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MFW my supervisees tell me to stop asking questions because it is distracting. | Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images His employees told him he ‘should stop asking questions because it was distracting.’ Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Bp5Ij46

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Twitch is pulling the plug on its Nintendo Switch app; the streaming company is “ending support” for the app, according to a support page . It will be removing the app from the Nintendo eShop on November 6th and people who already have it downloaded will “lose access” on January 31st, 2024. Twitch launched its Switch app in late 2021 , but users have voiced some complaints with the app. You can’t see a stream’s chat, for example, meaning you have to use another device if you want to see what other people are talking about or type a message of your own. You can’t subscribe to creators if you want to support them. And you also can’t use the app to broadcast your own gameplay. I’ve asked Twitch if it can share more information about why it’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/03zhjMZ

Photo: Getty Images You might not expect an antitrust trial focused on Google’s overwhelming dominance in the year 2023 to spend a lot of time talking about Internet Explorer circa 2005. But you’d be wrong. Google CEO Sundar Pichai spent a good chunk of Monday in a DC courtroom, testifying as part of the ongoing US v. Google antitrust trial . He stood at a podium instead of sitting (apparently he hurt his back), often with a magnifying glass in his hand, pushing his glasses up on his forehead as he squinted down at a binder full of exhibits. One exhibit proved particularly interesting: a letter from Google’s then-top lawyer David Drummond, sent on July 22nd, 2005, to Microsoft’s then-general counsel Brad Smith. Drummond’s letter concerned the launch of... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/57Qqwzp

Marathon and Destiny 2 ’s The Final Shape have been delayed. | Image: Bungie Bungie is laying off an unspecified number of staffers as well as delaying two of its forthcoming titles: Marathon and Destiny 2 ’s forthcoming expansion, The Final Shape . The latter is now expected to launch in June 2024, while the former won’t be expected until 2025. The layoffs, first reported by Bloomberg , are part of ongoing cuts within Sony’s PlayStation division. There’s no official number just yet, but ex-Bungie employees have begun posting on social media about the layoffs . Sony purchased Bungie last year in a $3.6 million deal that was supposed to see the Destiny developer operate as an independent unit within the company. The Final Shape is an ambitious new expansion pack for Destiny 2 that is meant to conclude many of the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/nRWS72i

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge Everyone knew that Twitter wasn’t worth $44 billion when Elon Musk bought it a year ago. Now, we know what Musk himself thinks it’s worth today: $19 billion. On Monday, employees at X were awarded equity in the company at a valuation of $19 billion, or $45 per share, according to internal documents seen by The Verge . That price is a 55 percent discount to Musk’s original purchase price, per the documents, which note that “the fair market value per share is determined by the Board of Directors based on a number of factors in a manner that complies with applicable tax rules.” (Musk is X’s chair and has yet to create a formal board.) Since he took over Twitter, Musk has said that he wants to model the company’s compensation plan after... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/F72yZEa

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is starting to block “unauthorized” Xbox controllers and accessories from being used on Xbox consoles. Resetera posters spotted a warning about the block last week, with some third-party Xbox controllers now throwing up a “connected accessory is not authorized” warning when connected to an Xbox console. It’s unclear if Microsoft is trying to target cheat devices, or whether the Xbox maker is trying to push its official partner program. An error has now started appearing for some third-party Xbox controllers, alongside a warning that notes the accessory will be blocked from further use after two weeks. “From the moment you connect an unauthorized accessory and receive error code 0x82d60002, you’ll have two weeks to use the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/hvQ7oMS

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge President Joe Biden signed an executive order providing rules around generative AI, ahead of any legislation coming from lawmakers. The order has eight goals: to create new standards for AI safety and security, protect privacy, advance equity and civil rights, stand up for consumers, patients, and students, support workers, promote innovation and competition, advance US leadership in AI technologies, and ensure the responsible and effective government use of the technology. Several government agencies are tasked with creating standards to protect against the use of AI to engineer biological materials, establish best practices around content authentication, and build advanced cybersecurity programs. The National Institute of Standards... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/qxTnkVM

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI is rolling out new beta features for ChatGPT Plus members right now. Subscribers have reported that the update includes the ability to upload files and work with them, as well as multimodal support. Basically, users won’t have to select modes like Browse with Bing from the GPT-4 dropdown — it will instead guess what they want based on context. The new features bring a dash of the office features offered by its ChatGPT Enterprise plan to the standalone individual chatbot subscription. I don’t seem to have the multimodal update on my own Plus plan, but I was able to test out the Advanced Data Analysis feature, which seems to work about as expected. Once the file is fed to ChatGPT, it takes a few moments to digest the file before... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/qEPYb5Q

Image: The Verge YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket streams have been plagued with buffering and pixelation, making afternoon games today unwatchable, according to many, many posts. The @TeamYouTube account acknowledged the issue at 1:53PM ET. The team wrote that they're aware YouTube is having issues and they are working to fix them, but acknowledged that “YouTube TV or NFL Sunday Ticket may also be impacted.” Now that YouTube is the only place to watch NFL Sunday Ticket , that leaves viewers across the country with no options to watch games apart from any available local broadcasts. People have taken to X to complain that streams are freezing up or lagging , or that it’s just like watching illegal streams . And plenty of them point out the money factor . NFL... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/H7BabDr

Image: Apple I’m trying to remember the last time a company’s big event came for prime time TV the way Apple’s 8pm ET keynote is trying to lock down our attention tomorrow. The only company I can think of that’s done it successfully lately is Victoria’s Secret with its Fashion Show. While I suspect there’s some overlap in audience between that and an Apple Keynote, I also suspect Bella Hadid is a bigger draw than a new iMac. But Apple is still going for it! Promising a keynote that will air on its website, YouTube, and over Apple TV while things like Monday Night Football airs on broadcast TV. The company is ready to take all the cultural cache its phones, Bluetooth headsets, and computers have earned it and convert that fanbase into a bigger... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/JwV2IpE

Image: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 12, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome. I’m so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I’ve been testing the Superlist tasks app, reading about the high-stakes race to crack crypto wallets , rehearsing my case for buying an e-bike , taking voice notes like a boss with Whisper Memos , and avoiding all my problems by watching Between Two Ferns bloopers on YouTube. I also have for you a new pair of AR glasses, a Netflix thriller, all the great sci-fi you could ever need, a great parenting app, a super-deep interview about Windows, a new puzzling platform, and a bunch more. As always, of... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jypSEz4

Illustration: The Verge Typical heart rate monitoring in wearable tech, like smart watches or wireless earbuds, relies at least partially on photoplethysmography (PPG), which uses light pulses to measure blood activity. It works generally well, but it has its limitations. Google scientists wrote in a new research blog spotted by 9to5Google yesterday that they had tried a different approach, called audioplethysmography (APG), that uses ultrasound to measure heart rate. And they did it with off-the-shelf active noise-canceling (ANC) earbuds and a software update. The trick works by bouncing a low-intensity ultrasound signal off the inside of the ear canal and using the tiny microphone that helps make ANC work to detect skin surface perturbations as blood pumps... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/CZpjdAm

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is looking into an Android 14 bug that’s been wreaking havoc for people with multiple user profiles. On October 27th, a Google representative acknowledged the bug and said the team is “working hard on a fix” for it. Thanks for sticking with us. Our team is looking into this storage issue affecting some Pixel devices running Android 14 and we're working hard on a fix. We'll update this thread with more details soon. While the first reports were mostly from Pixel 6 owners who experienced the problem as the update started rolling out, Ars Technica reported this week that a Google issue tracker for the problem had grown beyond over 350 replies, extending to owners of many different devices. The problems range from missing apps to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/FcSsmei

Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / Anadolu via Getty Images The Gaza Strip is suffering a near-total connectivity outage as the Israeli Defense Forces announced Friday that it was “expanding ground operations” in the region. As of Friday, the connectivity tracker NetBlocks reported “a collapse in connectivity in the Gaza Strip,” with one of the largest and last remaining Palestinian telecom providers, Paltel, being highly impacted by intense airstrikes. Paltel said it had sustained “a complete disruption of all communication and internet services” as a result of the barrage, according to The Washington Post . Since Israel cut off much of Gaza’s access to electricity earlier this month, the strip has largely relied on other power sources like generators to support connectivity. But in recent days,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/F8Bf2Kk

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Forbes launched a beta version of a generative AI search platform built with Google Cloud to provide personalized searches for readers. The platform is called Adelaide — named after the wife of Forbes’ founder, B.C. Forbes. Readers can ask specific questions or input general topic areas and get recommended articles about their query, along with a summarized answer to whatever they asked... as long as it’s within Forbes’ coverage scope. Adelaide trained on Forbes stories but only covered the past 12 months of its news and list coverage. Vadim Supitskiy, chief digital and information officer at Forbes , said the publication wanted to increase engagement with both search and its stories. “Engagement with search has been pretty standard... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/dwcs1ku

The M2 generation of MacBook Air now comes in two sizes, and both are discounted. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple sells MacBooks equipped with its own M-series chips in a wide range of sizes and price points. The offerings start with the 13-inch MacBook Air from 2020 at $999 and go all the way up to last year’s 16-inch MacBook Pro at $2,499 (and more Macs are expected to be announced at its upcoming “Scary Fast” evening product event on October 30th). But finding a deal on a current Mac with an M1 or M2 chip — or a higher-end Pro or Max version — is usually not too difficult. At this point, we don’t recommend buying any older Intel-based Macs. They’re just completely outclassed by all the newer models unless you have some super-niche Windows Boot Camp needs. Alternatively, purchasing refurbished is another way to save money on an Apple... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/9pZswaN

Stay immersed for a bit longer, but maybe not as immersed. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Meta is rolling out a software update that lets Quest 3 users eke out more battery life at the expense of graphics quality. In addition to this new Battery Saver mode, the v59 update also gives VR streamers a way to keep track of YouTube Live Chat within the headset, includes more reactions and stickers in a chat, adds legs to your avatar in Horizon Home , and enhances the Activities tab to easily find friend recommendations and drop in to play. Another note says that the Remote Display app from the Quest Pro “will become available for Quest 3 and Quest 2 over time,” allowing wearers to project their own computer screen into a VR environment. With the new update, users can switch to a lower graphics output setting on Meta Quest 3 that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ghZJ68l

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Social messaging platform Telegram has blocked channels used by Hamas, though only on Android phones. According to CNBC , two channels — hamas_com and al-Qassam brigades — were cut off for Android users, though other channels the group uses, like Gaza Now, are still accessible. Telegram blamed the blocks on Google’s app store guidelines, according to a story in The Jerusalem Post . Users reportedly see an error saying the channels can’t be viewed on “Telegram apps downloaded from the Google Play Store,” implying that the ban doesn’t extend to the app when it’s downloaded from elsewhere or used on another operating system. Both Meta and X (formerly Twitter) have said they’ve taken action to block Hamas-linked accounts and limit the spread... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/v2kMzd5

The what-is-a-photo-pocalypse gets even more complicated. | Image: Qualcomm Qualcomm’s new flagship mobile chipset is an on-device AI fest from top to bottom. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 brings generative AI capabilities right to the chipset, vastly speeding up the processing-intensive activities that are usually outsourced to the cloud. It’s one more leap forward in a year that has seen a lot of leaping when it comes to AI, and it will come sooner than later: the first phones with the new chipset are expected to debut in the coming weeks. The 8 Gen 3 supports a chatbot trained on Meta’s Llama 2, and it can accept text, image, and voice input. It can also talk back to you as well as generate an image or text. The chipset also runs the AI image generator Stable Diffusion on-device, something that Qualcomm demoed... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/QdwF940

What laptop is this? I have a guess. | Image: Qualcomm Qualcomm has announced its new Snapdragon X Elite platform, which looks to be its most powerful computing processor to date. The chips (including the new Qualcomm Oryon, announced today) are built on a 4nm process and include 136GB/s of memory bandwidth. PCs are expected to ship in mid-2024. Qualcomm has made the ambitious claim that its Snapdragon X Elite will outperform multiple Intel Core i7 processors on the Geekbench 6 benchmark that measures multi-threaded performance. The company has put forth a chart as evidence for this, which it did not label in any especially useful way. I have no idea whether this y-axis is a linear or logarithmic scale or where it starts. There is also no mention of single-thread performance, which is an... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/tW4mlpi

The Verge If you own a Galaxy smartphone and you haven’t already discovered the Samsung Good Lock app , I’d recommend getting it installed at your earliest opportunity. It’s packed with tweaks, tools, and options that build on top of what Samsung already puts into its One UI version of Android. Good Lock lets you take much more control over how your phone interface looks as well as helping you to do more with your phone. Whether you want to design your own clock face for the lock screen, switch between apps more quickly, or change the behavior of the S Pen stylus, Good Lock can help. Getting started To get started, open the Galaxy Store on your Samsung phone, then find and install the Good Lock app . The app works by using mini apps called... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/byeGPcn

Here’s a Ram truck at CES 2018. | Image: Sean O’Kane / The Verge Stellantis — the gigantic international automotive conglomerate that owns everything from Jeep to Ram to Alfa Romeo and Opel — has canceled its plans for CES 2024, we are told via a short press release . The company blames the current United Auto Workers (UAW) strikes, which today expanded to include 6,800 workers at the factory that makes Ram 1500 trucks , which is the largest Stellantis factory in the United States. Stellantis has “the worst proposal on the table regarding wage progression, temporary worker pay and conversion to full-time, cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), and more,” the UAW said in a statement to Axios . “As the costs of the ongoing UAW strikes against Stellantis continue to mount, the Company has decided to cancel its... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/LpUBitk

A screenshot of the Meta Verified toggle. | Image: Meta Instagram is testing a toggle that lets you only see posts from Meta Verified users, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri on Monday. “We’re exploring this as a new control for people and a way for businesses and creators to get discovered,” Mosseri wrote on his broadcast channel. The new Meta Verified toggle will appear as an option under “Following” and “Favorites” when you tap the Instagram logo at the top of the app. The prominence of the toggle could make paying for Meta Verified, which costs $11.99 on the web or $14.99 in an app, a more attractive proposition as it gives people a new way to try and appear more prominently in an Instagram feed. That said, Mosseri’s post didn’t say how big the test is or who might have access to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/dMYejCr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The next big Snapdragon chip headed to Android phones is likely to be announced this week — and details have leaked early revealing a heavy focus on AI. According to MSPoweruser , Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will support some handy and creative AI camera tools, including the ability to remove objects from videos, expand areas of a photo, and generate fake backgrounds. The leaked marketing materials also boast about the chip’s ability to run various AI models, including both Stable Diffusion and Meta’s Llama 2. Making that happen is supposed to be an upgraded Hexagon neural processor, which the leaked document says is 98 percent faster (presumably than last year’s processor, but the image doesn’t clarify). Qualcomm showed off t... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Ao0qwbT

New device types, including robot vacuums, smoke alarms, washing machines and refrigerators are coming to Matter. | Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge One year in, and Matter is adding support for fridges, robot vacuums, smoke alarms, and more. It’s a major step toward a complete smart home, but success hinges on platform and manufacturer follow-through. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/K0zjgwi

Now your mom and dad can help you find your next potential partner and stop dunking on your questionable dating choices. | Image: Tinder If you’re the kind of person who asks friends and family for help with your love life, Tinder is aiming to make things a little easier by letting them suggest potential partners for you directly within the app. Tinder’s new Matchmaker feature lets users invite their loved ones, regardless of whether they have a Tinder profile or not, to view and recommend potential matches, essentially integrating a “friend test” into the dating app. Tinder Matchmaker is available now in 15 countries including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Germany, with a global rollout expected “in the coming months.” Users can start a Matchmaker session either directly from a profile card, or within the app settings — creating a link that can be shared... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/GXNQ59o

Metal Gear Solid 3 protagonist “Naked Snake.” | Image: Konami It’s hard to fault the breadth of content Konami has included in its tantalizingly-named ‘Vol. 1’ collection. Just don’t go in expecting many modern upgrades to these decades-old titles. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/fjN9XSp

Image: The Verge Whether you want everything but the kitchen sink or top-tier performance for a midtier price, you’ve got options. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Y6WlnFL

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge October starting to slip away, and so far, all we’ve gotten was a very confusing Apple Pencil , despite rumors of iMacs and iPads . Well, it sounds like that new 24-inch iMac is on its way this month after all. Mark Gurman thinks so, having written in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg today that it’s coming very soon — as early as October 30th, in fact. That would end, as Gurman notes, an over 900-day drought since the M1 iMac launched in the first half of 2021. While he did not specify the chip today, he has previously predicted this refresh would put an M3 chip in the new iMac. Gurman writes that he was “told that Apple is planning a Mac-centered product launch around the end of this month.” He adds that if you try to order the iMac,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ipgBn1Z

Image: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 11, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome to the Installer verse, which is officially a thing now — we did it, everybody — and you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) I’m traveling this week, so I’ve got a slightly abbreviated issue for you. But there’s just way too much good stuff not to share. This week, I’m spending all my free time playing Subpar Pool , testing Twine as my new go-to Android RSS reader, watching Zane Lowe talk music with Blink-182 , learning about the incredible work of the masters of film set design , reading Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Internet Con , finally for real canceling some too-expensive streaming... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/JQNL7n0

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In 2020, scientists decided just to rework the alphanumeric symbols they used to represent genes rather than try to deal with an Excel feature that was interpreting their names as dates and (un)helpfully reformatting them automatically. Yesterday, a member of the Excel team posted that the company is rolling out an update on Windows and macOS to fix that. Excel’s automatic conversions are intended to make it easier and faster to input certain types of commonly entered data — numbers and dates, for instance. But for scientists using quick shorthand to make things legible, it could ruin published, peer-reviewed data, as a 2016 study found . Microsoft detailed the update in a blog post this week, adding a checkbox labeled “Convert continuous... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/UshR3aZ

Illustration: Beatrice Sala Here’s where we’ll keep track of late-in-the-week news companies really wish you wouldn’t read. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/NyYx1Ol

How many motors have you got? | Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla’s Cybertruck is finally nearing its first delivery event on November 30th , and yet we still don’t have key details on configurations, prices, and other specifications of the unconventionally designed pickup truck. But today, we got some insight for the launch, including initial Cybertruck powertrain options and Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR), thanks to new VIN info from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). A required VIN decoder submission that Tesla and other automakers must provide to NHTSA before vehicles are delivered to customers is now available for all to see and decipher. A Verge tipster pointed us to a Cybertruck Owners Club forum post where user Throwcomputer provided an analysis of Tesla’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Rl3459y

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge From January 2nd, 2024, Google Drive will allow downloads “without requiring third-party cookies that are embedded on third-party websites,” the search giant has announced . However, while we interpreted the original post as applying to all downloads from Google Drive, Google has updated its post on the Workspace Updates blog to clarify that this doesn’t change anything if you’re using the site directly. For anyone using Chrome with third-party cookies blocked, this workaround to manually unblock third-party cookies just for Google Drive is still required to enable downloads directly within Google’s service on Google’s browser for the foreseeable future. The change comes as Google prepares to ( finally ) disable third-party cookies by... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3D8yFuL

Image: Lexus Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus will start implementing Tesla’s winning charging plug standard known as the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, in “certain” vehicles starting in 2025 . Toyota will also provide current and soon-to-be EV buyers with adapters to access 12,000-plus Tesla Supercharger stations. One of Toyota’s first vehicles to include a NACS connector is a future three-row SUV it is planning for 2025, which will be assembled at the automaker’s plant in Kentucky. Toyota is currently light on EV options compared to most other automakers and has only released the mediocre bZ4X and the Lexus RZ 450e . Welcome Toyota and Lexus owners to Superchargers across North America ⚡️ — Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) October 19,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Ur5G4Li

Amazon’s paper mailers. | Image: Amazon Amazon is fulfilling a small part of its promise to switch from using plastic bubble mailers and air pillows to all recyclable paper packaging for its shipments. The company announced that it has outfitted one facility in Euclid, Ohio , with an upgraded packaging machine that can automatically fold custom-fit boxes to wrap some products, use paper mailers for small items, and slide in paper fillers instead of plastic ones in standard boxes. Amazon’s efforts to switch to nonplastic materials come after the company’s promise in July to cut out plastic mailers in favor of recyclable alternatives. Non-padded paper mailers are largely not as durable as plastic ones, but Amazon says it developed paper rolls that can stretch, seal with heat,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/So03kPy

Image: Amazon Despite running into obstacles in the US, Amazon is planning to expand its Prime Air drone delivery program to two additional countries. Amazon announced today that it will soon make drone delivery available for Prime members in Italy and the United Kingdom — in addition to expanding to one more yet-to-be-named US city. The new Prime Air locations will be announced in the coming months, with an anticipated launch date of late 2024. The e-commerce giant stated that it is working with regulators and governments around the world to expand drone delivery. “Not only will this help boost the economy, offering consumers even more choice while helping keep the environment clean with zero emission technology, but it will also build our... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Fsdcfvt

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is getting another price increase. As part of the streamer’s third quarter earnings results , it announced that users on its $9.99 per month Basic plan will now have to pay $11.99, and those paying $19.99 per month for Premium will have to pay $22.99. Netflix’s $6.99 ad-supported plan will stay the same price. Netflix last raised its prices in March 2022, bringing the Premium plan to $19.99 and the Standard tier to $15.49. The streamer stopped offering its $9.99 Basic ad-free plan to new and relapsed users in July, forcing them to fork out more to avoid ads. Prices for the Basic and Premium plans in the UK and France are going up as well, with the ad-supported plan remaining unchanged. “As we deliver more value to our members, we... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/BAQsUou

It may not offer stereo sound or in-line playback, but the first-gen Sonos Move remains a great portable speaker. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge In case you somehow weren’t aware, we’re in the thick of gadget season, with Apple, Google, and Meta having all recently released a trove of new devices. Sonos, not to be outdone, has also launched a new portable speaker in the form of the Sonos Move 2 . And now, unsurprisingly, Sonos has dropped the price of the first-gen model to make way for the updated version. Right now, the Sonos Move is on sale direct from Sonos for $299 ($100 off), matching its best price to date. While not as capable as the $429 Move 2, the original model still offers plenty of power and portability. The hefty speaker is close to the original in terms of design, and while its battery doesn’t last quite as long and it doesn’t offer stereo sound like the new... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/pNQOBhX

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nvidia looks to build a bigger presence outside GPU sales as it puts its AI-specific software development kit into more applications. Nvidia announced that it’s adding support for its TensorRT-LLM SDK to Windows and models like Stable Diffusion. The company said in a blog post that it aims to make large language models (LLMs) and related tools run faster. TensorRT speeds up inference, the process of going through pretrained information and calculating probabilities to come up with a result — like a newly generated Stable Diffusion image. With this software, Nvidia wants to play a bigger part in the inference side of generative AI. Its TensorRT-LLM breaks down LLMs and lets them run faster on Nvidia’s H100 GPUs. It works with LLMs like... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/lXACQFV

Image: Meta Meta will now let you block Instagram from collecting your data across the apps and websites you visit. The company says that it’s expanding the ability to disable this kind of tracking to Instagram, allowing you to review which businesses are sharing information with Meta, disconnect specific activity, or clear the collected information. You can now find this feature, called Activity Off-Meta Technologies, within the platform’s Accounts Center. It was previously only available for Facebook. Meta receives information from third-party websites that use its business tools, such as the Meta Pixel, which tracks users on the web and allows Meta to serve personalized ads on its platforms. Image: Meta You can now... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/6flociw

Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign launched its own account on former President Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday, as first reported by Fox News . “Well. Let’s see how this goes. Converts welcome!” the campaign wrote in its first post to the platform on Monday under the handle @BidenHQ . “Well. Let’s see how this goes. Converts welcome!” Speaking with Fox, the campaign said that it was joining the site in a bid to reach conservative voters and correct any “mis and disinformation” related to the president on the platform. So far, the campaign has posted several clips of GOP primary candidates like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley attacking Trump on issues like the federal debt or his comments on the war in... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/i3hIym0

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp users on Android can say goodbye to insecure and annoying SMS two-factor authentication. The Meta-owned company announced on X (formerly Twitter) that it’s rolling out support for a passwordless passkey feature to all Android users. The new security option allows WhatsApp users to use their device’s face, fingerprint, or pin security to unlock and access their accounts — following Google’s lead when it began prompting users last week to create passkeys . Passkeys were previously being tested by WhatsApp in its beta channel, but it’s now coming to regular users of the app on Android. We’ve reached out to Meta about iOS compatibility as well as other questions, but the company has not responded at this time. Android users can... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/dfU0GrJ

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of the worst tech labor years ever continues with the news that roughly half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off. Bandcamp employees are reporting the news via social media . about half the company was laid off today. some of the most incredible people i’ve ever worked with, including two of my amazing editorial colleagues @diamonde and @atoosamoinzadeh and most of the incredible support staff among many others. this is a loss, no two ways about it — jj skolnik (@modernistwitch) October 16, 2023 Epic Games bought the indie music platform back in 2022 for an undisclosed amount before selling it barely a year later. Late last month, Epic Games laid off 16 percent of its workforce , or 830 employees, due to what CEO Tim Sweeney... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/KZa6Gzr

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge My phone is absolutely littered with messages. I have a mess of messaging apps: Messages, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, GroupMe, Google Chat, Discord, Slack, Messenger, and Snapchat. Then there are all the apps that aren’t necessarily for messaging but still offer it as a feature, like LinkedIn and Instagram and X. Reddit and TikTok both can act like messaging platforms; I get messages through Tumblr sometimes; Skype is still sort of around. Chat is a core part of the modern internet experience, which is why everyone wants a piece : if you can build the app in which people talk to their friends, you’ve built the stickiest thing in tech. But in reality, all that competition means we spend our days endlessly checking inboxes and trying to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/NbfMnQd

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment The sequel doesn’t change a lot, but it adds some welcome variety to the web-slinging open-world series. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/6pOdk1Y

Image: Intel Intel is launching its 14th Gen desktop processors this week, promising boost frequencies of 6GHz out of the box for its flagship Core i9-14900K. Known as Raptor Lake Refresh, Intel is maintaining pricing for its 14th Gen Core i9, i7, and i5 processors this year, sticking to the same retail pricing as the 13th Gen when these new chips launch on October 17th. The 6GHz boost on the new Core i9-14900K makes it the “fastest desktop processor at volume,” according to Intel, referring to its special-edition 13900KS that first broke the 6GHz barrier at stock speeds last year but didn’t ship at volume. The more interesting 14th Gen processor in this refresh could be the Core i7-14700K, though, thanks to a significant bump to its efficiency... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/cETU8nu

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks to an employee at a solar farm in Hanstholm, Denmark. | Photo by Christoph Dernbach / picture alliance via Getty Images A new report compares climate initiatives by Apple, Dell, Google, HP, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Apple’s far from perfect, but so far, it’s ahead of the pack, according to today’s report. It’s the only company among the six tech giants that has set targets for its suppliers to switch to renewable energy. “Other brands need to send similarly clear signals to their suppliers,” Gary Cook, global climate policy director for the nonprofit Stand.earth that published the report , said in a press release. To be sure, a completely separate report published by a different environmental group last week casts some doubt on Apple’s recent carbon neutral claims. Stand.earth’s new report, however, puts Apple’s broader climate initiatives in perspective by... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/9lWOJY1

Laker legend-turned-actor Rick Fox has a new passion: sustainable concrete. | Image: Partanna A new house in the Bahamas is built with an alternative concrete that sucks CO2 out of the air. It’s a home that’s supposed to help in the fight against climate change, and the plan is to build 999 more like it. That’s the slam dunk NBA Lakers legend-turned-actor Rick Fox is working toward now on the small island nation where he grew up. Fox is the CEO and co-founder of the sustainable building materials startup Partanna that unveiled its first home today. If they’re successful in the Bahamas, the goal is to make its alternative concrete an everyday building material that could cut down pollution from construction. “I shut down my entire career that was in Hollywood to pursue and create [climate] solutions,” Fox tells The Verge . “I had... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Mf4cGIp

Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg today that the more affordable follow-up to the Apple Vision Pro will “likely” ditch the external display to help it reach an internally-discussed price point between $1,500 and $2.500. Gurman also reiterates what he wrote in June — that the more affordable version will probably run on an iPhone-grade chip, have fewer cameras, and get lower-resolution screens inside. Ditching the external display means Apple would lock one of the Vision Pro’s marquee features — EyeSight — behind the paywall of the more expensive versions. EyeSight is the thing that lets you see an on-the-fly render of the wearer’s eyes so they can “look” at you when you’re talking to them, and so you can tell,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/NPESxVD