verge-rss

Illustration: The Verge

Apple plans to start its foray into generative AI by offloading complex queries to M2 Ultra chips running in data centers before moving to its more advanced M4 chips.
Bloomberg reports that Apple plans to put its M2 Ultra on cloud servers to run more complex AI queries, while simple tasks are processed on devices. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Apple wanted to make custom chips to bring to data centers to ensure security and privacy in a project the publication says is called Project ACDC, or Apple Chips in Data Center. But the company now believes its existing processors already have sufficient security and privacy components.
The chips will be deployed to Apple’s data centers and eventually to servers run by third parties. Apple runs its own servers across the United States and has been working on a new center in Waukee, Iowa, which it first announced in 2017.
While Apple has not moved as fast on generative AI as competitors like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, the company has been putting out research on the technology. In December, Apple’s machine learning research team released MLX, a machine learning framework that can make AI models run efficiently on Apple silicon. The company has also been releasing other research around AI models that hint at what AI could look like on its devices and how existing products, like Siri, may get an upgrade.
Apple put a big emphasis on AI performance in its announcement of the new M4 chip, saying its new neural engine is “an outrageously powerful chip for AI.”

Illustration: The Verge

Apple plans to start its foray into generative AI by offloading complex queries to M2 Ultra chips running in data centers before moving to its more advanced M4 chips.

Bloomberg reports that Apple plans to put its M2 Ultra on cloud servers to run more complex AI queries, while simple tasks are processed on devices. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Apple wanted to make custom chips to bring to data centers to ensure security and privacy in a project the publication says is called Project ACDC, or Apple Chips in Data Center. But the company now believes its existing processors already have sufficient security and privacy components.

The chips will be deployed to Apple’s data centers and eventually to servers run by third parties. Apple runs its own servers across the United States and has been working on a new center in Waukee, Iowa, which it first announced in 2017.

While Apple has not moved as fast on generative AI as competitors like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, the company has been putting out research on the technology. In December, Apple’s machine learning research team released MLX, a machine learning framework that can make AI models run efficiently on Apple silicon. The company has also been releasing other research around AI models that hint at what AI could look like on its devices and how existing products, like Siri, may get an upgrade.

Apple put a big emphasis on AI performance in its announcement of the new M4 chip, saying its new neural engine is “an outrageously powerful chip for AI.”

Read More 

Image: Mob Entertainment

The horror puzzle game Poppy Playtime is getting a live-action film adaption. Developer Mob Entertainment says it struck a deal with the entertainment company Legendary after fielding “several competitive offers.” Transformers producer Don Murphy and filmmaker Susan Montford will develop and produce the adaptation.
Poppy Playtime is a first-person adventure game, where players take on the role of a former toy factory worker who returns to their now-abandoned workplace. As players explore Playtime Co., they have to solve several puzzles while trying to avoid Huggy Wuggy, the monstrous toy lurking in the factory. The base version of Poppy Playtime is free to play across PC and console, but its developers released chapters players can purchase to continue the adventure.
The similarly viral game Five Nights at Freddy’s also received a live-action film, but it’s far from the only game-to-movie adaptation we’ve seen lately. Following the breakout success of the Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. movies, other studios have picked up adaptations of The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, and even Stray.

Image: Mob Entertainment

The horror puzzle game Poppy Playtime is getting a live-action film adaption. Developer Mob Entertainment says it struck a deal with the entertainment company Legendary after fielding “several competitive offers.” Transformers producer Don Murphy and filmmaker Susan Montford will develop and produce the adaptation.

Poppy Playtime is a first-person adventure game, where players take on the role of a former toy factory worker who returns to their now-abandoned workplace. As players explore Playtime Co., they have to solve several puzzles while trying to avoid Huggy Wuggy, the monstrous toy lurking in the factory. The base version of Poppy Playtime is free to play across PC and console, but its developers released chapters players can purchase to continue the adventure.

The similarly viral game Five Nights at Freddy’s also received a live-action film, but it’s far from the only game-to-movie adaptation we’ve seen lately. Following the breakout success of the Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. movies, other studios have picked up adaptations of The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, and even Stray.

Read More 

Image: Albacore (X)

Microsoft has quietly started testing an intriguing change to the Windows 11 Start menu that could introduce a floating panel full of “companion” widgets. Windows watcher Albacore discovered the new Start menu feature in the latest test versions of Windows 11 that Microsoft has released publicly.
While Microsoft has not yet announced this feature, the “Start menu Companions” appear to be a way to allow developers to extend the Windows 11 Start menu with widget-like functionality that lives inside a floating island that can be docked next to the Start menu. It looks like developers will be able to build apps that provide widget-like information through adaptive cards — a platform-agnostic way of displaying UI blocks of information.

It’s time for the Start menu to become extensible!✨Windows 11 β build 26212 quietly introduces support for “Start Menu Companions.” They’re apps that provide Adaptive Cards which display on a floating island (docked ➡️ or ⬅️) alongside StartUsed Widgets data as a quick demo pic.twitter.com/FddrpC99h3— Albacore ☁️ (@thebookisclosed) May 9, 2024

These companions will be configurable in the main Windows 11 Settings section, with the ability to install multiple companions and toggles to enable or disable them. Albacore mentions that these companions seem to be very web-centric, much like the widgets inside Windows 11.
If Microsoft decides to proceed with this Start menu feature, it could be the answer to the loss of the Live Tiles that were removed in Windows 10X and Windows 11. Live Tiles, the animated and flipping icons from the Windows Phone days, offered widget-like information on the Start menu but weren’t widely supported by app developers. Microsoft first introduced them in Windows 8, back when the company was trying to bridge the gap with its Windows Phone OS. Live Tiles were designed to be “glance and go,” so you could quickly look at a phone or Start menu and see the information you needed.

Image: Albacore (X)

Microsoft has quietly started testing an intriguing change to the Windows 11 Start menu that could introduce a floating panel full of “companion” widgets. Windows watcher Albacore discovered the new Start menu feature in the latest test versions of Windows 11 that Microsoft has released publicly.

While Microsoft has not yet announced this feature, the “Start menu Companions” appear to be a way to allow developers to extend the Windows 11 Start menu with widget-like functionality that lives inside a floating island that can be docked next to the Start menu. It looks like developers will be able to build apps that provide widget-like information through adaptive cards — a platform-agnostic way of displaying UI blocks of information.

These companions will be configurable in the main Windows 11 Settings section, with the ability to install multiple companions and toggles to enable or disable them. Albacore mentions that these companions seem to be very web-centric, much like the widgets inside Windows 11.

If Microsoft decides to proceed with this Start menu feature, it could be the answer to the loss of the Live Tiles that were removed in Windows 10X and Windows 11. Live Tiles, the animated and flipping icons from the Windows Phone days, offered widget-like information on the Start menu but weren’t widely supported by app developers. Microsoft first introduced them in Windows 8, back when the company was trying to bridge the gap with its Windows Phone OS. Live Tiles were designed to be “glance and go,” so you could quickly look at a phone or Start menu and see the information you needed.

Read More 

“The next ROG Ally.” | Image: Asus

The Asus ROG Ally was the first true Steam Deck challenger; while I’d argue it fell a little short, it legitimately improved the state of affordable Windows handheld gaming with its plugged-in performance boosts and smooth variable refresh rate screen. Now, Asus is beginning to reveal its successor: the ROG Ally X.
Don’t call it an Ally 2: when it ships in the second half of the year, the Windows-based Ally X will have the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset and the same 7-inch 48–120Hz VRR screen. It’s not quite like the Steam Deck OLED, where Valve got AMD to revise its chip for better battery life and stability and added a larger, brighter, gorgeous new OLED panel with improved response time and slimmer bezels.
“We’re not looking at 30 to 40 percent more capacity.”
But the newly black-colored handheld will have a substantial battery life improvement, Asus SVP Shawn Yen tells The Verge — because Asus will cram a substantially larger battery pack into the Ally X’s revised shell. “We’re not looking at 30 to 40 percent more capacity,” he tells me. “We’re looking at way more than that.”
Asus won’t talk specific specs today. Instead, Yen asks me how much battery life I’d realistically like from a revised handheld. I say I’d want to double the worst-case battery life to three hours since I’m currently seeing maybe 1.5 hours in intensive games. “It won’t disappoint your worst-case scenario,” he tells me.

Image: Asus
Asus confirms the new Ally X will come in black — so perhaps this tease from the other day is it?

Yen says battery life has been the single biggest request since launch; Asus has seen how the community sometimes straps giant external batteries to their handhelds, even though the Ally theoretically had room inside for a larger battery pack.
“When we launched [the original Ally], we didn’t have such a clear understanding that the battery might be something people desire more than a lighter-weight device,” he admits.

Battery isn’t the only change Asus is talking about today; the Ally X is about addressing many of the community’s top priorities for how to revise the original. “We think about battery and storage, graphics and memory, ports… our goal is to fit as many of those as possible into a device like this,” says Asus senior product manager Gabriel Meng.
Again, no specs today, but Asus says the Ally X should now have more than its current 16GB of RAM so that you can allocate lots of it to the GPU without impacting the rest of the system. It should have a longer M.2 2280 SSD slot, so buyers can more easily find and purchase larger SSD upgrades than the current M.2 2230 allows.
The Ally X should also be even more repairable, with redesigned joystick modules that are more interchangeable — and upgradable, I imagine, if Gulikit steps up? While I didn’t get to see it for myself, Asus says the handheld will be slightly heavier due to the larger battery, with revised grips, and slight tuning to things like the D-Pad, joysticks, and triggers.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Verge (@verge)

Above: a video showing the inside of the original ROG Ally.
And, while Asus still won’t admit that the Ally’s SD card reader ever had any fault, tells me it’s the same exact SD card reader it uses in its laptops, and says it doesn’t believe any issues actually had to do with overheating, the Ally X will have a rearranged motherboard layout that sounds like it’ll move it away from the system’s vents. “We don’t want people to think that’s what we had to do,” Meng says of moving the SD reader. “We had to move things around the board to make them fit.”
Asus says the Ally X’s improvements will come at a cost; unlike the Steam Deck OLED, which largely replaced Valve’s LCD model at the same price points, the Ally X will start at a higher price than the original. The original 2023 ROG Ally will also continue to stick around and may see discounts.
As far as a ROG Ally 2 goes, Asus agrees that it has a similar philosophy to Valve: it wants to build a true successor when it can offer a significant performance boost, not just an incremental one.
And while Asus doesn’t plan to sell an aftermarket battery upgrade for original Ally buyers it has a big software update coming for those buyers as well: Armory Crate SE 1.5 is not only a very fresh coat of paint and navigation improvements, it’ll finally let players share their button mappings for various games with other Ally owners.

Asus tells me it still believes in Windows. While Meng says, “We are very open-minded to looking at other solutions,” and that the company does have conversations with Valve, Asus says it has philosophical and logistical reasons to stick with Microsoft’s OS, including a desire to have the “inclusiveness of all different game platforms” instead of relying on Steam. I’ll tell you about some of the logistical reasons in a future story.

“The next ROG Ally.” | Image: Asus

The Asus ROG Ally was the first true Steam Deck challenger; while I’d argue it fell a little short, it legitimately improved the state of affordable Windows handheld gaming with its plugged-in performance boosts and smooth variable refresh rate screen. Now, Asus is beginning to reveal its successor: the ROG Ally X.

Don’t call it an Ally 2: when it ships in the second half of the year, the Windows-based Ally X will have the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset and the same 7-inch 48–120Hz VRR screen. It’s not quite like the Steam Deck OLED, where Valve got AMD to revise its chip for better battery life and stability and added a larger, brighter, gorgeous new OLED panel with improved response time and slimmer bezels.

But the newly black-colored handheld will have a substantial battery life improvement, Asus SVP Shawn Yen tells The Verge — because Asus will cram a substantially larger battery pack into the Ally X’s revised shell. “We’re not looking at 30 to 40 percent more capacity,” he tells me. “We’re looking at way more than that.”

Asus won’t talk specific specs today. Instead, Yen asks me how much battery life I’d realistically like from a revised handheld. I say I’d want to double the worst-case battery life to three hours since I’m currently seeing maybe 1.5 hours in intensive games. “It won’t disappoint your worst-case scenario,” he tells me.

Image: Asus
Asus confirms the new Ally X will come in black — so perhaps this tease from the other day is it?

Yen says battery life has been the single biggest request since launch; Asus has seen how the community sometimes straps giant external batteries to their handhelds, even though the Ally theoretically had room inside for a larger battery pack.

“When we launched [the original Ally], we didn’t have such a clear understanding that the battery might be something people desire more than a lighter-weight device,” he admits.

Battery isn’t the only change Asus is talking about today; the Ally X is about addressing many of the community’s top priorities for how to revise the original. “We think about battery and storage, graphics and memory, ports… our goal is to fit as many of those as possible into a device like this,” says Asus senior product manager Gabriel Meng.

Again, no specs today, but Asus says the Ally X should now have more than its current 16GB of RAM so that you can allocate lots of it to the GPU without impacting the rest of the system. It should have a longer M.2 2280 SSD slot, so buyers can more easily find and purchase larger SSD upgrades than the current M.2 2230 allows.

The Ally X should also be even more repairable, with redesigned joystick modules that are more interchangeable — and upgradable, I imagine, if Gulikit steps up? While I didn’t get to see it for myself, Asus says the handheld will be slightly heavier due to the larger battery, with revised grips, and slight tuning to things like the D-Pad, joysticks, and triggers.

Above: a video showing the inside of the original ROG Ally.

And, while Asus still won’t admit that the Ally’s SD card reader ever had any fault, tells me it’s the same exact SD card reader it uses in its laptops, and says it doesn’t believe any issues actually had to do with overheating, the Ally X will have a rearranged motherboard layout that sounds like it’ll move it away from the system’s vents. “We don’t want people to think that’s what we had to do,” Meng says of moving the SD reader. “We had to move things around the board to make them fit.”

Asus says the Ally X’s improvements will come at a cost; unlike the Steam Deck OLED, which largely replaced Valve’s LCD model at the same price points, the Ally X will start at a higher price than the original. The original 2023 ROG Ally will also continue to stick around and may see discounts.

As far as a ROG Ally 2 goes, Asus agrees that it has a similar philosophy to Valve: it wants to build a true successor when it can offer a significant performance boost, not just an incremental one.

And while Asus doesn’t plan to sell an aftermarket battery upgrade for original Ally buyers it has a big software update coming for those buyers as well: Armory Crate SE 1.5 is not only a very fresh coat of paint and navigation improvements, it’ll finally let players share their button mappings for various games with other Ally owners.

Asus tells me it still believes in Windows. While Meng says, “We are very open-minded to looking at other solutions,” and that the company does have conversations with Valve, Asus says it has philosophical and logistical reasons to stick with Microsoft’s OS, including a desire to have the “inclusiveness of all different game platforms” instead of relying on Steam. I’ll tell you about some of the logistical reasons in a future story.

Read More 

Photo: Fanatec

Corsair is pursuing an acquisition of the racing sim brand Fanatec. In an update shared on Thursday, Corsair says it’s negotiating with Fanatec to restructure the troubled company’s around €70 million (about $75.4 million) debt and cover short-term costs.
Over the years, Fanatec has established itself as one of the most popular brands for racing sim hardware. It offers a premium lineup of racing wheels, pedals, shifters, and more, which virtual racing enthusiasts can hook up to their console or PC when playing games like Gran Turismo 7 and Assetto Corsa.
But the company’s reputation has taken a hit in recent months. Fanatec customers have flooded forums with complaints about the company’s inability to fulfill orders on time and lack of customer support. Fanatec also delayed the launch of its ClubSport DD+ racing wheelbase over licensing issues. These problems have drawn customers to hardware from rivals like Simagic or Logitech instead.
“This transaction would solve the company’s significant debt load and position the company for growth and continued product portfolio expansion,” Corsair CEO Andy Paul says in a statement. Regulators in Germany — where Fanatec is based — still have to approve of the deal.
Corsair isn’t the only company in the gaming hardware and peripheral industry making moves as of late, as Turtle Beach acquired the gamepad maker PDP in March.

Photo: Fanatec

Corsair is pursuing an acquisition of the racing sim brand Fanatec. In an update shared on Thursday, Corsair says it’s negotiating with Fanatec to restructure the troubled company’s around €70 million (about $75.4 million) debt and cover short-term costs.

Over the years, Fanatec has established itself as one of the most popular brands for racing sim hardware. It offers a premium lineup of racing wheels, pedals, shifters, and more, which virtual racing enthusiasts can hook up to their console or PC when playing games like Gran Turismo 7 and Assetto Corsa.

But the company’s reputation has taken a hit in recent months. Fanatec customers have flooded forums with complaints about the company’s inability to fulfill orders on time and lack of customer support. Fanatec also delayed the launch of its ClubSport DD+ racing wheelbase over licensing issues. These problems have drawn customers to hardware from rivals like Simagic or Logitech instead.

“This transaction would solve the company’s significant debt load and position the company for growth and continued product portfolio expansion,” Corsair CEO Andy Paul says in a statement. Regulators in Germany — where Fanatec is based — still have to approve of the deal.

Corsair isn’t the only company in the gaming hardware and peripheral industry making moves as of late, as Turtle Beach acquired the gamepad maker PDP in March.

Read More 

“Buy our iPad or the piano gets it!” | Screenshot: Apple

I wonder if Apple CEO Tim Cook was surprised by the visceral revulsion many people felt after viewing the newest commercial for Apple’s iPad. In it, a plethora of creative tools are flattened by an industrial press. Watching a piano, which if maintained can last for something like 50 years, squished to advertise a gadget, designed to be obsolete in less than 10, is infuriating. The backlash was immediate.
The message many of us received was this: Apple, a trillion-dollar behemoth, will crush everything beautiful and human, everything that’s a pleasure to look at and touch, and all that will be left is a skinny glass and metal slab.

Astoundingly, this is meant to sell a product. “Buy the thing that’s destroying everything you love,” says Apple. This is quite a change from the famous “1984” ad, where Apple styled itself as smashing boring conformity. Sure, the new ad is tone-deaf — after all, Apple rose to prominence by aligning itself with creative types. But it also takes an embarrassingly narrow view of technology. Imagine being such a rube that you believe that the only good technology is new technology.
The iPad doesn’t replace those experiences
That view of technology is fundamentally disrespectful. We are surrounded by stuff that’s meant to endure. Technology, in a much broader sense, is innately hopeful. It’s a bright golden thread between our past and our future.
Language is the most basic technology, the one that lets us build everything else. Writing down our thoughts meant we could begin to access lifetimes of experience. The Pythagorean theorem was so significant when it was first discovered that a cult formed around it; I learned it in sixth grade because it was foundational for a lot of things we created later. These foundations — language, math — made possible a chain of events that allowed Apple to exist.
There’s still a place for the technology Apple crushes in its ad. A TV screen is larger and more enjoyable to use than an iPad if you don’t need to be on the move; that’s why most people still own one. A record player allows the secondary joy of trading physical objects, and get-togethers at record stores. The arcade video game exists in places where you gather with other people.
The iPad doesn’t replace those experiences. At its best, it complements them. I have never met a professional carpenter who uses only a multi-tool to get their job done. But if you’re trying to travel light, that Swiss Army knife is probably better than an entire toolkit.
This ad does highlight a particular Silicon Valley attitude: It scorns the past as outdated
This ad does highlight a particular Silicon Valley attitude: It scorns the past as outdated rather than respecting it as clever. In some sense, these companies have to: they’ve got products to sell. If Apple were to build something as durable as a piano, it would sell a lot fewer computers. In fact, the company has a history of kneecapping its own products in order to sell more of them: it deliberately slowed its older iPhones, for instance. It also has a history of making repairing and maintaining its products difficult.
In this ad, technology is disposable. I flinched when that piano got crushed. But apparently, no one inside the company did — and a lot of people had to sign off on this ad. The emotional valence of crushing is unmistakable; simply reversing the ad, as Reza Sixo Safai did, so that all the creative tools spring from the iPad immediately improves it. After all, the iPad can also be a creative tool, and isn’t that what the commercial was meant to suggest?
Apple has a habit of suggesting its older devices are obsolete by releasing new versions that change their shells and styling without altering what they do in any meaningful way. The point of this ad is not about the iPad’s creative uses — it’s that it’s skinny. That’s the big selling point: the skinniest ever. Apple was so focused on its exciting new marketing feature that it lost sight of what’s really important: the tools that make the things we love.

“Buy our iPad or the piano gets it!” | Screenshot: Apple

I wonder if Apple CEO Tim Cook was surprised by the visceral revulsion many people felt after viewing the newest commercial for Apple’s iPad. In it, a plethora of creative tools are flattened by an industrial press. Watching a piano, which if maintained can last for something like 50 years, squished to advertise a gadget, designed to be obsolete in less than 10, is infuriating. The backlash was immediate.

The message many of us received was this: Apple, a trillion-dollar behemoth, will crush everything beautiful and human, everything that’s a pleasure to look at and touch, and all that will be left is a skinny glass and metal slab.

Astoundingly, this is meant to sell a product. “Buy the thing that’s destroying everything you love,” says Apple. This is quite a change from the famous “1984” ad, where Apple styled itself as smashing boring conformity. Sure, the new ad is tone-deaf — after all, Apple rose to prominence by aligning itself with creative types. But it also takes an embarrassingly narrow view of technology. Imagine being such a rube that you believe that the only good technology is new technology.

That view of technology is fundamentally disrespectful. We are surrounded by stuff that’s meant to endure. Technology, in a much broader sense, is innately hopeful. It’s a bright golden thread between our past and our future.

Language is the most basic technology, the one that lets us build everything else. Writing down our thoughts meant we could begin to access lifetimes of experience. The Pythagorean theorem was so significant when it was first discovered that a cult formed around it; I learned it in sixth grade because it was foundational for a lot of things we created later. These foundations — language, math — made possible a chain of events that allowed Apple to exist.

There’s still a place for the technology Apple crushes in its ad. A TV screen is larger and more enjoyable to use than an iPad if you don’t need to be on the move; that’s why most people still own one. A record player allows the secondary joy of trading physical objects, and get-togethers at record stores. The arcade video game exists in places where you gather with other people.

The iPad doesn’t replace those experiences. At its best, it complements them. I have never met a professional carpenter who uses only a multi-tool to get their job done. But if you’re trying to travel light, that Swiss Army knife is probably better than an entire toolkit.

This ad does highlight a particular Silicon Valley attitude: It scorns the past as outdated rather than respecting it as clever. In some sense, these companies have to: they’ve got products to sell. If Apple were to build something as durable as a piano, it would sell a lot fewer computers. In fact, the company has a history of kneecapping its own products in order to sell more of them: it deliberately slowed its older iPhones, for instance. It also has a history of making repairing and maintaining its products difficult.

In this ad, technology is disposable. I flinched when that piano got crushed. But apparently, no one inside the company did — and a lot of people had to sign off on this ad. The emotional valence of crushing is unmistakable; simply reversing the ad, as Reza Sixo Safai did, so that all the creative tools spring from the iPad immediately improves it. After all, the iPad can also be a creative tool, and isn’t that what the commercial was meant to suggest?

Apple has a habit of suggesting its older devices are obsolete by releasing new versions that change their shells and styling without altering what they do in any meaningful way. The point of this ad is not about the iPad’s creative uses — it’s that it’s skinny. That’s the big selling point: the skinniest ever. Apple was so focused on its exciting new marketing feature that it lost sight of what’s really important: the tools that make the things we love.

Read More 

Image: Lucid

It’s earnings season, and anyone invested in the idea that electric vehicles are the future of transportation is all over Tesla. But Elon Musk’s company isn’t the only one putting all its bets on battery-electric vehicles. Three other so-called “pure EV plays” — Rivian, Lucid Motors, and Fisker — also posted their earnings this week. And sifting through the numbers reveals some worrisome trends.
For years, it was assumed that Tesla as well as the dozen or so other pure EV companies it helped spawn, would outmaneuver the legacy automakers thanks to a laser focus on electric powertrains and battery production. But today, it’s the legacy automakers that are posting healthy profits while the pure EV companies flounder.
Price cuts, politics, and a stubborn belief that charging an EV is still too hard is holding a lot of people back. And the Tesla imitators are taking it square on the chin. Rivian, Lucid, and Fisker all appear to be in various stages of emergency. Let’s start with the most endangered and go from there.

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Fisker
Henrik Fisker’s second attempt at building a car company from scratch appears on the same downward trajectory as his first.
The latest news comes not from the company itself but from the contract manufacturer that makes Fisker’s only model, the Fisker Ocean SUV. The contractor, Magna International, published its earnings this week in which it basically wipes its hands of Fisker by stating that it won’t be making any more Oceans for the struggling company.
“Our current Outlook assumes no further production of the Fisker Ocean.”
“Our current Outlook assumes no further production of the Fisker Ocean,” Magna says. Moreover, the company is facing $75 million in losses based on its relationship with Fisker.
On top of all of that, Fisker’s Austrian subsidiary filed for restructuring, which is roughly equivalent to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In its most recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it only had $50 million left in the bank.
Fisker was already on the ropes, but this could be the kill shot. The struggling EV company previously slashed the price of the Ocean by nearly 40 percent as it looks for a miracle to avoid going out of business. It’s facing a $13 million lawsuit from the firm that developed Fisker’s Pear crossover and Alaska pickup truck. And the company was recently delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for failure to keep its share price above $1.
With no EV, dwindling cash funds, and an exodus from the public markets, Fisker is running out of options.

Image: Rivian

Rivian
Everyone’s favorite outdoorsy EV company is facing a serious cash crunch. The company lost $1.45 billion in the first quarter of 2024, up from a $1.35 billion loss in Q1 of 2023 — which is a staggering level of cash burn.
Fortunately, it has $7.9 billion of cash and cash equivalents on hand, but it acknowledges that further cuts will be necessary if it’s ever going to achieve stability. Rivian has already gone through several rounds of layoffs in its short history, but it’s possible more could be on the horizon.
Everyone’s favorite outdoorsy EV company is facing a serious cash crunch
The good news is that a lot of key indicators are trending upward: production increased 48 percent year over year; deliveries are up over 70 percent; and revenue increased over 80 percent.
The company says its outlook remains strong thanks to several decisions to reduce capital expenditures by moving production of the next-gen R2 vehicles to its Normal, Illinois, facility. Once it’s finished retooling the factory, Rivian says it will have enough space to build 215,000 vehicles annually, including 155,000 R2s — which seems wildly optimistic considering the current state of customer demand for EVs.
Still, Rivian finds itself stuck in the “EV valley of death,” in which it has scaled up production but isn’t bringing in enough revenue to cover its operational costs. It’s an especially vulnerable place for a young company to be. And Rivian lacks a financial benefactor with bottomless pockets like Lucid has with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

Photo by Tim Stevens for The Verge

Lucid
Speaking of, the luxury EV marque doesn’t produce as many vehicles as Rivian, so it lost considerably less money this past quarter. Lucid brought in $172 million in the first three months of the year, a 15 percent increase year over year. It lost $680.9 million, down from $779.5 million lost in Q1 of 2023. As such, it is sitting on a $2.2 billion pile of cash (and cash equivalents).
But the price war with Tesla and others has taken a toll. Lucid has been slashing its prices, most recently by as much as $7,000 for its Air Pure sedan with rear-wheel drive. And the luxury EV maker has struggled to generate demand for its premium-priced vehicles, producing only 8,428 vehicles in 2023, of which only 6,001 were delivered to customers. Lucid also laid off 18 percent of its workforce and cut production targets multiple times.
Still, having the vast wealth of the Saudi Public Investment Fund in its back pocket has paid dividends. Weeks before releasing its earnings report, Lucid said it’s raising an additional $1 billion from the fund, sending its shares to their highest level in months.
The Public Investment Fund already owns a controlling stake, 60 percent, of Lucid, which illustrates the automaker’s strategic advantage over its struggling competitors. They will all continue to lose money in the near term as Tesla continues to wage a grueling price war and customers continue to waffle over when and how to make the switch to EVs. But while Rivian bleeds money and Fisker flirts with bankruptcy, Lucid can keep zooming ahead.

Image: Lucid

It’s earnings season, and anyone invested in the idea that electric vehicles are the future of transportation is all over Tesla. But Elon Musk’s company isn’t the only one putting all its bets on battery-electric vehicles. Three other so-called “pure EV plays” — Rivian, Lucid Motors, and Fisker — also posted their earnings this week. And sifting through the numbers reveals some worrisome trends.

For years, it was assumed that Tesla as well as the dozen or so other pure EV companies it helped spawn, would outmaneuver the legacy automakers thanks to a laser focus on electric powertrains and battery production. But today, it’s the legacy automakers that are posting healthy profits while the pure EV companies flounder.

Price cuts, politics, and a stubborn belief that charging an EV is still too hard is holding a lot of people back. And the Tesla imitators are taking it square on the chin. Rivian, Lucid, and Fisker all appear to be in various stages of emergency. Let’s start with the most endangered and go from there.

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Fisker

Henrik Fisker’s second attempt at building a car company from scratch appears on the same downward trajectory as his first.

The latest news comes not from the company itself but from the contract manufacturer that makes Fisker’s only model, the Fisker Ocean SUV. The contractor, Magna International, published its earnings this week in which it basically wipes its hands of Fisker by stating that it won’t be making any more Oceans for the struggling company.

“Our current Outlook assumes no further production of the Fisker Ocean,” Magna says. Moreover, the company is facing $75 million in losses based on its relationship with Fisker.

On top of all of that, Fisker’s Austrian subsidiary filed for restructuring, which is roughly equivalent to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In its most recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it only had $50 million left in the bank.

Fisker was already on the ropes, but this could be the kill shot. The struggling EV company previously slashed the price of the Ocean by nearly 40 percent as it looks for a miracle to avoid going out of business. It’s facing a $13 million lawsuit from the firm that developed Fisker’s Pear crossover and Alaska pickup truck. And the company was recently delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for failure to keep its share price above $1.

With no EV, dwindling cash funds, and an exodus from the public markets, Fisker is running out of options.

Image: Rivian

Rivian

Everyone’s favorite outdoorsy EV company is facing a serious cash crunch. The company lost $1.45 billion in the first quarter of 2024, up from a $1.35 billion loss in Q1 of 2023 — which is a staggering level of cash burn.

Fortunately, it has $7.9 billion of cash and cash equivalents on hand, but it acknowledges that further cuts will be necessary if it’s ever going to achieve stability. Rivian has already gone through several rounds of layoffs in its short history, but it’s possible more could be on the horizon.

The good news is that a lot of key indicators are trending upward: production increased 48 percent year over year; deliveries are up over 70 percent; and revenue increased over 80 percent.

The company says its outlook remains strong thanks to several decisions to reduce capital expenditures by moving production of the next-gen R2 vehicles to its Normal, Illinois, facility. Once it’s finished retooling the factory, Rivian says it will have enough space to build 215,000 vehicles annually, including 155,000 R2s — which seems wildly optimistic considering the current state of customer demand for EVs.

Still, Rivian finds itself stuck in the “EV valley of death,” in which it has scaled up production but isn’t bringing in enough revenue to cover its operational costs. It’s an especially vulnerable place for a young company to be. And Rivian lacks a financial benefactor with bottomless pockets like Lucid has with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

Photo by Tim Stevens for The Verge

Lucid

Speaking of, the luxury EV marque doesn’t produce as many vehicles as Rivian, so it lost considerably less money this past quarter. Lucid brought in $172 million in the first three months of the year, a 15 percent increase year over year. It lost $680.9 million, down from $779.5 million lost in Q1 of 2023. As such, it is sitting on a $2.2 billion pile of cash (and cash equivalents).

But the price war with Tesla and others has taken a toll. Lucid has been slashing its prices, most recently by as much as $7,000 for its Air Pure sedan with rear-wheel drive. And the luxury EV maker has struggled to generate demand for its premium-priced vehicles, producing only 8,428 vehicles in 2023, of which only 6,001 were delivered to customers. Lucid also laid off 18 percent of its workforce and cut production targets multiple times.

Still, having the vast wealth of the Saudi Public Investment Fund in its back pocket has paid dividends. Weeks before releasing its earnings report, Lucid said it’s raising an additional $1 billion from the fund, sending its shares to their highest level in months.

The Public Investment Fund already owns a controlling stake, 60 percent, of Lucid, which illustrates the automaker’s strategic advantage over its struggling competitors. They will all continue to lose money in the near term as Tesla continues to wage a grueling price war and customers continue to waffle over when and how to make the switch to EVs. But while Rivian bleeds money and Fisker flirts with bankruptcy, Lucid can keep zooming ahead.

Read More 

Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max are teaming up for a new bundle this summer, Netflix is focused on the WWE and celebrity boxing, Disney Plus is getting ESPN, and Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Max could get a price hike. A familiar refrain emerged around all this news: streaming is becoming cable TV all over again and getting crummier in the process.
And it’s true! When streaming first emerged, it was a beautiful alternative to piracy, which was very convenient and very illegal, and cable, which was festooned with ads and weighed down by channels you were paying for and didn’t want. Streaming gave you a world of content on demand for a fraction of the cost of cable.
But that experience was never sustainable. Content costs money to make, and companies are apparently obligated to “increase revenue” and “make profit.” This means Netflix spending billions of dollars a year on content isn’t necessarily sustainable unless it’s adding new users and monetizing them through some combination of ads and increasing subscription fees for stuff that used to be free, like sharing an account or streaming in 4K.
I’ve been thinking about this problem for quite a while, so I sat down to talk about it. Because streaming is becoming cable, and we’re all going to need to make peace with that.

Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max are teaming up for a new bundle this summer, Netflix is focused on the WWE and celebrity boxing, Disney Plus is getting ESPN, and Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Max could get a price hike. A familiar refrain emerged around all this news: streaming is becoming cable TV all over again and getting crummier in the process.

And it’s true! When streaming first emerged, it was a beautiful alternative to piracy, which was very convenient and very illegal, and cable, which was festooned with ads and weighed down by channels you were paying for and didn’t want. Streaming gave you a world of content on demand for a fraction of the cost of cable.

But that experience was never sustainable. Content costs money to make, and companies are apparently obligated to “increase revenue” and “make profit.” This means Netflix spending billions of dollars a year on content isn’t necessarily sustainable unless it’s adding new users and monetizing them through some combination of ads and increasing subscription fees for stuff that used to be free, like sharing an account or streaming in 4K.

I’ve been thinking about this problem for quite a while, so I sat down to talk about it. Because streaming is becoming cable, and we’re all going to need to make peace with that.

Read More 

Illustration: The Verge

My Uber driver asked for my PIN recently. In my half-asleep state, I stared at him, alarmed, for a few seconds before it dawned on me: he was asking me to share the PIN Uber sent so I could verify my ride.
It turned out I’d activated all of Uber’s safety features while writing about Uber’s new safety customization section last month and then forgot about their existence entirely — which, to be honest, is pretty easy to do. Hidden away under Settings in the Uber app, Uber’s safety tools are less visible than all of its many services and even its Emission Savings feature (yeah, that’s a thing).
That’s a real shame because as a single female caregiver who frequently takes Ubers and has experienced harassment, I’m starting to appreciate the extra sense of safety. And given that Uber received 9,805 reports of sexual assault in its rides from 2017 to 2020, according to its most recent safety report, I think they can help a lot of people, too.

Some of these tools I knew about already, and you probably have heard about them, too, like ShareMyTrip, which lets you send live location and ride details with people you trust. But did you know you could also record your rides? The recording is encrypted, and you can’t listen to it — nor can your driver — but Uber can and will if you submit a safety report. What’s even cooler is that you can customize these features according to time and location. For example, you can schedule PIN verification or the audio recording feature to turn on for all rides after 9PM and / or whenever you’re within 50 meters of bars.
These features are not easy to find. But thankfully, Uber makes it pretty easy to turn them all on in just five steps. Here’s how:

First, in your Uber app, click on the Account tab located at the very bottom right of your screen.
After selecting Settings, scroll down to the Safety section.
Head on over to Safety preferences to start adding your safety tool preferences. (Note that some people may see and need to click on Start setup first before doing so, as I had initially.)
You’ll then see a page with four safety features that you can choose to activate: Get more safety check-ins; Use PIN verification; Record audio; and Share trip status.

On that same page, scroll down to Schedule. There, you can set schedules for all, some, or no rides. If you click on some rides, Uber will also let you choose between late-night rides (9PM–5AM), within 50 meters of a bar or restaurant, and / or weekends

You can also customize safety tools while on a ride when you click on the Safety Toolkit blue shield and select Set up safety preferences. Even better, Uber offers additional safety features while you’re on the ride (which are only visible when you are on said ride), like Text-to-911, which sends a prewritten text with information about the trip, vehicle, and location to 911 operators. There’s also Live Help, a feature Uber created in partnership with security company ADT that lets riders and drivers talk to safety agents via text or a call during a ride until they feel safe.

Truth be told, I wish Uber offered more safety tools and customization options. Why stop at just bars and restaurants? Why not other places, like airports, which is where one person did actually try to steal my Uber ride late at night? Or take a leaf from Lyft’s book and automatically match female / nonbinary drivers and riders more often!
I also wish some features, like audio recording, were automatically turned on by default, while features like PIN verification could be turned off manually after the fact. Busses have security cameras on all the time, after all, and I know it would have empowered me and my loved ones — male, female, and nonbinary Uber drivers and riders alike — to report harassment while on rides in the past. Heck, it would probably help deter crime from happening in the first place. Who knows — maybe automatic PIN verification could have saved Loletha Hall from being shot to death by an 81-year-old who thought she was a scammer.
But for now, I guess something is better than nothing. Hopefully, Uber will continue to work on making its rides safer. Until then, the best thing we can do is take our safety into our own hands and work within the narrow confines of Uber’s existing toolset.

Illustration: The Verge

My Uber driver asked for my PIN recently. In my half-asleep state, I stared at him, alarmed, for a few seconds before it dawned on me: he was asking me to share the PIN Uber sent so I could verify my ride.

It turned out I’d activated all of Uber’s safety features while writing about Uber’s new safety customization section last month and then forgot about their existence entirely — which, to be honest, is pretty easy to do. Hidden away under Settings in the Uber app, Uber’s safety tools are less visible than all of its many services and even its Emission Savings feature (yeah, that’s a thing).

That’s a real shame because as a single female caregiver who frequently takes Ubers and has experienced harassment, I’m starting to appreciate the extra sense of safety. And given that Uber received 9,805 reports of sexual assault in its rides from 2017 to 2020, according to its most recent safety report, I think they can help a lot of people, too.

Some of these tools I knew about already, and you probably have heard about them, too, like ShareMyTrip, which lets you send live location and ride details with people you trust. But did you know you could also record your rides? The recording is encrypted, and you can’t listen to it — nor can your driver — but Uber can and will if you submit a safety report. What’s even cooler is that you can customize these features according to time and location. For example, you can schedule PIN verification or the audio recording feature to turn on for all rides after 9PM and / or whenever you’re within 50 meters of bars.

These features are not easy to find. But thankfully, Uber makes it pretty easy to turn them all on in just five steps. Here’s how:

First, in your Uber app, click on the Account tab located at the very bottom right of your screen.
After selecting Settings, scroll down to the Safety section.
Head on over to Safety preferences to start adding your safety tool preferences. (Note that some people may see and need to click on Start setup first before doing so, as I had initially.)
You’ll then see a page with four safety features that you can choose to activate: Get more safety check-ins; Use PIN verification; Record audio; and Share trip status.

On that same page, scroll down to Schedule. There, you can set schedules for all, some, or no rides. If you click on some rides, Uber will also let you choose between late-night rides (9PM–5AM), within 50 meters of a bar or restaurant, and / or weekends

You can also customize safety tools while on a ride when you click on the Safety Toolkit blue shield and select Set up safety preferences. Even better, Uber offers additional safety features while you’re on the ride (which are only visible when you are on said ride), like Text-to-911, which sends a prewritten text with information about the trip, vehicle, and location to 911 operators. There’s also Live Help, a feature Uber created in partnership with security company ADT that lets riders and drivers talk to safety agents via text or a call during a ride until they feel safe.

Truth be told, I wish Uber offered more safety tools and customization options. Why stop at just bars and restaurants? Why not other places, like airports, which is where one person did actually try to steal my Uber ride late at night? Or take a leaf from Lyft’s book and automatically match female / nonbinary drivers and riders more often!

I also wish some features, like audio recording, were automatically turned on by default, while features like PIN verification could be turned off manually after the fact. Busses have security cameras on all the time, after all, and I know it would have empowered me and my loved ones — male, female, and nonbinary Uber drivers and riders alike — to report harassment while on rides in the past. Heck, it would probably help deter crime from happening in the first place. Who knows — maybe automatic PIN verification could have saved Loletha Hall from being shot to death by an 81-year-old who thought she was a scammer.

But for now, I guess something is better than nothing. Hopefully, Uber will continue to work on making its rides safer. Until then, the best thing we can do is take our safety into our own hands and work within the narrow confines of Uber’s existing toolset.

Read More 

Image: Microsoft.com

Microsoft is finally adding an easy way to use QR codes inside Windows 11’s built-in Snipping Tool. A new update has started rolling out to Windows Insider testers today that will automatically detect QR codes in screenshots so you can open links from your PC. The Snipping Tool update also includes support for emoji.
The automatic QR code detection will appear if you enter the text actions part of the canvas in the Snipping Tool and will highlight the QR code and its clickable link. If you’re an emoji fan, then you’ll be able to add Microsoft’s 3D emoji to your screenshots. This new option is part of the shapes toolbar, and any inserted emoji can easily be resized and moved around on top of your screenshot.

Image: Microsoft
3D emoji for your screenshots.

Speaking of the shapes toolbar, Microsoft is adding the ability to change the opacity of shape fill and the outline colors. The ruler tool is also being reintroduced, and you can toggle this on or off with the CTRL + R keyboard shortcut.
Alongside this Snipping Tool update, Microsoft is also updating the name of the AI-powered Pain Cocreator feature. It’s now becoming Image Creator, but it’ll work exactly as it does right now to let you create images from a text prompt.

Image: Microsoft.com

Microsoft is finally adding an easy way to use QR codes inside Windows 11’s built-in Snipping Tool. A new update has started rolling out to Windows Insider testers today that will automatically detect QR codes in screenshots so you can open links from your PC. The Snipping Tool update also includes support for emoji.

The automatic QR code detection will appear if you enter the text actions part of the canvas in the Snipping Tool and will highlight the QR code and its clickable link. If you’re an emoji fan, then you’ll be able to add Microsoft’s 3D emoji to your screenshots. This new option is part of the shapes toolbar, and any inserted emoji can easily be resized and moved around on top of your screenshot.

Image: Microsoft
3D emoji for your screenshots.

Speaking of the shapes toolbar, Microsoft is adding the ability to change the opacity of shape fill and the outline colors. The ruler tool is also being reintroduced, and you can toggle this on or off with the CTRL + R keyboard shortcut.

Alongside this Snipping Tool update, Microsoft is also updating the name of the AI-powered Pain Cocreator feature. It’s now becoming Image Creator, but it’ll work exactly as it does right now to let you create images from a text prompt.

Read More