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Image: HBO

In Julio Torres’ series Fantasmas, survival in the future is an intricate, corporate-owned game of feeding your identity to the machine. The avant-garde weirdness and practically created artistry of Fantasmas — Max’s new series from Problemista writer / director Julio Torres — makes it seem infinitely more whimsical and lighthearted than most other TV shows about people living in the robot-filled near-future. But in addition to being a story about a misunderstood artist trying to survive in a world hostile toward creativity, Fantasmas’ first season has been one of this year’s most brilliant examinations of the torturous experience we commonly refer to as “being (too) online.”
The rent is long past due as Fantasmas first introduces multidisciplinary artist Julio (Torres), who, after multiple threatening letters from his landlord, finds himself in desperate need of a Proof of Existence ID in order to keep his apartment. In Fantasmas’ heightened spin on New York City, getting ahold of one’s Proof of Existence is easy enough if you can provide a social security number, a credit score, or demonstrate that you’re an exceptional individual like Beyoncé.
But aside from Julio’s agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez) — the “J” is silent — few people can appreciate his raw talent for designing things like clear crayons and communicating with bodies of water (Tilda Swinton). And while the ID’s kind of necessary to live freely and get a job, the idea of having to prove that he exists is so mind-boggling to Julio that he insists on going without one on principle.

Because Julio’s robot assistant Bibo (Joe Rumrill) isn’t trying to kill him, and his need for an apartment becomes subsumed in a quest to find a lost oyster-shaped earring, Fantasmas doesn’t look or feel like many other recent stories about dystopian futures. But the show’s jokes about Zappos becoming a film studio and Exxon getting into the multi-family real estate business both underline the degree to which people’s lives have become ensnared in corporate-owned systems that technologies like the Proof of Existence feed into.
Though Fantasmas isn’t going for a Matrix-style narrative about humans fighting machines, it becomes easier to read as a story about resisting the commodification of one’s entire being as Julio encounters other eccentrics like Chester (Tomas Matos) — a cab driver rallying against Uber with his one-man ridesharing service — reluctant to sign up for Proof of Existence.
Fantasmas offsets the heft of its deeper themes by using a series of absurdist skits to build an entire fantastical world around Julio. His social media manager is a minuscule gnome who refuses to take any feedback, and his hunt for the earring leads him to a former queer hamster nightclub that has been gentrified into a tiny CVS. The show revels in its own silliness as much as it does its cleverness, which is part of why it seldom feels as if it’s speaking down to you about the perils of trusting social media algorithms (Dominique Jackson).

As batshit (positive) as Fantasmas might seem, with its plots about soul-sucking demons catfishing men on Grindr and dresses for toilets, the show presents them as things that people have become inured to with time and constant encouragement to accept the new norm.
That last point in particular has a fascinating way of making Julio’s journey feel very similar to the experience of being bombarded with noise on the internet that’s really just meant to extract engagement rather than giving you something you actually want. But in a world like ours that’s currently so committed to cranking that noise up at every opportunity, Fantasmas’ willingness to poke fun at it has made the show a surprising summer TV gem.
Fantasmas’ first season is now streaming on Max.

Image: HBO

In Julio Torres’ series Fantasmas, survival in the future is an intricate, corporate-owned game of feeding your identity to the machine.

The avant-garde weirdness and practically created artistry of Fantasmas — Max’s new series from Problemista writer / director Julio Torres — makes it seem infinitely more whimsical and lighthearted than most other TV shows about people living in the robot-filled near-future. But in addition to being a story about a misunderstood artist trying to survive in a world hostile toward creativity, Fantasmas’ first season has been one of this year’s most brilliant examinations of the torturous experience we commonly refer to as “being (too) online.”

The rent is long past due as Fantasmas first introduces multidisciplinary artist Julio (Torres), who, after multiple threatening letters from his landlord, finds himself in desperate need of a Proof of Existence ID in order to keep his apartment. In Fantasmas’ heightened spin on New York City, getting ahold of one’s Proof of Existence is easy enough if you can provide a social security number, a credit score, or demonstrate that you’re an exceptional individual like Beyoncé.

But aside from Julio’s agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez) — the “J” is silent — few people can appreciate his raw talent for designing things like clear crayons and communicating with bodies of water (Tilda Swinton). And while the ID’s kind of necessary to live freely and get a job, the idea of having to prove that he exists is so mind-boggling to Julio that he insists on going without one on principle.

Because Julio’s robot assistant Bibo (Joe Rumrill) isn’t trying to kill him, and his need for an apartment becomes subsumed in a quest to find a lost oyster-shaped earring, Fantasmas doesn’t look or feel like many other recent stories about dystopian futures. But the show’s jokes about Zappos becoming a film studio and Exxon getting into the multi-family real estate business both underline the degree to which people’s lives have become ensnared in corporate-owned systems that technologies like the Proof of Existence feed into.

Though Fantasmas isn’t going for a Matrix-style narrative about humans fighting machines, it becomes easier to read as a story about resisting the commodification of one’s entire being as Julio encounters other eccentrics like Chester (Tomas Matos) — a cab driver rallying against Uber with his one-man ridesharing service — reluctant to sign up for Proof of Existence.

Fantasmas offsets the heft of its deeper themes by using a series of absurdist skits to build an entire fantastical world around Julio. His social media manager is a minuscule gnome who refuses to take any feedback, and his hunt for the earring leads him to a former queer hamster nightclub that has been gentrified into a tiny CVS. The show revels in its own silliness as much as it does its cleverness, which is part of why it seldom feels as if it’s speaking down to you about the perils of trusting social media algorithms (Dominique Jackson).

As batshit (positive) as Fantasmas might seem, with its plots about soul-sucking demons catfishing men on Grindr and dresses for toilets, the show presents them as things that people have become inured to with time and constant encouragement to accept the new norm.

That last point in particular has a fascinating way of making Julio’s journey feel very similar to the experience of being bombarded with noise on the internet that’s really just meant to extract engagement rather than giving you something you actually want. But in a world like ours that’s currently so committed to cranking that noise up at every opportunity, Fantasmas’ willingness to poke fun at it has made the show a surprising summer TV gem.

Fantasmas’ first season is now streaming on Max.

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Image: First Film Corp.

Director Gary Hustwit tells us about his living documentary and the technology that changes it for every screening. Brian Eno has taken many musical forms: producer, technologist, glam-rock star. Eno, the new documentary about the musician, also takes many forms, though more literally. Each showing of the movie, which opens today in New York at Film Forum, will be a different version. It is, according to its makers, “the first generative feature film,” meaning pieces of it will change shape and structure per viewing, thanks to some clever software ingenuity designed by director Gary Hustwit and his partner Brendan Dawes.
While Eno may be more famous as a band member of Roxy Music or producing David Bowie’s Berlin trio, the form of this documentary fits its subject: Eno himself has been making generative art for decades now, since avant-grade minimalism of 1975’s Discreet Music to the mutating soundtrack of Spore.
This is different from generative AI, though, which uses massive training models to infer what it should spit out. Eno is crafted through 30 hours of interviews and 500 hours of film — a curated and ethically sourced data set — with certain pieces weighted to be more likely to appear. Basically, it follows a set of rules and logic written by Hustwit and Dawes. According to The New York Times, there are 52 quintillion possible versions of Eno. The two that I saw were immensely satisfying, with lots of overlap between each.
Eno is an unexpected documentary in other ways, too. You might expect a movie with so many possibilities to be broad, yet the scope remains narrow. Rather than taking a sweeping look at the musician’s long career, it expounds on his philosophies about creativity. The film deploys some great archival footage, but there are no other talking heads (although there is plenty of Talking Heads). It’s an approach you might expect from filmmaker Hustwit, best known for Helvetica, a doc that takes the seemingly niche topic of a single typeface and expresses how wide-reaching its design influence has been.
But the ambitions of Eno are greater than the film itself. Hustwit wants to see a future exploring generative filmmaking using Brain One, the name of the software behind Eno (as well as a piece of hardware designed by Teenage Engineering). The director spoke to The Verge about his ever-changing documentary, the bespoke patent-pending technology that fueled its creation, and how the movie inadvertently met this AI moment and did something more ambitious by thinking smaller about generative art.

The interview has been edited and condensed.
I’ll just start with the obvious one. Why Brian Eno?
I was lucky enough to have him do the soundtrack for my previous film Rams, about the German designer Dieter Rams. It was in 2017 when I was working with Brian, and I was just asking him, “Well, why isn’t there a documentary about you? Why isn’t there a career-spanning, epic documentary about you, Brian?” And he was like, “Ah, I hate documentaries. I’ve turned down so many people. I hate bio documentaries. And it’s always one person’s version of another person’s story, and I didn’t want to be someone else’s story.”
And around that same time, I was having these thoughts about, well, why can’t showing a film be more performative? Why does it have to be this static thing every time? I was working with my friend Brendan Dawes, who’s an amazing digital artist and coder, trying to experiment with what a generative film could be. Could you have a film that was made in software, dynamically, that was different every time but still had a storyline and felt like any of my other films, except that I would be surprised every time it played, too, just like the audience?
We were experimenting with that and very quickly realized, well, Brian would be the perfect subject for this approach. We showed him a very early demo of the generative software system that we created, and he loved it. He was just like, “This is exactly what I want to do.”

Ebru Yildiz
Director Gary Hustwit

You get the textures of his reluctance in the scene when he’s going through the notebooks.
Totally. That happened several times. What is in the film from that notebook session is a very tame version of that annoyance because I think he got more annoyed.
That’s always been his thing. He’s not nostalgic. He doesn’t want to think about the past. He wants to just keep looking forward. And I think he’s always felt that dwelling on his past work just puts him in a creative rut, and he just wants to keep focusing on what’s next. For 50 years, people have been asking him about David Bowie, the Talking Heads, and Roxy Music. He is tired of talking about it and has done so much since then.
I wanted the film to be about creativity and about his creative process and learning from that. Almost any piece of the film, there is some kind of creative lesson there. The majority of the footage in the scenes, even if he’s talking about Roxy or talking about synthesizers or anything, there is some grain of creative inspiration in it.
You were saying he’s sort of reluctant to talk about the Bowie days, but you do get it out of him.
He gets around to talking about it, but you can’t just go, point-blank, like, “So what was it like in Berlin with Bowie in ‘75?” He’ll be like, “Next question.” He just won’t do it. We talked for hours and hours and hours every day about this stuff, so you’re not seeing the two hours that we were talking before that led to the Bowie stuff. So that’s part of the documentary filmmaking process. Obviously, there’s so much that you don’t see.
But the one thing that’s cool with this generative approach is you can put a lot of things in there that you might not see if you watch the film three, four, or five times. In a way, it’s kind of like the cutting room floor gets to still be in there, but maybe it doesn’t have as much priority as other scenes or other footage that might come up. But it is an interesting way to approach a large amount of footage and present it in a concise way each time.
We could make a 10-hour series about Brian, and we still wouldn’t be scratching the surface of everything he’s done. So, again, this is a way that we can sort of do that but also continue to add things to the system. I just added a bunch of footage this past week that’s going into the Film Forum week two runs, which has never been in the system before. So, it’s like it doesn’t ever have to be finished. We can keep adding things to it and increasing the variety and seeing what the juxtapositions are and just keep evolving it.
So, it’s like a living document in a way.
Exactly. Again, why do films have to be these static, fixed things? Why can’t they be these fluid, storytelling structures that you could keep adding things to and keep revising? Yeah, it’s always been this constraint of the medium, that now, when everything is digital, there’s no physical media that we’re dealing with with film. So, why are we still held by the same constraints as 130 years ago when the media was born?

I’m curious how this system works. What kind of software are you using? How does it get structured or compiled? It seems modular.
The system is bespoke. It’s a proprietary system that Brendan and I have been working on for almost five years. It’s interesting how the technology as a whole — of generative software and AI — has continued to evolve pretty radically in the same time.
We have a patent pending on the system, and we just launched a startup called Anamorph that is basically exploring this idea further with other filmmakers and studios and streamers. We’re having a lot of conversations about, Okay, well, what else could we do here? What could a generative fiction film be? Could you have a Marvel film that’s different every time that it screens? What are the technical but also creative ideas around this technology?
Eno can continue to evolve, and we will keep evolving the software, too. The versions that we showed at Sundance six months ago and the versions that we’ll show at Film Forum have, in some ways, subtle but other ways bigger, improvements from that first gen. We get to keep digging into the footage and bringing new things into it, but we also get to keep changing the software. And I don’t know, in a year from now, what the film will look like or what the streaming versions of it will be.
Does the software have a name?
We call it Brain One, which is an anagram for Brian Eno.
We also collaborated with Teenage Engineering to build this generative film machine that we also call Brain One to use when we create the film live in theater. We use this beautiful aluminum box with 35-millimeter film reel, abstracted film reels moving, and all this other cool stuff. And all the functionality of the software is mapped to hardware controls.
So, it’s like… DJing a movie?
The system can make the film in real time, but I’m not really DJing it or anything. I’m kind of overseeing what’s happening with the software. I’m there as sort of a safety net and also doing some audio mixing while it’s happening. I can make all kinds of interventions, but a big part of this whole approach is that it’s not about me, the filmmaker. It’s not about what I think is the best version or my subjective take on what the film should be.
It seems like, though, you could do it in a way where you’re reacting to an audience — if they like footage of Roxy Music, give them more of that. But do you think that’s a powerful part, or do you actually think the randomness is the more interesting part?
I think the randomness is the more interesting part because, for me, I’m learning things. Maybe I haven’t seen two pieces of footage back to back before, and I’m making new connections about Brian.
Here’s also the thing: all this stuff is possible, and it could be completely interactive. I could just talk to the audience beforehand, like, “What do you guys want to see? Do you want to see more music, more talking, more ideas?” You could skew it any way you want it to or let the audience skew it. But in these first generations of the film, this is how we’re executing it.

First Film Corp.

When you say the word “generative,” the next word people think of now is “AI.” I feel like we used to think of “art.” How deliberately are you meeting this AI moment, or how much was that top of mind as you were making this movie?
It kind of wasn’t top of mind. We want to make a film that’s different. We want it to feel like a cinematic documentary that I would normally make. We just wanted it to be different every time. It wasn’t about disrupting the film industry or film criticism or streaming or any of this other stuff.
Everything around OpenAI, the AI boom in the past two years, really happened around us as we were doing the project. I think that the capabilities that are evolving now with AI, in general, are things that we are looking at in other platforms. Eno and Brain One feel so custom to this idea. The data set is all our material. We didn’t train the platform on other people’s documentaries. There’s not a model that was built around other people’s work. We programmed it with our knowledge as filmmakers about how to tell a cinematic story. And then the actual filmmaking part and the creativity around what the content is, is as important as the coding and the generative software making it each time.
So, I think that a lot of times now, AI, it’s like a land grab. Everybody’s just out there just grabbing any kind of thing they can, and people sort of feel powerless. I think of Brain One and what we created for Eno as more like gardening. We’ve got our material, our landscape that we’re making around this film, but it feels very like a closed system. We’re really just using the technology on our own stuff.
AI is technology that you could use in a lot of different ways. Yes, there are tons of companies using it in other ways, maybe less ethical ways right now. But you can also use it on your own stuff in a completely ethical way, and I think that’s what our approach is then.
I feel like Eno is exploring this question of what creativity is and what that process looks like for different people. The way OpenAI talks about what a large language model generates is, by definition, incurious about creativity. It’s like, what if we just spit stuff out and you have no idea where it came from?
Yeah, I think that’s accurate. [Laughs]

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Have you gotten any pushback at all? I just know there are people who are sensitive to anything AI-related.
People are, yeah. Until they watch the film.
It’s mostly within the filmmaking world, like editors and cinematographers and people that are doing this as a craft. From what they hear about it, people go in with some preconception. And then once they see the film, they just really want to talk to me about what else could happen with this and where can it go from here.
Even when I describe the film people, I’m like, “It’s different every time.” They don’t get it. And when they see it, they’re like, “Wow, this worked great for Eno, but I can’t see it working for anything else.”
A big part of what Anamorph is going to be doing this year is making demos of different ways to use this idea in narrative films or installations. There’s just all sorts of other applications for it. But I feel like until you understand the capability, it’s hard for other filmmakers to think of creative ideas that could work with it. It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg thing.
But I think if there are filmmakers that talk to you about it and others that, once they understand what the capabilities are, they can go, “Oh yeah, there’s a story that I actually think could work with this.” That’s the kind of stuff that we’ll be making here in the future.

Image: First Film Corp.

Director Gary Hustwit tells us about his living documentary and the technology that changes it for every screening.

Brian Eno has taken many musical forms: producer, technologist, glam-rock star. Eno, the new documentary about the musician, also takes many forms, though more literally. Each showing of the movie, which opens today in New York at Film Forum, will be a different version. It is, according to its makers, “the first generative feature film,” meaning pieces of it will change shape and structure per viewing, thanks to some clever software ingenuity designed by director Gary Hustwit and his partner Brendan Dawes.

While Eno may be more famous as a band member of Roxy Music or producing David Bowie’s Berlin trio, the form of this documentary fits its subject: Eno himself has been making generative art for decades now, since avant-grade minimalism of 1975’s Discreet Music to the mutating soundtrack of Spore.

This is different from generative AI, though, which uses massive training models to infer what it should spit out. Eno is crafted through 30 hours of interviews and 500 hours of film — a curated and ethically sourced data set — with certain pieces weighted to be more likely to appear. Basically, it follows a set of rules and logic written by Hustwit and Dawes. According to The New York Times, there are 52 quintillion possible versions of Eno. The two that I saw were immensely satisfying, with lots of overlap between each.

Eno is an unexpected documentary in other ways, too. You might expect a movie with so many possibilities to be broad, yet the scope remains narrow. Rather than taking a sweeping look at the musician’s long career, it expounds on his philosophies about creativity. The film deploys some great archival footage, but there are no other talking heads (although there is plenty of Talking Heads). It’s an approach you might expect from filmmaker Hustwit, best known for Helvetica, a doc that takes the seemingly niche topic of a single typeface and expresses how wide-reaching its design influence has been.

But the ambitions of Eno are greater than the film itself. Hustwit wants to see a future exploring generative filmmaking using Brain One, the name of the software behind Eno (as well as a piece of hardware designed by Teenage Engineering). The director spoke to The Verge about his ever-changing documentary, the bespoke patent-pending technology that fueled its creation, and how the movie inadvertently met this AI moment and did something more ambitious by thinking smaller about generative art.

The interview has been edited and condensed.

I’ll just start with the obvious one. Why Brian Eno?

I was lucky enough to have him do the soundtrack for my previous film Rams, about the German designer Dieter Rams. It was in 2017 when I was working with Brian, and I was just asking him, “Well, why isn’t there a documentary about you? Why isn’t there a career-spanning, epic documentary about you, Brian?” And he was like, “Ah, I hate documentaries. I’ve turned down so many people. I hate bio documentaries. And it’s always one person’s version of another person’s story, and I didn’t want to be someone else’s story.”

And around that same time, I was having these thoughts about, well, why can’t showing a film be more performative? Why does it have to be this static thing every time? I was working with my friend Brendan Dawes, who’s an amazing digital artist and coder, trying to experiment with what a generative film could be. Could you have a film that was made in software, dynamically, that was different every time but still had a storyline and felt like any of my other films, except that I would be surprised every time it played, too, just like the audience?

We were experimenting with that and very quickly realized, well, Brian would be the perfect subject for this approach. We showed him a very early demo of the generative software system that we created, and he loved it. He was just like, “This is exactly what I want to do.”

You get the textures of his reluctance in the scene when he’s going through the notebooks.

Totally. That happened several times. What is in the film from that notebook session is a very tame version of that annoyance because I think he got more annoyed.

That’s always been his thing. He’s not nostalgic. He doesn’t want to think about the past. He wants to just keep looking forward. And I think he’s always felt that dwelling on his past work just puts him in a creative rut, and he just wants to keep focusing on what’s next. For 50 years, people have been asking him about David Bowie, the Talking Heads, and Roxy Music. He is tired of talking about it and has done so much since then.

I wanted the film to be about creativity and about his creative process and learning from that. Almost any piece of the film, there is some kind of creative lesson there. The majority of the footage in the scenes, even if he’s talking about Roxy or talking about synthesizers or anything, there is some grain of creative inspiration in it.

You were saying he’s sort of reluctant to talk about the Bowie days, but you do get it out of him.

He gets around to talking about it, but you can’t just go, point-blank, like, “So what was it like in Berlin with Bowie in ‘75?” He’ll be like, “Next question.” He just won’t do it. We talked for hours and hours and hours every day about this stuff, so you’re not seeing the two hours that we were talking before that led to the Bowie stuff. So that’s part of the documentary filmmaking process. Obviously, there’s so much that you don’t see.

But the one thing that’s cool with this generative approach is you can put a lot of things in there that you might not see if you watch the film three, four, or five times. In a way, it’s kind of like the cutting room floor gets to still be in there, but maybe it doesn’t have as much priority as other scenes or other footage that might come up. But it is an interesting way to approach a large amount of footage and present it in a concise way each time.

We could make a 10-hour series about Brian, and we still wouldn’t be scratching the surface of everything he’s done. So, again, this is a way that we can sort of do that but also continue to add things to the system. I just added a bunch of footage this past week that’s going into the Film Forum week two runs, which has never been in the system before. So, it’s like it doesn’t ever have to be finished. We can keep adding things to it and increasing the variety and seeing what the juxtapositions are and just keep evolving it.

So, it’s like a living document in a way.

Exactly. Again, why do films have to be these static, fixed things? Why can’t they be these fluid, storytelling structures that you could keep adding things to and keep revising? Yeah, it’s always been this constraint of the medium, that now, when everything is digital, there’s no physical media that we’re dealing with with film. So, why are we still held by the same constraints as 130 years ago when the media was born?

I’m curious how this system works. What kind of software are you using? How does it get structured or compiled? It seems modular.

The system is bespoke. It’s a proprietary system that Brendan and I have been working on for almost five years. It’s interesting how the technology as a whole — of generative software and AI — has continued to evolve pretty radically in the same time.

We have a patent pending on the system, and we just launched a startup called Anamorph that is basically exploring this idea further with other filmmakers and studios and streamers. We’re having a lot of conversations about, Okay, well, what else could we do here? What could a generative fiction film be? Could you have a Marvel film that’s different every time that it screens? What are the technical but also creative ideas around this technology?

Eno can continue to evolve, and we will keep evolving the software, too. The versions that we showed at Sundance six months ago and the versions that we’ll show at Film Forum have, in some ways, subtle but other ways bigger, improvements from that first gen. We get to keep digging into the footage and bringing new things into it, but we also get to keep changing the software. And I don’t know, in a year from now, what the film will look like or what the streaming versions of it will be.

Does the software have a name?

We call it Brain One, which is an anagram for Brian Eno.

We also collaborated with Teenage Engineering to build this generative film machine that we also call Brain One to use when we create the film live in theater. We use this beautiful aluminum box with 35-millimeter film reel, abstracted film reels moving, and all this other cool stuff. And all the functionality of the software is mapped to hardware controls.

So, it’s like… DJing a movie?

The system can make the film in real time, but I’m not really DJing it or anything. I’m kind of overseeing what’s happening with the software. I’m there as sort of a safety net and also doing some audio mixing while it’s happening. I can make all kinds of interventions, but a big part of this whole approach is that it’s not about me, the filmmaker. It’s not about what I think is the best version or my subjective take on what the film should be.

It seems like, though, you could do it in a way where you’re reacting to an audience — if they like footage of Roxy Music, give them more of that. But do you think that’s a powerful part, or do you actually think the randomness is the more interesting part?

I think the randomness is the more interesting part because, for me, I’m learning things. Maybe I haven’t seen two pieces of footage back to back before, and I’m making new connections about Brian.

Here’s also the thing: all this stuff is possible, and it could be completely interactive. I could just talk to the audience beforehand, like, “What do you guys want to see? Do you want to see more music, more talking, more ideas?” You could skew it any way you want it to or let the audience skew it. But in these first generations of the film, this is how we’re executing it.

When you say the word “generative,” the next word people think of now is “AI.” I feel like we used to think of “art.” How deliberately are you meeting this AI moment, or how much was that top of mind as you were making this movie?

It kind of wasn’t top of mind. We want to make a film that’s different. We want it to feel like a cinematic documentary that I would normally make. We just wanted it to be different every time. It wasn’t about disrupting the film industry or film criticism or streaming or any of this other stuff.

Everything around OpenAI, the AI boom in the past two years, really happened around us as we were doing the project. I think that the capabilities that are evolving now with AI, in general, are things that we are looking at in other platforms. Eno and Brain One feel so custom to this idea. The data set is all our material. We didn’t train the platform on other people’s documentaries. There’s not a model that was built around other people’s work. We programmed it with our knowledge as filmmakers about how to tell a cinematic story. And then the actual filmmaking part and the creativity around what the content is, is as important as the coding and the generative software making it each time.

So, I think that a lot of times now, AI, it’s like a land grab. Everybody’s just out there just grabbing any kind of thing they can, and people sort of feel powerless. I think of Brain One and what we created for Eno as more like gardening. We’ve got our material, our landscape that we’re making around this film, but it feels very like a closed system. We’re really just using the technology on our own stuff.

AI is technology that you could use in a lot of different ways. Yes, there are tons of companies using it in other ways, maybe less ethical ways right now. But you can also use it on your own stuff in a completely ethical way, and I think that’s what our approach is then.

I feel like Eno is exploring this question of what creativity is and what that process looks like for different people. The way OpenAI talks about what a large language model generates is, by definition, incurious about creativity. It’s like, what if we just spit stuff out and you have no idea where it came from?

Yeah, I think that’s accurate. [Laughs]

Have you gotten any pushback at all? I just know there are people who are sensitive to anything AI-related.

People are, yeah. Until they watch the film.

It’s mostly within the filmmaking world, like editors and cinematographers and people that are doing this as a craft. From what they hear about it, people go in with some preconception. And then once they see the film, they just really want to talk to me about what else could happen with this and where can it go from here.

Even when I describe the film people, I’m like, “It’s different every time.” They don’t get it. And when they see it, they’re like, “Wow, this worked great for Eno, but I can’t see it working for anything else.”

A big part of what Anamorph is going to be doing this year is making demos of different ways to use this idea in narrative films or installations. There’s just all sorts of other applications for it. But I feel like until you understand the capability, it’s hard for other filmmakers to think of creative ideas that could work with it. It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg thing.

But I think if there are filmmakers that talk to you about it and others that, once they understand what the capabilities are, they can go, “Oh yeah, there’s a story that I actually think could work with this.” That’s the kind of stuff that we’ll be making here in the future.

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Fully equipped direct-to-consumer e-bikes still require compromises at $1,000. It’s easy to make a folding e-bike like the Engwe P20 look great on paper.
First, you price it near $1,000 and promise a 10-second folding time. Then, you replace the traditional oily chain, derailleur, cassette, and shifter with a belt-driven motor and torque sensor that should intuitively ramp up the pedal-assisted power without requiring any gears or maintenance. Finally, you add hydraulic disc brakes to bring everything to a controlled stop and wrap it all up in a nice-looking package that can be carried onto a train or tossed into the trunk of a car.
On paper, then, the €1,099 (about $1,190) Engwe P20 ticks all the boxes for an e-bike that recently went on sale in Europe. Riding it for the last month at my home in Amsterdam, however, makes it clear that you still get what you pay for.

The P20’s price and feature set makes its faults mostly forgivable, but they are faults nonetheless.
My first issue with the P20 is with the tuning of the torque sensor. There’s a noticeable delay in the pedal assist delivered by the P20’s “Talengo JKaero” belt drive when coming off the line. Trying to start on an incline is even worse, requiring a few seconds of fairly significant effort from the rider. And since it’s a single-speed bike, you can’t switch gears for relief.
Perhaps this tuning is on purpose since the unbranded 250W rear-hub motor is only capable of 42Nm of torque. It wouldn’t be the first e-bike that shifts the burden to the rider’s quadriceps instead of the motor (and battery) in favor of eking out a bit more range per charge. The P20 is not the bike to own if you need to regularly climb hilly terrain, but it handles moderate slopes fine.

The front and rear lights are integrated and included in the price.

My second issue makes itself known after getting the P20 up to speed. At about 23km/h (14mph), my legs started spinning so quickly that the saddle began to feel uncomfortable. That upper limit is fine if you’re good with rolling along at a casual pace but annoying if you need to get anywhere at the P20’s 25km/h (15.5mph) top speed, per European limits.
And like nearly all mail-order e-bikes, you can unlock the motor for even more speed if you know the trick — which I did for this review. Not surprisingly, I found pedaling at US speeds of 20mph (32km/h) to be impossible. Fortunately, my review model shipped with a throttle lever despite being a no-no in much of Europe. It was disabled in the software but can also be unlocked with some Konami code magic. Annoyingly, even the P20’s throttle suffers from a delay.
I pedal along at 23km/h, hit the throttle to stop the windmilling and… the motor cuts out, resuming after a second or two once the throttle finally engages. It does eventually get the bike up to 32km/h — and beyond, if you dare.
These performance quirks would be unforgivable for an e-bike in the $3,000-plus range that I usually review — but the Engwe P20 costs just a third of that. And there are plenty of things to like here.
There are plenty of things to like here
The P20’s hydraulic disc brakes bring those 20 x 1.95-inch tires to a stop quickly and under control. Just note that the brakes are unbranded, which could cause issues finding replacement brake pads when the time comes.
The P20’s geometry also rides larger than its size, so the steering doesn’t feel overly twitchy like some smaller foldable bikes. It’s heavy for a foldable with 20-inch tires, coming in at 18.5kg (41 pounds) or 22kg (55 pounds) when slotting in that removable (and lockable) 346Wh (36V / 9.6A) battery. But that added heft helps the ride feel a bit more secure at the expense of portability.
The range is decent, though heavy use of the throttle will diminish it considerably. When only using the motor as a pedal assist, I was getting about 52km (32 miles) from a full battery when riding in power levels two or three (out of three). Not bad. The battery takes over five hours to charge.
Engwe calls the P20 a 10-second folder, which is certainly ambitious — my best time was about twice that, but you might fare better with lots of practice. The handlebars and seat can both be dropped with quick-release latches, and even the pedals fold with some effort. The bike then folds in half along what feels like a reassuringly strong latch found midway along the center tube.
A magnet helps keep the front and rear wheels attached when folded, allowing you to push or pull the unwieldy package if you balance it on one wheel while holding the seat with two hands. It takes some practice and strength to get right. A tiny integrated metal stand lets the bike rest on the ground in the upright position without toppling over too easily.

The P20 also comes with lots of extras baked into the price, including integrated fenders, a rear rack, a kickstand, and front and rear lights (with useful brake light), which are all required by most city commuters. It also has a turn signal feature with dedicated buttons on the handlebar. Using them is tricky since they don’t make a sound, don’t automatically turn off, and aren’t very visible during the day. You’re better off using hand signals, in my opinion.
There’s no app, the display is tiny but fine, and the whole bike can withstand rain and jets of water while riding. You’d think an IP6 rating would be standard for all e-bikes meant to be ridden outdoors, but it’s not guaranteed at this price range.
What frustrates me about the P20 is that it could be a great e-bike but instead feels like it was developed by a marketing team using available parts picked from a catalog, without anyone taking the time to optimize the riding experience. But that’s what you get at the budget end of the e-bike spectrum.
For €1,099 / £1,099, the Engwe P20 is a decent choice for anyone who needs a relatively inexpensive e-bike as part of a multimodal commute or is looking for a foldable that rides more like a traditional bike.
Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

Fully equipped direct-to-consumer e-bikes still require compromises at $1,000.

It’s easy to make a folding e-bike like the Engwe P20 look great on paper.

First, you price it near $1,000 and promise a 10-second folding time. Then, you replace the traditional oily chain, derailleur, cassette, and shifter with a belt-driven motor and torque sensor that should intuitively ramp up the pedal-assisted power without requiring any gears or maintenance. Finally, you add hydraulic disc brakes to bring everything to a controlled stop and wrap it all up in a nice-looking package that can be carried onto a train or tossed into the trunk of a car.

On paper, then, the €1,099 (about $1,190) Engwe P20 ticks all the boxes for an e-bike that recently went on sale in Europe. Riding it for the last month at my home in Amsterdam, however, makes it clear that you still get what you pay for.

The P20’s price and feature set makes its faults mostly forgivable, but they are faults nonetheless.

My first issue with the P20 is with the tuning of the torque sensor. There’s a noticeable delay in the pedal assist delivered by the P20’s “Talengo JKaero” belt drive when coming off the line. Trying to start on an incline is even worse, requiring a few seconds of fairly significant effort from the rider. And since it’s a single-speed bike, you can’t switch gears for relief.

Perhaps this tuning is on purpose since the unbranded 250W rear-hub motor is only capable of 42Nm of torque. It wouldn’t be the first e-bike that shifts the burden to the rider’s quadriceps instead of the motor (and battery) in favor of eking out a bit more range per charge. The P20 is not the bike to own if you need to regularly climb hilly terrain, but it handles moderate slopes fine.

My second issue makes itself known after getting the P20 up to speed. At about 23km/h (14mph), my legs started spinning so quickly that the saddle began to feel uncomfortable. That upper limit is fine if you’re good with rolling along at a casual pace but annoying if you need to get anywhere at the P20’s 25km/h (15.5mph) top speed, per European limits.

And like nearly all mail-order e-bikes, you can unlock the motor for even more speed if you know the trick — which I did for this review. Not surprisingly, I found pedaling at US speeds of 20mph (32km/h) to be impossible. Fortunately, my review model shipped with a throttle lever despite being a no-no in much of Europe. It was disabled in the software but can also be unlocked with some Konami code magic. Annoyingly, even the P20’s throttle suffers from a delay.

I pedal along at 23km/h, hit the throttle to stop the windmilling and… the motor cuts out, resuming after a second or two once the throttle finally engages. It does eventually get the bike up to 32km/h — and beyond, if you dare.

These performance quirks would be unforgivable for an e-bike in the $3,000-plus range that I usually review — but the Engwe P20 costs just a third of that. And there are plenty of things to like here.

The P20’s hydraulic disc brakes bring those 20 x 1.95-inch tires to a stop quickly and under control. Just note that the brakes are unbranded, which could cause issues finding replacement brake pads when the time comes.

The P20’s geometry also rides larger than its size, so the steering doesn’t feel overly twitchy like some smaller foldable bikes. It’s heavy for a foldable with 20-inch tires, coming in at 18.5kg (41 pounds) or 22kg (55 pounds) when slotting in that removable (and lockable) 346Wh (36V / 9.6A) battery. But that added heft helps the ride feel a bit more secure at the expense of portability.

The range is decent, though heavy use of the throttle will diminish it considerably. When only using the motor as a pedal assist, I was getting about 52km (32 miles) from a full battery when riding in power levels two or three (out of three). Not bad. The battery takes over five hours to charge.

Engwe calls the P20 a 10-second folder, which is certainly ambitious — my best time was about twice that, but you might fare better with lots of practice. The handlebars and seat can both be dropped with quick-release latches, and even the pedals fold with some effort. The bike then folds in half along what feels like a reassuringly strong latch found midway along the center tube.

A magnet helps keep the front and rear wheels attached when folded, allowing you to push or pull the unwieldy package if you balance it on one wheel while holding the seat with two hands. It takes some practice and strength to get right. A tiny integrated metal stand lets the bike rest on the ground in the upright position without toppling over too easily.

The P20 also comes with lots of extras baked into the price, including integrated fenders, a rear rack, a kickstand, and front and rear lights (with useful brake light), which are all required by most city commuters. It also has a turn signal feature with dedicated buttons on the handlebar. Using them is tricky since they don’t make a sound, don’t automatically turn off, and aren’t very visible during the day. You’re better off using hand signals, in my opinion.

There’s no app, the display is tiny but fine, and the whole bike can withstand rain and jets of water while riding. You’d think an IP6 rating would be standard for all e-bikes meant to be ridden outdoors, but it’s not guaranteed at this price range.

What frustrates me about the P20 is that it could be a great e-bike but instead feels like it was developed by a marketing team using available parts picked from a catalog, without anyone taking the time to optimize the riding experience. But that’s what you get at the budget end of the e-bike spectrum.

For €1,099 / £1,099, the Engwe P20 is a decent choice for anyone who needs a relatively inexpensive e-bike as part of a multimodal commute or is looking for a foldable that rides more like a traditional bike.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

Read More 

President Donald Trump. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump will no longer be subject to extra severe penalties for content rule violations on his Facebook and Instagram accounts, Meta said on Friday.
Previously, Trump’s account could be fully suspended for even a relatively small infraction that wouldn’t lead to the same penalty for any other account. Now, with the Republican National Convention taking place next week, he’ll be treated more like everyone else.
“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Meta’s president of of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said in a company blog post. He added that the previous restrictions to Trump’s accounts “were a response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances, and have not had to be deployed.”
No politician has tested and contorted Meta’s content policies like Trump. The company famously suspended him alongside other platforms after January 6th, 2021. At the beginning of 2023, he was allowed back on Facebook and Instagram but still placed in the penalty box, with Meta saying at the time that “further violating content” could get his account suspended again for up to two years.
Since June 30th, Trump has started posting regularly on Facebook again, sharing videos of his rallies and attacks on President Joe Biden. He has 34 million followers on Facebook versus Biden’s 11 million. On Instagram, he has nearly 25 million versus Biden’s 17.1 million.

President Donald Trump. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump will no longer be subject to extra severe penalties for content rule violations on his Facebook and Instagram accounts, Meta said on Friday.

Previously, Trump’s account could be fully suspended for even a relatively small infraction that wouldn’t lead to the same penalty for any other account. Now, with the Republican National Convention taking place next week, he’ll be treated more like everyone else.

“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Meta’s president of of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said in a company blog post. He added that the previous restrictions to Trump’s accounts “were a response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances, and have not had to be deployed.”

No politician has tested and contorted Meta’s content policies like Trump. The company famously suspended him alongside other platforms after January 6th, 2021. At the beginning of 2023, he was allowed back on Facebook and Instagram but still placed in the penalty box, with Meta saying at the time that “further violating content” could get his account suspended again for up to two years.

Since June 30th, Trump has started posting regularly on Facebook again, sharing videos of his rallies and attacks on President Joe Biden. He has 34 million followers on Facebook versus Biden’s 11 million. On Instagram, he has nearly 25 million versus Biden’s 17.1 million.

Read More 

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

OpenAI is a leader in the race to develop AI as intelligent as a human. Yet, employees continue to show up in the press and on podcasts to voice their grave concerns about safety at the $80 billion nonprofit research lab. The latest comes from The Washington Post, where an anonymous source claimed OpenAI rushed through safety tests and celebrated their product before ensuring its safety.
“They planned the launch after-party prior to knowing if it was safe to launch,” an anonymous employee told The Washington Post. “We basically failed at the process.”
Safety issues loom large at OpenAI — and seem to just keep coming. Current and former employees at OpenAI recently signed an open letter demanding better safety and transparency practices from the startup, not long after its safety team was dissolved following the departure of cofounder Ilya Sutskever. Jan Leike, a key OpenAI researcher, resigned shortly after, claiming in a post that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products” at the company.
Safety is core to OpenAI’s charter, with a clause that claims OpenAI will assist other organizations to advance safety if AGI is reached at a competitor, instead of continuing to compete. It claims to be dedicated to solving the safety problems inherent to such a large, complex system. OpenAI even keeps its proprietary models private, rather than open (causing jabs and lawsuits), for the sake of safety. The warnings make it sound as though safety has been deprioritized despite being so paramount to the culture and structure of the company.
It’s clear that OpenAI is in the hot seat — but public relations efforts alone won’t suffice to safeguard society
“We’re proud of our track record providing the most capable and safest AI systems and believe in our scientific approach to addressing risk,” OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson said in a statement to The Verge. “Rigorous debate is critical given the significance of this technology, and we will continue to engage with governments, civil society and other communities around the world in service of our mission.”
The stakes around safety, according to OpenAI and others studying the emergent technology, are immense. “Current frontier AI development poses urgent and growing risks to national security,” a report commissioned by the US State Department in March said. “The rise of advanced AI and AGI [artificial general intelligence] has the potential to destabilize global security in ways reminiscent of the introduction of nuclear weapons.”
The alarm bells at OpenAI also follow the boardroom coup last year that briefly ousted CEO Sam Altman. The board said he was removed due to a failure to be “consistently candid in his communications,” leading to an investigation that did little to reassure the staff.
OpenAI spokesperson Lindsey Held told the Post the GPT-4o launch “didn’t cut corners” on safety, but another unnamed company representative acknowledged that the safety review timeline was compressed to a single week. We “are rethinking our whole way of doing it,” the anonymous representative told the Post. “This [was] just not the best way to do it.”

In the face of rolling controversies (remember the Her incident?), OpenAI has attempted to quell fears with a few well timed announcements. This week, it announced it is teaming up with Los Alamos National Laboratory to explore how advanced AI models, such as GPT-4o, can safely aid in bioscientific research, and in the same announcement it repeatedly pointed to Los Alamos’s own safety record. The next day, an anonymous spokesperson told Bloomberg that OpenAI created an internal scale to track the progress its large language models are making toward artificial general intelligence.
This week’s safety-focused announcements from OpenAI appear to be defensive window dressing in the face of growing criticism of its safety practices. It’s clear that OpenAI is in the hot seat — but public relations efforts alone won’t suffice to safeguard society. What truly matters is the potential impact on those beyond the Silicon Valley bubble if OpenAI continues to fail to develop AI with strict safety protocols, as those internally claim: the average person doesn’t have a say in the development of privatized-AGI, and yet they have no choice in how protected they’ll be from OpenAI’s creations.
“AI tools can be revolutionary,” FTC chair Lina Khan told Bloomberg in November. But “as of right now,” she said, there are concerns that “the critical inputs of these tools are controlled by a relatively small number of companies.”
If the numerous claims against their safety protocols are accurate, this surely raises serious questions about OpenAI’s fitness for this role as steward of AGI, a role that the organization has essentially assigned to itself. Allowing one group in San Francisco to control potentially society-altering technology is cause for concern, and there’s an urgent demand even within its own ranks for transparency and safety now more than ever.

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

OpenAI is a leader in the race to develop AI as intelligent as a human. Yet, employees continue to show up in the press and on podcasts to voice their grave concerns about safety at the $80 billion nonprofit research lab. The latest comes from The Washington Post, where an anonymous source claimed OpenAI rushed through safety tests and celebrated their product before ensuring its safety.

“They planned the launch after-party prior to knowing if it was safe to launch,” an anonymous employee told The Washington Post. “We basically failed at the process.”

Safety issues loom large at OpenAI — and seem to just keep coming. Current and former employees at OpenAI recently signed an open letter demanding better safety and transparency practices from the startup, not long after its safety team was dissolved following the departure of cofounder Ilya Sutskever. Jan Leike, a key OpenAI researcher, resigned shortly after, claiming in a post that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products” at the company.

Safety is core to OpenAI’s charter, with a clause that claims OpenAI will assist other organizations to advance safety if AGI is reached at a competitor, instead of continuing to compete. It claims to be dedicated to solving the safety problems inherent to such a large, complex system. OpenAI even keeps its proprietary models private, rather than open (causing jabs and lawsuits), for the sake of safety. The warnings make it sound as though safety has been deprioritized despite being so paramount to the culture and structure of the company.

“We’re proud of our track record providing the most capable and safest AI systems and believe in our scientific approach to addressing risk,” OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson said in a statement to The Verge. “Rigorous debate is critical given the significance of this technology, and we will continue to engage with governments, civil society and other communities around the world in service of our mission.”

The stakes around safety, according to OpenAI and others studying the emergent technology, are immense. “Current frontier AI development poses urgent and growing risks to national security,” a report commissioned by the US State Department in March said. “The rise of advanced AI and AGI [artificial general intelligence] has the potential to destabilize global security in ways reminiscent of the introduction of nuclear weapons.”

The alarm bells at OpenAI also follow the boardroom coup last year that briefly ousted CEO Sam Altman. The board said he was removed due to a failure to be “consistently candid in his communications,” leading to an investigation that did little to reassure the staff.

OpenAI spokesperson Lindsey Held told the Post the GPT-4o launch “didn’t cut corners” on safety, but another unnamed company representative acknowledged that the safety review timeline was compressed to a single week. We “are rethinking our whole way of doing it,” the anonymous representative told the Post. “This [was] just not the best way to do it.”

In the face of rolling controversies (remember the Her incident?), OpenAI has attempted to quell fears with a few well timed announcements. This week, it announced it is teaming up with Los Alamos National Laboratory to explore how advanced AI models, such as GPT-4o, can safely aid in bioscientific research, and in the same announcement it repeatedly pointed to Los Alamos’s own safety record. The next day, an anonymous spokesperson told Bloomberg that OpenAI created an internal scale to track the progress its large language models are making toward artificial general intelligence.

This week’s safety-focused announcements from OpenAI appear to be defensive window dressing in the face of growing criticism of its safety practices. It’s clear that OpenAI is in the hot seat — but public relations efforts alone won’t suffice to safeguard society. What truly matters is the potential impact on those beyond the Silicon Valley bubble if OpenAI continues to fail to develop AI with strict safety protocols, as those internally claim: the average person doesn’t have a say in the development of privatized-AGI, and yet they have no choice in how protected they’ll be from OpenAI’s creations.

“AI tools can be revolutionary,” FTC chair Lina Khan told Bloomberg in November. But “as of right now,” she said, there are concerns that “the critical inputs of these tools are controlled by a relatively small number of companies.”

If the numerous claims against their safety protocols are accurate, this surely raises serious questions about OpenAI’s fitness for this role as steward of AGI, a role that the organization has essentially assigned to itself. Allowing one group in San Francisco to control potentially society-altering technology is cause for concern, and there’s an urgent demand even within its own ranks for transparency and safety now more than ever.

Read More 

And on the other side of the iPhone, there’s a Notes app. | Image: Moft

Moft is launching a new MagSafe accessory that adds a literal notepad and pen to the back of your iPhone. The company’s new “Snap Flow” looks like a slim magnetic origami kickstand (like the one Moft is known for) but opens up like a book to reveal a paper pad and a really nifty ballpoint pen that magically folds into a prism shape.
It’s hard to believe there’s a product in 2024 that lets you take handwritten notes while using a revolutionary pocket computing device as a clipboard. Sometimes, the phone and other apps are the hurdles to writing down a story idea in my Notes app before it’s gone forever, so it could be nice to jot down thoughts the old-fashioned way.

The Snap Flow has refillable notepad paper, a clip so you can use a piece of paper as a to-do list, and a “folder” section where you can put notes you want to save for later. You can use the Snap Flow’s kickstand feature to either hold up your iPhone or just your paper pad on a desk to easily glance at your notes.
Moft has already gotten more than $100,000 in Kickstarter pledges for Snap Flow, handily beating its $10,000 goal. If you want to back the accessory, Moft is charging $39 as part of the Kickstarter, which is 20 percent off the eventual retail price of $49. The company plans to ship the Kickstarter orders in September.
Personally, I’ll continue to use the Notes app. But if Moft ever makes a sticky note version of the Snap Flow, I might be interested.

And on the other side of the iPhone, there’s a Notes app. | Image: Moft

Moft is launching a new MagSafe accessory that adds a literal notepad and pen to the back of your iPhone. The company’s new “Snap Flow” looks like a slim magnetic origami kickstand (like the one Moft is known for) but opens up like a book to reveal a paper pad and a really nifty ballpoint pen that magically folds into a prism shape.

It’s hard to believe there’s a product in 2024 that lets you take handwritten notes while using a revolutionary pocket computing device as a clipboard. Sometimes, the phone and other apps are the hurdles to writing down a story idea in my Notes app before it’s gone forever, so it could be nice to jot down thoughts the old-fashioned way.

The Snap Flow has refillable notepad paper, a clip so you can use a piece of paper as a to-do list, and a “folder” section where you can put notes you want to save for later. You can use the Snap Flow’s kickstand feature to either hold up your iPhone or just your paper pad on a desk to easily glance at your notes.

Moft has already gotten more than $100,000 in Kickstarter pledges for Snap Flow, handily beating its $10,000 goal. If you want to back the accessory, Moft is charging $39 as part of the Kickstarter, which is 20 percent off the eventual retail price of $49. The company plans to ship the Kickstarter orders in September.

Personally, I’ll continue to use the Notes app. But if Moft ever makes a sticky note version of the Snap Flow, I might be interested.

Read More 

Image: SpaceX

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket experienced an engine failure after it launched late Thursday night from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission, Starlink Group 9-3, was carrying Starlink satellites and failed to reignite its upper second stage after developing a leak. “Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” Elon Musk said overnight, confirming that the engine experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
SpaceX:
Falcon 9’s second stage performed its first burn nominally, however a liquid oxygen leak developed on the second stage. After a planned relight of the upper stage engine to raise perigee – or the lowest point of orbit – the Merlin Vacuum engine experienced an anomaly and was unable to complete its second burn.
The company’s statement says it will do a full investigation into the incident in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the company said on its website. The Falcon 9 has been grounded by the FAA pending the results of the investigation, reports CNBC.
The Falcon 9 has a lot riding on it — literally. It has been used for 52 percent of all orbital launches this year, according to Gunter Krebs’s Orbital Launches tracker. (Thursday’s launch was the 70th Falcon 9 launch in 2024; in all of 2023, the Falcon 9 was used for 96 launches.)
This was the first Falcon 9 failure since 2016 when a rocket exploded on the launch pad.

Watch Falcon 9 launch 20 @Starlink satellites to orbit from California, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities https://t.co/aXuY7ZXXrO— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 12, 2024

As a result of the failure, SpaceX said the Starlink satellites were deployed to “a lower than intended orbit.”
On Friday afternoon, the company said it had made contact with 10 satellites of the 20 that had been onboard but noted that the satellites are “in an enormously high-drag environment with their perigee, or lowest point of their elliptical orbit.” The maximum available thrust is “unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites,” SpaceX said, meaning that they will reenter the atmosphere and “fully demise.”
The satellites “do not pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety,” according to the company.

Image: SpaceX

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket experienced an engine failure after it launched late Thursday night from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission, Starlink Group 9-3, was carrying Starlink satellites and failed to reignite its upper second stage after developing a leak. “Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” Elon Musk said overnight, confirming that the engine experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

SpaceX:

Falcon 9’s second stage performed its first burn nominally, however a liquid oxygen leak developed on the second stage. After a planned relight of the upper stage engine to raise perigee – or the lowest point of orbit – the Merlin Vacuum engine experienced an anomaly and was unable to complete its second burn.

The company’s statement says it will do a full investigation into the incident in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the company said on its website. The Falcon 9 has been grounded by the FAA pending the results of the investigation, reports CNBC.

The Falcon 9 has a lot riding on it — literally. It has been used for 52 percent of all orbital launches this year, according to Gunter Krebs’s Orbital Launches tracker. (Thursday’s launch was the 70th Falcon 9 launch in 2024; in all of 2023, the Falcon 9 was used for 96 launches.)

This was the first Falcon 9 failure since 2016 when a rocket exploded on the launch pad.

As a result of the failure, SpaceX said the Starlink satellites were deployed to “a lower than intended orbit.”

On Friday afternoon, the company said it had made contact with 10 satellites of the 20 that had been onboard but noted that the satellites are “in an enormously high-drag environment with their perigee, or lowest point of their elliptical orbit.” The maximum available thrust is “unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites,” SpaceX said, meaning that they will reenter the atmosphere and “fully demise.”

The satellites “do not pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety,” according to the company.

Read More 

Newport News Shipbuilding, a defense contractor whose shipyard is alleged to have been photographed by drone. | Getty Images

A foreign graduate student has pleaded guilty to crimes under the Espionage Act for photographing classified US Navy ships with a drone. The case appears to be a first-of-its kind prosecution by the Department of Justice.
Fengyun Shi, a Chinese citizen and graduate student at the University of Minnesota, was arrested in January after a drone he was flying got stuck in a tree in Newport News, Virginia. A suspicious resident called the police and Shi was questioned before abandoning the drone and fleeing. After the FBI seized the drone and pulled the images off it, investigators discovered that Shi had photographed Navy vessels at multiple shipyards in Virginia. One of those shipyards, in Newport News, was actively manufacturing next-generation aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. Both of these types of vessels contain classified components.
Shi was charged with six misdemeanors under the Espionage Act. It appears to be, national security law expert Emily Berman previously told me, the first known prosecution under a WWII-era statute banning the use of aircraft to photograph sensitive military sites.
The first known prosecution under a WWII-era statute banning the use of aircraft to photograph sensitive military sites
On Monday, Shi pleaded guilty to two counts of violating that statute. Specifically, for photographing vessels at the shipyard in Newport News. Each offense may result in up to a year in prison, a $100,000 fine, and another year of supervised release, but prosecutors note that he could receive a heavier sentence that a higher court may review for reasonableness. The plea agreement also explains that Shi could be deported, but that he can apply for asylum if he believes he will be subject to torture in China.
The statement of facts accompanying Shi’s plea agreement contains new information. For example, it reveals that Shi purchased the drone one day before flying to Virginia from San Francisco. There is no explanation given for why he was in San Francisco. According to the statement, Shi only flew the drone around the shipyards and did not take any photos that did not contain US Navy vessels. Finally, it says that Shi was arrested trying to board a one-way flight to China from California.
There are many unknowns surrounding Shi’s strikingly novel prosecution, including why the DOJ pursued it in the first place. Despite the case taking place amid rising tensions between the US and China, Shi has not been accused of acting as a spy; his only crime was taking photos with a drone. Berman previously said that his case could even raise important First Amendment issues.
Court documents filed to date provide no explanation for why Shi took the photos, although the plea agreement states that Shi acknowledges he had no “innocent reason” for doing so. Even people around Shi seemed baffled by the case. I previously spoke to a colleague from the University of Minnesota who was surprised to learn that Shi was even still in the US, adding that he’d effectively abandoned his studies months prior to his arrest.
The DOJ declined to comment, and Shi’s attorney did not respond to a request. Shi now awaits sentencing.

Newport News Shipbuilding, a defense contractor whose shipyard is alleged to have been photographed by drone. | Getty Images

A foreign graduate student has pleaded guilty to crimes under the Espionage Act for photographing classified US Navy ships with a drone. The case appears to be a first-of-its kind prosecution by the Department of Justice.

Fengyun Shi, a Chinese citizen and graduate student at the University of Minnesota, was arrested in January after a drone he was flying got stuck in a tree in Newport News, Virginia. A suspicious resident called the police and Shi was questioned before abandoning the drone and fleeing. After the FBI seized the drone and pulled the images off it, investigators discovered that Shi had photographed Navy vessels at multiple shipyards in Virginia. One of those shipyards, in Newport News, was actively manufacturing next-generation aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. Both of these types of vessels contain classified components.

Shi was charged with six misdemeanors under the Espionage Act. It appears to be, national security law expert Emily Berman previously told me, the first known prosecution under a WWII-era statute banning the use of aircraft to photograph sensitive military sites.

On Monday, Shi pleaded guilty to two counts of violating that statute. Specifically, for photographing vessels at the shipyard in Newport News. Each offense may result in up to a year in prison, a $100,000 fine, and another year of supervised release, but prosecutors note that he could receive a heavier sentence that a higher court may review for reasonableness. The plea agreement also explains that Shi could be deported, but that he can apply for asylum if he believes he will be subject to torture in China.

The statement of facts accompanying Shi’s plea agreement contains new information. For example, it reveals that Shi purchased the drone one day before flying to Virginia from San Francisco. There is no explanation given for why he was in San Francisco. According to the statement, Shi only flew the drone around the shipyards and did not take any photos that did not contain US Navy vessels. Finally, it says that Shi was arrested trying to board a one-way flight to China from California.

There are many unknowns surrounding Shi’s strikingly novel prosecution, including why the DOJ pursued it in the first place. Despite the case taking place amid rising tensions between the US and China, Shi has not been accused of acting as a spy; his only crime was taking photos with a drone. Berman previously said that his case could even raise important First Amendment issues.

Court documents filed to date provide no explanation for why Shi took the photos, although the plea agreement states that Shi acknowledges he had no “innocent reason” for doing so. Even people around Shi seemed baffled by the case. I previously spoke to a colleague from the University of Minnesota who was surprised to learn that Shi was even still in the US, adding that he’d effectively abandoned his studies months prior to his arrest.

The DOJ declined to comment, and Shi’s attorney did not respond to a request. Shi now awaits sentencing.

Read More 

Amazon’s throwing in free smart bulbs with some Echo devices, including the latest Echo Show 8. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Amazon Prime Day may not officially kick off until July 16th, but that hasn’t stopped the retailer from dropping prices on a variety of items ahead of the two-day sale. We’ve already published a detailed guide to the best early Prime Day deals, but if you’re just interested in Amazon devices, this is where you’ll find the ones that are actually worthwhile. From Alexa-based Echo smart speakers to video doorbells, Amazon is discounting a wide range of gadgets, some of which are currently seeing their lowest prices to date.

Of course, the main caveat here is you’ll have to be an active Amazon Prime member to take advantage of any and all Prime Day deals. Luckily, Amazon makes it pretty easy to sign up, especially since new members can take advantage of the exclusive discounts with a free 30-day trial.

The best streaming device and TV deals

If you’re looking for a cheap way to beef up the built-in speakers on your TV, Amazon’s 24-inch Fire TV Soundbar is on sale at Amazon for $89.99 ($30 off) — its best price yet. The two-channel speaker doesn’t offer a ton of detail, but it’s still plenty loud with support for ARC, eARC, and Dolby Audio. The Bluetooth-compatible soundbar also works with any Fire TV product, including both streaming devices and TVs. Read our hands-on impressions.

Amazon’s third-gen Fire TV Cube, a streaming device that also doubles as a decent Echo speaker, is down to its all-time low of $99.99 ($40 off) at Amazon. The snappy 4K streaming device integrates well with Amazon Alexa for an excellent hands-free experience while supporting Wi-Fi 6E and all the popular HDR formats, including Dolby Vision. Read our review.

The best smart display and speaker deals

The fifth-gen Echo Dot is available at Amazon in blue, black, and white for an all-time low of $26.98 ($43 off) with a free Sengled smart bulb. The latest Dot delivers good sound quality and supports Alexa like previous models, letting you control smart home devices, play music, set alarms, and perform other tasks with your voice. It also features built-in temperature sensors and can act as a Wi-Fi extender for Eero mesh networks. Read our review.
You can also buy the Echo Pop in black, purple, blue, and white at Amazon with an 800-lumen Sengled smart bulb for $19.98 ($40 off), the bundle’s best price yet. The semispherical speaker doesn’t sound as good as the latest Dot and lacks features like temperature sensors. Nevertheless, it still sounds decent, integrates with Alexa, and comes in multiple colors. Read our review.

You can also pick up the fourth-gen Echo with a Sengled smart bulb in black, white, and blue for $56.98 ($63 off) at Amazon, which is $2 shy of the bundle’s best price to date. It’s still a great smart speaker despite its age, one that offers the same Alexa-enabled capabilities as the Echo Dot and Pop. However, it delivers better sound than Amazon’s entry-level speakers and can function as a smart home hub with Zigbee support; it also includes a temperature sensor. Read our review.

The best smart home deals

Ring’s newest video doorbell, the Ring Battery Doorbell Pro, is on sale for $149.99 ($80 off) at Amazon, which is a new low. It offers 1536p HD video, a head-to-toe view, and a similar feature set to the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2; however, it runs on a rechargeable battery and lacks some functionality, including Alexa Greetings.
The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is also down to an all-time low of $99.99 ($50 off) at Amazon. Ring’s newer doorbell also supports 1536p HD video and a head-to-toe view, along with color night vision, 3D motion detection for more accurate alerts, dual-band Wi-Fi, color pre-roll, and noise-canceling audio.

The Ring Indoor Cam is on sale for $29.99 ($30 off) at Amazon, which matches its all-time low price. The latest Ring Indoor Cam has 1080p video, a built-in siren, motion-activated recording, and color night vision but now offers a physical privacy cover you can use to disable audio and video recording. If you pay for the Ring Protect Pro subscription, you also get extra features like an SOS button so you can easily request emergency dispatch from a live view or the app.
If you’re looking for a cheap Ring camera you can use indoors and outdoors, Ring’s last-gen Stick Up Cam is matching its all-time low price of $54.99 ($45 off) at Amazon. The 1080p camera can capture motion-activated video in 1080p, runs on batteries, and has multiple mounting options.

The Blink Mini 2 is down to $19.99 (50 percent off) at Amazon, which is a new all-time low. The latest Mini is still a basic 1080p camera, but its IP65 weatherproofing means you can use it both indoors and outdoors if you pair it with a Blink Weather Resistant Power Adapter for $10. It also comes with USB-C, improved audio and image quality, and a wider field of view, making it a great upgrade over its predecessor. Read our review.
If you’re looking for an outdoor security camera, you can buy the Blink Outdoor 4 camera starting at a new all-time low of $39.99 ($60 off) from Amazon. You can also buy it bundled with the latest Echo Show 5 for $59.99 ($129.99 off). The basic 1080p camera offers support for motion detection, night vision, and two-way audio. Just bear in mind some features are paywalled, like cloud-based storage.

The best Kindle and Fire tablet deals

Amazon’s last-gen Fire HD 10 tablet is down to a record low of $69.99 ($95 off) at Amazon with 32GB of storage. The ad-free 10.1-inch tablet isn’t as powerful or capable as the aforementioned Max 11, but it’s still a good entertainment device for tapping into Amazon content thanks to its spacious 1080p display and decent camera.
You can buy the latest Fire HD 8 tablet at Amazon with ads and a standing case for $89.99 ($75 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on the bundle. The eight-inch slate isn’t as sharp as the Fire HD 10, but it’s still a reliable performer with good battery life and 64GB of storage, which is more than enough for stowing books, games, and streaming apps.

Miscellaneous early Prime Day deals

Amazon is offering a three-month trial of Audible Premium Plus through July 31st, which saves you about $45 over the three-month window given that memberships normally run $14.95 a month. The plan grants you access to thousands of audiobooks and podcasts as well as one premium audiobook every month.
Prime members can currently get a five-month subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited for free, which equates to a savings of $50. Non-Prime members are also eligible for the deal, but they’ll only get three months for free. The $9.99 monthly subscription grants you ad-free access to millions of podcast episodes and over 100 million songs.
The orb-like Echo Glow is back to its all-time low of $16.99 ($13 off) at Amazon. The 100-lumen LED lamp — which is designed primarily for kids — can cycle through multiple colors with just a tap, serve as a timer, and dim itself when it’s time to go to sleep. It’s also compatible with Amazon Alexa, allowing for hands-free control.
Amazon’s Luna Controller is back to its all-time low of $39.99 ($30 off) at Amazon with a free month of Luna Plus (for new subscribers). The wireless controller is designed to work with Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service, but you can also use it to play on PCs, Android phones, Fire TV devices, and Apple devices via Bluetooth and USB-C.

Amazon’s throwing in free smart bulbs with some Echo devices, including the latest Echo Show 8. | Image: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Amazon Prime Day may not officially kick off until July 16th, but that hasn’t stopped the retailer from dropping prices on a variety of items ahead of the two-day sale. We’ve already published a detailed guide to the best early Prime Day deals, but if you’re just interested in Amazon devices, this is where you’ll find the ones that are actually worthwhile. From Alexa-based Echo smart speakers to video doorbells, Amazon is discounting a wide range of gadgets, some of which are currently seeing their lowest prices to date.

Of course, the main caveat here is you’ll have to be an active Amazon Prime member to take advantage of any and all Prime Day deals. Luckily, Amazon makes it pretty easy to sign up, especially since new members can take advantage of the exclusive discounts with a free 30-day trial.

The best streaming device and TV deals

If you’re looking for a cheap way to beef up the built-in speakers on your TV, Amazon’s 24-inch Fire TV Soundbar is on sale at Amazon for $89.99 ($30 off) — its best price yet. The two-channel speaker doesn’t offer a ton of detail, but it’s still plenty loud with support for ARC, eARC, and Dolby Audio. The Bluetooth-compatible soundbar also works with any Fire TV product, including both streaming devices and TVs. Read our hands-on impressions.

Amazon’s third-gen Fire TV Cube, a streaming device that also doubles as a decent Echo speaker, is down to its all-time low of $99.99 ($40 off) at Amazon. The snappy 4K streaming device integrates well with Amazon Alexa for an excellent hands-free experience while supporting Wi-Fi 6E and all the popular HDR formats, including Dolby Vision. Read our review.

The best smart display and speaker deals

The fifth-gen Echo Dot is available at Amazon in blue, black, and white for an all-time low of $26.98 ($43 off) with a free Sengled smart bulb. The latest Dot delivers good sound quality and supports Alexa like previous models, letting you control smart home devices, play music, set alarms, and perform other tasks with your voice. It also features built-in temperature sensors and can act as a Wi-Fi extender for Eero mesh networks. Read our review.
You can also buy the Echo Pop in black, purple, blue, and white at Amazon with an 800-lumen Sengled smart bulb for $19.98 ($40 off), the bundle’s best price yet. The semispherical speaker doesn’t sound as good as the latest Dot and lacks features like temperature sensors. Nevertheless, it still sounds decent, integrates with Alexa, and comes in multiple colors. Read our review.

You can also pick up the fourth-gen Echo with a Sengled smart bulb in black, white, and blue for $56.98 ($63 off) at Amazon, which is $2 shy of the bundle’s best price to date. It’s still a great smart speaker despite its age, one that offers the same Alexa-enabled capabilities as the Echo Dot and Pop. However, it delivers better sound than Amazon’s entry-level speakers and can function as a smart home hub with Zigbee support; it also includes a temperature sensor. Read our review.

The best smart home deals

Ring’s newest video doorbell, the Ring Battery Doorbell Pro, is on sale for $149.99 ($80 off) at Amazon, which is a new low. It offers 1536p HD video, a head-to-toe view, and a similar feature set to the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2; however, it runs on a rechargeable battery and lacks some functionality, including Alexa Greetings.
The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is also down to an all-time low of $99.99 ($50 off) at Amazon. Ring’s newer doorbell also supports 1536p HD video and a head-to-toe view, along with color night vision, 3D motion detection for more accurate alerts, dual-band Wi-Fi, color pre-roll, and noise-canceling audio.

The Ring Indoor Cam is on sale for $29.99 ($30 off) at Amazon, which matches its all-time low price. The latest Ring Indoor Cam has 1080p video, a built-in siren, motion-activated recording, and color night vision but now offers a physical privacy cover you can use to disable audio and video recording. If you pay for the Ring Protect Pro subscription, you also get extra features like an SOS button so you can easily request emergency dispatch from a live view or the app.
If you’re looking for a cheap Ring camera you can use indoors and outdoors, Ring’s last-gen Stick Up Cam is matching its all-time low price of $54.99 ($45 off) at Amazon. The 1080p camera can capture motion-activated video in 1080p, runs on batteries, and has multiple mounting options.

The Blink Mini 2 is down to $19.99 (50 percent off) at Amazon, which is a new all-time low. The latest Mini is still a basic 1080p camera, but its IP65 weatherproofing means you can use it both indoors and outdoors if you pair it with a Blink Weather Resistant Power Adapter for $10. It also comes with USB-C, improved audio and image quality, and a wider field of view, making it a great upgrade over its predecessor. Read our review.
If you’re looking for an outdoor security camera, you can buy the Blink Outdoor 4 camera starting at a new all-time low of $39.99 ($60 off) from Amazon. You can also buy it bundled with the latest Echo Show 5 for $59.99 ($129.99 off). The basic 1080p camera offers support for motion detection, night vision, and two-way audio. Just bear in mind some features are paywalled, like cloud-based storage.

The best Kindle and Fire tablet deals

Amazon’s last-gen Fire HD 10 tablet is down to a record low of $69.99 ($95 off) at Amazon with 32GB of storage. The ad-free 10.1-inch tablet isn’t as powerful or capable as the aforementioned Max 11, but it’s still a good entertainment device for tapping into Amazon content thanks to its spacious 1080p display and decent camera.
You can buy the latest Fire HD 8 tablet at Amazon with ads and a standing case for $89.99 ($75 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on the bundle. The eight-inch slate isn’t as sharp as the Fire HD 10, but it’s still a reliable performer with good battery life and 64GB of storage, which is more than enough for stowing books, games, and streaming apps.

Miscellaneous early Prime Day deals

Amazon is offering a three-month trial of Audible Premium Plus through July 31st, which saves you about $45 over the three-month window given that memberships normally run $14.95 a month. The plan grants you access to thousands of audiobooks and podcasts as well as one premium audiobook every month.
Prime members can currently get a five-month subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited for free, which equates to a savings of $50. Non-Prime members are also eligible for the deal, but they’ll only get three months for free. The $9.99 monthly subscription grants you ad-free access to millions of podcast episodes and over 100 million songs.
The orb-like Echo Glow is back to its all-time low of $16.99 ($13 off) at Amazon. The 100-lumen LED lamp — which is designed primarily for kids — can cycle through multiple colors with just a tap, serve as a timer, and dim itself when it’s time to go to sleep. It’s also compatible with Amazon Alexa, allowing for hands-free control.
Amazon’s Luna Controller is back to its all-time low of $39.99 ($30 off) at Amazon with a free month of Luna Plus (for new subscribers). The wireless controller is designed to work with Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service, but you can also use it to play on PCs, Android phones, Fire TV devices, and Apple devices via Bluetooth and USB-C.

Read More 

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

A few days ago, I misplaced my wallet. I remember having it on Sunday, the night of my friend’s birthday dinner, because I was the one to put my card down. Maybe I had it on Monday. I didn’t spend any money then aside from a Lyft ride home, which famously doesn’t require you to swipe a card, so there’s no way to know for sure. And even when I did spend money — a case of La Croix at the bodega, an iced latte as a reward for going to the laundromat — my wallet never factored into the equation. I use Apple Pay for almost every purchase, both because it’s easy and convenient and because, unlike my wallet, my phone is something I actually can’t live without.
It wasn’t until Wednesday that my lack of a wallet became an issue. I didn’t need it to take the subway to a meeting, nor did I need it to get a coffee at said meeting. I didn’t need it to take the train downtown to The Verge’s office — it turns out I needed my ID to get into the building, but we found a way around that. (I showed the receptionist a photo of my driver’s license on my phone.) My wallet-free existence could have been a problem again that night: as I biked to the bar to meet my friends, I wondered if I’d be turned away at the door or when ordering a drink. I was not. The next day, at a wine bar, I used my phone to pay for my share of the bottle I split with a friend.
Wallet or no wallet, I can still get around. Crucially, I can still spend money. It’s a completely seamless process — one that has enabled me to be more forgetful and more careless about my spending.
Apple rolled out its contactless payment system in 2014, promising to disrupt the “fairly antiquated payment process” of swiping a card. “The whole process is based on this little piece of plastic, whether it’s a credit or debit card,” CEO Tim Cook said at the time. “We’re totally reliant on the exposed numbers, and the outdated and vulnerable magnetic interface — which by the way is five decades old — and the security codes which all of us know aren’t so secure.”
I kept relying on the exposed numbers and outdated interface for years, mostly out of stubbornness. I was 20 years old and terrible with the little money I had when Apple Pay first launched. If anything, I needed my purchases to have more friction, not less. Every penny I spent was precious. I’d write down all my expenses in a little notebook, color-coding them for good measure. By forcing myself to think about where my money was going, I shamed myself into spending less of it.
Even then, I was losing my wallet all the time. There was a two-month stretch the following summer where I left it on the subway, had it returned to me by a kind stranger who tracked me down on Facebook, and then left it at Yankee Stadium, where I never saw it again. But losing my wallet used to have consequences, and the threat of those consequences — losing my MetroCard, not being able to buy myself lunch, not being able to go out with my friends — made me somewhat more careful.
I finally caved in April 2020, though not entirely by choice. You know what was happening then — I don’t need to remind you. But let me set the scene: I had walked 20 minutes to the good grocery store, waited another 30 minutes in line to be let in (it was a different time!), grabbed a week’s worth of food, and got to the front of the checkout line, where I realized… I didn’t have my wallet. I called my roommate, who dutifully read my credit card number to me while I typed it into Apple Pay. Unfortunately, I never looked back.
It’s not Apple’s fault that I lose my wallet all the time, but Apple does bear some responsibility for ushering in this new world where all you need is your phone. In some ways, I’m the kind of model Apple consumer: no wallet, no ID, just Apple Pay and vibes.
And now here I am, more forgetful than ever, aided and abetted by a world where contactless payments have become the norm. I ended up finding my wallet this morning at the bottom of a tote bag. My credit card, however, is still missing, but it doesn’t really even matter.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

A few days ago, I misplaced my wallet. I remember having it on Sunday, the night of my friend’s birthday dinner, because I was the one to put my card down. Maybe I had it on Monday. I didn’t spend any money then aside from a Lyft ride home, which famously doesn’t require you to swipe a card, so there’s no way to know for sure. And even when I did spend money — a case of La Croix at the bodega, an iced latte as a reward for going to the laundromat — my wallet never factored into the equation. I use Apple Pay for almost every purchase, both because it’s easy and convenient and because, unlike my wallet, my phone is something I actually can’t live without.

It wasn’t until Wednesday that my lack of a wallet became an issue. I didn’t need it to take the subway to a meeting, nor did I need it to get a coffee at said meeting. I didn’t need it to take the train downtown to The Verge’s office — it turns out I needed my ID to get into the building, but we found a way around that. (I showed the receptionist a photo of my driver’s license on my phone.) My wallet-free existence could have been a problem again that night: as I biked to the bar to meet my friends, I wondered if I’d be turned away at the door or when ordering a drink. I was not. The next day, at a wine bar, I used my phone to pay for my share of the bottle I split with a friend.

Wallet or no wallet, I can still get around. Crucially, I can still spend money. It’s a completely seamless process — one that has enabled me to be more forgetful and more careless about my spending.

Apple rolled out its contactless payment system in 2014, promising to disrupt the “fairly antiquated payment process” of swiping a card. “The whole process is based on this little piece of plastic, whether it’s a credit or debit card,” CEO Tim Cook said at the time. “We’re totally reliant on the exposed numbers, and the outdated and vulnerable magnetic interface — which by the way is five decades old — and the security codes which all of us know aren’t so secure.”

I kept relying on the exposed numbers and outdated interface for years, mostly out of stubbornness. I was 20 years old and terrible with the little money I had when Apple Pay first launched. If anything, I needed my purchases to have more friction, not less. Every penny I spent was precious. I’d write down all my expenses in a little notebook, color-coding them for good measure. By forcing myself to think about where my money was going, I shamed myself into spending less of it.

Even then, I was losing my wallet all the time. There was a two-month stretch the following summer where I left it on the subway, had it returned to me by a kind stranger who tracked me down on Facebook, and then left it at Yankee Stadium, where I never saw it again. But losing my wallet used to have consequences, and the threat of those consequences — losing my MetroCard, not being able to buy myself lunch, not being able to go out with my friends — made me somewhat more careful.

I finally caved in April 2020, though not entirely by choice. You know what was happening then — I don’t need to remind you. But let me set the scene: I had walked 20 minutes to the good grocery store, waited another 30 minutes in line to be let in (it was a different time!), grabbed a week’s worth of food, and got to the front of the checkout line, where I realized… I didn’t have my wallet. I called my roommate, who dutifully read my credit card number to me while I typed it into Apple Pay. Unfortunately, I never looked back.

It’s not Apple’s fault that I lose my wallet all the time, but Apple does bear some responsibility for ushering in this new world where all you need is your phone. In some ways, I’m the kind of model Apple consumer: no wallet, no ID, just Apple Pay and vibes.

And now here I am, more forgetful than ever, aided and abetted by a world where contactless payments have become the norm. I ended up finding my wallet this morning at the bottom of a tote bag. My credit card, however, is still missing, but it doesn’t really even matter.

Read More