Image: Epic Games Disney and Fortnite maker Epic Games are teaming up to build what’s being described as an “expansive and open games and entertainment universe.” As part of the announcement, Disney revealed that it is investing $1.5 billion in an equity stake in Epic.Details on what this metaverse-like project will look like are sparse, but here’s how Disney explains it:In addition to being a world-class games experience and interoperating with Fortnite, the new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters, and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, and more. Players, gamers, and fans will be able to create their own stories and experiences, express... Continue reading…

The Sharge Retro 67 and Retro 35 chargers. When my colleague Chris Welch shared his favorite USB-C travel charger with the world last week, I took it as a challenge. I humbly submit that my charger is just as small and powerful as his Belkin — and it has a built-in screen and power meter so you can see how well your gadgets are charging!Oh, and it looks like a tiny Macintosh computer, in case that floats your boat. My boat is floating. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Verge (@verge)Sharge sent a review unit of the $70 Sharge Retro 67 about a year ago, and I liked it so much, I bought one myself. Like my colleague’s $45 Belkin BoostCharge 67W, it’s a three-port USB-C PD and PPS charger with folding prongs, one that can put out... Continue reading…

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images We’re here to help you save time with an assortment of unique gifts that are sweeter than any candy bar. Continue reading…

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have significantly evolved data storage, moving away from the mechanical design of Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) towards a more efficient, semiconductor-based approach. SSDs use flash memory, which provides faster data access, increased durability, and greater energy efficiency. This article aims to demystify the complex technology behind SSDs, focusing on their components and how they manage data storage and retrieval.

Illustration: The Verge Apple researchers released a new model that lets users describe in plain language what they want to change in a photo without ever touching photo editing software.The MGIE model, which Apple worked on with the University of California, Santa Barbara, can crop, resize, flip, and add filters to images all through text prompts. MGIE, which stands for MLLM-Guided Image Editing, can be applied to simple and more complex image editing tasks like modifying specific objects in a photo to make them a different shape or come off brighter. The model blends two different uses of multimodal language models. First, it learns how to interpret user prompts. Then it “imagines” what the edit would look like (asking for a bluer sky in a photo becomes... Continue reading…

Toyota is investing $1.3 billion in its Kentucky plant to support the production of EVs. Toyota is pumping $1.3 billion into its factory in Kentucky for “future electrification efforts,” including the production of a currently unnamed three-row electric SUV for the US market. The news comes as a bit of a surprise, as the largest automaker in the world is also one of the most hostile toward the industry-wide shift to EVs. Toyota says the money will fund an EV assembly line at its Kentucky plant, as well as battery pack assembly with EV batteries supplied by its facility in North Carolina. The company has said it would invest a total of $17 billion in its US operations to support the shift to EVs. Of course, this may come as cold comfort to environmentalists, who have been battling the automaker for years over its anti-EV... Continue reading…

Here’s how to opt-out where you can, and fight back where you can’t. | Samar Haddad / The Verge AI-generated imagery feels inescapable. It’s in the video games you play, in the movies you watch, and has flooded social media platforms. It’s even been used to promote the physical hardware that real, human artists use to create digital paintings and illustrations, to the immense frustration of those who already feel displaced by the technology. The pervasive nature of it seems especially egregious to creators who are fighting to stop their works from being used, without consent or compensation, to improve the very thing that threatens to disrupt their careers and livelihoods. The data pools that go into training generative AI models often contain images that are indiscriminately scraped from the internet, and some AI image generator... Continue reading…

Photo by JASON HENRY/AFP via Getty Images A driverless Waymo vehicle struck a cyclist in San Francisco, causing minor injuries. It was the latest incident in the city at a time when tensions around autonomous vehicles are particularly high after a driverless Cruise vehicle injured a pedestrian. The incident, which was first reported by Reuters, occurred at 3:02PM on February 6th at the intersection of 17th and Mississippi streets in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. A Google Maps Street View of the intersection shows a flat, well-lit area surrounded by warehouses with unprotected bike lanes on both streets. Police officers arriving at the scene found an autonomous vehicle had struck a cyclist, who only reported “non-life threatening injuries,” according to Eve... Continue reading…

Intel completely revamped its 2024 mobile processor lineup with new Core and Core Ultra branding. The company has dropped the ‘Gen’ and ‘i’ naming scheme with Meteor Lake and made a number of improvements to get its offerings ready for AI and complex tasks. The next time you go out to purchase a top laptop, you may notice a new Intel Core branding. So, which Intel CPU is better for you? Let’s simplify the company’s 2024 mobile CPU lineup.

Some of the newer Asus OLED monitors like the ROG Swift PG32UCDM (pictured) will benefit from a longer three year burn-in warranty. | Image: Asus MSI and Asus are providing consumers who purchase their OLED monitors with some additional peace of mind, having now revised their warranty coverage on certain models to cover the dreaded issue of panel burn-in. On Monday, TFTCentral spotted that the warranties offered across Asus OLED displays have been quietly updated to include burn-in coverage of either two or three years. MSI then countered this less than 24 hours later, announcing a new three-year burn-in warranty for some of its own OLED displays.OLED panels are becoming more common in gaming-focused monitors thanks to the improved image quality and responsiveness they provide over IPS and LCD displays, but burn-in is still a concern for many consumers. Static elements — like... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge X hit the number one slot among free apps on Apple’s App Store Wednesday, just as another celebrity image scandal was going viral on its platform.The hashtag “drakevideo” was trending as of Wednesday in the US, after a video that users speculated to be the rapper Drake half nude and engaged in a sexual act spread across the service.The incident comes less than two weeks after X struggled to stop the spread of another salacious celebrity image. In late January, fake, AI-generated explicit images of Taylor Swift circulated on the platform, leading the company to at one point block all searches for the artist’s name.But the scandals hardly seemed to hurt X in terms of downloads. X owner Elon Musk bragged about the app’s ascension to the... Continue reading…

Each year, we're more and more impressed by the new kinds of technology that debut. Last year, we were awed by Lenovo Yoga Book 9i because of its design as a dual-screen laptop. This could be the future for versatility when it comes to laptops and this is the best of its kind so far. But at CES 2024, Asus announced a new version of its Zenbook lineup that would rival the Yoga Book 9i. The Asus Zenbook Duo will hit the market soon and looks to have taken last year's Yoga Book 9i and upgraded different features from it for an entirely different dual-screen experience.