The Verge - All Posts

Reddit awards are (kinda) back - with a few notable changes. | Illustration: The Verge Reddit is re-introducing a revised version of the awards system it phased out last year after acknowledging the golden upvote system had missed the mark."We tried something new, it wasn't great (you called it)," Reddit said in its announcement post on Wednesday. So we're (re)launching awards, not-so-new but definitely improved. Rollout starts today on reddit.com and Reddit's iOS and Android apps."Most of the previous award system mechanisms will remain the same, according to Reddit, with a few tweaks - such as an award button placed under eligible posts, an updated UI to minimize clutter, and an awards leaderboard that displays the top gold and awards earned for a comment or post. New safety features have been introduced to keep... Continue reading...

The Verge The social network formerly known as Twitter has officially adopted X.com for all its core systems. That means typing twitter.com in your browser will now redirect to Elon Musk's favored domain, or should. At the time of publication, we're seeing a mix of results depending upon browser choice and whether you're logged in or not.A message also now appears at the bottom of the X login page that reads, We are letting you know that we are changing our URL, but your privacy and data protection settings remain the same."The domain transition has been one of the more awkward aspects of Elon Musk's move to rebrand the company. Although many aspects of X migrated to the new branding long ago - including its official account, its mobile apps,... Continue reading...

The new iPad Air and iPad Pro are here (and already on sale). | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge While the best iPad deals usually land during major sale events like Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day, many of the best iPad deals from the holiday season have persisted into 2024. The discounts come and go like changing winds, but you can still take advantage of sales on many models today, particularly on the more affordable iPads. What's more, Apple recently released a new iPad Pro and iPad Air, and they're already causing prices on older models to drop even further.It's difficult to know where exactly you can find the most notable iPad deals unless you're scouring the major retailers on a daily basis. But that's often what our deal hunters at The Verge are doing each and every day, so let us help you out. Below, we've listed the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge On Thursday evening, many iPhone owners (including some here at The Verge) saw the not delivered" flag when trying to send texts via iMessage. People reported the problem across multiple wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile), countries, and even continents.The Apple services status page didn't show any indication of trouble while the problems were going on, but now it has been updated after the fact, reflecting a resolved issue where Users were unable to use this service" for iMessage, Apple Messages for Business, FaceTime, and HomeKit. According to the note, the problems went on from about 5:39PM ET until 6:35PM ET. Screenshot: Apple.com Apple has not responded to inquiries or otherwise commented on... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google will soon offer schools access to Gemini AI - specifically for educators and students over the age of 18 - and promises not to use their data for AI model training or share it with anyone.Google will include the extra Gemini data privacy protections on Workspace for Education accounts at no additional charge. However, it does mean relying on the older Gemini 1.0 Pro model instead of newer, more updated models like Gemini 1.5 Pro or Flash, which is designed to provide more accurate answers.Gemini for Google Workspace launches on May 23rd and will come in two packages for institutions. The first is the lower-cost Gemini Education, which has a monthly usage limit, and the second tier is Education Premium, which opens full access to... Continue reading...

Photo: Getty Images Gannett, the media company that owns hundreds of newspapers in the US, is launching a new program that adds AI-generated bullet points at the top of journalists' stories, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge.The AI feature, labeled key points" on stories, uses automated technology to create summaries that appear below a headline. The bottom of articles includes a disclaimer, reading, The Key Points at the top of this article were created with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reviewed by a journalist before publication. No other parts of the article were generated using AI." The memo is dated May 14th and notes that participation is optional at this point.The summaries appear to already be live on some USA... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge OpenAI has signed a deal for access to real-time content from Reddit's data API, which means it can surface discussions from the site within ChatGPT and other new products. It's an agreement similar to the one Reddit signed with Google earlier this year that was reportedly worth $60 million.The deal will also enable Reddit to bring new AI-powered features to Redditors and mods" and use OpenAI's large language models to build applications. OpenAI has also signed up to become an advertising partner on Reddit.Redditors have been vocal about how Reddit's executives manage the platform before, and it remains to be seen how they'll react to this announcement. More than 7,000 subreddits went dark in June 2023 after users protested Reddit's... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge TikTok is experimenting with 60-minute video uploads, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The feature is available only to certain users, with no immediate plans to expand widely.The company has gradually bumped up the length of videos: in January, it gave some creators access to 30-minute clips, and as of now, users can upload content as long as 10 minutes long. Content creators who sell subscriptions also have access to 20-minute-long uploads.TikTok's arrival kicked off an era of shortform vertical video content, but these days, the platform has been leaning into longer, more YouTube-like material. Earlier this year, some TikTok creators got notifications that their content would get a boost" if they shared horizontal clips... Continue reading...

GTA 6 artwork | Image: Rockstar Games The hype has never been higher for one of the most anticipated games of the decade. Continue reading...

Image: Rockstar Games In Take-Two's Q4 2024 earnings report, the company stated when gamers can expect the next entry in the GTA series. What was previously a nebulous calendar year 2025 for Grand Theft Auto VI is now a more specific but still a bit vague fall 2025."

Image: Google Coinciding with Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is highlighting a number of new accessibility features across its software and enhancements to others that were already part of Android. First is a significant upgrade to Android's Lookout tool, which helps people who are blind or have low vision find out more information about their surroundings. Google is leveraging AI and adding the ability for Lookout to search for specific objects, including seating, bathrooms, and more, making up seven total categories.As you move your camera around the room, Lookout will notify you of the direction and distance to the item," Eve Andersson, Google's senior director of product inclusion, equity, and accessibility, wrote in the blog post.A... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon and Harvard University have created a quantum network" that transmitted an entangled photon from one quantum computer to another over 35 kilometers of fiber-optic cable.Researchers from Harvard and Amazon's AWS Center for Quantum Networking put a set of nodes around the Boston area to build a network capable of efficiently catching, storing, and transferring information initially stored in light." Like the internet we know, quantum networks send information carried by light - in this case, quantum-entangled photons. But they need repeaters" to prevent those photons from scattering across long distances, as light is wont to do, and the repeaters have to be able to send the photon without breaking its entanglement and modifying... Continue reading...

A family subscription is also coming to Strava. | Image: Strava There's new leadership at Strava, and they want everyone to know the platform is about to get a bunch of new features, starting with the highly requested dark mode, a family subscription plan, night heatmaps, and, of course, AI.Dark mode as a concept has been around for ages, but it's been a recurring source of consternation for Strava users on Reddit forums. For those folks, the good news is dark mode will arrive later this summer, and users can choose between permanently keeping the app in dark mode or matching a user's phone settings. More good news: it'll be available for both subscribers and free users.There's been a lot of investment that had to go in for an app that launched in 2009 to be able to get to a place where we could... Continue reading...

Image: Annapurna Interactive I've probably spent more time in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes jotting down notes and theories than I have actually playing the game. The latest release from Simogo - the Swedish studio behind eclectic titles like Year Walk and Device 6 - is a mystery game that is absolutely dense with puzzles. The sheer scale of it is initially intimidating. Everything in the game is locked behind a door of some kind, and figuring out how to open them involves navigating a deluge of cryptic, strange, and often confusing clues. But once I gave myself over to the game's logic, it all made a certain kind of sense. Eventually, it was all I could think about, and I have the notebook full of scribbled solutions to prove it.There's very little setup. You arrive... Continue reading...

Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut debuts on PC today, and it's the first game to feature Sony's new PlayStation PC overlay and shared Trophies system. I've had a chance to get a first look at this new overlay, and my initial impression is that it's really unobtrusive, clean, and simple.There are five main sections here: search, friends, Trophies, profile, and settings. Search lets you find other PlayStation players and add them as friends, whereas the friends section lists both your online and offline friends. You can see your friends' Trophies, but you can't message friends or party chat from this overlay, unfortunately. You'll have to use in-game chat if you want to speak to a console friend, or just use Discord. GIF... Continue reading...

The new Ricoh GR III HDF has a highlight diffusion filter instead of an ND filter. | Alex Parkin, The Verge When Ricoh launched its very first office copier, the Ricopy 101, in 1955, the product's popularity sparked a term - supposedly folks would say make a Ricopy" instead of make a copy." And with the company's current camera lineup, the GR III, they have made a lot of Ricopies, making only slight changes to each of the pocket-sized point-and-shoot cameras year over year.The latest of which is the $1,066.95 Ricoh GR III HDF. It has the same 24.2-megapixel APS-C sensor and external hardware as all of the other GR III cameras, including the first GR III camera that was released in 2019. But what makes it worth talking about today is the new HDF" part of its name. It stands for high diffusion filter." Whereas previous Ricoh cameras had a... Continue reading...

Photo by David Gray / AFP via Getty Images The House passed the TICKET Act 388-24 on Wednesday, which would force ticket sellers to show consumers total prices (including fees) upfront and guarantee refunds when events are canceled or postponed.The bill would still need to pass the Senate and be signed by the president to become law, but the overwhelming support in the House is a positive sign. The legislation comes after the Ticketmaster fiasco around Taylor Swift's Eras Tour tickets, where the ticket-selling platform canceled general sales after high demand it later partially blamed on bots. That prompted lawmakers to haul its top exec from its parent company, Live Nation, into a hearing. In the wake of the disaster, The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta is starting to test a TweetDeck-like experience for Threads today. It will allow Threads users to create customizable feeds that are stacked in a column interface on the web - just like TweetDeck did before it became a paid service and was rebranded to X Pro last year.If you're in the test, you can choose to keep things simple with a single feed, or add separate columns for your favorite searches, tags, accounts, saved posts, and notifications," explains Meta spokesperson Seine Kim in a statement to The Verge. You can choose to have specific columns auto-update in real time." Image: Meta The new TweetDeck-like web experience for Threads. Meta will be selecting Threads users to test this new experience... Continue reading...

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge A June 3rd deadline is approaching to either file a claim connected to this class action lawsuit against Apple or opt out. If you purchased an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus that suffered from microphone audio issues, you may be eligible to claim from a settlement pool of $35 million, with amounts ranging from at least $50 to as much as $394.Customers who have used one of the devices between the dates of September 16th, 2016, and January 3rd, 2023, are potentially eligible to make a claim, but the requirements are pretty strict. Eligible parties fall into one of two groups: people who paid out of pocket for repairs on their iPhone 7 or 7 Plus due to audio issues or customers who are on the books as having reported a problem that didn't pay for a... Continue reading...

Venu Sports is supposedly the next big thing in sports streaming. | Image: Venu Sports A new sports streaming service is coming later this year. We've known for months who is working on the service; it's a co-venture from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Now, we also know what it's going to be called: Venu Sports.The naming announcement comes a few months after the three networks said they were planning to launch a differentiated sports-centric service," a much-needed simplification of an increasingly chaotic sports streaming landscape. Sports rights are more expensive than ever and are being split up among more partners than ever, so having a way to share costs, infrastructure, and content makes a lot of sense.Initially, insiders took to calling the service Hulu For Sports, or Spulu for short. The actual name - which I'm... Continue reading...

Sony has introduced the Xperia 1 VI, the sixth generation of the company's flagship smartphone that could tempt photography enthusiasts away from rivaling iPhone and Pixel devices. Some of those perks include a true optical zoom, AI-assisted autofocus, and a unified app experience.It has three cameras on the back: a 24mm main camera with a 48-megapixel Sony Exmor T sensor, a 16mm ultrawide, and an 85-170mm variable zoom telephoto camera that provides magnification around 3.5x to 7.1x that of the main camera. The Xperia 1 VI also utilizes this new telephoto camera for its macro mode.The device comes with auto-focus human pose estimation" AI technology that can recognize a subject's body and head position and supports filming video in... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft isn't launching a new version of Windows next week, but what it's about to unveil could be just as significant. After nearly four years of falling behind Apple's MacBooks, sources inside Microsoft tell me that the company is confident it can finally beat Apple's own chips that power the MacBook Air.On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will detail the company's AI vision across hardware and software" at an event hosted at Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington. It's a pivotal moment for Microsoft and Windows because it won't involve the typical chip partnership with Intel that we've seen for decades. Instead, Microsoft will set the stage for a summer of Arm-powered laptops thanks to a close collaboration with Qualcomm.I... Continue reading...

As usual, Bose's audio processing makes this speaker sound excellent. But for $400, it's fair to expect more features and more smarts. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge / Getty Images Hugging Face, one of the biggest names in machine learning, is committing $10 million in free shared GPUs to help developers create new AI technologies. The goal is to help small developers, academics, and startups counter the centralization of AI advancements.We are lucky to be in a position where we can invest in the community," Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue told The Verge. Delangue said the investment is possible because Hugging Face is profitable, or close to profitable" and recently raised $235 million in funding, valuing the company at $4.5 billion.Delangue is concerned about AI startups' ability to compete with the tech giants. Most significant advancements in artificial intelligence - like GPT-4, the algorithms behind Google... Continue reading...

The Chevy Silverado EV, as mobile generator. | Image: Abigail Bassett Last week, General Motors summoned a small group of journalists to a Beverly Hills mansion to witness the future of home energy. And it started with a preemptive blackout.As sunset fell across the Hollywood Hills, the chief engineer from General Motors flipped a breaker and disconnected the five-bedroom home from the grid. The lights went out, and less than 20 seconds later, GM's home system powered it back up, pulling just 5kW or less from the fully charged Chevy Silverado EV parked in the garage.When the lights came back on, the small crowd of journalists and GM Energy employees clapped, as if they were experiencing electricity for the first time.When the lights came back on, the small crowd clapped, as if experiencing... Continue reading...

I think this tease is it, but I can't quite tell. | Image: Asus On June 2nd, Asus will formally announce the ROG Ally X, a semi-sequel to its handheld gaming PC with a way bigger battery. We exclusively revealed the broad strokes last Thursday, but I've now touched an early engineering sample, too - and I'm pleased to say it's far more comfortable to hold.Asus has made a whole bunch of ergonomic changes that make it practically melt into my hands, in the exact way the original did not. While I still prefer the Steam Deck's beefier grips and symmetrical thumbsticks, the Ally X could easily be my runner-up.First, a disclaimer: this is not what I'd consider a proper hands-on. Asus wouldn't let me power it on, play any games, or show you any photos. I couldn't bring the old ROG Ally into the room or... Continue reading...

The X-T50 kit comes with Fujifilm's also-new 16-50mm lens. | Image: Fujifilm Fujifilm has just announced a pair of new cameras at the company's X Summit Sydney event. There's the medium format GFX100S II, which frankly falls outside my scope of interest (and budget). The more mainstream of the two is the X-T50, which is a followup to - but not a replacement for - the X-T30 II, which will remain in Fujifilm's lineup moving forward.The X-T50 is a hodgepodge of the camera maker's new and old tech. Let's start with the new. The body has a fresh, more rounded shape that's unlike anything else in the X-Series lineup, and there's a film simulation dial right on the top, a first for any Fujifilm camera. You get several preset film sims to circle between and can choose your own for the three customizable slots - though... Continue reading...

Alvaro Bernis / The Verge How we use the internet is changing fast thanks to the advancement of AI-powered chatbots that can find information and redeliver it as a simple conversation. Continue reading...

Image: Samsung Samsung heard that Apple managed to upset a lot of people with the Crush" ad revealed last week that smushed instruments, arcade games, and sculptures into a shiny new OLED-screened iPad Pro, and apparently just had to get into the conversation. Apple eventually apologized, with an exec saying it missed the mark."On one side, responses included creatives like Hugh Grant and anyone who spotted a slightly-too-on-the-nose representation of Big Tech's steamroller approach to art, copyright, and the past, powered by the might of generative AI tools. On the other there were the people ticked off by the knowledge that there was any backlash at all.In response, the Samsung Mobile account on X posted this video with the hashtag UnCrush,"... Continue reading...

Like its Frame TVs, Samsung's art-inspired speaker is designed to complement your home decor more naturally. | Image: Samsung Samsung's art-inspired Frame TV has been a runaway hit over the last several years - so much so that everyone from Amazon to Hisense has begun cribbing some of its more popular features for their latest sets. It came as no surprise, then, that Samsung announced a speaker version during CES 2024. Enter the Samsung Music Frame, which is on sale at Amazon for $374.99 ($25 off) when you clip the on-page coupon.Samsung's sizable, 12.9 x 12.9 picture frame is more akin to the Ikea Symfonisk frame speaker than anything else, only it's considerably smaller and allows for a lot more customization than the popular Sonos / Ikea collab. You can insert your own photographs or artwork using the included mounting panel, for one, and Samsung will... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has now added a way to create easily formatted tables in Sheets with one click, something Excel has had for years. Now, if you have a block of data that you'd like to quickly turn into its own little island of filters and sorting rules, that's fully possible (or will be soon, depending on where you are in Google's rollout queue). Hooray!As a person who's maintained a shared budget spreadsheet in Google Sheets for about a decade and who would have loved not to have to create all of my filters and sort piece by piece, I'm excited. And judging by a little cursory searching, I'm not alone - people have been asking for self-contained tables like this for years. GIF: Google Look at that sick table. What... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed two new lawsuits against Amazon on Wednesday, bringing similar complaints to those the company is already facing from the Federal Trade Commission.Both of the lawsuits are brought under Arizona's own state statutes in the Superior Court of Arizona. One of the lawsuits accuses Amazon of engaging in deceptive business practices that violate the state's Consumer Fraud Act by allegedly using design tricks known as dark patterns to keep users from canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions. This is similar to a lawsuit the FTC filed against the company in June.The other lawsuit accuses Amazon of breaking Arizona's Uniform State Antitrust Act by unfairly maintaining monopoly status by enforcing... Continue reading...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivers a speech during an event called Microsoft Build: AI Day in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on May 2nd, 2024. | Photo by MOHD RASFAN / AFP via Getty Images Microsoft's producing a lot more planet-heating pollution now than it did when it made a bold climate pledge back in 2020. Its greenhouse gas emissions were actually around 30 percent higher in fiscal year 2023, showing how hard it could be for the company to meet climate goals as it simultaneously races to be a leader in AI.Training and running AI models is an increasingly energy-hungry endeavor, and the impact that's having on the climate is just starting to come into view. Microsoft's latest sustainability report is a good case study in the conundrum facing big tech companies that made a slew of climate pledges in recent years but could wind up polluting more as they turn their focus to AI.In many ways the moon is five times as... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge AST SpaceMobile has ramped up demonstrations of voice calls, texts, and video calls via satellite over the last year, using 4G LTE and 5G connections with download bandwidth reaching 14Mbps. Now the company says that a previous memorandum of understanding with AT&T to work on a space-based broadband network for phones has become a definitive commercial agreement," just in time for AST's first five commercial satellites to launch this summer.The FCC has gotten things rolling on a framework (PDF) for companies interested in building these types of services, with the idea of what Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel called a single network future. We won't need to think about what network, where, and what services are available. Connections... Continue reading...

Image: ByoWave On Wednesday, Microsoft announced the Proteus Controller, a $299 modular video game controller kit that lets Xbox gamers with disabilities customize their controllers.Created by peripheral company ByoWave as part of the Designed for Xbox program, the wireless controller consists of small cubes with interchangeable faceplates that include controller buttons, a directional pad, and analog sticks.The snap and play" parts connect together so gamers can build more than 100 configurations and LED lighting variations. As a result, one-handed gamers and other players with disabilities can use the controller in a way that's most comfortable for them. The buttons are also remappable for a more individualized experience, albeit only via the... Continue reading...

The entry-level Apple Watch SE is a gateway smartwatch if there ever was one. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In September, Apple launched its latest batch of smartwatches, introducing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 ($799) alongside the Apple Watch Series 9 ($399). Each wearable has its own pros and cons, as does the second-gen Apple Watch SE ($249), but the introduction of the new wearables also means there are now more Apple Watch models on the market than ever before - and a lot more deals to be had.But with all of those options, which one should you pick? Generally speaking, you want to buy the newest watch you can afford so that it continues to receive software updates from Apple. The latest update, watchOS 10, launched in September on the Apple Watch Series 4 and newer, though no one can say with certainty whether the Series 4 will get the next... Continue reading...

Screenshot: PPSSPP It's the PlayStation Portable's turn to get an emulator on the iOS App Store thanks to PPSSPP, which just went live today. This emulator, from developer Henrik Rydgard, has been in development for more than a decade, and it's free to download for the iPhone and iPad.Rydgard says in a blog post that the version approved this morning has some limitations versus previous builds of the app that were available through various exploits and workarounds. The biggest is that Apple doesn't allow Just-in-Time recompilers that retranslate code for the OS and can lead to smoother performance. (It's why we might never see a GameCube / Wii emulator.) Fortunately," he writes, iOS devices are generally fast enough" for almost all PSP games. ... Continue reading...

Is this the best use of RetroArch? | Screenshot: RetroArch Another emulator with tons of history and development, RetroArch, is now freely available on the iOS App Store today. This is great news for retro gaming fans with iPhones because it can emulate a truly eye-crossing number of retro consoles once installed.In fact, there are too many to list here. But some notable emulation cores - the actual separately developed emulation software - included in this version of RetroArch are the NEC PC Engine, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Boy, Neo Geo Pocket, and even the PSP (using the same core that drives the PPSSPP app that went up today). You can see the list in full by clicking more" on RetroArch's description in its App Store listing. Screen recording: RetroArch J... Continue reading...

The second-gen AirPods Pro, Apple's most premium set of earbuds, are currently on sale for $189.99. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you know where to look, you can often score discounts on Apple's ever-popular AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods at the end of 2021, we've seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model consistently dip below $100. And now that the second-gen AirPods Pro have been on the market for over a year, we're also seeing their price fall more often, too. We're even seeing great deals land on the updated AirPods Pro with USB-C.Here, we've curated the best deals currently available on each model, including the entry-level AirPods, the AirPods Pro, the third-gen AirPods, and the AirPods Max.The best AirPods (second-gen) dealsIn 2021, Apple lowered the list price of the second-gen AirPods - now the... Continue reading...