verge-rss

Photo: Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images

At some point in the future, a new “Multi-Purpose Tap” concept will let payment cards or devices like smartwatches and phones accomplish multiple things at once when using NFC. With this in play, a customer in a store might tap their phone with Apple Wallet or Google Pay on a terminal that simultaneously checks their ID if they’re buying booze, add points to their loyalty account, pay for their goods, and provide them with a digital receipt.
Some of the concept’s goals are laid out today in a PDF from the NFC Forum, the nonprofit consortium of tech companies that guides and promotes the NFC standard and which includes Apple, Google, and Sony among its roster.

Image: NFC Forum
NFC Forum slide on Multi-Purpose Tap.

No more paper, just receipts on my phone? Sign me up. The forum says that this could also be used to share details about a product, like the best way to recycle it, when you use an NFC tap to pay.

However, the Multi-Purpose Tap vision the forum presents raises some privacy questions. The forum highlights how it also means you, the customer, no longer have to enter your details into a separate tablet next to a register to get your points. But it “could also be used to trigger specific, targeted marketing communications.” That’s less appealing.
The details of how retailers and payment-processing companies would use this in the real world are unknown, but making it too easy for a retailer to link activity to an individual profile can cause all kinds of problems.

Photo: Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images

At some point in the future, a new “Multi-Purpose Tap” concept will let payment cards or devices like smartwatches and phones accomplish multiple things at once when using NFC. With this in play, a customer in a store might tap their phone with Apple Wallet or Google Pay on a terminal that simultaneously checks their ID if they’re buying booze, add points to their loyalty account, pay for their goods, and provide them with a digital receipt.

Some of the concept’s goals are laid out today in a PDF from the NFC Forum, the nonprofit consortium of tech companies that guides and promotes the NFC standard and which includes Apple, Google, and Sony among its roster.

Image: NFC Forum
NFC Forum slide on Multi-Purpose Tap.

No more paper, just receipts on my phone? Sign me up. The forum says that this could also be used to share details about a product, like the best way to recycle it, when you use an NFC tap to pay.

However, the Multi-Purpose Tap vision the forum presents raises some privacy questions. The forum highlights how it also means you, the customer, no longer have to enter your details into a separate tablet next to a register to get your points. But it “could also be used to trigger specific, targeted marketing communications.” That’s less appealing.

The details of how retailers and payment-processing companies would use this in the real world are unknown, but making it too easy for a retailer to link activity to an individual profile can cause all kinds of problems.

Read More 

Thunderbolt 5 cables, like their TB4 and TB3 predecessors, have USB-C tips. | Image: Cable Matters

Intel’s Thunderbolt 5 might be the best USB-C cable ever, with 120Gbps of single-direction bandwidth, 240 watts of power, and enough oomph to drive external SSDs, eGPUs, and high-resolution, high-refresh-rate monitors from a single cable at unheard-of levels. But first, it’d have to ship! Today, Cable Matters is shipping the first three certified Thunderbolt 5 cables, which bring us one big step closer to something practical instead of theoretical.
Available today from Amazon in 1-foot (0.3m), 1.6-foot (0.5m), and 3.3-foot (1m) lengths for $23, $27, and $33, respectively, the new cables obviously don’t do anything on their own — you’d need a computer with a Thunderbolt 5 port and a dock or accessory of some sort to get some real use out of it.

But as of today, the only laptop we’ve heard of with a Thunderbolt 5 port is the Razer Blade 18, and even there, it’s not guaranteed. You’d have to buy the $4,500 Mercury edition of the laptop to get that port. (You do also get an Intel i9 and a mobile RTX 4090 for the money.)

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
A Razer Blade 18 at CES with a Thunderbolt 5 port.

And unless you own two of those laptops, there’s still probably nothing special you can do with a Thunderbolt 5 cable as of today because the peripherals we saw at CES aren’t yet ready: Belkin, J5Create, OWC, and Sabrent do not yet list any of those Thunderbolt 5 products on their websites, and Hyper still shows its $400 dock as being out of stock with a “Sign up to be notified” button.
But if you do have two of the exact same $4,500 Razer laptops, could you use Thunderbolt Share to transfer files between them at ludicrous speed? Inquiring minds want to know. If not, I suppose you could use it as a USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 cable for now.
According to Cable Matters’ press release, its cable is manufactured by Lintes, the same company that provided the prototype cable we saw at CES.

Thunderbolt 5 cables, like their TB4 and TB3 predecessors, have USB-C tips. | Image: Cable Matters

Intel’s Thunderbolt 5 might be the best USB-C cable ever, with 120Gbps of single-direction bandwidth, 240 watts of power, and enough oomph to drive external SSDs, eGPUs, and high-resolution, high-refresh-rate monitors from a single cable at unheard-of levels. But first, it’d have to ship! Today, Cable Matters is shipping the first three certified Thunderbolt 5 cables, which bring us one big step closer to something practical instead of theoretical.

Available today from Amazon in 1-foot (0.3m), 1.6-foot (0.5m), and 3.3-foot (1m) lengths for $23, $27, and $33, respectively, the new cables obviously don’t do anything on their own — you’d need a computer with a Thunderbolt 5 port and a dock or accessory of some sort to get some real use out of it.

But as of today, the only laptop we’ve heard of with a Thunderbolt 5 port is the Razer Blade 18, and even there, it’s not guaranteed. You’d have to buy the $4,500 Mercury edition of the laptop to get that port. (You do also get an Intel i9 and a mobile RTX 4090 for the money.)

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
A Razer Blade 18 at CES with a Thunderbolt 5 port.

And unless you own two of those laptops, there’s still probably nothing special you can do with a Thunderbolt 5 cable as of today because the peripherals we saw at CES aren’t yet ready: Belkin, J5Create, OWC, and Sabrent do not yet list any of those Thunderbolt 5 products on their websites, and Hyper still shows its $400 dock as being out of stock with a “Sign up to be notified” button.

But if you do have two of the exact same $4,500 Razer laptops, could you use Thunderbolt Share to transfer files between them at ludicrous speed? Inquiring minds want to know. If not, I suppose you could use it as a USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 cable for now.

According to Cable Matters’ press release, its cable is manufactured by Lintes, the same company that provided the prototype cable we saw at CES.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Silvergate Bank, once a cornerstone of the crypto financial world until its collapse in early 2023, defrauded its investors by lying about its anti-money laundering controls and misleading investors about how the fallout from the FTX collapse would affect it, the Securities and Exchange Commission says in a lawsuit. Also named in the suit were the company’s chief executive officer, chief risk officer, and chief financial officer.
Silvergate said it had an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program tailored specifically to crypto but actually didn’t adequately monitor “approximately $1 trillion” in transactions, the complaint says. Silvergate also didn’t notice “nearly $9 billion in suspicious transfers” by FTX entities.
When FTX collapsed, the crypto industry panicked, leading to a run on Silvergate and a liquidity crisis. At that point, Silvergate’s chief financial officer Antonio Martino “engaged in a fraudulent scheme to mislead investors about the Bank’s dire financial condition,” the SEC alleges. Martino knew the bank had borrowed billions, which it would have to repay in January and February 2023. The only way that could happen would be by selling securities, but Martino approved an earnings release that “falsely stated the Bank expected to sell only $1.7 billion in securities during the First Quarter of 2023, of which it had already sold $1.5 billion.”
That earnings release understated Silvergate’s losses from its securities sales, the SEC complaint alleges. Martino also lied on the bank’s quarterly earnings call, according to the complaint.
Developing…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Silvergate Bank, once a cornerstone of the crypto financial world until its collapse in early 2023, defrauded its investors by lying about its anti-money laundering controls and misleading investors about how the fallout from the FTX collapse would affect it, the Securities and Exchange Commission says in a lawsuit. Also named in the suit were the company’s chief executive officer, chief risk officer, and chief financial officer.

Silvergate said it had an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program tailored specifically to crypto but actually didn’t adequately monitor “approximately $1 trillion” in transactions, the complaint says. Silvergate also didn’t notice “nearly $9 billion in suspicious transfers” by FTX entities.

When FTX collapsed, the crypto industry panicked, leading to a run on Silvergate and a liquidity crisis. At that point, Silvergate’s chief financial officer Antonio Martino “engaged in a fraudulent scheme to mislead investors about the Bank’s dire financial condition,” the SEC alleges. Martino knew the bank had borrowed billions, which it would have to repay in January and February 2023. The only way that could happen would be by selling securities, but Martino approved an earnings release that “falsely stated the Bank expected to sell only $1.7 billion in securities during the First Quarter of 2023, of which it had already sold $1.5 billion.”

That earnings release understated Silvergate’s losses from its securities sales, the SEC complaint alleges. Martino also lied on the bank’s quarterly earnings call, according to the complaint.

Developing…

Read More 

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. | Photo by Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

A couple of months ago, I was sitting in the audience at a tech conference in San Fransisco watching Bloomberg’s Emily Chang interview Reid Hoffman.
She asked about Microsoft’s hiring of the team behind Inflection, a would-be OpenAI competitor that Hoffman co-founded. It was an acquisition in everything but name, clearly designed to avoid the scrutiny of antitrust regulators. Not only had Microsoft (where Hoffman is a board member) hired most of Inflection’s employees — it also licensed the startup’s technology in a way that seemed designed to make its investors whole.
Speaking with Chang that day onstage, Hoffman predicted that what happened to Inflection will become a “pattern” for future AI deals. We are seeing that pattern play out now.
Last Friday, Amazon announced that it is hiring most of the team behind Adept, another would-be OpenAI competitor that raised about $400 million from top-tier investors to build, in the words of CEO David Luan, “a new type of giant model that turns natural language into actions on your machine.”

Amazon told GeekWire’s Taylor Soper that it’s hiring 80 percent of Adept’s employees, including Luan and his co-founders. In an internal memo published by the outlet, SVP Rohit Prasad said that, like Microsoft with Inflection, Amazon will also be licensing Adept’s technology to “accelerate our roadmap for building digital agents that can automate software workflows.”
Adept’s corporate blog post about the news suggests it was running out of money: “Continuing with Adept’s initial plan of building both useful general intelligence and an enterprise agent product would’ve required spending significant attention on fundraising for our foundation models, rather than bringing to life our agent vision.” Recent reports say the company has been looking to sell itself.
The reality is that building leading AI models is extremely costly, and raising $400 million isn’t even enough to compete these days. Big Tech, meanwhile, is flush with cash and looking to get in on what everyone perceives to be the next big thing. It’s logical for more AI startups to go the way of Inflection and Adept as the industry consolidates.
The problem for Big Tech is that they are no longer allowed to buy companies like they once did. The current antitrust enforcement regime would most certainly try to block an Amazon acquisition of Adept, whether there is a strong legal argument for doing so or not. (Amazon execs are still seething about not being allowed to buy a robot vacuum cleaner company.)
Even still, capitalism finds a way. What Microsoft did to Inflection, and what Amazon just did to Adept, is the new Big Tech playbook for swallowing the AI industry and getting away with it. Silicon Valley has a storied history of acquihires, where a startup is gutted for its people and left for dead. Microsoft and Amazon have done what are essentially reverse acquihires, where the hiring of people and a corresponding licensing deal is designed to disguise what is actually an acquisition.
Reid Hoffman, meanwhile, should probably be congratulated for more than just an accurate prediction about the future of these deals — one of Adept’s earliest investors was none other than his venture capital firm, Greylock.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. | Photo by Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

A couple of months ago, I was sitting in the audience at a tech conference in San Fransisco watching Bloomberg’s Emily Chang interview Reid Hoffman.

She asked about Microsoft’s hiring of the team behind Inflection, a would-be OpenAI competitor that Hoffman co-founded. It was an acquisition in everything but name, clearly designed to avoid the scrutiny of antitrust regulators. Not only had Microsoft (where Hoffman is a board member) hired most of Inflection’s employees — it also licensed the startup’s technology in a way that seemed designed to make its investors whole.

Speaking with Chang that day onstage, Hoffman predicted that what happened to Inflection will become a “pattern” for future AI deals. We are seeing that pattern play out now.

Last Friday, Amazon announced that it is hiring most of the team behind Adept, another would-be OpenAI competitor that raised about $400 million from top-tier investors to build, in the words of CEO David Luan, “a new type of giant model that turns natural language into actions on your machine.”

Amazon told GeekWire’s Taylor Soper that it’s hiring 80 percent of Adept’s employees, including Luan and his co-founders. In an internal memo published by the outlet, SVP Rohit Prasad said that, like Microsoft with Inflection, Amazon will also be licensing Adept’s technology to “accelerate our roadmap for building digital agents that can automate software workflows.”

Adept’s corporate blog post about the news suggests it was running out of money: “Continuing with Adept’s initial plan of building both useful general intelligence and an enterprise agent product would’ve required spending significant attention on fundraising for our foundation models, rather than bringing to life our agent vision.” Recent reports say the company has been looking to sell itself.

The reality is that building leading AI models is extremely costly, and raising $400 million isn’t even enough to compete these days. Big Tech, meanwhile, is flush with cash and looking to get in on what everyone perceives to be the next big thing. It’s logical for more AI startups to go the way of Inflection and Adept as the industry consolidates.

The problem for Big Tech is that they are no longer allowed to buy companies like they once did. The current antitrust enforcement regime would most certainly try to block an Amazon acquisition of Adept, whether there is a strong legal argument for doing so or not. (Amazon execs are still seething about not being allowed to buy a robot vacuum cleaner company.)

Even still, capitalism finds a way. What Microsoft did to Inflection, and what Amazon just did to Adept, is the new Big Tech playbook for swallowing the AI industry and getting away with it. Silicon Valley has a storied history of acquihires, where a startup is gutted for its people and left for dead. Microsoft and Amazon have done what are essentially reverse acquihires, where the hiring of people and a corresponding licensing deal is designed to disguise what is actually an acquisition.

Reid Hoffman, meanwhile, should probably be congratulated for more than just an accurate prediction about the future of these deals — one of Adept’s earliest investors was none other than his venture capital firm, Greylock.

Read More 

Image: Vaio

Would you believe today marks an entire decade since Sony spun out its Vaio computer brand? Vaio has stood for lightweight laptops pretty much ever since — and now the company’s announcing one of the lightest-ever portable monitors to go with them.
The Vaio Vision Plus 14 goes on sale today in Japan as a 14-inch, 1920 x 1200 USB-C monitor that weighs just 0.72 pounds (325g). That’s less than half as much as most of the monitors you’ll find in a typical “best portable monitor” list and notably lighter than the 13.3-inch, 1.08-pound (490g) Asus ZenScreen OLED MQ13AH, despite having a larger screen.
The Vaio is also just 12.4mm thick (0.49in) at its widest point and 3.9mm (0.15in) at its thinnest.

Images: Vaio
The side profile of the Vaio Vision Plus 14.

Vaio managed the light weight partly with a skeletal design (check out that kickstand and side profile!) and partly by molding the back panel out of carbon fiber, which it found was 33 percent lighter than aluminum and notably lighter than magnesium alloy at the same rigidity.

Speaking of rigidity, the company claims the Vision has been tested at its facility in Japan to withstand drops, bends, and years of use. The company claims (via Google Translate) that you can “use it with peace of mind in the unlikely event of stress during rush hour or impact when dropped.” It also has five videos to illustrate that the monitor can withstand some light torture; I’ve embedded one of them above.
It also comes with an origami-style stand cover that can raise it high enough to be a second vertical screen above your laptop:

Image: Vaio
The origami-style cover in use.

Like some other portable monitors, you can power this one from your laptop with a single included USB-C cable as long as it provides 10 watts — you can additionally plug a 65W or higher USB-C PD power supply into the monitor’s second USB-C port and charge your laptop simultaneously. The monitor itself consumes about 4W in use, according to Vaio’s spec sheet, and it can pass through a maximum of 60W to your laptop.

One unknown is picture quality. Vaio doesn’t specify what kind of panel we’re talking about, and while Vaio says the screen displays 100 percent of the sRGB spectrum, that’s a relatively small color space for graphics professionals. The antiglare screen also only hits 400 nits of brightness, which should be fine indoors but maybe not for an outdoor cafe.
While Vaio does sell its computers in the US and other countries, it hasn’t yet announced if the new portable monitor will be available outside of Japan. There, it’s on sale today for 54,800 yen (roughly $339) and is shipping this week.

Image: Vaio

Would you believe today marks an entire decade since Sony spun out its Vaio computer brand? Vaio has stood for lightweight laptops pretty much ever since — and now the company’s announcing one of the lightest-ever portable monitors to go with them.

The Vaio Vision Plus 14 goes on sale today in Japan as a 14-inch, 1920 x 1200 USB-C monitor that weighs just 0.72 pounds (325g). That’s less than half as much as most of the monitors you’ll find in a typical “best portable monitor” list and notably lighter than the 13.3-inch, 1.08-pound (490g) Asus ZenScreen OLED MQ13AH, despite having a larger screen.

The Vaio is also just 12.4mm thick (0.49in) at its widest point and 3.9mm (0.15in) at its thinnest.

Images: Vaio
The side profile of the Vaio Vision Plus 14.

Vaio managed the light weight partly with a skeletal design (check out that kickstand and side profile!) and partly by molding the back panel out of carbon fiber, which it found was 33 percent lighter than aluminum and notably lighter than magnesium alloy at the same rigidity.

Speaking of rigidity, the company claims the Vision has been tested at its facility in Japan to withstand drops, bends, and years of use. The company claims (via Google Translate) that you can “use it with peace of mind in the unlikely event of stress during rush hour or impact when dropped.” It also has five videos to illustrate that the monitor can withstand some light torture; I’ve embedded one of them above.

It also comes with an origami-style stand cover that can raise it high enough to be a second vertical screen above your laptop:

Image: Vaio
The origami-style cover in use.

Like some other portable monitors, you can power this one from your laptop with a single included USB-C cable as long as it provides 10 watts — you can additionally plug a 65W or higher USB-C PD power supply into the monitor’s second USB-C port and charge your laptop simultaneously. The monitor itself consumes about 4W in use, according to Vaio’s spec sheet, and it can pass through a maximum of 60W to your laptop.

One unknown is picture quality. Vaio doesn’t specify what kind of panel we’re talking about, and while Vaio says the screen displays 100 percent of the sRGB spectrum, that’s a relatively small color space for graphics professionals. The antiglare screen also only hits 400 nits of brightness, which should be fine indoors but maybe not for an outdoor cafe.

While Vaio does sell its computers in the US and other countries, it hasn’t yet announced if the new portable monitor will be available outside of Japan. There, it’s on sale today for 54,800 yen (roughly $339) and is shipping this week.

Read More 

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

While the majority of Americans would like to see more clean energy from solar and wind farms — support for new renewable energy projects has started to wane, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. It also found a drop in interest in electric vehicles following Biden administration policies to slash greenhouse gas emissions and Republican backlash.
The share of people who favor more solar power has dropped from 90 to 78 percent since 2020, the survey found. Support for wind power among survey participants similarly dropped more than 10 percentage points to 72 percent over the past four years. And just 29 percent of adults said they’d consider an EV as their next car purchase, compared to 38 percent last year.

Image: Pew Research Center

A widening partisan divide on clean energy technologies seems to be driving those changes. The biggest drop in support has been among Republicans in recent years, even though there are differences between how older and younger generations of the GOP view climate change and renewable energy.
The Pew Research Center surveyed 8,638 adults in the US in May of this year. It tries to include participants representative of the US population when it comes to race, ethnicity, gender, education, political affiliation, and more.
The biggest drop in support has been among Republicans in recent years
Back in 2020, 84 percent of Republican survey participants said they’d like to see more solar farms, and 75 percent said they’d favor more wind farms in the US. That support has fallen to 64 and 56 percent, respectively, for solar and wind farms this year. More than 80 percent of Republicans surveyed, compared to 35 percent of Democrats, oppose the Environmental Protection Agency’s new standards for greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes expected to make more than half of car sales EVs by 2032.
Those shifts in opinion coincide with the Biden administration’s push to incentivize new renewable energy projects since he was elected in 2020. President Biden signed the nation’s biggest investment in climate action and clean energy into law in 2022, the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have tried to slow EV adoption by attempting to roll back tax credits for EVs and block the tailpipe pollution rule.

Image: Pew Research Center

While many Republican lawmakers have lambasted the IRA investments in EVs and renewables, a lot of the funding it created for clean tech manufacturing is actually flowing into their districts. Of $206 billion in investments so far, $161 billion is slated for projects in Republican districts, according to a recent Bloomberg analysis. Most of that money supports EV and battery manufacturing. A separate analysis by CNN similarly found that nearly 78 percent of IRA investments go to congressional Republican districts.

We’ll have to wait and see if that infusion of cash happens to shift Republicans’ views on renewables. But the tides could also turn again with younger Republicans, who are far more optimistic about solar and wind energy than their older counterparts. Only 22 percent of Republicans aged 65 or older in the survey said that expanding renewable energy production should be a priority. In contrast, 67 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 said renewable energy ought to be the priority over coal, oil, and gas production. In general, young adults are more likely to think climate change will cause more harm in the US in their lifetime, according to another Pew survey published in October.

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

While the majority of Americans would like to see more clean energy from solar and wind farms — support for new renewable energy projects has started to wane, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. It also found a drop in interest in electric vehicles following Biden administration policies to slash greenhouse gas emissions and Republican backlash.

The share of people who favor more solar power has dropped from 90 to 78 percent since 2020, the survey found. Support for wind power among survey participants similarly dropped more than 10 percentage points to 72 percent over the past four years. And just 29 percent of adults said they’d consider an EV as their next car purchase, compared to 38 percent last year.

A widening partisan divide on clean energy technologies seems to be driving those changes. The biggest drop in support has been among Republicans in recent years, even though there are differences between how older and younger generations of the GOP view climate change and renewable energy.

The Pew Research Center surveyed 8,638 adults in the US in May of this year. It tries to include participants representative of the US population when it comes to race, ethnicity, gender, education, political affiliation, and more.

Back in 2020, 84 percent of Republican survey participants said they’d like to see more solar farms, and 75 percent said they’d favor more wind farms in the US. That support has fallen to 64 and 56 percent, respectively, for solar and wind farms this year. More than 80 percent of Republicans surveyed, compared to 35 percent of Democrats, oppose the Environmental Protection Agency’s new standards for greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes expected to make more than half of car sales EVs by 2032.

Those shifts in opinion coincide with the Biden administration’s push to incentivize new renewable energy projects since he was elected in 2020. President Biden signed the nation’s biggest investment in climate action and clean energy into law in 2022, the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have tried to slow EV adoption by attempting to roll back tax credits for EVs and block the tailpipe pollution rule.

While many Republican lawmakers have lambasted the IRA investments in EVs and renewables, a lot of the funding it created for clean tech manufacturing is actually flowing into their districts. Of $206 billion in investments so far, $161 billion is slated for projects in Republican districts, according to a recent Bloomberg analysis. Most of that money supports EV and battery manufacturing. A separate analysis by CNN similarly found that nearly 78 percent of IRA investments go to congressional Republican districts.

We’ll have to wait and see if that infusion of cash happens to shift Republicans’ views on renewables. But the tides could also turn again with younger Republicans, who are far more optimistic about solar and wind energy than their older counterparts. Only 22 percent of Republicans aged 65 or older in the survey said that expanding renewable energy production should be a priority. In contrast, 67 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 said renewable energy ought to be the priority over coal, oil, and gas production. In general, young adults are more likely to think climate change will cause more harm in the US in their lifetime, according to another Pew survey published in October.

Read More 

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Some folks are reporting being left with bricked Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and 6A phones after they factory reset them. Google is aware of the issue and is investigating, according to a comment from a member of the Pixel support forums’ product expert program.
Users in the forum thread, which was spotted by Indian tech outlet Tech-Issues Today, say that after attempting to reset their phone, the phone doesn’t boot, throwing up an error message:
“Cannot load Android system. Your data may be corrupt. If you continue to get this message, you may need to perform a factory data reset and erase all user data stored on this device.”
The phone offers the option to try again, which reportedly fails, or try a factory reset again, but during the wipe, a separate error says the phone is missing a file called tune2fs, which appears to refer to a Unix command line tool used to set file system parameters.

Image: Pixel Help forum
A picture of the error message from the Pixel help forums.

Some people reported seeing the issue after updating their phones, but the complaints seem to stem from a factory reset, not a specific software update. One Reddit member cobbled together complaints about the issue across all three Pixel 6 phones, and some of those who have experienced it say they can’t recover the phone using Google’s official tools for doing so.
Google did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Some folks are reporting being left with bricked Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and 6A phones after they factory reset them. Google is aware of the issue and is investigating, according to a comment from a member of the Pixel support forums’ product expert program.

Users in the forum thread, which was spotted by Indian tech outlet Tech-Issues Today, say that after attempting to reset their phone, the phone doesn’t boot, throwing up an error message:

“Cannot load Android system. Your data may be corrupt. If you continue to get this message, you may need to perform a factory data reset and erase all user data stored on this device.”

The phone offers the option to try again, which reportedly fails, or try a factory reset again, but during the wipe, a separate error says the phone is missing a file called tune2fs, which appears to refer to a Unix command line tool used to set file system parameters.

Image: Pixel Help forum
A picture of the error message from the Pixel help forums.

Some people reported seeing the issue after updating their phones, but the complaints seem to stem from a factory reset, not a specific software update. One Reddit member cobbled together complaints about the issue across all three Pixel 6 phones, and some of those who have experienced it say they can’t recover the phone using Google’s official tools for doing so.

Google did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Read More 

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Apple says the iPhone X, first-generation AirPods, and first-generation HomePod are now considered “vintage,” as reported by MacRumors. So, if you own a first-generation HomePod — or multiple, like the person I sold my HomePod to in 2022 — it might sting to hear that Apple already considers the six-year-old speaker “vintage.”
Apple’s vintage label technically refers to products that it stopped distributing between more than five and less than seven years ago, and fortunately, you can still get service for vintage products from Apple and authorized repair shops. But Apple seems to be moving the original HomePod on a faster track, given that it only discontinued the product three years ago. Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Apple isn’t yet considering the first-gen HomePod, first-gen AirPods, or iPhone X “obsolete” — Apple won’t service hardware after that milestone, which it says applies to products the company stopped distributing more than seven years ago. But if you have multiple OG HomePods around your house and they need repairs — I hope that’s not the case for the person who has my old HomePod! — you might want to figure those out sooner rather than later. (I’m sure Apple would prefer if you upgraded to the HomePod Mini or second-gen HomePod.)
We should also pour one out for the first-gen AirPods and the iPhone X. The iPhone X, released in 2017, looked great and was Apple’s first phone to have Face ID. And those first AirPods, which came out in 2016, were arguably the first true wireless earbuds that were a big hit; I remember picking up a pair right after they launched and being really impressed.

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Apple says the iPhone X, first-generation AirPods, and first-generation HomePod are now considered “vintage,” as reported by MacRumors. So, if you own a first-generation HomePod — or multiple, like the person I sold my HomePod to in 2022 — it might sting to hear that Apple already considers the six-year-old speaker “vintage.”

Apple’s vintage label technically refers to products that it stopped distributing between more than five and less than seven years ago, and fortunately, you can still get service for vintage products from Apple and authorized repair shops. But Apple seems to be moving the original HomePod on a faster track, given that it only discontinued the product three years ago. Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Apple isn’t yet considering the first-gen HomePod, first-gen AirPods, or iPhone X “obsolete” — Apple won’t service hardware after that milestone, which it says applies to products the company stopped distributing more than seven years ago. But if you have multiple OG HomePods around your house and they need repairs — I hope that’s not the case for the person who has my old HomePod! — you might want to figure those out sooner rather than later. (I’m sure Apple would prefer if you upgraded to the HomePod Mini or second-gen HomePod.)

We should also pour one out for the first-gen AirPods and the iPhone X. The iPhone X, released in 2017, looked great and was Apple’s first phone to have Face ID. And those first AirPods, which came out in 2016, were arguably the first true wireless earbuds that were a big hit; I remember picking up a pair right after they launched and being really impressed.

Read More 

Image: Meta

On Monday, Meta announced that it is “updating the ‘Made with AI’ label to ‘AI info’ across our apps, which people can click for more information,” after people complained that their pictures had the tag applied incorrectly. Former White House photographer Pete Souza pointed out the tag popping up on an upload of a photo originally taken on film during a basketball game 40 years ago, speculating that using Adobe’s cropping tool and flattening images might have triggered it.
“As we’ve said from the beginning, we’re consistently improving our AI products, and we are working closely with our industry partners on our approach to AI labeling,” said Meta spokesperson Kate McLaughlin. The new label is supposed to more accurately represent that the content may simply be modified rather than making it seem like it is entirely AI-generated.
The problem seems to be the metadata tools like Adobe Photoshop apply to images and how platforms interpret that. After Meta expanded its policies around labeling AI content, real-life pictures posted to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Threads were tagged “Made with AI.”

Image: Meta

You may see the new labeling first on mobile apps and then the web view later, as McLaughlin tells The Verge it is starting to roll out across all surfaces.
Once you click the tag, it will still show the same message as the old label, which has a more detailed explanation of why it might have been applied and that it could cover images fully generated by AI or edited with tools that include AI tech, like Generative Fill. Metadata tagging tech like C2PA was supposed to make telling the difference between AI-generated and real images simpler and easier, but that future isn’t here yet.

Image: Meta

On Monday, Meta announced that it is “updating the ‘Made with AI’ label to ‘AI info’ across our apps, which people can click for more information,” after people complained that their pictures had the tag applied incorrectly. Former White House photographer Pete Souza pointed out the tag popping up on an upload of a photo originally taken on film during a basketball game 40 years ago, speculating that using Adobe’s cropping tool and flattening images might have triggered it.

“As we’ve said from the beginning, we’re consistently improving our AI products, and we are working closely with our industry partners on our approach to AI labeling,” said Meta spokesperson Kate McLaughlin. The new label is supposed to more accurately represent that the content may simply be modified rather than making it seem like it is entirely AI-generated.

The problem seems to be the metadata tools like Adobe Photoshop apply to images and how platforms interpret that. After Meta expanded its policies around labeling AI content, real-life pictures posted to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Threads were tagged “Made with AI.”

Image: Meta

You may see the new labeling first on mobile apps and then the web view later, as McLaughlin tells The Verge it is starting to roll out across all surfaces.

Once you click the tag, it will still show the same message as the old label, which has a more detailed explanation of why it might have been applied and that it could cover images fully generated by AI or edited with tools that include AI tech, like Generative Fill. Metadata tagging tech like C2PA was supposed to make telling the difference between AI-generated and real images simpler and easier, but that future isn’t here yet.

Read More 

The Stream Deck Neo comes in a simple and clean white color. | Image: Elgato

Last week saw healthy savings on Elgato’s jumbo Stream Deck XL macro pad controller for serious Twitch streamers and power users, but today’s best deal is a chance for us normies to feast. That’s because the recently launched Elgato Stream Deck Neo is selling for just $84.99 ($15 off) at Best Buy, Target, and direct from Elgato. This is the first time the nifty controller has gone on sale since its introduction in April, making it a great value option that shouldn’t feel too limiting to advanced users.

The Stream Deck Neo is designed to sit on your desk beside your computer or laptop and offer all kinds of useful shortcuts when it comes to livestreaming (e.g., cycling through scenes in OBS) or just getting things done on your computer (like quickly muting yourself on a Zoom call). You can fully customize the functions of its eight LCD keys, and with two capacitive buttons, you’re able to thumb through an infinite number of pages of more macros. Plus, unlike any other Stream Decks, the Neo has an info display for glanceable viewing of things like the time and day.
Stream Decks are a popular choice among streamers, but it just makes a lot of sense to have physical keys for quick access to shortcuts on your computer — ones that don’t require pressing a convoluted combination on your keyboard.

A couple more deals to brighten your Monday mood

In other streaming-related deals, the still-pretty-new Elgato Game Capture Neo is seeing its first discount. The 1080p capture device is selling for $99.99 ($10 off) at Amazon and Elgato. It offers a plug-and-play setup to stream or record gameplay off your console of choice directly into PC software, such as OBS, while allowing passthrough video onto your monitor or TV at up to 4K / 60fps with HDR.

Hori’s Split Pad Pro controller grips for the Nintendo Switch, in a totally sick Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom design, are on sale for $48.20 (about $12 off) at Amazon. The Split Pad Pro is a great option for much comfier use of the Switch in handheld mode. Its full-size grips and sticks give ample room for even larger hands, and it’s even got a pair of customizable buttons on the rear. Just keep in mind they do not support motion controls, Amiibos, or rumble. Read our hands-on.

The Stream Deck Neo comes in a simple and clean white color. | Image: Elgato

Last week saw healthy savings on Elgato’s jumbo Stream Deck XL macro pad controller for serious Twitch streamers and power users, but today’s best deal is a chance for us normies to feast. That’s because the recently launched Elgato Stream Deck Neo is selling for just $84.99 ($15 off) at Best Buy, Target, and direct from Elgato. This is the first time the nifty controller has gone on sale since its introduction in April, making it a great value option that shouldn’t feel too limiting to advanced users.

The Stream Deck Neo is designed to sit on your desk beside your computer or laptop and offer all kinds of useful shortcuts when it comes to livestreaming (e.g., cycling through scenes in OBS) or just getting things done on your computer (like quickly muting yourself on a Zoom call). You can fully customize the functions of its eight LCD keys, and with two capacitive buttons, you’re able to thumb through an infinite number of pages of more macros. Plus, unlike any other Stream Decks, the Neo has an info display for glanceable viewing of things like the time and day.

Stream Decks are a popular choice among streamers, but it just makes a lot of sense to have physical keys for quick access to shortcuts on your computer — ones that don’t require pressing a convoluted combination on your keyboard.

A couple more deals to brighten your Monday mood

In other streaming-related deals, the still-pretty-new Elgato Game Capture Neo is seeing its first discount. The 1080p capture device is selling for $99.99 ($10 off) at Amazon and Elgato. It offers a plug-and-play setup to stream or record gameplay off your console of choice directly into PC software, such as OBS, while allowing passthrough video onto your monitor or TV at up to 4K / 60fps with HDR.

Hori’s Split Pad Pro controller grips for the Nintendo Switch, in a totally sick Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom design, are on sale for $48.20 (about $12 off) at Amazon. The Split Pad Pro is a great option for much comfier use of the Switch in handheld mode. Its full-size grips and sticks give ample room for even larger hands, and it’s even got a pair of customizable buttons on the rear. Just keep in mind they do not support motion controls, Amiibos, or rumble. Read our hands-on.

Read More