Uber Chopper is a total marketing gimmick that happens to be stupid fun

For the second year in a row, Uber is offering tech bros with money to burn an opportunity to transcend the crowds and headaches of CES by booking a helicopter ride through the app. Let’s be clear: this is not a legitimate way to get from point A to point B. But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t the most fun I had this week, and that’s coming from a guy who’s not the biggest fan of heights.The price is $100 per person, give or take surge pricing
From January 4-8, peopl

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Waymo is issuing a voluntary software recall after one of its driverless vehicles collided with a telephone pole in Phoenix, Arizona, last month, the company said. The vehicle was damaged, but no passengers or bystanders were hurt in the incident.The company is filing the recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) after completing a software update to 672 vehicles — the total number of driverless-capable vehicles in Waymo’

The Jabra Elite 10 gen 2 wireless earbuds (pictured) will still be available, serving as a final farewell to the Elite lineup. | Image: Jabra Immediately after introducing upgraded versions of its Elite 10 and Elite 8 Active earbuds, Jabra says it’s departing the consumer earbuds market entirely. Jabra’s parent company GN announced that it’s winding down its Elite and Talk audio product ranges in order to “increase focus and resources on more attractive parts” of it

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge Elon Musk had a sexual relationship with a former SpaceX intern, who he later hired onto his executive team, according to The Wall Street Journal. He also had a sexual relationship with a second employee. And a third woman alleged that Musk asked her several times to have his children; she refused. He then denied her a raise and complained about her performance.
One of the women who Musk had a sexual relationship also drew the ire of SpaceX President Gwynne Shotw

An eighth of a cup of Elmer’s, to be precise. | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images You may remember we all had a fun little laugh at Google’s AI search results telling us to put glue in our pizza. Internet legend Katie Notopoulos made and ate a glue pizza. A good time was had by all! Except, whoopsie, Google’s AI is training on our good time.
I will grant the query “how much glue to add to pizza” is an unusual one — but not that unusual given t

The sky, as observed from Zeytinburnu, Istanbul, Turkiye on May 25, 2024. | Photo: Getty Images A major environmental group is reportedly set to funnel millions of dollars into research on solar geoengineering, a proposed fix for climate change that has garnered skepticism and even fears about unintended consequences.Solar geoengineering encompasses a range of tactics to cool the planet down by reflecting sunlight, perhaps by artificially brightening clouds or thrusting reflective particles into

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk has dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing the company of a breach of contract and allegedly abandoning its mission of creating AI technology to benefit humanity. As reported earlier by CNBC, the case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning Musk can file it again.
Musk’s decision to withdraw the lawsuit, filed in a California state court in February, comes just one day before a scheduled hearing where

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Following weeks of discussions, Paramount’s potential merger deal with Skydance has fallen apart, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. In a statement on Tuesday, Paramount’s parent company, National Amusements, said the companies couldn’t “reach mutually acceptable terms” for its deal with Skydance Media.
One possible issue may have been Skydance’s decision not to include legal protection that would shield Nat

With Apple Intelligence features coming to older MacBooks, you shouldn’t feel the need to wait for Apple’s M4 chips. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It’s not surprising that the M3 MacBook Air’s value is strengthening the longer it’s been out, but the laptop is becoming increasingly hard to overlook when compared to the 13-inch M2 model — especially since you can get a 13-inch MacBook Air with an M3 chip for only $70 more than the current sale price of the

This is probably how the fool would look thinking they’re getting away with a steal. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is now testing Android 15’s automatic theft detection features announced at the I/O developer conference in May. The company tapped Brazil to play host for the initial testing grounds on account of local feedback from users in the country, which is an apparent hotbed for smartphone snatching. You can sign up to try the feature right now if you happen t

The URSA Cine Immersive might be what the Vision Pro needs. | Image: Blackmagic Design Blackmagic announced a new camera yesterday that it says is part of a new Vision Pro-specific workflow that involves its DaVinci Resolve software. Called the URSA Cine Immersive, Blackmagic says this camera, that’s built on its URSA Cine platform, will let cinematographers shoot 90fps video in stereoscopic 3D video for the Vision Pro.That and updates in the DaVinci Resolve video editing software will let

Image: Voodoo BeReal, the app known for its fleeting photo sharing window, has been acquired. On Tuesday, the French app developer Voodoo announced that it purchased the company for €500 million (about $537.23 million).
Launched by French developers Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau in 2020, BeReal started gaining traction in 2022 when more users started partaking in the random, once-per-day opportunity to share photos with friends. But the hype surrounding BeReal quickly died down.

Image: Best Buy Best Buy carried out another round of layoffs and job restructurings last week, with the company cutting some of its sales staff and reducing the pay for others, according to current and former employees who spoke with The Verge. Multiple people said their new pay will be much lower due to the changes.
The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers’ homes to help identify products that would work in their space.

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Online shopping changed how we buy things — and social media platforms are reshaping shopping again. TikTok Shop, the company’s in-app shopping feature, is quickly becoming a key retailer for the beauty industry, according to a report by Dash Hudson and NielsenIQ.
TikTok Shop is now the ninth-largest online beauty and wellness retailer in the US and the second-largest in the UK, the report found. TikTok Shop’s footprint in the industry h

Image: Flow Computing Flow Computing is making a tough to believe claim: it says it can 100x the performance of any CPU by shifting work to a special parallel processing unit (PPU) inside or outside the chip. And, it claims, it can double the performance of any existing computing code overnight, even if programmers don’t lift a finger to optimize for its new tech. The PPU could even fit into phones and watches, it says, dramatically improving their performance and battery life by offloadin

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is finally rolling out the ability for creators to test and compare how multiple video thumbnails perform, the company announced on Tuesday. The feature was first announced last June, but at the time, it was only available to a few hundred creators.With the new tool, which YouTube calls “Thumbnail Test & Compare,” creators can test up to three thumbnails for a video. “YouTube will show your chosen thumbnails evenly across your

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images X is rolling out private likes as soon as today, according to a source at the company. That means what users like on the platform will be hidden by default, which is already an option for X’s Premium subscribers.
A few weeks ago, the company’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, said the change is meant to protect users’ public image — because “many people feel discouraged” to like “edgy” c

The Apple HomePod will soon support SharePlay with Apple Music. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple’s SharePlay is expanding to include speakers in your home. Soon, the HomePod, HomePod Mini, Apple TV, and any Bluetooth speaker will work with SharePlay and Apple Music, meaning you can share control of the music in your home with friends and family. Apple’s music service is also getting Music Haptics to allow those with hearing difficulties to experience music on iPhone. Both new

Image: Cruise General Motors is investing $850 million into Cruise to help cover the company’s operational costs after it was forced to shut down its robotaxi service when one of its driverless cars struck a pedestrian.
GM chief financial officer Paul Jacobson announced the investment onstage at Deutsche Bank’s Global Auto Industry Conference in New York City today. The money would be used to cover Cruise’s operational costs as it slowly resumes testing its autonomous vehicles

We know from reports earlier this year that VC investment is once more on the rise for European startups. And the wave of optimism seems to be continuing — at least for the continent’s deep tech sector.  Munich’s Vsquared Ventures today announced the closing of a new €214mn fund for early-stage investment in deep tech startups. It is reportedly the largest ever early-stage fund for the sector in Europe. The VC firm will divide its second fund between 25 deep tech com

The newer second-gen Backbone One looks much like the original (pictured here). | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Apple talked about big-budget games coming to the iPhone at its recent WWDC 2024 keynote, but if you choose to play upcoming titles like Resident Evil 7 on your phone, you might want something better than touch controls — something much better. Thankfully, the second-gen Backbone One controller is currently discounted to $79.99 during Backbone’s Father’s Day s

This article features an interview with Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga, who is speaking at TNW Conference on June 21. Check out the full event schedule here. Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga has reason to celebrate. His company recently became the first “pre-loved” clothing platform to make a profit after a monumental 61% surge in sales. It’s now firmly established as Europe’s largest online marketplace for second-hand fashion. The results represent a remarkable turnaround. When

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge Late last year, seven automakers — BMW, Honda, General Motors, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis — announced plans for a joint venture to build easy-to-access public DC fast charging infrastructure in the US and Canada.The resulting company, Ionna, announced today that its headquarters will be in Durham, North Carolina and feature what the company is calling a “Quarterback Lab,” designed to help each participating car company addr