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.
The themes menu for RCS chats now has options for different bubble colors and wallpapers, including an option to upload your own background image. Google says chat customizations are only visible to you, though, not anyone else in the chat.
With the option enabled, only your followers will see your posts in Bluesky’s Discover feed. Other apps running the decentralized AT Protocol may still include your content in their feeds, however.
You can find the feature by navigating to your settings menu, selecting “Privacy and Security,” and turning on “Ask apps to hide my posts from algorithmic recommendations.”
The new $149 Meridian Band is a jewelry-inspired housing for the fifth-generation Whoop wearable that’s designed to make it look less like a boring gadget. The band is made from Milanese mesh and comes in a choice of black, silver, gold, and rose gold. You have to remove it to charge the device, however.
That’s what the fairly reliable leaker Digital Chat Station thinks Oppo has planned for its Find X10 Pro Max, tipped to launch in either September or October. It’s a different approach to the Find X9 Ultra, which leaned into a 10x periscope lens to stand out.
[Weibo]
The $619 HomePower 1000 Plus V2 solar generator is now available in white or gray. It’s built around a 1kWh LFP battery that can be expanded to an impressive 11kWh of capacity. Its diminutive size, 1800W of sustained AC output, and up to 400W of solar (or car’s alternator) input makes it suitable for vanlifers, creator job sites, and even home backup to keep devices like the fridge and CPAP machine running during the next outage.
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I certainly didn’t expect one of Cook’s final tweets as Apple’s CEO to star Pikachu. Wonder what his favorite Pokémon game is.
An open letter signed by over 100 companies and organizations calls for a “global surge in cyber defense,” saying “AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated:”
Put cyber-capable AI in the hands of defenders, starting with the teams protecting essential services. Fix the most dangerous weaknesses, verify the fixes, and share what works so others can build on it. Together, we can turn today’s AI advances into lasting improvements in security that benefit everyone.
How is Amazon getting away with this? This isn’t a third-party seller; they’re shipped and sold by Amazon Germany. Even DJI knows the DJI Pocket 4P isn’t legal to import, but Amazon’s been offering one of the best prices to US buyers for over a week now.
The prediction market platform will use The Weather Company’s data to verify weather-related market outcomes, such as how high the daily temperature might get in New York or Los Angeles. At the same time, The Weather Company will add Kalshi’s weather probabilities to “select experiences” on its app and website.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The feature is rolling out in the US in the coming weeks and will support bookings at Expedia, Booking.com, Hilton, Hotels.com, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, Priceline, and others.
Google also announced that you can now set up flight tracking alerts through AI Mode, as well as view the cost of flights in points or miles by linking your airline rewards account.
The Verge’s Hayden Field on how OpenAI president Greg Brockman has consolidated power as Sam Altman’s second-in-command.
Alienware announced its fancy AW3926QW monitor back at Computex, and it’s now up for sale with an actual price. The 39-inch tandem OLED with a 165Hz refresh rate and 1500R curve uses an LG panel with RGB stripe subpixels for sharper text display. And it’s loaded with extras, like a KVM and a USB-C port with 90W passthrough power. All for a cool $1,099.
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Nvidia, which recently debuted “compute as an asset class” and definitely is not doing circular financing, is reportedly buying Hugging Face for almost $13 billion, according to The Information, which cites a single anonymous source. Almost an hour earlier, Business Insider reported that the two companies were in talks but had not yet reached a deal, also citing a single anonymous source.
That’s on top of the 1 million Nvidia GPUs it was already planning to add, before demand “exceeded” expectations. The two companies doubled down on their partnership as Nvidia announced record revenue yet again, and Amazon says it’s planning to bring Nvidia’s Vera CPUs to AWS.
Sony’s new trailer for The Social Reckoning features a few brief snippets of Strong’s performance. The voice is pretty uncanny. The film debuts in theaters on October 9th.
X sued the startup after it attempted to cancel its ownership of the “Twitter” and “Tweet” trademarks, claiming they had been “abandoned.” But a preliminary ruling from April suggests “X seemed to have given up intellectual property claims,” leading Operation Bluebird’s co-founders to launch the Twitter.now platform, as reported by Ars Technica.
The platform is currently available in early access to “founders” who pay $20.
[Ars Technica]
From an announcement post:
Combined, we become two halves of one machine. [Flipboard’s] Surf will be the browser for the open social web — where people go to read and discover feeds across Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, RSS, and more. Graze will be the engine under those feeds — how a curator builds, tunes, and monetizes one without writing a line of code. Browse on one side, build and get paid on the other. And together, in joining forces, we serve tens of building atop open social protocols.
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