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Image: The Verge

A few months ago, my doctor showed off an AI transcription tool he used to record and summarize his patient meetings. In my case, the summary was fine, but researchers cited by ABC News have found that’s not always the case with OpenAI’s Whisper, which powers a tool many hospitals use — sometimes it just makes things up entirely.
Whisper is used by a company called Nabla for a medical transcription tool that it estimates has transcribed 7 million medical conversations, according to ABC News. More than 30,000 clinicians and 40 health systems use it, the outlet writes. Nabla is reportedly aware that Whisper can hallucinate, and is “addressing the problem.”
A group of researchers from Cornell University, the University of Washington, and others found in a study that Whisper hallucinated in about 1 percent of transcriptions, making up entire sentences with sometimes violent sentiments or nonsensical phrases during silences in recordings. The researchers, who gathered audio samples from TalkBank’s AphasiaBank as part of the study, note silence is particularly common when someone with a language disorder called aphasia is speaking.
One of the researchers, Allison Koenecke of Cornel University, posted examples like the one below in a thread about the study.

Harms perpetuating violence involve misrepresentation of a speaker’s words that could become part of a formal record (e.g. in a courtroom trial); we present 3 subcategories of examples: physical violence, sexual innuendo, and demographic stereotyping (4/14) pic.twitter.com/zhsKxI2qNs— Allison Koenecke (@allisonkoe) June 3, 2024

The researchers found that hallucinations also included invented medical conditions or phrases you might expect from a YouTube video, such as “Thank you for watching!” (OpenAI reportedly used to transcribe over a million hours of YouTube videos to train GPT-4.)
The study was presented in June at the Association for Computing Machinery FAccT conference in Brazil. It’s not clear if it has been peer-reviewed.

OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson emailed a statement to The Verge:
We take this issue seriously and are continually working to improve, including reducing hallucinations. For Whisper use on our API platform, our usage policies prohibit use in certain high-stakes decision-making contexts, and our model card for open-source use includes recommendations against use in high-risk domains. We thank researchers for sharing their findings.

Image: The Verge

A few months ago, my doctor showed off an AI transcription tool he used to record and summarize his patient meetings. In my case, the summary was fine, but researchers cited by ABC News have found that’s not always the case with OpenAI’s Whisper, which powers a tool many hospitals use — sometimes it just makes things up entirely.

Whisper is used by a company called Nabla for a medical transcription tool that it estimates has transcribed 7 million medical conversations, according to ABC News. More than 30,000 clinicians and 40 health systems use it, the outlet writes. Nabla is reportedly aware that Whisper can hallucinate, and is “addressing the problem.”

A group of researchers from Cornell University, the University of Washington, and others found in a study that Whisper hallucinated in about 1 percent of transcriptions, making up entire sentences with sometimes violent sentiments or nonsensical phrases during silences in recordings. The researchers, who gathered audio samples from TalkBank’s AphasiaBank as part of the study, note silence is particularly common when someone with a language disorder called aphasia is speaking.

One of the researchers, Allison Koenecke of Cornel University, posted examples like the one below in a thread about the study.

The researchers found that hallucinations also included invented medical conditions or phrases you might expect from a YouTube video, such as “Thank you for watching!” (OpenAI reportedly used to transcribe over a million hours of YouTube videos to train GPT-4.)

The study was presented in June at the Association for Computing Machinery FAccT conference in Brazil. It’s not clear if it has been peer-reviewed.

OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson emailed a statement to The Verge:

We take this issue seriously and are continually working to improve, including reducing hallucinations. For Whisper use on our API platform, our usage policies prohibit use in certain high-stakes decision-making contexts, and our model card for open-source use includes recommendations against use in high-risk domains. We thank researchers for sharing their findings.

Read More 

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Ever wondered why some of your Instagram videos tend to look blurry, while others are crisp and sharp? It’s because, on Instagram, the quality of your video apparently depends on how many views it’s getting. That’s according to a video AMA from Instagram head Adam Mosseri, in which he explained why some videos are lower-quality than others.
Here’s part of Mosseri’s explanation, from the video, which was reposted by a Threads user today:
In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can … But if something isn’t watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views are in the beginning — we will move to a lower quality video. And then if it’s watched again a lot then we’ll re-render the higher quality video.

He continues, adding that the platform does this in order to “show people the highest-quality content we can.”
Instagram devotes more resources to videos from “creators who drive more views,” Mosseri wrote later in response to the Threads post containing the clip.

Screenshot: Threads
Mosseri explains that video quality doesn’t ultimately matter.

The shift in quality “isn’t huge,” Mosseri said in response to another Threads user, who’d asked if that approach disadvantaged smaller creators. That’s “the right concern,” he told them, but said people interact with videos based on its content, not its quality.
That’s consistent with how Meta has described its approach before. In 2021, the company projected it wouldn’t be able to keep up with the increasing number of videos uploaded to the platform. (Meta estimated last year that it served 4 billion video streams per day on Facebook.)
Meta wrote in a blog that in order to conserve computing resources for the relatively few, most watched videos, it gives fresh uploads the fastest, most basic encoding. After a video “gets sufficiently high watch time,” it receives a more robust encoding pass. Once it gets popular enough, Meta applies its most advanced (read: slowest, most computationally costly) processing to the video. The result, of course, is that the most popular creators tend to have the best-looking videos.

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Ever wondered why some of your Instagram videos tend to look blurry, while others are crisp and sharp? It’s because, on Instagram, the quality of your video apparently depends on how many views it’s getting. That’s according to a video AMA from Instagram head Adam Mosseri, in which he explained why some videos are lower-quality than others.

Here’s part of Mosseri’s explanation, from the video, which was reposted by a Threads user today:

In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can … But if something isn’t watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views are in the beginning — we will move to a lower quality video. And then if it’s watched again a lot then we’ll re-render the higher quality video.

He continues, adding that the platform does this in order to “show people the highest-quality content we can.”

Instagram devotes more resources to videos from “creators who drive more views,” Mosseri wrote later in response to the Threads post containing the clip.

Screenshot: Threads
Mosseri explains that video quality doesn’t ultimately matter.

The shift in quality “isn’t huge,” Mosseri said in response to another Threads user, who’d asked if that approach disadvantaged smaller creators. That’s “the right concern,” he told them, but said people interact with videos based on its content, not its quality.

That’s consistent with how Meta has described its approach before. In 2021, the company projected it wouldn’t be able to keep up with the increasing number of videos uploaded to the platform. (Meta estimated last year that it served 4 billion video streams per day on Facebook.)

Meta wrote in a blog that in order to conserve computing resources for the relatively few, most watched videos, it gives fresh uploads the fastest, most basic encoding. After a video “gets sufficiently high watch time,” it receives a more robust encoding pass. Once it gets popular enough, Meta applies its most advanced (read: slowest, most computationally costly) processing to the video. The result, of course, is that the most popular creators tend to have the best-looking videos.

Read More 

A smart home display that looks like the iMac G4 would be irresistible. | Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge

The smart home display that Apple is rumored to be releasing next year could sport a look that harkens back to the iMac G4, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests in his Power On newsletter today.
The new smart home display will apparently be small. Gurman writes it will have a square display angled above a small base that makes it “reminiscent of the circular bottom of the iMac G4 from a couple of decades ago.” It may have speakers, essentially making it the HomePod with a screen that’s been rumored as one of Apple’s possible smart home futures.
Gurman didn’t say how much this device might cost but has hinted at an “affordable” smart home device with a square display in the past. Rumors have suggested Apple will release a $1,000 model with a robotic arm that moves the display around, but that’s not expected until 2026 at the earliest, he reiterates today. Both devices are expected to run bespoke versions of some Apple apps, like FaceTime, Calendar, and Notes, and to work with Apple Intelligence, which Apple’s current smart home devices don’t support.

I’m on the record as loving the look of the iMac G4 (I do use one as an external display, after all). And the idea that the rumored robotic display might look like it is attractive, especially in light of those early Apple ads that made the iMac G4 move around like the Pixar lamp. If Apple releases and adorable little smart home rendition of the iMac G4 — robotic or not — that I can plop on my countertop to use for timers or YouTube videos while I cook dinner? I’ll have a very hard time saying no to that.

A smart home display that looks like the iMac G4 would be irresistible. | Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge

The smart home display that Apple is rumored to be releasing next year could sport a look that harkens back to the iMac G4, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests in his Power On newsletter today.

The new smart home display will apparently be small. Gurman writes it will have a square display angled above a small base that makes it “reminiscent of the circular bottom of the iMac G4 from a couple of decades ago.” It may have speakers, essentially making it the HomePod with a screen that’s been rumored as one of Apple’s possible smart home futures.

Gurman didn’t say how much this device might cost but has hinted at an “affordable” smart home device with a square display in the past. Rumors have suggested Apple will release a $1,000 model with a robotic arm that moves the display around, but that’s not expected until 2026 at the earliest, he reiterates today. Both devices are expected to run bespoke versions of some Apple apps, like FaceTime, Calendar, and Notes, and to work with Apple Intelligence, which Apple’s current smart home devices don’t support.

I’m on the record as loving the look of the iMac G4 (I do use one as an external display, after all). And the idea that the rumored robotic display might look like it is attractive, especially in light of those early Apple ads that made the iMac G4 move around like the Pixar lamp. If Apple releases and adorable little smart home rendition of the iMac G4 — robotic or not — that I can plop on my countertop to use for timers or YouTube videos while I cook dinner? I’ll have a very hard time saying no to that.

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Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

While there aren’t a lot of new features in Android 15, it does offer some useful additions for your phone — and one of the most interesting is called “Private Space.” Think of it as a separate app vault that locks away specified apps on your Android device.

Of course, the main lockscreen already stops other people from accessing your phone, but Private Space puts an extra barrier in place. The idea is that if you lend someone your device to make a call or look at a photo, they won’t accidentally (or deliberately) stumble into something they shouldn’t. It’s also an extra safety net if your phone is lost or stolen while it’s unlocked.
I tried the feature on a Pixel 8 phone running Android 15. Here’s how it works.
Setting up Private Space

Screenshot: Google
There is a lot of screen guidance when you set up your first private space.

Screenshot: Google
You get the option to use a lock that’s different from that of your main screen.

Begin by going to Settings and selecting Security and privacy > Private space.
You then get a comprehensive overview of how it works and your options. Tap Set up.
On the next screen, you get the option (if you want) to use a different existing Google account for your private space or create a new one. You don’t have to do this, but it means you don’t run the risk of data from your private space being synced to your normal, more public areas on other devices: think photos, browsing history, and emails, for example. It also prevents your private data from being used in your browsing history or to prompt suggested content. Choose Got it to select another account or Do it later to skip this step.
Once you’ve chosen your account (or created a new one), you’ve got another choice: tap Choose new lock to set a new authentication method (like a PIN) for this private space or Use screen lock to use the security method already configured for your phone’s lockscreen.
After a few moments, your private space will have been created. Click Done.
You’ll find that a selection of Google apps, including Google Chrome and Google Photos, is already included.

Now, whenever you want to go to your private space, just scroll to the bottom of the app drawer, tap on the padlock icon, and authenticate (using either a biometric method like fingerprint recognition, or a PIN).
Configuring Private Space

Screenshot: Google
Your private space lives at the bottom of the app drawer.

Screenshot: Google
There are options to fully hide the private space and lock it automatically.

You can’t drag apps in and out of your private space — you have to install them. Think of it almost like a completely different Android device. When you’re within the space, tap the Install button to add new apps, and long-press on an app icon and choose Uninstall to remove them.
You can receive notifications from apps in the private space, but only when it’s unlocked. To use the same example as I used above, it’s effectively like a separate device, and when the space is locked, it’s like you’ve turned off that device. For this reason, Google doesn’t recommend using it to store apps that might need to send you critical information.
Once you’ve unlocked your private space, it stays open on the app drawer until you lock it again via the Lock button. You can also have the space lock automatically in certain situations: this and other options can be configured by tapping on the gear icon in the private space window.

Choose Private space lock to change the lock method used to access the private space.
Select Lock private space automatically to set when the private space is locked automatically: whenever the phone is locked; five minutes after a screen timeout; or every time the device restarts.
Tap Hide private space to remove it from the app drawer so other people don’t know it’s there. When it’s hidden, you can only find it by searching for “private space” in the search bar at the top of the app drawer.
Choose Delete private space to erase the private space and everything in it (though anything synced to the cloud isn’t affected).

Note that you can’t transfer your private space to a new phone. The standard Android-to-Android setup process won’t include any private space apps. You’ll have to start the private space again from scratch, though you can sign in with the same Google account you used for the private space on the older phone, which will restore your data in apps such as Gmail and Google Keep.

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

While there aren’t a lot of new features in Android 15, it does offer some useful additions for your phone — and one of the most interesting is called “Private Space.” Think of it as a separate app vault that locks away specified apps on your Android device.

Of course, the main lockscreen already stops other people from accessing your phone, but Private Space puts an extra barrier in place. The idea is that if you lend someone your device to make a call or look at a photo, they won’t accidentally (or deliberately) stumble into something they shouldn’t. It’s also an extra safety net if your phone is lost or stolen while it’s unlocked.

I tried the feature on a Pixel 8 phone running Android 15. Here’s how it works.

Setting up Private Space

Begin by going to Settings and selecting Security and privacy > Private space.
You then get a comprehensive overview of how it works and your options. Tap Set up.
On the next screen, you get the option (if you want) to use a different existing Google account for your private space or create a new one. You don’t have to do this, but it means you don’t run the risk of data from your private space being synced to your normal, more public areas on other devices: think photos, browsing history, and emails, for example. It also prevents your private data from being used in your browsing history or to prompt suggested content. Choose Got it to select another account or Do it later to skip this step.
Once you’ve chosen your account (or created a new one), you’ve got another choice: tap Choose new lock to set a new authentication method (like a PIN) for this private space or Use screen lock to use the security method already configured for your phone’s lockscreen.
After a few moments, your private space will have been created. Click Done.
You’ll find that a selection of Google apps, including Google Chrome and Google Photos, is already included.

Now, whenever you want to go to your private space, just scroll to the bottom of the app drawer, tap on the padlock icon, and authenticate (using either a biometric method like fingerprint recognition, or a PIN).

Configuring Private Space

You can’t drag apps in and out of your private space — you have to install them. Think of it almost like a completely different Android device. When you’re within the space, tap the Install button to add new apps, and long-press on an app icon and choose Uninstall to remove them.

You can receive notifications from apps in the private space, but only when it’s unlocked. To use the same example as I used above, it’s effectively like a separate device, and when the space is locked, it’s like you’ve turned off that device. For this reason, Google doesn’t recommend using it to store apps that might need to send you critical information.

Once you’ve unlocked your private space, it stays open on the app drawer until you lock it again via the Lock button. You can also have the space lock automatically in certain situations: this and other options can be configured by tapping on the gear icon in the private space window.

Choose Private space lock to change the lock method used to access the private space.
Select Lock private space automatically to set when the private space is locked automatically: whenever the phone is locked; five minutes after a screen timeout; or every time the device restarts.
Tap Hide private space to remove it from the app drawer so other people don’t know it’s there. When it’s hidden, you can only find it by searching for “private space” in the search bar at the top of the app drawer.
Choose Delete private space to erase the private space and everything in it (though anything synced to the cloud isn’t affected).

Note that you can’t transfer your private space to a new phone. The standard Android-to-Android setup process won’t include any private space apps. You’ll have to start the private space again from scratch, though you can sign in with the same Google account you used for the private space on the older phone, which will restore your data in apps such as Gmail and Google Keep.

Read More 

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

When the Mac Mini was first introduced in early 2005, it was pitched as a compact, “stripped down” desktop — and the most affordable Mac in Apple’s lineup. Steve Jobs referred to it as a “BYODKM” system: you’d bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse, and the Mini would provide a dependable computing experience with all the benefits of macOS.
The Mac Mini has carried on ever since. There have been periods where the Mini has been sidelined and ignored by Apple for long stretches of time. But the debut of Apple Silicon gave it a new lease on life. Even if the overall design didn’t change much in the transition from Intel to Apple’s in-house chips, the Mini’s potential soared.

But now that design is about to change. And if the rumors prove accurate, it’s going to be a radical makeover. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that the M4-powered Mac Mini will shrink down in size so significantly that its footprint will resemble that of an Apple TV. The new Mac Mini will be anything but a stripped down Mac.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Steve Jobs shows off the original Mac Mini’s box at Macworld 2005.

Instead, it’ll likely be the most visually impressive example yet of what Apple is capable of in this new era, where the incredible efficiency of its chips allows for all sorts of hardware designs that were technically unfeasible a handful of years ago. I haven’t been this excited about a new Mac since the phenomenal M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros were released in 2021.

Gurman has said the 2024 Mac Mini — at least the M4 Pro variant — will include a total of five USB-C ports, with two on the front of the machine. I consider that frontside I/O to be a godsend after years of having to turn the Mini around to plug anything in — or just guessing at it. It’ll still have an HDMI port for those of you who’ve integrated Apple’s smallest Mac into their home theater setup. USB-A is said to be a goner, but… it’s time.
Within the Mac family, the Mini still holds an important spot. The iMac is the visual stunner; the MacBook Pro delivers tremendous power on the go; and the Mac Pro and Mac Studio are both geared at professionals and creatives. But the Mini remains the line’s unassuming over-performer at a compelling price for anyone who wants a Mac that “just works.”
No matter its size, the Mini’s BYODKM is remains one of its best attributes. Apple might not be planning a 27-inch iMac, but we’re about to have an astonishingly-compact desktop that can be paired with any screen you want. And the software outlook is also excellent: the revamped Mini arrives shortly after macOS Sequoia, which added useful features like iPhone Mirroring and (long overdue) window tiling.
It’ll take some kind of colossal, unforeseen dealbreaker for me not to immediate preorder the M4 Mac Mini as my new at-home machine. If I’ve got one concern, it’s that Apple will find some way of artificially holding the Mini back so as not to steal too much thunder from the Mac Studio. But I don’t think that’ll be the case — at least not to an egregious degree, anyway. As of now, the Studio easily wins out in CPU and GPU performance, and it has other bonuses like an SD card slot and faster ethernet. I’d expect those advantages to remain true whenever the M4 model arrives.
Apple’s Mac portfolio has never been on a better path. And for those who’ve stuck with the company’s products for decades, that can still be hard to believe — even this deep into the age of Apple Silicon. We’ve been through some dark days. But with a new Mac Mini that looks equal parts streaming box and miniature PC, Apple seems poised for another M-series marvel and feather in its cap.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

When the Mac Mini was first introduced in early 2005, it was pitched as a compact, “stripped down” desktop — and the most affordable Mac in Apple’s lineup. Steve Jobs referred to it as a “BYODKM” system: you’d bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse, and the Mini would provide a dependable computing experience with all the benefits of macOS.

The Mac Mini has carried on ever since. There have been periods where the Mini has been sidelined and ignored by Apple for long stretches of time. But the debut of Apple Silicon gave it a new lease on life. Even if the overall design didn’t change much in the transition from Intel to Apple’s in-house chips, the Mini’s potential soared.

But now that design is about to change. And if the rumors prove accurate, it’s going to be a radical makeover. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that the M4-powered Mac Mini will shrink down in size so significantly that its footprint will resemble that of an Apple TV. The new Mac Mini will be anything but a stripped down Mac.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Steve Jobs shows off the original Mac Mini’s box at Macworld 2005.

Instead, it’ll likely be the most visually impressive example yet of what Apple is capable of in this new era, where the incredible efficiency of its chips allows for all sorts of hardware designs that were technically unfeasible a handful of years ago. I haven’t been this excited about a new Mac since the phenomenal M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros were released in 2021.

Gurman has said the 2024 Mac Mini — at least the M4 Pro variant — will include a total of five USB-C ports, with two on the front of the machine. I consider that frontside I/O to be a godsend after years of having to turn the Mini around to plug anything in — or just guessing at it. It’ll still have an HDMI port for those of you who’ve integrated Apple’s smallest Mac into their home theater setup. USB-A is said to be a goner, but… it’s time.

Within the Mac family, the Mini still holds an important spot. The iMac is the visual stunner; the MacBook Pro delivers tremendous power on the go; and the Mac Pro and Mac Studio are both geared at professionals and creatives. But the Mini remains the line’s unassuming over-performer at a compelling price for anyone who wants a Mac that “just works.”

No matter its size, the Mini’s BYODKM is remains one of its best attributes. Apple might not be planning a 27-inch iMac, but we’re about to have an astonishingly-compact desktop that can be paired with any screen you want. And the software outlook is also excellent: the revamped Mini arrives shortly after macOS Sequoia, which added useful features like iPhone Mirroring and (long overdue) window tiling.

It’ll take some kind of colossal, unforeseen dealbreaker for me not to immediate preorder the M4 Mac Mini as my new at-home machine. If I’ve got one concern, it’s that Apple will find some way of artificially holding the Mini back so as not to steal too much thunder from the Mac Studio. But I don’t think that’ll be the case — at least not to an egregious degree, anyway. As of now, the Studio easily wins out in CPU and GPU performance, and it has other bonuses like an SD card slot and faster ethernet. I’d expect those advantages to remain true whenever the M4 model arrives.

Apple’s Mac portfolio has never been on a better path. And for those who’ve stuck with the company’s products for decades, that can still be hard to believe — even this deep into the age of Apple Silicon. We’ve been through some dark days. But with a new Mac Mini that looks equal parts streaming box and miniature PC, Apple seems poised for another M-series marvel and feather in its cap.

Read More 

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 58, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, Batman forever, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about Simone Giertz and billionaire assistants and Checo Pérez and Call Her Daddy, learning about “Earthrise,” listening to Quinta Brunson and Conan O’Brien talk comedy, trying to decide whether to get super into Bluesky or just quit social altogether, and throwing myself into baseball so I can pretend I know what I’m talking about during the World Series.
I also have for you an excellent new VR game, a delightful new reading gadget, a nice RSS reader update, a new browser worth trying, and much more.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What does everyone else need to be watching / reading / playing / baking / cutting up with scissors this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

Batman: Arkham Shadow. I am hopelessly biased in favor of this game, the latest in my all-time favorite series of video games. But a surprising amount of what worked for the old Arkham games works in VR, too — the story, as always, is kind of whatever, but the action is fun and intense and everything I wanted it to be. This is the most I’ve used my Quest in months.

The Boox Palma 2. Another week, another reading gadget I’m going to feel ridiculous buying but definitely buy anyway. One of my favorite devices of the year got a faster processor, new Android… and not much else. But I still love this tiny Android e-reader.

Hasan Minhaj: Off With His Head. I’ve been waiting for this ever since that New Yorker story, and it delivers. His whole digression into crypto bros and podcast listeners has been all over my For You pages this week, and for good reason.

Inoreader. Inoreader is a really good RSS reader, but I always thought it was… ugly. The new redesign is really nice! It’s still very dense and text-heavy, but in a news reader, I actually like that. I’m also enjoying all the new filters, which are helping me find to-do list app news easier than ever.

“Shrek ASMR.” One of the most off-the-wall, committed-to-the-bit things I’ve ever seen on YouTube: a full remake of Shrek, ASMR-style. I loaded up the video after reading a really fun story about it from our friends at Polygon and ended up watching the whole thing. It’s remarkable… in so many senses.

Vivaldi. I’m still slightly torn on the new tab design, which is lovely but kind of busy. But I love the new Dashboard feature, which just lets you embed a bunch of apps and websites and see them all at once. It’s like what iGoogle used to be, only much better.

Sonic x Shadow Generations. Sonic. And Evil Sonic. What else do you need to know? All the reviews I’ve read say this game is an excellent remaster of a classic, plus lots of new stuff including a huge new Shadow-focused campaign. I immediately cleared space on my Switch for this one.

Notion Forms. Notion’s quest to be all things to all people continues! The new Notion Mail app looks pretty great, but day to day, I think Forms is a bigger deal. Even if you just use Notion (or Sheets or Airtable or whatever), setting up a bunch of forms for easy data input is such a simple way to make your life easier.

Mailbird. One of the best — maybe the best — Windows email apps is now available on the Mac. The free tier is pretty limited, but at least it’ll give you a sense if the app is right for you. I’m still a Mimestream devotee, but especially if you’re balancing Outlook and Gmail, this is worth a look.

Computer use in Claude. Anthropic’s AI bot got an upgrade this week, including a new feature that can just use your computer on your behalf. The video explaining how it works is great and a useful explainer of how simple some of this complex stuff really can be. Eventually. Someday.

Screen share
I reviewed the new iPad Mini this week and, as a result, spent a bunch of time setting up a new tablet and thinking a lot about how to organize the homescreen. I’ve deliberately kept this space phone-centric so far, because I really think you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their phone, but after spending all that time thinking about my iPad life, I’m wondering if I need to broaden the scope a little bit. Maybe I should get people to share, like, their computer desktops? Or their game console homescreens? Maybe the first screen of their smart TVs? I don’t know, there are a lot of homescreens out there. We’ll try some stuff.
All that said, here’s my iPad Mini homescreen, plus some info on the apps I’m using and why:

The tablet: iPad Mini, 2024. I love the iPad Mini. I wish this one were a lot better and that Apple would care about the Mini a lot more, but here we are.
The wallpaper: Apple’s weather wallpaper, which adapts to the current weather outside. It’s a total gimmick, and I am shocked at how much I love it.
The apps: Balatro, Madden, EA Sports FC, Retro Goal, Retro Bowl, Delta, Call of Duty: Warzone, Coffee Golf, Real Racing 3, Tiny Wings, NYT Games, The New York Times, Apple News, The Washington Post, Unread, Netflix, TikTok, Disney Plus, Prime Video, Sling, YouTube, Peacock, Max, Hulu, ESPN, Arc, Kindle, Workflowy, Readwise Reader, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Mela.
I feel like there are two ways you can go with your iPad. You can use it to try and do laptop things, or you can decide to use your iPad mostly as a way to avoid doing laptop things. I’ve picked the latter: roughly 100 percent of my iPad use is reading, watching, and playing. I don’t have Gmail or Slack or Google Docs on here; nothing is allowed to send me notifications. My iPad is a place for relaxation and fun, period.
I like and use all these apps, but there are a few to call out specifically: I’ve tried a lot of recipe apps, and Mela is still the simplest and the best at pulling recipes out of websites; Balatro is the most addicting game I’ve downloaded in years; I finally became an Apple News Plus subscriber and am blown away by how much I’m using it; the iPad Mini is the perfect tablet to use as a steering wheel, and Real Racing 3 is a fabulous driving game.
My dock is reserved for the apps I use at least close to every day, which means it’s reading, notes, recipes, podcasts, and music. (I just realized I should move Workflowy, so it’s not between the reading apps — I’ll get to that.) The most-used non-dock app right now is probably Peacock, which has Community and Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and is, thus, the streaming service I have on in the background basically all the time.
For years, I tried to turn my iPad into something like a laptop replacement. But the more I’ve leaned into it being a purely recreational device, the screen for when I don’t want to be stressed out by screens, the more I find myself using it. It’s a weird and expensive strategy, but it’s working for me.

Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads.
“I saw Adi ask for a Goodreads alternative and wanted to suggest The StoryGraph! It’s really great at showcasing stats about what you read, rather than the updates-sharing focus of GR, and it has really nice monthly summaries!” – Aurora
“Reading about Adi’s suffering with LibraryThing, I remembered that just a few days ago, I started using Hardcover, and so far, I’m finding it really cool.” – AH
“Taskly is a very straightforward list app for iOS with absolutely nothing else. I have been looking for something to manage my grocery list or just things I need to buy. Twodos is another such app, except it has a very clever way to separate the list into two categories: Sooner and Later. That’s something I really love about it.” – Karan
“I just put about six hours into Wagotabi, and I’m wildly impressed. It is one of the most clever and effective Japanese learning games I’ve ever played. It’s structured like Pokémon, but instead of catching monsters, you’re learning Japanese words and grammar. Instead of battling, you’re engaging in social interactions that put your new skills to the test. Over time, it replaces more and more English text with Japanese. And it’s genuinely fun! Duolingo be damned; Wagotabi is the king.” – Tom
“I grabbed a Steam Deck OLED a few weeks back and have been diving into games I just kind of missed. Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy were great. Now digging into the modern Tomb Raider trilogy. I guess I like adventure games when FIFA isn’t available.” – Andi
“I upgrade phones every two to three years, and one way I keep it fresh is to get a new case every year. This year’s case upgrade was from Keyway Designs. They make gorgeous wood and metal phone cases (and other goodies). Check them out!” – Bill
“Trying a new second brain app, Sublime, that adds a few interesting features. Will try for a few weeks and see how it grows on me.” – Miguel
“I have a seriously good Switch controller for you: the GuliKit Zen Pro is awesome, supports everything the Pro Controller does, and has Hall effect sticks to boot. It’s also a lot cheaper than the Pro Controller, so I’d recommend it for anyone buying a new Switch, too!” – Ben
“I’ve been using Capture for iOS, and it’s low-key amazing. Like should be a built-in feature-level amazing. Anything I come across online, I can set aside, hold it off to the side, and then send it where it needs to go later.” – Max
“The premise of MovieCart is simple: it’s for watching full-length movies on an actual Atari 2600. The reality is quite complex. It’s the work of a mad genius, and you may feel like one, too, once you actually get a film running!” – Tom

Signing off
Approximately every single person on the internet has been talking about the Chicken Shop Date episode with Andrew Garfield, which really is as charming as you can imagine. (Garfield has a history of great YouTube moments, like his convo about grief with Stephen Colbert.) The episode sent me down the rabbit hole of all things Chicken Shop Date, and it turns out, host Amelia Dimoldenberg has been through a truly fascinating ride as a creator.
Last year, she did a great interview with Colin and Samir, which doubles as a (very funny and silly) masterclass in how to turn a YouTube channel into a show at the very center of pop culture. All my favorite creator stories are equal parts ruthless execution and constant aimless experimentation, and Dimoldenberg is a perfect example of both.
See you next week!

Image: David Pierce / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 58, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, Batman forever, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Simone Giertz and billionaire assistants and Checo Pérez and Call Her Daddy, learning about “Earthrise,” listening to Quinta Brunson and Conan O’Brien talk comedy, trying to decide whether to get super into Bluesky or just quit social altogether, and throwing myself into baseball so I can pretend I know what I’m talking about during the World Series.

I also have for you an excellent new VR game, a delightful new reading gadget, a nice RSS reader update, a new browser worth trying, and much more.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What does everyone else need to be watching / reading / playing / baking / cutting up with scissors this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

Batman: Arkham Shadow. I am hopelessly biased in favor of this game, the latest in my all-time favorite series of video games. But a surprising amount of what worked for the old Arkham games works in VR, too — the story, as always, is kind of whatever, but the action is fun and intense and everything I wanted it to be. This is the most I’ve used my Quest in months.

The Boox Palma 2. Another week, another reading gadget I’m going to feel ridiculous buying but definitely buy anyway. One of my favorite devices of the year got a faster processor, new Android… and not much else. But I still love this tiny Android e-reader.

Hasan Minhaj: Off With His Head. I’ve been waiting for this ever since that New Yorker story, and it delivers. His whole digression into crypto bros and podcast listeners has been all over my For You pages this week, and for good reason.

Inoreader. Inoreader is a really good RSS reader, but I always thought it was… ugly. The new redesign is really nice! It’s still very dense and text-heavy, but in a news reader, I actually like that. I’m also enjoying all the new filters, which are helping me find to-do list app news easier than ever.

“Shrek ASMR.” One of the most off-the-wall, committed-to-the-bit things I’ve ever seen on YouTube: a full remake of Shrek, ASMR-style. I loaded up the video after reading a really fun story about it from our friends at Polygon and ended up watching the whole thing. It’s remarkable… in so many senses.

Vivaldi. I’m still slightly torn on the new tab design, which is lovely but kind of busy. But I love the new Dashboard feature, which just lets you embed a bunch of apps and websites and see them all at once. It’s like what iGoogle used to be, only much better.

Sonic x Shadow Generations. Sonic. And Evil Sonic. What else do you need to know? All the reviews I’ve read say this game is an excellent remaster of a classic, plus lots of new stuff including a huge new Shadow-focused campaign. I immediately cleared space on my Switch for this one.

Notion Forms. Notion’s quest to be all things to all people continues! The new Notion Mail app looks pretty great, but day to day, I think Forms is a bigger deal. Even if you just use Notion (or Sheets or Airtable or whatever), setting up a bunch of forms for easy data input is such a simple way to make your life easier.

Mailbird. One of the best — maybe the best — Windows email apps is now available on the Mac. The free tier is pretty limited, but at least it’ll give you a sense if the app is right for you. I’m still a Mimestream devotee, but especially if you’re balancing Outlook and Gmail, this is worth a look.

Computer use in Claude. Anthropic’s AI bot got an upgrade this week, including a new feature that can just use your computer on your behalf. The video explaining how it works is great and a useful explainer of how simple some of this complex stuff really can be. Eventually. Someday.

Screen share

I reviewed the new iPad Mini this week and, as a result, spent a bunch of time setting up a new tablet and thinking a lot about how to organize the homescreen. I’ve deliberately kept this space phone-centric so far, because I really think you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their phone, but after spending all that time thinking about my iPad life, I’m wondering if I need to broaden the scope a little bit. Maybe I should get people to share, like, their computer desktops? Or their game console homescreens? Maybe the first screen of their smart TVs? I don’t know, there are a lot of homescreens out there. We’ll try some stuff.

All that said, here’s my iPad Mini homescreen, plus some info on the apps I’m using and why:

The tablet: iPad Mini, 2024. I love the iPad Mini. I wish this one were a lot better and that Apple would care about the Mini a lot more, but here we are.

The wallpaper: Apple’s weather wallpaper, which adapts to the current weather outside. It’s a total gimmick, and I am shocked at how much I love it.

The apps: Balatro, Madden, EA Sports FC, Retro Goal, Retro Bowl, Delta, Call of Duty: Warzone, Coffee Golf, Real Racing 3, Tiny Wings, NYT Games, The New York Times, Apple News, The Washington Post, Unread, Netflix, TikTok, Disney Plus, Prime Video, Sling, YouTube, Peacock, Max, Hulu, ESPN, Arc, Kindle, Workflowy, Readwise Reader, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Mela.

I feel like there are two ways you can go with your iPad. You can use it to try and do laptop things, or you can decide to use your iPad mostly as a way to avoid doing laptop things. I’ve picked the latter: roughly 100 percent of my iPad use is reading, watching, and playing. I don’t have Gmail or Slack or Google Docs on here; nothing is allowed to send me notifications. My iPad is a place for relaxation and fun, period.

I like and use all these apps, but there are a few to call out specifically: I’ve tried a lot of recipe apps, and Mela is still the simplest and the best at pulling recipes out of websites; Balatro is the most addicting game I’ve downloaded in years; I finally became an Apple News Plus subscriber and am blown away by how much I’m using it; the iPad Mini is the perfect tablet to use as a steering wheel, and Real Racing 3 is a fabulous driving game.

My dock is reserved for the apps I use at least close to every day, which means it’s reading, notes, recipes, podcasts, and music. (I just realized I should move Workflowy, so it’s not between the reading apps — I’ll get to that.) The most-used non-dock app right now is probably Peacock, which has Community and Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and is, thus, the streaming service I have on in the background basically all the time.

For years, I tried to turn my iPad into something like a laptop replacement. But the more I’ve leaned into it being a purely recreational device, the screen for when I don’t want to be stressed out by screens, the more I find myself using it. It’s a weird and expensive strategy, but it’s working for me.

Crowdsourced

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

“I saw Adi ask for a Goodreads alternative and wanted to suggest The StoryGraph! It’s really great at showcasing stats about what you read, rather than the updates-sharing focus of GR, and it has really nice monthly summaries!” – Aurora

“Reading about Adi’s suffering with LibraryThing, I remembered that just a few days ago, I started using Hardcover, and so far, I’m finding it really cool.” – AH

“Taskly is a very straightforward list app for iOS with absolutely nothing else. I have been looking for something to manage my grocery list or just things I need to buy. Twodos is another such app, except it has a very clever way to separate the list into two categories: Sooner and Later. That’s something I really love about it.” – Karan

“I just put about six hours into Wagotabi, and I’m wildly impressed. It is one of the most clever and effective Japanese learning games I’ve ever played. It’s structured like Pokémon, but instead of catching monsters, you’re learning Japanese words and grammar. Instead of battling, you’re engaging in social interactions that put your new skills to the test. Over time, it replaces more and more English text with Japanese. And it’s genuinely fun! Duolingo be damned; Wagotabi is the king.” – Tom

“I grabbed a Steam Deck OLED a few weeks back and have been diving into games I just kind of missed. Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy were great. Now digging into the modern Tomb Raider trilogy. I guess I like adventure games when FIFA isn’t available.” – Andi

“I upgrade phones every two to three years, and one way I keep it fresh is to get a new case every year. This year’s case upgrade was from Keyway Designs. They make gorgeous wood and metal phone cases (and other goodies). Check them out!” – Bill

“Trying a new second brain app, Sublime, that adds a few interesting features. Will try for a few weeks and see how it grows on me.” – Miguel

“I have a seriously good Switch controller for you: the GuliKit Zen Pro is awesome, supports everything the Pro Controller does, and has Hall effect sticks to boot. It’s also a lot cheaper than the Pro Controller, so I’d recommend it for anyone buying a new Switch, too!” – Ben

“I’ve been using Capture for iOS, and it’s low-key amazing. Like should be a built-in feature-level amazing. Anything I come across online, I can set aside, hold it off to the side, and then send it where it needs to go later.” – Max

“The premise of MovieCart is simple: it’s for watching full-length movies on an actual Atari 2600. The reality is quite complex. It’s the work of a mad genius, and you may feel like one, too, once you actually get a film running!” – Tom

Signing off

Approximately every single person on the internet has been talking about the Chicken Shop Date episode with Andrew Garfield, which really is as charming as you can imagine. (Garfield has a history of great YouTube moments, like his convo about grief with Stephen Colbert.) The episode sent me down the rabbit hole of all things Chicken Shop Date, and it turns out, host Amelia Dimoldenberg has been through a truly fascinating ride as a creator.

Last year, she did a great interview with Colin and Samir, which doubles as a (very funny and silly) masterclass in how to turn a YouTube channel into a show at the very center of pop culture. All my favorite creator stories are equal parts ruthless execution and constant aimless experimentation, and Dimoldenberg is a perfect example of both.

See you next week!

Read More 

Image: Finji

I used to hate jigsaw puzzles. I thought they were frustrating, messy, and took way too long to solve. But my wife showed me how those parts of jigsaw puzzles can actually be fun: there’s something satisfying and meditative about working through those frustrations, sorting through the mess, and putting a picture together, one piece at a time, over the course of a few hours. (Or days.)
The makers of Wilmot Works It Out, a new puzzle game, understand this, and everything about the game is designed to make solving puzzles fun instead of annoying.
In the game, you play as Wilmot, an adorable white square with a face who has a puzzle-by-mail subscription. (He’s the same smiley square from Wilmot’s Warehouse, a 2019 puzzle game also made by developers Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg and published by Finji.) Every time you open a new package delivered by Sam, your mail carrier friend, the pieces appear in a jumble on the floor so you can match them together into a picture to put on the wall.
When you’ve put up a completed puzzle, Sam typically comes knocking with a brief conversation and a new box of pieces to sift through. After you finish a bunch of puzzles, you’ll complete a “season” and can move on to the next, which amps up the difficulty.

Image: Finji
It’s fun to sift through the pieces scattered about.

Wilmot Works It Out has a few clever ways to iron out the process of putting pieces together. Unlike every jigsaw puzzle I’ve done in real life, the puzzle pieces in Wilmot are all square. That sounds annoying, but because you don’t have to rotate the pieces to match them, it’s much easier to compare pieces side to side to see if they might fit together. When you slide a piece next to its correct counterpart, the piece you’re holding flashes once, and you’ll hear a soft but satisfying chime. I loved chasing those chimes.
Those design choices make it much easier to quickly assemble puzzles. But the game’s best trick is that puzzle packages typically contain a few pieces that connect to a puzzle you can’t finish yet. Because of that, you’re constantly trying to figure out which pieces fit a puzzle you can solve now and which pieces are supposed to be set aside for later.
Some puzzles are quite tricky
In the early seasons, I didn’t find this to be too difficult. That changed in the later seasons, though, as the developers have some devilish tricks to make you really work to figure out which pieces belong with which puzzles.
One season, for example, featured pieces that seemed to assemble into a peacock with big colorful circles on its feathers. Then, I started matching pieces with more colorful circles, but they turned out to be owl eyes. I tried to find a way for the owls and peacock to connect for longer than I care to admit — until I eventually realized that they were two separate pictures.
Two of my biggest problems with jigsaw puzzles have been how long they take and how messy they are. They can take what should be a fun activity and turn it into a chore. But Wilmot Works It Out fixes both, highlighting what I love about jigsaw puzzles in a delightful video game.
Wilmot Works It Out is out now on PC and Mac.

Image: Finji

I used to hate jigsaw puzzles. I thought they were frustrating, messy, and took way too long to solve. But my wife showed me how those parts of jigsaw puzzles can actually be fun: there’s something satisfying and meditative about working through those frustrations, sorting through the mess, and putting a picture together, one piece at a time, over the course of a few hours. (Or days.)

The makers of Wilmot Works It Out, a new puzzle game, understand this, and everything about the game is designed to make solving puzzles fun instead of annoying.

In the game, you play as Wilmot, an adorable white square with a face who has a puzzle-by-mail subscription. (He’s the same smiley square from Wilmot’s Warehouse, a 2019 puzzle game also made by developers Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg and published by Finji.) Every time you open a new package delivered by Sam, your mail carrier friend, the pieces appear in a jumble on the floor so you can match them together into a picture to put on the wall.

When you’ve put up a completed puzzle, Sam typically comes knocking with a brief conversation and a new box of pieces to sift through. After you finish a bunch of puzzles, you’ll complete a “season” and can move on to the next, which amps up the difficulty.

Image: Finji
It’s fun to sift through the pieces scattered about.

Wilmot Works It Out has a few clever ways to iron out the process of putting pieces together. Unlike every jigsaw puzzle I’ve done in real life, the puzzle pieces in Wilmot are all square. That sounds annoying, but because you don’t have to rotate the pieces to match them, it’s much easier to compare pieces side to side to see if they might fit together. When you slide a piece next to its correct counterpart, the piece you’re holding flashes once, and you’ll hear a soft but satisfying chime. I loved chasing those chimes.

Those design choices make it much easier to quickly assemble puzzles. But the game’s best trick is that puzzle packages typically contain a few pieces that connect to a puzzle you can’t finish yet. Because of that, you’re constantly trying to figure out which pieces fit a puzzle you can solve now and which pieces are supposed to be set aside for later.

In the early seasons, I didn’t find this to be too difficult. That changed in the later seasons, though, as the developers have some devilish tricks to make you really work to figure out which pieces belong with which puzzles.

One season, for example, featured pieces that seemed to assemble into a peacock with big colorful circles on its feathers. Then, I started matching pieces with more colorful circles, but they turned out to be owl eyes. I tried to find a way for the owls and peacock to connect for longer than I care to admit — until I eventually realized that they were two separate pictures.

Two of my biggest problems with jigsaw puzzles have been how long they take and how messy they are. They can take what should be a fun activity and turn it into a chore. But Wilmot Works It Out fixes both, highlighting what I love about jigsaw puzzles in a delightful video game.

Wilmot Works It Out is out now on PC and Mac.

Read More 

Image: The Verge

Google could preview its own take on Rabbit’s large action model concept as soon as December, reports The Information. “Project Jarvis,” as it’s reportedly codenamed, would carry tasks out for users, including “gathering research, purchasing a product, or booking a flight,” according to three people the outlet spoke with who have direct knowledge of the project.
Powered by a future version of Google’s Gemini, Jarvis reportedly only works with a web browser (it’s tuned specifically for Chrome). The tool is aimed at helping people “automate everyday, web-based tasks” by taking and interpreting screenshots and then clicking buttons or entering text, The Information writes. In its current state, it apparently takes “a few seconds” between actions.

The biggest AI companies are all working on models that do things like what The Information is describing. Microsoft’s Copilot Vision will let you talk with it about webpages you’re viewing. Apple Intelligence is expected to be aware of what’s on your screen and do things for you across multiple apps at some point in the next year. Anthropic debuted a “cumbersome and error-prone” Claude beta update that can use a computer for you, and OpenAI is reportedly working on a version of that, too.
The Information cautions that Google’s plan to show Jarvis off in December is subject to change. The company is reportedly considering releasing it to some small number of testers to find and help the company work out bugs.

Image: The Verge

Google could preview its own take on Rabbit’s large action model concept as soon as December, reports The Information. “Project Jarvis,” as it’s reportedly codenamed, would carry tasks out for users, including “gathering research, purchasing a product, or booking a flight,” according to three people the outlet spoke with who have direct knowledge of the project.

Powered by a future version of Google’s Gemini, Jarvis reportedly only works with a web browser (it’s tuned specifically for Chrome). The tool is aimed at helping people “automate everyday, web-based tasks” by taking and interpreting screenshots and then clicking buttons or entering text, The Information writes. In its current state, it apparently takes “a few seconds” between actions.

The biggest AI companies are all working on models that do things like what The Information is describing. Microsoft’s Copilot Vision will let you talk with it about webpages you’re viewing. Apple Intelligence is expected to be aware of what’s on your screen and do things for you across multiple apps at some point in the next year. Anthropic debuted a “cumbersome and error-prone” Claude beta update that can use a computer for you, and OpenAI is reportedly working on a version of that, too.

The Information cautions that Google’s plan to show Jarvis off in December is subject to change. The company is reportedly considering releasing it to some small number of testers to find and help the company work out bugs.

Read More 

A Lyft sign taken in January 2023 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. | Photo: Mat Hayward / Getty Images

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Friday that rideshare company Lyft has agreed to pay $2.1 million as part of a proposed settlement that requires it to change how it advertises driver pay.
The company routinely advertised that drivers could make “specific hourly amounts” — in one instance, claiming earnings of “up to $33” per hour for driving in Atlanta — that were based not on an average, but on what the top fifth of drivers made, according to the Commission. The company also apparently included tips in those figures.
Such moves “overinflated the actual earnings achieved by most drivers by as much as 30%,” writes the FTC, which says the company now must base potential pay claims on what drivers typically make, instead. And those amounts can no longer factor in tips as part of stated hourly pay.
“It is illegal to lure workers with misleading claims about how much they will earn on the job,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC will keep using all its tools to hold businesses accountable when they violate the law and exploit American workers.”
The FTC included examples of Lyft’s offending ads in its complaint, such as those below.

Screenshots: United States of America v. Lyft, Inc. proposed order

Screenshots: United States of America v. Lyft, Inc. proposed order

Lyft also apparently promoted earnings guarantees, such as one promising $975 for completing 45 rides in a weekend. But those also misled drivers, who thought they’d be getting the amount as a bonus on top of what they earned, when the offer was actually a conditional minimum pay guarantee for doing a set number of rides, according to the FTC. The company is now required to make that fact clear.
Here is the proposed order:

In a statement on its website, Lyft highlights changes it has made recently to tell drivers how much they can earn and says it is “committed to following the FTC’s best practices” when communicating such details.
The settlement comes two years after the FTC announced it was going after gig work companies for “unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive and otherwise unlawful practices.” Lyft and Uber have also faced labor regulation at the state and municipal level, such as in Massachusetts, where a law now requires them to offer rideshare drivers a minimum wage. In New York City, which has a similar law, they reportedly locked drivers out of their apps to limit how much they can make.

A Lyft sign taken in January 2023 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. | Photo: Mat Hayward / Getty Images

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Friday that rideshare company Lyft has agreed to pay $2.1 million as part of a proposed settlement that requires it to change how it advertises driver pay.

The company routinely advertised that drivers could make “specific hourly amounts” — in one instance, claiming earnings of “up to $33” per hour for driving in Atlanta — that were based not on an average, but on what the top fifth of drivers made, according to the Commission. The company also apparently included tips in those figures.

Such moves “overinflated the actual earnings achieved by most drivers by as much as 30%,” writes the FTC, which says the company now must base potential pay claims on what drivers typically make, instead. And those amounts can no longer factor in tips as part of stated hourly pay.

“It is illegal to lure workers with misleading claims about how much they will earn on the job,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC will keep using all its tools to hold businesses accountable when they violate the law and exploit American workers.”

The FTC included examples of Lyft’s offending ads in its complaint, such as those below.

Screenshots: United States of America v. Lyft, Inc. proposed order

Screenshots: United States of America v. Lyft, Inc. proposed order

Lyft also apparently promoted earnings guarantees, such as one promising $975 for completing 45 rides in a weekend. But those also misled drivers, who thought they’d be getting the amount as a bonus on top of what they earned, when the offer was actually a conditional minimum pay guarantee for doing a set number of rides, according to the FTC. The company is now required to make that fact clear.

Here is the proposed order:

In a statement on its website, Lyft highlights changes it has made recently to tell drivers how much they can earn and says it is “committed to following the FTC’s best practices” when communicating such details.

The settlement comes two years after the FTC announced it was going after gig work companies for “unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive and otherwise unlawful practices.” Lyft and Uber have also faced labor regulation at the state and municipal level, such as in Massachusetts, where a law now requires them to offer rideshare drivers a minimum wage. In New York City, which has a similar law, they reportedly locked drivers out of their apps to limit how much they can make.

Read More 

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Governor Tim Walz is returning to Twitch and this time, he’ll actually be playing a game. Earlier this month, Kamala Harris’ campaign teamed up with a Twitch streamer to live-stream a Walz rally as part of a World of Warcraft stream. But on Sunday afternoon, Walz will be playing Madden NFL on Twitch with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY).
Like with live-streaming the Walz rally alongside WoW, the idea with this Madden livestream is to try to reach young men, a demographic that Trump polls relatively high with.
Ocasio-Cortez is already well-known for her huge Among Us stream ahead of the 2020 election and a stream in July 2023 where she played Pico Park and Gartic Phone. (She’s a fan of League of Legends, too.) But while Walz is a known Dreamcast fan and a successful high school football coach, this will be the first time we’ll get to see him play games live on Twitch. Maybe someday we’ll get to see him play Crazy Taxi.
Sunday’s stream will kick off at 3PM ET on AOC’s Twitch channel, where Walz will be a guest. It will also be co-streamed on Kamala Harris’ Twitch channel.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Governor Tim Walz is returning to Twitch and this time, he’ll actually be playing a game. Earlier this month, Kamala Harris’ campaign teamed up with a Twitch streamer to live-stream a Walz rally as part of a World of Warcraft stream. But on Sunday afternoon, Walz will be playing Madden NFL on Twitch with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY).

Like with live-streaming the Walz rally alongside WoW, the idea with this Madden livestream is to try to reach young men, a demographic that Trump polls relatively high with.

Ocasio-Cortez is already well-known for her huge Among Us stream ahead of the 2020 election and a stream in July 2023 where she played Pico Park and Gartic Phone. (She’s a fan of League of Legends, too.) But while Walz is a known Dreamcast fan and a successful high school football coach, this will be the first time we’ll get to see him play games live on Twitch. Maybe someday we’ll get to see him play Crazy Taxi.

Sunday’s stream will kick off at 3PM ET on AOC’s Twitch channel, where Walz will be a guest. It will also be co-streamed on Kamala Harris’ Twitch channel.

Read More