Scarlett Johansson’s Statement About Her Interactions With Sam Altman

Scarlett Johansson’s Statement About Her Interactions With Sam Altman The actress released a lengthy statement about the company and the similarity of one of its A.I. voices.

Election officials are role-playing AI threats to keep them from undermining democracy

Election officials are role-playing AI threats to keep them from undermining democracy

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes led a tabletop exercise for journalists to role-play as election officials to understand the speed and scale of AI threats they face. | Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge

The job has never been harder, and the threats have never been stranger.

It’s the morning of Election Day in Arizona, and a message has just come in from the secretary of state’s office telling you that a new court order requires polling locations to stay open until 9PM. As a county election official, you find the time extension strange, but the familiar voice on the phone feels reassuring — you’ve talked to this official before.

Just hours later, you receive an email telling you that the message was fake. In fact, polls must now close immediately, even though it’s only the early afternoon. The email tells you to submit your election results as soon as possible — strange since the law requires you to wait an hour after polls close or until all results from the day have been tabulated to submit.

This is the sort of whiplash and confusion election officials expect to face in 2024. The upcoming presidential election is taking place under heightened public scrutiny, as a dwindling public workforce navigates an onslaught of deceptive (and sometimes AI-generated) communications, as well as physical and digital threats.

The confusion played out in an Arizona conference room in early May as part of an exercise for journalists who were invited to play election officials for the day. The subject matter — AI threats in elections — was novel, but the invitation itself was unusual. The entire event was unusual. Why is the Arizona secretary of state reaching out to journalists months in advance of the election?

Election officials have been on the receiving end of unprecedented harassment

During the 2020 election, Arizona swung blue, tipping the election to Joe Biden. Fox News forecast the win well ahead of other news outlets, angering the Trump campaign. Trump and his supporters pointed to unsubstantiated incidents of voter fraud and later filed (then dropped) a suit against the state demanding that ballots be reviewed. Later, Republicans commissioned an audit of the votes, which ultimately upheld the accuracy of the original tabulation. And only last Friday, Rudy Giuliani was served with an indictment in which he is charged with pressuring Arizona officials to change the outcome of the 2020 election in favor of Trump.

Election officials have been on the receiving end of unprecedented harassment. As recently as February, a California man was arrested for a threatening message he allegedly left on the personal cell phone of an election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, in November 2022.

The aftershocks of 2020 have not yet faded for election officials, and yet, the next presidential election is already on the horizon. Arizona officials are proactively seeking to restore confidence in the process. There’s a lot on the line for them. Unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud or election interference are dangers to democratic stability. But for the officials that end up in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories, their personal safety is also at risk.

Journalists were invited to the role-playing event as part of an effort to educate the public not just about the threats that election officials are preparing for but also about the scale and seriousness of the preparation itself.

“We’re facing the kinds of threats that no one has ever seen before.”

“We want to make sure in this that we have done everything that we can to make 2024 the best election that [it] possibly can be,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said at the start of the day’s events. “And we’re facing the kinds of threats that no one has ever seen before.” The proliferation of generative AI tools presents the latest set of challenges for election workers because of how easily and quickly these tools can pump out convincing fodder for sophisticated social engineering schemes.

The exercise being conducted was a version of a program created for actual Arizona election officials, who participated in the training back in December. Law enforcement is expected to also undergo the training soon. The Arizona secretary of state’s office spearheaded the initiative to expose election officials to the kinds of threats — particularly related to AI — that they might see in the lead-up to the elections.

Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge

Susan Lapsley is the elections security advisor for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency region that includes Arizona.

“It is unnerving to be where we’re at,” Fontes said, referencing an AI-generated deepfake of himself that played for attendees, showing the secretary of state seamlessly speaking both German and French — two languages he doesn’t speak fluently.

Fontes said he hopes to inoculate election officials against some of the known AI threats, giving them a baseline wariness like most people nowadays would have for an email from a “Nigerian prince” seeking some extra cash. The goal, according to Angie Cloutier, security operations manager at the secretary of state’s office, “is to desensitize election officials to the newness and the weirdness” of AI technology.

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Throughout the day, reporters viewed presentations from AI experts demonstrating how easy it is to use free online tools to create disinformation at scale.

One presentation used the LinkedIn profile of a reporter in the room to write a personalized email to the reporter with an AI text generator. The email included a phishing link in the signature masquerading as a LinkedIn profile URL. Later, the presenter used an image generator to put the reporter in a prison jumpsuit and attach that image to a fake article with false allegations, on a webpage designed to look like The New York Times. They also used a podcast recording to clone his voice to say whatever the presenter inputted.

Reporters were also presented with timed exercises. One condensed the months before Election Day into less than an hour and had reporters (role-playing election officials) choosing how to spend a $30,000 budget on a list of fortifications ranging from installing a firewall for the elections website to providing active shooter training or mental health resources to election workers. As time ticked by, organizers unveiled one new crisis after another: an influx of public information requests, a disinformation campaign, complaints of some voters failing to receive their mailed ballots, and sketchy messages asking for login credentials. Some of the obstacles could be avoided by picking the right fortifications, though the budget constrained how many each group could buy. Election Day itself was simulated in a similar — but shorter — timed exercise. The speed of the exercise was overwhelming, with problems popping up before we’d solved the last one. Actual election workers, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State C. Murphy Hebert said, were given even less time in the simulation.

Organizers wanted to simulate the stress and time crunch election officials feel while handling a wide range of threats while administering an election. “We prepare for the unexpected. And the way that we do that is by training ourselves to think in crisis mode,” said Hebert.

The work, for election officials, is very much like the myth of Sisyphus

The work, for election officials, is very much like the myth of Sisyphus, Fontes told The Verge in an interview after the event. (In ancient Greek lore, Sisyphus was condemned to spend eternity in the afterlife rolling a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again.) “It’s just like, every year, there’s another set of folks who just want to dismantle our democracy because they’re upset about political outcomes,” he said.

Even in the roughly five-month gap between the election officials’ training and the media exercise I was invited to, new AI tools and capabilities have become readily available. In an environment where the threats are so rapidly evolving, officials need to quickly develop skill sets and heuristics that will aid them in evaluating threats that may not even exist yet.

Fontes said that even though the technology evolves, the training prepares election workers to understand its overall trajectory. “When people look at it for the first time now, they’re like, ‘Wow, this is really scary.’ The folks that saw it in December are like, ‘Okay, this is a logical progression from what there was,’ so they can be a little more thoughtful about this,” he said. “Is it challenging to keep up with the changes in technology? Absolutely. But that’s part of the job.”

Although they are preparing for AI to be used against them, Fontes and his colleagues are also open to using the same tools to make their work more efficient as they balance constrained resources. Fontes sees AI as just another tool that could be used for good or bad. When asked about the role of AI companies in ensuring their products are used responsibly, he said he’s “not in the business of telling people how to utilize their tools or how to develop their tools.”

“I think there’s enough good uses in AI, not just for people, but for the economy, that that needs to be developed,” said Fontes. He’s open to what automation can do effectively. It’s understandable — election officials have never been more pressed for time or resources.

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As the threats to the electoral process widen in range and complexity, the job of an election official gets increasingly complex, even as their ranks dwindle in number.

AI is just the latest challenge to the work of administering free and fair elections in the US. Both tech experts and election officials emphasized at the event that AI isn’t all good or bad and doesn’t necessarily outweigh the importance of all the other threats they must prepare for. The office chose to focus on AI threats in particular this year because they’re so new.

Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for the Arizona secretary of state, said his role is more expansive than it used to be. “It used to be that a CISO was just focused on cybersecurity. But when I started [in] elections, that was not the case,” said Moore, who’s been working in the field since 2019. AI and online disinformation can fuel physical threats, meaning security teams need to think holistically about how to protect elections.

Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge

Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for the Arizona secretary of state, said that title encompasses a greater range of threats than it used to.

Meanwhile, election officials are doing more with less. This isn’t by choice. Unprecedented scrutiny and outright harassment of election officials during the 2020 election have contributed to significant turnover in election workers. Giuliani was most recently indicted for his alleged activities in Arizona, but the problem extends far beyond Arizona. Two Georgia election workers, for instance, were the victims of such extreme harassment that a jury awarded them $148 million in damages in a defamation suit against Rudy Giuliani after he admitted to falsely accusing them of ballot fraud.

12 out of 15 Arizona counties had new election officials since November 2020, covering 98 percent of the state population

Last year, nonpartisan group Issue One found that 40 percent of chief local election officials in the western states would change between 2020 and 2024. The trend was even more pronounced in battleground states, including Arizona, where President Joe Biden won over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 with a slim majority. As of September 2023, Issue One reported that 12 out of 15 Arizona counties had new election officials since November 2020, covering 98 percent of the state population. Such turnover means a loss in institutional knowledge, which is especially important in a time-crunched field like elections.

Even as their job gets harder, election officials are trying to bolster trust in the system. Educating the press about the checks and safeguards in their processes is a part of this effort.

Election officials are trying to get people not to believe everything they see and hear. They also don’t want to scare voters and election workers into believing nothing they see or hear. They’re walking a fine line. “Part of that sweet spot is getting people to be vigilant but not mistrustful,” says Fontes. “Vigilant in that they’re going to look out for the stuff that isn’t real, but not mistrustful so that they don’t lose confidence in everything, which is kind of counterproductive to what our mission is in the first place.”

Officials want to avoid a scenario where voters throw their hands up in the air and just don’t vote. “It used to be, ‘They’re all corrupt,’” said Susan Lapsley, elections security advisor for the region covering Arizona at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA).

These days, she says, that kind of low-grade nihilism comes mostly in the form of “I don’t know what’s real.”

How much of a role will AI play in the 2024 elections? Will 2024 be as rocky as 2020? Will Arizona become a battleground of misinformation and distrust again? Arizona is trying to prepare for all scenarios. “What exactly is going to happen? We’re not sure,” Fontes said. “What are we best preparing for? Everything. Except Godzilla.”

A.I. and the Election: See How Easily Chatbots Can Create Disinfo for Social Media

A.I. and the Election: See How Easily Chatbots Can Create Disinfo for Social Media Ahead of the election this year, the results suggested how easy it could be to create divisive content online, on either side of the political spectrum.

Two students find security bug that could let millions do laundry for free

Two students find security bug that could let millions do laundry for free

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge

A security lapse could let millions of college students do free laundry, thanks to one company. That’s because of a vulnerability that two University of California, Santa Cruz students found in internet-connected washing machines in commercial use in several countries, according to TechCrunch.

The two students, Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko, apparently exploited an API for the machines’ app to do things like remotely command them to work without payment and update a laundry account to show it had millions of dollars in it. The company that owns the machines, CSC ServiceWorks, claims to have more than a million laundry and vending machines in service at colleges, multi-housing communities, laundromats, and more in the US, Canada, and Europe.

CSC never responded when Sherbrooke and Taranenko reported the vulnerability via emails and a phone call in January, TechCrunch writes. Despite that, the students told the outlet that the company “quietly wiped out” their false millions after they contacted it.

The lack of response led them to tell others about their findings. That includes that the company has a published list of commands, which the two told TechCrunch enables connecting to all of CSC’s network-connected laundry machines. CSC ServiceWorks didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

CSC’s vulnerability is a good reminder that the security situation with the internet of things still isn’t sorted out. For the exploit the students found, maybe CSC shoulders the risk, but in other cases, lax cybersecurity practices have made it possible for hackers or company contractors to view strangers’ security camera footage or gain access to smart plugs.

Often, security researchers find these security holes and report them before they can be exploited in the wild. But that’s not helpful if the company responsible for them doesn’t respond.

The Mac Pro and Studio won’t get the M4 nod until mid-2025

The Mac Pro and Studio won’t get the M4 nod until mid-2025

A 2023 Mac Pro. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Mac Studio and Mac Pro aren’t due for an upgrade to Apple’s M4 chip until the middle of next year. That means both machines will still be on Apple’s M2 generation this year, unlike all other Macs except the MacBook Air, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote to Power On subscribers today.

Throughout 2024, though, all of Apple’s laptops (except the MacBook Air) will move to the M4 chip that the company just gave the iPad Pro, Gurman writes. Amusingly, this herky-jerky chip upgrade cycle means that the iPad Pro is currently the single-core performance champ of Apple’s lineup — and it will continue to be for about another year, when compared to the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

Screenshot: Geekbench

It’s not even close, according to comparisons on Geekbench, which regularly show the iPad Pro outdoing the the M2 Ultra by roughly 25 percent. If we want to be silly about it, even the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip is about on par with the M2 Ultra in single-core CPU power. Neither matters — the M2 Ultra will still smoke either when multiple cores are needed, and that’s where it really counts. (Apparently that’s not the case for my M1 Max Mac Studio, which puts up slightly lower multi-core numbers than the new iPad Pro.)

This is a silly comparison, of course — The current crop of Mac Studios and Mac Pros are incredible computers that hold more RAM, have more ports, and won’t throttle as quickly as the iPad Pro, even with that heat-conducting Apple logo. They also don’t have an operating system that stands squarely in the way of pushing their hardware. And high-end Mac users should be used to waiting a while between revisions. Still, I’m sure more than a few people will appreciate the upgrade when it comes.

Sonos is teasing its ‘most requested product ever’ on Tuesday

Sonos is teasing its ‘most requested product ever’ on Tuesday

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sonos is teasing, both in emails and on social media, that its “most requested product ever” is “coming soon” on May 21st (this Tuesday). This, of course, is almost certainly the Sonos Ace, its first wireless headphones.

Sonos has been expected to launch the Ace in June, but given the company’s “most requested” phrasing here and the fact that the headphones recently appeared for sale by authorized dealer Schuurman, it seems they’re coming sooner than that.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sonos (@sonos)

A launch this week could help Sonos with some of the ire surrounding the roll-out of its new app earlier this month. The app was ostensibly created in part to support the Sonos Ace, but is missing key features like a sleep timer or those related to local library management. And getting those features back in the app may take months.

Image: Schuurman

Sonos is also gearing up to release the Roam 2, likewise rumored for June. That speaker will look nearly identical to the original Roam and Roam SL, but with a color-matched “Sonos” and a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button. For all its good qualities, the first Roam had some annoying drawbacks, like requiring Wi-Fi setup before you can use Bluetooth, and an unintuitive pairing process even when you can.

Image: Sonos

The Roam and Ace aside, there’s not much else that the company is likely to announce this week. Rumor has it that Sonos is preparing to release a TV streaming device, but not until late this year at the earliest. Same goes for its rumored Sonos Arc soundbar. And chances seem pretty that its “most requested product ever” is the next Sonos Sub or the business-oriented Era 100. The headphones make the most sense and would kick off the first of four new product categories the company is supposed to be stepping into.

All the news about Blue Origin’s first crewed flight since 2022

All the news about Blue Origin’s first crewed flight since 2022

Screenshot: YouTube

Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company is flying humans to space for the first time since 2022.

Blue Origin hasn’t carried out a crewed launch since 2022, and is getting ready to do so once more after being required to implement 21 fixes required by the Federal Aviation Administration last year. Six human beings are flying aboard its New Shepard rocket today, including Ed Dwight, the first Black astronaut candidate, who was selected by US President John F. Kennedy, but never made it into space.

The five other passengers on the flight are Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura. The company posted just after 8AM ET that New Shepard was vertical on the launchpad, and that it had updated its targeted launch time to 10:13AM ET.

Today’s flight will be its seventh one with an actual crew on board. Blue Origin paused its space tourism flights in 2022 after a booster failed on an uncrewed flight, prompting an FAA investigation that led to the US regulator’s recommendations.

Correction May 19th: This article previously said this is Blue Origin’s sixth crewed mission, but in fact, it’s the seventh. That has been corrected, as has the spelling of Ed Dwight’s name.

The AI assistants are getting better fast

The AI assistants are getting better fast

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 38, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and you can also read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been writing about iPads and the future of Google, watching American Fiction and Bodkin, rewatching Her because of… reasons, endlessly replaying the songs of Windows95man, learning how to make better sandwiches, testing Claude for AI stuff, and listening to the new-old Childish Gambino album.

I also have for you a new AI model, literally thousands of new Lego pieces, a new way to Google, the fanciest mop you’ve ever seen in your life, more emulators for iOS, and much more.

And I have a question: What’s your favorite mini-game on the internet? I’m thinking about things like Wordle, The Wikipedia Game, Sudoku, Really Bad Chess, Name Drop, and a million others — the kinds of things you might play every morning with your coffee. I want to compile a huge list of everybody’s favorites, the sillier the better! I’d love to hear everything in your rotation. Reply to this email, email me at installer@theverge.com, or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — and tell me all your faves.

All right, lots to do this week. So much AI! Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, and tell them to subscribe here.)

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The Drop

• GPT-4o. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about OpenAI’s event this week, with the Her-like demo of the new voice assistant. It’s really impressive, kind of weird, and both delightful and creepy? I’m so torn. But the tech is impressive, and every AI app I’ve seen is already rushing to support GPT-4o.
• ChatGPT for Mac. Desktop AI chat apps are a dime a dozen and mostly all just wrappers on a webpage. But the new ChatGPT app is a bit more: it lets you share your screen and ask questions about it, which strikes me as a very handy way to get AI help with something. “How do I fix this?” is a question I ask ChatGPT a lot.
• “Historical AI & Rewriting the Past on TikTok.” Have you seen those videos on TikTok of an AI-generated emperor or whatever, telling you a salacious story about world history? They’re fun! And messy! And frequently just lies! Love this video on how it all happened and what it all means.
• Lego Barad-dûr. Five thousand, four hundred and seventy-one pieces. Pair this with the Rivendell set Lego released last year, and you’ll spend about $1,000 and one very happy lifetime putting together a truly epic Lord of the Rings setup.
• Google’s “Web” filter. I have a lot of big-picture thoughts about what AI is doing to web search and what that means for the internet, but I also just miss when Google was a bunch of links and not a thousand videos, X posts, and shopping links. The new “Web” filter is like old Google brought back to life — not right for everything but very useful.
• “​​I Started a New Business. It Didn’t Go Well…” I’m a fan of Ali Abdaal’s (he was in Installer a while back!) and really loved this video. He shares a lot of the kinds of stories you don’t hear about building products, failure, mistakes, challenges, and what happens when you just get it wrong. Lots to learn from this one.
• Setapp Mobile. If you don’t already know about Setapp, a subscription service that gets you access to hundreds of Mac and iOS apps, you should check it out. Setapp Mobile, its new alternative app store, is EU-only for now, but it’s still a fascinating look at what’s possible when you open up the smartphone.
• The Dyson WashG1. Explaining Dyson stuff always sounds so silly — “yeah, it’s like 4x the price of all its competitors, and yeah, it’s just a cleaning thing, but dude, it’s SICK.” But… this $700 ultra-fancy mop sounds sick. I can’t help myself.
• Hello, Dot. A new game from the Pokémon Go and Peridot folks, designed just for the Meta Quest. There’s not actually a ton to the game itself, but it’s a pretty great mixed reality tech demo, and these things are just fun to play around with.
• RetroArch. The latest in an increasingly long list of great emulator apps coming to the iPhone. This one’s not the most user-friendly, but it does support a huge number of consoles and games — and it works on the Apple TV!

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Screen share

My favorite new iPhone app this week is definitely Bebop, which is a really clever thing: it’s an app for taking notes, but it’s designed specifically to be used as a quick way to write something down for people who use tools like Obsidian, which is great but heavy and not good for short capture. Bebop just pipes stuff into a folder of text files, which you can read with any other app you want. I’m already using it a dozen times a day.

Bebop was created by Jack Cheng, who you might know as the author of books like The Many Masks of Andy Zhou and the very fun newsletter Sunday Letter. I’ve been a fan of Jack’s work for a while and figured his app launch was a good time to get him in Installer.

Here’s Jack’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 14.

The wallpaper: My partner, Julia, taken at one of my favorite places: Kresge Court inside the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The apps: Photos, Gmail, Arc, Phone, Messages, Bebop, Blackmagic Camera.

Lock screen widgets: Fantastical, Weather, and Lightroom’s camera widget. I usually include a photo when I send out my Sunday newsletter, and I loathe the way newer-generation iPhones over-process everything. So I use this when I want a RAW image for later editing (and don’t have my Ricoh GR III on me).

Homescreen: A Widgetsmith photo widget that shows my workweek in index cards. I’m doing my first 12-Week Year and also experimenting with the cards for time-blocking. I plan out my week on Monday morning, then the cards stay on the table next to my desk. I refer to them when I journal, too. Both the 12-Week Year and card system I first saw in Dan Catt’s oddly therapeutic Weeknotes.

Dock: Third from the left is my own file-based notes app, Bebop! I built it after frustrations with over-bloated notes apps that deprioritized capture. Bebop’s my first iOS app, and it felt so good to be able to give it that prime dock spot.

When Apple announced Final Cut Camera, I wondered if there was something similar for DaVinci Resolve, and it turned out there was: Blackmagic Camera. I’d love to do some short video updates for my YouTube channel (which currently just has older videos of me reading from one of my children’s novels). But that’s a big project, for a future 12-week stretch. In the meantime, I’m accumulating little clips and figuring out a good workflow.

I have two other iOS screens: One for reading and audio apps (the only screen visible in Sleep Focus mode) and another for messaging and social media. Everything else is in the App Library. I use search a lot.

I also asked Jack to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he shared:

• The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film is the best book I’ve read so far this year. It has so many insights on writing and making art, and I love the interview format — especially when the two conversation partners (the other is author Michael Ondaatje) are experts in their own domains. Which is why I’m also a Decoder fan!
• Completely Arbortrary is, to me, a perfect podcast. Each hour-long episode is about a different tree, and for hosts, you have a dendrologist (Casey Clapp) paired with a musician / comedian (Alex Crowson) who stands in for the novice listener. Talk about evergreen content. (sorry)
• I’m eagerly awaiting my preorder of Robin Sloan’s new novel, Moonbound. This happens startlingly regularly: I’m at the bookstore when a cover catches my eye. I read the flap copy and first few pages and get sucked right in. Then, I flip over to the back, and there it is: a Robin Sloan blurb. Robin has such a singular taste for the interestingly weird / weirdly interesting. He’s also a serial appreciator of things, which I appreciate!
• My partner and I just finished the third season of Master of None, eminently watchable in large part thanks to Amy Williams’ gorgeous production design. The seasonal arc is an infertility storyline involving Lena Waithe and Naomi Ackie’s characters, which, because of our own fertility journey, hit a little close to home at first. But I’m happy that after two years of trying, Julia and I are expecting our first child this summer.

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Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For more recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“So every once in a while, I manage to get a hard drive full to the rim and need to clean up. That’s when I fall back on a really old piece of software from the Dutch University of Eindhoven called SequoiaView. I don’t think it’s been updated since November 2002, but I still find it the best way to quickly and visually localize big files. I wonder: does anybody else have such an old piece of software that still performs its task for them?” — Jasper

“I’m very late to Balatro and been playing that (and failing — how are people already completing the game and I can’t even get past the basic stakes for some of these decks lol) and trying to finish the new Vampire Survivors DLC.” — Melody

“I just re-downloaded the original StarCraft and can’t stop watching TikTok live videos of people playing some weird Russian Roulette PC game.”

“Downloaded Delta when it officially launched and realized how much I missed playing ‘simpler’ games. Amongst a few others, I was really enjoying Pokémon Fire Red. Fast forward a few days… and the Analogue Pocket had a very timely restock. Nothing to take away from Delta — it’s amazing and massive credits to the developer. I think I just want something a bit more tactile to go all in on some OG games.” — Omesh

“Walkabout Mini Golf on the Meta Quest 3 is pretty awesome.” — Matt

“I’ve found that my screen time can sometimes rocket from using apps like Instagram and Twitter. To solve that, I found Ascent, which adds a sliding distraction screen whenever you try to open the app. You can get Premium for free by Instagramming about them, and it’s worth it because it’s so customizable!” — Leo

“One of Twitch’s / YT’s biggest creators Critical Role just launched their own direct support / streaming service, Beacon, but in contrast to the huge miss that was Watcher doing something similar last month, they aren’t paywalling any existing content. Super interesting move to skip established platforms like Patreon and DIY it. The new content on the platform is really cool for megafans!” – Zach

“Fur and Loathing. I just started listening to this podcast about the gas attack in the 2014 furry convention, and it’s really good!” — Katie

“I’m watching the second half of Clarkson’s Farm season 3. If you’ve never seen it, you’ll be surprised by just how complicated it is to grow something in a field.” — Alan

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Signing off

I’ve been sick off and on for most of the last two weeks, which has lots of downsides but one really terrific upside. It’s an infinite excuse to watch TV shows I’ve already seen 100 times! I’ve realized I have a rotation, not on purpose but somehow quite rigid: I watch The Office, then I watch Parks and Recreation, then I watch New Girl, then I watch Community. Sometimes one all the way through and then the next, sometimes a couple of episodes and then bounce around, but it’s almost always in that order. (Schitt’s Creek and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are the honorable mentions — they haven’t quite made it into the official rotation yet, but I love them both.)

Is this just a me thing? Does everyone have a few shows they just kind of instinctively bounce between when you don’t really care what you’re watching? Either way, I highly recommend my rotation. Infinite comedy, perfect for naps.

See you next week!

Sugar’s big twist was more than a gimmick

Sugar’s big twist was more than a gimmick

Image: Apple

For most of its first season, Sugar on Apple TV Plus was a fairly typical if slickly produced detective story. It starred Colin Farrell as John Sugar, a private investigator with a number of charming quirks — obsessed with old movies, unable to get drunk, beloved by dogs — who was determined to solve a missing persons case involving the granddaughter of a famous Hollywood director. Then, at the end of episode six, the show introduced a twist that threatened to change it into something very different. But now that Sugar’s finale is out, it’s clear that the twist didn’t alter what the show already was — it just added some new flavor.

Spoiler warning for the first season of Sugar, including the final episode.

Okay, let’s get it out of the way: Sugar is an alien. At the end of episode six, he revealed himself to be a blue humanoid who looks like a cross between Doctor Manhattan and Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy. It was a startling moment, although one that makes a lot of sense in retrospect. All of those quirks could be explained by Sugar’s extraterrestrial nature. He loves movies because he used them to learn about humanity. He can’t get drunk because he has different biology. And he’s part of a secretive group of polyglots because that’s how his alien friends meet up to discuss their observations.

Turning Sugar into an alien doesn’t fundamentally change the show — it’s still a modern noir with a compelling mystery at its core. The finale drives this home, as the sci-fi aspect mostly recedes to the background, while Sugar races to rescue Olivia (Sydney Chandler) from a potentially horrific fate and return her to her grandfather (James Cromwell). The episode is concerned with the same questions that have propelled the series since it started: what really happened to Olivia, and can Sugar save her?

Image: Apple

Mostly, the sci-fi elements add to the urgency. In Sugar’s finale, the aliens are discovered and forced to leave Earth. This means that Sugar needs to solve the case before hopping on a spaceship to wherever he’s from. Every moment counts. And the show ends in a way all good detective thrillers do, with a crime that is disturbing but also isn’t quite the end of the story. Even if you guess where it’s going, there are a number of unexpected twists and turns along the way.

Ultimately, the aliens are a fun twist on a well-worn archetype. Sugar is patient, observant, and dedicated, skills that make him great at his job and that can also be linked to his extraterrestrial origins. He’s patient and observant because his real job is watching people and reporting back to his home world. He’s dedicated to finding Olivia because he experienced a tragic loss on his planet and doesn’t want it to happen again.

The finale also makes it clear that Sugar’s story isn’t over. He ends up staying on Earth, partly because he can’t get enough of humanity, but mostly because he discovers that a fellow alien — who has also stayed behind — is essentially the intergalactic Moriarty to his Sherlock. If it gets renewed, Sugar will likely shift from a detective story to a revenge tale. Hopefully, if that happens, it can maintain that careful balance between sci-fi and noir. Sure, Sugar is an alien — but that’s not the most interesting thing about him.

Sugar is streaming now on Apple TV Plus.

The MSI Claw is an embarrassment

The MSI Claw is an embarrassment

Steer clear.

No one should buy an MSI Claw. It’s not technically broken: the first 7-inch Intel Core Ultra handheld gaming PC doesn’t regularly crash or anything like that. But the Claw falls so far short of the competition that it’s effectively dead on arrival.

In almost every way, the $750 MSI Claw feels like an inferior clone of the Asus ROG Ally — except it costs more, not less! You could get a far better experience while saving hundreds of dollars if you choose a Steam Deck OLED instead.

I’ve spent weeks searching for a silver lining. In the end, I only found three tiny ways the Claw improves on the competition.

I didn’t start my MSI Claw journey by running benchmarks. My expectations were already at rock bottom, so I began with an easier test: making the Claw my daily driver for the not-particularly-intensive games I’d already been playing on other handhelds. I fired up the PC port of Studio Ghibli’s Ni No Kuni, Dave the Diver, and Fallout New Vegas — a game that’s nearly 14 years old.

Every one of them runs smoothly on a $549 Steam Deck OLED. Not one ran smoothly on the $749 MSI Claw. They would stutter or hitch, even when the system told me they were hitting 60fps or above and despite a 48–120Hz variable refresh rate screen that should have smoothed things out. The Claw would also drop frames when the Deck stayed stable and delivered fewer frames to begin with.

So, I fired up some more repeatable benchmarks. How bad could the Intel Core Ultra 155H really be compared to rivals? Here’s a peek:

In case your jaw has not yet hit the floor, let me bottom-line it for you: the less expensive Steam Deck OLED all but completely wiped the floor with the MSI Claw in power and performance.

The Claw, set to maximum power and plugged into a wall for a turbo boost, ran some games slower than my Steam Deck did on battery power alone. Can you imagine paying two hundred dollars more to play games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 45 fps instead of 60 — and only when you’re plugged into the wall?

Against Windows gaming handhelds, the Claw fared no better: the competing Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go offered anywhere from 10 percent more performance to over double the perf depending on the game and power mode.

The functional quick access menu is one of the handheld’s very few bright spots.

There was one bright spot: Returnal, one of the most intensive PC titles I tried, actually ran better on the Claw than it did on the Deck or Ally. But not well enough to be playable… and when I sat down to play an hour each of Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk 2077, I didn’t find them playable either. Both are playable on the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go at identical (low) settings, so the Claw has no excuse for delivering a choppy mess.

I even fired up 3DMark Time Spy and Fire Strike to see if MSI might have accidentally sent me a lemon, but no — my Claw scored slightly higher than MSI’s own internal benchmark. And yes, I ran these benchmarks on the recent Intel graphics driver that was supposed to deliver big improvements, not the one the Claw originally shipped with.

One USB-C port and micro SD slot, next to the fingerprint reader power button.

At least the Claw doesn’t seem to have worse battery life than Windows peers. MSI gave it a 53-watt-hour battery pack, slightly larger than Legion Go and notably larger than Ally, and I saw roughly the same 1.5 hours of Shadow of the Tomb Raider on a charge. I got 2 hours and 25 minutes of Fallout New Vegas and achieved a maximum runtime of 4 hours and 19 minutes in Balatro, one of the least demanding games I’ve yet played on a handheld. (My first run lasted 3.25 hours; I got an extra hour by setting the system to Super Battery mode and aggressively dimming the screen.)

But compared to the Steam Deck OLED, which can easily go twice as long in Balatro and lets Lara Croft raid tombs for over two hours, it’s not great — and I have no clue how MSI can justify saying the Claw “lasts 50 percent longer” than the average handheld in its marketing campaign.

The backs of the ROG Ally and the MSI Claw show differences and similarities.

It’s worth noting that MSI did put a decent amount of thought into the Claw’s UX. While the hardware may look like a low-rent Batman edition of Asus’ ROG Ally, cribbing the same exact button layout and most of the same curves, it can feel a tad better in the hands. I appreciate its larger grips, more substantial face buttons, and its Hall effect joysticks and triggers for longevity. Like the Ally, the Claw has some of the best speakers on a gaming handheld, here augmented with surprisingly good Nahimic virtual surround sound that delivered delightfully all-around-me echoes as I failed to delve through tombs.

I do wish MSI hadn’t adopted a stiffer yet sloppier D-pad or added so many unnecessary spikes to its vents — they’ve repeatedly kept me from finding its charge port in a dark bedroom. The Claw’s rumble feels awful, too. At least MSI lets you turn it off!

But the main thing I’d like to turn off is Windows.

The fronts of the ROG Ally and MSI Claw show almost identical curves and layouts.

It’s been almost a full year since Asus released the ROG Ally and over two years since the Steam Deck, but Microsoft has done nothing meaningful to make its operating system friendlier for a gamepad-operated screen. I could practically copy / paste my criticisms from the ROG Ally review: I ran into the same exact issues summoning virtual keyboards and playing games — things that mostly just work on a Steam Deck despite and / or because of its Linux underpinnings.

And, I ran into very similar sleep issues to the ones I saw on the Lenovo Legion Go: I simply can’t trust this portable not to wake itself up when I put it down or drop it into a bag. Only here, it’s slightly worse because the MSI Center utility has a tendency to hang when waking from sleep — sometimes disabling my gamepad controls until I reboot it.

MSI Center M, the company’s quick launch software.

While MSI Center also buries important features like remappable controls, I like that it includes launchers for every major PC game platform, comes with lots of handy Quick Access shortcuts that work right out of the box (like a switch that turns off RGB lighting), and is relatively snappy. The Deck, Ally, and Legion Go all had buggier, more sluggish interfaces at launch.

Today, though, all of them are far more full-featured, and all let you natively install updates — while the Claw still expects you to navigate to MSI’s website and download important bits manually or wait for Windows Update to deliver the goods.

The MSI Claw vs. the Steam Deck. They’re roughly the same thickness, though the Deck’s joysticks are taller and there’s more grip underneath.

The MSI Claw isn’t the worst handheld gaming PC I’ve ever touched. Years ago, I played with some that didn’t even deserve a review, handhelds so poorly thought out and narrowly marketed I didn’t feel the need to warn you. But stores like Best Buy actually carry the MSI Claw — and in the current crop of competing handhelds, it’s the worst buy of them all.

Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Behold Ayaneo’s sophisticated takes on the Game Boy and Game Boy Micro

Behold Ayaneo’s sophisticated takes on the Game Boy and Game Boy Micro

Image: Ayaneo

The Analogue Pocket is the most advanced Game Boy to ever take actual carts, but Ayaneo has just unveiled a pair of emulator-centric pocket computers that could give it a run for its cash — including a modern take on the original DMG-01 Nintendo Game Boy with a 419ppi OLED screen.

Unfortunately, we’ve only got renders and a few details today — no prices or full spec sheets — but those renders look pretty neat! I find myself most interested in the Pocket Micro, whose sleek design, twin joysticks and horizontal layout look a bit more practical than the stick placement on the Pocket DMG. Not to mention a bit of a Sony Walkman vibe? Take a peek:

Below, you’ll also see the Ayaneo AG01 “Graphics Starship” eGPU dock the company already teased, as well as a Super Famicom themed retro power bank with a screen, and a new version of Ayaneo’s Mac-inspired mini-PC — now with a tilting screen and your choice of a AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS or Ryzen 9 8945HS chip, as well as 2.5Gbps Ethernet, a pair of USB4 ports, and six USB-A ports, and 65W worth of cooling.

Ayaneo says the Pocket DMG is powered by a Qualcomm G3x Gen 2 processor and has an active cooling system (read: fan) beneath its 3.92-inch, 1240x1080 OLED screen, while the aluminum-housed Pocket Micro has a 960x640 panel that allows for 4x integer scaling for GBA games, and is powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 chip.

The AG01 is a AMD Radeon RX 7600M eGPU that connects over Oculink or USB4, similar to competitors from OneXPlayer and GPD. It has twin DisplayPorts and twin HDMI ports for video output, as well as Ethernet, USB-A, and an SD card slot, and room inside for an M.2 2280 SSD with toolless entry — just twist a dial on the back.

Last but not least, the Retro Power Bank is a 45.6 watt-hour (12,000mAh) battery pack with a tiny built-in OLED display for real-time monitoring. It has 45W USB-C PD input and output, and two USB-C ports, though it looks like you might be limited to 15W per port if you use both at the same time.

It’s not clear when, where, or how much any of these will cost: Ayaneo says the Retro Power Bank will be released “soon,” and will announce details later for the rest.

Here are the best Kindle deals right now

Here are the best Kindle deals right now

The Kindle Scribe doesn’t provide the most intuitive note-taking experience you can get, but it’s getting better thanks to a series of OTA updates.

When it comes to finding a device to read ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon looks to be moving beyond books and into the realm of writing — something that should make future Kindles function more akin to physical paper.

Below, we’ve listed each model currently available. Sometimes, there isn’t a deal for one or any of the products, but we’ve mentioned the most recent sale price in those instances. Keep in mind that Amazon also offers 20 percent off all of its Kindles when you trade in select devices, so there are still other ways to save money when none of the models are available at a discount.

Image: Amazon

The best Kindle (2022) deals

In case you missed it, Amazon announced a new entry-level Kindle in 2022, one that was designed to replace the 2019 model. The latest Kindle — which starts at $99.99 — puts Amazon’s base e-reader more in line with the most recent Kindle Paperwhite, providing a number of quality-of-life improvements in the process. The 2022 model features longer battery life, a 300ppi screen, and charges via USB-C instead of Micro USB. It also touts 16GB of storage by default and comes in a “denim” color, which resembles the soft blue you might associate with jeans.

In the past, Amazon’s newest ad-supported Kindle has dropped to as low as $74.99 ($25 off) with three months of Kindle Unlimited included. Right now, however, you can only buy the Kindle at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for its full retail price of $99.99, or with ads, a power adapter, and a fabric cover starting at $134.97 ($15 off). Regardless of whether you choose the standalone model or the bundle, the entry-level Kindle remains a worthwhile option if you’re looking to pick up an e-reader for less than the latest Paperwhite.

Read our Kindle (2022) review.

The best Kindle Kids (2022) deals

The latest base Kindle wasn’t the only e-reader Amazon introduced in 2022. The entry-level model arrived alongside a new Kindle Kids, which is identical to the standard model but comes with a handful of accessories and provides age-appropriate content for younger readers who prefer digital books. Like the last-gen Kindle Kids, the latest model retails for $20 more than the base model, bringing the MSRP to $119.99.

In terms of add-ons, the new Kindle Kids edition consists of four items: the device, a case, a two-year extended replacement guarantee (in the event the device breaks), and one year of Amazon Kids Plus. The latter is the biggest selling point of the device aside from the kid-friendly patterns, as it allows parents to grant their child access to games, videos, and books — including those in the Percy Jackson and Harry Potter series — at no additional cost.

In late March, we saw the Kindle Kids sell for $99.99, which is $20 shy of its all-time low and the cheapest we’ve seen it go for since Black Friday. Right now, however, there are no deals currently available, meaning you can only buy the e-reader at its full retail price of $119.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.

Image: Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is identical to the standard model but features wireless charging and a sensor to automatically adjust the backlight.

The best Kindle Paperwhite (2021) deals

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite is its 11th-gen model, which comes with USB-C support, longer battery life, and a larger 6.8-inch display. The e-reader launched more than two years ago, and it often receives steep discounts at retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, particularly around Black Friday and throughout the holiday season.

When it first launched in 2021, the latest Kindle Paperwhite arrived in two entry-level configurations: an 8GB model with ads for $139.99 and an 8GB model without ads for $159.99. These days, though, it’s hard to find either in stock, and the 16GB ad-free version ($149.99) and the ad-free version ($169.99) tend to be more widely available. There’s also a 32GB ad-free Signature Edition for $189.99, which is identical to the standard Paperwhite only it features Qi wireless charging and a sensor that will automatically adjust the backlight when needed.

Amazon also rolled out a Kindle Paperwhite Kids for $169.99, which comes bundled with a kid-friendly cover, a two-year extended replacement guarantee, and a year of Amazon Kids Plus, much like the aforementioned Kindle Kids. All 2021 models are also similar to the 2018 model in that they feature a waterproof design and Audible audiobook support.

Unfortunately, the standalone Paperwhite with 16GB of storage is only available for $149.99 (full price) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That being said, you can save $20 when you buy two Kindle Paperwhite Kids. Alternatively, you can grab the 8GB Paperwhite as part of a package that includes a power adapter and your choice of a fabric cover for $174.97 ($20 off), a leather cover for $181.97 ($20 off), or a “cork” cover for $189.97 ($20 off).

Read our Kindle Paperwhite (2021) review.

As for the 32GB ad-free Signature Edition, it’s available at Amazon and Best Buy right now for $189.99 — its regular retail price. However, you can buy the ad-free Signature Edition with 32GB of storage, a wireless charging dock, and a leather cover on sale at Amazon for $244.97 ($20 off). You can also buy the e-reader with a cork cover and a wireless charging dock for $252.97 ($20 off) or a fabric cover and a wireless charging dock for $237.97 ($20 off).

Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The best Kindle Scribe deals

The ad-free Kindle Scribe is Amazon’s biggest e-reader to date — one that also represents a departure from past Kindle models. It packs a 10.2-inch display with 300 dpi, along with the same great battery life for which Kindles have become known. What separates the Scribe from other models, however, is that it comes with one of two styli, which can be used to annotate books, doodle, or jot down notes. We found the e-reader’s note-taking capabilities lacking in our testing, but Amazon has already started to improve the software via free OTA software updates, helping bring it up to speed with other E Ink competitors.

For a limited time, the Kindle Scribe is available at Amazon and Target in its 16GB base configuration with a Basic Pen and three months of Kindle Unlimited for $239.99 ($100 off), which matches its all-time low. The same model is also available at Amazon with a Premium Pen starting at $264.99 ($105 off), or bundled with a leather cover and a power adapter for $299.97 ($140 off). Meanwhile, the bundle with the Premium Pen, which offers a shortcut button and a built-in eraser, is currently on sale in the 16GB configuration with a folio cover and a power adapter starting at $324.97 ($145 off).

Read our Kindle Scribe review.

A note on the Kindle Oasis

Up until recently, Amazon also sold the 2019 Kindle Oasis. Along with a 7-inch 300ppi E Ink display, the Oasis was unique in that it offered physical, page-turning buttons. Sadly, however, the waterproof ebook reader is neither on sale nor in stock in new condition at Amazon or any other major retailer. The international version of the e-reader is currently available at Amazon for $135 (half off), though it may not be worth buying at this point. Amazon won’t ship it to US addresses, and more notably, the Oasis is no longer listed as part of Amazon’s official Kindle lineup. That suggests that Amazon may have discontinued it and that we may see a newer version at some point in the near future.

OpenAI’s Flirty New Assistant, Google Guts the Web and We Play HatGPT

OpenAI’s Flirty New Assistant, Google Guts the Web and We Play HatGPT It’s been a week of A.I. vertigo — the feeling that we’ve been dragged five years into the future and aren’t sure what to do about it.

Twitter is officially X.com now

Twitter is officially X.com now

The Verge

The social network formerly known as Twitter has officially adopted X.com for all its core systems. That means typing twitter.com in your browser will now redirect to Elon Musk’s favored domain, or should. At the time of publication, we’re seeing a mix of results depending upon browser choice and whether you’re logged in or not.

A message also now appears at the bottom of the X login page that reads, “We are letting you know that we are changing our URL, but your privacy and data protection settings remain the same.”

The domain transition has been one of the more awkward aspects of Elon Musk’s move to rebrand the company. Although many aspects of X migrated to the new branding long ago — including its official account, its mobile apps, and its “X Premium” (fka Blue) subscriptions — the platform’s URLs have remained twitter.com ever since Musk officially initiated the switch to X.

The URLs started to change way back in August of last year, when some Verge staffers were able to copy x.com links from the share sheet inside X’s iOS app. The clumsy transition has been a gift to phishing attacks, said Brian Krebs last month.

All core systems are now on https://t.co/bOUOek5Cvy pic.twitter.com/cwWu3h2vzr

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2024

Musk has a long history with the x.com URL, launching a business under the name in 1999 that eventually merged with what would become PayPal. For this modern-day version of the company, Musk envisions that it will become a WeChat-like “everything app.”

Maybe, but one thing’s for sure: it’s not Twitter anymore.