Kylie Robison / Fortune: X is testing Not A Bot, a program requiring new, unverified users to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post, in New Zealand and the Philippines — The owner of X, Elon Musk, has long floated the idea of charging users $1 to use the platform.
Read MoreA good day for the defense! | Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images Nishad Singh looks less reliable. Is it enough? Continue reading…
Read MoreIllustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images If you want to join X, the service formerly known as Twitter, via its website in New Zealand and the Philippines, be prepared to fork over $1 a year for the privilege. The subscription, part of a so-called “Not A Bot” program, is beginning in those
Read MoreKarissa Bell / Engadget: X now requires a linked source for proposed community notes, as researchers say misinformation on the platform has reached new heights amid the Israel-Hamas war — Researchers have said that misinformation has reached new heights amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Read MoreIllustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more. Today, we’ve got a joint issue looking at why Apple’s latest iOS update could cause download numbers to go down and featuring a talk about brand safety with Spotify’s director
Read MoreIf the original Pixel Watch was Google’s rough draft, the Pixel Watch 2 is an edited version much more than a complete rewrite. Google gave hopefuls a solid enough first-generation smartwatch, but it desperately needed refinement to smooth off the rougher edges. The Pixel Watch 2 cleans up some of the original’s mistakes with simple,
Read MoreTom Warren / The Verge: Phil Spencer says Activision Blizzard games won’t come to Xbox Game Pass until 2024, in part due to the time it took for the Activision acquisition to be closed — There’s no ‘secret celebration drop that’s coming in the next couple of weeks.’ … Xbox chief and Microsoft Gaming CEO
Read MoreAshley Stewart / Insider: Internal document: Amazon has committed more than $1B over five years to secure 1M+ Microsoft 365 license seats — – Internal document shows Microsoft ramping up internally for a huge 365 cloud deal with Amazon. — Amazon has purchased more than 1 million seats for Microsoft’s 365 suite, the document states.
Read MoreX is promoting Community Notes to solve its disinformation problems, but some former employees and people who currently contribute notes say it’s not fit for that purpose.
Read MoreImage: EA There’s a whole host of great games hitting Xbox Game Pass throughout October, including the grisly Dead Space remake that’s arriving just in time for Halloween. The Dead Space remake offers a complete overhaul of the original 2008 sci-fi horror title, and it’s headed to Game Pass for cloud, PC, and Xbox Series
Read MoreIllustration: The Verge Google Chrome on iOS and Android devices will look for possible typos in URLs and suggest corrections for you, Google announced in a blog post on Tuesday. This new accessibility feature for mobile versions of Chrome was promised earlier this year when Google released the same feature on Chrome for computers. Google
Read MoreRob Pegoraro / PCMag: The US IRS plans to offer a free direct e-filing option in 13 states in 2024, for taxpayers with simpler tax situations — The move deals a blow to decades of effort by Intuit and other tax-prep software vendors to stop government e-filing efforts. … Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act …
Read MoreJay Peters / The Verge: Roblox CEO David Baszucki says the company is “transitioning away” from remote work, as virtual workspaces aren’t as engaging or productive as physical ones — Roblox — a company that builds a hugely popular virtual experiences platform, recently introduced its own spin on video chat …
Read MoreImage: Microsoft OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model may be more trustworthy than GPT-3.5 but also more vulnerable to jailbreaking and bias, according to research backed by Microsoft. The paper — by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Center for AI Safety, and Microsoft Research — gave GPT-4 a
Read MoreIllustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is sunsetting its blockchain-based Community Points product, the company announced on Tuesday. A Reddit admin (employee) shared the announcement about Community Points, which uses the Ethereum blockchain, on a few subreddits, including r/CryptoCurrency (which had its own “moons” crypto token), r/FortniteBR (which had its own “bricks” token),
Read MoreCredit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Wear OS 4 is starting to roll out on the original Pixel Watch. The update is arriving with the Pixel Watch October security patch. Wear OS 4 will bring several new features to the Pixel Watch. After the Pixel Watch 2 launched with Wear OS 4, many original
Read MoreIrina Anghel / Bloomberg: PwC teams up with OpenAI to use AI to consult on complex tax, legal, and HR matters, as the Big Four audit firms look to AI to cut costs and boost productivity — PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has teamed up with ChatGPT owner OpenAI to offer clients advice generated by artificial intelligence …
Read MoreRon Amadeo / Ars Technica: Qualcomm says it’s developing a Snapdragon RISC-V chip for Wear OS in partnership with Google, in what could be the first mass-market RISC-V Android SoC — Qualcomm and Google project will enable more RISC-V Android devices in the future. — The Android ecosystem is hurtling toward a RISC-V future.
Read MorePhoto by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony has released more details about its PS5 cloud streaming feature for PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers, including bandwidth recommendations and a detailed FAQ page coinciding with the Japanese launch of the service on October 17th. The most interesting bit is the bandwidth recommendations, which seem relatively modest. Sony
Read MoreIvan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google rolls out new accessibility features, like Lens in Maps screen reader options, Google Maps accessible walking routes, and faster Chrome mobile search — Google is updating Maps, Search, and Assistant with new accessibility features. The company is also releasing a new Magnifier app to help users read text in different
Read MoreCredit: Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority You have to feel for the graphic designers and digital artists. AI may be coming for all of our jobs eventually, but AI image generation already gives everyone with an internet connection fantastic capabilities beyond our imagination a few years ago. Midjourney was one of the first AI image
Read MoreIllustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Xbox chief and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has confirmed that Activision Blizzard games aren’t coming to Xbox Game Pass anytime soon. In the latest official Xbox podcast, Spencer confirms there’s not going to be a big drop of Activision Blizzard games into Xbox Game Pass in the
Read MorePhoto by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google is bringing Wear OS 4 to its first Pixel Watch. In an announcement on Tuesday, Google says the update will start rolling out today and continue “over the coming weeks,” depending on your carrier and device. The Wear OS 4 update will bring several new features
Read MoreEmma Roth / The Verge: Meta now lets Instagram users control specific activity that third-party websites share with the app, an ability previously only available on Facebook — Meta will now let you block Instagram from collecting your data across the apps and websites you visit.
Read MoreIngrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Smartphone-based ID verification startup Prove Identity, called Payfone until 2020 and which has ~1,000 business customers, raised $40M at a “unicorn” valuation — Prove Identity, the smartphone-based identity verification startup that originally made its name years ago as Payfone …
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