Marvel Snap is the most positive addiction I’ve ever had
After breaking up with FIFA nearly two years ago, has Dominik Diamond found his new forever game in Marvel’s infectiously joyous mobile card-battler?
I don’t look cool. I have aged ungracefully. At 18 I was Morten Harket meets the Milky Bar Kid. Now I am Gary Oldman’s Dracula meets a potato. Yet I bonded with the coolest guy in my town this week. He and his mates invaded the bus en masse, all tumbling hair, skinny jeans and laughing eyes, fanning out around me, thinking it best not to bother the hobo in the ski jacket and ankle wellies.
I caught sight of the screen on Cool Guy’s phone. My heart flipped and I said the words that have united a million people around the world recently.
Google Promised to Defund Climate Lies, but the Ads Keep Coming Google said in 2021 that it would stop running ads alongside videos and other content that denied the existence and causes of climate change.
Robot dogs deployed in New York building collapse revive surveillance fears
Robots praised by New York mayor for searching ruins of a parking garage collapse, but critics fear robots will collect private data
“Digidog is out of the pound,” Eric Adams declared in April. The New York City mayor also insisted the successful use of the controversial robot in response to a recent building collapse should convince critics such devices can improve safety in the city.
Adams commended first responders’ use of the four-legged robot in the ruins of a parking garage collapse last week in Manhattan, in which one person was killed and five injured.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie has made a cool $1 billion
Bowser gazing at a Super Star. | Image: Universal
The writing’s been on the wall basically from the moment The Super Mario Bros. Movie first hit theaters, but after weeks of sitting comfortably at the top of the domestic box office, Universal, Illumination, and Nintendo’s big movie collaboration has officially made $1 billion.
It’s been less than a full month since co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie premiered, but in those few short weeks, the project’s already raked in a cool $490 million domestically and $532 million internationally, making it the fifth pandemic-era movie to cross the $1 billion mark. Given how the film only just opened in markets including South Korea and Japan within the past few days, it’s all but assured to make quite a bit more money before its theatrical run comes to an end.
Having become the most financially successful video game movie ever, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a far cry from the catastrophic box office failure that was Nintendo’s first Super Mario Bros. film from 1993. The movie’s gross basically guarantees that we’re going to be seeing more Mario sequels for years to come and feels like a signal that Nintendo’s big plan to build a new kind of entertainment empire for itself might just work.
The UK doesn’t want Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal, so what happens next?
Microsoft’s giant deal hangs in the balance. | Image: Microsoft
Microsoft is furious. Last week, a surprise decision from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) left its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard blocked in Britain, thanks to concerns about the future of cloud gaming.
Microsoft president Brad Smith was awake at 2AM that morning hastily writing a response from across the pond, according to Bloomberg. He spoke to the BBC a day later and called the UK regulator’s decision the “darkest day” for Microsoft in its four decades of working in Britain. He went a step further and said “the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business” than the UK, a particularly stinging statement given the political issues around Brexit.
Now, Microsoft is bruised, angry, and plotting its next move. If Brad Smith’s fighting talk is anything to go by, Microsoft will try to keep this deal alive. But the CMA’s decision won’t be an easy one to appeal.
Microsoft president Brad Smith has previously appeared in Brussels to argue for its Activision deal.
UK regulators have been cracking down on merger and acquisition activity in recent years, coinciding with the UK’s exit from the European Union. To fight its latest decision, Microsoft will have to file a notice with the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), a process that can take months. It will have to convince a panel of judges that the CMA acted irrationally, illegally, or with procedural impropriety or unfairness. And the chances of winning are slim. “The CMA has won 67 percent of all merger appeals since 2010,” wrote Nicole Kar, a partner at the Linklaters law firm, in 2020. I spoke to Kar after the CMA’s Microsoft decision, and she confirmed the CMA still wins the majority of any appeals.
Meta’s battle with the CMA over its Giphy acquisition shows what Microsoft might be in store for. Meta was originally ordered to sell Giphy in 2021 but appealed the ruling and was unsuccessful. Meta eventually had to comply with the UK competition watchdog and divest itself of social media GIF library Giphy. Viagogo’s $4 billion takeover of StubHub was also partially blocked by the CMA, forcing the company to keep StubHub’s US and Canadian operations but sell its UK and international businesses.
Microsoft skirmished with the CMA during the review process, publicly criticizing the regulator’s math and forcing it to fix “clear errors” in its financial calculations around withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation.
Those errors forced the CMA to make a rare U-turn with its provisional findings, dropping concerns around Call of Duty and the impact of Microsoft’s deal on console competition. But crucially, it kept cloud gaming concerns open — which led to the deal being blocked. Sony, which has emerged as one of the main opponents (alongside Google) to Microsoft’s Activision acquisition, called the CMA’s initial U-turn a “surprising, unprecedented, and irrational” decision, but the PlayStation maker hasn’t yet commented on the regulator’s decision to block the deal.
The CMA said in September that it was concerned about the effects of Microsoft owning Activision Blizzard games on existing rivals and emerging entrants offering multi-game subscriptions and cloud gaming services. I tweeted at the time that all of the headlines around Call of Duty were just noise, and there would be bigger concerns around Microsoft’s ability to leverage Windows and Azure, unlike its competitors, and how it could influence game distribution and revenue shares across the game industry with its Xbox Game Pass subscription.
Image: Activision Blizzard
Call of Duty wasn’t a big concern for the CMA after all.
Microsoft knew cloud gaming would be a key concern, and that’s why it has spent the past couple of months preparing by signing deals with Boosteroid, Ubitus, and Nvidia to allow Xbox PC games to run on rival cloud gaming services. These 10-year deals will also include access to Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games if Microsoft’s deal is approved by regulators. If it’s not approved, then the deals are off for Activision games, with only access to Microsoft’s Xbox PC games being supplied.
But these deals haven’t convinced the UK. The CMA says they are “too limited in scope” with models that mean gamers have to acquire the right to play games “by purchasing them on certain stores or subscribing to certain services.” There’s also concern around Microsoft potentially retaining all revenue from sales of Activision games and in-app purchases or cloud providers not being able to provide access to these games in rival multi-game subscription services or offer them on computer operating systems other than Windows.
Limiting support to Windows would make rival cloud gaming services customers of Microsoft, helping the software giant secure its dominance in operating systems if there ever was a bigger shift to cloud gaming. Valve’s SteamOS provides the only realistic threat to Windows gaming dominance right now, and if cloud providers have to license Windows to run games like Call of Duty, then it’s unlikely that we’ll see the switch to Linux that Google tried to push with its failed Stadia cloud gaming service.
Most of this deal now rests on the European Union’s shoulders. The cloud deals Microsoft has been signing are also designed to appease regulators in the EU. Reuters reported last month that the Activision deal is likely to be approved by EU regulators following the Nvidia and Nintendo licensing agreements. The EU is due to make a decision by May 22nd, and Microsoft is once again trying to get out ahead of regulators by signing a fresh deal with European cloud gaming platform Nware. Nvidia and Boosteroid, which both signed Microsoft’s 10-year cloud deal, have publicly questioned the CMA’s decision, with Microsoft hoping this kind of backing will sway EU regulators.
Microsoft and European cloud gaming platform Nware have signed a 10-year agreement. Our statement here: pic.twitter.com/GWoSBg63P6
An EU approval could offer a glimmer of hope for Microsoft’s giant deal, as such a move would put pressure on the UK as the only major market to outright block the acquisition. Regulators in Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Chile, Serbia, Japan, and South Africa have already approved the deal. Microsoft does face trouble closer to home, though.
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block Microsoft and Activision Blizzard’s deal late last year. The FTC case is still at the document discovery stage, with an evidentiary hearing scheduled for August 2nd. Microsoft and Sony lawyers are already arguing over which (and how many) documents should be presented as part of the legal discovery process, and we’re months away from knowing how the case will proceed.
Microsoft has always maintained that the deal will close by the end of its fiscal 2023 year, which is the end of June. But that deadline looks incredibly unrealistic now, given the CMA’s intervention. We’re definitely going to see some fighting from Microsoft in the weeks ahead, but if EU regulators share the same concerns as the CMA, then it will almost certainly be game over for Microsoft. It’s hard to imagine it’s really willing to battle it out in courts for months or years with multiple regulators in Europe, all while facing the prospect of the FTC trying to break the deal apart. So for the next few weeks, all eyes are now on Brussels.
The Verge’s favorite Stream Deck hacks
Image: Elgato
Stream Deck fever has hit The Verge — here are some of the uses that we put ours to.
Recently — this week, in fact — I purchased my first Stream Deck. Specifically, I decided to try the Stream Deck Mini, the smallest and most inexpensive model. Why? Because I saw how much fun many of my colleagues were having with theirs.
The Stream Deck is a device that lets you program a series of physical buttons (and, in the case of the Plus, knobs) to perform a single task or a series of tasks on your computer or on your home’s smart devices. In other words, it lets you do something that usually demands several keystrokes — say, starting a new email, dropping in a template, and sending it to a specific contact list — with a single button press. Neat, right?
Well, several staffers at The Verge think the Stream Deck is exceptionally neat, and they’ve been using the devices to make work more efficient, to make play more fun, and — well, just to mess around with the tech. So since I am a complete newbie, I thought I’d find out some of the ways that my co-workers were working with theirs.
By the way, if you’re also a Stream Deck fan and want to try some hacks, you can find plug-ins at Elgato’s site, ideas and advice on Reddit — or you can just Google what you’d like to try and see what comes up.
Meanwhile, here are how some of the folks here at The Verge have been using their Stream Decks.
I wanted knobs
Alex Cranz, managing editor
I know. Our own review of the Stream Deck Plus said most people didn’t need the Stream Deck Plus, and I know I could have gone a more fun and hacky route, but I wanted buttons, knobs, and a relatively easy setup. So now, I use a Stream Deck Plus. Button-wise, I mainly use it to quickly open a new page for posts on The Verge. I’ve got buttons for each story type, and I’ve customized the little Verge logo for each button. I also set up some hacks using the HomeControl app so I can control all my Philips Hue lights from the Stream Deck Plus, and that’s convenient, even if I often forget to do it.
But I bought the Stream Deck Plus because I wanted knobs rather than just buttons, so it’s no surprise that knob use cases are my favorites. I’ve got knobs for the volume on my computer and the brightness of the key light I use for video calls. I use them several times an hour — more than the 12 buttons I’ve programmed. The knobs work so well I wish they had more use cases. I’d love to be able to control every light in my house or control the volume for multiple audio outputs. I’m sure that kind of control is just a hack away. I just need to find it.
To trigger Mac shortcuts
Liam James, lead producer, The Vergecast
When I first started at The Verge, we were all obsessed with Art Lebedev’s prototype Optimus keyboard, which used tiny OLED screens underneath each keycap to show the most relevant input based on what you were doing. I wanted one very badly, but alas, it took years to become an actual product, and when it did, it was prohibitively expensive.
Fast-forward 10 years to the first time I saw a colleague use a Stream Deck to change the lighting in his remote office. I knew this was my time.
I use my Stream Deck MK. 2 primarily to trigger the Mac shortcuts (automations) I’ve created for repetitive tasks I have to do as part of my job as producer for TheVergecast. I can tap one button, and a Slack message I’ve received from one of the co-hosts turns into a new to-do item in my task manager. Another button quickly opens our online studio, Riverside, to the correct location I need for a recording. And of course, I copied my colleague David Pierce and can control everything in my smart home as well.
To declare podcast time
David Pierce, editor-at-large
I use my Stream Deck for mostly normal stuff. I use it to control my Philips smart lights because buttons are better than yelling “hey Siri, turn on the lights” a hundred times a day. I have a button that immediately ends whatever meeting I’m in. But there are two that I love and use most of all.
The first is Slack status, which I’ve rigged up to switch my Slack status to “BRB.” If it’s lunch / meeting / nap time, I just whack that button as I walk away, and poof! I’m gone. The second is a button connected to a Mac shortcut I call “Podcast Time!” (The exclamation point is very important.) When I hit that button, it turns on Do Not Disturb on my Mac, closes every app except the ones we use to record, and opens a tab with the episode’s Google Doc. It turns a million clicks into one button press, and it makes me happy every time I mash it.
To swap to speakers
Sean Hollister, senior editor
I can’t spend all day wearing a headset, no matter how comfortable, much less my amazing wireless gaming headset that slowly drives me up the wall. So I like to swap to a set of Audioengine speakers a few times a day, and my six-key Stream Deck Mini lets me do that with one tap of a button. I use the Audio Switcher plug-in by Fred Emmott to do it, which lets you pick two audio devices to switch between, complete with handy icons so you know which is active just by looking at a Stream Deck key.
It also comes with a must-enable fuzzy logic device match setting, so it can find my SteelSeries headset even if it decides to suddenly tell Windows it’s a brand-new device due to quirks of USB. I suppose I wouldn’t feel the need for this if Microsoft hadn’t buried the audio device switcher in Windows 11, but here we are, and the Stream Deck workaround works great for me.
Going for the basics
Brandon Widder, senior commerce editor
I’ll admit it, I’m an absolute newbie when it comes to the Stream Deck. I picked the entry-level Mini after I listened to many of my colleagues wax poetic about its infinite possibilities, which, as I quickly found out, are not all that hard to rig up if all you want to do is customize a few basic functions. Within minutes, I was able to program it to launch my favorite websites, update my Slack status, and swap between my various Philips Hue lighting zones (which is really just a selection of cool whites and some purplish zone called “vapor wave”). I’ve also programmed it, like others, to kick-start some of my go-to Spotify playlists, ensuring those lo-fi beats and whatever Wilco-adjacent deep cut I’m currently into is never out of reach.
Rearrange the windows
Dan Seifert, deputy editor, reviews
I started my Stream Deck journey with a six-button Mini, but I recently upgraded to the 15-key Stream Deck MK. 2 so I wouldn’t have to switch between pages as often to access the controls I use most frequently.
I use my Deck for a lot of the standard things — controlling media playback, smart home lights, in-meeting mute and leave — but my favorite hack combines a plug-in that can run small AppleScript code snippets with the Moom window management app. I set up a Multi Action Switch on the Stream Deck to automatically open the Google Meet web app and rearrange my windows to put it front and center (with my browser window off to the side) when I need to hop on a call, something I do multiple times a day. When the call is done, I press the same button, which runs a script to automatically close the Meet app and put my browser and other app windows back the way I had them, letting me get on with my next task.
It’s small things like this that make the Stream Deck an indispensable tool on my desk.
‘Godfather of AI’ quits Google with regrets and fears about his life’s work
Geoffrey Hinton (foreground) has left Google to speak out on the dangers of AI. | Image: Getty
Geoffrey Hinton, who alongside two other so-called “Godfathers of AI” won the 2018 Turing Award for their foundational work that led to the current boom in artificial intelligence, now says a part of him regrets his life’s work. Hinton recently quit his job at Google in order to speak freely about the risks of AI, according to an interview with the 75-year-old in The New York Times.
“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” said Hinton, who had been employed by Google for more than a decade. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”
Hinton notified Google of his resignation last month, and on Thursday talked to CEO Sundar Pichai directly, according to the NYT. Details of that discussion were not disclosed.
The life-long academic joined Google after it acquired a company started by Hinton and two of his students, one of whom went on to become chief scientist at OpenAI. Hinton and his students had developed a neural network that taught itself to identify common objects like dogs, cats, and flowers after analyzing thousands of photos. It’s this work that ultimately led to the creation of ChatGPT and Google Bard.
According to the NYT interview, Hinton was happy with Google’s stewardship of the technology until Microsoft launched the new OpenAI-infused Bing, challenging Google’s core business and sparking a “code red” response inside the search giant. Such fierce competition might be impossible to stop, Hinton says, resulting in a world with so much fake imagery and text that nobody will be able to tell “what is true anymore.”
Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, worked to soften the blow with the following statement:“We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.”
The spread of misinformation is only Hinton’s immediate concern. On a longer timeline he’s worried that AI will eliminate rote jobs, and possibly humanity itself as AI begins to write and run its own code.
“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” said Hinton to the NYT. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”
EV Lessons Learned From 4 Years as a Jaguar I-Pace Owner
I enjoyed this car more than any other car I've driven, and I've driven many cars, including exotics. But the death of my I-Pace showcases several ongoing problems with electric vehicles that still exist today. The post EV Lessons Learned From 4 Years as a Jaguar I-Pace Owner appeared first on TechNewsWorld.
‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Quits Google and Warns of Danger Ahead For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm.
Can we imagine a scenario in which the different anxieties aroused by George Romero’s horror film Night of the Living Dead and Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi dystopia 2001: A Space Odyssey merge?
How might a monster that combined our fear of becoming something less than human with our fear of increasingly “intelligent” machines appear to us and what might it say?
TikTokers prepare to blitz followers with coverage of the coronation
Royal watchers with hundreds of thousands of followers on the app are gearing up to cover the event for younger audiences
Amanda Matta, 28, is eagerly anticipating the king’s coronation. The TikToker, known as “matta_of_fact” posted her first video on the topic in December last year, and has “lots more coverage, explainers and analysis” coming up for her channel.
Matta has 1.2 million subscribers, an enviable audience for even established media outlets, and has become an influential voice on the app when it comes to the royals.
AI journalism is getting harder to tell from the old-fashioned, human-generated kind | Ian Tucker
I rumbled a chatbot ruse – but as the tech improves, and news outlets begin to adopt it, how easy will it be to spot it next time?
A couple of weeks ago I tweeted a call-out for freelance journalists to pitch me feature ideas for the science and sechnology section of the Observer’s New Review. Unsurprisingly, given headlines, fears and interest in LLM (large language model) chatbots such as ChatGPT, many of the suggestions that flooded in focused on artificial intelligence – including a pitch about how it is being employed to predict deforestation in the Amazon.
One submission however, from an engineering student who had posted a couple of articles on Medium, seemed to be riding the artificial intelligence wave with more chutzpah. He offered three feature ideas – pitches on innovative agriculture, data storage and the therapeutic potential of VR. While coherent, the pitches had a bland authority about them, repetitive paragraph structure, and featured upbeat endings, which if you’ve been toying with ChatGPT or reading about Google chatbot Bard’s latest mishaps, are hints of chatbot-generated content.
States’ Push to Protect Kids Online Could Remake the Internet New age restrictions for minors on sites like TikTok and Pornhub could also hinder adults’ access to online services.
National Crime Agency assessing risk after data of some National Smallbore Rifle Association members ‘compromised’
Police are investigating a cyber-attack involving potentially thousands of British gun owners, raising concerns that organised criminals may target them for firearms.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) is assessing the level of risk after the National Smallbore Rifle Association (NSRA) confirmed that data belonging to some of its members had been “compromised”.
Alphabet revenue unexpectedly rises in first quarter amid industry slowdown
Google’s parent company reported a revenue of $69.8bn even as it races to implement cost-saving measures
Alphabet stocks rose in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the tech firm beat analyst expectations for first-quarter earnings, marking an unexpectedly bright spot in the otherwise struggling tech sector.
The company reported first-quarter revenue of $69.8bn, up 3% year-over-year and above analyst predictions of $68.9bn. Its cloud business reported a profit for the first time since its launch, taking in $191m.
The future of streaming is ads
Watching TV has always been mostly ad-supported. And easy to do. Free streaming is bringing that back. | Illustration by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images
Call it FAST, call it AVOD, call it whatever you want. Free ad-supported streaming is having a moment, and it’s only going to get bigger from here.
The big-name streaming services had a really good run. The likes of Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, and all the other Pluses have spent the last decade upending the way we make and consume movies and shows and changing the whole business of Hollywood in the process. For a few (or not so few) bucks a month, more entertainment than ever is now at our fingertips.
But it seems the streaming revolution has hit a bit of a wall. Most services are growing more slowly now that they’ve reached most of their possible audience. The tens of billions they’re spending on content annually seem to be producing diminishing returns. Investors are no longer sure streaming is a great business; the streamers are searching desperately for new ways to make money. The golden age of high-flying, big-spending streaming seems to be over.
In its place, there’s a new thing booming in streaming. Free ad-supported platforms are the fastest-growing part of the streaming business right now, and services like Tubi, Pluto, and The Roku Channel are starting to assert themselves as power players in their own right. Many of these platforms have been around for years, quietly amassing big content libraries and millions of users. And now, as users look for cheaper ways to get their entertainment and studios look for better ways to monetize, they’re starting to make more noise.
The future of TV is free, it has ads, and it involves a lot of channel surfing. It’s a lot like the TV business of old, really. That’s actually kind of the point.
Always-on
When we talk about free streaming services, we’re really talking about two things. Both have silly acronyms. The first is FAST, which stands for Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television — these are programmed always-on streaming channels that run 24/7 and are roughly analogous to the broadcast channels you’re used to. The second is AVOD, or Advertising-Based Video On Demand, which refers to a library of content you can watch whenever you like. (Netflix and Max and the like are SVOD, Subscription Video On Demand.) For our purposes, we’re just going to combine FAST and AVOD into free streaming.
The appeal of free streaming is right there in the name: it’s free! An increasingly large percentage of streaming subscribers say they’re already spending more than they’d like to on their services, and a Deloitte survey last fall found that 44 percent of people had canceled at least one paid service in the last six months. Deloitte also found that 59 percent of users were happy to watch a few ads an hour in exchange for a cheaper, or even free, subscription.
That’s why you’re seeing more and more of the SVOD services start to dabble in ads, too. Netflix has already discovered that it makes more money per user on its ad-supported plan — $6.99 a month with a few ads an hour — than it does from pure subscriptions. Disney Plus has an ad-supported plan now, too. So does the new Max service, Peacock, and increasingly, the rest of the industry. Ads are the future of the entire streaming market, it appears.
Still, there’s something uniquely powerful about the truly free streaming service. Because the free streamers don’t have to try and convince you to part with $8 or $10 or even $20 every month, they’re free to think about their product differently. And in many cases, they land somewhere better. Companies like Tubi and Pluto make money every time you watch something, so they have only one job: get you to watch as many things as possible.
“Number one job for me is engagement,” says Adam Lewinson, the chief content officer at Tubi. “Since we are ad-supported, we don’t have a dual revenue stream. We don’t take credit cards, we never will — we make money when viewers are consuming content.” Scott Reich, the SVP of content at Pluto TV, says the same. “I don’t have to pay anything – if I don’t like it, I can just move on. So it’s our job as the service to give you that reason to come back.”
Image: Pluto/David Pierce
Pluto TV is one of the internet’s best sources of FAST channels.
That changes the way free streamers work in a couple of wonderful ways. For one thing, since these platforms have a massive incentive to get you watching something as quickly as possible, they do away with a lot of the UI cruft you see in most streaming apps. You don’t need to log in, you don’t need to scroll past all the big banners showing new shows you don’t care about. You just hit play. Pluto takes this to a truly delightful extreme: when you load the app, it automatically starts playing the FAST channel you were watching last. It’s the way turning on the TV used to work — you turn it on, and something’s already playing.
Free streamers also need their content to be found, which means they tend to play along with the aggregators and search engines that aim to help users make sense of the streaming world. Whether you use JustWatch or Reelgood or just Google “how to stream” and your favorite new show, the free services are typically well represented. And if the title you’re looking for is streaming on one of them? You don’t need to start a free trial or type in a password to start watching. You just hit play. Yes, you sacrifice some of your on-demand choosiness, and you’re going to have to see ads. But it’s just so much faster.
Personalization tends to be important to these platforms, too. They don’t care what you watch as long as you’re watching, so sending you down an infinite Gordon Ramsay rabbit hole or hooking you on all 11 million episodes of Project Runway is a pretty easy choice. Plus, Lewinson says, it’s a way to bring in viewers who aren’t looking for the same Cultural Moment kinds of shows you see everywhere. “Part of our job, via algorithms and merchandising, is to get the right piece of content to the right viewer, learn about what they’re interested in, and then superserve them more.” He’s not thinking about how to reach the whole audience but, rather, how to convince each individual person to keep watching.
For Pluto, Reich says the big-name shows and movies tend to bring people in, but that’s not why they stay. “What drives a lot of our viewing time are the single series or the franchise channels,” he says. “The Star Treks of the world, CSI, Three’s Company. That drives a lot of viewing time. And what people come back for is a lot of the classic TV and a little more of the niche channels — your food, your home, your lifestyle channels.”
Curating all that, Reich says, is where Pluto can really shine. Think of the way Spotify approaches playlists: it has the same set of songs as everyone else, but it remixes and presents them in new and better ways to keep users engaged. So it is with Pluto and channels. “We have a team of 50 different programmers that curate these channels, and curate the guides of these channels,” he says. “And the audience doesn’t necessarily know that, but they feel it.”
Image: Tubi
Tubi’s huge library is part of its appeal — but it’s getting more into premium content, too.
Playing the hits
There’s a flip side to that strategy, though: free streaming services aren’t exactly generating huge hits. Sure, spending a fortune on Succession just to have a couple million people tweet about it every week may not be a good business on its own, but it brings huge cachet and brand awareness to HBO, which brings more creators with more good ideas, which brings a few more subscribers… follow it out long enough, and there’s a real business there.
The other thing big hits do is drive brand loyalty. Viewers will now sit down and open Netflix or HBO just to see what’s new; nobody’s really coming to The Roku Channel to see what hit original series just dropped. To some extent, all the free services are interchangeable commodities, only as good as the size of their library and whether they have the particular title you’re looking for. There are hundreds of FAST channels available, many of them accessible from multiple platforms. The free streamers have lots of users but not as many fans.
Not every free streamer is chasing hits. Reich says Pluto is playing a different game — in part because it’s owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount Plus, which is doing enough hit-hunting on its own. “We have a gazillion studios and a gazillion channels that make original programming every single day,” he says. “And because we are able to tap into that, we can figure out how we play off each other — how you can catch up on Pluto and we then throw back to Paramount Plus, or one of the linear networks.”
But for Tubi, which is Fox Entertainment’s flagship streaming service, the hits might be coming. “My buying power five years ago was much less than it is today,” Lewinson says. He rattles off some of Tubi’s recent originals: The Stepmother, about a killer mom; Dead Hot, starring Vanessa Hudgens; and a documentary series from Vice, which just launched with an episode about Elon Musk. Is there any Emmy or Oscar bait in there? Probably not. But Lewinson says it’s a definite leap up in ambition for the service, and there’s more to come.
And over on Amazon’s Freevee, free streaming’s first true cultural moment seems to already be taking shape. It’s a show called Jury Duty, a mockumentary-style show about a court case in which everyone but the main character knows the whole thing is fake. The show became a hit, and a TikTok sensation, and sparked a huge amount of discussion online — plus a lot of “what in the world is Freevee and how do I watch it” stories. “Almost [every] studio and network passed,” producer Lee Eisenberg told The Daily Beast. ”The only place that stepped up was Freevee … There’s something very gratifying about everyone passing on something that then has turned into something so special.”
It’s hard to know exactly how much Jury Duty will change Freevee’s fortunes, but it certainly helped put the service on the map. The weekend after the show’s first episodes dropped, Google users searched “Freevee” twice as much as they ever had, including when Freevee first launched as a rebrand of IMDb TV. Freevee also cracked the top 75 in the iOS App Store the same weekend, App Annie’s data shows, when a week earlier it hadn’t even been in the top 200.
Hits help, there’s no question about that. But even without the Jury Duty bump, the free streaming flywheel appears to be spinning faster all the time. More people than ever are canceling cable and looking for new things to watch, while also looking for ways to spend less money on all those things. Most of the business of TV has always been advertising, and that advertising is starting to shift to digital platforms. A recent report from the research firm Omdia found that FAST channel revenue grew almost 20 times between 2019 and 2022 — and is set to triple again before 2027, at which point it will be a $12 billion annual business.
That’s still only a fraction of the overall business of movies and shows, but free streamers are well positioned to get more of it over time. They don’t have to convince you to pay for their content; they don’t even have to convince you to sign up. They just have to give you something to watch, sell ads against it, and keep you tuned in. That’s been the TV business for the better part of a century, and it’s coming back in a big way.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom preorder guide
This is what it must feel like to preorder for full price and not get at least some small gift or swag for free. | Image: Nintendo
If you’re looking to buy yourself a ticket aboard the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hype train and preorder the game ahead of its May 12th launch, you might as well get some cool extra bonuses. Some retailers are offering free preorder incentives like a wooden plaque or an art print, which are a nice bonus that doesn’t cost anything extra. Or, super-fans willing to plunk down extra money can get the fancy Collector’s Edition with lots of accouterments (if it ever becomes available again, sadly).
So which way to preorder nets you the most benefit? There’s already one method that allows you to save $20 on the game, but that’s only on the digital version and exclusive to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. Here, we’ll go over the small handful of preorder bonuses for the physical edition of Tears of the Kingdom so you can make your purchasing decision in one place, easy-peasy.
Preordering The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with free bonuses
These are the best incentives when it comes to preordering Tears of the Kingdom for its regular $69.99 price and getting a little something-something thrown in.
The arguably more interesting preorder incentive is GameStop’s offer of a free wooden plaque that looks pretty cool. But the trade-off with this exclusive preorder gift is GameStop requires you to claim it in-store. I can’t believe GameStop expects me to go outside on the day I should be inside playing the game nonstop.
Walmart’s incentive is a free Master Sword wall scroll. Unfortunately, after Walmart quickly sold out of a golden-colored wall scroll that was limited to 5,000 units, it came back with a black wall scroll that sold out, returned, and sold out again. The black scroll is also “limited,” but there’s no mention that there’s a set number, so perhaps it might crop up once more.
Ordering the Zelda special edition Nintendo Switch OLED
We’ve already got a little explainer on where you can get the Nintendo Switch OLED The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition, which is now readily available to order. It’s a beautiful-looking console, with gold Joy-Cons and a white dock all decked out in Zelda graphical adornments. If you want one for its $359.99 asking price (which does not include the game), you can get one now from Amazon, Best Buy, Target, or Nintendo.
Preordering the Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo Switch carrying case
If you’re buying the special Zelda-themed Switch OLED, you might as well complete the look and preorder the Tears of the Kingdom Edition of the Nintendo Switch Carrying Case for $24.99 at Best Buy and GameStop. It’s decorated with matching markings to the special-edition console, includes a screen protector, and is set to launch on May 12th with the game. Unlike the Zelda-themed Switch Pro Controller, this one hasn’t sold out during the preorder window.
Preordering The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Collector’s Edition
Lastly, let’s finally talk about the elusive white whale of Zelda preorders. TheLegend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Collector’s Edition is the requisite expensive bundle of the game with a bunch of added fancy swag included. In it, the standard cartridge version of the game is accompanied by a metal steelbook case to look fancier on your shelf, along with a poster, collector pins, and a small art book that all together cost $129.99.
The preorders at retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Target sold out very quickly and periodically cropped up again for short stints, but it’s still currently unavailable. It’s possible it may come back with more availability like the Metroid Dread Special Edition did, but there’s definitely no guarantee that’s happening before or even after May 12th.
Bluesky is starting to feel like Twitter
Photo by Stefan Sauer / picture alliance via Getty Images
Bluesky might be the Twitter-like we’ve been waiting for.
Yes, I know it’s still invite-only. Yes, I know there are only thousands of people on the platform right now. Yes, I know that it’s still missing table-stakes features like video uploads and DMs.
Still, I’m starting to feel that Bluesky is where it’s at.
It happened over the last few days. Bluesky — the decentralized Twitter alternative spun up by Twitter itself — has suddenly filled up with tech media and other people I follow on Twitter. Over and over again, I would check Twitter for one thing or another and see somebody begging for a Bluesky invite, then just a little while later, that person would be in my Bluesky skyline (timeline) and skeeting (tweeting). While that means I might be able to use Bluesky for actual newsgathering, which is what I rely on Twitter most for, I was most happy to see the vast majority of those news hounds and former Twitter obsessives posting with a raw, deranged energy that I haven’t seen in a very long time.
Then on Thursday, the service hit the viral escape velocity that every new social platform searches for as some of the internet’s biggest names hopped on board. Dril joined. Then, AOC. WeRateDogs, the dog-rating service. Darth, the Sith Lord red panda. Hell, I even found a “Thursday! What a concept!” account and Hard Drive, the satirical video game publication.
In the midst of that busy day, Bluesky even survived a downtime. Shortly before 5:30PM ET on Thursday, the official Bluesky account said the service needed to upgrade databases after seeing “our biggest single-day jump in new users that we’ve experienced.” The downtime took a worrying 20 or so minutes longer than the expected five minutes, but the skyline eventually returned, with everyone posting a collective sigh of relief. Twitter’s fail whale from the platform’s early days is still legendary, so it’s a good sign that people couldn’t wait for it to return.
I’ve already written about how much fun I’ve been having on Bluesky. But I thought the platform, at least in the near term, would remain its niche little thing where only super dorks like me would hang out and post pictures of cats. It’s clearly unfinished — for example, to use the service on the web, Bluesky recommends a link with “staging” in the URL — and I figured the small team of developers would keep tinkering away before opening the floodgates.
I didn’t expect Darth, Dril, and AOC to join Bluesky on the same day less than two weeks after I published that. There’s a real energy about Bluesky right now.
I can’t fully quit Twitter yet. I still rely a lot on the bird app to see up-to-the-minute news. Not everybody I want to follow is on Bluesky. I really wish there were things like DMs and video.
And the vibes aren’t quite as good as when I first joined up a couple weeks ago — which is perhaps the most telling signal yet that this could be Twitter 2.0. I’m seeing a lot more performative posts than I used to, as people are chasing clout. Some of the posts have been downright mean — users were threatening to beat writer Matthew Yglesias to death with hammers. Not great!
But I’m hopeful that things mellow over time and necessary features get added soon. That all could help Bluesky keep up its recent momentum and not turn into another flash-in-the-pan app like Peach or Ello. The promised decentralized features like account portability could make Bluesky enticing for more people.
I’m also encouraged by how active the Bluesky team is on the platform itself, and I appreciate hearing directly from the people actually building the product as issues have come up. They said Friday that “we cleared our calendars” to get blocking, which had been highly requested over the course of the week, shipped on the web that day, for example. (Blocking is expected to come to the mobile apps soon, if it hasn’t already by the time you read this.)
I started Thursday by posting a picture of a cat on Bluesky. I didn’t expect to end it pondering the nature of skeets. Bluesky has a long way to go to fully replace Twitter for me, but right now, I think it actually could.
A Towering, Terrifying Demon Horse Isn’t Even the Weirdest Part The Denver airport is a magnet for conspiracy theories — and a case study in the line between mass delusion and fun.
UK government ‘hackathon’ to search for ways to use AI to cut asylum backlog
Three-day quest for innovations to tackle waiting list of 138,052 attacked as ‘wasting time on nonsense ideas that will go nowhere’
The Home Office plans to use artificial intelligence to reduce the asylum backlog, and is launching a three-day hackathon in the search for quicker ways to process the 138,052 undecided asylum cases.
The government is convening academics, tech experts, civil servants and business people to form 15 multidisciplinary teams tasked with brainstorming solutions to the backlog. Teams will be invited to compete to find the most innovative solutions, and will present their ideas to a panel of judges. The winners are expected to meet the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in Downing Street for a prize-giving ceremony.
The Google Pixel Fold looks nearly gapless in first leaked marketing images
The Pixel Fold in 4K. | Image via Evan Blass (@evleaks)
You’ve seen renders. You’ve seen a little footage. You’ve heard the marketing leaks. Now, you can feast your eyes on what are almost certainly the first images from Google itself of the leaked Pixel Fold.
Those are the sorts of images that are the bread and butter of Evan Blass, aka @evleaks, and while his Twitter account is still private, he’s a friend of The Verge who’s happy to let us share them with you this fine evening. (Evening for me, anyhow, I’m in California.)
These 4K images won’t show you anything that hasn’t been leaked before, and you can’t see how high the camera bump is nor peep the inside screen, but they do make this phone look a bit slicker than in that brief real-world video. It’s quite a small gap between the two halves, and the rumored-to-be 5.8-inch front screen looks reasonably substantial — if these renders don’t lie.
Will a Chatbot Write the Next ‘Succession’? As labor contract negotiations heat up in Hollywood, unions representing writers and actors seek limits on artificial intelligence.
If true, that means both configurations are within spitting distance of Valve’s comparative pricing, where a 256GB Steam Deck costs $530 and a 512GB Steam Deck costs $650, respectively. But Valve also sells a $399 Steam Deck that comes with 64GB of eMMC storage, which enthusiasts often open to replace that SSD.
The original ROG Ally leak came from Best Buy, and it might make sense that Best Buy is the source of this one too — the new pricing is similarly in dollars and cents, and Asus only has one stateside retail partner for the handheld. SnoopyTech has seen my DMs and isn’t replying to them, though, so I can’t say for sure.
This will likely be the least expensive configuration of the ROG Ally, though it’s possible Asus could follow Valve’s lead and put out an eMMC model.
‘They’re coming up with devious ways to take your money’: the TV hackers taking on the scammers
Scam calls are an industrial-sized nuisance. Aided by an ‘ethical hacker’, the BBC’s hit daytime breakout show Scam Interceptors is making must-see TV by turning the tables on the con artists
It’s Thursday morning in the Scam Hub – a darkened room at the BBC’s Pacific Quay studio in Glasgow full of glowing screens and people feverishly tapping away on laptops under the glare of TV cameras – and the atmosphere is tense. We’re eavesdropping on a call between a man in the UK and a scammer in Calcutta, India, who has managed to talk her way inside the unwitting scamee’s Amazon account.
Believing that he’s receiving a benevolent customer service call warning of rogue activity, the man has been conned into giving away a private passcode. Worse, the scammer has convinced him to download software to his phone granting remote access to his device, which could allow the harvesting of much more sensitive information including bank details.
Sony reports strong PS5 hardware sales as it closes in on 40 million units sold
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Sony says it shipped 6.3 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the three months ending March 31st 2022, bringing total sales of the console to 38.4 million, the company reported in its latest earnings release. That’s more than triple what the company shipped in the same quarter the previous year (2 million), and means the Japanese electronics giant shipped 19.1 million PS5 during fiscal 2022, beating its earlier forecast of 18 million.
On the software side things were more mixed, Bloomberg notes. Revenue from game software was up overall, but units shipped fell from 70.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 68 million in the same quarter of 2022. PlayStation Network monthly active users were up slightly from 106 million to 108 million, but the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers were flat at 47.4 million.
This disparity partly reflects the lack of major first-party games releases in the quarter. But there are also concerns that the PS5’s earlier hardware supply issues are having a knock on effect on software sales and subscriptions, which are important if the company wants to build a “virtuous cycle” of mutually reinforcing console and game sales.
CNBC notes that the company’s financials were strong overall, reporting an operating profit of a record 1.21 trillion yen (around $8.9 billion) for the year. Revenue in the quarter rose 35 percent to 3.06 trillion yen (around $22.5 billion). Sony hasn’t broken out sales of its PlayStation VR2 headset, which launched during the quarter.
Bloomberg calls Sony’s profit forecast for the current fiscal year “conservative,” noting that it may be hedging against a drop in consumer spending and expectations that it will sell fewer games from its in-house PlayStation Studios this year. The company expects operating profit to come in at 1.17 trillion yen (around $8.6 billion), which would represent a roughly 3 percent drop year-over-year.
The MTA is abandoning bus and train alerts on Twitter
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will no longer post service alerts and information on Twitter, citing doubts about the platform’s reliability. It’s directing riders to its website, apps, and email or mobile alerts instead.
“We’ve loved getting to know you On Here, but we don’t love not knowing if we can to communicate with you each day,” the MTA account tweeted in a thread on Thursday evening. “For the MTA, Twitter is no longer reliable for providing the consistent updates riders expect. So as of today, we’re saying goodbye to it for service alerts and information.”
The MTA provides service info in real time, 24/7.
We do this through https://t.co/8rwbuwle0p, our apps, email & text alerts, and, until recently, Twitter.
We've loved getting to know you On Here, but we don't love not knowing if we can to communicate with you each day.
The MTA acknowledged this was a “big change,” and a separate MTA service account alluded to the reasoning in a followup tweet. “Our access to publish service alerts was suspended last week and again this week,” the account explained, directing people to contact the operators via WhatsApp and iMessage instead.
Earlier this month, the MTA was one of numerous accounts that had its automated service alerts disrupted by changes to Twitter’s application programming interface or API. Along with San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit and a number of disaster alert accounts, it was temporarily locked out of posting service updates as part of Twitter owner Elon Musk’s effort to charge for API access. Separately, while the MTA didn’t cite this as a problem, Twitter has also become more turbulent as users attempt to parse Musk’s confusing rollout of paid verification — which has made it more difficult to judge which accounts are trustworthy.
That’s unfortunate for riders. Service alerts are one of the most consistently helpful services Twitter — until recently — provided, and although the MTA’s other options can fill the gap, it’s a loss for the agency and the microblogging platform alike. As of publication time, the MTA has not joined Dril and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Bluesky.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place 64 years before the events of the main series. Instead of featuring Katniss Everdeen, this movie follows the story of a young Coriolanus Snow (who later goes goes on to become the villain of the original trilogy) and a Hunger Games tribute named Lucy Gray Baird, who he mentors.
I haven’t read the book this movie is based on, but based on this trailer, the film seems like it will be a dramatic return to Panem and the battle royale-style Hunger Games that made the original series such a sensation. It helps that the movie has a pretty stacked cast, including Tom Blyth (who plays Snow), Rachel Zegler (who plays Baird), Peter Dinklage, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, Jason Schwartzman, and Viola Davis.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be released in theaters on November 17th.
Samsung’s loses billions on chips as overall profits decline 95 percent
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Samsung’s memory chip business just had a terrible quarter, as falling demand and high inventories contributed to a 4.58 trillion won (around $3.4 billion) loss from the division, Bloomberg reports. The loss at the unit, which CNBC reports is typically its largest profit driver, contributed to Samsung’s quarterly operating profit plunging 95 percent in the quarter to 640 billion won (roughly $478 million).
A few different factors contributed to Samsung’s losses at its memory chip division. Smartphone and PC makers stockpiled chips during the pandemic as a hedge against supply issues as demand boomed, but have since been left with large inventory excesses as consumer demand has dropped off amidst high inflation and broader global economic uncertainties.
Samsung hopes that the chip business will start to pick up in the second half of this year. That’s when existing inventories are expected to have run down, and new smartphone and PC launches will spur demand. That’s tied to hopes of an economic recovery in China, which Bloomberg notes is the largest market for PCs and smartphones worldwide.
Samsung, one of the world’s largest supplier of memory chips, had warned of its rocky quarter in its preliminary earnings earlier this month. In response, it plans to cut memory chip production by a “meaningful” amount to help stem a roughly 70 percent fall in prices over the previous nine months.
But the company doesn’t plan to cut memory chip investment in the same way. “We have cut short-term production plans, but as we project solid demand for the mid-to-long term, we will continue to invest in infrastructure to secure essential cleanrooms and to expand R&D investment to solidify tech leadership,” Bloomberg reports Samsung said in a statement. Investment levels in 2023 are expected to be broadly consistent with last year.
It wasn’t all bad news for the South Korean electronics giant. Profit at its smartphone division, which saw the launch of the Galaxy S23 lineup last quarter, rose 3 percent to 3.94 trillion won (around $2.9 billion) versus the previous year. Revenue, however, was down 2 percent to 30.74 trillion won (around $22.9 billion).
Elon Musk Ramps Up A.I. Efforts, Even as He Warns of Dangers The billionaire plans to compete with OpenAI, the ChatGPT developer he helped found, while calling out the potential harms of artificial intelligence.
Best podcasts of the week: Sex therapist Chantelle Otten is here to save her listeners’ love lives
In this week’s newsletter: From couples keen to bring in a third party to exploring your bi-curiosity, the ‘sexologist’ has it all covered in Sex Therapy. Plus: five of the best podcasts with a purpose
Call Me Disabled
Widely available, episodes weekly “Drop the euphemisms,” says Poppy Field (below) in this powerful new podcast. Although it’s a term that doesn’t work for everyone, Field is sick of being told how to identify after living with chronic pain and neurodivergence. Her first guest is Jameisha Prescod (who founded You Look Okay to Me) and they talk openly about advocating for themselves and others, asking for a wheelchair and the power of radical rest. Hannah Verdier
Elon Musk Ramps Up A.I. Efforts, Even as He Warns of Dangers The billionaire plans to compete with OpenAI, the ChatGPT developer he helped found, while calling out the potential harms of artificial intelligence.
Guess again. The higher-end Asus ROG Ally will apparently cost just $699.99. That’s for the model with an AMD Z1 Extreme chip, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD — meaning that Asus’ 512GB handheld costs just $50 more than a 512GB Steam Deck.
That’s according to data shown to The Verge by reliable gadget leaker Roland Quandt, and an earlier leak by SnoopyTech. The data we’ve seen leaves little room for confusion — even the product number associated with the $699.99 gadget identifies it as the Z1 Extreme model with 512GB of storage, and we’ve got a long list of marketing claims in our possession that also look legitimate. I’m pretty sure it’s the real deal. Though it’s always possible the price is a placeholder; we won’t know for sure until May 11th.
If the Z1 Extreme starts at $699.99, what would a Ally with a vanilla AMD Z1 cost? (Asus confirmed to The Verge this morning that both will go on sale.) Well if Asus really wants to push, the Steam Deck starts at $400 with 64GB of eMMC...
The ROG Ally is 11.02 inches wide, 4.37 inches tall, 0.83 inches deep and weighs 608 grams (1.34 pounds) if the data we’ve seen is correct. A feature list also boasts you can upgrade the M.2 2230 SSD with a single screw, has an IPS screen protected by Gorilla Glass DXC, and that the Ally will charge from 0 to 50 percent in just 30 minutes using a bundled 65W USB-C power brick.
The Steam Deck is slow to charge by comparison, though Valve told us that’s something its handheld intentionally doesn’t do to preserve the longevity of the battery.
Elon Musk’s statements could be ‘deepfakes’, Tesla defence lawyers tell court
Judge in Autopilot death case says defence argument ‘deeply troubling’ and wants Tesla CEO interviewed under oath on safety claims
A California judge has tentatively ordered Elon Musk to be interviewed under oath about whether he made certain statements regarding the capabilities of Tesla’s Autopilot features after the company questioned the authenticity of the remarks, claiming Musk is a “target for deep fakes”.
The ruling came in a lawsuit against Tesla, filed by the family of Walter Huang who was killed in a car crash in 2018.
LG’s new ‘SuperSlim’ Gram laptop has a 15.6-inch OLED display
LG’s 15.6-inch Gram SuperSlim laptop. | Image: LG
LG’s Gram line of laptops have always been designed to be lightweight and thin, and now the company has released a new “SuperSlim” model that’s a strong competitor to the likes of Apple’s MacBook Air in the portability department (via Engadget).
LG officially calls its new laptop the Gram SuperSlim (formerly the Ultraslim), which the company touts in its press release as the “thinnest LG Gram ever.” It measures just 0.43 inches thick — thinner than the M2 MacBook Air — and has a 15.6-inch OLED display compared to Apple’s 13.6-inch IPS one. Oh, and LG’s is also lighter at just 2.2 pounds, compared to the MacBook Air at 2.7 pounds.
Image: LG
It is pretty thin, huh?
LG’s Gram Superslim is available now, and it starts at $1,699.99 with a 13th-gen Intel Evo Core i7-1360P processor, 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It also features three USB-C ports (two with Thunderbolt 4 support and one USB 4 only) and a headphone jack.
The better deal comes in at $1,999.99: with a spec bump to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. LG will also throw in its external USB-C 16-inch +view Portable monitor if you buy either new SuperSlim by May 14th.
It’s worth noting that while the SuperSlim has an OLED screen, the currently-available models only have a 1080p resolution. Apple’s smaller-screened MacBook Air has a higher 2560 x 1664 resolution screen, and still looks great, even if it’s not OLED. Personally, at the price LG has set for the SuperSlim, I’d like to hear more about another 15-inch ultraportable laptop option that’s been rumored.
LG first showed off the SuperSlim in January at CES alongside the rest of its Gram lineup, including the company’s regular 14, 15, 16, and 17-inch options, along with the colorful featherweight LG Gram Style laptops that, like the SuperSlim, also include an OLED screen and have a starting weight of 2.2 pounds.
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