We don’t have all the answers to those questions yet (although I need an answer on the Lego Movie stat). We have, however, finally gotten our first glimpse of this highly anticipated Lego set, which (fairly accurately) replicates the set of the Dynamite music video, complete with mini-figs of the seven group members.
The set was based on a fan-submitted idea from two BTS fans and Lego builders. “I watched the music video over and over and tried to capture its essence in the LEGO bricks,” writes 20-year-old Josh Bretz, one of the creators, in Lego’s press release.
The 749-piece set includes several of the primary settings featured in the music video, including the donut shop, the record store, the basketball hoop, and that ice cream truck that’s always hanging around. The stage is also present in the back, though that replica isn’t quite as faithful. All the pieces are modular, so you can move them around.
Notably missing is Jungkook’s bedroom from the opening verse, though I understand that recreating all those posters with Legos would’ve been a whole thing and a half.
Lego has captured some specific details; elements like the graffiti behind the basketball hoop, the addresses printed on the windows of the stores, and the Open sign next to the donut shop are nicely constructed. The green arrow should be angled a bit further down, but I know I’m getting into the weeds here. You also cannot recreate the plane that flies over the second chorus, but you can make Jungkook hold the donut outside the donut shop, which is consolation enough.
Image: Lego
Suga isn’t wearing this outfit in the real shot, so it’s slightly disconcerting, but we’ll roll with it.Click here for a larger image.
The company did a fairly impressive job replicating each member’s hairstyle, considering that we’re talking about...Lego hair. Jungkook’s black hair is easily distinguishable from J-Hope’s black hair, for example.
The seven figurines are dressed in the outfits that the group wears beginning at the song’s second chorus (rather than the costumes from their earlier solo shots or the pastel clothing from the beginning and end). Lego doesn’t provide multiple mini-figs for a costume change (and with a US price of $99.99, this is already not the cheapest piece of BTS merch you can buy). The figurines do have multiple expressions, at least; for example, you can make RM wink or just appear somewhat pensive, while Jungkook has both a smile and the bewildered look from his iconic donut shot.
This Lego set will be on sale in March. While you’re waiting, you can take a look at the pictures Lego has sent over, where the company has made admirable efforts to make the figurines look like they’re doing dance moves with their aerobically-limited limbs.
‘Team Jorge’ and Cambridge Analytica meddled in Nigeria election, emails reveal
Leaked messages show failed plan to discredit Muhammadu Buhari and get Goodluck Jonathan re-elected in 2015
Four weeks before a pivotal presidential election in Nigeria, an Israeli private operative specialising in political “black ops” was preparing his trip to the country. On 17 January 2015 the man, who used the alias “Jorge”, emailed Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy he was coordinating with on a covert plan to manipulate Africa’s largest democracy.
“Friends, hi, I will be on the ground tomorrow for couple days … Who is best to meet there[?]” he asked. “Low profile as we came in on a special visa and we are watched closely (which is part of our plan :) anyway we need better understanding of the current status, improve communication and coordinate plans, we want to run by you a couple things that we might execute if the stars align. so plz, in very limited circulation, who is best to meet, and whats his/her position, and contact info.”
Apple TV will stream MLS games in 1080p
Photo by Matthew Ashton - AMA / Getty Images
The Major League Soccer (MLS) season kicks off on February 25th, and if you were hoping Apple and MLS’s streaming service would give you the games in 4K, I have some bad news: the streams will top out at 1080p, according to a press release from MLS (via Engadget).
We probably shouldn’t have hoped for anything different; the Major League Baseball games on Apple TV Plus also peak at 1080p. But for the many sports fans who have been waiting for more sports games to stream at true 4K — this year’s Super Bowl, for example, was upscaled to 4K — MLS’s streaming service, MLS Season Pass, won’t be the place to see those.
That said, for soccer fans, MLS Season Pass seems like it will be a pretty good deal. You’ll be able to watch every live regular season game, playoff game, and the Leagues Cup with no blackouts. There will also be an NFL RedZone-like whip-around show called “MLS 360” to help you catch big moments without having to jump between games as well as pre- and post-game programming.
You can sign up for MLS Season Pass now in the Apple TV app ahead of the beginning of the season. The service costs $14.99 per month over the course of the season or $99 per season, and if you’re an Apple TV Plus subscriber, you can sign up at reduced rates of $12.99 per month or $79 per season.
This year will mark the first of a 10-year deal between Apple and Major League Soccer. The two won’t make that deal easy to forget, as every single club’s jersey now has an Apple TV logo.
To help recover balance, robotic exoskeletons have to be faster than human reflexes Wearable robotics promise to help older people retain their mobility and paraplegic patients regain theirs. They could help make humans stronger and faster. But, so far, they're not great at keeping people from falling.
Sony’s PSVR2 teardowns reveal how the headset tracks the Sense controllers
Image: Sony
The PlayStation VR2 headset can track the accompanying Sense controllers thanks to a bunch of IR LEDs hidden in the orb-shaped controllers, according to new teardown videos Sony posted Tuesday evening.
Under the Sense controller cover, the controller itself has a ring of 14 IR LEDs and three placed elsewhere for tracking, as shown in the Sense teardown video. “These infrared lights are used by the VR headset’s tracking camera to detect the controller’s position and orientation,” Sony’s Takeshi Igarashi, who also designed the DualSense controller, explains in the video. “The LEDs have been placed in optimal locations to ensure they are accurately detected no matter what direction the controller is facing.” And the cover on the controllers is even made with a material that “transmits the infrared light emitted internally to track the movement of the controller,” he says.
The Sense teardown video also shows the five capacitive touch sensors on the controller, a look at the adaptive trigger component (which works like it does on the DualSense), and even that there are tiny PlayStation button icons embossed on the controller.
And for the headset itself, that teardown is pretty cool, too; I loved watching Takamasa Araki, the lead designer of the PSVR2 (and the first PSVR!), expertly disassemble both the front of the headset and the headband. I’d particularly recommend scrubbing to 6:07 or so, where you can see what it looks like on the inside of the headset when you turn the lens adjustment dial. Oh, and the headset’s eye tracking feature? As shown by Araki, there’s an IR LED around each lens and an IR camera that captures the light from the LED, and those work together to follow your eye’s movements. Super cool.
Image: Sony
A PSVR2 lens.
I really recommend you watch both the headset and the controller teardowns, they’re fascinating. However, Sony warns that you should not try the teardowns yourself, noting that taking apart your hardware will invalidate the warranty.
Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first
Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge, photo by Christian Marquardt / Getty Images
This story is based on interviews with people familiar with the events involved and supported by documents obtained byPlatformer.
At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.
“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”
When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.
In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.
Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.
In recent weeks, Musk has been obsessed with the amount of engagement his posts are receiving. Last week, Platformer broke the news that he fired one of two remaining principal engineers at the company after the engineer told him that views on his tweets are declining in part because interest in Musk has declined in general.
His deputies told the rest of the engineering team this weekend that if the engagement issue wasn’t “fixed,” they would all lose their jobs as well.
Late Sunday night, Musk addressed his team in-person. Roughly 80 people were pulled in to work on the project, which had quickly become priority number one at the company. Employees worked through the night investigating various hypotheses about why Musk’s tweets weren’t reaching as many people as he thought they should and testing out possible solutions.
One possibility, engineers said, was that Musk’s reach might have been reduced because he’d been blocked and muted by so many people in recent months. Even before the events of this weekend, Musk’s long stint as Twitter’s main character, both in the run-up to and aftermath of his $44 billion takeover of the company, had led huge numbers of people to filter him out of their feeds.
But there were also legitimate technical reasons the CEO’s tweets weren’t performing. Twitter’s system has historically promoted tweets from users whose posts perform better to both followers and non-followers in the For You Tab; Musk’s tweets should have fit that model but showed up less only about half the time that some engineers thought they should.
By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his posts will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.
Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told. The code also allows Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the core ranked feed, now known as “For You.”
That explains why people opening the app Monday found that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to one internal estimate.
Some of his tweets Monday were sent while he was on calls with Twitter engineers, to test out whether the solutions they’d designed were working as well as he thought they should.
After Musk’s timeline takeover caused an uproar Monday, he seemed to suggest that the changes would be walked back, at least in part. “Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh .… “algorithm,” he tweeted.
The artificial boosts applied to his account remain in place, although the factor is now lower than 1,000, we’re told. Musk’s handful of tweets Tuesday reported around 43 million impressions, which are on the high end of his recent average.
Absurd as Musk’s antics are, they do highlight a tension familiar to almost anyone who has ever used a social network: why are some posts more popular than others? Why am I seeing this thing, and not that one?
Engineers for services like TikTok and Instagram can offer partial, high-level answers to these questions. But ranking algorithms make predictions based on hundreds or thousands of signals, and deliver posts to millions of users, making it almost impossible for anyone to say with any degree of accuracy who sees what.
For better and for worse, that answer hasn’t been good enough for Musk. As Twitter’s most prominent user, with nearly 129 million followers, his posts often get 10 million or more impressions, as counted by Twitter. (There are good reasons to doubt the accuracy of these counts, but better data is not readily available.)
But Musk’s view counts still fluctuate widely. The bottle-feeding tweet got a reported 118.4 million impressions; his next one, a joke observation previously posted to Reddit and satirically attributed to Abraham Lincoln, got 49.9 million. Some of his tweets from earlier this month had fewer than 8 million.
The most obvious reason for this discrepancy is that people think some tweets are better than others. But it doesn’t have to work like that: you could also change the ranking algorithms so that they show your posts no matter what.
Terrified of losing their jobs, this is the system that Twitter engineers are now building.
“He bought the company, made a point of showcasing what he believed was broken and manipulated under previous management, then turns around and manipulates the platform to force engagement on all users to hear only his voice,” said a current employee. “I think we’re past the point of believing that he actually wants what’s best for everyone here.”
Google Fiber’s 5-gig internet service starts rolling out in three cities
Image: Google Fiber
Google Fiber is now offering 5 Gbps speeds in certain markets (via Engadget). Customers in Kansas City, West Des Moines, and the Salt Lake City metropolitan area will be the first to get the option for the speedier tier, which is rolling out now. Late last year, Google started testing limited access to Fiber’s faster 5-gig and even 8-gig packages for some customers in those same areas.
The new 5 Gbps offering will cost subscribers $125 a month and includes an optional Wi-Fi 6 router, up to two mesh extenders, and professional installation that also upgrades homes to be 10Gbps-ready.
Google Fiber’s 5 Gbps internet offers symmetrical upload and download speeds for those who work heavily in the cloud with large files and is a big upgrade from current 1- to 2.5-gigabit offerings. After staying stagnant for several years, Google is finally working to expand service to more cities and will eventually offer 8-gigabit-plus speeds.
Companies like Frontier and Optimum are starting to offer 5 Gbps service, albeit for a higher $155 per month and $180 per month price (respectively). And, of course, Comcast says it’s close to launching “10G” multi-gig service (read: 2 Gbps up and down, so far) in select markets.
A Link Between Hearing Voices and Hearing Your Own Voice An experiment with bone-conduction headphones suggests a way for neuroscientists to better understand some hallucinations.
Tweetbot’s creators added an edit button to their Mastodon client
Image: Tapbots
The developers who created the now-discontinued Tweetbot client have added an edit button to Ivory, their app for Mastodon. This comes bundled with a couple of other updates for Ivory’s iOS app, including the ability to report users and posts, as well as support for Mastodon’s server language translation services.
While Ivory’s still in early access, Tapbots says there’s much more to come, like quote posts and support for custom instance emoji. So far, Ivory lets you edit your profile on Mastodon, suppress duplicate boosted posts, create content warnings, and approve follow requests from private accounts.
Just like Tweetbot, Ivory’s a paid service, which means you’ll have to pay $1.99 per month or $14.99 per year for full access to the iOS app. You can also demo it in read-only mode if you’re not ready to commit just yet. There’s a macOS app in development as well, but it’s currently available as a limited public alpha through Testflight.
Twitter initially said it would start making developers pay to access its API on February 9th but has since delayed the rollout of the new system to an undetermined date. Access to the API could cost developers much as $100 per month, and CEO Elon Musk has since hinted at a free tier with “light, write-only” access for Twitter bots that create “good” content, whatever that might mean.
Amazon’s weird toaster-shaped robotaxi hits the road in a ‘first’ for the company
Image: Zoox
Zoox, the autonomous vehicle company owned by Amazon, said that its toaster-shaped driverless vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals was approved to drive on public roads with passengers in California. The company celebrated the milestone as the “first time in history a purpose-built robotaxi — without any manual controls — drove autonomously with passengers.”
Zoox is one of dozens of companies currently testing AVs on public roads in the Golden State. And while it trails behind competitors like Waymo and Cruise in the race to commercialize the technology, it is making advancements by introducing a new kind of vehicle to the road — one that lacks traditional controls and could hardly be described as a “car” in the modern sense of the word.
Last week, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles approved a modification to Zoox’s existing testing permit allowing it to test its robotaxi in a “limited area” in Foster City, California, where the company is headquartered.
But Zoox’s purpose-built robotaxi can hardly travel where ever it wants. According to the DMV, the vehicle is limited to a top speed of 40 mph, can only operate on Saturdays and Sundays during daylight hours, and is prohibited from driving during bad weather.
According to Levinson, the Zoox vehicle drove a two-mile loop “dozens of times” on open roads with passengers in the vehicle. “Our vehicle never got stuck, paused, or had any issues whatsoever while driving,” he wrote. “As you’d expect on open public roads, we encountered lots of vehicles, pedestrians, bikes, etc. The route has multiple traffic lights, left/right turns, unprotected cross traffic, and speeds up to 35 MPH.”
Levinson also addressed questions about Zoox’s claim to be the first to deploy a purpose-built autonomous vehicle on public roads, considering Google had ferried passengers in its purpose-built Firefly vehicle on open roads more than five years ago.
Google’s prototype wasn’t built to comply with federal safety standards, nor could it exceed 25 mph, Levinson said. Firefly “was also never designed for production, as it was clearly a test/research vehicle platform (which Waymo then abandoned),” he added. “In contrast, the Zoox robotaxi complies with the complete set of FMVSS, is fully street-legal, and has a comprehensive set of safety and comfort features for our riders.”
Zoox’s vehicle, which was first unveiled in 2020, is currently testing AVs in Seattle, Las Vegas, and the Bay Area. The company mostly uses Toyota Highlanders retrofitted with sensors and cameras as part of its fleet.
Zoox is one of the few companies that is building its own autonomous vehicle. Cruise, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, is expected to begin mass production of its Origin vehicle later this year. Both companies will need permission from the federal government to build vast quantities of vehicles that don’t comply with current safety standards, which require traditional controls like pedals and steering wheels.
T-Mobile suffers major network outage across US
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Thousands of T-Mobile customers in the United States reported significant network problems on Monday night, with many unable to place calls or carry out other basic functions. Issues were reported across the country, with users from California to New York saying that service was up and down or completely unavailable for extended periods.
DownDetector spiked and showed over 80,000 reports of problems. Owners of Apple’s iPhone 14 phones said their signal status showed no cellular connection whatsoever — instead defaulting to the emergency SOS satellite indicator.
By late evening, the carrier seemed to be getting a handle on things, but customers weren’t pleased with the disruption.
Responding to complaints on social media, T-Mobile said it was “aware of and rapidly working to resolve an issue that has created intermittent impacts to our voice, messaging, and data service in several areas for a short period of time this evening.”
In a bizarre coincidence, the outage struck on the same day that T-Mobile network chief Neville Ray announced his upcoming retirement from the company. In a tweet Monday night, Ray blamed the service problems on a “third-party fiber interruption.”
Our teams are rapidly addressing a 3rd party fiber interruption issue that has intermittently impacted some voice, messaging and data services in several areas. The situation is improving and we hope to have a full resolution very soon. We apologize for any disruption caused.
Some affected customers reported success restoring a data signal by toggling airplane mode on and off on their devices. So if you’ve been dealing with this tonight and are without service, that’s worth a try.
Toyota’s first next-gen EV will be a Lexus
The Lexus RZ 450e SUV is the last electric vehicle announced by parent company Toyota. | Image: Lexus
Toyota’s incoming CEO said the automaker would release “next-generation” electric cars under the Lexus brand by 2026. This is just one part of a new strategy in development to overcome problems linked to a slow and expensive EV manufacturing process.
Toyota will also be expanding its current EV lineup, which currently consists of the bZ4X crossover SUV (which required a recall to make sure its wheels don’t fall off) and the Subaru Solterra EV built on top of Toyota’s e-TNGA flexible EV platform. Lexus has yet to release its RZ 450e SUV that’s based on the same platform.
Koji Sato, who is currently the president of Lexus, will replace Akio Toyoda as president and CEO of Toyota on April 1st. During a press conference on Monday, Sato said next-generation battery electric vehicles are the first order of business priority and that the “time is right” to develop EVs under the new team once they take over in April, which is when we should hear more concrete details.
This is coming after years of criticism over Toyota’s slow approach to electric vehicle adoption, resting on its laurels with efficient gas and hybrid cars, and being distracted by the development of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Meanwhile, competitors are already extending purpose-built EV platforms across their product lines, like GM with Ultium.
Sato mentioned Toyota would take an “omnidirectional approach,” suggesting it will continually keep its hybrid business — with vehicles like the now-refreshed Prius — relevant. “We want to stay in tune with customers around the world and provide diverse options,” Sato said.
If Google Photos is broken for you on iOS, you’re not alone
Illustration: The Verge
Google Photos appears to be broken for many users following Apple’s latest iOS 16.3.1 update. Several Verge staff members, as well as peopleonTwitter, report that the app crashes on launch, making it impossible to access or manage your Google photo library.
While the problem isn’t universal — afewpeople, myself included, say they’re able to open Google Photos just fine — the crashing does still appear to be relatively widespread. Other Google apps, such as Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Maps, all appear to be working fine.
It’s currently unclear what could be causing the problem and why it only affects certain people. The iOS update (which may or may not have triggered the issue) is supposedly relatively minor; Apple’s release notes say it’s mainly meant to fix bugs and a few security issues.
Google didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on whether it was aware of the crashes and if there was a fix in the works. The Google Photos Twitter account, however, hasresponded to two people who mentioned the issue on Monday, one of whom said they were using an older version of iOS.
Twitter is just showing everyone all of Elon’s tweets now
The first of several Elon tweets that appear in my For You feed. | Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge
For many of us, Twitter’s “For You” is full of tweets and replies to tweets from Elon Musk. Not everyone is getting the Elon-first feed, but on Monday afternoon, more than a few people noticed something was different.
Several of us here at The Verge are seeing more Musk replies than usual, and I personally counted five at the very top of my feed, with many more sprinkled in between tweets from other users. The same is true for some accounts that don’t even follow Elon Musk.
Is everyone else's entire For You page Elon replies
As reported by Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton, internal Twitter data indicates that while Musk’s account rose to peak popularity in search rankings in April 2022, engagement has since dropped significantly, and engineers found no issue with Twitter’s algorithm.
Over the weekend, Musk said Twitter rolled out some sort of change to fix this “visibility” issue, with the billionaire CEO stating that 95 percent of his tweets weren’t “getting delivered.” I’m not sure if this is at all related to this Elon-filled feed, but I’m hoping Twitter fixes this issue soon — unless the new mandate is to get the boss more views by any means necessary.
Long day at Twitter HQ with eng team
Two significant problems mostly addressed:
1. Fanout service for Following feed was getting overloaded when I tweeted, resulting in up to 95% of my tweets not getting delivered at all. Following is now pulling from search (aka Earlybird).… https://t.co/oMW54chhRz
Ram 1500 REV loses the prototype’s gimmicks and looks like an electric Ram
The Ram 1500 REV electric truck looks like a regular Ram truck now. | Image: Stellantis
The preproduction Ram 1500 REV now looks very similar to the current gas-powered Ram pickup trucks on the road today. Even the interior, including the infotainment screen, would look wholly familiar to recent Ram owners. Stellantis’ design direction for the REV echoes what Ford did with its F-150 Lighting electric pickup, which looks very similar to its combustion engine counterpart as well.
The Ram 1500 REV will be available starting Q4 2024, according to its website. EV-curious Mopar diehards and others in the market for an electric pickup can get in line to reserve the truck — and become members of “Ram REV Insider Plus” — with a refundable $100 “membership fee.”
Stellantis originally said it would put the truck into production in 2022. A late 2024 release puts it well behind competitors like Ford’s F-150 Lightning, which is currently sold out for the 2023 model year, and Chevy’s Silverado EV, which is supposed to be released later this year.
The production Ram 1500 REV debuted in a Super Bowl ad that connects common electric vehicle buyers’ concerns to sexual stamina while suggesting the truck will have a long range, bigger payload, and won’t have to have you stop often.
“We wanted to directly address any potential concerns about EV truck ownership using an approach that we believe will resonate with our truck-buying consumers,” Stellantis’ global chief marketing officer, Olivier Francois, states in a press release.
The site specifies that members will get early access to preorder the REV and receive early invites to events that include first looks and test drives, as well as up-to-date news on this and future electric Ram trucks. Reservations are open from now until February 28th, 2023, or while “supplies last.” Stellantis has not offered any details on how many reservations it plans on taking.
Chromebooks might finally get customizable keyboard shortcuts
Image: Framework
Google appears to be testing a feature that would let Chromebook users set custom keyboard shortcuts throughout the OS (via Ars Technica). While it doesn’t currently work, About Chromebooks’ Kevin Tofel found a keyboard shortcut editor in the ChromeOS 111 beta that can be accessed by enabling flags with names like “enable-shortcut-customization-app” and “improved-keyboard-shortcuts.”
The screen, which is accessible through the settings app, shows you the list of shortcuts that are available in different parts of the OS and apps, as well as the default keybindings for them. The experimental version lets you add alternative shortcuts, according to Tofel and Ars Technica, though they unfortunately don’t seem to work — you can set shortcuts, but pressing those keys won’t do what you want. The screen also has options to reset the defaults for both specific shortcuts and for all the shortcuts.
There have been hints that this feature was coming for months, but the version in the beta seems to be almost complete. Hopefully, that means it should start rolling out to users within the next few weeks or months. While the current version of ChromeOS lets you easily see the default keyboard shortcuts, it’s always nice to be able to tweak them to match your specific preferences.
Beyond Silicon Valley, Spending on Technology Is Resilient Despite an uncertain outlook, corporations plan to continue investing in their digital projects — a source of stability for the economy.
Monday’s top tech news: Mario’s still got a day job
Image: Illumination
Mario’s plumbing ad was one of several big new trailers from the Super Bowl.
I sometimes forget that in between his adventurous odysseys, Mario’s day job is plumbing. So it’s fun to see the upcoming movie lean into it, using Mario’s profession as an excuse to revive the rap used in the 1989 Super Mario Bros TV show. The clip from the film was one of the half-dozen plus trailers broadcast during last night’s Super Bowl — The Guardian has a neat roundup of the other big ones.
And finally, in case you missed it, my colleague James Vincent did a great breakdown last week highlighting the biggest risks and problems facing Microsoft and Google as they forge ahead into a new era of AI-powered search.
Microsoft to power Bing with AI as race with Google heats up
Company to work with OpenAI to improve search and Edge web browser as rival unveils ChatGPT competitor
Microsoft is revamping its search products with more artificial intelligence, using technology behind the wildly popular ChatGPT, as tech companies race to take advantage of increasingly powerful AI tools.
The company detailed its plans at a special event on Tuesday, saying it would work with OpenAI, the startup behind the ChatGPT tool, to upgrade its Bing search engine and Edge web browser and enhance the information available.
Xfinity customers will have to pay to stream Peacock soon
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Comcast wants Xfinity subscribers to pay up for Peacock. In a post on Twitter, the Comcast-owned NBCUniversal confirmed plans to stop offering free access to Peacock Premium to Xfinity subscribers on June 26th, 2023 (via Variety).
Peacock Premium, which normally costs $4.99 per month, is an ad-supported plan that has been available to Xfinity customers at no extra cost since the service first launched in 2020. Details about the change first emerged in a post on Reddit, which an NBCUniversal representative later confirmed to Variety and The Streamable.
Hello Bob! Thank you for contacting Peacock, we're happy to help. We can confirm that complimentary Peacock Premium access will be ending on June 26, 2023, and we have no additional information at this time.
For any additional assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out!
As part of the change, Xfinity will start offering a discounted version of Peacock to Xfinity subscribers in place of the free subscription. It’s still unclear how much this add-on will cost, however, and the company didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. The company will also stop offering free Peacock Premium to new Xfinity customers starting on April 3rd, and will only provide free, six-month trials going forward.
While NBCUniversal initially marketed Peacock as a “free as a bird” service, the company’s decision to cut off Xfinity customers doesn’t come as much of a shock. Last June, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell hinted that the company will make Xfinity customers pay for Peacock “at some point.”
But with the streaming service’s slow growth and $3 billion in expected losses, NBCUniversal’s likely looking for ways to squeeze existing subscribers, while forcing freeloaders to pay up. The company's already making moves to improve the content it has on offer, with the release of the breakout hit Poker Face and the addition of local NBC stations for Premium Plus subscribers. Peacock reported having a total of 20 million paid subscribers last quarter.
It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to hang on to all the viewers who tuned into Peacock with their Xfinity subscriptions, though. As an Xfinity customer who’s been getting Peacock for free for over a year now, I’m certainly not looking forward to shelling out extra cash on top of all the other streamer services I’m already subscribed to, even if it is at a discount.
Disclosure: Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.
Just nine out of 116 AI professionals in films are women, study finds
Report says pattern seen in films such as Ex Machina risks contributing to lack of women in tech
A relentless stream of movies, from Iron Man to Ex Machina, has helped entrench systemic gender inequality in the artificial intelligence industry by portraying AI researchers almost exclusively as men, a study has found.
The overwhelming predominance of men as leading AI researchers in movies has shaped public perceptions of the industry, the authors say, and risks contributing to a dramatic lack of women in the tech workforce.
Don’t attempt this RGB Steam Deck mod just yet
The RGBDeck mod just isn’t ready yet. | Image: Adam Honse / Reddit
As cool as the Steam Deck looks with RGB lighting, you might not want to attempt to mod your device just yet. One Reddit user who tried the mod found that while adding the RGB LEDs doesn’t draw a significant amount of power from the battery, it can cause pretty big issues with the Steam Deck’s motherboard.
The “RGBDeck” mod started making the rounds on Reddit earlier this month, with u/WUBBSY documenting the process of affixing a small microcontroller and LED strips to the device. They topped it off with a transparent backing from JSAUX, allowing the lights to shine through the case while the Steam Deck’s switched on. The end result gives the Steam Deck a nice pop of color (in a very gamer PC kind of way).
— Adam (@CalcProgrammer1@mastodon.social) (@CalcProgrammer1) February 6, 2023
Adam Honse (u/CalcProgrammer1), the developer behind the open-source lighting platform OpenRGB, also attempted the mod and even came up with an integration that lets users adjust the Steam Deck’s lighting through the app. However, Honse has since posted an update on Saturday night that advises against trying it, noting that it “seems to be a significant hurt on the motherboard.”
According to Honse, the source of the issue is a tiny component “that did not like the added power draw on the internal USB connection between the motherboard and controller PCB,” where he sourced the 5V needed to power the RGB lights. That piece ended up failing after a few days, causing the lights and controller to exhibit some funky behavior before they stopped working altogether.
It also did some damage to a component on the Steam Deck’s motherboard, which is supposed to cut off the 5V of power to the controller board when the device is in sleep mode. As explained by Honse, that piece no longer switches the power off to the controller when the Steam Deck’s on standby, causing the device to lose power. “We’ll need to find a new source of 5V power that can handle higher current,” Honse explains.
In other words, the mod just isn’t there yet, and that’s okay; I’m just glad Honse came forward before other modders go breaking their Steam Decks. Hopefully, it won’t be too long until we see a possible solution (at least until Valve decides to incorporate RGB into the Steam Deck by default).
Ford’s reportedly working on a $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Ford’s gearing up to announce a $3.5 billion battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, according to a report from Automotive News. In an advisory obtained by the outlet, the automaker says it will reveal the news of the factory on Monday in partnership with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), a company that creates lithium iron phosphate batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), including the Mustang Mach-E.
While Ford still hasn’t confirmed these plans, Michigan reportedly offered $1 billion in incentives to attract the automaker. The factory’s expected to bring 2,500 jobs to the area.
Even still, Ford’s reportedly pushing ahead with the project. It could implement a “novel ownership structure” that would allow the automaker to work with the Chinese company and still qualify for the federal tax credit, according to a report from Bloomberg. This could involve Ford taking 100 percent ownership of the plant itself, while CATL controls operations at the facility and keeps the technology it uses to build the batteries.
Rumors about the new facility have been swirling for months, with a report from The Detroit News indicating that Ford initially wanted to bring the battery factory to Virginia. However, Governor Glenn Youngkin rejected its construction in the state over its ties to China, with his spokesperson noting at the time that it “would serve as a front for the Chinese Communist party, which could compromise our economic security and Virginians’ personal privacy.”
Ford later set its sights on Michigan, which recently began advertising a 1,900 “megasite” in the southwest portion of the state. If the rumors are true, the Michigan-based $3.5 plant would add to the $11.4 billion investment Ford made in partnership with South Korea’s SK Innovation to bring battery and EV factories in Tennessee and Kentucky. It could also help the company get closer to its goal of building over 2 million EVs per year by late 2026.
Opera’s building ChatGPT into its sidebar
Opera’s new tool summarizes webpages, and it apparently works on Verge articles! | Image: Opera
Opera’s adding a ChatGPT-powered tool to its sidebar that generates brief summaries of webpages and articles. The feature, called “shorten,” is part of the company’s broader plans to integrate AI tools into its browser, similar to what Microsoft’s doing with Edge.
As shown in a demo included in Opera’s blog post, you can activate the feature by selecting the “shorten” button to the right of the address bar. From there, a sidebar with ChatGPT will pop out from the left, which will then generate a neat, bulleted summary of the article or webpage you’re looking at.
Opera’s announcement comes just days after Microsoft revealed the AI-powered Bing and Edge. While the company’s search engine will offer access to an AI chatbot that provides annotated answers to queries, Edge will come with an AI “copilot” that can similarly summarize webpages or articles, as well as generate text for social media posts and more. Google also showed off its AI search bot Bard earlier this week, although it’s not available for users to demo just yet.
“We are excited to see the rapid roll-out of developer programs for solutions such as Google Bard, for example, and are starting to build and roll out new experiences in web browsing that not very long ago seemed impossible to achieve,” Per Wetterdal, Opera’s head of strategic partnerships and AI ecosystem says in a statement.
The “shorten” feature isn’t available to everyone just yet, though. Jan Standel, the vice president of marketing and communications at Opera, tells The Verge that it’s going to “launch in browsers very soon.” Opera’s also working on other AI-powered features that “augment” the browsing experience and plans on adding “popular AI-generated content services to the sidebar,” although it’s not yet clear what this could entail.
Some Googlers reportedly aren’t happy about Bard’s ‘rushed’ announcement
Illustration: The Verge
Googlers are talking all about the company’s announcement of its ChatGPT rival, Bard — and many aren’t happy with how things went. According to a report from CNBC, Google employees are calling the launch of the AI chatbot “rushed” and “botched” in posts across the company’s internal message boards, with many targeting CEO Sundar Pichai.
“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic,” one user wrote a heavily upvoted post seen by CNBC, which refers to last month's job cuts that eliminated 12,000 workers. Other Googlers reportedly posted memes comparing the past year at Google to a dumpster fire, while another employee said “pushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us.” Google’s stock took a pretty big blow after news about Bard’s error started going around, losing nearly $100 billion of its market value in just one day.
Google’s ChatGPT competitor won’t see wider availability for weeks, but with Microsoft planning to upend web search with a bot that can provide annotated answers to various types of queries, it’s no wonder that Google — which is arguably the king of search — decided to show off Bard now, even if it was a tad earlier than expected.
It’s the ultimate big-screen gaming experience for the ultimate price.
Razer has made big laptops in the past — but they apparently weren’t big enough. The Razer Blade 18 is the biggest-screened Razer Blade ever released, and it’s hard to overstate how immersive that 18-inch, QHD, 16:10, 240Hz display is. That massive 2560 x 1600 screen is the primary draw of the device, but a few other staples of the Blade line — the six-speaker array, the per-key RGB keyboard, the best build quality you’ll find in the high-end gaming space — as well as some features coming newly to the 18, including a CPU overclocking feature, a battery health optimizer, and an absolutely massive touchpad, all make for a solid package.
While the smaller Blade 16, with its dual-mode Mini LED screen, may be a flashy and fancy reimagining of what a Razer Blade can be, the Blade 18 is a more traditional offering — Razer took the Blades we knew and loved and just kind of blew them up. While some may aspire to the ideal of a fully-specced RTX 4090 Blade 16, I think this toned-down, 2560 x 1600, RTX 4080 Blade 18 is a more pragmatic buy for high-end shoppers. It’s a whole lot cheaper, but the experience delta is not that wide.
Before I get into my results, I do need to make one caveat: Blades are more expensive than they used to be. The Blade 18 I tested was the cheaper of two currently available Blade models, and it includes a 24-core Core i9-13950HX, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, 1TB of storage, and the RTX 4080. It currently costs $3,799.99; if you think that’s expensive, don’t even click on the RTX 4090 model, which is going for $4,499.99.
For context, the most expensive QHD RTX 3070 Ti model of last year’s Blade 17 is going for $3,399.99 — a full $400 cheaper. I know that eight is technically a bigger number than seven, but that is still a comparable model to our test unit when it comes to the tiers they occupy in Razer’s lineup. If you compare the top chips on offer, Razer sold a QHD 3080 Ti Blade 17 for $3,999.99 (though this was discontinued in the U.S.), which is $500 cheaper than the 4090 Blade 18. There is not currently a Blade 18 you can get for the price of last year’s QHD 3070 Ti models.
Basically, these gaming laptops are getting better — but they’re also getting more expensive (and they have been for the past few generations).
Diving into the gaming performance, which is presumably the reason you’re here: The Blade 18 did well. At QHD resolution, it ran every game at over 60fps — even Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing on, which is bonkers. Peruse the provided benchmark chart at your leisure. But what kind of a performance penalty do you see when moving from the 4090 down to the 4080? The answer, as far as I can tell, is… not a big one.
On many of the games we ran, the Blade 18 got a similar (and identical, in some cases) score to the Blade 16. (Our Blade 16 unit had this same Core i9 but an RTX 4090 inside.) In cases where the 4090 machine won, the deltas were generally in single-digit percentages. That often means frame rate increases of single digits — nothing that’s going to significantly impact most people’s gameplay.
The Blade 16 is a smaller machine than the Blade 18, so things like cooling and power limits might be coming into play there. For what it’s worth, though, MSI’s Titan GT77 HX, which has an RTX 4090 and is enormous, is also only single-digit percentages ahead of the Blade 18 on many of these titles. All in all, the RTX 4080 is looking like a solidly better value than the RTX 4090 based on these results.
Oh, the Blade 18 also put up a massive 43 percent increase in Horizon Zero Dawn performance over our Blade 17 review unit from last year (which had an RTX 3080 Ti). I’m just sharing that because I found it humorous. Anyway, games looked great on this QHD+ screen, which reached 574 nits of peak brightness in testing (considerably more than the average gaming laptop) — and is also, I have to remind you, 18 inches, which is so big.
This kind of machine is perpetually smudged.
In Premiere Pro, the Blade 18 finished our 4K export test in just over two minutes. It handily bested both the Blade 16 and the Titan on PugetBench, a synthetic benchmark that tests export and playback performance at 4K and 8K, scoring a 1413. In fact, it also beat the recent M2 MacBook Pros (and that’s supposed to be like, their whole thing). I’m scratching my head a bit at this result, I’ll admit. I even ran the test multiple times to make sure I hadn’t messed something up. My best guess would be, to borrow my earlier phrasing, cooling and power limits. Anyway, the takeaway: The Blade 18 is good at Premiere.
Speaking of cooling, a pleasant surprise throughout my testing was that compared to the Blade 16, the Blade 18 is… cooler. The 18’s larger chassis, after all, doesn’t just lend itself to more pixels; it also has room for a fancier cooling system. Razer claims that this device’s cooling system is “thinner and more efficient than traditional heat pipe methods,” utilizing a vacuum-sealed copper chamber with deionized water, as well as various special materials meant to reduce hotspots. So, seems like that’s all doing something.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it cool — it certainly gets warmish during gameplay in the hinge area — but it’s not the worrisome fireball that I’ve found other thin gaming laptops (like the Blade 16) to be. The keyboard and palm rests largely stayed comfortable. The CPU did hit 100 (Celsius) a couple of times while I played, but it was not spending nearly as much time there as the Blade 16 did, and was largely hanging out in the mid-70s to mid-80s.
The Blade has a CNC Aluminum unibody with an anodized finish.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean this laptop is quiet. It’s loud. You will hear the fans going — probably from across the room if you run the device at full power as you game. If you find that too annoying, you can swap to Silent Mode in Razer’s Synapse software.
Charging port, Ethernet, USB-A, USB-C, headphone jack on the left.
Lock slot, HDMI, USB-A, USB-C, SD on the right.
Speaking of battery life: It’s not great. I got three hours and 46 minutes out of this device, using it solely for Chrome multitasking and some streaming (with the discrete GPU off). On the one hand, it is better than what we saw from the Blade 17 last year (which makes sense since, if nothing else, the battery is bigger). And battery life isn’t as crucial on giant gaming rigs as it is in the ultraportable market.
But 3:46 is still not great, and certainly mitigates the benefit of the Blade’s relatively thin and light stature somewhat. This device, while far from tiny, is compact compared to the Titans and Strixes of the world, at 0.86 inches thick and a hair over seven pounds. You’re not likely to find much thinner or lighter in the 18-inch gaming space, and I assume that portability will be at least some part of the appeal for people who are considering the product.
While the Blade 18 is technically a new device, it’s currently the closest thing we have to a sequel to last year’s Blade 17. One of the most noticeable changes is that the touchpad has increased by 50 percent in size from the Blade 17’s touchpad. The new touchpad is 15.74 x 10.84 x 0.86 inches — it’s huge. It’s actually almost too big for me, to the point where I have to consciously reach in order to left click with my right hand. I recognize that this is mostly a me problem. As with past Blades, this trackpad has a somewhat mushy click, but is certainly responsive to gestures and quick to scroll.
With an 88 percent screen-to-body ratio, the Blade makes efficient use of its screen real estate.
Port selection is as good as it gets: there’s a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, in addition to the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, Thunderbolt 4, three USB-A, HDMI 2.1, and UHS-II SD card reader. The Blade 18 can charge via USB-C (up to 100W) if you don’t feel like carrying its dedicated 330W adapter around — though it’s fairly compact as gaming laptop bricks go. And yes: I know lots of people have erased USB-A from their lives, but speaking as someone who still has old gaming peripherals that they have no desire to dispense with, those ports make my life easier.
The camera conveniently supports Windows Hello.
The 5MP webcam is another new feature, and it does look pretty good. It delivered a sharp, clear picture of me in a bright office setting where I look washed out on many laptop cameras. That said, it’s still a laptop webcam, and the picture remains somewhat grainy as pictures go. I’m honestly about as bummed about the lack of a physical shutter (the Blade 16 has one) as I am excited about the webcam’s quality.
Those are most of the new things, and the rest of this laptop is quite similar to big Blades past. This looks, for all intents and purposes, like a big Blade. The signature green logo is there on the lid. The black finish is smooth and a major fingerprint magnet.
It’s not THIN, but in the grand scheme of things, it is thin.
It’s a bit confusing to me that Razer isn’t currently selling a 4K model of the Blade 18. It’s selling a 4K Blade 16, after all, and a bigger screen gets even more benefit from those extra pixels. But the fact that this particular unit has a QHD screen makes a great case for it. Because while it’s possible that the RTX 4090 may be the right option for folks who want a 4K gaming experience, the RTX 4080 is absolutely the QHD buy.
I could summarize my impressions of the Blade 18’s various components here, but I’m not sure they’re super important to most people shopping in this category. The bottom line is that if you want an 18-inch gaming laptop and you don’t want it to be covered in obnoxious lights, the Blade 18 is probably one of your only options. It’s a decent option — and you shouldn’t spend more on it than you have to. As the prices of these laptops shoot through the roof, I’m doing a lot of thinking about just how much an additional frame is worth. I think shoppers should too.
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