Google Drive search on iOS gets better filtering options
Image: Google
Google Drive for iOS now lets you filter searches using dropdown menus for File Type, Owners, and Last Modified, the company wrote on Friday in its Workspace Updates blog. The dropdown menus show up before and after a search, and relevant filter recommendations will show up as well as users type.
Google says the update is available to Google Workspace customers and individual subscribers, as well as anyone with a personal Google account on iOS. The feature hasn’t been rolled out for Android users yet, but Google says that’s coming, too.
Here’s a screen recording I made to show how it works:
Screen recording: Wes Davis / The Verge
Dropdown menus are GOAT, as the youths say.
The new filter update makes it much more pleasant to search and browse for files when you don’t know where they are. For instance, if you know you’re looking for a video stored in Drive but have no idea what it’s called, you can just tap the Videos file type, then choose “custom range” under the last modified and search for the time period you last touched it. I’d love to see this updated to let me filter by other types of dates or file sizes.
It’s a marked improvement to Google’s previous approach, which involved filter suggestions and swipeable filters. Turns out, dropdown menus are still the best. Who’d have thought?
Apple may not do a spring event this year
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Apple has plenty of releases planned for the spring, by the rumor mill’s reckoning, but one thing it may not do is make a big production out of it, according to Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. It’s not all that unusual for Apple to skip a spring event — it didn’t have one last year, and it’s skipped it in years past, too. Even so, it’s a little surprising, given the plethora of devices the company is expected to launch.
The biggest thing is a revamped iPad Pro with an OLED screen and an M3 chip. For the most part, Apple’s highest-end tablet’s design has been unchanged since its 2018 refresh, when it took on the flat-sided design language that also defines the company’s phones, laptops, and even the iMac. The company is also expected to update the iPad Air, introducing a new 12.9-inch version alongside the usual 10.9-inch model. Both would be the first new iPads since 2022.
Rumors have been predicting a new Apple Pencil, too, though there hasn’t been a lot of information about what will be different. There could be new interchangeable magnetic tips that alter its characteristics for different kinds of art, and it may also have Find My built-in. Other accessories that have been tipped by Gurman and others include a redesigned Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro that would be encased in aluminum and lend the deluxe iPad more of the illusion of a laptop.
Rumors have pegged spring as the release window for M3 chip-equipped 13- and- 15-inch MacBook Airs, as well. Those probably won’t change hugely — just more powerful chips. But apart from perhaps a nicer display, I’m not convinced anyone is clamoring for big changes on the Air lineup. As with iPads, this would be the first update to the excellent 13-inch MacBook Air since 2022.
That’s so much new hardware to announce without a big production! But maybe it makes sense. After all, it’s not without precedent, and it’s not like there are any fancy new chips for Johnny Srouji to talk up in his lab. Plus, if Apple changes little else about the iPad Pro apart from the screen, there’s functionally not a lot to really get excited about there, either. It also remains to be seen how big a deal a larger iPad Air will be to customers.
That would make Apple’s next big event its World Wide Developer Conference, typically in June. There, we expect a lot of changes. As Gurman writes, the company is getting ready to unveil the fruits of its massive effort to catch up with everyone else on generative AI. That’s also where Apple shows off what it’s doing to update its operating systems, so expect plenty of updates there — particularly for iOS 18, which Gurman has said (and does again today) will be the most significant software rejiggering the iPhone has ever seen.
The very best food stuff on the internet
Illustration: William Joel / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 28, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome to the Installerverse, so glad you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you the new Dune movie, a new smartwatch, a buzzy new tech book, and oh so many food-related YouTube channels. It’s food week here at Installer, so let’s get into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading, watching, playing, testing, knitting, or conjuring this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, or you want to get it in your inbox a day early, subscribe here.)
The Drop
Dune: Part Two. The vibes around this movie are so good that I finally got around to watching Part One (which is awesome, despite the fact that hardly anything ever happens?). The buzz is that it’s bigger and better, and obviously I have to see it in theaters to get one of those horrifying popcorn buckets.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. This game will make you feel feelings. Stressful, intense, breath-holding feelings. But in a good way. It’s a huge open game with a ton to do, and while it doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, everyone seems to be finding something to love in here.
Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 4. Sennheiser should be a bigger name in headphones; it just consistently churns out great-sounding stuff. These new $300 buds are definitely high-end, but their audio quality can hang, and they have a bunch of features — like Auracast! — that make them pretty compelling.
The Tourist season 2. The first season of this show was a huge hit internationally but kind of under the radar in the US — though it’s having a moment now that it’s on Netflix. I loved it: it’s intense and surprising and beautifully made. If you haven’t watched yet, now’s the time to watch both seasons.
“This Hardware Company May Be the Next Apple!”I always like to describe Teenage Engineering as your favorite tech company’s favorite tech company. I don’t think they’re the next Apple, and this video from Varun Mayya does a good job of explaining why — Teenage Engineering is very much playing its own game. And winning.
The OnePlus Watch 2. OnePlus’ first smartwatch was… bad. But this one seems to be good! Early reviews say it has solid battery life and pretty good performance, more health and fitness stuff, and a much-improved design. It’s not cheap, but it looks like OnePlus is figuring this smartwatch stuff out.
The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. A new food thing! Perfect timing for this week. And I love the show so far: it’s about food, but it’s also about how two very smart people create recipes, which means it’s about how they think about food and how they work. It’s a pure process deep dive, and it’s great.
Google Docs markups. If you have an Android device, you can now highlight, draw, or otherwise mark up Google Docs right within the app. This is so much better than leaving a million comments or doing that weird thing where you change the font color and write your notes that way. I need an Android tablet.
Burn Book. The discourse around Kara Swisher’s book has been so funny — some people love it, some people hate it, and everybody’s talking about it, which is just precisely the way I suspect Kara wants it. Few people have seen as much of tech as she has; whatever this book is, I’m sure I’m gonna like it.
Superhuman Instant Reply. I’m on the record that I think the very best thing AI chatbots do is write emails. Superhuman took it one step further by marrying AI to Gmail-like smart replies, so now you can tap, like, “Sounds good,” and it’ll write out a whole email for you. Superhuman remains the most power user of power user email tools, and it’s still ludicrously expensive, but it’s pressing at AI email in some really fun ways.
Screen share
Since it’s food week here at Installer, I asked a true expert to share their homescreen with us today: Stephanie Wu, the editor-in-chief of our sister publication Eater. Eater, among so many other things, is single-handedly responsible for helping me find all the good pizza in my new city and is the reason I’ve been thinking about ube donuts for like the last three years. Stephanie writes a terrific newsletter about Eater and food and news, and you should definitely subscribe.
Stephanie warned me in advance that her homescreen wasn’t just full of food apps. Which I realize now makes perfect sense: she’s also a mom, and a boss, and just a human, and one of the fun things about seeing people’s screens has been realizing that no matter what you do all day, we all do so many of the same things. But still… Stephanie, we need some food stuff. And she delivered.
Here’s Stephanie’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:
The phone: I have the Google Pixel 8 Pro and am a Pixel devotee.
The wallpaper: My homescreen is a photo of my two kids, who are almost three and almost one.
The apps: Google Messages, WhatsApp, WeChat, Baby Tracker, Nanit, Duolingo, Chrome, Gmail, Phone, Google Maps, Camera.
The most useful thing on my homescreen is my calendar widget, which is how I stay on top of everything. It’s color coded for meetings, focus blocks, exercise, and personal events.
WhatsApp is my go-to messaging app, and I’ve forced all my friends to move over our group chats, which has much improved my life as an Android user. Then I have my new-parent essentials: an app that keeps track of feeds and diaper changes and the baby monitor.
I started my NYT crossword puzzle and Duolingo streaks while I was on parental leave and haven’t been able to give those up. I also love Connections, as frustrating as it can be sometimes.
Off-screen, the food-related app I’ve been using the most is the NYC Smart Compost app. Having an orange bin around the corner is a game-changer.
I also asked Stephanie to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she said:
Like everyone else I know, I’m obsessed with The Traitors. We watch it as soon as it airs because I can’t stand being spoiled. And I love Tournament of Champions, Guy Fieri’s game show-esque cooking competition with a stacked roster of big-name chefs.
My current go-to kitchen tool is a mini spatula, also known as a jam spoon. It’s great for feeding the baby and scraping clean containers of yogurt or peanut butter.
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.comor message +1 203-570-8663 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
Last week, I asked you all to share your favorite food stuff on the internet. Your favorite apps, blogs, creators, recipes, and everything else from the best of the Food Web. And like you always do, you delivered!
I’ll get to a bunch of specific stuff, but first, let me try to consolidate the Greatest Hits from all of your responses. Here are the things that came up a bunch of times:
Paprika. This was not just the most recommended app but the most recommended thing by far in my inbox: a cross-platform app for meal planning, recipes, and grocery shopping. There are a lot of apps that do this, but Paprika is your overwhelming favorite.
Mela. The runner-up in the app category: Mela doesn’t do as much as Paprika, and it only works on Apple devices, but wow is it well designed and just delightful to use.
Ethan Chlebowski. You all like his recipe site, his newsletter, and especially his YouTube channel. His approach is a little different from most: he makes a lot of videos about whether you really need expensive parmesan cheese and lots of deep dives into food science. His theory is that if you understand food, you’ll cook it better — and I dig it.
All the just-the-recipe services. One thing everyone wants is a way to turn complicated, ad-filled food websites into simple recipes. Paprika and Mela both do that well; folks also recommended Just the Recipe, CookBook, Cooked, and Pestle as ways to get the recipe without all the extra stuff. (I have a lot of feelings about what this does to food blogs and their businesses online… but that’s for another day.)
Now, here are a bunch of other specific recommendations, because y’all sent in so much good stuff, it seems rude not to share:
“By far my favorite food content is from Mythical Kitchen on YouTube. Started as part of Rhett & Link’s Good Mythical Morning and has grown into an awesome channel with a great cast. They do everything from busting food myths to budget ingredient comparisons, historical fast food recreations, and more.” – Mack
“The best and most important food blog I’ve ever found is Budget Bytes. Beth, the founder of the website, puts together great low-cost recipes, broken down by ingredient price. It was a lifesaver in grad school and in the first couple years of postgrad, but even now when I’m not sure what to make for dinner, Budget Bytes is one of the first places I go to. And I make Beth’s baked oatmeal almost every week.” – Zoe
“I recommend checking out Cook Well for your food-related issue. Dead simple, no gimmicks. Best recipe site I’ve used in years.” – Matty
“I specifically want to recommend World of Mouth. They are trying to create a community for foodies. I tried it on my vacation to Vietnam recently, and it was surprisingly great. The selection may be a little sparse vs. other mediums, but quality over quantity.” – Nachiketa
“There are a bunch of really great cooking instruction shows free on YouTube. Personal favorites are “Bake It Up a Notch” by Erin Jeanne McDowell on Food52, “Cooking 101” with Sohla El-Waylly, and also — less educational but delightful — “Mystery Menu” and the gingerbread house series with her and her husband, Ham, are AMAZING and just great comfy TV.” – Kailey
“Gotta be the Sidekick app from the guys at Sorted Food on YouTube. The channel is a riot: a mix of professional chefs and ‘regular guys’ competing and learning about cooking together. The app not only has a ton of great recipes but helps you figure out what to make based on what you have and minimize food waste from cooking in the process. Awesome stuff.” – John
“I also use the New York Times Cooking website and BBC Good Food as major sources of recipes. It’s great to get recipes without a big story like a lot of cooking blogs do.” – Richard
“My nomination is for the Tabitha Brown YouTube channel. She is a Black woman who shares vegan recipes and restaurants and also a renowned actress with a children’s show that is also hosted on her channel — overall just a lovely person and personality, and her North Carolina-isms and slang ‘that’s your business!’ and reactions make for a heartwarming (and mouthwatering!) watch.” – S. Erin
“Since you mentioned ramen, I must mention Alex (aka FrenchGuyCooking) on YouTube. He’s done a ton of videos about ramen (I believe twoseries), and they’re fantastic. You can also see a lot of DIY on his channel as he builds or modifies his equipment.” – Tiago
Signing off
I realized this week, not for the first time, that I’m paying for three different music services. Spotify I pay for by itself; YouTube Music comes free with YouTube Premium, which is annoyingly expensive but is also the best money I spend every month because ads on YouTube are an unbearable scourge; and I get Amazon Music free with Amazon Prime.
This is so dumb! But I don’t know what to do. Spotify is… better than the others, right? But they all have the same stuff, so maybe I’m just flushing money. I need help! Tell me what you do. Help me decide what to do before I accidentally go throw more money at Apple Music or Tidal or something.
I don’t know. Maybe the right answer is just to hack an old iPod and go back to living the local music life. I do miss that click wheel.
HP is in the rent-a-printer business now
Rent-a-print. | Image: HP
HP has a new proposition in a time when (companies like it have made sure) you don’t really control much about your computer anyway: why don’t you just let HP rent you one? The company debuted a subscription service today — just like CEO Enrique Lores said it would last month — called the HP All-In Plan. It’s essentially an extension of HP’s Instant Ink, and like that plan, you’ll have ink sent to you as you approach empty, but unlike it, your monthly fee also covers the printer itself.
Which printer you get depends on the plan you choose. They start at $6.99 per month for 20 pages’ worth of prints and whatever the current HP Envy model is, and go all the way up to a $35.99-a-month affair that gets you an OfficeJet Pro and 700 pages. If you go over your page allotment, HP will add more for a dollar per block of 10–15 pages.
But each plan is a two-year rental, not a lease-to-own situation. So if you decide HP All-In isn’t for you after all, you’ll have to return the printer and go back to rubbing elbows with everyone else at FedEx whenever the need to print arises. And if you cancel after an initial 30-day trial or before two years, you’ll pay a fee as high as $270, depending on the plan and when you cancel.
The subscription, like HP’s recent ad campaign promoting its printers as “made to be less hated,” trades on the idea that printers are frustrating commodities. The company’s configurator page mentions bonuses like “continuous printer coverage” and “next-business-day printer replacement,” for instance. That way, if a firmware upgrade blue-screens your printer, at least you have some recourse that doesn’t involve driving to a store to buy a whole new one.
There are people this plan will undoubtedly appeal to. Not everybody cares that deeply about feeling like they own their printer. And receiving ink before you run out is great if you are, like me, the kind of person who ignores the “low ink” warning all the way until I’m fully out and am actually printing something critical, rather than coloring pages for your kid, for once.
But those are mostly functions of the fact that I don’t really print that often and rarely encounter the annoyances of printer ownership. For those who do, companies can take two paths. One is HP’s plan, which appeals to the frustration of user-hostile experiences like scanners that don’t work because you bought third-party ink and printers that become unusable without some serious effort because you moved overseas. The other approach is making printers that mostly just do the thing you want them for.
Why Elon Musk’s OpenAI Lawsuit Leans on A.I. Research From Microsoft In his lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, Mr. Musk relies on a provocative paper from the start-up’s closest partner.
Here are the best Kindle deals right now
The Kindle Paperwhite, our favorite Kindle, is on sale with a power adapter and one of three fabric covers starting at $174.97 ($20). | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge
When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.
Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon looks to be moving beyond books and into the realm of writing — something that should make future Kindles function more akin to physical paper.
Below, we’ve listed each model currently available. Sometimes, there isn’t a deal for one or any of the products, but we’ve mentioned the most recent sale price in those instances. Keep in mind that Amazon also offers 20 percent off all of its Kindles when you trade in select devices, so there are still other ways to save money when none of the models are available at a discount.
Image: Amazon
The best Kindle (2022) deals
In case you missed it, Amazon announced a new entry-level Kindle in 2022, one that was designed to replace the 2019 model. The latest Kindle — which starts at $99.99 — puts Amazon’s base e-reader more in line with the most recent Kindle Paperwhite, providing a number of quality-of-life improvements in the process. The 2022 model features longer battery life, a 300ppi screen, and charges via USB-C instead of Micro USB. It also touts 16GB of storage by default and comes in a “denim” color, which resembles the soft blue you might associate with jeans.
In the past, Amazon’s newest ad-supported Kindle has dropped to as low as $74.99 ($25 off) with three months of Kindle Unlimited included. Right now, however, you can only buy the Kindle at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for its full retail price of $99.99. That said, you can pick it up on sale at Amazon with ads, a power adapter, and a fabric cover starting at $134.97 ($15 off). Regardless of whether you choose the standalone model or the bundle, the entry-level Kindle remains a worthwhile option if you’re looking to pick up an e-reader for less than the latest Paperwhite.
The latest base Kindle wasn’t the only e-reader Amazon introduced in 2022. The entry-level model arrived alongside a new Kindle Kids, which is identical to the standard model but comes with a handful of accessories and provides age-appropriate content for younger readers who prefer digital books. Like the last-gen Kindle Kids, the latest model retails for $20 more than the base model, bringing the MSRP to $119.99.
In terms of add-ons, the new Kindle Kids edition consists of four items: the device, a case, a two-year extended replacement guarantee (in the event the device breaks), and one year of Amazon Kids Plus. The latter is the biggest selling point of the device aside from the kid-friendly patterns, as it allows parents to grant their child access to a digital library of kid-friendly books like Percy Jackson and the entire Harry Potter series at no additional cost.
While we’ve seen the Kindle Kids drop to as low as $79.99, right now there are no deals available. That means you can only buy Amazon’s latest Kindle Kids from Amazon and Best Buy at its full retail price of $119.99.
Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge
The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is identical to the standard model but features wireless charging and a sensor to automatically adjust the backlight.
The best Kindle Paperwhite (2021) deals
Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite is its 11th-gen model, which comes with USB-C support, longer battery life, and a larger 6.8-inch display. The e-reader launched more than two years ago, and it often receives steep discounts at retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, particularly around Black Friday and throughout the holiday season. You can still occasionally pick up the last-gen model from 2018 at a discount.
Amazon has also rolled out a Kindle Paperwhite Kids Edition for $169.99, which comes bundled with a kid-friendly cover, a two-year extended replacement guarantee, and a year of Amazon Kids Plus, much like the aforementioned Kindle Kids. All 2021 models are also similar to the 2018 model in that they feature a waterproof design and Audible audiobook support.
The ad-free Kindle Scribe is Amazon’s biggest e-reader to date — one that also represents a departure from past Kindle models. It packs a 10.2-inch display with 300 dpi, along with the same great battery life for which Kindles have become known. What separates the Scribe from other models, however, is that it comes with one of two styli, which can be used to annotate books, doodle, or jot down notes. We found the e-reader’s note-taking capabilities lacking in our testing, but Amazon has already started to improve the software via free OTA software updates, helping bring it up to speed with other E Ink competitors.
The Kindle Scribe is available at its full retail price of $339.99 at Amazon in its 16GB base configuration with a Basic Pen and three months of Kindle Unlimited. The same model is also available at Amazon bundled with a leather cover and a power adapter for $379.97 ($60 off). Meanwhile, the bundle with the Premium Pen, which offers a shortcut button and a built-in eraser, is currently on sale in the 16GB configuration with a folio cover and a power adapter starting at $389.97 ($60 off).
Up until recently, Amazon also sold the 2019 Kindle Oasis. Along with a 7-inch 300ppi E Ink display, the Oasis was unique in that it offered physical, page-turning buttons. Sadly, however, the waterproof ebook reader is neither on sale nor in stock at Amazon or any other major retailer. While the international version of the e-reader is available at Amazon starting at $199.99 ($70 off), it may not be worth buying at this point. Amazon won’t ship it to US addresses, and more notably, the Oasis is no longer listed as part of Amazon’s official Kindle lineup. That suggests that Amazon may have discontinued it and that we may see a newer version at some point in the near future.
UnitedHealth says Blackcat is the reason healthcare providers are going unpaid
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Health insurance provider UnitedHealth has identified Blackcat as the group behind a debilitating cyber attack that has disrupted healthcare providers nationwide, Reuters is reporting. The attack has led to more than a week-long outage of the the United-owned Change Healthcare system, disrupting payments at hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies across the nation.
Since Change Healthcare acts as a middleman between healthcare providers and insurance companies, the breach has hindered everyday transactions like electronic pharmacy refills and new insurance claims. The company first identified suspicious activity on its IT systems on February 21st, according to an SEC filing.
The breach could last for weeks, UnitedHealth Group Chief Operating Officer Dirk McMahon told STAT. The insurance company is setting up a loan program for healthcare providers in the meantime.
In a joint cybersecurity advisory, federal agencies including CISA and the FBI warned that Blackcat is now intentionally targeting the healthcare system. “Since mid-December 2023, of the nearly 70 leaked victims, the healthcare sector has been the most commonly victimized,” the agencies wrote.
The US government has even offered a combined $15 million reward for any actionable intelligence on the group’s whereabouts. An attempt by the FBI to seize Blackcat’s servers and sites last year seemingly failed —the group quickly regained control.
In a darknet message that was later deleted on Wednesday, Blackcat also claimed it stole millions of patient records, including sensitive medical and insurance data in the UnitedHealth breach, Reuters reported. The group also admitted, in the same message, to stealing data from Medicare, the military medical agency Tricare, and even CVS Health. No further details were provided about the timing of these breaches, and the message was reportedly deleted without explanation. Reuters was unable to reach the hackers or verify any of their claims.
Even the theft of sensitive records from UnitedHealth alone could impact millions of people. Change Healthcare handles nearly 1 in 3 patient records in the US, the American Hospital Association told HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in a letter sent on Monday. “Any prolonged disruption of Change Healthcare’s systems will negatively impact many hospitals’ ability to offer the full set of health care services to their communities,” wrote AHA president Richard J. Pollack.
UnitedHealth is currently working with Google-owned Mandiant and cybersecurity software vendor Palo Alto Networks, CNBC reports. The company hasn’t indicated whether it plans to pay the ransom.
S.E.C. Is Investigating OpenAI Over Its Board’s Actions The U.S. regulator opened its inquiry after the board unexpectedly fired the company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, in November.
Here’s your first look at Tron: Ares, premiering in 2025
Image: Disney
The third Tron movie is nearing release. Disney announced that production on Tron: Ares — a follow-up to Tron: Legacy, which itself was a sequel to the 1982 original — began in January and that the plan is for the film to premiere in 2025. As part of the announcement, the first image for the film was also released. It definitely has Tron vibes but also wouldn’t be out of place as a skin in a shooter like Destiny or Fortnite.
Here’s the full thing:
Image: Disney
According to Disney, the new film is about “a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with AI beings.” It’s being directed by Joachim Rønning, who previously worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and the sequel to Maleficent. And while we don’t know much about the characters, the cast includes Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, and Gillian Anderson.
This ‘Amazon’s Choice’ video doorbell could let just about anyone spy on you
An “Aiwit” doorbell camera. There are many like it. | Image via Amazon
Does your video doorbell look anything like the one in the picture? Perhaps you bought it for cheap at Amazon, Temu, Shein, Sears, or Walmart? Does it use the Aiwit app?
Consumer Reports is reporting the security on these cameras is so incredibly lax, anybody could walk up to your house, take over your doorbell, and permanently get access to the still images it captures — even if you take control back.
The cameras are sold by a Chinese company called Eken under at least ten different brands, including Aiwit, Andoe, Eken, Fishbot, Gemee, Luckwolf, Rakeblue and Tuck. Consumer Reports says online marketplaces like Amazon sell thousands of them each month. Some of them have even carried the Amazon’s Choice badge, its dubious seal of approval.
Yet Amazon didn’t even respond to Consumer Reports findings last we’d heard, much less pull the cameras off its virtual shelves. Here’s one of them on sale right now. Shopping app Temu, at least, told CR it would halt sales after hearing just how incredibly easy they are to hack.
Not only do these cameras reportedly expose your public-facing IP address and Wi-Fi network in plaintext to anyone who can intercept your network traffic (hope you aren’t checking them on public Wi-Fi!), they reportedly broadcast snapshots of your front porch on web servers that don’t ask for any username or password.
One Consumer Reports security staffer was able to freely access images of a colleague’s face from an Eken camera on the other side of the country, just by figuring out the right URL.
Worse, all a bad actor would need to figure out those web addresses is the serial number of your camera.
Even worse, a bad actor could get that serial number simply by holding down your doorbell button for eight seconds, then re-pairing your camera with their account in the Aiwit smartphone app. And until you take control of your own camera again, they’ll get video and audio as well.
Worse still, that bad actor could then share those serial numbers with anyone else on the internet. Consumer Reports tells us that once the serial number is out in the wild, a bad actor can write a script that would just keep downloading any new images generated by the camera.
Image: Eken
“Your privacy is something that we value as much as you do,” reads Eken’s video doorbell website.
I guess you could say “Well, these cameras only face outdoors and I don’t care about that,” but Eken advertises indoor-facing cameras as well. (Consumer Reports tells us it hasn’t tested other Eken models yet.) I also really don’t want bad actors to know exactly when I leave my home.
You might say “Ah, this isn’t a big threat because a bad actor needs local access to the camera” — but that assumes they can’t figure out a way to randomly hit upon working serial numbers, or recruit porch pirates to canvas neighborhoods. At least the serial numbers seem to be randomized, not incremental, Consumer Reports tells us.
You also might say “Won’t Eken just stop hosting these images at freely accessible URLs?” That’d be good, but it apparently couldn’t be bothered to respond to Consumer Reports’ requests for comment.
Do the Aiwit servers do anything at all to prevent hackers from just randomly trying URLs until they find images from people’s cameras? If so, Consumer Reports hasn’t seen it yet.
“I have made tens of thousands of requests without any defense mechanisms triggering,” Consumer Reports’ privacy and security engineer Steve Blair tells The Verge via a spokesperson. “In fact, I was purposely noisy (hundreds of requests at once, from a single IP/source, repeated every couple of minutes) to try to determine if any defenses were present. I did not see any limitations.”
At least Consumer Reports isn’t yet suggesting this has been exploited in the wild.
We didn’t independently confirm these flaws, but we did read through the vulnerability reports that CR shared with Eken and another brand named Tuck. And it wouldn’t be the first time a “security” camera company has neglected basic security practices and misled customers.
Image: Eken
Eken sells a wide variety of video doorbells under an even wider variety of brands. Consumer Reports points out that the buttons and sensor spacing are similar, though.
But the Eken vulnerability might even be worse, because it sounds far easier to exploit, and because they’re white-labeled under so many different brands that it’s harder to protest or police.
Consumer Reports says that even after Temu pulled some of the worrying doorbells, it kept selling others — and that as of late February, despite its warnings to retailers, most of the products it found were still on sale.
Now it’s the Galaxy Z Flip 6’s turn to leak in unofficial renders
Unofficial renders of what the Z Flip 6 could look like. | Image: OnLeaks / SmartPrix
While the overall form-factor of the device is similar to last year’s Z Flip 5, including a 6.7-inch inner folding display and 3.4-inch cover screen, SmartPrix reports that its thickness could increase from 6.9mm to 7.4mm, prompting speculation about what the extra internal space could be used for. The front-running theory comes from a GalaxyClub report from last year, which said the Z Flip 6’s battery capacity could increase from 3,700mAh to 4,000mAh. It’s a move that could (hopefully) address the so-so battery life we experienced on the Z Flip 5.
Good Morning #FutureSquad! Another day, another leak with your very first look at the #Samsung#GalaxyZFlip6 (360° video + sharp 5K renders + dimensions)!
Other specs include a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and a return of the dual camera setup from last year. SmartPrix reports that they’ll once again both have 12-megapixel resolutions. GalaxyClub earlier reported that Samsung was testing the inclusion of a 50-megapixel main camera in the Z Flip 6, but it’s unclear if it’ll make it to the final device. Available colors include light purple and mint green.
Although it’s impossible to tell from the renders, you have to imagine that Samsung’s suite of Galaxy AI features is going to make an appearance on its upcoming foldables. What’s less clear is whether there’ll be any new AI tools, or whether the features will be similar to what we saw on the Galaxy S24.
X adds live video to Spaces instead of bringing back Periscope
Illustration: The Verge
Spaces, the live audio feature for X, is now letting hosts turn on their video during chat sessions. The platform formerly known as Twitter announced the news on Wednesday as owner / CTO Elon Musk reposted a walkthrough from a user named "Dogedesigner."
Spaces users will notice a new option to “enable video” when they first create a new Spaces session. Hosts can opt for either their phone’s front or back-facing cameras as well as either a landscape or vertical view of their video feed.
The Video Spaces are available on the iOS version of the X app, but we haven’t seen them available on Android or the web yet. Multiple users reported significant lag while trying out the feature so far.
Right now, only hosts have the ability to turn on video. The end result is a prominent display of the host’s video feed, which is then surrounded by icons of co-hosts, speakers, and any listeners. At first glance, it’s an environment that resembles Twitch — expect for the fact that any selected audience members can chime in at any minute. A host’s video feed also only lives inside a Spaces session, so users will have to join the session in order to tune in.
When Elon Musk announced that Spaces would get video late last year, his description of it sounded closer to a videoconferencing app or video call app like FaceTime, where the video feed switches to whoever is currently speaking.
But for now, a typical Spaces with video session prominently features the host’s video feed, which is surrounded by the smaller icons of any other speakers, co-hosts, or listeners in the room. It’s not exactly like Twitch since anyone you give permission to can speak back to you, but it does turn the host into the main event in a similar fashion.
The new video integration of X Spaces is separate from the platform’s existing live broadcast feature, which lets users directly livestream video. Spaces functions as a live chatroom, where multiple users can tune in and speak. In contrast, the audience in a typical live broadcast can only comment or send hearts.
Behind Apple’s Doomed Car Project: False Starts and Wrong Turns Internal disagreements over the direction of the Apple car led the effort to sputter for years before it was canceled this week.
Google CEO says Gemini AI diversity errors are ‘completely unacceptable’
Google CEO Sundar Pichai. | Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
The historically inaccurate images and text generated by Google’s Gemini AI have “offended our users and shown bias,” CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in an internal memo obtained by The Verge.
Last week, Google paused Gemini’s ability to generate images after it was widely discovered that the model generated racially diverse, Nazi-era German soldiers, US Founding Fathers who were non-white, and even inaccurately portrayed the races of Google’s own co-founders. While Google has since apologized for “missing the mark” and said it’s working to re-enable image generation in the coming weeks, Tuesday’s memo is the first time the CEO has widely addressed the controversy.
In the memo, which was first reported by Semafor, Pichai says the company has “been working around the clock” to address “problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app.” He doesn’t says that Google has fixed the problem. “No Al is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes,” he writes.
You can read Sundar Pichai’s full memo to Google employees below:
Hi everyone
I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app (formerly Bard). I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias — to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.
Our teams have been working around the clock to address these issues. We’re already seeing a substantial improvement on a wide range of prompts. No Al is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry’s development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we’ll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.
Our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful is sacrosanct. We’ve always sought to give users helpful, accurate, and unbiased information in our products. That’s why people trust them. This has to be our approach for all our products, including our emerging Al products.
We’ll be driving a clear set of actions, including structural changes, updated product guidelines, improved launch processes, robust evals and red-teaming, and technical recommendations. We are looking across all of this and will make the necessary changes.
Even as we learn from what went wrong here, we should also build on the product and technical announcements we’ve made in Al over the last several weeks. That includes some foundational advances in our underlying models e.g. our 1 million long-context window breakthrough and our open models, both of which have been well received.
We know what it takes to create great products that are used and beloved by billions of people and businesses, and with our infrastructure and research expertise we have an incredible springboard for the Al wave. Let’s focus on what matters most: building helpful products that are deserving of our users’ trust.
Amazon’s Road House reboot is accused of copyright infringement — and AI voice cloning
Amazon MGM Studios
The screenwriter of the 1989 action film Road House is suing MGM Studios and its owner Amazon Studios, accusing them of copyright infringement over the upcoming Road House remake, report the Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Reporter. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the U.S. Central District Court in Los Angeles, also alleges that Amazon Studios resorted to generative AI to clone actor’s voices in order to finish the Road House remake during last year’s Hollywood strikes, which largely shut down film production.
In the complaint, screenwriter R. Lance Hill reportedly states that he filed a petition with the US Copyright Office in November 2021 to reclaim the rights for the screenplay (which both the original Road House and Amazon Studios reboot is based on). At that point, Amazon would have owned the rights to Road House due to the tech giant’s acquisition of MGM’s film library, but the tech giant’s claim on the work was set to expire in November 2023.
But according to THR, Hill’s original deal with United Artists (which secured the rights to the 1986 screenplay before being later acquired by MGM Studios) is defined as a “work-made-for-hire”. The term, according to the US Copyright Office, means that party that hired an individual to create work is both the owner and copyright holder of that work.
Hill alleges that the work-for-hire clause was merely boilerplate, and that Amazon ignored his copyright claims and rushed production of the remake, even taking “extreme measures” such as using generative AI. The lawsuit is seeking a court order to block the release of the film, which is scheduled to premiere on the opening night of SXSW on March 8th and stream on Prime Video on March 21st.
Amazon MGM Studios categorically denied using AI to replace or recreate actors’ voices in statements to The Verge, with spokesperson Jenna Klein telling us that “the studio expressly instructed the filmmakers to NOT use AI in this movie.”
“If at any time AI was utilized, it would have been by the filmmakers (while editing early cuts of the film) and not the studio as they controlled the editorial,” Klein wrote, adding that filmmakers were instructed to remove any “AI or non-SAG AFTRA actors” when finishing the film.
Amazon also said that “numerous allegations” in the lawsuit are “categorically false,” and that the company doesn’t believe its copyright has effectively expired on Road House.
Eufy’s new 360-degree 4K camera doesn’t need Wi-Fi or power outlets
Eufy
Anker’s Eufy brand has started shipping a new 4K security camera that should offer 360-degree views, panning 344 degrees and tilting up to 70 degrees. It could also run indefinitely without wired internet or power.
That’s because in addition to Wi-Fi, the $249.99 Eufy 4G LTE Cam S330 can connect to nearby LTE towers instead, and comes with a detachable solar panel that supposedly needs just two hours under the sun to keep the 36.2Wh battery charged. Since the battery also lasts up to a month on a full charge, according to Anker, it could keep going even through the rainy season.
On paper, the S330 seems to address many of the pain points we encountered with earlier LTE-capable cameras from both Eufy and Arlo for around the same starting cost. While you could totally mount it inside or outside your primary residence for wire-free security, the design and functionality could make it even more ideal for remote areas on your property — perhaps at the far corner of a garden, a nearby storage shed, or other areas Wi-Fi won’t reach. Aiding that venture, Eufy suggests it can withstand harsh temperatures and elements hot or cold (-4 to 122 degree Fahrenheit).
It builds on the Eufy Starlight by including an EIOTClub SIM card that should automatically hop between Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, depending on whichever is serving up the strongest LTE signal. That functionality carries an ongoing fee of $19.90 per 2GB or $139.99 per 24GB after you’ve used up 100MB of trial data, but you can also use your own SIM. Eufy estimates it’ll eat about 700MB of data per month, assuming you don’t have an extraordinary barrage of traffic constantly triggering recordings.
Image: Eufy
The 4K camera offers 8x zoom and uses activity zones with AI-powered vehicle and human detection to cut back on false alarms from critters and other incidental activity. There’s also an integrated 100-lumen spotlight surrounding the sensor that can illuminate areas up to 26 feet away. Rounding out its security features are two-way audio and the ability to sound an alarm, all controllable through the mobile app and with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice control.
You can save up to eight months of recordings locally to the included 32GB microSD card (the camera supports up to 128GB cards), but the S330 sadly doesn’t cooperate with third-party NAS devices. It’s usable with Eufy’s $149.99 HomeBase 3 S380, however, which supports up to 16TB of storage and enables facial recognition. The only catch for such privilege is that it requires you to stay in Wi-Fi mode. It’s also worth noting that you can only switch between LTE and Wi-Fi manually using the app, so you can’t rely on it as an automatic failsafe.
Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu for ‘facilitating piracy at a colossal scale’
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
If you’ve ever seen a Steam Deck playing a Legend of Zelda game, chances are you were seeing the Yuzu emulator at work. Now, Nintendo has sued the developers of Yuzu in US federal court, with the intent of squashing Yuzu for good.
In the lawsuit, spotted by Stephen Totilo, Nintendo alleges that Yuzu violates the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as accusing the creators of copyright infringement. It alleges Yuzu is “primarily designed” to circumvent several layers of Nintendo Switch encryption so its users can play copyrighted Nintendo games.
The company’s not only asking for the courts to stop Yuzu in its tracks with a permanent injunction. It also wants to take away its domain names, URLs, chatrooms, and social media presence; hand yuzu-emu.org over to Nintendo; and even seize and destroy its hard drives to help wipe out the emulator. Oh, and Nintendo wants lots of money in damages as well.
Aren’t emulators legal? Well... yes and no. While there’s legal precedent that suggests it’s okay to reverse engineer a console and develop an emulator that uses none of the company’s source code, those cases are roughly a quarter of a century old or more — it gets trickier when we’re talking about multiple layers of modern encryption and the copyrighted BIOSes that Yuzu and other modern emulators require to run.
The Dolphin Emulator for Nintendo Wii and GameCube got in enough hot water to abandon its plan to launch on Steam, when it was revealed that Dolphin ships with Nintendo’s Wii common key to help circumvent the copyright protection on Wii games. (Dolphin maintains that including that key is legal.)
Nintendo doesn’t allege that Yuzu includes any such keys, though. Yuzu takes a bring-your-own-BIOS approach, expecting users to either lift their own BIOSes and keys off a hacked Nintendo Switch (using a loophole that Nintendo eliminated in newer models), or more likely download a pirated one.
So instead, Nintendo’s arguing that Yuzu is knowingly “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.”
As you’ll see in the full complaint below, Nintendo suggests that Yuzu is facilitating that piracy in myriad ways, including providing “detailed instructions” on how to “get it running with unlawful copies of Nintendo Switch games,” testing thousands of official Nintendo Switch games to verify their compatibility, and linking to websites that help users “obtain and further distribute the prod.keys.” Nintendo also says the developers have clearly extracted Nintendo Switch games themselves, bypassing encryption, in order to test their own emulator.
Image: Nintendo lawsuit
Nintendo points out in its complaint that Yuzu advertises compatibility with specific copyrighted Nintendo games like Xenoblade.
If Nintendo can prove that Yuzu is “primarily designed” to give people access to official Nintendo Switch games and has no other real use, Yuzu would indeed be in trouble. DMCA Section 1201(a)(2) bans products “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access” to a copyrighted work. It’s the same provision that game archivists have struggled with for years.
“The important thing is that Nintendo is bringing the case as a DMCA circumvention claim,” says Richard Hoeg, a business attorney who hosts the Virtual Legality podcast. He tells me that that while emulators are broadly legal if engineered “correctly,” the DMCA also lets Nintendo focus on whether the emulator was only designed to break Nintendo’s control over its games.
“There is a real chance for them to win as the court ‘tests’ things like the effectiveness of the measure and just how the emulator was created,” Hoeg says.
Nintendo suggests in its complaint that it may have actually been damaged by Yuzu, too, alleging that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was illegally downloaded over a million times in early May 2023, while Yuzu’s Patreon membership doubled during that same period.
Legal emulation or no, Yuzu may not want to risk finding out in a court of law. Many small bands of developers have axed their projects after being approached by Nintendo, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Yuzu settled. “I’d say the claim here is enough to get a reasonable emulator company to cease, desist, and settle claims,” says Hoeg. “But remember that this is only one side of the story at present.”
Yuzu didn’t immediately respond to requests for its side of the story on Discord and via email. The team released Yuzu for Android last May.
Stardew Valley is getting a massive March game content update
The 1.6 update will be available for macOS, Windows, and Linux on March 19th. | Image: ConcernedApe
Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone — better known as ConcernedApe — has revealed when players can expect the next major update to drop, adding fresh content and expanded multiplayer options to the game. Announced on Monday in line with Stardew Valley’s eighth anniversary, update 1.6 will be available for PC (Windows/macOS/Linux) players on March 19th, with console and mobile to follow “as soon as possible.”
We have some idea of what content is coming thanks to a “sneak peak” that ConcernedApe shared back in September. This includes three unnamed festivals — one “major” and two “mini” — alongside new items, crafting recipes, rewards for billboard quests, and late-game content that expands each of the five skills: farming, fishing, mining, foraging, and combat. Over 100 new lines of dialogue are being added for the local villagers, as are some trendy winter outfits (which will presumably be donned during the game’s chillier season).
Image: ConcernedApeThe developmental sneak peek for the 1.6 update teases additions like frogs, new Warp Totems, and...a shady lil’ guy.
Players can also expect some Joja-themed alternatives for some of the end-game quests and a new farm type which hasn’t been disclosed yet. Other vagueries such as “new secrets” and “small additions” have also been teased, but we’ll need to wait for the full patch notes for more details on that. Finally, multiplayer support for PC is being expanded from four to eight players, allowing you to drag more farmhands (or friends) to help build your virtual homestead.
It’s no small feat to keep providing a game’s fanbase with new content for almost a decade, especially for one that started out as a solo project. The incoming 1.6 update for Stardew Valley will hopefully be enough to sate our appetites until ConcernedApe announces a release date for his highly anticipated second game, Haunted Chocolatier.
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