Elon Musk answers Tesla pricing question with anti work-from-home rant
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images
On Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said people who work from home take advantage of the people who cannot work from home and are “detached from reality.” In the middle of talking about rising interest rates and their effect on the affordability of vehicles, Musk launched into a discussion about “Marie Antoinette” vibes of the person he describes asking why doesn’t everyone work from home.
“Like... what about all the people that have to come to the factory and and build the cars? What about all of the people that have to go to to the restaurant and make your food, and deliver your food? It’s like, what are you talking about...”
Musk carried on, saying “Why did I sleep in the factory so many times? Because it mattered,” referring to lowering the costs of a Tesla. He’d been asked how he thought about price elasticity in the current macroenvironment.
In a CNBC interview earlier this year, Musk called remote work “morally wrong” and argued it’s unfair to those who can’t have the option, like food delivery workers. “Get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit,” Musk said at the time. Last year, Musk said work from home was “no longer acceptable” at Tesla and issued requirements for 40-hour work weeks in office.
Only Nintendo DS lovers will fully appreciate this dual-screen handheld PC
The Ayaneo Flip DS. | Image: Ayaneo
Boutique handheld gaming company Ayaneo has announced the Ayaneo Flip DS — a 7-inch 120Hz handheld gaming clamshell with a secondscreen that’s clearly inspired by the Nintendo DS, and might let it play games like one too.
According to Liliputing’s Brad Linder, who deserves kudos for calling out the company’s attempt to plant a “leak,” both the Flip DS and a similar Flip KB will be powered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840U. That’s the same chip that’s in practically every other flagship Windows gaming handheld at the moment, including quite a few from Ayaneo itself.
Image: Ayaneo
The Ayaneo Flip DS... Image: Ayaneo
...vs. the Ayaneo Flip KB.
While that AMD chip sounds like overkill for Nintendo DS titles — I’m very curious about battery life — a secondary screen to properly display Nintendo’s top-and-bottom games is a rarity in the emulation world.
Lots of handhelds (and phones) can already emulate the DS, but they often put the top and bottom screens side by side or let you switch between looking at the top or bottom at any given time.
That’s one of the reasons the emulator community was excited about the rise of folding phones like Samsung’s Galaxy Fold:
And it’s why some Steam Deck owners have gone out of their way to bolt a second screen onto their handheld.
If you’re interested in the Ayaneo Flip DS, know that it’s likely going to take a convoluted path to market. Not only does Ayaneo crowdfund all its products, but it also tends to trickle out details as slowly as it possibly can ahead of their Indiegogo debut. The company also announces new designs faster than it can ship them — by the time I’ve received one of the company’s products for testing, it’s almost always already moved on to a newer, more desirable model.
Reddit’s blockchain-based Community Points are going away
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Reddit is sunsetting its blockchain-based Community Points product, the company announced on Tuesday. A Reddit admin (employee) shared the announcement about Community Points, which uses the Ethereum blockchain, on a few subreddits, including r/CryptoCurrency (which had its own “moons” crypto token), r/FortniteBR (which had its own “bricks” token), and r/EthTrader (which had its own “donuts” token).
The value of those tokens has, predictably, fallen off of a cliff, as CoinDesk reports drops of between 60 and 90 percent. Some Reddit posters claim thousands of dollars in value disappeared from their wallets immediately, while others are pointing at transactions made just prior to Tuesday’s announcement that they think are suspicious.
Community Points will go away by November 8th. According to the announcement, the admin said that the company shutting down Community Points because “there was no path to scale it broadly across the platform.” While the moderators and communities that supported the feature “have been incredible partners,” the admin said that “the regulatory environment has added to scalability limitations.” The admin added that Community Points “wouldn’t migrate well” to the updated reddit.com experience “without an outsized commitment to resources.”
Instead, the company plans to focus on “more scalable programs” like the recently launched Contributor Program, which will let you turn Reddit gold into real money, the admin says. When Community Points are officially sunset, you won’t see them in your Vault on the Reddit app.
The Meta glassholes have arrived
Quest 3 in an elevator. | Video: @kukurio59 (TikTok)
It’s happening: people are once walking into public places wearing a video-recording face computer on their heads. Only this time, the faceputer is sold by Meta, not Google.
Over the weekend, as buyers got their first uninterrupted stretches of time with the new Meta Quest 3 headset, some started posting videos of themselves interacting with the real world instead of playing games.
Sure, it’s cool to blast low-poly baddies breaking through your walls, but isn’t it more technically impressive that Meta’s new headset lets you cook a meal or sweep your floors or enjoy a fancy coffee on a beautiful day without ever taking off the machine? That’s what the Quest 3’s full-color, low-latency passthrough video allows.
It didn’t take long for people to begin pushing the limits — both technologically and socially. Jay Mayo walked the New York Comic-Con floor with the headset on, recording clips of strangers along the way.
And, in the video you already saw atop this post, XR and AI booster Cix Liv went nearly full Glasshole by walking straight into a San Francisco coffee shop and placing an order, without bothering to hide the cafe’s address.
Here’s that video again:
I spoke to Ray Ng, co-owner of Fiddle Fig Cafe, the coffee shop in question, and he thinks it was just “a stunt for laughs and giggles.” Liv didn’t sit down and drink his coffee with the headset on, says Ng. “They took the set off, sat down, and that was it,” he tells me over the phone. The whole thing was over in “maybe 5 minutes.”
But that won’t necessarily stop other attention-seekers from following Liv’s lead — they might even embolden each another. “Now I don’t feel bad walking around with the headset during comic con,” Mayo replied to Liv, after the artist who filmed themselves walking around New York Comic-Con saw Liv’s cafe video.
We’ve been through all of this before, of course — a decade ago, public opinion turned against Google Glass, with public business owners in particular coming out against the tech. Diners, movie theaters, casinos, bars, and other public establishments outright banned the headset — one woman was allegedly assaulted for wearing Google Glass in San Francisco, and an XR pioneer was assaulted in Paris while using a similar-looking device.
But that was a decade ago, and I argued last year that our definition of privacy, our tolerance for public photography, and our resistance to wearable technology have all changed considerably since Google first introduced Glass. Maybe it won’t be such a problem this time around? Smartphone cameras everywhere is now the norm, and small businesses often benefit from an influencer plug; Ng was fine with me naming Fiddle Fig Cafe in this story.
I do wonder if Meta was prepared for the Quest 3 to be the glasshole’s headset of choice, though. While the company has put considerable thought into making sure its glasses-like Ray-Bans don’t fall into the same trap — publishing privacy explainers and guidelines on using those glasses in public, including proactively letting people know you’re recording — the Quest 3 doesn’t seem to have similar published guidelines.
It’s also a bit harder for bystanders to tell when the Quest 3 is recording. It simply pulses a white light, slowly, and it’s a light that’s already on by default. When I asked my wife if she thought I was recording, she said she had no clue.
Then again, if I saw someone walking into a cafe with a bulbous white object atop their face with multiple camera slits, I’d just automatically assume they were recording absolutely everything.
Pixel 6 owners who use multiple profiles run into problems with Android 14
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
Some Pixel 6 users are reporting strange issues after updating their devices to the new Android 14 OS, which launched on October 4th for Pixel devices. One critical-sounding bug that seems to have spread to multiple users is losing access to internal storage, which ends up in a complete loss of data. Others seem to have other odd issues, like repeat UI launcher crashes. A Verge tipster pointed out the reports, which show a pattern of striking users with multiple user accounts set up on their devices.
The original poster reports “storage is full” errors once they rebooted following an overnight update to Android 14, while another commenter said they lost access to internal storage entirely. The Android 14 update launched officially last week alongside Google’s new Pixel 8 devices with updates to the UI, additional customization options, and more.
Screenshot by Umar Shakir / The Verge
All I did was make a new user account and run software updates. However, I am on the Android 14 beta.
I have personally tried to reproduce the issue on my Pixel 6A by setting up a new account and attempting to run software updates. While I did not get storage issues, my 6A did crash multiple times. I also got a “System UI isn’t responding” error. But if I switch back to the other account, the issues are no longer present. I should mention that I am on the Android 14 beta, and I have not run into any other issues since attempting this.
We reached out to Google for comment on the issues presented by the users, but we didn’t hear back by the time of publication.
Biden, Trolling Trump, Joins Truth Social: ‘Converts Welcome’ The Biden campaign is in search of any edge with voters who could be persuaded to his side.
Intel’s new 14th Gen CPUs arrive on October 17th with up to 6GHz out of the box
Image: Intel
Intel is launching its 14th Gen desktop processors this week, promising boost frequencies of 6GHz out of the box for its flagship Core i9-14900K. Known as Raptor Lake Refresh, Intel is maintaining pricing for its 14th Gen Core i9, i7, and i5 processors this year, sticking to the same retail pricing as the 13th Gen when these new chips launch on October 17th.
The 6GHz boost on the new Core i9-14900K makes it the “fastest desktop processor at volume,” according to Intel, referring to its special-edition 13900KS that first broke the 6GHz barrier at stock speeds last year but didn’t ship at volume. The more interesting 14th Gen processor in this refresh could be the Core i7-14700K, though, thanks to a significant bump to its efficiency cores.
This year, Intel is increasing the core count on its Core i7 processor, moving from eight efficiency and eight performance cores to 12 efficiency and eight performance cores. That’s 20 cores in total for the Core i7-14700K, close to the 24 found on the Core i9-14900K. The base clocks on the P-core are 3.4GHz and 2.5GHz on the E-core for the 14700K, the same that we saw on last year’s 13700K. These added efficiency cores should help with creator tasks and even gaming performance for titles that take advantage of multithreading.
Image: Intel
Intel latest 14th Gen Core i7 compared to previous generations.
Intel has some favorable benchmarks against AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X and even its own previous Core i7 chips for creator tasks, but we’ll have to wait and see how this new Core i7-14700K compares to AMD’s impressive 7800X3D chip for gaming benchmarks.
Over on the flagship side, Intel’s Core i9-14900K adds the 6GHz Thermal Velocity Boost frequency found previously on the $699 special-edition Core i9-13900KS variant. Frequencies for the P-core max turbo are up 200Hz to 5.6GHz this time around, alongside a 100MHz bump on the E-core max turbo side. Even the base frequencies for both the P- and E-cores are up 200MHz.
Image: Intel
Intel’s full 14th Gen lineup.
Intel also has a refreshed Core i5 this year. The i5-14600K includes a total of 20 cores (six P-cores and eight E-cores) and has a base clock of 3.5GHz on the P-core side and up to a 5.3GHz boost.
All of these 14th Gen processors will work in Intel 600- and 700-series motherboards, as Intel is still using its LGA 1700 socket. They also include support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 through a discrete option that motherboard manufacturers can include in refreshed Z790 boards. Intel is also supporting DDR5 5600 and DDR4 3200 memory speeds with its 14th Gen chips.
The Core i9-14900K will be priced at $589, with the Core i7-1700K priced at $409 and the Core i5-14600K launching at $319. All three processors will be available from system builders and retailers on October 17th.
Apple has an edge over its competitors in the fight against climate change
Apple CEO Tim Cook talks to an employee at a solar farm in Hanstholm, Denmark. | Photo by Christoph Dernbach / picture alliance via Getty Images
A new report compares climate initiatives by Apple, Dell, Google, HP, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Apple’s far from perfect, but so far, it’s ahead of the pack, according to today’s report.
It’s the only company among the six tech giants that has set targets for its suppliers to switch to renewable energy. “Other brands need to send similarly clear signals to their suppliers,” Gary Cook, global climate policy director for the nonprofit Stand.earth that published the report, said in a press release.
To be sure, a completely separate report published by a different environmental group last week casts some doubt on Apple’s recent carbon neutral claims. Stand.earth’s new report, however, puts Apple’s broader climate initiatives in perspective by scrutinizing several tech companies at once.
Big Tech produces 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than aviation. The new Stand.earth report published today includes recommendations for companies to rein in that pollution.
Crucially, companies need to be more strategic about how they purchase renewable energy. Most power grids don’t have enough solar and wind farms online yet to fulfill companies’ goals of becoming carbon neutral. Many of them, including Apple, instead purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) meant to support clean energy projects. But this financial incentive often isn’t enough to actually bring more renewable energy online, particularly if the RECs are unbundled. To change that, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have strategies to get more renewable energy into local grids where they operate.
On top of that, the report says tech companies ought to work together more closely to fight climate change. “There remains a substantial lack of meaningful collaboration and unified action among sector leaders,” it says. They could use their collective might to advocate for policies that promote the adoption of clean energy, for instance.
And of course, supply chain emissions are still a sore spot across the board. The biggest chunk of a company’s carbon footprint is often its suppliers. By the end of the decade, Apple has said it wants to be carbon neutral across its operations and supply chain. The company’s suppliers more than doubled their clean power between 2021 and 2022. This year, some 300 had committed to only using clean energy by 2030 when making Apple products. Their commitments helped Apple make its first announcement of carbon-neutral gadgets last month: “select” combinations of cases and bands for the Apple Watch.
“While Apple may be too quick to claim their products are ‘carbon neutral,’ they are the only ones who are both setting a strong example in how they are moving their own operations off of fossil fuels, and working aggressively to get their suppliers on a path to be 100% renewably powered by 2030,” Cook said.
Despite that progress, Apple still has to be more transparent about its supply chain emissions, according to the separate report published last week by the nonprofit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). Apple stopped asking its suppliers to disclose their emissions this year, according to the report.
“Given that Apple’s suppliers do not publicly disclose their clean energy use and greenhouse gas emissions data, how can it be publicly verified that the manufacturing process for the three carbon neutral Apple Watch products uses 100 percent clean electricity?” IPE asks.
The Verge reached out to each of the companies in the report. “We will continue to advocate and share our rigorous, science-based approach to decarbonize our products — in close partnership with our suppliers, and with third-party validation — as a way to drive further progress across industry,” Apple spokesperson Sean Redding said in an email to The Verge.
Nvidia director of corporate communications Liz Archibald said in an email that the company “consistently engages suppliers to evaluate additional initiatives and facilitate further emissions reductions across the supply chain.” Other companies didn’t immediately respond or declined to comment on the record.
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Lakers legend Rick Fox built a house that can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere
Laker legend-turned-actor Rick Fox has a new passion: sustainable concrete. | Image: Partanna
A new house in the Bahamas is built with an alternative concrete that sucks CO2 out of the air. It’s a home that’s supposed to help in the fight against climate change, and the plan is to build 999 more like it.
That’s the slam dunk NBA Lakers legend-turned-actor Rick Fox is working toward now on the small island nation where he grew up. Fox is the CEO and co-founder of the sustainable building materials startup Partanna that unveiled its first home today. If they’re successful in the Bahamas, the goal is to make its alternative concrete an everyday building material that could cut down pollution from construction.
“I shut down my entire career that was in Hollywood to pursue and create [climate] solutions,” Fox tells The Verge. “I had to move around the industry that was new to me and meet people that were looking at me like, ‘What the hell are you doing in concrete?’”
Concrete just happens to be a major source of the greenhouse gas emissions causing more intense storms, wildfires, and other catastrophes through climate change. The culprit is actually cement, a key ingredient in concrete that alone is responsible for more than 8 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally.
“My entry into the world of concrete was one out of just sheer survival and the need to innovate in my own home country,” Fox says. Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas in 2019, wrecking 75 percent of homes on the worst hit island of Abaco and displacing thousands of people. Fox was in Los Angeles at the time. “The closest thing I could do was race to CNN to scream from the rooftops that we needed to do something better,” he says.
Soon after, he met California-based architect Sam Marshall, whose home had sustained damage in the 2018 Woolsey fire, one of the most destructive blazes in the state’s history. Marshall had already “caught lightning in a bottle,” according to Fox. Working with material scientists, they’d developed a way to make concrete without using carbon-intensive cement. Together, they co-founded Partanna.
The pair are pretty tight-lipped around the process, but the main ingredients are brine from desalination plants and a byproduct of steel production called slag. By getting rid of cement as an ingredient, Partanna can avoid the carbon dioxide emissions that come with it. Making cement produces a lot of climate pollution because it has to be heated to high temperatures in a kiln and because it triggers a chemical reaction that releases additional CO2 from limestone.
Partanna says its mixture can cure at ambient temperatures, so it doesn’t have to use as much energy. It also says binder ingredients in the mixture absorb CO2 from the air and trap it in the material. In a home or building, the material continues to pull in CO2. Even if that structure is demolished, the material holds onto the CO2 and can be reused as an aggregate to make more of the alternative concrete.
That’s how the startup and can call its material and the newly constructed home “carbon negative.” The 1,250-square-foot structure is supposed to have captured as much CO2 as 5,200 mature trees a year.
To be sure, carbon-counting with trees is tricky. A Guardianinvestigation earlier this year found that 90 percent of rainforest offsets certified by one of the world’s leading carbon credit certifiers, Verra, are “worthless” because they likely didn’t lead to actual reductions in pollution. Verra is also certifying carbon credits for Partanna. Fox says the CO2 Partanna captures is easier to quantify than forest offsets and isn’t as vulnerable as forests that need to be protected from deforestation in order to store carbon.
It’s also worth noting that Partanna’s key ingredients, slag and brine, come from energy-intensive steel and desalination facilities that can produce a lot of CO2 emissions on their own. Partanna isn’t counting those emissions in its carbon footprint. “That’s not on us ... These are waste materials that we are taking and using for good,” Fox says.
“It’s good that they’re making use of waste,” says Dwarak Ravikumar, an assistant professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. Even so, Ravikumar says, “We need to conduct a robust analysis of this from a systems perspective to understand what is the overall climate impact.” It’s important for the company to share its data so that researchers can assess Partanna’s entire environmental footprint and how scalable its strategy is, he says.
Fox isn’t the only one on a mission to make a more sustainable building material than traditional concrete. Microsoft announced last month that it’s testing low-carbon concrete for its data centers. And other startups are working to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and trap it in concrete.
Partanna says it has an edge since its material is made with brine. It’s actually supposed to get stronger with exposure to seawater — an attractive trait to a country made up of many low-lying islands exposed to worsening storms and sea level rise.
“We are not just on the frontline of climate change; we are the frontline of solutions,” Philip Davis, prime minister and minister of finance of the Bahamas, said in a Partanna press release.
The Bahamian government is partnering with Partanna to build 1,000 homes, starting with a community of 29 more houses that are supposed to be built by next year. No one is living in the first one in Nassau yet; it’s a prototype. But the next are expected to be part of a program to help first-time homeowners.
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Everything you need to track your movies, music, books, and more
Illustration: William Joel / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 10, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, hooray! I’m so happy you’re here, and also, you can catch up on all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) We made it through 10 weeks! It’s been so fun to make this every week and to talk to you all about the cool stuff you’re into. Thanks for being part of the Installerverse (we’re gonna make that a thing, it’s gonna happen), and as always, tell me everything you think we can do to make it better!
This week, I also have for you a new flip phone, a big Roblox release, a new messaging app, some sneaky browser hacks, and oh so many ways to keep track of all your media. And a deal on some truly rad Verge merch!
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 edition in your inbox a day early, you can subscribe here.
This week’s a really fun one. Let’s get into it.
The Drop
Omnivore. One of the best (and free and open-source) read-later apps got a bunch of updates this week — better highlighting, better text-to-speech — but I’m really into the upgraded browser extension, which makes organizing much easier. I tend to save a billion things and then never find them again, so a good tags system is a game-changer.
The Verge’s dbrand collab. Yes, this is brazen self-promotion, but I just got the skin I ordered, and honestly, it looks awesome. We worked with dbrand on phone cases, skins, chargers, and more. And just for this weekend, just for us in the Installerverse (I told you we’re making this happen), if you use the code INSTALLER, you’ll get 15 percent off everything dbrand sells.
How Do We Fix It? “The Polarization Series.” I’m new to this podcast but have been enjoying the three-episode arc on the current broken state of American politics, how we got here, and where we go next. I took a particularly large number of notes on the episode about whether social media is to blame.
Space OS. The idea is super compelling: a personal, private computer in the cloud that is completely yours and not subject to the whims of app providers and social platforms. The reality of “a private thing in the cloud” is way more complicated, but the team behind Space OS has some really interesting ideas about how it should all work.
Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul. A three-episode dive into the spectacular rise and brutal fall of the biggest name in e-cigs. You can see bits of everything from Juicero to Theranos and WeWork in this story, and the doc tells it well. (Fair warning: I was interviewed for this, and I’m in it a bit, but you can just fast-forward past those bits.)
The Motorola Razr. I think flip phones are the future of phones. I really do. And so I’m psyched to see Motorola showing up with a flip phone designed to manage your relationship with your phone, and most importantly, it’s $699.99 — a lot cheaper than other flip phones we’ve seen. (I’m even seeing it on sale for $599.99 right now.) Yeah, I wish it had a bigger outer screen, but it’s nice to have options.
Robloxfor PlayStation. A long-overdue release, if you ask me, but still a big deal, especially as Roblox tries to become a platform for all ages and all uses. Forget what Meta’s building; Roblox is the company most trying to make the metaverse happen.
The Fall of the House of Usher. Mike Flanagan’s horror shows have been a Netflix staple in recent years, and his latest (and maybe last) sounds like a fitting finale: truly bonkers but ultimately a lot of fun. And bonus: plenty of critiques of modern tech-forward life.
ActivityPub for WordPress. This is a huge deal: it means anyone with a site on WordPress.com, which is an awful lot of people, can now automatically syndicate their stuff to Mastodon, Pixelfed, and the rest of the fediverse. I’m all in on the open web future of social, and this is a big step in that direction.
Lightroom Ultra HDR. This is the good kind of HDR, the kind that actually makes your photos crisper and more lifelike, and now Lightroom’s Android app can work with it natively on your phone. For now, Ultra HDR is just for Pixel phones, but in general, Lightroom is an excellent app and a great step up from your typical smartphone editing app. (Also, check out all the wild AI stuff Adobe showed off at Max this week. I know we talk too much about “what is a photo,” but seriously. Everything’s different now.)
Group project
Last week, I thought I’d try something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: see if we, as the whole Installerverse (it’s HAPPENING), could all work together to figure out the same thing. So I asked, what do you use to track all the stuff you want to read, watch, and listen to?
Oh, boy, did you all come through. Thanks so much to everyone who emailed and texted and DMed! I got a lot of great app recommendations, a bunch of truly wild hacky systems, some seriously elaborate spreadsheeting, and much more. So here, as best as I can summarize it all in one place, is how the whole Installer community does its media tracking.
The overall favorite.Sequel was by far the most-recommended app in my inbox this week. It is sadly only for Apple devices, but folks love its design, the fact that it can track basically all kinds of media, its notifications for new stuff, the extra info it adds, and more. Oh, and good news: Romain Lefebvre, who makes Sequel, tells me version 2.1 is coming soon with even more stuff, and you can get in the TestFlight beta right now.
The all-in-one apps.Sofa was probably the second most popular recommendation. Everybody also seems to love the design of Trakt, Play is a nifty up-and-comer, and Cronica has some fans, too.
The media-specific apps. For movies, lots of people recommended Reelgood and JustWatch, and there was a lot of love for Letterboxd as well. For TV shows, Hobi seems to be a favorite, and SeriesGuide and TV Club both came up a few times, too. For book consumption, Goodreads seems to be the go-to, but StoryGraph got some love as well. For tracking music, MusicHarbor and MusicBox seemed to be the choices, though there are some Last.fm diehards out there, too. For video games, GameTrack was really the only one I heard about!
Drop them in a link bucket. I heard from a few people who use bookmarking tools like Raindrop, into which you can just drop IMDb or YouTube or Amazon links. Others used Instapaper and Pocket for saving links.
Make them tasks. A bunch of you are repurposing to-do list apps like Things, Todoist, and Microsoft To Do as ways to track this stuff — some have it in a big “Stuff to Consume” list; others have it separated by media type. One upside of this is that it can be collaborative: share a list with a partner or roommate, and everybody can add to it easily.
Go to the source. I heard from folks who keep their to-watch list in IMDb, their shopping list in their Amazon account, their podcast recommendations in Overcast, and their music queue in their Spotify library. The goal, it seems, is just to dump everything where it’ll end up anyway.
Just keep a list. Notion; Apple Notes; Evernote; Anytype; Bear; Obsidian; Capacities; Google Keep; OneNote; lots and lots of others. So many of you said the best thing to do is just write everything down somewhere — ideally, somewhere you’ll find it again — and be done with it.
A few other specific apps that people really liked: Mela for tracking recipes; Copilot for tracking finances; Discogs for managing physical music; Habitica for tracking habits.
And a special shoutout to the most impressive system I heard about this week, from someone who asked to be identified only as Stealth1248, which I’m just going to quote in its entirety:
“I’ve looked into some of the collector apps, but they are expensive and seem like a lot of work. The joy of an Excel spreadsheet is that it’s super easy to modify to contain whatever kind of information I want. I can sort things, categorize them, keep track of if I already own them or not, etc.
“I also set up a couple Microsoft Forms to add things to them. The reason for that is 2-fold. 1: Excel on mobile (while possible) is really hard to work with. Forms adjust far better to a small vertical screen. You can set up free fill answers, multi select questions, fields that require dates/times/numbers, and make certain questions mandatory (so I don’t forget to fill out a certain field of data) 2: You can export the results from Forms as rows in an Excel document, so this makes it easy to add them to the main spreadsheet when I have time to sit down on a real (aka large with a horizontal screen) computer. Each question becomes a column of the spreadsheet and each complete survey response becomes a row.”
Here’s what the resulting spreadsheet looks like:
I love it. I’d never manage to keep it up to date, but I love it. Thanks again to everyone who wrote in with recommendations and ideas, we’ll do something like this again really soon!
Screen share
Every once in a while, I like to text Casey Newton just to see which note-taking app he’s using — because he seems to change his mind almost as often as I do and is just as willing to throw his life and hopes and dreams into anything that might help him do a little more a little more easily. And honestly, same. Casey gets it.
But on the other hand, Casey is also one of the most thoughtful internet users I know. If you’ve read his excellent Platformernewsletter or heard the delightful Hard Forkpodcast, you know he’s deeply knowledgeable about how and why tech influences us. So I was curious to see what apps he uses, where they live, and how he thinks about his phone’s job in his life.
Here’s Casey’s homescreen (two of them, actually!), plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 15 Pro.
The wallpaper: “The system wallpaper that shows you where on earth you are. I don’t think it has a name.”
The apps: Todoist, Barry’s (lets you book Barry’s classes on the go, or even more importantly, cancel them when you’re hungover), Clock, Cron (actually the more I look at Cron, the more I miss Fantastical. What am I doing to myself here?), Stripe, Pocket, Messenger, Google, Google Maps, App Store, Settings, Overcast, Spotify, Phone, 1Password, Threads (Threads has felt much more lively over the past week, and I basically think it’s three or four big releases away from achieving escape velocity), ChatGPT, Messages, Gmail, Bear, Safari, Chrome, Dark Sky (I will never delete this app icon because it reminds me of what we lost. Valar morghulis), Day One, Holedown (it’s 400 years old, is never updated, and can fill absolutely any amount of time between 10 seconds and 90 minutes), Grindr, Mem, Ivory, Artifact, Poe, Bluesky, Lutron, Amie, Capacities (my new favorite note-taking app, and if you’re in the market for a place to do your personal knowledge management, you should absolutely check it out), Epik, and Bonk.
I also asked Casey to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he said:
Artifact. This little AI newsreading app from the Instagram co-founders is shipping new features faster than any product on the consumer internet. I increasingly discover news there that I put in Platformer, and I always find something interesting that I haven’t seen before. I’m not totally sure where it’s going, but I know Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have huge plans for it, and I’m enjoying being along for the ride. One cool feature is that if you’re a writer, they send you push notifications when other people link to your stories. Which is always fun to see.
Bonk. Bonk is the best new social network. You add friends and then “bonk” them, and every time you bonk, they get a separate notification telling them. So you can quickly take over someone’s entire phone with your horrible notifications, and every time you bonk, you get haptic feedback, and the Bonk app itself is taken over by the word Bonk. The best feature (aside from every other feature) is that there is a leaderboard that tells you which of your friends has bonked the most over the past few days. The funniest feature is that the app, which is still in beta, requires iOS 17 for reasons known only to the developer and to God. It also has the best URL for an app I have personally ever seen: bonkbonkbonk.app.
ChatGPT. A mistake I made this year as a tech reporter was not immediately subscribing to ChatGPT Plus when GPT-4 became available. It turns out that if you’re only using 3.5, you really have no idea what is about to happen to all of us. GPT-4 makes many fewer mistakes and is better in every way at helping you think through subjects or analyze text than its predecessor. I assigned the voice-operated version of it to the Action Button on my new iPhone 15 Pro, so now I can talk to ChatGPT at the press of a button. It feels like getting a glimpse of the future.
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. And for way more great recommendations than I could include here,check out this Threads thread.
“Dex. It’s a ‘personal rolodex’ app: it lets you take notes about people in your life, set reminders to follow up, keep track of birthdays, and sync with Gmail / LinkedIn. For a freelancer, my memory skills leave much to be desired. It helps me remember details about conversations with people the next time we talk — both professionally and socially.” – Ryan
“Two recent excellent series, both on Apple TV Plus: Silo and Foundation.” – Dennis
“I use multiple browsers for different things, then I use BrowserFairy to automatically route apps and sites to specific browsers. For my newsletters and related things to read, I have BrowserFairy open Microsoft Edge. In Edge, I sync between devices, group tabs, and all the normal built-in-browser things Edge brings, especially vertical tabs (which is like Safari reader, just so much better).” – Brent
“Making a smart lamp using a Shelly RGBW and a custom firmware mod to get it to work with Apple Home. Probably a huge home network security risk, but it works. Also, too much Stardew Valley on Apple Arcade.” – Timothy
“After years of trying to warm up to GTD apps, with little success, I finally tried Agenda, and it really works for me. I’m not using it for note-taking (I have Apple Notes, Google Keep, and Obsidian for that). But the way it handles triaging to-dos and integrates with your calendar and Apple Reminders is really slick. It is loaded with features, looks beautiful, is constantly being updated, and has a unique paid tier that you can get via subscription or a one-time payment. But the free version is so good, most people will never need to pay. Finally, I’m GTD!” – David
“Just got Patrick Stewart’s new memoir, and I’m super excited to read it! I also got to see him during his book tour, which was amazing.” – Aaron
“Oh my god, I just got a Nitro Deck from CKRD, and it is absolutely my new favorite video game gadget. It’s a deck for the Switch, with Hall-effect joysticks, programmable rear bumpers, and a nice wide grip for big-handed folks like me that find the Joy-Cons cramped. I ordered the unit in GameCube purple and can confirm it is as righteous in person as it looks on the store.” – Nick
“The coolest thing I’ve seen recently, I don’t know how to share with anyone. It’s a movie called Hello Dankness that seamlessly cuts together everything from Napoleon Dynamite and Wayne’s World to Pen15 and RoboCop to create bizarre cross-world interactions and make a satirical commentary on the absurdity of the post-Trump political landscape. But because it’s basically a pirated work, I think you can only see it at film festivals and special screenings. Oh, and it has a bonkers trailer.” – Thomas
“I used iTunes exclusively until about 2018, and though it was bad software by the end, it did offer a music nerd a lot of things that Spotify and some of the others do not. There is an iOS app called Marvis, which has a pro version that offers many of those features. The rub is that it only works with Apple Music, but I’ve found that, for old iTunes holdouts, this isn’t much of a problem.” – John
Signing off
A few days ago, on The Vergecast, I mentioned that one of the best phone accessories I’ve ever bought is a really long — mine is 10 feet — charging cable. I have one next to my couch and another next to my bed, and y’all, the freedom that comes from not having to lean over to be closer to my outlets!
But then, I got an email from Eric telling me how wrong I was. Here’s what Eric said: “I used to work at Apple retail, and when people would come in looking for longer charging cables, they would balk at the price — longer Lightning (at the time) cables were (are?) expensive! — and I would always recommend going to Target and looking at regular extension cables. Way more options (colors, lengths, thicknesses, cord styles, etc...) and often way cheaper. Can’t tell you how many folks came back in just to say thanks for the idea, just saved them $25. All this to say: David! Don’t buy a 10-foot Apple USB cable, buy an awesome 12-foot extension cable instead.”
I’ve done some looking, and Eric’s not wrong. There are some lovely, inexpensive extension cables out there (I searched “braided extension cable” and found lots of good ones), and they’re way more multifaceted than just having one long USB charger. Apparently, I’m going to redo all my charging stations again.
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LG’s desk-friendly C3 OLED has dipped below $1,000 for the first time
LG’s 42-inch C3 OLED TV might not be big enough for your living room, but it will look great on your desk. | Image: LG
Welcome to the weekend, dear readers! Although we’ve spent the past week pummeling you with deals from Amazon’s fall Prime Day event — some of which are still available, to be sure — our Saturday roundup is mostly concerned with the discounts that have cropped up in the time since, starting with LG’s C3 OLED. Right now, you can grab the 42-inch model at Amazon for $921.48 (about $276 off).
Like the much-lauded C2 we reviewed last year, it’s hard to go wrong with LG’s brilliant C3 panel, regardless of what type of entertainment you watch. The TV features terrific picture quality and many of the same specs that made last year’s C2 such a great pick for gamers, including a 120Hz refresh rate and comprehensive HDMI 2.1 support, only with a brighter display and faster performance. It showcases a few interface refinements as well, one of which makes it a bit easier to set up the C3’s picture mode.
Admittedly, a 42-inch panel is certainly not the biggest, though the TV’s smaller stature also makes it a perfect desk companion if you want a glorified gaming monitor with perfect black levels. If not, the 65-inch model is also currently on sale at BuyDig with a $150 Visa gift card and an extended four-year warranty for $1,696.99 ($900 off).
Lego, not to be outdone by Amazon, also kicked off a pre-holiday sale this week, slashing prices on an assortment of Verge-approved sets we’ve only seen on sale a few times before. There are about 80 discounted sets in total, including both busts and bird nests, but we want to specifically call out the Atari 2600 and the Hulkbuster.
The first is a 2,532-piece replica of the Atari’s iconic console — the 1980 revision, mind you, not the original from 1977 — while the latter is a “hulking” 4,000-piece set that pays tribute to Iron Man’s Mark XLIV armor from the Infinity Saga films. The former is currently on sale for $191.99 ($48 off) while the latter is down to $384.99 ($165 off), which are some of the best prices we’ve seen on either Lego set.
Other weekend deals and discounts
If you could use a travel charger, Zendure’s fantastic SuperTank Pro is on sale at Amazon for $137.99 ($92 off) when you clip the on-page coupon for 40 percent off. It has a 26,800mAh capacity, up to 100W charging, and four USB-C ports, along with an info-dense OLED panel that shows the remaining battery life and charging speeds of all your devices. Read our review
Apple’s Mac Mini is on sale at B&H Photo right now in its base configuration with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $499 ($100 off), matching a deal we saw in August. The latest model features a wide port selection, Wi-Fi 6E, and the same speedy M2 processor as the latest 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, which makes it a competent little desktop machine so long as you’re prepared to BYO monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Read our review.
The newer OnePlus Buds Pro 2 are available for $129.99 ($50 off) from Amazon and OnePlus, which marks their second-best price to date. The flagship wireless earbuds check quite a few boxes — ANC, multipoint, you name it — and supposedly offer both better sound and battery life than the original model. They even feature head-tracked spatial audio when used with the OnePlus 11.
The 128GB Google Pixel Tablet, which is one of the better Android slates you can pick up right now, is down to $419.99 ($80 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store. It doesn’t reinvent the tablet by any means, but it comes with a nice 11-inch display, fast-enough performance, and a magnetic speaker dock that ensures it’s always ready to go when you need it. Read our review.
We are in the very throes of spooky season, y’all. Thankfully, if you have yet to get in on the Halloween fun, Arkham Horror The Card Game is currently on sale at Amazon for $24 ($21 off). The cooperative title is a little complex at first, but once you grasp the various role-playing elements and overall flow, the Lovecraftian game takes on a life of its own.
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Apple’s new video reactions are making therapy incredibly awkward
This may not be what you want to see during a video therapy session. | Image: Apple
SimplePractice, a company that offers a telehealth platform, is warning patients about Apple’s new video reactions feature that might let people unintentionally add heart emoji or virtual fireworks during a telehealth video call. Awkward.
As shown in a Mastodon post by Matt Haughey — who says he had a friend who saw the fireworks on a therapy call after giving a thumbs up in response to a question from his therapist — SimplePractice is notifying patients that Apple devices “may show emojis during video calls” and that SimplePractice doesn’t have control over the settings. SimplePractice also discusses the reactions in an FAQ and has instructions on how to turn reactions off on both iOS and macOS.
The video reactions are a big new feature for iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, which Apple officially released in September. When the reactions are enabled — and they’re enabled by default — you can use hand gestures to make certain emoji and animations appear. Making a heart shape adds the hearts, for example, while two thumbs up set off the virtual fireworks. There are eight possible reactions you can activate with your hands.
The reactions are theoretically a useful way to add something a little extra to a video call. But during certain situations (like, say, a video therapy session or an important litigation call), you probably don’t want to see those reactions at all. The reactions all use relatively common hand gestures — things like a single thumbs up, thumbs down, and two peace signs all do different reactions, too — so it’s easy to see how people might activate the reactions by accident. And since the reactions are enabled by default, people may end up triggering them without knowing that it was possible to do so.
Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
If you want to turn the gesture-based reactions off, here’s how to do it. On iOS, open up the FaceTime app, access the Control Center (on Face ID iPhones, you can get to it from a swipe down from the top-right corner, while on Touch ID iPhones, it’s a swipe up from the bottom of the screen), tap the “Video Effects” option in Control Center, and then tap “Reactions.” On macOS Sonoma, open the FaceTime app, click the FaceTime icon in the menu bar, and then click on “Reactions.”
Google tests adding a Discover Feed to its valuable desktop homepage
Illustration: The Verge
Google is experimenting with the inclusion of a Discover Feed on its desktop homepage that shows recommended content alongside the company’s traditional search box. A screenshot from MSPowerUser, which spotted the change, shows a feed that includes news headlines, a weather forecast, sports scores, and stock information for a trio of companies. The search giant previously added the Discover Feed to its US homepage on mobile devices in 2018,
A Google spokesperson confirmed the change in a statement given to The Verge, noting that it’s an experiment that’s currently being run in India. Any change to google.com is significant as it continues to be the world’s most visited website.
Image: MSPowerUserA screenshot of the feature published by MSPowerUser.
The search giant has experimented with its desktop homepage before. Last year 9to5Google spotted it testing a row of widget-like cards on its desktop homepage showing a similar mix of news stories, weather forecasts, and stock information. However, it’s unclear how widely the feature was rolled out, and it’s not appearing for me in the UK as of this writing.
As MSPowerUser points out, Google’s experimental interface looks similar to what Microsoft offers on its search engine Bing, which already contains a long list of news stories and other information. I’ll always have a fondness for the simplicity of Google’s traditional interface, but I have to admit I now barely visit the search engine’s homepage after over a decade of being able to search directly from my browser’s address bar.
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Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal approved by UK regulators
Illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard has been approved by UK regulators. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has concluded that the deal can proceed after Microsoft recently restructured the deal to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft. The decision clears the way for the deal to close now that the UK regulator has given the green light.
“The CMA has decided to give Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) consent to acquire Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Activision) (the Parties) excluding Activision’s cloud streaming rights outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) (the Merger) subject to the condition that the sale of Activision’s cloud streaming rights completes prior to completion of the Merger,” reads a statement from the CMA.
We’ve cleared the new deal for Microsoft to buy Activision without cloud gaming rights.
In August, Microsoft made a concession that would see Ubisoft, instead of Microsoft, buy Activision’s cloud gaming rights.
The CMA describes Microsoft’s concession as a “gamechanger that will promote competition” in the growing cloud gaming market. “With the sale of Activision’s cloud streaming rights to Ubisoft, we’ve made sure Microsoft can’t have a stranglehold over this important and rapidly developing market,” says Sarah Cardell, CEO of the CMA. “As cloud gaming grows, this intervention will ensure people get more competitive prices, better services and more choice. We are the only competition agency globally to have delivered this outcome.”
Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith says the company welcomes the CMA’s decision. “We have now crossed the final regulatory hurdle to close this acquisition, which we believe will benefit players and the gaming industry worldwide,” says Smith in a message on X (formerly Twitter).
We’re now awaiting news from Microsoft about the finalization of the acquisition. The Verge reported last week that Microsoft was getting ready to close its Activision Blizzard deal today, Friday October 13th.
We’re grateful for the CMA’s thorough review and decision today. We have now crossed the final regulatory hurdle to close this acquisition, which we believe will benefit players and the gaming industry worldwide.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick emailed all employees today announcing the news. “We now have all regulatory approvals necessary to close and we look forward to bringing joy and connection to even more players around the world,” said Kotick. “We’re excited for our next chapter together with Microsoft and the endless possibilities it creates for you and for our players.”
The CMA’s decision comes months after the regulator initially moved to block Microsoft’s deal in April over cloud gaming concerns. Microsoft appealed that decision with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), but both parties put that process on hold in July to make way for Microsoft’s restructured deal that was designed to address the concerns. After successful discussions with the CMA, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard agreed to extend their merger agreement deadline to October 18th.
The Xbox maker originally announced the deal in January 2022, and has faced close scrutiny from regulators ever since — including an FTC v. Microsoft case that revealed plenty of Xbox secrets. The Federal Trade Commission is still appealing its failure to secure a preliminary injunction to block Microsoft’s deal, with a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals due in December.
Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge
Cloud gaming is a growing market for Microsoft and others.
As the FTC doesn’t have a preliminary injunction in place, Microsoft is now clear to close its proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition ahead of the deal deadline. The closure will bring to an end a 20-month process of regulatory approvals and battles, and comes months after EU regulators approved the deal thanks to additional concessions from Microsoft.
Microsoft’s obligations to the European Commission will allow consumers in EU countries to stream via “any cloud game streaming services of their choice” all current and future Activision Blizzard PC and console games that they have a license for.
Microsoft has made several cloud gaming deals to license Activision Blizzard content, and the company’s restructured deal means it won’t control the cloud gaming rights to Activision Blizzard outside of EU markets. Ubisoft will acquire these rights for a period of 15 years, allowing the publisher to license titles back to Microsoft to be included in Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Microsoft Wins Critical Approval for Activision Deal by Britain’s C.M.A. The $69 billion video game acquisition is expected to be finalized soon after the sign-off from British regulators.
EU is formally investigating X over content about the Israel-Hamas war
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge
The European Union (EU) has formally opened an investigation into X, the platform previously known as Twitter, to ensure it’s complying with the Digital Services Act (DSA) following Hamas’ attack on Israel in early October and subsequent Israeli air assault on Gaza. According to the request, this comes after “indications received by the Commission services of the alleged spreading of illegal content and disinformation, in particular the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech.”
Earlier this week, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton sent a letter to X owner Elon Musk alleging that the platform is “being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU.”
The EU is requesting that X provide information related to its investigation by October 18th. Investigators are reportedly asking X on what the company’s protocols are during crisis situations, according to the Financial Times. In his letter from earlier this week, Brenton noted the media has widely reported misleading imagery on X that includes previous armed conflicts as well as doctored ones.
The probe at X is the first under the new DSA, the Financial Times says. Under the law, tech giants like Meta, Google, and Amazon, which operate “very large online platforms” with millions of users, can be held liable for content that’s illegal in the EU. The commission could, in serious cases, impose fines of up to six percent of global revenue.
Brenton also sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, similarly urging his company to remove illegal content and “to be very vigilant to ensure strict compliance with the DSA rules.”
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