Microsoft makes the Windows 11 setup process less boring with an entertaining Easter egg
Microsoft’s SkiFree-like game appears when setting up a Surface Laptop Studio 2. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Microsoft is making the Windows 11 setup process a little more entertaining, at least on some laptops. I unboxed the Surface Laptop Studio 2 yesterday (read Monica Chin’s review here) and noticed that Microsoft now prompts you to play the modern version of its SkiFree game while you wait for updates to be applied.
It’s the same secret surfing game that Microsoft added to its Edge browser three years ago, a fun little Easter egg that’s very similar to the SkiFree skiing game that was released as part of Microsoft’s Entertainment Pack 3 for Windows back in 1991.
Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Playing Microsoft’s surfing game.
The game appears as an option if there are outstanding Windows updates available or if you’re restoring settings using Windows Backup, as far as I can tell. I’m not entirely sure if this is limited to just new Surface devices or whether Microsoft has added the game to the Windows 11 setup process in general. I asked Microsoft for more information on this addition, but the company hasn’t responded in time for publication.
Either way, it’s a fun addition to the often boring Windows setup process. Microsoft has come a long way with its out-of-box installation process in Windows in recent years, with Windows 10 improving on the work of Windows 8 to serve up a more modern and simplified process. I’m old enough to remember how unfriendly setting up a Windows laptop was more than a decade ago, and Windows 11 is a refreshing change.
It’s also far better to be offered a game than having Cortana shout at you when you’re trying to configure a bunch of laptops.
Instacart will accept Medicare Advantage for grocery orders
Image: Instacart
Instacart is expanding its payment options next year to include Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and other supplement health benefits for grocery deliveries. The move comes after the company began accepting food stamps as payment earlier this year.
The program, which will be administered through Alignment Health, will allow anyone who receives health insurance through Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and other eligible programs to use their plan-sponsored funds to purchase “eligible groceries, wellness essentials, and over-the-counter medications for delivery via Instacart,” the company said.
The goal is to improve access to nutritious food and over-the-counter medicines for seniors, many whom experience food insecurity as a result of transportation challenges and economic instability.
“The new plans will give participating seniors greater independence, convenience, and the dignity of choice to select the essentials they need to support their health from Instacart’s broad selection of retail partners,” Sarah Mastrorocco, Vice President and General Manager of Instacart Health, said in a blog post.
Instacart has been working to expand payment options to people on food stamps or other welfare programs for years now. The company partnered with grocery outlet Aldi on a pilot three years ago. Earlier this year, it announced that it now accepts food stamps in all 50 states.
Most delivery platform apps aren’t equipped to accept food stamps as a universal form of payment, though that may be changing. Uber Eats announced recently it would begin to accept food stamps.
An estimated 31 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, while 92 million are on Medicaid. SNAP is the biggest food assistance program in the US, with an estimated 41.2 million people receiving monthly benefits in the 2022 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center.
Ford’s new F-150 Lightning Flash trim will have more range, a bigger screen, and a heat pump
Image: Ford
Ford announced a new “Flash” trim of the model year 2024 F-150 Lighting, with a bigger screen, longer range, and a heat pump to help improve battery conditioning on those colder days. The company said it is also expecting to make more F-150 Lightning deliveries to customers later this year after a factory shutdown restricted Ford’s supply of the electric truck.
Ford says it is targeting an EPA-estimated range for Flash of 320 miles, which would fit neatly in between the automaker’s Standard Range and Long Range models. The F-150 Lightning Standard Range typically gets less than 300 miles of EPA-estimated range, while Extended Range variants can travel as far as 350 miles on a single charge.
A heat pump will also be included with Flash, a nod to customers who have complained that cold weather tends to sap the F-150 Lightning’s battery. Heat pumps can keep batteries at a more optimal temperature during the winter months, which helps with charging times, range, and performance. More and more EVs are coming with standard heat pumps as the auto industry begins to recognize their utility.
The new tech in Flash includes a 15.5-inch touchscreen as standard, which is currently only found in the Lariat and Platinum trims. Price-wise, the F-150 Lightning Flash will sit above the XLT in the model lineup, with a $69,995 price tag and an expected delivery sometime next year.
Marin Gjaja, chief operating officer of Ford’s EV-focused model e division, said the goal was to put some of the features in the more expensive models that customers like the most in a more affordable profile.
“We don’t actually have a vehicle at this price point that’s equipped in this way,” Gjaja said in a briefing with reporters Monday. “So if you look at the way that Flash is equipped, it has some of the features that a Lariat has, and has some of the features that an XLT has, and not surprisingly, it lands at a price between the two of them.”
Affordability is a crucial subject for Ford, especially as it relates to the F-150 Lightning. Recent price hikes have caused some customers with pre-orders to cancel their reservations.
The new trim aside, the flow of F-150 Lightnings to customers should improve this fall now that the company’s Rogue Electric Vehicle Center reopened in August. The factory was closed for six weeks to expand and retool the plant for increased production capacity.
The first hint that Flash was coming was when Electrek spotted a trademark filing for the name earlier this year. At the time, it was assumed the name was applied to a performance version of the truck, coming on the heels of a partnership between Ford and Red Bull Powertrains on next-gen hybrid power units. But now we know that won’t be how it’s used.
The F-150 Lightning Flash won’t have the curb appeal of the new Platinum Black edition of the electric truck, with its factory-applied matte black exterior and limited production run. But the introduction of a new trim is a sure-fire sign that Ford is ramping up its hopes for the Lightning to help boost sales and slow the EV cash burn. The company has said it will lose $4.5 billion on its EV business in 2023.
“We will not rest,” Gjaja said. “Our plan is to scale production and scale demand for our EVs with a focus on profitability.”
Takeaways From a New Book on Sam Bankman-Fried “Going Infinite,” by Michael Lewis, offers a behind-the-scenes account of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s rise and fall.
Nobel Prize awarded to duo who made rapid covid vaccines possible
Katalin Karikó (left) and Drew Weissman’s (right) research into mRNA was used to develop covid-19 vaccinations. | Image: Nobel Prize
American scientists Katalin Karikó (a Hungarian-born biochemist) and Drew Weissman (an immunologist and professor of vaccine research) have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), which contributed towards the development of effective covid-19 vaccines (seen via The New York Times). mRNA vaccines have an advantage over traditional vaccines in that they can be quickly designed and safely manufactured at scale with fewer errors.
Seven years after they first met at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998, Karikó and Weissman published their findings on mRNA. The scientists found that they could add altered mRNA to cells, prompting them to create any protein they desired. These protein molecules, normally produced using a modified virus, would then stimulate an adaptive immune response to teach the body how to destroy invading pathogens. The trailblazing work was later used by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to develop competing covid vaccines in record time.
The prize is the first of six Nobel Prizes that will be awarded this year, with the remaining winners to be announced over the coming week. As the winnings — which are set at 11 million Swedish kronor (around $1 million) for 2023 — are awarded per full Nobel Prize, Karikó and Weissman will split the cash.
Tesla Sales Slip as It Readies Factories for New Models Analysts expected a decline in sales for the quarter. Still, the dip may raise concerns about flagging demand.
How a Pricing Change Led to a Revolt by Unity’s Video Game Developers In an industry where customers are slow to trust and quick to criticize, a new fee from Unity infuriated studios that use its platform.
Tesla rolls out an updated Model Y in China but keeps the same starting price
The new Model Y for China looks a lot like the old one. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
Tesla's China arm announced in a WeChat post Sunday morning that it released a new Model Y with design and performance tweaks that keeps the same starting price as before (via Reuters). The new car follows the company’s release of the revamped "Highland" Model 3 in China, which also hit Europe early last month.
According to Tesla’s Chinese website, the Model Y now has a 0–100km/h time of 5.9 seconds, which Bloombergnotes in a report is slightly faster than before. The car gets new wheels and an ambient LED lighting strip in the dash, like the refreshed Model 3.
Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
If you squint, you can see the new LED strip along the front.
The car starts at 263,900 yuan (about $37,000), and the company offers both a long-range version for 299,900 yuan (about $42,000) and a high-performance version for 349,900 yuan (about $49,000). Tesla has not announced the updated Model Y — or the Model 3, for that matter — in the US. Here are some cropped images from Tesla’s WeChat post announcing the updated car:
Image: Tesla
The updated dashboard and wheels. Image: Tesla
The Model Y is mostly unchanged elsewhere.
Apple plans to upgrade the App Store’s search engine, and it might not stop there
Illustration: The Verge
Apple will soon bring its powerful internal search engine to the App Store and other apps, as Mark Gurman reports in this week’s Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. Apple debuted upgrades to its Spotlight search feature in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, letting users search there for web results, details from apps, documents, and much more.
According to the newsletter, former Google executive John Giannandrea’s search team is working to bake the internally-named “Pegasus” search engine more deeply into iOS and macOS and could even use generative AI tools to enhance it further. Last year Apple also launched Business Connect, a tool that helped strengthen its information database with details about businesses’ hours and locations in a way that could help it compete with Google.
Gurman points out that although Apple’s Spotlight and app search engine isn’t as powerful as Google’s, it has a robust App Store ads business that serves ads to its other apps, like Apple News and Weather. Those things combined give Apple enough pieces to launch its own search engine, perhaps sooner rather than later.
A leaked Google ‘Switch to Pixel’ ad highlights Pixel 8 AI features
A leaked Pixel 8 “Switch to Pixel” ad posted to X by Arséne Lupin highlights Google’s AI features, including Best Take, which lets you swap faces into an image from other pictures (via 9to5Google). Google’s Pixel event is just around the corner on October 4th, but there’s seemingly very little we don’t already know about the phone, considering the steady stream of leaks.
The ad kicks off highlighting the process for transferring data to a Pixel 8, but spends most of its time on the AI features of the phone — some new, like Best Take, and some old, like Magic Eraser:
9to5Google also points to a leak from Kamila Wojciechowska, who posted apparent marketing materials showing updated first-party silicone Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro cases. Wojciechowska says the Pixel 8 cases will come in Rose, Mint, Charcoal, and Hazel colors, while the Pixel 8 Pro cases will get Bay, Charcoal, Mint, and Porcelain. They look a lot like last year’s cases.
The Pixel Watch exceeded expectations — now it needs to be as good as Samsung
The Pixel Watch 2 is a golden opportunity for Google to prove it’s serious about wearables. | Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
After I reviewed the Pixel Watch last year, skeptics kept asking me the same questions over and over again: Do you think Google’s actually going to keep this thing going? Do you think it’s going to ax the Pixel Watch if it doesn’t sell?
These are fair questions to ask. Despite being among the first to the wearable scene in 2014, it let Android Wear and then Wear OS languish for years. Plus, Google’s graveyard of abandoned projects is notoriously vast. While I was pretty confident we’d see a Pixel Watch 2, I didn’t think the Pixel Watch — a better-than-expected debut with some very first-gen flaws — would succeed to the degree it did. During Q4 2022 (aka the holiday season), Google leapfrogged Samsung to become the No. 2 bestselling wearable maker behind Apple, shipping 880,000 units.
But the question remains. Can Google keep the momentum going?
Now would be the best time to prove that it can. Apple and Samsung have already launched their 2023 flagship smartwatches — and while all are excellent, they’re the definition of iterative. Both companies are long-term players in this field, too. Each new Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch is a refinement of the last. As a newcomer, Google has a lot more room to grow.
On the flip side, the Pixel Watch’s flaws were easier to forgive because it was a debut smartwatch. It’s a rare gadget that knocks it out of the park on a first attempt. It didn’t help that last year’s Google wearable lineup was a confusing jumble of three smartwatches. To differentiate between the Pixel Watch, Fitbit Versa 4, and Fitbit Sense 2, Google nerfed the Pixel Watch’s health features and the Fitbit smartwatches’ previously available smart features. Battery life at launch was also the pits. You could only get the estimated 24 hours if you babied the battery and turned the always-on display off.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Battery life was a major complaint with the Pixel Watch. Addressing that would go a long way.
Some of this has since been addressed in subsequentsoftwareupdates. But the Pixel Watch 2 is an opportunity to show that Google not only listened to feedback but also dealt with it. If it doesn’t, it’s harder to turn a blind eye to known issues on a sophomore attempt, especially since there’s no reason it shouldn’t be able to improve battery life, expand health features, and deliver a better user experience. Google has a decade’s worth of rival smartwatches to draw inspiration from. Unlike Apple or Samsung, Google doesn’t have to revolutionize smartwatches to drum up excitement around the Pixel Watch 2. It just has to be noticeably better than last year’s.
Really, it only has to deliver a similar experience to the Galaxy Watch 6. Samsung and Google have both given up on winning over iOS users because their Wear OS watches are Android only. So this is to see who reigns over the incredibly fragmented Android smartwatch market.
For the past 10 years, Samsung has been the de facto leader partly because it had solid products and partly because everyone else was a hot mess. This is in spite of the fact that some of its health features, like EKGs, are gatekept to Samsung phone users. Fossil watches, while prolific, have always been design-first, with middling smarts and health features second. Garmins served a specific niche of outdoorsy athletes. Mobvoi had a decent shot with loyal TicWatch fans until it fumbled the transition to Wear OS 3. Huawei watches, while good, have been stymied by trade bans. Montblanc watches cost $1,000.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Thinner bezels on the Pixel Watch 2 would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.
It would not take a lot for Google to own this space. It’s already succeeding in convincing third-party makers to hop aboard the Wear OS train. Xiaomi is the latest to ditch a proprietary OS for the platform with its newly announced Watch 2 Pro. The allure of the Play Store is just too strong. (Speaking of which, Google’s been hard at work getting third-party app developers to actually buy in.) So long as the Pixel Watch 2 doesn’t fall on its face, the pressure is on for Samsung to show everyone something they haven’t seen before. And that’s a lot harder to do.
For all these reasons, a lot is actually riding on the Pixel Watch 2 when it’s unveiled on October 4th. A success won’t put Samsung down for the count, but it will make my job (and many others) of picking the best Android smartwatch a lot harder. A flop... well, that just adds more fodder for Google’s reputation as a company with big ideas and no follow-through.
The best Google alternative I’ve tried yet
Image: William Joel / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 8, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, first of all, hi, hello, welcome, and second of all, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you a new VR / AR / MR headset, a browser you should download everywhere, an awesome Android launcher, some Baldur’s Gate 3 fanfiction, and much more. (Also, Linda Yaccarino, I have a lot of questions about your homescreen, so if you want to be in next week’s issue, get at me. Mail and Gmail? Really?)
As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you want to get every issue of Installer a day early in your email inbox you can subscribe here.
Okay. Let’s go.
The Drop
Meta Quest 3. It’s not VR anymore, it’s mixed reality. The $499.99 Quest 3 seems to be a big improvement on the Quest 2, and in a brief demo, it showed some pretty solid mixed reality chops. But I’m genuinely curious: do you care about headsets? Are they the future / too early / totally stupid? I think they’re really interesting game consoles and maybe cool TV setups. But I want to know what you think! Email me all your thoughts (and fave Quest apps if you have ’em): installer@theverge.com.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. I love a filmmaking experiment, and this has been a fun one: Wes Anderson made a bunch of short films based on Roald Dahl stories, and they’ve been dropping on Netflix all week. It’s kind of a show, kind of a movie in four parts, kind of an old-fashioned web series? Whatever it is, it’s delightful.
ChatGPT’s voice commands. Two good things happened to ChatGPT this week: it got back the ability to browse the web in real time, and it became a really handy voice assistant. (You’ll need the $20 a month ChatGPT Plus subscription to get them, at least for now.) I now ask ChatGPT all the questions Siri never seems to get right, and it’s pretty impressive. It still makes mistakes and can’t do basic things like share a link, but it’s the most usable voice assistant I’ve ever tried.
macOS Sonoma. I include this otherwise relatively straightforward operating system update for one reason and one reason only: the screensavers. Apple basically took those gorgeous, moving screensavers from the Apple TV and ported them to the Mac, and they look so good. Also, you know, widgets and whatever. But the screensavers.
Raspberry Pi 5. There’s still no better computer tinker toy than a Raspberry Pi. The new one, which starts at $60, is a spec upgrade across the board, and it’s as easy as ever to make it a smart home controller / simple media computer / basically anything else you can think of. I’m certainly no computer-building genius, but I’ve had a blast for years playing with these. And with the new Pi OS coming next month, this one will be even more powerful out of the box.
The Creator. This movie has a premise I’m sure you’ve seen a million times before — humans fighting the AI takeover, what does it mean to be human, yadda, yadda, yadda. The Verge’s Charles Pulliam-Moore was left somewhat cold by the movie’s big ideas, but if nothing else, it sounds like totally gorgeous sci-fi. One for the big screen for sure.
The Vivaldi browser. Vivaldi is one of my absolute favorite browsers. It’s superfast, wildly customizable, and as of this week, available just about everywhere! The new iOS app syncs easily with your other browsers, and just like other platforms, has a huge amount of options and features. (The Android app has been around for a while and is terrific.) Plus: an actual tab bar on my phone? You love to see it.
Windows 11’s fall update. Microsoft would tell you the big upgrade this fall is Copilot, its built-in AI assistant for getting things done all over the OS. I’m also into the File Explorer redesign. But I’d argue the new Paint — which got a bunch of Photoshop-lite-ish features like layers and transparency and is getting AI tools for editing and creating images — is going to be an even bigger win for most people.
Murder in the 21st. This new show, a true crime series looking at some major investigations and murders through the lens of the victims’ digital footprints, is going to be very popular in my house. It’s the most iconic crossover of my family’s interests since Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce started hanging out.
Spotlight
One thing I’ve struggled with in Installer so far is how to talk about things that aren’t new but not everybody knows about. I don’t want to bore you with stuff like, “Have you heard of the iPhone, it’s neat!” but I also do see more stuff than your average internet person, you know? So I figure, let’s try this: when I come across something cool that’s new to me (and reasonably likely to be new to most people), I’m going to share a bit about it and why it’s worth checking out.
First up, and the reason I’ve been thinking about this section at all: I’ve become a total convert to the Kagi search engine. I wrote a big story about Neeva and search a few months ago, and a bunch of people were like, “Try Kagi! It’s awesome!” It is, in fact, awesome. Here’s what I like about it:
It’s customizable. Kagi looks a lot like Google and generally feels very similar to use. But unlike Google, Kagi lets you block sites you don’t like and promote sites you do like. You can also create “lenses” to only search certain sites or domains — Kagi has a bunch built in, too, like a “Small Web” lens that favors blogs, forums, and other parts of the web that tend to get blotted out by the giants.
No ads. The catch with Kagi is you have to pay for it. You get a few searches a month for free, but $10 buys you unlimited access. That’s a lot of money for a search engine! But the pages are so much cleaner and less confusing that I was surprised how quickly I paid up.
It’s great for videos and podcasts. Podcast search is, like, impossible. But I’ve had surprisingly good luck Kagi-ing topics I’m interested in and finding related podcast episodes, and the engine does a similarly good job of scouring YouTube for interesting stuff.
Its AI is handy but not in the way. For a lot of queries, Kagi puts a little “Quick Answer” button at the top — click it, and you get a brief AI-generated answer, with cited sources you can click on. That’s exactly the amount of AI I’m looking for in most of my searches.
The mobile browser is great. Kagi’s mobile app is a browser called Orion, and it’s as no-frills a mobile browser as you’ll find. But that’s cool by me! It’s fast and easy to use. You can also supposedly download Kagi as a Safari extension on iOS, but I haven’t managed to make that work. (On Android, you can just switch to Kagi as your default search engine because Android is much better at this.)
It seems… good? I’ve tried basically all the search engines, and I usually end up back on Google because Google has better results. (Or at least the results I’m expecting and looking for.) With Kagi, I’ve found myself going back to Google less than usual. I don’t know if that’ll hold up forever, but I’m impressed so far.
Ten bucks for search, when Google exists and is great and is free, is a tough ask. But Kagi CEO Vladimir Prelovac tells me the company’s doing well and growing quickly and says he knows he’s not going to reach Google scale with Kagi but also says he doesn’t need to. “I have all the respect for Google and their people and technology,” he says, “I just don’t like their business model.”
So far, I’m sold just because I can make the search engine work the way I want it to. That’s worth the price to me, at least for now. But I also want to know: do you use a non-Google search engine? What would make you switch? Does anyone even care about search as long as you find what you’re looking for? Let me know; I’m all ears.
Screen share
Ash Parrish always seems to be playing 35 games at once. As The Verge’s gaming reporter, she’s covering everything from the nooks and crannies of Hyrule to the huge businesses of Epic and Unity — and all the chaos and culture in between. And I’ve learned that every time she gets excited about a game, either on The Verge or just in Slack, I should write it down and play it ASAP.
That’s part of why I asked Ash to share her homescreen with us this week, along with some things she’s into. Because if Ash is into it, it tends to rule. So here’s what’s on Ash’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:
The Phone: A Samsung Galaxy S21 that’s had its life saved many times by a cheapo Amazon phone case.
The Apps: My homescreen is a mixture of priority work and communication apps along with the fun stuff. I’ve got Slack, X / Twitter, Gmail, and Facebook Messenger (which, oddly, is the primary way I communicate with my husband). Beyond that, I’ve got Google Maps, DoorDash, and a neat photo app called BeautyCam that takes the best selfies. I have the Overwatch League app so I can keep track of my teams, schedules, and standings because the Grand Finals (which will most likely be the last Grand Finals ever) is going on right now.
Finally, I am neatly, firmly, and happily in Baldur’s Gate 3 hell. I eat, sleep, and breathe this game, and my mind is so ravenous for content that I’ve adopted habits I haven’t had since my younger years as a fixture in the Dragon Age fandom. I’ve downloaded (or redownloaded) so many apps that I hope will deliver me the fan content I crave. Tumblr’s for fan art, Archive Reader is the unofficial Archive of Our Own app that I use to read fanfiction. And because my chosen Baldur’s Gate 3 pairing isn’t the most popular, I downloaded Wattpad in hopes of finding more fanfiction that feeds my needs. (I have not. Wattpad… doesn’t have the greatest content.)
The wallpaper: I got married last year, and this is one of my favorite pictures that was taken. That’s me and my husband cutting our cake in our sunroom. Look at that man! In’ he cute!
I also asked Ash to share a few other things she’s into. Here’s what she said:
Google Docs.Baldur’s Gate 3 has awoken one of my primal animating forces: writing fanfiction. After years of being out of the game, I’ve started writing again with a zeal I haven’t seen since I was 25 spending a whole eight-hour shift at my office job writing a 21,000-word fic in one sitting.
The Roman Empire. You know that meme going around about how a lot of women don’t understand how often the men in their lives think about the Roman Empire? Well, I’m one of the women who constantly thinks about the Roman Empire. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney posted a now poorly aged tweet likening Epic to the Roman Empire. (The screenshot was from a movie and featured Roman soldiers in a forest. I spent about an hour trying to track down the battle referenced in that movie to see if it was one of the many times the Romans got their ass beat by Germanic tribes, which would have made Sweeney’s tweet oddly prescient. My results were inconclusive.)
TheOverwatchLeague. I don’t like meat sports, but I love esports. And of the many esports, the Overwatch League is my favorite to watch. However, because of reasons, this season will likely be the last. And worse than that, this season wasn’t that interesting to me. But the Hangzhou Spark, a team from a country where you cannot even officially play Overwatch, just beat the team highly favored to win it all, reminding me of how much I love this game. I’m rooting for the Spark to win now. It’d be a fitting end to something that has brought me so much joy.
Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Emailinstaller@theverge.comwith your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
“Energiza Pro, an app for better battery life in the long term. I bought it a few weeks ago. I’m finding it very useful.” – Dennis
“Radio Paradise plays an electric mix of music, ad-free, totally free, and has multiple ‘Mixes’ you can listen to (Rock, Mellow, Main, Global). They play a great mix of music I wouldn’t usually listen to, and you can skip the song if you don’t like it. They even let you customize the stream quality from Low to FLAC quality. They just updated the app to a new interface and are fully listener-supported, and I give when I can.” – Jonathan
“Bombas socks and Kizik shoes. Both the socks and shoes are so comfortable, and the shoes are easy to put on / slip on and off.” – Marty
“Not sure if this is a new feature, but I just noticed when you’re viewing all tabs in mobile Safari, you can long-press the button that shows how many tabs you have, and it will pop up an option to copy all the links to your clipboard! I’m a pretty obsessive iPhone tips reader and haven’t seen this one before.” – Andrew
“Recently, I’ve been sucked back into Thumper, one of my favorite games of all time. This playthrough on iOS!” – Arden
“My favorite launcher of all time is the Z launcher by Nokia. It’s been unsupported for a while now and was eventually taken off the app store (breaking my heart). My second favorite launcher, and the one I’m currently using, is Niagara Launcher. It’s clean (making your wallpaper visible), can adjust pinned apps automatically by usage, and most importantly, can find any app on your phone one-handed. I love the app scrollbar (reminiscent of the One UI app settings scrollbar) since you can accurately get to any app on your phone in a fraction of a second.” – Samuel
“Raycast! It’s this powerful and modern Spotlight replacement for Mac that’s similar to Alfred but way better and more modern. I use it all day, every day, and it just keeps getting better. Part of it is due to software updates and new features but most of all because I dig deeper into all the amazing and powerful community-made extensions for it!” – Edvard
“I’m really liking Death Glitch by Tamara Kneese about how the social platforms and internet culture handle user death. And obvs, I hear really great things about Kashmir Hill’s new book.” – Joe
Signing off
This week, the folks at the Dropout streaming service announced that, five years after launch, they’re fully getting rid of the name they had before — CollegeHumor. Dropout is great, love Dropout, go watch Dropout, but the official end of CH sent me down the deepest YouTube rabbit hole this week. Have you watched Pete Holmes as Badman? Trust me, watch it again. Then, go watch all of “Troopers,” the fantastic Star Wars parody. “If Google Was a Guy” is still one of the funniest tech-related things ever. I still say “no brandcuffs” out loud probably five times a week. There were a lot of stinkers on CH over the years, but that team also did some of the funniest stuff ever on the web. And 14 years later, “If All Movies Had Cell Phones” still rings in my ears every time I watch somebody who could absolutely solve all their problems with one text message.
Here are a few discounted chargers to make use of iOS 17’s StandBy mode
Apple’s StandBy mode is a convenient feature that gives you a good excuse to buy a MagSafe stand. | Image: Apple
The iPhone 15 and iOS 17 do a whole bunch of new things that many of us here at The Verge enjoy, but one of our favorites is Apple’s StandBy mode. The simple little feature turns your iPhone into a small smart display once you place it on a MagSafe / magnetic Qi stand in landscape orientation. This allows you to see an assortment of full-screen widgets, including a pleasant desk clock, a calendar, or both.
Using the new StandBy mode may involve some menu diving if you want to customize it to your liking (which is definitely part of the fun), but getting started is as simple as turning on the feature and plopping your phone on a charger sideways.
Of course, if you don’t already own a magnetic charging stand for your iPhone, you’ll need to grab one to take advantage of the handy new feature. Luckily, a number of great options are currently discounted, allowing you to pick up a StandBy-compatible stand and achieve those 15W (or 7.5W) charging speeds without spending a fortune.
The best deals on StandBy-ready charging stands
Leading us off, Belkin’s latest BoostCharge Pro 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe is on sale direct from Belkin for $129.99 ($20 off) with promo code FALL23. It’s a progressive code that allows you to save more money as you spend above certain tiers, so if you cross the $150 threshold, it will instead save you $40. The real play here is to add an inexpensive accessory like this $7.99 USB-C to USB-A cable and get both for a total of $117.98.
Belkin’s multi-charger — which looks a whole lot like a techy tree — not only charges your iPhone at true 15W MagSafe speeds, but also fast-charges compatible Apple Watch models (including the Series 7, 8, and 9). It can also charge a pair of AirPods or another Qi-enabled device on its base, making it one of the best 3-in-1s you can get for home use.
If you want to spend a little less or don’t need an Apple Watch charger, the 2-in-1 version of Belkin’s charger is also on sale at the manufacturer’s site for $89.99 ($10 off) when you use offer code FALL23. However, just like with the aforementioned 3-in-1 charger, the discount increases if you add an item to your order (like that one-meter cable), allowing you to knock $20 off your total instead of a mere $10.
The Belkin BoostCharge Pro 2-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe is, as it sounds, a smaller version of the triple charger above. It takes up slightly less space, still charges an iPhone at up to 15W, and is StandBy-compatible by mounting the phone to it sideways. Just be aware that the AirPods charging spot is recessed, meaning you can’t charge a second phone down there.
If you want a StandBy-compatible charger that takes up less space on a desk or table and travels well, look no further than the Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe — which is currently on sale direct from Anker with delayed shipping for $119.96 (around $30 off) when you use promo code ANKER20%OFF at checkout. The Anker Cube is about as small as you can get for a multi-charger that charges a MagSafe iPhone, a pair of earbuds, and an Apple Watch (via an adorable slide-out shelf). The lid tips to display your phone at varying angles, too, and allows for a very compact and low-height StandBy mode experience.
On a tighter budget but still want a multi-charging stand that will work for StandBy mode and charge other devices? Well, if you don’t mind your iPhone charging at slower 7.5W speeds, the ESR HaloLock 3-in-1 Charger Stand for Magsafe is currently selling for $51.99 ($13 off) at Amazon when you click the on-page coupon for 20 percent off.
ESR’s economy-level stand doesn’t support proper MagSafe charging speeds, but its magnetic Qi charging should be adequate for most situations if you don’t need the quickest top-ups. It also charges a pair of AirPods and an Apple Watch, and its niftiest feature is that the Apple Watch pad can be removed and used independently via its USB-C plug.
The best deals on StandBy-ready charging pucks and battery packs
It isn’t just bulky stands that work with iOS 17’s StandBy mode. You can also opt for Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro with MagSafe charging puck and its cute little kickstand, which is currently available from Amazon for $29.99 ($20 off) and from Belkin for $26.99 ($23 off), the latter with promo code CLR10. Not only is this the best charging puck you can buy thanks to its lengthy braided cable and support for 15W charging speeds, but it’s also one of the few that supports StandBy mode given it props your phone up via a built-in kickstand.
And just for good measure, here’s a discounted battery pack you can use with Apple’s StandBy mode. The Anker 622 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) is on sale at Amazon in multiple colors for $39.99 ($30 off) when you click the on-page coupon.
Anker’s MagGo charger may not charge at full MagSafe speeds but it features an unfolding origami-like kickstand that, while small, is strong enough to support a Max-sized iPhone. You can also mount your MagSafe-compatible iPhone to the magnetic Qi battery pack in a horizontal orientation, letting you take full advantage of StandBy mode while your phone is charging via the 5,000mAh battery.
These are the biggest wins in the WGA’s new labor contract
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening draws strike sign collectibles for picketers. | Image: Brittany Woodside / The Writers Guild of America
From its new writers room staffing minimums to guarantees that staffers will receive a bigger cut of streaming residuals, the WGA’s new labor contract is set to fundamentally improve working conditions in the entertainment industry.
(Disclosure: The Verge’s editorial staff is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.)
The WGA made it crystal clear from the jump that its members were ready for the fight of their lives in pursuit of a new minimum basic agreement — the official guidelines that determine how workers are compensated for their labor — designed to better address the tectonic shifts in the entertainment industry. But however good a new deal you might have been hoping for, what the WGA managed to achieve is truly monumental in a way that can’t be overstated, and it’s going to make the business of TV and movie making much more equitable over the next few years.
Though the WGA’s members have until October 9th to cast ballots deciding whether they want to ratify the new proposed contract, leadership from the boards of both the WGAE(ast) and WGAW(est), as well as the guild’s negotiating committee, all voted unanimously to recommend the “exceptional” deal, and it’s not hard to understand why that is.
WGA / Brittany Woodside
A striking WGA member holding a sign depicting the Cryptkeeper that saying “no writers, no die-alogue.”
Minimum pay bumps and the end of TV “mini-rooms”
The WGA’s new contract guarantees “staff writers and Article 14 writers (story editors/executive story editors)” will see increases in their basic weekly wages for the next three years — 5 percent in the first year, 4 percent in the second, and 3.5 percent in the third. Sixty days after the contract is ratified, writer-producers like the showrunner and other above-the-line co-producers who have writing responsibilities will receive a new minimum weekly rate “amounting to a 9.5 percent premium over the story editor / executive story editor rate.” When staff writers are individually responsible for writing particular episodes, they must now be paid script fees on top of their basic weekly wages.
In addition to straightforward pay bumps, the WGA has also secured television writers more resources by way of minimum staffing requirements designed to roll back the rise of “mini-rooms” in which very small teams would be hired (and generally underpaid) to pen full-sized projects. Now, rather than the AMPTP being able to keep writers rooms’ artificially small, their headcounts will be determined by the length of a show’s season (except for in instances similar to The White Lotus and Yellowstone where a single person writes every episode).
Going forward, at least three writers must be hired for shows consisting of six episodes or fewer. If a season has between 7-12 episodes, five staff writers must be hired, and for shows with more than than 13 episodes, that number jumps to six. At all sizes, at least three of the writers in a show’s room must also be writer-producers, and it’s going to be interesting to see over the next few years what impact that specific rule is going to have on the pipeline that develops new junior staffers just getting into the industry.
Staffing minimums were one of the biggest changes that the WGA pushed for during contract negotiations. But because of the writer-producer requirement, there has been some valid concern that newer writers might still struggle to find opportunities outside of larger rooms where there’s more space for them as well as more seasoned staffers at higher levels.
It’s important to note that these minimums aren’t necessarily maximums, meaning that showrunners should be able to push for more bodies at the onset of a gig. And even though studios are almost guaranteed to push back on those kinds of asks, the new contract does include other benefits like minimum writers room lengths that are designed to assist newcomers with their professional development.
Getty Images / Mario Tama
Striking WGA (Writers Guild of America) members picket with striking SAG-AFTRA members outside Netflix studios.
Showrunners are writers whose prep time is valuable, and writers need to be on set
As common as the word “showrunner” has become in our lexicon, it’s never been an official role codified into the WGA and AMPTP’s contract, which is partially why some studios like Marvel have gotten into the habit of downplaying the title when talking about its projects. The new contract clearly defines showrunners as head writers and people responsible for making hiring decisions regarding a project’s other staff writers.
Part of a showrunner’s job is reaching out to other writers in the earliest stages of a project before it’s even been officially greenlit for the first time or for a new season. Under the new contract, once at least three writer-producers, including the showrunner, are attached to a gig before it’s been officially greenlit, that development room is guaranteed at least 10 weeks of employment.
After a show has been greenlit, “the minimum staff must be guaranteed at least 20 weeks or the entire duration of the post-greenlight room, whichever is shorter.” Also, while the overall number of “weeks worked in the development room can be credited against the guaranteed weeks in the writers’ room,” the time they are paid for in development rooms explicitly cannot be credited against the time they’re paid for full-on writers rooms.
By definition, these new rules ensure a certain level of job security that’s crucial to professional development at all levels. This same is true of the contract’s mandate that a showrunner and two writer-producers must be paid to work on set “for the lesser of 20 weeks of production or the duration of production.”
One of the more nuanced points the WGA’s members emphasized throughout the strikes is how, in addition to literally putting writers in better positions to provide last-minute rewrites in the midst of productions, being on set and able to actually see the process of how one’s writing is produced on a technical level is key to professional growth. Now, writers are guaranteed to have a chance to see their work coming to life, and the contract also makes it so that those two non-showrunner spots don’t always have to go to the same people, meaning that multiple staffers can have that same opportunity.
Getty Images / Photo by Michael M. Santiago
Members of Writers Guild of America (WGA) East and SAG-AFTRA walk a picket line outside of the HBO and Amazon NYC headquarters.
Screenwriting second steps and speedy payments are in
Studios used to be able to choose at their own discretion whether to bring writers back in for paid rewrites, known commonly as second steps, but that process is now required and comes with a flat compensation rate. Whenever a screenwriter is hired to draft a screenplay, they must be tapped for a second step for 200 percent of their MBA minimum, regardless of whether they’re writing original or non-original screenplays. Streaming movie writers working on projects with budgets of $30 million or more will see their story and teleplay minimum compensation jump to $100,000, as well as a 26 percent jump in their residual payment rates.
Per the contract, studios will also now be required to pay screenwriters in a more timely fashion. Should a writer be hired for a deal that pays less than 200 percent of their minimum MBA-guaranteed rate, they must be paid “50 percent of their fee on commencement.” Even if the writer hasn’t turned in a script nine weeks into their deal, studios are required to pay them another 25 percent of their fee, and the final 25 percent is due upon final delivery of a script.
In the same way paying people more materially improves their working conditions, so, too, does ensuring that employees are paid expediently because of how it puts money in people’s bank accounts. This also demonstrates that studios are actually committed to giving workers what they’re owed.
Workers being forced to wait for checks while companies take their sweet time paying invoices is an all-too-common situation that — by design — is often difficult for individuals to quickly rectify. While this contract is obviously specific to the WGA, at a time when more and more workplaces are organizing, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other unions push for similar protections.
WGA / J.W. Hendricks
Better residuals and more streaming data transparency
Bigger residual payments and access to more data about how streaming shows are actually performing were two of the most contentious issues the AMPTP fought the WGA on, and while the studios probably won’t be getting into the business of radical transparency anytime soon, the union did make some very significant wins. Though the public won’t be made privy to hard stats about how streaming films and TV shows are performing on various streamers, the AMPTP has agreed to share “the total number of hours streamed, both domestically and internationally, of self-produced high budget streaming programs” with the WGA.
Those figures will be kept confidential, but the WGA will be able to share them with members in aggregate form, and it will use them to determine viewership-based bonuses as well as new foreign streaming residual rates the union says will amount to a 76 percent jump in payments over the next three years. Shows and movies made for streamers that are viewed by 20 percent or more of a platform’s domestic subscribers within the first 90 days of the project’s premiere will receive bonuses “equal to 50 percent of the fixed domestic and foreign residual” they’re already receiving.
How this is all going to shake out isn’t entirely clear yet because the new contract’s method of determining residual payments is tied up in viewership metrics that vary from platform to platform. What we’re likely going to see going forward, though, is an even sharper uptick of promotion for new projects’ upcoming releases with an emphasis on getting people to watch within the windows that ultimately impact the size of these bonuses.
The WGA is keeping its eye on AI
Regarding the use of artificial intelligence tools, the WGA has been emphatic about its desire to keep the technology from harming human writers. While the new contract doesn’t ban AI’s use for MBA-covered work full stop, it does put in place a number of restrictions designed to prioritize human labor in the business of writing.
If writers hired by studios want, they’ll be free to “use AI when performing writing services, if the company consents and provided that the writer follows applicable company policies.” But studios cannot require hired writers to use AI tools, and they must also disclose to their writers “if any materials given to the writer have been generated by AI or incorporate AI-generated material.” The contract does explicitly prohibit the use of AI “to write or rewrite literary material” that might have been considered as the source material for a script, “meaning that AI-generated material can’t be used to undermine a writer’s credit or separated rights.”
Unsurprisingly, the AMPTP refused to give up its ability to train learning models on the scripts studios already own. But the WGA has reserved the right to “assert that exploitation of writers’ material to train AI is prohibited by MBA or other law,” suggesting that the organization intends to act as a litigious watchdog in the future. This provision comes just a few days after California state Senator Scott Wiener (D) proposed a bill designed to regulate AI at a state level. The bill would place a number of restrictions and transparency requirements on large language models and other kinds of “frontier” model systems that require a certain level of computational power.
If passed, the bill would also require the companies behind these AI tools to run rigorous tests to assess potential safety risks that would have to be disclosed to the state. We’re still a ways out from California’s senators being able to vote the bill — the exact terms of which are still being hammered out — into law. But it’s very easy to imagine a situation in which these regulations became a vital part of the WGA’s plan to hold the AMPTP accountable regarding Hollywood’s adoption of AI.
It’s going to be way easier for teams to get healthcare
In order to qualify for healthcare benefits, the WGA’s members have to make a certain amount of money annually — a rule that’s long made it much more difficult for writing duos and teams who typically collect their fees as if they were a single person. While these kinds of groups’ fees will still technically be divvied up, under the new contract, all writers will be documented as receiving the team’s full payment — which will make it significantly easier for them to hit the required minimums to receive insurance.
The Humane Ai Pin makes its debut on the runway at Paris Fashion Week
The Humane Ai Pin, up-close on a model at coperni’s Ready to Wear show during Paris Fashion Week, September 29th, 2023. | Photo by Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
It’s Paris Fashion Week, and Humane was designer Coperni’s latest buzzy tech name to be included. Humane’s Ai Pin — a device we’ve so far only seen in silhouette on the company’s website or peeking out of Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri’s breast pocket in a TED demo earlier this year — was pinned on the clothes of multiple Coperni models during its presentation. And it’s a rounded-corner square thing that makes me think just a little of a Star Trek: TNG-style communicator.
The Coperni showcase doesn’t answer our many questions about the device since nobody seems to have used it on the runway as far as we can tell, but at least we know basically what it will look like now. We still have no real idea how self-contained it is, whether it supports third-party apps, or how you interact with it generally. Those questions will be important, especially with potential competition on the way from Chaudhri’s former Apple colleague Jony Ive and OpenAI.
Anyway, here are some more pictures and videos from the showcase, starting with a close video of Naomi Campbell wearing it, from Vogue’s TikTok account:
Smart glasses need to be stylish to really go mainstream
Style is crucial to wearable devices in a way that’s not necessarily true of other personal gadgets. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge
When I first saw the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses a few weeks ago, I noticed something. In the event space Meta had so carefully prepared, there was a wall showcasing the different frames, colors, and lenses. It was meant to visualize all the different style options — more than 150, in fact. But standing about 10 feet away, they all blended together.
That bothered me.
For the most part, my hands-on with the Meta smart glasses went better than I’d expected. Photo and video quality was dramatically improved thanks to the new 12MP camera. Pain points like audio leakage seemed to be addressed because they now have five microphones instead of one. Sound quality was also better and supported spatial audio. You could livestream with them! After a few demos, this was a device I could imagine a content creator or home video aficionado buying.
I just didn’t like how I looked in the two pairs I tried. One was the Wayfarer, and the other was the new rounded Headliner. While Wayfarers are a popular, classic style, there are still plenty of folks who don’t like the way they look. On me, the bold black frames overpowered my face, and combined with clear lenses, my eyes seemed smaller — a thing I’m self-conscious about. Granted, it was a short demo, and I simply may not have been used to them. But if I didn’t end up liking either of the two available frames, would having 150 variations matter? This wouldn’t be an issue on Zenni Optical. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of frames to choose from, in different materials, colors, and lenses. It might take a while, but I know I’m going to find something that makes me feel good when I look at myself in the mirror.
Image: Meta
You can see the differences up close, but if you move back a few feet, they all blend together.
Limited style options were a problem I’ve had with every pair of smart glasses I’ve ever worn, from the defunct Focals by North to the Bose Frames and nearly every prototype of Google Glass. (I look like a total jabroni in the Bose Frames Tempo.) That’s because smart glasses, generally speaking, are tricky to do well. You have to provide a compelling use case, cram in enough tech to make sure they work well without being uncomfortable, and they have to look good. I have trouble naming a company that’s done all three.
The thing is, if you’re mass-producing a gadget, the human body is kind of your enemy. No two people’s faces or vision are the same. Low nose bridges, strong prescriptions, astigmatism, and face shapes are all things you have to accommodate. At the same time, it behooves wearable makers to pursue designs that work for “most people.” While that works with phones, tablets, and even smartwatches, it’s less effective for something you wear on your face. Again, just because most people look alright in Wayfarers doesn’t mean everyone wants to wear them.
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge
They look better as sunglasses, but that makes them largely useless indoors.
When I wore the Razer Anzu for testing, I thought they looked alright on me. My spouse hated how they made me look. The nicest thing my friends and colleagues said to me was, “I don’t hate them.” Vanity may be a sin of pride, but if eyes are windows to the soul, I want my glasses to be a fetching pair of curtains. The Razer Anzu would’ve needed to be as necessary to my life as a smartphone for me to go all in on function over form. They weren’t. Now I wear a pair both my spouse and I like, and the Anzu collect dust in a drawer.
That’s why it’s a problem that all smart glasses tend to look the same. Not everyone will like how a wide, boxy, thick frame will look on them. You could have the most powerful smart glasses ever, but it means jack if people don’t want to wear them.
I hate to say it, but if smart glasses are ever to become mainstream, looks matter. Companies need to give people as many options as they’d find online or at their local optician. The parable of Google Glass hammered home the lesson that outlandish design (and dubious privacy) evokes ridicule. You’ve likely never heard of Epson’s Moverio glasses because you’d never get a date wearing them. You probably forgot about the Echo Frames, not just because sticking Alexa in your glasses is unnecessary but also because the design is utterly forgettable.
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge
The frames are on the thicker, bolder side. Some people look great with these kinds of frames, but they can be overpowering on other faces.
That’s why, of all the smart glasses I’ve seen so far, the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses might actually have a shot. At $300, they’re pricey but on par with regular Ray-Bans. This time around, there’s a clear use case: hands-free video that you’d actually share to social platforms. Socially, privacy is still a concern, but the TikTok era has also turned everyone into a potential content creator. For better or worse, every time I go out, I assume I’ll be an extra in the reel of someone else’s life. And while 150 variations still aren’t enough to make everyone want a pair, there’s a better chance of finding a combination you like than if you only had two or three options total.
Style aside, at the end of the day, these glasses still need to work and work well. That’s why, despite my reservations about how I look in them, I’m cautiously optimistic that, unlike the Anzu, the upgrades might encourage me to stick around. I won’t know for sure until I get my review unit, but I’m eager to find out.
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