Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is reportedly getting a major update soon
Image: Valve
Valve’s on the precipice of launching a major update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, according to a report from esports journalist Richard Lewis (via Forbes). Sources close to the situation tell Lewis that Valve could finally release a new version of the game on the company’s Source 2 engine as early as this month.
Lewis, who has broken big CS:GO stories in the past, says he’s told that Valve already enlisted a group of professional CS:GO players to try out the updated game at the company’s Seattle headquarters. Migrating the game to the Source 2 engine, which is used by some of Valve’s other games, like Dota 2 and Half-Life: Alyx, could allow for better performance and graphics.
Something weird just happened. Latest NVIDIA drivers introduced support for unknown app executables called "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". Why project is called Counter-Strike 2 and what are you cooking @csgo? https://t.co/U9YKlAjwgypic.twitter.com/PU8Op9uGLq
That’s apparently not the only upgrade Valve’s been working on. Lewis adds that the “new” CS:GO could come with an improved matchmaking system that more closely resembles the third-party platforms where players can find and join CS:GO matches, like FACEIT or ESEA. Valve’s also expected to increase the tick rate of the servers used by the game from 64 to 128, potentially making for less latency during online matches.
It’s hard to believe that over 10 years after the release of CS:GO (and over 20 since the release of the original title) that Valve would spring a huge update on us with little to no fanfare. But this isn’t the only evidence of a possible upgrade. Last week, u/DAOWAceon Reddit discovered a suspect pair of executable files, named “csgos2.exe” and “cs2.exe,” included in recent drivers released by Nvidia.
While it may sound like Valve’s releasing an entirely new game, Twitter users @gabefollower and @aquaismissing explain that this could simply indicate that Valve’s moving the game over to the Source 2 engine and that developers may have been a bit lazy with the file-naming. We hopefully won’t have to wait too much longer to see what the so-called Counter-Strike 2 is all about, though, as Lewis says the game’s “about ready to go.”
DJI quietly discontinues its drone-detecting AeroScope system
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
DJI’s no longer producing AeroScope, the drone-detecting system accused of helping Russians target and attack Ukrainian drone pilots, as first spotted by UAV Hive (via DroneDJ). The device’s product page now displays a pop-up that reads: “The Aeroscope is no longer in production. For the latest in DJI technology, please view our product recommendations below.”
You can close out of the notification and view the entirety of AeroScope’s product page, which still has an order form for DJI dealers at the bottom. The China-based DJI hasn’t formally announced the discontinuation of the product, and it’s still not clear whether existing AeroScope devices will lose functionality, or if the platform’s going away forever. According to UAV Hive, rumors indicate that DJI’s working on a second version of the receiver, however, DJI didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for more information.
Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge
DJI describes its AeroScope technology as a “comprehensive drone detection platform” that can identify and track drones in real time using the receiver signals broadcasted by newer DJI drones. This signal provides AeroScope users with information like flight status, path, and pilot location from drones up to about 30 miles away.
While the product was originally intended for use by law enforcement or other government agencies to monitor drones flying in potentially dangerous areas (like around an airport runway) and to track down their pilots, the technology became a cause for concern in the midst of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
I don't work there anymore, but probably two reasons:
1. It doesn't make sense to continue supporting a feature that was created to assist US security interests when being constantly attacked by US security agencies.
2. FAA Remote ID is being implemented.https://t.co/qOXXGMxzvj
Brendan Schulman, the former vice president of policy at DJI, says on Twitter that there are “probably two reasons” behind DJI’s decision to discontinue AeroScope. “It doesn’t make sense to continue supporting a feature that was created to assist US security interests when being constantly attacked by US security agencies,” Schulman writes, while also citing the Federal Aviation Administration’s implementation of Remote ID.
This is the upcoming standard that the FAA, law enforcement, and other agencies will use to detect and track “most drones operating in US airspace,” giving them information about the drone’s identity, location, altitude, take-off location, control station location, and more.
Starting on September 16th, 2023, most drone operators in the US will only be able to fly aircraft with built-in remote broadcast capabilities or a retrofitted remote ID broadcast module — essentially what DJI has already been doing with its newer drones and AeroScope. The only time drone operators can use a device that doesn’t emit remote ID signals is if they’re flying in FAA-recognized identified areas.
Just days before AeroScope’s apparent discontinuation came to light, a report from Wired revealed that researchers have created a tool that receives signals from DJI drones through more affordable third-party devices, letting them pick up on the GPS locations of the device and its pilot without the need for an AeroScope system. The engineers working on the project tell Wired they have only tested the tool with drones 15 to 25 feet away, but believe they can track drones from even further away with more testing.
Meet the companies trying to keep up with ChatGPT
Illustration: The Verge
With all the hype surrounding ChatGPT, it’s no wonder other companies are vying for a piece of the AI-powered chatbot game. Companies are betting that we’re at a decisive moment in the artificial intelligence industry, where products that adopt and build upon the budding technology could have the potential to reshape technology as we know it — not to mention shake up the Big Tech hierarchy.
The stakes are high, and technology’s biggest players don’t want to be left behind as breakthroughs in AI make it more accessible — and much more interesting — to users. While tech giants like Microsoft and Google have already introduced their versions of conversational AI tools built using large language models (LLMs), other lesser-known companies have thrown themselves in the mix, setting the stage for an AI showdown.
Here, we’ve rounded up a list of all the companies and AI chatbots that are looking to challenge ChatGPT — or build on top of its success.
Microsoft
Let’s start with Microsoft. The company made its chatbot debut with its launch of the “new” Bing, which promises to upend the way we search for things online. It also built AI-powered tools into the Edge browser.
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft — a big investor in OpenAI — leveraged the technology behind ChatGPT to build an AI tool it says is “even more powerful.” So far, the results have oscillated between impressive and truly off the rails.
The company made the “new” Bing available for beta testers, who have been able to ask questions like “Can you suggest places to visit in Paris?” or “What’s the best apple pie recipe?” and then receive annotated responses describing various tourist destinations or outline the ingredients and steps that go along with a recipe.
But Microsoft may have made Bing a bit too flexible. Users quickly found exploits with the system, including a now-disabled prompt that triggers the Bing bot to divulge its internal nickname, Sydney, and some of the parameters its developers set for its behavior, such as “Sydney’s responses should avoid being vague, controversial, or off-topic.”
As for Edge, Microsoft plans on adding AI enhancements that let you summarize the webpage or document you’re reading online, as well as generate text for social media posts, emails, and more.
Google
Google couldn’t let Microsoft get away with launching an AI chatbot that has the potential to challenge the company’s core business: search. That’s why it rushed to announce its own AI chatbot, Bard, though we still don’t know much about its capabilities.
Image: Google
According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the company is using its in-house large language model, LaMDA, to power the conversational AI service, which “draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.” Google says you’ll be able to use the chatbot for a range of tasks, like planning a baby shower, comparing two Oscar-nominated movies, and getting recipe ideas based on the ingredients you have in your fridge.
The company’s announcement was considerably more haphazard than Microsoft’s, so much so that Googlers reportedly criticized the company for it in internal messages. Bard made a factual error in the very first demo Google posted to Twitter, and a presenter showing off the chatbot during a search event in Paris forgot the phone they were supposed to use during the presentation. Bard is currently only available to a limited test group, with wider availability arriving in the “coming weeks.”
Meta
Meta — the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — also has its sights set on AI. It developed Galactica, a language model designed to provide assistance to scientists and researchers with summaries of academic articles, solutions to math problems, the ability to annotate molecules, and more.
While Meta says it trained the bot on “over 48 million papers, textbooks, reference material, compounds, proteins and other sources of scientific knowledge,” the bot produced disappointing results when the company made it available in a public beta last November. The scientific community fiercely criticized the tool, with one scientist calling it “dangerous” due to its incorrect or biased responses. Meta took the chatbot offline after just a few days.
There’s more to come from Meta in the AI space just yet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company established a dedicated AI team that will eventually create “AI personas” designed to help people, as well as text- and image-based AI tools for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.
Anthropic
Anthropic, an AI research company founded by former OpenAI employees in 2021, is working on a Chat-GPT competitor of its own called Claude, which has yet to get a full public release. Google invested $300 million into Anthropic in late 2022.
We’ve trained language models to be better at responding to adversarial questions, without becoming obtuse and saying very little. We do this by conditioning them with a simple set of behavioral principles via a technique called Constitutional AI: https://t.co/rlft1pZlP5pic.twitter.com/MIGlKSVTe9
The company developed the chatbot using a methodology it calls Constitutional AI. There’s a whole research paper about the framework here, but, in short, it involves Anthropic training the language model with a set of around 10 “natural language instructions or principles” that it uses to revise its responses automatically. The goal of the system, according to Anthropic, is to “train better and more harmless AI assistants” without incorporating human feedback.
Scale, an AI data platform, was given access to Claude and outlined some of the differences between Anthropic’s bot and Chat-GPT. It found that the service could serve as a “serious” competitor to the OpenAI-made system and that the bot was “more inclined to refuse inappropriate requests.” It does come with some drawbacks, however, as Claude still appears to be prone to making factual errors and mathematical mistakes. For now, the general public can’t access Claude, and it’s only available to companies as an early-access product.
You.com
You.com, a company built by two former Salesforce employees, bills itself as the “search engine you control.” At first glance, it may seem like your typical search engine, but it comes with an AI-powered “chat” tool that works much like the one Microsoft’s piloting on Bing.
You.com first introduced the chatbot, called YouChat, in December 2022 and says it’s built on the company’s C-A-L model, which is “blended with AI-powered conversations, You.com apps, web links and citations.” Just like Microsoft’s AI, YouChat can provide annotated answers to various types of queries, create summaries of articles from the web, generate code, write essays, and more.
In addition to giving users access to an AI-powered chatbot, You.com recently added built-in AI image generator models, including Stable Diffusion 1.5, Stable Diffusion 2.1, and Open Journey, that you can use to generate images based on a written description. The engine also breaks down your search results based on relevant responses on sites like Reddit, TripAdvisor, Wikipedia, and YouTube while also providing standard results from the web.
Alibaba
Alibaba, the China-based e-commerce giant, has caught onto the AI chatbot trend as well. In early February, a company spokesperson told CNBC that the company is testing a Chat-GPT rival internally. Alibaba has reportedly been experimenting with generative AI since 2017, but the company hasn’t provided any sense of when it could announce the tool it’s working on or what it might be capable of.
Alibaba may have to overcome some hurdles before it gets its own version of ChatGPT off the ground, however. A report from Nikkei Asia indicates that Chinese regulators have already told the Alibaba-owned Tencent and Ant Group that they should restrict access to ChatGPT over concerns the bot could espouse uncensored content. The companies will also have to confer with the government before making their own bots available to the public.
Similar rules will likely apply to all of the other Chinese companies developing AI chatbots, calling into question whether they'll even be able to launch their products or if their utility will be held back by China’s strict censorship rules.
Baidu
Another Chinese company, Baidu, is getting ready to launch an AI tool it calls “Ernie Bot” as soon as March. Baidu is best known for its search engine of the same name, along with a cluster of other internet-related services, such as mapping platform Baidu Maps, online encyclopedia Baidu Baike, cloud storage service Baidu Wangpan, and more. It’s also leveraging AI technology to develop a self-driving car.
We are proud to announce our ongoing development of the AI chatbot project, ERNIE Bot (文心一言). First proposed as a language model in 2019, ERNIE has made significant progress since then.
Ernie, which stands for Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration, first appeared in 2019 and has since evolved into a ChatGPT-like tool that can generate conversational responses. In late 2021, Baidu said it trained the model on “massive unstructured data and a gigantic knowledge graph” and that it “excels at both natural language understanding (NLU) and generation (NLG).”
Aside from companies making standalone chatbots for search, there are a few other companies using generative AI in slightly different ways.
Snapchat, for example, is working on a “My AI” chatbot that essentially works as an in-app version of ChatGPT, allowing users to ask for recipe suggestions or plan trips. It’s more limiting than ChatGPT, however, as it’s been trained to avoid breaking Snapchat’s trust and safety guidelines. The service is only available as part of Snapchat’s $3.99 per month Plus subscribers for now, but CEO Evan Spiegel plans on eventually bringing it to all users.
Image: Snap
Snap’s My AI chatbot is basically a mobile version of ChatGPT.
Character.AI is another one of these tools and comes from the developers of Google’s LaMDA technology. The site lets you create or browse chatbots modeled after real people or fictional characters, such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Tony Stark. When “conversing” with these bots, the AI attempts to respond in a manner similar to that person or character’s personality. However, that’s not the only thing these bots are capable of, as some are designed to help generate book recommendations, brainstorm ideas, practice a new language, and more.
Meanwhile, Chinese gaming firm NetEase has announced that its education subsidiary, Youdao, is planning to incorporate AI-powered tools into some of its educational products, according to a report from CNBC. It’s still not clear what exactly this tool will do, but it seems the company’s interested in employing the technology in one of its upcoming games as well.
With Generative AI being all over the headlines these days, NetEase says it'll launch launch the first game version of ChatGPT in Justice Online Mobile, its upcoming MMO title.
It'll allow players to chat with NPCs and have them react in unique ways that impact the game. pic.twitter.com/JBiFy3J5dV
Daniel Ahmad, the director of research and insights at Niko Partners, reports that NetEase could bring a ChatGPT-style tool to the mobile MMO Justice Online Mobile. As noted by Ahmad, the tool will “allow players to chat with NPCs and have them react in unique ways that impact the game” through text or voice inputs. However, there’s only one demo of the tool so far, so we don’t know how (or if) it will make its way into the final version of the game.
Then, there’s Replika, an AI chatbot that functions as a sort of “companion” that you can talk to via text-based chats and even video calls. The tool combines the company’s own version of the GPT-3 model and scripted dialogue content to build memories and generate responses tailored to your conversation style. But the company that owns the tool recently ruled out erotic roleplay, devastating dedicated users.
We’re still at the beginning of what conversational AI can do, and with major players like Microsoft and Google getting on board, we’re bound to see some progress. It’ll be interesting to see how all of these tools evolve over the coming years, as well as which ones manage to make their way into our daily lives.
Apple will reportedly launch an M3-equipped iMac later this year
The M1-equipped iMac released in 2021. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple’s readying a new iMac that could launch as early as the second half of this year, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. While the new iMac will reportedly feature the same 24-inch display size as the previous model, it’s expected to come with a more powerful M3 chip made with a 3nm process.
The new iMac isn’t expected to enter mass production until at least three months, Gurman notes, but could still start shipping in the latter half of this year in the same colorways as its predecessor, including blue, silver, pink, and orange. Gurman says the new iMac is at “an advanced stage of development” and that Apple’s currently “conducting production tests of the machine.” This tracks with previous rumors from Gurman, which also hinted at a 2023 iMac launch.
Other details disclosed by Gurman indicate that some of the iMac’s internal components might get “relocated and redesigned,” and that the production process for mounting the iMac’s stand to the display is “different.” The iMac is overdue for an upgrade. Apple hasn’t refreshed its lineup in two years, with the 2021 model being the first to come with the company’s in-house silicon, along with a larger display size and an array of new colors.
In addition to a new iMac, Gurman says Apple’s also getting ready to launch the new 15-inch MacBook Air, an upgraded 13-inch MacBook Air, and a Mac Pro equipped with an M2 Ultra chip. Gurman speculates that it might make sense for Apple to include an M3 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Air as well, given that the company just released an M2-equipped one last year, while reserving the M2 chip for the larger 15-inch model.
It’s shaping up to be a busy year for Apple. The company’s expected to showcase its new M3 chip at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, where it could also take the wraps off of its highly-anticipated mixed-reality headset.
‘They’re more concerned about profit’: Osha, DoJ take on Amazon’s grueling working conditions
The federal workplace safety agency has issued citations against the company at multiple warehouses for various violations
The US’s top workplace safety regulator and the justice department are pressuring Amazon to explain safety practices that have led to injury rates for warehouse workers that are on average close to twice as high as the company’s competitors and in one case five times higher.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) issued citations against Amazon at six warehouses in December 2022, January 2023 and February 2023 over unsafe working conditions, ergonomic hazards and failure to properly report injuries.
How A.I. Is Being Used to Detect Cancer That Doctors Miss Hungary has become a major testing ground for A.I. software to spot cancer, as doctors debate whether the technology will replace them in medical jobs.
Facebook’s willing to reform its controversial cross-check program — but only parts of it
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta has agreed to modify Facebook and Instagram’s cross-check program, which exempts high-profile users from the company’s automated moderation system. In an updated blog post published Friday, the company shared its response to the Oversight Board’s recommendations, stating it will make the cross-check system “more transparent through regular reporting” as well as tweak the criteria it uses to add people to the program “to better account for human rights interests and equity.”
The Oversight Board, or the “independent body” that reviews Meta’s content moderation decisions, made a total of 32 recommendations on how Meta can improve its cross-check program last December. Meta has opted to fully implement 11 of those recommendations, while partially adopting 15.
Several aspects of Meta’s response haven’t gone as far as we recommended to achieve a more transparent and equitable system. Meta declined the Board's suggestion that deserving users be able to apply for the protections afforded by cross-check.
Facebook and Instagram’s cross-check program came under fire after a 2021 report from The Wall Street Journalrevealed that Meta’s been using it to shield politicians, celebrities, and popular athletes from its automated moderation system. According to Meta, the system lets the company apply “additional levels of human review” to posts shared by high-profile figures in an attempt to avoid wrongly removing them.
The Oversight Board criticized the program, stating it “appears more directly structured to satisfy business concerns” rather than as a way to further the company’s “human rights commitments” as it previously claimed. As part of its response, Meta agreed to implement recommendations that require it to take immediate action on cross-checked content “identified as potentially severely violating.” It also committed to reducing the cross-check program’s backlog, an issue the Oversight Board found could cause harmful content to stay online longer than it should.
However, Meta’s still “assessing the feasibility” of a rule that would allow figures to opt out of the cross-check program, and isn’t going through with five recommendations, including a suggestion to “publicly mark” some of the figures benefitting from the program. It also rejected the Oversight Board’s recommendation to notify users that it might take longer for Meta to take action when they report a post from someone in the cross-check program. You can read the full list of recommendations and Meta’s response to each here.
While the Oversight Board calls Meta’s response a “landmark moment” in a thread on Twitter, it isn’t completely satisfied with the changes the company’s willing to make. “Several aspects of Meta’s response haven’t gone as far as we recommended to achieve a more transparent and equitable system,” the Oversight Board writes. “Meta declined the Board’s suggestion that deserving users be able to apply for the protections afforded by cross-check... We will continue to react to Meta’s specific responses in the days and weeks to come.”
Amazon’s sleep-tracking Halo Rise smart alarm drops to a new all-time low price
The Amazon Halo Rise is on sale for $99.99 ($40 off) at multiple retailers. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Welcome to the weekend — and the last one where you’ll be able to enjoy an “extra” hour of sleep before you lose it next Sunday. That’s right: Daylight Saving Time begins in the US next Sunday, March 12th, which means the clocks will spring forward one hour, the days will get brighter, and we’re all going to wake up the following Monday morning even sleepier than usual.
That sucks, but today’s deal on Amazon’s Halo Rise might help make the adjustment to the change in time go a little smoother. Right now, you can buy Amazon’s latest wellness gadget at a new all-time low of $99.99 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Lowe’s. Part smart alarm clock, the Rise will gently wake you up during your lightest sleeping stage with a natural morning light so getting up earlier feels less disorienting. At the same time, the Rise is a noninvasive sleep tracker that helps you improve your sleep habits as you adjust by generating daily reports and monitoring potential disturbances, like room temperature.
Oh, and just in case you find it hard to actually get to sleep, you can also use the Rise as a soothing warm smart table lamp you can use to read before bed. It’s also compatible with Echo devices, so you can ask Alexa to play some relaxing music. Read our review.
Shopping for an excellent pair of noise-canceling headphones? Good news: today we’ve found deals on two of the best on the market: Bose’s QuietComfort 45 and Apple’s AirPods Max. First up, Bose’s QuietComfort 45 are on sale at Amazon and Newegg for $279 ($50 off) in various colors. Not only do these over-ear headphones boast excellent noise cancellation, but they are also some of the most comfortable we’ve ever tested. As a result, you won’t suffer from ear fatigue when you want to tune out loud passengers while, say, flying out of town for spring break. You won’t need to fear running out of battery either as they can last 24 hours, and fitting them into your luggage won’t be a problem as the ear cups can even swivel and fold. Read our review.
If you’re more of an Apple aficionado, though, you can alternatively buy Apple’s AirPods Max for $449.99 ($100 off) in all colors at Best Buy, which is the lowest price we’ve seen this year. Compared to their plastic Bose and Sony rivals, the aluminum and steel AirPods Max feature superior build quality, albeit with a heavier weight. While their bass response isn’t quite as good, their sound quality is still phenomenal, thanks to nice features like spatial audio support. Plus, the Bluetooth headphones pair well with other Apple devices, making them a particularly good pick for iPhone owners. Read our review.
If you’re looking for a powerful Chromebook, you might want to take a look at today’s deal on Acer’s Chromebook Spin 714. With Intel’s fast 12th Gen processors and Thunderbolt 4 support, it’s our favorite Chromebook for power users and even comes with an included stylus to boot. Yet at the same time, it’s relatively quiet and produces very little heat in comparison to its predecessor. There’s also an HDMI port, which is rare to find in a thin Chromebook. While it’s a shame its battery life is slightly worse than its predecessor’s and its speakers aren’t that great, it’s an otherwise good Chromebook capable of handling more intense workloads than many of its rivals. You can buy it with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel Evo Core i5 processor for $499 ($230 off) at Best Buy, which is just $20 shy of its all-time low price. Read our review.
You can buy the Dart Zone Pro MK-3 foam blaster for $59.99 ($25 off) in red from Amazon. The well-designed blaster is powerful to use and capable of firing darts at up to 150 feet per second. Read our review.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for Nintendo Switch is $39.99 ($20 off) at Target. The Switch reimagining of the 1993 Game Boy classic offers a whole new take on the original, with an adorable miniature-like aesthetic to its graphics. Read our review.
Sick of hunt-and-peck? Here’s how to touch-type like a pro
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
As a kid, I started typing by tapping in cheat codes on ’90s PC games like Doom and Rise of the Triad, but it wasn’t until the covid pandemic that I finally ditched my awkward hunt-and-peck technique and learned touch typing.
If you don’t know how to touch type, there are very approachable ways you can learn on your own. You may think you do just fine ham-fisting your way through the keys, but with a little effort, you can learn to type faster, use your fingers more ergonomically, and rarely have to take your eyes off your screen as you clackity-clack-clack-clack along.
If you’ve been relying on only a few fingers to type, it’s going to take some time to adjust and get those idle digits cracking along. At first, you may type as slow as molasses while you learn what fingers are responsible for what keys, but that’s okay. Even if you start off at 20 words per minute, it’s key to focus on accuracy and building that new muscle memory from the ground up. Just like playing a musical instrument, hit the right notes first — then do it faster.
Image: Keybr
The home row resting position and the corresponding keys for each finger.
Touch typing begins with anchoring your fingers on the home row. On a QWERTY layout keyboard, that involves resting your left fingers on A, S, D, and F while your right digits are on J, K, L, and semicolon. Both thumbs should hover over / rest on the space bar. Do you feel a little raised bump, nub, or other signifier on the F and J keys? Most keycaps have some tactile accent making these two keys feel different. That’s how you find these important keys to anchor your index fingers and let the rest fall into place, even without looking.
It’s easy to get started with different kinds of training apps (the majority of which are free) that simplify the typing experience and even make it fun. In this article, I’ll first walk you through a variety of options for you to try and then add some dos and don’ts that should get you learning new finger muscle memory to make you much, much faster.
Keybr starts you off with limited keys and slowly lights more up as it introduces them into your routine.
When it comes to free resources for learning how to touch-type, I highly recommend using Keybr on a desktop browser. This site automatically builds typing lessons for you by measuring your initial skill (accuracy and speed) and generates practice lessons that focus first on the most frequently used letters. It then slowly ramps up with more letters to type and fingers to use. You’ll be typing a mix of real words and fake words that follow familiar-looking phonetic structures, so it works your fingers without abstracting away all semblance of language.
By making an account with Keybr (via email, Google, or Facebook sign-ins), you can save your progress and pick up where you left off. Keybr also offers a premium account for a one-time $10 purchase that removes ads and disables ad trackers, though the on-page ads are not very invasive.
The key to using Keybr, just like any typing tool, is consistency. Keep practicing daily and the program will work you through all the keys before you know it. Once you’ve “unlocked” all the keys, keep forging ahead and focusing on accuracy. Your speed will slowly go up over time.
You can see from my practice calendar that my prime learning time was about six weeks of fairly consistent practicing. Keybr also saves other nifty data about your progress in your profile, like your best and worst letters.
And then, just when you start to get some confidence, try turning on capital letters and punctuation in Keybr’s settings. I assure you, it will suck at first, but you gotta learn those shift keys eventually. Best practice dictates that you should use the pinky finger of the opposite hand that’s typing the capital letter, but in reality, I’m sure many of us slip on that fine detail.
I don’t love that Keybr adds capitalization and punctuation to every single word when you enable those settings, but you can always switch it off when you want to pivot back to focusing on character speed. Plus, once you start feeling generally comfortable touch typing without looking, you can always switch from Keybr to another program that incorporates more real-world use of caps and symbols.
Monkeytype offers myriad controls for custom-tailoring your typing lessons. For example, I’ve themed mine with Verge colors (whichyou can use, too), while that user-submitted text prompt is from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Once you start getting the hang of touch typing, the site that I continuously return to is Monkeytype. Monkeytype is the sleekest, most customizable type tester I’ve come across. Its clean interface allows you to load it up and hammer out some phrases in a matter of seconds, or you can dive into the options and custom-tailor something unique. The site has all kinds of cool templates and styles for you to customize. You can test based on time or phrase length, and you can also choose to incorporate punctuation, capitalization, longer or shorter passages, or extra-hard parameters — like failing if you make a single mistake or dip below a words-per-minute threshold. You can even load up randomly generated tests that pull from movie, book, and TV quotes.
Really, there’s a lot of fun stuff to tinker with on Monkeytype, ranging from the color layout to weird graphical effects that may test your threshold for motion sickness as much as your typing.
Little Women isn’t just a timeless American coming-of-age novel — it makes for a fun typing exercise.
Want to practice typing while reading classics by George Orwell, Dante Alighieri, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and more? TypeLit.io has dozens of books for you to practice typing with, like The War of the Worlds or Sense and Sensibility. There’s even William Strunk Jr.’s The Elements of Style, so you can learn 1920s-era American-English writing style while you type.
This may be a bit of a novelty, but it’s a charming take on typing practice. It offers thousands of pages of actual literary text, which makes for some good exercises.
It’s basic looking, but Typing Trainer gets the job done and has some handy lessons if you want to practice specific trouble spots in your typing.
Brace yourself for some antiquated design and graphics. Typing Trainer may look like the cheesy programs we used as kids, but it’s still an effective learning tool. You can work your way through a series of courses from the very beginning or jump into some timed tests.
Typing Trainer also has some browser games you can play, where you can race a car or blast alien spaceships by, you guessed it, typing. They’re pretty basic, with an early-2000s flash game aesthetic, but they’re a fun distraction to practice with.
Mamma mia! What the hell is going on with Toad’s face in this title screen?
Many of us olds might remember the 1992 DOS classic Mario Teaches Typing, made for Nintendo by Interplay. You can now play the whole game free in your browser courtesy of the Internet Archive. It’s very dated and probably not the best way to learn today since it’s stuck in the old ways of grueling and unrelenting repetition using lots of individual letters and repeated sequences, but it’s worth it for a laugh and the nostalgia trip. Fun fact: this was the first game where Mario spoke, and the voice lines are hilariously bad, sounding like they’re trying the Italian-American accent thing way too hard.
Plus, there’s a writing prompt about the American Civil War that seems to downplay the significance of slavery in the cause of the war. So, yeah, be prepared for some problematic stuff buried in there.
Image: Fishing Cactus
Not only do you type your way through battles in Epistory, but the movement keys are situated on the home row to keep your hands in the right position. It takes a little getting used to, but in this case, it’s better than using traditional WASD controls.
Epistory - Typing Chronicles is a charming Steam-based action-adventure game with a papercraft aesthetic that uses typing to activate the powers of your fox-riding protagonist and fight monsters while exploring a fantasy world. I find Epistory to be a little dry at times, but it’s a pretty game, and I admire its fun twist on the typing genre. It’s a novel way to practice once you’ve started getting the hang of touch typing, and if you enjoy it, there’s even a sequel due out soon.
Image: Sega
Putting down zombies with a rat-a-tat-tat as you feverishly tap away on your keys just somehow feels right.
This is an on-rails shooter spinoff of the House of the Dead games, where typing words fires bullets at zombies. The Typing of the Dead: Overkill is a visceral experience that’s good for a cheap thrill while typing, though it shows some of its 2010s-era cringe with campy jokes and characters that lean on tired stereotypes. It’s like a C-movie video game with B-level typing, but I can’t help myself from enjoying it and recommending it.
More tips for learning touch-typing skills
Having gone through this learning process myself and being a bit of a nerd for mechanical keyboards (the two often go hand-in-hand), here’s some further advice and best practices on developing your touch-typing expertise.
Dos:
Practice regularly. Ideally, once a day.
Turn practicing into a regular routine or habit, like starting your day with it while drinking your morning coffee.
Test yourself with capital letters, punctuation, and even numbers. Real-world typing isn’t just lowercase letters!
Look ahead to the next word on a typing prompt. You type faster when you know what’s coming next. Think of it like Tetris.
Use the same methods for learning alternate keyboard layouts like Dvorak and Colemak. Sites like Keybr and Monkeytype offer training in all of them, though QWERTY is the default.
Use your newfound love of typing as an excuse to get into mechanical keyboards. Sure, they won’t help you type faster, but they sound and look cool, and it’s a fun rabbit hole to dive into.
Don’ts:
Don’t get impatient about getting faster.
Don’t ignore your typos. If a type trainer allows you to backspace and fix mistakes, you should do that to build the habit.
Don’t overdo the training. Your fingers can get overworked, and practicing too much in one sitting yields diminishing returns. Just like when you exercise, recovery and rest are important, too. You’ll probably be slightly faster when you pick it up the next day.
Don’t be elitist about typing. Just because you know how to touch-type doesn’t mean you get to judge others for not knowing or for typing slowly. Sometimes people online use Words Per Minute (WPM) as a measure of people’s worth or as a way of gatekeeping, and that’s just not cool. Instead, be welcoming and encourage others to get into it if they’re interested.
Uh oh! The crypto collapse has reached the real financial system
Liquidity trouble? | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Silvergate, one of the most important banks in crypto, is in big trouble. Maybe existential trouble.
Silvergate didn’t start in crypto. It started in real estate. But in January 2014, the bank jumped into Bitcoin, a volatile year — Bitcoin started the year at $770 and closed above $300 in December. “Some of the companies that were being formed at the time to provide services to this budding Bitcoin space, many of them were struggling to find and maintain bank accounts,” said Silvergate CEO Alan Lane in a June 2022 episode of the Odd Lots podcast. “So that was really where we started.”
The focus at the bank was institutions — other companies, some of which work with consumers. For instance, Genesis, the now-bankruptcrypto-lending subsidiary of DCG, was among Silvergate’s early clients. The bank developed the Silvergate Exchange Network, which was a way for crypto institutions such as Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken to transact in dollars 24/7. “We’ve got all of them,” Lane said in 2022. “All of the major ones. Anybody who is serious about regulation.”
Also among Lane’s clients: FTX. Federal prosecutors are now examining Silvergate’s role in banking Sam Bankman-Fried’s fallen empire. The more pressing problem is that the collapse of FTX spooked other Silvergate customers, resulting in an $8.1 billion run on the bank: 60 percent of its deposits that walked out the door in just one quarter. (“Worse than that experienced by the average bank to close in the Great Depression,” TheWall Street Journal helpfully explained.)
The laundry list of customers helps to explain why Silvergate’s woes are frightening. Very few banks will touch crypto because it’s so risky — and most traditional banks don’t let crypto clients transact in dollars 24/7. Access to banking that moves at the pace crypto does is rare, and only one other US bank can do it.
“If Silvergate goes out of business, it’s going to push funds and market makers further offshore,” Ava Labs president John Wu told Barron’s. The issue is how easy it is to get into actual cash dollars, which in finance-speak is called liquidity. Less liquidity makes transactions more difficult. Already there is a broader gap between the price at which a trade is expected to go through at and the actual price at which it executes, Wu said.
So Silvergate’s troubles are a problem for the entire crypto industry.
Stablecoins
Silvergate’s SEN was an important on- and off-ramp from the almighty dollar (and the almighty euro) into crypto. In 2022, Lane said all the “regulated, US-dollar backed stablecoin issuers” banked at Silvergate.
But for stablecoins issued by Circle, Paxos, and Gemini, among others, the SEN was important for making and burning their tokens, which were issued when someone deposited a dollar in their Silvergate bank accounts, Lane said.
Silvergate was a pass-through point for crypto. Stablecoins that are backed by dollars at least theoretically have cash or cash-like assets sitting in reserve somewhere. (The reason Tether is controversial is that there are questions about the existence and value of that reserve.) Silvergate’s job was to create a token when someone put a dollar into, say, USDC and to burn a token when someone took a dollar out. “We are this critical piece of infrastructure where folks, as they’re exiting the ecosystem and wanting to go to cash — those dollars pass through Silvergate,” Lane said in 2022.
The dollar side of the transaction meant that Silvergate’s clients had to keep a bunch of cash on hand at the bank in order to pay each other and anyone who wanted to cash out. To make money here, Silvergate could do a few things. The safest is to buy, like, one-month Treasury bills at the Fed and call it a day.
Now, this being finance, taking more risk also may mean more profit. So Silvergate seems to have bought bonds. (Verge favorite Matt Levine at Bloomberghas a more in-depth analysis of how this worked if you want the gory details.) The problem is not that the bonds were super risky — it is that FTX sparked a mass exodus into dollars, and Silvergate suddenly had to come up with a bunch of money. Unfortunately, that meant selling its bonds at a loss in order to pay its obligations. Ironically, the bonds were pretty safe — “if its depositors had kept their money at Silvergate, its bonds would have matured with plenty of money to pay them back,” notes Levine.
Silvergate has another way of touching stablecoins besides serving as the on- and off-ramp for their transactions. It bought assets from Facebook’s doomed stablecoin attempt Libra, later renamed Diem, in January 2022. At the time, Silvergate said it would start making Diem available by the end of the year. The goal was a digital payments network.
One of the other services Silvergate offered was the ability to lend dollars against Bitcoin. Now, Silvergate said in January on its fourth quarter earnings call that “all of our SEN Leverage loans continued to perform as expected, with no losses or forced liquidations.” Maybe these loans are fine! Silvergate doesn’t appear to have done anything exceptionally risky elsewhere.
But if you want to use your Bitcoin to take out a dollar loan, I think that just got harder.
Real estate
Silvergate had a life before crypto: it was a tiny bank focused on real estate deals in southern California. During that time, it never had more than $1 billion in deposits, according to The Financial Times. And Silvergate needed deposits. When Lane steered the company into crypto, its business ballooned. By 2021, Silvergate had more than $10 billion. The bank went public in 2019 at $12 a share and peaked at over $200 a share in 2021. (Shares closed at $5.77 on March 3.)
Real estate became less and less of a focus because crypto was a rocket ship for the bank. But that real estate connection proved useful for Silvergate in 2022, though. In the last quarter of the year, Silvergate got at least $3.6 billion in funds from Federal Home Loan Banks, a 1930s-era system that also originally dealt in mortgages.
To pay that off, Silvergate sold off more bonds. This is not ideal, and it is part of the reason Silvergate is in trouble. “If you are a bank you do not want to be pointing in the wrong direction, because that becomes self-fulfilling,” writes Bloomberg’s Levine. And indeed, this is why many of Silvergate’s major customers are spooked. Levine thinks that this may get some regulators interested in crypto banking.
Bizarre transactions
In fact, the Justice Department is already interested. There are some questions around bizarre transactions that took place at Silvergate.
For instance, Binance. Its supposedly independent arm, Binance.US, transferred more than $400 million to a trading firm called Merit Peak Ltd, Reuters reported. That firm is managed by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. “The CEO of Binance.US at the time, Catherine Coley, wrote to a Binance finance executive in late 2020 asking for an explanation for the transfers, calling them ‘unexpected’ and saying ‘no one mentioned them,’” Reuters wrote. Those transfers took place on Silvergate’s special network, SEN.
This is similar to some of the problems Silvergate faces around FTX. Alameda Research, the trading firm also owned by Bankman-Fried, opened an account with Silvergate in 2018. Bankman-Fried admitted he used Alameda accounts for FTX funds, commingling customer funds with those for the trading firm.
I don’t know if Silvergate did anything wrong. Possibly it didn’t! But having the Feds start poking around, asking questions? That is a headache and a distraction. It is the last thing a troubled bank needs.
But you know what? In this specific case, I’m inclined to believe them. First of all, just a fuckload of money has already left Silvergate. But second, SIlvergate was a pass-through bank for crypto; it didn’t hold onto reserves, and it didn’t pay interest. The problem here is less that some exchange or stablecoin is going to suffer a massive loss of customer money and more that it is now even harder for crypto companies to get banking.
I don’t know whether Silvergate is going to come through this. But I strongly suspect it has just gotten a lot harder to get into dollars from crypto and out of crypto into dollars. Silvergate dealt in liquidity, and a liquidity problem can become a solvency problem real fast. The entire crypto industry just got a lot more fragile.
TikTok ‘acting too slow’ to tackle self-harm and eating disorder content
Organisations including NSPCC say app has chosen to deny the problem and must take meaningful action
TikTok has been urged to strengthen its content moderation policies around suicide and eating disorder material by organisations including the NSPCC and the Molly Rose Foundation.
The groups claimed TikTok had not acted swiftly enough following the publication of research suggesting the app’s recommendation algorithm pushes self-harm and eating disorder content to teenagers within minutes of them expressing interest in the topics.
In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. You can contact the mental health charity Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or visiting mind.org.uk.
UK chip designer Arm chooses US-only listing in blow to Rishi Sunak
PM had held talks with firm’s owner SoftBank in effort to make London first choice for tech flotations
The Cambridge-based chip designer Arm is to pursue a US-only listing this year, dealing a major blow to Rishi Sunak’s ambitions to make London the first choice for tech company flotations.
The company, which is owned by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, confirmed its preferred plan of seeking a US-only main listing later this year, spurning the UK despite heavy lobbying by successive prime ministers.
Labor board decision could force Google to negotiate with YouTube contractors
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, should be considered a joint employer for a group of YouTube Music contractors. The workers are currently attempting to organize with the Alphabet Worker’s Union, and the NLRB’s decision could mean that the tech giant has to negotiate with them if they vote to unionize in an upcoming election.
The workers are directly employed by a company called Cognizant, which acts as an Alphabet subcontractor. However, the NLRB believes that Google has enough control over their “benefits, hours of work, supervision, and direction of work” that it counts as a partial employer, according to Bloomberg.
“We are proud to win a precedent setting victory not just for ourselves, but also for workers across the country,” said Sam Regan, a union organizer and YouTube Music contractor, who was quoted in a press release from the AWU. “Technology companies in particular have innovated new ways to deny responsibility for their workers’ livelihoods through subcontracting, gig work, and other poor employment practices.”
For its part, Alphabet intends to appeal the NLRB’s decision. “We simply don’t control these workers’ employment terms or working conditions,” spokesperson Courtenay Mencini told Bloomberg.
In addition to the union drive and fight to get Alphabet recognized as a joint employer, the contractors went on strike in February to protest return to office orders — the first strike at the company, according to the AWU. The dates for the union election haven’t been publicly announced yet.
Apple’s business-oriented ‘Mac notebook upgrade program’ has been discontinued
Image: @MaxWinebach
Apple partnered with a bank in 2021 to let small businesses lease new M1 Macs for as low as $30 per month, with easy options to upgrade if and when more powerful devices are released. Now that’s no longer being offered, and businesses that had signed up will now have to sign up for a different program from CIT Group, the bank Apple partnered with, or go another route to get their computers.
A business that reached out to The Verge shared an email from CIT Group (aka First Citizens Bank) confirming the Mac Upgrade Program has ended. Now the bank is requesting the business to switch to its FMV lease or continue to lease the equipment at the same monthly rate — though it would run indefinitely with no buyout option. The Verge contacted both CIT and Apple to confirm the program’s status, but neither has responded at time of publication.
While the Mac Notebook Upgrade Program is no more, CIT Group still has Apple hardware leasing options that include a “$1 buyout lease.” Although the terms are not fully disclosed on the page, Apple has an active business financing page that seems to describe CIT’s offering.
The current offering includes “flexible” leasing options, 12 / 24 / 36-month terms, a $4,000 order minimum, financing for up to 25 percent of the value on accessories, and buyout options. The now-defunct program offered low monthly payments starting with the 13-inch MacBook Air for $30, 13-inch MacBook Pro for $39, 14-inch MacBook Pro for $60, and 16-inch MacBook Pro for $75. Immediate upgrades were available if a new MacBook Air or Pro with newer chips were released at any time after the first 90 days of the lease.
It also seemed like a part of Apple’s overall service-oriented shift, following the iPhone Upgrade program that has existed for consumers for several years, bundling AppleCare Plus and the ability to swap your phone annually, or the also consumer-aimed Upgrade Plus financing setup Apple offers for laptops purchased from Best Buy. It’s unclear if this program has shut down due to a lack of interest or a change in strategy, but there was a rumor that Apple might launch a full subscription program for the iPhone, perhaps by the end of this year.
Although Apple and CIT Group aren’t offering the Mac Upgrade Program anymore, Apple is still supporting small businesses on the services side with its Business Essentials IT management package. Businesses (and K-12 / High Ed) can also still order hardware directly from Apple’s special Business or Education store site and build POs — but normally for the full price.
Apple is also expected to launch its buy now, pay later service this year. Whether it launches or not, individuals — and perhaps individuals that own a small business — could always use an Apple Card and pay 0 percent financing on new Apple computers.
From Ghostbusters and Aliens to Lego Star Wars: 10 great video games based on movies
As Oscars night approaches, we pick out some of the rare movie tie-ins that don’t make you want to throw popcorn at your screen
Designed by ex-Atari luminary David Crane (Pitfall, Decathlon), Activision’s wonderful tie-in captured the humour and spirit of the classic comedy. Players set up their own ghostbusting franchises, buying equipment before setting out to capture spooks. With its use of digitised speech and a jaunty reproduction of the film’s soundtrack, it showed that games really could provide an authentic movie experience.
Sony might be forced to reveal how much it pays to keep games off Xbox Game Pass
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Sony might be forced to detail its PlayStation exclusivity deals and how much it pays for “blocking rights” to keep games off rival services like Xbox Game Pass. The FTC has sued to try and block Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition and kicked off a legal discovery process with Microsoft sending subpoenas to Sony to force it to reveal records, internal documentation, and emails from the company’s PlayStation unit.
Kotaku spotted that the FTC’s chief administrative judge D. Michael Chappell has now sided with Microsoft’s request for details of Sony’s PlayStation exclusivity deals. The request cover deals made after January 1st, 2019, including fees or agreements that prevented publishers from placing games on Xbox Game Pass. The judge’s decision comes after Microsoft previously accused Sony of paying for “blocking rights” to stop developers from adding their content to Xbox Game Pass.
Here are Microsoft’s latest claims, summarized in the word’s of Judge Chappell:
Microsoft argues that the Complaint in this case makes a number of allegations regarding high-performance video game console developers’ exclusivity arrangements with video game publishers. Microsoft states that it is aware that SIE requires many third-party publishers to agree to exclusivity provisions, including preventing the publishers from putting their games on Xbox’s multi-game subscription service, and that understanding the full extent of SIE’s exclusivity arrangements and their effect on industry competitiveness will assist in its defense.
“The nature and extent of SIE’s content-licensing agreements are relevant to the Complaint’s allegations of exclusivity arrangements between video game console developers and video game developers and publishers,” said Judge Chappell.
Microsoft had also been trying to get details on Sony’s deals dating back to 2012, but Judge Chappell labeled this “excessive,” and granted Sony’s request to limit the applicable time for document requests to 2019 instead.
It’s incredibly rare for details on such exclusivity deals to be made public, but the FTC case could open up some of the secrecy of the games industry in court hearings. The last time we saw similar details revealed by a court case was Epic Games vs. Apple in 2021. That case showed how Microsoft had explored reducing its Xbox store cut to shake up console gaming, how Sony had implemented cross-play platform fees, and that Fortnite was a PS4 cash cow.
The FTC case is still at the document discovery stage, with an evidentiary hearing scheduled for August 2nd, so we’re months away from seeing any potential new details.
Elsewhere, Microsoft’s Activision deal is likely to be approved by EU regulators. The combination of a binding 10-year agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms and a similar deal with Nvidia has reportedly convinced the European Commission to approve the acquisition. Microsoft still faces scrutiny from UK and US regulators though, with Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) offering possible remedies last month that include forcing Microsoft to sell off Activision Blizzard’s business associated with Call of Duty.
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