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The Verge X has substantially raised the price of its top-tier user subscription in multiple regions to help bolster the platform’s creator payouts. The increase for Premium Plus came into effect on December 21st according to X , raising prices in the US from $16 per month to $22, or from $168 to $229 for annual subscriptions. Many European countries like France, Germany, and Spain are impacted by a similar increase, taking monthly prices from €16 to €21. Monthly subscribers in Canada (currently paying $20), Australia ($26) and the UK (£16) will also see pricing increased to $26, $35, and £17 respectively. The higher pricing is immediately applicable to new subscribers, with existing users grandfathered into their current rates until January 20th. X’s basic subscription tier remains unaffected. The pricing changes for US subscribers are the highest increase introduced since Elon Musk purchased the social media platform in 2022. X gave several reasons to justify the price hike, ci...

Image: Canoo Days after furloughing dozens of its employees without pay, EV startup Canoo told the remainder of its staff they will be on a “mandatory unpaid break” through at least the end of the year, TechCrunch reported Friday . A company email seen by the outlet said employees would be locked out of Canoo’s systems by the end of Friday, with their benefits continuing through the end of this month. The report follows Canoo’s announcement last week that it was idling its Oklahoma factories and furloughing employees while it worked “to finalize securing the capital necessary to move forward with its operations.” As TechCrunch notes, the company reported that it had only about $700,000 left in the bank last month. Also on Friday, the company announced a 1-for-20 reverse stock split, effective December 24th. Canoo says the consolidation aims to keep its stock listed on the Nasdaq exchange and attract “a broader group of institutional and retail investors.” Canoo was fou...

Illustration: The Verge In the latest version of the Files by Google app, summoning Gemini while looking at a PDF gives you the option to ask about the file, writes Android Police . You’ll need to be a Gemini Advanced subscriber to use the feature though, according to Mishaal Rahman, who reported on Friday that it had started rolling out. If you have the feature, when you summon Gemini while looking at a PDF in the Files app, you’ll see an “Ask about this PDF” button appear. Tapping that lets you ask questions about the file, the same way you might ask ChatGPT about a PDF. Google first announced this screen-aware feature during its I/O developer conference in May. Rahman posted a screenshot of what it looks like in action: Other context-aware Gemini features include the ability to ask about web pages and YouTube videos. For apps or file types without Gemini’s context-aware support, the assistant instead offers to answer questions about your screen, using a screenshot it ta...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Commerce Department has awarded Samsung and Texas Instruments with a combined over $6 billion in “direct funding under the CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication,” according to a pair of announcements published on Friday. Samsung will get the larger of the two awards at $4.745 billion. The Commerce Department says the company will use this as part of its planned $37 billion investment in Texas chip facilities that include two new “leading-edge logic fabs and an R&D fab” in Taylor, Texas, and the expansion of its plant in Austin. The company was originally slated to receive $6.4 billion. In a statement reported by Bloomberg , the company said that its “mid-to-long-term investment plan has been partially revised to optimize overall investment efficiency,” which suggests the company has dialed back its plans, according to the outlet. Texas Instruments will receive $1.61 billion to bolster t...

Image: Asus Asus has announced the Asus NUC 14 Pro AI , the first Copilot Plus-capable AI mini PC that crams an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor into a form factor resembling a black M4 Mac Mini. First introduced at IFA in September , Asus is providing a little more detail about the mini PC’s specs than it did before, but still isn’t saying it will become available or how much it will cost. The NUC 14 Pro AI will come in five CPU configurations, from the Core Ultra 5 226V processor with 16GB of integrated RAM to a Core Ultra 9 288V processor with 32GB of RAM. The company says it has up to 67 TOPS of GPU performance and 48 NPU TOPS, and that its M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x 4 slot supports 256GB to 2TB NVMe SSDs. All of that is packed into a PC that measures 130mm deep and wide and just 34mm tall; comparatively, the Mac Mini is 127mm deep and wide and 50mm tall. Here are some pictures from Asus’ website: The Asus NUC 14 Pro AI features a fingerprint sensor on top and a Copilot button on ...

Stellar hardware from a controversial figure. Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/24303052/modretro-chromatic-review-game-boy-color-handheld-palmer-luckey

Image: Netflix In Squid Game , schoolyard games are turned into nightmares, as players compete to survive and — if they’re lucky — earn a massive cash prize. But in Unleashed , a new mobile spinoff that’s part of the streamer’s fledgling gaming efforts , those games are fun . It’s a strange experience that sands off much of the appeal of Squid Game in service of making a multiplayer party game. Unleashed is sort of like Fall Guys but in a Squid Game wrapper. You compete against 31 other players across three random games pulled from the show, like “red light, green light” or racing across a bridge made of glass. Slowly other players die off, and by the end one wins a whole bunch of money. Aesthetically, the game mostly follows the show. There are a bunch of characters to play as — some pulled from the show, others new for the game — and even though there’s a cartoon aesthetic, things still get bloody, with players being shot for breaking the rules or crushed under some obs...