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Image: Nintendo During a GDC 2024 talk, the developers on Tears of the Kingdom explained how they were able to blow players’ minds with the design philosophy of ‘multiplicative gameplay.’ Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/l5A1wPJ

Garmin really needed a training watch in the $250 to $300 range. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The tradeoffs are well worth the savings over the slightly more advanced Forerunner 265. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/t41J8FQ

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Before the iPhone, before Android, before webOS, a revolutionary soap bar of a phone made it incredibly easy to get shit done. The Danger Hiptop, better known as the T-Mobile Sidekick, made the internet portable and affordable like no phone before. It introduced cloud sync long before iCloud, popularized unlimited data and real web browsing on mobile, and made instant messaging and email a breeze thanks to its landscape hardware keyboard . But the Sidekick doesn’t get enough credit for one physical button that tied the whole phone together: the Jump key. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Most remember the swiveling screen, but there was much more to a Sidekick. On modern phones, opening an app usually means... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Uo7aKps

Image: The Verge AT&T has acknowledged that a data leak making the rounds online contains information from more than 7.6 million current customers and 65 million former customers. The company has reset the security passcodes of active customers affected, and says that leaked information "may have included full name, email address, mailing address, phone number, social security number, date of birth, AT&T account number and passcode." AT&T is reaching out to affected customers via “email or letter” to let them know what data was included and what it’s doing for customers in response. The company's acknowledgment that the leaked data is real — the first reports of the leak emerged in 2021 — only came after TechCrunch notified AT&T of the vulnerability... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/zfsnVMp

Amazon won’t let you engrave your AirTags with an adorable unicorn picture, but it will sell them to you starting at $24.99. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Happy Saturday, folks! When Apple launched AirTags in 2021, it was a big moment for item trackers. Tile still dominated the landscape back then, however, thanks to Apple’s ultra wideband (UWB) chip and their ability to tap into Apple’s vast Find My network, they quickly became the go-to pick for iPhone owners. They’ve often gone on sale for around $80 in the time since, however, right now you can snag a four-pack at Amazon , Walmart , and Best Buy for $74.99 ($24), an all-time low. In addition to their ultra-precise tracking capabilities, which allow you to locate them even when you’re not in their immediate vicinity, Apple’s AirTags have a few other things going for them. The handy trackers pack an IP67 rating — meaning they’re sealed... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/umNGPz8

Image: Atari Now that the miniature game console trend has already covered most of the biggest devices from Nintendo , Sega , and Sony , we’re starting to enter more niche territory. The Atari 400 Mini isn’t a rerelease of the company’s most recognizable console (that’d be the 2600). And it isn’t full of household names. But that’s also part of what makes it so interesting — the little gadget is a cute, playful way to explore a very specific and formative niche of video game history. Like its contemporaries, the 400 Mini is a shrunken-down version of the original. That means a small box in a very 1970s shade of beige plastic, with a keyboard and cartridge slot that are purely ornamental. I appreciate just how retro this thing looks; even the included... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/60TOrQ5

The company that usually specializes in premium OLED TVs has produced something refreshingly out of the ordinary. And I already hope it gets a sequel. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/4SFM83R

It’s pretty fast, too. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge The Shazam app for Wear OS just got a neat update: it can now work independently of your Android phone. The update, which was spotted by 9to5Google , basically removes the need for the wrist app to confer with the app on your phone. You don’t even need the app downloaded on your Android for it to work. I downloaded it directly onto the OnePlus Watch 2 that I’m testing without doing so on the Pixel 8 Pro it’s paired to. It still works! And quickly at that. It was able to correctly identify some bangers on my K-pop playlist within a second or two. (To be fair, there wasn’t any background noise in my office. Your mileage may vary in a coffee shop.) Another neat update is that if your watch is offline, the app will save a clip of the song... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ke3WBMR

The Cross Bronx Expressway, a notorious stretch of highway in New York City that is often choked with traffic and contributes to pollution and poor air quality on November 16, 2021 in New York City. | Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the toughest US standards yet for greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty vehicles like big rigs and buses. The rules apply to model year 2027 to 2032 heavy-duty vehicles and are meant to slash emissions from a major source of the pollution causing climate change. Heavy-duty vehicles are responsible for a quarter of the nation’s transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA says its new standards will avoid a billion tons of those emissions by 2055, which would be like eliminating the pollution from 13 million tanker trucks’ worth of gasoline. “On behalf of everyone who breathes, thank you.” Transportation makes up the biggest chunk of the country’s carbon footprint and has...

“I’ve never seen a performance quite like that.” | Collage by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Victor J. Blue, Bloomberg, Getty Images ‘It’s his nature.’ Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jZrShvd

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta will bring AI to its Ray-Ban smart glasses starting next month, according to a report from The New York Times . The multimodal AI features, which can perform translation, along with object, animal, and monument identification, have been in early access since last December. Users can activate the glasses’ smart assistant by saying “Hey Meta,” and then saying a prompt or asking a question. It will then respond through the speakers built into the frames. The NYT offers a glimpse at how well Meta’s AI works when taking the glasses for a spin in a grocery store, while driving, at museums, and even at the zoo. Although Meta’s AI was able to correctly identify pets and artwork, it didn’t get things right 100 percent of the time. The NYT... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/9wIOrFS

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One year after YouTube turned on revenue sharing for its shortform video feature, a growing chunk of creators are getting paid for it. More than 1 in 4 creators in YouTube’s Partner Program are now earning money with YouTube Shorts, the company announced on Thursday. Given there are over 3 million creators in YouTube’s ad sharing program, that amounts to roughly 750,000 Shorts creators in total. The company doesn’t break out how much it has paid Shorts creators specifically. It has paid $70 billion to creators in total over the last three years, with the bulk of that going to longform content. By all measures, Shorts are getting more popular. The number of Shorts uploaded on YouTube has grown by 50 percent year over year, and the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/y08BcKZ

It’s a beaut. For most people, the compact camera is long since dead; a camera is a phone and a phone is a camera. But despite all of the technological developments over the past few years, phones still leave something to be desired if you’re the kind of person who likes to go take photos. Traditional cameras — especially of a certain size and shape — are still alive and kicking, partly because there’s nothing that beats real buttons, dials, and a sturdy grip. They’re things that phones generally don’t have — except for the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. It’s the camera-iest phone camera I’ve used in the last decade (RIP the Nokia Lumia 1020 ), and I dearly wish it was available in the US. We love to see an exposure comp dial. The Xiaomi 14... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/1LENgYp

Two in-development Borderlands projects will continue to be led by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford under Take-Two’s 2K division. | Image: 2K Swedish gaming conglomerate Embracer Group has entered an agreement to sell Gearbox Interactive to Rockstar parent company Take-Two for $460 million. In a press release published on Thursday , Embracer announced that Take-Two will acquire full ownership over the Borderlands (including Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands ), Homeworld , Risk of Rain , Brothers in Arms , and Duke Nukem franchises in the deal, which is expected to be finalized by June 2024. Take-Two Entertainment will also acquire the Gearbox studios based in Quebec, Montréal, and Frisco, Texas. Embracer will, however, retain several Gearbox assets, including Gearbox Publishing San Francisco (which will be renamed), Cryptic Studios, Lost Boys Interactive, the Remnant franchise, Hyper Light... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/nEeuXaM

Image: Hello Games No Man’s Sky just keeps on expanding. Hello Games is releasing the game’s 27th update today, dubbed “Orbital,” and it adds some major features including improved space stations and a tool for customizing ships. The studio says that the stations are now much larger and more impressive from the outside and that the insides are now “vast, procedurally generated, and incredibly diverse.” Most notably, they now feature ship editors where players can customize their personal spacecraft. “We haven’t introduced customisation previously, because so many players love exploring to find the perfect ship already out there to purchase,” Hello explains. “In keeping with exploration, to customise their ship, Travellers gather and trade parts for their... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/GINjbR1

It’s Hulu. In Disney Plus. | Image: Disney As of today, Hulu is part of Disney Plus. Hulu still exists — it still even has its own app — but it’s also being bundled into Disney’s primary streaming service alongside all the company’s other content. Even the Disney Plus logo changed to integrate that iconic green Hulu hue. From a product perspective, the Hulu integration is roughly what you’d imagine. Hulu is now a tile inside the app, next to Marvel and Pixar and National Geographic and the rest. The price hasn’t changed; it’s still US-only, and the app’s not going away. Hulu shows and movies will also show up in search results and recommendations; if you’re subscribed to Hulu, you’ll get everything seamlessly, and if you’re not, the app will try to convince you to sign up.... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/TzJlmiS

The old Disney Plus icon logo (left) compared with the updated teal one (right). | Image: Disney Disney has made some slight but notable updates to the logo and splash screen for its Disney Plus streaming service that likely nod to its looming merger with Hulu . The biggest change is the new teal / seafoam background color, which appears to be a rough mix between its original blue background and the green that Hulu uses. At face value alone, the updated design — which can already be seen on the Disney Plus website and various app stores — makes sense for the corporate giant. Aside from the obvious unity with Hulu, the new color also makes it stand out more against the sea of blue and black logos used by other streaming services like Prime Video, Max, and Paramount Plus. But I am actually sad to see the old logo go. I... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/y6XOS5G

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is introducing a new Community Game Help feature on the PS5 later this year that is designed to automatically create clips that can help other players. PS5 players will be able to automatically upload gameplay to help contribute to hint videos provided by game developers. The opt-in experience will let your PS5 automatically capture a game clip when you complete an activity in supported titles. “Then, it will be reviewed by a moderator, and if approved, your video will be published as a Game Help hint for PlayStation players to watch, learn from, and rate,” explains Sabrina Meditz , senior director of product management for the PS5 platform experience. Image: Sony PS5 players will get a notification if their... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/yqZJtan

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride The AI search tools are getting better — but they don’t yet understand what a search engine really is and how we really use them. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/teSkwCl

Affinity’s professional design software could give Canva the edge it needs to seriously compete against Adobe. | Image: Canva Web-based design platform Canva has acquired the Affinity creative software suite , positioning itself as a challenger to Adobe’s grip over the digital design industry. Canva announced the deal on Tuesday , which gives the company ownership over Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher — three popular creative applications for Windows, Mac, and iPad that provide similar features to Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign software, respectively. Official figures for the deal have not been revealed, but Bloomberg reports that it’s valued at “several hundred million [British] pounds.” Nevertheless, the acquisition makes sense as the Australian-based company tries to attract more creative professionals. As of January this year , Canva’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/L4jwoS3

We’re in a Gilded Age of fast, cheap, and trendy clothing. Anyone can purchase copies of expensive garments online that arrive at record speeds to their home, and for a fraction of the original price. This practice has made items affordable — often at the expense of the workers making the products — and created shopping habits that can be wasteful and impulsive. One e-comm giant, Shopify, estimates that 20 to 30 percent of online purchases are returned, while the National Retail Federation says around 18 percent of online orders are returned. The online fashion house, Finesse, is promising to change that. Their motives are to reduce overproduction by using AI to market and design their clothing exactly for their audience. Retailers have... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/tBJs0bc

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft has committed changes to Chromium that will improve text rendering on Windows machines. Following years of complaints, Chrome version 124 will finally support contrast and gamma values from the Windows ClearType Text Tuner for text rendering in Google’s browser. This change should mean Chrome will finally match the improvements Microsoft made to Edge for font and text rendering, so you can apply text contrast enhancements and gamma correction to improve the readability of text on webpages. Chrome uses Skia for text rendering with hard-coded values for contrast and gamma, so it wasn’t picking up the improvements that ClearType has to offer. Microsoft’s ClearType font technology has long been used in Windows to improve text... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/IZxWLrC

Cath Virginia / The Verge The European Commission is opening five non-compliance investigations into how Apple, Google, and Meta are complying with its new Digital Markets Act antitrust rules, the regulator announced today . “We suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA,” the EU’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. “We will now investigate the companies’ compliance with the DMA, to ensure open and contestable digital markets in Europe.” In particular, the Commission plans to investigate Google and Apple’s anti-steering rules in their app stores and whether Google is guilty of self-preferencing its own services within its search engine. Apple’s browser choice screen for iOS is also... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/rSFyTWM

Image: Studio Ghibli Studio Ghibli fans who missed their shot at watching Spirited Away in theaters last year can try again between April 27th and May 1st at “U.S. cinemas nationwide.” The showings are part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2024 , which will put 14 Ghibli films — with English dubbed and subtitled versions with the original Japanese voice work — back in theaters throughout the year. It’s not clear how many theaters are involved, but in my area, five theaters are showing Spirited Away over the course of as many days. That’s the largest list of movies since Ghibli Fest started in 2017 . Others hitting theaters this year include Miyazaki classics like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke, as well as movies from other Ghibli directors,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/dbX8xro

The world of Elden Ring expands on June 21st with a new world, items, and bosses to slay. | Image: Amazon We spent much of the time following Elden Ring ’s launch begging FromSoftware to expand the universe of its latest Game of the Year award-worthy soulslike. By now, you’ll realize our prayers were answered . Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will launch on June 21st for the PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC. It takes place in a whole new area separate from the game’s standard map, one filled with new stories, characters, and bosses to slay. It sounds full enough to be a standalone game, but alas, you’ll need the base game to enjoy the $39.99 expansion. When it comes to purchasing options, Shadow of the Erdtree is not your average piece of downloadable content — there are preorder bonuses, physical bundles, and special editions with collector’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2SE0Rep

The first-generation Roam speakers. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sonos will launch the follow-up to its Roam wireless AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth speaker in June, along with a new app specifically for its portable speakers. That’s according to Bloomberg ’s Mark Gurman, who writes in his Power On newsletter today that the company has rejiggered the hardware to fix Bluetooth issues with thespeaker. Gurman writes that the new app will also support the company’s rumored $449 high-end headphones, which may also come in June . However, users will have to wait for the Move 1 and 2 and the first-generation Roam to gain support, as the company has reportedly had trouble getting the software up to snuff. The original Roam is a solid speaker with some quirks, like no stereo pairing over Bluetooth, which The Verge ’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ZfEpAlu

Image by Cath Virginia / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 31, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hi, sorry for my bad taste in TV, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I’ve been reading about LA crime rings and AI music tools , watching March Madness even though all my brackets are already busted, watching the story of Mickey Mouse and pretending I don’t care about Love Is Blind while my wife watches even though I’m now kind of obsessed with Love Is Blind , and trying to understand all the basketball terms LeBron James uses in his new podcast . I also have for you a huge new Netflix show, a super-cheap USB charger, a newish messaging app, the new X-Men series... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/BxFUDHL

The Verge The Financial Times has a new generative AI chatbot called Ask FT that can answer questions its subscribers ask. Similar to generalized AI bots (like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini), users can expect a curated natural language answer to whatever they want to know — but with answers derived from the outlet’s decades of published information rather than sources that are harder to explain or are subject to ongoing legal action . So don’t expect it to give you an answer for the best recipe for fettucini alfredo. When we asked, “Who runs Microsoft’s AI products?” the tool returned an up-to-date answer and referenced news that broke this week about Microsoft hiring DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of its new AI team: Mustafa... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/P7Nw4JX

Suno will happily sing you a tune. | Image: The Verge / Shutterstock I heard a new song last weekend called “Soul Of The Machine.” It’s a simple, old-timey number in E minor with a standard blues chord progression (musicians in the know would call it a 1-4-5 progression ). In it, a voice sings about being a trapped soul with a heart that once beat but is now cold and weak. “Soul Of The Machine” is not a real song at all. Or is it? It’s getting harder to say. Whatever it is, it’s the creation of Suno, an AI tool from a startup of the same name focused on music generation. Rolling Stone said this song’s prompt was “solo acoustic Mississippi Delta blues about a sad AI.” And you know what? I doubt I’d glance askance at it if I heard it in a mix of human-recorded Delta blues tunes. The track is technically... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/zHCoYO4

Sunglasses that convert to reading glasses with a swipe. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/QjgvrmT

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Emad Mostaque is stepping down from his role as CEO of Stability AI, the startup that helped bring Stable Diffusion to life. In a press release late on Friday night, Stability AI says Mostaque is leaving the company “to pursue decentralized AI.” Mostaque will also step down from his position on the board of directors at Stability AI. The board has appointed two interim co-CEOs to lead Stability AI — COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte — while it conducts a search for a permanent CEO. “As we search for a permanent CEO, I have full confidence that Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte, in their roles as interim co-CEOs, will adeptly steer the company forward in developing and commercializing industry-leading generative AI... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/PodIR30

The DOJ says it paved the way for Apple’s rise — now it wants to check the company’s power. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Inside the US Department of Justice’s 88-page antitrust complaint against Apple , there’s a cool reminder to the company: you’re here because we paved the way. According to the DOJ, its antitrust case against Microsoft cleared the way for Apple — then teetering on bankruptcy — to launch its breakout success: the iPod. Decades and trillions of dollars later, Apple is in the hot seat. And because time is a flat circle, it’s facing an antitrust case built directly on that 1999 case against Microsoft. To better understand the DOJ’s case against Apple, it helps to understand United States v. Microsoft . If you were a teen in the ’90s (or maybe not yet born — in which case, good for you), you may have missed this landmark antitrust case, but... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/lTOSdL4

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Over the course of 88 pages of surprisingly readable legalese, the US Department of Justice attempted to make the case that Apple is a problem . Apple, the DOJ alleges in its sweeping antitrust complaint , has systematically crushed innovation in the smartphone world, robbing not only competitors but also iPhone users of the opportunity to get better software and use better hardware. The argument is complicated, but it has an awful lot in common with another big antitrust trial, one the government won more than two decades ago: US v. Microsoft . That case was about a huge corporation ruthlessly working to neutralize any company that threatened to open up its walled gardens, make it easy for people to build and use cross-platform software,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/En07vuh

The Apple Watch-iPhone connection is well established. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge When people ask me what smartwatch they should buy, I always ask them the same question: what phone do you have? Sadly, the phone you have largely dictates which smartwatches you can buy. They aren’t standalone devices. You need a phone to set them up, and as the US Department of Justice pointed out in its monopoly case against Apple , that makes them the perfect accessory for locking people into an ecosystem. If you spend $400 on an Apple Watch and absolutely love it, you’re less likely to give up on an iPhone you don’t like. Apple’s well aware of this. In the DOJ lawsuit , an Apple executive is quoted as saying the Apple Watch “may help prevent iPhone customers from switching.” But for a long time, this wasn’t that serious of a problem.... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/yNcbqhp

We could’ve had it all, Motorola. There are some phones that just feel nice to pick up, and the 2024 Moto G Power is one of them. It’s sitting on my desk and even though I don’t need to do anything with it right now, I pick it up anyway. That soft-touch back! The flat-yet-slightly-contoured edges! I turn it to look at the headphone jack on the bottom edge, just to remind myself if it’s there. If the battery is even a little low, I set it on my wireless charging stand just for the thrill. All this on a $300 phone! Imagine! But after spending a little more time with the Moto G Power, I come crashing back down to reality. The LCD panel isn’t as nice and contrast-y as an OLED (that’s forgivable). The camera is underwhelming and suffers from Motorola’s unusual image... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/klO657j

Ikea is now selling a pair of its own USB-C chargers that start at just $7.99. The 30W Sjöss charger comes with a single USB-C port, and there’s also a 45W model (also called Sjöss) that has two USB-C ports for $14.99. This dual-port charger can only output 45W of power when using one port at a time, with the output halved at 22W to each device when plugging in two simultaneously. Ikea’s chargers are compatible with Power Delivery (PD 3.0), Quick Charge (QC4+), and Programmable Power Supply (PPS) specs. Both chargers come with a sheet of colored stickers that lets you “personalize” them — useful in households where kids or flatmates can easily mix them up. The big news here is how affordable Ikea’s two chargers are. At the time of... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ldJB5NQ

Neuralink’s N1 implant. | Image: Neuralink Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company has released a video purporting to show the first human patient using Neuralink’s brain implant to control a mouse cursor and play a game of chess. The patient, identified as 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, said he was injured in a diving accident eight years ago that paralyzed him below the shoulders. Arbaugh describes using the Neuralink implant as like using the Force from the Star Wars franchise, allowing him to “just stare somewhere on the screen” and move the cursor where he wants. Elon Musk, who founded Neuralink in 2016, retweeted the video of Arbaugh and said it demonstrated “telepathy.” https://t.co/OMIeGGjYtG — Neuralink (@neuralink) March 20, 2024 In addition to playing chess,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/9stdXni

Photo courtesy of: Becca Farsace We know how much you’ll miss the icy streets, freezing temperatures, and misbehaving radiators that the winter season brings, but spring is right around the corner, which means that while you no longer have to worry about shoveling snow off your driveway, it is time to start thinking about plants — whether it’s in your garden or on your windowsill. We asked the staff members of The Verge what they are planning to grow over the coming spring and summer months and how they are planning to care for those flowers, vegetables, and other flora. Here’s what they told us about starting new plants and caring for the seedlings — although some are using rather unusual gardening tools. Rare heirloom seeds Mia Sato, reporter There are some fruits,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/FJYqWfw

Image: Beeper Beeper needed a fresh start. Late last year, the company bet big on a hacked-together iMessage app for Android, only to be shut down by Apple within days. Beeper tried to fight back, but it ultimately threw in the towel just weeks later in a widely covered defeat. “December was a wild ride,” Eric Migicovsky, the co-founder of Beeper, tells The Verge. With dreams of an iMessage app dead, Beeper went back to square one to figure out its next steps. And the answer was to stop fighting Apple and return to its original goal: bringing every chat app — iMessage excepted — into a single place. “We’ve refocused on our primary mission,” Migicovsky says, “which is to build the best chat app on earth.” The new Beeper app launched in beta last week,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/w6WUvQ9

There are a lot of ideas and promise packed into this smart ring, but it’s not all the way there yet. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/JnfqgOT

Patch 1.6 gives Stardew Valley players masses of new content, including this new “Meadowlands” farm biome. | Image: Stardew Valley / @pearblossoms_ Stardew Valley ’s massive 1.6 update has been out on PC for less than 24 hours, and it’s already taken the game’s popularity to staggering new heights. The cozy farming simulator hit 146,159 concurrent players on Steam according to SteamDB data , smashing the game’s previous record as players flock to enjoy new content — including a new farm, festivals, and pets. Stardew Valley ’s previous peak of 94,875 concurrent Steam players was achieved back in January 2021, shortly after the 1.5 update was released. By contrast, its new record is higher than any of the concurrent player stats reported for Palworld this week — which is pretty impressive for a near-decade-old indie RPG. Developer Eric “Concerned Ape” Barone had teased some of the new... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/biAegqC

All three chargers deliver up to 15 watts of power to compatible iPhones. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge Few things test my patience more than waiting for my phone to charge when I’m in a rush, which is why Qi2 chargers are a godsend. They deliver fast, certified MagSafe charger speeds without the price tag, and right now, many of Anker’s new, Qi2 certified versions are down to all-time lows. Amazon ’s selling the new version of our favorite MagSafe-compatible battery pack , the Anker MagGo Power Bank , for $47.99 ($22 off). That’s just $8 more than its predecessor and a discount you can also find at Anker with code WSTDMXPG8FSD . Amazon is also selling the MagGo Wireless Charging Station (Foldable 3-in-1) for $82.49 ($28 off) and the 8-in-1 MagGo Orb for $69.99 ($30 off). Anker’s matching prices as well, though you’ll have to apply the code W... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/gw2yrcs

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta says it’s offered to reduce the price of its ad-free subscription for Instagram and Facebook in Europe to address regulatory concerns, Reuters reports . Speaking in a hearing with the European Commission, Meta lawyer Tim Lamb said the company has “offered to drop the price from €9.99 to €5.99 for a single account and €4 for any additional accounts” in its discussion with privacy regulators in an attempt to “get to a steady state.” Lamb said €5.99 is “by far the lowest end of the range that any reasonable person should be paying for services of this quality” and hoped that the “regulatory uncertainty” will “settle down quickly.” It reportedly made the offer to cut its prices to data protection authorities earlier this year. The... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/XxPTKnv

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images ‘The old fear has come back.’ Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2LcKfQ3

Photo by Rick Kern / Getty Images for Vox Media The leader of design toolmaker Figma on life after the failed Adobe deal and what comes next in a live interview from SXSW. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/iENyLBt

The new “Text to Texture” feature is now available in the Adobe Substance 3D Sampler 4.4 beta. | Image: Adobe While many developers are working out how generative AI could be used to produce entire 3D objects from scratch, Adobe is already using its Firefly AI model to streamline existing 3D workflows. At the Game Developers Conference on Monday, Adobe debuted two new integrations for its Substance 3D design software suite that allow 3D artists to quickly produce creative assets for their projects using text descriptions. The first is a “Text to Texture” feature for Substance 3D Sampler that Adobe says can generate “photorealistic or stylized textures” from prompt descriptions, such as scaled skin or woven fabric. These textures can then be applied directly to 3D models, sparing designers from needing to find appropriate reference materials. T... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/VdaqmuZ

Sony’s PlayStation VR2. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge After producing in excess of two million units of its latest virtual reality headset, Bloomberg is reporting that Sony is hitting pause on production to try and shift its unsold inventory. The PlayStation VR2 launched last February for $549 as an accessory for the PlayStation 5, but IDC data suggests that shipments have declined each quarter since. Bloomberg suggests that the problem is a lack of content for the headset. The PSVR2 is compatible with a handful of AAA games including Horizon Call of the Mountain , Gran Turismo 7 , and entries in the Resident Evil series, as well as a range of smaller titles. But, at $549, the headset costs more than the PS5 itself, so expectations are high. Bloomberg notes that Meta and Apple have faced... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/UMNnk0i

Last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is reportedly in “active negotiations” with Google to bring its Gemini generative AI technology to the iPhone, Bloomberg reports , and has also considered using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. CEO Tim Cook has already confirmed that Apple is spending “a tremendous amount of time and effort” on artificial intelligence features, and plans to release them to its customers “later this year.” Bloomberg’s report suggests that the AI features built into Apple’s products could eventually be powered by a mix of first- and third-party AI models. Apple’s models could power on-device generative AI with iOS 18, releasing later this year, while cloud-based AI features like text- and image-generation could come via partnerships with the likes of Google. If a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/nhlzPQW

The Verge On March 11th, Elon Musk said xAI would open source its AI chatbot Grok , and now an open release is available on GitHub . This will allow researchers and developers to build on the model and impact how xAI updates Grok in the future as it competes with rival tech from OpenAI, Meta, Google, and others. A company blog post explains that this open release includes the “base model weights and network architecture” of the “314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model, Grok-1.” It continues saying the model is from a checkpoint last October and hasn’t undergone fine-tuning “for any specific application, such as dialogue.” As VentureBeat notes, it’s being released under the Apache 2.0 license that enables commercial use but doesn’t include... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/rlJq1U8

Image: A24 The magic of writer / director Julio Torres’ Problemista lies in its imaginative production design and its thoughtful deconstruction of the American immigration dream. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/RyMsx9F

Image: Caleb Wood Scavengers Reign is a beautiful exploration of a complicated, fascinating, sometimes brutal ecology. Nidus is also a beautiful exploration of a complicated, fascinating, sometimes brutal ecology. Their approaches and styles are different, but the underlying themes share a connection — and an artist. Caleb Wood is an animator and now game developer who worked as a concept artist on Max’s sci-fi show while simultaneously solo-developing his recently released arcade bullet hell game. Having begun his animation career 15 years ago, Wood decided that he wanted to figure out game development in 2020. Nidus was meant to be something simple that he could use to teach himself programming. “But because I’m able to produce some pretty good art... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/DUwmRNY

Cath Virginia / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 30, 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 playing the fun puzzler Close Cities , scrounging up money to buy TikTok, reading the latest in my favorite spy-thriller series , debating becoming a mansion squatter , testing Today for simple tasks, taking notes on this great video about the editing in Oppenheimer , and yelling “SPACE!” while watching the most recent SpaceX launch . I also have for you a new AI productivity tool, a great way to find stuff to watch, some new shows about old events, and a deep dive into the collapse of the Apple... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Qg3E8PI

Image SpaceX’s Starshield unit has had a classified contract with the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) since 2021 to build a network of “hundreds” of spy satellites for the agency, Reuters reports today , citing unnamed sources “familiar with the program.” A Wall Street Journal report in February listed a classified $1.8 billion SpaceX contract with a then-unnamed government agency. Now Reuters has attached a name, and that it’s to build a network of “hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits.” The report didn’t say when the network will be operational or what other companies are involved. It does mention that a US database of space objects lists satellites deployed by SpaceX... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/VKR5GhB