Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Stuart Franklin Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke. Continue reading…

Photo: Antonio Cascio / Bloomberg via Getty Images The body of billionaire tech mogul Mike Lynch was recovered off the coast of Sicily, the Italian Coast Guard announced on Thursday. Lynch’s 184-foot superyacht, the Bayesian, sunk on August 19th, reportedly after being hit by a tornado over the water, called a waterspout. The yacht sank quickly, according to reports, even though its manufacturer claimed it was unsinkable.Lynch was on the yacht with family and friends celebrating his acquittal on fraud charges in June. HP, which bought Lynch’s company, Autonomy, for $11 billion in 2011, had alleged “accounting improprieties” that misrepresented Autonomy’s value. In an interview with the BBC — the only broadcast interview before the yacht sank — Lynch said his wealth helped him deal with... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google is making a new desktop app called Essentials that packages a few Google services, like Messages and Photos, and includes links to download many others. The app will be included with many new Windows laptops, with the first ones coming from HP.The Essentials app lets you “discover and install many of our best Google services,” according to Google’s announcement, and lets you browse Google Photos as well as send and receive Google Messages in the app. A full list of apps has not yet been announced, but Google’s announcement art showcases icons including Google Sheets, Google Drive, Nearby Share, and Google One (a two-month free trial is offered through Essentials for new subscribers). HP will start including Google Essentials... Continue reading…

Instead of carrying a bag full of lenses, the new Samyang Remaster Slim lets you only carry alternate optical elements. | Image: Samyang In an attempt to lighten camera bags, Samyang has created a prime lens that allows photographers to change the focal length by swapping out just the optical elements inside it, instead of having to change lenses completely.The simpler design of prime lenses in general — which offer no zoom capabilities — can deliver several advantages, including sharper images and a shallower depth of field. The tradeoff is that photographers have to move closer or further away when framing subjects or swap between several prime lenses with different focal lengths. That approach can get expensive and heavy — problems that Samyang’s Remaster Slim autofocus lens, measuring just 0.8 inches thick, may solve.The optical elements in the Remaster Slim sit in... Continue reading…

Image: Cruise Uber has signed up another robotaxi company to offer driverless rides inside its app. Starting sometime next year, for “qualifying” rides, Uber will give you the option to take the trip in one of Cruise’s autonomous vehicles. The two companies announced a “multiyear strategic partnership” on Thursday. Uber already partnered with Waymo on autonomous rides and announced a long-term deal with driverless truck company Aurora earlier this year. It also offered driverless rides with Motional before Motional paused its robotaxi deployments in May. The original date for Elon Musk’s event revealing Tesla’s robotaxi developments passed a couple of weeks ago, but now it’s supposed to take place October 10th.Cruise halted its robotaxi service in... Continue reading…

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures Middle-earth is looking a little different in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Warner Bros. Pictures just released the first trailer for the animated prequel, which is directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Blood: The Last Vampire, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) and set 183 years before the original film trilogy. Peter Jackson is involved as an executive producer.According to the official description, the new movie “tells the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan.” Here’s the full setup:A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg — a... Continue reading…

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Former President Donald Trump is launching a cryptocurrency platform, he announced on Thursday in a post on Truth Social. Trump’s post included few other details, but he and his sons have suggested it will target unbanked and underserved communities.“For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites,” the post reads. “It’s time we take a stand—together. #BeDefiant.” The name of the platform, The DeFiant Ones, is a play on “decentralized finance.”Trump’s Truth Social post links to a Telegram channel for the as-of-yet unreleased platform, which has posts dating back to August 15th calling it the “only official Telegram channel for the Trump DeFi project.” There are no details about what the... Continue reading…

In May 2024, around 200 employees at Google DeepMind (representing roughly 5 percent of the division) signed a letter urging the company to end its contracts with military organizations, expressing concerns that its AI technology was being used for warfare, Time magazine reported.The letter states that employee concerns aren’t “about the geopolitics of any particular conflict,” but it does link out to Time’s reporting on Google’s defense contract with the Israeli military, known as Project Nimbus. The letter also points to reports that the Israeli military uses AI for mass surveillance and to select targets in its bombing campaign in Gaza, with Israeli weapon firms mandated by the government to purchase cloud services from Google and... Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Apple will soon let iPhone and iPad users in the European Union choose default apps for phone calls, messaging, keyboards, password managers, and more. These options will be available later this year in a new “Default Apps” section in Settings, according to an update on Thursday.In the spring of next year, Apple says it will also let users set default navigation, translation apps, and call spam filter apps. Along with these new options, iPhone users in the EU will add the ability to delete the App Store, Messages, Camera, Photos, and Safari apps. The only apps Apple won’t let users delete are Settings and Phone. Image: Apple Apple is adding more detail to its browser choice screen. Some small changes are... Continue reading…

If you really want to up your gaming experience, a great monitor is going to be an absolute must. And we know, some of the best monitors you can buy in 2024 aren't cheap. But if you're serious about your entertainment, then this is going to be one upgrade you're going to want to splurge on. With that said, we're all about finding fantastic discounts on superb products, which is why we think this LG UltraGear OLED monitor deal is going to be just for you.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An appeals court has revived the District of Columbia’s antitrust case against Amazon, which the District claims illegally drives up prices on rival platforms. In a decision on Thursday, the DC Court of Appeals ruled that the District’s allegations “plausibly suggest” that Amazon already has monopoly power over online marketplaces or is close to achieving it. Former DC Attorney General Karl Racine filed the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon in 2021, but it was tossed out in court in 2022. The lawsuit alleges Amazon engages in anticompetitive behavior by restricting third-party sellers from offering products on other online stores, including their own websites, for less than they charge on Amazon — effectively controlling the price of... Continue reading…

Fans of handheld retro gaming devices are really eating well this year, aren't they? We're just over halfway through 2024 and we're already neck-deep in stellar handheld consoles to replay the classics on. Now, get ready to make room on the shelf for one more, because Retroid just hot-dropped a trailer for the Pocket Mini.