Neuralink video shows patient using brain implant to play chess on laptop
Neuralink’s N1 implant. | Image: Neuralink
Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company has released a video purporting to show the first human patient using Neuralink’s brain implant to control a mouse cursor and play a game of chess.
The patient, identified as 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, said he was injured in a diving accident eight years ago that paralyzed him below the shoulders. Arbaugh describes using the Neuralink implant as like using the Force from the Star Wars franchise, allowing him to “just stare somewhere on the screen” and move the cursor where he wants.
The video marks the first time Neuralink has shared footage of a human using its brain implant, after Musk announced in January that the first trial participant was “recovering well” after having the technology implanted. It comes a little under three years after the company released a video that showed a monkey controlling an on-screen cursor to play Pong using the technology.
This kind of control via a brain-computer interface isn’t entirely new; The Wall Street Journal notes that in 2004 a paralyzed person was also able to move a cursor thanks to help from a brain-computer interface. But this earlier iteration of the technology wasn’t able to transmit data wirelessly like Neuralink, and relied on wires protruding through the skin. The fact that Arbaugh was able to hold a conversation while moving the cursor is also notable, according to the WSJ.
“It’s certainly a good starting point,” Wisconsin Institute for Translational Neuroengineering co-director Kip Ludwig tells Reuters. However, he denied that the demo represents a “breakthrough.” Other companies like BlackRock and Synchron have also demonstrated how paralyzed patients can use brain-computer interfaces to control electronic devices, though Synchron’s less-invasive approach may not be able to gather as much neural data, according to the WSJ. Paradromics and Precision Neuroscience are also working on brain implants to compete with Neuralink.
Neuralink has been criticized for the way it’s conducted its trials, with critics pointing towards a lack of transparency around elements like the number of subjects or what outcomes it’s assessing, Wired notes. The company’s previous experiments on monkeys have also been the subject of controversy, including reports that animals involved in the trials had to be euthanized after suffering complications including brain bleeds, “bloody diarrhea, partial paralysis, and cerebral edema.”
Although Neuralink is initially being pitched as an assistive technology, Musk has said he eventually wants it to be implanted into perfectly healthy people to enhance their capabilities. But that’s still a long ways off.
Arbaugh admitted that “there’s still a lot of work to be done” and that the team “have run into some issues.” But he also says that the implant “has already changed my life.”
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Meta just showed off Threads’ fediverse integration for the very first time
Illustration: The Verge
Threads is coming to the fediverse — and we just got our first official look at how that might work from Meta itself. During the FediForum conference on Tuesday, Meta’s Peter Cottle showed off a brief demo of how users will eventually be able to connect their accounts and posts to the fediverse. The integration will let users share their posts across different platforms through Threads, letting them reach multiple audiences at once. Meta is just one of the many platforms aiming to join the fediverse, a group of decentralized social networks aiming to become interoperable with one another.
As you can see in the video below, which FediForum shared with The Verge, Cottle can navigate to his Threads account settings and toggle on an option called “fediverse sharing.” Meta will then show a pop-up explaining what exactly the fediverse is, along with some disclaimers Meta will flag to users so they know what they’re getting into.
First, Meta notes that users will need to have a public profile to toggle on the feature, something Instagram head Adam Mosseri has already mentioned. Users in the current alpha test also can’t view replies to their posts and can only see the likes they get. Cottle says Meta is working “super hard” on changing that.
Additionally, Meta warns that Threads can’t “guarantee” that a post gets deleted on other linked platforms if a user decides to delete it on Threads. In other words, your post may still be visible on, say, a linked Mastodon server, even if you decide to delete it with Threads.
“I think this is a downside of the protocol that we use today, but I think it’s important to let people know that if you post something and another server grabs a copy, we can’t necessarily enforce it,” Cottle says.
Once fediverse sharing is enabled, users will be able to post to other services that interoperate through ActivityPub. Cottle says Threads will “wait five minutes” before sending posts out into the fediverse, during which users have a chance to edit or delete their post. If a Threads user has fediverse sharing enabled, their profiles will display a “pill” icon that other users can click into to copy their fediverse usernames.
“I know there’s a ton of skepticism about Meta entering the fediverse — it’s completely understandable,” Cottle says. “I do want to kind of make a plea that I think everyone on the team has really good intentions. We really want to be a good member of the community and give people the ability to experience what the fediverse is.”
The FediForum is an online event that gives developers the opportunity to show off what they’re working on in the fediverse. “It’s good for them, and it’s good for the rest of us to see what they’re up to,” Johannes Ernst, one of FediForum’s co-founders, tells The Verge. “They’re being transparent about what they’re building and why.”
Threads started testing an ActivityPub integration last year, and Mosseri suggested last December that Threads’ plans for the fediverse could take “the better part of a year” to pan out. Earlier this month, Threads gave Evan Prodromou, one of the creators of the ActivityPub protocol, the ability to post on both Threads and Mastodon. Threads also plans on letting users follow non-Threads fediverse accounts and letting creators take their followers with them to another platform.
The Google Pixel 8A may get a brighter, 120Hz display
Image: OnLeaks / Smartprix
Google’s Pixel 8A may have a 120Hz display — up from 90Hz in the Pixel 7A — and a brighter screen, according to Kamila Wojciechowska, whose past leaks have included videos of the pre-release Pixel Fold.
Google’s I/O 2024 conference is set for May 14th, when the company will likely talk a lot about AI again. That’s also probably where the company will announce the Pixel 8A.
Writing for Android Authority, Wojciechowska says this next entry in the line of budget Pixel phones will feature 1,400 nits of peak brightness, up from the 7A’s 1,000 nits, and limited support for DisplayPort output via USB-C. Those may both be improvements over its predecessor, but if this leak is accurate, it won’t follow the 7A’s lead with a better camera system than the Pixel 8, as it says Google is carrying over last year’s cameras to the 8A, instead.
Past leakshave suggested the Pixel 8A will get the updated, rounded corners of the Pixel 8, the Tensor G3 chip, and that it will continue to be a 6.1-inch phone like the 7A, all of which Wojciechowska’s leak corroborates today. Taken together, all of these rumored changes could make the Pixel 8A feel a lot more like a smaller (or, as some would say, correctly sized) and cheaper version of the Pixel 8, just with a nice discount.
Google gave the Pixel 8 access to fewer AI features than the Pixel 8 Pro. Wojciechowska says the Tensor G3 in the new 8A will be slightly thicker and hotter than the G3 that drives the Pixel 8, so the big question is how many AI features will be open to owners of the cheaper phone.
Ad-free Facebook might get way cheaper to appease EU regulators
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta says it’s offered to reduce the price of its ad-free subscription for Instagram and Facebook in Europe to address regulatory concerns, Reuters reports. Speaking in a hearing with the European Commission, Meta lawyer Tim Lamb said the company has “offered to drop the price from €9.99 to €5.99 for a single account and €4 for any additional accounts” in its discussion with privacy regulators in an attempt to “get to a steady state.”
Lamb said €5.99 is “by far the lowest end of the range that any reasonable person should be paying for services of this quality” and hoped that the “regulatory uncertainty” will “settle down quickly.” It reportedly made the offer to cut its prices to data protection authorities earlier this year.
The company launched its ad-free subscription last November after European Union regulators challenged the legal basis for its collection and processing of user data. Meta hoped that this “Subscription for no ads” program would allow it to effectively get consent to process user data under the EU’s GDPR rules as well as the Digital Markets Act. The subscription is available in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.
But the paid tier was quickly the subject of complaints from consumer groups, who’ve attacked the measure as a “pay-or-consent” smokescreen. “Meta’s offer to consumers is smoke and mirrors to cover up what is, at its core, the same old hoovering up of all kinds of sensitive information about people’s lives which it then monetises through its invasive advertising model,” the European Consumer Organisation’s (BEUC) deputy director general, Ursula Pachl, said in a statement in February.
Eight consumer groups from the BEUC’s network filed complaints with their respective national data protection authorities accusing Meta of not complying with the GDPR. The group said Meta doesn’t have a “valid legal basis” to justify its data collection and that “the choice it imposes on its users can not lead to their freely given and informed consent.”
It’s unclear whether simply lowering the price of this monthly subscription will address these privacy concerns. Although privacy rights group NOYB attacked the cost of the subscription for being “way out of proportion” to the value Meta gets from tracking EU users, other groups have more structural complaints with the way the subscription has been implemented. BEUC, which serves as an umbrella group of 45 consumer organizations, has called for Meta to give consumers more time to think about their choice, for example, and to be more transparent about which data is collected under the paid option.
From Russia, Elaborate Tales of Fake Journalists As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online to discredit Ukraine’s leader and undercut aid. Some have a Hollywood-style plot twist.
Steam streamlines its family sharing features
Image: The Verge
Today, Steam launched Steam Families, an overhaul of its family sharing system. The new system gets rid of limits on how many people can play games from one library, makes buying games for your kids easier, and adds new parental controls and sharing options.
Before, you needed to use two different systems — Family Sharing and Family View — if you wanted to share your library but limit which games your kids could play. Also under the old approach, only one person at a time could play a game from another’s library. Now — to use Steam’s example — if you’re playing your copy of Portal 2 and someone else wants to play Half-Life from your library, that’s fine. They’ll only be booted if you start up Portal 2 while they’re playing it from your library. That’s right — they can’t earn your cake and eat it, too. (I hope this Portal reference is satisfactory.)
Image: Valve
Set up Steam Family Sharing under Family Management.
You’ll need to be in the beta program to try it, which you can do by visiting Settings > Interface > Client Beta Participation and selecting “Steam Family Beta.” Then, to create a family, go to the Store page, click your account, then Account details > Family Management > Create a Family.
Accounts can share a library with five other family members, just as before, but there’s no mention of limits to the number of devices you can authorize. (It was capped at 10 before.) Offline play is supported now, too, whereas the previous sharing scheme required you to be online to play games from someone else’s library.
Image: Valve
Here’s what a shared library might look like.
Doing parent stuff is also easier, and not just because you now can manage kids’ access to specific games, monitor their play time, and set time-based restrictions. You won’t have to go through the rigamarole of buying a gift card or handing off your credit card to buy your kid a game anymore — you just approve their request for a game, and your account is charged for it.
A note of caution, though: the new system is region-locked, so if you’ve been sharing with someone in another country, you might not be able to continue doing so. And if someone leaves your family, they can’t join or start another one for a full year.
Steam says developers have to approve their titles for family sharing, while others, like free-to-play games or those requiring third-party keys, accounts, or subscriptions, can’t be shared.
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On March 11th, Elon Musk said xAI would open source its AI chatbot Grok, and now an open release is available on GitHub. This will allow researchers and developers to build on the model and impact how xAI updates Grok in the future as it competes with rival tech from OpenAI, Meta, Google, and others.
A company blog post explains that this open release includes the “base model weights and network architecture” of the “314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model, Grok-1.” It continues saying the model is from a checkpoint last October and hasn’t undergone fine-tuning “for any specific application, such as dialogue.”
As VentureBeat notes, it’s being released under the Apache 2.0 license that enables commercial use but doesn’t include the data used to train it or connections to X for real-time data. xAI said in a November 2023 post that the LLM Grok was “developed over the last four months” and is targeted for uses around coding generation, creative writing, and answering questions.
After Musk bought Twitter (now X), the code behind its algorithms was eventually released, and Musk has openly criticized companies that don’t open-source their AI model. That includes OpenAI, which he helped found but is now suing, alleging the company breached an original founding agreement that it would be open source.
Companies have released open-source or limited open-source models to get feedback from other researchers on how to improve them. While there are many fully open-source AI foundation models like Mistral and Falcon, the most widely used models are either closed-sourced or offer a limited open license. Meta’s Llama 2, for example, gives its research away for free but makes customers with 700 million daily users pay a fee and won’t let developers iterate on top of Llama 2.
When the Grok chatbot launched, accessing it required an X subscription (aka a paid blue check). Grok’s pitch was to be a more irreverent, up-to-date chatbot alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Instead, in our early testing, it was unfunny and lacked anything that could help it stand out against the more powerful and advanced chatbots available elsewhere.
here's your DEEP DIVE into @grok's architecture!
I just went through the https://t.co/8Y5cjeImg6, for this 314B open source behemoth with *no strings attached*.
Elon Musk to Open Source Grok Chatbot in Latest AI War Escalation Mr. Musk’s move to open up the code behind Grok is the latest volley in a war to win the A.I. battle, after a suit against OpenAI on the same topic.
A better way to find stuff to watch
Cath Virginia / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 30, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome. So psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you a new AI productivity tool, a great way to find stuff to watch, some new shows about old events, and a deep dive into the collapse of the Apple Car. Let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What app are you obsessed with right now? What show can you not stop talking about? What game is burning all your controller batteries this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
Likewise. I’ve been a fan of Likewise as a show and movie and podcast recommender for a while, and the app just got a redesign I really like. It’s extremely just TikTok, but it kind of works — you just scroll from title to title and trailer to trailer until you find something you like.
The Apple Car - A $10 Billion Failure. There’s been a lot of great reporting about what happened to Apple’s car project, and this is a great summary. It also makes a pretty good case that, actually, the things that make Apple Apple are exactly the reasons it was never going to win in the car biz.
Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War. We all rewatched Oppenheimer this week after its big Oscar win, right? If not, go do that, it’s on Peacock. But if you’re looking for some more, this Netflix series is it: a deep dive into how the Cold War started, and whether it ever actually ended.
Proton Mail for desktop. I’m pretty ready to call Proton the best non-Gmail email service on the internet. (Gmail’s not even that great, it’s just… it’s Gmail.) The new Mac and Windows apps include both mail and calendar, and it’s silly they don’t work offline yet, but that’s apparently coming soon.
The Dyson 360 Vis Nav. A $1,200 robot vacuum seems silly, in the way that Dyson’s prices always seem silly, but they do seem to be worth it a lot. Early looks at this one seem sort of split on whether it’s worth the price, but its mega power and apparent skill with corners is pretty enticing.
Evernote. I never, ever thought I’d mention Evernote here — the app seemed to be on a slow road to nothingness. But under new ownership, it’s kind of on a tear? It got Outlook calendar integration this week, plus some handy new formatting stuff (I lovecollapsible headers in long notes), and suddenly I’m tempted back to an app I once left for dead.
Manhunt. A seven-part miniseries about the epic hunt for Abraham Lincoln’s killer? (Which, fun fact, apparently took place in part in the neighborhood where my wife grew up, but that’s not the point?) I’m here for it. I need to read the book it’s based on, too, which I’m told is terrific.
Dola. I have long extolled the virtues of text messaging as a productivity tool. This is a really clever (and surprisingly powerful) version of that: an AI assistant that communicates through text messages, that can set reminders, make calendar events, and more. I’ve been using it for one-off reminders all week, and it works great.
Ozone on Bluesky. This is the fediverse stuff that gets me excited: the Bluesky team is open-sourcing its moderation tool, so that anyone can build their own moderation systems and users can use whichever one they want. And it all gets integrated right into Bluesky.
Screen share
Michael Fisher goes by many names. Michael Fisher is one of them. But he’s also MrMobile, and Captain2Phones, and — this is my personal nickname for him — The World’s Only Remaining Fan of The Palm Pre. He’s also, as of recently, the co-founder of a nifty new keyboard case for iPhone called Clicks.
Michael and I recently had a long, fun chat about keyboards, which is coming to a Vergecast feed near you very soon. But I also asked him to share his homescreen, because, I mean, there aren’t many people on Earth who have had as many homescreens as he has. I secretly hoped he’d send me 12 screenshots and just say, like, “Sorry, these are all my daily drivers.”
Alas, all I got was one. But it’s a fun one. Here’s Michael’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: Google Pixel Fold. Thirteen years of reviewing smartphones has cursed me with an unquenchable thirst for novelty, so I switch devices constantly even when I don’t need to — but I find the Pixel Fold never gets far from my daily rotation. Turns out a digital Moleskine is quite a comforting thing to carry, at least for tech nerds of a certain age.
The wallpaper: I’ll be honest: when Google briefed me on its emoji wallpaper last year, I rolled my eyes. But having a bunch of icons representing your interests splayed out in a pleasing pattern on the screen you see the most? Turns out it’s pretty cool! (Also, I like how it “breathes” when I tap it.)
The apps: Phone, Google Voice, NYC Ferry, Instagram, Gmail, Reddit, Todoist, Slack, Food Bazaar.
One of the things I adore about large-format foldables is all the space they afford me to just... spread out. So my choice of layout is more notable than my list of apps, which I’ve clustered into five folders for two-tap access whether the phone is open or closed. Alongside those, an anchor row of apps that used to be critical core features... but as I write this, I realize how little I actually use the dialer or Google Voice (my SMS solution since it was called GrandCentral before Google scooped it up). Habit is a helluva drug.
Another thing I’ve spent too long doing: letting phones try to guess which apps I might want to use at any given time. That’s the bottom row there, and Google’s done a pretty good job of suggesting, on this Monday midafternoon, a mix of productivity and messaging apps. I generally save my Reddit sessions until after bedtime, and I’ve never used my local grocery store app before sundown, so those are oddballs... but I still appreciate the suggestions that do make sense.
I will shout out one app: NYC Ferry, which lets me navigate my fair city by sea instead of subway. If you live in New York City and you don’t use the ferry, I genuinely don’t know what you’re doing. (Bonus: they let local elementary schoolers name all the boats, so you’re whisked to and fro by vessels bearing legends like “Tooth Ferry” and “Lunchbox.” It’s the best.)
Finally: I’m big on glanceable info, so I use a trio of widgets to make sure I’m getting useful data the second I open my phone. All three are from Google: Calendar for my schedule, Weather for whether I need an umbrella, and At A Glance to give me reminders about stuff I might have missed on the other two.
I also asked Michael to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he said:
In preparing for a recent episode of the Living In The Futurepodcast, I watched the classic science-fiction film Outland. A 1981 Sean Connery playing a federal SPACE MARSHAL! Sent to tame a rough-and-tumble mining colony on one of Jupiter’s moons! Yes, it’s High Noon in space, but that’s the best kind of compliment — and what really puts it over the top is the production design, whose blend of Alien and Star Trek II is the purest form of cassette futurism.
Speaking of old stuff: I’ve recently fallen back in love with text adventures, the interactive fiction stories that first opened my eyes to computer gaming. Alter Ego was originally written for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and their contemporaries back in 1986 — and these days it’s playable as an app or in a browser. It allows you to live an entire human life, from birth to death, making choices to dictate your path along the way. Playing through a whole lifetime on my phone was surprisingly fulfilling and even at times profound (even if I died in the dumbest way possible, catching a pitch in a softball game).
Finally, out in the real world: I had my first experience at a cat cafe this weekend. If you’re not familiar: this is a cafe you can visit that — yes — is festooned with felines. It was a deeply necessary opportunity for me to get away from the digital world and reconnect with the natural one, and if you have a cat cafe near you, it’s the perfect activity for a rainy Saturday. You just need to be prepared for the overwhelming urge to adopt one — or two! — and by the time you read this, I may well have two fluffy new roommates as a result of my own visit! Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
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.
“I’m a week late, but I wanted to get a single point on the board for Pandora. The new music page highlights artists that match my tastes, and they still have a stupendous radio feature — hardly surprising considering they popularized it. Also, Pandora has a slight edge by keeping podcasts (a feature I do not use) tucked away out of sight, while Spotify loses points, like some people I know, for never shutting up about Joe Rogan, who clearly peaked in the 90’s on News Radio.” — Will
“New Pokémon TCG set coming next week, so prepping for that, as well as playing Pokémon Go, because well… I’m always playing Pokémon Go… always.” — Bobby
“One small stuff that completely changed the way I use my lockscreen on iOS… Random photos. When I realized that I can hand pick the photos super easily, apply cool filters and make them change randomly when I touch the screen, it became the best way to revive weekends, holidays or last night’s parties by featuring the five-to-ten best pictures on my lock screen. It’s so much more practical and fun than having to open the Photos app.” — Benoit
“More and more of my friends have been signing on to BeReal — wonder if any other friend groups are seeing this growth. Also, the app keeps trying to get you to view public profiles and I would like them to stop that.” — Wisdom
“The amazing Empty Fasting app that launched this week. One-time fee for a beautifully designed fasting app.” — Esteban
“I thought I’d throw in a great ‘audio products’ reviewer, Darko Audio. He has some good info and thoughts at the high end and some nerdy written content on streaming protocols. Personally, I’m a Spotify user since, as you say, it’s everywhere. I do feel pushed ever further away from Spotify with each software update that seems to chip away at what was a near perfect interface.” — David
“Bought a used, but excellent condition Pixel 7 Pro. After trade-in, $201. Wife recently got the same-condition iPhone 13. Makes you think about upgrade cycles. Also Zack from JerryRigEverything has left an impression on me regarding recycling tech and parts and whatnot.” – Omar
“It’s owl breeding season, and I’m back to watching live streams of nesting European eagle owls. In addition to being cute, the camera quality for bird cams is so much better than it was just a couple years ago. Tristan and Isolde on Cam 3 have a clutch of 4 eggs this year!” — Daniel
Over the last two weeks, my 15-month-old son has become a Train Kid. He wants to look at trains, make train noises, yell at the trains outside, walk by the train car outside the library whenever we go past. After months of just, like, watching Wiggles videos on repeat, trains are a terrific new trend.
And y’all: if you’re not already into TrainTube, you are missing out.Hours upon hours of beautifully shot videos of awesome-looking trains in beautiful locations. It’s peaceful, it’s surprisingly good background noise for working to, and there is nothing funnier to me than the fact that an hourlong video of trains has 107 million views — and according to the comments, most of them are toddlers. I love the internet.
US prosecutors are investigating how Meta platforms played a part in illegal drug sales
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Federal prosecutors asking questions about Meta are "looking into whether the company’s social-media platforms are facilitating and profiting from the illegal sale of drugs," according to unnamed sources in a report today by the Wall Street Journal. Prosecutors reportedly sent Meta subpoenas last year seeking records on “violative drug content on Meta’s platforms and/or the illicit sale of drugs via Meta’s platforms.”
A Meta spokesperson told the Journal that, “The sale of illicit drugs is against our policies and we work to find and remove this content from our services. Meta proactively cooperates with law enforcement authorities to help combat the sale and distribution of illicit drugs.”
The WSJ said TikTok did not respond when asked whether it has received any subpoenas.
Researchers who collected data about prescription drug ads on Facebook for the Journal in 2022 also said they received a subpoena. Meta didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.
As the Journal notes, Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg posted on Friday that the company has joined the Alliance to Prevent Drug Harms. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said during a session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs yesterday that the US and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime had begun “a new collaborative effort with Meta, Snap, and others to disrupt synthetic drug activity online.”
Bose’s noise-canceling QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are back at their lowest price
Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds drown out noise exceptionally well while delivering enjoyable sound. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Working from coffee shops can be great, but noisy neighbors can make it hard to focus. If you’re looking for a way to drown out the noise without being rude, the best noise-canceling earbuds have thankfully returned to their best price. Best Buy, Walmart, and Bose are all selling the BoseQuietComfort Ultra Earbuds for $249 ($50 off).
In addition to top-notch noise cancellation, the wireless earbuds sound great with a new immersive audio component. Bose also improved voice call performance, so you should have no problem making calls from cafes, while the transparency mode remains crystal clear. The buds are now designed to fit even more securely in your ears while retaining perks like IPX4 water resistance, so you don’t have to worry while wearing them commuting or working out. All in all, they’re an excellent pair of buds that’ll guarantee you some peace and quiet whenever and wherever, even if you do need to pay $50 to add wireless charging and will not get multipoint support.
If you’re looking for an affordable mobile gaming controller, you might consider giving Razer’s Kishi V2 a try. It has USB-C, meaning it works with Android devices of varying sizes, and the white Xbox Edition version is down to $79.99 at Woot ($70 off), which is one of its better prices to date.
While some of us at The Verge prefer the Backbone One controller for its slightly better build and inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone jack, the Kishi V2 is more than serviceable for mobile gaming, whether you’re streaming over services like Xbox Game Pass or racking up killstreaks in titles like Call of Duty: Mobile. The Razer Nexus app that syncs up with the Kishi may not be stellar, but it did get a sizable update last year that improved the UI, fixed a battery drain issue when left connected to an asleep Android phone, and allowed for virtual button remapping on Android.
More good deals to welcome the weekend
The latest Google Nest Thermostat is on sale for $99.99 ($30 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which is one of its better prices to date. The smart thermostat is a good basic thermostat with an energy-saving mode to help you save money on energy bills. Sadly, it doesn’t adapt to your habits, but it does support Matter, which means it’s compatible with Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, Google Assistant, and any other Matter-compatible platform. Read our review.
Those traveling out of the country for spring break can pick up the Epicka Universal Travel Adapter One for $19.99 ($4 off) at Amazon, which is about $2 shy of its all-time low price. The adapter charges electronics quickly, thanks to a USB-C port and four standard USB-A ports, while you can use it in over 150 countries.
Right now, 8BitDo’s Retro Mechanical Keyboard is down to its all-time low price of $84.99 ($15 off) at Amazon, while the Famicom-inspired Fami Edition is $79.99 ($20 off) at Woot. From the colors to the programmable “Super Buttons,” the NES-inspired keyboards look just like their ’90s console counterparts. The keyboard also features hot-swappable Kailh Box White V2 switches and multiple connectivity modes, with support for Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless via a dongle.
Google’s floodlight-equipped Nest Cam is down to $219.99 ($60 off) at Best Buy. This is the best floodlight camera to use with Google Assistant. Along with two bright adjustable floodlights, it comes with free video recording and smart alerts for people, vehicles, and animals.
TikTok Bill’s Progress Slows in the Senate Legislation to force TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned in the United States sailed through the House, but the Senate has no plans to move hastily.
How the House revived the TikTok ban before most of us noticed
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
An unusually fast process. A classified briefing. Phone lines clogged with teenagers “in near tears.” The bill, meant to force the sale of TikTok, passed by a landslide.
The US push to force TikTok to divorce from its Chinese parent company or else be banned entirely had faded from public discussion for almost a full year. In the course of just over a week, it jumped suddenly from the pile of forgotten ideas to getting halfway through the process of becoming enshrined in law.
But the road to the blockbuster vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday was months in the making. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and is a lead author of the bill, said he’d worked for eight months with colleagues including Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) to prepare it.
“The fact that we didn’t leak the content of those negotiations to the media, it’s just a function of how serious our members were,” Gallagher told a group of reporters after 352 members voted in favor of passing HR 7521, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (just 65 voted against it). “We had multiple iterations. We invited technical assistance from the White House, which improved the bill.”
The legislation is now heading to the Senate where it faces an uncertain future. But how did it get this far in the first place? The bill slid through an unusually fast process in Congress, and a classified hearing last Thursday may have been a major factor in convincing some representatives.
But the clincher was an in-app congressional call-in campaign that backfired spectacularly. When TikTok rolled out notifications to its users urging them to call their representatives, phone lines immediately became clogged across Capitol Hill. Congressional staffers told The Verge about the calls of “students in near tears” with the “chatter of the classroom behind them.”
”They’re flooding our offices, often from kids who are about as young as nine years old, their parents have no idea that they’re doing this, they’re calling in, and they’re basically saying things like, ‘What is Congress? What’s a congressman, can I have my TikTok back?’” Krishnamoorthi told The Verge.
“One person threatened self harm unless they got their TikTok. Another impersonated a member of Congress’ son, scaring the bejesus out of the congressman, by the way,” said Krishnamoorthi. “And this is exactly the kind of influence campaign which, in the hands of a foreign adversary in a moment of national peril, could sow chaos and discord and division in a way that could really harm our national security to the benefit of a foreign adversary.”
“I can’t tell you how many people had the ‘aha’ moment just because of that particular push notification,” Krishnamoorthi said.
The road to the ban
The new legislation is not the first time Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi have tried to ban or force a sale of TikTok. The pair introduced the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act alongside Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in late 2022, which would empower the president to ban social media companies from countries of concern, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
But that statute comes with legal hurdles, and Gallagher acknowledged after the vote Wednesday that approach “wasn’t the right bill.” HR 7521 takes a different approach, making it illegal for app stores or web hosts to distribute social media services that are “controlled by a foreign adversary.” It also gives covered companies six months to divest from the foreign adversary ownership or stake to remain in the US.
The authors worked with stakeholders and the White House and Department of Justice for months to address concerns — including concerns about whether the legislation could violate the constitution. Even after all the work, Krishnamoorthi told reporters that the 352 votes the bill received “was not predicted.”
“That’s a testament to the power of the bill and the concern about ByteDances’ ownership of TikTok,” he said.
Still, some members expressed concern about the speed with which the bill made its way to passage. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a member of the Select Committee on the CCP alongside Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi, voted against it and called the process “rushed” in a statement. “Congress needs to listen and work instead on a broader data privacy bill to address real concerns without a ban,” he said.
“It was a 12 page bill,” Gallagher said of the speed right after the vote. “I mean, it wasn’t like an omnibus that we just shoved in people’s faces. Even a member of Congress could read 12 pages in a matter of hours.”
TikTok’s ‘number one worst public relations stunt’
Apparently caught off guard by the bill’s introduction last week, TikTok scrambled to activate its enormous US user base to fight it. The app featured a full-screen prompt for users to enter their zip codes and receive the number for their congressperson to call and urge against a TikTok ban.
Lawmakers’ phones began ringing off the hook just ahead of the committee’s vote.
A Democratic staffer for an Energy and Commerce Committee member said their office had hardly seen lobbying engagement of any kind from TikTok since its CEO’s testimony last year. The onslaught of calls took them by surprise.
For four hours, the office’s four phone lines were constantly full, with others going to voicemail. Staffers would take turns handling the phones when others had to get up to use the bathroom.
“It was so bad we had to turn off the phones,” the staffer said.
The callers were also unusual as far as congressional call-in campaigns go, based on conversations with five congressional staffers who were not authorized to speak on the record about internal matters. For one, they didn’t seem to have any sort of script. Some would hang up soon after they realized they got through to a live person. And even stranger, most sounded extremely young. Several staffers who spoke to The Verge estimated that callers sounded like they were 14, 15 years old, and sometimes even younger. TikTok has said the notification went to users over 18.
“Kids at recess, kids at lunch,” the Democratic staffer said. “Some kids would pass the phone around … it was a total debacle.”
A senior staffer for a Democratic member on the House Intelligence Committee said their office had gotten calls of “students in near tears, ‘What are you doing, why are you taking TikTok away from me?”
“They’re in class calling our office, you can hear the classroom chatter happening behind them,” the senior staffer added.
After this staffer asked a caller to give their name to record their message, the young caller asked if they could leave their comment without giving out their information. The senior staffer recalled explaining that protecting the caller’s private information was exactly the point of the legislation they were calling about.
“I saw the lightbulb go off through the phone,” the senior staffer said.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), an E&C member, told The Verge her office had received about 200 calls on the legislation last Thursday but only about eight to ten had left any information. “When the others heard someone answer the phone, they hung up.”
“If that was their lobbying effort, it was a bust,” she said.
Rather than convincing lawmakers of the affection their constituents have for the app, it seemed to prove to politicians how much power TikTok has as a service with direct access to 170 million US users.
“This was a preview of what could happen if the CCP wanted to use the app to prevent Congress from acting, say, on a debate over authorizing force to defend Taiwan. Or removing China’s permanent normal trade relations status,” Gallagher told reporters after the vote. “The possibility for dangerous propaganda is too immense to allow one of our foremost adversaries to have this control over what is increasingly becoming the dominant news platform in America.”
But TikTok hasn’t seemed to convince many House members. “I think the full court press last week backfired,” Gallagher told reporters after the vote. “I think that actually proved the point to a lot of members who may have been on the fence before.”
“It was probably the number one worst public relations stunt that TikTok pulled,” Krishnamoorthi told The Verge. “That was kind of the secret, not-so-secret reason why, for instance, the House Energy and Commerce Committee had a number of lean-yeses on the day of the vote that became hell-yeses by the time of the vote.”
In a letter to Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi on Monday, TikTok’s vice president of public policy Michael Beckerman wrote, “It is offensive that you would complain about hearing from your constituents and seek to deny them of their constitutional rights. One would hope, as public servants, that you would be well acquainted with the constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Eshoo said she understands why TikTok users would be upset, but that as a member of Congress, she has to factor in other considerations, too.
“I doubt that TikTok’s 170 million users, I don’t think they’re concerned about our national security. That’s not something that they deal with day in, day out. They have their businesses, communications, and all of that with TikTok and they love it,” Eshoo said. “But if something presents a national security threat to the United States of America, I damn well better pay attention to that as a member of the Congress of the United States.”
A classified hearing
Members had access to classified briefings ahead of the vote to better understand the risks. For some members, these sessions seemed instrumental to their decisions to vote for the bill’s passage. Immediately before the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 50–0 to pass the legislation last Thursday, they heard from representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a classified hearing.
Eshoo, who noted she’s attended many intelligence briefings after spending about a decade on the House Intelligence Committee, called the one ahead of Thursday’s committee markup “excellent.” She said hearing from intelligence officials helped ease any concerns she might have otherwise had about the process. “If it was brought up without additional, updated briefing, I would have objected,” she said. “But it was, I thought, a very thorough briefing, layered over other briefings that we have had.”
Krishnamoorthi told The Verge that it wasn’t necessarily “any one single revelation” that made the classified briefings impactful. “I think that it’s probably the level of seriousness with which people addressed the topic. And the way it was done, which was not partisan in any way.” He added that the opportunity for lawmakers to have “candid conversations” with each other in a bipartisan, classified setting was also helpful.
Still, members who opposed the legislation said they either saw it as a rushed process or the wrong tool to fit the concerns. Notably, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of the members who opposed the bill. He said in a statement that, due to his position on the committee, “I have more insight than most into the online threats posed by our adversaries. But one of the key differences between us and those adversaries is the fact that they shut down newspapers, broadcast stations, and social media platforms. We do not. We trust our citizens to be worthy of their democracy. We do not trust our government to decide what information they may or may not see.”
Himes added that he believes “there is a way to address the challenge posed by TikTok that is consistent with our commitment to freedom of expression. But a bill quickly passed by one committee less than a week ago is not that way.”
E&C Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) also expressed concern about the speed of the process ahead of the committee’s classified hearing and vote last week. Pallone said he wanted to hear from the witnesses before making his decision. After emerging from the classified hearing, he joined the rest of his colleagues on the panel in voting for the legislation to pass. He later advocated for it on the floor before casting a vote in favor there, too.
The path ahead in the Senate
Now that the legislation’s fate is in the hands of the Senate, the process could slow down considerably. There’s not yet a companion bill in that chamber, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has not yet committed to a course of action besides reviewing the bill.
But the bill’s sponsors in the House are hopeful that Wednesday’s vote will send a message.
“The number we posted today, I think, makes it impossible for the Senate to ignore the effort,” Gallagher told reporters.
To move forward, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) will need to usher the legislation through her panel. But Cantwell has served as a roadblock to popular bipartisan tech legislation in the past. She was the only one of the “four corners” of the relevant committees (the top Republicans and Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Commerce Committee) to withhold support for the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, the most concrete and comprehensive piece of privacy legislation to reach such an advanced stage. It passed out of the House committee by a vote of 53–2 in 2022.
In a statement after the House vote on the TikTok bill, Cantwell said she’d try to find “a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties,” but did not necessarily commit to advancing that exact legislation.
“I’m very concerned about foreign adversaries’ exploitation of Americans’ sensitive data and their attempts to build backdoors in our information communication technology and services supply chains,” Cantwell said. “These are national security threats and it is good [that] members in both chambers are taking them seriously.”
Another potential speed bump is former President Donald Trump’s new opposition to a TikTok ban.
Trump surprised some by coming out against the TikTok bill last week, despite his own previous efforts during his time in office to ban the app. He said on Truth Social and CNBC that banning TikTok would only help Facebook, which he considers to be “an enemy of the people.”
Speaking with reporters after the vote, Gallagher tried to downplay Trump’s opposition. “If you actually read what Trump said, the goal of the bill is not to shut down TikTok and force its users onto Facebook. That would be a bad outcome,” he said. “So in that sense, I agree with what Trump said. But our bill allows for a divestiture.”
Gallagher also appealed to Trump’s ego and self-crafted image as a dealmaker, saying, “Trump may, if he gets reelected, have an opportunity to consummate the deal of the century.”
Ampler introduces an all-road electric bike alongside series refresh
Curt Anyroad in silver. | Image: Ampler
Ampler — one of our favorite European e-bike makers — is back with a 2024 model refresh that includes a new all-road variant of the sporty Curt.
The Curt Anyroad is available with either a high- or low-step frame, the latter being easier to step through when sitting on a fully loaded bike. Both are otherwise identical, offering wider tires, fork mounts for some light gear bags, and a new 10-speed pedal-assisted drivetrain. That should make it suitable for more terrain but it lacks any kind of suspension for dampening bumps. The all-road edition takes the Curt up from a feathery (for an e-bike) 14.4kg (about 32 pounds) to 16.9kg, and still fits riders from small to large. Prices start at a tax-inclusive €3,690 (about $4,000). Shipments being June 21st.
Image: Ampler
Ampler is good at colors, including this lavender Curt Anyroad shown in both low- and high-step.
All Ampler e-bikes feature non-removable batteries that power a European standard 250W rear-hub motor with a max speed of 25km/h, and include a two-year warranty, 14-day returns, and service centers available across Europe should things go wrong.
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The Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra is more screen, less zen
New big Android phone just dropped.
The days of the small Zenfone are over — maybe? Asus has officially unveiled the Zenfone 11 Ultra, and it is anything but the small-ish device that its last few predecessors were. It comes with a 6.78-inch screen, a huge 5,500mAh battery, and a sizable $899 starting price.
You don’t have to look too hard to identify that the Zenfone 11 Ultra is basically a rebadged ROG Phone 8, minus the gamer lights. Like its gaming-focused sibling, the 11 Ultra uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and comes with 12GB of RAM / 256GB of ROM in its base configuration. A 16GB / 512GB model will be sold outside the US. Like previous Zenfones, the 11 Ultra won’t work on Verizon in the US — only AT&T and T-Mobile.
The 11 Ultra uses an LTPO display, so it can ramp the refresh rate all the way down to 1Hz to save on battery life. Refresh rates can also go up to 144Hz, but only while gaming — otherwise, it maxes out at 120Hz. There’s a 50-megapixel main camera with f/1.9 lens, supported by Asus’ impressive six-axis stabilization, a 13-megapixel wide-angle lens, and a stabilized 32-megapixel 3x telephoto.
Not a gamer light in sight.
It’s 2024, so there are a few familiar-sounding AI features, including live language translation and two-way noise cancellation for phone calls. AI can summarize voice memo transcriptions, and the search functions for photos and system settings have been enhanced with AI.
This might be the new shape of the Zenfone, or it might not be — Asus’ global director for smartphones, Chih-Hao Kung, was vague on that point in a recent media briefing. He emphasized that the Zenfone 10 launched in the second half of last year and is still for sale now, but “at this moment, we don’t have any comments on this... This launch only focuses on the large-sized Zenfone 11 Ultra.”
Seven developers have now stepped away from projects, are shutting them down, or have left the emulation scene entirely. Of those that remain, many are circling the wagons, getting quieter and more careful, trying not to paint targets on their backs. Four developers declined to talk to The Verge, telling me they didn’t want to draw attention. One even tried to delete answers to my questions after we’d begun, suddenly scared of attracting press.
Not everyone is so afraid. Four other emulator teams tell me they’re optimistic Nintendo won’t challenge them, that they’re on strong legal footing, and that Yuzu may have been an unusually incriminating case. One decade-long veteran tells me everyone’s just a bit more worried.
But when I point out that Nintendo didn’t have to prove a thing in court, they all admit they don’t have money for lawyers. They say they’d probably be forced to roll over, like Yuzu, if the Japanese gaming giant came knocking. “I would do what I’d have to do,” the most confident of the four tells me. “I would want to fight it... but at the same time, I know we exist because we don’t antagonize Nintendo.”
There’s a new meme where Yuzu is the mythical Hydra: cut off one head, and two more take its place. It’s partly true in how multiple forks of Yuzu (and 3DS emulator Citra) sprung up shortly after their predecessors died: Suyu, Sudachi, Lemonade, and Lime are a few of the public names. But they’re not giving Nintendo the middle finger: they’re treating Nintendo’s lawsuit like a guidebook about how not to piss off the company.
In its legal complaint, Nintendo claimed Yuzu was “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale,” giving users “detailed instructions” on how to “get it running with unlawful copies of Nintendo Switch games,” among other things. Okay, no more guides, say the Switch emulator developers who spoke to me.
They also say they’re stripping out some parts of Yuzu that made it easier to play pirated games. As Ars Technica reported, a forked version called Suyu will require you to bring the firmware, title.keys, and prod.keys from your Switch before you can decrypt and play Nintendo games. Only one of those was technically required before. (Never mind that most people don’t have an easily hackable first-gen Switch and would likely download these things off the net.)
The developer of another fork tells me he plans to do something similar, making users “fend for yourself” by making sure the code doesn’t auto-generate any keys.
A Suyu moderator sums it up for us.
Most developers I spoke to are also trying to make it clear they aren’t profiting at Nintendo’s expense. One who initially locked early access builds behind a donation page has stopped doing that, making them publicly available on GitHub instead. The leader of another project tells me nothing will ever be paywalled, and for now, there’s “strictly no donation,” either. The Dolphin Emulator, which faced a minor challenge from Nintendo last year, now publicly exposes its tiny nonprofit budget for anyone to scrutinize.
But I don’t know that these steps are enough to prevent Nintendo from throwing around its weight again, particularly when it comes to emulating the Nintendo Switch, its primary moneymaker. One thing to know about this whole situation: the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. Emulators have typically lagged behind new console generations since it can take a lot of horsepower to digitally replicate the functionality of a console and time to learn its secrets. But that hasn’t been true for Switch.
Not only did hackers find an unprecedented vulnerability in the original Switch less than a year after release but also the emulator scene managed to develop software that plays Switch games better than the Switch itself within its own lifespan. They muscled in on Nintendo’s turf by competently running on Switch-style portable devices like the Steam Deck as well as some phones. YouTubers published tutorials on emulating Switch games, some of which Nintendo reportedly threatened with copyright claims; Valve even (briefly) showed the Yuzu emulator in an official Steam Deck video.
But the speed of technology may also make it easier for Nintendo to challenge emulators, several developers admit. While Nintendo didn’t begin properly introducing encryption until the Wii, the Switch apparently has five different layers of encryption, and Nintendo’s complaint against Yuzu primarily alleged that the emulator was encouraging users to circumvent them.
That’s an argument that hasn’t yet been tested by the courts, and there’s at least one major reason to think Nintendo might not win if it tried. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does allow people to narrowly circumvent copy protection for “interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs,” and the Dolphin Emulator team has publicly argued that would even extend to sharing decryption keys.
But many earlier emulators would never have faced that kind of challenge, and again, no developer has the money to fuck around and find out. “We’re lucky that the systems we’re using are simpler, they don’t have the advanced encryption techniques,” says one developer who focuses on early Nintendo consoles.
Another suggests that the safest emulators are for consoles so old or emulated at so high a level, they don’t even require users to bring a copyrighted BIOS. Sony PSP emulator PPSSPP, for example, can help defend itself by saying it emulates everything, including a BIOS and operating system, using its own code.
But the longer I talk to them, the clearer it becomes that the emulator faithful have been slightly shaken by the collapse of Yuzu. None seem completely convinced that Yuzu was doing it wrong.
“The Yuzu Discord was really careful about not mentioning piracy — they even scanned the logs from bug reports to check whether the people are using self-made copies of games,” one fork contributor tells me.
“They had a metaphorical gun to their heads,” says another, calling bullshit on Yuzu’s admission that it was “primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games” and thus broke the law.
None of the developers I spoke to have a tremendous amount to lose. It’s not their livelihoods at stake, and they don’t have extra mouths to feed. But they’re still relying on the good graces of companies like Nintendo.
The big companies do sometimes profit from letting emulation run its course. You can download classic games for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 today because of emulators. Nintendo is said to have hired from the scene for its own in-house emulation team, and Sony definitely did, hiring at least one developer of the PlayStation 2 emulator PCSX2 to bring PS2 games to PS4.
Today, his company, Implicit Conversions, works with Sony to put PS1 and PSP games on PS5, with downloadable Sony games like Twisted Metal and Syphon Filter quietly powered by emulation. It’s one reason to be optimistic: maybe Nintendo will see at least some benefit in leaving the rest of the scene alone.
For Gen Z, Facebook Is a Marketplace For a generation that loves thrift-shopping, Facebook isn’t a place to socialize online — it’s the best place to score some deals.
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Image: Valve
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Image: Valve
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Image: Ampler
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