The best Garmin watches for training and everyday life

The best Garmin watches for training and everyday life

Garmins aren’t just multisport behemoths anymore. | Illustration by Will Joel / The Verge

Garmin may be best known for its hardcore fitness watches, but it’s got an extensive line of lifestyle offerings, too.

Few brands are as synonymous with outdoor sports as Garmin. You’ll find these fitness trackers and smartwatches on dozens of wrists at any 5K, marathon, or Ironman. You’ll also find Garmin devotees among divers, thru-hikers, golfers, kiteboarders — you name it. But these devices aren’t just for athletes. The company’s made significant strides in its lifestyle offerings, so regardless of your fitness level, there’s a Garmin for everyone.

If you’re coming from a more traditional smartwatch, Garmin’s core strengths lie in fitness, GPS, adventuring, and durability. These are hardy devices that are meant to withstand the elements and last weeks on a single charge. Several models come with offline maps, advanced navigational features, and more training metrics than any other platform. And although many wearable companies have begun rolling out subscriptions, Garmin has publicly stated it has no intention of charging its users extra. That’s a good thing since Garmin devices tend to be on the pricier side.

Garmins aren’t too shabby on smarts, either. While more fitness-focused than anything from Apple, Google, or Samsung, there’s enough to get you the basics like notifications and then some. For example, most Garmins have fall detection and safety features, and several of the latest Garmins recently got an FDA-cleared EKG feature. (You’ll need a phone on hand, however, as only one Garmin model has cellular connectivity.) Many Garmin devices also support offline music playback and come with a small third-party app ecosystem.

There are a lot of Garmin watches to choose from. No, seriously, there are six major lineups, and each has a multitude of models. But no worries — I test several Garmins every year and can help point you in the right direction.

The best Garmin for runners

Sizes: 42mm w/ 18mm straps; 46mm w/ 22mm straps / Weight: 39g (42mm); 47g (46mm) / Battery life: Up to 15 days (42mm); 13 days (46mm) in smartwatch mode / Display type: OLED touchscreen / GPS: All-systems GNSS and dual-frequency GPS / Connectivity: Bluetooth, Ant Plus, Wi-Fi / Water resistance: 5ATM / Music storage: 8GB

Garmin has many running watches, and a lot of them are great. But the Forerunner 265 or 265S (if you have petite wrists) strikes an excellent balance between price, feature set, battery life, and a vibrant OLED display.

That said, the Forerunner 265 / 265S is a bit of an odd duck. It comes a mere nine months after its predecessor, the Forerunner 255, and is, in many ways, pretty much the same watch. The main difference is the 265 has an OLED display compared to the 255’s memory-in-pixel screen. Usually, that means worse battery life, but in this case, we got about a week on a single charge with the always-on display enabled. Without it, you can get up to 15 days. Given that OLED is easier to read and just, well, looks nicer, that gives the 265 lineup an edge over the 255.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The 42mm Forerunner 265S fits on my petite wrists well. Plus, it’s lightweight, so it won’t distract you while running.

The 265 also has dual-frequency GPS (also known as multi-band). The gist is you get much more accurate maps in challenging environments like cities and dense forests because you can access both the L1 and L5 satellite frequencies. And even with dual-frequency GPS enabled, you still don’t lose a whole lot of battery life. I wore it during a half marathon with that and the AOD enabled, and I still had over 80 percent battery by the time I got home. This is also an excellent price, as the majority of multi-band GPS watches cost well over $600.

My main complaint is $450, while not bad for Garmin, is still a lot when you consider that’s the same price as smarter smartwatches with great running features. Some runners won’t care. But if you’re on a budget — or you’re new to running and feel iffy about spending that much — then consider the Forerunner 165 series. It starts at $250 (add another $50 for onboard music) and does almost everything the 265 series does. The main things you’re missing are dual-frequency GPS and a few more niche sport profiles. But if you’re mostly sticking to running, gym equipment, cycling, swimming, and hiking, you’re covered.

Neither has all of Garmin’s training features, but it’s got what you’ll need to run anything from a 5K to a full marathon. That includes a Race Predictor, which gives you an estimate of what your best time would be based on your actual training. You can also use PacePro to figure out your pacing strategy for a race. You also get Garmin’s Training Readiness feature to help gauge load and recovery, Garmin Coach plans, and a host of running form metrics. It also supports offline music and safety features like fall detection. The only thing they lack is advanced mapping. (They still have trackback, point-to-point navigation, and real-time breadcrumb trail support, however.)

Read my full review of the Garmin Forerunner 265S.

The best Garmin for endurance sports

Sizes: 42mm w/ 20mm straps; 47mm w/ 22mm straps; 51mm w/ 26mm straps / Weight: 42mm: 63g stainless steel, 58g titanium; 47mm: 78g stainless steel, 70g titanium; 51mm: 98g stainless steel, 88g titanium / Battery life: 42mm: up to 10 days (4 with AOD); 47mm: up to 16 days (6 with AOD); 51mm: up to 31 days (11 with AOD) / Display type: OLED / GPS: All-systems GNSS and dual-frequency GPS / Connectivity: Bluetooth, Ant Plus, Wi-Fi / Water resistance: 10ATM / Music storage: Up to 32GB

The Epix Pro will get you every fitness feature that Garmin has to offer. And I mean everything. It would frankly be easier to tell you what the Epix Pro does not have: things that are limited to LTE smartwatches, like the ability to make calls. (This used to include EKGs, but Garmin has since pushed a firmware update that brings this feature to its latest watches.) Otherwise, you’ve got topographical maps, turn-by-turn navigation, and more training metrics than even a seasoned triathlete would know what to do with.

The Pro is more size-inclusive than the standard second-gen Epix, which only comes in 47mm. You can get the Pro in that size, too, but it also comes in 42mm and 51mm. This was a major complaint I had with the second-gen Epix last year, and you love to see companies actually take this sort of thing seriously. The best part is the Pro models start at the same price as the regular Epix did. You’ll have to pay $100 extra for materials like titanium and sapphire crystal, but that’s also true of the standard Epix.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

The hands-free flashlight and OLED display is a winning combination.

That said, it muddies the waters if you’re trying to pick between the Epix Pro, Fenix 7, or the Fenix 7 Pro. The main difference is the Epix watches have OLED displays. One reason I prefer OLED is that they’re much easier to read indoors — where most of us spend the majority of our time. The Fenix 7 series’ memory-in-pixel displays (plus solar charging if you opt for it) allow for weeks and weeks of charge, but the smallest Epix Pro can get around 10 days with normal usage. The 47mm and 51mm Pro models can go longer between charges due to bigger batteries, but I felt that the 42mm has enough juice to satisfy most use cases. Garmin also has so many battery-saving modes and options that I highly doubt this will ever be an issue.

But really the winning feature is the hands-free flashlight. It’s so useful in my day-to-day life, and all you have to do is double-press a button. It’s as bright as your smartphone, comes with a red light option if you want something easier on the eyes, and can act as a strobe in an emergency situation. The Fenix 7 Pro watches also have a flashlight, but the combo with the OLED display gives the Epix the edge — and it’s why I currently recommend it over the Fenix lineup.

But if you’re set on the Fenix’s extra battery life, I recommend the 7 Pro over the standard 7 for a few reasons. Its MIP display is slightly brighter, all sizes have the flashlight, and, like the Epix Pro, it has an updated sensor array. These are spendy watches, however. If you’ve got some time and savings are your top priority, then I recommend keeping an eye out for sales. We’re heading into peak smartwatch launch season — which means older models like the standard Fenix 7 line will be discounted as retailers try to reduce inventory.

Read my full Epix Pro review.

The best Garmin on a budget

Sizes: 40mm w/ 20mm straps / Weight: 19g / Battery life: Up to 5 days / Display type: “Hidden” OLED touchscreen / GPS: Tethered GPS / Connectivity: Bluetooth, Ant Plus / Water resistance: 5ATM / Music storage: N/A

What I love most about the Vivomove Sport is it doesn’t look like what most people expect from a Garmin. It’s a hybrid smartwatch, which means it looks like a regular watch but can track fitness and deliver notifications. Garmin’s hybrids are also unique in that they all use an OLED display that stays hidden until you need it.

This is best suited for a casually active person who wants style and value in a lightweight package. Think wellness, more so than fitness. It gets you continuous heart rate monitoring and blood oxygen level monitoring and can even provide abnormal heart rate alerts. You also get access to more in-depth metrics like respiration rate, fitness age, stress, and Body Battery, which is Garmin’s tool for visualizing how well-rested you are. For smart features, you get all the basics, like notifications, alarms, and timers.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

You can’t easily read a whole text on this hidden OLED display, but you will know who sent it and make an educated choice about whether you want to reach for your phone.

The Sport isn’t quite as full-featured as some other Garmins you’ll find on this list. For instance, you’re giving up built-in GPS in favor of tethered GPS through your phone. There are no contactless payments, nor is there a microphone or speaker for taking calls on the wrist. But this is a budget pick, and you get a lot, considering this is an entry-level gadget that could pass for a Swatch at a glance.

I don’t love that the battery life is short for a hybrid, at around three to four days. Even so, that’s still much better than what you’ll get on an Apple Watch or Wear OS 3 watch. If you’re willing to spend about $100 more, the $269.99 Vivomove Trend has more chic materials, gets you more screen real estate, and wireless Qi charging. Otherwise, this is a great lifestyle wearable that can serve as a classier alternative to your typical fitness band.

Read my full review of the Garmin Vivomove Sport.

The best Garmin to replace a Fitbit

Sizes: 40mm w/ 20mm straps / Weight: 38g / Battery life: Up to 11 days / Display type: OLED touchscreen / GPS: All-systems GNSS / Connectivity: Bluetooth, Ant Plus / Water resistance: 5ATM / Music storage: 4GB (for Music Edition)

If you were disappointed by the Fitbit Sense 2 and Versa 4, the Venu Sq 2 is the next best thing (and, in some ways, better).

At a glance, the Venu Sq 2 could easily be mistaken for an Apple Watch. On the wrist, you’ll notice it’s made of plastic, but it still looks quite chic and extremely lightweight. The screen is bright, easy to read, and looks better than any Versa or Sense ever did.

The feature set is also great for the price, with built-in GPS, a ton of watch faces, emergency safety features, and contactless payments. If you pay $50 more for the Music Edition, you’ll also get about 500 songs worth of storage, but we wouldn’t recommend it. This doesn’t have cellular connectivity and, therefore, isn’t truly standalone. You’ll most likely be carrying your phone with you anyway.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The display is nicer than anything Fitbit ever made — and with smaller bezels, too.

As for health features, the Venu Sq 2 basically has everything you’d get on a Versa or Sense smartwatch but with Garmin’s treasure trove of metrics as well. That includes heart rate tracking, blood oxygen tracking, intensity minutes (how much moderate exercise you get in a week), stress tracking, hydration tracking, respiratory rate, period tracking, and Garmin’s recovery feature, Body Battery. As far as fitness goes, you also get access to Garmin Coach, which provides free 5K, 10K, and half marathon training plans. You love to see it.

Another big leg-up Garmin has over Fitbit? None of these features or metrics are locked behind a paywall.

Read my full review of the Garmin Venu Sq 2.

The best Garmin smartwatch

Sizes: 41mm w/ 18mm straps; 45mm w/ 22mm straps / Weight: 40g for the 3S; 47g for the 3 / Battery life: Up to 10 days for 3S; 14 days for 3 / Display type: OLED touchscreen / GPS: GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO / Connectivity: Bluetooth, Ant Plus, Wi-Fi / Water resistance: 5ATM / Music storage: 8GB

Garmin has shored up the smarts in its watches over the past few years, and the Venu 3 series is the smartest of the bunch.

The Venu 3 series comes in two sizes: 41mm and 45mm. Like the Venu 2 Plus, it has a microphone and speaker. You can take calls directly from the wrist as well as issue commands to your phone’s digital assistant via Bluetooth. It’s not the same as having Siri, Bixby, Amazon Alexa, or Google Assistant built directly into the watch, but it’s a clever workaround that works well for hands-free control. It also supports safety features like fall detection and live tracking as well as contactless payments.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Venu 3S has Garmin’s latest heart rate sensor and adds a wheelchair mode and nap detection.

Like other OLED Garmins, the display is both vibrant and easy to read. As for health and fitness, you get a nice mix of basic and more advanced features and metrics. It has Garmin’s latest heart rate sensor, which enables FDA-cleared EKG and AFib detection features. Overall, it leans a bit more on the wellness and health side of things, with intensity minutes, blood oxygen monitoring, sleep tracking, period tracking, abnormal heart rate alerts, and stress tracking. As for training, you still get built-in GPS, VO2 Max, heart rate zones, respiration rate, and downloadable training plans via Garmin Coach.

New to the 3 and 3S is a sleep coach that factors in metrics like heart rate variability and recent activity to determine your sleep needs. It also finally adds nap detection, a feature that’s been long overdue for the Garmin platform. The Venu 3 series also adds audio-guided meditation sessions, and you can view how these sessions directly impact your metrics. From an accessibility standpoint, this also adds a new wheelchair mode.

This is the Garmin for you if you want the platform’s in-depth training without sacrificing the productivity of a smartwatch. The main things it’s lacking are cellular options and a robust third-party app ecosystem. That said, it’s got Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer for offline listening. It’s also a good option if you’re fed up with MIP displays and want a smarter Garmin rather than a full-on smartwatch.

Read my full review of the Garmin Venu 3S.

Update April 1st, 10:02AM ET: Added Garmin Forerunner 165 series as an alternative to the 265 series.

Microsoft splits Teams from Office as antitrust pressure ramps up

Microsoft splits Teams from Office as antitrust pressure ramps up

Image: The Verge

Microsoft, possibly hoping to deflect the blow of an ongoing antitrust investigation in the EU, is spinning Teams off from Office 365 to sell as its own separate app globally, Reuters reported today. A company spokesperson told Reuters it was making the change to its business chat and conferencing app “to ensure clarity for our customers” after already doing so in the EU last year.

Microsoft’s existing customers should be able to keep their current deal, which bundles Teams with Office and other products, renew, update, or pick a new offer. For anyone signing up fresh, Teams on its own will cost $5.25, while Office packages without Teams will run from $7.75 to $54.75.

Microsoft first spun off Teams in the EU in August last year, a month after the European Commission started investigating whether the bundling violated its competition rules. The investigation followed a 2020 anticompetitive complaint from Slack, when Teams saw massive growth amid the covid-19 pandemic. This latest decision comes just over a week after the US Justice Department sued Apple, accusing it of antitrust behavior (and congratulating itself for helping Apple prevail over Microsoft with a previous ruling).

As Reuters notes, it’s still possible the EU will charge the company with a violation, even with this change. There’s plenty at stake here for the company, though, as an antitrust fine could equal up to 10 percent of its global annual turnover.

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The Forerunner 165 series is the budget training watch Garmin needed

The Forerunner 165 series is the budget training watch Garmin needed

Garmin really needed a training watch in the $250 to $300 range. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The tradeoffs are well worth the savings over the slightly more advanced Forerunner 265.

If you’re training for a race, few multisport watch brands do it like Garmin. But there are two things I don’t like about ‘em. They’re pricey, and the platform can be intimidating to newcomers. Have you seen its online store? For newbies, it’s tough to parse which of Garmin’s dozens of watches gets you the basics without destroying your wallet. Not anymore. After spending the last few weeks with the $299.99 Forerunner 165 Music, I’m convinced this — or the $249.99 standard version — is the Garmin watch that hits the sweet spot.

Three hundred smackeroos may not seem budget-friendly until you look at Garmin’s flagship watches. Those can go for a whopping $700 to well over $1,000. Even midrange watches, like the excellent Forerunner 265 series, retail for $450. I loved the Forerunner 265 series. The only thing I didn’t like was the price. And that’s what makes this particular watch so appealing. It’s a near clone of the smaller 265S but for $150 to $200 less. The only things you’re really missing are dual-frequency GPS and EKGs for atrial fibrillation detection.

Seriously. Side by side, it’s hard to tell my 165 Music and 265S apart. The buttons on the 265S are a bit fancier. Thankfully, my units are different colors. I don’t think I’d be able to tell at a glance otherwise.

As for performance, in 95 percent of my daily use, I didn’t notice a difference. Even without dual-frequency GPS, you still get accurate outdoor activity tracking. I tested the 165 Music simultaneously with my phone and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 — both of which have dual-frequency GPS. The maps and distance reported all corresponded within a 10th of a mile. I might’ve seen more of a difference if I ran in a challenging environment, like Manhattan’s financial district. That said, I’ve done a lot of running with multisport watches with and without dual-frequency GPS. While dual-frequency GPS is more accurate, it mostly benefits folks who train in GPS dead zones. If that’s not you, you won’t likely notice.

Heart rate data was also on par with my Ultra 2 and a Polar H10 chest strap. Since I’m not someone with a high risk of AFib, I never even missed the EKG feature. (Even if I were, EKG-powered AFib features aren’t a diagnostic tool and still require you to see a doctor.) Unless it runs in your family or you know you’re at risk, EKGs just aren’t a feature everyone needs, especially since high / low heart rate notifications are still available.

For activity profiles and health tracking metrics, you get the basics for a training watch. And Garmin’s definition of basic is generous. Are you going to get snowboarding or boxing? No. More niche activities like triathlon, golfing, mountain biking, or team sports require a more expensive Forerunner or Garmin. But if you generally stick to the gym, cycling, running, swimming, hiking, tennis (or pickleball!), and the occasional yoga or pilates session? You’re good. Sure, spending more will get you more — but this will get most people everything they need.

Aside from these few things, you’re getting everything that makes a Garmin a Garmin: long battery life, durability, and a ton of training data. Even with a more power-hungry OLED display, the 165 Music lasted me almost a week on a single charge with the always-on display enabled and closer to 10 days with it off. The 165 Music survived my cat chomping on it, and it’s more than capable of handling a dunk in the pool. You can still access Garmin Coach, adaptive training plans, nap detection, sleep tracking, and features like Body Battery and Morning Report. And, blessedly, the redesigned Garmin Connect app has decluttered a lot of that information, making it easier to glance at.

You still get all the basic metrics — and more.

Normally, I’d launch into a TED Talk about why Garmin’s cluttered product lineup needs fewer watches. That said, the Forerunner 165 stands out because the price, feature set, and product design are all so well aligned. Garmin’s been missing a good training watch in the sub-$300 category, where most of its options are like the Venu Sq 2 or Vivomove Trend — they’re either geared toward casual users or people looking for a more stylish vibe. This is a bona fide training watch, both in terms of design and function.

The only bad thing about the 165 series is it further muddies the already-crowded Forerunner lineup. Lord knows Garmin has a Forerunner 55, 255, 265, 745, 955, 965, and a handful of others I’m missing. There’s even other watch lines, like the Instinct, that are quite similar to the Forerunner. But amid all the clutter, the Forerunner 165 and 165 Music are my picks for an entry-level Garmin for training. It’s great for newbies to the platform — as well as intermediate and advanced athletes who aren’t interested in bells and whistles.

The T-Mobile Sidekick’s Jump button made mobile multitasking easy

The T-Mobile Sidekick’s Jump button made mobile multitasking easy

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Before the iPhone, before Android, before webOS, a revolutionary soap bar of a phone made it incredibly easy to get shit done. The Danger Hiptop, better known as the T-Mobile Sidekick, made the internet portable and affordable like no phone before.

It introduced cloud sync long before iCloud, popularized unlimited data and real web browsing on mobile, and made instant messaging and email a breeze thanks to its landscape hardware keyboard.

But the Sidekick doesn’t get enough credit for one physical button that tied the whole phone together: the Jump key.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Most remember the swiveling screen, but there was much more to a Sidekick.

On modern phones, opening an app usually means tapping on a notification or hunting for the correct homescreen icon. To do, you have to see. Before the Sidekick, the hunt-and-peck was also harder than today: it meant physically pressing down with a stylus on a resistive Palm Pilot or Windows Mobile touchscreen.

But in 2002, the Hiptop’s Jump button turned multitasking into muscle memory. Every Sidekick shipped with both preset and programmable keyboard shortcuts, letting you “Jump” to any app.

I would type up my notes in the middle of college classrooms, Jump+B my way to the web browser to look something up, Jump+N back to my notepad, Jump+I to chat on AOL Instant Messenger with pals, then Jump+E to email the notes to myself at the end of class. My thumbs never left the keys.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Jump + B would bring up the web browser. Sadly, I couldn’t find a battery and charger for this old phone.

It was so convenient that I wound up taking most of my college notes on a Sidekick II – maybe all of them save Japanese.

Weirdly, T-Mobile didn’t make much of an effort to explain the Sidekick’s seamless task-switching potential. Real ones knew, but in the official user manuals, the Jump key is almost always described as a glorified home button. “Pressing JUMP takes you back to the Jump screen, your starting point for launching all the device applications,” reads a typical example.

Image: Danger

I did find these Jump Shortcuts on page 38 of a 2003 user manual.

But former Danger director of design Matías Duarte, who went on to design webOS and the look and feel of Google’s Android, tells me Jump was never just a substitute for Home. It was designed to be chorded, pressing down multiple keys at a time to unlock its potential. “That was really where the power of it was, the thing that made it more than a home button, if you will.”

“We worked on them, we relied on them,” he says of the keyboard shortcuts. Danger would file bug reports, set up meetings, chat in ICQ and email, copy them into notes, all from the Hiptop itself. “I lived on it because I was commuting by Caltrain up to the city every day,” says Duarte.

Photo by Matias Duarte

“Jump” actually appeared on the original Jump key in the first-gen Danger Hiptop / T-Mobile Sidekick.

Originally, the Jump key was born to give you a way to jump in and out of mobile app notifications, which, back then, were pretty novel in and of themselves. “There wasn’t this concept of launching a program and quitting a program, it was you can jump to the notification and just jump back to what you’re doing.”

Unlike Palm Pilots, BlackBerrys, and flip phones of the era, the Sidekick didn’t kill apps when they were closed, he says — it had a “true multitasking architecture” where they kept on running in the background, connected to the internet. (Every phone does this today.)

“The state of the art of notifications always felt like they were these obnoxious lights that don’t respect you,” he says of the notification lights on other phones, “so it was important that they would pop up, banner up, and let you know who they were from. You could jump to it if you cared about it, or not if you ignored it. Together they were solving the problem of the user not being actually interrupted, but effectively multitasking.”

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

A former Danger engineer found this pristine Sidekick II in a momento bin.

But it doesn’t surprise Duarte that the Jump button was marketed as something simpler, merely a way to get back to the homescreen where you could use the Sidekick’s dial to scroll through apps — because the button was genuinely supposed to do both. “The philosophy was that we wanted to make it really accessible, but we didn’t think that making it accessible made it less powerful.”

And it was called “Jump” to keep it simple. “We wanted to make something that was for normal people, where you didn’t need to understand any of these concepts of launching or quitting or multitasking.”

Jump wasn’t the only button that offered chorded keyboard shortcuts to Sidekick power users. You could cut, copy, paste, jump to a specific chat, or start a new email without launching the email client (and prefilled with the text you just copied!) by first holding down the Menu key.

Duarte says he struggled to justify adding the Menu button because he was trying to keep the phone simple — but Danger was also trying to keep it cheap, only giving you buttons and a one-dimensional scroll wheel instead of paying for a pricey (at the time) touchscreen. Repeatedly rotating and clicking a wheel to select each command seemed like a lot to ask of users.

“That’s why we needed the Menu button: so we weren’t always drilling in and out of everything,” he says.

Above: T-Mobile’s anime ad campaign for the Sidekick hinted at task-switching but didn’t explicitly show off shortcuts.

The Sidekick eventually died a sad death, abandoned by celebrities after Paris Hilton’s phone got hacked, shunned by some users after new owner Microsoft lost gobs of user data in a server failure, and replaced for people like me by Android (which, importantly, was created by some of the same people who launched the Hiptop).

But many of Danger’s useful keyboard shortcuts live on to this very day. I found them waiting for me, like old friends, when I purchased the very first Android phone. Squinting, I spotted a tiny magnifying glass key on the T-Mobile G1’s sliding keyboard. I pressed Search+B, watched a web browser pop up, and grinned wide.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

My T-Mobile G1, originally the HTC Dream — the first Android phone.

For more on the Danger Hiptop, I recommend co-founder Joe Britt’s 2007 Stanford lecture on how it was built, Chris DeSalvo’s essay on its innovations, and retrospectives from MrMobile and TheUnlockr.

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The Atari 400 Mini is a cute little slice of video game history

The Atari 400 Mini is a cute little slice of video game history

Image: Atari

Now that the miniature game console trend has already covered most of the biggest devices from Nintendo, Sega, and Sony, we’re starting to enter more niche territory. The Atari 400 Mini isn’t a rerelease of the company’s most recognizable console (that’d be the 2600). And it isn’t full of household names. But that’s also part of what makes it so interesting — the little gadget is a cute, playful way to explore a very specific and formative niche of video game history.

Like its contemporaries, the 400 Mini is a shrunken-down version of the original. That means a small box in a very 1970s shade of beige plastic, with a keyboard and cartridge slot that are purely ornamental. I appreciate just how retro this thing looks; even the included HDMI and power cords are beige. It has five USB ports (four on the front, one on the back), an HDMI port, and USB-C port for power. There’s one functional power button on the rear, coupled with a little red light to let you know it’s on. You also get one classic Atari joystick, which has been outfitted with a USB plug and the sneaky addition of a few extra buttons, including a shoulder button and a clickable circle around the actual stick.

This is a plug-and-play device, so setup is exceedingly straightforward. It doesn’t connect to the internet, and the visual settings are pretty standard. There are two options: the 4:3 mode displays games in their original aspect ratio, while “pixel perfect” mode renders the pixels as squares. You also have the option to add virtual scanlines to imitate the experience of playing on a CRT display. Other than that, there’s not much to it. You scroll through games in alphabetical order, and it has console-level save slots, so you can pause and save your progress at any point while playing. It all works well enough, though it took me some time to get a handle on navigating the menu with a big joystick.

The more important part is the games themselves. The 400 Mini has 25 built-in games spanning Atari’s 8-bit era. That includes expected titles like Asteroids and Centipede, as well as slightly more obscure releases like the nautical-themed shooter Wavy Navy and Hover Bovver, Jeff Minter’s game about cutting lawns with a stolen lawnmower. The emulation is solid, and I was surprised by how well some of these games stood up. I had never played Crystal Castles before — a platformer where a bear tries to escape a series of magical mazes — but I ended up spending hours playing with my eight-year-old daughter, passing the joystick back and forth. Similarly, space sim Star Raiders II remains incredibly thrilling all these years later, and I was very happy to discover Airball, a fantasy maze where you play as a bouncing bubble.

It’s a well-curated list, and I found basically everything — with the exception of the dead-simple Basketball — still playable by modern standards. The collection does a great job of encompassing just what this hardware was capable of. And unlike most similar mini consoles, the 400 Mini has room for expansion. The various USB ports let you connect a variety of joysticks and keyboards, and you can also stick in a flash drive to sideload games. That opens up a lot of possibilities, especially considering how robust the Atari homebrew scene is.

Image: Atari

Star Raiders II.

That ability to expand the device is also important because the 400 Mini has a surprising amount of competition. It’s really not that hard to find ways to play Atari games right now. The company released a recreation of the 2600 last year that can play old cartridges, and the excellent Atari 50 collection not only has an expansive list of games but also adds historical context with its interactive documentary format. With that in mind, a $119 mini console could be a tough sell. But the bookshelf-worthy design combined with its flexibility might just push it over the edge — so long as you have a craving for some Star Raiders.

The Atari 400 Mini is on sale now.

The world needs more gadgets like LG’s briefcase TV

The world needs more gadgets like LG’s briefcase TV

The company that usually specializes in premium OLED TVs has produced something refreshingly out of the ordinary. And I already hope it gets a sequel.

LG’s StanbyME Go is easily the most Inspector Gadget thing I’ve ever reviewed. It’s a 27-inch touchscreen TV that’s built into (and protected by) a large military-grade briefcase — complete with an integrated sound system, HDMI connectivity, and the same webOS software that runs on the company’s regular TVs.

Theoretically, you can bring it anywhere, but at 28 pounds, the StanbyME Go is far from a light load, and it’s a stretch to call it very portable. Road trips are no issue, but I never got bold enough to bring this thing on a flight. For one, I didn’t want to deal with TSA scrutiny over this gadget that looks like a Mission Impossible prop. But the briefcase is too wide to satisfy the carry-on requirements at most airlines, regardless.

But it’s… it’s unique as hell. And that’s what has resonated with me over these last couple months of testing the terribly-named StanbyME Go. You can take this briefcase TV tailgating; you can bring it camping; if you’re traveling somewhere, it can be a mobile entertainment and gaming solution for yourself or the kids. I’ve had friends say they’d be open to using something like this in lieu of a projector in rooms where a permanent TV might be unwelcome. When it comes time to lift it up, that excitement often dampens.

Aside from its heft, the biggest thing going against the StanbyME Go is the $1,200 that LG is asking for what, at the end of the day, is a pretty unremarkable 27-inch LCD panel. It’s a 1080p screen with so-so viewing angles and a peak brightness of 500 nits. That’s more than fine for indoor viewing, and I’ve also found it adequate for most outdoor usage so long as you’re not in direct sunlight. (The display’s anti-reflective coating helps out here big time.) But if you’re judging this thing by display specs alone, paying $1,200 for it would be lunacy. I would go wild for a 4K OLED version of the StanbyME Go, though that would likely rocket its price up into $2,000 territory. The nicheness of this product is inherently part of why it’s more expensive than many would prefer.

The display’s peak brightness of 500 nits is fine in the shade or on a cloudy day.

The claimed Dolby Vision HDR support is laughable, considering this display’s limited brightness. The same goes for the four-channel “Dolby Atmos” speaker system, though I was surprised by its fullness since the audio is coming from drivers unconventionally built into one side of a briefcase. And despite the fact that the speakers are positioned behind the screen when it’s raised, the sound remains clear. Just don’t expect much in the way of immersion or surround trickery here. If you need more impactful sound when tailgating, you can always pair up a large Bluetooth speaker.

At almost 30 pounds, the StanbyME Go can be a chore to lug around.

To see any value in the StanbyME Go, you’ve got to try and appreciate the sum of its parts. That average screen is attached to a very sturdy articulating arm that lets the display be used in three different ways. It can lay flat for touchscreen games like chess or when playing music on the speakers from your phone. Pull the screen up and you can position it in either landscape or portrait orientations; the latter can be useful if you want to mirror your phone and scroll through your TikTok feed — or maybe give a presentation on the road. I rarely bothered with vertical mode, but the versatility is nice.

It can go basically wherever you want.

The 27-inch screen is 1080p and lacks local dimming, but still looks nice enough when you're watching something.

The StanbyME Go is smart enough to automatically turn off its display and power down whenever the briefcase is latched. The hard outer shell is plenty tough — LG claims it has passed 11 different durability tests — and while I never intentionally tried to put LG’s review unit through my own torture test, it certainly took a few bumps during my weeks of testing and even had a minor fall while the case was open with the screen up. It survived all that with no issues. But the ruggedness only goes so far; the StanbyME Go doesn’t offer any water resistance, so be careful if you’ll be using it poolside or near a lake when camping. That’s a big differentiator between this, a TV that can be used outdoors, and actual “outdoor TVs” that can withstand the elements and get bright enough to combat the sun — for much more money than the StanbyME Go.

The StanbyME Go makes for a fun traveling game station — and you get LG’s typical low input lag.

There’s a dedicated cradle for the remote inside the case, and if you pop that off, there’s a section underneath for storing the power cable whenever you don’t need it. The power input is covered by a protective flap, and there’s another that guards the HDMI/eARC port, USB-A port (for media on external drives) and a switch that can turn off the battery to preserve juice when you won’t be using the TV for a while. LG says the StanbyME Go will average around three hours of battery life. In my experience, you can eke out an extra hour if you activate webOS’s energy-saving features, but those usually come at the expense of brightness, which isn’t impressive to begin with.

There are some preloaded games that take advantage of the touchscreen.

Can your OLED TV do bar games this well?

Actually using this briefcase TV feels similar to any of LG’s other models. All the standard picture and sound modes are present. But most LG sets lack a touchscreen. Don’t have the remote handy? You can navigate around with smartphone-like gestures: swipe up from the bottom of the screen to go home or swipe down for the top for quick access to brightness and volume controls.

There’s a single HDMI port, plus a USB-A port that you can plug media drives into.

LG includes a handful of very simple games like the aforementioned chess and bar games like photo hunt. But the novelty of those fades fast, so you’ll want to plug in a console for the real thing. Of course, this means you’ll need to provide power for whatever HDMI devices you’re using, which can get tricky on the go and especially outside. A portable power station would prove super convenient in these situations.

All the popular streaming apps are accounted for in LG’s store, but if you want to watch them from a cabin or tent while camping, you’ll find yourself routinely tethering to your phone for an internet connection.

There’s a four-channel, 20-watt speaker system built into the upper half of the briefcase.

The briefcase is large but easy enough to stash away when you don’t need it.

I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for weird gadgets, which tend to come along rarely nowadays. Most big tech brands play their hands too safely and only release products with mainstream appeal. From that viewpoint, I commend LG for doing something not just a little different but so far off the beaten path. If the StanbyME Go cost a few hundred dollars less, I’d be able to recommend it for reasons beyond the uniqueness factor. It’s weighty but thoughtfully designed. It’s one of those attention-grabbing devices that people will ask questions about whenever they see you using it.

More weird gadgets like this, please.

But the TV that’s packed into this briefcase is merely average — and less so when you consider the price. My hope is that the StanbyME Go won’t prove so niche that LG never gives it a second attempt. Because this first try is unique and often just plain fun. But at $1,200, the simple reality is that most people are better off with a more traditional tablet or portable monitor until LG nails the right formula (and price).

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

The DNC made a weird AI-generated parody of a Lara Trump song

The DNC made a weird AI-generated parody of a Lara Trump song

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Stephen Morton, Getty Images

After Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump’s indie music detour to launch a heavily autotuned track called “Anything is Possible,” the Democrats have responded with “Party’s Fallin’ Down.” Published three days too early to be passed off as an awkward April Fools’ Day joke, it’s described as “a new AI-generated song about Lara Trump’s rocky start as RNC co-chair.”

The track no one asked for was posted to an otherwise anonymous SoundCloud page, promoted on TMZ, and tweeted from X accounts for DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and the Democrats’ “rapid response team.”

You can listen to it here. My recommendation, however, is that you don’t in favor of doing anything else with your time, regardless of your political affiliation, musical taste, or thoughts on AI.

In a statement, Harrison calls Trump’s music career “embarrassing, unserious, and a waste of money,” touting how the Democratic National Committee “didn’t put as much time and money into making our song.” Nevertheless, putting less time and money into making something embarrassing and unserious is still... making something embarrassing and unserious?

And besides, this injection of generative AI into election season feels like opening a door that will be hard to close. The next time we consider the question of whether or not it’s appropriate to use generative AI in the political context, it probably won’t be over a bad musical spoof with goofy lyrics.

Sam Bankman-Fried is still gambling

Sam Bankman-Fried is still gambling

“I’ve never seen a performance quite like that.” | Collage by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Victor J. Blue, Bloomberg, Getty Images

‘It’s his nature.’

Sam Bankman-Fried has learned nothing, and I’m not sure any of the rest of us have, either.

At his sentencing, I sat several rows behind Bankman-Fried, clad in prison khaki and clanking faintly when he walked from the shackles on his feet, while he gave his statement to the court. “I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,” Bankman-Fried said. “I failed everyone I cared about.”

What Bankman-Fried did not say was that he had, in fact, committed crimes and he wouldn’t do it again. Instead, he talked about the “mistakes” he’d made, how he’d assisted the FTX customers in dealing with the bankruptcy estate, that he hadn’t actually engaged in witness tampering, and that, in fact, the FTX estate had “billions” more than necessary to repay the customers, and that has been true the whole time. He didn’t say a word about his lenders, two of which went bankrupt, or the investors, whose money is gone.

It struck me that Bankman-Fried was going with the strategy he’d outlined in a document, submitted as evidence by the prosecution. He was simply going to blame the bankruptcy lawyers, as outlined in points 4, 5, 6, and 9 in his little Google Doc.

He’s appealing the verdict, and so that meant he had to dance through saying he was sorry without really admitting to anything. But I was absolutely astonished when he began talking about how FTX employees had been robbed of their chance to build something wonderful and that they should get together to, essentially, create an FTX equivalent.

Imagine standing up at your sentencing and saying, “Yeah, I’d do it again, your honor.”

“I guess there is a big opportunity in the world to do what the world thought I would do, what it hoped I would do, at least for a while, what I hoped I would do for the world, not what I ended up doing,” Bankman-Fried said. “And 300 people that I used to work with, incredibly talented, selfless, impressive people were looking for something to do. If that happens, if they do what they could for the world, then hopefully I’ll be able to see their success, not just my own failures, each night.”

Imagine standing up at your sentencing and saying, “Yeah, I’d do it again, your honor.”

I have heard a lot, throughout this trial, about Bankman-Fried’s vaunted intelligence. I have been told, in documents filed by the defense, that he is simply misunderstood because he is autistic. That may be true, but I absolutely witnessed him perjure himself on the stand. So did Judge Lewis Kaplan, who, in commenting on the perjury, gave three examples: that Bankman-Fried lied about not knowing Alameda spent FTX customer funds, that he first learned of Alameda’s debt in October 2022, and that he did not know that asking Alameda to repay its lenders would necessitate further dipping into customer funds. I’m not an expert or anything, but I don’t think lying on the stand is a symptom of autism.

“I did not think it a fruitful use of time to spell out every time I thought Mr. Bankman-Fried testified, willfully and knowingly, falsely at trial,” Kaplan said. “And when he wasn’t outright lying, he was evasive, hairsplitting, dodging questions, and trying to get the prosecutor to reword questions in ways that he could answer in ways he thought less harmful than a truthful answer to the question that was posed would have been. I’ve been doing this job for close to 30 years. I’ve never seen a performance quite like that.”

“It started at least as early as Jane Street and it continued to the very end. It’s his nature.”

The 25-year sentence (and $11 billion forfeiture) Kaplan gave had a lot to do with Bankman-Fried’s propensity for gambling. A math nerd who makes decisions in math, doing what we might call “cost / benefit analysis” and what Bankman-Fried called “expected value.” It was the math that did him in.

“In the head of this mathematical wizard, his own counsel tells us, in substance, that he was viewing the cost of getting caught, discounted by probability or improbability, against the gain of getting away without getting caught, given the probabilities,” Kaplan said. “That was the game. It started at least as early as Jane Street [the Wall Street firm Bankman-Fried joined straight out of college], and it continued to the very end. It’s his nature. And you don’t have to take my word for it — everybody has said that.”

Kaplan lingered on Caroline Ellison’s testimony about Bankman-Fried’s character; specifically, he told her that if there was a coin where tails destroyed the world and heads made the world twice as good, he’d gamble on flipping the coin. “A man willing to flip a coin as to the continued existence of life and civilization on Earth, if the chances were imperceptibly greater that it would come out without that catastrophic outcome, that’s really a leitmotif in my judgment of this entire case.”

Bankman-Fried rolled up to his sentencing and pitched a second FTX; he would absolutely keep flipping that coin.

He is flipping the coin right now, actually, hoping for a win on appeal.

It’s tempting to try to double-or-nothing your way out of a hole, but that rarely works out as planned

One of the key skills in gambling is knowing when to cut your losses. It is, maybe, the skill — the only one that matters. It’s the lesson every first-time investor learns in their first bear market. It’s tempting to try to double-or-nothing your way out of a hole, but that rarely works out as planned. It didn’t work out at Alameda or FTX. It didn’t work out in Bankman-Fried’s trial. It didn’t work out in his sentencing. I suppose we will see about the appeal.

Bankman-Fried’s arrogance is of a Shakespearean scale. Arrogance can take a number of forms. One is not dressing up for an event where it is customary to wear a suit because you are so important you don’t need to follow the dress code. Another way is paying one of the biggest political bribes in history because you want to have your way. A third is determining that you, personally, must have the biggest charitable impact in the world.

Kaplan suggested that Bankman-Fried just likes the game. Maybe. It’s possible that Bankman-Fried simply cannot understand that he lost.

In order to understand that he’s lost and the jig is up, he would have to accept two things: that he isn’t as smart as he thought he was and that he’s not a good boy. I have sat through endless litanies of his good boy credentials; if we leave aside FTX’s matryoshka doll of crime, he’s better behaved than me. I have also been told many, many times that he’s smart. Private school. MIT. Jane Street. You get it.

That’s actually how he views himself. He’s smart and good. John J. Ray III, in his filing, hit the nail on the head when he said, “Mr. Bankman-Fried continues to live a life of delusion.”

In November 2022, FTX’s impending collapse triggered a 22 percent drop in the price of Bitcoin in a single day. Bitcoin’s now at about $70,000, higher than the peak of the last cycle. I have been told by a suspiciously large number of people that Bankman-Fried is a one-off, just a bad apple. Since I’ve started following crypto, this is the third bull run I’ve seen. I don’t know who the main character is going to be this time, but I know there’s going to be one.

The casino’s still open, 24 hours a day, for anyone who wants to take a seat at the table. The rules haven’t changed.

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Apple sues former iOS engineer for allegedly leaking Vision Pro, Journal app details

Apple sues former iOS engineer for allegedly leaking Vision Pro, Journal app details

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Apple is suing a former employee for leaking confidential information, including unknown details about Apple’s Journal app, the development of the VisionOS headset, and more, to journalists and employees of other companies. The lawsuit, filed ten days ago in California state court (24CV433319, pdf), says Andrew Aude also leaked regulatory compliance strategies, employee headcounts, and other product hardware characteristics.

As reported previously by MacRumors, in at least one message, the company says Aude claimed he leaked information “so he could “kill” products and features with which he took issue.”

Apple referenced many of the communications in the lawsuit:

Between June and September 2023 alone, Mr. Aude connected with a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) journalist, whom Mr. Aude code named “Homeboy,” over 1,400 times using an encrypted messaging app. Mr. Aude also read “Homeboy” a final feature list for an unannounced Apple product over the phone. Mr. Aude sent another journalist at The Information over 10,000 text messages and traveled across the continent to meet with her.

The following screenshot of an encrypted message exchange on the Signal app between Aude and a WSJ journalist appears in the complaint, as Apple says, “Mr. Aude often took and saved screenshots of his communications on his Apple-issued work iPhone to preserve them for posterity.”

Apple

Apple accuses Aude of leaking a list of finalized features for Apple’s Journal app in a phone call that occurred in April 2023 to the same reporter. A story about the unreleased app’s features appeared that same month in The Wall Street Journal.

Aude joined Apple in 2016 as an iOS engineer focused on optimizing battery performance. Apple’s lawyers write that the nature of the role gave Aude access to “information regarding dozens of Apple’s most sensitive products.”

The leaks weren’t discovered until late 2023, the company states. When representatives from Apple first sat down with Aude in November 2023, he reportedly denied his involvement in the leaks and lied about having his Apple-issued iPhone with him. Then, they claim, he faked needing to go to the bathroom, “extracted his iPhone from his pocket during the break and permanently deleted significant amounts of evidence from his device,” including the Signal app.

Then, in a second meeting on December 12th, the complaint says “Mr. Aude admitted that he leaked information about Apple’s strategies for regulatory compliance, unannounced products, development policies, and hardware characteristics of certain released products to at least two journalists.” He was fired three days later. Apple’s filing says the company is seeking a jury trial, damages, “restitution and/or disgorgement” of bonuses and stock options, plus “An order directing Mr. Aude not to disclose Apple’s confidential and proprietary, information to third parties without its written consent.”

New York City welcomes robotaxis — but only with safety drivers

New York City welcomes robotaxis — but only with safety drivers

Image: Getty

New York City announced a new permitting system for companies interested in testing autonomous vehicles on its roads, including a requirement that a human safety driver sit behind the steering wheel at all times.

As cities like San Francisco continue to grapple with the problems posed by fully driverless for-hire vehicles, New York City is trying to get ahead of the problem by outlining what it calls “a rigorous permitting program” that it claims will ensure applicants are “ready to test their technology in the country’s most challenging urban environment safely and proficiently.”

“This technology is coming whether we like it or not,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement to The Verge, “so we’re going to make sure that we get it right.”

“This technology is coming whether we like it or not”

The requirements would exclude companies without previous autonomous vehicle testing experience in other cities. Applicants would need to submit information from previous tests, including details on any crashes that occurred and how often safety drivers have to take control of the vehicle (also known in California as “disengagements). And in what is sure to be the most controversial provision, fully driverless vehicles won’t be permitted to test on the city’s public roads; only vehicles with safety drivers will be allowed.

A small handful of companies, including Waymo and Cruise, have deployed driverless vehicles, also known as Level 4 automation — but issues around traffic obstruction and safety have stymied their rollout.

Last October, a driverless Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian over 20 feet to the curb on a street in San Francisco, spurring regulators to suspend the company’s operations permit. Several months later, a driverless Waymo vehicle struck a bicyclist, causing minor injuries. City officials in San Francisco have criticized both companies for blocking roads and obstructing buses and emergency vehicles.

New York City is hoping to avoid similar problems by requiring companies to keep safety drivers in the vehicles at all times. Under Adams’ proposal, companies would still need to obtain a permit from the state Department of Motor Vehicles. In addition, applicants would have to provide details on how their safety drivers are hired and trained and “attest that they will follow recent best practices from the Society of Automotive Engineers.”

New York City is hoping to avoid similar problems by requiring companies to keep safety drivers in the vehicles at all times

Naturally, autonomous vehicles would be required to follow all traffic laws and curb regulations. Likewise, companies would need to submit “assurance protocols for how the operator will compensate for any AV system limitation or failure and proactively intervene to avoid potential crashes.”

Data from AV testing will eventually be available on the city’s Open Data portal, a spokesperson said. As part of the application process, the city’s Department of Transportation will review requests from applicants to withhold certain data from disclosure on the basis of confidentiality.

While other states have become hotbeds for AV testing, New York has been a bit of a ghost town. Part of the reason could be the state’s strict rules, which include mandating that safety drivers keep their hands on the wheel at all times. The state law originally required a police escort, but a renewal of the law several years ago removed that language.

In 2017, Cruise announced plans to test its self-driving vehicles in lower Manhattan, but those plans were later scuttled with little explanation as to why. Boston-based Optimus Ride tested autonomous shuttles in Brooklyn but only on private roads as part of the borough’s Navy Yard. Mobileye, a division of Intel, also tested a couple of vehicles in the city. And Waymo said it would bring its manually driven vehicles for mapping purposes.

Automakers and tech companies testing AVs tend to flock to states with friendlier regulations (like Arizona and Texas) or places that are more convenient to their headquarters (like California). New York is neither, but it does represent one of the biggest taxi markets in the world — and therefore is a ripe target for robotaxi companies.

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No Man’s Sky is finally getting a ship editor in latest update

No Man’s Sky is finally getting a ship editor in latest update

Image: Hello Games

No Man’s Sky just keeps on expanding. Hello Games is releasing the game’s 27th update today, dubbed “Orbital,” and it adds some major features including improved space stations and a tool for customizing ships.

The studio says that the stations are now much larger and more impressive from the outside and that the insides are now “vast, procedurally generated, and incredibly diverse.” Most notably, they now feature ship editors where players can customize their personal spacecraft.

“We haven’t introduced customisation previously, because so many players love exploring to find the perfect ship already out there to purchase,” Hello explains. “In keeping with exploration, to customise their ship, Travellers gather and trade parts for their ships as they explore, salvaging the best components from wrecks and ruins.”

Image: Hello Games

There’s a bunch of other stuff in the update as well. That includes a revamped guild system that makes “joining guilds and increasing reputation a much larger part of the game,” a refreshed user interface, and the ability to send out your frigate fleets on away missions. You can check out the full update notes right here.

Of course, these kinds of ongoing updates have become the norm since No Man’s Sky launched in 2016, adding not only new gameplay elements but also expanding to more platforms like VR and the Nintendo Switch. Meanwhile, last year, the studio announced its next game, a fantasy adventure called Light No Fire.

The Disney Plus-Hulu merger is way more than a streaming bundle

The Disney Plus-Hulu merger is way more than a streaming bundle

It’s Hulu. In Disney Plus. | Image: Disney

As of today, Hulu is part of Disney Plus. Hulu still exists — it still even has its own app — but it’s also being bundled into Disney’s primary streaming service alongside all the company’s other content. Even the Disney Plus logo changed to integrate that iconic green Hulu hue.

From a product perspective, the Hulu integration is roughly what you’d imagine. Hulu is now a tile inside the app, next to Marvel and Pixar and National Geographic and the rest. The price hasn’t changed; it’s still US-only, and the app’s not going away. Hulu shows and movies will also show up in search results and recommendations; if you’re subscribed to Hulu, you’ll get everything seamlessly, and if you’re not, the app will try to convince you to sign up. Disney has been beta-testing this for months, and it works fine — it can be somewhat confusing to figure out what’s “a Hulu thing,” whereas “a Pixar thing” is much easier to define, but there’s nothing shockingly new or confusing here. It’s just Hulu inside of Disney Plus.

Image: Disney

Most — but not all — of the Hulu library is coming to Disney Plus.

But “it’s just Hulu inside of Disney Plus” turns out to be a bigger deal — and a bigger undertaking — than it sounds. As it has prepared to integrate Hulu, Disney has also been changing the way the whole company thinks about streaming. It has worked to better integrate everything from login tools to advertising platforms to metadata and personalization systems so that Disney can go from owning a collection of streaming services and platforms to having something much more like a single product across the whole company.

So, yes, Hulu is just a tile. But that tile also seems to represent something bigger inside of Disney: the full Disney Plus-ification of everything, as the tech and strategy it built over the last few years percolates out to everything else Disney does. “We zoomed out and took a very long-term approach,” says Aaron LaBerge, the president and CTO of Disney Entertainment and ESPN. “We’re going to be running a streaming service forever.”

Here’s just one example of what that looks like: Chris Lawson, the EVP of content operations at the company, estimates that Disney had to move more than 100,000 individual assets from Hulu to Disney Plus in order to make this work. “It’s a mixture of content that we own and content from our partners,” he says. Every partner shares that content in different ways, in different formats, with different metadata attached.

Disney had to move more than 100,000 individual assets from Hulu to Disney Plus in order to make this work

Hulu, a 16-year-old app, runs on a very different technological platform than the four-year-old Disney Plus. So Disney had to re-encode all the Hulu video files to work on Disney Plus, which it could have done in a relatively straightforward way, but instead, the company decided to use this opportunity to roll out a single content library system for everything, everywhere. That’s still in progress, LaBerge says: “that in and of itself has been a bit of a massive lift. But when it’s all said and done, we will have one master media library for the entire company that has the same consistent metadata formats, description of content, and playback encoding, that is the highest quality it can be for the entire Walt Disney Company.”

A lot of those 100,000 assets, by the way, aren’t video files. They’re artwork designed to be used in various places in the app, in email marketing blasts, on Hollywood billboards, and elsewhere. Disney Plus, a huge global service, requires content providers to include lots of this stuff alongside every title, up to twice as much as Hulu requires. So part of the process for Disney has been to adapt all that Hulu art and to bring everybody else up to Disney Plus standards going forward. “When the next Marvel movie comes out, there’s a specification for how the content needs to be delivered and what artwork is associated with it,” LaBerge says.

Image: Disney

The Hulu on Disney Plus logo isn’t exactly breaking new ground.

The same goes for the metadata, the information about each title. Streaming metadata is a mess; every studio, producer, and platform seems to have a different language with which to talk about content. Disney has been building something like a universal metadata translator, says Jay Donnell, the company’s SVP of product engineering. “We don’t assume one source of truth,” he says. “We can ingest content from all these different catalogs and have it represented in a unified way.”

That improved metadata makes things like search better — and also improves personalization. By unifying everything in the background, Disney now plans to use all the company’s data about you to recommend stuff you might like. What you watch on Hulu will affect your Disney Plus recommendations and vice versa; so will the rides you go on at Disney World or the teams you care about on ESPN. Disney has been working to unify identities so that who you are on the Hulu app is connected to who you are on Disney Plus and ESPN and your cable box. (That also helps with cracking down on password sharing.) Much of this is only starting to roll out now, but LaBerge says it’ll get better fast as it flows through Disney’s machine learning systems. Even search can be personalized in real time, Lawson says, based on what you’re watching and thus likely to be looking for.

Over time, the goal is to make all of Disney’s streaming services, and maybe even all of Disney, work out of this single system. That means making the tools work in many languages, across many regions, and with many partners. It’ll take a while, and ultimately, it will affect much more than just Disney Plus, too. It’ll change the way the entire company thinks about, creates, and distributes content. LaBerge says a few times that the Hulu integration launch is just the first instantiation of a lot of new systems and products that will eventually show up everywhere else — including even places like the Hulu app, where users might start to notice better recommendations and streaming quality.

When I ask LaBerge if this feels like an inflection point, the moment Disney Plus really took over Disney, he says yes. But not in the way I’m thinking. The future isn’t necessarily one behemoth app for everything, he says. “It could all be one app, and it could also exist outside of one app — the way we’re designing it, it won’t matter.” You and I, the viewers, might never notice the changes Disney’s making, except that, hopefully, everything gets a little better. But all around Disney, the tech the company built to launch its flagship streaming service is starting to reshape how everything works under the surface. In that sense, the Disney Plus takeover is even bigger than it looks.

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Nissan announces plans to make 16 new electrified vehicles by 2026

Nissan announces plans to make 16 new electrified vehicles by 2026

Image: Nissan

Nissan has laid out a new plan to electrify 16 of the 30 vehicles it produces by 2026, with the rest using internal combustion instead. For those of us in North America, the company says it plans to release seven new vehicles in the US and Canada, although it’s not clear how many of those will be some type of EV.

Nissan says the US is getting “e-POWER and plug-in hybrid models” — each of those uses a mix of electricity and fuel for power. At the moment, the only all-electric EVs Nissan is producing are the Ariya SUV and the perhaps endangered (or maybe not) Leaf.

In 2021, Nissan said it would make 23 electrified vehicles by 2030, and that 15 of those would be fully electric, rather than some form of hybrid vehicle. It’s hard to say if any of this is a step forward from that plan, because yes, 16 is bigger than 15, but Nissan doesn’t explicitly say how many of those 16 are all-battery, or indeed if any of them are. We’ve asked Nissan, but it did not immediately respond.

The company did, however, say it’s expecting 60 percent of its vehicles to be “electrified” by 2030, up from its 50 percent promise by that same deadline. It also upped the total number of electrified vehicles to 34 by the same year.

The company seems to be walking back its “all-solid-state” battery plans for 2028. Now, it says it will produce vehicles with “enhanced NCM li-ion, LFP and all-solid-state batteries,” by that deadline. You can read the full announcement here, where Nissan also goes over its future investment strategies, plans for regions like Europe and Japan, and manufacturing expansion.

DeSantis Signs Social Media Bill Barring Accounts for Children Under 14

DeSantis Signs Social Media Bill Barring Accounts for Children Under 14 A new Florida law also requires apps like TikTok and Snapchat to obtain a parent’s consent before giving accounts to 14- and 15-year-olds.

Telegram’s Peer-to-Peer Login system is a risky way to save $5 a month

Telegram’s Peer-to-Peer Login system is a risky way to save $5 a month

Please don’t sign up for this program. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Telegram is offering a new way to earn a premium subscription free of charge: all you have to do is volunteer your phone number to relay one-time passwords (OTP) to other users. This, in fact, sounds like an awful idea — particularly for a messaging service based around privacy.

X user @AssembleDebug spotted details about the new program on the English-language version of a popular Russian-language Telegram information channel. Sure enough, there’s a section in Telegram’s terms of service outlining the new “Peer-to-Peer Login” or P2PL program, which is currently only offered on Android and in certain (unspecified) locations. By opting in to the program, you agree to let Telegram use your phone number to send up to 150 texts with OTPs to other users logging in to their accounts. Every month your number is used to send a minimum number of OTPs, you’ll get a gift code for a one-month premium subscription.

Boy does this sound like a bad idea, starting with the main issue: your phone number is seen by the recipient every time it’s used to send an OTP. And if anything unpleasant happens as a result of this, Telegram’s terms make it clear it’s on you:

Accordingly, you understand and agree that Telegram will not be liable for any inconvenience, harassment or harm resulting from unwanted, unauthorized or illegal actions undertaken by users who became aware of your phone number through P2PL.

Once an OTP has been sent from your number, the recipient might just text you back. People participating in the P2PL program are told not to text the recipients of OTPs, even if they texted first — but there’s no way for Telegram to enforce that, no way to restrict people from replying to the OTP text. This seems like a particularly bad place to employ the honor system.

Telegram says it’s offering this program to make receiving access codes via SMS more reliable in certain areas. A more cynical read might be that the company is trying to avoid fees imposed for sending codes via SMS — a move from the X / Twitter playbook. In fact, Telegram is taking zero responsibility if your carrier charges you a fee for sending access codes.

It’s all pretty uncharacteristic for a company that touts a “revolutionary privacy policy.” Telegram’s global user base has been attracted to the platform as an algorithm-free means of distributing information, both for good and not-so-good. We’ve reached out to Telegram for a comment on this new program and will update this post if we hear back.

Altogether, it seems like an awful lot to risk just to save $5 a month. Our free advice? Steer clear of this offer if you see it.

Microsoft is making Chrome’s text rendering better on Windows

Microsoft is making Chrome’s text rendering better on Windows

Illustration: The Verge

Microsoft has committed changes to Chromium that will improve text rendering on Windows machines. Following years of complaints, Chrome version 124 will finally support contrast and gamma values from the Windows ClearType Text Tuner for text rendering in Google’s browser.

This change should mean Chrome will finally match the improvements Microsoft made to Edge for font and text rendering, so you can apply text contrast enhancements and gamma correction to improve the readability of text on webpages. Chrome uses Skia for text rendering with hard-coded values for contrast and gamma, so it wasn’t picking up the improvements that ClearType has to offer.

Microsoft’s ClearType font technology has long been used in Windows to improve text rendering on screens, with the aim of making text look like it was printed on a piece of paper. Now, Neowin has spotted that Microsoft engineers have integrated ClearType Text Tuner support into Chrome so it picks up any changes to contrast and gamma, just like most other native Windows apps.

Kurt Catti-Schmidt, a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, has led the push here. Catti-Schmidt has been on a mission to improve text rendering on Chromium-based browsers in recent months and regularly focuses on accessibility improvements to both Edge and Chrome.

These latest changes are part of Microsoft’s commitment to improving Chromium-based browsers on Windows after the company made the move to Chromium in its own Edge browser more than five years ago. At the time, Microsoft said it would “offer our Windows platform expertise to improve the experience of all Chromium-based browsers on Windows,” and that promise has held true. Microsoft has helped improve scrolling in Chrome, touch support, and much more.

Joe Biden wants to make mac and cheese with clean energy

Joe Biden wants to make mac and cheese with clean energy

The production line of Easy Mac Macaroni & Cheese Cups on March 27, 2020, at the Kraft Heinz plant in Champaign, Ill. | Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The Biden administration today announced the largest investment in cleaning up industrial greenhouse gas emissions to date. The Department of Energy (DOE) selected 33 projects across more than 20 states to receive up to $6 billion in federal funding for clean energy technologies. It’s a diverse cohort spanning from mac-and-cheese maker Kraft Heinz to manufacturers of chemicals, paper, and construction materials.

Industrial emissions account for almost a quarter of the nation’s planet-heating pollution. It’s also widely considered the most difficult kind of climate pollution to prevent. Alternatives to fossil fuel-fired furnaces and industrial processes have lagged behind other clean energy technologies. The Biden administration thinks it can change that by funding these projects, with the hope that they’ll become sustainable models for broader swaths of industry.

“The solutions that we are funding are replicable, and they’re scalable, meaning they’re going to set a new gold standard for clean manufacturing in the United States and around the world,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a Friday press call.

“They’re going to set a new gold standard for clean manufacturing”

Kraft Heinz is eligible for up to $170.9 million in funding under the program. It’ll use the cash to update and electrify 10 facilities in nine states, including its plant in Holland, Michigan, where it produces those iconic blue packages of mac and cheese.

“It takes a whole lot of heat to dry all that macaroni which produces a whole lot of emissions. And so this project is going to deploy clean tech like heat pumps and electric heaters and electric boilers to slash those emissions 99 percent,” Granholm said in the call with reporters.

Ice cream manufacturing in Vermont, Missouri, and Tennessee will also get an upgrade with up to $20.9 million in funding. Unilever will use the money to replace gas boilers with electric boilers and heat pumps. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from producing Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, Klondike, Magnum, Popsicle, Talenti, and other packaged ice cream products.

Bulleit Whiskey maker Diageo Americas Supply will also replace gas-fired heat with cleaner alternatives thanks to up to $75 million in funding. It plans to use electric boilers and new-fangled heat batteries powered by renewable energy generated on-site at its facilities in Kentucky and Illinois. Diageo is partnering with startup Rondo Energy, which developed the heat battery with funding from Bill Gates’ climate investment fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Another 12 projects aim to slash carbon dioxide emissions from iron, steel, cement, and concrete production. Five aluminum and copper projects were also selected for funding. These are all materials vital to building out the infrastructure needed to decarbonize the US economy.

Electrifying buildings and machinery can prevent pollution from oil, coal, and gas — but only if the power grid is revamped to run on clean energy. That means laying down many more power lines made up of aluminum and copper and reinforced with steel. Concrete, meanwhile, is the most widely used substance in the world after water and, on its own, generates 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The DOE thinks the projects it selected can collectively prevent the equivalent of more than 14 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. That would be like taking 3 million gas-powered cars off the road each year. The initiatives are also expected to reduce other kinds of pollution that come from burning fossil fuels, like soot and smog-forming nitrogen oxides. Close to eighty percent of the projects are located in disadvantaged communities, according to the Biden administration. And awardees are required to craft a community benefits plan aimed at including residents and labor groups in the planning process.

Funding for these projects includes $489 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and another $5.47 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act. The projects selected so far will still have to go through a negotiation process with the DOE before receiving funds. Senior administration officials say the projects were selected based on assessments of their ability to reduce emissions, market viability, speed to deployment, and potential community benefits ranging from new jobs to a cleaner environment.