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Mario’s excellent run continues with Mario & Luigi: Brothership on the Switch
https://www.theverge.com/24287092/mario-and-luigi-brothership-review-nintendo-switch
Perplexity debuts an AI-powered election information hub
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24287157/perplexity-ai-election-voting-information-tracking-hub-us-presidential-election-2024-trump-harris
Can Nintendo’s Alarmo run Doom? You bet it can
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24286842/nintendo-alarmo-doom-hack-usb-custom-firmware-instructions
Your favorite musician’s favorite TikTok show
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24285474/track-star-tiktok-music-game-show-vergecast
US immigration policy has a huge blind spot: climate change
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24285366/migration-climate-change-biden-election-trump-harris
Rolls-Royce’s first electric vehicle sounds like no other
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24281754/rolls-royce-spectre-review-ev-price-specs-sound
Donald Trump files yet another censorship lawsuit
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285305/trump-lawsuit-cbs-harris-interview-fcc-broadcast-censorship
Google is building smart home controls into Gemini
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285283/google-smart-home-extension-gemini-app
The AI garage door mystery
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285304/chatgpt-search-apple-mac-mini-smart-home-vergecast
The Verge’s favorite social networks
https://www.theverge.com/24283800/threads-twitter-bluesky-favorites
What voting machine companies are doing to avoid another 2020
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24284887/smartmatic-dominion-voting-machine-companies-trust-disinformation
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Turbosquid
Retro Game Corps isn’t Nintendo’s typical mark. Could he fight back?
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/games/24272743/nintendo-retro-game-corps-russ-crandall-profile-youtube-emulation-dmca-takedown-copyright-strike)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
To cap off a busy week that saw the rollout of the first Apple Intelligence features (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/28/24279804/apple-intelligence-ios-18-1-siri-ai) and several new Macs, Apple reported its fiscal Q4 earnings this afternoon (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-reports-fourth-quarter-results/). The period included very early sales of the iPhone 16 lineup, offering a chance to gauge the momentum of the company’s latest phones. The Apple Watch Series 10 (https://www.theverge.com/24246464/apple-watch-series-10-review-smartwatch-wearables) and AirPods 4 (https://www.theverge.com/24245570/apple-airpods-4-review) were also released during the quarter. CEO Tim Cook told CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/31/apple-aapl-q4-earnings-report-2024.html) that sales of the iPhone 15 were “stronger than 14 in the year-ago quarter, and 16 was stronger than 15.”
The company reported revenue of $94.9 billion, which is a new record for the September quarter and up 6 percent year over year. The strong performance was dampened somewhat by a one-time income tax charge of $10.2 billion that Apple paid to...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284854/apple-q4-2024-earnings-iphone-16-ai)
Image: The Verge
The music streaming app Tidal is laying off more workers. In a statement to Fortune, an unnamed Tidal spokesperson confirmed “the elimination of some roles across our business and design teams.”
On Wednesday, Fortune published a leaked memo from Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Tidal parent company Block Block Head (https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/22/23037963/jack-dorsey-block-head-ceo), who said that the company is going to “part ways with a number of folks” on the team. “We’re reducing the size of our design team and foundational roles supporting TIDAL, and we will consider reducing engineering over the next few weeks as we have more clarity around leadership going forward,” Dorsey wrote, according to Fortune.
Though Dorsey’s message didn’t specify how many employees would be laid off, sources told Fortune that it...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284801/tidal-jack-dorsey-layoffs-report)
Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge
Ford is idling the factory where it makes its F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks until next year, the company said today. It’s another (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284413/ford-made-nacs-css-tesla-complementary-adapter-launch) unwelcome (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/19/24274405/ford-ev-nacs-adapter-faulty-replacement-service-bulletin) hiccup (https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/21/24225177/ford-electric-vehicle-cancellations-delays-suv-t3-pickup) in Ford’s path to becoming a global EV producer.
The plan is to shut things down after the last shift on Friday, November 15th, at which point the plant will be closed for seven weeks, including holidays in which no work would have occurred anyway. The reasons are a bit vague, with Ford spokesperson Emma Berg citing a need to “adjust production for an optimal mix of sales growth and profitability.”
That last word — profitability — is surely driving most of this decision. While Tesla just had a better-than-expected earnings quarter, Ford is still struggling to squeeze profit out of...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284643/ford-f150-lightning-factory-idle-pause-production)
The Verge
AI search company Perplexity is putting to the test whether it’s a good idea to use AI to serve crucial voting information with a new Election Information Hub (https://www.perplexity.ai/elections/2024-11-05/us/) it announced on Friday (https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-the-election-information-hub). The hub offers things like AI-generated answers to voting questions and summaries of candidates, and on November 5th, Election Day, the company says it will track vote counts live, using data from The Associated Press.
Perplexity says its voter information, which includes polling requirements, locations, and times, is based on data from Democracy Works. (The same group powers similar features from Google). And that its election-related answers come from “a curated set of the most trustworthy and informative sources.”
Perplexity spokesperson Sara Plotnick...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24287157/perplexity-ai-election-voting-information-tracking-hub-us-presidential-election-2024-trump-harris)
This, but blasting demons. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
What do John Deere tractors (https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/15/23306650/def-con-hacker-john-deere-tractors-run-doom-right-to-repair), Ikea smart bulbs (https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/14/22533512/doom-ikea-tradfri-smart-light-bulb-hack), Lego bricks (https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/20/23308217/lego-brick-computer-james-brown), and the MacBook Pro Touch Bar (https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/21/13697058/macbook-touchbar-doom-hack-sure-why-not) have in common? They can all run Doom, and naturally, so can Nintendo’s adorable Alarmo alarm clock (https://www.theverge.com/24273422/nintendo-alarmo-review-alarm-clock). It was only a matter of time before someone pulled that off, but what I didn’t expect was that when it happened, it would be playable.
That’s exactly what hacker GaryOberNicht, who recently figured out how (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/30/24283916/sound-the-alarmo) to run custom firmware on the Alarmo, did in a video posted to Mastodon (garyodernichts/113414373708017840" rel="nofollow">https://social.treehouse.systems/@garyodernichts/113414373708017840) and their X account (https://x.com/GaryOderNichts/status/1852753537001718021) yesterday. In it, they play by turning or pressing the mushroom-shaped blob on top of the Alarmo to move and pressing the other buttons to shoot or open doors. Here, have a look:
Gary said (garyodernichts/113414374157540351" rel="nofollow">https://social.treehouse.systems/@garyodernichts/113414374157540351) it’s “possible to load the shareware version of Doom entirely from...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24286842/nintendo-alarmo-doom-hack-usb-custom-firmware-instructions)
Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge
Guess the artist, win five bucks. Whether you’re a random person on the streets of New York, an A-list celebrity, or the sitting Vice President of the United States, that’s the pitch behind one of the most fun music shows on social media. You show up, you get some headphones and a microphone, and you hope you know what song is playing.
The show is called Track Star, and it’s hosted by Jack Coyne. On this episode of The Vergecast, the first in our three-part miniseries about the future of music, Coyne joins the show to tell us the story of Track Star.
We talk about the show’s beginnings as a trivia show about New York called Public Opinion, how Coyne and his co-creators figured out the show’s structure and pace, how he thinks about his...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24285474/track-star-tiktok-music-game-show-vergecast)
Activists gather in New York City in August 2024. | Photo: Luis Yañez
Joe Biden raised hopes that the US would finally plan for climate-displaced migrants. Today, it’s still a glaring hole in climate and immigration policy.
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24285366/migration-climate-change-biden-election-trump-harris)
Tim Stevens
My favorite feature of the new $420,000, all-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre isn’t the cosseting ride quality or the illuminated stars embedded in the headliner of the insanely ornate interior. It isn’t the 577 horsepower or the 266 miles of range. It’s neither the “yes, that’s the spot” massaging seats nor the curbside presence of that upright, chromed front grille. It isn’t even the aerodynamically refined yet classically styled Spirit of Ecstasy statuette perched atop.
My favorite feature of the Spectre is the sound it makes. As an EV, it doesn’t really make any engine sound on its own. It’s a rolling cocoon made inherently anti-acoustic thanks to the tireless work of some surely big-eared scientists. So, to inject a little more life...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/3/24281754/rolls-royce-spectre-review-ev-price-specs-sound)
Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
I regret to inform you that former President Donald Trump has once again filed what is almost inarguably a SLAPP complaint (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation), this time against CBS for editing its own interview of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s lawsuit, first reported by Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-sues-cbs-news-10-billion-alleging-deceptive-doctoring-harris-60-minutes-interview) yesterday, escalates a weeks-long crusade (https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/media/trump-strip-tv-station-licenses-punish-media/index.html) against CBS for its 60 Minutes interview with Harris. Trump argues CBS — which published multiple cuts of the interview (https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/kamala-harris-responds-60-minutes-edit-controversy-cbs-1236173842/) — deceptively edited Harris’ answer to make her appear more coherent. This is the kind of editing decision it’s reasonable to argue about, and that people in fact constantly argue about (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/insider/trump-speeches-2024-election.html) with Trump’s own words. It is less reasonable to:
Claim the edit counts as a contribution to the Harris campaign
Call to strip CBS of its FCC...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285305/trump-lawsuit-cbs-harris-interview-fcc-broadcast-censorship)
Illustration: The Verge
Google is adding a Google Home extension (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15335456) to the Gemini app, allowing you to control your smart home while chatting with the AI assistant. The update, which is available to Android users as part of Google Home’s Public Preview program (https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/12494697), will let you use natural language prompts, like “Set the dining room for a romantic date night” to adjust lighting, or “Help me clean up the kitchen” to turn on the vacuum.
Previously, the Gemini app would open Google Assistant if you tried to control your smart home. With the new Google Home extension, you can perform actions across smart lighting, climate control, window coverings, TVs, speakers, and more from within the Gemini app.
The extension in Gemini doesn’t support all smart devices,...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285283/google-smart-home-extension-gemini-app)
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
You just left your house. As you peel out of the driveway and tear down the street in the coolest way possible, your garage door... well, what does it do? The answer’s probably nothing, and that feels like the wrong answer. The smart home was supposed to have fixed this by now.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we didn’t necessarily set out to talk about smart garage doors for as long as we did, but The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern (https://www.wsj.com/news/author/joanna-stern) joined the show with a lot of thoughts about Apple Intelligence, notification summaries, and how we all — and in particular, how Apple’s software leader Craig Federighi — manage their own houses. Given the reporting that Apple is gearing up for a big hardware push into the smart home (https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/27/24280830/apple-intelligence-smart-home-display-imac-g4-design), what does the...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285304/chatgpt-search-apple-mac-mini-smart-home-vergecast)
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
Social networking has become more disconnected, to say the least. Two years ago, Elon Musk began transforming Twitter into what is now X, and the ensuing chaos drove a lot of former users elsewhere — elsewhere being several places, including Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and even Facebook or Instagram.
We were curious as to where our staff members were going for their social networking fix these days — or whether they had given up on it altogether. Here are some of their answers.
I just don’t think any single platform is going to be the one-stop shop that Twitter once was
Jay Peters, news editor
I primarily use microblogging social networks, and I bounce between many of them because 1) I need to for my job and 2) because none has really...
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/24283800/threads-twitter-bluesky-favorites)
Image: Alex Parkin / Getty Images
Smartmatic and Dominion are trying to debunk false stories and rebuild trust — but that’s a tall order in 2024.
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24284887/smartmatic-dominion-voting-machine-companies-trust-disinformation)
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition review: Intel excellence inside, middling outside
https://www.theverge.com/24283884/lenovo-yoga-slim-7i-aura-edition-laptop-intel-lunar-lake-review
The $1,300 ‘Aura Edition’ laptop doesn’t quite live up to its fancy new Lunar Lake processor.
Continue reading… (https://www.theverge.com/24283884/lenovo-yoga-slim-7i-aura-edition-laptop-intel-lunar-lake-review)
Why is Nintendo targeting this YouTuber?
https://www.theverge.com/games/24272743/nintendo-retro-game-corps-russ-crandall-profile-youtube-emulation-dmca-takedown-copyright-strike
iPhone sales are booming — with or without Apple Intelligence
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284854/apple-q4-2024-earnings-iphone-16-ai
Tidal is laying off more staff
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284801/tidal-jack-dorsey-layoffs-report
Ford won’t be making any new F-150 Lightnings until next year
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284643/ford-f150-lightning-factory-idle-pause-production