Technology news

People loved uploading videos from their iPhone Camera Roll directly to YouTube. | Image: The Verge The “IMG_0001” website features a frame with an old TV static effect and a floating retro Panasonic remote that you can click to start watching random YouTube videos from over a decade ago that were recorded and uploaded from devices such as 2010’s iPhone 4.Riley Walz, a tech worker who helped stage a fake steakhouse restaurant in Manhattan last year, built the site. He credits t

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Sony is bringing a big new feature to the PlayStation Portal: cloud streaming. When it first launched, the device was only able to stream games from your PS5 over Wi-Fi. But as part of a new system update that’s rolling out starting later today, you’ll be able to stream select PS5 games from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog to your PlayStation Portal.
Sony is launching the feature in beta, and you’ll need to be a PlayStation Plus Pr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Following ongoing reports that Amazon’s generative AI makeover of Alexa is not going well, it appears Amazon may take a more practical approach to making its smart assistant more useful. According to Business Insider, Amazon is partnering with several companies to make Alexa better at doing things you might want a digital assistant to do: including calling an Uber, tackling Ticketmaster for events, booking dinner through OpenTable, and handling GrubH

Illustration: The Verge Just one day after 404 Media revealed that HarperCollins struck a three-year AI training deal with an unnamed company, Bloomberg now says Microsoft will use the publisher’s content to train a not-yet-announced AI model.
HarperCollins said in a statement to 404 Media that its deal will include “select nonfiction backlist titles” and that authors will have to opt into the training program.One author, Daniel Kibblesmith, posted screenshots a few days ago sh

Image: Warner Bros. A Minecraft Movie has a new trailer giving us a taste at the kind of story moviegoers can expect. The trailer predominately features Jack Black as Steve, the silent protagonist players embody in Minecraft. In the trailer, Black’s Steve is way more chatty, giving us his backstory as a child who quite literally yearns for the mines. As an adult, Steve finds a special blue cube that transports him to the Minecraft world where, “anything you can imagine is possible.&r

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images for Netflix © 2024 Despite widespread issues with video quality and buffering, Netflix’s live-streamed Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match brought in an average of 108 million viewers, based on TVision data in the US and first-party data in global markets. With 65 million concurrent streams, Netflix says the fight was the “most-streamed global sporting event ever.”
Of those simultaneous streams, 38 million were from households in the US, an

Image: Aqara Aqara’s Smart Valve Controller T1 is now available, bringing an interoperable Matter-compatible valve controller option to the smart home for the first time. The $69.99 T1 connects to your water shutoff valve so you can operate it remotely or shut it off automatically when a leak is detected.The Aqara hub lets this T1 integrate with any of the major smart home platforms, unlike some pricier options from companies like Moen, Kohler, and Belkin. Right now, only Samsung and Home

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has given us a glimpse at what’s coming in the next major version of Android. The first preview release for Android 16 is available for developers starting today, which expands the photo library and medical data-sharing capabilities in apps. A change moving Android’s release timeline forward was announced last month, which could help third-party Android phones released in 2025 avoid waiting months to receive the latest major updates.
And

The original Steam Controller, and a prototype that preceded it. | Image: Sean Hollister / The Verge Two years ago, Valve told The Verge it wanted a successor to its cult classic Steam Controller, whose incredibly customizable buttons and touchpads paved the way for the Steam Deck handheld PC. Now, Valve watcher Brad Lynch claims a Steam Controller 2 — codename “Ibex” — is actually getting made.
His sources tell him the Steam Controller 2 is currently being tooled for mas

Illustration: The Verge Google Gemini can now “remember” certain things about you, such as your interests and personal preferences. The change is rolling out to subscribers with access to Gemini Advanced, and it will allow the AI chatbot to tailor its responses based on your needs, according to Gemini’s most recent release notes.
As noted by Google, you can share your interests, as well as details about your work, hobbies, or aspirations, while chatting with Gemini. You can als

Minecraft could soon be coming to a theme park near you. UK theme park company Merlin Entertainments has announced the completion of a $110 million deal with developer Mojang to open Minecraft-themed attractions in the US and the UK. The attractions are planned to open in 2026 and 2027 and will either be new additions to existing parks or a wholly new experience. The game seems well-suited for the theme park treatment with in-game activities like mine cart rides, fighting creepers, taking trips

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Bose has acquired the high-end audio brand McIntosh — a move that Bose says will “significantly” expand its product lineup. The acquisition, which also includes McIntosh subsidiary Sonus faber, also “opens new opportunities in the automotive sector,” as both companies plan to work together to expand their in-car audio offerings:
By leveraging Bose’s 40-plus years of experience in automotive audio, and McIntosh Group’s leg

Image: Netflix Netflix is releasing a documentary next month about Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan called Biggest Heist Ever — and the company’s timing couldn’t be better, as Lichtenstein and Morgan, a married couple, were both recently sentenced to prison for laundering stolen Bitcoin that would now be worth more than $11 billion.
Based on a trailer for the documentary, Biggest Heist Ever seems like it could be fascinating and

For the past few months, Meta has been sending recipes to a Dutch scaleup called VSParticle (VSP). These are not food recipes — they’re AI-generated instructions for how to make new nanoporous materials that could potentially supercharge the green transition.  VSP has so far taken 525 of these recipes and synthesised them into nanomaterials called electrocatalysts. Meta’s algorithms predicted these electrocatalysts would be ideal for breaking down CO2 into useful products

British automaker Jaguar is changing its branding for “a new era” as it prepares to fulfill its plan to go all-electric for its lineup, with the first new model slated to launch in 2026. The automaker has revealed a new logo that changes the font, spaces out the letters, and uses lowercase letters on everything except for the G and U.
“This is a reimagining that recaptures the essence of Jaguar, returning it to the values that once made it so loved, but making it relevant for

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Google is tightening its rules against “parasite SEO” content, or articles and pages that often have little to do with the site’s focus but that exploit the website’s Google ranking.An example of parasite SEO content is a news blog that publishes online shopping coupon codes in a hidden part of its website or an educational site publishing unrelated affiliate marketing content. In March, Google announced it would crack down o

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Image Brazil and the United Nations launched a new international effort to combat disinformation on climate change. They announced the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change during the G20 Leaders’ Summit taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
It’s a collaboration between governments and international organizations to boost research on misinformation swirling online and around the globe that they fear could slow action o

Nanoleaf’s smart ceiling lights are exceptionally bright and deliver some cool lighting effects perfect for setting the mood. | Image: Nanoleaf If you want to brighten up your home as the days get darker, Nanoleaf’s ceiling lights will bring a bit of the sun in. Normally $249.99, right now you can buy the three-pack Nanoleaf Skylight Smarter Kit at an all-time low price of $199.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from Nanoleaf.Nanoleaf designed the full-color LED ceiling lights so t

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is creating a new companions experience for the Windows 11 taskbar that will surface important data with just a click. Microsoft 365 Companions will include contacts and people, files, or calendar appointments integrated into the taskbar of Windows 11.
“We will bring Microsoft 365 People, Files, and Calendar to your taskbar so your Graph data is just a click away,” said Windows chief Pavan Davuluri on stage at Microsoft Ignite 2024 today.
Microsoft hasn&rsq

Image: Sony Sony announced its new A1 II pro-focused mirrorless camera during today’s livestream from its Creative Space event in New York City. The camera has various speed and performance improvements over its predecessor, plus a fast new zoom lens to accompany it.
The $6,499 A1 II sports a 50.1-megapixel full-frame stacked sensor that’s capable of shooting full-resolution RAW photos at 30 frames per second and up to 8K video at 30p (as well as 4K video at 120p). That’s not v

Illustration: The Verge Right now, text highlighting is broken for anyone using recent Chromium-based browsers on some websites. The cause appears to be a change to selection styling that doesn’t play nicely with Tailwind CSS. We’ve noticed it on our site, and so have several people posting about the issue in threads on Github and Chromium.
For affected sites, you may still be able to select, copy, and paste text on websites but there’s no visual indicator that you did so. Or y

Image: Amazon Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers can now get one free audiobook per month — similar to the freebie Spotify started tossing Premium listeners last year. The perk is available to Music Unlimited subscribers in the US, Canada, and the UK, offering access to Audible’s library of more than 1 million audiobooks.
Amazon says individual subscribers and the primary account holder for family plans “can listen to one audiobook at a time — of any length — per mo

Control. | Image: Remedy Entertainment We already knew that the supernatural thriller Control was getting a sequel, but now Remedy has provided some more details on the game. Well, one major detail: Control 2 will be an action RPG, seemingly deviating from the action-adventure template set by the original.
The news came during an investors presentation, in which the studio revealed a few other tidbits about its franchises: Alan Wake 2 has sold over 1.8 million copies, the “ultimate edition

Image by: The Verge; Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images for Netflix The Paul / Tyson fight on Friday was very popular. Netflix streamed it into more than 60 million households, which is a huge number for any TV event, much less a streaming-only one. Whether the whole thing went well, though, is another matter. The fight itself wasn’t very exciting, and for a large portion of the audience it wouldn’t have mattered if it was — all they could see was laggy, pixelated nothingness. Netf

The update will first come to the Galaxy Watch 6 before arriving on previous Wear OS models. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge There’s good news if you’ve got an older Samsung Galaxy Watch: the company announced today that it’s finally begun rolling out One UI 6 Watch to its older Wear OS smartwatches.One UI 6 Watch is Samsung’s take on Wear OS 5, and brings with it a host of new features. On the health and fitness front, that includes AI-powered health tips,

Image: Nuro In the wake of pivoting its business strategy to include robotaxis and driver assist, Nuro is taking its fully autonomous vehicles to new geographic areas.
The California-based company, which currently operates a small fleet of driverless vehicles in California and Texas, said it would grow its operational design domain and expand the deployment of its zero-occupant, Level 4 vehicles.In Mountain View and Palo Alto, Nuro says it will see an 83 percent increase in the deployment area,

Image: Google Google is introducing a new feature to Google Lens that aims to give users more information about products when they’re shopping in physical stores. Starting today for Android and iOS users in the US, using the Google app to snap a picture of an item on store shelves will bring up detailed information about the product, customer reviews, stock and price comparisons for online and nearby retailers, and similar products that are available in the same store.
Google says the feat

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge There are all kinds of reasons you might want to record what’s happening on your Android screen, from capturing your gaming exploits to trying to explain to a family member how to fix a problem they’re having with their favorite app.
And when you do need this function, you’ll find it built right into Android (as it is on iOS). Since Android 11 launched in 2020, you haven’t needed a third-party app for the job — though you can

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is planning to launch a new purpose-built miniature PC for its Windows 365 cloud service next year. Windows 365 Link is a $349 device that acts like a thin client PC to connect to the cloud and stream a version of Windows 11.
The Link device is designed to be a compact, fanless, and easy to use cloud PC for your local monitors and peripherals. It’s meant to be the ideal companion to Microsoft’s Windows 365 service, which lets businesses transition employees

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The CrowdStrike catastrophe that took down 8.5 million Windows PCs and servers in July has left many of Microsoft’s biggest customers looking for answers to make sure that such an event never happens again. Now, Microsoft has some answers in the form of a new Windows Resiliency Initiative that’s designed to improve Windows security and reliability.
The Windows Resiliency Initiative includes core changes to Windows that will make it easier for M

The Verge At Microsoft’s Ignite conference today the software giant is introducing Copilot Actions, a new way for Microsoft 365 Copilot users to automate repetitive tasks. Microsoft is also adding AI agents to SharePoint, allowing PowerPoint to translate entire presentations, and improving how Copilot works in Outlook to find the best time for meetings.
Copilot Actions, now in private preview, enables anyone to automate repetitive everyday tasks. That could include automating a summary of

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft Teams meetings are getting a new interpreter feature that lets each participant speak or listen in the language of their choosing. Interpreter in Teams uses real-time AI-powered speech-to-speech translation to simulate your speaking voice during meetings.
A preview will be available in early 2025 that will include up to nine languages, and the ability for the interpreter feature to simulate your personal voice in a different language.
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