Photo by NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images A new report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board has found that Microsoft could have prevented Chinese hackers from breaching US government emails through its Microsoft Exchange Online software last year. The incident, described as a “cascade of security failures” at Microsoft, allowed Chinese state-sponsored hackers to access online email inboxes of 22 organizations, affecting more than 500 people including US government employees working on national security.The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a scathing report that found that the hack was “preventable” and that a number of decisions inside Microsoft contributed to “a corporate culture that deprioritized enterprise security investments and rigorous risk... Continue reading…

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Intel’s chip-making division accumulated $7 billion in operating losses in 2023, Reuters reported on Tuesday. That’s a big increase from $5.2 billion it lost in 2022, and while it made $18.9 billion in revenue in 2023, that number is down 31 percent from the $27.49 billion it made the year prior.However, based on CEO Pat Gelsinger’s comments to investors, the total loss isn’t a total surprise. Gelsinger says these latest numbers are partially the result of Intel’s past mistakes catching up with its foundry business, which caused the chipmaker to outsource about 30 percent of all its wafer production to other foundries, like TSMC, one of Intel’s biggest competitors currently. But now Intel has invested in using extreme ultraviolet (EUV)... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Stable Audio 2.0, an audio generation model for Stability AI, now lets users upload their own audio samples which they can then transform using prompts and create AI-generated songs. But the songs will not win any Grammys just yet. The first version of Stable Audio was released in September 2023 and only offered up to 90 seconds for some paying users, which meant they could only make short sound clips to experiment with. Stable Audio 2.0 offers a full three-minute sound clip—the length of most radio-friendly songs. All uploaded audio must be copyright-free. Unlike OpenAI’s audio generation model Voice Engine, which is only available to a select group of users, Stability AI made Stable Audio free and publicly available through its... Continue reading…

Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge There’s a little-known hack in rural America: you can get the best fried food at the gas station (or in the case of a place I went to on my last road trip, shockingly good tikka masala). Now, one convenience store chain wants to change that with a robotic fry cook that it’s bringing to a place once inhabited by a person who may or may not smell like a recent smoke break and cooks up a mean fried chicken liver. The convenience store chain Re-Up announced that it's installing “The Wingman,” a robot from Nala Robotics that drops fry baskets into hot oil and rolls chicken wings around in sauce before dumping those things into buckets for your consumption (at least, based on the video below). The company says that the machine will use... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Linux, the most widely used open source operating system in the world, narrowly escaped a massive cyber attack over Easter weekend, all thanks to one volunteer.The backdoor had been inserted into a recent release of a Linux compression format called XZ Utils, a tool that is little-known outside the Linux world but is used in nearly every Linux distribution to compresses large files, making them easier to transfer. If it had spread more widely, an untold number of systems could have been left compromised for years.And as Ars Technica noted in its exhaustive recap, the culprit had been working on the project out in the open.The vulnerability, inserted into Linux’s remote log-in, only exposed itself to a single key, so that it could hide... Continue reading…

Last week, I reviewed not one, but two sets of Nintendo Switch controllers that try to address some of the faults of Nintendo's Joy-Con. These controllers have larger grips, hall effect analog sticks, and nicer-feeling buttons. In many ways, they feel like the complete package for any Nintendo Switch owner.

The Dudesy podcast agreed to take the allegedly ai-generated comedy special offline as part of the settlement. | Photo by Mark Junge/Getty Images George Carlin’s estate has reached a settlement with the media company that purportedly used generative artificial intelligence to imitate the late comedian. The decision arrives as a group representing artists like Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, and Stevie Wonder calls for performers to be better protected against being mimicked by AI technology.According to the New York Times, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen — the Dudesy podcast creators who imitated Carlin in a faked comedy special titled “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead” — agreed as part of the settlement reached on Tuesday to take the offending content offline and never upload it on any platform. Sassoo and Kultgen also agreed to not use Carlin’s voice or likeness in content they produce... Continue reading…

With AI PCs entering the market, people can now pick up machines that come with AI processing power. These are usually measured in "TOPS," or "Trillions of Operations per Second," and they're a good general estimate of how powerful an AI processor is. BeagleBoard has managed to squeeze 4 TOPS of processing power into a board that's not too different from a Raspberry Pi which will hopefully pave the way for tiny standalone devices that can do all your AI processing for you.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Humane, Rabbit, Brilliant, Meta, and countless other companies are just about to launch AI-first gadgets. AI hardware may not be as big as the smartphone, but it’s going to be big. Continue reading…

The Verge Microsoft is rolling out priority access to GPT-4 Turbo for business subscribers of its AI-powered Copilot assistant. This unlocks access to OpenAI’s latest model inside the Copilot mobile app, on the web, in Windows, and Edge as part of the $30 per user, per month pricing of Copilot for Microsoft 365.While consumers subscribed to Copilot Pro already had access to GPT-4 Turbo, businesses using Copilot for Microsoft 365 now have access and no limits on the number of chats per day and turns per conversation.GPT-4 Turbo will be available in Copilot for Microsoft 365 for both web queries against the latest public information, and to use across work data like querying emails, documents, meetings, and more. OpenAI’s latest model also... Continue reading…

The 13-inch and 15-inch Air are better than ever, but Apple needs to do something about the upgrade funnel. Continue reading…

Cath Virginia / The Verge DMA is about to unleash a brave new world of game emulators, clipboard managers, and uncertainty. Continue reading…