Instagram’s ‘limits’ adds a mute button for everyone other than close friends
Image: Instagram
Instagram is expanding “limits,” a safety control you can use to hide DMs and comments from accounts who may be harassing you. Now, instead of just hiding content from recent followers or people who don’t follow you, Instagram will mute incoming messages from everyone except the users on your close friends list.
Even though Instagram first rolled out limits to help creators deal with harassment campaigns, anyone can use the feature if they’re facing unwanted messages and comments from bullies and other bad actors. It could give a way to shut down incoming noise without disconnecting people from a supportive community.
Image: Instagram
When limiting interactions from everyone but close friends, you’ll only see DMs, tags, and mentions from the people on your list. Users not on your close friends list can still interact with your posts, but you won’t see these updates. These accounts also won’t know that you’ve hidden their content. You can also choose to view or ignore the limited comments and DMs.
Instagram lets you limit accounts for up to four weeks at a time, but you can extend it. You can enable limits by tapping your profile, selecting the hamburger menu in the top-right corner of the screen, and choosing Limited interactions. From there, you can toggle on limits for Accounts that aren’t following you, Recent followers, or Everyone but your Close Friends.
Instagram is also building on its restrict feature, which now lets you prevent a user from tagging or mentioning you in addition to hiding their comments. These expanded features come as Instagram faces increased scrutiny from the US government over the safety of its young users. Earlier this year, Meta rolled out a new feature that prevents adults from messaging minors on Instagram and Facebook by default. The company also moved to hide suicide and eating disorder content from teens on both of its platforms.
The Very Slow Restart of G.M.’s Cruise Driverless Car Business An incident that seriously injured a pedestrian in San Francisco led Cruise to take all of its cars off the road. The question now is when they will return.
Amazon Prime now comes with free Grubhub food delivery
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Amazon now offers restaurant food delivery. And if you pay for Amazon Prime, the delivery part is free.
Amazon is now embedding Grubhub into Amazon.com and the Amazon Shopping app, and Amazon Prime customers paying $139 per year for Amazon Prime will now pay $0 for food delivery fees on orders of $12 or more, among other benefits.
Amazon had previously offered Prime customers a free one-year subscription to GrubHub Plus, but that one auto-renewed at $129 per year. Now, it’s a permanent part of the Amazon Prime subscription.
Amazon says the ordering experience is “identical” to ordering from Grubhub’s website or app and is accessible to all customers, even without Prime.
Amazon and Grubhub say they’ll continue collaborating on other promotions, including food pairings and promotions like the limited Nuka Burger for the Fallout series premiere.
Amazon’s Prime membership comes along with other services like Prime Video, Amazon Music, plus premium add-ons like Amazon’s pharmacy service RxPass ($5 a month for many common medications) or $10 a month for unlimited grocery delivery from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh.
Prime members can also get $5 off their Grubhub meal of $25 or more, made through Amazon with code PRIME5 (valid through June 2nd).
Netflix’s next game show is Million Dollar Secret
Peter Serafinowicz will host Million Dollar Secret. | Photo: Kate Green / Getty Images for Paramount Pictures UK
Netflix has a new game show on the way called Million Dollar Secret. Netflix says that the eight-episode series will set 11 contestants on the hunt for a 12th one who’s been given a $1 million prize in an effort to be the last person standing (and win that prize).
The show seems to be aimed at the same audience that made the similarly dystopian-in-tone Squid Game: The Challenge the 15th-most watched TV show on Netflix in the second half of 2023 with over 33 million views (enough to slightly edge out CoComelon S1, Suits S1, and The Crown S6 but still well short of CoComelon S8).
Once the $1 million prize holder is found and eliminated by another contestant, the money goes to them, Netflix wrote. But it involves some strategy: players who find that prize early will become everyone else’s target, but if they wait, they stand less of a chance of finding the person who has the cash. Netflix apparently calls it “a game of strategy and alliances.”
British actor Peter Serafinowicz will host Million Dollar Secret. If you don’t know Serafinowicz’s name, you may know his face. He starred as Shaun’s grumpy, responsible roommate (and, later, shower zombie) in Shaun of the Dead, for instance, and as the titular blue hero of Amazon’s canceled-too-soon The Tick. Netflix hasn’t said when the show will premiere yet.
GPD is making a dual-screen OLED laptop that flips and folds
Image: GPD
GPD has been creating handheld gaming PCs and miniature mobile PCs for years, but it’s now turning its attention to regular-sized laptops. After teasing a dual-screen laptop last week, GPD has now published an image of its upcoming GPD Duo — complete with two 13.3-inch OLED displays, a range of ports, and stylus support.
While we’ve seen new dual-screen laptops emerge over the past year, the GPD Duo looks like it might be the most practical yet. GPD is stacking the two 13.3-inch OLED panels so you get an extra screen on top. That’s similar to Asus’ new Zenbook Duo, but GPD is aiming to do this without a removable keyboard and kickstand, so the second display can fold behind the main one in what looks like a regular laptop form factor.
The second display on the GPD Duo can also fold down into a tablet form factor with support for stylus input. “When folded, the device is the size of an A4 sheet of paper, and when both screens are fully extended, it measures 18 inches,” says GPD in a post on X. The screens support 10-point touch, 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity for a stylus, and the Microsoft Pen Protocol for compatibility with the Surface Pen.
GPD DUO high definition picture
The GPD DUO features dual 13.3-inch OLED screens, utilizing Samsung's original AM-OLED panels. When folded, the device is the size of an A4 sheet of paper, and when both screens are fully extended, it measures 18 inches. It supports 10-point… pic.twitter.com/PrF0gVyMJr
While GPD doesn’t list the ports on the Duo, it looks like there will be an Ethernet port at the rear, alongside an OcuLink port for eGPU connectivity. There are at least two USB ports on the side, and what appears to be some form of card reader along the left-hand side of the laptop. There are several other ports visible in the image, but determining exactly which ports are included is challenging due to its low resolution.
The GPD Duo will have a full-size keyboard and regular trackpad, which will set it apart from Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i that shipped with a separate Bluetooth keyboard you placed on top of its second display.
It’s also not immediately clear what processor will be powering GPD’s Duo laptop. There’s a vague mention of a 35-watt TDP and that this will be an “AI PC,” but nothing to indicate this might be a new Copilot Plus PC with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips inside. Given Computex is less than a week away, I’m hoping we’ll hear a lot more about the GPD Duo soon.
As Interest in Clean Energy Grows, Saudi Arabia Eyes a Future Beyond Oil The kingdom is trying to juggle its still-vital petroleum industry with alternative energy sources like wind and solar as it faces pressure to lower carbon emissions.
New Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Ring details have leaked, courtesy of the FCC
Image: OnLeaks / SmartPrix
It looks like the not-yet-announced Galaxy Z Flip 6 is getting a tiny boost in battery capacity compared to the Z Flip 5, according to FCC testing records spotted by MySmartPrice. The Galaxy Ring’s size ranges and battery ratings showed up, too, revealing good news for the small-of-finger, as it’s been tested as low as size 5.
The Z Flip 6’s battery is rated at 3,790mAh, based on screenshots shared by the outlet. That’s a touch higher than the 3,700mAh capacity that Samsung advertises for the Z Flip 5. Assuming that translates to increased battery life — which is not safe to assume — it could be a slight if welcome change for a phone that may not be changing all that much otherwise, at least judging from Z Flip 6 renders that leaked earlier this year.
Or, if you’ve been following those earlier leaks, 3,790mAh may come as a disappointment: that previous set of rumor suggested Samsung was testing a larger 4,000mAh battery instead.
As for the Galaxy Ring, it appears to range from size 5 to size 12. That’s in line with the Evie Ring’s sizes. But it’s different than the Oura Ring Gen 3, which starts at 6 and goes to 13, as well as the Ultrahuman Ring Air, which you can get in sizes 5 to 14.
The Galaxy Ring’s battery capacity looks typical, ranging from 17mAh to 22mAh, depending on the size. For comparison, the latest Oura Ring ranges from 15mAh to 22mAh and gets as much as seven days between charges, while Samsung officials have said its ring will get up to nine. As always, when it comes to battery life claims, “I’ll believe it when I see it” is the right attitude to take.
T-Mobile signs a $4.4 billion deal to buy most of US Cellular
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
T-Mobile has agreed to purchase parts of regional wireless carrier US Cellular in a $4.4 billion deal that includes US Cellular’s wireless customers, stores, and approximately 30 percent of spectrum assets. US Cellular will retain ownership of its towers and “approximately 70 percent of its spectrum portfolio across several spectrum bands,” with T-Mobile entering a long-term arrangement to lease space on more than 2,000 towers.
According to T-Mobile, the deal will improve nationwide coverage for US Cellular wireless customers while providing better 5G connectivity in “underserved rural areas” where T-Mobile sometimes struggles compared to AT&T and Verizon. It would also reduce the number of carriers competing in markets where US Cellular offers service, which will certainly come up as the companies seek regulatory approval to close this deal on schedule by mid-2025.
T-Mobile was allowed to buy Sprint once it sold Boost Mobile to Dish Network to start another national wireless carrier, and we’ve seen how that’s gone. By the end of 2023, Boost had 1.5 million fewer customers than it did before the sale, and according to Dish co-founder Charlie Ergen, the “vast majority” don’t have a phone that works on Dish’s own network.
As we noted in our 2021 roundup of 5G phone plans in the US, at the time, US Cellular only offered “low-band” 5G that was not much faster than 4G. Since then, as its coverage map (below) shows, it has added “5G Plus” network access in some areas with a combination of mmWave and 5G mid-band network that can offer much more bandwidth. In a press release last summer, US Cellular said its mid-band network would cover more than 1 million households by the end of 2023 and nearly 3 million would have access by the end of 2024.
Image: US Cellular
US Cellular 5G coverage map, with the brightest blue coloring for areas with “5G Plus” coverage indicating mmWave or C-band access.
In today’s announcement, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said:
With this deal T-Mobile can extend the superior Un-carrier value and experiences that we’re famous for to millions of UScellular customers and deliver them lower-priced, value-packed plans and better connectivity on our best-in-class nationwide 5G network. As customers from both companies will get more coverage and more capacity from our combined footprint, our competitors will be forced to keep up – and even more consumers will benefit.
T-Mobile says that US Cellular customers can choose to stay on their current plan or move to an unlimited T-Mobile plan “of their choosing with no switching costs.” The acquisition announcement comes just a few weeks after T-Mobile completed its $1.35 billion purchase of Mint Mobile, the carrier partially owned by Ryan Reynolds, in a deal that similarly carried over existing packages for Mint customers.
OpenAI Says It Has Begun Training a New Flagship A.I. Model The advanced A.I. system would succeed GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT. The company has also created a new safety committee to address A.I.’s risks.
If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your C.E.O. Chief executives are vulnerable to the same forces buffeting their employees. Leadership is important, but so is efficiency — and cost-cutting.
Windows will soon let you grab text from your Android photos
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
An upcoming version of Microsoft Phone Link lets you select and copy text from within images synced from your Android phone. The feature is live now in Release Preview Insider builds, so it should roll out to everyone soon.
Phone Link (called Link to Windows on the phone side) lets you sync calls, messages, notifications, and images — and cast your entire phone — from your Android phone to your Windows computer. It also works in a more limited fashion with iOS devices, which only sync notifications, messages, and calls over Bluetooth.
Screenshot: Nathan Edwards / The Verge
Phone Link will now let you select and copy text from images synced from your Android phone.
The Windows Snipping Tool got text extraction last year around the same time Phone Link got image share notifications, so it’s been possible for a bit to extract text from phone photos with the Snipping Tool. This update just saves you a step and lets you do it in-app. The feature is live in Phone Link 1.24051.91.0 and I gave it a quick test in Insider Preview Build 22635.3646 (Beta Channel).
In my testing, the OCR was decent, though it made more errors than either Samsung or Apple’s text extractors with the same photo of a book page. For longer passages you’re probably better off enabling cross-device copy and paste, extracting the text on your phone, and sending it to your PC that way.
Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6 billion to fund its race against ChatGPT and all the rest
The Verge
Elon Musk founded xAI last summer, and today it announced raising $6 billion in funding, saying it will help bring the startup’s “first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies.”
So far, xAI has launched Grok, a supposedly edgier version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT available via X, formerly known as Twitter, where the chatbot is currently only available to X Premium subscribers.
Funding in this round came from several sources, according to xAI, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Saudi Arabian Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. Last year, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed that xAI was looking to raise up to $1 billion in equity investments, and a few months ago, The Financial Times reported it was seeking up to.... $6 billion. Musk denied that report at the time.
The hardware capable of powering AI development is pretty pricey, with Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell B200 AI graphics cards costing anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 apiece. Last week, a report from The Information said that xAI would need 100,000 of Nvidia’s current H100 chips for a supercomputer to power an upgraded version of its Grok AI chatbot. Musk reportedly told investors the plan is to launch the new data center by the fall of 2025.
Continuing on in the AI race for chips, talent, and technology won’t be cheap — big tech firms have dumped billions into AI startups like Anthropic in addition to the resources Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are pouring into AI projects of their own.
Outside of xAI and OpenAI, Musk said he would “prefer to build products outside of Tesla” when it comes to AI and robotics unless he gets more control. Tesla shareholders will start voting this week on whether to restore Musk’s $56 billion pay package ahead of its annual meeting on June 13th.
How Netflix turned from chasing HBO to signing a deal with WWE
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Netflix isn’t just programming content only a small group of people would like — it’s intent on having a little something for everyone. During an interview with The New York Times, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos says he regrets comparing Netflix to HBO and its more limited selection of content in the past.
His dream project: a Netflix series created by Warren Beatty. “He’s great in long form,” Sarandos says. “His only problems have been when he’s constrained.” Sarandos is also warming up Jodie Foster, who directed an episode of Orange Is the New Black. “The goal,” he says, “is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” His seductive pitch to today’s new breed of TV auteurs: a huge audience, real money, no meddlesome ecutives (“I’m not going to give David Fincher notes”), no pilots (television’s great sucking hole of money and hope), and a full-season commitment.
He tells the NYT interviewer, “What I should have said back then is, We want to be HBO and CBS and BBC and all those different networks around the world that entertain people, and not narrow it to just HBO.” He adds that “prestige elite programming” is a “very small” business, which isn’t what Netflix is about anymore.
Instead, Sarandos explains that Netflix must have a "broad variety of things that people watch and love.” That’s why not everything the service offers may not appeal to your taste. “The people who love ‘Ginny & Georgia’ will tell you, ‘Ginny & Georgia’ is great,” Sarandos says.
As my colleague Alex Cranz pointed out earlier this year, Netflix’s programming strategy makes it more like cable TV, as the service now has everything from Young Sheldon to The 100 — and soon, WWE’s Monday Night Raw.
Netflix is still eyeing the competition from Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Comcast. “Early on, we were discounted because I think the studios thought these tech guys are never going to figure out programming,” Sarandos tells the NYT. “We largely have proved them wrong. And I think it would be crazy for us to think, Well, these entertainment companies are never going to figure out the tech.”
Netflix has undergone a big transformation over the past few years, pushing ahead with some of the things it said it’d never do, including advertising and paid password sharing. As the streaming landscape shifts focus to revenue rather than subscriber numbers, we could see other streamers follow a similar path.
Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $6 Billion Mr. Musk, who founded xAI last year, has said the business “still has a lot of catching up to do” as it looks to compete with well-funded companies like OpenAI.
A big list of the best tiny games on the internet
Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 39, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready for gadgets this week, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you a bunch of cool new gadgets, a new YouTube channel you’re going to love, a new-old Mario game, a clever new AI tool for Windows, lots and lots of fun new games, and a whole bunch more. Let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into this week? What should everyone be into? What is so awesome that everyone needs to know about it right this second or else? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, and tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
The Sonos Ace headphones. I’m generally very happy with my Bose QuietComfort Headphones, which are kind of beaten up but still work great. Even for $450, though, the Ace look really nice — I dig the super-minimalist vibe, almost like they’re an early prototype the company shipped. Really curious to see the reviews on these.
The new Surface Pro. If you’re one of the “why can’t my iPad do more stuff” kinds of people, the device you want might not be an iPad. It might be the new $999 Surface Pro, which Microsoft promises has great performance and battery, comes in cool colors, and has a really nifty new keyboard attachment.
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Another great reboot from Nintendo, which is remarkably good at sprucing up old Mario games and getting me hooked on them all over again. Like my colleague Andrew Webster wrote, the Switch is turning into a retro Mario RPG machine, and it’s awesome.
Howtown. I love a good “no mystery too small” show, which is why I’m a religious consumer of things like Search Engine and Underunderstood. This new YouTube channel, from two excellent creators, is an insta-subscribe for me. And they have some really fun guests lined up!
Microsoft Recall. One of the cooler AI apps I’ve seen — and maybe the best argument yet for why you need an “AI PC.” Sure, an app that tracks everything you do on your computer feels slightly creepy, but that’s kind of already how your computer works. This just makes it useful.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.Fury Road is one of the coolest movies ever made, if you ask me, and by all accounts, Furiosa is a worthy — if slightly slower and less, uh, bonkers — follow-up. It’s also apparently the rare prequel that adds something to the first flick; guess which two movies I’ll be watching this weekend.
Stompers. I’m currently very into silly, chill, less-intense workout apps, and this is such a funny one. You compete with your friends to walk more, and when you’re winning, your friends get, like, virtual bananas to slow you down. Delightful!
Canva. Canva launched a big redesign this week (at least, if you can find a “secret portal”), which comes with a bunch of clever AI features and some new ways for your IT department to give Canva money. I don’t use Canva much personally, but the folks I know who do tend to love it. This should be good news.
Hellblade II. This game sounds genuinely terrifying — and there’s not much I love more than a game that makes me scream out loud. The sound design appears to be particularly intense, so if you need me this weekend, I’ll be holed up in the dark scaring myself half to death.
The Daylight DC1. Half of me rolls my eyes at anyone who’s like, “Gadgets are bad. Here’s a gadget to save you from gadgets.” And it’s $729! But I love the retro-future aesthetic here, I’m hopeful the screen tech works, and I’ll be keeping an eye on this thing for sure.
Group project
Last week, I asked you to share your favorite minigames on the internet. Things you can play in a few minutes. Maybe you play once a day, maybe you play it 50 times in a row while you’re on the train to work. Did I ask for this because selfishly I’m sort of bored of Quordle and Name Drop and wanted new stuff to try? Partly! But I also suspected I’m not the only one who loves these games.
Oh boy, was I right. Thank you to everyone who responded! I got a ton of great suggestions, and I want to share as many of them as I can. First of all, here are the ones you recommended the most often:
Coffee Golf. A new five-hole golf course to play every day. (This was the most recommended game of the week, by a lot, and I can see why. I love it.)
And here is a list, in no particular order but very slightly categorized, of some of the other great game recommendations I got. First up, there are the games that I’d describe as “Wordle, but not exactly:”
And last but not least, there were the other games. Not all of them are daily, but I think they fit the “it’s a thing you can do a couple of minutes at a time,” so I’ll allow them:
Pedantle. Find words in a redacted page to figure out which Wikipedia entry it is.
Contexto. Try to guess the word just by guessing other words.
Football Bingo. Turns out, I don’t know soccer as well as I thought.
Untitled Game.It loads a blank webpage. You figure out what to do next.
Random battles on Pokemon Showdown.
Universal Paperclips. You make paperclips. And sell them. As many as you can. Forever.
Box Office Game. The game gives you a weekend and some numbers, you try to guess the most popular movies.
I now have about two-thirds of these games bookmarked in my browser, and I will be playing them all every day forever. I may never be productive again. Thanks again to everyone who shared their favorite games, and I hope you find something fun to play!
I asked David to share his homescreen, both to see which of his cool photos he picked as a wallpaper and to snoop on whether he had any cool photography / podcasting apps I didn’t know about. Turns out, he’s pretty minimalist! Here’s David’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The apps: Photos, Settings, Viewfinder, Fujifilm Camera Remote, Telegram, Gmail, Pocket Casts, Messages, Arc, Spotify.
Gotta be honest, I generally use the swipe down to search apps gesture every time I want to use an app. I don’t know if that makes me a psycho, but I only keep a few on the homescreen. The widgets are for my bedroom lights and blinds — all running on Matter. I get very little light in my apartment, so the blinds close at 9PM and open at 7AM to help me wake up, and I toggle the lights manually.
Viewfinder Preview. This is my favorite app for shooting film. I mostly use it for my 6:17 and 6:24 120 film cameras, but it’s amazing. You can emulate any film format and field of view, and you can take digital copies to both remember which image you shot and what your settings were. It’s also a light meter and has been super accurate.
Fujifilm Camera Remote. I use this to transfer photos from my X100 (my daily camera) to my phone. The new app (Fujfilmi XApp) never works for me for some reason, but the old app still works great.
Pocket Casts. This is probably the most-used app on my phone. I’ve used this app since like 2010 for podcasts, and since I bought it once for $7 way back in the day, I got grandfathered in for a lifetime pro tier once they added a subscription model. It’s a really fantastic podcast app, but I am aware that they hide a lot of features behind a subscription now, which kinda sucks.
Arc Search. David, I think you and I are probably both the biggest Arc fans on the internet. The browser is just so delightful, and the desktop app is absolutely incredible for research; segmenting out my work life / accounts / research projects, and spaces is great. I could talk forever about how much I love the actually useful AI features they have in the desktop app like tab renaming, download / file renaming, tidy tab sorting, etc., alongside pinned tabs, the ability to share folders, and more.
I also asked David to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he shared:
Right now, I’m in the middle of getting a Hasselblad Flextight film scanner up and running. It’s the highest-quality scan you can get outside of a drum scan, but they’re so old, you have to use a super old Mac for it. My friend Willem Verbeeck made a video on it recently. A nice ex-professional photographer in California found out I’m into panoramic photography (especially my Fujifilm TX-1) and had a mask specifically made for it. It weighs 60 pounds.
I’m a big fan of Casey Newton and Kevin Roose’s Hard Fork podcast. It’s not exactly new, but I think they have a great dialogue, and considering they both cover similar things in their respective publications, the conversations are a great mix of funny, intelligent, and engaging.
I don’t watch a ton of movies, shows, or YouTube, but I’ve been going back through VSauce’s channel and watching his old videos just because I really like the style of WHY WHY WHY storytelling. Oldie, but very goodie. Also Gawx Art might be the best YouTuber on the platform right now, and this interview with him on Jack Conte’s Digital Spaghetti channel is freaking awesome.
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 me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
“I loved Jenny Nicholson’s YouTube essay about the demise of the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser hotel experience. It’s long (four hours!), but she goes into every detail, from concept, to her own visit, to why it failed. Totally worth the time.” – Mike
“ReminderCal is a really awesome app that syncs iOS Reminders so they appear in iOS Calendar. I’ve set up Shortcut automations for it, and now it works like magic (even when using the app switcher!) and feels like Apple integrated it! Plus I’m absolutely loving Hit Me Hard and Soft. The whole album is Billie Eilish at her best, and I can’t get “Chihiro” out of my head!” – John
“Just saw someone mention SequoiaView, which is great, but WizTree is about 1 billion times faster. Hope it helps someone in a rush to clean up a disk…” – César
“I installed a Synology NAS in my home and set it up as a NAS (obviously) but also as a Plex server, which works really well! I can now watch my old DVDs and Blu-rays again using Plex, after importing them as MP4s, and it can also configure itself automatically to be accessible from outside my local network.” – Wenzel
“Bought a bike recently and am really enjoying viewing my Apple Watch metrics on my iPhone. Using the Peak Design case and bike mount.” – Hobie
“After a long day, my favorite way of winding down before sleeping is watching this YouTube channel, Virtual Japan, that makes videos walking around Tokyo and other cities of Japan in a beautiful 4K HDR. My favorite videos are this one from an Onsen town and this one from a rainy midnight in Kyoto. It’s one of the best ways of calming the mind and the body before sleeping.” – Guilherme
“Apparently this isn’t new, but I just heard about Hoopla this week! It’s an app that you can connect your local library card to and gain access to their library of digital content including streaming movies and TV shows! I’ve found several shows on there that are otherwise only available on a streaming service I don’t want to pay for, so it’s been a great find for me this week!” – Charles
“Probably not new, but I learned about PlayCover and have been using it to replay the GTA III / Vice City / San Andreas games on my MacBook using my Netflix subscription.” – Alex
Signing off
About this time of year, a lot of people start asking me (and everyone else I know who likes gadgets) which Bluetooth speaker to buy. It’s party and barbecue time, I guess! There are lots of good choices out there, but let me just save you a bunch of time: buy a UE Wonderboom. The whole Boom lineup is great, honestly, but this one’s plenty loud, it’s tiny, it lasts forever, it sounds great, it’s $100. You might be able to beat it on one of those things, but I’ve never found a better “awesome speaker in a tiny box” anywhere. When the weather’s good, mine goes everywhere with me. Maybe we can hang at the beach and sync ours up for some sweet stereo tunes. Hit me up.
There’s no easy 3D printer, but Bambu has won me over
Bambu P1P vs. Creality K1C: an ‘easy’ 3D printer showdown.
If you asked me to recommend an “easy” consumer 3D printer, I’d warn you first: despite countless innovations, you still can’t quite hit a button to reliably photocopy a 3D model. Buying a 3D printer is buying an entire hobby, one where — if you’re a lazy bum like me — many attempts will turn into worthless gobs of plastic.
But if you persisted, I’d tell you my one clear choice for lazy bums: the Bambu P1P.
What, a printer from the company that recalled its newest model and whose earlier ones once went rogue? Yep — because not only did Bambu handle those incidents with rapid apologies, investigations, transparency, and even refunds, the $599 Bambu P1P is also absolutely the easiest, most reliable 3D printer I’ve used.
It makes my stalwart old Ender 3 Pro look like a hunk of junk. It makes its closest competition, the $559 Creality K1C, feel like an inferior clone. I’ve spent months testing them side by side, and I’d personally pick the Bambu every time.
Don’t get me wrong: the K1C is the better choice for some tinkerers since its full enclosure, bed, and extra fan let you print higher temperature plastics like ABS as well as ones reinforced with glass or carbon fibers. (Bambu sells the $699 P1S for that.) And I did successfully use both the P1P and a pair of Creality K1 printers to produce dozens of objects over the past year, including pegboard mounts, figurines for my kids, and these badass unofficial Nerf blasters:
With either of these printers and a little knowledge of what’s easily 3D-printable, I can (sometimes) send an entire plate full of parts to these printers and expect them to all turn out.
But if you want fewer software and filament headaches, I would absolutely point you to Bambu. And I’d recommend you steer clear of the original Creality K1 entirely — I spent months struggling with issues that were instantly fixed when I swapped for the newer K1C model.
One of my first prints on the Bambu P1P: the white side panels it’s worn ever since.
But the Bambu P1P and Creality K1 series stood out as the most affordable full-size, full-featured CoreXY printers that claim you can print right out of the box — with no need to bolt together a printer frame or even tighten belts. And while you can’t “just start printing the moment your K1 arrives,” as Creality puts it, both printers are mostly prebuilt, pretuned, and ready to go 20 or 30 minutes after you cut the packing tape. You remove a few safety pieces; attach their screens, power cables, and filament roll holders; connect to your home network for updates; and then press a button for automated setup.
Each will automatically level their bed so your prints literally get off on the right foot. They tune their motors with vibrations so intense, they shake the entire surface the printers are standing on. That’s intentional — because excess movement ruins prints, and printing quickly creates more movement, they teach themselves to avoid frequencies that rattle too hard. As I alluded to before, they both have CoreXY kinematics systems that provide an incredibly speedy, stable bead of plastic without needing to sling your model back and forth on a moving bed.
With a CoreXY printer, the head moves in two dimensions while the bed slowly lowers, keeping the model stable.
Bedslingers, like this Bambu A1 Mini, fling the model one direction and the print head another.
But the next step is where the Bambu P1 and Creality K1 printers begin to diverge. When it’s time to stick your fishing line of consumable plastic into a Creality printer, you have to thread the needle, pushing a sharp point of plastic into a tube and through the extruder so that the hot nozzle can melt and squirt it out one tiny bead at a time.
It’s the way many 3D printers have worked for years, but it leaves a lot of room for user error. It feels imprecise: you snip your filament at an angle to get a sharp point, then largely… shove until it feels right. Then you press a button and cross your fingers that the K1C’s motorized extruder will take it from there. Or manually shove it some more and hope the filament doesn’t break inside. Or you physically remove the filament tube, like I always did with my old Ender 3, so at least you can be sure you’re pushing straight down into the extruder without binding.
This Pikachu, made of silk PLA, came out pretty well on the K1C.
Here it is with supports removed.
It could be worse! With the original K1, the filament pathway was so jam-prone that the company wound up designing and shipping multiple replacement parts during the time I had the printer, and even then, I had some trouble. With the K1C’s completely redesigned nozzles, I’ve mostly been able to shove filament in without issue.
But Bambu sidesteps all of that: there’s no needlepoint with a Bambu printer at all! Press a few buttons, insert uncut, flat-ended filament until you feel it being pulled away from your hand, and then, in my experience, it does the rest itself. The Bambu printer also automatically cuts off the molten bit when you’re ejecting filament, producing a nice clean-cut end I can effortlessly rewind without dragging on the printer’s internal parts. And, every single print, the Bambu purges that leftover molten filament into what owners have affectionately dubbed the “poop chute.”
The tiny non-touch screen is one of the few weaknesses of the Bambu P1P. I’m getting used to it.
The upshot: it took months before I saw my Bambu P1P jam for the first time. I’ve even had good results at times pushing old, brittle filament into Bambu printers. With the K1 and even K1C, it’s far less foolproof, as Creality makes you shove it through a filament runout sensor and a tight bend in the tubing before the extruder can grab it. I’ve broken the filament a couple of times in the K1C and many times in the original K1.
And if you do have to get inside that extruder to fix or replace parts, Bambu makes it a breeze: its magnetic cover just lifts off, and $35 buys you a complete modular hotend with heatsink, fan, heating element, and thermistor all attached — just two screws and a few easy cable pulls to swap it.
Bambu’s magnetic cover pops off to reveal just two screws and two easy-pull connectors to remove the hotend.To get inside Creality’s, you have to unscrew screws immediately underneath, and parallel to, the greased rails.
With Creality, there are five screws you have to remove at uncomfortable angles and a silicone sleeve that requires prying, and then you have to reach underneath to get at its tiny rear-facing connectors. You may even have to pull out a pair of pliers because the Creality assembly line inexplicably glues those connectors into place.
Mind you, you’re not going to be doing that every day or even every month: you generally only replace a nozzle if it wears out, gets badly jammed, or if you want to print at higher resolution for more detail or at lower resolution for more speed. For reference, I wound up replacing worn parts of my Ender 3 Pro’s hotend twice in three years after a series of messy jams.
Creality’s bed is a bit harder to clean and maintain... and whose idea was it to purge filament next to a fan intake?
The last reason I think Bambu is a better choice for beginners is the print bed surface itself: how easily parts adhere and detach and how easy it is to clean. The Creality K1 series ships with a smooth PEI build plate that’s theoretically better for high temperature materials and initially gave my parts an incredibly smooth face. But it can be a challenge to remove some parts unless you apply a coating of the included glue stick (the kind kids use to paste paper together), and it’s easy to add too little or too much. I wound up tearing a chunk out of my build plate after too thin a coating.
Also, without a “poop chute,” I always found the K1 and K1C dripping tiny unwanted beads of plastic that’d wind up embedded in the bottom of models unless I carefully cleaned the print bed before each use.
This should give you a good glimpse at the Bambu’s plate texture.
The P1P, meanwhile, ships with a textured PEI-covered stainless steel plate that’s almost never missed for me, no glue required. Generally, my parts are already loose by the time the bed cools. You can buy such a plate for Creality, too, though, and still be paying less than the P1P after you have both.
Not all of Creality’s K1C choices are worse for beginners! While its “AI camera” attaches to the printer at a slightly awkward angle, the timelapses it creates are much easier to monitor and download than the ones from Bambu’s camera. I appreciate the K1C’s simple twist-to-lock filament reel holder (Bambu uses screws), the USB port to load files (Bambu only gives you microSD), more reliable Wi-Fi, and of course, the large 4.3-inch color touchscreen. It’s so much easier to reprint a successful design or navigate a thumb drive when you can actually tap a picture of each design on a screen, instead of Up-Down-Left-Right navigating through Bambu’s small text-only interface.
Creality’s K1C comes with a USB port and anti-vibration feet.
I also like that the Creality comes with anti-vibration feet, although, out of the box, my Bambu prints had more stable lines and steady surface textures even without them. The Bambu P1P is also quieter and can completely turn off its fans when idle. I’ve often come back to the Creality K1C after a day away and found it humming loudly in my garage.
Both companies need to work on their software, but Creality’s is definitely worse. While I’m having no real major trouble with Creality’s own Creality Print desktop app for basic 3D prints in PLA and flexible TPU plastic, I had major issues printing firmer and / or transparent PETG. It’s also missing loads of features compared to rival slicer apps you’d use to prepare your models for printing. (A slicer turns a 3D shape into printable horizontal layers and spits out code that tells the printer how to form each one.)
I had a easier timemaking transparent green PETG appear transparent on the Bambu (left).Another comparisonbetween P1P (left) and K1C (right) with the silver PETG.
You can use those rival slicers, but you may need to tune them for your printer yourself — some had even refused to support the K1 until Creality fulfilled obligations to open source its code. (It seems Creality has now done so.) OrcaSlicer is a popular third-party alternative that does have its own K1 profile, and it helped me print in PETG when Creality Print wouldn’t.
Creality’s mobile app, meanwhile, is gamified to the point that I want nothing to do with it. I just want a way to start and monitor prints, not earn points for printing trendy junk! I even had to turn off app notifications after I got bombarded with point earning opportunities each day, though it seems the company’s cut back on the notifications since launch.
The failed print I’m talking about: it’s for a wireless mouse.
But while Bambu’s slicer is great and its app doesn’t have the same annoyances, I’m not entirely sure I can trust the company’s cloud. One month after the company’s very good apology for its rogue printer incident, I had a similar issue. I went out to the garage one morning to find a model I’d printed directly from its cloud half-finished, stuck to my nozzle, with a second halfway printed copy of the model on the floor.
I’ve tried to print a few other models from its new MakerWorld, a place where you can supposedly find one-click prints validated to work on Bambu’s specific printers, no slicing or tweaks necessary, but one became a huge hunk of worthless plastic because it actually wasn’t validated. I guess I could always go with a private LAN-only connection to the printer instead of using the cloud.
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see from here to an even easier 3D printing future. Bambu’s new A1 series printers now have completely tool-less hotend swaps — just pop the pieces off. The company’s working on new sensors that can detect when your filament tangles while it’s still on the roll, something that occasionally trips up every 3D printer I’ve yet used. I’ve also yet to see a 3D printer company ship their printers with a dry box to keep moisture out of their filament, but Creality does sell them separately, and it’s definitely something they could do to get us closer to that push-button, get-object future!
(I’m not saying you should buy an A1: I had more jams and lower-quality results with an A1 Mini than my P1P, the filament tangle detection still doesn’t work, and many things I print are too big for its bed. I haven’t gotten to test the full-size A1 since its recall.)
The biggest way 3D printers will earn trust, though, is if companies like Creality and Bambu stop shipping them before they’re ready. I can’t believe the terrible state the original Creality K1 first shipped in, and if you lurk in the right places on Reddit and Discord, you’ll hear veterans say that the Bambu P1P shipped with early issues, too. And I’ve read plenty of testimonials from Bambu customers who, like me with the Creality K1, were expected to open up their printers to fix broken things instead of sending them in for service. It’s a good reminder that these are hobbyist devices, not consumer products, even as these companies talk about democratizing 3D printing for everyone.
No matter which printer you’re eyeing, I strongly recommend steering clear of ones that have just launched. Wait for early adopters to iron things out! But if you’re itching to get printing, I’m pretty happy with the nearly two-year-old P1P.
Ventje turns VW’s ID Buzz into a very charming camper
Ventje’s eVentje.
The eVentje custom buildout is a worthy all-electric successor to the iconic VW Camper in Europe.
Volkswagen’s ID Buzz now has a custom camper build-out that’s just as clever and charming as the electric microbus. It’s called eVentje, and it’s now available for general sale in Europe.
Designed and sold by Ventje, a small but rapidly growing company based in the Netherlands, the eVentje conversion is as good as it gets until VW finally releases a California edition of the ID Buzz — which is still a few years away at least. That long delay since European sales began in 2022 has made room for a burgeoning aftermarket for ID Buzz camper products, including the excellent and relatively inexpensive Ququq camping box I previously reviewed.
I first tested a Ventje camper built on top of a VW Transporter T5 cargo van in 2022, before living and working from an ID Buzz for a few weeks in 2023. In 2024, I finally got to test the union of the two for a weekend. And let me tell you, this is definitely a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The ID Buzz has always been a showstopper when driving past onlookers — now, the show continues when the doors open to reveal that wonderfully adaptive Ventje interior.
The overall design of the Ventje camper still relies on more than 100 magnets to keep all those wooden surfaces aligned and locked in place. There’s still a kitchen accessible from inside and out, a pop-top tent, and a multipurpose interior that converts from a lounge to a bed to a luxurious outside furniture set in minutes. Only now, things have been refined throughout with one big addition: a folding table and hidden stools to create an outside bar. Swoon.
The kitchen has seen several improvements that provide more adaptable prep surfaces — always a challenge in a small space — and smarter use of storage. Ventje also moved to not one but two induction cooktops thanks to the inclusion of a 2200W inverter and 2160Wh leisure battery that charges from the VW’s driving battery, a 350-watt solar panel, and a mini shore-power outlet located on the lower backside of the van.
There’s even a bar.
Ventje also makes it easier to keep all your own gear powered with eight USB sockets (4x USB-A, 4x USB-C), a 12V car jack, 3x wireless charging surfaces, and 3x 230V AC sockets for anyone looking to take advantage of their company’s hybrid office policy. There are also more lighting options including dimmable LED light strips and a closable sunroof in the pop-top tent.
VW’s poorly designed software still frustrates the otherwise exceptional driving experience, which remains rattle-free even with all of Ventje’s customizations. One would expect VW to eventually enable a camping mode on the ID Buzz, a feature already found on its existing California series campers. That would make heating and cooling the ID Buzz more intuitive when parked and allow owners to more easily disable the interior motion alarm when locking all the doors at night.
The eVentje can sleep four but is currently highway legal for only two people. It’s built around the regular-wheelbase ID Buzz, not the long-wheelbase model coming to Europe and the US (finally!) later this year. Nevertheless, my wife and I didn’t want for more space, even with the dog coming along on the trip.
The eVentje, like the ID Buzz, isn’t cheap, and soon, in Europe, it will have to compete with VW’s new PHEV “T7” California camper going on sale in June for what’s probably about the same price. But that model lacks the retrofuturistic appeal of the all-electric ID Buzz, and its interior is arguably less flexible — and definitely less fun — than Ventje’s warm custom design.
The modified eVentje ID Buzz starts at €95,000 (about $103,000) in Europe. An order placed today will ship in nine months to customers in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Ventje says that it’s also planning to expand to the UK and US in time.
YouTube Music will let you search by humming into your Android phone
Tap the waveform icon, circled above, to search with sound. | Screenshots: YouTube Music
The Android YouTube Music app is rolling out a feature that’s part Shazam and part your friend when you say, “hey what’s that song that goes...” right before you hum out a bar. The feature lets you hum, whistle, sing, or play a recording of a song to figure out what it is.
If you have the new feature, you’ll see a new waveform icon next to the microphone icon that appears when you tap the search button in the upper right corner of the app. Tap this, and the app will start listening. It’s not too shabby, either! When I tested, it was able to identify actual recordings with what seemed like uncanny speed, making it a great replacement for Shazam.
As far as listening to me hum, it accurately picked out most of the songs I sang, whistled, and hummed at my phone, but there were some funny misses:
Screenshot: YouTube Music
To be fair, some Tom Waits songs make for good Halloween music.
This was supposed to be “Dead,” by They Might Be Giants.
Screenshot: YouTube Music
Eh, I’ll take it.
I was whistling “Bat Out of Hell” by Meat Loaf here. At least Finnish hair metal throwback band Reckless Love is at least in the ballpark, kind of?
I can’t fault it too much for the misses. I was throwing songs at it that I’d guess most people wouldn’t pick out from a few seconds of humming. Overall, it works quickly, perhaps faster than the same feature that Google Assistant has had for years. Humming to search has reportedly been spotted in YouTube Music for iOS in recent months, too, though it doesn’t appear to have gone out widely there, yet.
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