Technology news

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta, Snap, and TikTok have founded a new program called Thrive to help stop the spread of graphic content depicting or encouraging self-harm and suicide. Thrive enables participating companies to share “signals” to alert each other of violating content on their platforms.
Thrive is built in conjunction with the Mental Health Coalition, a charitable organization that says it works to remove the stigma around mental health discussions. Meta say

You’ll want to be extra careful with Huawei’s new trifold Mate XT Ultimate Design smartphone. | Image: Huawei Huawei has revealed the cost of replacement parts for the world’s first dual-hinged, triple-screen folding phone, and it’s another round of sticker shock. The Mate XT Ultimate Design starts at around $2,809, but should you damage its folding screen enough to need repairs, you’ll be potentially paying an additional 7,999 yuan, or around $1,123, for a replacem

You’ll want to be extra careful with Huawei’s new tri-fold Mate XT Ultimate Design smartphone. | Image: Huawei Huawei has revealed the cost of replacement parts for the world’s first dual-hinged, triple-screen folding phone, and it’s another round of sticker shock. The Mate XT Ultimate Design itself starts at around $2,809, but should you damage its folding screen enough to need repairs, you’ll be potentially paying an additional 7,999 yuan, or around $1,123, for a

OpenAI's advanced reasoning model has arrived. SEE ALSO:OpenAI clarifies: No, "GPT Next" isn't a new model.
Initially dubbed "Project Strawberry," the model was released to the public as "o1" on Thursday. As expected, o1 is able to "think" (process) before answering a prompt, which differs from previous large language models that use predictive text to form their responses. "We've developed a new series of AI models designed to spend more time thinking before they respond," said OpenAI in the an

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Image Right-wing media figures and influencers have descended on Springfield, Ohio, hunting for anything that can help them prove the veracity of a viral racist rumor about Haitian migrants in the community — and relying on misleading, occasionally AI-generated content to help them prove their point. Springfield, which has seen its Haitian population grow by an estimated 15,000 people, has become a sort of shorthand for conservatives’ fears abo

Multiple Stream Deck Studio interfaces can be stacked in a studio rack. | Image: Elgato Elgato’s new Stream Deck Studio — the largest version of its Stream Deck controller yet — is designed for broadcast environments where workflows involve juggling more hardware, software, and media feeds than streamers and solo content creators typically have to deal with.
Available starting today for $899.99, the Stream Deck Studio is a collaboration between Elgato and Bitfocus, whose Compan

Multiple Stream Deck Studio interfaces can be stacked in a studio rack. | Image: Elgato Elgato’s new Stream Deck Studio — the largest version of its Stream Deck controller yet — is designed for broadcast environments where workflows involve juggling more hardware, software, and media feeds than streamers and solo content creators typically have to deal with.
Available starting today for $899.99, the Stream Deck Studio is a collaboration between Elgato and Bitfocus whose Compani

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Steam Summer Sale, like summer itself, is sadly well behind us now, but Valve is beating one of its best deals on its own gaming handheld. That’s because in addition to the Steam Deck LCD with 256GB of storage once again selling for $296.65 (around $52 off), the 512GB version, complete with its fancier anti-glare etched screen, is selling for a new low of $336.75 (about $112 off).Whichever Steam Deck you choose, you’re getting an excellent PC gam

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

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 m

A Ukrainian startup forged by war is bringing counter-disinformation to the business world. Osavul was founded in 2022 to fight Russian propaganda. To analyse the threats, the company applied AI analytics to the information landscape. The startup surveys open-source data from social media, websites, and messaging apps. It then identifies harmful narratives — and the sources spreading them.  The narratives have diverse forms. Osavul has detected fake news videos plastered with BBC log

Apple's newly announced hearing aid capability is officially the first over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid software to be approved by the FDA. And it should be available on devices soon. The federal agency formally ushered in the tech giant's new "Hearing Aid Feature" (or HAF, as the agency refers to it) mere days after the company's keynote "Glowtime" event, which unveiled a series of new health features. The HAF allows AirPods Pro users to conduct a personalized Hearing Test on their device, wh

Given the presidential debate this week, you probably heard plenty of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Indeed, reporters and fact checkers were working overtime to specifically determine whether Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating domestic pets, as grotesquely alleged by Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, and his vice presidential running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Neither has produced evidence proving their claim, and local officials say it's untrue. Still, the f

You can't escape advertising on the internet…even AI chatbots are starting to send ads your way.In an update provided to its advertisers, ecommerce giant Amazon has shared that it will start serving ads via its AI-powered shopping assistant chatbot called Rufus.SEE ALSO:New evidence claims Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon could be listening to you on your devices
"To help customers discover more products in Amazon’s generative AI-powered shopping assistant, referred to as Rufus,

Meta will hide the “AI Info” label in a menu if an image has been edited with AI. | Image: Meta Meta is updating how it labels content on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads that has been edited or manipulated using generative AI. In an updated blog post, Meta announced that its “AI Info” tag will appear within a menu in the top-right corner of images and videos edited with AI — instead of directly beneath the user’s name.
Users can click on the menu to check if

Pixar After breaking all kinds of box office records and becoming one of this year’s biggest theatrical hits, Pixar’s Inside Out 2 is coming to Disney Plus at the end of September.
Though you can still catch the movie in theaters right now, Disney announced today that Inside Out 2 will make its Disney Plus streaming debut on September 25th. Ahead of the movie’s premiere, Disney Plus is also rolling out a new Blockbuster Offer to first time and returning subscribers that will gi

Adult video site Clips4Sale is celebrating its 20 year anniversary in 2024, and it's looking back on the last two decades of fetish content. According to the site, some fetishes are timeless — like foot fetishes, which thrived on Clips4Sale (C4S) since the very beginning. But so much has changed in terms of how we watch porn in the last 20 years. In 2004, porn was dominated by studio productions, and people accessed porn by buying DVDs or downloading videos. In the time since, streamable c

Finding someone who you like enough to hang out with on a regular basis is hard enough. But finding someone who you like enough to smoke with regularly? That's a different ball game, and the best 420-friendly dating apps can help you find someone to share your next joint with."I don't care that you're a stoner" are words any weed enthusiast would love to hear during a hangout sesh — ideally from Chappell Roan herself's mouth during an a cappella serenade of Red Wine Supernova, but from any

Meeting people in real life is ideal, but waiting for a meet-cute to happen organically isn't always realistic. That's especially true when your life involves working late into the evening, launching a startup, juggling multiple clients and side hustles as a busy freelancer, and just generally trying to have it all.So, how do you find time to meet people when you're too busy for happy hour? Fortunately, the philosophy of "work smarter, not harder" can be applied to your love life, too. Ente

Sexting (dirty talk, swapping nudes, sending explicit audio messages...the list goes on) is one way to take your dating life to new heights.Whether you're single and ravenous for some sexy screen time with a stranger, in a long-distance relationship keeping the passion alive through digital intimacy, or interested in amping up your solo sex toy sessions with steamy instructions from an AI companion, mastering the act (art?) of sexting leads to a more fulfilling physical and emotional experience.

A lot of guys have a love-hate relationship with the apps, but what's the alternative?Sure, even the best dating apps for men can be a pain, yet meeting someone organically, or "in the wild," can feel nearly impossible. Between work, hobbies, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life, who has the time to actually meet people? That's where online dating comes in.If you're already rolling your eyes, we hear you. Dating as a man in the 21st century is tough. It's not just the pressure

Illustration: The Verge Google is rolling out its Gemini Live voice chat mode to all Android users for free. You can access the conversational AI chatbot through the Gemini app or the overlay on Android.
Google first announced Gemini Live during its Pixel 9 launch event last month, but it has only been available to Gemini Advanced subscribers until now. Similar to ChatGPT’s voice chat feature, you can ask Gemini Live questions aloud and even interrupt it mid-sentence. There are also severa

Surprise: Fitbit wearers will now get a feature previously reserved for Premium subscribers. As 9to5Google noted, the fitness company has rolled out its readiness score for free to its trackers and watchers. This update was in conjunction with the launch of the Pixel Watch 3 this summer. (For the unaware, Google owns Fitbit.) So...what is a readiness score? In short, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a number that tells you how prepared you are for the day. It takes your activity levels, sl

The Gocycle GXi we reviewed a few years ago. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Gocycle’s designer-in-chief Richard Thorpe is rebooting the e-bike company he founded more than two-decades ago. Following a January restructuring to reduce overhead, Thorpe is now turning to crowdfunding to help launch a new series of F1-inspired e-bikes while also expanding into non-electric foldables — a space currently dominated by Gocycle’s British compatriots Brompton.
To drum up support, Th

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge One year to the day since Unity announced its runtime fee pricing model, the software developer is canceling that program effective immediately. “After extensive consultation with our games community and customers, we’ve decided to cancel the Runtime Fee,” said Unity CEO Matt Bromberg in the blog post announcing the news. Instead of the runtime fee, Unity will return to a per-seat subscription model.
Last year, Unity caused a stir withi

Image: The Verge OpenAI is releasing a new model called o1, the first in a planned series of “reasoning” models that have been trained to answer more complex questions, faster than a human can. It’s being released alongside o1-mini, a smaller, cheaper version. And yes, if you’re steeped in AI rumors: this is, in fact, the extremely hyped Strawberry model.
For OpenAI, o1 represents a step toward its broader goal of human-like artificial intelligence. More practically, it d

For the first time in history, a private citizen has left the confines of a spaceship while flying through space — an exercise that before now was only performed by trained astronauts. The unprecedented commercial spacewalk was part of SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission, which sent four civilians into orbit to test the company's new spacesuits. Tech magnate Jared Isaacman, who funded the spaceflight, was the first to conduct a spacewalk. "From here, it sure looks like a perfect world,

Nevada will become the first state to pilot a generative AI system designed to make unemployment claim decisions, marketed as a way to speed up appeals and tackle the nation's overwhelming backlog of cases. It's a risky, first-time experiment at integrating AI into higher-level decision making. Google is behind the program's tech, which runs transcripts of unemployment appeals hearings through Google's AI servers, analyzing the data in order to provide claim decisions and benefit recommendations

SAVE 37%: The Sony SRSXB13 portable Bluetooth speaker is on sale for just $38 at Amazon, marked down from the list price of $59.99. That's a savings of $21.99.Opens in a new windowCredit: SonySony SRSXB13 portable Bluetooth speaker$38.00 at Amazon $59.99 Save $21.99Get DealA portable Bluetooth speaker can make any gathering better. Think beach tunes as the sun sets behind the waves, or just getting into the right frame of mind when you're cleaning out the garage. Nice, right? If you're in need o

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Google has unlisted an impressive Gemini demo video it posted last December that seemed remarkably conversational. The BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD), an ad industry watchdog, inquired whether the video “accurately depicts the performance of Gemini in responding to user voice and video prompts.”Google chose to end the inquiry by ending its promotion of the video that showed Gemini quickly responding to various spo

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Just days after Apple announced a new hearing aid feature for the second-generation AirPods Pro, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the software that powers this functionality. In a press release, the FDA describes Apple’s solution as “the first over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid software device.”
The feature “was evaluated in a clinical study with 118 subjects with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss,” acco

Lego’s McLaren P1 isn’t quite as fast as the real deal. | Image: Lego After releasing a 24-inch long scale replica of the McLaren P1 earlier this year, Lego has now debuted a full-size, driveable version of the hypercar built from over 342,817 Technic pieces and powered by hundreds of Lego electric motors.
That eclipses the 3,893 pieces that go into building Lego’s 1:8-scale McLaren P1 model. The company says the full-scale version used 393 types of Technic components, includin

SAVE UP TO $120: This week, explore deals on a variety of headphones including Beats Fit Pro for $159 for $40.95 off and 20% savings. Plus find AirPods Max starting at $429, giving you $120 in savings for 22% off.Best headphone dealsBest earbud dealBeats Fit Pro$159 at Amazon(Save $40.95)Get DealBest headphone dealBeats Studio Pro x Kim Kardashian with two years of AppleCare+$269.99 at Amazon(Save $108.96)Get DealBest AirPod dealApple AirPods MaxFrom $429 at Amazon(Save $120)Get DealBest deal on

Check out the best Amazon deals of the day as of Sept. 12:OUR TOP PICKRoborock S8 Pro Ultra$949.99 at Amazon(save $650)Get DealBEST HEADPHONES DEALBeats Fit Pro$159 at Amazon(save $40.95)Get DealBEST SOUNDBAR DEALJBL Bar 9.1 soundbar$584 at Amazon(save $615.95)Get DealBEST SMART HOME DEALAmazon Echo (4th gen) + Sengled smart color bulb$64.99 at Amazon(save $54.99)Get DealBEST BLUETOOTH SPEAKER DEALAnker Soundcore 2 Bluetooth speaker$27.99 at Amazon(save $12)Get Deal
Looking for some sweet deals

One of the reasons iPhones cost as much as they do is Apple knows most people aren't paying full price for them. You're almost always trading in an old device or getting some kind of carrier discount, right? Well, if you're doing the former, you may want to keep your old iPhone in good shape.MacWorld executive editor Michael Simon wrote a cautionary tale purporting that Apple would not accept a 256GB variant of the iPhone 15 Pro Max (which should have nearly the highest trade-in value of any exi

SAVE 58%: Get the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic (47 mm) for just $199.99 at Amazon, marked down from its normal price of $479.99. That's a discount of $280 and the lowest price we've seen.Opens in a new windowCredit: AmazonSamsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic$199.99 at Amazon $479.99 Save $280.00Get DealWhen it comes to buying a new smartwatch, there are tons to choose from, including the newly-announced Apple Watch Series 10. But if you don't want to overspend, or you're an Android user, that upgrad

On mobile, you get a one-tap unsubscribe under annoying website notifications from Chrome. | Image: Google Google is expanding a Chrome safety feature to help you cancel pesky website notifications with a single tap. It’s already available on Pixels and is coming to more Android devices; adding a simple unsubscribe button in the notification so that you can get rid of websites you didn’t mean to subscribe to, like horoscopes or weird facts about ducks (there’s also an undo butt

Looking for some peace of mind when it comes to keeping tabs on your home? We've spotted some steep discounts on home security systems and cameras that are sure to help, regardless of your budget. Here are some top picks:Best home security dealsBest overall dealSimpliSafe wireless home security system (8 piece)$143.99 at Amazon(save $96)Get DealBest video doorbell dealeufy Security smart Wi-Fi video doorbell$99.99 at Best Buy(save $80)Get DealBest indoor camera dealKasa Indoor Pan/Tilt smart sec