Technology

samedi 23 septembre 2023

Alexa is the best frenemy I’ve ever had

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

Before I received my first Alexa-enabled smart display as a Christmas gift in 2019, I was not a big fan. I just didn’t feel like I could trust an Amazon device with a camera inside of it. I’d heard about all the privacy concerns, and I was determined to avoid it like the plague.

But then a plague really did happen — and right when my mom got sick. And then, suddenly, this device I was once suspicious of became a vital part of our support system. Those people Amazon always claim love Alexa? I somehow suddenly found myself becoming one of them.

To be clear, Mom had been sick for years. Mom has Parkinson’s disease, an incurable neurological disorder that affects everything from mobility to memory. At first, she suffered from a few tremors every now and then, but she was still able to go for a run at the gym. Then the pandemic happened. I don’t know why — maybe it was the stress and isolation of the time — her condition suddenly took a drastic turn for the worse.

The woman who impressed even the diehard gym buffs with her ability to quickly run a mile was suddenly unable to walk longer than ten minutes.

Thankfully, there are medications the doctors prescribed to help her manage the condition, which allows her to walk for a little longer. Side effects — like high blood pressure — were the tradeoff. Shortly after the stay-at-home order went into effect in March 2020, she was hospitalized for a hypertensive crisis and nearly had a stroke.

It was the first hospitalization of many more to come during the pandemic. The list of medications began growing at as rapid of a pace as her Parkinson’s symptoms — and the side effects of those meds — intensified.

Each day was getting more overwhelming. I thought it would be years before she would reach this stage in her disease, but it had arrived and during a global pandemic to boot. Suddenly, I was forced into becoming a carer during the most isolated time in modern history.

I didn’t know what I was doing, and I sure as hell had no idea how to cope. It was so hard to see my mom — this strong force of nature, who single-handedly raised three children as a widow with little money — suddenly become so helpless. I was terrified I was going to mess everything up and, as a result, lose her — my best friend and the only parent I have had since my dad died at 7 — too.

We — I — needed support more than ever, but quarantine meant there was nobody who could physically come and help us. And so I turned to Alexa.

I was floored — and, truthfully, secretly thrilled — the first time I realized that Alexa could be helpful for something. A few weeks after Mom’s first hypertensive crisis, she was on the verge of having another one. The pandemic was raging, and I wanted to avoid the hospital as much as I could for fear of exposing her to covid.

She was incredibly weak, and her breathing started to shorten. I tried everything to calm her, but the number on the blood pressure monitor kept shooting up. Desperate to find something to lower her blood pressure and honestly totally lost for what to do, I wildly looked around at anything that could help. My eyes fell on Alexa, and I asked what anybody would do when the world is ending because of a virus and your mom is dangerously sick.

“ALEXA, PLAY FART SOUNDS!!”

And Alexa did. Loud ones, juicy ones, and even “long and crispy” ones (yeah, Alexa names farts). As Alexa exploded into a firework of flatulence, my mom burst out into hysterical laughter, and our worries disappeared. Thirty minutes later, Mom’s blood pressure had dropped to a healthy level.

Ironically, all of Alexa’s farts earned my respect — and gave me a sense of hope. I began to research how else Alexa could help me and slowly began relying on this weird device more and more.

It turns out Alexa offers all kinds of features that are really helpful for the sick and elderly. I started using Alexa to remind my mom when to take her medications. Given the list just kept growing during that time while Mom’s memory started to decline, this helped lighten the load considerably. When I wasn’t around and Mom couldn’t move, I taught Mom how to ask Alexa to turn the lights on.

Over time, we grew comfortable with this thing in our home, and Mom actually started treating it like a beloved pet. Many times, I’d walk in to find my mom laughing at Alexa’s antics or talking to Alexa when she was lonely or down about her disease. To this day, it doesn’t matter how bad of a day I’m having — the sight alone warms my heart and makes me smile.

I’ve now developed a bizarre affection for my Echo Show and Alexa. I’ll never fully trust it — I avoid getting dressed in front of it, for example — but whereas once I treated it with disdain, now it’s easily my favorite gadget in the world. Alexa helped carry me through when I first started really becoming a carer and the reality of what Parkinson’s disease truly is sunk in. During a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic when nobody could be there, Alexa also gave my mom and me companionship and a helping hand.

And, of course, most importantly, an encyclopedic knowledge about farts.

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The iPhone 15 Pro is teaching me to embrace digital zoom

Hand holding iPhone 15 Pro showing camera preview on screen. — *I promise digital zoom isn’t as icky as it used to be.* | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

If you want to hear a love story, ask any photographer about their favorite lens.

They’ll probably get a little glimmer in their eye as they tell you about the fast 35mm they carry everywhere or the long portrait lens with the bokeh that hits just right. Camera bodies come and go, but your favorite lens is a lifelong relationship.

Phone camera lenses are a different story. They’re built like a regular camera lens — only, you know, tiny — and they’re with us literally everywhere we go. But I don’t know anyone who would wax poetic about the 24mm equivalent wide angle on their iPhone or the 5x telephoto lens on their Pixel. Our relationships with them are much more transactional, and the results have as much to do with the image processing pipelines they’re attached to as any physical optics.

Photo of San Francisco skyline and painted ladies with people sitting in the park in foreground. — *If telephoto lens compression is your thing, then you’ll be very happy with the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s new 5x lens.*

Photographically inclined smartphone owners might not have any special attachment to those lenses, but they definitely have strong negative feelings about digital zoom. Many photographers would rather use a native focal length and crop later in software, which makes sense when you’re working with a traditional digital camera. But the latest round of flagship phone cameras is flipping that traditional wisdom upside down. Nowhere is this more evident than on three of the best you can buy right now: the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the Google Pixel 7 Pro, and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

I’ve been shooting with them over the past 10 days, and I’ve come away with two major impressions: optical zoom still wins, but digital zoom isn’t as far behind as you might think. And it might be time to come around to digital focal lengths, even if using them made you feel icky in the past.

Optical zoom still wins

Let’s just get this out of the way: smartphone camera zoom has improved a lot over the past few years, but you’ll still get much better quality from a big, traditional camera with a big sensor and a big lens. Computational photography hasn’t overcome physics. But comparing apples to apples, a traditional zoom lens on a phone still beats smartphone digital zoom — even with a lot of extra data and neural networks involved. Take a look at the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s new 5x telephoto lens compared to the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra at 5x, which is between its 3x and 10x optical zoom focal lengths.

The iPhone 15 Pro’s 5x telephoto lens does fine in bright light, but indoors, the phone still occasionally switches to the main camera in dim lighting or if your subject is too close for the tele’s minimum focus distance. You can sometimes get it to switch back to the 5x lens by changing your framing or moving back slightly, which I did between the two shots below. And oh, what a difference it makes.

Digital zoom is getting better

But even when digital zoom is the only option, there are better approaches than others. At 10x, the Pixel 7 Pro crops into the middle 12 megapixels of the high-res, 48-megapixel sensor coupled with its 5x optical zoom lens. The iPhone 15 Pro’s 5x telephoto uses a 12-megapixel sensor, so it can’t do the same thing at 10x — and the results look much more like traditional digital zoom compared to the Pixel 7 Pro.

And then there’s the iPhone 15 Pro’s new “focal lengths” — the 28mm and 35mm settings that are accessible in the camera app by tapping the 1x icon. You can cycle between them, disable them, or set one as your new default “lens.” They’re a version of digital zoom but with some extra processing going on in the background. You can read a more detailed explanation in my full review of the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Does this extra processing make a noticeable difference? Well, kind of. If I take a photo in decent light at 35mm and zoom out to 31mm, I can just barely make out more detail in the 35mm image. Same thing if I crop in on a 24mm image rather than use the in-camera zoom to 35mm.

The photos below were taken from the same position; I cropped the 24mm image to match the framing of the 35mm, which resulted in an image a little bigger than 12MP. I up-resed that image in Photoshop to match the 24MP 35mm image — that’s what will happen with typical digital zoom — and comparing the two at 100 percent, you can just see some very fine detail from the in-camera 35mm photo that’s smudgier in the crop from 24mm. Take a look at the side of the square, clear bottle on the top shelf.

More important than that, using the in-camera zoom has one key feature that cropping later doesn’t: showing you the framing that you want right in the moment when you’re taking the photo. This isn’t just some high-brow, “making photographs” nonsense. In my experience, I just “see” photos better when I know what I’m getting before I take it into Lightroom.

Photo of a sign that reads Seattle framed by purple flowers in the foreground. — *Seeing this image as I take the photo — rather than envisioning what it will look like when I crop it later — helps me get my composition just right. Taken with iPhone 15 Pro at 2x zoom.*

Honestly, I’m learning that getting my head into the right space has more of an impact on my photography than any minute amount of detail that I might be losing in the process. I might technically be capturing a slightly better image at 35mm on an iPhone 15 Pro versus an iPhone 14 Pro, for example. But being able to tap an icon and quickly switch to that 35mm setting takes some of the friction out and makes the whole experience more enjoyable — and that’s the real difference-maker.

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vendredi 22 septembre 2023

You asked, and we answered your burning iPhone 15 questions

The iPhone 15 Pro in hand. — *Who you gonna call when you have very specific questions about the new iPhone?* | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Ever since our reviews for the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro went up on Tuesday morning, you’ve had a ton of questions to ask about the phones — in comments, on The Vergecast, on Threads, an Instagram App, and in a live Q&A. So we thought we’d put all that information together in a nice little smorgasbord of nerdy tidbits and philosophical pondering and pick out a few favorites in the process.

I deeply respect a settings menu question

Post by @allisonjo1

View on Threads

Since the mute switch is going away, Apple put an indicator in the status bar so you can check if your ringer is silenced at a glance. But what if you find it annoying and want it to go away? Great news: you will have the power to banish it from sight.

We almost got the perfect kid photography feature.

quesonoche

September 19, 2023, 1:24 PM

I haven't seen it anywhere but does the regular vs portrait photo switching include live photos? Like can I turn the one still from a live photo where all my kids are finally looking into a portrait?

Rec 1

A reader asked if you could switch the key frame in a Live Photo and still keep the depth map to turn it into a Portrait Mode photo. Imagine a world where you can take a picture of your kids, pick the frame where they’re actually looking at the camera, and turn it into a Portrait Mode photo after the fact! It’s the dream! But while you can have Live Photos and the automatic depth map saving feature enabled simultaneously, you only get the depth map for the single key frame. We were so close.

When you don’t want to give 100 percent

joersgnl

September 19, 2023, 7:43 PM

Hello! Are you able to share more details about the iPhone 15's ability to stop charging at 80%? Is it always 80%, or are there different options? And this is different than Optimized Battery Charging where it reaches 80%, pauses, and tops up to 100% later on, right? Are you able to share a screenshot, or share the wording in the Settings app for this feature? Thank you so much. (Disclosure: I work for MacRumors and would like to report this information.)

Rec 0

Joe Rossignol from MacRumors stopped by our iPhone 15 Q&A to ask a question about new battery optimization charging options on the phone. It turns out that Apple snuck in a new setting to limit charging to 80 percent, which will help extend the battery’s lifespan... how timely! Unfortunately, this setting doesn’t work in our testing so far.

A new way to set quiet hours

rianfan

September 20, 2023, 3:37 AM

The question I really need answered is if you can finally bind ringer to a focus mode or a shortcut. I’ve wanted this for years.

Rec

Wouldn’t it be nice to tie your ringer on / off setting to a focus mode? You can on the iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max, where it’s now a filter option for your focus modes as well as an action in the Shortcuts app. That’s not the most fun you can have with Shortcuts, but it is handy.

Which phone wins in a power struggle?

This Vergecast hotline question is a delight. Start at 33:35 to hear Jordan’s question about a theoretical power struggle between two phones connected by USB-C. Deputy editor Dan Seifert got to the bottom of this one.

Amazon is sticking ads on Prime Video shows and movies unless you pay more

Your Prime Video experience is about to be downgraded unless you cough up an extra $3 each month. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon has announced plans to start placing “limited advertisements” in TV shows and movies running on the company’s Prime Video streaming platform, to allow the e-commerce giant to “continue investing in compelling content.” According to Amazon’s press release, the ads will first be introduced on Prime Video content in the US, UK, Germany, and Canada on an unmentioned date in “early 2024,” with France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia to follow later that year.

Amazon says it doesn’t have plans to change the current price of its Prime memberships in 2024, and Prime members will be notified of the change several weeks before the ad injections begin, along with details to sign up for the ad-free option. US-based Prime members will be able to revert back to an ad-free experience for an additional $2.99 per month on top of their existing subscription. Prime memberships in the US cost $14.99 per month, or $139 per year if paid annually. Pricing for the ad-free option for other countries will be shared “at a later date.”

The introduction of ads comes at a time when Amazon is undergoing cost-cutting across the company, and arrive as price increases and ad-supported tiers launch on competing streaming services.

The latest Windows 11 update will help you ditch passwords for good

Microsoft takes its next step towards a passwordless future. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft’s incoming Windows 11 update will introduce public support for passkeys — a passwordless login technology that instead uses your face, fingerprint, or device PIN to sign into accounts. Announced at Microsoft’s AI and Surface launch event on Thursday, the latest Windows 11 update (available from September 26th) will allow users to create, manage, and store passkeys, and use them to access supported websites and services using their device’s own authentication systems.

Microsoft began testing passkey management in the Windows Insider developer channel back in June, so this Windows 11 update is bringing the technology into general availability.

Windows 11 passkeys are created through Windows Hello. Passkeys can be accessed on both a Windows desktop system and/or a mobile device used to authenticate the user’s identity. Following the Windows 11 update, IT teams will also be able to encourage employees to use more secure sign-in methods by removing the option to use passwords for all Windows 11 devices with Windows Hello for Business.

“For the past several years, we’ve been committed to working with our industry partners and the FIDO Alliance to further the passwordless future with passkeys,” said Microsoft in a blog post published on Thursday. “Passkeys are the cross-platform, cross-ecosystem future of accessing websites and applications.”

Microsoft provided Github and Docusign as examples of where they can be used, as passkeys can only replace passwords on websites, apps, and services that already support the WebAuthn public key authentication standard. Password management service 1Password has created a comprehensive directory that tracks everything currently supporting passkey.

Passkeys are expected to eventually replace passwords entirely as a new standard for login technology, but it’s going to take a while for them to be widely supported. Microsoft is one of the technology’s earliest supporters, having announced its plans to adopt passkeys on World Password Day in 2022 alongside other tech giants like Apple and Google.

Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal gets preliminary approval from UK regulator

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given preliminary approval for Microsoft to proceed with its $69 billion Activision Blizzard deal. The CMA had originally blocked the acquisition over cloud gaming concerns, but Microsoft recently restructured the deal to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft.

“The CMA considers that the restructured deal makes important changes that substantially address the concerns it set out in relation to the original transaction earlier this year,” the CMA said in a press release, and “opens the door to the deal being cleared.”

This is just a preliminary decision, ahead of final approval. The CMA says it has now opened a consultation to gain third-party feedback on Microsoft’s proposed remedies, until October 6th. A final decision is expected before the extended October 18th deadline.

The consultation period is meant to address a few remaining concerns that the CMA has with the deal. “While the CMA has identified limited residual concerns with the new deal, Microsoft has put forward remedies which the CMA has provisionally concluded should address these issues.”

Microsoft is understandably optimistic about the decision. “We presented solutions that we believe fully address the CMA’s remaining concerns related to cloud game streaming, and we will continue to work toward earning approval to close prior to the October 18 deadline,” said Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith on X (formerly Twitter.)

We are encouraged by this positive development in the CMA’s review process. We presented solutions that we believe fully address the CMA’s remaining concerns related to cloud game streaming, and we will continue to work toward earning approval to close prior to the October 18…
— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) September 22, 2023

Activision Blizzard is also pleased with the CMA’s response. “This is a significant milestone for the merger and a testament to our solutions-oriented work with regulators,” said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in a statement sent to employees. “I remain optimistic as we continue the journey toward completion and am very grateful to each of you for your dedication and focus throughout this process.”

The UK is the final regulatory hurdle for Microsoft’s giant deal.

jeudi 21 septembre 2023

Valve: don’t expect a faster Steam Deck ‘in the next couple of years’

*The Steam Deck.* | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Valve has been clear it wants to build a Steam Deck 2 — and equally clear that a faster handheld wouldn’t arrive soon. Now, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais tells The Verge and CNBC that it could be late 2025 or beyond before it raises that bar — because it wants to see a leap in performance without a significant hit to battery life.

“I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years,” he told me via email.

Here’s the whole quote:

It’s important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games. As such, changing the performance level is not something we are taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase to be had. We also don’t want more performance to come at a significant cost to power efficiency and battery life. I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years, but we’re still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going there.

Earlier today, he spoke to CNBC on the same topic, saying “We’re looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple years.” Since the Steam Deck was released in February 2022, I assumed he was probably talking about 2024.

But “the next couple of years” is a longer timeframe than I thought — and while the Steam Deck can still technically play the latest PC games, it’s getting harder with the latest wave of demanding / poorly optimized games like The Last of Us Part I, Redfall and Starfield.

(I can confirm Starfield is now playable on Deck, in a “I’m willing to tolerate terrible graphics to advance this quest” way, as of the Steam Deck OS 3.5 Preview. Griffais credits “a targeted optimization effort in the Mesa radv Vulkan driver by our graphics driver team” to support unusual features like ExecuteIndirect, explaining that Valve learned how to optimize a similar GPU-driven rendering pipeline when it added support for Halo Infinite.)

All that said, Valve might totally still have a Steam Deck refresh in the works that doesn’t change the performance floor. There’s a rich history of console manufacturers releasing smaller, lighter, and more power efficient versions of the same hardware, and Nintendo has refreshed the Switch twice: once to improve the battery and once to improve the screen.

Screen and battery are the top pain points both Griffais and fellow designer Lawrence Yang want to address in a Steam Deck sequel, too, they told me in late 2022.

And a new screen could unlock more perceived performance even if there’s no new chip to enhance the framerate. The Asus ROG Ally showed us that — playing Starfield on the Ally and an Ayaneo Geek 1S, which both sport very similar AMD chips, the game feels smoother on Asus largely because its variable refresh rate screen smooths out the dips. Valve could also raise the ceiling rather than the floor, if it had a plugged-in turbo mode like both those handhelds.

Perhaps Valve just gets AMD to shrink and optimize the same chip to use less juice? Perhaps it finds a better screen? Perhaps just a larger battery? Or perhaps it just waits, and Valve’s mystery Galileo / Sephiroth turns out to be the long-awaited SteamVR standalone headset.

There’s also a theory that maybe Galileo is a Steam living room PC that can beam graphics to a headset, but Griffais threw some cold water on that idea last week.

X is shutting down Circles

Illustration: The Verge

X is planning to shut down Circles, a feature that lets you share posts with a limited group of people instead of all of your followers. The company said in a “PSA” on Thursday that Circles will be disabled by October 31st.

“After this date, you will not be able to create new posts that are limited to your Circle, nor will you be able to add people to your Circle,” X wrote in a post on its help center. “You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle,” and the company gave instructions on how to do that.

Twitter (not X) officially launched Circles (which it called “Circle”) in August 2022; Elon Musk wasn’t yet the official owner of the company. (At that time, he was trying to get out of his deal to buy it.) But in April, some posts intended for Circles starting appearing on the platform’s For You timeline, which obviously wasn’t ideal if you wanted a post to only be seen by your handpicked Circle audience.

Confirmed someone I'm not even following was able to see a private Twitter Circle tweet (thank you @TheSahilDev)

This hurts trust in the platform a lot. Should be top priority @TwitterEng pic.twitter.com/BCYPkikJ2p
— Theo - t3.gg (@t3dotgg) April 8, 2023

X didn’t give a reason as to why it’s shutting down the feature. But the company has recently been making more of a push around its Facebook Groups-like Communities feature — perhaps it viewed Circles and Communities as too similar to keep both around.

The iPhone 15 has a new optimized charging setting, here’s how it works

Apple has detailed how the iPhone 15’s new 80 percent charging limit setting works in an update to a support document.

Here’s Apple’s explanation of what you can expect if you enable the setting:

When you choose 80% Limit, your iPhone will charge up to about 80 percent and then stop charging. If the battery charge level gets down to 75 percent, charging will resume until your battery charge level reaches about 80 percent again.

As we’ve been testing the setting on our review devices, we noticed that our phones have been charging past 80 percent anyway. That’s apparently something you can expect to see happen occasionally, according to Apple.

With 80% Limit enabled, your iPhone will occasionally charge to 100 percent to maintain accurate battery state-of-charge estimates.

This new option joins the existing Optimized Battery Charging setting that has been on Apple devices for a few years. That setting will hold the battery charge at 80 percent before bringing it up to full before it thinks you’ll need to use the phone, based on your usage patterns. Apple also just released iOS 17.0.2 for the iPhone 15 series, and we’re installing it now to see if charging actually starts to hover around 80 percent with the new setting enabled.

The new 80 percent limit could help prevent the unexpected battery capacity dropoffs that many iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro have reported as of late. The iPhone 15 series also lets users see the charge cycle count for your battery.

Pixel Fold replacement parts and iFixit repair guides now available

iFixit’s outer screen replacement kit for the Google Pixel Fold. — *You can purchase Pixel Fold parts separately or bundled with iFixit’s repair tools.* | Image: iFixit

The prospect of having to repair your own Pixel Fold just became a lot less daunting thanks to Google’s continuing partnership with device repair specialists iFixit. As spotted by 9to5Google, iFixit’s website now provides multiple repair guides that instruct Pixel Fold owners on how to replace their broken phone components, in addition to stocking the genuine Pixel Fold parts needed to complete the job.

Among the parts available is a kit to replace the Pixel Fold’s flexible inner screen. It costs $899.99 (or $909.99 when bundled with iFixit’s Fix Kit toolset) and includes the inner OLED display, a flexible glass panel, batteries, display bezels, side buttons, and fingerprint scanner. You can also buy some of these components separately, with the Pixel Fold’s “Flip” and “Base” batteries both available for $49.99. A replacement front camera can be purchased for $42.99, and the Fold’s OLED outer display is $159.99.

A screenshot taken from the iFixit website of the Pixel Fold parts and repair guides. — *There are currently 20 repair guides available for the Pixel Fold, alongside a wide range of the phone’s internal components.*

The right-to-repair champions at iFixit also provide guides and spare components for various other Pixel gadgets — including the Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6A, Pixel 7A, and the Pixel Tablet. The Pixel Fold appears to be the first foldable smartphone that iFixit supports so thoroughly.

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mercredi 20 septembre 2023

Hollywood’s writers’ strike might come to an end soon

SAG-AFTRA And WGA Strike Continues — Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images

Well-connected CNBC anchor David Faber cites people close to negotiations between the major Hollywood studio producers and striking writers, saying the sides “hope” to finalize a new deal tomorrow. The WGA strike began in early May before the actors (SAG-AFTRA) also went on strike in mid-July, marking the first time that has happened in 63 years.

They cited some similar issues in trying to protect members’ livelihoods as streaming entertainment grows and as studios begin to use generative AI tools in the entertainment business.

After face to face meeting today, writers and producers near agreement to end WGA strike. Met today and hope to finalize deal tomorrow, according to people close to the negotiations, who, while optimistic, warn that without deal tomorrow strike likely continues through year end.
— David Faber (@davidfaber) September 21, 2023

Deadline reported earlier on the Wednesday meeting between the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The two sides put out a joint statement saying only that they “met for bargaining today and will meet again tomorrow.” However, according to Faber, if an agreement isn’t reached, the strike would likely extend until next year.

Wednesday’s meeting reportedly included execs like Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, and Universal chief content officer Donna Langley, in addition to the WGA’s chief negotiator and the president of the AMPTP.

There’s no word yet on any progress toward ending the SAG-AFTRA strike against the studios, even as that union is currently voting on whether to authorize a strike against the gaming industry as well. That vote is scheduled to close at 5PM PT on Monday, September 25th.

(Disclosure: The Verge’s editorial staff is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.)

Fujifilm’s new Instax Pal is a $200 palm-sized digital camera bundled with a smartphone printer

Polaroid recently tried pushing the envelope with the new Polaroid I-2 instant camera, and now Fujifilm’s taking a stab at it, too. On Wednesday, the company announced it’s releasing a new kind of instant film product geared for kids, the Instax Pal digital camera bundle, for $199.95 in late October.

The Instax Pal is essentially a palm-sized, round digital camera that doesn’t print any photos and lacks a built-in viewfinder. Instead, it outputs images using the companion app, and you can then print these photos via the included Instax Mini Link 2 smartphone printer. The price also includes a 10-pack of Instax Mini film, which is a nice extra that Fujifilm’s instant cameras don’t often come with.

I’m not going to lie: my first thought when I heard about the Instax Pal was: “But... why?” After all, Fujifilm already sells the Instax Mini Evo instant camera, which can also output images to an app and prints photos for around the same price. It also comes with an actual viewfinder along with other controls that make it feel like a real camera. The Instax Mini Evo also doesn’t try to guilt trip me into using it by making strange, sad sounds when it’s sitting idle.

My best guess is that Fujifilm’s trying to replicate some of its Instax Mini Evo instant camera success by creating an easier-to-use, cuter version for kids. That’s why everything about the camera is designed to scream “fun.” You can, for example, create your own custom shutter sounds, add filters, text, and in-app stickers, and apparently even earn rewards (though I’m still figuring out how). And, of course, its small size and detachable ring should make it easier for smaller hands to hold.

At the same time, like the Instax Mini Evo, kids get to choose which photos they want to print. That’s a feature parents will particularly like, given it can help kids avoid wasting expensive film on bad shots.

But is all that worth $199.95? I’m still testing the camera and its app — which is still very much a work in progress — so I can’t give a definite opinion yet. But so far, I’m not convinced it is. An instant film camera that doesn’t print any photos and lacks a built-in viewfinder? It doesn’t feel like the Instax Pal is a camera so much as a cute accessory bundled with a smartphone printer.

Iconic League of Legends team TSM replaced by Shopify in pro league

Players on TSM posting for a picture. — Image: TSM

Shopify is entering the League of Legends arena. On Wednesday, Shopify announced that its Rebellion esports brand will be acquiring TSM’s spot in the League Championship Series (LCS), the pro circuit for US League of Legends esports.

The move marks a major change of the guard in the LCS. TSM, one of the biggest esports organizations in the world, got its start as a scrappy League of Legends team; the TSM acronym stands for Team SoloMid, which references a solo League of Legends player occupying the middle lane of the game’s multi-pronged map. In the mid 2010s, TSM was one of the most successful teams in the LCS, and the organization has entered other esports, signed Twitch streamers, and even bought an esports app.

We'll see you at the #LCS Arena in 2024. pic.twitter.com/9ZZAUmMEBA
— Shopify Rebellion (@ShopifyRebels) September 20, 2023

But TSM has had some struggles as of late. Its LCS team hasn’t been quite as successful in League (outside of an impressive run in 2020). TSM CEO and founder Andy Dinh was fined and placed on a two-year probation by League of Legends developer Riot Games after an investigation found that “there was a pattern and practice of disparaging and bullying behavior exhibited by Dinh” toward TSM staff and players. The organization was forced to back out of a $210 million deal with FTX after the crypto company collapsed.

Then, in March, Sports Business Journal reported that TSM was considering dumping its LCS team, and in May, TSM announced that it was looking to sell its LCS spot and compete in League of Legends in another region. “I believe moving to another region will re-ignite our hunger to do whatever it takes to win a world championship,” Dinh said in a video about the change.

Shopify Rebellion will compete in the LCS starting in 2024. “Entering League of Legends — one of the largest esports titles, with a rich competitive history — felt like an obvious next step for us as we continue to grow our presence in esports,” Shopify Rebellion’s Dario “TLO” Wünsch said in a statement. The organization also competes in games like Dota 2, Valorant, and Rocket League.

TSM hasn’t said where it may end up fielding a League of Legends team next. But the organization is already positioning itself as a global brand. “TSM is a movement, binding us all together no matter who we are or where we came from,” TSM wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “From North America and Europe to South America and Asia, our hearts beat as one.”

The switch from TSM to Shopify Rebellion isn’t the only recent loss of a storied LCS brand. NRG Esports acquired Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) in April and took over CLG’s LCS slot. But there’s a happy ending to that upheaval: the new NRG defeated Cloud9 in a major upset to win the 2023 LCS summer split championships.

Arlo’s new security tags can disable your security system with a doorbell tap

Arlo’s Essential wired video doorbell installed on a front door. — *We currently have no ideas what the Security Tag looks like, but it’ll be compatible with Arlo’s new video doorbell (pictured).* | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Arlo is adding a new gadget to its smart home security lineup that should make it easier to disarm its Arlo Home Security system without digging through the company’s companion app or using its keypad once you’re in the house. The press release for Arlo’s new Essential product series — which includes a new video doorbell, outdoor camera, indoor camera, and XL security camera — mentions an “Arlo Security Tag” that can be held against the new doorbell itself to swiftly disarm the company’s security system when the little fob launches in “Q4 2023.”

When asked for comment about the product, Arlo spokesperson Hannah Block said that the Arlo Security Tag will be the “first NFC Touchless Disarm device,” and that further details would be released closer to the tag’s launch date later this year. Pricing was not provided and the information we have is slim, but the tag appears to be akin to a contactless keyfob like the now-discontinued Google Nest Secure tags.

Having quick access to the Arlo Security Tag should help avoid accidentally blasting any of the sirens that feature on the company’s new Essentials lineup — provided it hasn’t fallen into the hands of a thief.

T-Mobile users say other people’s account information is appearing in their app

T-Mobile has yet to offer an explanation for the issue. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

There’s some weirdness happening over at T-Mobile this morning. Multiple T-Mobile customers on X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit have reported that they’re able to see other users’ account data — including their current credit balance, purchase history, credit card information, and home address — when signing into their own T-Mobile accounts.

Some T-Mobile customers have mentioned seeing information from several other accounts, but the scale of the issue isn’t yet clear. It’s prevalent enough that the T-Mobile subreddit has asked its users to avoid posting any further information for “security reasons.”

T-Mobile has yet to officially acknowledge the concerns or provide an explanation as to what’s causing them. We have reached out for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

If this does turn out to be caused by a security breach then it wouldn’t be the first incident that T-Mobile has needed to contend with this year, having already disclosed two separate cybersecurity attacks in January and May.

@TMobile I think you're getting hacked again. Here's what came up in my T-Mobile app on my phone with my SIM card. I'm not Claudia and I don't have 2 phones and 3 wearables. pic.twitter.com/zmUVpZesyn
— Grzegorz Konowalik (@goferp1) September 20, 2023

And ever since then like every 15 minutes it shows another random account!
— RadioWinnerGuy (@RadioWinnerGuy) September 20, 2023

So why tf I just paid my T-Mobile bill ADDED MY CARD and somebody else information came up after I paid
— (@Thats_mijha) September 20, 2023

This story is developing…

Max to Stream Pro Sports Starting in October

Max to Stream Pro Sports Starting in October Media companies are racing to figure out how to merge live sporting events with their popular but still cash-bleeding streaming services.

mardi 19 septembre 2023

Meta is expanding its paid verification badge to business accounts

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Businesses on Meta platforms will soon be able to purchase a blue check to get exclusive features and support.

The expansion was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an event today. Earlier this year, the company announced Meta Verified for creators, a $12 per month subscription that gives creators a blue check and access to features like priority customer support and impersonation protection. Businesses can buy verification on Facebook or Instagram for $22 a month or $35 for both — an increase over creator pricing that ranges from $12 to $15. Testing on Facebook and Instagram will begin in the coming weeks, with WhatsApp to follow.

Paying businesses will get similar perks as creators, including account security features and troubleshooting. Verified businesses will also get increased visibility in search on Facebook and Instagram. Businesses on WhatsApp will be able to create a landing page that’s discoverable through web search and the ability to have multiple employees chat with and respond to customers.

Meta’s initial move into paid verification followed changes at Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, where paying subscribers were able to buy a blue check for a monthly fee. The paid X subscription immediately spiraled out of control as users impersonated brands, celebrities, and even the pope using identical verified blue check marks. Earlier this month, X rolled out the option to verify paid users through a government ID, saying users could receive “additional benefits” in the future if they choose to do so. Meta Verification for businesses will require businesses to meet certain activity and security requirements, and the person applying must prove their connection to the business.

Nikon’s new ZF is a retro-styled full-frame camera aimed right at our nostalgic hearts

The Nikon ZF camera held in-hand, facing the picture-taker with the LCD facing forward and showing them in Live View. — *The Nikon ZF is the company’s latest camera.* | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

After nine years of occasionally chasing the retro-camera-with-modern-features unicorn, Nikon may have finally gotten the formula right.

The Japanese camera maker is announcing the Nikon ZF, a modern mirrorless camera packed with fairly high specs — like a 24.5-megapixel full-frame sensor, 299-point tracking autofocus with subject detection, in-body image stabilization, and dual card slots (of a sort) — in a body that looks just like one of the camera’s analog forebears. Nikon may have done this dance before with its trifling ZFC and long-forgotten Df DSLR, but it’s correcting its main mistakes with those cameras by giving the ZF a full-frame sensor and competitive price of $1,999.95 when it launches mid-October.

While the Df may look a whole lot like an old Nikon FM2 or FE2 film camera, it’s got the same Expeed 7 processor found in Nikon’s higher-end Z8 and Z9 cameras, along with much of their accouterment. The ZF has five-axis in-body image stabilization Nikon claims is good for eight stops of correction, 3D tracking autofocus, 4K 10-bit H.265 video with up to 60 frames per second cropped or 30fps full-width, an articulating 3.2-inch touchscreen, and continuous burst shooting up to 30fps. But what separates the ZF the most from the Z8 and Z9 are its vintage looks with classic dials, a dedicated switch for monochrome mode, and an audible KACHUNK-sounding mechanical shutter (the Z8 and Z9 solely use electronic shutters).

*Nikon will directly sell the ZF in six amazing-looking color options for an extra $100, while all other US retailers only get black-on-black.*

It’s those looks, sounds, and feel that really give the ZF its greatest charm, as my colleague Becca Farsace got to experience in her all-too-brief hands-on time in the video above.

The ZF seems positioned primarily at photographers who idolize the cameras of yore but want the latest tech and features to get higher image quality than film can provide. It’s basically Nikon’s greatest answer yet to Fujifilm (which built its X-system on vintage camera aesthetics) and its biggest attempt to court film enthusiasts and those who covet Leica cameras but can’t justify their super-high prices. The ZF is not nearly as hardcore of a camera as the black-and-white-only Leica M11 Monochrom, as its monochromatic mode is simply a software filter rather than part of the sensor’s hardware design, but it dabbles in Leica’s vibes-based world with its looks and its magnesium-alloy build.

There are dials for days on the right-hand side.

The facade starts to break down a little once you put a non-vintage-looking Nikkor Z lens on it. There are only two old-school style “SE” lenses in Nikon’s lineup, a 28mm f/2.8 and a 40mm f/2, so most of Nikon’s current lenses will break your Steve McCurry cosplay a bit. You can mount true vintage glass to the ZF, but that awkwardly puts an adapter in the way. And speaking of awkwardness, while it’s great the ZF supports dual card slots, it’s an SD and microSD tandem — which is just kinda weird, even if I’ll take what I can get.

I’ll wager many of the ZF’s quirks can be forgiven by the photo diehards who love a camera that looks and acts like a camera more than a laptop. I can recall the hype behind the Df in 2014 when Nikon was first teasing a return to the good ol’ days. That camera might have had some success if it wasn’t so expensive and wasn’t a re-housed Nikon D600 body with a great sensor but the video stripped out. And when the ZFC came out in 2021, the collective groan from many of us was essentially, “Nice work, Nikon. Now try again, and don’t make it from cheap plastic or give it a cropped sensor that you’re likely to ignore with lens support.” The ZF looks like it’s exactly that — a metal, full-frame camera that honors Nikon’s roots and uses its best glass.

Roblox is rolling out in-experience subscriptions, but you can’t buy them yet

A screenshot of what subscriptions might look like in a Roblox experience. — Image: Roblox

Roblox is now rolling out the ability for developers to create subscriptions that they can sell in their experiences, according to a forum post. The company announced in July that it was working on these tools, saying that they could help developers “establish a recurring economic relationship with their users and potentially increase the predictability of their earning,” and now developers can actually start to plan out their offerings.

Roblox users won’t be able to buy subscriptions just yet, however; that won’t be possible until sometime in November, according to the post. When they can, users will pay for subscriptions in their local currency, but the money will make its way to developers as Robux, Roblox’s on-platform currency.

It’s a little weird, but here’s how Roblox justifies that decision:

Why are subscriptions purchased in local currency but paid in Robux?

Subscriptions renew automatically unless the user actively cancels. To support this automatic renewal feature, subscribers will pay in real world currency. Automatic renewals help to retain subscribers which leads to more opportunities for creators to earn from an ongoing revenue stream.

Paying creators in Robux also allows creators to understand overall experience monetization across different products (dev products, Passes, subs, ads rev share) more seamlessly without having to do currency conversions.

There are some limits on who can make subscriptions and for which experiences. Developers will need to have verified their account, and only experiences made in Roblox Studio before September 1st will be eligible to have subscriptions. Roblox says this is “meant to be a temporary requirement” and that it plans to open subscriptions to all experiences “in early 2024.”

The new subscription tools arrive more than a week after Roblox’s developer conference, which included news about Roblox’s AI chatbot to help users build experiences and its new take on video chat.

Xbox leak: new Xbox Series X design, next-gen in 2028, and more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A huge amount of unredacted Microsoft emails and documents have leaked online.

One of the biggest Xbox leaks in history has occurred, thanks to the FTC v. Microsoft case. Unredacted documents have revealed key Microsoft communications between Xbox executives, plans for a new disc-less Xbox Series X, a gyro controller, and even a next-gen hybrid Xbox in 2028.

It’s the biggest leak in Xbox history, simply because unredacted emails like this don’t usually appear in the public domain. Follow along for all the latest developments.

Microsoft’s next Xbox, coming 2028, envisions hybrid computing

Microsoft’s new disc-less Xbox Series X is far from the only news that just leaked out of the FTC v. Microsoft case. The documents may also reveal Microsoft’s far future plans for 2028 — by which the company believed it could achieve “full convergence” of its cloud gaming platform and physical hardware to deliver “cloud hybrid games.”

“Our vision: develop a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences.”

Those are the words on just one slide from a leaked presentation dubbed “The Next Generation of Gaming at Microsoft,” which appears to be a May 2022 pitch document entirely around this idea.

The company imagined you playing these games using the combined power of a sub-$99 gadget — possibly a handheld — and its xCloud platform simultaneously.

I am familiar with this idea, because it’s the one I advocated for in June 2021, pointing out how Microsoft had a unique opportunity to build games that scale from native hardware to cloud.

It’s something that Microsoft’s kinda-sorta already tried by offering photorealistic scenery in Microsoft Flight Simulator by streaming in that data from a 2-petabyte cloud instead of your Xbox or PC where most of the game is running. But the best example is still this Amazon demo from 2014 — where the Lord of the Rings-esque armies don’t actually live on your device, it’s only the ballista that runs locally so you can feel that responsive experience.

Now, in these documents, Microsoft’s calling the idea “Cohesive Hybrid Compute” — a “Cloud-to-Edge architecture across Silicon, Graphics, and OS enabling ubiquitous play.”

If it’s happening, it may already be happening. The team suggested it would need to ink partnerships with AMD for the silicon by the first quarter of this year to lock down the company’s Navi 5 graphics — for reference, we’re only on Navi 3 right now — as well as potentially nabbing the company’s Zen 6 CPU cores. (It’s also considering Arm.)

Microsoft suspected it would also need an NPU (machine learning AI coprocessor) to provide a wide variety of benefits, including super resolution, latency compensation, frame rate interpolation and more — see below.

The documents include an entire potential roadmap for the technology that would have seen hardware design begin in 2024, the first dev kits arrive in 2027, and the first hybrid cloud games being produced from 2024 through 2026.

But before that, according to another slide, the company needed to make some key decisions on that silicon, alignment on building a thin operating system to run the local parts of those cloud games, which teams would be responsible, and which hardware it would build to go with it. It’s very possible none of that happened, just as Microsoft abandoned its “dedicated xCloud SKU” in favor of partnering with other providers instead.

Microsoft increasingly sees “cloud-first” gaming as important.

According to the leaked documents, the pitch appears to have come out of a major ongoing conversation among Microsoft’s top leadership, including CEO Satya Nadella, Xbox boss Phil Spencer, Windows devices and operating system leader Panos Panay, xCloud CVP Kareem Choudhry, and more.

“We are building 4 types of computers: (1) cloud everything, (2) a hybrid Xbox, (3) hybrid Windows, and (4) hybrid HoloLens,” wrote Nadella, according to the leaded documents. “We need to bring the company’s systems talent together to align on a unified vision.”

“We can’t go from big idea to big idea. We need a single big idea to rally the company around,” he wrote.

In another document from May 2022, dubbed “Roadmap to 2030,” the company suggests that its new strategy may revolve around the controller. “Controller becomes the hero,” reads one key tenet, adding “The new Xbox controller is the only thing you need to play on every device.” That document goes on to describe Sebile, a new Xbox controller that includes “Direct-to-Cloud” connectivity as well as Xbox Wireless and Bluetooth.

It also contains a picture of a possible “Mobile Controller,” a “One-hand Controller” and a gaming keyboard & mouse that Microsoft apparently considered building itself.

The document also mentions a “Cloud Console (Keystone)” as a project that had already been funded, along with the new “Brooklin” Xbox Series X refresh and the aforementioned Sebile gamepad — though it noted that the “full product vision” for Sebile was not currently approved as of May 2022.

In 2021, Microsoft hired Kim Swift, a former Google Stadia design director best known for Valve’s Portal, to build a new team focused on cloud-native games, but it’s not clear if that has anything to do with this initiative. Sony hired Jade Raymond away from the wreckage of Stadia as well, and her studio is working on cloud gaming technology ahead of a likely new Sony cloud gaming push.

Microsoft documents leak new Bethesda games, including an Oblivion remaster

A screenshot from the original Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. — *A screenshot from the original* Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. | Image: Bethesda Softworks

Before it was acquired by Microsoft, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of studios like Bethesda Game Studios and id Software, was working on remasters of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, and a new entry in the Doom franchise, according to new documents revealed as part of FTC v. Microsoft. The games were included in a July 2020 Microsoft presentation about the then-potential ZeniMax acquisition.

Unannounced games in the presentation include:

The Oblivion remaster (originally set for fiscal year 2022)
Doom Year Zero and DLC (fiscal year 2023) and a second set of DLC (fiscal year 2024)
The Fallout 3 remaster (fiscal year 2024)
A sequel to Ghostwire: Tokyo (fiscal year 2024)
Dishonored 3 (fiscal year 2024)

There are also a number of titles for console / PC without specific names, including:

The Indiana Jones game (which we have known about for awhile and was originally scheduled for fiscal year 2022)
Project Kestrel (fiscal year 2023) and an expansion (fiscal year 2024)
Project Platinum
A vaguely-named “licensed IP game”

Here is the relevant slide, if you want to see the plans for yourself:

A screenshot of a list of ZeniMax Games in the works.

Remember that these were estimates from more than three years ago and before Microsoft completed its acquisition of ZeniMax in March 2021, so there’s always the chance that some of these plans have changed dramatically or been scrapped entirely. But they may provide an early look at some of the games we can look forward to from Microsoft down the road.

The same leak also revealed a disc-less Xbox Series X redesign, a refreshed Xbox Series S, and a brand new “Sebile” Xbox controller.