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Apple’s new CarPlay is still just a concept. | Screenshot: Apple We still haven’t seen the “next generation of CarPlay” that Apple first announced in 2022 and continues to say on its CarPlay webpage is arriving in 2024, as MacRumors points out . And barring some spectacular surprise, it’s not coming today or tomorrow. What gives? So far, we’ve only seen changes like CarPlay mapping directions appearing in the instrument cluster in cars from manufacturers like Polestar, Porsche, and Lincoln. That’s even the case for vehicles like the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus , which has the screen real estate to support Apple’s vision for its dashboard-spanning infotainment software. Porsche and Aston Martin had announced their cars would be the first to get the new CarPlay, but both recently declined to give Wired a timeline for its rollout. Screenshot: Apple Apple’s website still says “First models arrive in 2024,” which seems... unlikely. Other companies that Apple said would support its n...

Image: Apple Apple TV Plus will be free to stream this weekend from January 4th through the 5th. The company posted the news on social media alongside a short trailer featuring some of its top shows, with the tagline “see for yourself.” Apple had teased last week that it might provide some free streaming days, which the company has not offered previously. A full weekend may be enough to binge some of Apple’s top shows, including Severance , which has its hotly anticipated season 2 launching on January 17th. The free days could also help potential subscribers get a taste of Apple’s eclectic mix of sci-fi shows , such as the space race drama For All Mankind , postapocalyptic thriller Silo , and the Godzilla serial Monarch: Legacy of Monsters . This weekend, see for yourself. Stream for free Jan 4-5. pic.twitter.com/8p6PCUYpms — Apple TV (@AppleTV) December 30, 2024 Apple doesn’t provide more detail than that in its teaser post, which doesn’t say if the promotional period i...

The DJI Flip is expected to fly nearly twice as long as the DJI Neo, pictured here. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge New images of the rumored DJI Flip folding drone hit late last week, showing the compact, light-colored drone both folded and unfolded, and even in a carrying case. The images appeared in posts by Igor Bogdanov , who has shared other credible DJI leaks in the past. Bogdanov added in a post yesterday that DJI is preparing a new Cellular Dongle 2 module for the compact drone. The new leaks join earlier images of ND filters for the Flip, its propeller set, and charging hub, which Bogdanov wrote can charge two batteries in a minimum of 45 minutes, and can use “a 65W parallel charger.” Oh, how. Flip gonna have a Cellular Dongle 2. #dji #djiflip pic.twitter.com/CbpZpnSHj0 — Igor Bogdanov (@Quadro_News) December 28, 2024 Below are some of the other pictures Bogdanov posted, including of its front screen, which drone leaker Jasper Ellens notes shows “all the...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is testing a new floating “Play something” button that will pick a video for you, 9to5Google spotted in the YouTube app for Android. The button floats just above the bottom bar of the app, and when tapped, it picks a YouTube video to play for you. Just as in earlier versions of this feature YouTube’s been testing, the new button reportedly uses the portrait-oriented YouTube Shorts player to show videos, regardless of whether they’re vertically formatted Shorts or standard YouTube videos. Hopefully that changes by the time the feature gets a wide release. Other incarnations the company has been testing for over a year include a “Play Something” banner and a simple button that looks like a black-and-white YouTube logo . If the feature’s name sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because Netflix retired a similar random video picker last year called “Surprise Me,” which originally launched in 2021 as “Play Something.” source https://...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge A Reddit user posted a screenshot overnight of a Spotify search that brought a surprise: a pornographic video tucked into suggested results for the rapper M.I.A. Here’s a NSFW link to the thread . The video shown in their screenshot didn’t appear for us, but we found others after scrolling through dozens of results in the “Video” tab. One of the accounts that posted videos we saw has published erotic audio for years but has sprinkled in sexually graphic videos more recently. Another account, which was named with a long string of alphanumeric characters, has been publishing equally nonsensically-titled explicit videos as a podcast account since mid-November. Spotify representative Laura Batey told The Verge in an email that the examples we provided “have been removed due to violation of our policies.” Those policies include forbidding sexually explicit material . We asked Spotify for more information on how the videos made it past its moder...

iOS 18 introduced an “Enhanced Visual Search” toggle for the Photos app. | Screenshot: iOS 18 Settings app Apple occasionally makes choices that tarnish its strong privacy-forward reputation, like when it was secretly collecting users’ Siri interactions . Yesterday, a blog post from developer Jeff Johnson highlighted such a choice: an “Enhanced Visual Search” toggle for the Apple Photos app that is seemingly on by default, giving your device permission to share data from your photos with Apple. Sure enough, when I checked my iPhone 15 Pro this morning, the toggle was switched to on. You can find it for yourself by going to Settings > Photos (or System Settings > Photos on a Mac). Enhanced Visual Search lets you look up landmarks you’ve taken pictures of or search for those images using the names of those landmarks. To see what it enables in the Photos app, swipe up on a picture you’ve taken of a building and select “Look up Landmark,” and a card will appear that ideally id...

A Meta Quest 3 on a charging dock. | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge Meta updated a note on the top of its Quest support site to say that a “software update issue” has been bricking Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest 3S headsets. The company writes that while “most” people can now use their headsets normally, it’s “actively working on resolving the issue for all users.” That Meta is now saying it’s working on a fix “for all users” may be good news for Quest 2 and 3 owners who’ve reported that Meta wouldn’t fix or replace their headsets because they were out of warranty. Some Reddit users say the company has emailed a confirmation that they were getting out-of-warranty service for the issue, and a Meta support forum community manager wrote in an update yesterday that Meta’s customer support “should have new directions on how to support users now.” We're aware that some new Meta Quest 3S devices are having trouble with the initial software update. Our team is working on a so...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is proposing new cybersecurity requirements for healthcare organizations aimed at protecting patients’ private data in the event of cyberattacks, reports Reuters . The rules come after major cyberattacks like one that leaked the private information of more than 100 million UnitedHealth patients earlier this year. The OCR’s proposal includes requiring that healthcare organizations make multifactor authentication mandatory in most situations, that they segment their networks to reduce risks of intrusions spreading from one system to another, and that they encrypt patient data so that even if it’s stolen, it can’t be accessed. It would also direct regulated groups to undertake certain risk analysis practices, keep compliance documentation, and more. The rule is part of the cybersecurity strategy that the Biden administration announced last year. Onc...

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge A cyberattack campaign inserted malicious code into multiple Chrome browser extensions as far back as mid-December, Reuters reported yesterday . The code appeared designed to steal browser cookies and authentication sessions, targeting “specific social media advertising and AI platforms,” according to a blog post from Cyberhaven, one of the companies that was targeted. Cyberhaven blames a phishing email for the attack, writing in a separate technical analysis post that the code appeared to specifically target Facebook Ads accounts. According to Reuters, s ecurity researcher Jaime Blasco believes the attack was “just random” and not targeting Cyberhaven specifically. He posted on X that he’d found VPN and AI extensions that contained the same malicious code that was inserted into Cyberhaven. Other extensions possibly affected include Internxt VPN, VPNCity, Uvoice, and ParrotTalks, as Bleeping Computer writes . Our team has confirmed...

Image: Getty Do Kwon, the co-founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs, will be extradited to the US to face federal fraud charges, as reported earlier by Bloomberg . The Montenegro Ministry of Justice announced the decision on Friday, which comes more than one year after the authorities arrested Kwon in the country. Kwon faces charges in the US and South Korea after the TerraUSD stablecoin and its sister token Luna crashed in 2022, causing investors to lose $40 billion in the process . Both countries have issued extradition requests for Kwon, and have been awaiting Montenegro’s decision for months. “It was concluded that most of the criteria provided for by law support the extradition request of the competent authorities of the United States of America,” a machine-translated version of Montenegro’s Ministry of Justice’s statement said. It doesn’t say when Montenegro plans on releasing Kwon to the US. As noted by Bloomberg , it’s also unclear whether this deci...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and other members of President-elect Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley coalition are clashing with the MAGA movement’s hardline anti-immigrant faction, and it’s allegedly resulted in Musk stripping far-right critics’ verification badges on X. The conflict centers on Musk and Ramaswamy’s recent praise for foreign tech workers, beginning soon after Indian immigrant Sriram Krishnan joined the team of Trump’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks. It’s pitted Trump’s tech mogul donor class against his older network of far-right influencers like activist and Trump companion Laura Loomer while escalating into racist rhetoric against Indian Americans in particular. The ugly, extremely online fight between the American far-right influence network parallels the immigration debate currently being hashed out more quietly in Washington . Anti-immigrant rhetoric was a cornerstone of Trump’s pitch to voters; on top of promoting f...

The Beats Fit Pro offer built-in wing tips and excellent noise cancellation, making them a great pair of gym-friendly earbuds. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you need help shedding pounds from all the junk food you indulged in over Christmas, music is a great activity motivator — which is why wireless earbuds are a useful investment. Luckily, today the Beats Fit Pro — our favorite pair of earbuds for working out — are matching their all-time low price of about $149 ($50 off) at Amazon , Best Buy , and Walmart . The Beats Fit Pro offer a wide range of features that’ll help you keep motivated while working out. They sport excellent noise cancellation and a transparency mode that sounds natural, so you can tune distractions out and allow outside sound in when needed. They’re also designed for vigorous workouts, with built-in wing tips to keep them firmly in place and IPX4 rating for water resistance. Even more conveniently, the wireless earbuds offer a host of Apple-ce...

An artist’s rendering of the Parker Solar Probe . | Image: NASA NASA sent its Parker Solar Probe just 3.8 million miles from the surface of the Sun — and it survived. The probe transmitted a signal back to Earth on the night of December 26th, “indicating it’s in good health and operating normally,” according to NASA . The mission marks the closest the Parker Solar Probe — or any human-man object at all — has ever gotten to the Sun. The probe set off on its mission on December 20th , with the closest approach occurring on December 24th as it flew 430,000 miles per hour past the solar surface. Mission operations were out of contact with the probe during this time. Now that NASA has confirmation of the mission’s success, it expects the Parker Solar Probe to send “detailed telemetry data on its status” on January 1st. The close flyby is supposed to help scientists get a better understanding of solar wind, the Sun’s heat, and how “energetic particles are accelerated to near light speed...

Image: The Verge ChatGPT isn’t working for many users right now. With numerous reports on social media, we also confirmed that the chatbot loads but isn’t able to respond to queries, while others are seeing an “internal server error” message. It looks like the outage started around 1:30PM ET, which is when reports began to spike on Down Detector . At around 2PM ET, OpenAI posted an update to its status page , saying ChatGPT, the API, and its text-to-video generator Sora are “currently experiencing high error rates.” An update posted at 2:18PM ET said the issue is “caused by an upstream provider” and that OpenAI is currently monitoring the situation. There’s no mention of an ETA for when access will be restored. ChatGPT has gone down a few times in the past several months. Just days after OpenAI released Sora to ChatGPT subscribers earlier this month, the video generation tool and ChatGPT went down for hours. Meanwhile, a widespread outage affecting AI tools brought down ChatGPT...

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Loading up HDR photos and videos can be a great way of showcasing the fancy display on your new phone and testing just how bright it can get. But sometimes, especially at night, you might not want your screen to crank into overdrive with blinding highlights just because someone posted a random video to Instagram in HDR. (Devices are increasingly set to capture video with the increased dynamic range by default, so let’s not blame each other.) With its forthcoming One UI 7 update that’s currently in beta , Samsung is giving Galaxy phone owners a system-wide kill switch for disabling HDR content. As covered by 9to5Google , there’s a new “Super HDR” toggle in the settings menu. The description — “automatically adjust the display to show the full range of colors and contrast in pictures taken with Galaxy devices” — is a bit misleading, since it turns out that toggling this on will keep your display brightness in check across all apps. But that’s ex...

WD_Black Xbox expansion cards still sport the brand’s trademark rugged exterior, only in a much tinier form. | Image: Western Digital If you’ve just unwrapped a new Xbox Series X or Series S for Christmas, you’ll have enough storage out of the box to download several games. But you’ll quickly feel the squeeze from 100GB-plus installs, especially if you tend to keep a heavy rotation. Expansion cards are your only relief on Xbox consoles if you’re playing titles optimized for Series X/S. Thankfully, you can get a 2TB expansion card cheaper than ever, with Western Digital’s WD_Black C50 going for $189.99 ($70 off) at Amazon . You can also get it in 512GB for $69.99 ($10 off) and 1TB for $109.99 ($48 off). That said, the 2TB model is the better deal in the long run. Because the Series X and Series S use a proprietary storage format, you can’t use an external SSD, an internal NVMe SSD (as you could on the PS5), or a standard external hard drive to play newer games that are op...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Glasses may be more promising as the head-worn computers of the future — and there’s a chance Apple might be looking in that direction. Apple’s Vision Pro headset is an incredible piece of technology, but even Apple’s design and marketing magic hasn’t been enough to convince many people to don a VR headset for an entire day. Instead, people seem more willing to use discreet wearables like Bluetooth headphones, smartwatches, and products like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses — so Apple’s headset isn’t making the waves the company would have wanted. Of course, an instant transformation of the computing landscape wasn’t exactly the point of the Vision Pro. Apple was clearly launching its headset for Apple enthusiasts, first adopters, and people who love VR. At a starting price of $3,499, the barrier of entry was just too high to expect the device to be a hit from the jump. Even CEO Tim Cook called it an “early-adopter product.” Would you real...

This Bluetooth speaker’s design is a breath of fresh air, but Bose skimped on some features that are usually standard at this price. Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/24326228/bose-soundlink-home-speaker-review

Image: Netflix After years of brand tie-ins and ill-conceived spinoffs, the series is back — and it’s just as tense as ever. Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/24324173/squid-game-season-2-review-netflix

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images These days, podcasts are going video, and there are a number of visual trends we’ve noticed — some good, some not so much. We’ll show you. Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/24302894/podcasts-video-youtube-2024-trends-tiktok-instagram

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images This year showed that a roguelike can be almost anything. Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/24312434/best-roguelikes-2024-balatro-hades-2-prince-of-persia

Image: Atlus Metaphor: ReFantanzio is one of 2024’s best games racking up a stack of Game Awards including best RPG, best art direction, and best narrative. But one category in which Metaphor particularly stood out was its music. The soundtrack, produced by Shoji Meguro – the long-time music director of the Persona series, is one of the outstanding achievements in video game music this year, particularly its battle theme which became a viral hit. In an interview with The Verge , Meguro talked about his work on the Metaphor soundtrack including what went into what is perhaps the coolest piece of video game battle music ever made. Meguro, known for his work producing the pop-y, jazzy vibes of the Persona soundtracks , acknowledged that Metaphor ’s heavy orchestral / choral sound is not something Persona fans would expect from him and definitely outside his own wheelhouse. He said in order to effectively change gears from Persona to Metaphor , he had to relearn classical music ...

Kobo’s Elipsa 2E is a good e-reader that offers an intuitive note-taking experience. | Image: Kobo Amazon might have released a new Kindle Scribe earlier this month for $399.99 , but after testing it, I still don’t think it can compete with its rivals. If you’re looking for a good e-reader with more useful note-taking capabilities, the Kobo Elipsa 2E is still one of my favorites, and it’s down to an all-time low of $349.99 ($50 off) at Amazon or Target . Rakuten Kobo will also throw in $10 in credit when you buy a $50 gift card, which you can use toward buying books or styli . If you’re the type of person who likes to scribble in margins while reading ebooks, you’ll likely prefer the Kobo Elipsa 2E. The Elipsa 2E lets you directly write on ebook pages, taking notes in margins or anywhere else you’d like, just as you would on paper. The new Kindle Scribe lets you directly write on pages, too, but it’s a lot more complicated and you can’t even circle phrases or words. The ...

Image: Asus Asus is planning to launch a new Rog Strix laptop at CES on January 6th, 2025, the company confirmed in a post spotted by VideoCardz . The short teaser shared by Asus shows a laptop with RGB lighting that wraps all the way around the bottom of the device, likely making for an even more colorful underglow when compared to previous generations . Though Asus doesn’t say which Rog Strix models it will introduce, leaked retail listings suggest Asus could reveal new Rog Strix 18 Scar and Rog Strix G16 laptops. New STRIX, January 6, 8PM PST Save the date https://t.co/mS9trt2BCn #UnlockTheROGLab #CES2025ROG #CES2025 pic.twitter.com/y4hb43gRdY — ROG Global (@ASUS_ROG) December 23, 2024 While the Rog Strix Scar 18 is rumored to come with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285 HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics chip, the Rog Strix G16 could feature the same CPU options but with up to a GeForce RTX 5080, as noted by NotebookCheck . Asus may have more to share t...

The XM4 are over four years old, but they still sound great for the money. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge A couple of months ago, we saw the Sony WH-1000XM4 drop to $129.99, which was an absolute steal for the last-gen noise-canceling headphones. That deal predictably sold out in a heartbeat, and there’s no telling whether we’ll see it that low again, but Amazon is selling them in black for $178.20 (about $170 off), which would be an all-time low if not for said outlier. You can also pick them up in other colors for $198 right now, though that price is frequently available these days. The newer Sony WH-1000XM5 have leapfrogged the heap as the best noise-canceling headphones for most people in our book, but the XM4 remain a great pair of headphones if you’re looking to save some money. They feature phenomenal audio quality and noise cancellation, which keeps them in the big leagues occupied by newer sets. They also have nice quality-of-life features, including a foldab...

Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is suing Walmart and payroll service provider Branch Messenger for alleged illegal payment practices for gig workers. The bureau says Walmart was opening direct deposit accounts using Spark delivery drivers’ social security numbers without their consent. The accounts also can come with intense fees that, according to the complaint, would add either 2 percent or $2.99 per transaction, whichever is higher. It also says Walmart repeatedly promised to provide drivers with same-day payments through the platform starting in July 2021 but never delivered on that. The Bureau alleges that for approximately two years starting around June 2021, defendants engaged in unfair, abusive, and deceptive practices in violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, including by requiring Spark Drivers to receive their compensation in Branch Accounts, opening Branch Accounts for Spark Drivers withou...

Patrick Mahomes is playing on Christmas. Netflix better not screw it up. | Photo by Jason Miller / Getty Images It hasn’t always gone well for Netflix. Remember the Love Is Blind reunion or the laggy Paul / Tyson fight? But Netflix is betting big that live still matters, even in the on-demand world it helped create. Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/24326196/netflix-live-nfl-paul-tyson-wwe-world-cup

A hybrid supercar that can run on electricity alone, while still delivering that twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6 experience Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24325168/mclaren-artura-review-hybrid-specs-price

Photo by PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images Honda and Nissan have announced plans to merge as the Japanese automakers struggle with competition from rival brands in the electric vehicle market. The two companies confirmed on Monday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding that would create the third largest car maker by sales, behind Toyota and Volkswagen. Nissan alliance member Mitsubishi Motors is also in talks with Honda and Nissan to join the integration, with a decision expected by the end of January. Based on the market capital of all three companies, a finalized merger could result in an entity worth more than 50 billion dollars. Honda will initially lead the management of the merged company according to Honda president, Toshihiro Mibe, with the aim to complete a formal merger agreement by June and finalize the deal by August 2026. “Creation of new mobility value by bringing together the resources including knowledge, talents, and technologies that Honda and Nissa...