Iconfactory After nearly 16 years in operation, Twitterrific was abruptly deactivated last year during Twitter’s unceremonious purging of third-party apps. Now, the app’s developer Iconfactory is raising funds on Kickstarter to create Project Tapestry, a new internet reader for the publicly accessible web. The iOS app will serve as a “universal, chronological timeline,” pulling from federated social media networks like Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as Tumblr, Micro.blog, and any RSS feed. It’ll also be able to access governmental data sources, such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite imagery and US Geological Survey (USGS) earthquake data. Because Tapestry (which will be the app’s official name) will let anyone... Continue reading…

Tomo, the AI avatar | Luka, Inc. AI companion company Replika partnered with the team behind the AI dating simulator Blush to release Tomo, a wellness and meditation app with an AI-generated avatar guiding users. Its the kind of concept that seemed destined as soon as generative AI took off, but in the time I’ve spent with Tomo, I found myself wondering if I can ever open up to an AI like I can with a real therapist.Tomo, now generally available on the Apple iOS store, brings users to a virtual island retreat, greeted by an AI-generated avatar guide named… Tomo. Tomo offers programs to help people explore personal growth, mental well-being, and fulfillment. It also provides guided meditation, yoga, affirmation classes, and, most of all, talk therapy. Users can try out... Continue reading…

The newest Roomba vacuum — the Combo j9 Plus — faces stiff competition. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge By abandoning its deal to buy iRobot, Amazon has left the robot vacuum maker stuck under the couch. Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google spent $2.1 billion on severance and other expenses as it laid off more than 12,000 employees over the course of 2023. And the layoff charges keep coming: in just the one month of 2024 so far, the company has already spent $700 million on employee severance charges as part of layoffs targeting another 1,000-plus roles. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, revealed the figure alongside its fourth-quarter earnings release on Tuesday.Despite the cuts, Google ended 2023 with growth across most of its core business lines. Google posted $86 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023, a 13 percent increase year over year. The search giant’s core digital ads and cloud computing businesses also showed steady growth, which CEO Sundar... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge During the January Microsoft Research Forum, Dipendra Misra, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research Lab NYC and AI Frontiers, explained how Layer-Selective Rank Reduction (or LASER) can make large language models more accurate. With LASER, researchers can “intervene” and replace one weight matrix with an approximate smaller one. Weights are the contextual connections models make. The heavier the weight, the more the model relies on it. So, does replacing something with more correlations and contexts make the model less accurate? Based on their test results, the answer, surprisingly, is no. “We are doing intervention using LASER on the LLM, so one would expect that the model loss should go up as we are doing more approximation,... Continue reading…

The Indiglo button on a modern Timex Weekender. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Long before the self-lit pixels of OLED phones illuminated our lives, there was a time many portable gadgets didn’t shine at all. Remember when the display of practically every Nintendo Game Boy was designed to be viewed by sunlight? Remember when it was tough to tell time with your average wristwatch after dark?But in 1992, Timex popularized a push-button technology that could bathe any small display in a soothing, sea-green glow. And even though the actual button was often bad, it literally changed the face of portable electronics.They called it Indiglo. As a ‘90s kid, I thought Indiglo was the coolest thing. It still kind of is! Electricity energizes a layer of phosphorescent material as thin as a human hair, invisibly suspended... Continue reading…

The best thing about installing an M.2 SSD is that it doesn't demand a lot of space inside the PC case or requires any cables for connection. These SSD modules are small enough to be installed directly on the motherboard itself, and it only takes a few minutes to secure one of them in place. In fact, you can install an M.2 SSD very easily even on PCs that are already assembled. Installing an M.2 SSD is usually quite simple, even in a PC that's already been assembled.

Photo by Kathryn Riley/Getty Images US lawmakers have proposed letting people sue over faked pornographic images of themselves, following the spread of AI-generated explicit photographs of Taylor Swift. The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act would add a civil right of action for intimate “digital forgeries” depicting an identifiable person without their consent, letting victims collect financial damages from anyone who “knowingly produced or possessed” the image with the intent to spread it.The bill was introduced by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), joined by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Josh Hawley (R-MO). It builds on a provision in the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022, which... Continue reading…

Microsoft introduced 3D immersive meetings to Teams last week, but people who use the tool without paying can't use the feature. Instead, the Teams free users now have access to many community engagement and accessibility features for a better meeting experience across different platforms.

Image: Philips Philips is halting sales of its recalled sleep apnea machines in the US after finding they were pumping foam particles into users’ airways. In its earnings report on Monday, the company says it will not sell new CPAP or BiPAP devices in the US until it meets the requirements outlined by the Food and Drug Administration.Philips first issued a recall on its sleep apnea machines in 2021 over “potential health risks.” The recall includes devices made between 2009 and April 21st, 2021, and stems from a polyester-based polyurethane foam Philips included in the machines to minimize sound and vibration. As noted by Philips, that foam “can break down,” leading the person using the device to breathe it in or swallow it, resulting in potential... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge During the roughly 40-minute presentation, expect to hear new info on Rise of the Ronin, Death Stranding, Sonic Generations, Judas, and more. Continue reading…

Modern video games provide a myriad of settings and parameters you can tweak to get the best possible experience. Heck, even the accessibility and gameplay options can take a couple of minutes to fully explore, and that’s before we include the sheer number of graphical settings you can tweak in most games these days.