Lead Hacker

Prediction market exchanges have created an environment where just about any piece of information is potentially monetizable: How well will BTS's new song perform this week? How hot will Los Angeles get? Will Donald Trump be impeached? Users can wager on all of that and, on some platforms, more gruesome and violent outcomes in the real world. The rapid rise and expansion of Polymarket and Kalshi have put newsrooms in a strange position. Prediction market evangelists often claim that their odds are more trustworthy and accurate than polls and traditional media - effectively positioning the industry as a replacement for news. At the same time … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/report/914157/prediction-markets-news-outlet-ethics-policy-propublica-kalshi-polymarket

I kind of wish it just took pictures. I've never been as charmed and frustrated by one gadget as I have with the Poetry Camera. It's a delightful object. White and cherry red with a color-matched woven strap, it looks playful and adorably lo-fi. If I saw it on a store shelf, I'd absolutely pick it up. But aside from obviously appealing, I'm not exactly sure what it is. I mean, I know what it is . It's a camera that makes AI poems instead of photos. You take a picture, and instead of printing a photo, you get an AI-generated poem inspired by the scene, printed on thermal receipt paper. But after printing dozens of poems, I can only report feeling frustrated instead of inspired. … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/913981/poetry-camera-ai-hands-on

The iPhone 17E is the best cheap iPhone, no surprises there. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Over the last few months, every phone maker under the sun has refreshed its lineups, especially at the affordable end, with no major budget phone launches now expected until next year. That made it the perfect time to go back and reassess The Verge 's recommendations for the best budget phones you can buy right now. You won't be too surprised to hear that the iPhone 17E is now our recommendation for the best cheap iPhone, not least because it's the only cheap iPhone. Still, this year's addition of MagSafe charging makes it a much more well-rounded package than last year's 16E, and with the same A19 chip as the flagship iPhone 17, you won't f … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/912286/our-new-favorite-budget-phones

The Surface Laptop 7. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Microsoft is preparing to launch new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models in the coming months. Windows Central reports that the refreshed models will include both Intel and Qualcomm variants, with Microsoft opting for an OLED display option for the Surface Laptop this year. Microsoft is expected to launch new Surface Pro and Laptop models with Intel's Core Ultra 3 chips first, followed by Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 variants later this summer. This is reportedly because Qualcomm's latest chips are in short supply, but it reverses Microsoft's trend of shipping Qualcomm-powered Surface devices to consumers first in recent years. While a RAM cri … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/news/913218/microsoft-surface-laptop-oled-display-rumor

Microsoft's new Xbox chief has had a busy couple of months after promising "the return of Xbox." Asha Sharma met with publishers at the Game Developers Conference in March, and has also been on the road visiting Microsoft's own game studios and product teams in recent weeks. Sharma, who used to work in Microsoft's CoreAI division, is very much in learning mode and talking to as many people as she can before she makes strategic decisions on the future of Xbox. Some of those decisions are about to be made very soon. Sources at Xbox tell me Sharma has been looking closely at Game Pass pricing recently, with a view to offering a wider range of … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/913093/microsoft-new-xbox-ceo-asha-sharma-memo-notepad

An example image from Google. Google's Personal Intelligence feature, which lets Gemini pull data from apps like Google Photos to offer responses tailored to you, can now use that data and its Nano Banana 2 image model to create images based on your personal context. With the feature, you can use prompts like "Design my dream house" or "Create a picture of my desert island essentials" and the photos Gemini creates will "automatically reflect your specific tastes and lifestyle, gleaned from the Google apps you've connected to," Google says in a blog post . Under the hood, the integration uses your labels in Google Photos to identify people like you, your friends, and your … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/913202/gemini-personal-intelligence-images-nano-banana