The Rabbit R1 AI device launched a few months ago, and since then, its existence has been plagued by controversies, one after the other. We reviewed the hardware and gave it an abysmal 2/10 rating, citing issues like half-baked technical implementation of several features, not being able to provide enough value to complement a smartphone, connectivity issues, and more. The internet echoed our thoughts, also discovering that Rabbit used to be a shady NFT company and that the R1 could just be used as a smartphone app without requiring dedicated - and rather expensive - hardware.

If you want to get a NAS and aren't sure where to begin, you can buy an off-the-shelf all-in-one device that's simply just the NAS and all of the software that you need. However, if you want to build a NAS, then that's a different story, and you can build a very powerful NAS for less than $500. If you buy used parts, you can get it for even less.

Yesterday, Microsoft detailed all the features it had added to Excel during June 2024, and while the change log wasn't huge, it contained several enhancements to entice existing and potential customers. Now, right on cue, Google has announced a major update for Sheets, its web-based spreadsheet software. The update focuses on productivity improvements, along with the integration of AI capabilities.

If you're a frequent visitor to XDA, you'll know that we love seeing SBC projects that really let creators' talents shine. Of course, in order to come up with some of these great projects, you often only need a little imagination and some programming skills. But for the most part, it's still possible to get things done thanks to the support of a deep online community and powerful feature-packed SBCs.

YouTube is expecting to launch new AI tools later this year that are trained off the back of these deals. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After debuting a generative AI feature last year that produces music in the style of famous artists like Charli XCX, John Legend, and T-Pain, YouTube is now asking major record labels to allow it to clone more musicians. According to the Financial Times, the Google-owned video platform is offering to pay Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records “lump sums of cash” in exchange for licensing their songs to legally train its AI music tools.YouTube told the Financial Times that it’s not looking to expand Dream Track — which was supported by just ten artists during its test phase — but confirmed it was “in conversations with labels about other experiments.” The platform is aiming to license music from... Continue reading…

Yesterday, we reported that Windows is incorrectly spamming some users to change their timezone. Although Microsoft is reportedly aware of this issue and is working on releasing a fix in the coming days, it is not tracking this problem in its Windows release health dashboard. In fact, it has now started tracking another issue on this dashboard, one that is arguably more severe.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Traffic got you down? If the idea of locking your car keys in a drawer and using alternate means of transportation sounds intriguing, Uber has the challenge for you. Today, the ridehailing company announced the One Less Car trial, in which 175 people in the US and Canada will be selected to ditch their cars for five weeks in exchange for cash and credits to be put toward other travel modes. Call it a gimmick or a PR stunt, Uber says the aim is to highlight the high costs of personal car ownership, as well as all the external effects on our health and the cities where we live. Uber has long advocated for fewer cars on the road — even as studies have shown that the app-based ridehailing industry has intensified traffic congestion in... Continue reading…

“Mr. Bugs Wordy Nugz.” | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Wordle is a pretty clever name for the very good word game created by Josh Wardle. But when he was first working on it in 2013, Wardle had another name in mind that isn’t quite as catchy.“This is true: I was going to call Wordle, Mr. Bugs’ Wordy Nugz,” Wardle revealed as part of a presentation about Wordle at Figma’s Config conference on Wednesday. He also showed a slide that spelled out the name in big yellow letters. “Had I called the game Mr. Bugs, I like to think it would not have been successful.”During the presentation, which was about the development decisions that he said “are the opposite of what you’re meant to do” but ultimately contributed to making the game a hit, Wardle also discussed the history of the game and showed... Continue reading…

If you're a bit of a disorganized person, you might try to use a ton of different apps to help you out. But what if I told you that you can actually use Discord to really help you with time management and projects? It surprisingly works very well, especially given how much you can customize Discord to be your own.

Illustration: The Verge Google is adding support for 110 new languages to Google Translate, the company announced on Thursday. Before now, Google Translate supported 133 languages, so this expansion — which the company says is its biggest ever — marks a significant jump.Google’s PaLM 2 AI language model helped Translate learn these new languages. It was especially good at learning ones that were related to one another, such as languages “close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole,” Google’s Isaac Caswell says in a blog post. The list of newly-supported languages in Translate includes Cantonese, which “has long been one of the most requested languages for Google Translate,” Caswell says. “Because... Continue reading…

M.2 SSDs are the way to go if you're looking to upgrade the storage on your PC, laptop, or other compatible devices. Of course, it's not always as easy at just picking one and popping it in, as there are a number of different options. While 2280 SSDs are the most common, 2230s are also quite popular as well, with the latter being the most common form factor you'll find in today's popular PC gaming handhelds.

BMW’s 2025 BMW M5, which is coming as a plug-in electric hybrid (PHEV) for the first time, will be a husky vehicle. With an electric motor to go along with its 4.4-liter V8 engine, the sedan will weigh in at a hefty 5,390 pounds when it launches during the fourth quarter of 2024.That makes the new M5 about 1,000 pounds heavier than the 2023 model that preceded it. It also weighs more than trucks like the 2022 Chevrolet Tahoe (5,356 pounds), the 2024 Lucid Air Sapphire (5,336 pounds), and the 2024 Range Rover Sport (5,090 pounds), Motor1 noted today. Unlike Lucid’s EV, though, the M5 can’t blame as much of its heft on the battery, which is only big enough to go 25 miles without using gas.The M5 isn’t the heaviest electrified BMW — the a... Continue reading…