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Terradot’s pilot program in Brazil involves spreading crushed basalt over farmland. | Image: Terradot To try to counteract the impact their pollution has on the climate, Google and other big companies have bought into a plan to trap carbon dioxide using rocks. They recently announced multimillion dollar deals with a Sheryl Sandberg-backed startup called Terradot. Google, H&M Group, and Salesforce are among a gaggle of companies that collectively agreed to pay Terradot $27 million to remove 90,000 tons carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The deals were brokered by Frontier, a carbon removal initiative led by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability. Separately, Google announced its own deal to purchase an additional 200,000 tons of carbon removal from Terradot. Both companies declined to say how much that deal is worth. If the cost is similar to the Frontier agreement — roughly $300 per ton of CO2 captured — it could add up to $60 million, although Google says i...

The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition is the first hardware from the open-source smart home platform that’s designed for voice control. | Image: Nabu Casa There’s a new voice assistant in town, and this one can work locally in your home without phoning home to its corporate overloads. This week, the popular hobbyist smart home platform Home Assistant officially launched its first voice assistant hardware — Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition . Built for the open-source smart home platform, Voice PE costs $59 and brings a locally controlled, privacy-focused voice assistant to Home Assistant in a plug-and-play package. Once connected to Home Assistant , you can use voice to control any connected device , with commands such as “Turn on the living room lights,” “Lock all the doors,” “Create a timer for 5 minutes,” and many more . While Home Assistant users have been able to control their smart homes with voice using either Home Assistant’s Assist on less capable third-par...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Thousands of delivery drivers who work for Amazon third-party contractors are now on strike, The New York Times reports . The workers are striking after “Amazon’s repeated refusal to follow the law and bargain with the thousands of Amazon workers who organized with the Teamsters,” according to a Teamsters press release . Workers are picketing at Amazon warehouses from Atlanta, New York City, San Francisco, Southern California, and Skokie, Ill., with other Amazon Teamsters “prepared to join them,” the Teamsters say. “Teamsters local unions are also putting up primary picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide.” The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against Amazon earlier this year, saying that Amazon and one of its third-party contractors are joint employers of delivery drivers and that it has “a legal duty to recognize and bargain with the Teamsters Union,” per another Teamsters press release . ...

Image: The Verge In what seems to be a battle between Threads and Bluesky for the hearts and minds of ex-Twitterers, Threads has been adding some interesting new features. The latest is the ability to share photos and videos without including the original post — in other words, without quote posting. (There’s a similar feature in X for videos.) There has been some initial pushback on it. A photographer on Threads complained that “there will be a small watermark-like credit on the photo, but there won’t be a link back to your account.” Curious, I tried out the new feature, went to see if there was indeed no link back to the original post, and followed bryanhansel’s instructions for turning it off. Here’s what happened, and how you can use and adjust Threads’ new feature. (All of these instructions have been followed using the mobile app.) To share images alone Long-press on the image you want to share. A menu will pop up at the bottom of the screen. To share just the ima...

Illustration: The Verge Google has introduced a new AI “reasoning” model capable of answering complex questions while also providing a rundown of its “thoughts,” as reported earlier by TechCrunch . The model, called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, is still experimental and will likely compete with OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model . In a post on X, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean says the model is “trained to use thoughts to strengthen its reasoning,” and also benefits from the speed that comes along with the faster Gemini Flash 2.0 model . The demo shared by Dean shows how Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking goes about answering a physics problem by “thinking” through a series of steps before offering a solution. Want to see Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking in action? Check out this demo where the model solves a physics problem and explains its reasoning. pic.twitter.com/Nl0hYj7ZFS — Jeff Dean (@JeffDean) December 19, 2024 This isn’t necessarily “reasoning” in the way humans perform it, bu...

This is such a weird episode of The X-Files . | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Phone cameras are incredible little machines, capable of way more than their tiny lenses and sensors would lead you to believe. They can capture core memories at the beach and northern lights in the sky . But even with all of their computational smarts, they have their limits, including one that’s particularly obvious at the moment. You know all those clear, high-quality pictures you’ve seen of the drones hovering over New Jersey at night? No? Exactly. You are probably aware by now that there are drones of mysterious origins visiting the New Jersey skies at night. And if you’ve watched or read a report on the drone situation, you’ve probably seen a grainy photo of distant lights in the sky, maybe with blurred trails from red and green navigation lights. You know the type , because they all basically look the same. But this isn’t happening in some remote part of the country, this is a s...

LG’s Signature OLED T, the transparent TV that was the company’s big flashy reveal at CES 2024 , now has an official price: $59,999. It’s available beginning today in the United States “at select LG-authorized retailers including Best Buy, Video & Audio Center and via LG.com” the company said in a press release. You can’t just walk into your local Best Buy and get this thing, mind you; it’s a special order kind of situation. LG says the first purchase will be made later tonight at a gala at Video & Audio Center. The OLED T lets you switch between its mind-boggling transparent mode, where you can clearly see whatever’s behind the OLED panel, and an opaque mode that eliminates distractions when enjoying content on the 77-inch screen. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Verge (@verge) As is usually the case with Signature models, this OLED gets some completely unique software tricks that you won’t find on other LG s...