Image: Epic Games Fortnite is bigger than a battle royale now, and to help make progressing through the various available battle passes a little bit more streamlined, Epic Games is going to allow XP from any experience apply to any of those passes.Currently, XP you earn across various modes in Fortnite doesn’t help you progress through the special passes for Lego Fortnite and the music-themed Fortnite Festival. Instead, you progress by earning “studs” and “festival points,” respectively, by playing those modes.Starting November 2nd, however, Epic will begin the migration to let you progress using XP. As Epic details in a blog post, the change will first apply the upcoming Music Pass (renamed from Festival Pass), meaning festival points will go away. On... Continue reading…

“We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards,” Jeff Bezos, previously. | Laura Normand / The Verge The fallout from the non-endorsement of Kamala Harris at The Washington Post is here: more than 200,000 canceled subscriptions, NPR reports. This is about 8 percent of the paid subscriber base, and the number of cancellations is still growing.To put that in perspective, in an Oct. 15th story about Post CEO Will Lewis’s strategy to get more paying subscribers, The New York Times reported that the Post had added 4,000 subscribers since the beginning of 2024 through September. Like, I am actually flabbergasted: that’s fifty times as many cancellations in one weekend as The Post earned in the better part of a year.“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory.”Now,... Continue reading…

UMG and AI company Klay are forming their own foundational Music-generating AI model. | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Image Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a new deal centered on creating an “ethical” foundational model for AI music generation. It’s partnered with a company called Klay Vision that’s creating a “Large Music Model” named KLayMM and plans to launch out of stealth mode with a product within months. Ary Attie, its founder and CEO, said the company believes “the next Beatles will play with KLAY.”The two say the model will work “in collaboration with the music industry and its creators,” without many details about how, while Klay plans to make music AI “more than a short-lived gimmick.”This is how the companies explain their shared goals:Building generative AI music models ethically and fully respectful of copyright, as well as name and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has released its official definition of “open” artificial intelligence, setting the stage for a clash with tech giants like Meta — whose models don’t fit the rules.OSI has long set the industry standard for what constitutes open-source software, but AI systems include elements that aren’t covered by conventional licenses, like model training data. Now, for an AI system to be considered truly open source, it must provide: Access to details about the data used to train the AI so others can understand and re-create itThe complete code used to build and run the AIThe settings and weights from the training, which help the AI produce its resultsThis definition directly challenges Meta’s Llama, widely... Continue reading…

Image: Mr.Nelson design for The Verge / Getty Images An endorsement of democracy, solving problems, and Kamala Harris. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is expanding “Help me write” to Gmail on the web, allowing users to whip up or tweak emails using Gemini AI. Just like on mobile, users will see a prompt to use the feature when opening a blank draft in Gmail.Google’s “Help me write” feature is only available to users who subscribe to Google One AI Premium or have the Gemini add-on for Workspace. In addition to generating an email draft, “Help me write” can also provide suggestions on how to formalize, elaborate, or shorten a message. GIF: Google Google is also adding a shortcut for the “polish” option available within its “Help me write” toolset, which will appear on drafts with over 12 words. For Gmail on the web, users can click the shortcut or type Ctrl + H... Continue reading…

I've been a PC gamer most of my life, starting before Intel, AMD, and Nvidia were the dominant forces in PC components. Whether I've built a gaming PC, picked up a prebuilt, or decided to chill out on the couch with a PC gaming handheld, picking the right components for your PC is only part of the equation. You still need an operating system to run your games on, and for most, that's Windows. Out-of-the-box, Windows is a lot better than it used to be for gaming, but it's still set up for general use, so there are a number of tweaks you can make for better performance. Whether it's limiting background tasks or making sure your drivers are on the latest version, all of these tweaks together will enhance your PC gaming experience.

Illustration: The Verge Amazon has spoiled Apple’s week of Mac announcements by sharing details of the new Mac Mini a bit early. The listing has been pulled but MacRumors managed to grab a few screenshots first.The one tiny image of the new silver Mac Mini shows what appear to be a headphone jack and two front-facing USB-C ports, presumably with at least Thunderbolt 4 support. It’s available with a base or Pro version of the new M4 chipset, with up to 14 CPU cores, 20 GPU cores, 64GB of memory, and 8TB of storage. The backside ports will remain a mystery for now.The M4 will be a significant jump from the M2 found in current Mac Minis, last refreshed in January 2023. That boost in power should help with current and future Apple Intelligence processing, jumping... Continue reading…

Windows 11 is the latest version of the most popular operating system in the world, and as long as you have a supported PC, it's very easy to install. But therein lies the problem: Windows 11 has significantly higher system requirements compared to previous versions of Windows, so there are a lot of unsupported PCs you can't install it on.

We've covered plenty of DIY handhelds here at XDA, including ones made with official hardware (like a PlayStation or an Xbox). However, it never actually crossed my mind that you could use hardware designed for DIY purposes to make a handheld. So, imagine how I felt when someone discovered that, instead of jumping through all the hoops of getting a board into a case, you can just buy one off of Framework and put it into a 3D case. Well, now I feel silly.

Ray tracing has been one of the biggest buzzwords for desktop GPUs since 2018, which is when Nvidia brought it to gamers with its Turing GPUs. We're on the verge of the launch of the fourth generation of Nvidia GPUs, so it's a good time to analyze whether ray tracing has transformed PC gaming or not.

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta is working on an AI-powered search engine to decrease its dependence on Google and Microsoft, according to a report from The Information. The search engine would reportedly provide AI-generated search summaries of current events within the Meta AI chatbot.The Meta AI bot built into Instagram and Facebook currently uses Google — whose parent company, Alphabet, will report quarterly earnings tomorrow — and Microsoft Bing to answer questions about recent news and events. That could eventually change, as Meta’s web crawler was spotted roving the web months ago. The Information’s source indicates a team has been working for about eight months to build a database of information for its chatbot. Meta has worked on building up location... Continue reading…