verge-rss

Photo: Getty Images

A big part of Microsoft Build that stood out to me last week was the potential of Windows on Arm for PC gaming, especially for laptops and handhelds. Microsoft and Qualcomm aren’t talking much about this yet, but both companies have been dropping hints about game compatibility.
Qualcomm said previously that most Windows games should “just work” on Snapdragon X Elite laptops, and Microsoft took the time to demo some more games onstage at Build last week. Borderlands 3 was shown running around 60 percent faster than native 1440p resolution thanks to Microsoft’s Auto Super Resolution technology. This taps into the NPU to boost frame rates and resolution, much like how Nvidia’s DLSS utilizes its own GPUs to upscale games.
Microsoft also revealed a new “works on Windows on Arm” website that catalogs which games work on Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite laptops. Linaro built the website and claims to have tested more than 1,400 games on the new Surface Laptop and other Snapdragon X Elite devices. More than 700 games are listed as running at 1080p and 60fps, including titles like Control Ultimate Edition.
This all sounds rather promising for emulated games running on thin and lightweight laptops…

This story is exclusively for subscribers of Notepad, our newsletter uncovering Microsoft’s era-defining bets in AI, gaming, and computing.
Start your Notepad free trial now to get the full story in your inbox.

Monthly
$7/month
Get every issue of Notepad straight to your inbox. The first month is free.
START YOUR TRIAL

Annual
$70/year
Get a year of Notepad at a discounted rate. The first month is free.
START YOUR TRIAL

Bundle
$100/person/year
Get one year of both Notepad and Command Line. The first month is free.
SUBSCRIBE TO BOTH

We accept credit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Photo: Getty Images

A big part of Microsoft Build that stood out to me last week was the potential of Windows on Arm for PC gaming, especially for laptops and handhelds. Microsoft and Qualcomm aren’t talking much about this yet, but both companies have been dropping hints about game compatibility.

Qualcomm said previously that most Windows games should “just work” on Snapdragon X Elite laptops, and Microsoft took the time to demo some more games onstage at Build last week. Borderlands 3 was shown running around 60 percent faster than native 1440p resolution thanks to Microsoft’s Auto Super Resolution technology. This taps into the NPU to boost frame rates and resolution, much like how Nvidia’s DLSS utilizes its own GPUs to upscale games.

Microsoft also revealed a new “works on Windows on Arm” website that catalogs which games work on Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite laptops. Linaro built the website and claims to have tested more than 1,400 games on the new Surface Laptop and other Snapdragon X Elite devices. More than 700 games are listed as running at 1080p and 60fps, including titles like Control Ultimate Edition.

This all sounds rather promising for emulated games running on thin and lightweight laptops…

Read More 

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Meta appears to have confirmed the name of its next virtual reality headset: the Quest 3S. In a Quest Store listing spotted by UploadVR, Meta lists the Quest 3S as a supported device.
At this time of writing, you can see the Quest 3S listed alongside the Quest 3, Quest, Pro, and Quest 2 in the listing for the upcoming Alo Moves XR app. Other upcoming titles, such as Miracle Pool and Rival Stars Horse Racing: VR Edition, also include the Quest 3S. The Verge reached out to Meta with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Image: The Verge

The Alo Moves XR app lists the Quest 3S as a supported headset.

The Quest 3S could be a more affordable version of the Quest 3 headset the company launched in October 2023, but there’s a lot unknown about the new device. In March, a leaked image shared by @ZGFTECH showed what could be the cheaper Quest 3 with no passthrough cameras. However, a more recent leak seems to contradict this, claiming it comes with two 4MP RGB passthrough cameras.
Last year, The Verge’s Alex Heath reported on an internal presentation made by Mark Rabkin, Meta’s vice president of VR, that referenced a cheaper Quest headset on the company’s product roadmap. During the presentation, Rabkin mentioned launching a more “accessible” headset codenamed Ventura. At the time, Rabkin said the goal was to “pack the biggest punch we can at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market.”

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Meta appears to have confirmed the name of its next virtual reality headset: the Quest 3S. In a Quest Store listing spotted by UploadVR, Meta lists the Quest 3S as a supported device.

At this time of writing, you can see the Quest 3S listed alongside the Quest 3, Quest, Pro, and Quest 2 in the listing for the upcoming Alo Moves XR app. Other upcoming titles, such as Miracle Pool and Rival Stars Horse Racing: VR Edition, also include the Quest 3S. The Verge reached out to Meta with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Image: The Verge

The Alo Moves XR app lists the Quest 3S as a supported headset.

The Quest 3S could be a more affordable version of the Quest 3 headset the company launched in October 2023, but there’s a lot unknown about the new device. In March, a leaked image shared by @ZGFTECH showed what could be the cheaper Quest 3 with no passthrough cameras. However, a more recent leak seems to contradict this, claiming it comes with two 4MP RGB passthrough cameras.

Last year, The Verge’s Alex Heath reported on an internal presentation made by Mark Rabkin, Meta’s vice president of VR, that referenced a cheaper Quest headset on the company’s product roadmap. During the presentation, Rabkin mentioned launching a more “accessible” headset codenamed Ventura. At the time, Rabkin said the goal was to “pack the biggest punch we can at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market.”

Read More 

The Pixel Watch 2, like the first-gen model, comes in just one size of 41mm that should fit most wrists. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google’s Pixel Watch 2 is on sale for a new low price of $284.99 ($65 off) at Wellbots when you use code VERGEWATCH65 until June 16th — giving you ample time to pick one up for any Android phone-owning dads in your life, if you’re so inclined.

The moment the Pixel Watch 2 was released, it quickly became one of the best Android smartwatches around as well as one of the best Fitbit fitness trackers. That’s mostly due to the sophomore device maintaining the things that made the original compelling (like its svelte circular design) and fixing its biggest problem: battery life.
The Pixel Watch 2 can confidently get through a day of use (yes, that’s saying a lot compared to the first-gen), offering you ample notifications on your wrist and an array of fitness tracking through the Google-owned Fitbit app. It also supports Google’s excellent Safety Check feature, allowing a trusted contact to see your location for a limited time with just a few taps.

Another pretty good deal from Pixel land
The Google Pixel Tablet is also on a pretty good sale at Wellbots, knocking the base 128GB model down to $409 ($90 off) when you use code VERGEPIX90 and the 256GB configuration to $489 ($110 off) with code VERGEPIX110. We’ve seen better prices before on Google’s 11-inch slate and its handy speaker dock that doubles as its charging station, but it’s worth your attention if Android tablets are your thing.

The Pixel Watch 2, like the first-gen model, comes in just one size of 41mm that should fit most wrists. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google’s Pixel Watch 2 is on sale for a new low price of $284.99 ($65 off) at Wellbots when you use code VERGEWATCH65 until June 16th — giving you ample time to pick one up for any Android phone-owning dads in your life, if you’re so inclined.

The moment the Pixel Watch 2 was released, it quickly became one of the best Android smartwatches around as well as one of the best Fitbit fitness trackers. That’s mostly due to the sophomore device maintaining the things that made the original compelling (like its svelte circular design) and fixing its biggest problem: battery life.

The Pixel Watch 2 can confidently get through a day of use (yes, that’s saying a lot compared to the first-gen), offering you ample notifications on your wrist and an array of fitness tracking through the Google-owned Fitbit app. It also supports Google’s excellent Safety Check feature, allowing a trusted contact to see your location for a limited time with just a few taps.

Another pretty good deal from Pixel land

The Google Pixel Tablet is also on a pretty good sale at Wellbots, knocking the base 128GB model down to $409 ($90 off) when you use code VERGEPIX90 and the 256GB configuration to $489 ($110 off) with code VERGEPIX110. We’ve seen better prices before on Google’s 11-inch slate and its handy speaker dock that doubles as its charging station, but it’s worth your attention if Android tablets are your thing.

Read More 

Illustration: The Verge

One thing right off the bat: the Google Search algorithm has not leaked, and SEO experts don’t suddenly have all the answers. But the information that did leak this week — a collection of thousands of internal Google documents — is still huge. It’s an unprecedented look into Google’s inner workings that are typically closely guarded.
Perhaps the most notable revelation from the 2,500 documents is that they suggest Google representatives have misled the public in the past when discussing how the biggest gatekeeper of the internet assesses and ranks content for its search engine.
How Google ranks content is a black box: websites depend on search traffic to survive, and many will go to great lengths — and great expense — to beat out the competition and rise to the top of results. Better ranking means more website visits, which means more money. As a result, website operators hang on to every word Google publishes and each social media post by employees working on search. Their word is taken as gospel, which, in turn, trickles down to everyone using Google to find things.
Over the years, Google spokespeople have repeatedly denied that user clicks factor into ranking websites, for example — but the leaked documents make note of several types of clicks users make and indicate they feed into ranking pages in search. Testimony from the antitrust suit by the US Department of Justice previously revealed a ranking factor called Navboost that uses searchers’ clicks to elevate content in search.
“To me, the larger, meta takeaway is that even more of Google’s public statements about what they collect and how their search engine works have strong evidence against them,” Rand Fishkin, a veteran of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, told The Verge via email.
The leak first spread after SEO experts Fishkin and Mike King published some of the contents of the leaked documents earlier this week along with accompanying analyses. The leaked API documents contain repositories filled with information about and definitions of data Google collects, some of which may inform how webpages are ranked in search. At first, Google dodged questions about the authenticity of the leaked documents before confirming their veracity on Wednesday.
“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information,” Google spokesperson Davis Thompson told The Verge in an email on Wednesday. “We’ve shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors that our systems weigh, while also working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.”
There’s no indication in the documents about how different attributes are weighted, for one. It’s also possible that some of the attributes named in the documents — like an identifier for “small personal sites” or a demotion for product reviews, for example — might have been deployed at some point but have since been phased out. They also may have never been used for ranking sites at all.
“We don’t necessarily know how [the factors named] are being used, aside from the different descriptions of them. But even though they’re somewhat sparse, there’s a lot of information for us,” King says. “What are the aspects that we should be thinking about more specifically when we’re creating websites or optimizing websites?”
The suggestion that the world’s largest search platform doesn’t base search result rankings on how users engage with the content feels absurd on its face. But the repeated denials, carefully worded company responses, and industry publications that unquestioningly carry these claims have made it a contentious topic of debate among SEO marketers.
Another major point highlighted by Fishkin and King relates to how Google may use Chrome data in its search rankings. Google Search representatives have said that they don’t use anything from Chrome for ranking, but the leaked documents suggest that may not be true. One section, for example, lists “chrome_trans_clicks” as informing which links from a domain appear below the main webpage in search results. Fishkin interprets it as meaning Google “uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and uses that to determine the most popular/important URLs on a site, which go into the calculation of which to include in the sitelinks feature.”
There are over 14,000 attributes mentioned in the documents, and researchers will be digging for weeks looking for hints contained within the pages. There’s mention of “Twiddlers,” or ranking tweaks deployed outside of major system updates, that boost or demote content according to certain criteria. Elements of webpages, like who the author is, are mentioned, as are measurements of the “authority” of websites. Fishkin points out that there’s plenty that’s not represented much in the documents, too, like information about AI-generated search results.
So what does this all mean for everyone other than the SEO industry? For one, expect that anyone who operates a website will be reading about this leak and trying to make sense of it. A lot of SEO is throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, and publishers, e-commerce companies, and businesses will likely design various experiments to try to test some of what’s suggested in the documents. I imagine that, as this happens, websites might start to look, feel, or read a little differently — all as these industries try to make sense of this wave of new but still vague information.
“Journalists and publishers of information about SEO and Google Search need to stop uncritically repeating Google’s public statements, and take a much harsher, more adversarial view of the search giant’s representatives,” Fishkin says. “When publications repeat Google’s claims as though they are fact, they’re helping Google spin a story that’s only useful to the company and not to practitioners, users, or the public.”

Illustration: The Verge

One thing right off the bat: the Google Search algorithm has not leaked, and SEO experts don’t suddenly have all the answers. But the information that did leak this week — a collection of thousands of internal Google documents — is still huge. It’s an unprecedented look into Google’s inner workings that are typically closely guarded.

Perhaps the most notable revelation from the 2,500 documents is that they suggest Google representatives have misled the public in the past when discussing how the biggest gatekeeper of the internet assesses and ranks content for its search engine.

How Google ranks content is a black box: websites depend on search traffic to survive, and many will go to great lengths — and great expense — to beat out the competition and rise to the top of results. Better ranking means more website visits, which means more money. As a result, website operators hang on to every word Google publishes and each social media post by employees working on search. Their word is taken as gospel, which, in turn, trickles down to everyone using Google to find things.

Over the years, Google spokespeople have repeatedly denied that user clicks factor into ranking websites, for example — but the leaked documents make note of several types of clicks users make and indicate they feed into ranking pages in search. Testimony from the antitrust suit by the US Department of Justice previously revealed a ranking factor called Navboost that uses searchers’ clicks to elevate content in search.

“To me, the larger, meta takeaway is that even more of Google’s public statements about what they collect and how their search engine works have strong evidence against them,” Rand Fishkin, a veteran of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, told The Verge via email.

The leak first spread after SEO experts Fishkin and Mike King published some of the contents of the leaked documents earlier this week along with accompanying analyses. The leaked API documents contain repositories filled with information about and definitions of data Google collects, some of which may inform how webpages are ranked in search. At first, Google dodged questions about the authenticity of the leaked documents before confirming their veracity on Wednesday.

“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information,” Google spokesperson Davis Thompson told The Verge in an email on Wednesday. “We’ve shared extensive information about how Search works and the types of factors that our systems weigh, while also working to protect the integrity of our results from manipulation.”

There’s no indication in the documents about how different attributes are weighted, for one. It’s also possible that some of the attributes named in the documents — like an identifier for “small personal sites” or a demotion for product reviews, for example — might have been deployed at some point but have since been phased out. They also may have never been used for ranking sites at all.

“We don’t necessarily know how [the factors named] are being used, aside from the different descriptions of them. But even though they’re somewhat sparse, there’s a lot of information for us,” King says. “What are the aspects that we should be thinking about more specifically when we’re creating websites or optimizing websites?”

The suggestion that the world’s largest search platform doesn’t base search result rankings on how users engage with the content feels absurd on its face. But the repeated denials, carefully worded company responses, and industry publications that unquestioningly carry these claims have made it a contentious topic of debate among SEO marketers.

Another major point highlighted by Fishkin and King relates to how Google may use Chrome data in its search rankings. Google Search representatives have said that they don’t use anything from Chrome for ranking, but the leaked documents suggest that may not be true. One section, for example, lists “chrome_trans_clicks” as informing which links from a domain appear below the main webpage in search results. Fishkin interprets it as meaning Google “uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and uses that to determine the most popular/important URLs on a site, which go into the calculation of which to include in the sitelinks feature.”

There are over 14,000 attributes mentioned in the documents, and researchers will be digging for weeks looking for hints contained within the pages. There’s mention of “Twiddlers,” or ranking tweaks deployed outside of major system updates, that boost or demote content according to certain criteria. Elements of webpages, like who the author is, are mentioned, as are measurements of the “authority” of websites. Fishkin points out that there’s plenty that’s not represented much in the documents, too, like information about AI-generated search results.

So what does this all mean for everyone other than the SEO industry? For one, expect that anyone who operates a website will be reading about this leak and trying to make sense of it. A lot of SEO is throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, and publishers, e-commerce companies, and businesses will likely design various experiments to try to test some of what’s suggested in the documents. I imagine that, as this happens, websites might start to look, feel, or read a little differently — all as these industries try to make sense of this wave of new but still vague information.

“Journalists and publishers of information about SEO and Google Search need to stop uncritically repeating Google’s public statements, and take a much harsher, more adversarial view of the search giant’s representatives,” Fishkin says. “When publications repeat Google’s claims as though they are fact, they’re helping Google spin a story that’s only useful to the company and not to practitioners, users, or the public.”

Read More 

I mean, has anyone else seen that Temu egg slicer meme? | Image: The Verge

Temu, the popular Chinese shopping platform, is about to face stricter EU regulations after the European Commission deemed it a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
According to the Commission, Temu has confirmed that it has more than 45 million monthly users in the EU, the threshold for being considered a VLOP. That means it’ll have to comply with the strictest rules under the DSA, particularly around assessing “systemic risks” associated with its services, such as counterfeit goods, illegal products, and items that infringe on intellectual property rights.
Temu is the latest retailer to get hit with stricter regulations under the DSA. The Commission did the same for Shein, a popular fast fashion company, just last month. The move also comes just two weeks after other European consumer organization BEUC and 17 of its member groups filed a complaint against Temu. The complaint alleged that the company failed to be transparent with consumers about its algorithm or where its products come from and used manipulative gamification tactics to get consumers to spend more.
Temu will have four months to provide an initial systemic risk assessment report to the Commission, which it will have to submit annually going forward. The regulations also require Temu to put in place more consumer protection measures, as well as publish transparency reports on content moderation every six months.
While these regulations are mostly focused on EU consumers, Temu’s also facing increased scrutiny in the US. Lawmakers reportedly pushed for a potential import ban on Temu in February, citing forced labor concerns with its suppliers.

I mean, has anyone else seen that Temu egg slicer meme? | Image: The Verge

Temu, the popular Chinese shopping platform, is about to face stricter EU regulations after the European Commission deemed it a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

According to the Commission, Temu has confirmed that it has more than 45 million monthly users in the EU, the threshold for being considered a VLOP. That means it’ll have to comply with the strictest rules under the DSA, particularly around assessing “systemic risks” associated with its services, such as counterfeit goods, illegal products, and items that infringe on intellectual property rights.

Temu is the latest retailer to get hit with stricter regulations under the DSA. The Commission did the same for Shein, a popular fast fashion company, just last month. The move also comes just two weeks after other European consumer organization BEUC and 17 of its member groups filed a complaint against Temu. The complaint alleged that the company failed to be transparent with consumers about its algorithm or where its products come from and used manipulative gamification tactics to get consumers to spend more.

Temu will have four months to provide an initial systemic risk assessment report to the Commission, which it will have to submit annually going forward. The regulations also require Temu to put in place more consumer protection measures, as well as publish transparency reports on content moderation every six months.

While these regulations are mostly focused on EU consumers, Temu’s also facing increased scrutiny in the US. Lawmakers reportedly pushed for a potential import ban on Temu in February, citing forced labor concerns with its suppliers.

Read More 

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

A cyberattack was behind an incident last year that disabled over 600,000 internet routers across several Midwest states between October 25th and 27th, according to new research published by Lumen Technologies’ threat research arm, Black Lotus Labs. The incident wasn’t disclosed at the time, despite hundreds of thousands of routers being rendered inoperable.
The investigation also didn’t specify which company was targeted, but Reuters says it has identified the target as Windstream, an Arkansas-based ISP, based on cross-referencing internet outages reported during the same period. Windstream, which has a service area covering many rural or underserved communities, declined The Verge’s request for comment.
Black Lotus Labs investigated based on repeated complaints across social media and outage detectors about specific routers, particularly the ActionTec T3200 and ActionTec T3260. Users reported their issues were resolved only by their provider replacing the affected devices.

The malicious firmware package that deleted parts of the operational code on impacted routers was identified as “Chalubo,” a commodity remote access trojan. It’s unclear how the firmware was shipped to customers — whether through an unknown exploit, weak credentials, or access to administrative tools — or who was behind the attack that the researchers called “a deliberate act intended to cause an outage.”
While some mysteries remain, Black Lotus Labs recommends that organizations secure management devices and avoid basic security weaknesses like default passwords. Consumers are also encouraged to stay on top of regular security updates.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

A cyberattack was behind an incident last year that disabled over 600,000 internet routers across several Midwest states between October 25th and 27th, according to new research published by Lumen Technologies’ threat research arm, Black Lotus Labs. The incident wasn’t disclosed at the time, despite hundreds of thousands of routers being rendered inoperable.

The investigation also didn’t specify which company was targeted, but Reuters says it has identified the target as Windstream, an Arkansas-based ISP, based on cross-referencing internet outages reported during the same period. Windstream, which has a service area covering many rural or underserved communities, declined The Verge’s request for comment.

Black Lotus Labs investigated based on repeated complaints across social media and outage detectors about specific routers, particularly the ActionTec T3200 and ActionTec T3260. Users reported their issues were resolved only by their provider replacing the affected devices.

The malicious firmware package that deleted parts of the operational code on impacted routers was identified as “Chalubo,” a commodity remote access trojan. It’s unclear how the firmware was shipped to customers — whether through an unknown exploit, weak credentials, or access to administrative tools — or who was behind the attack that the researchers called “a deliberate act intended to cause an outage.”

While some mysteries remain, Black Lotus Labs recommends that organizations secure management devices and avoid basic security weaknesses like default passwords. Consumers are also encouraged to stay on top of regular security updates.

Read More 

Image: The Verge

OpenAI is making ChatGPT more accessible to schools and nonprofit organizations. In a pair of blog posts, the company shared that it’s launching a version of ChatGPT for universities, along with a program that lets nonprofits access ChatGPT at a discounted rate.
OpenAI says ChatGPT Edu will allow universities to “responsibly deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations.” It’s built on its faster GPT-4o model, which offers improved multimodal capabilities across text, vision, and audio.
For example, OpenAI says universities can use the tool to review student resumes, write grant applications, and assist professors with grading. ChatGPT for Edu offers “enterprise-level” security and doesn’t use data to train OpenAI’s models. It’s offered at an “affordable” rate for universities.

Additionally, OpenAI introduced OpenAI for Nonprofits, which gives nonprofit organizations access to ChatGPT Team at a cheaper rate of $20 per month per user. Nonprofits can apply for the discount on OpenAI’s website. Larger organizations that need more capabilities and security can also contact OpenAI to get ChatGPT Enterprise at a 50 percent discount.
These announcements come after another tumultuous few weeks at OpenAI. Several key researchers resigned, citing safety concerns, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman faced criticism for rolling out an AI voice that sounds eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson after the actor refused the role.
Meanwhile, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, who helped lead a push to fire Altman last year, spoke out about the CEO during an interview on The TED AI Show podcast. Toner cited “multiple occasions” in which Altman provided inaccurate info about the company’s safety processes and evidence the board saw of Altman “lying and being manipulative in different situations.”

Image: The Verge

OpenAI is making ChatGPT more accessible to schools and nonprofit organizations. In a pair of blog posts, the company shared that it’s launching a version of ChatGPT for universities, along with a program that lets nonprofits access ChatGPT at a discounted rate.

OpenAI says ChatGPT Edu will allow universities to “responsibly deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations.” It’s built on its faster GPT-4o model, which offers improved multimodal capabilities across text, vision, and audio.

For example, OpenAI says universities can use the tool to review student resumes, write grant applications, and assist professors with grading. ChatGPT for Edu offers “enterprise-level” security and doesn’t use data to train OpenAI’s models. It’s offered at an “affordable” rate for universities.

Additionally, OpenAI introduced OpenAI for Nonprofits, which gives nonprofit organizations access to ChatGPT Team at a cheaper rate of $20 per month per user. Nonprofits can apply for the discount on OpenAI’s website. Larger organizations that need more capabilities and security can also contact OpenAI to get ChatGPT Enterprise at a 50 percent discount.

These announcements come after another tumultuous few weeks at OpenAI. Several key researchers resigned, citing safety concerns, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman faced criticism for rolling out an AI voice that sounds eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson after the actor refused the role.

Meanwhile, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, who helped lead a push to fire Altman last year, spoke out about the CEO during an interview on The TED AI Show podcast. Toner cited “multiple occasions” in which Altman provided inaccurate info about the company’s safety processes and evidence the board saw of Altman “lying and being manipulative in different situations.”

Read More 

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

The algorithm that powers Google Search is one of the most important, most complicated, and least understood systems that rule the internet. As of this week, though, we understand it a little better. Thanks to a huge leak of API documentation, we got an unprecedented look at what Google cares about, how it ranks content, and how it thinks the internet should work. The leaked documentation is dense, and it doesn’t tell us everything about how Google ranks, but it does offer a set of signals we’ve never seen before.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss everything in the leaked documents, the SEO community’s reaction, the potential regulatory implications of it all, and what it means to build a website in 2024.

After that, we talk about the recent spate of media companies (including Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company) making content and technology deals with OpenAI. Are media companies making the same mistakes they did with Facebook and others, or are they actually trying to make sure they don’t make those mistakes again? We have a lot of thoughts, and we also want to hear from you in particular — disclosure is The Verge’s brand, after all, and we want to know how you think we should talk about all this. Email us at vergecast@theverge.com, call the hotline at 866-VERGE11, and tell us everything on your mind.
Finally, we do a lightning round of other tech news, including Apple’s AI plans at WWDC, Discord’s kinda-sorta pivot, a Fitbit for kids, “edgy” engagement, and the Sony party speaker The Verge’s Nilay Patel can’t stop talking about.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the Google leak:

Google won’t comment on a potentially massive leak of its search algorithm documentation
Google confirms the leaked Search documents are real
From SparkToro: An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them

From iPullRank: Secrets from the Algorithm: Google Search’s Internal Engineering Documentation Has Leaked

From Search Engine Land: How SEO moves forward with the Google Content Warehouse API leak

And on OpenAI:

Vox Media and The Atlantic sign content deals with OpenAI
Apple’s WWDC may include AI-generated emoji and an OpenAI partnership
OpenAI has a new safety team — it’s run by Sam Altman
Why the OpenAI board fired Sam Altman

And in the lightning round:

David Pierce’s pick: Discord’s turning the focus back to games with a new redesign

Alex Cranz’s pick: The Fitbit Ace LTE is like a Nintendo smartwatch for kids
Nilay’s pick: X is hiding likes to encourage ‘edgy’ engagement

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

The algorithm that powers Google Search is one of the most important, most complicated, and least understood systems that rule the internet. As of this week, though, we understand it a little better. Thanks to a huge leak of API documentation, we got an unprecedented look at what Google cares about, how it ranks content, and how it thinks the internet should work. The leaked documentation is dense, and it doesn’t tell us everything about how Google ranks, but it does offer a set of signals we’ve never seen before.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss everything in the leaked documents, the SEO community’s reaction, the potential regulatory implications of it all, and what it means to build a website in 2024.

After that, we talk about the recent spate of media companies (including Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company) making content and technology deals with OpenAI. Are media companies making the same mistakes they did with Facebook and others, or are they actually trying to make sure they don’t make those mistakes again? We have a lot of thoughts, and we also want to hear from you in particular — disclosure is The Verge’s brand, after all, and we want to know how you think we should talk about all this. Email us at vergecast@theverge.com, call the hotline at 866-VERGE11, and tell us everything on your mind.

Finally, we do a lightning round of other tech news, including Apple’s AI plans at WWDC, Discord’s kinda-sorta pivot, a Fitbit for kids, “edgy” engagement, and the Sony party speaker The Verge’s Nilay Patel can’t stop talking about.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the Google leak:

Google won’t comment on a potentially massive leak of its search algorithm documentation
Google confirms the leaked Search documents are real
From SparkToro: An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them

From iPullRank: Secrets from the Algorithm: Google Search’s Internal Engineering Documentation Has Leaked

From Search Engine Land: How SEO moves forward with the Google Content Warehouse API leak

And on OpenAI:

Vox Media and The Atlantic sign content deals with OpenAI
Apple’s WWDC may include AI-generated emoji and an OpenAI partnership
OpenAI has a new safety team — it’s run by Sam Altman
Why the OpenAI board fired Sam Altman

And in the lightning round:

David Pierce’s pick: Discord’s turning the focus back to games with a new redesign

Alex Cranz’s pick: The Fitbit Ace LTE is like a Nintendo smartwatch for kids
Nilay’s pick: X is hiding likes to encourage ‘edgy’ engagement

Read More 

The Acer SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera fully integrates with the rest of Acer’s SpatialLabs device lineup. | Image: Acer

Acer isn’t a brand that you’d typically associate with photography, but its new camera offering comes with an interesting twist — the ability to snap pictures and video in stereoscopic 3D. Announced ahead of next week’s Computex event, the SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera also allows users to livestream 3D content to YouTube, and make 3D video calls on Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet.
Acer says the SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera will be available in Q3 this year starting at $549. It fully integrates with Acer’s lineup of SpatialLabs 3D devices — such as the Aspire 3D 15 SpatialLabs Edition laptop — which have wowed us with their impressive ability to display glasses-free 3D content. Images and video recorded on the SpatialLabs camera can also be viewed on other 3D-capable displays, 3D projectors, VR headsets, or on the camera itself.

Image: Acer
The front of the camera, with the USB-C charging port viewable at the bottom left…

Image: Acer
…and the rear, showing a minimalistic touchscreen interface with a single button to access the camera gallery.

Support for 3D livestreaming and conference calls is a niche feature, but it’s nice to see Acer expanding its SpatialLabs 3D tech. The 3D experience Acer provides really needs to be experienced firsthand to understand how visually mind blowing it is to see things reaching out at you without the assistance of glasses. It’s far superior (and more pleasant to view) than older glasses-free 3D offerings like Nintendo’s 3DS handheld, and the SpatialLabs camera makes filming such content more accessible to those without expansive videography knowledge.

The SpatialLabs camera is compact, weighing 220 grams (0.4 pounds) and measuring in at 4 x 2.5 x 0.9 inches. It has a resolution of 8 megapixels per eye, a built-in “selfie mirror,” and a smattering of familiar photography features — like Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) and the ability to manually adjust ISO, white balance, and shutter speed settings. The camera also has a 1500mAh battery capacity, a microSD card slot to expand storage, and a 2.4-inch touchscreen contained in a “weatherproof” casing.
Livestreaming to YouTube will require the latest version of Acer’s SpatialLabs Player, while 3D video conferencing support — which also comes with “customizable depth features” — will be enabled via the incoming SpatialLabs video call widget which is also launching sometime in Q3.

The Acer SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera fully integrates with the rest of Acer’s SpatialLabs device lineup. | Image: Acer

Acer isn’t a brand that you’d typically associate with photography, but its new camera offering comes with an interesting twist — the ability to snap pictures and video in stereoscopic 3D. Announced ahead of next week’s Computex event, the SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera also allows users to livestream 3D content to YouTube, and make 3D video calls on Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet.

Acer says the SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera will be available in Q3 this year starting at $549. It fully integrates with Acer’s lineup of SpatialLabs 3D devices — such as the Aspire 3D 15 SpatialLabs Edition laptop — which have wowed us with their impressive ability to display glasses-free 3D content. Images and video recorded on the SpatialLabs camera can also be viewed on other 3D-capable displays, 3D projectors, VR headsets, or on the camera itself.

Support for 3D livestreaming and conference calls is a niche feature, but it’s nice to see Acer expanding its SpatialLabs 3D tech. The 3D experience Acer provides really needs to be experienced firsthand to understand how visually mind blowing it is to see things reaching out at you without the assistance of glasses. It’s far superior (and more pleasant to view) than older glasses-free 3D offerings like Nintendo’s 3DS handheld, and the SpatialLabs camera makes filming such content more accessible to those without expansive videography knowledge.

The SpatialLabs camera is compact, weighing 220 grams (0.4 pounds) and measuring in at 4 x 2.5 x 0.9 inches. It has a resolution of 8 megapixels per eye, a built-in “selfie mirror,” and a smattering of familiar photography features — like Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) and the ability to manually adjust ISO, white balance, and shutter speed settings. The camera also has a 1500mAh battery capacity, a microSD card slot to expand storage, and a 2.4-inch touchscreen contained in a “weatherproof” casing.

Livestreaming to YouTube will require the latest version of Acer’s SpatialLabs Player, while 3D video conferencing support — which also comes with “customizable depth features” — will be enabled via the incoming SpatialLabs video call widget which is also launching sometime in Q3.

Read More 

When I reviewed the OnePlus Watch 2 last month, I said it had a digital crown. I did so because it had a button with grooves that you could twist and press. I didn’t think much of it, but a few readers contested its crown-ness. This, they said, was naught but a mere button.
To that, I furrowed my brow.
The problem was that twisting the OnePlus Watch 2’s “digital crown” didn’t do anything. It broke the unspoken nerd covenant that smartwatch crowns must scroll. Pressing the button brings up an app menu, but twisting it? Zip, zilch, nada. On other smartwatches, twisting a crown generally lets you scroll through menus and notifications — whatever’s on your display. Since this button didn’t do that, the people argued, it could not be a digital crown, style be damned.

When I type “What’s a digital crown?” into Google, the top results tell me it is a large, protruding dial on an Apple Watch that’s based on a mechanical watch’s crown. It’s a means of navigating and activating features. This is a deeply dissatisfying answer.
For starters, digital crowns are not limited to Apple Watches. I’m not denying that the first Apple Watch popularized the digital crown: if you look at pre-2015 smartwatches and fitness trackers, you’ll see buttons and pushers were the more common design choice. (Some, like the LG G Watch R, had a crown-like button that could rotate, but like the OnePlus Watch 2, didn’t scroll.) But these days, digital crowns are fairly common outside of Apple’s walled garden. The Pixel Watch and Pixel Watch 2 have one. So do a bunch of my Withings, Mobvoi, and Fossil watches.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
The OnePlus Watch 2’s crown rotates, but doesn’t do anything.

Secondly, digital crowns have never been the primary means of navigating smartwatch menus. The vast majority use touchscreens where swipes and taps reign supreme. (Some smartwatches don’t even have a single button!) The smartwatches that don’t have touchscreens, like some multisport watches from Garmin or Polar, primarily rely on a five-button system for navigation and selecting. Athletes swear by these buttons because they’re immune to sweat and gloves.
Out of curiosity, I rummaged through four drawers of smartwatches I’ve reviewed over the years. A trend emerged. Most watches with digital crowns — from brands both big and small — were those mimicking the feel of an analog mechanical watch.

Image: Breguet
Crowns used to wind a watch spring. Smartwatches have circuit boards, so what do we want from digital crowns?

That, in turn, made me wonder why watches had crowns to begin with. Before the 1800s, winding a pocket watch or a clock often required a special key — which could get pretty annoying. The “crown” seemingly emerged in the 1830s, letting owners turn a decorative part of their watch to wind its mainspring, thereby powering the device’s internals, too. They did it using a dial with ribbed grooves that looked like a king or queen’s crown.
But earlier inventors call it a “knob,” or simply a way to wind a watch without a key, and enthusiasts have traced keyless winding mechanisms as far back as 1686.

Image: Titles of Patents of Invention, Great Britain Patent Office
An 1820 patent: “A new and additional movement applied to a watch, to enable it to be wound by the pendant knob.”

Image: The London Gazette
The London Gazette, 1686: “Lost … a watch in a black shagreen studded case … the spring being wound up without a key, and it opening contrary to all other watches.”

In short, the traditional watch crown was both the main way of interacting with a watch and crucial to the watch’s functioning. But it was always more knob than button.
That was then. Technically, wristwatch wearers haven’t needed to use crowns to wind springs since Seiko made the Astron 35SQ, the first quartz watch, in 1969. Today, analog knobs are mostly used to set the time. The modern digital crown isn’t even necessary for that, so really, it’s all about interacting with a smartwatch.
Each smartwatch maker is different, but I’m struggling to remember a digital crown that just scrolls. More often than not, it works as a select button, a shortcut, or a way to bring up a voice assistant. Some people don’t even use the crown to scroll menus at all. (Yours truly primarily uses it to adjust volume.) So when did scrolling become the defining criterion of what makes a digital crown?
To that, I could probably point my finger at one Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief. In an interview with Hodinkee, Ive notes that the crown is a “fantastic solution for scrolling and making choices.” Ive mentions scrolling first, and Apple itself made a big hullabaloo about the digital crown as a pioneering input method in the first Apple Watch’s marketing. But again, he primarily refers to it as an input mechanism, a means of interaction — he calls it an alternative to the “panacea” of “direct manipulation,” aka touchscreens.
In typical Ive bombast, he says implementing the digital crown “took a modicum of courage” and that it allowed Apple to “offer a ‘second button’ on the device.”
But you heard the man: it’s a button.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The digital crown, and how it could scroll, was a big part of the original Apple Watch’s marketing.

Today, Apple doesn’t use scrolling as part of its definition of a digital crown. It calls it an “important hardware input” for the Apple Watch and the Vision Pro. On the Vision Pro, turning the crown doesn’t scroll through menus at all. The rotation does, however, have a purpose. When you turn the crown, it lets you adjust your immersion in virtual environments — as in fine-tune your connection to reality. It also acts as a means of adjusting volume and an alternative to pinching your fingers when you want to select a button.
So, even Apple — which popularized the digital crown as we know it — doesn’t seem to have a hard and fast rule about the crown. Just that the rotation should be an intuitive part of the UI.
After much soul-searching, it’s clear that the OnePlus Watch 2 definitely has a crown. Whether it’s digital boils down to if that rotation truly does anything at all. It ought to have some kind of intentional purpose. Otherwise, why not just have a regular old pusher-style button?
Out of curiosity, I reached out to OnePlus.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Verdict: this is a crown, just not a digital one.

“The crown does not have any function on the device. The crown rotating when moved leads to the button being more durable than if it was rigid, especially during impacts,” says OnePlus spokesperson Spenser Blank. “Also, Wear OS 4’s intuitive interface plus the OnePlus Watch 2’s large screen allows for easy swipes and interactions, making the adjustments provided by a digital crown unnecessary.”
There you have it. I stand corrected: even OnePlus says it’s not a digital crown. The rotating serves a mechanical purpose — just not one anyone can get particularly excited about. (I know a few glove-wearing athletes who’d take umbrage with Blank’s assertion that a touchscreen suffices.) So let’s leave it at this: the OnePlus Watch 2 has a crown. It’s just not a particularly good one and definitely not digital.

When I reviewed the OnePlus Watch 2 last month, I said it had a digital crown. I did so because it had a button with grooves that you could twist and press. I didn’t think much of it, but a few readers contested its crown-ness. This, they said, was naught but a mere button.

To that, I furrowed my brow.

The problem was that twisting the OnePlus Watch 2’s “digital crown” didn’t do anything. It broke the unspoken nerd covenant that smartwatch crowns must scroll. Pressing the button brings up an app menu, but twisting it? Zip, zilch, nada. On other smartwatches, twisting a crown generally lets you scroll through menus and notifications — whatever’s on your display. Since this button didn’t do that, the people argued, it could not be a digital crown, style be damned.

When I type “What’s a digital crown?” into Google, the top results tell me it is a large, protruding dial on an Apple Watch that’s based on a mechanical watch’s crown. It’s a means of navigating and activating features. This is a deeply dissatisfying answer.

For starters, digital crowns are not limited to Apple Watches. I’m not denying that the first Apple Watch popularized the digital crown: if you look at pre-2015 smartwatches and fitness trackers, you’ll see buttons and pushers were the more common design choice. (Some, like the LG G Watch R, had a crown-like button that could rotate, but like the OnePlus Watch 2, didn’t scroll.) But these days, digital crowns are fairly common outside of Apple’s walled garden. The Pixel Watch and Pixel Watch 2 have one. So do a bunch of my Withings, Mobvoi, and Fossil watches.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
The OnePlus Watch 2’s crown rotates, but doesn’t do anything.

Secondly, digital crowns have never been the primary means of navigating smartwatch menus. The vast majority use touchscreens where swipes and taps reign supreme. (Some smartwatches don’t even have a single button!) The smartwatches that don’t have touchscreens, like some multisport watches from Garmin or Polar, primarily rely on a five-button system for navigation and selecting. Athletes swear by these buttons because they’re immune to sweat and gloves.

Out of curiosity, I rummaged through four drawers of smartwatches I’ve reviewed over the years. A trend emerged. Most watches with digital crowns — from brands both big and small — were those mimicking the feel of an analog mechanical watch.

Image: Breguet
Crowns used to wind a watch spring. Smartwatches have circuit boards, so what do we want from digital crowns?

That, in turn, made me wonder why watches had crowns to begin with. Before the 1800s, winding a pocket watch or a clock often required a special key — which could get pretty annoying. The “crown” seemingly emerged in the 1830s, letting owners turn a decorative part of their watch to wind its mainspring, thereby powering the device’s internals, too. They did it using a dial with ribbed grooves that looked like a king or queen’s crown.

But earlier inventors call it a “knob,” or simply a way to wind a watch without a key, and enthusiasts have traced keyless winding mechanisms as far back as 1686.

In short, the traditional watch crown was both the main way of interacting with a watch and crucial to the watch’s functioning. But it was always more knob than button.

That was then. Technically, wristwatch wearers haven’t needed to use crowns to wind springs since Seiko made the Astron 35SQ, the first quartz watch, in 1969. Today, analog knobs are mostly used to set the time. The modern digital crown isn’t even necessary for that, so really, it’s all about interacting with a smartwatch.

Each smartwatch maker is different, but I’m struggling to remember a digital crown that just scrolls. More often than not, it works as a select button, a shortcut, or a way to bring up a voice assistant. Some people don’t even use the crown to scroll menus at all. (Yours truly primarily uses it to adjust volume.) So when did scrolling become the defining criterion of what makes a digital crown?

To that, I could probably point my finger at one Sir Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief. In an interview with Hodinkee, Ive notes that the crown is a “fantastic solution for scrolling and making choices.” Ive mentions scrolling first, and Apple itself made a big hullabaloo about the digital crown as a pioneering input method in the first Apple Watch’s marketing. But again, he primarily refers to it as an input mechanism, a means of interaction — he calls it an alternative to the “panacea” of “direct manipulation,” aka touchscreens.

In typical Ive bombast, he says implementing the digital crown “took a modicum of courage” and that it allowed Apple to “offer a ‘second button’ on the device.”

But you heard the man: it’s a button.

Today, Apple doesn’t use scrolling as part of its definition of a digital crown. It calls it an “important hardware input” for the Apple Watch and the Vision Pro. On the Vision Pro, turning the crown doesn’t scroll through menus at all. The rotation does, however, have a purpose. When you turn the crown, it lets you adjust your immersion in virtual environments — as in fine-tune your connection to reality. It also acts as a means of adjusting volume and an alternative to pinching your fingers when you want to select a button.

So, even Apple — which popularized the digital crown as we know it — doesn’t seem to have a hard and fast rule about the crown. Just that the rotation should be an intuitive part of the UI.

After much soul-searching, it’s clear that the OnePlus Watch 2 definitely has a crown. Whether it’s digital boils down to if that rotation truly does anything at all. It ought to have some kind of intentional purpose. Otherwise, why not just have a regular old pusher-style button?

Out of curiosity, I reached out to OnePlus.

“The crown does not have any function on the device. The crown rotating when moved leads to the button being more durable than if it was rigid, especially during impacts,” says OnePlus spokesperson Spenser Blank. “Also, Wear OS 4’s intuitive interface plus the OnePlus Watch 2’s large screen allows for easy swipes and interactions, making the adjustments provided by a digital crown unnecessary.”

There you have it. I stand corrected: even OnePlus says it’s not a digital crown. The rotating serves a mechanical purpose — just not one anyone can get particularly excited about. (I know a few glove-wearing athletes who’d take umbrage with Blank’s assertion that a touchscreen suffices.) So let’s leave it at this: the OnePlus Watch 2 has a crown. It’s just not a particularly good one and definitely not digital.

Read More