Latest Technology

Image: Ford For customers still unsure whether they’re ready to make the switch to an all-electric vehicle, Ford is sweetening the pot. Today, the company launched a new initiative called the “Ford Power Promise,” in which it will provide a suite of benefits to customers who buy or lease a new EV. And chief among them is a complimentary home charger for all new customers, as well as the costs of standard installation. The charger that’s being offered is the company’s Ford Charge Station Pro , a $1,310 Level 2 charger that comes with a standard CCS1 connector. Ford declined to put a monetary value on the installation but said it would cover costs up to 60 amps of power and 80 feet of wire run. Customers who need to upgrade their home electrical... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ol592xd

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Philip Pacheco, Getty Images Four years after Epic sued Google for running an illegal app store monopoly — a case it won this past December — Epic is suing again. The Fortnite game developer has filed a second antitrust lawsuit against Google, and now additionally Samsung, accusing them of illegally conspiring to undermine third-party app stores. The lawsuit revolves around Samsung’s “Auto Blocker ” feature, which now comes turned-on-by-default on new Samsung phones. While it’s turned on, it automatically keeps users from installing apps unless they come from “authorized sources” — namely, Google and Samsung’s app stores. Epic claims there’s no process for any rival store to become “authorized.” When Epic filed its original lawsuits against Google and Apple in... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/G4Mh25l

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Spotify appears to be down at the moment, with users across social media having started reporting that the app and website aren’t working over the last hour or so. It’s not working for those of us at The Verge who have tried, either. Downdetector shows a spike in the number of reports about problems with the music streaming service that started at about 10:40AM ET. Just after noon ET, the Spotify Status account on X acknowledged the problems, posting , “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!.” There’s still no word however on what might be causing the problem. We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out! — Spotify Status (@SpotifyStatus) September 29, 2024 The outage seems to affect both... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/4a2sRfJ

The StandBy feature of iPhones offers a hint of how an Apple smart home display could work. | Image: David Pierce / The Verge Apple is preparing to take a fresh run at the smart home that starts with a rumored smart display that it may release next year. That’s according to Bloomberg ’s Mark Gurman, who writes in his Power On newsletter today that the display will use a new operating system, called homeOS, that’s based on the Apple TV’s tvOS (much like the software that drives HomePods now.) Gurman reports that the display will run Apple apps like Calendar, Notes, and Home, and that Apple has tested prototypes with magnets for wall-mounting. And it will support Apple Intelligence — something Apple’s HomePods don’t currently do. Rumors of such a device have been going around for some time now , with form factors ranging from a HomePod with a screen to a display a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/76LMBAr

The Verge Roughly a month ago, Michael Sayman realized he could finally build the app he’d been thinking about for years: a social network where everyone but you is an AI bot. Large language models are finally good enough and cheap enough that the experience might actually feel social and useful, and not like a gimmick or a game. And so, after years of waiting and months of testing the latest models, Sayman got to work. The app he built is called SocialAI , and it has become something of a viral phenomenon since it launched. (All he’d tell me is that it was downloaded 20,000 times in the first couple of days — but says the number has gone up substantially since then.) Some people thought it seemed fun and useful; other people thought it felt deeply... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/eSCpiKj

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 54, 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 reading about AI slop and sports betting and Jony Ive , clearing my schedule for the new season of The Great British Bake Off , watching Sicario and Pirates of the Caribbean and A Quiet Place: Day One on plane-seat screens like their directors intended, insta-subscribing to Hasan Minhaj’s new YouTube show , and just relentlessly trolling people with Vergecast clips through Pocket Casts’ new feature . I also have for you a couple of new Meta gadgets, the mobile game that will eat up all your free... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/1uKLOb9

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Apple, the most valuable company in the world, will have to work this weekend to meet a legal deadline on Monday. That’s after Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson on Friday denied the company’s request for more time to produce 1.3 million documents related to App Store changes it made in January to comply with a 2021 court order . Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who presided over the Epic lawsuit that resulted in those changes , told Apple’s legal team on May 31st it would need to produce all documents related to how it decided the new App Store rules after Epic challenged them . Document discovery was then referred to Hixson , who quoted part of a transcript from the hearing when he set Monday’s deadline back in August : “THE COURT: — so let... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/dMgkui2

Playstack Now that Balatro is out on mobile, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And while it’s a great game, its tutorial doesn’t do the best job of setting you up for the kind of success necessary to hook you. In my first few hours, though I was completing the objectives laid out, it felt like I was stumbling my way to success instead of achieving it through strategy. Onboarding was a bit too abrupt, focused on the barebones of how to play instead of blending that with tips on how to play effectively. With that in mind, here’s some useful info and tips on how to get started. I was told there would be no math In Balatro , the main gameplay loop is amassing enough poker chips to beat a set chip total called a blind. To do that, you must... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/OUTdSjs

See that little circle? That’s a camera. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge All around Meta’s Menlo Park campus, cameras stared at me. I’m not talking about security cameras or my fellow reporters’ DSLRs. I’m not even talking about smartphones. I mean Ray-Ban and Meta’s smart glasses, which Meta hopes we’ll all — one day, in some form — wear. I visited Meta for this year’s Connect conference, where just about every hardware product involved cameras. They’re on the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that got a software update , the new Quest 3S virtual reality headset , and Meta’s prototype Orion AR glasses . Orion is what Meta calls a “time machine”: a functioning example of what full-fledged AR could look like, years before it will be consumer-ready. But on Meta’s campus, at least, the Ray-Bans were already everywhere. It... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/nrK38GZ

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Thanks to Qi2, there are way more great chargers for your MagSafe phone than ever before. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/sLPatMS

Image: The Verge Steam just removed its forced arbitration policy, opening the door for lawsuits against its parent company, Valve. In an update on Thursday , Steam says its subscriber agreement “now provides that any disputes are to go forward in court instead of arbitration.” Many companies include a forced arbitration clause in their user agreement, waiving a person’s right to a trial in court. Arbitration involves settling a dispute outside a legal system before an impartial third party. This method is often faster but may not get the best results for consumers, as arbitrators don’t need to consider the law when issuing a decision. Many services put mandatory arbitration agreements in their terms of service, which people may not even read or fully... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/WjwAFtr

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge You can’t buy Meta’s most impressive new product, the smart glasses codenamed Orion. You might be able to buy something sort of like them, a few years from now, but most of us will never get to so much as wear them. That doesn’t necessarily make them less impressive, though, or less important. Orion is a statement of purpose from Meta: that AR glasses really are the future, and that we’re eventually going to get there. On this episode of The Vergecast , The Verge ’s Alex Heath joins the show to tell us all about his experience with Orion — two hours in the glasses of the future, playing Pong with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and making smoothies and doing all sorts of other things. He also tells us about his conversation with Zuckerberg... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/PJ5p9rn

The new ULL-supported controller (seen right) was tested against an unspecified standard Bluetooth gamepad (left). | Image: LG LG has teamed up with Razer and MediaTek to develop a new Bluetooth gaming controller that could greatly reduce the input lag for cloud-based gaming. According to LG, it’s the first controller to utilize Ultra-Low Latency (ULL) Bluetooth technology — an in-development standard that aims to make wireless controllers as responsive as their wired counterparts. The BT ULL-enabled controller was compared against a non-specified “standard controller” at LG’s webOS Summit event on Friday. “The demonstration highlighted the superior responsiveness, reduced input lag and control precision of the BT ULL technology across various cloud-based games, including FPS, fighting and racing titles,” LG said in its newsroom post. Image: LG ... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/OIu7scd

Now there are two of them! | Image: Leica Camera Leica’s Q series of full-frame compact cameras have had the same 28mm f/1.7 lens since the original in 2015 , but now the company is shaking things up. The Leica Q3 43 launching today is nearly identical to the 60-megapixel Q3 , but it’s got a 43mm f/2 lens for a tighter field of view that’s more appropriate for close-ups and portraits — and, of course, it’s even more expensive, coming in at $6,895 compared to the $6,295 standard model. The Q3 43 has mostly the same specs since it’s basically a Q3 camera with a new aspherical APO-Summicron 43mm f/2 lens permanently attached and a gray leatherette (I imagine so deep-pocketed users who inevitably buy both can tell them apart in a bag). It uses the same backside-illuminated sensor with an... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/RE9NIHx

Photo by Tommaso Boddi / Variety via Getty Images Meta has cut deals for high-profile actors to lend their voices to its Meta AI chatbot, with Kristen Bell among the initial set of voices. Bell lending her voice is a bit of a surprise. Back in June, she openly expressed opposition to Meta’s AI using her data. She reposted a popular Instagram message declaring that she refused to consent to Meta using her content and likeness for training large language models and demanding that Instagram “get rid of the AI program.” Kristen Bell / Instagram The prompt claims that by reposting, users deny Meta permission to use their personal data for these purposes. Celebrities such as Jessica Chastain, Sarah Paulson, and Ashley Tisdale have reposted a recent version of this prompt —... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/CybfX8n

If a place is caught using fake reviews, Google will temporarily limit its reviews entirely. | Image: The Verge Google Maps is reeling in business pages engaging in fake reviews, and highlighting such activity to its users. Google will now impose restrictions against business profiles that violate the search giant’s Fake Engagement policy, such as temporarily removing reviews, blocking new reviews or ratings, and displaying a warning message on profiles that have had fake reviews deleted. The business profile restrictions were introduced in the UK earlier this year, but Search Engine Roundtable notes that the support page was updated in mid-September to seemingly apply globally. For the moment, however, only users in the UK are seeing the business warnings, such as the example posted to X by Mike Blumenthal . Image: Google / Mike... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3WQnkb7

Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Agustina Torres, Getty Images The story of Sam Bankman-Fried was obvious enough: a Shakespearean level of arrogance that led to tragedy . But I have been puzzled for some time by Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research and star witness of the FTX trial . Now, after her sentencing , I believe what she did is weirder and perhaps sadder. Ellison spoke on her own behalf, beginning by apologizing to everyone she’s hurt. “I think on some level my brain can’t even truly comprehend the scale of the harms I’ve caused,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t try. So to all the victims and everyone I harmed directly or indirectly, I am so, so sorry.” Ellison never really left work Ellison went on to say that she’s always thought of herself as an honest person — and that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/MeX9r0E

So would you say this is...Loogie green? | Image: Duolingo Duolingo, best known for its language-learning app, has teamed up with the instrument brand Loog to offer a beginner-friendly portable piano. The $249 Loog x Duolingo Piano is meant to complement Duolingo’s similarly gamified music course launched last year . The keyboard is essentially a co-branded version of the portable digital piano that Loog launched on Kickstarter last year , featuring a near-identical wooden design, 37 keys, and a volume adjusting knob. Beyond the green color there are some additional aesthetic differences. The knob on Duolingo’s version is a lighter wooden finish, and it comes with a matching phone stand to follow the company’s music lessons as you play, for example. The most notable feature shared by both models... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/TQEt0sz

The Smart Stack is much more contextual this year. watchOS 11 is nowhere near as flashy as Apple Intelligence, but it’s full of neat little moments. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/6UnJcHz

Image: Brompton It might not be immediately obvious, but the Brompton G Line is the first major redesign of the iconic British folding bicycle in its nearly 50-year history. It’s even bigger than the launch of its first e-bike in 2019, literally and figuratively. The G Line is available as a standard bike with an internally geared Shimano Alfine 8-speed hub or as a 4-speed e-bike with derailleur . Both models feature bigger 20-inch wheels with fat grippy Schwalbe tires, hydraulic disc brakes from Tektro, wider handlebars, and a frame geometry that more closely resembles full-size bicycles. It all adds up to what should be a less twitchy ride that’s suitable for more varied terrain on a bike that’s easier to service over time given the selection of... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2XuEdPC

Google Photo’s redesigned video editor is rolling out to Android and iOS. | Image: Google Google is updating the mobile video editor on its Photos app for Android and iOS, adding new editing tools and AI-powered presets that should make it easier for users to trim and tweak their clips. Features coming to Android devices include a new “Speed” tool for creating slo-mo or sped-up videos, a new “Auto enhance” button that improves color and stability, and an updated trimming tool for making more precise cuts to footage. The tools located immediately below the video timeline are also being rearranged to make it easier for users to find commonly used features like mute, enhance, stabilize, and export frame. Image: Google Here’s what the new tool and presets layout looks like for Google Photos on Android. N... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/btgNfHR

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: The Verge The Browser Company cofounder thinks it’s time to modernize the browser and reinvent the web. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/eMBGPE2

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images A late inquiry kept US gymnast Jordan Chiles off the podium. But who is to blame? The judges, the technology, or the way we measure time itself? Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Pc4O0Iv

The at-home treatment could assist people who are unable to travel to immunization appointments. | Photo by Jeff Gritchen/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration has approved a nasally-administered influenza immunization treatment that can be taken at home. FluMist — a nasal spray vaccine that AstraZeneca initially developed as an in-office treatment two decades ago — will still require a prescription to obtain and is expected to be made available via a new online pharmacy next year, according to The New York Times . The treatment will require people to fill out a questionnaire on the upcoming FlueMist Home website. Once approved by a pharmacist, the nasal spray will be shipped directly to the customer’s door. The current out-of-pocket cost is around $35 to $45 per dose according to the NYT , but that may drop depending on insurance coverage. The Centers for Disease... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://i

image: iFixit No sooner has the Phone 16 lineup arrived than the folks at iFixit start taking them apart , a process made easier this time around by the day-one release of repair manuals from Apple. The disassembly process shows the Camera control is a real button that moves, along with a flex cable that likely measures force, and the heat sink that appears positioned to keep the A18 chip’s Neural Engine cool while it handles AI workloads. For this year’s refresh, the base iPhone 16 may be more interesting than the Pro model for one reason — it’s the first one using electrically debondable adhesive for its battery enclosure. As reported in June by The Information , Apple isn’t using the new adhesive on all of its phones yet, but now we have a lot more... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/RDIy9U8

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Scratch the surface of Windows (and macOS), and you’ll find a command line console underneath, a lingering remnant of how these operating systems started out: as user-friendly graphical wrappers built on top of text-based, monochrome interfaces. If you’re as old as I am, you might remember having to launch apps and games on a computer by typing out text commands, rather than pointing and clicking. The modern-day methods are much easier, of course, but the old ways are still available — and they’re actually still useful for multiple tasks, as the list below shows. To begin with, Windows kept the Command Prompt utility as a reminder of its MS-DOS roots. That was later joined by PowerShell (Command Prompt with extras), and in the latest... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/nQLJRcz

The Verge Steven Johnson is a very meta author. He writes frequently about science and technology, and likes to immerse himself in the things he’s covering, even using them to change the way he writes books. A couple of years ago, a few months before ChatGPT launched and the AI boom took over the tech world, Johnson got a magazine assignment that sent him really, really deep down the AI rabbit hole. And he never came back up. Now, in addition to writing books, Johnson is also working at Google. He’s part of the team building a product called NotebookLM — “Notebook,” as the team calls it. It’s a note-taking and research tool : you upload documents and import web links, and Notebook’s Gemini-powered AI helps you organize things, extract information,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/I46kH25

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 53, 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 reading about Beyoncé and Rosanna Pansino and Bowen Yang , pouring my life back into Todoist , watching the end of The Grand Tour , catching up on some My Brother, My Brother and Me episodes, seeing if the Pixel Recorder app can replace my trusty voice recorder, and moving Headspace to my homescreen to see if it helps me meditate more. (So far… no.) I also have for you a truly wild new pair of AR glasses, a Batman-adjacent show on HBO, a great new book about the end of Twitter, a funny twist on... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ymF4CUS

Image: Meta Meta is holding its annual Connect developers conference next week, and it’s going to showcase a bunch of expected and perhaps some surprise new VR and AR hardware — alongside what might be a heavy Meta AI showcase featuring the company’s newest Llama large language model and image generator in apps like WhatsApp . And as Meta sunsets custom tools for AR filters , we could end up seeing a whole new set of developer tools designed to harness generative AI experiences. Perhaps it will all come together in Meta’s next big push into its alternative reality ideas (and namesake) in the metaverse, including significant Horizon Worlds updates. However, the most anticipated products expected to appear during the conference are the successor to the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/cmsABx5

Image: All Possible Futures The Plucky Squire is a game that leaps off the page — literally. It takes place in a storybook world rendered in an adorable two dimensions thanks to codirector and former Pokémon artist James Turner . But at certain points, the heroic lead character can venture into the real world and solve puzzles that mix 2D and 3D in inventive ways. Sometimes, you’re moving objects between dimensions; other times, you’re rearranging the words in a book to create new outcomes. It’s as cute as it is creative, and it follows Sony’s Astro Bot in what is turning out to be a very good year for family-friendly games. The game puts you in the role of Jot, the titular plucky squire, who has the unusual ability to exist outside of the book he stars in. The two... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/hsvgaM2

Of all the AI wearables this year, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses made the most sense. The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses exceeded expectations in a year when AI gadgets flopped. But can it keep the momentum going? Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/wKBE7Z5

Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Ford has a good thing going with its next-gen infotainment system — whether you use CarPlay or not. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Sqeop3W

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images Microsoft just signed a deal to revive the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. If approved by regulators, the software maker would have exclusive rights to 100 percent of the output for its AI data center needs. Constellation, the owner of the Three Mile Island plant, announced a power purchase agreement with Microsoft earlier today, which should see the site coming back online in 2028, assuming regulators approve it. The reactor that Microsoft plans to source its energy from was retired in 2019 for economic reasons, and is located next to a unit that was shutdown in 1979 after the worst US nuclear accident in history. The plant that Constellation plans to reopen can generate 837 megawatts of energy, enough to power more... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/0UKefbt

Everyone’s iPhone camera might look a little different with the new Photographic Styles. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge When I walked into the building that houses the Steve Jobs Theater for the iPhone 16 launch last week, the first person I saw taking a photo of the room wasn’t using an iPhone; they were using a compact digital camera. I’m not talking about a fancy Ricoh GR III. I’m talking a PowerShot, Cybershot, or a Coolpix — something with 6 megapixels and a CCD sensor that makes anything above ISO 1600 look like confetti. These cameras are in style right now with a certain subset of photographers, tired of phone photos looking “overprocessed,” running straight in the other direction to the hard contrast and blown highlights of those early digital sensors. What’s old is new again, and artificially bright shadows are out. Apple’s reaction to the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Iva9TXY

The two new proceedings are meant to “assist Apple in complying with its interoperability,” according to the EU. | Cath Virginia / The Verge The European Commission has opened new proceedings under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that will see the bloc instruct Apple on how it can comply with its interoperability obligations. The two “specification proceedings” focused on iOS and iPadOS will conclude within six months. Under DMA, Apple is required to provide third parties with “free and effective interoperability” with hardware and software features controlled by iOS and iPadOS. Now the EU is going to help Apple understand what that specifically means. “Today is the first time we use specification proceedings under the DMA to guide Apple towards effective compliance with its interoperability obligations through constructive dialogue,” said outgoing EU competition chief... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/GbJ04NH

DJI’s Osmo Action 5 Pro. | Image: DJI DJI’s response to GoPro’s new Hero 13 lineup is the Osmo Action 5 Pro . It justifies that professional moniker with a new image sensor that promises to improve image quality and low-light performance. It also features a built-in pressure sensor, the ability to capture super slow motion at an unbelievable 1080p/960fps, and a new power-sipping 4nm chip that enables up to four hours of continuous recording off a single charge. The camera is fitted with DJI’s next-gen 1/1.3-inch sensor that can capture 40-megapixel stills and an industry-first 13.5-stop dynamic range to capture high-dynamic, low-light video at 4K/60fps. And while 960fps slow-mo is impressive, DJI gets there by capturing 240fps and then making an intelligent guess as to how to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/dmEfiFw

Integrating IVAS with Anduril’s Lattice software aims to keep soldiers informed of battlespace threats. | Image: Anduril Anduril Industries, the military tech company started by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, is teaming up with Microsoft to improve the mixed-reality headsets used by the United States Army. The project announced by Anduril will embed the company’s Lattice software into the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), allowing the HoloLens-based goggles to update soldiers with live information pulled from drones, ground vehicles, and aerial defense systems. The partnership marks a return to the VR headset space for Luckey, having sold Oculus to Meta for $2 billion in 2014 . Luckey started Anduril in 2017 with support from venture capitalist Peter Thiel. The Lattice integration with IVAS could alert wearers to incoming threats picked up by... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/pibvCw0

Photo by Abigail Bassett for The Verge BMW of North America struck a deal to recycle lithium-ion batteries from all of its electrified vehicles with Redwood Materials, the companies announced today. The German automaker said it would instruct its dealers to send old batteries from all of its electrified models, including battery-electric, hybrid, mild hybrid, and plug-in hybrid vehicles from brands like BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce, to Redwood for recycling. Redwood, which was founded by Tesla cofounder and ex-chief technology officer JB Straubel, will handle the end-of-life batteries at its two facilities. One facility is in Reno, Nevada , and the other, which is still under construction, will be in Charleston, South Carolina — somewhat near BMW’s Spartanburg and Woodruff... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/fyFz57m

Black and custom blasted, like my soul. It makes no sense to upgrade based on color alone. Or does it? Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/BN6HgE8

The iPhone 16, which Apple claims is built “from the ground up” for AI. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Apple Intelligence’s list of forthcoming supported languages just got a little longer. After an October launch in US English, Apple says its AI feature set will be available in German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese, “and others” in the coming year. The company drops this news just days before the iPhone 16’s arrival — the phone built for AI that won’t have any AI features at launch . Apple’s AI feature set will expand to include localized English in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand in December, with India and Singapore joining the mix next year. The company already announced plans to support Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish next year as well. Apple announced the iPhone 16 series last week with a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/0AlP1wi

I’m not saying you should buy a new phone for a single camera setting... but I’m not not saying that, either. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3dBkxjX

It’s a good year for Apple’s basic iPhone, even if its AI is MIA. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Yl8kFuw

Image: GM General Motors says it has updated the software in its electric vehicles so its customers can finally use Tesla’s Supercharging network. To gain immediate access, owners of electric Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC vehicles will need to purchase “GM approved” Tesla adapters through each brand’s smartphone app for $225. Future GM vehicles will come with Tesla’s charging port natively installed. The announcement comes more than 15 months after GM first announced it would adopt Tesla’s EV charging plug for its vehicles. The automaker had originally said it expected to complete the software coordination with Tesla by “early spring” 2024, but production bottlenecks and layoffs at Tesla have delayed the process. Image: GM GM... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/MqdOaTV

Illustration: The Verge Google is planning to roll out a technology that will identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software like Photoshop, or produced by generative AI models. In the coming months , Google’s search results will include an updated “about this image feature” to let people know if an image was created or edited with AI tools. The system Google is using is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity ( C2PA ), one of the largest groups trying to address AI-generated imagery. C2PA’s authentication is a technical standard that includes information about where images originate and works across both hardware and software to create a digital trail. Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Arm, OpenAI, Intel, Truepic, and Google... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/IhQ7HtY

The Series 10 bets big on a larger display and a more wearable design. As far as iterative updates go, that’s a savvy choice. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/UqFS3kI

Apple announced a new set of AirPods Max during its event last week, updating them with USB-C and in a new set of colors. The switch to USB-C is a welcome one, to be sure, but Apple changed nothing else about them. And that feels weird, right? What gives? Apple’s high-end luxury headphones were impressive when they launched in 2020. They had all the features of the AirPods Pro and made clever use of the Apple Watch’s digital crown for volume control. They also sounded fantastic — still do, in fact! But the rest of the market didn’t sit still; alternatives from Sony , Bose , and more recently, Sonos , all offer comparable features and sound — most notably, they each compete with the AirPods Max when it comes to noise cancellation (Bose does... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/WCdB5jO

Image: Nintendo The incoming holiday season has some reliable signs, with Christmas songs on the radio, football back on television, and Nintendo Switch bundles with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe . If you somehow have avoided the convertible console so far, then this is your chance to get not only the system but also a complimentary subscription to Nintendo Switch Online. Since we know that the Switch 2 will be announced soon , Nintendo has improved the offer over last year’s bundle by including the Switch OLED as an option and packing in 12 months of the online service for free instead of three. Image: Nintendo The Mario Kart 8 pack-in is in the form of a digital code, so that’s worth noting if you demand physical media. But otherwise,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ULZVfRs

Aerial image of a controlled burn. | Image: Google A Google-backed initiative aims to prevent raging infernos by using satellites that can detect small fires before they grow out of control. The goal is to launch a constellation of satellites called FireSat into low Earth orbit. It’s a collaboration between a newly founded nonprofit coalition called Earth Fire Alliance and the startup Muon Space, which designs and operates satellite networks. Google.org is funding the project, and Google’s research team is also helping to develop the technology to spot wildfires and monitor their growth from space. “There is a significant gap between the data we have available today and what we could have with better satellite coverage.” Climate change is setting the stage for more monstrous wildfires... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/GQTPLEM

The AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation are worth springing for compared to the regular pair. Both sound good, but the ANC works surprisingly well — most of the time. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/F2c5geW

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge For so many years, the Evernote elephant was a truly iconic logo. Evernote was one of the first productivity apps to embrace smartphones, to enable cross-platform sync, and to make it really easy to store and create almost anything. And so Evernote was huge. But Peak Evernote was roughly a decade ago. Since then, the product has often felt stagnant (or worse), the company churned through executives and business plans, and it seemed like Evernote was slowly turning into a zombie app. Not gone, not even forgotten, just sort of... there. In 2022, when Bending Spoons acquired the company and soon after laid off nearly all its staff, millions of Evernote users were confused about what the future held for the tool they had relied on for so... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/rG9uoV0

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 52, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I swear I don’t always just share absurdly expensive gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I’ve been reading about Chappell Roan and college football and the problem with pennies , watching Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist and Jennifer Garner’s delightful AD home tour , taking copious notes on Ben Thompson’s newslettering process , making surprisingly great bread with a random recipe from Reddit , and trying out Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold. I also have for you some expensive but excellent new gadgets, a couple of great new tech podcasts, the best pause music... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ApbWJhj

Image: Goblinz Publishing Shogun Showdown sometimes breaks my brain. The new deckbuilding roguelike is all about tactics, and a key part of the game is that you can always see what the enemies plan to do next. Every once in a while, that gets me in a quandary where I know I’ll lose. But when things click into place and I clear everyone out in one fell swoop, I feel like a strategic genius. In the game, which just left early access , you’re constantly trying to position your character across a small level to either attack your foes or dodge their moves. As you play, you can upgrade your “tiles” (think: cards) to improve their damage, add perks like freezing ice, or lower their cooldown so that you can use them more frequently. You’re also able to stack up to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jMxAbKn

Image: The Verge Disney and DirecTV are back in business with each other after a carriage dispute that has kept ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned networks off of the cable provider since the beginning of September. ESPN and other channels Disney had blocked have been restored, giving DirecTV subscribers access, once again, to Monday Night Football, college football games, and other programming from Disney’s channels. As part of the deal, DirecTV will offer packages that include Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus as bundles or a la carte options. It’ll also include “Disney’s upcoming ESPN flagship direct-to-consumer service” when it launches, for no extra cost. And DirecTV will be able to “offer multiple genre-specific options — sports, entertainment, kids... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jOVMBvN

You can wear the NotePin or clip it almost anywhere — which is pretty much its whole appeal. | Image: Plaud Kudos to Plaud for one thing: in a year otherwise marred by high-profile failures and oh so much AI vaporware , it made an AI gadget that does exactly what it claims to do and does it pretty well. The gadget is called the NotePin , and it’s a $169, pill-shaped voice recorder that can transcribe, summarize, and pull important information out of your audio. This is something current AI systems can actually do well! There’s good and mature tech at every step along the pipeline here, from tiny microphones to speech-to-text transcription to natural-language processing and AI summarization. The NotePin does it well. But the reason the NotePin works is also the reason I wouldn’t recommend buying one. AI voice recording is great and handy and... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/sxCvLby