A screen grab of the video titled “How My Video Gear is Changing!” | Image: MKBHD Marques Brownlee is dealing with another commenter backlash. Fans of Brownlee are furious that his latest video, titled “How My Video Gear is Changing!” on the MKBHD YouTube channel, is a fully sponsored segment for DJI, rather than an editorially independent review. The video also contained a clip of Brownlee driving a sports car way over the speed limit on a suburban road.Commenters have flooded the video with criticism, calling out Brownlee for running the sponsored segment. “This can’t even be considered a sponsored video anymore. It’s literally just a ten minute advertisement,” reads one comment with more than 12,000 likes.In response, Brownlee edited the video to remove the clip of him speeding. It had originally shown him... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is testing a new feature that will let creators use AI to “restyle” licensed songs for their shorts. The small group of creators with access can enter a prompt to change up different elements in a song, such as its mood or genre, and the expansion of YouTube’s Dream Track AI feature will generate a reworked 30-second soundtrack.YouTube:If you’re a creator in the experiment group, you can select an eligible song > describe how you want to restyle it > then generate a unique 30-second soundtrack to use in your Short.These restyled soundtracks will have clear attribution to the original song through the Short itself and the Shorts audio pivot page, and will also clearly indicate that the track was restyled with AI YouTube has... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Where will we all hang out next? Continue reading…

Excel has been the leading spreadsheet application for ages, but there are plenty of other options out there. Whether youre just starting out or a spreadsheet pro, there are many good choices for data crunching beyond Microsoft Excel. Lets check out seven of these Excel alternatives and see how they compare.

Eufy’s new hardwired floodlight camera can record all day long. | Image: Eufy Eufy’s new Floodlight Camera E30 attaches a 2K camera that can tilt and pan 360 degrees to a pair of 2,000-lumen LED floodlights and throws in local video capture without subscription fees. Although Eufy, the smart home brand of Anker, sells similar products with batteries and solar panels offering more flexibility on where they can be mounted, most homes already have a floodlight. That makes the hardwired E30 an easy replacement that is available now through the company’s website and Amazon for $149.99,There are alternatives we currently recommend in our floodlight camera buyer’s guide, but for $150, the Eufy E30 offers several premium features without requiring ongoing fees to actually use them.Being hardwired also means the E30,... Continue reading…

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge For months now, there have been rumors about a smart home display Apple is supposedly working on. Now Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the display will be wall-mounted and control smart home devices, attend video calls, and more, similar to the Amazon Echo Hub, and works on its own but requires an iPhone to complete the initial setup.The iPad-like device, which will reportedly be available as soon as next March, has a six-inch display with thick edges, a built-in camera, a rechargeable battery, and speakers, according to Gurman. The plan is to have Siri and Apple Intelligence voice control support as well.If the rumors are true, the smart display will offer a centralized way to control HomeKit-compatible lights, security cameras, sensors,... Continue reading…

Pixel art is a digital art style that utilizes the blocky visuals of pixels. Pixel art is abstract and simple, using raster or vector styles in a manner that's a world away from typical uses of vector or raster imagery. Pixel art was made popular by the low-res gaming imagery of bygone eras, and it was easily created using Microsoft Paint back in the day. But there are plenty of software choices in the modern era for creating fun and interesting pixel art.

Google’s new Pixel Buds Pro 2 have already fallen to $179 ahead of the holiday. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Can’t wait until Black Friday to start your holiday shop or score a killer deal on a gadget you’ve been eyeing? You may not have to. Although Black Friday isn’t until November 29th, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target have begun rolling out their holiday discounts, many of which are available elsewhere. Some retailers will even refund you the difference if an item drops further in price later this year, meaning you don’t necessarily have to worry about shopping ahead of time.New deals are popping up weekly, so we’ve rounded up the cream of the crop below to make sorting through them easier. Current promos include steep discounts on a range of our favorite tech, too, from the Beats Solo Pro headphones and Apple’s AirTags to some of our... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Apple and A24 are working on a new movie about imprisoned crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried based on The Big Short writer Michael Lewis's book Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon. Variety reported their arrangement and that Girls creator and star Lena Dunham is set to write the film.Going Infinite is Lewis’s chronicle of the rise, spectacular implosion, and eventual conviction of Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange FTX. Lewis was working on the book already and embedded with Bankman-Fried when FTX collapsed in 2022. SBF was ultimately found guilty of several criminal fraud and conspiracy charges and given a 25-year prison sentence. He’s appealing his conviction, even as his fellow FTX executives are being sentenced and... Continue reading…

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge After pleading guilty in March to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act, former Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced today to 15 years in prison for posting “hundreds of pages” of classified military documents on Discord.Some of the leaked information included sensitive details about troop movements in Ukraine and previously unknown information about US intelligence gathering on other countries like China, Russia, and South Korea.While stationed at an air base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Teixeira was granted a Top-Secret//Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance necessary for “maintaining and troubleshooting” classified workstations in the... Continue reading…

There's nothing quite like a strong nostalgia trip, especially for those of us who have been involved with tech from an early age. I still vividly remember the days of toying around with my dad's beige PC tower and mashing the keys on his Logitech MX Duo. That experience was so novel at the time, it will be forever etched into my memory. The functionality of these old relics obviously doesn't hold up today, and some of these aesthetics definitely didn't age well, but I don't care. Here are 6 PC aesthetics from the 2000s that I'll forever miss.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge These days, Black Friday isn’t so much a single-day shopping holiday as it is an ever-expanding, monthslong event that often begins as early as October. The 24-hour deal blitz that once was the focus of newspaper headlines and mobs outside of stores is no more, which makes knowing when and where you should be spending your cash all the more confusing.Luckily, we’re here to help. Over the next month or so, we’ll be poring through scores of presale spreadsheets and thousands upon thousands of deals to separate the real discounts from the unexciting, made-up bargains every retailer seems to hawk around the holidays. We’ll have tips on how to find the best deals and when to shop, and we’ll continue to flag the most compelling sales in the... Continue reading…