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Image: The Verge

OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to let the US government access major new AI models before release to help improve their safety.
The companies signed memorandums of understanding with the US AI Safety Institute to provide access to the models both before and after their public release, the agency announced on Thursday. The government says this step will help them work together to evaluate safety risks and mitigate potential issues. The US agency said it would provide feedback on safety improvements, in collaboration with its counterpart agency in the UK.
Sharing access to AI models is a significant step at a time when federal and state legislatures are considering what kinds of guardrails to place on the technology without stifling innovation. On Wednesday, California lawmakers passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047), requiring AI companies in California to take specific safety measures before training advanced foundation models. It’s garnered pushback from AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic that warn it could harm smaller open-source developers, though it’s since undergone some changes and is still awaiting a signature from Governor Gavin Newsom.
In the meantime, the White House has worked to secure voluntary commitments from major companies on AI safety measures. Several leading firms have entered non-binding commitments to invest in cybersecurity and discrimination research and work on watermarking AI-generated content.
US AI Safety Institute director Elizabeth Kelly said in a statement that the new agreements were “just the start, but they are an important milestone as we work to help responsibly steward the future of AI.”

Image: The Verge

OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to let the US government access major new AI models before release to help improve their safety.

The companies signed memorandums of understanding with the US AI Safety Institute to provide access to the models both before and after their public release, the agency announced on Thursday. The government says this step will help them work together to evaluate safety risks and mitigate potential issues. The US agency said it would provide feedback on safety improvements, in collaboration with its counterpart agency in the UK.

Sharing access to AI models is a significant step at a time when federal and state legislatures are considering what kinds of guardrails to place on the technology without stifling innovation. On Wednesday, California lawmakers passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047), requiring AI companies in California to take specific safety measures before training advanced foundation models. It’s garnered pushback from AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic that warn it could harm smaller open-source developers, though it’s since undergone some changes and is still awaiting a signature from Governor Gavin Newsom.

In the meantime, the White House has worked to secure voluntary commitments from major companies on AI safety measures. Several leading firms have entered non-binding commitments to invest in cybersecurity and discrimination research and work on watermarking AI-generated content.

US AI Safety Institute director Elizabeth Kelly said in a statement that the new agreements were “just the start, but they are an important milestone as we work to help responsibly steward the future of AI.”

Read More 

The Wyze Cam 4. | Image: Wyze

Wyze is making it easier to find out which of your cats knocked over your planter while you were gone. It’s testing a new AI search feature for Cam Unlimited subscribers that lets you search through footage using keywords, rather than scrolling through all recorded events, as spotted by GeekWire.
With the feature, you can search for things that might’ve been caught on camera, like “truck” or “delivery person.” You can even add more detail to your search by typing something like “show me my cat in the backyard” or “woman under an umbrella.” Wyze will then pull up relevant scenes using AI.

However, Wyze notes that the feature isn’t perfect and you may “get some wonky results at times.” Still, it sounds like it could save you from having to rewind your footage or search through all the activity your cameras picked up.
It’d be nice to see this feature come to other smart cameras — and it seems like companies are working on it. Earlier this month, Google announced it’s bringing Gemini to its Home app, allowing you to search your Nest camera footage for events. Meanwhile, Ring CEO Liz Hamren told GeekWire that the company is getting ready to release a similar feature.
Wyze’s AI search is available to Cam Unlimited subscribers, which costs $9.99 per month. You can request access to the feature from Wyze’s website, but do so at your own discretion, as Wyze has had some serious security issues in the past.

The Wyze Cam 4. | Image: Wyze

Wyze is making it easier to find out which of your cats knocked over your planter while you were gone. It’s testing a new AI search feature for Cam Unlimited subscribers that lets you search through footage using keywords, rather than scrolling through all recorded events, as spotted by GeekWire.

With the feature, you can search for things that might’ve been caught on camera, like “truck” or “delivery person.” You can even add more detail to your search by typing something like “show me my cat in the backyard” or “woman under an umbrella.” Wyze will then pull up relevant scenes using AI.

However, Wyze notes that the feature isn’t perfect and you may “get some wonky results at times.” Still, it sounds like it could save you from having to rewind your footage or search through all the activity your cameras picked up.

It’d be nice to see this feature come to other smart cameras — and it seems like companies are working on it. Earlier this month, Google announced it’s bringing Gemini to its Home app, allowing you to search your Nest camera footage for events. Meanwhile, Ring CEO Liz Hamren told GeekWire that the company is getting ready to release a similar feature.

Wyze’s AI search is available to Cam Unlimited subscribers, which costs $9.99 per month. You can request access to the feature from Wyze’s website, but do so at your own discretion, as Wyze has had some serious security issues in the past.

Read More 

Sure, it’s skinny, but it’s also blocking the second wall outlet in this image. | Image: Genki

If you’re in need of a compact and portable USB-C charger, then Genki’s TurboCharger might fit the bill. The gaming accessory maker says its new gallium nitride (GaN) accessory is the “flattest” 100W wall charger on the market, capable of folding to a thickness of 18 millimeters (0.7 inches) to make it easier to pack.
The TurboCharger is compatible with Power Delivery (PD 3.0) and has a pair of USB-C ports on the bottom, which can each supply up to 100W or a 65W / 30W split if charging two devices simultaneously. Its skinny design also means it can fit snugly in tight spaces like behind couches or cupboards, and it keeps its weight closer to the wall to provide a more secure connection that’s less likely to fall out. And while the TurboCharger is targeting owners of handheld gaming PCs — providing enough juice for the ROG Ally’s Turbo performance mode, for example — there’s no reason you can’t use it for other gadgets.

Image: Genki
You can even carry it around on your belt loop if you’re into that sort of thing.

It is, however, launching as part of a Kickstarter campaign. If crowdfunding risks don’t concern you, then it can be had for a special $48 price, which the company says will later increase to $60 for general availability.
One criticism of this design is that the charger could block secondary outlet ports or even an entire row on a power strip. Rival offerings like Anker’s $84.99 foldable Prime Charger avoid this by placing the prongs at the end. But for the best of both worlds (at the expense of wattage), Anker is also set to release a slim 65W charger later this year that can fold its prongs into either orientation.

Sure, it’s skinny, but it’s also blocking the second wall outlet in this image. | Image: Genki

If you’re in need of a compact and portable USB-C charger, then Genki’s TurboCharger might fit the bill. The gaming accessory maker says its new gallium nitride (GaN) accessory is the “flattest” 100W wall charger on the market, capable of folding to a thickness of 18 millimeters (0.7 inches) to make it easier to pack.

The TurboCharger is compatible with Power Delivery (PD 3.0) and has a pair of USB-C ports on the bottom, which can each supply up to 100W or a 65W / 30W split if charging two devices simultaneously. Its skinny design also means it can fit snugly in tight spaces like behind couches or cupboards, and it keeps its weight closer to the wall to provide a more secure connection that’s less likely to fall out. And while the TurboCharger is targeting owners of handheld gaming PCs — providing enough juice for the ROG Ally’s Turbo performance mode, for example — there’s no reason you can’t use it for other gadgets.

Image: Genki
You can even carry it around on your belt loop if you’re into that sort of thing.

It is, however, launching as part of a Kickstarter campaign. If crowdfunding risks don’t concern you, then it can be had for a special $48 price, which the company says will later increase to $60 for general availability.

One criticism of this design is that the charger could block secondary outlet ports or even an entire row on a power strip. Rival offerings like Anker’s $84.99 foldable Prime Charger avoid this by placing the prongs at the end. But for the best of both worlds (at the expense of wattage), Anker is also set to release a slim 65W charger later this year that can fold its prongs into either orientation.

Read More 

SpaceX has yet to set a new date for it’s delayed Polaris Dawn Falcon 9 rocket launch. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has grounded SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket following a failed landing attempt during a recent Starlink mission. After successfully carrying the satellites into orbit on Wednesday, the first-stage booster returned to Earth and toppled into the Atlantic Ocean in a fireball shortly after touchdown, ending a streak of 267 successful landings.
The FAA has ordered an investigation into the failed touchdown. “The incident involved the failure of the Falcon 9 booster rocket while landing on a droneship at sea. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported,” an FAA spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. “A return to flight of the Falcon 9 booster rocket is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the anomaly does not affect public safety.”

After sending 21 Starlink satellites on their way to orbit, Falcon 9 booster 1062, making its 23rd flight, tipped over and exploded as it landed on the drone ship ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’. It was the first Falcon 9 landing failure since Feb. 2021. Watch a replay of our live… pic.twitter.com/Dquqk2DL2R— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) August 28, 2024

The grounding order could cause further delays to SpaceX’s high-profile Polaris Dawn mission, which aims to carry four people into orbit to attempt the first private spacewalk. The Polaris mission was expected to launch this week, but was pushed back due to poor weather conditions and a new date hasn’t been set yet.
These investigations tend to wrap up fairly quickly at least, with SpaceX responsible for conducting the probe itself and the FAA then assessing its findings. This is the second grounding for SpaceX this year after a liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon 9 booster caused a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” during another Starlink satellite delivery mission in July. The FAA permitted the Falcon 9 to be returned to flight just 15 days later.
Groundings for SpaceX workhorse rocket are rare, with the last one occurring in 2016 prior to the two incidents this year. According to SpaceX, the specific booster that failed on Wednesday was on its 23rd flight.

SpaceX has yet to set a new date for it’s delayed Polaris Dawn Falcon 9 rocket launch. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has grounded SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket following a failed landing attempt during a recent Starlink mission. After successfully carrying the satellites into orbit on Wednesday, the first-stage booster returned to Earth and toppled into the Atlantic Ocean in a fireball shortly after touchdown, ending a streak of 267 successful landings.

The FAA has ordered an investigation into the failed touchdown. “The incident involved the failure of the Falcon 9 booster rocket while landing on a droneship at sea. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported,” an FAA spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. “A return to flight of the Falcon 9 booster rocket is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the anomaly does not affect public safety.”

The grounding order could cause further delays to SpaceX’s high-profile Polaris Dawn mission, which aims to carry four people into orbit to attempt the first private spacewalk. The Polaris mission was expected to launch this week, but was pushed back due to poor weather conditions and a new date hasn’t been set yet.

These investigations tend to wrap up fairly quickly at least, with SpaceX responsible for conducting the probe itself and the FAA then assessing its findings. This is the second grounding for SpaceX this year after a liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon 9 booster caused a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” during another Starlink satellite delivery mission in July. The FAA permitted the Falcon 9 to be returned to flight just 15 days later.

Groundings for SpaceX workhorse rocket are rare, with the last one occurring in 2016 prior to the two incidents this year. According to SpaceX, the specific booster that failed on Wednesday was on its 23rd flight.

Read More 

These high-speed electric models follow in the footsteps of 120 years of Ford racing. Silent, clean, and calm, most EVs are lovely to drive. They’re easier on the environment and are less likely to increase your stress levels than traditional cars, too. But if you’re the sort of driver who’s looking to get your adrenaline pumping without burning any gasoline, you haven’t had many options.
That’s something Ford is looking to change with its latest high-performance special edition, the Mach-E Rally. After a few exclusive laps spent sliding one around Ford’s private, purpose-built, off-road course in Michigan, I can attest that this is a machine that lives up to its name.
But Ford’s mission to spice up its EV efforts has resulted in some other, much wilder machines in some unusual shapes, so-called “demonstrators” that offer levels of performance so outrageous they’re decidedly illegal for the street. It’s a dual-pronged approach to bolstering the company’s electrified efforts, but in many ways, it’s just a continuation of the same theme that the company has been singing since its earliest days.

SuperTruck
In June of this year, a Ford F-150 Lightning pulled up to the starting grid at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. This harrowing road has been challenging cars and drivers since 1916, with one simple goal: get to the top faster than anyone else.
And that’s exactly what Ford’s all-electric entry did, screaming from start to finish in a time of eight minutes and 53 seconds, more than 10 seconds quicker than the next-fastest competitor. That’s a remarkable feat for a truck, made more incredible by the fact that Ford’s entry, dubbed the SuperTruck, lurched to a halt just a few feet after the start. It stood still for 26 seconds while pilot Romain Dumas ran through the reboot sequence.
Eight minutes and 53 seconds
“Luckily, Romain had been studying the process of what to do in case that happened the night before,” said David Root, exterior designer on the F-150 Lightning SuperTruck. “He knew exactly what to do.”
That Dumas still won the event after standing still for half a minute shows the dominance of a truck that looks like something out of a video game. And that’s because it was — spiritually, at least. SuperTruck design manager Anthony Meyer admitted to me that he drew inspiration from the epic, big-winged Suzuki Escudo that dominated Gran Turismo 2.

That wild look is possible because the SuperTruck shares nothing with the road-going F-150 Lightning. Built on a custom frame with three high-performance motors delivering over 1,600 horsepower, it’s what the brand calls a “demonstrator.” That is, a high-power, high-performance machine designed to impress, not necessarily to compete.
“We didn’t feel there was the right full-electric racing series to participate in,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance, the company’s racing division. “Because we’re not restricted by rules. We can do whatever we want, we can learn whatever we want, and we can tell whatever spectacle or story we want.”
While the Pikes Peak event does have rules defining the various categories of cars that compete every year, in the event’s Open class, most of those regulations are in the name of driver safety. Beyond creating a safe car that had a passing resemblance to the road-going F-150, Ford’s team was free to do more or less whatever they wanted. That enabled the team to create something wild, all in the name of raising the profile of its road-going EVs.
Electric spectacle
While EV demonstrators are just one facet of Ford’s motorsports efforts, they’re an increasingly important part of the company’s marketing efforts.
It started with 2020’s Mustang Cobra Jet 1400, a 1,400-horsepower dragster designed to run the quarter mile in eight seconds, quicker even than the astonishingly fast Lucid Air Sapphire. That was followed closely by the equally powerful Mustang Mach-E 1400.
The bulk of Ford’s motorsports efforts, however, are still focused on internal combustion — more specifically, on the controlled explosions that happen under the hood of a Ford Mustang coupe. Ford’s sports car, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, competes in everything from Le Mans to NASCAR to the National Hot Rod Association, disparate series with vastly different demands.
“We’re not restricted by rules”
It’s all in pursuit of the age-old adage “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” the adage that says success on the race track leads to success at the dealership.
To better make that connection, Ford has a long history of motorsports-themed Mustang special editions. Models like the Shelby GT350, Boss 302, and Cobra R all have their roots in racing. This year, though, saw a special edition of a different color when Ford released its first performance edition of that other Mustang: the Mustang Mach-E Rally. Like many of those pony cars that came before, the Rally had to earn its stripes at the hands of Ford’s torture testers.

Testing ground
Many of Ford’s road-going machines, and plenty of its track-oriented ones, whet their teeth in a rather unassuming place: Michigan Proving Grounds, better known as MPG. Located in Romeo, Michigan, a rural village with a population of less than 4,000, and situated 45 miles north of Detroit, it’s one of several test facilities Ford operates around the world.
MPG headquarters is a tired-looking building full of low, dark cubicles. The only color in the place comes from the array of motorsports posters on the wall, some signed by Ford greats. One, showing a Ford Fiesta rally car sliding sideways through the gravel, carries the dedication: “To MPG – Thanks for Everything! -Ken Block 43”
It’s a bit depressing inside, but that’s fine because the real magic happens outside. That building’s backyard is a 4,000-acre edifice to automotive excellence, criss-crossed by roads and paths suitable for evaluating every vehicle Ford makes — plus some choice offerings from the competition, too.
There, you’ll find asphalt smooth and rough, steep and shallow, plus endless dirt trails and off-road sections. Despite all that, there was nothing quite right for the development of the Mach-E Rally.
“To MPG – Thanks for Everything! -Ken Block 43”
“We surveyed all these tracks on these 4,000 acres that we already had. And we looked at the other proving grounds, in Arizona, and in Germany, and nothing was quite rallycross,” said Jay Kistler, vehicle engineering supervisor for the Mustang Mach-E.
The Mach-E Rally is dedicated to the sport of rallying, the age-old pursuit of going fast over any conditions. But rallycross is a specific flavor of that pursuit. In the American sense, a rallycross is generally a rural affair, an amateur event where people slide their Subarus around traffic cones placed on pastures or gravel parking lots. Each competitor gets multiple runs through the day; at the end, the driver with the lowest cumulative time wins.
Nearly any car with a functional suspension can compete and survive so long as its drivers aren’t too precious about their paint. But, not all will survive. As the day goes on, it’s not uncommon for courses to start to deteriorate. As the ruts get deeper, the risk of damage increases.

Rallycrossing is not easy on cars. Serious competitors invest in suspension to provide extra compliance, ground clearance, and durability for the rougher courses. Aluminum skid plates are also commonplace to save oil pans, exhausts, and differentials from damage. Without these basic upgrades, competitors who drive hard are asking for trouble.
To replicate the conditions a rallycrosser is likely to find on an average Saturday, Ford’s development team did what any racer with a fast car and 4,000 acres of playground would do: they made their own course.
The result is a short, dirt and gravel circuit with interconnected loops to provide variety. After a few revisions and expansions, executed at a cost that nobody was willing to disclose, the Mach-E team had its perfect testing ground.
As the ruts get deeper, the risk of damage increases
The goal was 500 hours of serious testing. “Full send, all the time,” Anthony Magagnoli, off-road attribute engineer at Ford and one of the test drivers, said.
“Full send” is rally parlance for driving as hard as possible without an ounce of mechanical sympathy. A car that could survive 500 hours without breaking anything was the goal. The team reckoned that would equate to 10 years’ worth of competition.
That’s an impressive feat considering many cars don’t make it 10 minutes at a rallycross without losing bodywork. Indeed, things didn’t start so well for the Mach-E.
“In the first 50 miles of us originally trying this, we had a lot of parts falling off the vehicle,” Ford’s Kistler said.
“None of them were, like, structural-type things,” Chris Berchin added, off-road attribute engineer and an avid rallycrosser responsible for many of those 500 hours. “It was this trim piece fell off, this shield fell off… the majority of the car was solid.”
The team redesigned the Mach-E’s bodywork by upgrading the strut tops, the part of the suspension most likely to fail under hard compression. But the bulk of the car survived without issue.
The result was a rally-hardened machine. At the car’s recent media launch, where dozens of ham-fisted journalists slid the thing around in the gravel and the mud for days, there wasn’t a single failure.

Sell on Monday?
It’s safe to say that Ford’s EV efforts are in question at the moment. The Blue Oval recently revised its EV outlook again, canceling a planned three-row electric SUV and shuffling dates for other, unannounced products. Despite sales of electric cars continuing to climb, there’s a perceived softness in the market, a bit of smoke being fanned furiously by a curiously dedicated group of American EV haters.
On its own, the Mach-E Rally won’t do much to change their minds. Rallycross is a wonderful pursuit, truly among the most fun things you can do on four wheels, but it’s hardly mainstream. Various series have tried and failed, including the Red Bull Global Rallycross, which folded in 2018, and the Americas Rallycross Championship, which picked up from there before shuttering in 2019.
“Full send, all the time.”
Still, sometimes it’s in chasing the niches that mainstream success can be found. Hyundai is following much the same lead to spice up its electrification efforts with the Ioniq 5 N, which comes complete with fake shifting noises and endless performance-oriented sliders on its touchscreen. Nissan also makes a limited-edition, high-performance Nismo flavor of its Ariya SUV — but only in Japan for now.
Adding a dose of aspirational potential to an everyday product is a tried and true way of wooing American consumers, one that’s worked for the Mustang for ages. Indeed, it’s hard to look at the Mach-E Rally’s rally-style wheels, big wing, and running lights without getting some bad ideas about hooning your way down the closest gravel road.
It’s similar antics that gave Henry Ford some ideas of his own. “It goes way back to 1901, with Henry Ford winning a race. I definitely believe that ultimately led to the formation of our company in 1903,” Mark Rushbrook said.
Appropriately, that 1901 race took place on the dirt.

These high-speed electric models follow in the footsteps of 120 years of Ford racing.

Silent, clean, and calm, most EVs are lovely to drive. They’re easier on the environment and are less likely to increase your stress levels than traditional cars, too. But if you’re the sort of driver who’s looking to get your adrenaline pumping without burning any gasoline, you haven’t had many options.

That’s something Ford is looking to change with its latest high-performance special edition, the Mach-E Rally. After a few exclusive laps spent sliding one around Ford’s private, purpose-built, off-road course in Michigan, I can attest that this is a machine that lives up to its name.

But Ford’s mission to spice up its EV efforts has resulted in some other, much wilder machines in some unusual shapes, so-called “demonstrators” that offer levels of performance so outrageous they’re decidedly illegal for the street. It’s a dual-pronged approach to bolstering the company’s electrified efforts, but in many ways, it’s just a continuation of the same theme that the company has been singing since its earliest days.

SuperTruck

In June of this year, a Ford F-150 Lightning pulled up to the starting grid at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. This harrowing road has been challenging cars and drivers since 1916, with one simple goal: get to the top faster than anyone else.

And that’s exactly what Ford’s all-electric entry did, screaming from start to finish in a time of eight minutes and 53 seconds, more than 10 seconds quicker than the next-fastest competitor. That’s a remarkable feat for a truck, made more incredible by the fact that Ford’s entry, dubbed the SuperTruck, lurched to a halt just a few feet after the start. It stood still for 26 seconds while pilot Romain Dumas ran through the reboot sequence.

“Luckily, Romain had been studying the process of what to do in case that happened the night before,” said David Root, exterior designer on the F-150 Lightning SuperTruck. “He knew exactly what to do.”

That Dumas still won the event after standing still for half a minute shows the dominance of a truck that looks like something out of a video game. And that’s because it was — spiritually, at least. SuperTruck design manager Anthony Meyer admitted to me that he drew inspiration from the epic, big-winged Suzuki Escudo that dominated Gran Turismo 2.

That wild look is possible because the SuperTruck shares nothing with the road-going F-150 Lightning. Built on a custom frame with three high-performance motors delivering over 1,600 horsepower, it’s what the brand calls a “demonstrator.” That is, a high-power, high-performance machine designed to impress, not necessarily to compete.

“We didn’t feel there was the right full-electric racing series to participate in,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance, the company’s racing division. “Because we’re not restricted by rules. We can do whatever we want, we can learn whatever we want, and we can tell whatever spectacle or story we want.”

While the Pikes Peak event does have rules defining the various categories of cars that compete every year, in the event’s Open class, most of those regulations are in the name of driver safety. Beyond creating a safe car that had a passing resemblance to the road-going F-150, Ford’s team was free to do more or less whatever they wanted. That enabled the team to create something wild, all in the name of raising the profile of its road-going EVs.

Electric spectacle

While EV demonstrators are just one facet of Ford’s motorsports efforts, they’re an increasingly important part of the company’s marketing efforts.

It started with 2020’s Mustang Cobra Jet 1400, a 1,400-horsepower dragster designed to run the quarter mile in eight seconds, quicker even than the astonishingly fast Lucid Air Sapphire. That was followed closely by the equally powerful Mustang Mach-E 1400.

The bulk of Ford’s motorsports efforts, however, are still focused on internal combustion — more specifically, on the controlled explosions that happen under the hood of a Ford Mustang coupe. Ford’s sports car, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, competes in everything from Le Mans to NASCAR to the National Hot Rod Association, disparate series with vastly different demands.

It’s all in pursuit of the age-old adage “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” the adage that says success on the race track leads to success at the dealership.

To better make that connection, Ford has a long history of motorsports-themed Mustang special editions. Models like the Shelby GT350, Boss 302, and Cobra R all have their roots in racing. This year, though, saw a special edition of a different color when Ford released its first performance edition of that other Mustang: the Mustang Mach-E Rally. Like many of those pony cars that came before, the Rally had to earn its stripes at the hands of Ford’s torture testers.

Testing ground

Many of Ford’s road-going machines, and plenty of its track-oriented ones, whet their teeth in a rather unassuming place: Michigan Proving Grounds, better known as MPG. Located in Romeo, Michigan, a rural village with a population of less than 4,000, and situated 45 miles north of Detroit, it’s one of several test facilities Ford operates around the world.

MPG headquarters is a tired-looking building full of low, dark cubicles. The only color in the place comes from the array of motorsports posters on the wall, some signed by Ford greats. One, showing a Ford Fiesta rally car sliding sideways through the gravel, carries the dedication: “To MPG – Thanks for Everything! –Ken Block 43”

It’s a bit depressing inside, but that’s fine because the real magic happens outside. That building’s backyard is a 4,000-acre edifice to automotive excellence, criss-crossed by roads and paths suitable for evaluating every vehicle Ford makes — plus some choice offerings from the competition, too.

There, you’ll find asphalt smooth and rough, steep and shallow, plus endless dirt trails and off-road sections. Despite all that, there was nothing quite right for the development of the Mach-E Rally.

“We surveyed all these tracks on these 4,000 acres that we already had. And we looked at the other proving grounds, in Arizona, and in Germany, and nothing was quite rallycross,” said Jay Kistler, vehicle engineering supervisor for the Mustang Mach-E.

The Mach-E Rally is dedicated to the sport of rallying, the age-old pursuit of going fast over any conditions. But rallycross is a specific flavor of that pursuit. In the American sense, a rallycross is generally a rural affair, an amateur event where people slide their Subarus around traffic cones placed on pastures or gravel parking lots. Each competitor gets multiple runs through the day; at the end, the driver with the lowest cumulative time wins.

Nearly any car with a functional suspension can compete and survive so long as its drivers aren’t too precious about their paint. But, not all will survive. As the day goes on, it’s not uncommon for courses to start to deteriorate. As the ruts get deeper, the risk of damage increases.

Rallycrossing is not easy on cars. Serious competitors invest in suspension to provide extra compliance, ground clearance, and durability for the rougher courses. Aluminum skid plates are also commonplace to save oil pans, exhausts, and differentials from damage. Without these basic upgrades, competitors who drive hard are asking for trouble.

To replicate the conditions a rallycrosser is likely to find on an average Saturday, Ford’s development team did what any racer with a fast car and 4,000 acres of playground would do: they made their own course.

The result is a short, dirt and gravel circuit with interconnected loops to provide variety. After a few revisions and expansions, executed at a cost that nobody was willing to disclose, the Mach-E team had its perfect testing ground.

The goal was 500 hours of serious testing. “Full send, all the time,” Anthony Magagnoli, off-road attribute engineer at Ford and one of the test drivers, said.

“Full send” is rally parlance for driving as hard as possible without an ounce of mechanical sympathy. A car that could survive 500 hours without breaking anything was the goal. The team reckoned that would equate to 10 years’ worth of competition.

That’s an impressive feat considering many cars don’t make it 10 minutes at a rallycross without losing bodywork. Indeed, things didn’t start so well for the Mach-E.

“In the first 50 miles of us originally trying this, we had a lot of parts falling off the vehicle,” Ford’s Kistler said.

“None of them were, like, structural-type things,” Chris Berchin added, off-road attribute engineer and an avid rallycrosser responsible for many of those 500 hours. “It was this trim piece fell off, this shield fell off… the majority of the car was solid.”

The team redesigned the Mach-E’s bodywork by upgrading the strut tops, the part of the suspension most likely to fail under hard compression. But the bulk of the car survived without issue.

The result was a rally-hardened machine. At the car’s recent media launch, where dozens of ham-fisted journalists slid the thing around in the gravel and the mud for days, there wasn’t a single failure.

Sell on Monday?

It’s safe to say that Ford’s EV efforts are in question at the moment. The Blue Oval recently revised its EV outlook again, canceling a planned three-row electric SUV and shuffling dates for other, unannounced products. Despite sales of electric cars continuing to climb, there’s a perceived softness in the market, a bit of smoke being fanned furiously by a curiously dedicated group of American EV haters.

On its own, the Mach-E Rally won’t do much to change their minds. Rallycross is a wonderful pursuit, truly among the most fun things you can do on four wheels, but it’s hardly mainstream. Various series have tried and failed, including the Red Bull Global Rallycross, which folded in 2018, and the Americas Rallycross Championship, which picked up from there before shuttering in 2019.

Still, sometimes it’s in chasing the niches that mainstream success can be found. Hyundai is following much the same lead to spice up its electrification efforts with the Ioniq 5 N, which comes complete with fake shifting noises and endless performance-oriented sliders on its touchscreen. Nissan also makes a limited-edition, high-performance Nismo flavor of its Ariya SUV — but only in Japan for now.

Adding a dose of aspirational potential to an everyday product is a tried and true way of wooing American consumers, one that’s worked for the Mustang for ages. Indeed, it’s hard to look at the Mach-E Rally’s rally-style wheels, big wing, and running lights without getting some bad ideas about hooning your way down the closest gravel road.

It’s similar antics that gave Henry Ford some ideas of his own. “It goes way back to 1901, with Henry Ford winning a race. I definitely believe that ultimately led to the formation of our company in 1903,” Mark Rushbrook said.

Appropriately, that 1901 race took place on the dirt.

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The ThinQ On is LGs new smart home hub. A smart speaker, it uses generative AI for conversational commands and control of connected devices. | Image: LG

LG has announced the ThinQ ON, the company’s first dedicated smart home hub. The device, which was teased at CES earlier this year, will debut at the IFA 2024 tech show in Berlin, Germany, next week.
The ThinQ ON is an AI-powered hub that can connect and control LG appliances and other smart home devices via Thread, Matter, and Wi-Fi. It works on LG’s ThinQ smart home platform and uses LG’s Affectionate Intelligence to learn from your usage patterns, monitor your appliances, and allow for voice control of connected devices.

A small, circular white hub, the LG ThinQ ON is also a smart speaker with LG’s AI voice assistant onboard. The company says the assistant can understand natural language, interpret context, and learn user preferences. LG’s AI chipset powers the hub, and according to LG, it has been designed with future scalability in mind.

Image: LG
The ThinQ ON is LG’s new smart home hub.

Like most smart home hubs, the ON will allow you to control and monitor the settings of connected devices and create routines to enable smart home automations through LG’s ThinQ app.
The ThinQ ON is Matter-certified, and LG says it will support various network connectivity options, “including Wi-Fi and Thread.” It’s also compatible with a wide range of LG devices and “a growing number of appliances and IoT devices from other manufacturers.”

Some of this “growing number” will likely come from LG’s recent acquisition of Athom, maker of the Homey Pro hub, a smart home hub that supports hundreds of smart home device integrations. LG bought Athom in July of this year, so it seems unlikely that all of Homey’s integrations will be available on the ThinQ ON at launch.
LG’s approach to the smart home to date has largely been limited to controlling its own devices and appliances. This new hub is the first major move toward becoming a more robust smart home platform, similar to Samsung and its SmartThings smart home platform.
Earlier this year, LG also announced that some of its TVs will work as Matter-enabled Google Home Hubs, allowing you to set up and control any Matter-compatible smart home devices, along with LG, Google, and Google Home devices, through the ThinQ app.
We don’t yet know how much the ThinQ ON will cost or when it will be available. We’ve contacted LG for more details and will be at IFA next week to see the new device in person.

The ThinQ On is LGs new smart home hub. A smart speaker, it uses generative AI for conversational commands and control of connected devices. | Image: LG

LG has announced the ThinQ ON, the company’s first dedicated smart home hub. The device, which was teased at CES earlier this year, will debut at the IFA 2024 tech show in Berlin, Germany, next week.

The ThinQ ON is an AI-powered hub that can connect and control LG appliances and other smart home devices via Thread, Matter, and Wi-Fi. It works on LG’s ThinQ smart home platform and uses LG’s Affectionate Intelligence to learn from your usage patterns, monitor your appliances, and allow for voice control of connected devices.

A small, circular white hub, the LG ThinQ ON is also a smart speaker with LG’s AI voice assistant onboard. The company says the assistant can understand natural language, interpret context, and learn user preferences. LG’s AI chipset powers the hub, and according to LG, it has been designed with future scalability in mind.

Image: LG
The ThinQ ON is LG’s new smart home hub.

Like most smart home hubs, the ON will allow you to control and monitor the settings of connected devices and create routines to enable smart home automations through LG’s ThinQ app.

The ThinQ ON is Matter-certified, and LG says it will support various network connectivity options, “including Wi-Fi and Thread.” It’s also compatible with a wide range of LG devices and “a growing number of appliances and IoT devices from other manufacturers.”

Some of this “growing number” will likely come from LG’s recent acquisition of Athom, maker of the Homey Pro hub, a smart home hub that supports hundreds of smart home device integrations. LG bought Athom in July of this year, so it seems unlikely that all of Homey’s integrations will be available on the ThinQ ON at launch.

LG’s approach to the smart home to date has largely been limited to controlling its own devices and appliances. This new hub is the first major move toward becoming a more robust smart home platform, similar to Samsung and its SmartThings smart home platform.

Earlier this year, LG also announced that some of its TVs will work as Matter-enabled Google Home Hubs, allowing you to set up and control any Matter-compatible smart home devices, along with LG, Google, and Google Home devices, through the ThinQ app.

We don’t yet know how much the ThinQ ON will cost or when it will be available. We’ve contacted LG for more details and will be at IFA next week to see the new device in person.

Read More 

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

The California State Assembly has passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047), Reuters reports. The bill is one of the first significant regulations of artificial intelligence in the US.
The bill, which has been a flashpoint for debate in Silicon Valley and beyond, would obligate AI companies operating in California to implement a number of precautions before they train a sophisticated foundation model. Those include making it possible to quickly and fully shut the model down, ensuring the model is protected against “unsafe post-training modifications,” and maintaining a testing procedure to evaluate whether a model or its derivatives is especially at risk of “causing or enabling a critical harm.”
Senator Scott Wiener, the bill’s main author, said SB 1047 is a highly reasonable bill that asks large AI labs to do what they’ve already committed to doing: test their large models for catastrophic safety risk. “We’ve worked hard all year, with open source advocates, Anthropic, and others, to refine and improve the bill. SB 1047 is well calibrated to what we know about forseeable AI risks, and it deserves to be enacted.”

SB 1047 — our AI safety bill — just passed off the Assembly floor. I’m proud of the diverse coalition behind this bill — a coalition that deeply believes in both innovation & safety.AI has so much promise to make the world a better place. It’s exciting.Thank you, colleagues.— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) August 28, 2024

Critics of SB 1047 — including OpenAI and Anthropic, politicians Zoe Lofgren and Nancy Pelosi, and California’s Chamber of Commerce — have argued that it’s overly focused on catastrophic harms and could unduly harm small, open-source AI developers. The bill was amended in response, replacing potential criminal penalties with civil ones, narrowing enforcement powers granted to California’s attorney general, and adjusting requirements to join a “Board of Frontier Models” created by the bill.
After the State Senate votes on the amended bill — a vote that’s expected to pass — the AI safety bill will head to Governor Gavin Newsom, who will have until the end of September to decide its fate, according to The New York Times.
Anthropic declined to comment beyond pointing to a letter sent by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to Governor Newsom last week. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

The California State Assembly has passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047), Reuters reports. The bill is one of the first significant regulations of artificial intelligence in the US.

The bill, which has been a flashpoint for debate in Silicon Valley and beyond, would obligate AI companies operating in California to implement a number of precautions before they train a sophisticated foundation model. Those include making it possible to quickly and fully shut the model down, ensuring the model is protected against “unsafe post-training modifications,” and maintaining a testing procedure to evaluate whether a model or its derivatives is especially at risk of “causing or enabling a critical harm.”

Senator Scott Wiener, the bill’s main author, said SB 1047 is a highly reasonable bill that asks large AI labs to do what they’ve already committed to doing: test their large models for catastrophic safety risk. “We’ve worked hard all year, with open source advocates, Anthropic, and others, to refine and improve the bill. SB 1047 is well calibrated to what we know about forseeable AI risks, and it deserves to be enacted.”

Critics of SB 1047 — including OpenAI and Anthropic, politicians Zoe Lofgren and Nancy Pelosi, and California’s Chamber of Commerce — have argued that it’s overly focused on catastrophic harms and could unduly harm small, open-source AI developers. The bill was amended in response, replacing potential criminal penalties with civil ones, narrowing enforcement powers granted to California’s attorney general, and adjusting requirements to join a “Board of Frontier Models” created by the bill.

After the State Senate votes on the amended bill — a vote that’s expected to pass — the AI safety bill will head to Governor Gavin Newsom, who will have until the end of September to decide its fate, according to The New York Times.

Anthropic declined to comment beyond pointing to a letter sent by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to Governor Newsom last week. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Untangling companies’ environmental claims these days can be a head-spinning endeavor, and reading Meta’s latest sustainability report is no exception. Depending on how you look at it, the company’s greenhouse gas emissions either grew or fell last year.
Depending on how you look at it, the company’s greenhouse gas emissions either grew or fell last year
Confused? The discrepancy has to do with whether you’re assessing total or net emissions and, crucially, whether you’re considering the local impact Meta has in places where it operates.
It helps to take a look at the graph below from the sustainability report. The light gray bars show Meta’s total “location-based” greenhouse gas emissions. Those bars have risen steadily since 2019, climbing to a total of 14,067,104 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023. It’s a slight increase in planet-heating pollution over the past year.

Screenshot: Meta

The darker bars on the same graph, on the other hand, show “market-based” emissions falling over the past year. Looking at these numbers, Meta’s carbon footprint appears nearly half as small, reaching just 7,443,182 metric tons in 2023.
So, which number should we believe? Meta, unsurprisingly, highlights the smaller figure near the top of its report, a couple pages ahead of the graph. But it’s important to keep both figures in mind — especially given how difficult it is to suss out how effective market-based mechanisms can really be in eliminating the fossil fuel pollution causing climate change.
“They’ve almost halved their emissions on paper, but it’s really difficult to say how much they’ve reduced it in reality,” says Rachel Kitchin, senior corporate climate campaigner at the environmental organization Stand.earth.
When it comes to the larger, location-based emissions, she says, “You could argue that it’s what their emissions actually are.” Those taller gray bars on the graph reflect local pollution stemming from the electricity the company uses wherever it sets up shop. Data centers typically connect into the local power grid, so they run on the same mix of fossil fuels as everyone else. A majority of Meta’s data centers are located in the US, where 60 percent of electricity still comes from fossil fuels.

But Meta says it matches 100 percent of its electricity use with renewable energy purchases, which is how it’s able to show a much smaller carbon footprint on paper. It can do that through something called a Renewable Energy Certificate, or REC, that represents a claim to the environmental benefits of renewable energy. Power companies generating renewable energy can sell both the electricity itself and the REC, which is supposed to provide additional income to support the development of new renewable projects.
Companies like Meta can ostensibly cancel out or offset carbon emissions from their electricity use by purchasing those RECs. Unfortunately, the math doesn’t always add up in the real world. Companies often overestimate the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they think they’re reducing through RECs, a 2022 study of 115 companies found. The problem is that RECs have gotten so cheap that selling them isn’t necessarily enough to fund new clean energy projects.
There are ways to avoid those pitfalls, however. That’s why it’s still worth looking into Meta’s market-based emissions, which take RECs and other commitments to support renewable energy growth into account.
Buying locally makes a big difference. Companies like Meta can agree to purchase bundled RECs specifically tied to new renewable energy projects in the same region where they operate. That way, they can help get more clean energy onto the local power grid and into local homes, businesses, and its own data centers. Commitments to match electricity use with renewable energy on a 24/7 basis rather than on an annual accounting sheet can also have more impact. It incentivizes the construction of additional clean power sources that can balance each other out when the sun doesn’t shine or winds die down.
Buying locally makes a big difference
To its credit, Meta says supporting new wind and solar projects near its data centers is a priority. An economic impact study it conducted last year found that its support for 86 new wind and solar projects across 24 states in the US should add up to 9,800MW of renewable energy to local grids by 2025. For comparison, Texas had more than 15,000MW of utility-scale solar capacity as of last year.
“I would say, from reading their report, it seems as though Meta has broadly pursued a high-impact approach to renewable energy,” Kitchin says. This week, for example, Meta announced a new initiative to develop geothermal energy for new data centers.
Finding new sources of clean energy has become an even bigger challenge because of how energy-intensive it is to train new AI tools. “As we want to build more data centers, it’s going to be really important that the electricity grids around us continue to decarbonize,” Urvi Parekh, head of renewable energy at Meta, said in a call with The Verge this week. “Our data centers are online 24 hours a day so that users can access the products like Instagram and WhatsApp and others. And so what’s great about geothermal energy is that it can also supply electricity around the clock.”

There’s still a lot of progress to be made. Meta sourced 8.5 percent of its renewable energy purchases from less effective, unbundled RECs, according to an assessment of tech companies’ renewable energy spending that Stand.earth published earlier this year. In an email, Meta didn’t confirm whether that figure is still accurate — just that unbundled RECs make up a “small percentage” of its portfolio. Meta says it mostly enters into long-term agreements to purchase renewable energy from new projects.
But whether you look at the location or market-based emissions in its latest sustainability report, Meta’s carbon footprint is still significantly larger than it was in 2020. That’s the year it pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2030 across its operations, supply chain, and consumer use of its products. Now, it’s even further from that goal than when it started.

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Untangling companies’ environmental claims these days can be a head-spinning endeavor, and reading Meta’s latest sustainability report is no exception. Depending on how you look at it, the company’s greenhouse gas emissions either grew or fell last year.

Confused? The discrepancy has to do with whether you’re assessing total or net emissions and, crucially, whether you’re considering the local impact Meta has in places where it operates.

It helps to take a look at the graph below from the sustainability report. The light gray bars show Meta’s total “location-based” greenhouse gas emissions. Those bars have risen steadily since 2019, climbing to a total of 14,067,104 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023. It’s a slight increase in planet-heating pollution over the past year.

Screenshot: Meta

The darker bars on the same graph, on the other hand, show “market-based” emissions falling over the past year. Looking at these numbers, Meta’s carbon footprint appears nearly half as small, reaching just 7,443,182 metric tons in 2023.

So, which number should we believe? Meta, unsurprisingly, highlights the smaller figure near the top of its report, a couple pages ahead of the graph. But it’s important to keep both figures in mind — especially given how difficult it is to suss out how effective market-based mechanisms can really be in eliminating the fossil fuel pollution causing climate change.

“They’ve almost halved their emissions on paper, but it’s really difficult to say how much they’ve reduced it in reality,” says Rachel Kitchin, senior corporate climate campaigner at the environmental organization Stand.earth.

When it comes to the larger, location-based emissions, she says, “You could argue that it’s what their emissions actually are.” Those taller gray bars on the graph reflect local pollution stemming from the electricity the company uses wherever it sets up shop. Data centers typically connect into the local power grid, so they run on the same mix of fossil fuels as everyone else. A majority of Meta’s data centers are located in the US, where 60 percent of electricity still comes from fossil fuels.

But Meta says it matches 100 percent of its electricity use with renewable energy purchases, which is how it’s able to show a much smaller carbon footprint on paper. It can do that through something called a Renewable Energy Certificate, or REC, that represents a claim to the environmental benefits of renewable energy. Power companies generating renewable energy can sell both the electricity itself and the REC, which is supposed to provide additional income to support the development of new renewable projects.

Companies like Meta can ostensibly cancel out or offset carbon emissions from their electricity use by purchasing those RECs. Unfortunately, the math doesn’t always add up in the real world. Companies often overestimate the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they think they’re reducing through RECs, a 2022 study of 115 companies found. The problem is that RECs have gotten so cheap that selling them isn’t necessarily enough to fund new clean energy projects.

There are ways to avoid those pitfalls, however. That’s why it’s still worth looking into Meta’s market-based emissions, which take RECs and other commitments to support renewable energy growth into account.

Buying locally makes a big difference. Companies like Meta can agree to purchase bundled RECs specifically tied to new renewable energy projects in the same region where they operate. That way, they can help get more clean energy onto the local power grid and into local homes, businesses, and its own data centers. Commitments to match electricity use with renewable energy on a 24/7 basis rather than on an annual accounting sheet can also have more impact. It incentivizes the construction of additional clean power sources that can balance each other out when the sun doesn’t shine or winds die down.

To its credit, Meta says supporting new wind and solar projects near its data centers is a priority. An economic impact study it conducted last year found that its support for 86 new wind and solar projects across 24 states in the US should add up to 9,800MW of renewable energy to local grids by 2025. For comparison, Texas had more than 15,000MW of utility-scale solar capacity as of last year.

“I would say, from reading their report, it seems as though Meta has broadly pursued a high-impact approach to renewable energy,” Kitchin says. This week, for example, Meta announced a new initiative to develop geothermal energy for new data centers.

Finding new sources of clean energy has become an even bigger challenge because of how energy-intensive it is to train new AI tools. “As we want to build more data centers, it’s going to be really important that the electricity grids around us continue to decarbonize,” Urvi Parekh, head of renewable energy at Meta, said in a call with The Verge this week. “Our data centers are online 24 hours a day so that users can access the products like Instagram and WhatsApp and others. And so what’s great about geothermal energy is that it can also supply electricity around the clock.”

There’s still a lot of progress to be made. Meta sourced 8.5 percent of its renewable energy purchases from less effective, unbundled RECs, according to an assessment of tech companies’ renewable energy spending that Stand.earth published earlier this year. In an email, Meta didn’t confirm whether that figure is still accurate — just that unbundled RECs make up a “small percentage” of its portfolio. Meta says it mostly enters into long-term agreements to purchase renewable energy from new projects.

But whether you look at the location or market-based emissions in its latest sustainability report, Meta’s carbon footprint is still significantly larger than it was in 2020. That’s the year it pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2030 across its operations, supply chain, and consumer use of its products. Now, it’s even further from that goal than when it started.

Read More 

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

Yelp, one of Google’s most persistent and outspoken rivals, has finally filed its own antitrust lawsuit against the search giant, less than a month after a federal judge ruled Google an illegal monopolist.
Yelp alleges that Google has created or preserved its monopoly in local search services by preferencing its own inferior vertical over competitors’, which Yelp says harmed competition and reduced the quality of local search services. Yelp claims that the way Google directs users toward its own local search vertical from its general search engine results page should be considered illegal tying of separate products to keep rivals from reaching scale.
Yelp wants the court to order Google to stop the allegedly anticompetitive conduct and to pay it damages. It demanded a jury trial and filed the suit in the Northern District of California, where a different jury found that Google had an illegal monopoly through its app store in its fight against Epic Games.
The company was emboldened to bring its own lawsuit against Google after the DOJ’s win in its antitrust case about the company’s allegedly exclusionary practices around the distribution of search services. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told The New York Times that following that decision, “the winds on antitrust have shifted dramatically.” Previously, he told the Times, he’d hesitated to bring a suit because of the resources it would require and because he saw it as the government’s job to enforce the antitrust laws.
While US District Court Judge Amit Mehta delivered the government a win in its case against Google, he notably narrowed the suit earlier in litigation. Mehta threw out claims from a group of state attorneys general that Google had acted unfairly by allegedly designing its search result pages to lower the visibility of specialized search engines like Yelp and TripAdvisor.
“Yelp’s claims are not new,” Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said in a statement. “Similar claims were thrown out years ago by the FTC, and recently by the judge in the DOJ’s case. On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp’s meritless claims.”
Consumers are the ultimate losers of Google’s allegedly anticompetitive behavior, Yelp says. “By keeping users from leaving Google, other vertical search services are prevented from reaching customers, achieving scale, and building helpful content,” Stoppelman wrote in a blog post. “This softening of the competitive landscape translates to less incentive for Google to invest in quality content that would improve the consumer experience, and greater incentives to show less relevant but nevertheless monetizable results.”
Consumers are the ultimate losers of Google’s allegedly anticompetitive behavior, Yelp says
It also hurts advertisers, according to Yelp, since suppressing competition for local search leads more local advertisers to Google. “As a result, Google can extract higher fees from advertisers with little consequence, according to studies,” Stoppelman wrote. “Notably, Google has increased its year-over-year search advertising revenue by 20% or more each year for the better part of the last decade, while still being able to increase its market share.”
Yelp has a long history of airing its antitrust grievances against Google. A top executive testified about their complaints in front of the Senate in 2020, it’s filed a complaint in the European Union about Google’s alleged self-preferencing, and it’s cheered government agencies along in pursuing charges against Google.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge

Yelp, one of Google’s most persistent and outspoken rivals, has finally filed its own antitrust lawsuit against the search giant, less than a month after a federal judge ruled Google an illegal monopolist.

Yelp alleges that Google has created or preserved its monopoly in local search services by preferencing its own inferior vertical over competitors’, which Yelp says harmed competition and reduced the quality of local search services. Yelp claims that the way Google directs users toward its own local search vertical from its general search engine results page should be considered illegal tying of separate products to keep rivals from reaching scale.

Yelp wants the court to order Google to stop the allegedly anticompetitive conduct and to pay it damages. It demanded a jury trial and filed the suit in the Northern District of California, where a different jury found that Google had an illegal monopoly through its app store in its fight against Epic Games.

The company was emboldened to bring its own lawsuit against Google after the DOJ’s win in its antitrust case about the company’s allegedly exclusionary practices around the distribution of search services. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told The New York Times that following that decision, “the winds on antitrust have shifted dramatically.” Previously, he told the Times, he’d hesitated to bring a suit because of the resources it would require and because he saw it as the government’s job to enforce the antitrust laws.

While US District Court Judge Amit Mehta delivered the government a win in its case against Google, he notably narrowed the suit earlier in litigation. Mehta threw out claims from a group of state attorneys general that Google had acted unfairly by allegedly designing its search result pages to lower the visibility of specialized search engines like Yelp and TripAdvisor.

“Yelp’s claims are not new,” Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said in a statement. “Similar claims were thrown out years ago by the FTC, and recently by the judge in the DOJ’s case. On the other aspects of the decision to which Yelp refers, we are appealing. Google will vigorously defend against Yelp’s meritless claims.”

Consumers are the ultimate losers of Google’s allegedly anticompetitive behavior, Yelp says. “By keeping users from leaving Google, other vertical search services are prevented from reaching customers, achieving scale, and building helpful content,” Stoppelman wrote in a blog post. “This softening of the competitive landscape translates to less incentive for Google to invest in quality content that would improve the consumer experience, and greater incentives to show less relevant but nevertheless monetizable results.”

It also hurts advertisers, according to Yelp, since suppressing competition for local search leads more local advertisers to Google. “As a result, Google can extract higher fees from advertisers with little consequence, according to studies,” Stoppelman wrote. “Notably, Google has increased its year-over-year search advertising revenue by 20% or more each year for the better part of the last decade, while still being able to increase its market share.”

Yelp has a long history of airing its antitrust grievances against Google. A top executive testified about their complaints in front of the Senate in 2020, it’s filed a complaint in the European Union about Google’s alleged self-preferencing, and it’s cheered government agencies along in pursuing charges against Google.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sonos has released an update to its app as it attempts to reverse the fallout from a disastrous redesign. But while the update adds enhanced accessibility settings and improved stability during the product setup process, the update addresses just a fraction of user complaints.
Sonos is reintroducing the ability to clear your music queue on the Android app — a feature that’s been sorely missed since the app’s relaunch. It also added a Night Mode toggle for sound bars, which enhances dialogue without you having to turn up the volume on your TV.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement, and Sonos has a long list of features to add in its queue. Since the app’s controversial redesign in May, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence apologized for disappointing customers and said fixing the app is the company’s “number one priority,” leading to the delay of two new products.
Earlier this month, Spence dashed hopes that the old app could be rereleased. Instead, the company plans to continue following its roadmap to add features to improve the app, with better volume responsiveness, enhanced queue editing, and better alarm reliability coming in future updates.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sonos has released an update to its app as it attempts to reverse the fallout from a disastrous redesign. But while the update adds enhanced accessibility settings and improved stability during the product setup process, the update addresses just a fraction of user complaints.

Sonos is reintroducing the ability to clear your music queue on the Android app — a feature that’s been sorely missed since the app’s relaunch. It also added a Night Mode toggle for sound bars, which enhances dialogue without you having to turn up the volume on your TV.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement, and Sonos has a long list of features to add in its queue. Since the app’s controversial redesign in May, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence apologized for disappointing customers and said fixing the app is the company’s “number one priority,” leading to the delay of two new products.

Earlier this month, Spence dashed hopes that the old app could be rereleased. Instead, the company plans to continue following its roadmap to add features to improve the app, with better volume responsiveness, enhanced queue editing, and better alarm reliability coming in future updates.

Read More