Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Well, it’s been a messy, messy week. Today, I have a look at the departure of Spotify CFO Paul Vogel, who (as first reported by Podnews) sold millions worth of stock on Tuesday. Plus, other key Spotify layoffs and the podcast download fallout of Apple’s iOS 17.After an insensitive stock sale, Paul Vogel is out as CFO of SpotifyIn an absolutely chaotic week for Spotify, the biggest layoff of all dropped on Thursday evening: Paul Vogel, who has been the company’s CFO for nearly four years, will leave in March. The news, which came after it was disclosed that he had sold $9.38 million worth of shares the day after the layoffs, was delivered by an atypically terse press release that made it clear Spotify’s leadership wasn’t satisfied with... Continue reading…

There's been a lot of momentum around getting iMessage on Android lately, both in terms of third-party solutions and from official sources. Apple even surprisingly announced RCS will come to the iPhone next year. However, that isn't cross-platform iMessage. The few third-party options to debut recently also came with some alarming security concerns.

Illustration: The Verge It appears that Beeper Mini, an easy iMessage solution for Android, was simply too good to be true — or a short-lived dream, at least. On Friday, less than a week after its launch, the app started experiencing technical issues when users were suddenly unable to send and receive blue bubble messages. The problems grew worse over the course of the day, with reports piling up on the Beeper subreddit. Several people at The Verge were unable to activate their Android phone numbers with Beeper Mini as of Friday afternoon, a clear indication that Apple has plugged up whatever holes allowed the app to operate to begin with.Beeper Mini was the result of a comprehensive attempt to reverse engineer Apple’s messaging protocol. A 16-year-old high... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Say goodbye to the Chevy Bolt EV... again. General Motors won’t be bringing over the original hatchback Bolt to the automaker’s Ultium platform, just the larger Bolt EUV, GM confirmed after InsideEVs first reported the news. That comes after GM said it was discontinuing Bolt production but later confirmed that it would resurrect the EV as an Ultium vehicle for 2025. The original Bolt EV was built on GM’s older and soon-to-be-obsolete BEV2 platform. The automaker has since shifted to the Ultium battery architecture for its next-generation EVs, including the Cadillac Lyriq, Hummer EV, and GMC Sierra EV. Chevy is building a trio of Ultium-built EVs, including the Silverado EV, Blazer EV, and Equinox EV.“We are glad to see the enthusiasm... Continue reading…

Less than three days ago, it looked like Android users would finally be able to pass under Apple’s blue-bubble radar without throwing privacy to the wind thanks to an app named Beeper Mini. Unfortunately, that looks to no longer be the case.

MediaTek's Dimensity 9000 Plus chipset was the company's big return to flagship chipsets in the west, and it was a long time coming. The non-Plus version launched in devices like the OPPO Find X5 Pro Dimensity Edition, a China-only exclusive. However, with the advent of the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro came an additional tier above — the Asus ROG Phone 6D Ultimate. The "Ultimate" moniker obviously implied at the time that it was the superior device, and so, we put both chipsets to the test.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge With iOS 17.2, you’ll be able to share passes from the Wallet app by bringing two iPhones next to each other, according to MacRumors. I haven’t tested the feature myself, but it sounds a lot like Apple’s NameDrop contact-sharing tool it introduced with the first release of iOS 17.If you’re looking at a pass or ticket in the Wallet app and you bring your iPhone next to another running iOS 17.2, you’ll see a “share” button appear at the bottom of your screen, MacRumors says. Tap that to pass the pass over AirDrop.Note that you can already share passes from within Wallet. When looking at a pass, you can tap the share icon at the top of the screen to see ways to send it to other people, like through Messages or the traditional AirDrop... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is suing a naughty but enterprising group called REKK for offering a paid service to willing shoppers looking to get big-ticket items like laptops and game consoles for cheap by exploiting its return and refund system. This isn’t like the times you try to return a small item purchased from Amazon, like a pair of socks, and the system refunds you without telling you to send it back. As reported by Bloomberg, Amazon’s lawsuit accuses REKK of using social engineering and phishing attacks on Amazon fulfillment employees or bribes to get millions of dollars in refunds without actually sending the items back. Image: US District Court A text exchange shows REKK recruiting an Amazon employee. REKK advertised... Continue reading…

The earliest that we will likely see these rules come into force is 2025. | The Verge Following a round of intense negotiations this week, lawmakers in Brussels have now reached a “provisional agreement” on the European Union’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). The EU’s AI Act is anticipated to be the world’s first comprehensive set of rules to govern AI and could serve as a benchmark for other regions looking to pass similar laws. According to the press release, negotiators established obligations for “high-impact” general-purpose AI (GPAI) systems that meet certain benchmarks, like risk assessments, adversarial testing, incident reports, and more. It also mandates transparency by those systems that include creating technical documents and “detailed summaries about the content used for training” — something... Continue reading…

Fire and ice make everything nice. Continue reading…

Image: The Verge One feature added to Microsoft’s AI Copilot in the Edge browser this week is the ability to generate text summaries of videos. But Edge Copilot’s time-saving feature is still fairly limited and only works on pre-processed videos or those with subtitles, as Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s CEO of advertising and web services, explained. As spotted by MSPowerUser, Parakhin writes, “In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn’t preprocess it yet - then it won’t work,” in response to a question. In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we... Continue reading…

With the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI) still underway, companies are looking to leverage large language models (LLMs) and other machine learning principles to build commercial products to attract both enterprise and personal users. Google recently unveiled a powerful language model called Gemini, and we also know that the firm is implementing a mechanism to let Chrome users generate browser themes through AI. Now, it seems that Google is also working on another major project that aims to tell someone's life story with the power of AI.