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Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images It’s not you, it’s the interest rates. The reasons are probably more nuanced than that, but a number of prominent car tech companies are finding themselves in the unenviable position of being dumped by the bigger companies that they’ve relied on for funding. It’s especially harsh when you consider we’re a few weeks away from Valentine’s Day. It started earlier this week, when auto parts giant Aptiv said it was pulling funding from Motional , the robotaxi joint venture it started with Hyundai in 2020 . The reason? Money, of course. And how long it was taking to commercialize the technology. Aptiv said it was incurring millions of dollars in losses while waiting for Motional to launch its fully driverless ridehail vehicles. The company... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Ile15Mz

The standard Nintendo Switch can be played on the go or while docked on a TV. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge While the Nintendo Switch 2 is widely expected to drop this year, it’s anybody’s guess when. That means if you don’t want to wait to play games like the Mario vs. Donkey Kong demo and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom , the existing Switch lineup is still your best bet. Luckily, the Nintendo Switch console with neon blue and red Joy-Cons is on sale right now for just $269 when you check out at Amazon , which is a rare $30 discount given it typically goes for $299.99. If you’re looking for a console you can take on the go or play docked on a TV, the Nintendo Switch remains an excellent option. True, the Switch 2 might come with a bigger eight-inch screen, but the 6.2-inch touchscreen found on the original Switch is still spacious... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/S8Vx0J5

Arc’s new Smart Folders start with an AI query. | Image: The Browser Company Only a few days after releasing an AI-powered mobile app, called Arc Search , The Browser Company is making some big (and of course AI-powered) changes to its desktop browser as well. Unlike Arc Search, though, which is essentially a total rethink of how you use the web on your phone, the new stuff in Arc for Mac and Windows is more straightforward and practical. They turn search queries into bookmarks without needing a Google page, and they keep you up to date on stuff you care about without needing another app. In Arc’s world, it’s all about the web browser. For instance, the new “Instant Links” feature is a way to use AI to skip a search engine: if you’re looking for something specific, like that epic “Blank Space” performance from... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/JLk6hRS

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is launching a suite of its Microsoft 365 apps on Apple’s Vision Pro headset later this week. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Loop, and Microsoft Teams will all be available in the App Store for Apple Vision Pro on February 2nd — the same day Apple’s new headset is available in stores. Apple Vision Pro owners will also be able to access an AI-powered version of Copilot while using the headset, including the ability to create drafts, summarize documents, and generate PowerPoint presentations with your voice. Image: Microsoft Microsoft Word on the Vision Pro. Word on the Vision Pro includes a focus mode much like the reader mode found in the desktop versions, alongside a ribbon... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/x1ugNRf

Shopify Magic Media Editor. | Image: Shopify The Shopify Magic suite of generative AI tools that launched in April last year is adding a media editor that brings generative image fill to its platform and conversational search powered by AI. Merchants can prompt the image editor to change photo backgrounds without Photoshop experience to match whatever theme they have in mind. Shopify’s AI editor can also suggest backgrounds and styles that match existing product images in the merchant’s library once it rolls out this spring . Glen Coates, Shopify’s vice president of product, says many sellers on the platform don’t have access to big studios or professional photographers, but they still need to set their items up for success. Since there’s no additional cost to use this tool, it... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/MkVJ1DB

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft just posted the second quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $62 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q2. Revenue is up 18 percent, and net income has increased by 33 percent. This is the first quarter Microsoft is reporting earnings as a $3 trillion company and also the first time the company has reported additional revenue from its Activision Blizzard acquisition. While Office and cloud revenue remain strong, devices revenue from Surface sales has continued to decline this quarter, with Windows bouncing back after a slow period for the PC market. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Surface Laptop Studio 2. Microsoft did warn that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/i08wsV2

MSCHF The art collective MSCHF is stirring up some trouble on the internet again. For its latest project, ASCII Theater , the group will broadcast a popular new film daily in ASCII format that anyone can watch for free. Just paste the command on your Mac or PC’s terminal, and you can watch films like Barbie exactly as, well, virtually no one has intended. ASCII art films are nothing new and date back to the early days of the internet. They are made by converting a film, frame by frame, into lines of text characters. Instead of pixels, you’ll see text. One of the most famous examples is the ASCII art version of the original 1977 Star Wars movie, which was completed by New Zealand-based programmer Simon Jansen in 1997 and is still available... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/wfoxzR4

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Location tracking can be very handy — it’s convenient when an app can tell you, say, where the nearby restaurants or gas stations are — but it’s also a privacy issue (something that at least one of Google’s competitors has used in its sales pitch ). You probably know that Google can track your location and movements through its Google Maps app. But you may not realize that your Android phone is also tracking your movements and activities through several other built-in apps. If you really don’t want your phone to be tracking any of your movements and activities, there is a way to turn tracking off for all (well, most) of them. You just need to be aware that you’re probably going to render many of your apps (such as rideshare apps, weather... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/lOjrUFR

The New York Times will begin building a team to explore the use of generative AI in its newsroom. Zach Seward, who was recently hired by the publication to head AI initiatives, posted on Threads that the team will be “focused on prototyping uses of generative AI and other machine-learning techniques to help with reporting and how the Times is presented to readers.” Seward’s post said the Times plans to hire a machine learning engineer, a software engineer, a designer, and a couple of editors to round out the AI newsroom initiative. So far, the Times has posted job listings for an associate editorial director for AI initiatives and a senior design editor. “The team, led by the editorial director for A.I. initiatives, will also include... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/k4FYUnO

You can buy the portable power bank on sale at Amazon in a variety of colors. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Anker’s new Qi2-compatible chargers may be capturing all the attention, but that doesn’t mean older devices like the Anker 622 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) aren’t worth a look. The portable, 5,000mAh charger may not be as fast as Anker’s new Qi2 MagGo Power Bank , but it’s still one of our favorite models — one you can currently pick up for $34.99 (half off) at Amazon and Walmart . While the new 6,600mAh MagGo Power Bank recharges your phone twice as quickly, Anker’s magnetic Qi charger still delivers a respectable 7.5 watts of power to MagSafe-compatible phones. It also weighs a lot less, making it a better option if you want something you can easily slap onto your phone while on the go. Its foldable kickstand may not be as sturdy as the new... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/cf8By50

Image: The Verge Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update. I don’t use Microsoft Edge regularly, and I have Google Chrome set as my default browser. Bleary-eyed at 9AM, it took me a moment to realize that Microsoft Edge had simply taken over where I’d left off in Chrome. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I never imported my data into Microsoft Edge, nor did I confirm whether I wanted to import my tabs. But here was Edge automatically opening after a Windows update with all the Chrome tabs I’d been working on. I didn’t even realize I was using Edge at first, and I was confused why all my tabs were suddenly logged out. After the shock... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Zj39yt7

One of iRobot’s Roombas in action. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Amazon’s deal to buy Roomba maker iRobot is off, the companies announced today , after iRobot said the deal has “no path to regulatory approval in the European Union.” iRobot is also announcing that it’s laying off around 350 employees, or around 31 percent of its workforce as part of a restructuring . As part of the announcement, iRobot’s chairman and CEO Colin Angle is stepping down. iRobot’s current executive vice president and chief legal officer Glen Weinstein will serve as interim CEO, and Andrew Miller, formerly lead independent director of the board, will become chairman. The announcement comes after the $1.4 billion acquisition ran into difficulties with EU regulators. Last November, the European Commission said it believed the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/FpUr2mD

SLIM landed close to its target, but engine troubles during the descent saw the lander flipped upside-down and unable to properly recharge its solar batteries. | Image: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) has been resurrected, over a week after the probe ran out of electricity following its troubled lunar touchdown on January 20th, leaving it upside-down and its solar panels pointing in the wrong direction. On Monday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that communication with the SLIM spacecraft had been re-established, and operations to hunt for clues about the Moon’s origins had resumed. JAXA had predicted that a change in sunlight direction could allow the probe’s battery to be recharged from its awkwardly angled solar panels. It’s unclear how long this power will last — the agency previously said that SLIM was not designed to survive a lunar night, which will next... Continue reading… from The V...

The Nomad Stand offers 15W of wireless iPhone fast charging for $100. | Image: Nomad Nomad’s Stand is the latest Qi2 charger to hit the market, offering up to 15W of wireless charging speed to Qi2-compatible phones like the iPhone 15. The accessory was announced in late December , but it’s now shipping in a choice of black or white for $100 from Nomad’s website . It’s $100 price point makes the Stand $10 cheaper than Nomad’s equivalent MagSafe model, the Stand One , and offers the same “up to 15W” charging speeds and magnetic attachment compatibility as Apple’s MagSafe (Apple helped develop the Qi2 charging standard). The bad news is that Nomad’s $100 asking price doesn’t include the required 20W power adapter — you just get a USB-C to USB-C cable. Image: Nomad Nomad’s Stand in black. Nomad’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/5KavIz2

Arc Search browses the web for you, and then builds you the webpage you wanted. That’s the idea, anyway. | Image: The Browser Company / David Pierce A few minutes ago, I opened the new Arc Search app and typed, “What happened in the Chiefs game.” That game, the AFC Championship, had just wrapped up. Normally, I’d Google it, click on a few links, and read about the game that way. But in Arc Search, I typed the query and tapped the “Browse for me” button instead. Arc Search , the new iOS app from The Browser Company, which has been working on a browser called Arc for the last few years, went to work. It scoured the web — reading six pages, it told me, from Twitter to The Guardian to USA Today — and returned a bunch of information a few seconds later. I got the headline: Chiefs win. I got the final score, the key play, a “notable event” that also just said the Chiefs won, a note about... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/clwV2IR

Image: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 23, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .) This week, I’ve been reading about the sudden rise in freight train heists and the strange state of Air Jordans , watching Jon Stewart’s Mark Twain Prize speeches all over again, wondering if I should buy an original Macintosh on eBay instead of continuing to pay my mortgage, scheming to get my hands on the “real” Star Wars lightsaber , tracking at-home workouts with Weller , and trying to replace doomscrolling on my phone with the Chess.com app . I also have for you a new show from the Silicon Valley creator,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/PZoNGq6

Image: The Verge X says it will hire 100 full-time employees for a new trust and safety office in Austin, Texas, according to a Saturday report by Bloomberg . The plan comes, as the article notes, just a few days before CEO Linda Yaccarino’s scheduled January 31st hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding X’s handling of child sexual exploitation moderation. The team would reportedly focus mainly on CSE and would be the first proper trust and safety team since Elon Musk gutted it shortly after purchasing the platform formerly known as Twitter. X updated a blog post about its CSE moderation approach to mention the new office yesterday, as well, though it doesn’t reveal what the new team will be doing, nor when the office will open. The... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/X0TqVI8

Illustration: The Verge X appears to have blocked searches for Taylor Swift as a reaction to a recent trend of graphic AI fakes of the world-famous recording artist being posted to the site . Right now, if you search “Taylor Swift” or “Taylor Swift AI” on X, formerly Twitter, you may see a “Something went wrong” message. After Platformer ’s Casey Newton posted about the apparent block, we tried some other searches. If X is intentionally blocking searches for illicit AI-generated images of Swift, it doesn’t seem to have gotten very far. That’s because if you run into a blocked search term and decide to put the barest amount of effort into trying something else, you’ll get around it. “Taylor AI Swift” or simply putting quotation marks around her name both returned... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/m9abYcS

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft released a new Canary test build for Windows yesterday that brings the company’s Voice Clarity feature, which previously only worked on Surface devices , to all Windows machines, including those using ARM CPUs. The company says in a blog post that the feature uses “low complexity AI models” to filter out background noise, echo, and reverberation in real-time. If Voice Clarity works well enough, its obvious best use case is to make Zoom or Teams meetings less insufferable — after all, how many times have you found yourself lost because someone is giving a presentation while standing 10 feet away from a laptop, their voice awash in a sea of reverb or echo? Or been unable to concentrate on what you’re saying because your every... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/pNWnO6g

Illustration: The Verge Is it a joyous outage where you get to relax, or something mission critical going wrong? Either way, “a portion” of Microsoft Teams is down — with outages in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to the latest status update from Microsoft’s official account. So yeah, if you can’t communicate with your colleagues right now via Microsoft’s biz comm platform, that’s probably why. Some users are reportedly not able to log into Teams, while others may see missing messages, missing attachments, delays, etc. We've completed the failover in the EMEA region and service telemetry is showing some improvement. The failovers for the North and South America regions are ongoing and we continue to monitor.... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/7CBFrN8