Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge Roku has made my TV unusable.On June 6th, my TCL TV’s Roku OS was updated to version 13.0.0. Ever since, on everything I watch, there is motion smoothing — a TV and film purists’ deepest nightmare. There is no way to turn it off.In the updated OS, Roku added a feature called Roku Smart Picture, which, according to its release notes, “automatically improves picture quality dynamically as users stream.” While Roku doesn’t explicitly mention motion smoothing, or what Roku calls “action smoothing,” the update has made it so that I and many others with Roku TVs see motion smoothing, regardless of whether the picture setting is Roku Smart Picture or not. My TV didn’t even support motion smoothing before this. Now, I can’t make it go away.If... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge They’re more colorful than anything Amazon offers and have built-in support for Overdrive, but the UI feels more focused on selling books than reading them. Continue reading…

The upcoming feature will allow WhatsApp users to ‘imagine’ themselves in different settings. | Illustration: The Verge Whatsapp appears to be working on a new generative AI feature that should allow users to make personalized avatars of themselves for use in any imagined setting. The in-development feature, spotted in the new WhatsApp Beta for Android 2.24.14.7 by WABetaInfo, will seemingly use a combination of user-supplied images, text prompts, and Meta’s AI Llama model to generate the images.A screenshot shared by WABetaInfo says that users can imagine themselves “in any setting from the forest to outer space.” The examples look fairly typical for those produced by AI generators, particularly if you’ve used apps like Lensa AI or Snapchat’s “Dreams” selfie feature. Image: Meta / WABetaInfo Screenshot shared by WABetaInfo. T... Continue reading…

Sunny. | Image: Apple Just like last year, the hot summer months of 2024 are turning out to be an excellent time for science fiction fans. There are a number of sci-fi series that either just wrapped up, are in the middle of a season, or are set to premiere soon. Perfect for ignoring the heat of the outdoors for the substantially cooler worlds of space and the future. And this is a lineup that could potentially grow even more, as Apple has been teasing the return of both Severance and Silo sometime soon. In the meantime, plan your next few months of streaming time accordingly with this list.Scavengers ReignStreaming on Max and NetflixThis animated series actually premiered on Max last year but made its way to Netflix on May 31st. It’s unlike anything else... Continue reading…

A few days ago, we talked about all the new features Microsoft added to Teams during the month of June 2024. Earlier, we also detailed everything new in Excel and Copilot for Microsoft 365. Now, Microsoft has published the change log for the free version of Teams, an SKU of the collaborative software that's intended for personal use. Although the change log isn't particularly hefty, it does contain some interesting new capabilities.

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In March, Microsoft notified the US Department of Veterans Affairs that it was impacted by the security breach that enabled the Russian hacking group known as “Midnight Blizzard” to steal some of the company’s source code, reports Bloomberg. Already assigned blame for the earlier SolarWinds attack, the group has been accused of spying on email accounts of Microsoft’s senior leadership team and attempting to use the secrets obtained there to create additional security breaches.The VA department found that Midnight Blizzard used a single set of stolen credentials to access a Microsoft Cloud test environment around January. VA officials told Bloomberg that the account was accessed for just one second, presumably to see if the credentials... Continue reading…

After August 6, Nike Adapt owners won’t be able to download the accompanying mobile app any longer. | Photo by Felicia Shivakumar / The Verge Despite the ongoing popularity of the Back to the Future trilogy that inspired the self-lacing tech found in the HyperAdapt 1.0 and Air Mags, Nike has announced that it’s “no longer creating new versions of Adapt shoes.” Now, the Adapt BB mobile app used to control the $350 third iteration of Nike’s self-lacing sneakers will disappear from Google Play and the iPhone App Store next month.Without the app, owners can use the physical buttons on the sneakers to power them on and off, check battery status, tighten or loosen the laces, and save a single preset, but there will be no way to adjust the shoe’s lighting.The power laces on the Nike Adapt BB basketball shoes, which were worn by athletes like Jayson Tatum and Luka Doncic, were... Continue reading…

Samsung makes some of the best smartphones, and if you're looking for a good smartwatch to pair with yours, you have quite a few options. The Apple Watch might be the best smartwatch overall, but some excellent wearables are on the market today for Android fans (a few of which are made by Samsung). Other brands like Garmin, Withings, and Google also offer fantastic smartwatches, so you don't have to limit yourself to the Galaxy Watch family. But no matter what style you prefer or which features you want, these are the best smartwatches to pair with your Samsung phone.

The Fourth of July weekend is quickly approaching, and if you're lucky enough to get some extra time off, that hopefully means being able to spend the long weekend with family and good friends, along with enjoying some great food. Of course, if you're a savvy shopper, you'll know that the holidays bring out some of the best deals of the year.

If you're in your 20s, there's a good chance that you don't know what a floppy disk is. And while there are many different iterations of the floppy disk, the 3.5-inch variant is probably going to be one of the most recognizable, providing, at its peak, a whopping 1.44 megabytes of storage space.

When discussing Copilot+ PC, it's really easy only to consider them from Microsoft's perspective. When people cover what a Copilot+ PC can do, they usually focus on all of the Redmond giant's tools, including the controversial Recall feature. However, don't forget that the Snapdragon X inside a Copilot+ PC can do a lot more than Microsoft's apps; in fact, we're seeing third-party support coming in that puts the additional AI processing power to good use. So, here are four ways that third-party apps are putting Copilot+ PCs to good use.

Image: Evan Blass We’re only one week away from Samsung’s next Unpacked event on July 10th, where we’re expecting the company’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 folding phones — but leaker Evan Blass has just revealed the entire spec sheets and marketing materials with practically everything you’d want to know.For example, did you know both phones will be lighter, with longer battery life, despite being slightly thinner, and both have slight changes to their screens? Or that the Flip will now let you use Samsung’s language-translating Interpreter Mode on its front cover screen as well, letting you point the text of one language at the person you’re talking to while the other faces you? Image via Evan Blass The cover screen... Continue reading…