~theverge | Bookmarks (625)

There’s a future where we don’t need roads and regular folks like you and me can jump into a boat-sized electric pod and just fly anywhere on a whim. While we’ve been perfecting the miracle of human flight for more than a century, instant air transportation has long been relegated to science fiction. But in […]

Virgin Atlantic announced a partnership with California-based Joby Aviation to launch an air taxi service in the UK, becoming the latest airline to bet on a new class of electric aircraft vying to become taxis in the sky. Joby’s all-electric aircraft has six rotors and seats five, including the pilot. The vehicle can take off […]

It is hard to describe how utterly joyless and devoid of imaginative ideas The Electric State is. Netflix’s latest feature codirected by Joe and Anthony Russo takes many visual cues from Simon StÃ¥lenhag’s much-lauded 2018 illustrated novel, but the film’s leaden performances and meandering story make it feel like a project borne out by a […]

OpenAI and Google are pushing the US government to allow their AI models to train on copyrighted material. Both companies outlined their stances in proposals published this week, with OpenAI arguing that applying fair use protections to AI “is a matter of national security.” The proposals come in response to a request from the White […]

Anthropic is one of the world’s leading AI model providers, especially in areas like coding. But its AI assistant, Claude, is nowhere near as popular as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to chief product officer Mike Krieger, Anthropic doesn’t plan to win the AI race by building a mainstream AI assistant. “I hope Claude reaches as many […]

Amazon is discontinuing a feature that allowed users of some of its Echo smart speakers to choose not to send their voice recordings to the cloud. According to an email the company sent to users that was posted on Reddit, it will disable the feature that allowed select Echos to process Alexa requests locally on […]

In recent weeks, Apple has been unable to escape headlines about its slow progress with everything having to do with Siri and artificial intelligence. The company has officially delayed features first promised last June intended to modernize Siri and give Apple a much-needed boost in the AI race. We still don’t know when those Apple […]

So soon after Specter Divide, a multiplayer shooter developed by Mountaintop Studios, announced its pending shut down which will take its studio with it, is yet another live-service game going offline. Today, Star Wars: Hunters developer Zynga announced the game will be sunset on October 1st. Hunters is a class-based arena shooter featuring original characters […]

On Friday, Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, upped his investigations into Big Tech by sending subpoenas to 16 major tech companies, asking whether the federal government had pressured them into using artificial intelligence to “censor lawful speech” – a new front in his long-running quest to prove the tech […]

The United Kingdom’s mobile browser market is “not working well for consumers and businesses” according to a final report from Britain’s competition watchdog, which says that Apple and Google are largely to blame. An independent inquiry group has concluded its mobile browsers investigation for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), identifying Apple’s policies around iOS, […]

Sure enough, AMD’s exciting Radeon 9070 and 9070 XT graphic card prices, quoted at $550/$600, are looking too good to be true. Newegg, Overclockers UK, and even Micro Center are among the outlets that have now quietly raised the prices on the supposedly entry-level MSRP models of these graphics cards by $50-$130. Last Thursday, AMD […]

Amtrak is revamping its mobile app to include more helpful features like making it easier to look up schedule changes and track your train’s progression from station to station. The changes come as Amtrak campaigns to attract customers and encourage them to travel by train instead of cars and planes. Amtrak’s app already helped riders […]

Intel has appointed a new CEO, three months after former CEO Pat Gelsinger was pushed out of the company. The company’s new chief executive is Lip-Bu Tan, who served as CEO of chip design hardware and services company Cadence from 2009 to 2021 and as a member of Intel’s board of directors from 2022 to […]

Three days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, the White House confirmed the recent Columbia graduate hadn’t been charged with a crime. Instead, Khalil’s arrest had been personally ordered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “The secretary of state has the right to revoke a green card or visa for individuals […]

In a first for the US, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal last year, according to a new report from energy think tank Ember. Coal fell to a historic low, generating 15 percent of the country’s electricity compared to 17 percent from solar and wind combined. The federal government is now taking a […]

With favorable weather forecast at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission is set to launch at 7:49PM ET tonight. Flying into orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Dragon spacecraft, will dock with the ISS at around 6:00AM ET on March 13th. Once its there, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and […]

Attorneys at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asked a federal judge Wednesday to delay its consumer protection trial against Amazon by two months, saying that staffing losses and a possible office move could hinder its ability to prepare.  “We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on our case team,” FTC attorney […]

Snapchat Platinum subscribers will now be able to use video lenses featuring AI generated animals or flowers, Snap announced today.  There will initially be three of the lenses, which Snap calls “AI Video Lenses.” The fox lens, for example, can have a fox snuggle on your shoulder, while the raccoon one can have raccoons scamper […]

Any ebook reader will let you cram a Beauty and the Beast-sized library’s worth of books in your pocket, but so will your phone. An ebook reader offers a more book-like reading experience, with fewer distractions and less eye strain, and many include extra features, like adjustable frontlighting. Some really are pocketable. Others are waterproof […]

After a tumultuous 2024, in which iRobot lost its founder and CEO, Colin Angle, Amazon abandoned its acquisition plans, and the company laid off a large portion of its staff, iRobot is back with a major shake-up of its robotic vacuum line. This week, the company that invented the robot vacuum over 20 years ago announced eight […]

“Big time” confusion has wracked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) staff since last month, the agency’s chief operating officer, Adam Martinez, testified before a federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday.  Martinez’s testimony — which will continue on Tuesday afternoon — is meant to address questions around what’s happening at the financial regulation agency, […]

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) must comply with a request to disclose its internal records. In a ruling on Monday, US District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper wrote that DOGE is likely covered by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), adding that “the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in […]

Even with uncertainty surrounding the TikTok ban, the platform is still trying to address safety concerns with a new reminder that tells teens to stop using the app at night and more controls for parents. If a teen under 16 is still using the app after 10PM, TikTok will interrupt their feed with a full-screen […]

Agents are said to be the future of AI, and now OpenAI is trying to help developers build their own. The company is releasing a new Responses API that offers building blocks for developers to create agents capable of searching the web, digging through files, and performing tasks on a computer on their behalf. “There […]