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Wireless Bluetooth speakers have become ubiquitous, indispensable gadgets. Everyone’s got one somewhere, and the use cases vary from person to person. Maybe you use your speaker around the house or as a shower soundtrack. Maybe you bring it along to the park or beach. And then there are those people who take a portable speaker practically everywhere they go — sharing their music from a bike or backpack with everyone nearby. I know a lot of people who have old Bluetooth speakers kicking around, and if the one you’ve got is still working for you, there’s no immediate need to upgrade to something newer. But Bluetooth speakers have gotten very good in recent years. Sound quality continues to improve, battery life is stretching to new records, and they’re more robust and durable than ever before. I’m The Verge’s resident audio gear reviewer, and I’ve spent dozens of hours testing our picks below in various scenarios. I’ve listened to them at home, outdoors, in hotels — and yes, in the bathroom. Each product is easy to recommend for different reasons.If you’re shopping around for a new speaker, start off by considering what size you want. For this guide, I’m mostly sticking to portable Bluetooth speakers and excluding anything that’s impractical to take on the go. From there, you need to weigh other criteria like audio quality, ease of use, durability, and bonus features like speakerphone functionality. Some speakers let you stereo pair two of them together, and several companies include “party mode” capabilities that let you link many speakers together. If you don’t really care about any of that, you can get a tiny Bluetooth speaker for as little as $25. But all of the picks here go a little further in terms of features and style.The best portable Bluetooth speakers of 2023Bose’s SoundLink Flex is more rugged and durable than it looks. Photo by Chris Welch / The VergeBest Bluetooth speaker under $200Weight: 1.3 pounds / Battery life: 12 hours / Water resistance: IP67 / Can you stereo pair two?: Yes / Speakerphone: Yes / Charging port: USB-C$150Bose’s newest Bluetooth speaker, the SoundLink Flex, offers pristine, detailed sound qu
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Disney and Lucasfilm have been tight-lipped about what exactly Jon Watts’ upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which stars Jude Law, is about, but we now know at least two of the directors who will be helming the series.Apropos of recent reports from The Hollywood Reporter that Everything Everywhere All at Once co-directing duo the Daniels were in talks to work on an unspecified Star Wars project, Daniel Kwan took to his Instagram page this week to clear up the speculation by announcing that he and Daniel Scheinert are slated to direct an episode from Skeleton Crew’s first season. In his post, Kwan assured fans any rumors of them “getting sucked up by the ‘corporate machine’” were wholly out of pocket and explained that their decision to sign on to work a Star Wars gig was informed by, among other things, a need for healthcare.“Jon Watts approached us to do an episode a while [sic] ago (before EEAAO even came out),” Kwan wrote. “We love Jon, love Star Wars, love learni
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It’s hard to beat the tactility, durability, or good looks of a mechanical keyboard, but if you’re looking for one, it can be hard to know where to start. Here are our top picks, including both wired and wireless models ranging from compact keyboards with laptop-style layouts to full-size keyboards complete with numpads — from budget to… not so budget.A brief introduction to key keyboard termsSwitches — the component that registers each keypress. Available in many different varieties, which roughly break down into three categories:Clicky switches — these make a big audible “click” sound when you press them. The most famous example is the Cherry MX Blue switch, so these are sometimes referred to as Blue switches. Often recommended as the best switch for typists but have the disadvantage of being the loudest switch type.Tactile switches — also known as Brown switches after Cherry MX Brown, these switches have a small bump you can feel as you press them. A nice halfway house.Linear switches — aka Red switches, Linear switches have no bump or click. They just feel completely smooth. Generally recommended as a gaming switch.Hot-swappable switches — switches that can be removed with a simple pulling tool without desoldering. Ideal if you want to change a keyboard’s feel without replacing the whole thing.QMK — an open-source keyboard firmware that’s powerful and customizable but a little unintuitive for beginners.VIA — a slickly designed app to configure keyboards running QMK firmware.Keycap profile — describes the shape of a set of keycaps. Cherry is a popular option that looks very traditional. Other options include MT3, DCX, and MDA. Here’s a handy site that compares the popular designs.North-facing switches — when a keyboard’s switches are oriented with the LED cutout toward the back, which better illuminates shine-through legends.South-facing switches — when a keyboard’s switches have the LED cutout at the front to avoid interference with Cherry-profile keycaps. While there’s nothing wrong with more typical membrane keyboards like Apple’s popular Magic-branded devices, many prefer mechanical keyboards for their more tactile typing feel and superior durability. There’s also a sizable enthusiast community of people who like to modify and customize them to get their look and feel just right, which means they can be a fun hobby as well as a simple PC accessory.For this list, we limited our recommendations to readily available, fully-assembled keyboards. That rules out any that you need to assemble yourself or which are only available in group buys or limited-edition runs. With one exception, we prioritized keyboards that offer hot-swappable switches so you can easily replace them if they break or you just fancy a change. We tested each keyboard’s typing feel and sound (obviously), the quality of its chassis, keycaps, and stabilizers, how customizable the keymapping and lighting were, and the ability to use it across Mac and Windows computers (such as by offering keycap legends for either OS or being able to easily swap layouts with a switch or shortcut). We also noted whether switches are north- or south-facing since this impacts backlighting and keycap compatibility. Most of the keyboards below use a 75 percent layout, which is a compact form factor that maintains a function row and arrow key cluster, like most laptop keyboards. It’s the best place to start unless you really want an attached number pad or know you prefer a different layout. Nearly all of our recommendations also come in other layouts, which we’ve linked where possible. Finally, while any keyboard can be used for gaming, this guide focuses on the best keyboards for typing and general office work, so input latency and responsiveness weren’t major deciding factors. If you’re after a keyboard specifically for gaming, then stay tuned for our upcoming dedicated guide. The Keychron V1 is the best mechanical keyboard for most people. This is the volume knob-equipped model. Image: Jon Porter / The VergeThe best wired keyboard for most peopleKeychron V1The Keychron V1 is the best entry-level wired keyboard. Starting at just $84 for a fully assembled model, it’s one of the more affordable options on this list, but it feels almost as nice to type on as keyboards that cost twice as much, and its build quality is lovely and sturdy. It also sounds amazing, with no discernible stabilizer rattle, and its 75 percent layout offers a nice mix of compactness without sacrificing too many important keys. $94The Keychron V1 has many of the features of the more expensive Q-series at a much cheaper price.For such a low price, the V1 is packed with features usually found on enthusiast keyboards. It offers hot-swappable switches with south-facing RGB backlighting, and its switches and stabilizers feel nice and smooth. It’s fully programmable: you can remap every key using the intuitive and powerful VIA software on top of QMK — which works on Windows, Mac, and Linux and lets you do everything from moving keys around to programming macros directly into the keyboard itself. The V1 comes with durable double-shot PBT keycaps, with both Mac and Windows legends, and a switch on the back of the keyboard lets you toggle between layouts instantly. You can get it with a volume knob for an extra $10 (pictured) or save $20 and buy a bare-bones version without keycaps or switches. Our sample came with Keychron’s own tactile K Pro Brown switches, but there are also clicky and linear options.If you like the design of the V1 but don’t like its layout, Keychron has over half a dozen other models in the V-series range. There’s the more compact V2 (which has a 65 percent layout that omits the dedicated function row), the even more compact V4 (with a 60 percent design that omits the arrow keys entirely), and larger keyboards like the tenkeyless V3, full-size V6, or Alice-layout V10. Keychron’s Q1 Pro (pictured) is a wireless version of the already-excellent Q1. Image: Jon Porter / The VergeThe best premium Bluetooth keyboardKeychron Q1 ProThe Keychron Q1 Pro is an excellent pick for anyone who’s prepared to spend more for wireless connectivity and a more premium typing feel. Like the non-Pro Keychron Q1, it has a sturdy aluminum construction, built-in volume dial, excellent typing feel, and is fully customizable. But it also includes Bluetooth to connect it to your laptop, phone, or tablet.$199The Keychron Q1 Pro is a great premium keyboard, with a full aluminum chassis, gasket-mounted plate, and the flexibility of Bluetooth in addition to the hotswap switches and VIA compatibility of the more affordable V-series.That not only makes it a great step up from Keychron’s V-series keyboards but also we think the Q1 Pro is worth picking over the wired Keychron Q1. That’s because it offers everything the wired Q1 has plus the flexibility of Bluetooth for a relatively small $20 price premium. But if you don’t need wireless and you’re happy with a “good” rather than “great” typing feel, then many of the Q1 Pro’s most compelling features, like VIA programming, hot-swappability, and per-key south-facing RGB backlighting, are also available on V-series boards. Use the keyboard wirelessly, with its RGB lighting disabled, and the Q1 Pro can happily go for over a month without needing to be recharged. But turn on its backlighting, and that battery life drops to around a week. The reliability of the Bluetooth connection was flawless in my testing — I didn’t experience any dropouts during a month of use.The Q1 Pro’s full aluminum case and gasket-mounted design make it feel much more substantial than the plastic keyboards I’ve tested. By effectively suspending its polycarbonate switch plate and PCB between gaskets, the keyboard has a substantial amount of flex to it. That might not sound like much, but it gives the Q1 Pro a much more satisfying typing sound compared to what are known as tray-mounted keyboards like the Keychron V-series. Replacement switch plates are also available in different materials if you want to further customi
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Jabra’s new entry-level Elite 4 earbuds offer active noise cancellation, but they still come at a budget-friendly price tag. For $99.99, the buds promise 5.5 hours of listening time with ANC switched on or 22 hours with the case.The Elite 4 offer a handful of upgrades over their $79.99 Elite 3 predecessors, which made our list of the best wireless earbuds. In his review of the buds, my colleague Chris Welch said the Elite 3 offer “good sound for the price” and a comfortable fit but noted two major drawbacks: the lack of ANC and multipoint.Fortunately, Jabra has addressed both of these weaknesses with the Elite 4. In addition to ANC, the Elite 4 now come with Bluetooth multipoint, allowing them to connect to multiple devices at the same time, making it easier to switch between your phone, laptop, or another device as your audio source. The company also added support for Microsoft Swift Pair for faster pairing between the buds and a Windows PC, in addition to the Google Fast Pair feature the Elite 3 already offered.The Elite 4 earbuds look very similar to their Elite 3 counterparts. Image: JabraAside from those new features, not much else has changed between the two generations. The Elite 4 earbuds come with the same 6mm speakers as the Elite 3 and also features the same amount of battery life without ANC: seven hours by themselves and 28 hours with the case. They also share the same four-microphone setup, along with an IP55 rating for limited protection from dust and water. The Elite 4 aren’t to be confused with the Elite 4 Active, which Jabra released last year. The Elite 4 Active cost slightly more at $119.99 and come with similar specs, save for a higher IP57 rating and better battery life with ANC switched on. Unlike the standard Elite 4, however, they do lack multipoint connectivity.The Jabra Elite 4 come in four colors: gray, navy, lilac, and beige and are available for purchase on Jabra’s website. Although these buds might not come with the high-end audio specs as, say, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro or Apple’s AirPods Pro, you really can’t go wrong with a $99 price tag for a pair of earbuds offering both ANC and multipoint.
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EA plans to delist Battlefield 1943, Battlefield: Bad Company, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Mirror’s Edge from digital stores on April 28th, the company announced on Tuesday. The delistings are happening ahead of online services shutting down for the games on December 8th.Offline features for Bad Company, Bad Company 2, and Mirror’s Edge will still work after December 8th, EA says, so if you own those titles, you’ll still be able to play through their single-player campaigns. But it’s frustrating that the games are being removed from digital storefronts entirely even though parts wi
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TikTok is rolling out a charm offensive ahead of Thursday’s congressional hearing, putting CEO Shou Zi Chew in users’ feeds to warn them about a looming ban. Chew posted a minute-long video to the ByteDance subsidiary’s official TikTok account, rallying users to defend the app.Chew’s video outlines points he’ll probably hit in his House Energy and Commerce Committee testimony later this week, where legislators will question whether the app’s Chinese ownership makes it untrustworthy. That includes the news that TikTok now has 150 million American users — something news outlets rec
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Ford’s third-ever all-electric vehicle is a Europe-only crossover SUV with one of the automaker’s most popular nameplates. The Explorer EV will also be the first in a wave of new plug-in vehicles for the automaker’s overseas lineup, as it works toward an electric-only portfolio in Europe by 2030. The Explorer EV may carry a familiar nameplate, but it will be built on top of an unfamiliar platform — for Ford, at least. The automaker is using Volkswagen’s flexible MEB architecture for the new EV, which will be built at Ford’s factory in Cologne, Germany. The Explorer EV will be the first of two vehicles from Ford that will utilize VW’s electric platform as part of an agreement that was established when the two companies formed a global alliance in 2019.The Explorer EV may carry a familiar nameplate, but it will be built on top of an unfamiliar platformFord said it won’t release the vehicle’s range until it’s closer to production, but it did reveal details about its pricing. The Explorer EV will be available in two trims — Explorer and Explorer Premium — with starting pricing “less than €45,000” (or about $48,250). Reservations are open now through Ford’s European website. The most noticeable feature in the new electric Explorer is a moveable 15-inch center touchscreen that the company says should be better for dealing with outside glare. The screen, which can move up and down, also conceals a built-in lockable storage space for valuables. Here’s a GIF of the movable screen: The Ford Explorer EV is significant because it’s only the third all-electric vehicle to be announced by the iconic American automaker. (I’m not counting the Ford Focus Electric and some of the company’s compliance vehicles, for what it’s worth.) The company’s current EV lineup includes the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, which have propelled Ford to its status as the No. 2 seller of electric vehicles in the US. Still, the company has a ways to go if it wants to catch up to the No. 1 seller, Tesla, and the European market will play a big role in that. It also needs to get a better handle on a number of quality issues that have plagued its EV push. Ford recently recalled over a dozen F-150 Lightnings over concerns about a battery problem. In 2022, Ford issued more recalls in America than any other automaker.Ford’s plans for Europe are ambitiou
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A former security policy manager at Meta had her phone wiretapped and hacked by Greece’s national intelligence agency, according to a report from The New York Times. Artemis Seaford, who worked for Meta while partly living in Greece, was reportedly surveilled with the help of spyware called Predator.Seaford worked for Meta from 2020 to 2022, where she addressed cybersecurity policy issues and often spoke with Greek and other European political officials. As noted by the Times, she first became aware that she may have been hacked when she saw her name included on a leaked list of spyware targets in November 2022. Cybersecurity researchers at Citizen Lab later confirmed that her phone had been infected with Predator in September 2021 for “at least two months.” The Times reports Seaford was also a victim of a yearlong wiretap.Predator is developed by a company based in North Macedonia called Cytrox. Like the infamous Pegasus spyware, Predator can monitor text messages, calls, photos, and videos on a target’s phone. However, as noted by a Times report from last year, Predator infects a victim’s phone when they click a link, while Pegasus can infect someone’s device just by calling it. Predator has been found to target government dissidents and journalists in the past.In 2021, Meta notified around 50,000 Facebook and Instagram users that their accounts were getting spied on by “surveillance-for-hire” companies around the world. At the time, Meta’s cyber security report indicated that the company removed 300 accounts with links to Cytrox, although it’s unclear whether Seaford’s case is related. Meta didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.In addition to Predator spyware on her phone, people with knowledge of the situation tell the Times that Seaford had been wiretapped by Greek national intelligence in August — just one month before her phone got infected — a potential explanation for the method in which her phone was hacked. The spyware made its way onto Seaford’s phone after she scheduled an appointment to receive a covid booster shot through the Greek government’s web portal, according to the Times. Several hours after she made the appointment, she received a text message that asked for confirmation by clicking the included link. This link, the Times states, was the one that infected Seaford’s device. “The details for the vaccination appointment in the infected text message were correct, indicating that someone had reviewed the authentic earlier confirmation and drafted the infected message accordingly,” the Times says. “The sender also appeared to be the state vaccine agency, while the infected URL mimicked that of the vaccination platform.”It’s still not clear why Seaford became a target of Greece intelligence, and it seems she’s not entirely sure, either. “In my case, I do not know why I was targeted, but I cannot see any reasonable national security concerns behind it,” Seaford tells the Times. Seaford has since filed a lawsuit in Athens against the unknown individuals responsible for the attack. She also requested that the Greek Authority for the Protection of the Pri
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“Bard is a complement to search.” That’s how Google describes the relationship between Bard, the new chatbot entering into beta testing today, and its monolithic search engine. The way the company sees it, Bard is less a tool for finding information and more a way to automatically generate ideas and emails. And poems. And poem-emails. You want answers to search queries? That’s what Google search is for. There’s even a “Google It” button at the bottom of most Bard responses.But the thing about Bard — and really the thing about every chatbot including ChatGPT and the new Bing — is that Google doesn’t actually get to choose how you use it. People have spent the last few months using ChatGPT to replace a search engine... and wondering what it might do to Google’s bottom line. Even Google’s competitors see chatbots as search engines: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he launched the Bing chatbot to bring the fight to Google. “I want people to know that we made them dance,” he said.All Bard is, from a user experience perspective, is a text box. And what has Google spent two-plus decades training us to do with a text box? Type search queries. Meanwhile, Google has also spent the last few years rebranding itself as “helpful,” using Google Assistant to much more directly answer user questions and adding more information to the results page so you never need to click away.Bard is a search engine — and an extremely on-brand Google one. Whether or not Google wants to admit it, it’s currently launching the future of search.The way Google talks about Bard right now seems to be, reasonably enough, based on what Bard can actually do. “In our initial testing, we found that people are delighted to use it for use cases like planning their neighborhood block party,” says Sissie Hsiao, a VP of product at Google and one of the Bard leads. For now at least, she called Bard a “creative collaborator” and didn’t seem bothered when Bard got a newsy query wrong. “There’s Google search for that, right?” The way she sees it, “Bard is really here to help people boost their imagination and their productivity.” Brainstorming and planning are the kinds of things Google thinks Bard is already useful for. Image: GoogleThat’s all well and good, but Bard is a general purpose chatbot: a blank text box into which people can type their questions and hopes and weird fantasies and get instantaneous feedback and responses. Even the text box itself invites exploration — all it says is “enter a prompt here.” Google has put some rails on the experience, trying to narrow Bard’s scope to only the things it does well. It refused to tell us how to make mustard gas, for instance, with one draft gently saying no and another angrily admonishing us for even trying. Google’s limiting the back-and-forths in a conversation — Eli Collins, a VP at Google Research and another of the Bard leads, wouldn’t say how many turns you can take exactly, except that it’s a single-digit number — in order to keep things from spiraling out of control. Google has been testing Bard-like products for a long time, too. But if we’ve learned
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Last week, we learned — from Bloomberg — that Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy tens of thousands of Nvidia A100 graphics chips so that partner OpenAI could train the large language models (LLMs) behind Bing’s AI chatbot and ChatGPT. Don’t have access to all that capital or space for all that hardware for your own LLM project? Nvidia’s DGX Cloud is an attempt to sell remote web access to the very same thing. Announced today at the company’s 2023 GPU Technology Conference, the service rents virtual versions of its DGX Server boxes, each containing eight Nvidia H100 or A100 GPUs and 640GB of memory. The service includes interconnects that scale up to the neighb
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This special episode of Decoder dives deep into Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster, and how a handful of policy changes in the 1980s led to one firm so thoroughly dominating the live events business in the Un
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Despite a number of recent controversies, from unpopular monetization changes to rampant ads to high-profile creators leaving for YouTube, Twitch thinks now is the best time to be on the platform.“I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to start streaming on Twitch,” said Twitch chief product officer Tom Verrilli. In January, Twitch shared a lengthy blog highlighting some of the changes it’s making and tools it’s bringing to the platform to invest in streamers. As platforms compete for new users, ad dollars, and talent, streamers have more options for where to go than they ever have before. The Verge spoke with Verrilli and chief monetization officer Mike Minton about what
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Adobe has unveiled Adobe Express for Enterprise, a new version of the Adobe Express cloud-based design platform that’s meant to make content creation more accessible for those without professional d
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Today, Google is opening up limited access to Bard, its ChatGPT rival, a major step in the company’s attempt to reclaim what many see as lost ground in a new race to deploy AI. Bard will be initially available to select users in the US and UK, with users able to join a waitlist at bard.google.com, though Google says the roll-out will be slow and has offered no date for full public access. Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, Bard offers users a blank text box and an invitation to ask questions about any topic they like. However, given the well-documented tendency of these bots to invent information, Google is stressing that Bard is not a replacement for its search engine but, rather, a “complement to search” — a bot that users can bounce ideas off of, generate writing drafts, or just chat about life with. In a blog post written by two of the project’s leads, Sissie Hsiao and Eli Collins, they describe Bard in cautious terms as “an early experiment ... intended to help people boost their productivity, accelerate their ideas, and fuel their curiosity.” They also characterize Bard as a product that lets users “collaborate with generative AI” (emphasis ours), language that also seems intended to diffuse Google’s responsibility for future outbursts.Bard is going to be much more useful for general queries than factual searches. Image: GoogleIn a demo for The Verge, Bard was able to quickly and fluidly answer a number of general queries, offering anodyne advice on how to encourage a child to take up bowling (“take them to a bowling alley”) and recommending a list of popular heist movies (including The Italian Job, The Score, and Heist). Bard generates three responses to each user query, though the variation in their content is minimal, and underneath each reply is a prominent “Google It” button that redirects users to a related Google search.Bard’s interface is festooned with disclaimers to treat its replies with cautionAs with ChatGPT and Bing, there’s also a prominent disclaimer underneath the main text box warning users that “Bard may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn’t represent Google
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Adobe is finally launching its own AI image generator. The company is announcing a “family of creative generative AI models” today called Adobe Firefly and releasing the first two tools that take advantage of them. One of the tools works like DALL-E or Midjourney, allowing users to type in a prompt and have an image created in return. The other generates stylized text, kind of like an AI-powered WordArt.This is a big launch for Adobe. The company sits at the center of the creative app ecosystem, and over much of the past year, it’s stayed on the sidelines while newcomers to the creative space began to offer powerful tools for creating images, videos, and sound for next to nothing. At launch, Adobe is calling Firefly a beta, and it’ll only be available through a website. But eventually, Adobe plans to tightly integrate generative AI tools with its suite of creative apps, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere.“We’re not afraid of change, and we’re embracing this change,” says Alexandru Costin, VP of generative AI and Sensei at Adobe. “We’re bringing these capabilities right into [our] products so [customers] don’t need to know if it’s generative or not.”“We can generate high quality content and not random brands’ and others’ IP”Adobe is putting
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Microsoft is building a cryptocurrency wallet for its Edge browser even as the crypto markets struggle. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the software giant has been testing the Microsoft Edge built-in crypto wallet internally in recent months, with plans to eventually ship it to consumers. It’s just the latest feature coming to Microsoft’s increasingly bloated Edge browser.Screenshots of the crypto wallet leaked online last week thanks to Twitter user Albacore, who regularly documents unreleased features in Windows. Microsoft’s description of the crypto wallet says it has “simplified experiences that make Web3 easier to interact with” and that it has “integrated security features to protect you from unsecure addresses or apps.”Microsoft employees recently got access to the crypto wallet in Edge, and it has already proved controversial internally. One source described the situation as a “bad look” after Microsoft recently laid off many from its Edge team who were working on far less superfluous features.Microsoft Edge will advertise the ability to purchase cryptocurrency from Coinbase and MoonPay through the built-in crypto wallet. It will also include the ability to connect decentralized apps to the wallet feature and support collecting and storing non-fungible tokens (NFTs).The appearance of this Edge crypto wallet comes just days after Microsoft added a giant Bing button to its Edge browser in an effort to push people toward its search engine. The button isn’t easily removable. Microsoft has also faced criticism over adding buy now, pay later financing options into Edge, its aggressive prompts to stop you from using Chrome, and the way Windows 11 initially made it harder to change default browsers. Microsoft has addressed the Windows 11 default app concerns, but Edge is gradually getting more bloated with features that I can’t imagine many will find useful. That’s a shame because Microsoft Edge is actually good.
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He was a self-made tech millionaire looking for a good time. But a Tinder date turned out to be a brazen car theft scam. And things only got worse when he tried to get his prized Jaguar back. Mike Vallejo, a 32-year-old technology entrepreneur and self-proclaimed multimillionaire from Portland, Oregon, had recently separated from his wife of four years. Their marriage had been on the skids for a while, the true downfall of which was spurred by Mike making out and getting “handsy,” as he put it, with a much younger woman named Lauren.  This past August, Lauren pitched Mike, who was now officially single, on having a threesome with her and her friend Haley. Youthful and blonde, faces impeccably sculpted by makeup, the duo was freewheeling and eager for a good time. Mike readily agreed, and the three of them congregated at a swanky boutique hotel in downtown Portland. “I did a line of cocaine off of Lauren’s ass,” Haley said. “That got Mike excited.”  “It was awesome,” he told me. Although Mike had previously hooked up with Lauren, he explained that he began dating Haley after the threesome. (“We were not dating,” Haley said. “I can’t have anyone think I was dating him. Let’s just say we were, um, hanging out and he liked me.”) In November, Haley left town for a family vacation.  Mike, missing her, decided to distract himself by joining Tinder. “I got, like, 15 matches within the first 12 hours,” he said.  The dopaminergic rush of the matches, and the potential of meeting up with the women on the other end of his screen, temporarily soothed the loneliness brought on by Haley’s absence and Mike’s ongoing marital separation. “I feel like my wife leaving me made me want, even more, to give the best to others,” he said. “I just wanted to spend time with someone. It was more of feeling like there’s a void that I needed to fill by getting attention or affection from others.”  Mike quickly matched with a woman named Ky. She seemed cute, if somewhat inscrutable, with no biographical details and photographs that included only a mirror sel
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You bought your parents / grandparents / other relatives a new computer, set it up, and showed them all of its nifty new features. You’ve gone home, knowing that you’ve made them very happy. But deep down, you know that this isn’t the end of the story. It’s not going to be long before that dreaded call comes in asking for support. “I can’t find the draft of the email I started!” “Why can’t I get on that Zoom conference?” “My speaker / mouse / keyboard isn’t working!” They’re going to want you to talk them through a fix, which (depending on how computer-savvy they are) is probably going to take a minimum of several hours out of your day.But there is a solution. If both you and your troubled relative use the Chrome browser (or own a Chromebook), you can use Google
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Spring break is here, and before you know it, summer will be, too. That means airports and train stations are about to get a whole lot busier. If you often travel for business or plan on vacationing soon, it’s wise to pick up a pair of noise-canceling headphones in preparation for the chaos. Luckily, Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless are on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and direct from Sennheiser for $269.95 ($80 off), which is one of their better prices to date.In a nutshell, the Momentum 4 are our favorite pair of headphones for traveling. They last a whopping 60 hours on a single charge and their noise cancellation is excellent, meaning you’ll be able to tune out loud crowds, crying babies, and other unwanted sounds. True, they look more generic than their predecessor — the Momentum 3
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Rodney Ramsey typically dons a VR headset to tell jokes, but one day in January, he was on a stage in a virtual world called ProtestLand leading a rally to stop Meta from burying his stand-up comedy shows.ProtestLand is a small world in Meta’s metaverse playscape, Horizon Worlds. (Ramsey and his partner-in-comedy, Simon Josh Abramovitch, hired a creator to help them build it.) A monolithic, Barad-dûr-esque tower represents Meta, complete with a giant Eye of Sauron-like Meta logo perched at the top. Legless Horizon avatars mill around a stage, holding the kind of pithy signs you’d find at a real-life rally. “Is this the meta VERSE or the meta WORST?” reads one.Ramsey himself kicks things off with a chant: “Change our events, stat, or we go to VRChat!”“The reason why people keep coming back to this metaverse is for the stuff that the creators are making, not the stuff that Meta is making,” Ramsey says onstage, holding a virtual megaphone. “Even though their stuff is cool, too, and we love that they built the metaverse, the metaverse is about us.”“We want to see real shows! In VR!” shouts Abramovitch. “With avatars, entertaining you. We want to just have a c
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Oppo has joined the likes of Xiaomi and sister-company Vivo by including a massive 1-inch-type camera sensor in its latest smartphone, the Find X6 Pro, which also doesn’t skimp on the telephoto and ultrawide camera specs. It’s launching in China today alongside the regular Find X6.In China, the Find X6 Pro starts at 5999 yuan (around $872) for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, rising to 6999 yuan (around $1017) for 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage. Meanwhile the non-Pro Find X6 starts at 4499 yuan (around $654) for 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage. A spokesperson for the company was unwilling to confirm whether the X6 phones will see a broader international release in the future. The Find X6 Pro’s primary camera is the star of the show, and uses Sony’s 50-megapixel 1-inch-type IMX989 sensor. But Oppo wants you to know that it hasn’t forgotten about the secondary telephoto and ultrawide cameras on the phone. Oppo claims that the 50-megapixel 1/1.56-inch Sony IMX890 sensors used for its ultrawide and periscope cameras are “larger than any wide-angle camera to date” and “the largest sensor of any smartphone telephoto camera on the market,” respectively. That sensor is as big as what Samsung uses for the main camera on its recent Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus phones, for reference.As well as 100W wired charging, the Find X6 Pro can also charge at 50W wirelessly. Image: OppoObviously, sensor size is far from the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to image quality, especially when most smartphones rely so heavily on software in their photography (in fact, here’s an excellent piece from my colleague Allison that examines the strengths and limitations of large camera senso
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ChatGPT’s chat history feature is currently offline as of Tuesday morning after a bug exposed brief descriptions of other users’ conversations to people on the service. On Reddit, one user posted a photo showing descriptions of several ChatGPT conversations they said weren’t their own, while someone else on Twitter posted a screenshot of the same bug. A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed the incident to Bloomberg, noting that the bug did not share full transcripts of conversations but only brief descriptive titles. The bug is an important reminder to be careful about the sensitive information shared with ChatGPT. “Please don’t share any sensitive information in your conversations,” warns an FAQ on OpenAI’s website, which notes that the company cannot delete specific prompts from a person’s history, and that conversations may be used for training. However, there will inevitably be a strong temptation to share confidential information with the chatbot, particularly as businesses continue to experiment with how to make use of the new tool. Bloomberg reports that OpenAI temporarily shut down ChatGPT on Monday in response to the bug, but that it was brought back online later that night. As of this writing the chat history sidebar has been replaced with a message noting that “History is temporarily unavailable” and that the company is “working to restore this feature as soon as possible.” The last update on OpenAI’s status page from 10:54PM ET on Monday no
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Zack Snyder, known for films like 300 and the four-hour “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, is working on an RPG set in the universe of his forthcoming Netflix sci-fi movie Rebel Moon, he teased in a podcast interview on Sunday.“The one thing that I’m really having a really good time with is — and I don’t even know if I’m supposed to talk about it — this RPG that we’re doing that is just literally insane and so immersive and so intense and so huge,” Snyder said in an interview on The Nerd Queens podcast.Snyder didn’t share many details beyond that and the Rebel Moon connectio
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Though Victoria Alonso’s name will still be listed in the credits of a number of Marvel Studios’ upcoming projects like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, and Secret Invasion, the longtime producer is ready to make her exit.Per The Hollywood Reporter, after 17 years of working at Marvel Studios — originally as executive vice president of visual effects and post-production before going on to become president in the department — Alonso left the company last Friday for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. As a co-producer on a number of Marvel’s earliest films like the first
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Google is rolling out a fix for a bug that made Pixel Watch alarms go off at the wrong time. The Clock app update will be delivered via the Play Store, according to a statement from the company provided by spokesperson Sofia Giovannello.Reports of the problem started cropping up last month, with users reporting that their smartwatch alarms would sometimes go off a few minutes early or late. Apparently, they could miss the mark by up to 10 minutes, which could be the difference between making a meeting and missing it. Both 9to5Google and Gizmodo speculated that the issue may be related to Bedti
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Who says Apple can’t game? 8BitDo is enabling compatibility for six of its existing wireless controllers with iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS devices. This gives Apple users a fresh new selection of game controller options, some of which they may already own and use on PC, Nintendo Switch, or Android.The initial list of compatible controllers includes the 8BitDo Ultimate Controller 2.4GHz, Pro 2, SN30 Pro, SN30 Pro Plus, SN30 Pro for Android, and the Lite SE — with the company teasing on its site that more compatible models are “incoming.” All supported controllers require the latest firmware update to be installed, which can be done via the Firmware Updater tool for Windows or Mac. The more options, the gamierOver on the Apple side, compatibility hinges on iPhones running iOS 16.3, i
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EA debuted a new trailer for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on Monday that gives some hints about the game’s story and a preview of some of the action and puzzles you can expect from the final release.Survivor, the sequel to 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, once again stars Jedi Cal Kestis and takes place five years after the events of the previous game. “The dark times are closing in as Cal Kestis seeks out a safe haven far from the reach of the Empire,” according to the trailer’s description. “Follow Cal and his crew’s increasingly desperate fight as the galaxy descends further into darkness.” The trailer itself is still pretty vague about what the moment-by-moment story will look like, but I’m happy to see that many of Cal’s allies from Fallen Order return for Survivor
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Over the last year, it feels like every day, we’ve heard the news of mass layoffs and hiring freezes from big tech companies that were formerly famous for having deep pockets and near-endless amenities for workers. To open 2023, Amazon announced layoffs of mostly corporate employees will trim 18,000 workers from the roster, the biggest reduction — in raw numbers, despite Amazon’s 1.5 million-strong workforce — yet.Slightly smaller raw numbers have popped up at Google, with 12,000 layoffs, and Microsoft, with 10,000.Elizabeth Lopatto spoke to experts to try and answer the question of why so many layoffs are happening right now, despite tech companies continuing to register sizable profits. One reason is that “investors have changed how they’re evaluating companies,” even if th
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Amazon is laying off another 9,000 workers, according to a memo to employees CEO Andy Jassy sent to workers on Monday. The employees affected by the cut include those in roles in AWS, Twitch, advertising, and human resources.In his memo, Jassy cites the “uncertain economy” as the reason for the cuts and says the company has “chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.” Amazon just got done laying off a total of 18,000 people across the company late last year and in January, which included workers in its hardware and services, human resources, and retail teams. “The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningful
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Text-to-image AI is mainstream now, but just waiting in the wings is text-to-video. The pitch for this technology is that you’ll be able to type a description and generate a corresponding video in any style you like. Current capabilities lag behind this dream, but for those tracking the tech’s progress, an announcement today by AI startup Runway of a new AI video generation model is noteworthy nonetheless.Runway offers a web-based video editor that specializes in AI tools like background removal and pose detection. The company helped develop open-source text-to-image model Stable Diffusion and announced its first AI video editing model, Gen-1, in February. Gen-1 focused on transforming existing video footage, letting users input a rough 3D animation or shaky smartphone clip and apply
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Ikea has enlisted more drones to keep tabs on its inventory. In a blog post shared last week, Ingka, the legal entity responsible for most of Ikea’s stores, says it now has a total of 100 autonomous drones counting stock in its warehouses during nonoperational hours.Ikea first partnered with the drone-making company Verity in 2020 to deploy the drones in Switzerland, but now, the company says they’re zipping around 16 locations across Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The Swedish furniture giant says the drones help improve the accuracy of product availability and also support “a more ergonomic workplace,” as it saves employees from counting stock manually.Verity, which specializes in creating self-flying drones for warehouses and even concerts, was f
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Despite causing millions of deaths, economic downfall, and worldwide disruption these past few years, the 10th annual World Happiness Report reveals that the covid pandemic hasn’t impacted our overall happiness. The 2023 report published today reveals that happiness levels from self-reported “life evaluations” have been “remarkably resilient” — with global averages between 2020 and 2022 just as high as those reported pre-pandemic.The annual World Happiness Report uses data from studies like the Gallup World Poll, which collects around 1,000 self-assessed life evaluations from each of the 137 participating countries to determine its overall rankings. The self-reported evaluations are then broken down into six key factors — social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, a
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Microsoft is getting ready to launch its Xbox mobile gaming store as soon as next year. The software giant revealed its plans for an Xbox mobile store last year, and now Xbox chief Phil Spencer says the company is building the store in the anticipation of companies like Apple and Google being forced to open up their mobile app stores. “We want to be in a position to offer Xbox and content from both us and our third-party partners across any screen where somebody would want to play,” said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview with the Financial Times. “Today, we can’t do that on mobile devices but we want to build towards a world that we think will be coming where those devices are opened up.”Microsoft said last year it was working on a new Xbox mobile storeMicrosoft f
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Skip to main content / Around 1 million accounts are thought to be subscribed to the cheaper tier, which got off to a slow start after its launch last November. Mar 20, 2023, 9:43 AM UTC|Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeAround one million accounts are now signed up to Netflix’s ad-supported tier in the US, according to internal figures seen by Bloomberg. The tier was first launched in early November, and is thought to have gotten off to a slow start. Come January, however, 19 percent of new signups in the US opted for the $6.99 ad-supported tier, according to analytics firm Antenna.Bloomberg cautions that the internal data it saw is “at least” a month old, and that it doesn’t account for multiple users watching via the same account. But the figures suggest that Netflix is f
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I am that guy who asks airport security if I can photograph my luggage going through the X-ray machine. I’m also the guy who spent a solid hour scrubbing through the CT scan of my broken jaw with a mix of horror and utter fascination. You could say I’ve been on a bit of a spectral imaging kick. So when a startup called Lumafield told me I could put as many things as I wanted into its $54,000 a year radiographic density scanning machine... let’s just say I’ve a sneaking suspicion they didn’t think I’d take it literally. Last month, I walked into the company’s satellite office in San Francisco with a stuffed-to-the-gills backpack containing: A Lumafield Neptune at the company’s satellite office in San Francisco. Image: Vjeran Pavic / The VergeI would have brought more, but I
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