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Verge Score
Sony’s spec monster let me shoot 67-megapixel images fast, silently, and without any blackout.
Google’s new Camera Looks feature will do less computational photography — and that’s a great thing.
An AI future of sleek, streamlined, and totally empty relationships.
Good news! Your Beauty and Electronics items are arriving tomorrow!
Tools that promise to detect AI writing can be dubious, but educators and publishers are using them anyway.
After reports that some cops misused tracking data it collects, Flock is rolling out policy changes.
DHS is accusing people of ‘doxing’ federal agents — and, a new lawsuit claims, trying to chill dissenting speech.
This year’s Border Security Expo was a victory lap for Trump’s immigration policies. But with border crossings at record lows, what were vendors hawking next?
Here’s how to lock down your existing Ring cameras, along with our picks for security cameras that store footage locally or use end-to-end encryption.
OpenAI showed that AI can tackle long-standing problems in mathematics. Experts are excited about the possibilities — and worried about what comes next for their field.
‘Everyone will be affected, not just scientists. Every community in the country.’
Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ of American science starts with dismantling it, while funneling billions into AI.
Journal editors and peer reviewers are being flooded with AI-generated papers that are almost impossible to detect.
I pitted five automowers against each other to find the best cutter for my challenging garden.
Testing Govee’s over-the-top RGB lineup convinced me there might actually be room in my garden for a horse-race light show this summer.
The Aura by Coolfly is a more practical, less polished alternative to the popular Birdbuddy.
Liv 2.0 starts at $1,700 and can be expanded to cover 3,000 square feet – for a price. It also tackles no-see-ums.
The cult classic is long overdue for an HD remaster.
Scribble some nonsense, offer wooden jokes, or make your own requests of a real human playing a fake AI.
The good news: The beloved children’s series is coming to the big screen!
The bad news: The charming 2D animation has been replaced with some bland 3D computer animation.
And knowing Disney, we’ll probably get a soulless “live action” remake in about a decade.
Everyone in the room got a glimpse at Ryan Gosling in Starfighter, but Disney hasn’t publicly dropped a clip yet.
All of the new Disney trailers in one place.
With the next chapter of the MCU continuing on after the well-received Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Disney brought Kevin Feige, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Hayley Atwell out at D23 on Friday to show off this new trailer for the next Avengers movie, which is scheduled for release on December 18th.
The Disney+ show premieres on October 14th, closing out a trilogy of series that began with WandaVision. VisionQuest sees the titular hero wrestle with his identity, chat with Ultron (in human avatar form), and search for his potential son.
Maya Boyd, Inde Navarrette, and Adam Driver join Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey.
The CrossPoint Reader firmware is getting plug-ins that add support for ebooks from Libby, Kobo, and other sources.
Plus, in this week’s Installer: Google’s new Pixel, an old controller comes back, the TV Time successor, and much more.
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Verge Score
Brooklyn-based artist Justin Blinder created a device that illustrates how soaring housing costs are making life in the city that much harder.
Ploopy just announced the A Plus trackball, the successor to the open-source, 3D-printed Adept. It has six buttons, two dials, a wrist rest, and RGB LEDs. It goes on sale on August 19th starting at $99 CAD (about $71 USD). Ploopy.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has approved the $34.5 billion deal with some conditions, as reported by Fierce Network. However, the approval comes with some conditions, including that the combined company must have affordable broadband offerings “for low-income Californians” for five years and invest “at least $275 million to upgrade the company’s California network.”
The deal is expected to close next week. It has already been approved by the FCC.
People have opinions about the new Instagram logo. Zion Wuxinyi posted a simple fix on Threads which is the best I’ve seen so far. There’s no question in this edit that the “r” is real and not a sneaky “z”. If Instagram is reading this, please take notes.
Waymo has received regulatory approval in the state to “expand” its autonomous ride-hailing service “across the SF Bay Area and LA” and bring it to Sacramento and San Diego, the company said on Friday. The approved expansion covers “most of the state’s population,” Electrek reports.
The expansion will be “gradual and guided by our safety framework,” according to Waymo.
Citing an unnamed source, CNBC reported that OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said at a recent investor meeting that OpenAI “entered the year at 60-40, but enterprise has accelerated much faster than expected and those lines have now crossed … The majority of our revenue is now enterprise.”
Snoo is putting on adult pants. The change is set to kick in on Tuesday.
“Reddit’s raw materials are special, and there is so much potential to continue building great products and scaling profitably,” CFO Drew Vollero says in a statement.
[Reddit Inc.]
Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, speaking today with CNBC, reinforced the company’s allegation that the FCC has violated its First Amendment rights by attacking ABC’s broadcast license. “We’re very principled on this,” D’Amaro said. “We’re going to stand up to what we believe is journalistic integrity. And we’re not going to be told how to run that side of our business.”
After denying that it replaced writers for Rideshare “Stimulator” with ChatGPT and admitting that the game has some AI-generated elements, Saber Interactive has added an AI content disclosure to the title’s Steam page.
While the main campaign is written by humans, AI tools are used for “voice generation and some localization.” Free ride mode, which is optional, includes “AI-generated passenger missions and localized dialogue.” There are also radio stations featuring AI-generated music, though they’ll be labeled in the game.
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The first new Samsung headphones in a decade could go up against Apple’s AirPods Max next year.
Verge staff in the UK received the alerts warning of a “high risk of wildfires” nationally — the first actual mass notice aside from tests. PM Andy Burnham confirmed the alert, advising people to “take extra care” and not to light fires in open spaces. My friend, who is currently on a train from Amsterdam to England, notes that the train has been lit up with the alerts as they roll in for people separately.
The newly-announced Gemini 3.7 Flash is rolling out today as an option for AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers. The updated model is better at following instructions and “understanding your intent, so you get even more helpful responses,” says Search VP of product Robby Stein.
Hulu’s new R-rated cut of The X-Files: I Want to Believe is closer to the director’s original vision.
If you want to use the Camera Looks photo styles, you’ll have to upgrade to one of Google’s new phones.
On The Vergecast: Instagram’s new logo, Zuck’s AI manifesto, and lots of other bad ideas.
Google will still embed invisible SynthID and C2PA watermarks into AI-generated images, videos, and music.
“Roblox appears to prioritize revenue and engagement metrics over the safety and well-being of our children, and the alleged criminal activity on Roblox warrants congressional scrutiny,” Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) wrote in a letter to Roblox CEO David Baszucki.
The online gaming platform has also been subject to state lawsuits regarding alleged child safety issues. Roblox has settled some of those lawsuits, and it recently launched dedicated accounts for younger users.
[Josh Hawley, U.S. Senator for Missouri]
Now you can upload attachments up to 20MB, twice the previous 10MB cap. But Discord also says its mobile apps will now check file sizes before compressing attachments, just like the desktop app already does.
[Discord]
Bike shop owners say the law, which places heavy restrictions on e-bike ownership in the state, is fueling a steep drop in sales, with some saying as much as 90 percent of their business has evaporated.
“It has had a chilling effect on the legitimate e-bike industry,” said Mike Grotz, owner of Cyclesport in Park Ridge. “We sold over 50 Class 1 e-bikes last year, this year, a total of 4 e-bikes.”
Workers are being laid off, and some shop owners predict they will be forced to shut down. Who could have predicted this?
That’s $1 per Expedition. Other great deals include a Pixel 11 / Pixel Watch 5 preorder perk, 4K Blu-ray sets, and more.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of the AI coding tool Cursor on Friday. Cursor says it’s going to work on the company’s Grok AI chatbot, which added a new AI agent feature this week.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
You can already get multi-port desktop USB-C chargers with a status screen from companies like Satechi, Baseus, and Anker. What sets Ugreen’s new $199.99 Nexode Pro 300W apart is that in addition to six USB-C charging ports and a USB-A port, it includes a barrel-style port that can deliver 240W to a beefy laptop.
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A new “take notes” button is rolling out now for paid Workspace accounts that records audio from your mic so Gemini can generate notes for in-person meetings. Just like the virtual version of the feature, it also generates a transcript and “action items” and saves them to a Google Doc in your Drive account.
[Workspace Updates Blog]
A staff member in the official Epic Games Store community Discord confirmed a Linux app is in the works, but won’t be in the next preview release, VideoCardz reports. Linux users currently have to use third-party tools like the Heroic Games Launcher to run games from the Epic Games Store.