Illustration: The Verge In a late Friday email, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the launch of a new “video tab” feature (resembling a TikTok-style endless scroll, according to a source at X) and an X-exclusive reality series, called The Offseason, starring soccer star Midge Purce, and produced by investor Alexis Ohanian.This announcement comes shortly after a gathering of X partners and clients at the New York office on Tuesday, while Yaccarino works to retain advertisers and content creators — both vital to the platform but steadily fleeing due to the behavior of its owner, Elon Musk.Yaccarino added that Purce and Ohanian came to the office to share more about the upcoming premiere of The Offseason — which is set to go live October 18. X has been securing... Continue reading…

We all understand that wireless connectivity, like that of the best Wi-Fi routers, is sent and picked up from the antennae. But have you given any thought to how the antennae should be pointing or how the effective area of Wi-Fi around each antenna looks? How about when there are no visible antennae at all, like on a mesh router? The good news is that understanding all of these questions is relatively simple, even if the physics behind why isn't.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Back in the Mad Men days, the only thing that might interrupt the corporate blandness of a workspace might be a photo of your family or maybe a coffee cup with a funny saying. But nowadays, especially if we’re working at home, we can have some pretty interesting, weird, or just plain nice-looking items on our desks.We asked the folks here at The Verge what they have on their desks or in their offices that they keep just for the hell of it — because they like it, because it means something special, or just because. Here are some of the answers we got.A looping gif of our late cat Pouncey on my keyboard’s LCDAntonio G. Di Benedetto, commerce / deals writer GIF: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge The LCD on the... Continue reading…

Perhaps you constantly find yourself battling with PC issues, or just want some tools in your kit in case you encounter problems in the future. Either way, it's always good practice to have a few PC diagnostic tools on hand to fix issues as they appear. This way, if you ever run into an issue that you don't know how to fix, then you can download and install one of these tools to help you identify what the problem is and hopefully find a solution.

EcoFlow’s Alternator Charger helps keep all your tools and toys charged when driving away from civilization. Continue reading…

Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Ford has a good thing going with its next-gen infotainment system — whether you use CarPlay or not. Continue reading…

For a long time, getting the best network speeds around your home meant dragging Ethernet cables everywhere. That was a pain for homeowners, but renters looking for better network speeds were limited in what they could do. Nowadays, improvements to Wi-Fi routers mean wireless is often the way to go for speed, but that wasn't the case not that long ago. One solution that came out was powerline adapters, which used the wires that provide you with A/C electricity as makeshift Ethernet cables. They sounded great in theory, being able to plug two boxes into sockets across your home and get a network connection between them, but often fell short in practice.

Image: The Verge Brazilian fan account owners might have a reason to rejoice, as X could be returning to Brazil. According to the New York Times, in a court filing Friday night the company agreed to abide by the Supreme Court’s request in order to have the countrywide ban lifted:Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.The company has spent the last three weeks fighting the ban and continuing to distribute content from members of the far right community in... Continue reading…

Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media Jony Ive has confirmed that he’s working with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on an AI hardware project. The confirmation came today as part of a profile of Ive in The New York Times, nearly a year after the possibility of a collaboration between Altman and the longtime Apple designer was first reported on.There aren’t a lot of details on the project. Ive reportedly met Altman through Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and the venture is being funded by Ive and the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’ company. The Times reports it could raise $1 billion in funding by the end of the year, but makes no mention of Masayoshi Son, the SoftBank CEO rumored last year to have invested $1 billion in the project.The project only has 10 employees... Continue reading…

Image: All Possible Futures The Plucky Squire is a game that leaps off the page — literally. It takes place in a storybook world rendered in an adorable two dimensions thanks to codirector and former Pokémon artist James Turner. But at certain points, the heroic lead character can venture into the real world and solve puzzles that mix 2D and 3D in inventive ways. Sometimes, you’re moving objects between dimensions; other times, you’re rearranging the words in a book to create new outcomes. It’s as cute as it is creative, and it follows Sony’s Astro Bot in what is turning out to be a very good year for family-friendly games.The game puts you in the role of Jot, the titular plucky squire, who has the unusual ability to exist outside of the book he stars in. The two... Continue reading…

Of all the AI wearables this year, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses made the most sense. The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses exceeded expectations in a year when AI gadgets flopped. But can it keep the momentum going? Continue reading…

Image: Meta Meta is holding its annual Connect developers conference next week, and it’s going to showcase a bunch of expected and perhaps some surprise new VR and AR hardware — alongside what might be a heavy Meta AI showcase featuring the company’s newest Llama large language model and image generator in apps like WhatsApp.And as Meta sunsets custom tools for AR filters, we could end up seeing a whole new set of developer tools designed to harness generative AI experiences. Perhaps it will all come together in Meta’s next big push into its alternative reality ideas (and namesake) in the metaverse, including significant Horizon Worlds updates.However, the most anticipated products expected to appear during the conference are the successor to the... Continue reading…