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Image: Paradox Interactive

Life by You, Paradox Interactive’s in-development competitor to The Sims, has been canceled, the company announced on Monday.
The game, which was first revealed in 2023, sounded impressive: it was designed to allow for the entire town to be simulated in real-time and have no loading screens. However, based on a forum post by Paradox’s deputy CEO Mattias Lilja, the game had some issues that may not have been easily fixable even with additional time for development.

“A few weeks back, we decided to hold off on an Early Access release in order to re-evaluate Life by You, as we still felt that the game was lacking in some key areas,” Lilja says. “Though a time extension was an option, once we took that pause to get a wider view of the game, it became clear to us that the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain.”
Lilja says that the game “had a number of strengths,” but the company realized that “when we come to a point where we believe that more time will not get us close enough to a version we would be satisfied with, then we believe it is better to stop.”
The game’s initial early access launch had been set for September 2023, but it was pushed to March 2024, then June, and then delayed indefinitely in May before being officially canceled.
The Life by You team hasn’t been the only one trying to make a new take on The Sims: former XCOM developers recently launched Midsummer Studios to develop a new life sim game of their own. But EA is hard at work on more Sims as well, developing a new free-to-play Sims game codenamed Project Rene.

Image: Paradox Interactive

Life by You, Paradox Interactive’s in-development competitor to The Sims, has been canceled, the company announced on Monday.

The game, which was first revealed in 2023, sounded impressive: it was designed to allow for the entire town to be simulated in real-time and have no loading screens. However, based on a forum post by Paradox’s deputy CEO Mattias Lilja, the game had some issues that may not have been easily fixable even with additional time for development.

“A few weeks back, we decided to hold off on an Early Access release in order to re-evaluate Life by You, as we still felt that the game was lacking in some key areas,” Lilja says. “Though a time extension was an option, once we took that pause to get a wider view of the game, it became clear to us that the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain.”

Lilja says that the game “had a number of strengths,” but the company realized that “when we come to a point where we believe that more time will not get us close enough to a version we would be satisfied with, then we believe it is better to stop.”

The game’s initial early access launch had been set for September 2023, but it was pushed to March 2024, then June, and then delayed indefinitely in May before being officially canceled.

The Life by You team hasn’t been the only one trying to make a new take on The Sims: former XCOM developers recently launched Midsummer Studios to develop a new life sim game of their own. But EA is hard at work on more Sims as well, developing a new free-to-play Sims game codenamed Project Rene.

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Image: Parker Ortolani / The Verge

The Tesla Cybertruck’s gigantic windshield wiper isn’t working for some people — and for others, it may be the reason they can’t pick up their car. Users on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum have reported that Tesla has been delaying Cybertruck deliveries on short notice, and wiper issues are apparently to blame.
Over the weekend, one forum user said Tesla told them the delivery pause was due to the wiper motor, while another said their delivery was pushed back because of the blade. A Reddit user said they were told their delay was due to “a windshield wiper arm issue.” And deliveries are still being held up, with forum users reporting Monday that Tesla informed them of delays.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

People who already have their Cybertrucks reported wiper problems in the Cybertruck Owners Club as well. One forum member, for example, reported Friday that their wiper wasn’t working right after they took delivery of their car and that Tesla said it would be “a few weeks” before their wiper motor could be replaced. “My wiper never worked,” said another person, adding that it took them two weeks to get a replacement part. (Some users, however, say their wiper has worked without issues.)
Drive Tesla reports that the wiper motors are failing “due to an internal fault stemming from a supplier quality issue.” Tesla didn’t reply to a request for comment, though it has dissolved its press office.
In April, Tesla issued a Cybertruck recall because of an issue that caused the accelerator pedal to stick.

Image: Parker Ortolani / The Verge

The Tesla Cybertruck’s gigantic windshield wiper isn’t working for some people — and for others, it may be the reason they can’t pick up their car. Users on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum have reported that Tesla has been delaying Cybertruck deliveries on short notice, and wiper issues are apparently to blame.

Over the weekend, one forum user said Tesla told them the delivery pause was due to the wiper motor, while another said their delivery was pushed back because of the blade. A Reddit user said they were told their delay was due to “a windshield wiper arm issue.” And deliveries are still being held up, with forum users reporting Monday that Tesla informed them of delays.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

People who already have their Cybertrucks reported wiper problems in the Cybertruck Owners Club as well. One forum member, for example, reported Friday that their wiper wasn’t working right after they took delivery of their car and that Tesla said it would be “a few weeks” before their wiper motor could be replaced. “My wiper never worked,” said another person, adding that it took them two weeks to get a replacement part. (Some users, however, say their wiper has worked without issues.)

Drive Tesla reports that the wiper motors are failing “due to an internal fault stemming from a supplier quality issue.” Tesla didn’t reply to a request for comment, though it has dissolved its press office.

In April, Tesla issued a Cybertruck recall because of an issue that caused the accelerator pedal to stick.

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This screenshot of the National Weather Service and CDC’s new HeatRisk tool reflects the severity of potential health risks from heat on Tuesday, June 18th, 2024. | Screenshot: National Weather Service

Extreme heat is in store for communities across the US this week, and the CDC and National Weather Service (NWS) have new tools to help people prepare for the health risks.
Heat is the top weather-related killer in the US, a threat that’s growing worse with climate change. But even though heatwaves kill some 1,220 people in the US, according to the CDC, the health risks can often fly under the radar. Heatwaves don’t necessarily illicit the same sense of urgency as tropical storms, for instance, which are named and categorized according to their intensity.
This year, it’s easier to see how any impending heat spell might impact your area thanks to HeatRisk tools launched by the CDC and NWS this year. You can head over to the HeatRisk dashboard and plug in your zip code to see forecasts and health recommendations for your area. For a bigger picture of how heat is impacting the US, check out a still experimental HeatRisk forecast online tool with a new color-coded system for assessing health risks.
“With heat, it’s a lot harder to actually see the impact unless it happens to impact you”
“With hurricanes and tornadoes, those might get much more attention because you can visibly see the damage that occurs. But with heat, it’s a lot harder to actually see the impact unless it happens to impact you,” says Jessica Lee, NWS public weather services program coordinator. “The main thing we hope to accomplish with HeatRisk is that it will be used by individuals to help them personalize what forecasted heat will mean to them and better understand what actions they may need to take.”
More than 72.9 million people — over a fifth of the population — are under active heat advisories as a record-breaking heatwave is forecast to unfold across much of the Central US and Northeast this week. Open up the National Weather Service’s HeatRisk tool, and you’ll see a map of the contiguous US ablaze in yellow, orange, red, and magenta colors. Each color is a warning about the potential impacts heat is expected to have in a particular location each day of the week.
For now, much of the Northwest is green, denoting “little to no risk from expected heat.” Yellow indicates a “minor” level of risk, although this can still affect people who are more susceptible to heat-related illness — especially anyone who has to spend time outdoors. “Moderate” risk, defined as affecting “most individuals sensitive to heat, especially those without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration,” is labeled orange.
Children and older people tend to be more vulnerable. Kids’ bodies are less efficient at cooling themselves down, and older adults might be taking medications that affect their body’s ability to thermoregulate or may have health conditions that heat can exacerbate. It’s a good idea to check in on loved ones who live alone or have chronic health conditions during an orange alert.
Red and magenta correspond with “major” and “extreme” health risks, respectively. At those levels, anyone might be at risk if they don’t have a way to cool down and stay hydrated. Parts of Texas and states across the Midwest, Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, and New England are forecast to face bouts of “extreme” risk this week. That’s considered rare since it generally takes a prolonged heatwave with soaring daytime and nighttime temperatures to reach magenta-level risk.
It’s important to understand how heat interacts with an individual’s health history and their surroundings. City sprawl tends to trap heat, making urban neighborhoods feel much warmer than more rural areas. Cities in the Southwest meanwhile, might be better prepared for temperatures soaring above 90 degrees Fahrenheit than typically cooler regions in the Pacific Northwest where air conditioning isn’t as commonplace. The heat can even exacerbate air pollution in your area by supercharging the chemical reaction that creates smog. Entering your zip code into the CDC’s HeatRisk dashboard addresses a lot of these nuances, sharing air quality information on top of color-coded HeatRisk scores for the week and actions to take to protect your health.

The two websites launched on Earth Day, April 22nd, this year. The tools build off a similar system used in California since 2013 that expanded to other western states in 2017. Early iterations focused on climatological data, like how soaring temperatures compared to the norm for that area. Soon after, the NWS started working with the CDC to incorporate health information into its assessments and account for more humidity in the eastern half of the US.
HeatRisk is still an “experimental product” while the agencies continue to take public feedback on it through September 30th via an online form. Then, they’ll decide whether to implement changes based on that feedback and / or continue taking feedback. In 2022, the US launched yet another website called heat.gov to help city planners stay up to date on heat alerts and incorporate that data into their decision-making.

This screenshot of the National Weather Service and CDC’s new HeatRisk tool reflects the severity of potential health risks from heat on Tuesday, June 18th, 2024. | Screenshot: National Weather Service

Extreme heat is in store for communities across the US this week, and the CDC and National Weather Service (NWS) have new tools to help people prepare for the health risks.

Heat is the top weather-related killer in the US, a threat that’s growing worse with climate change. But even though heatwaves kill some 1,220 people in the US, according to the CDC, the health risks can often fly under the radar. Heatwaves don’t necessarily illicit the same sense of urgency as tropical storms, for instance, which are named and categorized according to their intensity.

This year, it’s easier to see how any impending heat spell might impact your area thanks to HeatRisk tools launched by the CDC and NWS this year. You can head over to the HeatRisk dashboard and plug in your zip code to see forecasts and health recommendations for your area. For a bigger picture of how heat is impacting the US, check out a still experimental HeatRisk forecast online tool with a new color-coded system for assessing health risks.

“With hurricanes and tornadoes, those might get much more attention because you can visibly see the damage that occurs. But with heat, it’s a lot harder to actually see the impact unless it happens to impact you,” says Jessica Lee, NWS public weather services program coordinator. “The main thing we hope to accomplish with HeatRisk is that it will be used by individuals to help them personalize what forecasted heat will mean to them and better understand what actions they may need to take.”

More than 72.9 million people — over a fifth of the population — are under active heat advisories as a record-breaking heatwave is forecast to unfold across much of the Central US and Northeast this week. Open up the National Weather Service’s HeatRisk tool, and you’ll see a map of the contiguous US ablaze in yellow, orange, red, and magenta colors. Each color is a warning about the potential impacts heat is expected to have in a particular location each day of the week.

For now, much of the Northwest is green, denoting “little to no risk from expected heat.” Yellow indicates a “minor” level of risk, although this can still affect people who are more susceptible to heat-related illness — especially anyone who has to spend time outdoors. “Moderate” risk, defined as affecting “most individuals sensitive to heat, especially those without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration,” is labeled orange.

Children and older people tend to be more vulnerable. Kids’ bodies are less efficient at cooling themselves down, and older adults might be taking medications that affect their body’s ability to thermoregulate or may have health conditions that heat can exacerbate. It’s a good idea to check in on loved ones who live alone or have chronic health conditions during an orange alert.

Red and magenta correspond with “major” and “extreme” health risks, respectively. At those levels, anyone might be at risk if they don’t have a way to cool down and stay hydrated. Parts of Texas and states across the Midwest, Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, and New England are forecast to face bouts of “extreme” risk this week. That’s considered rare since it generally takes a prolonged heatwave with soaring daytime and nighttime temperatures to reach magenta-level risk.

It’s important to understand how heat interacts with an individual’s health history and their surroundings. City sprawl tends to trap heat, making urban neighborhoods feel much warmer than more rural areas. Cities in the Southwest meanwhile, might be better prepared for temperatures soaring above 90 degrees Fahrenheit than typically cooler regions in the Pacific Northwest where air conditioning isn’t as commonplace. The heat can even exacerbate air pollution in your area by supercharging the chemical reaction that creates smog. Entering your zip code into the CDC’s HeatRisk dashboard addresses a lot of these nuances, sharing air quality information on top of color-coded HeatRisk scores for the week and actions to take to protect your health.

The two websites launched on Earth Day, April 22nd, this year. The tools build off a similar system used in California since 2013 that expanded to other western states in 2017. Early iterations focused on climatological data, like how soaring temperatures compared to the norm for that area. Soon after, the NWS started working with the CDC to incorporate health information into its assessments and account for more humidity in the eastern half of the US.

HeatRisk is still an “experimental product” while the agencies continue to take public feedback on it through September 30th via an online form. Then, they’ll decide whether to implement changes based on that feedback and / or continue taking feedback. In 2022, the US launched yet another website called heat.gov to help city planners stay up to date on heat alerts and incorporate that data into their decision-making.

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This Lego-built printer can save you the hassle of painstakingly creating your own Lego pixel art. | Screenshot: YouTube

A devoted YouTuber has designed and built a Lego printer that can automate the process of assembling elaborate brick-built mosaics, similar to Lego’s art sets like da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Hokusai’s The Great Wave. But while the creation draws inspiration from another Lego printer called the Bricasso, it streamlines the process using AI.
Although technically impressive when it debuted eight years ago, Jason Allemann’s Bricasso required a complicated process where mosaic designs had to be manually created, printed on paper, and then scanned by the machine’s camera. The YouTube channel Creative Mindstorms used some custom code and AI, so generating a Lego mosaic requires one simple input.
With the Pixelbot 3000, users simply have to type in what artwork they want the printer to create. The prompt is sent to OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, which the underlying code requests as being generated in a cartoon style to produce a simplified image that’s 1024 x 1024 pixels in size.

The mosaics assembled by the printer are limited to a much smaller grid that’s just 32 x 32 Lego tiles in size, but instead of resizing the image generated by DALL-E 3 to make it smaller, the Pixelbot 3000’s code divides the AI-generated image into a 32 x 32 grid and samples the color of the center pixel in each square. This results in a high-contrast scaled image that produces a better mosaic in the end.
Another limitation imposed by using Lego as an artistic medium is that the plastic bricks are only available in about 70 different colors, and the Pixelbot 3000 uses just 15 of them. The scaled AI-generated image requires one final pass to find the closest match of each colored pixel to the 1 x 1 Lego tiles used to assemble the final mosaic.
Designing, building, and programming the Pixelbot 3000 seems like it would be just as much work as assembling one of Lego’s mosaic artworks, which can be over 11,000 pieces in size. If you’re really looking to de-stress, just take 15 minutes and watch Creative Mindstorms’ process as the Pixelbot 3000 goes from a concept to a functional reality.

This Lego-built printer can save you the hassle of painstakingly creating your own Lego pixel art. | Screenshot: YouTube

A devoted YouTuber has designed and built a Lego printer that can automate the process of assembling elaborate brick-built mosaics, similar to Lego’s art sets like da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Hokusai’s The Great Wave. But while the creation draws inspiration from another Lego printer called the Bricasso, it streamlines the process using AI.

Although technically impressive when it debuted eight years ago, Jason Allemann’s Bricasso required a complicated process where mosaic designs had to be manually created, printed on paper, and then scanned by the machine’s camera. The YouTube channel Creative Mindstorms used some custom code and AI, so generating a Lego mosaic requires one simple input.

With the Pixelbot 3000, users simply have to type in what artwork they want the printer to create. The prompt is sent to OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, which the underlying code requests as being generated in a cartoon style to produce a simplified image that’s 1024 x 1024 pixels in size.

The mosaics assembled by the printer are limited to a much smaller grid that’s just 32 x 32 Lego tiles in size, but instead of resizing the image generated by DALL-E 3 to make it smaller, the Pixelbot 3000’s code divides the AI-generated image into a 32 x 32 grid and samples the color of the center pixel in each square. This results in a high-contrast scaled image that produces a better mosaic in the end.

Another limitation imposed by using Lego as an artistic medium is that the plastic bricks are only available in about 70 different colors, and the Pixelbot 3000 uses just 15 of them. The scaled AI-generated image requires one final pass to find the closest match of each colored pixel to the 1 x 1 Lego tiles used to assemble the final mosaic.

Designing, building, and programming the Pixelbot 3000 seems like it would be just as much work as assembling one of Lego’s mosaic artworks, which can be over 11,000 pieces in size. If you’re really looking to de-stress, just take 15 minutes and watch Creative Mindstorms’ process as the Pixelbot 3000 goes from a concept to a functional reality.

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Image: Sleep Number

Sleep Number has released an adjustable smart bed with sleep tracking that costs less than $1,000, the company announced in a press release on Monday. While still a lot of money for what essentially is a fancy air bed, it’s still significantly cheaper than some comparable rivals.
Take, for example, Sleep Number competitor Eight Sleep, which makes smart mattress covers. (We’ve previously listed the Pod 2 cover as one of our favorite sleep gadgets.) Eight Sleep’s newer Pod 3 cover starts at $2,195 — and that’s only for the smaller full-size version. The newest Pod 4 cover starts at $2,449. Meanwhile, the Sleep Number c1 smart bed starts at just $599 for a twin-size model, and you can buy a queen for $999.

We’ve yet to review the Sleep Number c1 smart bed, but on paper, that seems like a good deal for a smart bed that offers personalized sleep and health insights. The bed is also capable of automatically adjusting throughout the night, lets users set their ideal level of firmness, and even allows them to adjust the sides of the bed so they can sleep more comfortably.
You miss out on some higher-end sensors and other features, though. The c1 only offers a ceramic gel layer designed to reduce heat, for example. Again, we’ve yet to test it, but it sounds like that may not offer quite the same amount of control over comfort as Eight Sleep’s Pod covers, which use a water pump to regulate both sides of the bed and even automatically adjust the temperature.
The Sleep Number c1 smart bed is the latest addition to Sleep Number’s Classic Series smart bed collection, making it the third Sleep Number to cost less than $2,000. It is available for purchase directly from the website as well as various Sleep Number stores.

Image: Sleep Number

Sleep Number has released an adjustable smart bed with sleep tracking that costs less than $1,000, the company announced in a press release on Monday. While still a lot of money for what essentially is a fancy air bed, it’s still significantly cheaper than some comparable rivals.

Take, for example, Sleep Number competitor Eight Sleep, which makes smart mattress covers. (We’ve previously listed the Pod 2 cover as one of our favorite sleep gadgets.) Eight Sleep’s newer Pod 3 cover starts at $2,195 — and that’s only for the smaller full-size version. The newest Pod 4 cover starts at $2,449. Meanwhile, the Sleep Number c1 smart bed starts at just $599 for a twin-size model, and you can buy a queen for $999.

We’ve yet to review the Sleep Number c1 smart bed, but on paper, that seems like a good deal for a smart bed that offers personalized sleep and health insights. The bed is also capable of automatically adjusting throughout the night, lets users set their ideal level of firmness, and even allows them to adjust the sides of the bed so they can sleep more comfortably.

You miss out on some higher-end sensors and other features, though. The c1 only offers a ceramic gel layer designed to reduce heat, for example. Again, we’ve yet to test it, but it sounds like that may not offer quite the same amount of control over comfort as Eight Sleep’s Pod covers, which use a water pump to regulate both sides of the bed and even automatically adjust the temperature.

The Sleep Number c1 smart bed is the latest addition to Sleep Number’s Classic Series smart bed collection, making it the third Sleep Number to cost less than $2,000. It is available for purchase directly from the website as well as various Sleep Number stores.

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That is one quirky-looking camera. | Image: Ricoh Imaging

I used to lambaste the very idea of half-frame cameras when I was a college student obsessed with medium- and large-format film (who wants even less resolution than 35mm?), but electing to shoot film today is already a conscious decision to compromise quality for the sake of experience and style.
Who needs resolution when you’ve got vibes? That’s what Pentax seems to be saying with its new Pentax 17, a film camera that takes half-size pictures and looks about as timeless as an old beater you scored at some dude’s estate sale. But the $499.95 Pentax 17 (launching later this month) is a totally new camera, one that, in 2024, takes the so-hot-right-now 35mm format and shoots smaller pictures for the sake of fun and making film photography cost a little less.

Half-frame cameras aren’t a new idea. Olympus had an entire line dedicated to making these tiny images back in the ’60s, and Kodak has one now with the look, feel, and feature set of a disposable camera that you can reload film into.
The Pentax 17 handles things just like its half-frame predecessors: instead of capturing a horizontal 24 x 36mm image on a 35mm roll, it creates a vertical 17 x 24mm picture so you get two shots for every one, making a 36 exposure roll eke out a whole 72 shots. This saves you some money, with the tradeoff being that a smaller image area records less fine detail. (It also means you’re natively taking portrait-oriented shots since the viewfinder is vertical, and you’d have to turn the camera sideways to take horizontal shots.)

Image: Ricoh Imaging
A simulation of how the Pentax 17’s half-frame images are captured on a segment of 35mm film.

The Pentax 17 uses a built-in 25mm f/3.5 lens (equivalent to 37mm on a 35mm / full-frame camera) with a nine-bladed aperture. The lens has no autofocus, but it also isn’t fully manual — you use zone focusing by picking from one of six set distances ranging from as close as 0.24 meters in macro mode to infinity. Relying solely on zone focusing means the Pentax 17 is best equipped for casual snapshots or slice-of-life genres like street photography.
As for exposure modes, the 17 doesn’t have full manual control here, either. It’s mostly designed to be used in program auto mode, but it does have an exposure compensation dial as well as slow shutter and bulb modes so savvier photographers can at least have some creative control.

This camera lacks features you’d find in even a 48-year-old Pentax K1000 you can buy off eBay for around $100, as it doesn’t have interchangeable lenses or full control of settings such as focus and exposure. But still, it offers a unique experience (as well as a new warranty and first-party repairs). This is the first camera from Pentax’s film project it announced back in 2022, when it set out to make a new film camera with feedback from its community. While it might have been a safer bet to remake the fan-favorite K1000 or the highly coveted Pentax 67 and its lovely wood handle, I give props to Pentax for taking a chance on something a bit different.

That is one quirky-looking camera. | Image: Ricoh Imaging

I used to lambaste the very idea of half-frame cameras when I was a college student obsessed with medium- and large-format film (who wants even less resolution than 35mm?), but electing to shoot film today is already a conscious decision to compromise quality for the sake of experience and style.

Who needs resolution when you’ve got vibes? That’s what Pentax seems to be saying with its new Pentax 17, a film camera that takes half-size pictures and looks about as timeless as an old beater you scored at some dude’s estate sale. But the $499.95 Pentax 17 (launching later this month) is a totally new camera, one that, in 2024, takes the so-hot-right-now 35mm format and shoots smaller pictures for the sake of fun and making film photography cost a little less.

Half-frame cameras aren’t a new idea. Olympus had an entire line dedicated to making these tiny images back in the ’60s, and Kodak has one now with the look, feel, and feature set of a disposable camera that you can reload film into.

The Pentax 17 handles things just like its half-frame predecessors: instead of capturing a horizontal 24 x 36mm image on a 35mm roll, it creates a vertical 17 x 24mm picture so you get two shots for every one, making a 36 exposure roll eke out a whole 72 shots. This saves you some money, with the tradeoff being that a smaller image area records less fine detail. (It also means you’re natively taking portrait-oriented shots since the viewfinder is vertical, and you’d have to turn the camera sideways to take horizontal shots.)

Image: Ricoh Imaging
A simulation of how the Pentax 17’s half-frame images are captured on a segment of 35mm film.

The Pentax 17 uses a built-in 25mm f/3.5 lens (equivalent to 37mm on a 35mm / full-frame camera) with a nine-bladed aperture. The lens has no autofocus, but it also isn’t fully manual — you use zone focusing by picking from one of six set distances ranging from as close as 0.24 meters in macro mode to infinity. Relying solely on zone focusing means the Pentax 17 is best equipped for casual snapshots or slice-of-life genres like street photography.

As for exposure modes, the 17 doesn’t have full manual control here, either. It’s mostly designed to be used in program auto mode, but it does have an exposure compensation dial as well as slow shutter and bulb modes so savvier photographers can at least have some creative control.

This camera lacks features you’d find in even a 48-year-old Pentax K1000 you can buy off eBay for around $100, as it doesn’t have interchangeable lenses or full control of settings such as focus and exposure. But still, it offers a unique experience (as well as a new warranty and first-party repairs). This is the first camera from Pentax’s film project it announced back in 2022, when it set out to make a new film camera with feedback from its community. While it might have been a safer bet to remake the fan-favorite K1000 or the highly coveted Pentax 67 and its lovely wood handle, I give props to Pentax for taking a chance on something a bit different.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile has been asked to stop advertising its “Price Lock” policy for its 5G internet service just months after raising prices. On Monday, the National Advertising Division (NAD) recommended that T-Mobile discontinue or modify the claim to explain how it “differs from a ‘price lock.’”
The NAD is part of the nonprofit BBB National Programs that evaluates claims presented in the ads industry. AT&T brought the challenge against the Price Lock claim, which appeared in numerous advertisements in print, online, and TV. In each instance, the description below the Price Lock claim says, “Get your last month of service on us if we ever raise your internet rate.” The NAD argues that this disclosure contradicts the main message of the ‘Price Lock’ claim, as T-Mobile really isn’t locking in a customer’s price and will only guarantee them one month of free service if T-Mobile raises their bill.
The NAD recommends that T-Mobile change its claim to explain this or stop advertising it completely. In the past, T-Mobile often advertised certain internet and mobile plans as coming with a Price Lock guarantee, which is supposed to prevent T-Mobile from raising a customer’s monthly price after signing up.
However, T-Mobile changed this policy for new customers in January to only offer one month of free service in the event of a price increase. Around the same time, T-Mobile increased the price of its 5G home internet service. It later raised prices across its mobile plans. T-Mobile plans to comply with the NAD’s decision, but it told the NAD that the ads in question “appropriately communicate the generous terms of its Price Lock policy.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile has been asked to stop advertising its “Price Lock” policy for its 5G internet service just months after raising prices. On Monday, the National Advertising Division (NAD) recommended that T-Mobile discontinue or modify the claim to explain how it “differs from a ‘price lock.’”

The NAD is part of the nonprofit BBB National Programs that evaluates claims presented in the ads industry. AT&T brought the challenge against the Price Lock claim, which appeared in numerous advertisements in print, online, and TV. In each instance, the description below the Price Lock claim says, “Get your last month of service on us if we ever raise your internet rate.” The NAD argues that this disclosure contradicts the main message of the ‘Price Lock’ claim, as T-Mobile really isn’t locking in a customer’s price and will only guarantee them one month of free service if T-Mobile raises their bill.

The NAD recommends that T-Mobile change its claim to explain this or stop advertising it completely. In the past, T-Mobile often advertised certain internet and mobile plans as coming with a Price Lock guarantee, which is supposed to prevent T-Mobile from raising a customer’s monthly price after signing up.

However, T-Mobile changed this policy for new customers in January to only offer one month of free service in the event of a price increase. Around the same time, T-Mobile increased the price of its 5G home internet service. It later raised prices across its mobile plans. T-Mobile plans to comply with the NAD’s decision, but it told the NAD that the ads in question “appropriately communicate the generous terms of its Price Lock policy.”

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Image: Apple

Apple’s been talking about its next generation of CarPlay for two years now with very little to show for it — the system is designed to unify the interfaces on every screen in your car, including the instrument cluster, but so far only Aston Martin and Porsche have said they’ll ship cars with the system, without any specific dates in the mix.
And the public response from the rest of the industry towards next-gen CarPlay has been pretty cool overall. I talk to car CEOs on Decoder quite often, and most of them seem fairly skeptical about allowing Apple to get between them and their customers. “We have Apple CarPlay,” Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius told me in April. “If, for some of the functions, you feel more comfortable with that and will switch back and forth, be my guest. But to give up the whole cockpit head unit — in our case, a passenger screen and everything — to somebody else? The answer is no.”
That industry skepticism seems to have hit home for Apple, which posted two WWDC 2024 videos detailing the architecture and design of next-gen CarPlay. Both made it clear that automakers will have a lot of control over how things look and work, and even have the ability to just use their own interfaces for various features using something called “punch-through UI.” The result is an approach to CarPlay that’s much less “Apple runs your car” and much more “Apple built a design toolkit for automakers to use however they want.”
See, right now CarPlay is basically just a second monitor for your phone – you connect to your car, and your phone sends a video stream to the car. This is why those cheap wireless CarPlay dongles work – they’re just wireless display adapters, basically.
But if you want to integrate things like speedometers and climate controls, CarPlay needs to actually collect data from your car, display it in realtime, and be able to control various features like HVAC directly. So for next-gen CarPlay, Apple’s split things into what it calls “layers,” some of which run on your iPhone, but others which run locally on the car so they don’t break if your phone disconnects. And phone disconnects are going to be an issue, because next-generation CarPlay only supports wireless connections. “The stability and performance of the wireless connection are essential,” Apple’s Tanya Kancheva says while talking about the next-gen architecture. Given that CarPlay connectivity issues are still the most common issue in new cars and wireless made it worse, that’s something Apple needs to keep an eye on.

Apple

There are two layers that run locally on the car, in slightly different ways. There’s the “overlay UI,” which has things like your turn signals and odometer in it. These can be styled, but everything about it is entirely run on your car, and otherwise untouchable. Then there is the “local UI,” which has things like your speedometer and tachometer — things related to driving that need to update all the time, basically. Automakers can customize these in several ways – there are different gauge styles and layouts, from analog to digital, and they can include logos and so on. Interestingly, there’s only one font choice: Apple’s San Francisco, which can be modified in various ways, but can’t be swapped out.
Apple’s goal for next-gen CarPlay is to have it start instantaneously — ideally when the driver opens the door — so the assets for these local UI elements are loaded onto the car from your phone during the pairing process. Carmakers can update how things look and send refreshed assets through the phone over time as well — exactly how and how often is still a bit unclear.
Then there’s what Apple calls “remote UI,” which is all stuff that runs on your phone: maps, music, trip info. This is the most like CarPlay today, except now it can run on any other screen in your car.
The final layer is called “punch-through UI,” and it’s where Apple is ceding the most ground to automakers. Instead of coming up with its own interface ideas for things like backup cameras and advanced driver-assistance features, Apple’s allowing carmakers to simply feed their existing systems through to CarPlay. When you shift to reverse, the interface will simply show you your car’s backup camera screen, for example:

Apple

But carmakers can use punch-through UI for basically anything they want, and even deeplink CarPlay buttons to their own interfaces. Apple’s example here is a vision of multiple colliding interface ideas all at once: a button in CarPlay to control massage seats that can either show native CarPlay controls, or simply drop you into the car’s own interface.

Apple
A lot of carmakers are going to take the easy way out here, I think.

Or a hardware button to pick drive modes could send you to either CarPlay settings, deeplink you into the automaker’s iPhone app, or just open the native car settings:

Apple

Messy!
Apple’s approach to HVAC is also what amounts to a compromise: the company isn’t really rethinking anything about how HVAC controls work. Instead, it’s allowing carmakers to customize controls from a toolkit to match the car system and even display previews of a car interior that match trim and color options. If you’ve ever looked at a car with a weird SYNC button that keeps various climate zones paired up, well, the next generation of CarPlay has a weird SYNC button too.

Apple

All of this is kept running at 60fps (or higher, if the car system supports it) by a new dedicated UI timing channel, and a lot of the underlying compositing relies on OpenGL running on the car itself.
All in all, it’s a lot of info, and what feels like a lot of Apple realizing that carmakers aren’t going to just give up their interfaces — especially since they’ve already invested in designing these sorts of custom interfaces for their native systems, many of which now run on Unreal Engine with lots of fun animations, and have Google services like Maps integrated right in. Allowing automakers to punch those interfaces through CarPlay might finally speed up adoption – and it also might create a mix-and-match interface nightmare.
All that said, it’s telling that no one has seen anything but renders of next-gen CarPlay anywhere yet. We’ll have to see what it’s like if this Porsche and Aston ever arrive, and if that tips anyone else into adopting it.

Image: Apple

Apple’s been talking about its next generation of CarPlay for two years now with very little to show for it — the system is designed to unify the interfaces on every screen in your car, including the instrument cluster, but so far only Aston Martin and Porsche have said they’ll ship cars with the system, without any specific dates in the mix.

And the public response from the rest of the industry towards next-gen CarPlay has been pretty cool overall. I talk to car CEOs on Decoder quite often, and most of them seem fairly skeptical about allowing Apple to get between them and their customers. “We have Apple CarPlay,” Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius told me in April. “If, for some of the functions, you feel more comfortable with that and will switch back and forth, be my guest. But to give up the whole cockpit head unit — in our case, a passenger screen and everything — to somebody else? The answer is no.”

That industry skepticism seems to have hit home for Apple, which posted two WWDC 2024 videos detailing the architecture and design of next-gen CarPlay. Both made it clear that automakers will have a lot of control over how things look and work, and even have the ability to just use their own interfaces for various features using something called “punch-through UI.” The result is an approach to CarPlay that’s much less “Apple runs your car” and much more “Apple built a design toolkit for automakers to use however they want.”

See, right now CarPlay is basically just a second monitor for your phone – you connect to your car, and your phone sends a video stream to the car. This is why those cheap wireless CarPlay dongles work – they’re just wireless display adapters, basically.

But if you want to integrate things like speedometers and climate controls, CarPlay needs to actually collect data from your car, display it in realtime, and be able to control various features like HVAC directly. So for next-gen CarPlay, Apple’s split things into what it calls “layers,” some of which run on your iPhone, but others which run locally on the car so they don’t break if your phone disconnects. And phone disconnects are going to be an issue, because next-generation CarPlay only supports wireless connections. “The stability and performance of the wireless connection are essential,” Apple’s Tanya Kancheva says while talking about the next-gen architecture. Given that CarPlay connectivity issues are still the most common issue in new cars and wireless made it worse, that’s something Apple needs to keep an eye on.

Apple

There are two layers that run locally on the car, in slightly different ways. There’s the “overlay UI,” which has things like your turn signals and odometer in it. These can be styled, but everything about it is entirely run on your car, and otherwise untouchable. Then there is the “local UI,” which has things like your speedometer and tachometer — things related to driving that need to update all the time, basically. Automakers can customize these in several ways – there are different gauge styles and layouts, from analog to digital, and they can include logos and so on. Interestingly, there’s only one font choice: Apple’s San Francisco, which can be modified in various ways, but can’t be swapped out.

Apple’s goal for next-gen CarPlay is to have it start instantaneously — ideally when the driver opens the door — so the assets for these local UI elements are loaded onto the car from your phone during the pairing process. Carmakers can update how things look and send refreshed assets through the phone over time as well — exactly how and how often is still a bit unclear.

Then there’s what Apple calls “remote UI,” which is all stuff that runs on your phone: maps, music, trip info. This is the most like CarPlay today, except now it can run on any other screen in your car.

The final layer is called “punch-through UI,” and it’s where Apple is ceding the most ground to automakers. Instead of coming up with its own interface ideas for things like backup cameras and advanced driver-assistance features, Apple’s allowing carmakers to simply feed their existing systems through to CarPlay. When you shift to reverse, the interface will simply show you your car’s backup camera screen, for example:

Apple

But carmakers can use punch-through UI for basically anything they want, and even deeplink CarPlay buttons to their own interfaces. Apple’s example here is a vision of multiple colliding interface ideas all at once: a button in CarPlay to control massage seats that can either show native CarPlay controls, or simply drop you into the car’s own interface.

Apple
A lot of carmakers are going to take the easy way out here, I think.

Or a hardware button to pick drive modes could send you to either CarPlay settings, deeplink you into the automaker’s iPhone app, or just open the native car settings:

Apple

Messy!

Apple’s approach to HVAC is also what amounts to a compromise: the company isn’t really rethinking anything about how HVAC controls work. Instead, it’s allowing carmakers to customize controls from a toolkit to match the car system and even display previews of a car interior that match trim and color options. If you’ve ever looked at a car with a weird SYNC button that keeps various climate zones paired up, well, the next generation of CarPlay has a weird SYNC button too.

Apple

All of this is kept running at 60fps (or higher, if the car system supports it) by a new dedicated UI timing channel, and a lot of the underlying compositing relies on OpenGL running on the car itself.

All in all, it’s a lot of info, and what feels like a lot of Apple realizing that carmakers aren’t going to just give up their interfaces — especially since they’ve already invested in designing these sorts of custom interfaces for their native systems, many of which now run on Unreal Engine with lots of fun animations, and have Google services like Maps integrated right in. Allowing automakers to punch those interfaces through CarPlay might finally speed up adoption – and it also might create a mix-and-match interface nightmare.

All that said, it’s telling that no one has seen anything but renders of next-gen CarPlay anywhere yet. We’ll have to see what it’s like if this Porsche and Aston ever arrive, and if that tips anyone else into adopting it.

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Illustration: The Verge

Apple is shutting down Apple Pay Later, its buy now, pay later service, the company confirmed to 9to5Mac. The service, which lets you take out “pay later” loans that can be paid in four payments over six weeks, only launched fully in the US in October 2023. In its place, Apple says that users will be able to apply for “installment loans” from credit cards, debit cards, and lenders when checking out with Apple Pay later this year.
Here is Apple’s full unsigned statement, which was given to 9to5Mac:
Starting later this year, users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay. With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the U.S. Our focus continues to be on providing our users with access to easy, secure and private payment options with Apple Pay, and this solution will enable us to bring flexible payments to more users, in more places across the globe, in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders.
Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge.
Apple Pay Later was originally announced alongside iOS 16, but it wasn’t part of the initial iOS 16 release. The company rolled out in early access invitations to “randomly selected users” in March 2023 before finally launching the service widely in the US in October.

Illustration: The Verge

Apple is shutting down Apple Pay Later, its buy now, pay later service, the company confirmed to 9to5Mac. The service, which lets you take out “pay later” loans that can be paid in four payments over six weeks, only launched fully in the US in October 2023. In its place, Apple says that users will be able to apply for “installment loans” from credit cards, debit cards, and lenders when checking out with Apple Pay later this year.

Here is Apple’s full unsigned statement, which was given to 9to5Mac:

Starting later this year, users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay. With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the U.S. Our focus continues to be on providing our users with access to easy, secure and private payment options with Apple Pay, and this solution will enable us to bring flexible payments to more users, in more places across the globe, in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders.

Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge.

Apple Pay Later was originally announced alongside iOS 16, but it wasn’t part of the initial iOS 16 release. The company rolled out in early access invitations to “randomly selected users” in March 2023 before finally launching the service widely in the US in October.

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Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

After a change to its privacy policy drew a lot of attention last week, Sonos has responded and insists it’s still carefully protecting the personal data of its customers. The company removed a line — “Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers” — from its US privacy statement earlier this month.
But Sonos claims the reason wasn’t scandalous; the company says it cut the sentence because it was overly broad and already could’ve been viewed as untrue depending on individual state privacy laws surrounding consumer data.
“Sonos uses several modern and industry-standard marketing tools, including third party service providers and social media platforms, to help us identify and display relevant ads and marketing communications,” spokesperson Julia Fasano told The Verge by email. “Any data that is shared in this process is hashed or otherwise pseudonymized, ensuring that our customers personal information remains protected and private and Sonos does not sell personal data.”
The statement goes on to address the specific change:
The Privacy Statement was updated to reflect that the use of these practices may fall within the definition of “sale / share” under US state privacy laws. To learn more about the specifics, customers can refer to the Communication, Marketing and Advertising section of the Privacy Statement and can always opt out of data sharing by sending an email to privacy@sonos.com.
In effect, the company is saying that nothing is materially different about the updated privacy policy, which was criticized by repair technician and consumer privacy advocate Louis Rossmann. This might not have become such a controversy if the change hadn’t followed Sonos’ much-criticized new mobile app, which is still seeing frequent updates to restore old functionality.
Just today, Sonos updated the app again and brought numerical values back to its volume sliders, among other tweaks (like a mute button returning on Android). The ability to queue songs, which was somehow lost in the redesign, also returned last week. CEO Patrick Spence has defended the overhauled app and told me it will ultimately allow the company to roll out improvements faster than ever before. “We basically took a monolith and broke it into modular parts, which allows us to move faster in certain elements,” he said.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

After a change to its privacy policy drew a lot of attention last week, Sonos has responded and insists it’s still carefully protecting the personal data of its customers. The company removed a line — “Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers” — from its US privacy statement earlier this month.

But Sonos claims the reason wasn’t scandalous; the company says it cut the sentence because it was overly broad and already could’ve been viewed as untrue depending on individual state privacy laws surrounding consumer data.

“Sonos uses several modern and industry-standard marketing tools, including third party service providers and social media platforms, to help us identify and display relevant ads and marketing communications,” spokesperson Julia Fasano told The Verge by email. “Any data that is shared in this process is hashed or otherwise pseudonymized, ensuring that our customers personal information remains protected and private and Sonos does not sell personal data.”

The statement goes on to address the specific change:

The Privacy Statement was updated to reflect that the use of these practices may fall within the definition of “sale / share” under US state privacy laws. To learn more about the specifics, customers can refer to the Communication, Marketing and Advertising section of the Privacy Statement and can always opt out of data sharing by sending an email to privacy@sonos.com.

In effect, the company is saying that nothing is materially different about the updated privacy policy, which was criticized by repair technician and consumer privacy advocate Louis Rossmann. This might not have become such a controversy if the change hadn’t followed Sonos’ much-criticized new mobile app, which is still seeing frequent updates to restore old functionality.

Just today, Sonos updated the app again and brought numerical values back to its volume sliders, among other tweaks (like a mute button returning on Android). The ability to queue songs, which was somehow lost in the redesign, also returned last week. CEO Patrick Spence has defended the overhauled app and told me it will ultimately allow the company to roll out improvements faster than ever before. “We basically took a monolith and broke it into modular parts, which allows us to move faster in certain elements,” he said.

Read More