Image: Fubo The face-off between streaming TV service Fubo and Warner Bros. Discovery is continuing to escalate. Fubo announced via a late afternoon press release that it has dropped Discovery networks effective immediately — “including Discovery, HGTV, Food Network and TLC, among others” — and has been unable to reach a separate deal to bring Turner sports networks TNT, TBS, and truTV to its customers.The company claims that it had little choice but to drop the batch of Discovery channels after talks with WBD went nowhere, and it’s accusing WBD of bad-faith negotiations and an “abuse of massive market power that ultimately limits consumer choice.”Fubu says that it offered WBD “market rates” to secure all of this content but that it never received... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Buttons feel magical. You press here, and invisible connections make something happen elsewhere. But “magical” is probably not how I’d describe most public drinking fountains.Who among us hasn’t walked up to a drinking fountain, expecting a bubbling stream of life-giving water, only to experience the crushing disappointment of a measly trickle after smashing in that button? But I’m beginning to think it’s not the drinking button’s fault; they’re actually some of the most elegant buttons out there. They’re one of the few remaining buttons where your push directly and mechanically controls the result. They’re over a hundred years old. And all the action happens within an inch of the button itself. Photo by Amelia... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge A software engineer who was fired from Google in connection to internal protests at the company’s offices says the company retaliated against him for merely watching the demonstration against an Israeli defense contract.The former employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said he went to the lounge on the 10th floor of Google’s New York City office around lunchtime to check out the protest.“When I got there, there were probably 20-ish people sitting on the floor. I didn’t talk to any of them, I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles,” he said, adding that the protesters were wearing matching T-shirts. The worker then went back to his desk before returning to the protest around 5PM. “I chatted with... Continue reading…

Image: Supercell Manchester City superstar Erling Haaland is becoming a playable video game character in Clash of Clans this week. It’s the first time a real person has been added to the game, and footballer Haaland will become the Barbarian King character during a month-long football-themed seasonal event.Clash players will be able to recruit the Norwegian striker or raid his village and ruin it — perfect if you’re an Arsenal fan like me.Haaland has played Clash of Clans for more than 10 years and reached out to Supercell, the Finnish game developers behind the popular mobile game, to make a partnership happen. Supercell jumped at the opportunity. “When we heard Erling Haaland was a fan of our game and that he wanted to partner with us, it was really... Continue reading…

Yelp’s new AI releases. | Image: Yelp As Yelp tries to remind users it’s more than just a place to find a new restaurant to try, it’s launching the Yelp Assistant, an AI chatbot that “contextually” understands what users are looking for and can match them with service professionals in their area. If you want to replace your bathtub, the chatbot will ask questions like what type of bathtub you want and which features you’re interested in, then suggest a couple of nearby bathtub installers. People have the option of writing their own messages to selected businesses or having Yelp Assistant make one for them. After you review the final project request (generated based on what you asked for in your chat session), the bot can send it to service providers on your behalf, which... Continue reading…

Musk said he wants Tesla to be “absolutely hard core” about the headcount reduction. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Barely two weeks after initiating layoffs for at least 14,000 staffers, Tesla is now reportedly laying off hundreds more — including senior executives and the majority of its Supercharging team. According to an email first reported by The Information and then Electrek, the automaker’s senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci is leaving the company on Tuesday, alongside most of the 500-person team she oversaw. Tesla’s head of the new vehicles program, Daniel Ho, is also out along with his team. These cuts come in addition to the recent 10 percent workforce reduction — and Musk’s email leaves room for more.In the email sent to executives last night, Musk said he wants Tesla to be “absolutely hard core” about the cuts, and that... Continue reading…

The second-gen AirPods Pro offer a wealth of ecosystem tricks, along with some of the best ANC you can get in a pair of earbuds. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Earlier today, Beats announced the Solo 4 alongside the forthcoming Solo Buds. The latter joins a burgeoning lineup of wireless earbuds under the Beats brand, though, despite being an Apple product, they don’t offer noise cancellation and the kind of deep ecosystem tricks afforded by the latest AirPods Pro with USB-C. Fortunately, Apple’s second-gen earbuds are currently matching their all-time low of $179 ($70 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart.Whereas the entry-level Solo Buds are geared toward both Android and iOS, the premium AirPods Pro are aimed squarely at Apple users. The refreshed earbuds continue to offer top-tier ANC, refined sound, and the same feature set as the second-gen model from 2022, save for some added dust... Continue reading…

Zhao “violated US law on an unprecedented scale,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Continue reading…

Photo: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Tesla was on the cusp of taking over electric vehicle charging in the US — then, the layoffs came. Today, multiple outlets reported that the company has laid off hundreds of employees, just weeks after cutting 10 percent (approximately 14,000 people) of its global workforce. Tesla’s Supercharger division was said to be particularly hard hit, with several soon-to-be-former employees saying that close to the entire team had been cut. According to The Information, Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla’s senior director of EV charging, is leaving the company, alongside most of the 500-person team she oversaw. Tinucci oversaw the effort to win near universal support from other automakers for Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), an enormous... Continue reading…

If you haven't heard the news, ads are making the slow, somber march toward the Windows 11 Start menu. Right now, the feature is only on the beta branch of Windows 11, but it's only a matter of time until it arrives on the release branch. As such, ads in the Windows 11 Start menu will eventually become the norm.

This could be the perfect gas to get Google I/O started this year. | Illustration: The Verge / Shutterstock I simply don’t know how to feel about an incoming update to the Google Phone app that adds sound effects to the Android dialer. First spotted as part of a beta update by 9to5Google, the app may soon let you tap one of six “Audio Emoji” buttons to play a short sound clip that both sides of the call can hear.There’s clapping, laughing, crying (a sad, sliding trombone), partying, a drum sting (ba-dum ts) and... poop, which emits a fart sound. You can access the buttons during a call by tapping the option in the dialer’s overflow menu or with a small flag positioned toward the bottom.The dormant adolescent in me wants to try the poop button at least once with a trusted friend who won’t disown me for having a questionable sense of humor.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images More news organizations, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, and four others, are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement. The publications, all owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, claim that both OpenAI and Microsoft trained on their articles without compensation or permission. The plaintiffs included as evidence several excerpts from conversations with both ChatGPT and Copilot showing that both chatbots reproduced lengthy excerpts of specific articles on command, indicating that their training datasets included the texts of those articles. They also showed screenshots of Copilot, which can search the web in real time, reproducing entire news... Continue reading…