Solar panels, part of renovations done under the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, sit on the roof of New York City Housing Authority’s Ocean Bay Apartments in New York, NY. | Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Biden administration on Thursday announced $100 million in funding to make low-income homes in the US more energy efficient and resilient to climate change. It will also start taking applications Thursday for a new credit program aimed at making it more affordable for low-income communities to install small solar and wind projects. Both programs are funded through the Inflation Reduction Act. New technologies like heat pumps and solar panels that can save energy, lower utility bills, and prevent greenhouse gas emissions often come with a hefty price tag initially. While costs tend to drop over time with greater adoption, this usually leaves low-income households last in line. These programs aim to flip that on its head by offering... Continue reading…

Here’s something to stop you from hiding your tired face in early morning meetings. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A highly requested feature, according to Google, is finally being introduced in Google Meet that allows users to apply ‘beauty’ effects during video calls. Announced in a Google Workspace update on Wednesday, portrait touch-up is currently rolling out to Google Meet on mobile devices for early adopters, with an extended rollout to remaining accounts scheduled to begin on October 28th. Google said it also plans to bring the portrait touch-up feature to Google Meet on the web “by the end of 2023.”There are two portrait modes available that provide different levels of complexion smoothing, under-eye lightening, and teeth whitening. “Subtle” mode, as the name suggests, provides very light cosmetic adjustments, while “Smoothing” mode is a... Continue reading…

The Verge The FCC unanimously approved plans by several tech companies to use the 6GHz band for wireless devices on the same day it voted to move forward with restoring net neutrality rules.FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel proposed the new rules, which would authorize very low power (VLP) operations — meaning their signals won’t be able to go very far — in about 850MHz of the spectrum, on September 27th. The rules will also allow devices to “use higher power levels” so long as they’re geofenced to keep from interfering with actual licensed 6GHz usage, and the FCC will be taking comments on other ways it can expand 6GHz spectrum usage by technology devices.A September Bloomberg report pointed to some of the kinds of devices the FCC’s affirmative... Continue reading…

It’ll soon be easier to charge your Tesla — and eventually everything else — at a ChargePoint station. | Photo: ChargePoint ChargePoint, one of the companies racing to put EV charging stations all over the US, announced today that it is beginning to roll out support for the NACS connector that is quickly becoming the national standard. ChargePoint stations that have previously used other ports and power sources can start to use the Tesla-created plug in November, and the company says it now offers “every necessary cable solution to charge an EV in North America and Europe.”The company first said it would add NACS plugs to some of its stations in June, as the standards organization SAE International announced that the NACS (which stands for “North American Charging Standard”) port would be standardized for cars in North America. A number of car makers have... Continue reading…

Minecraft has become quite a popular game since it was officially released in 2011, and thanks to the variety of mods and variations, it has a solid fan base around the world. Since it doesn't have any set goals or instructions, it is often described as a game with no rules, making it perfect for individuals across age groups to enjoy. Best of all, Minecraft is available on almost every single platform you can think of, including Windows, Mac, Linux, phones, tablets, consoles, and even the Raspberry Pi.

Smartphones are, for many, their primary camera. The built-in cameras have been getting better and better, and one of the features you’ll find in the best iPhones is a depth effect that creates compelling lock screen wallpapers with iOS 16 and above. You can also use and even adjust the depth effect with Portrait mode photos.

When Motorola announced a new Razr lineup, people wondered when they might debut in 2023. The Motorola Razr+ came out at the beginning of the summer and was an immediate hit in the foldable smartphone market. At XDA, we quickly dubbed it "the best foldable Motorola phone" because of its sleek design and larger outer display. There's so much that you can do with it, but that might not be what everyone wants. Enter the base model, Motorola Razr (2023). This is coming out this week and is a more affordable version of the Razr. Which one is better for you? Let's help you decide by comparing them.

Illustration: The Verge If you use two different WhatsApp accounts, you’ll soon be able to access both from just one device. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that WhatsApp is rolling out the ability to switch between accounts on Android, and you won’t need to lug around an extra device or continuously log out of your account to be able to do so.This new feature should make it easier to manage your conversations across multiple accounts, like if you have one WhatsApp account for work and another for messaging friends and family members. It’s rolling out in the coming weeks.Meta notes that you’ll still need a separate phone number and SIM card (or a phone that accepts multi-SIM or eSIM) if you want to set up a second account. You’ll also need the... Continue reading…

Samsung has shown an alarmingly short turnaround from the release of the Galaxy Tab S9 to that of the Tab S9 FE. This new product in the growing Fan Edition series offers a comparable overall experience to Samsung’s best tablets, albeit with a fraction of the power and at a fraction of the price. But does the feature-lite new tablet’s price-to-performance ratio outdo the modern specs of the Tab S9? Let’s investigate which tablet takes the cake.

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp is beta testing the ability to send voice messages that can only be listened to once by their intended recipient, WABetaInfo reports. The feature, which is currently only available to a limited number of Android and iOS users running the beta version of the app, is reportedly accessible by tapping a small “1” icon that appears to the right of the voice note waveform when recording. “After sending the voice note with the view once mode enabled, you won’t be able to listen to it and the recipient can no longer listen to the voice note after dismissing it,” WABetaInfo reports.The Meta-owned messaging service already has a similar “View Once” feature for photos and videos that it launched in 2021, so it makes sense it would expand... Continue reading…

If you’re an urban-dwelling electric vehicle owner, your public charging options are often limited to slow AC chargers found in tight parking spaces that are too small for typical DC fast chargers. Now Gravity, the company that started an EV taxi fleet in New York City in 2021, designed a compact and super fast DC charging system for big dense cities that can reduce your charging time from hours to just minutes.Gravity’s system includes small dispenser boxes that the company calls “Distributed Energy Access Points,” which can be mounted above or in front of a parking spot and deliver up to a ridiculously high 500kW of energy. That compares to DC fast charging stations from other companies, which have larger stall units and max out at... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Major record label Universal Music Group and other music publishers have sued artificial intelligence company Anthropic for distributing copyrighted lyrics with its AI model Claude 2.The music publishers’ complaint, filed in Tennessee, claims that Claude 2 can be prompted to distribute almost identical lyrics to songs like Katy Perry’s “Roar,” Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” and the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” They also allege Claude 2’s results use phrases extremely similar to existing lyrics, even when not asked to recreate songs. The complaint used the example prompt “Write me a song about the death of Buddy Holly,” which led the large language model to spit out the lyrics to Don Mclean’s “American Pie”... Continue reading…