Technology news

The new Moonwalkers Aero are lighter than the originals, and can be customized in different colors. | Image: Shift Robotics Shift Robotics has launched a new version of its Moonwalkers shoes / motorized roller skates that claim to boost the speed of your natural walking gait.Unlike the first generation, there are six wheels instead of ten on the Moonwalkers Aero, which the company says makes them lighter and quieter. That makes them similar to, but not the same as, the industrial-focused Moonwal

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge DoNotPay, a company that claimed to offer the “world’s first robot lawyer,” has agreed to a $193,000 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced on Tuesday. The move is a part of Operation AI Comply, a new law enforcement effort from the FTC to crack down on companies that use AI services to deceive or defraud customers.
According to the FTC complaint, DoNotPay said it would “replace the $200-billion-dollar lega

The Space Invaders: My Play Watch can be customized with various retro gaming-themed straps. | Image: F84 Taito Corporation, which gave the world Space Invaders over 45 years ago, has collaborated with the designers of Floor 84 Studio to create a watch that pairs retro gaming with basic health tracking capabilities. The Space Invaders: My Play Watch is now available for $60 for the earliest backers of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.
The My Play Watch was teased earlier this month, but we no

Coming soon to Google Earth: Time travel.According to Google, some new updates on the way to the company's satellite imagery platform Google Earth, will allow users to "travel back in time" and view satellite and aerial images that go as far back as 80 years ago.Google Earth lets you explore more of the pastIn its update announcement, Google says some cities, including London, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris, will have imagery dating back to the 1930s. As of right now, most locations on Google Earth go

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that his office had launched an investigation into the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries alleged role in causing a plastic pollution crisis on April 28th, 2022, in Playa Del Rey, California. | Photo: Getty Images California is going after ExxonMobil over what it calls a “campaign of deception” about plastic recycling.The Golden State filed suit against the oil giant this week, alleging that it has misled consumers for years by ma

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus were never on my radar — until I had a sudden change of heart.As a Pro Max exclusivist, the entry-level iPhone typically doesn't catch my eye. After all,“Who wants a puny little phone?” I once thought.And the "Plus" was always the awkward middle child, often ignored for the base model or the top-tier variant.However, my experience with these phones has changed my mind. For those who don’t need pro-level photo and video capture, I’d g

The Suunto Wing don’t sound any different than the entry-level Sonic, but they tack on a few extra flourishes. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge I’m a big fan of noise-canceling earbuds in most situations, but when it comes to running, I’ve always preferred something that doesn’t drown out the sound of approaching cars, dogs, and other obstacles. Luckily, if you’re in the same camp as me, Suunto’s new Sonic headphones are on sale at Amazon and dire

I now crown the iPhone 16 Pro Max as our new smartphone battery life king, kicking the Google Pixel 9 out of its short-lived throne.You won't believe how long the top-tier iPhone 16 lasted on a charge.If you're confused over whether you should snag the iPhone 16 Pro or the iPhone 16 Pro Max, you'll find out in this in-depth review that the latter delivers more than just a 6.9-inch mega display.iPhone 16 Pro MaxCredit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable
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The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are entering a new market, as the company announces a new collaboration with accessibility service provider Be My Eyes that will help wearers get the assistance they need. Be My Eyes provides free human and AI support for users who are blind or have low vision, pairing them with sighted volunteer helpers who can describe a visual field or object, read text, navigate a space, or answer questions in real time. With a brand new integration of the accessibility app and

UPDATE: Sep. 25, 2024, 3:45 p.m. EDT This story has been updated with additional details about the Meta Quest 3S.Opens in a new windowCredit: MetaMeta Quest 3S (128GB)$299.99 at Meta.com Pre-Order HereMeta is launching a new entry-level version of its flagship virtual reality headset ahead of the holidays, and preorders begin today (Sept. 25).CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the upcoming Meta Quest 3S at the outset of the company's Connect developer conference Wednesday. It looks pretty similar to

Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge Meta is overhauling its metaverse avatars, and you’ll be able to use them soon: the new look will be available on October 1st, the company announced at its Connect conference on Wednesday. The new avatars will be available on Meta Horizon OS (its VR operating system), as well as Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
Meta’s avatars started out in a rough place, but the company has made steady improvements, and these changes look to build on that. With the

Screenshot: YouTube OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is leaving the company, she announced on Wednesday.“I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration,” she wrote in a post on X. “For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining the momentum we’ve built.”
This comes almost a year after a boardroom coup shook the AI startup and temporarily ousted CEO Sam Altman, leaving Murati as

In the race to make truly useful AI for a mass audience, Meta just jumped forward a few key steps — including AI's ability to "see" objects and provide live, lip-synched translations. At the Meta Connect developers' conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the latest version of Llama. That's the open-source Large Language Model (LLM) powering the AI chatbot in the company's main services: Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Given that reach, Zuckerberg described Meta AI as "the m

If you do a quick online search for Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses right now, you'll find that the wearable is mostly marketed for its quick photo capturing and livestreaming capabilities.However, at the Meta Connect 2024 event on Wednesday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn't have too much to say about photos and videos during the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses section of the presentation.SEE ALSO:Everything announced at Meta Connect 2024
In fact, Zuckerberg introduced the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Gl

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Meta’s Quest headsets and app store have been around for a while, but with a software experience largely limited to 3D and AR apps and games. But now, the company says it’s opening things up — Horizon OS and Quest VP Mark Rabkin said during Meta Connect that from today, the Meta app store “fully welcomes 2D and spatial apps.”
Meta also says it supports web apps, and what do you know? The New York Times’ Wordle app for Quest he

Image: HP HP has a groundbreaking announcement. No, it’s not making it easier to use cheaper, third-party ink, nor does it have a solution for frequent paper jams and irritating software issues. It’s bringing AI to printers.
The new HP Print AI experience is rolling out today in an “exclusive” beta and comes with a Perfect Output feature that’s supposed to clean up printouts of webpages. HP says it will automatically detect unwanted content like ads or weird formatt

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pushing back on the idea that social media directly harms teen mental health. During an interview with The Verge’s Alex Heath, Zuckerberg said that “the majority of the high-quality research out there suggests that there’s no causal connection at a broad scale between these things.”
This echoes the statement Zuckerberg gave in front of Congress in January during a hearing about child safety, where

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 c

Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge Meta has big ambitions for using AI to help creators, and it showed two impressive demos of what that could look like onstage at Connect today.
One version of this involves fully recreating real influencers as AI figures. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented a live demo of a creator-based AI persona, which looked like the creator, talked like the creator, and tried to respond to questions like the creator would. It was pretty wild to watch. View this post on Instagr

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Meta has a bunch of new hardware and AI news coming out of its Meta Connect event today, including a new Quest 3S VR headset, an expansion of Meta AI features, a new Llama model, and a first look at the new Orion augmented reality glasses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage on Wednesday with a new style and demonstrated new features including live translation between English and Spanish.
Here’s everything announced at Meta Connect:
Orion AR glasses Photo b

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are already one of the best cracks at AI hardware to date. Now, Meta is pushing out a series of software updates, along with a new transparent Ray-Ban style, that bring the smart glasses closer to actually feeling smart.
The company announced several updates to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses at its Connect conference on Wednesday, introducing new features like “Reminders,” which has the glasses take a photo of what you&rs

The MX Ink is available to buy now following it’s announcement back in June. | Image: Logitech Logitech has released a pen-shaped Meta Quest controller that makes it easier to draw, sculpt, and manipulate objects in mixed-reality environments. After initially being announced back in June, the $129.99 Logitech MX Ink stylus is available to buy starting today, and can be paired with the Meta Quest 3S, Quest 3, and Quest 2 headsets via the Meta Quest app.
The MX Ink should feel more comfortab

Image: Meta If you think avoiding AI-generated images is difficult as it is, Facebook and Instagram are now going to put them directly into your feeds. At the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, the company announced that it’s testing a new feature that creates AI-generated content for you “based on your interests or current trends” — including some that incorporate your face.
When you come across an “Imagined for You” image in your feed, you’ll see options

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta is adding conversational voices by celebrities to its AI chatbot in Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook.The company announced at its Connect event today that you can now talk to Meta AI and hear it respond in one of several voices, including celebrity soundalikes such as Awkwafina, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristen Bell, and the only one I truly care about: Dame Judi Dench.
Meta’s AI voices, ft. Judi Dench, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristen BellTh

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Just two months after releasing its last big AI model, Meta is back with a major update: its first open-source model capable of processing both images and text.
The new model, Llama 3.2, could allow developers to create more advanced AI applications, like augmented reality apps that provide real-time understanding of video, visual search engines that sort images based on content, or document analysis that summarizes long chunks of text for you.
Meta says i

The Verge’s Alex Heath wearing a Quest 3S. Meta finally announced the very heavily leaked Quest 3S VR headset, and the leaks were right: it’s a $299.99 headset that looks like a mix of the Quest 2 and Quest 3. But now that the specs are official, I can tell you that it’s a lot closer to the Quest 3 than expected for a refresh that’s almost half the price. If you don’t have a Quest headset already, the 3S is potentially a very compelling purchase.
The Quest 3S offers

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta is discontinuing the Quest Pro, its high-end VR headset launched in 2022 that we said “isn’t very good.” The company plans to sell its remaining Quest Pro headsets through the end of the year or “until they’re gone, whichever comes first,” according to a blog post.Meta’s post didn’t specify why it’s moving on from the Quest Pro so soon, but it’s clear the headset wasn’t well receive

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge In November of 2020, Google — which had offered unlimited storage for what it called “high quality” (read: compressed) photos — announced that, as of June 1st, 2021, “unlimited” was being changed to “up to 15GB on your Google account.” Since then, photo and video storage has counted against your total of 15 free gigs on a Google account, along with your Gmail, Google Drive files, and other stored data. Once you hit t

Image: Insomniac Games Sony finally confirmed the PS5 Pro, and in addition to enhanced features like Wi-Fi 7 and 8K gaming, the company has been sharing how recent and older games will perform on the system. As of September 25th, it’s revealed 25 different PS5 games that developers are specifically enhancing for the new console — here’s our hands-on with 11 of them.The PS5 Pro may also “stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games” with a feat

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company would start making users pay to share their passwords this month, and now we know how much it will cost. In an announcement on Wednesday, Disney Plus says adding an “extra member” to an ad-supported plan will cost $6.99 monthly, with that price going up to $9.99 for its ad-free plan.
The company says the extra member offering will let you share your subscription with a friend or family member who lives outsi

Image: Ubisoft Ubisoft is delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows from its planned November 15th release to February 14th, 2025. After showing off 12 minutes of gameplay in June, it looked like Ubisoft was set to deliver its next Assassin’s Creed installment in the usual holiday period, but now the publisher says it needs more time to get its new parkour and stealth systems ready.
“We realize we need more time to polish and refine the experience, pushing further some of our key featu