On The Vergecast: why taste matters, and what AI can make from your good ideas.
The company formerly known as Facebook has had some trouble making its namesake metaverse become a thing. And rumors are that division of the company is facing massive budget cuts. But things aren’t going so smoothly elsewhere, either. Now word is that the company’s next-gen Phoenix mixed reality glasses are being delayed until 2027, according to Business Insider.
We just found out that the original Star Wars theatrical cuts are returning to theaters in February of 2027. Not to be out-nerded, the extended cuts of the Lord of the Rings films will be hitting the big screen to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the premiere of The Fellowship of the Ring. You’ll only have two weekends to relive the magic (or pain, depending on your opinion of the extended cuts), so you might want to get your tickets now.
Nashville’s writing rooms will never be the same.
Five different AI browsers have the same problem.
Continuing the trend of car influencers falling in love with Chinese EVs, MKBHD got behind the wheel of a Xiaomi SU7 and walked away wondering if US automakers were “cooked.” Well, not yet. The SU7 might cost roughly $42,000 and handle like $75,000 car, but it’s also not available in the US... At least not outside of video games.
In September, Google and C-SPAN struck a deal to bring the networks to subscribers, and this week C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, and C-SPAN3 went live on YouTube TV in all its unfiltered glory of wall-to-wall government minutia. But, it’s not all boring congressional sessions, they know how to have fun at C-SPAN, too.
On the slop-filled internet, Jeremy Carrasco uses his platforms to spread AI literacy.
Spoiler: the nine-person team works for Anthropic.
To help address the issue of its robotaxis passing stopped school buses, Waymo plans to file a voluntary software recall with the NHTSA, Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, says in a statement to The Verge.
A curated mix of tech-y standouts, everyday favorites, and other delights for everyone on your list.
WB has a checkered history of acquisitions, but joining forces with Netflix would elevate it to a new level of prominence.
The Steam Frame is a Trojan horse carrying Arm’s gaming future.
After the Trump administration used Carpenter’s song “Juno” in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) propaganda video, the pop star responded, calling it “evil and disgusting.” The White House account has since deleted the post — but they’ve picked this fight with musicians before.
Warner Bros. mergers have a not-so-great history, but with this deal, co-CEO Greg Peters said on an analyst call that, as transcribed by Deadline:
We understand these assets that we’re buying, the things that are critical in Warner Bros. are key businesses that we operate in, and we understand. A lot of times, the acquiring company, it was a legacy non-growth business that was looking for sort of a lifeline. That doesn’t apply to us.
The latest Metroid nails the mood and action, but its new additions often feel out of place.
Last week, Arrowhead Game Studios announced that they are drastically reducing the file size of the PC version of Helldivers 2, bringing it down to just 23GB (from 154GB).
Testing by Digital Foundry shows that this “slim” version doesn’t have any noticeable performance drawbacks. Even on an HDD, it only took 6.3 seconds longer to load into a tutorial compared to the original version.
[Digital Foundry]
Reuters reports that Meta just bought Limitless, an AI pendant that listens to and summarizes your conversations. It’s a burgeoning category of wearables (see: Bee AI which was bought by Amazon) and hints that like Google, Meta’s interested in perhaps building its own ecosystem of AI-powered gadgets.
[reuters.com]
On Friday, the handpicked CDC advisory group, containing several known vaccine critics, scrapped the three-decade-old recommendation to vaccinate all babies for hepatitis B at birth, instead delaying the recommended schedule to 2 months, if at all, for babies whose mothers test negative for the disease.
That’s a bad idea, according to medical groups and public health experts, and likely to lead to a rise in hepatitis B cases.
After Simon Fondrie-Teitler called out the Dekoda health tracker’s incorrect use of the term end-to-end encryption because Kohler does have access to the data it collects, the company has updated the toilet cam’s product pages to now say that user data is “encrypted in transit and at rest.”
The update, released for PC exactly 10 years after the game’s original launch, adds a new character, custom mode, support for four-player local co-op, 60fps, verification for Steam Deck, and even support for Apple Silicon, according to the patch notes. Might finally be time for me to check the game out.
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Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. AI companies are ignoring it.
The “production release” of Windows MIDI Services just hit the Dev and Beta Windows Insider channels, and Microsoft says it will land on retail installs in “the next few months.” This means higher-resolution expression, two-way communication between devices, and less need for third-party drivers. MIDI 2.0 was announced in 2019, but adoption has been slow, with macOS and Android adding support in 2021 and 2022, respectively. There are still only a handful of compatible devices available, too.
We’re doing Google Glass for the first episode back. I cannot believe how many feelings I still have about Google Glass, all these years after I took them off for the last time. Quick PSA: now that our first eight-episode run is over, we’re no longer publishing every episode on the Vergecast feed. If you want to make sure you get every episode when it drops, here’s a few ways to do so:
Frog costumes, Luigi hats, and the press frenzy at the viral murder trial.
Spotify shared its methodology on how your Spotify Wrapped is made in a new blog post. More than 200 million people engaged with this year’s Wrapped in “the first ~24 hours alone,” CEO Daniel Ek said.
