Month: August 2024

Image: Apple

The Apple Sports app is gearing up for football season with an update that brings live scores and play-by-play information for NFL and college football games to your iPhone’s lockscreen. With Live Activities support “for all teams and leagues available in the app for the first time ever” in iOS 18 and watchOS 11, now you can keep tabs on your team’s scores from the lockscreen on your iPhone or Apple Watch.
In addition to North American football, Apple Sports is adding UEFA Champions League and Europa League next month.
For pro and college football fans in the US, the app is also adding a new “dynamic drive tracker” visual to show the ball’s current position on the field.

Image: Apple
Live Activities will let you view scores on your iPhone or Apple Watch’s lockscreen.

Later this year, Apple plans on rolling out a new drop-down navigation menu that’s supposed to make it easier to switch between main scorecard views. It’s also working on an improved search feature to help you find matches for leagues you aren’t following.
Apple launched its Sports app in February and has since been adding support for new leagues, teams, and tournaments throughout the year, including Major League Baseball and March Madness.

Image: Apple

The Apple Sports app is gearing up for football season with an update that brings live scores and play-by-play information for NFL and college football games to your iPhone’s lockscreen. With Live Activities support “for all teams and leagues available in the app for the first time ever” in iOS 18 and watchOS 11, now you can keep tabs on your team’s scores from the lockscreen on your iPhone or Apple Watch.

In addition to North American football, Apple Sports is adding UEFA Champions League and Europa League next month.

For pro and college football fans in the US, the app is also adding a new “dynamic drive tracker” visual to show the ball’s current position on the field.

Image: Apple
Live Activities will let you view scores on your iPhone or Apple Watch’s lockscreen.

Later this year, Apple plans on rolling out a new drop-down navigation menu that’s supposed to make it easier to switch between main scorecard views. It’s also working on an improved search feature to help you find matches for leagues you aren’t following.

Apple launched its Sports app in February and has since been adding support for new leagues, teams, and tournaments throughout the year, including Major League Baseball and March Madness.

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A rendering of Sage Geosystems’ geothermal energy project. | Image: Sage Geosystems

Meta announced a new partnership this week in the hopes that geothermal energy can help it reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Meta and startup Sage Geosystems struck up a deal to develop new geothermal power plants. If they make it to the finish line, the plants would provide carbon pollution-free energy that Meta needs for new data centers in the US.
The company has struggled to keep its carbon pollution down since it pledged in 2020 to reach net zero emissions by the end of the decade, its latest sustainability report published yesterday shows. The race to develop more powerful AI tools has raised the stakes, triggering the development of new energy-hungry data centers. So, Meta is putting its faith in next-generation geothermal tech to unlock a new source of clean energy.
Meta is putting its faith in next-generation geothermal tech to unlock a new source of clean energy
The announcement came out of a Department of Energy (DOE) workshop on Monday, showing the Biden administration’s hopes that geothermal energy can also help the US meet its climate goals under the Paris agreement.
“Every new next-generation geothermal project helps prove out these technologies and raise awareness about geothermal’s opportunities to provide firm, flexible power nationwide,” Lauren Boyd, director of the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office, said in an email to The Verge.
The US hardly uses any geothermal energy today, which made up less than half a percent of the nation’s electricity mix last year. Typical geothermal plants take advantage of the heat that’s generated within our planet, drawing up hot fluids from natural reservoirs to produce steam that turns turbines. But relying on those natural reservoirs limits where you can build a geothermal plant.

Sage is developing technologies to harness that energy source from hot, dry rock formations. To do that, it essentially creates artificial reservoirs by drilling and pumping water underground. It field-tested this method for the first time in 2022 using an abandoned gas well in Texas. Sage says it can scale the technique up using common “off-the-shelf oil and gas technologies.” If it drills 18–20 wells near each other, for example, it expects to be able to generate 50 megawatts of geothermal power.
Its partnership with Meta is to eventually provide up to 150MW, but the deal is still in a very early stage. There are no details yet on where the new plants would be located, and the companies tell The Verge they have yet to sign a long-term contract called a power purchase agreement.

Photo: Sage Geosystems
Sage’s test well in Starr County, Texas.

“We want to give [Sage] the clarity that we’re there as their partner, ready to sign an agreement at the right time. But the Sage team will be responsible for taking the project from today, finding a location, getting the permits done, designing and engineering the whole facility. There are a lot of really important steps, especially for technologies like Sage that are ripe and ready to scale,” Urvi Parekh, head of renewable energy at Meta, says.
Sage also still has to find investors for this project, CEO Cindy Taff tells The Verge. The first phase of the project will be to show it can generate 8MW of power by 2027 before scaling up to 150MW some 36 to 48 months later. The first phase alone is expected to cost up to about $50 million, although Sage says that could fluctuate as the project takes shape. Meta isn’t sharing any figures yet on how much it’s willing to spend on the project.
Costs and all the heavy lifting it takes to get a geothermal project up and running — from securing permits to safely drilling wells — has been a stumbling block for geothermal energy for decades. It can be seen as a riskier venture than putting up solar panels or wind turbines. That’s what makes buy-in from a tech giant like Meta a boon for these technologies.

“It’s encouraging. Meta has a lot of money. They chew up a lot of electricity running all these data centers. It’s good to see them interested in decarbonizing,” says Jefferson Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell University where researchers are developing a geothermal system to heat the school campus. Still, for geothermal energy to really take off, it’ll need more public and private support, he says.
Geothermal energy does have some advantages over other renewables. It can provide consistent power to make up for shortfalls in wind and solar energy that fluctuate with the weather and time of day. That advantage has made it an attractive proposition for Meta and Google, which has partnered with another geothermal company for its data centers.
“Our data centers are online 24 hours a day so that users can access the products like Instagram and WhatsApp and others. And so what’s great about geothermal energy is that it can also supply electricity around the clock,” Parekh says. “As we want to build more data centers, it’s going to be really important that the electricity grids around us continue to decarbonize.”

A rendering of Sage Geosystems’ geothermal energy project. | Image: Sage Geosystems

Meta announced a new partnership this week in the hopes that geothermal energy can help it reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Meta and startup Sage Geosystems struck up a deal to develop new geothermal power plants. If they make it to the finish line, the plants would provide carbon pollution-free energy that Meta needs for new data centers in the US.

The company has struggled to keep its carbon pollution down since it pledged in 2020 to reach net zero emissions by the end of the decade, its latest sustainability report published yesterday shows. The race to develop more powerful AI tools has raised the stakes, triggering the development of new energy-hungry data centers. So, Meta is putting its faith in next-generation geothermal tech to unlock a new source of clean energy.

The announcement came out of a Department of Energy (DOE) workshop on Monday, showing the Biden administration’s hopes that geothermal energy can also help the US meet its climate goals under the Paris agreement.

“Every new next-generation geothermal project helps prove out these technologies and raise awareness about geothermal’s opportunities to provide firm, flexible power nationwide,” Lauren Boyd, director of the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office, said in an email to The Verge.

The US hardly uses any geothermal energy today, which made up less than half a percent of the nation’s electricity mix last year. Typical geothermal plants take advantage of the heat that’s generated within our planet, drawing up hot fluids from natural reservoirs to produce steam that turns turbines. But relying on those natural reservoirs limits where you can build a geothermal plant.

Sage is developing technologies to harness that energy source from hot, dry rock formations. To do that, it essentially creates artificial reservoirs by drilling and pumping water underground. It field-tested this method for the first time in 2022 using an abandoned gas well in Texas. Sage says it can scale the technique up using common “off-the-shelf oil and gas technologies.” If it drills 18–20 wells near each other, for example, it expects to be able to generate 50 megawatts of geothermal power.

Its partnership with Meta is to eventually provide up to 150MW, but the deal is still in a very early stage. There are no details yet on where the new plants would be located, and the companies tell The Verge they have yet to sign a long-term contract called a power purchase agreement.

“We want to give [Sage] the clarity that we’re there as their partner, ready to sign an agreement at the right time. But the Sage team will be responsible for taking the project from today, finding a location, getting the permits done, designing and engineering the whole facility. There are a lot of really important steps, especially for technologies like Sage that are ripe and ready to scale,” Urvi Parekh, head of renewable energy at Meta, says.

Sage also still has to find investors for this project, CEO Cindy Taff tells The Verge. The first phase of the project will be to show it can generate 8MW of power by 2027 before scaling up to 150MW some 36 to 48 months later. The first phase alone is expected to cost up to about $50 million, although Sage says that could fluctuate as the project takes shape. Meta isn’t sharing any figures yet on how much it’s willing to spend on the project.

Costs and all the heavy lifting it takes to get a geothermal project up and running — from securing permits to safely drilling wells — has been a stumbling block for geothermal energy for decades. It can be seen as a riskier venture than putting up solar panels or wind turbines. That’s what makes buy-in from a tech giant like Meta a boon for these technologies.

“It’s encouraging. Meta has a lot of money. They chew up a lot of electricity running all these data centers. It’s good to see them interested in decarbonizing,” says Jefferson Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell University where researchers are developing a geothermal system to heat the school campus. Still, for geothermal energy to really take off, it’ll need more public and private support, he says.

Geothermal energy does have some advantages over other renewables. It can provide consistent power to make up for shortfalls in wind and solar energy that fluctuate with the weather and time of day. That advantage has made it an attractive proposition for Meta and Google, which has partnered with another geothermal company for its data centers.

“Our data centers are online 24 hours a day so that users can access the products like Instagram and WhatsApp and others. And so what’s great about geothermal energy is that it can also supply electricity around the clock,” Parekh says. “As we want to build more data centers, it’s going to be really important that the electricity grids around us continue to decarbonize.”

Read More 

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Jools Lebron

At this point, you either already know about the “very demure, very mindful” meme that originated on TikTok, or you have neither the interest nor the capacity to understand. It is simply A Thing, a viral catchphrase that may become as ubiquitous in the 2020s as “eyebrows on fleek” was in the 2010s. And that is why every tabloid in America is running a story about a dispute over an application to register “Very Demure… Very Mindful…” as a trademark.
The headlines go like this:

Trademarks Are Very Demure, Very Mindful (TMZ)
TikToker Jools Lebron Sobs Over Trademark Filing in Deleted TikTok (also TMZ)
Who is Jefferson Bates and when did he trademark Jools Lebron’s very mindful very demure TikTok trend? (The Sun)
Newest internet villain? Man files trademark for Jools Lebron’s ‘very mindful, very demure’ (USA Today)
‘Very demure’ catchphrase filed for trademark by Washington State man, not influencer who popularized trend (TODAY.com)
‘Very Demure, Very Mindful’ trendsetter Jools Lebron loses trademark rights, sobs on TikTok (Hindustan Times)
Jools Lebron, the creator of ‘very demure, very mindful,’ might not own its trademark (Mashable)

The first thing I want to say is that trademark is not the same as copyright, regardless of what’s written in The Sun article. The second is that a trademark is not the same as a trademark registration. The third — and most salient — thing is this: an application to register a trademark is neither.
To lay out some basics, a trademark is any word, phrase, image, or combination thereof that is used in commerce to identify what a layperson might call a “brand” — even things like the Law & Order “dun-DUN” or the NBC chimes are trademarks. It’s legally possible to have a common law trademark with no paperwork, but most companies file for a trademark registration, because having that entry in a government database makes it easier to sue for infringement. It’s a bit like having a driver’s license or passport: you’re still you without one, but the paperwork will cut through a lot of hassle when somebody asks for proof.
The “very demure, very mindful” trademark filing, however, is just an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office. It’s a pending registration that the USPTO hasn’t ruled on, roughly equivalent to the numbered ticket you’d get for turning in a few forms at the DMV.
Mr. Verydemure Verymindful? Please take a seat in the waiting area. We’ll call out your number in approximately eight months.
Anyone can apply for a registration, but you’re not guaranteed to get one
Anyone can apply for a registration, but you’re not guaranteed to get one. Maybe your application overlaps too much with a preexisting registration in the database. Maybe the trademark you’ve picked is a tad bit too generic. Depending on what kind of paperwork you’re filing, it’s possible you didn’t include enough documentation of how the trademark is being used in the real world. And sometimes, the examining attorney who was assigned to your application is feeling cranky that day and decides to pick on you. (The inverse can be true as well — the examiner might be a little too ready to go home, and rubber-stamps something that probably shouldn’t have been approved.)
About a week ago, someone named Jefferson A. Bates filed the application to register “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” as a trademark. A whole lot of people know who TikTok influencer Jools Lebron is — she was on Jimmy Kimmel just last week — and she is pretty widely acknowledged as the originator of the “very demure” meme. She’s made deals with Verizon and Netflix all on the back of “demure.” No one knows who Jefferson A. Bates is, except that his email address is tied to the publisher of a defunct emoji app called “Insta LOL Emoji,” which has a Facebook page featuring a screenshot of an X post about (of all things) the intellectual property rights for Squid Game.

Screenshot by The Verge
You can’t make this stuff up.

The services that Bates wants to cover are “Advertising, marketing and promotional services related to all industries for the purpose of facilitating networking and socializing opportunities for business purposes,” a series of words that made me do a spit-take. It’s not just that “advertising, marketing, and promotional services” is a hilarious category to use someone else’s TikTok meme for — the “all industries” tips it over into genuinely sublime comedy.
Having a trademark in one industry doesn’t let you flex on all the others
Even if you’re running one of the biggest companies on earth, you can still only register a mark for a finite range of goods and services. And the more goods and services you claim, the more pushback you’ll get from the Trademark Office. Having a trademark doesn’t mean you “own” a word or phrase in the English language, and having that trademark in one industry doesn’t let you flex on all the others. Apple obviously owns the trademark for all kinds of things, ranging from phones to personal computers to television streaming services, but it can’t stop anyone from selling a fruit while calling it an apple. (In fact, the company was mired in years of legal finagling over its music-related services, thanks to the Beatles’ Apple Records.) Two entirely different companies manufacture Dove chocolate (“For: IC 030 Cocoa”) and Dove deodorant (“For: IC 003 Body wash and body bars soap; deodorants; hair care preparations”). Spirit Halloween (“For: IC 035 retail store services featuring Halloween merchandise”) and Spirit Airlines (“For: IC 039 Scheduled and chartered air transportation”) have no relation to each other.
And crucially, during the application process, other people can file to oppose the registration. (In 2014, Disney tried — unsuccessfully — to block the registration of Deadmau5’s logo.)
Media coverage sometimes treats the trademark system like a weapon that lets hucksters sweep in to lock up somebody else’s meme or viral phrase. But the registration system can actually serve the opposite purpose. People can check the registers to get the lay of the land when branding their latest hustle, and they can keep an eye on new filings for similar marks that could edge in on their turf.
So Jools Lebron finding out about the “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” trademark application and then getting mad about it is — theoretically speaking — all part of the process. Lebron hasn’t lost a trademark, she’s been given a heads up that someone else is crowding in on her whole deal.
Lebron hasn’t lost a trademark
Lebron could, for instance, oppose Bates’ application on the grounds that she was using the trademark first, even without a preexisting registration. That deal with Verizon, for example, kind of looks like use in commerce! Bates, meanwhile, is not inking deals with megacorporations. Once again, this application is in the extremely early stages. It will likely sit around for months before reaching an examining attorney, during which time people (including Lebron) could file their own applications. Plenty of trademarks never even make it through this phase.
This isn’t to say that things are guaranteed to go smoothly for Lebron. Bates filing first is a pain in the ass. Still, the headlines that indicate that she has already lost are wildly incorrect. And meanwhile, Jefferson A. Bates may end up regretting his choice to file in a particularly un-demure, non-mindful fashion. Bates seemingly didn’t use an attorney to submit the application, which is of course not a necessity — the government is not out to girlboss, gaslight, and gatekeep the Patent and Trademark Office. But now, what appears to be Bates’ home address is very visible in this public-facing database, along with a phone number and email address.
At this exact moment in time, Jools Lebron has never been more popular. After TMZ ran its exclusive about the trademark registration application, she reportedly wept in a since-deleted TikTok, kicking off a wave of online fury directed towards the mysterious Jefferson A. Bates. When The Verge reached out to the email address listed in the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR) system, we received a delivery error stating, “Their inbox is full, or it’s getting too much mail right now.”
The mailing address in the Trademark Office’s database seems to be for a brick-and-beige home that I will otherwise refrain from describing. Someone has already created a Google Maps listing for “Very Demure Very Mindful” at this address, with the official website listed as a link to the TSDR page for the pending “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” application. As of writing, four people have reviewed the listing, giving it an average rating of 1.0 out of 5.0 stars. “Jefferson Bates, you should be ashamed of yourself!!” one reviewer writes. “Not very demure,” says another.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Jools Lebron

At this point, you either already know about the “very demure, very mindful” meme that originated on TikTok, or you have neither the interest nor the capacity to understand. It is simply A Thing, a viral catchphrase that may become as ubiquitous in the 2020s as “eyebrows on fleek” was in the 2010s. And that is why every tabloid in America is running a story about a dispute over an application to register “Very Demure… Very Mindful…” as a trademark.

The headlines go like this:

Trademarks Are Very Demure, Very Mindful (TMZ)
TikToker Jools Lebron Sobs Over Trademark Filing in Deleted TikTok (also TMZ)
Who is Jefferson Bates and when did he trademark Jools Lebron’s very mindful very demure TikTok trend? (The Sun)
Newest internet villain? Man files trademark for Jools Lebron’s ‘very mindful, very demure’ (USA Today)
‘Very demure’ catchphrase filed for trademark by Washington State man, not influencer who popularized trend (TODAY.com)
‘Very Demure, Very Mindful’ trendsetter Jools Lebron loses trademark rights, sobs on TikTok (Hindustan Times)
Jools Lebron, the creator of ‘very demure, very mindful,’ might not own its trademark (Mashable)

The first thing I want to say is that trademark is not the same as copyright, regardless of what’s written in The Sun article. The second is that a trademark is not the same as a trademark registration. The third — and most salient — thing is this: an application to register a trademark is neither.

To lay out some basics, a trademark is any word, phrase, image, or combination thereof that is used in commerce to identify what a layperson might call a “brand” — even things like the Law & Order “dun-DUN” or the NBC chimes are trademarks. It’s legally possible to have a common law trademark with no paperwork, but most companies file for a trademark registration, because having that entry in a government database makes it easier to sue for infringement. It’s a bit like having a driver’s license or passport: you’re still you without one, but the paperwork will cut through a lot of hassle when somebody asks for proof.

The “very demure, very mindful” trademark filing, however, is just an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office. It’s a pending registration that the USPTO hasn’t ruled on, roughly equivalent to the numbered ticket you’d get for turning in a few forms at the DMV.

Mr. Verydemure Verymindful? Please take a seat in the waiting area. We’ll call out your number in approximately eight months.

Anyone can apply for a registration, but you’re not guaranteed to get one. Maybe your application overlaps too much with a preexisting registration in the database. Maybe the trademark you’ve picked is a tad bit too generic. Depending on what kind of paperwork you’re filing, it’s possible you didn’t include enough documentation of how the trademark is being used in the real world. And sometimes, the examining attorney who was assigned to your application is feeling cranky that day and decides to pick on you. (The inverse can be true as well — the examiner might be a little too ready to go home, and rubber-stamps something that probably shouldn’t have been approved.)

About a week ago, someone named Jefferson A. Bates filed the application to register “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” as a trademark. A whole lot of people know who TikTok influencer Jools Lebron is — she was on Jimmy Kimmel just last week — and she is pretty widely acknowledged as the originator of the “very demure” meme. She’s made deals with Verizon and Netflix all on the back of “demure.” No one knows who Jefferson A. Bates is, except that his email address is tied to the publisher of a defunct emoji app called “Insta LOL Emoji,” which has a Facebook page featuring a screenshot of an X post about (of all things) the intellectual property rights for Squid Game.

Screenshot by The Verge
You can’t make this stuff up.

The services that Bates wants to cover are “Advertising, marketing and promotional services related to all industries for the purpose of facilitating networking and socializing opportunities for business purposes,” a series of words that made me do a spit-take. It’s not just that “advertising, marketing, and promotional services” is a hilarious category to use someone else’s TikTok meme for — the “all industries” tips it over into genuinely sublime comedy.

Even if you’re running one of the biggest companies on earth, you can still only register a mark for a finite range of goods and services. And the more goods and services you claim, the more pushback you’ll get from the Trademark Office. Having a trademark doesn’t mean you “own” a word or phrase in the English language, and having that trademark in one industry doesn’t let you flex on all the others. Apple obviously owns the trademark for all kinds of things, ranging from phones to personal computers to television streaming services, but it can’t stop anyone from selling a fruit while calling it an apple. (In fact, the company was mired in years of legal finagling over its music-related services, thanks to the Beatles’ Apple Records.) Two entirely different companies manufacture Dove chocolate (“For: IC 030 Cocoa”) and Dove deodorant (“For: IC 003 Body wash and body bars soap; deodorants; hair care preparations”). Spirit Halloween (“For: IC 035 retail store services featuring Halloween merchandise”) and Spirit Airlines (“For: IC 039 Scheduled and chartered air transportation”) have no relation to each other.

And crucially, during the application process, other people can file to oppose the registration. (In 2014, Disney tried — unsuccessfully — to block the registration of Deadmau5’s logo.)

Media coverage sometimes treats the trademark system like a weapon that lets hucksters sweep in to lock up somebody else’s meme or viral phrase. But the registration system can actually serve the opposite purpose. People can check the registers to get the lay of the land when branding their latest hustle, and they can keep an eye on new filings for similar marks that could edge in on their turf.

So Jools Lebron finding out about the “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” trademark application and then getting mad about it is — theoretically speaking — all part of the process. Lebron hasn’t lost a trademark, she’s been given a heads up that someone else is crowding in on her whole deal.

Lebron could, for instance, oppose Bates’ application on the grounds that she was using the trademark first, even without a preexisting registration. That deal with Verizon, for example, kind of looks like use in commerce! Bates, meanwhile, is not inking deals with megacorporations. Once again, this application is in the extremely early stages. It will likely sit around for months before reaching an examining attorney, during which time people (including Lebron) could file their own applications. Plenty of trademarks never even make it through this phase.

This isn’t to say that things are guaranteed to go smoothly for Lebron. Bates filing first is a pain in the ass. Still, the headlines that indicate that she has already lost are wildly incorrect. And meanwhile, Jefferson A. Bates may end up regretting his choice to file in a particularly un-demure, non-mindful fashion. Bates seemingly didn’t use an attorney to submit the application, which is of course not a necessity — the government is not out to girlboss, gaslight, and gatekeep the Patent and Trademark Office. But now, what appears to be Bates’ home address is very visible in this public-facing database, along with a phone number and email address.

At this exact moment in time, Jools Lebron has never been more popular. After TMZ ran its exclusive about the trademark registration application, she reportedly wept in a since-deleted TikTok, kicking off a wave of online fury directed towards the mysterious Jefferson A. Bates. When The Verge reached out to the email address listed in the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR) system, we received a delivery error stating, “Their inbox is full, or it’s getting too much mail right now.”

The mailing address in the Trademark Office’s database seems to be for a brick-and-beige home that I will otherwise refrain from describing. Someone has already created a Google Maps listing for “Very Demure Very Mindful” at this address, with the official website listed as a link to the TSDR page for the pending “Very Demure.. Very Mindful..” application. As of writing, four people have reviewed the listing, giving it an average rating of 1.0 out of 5.0 stars. “Jefferson Bates, you should be ashamed of yourself!!” one reviewer writes. “Not very demure,” says another.

Read More