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Sony has introduced the Xperia 1 VI, the sixth generation of the company’s flagship smartphone that could tempt photography enthusiasts away from rivaling iPhone and Pixel devices. Some of those perks include a true optical zoom, AI-assisted autofocus, and a unified app experience.
It has three cameras on the back: a 24mm main camera with a 48-megapixel Sony Exmor T sensor, a 16mm ultrawide, and an 85-170mm variable zoom telephoto camera that provides magnification around 3.5x to 7.1x that of the main camera. The Xperia 1 VI also utilizes this new telephoto camera for its macro mode.
The device comes with auto-focus “human pose estimation” AI technology that can recognize a subject’s body and head position and supports filming video in 4K HDR at 120fps that works alongside high-end color profiles like the S-Cinetone. Sony has also unified its various filming and photography features into a single camera app experience, preventing users from needing to jump between different software.

Inside the Xperia 1 VI, you’ll find the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, 12GB of RAM, and a choice between 256GB and 512GB of storage. Sony says its 5,000mAh battery should provide users with up to two days worth of juice on a single charge and that the device supports both 15W wireless charging and wireless battery sharing to other devices.

Image: Sony
The optical zoom on the 12-megapixel telephoto camera seen here on the bottom ranges from 85 to 125mm.

A few other changes have also been introduced besides the camera upgrades which might be a harder sell for some customers. The previously 4K display is now 2220 x 1080 and has been reduced from 7.1 inches down to 6.5 inches, taking the aspect ratio from 21:9 to a stouter 19.5:9. It does now have a variable refresh rate between 1Hz to 120Hz however, and Sony says the OLED display can achieve a 50 percent higher peak brightness than the Xperia 1 V.

Image: Sony
The Xperia 1 VI’s more compact size may also appeal to folks who are looking to move away from larger smartphones.

The actual design remains fairly unchanged. It’s visually almost identical to the previous model, down to being released in the same three colors: black, silver, and khaki green. It also still comes with a dedicated shutter button and a 3.5mm headphone jack (a rarity in flagship mobiles these days), though Sony says the new “full-stage” speakers also provide improvements to “bass, clarity, and the spread of sound” for those who choose not to plug in.

Image: Sony
The model in the middle is supposed to be “khaki” in case you’re as confused as I am.

Unlike previous releases in the Xperia 1 series, Sony isn’t planning to release the Xperia 1 VI in the US. The device can, however, be preordered now in the UK and across Europe for £1,299 (around $1,640) and €1,399, respectively, with deliveries starting from June 6th.

Sony has introduced the Xperia 1 VI, the sixth generation of the company’s flagship smartphone that could tempt photography enthusiasts away from rivaling iPhone and Pixel devices. Some of those perks include a true optical zoom, AI-assisted autofocus, and a unified app experience.

It has three cameras on the back: a 24mm main camera with a 48-megapixel Sony Exmor T sensor, a 16mm ultrawide, and an 85-170mm variable zoom telephoto camera that provides magnification around 3.5x to 7.1x that of the main camera. The Xperia 1 VI also utilizes this new telephoto camera for its macro mode.

The device comes with auto-focus “human pose estimation” AI technology that can recognize a subject’s body and head position and supports filming video in 4K HDR at 120fps that works alongside high-end color profiles like the S-Cinetone. Sony has also unified its various filming and photography features into a single camera app experience, preventing users from needing to jump between different software.

Inside the Xperia 1 VI, you’ll find the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, 12GB of RAM, and a choice between 256GB and 512GB of storage. Sony says its 5,000mAh battery should provide users with up to two days worth of juice on a single charge and that the device supports both 15W wireless charging and wireless battery sharing to other devices.

Image: Sony
The optical zoom on the 12-megapixel telephoto camera seen here on the bottom ranges from 85 to 125mm.

A few other changes have also been introduced besides the camera upgrades which might be a harder sell for some customers. The previously 4K display is now 2220 x 1080 and has been reduced from 7.1 inches down to 6.5 inches, taking the aspect ratio from 21:9 to a stouter 19.5:9. It does now have a variable refresh rate between 1Hz to 120Hz however, and Sony says the OLED display can achieve a 50 percent higher peak brightness than the Xperia 1 V.

Image: Sony
The Xperia 1 VI’s more compact size may also appeal to folks who are looking to move away from larger smartphones.

The actual design remains fairly unchanged. It’s visually almost identical to the previous model, down to being released in the same three colors: black, silver, and khaki green. It also still comes with a dedicated shutter button and a 3.5mm headphone jack (a rarity in flagship mobiles these days), though Sony says the new “full-stage” speakers also provide improvements to “bass, clarity, and the spread of sound” for those who choose not to plug in.

Image: Sony
The model in the middle is supposed to be “khaki” in case you’re as confused as I am.

Unlike previous releases in the Xperia 1 series, Sony isn’t planning to release the Xperia 1 VI in the US. The device can, however, be preordered now in the UK and across Europe for £1,299 (around $1,640) and €1,399, respectively, with deliveries starting from June 6th.

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Microsoft isn’t launching a new version of Windows next week, but what it’s about to unveil could be just as significant. After nearly four years of falling behind Apple’s MacBooks, sources inside Microsoft tell me that the company is confident it can finally beat Apple’s own chips that power the MacBook Air.
On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will detail the company’s “AI vision across hardware and software” at an event hosted at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. It’s a pivotal moment for Microsoft and Windows because it won’t involve the typical chip partnership with Intel that we’ve seen for decades. Instead, Microsoft will set the stage for a summer of Arm-powered laptops thanks to a close collaboration with Qualcomm.
I’m told Microsoft has full confidence that Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors will begin a new era for Windows laptops…

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Microsoft isn’t launching a new version of Windows next week, but what it’s about to unveil could be just as significant. After nearly four years of falling behind Apple’s MacBooks, sources inside Microsoft tell me that the company is confident it can finally beat Apple’s own chips that power the MacBook Air.

On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will detail the company’s “AI vision across hardware and software” at an event hosted at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. It’s a pivotal moment for Microsoft and Windows because it won’t involve the typical chip partnership with Intel that we’ve seen for decades. Instead, Microsoft will set the stage for a summer of Arm-powered laptops thanks to a close collaboration with Qualcomm.

I’m told Microsoft has full confidence that Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors will begin a new era for Windows laptops…

Read More 

The new iPad Pro is super thin — but more rugged than it looks. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Since about six seconds after Apple debuted the new and remarkably thin iPad Pro, the internet has collectively been asking one question: you can totally snap this thing in half, right?
By god, that’s JerryRigEverything’s music! And our favorite destroyer of gadgets delivered on Thursday, posting an 11-minute dive into the new Pro. As ever, it’s a really interesting (and brutal) test of a 13-inch tablet: you’ll get to see the new OLED screen at microscopic levels, open up the new Pencil Pro, watch this incredibly expensive device get scratched up good (though it holds up pretty well!), and pry apart the pieces of the Magic Keyboard. JRE host Zack Nelson’s videos are always both incredibly fun and kind of painful to watch, as you see a beautiful piece of engineering just get totally wrecked. It’s great.

But at about eight and a half minutes into the video, we get to the main event. And spoiler alert: the iPad Pro holds up really well. Even with some aggressive bending, “that central spine is definitely providing enough structure for horizontal bends.” Vertical bends don’t do as well, though — the Pro cracks right at the charging port, which appears to be the main structural weakness of the device. Still, for what it is, and how you’re likely to use it, the Pro should hold up fine.
Other creators are also getting their hands on the new Pro and finding similarly solid results. In nearly every case, the charging port appears to be the weakest part of the device, but in general, it holds up better than ever.

This is particularly good news because the iPad’s history in JRE tests is, let’s say, not great. The first Pro did terribly:

Even the last model bent pretty easily, though it was somewhat hilariously still functional, even after Nelson turned it into “a crinkled piece of paper”:

The latest Pro is definitely a big step up. No word on the new Air yet, but to borrow a JRE-ism, if you get the 10th-generation iPad, don’t put it in your back pocket:

Overall, most of these testers seem impressed by the Pro, and they do a good job of showing off what Apple does to make the device so sturdy despite its size. Like any gadget, you can break it if you really try — and you can probably carve a lion into most things as well, if your knife is sharp enough. But for all the new iPad Pro owners worried about how their new tablet will fare in their backpack, it seems you’re probably going to be okay.

The new iPad Pro is super thin — but more rugged than it looks. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Since about six seconds after Apple debuted the new and remarkably thin iPad Pro, the internet has collectively been asking one question: you can totally snap this thing in half, right?

By god, that’s JerryRigEverything’s music! And our favorite destroyer of gadgets delivered on Thursday, posting an 11-minute dive into the new Pro. As ever, it’s a really interesting (and brutal) test of a 13-inch tablet: you’ll get to see the new OLED screen at microscopic levels, open up the new Pencil Pro, watch this incredibly expensive device get scratched up good (though it holds up pretty well!), and pry apart the pieces of the Magic Keyboard. JRE host Zack Nelson’s videos are always both incredibly fun and kind of painful to watch, as you see a beautiful piece of engineering just get totally wrecked. It’s great.

But at about eight and a half minutes into the video, we get to the main event. And spoiler alert: the iPad Pro holds up really well. Even with some aggressive bending, “that central spine is definitely providing enough structure for horizontal bends.” Vertical bends don’t do as well, though — the Pro cracks right at the charging port, which appears to be the main structural weakness of the device. Still, for what it is, and how you’re likely to use it, the Pro should hold up fine.

Other creators are also getting their hands on the new Pro and finding similarly solid results. In nearly every case, the charging port appears to be the weakest part of the device, but in general, it holds up better than ever.

This is particularly good news because the iPad’s history in JRE tests is, let’s say, not great. The first Pro did terribly:

Even the last model bent pretty easily, though it was somewhat hilariously still functional, even after Nelson turned it into “a crinkled piece of paper”:

The latest Pro is definitely a big step up. No word on the new Air yet, but to borrow a JRE-ism, if you get the 10th-generation iPad, don’t put it in your back pocket:

Overall, most of these testers seem impressed by the Pro, and they do a good job of showing off what Apple does to make the device so sturdy despite its size. Like any gadget, you can break it if you really try — and you can probably carve a lion into most things as well, if your knife is sharp enough. But for all the new iPad Pro owners worried about how their new tablet will fare in their backpack, it seems you’re probably going to be okay.

Read More 

Image: Marvel

X-Men ‘97’s weekly release schedule was a key part of what made the first season such a glorious return for Marvel’s mutants. It was hard to get a solid read on X-Men ‘97 immediately after its debut because of how many different things it was trying to do. Even though ‘97’s premiere picked up threads from the classic ’90s cartoon, the new show’s fresh plotlines, updated music, and flashier production values all made it feel different in unexpected ways. But the show’s first season — which just came to an end with episode 10, “Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 3” — proved week after week that ‘97 had the heat and illustrated how much there is to be gained from letting shows (and the people watching them) breathe.
Because we live in a world where streamers are allergic to being truly transparent about how well their projects are performing, it’s always difficult to know when something is a proper hit in terms of being both widely watched and part of the pop-culture discourse. It’s easy for studios to tout how many hours people have generally spent watching a movie or show, but it’s far harder to quantify the degree to which a new project has reached Game of Thrones or Stranger Things-like status — especially at the outset.
Though WandaVision helped steer the MCU into its current multiversal era of diminishing returns, it was also one of the first Disney Plus shows that everyone — not just comic book fans and TV obsessives — seemed to be buzzing about. A lot of that had to do with post-Endgame hype and the covid-19 pandemic giving Marvel a somewhat captive audience. But WandaVision’s weekly release schedule also gave people time to develop a relationship with its story and become invested as they watched it evolve one episode at a time.

Very much like WandaVision, X-Men ‘97 felt a little rough around the edges in its two-episode premiere that reintroduced Charles Xavier’s team of superstudents as some of the world’s most powerful and persecuted heroes. But the exposition heaviness that plagued “To Me, My X-Men” and “Mutant Liberation Begins” quickly gave way to a winding but propulsive narrative that highlighted how Marvel’s animated mutants have always been soap opera stars first and superheroes second.
There is so much more to Marvel’s Inferno 1989 comics crossover event than what’s detailed in X-Men ‘97’s “Fire Made Flesh,” but the episode’s twisty exploration of how Jean Grey was secretly cloned brought meaty drama (and the pretext for psychic infidelity) to the series. And while Storm’s godlike feats of strength were the centerpieces of many of X-Men ‘97’s bigger action sequences, “Lifedeath – Part 2” hammered home how fascinating she is as a character in stories that frame her powers as more than weapons. Both of those episodes, and other weightier ones like “Remember It,” definitely felt like concentrated distillations of much bigger comics storylines because they were, and it’s fair to say that X-Men ‘97 stripped away some context that might have been helpful.

But the week between each episode gave viewers time to go read those old comics and ponder what was going to happen on the show next. People had a chance to catch up if they were behind and make memes when they needed to remind the world how wild the latest episode was. Social media buzz isn’t a reliable indicator of a show’s success, but the way phrases like “milky way ghetto” flooded X after “Lifedeath – Part 2” debuted spoke to how people were sticking with the show despite all its convoluted twists and turns.
That kind of organic buzz is something studios tend to want because of the way it draws people (read: potential customers) in. And while there is only so much that companies can do to shape the form and tone buzz ultimately takes, drawn-out releases are one of the biggest ways they can position series to become the kinds of events people want to talk about.
It can also lead to uncanny (positive) accidents. Marvel probably did not know that Storm would reclaim her powers right after Beyoncé dropped an album more or less about the same thing. It’s a coincidence that a real-world electromagnetic storm gave people across the world the ability to see the (typically) northern lights the same week “Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 2” featured Magneto floating down from the heavens with an asteroid in a sea of aurora. But those are the sorts of weird things that just happen sometimes, and while streamers can’t exactly rely on them, they can give their shows chances to be engaged with in a larger context rather than presenting them as things to be inhaled instantaneously.

Of course, X-Men ‘97 had to stand on its own legs because memes alone are not enough to make shows hits. But for all of the streamlining the show did to make the comics fit into 30-minute chunks, each episode was also doing a surprisingly good job foreshadowing the deeper story about the X-Men and technopathic android Bastion (Theo James) that comes to a head in the season’s final three episodes.
Between its cameos, characters returning from the dead, and set pieces that feel like they could play on a bigger screen, each piece of “Tolerance Is Extinction” delivers on what a show like X-Men ‘97 needs for its closing act. And while the finale’s cliffhanger ending opens up all kinds of possibilities about how X-Men ‘97 could continue, part of what’s promising about the way the show closes out is how unconcerned with the larger Marvel universe it appears to be.
Ms. Marvel’s integration into the X-brand and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ X-Men cameos both felt like last-ditch plays to wow audiences with the unexpected. But there’s a different energy to the way X-Men ‘97 is finishing just ahead of Deadpool & Wolverine this summer. Though the two newer projects couldn’t be any more tonally different, they’re both examples of Marvel finally letting its mutant IP shine rather than sequestering it off to the sidelines. They’re also testaments to how the long wait for more X-Men adaptations has primed fans to see what the studio can do with the characters now that it has full control of them again.
It might be a while until we see X-Men ‘97 return for its third season (the second’s production has already wrapped for the most part), but these first 10 episodes make it pretty clear that it’ll be worth the wait.

Image: Marvel

X-Men ‘97’s weekly release schedule was a key part of what made the first season such a glorious return for Marvel’s mutants.

It was hard to get a solid read on X-Men ‘97 immediately after its debut because of how many different things it was trying to do. Even though ‘97’s premiere picked up threads from the classic ’90s cartoon, the new show’s fresh plotlines, updated music, and flashier production values all made it feel different in unexpected ways. But the show’s first season — which just came to an end with episode 10, “Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 3” — proved week after week that ‘97 had the heat and illustrated how much there is to be gained from letting shows (and the people watching them) breathe.

Because we live in a world where streamers are allergic to being truly transparent about how well their projects are performing, it’s always difficult to know when something is a proper hit in terms of being both widely watched and part of the pop-culture discourse. It’s easy for studios to tout how many hours people have generally spent watching a movie or show, but it’s far harder to quantify the degree to which a new project has reached Game of Thrones or Stranger Things-like status — especially at the outset.

Though WandaVision helped steer the MCU into its current multiversal era of diminishing returns, it was also one of the first Disney Plus shows that everyone — not just comic book fans and TV obsessives — seemed to be buzzing about. A lot of that had to do with post-Endgame hype and the covid-19 pandemic giving Marvel a somewhat captive audience. But WandaVision’s weekly release schedule also gave people time to develop a relationship with its story and become invested as they watched it evolve one episode at a time.

Very much like WandaVision, X-Men ‘97 felt a little rough around the edges in its two-episode premiere that reintroduced Charles Xavier’s team of superstudents as some of the world’s most powerful and persecuted heroes. But the exposition heaviness that plagued “To Me, My X-Men” and “Mutant Liberation Begins” quickly gave way to a winding but propulsive narrative that highlighted how Marvel’s animated mutants have always been soap opera stars first and superheroes second.

There is so much more to Marvel’s Inferno 1989 comics crossover event than what’s detailed in X-Men ‘97’s “Fire Made Flesh,” but the episode’s twisty exploration of how Jean Grey was secretly cloned brought meaty drama (and the pretext for psychic infidelity) to the series. And while Storm’s godlike feats of strength were the centerpieces of many of X-Men ‘97’s bigger action sequences, “Lifedeath – Part 2” hammered home how fascinating she is as a character in stories that frame her powers as more than weapons. Both of those episodes, and other weightier ones like “Remember It,” definitely felt like concentrated distillations of much bigger comics storylines because they were, and it’s fair to say that X-Men ‘97 stripped away some context that might have been helpful.

But the week between each episode gave viewers time to go read those old comics and ponder what was going to happen on the show next. People had a chance to catch up if they were behind and make memes when they needed to remind the world how wild the latest episode was. Social media buzz isn’t a reliable indicator of a show’s success, but the way phrases like “milky way ghetto” flooded X after “Lifedeath – Part 2” debuted spoke to how people were sticking with the show despite all its convoluted twists and turns.

That kind of organic buzz is something studios tend to want because of the way it draws people (read: potential customers) in. And while there is only so much that companies can do to shape the form and tone buzz ultimately takes, drawn-out releases are one of the biggest ways they can position series to become the kinds of events people want to talk about.

It can also lead to uncanny (positive) accidents. Marvel probably did not know that Storm would reclaim her powers right after Beyoncé dropped an album more or less about the same thing. It’s a coincidence that a real-world electromagnetic storm gave people across the world the ability to see the (typically) northern lights the same week “Tolerance Is Extinction – Part 2” featured Magneto floating down from the heavens with an asteroid in a sea of aurora. But those are the sorts of weird things that just happen sometimes, and while streamers can’t exactly rely on them, they can give their shows chances to be engaged with in a larger context rather than presenting them as things to be inhaled instantaneously.

Of course, X-Men ‘97 had to stand on its own legs because memes alone are not enough to make shows hits. But for all of the streamlining the show did to make the comics fit into 30-minute chunks, each episode was also doing a surprisingly good job foreshadowing the deeper story about the X-Men and technopathic android Bastion (Theo James) that comes to a head in the season’s final three episodes.

Between its cameos, characters returning from the dead, and set pieces that feel like they could play on a bigger screen, each piece of “Tolerance Is Extinction” delivers on what a show like X-Men ‘97 needs for its closing act. And while the finale’s cliffhanger ending opens up all kinds of possibilities about how X-Men ‘97 could continue, part of what’s promising about the way the show closes out is how unconcerned with the larger Marvel universe it appears to be.

Ms. Marvel’s integration into the X-brand and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ X-Men cameos both felt like last-ditch plays to wow audiences with the unexpected. But there’s a different energy to the way X-Men ‘97 is finishing just ahead of Deadpool & Wolverine this summer. Though the two newer projects couldn’t be any more tonally different, they’re both examples of Marvel finally letting its mutant IP shine rather than sequestering it off to the sidelines. They’re also testaments to how the long wait for more X-Men adaptations has primed fans to see what the studio can do with the characters now that it has full control of them again.

It might be a while until we see X-Men ‘97 return for its third season (the second’s production has already wrapped for the most part), but these first 10 episodes make it pretty clear that it’ll be worth the wait.

Read More 

As usual, Bose’s audio processing makes this speaker sound excellent. But for $400, it’s fair to expect more features and more smarts. Bose is undoubtedly best known for its noise-canceling headphones. But do you know what else the company has always been damn good at? Portable speakers. I can still remember being wowed by the original SoundLink Mini (and later, its successor). Something about Bose’s magic sauce audio processing can make these relatively tiny speakers sound much bigger and broader than they really are, and that’s remained true with the more recent SoundLink Flex — which remains one of our favorite picks.
Now, Bose has introduced a larger speaker, the new SoundLink Max, that takes after the Flex in style while adding key improvements. It delivers much richer audio that’s now in true stereo. (The Flex, like other diminutive speakers in its class, uses a mono driver.) But here, you’re getting dual tweets along with passive radiators on both sides for a much fuller listening experience.

Size-wise, especially with the handle, it feels like a lunchbox: a very thick 4.9-pound lunchbox of sound wrapped in silicone with a metal faceplate. Look, all I’m saying is this thing could absolutely be a weapon if you ever needed it to be. You can get some real swinging force with the removable handle, which can be swapped for other colors or a longer shoulder strap.
At 4.73 inches high, 10.42 inches wide, and 4.13 inches deep, the Max’s enclosure is noticeably bigger and beefier than the Flex’s, but it’s far from oversized. Once I started playing music, I was quickly struck by the remarkably wide soundstage it can produce. This is one of those speakers where if you close your eyes, your brain will be convinced that sounds are coming from well beyond the device’s physical footprint. And the bass carries plenty of punch. Some people might find the default EQ a tad bright, but you get full control over that balance in Bose’s mobile app.
The Max fares best indoors, where Bose’s processing can count on walls and bouncing soundwaves. Outdoors, in wide open spaces, that audio presentation feels less “max” but still above average for this size — especially if you bump the bass EQ. Aside from the usual AAC and SBC Bluetooth codes, the Max also supports AptX Adaptive for higher-bitrate audio from Android devices. Bose puts battery life at up to 20 hours, which I’ve found accurate based on my moderate-volume listening so far.

The SoundLink Max has IP67 dust and water resistance, meaning it can be briefly submerged without any problems.

The speaker has an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance. It’ll even float should you accidentally drop it in a pool. That said, its rear ports are left uncovered and exposed to the elements, so you’ll want to dry the Max off and let it sit for a while before plugging it in. The silicone that wraps around the sides and back is resilient, but the tradeoff is that it’s a dust and lint magnet. (At least you can easily clean it off.)
The Max’s metallic front grille can pick up scratches more easily than I’d like. My camera lens bumped up against it, and just like that, the powder paint coating picked up a tiny permanent scar. This blue looks quite nice, but I wish Bose would offer a paintless silver edition that would conceal such blemishes over the long haul — especially for a speaker that’s otherwise quite rugged.

You love to see an aux input.

Then there’s that $399 price. The SoundLink Max finds itself in no-man’s-land. It’s more expensive than competitors from JBL, Anker / Soundcore, and others — and not much cheaper than far “smarter” options like the Sonos Move 2. Bose’s speaker has no Wi-Fi connectivity to speak of, so you’re at risk of notification sounds (or calls) interrupting your music. There’s also no speakerphone functionality, which the Flex does include. Climb a bit higher in price, and you’ve entered much larger speaker territory with popular choices such as JBL’s Boombox 3 and Sony’s new Ult Field 7, which can hold their own better in outdoor spaces. Even Bose’s prized processing is no match for those bigger drivers and their more impactful sound once you really crank the volume.

It’s larger and heavier than the SoundLink Flex but still compact enough to fit in a bike basket.

Bose does throw in several bonus features to help justify the premium price. The Max supports multipoint Bluetooth, so two devices can pair to it at once. There’s a 3.5mm aux input for external audio sources, and the USB-C port that’s used for juicing up the speaker can also provide power to mobile devices. We’ve now hit the point where I wish that the USB-C port could double as an audio input. As is, I had to grab a headphone jack adapter from my bag whenever I plugged in my phone for some lossless playback. I’m just happy to have any type of line-in. Later this year, you’ll be able to stereo pair the Max with another unit or group it with Bose’s other speakers.

Unlike the Flex, the Max delivers true stereo sound.

At the end of the day, the SoundLink Max will draw in the same people who’ve always bought Bose’s speakers. If you want to splurge on a very simple, elegant, great-sounding speaker, this is that. But the Bose tax and that $399 price will inevitably give others pause — understandably so. I’m already planning to carry this thing around often over the months ahead, but it’s a luxury purchase through and through.
Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

As usual, Bose’s audio processing makes this speaker sound excellent. But for $400, it’s fair to expect more features and more smarts.

Bose is undoubtedly best known for its noise-canceling headphones. But do you know what else the company has always been damn good at? Portable speakers. I can still remember being wowed by the original SoundLink Mini (and later, its successor). Something about Bose’s magic sauce audio processing can make these relatively tiny speakers sound much bigger and broader than they really are, and that’s remained true with the more recent SoundLink Flex — which remains one of our favorite picks.

Now, Bose has introduced a larger speaker, the new SoundLink Max, that takes after the Flex in style while adding key improvements. It delivers much richer audio that’s now in true stereo. (The Flex, like other diminutive speakers in its class, uses a mono driver.) But here, you’re getting dual tweets along with passive radiators on both sides for a much fuller listening experience.

Size-wise, especially with the handle, it feels like a lunchbox: a very thick 4.9-pound lunchbox of sound wrapped in silicone with a metal faceplate. Look, all I’m saying is this thing could absolutely be a weapon if you ever needed it to be. You can get some real swinging force with the removable handle, which can be swapped for other colors or a longer shoulder strap.

At 4.73 inches high, 10.42 inches wide, and 4.13 inches deep, the Max’s enclosure is noticeably bigger and beefier than the Flex’s, but it’s far from oversized. Once I started playing music, I was quickly struck by the remarkably wide soundstage it can produce. This is one of those speakers where if you close your eyes, your brain will be convinced that sounds are coming from well beyond the device’s physical footprint. And the bass carries plenty of punch. Some people might find the default EQ a tad bright, but you get full control over that balance in Bose’s mobile app.

The Max fares best indoors, where Bose’s processing can count on walls and bouncing soundwaves. Outdoors, in wide open spaces, that audio presentation feels less “max” but still above average for this size — especially if you bump the bass EQ. Aside from the usual AAC and SBC Bluetooth codes, the Max also supports AptX Adaptive for higher-bitrate audio from Android devices. Bose puts battery life at up to 20 hours, which I’ve found accurate based on my moderate-volume listening so far.

The speaker has an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance. It’ll even float should you accidentally drop it in a pool. That said, its rear ports are left uncovered and exposed to the elements, so you’ll want to dry the Max off and let it sit for a while before plugging it in. The silicone that wraps around the sides and back is resilient, but the tradeoff is that it’s a dust and lint magnet. (At least you can easily clean it off.)

The Max’s metallic front grille can pick up scratches more easily than I’d like. My camera lens bumped up against it, and just like that, the powder paint coating picked up a tiny permanent scar. This blue looks quite nice, but I wish Bose would offer a paintless silver edition that would conceal such blemishes over the long haul — especially for a speaker that’s otherwise quite rugged.

Then there’s that $399 price. The SoundLink Max finds itself in no-man’s-land. It’s more expensive than competitors from JBL, Anker / Soundcore, and others — and not much cheaper than far “smarter” options like the Sonos Move 2. Bose’s speaker has no Wi-Fi connectivity to speak of, so you’re at risk of notification sounds (or calls) interrupting your music. There’s also no speakerphone functionality, which the Flex does include. Climb a bit higher in price, and you’ve entered much larger speaker territory with popular choices such as JBL’s Boombox 3 and Sony’s new Ult Field 7, which can hold their own better in outdoor spaces. Even Bose’s prized processing is no match for those bigger drivers and their more impactful sound once you really crank the volume.

Bose does throw in several bonus features to help justify the premium price. The Max supports multipoint Bluetooth, so two devices can pair to it at once. There’s a 3.5mm aux input for external audio sources, and the USB-C port that’s used for juicing up the speaker can also provide power to mobile devices. We’ve now hit the point where I wish that the USB-C port could double as an audio input. As is, I had to grab a headphone jack adapter from my bag whenever I plugged in my phone for some lossless playback. I’m just happy to have any type of line-in. Later this year, you’ll be able to stereo pair the Max with another unit or group it with Bose’s other speakers.

At the end of the day, the SoundLink Max will draw in the same people who’ve always bought Bose’s speakers. If you want to splurge on a very simple, elegant, great-sounding speaker, this is that. But the Bose tax and that $399 price will inevitably give others pause — understandably so. I’m already planning to carry this thing around often over the months ahead, but it’s a luxury purchase through and through.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

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Image: The Verge / Getty Images

Hugging Face, one of the biggest names in machine learning, is committing $10 million in free shared GPUs to help developers create new AI technologies. The goal is to help small developers, academics, and startups counter the centralization of AI advancements.
“We are lucky to be in a position where we can invest in the community,” Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue told The Verge. Delangue said the investment is possible because Hugging Face is “profitable, or close to profitable” and recently raised $235 million in funding, valuing the company at $4.5 billion.
Delangue is concerned about AI startups’ ability to compete with the tech giants. Most significant advancements in artificial intelligence — like GPT-4, the algorithms behind Google Search, and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system — remain hidden within the confines of major tech companies. Not only are these corporations financially incentivized to keep their models proprietary, but with billions of dollars at their disposal for computational resources, they can compound those gains and race ahead of competitors, making it impossible for startups to keep up.
“If you end up with a few organizations who are dominating too much, then it’s going to be harder to fight it later on.”
Hugging Face aims to make state-of-the-art AI technologies accessible to everyone, not just the tech giants. I spoke with Delangue during Google I/O, the tech giant’s flagship conference, where Google executives unveiled numerous AI features for their proprietary products and even a family of open-source models called Gemma. For Delangue, the proprietary approach is not the future he envisions.
“If you go the open source route, you go towards a world where most companies, most organizations, most nonprofits, policymakers, regulators, can actually do AI too. So, a much more decentralized way without too much concentration of power which, in my opinion, is a better world,” Delangue said.
How it works
Access to compute poses a significant challenge in constructing large language models, often favoring companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which secure deals with cloud providers for substantial computing resources. Hugging Face aims to level the playing field by donating these shared GPUs to the community through a new program called ZeroGPU.
The shared GPUs are accessible to multiple users or applications concurrently, eliminating the need for each user or application to have a dedicated GPU. ZeroGPU will be available via Hugging Face’s Spaces, a hosting platform for publishing apps, which has over 300,000 AI demos created so far on CPU or paid GPU, according to the company.
“It’s very difficult to get enough GPUs from the main cloud providers”
Access to the shared GPUs is determined by usage, so if a portion of the GPU capacity is not actively utilized, that capacity becomes available for use by someone else. This makes them cost-effective, energy-efficient, and ideal for community-wide utilization. ZeroGPU uses Nvidia A100 GPU devices to power this operation — which offer about half the computation speed of the popular and more expensive H100s.
“It’s very difficult to get enough GPUs from the main cloud providers, and the way to get them—which is creating a high barrier to entry—is to commit on very big numbers for long periods of times,” Delangue said.
Typically, a company would commit to a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services for one or more years to secure GPU resources. This arrangement disadvantages small companies, indie developers, and academics who build on a small scale and can’t predict if their projects will gain traction. Regardless of usage, they still have to pay for the GPUs.
“It’s also a prediction nightmare to know how many GPUs and what kind of budget you need,” Delangue said.
Open-source AI is catching up
With AI rapidly advancing behind closed doors, the goal of Hugging Face is to allow people to build more AI tech in the open.
“If you end up with a few organizations who are dominating too much, then it’s going to be harder to fight it later on,” Delangue said.
Andrew Reed, a machine learning engineer at Hugging Face, even spun up an app that visualizes the progress of proprietary and open-source LLMs over time as scored by the LMSYS Chatbot Arena, which shows the gap between the two inching closer together.
Over 35,000 variations of Meta’s open-source AI model Llama have been shared on Hugging Face since Meta’s first version a year ago, ranging from “quantized and merged models to specialized models in biology and Mandarin,” according to the company.
“AI should not be held in the hands of the few. With this commitment to open-source developers, we’re excited to see what everyone will cook up next in the spirit of collaboration and transparency,” Delangue said in a press release.

Image: The Verge / Getty Images

Hugging Face, one of the biggest names in machine learning, is committing $10 million in free shared GPUs to help developers create new AI technologies. The goal is to help small developers, academics, and startups counter the centralization of AI advancements.

“We are lucky to be in a position where we can invest in the community,” Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue told The Verge. Delangue said the investment is possible because Hugging Face is “profitable, or close to profitable” and recently raised $235 million in funding, valuing the company at $4.5 billion.

Delangue is concerned about AI startups’ ability to compete with the tech giants. Most significant advancements in artificial intelligence — like GPT-4, the algorithms behind Google Search, and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system — remain hidden within the confines of major tech companies. Not only are these corporations financially incentivized to keep their models proprietary, but with billions of dollars at their disposal for computational resources, they can compound those gains and race ahead of competitors, making it impossible for startups to keep up.

Hugging Face aims to make state-of-the-art AI technologies accessible to everyone, not just the tech giants. I spoke with Delangue during Google I/O, the tech giant’s flagship conference, where Google executives unveiled numerous AI features for their proprietary products and even a family of open-source models called Gemma. For Delangue, the proprietary approach is not the future he envisions.

“If you go the open source route, you go towards a world where most companies, most organizations, most nonprofits, policymakers, regulators, can actually do AI too. So, a much more decentralized way without too much concentration of power which, in my opinion, is a better world,” Delangue said.

How it works

Access to compute poses a significant challenge in constructing large language models, often favoring companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which secure deals with cloud providers for substantial computing resources. Hugging Face aims to level the playing field by donating these shared GPUs to the community through a new program called ZeroGPU.

The shared GPUs are accessible to multiple users or applications concurrently, eliminating the need for each user or application to have a dedicated GPU. ZeroGPU will be available via Hugging Face’s Spaces, a hosting platform for publishing apps, which has over 300,000 AI demos created so far on CPU or paid GPU, according to the company.

Access to the shared GPUs is determined by usage, so if a portion of the GPU capacity is not actively utilized, that capacity becomes available for use by someone else. This makes them cost-effective, energy-efficient, and ideal for community-wide utilization. ZeroGPU uses Nvidia A100 GPU devices to power this operation — which offer about half the computation speed of the popular and more expensive H100s.

“It’s very difficult to get enough GPUs from the main cloud providers, and the way to get them—which is creating a high barrier to entry—is to commit on very big numbers for long periods of times,” Delangue said.

Typically, a company would commit to a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services for one or more years to secure GPU resources. This arrangement disadvantages small companies, indie developers, and academics who build on a small scale and can’t predict if their projects will gain traction. Regardless of usage, they still have to pay for the GPUs.

“It’s also a prediction nightmare to know how many GPUs and what kind of budget you need,” Delangue said.

Open-source AI is catching up

With AI rapidly advancing behind closed doors, the goal of Hugging Face is to allow people to build more AI tech in the open.

“If you end up with a few organizations who are dominating too much, then it’s going to be harder to fight it later on,” Delangue said.

Andrew Reed, a machine learning engineer at Hugging Face, even spun up an app that visualizes the progress of proprietary and open-source LLMs over time as scored by the LMSYS Chatbot Arena, which shows the gap between the two inching closer together.

Over 35,000 variations of Meta’s open-source AI model Llama have been shared on Hugging Face since Meta’s first version a year ago, ranging from “quantized and merged models to specialized models in biology and Mandarin,” according to the company.

“AI should not be held in the hands of the few. With this commitment to open-source developers, we’re excited to see what everyone will cook up next in the spirit of collaboration and transparency,” Delangue said in a press release.

Read More 

The Chevy Silverado EV, as mobile generator. | Image: Abigail Bassett

Last week, General Motors summoned a small group of journalists to a Beverly Hills mansion to witness the future of home energy. And it started with a preemptive blackout.
As sunset fell across the Hollywood Hills, the chief engineer from General Motors flipped a breaker and disconnected the five-bedroom home from the grid. The lights went out, and less than 20 seconds later, GM’s home system powered it back up, pulling just 5kW or less from the fully charged Chevy Silverado EV parked in the garage.
When the lights came back on, the small crowd of journalists and GM Energy employees clapped, as if they were experiencing electricity for the first time.
When the lights came back on, the small crowd clapped, as if experiencing electricity for the first time
While a pickup truck may be an unusual site in the tony neighborhood, the company wanted to show off how its new energy subsidiary, GM Energy, can power an entire home using nothing but the Silverado as a mobile generator. GM wanted to demonstrate the new features of its vehicle-to-home (V2H) energy products at a splashy if mostly sterile mansion in the excessively wealthy Los Angeles enclave.
(In case you’re house hunting, the uber-lux Beverly Hills mansion that hosted GM’s demo is currently for sale for nearly $25 million — and is also rumored to have once belonged to Rat Pack member Dean Martin.)
Before the event, GM Energy installed a bidirectional charger, which the company calls the GM Energy PowerShift Charger, as well as its own V2H Enablement kit, which includes a power inverter, a home hub that includes a computer system that manages the loads through the house, and a backup battery. The full kit retails for $12,699, but buyers can opt for the individual components at the same price.
Using GM Energy’s equipment, the 10,000-square-foot mansion ran exclusively on battery power from the fully charged 215kWh Ultium battery pack underpinning the new Silverado EV for a few hours on a Thursday evening for the event.

Image: Abigail Bassett
The house, once owned by Dean Martin, is for sale for $25 million.

But one couldn’t help but be struck by some of the cognitive dissonance on display. Amid cooling demand and flagging sales for EVs, automakers like GM are increasingly trying to market their plug-in cars as something like a Swiss Army knife for the electrical grid. The aim is to entice consumers into spending more on an EV to get access to all these extra features unavailable to anyone driving a car that runs on fossil fuels.
The home ran off the Silverado EV for the rest of the night, powering more than 50 overhead lights inside, music throughout, the kitchen where a full chef’s staff continued to turn out hot hors-d’oeuvres for guests, and exterior lighting that ran all the way down the 200-foot long driveway.
While EV technology opens up a number of new and innovative benefits for the consumer, and there are plenty of benefits to creating V2H systems for EVs, the clean energy market has put up somewhat mixed financial results in recent months. Still, GM remains bullish and barreling ahead with a team hired from private equity, climate tech, and more.
“This is truly unlocking the potential of GM’s electric vehicle lineup”
“This is truly unlocking the potential of GM’s electric vehicle lineup,” said Wade Sheffer, VP of GM Energy. “Having that technology, in that garage, prepared to do what it’s doing right now, raises this property’s valuation even more.”
“If you put one of these GM Home systems in every single customer’s home, you can create a decentralized grid,” added William Hotchkiss, head of safety and supplier quality, purchasing, and supply chain. “You can start to make it a connected network so that you can manage demand, and everyone will have more reliability.”

Image: Abigail Bassett
The full kit from GM Energy retails for over $12,000.

GM launched GM Energy in 2022 as a way to compete in the growing home energy market and has plans to sell additional equipment, including the Power Bank or stationary home battery system.
The automaker is no stranger to dabbling in areas that seem incongruent with its core automobile business. It made mechanical hearts in the 1950s and, more recently, respirators during the covid-19 pandemic.
Yet, in an era when EV sales have not grown as quickly as many automakers had anticipated, questions remain about whether it makes good business sense to get into home energy. The market isn’t small, but it’s not exactly growing, with current estimates putting its worth at around $150 billion.
Questions remain about whether it makes good business sense to get into home energy
Other automakers have also sensed an opportunity. Tesla touted its energy business, which includes home chargers, stationary batteries, and solar panels, as a bright spot during last month’s earnings call. The company recently announced that it would start rolling out bidirectional charging in 2025. In the home battery and solar installation market, Tesla dominates.
Hyundai offers its own home energy integration, which includes solar panels and battery storage, alongside its EVs like the Ioniq 5 and 6, which have bidirectional charging. But the automaker has said it’s more focused on vehicle-to-grid power over vehicle-to-home.
GM is taking a similar approach and partnering with Qmerit to help homeowners install their GM Energy technology. The company says that its new “holistic” home system will “help accelerate EV adoption.
As Sheffer put it during our interview, “General Motors simply believes we’re going to have mass adoption of EVs, and we’re going to invest in the whole ecosystem. We’re a separate company within the company, so General Motors invested in us to deliver all of the pieces of that possible.”

Image: Abigail Bassett
Currently, the Chevy Silverado EV is GM’s only vehicle with V2H capabilities.

While the Silverado EV is the only current vehicle that has this V2H ability, eventually GM’s other electric vehicles, including the GMC Sierra EV Denali, Chevy Equinox and Blazer EVs, and Cadillac Lyriq, will get it, too, either via an over-the-air or dealer-installed update.
While these features are similar to those already offered on the Ford F-150 Lightning, GM is promising to make it more accessible to the masses. Its plan is to transform its complete lineup of EVs to enable V2H capabilities. But at launch, there are no plans to open the system up to third parties.
For example, the GM Home kit is currently not compatible with other EVs, including the Honda Prologue, which also gets GM’s Ultium battery. According to executives at last week’s event, there are no current plans to change that until ISO standards change.
“Right now, GM Energy offers the most comprehensive home charge ecosystem on the market, bar none,” Sheffer said. “Once we had the power bank and connection to solar, stop the tires.”
“Once we had the power bank and connection to solar, stop the tires”
Hotchkiss and Sheffer also confirmed that there are no current plans for GM to get into the solar panel manufacturing or installing business right now, given how fraught the space can be. (The company previously said it would work with third-party solar providers, like Sun Power.) Plans to allow customers to sell excess energy back to the grid are still in the works, according to Sheffer, noting that GM is currently piloting some smaller programs with utilities across the nation.
These backup power systems essentially provide microgrids for communities and homeowners looking to insulate themselves from blackouts due to extreme weather resulting from climate change.
As the world heats up and climate change stretches the electrical grid closer to its limits, consumers are increasingly looking for ways to ensure they still have access to reliable power. Since EVs spend the majority of their time parked in home garages and plugged in, GM sees an opportunity to leverage those parked EVs for power storage. The demonstration last week shows what that might look like.
Politics are also at play in the energy space. As demand for electricity grows, coal plants close, and more solar and wind power come online, some politicians and critics of clean power see the potential for a power reliability crisis to increase. By providing a way for people to power their homes when the grid goes down, GM says it is opening new opportunities for individual consumers. And with Tesla’s polarizing CEO Elon Musk increasingly alienating some of his most loyal potential customers, GM offers a less “political” alternative.
It also turns out that consumers want these kinds of features from their EVs, at least according to a recent study by JD Power. The study found that over a third of EV owners said they were interested in bidirectional charging as a way to make money by selling power back to the grid and to help balance peak electrical demands.
While it’s still very early days for GM Energy and its suite of new features supporting V2H support, executives are positive about the future of the venture. “GM is an automobile company, pulling from the grid. It only makes sense that we have the whole ecosystem,” Sheffer said. “That’s why GM said we’re going to pioneer this. If we don’t start, nobody is ever going to get there. So here we go.”
This was no temporary solution, either. GM executives promised that the mansion could run for three to four days at that level of consumption before fully depleting the battery. When I left at around 9:30PM, the charge on the Silverado EV had only dropped by 1 percent.

The Chevy Silverado EV, as mobile generator. | Image: Abigail Bassett

Last week, General Motors summoned a small group of journalists to a Beverly Hills mansion to witness the future of home energy. And it started with a preemptive blackout.

As sunset fell across the Hollywood Hills, the chief engineer from General Motors flipped a breaker and disconnected the five-bedroom home from the grid. The lights went out, and less than 20 seconds later, GM’s home system powered it back up, pulling just 5kW or less from the fully charged Chevy Silverado EV parked in the garage.

When the lights came back on, the small crowd of journalists and GM Energy employees clapped, as if they were experiencing electricity for the first time.

While a pickup truck may be an unusual site in the tony neighborhood, the company wanted to show off how its new energy subsidiary, GM Energy, can power an entire home using nothing but the Silverado as a mobile generator. GM wanted to demonstrate the new features of its vehicle-to-home (V2H) energy products at a splashy if mostly sterile mansion in the excessively wealthy Los Angeles enclave.

(In case you’re house hunting, the uber-lux Beverly Hills mansion that hosted GM’s demo is currently for sale for nearly $25 million — and is also rumored to have once belonged to Rat Pack member Dean Martin.)

Before the event, GM Energy installed a bidirectional charger, which the company calls the GM Energy PowerShift Charger, as well as its own V2H Enablement kit, which includes a power inverter, a home hub that includes a computer system that manages the loads through the house, and a backup battery. The full kit retails for $12,699, but buyers can opt for the individual components at the same price.

Using GM Energy’s equipment, the 10,000-square-foot mansion ran exclusively on battery power from the fully charged 215kWh Ultium battery pack underpinning the new Silverado EV for a few hours on a Thursday evening for the event.

But one couldn’t help but be struck by some of the cognitive dissonance on display. Amid cooling demand and flagging sales for EVs, automakers like GM are increasingly trying to market their plug-in cars as something like a Swiss Army knife for the electrical grid. The aim is to entice consumers into spending more on an EV to get access to all these extra features unavailable to anyone driving a car that runs on fossil fuels.

The home ran off the Silverado EV for the rest of the night, powering more than 50 overhead lights inside, music throughout, the kitchen where a full chef’s staff continued to turn out hot hors-d’oeuvres for guests, and exterior lighting that ran all the way down the 200-foot long driveway.

While EV technology opens up a number of new and innovative benefits for the consumer, and there are plenty of benefits to creating V2H systems for EVs, the clean energy market has put up somewhat mixed financial results in recent months. Still, GM remains bullish and barreling ahead with a team hired from private equity, climate tech, and more.

“This is truly unlocking the potential of GM’s electric vehicle lineup,” said Wade Sheffer, VP of GM Energy. “Having that technology, in that garage, prepared to do what it’s doing right now, raises this property’s valuation even more.”

“If you put one of these GM Home systems in every single customer’s home, you can create a decentralized grid,” added William Hotchkiss, head of safety and supplier quality, purchasing, and supply chain. “You can start to make it a connected network so that you can manage demand, and everyone will have more reliability.”

Image: Abigail Bassett
The full kit from GM Energy retails for over $12,000.

GM launched GM Energy in 2022 as a way to compete in the growing home energy market and has plans to sell additional equipment, including the Power Bank or stationary home battery system.

The automaker is no stranger to dabbling in areas that seem incongruent with its core automobile business. It made mechanical hearts in the 1950s and, more recently, respirators during the covid-19 pandemic.

Yet, in an era when EV sales have not grown as quickly as many automakers had anticipated, questions remain about whether it makes good business sense to get into home energy. The market isn’t small, but it’s not exactly growing, with current estimates putting its worth at around $150 billion.

Other automakers have also sensed an opportunity. Tesla touted its energy business, which includes home chargers, stationary batteries, and solar panels, as a bright spot during last month’s earnings call. The company recently announced that it would start rolling out bidirectional charging in 2025. In the home battery and solar installation market, Tesla dominates.

Hyundai offers its own home energy integration, which includes solar panels and battery storage, alongside its EVs like the Ioniq 5 and 6, which have bidirectional charging. But the automaker has said it’s more focused on vehicle-to-grid power over vehicle-to-home.

GM is taking a similar approach and partnering with Qmerit to help homeowners install their GM Energy technology. The company says that its new “holistic” home system will “help accelerate EV adoption.

As Sheffer put it during our interview, “General Motors simply believes we’re going to have mass adoption of EVs, and we’re going to invest in the whole ecosystem. We’re a separate company within the company, so General Motors invested in us to deliver all of the pieces of that possible.”

Image: Abigail Bassett
Currently, the Chevy Silverado EV is GM’s only vehicle with V2H capabilities.

While the Silverado EV is the only current vehicle that has this V2H ability, eventually GM’s other electric vehicles, including the GMC Sierra EV Denali, Chevy Equinox and Blazer EVs, and Cadillac Lyriq, will get it, too, either via an over-the-air or dealer-installed update.

While these features are similar to those already offered on the Ford F-150 Lightning, GM is promising to make it more accessible to the masses. Its plan is to transform its complete lineup of EVs to enable V2H capabilities. But at launch, there are no plans to open the system up to third parties.

For example, the GM Home kit is currently not compatible with other EVs, including the Honda Prologue, which also gets GM’s Ultium battery. According to executives at last week’s event, there are no current plans to change that until ISO standards change.

“Right now, GM Energy offers the most comprehensive home charge ecosystem on the market, bar none,” Sheffer said. “Once we had the power bank and connection to solar, stop the tires.”

Hotchkiss and Sheffer also confirmed that there are no current plans for GM to get into the solar panel manufacturing or installing business right now, given how fraught the space can be. (The company previously said it would work with third-party solar providers, like Sun Power.) Plans to allow customers to sell excess energy back to the grid are still in the works, according to Sheffer, noting that GM is currently piloting some smaller programs with utilities across the nation.

These backup power systems essentially provide microgrids for communities and homeowners looking to insulate themselves from blackouts due to extreme weather resulting from climate change.

As the world heats up and climate change stretches the electrical grid closer to its limits, consumers are increasingly looking for ways to ensure they still have access to reliable power. Since EVs spend the majority of their time parked in home garages and plugged in, GM sees an opportunity to leverage those parked EVs for power storage. The demonstration last week shows what that might look like.

Politics are also at play in the energy space. As demand for electricity grows, coal plants close, and more solar and wind power come online, some politicians and critics of clean power see the potential for a power reliability crisis to increase. By providing a way for people to power their homes when the grid goes down, GM says it is opening new opportunities for individual consumers. And with Tesla’s polarizing CEO Elon Musk increasingly alienating some of his most loyal potential customers, GM offers a less “political” alternative.

It also turns out that consumers want these kinds of features from their EVs, at least according to a recent study by JD Power. The study found that over a third of EV owners said they were interested in bidirectional charging as a way to make money by selling power back to the grid and to help balance peak electrical demands.

While it’s still very early days for GM Energy and its suite of new features supporting V2H support, executives are positive about the future of the venture. “GM is an automobile company, pulling from the grid. It only makes sense that we have the whole ecosystem,” Sheffer said. “That’s why GM said we’re going to pioneer this. If we don’t start, nobody is ever going to get there. So here we go.”

This was no temporary solution, either. GM executives promised that the mansion could run for three to four days at that level of consumption before fully depleting the battery. When I left at around 9:30PM, the charge on the Silverado EV had only dropped by 1 percent.

Read More 

The EU is concerned that Meta’s algorithms may cause “behavioral addictions in children.” | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

The European Union has opened a formal investigation into Meta over concerns that it isn’t doing enough to safeguard the mental and physical health of children who use its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms.
The probe announced by the European Commission on Thursday will assess whether Meta has breached rules under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), noting that Facebook and Instagram’s UI and algorithms may cause “behavioral addictions in children” and create “rabbit-hole effects.” The EU is also concerned that Meta isn’t doing enough to prevent minors from accessing inappropriate content, and that its age-verification tools may not be “reasonable, proportionate, and effective.”

Today we open formal #DSA investigation against #Meta. We are not convinced that Meta has done enough to comply with the DSA obligations — to mitigate the risks of negative effects to the physical and mental health of young Europeans on its platforms Facebook and Instagram. pic.twitter.com/WxPwgE5Opc— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) May 16, 2024

The probe will additionally assess whether Meta’s content recommendation systems and default privacy settings provide enough privacy, safety, and security for minors. The investigation follows Meta’s recent efforts to improve child safety across Facebook and Instagram, such as restricting them from viewing harmful topics, and limiting interaction with “suspicious” adult accounts, as it attempts to rectify its poor reputation for protecting children online.
The Commission’s next steps involve gathering additional evidence. There’s no formal deadline for the proceedings, but the EU is permitted to take interim enforcement action against Meta while the investigation is ongoing. If Meta is found to be in violation of DSA rules, it could face fines of up to six percent of the company’s global revenue, with EU Commissioner Thierry Breton declaring on X that “we are sparing no effort to protect youth.”

The EU is concerned that Meta’s algorithms may cause “behavioral addictions in children.” | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

The European Union has opened a formal investigation into Meta over concerns that it isn’t doing enough to safeguard the mental and physical health of children who use its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms.

The probe announced by the European Commission on Thursday will assess whether Meta has breached rules under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), noting that Facebook and Instagram’s UI and algorithms may cause “behavioral addictions in children” and create “rabbit-hole effects.” The EU is also concerned that Meta isn’t doing enough to prevent minors from accessing inappropriate content, and that its age-verification tools may not be “reasonable, proportionate, and effective.”

The probe will additionally assess whether Meta’s content recommendation systems and default privacy settings provide enough privacy, safety, and security for minors. The investigation follows Meta’s recent efforts to improve child safety across Facebook and Instagram, such as restricting them from viewing harmful topics, and limiting interaction with “suspicious” adult accounts, as it attempts to rectify its poor reputation for protecting children online.

The Commission’s next steps involve gathering additional evidence. There’s no formal deadline for the proceedings, but the EU is permitted to take interim enforcement action against Meta while the investigation is ongoing. If Meta is found to be in violation of DSA rules, it could face fines of up to six percent of the company’s global revenue, with EU Commissioner Thierry Breton declaring on X that “we are sparing no effort to protect youth.”

Read More 

I think this tease is it, but I can’t quite tell. | Image: Asus

On June 2nd, Asus will formally announce the ROG Ally X, a semi-sequel to its handheld gaming PC with a way bigger battery. We exclusively revealed the broad strokes last Thursday, but I’ve now touched an early engineering sample, too — and I’m pleased to say it’s far more comfortable to hold.

Asus has made a whole bunch of ergonomic changes that make it practically melt into my hands, in the exact way the original did not. While I still prefer the Steam Deck’s beefier grips and symmetrical thumbsticks, the Ally X could easily be my runner-up.
First, a disclaimer: this is not what I’d consider a proper hands-on. Asus wouldn’t let me power it on, play any games, or show you any photos. I couldn’t bring the old ROG Ally into the room or use any tools. The company even covered its ports with black electrical tape to keep me from sleuthing too much!
But I figure you’ll appreciate a discussion of the design changes anyhow. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The original ROG Ally, below the original Steam Deck.

Imagine a black ROG Ally — a black version of the white handheld you see in the image above. That’s how the ROG Ally X looks from the front: same big screen bezels, same glossy cover glass, same button layout, same speaker placement, almost the same exact shape throughout. But instead of palm rests with bumpy corners, you now get smooth curves.
Flip it over, and those curves dominate the handheld’s rear grips, with no more unnecessary edges. Asus no longer makes you try to wrap your fingers around embedded versions of ROG’s trademark diagonal slash — though the iridescent foil slash design mark itself is still there.

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge
The back of the original ROG Ally, as a visual aid. The Ally X back buttons and grips are quite different.

The new back buttons no longer embody the slash, either; they’ve been shrunk down to small, almost heart-shaped pebbles and moved further away from the grips. The grips aren’t as beefy as the Steam Deck’s, but there’s enough to get my fingers around.
Add it all together, and I can now pick up this handheld and hold it above my head without any edges digging into my fingers or palms. It’s easier to grip, and the back buttons no longer get in the way — they’re there if I need them, not if I don’t.
It’s not a light handheld. The bigger battery will make it a thicker and heavier one, and the engineering sample definitely had more heft than the original. But I wouldn’t say it felt heavy, either, thanks to the added comfort when holding it.
I won’t guess at its weight, but I can give you an educated guess at thickness: maybe a third of an inch thicker at most.
How can I tell? I used my index finger as a ruler! The handheld’s “tablet” portion is roughly as thick as the length of my index fingertip, and the grips add roughly the thickness of my index fingernail. Since my fingertip’s about an inch long (27mm), and my fingernail’s about half an inch long (13mm), the Ally X is roughly 1.5 inches and 40mm thick in total. Meanwhile, the original ROG Ally is 1.27 inches (32mm) thick, and 0.83 inches (21mm) of that is its tablet region.
While I mentioned earlier that the Ally melted into my hands, I do feel saying that is a bit premature: the engineering sample I saw was an entirely unfinished, smooth, cheap-looking piano black, and Asus plans to stipple and texture its grips before launch.
So that’s the sculpt… what about the rest? It’s pretty hard to judge without actually playing a game, but here’s what I think I noticed playing around:

The ABXY face buttons feel like they’ve nudged slightly southward, closer to the analog stick, so that the B button now slightly intersects the grip
The face buttons are a little less rattle-y, though they still do pleasingly rattle
The joysticks now have a nicely tacky rubber coating in the middle, like the Steam Deck OLED — their throw felt slightly tighter, too
The D-pad now has eight-way indicators and felt very slightly floatier
The triggers maybe have a touch more throw and still have a nice smooth pull
There’s still just two back buttons
It still uses Phillips head screws
You still get RGB LED ring lights around the sticks; I couldn’t tell if they’d been added to the buttons, but they’re still double-shot
I could see through vent gaps in the chassis that there’s still a pair of fans inside

That’s all I was able to glean — but if Asus manages to nail comfort and battery life without a much higher price tag, this’ll definitely be a handheld to watch. Leaker @MysteryLupin claims it will cost $799 and come with 1TB of storage, 24GB of RAM, and up to eight hours of battery life — but if I recall correctly, Asus claimed the original Ally had up to eight hours of battery life, too.
I guess we’ll find out in June!

I think this tease is it, but I can’t quite tell. | Image: Asus

On June 2nd, Asus will formally announce the ROG Ally X, a semi-sequel to its handheld gaming PC with a way bigger battery. We exclusively revealed the broad strokes last Thursday, but I’ve now touched an early engineering sample, too — and I’m pleased to say it’s far more comfortable to hold.

Asus has made a whole bunch of ergonomic changes that make it practically melt into my hands, in the exact way the original did not. While I still prefer the Steam Deck’s beefier grips and symmetrical thumbsticks, the Ally X could easily be my runner-up.

First, a disclaimer: this is not what I’d consider a proper hands-on. Asus wouldn’t let me power it on, play any games, or show you any photos. I couldn’t bring the old ROG Ally into the room or use any tools. The company even covered its ports with black electrical tape to keep me from sleuthing too much!

But I figure you’ll appreciate a discussion of the design changes anyhow. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The original ROG Ally, below the original Steam Deck.

Imagine a black ROG Ally — a black version of the white handheld you see in the image above. That’s how the ROG Ally X looks from the front: same big screen bezels, same glossy cover glass, same button layout, same speaker placement, almost the same exact shape throughout. But instead of palm rests with bumpy corners, you now get smooth curves.

Flip it over, and those curves dominate the handheld’s rear grips, with no more unnecessary edges. Asus no longer makes you try to wrap your fingers around embedded versions of ROG’s trademark diagonal slash — though the iridescent foil slash design mark itself is still there.

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge
The back of the original ROG Ally, as a visual aid. The Ally X back buttons and grips are quite different.

The new back buttons no longer embody the slash, either; they’ve been shrunk down to small, almost heart-shaped pebbles and moved further away from the grips. The grips aren’t as beefy as the Steam Deck’s, but there’s enough to get my fingers around.

Add it all together, and I can now pick up this handheld and hold it above my head without any edges digging into my fingers or palms. It’s easier to grip, and the back buttons no longer get in the way — they’re there if I need them, not if I don’t.

It’s not a light handheld. The bigger battery will make it a thicker and heavier one, and the engineering sample definitely had more heft than the original. But I wouldn’t say it felt heavy, either, thanks to the added comfort when holding it.

I won’t guess at its weight, but I can give you an educated guess at thickness: maybe a third of an inch thicker at most.

How can I tell? I used my index finger as a ruler! The handheld’s “tablet” portion is roughly as thick as the length of my index fingertip, and the grips add roughly the thickness of my index fingernail. Since my fingertip’s about an inch long (27mm), and my fingernail’s about half an inch long (13mm), the Ally X is roughly 1.5 inches and 40mm thick in total. Meanwhile, the original ROG Ally is 1.27 inches (32mm) thick, and 0.83 inches (21mm) of that is its tablet region.

While I mentioned earlier that the Ally melted into my hands, I do feel saying that is a bit premature: the engineering sample I saw was an entirely unfinished, smooth, cheap-looking piano black, and Asus plans to stipple and texture its grips before launch.

So that’s the sculpt… what about the rest? It’s pretty hard to judge without actually playing a game, but here’s what I think I noticed playing around:

The ABXY face buttons feel like they’ve nudged slightly southward, closer to the analog stick, so that the B button now slightly intersects the grip
The face buttons are a little less rattle-y, though they still do pleasingly rattle
The joysticks now have a nicely tacky rubber coating in the middle, like the Steam Deck OLED — their throw felt slightly tighter, too
The D-pad now has eight-way indicators and felt very slightly floatier
The triggers maybe have a touch more throw and still have a nice smooth pull
There’s still just two back buttons
It still uses Phillips head screws
You still get RGB LED ring lights around the sticks; I couldn’t tell if they’d been added to the buttons, but they’re still double-shot
I could see through vent gaps in the chassis that there’s still a pair of fans inside

That’s all I was able to glean — but if Asus manages to nail comfort and battery life without a much higher price tag, this’ll definitely be a handheld to watch. Leaker @MysteryLupin claims it will cost $799 and come with 1TB of storage, 24GB of RAM, and up to eight hours of battery life — but if I recall correctly, Asus claimed the original Ally had up to eight hours of battery life, too.

I guess we’ll find out in June!

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The X-T50 kit comes with Fujifilm’s also-new 16-50mm lens. | Image: Fujifilm

Fujifilm has just announced a pair of new cameras at the company’s X Summit Sydney event. There’s the medium format GFX100S II, which frankly falls outside my scope of interest (and budget). The more mainstream of the two is the X-T50, which is a followup to — but not a replacement for — the X-T30 II, which will remain in Fujifilm’s lineup moving forward.
The X-T50 is a hodgepodge of the camera maker’s new and old tech. Let’s start with the new. The body has a fresh, more rounded shape that’s unlike anything else in the X-Series lineup, and there’s a film simulation dial right on the top, a first for any Fujifilm camera. You get several preset film sims to circle between and can choose your own for the three customizable slots — though you can’t set these to custom film recipes. Still, the dial goes to show what a vital part of Fujifilm’s appeal that these simulations have become over the years.

Image: Fujifilm
The X-T50 has a dial for switching between the company’s signature film simulations.

The X-T50 includes the same 40-megapixel sensor as the X-T5 and X-H2, plus the accompanying fifth-gen processor, so this camera offers a substantial increase in both resolution and autofocus performance compared to the X-T30 II. And it also gains a 7-stop in-body image stabilization system; the far less expensive X-T30 II lacks IBIS altogether. Continuous shooting is limited to 8fps with the mechanical shutter, whereas the X-T5 and X-H2 can both hit 15fps. For storage, there’s a single UHS-II SD card slot. Video performance has also been dialed up significantly:

Image: Fujifilm
The X-T50 is a far more capable video camera than the X-T30 II.

But there are still some older hardware elements to this camera. For one, you’re stuck with the last-generation battery that isn’t nearly as long-lasting. And disappointingly, the electronic viewfinder is also unchanged from the X-T30 II. You do at least get the same 3-inch, 1.84-million dot rear LCD with two-way tilt as on the X-T5.
The X-T50 slots into a curious spot when it comes to pricing. If you’re buying the body alone, it’s $1,399.99, which is $500 more than the X-T30 II. But again, Fujifilm doesn’t consider this a replacement for that camera. It gets its own unique place in the lineup, which now looks like this:

X-H2S: $2,499
X-H2: $1,999
X-T5: $1,699
X-100V (fixed lens): $1,599
X-T50: $1,399
X-S20: $1,299
X-T30 II: $899

Image: Fujifilm
The X-T50 uses Fujifilm’s last-gen battery with far less stamina than the newer design.

Some of the upgrades that come with stepping up to the X-T5 include water resistance, a nicer EVF, dual SD slots, better continuous shooting performance, and the newer battery with superior endurance.
Fujifilm’s kit lens is also getting a notable revamp. The company’s well-regarded 18-55mm glass is being replaced by a new, lighter 16-50mm f/2.8 – 4.8 lens that now features water resistance. (The X-T50 itself doesn’t have any official water resistance.) Fujifilm believes this lens does a better job resolving that 40MP sensor compared to the ancient 18-55mm. It’s also a constant length, so all the zooming now happens internally without the lens having to extend. Sold on its own, the new 16-50mm lens costs $699. The combined X-T50 kit runs $1,799.99, so you’re only paying $400 for the lens in that scenario.
The X-T50 will be available starting in June in black, dark gray, or silver. Preorders open today, and the company is no doubt hoping that at least some people will get tired of waiting for the backordered-everywhere X100VI and opt for its latest interchangeable lens camera instead.

The X-T50 kit comes with Fujifilm’s also-new 16-50mm lens. | Image: Fujifilm

Fujifilm has just announced a pair of new cameras at the company’s X Summit Sydney event. There’s the medium format GFX100S II, which frankly falls outside my scope of interest (and budget). The more mainstream of the two is the X-T50, which is a followup to — but not a replacement for — the X-T30 II, which will remain in Fujifilm’s lineup moving forward.

The X-T50 is a hodgepodge of the camera maker’s new and old tech. Let’s start with the new. The body has a fresh, more rounded shape that’s unlike anything else in the X-Series lineup, and there’s a film simulation dial right on the top, a first for any Fujifilm camera. You get several preset film sims to circle between and can choose your own for the three customizable slots — though you can’t set these to custom film recipes. Still, the dial goes to show what a vital part of Fujifilm’s appeal that these simulations have become over the years.

Image: Fujifilm
The X-T50 has a dial for switching between the company’s signature film simulations.

The X-T50 includes the same 40-megapixel sensor as the X-T5 and X-H2, plus the accompanying fifth-gen processor, so this camera offers a substantial increase in both resolution and autofocus performance compared to the X-T30 II. And it also gains a 7-stop in-body image stabilization system; the far less expensive X-T30 II lacks IBIS altogether. Continuous shooting is limited to 8fps with the mechanical shutter, whereas the X-T5 and X-H2 can both hit 15fps. For storage, there’s a single UHS-II SD card slot. Video performance has also been dialed up significantly:

Image: Fujifilm
The X-T50 is a far more capable video camera than the X-T30 II.

But there are still some older hardware elements to this camera. For one, you’re stuck with the last-generation battery that isn’t nearly as long-lasting. And disappointingly, the electronic viewfinder is also unchanged from the X-T30 II. You do at least get the same 3-inch, 1.84-million dot rear LCD with two-way tilt as on the X-T5.

The X-T50 slots into a curious spot when it comes to pricing. If you’re buying the body alone, it’s $1,399.99, which is $500 more than the X-T30 II. But again, Fujifilm doesn’t consider this a replacement for that camera. It gets its own unique place in the lineup, which now looks like this:

X-H2S: $2,499
X-H2: $1,999
X-T5: $1,699
X-100V (fixed lens): $1,599
X-T50: $1,399
X-S20: $1,299
X-T30 II: $899

Image: Fujifilm
The X-T50 uses Fujifilm’s last-gen battery with far less stamina than the newer design.

Some of the upgrades that come with stepping up to the X-T5 include water resistance, a nicer EVF, dual SD slots, better continuous shooting performance, and the newer battery with superior endurance.

Fujifilm’s kit lens is also getting a notable revamp. The company’s well-regarded 18-55mm glass is being replaced by a new, lighter 16-50mm f/2.8 – 4.8 lens that now features water resistance. (The X-T50 itself doesn’t have any official water resistance.) Fujifilm believes this lens does a better job resolving that 40MP sensor compared to the ancient 18-55mm. It’s also a constant length, so all the zooming now happens internally without the lens having to extend. Sold on its own, the new 16-50mm lens costs $699. The combined X-T50 kit runs $1,799.99, so you’re only paying $400 for the lens in that scenario.

The X-T50 will be available starting in June in black, dark gray, or silver. Preorders open today, and the company is no doubt hoping that at least some people will get tired of waiting for the backordered-everywhere X100VI and opt for its latest interchangeable lens camera instead.

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