If 2023 was the year of artificial intelligence, 2024 might end up being the year of the AI PC. Plenty of so-called AI PCs are on the market today, and more will come throughout the year. While cloud-based AI tools don't require much, if any, new hardware, the same can't be said for AI that uses on-device processing. The recent advancements in AI and their corresponding performance demands for on-device processing could mean Windows system requirements could finally be pushed forward.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Location tracking can be very handy — it’s convenient when an app can tell you, say, where the nearby restaurants or gas stations are — but it’s also a privacy issue (something that at least one of Google’s competitors has used in its sales pitch).You probably know that Google can track your location and movements through its Google Maps app. But you may not realize that your Android phone is also tracking your movements and activities through several other built-in apps.If you really don’t want your phone to be tracking any of your movements and activities, there is a way to turn tracking off for all (well, most) of them. You just need to be aware that you’re probably going to render many of your apps (such as rideshare apps, weather... Continue reading…

SmartLess Media/YouTube SiriusXM has inked a multiyear deal with SmartLess Media for exclusive rights around the flagship podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes as well as a number of other SmartLess shows. The three-year deal cost the satellite radio giant a total of $100 million, anonymous sources told Bloomberg, and brings the popular hosts into SiriusXM’s celebrity-packed roster, which includes Howard Stern, Kevin Hart, and Conan O’Brien.This also means that the flagship SmartLess podcast and SmartLess Media will no longer be under the wing of Amazon. In 2021, Amazon paid what Bloomberg reported was anywhere between $60 and $80 million for exclusive rights to SmartLess and any future shows developed by its podcast network. Under the... Continue reading…

Arlo’s cloud subscription plan for a single camera or video doorbell is increasing to $7.99 a month. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge In more “things are just getting expensive” news, the Arlo Secure subscription service is climbing. Again. This time, it’s going from $4.99 to $7.99 for a single camera or video doorbell. This 60 percent price hike comes on the heels of an increase early last year from $2.99 to $4.99. According to an email sent to single-camera users from Arlo and posted on Reddit, the change is “due to increasing costs and investment in developing innovative solutions.” The updated plans are now live on Arlo’s site, and the lowest-tier Arlo Secure plan, which includes 30 days of cloud storage and smart alerts for people, pets, packages, and vehicles, costs $7.99 monthly for one camera. If you have multiple Arlo cameras, the subscription costs $12.99... Continue reading…

Yelp is joining the wealth of platforms expanding their use of AI, as it’s rolling out a new feature on iOS that rounds up and summarizes user reviews in a blurb that appears near the top of a company’s Yelp page.The new feature uses large language models (LLMs) to parse through user feedback to highlight “what the business is best known for based on first-hand reviews,” Yelp says. That may include a mention of a location’s atmosphere, popular dishes, amenities, and more. One example (as shown in the image at the top of this article) describes a restaurant as a “retro diner well known for its classic cheeseburgers and affordable prices.” GIF: Yelp Yelp is bringing more visual content to its homepage on iOS. It... Continue reading…

MSCHF The art collective MSCHF is stirring up some trouble on the internet again. For its latest project, ASCII Theater, the group will broadcast a popular new film daily in ASCII format that anyone can watch for free. Just paste the command on your Mac or PC’s terminal, and you can watch films like Barbie exactly as, well, virtually no one has intended. ASCII art films are nothing new and date back to the early days of the internet. They are made by converting a film, frame by frame, into lines of text characters. Instead of pixels, you’ll see text. One of the most famous examples is the ASCII art version of the original 1977 Star Wars movie, which was completed by New Zealand-based programmer Simon Jansen in 1997 and is still available... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Vertical video platform TikTok wants users to turn their phones around and start shooting horizontal videos — long ones, too.TikTok appears to be incentivizing creators to start posting horizontal videos that are more than a minute long, according to a prompt seen by creators @candicedchap and @kenlyealtumbiz. The platform says it will “boost” these videos within 72 hours of posting. Creators who’ve been on TikTok for more than three months will be eligible for the viewership boost, as long as the videos are not ads or from political parties. The Verge reached out to TikTok for additional information but didn’t immediately hear back.Pushing for horizontal videos would be a big changeMost people who watch TikToks do so on their... Continue reading…

An example of how product links currently appear in TikTok after the launch of TikTok Shop. | Image: TikTok TikTok Shop links could soon become a lot more common across the social media app. Bloomberg reports that the company is testing a new feature that automatically identifies products in the platform’s videos before offering a link to “Find similar items on TikTok Shop.” A spokesperson for the company was not immediately available to respond to The Verge’s request for comment, but it confirmed to Bloomberg that the feature is an early test.Business Insider previously spotted a test of the same feature last November, and we found videos containing footage of the “find similar items on TikTok Shop” button from September and October last year. TikTok previously confirmed that it was testing the feature with a small number of users in the US... Continue reading…

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Apple’s new plan to comply with the European Union’s tech regulations has already drawn criticism from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and Spotify. Now Microsoft is weighing in with its own concerns, calling the App Store changes in the EU “a step in the wrong direction.”Apple has proposed a new Core Technology Fee for apps that want to operate on third-party app stores in the EU. It will require developers using third-party app stores to pay €0.50 for each annual app install after 1 million downloads. Apple will also still take a 17 percent commission from the developers who choose to use third-party payment processors. “Apple’s new policy is a step in the wrong direction,” says Xbox president Sarah Bond in a post on X. “We hope they... Continue reading…

The LGA 1700 socket was made specifically for Intel's 12th and 13th-generation CPUs, but its life got extended when the 14th-gen Raptor Lake refresh chips were released last year, and it's the socket you see on Intel 600 and 700 series motherboards. When it came out in 2021, it put Intel firmly ahead of AMD, and even though the Ryzen 7000 and 8000 have since come out on the AM5 socket to even the score, LGA 1700 motherboards are still cutting-edge enough. If you're looking to upgrade to LGA 1700, you probably don't want to buy a new cooler, but is the one you have compatible? Here's everything you need to know about coolers for LGA 1700.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft just posted the second quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $62 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q2. Revenue is up 18 percent, and net income has increased by 33 percent. This is the first quarter Microsoft is reporting earnings as a $3 trillion company and also the first time the company has reported additional revenue from its Activision Blizzard acquisition. This additional revenue has made gaming Microsoft’s third largest business this quarter, above Windows.Office and cloud revenue still reign supreme, contributing nearly 60 percent of Microsoft’s overall revenue. While Windows OEM revenue is bouncing back, devices revenue from Surface sales has continued to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta’s latest update to its code generation AI model, Code Llama 70B, is “the largest and best-performing model” yet. Code Llama tools launched in August and are free for both research and commercial use. According to a post on Meta’s AI blog, Code Llama 70B can handle more queries than previous versions, which means developers can feed it more prompts while programming, and it can be more accurate.Code Llama 70B scored 53 percent in accuracy on the HumanEval benchmark, performing better than GPT-3.5’s 48.1 percent and closer to the 67 percent mark an OpenAI paper (PDF) reported for GPT-4. Built on Llama 2, Code Llama helps developers create strings of code from prompts and debug human-written work. Meta simultaneously launched two... Continue reading…