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Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes led a tabletop exercise for journalists to role-play as election officials to understand the speed and scale of AI threats they face. | Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge

The job has never been harder, and the threats have never been stranger. It’s the morning of Election Day in Arizona, and a message has just come in from the secretary of state’s office telling you that a new court order requires polling locations to stay open until 9PM. As a county election official, you find the time extension strange, but the familiar voice on the phone feels reassuring — you’ve talked to this official before.
Just hours later, you receive an email telling you that the message was fake. In fact, polls must now close immediately, even though it’s only the early afternoon. The email tells you to submit your election results as soon as possible — strange since the law requires you to wait an hour after polls close or until all results from the day have been tabulated to submit.
This is the sort of whiplash and confusion election officials expect to face in 2024. The upcoming presidential election is taking place under heightened public scrutiny, as a dwindling public workforce navigates an onslaught of deceptive (and sometimes AI-generated) communications, as well as physical and digital threats.
The confusion played out in an Arizona conference room in early May as part of an exercise for journalists who were invited to play election officials for the day. The subject matter — AI threats in elections — was novel, but the invitation itself was unusual. The entire event was unusual. Why is the Arizona secretary of state reaching out to journalists months in advance of the election?
Election officials have been on the receiving end of unprecedented harassment
During the 2020 election, Arizona swung blue, tipping the election to Joe Biden. Fox News forecast the win well ahead of other news outlets, angering the Trump campaign. Trump and his supporters pointed to unsubstantiated incidents of voter fraud and later filed (then dropped) a suit against the state demanding that ballots be reviewed. Later, Republicans commissioned an audit of the votes, which ultimately upheld the accuracy of the original tabulation. And only last Friday, Rudy Giuliani was served with an indictment in which he is charged with pressuring Arizona officials to change the outcome of the 2020 election in favor of Trump.
Election officials have been on the receiving end of unprecedented harassment. As recently as February, a California man was arrested for a threatening message he allegedly left on the personal cell phone of an election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, in November 2022.
The aftershocks of 2020 have not yet faded for election officials, and yet, the next presidential election is already on the horizon. Arizona officials are proactively seeking to restore confidence in the process. There’s a lot on the line for them. Unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud or election interference are dangers to democratic stability. But for the officials that end up in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories, their personal safety is also at risk.
Journalists were invited to the role-playing event as part of an effort to educate the public not just about the threats that election officials are preparing for but also about the scale and seriousness of the preparation itself.
“We’re facing the kinds of threats that no one has ever seen before.”
“We want to make sure in this that we have done everything that we can to make 2024 the best election that [it] possibly can be,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said at the start of the day’s events. “And we’re facing the kinds of threats that no one has ever seen before.” The proliferation of generative AI tools presents the latest set of challenges for election workers because of how easily and quickly these tools can pump out convincing fodder for sophisticated social engineering schemes.
The exercise being conducted was a version of a program created for actual Arizona election officials, who participated in the training back in December. Law enforcement is expected to also undergo the training soon. The Arizona secretary of state’s office spearheaded the initiative to expose election officials to the kinds of threats — particularly related to AI — that they might see in the lead-up to the elections.

Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge
Susan Lapsley is the elections security advisor for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency region that includes Arizona.

“It is unnerving to be where we’re at,” Fontes said, referencing an AI-generated deepfake of himself that played for attendees, showing the secretary of state seamlessly speaking both German and French — two languages he doesn’t speak fluently.
Fontes said he hopes to inoculate election officials against some of the known AI threats, giving them a baseline wariness like most people nowadays would have for an email from a “Nigerian prince” seeking some extra cash. The goal, according to Angie Cloutier, security operations manager at the secretary of state’s office, “is to desensitize election officials to the newness and the weirdness” of AI technology.

Throughout the day, reporters viewed presentations from AI experts demonstrating how easy it is to use free online tools to create disinformation at scale.
One presentation used the LinkedIn profile of a reporter in the room to write a personalized email to the reporter with an AI text generator. The email included a phishing link in the signature masquerading as a LinkedIn profile URL. Later, the presenter used an image generator to put the reporter in a prison jumpsuit and attach that image to a fake article with false allegations, on a webpage designed to look like The New York Times. They also used a podcast recording to clone his voice to say whatever the presenter inputted.
Reporters were also presented with timed exercises. One condensed the months before Election Day into less than an hour and had reporters (role-playing election officials) choosing how to spend a $30,000 budget on a list of fortifications ranging from installing a firewall for the elections website to providing active shooter training or mental health resources to election workers. As time ticked by, organizers unveiled one new crisis after another: an influx of public information requests, a disinformation campaign, complaints of some voters failing to receive their mailed ballots, and sketchy messages asking for login credentials. Some of the obstacles could be avoided by picking the right fortifications, though the budget constrained how many each group could buy. Election Day itself was simulated in a similar — but shorter — timed exercise. The speed of the exercise was overwhelming, with problems popping up before we’d solved the last one. Actual election workers, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State C. Murphy Hebert said, were given even less time in the simulation.
Organizers wanted to simulate the stress and time crunch election officials feel while handling a wide range of threats while administering an election. “We prepare for the unexpected. And the way that we do that is by training ourselves to think in crisis mode,” said Hebert.
The work, for election officials, is very much like the myth of Sisyphus
The work, for election officials, is very much like the myth of Sisyphus, Fontes told The Verge in an interview after the event. (In ancient Greek lore, Sisyphus was condemned to spend eternity in the afterlife rolling a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again.) “It’s just like, every year, there’s another set of folks who just want to dismantle our democracy because they’re upset about political outcomes,” he said.
Even in the roughly five-month gap between the election officials’ training and the media exercise I was invited to, new AI tools and capabilities have become readily available. In an environment where the threats are so rapidly evolving, officials need to quickly develop skill sets and heuristics that will aid them in evaluating threats that may not even exist yet.
Fontes said that even though the technology evolves, the training prepares election workers to understand its overall trajectory. “When people look at it for the first time now, they’re like, ‘Wow, this is really scary.’ The folks that saw it in December are like, ‘Okay, this is a logical progression from what there was,’ so they can be a little more thoughtful about this,” he said. “Is it challenging to keep up with the changes in technology? Absolutely. But that’s part of the job.”
Although they are preparing for AI to be used against them, Fontes and his colleagues are also open to using the same tools to make their work more efficient as they balance constrained resources. Fontes sees AI as just another tool that could be used for good or bad. When asked about the role of AI companies in ensuring their products are used responsibly, he said he’s “not in the business of telling people how to utilize their tools or how to develop their tools.”
“I think there’s enough good uses in AI, not just for people, but for the economy, that that needs to be developed,” said Fontes. He’s open to what automation can do effectively. It’s understandable — election officials have never been more pressed for time or resources.

As the threats to the electoral process widen in range and complexity, the job of an election official gets increasingly complex, even as their ranks dwindle in number.
AI is just the latest challenge to the work of administering free and fair elections in the US. Both tech experts and election officials emphasized at the event that AI isn’t all good or bad and doesn’t necessarily outweigh the importance of all the other threats they must prepare for. The office chose to focus on AI threats in particular this year because they’re so new.
Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for the Arizona secretary of state, said his role is more expansive than it used to be. “It used to be that a CISO was just focused on cybersecurity. But when I started [in] elections, that was not the case,” said Moore, who’s been working in the field since 2019. AI and online disinformation can fuel physical threats, meaning security teams need to think holistically about how to protect elections.

Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge
Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for the Arizona secretary of state, said that title encompasses a greater range of threats than it used to.

Meanwhile, election officials are doing more with less. This isn’t by choice. Unprecedented scrutiny and outright harassment of election officials during the 2020 election have contributed to significant turnover in election workers. Giuliani was most recently indicted for his alleged activities in Arizona, but the problem extends far beyond Arizona. Two Georgia election workers, for instance, were the victims of such extreme harassment that a jury awarded them $148 million in damages in a defamation suit against Rudy Giuliani after he admitted to falsely accusing them of ballot fraud.
12 out of 15 Arizona counties had new election officials since November 2020, covering 98 percent of the state population
Last year, nonpartisan group Issue One found that 40 percent of chief local election officials in the western states would change between 2020 and 2024. The trend was even more pronounced in battleground states, including Arizona, where President Joe Biden won over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 with a slim majority. As of September 2023, Issue One reported that 12 out of 15 Arizona counties had new election officials since November 2020, covering 98 percent of the state population. Such turnover means a loss in institutional knowledge, which is especially important in a time-crunched field like elections.
Even as their job gets harder, election officials are trying to bolster trust in the system. Educating the press about the checks and safeguards in their processes is a part of this effort.
Election officials are trying to get people not to believe everything they see and hear. They also don’t want to scare voters and election workers into believing nothing they see or hear. They’re walking a fine line. “Part of that sweet spot is getting people to be vigilant but not mistrustful,” says Fontes. “Vigilant in that they’re going to look out for the stuff that isn’t real, but not mistrustful so that they don’t lose confidence in everything, which is kind of counterproductive to what our mission is in the first place.”
Officials want to avoid a scenario where voters throw their hands up in the air and just don’t vote. “It used to be, ‘They’re all corrupt,’” said Susan Lapsley, elections security advisor for the region covering Arizona at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA).
These days, she says, that kind of low-grade nihilism comes mostly in the form of “I don’t know what’s real.”
How much of a role will AI play in the 2024 elections? Will 2024 be as rocky as 2020? Will Arizona become a battleground of misinformation and distrust again? Arizona is trying to prepare for all scenarios. “What exactly is going to happen? We’re not sure,” Fontes said. “What are we best preparing for? Everything. Except Godzilla.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes led a tabletop exercise for journalists to role-play as election officials to understand the speed and scale of AI threats they face. | Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge

The job has never been harder, and the threats have never been stranger.

It’s the morning of Election Day in Arizona, and a message has just come in from the secretary of state’s office telling you that a new court order requires polling locations to stay open until 9PM. As a county election official, you find the time extension strange, but the familiar voice on the phone feels reassuring — you’ve talked to this official before.

Just hours later, you receive an email telling you that the message was fake. In fact, polls must now close immediately, even though it’s only the early afternoon. The email tells you to submit your election results as soon as possible — strange since the law requires you to wait an hour after polls close or until all results from the day have been tabulated to submit.

This is the sort of whiplash and confusion election officials expect to face in 2024. The upcoming presidential election is taking place under heightened public scrutiny, as a dwindling public workforce navigates an onslaught of deceptive (and sometimes AI-generated) communications, as well as physical and digital threats.

The confusion played out in an Arizona conference room in early May as part of an exercise for journalists who were invited to play election officials for the day. The subject matter — AI threats in elections — was novel, but the invitation itself was unusual. The entire event was unusual. Why is the Arizona secretary of state reaching out to journalists months in advance of the election?

During the 2020 election, Arizona swung blue, tipping the election to Joe Biden. Fox News forecast the win well ahead of other news outlets, angering the Trump campaign. Trump and his supporters pointed to unsubstantiated incidents of voter fraud and later filed (then dropped) a suit against the state demanding that ballots be reviewed. Later, Republicans commissioned an audit of the votes, which ultimately upheld the accuracy of the original tabulation. And only last Friday, Rudy Giuliani was served with an indictment in which he is charged with pressuring Arizona officials to change the outcome of the 2020 election in favor of Trump.

Election officials have been on the receiving end of unprecedented harassment. As recently as February, a California man was arrested for a threatening message he allegedly left on the personal cell phone of an election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, in November 2022.

The aftershocks of 2020 have not yet faded for election officials, and yet, the next presidential election is already on the horizon. Arizona officials are proactively seeking to restore confidence in the process. There’s a lot on the line for them. Unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud or election interference are dangers to democratic stability. But for the officials that end up in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories, their personal safety is also at risk.

Journalists were invited to the role-playing event as part of an effort to educate the public not just about the threats that election officials are preparing for but also about the scale and seriousness of the preparation itself.

“We want to make sure in this that we have done everything that we can to make 2024 the best election that [it] possibly can be,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said at the start of the day’s events. “And we’re facing the kinds of threats that no one has ever seen before.” The proliferation of generative AI tools presents the latest set of challenges for election workers because of how easily and quickly these tools can pump out convincing fodder for sophisticated social engineering schemes.

The exercise being conducted was a version of a program created for actual Arizona election officials, who participated in the training back in December. Law enforcement is expected to also undergo the training soon. The Arizona secretary of state’s office spearheaded the initiative to expose election officials to the kinds of threats — particularly related to AI — that they might see in the lead-up to the elections.

Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge
Susan Lapsley is the elections security advisor for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency region that includes Arizona.

“It is unnerving to be where we’re at,” Fontes said, referencing an AI-generated deepfake of himself that played for attendees, showing the secretary of state seamlessly speaking both German and French — two languages he doesn’t speak fluently.

Fontes said he hopes to inoculate election officials against some of the known AI threats, giving them a baseline wariness like most people nowadays would have for an email from a “Nigerian prince” seeking some extra cash. The goal, according to Angie Cloutier, security operations manager at the secretary of state’s office, “is to desensitize election officials to the newness and the weirdness” of AI technology.

Throughout the day, reporters viewed presentations from AI experts demonstrating how easy it is to use free online tools to create disinformation at scale.

One presentation used the LinkedIn profile of a reporter in the room to write a personalized email to the reporter with an AI text generator. The email included a phishing link in the signature masquerading as a LinkedIn profile URL. Later, the presenter used an image generator to put the reporter in a prison jumpsuit and attach that image to a fake article with false allegations, on a webpage designed to look like The New York Times. They also used a podcast recording to clone his voice to say whatever the presenter inputted.

Reporters were also presented with timed exercises. One condensed the months before Election Day into less than an hour and had reporters (role-playing election officials) choosing how to spend a $30,000 budget on a list of fortifications ranging from installing a firewall for the elections website to providing active shooter training or mental health resources to election workers. As time ticked by, organizers unveiled one new crisis after another: an influx of public information requests, a disinformation campaign, complaints of some voters failing to receive their mailed ballots, and sketchy messages asking for login credentials. Some of the obstacles could be avoided by picking the right fortifications, though the budget constrained how many each group could buy. Election Day itself was simulated in a similar — but shorter — timed exercise. The speed of the exercise was overwhelming, with problems popping up before we’d solved the last one. Actual election workers, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State C. Murphy Hebert said, were given even less time in the simulation.

Organizers wanted to simulate the stress and time crunch election officials feel while handling a wide range of threats while administering an election. “We prepare for the unexpected. And the way that we do that is by training ourselves to think in crisis mode,” said Hebert.

The work, for election officials, is very much like the myth of Sisyphus, Fontes told The Verge in an interview after the event. (In ancient Greek lore, Sisyphus was condemned to spend eternity in the afterlife rolling a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again.) “It’s just like, every year, there’s another set of folks who just want to dismantle our democracy because they’re upset about political outcomes,” he said.

Even in the roughly five-month gap between the election officials’ training and the media exercise I was invited to, new AI tools and capabilities have become readily available. In an environment where the threats are so rapidly evolving, officials need to quickly develop skill sets and heuristics that will aid them in evaluating threats that may not even exist yet.

Fontes said that even though the technology evolves, the training prepares election workers to understand its overall trajectory. “When people look at it for the first time now, they’re like, ‘Wow, this is really scary.’ The folks that saw it in December are like, ‘Okay, this is a logical progression from what there was,’ so they can be a little more thoughtful about this,” he said. “Is it challenging to keep up with the changes in technology? Absolutely. But that’s part of the job.”

Although they are preparing for AI to be used against them, Fontes and his colleagues are also open to using the same tools to make their work more efficient as they balance constrained resources. Fontes sees AI as just another tool that could be used for good or bad. When asked about the role of AI companies in ensuring their products are used responsibly, he said he’s “not in the business of telling people how to utilize their tools or how to develop their tools.”

“I think there’s enough good uses in AI, not just for people, but for the economy, that that needs to be developed,” said Fontes. He’s open to what automation can do effectively. It’s understandable — election officials have never been more pressed for time or resources.

As the threats to the electoral process widen in range and complexity, the job of an election official gets increasingly complex, even as their ranks dwindle in number.

AI is just the latest challenge to the work of administering free and fair elections in the US. Both tech experts and election officials emphasized at the event that AI isn’t all good or bad and doesn’t necessarily outweigh the importance of all the other threats they must prepare for. The office chose to focus on AI threats in particular this year because they’re so new.

Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for the Arizona secretary of state, said his role is more expansive than it used to be. “It used to be that a CISO was just focused on cybersecurity. But when I started [in] elections, that was not the case,” said Moore, who’s been working in the field since 2019. AI and online disinformation can fuel physical threats, meaning security teams need to think holistically about how to protect elections.

Photo by Ash Ponders for The Verge
Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for the Arizona secretary of state, said that title encompasses a greater range of threats than it used to.

Meanwhile, election officials are doing more with less. This isn’t by choice. Unprecedented scrutiny and outright harassment of election officials during the 2020 election have contributed to significant turnover in election workers. Giuliani was most recently indicted for his alleged activities in Arizona, but the problem extends far beyond Arizona. Two Georgia election workers, for instance, were the victims of such extreme harassment that a jury awarded them $148 million in damages in a defamation suit against Rudy Giuliani after he admitted to falsely accusing them of ballot fraud.

Last year, nonpartisan group Issue One found that 40 percent of chief local election officials in the western states would change between 2020 and 2024. The trend was even more pronounced in battleground states, including Arizona, where President Joe Biden won over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 with a slim majority. As of September 2023, Issue One reported that 12 out of 15 Arizona counties had new election officials since November 2020, covering 98 percent of the state population. Such turnover means a loss in institutional knowledge, which is especially important in a time-crunched field like elections.

Even as their job gets harder, election officials are trying to bolster trust in the system. Educating the press about the checks and safeguards in their processes is a part of this effort.

Election officials are trying to get people not to believe everything they see and hear. They also don’t want to scare voters and election workers into believing nothing they see or hear. They’re walking a fine line. “Part of that sweet spot is getting people to be vigilant but not mistrustful,” says Fontes. “Vigilant in that they’re going to look out for the stuff that isn’t real, but not mistrustful so that they don’t lose confidence in everything, which is kind of counterproductive to what our mission is in the first place.”

Officials want to avoid a scenario where voters throw their hands up in the air and just don’t vote. “It used to be, ‘They’re all corrupt,’” said Susan Lapsley, elections security advisor for the region covering Arizona at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA).

These days, she says, that kind of low-grade nihilism comes mostly in the form of “I don’t know what’s real.”

How much of a role will AI play in the 2024 elections? Will 2024 be as rocky as 2020? Will Arizona become a battleground of misinformation and distrust again? Arizona is trying to prepare for all scenarios. “What exactly is going to happen? We’re not sure,” Fontes said. “What are we best preparing for? Everything. Except Godzilla.”

Read More 

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge

A security lapse could let millions of college students do free laundry, thanks to one company. That’s because of a vulnerability that two University of California, Santa Cruz students found in internet-connected washing machines in commercial use in several countries, according to TechCrunch.
The two students, Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko, apparently exploited an API for the machines’ app to do things like remotely command them to work without payment and update a laundry account to show it had millions of dollars in it. The company that owns the machines, CSC ServiceWorks, claims to have more than a million laundry and vending machines in service at colleges, multi-housing communities, laundromats, and more in the US, Canada, and Europe.

CSC never responded when Sherbrooke and Taranenko reported the vulnerability via emails and a phone call in January, TechCrunch writes. Despite that, the students told the outlet that the company “quietly wiped out” their false millions after they contacted it.
The lack of response led them to tell others about their findings. That includes that the company has a published list of commands, which the two told TechCrunch enables connecting to all of CSC’s network-connected laundry machines. CSC ServiceWorks didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
CSC’s vulnerability is a good reminder that the security situation with the internet of things still isn’t sorted out. For the exploit the students found, maybe CSC shoulders the risk, but in other cases, lax cybersecurity practices have made it possible for hackers or company contractors to view strangers’ security camera footage or gain access to smart plugs.
Often, security researchers find these security holes and report them before they can be exploited in the wild. But that’s not helpful if the company responsible for them doesn’t respond.

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge

A security lapse could let millions of college students do free laundry, thanks to one company. That’s because of a vulnerability that two University of California, Santa Cruz students found in internet-connected washing machines in commercial use in several countries, according to TechCrunch.

The two students, Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko, apparently exploited an API for the machines’ app to do things like remotely command them to work without payment and update a laundry account to show it had millions of dollars in it. The company that owns the machines, CSC ServiceWorks, claims to have more than a million laundry and vending machines in service at colleges, multi-housing communities, laundromats, and more in the US, Canada, and Europe.

CSC never responded when Sherbrooke and Taranenko reported the vulnerability via emails and a phone call in January, TechCrunch writes. Despite that, the students told the outlet that the company “quietly wiped out” their false millions after they contacted it.

The lack of response led them to tell others about their findings. That includes that the company has a published list of commands, which the two told TechCrunch enables connecting to all of CSC’s network-connected laundry machines. CSC ServiceWorks didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

CSC’s vulnerability is a good reminder that the security situation with the internet of things still isn’t sorted out. For the exploit the students found, maybe CSC shoulders the risk, but in other cases, lax cybersecurity practices have made it possible for hackers or company contractors to view strangers’ security camera footage or gain access to smart plugs.

Often, security researchers find these security holes and report them before they can be exploited in the wild. But that’s not helpful if the company responsible for them doesn’t respond.

Read More 

A 2023 Mac Pro. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Mac Studio and Mac Pro aren’t due for an upgrade to Apple’s M4 chip until the middle of next year. That means both machines will still be on Apple’s M2 generation this year, unlike all other Macs except the MacBook Air, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote to Power On subscribers today.
Throughout 2024, though, all of Apple’s laptops (except the MacBook Air) will move to the M4 chip that the company just gave the iPad Pro, Gurman writes. Amusingly, this herky-jerky chip upgrade cycle means that the iPad Pro is currently the single-core performance champ of Apple’s lineup — and it will continue to be for about another year, when compared to the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

Screenshot: Geekbench

It’s not even close, according to comparisons on Geekbench, which regularly show the iPad Pro outdoing the the M2 Ultra by roughly 25 percent. If we want to be silly about it, even the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip is about on par with the M2 Ultra in single-core CPU power. Neither matters — the M2 Ultra will still smoke either when multiple cores are needed, and that’s where it really counts. (Apparently that’s not the case for my M1 Max Mac Studio, which puts up slightly lower multi-core numbers than the new iPad Pro.)
This is a silly comparison, of course — The current crop of Mac Studios and Mac Pros are incredible computers that hold more RAM, have more ports, and won’t throttle as quickly as the iPad Pro, even with that heat-conducting Apple logo. They also don’t have an operating system that stands squarely in the way of pushing their hardware. And high-end Mac users should be used to waiting a while between revisions. Still, I’m sure more than a few people will appreciate the upgrade when it comes.

A 2023 Mac Pro. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Mac Studio and Mac Pro aren’t due for an upgrade to Apple’s M4 chip until the middle of next year. That means both machines will still be on Apple’s M2 generation this year, unlike all other Macs except the MacBook Air, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman wrote to Power On subscribers today.

Throughout 2024, though, all of Apple’s laptops (except the MacBook Air) will move to the M4 chip that the company just gave the iPad Pro, Gurman writes. Amusingly, this herky-jerky chip upgrade cycle means that the iPad Pro is currently the single-core performance champ of Apple’s lineup — and it will continue to be for about another year, when compared to the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

Screenshot: Geekbench

It’s not even close, according to comparisons on Geekbench, which regularly show the iPad Pro outdoing the the M2 Ultra by roughly 25 percent. If we want to be silly about it, even the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip is about on par with the M2 Ultra in single-core CPU power. Neither matters — the M2 Ultra will still smoke either when multiple cores are needed, and that’s where it really counts. (Apparently that’s not the case for my M1 Max Mac Studio, which puts up slightly lower multi-core numbers than the new iPad Pro.)

This is a silly comparison, of course — The current crop of Mac Studios and Mac Pros are incredible computers that hold more RAM, have more ports, and won’t throttle as quickly as the iPad Pro, even with that heat-conducting Apple logo. They also don’t have an operating system that stands squarely in the way of pushing their hardware. And high-end Mac users should be used to waiting a while between revisions. Still, I’m sure more than a few people will appreciate the upgrade when it comes.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sonos is teasing, both in emails and on social media, that its “most requested product ever” is “coming soon” on May 21st (this Tuesday). This, of course, is almost certainly the Sonos Ace, its first wireless headphones.
Sonos has been expected to launch the Ace in June, but given the company’s “most requested” phrasing here and the fact that the headphones recently appeared for sale by authorized dealer Schuurman, it seems they’re coming sooner than that.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sonos (@sonos)

A launch this week could help Sonos with some of the ire surrounding the roll-out of its new app earlier this month. The app was ostensibly created in part to support the Sonos Ace, but is missing key features like a sleep timer or those related to local library management. And getting those features back in the app may take months.

Image: Schuurman

Sonos is also gearing up to release the Roam 2, likewise rumored for June. That speaker will look nearly identical to the original Roam and Roam SL, but with a color-matched “Sonos” and a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button. For all its good qualities, the first Roam had some annoying drawbacks, like requiring Wi-Fi setup before you can use Bluetooth, and an unintuitive pairing process even when you can.

Image: Sonos

The Roam and Ace aside, there’s not much else that the company is likely to announce this week. Rumor has it that Sonos is preparing to release a TV streaming device, but not until late this year at the earliest. Same goes for its rumored Sonos Arc soundbar. And chances seem pretty that its “most requested product ever” is the next Sonos Sub or the business-oriented Era 100. The headphones make the most sense and would kick off the first of four new product categories the company is supposed to be stepping into.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sonos is teasing, both in emails and on social media, that its “most requested product ever” is “coming soon” on May 21st (this Tuesday). This, of course, is almost certainly the Sonos Ace, its first wireless headphones.

Sonos has been expected to launch the Ace in June, but given the company’s “most requested” phrasing here and the fact that the headphones recently appeared for sale by authorized dealer Schuurman, it seems they’re coming sooner than that.

A launch this week could help Sonos with some of the ire surrounding the roll-out of its new app earlier this month. The app was ostensibly created in part to support the Sonos Ace, but is missing key features like a sleep timer or those related to local library management. And getting those features back in the app may take months.

Image: Schuurman

Sonos is also gearing up to release the Roam 2, likewise rumored for June. That speaker will look nearly identical to the original Roam and Roam SL, but with a color-matched “Sonos” and a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button. For all its good qualities, the first Roam had some annoying drawbacks, like requiring Wi-Fi setup before you can use Bluetooth, and an unintuitive pairing process even when you can.

Image: Sonos

The Roam and Ace aside, there’s not much else that the company is likely to announce this week. Rumor has it that Sonos is preparing to release a TV streaming device, but not until late this year at the earliest. Same goes for its rumored Sonos Arc soundbar. And chances seem pretty that its “most requested product ever” is the next Sonos Sub or the business-oriented Era 100. The headphones make the most sense and would kick off the first of four new product categories the company is supposed to be stepping into.

Read More 

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge

As video games and movies become more immersive, it may start to become apparent what sensations are missing in the experience. Is there a point in Gran Turismo that you wish you could smell the burning rubber and engine exhaust? Would an experience playing beer pong in Horizon Worlds not be complete unless you could taste the hops?
On this episode of The Vergecast, the latest in our miniseries about the five senses of video games, we’re tackling the topics of smell and taste in video games — and whether either could actually enhance the virtual experience for gamers. In other words: Smellovision is back for a new generation of media.

First, we try out a product (actually available to buy today) called the GameScent, an AI-powered scent machine that syncs with your gaming and movie-watching experience. The GameScent works by listening in on the sound design of the content you’re playing or watching and deploying GameScent-approved fragrances that accompany those sounds. We tried the GameScent with games like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing to see if this is really hinting at a scent-infused gaming future.
On the taste side, we speak to Nimesha Ranasinghe, an assistant professor at the University of Maine working on taste sensations and taste simulation in virtual reality experiences. Ranasinghe walks us through his research on sending electrical pulses to your tongue to manipulate different taste sensations like salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. He also talks about how his research led to experimental gadgets like a “virtual cocktail,” which would allow you to send curated tasting and drinking experiences through digital signals.
If you want to know more about the world of smelling and tasting digital content, here are some links to get you started:

The sights, smells, and sprays of Iron Man 3 in 4DX
VR pioneer Jaron Lanier on dystopia, empathy, and the future of the internet
From Wired: A Brief History of Smell-O-Vision

From The History of Information: “Scent of Mystery,” the First and Only Use of Smell-O-Vision
From The Scent Company: The iSmell story

From Linus Tech Tips: Smell-O-Vision is REAL

From The Ghost Howls: The sense of taste in virtual reality

From New Scientist: Virtual lemonade sends colour and taste to a glass of water

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge

As video games and movies become more immersive, it may start to become apparent what sensations are missing in the experience. Is there a point in Gran Turismo that you wish you could smell the burning rubber and engine exhaust? Would an experience playing beer pong in Horizon Worlds not be complete unless you could taste the hops?

On this episode of The Vergecast, the latest in our miniseries about the five senses of video games, we’re tackling the topics of smell and taste in video games — and whether either could actually enhance the virtual experience for gamers. In other words: Smellovision is back for a new generation of media.

First, we try out a product (actually available to buy today) called the GameScent, an AI-powered scent machine that syncs with your gaming and movie-watching experience. The GameScent works by listening in on the sound design of the content you’re playing or watching and deploying GameScent-approved fragrances that accompany those sounds. We tried the GameScent with games like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing to see if this is really hinting at a scent-infused gaming future.

On the taste side, we speak to Nimesha Ranasinghe, an assistant professor at the University of Maine working on taste sensations and taste simulation in virtual reality experiences. Ranasinghe walks us through his research on sending electrical pulses to your tongue to manipulate different taste sensations like salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. He also talks about how his research led to experimental gadgets like a “virtual cocktail,” which would allow you to send curated tasting and drinking experiences through digital signals.

If you want to know more about the world of smelling and tasting digital content, here are some links to get you started:

The sights, smells, and sprays of Iron Man 3 in 4DX
VR pioneer Jaron Lanier on dystopia, empathy, and the future of the internet
From Wired: A Brief History of Smell-O-Vision

From The History of Information: “Scent of Mystery,” the First and Only Use of Smell-O-Vision
From The Scent Company: The iSmell story

From Linus Tech Tips: Smell-O-Vision is REAL

From The Ghost Howls: The sense of taste in virtual reality

From New Scientist: Virtual lemonade sends colour and taste to a glass of water

Read More 

Screenshot: YouTube

Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company is flying humans to space for the first time since 2022. Blue Origin hasn’t carried out a crewed launch since 2022, and is getting ready to do so once more after being required to implement 21 fixes required by the Federal Aviation Administration last year. Six human beings are flying aboard its New Shepard rocket today, including Ed Wright, the first Black astronaut candidate, who was selected by US President John F. Kennedy, but never made it into space.
The five other passengers on the flight are Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura. The company posted just after 8AM ET that New Shepard was vertical on the launchpad, and that it had updated its targeted launch time to 10:13AM ET.

Today’s flight will be its sixth one with an actual crew on board. Blue Origin paused its space tourism flights in 2022 after a booster failed on an uncrewed flight, prompting an FAA investigation that led to the US regulator’s recommendations.

Screenshot: YouTube

Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company is flying humans to space for the first time since 2022.

Blue Origin hasn’t carried out a crewed launch since 2022, and is getting ready to do so once more after being required to implement 21 fixes required by the Federal Aviation Administration last year. Six human beings are flying aboard its New Shepard rocket today, including Ed Wright, the first Black astronaut candidate, who was selected by US President John F. Kennedy, but never made it into space.

The five other passengers on the flight are Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura. The company posted just after 8AM ET that New Shepard was vertical on the launchpad, and that it had updated its targeted launch time to 10:13AM ET.

Today’s flight will be its sixth one with an actual crew on board. Blue Origin paused its space tourism flights in 2022 after a booster failed on an uncrewed flight, prompting an FAA investigation that led to the US regulator’s recommendations.

Read More 

Image: John William Evelyn

“I couldn’t walk away from the pen and ink thing,” says John Evelyn, creator of The Collage Atlas, a dreamlike storybook adventure recently released on Steam. The entire game is hand drawn, from tiny flowers and insects to huge buildings and the clouds that float over them. Exploring this world unwraps its dreamlike story, with environments folding out in response to your approach.
“I had been drawing for many years before that and I’d always draw with ink straight away, without any kind of prior pencil work or sketching,” he says. “I liked all the incidental details and the accidents that come out along the way.” He compares it to improv music — “actually, sometimes it goes horribly wrong!” — but says that the feeling of getting into a stride and being surprised by unexpected outcomes was important to the whole game.
It’s because of this that the art style underpins the rest of the experience. Where individual pieces of game art can fall into the background, The Collage Atlas requests your attention to detail — and rewards it. At the very start of the game, a pinwheel appears from a grassy plain; look at it, and it begins spinning. It was one of the first things that Evelyn created, for what was originally an app meant to accompany a picture book.

The book, a follow-up to a self-published work called Asleep As The Breeze, was intended to explore themes of agency and the feeling of disempowerment that can come from traumatic or chaotic life experiences. “You can start to feel like life is something that’s kind of happening to you rather than something that you have meaningful control or authorship of,” says Evelyn.
While experimenting with that theme, “everything clicked into place,” when the pinwheel spun, he says. “It suddenly made sense that, actually, this was the crux of what I was trying to talk about. That, actually, even when it doesn’t feel like it, just your presence within the world is genuinely meaningful and actually does have an impact on it. Even your gaze and your observation is also meaningful.”
“Even your gaze and your observation is also meaningful.”
Evelyn built on the app idea for a short art experience, which he exhibited at the Leftfield Collection at UK gaming convention EGX in 2016. At the time, he says, he had no intention of continuing to expand it into a game that would eventually make it to Apple Arcade and then Steam. Instead, he says, it was “something that I personally felt like I really needed to do.”
“I had gone through a pretty bad run of years,” he says, “and I was finding it difficult to find media that spoke to me about the things I was experiencing.” Other media seemed deeply specific to others’ situations, whereas Evelyn wanted something broader. “Things that just nudge at universal themes I find really useful.”
At the show, people connected with his piece. In particular, Evelyn was swayed by the attention of “business-type people,” who would ask him how long the full game would end up being. “In my mind, I was like, ‘Oh, do you actually think that people would want that?’” He says he was swayed by them because, if they were coming at it from a “fairly cold financial standpoint” and thought there would be an audience for it, he might be able to believe it himself.

Image: John William Evelyn

He knew that he wanted the experience to be something that could “slowly absorb you” — meaning a couple of hours, rather than 10 minutes. For the next four years, he threw everything at filling out that scope. Although he had experience and knowledge from a career that included time making Flash games, working in freelance illustration, and releasing music EPs, he also had a lot to learn. “The day that I started The Collage Atlas as it is now, not the little demo version, that was the very first day I opened up [game engine] Unity,” he says.
In order to convert illustrations to 3D, a process he had never done before, he began by creating the models in Unity before printing their maps and drawing in the details with pen. Once scanned back in, those textures were readded to the model to create the world of The Collage Atlas and everything that makes it up.
“Works don’t have any kind of permanence — they can just vanish.”
After nearly five years of work, in 2020, the game was released on Apple Arcade, but in 2023 it was delisted when the exclusivity period ended. Not long afterward, even people who had downloaded it weren’t able to launch it. “This is the sad thing about the way our kind of creative mediums are going: works don’t have any kind of permanence — they can just vanish,” he says. Evelyn felt he owed it to his past self who did all that work to make sure the game was still available and recently launched it on Steam.
After the game’s Apple Arcade release, Evelyn thought he might be done working on games. “I spoke to one of my friends who’s a AAA developer and I said, ‘That’s it. That’s me done. I’m never doing this again.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you six months.’” Almost exactly six months later, he started working on his next game, The Wings of Sycamore. Also hand-drawn, it’s something of a spiritual sequel to The Collage Atlas.
“Atlas is trying to explore the idea of falling inwards,” he says. “Wings of Sycamore is about flight. After you manage to climb back out of the depths, hopefully, that’s when you just have the pure joy of flying.”

Image: John William Evelyn

“I couldn’t walk away from the pen and ink thing,” says John Evelyn, creator of The Collage Atlas, a dreamlike storybook adventure recently released on Steam. The entire game is hand drawn, from tiny flowers and insects to huge buildings and the clouds that float over them. Exploring this world unwraps its dreamlike story, with environments folding out in response to your approach.

“I had been drawing for many years before that […] and I’d always draw with ink straight away, without any kind of prior pencil work or sketching,” he says. “I liked all the incidental details and the accidents that come out along the way.” He compares it to improv music — “actually, sometimes it goes horribly wrong!” — but says that the feeling of getting into a stride and being surprised by unexpected outcomes was important to the whole game.

It’s because of this that the art style underpins the rest of the experience. Where individual pieces of game art can fall into the background, The Collage Atlas requests your attention to detail — and rewards it. At the very start of the game, a pinwheel appears from a grassy plain; look at it, and it begins spinning. It was one of the first things that Evelyn created, for what was originally an app meant to accompany a picture book.

The book, a follow-up to a self-published work called Asleep As The Breeze, was intended to explore themes of agency and the feeling of disempowerment that can come from traumatic or chaotic life experiences. “You can start to feel like life is something that’s kind of happening to you rather than something that you have meaningful control or authorship of,” says Evelyn.

While experimenting with that theme, “everything clicked into place,” when the pinwheel spun, he says. “It suddenly made sense that, actually, this was the crux of what I was trying to talk about. That, actually, even when it doesn’t feel like it, just your presence within the world is genuinely meaningful and actually does have an impact on it. Even your gaze and your observation is also meaningful.”

Evelyn built on the app idea for a short art experience, which he exhibited at the Leftfield Collection at UK gaming convention EGX in 2016. At the time, he says, he had no intention of continuing to expand it into a game that would eventually make it to Apple Arcade and then Steam. Instead, he says, it was “something that I personally felt like I really needed to do.”

“I had gone through a pretty bad run of years,” he says, “and I was finding it difficult to find media that spoke to me about the things I was experiencing.” Other media seemed deeply specific to others’ situations, whereas Evelyn wanted something broader. “Things that just nudge at universal themes I find really useful.”

At the show, people connected with his piece. In particular, Evelyn was swayed by the attention of “business-type people,” who would ask him how long the full game would end up being. “In my mind, I was like, ‘Oh, do you actually think that people would want that?’” He says he was swayed by them because, if they were coming at it from a “fairly cold financial standpoint” and thought there would be an audience for it, he might be able to believe it himself.

He knew that he wanted the experience to be something that could “slowly absorb you” — meaning a couple of hours, rather than 10 minutes. For the next four years, he threw everything at filling out that scope. Although he had experience and knowledge from a career that included time making Flash games, working in freelance illustration, and releasing music EPs, he also had a lot to learn. “The day that I started The Collage Atlas as it is now, not the little demo version, that was the very first day I opened up [game engine] Unity,” he says.

In order to convert illustrations to 3D, a process he had never done before, he began by creating the models in Unity before printing their maps and drawing in the details with pen. Once scanned back in, those textures were readded to the model to create the world of The Collage Atlas and everything that makes it up.

After nearly five years of work, in 2020, the game was released on Apple Arcade, but in 2023 it was delisted when the exclusivity period ended. Not long afterward, even people who had downloaded it weren’t able to launch it. “This is the sad thing about the way our kind of creative mediums are going: works don’t have any kind of permanence — they can just vanish,” he says. Evelyn felt he owed it to his past self who did all that work to make sure the game was still available and recently launched it on Steam.

After the game’s Apple Arcade release, Evelyn thought he might be done working on games. “I spoke to one of my friends who’s a AAA developer and I said, ‘That’s it. That’s me done. I’m never doing this again.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you six months.’” Almost exactly six months later, he started working on his next game, The Wings of Sycamore. Also hand-drawn, it’s something of a spiritual sequel to The Collage Atlas.

“Atlas is trying to explore the idea of falling inwards,” he says. “Wings of Sycamore is about flight. After you manage to climb back out of the depths, hopefully, that’s when you just have the pure joy of flying.”

Read More 

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 38, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and you can also read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been writing about iPads and the future of Google, watching American Fiction and Bodkin, rewatching Her because of… reasons, endlessly replaying the songs of Windows95man, learning how to make better sandwiches, testing Claude for AI stuff, and listening to the new-old Childish Gambino album.
I also have for you a new AI model, literally thousands of new Lego pieces, a new way to Google, the fanciest mop you’ve ever seen in your life, more emulators for iOS, and much more.
And I have a question: What’s your favorite mini-game on the internet? I’m thinking about things like Wordle, The Wikipedia Game, Sudoku, Really Bad Chess, Name Drop, and a million others — the kinds of things you might play every morning with your coffee. I want to compile a huge list of everybody’s favorites, the sillier the better! I’d love to hear everything in your rotation. Reply to this email, email me at installer@theverge.com, or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — and tell me all your faves.
All right, lots to do this week. So much AI! Let’s go.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, and tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

GPT-4o. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about OpenAI’s event this week, with the Her-like demo of the new voice assistant. It’s really impressive, kind of weird, and both delightful and creepy? I’m so torn. But the tech is impressive, and every AI app I’ve seen is already rushing to support GPT-4o.

ChatGPT for Mac. Desktop AI chat apps are a dime a dozen and mostly all just wrappers on a webpage. But the new ChatGPT app is a bit more: it lets you share your screen and ask questions about it, which strikes me as a very handy way to get AI help with something. “How do I fix this?” is a question I ask ChatGPT a lot.
“Historical AI & Rewriting the Past on TikTok.” Have you seen those videos on TikTok of an AI-generated emperor or whatever, telling you a salacious story about world history? They’re fun! And messy! And frequently just lies! Love this video on how it all happened and what it all means.

Lego Barad-dûr. Five thousand, four hundred and seventy-one pieces. Pair this with the Rivendell set Lego released last year, and you’ll spend about $1,000 and one very happy lifetime putting together a truly epic Lord of the Rings setup.

Google’s “Web” filter. I have a lot of big-picture thoughts about what AI is doing to web search and what that means for the internet, but I also just miss when Google was a bunch of links and not a thousand videos, X posts, and shopping links. The new “Web” filter is like old Google brought back to life — not right for everything but very useful.

“​​I Started a New Business. It Didn’t Go Well…” I’m a fan of Ali Abdaal’s (he was in Installer a while back!) and really loved this video. He shares a lot of the kinds of stories you don’t hear about building products, failure, mistakes, challenges, and what happens when you just get it wrong. Lots to learn from this one.

Setapp Mobile. If you don’t already know about Setapp, a subscription service that gets you access to hundreds of Mac and iOS apps, you should check it out. Setapp Mobile, its new alternative app store, is EU-only for now, but it’s still a fascinating look at what’s possible when you open up the smartphone.

The Dyson WashG1. Explaining Dyson stuff always sounds so silly — “yeah, it’s like 4x the price of all its competitors, and yeah, it’s just a cleaning thing, but dude, it’s SICK.” But… this $700 ultra-fancy mop sounds sick. I can’t help myself.

Hello, Dot. A new game from the Pokémon Go and Peridot folks, designed just for the Meta Quest. There’s not actually a ton to the game itself, but it’s a pretty great mixed reality tech demo, and these things are just fun to play around with.

RetroArch. The latest in an increasingly long list of great emulator apps coming to the iPhone. This one’s not the most user-friendly, but it does support a huge number of consoles and games — and it works on the Apple TV!

Screen share
My favorite new iPhone app this week is definitely Bebop, which is a really clever thing: it’s an app for taking notes, but it’s designed specifically to be used as a quick way to write something down for people who use tools like Obsidian, which is great but heavy and not good for short capture. Bebop just pipes stuff into a folder of text files, which you can read with any other app you want. I’m already using it a dozen times a day.
Bebop was created by Jack Cheng, who you might know as the author of books like The Many Masks of Andy Zhou and the very fun newsletter Sunday Letter. I’ve been a fan of Jack’s work for a while and figured his app launch was a good time to get him in Installer.
Here’s Jack’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 14.
The wallpaper: My partner, Julia, taken at one of my favorite places: Kresge Court inside the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The apps: Photos, Gmail, Arc, Phone, Messages, Bebop, Blackmagic Camera.
Lock screen widgets: Fantastical, Weather, and Lightroom’s camera widget. I usually include a photo when I send out my Sunday newsletter, and I loathe the way newer-generation iPhones over-process everything. So I use this when I want a RAW image for later editing (and don’t have my Ricoh GR III on me).
Homescreen: A Widgetsmith photo widget that shows my workweek in index cards. I’m doing my first 12-Week Year and also experimenting with the cards for time-blocking. I plan out my week on Monday morning, then the cards stay on the table next to my desk. I refer to them when I journal, too. Both the 12-Week Year and card system I first saw in Dan Catt’s oddly therapeutic Weeknotes.
Dock: Third from the left is my own file-based notes app, Bebop! I built it after frustrations with over-bloated notes apps that deprioritized capture. Bebop’s my first iOS app, and it felt so good to be able to give it that prime dock spot.
When Apple announced Final Cut Camera, I wondered if there was something similar for DaVinci Resolve, and it turned out there was: Blackmagic Camera. I’d love to do some short video updates for my YouTube channel (which currently just has older videos of me reading from one of my children’s novels). But that’s a big project, for a future 12-week stretch. In the meantime, I’m accumulating little clips and figuring out a good workflow.
I have two other iOS screens: One for reading and audio apps (the only screen visible in Sleep Focus mode) and another for messaging and social media. Everything else is in the App Library. I use search a lot.
I also asked Jack to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he shared:

The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film is the best book I’ve read so far this year. It has so many insights on writing and making art, and I love the interview format — especially when the two conversation partners (the other is author Michael Ondaatje) are experts in their own domains. Which is why I’m also a Decoder fan!

Completely Arbortrary is, to me, a perfect podcast. Each hour-long episode is about a different tree, and for hosts, you have a dendrologist (Casey Clapp) paired with a musician / comedian (Alex Crowson) who stands in for the novice listener. Talk about evergreen content. (sorry)
I’m eagerly awaiting my preorder of Robin Sloan’s new novel, Moonbound. This happens startlingly regularly: I’m at the bookstore when a cover catches my eye. I read the flap copy and first few pages and get sucked right in. Then, I flip over to the back, and there it is: a Robin Sloan blurb. Robin has such a singular taste for the interestingly weird / weirdly interesting. He’s also a serial appreciator of things, which I appreciate!
My partner and I just finished the third season of Master of None, eminently watchable in large part thanks to Amy Williams’ gorgeous production design. The seasonal arc is an infertility storyline involving Lena Waithe and Naomi Ackie’s characters, which, because of our own fertility journey, hit a little close to home at first. But I’m happy that after two years of trying, Julia and I are expecting our first child this summer.

Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For more recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.
“So every once in a while, I manage to get a hard drive full to the rim and need to clean up. That’s when I fall back on a really old piece of software from the Dutch University of Eindhoven called SequoiaView. I don’t think it’s been updated since November 2002, but I still find it the best way to quickly and visually localize big files. I wonder: does anybody else have such an old piece of software that still performs its task for them?” — Jasper
“I’m very late to Balatro and been playing that (and failing — how are people already completing the game and I can’t even get past the basic stakes for some of these decks lol) and trying to finish the new Vampire Survivors DLC.” — Melody
“I just re-downloaded the original StarCraft and can’t stop watching TikTok live videos of people playing some weird Russian Roulette PC game.”
“Downloaded Delta when it officially launched and realized how much I missed playing ‘simpler’ games. Amongst a few others, I was really enjoying Pokémon Fire Red. Fast forward a few days… and the Analogue Pocket had a very timely restock. Nothing to take away from Delta — it’s amazing and massive credits to the developer. I think I just want something a bit more tactile to go all in on some OG games.” — Omesh
“Walkabout Mini Golf on the Meta Quest 3 is pretty awesome.” — Matt
“I’ve found that my screen time can sometimes rocket from using apps like Instagram and Twitter. To solve that, I found Ascent, which adds a sliding distraction screen whenever you try to open the app. You can get Premium for free by Instagramming about them, and it’s worth it because it’s so customizable!” — Leo
“One of Twitch’s / YT’s biggest creators Critical Role just launched their own direct support / streaming service, Beacon, but in contrast to the huge miss that was Watcher doing something similar last month, they aren’t paywalling any existing content. Super interesting move to skip established platforms like Patreon and DIY it. The new content on the platform is really cool for megafans!” – Zach
“Fur and Loathing. I just started listening to this podcast about the gas attack in the 2014 furry convention, and it’s really good!” — Katie
“I’m watching the second half of Clarkson’s Farm season 3. If you’ve never seen it, you’ll be surprised by just how complicated it is to grow something in a field.” — Alan

Signing off
I’ve been sick off and on for most of the last two weeks, which has lots of downsides but one really terrific upside. It’s an infinite excuse to watch TV shows I’ve already seen 100 times! I’ve realized I have a rotation, not on purpose but somehow quite rigid: I watch The Office, then I watch Parks and Recreation, then I watch New Girl, then I watch Community. Sometimes one all the way through and then the next, sometimes a couple of episodes and then bounce around, but it’s almost always in that order. (Schitt’s Creek and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are the honorable mentions — they haven’t quite made it into the official rotation yet, but I love them both.)
Is this just a me thing? Does everyone have a few shows they just kind of instinctively bounce between when you don’t really care what you’re watching? Either way, I highly recommend my rotation. Infinite comedy, perfect for naps.
See you next week!

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 38, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and you can also read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been writing about iPads and the future of Google, watching American Fiction and Bodkin, rewatching Her because of… reasons, endlessly replaying the songs of Windows95man, learning how to make better sandwiches, testing Claude for AI stuff, and listening to the new-old Childish Gambino album.

I also have for you a new AI model, literally thousands of new Lego pieces, a new way to Google, the fanciest mop you’ve ever seen in your life, more emulators for iOS, and much more.

And I have a question: What’s your favorite mini-game on the internet? I’m thinking about things like Wordle, The Wikipedia Game, Sudoku, Really Bad Chess, Name Drop, and a million others — the kinds of things you might play every morning with your coffee. I want to compile a huge list of everybody’s favorites, the sillier the better! I’d love to hear everything in your rotation. Reply to this email, email me at installer@theverge.com, or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — and tell me all your faves.

All right, lots to do this week. So much AI! Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, and tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

GPT-4o. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about OpenAI’s event this week, with the Her-like demo of the new voice assistant. It’s really impressive, kind of weird, and both delightful and creepy? I’m so torn. But the tech is impressive, and every AI app I’ve seen is already rushing to support GPT-4o.

ChatGPT for Mac. Desktop AI chat apps are a dime a dozen and mostly all just wrappers on a webpage. But the new ChatGPT app is a bit more: it lets you share your screen and ask questions about it, which strikes me as a very handy way to get AI help with something. “How do I fix this?” is a question I ask ChatGPT a lot.
“Historical AI & Rewriting the Past on TikTok.” Have you seen those videos on TikTok of an AI-generated emperor or whatever, telling you a salacious story about world history? They’re fun! And messy! And frequently just lies! Love this video on how it all happened and what it all means.

Lego Barad-dûr. Five thousand, four hundred and seventy-one pieces. Pair this with the Rivendell set Lego released last year, and you’ll spend about $1,000 and one very happy lifetime putting together a truly epic Lord of the Rings setup.

Google’s “Web” filter. I have a lot of big-picture thoughts about what AI is doing to web search and what that means for the internet, but I also just miss when Google was a bunch of links and not a thousand videos, X posts, and shopping links. The new “Web” filter is like old Google brought back to life — not right for everything but very useful.

“​​I Started a New Business. It Didn’t Go Well…” I’m a fan of Ali Abdaal’s (he was in Installer a while back!) and really loved this video. He shares a lot of the kinds of stories you don’t hear about building products, failure, mistakes, challenges, and what happens when you just get it wrong. Lots to learn from this one.

Setapp Mobile. If you don’t already know about Setapp, a subscription service that gets you access to hundreds of Mac and iOS apps, you should check it out. Setapp Mobile, its new alternative app store, is EU-only for now, but it’s still a fascinating look at what’s possible when you open up the smartphone.

The Dyson WashG1. Explaining Dyson stuff always sounds so silly — “yeah, it’s like 4x the price of all its competitors, and yeah, it’s just a cleaning thing, but dude, it’s SICK.” But… this $700 ultra-fancy mop sounds sick. I can’t help myself.

Hello, Dot. A new game from the Pokémon Go and Peridot folks, designed just for the Meta Quest. There’s not actually a ton to the game itself, but it’s a pretty great mixed reality tech demo, and these things are just fun to play around with.

RetroArch. The latest in an increasingly long list of great emulator apps coming to the iPhone. This one’s not the most user-friendly, but it does support a huge number of consoles and games — and it works on the Apple TV!

Screen share

My favorite new iPhone app this week is definitely Bebop, which is a really clever thing: it’s an app for taking notes, but it’s designed specifically to be used as a quick way to write something down for people who use tools like Obsidian, which is great but heavy and not good for short capture. Bebop just pipes stuff into a folder of text files, which you can read with any other app you want. I’m already using it a dozen times a day.

Bebop was created by Jack Cheng, who you might know as the author of books like The Many Masks of Andy Zhou and the very fun newsletter Sunday Letter. I’ve been a fan of Jack’s work for a while and figured his app launch was a good time to get him in Installer.

Here’s Jack’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 14.

The wallpaper: My partner, Julia, taken at one of my favorite places: Kresge Court inside the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The apps: Photos, Gmail, Arc, Phone, Messages, Bebop, Blackmagic Camera.

Lock screen widgets: Fantastical, Weather, and Lightroom’s camera widget. I usually include a photo when I send out my Sunday newsletter, and I loathe the way newer-generation iPhones over-process everything. So I use this when I want a RAW image for later editing (and don’t have my Ricoh GR III on me).

Homescreen: A Widgetsmith photo widget that shows my workweek in index cards. I’m doing my first 12-Week Year and also experimenting with the cards for time-blocking. I plan out my week on Monday morning, then the cards stay on the table next to my desk. I refer to them when I journal, too. Both the 12-Week Year and card system I first saw in Dan Catt’s oddly therapeutic Weeknotes.

Dock: Third from the left is my own file-based notes app, Bebop! I built it after frustrations with over-bloated notes apps that deprioritized capture. Bebop’s my first iOS app, and it felt so good to be able to give it that prime dock spot.

When Apple announced Final Cut Camera, I wondered if there was something similar for DaVinci Resolve, and it turned out there was: Blackmagic Camera. I’d love to do some short video updates for my YouTube channel (which currently just has older videos of me reading from one of my children’s novels). But that’s a big project, for a future 12-week stretch. In the meantime, I’m accumulating little clips and figuring out a good workflow.

I have two other iOS screens: One for reading and audio apps (the only screen visible in Sleep Focus mode) and another for messaging and social media. Everything else is in the App Library. I use search a lot.

I also asked Jack to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he shared:

The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film is the best book I’ve read so far this year. It has so many insights on writing and making art, and I love the interview format — especially when the two conversation partners (the other is author Michael Ondaatje) are experts in their own domains. Which is why I’m also a Decoder fan!

Completely Arbortrary is, to me, a perfect podcast. Each hour-long episode is about a different tree, and for hosts, you have a dendrologist (Casey Clapp) paired with a musician / comedian (Alex Crowson) who stands in for the novice listener. Talk about evergreen content. (sorry)
I’m eagerly awaiting my preorder of Robin Sloan’s new novel, Moonbound. This happens startlingly regularly: I’m at the bookstore when a cover catches my eye. I read the flap copy and first few pages and get sucked right in. Then, I flip over to the back, and there it is: a Robin Sloan blurb. Robin has such a singular taste for the interestingly weird / weirdly interesting. He’s also a serial appreciator of things, which I appreciate!
My partner and I just finished the third season of Master of None, eminently watchable in large part thanks to Amy Williams’ gorgeous production design. The seasonal arc is an infertility storyline involving Lena Waithe and Naomi Ackie’s characters, which, because of our own fertility journey, hit a little close to home at first. But I’m happy that after two years of trying, Julia and I are expecting our first child this summer.

Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For more recommendations than I could fit here, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“So every once in a while, I manage to get a hard drive full to the rim and need to clean up. That’s when I fall back on a really old piece of software from the Dutch University of Eindhoven called SequoiaView. I don’t think it’s been updated since November 2002, but I still find it the best way to quickly and visually localize big files. I wonder: does anybody else have such an old piece of software that still performs its task for them?” — Jasper

“I’m very late to Balatro and been playing that (and failing — how are people already completing the game and I can’t even get past the basic stakes for some of these decks lol) and trying to finish the new Vampire Survivors DLC.” — Melody

“I just re-downloaded the original StarCraft and can’t stop watching TikTok live videos of people playing some weird Russian Roulette PC game.”

“Downloaded Delta when it officially launched and realized how much I missed playing ‘simpler’ games. Amongst a few others, I was really enjoying Pokémon Fire Red. Fast forward a few days… and the Analogue Pocket had a very timely restock. Nothing to take away from Delta — it’s amazing and massive credits to the developer. I think I just want something a bit more tactile to go all in on some OG games.” — Omesh

“Walkabout Mini Golf on the Meta Quest 3 is pretty awesome.” — Matt

“I’ve found that my screen time can sometimes rocket from using apps like Instagram and Twitter. To solve that, I found Ascent, which adds a sliding distraction screen whenever you try to open the app. You can get Premium for free by Instagramming about them, and it’s worth it because it’s so customizable!” — Leo

“One of Twitch’s / YT’s biggest creators Critical Role just launched their own direct support / streaming service, Beacon, but in contrast to the huge miss that was Watcher doing something similar last month, they aren’t paywalling any existing content. Super interesting move to skip established platforms like Patreon and DIY it. The new content on the platform is really cool for megafans!” – Zach

“Fur and Loathing. I just started listening to this podcast about the gas attack in the 2014 furry convention, and it’s really good!” — Katie

“I’m watching the second half of Clarkson’s Farm season 3. If you’ve never seen it, you’ll be surprised by just how complicated it is to grow something in a field.” — Alan

Signing off

I’ve been sick off and on for most of the last two weeks, which has lots of downsides but one really terrific upside. It’s an infinite excuse to watch TV shows I’ve already seen 100 times! I’ve realized I have a rotation, not on purpose but somehow quite rigid: I watch The Office, then I watch Parks and Recreation, then I watch New Girl, then I watch Community. Sometimes one all the way through and then the next, sometimes a couple of episodes and then bounce around, but it’s almost always in that order. (Schitt’s Creek and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are the honorable mentions — they haven’t quite made it into the official rotation yet, but I love them both.)

Is this just a me thing? Does everyone have a few shows they just kind of instinctively bounce between when you don’t really care what you’re watching? Either way, I highly recommend my rotation. Infinite comedy, perfect for naps.

See you next week!

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Image: Blue Origin

It’s been over a year and a half since Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket failed mid-flight, and more than two since its last crewed flight. Now, the company is go to launch six human beings into space. The company’s launch window begins at 6:30AM PT / 9:30AM ET, but will start streaming 40 minutes ahead of time on its website.
Blue Origin also normally streams its launches live on its YouTube channel, so it’s a pretty safe bet it will do so for its NS-25 mission tomorrow. Assuming the launch goes as planned, it will carry six passengers aboard, including the 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who was America’s first Black astronaut candidate but has never been to space. The other passengers are Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura.

We’re “Go” to proceed to launch tomorrow, Sunday, May 19. The #NS25 launch window opens at 8:30 a.m. CDT / 13:30 UTC from Launch Site One in West Texas. Live coverage begins on https://t.co/7Y4TherpLr at T-40 minutes. pic.twitter.com/xIl2sVo7mH— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) May 18, 2024

Jeff Bezos’ company decided to put its private space tourism flights on hold after a September 2022 rocket booster issue, which was later identified as an engine nozzle failure, triggered its uncrewed capsule’s emergency escape system.
The Federal Aviation Administration closed its investigation of the mishap in September last year, requiring Blue Origin to carry out 21 corrective actions that included redesigning the engine and nozzle components to prevent future failures. In December, Blue Origin launched 33 science payloads from NASA and other institutions into space. The capsule and booster were successfully recovered afterwards.

Image: Blue Origin

It’s been over a year and a half since Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket failed mid-flight, and more than two since its last crewed flight. Now, the company is go to launch six human beings into space. The company’s launch window begins at 6:30AM PT / 9:30AM ET, but will start streaming 40 minutes ahead of time on its website.

Blue Origin also normally streams its launches live on its YouTube channel, so it’s a pretty safe bet it will do so for its NS-25 mission tomorrow. Assuming the launch goes as planned, it will carry six passengers aboard, including the 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who was America’s first Black astronaut candidate but has never been to space. The other passengers are Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura.

Jeff Bezos’ company decided to put its private space tourism flights on hold after a September 2022 rocket booster issue, which was later identified as an engine nozzle failure, triggered its uncrewed capsule’s emergency escape system.

The Federal Aviation Administration closed its investigation of the mishap in September last year, requiring Blue Origin to carry out 21 corrective actions that included redesigning the engine and nozzle components to prevent future failures. In December, Blue Origin launched 33 science payloads from NASA and other institutions into space. The capsule and booster were successfully recovered afterwards.

Read More 

Is this a Game Boy Advance SP or Nintendo DS Lite? Who can say? | Image: Retrohai hai Softbank

Have you ever looked at a Nintendo DS and thought it would be cooler if the top screen was swapped for the Game Boy Advance SP’s? Or looked at a Super Nintendo controller and wished it had a GBA SP screen bolted onto the back? Whether you have or not, Hardware modder Hairo Satoh, aka Retrohai hai Softbank, has you covered with some truly cursed reimaginings of Nintendo’s portable consoles. (Recall their portable emulated PlayStation built into the Takara Roulette Controller.)
Let’s go on a little journey through Satoh’s Instagram account. Before we get into my favorite mutated Nintendo handhelds — frankententos, if you will — know that Satoh also does some very pretty custom jobs on the company’s various portable consoles. And they’re made to order.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

This one they posted recently is a good example. We are Known Transparent Case Stans here at The Verge, but this goes a step further with its colorful hologram stickers and ChromaFlair-style color-changing sheen. Oh, and it runs Game Boy Advance games.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

That controller mod I mentioned up top isn’t the only time Satoh has turned a console gamepad into its own handheld. The GBA SP’s screen looks remarkably at home on an SNES (well, Super Famicom, technically) pad…

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

…and on a PS2 Dual Shock controller, too.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

But why not jam one onto a Nintendo DS Lite, too? It doesn’t make sense at all, even if this is a mash-up of the two most attractive pieces of hardware Nintendo ever made, but I don’t need any justification for this thing’s existence. Also, this is the point where things start getting a little cursed.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

I guess this is also a Nintendo DS?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

Again, but more colorful.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

Ah yes, the Original Game Boy Advance SP DS (OGBASPDS).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

I’m enamored with the concept of a multi-position adjustable screen on this original DS.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

What if… GBA SP but also T-Mobile Sidekick?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

Give me this and the ability to emulate the fantastic vertical-scrolling shooter Ikaruga, please.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

I’m sorry, what?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

Ah, yes, this makes sense.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

I can’t say I understand the extra buttons and d-pad here, but I respect the chaos.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

The Nintendo Long Boy DS.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hairo Satoh (@haihaisb)

I think this is probably the final boss of Satoh’s inventive creations.
Satoh didn’t respond to us when we reached out, but we’d love to know more about these creations. How much of these are made up of custom hardware on the inside? How many of them are emulating Nintendo’s handhelds, rather than rejiggering its original hardware components to fit? If we receive a response, we’ll dig in some more.

Is this a Game Boy Advance SP or Nintendo DS Lite? Who can say? | Image: Retrohai hai Softbank

Have you ever looked at a Nintendo DS and thought it would be cooler if the top screen was swapped for the Game Boy Advance SP’s? Or looked at a Super Nintendo controller and wished it had a GBA SP screen bolted onto the back? Whether you have or not, Hardware modder Hairo Satoh, aka Retrohai hai Softbank, has you covered with some truly cursed reimaginings of Nintendo’s portable consoles. (Recall their portable emulated PlayStation built into the Takara Roulette Controller.)

Let’s go on a little journey through Satoh’s Instagram account. Before we get into my favorite mutated Nintendo handhelds — frankententos, if you will — know that Satoh also does some very pretty custom jobs on the company’s various portable consoles. And they’re made to order.

This one they posted recently is a good example. We are Known Transparent Case Stans here at The Verge, but this goes a step further with its colorful hologram stickers and ChromaFlair-style color-changing sheen. Oh, and it runs Game Boy Advance games.

That controller mod I mentioned up top isn’t the only time Satoh has turned a console gamepad into its own handheld. The GBA SP’s screen looks remarkably at home on an SNES (well, Super Famicom, technically) pad…

…and on a PS2 Dual Shock controller, too.

But why not jam one onto a Nintendo DS Lite, too? It doesn’t make sense at all, even if this is a mash-up of the two most attractive pieces of hardware Nintendo ever made, but I don’t need any justification for this thing’s existence. Also, this is the point where things start getting a little cursed.

I guess this is also a Nintendo DS?

Again, but more colorful.

Ah yes, the Original Game Boy Advance SP DS (OGBASPDS).

I’m enamored with the concept of a multi-position adjustable screen on this original DS.

What if… GBA SP but also T-Mobile Sidekick?

Give me this and the ability to emulate the fantastic vertical-scrolling shooter Ikaruga, please.

I’m sorry, what?

Ah, yes, this makes sense.

I can’t say I understand the extra buttons and d-pad here, but I respect the chaos.

The Nintendo Long Boy DS.

I think this is probably the final boss of Satoh’s inventive creations.

Satoh didn’t respond to us when we reached out, but we’d love to know more about these creations. How much of these are made up of custom hardware on the inside? How many of them are emulating Nintendo’s handhelds, rather than rejiggering its original hardware components to fit? If we receive a response, we’ll dig in some more.

Read More