Illustration: The Verge Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. The firings come after 9 employees were suspended and then arrested in New York and California on Tuesday. The fired employees were involved in protesting Google’s involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government cloud contract that also includes Amazon. Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement. Last month, Google fired another employee for protesting the contract during a company presentation in Israel.In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security,... Continue reading…

Intel's first-generation Alchemist family of Arc GPUs that landed on our test bench couldn't really leave a lasting impression on us. The Alchemist chip looked great on paper, but it turned out to be just average, at best. The driver issues truly took the GPU down, and it couldn't stand a chance as a match for Nvidia's GeForce RTX and AMD's Radeon models at that time.

Apple has opened the door for emulators on the App Store, but the road to actually getting an emulator to stick on it hasn't been so successful. We saw iGBA arrive, but it turned out that the app was someone else's emulator with ads slapped on it. Then we saw the Bimmy emulator appear, but the developer took it down a day later "out of fear." Now, Delta has made its debut on the App Store, and we hope it'll last a bit longer than what came before it.

Nothing is churning out new earbuds at a faster clip than smartphones. The company just introduced the Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a), priced at $149 and $99, respectively. Together, they mark Nothing’s fourth and fifth products in the headphone category. First came the original Ear 1, which stood out for its partly transparent design but suffered from bugs and inconsistent audio performance. Then, Nothing went after a different audience with the open-style (and oddly named) Ear Stick. And a year ago, the company shored up reliability and sound quality concerns with the Ear 2. Now it’s back for another go-round. And guess what? Yep, they still look pretty much exactly the same.The Nothing Ear and Ear (a) both preserve the design that... Continue reading…

AMD and Nvidia have been battling it for GPU dominance and the competition has only become ever fiercer as buzzwords such as AI get thrown into the mix. Which company is best for building a PC from scratch or upgrading an older system? Most of the best graphics cards are made by AMD and Nvidia with the latter producing the world’s faster GPU, the mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Nothing has announced that it plans to more deeply integrate ChatGPT with its smartphones and earbuds. The move will give the company’s customers quicker access to the service. “Through the new integration, users with the latest Nothing OS and ChatGPT installed on their Nothing phones will be able to pinch-to-speak to the most popular consumer AI tool in the world directly from Nothing earbuds,” the company wrote in a blog post. And yes, the new Nothing Ear and Ear (a) are both supported.Spokesperson Jane Nho told me by email that “gradual rollout of the integration will commence on April 18th with Phone 2 followed by Phone 1 and Phone 2A in the coming weeks.” Once the update lands, you’ll be able to query ChatGPT using the company’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In 2020, we wrote how coding bootcamp Lambda School seemed like a bit of a bait-and-switch. Four years later and one rebranding to “BloomTech” later, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is finally slapping it on the wrist — it’s permanently banning it from issuing any more student loans, fining the company and its CEO $164,000, and releasing some students from some of their debt. Why? Among other deceptive practices, the “Bloom Institute of Technology” didn’t call them loans. It advertised a way for students to get high-paying tech jobs “risk free” with “no loans” by paying 17 percent of their future income for five years — rather than the $20,000 sticker price of tuition. But those Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs)... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge After nearly a year of testing, Twitch’s new TikTok-style discovery feed will finally roll out to all users later this month. During a Patch Notes livestream on Wednesday, Twitch announced the new feed that will let you scroll through separate feeds dedicated to clips and current livestreams.The new discovery feed will launch as a tab within the mobile app, and next month, some users might see this feed as the homepage of their mobile app. Twitch says all livestreams and clips are eligible to appear in its discovery feed as long as they meet its content guidelines. When scrolling through the live feed, you’ll find live content from creators you follow, as well as streams recommended by Twitch. If you find something you like, you can... Continue reading…

Image: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Two prominent Senate Democrats are calling for increased scrutiny of autonomous vehicles and advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) like Tesla’s Autopilot, arguing that the unimpeded flow of highly automated vehicles on public roads in recent years risks exacerbating the traffic safety crisis in the US. Automakers and tech companies say the technology can lead to safer streets. But there have been a number of high-profile incidents in recent years involving fully autonomous vehicles, as well as hundreds of crashes and dozens of fatalities in vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assist systems. The two senators, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Ed Markey (D-MA), argue that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s regulatory... Continue reading…

In Microsoft Teams, you can use the Avatar feature if you're feeling video fatigue and don't want to appear in the video while attending a meeting. It simply creates a 3D avatar of yours, which animates based on your audio cues, without a webcam. However, Microsoft has gone a step further and developed a new AI technology that can take the concept of webcam-free video conferencing to the next level.

About a week ago, we learned that Microsoft has begun to show full-screen ads in Windows 10, urging customers to upgrade to Windows 11 even though there is still more than a year to go before the former runs out of support. This move drew a lot of attention considering the company had come under fire in the same week for the slow performance of the Start menu, which had also begun showing advertisements for apps. However, it seems like the Redmond tech firm is not done notifying users about how they can improve their Windows experience, as can be determined from a recent Windows 10 Insider update.

Google Assistant can be regarded as the cornerstone of most modern Android smartphones. From task automation and controlling your smart home devices to cracking the odd joke while engaging in a conversation, Google Assistant boasts an extensive skill set and is far more capable than just a voice-search engine. However, if you're not a fan, you can turn it off if you want.