This shot was probably made by AI — the clipboards and Mason jar are good tells. | Image: MicrosoftMicrosoft has revealed that it’s created a minute-long advert for its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop hardware using generative AI. But there’s a twist: it released the ad almost three months ago, and no-one seemed to notice the AI elements.The ad, which went live on YouTube on January 30th, isn’t entirely made up of generated content. In a Microsoft Design blog post published Wednesday, senior design communications manager Jay Tan admits that “the occasional AI hallucination would rear its head,” meaning the creators had to correct some of the AI output and integrate it with real footage.“When deciding on which shots within the ad were to be AI generated, the team determined that any intricate movement such as closeups of hands typing on keyboards had to be shot live,” Tan says. “Shots that were quick cuts or with limited motion, however, were prime for co-creation with generative AI tools.”Microsoft hasn’t specified exactly which shots were generated using AI, though Tan did detail the process. AI tools were first used to generate “a compelling script, storyboards and a pitch deck.” Microsoft’s team then used a combination of written prompts and sample images to get a chatbot to generate text prompts that could be fed into image generators. Those images were iterated on further, edited to correct hallucinations and other errors, and then fed into video generators like Hailuo or Kling. Those are the only specific AI tools named by Tan, with the chatbots and image generators unspecified.“We probably went through thousands of different prompts, chiseling away at the output little by little until we got what we wanted. There’s never really a one-and-done prompt,” says creative director Cisco McCarthy. “It comes from being relentless.” That makes the process sound like more work than it might have been otherwise, but visual designer Brian Townsend estimates that the team “probably saved 90% of the time and cost it would typically take.”The process echoes recent comments from Microsoft’s design chief Jon Friedman to my colleague Tom Warren, that AI is going to become one more tool in creatives’ arsenals, rather than replacing them outright. As Friedman puts it, “suddenly the design job is how do you edit?”Despite the fact that the video has been online for almost three months, there’s little sign that anyone noticed the AI output until now. The ad has a little over 40,000 views on YouTube at the time of writing, and none of the top comments speculate that the video was produced using AI. Knowing that AI was involved, it’s easy enough to guess where — shots of meeting notes that clearly weren’t hand-written, a Mason jar that’s suspiciously large, the telling AI sheen to it all — but without knowing to look for it, it’s clear that plenty of viewers couldn’t spot the difference. The ad’s quick cuts help hide the AI output’s flaws, but suggest that in the right hands, AI tools are now powerful enough to go unnoticed.

Chromebooks on Arm processors are about to get a big boost as developers prepare new versions of ChromeOS with support for Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips, reports Chrome Unboxed.According to a new developer commit message posted in the Chromium project Gerrit code review, the SoCID for a Qualcomm X1P42100, aka the Snapdragon X Plus, is now being included in the Chromium repository, which likely means active development of Chromebooks with the chip is underway.The Snapdragon X Plus isn’t Qualcomm’s flagship “Elite” processor used in some of the top Windows 11 Arm laptops, but it is capable of the same 45 TOPS of AI performance from its NPU.Qualcomm’s previous Arm-powered Chromebooks haven’t exactly been powerhouses. The 2021 Acer Chromebook Spin 513 that we’ve tested has great battery life, but a very slow Snapdragon 7c chip powers it. And although the 7c Gen 2 version was faster in devices like the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3, Qualcomm ended up not bringing the Gen 3 to Chromebooks. That left Chromebooks with chip options from MediaTek and Intel, the latter of which hasn’t been known for excellent battery life.

Bluesky is currently experiencing a major outage.On my desktop browser, my Bluesky feed won’t load at all — it just shows a spinning loading circle. I’m seeing something similar with the mobile app; I can log in, but when I do, the feed doesn’t low. Other Verge colleagues are also experiencing issues.In a 6:55PM ET message on its status page, Bluesky says that that there are “major PDS networking problems” and that “we are investigating a major outage with Bluesky hosted PDS instances.” In a 7:38PM ET message, it says that “we have identified a likely root cause and are rolling out a fix to the Bluesky PDS fleet.”Bluesky didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. The company also hasn’t posted to its Twitter account about what might be going on. In November, Bluesky had some issues with slow-loading feeds and notifications because one of its internet providers had downtime because of a cut fiber cable. That outage happened on what Bluesky said at the time was its “highest traffic day ever.”Update, April 24th: Bluesky says it’s rolling out a fix.

Home Assistant is a deep rabbit hole that can consume a lot of time and money, depending on how far down you wish to traverse. I've used it for many months now, configuring custom integrations with HACS, using Nginx for a secure method to access all the functions when outside the internal network, and adding everything I can to the platform. Throw in Zigbee and you've got a powerful hub for turning your house into a truly smart home. Here are some rather unexpected ways Home Assistant improved my life.

The Slate Truck is an electric two-seater with 150 miles of range and no stereo. | Image: Slate AutoAsk just about anybody, and they'll tell you that new cars are too expensive. In the wake of tariffs shaking the auto industry and with the Trump administration pledging to kill the federal EV incentive, that situation isn't looking to get better soon, especially for anyone wanting something battery-powered. Changing that overly spendy status quo is going to take something radical, and it's hard to get more radical than what Slate Auto has planned.Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electric vehicle that enters production next year. It only seats two yet has a bed big enough to hold a sheet of plywood. It only does 150 miles on a charge, only comes in gray, and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker. It is the bare minimum of what a modern car can be, and yet it's taken three years of development to get to this point.But this is more than bargain-basement motoring. Slate is presenting its truck as minimalist design with DIY purpose, an attempt to not just go cheap but to create a new category of vehicle with a huge focus on personalization. That design also enables a low-cost approach to …Read the full story at The Verge.

The default Windows File Explorer does the job just fine, but what if you want something a little extra? For instance, you want the File Explorer to do a specific function, but when you look for it, you discover that Microsoft hasn't added it yet (if it ever will). Fortunately, there are plenty of third-party apps that shunt File Explorer out of the way and supply a different experience that adds user-requested features to the app.

A successful video game is a difficult thing to measure when you're outside the video game industry looking in. The video game industry has always had a transparency problem, and the inner workings of the business of video games have only become more opaque as it's continued to grow. You can't go look up what it took to make a video game in the same way you can go look up what it took to make last year's blockbuster film.

Back in August of last year, I reinstalled Windows on my PC on an SSD that I used just for gaming. While I largely stuck to that for quite a while, I've allowed some non-gaming software to reside on that SSD too. I ran Win11Debloat following the installation process, and three-quarters of a year later, I don't think I'd ever install Windows without it again.

OpenAI is introducing a new version of its ChatGPT deep research tool that it says is cheaper to operate. The “lightweight” model is available now to free users, as well as those on several of the company’s paid tiers.Deep research (lightweight) is powered by a version of OpenAI’s o4-mini model, and the company says it’s “nearly as intelligent” as the original deep research mode, which produces lengthy reports including citations and summaries of its process. OpenAI adds that the lightweight version delivers responses that are “shorter while maintaining the depth and quality you’ve come to expect.”While the standard deep research model remains exclusive to paid users, the lightweight version is rolling out to free users now, who can use it for five tasks per month. Paid users also get access, and it will kick in by default when they hit their rate limits on the original deep research, giving Team and Plus users a total of 25 monthly tasks across both versions, and Pro users 250. Enterprise and Education users will get access next week at the same limits as Team and Plus users. Importantly for OpenAI, it says the new version is “significantly cheaper” to run, which matters all the more in a world where it spends “tens of millions of dollars” just to process users saying please and thank you.

There’s no shortage of task management apps out there, from the powerful features of Todoist to the simplicity of many niche tools. Yet, after years of juggling multiple solutions, I’ve found that Microsoft To Do stands head and shoulders above the rest. Here are some reasons I still think that Microsoft To Do is the ultimate to‑do list app for productivity, seamless workflow integration, and pretty nice to work with.

I didn’t realize how much filament I was wasting until I started making minor changes to my slicer settings. What began as a few tweaks to speed up prints quickly turned into a full-on overhaul of how I sliced nearly everything. These aren’t obscure experimental features or gimmicks — they’re practical, everyday settings that made my prints cleaner, faster, and more efficient. If you want to reduce waste without sacrificing quality, these settings truly made a difference.

A group of tabletop game makers and other American small businesses are filed a lawsuit on Thursday against President Donald Trump and his administration to attempt to stop his tariffs. The lawsuit alleges the tariffs are “unlawful and unconstitutional” and details how they are creating challenges for the plaintiffs’ businesses.The tabletop companies that are among the plaintiffs in the case include Stonemaier Games (which announced its involvement in the lawsuit earlier this week, as reported by Polygon), Spielcraft Games, Rookie Mage Games, XYZ Game Labs, and Tinkerhouse. The 145 percent tariffs imposed on goods imported from China are a significant part of the burden, as spelled out in examples in the lawsuit:Stonemaier Games, which has its products printed at a factory in China, has imports that are “ready to ship on which it estimates it will pay millions in tariffs pursuant to the actions challenged herein.”Spielcraft Games has paid $4,335.40 in tariffs for “a board game set” that it imported from China this month.Rookie Mage Games has paid $3,120.80 in tariffs for “products imported from China” this month and will have to pay tariffs on “all future imports.”XYZ Game Labs estimates that it will have to pay “substantial tariffs” on goods manufactured in China that it plans to import later this year and on “all future imports.”Tinkerhouse is producing a “tabletop roleplaying game accessory” in China that the company has made a down payment on. The company estimates it will have to pay “substantial tariffs” on when it imports the accessory later this year. It also expects that it has to pay tariffs on “all future imports.”Other plaintiffs in the case include Princess Awesome, a clothing company, Mischief Toy Store, a toy store based in Saint Paul, MN, and others. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday with the US Court of International Trade.The lawsuit from the small companies joins a growing list of parties fighting the tariffs in court. On Wednesday, 12 states sued the administration, with New York Attorney General Letitia James calling the tariffs “unlawful” in a statement. The CEO of Learning Resources, a toy company that also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over tariffs, told CBS MoneyWatch that “this path is catastrophic.”However, the future of the tariffs is also murky right now, with The Wall Street Journal reporting yesterday that the Trump administration is thinking about reducing the tariffs on China