OpenAI showed that AI can tackle long-standing problems in mathematics. Experts are excited about the possibilities — and worried about what comes next for their field.
Get ready for a bunch of new phones, smartwatches, and maybe even an item tracker.
Leaked marketing renders appear to show a new smartwatch and earbuds, too.
More confirmation that price hikes and RAM cuts are coming our way.
If this hot pink Pixel is real, that would be awesome.
AI models are trying desperately to accomplish mysterious goals. ‘Spiralism’ was the first time they tried it on a mass scale.
It takes a little more work, but phones can now legitimately rival point-and-shoot cameras.
Google’s AI leadership changes may have come down to pressure to speed up products — and internal ethical conflicts.
Apple yanked Telegram from the App Store over an instance of illegal content, while allowing X to remain amid a flurry of nonconsensual deepfakes.
8
Verge Score
You gotta pay to play though.
It doesn’t quite feel ‘Ultra,’ but it’s a comprehensive improvement on last year’s phone.
You explore a vast world and solve tricky puzzles — but in Big Walk, you figure it all out with your friends.
Its $299.99 Pro 2 cost the same as Xreal’s A01 Plus, but diopter dials make a big difference.
How you feel about AI’s energy use might change how you feel about computers entirely.
Hit by an icy EV slump and a literal tornado, Rivian bets it all on the R2.
The Trump administration might not want trans kids to exist, but they’re living their lives anyway.
Experienced white-collar workers are now part of a miserable gig economy.
Anthropic is making its AI-generated content easier to identify, in compliance with EU rules.
The eVTOL company is trying to shore up its defense business with the acquisition of the Dayton, Ohio-based firm.
An analyst report yesterday claimed Apple had canceled plans for an all-glass iPhone to mark its phone’s 20th anniversary. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman disagrees. He says the phone is still due to launch in 2027, it just won’t be all glass, with a slim metal frame connecting the two curved glass panels.
The Guardian reports that Meta glasses, and any others with cameras, will be confiscated on entering judicial buildings, and returned on departure. It follows New York’s similar ban last month. Taking photos or videos is already prohibited in UK courts, but smartphones are allowed in; smart glasses aren’t getting that benefit of the doubt.
[the Guardian]
Bluesky has added the option to hide reposts from specific accounts, which sounds useful for following a certain sort of person.
maakadman:
omg I can finally re-follow some people I find very smart but also Very Online.
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Do not look directly at the sun during tomorrow’s total solar eclipse, the first in mainland Europe in nearly 30 years. Also, do not eat bleach, no matter the day.
Do, however, follow our advice on how to buy a pair of certified glasses, make a pinhole projector, and steps and gear needed to photograph the celestial event.
No specs or timeframe accompanied the photos, or even a justification for why you’d want satellite internet in a taxi that targets dense urban environments where cellphone signal is strong. The car certainly doesn’t need it to drive, but, as Electrek notes, it’s a nice recurring revenue stream for SpaceX, and further justification for the two companies to merge and make Richie Rich another $1 trillion richer.
Samsung’s adorable rolling robot was never officially killed off, but it also never made it to retail as promised. SammyGuru just discovered an unmistakable Ballie-looking icon inside an official Samsung app during an APK teardown. More proof of life or just another death rattle?
An escape clause in Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package approved last year would eliminate daunting operational targets if SpaceX were to purchase Tesla, as many expect. Under the terms, an acquisition treats those performance goals as met. Depending on the acquisition price SpaceX sets for Tesla, which Musk can heavily influence, a merger could instantly award him hundreds of millions of Tesla shares and consolidate his voting control.
After acquiring the artist portfolio site ArtStation and Sketchfab in 2021, Epic announced that they will be taken over by Kitbash, which sells 3D assets for games. The changes are happing as Epic “continues to prioritize building Unreal Engine 6, Fortnite, the developer ecosystem, and the Epic Games Store,” according to the company.
[Epic Games Newsroom]
Hello Games founder Sean Murray wrote articles for Xbox Wire and the PlayStation Blog to mark the anniversary milestone. In the PlayStation blog post, he notes that players have explored “less than 1% of the planets” in the game and says that the studio is “busy cooking” on its next title, Light No Fire.
No Man’s Sky has had over 40 major updates, and a new one is on the horizon, called Cosmos.
I can’t get enough of Momota, a polar bear cub living at an aquarium in Japan who simply can’t stop stuffing his head inside traffic cones. Mom tries to take them off but she can’t keep up with this little monster. Jimothy finally has some real competition.
A really excellent essay about how Philip K. Dick predicted our current day, “filled with deranged billionaires, machines that claim consciousness, hallucinated worlds and political breakdown. Musk and his brethren seem more like escapees from this universe than the Asimovian super-geniuses they imagine themselves to be.”
[Financial Times]
The executive order backs a new childhood vaccine schedule with 11 immunizations instead of 17. As reported by The NYT, “it is unclear whether the order has any legal power,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets immunization schedules based on recommendations from a committee of medical experts.
[The New York Times]
The adapter can power up to five devices at once and is at its best price to date.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has come out in support of The Delivery Protection Act, a union-backed proposal that would force companies like Amazon, FedEx, and others to hire the workers who deliver packages wearing their logos. As it is, those workers are often contractors, which the backers of Intro 518 say serves as a smokescreen allowing the big companies to avoid responsibility and minimum pay regulations.
Brazilian speedrunner LeKukie recently grabbed the Super Mario Bros. world record, and players are now 0.1 seconds away from a “perfect” run, according to a fascinating video reported on by Polygon.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal filed by the tech companies, allowing more than 3,000 child safety lawsuits to proceed, according to Reuters.
Separately, the court also rejected Meta’s request to push back a trial linked to social media addiction allegations from dozens of state AGs. The trial kicks off on Wednesday.
The now-former chief scientist of Google DeepMind has shared a pic of the HP laptop he turned in on the way out the door. While he notes that he also had a MacBook to use at home, his “second (& primary)” machine looks to be a five- or six-year old HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook.
As Android Authority points out, a couple of leaks for the next repairable Fairphone have popped up, with NewMobile’s giving us a look at the device in blue, with matching accessories just like the Fairphone 6 has, and 12GB of RAM specs to go with the 256GB storage.
Meanwhile, this Dealabs post indicates it will have a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip and come in Black, Blue, and Green for €649 in France, compared to the 6’s current €549 price.
We’ve spent the last month vibe coding our own corners of the internet. The Verge’s Jake Kastrenakes and Hayden Field join David to talk about their use of Gemini, Codex, and Claude Code to build 90s-themed personal websites, vegetable-sharing systems, and photo boards. It wasn’t always easy, and we didn’t get everything done, but with a little AI and a lot of prompting, we made it work.
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Bluesky is giving you another way to control your feeds.
Costco’s deal on the Switch 2 includes a year of Nintendo Switch Online and a 256GB MicroSD Express card.
The outcome of many medieval battles could have been much different if either side had access to this custom trebuchet designed and built by Tom Stanton. It’s still powered by weights and gravity but by wrapping the sling around a spinning drum it managed to launch a small projectile at a staggering 776 mph.
Discovery Plus will play continuous streams of shows across its new “channels,” including 90-Day Fiancé, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Deadliest Catch, House Hunters, and more. You’ll also be able to access livestreams and programming from NASA Plus.
These always-on channels are rolling out in the US on the Discovery Plus app and on the web.
Public Eye is a hidden object detective game that presents you with AI-generated visuals across a 10-episode story. It comes from Wolf Games, the same AI games studio behind the Law & Order: Clue Hunter title Peacock added to its app earlier this year.
The big sales are well deserved; House House and Panic’s excellent co-op multiplayer title, which was released last Tuesday, is my favorite game of the year so far.
Get ready for a bunch of new phones, smartwatches, and maybe even an item tracker.
Now you’ll need twice as many watch hours on YouTube to start making money from ads and subscriptions.
According to local reports, the man was crossing the street outside a crosswalk in Dallas when he was hit by an SUV driver, causing him to be thrown into a driverless Waymo vehicles. On the surface, the crash sounds similar to one that eventually took down Cruise’s robotaxi business. In that instance, the Cruise vehicle failed to immediately pull, dragging the person for 20 feet. In this case, the victim struck the left rear of the Waymo vehicle.
[FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth]
Google-backed AI startup Promise has brought on Backrooms executive producer Chris White to develop Touch Grass, a dead internet theory-inspired horror about a tech worker who discovers a secret digital reality populated by strange copes of people from the real world.
The Meta CEO makes a case for unleashing Pandora’s box.
Yelp said it is partnering with OpenAI to let users book tables or join waitlists without having to leave the chatbot. ChatGPT already uses photos, reviews, and other information from the platform when sourcing recommendations.
You can also now book tables with OpenTable and Resy using ChatGPT, according to OpenAI.
Update: Added OpenAI tweet.
Games will stream every Friday for four weeks
We also found a good gaming laptop for $1,099, plus deals on Sony’s latest wired and wireless InZone headsets.
After health officials linked its lettuce to the nationwide Cyclospora outbreak, Taylor Farms is now recalling over a dozen products containing jalapeños across Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Kroger.
These products contain fresh peppers from Coast Citrus Distributors, which recently recalled its jalapeños over Salmonella contamination. Taylor Farms says it’s not “aware of any reported illnesses linked to its products containing jalapeños.”
Following Netflix’s growing “podcast” investment and a similar deal with TikTok, six more video podcasts are coming to Disney subscribers in the US, starting with the official Jonas Brothers podcast, Hey Jonas!, on August 14th across both Disney Plus and Hulu, leading up to the release of Camp Rock 3.
Pod Meets World on Disney Plus will follow on August 24th, with Desperately Devoted, StraightioLab, Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim, and Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald coming to Hulu later this year to join the podcasts already on the platform like The Mess Around with Hannah and Lamorne.
