Latest Technology

Simone Giertz pulls up in her freshly detailed and upgraded Truckla. | Image: Simone Giertz Remember that Tesla Model 3 that was chopped up to make an all-electric pickup truck many years ago? Well, it’s still alive! Inventor and YouTuber Simone Giertz — the self-described “queen of shitty robots” — uploaded a new video on Thursday with an update on how her custom Truckla’s been doing ( via Boing Boing ). In the video, Giertz says it’s been four years since the Truckla was built, and since then, she’s been using it as her daily driver. It was never completely finished, though: the custom truck bed was never weather sealed, some trim was still unfinished, and the removable tailgate stopped working. “She’s a little bit rattle-ly, because the truck bed isn’t welded in,” Giertz explained in the video. She also has to baby the car... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/T9VhAHD

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has released the code that chooses which tweets show up on your timeline to GitHub and has put out a blog post explaining the decision . It breaks down what the algorithm looks at when determining which tweets to feature in the For You timeline and how it ranks and filters them. According to Twitter’s blog post, “the recommendation pipeline is made up of three main stages.” First, it gathers “the best Tweets from different recommendation sources,” then it ranks those tweets with “a machine learning model.” Lastly, it filters out tweets from people you’ve blocked, tweets you’ve already seen, or tweets that are not safe for work, before putting them on your timeline. The post also goes in-depth to each step of the process. For... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/82FpNRZ

Image: Poncle Vampire Survivors is getting a second expansion, and like the previous one, it will cost $2. The new fantasy-themed DLC, Tides of the Foscari , includes eight new characters, 13 weapons, and a new stage, and it comes out on April 13th. Developer Poncle is already teasing characters like a mage and a swordsman as well as weapons like a spellbook and a sword named “Eskizzibur.” I can’t wait to try out all of the new additions — I’m sure they’ll all be unbelievably broken in some delightful ways. The new level looks like a lot of fun, too. Like with the first expansion, Legacy of the Moonspell , it’s a really big map with many separate areas, including the mysterious Lake Foscari taking up a good chunk of one corner. You can check out the new... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/54WIXx2

Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge Last year’s iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 releases came with a host of great new features — including sweet lock screen customization options, which Verge reporter Jay Peters called one of the biggest successes of 2022 . But Apple is still not done with iOS 16; iterative releases have been handed out for testing through the company’s public beta program. Now, Apple has pushed its latest public betas — iOS 16.5 and iPadOS 16.5 — which introduce even more new features, like being able to ask Siri to start a screen recording. You can download the latest public beta releases today — at your own risk, naturally. Here’s how to install the beta software on your iPhone or iPad once it’s available for your device. Before we get started, a word of warning:... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/kqg3hZR

Illustration: The Verge Google CEO Sundar Pichai has responded to criticism of the company’s experimental AI chatbot Bard, promising that Google will be upgrading Bard soon. “We clearly have more capable models,” Pichai said in an interview on The New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast . “Pretty soon, perhaps as this [podcast] goes live, we will be upgrading Bard to some of our more capable PaLM models, which will bring more capabilities; be it in reasoning, coding, it can answer maths questions better. So you will see progress over the course of next week.” “In some ways I feel like we took a souped-up Civic and put it in a race with more powerful cars.” Pichai noted that Bard is running on a “lightweight and efficient version of LaMDA,” an AI language model that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/uoSjFIU

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge BuzzFeed has taken its next step into AI-written content and started publishing AI-generated travel guides, as reported by Futurism . The publisher’s first AI-generated articles were ad-lib quizzes that were largely innocuous, but the travel guides appear to be a more brazen play to attract search traffic about different destinations. You can see the full list of travel articles from BuzzFeed ’s “Buzzy” AI tool right here . Right now, there are 44 posts covering destinations like Morocco, Stockholm, and Cape May, New Jersey. The articles are “written with the help of Buzzy the Robot (aka our Creative AI Assistant) but powered by human ideas,” BuzzFeed says on Buzzy’s profile. The top of each story I’ve seen includes a line noting that an... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/XQ3FqTP

Waymo’s minivans at its Arizona depot in 2018. | Image: Waymo Waymo’s Chrysler Pacificas are heading off into the sunset. On Thursday, the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle operator announced it was phasing out the plug-in hybrid minivans it had been using for the last seven years. Instead, Waymo will rely on the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace as a platform for the fifth generation of its “Waymo Driver,” which is the branding the company uses to describe its autonomous driving hardware and software stack that enable its vehicles to drive without a person behind the steering wheel. Waymo’s Chrysler Pacificas are heading off into the sunset “For many, hailing a fully autonomous ride with Waymo may be the easiest way to access an EV,” the company said in a blog post . “Our growing ride-hailing service not... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jH1eh6W

The Gen 3 had a rocky launch, but after a year of testing, it’s easy to see the hype behind this buzzy smart ring. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/LmO81xY

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Roku plans to lay off an additional 200 employees, the company announced today in an 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission , a little over four months after announcing a previous round of 200 layoffs last November . While the first round affected its US workforce specifically, today’s filing doesn’t specify where the affected workers are based. The layoffs are expected to impact around 6 percent of Roku’s workforce, and are part of a restructuring plan to “lower the company’s year-over-year operating expense growth and prioritize projects that the company believes will have a higher return on investment.” The restructuring changes are expected to mostly be completed by the end of the second quarter of this year. R... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/CY4NRF0

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has formally announced its revamped API tiers a month and a half after new CEO Elon Musk promised a big shake up of the system. In a thread, the company’s official developer account listed three tiers — free, basic, and enterprise — and provided some details on their prices and read and write limits. It also linked to signup pages , which offer links to get started with the first two tiers, and to express an interest in the third. The company says older tiers will be depreciated “over the next 30 days.” Here’s a short summary of the three replacements (which can also be found on Twitter’s website ): Free — Write-only access with the ability to post 1,500 tweets per month at no cost. Basic — A $100 per month subscription for... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/A14Wfpl

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. | Image: Spike Chunsoft While detective stories are a mainstay in the worlds of film, television, and literature, they’re comparatively niche when it comes to video games. And with a few notable exceptions , the most beloved detective games tend to be visual novels . Kazutaka Kodaka loves detective stories and is best known for the dark adventure series Danganronpa . But for his studio’s next project, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code , he decided to take things in a slightly different direction. “Mystery games tend to be dull because it’s mostly reading text,” Kodaka says. “But for this we created a world where you can solve various kinds of mysteries and roam around freely.” Rain Code is described as a “lucid-noir” detective game. It takes place in a sort of... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/0wXkn1y

You can finally play StarFox64 the way Nintendo intended. | Image: Nintendo If you’re still on the hunt for Nintendo’s official N64 controller, you just might be able to pick up the legendary controller for the Nintendo Switch at the Nintendo eShop. This $49.99 controller allows you to experience N64 games the way they were meant to be played — with a big gray controller that has an awkwardly placed central analog stick. This offer is exclusive to the Nintendo store and is only available to purchase if you’re a current Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. To see if it’s in stock and possibly complete your purchase, you may need to be logged in with your Nintendo account. (Note: you can only access the N64 games with the purchase of the Switch Online Expansion Pack.) The restock for the N64 doesn’t follow the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Erid5Ym

The Sony ZV-E1 is pretty dang small for a full-frame camera. We know what most vlogs and YouTube videos look like in this, our Age of Content. So does Sony, and it’s starting to make cameras built to spit out exactly the style of video you’re looking to mimic. The new Sony ZV-E1 is a compact mirrorless full-frame system camera that’s dedicated to content creators and aimed squarely at vloggers. It’s the new flagship offering of Sony’s established ZV line of vlog-centric cameras, taking a similar 12-megapixel backside-illuminated full-frame sensor as the pro-focused FX3 and mixing in the A7R V’s AI autofocus smarts to reduce the friction in making high-quality video content. My colleague Becca Farsace spent a week with the camera and tested many of its vlog-centric automated features for you to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/wnYBGfa

Day One is a great app. It also asks you to trust it in a big way. | Image: Day One I have written in my journal 86 days in a row. It was my New Year’s resolution to actually commit to keeping a diary of my days, and every day since January 2nd, I’ve sat down and done so. This is the longest I’ve ever kept a journal — and almost certainly the longest I’ve ever stuck to a resolution of any kind. I’m probably more proud of myself than I should be. I’ve been using the Day One app , which is the giant of the digital journal space. Day One works on practically every platform, is fast and simple, and lets me write text as well as save photos, audio, and links into my journal. It’s a great app! But I had this moment, about a month into pouring my heart and soul (and hundreds of pictures of my newborn son) into Day One, where I... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/r8HXhJP

London Underground advising people not to travel in record breaking heat on the 19th of July 2022, Picadilly Station, Central London, United Kingdom.  | photo by Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images Google plans to roll out new alerts in Search for extreme heat events, the company announced in a blog post today. Eventually, users should be able to find important information about extreme temperatures in their area when they search relevant terms like “heatwave.” The alert will bring up information like when a heatwave is forecast to start and end in an area, local news on the event, and recommended actions to stay safe. The feature is expected to be available in the US and “a number of countries” including parts of Europe in the second half of the year, according to Hema Budaraju, senior director of product for health and social impact at Google Search. “We feel a great sense of responsibility as we continue to scale this work... Continue reading… from The Verge - All

Maat Mons is displayed in this computer-generated 3D perspective of the surface of Venus. | Image: NASA/JPL The recent discovery of volcanic activity on the planet should have been a cause of celebration. But instead, the scientific community is in shock after NASA delayed funding for a key mission to Venus. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/USp57on

Ember Lumen and Wade Ripple in Elemental. | Pixar Thematically, Pixar’s Elemental , from director Peter Sohn, might not seem like the studio’s most imaginative animated feature. But if the movie’s first full trailer is any indication, Elemental ’s going to be a mesmerizing visual feat. Elemental tells the story of Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) and Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), two of the countless citizens who call a sprawling megacity teeming with other elemental beings like them home. With Ember living among her fellow fire people (think Howl’s Moving Castle ’s Calcifer) and Wade keeping mostly to his fellow water folk (think Osmosis Jones but drippier), they never expected to meet one another, let alone begin to fall in love. But after a chance encounter, the mismatched pair can’t deny that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jcWfE2O

The DJI Avata is my favorite beginner drone . I can’t think of anything easier or more fun to fly, even if it can’t dodge obstacles like a Skydio . But the configuration you probably want to feel like you’re flying costs $1,388 — and requires you to plug a belt clip battery pack into a pair of goggles and use a gyroscopic controller that limits you to flying it like an airplane. Today, DJI’s introducing a new set of goggles and a new controller that should maintain that core flying experience while also lowering the price of entry to $1,278. These are the DJI Goggles Integra , and they’re solely responsible for that price dip: The Integra features the same pair of 0.49-inch / 1080p 100Hz / 700-nit micro OLED displays as the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/bQXPKl8

Image: Epic Games Epic’s new system to pay Fortnite creators could have a transformative effect on the game’s ecosystem, but the company that makes the game is competing for those dollars, too. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/HpLO6Q9

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney’s next generation storytelling and consumer experiences division, which had been exploring how the company could enter the so-called metaverse, has been eliminated according to The Wall Street Journal . The team is thought to have been made up of around 50 employees, and was exploring how Disney could use its existing intellectual property in what former CEO Bob Chapek called “the next great storytelling frontier.” The team has reportedly been axed in the first of a planned three rounds of layoffs at Disney. A total of 7,000 employees are expected to be made redundant across the company, helping it cut around $5.5 billion in costs. Rumors of layoffs began to swirl shortly after Bob Iger replaced Bob Chapek as Disney CEO last... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/5zuQqca

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Ubisoft is backing out of its planned attendance at the E3 2023 in-person expo in favor of its own show in LA on June 12th, the company confirmed to VGC . “E3 has fostered unforgettable moments across the industry throughout the years,” Ubisoft spokesperson Heather Haefner says in a statement to The Verge . “While we initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we’ve made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction, and will be holding a Ubisoft Forward Live event on June 12 in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon.” E3 organizer ReedPop didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. With Ubisoft backing out, E3 2023, which runs from June 13th through June 16th ,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/xrk7X9G

The G4 is the first and only wireless smart doorbell to work with Apple Home. Its features are impressive, but it lacks some essentials. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/UpZJAoi

Image: Nintendo Quite possibly the biggest game of the year is getting an appropriately large gameplay reveal. Nintendo announced that will be releasing a presentation featuring “roughly 10 minutes of gameplay” from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom , the much-anticipated sequel to the defining Breath of the Wild . The presentation will be led by longtime series producer Eiji Aonuma, who has worked on Zelda since Ocarina of Time . It’ll be available on YouTube on March 28th at 10AM ET, and it sounds like the video will be entirely focused on the new Zelda . Join The Legend of #Zelda series producer, Eiji Aonuma, for roughly 10 minutes of gameplay from The Legend of Zelda: #TearsOfTheKingdom on 3/28 at 7:00 a.m. PT on our YouTube channel. ▶️ h... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/zI1xqKy

The more affordable Era speaker improves upon the Sonos One by nearly every measure and will likely find the same success and popularity among Sonos customers. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/cTf1ahe

Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge Parts of Twitter’s source code were recently leaked online via GitHub , the New York Times reports , but were taken down after the social media platform filed a DMCA request. The request, which GitHub has published online , notes that the leaked information included “proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.” The NYT notes that the source code maybe have been public for several months before being removed — the GitHub profile associated with the DMCA takedown lists a single (non-public) code contribution from early January. The name of the account is listed as “FreeSpeechEnthusiast,” in an apparent reference to Twitter CEO Elon Musk calling himself a “ free speech absolutist ” in the past. Twitter has asked for the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Rkf36EH

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has stopped its $1 trial offer for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. The trial has been available for years, with brief periods where it wasn’t always available in certain markets, and it now looks like Microsoft is considering new promotions instead. “We have stopped our previous introductory offer for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass and are evaluating different marketing promotions for new members in the future,” says Kari Perez, head of global communications at Xbox, in a statement to The Verge . The $1 trial has allowed people to sign up to Xbox Game Pass for a month, before the full Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription kicks in at $14.99 per month or $9.99 a month for the PC- or console-only subscriptions.... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/BvbUFDV

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge The Wii U and Nintendo 3DS digital storefronts are shutting down tomorrow, March 27th, 2023. While you’ll no longer be able to purchase games or DLC from either eShop, you’ll still be able to redownload the games you’ve already bought and play online for the time being. Nintendo first warned us of the shutdown last year and started barring users from loading money into the Wii U and 3DS eShops in August. Sadly, this imminent shutdown means we’ll have to bid farewell to the hundreds of great digital-only titles available on either store, such as Dr. Luigi , Pokemon Rumble U , Pushmo , Pokémon Picross , and many others. The closures will also make it impossible to purchase the full range of Virtual Console games on the 3DS and Wii U, which... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/uUMF6aI

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk has put a $20 billion value on Twitter, making up less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid to acquire the site, according to reports from Platformer and The Information . In a memo sent to staff viewed by Platformer ’s Zoë Schiffer, Musk reportedly says that employees will receive stock grants based on Twitter’s $20 billion valuation. Musk stated last year that he’s “obviously overpaying” for Twitter at $54.20 per share. Price was also one of the reasons why he attempted to back out of the deal last year, claiming that the company made false and misleading statements about the presence of bots on the platform. Comp increases will be based on X Corp stock. Current grants are based on a $20b valuation. Musk says he sees a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/9yltrNZ

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple could soon launch a USB-C version of its second-gen AirPods Pro. That’s according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo , who believes the company could start shipping the earbuds with a USB-C case during the second and third quarters of this year. This apparently doesn’t apply to Apple’s standard AirPod models, though, as Kuo notes that the company “currently appears to have no plans for USB-C versions of the AirPods 2 & 3.” Kuo hinted at the change in response to a tweet from Twitter user @aaronp613 , who spotted references to a new AirPods model number (A3048), along with a new AirPods case model number (A29680) in iOS 16.4. I think this is likely the USB-C version of the AirPods Pro 2, with mass shipments expected in 2Q23-3Q23. By the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/kh5HwVL

Tired: the metaverse. Wired: the message-verse? | Image: OpenAI / David Pierce It’s pretty obvious that nobody saw ChatGPT coming. Not even OpenAI. Before it became by some measures the fastest growing consumer app in history, before it turned the phrase “generative pre-trained transformers” into common vernacular, before every company you can think of was racing to adopt its underlying model, ChatGPT launched in November as a “research preview.” The blog post announcing ChatGPT is now a hilarious case study in underselling. “ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. We are excited to introduce ChatGPT to get users’ feedback and learn about its strengths and weaknesses.” That’s it! That’s the whole pitch! No waxing poetic about... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/QscBp4e

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has pushed an update to fix a screenshot editing vulnerability in Windows 10 and 11, as spotted earlier by Bleeping Computer . The security flaw, dubbed the “aCropalypse,” could let bad actors recover the edited portions of screenshots, potentially revealing personal information that had been cropped out or concealed. According to Microsoft, the issue (CVE-2023-28303) affects both the Snip & Sketch app on Windows 10 and the Snipping Tool on Windows 11. However, it only applies to images created in a very specific set of steps. That includes those that have been taken, saved, edited, and then saved over the original file, as well as the ones opened in the Snipping Tool, edited, and then saved to the same location. It doesn’t have... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/il0FCtv

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft doesn’t want its rivals to use Bing’s search index to power their AI chatbots, according to a report from Bloomberg . The company reportedly told two unnamed Bing-powered search engines that it will restrict them from accessing Microsoft’s search data altogether if they continue using it with their AI tools. As noted by Bloomberg , Microsoft licenses out Bing’s search data to several search engines, including DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and the AI search engine You.com . While DuckDuckGo, for example, uses a combination of Bing and its own web crawler to provide search results, You.com and Neeva also pull some of their results from Bing, helping to conserve some of the time and resources that come along with crawling the entire web. M... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/TCGsV4N

Naiad. | Image: Hiwarp The Game Developers Conference was a chance to check out some fascinating new indie games, ranging from a charming family story told through cooking to a strategy game about building a city on top of a giant beast. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Jwfs50p

This affordable fitness band stuffs in an impressive amount of features, but these budget trackers aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/6csbuHh

Francesco Francavilla’s Us poster. | Image: Francesco Francavilla / Mondo It wasn’t a good sign when Funko announced earlier this month its plans to straight up destroy somewhere between $30 and $36 million worth of its collectible vinyl figurines due to dwindling demand that’s tanked their value. But Funko’s recent decision to lay off about half of the staffers at subsidiary Mondo paints a clear picture of a company struggling to secure its financial footing. Though Funko only acquired Mondo — the Austin-based nostalgic memorabilia outfit known for its small-batch movie posters and vinyl records — from Alamo Drafthouse last summer, The Wrap reports that “most of” Mondo’s staff, including co-founders Rob Jones and Mitch Putnam, were laid off this week. Along with the layoffs, Funko is said to be shuttering... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/rOkCsXL

Image: Showtime The gruesome mystery returns, but it’s lacking some of the punch that made the first season so potent. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/MinlHsS

Álvaro 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… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/iVMjlhb

Social media companies have until March 1st, 2024, to comply with or appeal Utah’s new regulations. | Image: Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP Utah has enacted controversial restrictions that will require minors to obtain the consent of a guardian to use social media platforms, the first US state to introduce such measures. Two laws signed by Governor Spencer Cox on Thursday — H.B. 311 and S.B. 152 — form part of the new Utah Social Media Regulation Act, aimed at protecting children from addictive features and targeted ads on social platforms. The H.B. 311 bill prohibits social media companies from broadly “using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction” to their platform and grants minor account holders the right to collect damages for addiction, physical, or emotional harm incurred as a result of using a social media platform. The S.B. 152 bill requires... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/rwX4tbd

Imagine this but around 10 times grander. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or anything like it takes a lot of research and gear. So what would a research and weight-obsessive tech writer bring? Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Q2VL5dB

Image: Daedalic Entertainment It is a shame Andy Serkis never won an award for his work as Gollum in the Peter Jackson-helmed The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The way he managed to evoke two distinct personalities — Gollum and his mild-mannered Hobbit alter ego Sméagol — with his voice and body movements is a performance that should have netted him one of those goofy-looking gold statues. In a hands-on demo of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum , I was reminded of Serkis’ mercurial performance as Gollum and was pleased to see that those dual personalities were a fundamental part of the game. In my short time with Gollum , I got to scamper around Mordor chasing troublesome crows and avoiding orcs, which, if they catch you, will automatically give you a “game over.” Sneakiness... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/UoCDekv

Image: Nvidia CD Projekt Red is releasing a technology preview of a new Cyberpunk 2077 ray tracing mode next month. Path tracing, also known as full ray tracing, will be enabled in the game on April 11th, which will bring even more accurately simulated light to the role-playing game. Path tracing is film-like rendering that’s been used by studios like Pixar to create incredible visuals in movies. Visual effects artists use path tracing for film and TV graphics, but it’s incredibly GPU-intensive for video games. CD Projekt Red is using Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology to bring this full ray tracing mode to Cyberpunk 2077 . Image: Nvidia A comparison between ray tracing, path tracing, and regular... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/mq4ryhA

Example of the ARES footwear try-on feature. | Image: Snap For years, Snapchat has allowed you to try on new lipstick shades, hats, and outfits from major retailers. But starting today, you’ll be able to apply these Snapchat-powered capabilities in other apps. Snap just announced a new business unit, AR Enterprise Services (ARES), that’ll equip retailers with tools so you can try on clothes, jewelry, and more from various brands — all from the comfort of your home. The new ARES business aims to help retailers increase conversions and reduce return rates with augmented reality shopping tools. To this end, ARES will provide its customers with professional services, including product marketing to customer support. That’s in addition to tools included in its first solution — the “Shopping Suite” —... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/IGeqxZJ

If we automate venture capital, will the hype generate itself? | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The AI hype is marketing, baby. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/5sZbG7q

Less than half the price of a Super73-ZX but with more inattention to detail. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/eTgkAN9

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games has just wrapped its State of Unreal 2023 keynote, where it showed off new enhancements coming to Unreal Engine 5.2, stunning new MetaHuman technology, a big push to unify its disparate assets marketplaces, and Fortnite’s long-awaited Unreal Editor tools. Given the popularity of Unreal Engine and Fortnite , the day’s announcements could have a major impact on the games we play in the future. Here are the biggest announcements from the show. Epic showed off a stunning, foliage-filled Unreal Engine 5.2 demo One of Unreal Engine 5.2’s biggest additions is new procedural generation tools, which Epic showed off in a gorgeous “Electric Dreams” demo that took place in a dense, foliage-filled forest partially created... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/7NCt92e

Image: Valve Counter-Strike 2 is official, and for some, it’s coming today . In a post on Twitter, Valve writes that a limited test for CS2 is starting today, which it describes as an “overhaul to every system, every piece of content, and every part of the C-S experience.” A website for the game describes it as “the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history” and promises years of updates and new features. The full game is expected to release in summer 2023, according to the game’s FAQ . It will be free to play. CS2 is based on Valve’s Source 2 engine and includes updates to some of the game’s core mechanics, including improved smoke grenades and “sub-tick updates” that Valve says will let “servers know the exact instant that motion... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/eLFiya9

Microsoft’s Notion competitor is ready for everyone to try. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is now letting anyone preview Microsoft Loop, a collaborative hub offering a new way of working across Office apps and managing tasks and projects. Much like Notion, Microsoft Loop includes workspaces and pages where you can import and organize tasks, projects, and documents. But what sets the two apart is Loop’s shareable components that let you turn any page into a real-time block of content that can be pasted into Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Word on the web, and Whiteboard. Loop components are constantly updated and editable for whoever they’re shared with. Imagine a table that you’re working on with colleagues; you can drop that as a Loop component into a Teams message or Outlook email, and any edits to the table will be... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/FR7zVkp

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games is nearly ready to reveal its latest updates to Unreal Engine, its hugely popular suite of development tools. The company is just about to host its 2023 State of Unreal keynote, where the company plans to “take a look at some new projects, dive into the latest Epic tech, and have some fun along the way.” The keynote is taking place as part of this year’s Game Developers Conference, and the company’s tech talks following the keynote give some clues as to what might be discussed. A few sessions include Unreal Engine 5.2 in the title, so you can expect Epic will share some news on that during the keynote. If you want to see what’s possible with Unreal Engine 5.1, just hop into a match of Fortnite . And speaking of Fortnite , Epic... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/CIvmfo0

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Waymo published a paper today outlining a safety case for autonomous vehicles that the company says should serve as a blueprint for the entire industry. Waymo’s safety case would be “a formal way to explain how a company determines that an AV system is safe enough to be deployed on public roads without a human driver, and it includes evidence to support that determination,” the company says in an accompanying blog post. In other words, Waymo is presenting an argument for the safety of autonomous vehicles, along with evidence that it says backs up this argument. And the company wants other AV companies — essentially, its competitors — to adopt a similar approach in order to prove to regulators that AVs can safely be deployed at a wide... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/MlJf3zr

Image: Nintendo The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Explorer’s Guide , an official guide for the game, is now available as a free PDF that you can download from Nintendo’s Zelda website ( via Polygon ). The guide was originally bundled with the “Explorer’s Edition” of the game, but now you can peruse it even if you don’t own that specific version. The Explorer’s Guide is jam-packed with screenshots and tips to help you make the most of exploring the vast land of Hyrule, which could be handy if you still haven’t played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or are doing a new run ahead of the launch of the game’s nearly-here sequel, Tears of the Kingdom . (That launches on May 12th .) But the guide is also fun to look through as a refresher on what’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/5I1OysW

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Water resistance and lengthy battery life are now standard Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/aPkQHsZ

Image: Ford Ford’s third-ever all-electric vehicle is a Europe-only crossover SUV with one of the automaker’s most popular nameplates. The Explorer EV will also be the first in a wave of new plug-in vehicles for the automaker’s overseas lineup, as it works toward an electric-only portfolio in Europe by 2030 . The Explorer EV may carry a familiar nameplate, but it will be built on top of an unfamiliar platform — for Ford, at least. The automaker is using Volkswagen’s flexible MEB architecture for the new EV , which will be built at Ford’s factory in Cologne, Germany. The Explorer EV will be the first of two vehicles from Ford that will utilize VW’s electric platform as part of an agreement that was established when the two companies formed a global... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jzGFAgM

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge You bought your parents / grandparents / other relatives a new computer, set it up, and showed them all of its nifty new features. You’ve gone home, knowing that you’ve made them very happy. But deep down, you know that this isn’t the end of the story. It’s not going to be long before that dreaded call comes in asking for support. “I can’t find the draft of the email I started!” “Why can’t I get on that Zoom conference?” “My speaker / mouse / keyboard isn’t working!” They’re going to want you to talk them through a fix, which (depending on how computer-savvy they are) is probably going to take a minimum of several hours out of your day. But there is a solution. If both you and your troubled relative use the Chrome browser (or own a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/QfOxCc5

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge ChatGPT’s chat history feature is currently offline as of Tuesday morning after a bug exposed brief descriptions of other users’ conversations to people on the service. On Reddit , one user posted a photo showing descriptions of several ChatGPT conversations they said weren’t their own, while someone else on Twitter posted a screenshot of the same bug . A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed the incident to Bloomberg , noting that the bug did not share full transcripts of conversations but only brief descriptive titles. The bug is an important reminder to be careful about the sensitive information shared with ChatGPT. “Please don’t share any sensitive information in your conversations,” warns an FAQ on OpenAI’s website , which notes that the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/RDHQJc4

The Vergecast logo is old, but Overcast, the app it’s playing on, has been charming us for years. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For the last four weeks, Ashley Esqueda has joined The Vergecast each Monday to talk with someone making something really cool on the internet all by themselves. She’s talked with the maker of Hive , the indie developer of the game Birth , the maker of tiny artisan keycaps , and even the person who built the McRib Locator . It felt fitting that, for the final episode of this miniseries, Ashley would talk to one of the original app makers. Marco Arment has been solo building really cool stuff on the internet for years. While he was the CTO of Tumblr, he launched Instapaper in 2008. He left Tumblr in 2010, sold a majority share of Instapaper in 2013, and then turned his focus to Overcast, one of the absolute best apps you can use for tracking... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Y3usI90