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Image: The Verge

Getting to Mars will be easy. It’s the whole ‘living there’ part that we haven’t figured out. Sending people to Mars won’t be easy. There are the obvious challenges like getting people and supplies into space and landing them safely on another planet. And once they arrive, they’ll need somewhere safe to live with air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat. But the biggest obstacle to crewed exploration of Mars might be something that’s totally invisible and often overlooked: the space radiation that can wreak havoc on the human body.
While Elon Musk is busy drawing up plans for a Martian city, experts working on human space exploration are more cautious. Getting to Mars might not even be the hardest part if we want people to explore safely.
We know from decades of research on the International Space Station that microgravity has a range of effects on the body, from vision problems to muscle loss. But leaving Earth means not only leaving its gravity but also leaving its protective bubble. And we’re only just beginning to learn about the many ways that exposure to space radiation can impact human health.
Leaving Earth means not only leaving its gravity but also leaving its protective bubble
Space radiation comes from two main sources: solar activity in the form of solar flares, and energetic particles called galactic cosmic rays. “Galactic cosmic rays come from stars that are dying, and that radiation is part of the void of space when you travel,” explained radiobiologist and radiation expert Eleanor Blakely.
The health risks from space radiation are many, but poorly understood. It is thought to raise cancer risk, affect the central nervous system, increase degenerative effects like heart disease and cataracts, and change the immune system. Finding a way to mitigate these effects will determine whether astronauts can ever visit Mars safely or whether the health detriments make it too dangerous for people to ever set foot there.
A different type of radiation
The particular challenge of space exploration is that it involves long-term exposure to low levels of radiation, which is quite different from what most radiation exposure looks like here on Earth.
Most of the data we have looks at the health effects of radiation like gamma rays and X-rays, which cause damage across the body in a “uniform, spray-bottle kind of pattern,” explained radiation biologist Greg Nelson, who advises NASA on radiation health research. But galactic cosmic rays move through the body in a straight line, like a track. “So you concentrate damage on a microscopic scale, and that damage, because it’s so concentrated, is much more difficult for the body to repair,” Nelson said.
This type of space radiation isn’t like the low-dose exposure of a chest X-ray. Instead, imagine a charged particle traveling at nearly the speed of light, firing straight through your brain, perturbing 10,000 cells all in a row, all within a microsecond. It’s not necessarily damaging those cells, but it is activating them in a highly unusual way. And we don’t yet know what that does.
“It’s that feature, that we would call track structure, that lends itself to the possibility of new and different effects occurring,” Nelson said.
“That damage, because it’s so concentrated, is much more difficult for the body to repair”
While most radiation on Earth can cause cancer by breaking apart DNA, the latest research suggests these charged particles could be damaging the brain in an entirely different way, such as by disrupting the connections between neurons or the mitochondria within neurons.
Compounding problems
Another concern is that astronauts aren’t only exposed to radiation. On a space journey, they are also dealing with microgravity, which is well known to cause health issues.
There are the more obvious effects, like loss of muscle tissue because muscles aren’t working against gravity. But there is also evidence of other effects such as brain remodeling. “That means the tissues are activated in a different way than they normally are,” Blakely explained, such as changes of the amount of gray matter versus white matter. But as for the effects of that: “What are the psychological or physiological consequences? We don’t know.”
Researchers are starting to look at how the effects of microgravity and radiation exposure can compound.
“There is some evidence that they interact,” Nelson said. “No one knows if it’s additive, or if it’s a synergistic effect at this point.” In other words, it’s not clear whether the effects stack on each other or if they produce an even worse outcome when combined. Nelson pointed to evidence of changes to bone health, to the blood-brain barrier of the central nervous system, and to particular features in the eye as areas of open research.
A combination of radiation exposure and sleep deprivation could also add up to more cognitive defects, according to recent research in rodents. This isn’t even considering further effects of the isolation of long-duration space missions and the psychological toll of confinement.
The health risks of traveling in space are many, and we don’t yet have enough information to know how they interact.

Photo by Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images
The SpaceX Starship launches on its fourth flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on June 6th, 2024.

Heading to Mars
NASA’s own calculations show that longer missions to Mars could take astronauts above 1 sievert of radiation exposure, which is above the agency’s acceptable limit for lifetime exposure. However, when sending people to Mars, the biggest risk from radiation is during the period they are traveling. On the Mars surface, there is some protection from being on the planet’s surface, so the real concern is time spent in space.
For periods of up to a month, the effects are unlikely to be severe. But when you start looking at periods of six months to a year in space, “Now you’re getting into the range where, at least in rodent studies, you can pick up some changes,” Nelson said. “And how that extrapolates to humans we still don’t know with great certainty.”
You can choose when to travel to mitigate the radiation risk. The sun goes through a roughly 11-year cycle of activity, and if you travel when the sun is most active at solar maximum, there is more material coming from the sun that pushes away cosmic rays. But that coincides with more solar particle events, so you have more radiation from the sun to worry about.
You could lessen the amount of time spent in space by using technology such as nuclear propulsion, which NASA is researching, but that carries its own risks — especially if something were to go wrong during a launch, as an explosion could scatter radioactive material into Earth’s atmosphere.
Mitigating the problem
There are ways to protect astronauts from radiation, such as shielding. But that’s not a simple proposition either.
“Intuitively, we’ve all come to think, that ‘Oh, just put enough lead around me, make sure my underwear is lead, and I’ll be fine.’ That’s probably true for things like X-rays and gamma rays,” Nelson said, particularly when radiation is coming from one direction. But with charged particles, which come from all directions, that isn’t the case.

“With regards to charged particles, one of the things that happens is they break up into pieces,” Nelson said. “And the smaller pieces have the ability to penetrate to larger depths than the big pieces did. So sometimes more shielding actually adds to the problem.”
There’s a “sweet spot” for radiation shielding that protects from some of the large pieces without creating too many secondary pieces. Some of the most effective shielding is actually material like polyethylene rather than metal as it has more hydrogen atoms and is less likely to create small pieces.
You can build up layers of material to act as protection in certain circumstances — such as having astronauts sleep in more heavily shielded areas — but sooner or later, astronauts are going to need to venture out and explore.
“Shielding is effective, but we simply have to live with the fact that there will be unshieldable quantities of radiation that we have to deal with,” Nelson said.
Weighing the risks
NASA has strict limits on how much radiation an astronaut may be exposed to over their career, equivalent to a 3–4 percent excess mortality risk from all causes. These limits were recently changed, somewhat controversially, because it’s hard to come up with an amount of radiation exposure that is safe. Different types of radiation affect people differently, based on factors like which parts of the body were exposed, plus the age, gender, and general health of the person.
“We have to provide an informed risk estimate to the crew members,” Nelson said. “Here’s the risk to you if you go to space — to the best of our knowledge, this is your excess risk in whichever category. And then the person has to decide. Are they willing to accept that against some benefit — to themselves, to NASA, to the public at large? Does your family agree with that? Does your lawyer agree with that?”
“Shielding is effective, but we simply have to live with the fact that there will be unshieldable quantities of radiation that we have to deal with”
When discussing health risks, astronauts are often quite willing to accept risks to their own safety. After all, space exploration is dangerous for a whole host of reasons, including the real danger of potential failure of a spacecraft or launch vehicle that can result in death. Next to that, the risk of developing cataracts or an increased risk of cancer can seem like a lesser concern.
But agencies like NASA also have to consider the views of family members and other people in astronauts’ lives. “There are family stakeholders here, who really do have a stake in what happens, and who want to weigh in on those decisions,” Blakely said. “And when that is folded in, it gives a new perspective to what you come up with as a limit [for radiation exposure].”
Considering the long-term health risks to astronauts, especially those who are younger, from the perspective of their families carries a different emotional weight than thinking purely about oneself. “I’m not sure if I was the mother of those people, that I’d want that,” Blakely said.
But the considerations of individual harm have to be balanced against the potential of discovery from exploration — including all the things that we could learn about the human body.
“Exploration is thought to be important to our country for many reasons, and we’ve learned so much about health from it. It’s amazing,” Blakely said.
Whether it’s the glittering Martian cities envisioned by Musk or, more realistically, a small group of explorers heading to Mars for periods of a few months to a few years before returning to Earth, the payoffs of sending people to another planet could be profound — we just need to be clear about the costs.

Image: The Verge

Getting to Mars will be easy. It’s the whole ‘living there’ part that we haven’t figured out.

Sending people to Mars won’t be easy. There are the obvious challenges like getting people and supplies into space and landing them safely on another planet. And once they arrive, they’ll need somewhere safe to live with air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat. But the biggest obstacle to crewed exploration of Mars might be something that’s totally invisible and often overlooked: the space radiation that can wreak havoc on the human body.

While Elon Musk is busy drawing up plans for a Martian city, experts working on human space exploration are more cautious. Getting to Mars might not even be the hardest part if we want people to explore safely.

We know from decades of research on the International Space Station that microgravity has a range of effects on the body, from vision problems to muscle loss. But leaving Earth means not only leaving its gravity but also leaving its protective bubble. And we’re only just beginning to learn about the many ways that exposure to space radiation can impact human health.

Space radiation comes from two main sources: solar activity in the form of solar flares, and energetic particles called galactic cosmic rays. “Galactic cosmic rays come from stars that are dying, and that radiation is part of the void of space when you travel,” explained radiobiologist and radiation expert Eleanor Blakely.

The health risks from space radiation are many, but poorly understood. It is thought to raise cancer risk, affect the central nervous system, increase degenerative effects like heart disease and cataracts, and change the immune system. Finding a way to mitigate these effects will determine whether astronauts can ever visit Mars safely or whether the health detriments make it too dangerous for people to ever set foot there.

A different type of radiation

The particular challenge of space exploration is that it involves long-term exposure to low levels of radiation, which is quite different from what most radiation exposure looks like here on Earth.

Most of the data we have looks at the health effects of radiation like gamma rays and X-rays, which cause damage across the body in a “uniform, spray-bottle kind of pattern,” explained radiation biologist Greg Nelson, who advises NASA on radiation health research. But galactic cosmic rays move through the body in a straight line, like a track. “So you concentrate damage on a microscopic scale, and that damage, because it’s so concentrated, is much more difficult for the body to repair,” Nelson said.

This type of space radiation isn’t like the low-dose exposure of a chest X-ray. Instead, imagine a charged particle traveling at nearly the speed of light, firing straight through your brain, perturbing 10,000 cells all in a row, all within a microsecond. It’s not necessarily damaging those cells, but it is activating them in a highly unusual way. And we don’t yet know what that does.

“It’s that feature, that we would call track structure, that lends itself to the possibility of new and different effects occurring,” Nelson said.

While most radiation on Earth can cause cancer by breaking apart DNA, the latest research suggests these charged particles could be damaging the brain in an entirely different way, such as by disrupting the connections between neurons or the mitochondria within neurons.

Compounding problems

Another concern is that astronauts aren’t only exposed to radiation. On a space journey, they are also dealing with microgravity, which is well known to cause health issues.

There are the more obvious effects, like loss of muscle tissue because muscles aren’t working against gravity. But there is also evidence of other effects such as brain remodeling. “That means the tissues are activated in a different way than they normally are,” Blakely explained, such as changes of the amount of gray matter versus white matter. But as for the effects of that: “What are the psychological or physiological consequences? We don’t know.”

Researchers are starting to look at how the effects of microgravity and radiation exposure can compound.

“There is some evidence that they interact,” Nelson said. “No one knows if it’s additive, or if it’s a synergistic effect at this point.” In other words, it’s not clear whether the effects stack on each other or if they produce an even worse outcome when combined. Nelson pointed to evidence of changes to bone health, to the blood-brain barrier of the central nervous system, and to particular features in the eye as areas of open research.

A combination of radiation exposure and sleep deprivation could also add up to more cognitive defects, according to recent research in rodents. This isn’t even considering further effects of the isolation of long-duration space missions and the psychological toll of confinement.

The health risks of traveling in space are many, and we don’t yet have enough information to know how they interact.

Photo by Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images
The SpaceX Starship launches on its fourth flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on June 6th, 2024.

Heading to Mars

NASA’s own calculations show that longer missions to Mars could take astronauts above 1 sievert of radiation exposure, which is above the agency’s acceptable limit for lifetime exposure. However, when sending people to Mars, the biggest risk from radiation is during the period they are traveling. On the Mars surface, there is some protection from being on the planet’s surface, so the real concern is time spent in space.

For periods of up to a month, the effects are unlikely to be severe. But when you start looking at periods of six months to a year in space, “Now you’re getting into the range where, at least in rodent studies, you can pick up some changes,” Nelson said. “And how that extrapolates to humans we still don’t know with great certainty.”

You can choose when to travel to mitigate the radiation risk. The sun goes through a roughly 11-year cycle of activity, and if you travel when the sun is most active at solar maximum, there is more material coming from the sun that pushes away cosmic rays. But that coincides with more solar particle events, so you have more radiation from the sun to worry about.

You could lessen the amount of time spent in space by using technology such as nuclear propulsion, which NASA is researching, but that carries its own risks — especially if something were to go wrong during a launch, as an explosion could scatter radioactive material into Earth’s atmosphere.

Mitigating the problem

There are ways to protect astronauts from radiation, such as shielding. But that’s not a simple proposition either.

“Intuitively, we’ve all come to think, that ‘Oh, just put enough lead around me, make sure my underwear is lead, and I’ll be fine.’ That’s probably true for things like X-rays and gamma rays,” Nelson said, particularly when radiation is coming from one direction. But with charged particles, which come from all directions, that isn’t the case.

“With regards to charged particles, one of the things that happens is they break up into pieces,” Nelson said. “And the smaller pieces have the ability to penetrate to larger depths than the big pieces did. So sometimes more shielding actually adds to the problem.”

There’s a “sweet spot” for radiation shielding that protects from some of the large pieces without creating too many secondary pieces. Some of the most effective shielding is actually material like polyethylene rather than metal as it has more hydrogen atoms and is less likely to create small pieces.

You can build up layers of material to act as protection in certain circumstances — such as having astronauts sleep in more heavily shielded areas — but sooner or later, astronauts are going to need to venture out and explore.

“Shielding is effective, but we simply have to live with the fact that there will be unshieldable quantities of radiation that we have to deal with,” Nelson said.

Weighing the risks

NASA has strict limits on how much radiation an astronaut may be exposed to over their career, equivalent to a 3–4 percent excess mortality risk from all causes. These limits were recently changed, somewhat controversially, because it’s hard to come up with an amount of radiation exposure that is safe. Different types of radiation affect people differently, based on factors like which parts of the body were exposed, plus the age, gender, and general health of the person.

“We have to provide an informed risk estimate to the crew members,” Nelson said. “Here’s the risk to you if you go to space — to the best of our knowledge, this is your excess risk in whichever category. And then the person has to decide. Are they willing to accept that against some benefit — to themselves, to NASA, to the public at large? Does your family agree with that? Does your lawyer agree with that?”

When discussing health risks, astronauts are often quite willing to accept risks to their own safety. After all, space exploration is dangerous for a whole host of reasons, including the real danger of potential failure of a spacecraft or launch vehicle that can result in death. Next to that, the risk of developing cataracts or an increased risk of cancer can seem like a lesser concern.

But agencies like NASA also have to consider the views of family members and other people in astronauts’ lives. “There are family stakeholders here, who really do have a stake in what happens, and who want to weigh in on those decisions,” Blakely said. “And when that is folded in, it gives a new perspective to what you come up with as a limit [for radiation exposure].”

Considering the long-term health risks to astronauts, especially those who are younger, from the perspective of their families carries a different emotional weight than thinking purely about oneself. “I’m not sure if I was the mother of those people, that I’d want that,” Blakely said.

But the considerations of individual harm have to be balanced against the potential of discovery from exploration — including all the things that we could learn about the human body.

“Exploration is thought to be important to our country for many reasons, and we’ve learned so much about health from it. It’s amazing,” Blakely said.

Whether it’s the glittering Martian cities envisioned by Musk or, more realistically, a small group of explorers heading to Mars for periods of a few months to a few years before returning to Earth, the payoffs of sending people to another planet could be profound — we just need to be clear about the costs.

Read More 

Promotional art for Fortnite’s “Absolute Doom” season. | Image: Epic Games

Fortnite is finally back on iOS, just over four years after Apple booted it from the iOS App Store — but it’s only available in the EU. The game is launching today on both a new iPhone version of the Epic Games Store and through AltStore PAL, another third-party app store. The Epic Games Store is also launching today for Android users worldwide.
The launch follows years of litigation between Epic and Apple, as well as regulatory changes ushered in by the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which forced Apple to allow alternate app stores. Epic plans to eventually bring its games to Aptoide’s iOS store in the EU and the ONE Store on Android and says in a blog post that “we look forward to bringing our games to other stores around the world.”
“We’re really excited and grateful for the European DMA law,” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said in a briefing with reporters. “Fortnite is finally returning to iOS in Europe.”
There is a catch: after scanning the QR code from Epic’s website, a popup appears saying “to install the Epic Games Store on your iPhone, update to iOS 17.6 or later.” This conflicts with Epic’s own FAQ that says the Games Store can be installed on “iPhones running iOS 17.4 or later.”
Nevertheless, the revived iOS version of Fortnite is launching just in time for the new Marvel-themed season, giving EU players a potentially major reason to come back to the game on Apple’s mobile platform. Sweeney said that Epic foresees “absolutely no trouble of being able to update Fortnite simultaneously, worldwide.” In addition to Fortnite, European iPhone owners and global Android users will be able to download Epic’s Rocket League Sideswipe and a new title, a mobile version of Fall Guys, from the Epic Games Store.

Image: Epic Games
Fall Guys is now available on mobile for the first time.

Since Epic announced its plans for an iOS store, Apple has repeatedly slowed the process down. In March, Apple shut down an Epic developer account and called the company “verifiably untrustworthy,” perhaps alluding to Epic knowingly breaking Apple’s rules with a Fortnite in-app payment system that got it kicked off iOS. Apple reinstated Epic’s account after an inquiry from the European Commission, but it later took issue with the Epic Games Store’s buttons.
While the mobile Epic Games Store currently has just three first-party games, the company is already in discussions with third-party mobile developers. Epic aims to have a “curated” selection of third-party games on the mobile store in December, VP and Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison said, with self-publishing (which is already possible on PC) set to arrive in early 2025. Epic also plans to bring over “everything” it offers on PC, like its 88 percent revenue share for developers, free games for players, and the option for developers to use their own payment platforms. It’s aiming for 100 million net new Epic Games Store mobile installations by the end of the year, Allison said, though that could be hampered by hurdles in Apple’s third-party installation process.
To succeed, Epic will need developers to brave Apple’s fees for venturing outside the App Store. If a developer wants to list their app on a third-party store, they must pay Apple a “Core Technology Fee” of €0.50 per year for each install after the first million. This fee applies to app installs on both third-party app stores and the App Store, which could add up quickly if you have a successful app on the App Store and want to offer your app through an outside marketplace. “The effect of that is to dissuade any developer of a current, successful game from putting their game on any store that competes with the iOS App Store,” Sweeney said.
Apple also announced additional new fees last week. “We’d like to use the walled garden terminology, but these core tech fees and the new things introduced last week made the wall a little bit higher, and maybe [Apple] put some barbed wire on top,” Allison said.

For Epic, it’s worth scaling that wall. According to court documents, Fortnite on iOS made more than $700 million over the two years before Apple yanked it from the store. While Fortnite will certainly have a much smaller audience on an EU-only third-party store, Epic will get 100 percent of the revenues from in-app purchases instead of paying Apple’s usual 30 percent App Store cut. Some of that revenue will go toward Apple’s fees, but Epic is big enough to weather them. And if regulation, competitive pressures, or public sentiment force Apple to soften its byzantine rules for third-party app stores, Epic will be one of the biggest, earliest players in the field.
But so far, many third-party developers seem leery. Allison said that Epic is in active discussions with “just about every single one” of the top 250 mobile developers. And while the developers are “very enthusiastic” about the Epic Games Store on Android, “almost all of them” said they can’t make it work on iOS.
Epic knows it’s got a long way to go. The company has already spent hundreds of millions in its fight with Apple, according to Sweeney. And Allison acknowledged there’s still a huge amount of friction for players and developers. “But our vision for the future is we’re going to keep fighting,” Allison said. “We’re going to make progress. We are confident that over time, we will get these things eradicated. But we don’t know if it’s going to be two months or two years or longer, but we certainly hope it’s one of the shorter ones.”

Promotional art for Fortnite’s “Absolute Doom” season. | Image: Epic Games

Fortnite is finally back on iOS, just over four years after Apple booted it from the iOS App Store — but it’s only available in the EU. The game is launching today on both a new iPhone version of the Epic Games Store and through AltStore PAL, another third-party app store. The Epic Games Store is also launching today for Android users worldwide.

The launch follows years of litigation between Epic and Apple, as well as regulatory changes ushered in by the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which forced Apple to allow alternate app stores. Epic plans to eventually bring its games to Aptoide’s iOS store in the EU and the ONE Store on Android and says in a blog post that “we look forward to bringing our games to other stores around the world.”

“We’re really excited and grateful for the European DMA law,” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said in a briefing with reporters. “Fortnite is finally returning to iOS in Europe.”

There is a catch: after scanning the QR code from Epic’s website, a popup appears saying “to install the Epic Games Store on your iPhone, update to iOS 17.6 or later.” This conflicts with Epic’s own FAQ that says the Games Store can be installed on “iPhones running iOS 17.4 or later.”

Nevertheless, the revived iOS version of Fortnite is launching just in time for the new Marvel-themed season, giving EU players a potentially major reason to come back to the game on Apple’s mobile platform. Sweeney said that Epic foresees “absolutely no trouble of being able to update Fortnite simultaneously, worldwide.” In addition to Fortnite, European iPhone owners and global Android users will be able to download Epic’s Rocket League Sideswipe and a new title, a mobile version of Fall Guys, from the Epic Games Store.

Image: Epic Games
Fall Guys is now available on mobile for the first time.

Since Epic announced its plans for an iOS store, Apple has repeatedly slowed the process down. In March, Apple shut down an Epic developer account and called the company “verifiably untrustworthy,” perhaps alluding to Epic knowingly breaking Apple’s rules with a Fortnite in-app payment system that got it kicked off iOS. Apple reinstated Epic’s account after an inquiry from the European Commission, but it later took issue with the Epic Games Store’s buttons.

While the mobile Epic Games Store currently has just three first-party games, the company is already in discussions with third-party mobile developers. Epic aims to have a “curated” selection of third-party games on the mobile store in December, VP and Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison said, with self-publishing (which is already possible on PC) set to arrive in early 2025. Epic also plans to bring over “everything” it offers on PC, like its 88 percent revenue share for developers, free games for players, and the option for developers to use their own payment platforms. It’s aiming for 100 million net new Epic Games Store mobile installations by the end of the year, Allison said, though that could be hampered by hurdles in Apple’s third-party installation process.

To succeed, Epic will need developers to brave Apple’s fees for venturing outside the App Store. If a developer wants to list their app on a third-party store, they must pay Apple a “Core Technology Fee” of €0.50 per year for each install after the first million. This fee applies to app installs on both third-party app stores and the App Store, which could add up quickly if you have a successful app on the App Store and want to offer your app through an outside marketplace. “The effect of that is to dissuade any developer of a current, successful game from putting their game on any store that competes with the iOS App Store,” Sweeney said.

Apple also announced additional new fees last week. “We’d like to use the walled garden terminology, but these core tech fees and the new things introduced last week made the wall a little bit higher, and maybe [Apple] put some barbed wire on top,” Allison said.

For Epic, it’s worth scaling that wall. According to court documents, Fortnite on iOS made more than $700 million over the two years before Apple yanked it from the store. While Fortnite will certainly have a much smaller audience on an EU-only third-party store, Epic will get 100 percent of the revenues from in-app purchases instead of paying Apple’s usual 30 percent App Store cut. Some of that revenue will go toward Apple’s fees, but Epic is big enough to weather them. And if regulation, competitive pressures, or public sentiment force Apple to soften its byzantine rules for third-party app stores, Epic will be one of the biggest, earliest players in the field.

But so far, many third-party developers seem leery. Allison said that Epic is in active discussions with “just about every single one” of the top 250 mobile developers. And while the developers are “very enthusiastic” about the Epic Games Store on Android, “almost all of them” said they can’t make it work on iOS.

Epic knows it’s got a long way to go. The company has already spent hundreds of millions in its fight with Apple, according to Sweeney. And Allison acknowledged there’s still a huge amount of friction for players and developers. “But our vision for the future is we’re going to keep fighting,” Allison said. “We’re going to make progress. We are confident that over time, we will get these things eradicated. But we don’t know if it’s going to be two months or two years or longer, but we certainly hope it’s one of the shorter ones.”

Read More 

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

The San Francisco City Attorney’s office is suing 16 of the most frequently visited AI-powered “undressing” websites, often used to create nude deepfakes of women and girls without their consent. The landmark lawsuit, announced at a press conference by City Attorney David Chiu, says that the targeted websites were collectively visited over 200 million times in the first six months of 2024 alone.
The offending websites allow users to upload images of real, fully clothed people, which are then digitally “undressed” with AI tools that simulate nudity. One of these websites, which wasn’t identified within the complaint, reportedly advertises: “Imagine wasting time taking her out on dates, when you can just use [the redacted website] to get her nudes.”

The website operators are accused of violating state and federal laws banning revenge pornography, deepfake pornography, and child pornography, alongside California’s unfair competition law because “the harm they cause to consumers greatly outweighs any benefits associated with those practices,” according to the complaint filing. The lawsuit is seeking civil penalties, in addition to taking the websites offline and permanently preventing their purveyors from creating future deepfake pornography.
The complaint comes amid heightened attention on the creation and spread of non-consensual nudes, largely driven by advancements in generative AI — leading to increasing reports of “sextortion.” Notable celebrities like Taylor Swift have been victimized by sexually explicit deepfakes, and schoolchildren across the country have been expelled or arrested for circulating AI-generated nude photos of their classmates.
“This investigation has taken us to the darkest corners of the internet, and I am absolutely horrified for the women and girls who have had to endure this exploitation,” Chiu said on X. “This is a big, multi-faceted problem that we, as a society, need to solve as soon as possible.”

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images

The San Francisco City Attorney’s office is suing 16 of the most frequently visited AI-powered “undressing” websites, often used to create nude deepfakes of women and girls without their consent. The landmark lawsuit, announced at a press conference by City Attorney David Chiu, says that the targeted websites were collectively visited over 200 million times in the first six months of 2024 alone.

The offending websites allow users to upload images of real, fully clothed people, which are then digitally “undressed” with AI tools that simulate nudity. One of these websites, which wasn’t identified within the complaint, reportedly advertises: “Imagine wasting time taking her out on dates, when you can just use [the redacted website] to get her nudes.”

The website operators are accused of violating state and federal laws banning revenge pornography, deepfake pornography, and child pornography, alongside California’s unfair competition law because “the harm they cause to consumers greatly outweighs any benefits associated with those practices,” according to the complaint filing. The lawsuit is seeking civil penalties, in addition to taking the websites offline and permanently preventing their purveyors from creating future deepfake pornography.

The complaint comes amid heightened attention on the creation and spread of non-consensual nudes, largely driven by advancements in generative AI — leading to increasing reports of “sextortion.” Notable celebrities like Taylor Swift have been victimized by sexually explicit deepfakes, and schoolchildren across the country have been expelled or arrested for circulating AI-generated nude photos of their classmates.

“This investigation has taken us to the darkest corners of the internet, and I am absolutely horrified for the women and girls who have had to endure this exploitation,” Chiu said on X. “This is a big, multi-faceted problem that we, as a society, need to solve as soon as possible.”

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is working on a new Workspaces features for its PowerToys suite of Windows add-ons that will launch a collection of apps and automatically arrange and snap them into a custom layout on your monitor.
PowerToys Workspaces will let you create app layouts that can be saved to a shortcut that you use to automatically launch all your apps and place them on your screens. It supports multiple monitors, and you can create multiple app layouts for different tasks.

Image: Microsoft
The new PowerToys Workspaces feature in action.

“The goal of app layouts is really to allow you as a developer to get into your workspaces and your workflows easier with just one click, and get your desktop all set up with just one click,” explains Microsoft product manager Connor Plante in a YouTube demo that was spotted by Neowin.
The new feature is coming with the PowerToys 0.84 update soon, and looks like it will be particularly useful for power users of Windows that manage a variety of apps across multiple monitors. Microsoft has been steadily adding a variety of tools to its PowerToys in recent years, including a new AI-powered copy and paste feature that can paste as plain text, markdown, or even summarized or translated text thanks to OpenAI API integration.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft is working on a new Workspaces features for its PowerToys suite of Windows add-ons that will launch a collection of apps and automatically arrange and snap them into a custom layout on your monitor.

PowerToys Workspaces will let you create app layouts that can be saved to a shortcut that you use to automatically launch all your apps and place them on your screens. It supports multiple monitors, and you can create multiple app layouts for different tasks.

Image: Microsoft
The new PowerToys Workspaces feature in action.

“The goal of app layouts is really to allow you as a developer to get into your workspaces and your workflows easier with just one click, and get your desktop all set up with just one click,” explains Microsoft product manager Connor Plante in a YouTube demo that was spotted by Neowin.

The new feature is coming with the PowerToys 0.84 update soon, and looks like it will be particularly useful for power users of Windows that manage a variety of apps across multiple monitors. Microsoft has been steadily adding a variety of tools to its PowerToys in recent years, including a new AI-powered copy and paste feature that can paste as plain text, markdown, or even summarized or translated text thanks to OpenAI API integration.

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After revealing Fortnite’s Marvel-themed “Absolute Doom” season last weekend, Epic Games is officially kicking off Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 4 by sharing a bunch of details about what you can expect when you drop onto the island in battle royale. Spoiler: there’s a lot of Doctor Doom.
As already shown, the Absolute Doom battle pass will feature various heroes and villains you can obtain like War Machine, Gwenpool, and, of course, Doctor Doom himself. (Timely!) But the battle royale island will also have Doom-themed locations you can visit like the town of Doomstadt and Castle Doom, where you can find Doom’s Arcane Gauntlets to use as weapons. Doom’s gauntlets aren’t the only Marvel-themed weapons available, though; you’ll also be able to find Captain America’s shield, which is making a return from an Endgame-themed mode from 2019.

This is actually Fortnite’s second Marvel-themed season; the previous, which launched in August 2020, featured characters like Iron Man, Storm, and another version of Doctor Doom in its battle pass. If you didn’t get the outfits in that battle pass, Epic won’t offer them again, but thankfully, Epic is changing that policy starting with the pass for Absolute Doom.
There are also more Disney crossovers coming to Fortnite, including three Disney villains and characters from The Incredibles. Given that Disney recently invested $1.5 billion into Epic Games, I suspect we’ll see a bunch more Disney cameos on the battle royale island at some point — and there’s a whole Disney-themed universe inside Fortnite on the way as well.

After revealing Fortnite’s Marvel-themed “Absolute Doom” season last weekend, Epic Games is officially kicking off Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 4 by sharing a bunch of details about what you can expect when you drop onto the island in battle royale. Spoiler: there’s a lot of Doctor Doom.

As already shown, the Absolute Doom battle pass will feature various heroes and villains you can obtain like War Machine, Gwenpool, and, of course, Doctor Doom himself. (Timely!) But the battle royale island will also have Doom-themed locations you can visit like the town of Doomstadt and Castle Doom, where you can find Doom’s Arcane Gauntlets to use as weapons. Doom’s gauntlets aren’t the only Marvel-themed weapons available, though; you’ll also be able to find Captain America’s shield, which is making a return from an Endgame-themed mode from 2019.

This is actually Fortnite’s second Marvel-themed season; the previous, which launched in August 2020, featured characters like Iron Man, Storm, and another version of Doctor Doom in its battle pass. If you didn’t get the outfits in that battle pass, Epic won’t offer them again, but thankfully, Epic is changing that policy starting with the pass for Absolute Doom.

There are also more Disney crossovers coming to Fortnite, including three Disney villains and characters from The Incredibles. Given that Disney recently invested $1.5 billion into Epic Games, I suspect we’ll see a bunch more Disney cameos on the battle royale island at some point — and there’s a whole Disney-themed universe inside Fortnite on the way as well.

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The 2025 Lincoln Navigator Black Label in crystal white. | Image: Lincoln

Lincoln is making a big change to the largest vehicle in its lineup by adding a panoramic display across the dashboard. The 2025 Navigator SUV is the automaker’s second vehicle to get the Android-based digital dashboard developed by Ford, with its first implementation introduced in the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus.
The new Navigator, which is making its debut during Monterey Car Week, takes the Nautilus’ Panoramic Display (technically, it’s two screens) with the Lincoln Digital Experience and drops it in with a more stylish and open flair and adds contrasting speakers to the sides. Meanwhile, the same continuous curved displays in the Nautilus go pillar to pillar, look more integrated, and its trim lines up with the doors.

The Navigator and Nautilus have functionally the same setup, Lincoln communications manager Anika Salceda-Wycoco says. However, the Navigator has a new entertainment feature called Pano mode, which Salceda-Wycoco says “brings in the capability for video streaming and gaming on either side of the 48” Panoramic Display.”
Pano mode surprisingly isn’t in the Nautilus, which can only play games and movies on the smaller central touchscreen — but that might change. “We’re talking about it first on Navigator and will have more to share in the future,” Salceda-Wycoco says. The Navigator is also the first to get Lincoln’s “Rejuvenate mode” spa experience, which was announced for the 2024 Nautilus but didn’t make it by launch.

Rejuvenate mode adds sounds and scenery like the Aurora Borealis to the screens, sets your seat back, turns on massagers and heating, and pumps out air freshener scents for a 5 or 10-minute break. Salceda-Wycoco says the 2025 Nautilus will also get the feature at launch, while Lincoln has “more to share on timing soon” for the current 2024. The Navigator will include a waterfall meditation experience in partnership with the Calm app, which will also slip owners a complimentary one-year subscription.
Jump into the center row of the Navigator, and you’ll find an option for adjustable captain chairs with many of the features of the front row (including massagers), two touchscreens for entertainment, and a 5.8-inch center control screen for climate and more. Past the folding third-row seats, there’s a split tailgate that can open for you on approach.

The Navigator has some all-new looks on the outside, too, with an updated facia that looks more in line with the new Nautilus, including a lightbar cutting across the middle. Unfortunately, the Navigator isn’t evolving under the hood this year; it’s still a massive gas truck running on a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 engine with no hybrid option like the Nautilus.
Lincoln has said it plans on releasing three new fully electric vehicles by 2025 and a fourth by 2026. But earlier this year, the brand’s CEO was sounding pretty pessimistic about those deadlines.

The 2025 Lincoln Navigator Black Label in crystal white. | Image: Lincoln

Lincoln is making a big change to the largest vehicle in its lineup by adding a panoramic display across the dashboard. The 2025 Navigator SUV is the automaker’s second vehicle to get the Android-based digital dashboard developed by Ford, with its first implementation introduced in the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus.

The new Navigator, which is making its debut during Monterey Car Week, takes the Nautilus’ Panoramic Display (technically, it’s two screens) with the Lincoln Digital Experience and drops it in with a more stylish and open flair and adds contrasting speakers to the sides. Meanwhile, the same continuous curved displays in the Nautilus go pillar to pillar, look more integrated, and its trim lines up with the doors.

The Navigator and Nautilus have functionally the same setup, Lincoln communications manager Anika Salceda-Wycoco says. However, the Navigator has a new entertainment feature called Pano mode, which Salceda-Wycoco says “brings in the capability for video streaming and gaming on either side of the 48” Panoramic Display.”

Pano mode surprisingly isn’t in the Nautilus, which can only play games and movies on the smaller central touchscreen — but that might change. “We’re talking about it first on Navigator and will have more to share in the future,” Salceda-Wycoco says. The Navigator is also the first to get Lincoln’s “Rejuvenate mode” spa experience, which was announced for the 2024 Nautilus but didn’t make it by launch.

Rejuvenate mode adds sounds and scenery like the Aurora Borealis to the screens, sets your seat back, turns on massagers and heating, and pumps out air freshener scents for a 5 or 10-minute break. Salceda-Wycoco says the 2025 Nautilus will also get the feature at launch, while Lincoln has “more to share on timing soon” for the current 2024. The Navigator will include a waterfall meditation experience in partnership with the Calm app, which will also slip owners a complimentary one-year subscription.

Jump into the center row of the Navigator, and you’ll find an option for adjustable captain chairs with many of the features of the front row (including massagers), two touchscreens for entertainment, and a 5.8-inch center control screen for climate and more. Past the folding third-row seats, there’s a split tailgate that can open for you on approach.

The Navigator has some all-new looks on the outside, too, with an updated facia that looks more in line with the new Nautilus, including a lightbar cutting across the middle. Unfortunately, the Navigator isn’t evolving under the hood this year; it’s still a massive gas truck running on a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 engine with no hybrid option like the Nautilus.

Lincoln has said it plans on releasing three new fully electric vehicles by 2025 and a fourth by 2026. But earlier this year, the brand’s CEO was sounding pretty pessimistic about those deadlines.

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Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

The popular benchmarking utility Geekbench has launched a new cross-platform tool to evaluate the performance of devices under AI-heavy workloads. Geekbench AI measures a device’s CPU, GPU, and NPU (neural processing unit) to determine how well it can handle machine learning applications.
Geekbench developer Primate Labs has been working on the software using the name Geekbench ML, which launched in preview in 2021 but shifted the name to AI for reasons that seem obvious. To explore how different hardware responds to different AI-related tasks, it evaluates performance based on both accuracy and speed, with support for different frameworks, including ONNX, CoreML, TensorFlow Lite, and OpenVINO.

It delivers three scores, full precision, half precision, and quantized. Primate Labs says the scores also have an accuracy measurement to evaluate how close a workload’s outputs are to the truth, “or how accurately that model can do what it’s supposed to do.”
We’ll need more time with devices running on-device AI such as Copilot Plus PCs and all of the new phones to see how performance in real-world tasks correlates with Geekbench AI’s numbers. Checking framerates or loading times is one thing — now we might be checking the accuracy of predictive text, or what generative AI-enabled image editor comes up with.
You can download the tool now to try it yourself on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

The popular benchmarking utility Geekbench has launched a new cross-platform tool to evaluate the performance of devices under AI-heavy workloads. Geekbench AI measures a device’s CPU, GPU, and NPU (neural processing unit) to determine how well it can handle machine learning applications.

Geekbench developer Primate Labs has been working on the software using the name Geekbench ML, which launched in preview in 2021 but shifted the name to AI for reasons that seem obvious. To explore how different hardware responds to different AI-related tasks, it evaluates performance based on both accuracy and speed, with support for different frameworks, including ONNX, CoreML, TensorFlow Lite, and OpenVINO.

It delivers three scores, full precision, half precision, and quantized. Primate Labs says the scores also have an accuracy measurement to evaluate how close a workload’s outputs are to the truth, “or how accurately that model can do what it’s supposed to do.”

We’ll need more time with devices running on-device AI such as Copilot Plus PCs and all of the new phones to see how performance in real-world tasks correlates with Geekbench AI’s numbers. Checking framerates or loading times is one thing — now we might be checking the accuracy of predictive text, or what generative AI-enabled image editor comes up with.

You can download the tool now to try it yourself on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

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Imagen 3 created this image of Google’s logo. | Image: Emma Roth / Imagen 3

Google has released the latest version of Imagen 3, its AI text-to-image generator, to users in the US, as spotted by VentureBeat. The tool, which you can access on Google’s AI Test Kitchen, is supposed to generate images with “better detail, richer lighting, and fewer distracting artifacts” compared to Google’s previous models.
Google first announced its updated Imagen 3 tool during I/O in May, but it only appears to have made the tool generally available through its Vertex AI platform within the past several days. Some Reddit users started experimenting with Imagen 3 last week, and Google published a research paper on the tool on Tuesday.
Like other AI image generators, Imagen 3 can create detailed images based on your prompt. You can also edit the image by highlighting a certain part and describing what you want to change.

Image: Emma Roth / Imagen 3

It was relatively easy to get Imagen to generate images resembling Sonic.

There seem to be some guardrails in place, as the tool will decline to generate images of public figures, like Taylor Swift, and also won’t produce images of weapons. And while it will stop short of generating named copyrighted characters, you can get around this pretty easily by describing the character you want to create.
I got the tool to generate images that look very much like Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario, while my colleague was able to create characters resembling Mickey Mouse. I also found that it will generate logos belonging to companies like Apple, Macy’s, Hershey’s, and even Google, which you can see in the image at the top of this article.
Despite these somewhat flexible guardrails, Imagen 3 still stands in stark contrast to Grok, the AI image generator that lives on Elon Musk’s X platform. Grok has been used to generate all sorts of wild content, including images with drugs, violence, and public figures doing questionable things.
But Google’s AI tools have run into some issues as well. Earlier this year, Google stopped letting people generate images with its Gemini AI chatbot after users found that it created historically inaccurate images.

Imagen 3 created this image of Google’s logo. | Image: Emma Roth / Imagen 3

Google has released the latest version of Imagen 3, its AI text-to-image generator, to users in the US, as spotted by VentureBeat. The tool, which you can access on Google’s AI Test Kitchen, is supposed to generate images with “better detail, richer lighting, and fewer distracting artifacts” compared to Google’s previous models.

Google first announced its updated Imagen 3 tool during I/O in May, but it only appears to have made the tool generally available through its Vertex AI platform within the past several days. Some Reddit users started experimenting with Imagen 3 last week, and Google published a research paper on the tool on Tuesday.

Like other AI image generators, Imagen 3 can create detailed images based on your prompt. You can also edit the image by highlighting a certain part and describing what you want to change.

Image: Emma Roth / Imagen 3

It was relatively easy to get Imagen to generate images resembling Sonic.

There seem to be some guardrails in place, as the tool will decline to generate images of public figures, like Taylor Swift, and also won’t produce images of weapons. And while it will stop short of generating named copyrighted characters, you can get around this pretty easily by describing the character you want to create.

I got the tool to generate images that look very much like Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario, while my colleague was able to create characters resembling Mickey Mouse. I also found that it will generate logos belonging to companies like Apple, Macy’s, Hershey’s, and even Google, which you can see in the image at the top of this article.

Despite these somewhat flexible guardrails, Imagen 3 still stands in stark contrast to Grok, the AI image generator that lives on Elon Musk’s X platform. Grok has been used to generate all sorts of wild content, including images with drugs, violence, and public figures doing questionable things.

But Google’s AI tools have run into some issues as well. Earlier this year, Google stopped letting people generate images with its Gemini AI chatbot after users found that it created historically inaccurate images.

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This is a screenshot from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition. We never saw footage of the VR port. | Image: Rockstar Games

The Quest version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was first announced nearly three years ago, is “on hold indefinitely,” Meta confirmed to IGN and in a comment on a YouTube video. “GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects,” the Meta Quest VR account said in response to a comment on a video for Skydance’s Behemoth. “We look forward to working with our friends at Rockstar in the future.”
Meta announced the game in October 2021 as part of its Connect conference, saying that it was in development for the Meta Quest 2. “Get a new perspective on Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas as you experience (again or for the first time) one of gaming’s most iconic open worlds,” Meta wrote in a blog post. “This is a project many years in the making, and we can’t wait to show you more of it.”
At the time, Meta and Rockstar Games didn’t share any footage or screenshots of this VR version of San Andreas. Now, it seems like we may never see it at all. Meta and Rockstar didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

This is a screenshot from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition. We never saw footage of the VR port. | Image: Rockstar Games

The Quest version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was first announced nearly three years ago, is “on hold indefinitely,” Meta confirmed to IGN and in a comment on a YouTube video. “GTA: San Andreas is on hold indefinitely while we both focus on other projects,” the Meta Quest VR account said in response to a comment on a video for Skydance’s Behemoth. “We look forward to working with our friends at Rockstar in the future.”

Meta announced the game in October 2021 as part of its Connect conference, saying that it was in development for the Meta Quest 2. “Get a new perspective on Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas as you experience (again or for the first time) one of gaming’s most iconic open worlds,” Meta wrote in a blog post. “This is a project many years in the making, and we can’t wait to show you more of it.”

At the time, Meta and Rockstar Games didn’t share any footage or screenshots of this VR version of San Andreas. Now, it seems like we may never see it at all. Meta and Rockstar didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

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With the right hardware, you can now connect the Meta Quest to devices with HDMI or DisplayPort output. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Meta has released a new app for the Quest 3, 2, and Pro, letting you use the headsets as a screen for consoles, laptops, or any device with video out capabilities. Using the free Meta Quest HDMI Link app does require additional hardware, but it’s still a relatively cheap way to repurpose the headset, instead of buying single-purpose video glasses that can cost just as much.
In a post shared to the Meta Quest Blog today, the company warns that getting this to work isn’t quite as straightforward as using Air Link, which allows the Quest headsets to stream video from a PC over Wi-Fi. Instead of plugging a PS5, Pixel 9, or even a laptop directly into the Quest’s USB-C port with a cable, you’ll need to add a UVC (USB Video Class) and UAC (USB Audio Class) compatible 1080p capture card to the mix.

Image: Meta
You can find capture cards for less than $20, but you might want to splurge on one with an extra port for power that will keep the Quest headset charged while connected.

These capture cards are now as small as USB flash drives, can cost less than $20 (Note: The Verge hasn’t tested this or any of the offerings currently on Amazon), and typically feature an HDMI port on one end with a USB-A or USB-C connection on the other. Some capture cards even include an extra port for a power adapter, which will allow the Quest to stay charged while it’s connected.
Once the Meta Quest HDMI Link app is installed on a supported Quest headset, you connect a video source device to the capture card’s input using whatever cable is necessary (USB-C to HDMI, Lightning to HDMI, etc.) and then connect that dongle directly to the headset. You’ll also need to “grant the necessary permissions” once the Quest boots up, but after that, the video from the connected device can be viewed with “near-zero latency” on a floating resizable screen.
Resolution will be limited to 1080p at 60fps, but the app allows the Quest to provide a big screen experience without a projector or to have the video feed positioned in a smaller window alongside other apps. Future versions of the Quest headset could offer similar built-in functionality by natively supporting standards like DisplayPort over USB-C, but the dongle approach is an easy way to bring this functionality to existing hardware.

With the right hardware, you can now connect the Meta Quest to devices with HDMI or DisplayPort output. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Meta has released a new app for the Quest 3, 2, and Pro, letting you use the headsets as a screen for consoles, laptops, or any device with video out capabilities. Using the free Meta Quest HDMI Link app does require additional hardware, but it’s still a relatively cheap way to repurpose the headset, instead of buying single-purpose video glasses that can cost just as much.

In a post shared to the Meta Quest Blog today, the company warns that getting this to work isn’t quite as straightforward as using Air Link, which allows the Quest headsets to stream video from a PC over Wi-Fi. Instead of plugging a PS5, Pixel 9, or even a laptop directly into the Quest’s USB-C port with a cable, you’ll need to add a UVC (USB Video Class) and UAC (USB Audio Class) compatible 1080p capture card to the mix.

Image: Meta
You can find capture cards for less than $20, but you might want to splurge on one with an extra port for power that will keep the Quest headset charged while connected.

These capture cards are now as small as USB flash drives, can cost less than $20 (Note: The Verge hasn’t tested this or any of the offerings currently on Amazon), and typically feature an HDMI port on one end with a USB-A or USB-C connection on the other. Some capture cards even include an extra port for a power adapter, which will allow the Quest to stay charged while it’s connected.

Once the Meta Quest HDMI Link app is installed on a supported Quest headset, you connect a video source device to the capture card’s input using whatever cable is necessary (USB-C to HDMI, Lightning to HDMI, etc.) and then connect that dongle directly to the headset. You’ll also need to “grant the necessary permissions” once the Quest boots up, but after that, the video from the connected device can be viewed with “near-zero latency” on a floating resizable screen.

Resolution will be limited to 1080p at 60fps, but the app allows the Quest to provide a big screen experience without a projector or to have the video feed positioned in a smaller window alongside other apps. Future versions of the Quest headset could offer similar built-in functionality by natively supporting standards like DisplayPort over USB-C, but the dongle approach is an easy way to bring this functionality to existing hardware.

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