Actors Taye Diggs, Autumn Federici, Gary Entin, Troy Brookins, Edmund Entin and Eric Guilmette attend the world premiere of Microhouse Films and Lifetime's Reunion Island during the ALZA Festival. | Getty Images for Lifetime.
It remains to be seen if people really want to watch vertical content on horizontal TV screens, but many filmmakers and creators were confident that their latest projects would play well at Alza - New York City's first microdrama film festival. Founded by former Tribeca Festival chief operating officer Pete Torres, Alza, which took place October 16th through 18th, was billed as a showcase for the "the creativity, innovation, and growing cultural impact of stories made for the vertical screen." The festival featured a selection of microdrama and film premieres as well as industry-focused panels with executives who all seemed to genuinely beli …
Microsoft asked its employees to return to the office three days per week last year, and it's now upping this requirement to four days a week for most Xbox employees. An internal memo, seen by The Verge, describes the change as a "need to create more opportunities for people to work together" after feedback from Xbox employees.
"Starting February 1st, 2027, Xbox employees in Puget Sound who live within 50 commuting miles of Studio D are required to work from the office a minimum of four days a week," says Jacinda Chislum Pearson, Xbox chief people officer, in the internal memo. "We have thousands of Xbox employees within commuting distance …
But TP-Link is willing to do something those companies weren't - to invest nearly $1 billion to make routers in the United States, creating "hundreds of high-paying re …
The Antigravity A1, with the new Follow Me Kit. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Last year's Antigravity A1 is the best beginner drone I've ever tried. I put a friend who'd never flown into its virtual cockpit and didn't worry one bit. The A1's also nice for people who'd prefer to think about flying rather than filming, because you can reframe its 360-degree footage after.
But until today, that meant wearing the company's FPV goggles and spending upwards of $1,599 on the complete set. Now, Antigravity is halving the price of entry to $799 in the US with a new "Follow Me" kit that replaces the original headset and motion controller with a wristwatch and ring instead.
The idea is that Antigravity can be your robot cam …
CoreWeave had a bad week last week. Its bonds slipped into distressed territory by a common definition - when investors demand 1,000 basis points more in yield than they'd get from government bonds. Last Tuesday Chamath "SPAC King" Palihapitiya noticed the distressed debt, and also asked whether the AI buildout was a private credit bubble. Its shares are down more than 20 percent since Tuesday's close, which is kind of a lot! There even seemed to be some collateral damage in the market on other AI companies, too.
Now, I have also asked if the AI industry is a bubble, but when the SPAC King echoes concerns held by a lady whose ongoing questi …
If you spend any time on r/synthesizers or watch a lot of synth videos on YouTube, you've probably noticed the explosion of custom firmware for hardware synthesizers, samplers, and grooveboxes. What unites almost all of them is that they were made possible by increasingly sophisticated vibe-coding tools.
These sorts of custom firmware were exceedingly rare in the pre-LLM days and required both deep expertise and an incredible investment of time. It could take weeks or months to add a simple feature like velocity sensitivity to a Korg Volca. Now, hobbyist hackers are able to turn Temu synths into full-fledged grooveboxes in a matter of days.
Democrats could win back control of Congress this November, and if they do, they'll need to decide how to approach one of the country's newest and thorniest political issues: AI.
Polls predict Democrats will flip at least one chamber of Congress in the midterm elections, which would put committee leadership back in their hands. That could usher in a wave of newfound scrutiny for AI companies. Top Democrats on key committees have already signaled their willingness to press the industry on tax credits tied to data centers and recent hacking incidents, and would be able to set committee agendas if they take over, allowing them to call CEOs to …
J Mascis on stage during Dinosaur Jr.’s Baby’s Alright show in NYC. | Photo: Terrence O’Brien
Dinosaur Jr. frontman J Mascis is known as something of a slacker guitar god. He stands stoically onstage, barely moving, as he seemingly effortlessly works through deft guitar solos and lopsided riffs. Unfortunately, Mascis has developed a similar reputation as an interview subject, quietly sitting and offering deft nonanswers.
That's not to say that Mascis can't be funny or charming. As our interview was winding down and I was thanking him for his time, he started to loosen up a bit. He told me about his youth as a mini golf "enthusiast." "I had a 3-foot putt for the win" at a mini-golf tournament, he said, but "that's when I realized tha …
It's hard to overstate Jad Abumrad's impact on the podcasting world. He created and hosted Dolly Parton's America and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, two Peabody Award-winning shows that offered unprecedented looks at the lives of two of the most important music icons of the last century.
Before that, though, he created Radiolab, an experimental NPR show that leaned heavily on creative sound design and eventually helped redefine what a podcast could be. In the early days of podcasting, shows were often just a couple of people talking at each other at a table (some still are), or lazily repackaged radio broadcasts. Radiolab instead told deeply repor …
Autonomous agents are the hottest thing in AI. OpenAI, Meta, Google, Instinct, and others promise their agents can scour the internet on your behalf, doing anything from booking a dinner reservation and cleaning out your inbox to buying new shoes. But what happens when the rest of the internet won't play nice?
In recent weeks, users of services like Meta's Muse, xAI's Grok, OpenAI's Dots, and Instinct have reported blocks preventing their AI agents from performing tasks across top websites. Yelp told TechCrunch that it only allows AI agents that pay for its data licensing program, while Delta Air Lines is preventing them from booking ticket …
The HomeView can simplify online recipe formatting into easy-to-follow steps. | Image: Apple
When Apple revealed the HomeView to the world, it did so with an unusual ad for the company: Instead of pristine, polished tech in immaculate rooms, it's a three-minute look at the messy, frantic morning routine of a family of five. Apple's new smart display sits in the center of the chaos on the kitchen table, helping the family check their calendars, send messages, and pull up a French toast recipe in seconds, with simple, step-by-step instructions.
The HomeView is just the latest in a long line of websites, browser extensions, and smart home gadgets with the same promise: that it can take an online recipe and strip it down to the essenti …
Apple’s Home Collection, codeveloped with partners, is part of the company’s first major push into the smart home category. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
For more than a decade, Apple has told other companies to build smart home devices for its platform. This week, Apple launched its own. The Apple Home Collection is a lineup of cameras, thermostats, sensors, a smart door lock, and a video doorbell, all codeveloped with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric. They arrive alongside HomeView, Apple's first smart display.
Even after 12 years of HomeKit, Apple's smart home ecosystem still felt underdeveloped, especially compared to the competition. Amazon's and Google's ecosystems support more products, and both have popular in-house brands: Ring and Nest. Apple had nothing of its own to point cu …
An Nvidia RTX Spark chip aboard an Asus laptop motherboard. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Fourteen years ago this month, Microsoft released an Nvidia-powered Windows PC that would become one of the greatest tech flops in modern history. The original Microsoft Surface, which ran a stripped-down version of Windows on an Nvidia Tegra chip, bombed so hard that Microsoft had to write off $900 million in inventory.
The problem was that Nvidia's Arm chip couldn't run existing Windows apps. Buyers had to leave their legacy programs behind.
This Friday, October 16th, Nvidia will once again be at the heart of Arm-powered Windows PCs with the first wave of RTX Spark laptops. But now, the company says, they'll run everything. Adobe. Offic …
There's a new digital pet in town - a cute little marshmallow of a robot that can change its cartoony expressions to match your mood. But if you or your kids talk to "Eiliko" over Wi-Fi, it'll phone home to China. Its AI companion can store literally everything you tell it on Chinese servers, where hackers can easily gain access or even hijack its personality. And the company that made it, Energize Lab, doesn't seem to care.
I bought an Eiliko from Amazon on August 29th. During a 10-minute conversation on August 30th, I asked the little bot: "Do you ever tell anybody else what I'm saying?"
Apple’s HomeView smart display seems tailor-made for the kitchen. (That aluminum base looks like it will hold up better than my now off-white kitchen HomePod.)
I'm just going to come right out and say it. I love the approach Apple has taken with the HomeView. I think it's the shared, always-available household interface that my family might finally use. Is Apple's first smart display my dream smart home dashboard? No. But is it the right product for Apple Home at this moment? Absolutely.
A lot of initial reactions to the $299 HomeView (which looks like a giant Apple Watch on a flatter metallic HomePod Mini) ask why you would want it when you can do most of what it offers on your iPhone or iPad. And yes, its features replicate many of the things you already do on the devices you use all the time. B …
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