its ur expert

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Some of the most watched and listened to music on YouTube and YouTube Music disappeared on Saturday, replaced by a short message: Video unavailable This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country. That is probably not what people expected when they tried to stream Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep ” or other songs from artists as varied as Kendrick Lamar, Britney Spears, Green Day, Kanye West, and Burna Boy. This leaves two questions: what is SESAC, and when is the music coming back? Screenshot: YouTube SESAC stands for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, which has been around since 1930 and, according to its website, “...currently licenses the public performance of more than... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/aGPrC48

Brian Williams during a Meet the Press taping in 2008. | Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images for Meet the Press Former news anchor Brian Williams is in talks to host an Amazon Prime election night special, reports Variety . The show would apparently be a “non-partisan discussion” as election night news comes in and could include multiple guests. Williams has been out of the news game for a while. He lost his role as anchor of NBC’s Nightly News after some of his reporting was found to have been repeatedly embellished . He went on to host MSNBC’s 11th Hour until he resigned from the network in 2021. If the deal goes through, Williams would begin the November 5th presidential election night broadcast as early as 5PM ET and continue for up to eight hours — or longer if the election is too close to call, writes Variety, citing unnamed sources familiar... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/iWauDnC

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Meta is restricting links on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook that lead to Ken Klippenstein’s newsletter containing a JD Vance dossier that was allegedly nabbed in an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign. The company has apparently removed posts containing the link and is seemingly blocking links to PDFs of the dossier being hosted elsewhere. Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold emailed Meta’s statement to The Verge : “Our policies do not allow content from hacked sources or content leaked as part of a foreign government operation to influence US elections. We will be blocking such materials from being shared on our apps under our Community Standards.” A Meta page on privacy violations forbids users from sharing details “obtained from hacked... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3W4OTXK

Illustration: The Verge Meta is rolling out the ability to tag your location on your Threads posts. If you have the feature, you’ll see a pin in the post composer that you can tap so you can include where you are. Note that adding your location to a Threads post doesn’t share an exact pin on a map. Instead, the feature lets you give your users an approximate idea of your location by sharing things like a city name, a neighborhood, or a restaurant. And if you see a Threads post that includes a location, you can tap that location to see other posts from the same place. I have the feature, and I’ve been messing around with it. When I tap the pin in the post composer, Threads shows me a range of options: I can stay broad by tagging myself in Portland, OR, which is... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2yrGNka

Image: Nintendo The Nintendo Museum in Kyoto is a slick and playful trek through the company’s century-long history. But it’s lacking much in the way of revelations. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/JDQakp5

Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Ford is releasing a new version of its BlueCruise hands-free driving software , version 1.4, which it claims will let you keep your hands off the wheel twice as long. In fact, the company tells us it can now run an average of five times longer compared to last year’s version 1.2 and double that of 1.3, which started rolling out more recently. The company doesn’t specify exactly how long, on average, a vehicle can be driven using BlueCruise. The improvements come thanks to new “motion controller” software that Ford says keeps your BlueCruise-equipped vehicle better centered in its lane as well as improvements in handling different weather conditions, tight curves, narrow lanes, and reflections from the sun. Image: Ford ... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/m1l49uI

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Nvidia is reportedly planning to ship its upcoming GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card with 32GB of GDDR7 memory. Hardware leaker Kopite7kimi has published rumored specifications for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 today, and both cards will reportedly be more power-hungry as Nvidia looks to debut more capable next-gen GPUs. The RTX 5090 is said to have a 600-watt spec, although as VideoCardz points out it’s not clear if this refers to how much the entire GPU board draws, or how much power the chip itself consumes. Either way, it looks like the RTX 5090 will draw 150 watts more than the 450 watts that the RTX 4090 pulls. The RTX 5090 will also reportedly include 32GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, with 21,760 CUDA cores. GeForce RTX 5090 P... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/x4FyJLW

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there are complex copyright questions around scraping data to train AI models, but he suggests the individual work of most creators isn’t valuable enough for it to matter. In an interview with The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath, Zuckerberg said Meta will likely strike “certain partnerships” for useful content. But if others demand payment, then — as it’s done with news outlets — the company would prefer to walk away. “I think individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content in the grand scheme of this,” Zuckerberg said in the interview , which coincides with Meta’s annual Connect event. “My guess is that there are going to be certain partnerships that get made when... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/fkOMFGQ

Image: Razer Razer , Wooting , Asus , and SteelSeries are among the keyboard manufacturers that have embraced rapid-fire strafing, letting you press two simultaneous opposing directions at the same time to dodge bullets rather than standing still. But while you’ve typically had to buy specific keyboards (or set up null binds ) to get this functionality, Razer has just brought it to years of keyboards and laptops as well. Every Razer keyboard and Blade laptop that works with the company’s Synapse 4 desktop software — here’s the full list , including laptops that go back to 2018 — can now update Synapse and toggle on Razer’s Snap Tap feature. (Other manufacturers call it “Snappy Tappy” or “Speed Tap,” and Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions, or SOCD,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Vl4dOvS

Mercedes-Benz AG Drive Pilot, Mercedes-Benz’s Level 3 “conditionally automated driving” feature , is getting a speed bump. The system will now support speeds of up to 95km/h (59mph) on German motorways, a sign that the automaker is feeling bullish about its boundary-pushing technology. Mercedes is still waiting for approval from German regulators before pushing out a software update to customers of vehicles that support Drive Pilot. But once that happens, the company boasts that it will have “the world’s fastest Level 3 system in a series-production vehicle.” Drive Pilot is similar to “hands-free” highway driving systems like GM’s Super Cruise, Ford’s BlueCruise, and Tesla’s Autopilot in so far that it allows drivers to take their hands off the steering... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ptzMLa7

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Telegram will now turn over a user’s phone number and IP address if it receives a request from authorities, according to its just-updated privacy policy : If Telegram receives a valid order from the relevant judicial authorities that confirms you’re a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate the Telegram Terms of Service, we will perform a legal analysis of the request and may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities. The adjustment is the latest change Telegram has made following the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov last month, who French authorities charged with enabling illegal activity on the platform. In a post on Telegram , Durov says the company is making these changes to “deter... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ivQDWTR

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/qnrhfDR

Image: The Verge Nintendo has submitted a mysterious new wireless device to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this weekend, and it isn’t the Switch 2 console we’re expecting to be revealed before next April. The CLO-001 model number doesn’t reveal what it actually is, but it appears to be an entirely new product line given the “001” codes used on devices like the original Switch (HAC-001) and DS (NTR-001) consoles. It’s tagged only as a “wireless device,” not a “wireless game console” or any kind of controller like a Joy-Con. A basic diagram within the documents shows an outline of where the FCC label will be “displayed in a depression area on the bottom” of something with a squarish footprint and rounded-off corners. The documents also show... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/iJO174t

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/s56A1ih

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

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/HdjY3GD

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/hC2xTL3

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/IXQPGzq

Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media A year after multiple publications reported Jony Ive was collaborating with Sam Altman on a hardware project, Ive himself as confirmed it in a profile in the New York Times . There aren’t a lot of details. He met Altman through Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBNB, and the project is being funded by Ive and the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs company. The New York Times claims it could raise $1 billion in funding by the end of the year. There was no mention of Masayoshi Son, the Softbank CEO rumored last year to have invested a $1 billion in the project . The project only has ten employees currently, but they include Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, two key people who work with Ive on the iPhone. As for the device itself? Last year it was rumored... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/GMjelo8

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any deal is described as “far from certain,” according to the paper’s unnamed sources, it would represent a tremendous fall for a company that had been the most valuable chip company in the world, based largely on its x86 processor technology that for years had triumphed over Qualcomm’s Arm chips outside of the phone space. It would also be a massive coup for Qualcomm, which reentered the desktop processor market this year as a part of Microsoft’s AI PC strategy after years of dominance in mobile processors. Intel, meanwhile, is arguably in its weakest position in years — while many of its... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/K1zNHp9

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Twitch is changing the way it enforces its community guidelines. In an announcement posted on its website , Twitch said that it will introduce a new enforcement strategy in which strikes for certain offenses will depreciate over time, users will receive more information regarding their strikes, and users will be able to take educational courses to reduce the severity of enforcement actions. In an interview with The Verge , Rob Lewington, Twitch’s VP of safety operations, and Kristen Murdock, the director of safety risk and response, spoke about the new program and what it means for moderating communities on Twitch. According to Lewington, safety is Twitch’s highest priority. He said Twitch hosts over 105 million users per month with 1.3... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/M3ZInEb

watchOS 11 makes the Apple Watch an even better remote for the Apple TV. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Previous versions of watchOS allowed the Apple Watch to be used as a remote control for an Apple TV, with limited functionality. With watchOS 11 , the smartwatch can potentially completely replace the Siri Remote that now ships with Apple’s streaming box, with new capabilities spotted by 9to5Mac . Before watchOS 11 , the Apple Watch’s Remote app could only be used to play and pause videos or navigate tvOS using swipe gestures to move through menus and screen taps to make selections. It was useful if you couldn’t reach the Apple TV’s remote, but it couldn’t replace its features entirely. The company has updated the Apple Watch User Guide on its website to include the new Remote app functionality introduced with watchOS 11. Turning the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/pR5rasc

Image: PayPal Roughly 25 years after it launched payment processing, PayPal is “ushering in a new era for customers” with some generic black text. The company has a new logo, designed by Pentagram , that looks incredibly plain — especially compared to previous iterations of the logo that featured a rakish slant, two shades of blue, and prominent PayPal P’s. Image: PayPal The evolution of PayPal’s logo. The company justifies the change by saying that the new black standalone wordmark won’t be confused with the rest of the payments processing world — especially “the blue that has become synonymous with fintech.” And yet: Image: PayPal That is a very blue word. Image: PayPal Also... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Dfj3sWo

Illustration: The Verge You don’t have to spend a fortune to have a robot clean your floors. Here’s our pick of the most cost-effective bots you can buy right now. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/SJ4pWvE

Image: MysteryLupin ( Twitter ) The next flagship soundbar from Sonos will be called the Arc Ultra, and marketing images of the product have been posted on X today. They line up with the photos I published back in July and offer yet more confirmation that the Arc Ultra will support Bluetooth audio playback. Sonos itself has managed to leak details about the Arc Ultra in recent days; the company’s online store briefly featured a few tidbits about the Arc Ultra and mentioned the inclusion of “Sound Motion technology.” This is presumably the branding that Sonos has chosen for the technology that it obtained through an acquisition of Mayht in 2022 . Arc Ultra ($999) https://t.co/z6sXvj2dAg pic.twitter.com/iuwG2vGXDv — Arsène Lupin (@MysteryLupin) September 17, 2024 S... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ngSXQjd

The Eufy Smart Lock E30 is a Matter-compatible smart lock with a fingerprint reader. It’s Eufy’s first lock to work with Apple Home. | Image: Eufy The latest smart lock from Eufy is its first product to support Matter . The Eufy Smart Lock E30 ($169.99) works over Thread, which should allow for faster responsiveness, longer battery life, and better connectivity than locks that work over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The E30 is also the first smart lock from Anker’s smart home arm that works with Apple Home, although Home Key is not supported. While Eufy offers a handful of older security cameras with HomeKit compatibility, it hasn’t released a new Apple Home product for years. The E30 can use a traditional key but also has a fingerprint reader for biometric access and a keypad for keycode access. It can be controlled through the Eufy app over built-in Wi-Fi, including out-of-home control,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/G4RHUB9

Some of the latest M3 MacBooks are on sale, and you can find great discounts on older models, too. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple currently sells MacBooks equipped with its own M-series chips in a wide range of sizes and price points. It recently discontinued the M1 MacBook Air to make room for the M3 Air , but some retailers are still selling the last-gen laptop starting at $649 — a far cry from the $2,499 starting price of the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro. Purchasing a new MacBook can certainly be a pricey endeavor, but thankfully, finding a deal on a current M3-based model is actually not that difficult. Although Macs may not experience perpetual discounts, it’s not uncommon to see various models discounted by as much as $400. Alternatively, purchasing refurbished options directly from Apple is another way to save money without waiting for the changing deal... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ZTJC21K

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images For years, Google took the same 20 percent commission for ad transactions that ran through its platform, even though it was higher than what any other industry player charged. Executives privately worried the fee was difficult to defend. Now, the Justice Department argues it’s a key sign of Google’s monopoly over online ads. Google’s so-called take rate took center stage on the last day of week one in the Justice Department’s second antitrust trial against Google. Citing internal Google documents and the testimony of former Google sell-side ads executive Chris LaSala, the DOJ sought to demonstrate that Google never experienced any real pricing pressure due to its unshakable dominance in the market , despite knowing its fee was higher than... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/e2xYFWl

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/90a7Cxe

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/NBaKplk

Illustration: The Verge Instagram might roll out a way to share comments on other Instagram posts to Threads, according to Alessandro Paluzzi, who often reverse engineers Meta’s social media apps to find coming features. Paluzzi shared an image showing that when commenting on an Instagram post, there could be a new dropdown menu that lets users choose to share the comment only to Instagram or “also share on Threads.” Meta has made a few moves to integrate Threads with its other platforms in the past, such as showing Threads posts on Instagram or Facebook (and, later, letting users opt out of that). The Twitter-like short-posting social network also lacks DMs of its own, but users can still receive or send messages through Instagram. The bigger effort, of... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2RtiMuk

Image: Nilay Patel Apple has hiked the price of its battery repair service for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max . Now, it will cost $119 to get your battery replaced in either phone — a $20 jump over its older fee. The price remains the same for the standard and “Plus” models, as do those for last year’s phones, as MacRumors notes . The company doesn’t seem to have started charging more for other battery replacements yet, but it wouldn’t be unexpected. In 2022, Apple drove the cost of iPhone 14 battery service up by $30 to $99 . Increases for iPad, MacBook, and older iPhone battery repairs came after that , and Apple Watches followed suit later . (One longs for the salad days of battery drama-induced $29 battery replacements !) Defective batteries are covered... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/K1MCJwq

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/mSHUZjE

Adam Driver in a Megalopolis trailer. | Screenshot: YouTube Francis Ford Coppola wanted voice recognition software to let audience members ask Adam Driver’s Cesar character a question during theatrical showings of Megalopolis , according to a Telegraph interview with the director . Then, the software would trigger the theater’s projector to play a clip of “the most relevant response” from Driver. Apparently, it was actually in the works. Amazon had agreed to make a “custom version of its Alexa voice-recognition software” to do this, but the team working on it was laid off during a huge round of layoffs in 2022 , writes The Telegraph. Alas. “Imagine!” Coppola beams. “You could see Megalopolis five times in its opening week and it would be different each time! It would have been the future of the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/N1V5U9o

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spoke about their continued stay aboard the International Space Station during a press conference held yesterday. The two are now fully incorporated into the ISS crew, as the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that was meant to take them home last week was instead sent back to Earth uncrewed . Early on, the two were asked if they felt “let down” by Boeing. “Absolutely not,” said Wilmore: “This operation is not easy. NASA does a great job — the people at Nasa do a great job — of making a lot of things look easy. Sending probes beyond the edge of our solar system; going in [and] getting samples from asteroids; humans in space. It’s a very risky business and things do not always turn out the way you... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/kIJA3y7

A GameCube controller, post-mod. | Image: 8BitDo 8BitDo announced it’s taking preorders for a new mod kit that lets you retrofit a wired GameCube controller with Hall effects joysticks and Bluetooth connectivity. The company is charging $25.98 for the kit, which it says is a simple, solderless mod. 8BitDo has made a few of these in the past for old Nintendo controllers, including those for the N64 and earlier consoles , and now it’s the GameCube’s turn. The kit replaces your controller’s existing PCB with a drop-in board that has Hall effects joysticks and a USB-C-rechargeable 300mAh battery attached. It also comes with a trigger pack, and 8BitDo says the battery will get 6 hours of playtime between charges. It’s compatible with the Switch and Android, according to the product page. I... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/EviRHYF

The Anker MagGo USB-C Adapter supports both SD and microSD cards. | Image: Anker Anker’s next puck-shaped accessory is an SD and microSD card reader called the MagGo USB-C Adapter that can be used with laptops, tablets, and smartphones. When connected to an iPhone 15 or 16, it can also unlock ProRes 4K recording at 60fps if the memory card supports at least 220MB/s write speeds and 256GB capacity. The MagGo USB-C Adapter — available in white, black, or teal finishes for $34.99 from Anker or Amazon — is MagSafe compatible, so it can be secured to the back of an iPhone and kept out of the way while recording video. Since it does end up blocking both of the ways an iPhone can be charged, Anker has included an additional USB-C port on the MagGo that will pass along up to 42.5W of power. Image: Anker ... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/dVr2Ze7

Image: The Verge It looks like the fediverse is continuing to open up. In late March, Meta’s Threads introduced a beta feature that allows users from the US, Canada, or Japan to cross-post and view likes from Mastodon and, presumably, other federated social networks. In June, it added that ability to over 100 countries . While you can follow a step-by-step process to get to the Fediverse settings dialog, where you can opt in or out of sharing your Threads posts, there is now a single link that will take you right there . If you want to do it the long way around, you can still do it from the mobile app or the web version: On Threads’ mobile app, tap your profile icon in the lower-right corner, tap the parallel lines in the upper-right corner, and select A... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/bDcnqZ8

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge Wear OS is much better than it used to be, so there’s never been a better time to consider a smartwatch. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/17qIwVL

Image: The Verge Microsoft is announcing plans to make changes to Windows that will help CrowdStrike and other security vendors operate outside of the Windows kernel. The announcement stems from a Microsoft-hosted security summit earlier this week at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters, where it discussed changes to Windows in the wake of the disastrous CrowdStrike incident in July. Windows kernel access has been a hot topic ever since the CrowdStrike catastrophe took down 8.5 million Windows PCs and servers. CrowdStrike’s software runs at the kernel level of Windows — the core part of an operating system that has unrestricted access to system memory and hardware. That’s what allowed a faulty update to generate a Blue Screen of Death as soon... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/LAkNbPD

Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images Newsom has until September 30th to decide the bill’s fate, and both sides are lobbying hard. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Au9PfJF

An AMD Strix Point laptop. | Photo by Joanna Nelius / The Verge Many laptops and gaming handhelds share a single pool of memory between the CPU and GPU — and sometimes, you might want that RAM boosting your graphics instead. Now, AMD won’t make you dive into a BIOS to reroute that power. The company’s new Variable Graphics Memory lets you turn up to 75 percent of your system memory into dedicated video RAM, just by tapping a button in AMD’s desktop Adrenalin app. It’s only currently available for AMD AI 300 “Strix Point” laptops, and how much RAM you’ll be able to divert depends on your system’s total — AMD explains that the “medium” setting will turn a 32GB laptop which came with 512MB of video memory into a 24GB one with 8GB of dedicated VRAM. Image: AMD You might be... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/mGN6agB

The PS5 Pro looks like a slim that got a growth spurt. | Image: Sony After various rumors and leaks, the PlayStation 5 Pro is finally official — complete with a new GPU, $700 price point, and no built-in disc drive . But is that pretty much it? What makes this new console 40 percent more expensive than the existing PS5 you can buy today for $500? The same one that’s bound to go on sale during the holidays, not long after the Pro’s November 7th launch date. What are the differences between the PS5 and PS5 Pro that make it (depending who you ask) a worthwhile upgrade or a superfluous expense? Spec and performance differences The PS5 Pro has three core performance improvements over the standard PS5, according to Sony’s technical presentation announcement , hosted by PS5 lead architect, Mark Cerny. It’s got a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/F9bHL4K

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge This weekend, ESPN began publishing AI-generated recaps of women’s soccer games, with more sports to come. It’s using Microsoft AI to write each story, with humans only involved in reviewing each recap for “quality and accuracy.” ESPN says these stories will “augment,” rather than detract from, its other content — but needless to say, people have feelings about it. It’s not that ESPN is masquerading AI work as that of humans. In fact, each story advertises that it’s written by “ESPN Generative AI Services,” and ESPN includes a note at the bottom of each article about how the recap is based on a transcript from the sporting event. ESPN isn’t the only news organization that does this; The Associated Press started using AI to write sports... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/OjWXaUS

Image: Apple Apple’s all in on AI — at least Apple’s version. “The next generation of iPhone has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said before revealing the iPhone 16. Software chief Craig Federighi pitched Apple Intelligence as a “personal intelligence system” that’s at “the heart of the iPhone 16 lineup.” After the event, Apple even published a whole press release dedicated to Apple Intelligence . There’s just one catch: when the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro first come out, they won’t have any Apple Intelligence features. Sure, the new A18 and A18 Pro chips in the iPhone 16 lineup each have a 16-core Neural Engine that Apple says is “optimized for large generative models,” so they will probably be good at handling A... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/1ym0Qbe

The AirPods Pro 2 are also getting a five-minute hearing test feature. | Screenshot: Apple Apple has announced a batch of hearing health updates coming to the AirPods Pro 2 , including a new “clinical grade” hearing aid feature for users with mild to moderate hearing loss. The iPhone maker says the hearing aid functionality is still awaiting FDA clearance, but it expects the agency’s approval alongside other regulatory bodies “soon.” When enabled, the over-the-counter hearing aid capability will boost specific sounds in real time, such as speech and other environmental noises. A new clinically validated hearing test feature will also be included in this update that can help to detect hearing loss. Apple says the test requires both the AirPods Pro 2 and a compatible iOS 18 iPhone or iPad and can be taken in under five minutes. ... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/sUCtcuQ

The IFA tech show is celebrating its 100th year. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Laptops that twist, robovacs that can climb, and AI in everything; here’s all you need to know about Europe’s largest tech show. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/edtcRDS

The Ultimate Ears Miniroll is available now in black, gray, pink, and blue colorways. | Image: Logitch / Ultimate Ears Ultimate Ears just launched the Miniroll, a new compact Bluetooth speaker that’s more portable than the company’s Boom-branded lineup. Priced at $79.99, the Miniroll is now the smallest and most affordable Bluetooth speaker offered by Ultimate Ears, and revives the disc design used by the company’s discontinued Roll and Roll 2 products . As its name suggests, that familiar form factor has been shrunk to a diameter of around 4 inches (105mm), and a thickness of 1.9 inches (48mm) — making it easier to fit into pockets or smaller bags. The Miniroll weighs 9.8 ounces (279g) and still features a built-in strap that can be used to attach it to things like bags and belt loops. Ultimate Ears also says that the speaker is “drop-proof” up to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/iJ0DgPZ

Apple’s iPhone 16 event invitation. | Image: Apple Apple is getting ready to announce the iPhone 16, which will surely be its most powerful and best-camera-having phone yet (at least for the Pro models). It’s also expected to be the first iPhone to launch with Apple Intelligence across the board. In addition to the iPhone 16 lineup and a slate of new watches and AirPods, Apple is expected to show more AI features, like the ability to understand what’s onscreen, along with features it introduced at WWDC in June, which include an upgraded Siri , image generation, AI rewrite, and call recording and transcription abilities. The word “glowtime” is likely a reference to the glow effect that appears around the edges of the screen when Siri is activated in the latest developer betas of iOS 18 .... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jP9WavA

AUKEY Aukey debuted three new magnetic wireless chargers at IFA in Berlin that come with fans to keep your phone cooler while it’s charging. The company says that means the chargers, called the MagFusion 3-in-1 Pro , the MagFusion GameFrost , and the MagFusion Dash Pro , will charge your phone faster, too. All three use the Qi2 standard, which means up to 15-watt charging for compatible phones and backward compatibility with normal Qi devices. Aukey claims they can drop charging temperatures as much as 68 degrees Fahrenheit compared to “traditional wireless chargers.” The MagFusion 3-in-1 Pro stand can simultaneously charge an iPhone, AirPods, and an Apple Watch. It can tilt up and down over a 30-degree range, also. The MagFusion GameFrost is,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/WoHTxZn

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 51, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I hope you love spy shows as much as I do, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I’ve been reading about cobalt miners and religious AI and the history of the Moleskine , listening to pop-punk Disney songs on repeat, finally starting The Sopranos (I know, I know), soundtracking my workday with the Earth.fm app , giving Tweek another whirl for simple task and calendar stuff, and spending too much time debating whether NFL Sunday Ticket is worth the money. It’s definitely not, but it also, like, kind of is. I also have for you everybody’s favorite new PlayStation game,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/J5esfNG