The latest tech news about the world’s best (and sometimes worst) hardware, apps, and much more. From top companies like Google and Apple to tiny startups vying for your attention, Verge Tech has the latest in what matters in technology daily.
App casting, handoff, and seamless file sharing make Googlebooks feel (almost) obvious with an Android phone.
It remains the best tiny computer you can buy, but $900 stings compared to the $600 of the last-gen.
Googlebooks are here. And they’re actually interesting (for Android phone users) — but there are still so many questions.
Google’s latest attempt to reinvent the laptop will require everything the company does well — and a few things it doesn’t.
The subsea “Petal” cable will connect the US and France across 4,300 miles when it comes online in 2029. Meta says it will be the first transoceanic subsea cable to deliver 1 petabit of data per second using a multi-core fiber technology. “That’s roughly the network capacity required for 75% of the world’s population to stream music at the same time,” according to Meta.
Features like Web & App Activity, Location History, and Location Accuracy were found to violate GDPR privacy rules in Europe from 2018 to 2020.
“As a result of Google’s failures, individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used to, for example, influence them with ads or to infer their interests, and could lose control over their personal data,” DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement. “The retention of users’ location data for longer than necessary aggravated this loss of control.”
A new “Copy code” button is rolling out to Gmail inboxes on Android and iOS that previews authentication codes below the subject line, letting you copy them with a single tap without opening the email. It isn’t available on web, but it should make mobile logins less tedious.
This episode of the BBC’s Towards Tomorrow explores whether humans and robots can coexist. It features an introduction from Isaac Asimov, in which he wonders whether the line between the two will become meaningless and “humanity itself will die out as humanity, and sort of melt into this machine culture.”
It’s unclear what military advantage there would be to storing “large quantities of sniper ammunition” and “large numbers of drones” in the DC arch. The area already has a significant military presence. But this is the same tactic Trump used to argue for his ballroom, which suddenly became a national security issue when it faced legal challenges.
It’s AI CEO against AI CEO, and things are changing by the day.
Valve’s 0.3.0 update for Steam Frame claims “Substantially faster charging while unit is off / sleeping.” It’s true. I used to see 8-watt charging when plugging in a dead unit, and 27-watt charging at peak. Now I’m getting 19-21W charging right away and up to 42W in game.
That’s enough to plug in a dead Frame and start playing right away.
The price increase reportedly follows higher prices from chip manufacturer TSMC, and could impact everything from AMD’s GPUs to its motherboard chipsets. Intel is reportedly planning a similar price hike, and Qualcomm and Nvidia also raised prices earlier this year.
The team behind Apple’s new foldable basically gave a second keynote to GQ, and snagged a couple brief statements from new CEO John Ternus. “Steve [Jobs] talked about the intersection of technology and liberal arts, and I think iPhone Duo is a perfect example of that,” Ternus told GQ.
After 100 years this Leica I was suffering from light leaks as a result of shutter curtains that had become porous. This satisfying ASMR video shares the two and a half hour process of the camera being disassembled, cleaned, repaired, and put back together by an expert technician.
You’ll have to pay at least $9.99 a month for Apple Home’s new AI-powered features, including video summaries, for just one camera. If you want access on up to five cameras, it’s $59.99 (included in the 12TB iCloud Plus plan). Is this a sign of more subscription fees on the horizon for Apple’s smart home?
Those are just three of 1,400 new words added to the more comprehensive online version of Merriam-Webster’s linguistic repository. Other additions include Mandela Effect, AGI, letterboxing, looksmaxxing, and what seems like a really late acknowledgement for Rickroll.
They’ve opened “at least one criminal probe” following complaints about the glasses being used to film women on the street in public without their consent, Reuters reports. France’s data protection authority also says businesses are “increasingly” asking if they can ban smart glasses at work, similar to a ban under consideration in Australia.
Clicks is offering another updated look at the much-awaited Communicator and a couple of pleasant surprises for those who have already pre-ordered the device: more RAM, a slightly bigger battery, and Android 17 included as standard.
It’s expected to ship in December to customers, and this video gives a look at some of the software features Clicks has been working on.
The annual Small World in Motion Competition has yielded another five bangers. The first place entry used a 100X magnification to capture the abnormal airway cilia inside a child with a genetic disorder affecting respiratory function. Sad, but beautiful. ABC News (Australia) has a roundup.
The agent initially launched earlier this month on iOS, Android, and the web, but now, you can use it on your Mac computer, as announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. With Muse on Mac, the agent can do things like organize files, fill out forms, and pull information from apps including Messages, Calendar, and Notes, Meta says.
The Steam Frame and Meta Quest headsets can natively beam your Windows monitors into a headset — but some still prefer Virtual Desktop, the app that pioneered the idea in 2016 before getting “sherlocked” by Meta. Developer Guy Godin says Valve didn’t send him a Frame, but he’ll try to port it anyhow.
Technically, I can already stream Virtual Desktop Classic, with working 3D video, but my monitors are stitched together and the controls feel awkward.
“Lepton is intended to help game developers bring their VR Android games to the Steam Frame,” Valve writes. “Lepton is not designed for general Android use, instead opting to keep the bare minimum functionality required to launch into games.”
Developers have already used it to port Meta Quest games to the Steam Frame. But could it do more?
[GitLab]
In court documents unredacted Thursday, lawyers for the NYT in its copyright infringement case against Microsoft and OpenAI cited Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht, saying that “millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions… almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use.”
The Orlando Sentinel, which is also part of the suit, reports a Microsoft filing “framed Hecht as someone on the payroll to play a contrarian.”
On the Noto Emoji site, you can search for emoji, download 2D and 3D files of the (open source) emoji in different formats, and even see the original proposals that helped things get turned into emoji in the first place. (In 2019, I wrote about that proposal process for my submissions of the waffle and yawning face emoji.)
I also recommend Google’s post about designing its Noto 3D emoji, it’s good stuff.
