its ur expert

Nvidia is touting the performance of DeepSeek’s open source AI models on its just-launched RTX 50-series GPUs, claiming that they can “run the DeepSeek family of distilled models faster than anything on the PC market.” But this announcement from Nvidia might be somewhat missing the point. This week, Nvidia’s market cap suffered the single biggest one-day market cap loss for a US company ever , a loss widely attributed to DeepSeek. DeepSeek said that its new R1 reasoning model didn’t require powerful Nvidia hardware to achieve comparable performance to OpenAI’s o1 model, letting the Chinese company train it at a significantly lower cost. What DeepSeek accomplished with R1 appears to show that Nvidia’s best chips may not be strictly needed to make strides in AI, which could affect the company’s fortunes in the future.  That said, DeepSeek did train its models using Nvidia GPUs, merely weaker ones (H800) that the US government allows Nvidia to export to China. And today’s blog po...

Sonos speakers and soundbars are great for games and movies, not just sports. I would have preferred any other Super Bowl matchup than another showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, but the world doesn’t revolve around me. Regardless, I love a good championship football game, especially one enhanced by an immersive sound system. If you’re in need of a home theater audio upgrade yourself, Sonos might be the play, as it’s offering up to $250 off its connected soundbars and speakers through February 8th. The Sonos Arc , for example, is on sale at Amazon , Best Buy , and Walmart starting at just $649 ($250 off) right now, which is the lowest price we’ve seen on the high-end soundbar. It was the most impressive soundbar in the Sonos lineup before the Sonos Arc Ultra showed up. Although it doesn’t have the expanded soundstage offered by the Ultra’s extra virtual channels and Sound Motion tech, it’s still terrific as a standalone Dolby Atmos soundbar with e...

MultiVersus will go offline at the end of its next season, Warner Bros. Games announced on Friday . The free-to-play brawler’s fifth and final season starts on February 4th and runs through May 30th, 2025, after which you’ll only be able to play against AI opponents or through local co-op. It will also no longer be available to download. To gain access to the offline version of MultiVersus , you need to download the latest version of the game and log in during season five. From there, you’ll get a local save file connected to your PlayStation, Microsoft, Steam, or Epic Games account, “allowing you to enjoy the game offline with all earned and purchased content moving forward.​” The Super Smash Bros . – like MultiVersus first launched in an open beta in 2022, but it went offline in 2023 after its player count dropped . It relaunched in May 2024 , adding characters from across Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property, like Samurai Jack, the Powerpuff Girls, and Beetlejuice. T...

The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has launched a digital library with more than 30,000 files of “industry ephemera” from the VGHF’s physical collection. The library, which is launching in early access, includes things like “more than 1,500 full-text searchable out-of-print video game magazines, never-before-seen game development assets, artwork, promotional materials, and more gaming relics,” according to a press release. In a blog post, the VGHF highlights things like documents from retired video game producer Mark Flitman , production materials from Myst developers Cyan , digitized CDs of press assets received by GamePro , and a collection of FromSoftware promotional materials . (Note that some of the links may not work; as I’ve been writing this story, the links have occasionally been broken.) Library director Phil Salvador says in a video that this is just the “first wave of open access content” in the library and that VGHF will keep building the library “over the comin...

Elliot Page. | Photo: Getty Images Beyond: Two Souls , the Quantic Dream-made interactive thriller starring Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe, is being adapted for TV by Page’s Pageboy Productions, Deadline reports . The series is in early development and it’s “expected to explore the game’s non-linear narrative,” according to Deadline . In the game, you play as Jodie (portrayed by Page), and sometimes as a supernatural entity called Aiden to whom she is somehow connected. I haven’t played the game myself, but if you want to get a general idea of what it’s about, you can read Sean Hollister’s review of its debut on the PlayStation 3 in 2013. “Filming the game was one of the most challenging and fulfilling acting experiences of my career,” Page says in a statement to Deadline . “The story’s rich narrative and emotional depth offer us a fantastic foundation. We want to create a unique vision of the characters and their journeys that resonates with fans and newcomers.” There’s no pote...

The next Hunger Games installment will follow a young Haymitch Abernathy (originally played by Woody Harrelson). Amazon’s Prime Video is about to get a lot more Lionsgate films as part of a multi-year deal that will put the studio’s entire 2026 slate of films on the service. Under the agreement, Prime Video will exclusively stream Lionsgate’s upcoming films in the US after they first appear on Starz. The lineup includes titles like Now You See Me 3 and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Prime Video doesn’t say how long this exclusivity window will last, but the deal will expand the number of high-profile movies on the service, joining the swath of films it added following Amazon’s acquisition of MGM . Netflix has a similar deal in place that brings Sony films exclusively to the platform . Along with these new films, Prime Video will also be able to license certain “premium” titles from Lionsgate’s broader catalog, such as John Wick , Twilight , Divergent , Weeds , and Nur...

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 9: A view of flames at the mountain as seen from Topanga Canyon near Pacific Palisades in Topanga, Los Angeles, California, United States on January 9, 2025. | Photo: Getty Images Climate change helped to set the stage for the devastating Los Angeles fires this month, a new study by 32 researchers shows.  The Palisades and Eaton wildfires broke out in early January and soon killed at least 28 people, destroying 16,000 structures. Hot, dry conditions and extraordinarily powerful winds fanned the flames. Those conditions were made about 35 percent more likely because of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels warming the planet, according to the study. Fire risk will only grow unless the pollution causing climate change stops.  “Realistically, this was a perfect storm when it comes to conditions for fire disasters,” John Abatzoglou, professor of climatology at the University of California, Merced, said in a press call today.  “...

Meta is making sweeping changes to its content moderation policies , including abandoning third-party fact-checks in favor of X’s crowd-sourced “Community Notes” approach and loosening restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity. Under the updated Hateful Conduct policy, for example, calling gay and trans people “mentally ill” is now allowed, while an explicit ban on referring to women as “household objects” has been removed . Policy chief Joel Kaplan says that in pursuit of “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes,” Meta will focus more on preventing overenforcement of its content policies and less on mediating potentially harmful — but technically legal — discussions on its platform. The company is also ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement appeals to many of the new administration’s talking points . Zuckerberg, who has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago multiple times since the election and attended the inauguration, has promis...

Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 test plane broke the sound barrier three times during its twelfth test flight. Ten months after its long-delayed first subsonic flight took place last March , Boom Supersonic’s prototype test plane, the XB-1, broke the sound barrier today three times during its twelfth flight. The XB-1 is a smaller-scale demonstration version of the larger Overture airliner Boom wants to eventually build that will carry 64 passengers on supersonic international flights at cruising speeds of up to Mach 1.7, similar to service that the Concorde offered before it retired in 2003. After taking off from the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, Boom’s chief test pilot, Tristan Brandenburg, flew the XB-1 to an altitude of 34,000 feet before hitting a top speed of Mach 1.1 (around 844 mph) for approximately four minutes. Today’s flight is not only the first time Boom’s demonstrator aircraft broke the speed of sound, it’s also the first time a civil aircraft has gone supersonic...

It initially seemed like Warner Bros. wanted to keep some of Ryan Goodler’s new gothic horror Sinners shrouded in mystery, but the movie’s latest trailer spells out exactly what’s going on. Though nobody says “vampire,” in Sinners’ new trailer twin brothers Elijah and Elias (Michael B. Jordan) know that there’s something demonic going as they return to their hometown down in the South. It’s not just that the town is full of superstition and white men like Remmick (Jack O’Connell) who don’t take kindly to Black people. There is something hunting folks down in the dead of night and leaving nothing behind but burning buildings. And while the twins know how to deal with garden variety Jim Crow era racists, they’re understandably shocked to realize that they’re dealing with fanged ghouls with a taste for human blood. Between its shots of Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) dancing with one of the brothers, a showdown at the local juke joint, and Remmick feasting on a victim, the new traile...

The Pebble Time Round just got a new lease on life. | Photo: Chris Welch / The Verge Eric Migicovsky still wears his Pebble. Thirteen years after he founded the wearables company and found huge success on Kickstarter , and more than eight years after he sold the company to Fitbit , which was then acquired by Google , Migicovsky’s watch still works. (In case you’re wondering: when I saw him at CES a few weeks ago, he appeared to be wearing a white Pebble Time Round model. But he has a box full of them at home.) It hasn’t gotten a software update since December 2016, though, and he’s been worried for a while that it will eventually stop getting notifications, or connecting to his phone, or run into some other show-stopping problem. Rather than buy another smartwatch, Migicovsky decided to try and get Pebble going again. He sold his most recent startup , a messaging app called Beeper , to Automattic last year and left the company in the fall. Since then, he’d thought about starting ...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge iOS 18.3 is here, and it’s bringing changes to AI notification summaries on your iPhone. In iOS 18.3’s release notes, Apple says it has temporarily disabled notification summaries for news and entertainment apps. The change, which was first spotted in the iOS 18.3 beta , comes after the BBC called out the feature for incorrectly summarizing one of its headlines. If you opt-in to the feature, Apple will notify you once it becomes available again. For Apple devices that support Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro and later, iPads and Macs with the Apple Silicon M1 chip or later, and the most recent version of the iPad mini), today’s updates will also switch Apple Intelligence on by default. Other features coming with the new iPhone update include the ability to use Visual Intelligence to add an event to the Calendar app from a poster or flyer, as well as a way to “easily identify plants and animals.” On Macs, the macOS 15.3 update tha...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Some Slack users are finding that their notifications aren’t showing up on the platform this morning, or that their corresponding messages are harder to find than usual. A few of my colleagues are reporting similar issues on The Verge’ s Slack channels, and I’ve been receiving repeated notifications for thread messages that I’ve already marked as read. The issues also seem to be affecting tags for other users — if a colleague hasn’t responded to your pings, DM them directly for now. Slack is aware that “notifications may be missing for some users” and logged an incident report at 7:52AM ET today, later confirming that the issue is impacting threads. “We’re currently investigating the issue and we’ll be back when we have more information,” Slack announced on its status page. “We’re sorry for any interruption to your day.” It’s unclear what’s causing the disruption to notifications or how many Slack users have been impacted. There’s a visible...

Photo illustration by The Verge / Photo: Ciena One of the biggest tech companies you’ve never heard of is helping you listen to this podcast.  Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/M8nUb60

The market value of US AI companies is taking a tumble. | Image: DeepSeek A chatbot made by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has rocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store charts in the US this week, dethroning OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app. The eponymous AI assistant is powered by DeepSeek’s open-source models, which the company says can be trained at a fraction of the cost using far fewer chips than the world’s leading models. The claim has riled financial markets, sending Nvidia’s shares down over 12 percent in pre-market training, Downloads for the app exploded shortly after DeepSeek released its new R1 reasoning model on January 20th, which is designed for solving complex problems and reportedly performs as well as OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks. R1 was built on the V3 LLM DeepSeek released in December, which the company claims is on par with GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet , and cost less than $6 million to develop. By contras...

The new iPhone SE will likely be limited to a single rear camera. | Image: Majin Bu We might have just gotten our best look yet at Apple’s next affordable iPhone SE, shown in both video and photographs of what’s either a real phone or a convincing dummy unit. Despite some reports that the next SE would adopt recent iPhones’ Dynamic Island design, this model appears to stick with the older notch. Leaker Majin Bu shared a short video over the weekend that shows the new phone in bright daylight, following it up a day later with photos of both white and black versions. Like previous iPhone SE models there’s only a single rear camera, though this appears to be the first in the line to feature a USB-C port — now a requirement for the phone to be sold in the EU. Here's what the iPhone SE 4 looks like pic.twitter.com/pEyIAJ34VR — Majin Bu (@MajinBuOfficial) January 25, 2025 The biggest surprise is that the phone features Apple’s older notched display, rather than the Dynamic Is...

The Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge It might be time for a more unified platform. Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/PxFQ6MR

Image: Fubo Fubo has raised its English-language streaming plan prices by $5 each, with a Fubo spokesperson citing “rising costs from our programming partners,” reported The Streamable yesterday. Fubo’s Essential and Pro plans now start at $85 a month, while its Elite plan has gone up to $95 monthly. “We only make adjustments when necessary,” a Fubo spokesperson said to The Streamable, “a nd we’re committed to keeping Fubo competitive while ensuring our subscribers have access to the channels, features and live events they enjoy.” I've updated my live TV streaming price tracker to reflect Fubo's $5/month increase. More from The Streamable: https://t.co/wL6hz3IR6p pic.twitter.com/8w9izuy8F1 — Michael Saves (@MichaelSaves) January 24, 2025 Fubo debuted its Essential plan at $80 per month in December, as The Streamable notes. While priced the same as the Pro plan and offering largely the same features, it doesn’t include regional sports networks — or the extra up-t...

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge The next generation of Nvidia GPUs is almost here. Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs are just around the corner, with the first releases — the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 — dropping on January 30th. The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 will follow that with their own releases in February, but some are already getting a sneak peek at the GPUs’ software benefits through DLSS 4. Tom Warren’s Verge review of the $1,999 RTX 5090 indicates it’s expectedly a powerhouse, but not quite the generational leap that the RTX 4090 was over its own predecessor. That didn’t stop The Verge ’s Sean Hollister from being impressed with the two-slot RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPU when he stuffed it into his aging small-form-factor PC . Along with the 50-series GPUs comes DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation , a software trick that may be just as big a story as the hardware itself. This latest version of DLSS uses AI to predictively generate frames, making it possible to run games at higher ...

You don’t have to pay a lot for do-it-all robot vacuums like the SwitchBot S10. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge We’re in an age where you can realistically delegate tasks to smart hunks of metal, whether it’s a self-driving car or a robot that can clean on your behalf. Most of us probably won’t be able to afford the helpful sentient humanoids being developed in our lifetimes, but robot vacuums are an affordable way to experience that promised utopia right now. Today’s floor cleaners are also more advanced than ever. In addition to vacuuming, many of the best models can now mop, allowing you to tackle both carpet and hardwood flooring. Some can automatically dispense of their trash and dirty water, too, and clean their own components without intervention. Soon, we’ll even have models that can pick up dirty laundry and purify the air in your home, preventing you from having to lift a finger. But if you need something relatively affordable for daily cleaning,...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Rivian is planning to launch a hands-free driving assistant system for its electric R1T and R1S vehicles later this year, followed by an “eyes-off” version in 2026, reveals Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe in a press roundtable interview according to a post on Rivian Forums and reported by Electrek . The first part of the system sounds like it will work similarly to Ford’s Blue Cruise or GM’s Super Cruise software, which are Level 2 assistants that only work on highways fully mapped by each manufacturer. It’s unclear if current Gen 1 and Gen 2 Rivian vehicles will support the upcoming hand-free assistant software or if it will come to upgraded models or the upcoming R2 SUV . Gen 2 vehicles already come with exclusive features like matrix headlights and an upgraded light bar that can change colors , which Scaringe says could be used as an indicator to let others know a Rivian is operating autonomously, according to a Rivian Forum user. Gen 2 vehicles...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is officially launching a new Android security feature for Pixel devices with Android 15 to prevent phone thieves from accessing your digital accounts. The feature, called Identity Check , requires biometric authentication to access some account and device settings when you’re not at a trusted location (such as your home or your workplace). “A stolen device in the wrong hands can expose sensitive data, leaving you vulnerable to identity theft, financial fraud and privacy breaches,” Google says in its blog post about the launch. Apple introduced a similar feature to Identity Check, called Stolen Device Protection , following reports of thieves watching people input their iPhone passcodes, stealing the phones, and using the passcodes to access private information and lock users out of their Apple accounts. Settings protected by Android’s Identity Check include changing your device’s PIN, disabling theft protection, turning off Find My D...

Image: id Software After revealing its next Doom game last summer , id Software is almost ready to release it: the studio announced that Doom: The Dark Ages is launching on May 15th. The news came as part of Xbox’s most recent Developer Direct livestream , which provided the best look yet at the prequel. As the name implies, The Dark Ages is set in a medieval fantasy realm and takes place long before the events of Doom Eternal and the franchise’s 2016 reboot . The developers say that the new game features a much bigger world with a larger emphasis on story — including plenty of cutscenes — but the most important changes appear to be with how The Dark Ages will play. A big focus this time around is on melee combat. Since this is a Doom set in medieval times, that means players will get access to brutal new melee weapons like a spiked mace and iron flail. The scale of battles also seems to have ramped up. We already knew that players would get a mount in the form of a cybernet...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung and Google are partnering up to build AR glasses, Samsung’s TM Roh told Bloomberg . But there aren’t many other specifics beyond the fact that they’re in development — there’s not even a specific release timeline, with Roh telling the publication that Samsung and Google “will try to reach the quality and readiness we want as soon as possible.” The announcement follows Meta’s splashy reveal of Orion , its first augmented reality glasses, last year. Those glasses won’t be sold to consumers, but my colleague Alex Heath called them an “impressive demo.” The news of the Samsung- and Google-made AR glasses also follows the announcement of the Project Moohan mixed reality headset . The headset runs Android XR, which Google recently announced for headsets and smart glasses (and Bloomberg reports that the AR glasses will “eventually launch as part of the company’s efforts to co-develop the Android XR operating system”). My colleague Victor...

Warner Bros. Pictures Ahead of Mickey 17 ’s debut in a few weeks , Warner Bros. has dropped a new trailer that really makes the film’s vision of terraforming alien planets look like absolute hell — at least for the working class. Everyone has an important role to play in Mickey 17 ’s take on a future where humanity is trying to colonize other worlds. But in the new trailer, it’s clear that Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has no idea what he’s agreeing to when he signs up to be an “expendable” on a ship headed to the desolate ice planet Niflheim. Mickey doesn’t think there’s anything strange about how, once they make it to Niflheim, his crewmates all stay on their ship while encouraging him to wander outside with his helmet off and take deep breaths of whatever viruses might be hanging out in the atmosphere. And he doesn’t even seem all that concerned once his little excursion seemingly leads to a lethal infection that involves coughing up a lot of blood. It’s awful, but it’s also...

Playstack Balatro has crossed a major milestone, selling 5 million copies in its first year. The news was shared on X and featured a shout out to The Game Awards. “To everyone who picked up Balatro after seeing it at @thegameawards , we hope you’re having an amazing time with it!” the post read. Balatro was featured prominently during The Game Awards, nominated for a number of awards including Game of the Year and winning the best indie, best debut indie, and best mobile categories. On X, Wout van Halderen, PR manager for Balatro publisher Playstack, added that the game had sold 3.5 million copies by the first week of December . With The Game Awards taking place the second week in December, the implication is that Balatro received a significant 1.5 million unit bump in sales after being featured during Keighley’s Christmas Commercial telethon. Even more impressive, the 5 million figure is total units sold and doesn’t count the number of downloads the game got for being on the...

Image: Volvo The compact Volvo EX30 is finally arriving in the US — and with it comes some more clarity about its price. When it was first announced in 2023, the EX30 was positioned as a smaller, more affordable electric vehicle in a market overflowing with expensive, luxury models. And it seemed poised to win over a lot of converts, with a starting price of just $34,950. At that time, the only other EVs available for a similar price were the utilitarian Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf. You could also find a few used EVs, or even a stripped down Tesla Model 3, but the idea of a luxuriously appointed (if bare bones) European model for just under $35,000 was unheard of. But politics intervened, and Volvo was forced to delay the EX30’s arrival in the US until 2025, citing newly leveled tariffs against vehicles built in China. Volvo is a subsidiary of Geely, and many of its models, including the EX30, are built there. Volvo said it was moving the EX30’s production to its factory in Bel...

Photo by Kevin Lamarque - Pool/Getty Images Vivek Ramaswamy has stepped down from co-leading President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to the Associated Press . The official line as to why Ramaswamy is moving on is that he plans to run for elected office — he reportedly intends to run for Ohio governor . “Vivek Ramaswamy played a critical role in helping us create DOGE,” spokesperson Anna Kelly says in the statement to the Associated Press . “He intends to run for elected office soon, which requires him to remain outside of DOGE, based on the structure that we announced today. We thank him immensely for his contributions over the last 2 months and expect him to play a vital role in making America great again.” Trump gave DOGE, which is not a department of the US government, the remit to advise cuts to “wasteful” government spending . Musk and Ramaswamy spelled out their plans in a Wall Street Journal article . But CBS News reported yesterday ...

Image: Koei-Tecmo After previous games failed to live up to expectations, Origins is a vast improvement. Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Vvl7SJK

Fujifilm has added two new models to its Techno-Stabi binoculars line with stabilization and increased magnification. | Image: Fujifilm Fujifilm has announced two new additions to its flagship Techno-Stabi line of binoculars featuring electronic stabilization, as spotted by PetaPixel . The new TS-L2040 and TS-L1640 deliver even more magnification than Fujfilm’s previous top-of-the-line offering — 20x and 16x, instead of just 14x — while also being smaller and lighter without sacrificing features like waterproofing. Both new models can survive a complete dunking to a depth of one meter for 30 minutes. The Fujifilm TS-L2040, with 20x magnification, will be $1,299.95 when available for purchase starting on January 31st, 2025. The slightly cheaper TS-L1640, which offer 16x magnification, will be $1,199.95. Using binoculars with more than 10x magnification without a tripod or stable support can result in blurred images because humans are simply incapable of holding them steady enou...