Philips Hue’s latest smart string lights offer plenty of preset scenes and a wide variety of vibrant colors. | Image: Philips Hue Philips Hue lights set the mood in a way other types of home decor can’t, but sadly, they can be pricey. Thankfully, Amazon and Woot have both kicked off a Philips Hue sale, making many bulbs, dimmers, light strips, and other accessories a little more affordable for a limited time. Amazon is also currently taking 20 percent off when you buy two or more items featured on this page, while Woot is slashing prices on a handful of both new and refurbished items. That includes a three-bulb kit with a smart button and Hue Bridge for $67.99 ($32 off).However, the real star of the show here is the Philips Hue Festavia string lights deal at Amazon, which drops the 65-foot smart lights to $175.99 ($44 off) when you clip the on-page coupon for an... Continue reading…

When shopping around for a new CPU, most people don't care too much about integrated graphics. There's a common belief that these integrated graphics are particularly weak, especially compared to a dedicated graphics card. That is true for tasks such as gaming, and this is why Intel's KF and F CPUs are so popular. However, integrated graphics have their benefits in certain situations, especially with features such as Quick Sync.

Image: Nintendo The world of Super Mario is a dangerous place. In the games, the plumber falls off cliffs, gets jabbed with spikes, and has everything from wrenches to fireballs hurled at him. But he always gets back up and goes again, which raises an important question: does Nintendo’s hero actually feel pain? According to Takashi Tezuka, who has worked on the series since the original Super Mario Bros. (including serving as producer on last year’s Wonder), there isn’t really a clear answer. “It may be that Mario does feel pain,” he tells me.But that ambiguity may be because I was asking the wrong question. The important part, he explains, is the emotions players experience when Mario plummets to his death or is fried by Bowser’s breath. “If the... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI is offering limited access to a text-to-voice generation platform it developed called Voice Engine, which can create a synthetic voice based on a 15-second clip of someone’s voice. The AI-generated voice can read out text prompts on command in the same language as the speaker or in a number of other languages. “These small scale deployments are helping to inform our approach, safeguards, and thinking about how Voice Engine could be used for good across various industries,” OpenAI said in its blog post. Companies with access include the education technology company Age of Learning, visual storytelling platform HeyGen, frontline health software maker Dimagi, AI communication app creator Livox, and health system Lifespan.In these... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Little for The Verge Gmail revolutionized email with fast search and a whole gigabyte of storage. But where’s it headed next? Continue reading…

Sony’s all-in-one device is available for its usual asking price of $199.99 at Best Buy. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Sony’s PlayStation Portal may not be the most impressive handheld we’ve ever tested, but it’s good enough that it’s proven difficult to get ahold of. The single-purpose device has consistently sold out whenever it becomes available, though, today, you have another shot at landing the elusive remote player. Right now, it’s available at Best Buy for its full retail price of $199.99.In case you need a refresher, Sony’s new handheld device features an eight-inch touchscreen LCD, which you can use to stream PlayStation 5 games via Remote Play over Wi-Fi. It’s a fun, portable device that delivers a nice all-in-one experience, as opposed to a phone, an iPad, or a mobile controller like the Backbone One or Razer Kishi. Unlike the latter... Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung is raising the price of its Care Plus device protection plans — but, in exchange, it’s throwing in unlimited battery repair. In an email spotted by Sammobile, Samsung tells customers that Care Plus and the more expensive Care Plus Theft and Loss plan will increase in price by $2.The new pricing goes into effect on May 1st, 2024, which is when Samsung plans on rolling out a new unlimited battery repair option for “eligible devices.” To qualify for a battery repair, Samsung says the phone must have a charging capacity below 79 percent and no “additional damage.” The Verge reached out to Samsung for more information on which devices are eligible for unlimited battery repairs, as well as whether it will be completely free, but... Continue reading…

Considering the number of great PC gaming handhelds that have been released over the past year, it's hard to imagine that Valve's Steam Deck was the only mainstream gaming handheld not too long ago. Now, plenty of PC gaming giants have entered the space, such as Asus, MSI, and Lenovo. There are also the more niche brands cooking up unique gaming handhelds, like Ayaneo and OneXPlayer.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Robert Robb allegedly convinced several crypto investors to send him $1.5 million to build a too-good-to-be-true crypto trading bot, according to an FBI affidavit viewed by 404 Media and CourtWatch. Robb allegedly sent a message reading, “Poof, YOU’RE A MILLIONAIRE” to one Telegram group, accompanied by this image of a purple fairy wearing a mushroom cap. The message promised recipients they could strike it rich if they used Robb’s MEV bot and invested in the cryptocurrency $RAT and the ironically named token NoRugz. Image: FBI affidavit, Case No. 1:24-MJ-100 A screenshot of a Telegram message allegedly sent by Robert Robb to prospective investors. It says Robb asked crypto investors over Telegram and other... Continue reading…

Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images For years now, civil engineers have understood that bridges have a problem: many of them are not designed to withstand a blow from the kinds of cargo ships that routinely pass through their waters. Those concerns came to a head on Tuesday with the devastating collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s the kind of failure engineers have been trying to prevent for decades — and even now, they’re not sure if the available solutions are enough.“We don’t design for the deadly force that is generated by such an impact — millions of pounds,” Atorod Azizinamini, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Florida International University, tells The Verge. “The collapse has really nothing to do with the type... Continue reading…

It’s pretty fast, too. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge The Shazam app for Wear OS just got a neat update: it can now work independently of your Android phone.The update, which was spotted by 9to5Google, basically removes the need for the wrist app to confer with the app on your phone. You don’t even need the app downloaded on your Android for it to work. I downloaded it directly onto the OnePlus Watch 2 that I’m testing without doing so on the Pixel 8 Pro it’s paired to. It still works! And quickly at that. It was able to correctly identify some bangers on my K-pop playlist within a second or two. (To be fair, there wasn’t any background noise in my office. Your mileage may vary in a coffee shop.) Another neat update is that if your watch is offline, the app will save a clip of the song... Continue reading…

Microsoft-backed OpenAI is perhaps best known for ChatGPT, its conversational AI model that made waves back when it launched publicly in 2022, and is still highly impressive to this day. Since then, the firm has also unveiled Sora, an AI model that can generate video clips using just textual input. While Sora is yet to become available publicly, OpenAI has now announced yet another AI model, and this time, it's capable of generating synthetic audio.