of goodwill." However, Dbrand didn't delete the original... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Following Paramount's move to add Showtime programming to certain Paramount Plus streaming plans, the Showtime standalone streaming platform is coming to an end.Variety reports that Showtime streaming subscribers have begun receiving notices that they will no longer be able to access the platform after April 30th. Going forward, subscribers will have to sign up for the $11.99 per month Paramount Plus with Showtime plan. Paramount Global announced its intentions to shutter the Showtime platform last year after also rebranding the traditional Showtime network as "Paramount Plus with Showtime."Though this whole renaming process has been awkward, Paramount's following through on its plan to fully subsume the Showtime brand. And while... Continue reading...

Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry.Hi, everyone - I'm starting off today with some big news to share: next week will be my last at Hot Pod and The Verge. Before coming here, all I wanted was to cover the podcasting industry, and I still can't believe I managed to get a job doing just that. Even when the news was bad (which, let's be real, was often), I was buoyed by the passion and innovation of this community. It's been a real privilege getting to know so many of you.I'll have a few more stories coming out before I leave as well as some final thoughts on the state of the industry. My colleague Jake Kastrenakes has a note below with more information about the newsletter moving forward.As... Continue reading...

The countdown to Google I/O starts now. | Image: The Verge / Android Android 15's first public beta is available to download now, provided you have a Pixel phone and a bit of a sense of adventure. It's the first consumer-facing release after two developer previews, and while we have a good idea of what to expect from Google's next mobile OS version, we'll certainly hear more at the company's annual developer conference soon enough.The blog post highlighting updates in today's release covers some pretty pedestrian stuff. Apps will scale edge to edge by default and will draw behind translucent system bars on the top and bottom of the screen, rather than around them. There's OS-level support for app archiving and unarchiving so third-party app stores can take advantage of this feature. Android 15 will also... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber has launched a new safety preferences section that gathers all of Uber's safety tools in one place and lets users schedule them to switch on automatically.Some of the safety tools you can customize include audio recording - which saves encrypted audio of the trip that Uber can use to investigate reported incidents - and PIN verification, so you can ensure you're entering the right vehicle. You can also share your live location and ride details with people you trust via ShareMyTrip, while RideCheck notifies Uber when a ride suddenly stops or goes off-course.You can choose to activate all of Uber's safety features by default for every ride or customize your settings based on time and location. For example, you can set it to turn on... Continue reading...

Executives hold shovels during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Occidental Petroleum and 1PointFive carbon removal plant in Ector County, Texas, on April 28th, 2023. | Image: Jordan Vonderhaar / Bloomberg via Getty Images Attempting to filter enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to make a significant impact on climate change would require hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending, according to a new report.The suite of technologies emerging to attempt that task all fall under an umbrella called carbon dioxide removal, or CDR. It's still risky and astronomically expensive. But there's been growing chatter about it, particularly as the US continues producing record amounts of oil and gas.According to the new report by research firm Rhodium Group, the US needs to spend roughly $100 billion a year on CDR in order to scale up to a level that would help the country meet its climate goals. A majority of that needs to come in the form of... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft is trying to entice Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 with fullscreen prompts 18 months before the end of support cutoff. Reddit user Woopinah9 spotted a notification while in the middle of working," where Microsoft thanks Windows 10 customers" for their loyalty with a full-screen message and then explains the end of support date. You might be expecting a free upgrade as part of this interruption, but unfortunately for this Reddit user, their PC can't upgrade to Windows 11, so it's more hey check out this cool thing we have! oh but you cant have it," as one Redditor puts it.While Some Windows 10 users will see this prompt and be able to upgrade to Windows 11, this Reddit user, in particular, has one of the many... Continue reading...

Image: Yoto If your kid uses this Yoto Mini speaker, take it away immediately. Yoto has recalled the popular speaker due to a charging cable issue that causes the lithium-ion battery to overheat and catch fire, posing a burn and fire risk.The recall affects the Yoto Mini speakers sold nationwide from November 2021 through April 2024. It includes 251,165 devices in the US and 19,721 in Canada with the PRPLXX00860 SKU. You can find the SKU number, along with the speaker's serial number and model name, on the base of the device. There haven't been any reported injuries. Image: US Consumer Product Safety Commission The recall affects Yoto Mini speakers with the SKU PRPLXX00860. You won't have to get rid of the entire device.... Continue reading...

Photo by Neilson Barnard / Getty Images for The Recording Academy Taylor Swift's catalog of music has returned to TikTok, just a few months after it was purged alongside other popular artists represented by Universal Music Group (UMG).In January, UMG and TikTok's licensing deal expired, and the companies took turns blaming each other for why fans would no longer be able to use UMG artists' music on the app. UMG argued that TikTok wasn't willing to pay what it wanted and that allowing AI-generated content on the app was sponsoring artist replacement" by the technology. Meanwhile, TikTok said UMG was being greedy and that it was able to come to agreements with every other label and publisher.It's not immediately clear how Swift's music has made its way back to TikTok - as Variety noted, Swift may... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony is changing up the strategy around its mainstream wireless headphones and speakers. Today, the company is announcing several new products and introducing a new brand, ULT Power Sound, to go with them. Any kind of actual name" is an improvement from years past, when Sony would typically just refer to devices by their model number. And as the branding implies, all of these new products - three speakers and one pair of headphones - focus on lively, bass-forward sound.All of them also have an ULT button that can cycle between different sound modes depending on how much bass emphasis you want. ULT1 gets you deeper, lower frequency bass," while ULT2 delivers powerful, punchy bass." And yes, apparently there's a difference between... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple is continuing its run of streaming sci-fi with the upcoming Dark Matter, a thriller about a man who... kidnaps himself. The first trailer looks appropriately trippy and follows a physicist played by Joel Edgerton who is abducted into an alternate version of his life." The show involves him trying to get home while navigating this new multiversal reality, which is powered by a big black box that he invented.The nine-episode-long show is based on the novel of the same name by Blake Crouch and also stars Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, and Oakes Fegley. It starts streaming on May 8th with a two-episode premiere, and subsequent episodes debut on Wednesdays after that.Dark Matter joins a growing list of... Continue reading...