Samsung’s new app, Samsung Food, is designed to be a personalized AI cooking assistant. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Wi-Fi-connected kitchen appliances have struggled to prove their worth, but Samsung’s not entirely new app could help realize the potential of connected cooking.

Continue reading…

Image: James Bareham / The Verge

A federal judge has blocked a Texas law that would require age verification and health warnings for pornographic websites, calling it unconstitutional and poorly defined. In a preliminary injunction decision released today, Judge David Ezra ruled in favor of the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade association. The ruling prevents Texas from enforcing HB 1181, one of multiple state-level bills that would require age verification for accessing adult content online.

Ezra, a Ronald Reagan-appointed district judge, said HB 1181 had numerous problems that could limit internet users and adult content creators’ First Amendment rights. “The restriction is constitutionally problematic because it deters adults’ access to legal sexually…

Continue reading…

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
University of Zürich and Intel researchers reveal Swift, an autonomous drone trained via deep reinforcement learning to beat human champions in FPV drone racing  —  University creates the first autonomous system capable of beating humans at drone racing.

Image: Larian Studios

It brings me no joy to say this, but I can’t play Baldur’s Gate 3 for the foreseeable future. Is it because my plate of games is full and will remain so for the next eight years? That’s true, but it’s not the reason. Or is it because the game has taken over my life such that I ignore my personal and professional responsibilities? Also true — but still not the reason. It’s bugs.

Bugs in a huge game like Baldur’s Gate 3 aren’t uncommon, and more often than not, they’re tolerable nuisances. My bug encounter rate in Act 1 and 2 was negligible, just minor graphical issues, texture pop-ins, and noticeable delays between when an NPC stops talking and my dialogue choices appear. Ignorable. But in Act 3, I’ve encountered an apparent bug so…

Continue reading…

Chrome’s new Copy Video Frame tool outputs a high-quality image with no overlay. Too bad I couldn’t use it to show the right-click menu! | Screenshot: The Verge

Google just made it easier to grab high-quality still images from videos — and it works in a bunch of browsers. In a post on Google’s Keyword blog aimed at students, the company announced a new feature built into Chrome that lets you capture a high-quality, non-overlayed frame from the source video. Just right-click on the video when paused and select “Copy Video Frame.” It might not work on all videos — actually, as far as I can tell, it mostly just works on YouTube — but it does work in a bunch of Chromium-based browsers, not just Chrome.

Google’s pitching this as a tool for students to grab notes from lecture videos, which, sure! After messing around with the new feature for a few minutes, I can confirm that it does offer much higher…

Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

New York’s subway pass system has turned off a feature that could enable others to track your travels if they have access to your bank card number. In a statement to The Verge, Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesperson Eugene Resnick says the agency “disabled the feature” as part of its “ongoing commitment to customer privacy.”

The MTA’s OMNY system is a contactless subway pass option that lets you pay for a fare by tapping your phone or bank card at a station. However, a report published by 404 Media on Wednesday found that anyone with your card number and expiration date can see your rides within the past seven days through OMNY’s “trip history” feature.

“This feature was meant to help our customers who want access to their…

Continue reading…

Segways stunned the world when they first hit the market in 2001. Hoverboards then terrified the world with nasty accidents and surprise fires. [James Bruton] loves hoverboards regardless, and set out on a mighty upgrade regime turning the ride-on toy into a giant omniwheeled bicycle.

The build relies on two giant omniwheels of [James’s] own creation, using lasercut and 3D-printed parts. The wheels are mounted perpendicularly on either end of a boxy plywood “bike frame” built in two sections, with a split in the middle. The two halves can rotate relative to each other, much like the two halves of a stock hoverboard.

Amazingly, the build relies on the stock hoverboard motors and electronics. The hoverboard wheel motors are responsible for driving the omniwheels at either end via a toothed belt drive. The gear ratio of the belt reduction is set up to cancel out the greater diameter of the omniwheels, such that the hoverboard’s tuning isn’t disrupted. Wisely, [James] also fitted a safety power cutout, too.

The result is a self-balancing “bike” the likes of which you’ve never seen before. At present, it can balance upright and rotate relatively well. However, control is difficult, requiring the use of the rider’s body weight and the twisting of the bike’s sections. [James] has instead contemplated using servos to tilt the hoverboard sensors instead for an easier control method than the current setup.

It’s a truly bonkers build which is a testament to [James’s] creativity and prowess. We’ve seen some other great hoverboard hacks before, but nothing quite like this. Video after the break.

Microsoft is retiring its Visual Studio for Mac IDE. The company advises developers on Mac to seek alternatives such as the C# Dev Kit for Visual Studio Code and other extensions that enable .NET development.

Citing ongoing user feedback and usage patterns for Visual Studio for Mac, Microsoft on August 30 said it is now focusing efforts on optimizing its Visual Studio IDE, available through the Microsoft Dev Box service on Azure for developers on any OS, and also the C# Dev Kit for VS Code, also available for any OS. With the retirement, Visual Studio for Mac 17.6 will be supported until August 31, 2024.

To read this article in full, please click here

Child safety group Heat Initiative plans to launch a campaign pressing Apple on child sexual abuse material scanning and user reporting. The company issued a rare, detailed response on Thursday.

Child safety group Heat Initiative plans to launch a campaign pressing Apple on child sexual abuse material scanning and user reporting. The company issued a rare, detailed response on Thursday.

Microsoft is retiring its Visual Studio for Mac IDE. The company advises developers on Mac to seek alternatives such as the C# Dev Kit for Visual Studio Code and other extensions that enable .NET development.

Citing ongoing user feedback and usage patterns for Visual Studio for Mac, Microsoft on August 30 said it is now focusing efforts on optimizing its Visual Studio IDE, available through the Microsoft Dev Box service on Azure for developers on any OS, and also the C# Dev Kit for VS Code, also available for any OS. With the retirement, Visual Studio for Mac 17.6 will be supported until August 31, 2024.

To read this article in full, please click here

The Indian Space Research Organisation’s Pragyan rover does the twist on the Moon. | Image: ISRO

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is riding on the high of its Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission’s successful landing, sharing more of it with the world by posting a new video of the lander’s imager observing the rover as it rotates on the no-longer-Super-Blue Moon’s surface.

India’s space agency is trying to research the Moon’s history on the south pole, where the Chandrayaan-3 probe successfully landed last week.

The post describes the rover as a child “playfully frolicking in the yards of Chandamama” in a video captured on August 29th. Chandamama is a term of endearment toward the Moon in Hindi and other regional languages and is also used in nursery rhymes. (My mom used to sing this to me as a lullaby.)

Continue reading…

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Bumble updates its community guidelines to crack down on bots, spam, ghosting, and doxxing, and says the company blocked 8.2M+ accounts in 2023, mostly using AI  —  Dating app company Bumble has released its updated community guidelines with an aim to crack down on bots, spam, ghosting, and doxing.

Starfield is all about space exploration — potentially like hundreds of hours of it. | Image: Bethesda Game Studios

It’s been a very busy year for big game releases, with Starfield being one of the biggest titles that has yet to launch. The Xbox and PC exclusive from Bethesda is promising a massive sci-fi world to voyage around, with over 1,000 explorable planets and countless weapon and mod customizations. It’s also the first new world that Bethesda has created in over two decades, offering a change of pace from its long-running Elder Scrolls franchise.

If what you saw in Bethesda’s 45-minute gameplay preview or our review has you hyped enough to preorder Starfield ahead of its September 6th release date or September 1st early-access launch, we’ve compiled all your options into a one-stop shop. From the $69.99 base game to the $299.99 Constellation…

Continue reading…

Have you ever tried to take a screenshot of a moment in a video you’re watching? It rarely ever looks good, as the image is often pretty low quality. But Google has introduced a new feature to the latest version of the Chrome browser that will solve that issue.

In a blog post focused on college students, Google revealed a new feature arriving to Chrome browsers starting today. That new feature is called “Copy Video Frame.”

Image: Colin Young-Wolff

Though The Guard won Valorant’s Ascension tournament, earning them a promotion into the international league, the team will not compete in the 2024 season, and its roster has been dissolved.

Continue reading…

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta is testing a “For you on Threads” carousel in Instagram, with a button to open the Threads app, after adding a “Send to Instagram DM” button in Threads  —  Meta is continuously experimenting with features to bump up engagement on Threads, which has fallen off …

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nvidia and AMD say they face new restrictions in some Middle Eastern countries, Reuters reports. This widens the restrictions on these chips beyond China and Russia. The new licensing requirement applies to “a subset” of Nvidia’s top-end chips, the company said.

In response, the Biden administration said it “has not blocked” chip sales to the Middle East, Reuters reports. “The Commerce Department declined to comment on whether it had imposed new requirements on specific U.S. companies,” Reuters writes. The Commerce Department, Nvidia, and AMD didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Nvidia announced the new licensing requirement in a regulatory filing. Its statement reads:

There are also now licensing requirements to export a…

Continue reading…

Because Nintendo’s upcoming Mario game had no deadline, its creators were able to experiment with new styles and move from the Mushroom Kingdom to the Flower Kingdom—with delightfully trippy results.

Mark Wilding / The Verge:
Investigation: in July, IBM signed a £54.7M deal to develop a UK biometrics platform, including for facial recognition, despite a 2020 pledge to stop such work  —  IBM has returned to the facial recognition market — just three years after announcing it was abandoning work on the technology due …

Every year, we see the newest and best smartphones from the big brands, such as Samsung, Apple, Google, etc. Regardless of your preferred brand, the messaging is always crystal clear: “Your old phone is not as good as this new phone, so out with the old and in with the new!” While this is usually great for a company’s revenue, it’s not so great for the environment — or the usually underpaid folks who actually produce those phones on the factory line. These are trends the just-launched Fairphone 5 aims to disrupt.

In this sense, the Fairphone 5 is the anti-smartphone. It’s designed to be kept for a very long time by being easily repairable, easily upgradeable, and kept up-to-date with software for an ambitious ten years. In other words, Fairphone wants you to buy this phone and then not buy another until well into 2030. That’s not the message we get from pretty much any other brand.

The average Starlink user probably doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about their hardware after getting the dish aligned and wiring run. To security researchers, however, it’s another fascinating device to tinker with as they reverse-engineer the firmware and try to both find out what makes it tick, as well as how to break it. This is essentially the subject of [Carlo Ramponi]’s article over at Quarkslab as he digs into the firmware architecture and potential weaknesses in its internal communication.

The user terminal hardware itself is a quite standard AArch64 ARM-based SoC, along with the proprietary communication interface, all of which is controlled by the Linux-based firmware. Dumping the firmware itself was made easy thanks to existing work by researchers at the KU Leuven, involving dumping the contents of the onboard eMMC storage. After this the firmware architecture could be analyzed, which turned out to consist out of mostly C++-based binaries, but with a single big binary for the user front-end written in Go.

Communication between these processes is handled through a custom inter-process protocol called ‘Slate Sharing’, all of which is coordinated via the core User Terminal Control process. It are these Slate IPC messages which form the most likely attack surface for a fuzzing attack, with the SoftwareUpdateRequest command being an interesting target as it would seem to not require authentication since it doesn’t address a specific user. This work is part of [Carlo]’s master’s thesis, and should form the basis of further research on the Starlink User Terminal firmware.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nvidia and AMD say they face new restrictions in some Middle Eastern countries, Reuters reports. This widens the restrictions on these chips beyond China and Russia. The new licensing requirement applies to “a subset” of Nvidia’s top-end chips, the company said.

In response, the Biden administration said it “has not blocked” chip sales to the Middle East, Reuters reports. “The Commerce Department declined to comment on whether it had imposed new requirements on specific U.S. companies,” Reuters writes. The Commerce Department, Nvidia, and AMD didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Nvidia announced the new licensing requirement in a regulatory filing. Its statement reads:

There are also now licensing requirements to export a…

Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

IBM has returned to the facial recognition market — just three years after announcing it was abandoning work on the technology due to concerns about racial profiling, mass surveillance, and other human rights violations.

In June 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests swept the US after George Floyd’s murder, IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna wrote a letter to Congress announcing that the company would no longer offer “general purpose” facial recognition technology. “The fight against racism is as urgent as ever,” he wrote. “IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms,…

Continue reading…

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta begins testing full-text search on Threads in Australia and New Zealand and plans a wider rollout to other English-speaking countries in the future  —  Threads launched one of the most anticipated features, a web version of the platform, last week.  Now, Meta is testing another highly …