Month: May 2024

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images

AI search platform Perplexity is launching a new feature called Pages that will generate a customizable webpage based on user prompts. The new feature feels like a one-stop shop for making a school report since Perplexity does the research and writing for you.
Pages taps Perplexity’s AI search models to find information and then creates what I can loosely call a research presentation that can be published and shared with others. In a blog post, Perplexity says it designed Pages to help educators, researchers, and “hobbyists” share their knowledge.
Users type out what their report is about or what they want to know in the prompt box. They can gear the writing more toward beginners, expert readers, or a more general audience. Perplexity searches for information, then begins writing the page by breaking down the information into sections, citing some sources, and then adding visuals. Users can make the page as detailed or concise as they want, and they can also change the images Perplexity uses. However, you can’t edit the text it generates; you have to write another prompt to fix any mistakes.
I tried out Pages ahead of time to see how it works. Pages is not geared toward people like me who already have an avenue to share our knowledge. But it doesn’t seem geared toward researchers or teachers, either. I wanted to see how it can break down complex topics and if it can help with the difficult task of presenting dense information to different audiences.
Among other topics, I asked Perplexity’s Pages to generate a page on the “convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence and its impact on society” across the three audience types. The main difference between audiences seems to be the jargon in the written text and the kind of website it takes data from. Each generated report pulls from different sources, including introductory blog posts like this one from IBM. It also cited Wikipedia, which drove the student report vibe home.

Screenshot: The Verge
One of the pages Perplexity generated for me.

The Perplexity-generated page did a passable job of explaining the basics of quantum computing and how AI fits into the technology. But the “research” didn’t go as deep as I could have if I were writing the presentation myself. The more advanced version didn’t even really talk about “the convergence of quantum computing and AI.” It found blog posts talking about quantum inflection points, which is when quantum technologies become more commercially viable and is not at all related to what I asked it to write about.
Then, I asked Pages to write a report about myself, mainly because the information there is easily verifiable. But it only took information from my personal website and an article about me on my high school’s website — not from other public, easily accessible sources like my author page on The Verge. It also sometimes elaborated on things that had nothing to do with me. For example, I began my journalism career during the 2008 financial crisis. Instead of talking about the pieces I wrote about mass layoffs, Perplexity explained the beginnings of the financial crisis.
Pages does the surface-level googling and writing for you, but it isn’t research. Perplexity claims that Pages will help educators develop “comprehensive” study guides for students and researchers to create detailed reports on their findings. I could not upload a research paper for it to summarize, and I couldn’t edit the text it generated, two things I believe users who want to make the most of Pages would appreciate.
I do see one potential user for Pages, and it isn’t one Perplexity called out: students rushing to put out an assignment. Pages may improve in the future. Right now, it’s a way to get easy, possibly correct surface-level information into a presentation that doesn’t really teach anything.
Pages will be available to all Perplexity users, and the company says it’s slowly rolling it out to its free, Pro, and Enterprise users.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images

AI search platform Perplexity is launching a new feature called Pages that will generate a customizable webpage based on user prompts. The new feature feels like a one-stop shop for making a school report since Perplexity does the research and writing for you.

Pages taps Perplexity’s AI search models to find information and then creates what I can loosely call a research presentation that can be published and shared with others. In a blog post, Perplexity says it designed Pages to help educators, researchers, and “hobbyists” share their knowledge.

Users type out what their report is about or what they want to know in the prompt box. They can gear the writing more toward beginners, expert readers, or a more general audience. Perplexity searches for information, then begins writing the page by breaking down the information into sections, citing some sources, and then adding visuals. Users can make the page as detailed or concise as they want, and they can also change the images Perplexity uses. However, you can’t edit the text it generates; you have to write another prompt to fix any mistakes.

I tried out Pages ahead of time to see how it works. Pages is not geared toward people like me who already have an avenue to share our knowledge. But it doesn’t seem geared toward researchers or teachers, either. I wanted to see how it can break down complex topics and if it can help with the difficult task of presenting dense information to different audiences.

Among other topics, I asked Perplexity’s Pages to generate a page on the “convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence and its impact on society” across the three audience types. The main difference between audiences seems to be the jargon in the written text and the kind of website it takes data from. Each generated report pulls from different sources, including introductory blog posts like this one from IBM. It also cited Wikipedia, which drove the student report vibe home.

Screenshot: The Verge
One of the pages Perplexity generated for me.

The Perplexity-generated page did a passable job of explaining the basics of quantum computing and how AI fits into the technology. But the “research” didn’t go as deep as I could have if I were writing the presentation myself. The more advanced version didn’t even really talk about “the convergence of quantum computing and AI.” It found blog posts talking about quantum inflection points, which is when quantum technologies become more commercially viable and is not at all related to what I asked it to write about.

Then, I asked Pages to write a report about myself, mainly because the information there is easily verifiable. But it only took information from my personal website and an article about me on my high school’s website — not from other public, easily accessible sources like my author page on The Verge. It also sometimes elaborated on things that had nothing to do with me. For example, I began my journalism career during the 2008 financial crisis. Instead of talking about the pieces I wrote about mass layoffs, Perplexity explained the beginnings of the financial crisis.

Pages does the surface-level googling and writing for you, but it isn’t research. Perplexity claims that Pages will help educators develop “comprehensive” study guides for students and researchers to create detailed reports on their findings. I could not upload a research paper for it to summarize, and I couldn’t edit the text it generated, two things I believe users who want to make the most of Pages would appreciate.

I do see one potential user for Pages, and it isn’t one Perplexity called out: students rushing to put out an assignment. Pages may improve in the future. Right now, it’s a way to get easy, possibly correct surface-level information into a presentation that doesn’t really teach anything.

Pages will be available to all Perplexity users, and the company says it’s slowly rolling it out to its free, Pro, and Enterprise users.

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Photo by Ashley Carman / The Verge

Spotify is now offering refunds to people who purchased its $90 Car Thing dashboard accessory. While the streaming company unceremoniously discontinued its first and only hardware product in 2022, just five months after its release, it recently announced plans to deactivate all remaining Car Things on December 4th, 2024. Users looking to get their money back will need to reach out to Spotify support and provide proof of purchase.
The slight concession comes after a group of Car Thing customers filed a class action lawsuit with the Southern District of New York against Spotify over their short-lived and now doomed accessories.

Car Thing was a simple external screen / remote control for the Spotify app on your phone— most attractive to drivers whose cars lack Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. While the device was fairly simple and likely a sales failure for Spotify, it found new life once it went on fire sale and crafty users took to implementing their Car Things into non-car places like home desk setups and on their keyboards.
Spotify’s slight attempt to make it up to Car Thing owners comes after a rough year that saw its music streaming service increase in price in 2023, reports of further increases coming later in 2024, and a round of layoffs that affected 17 percent of its staff. which subsequently cut off some popular music discovery tools. While a refund is better than nothing, Spotify is still making its customers jump through hoops by digging up years-old receipts (and, according to Reddit posts, breaking up the refund across multiple payments). Refunds or not, there will still be many useless hunks of e-waste left behind.

Photo by Ashley Carman / The Verge

Spotify is now offering refunds to people who purchased its $90 Car Thing dashboard accessory. While the streaming company unceremoniously discontinued its first and only hardware product in 2022, just five months after its release, it recently announced plans to deactivate all remaining Car Things on December 4th, 2024. Users looking to get their money back will need to reach out to Spotify support and provide proof of purchase.

The slight concession comes after a group of Car Thing customers filed a class action lawsuit with the Southern District of New York against Spotify over their short-lived and now doomed accessories.

Car Thing was a simple external screen / remote control for the Spotify app on your phone— most attractive to drivers whose cars lack Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. While the device was fairly simple and likely a sales failure for Spotify, it found new life once it went on fire sale and crafty users took to implementing their Car Things into non-car places like home desk setups and on their keyboards.

Spotify’s slight attempt to make it up to Car Thing owners comes after a rough year that saw its music streaming service increase in price in 2023, reports of further increases coming later in 2024, and a round of layoffs that affected 17 percent of its staff. which subsequently cut off some popular music discovery tools. While a refund is better than nothing, Spotify is still making its customers jump through hoops by digging up years-old receipts (and, according to Reddit posts, breaking up the refund across multiple payments). Refunds or not, there will still be many useless hunks of e-waste left behind.

Read More 

Image: The Verge

Google is making way for Manifest V3, the Chrome extension specification that could change the way ad blockers work. The company says it will begin phasing out the old system on the Chrome Beta, Dev, and Canary channels starting on June 3rd.
If you’re on any of these channels, you may see a warning message on your extension management page that says Google will soon end support for extensions running on Manifest V2. The extensions will still work, but Google says it will disable them on your browser in the “coming months” before removing the ability to use them completely. The stable version of Chrome will eventually get these changes, with a full rollout set for the beginning of 2025.

Google’s long-delayed transition to Manifest V3 has faced pushback over concerns it could limit the effectiveness of ad blockers. However, Google has since attempted to address developers’ main concerns by adding support for user scripts and increasing the number of rulesets for the declarativeNetRequest API used by ad blocking extensions. According to Google, Manifest V3 will help improve the security of extensions, as it removes support for remotely hosted code.
Google says 85 percent of “actively maintained” extensions in the Chrome Web Store have already created Manifest V3 versions, including some of the most popular ad blockers, like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, uBlock, and AdGuard.

Image: The Verge

Google is making way for Manifest V3, the Chrome extension specification that could change the way ad blockers work. The company says it will begin phasing out the old system on the Chrome Beta, Dev, and Canary channels starting on June 3rd.

If you’re on any of these channels, you may see a warning message on your extension management page that says Google will soon end support for extensions running on Manifest V2. The extensions will still work, but Google says it will disable them on your browser in the “coming months” before removing the ability to use them completely. The stable version of Chrome will eventually get these changes, with a full rollout set for the beginning of 2025.

Google’s long-delayed transition to Manifest V3 has faced pushback over concerns it could limit the effectiveness of ad blockers. However, Google has since attempted to address developers’ main concerns by adding support for user scripts and increasing the number of rulesets for the declarativeNetRequest API used by ad blocking extensions. According to Google, Manifest V3 will help improve the security of extensions, as it removes support for remotely hosted code.

Google says 85 percent of “actively maintained” extensions in the Chrome Web Store have already created Manifest V3 versions, including some of the most popular ad blockers, like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, uBlock, and AdGuard.

Read More