Tech Talk

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have become indispensable to millions of users. Tesla Autopilot has the potential to change driving forever. And IBM Watson took a new job providing big data solutions to corporations after its first job was in jeopardy. Those are just the most prominent examples. Helpful applications of AI are being deployed in a broad spectrum of industries, but AI also has the potential to be misused. About the author  Jason Egnal is Chief Marketing Officer at Zenfolio . His background spans a variety of industries, including SaaS, AI, Fintech and Consumer Electronics.  Zenfolio, the website builder and photo sharing site , recently introduced technology that applies AI to assist photographers in selecting the best photos from the thousands of shots typically taken during a photo session. The advanced image recognition technology is tremendously powerful and can make photographers more efficient than they ever d

Nvidia’s RTX 4080 has popped up at retailers with one graphics card showing at the MSRP in the US as we near the official on-sale date – but the news isn’t so good in the UK sadly (or elsewhere in Europe). So, the official MSRP in the US is $1,199 for the GeForce RTX 4080 (16GB version – which is the only variant now, of course, since the 12GB spin was canceled ), and we’ve also seen that it will retail in the UK at an MSRP of £1,269 (we’ll come back to that). This is the price Nvidia will sell for, but third-party custom versions of the RTX 4080 will command more of a premium in some cases, but not in every instance, and we’ve seen that illustrated with a PNY graphics card that has the official MSRP pinned to it. As Tom’s Hardware highlights, this is the PNY Gaming Verto RTX 4080 which is priced at bang-on $1,199 and might be up for pre-order before long, bearing in mind the 4080 isn’t officially on sale until November 16, just over a fortnight away yet. There’s also the faste

Cloud misconfigurations are one of the biggest causes of data breaches these days, and one security researcher has now set out to fix it with a new tool. Built on Python, S3crets Scanner allows security researchers and analysts to look for “secrets” that companies exposed to the public, by mistake, through their company’s AWS S3 storage buckets. As explained by BleepingComputer , secrets include authentication keys, access tokens, or API keys, all of which can be used by threat actors to deal plenty of damage. For example, these secrets can be used to access the company’s corporate network and endpoints , which could result in data theft, malware infections, or even ransomware attacks.  Targeting PII The tool was built by security researcher Eilon Harel to only look for secrets exposed by mistake. It does so by only scanning S3 buckets that have specific configurations set to false, such as “BlockPublicAcls”, “BlockPublicPolicy”, “IgnorePublicAcls”, and “RestrictPublicBuckets”. A

While we wait patiently for The Witcher season 3 , there's some good news and some potentially bad news for fans of the fantasy series: Netflix has renewed the show for a fourth season, but star Henry Cavill won't be returning as Geralt of Rivia. As per the Netflix announcement , Liam Hemsworth – perhaps best known as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games series – will be stepping into the role. That casting change is just about the only information we have on season 4 at the moment. "My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures, and alas, I will be laying down my medallion and my swords for Season 4," said the departing Cavill in a statement. "In my stead, the fantastic Mr. Liam Hemsworth will be taking up the mantle of the White Wolf." "As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam's take on this most fascinating and nu

The Google Pixel Tablet is taking its time on the journey between the first reveal of the device (May 2022) and it actually being available to buy (sometime in 2023), and that means a wide window of opportunity for leaks and rumors to appear. As spotted by the team at 9to5Google , we may have been given our first look at the software running on board the Pixel Tablet, via a blog post on keyboard shortcut updates that are coming to the Google Keep app on Android. It's difficult to know for sure, but it makes sense that Google engineers would already be using the tablet internally, and the size of the GIF scales up to the expected Pixel Tablet screen resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. Details, details The animated image doesn't tell us too much about how the Pixel Tablet is going to look in terms of its software, but we can see a docked row of icons along the bottom of the screen, and the familiar Android status bar along the top. That status bar is bigger than it would no

Microsoft has announced strong Q1 2023 financial results thanks largely to the success of its cloud services, despite losses in its flagship Windows PC vector.  The company’s Microsoft Cloud division raked in $25.7 billion worth of revenue in the quarter, a 24% increase from the same period last year.  The business now accounts for over a half of the company’s entire revenue, and helped it to offset the losses seen in its Windows OEM division - where the operating system is installed on machines made by other manufacturers - which was down by 15%. Global concerns Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella blamed the overall downtown in the PC market, and in an earnings call indicated that the company was giving less attention to its traditional OS model and instead focusing on cloud computing. Nadella added the company wanted to help customers “do more with less” and that it will be “managing [its] cost structure in a disciplined way”.  Microsoft also revealed its overall revenue was up by 1

Nick Barclay / The Verge Spotify says Apple is making it harder to sell audiobooks, an offering Spotify just introduced last month . The company called Apple practices “anticompetitive” and said it was “choking competition” in a blog post published just before the company revealed its earnings report on Tuesday . Spotify says Apple’s rules make the process of buying an audiobook on Spotify “far too complicated and confusing,” adding that Apple changes its “rules arbitrarily, making them impossible to interpret.” Apple charges up to a 30 percent commission on purchases made in apps listed on the App Store, and bars certain developers from using or directing users to an external payment processor. As outlined in a webpage Spotify specifically made to support its cause, the company says Apple rejected its proposed audiobook purchasing process three times because it went against the App Store’s policies. To comply with Apple’s rules, Spotify hides the price of its audiobooks and do

Alex Castro / The Verge It’s a new financial year for Microsoft, and the Windows and Xbox maker has just posted the first quarter of its 2023 financial results today . Microsoft made $50.1 billion in revenue and a net income of $17.6 billion during Q1. Revenue is up 11 percent but net income has decreased by 14 percent — meaning profits are down at Microsoft this quarter. While there were signs of PC declines earlier this year, it’s clear this quarter that the PC is very much in decline, and that has impacted Microsoft’s Windows results. PC shipments experienced another big decline in the recent quarter — 15 percent, according to IDC . Geopolitical tensions, inflation, and continued supply chain challenges are all contributing to PC sales issues, alongside softer demand. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Surface Pro 9 launched today. Microsoft’s Windows OEM revenue, the price PC manufacturers pay Microsoft to put Windows on machines, fell 15 percent in Q1, driven

Just cover my desk in buttons, y’all. The Mountain Everest Max is an absolutely massive keyboard that looks like it shakes down 60 percent keyboards for their lunch money. Now, this maximalist keyboard is getting even bigger with the addition of a pair of new peripherals. Mountain is giving you the option of adding an additional 12 buttons to your desk setup with its new MacroPad and DisplayPad. The MacroPad is exactly what it says on the tin, giving you 12 new buttons that you can bind to individual functions or program macros through Mountain’s Basecamp software. Just like Mountain’s keyboards, the MacroPad features hot-swappable switches and addressable RGB lighting. Image: Mountain The Mountain MacroPad, for when 104 keys isn’t enough The DisplayPad is arguably the more impressive peripheral, with 12 miniature LED screens that can be customized with individual icons. While it can also use the Basecamp software to bind macros to each of its buttons, the DisplayPad also fea

Google’s new web view for its Nest cameras should arrive this week. | Image: Google Google is finally giving its Nest smart home cameras one home on the web. In a blog post published today, Google announced the rollout of its long-promised Google Home web view . You should now be able to view all your Nest cameras and doorbells on home.google.com . If it’s not there for you yet, Google says it will be by next week. The ability to start a Google Home Routine when your door unlocks, a light is turned off, or a doorbell is pressed is also showing up for some users (us included). Here’s the list of supported cameras for the web view: Nest Cam (battery) and Nest Cam (wired) Nest Cam with floodlight (wired) Nest Doorbell (battery) Nest Doorbell (wired) aka Nest Hello Nest Doorbell (wired, second-gen) Nest Cam Indoor and Nest Cam Outdoor Nest Cam IQ Indoor and Nest Cam IQ Outdoor Last year, Rishi Chandra, the general manager of Google Nest, promised a desktop view would be co

Stage Manager’s external display support is only available on iPads with an M1 chip. | Image: Apple Apple’s getting closer to shipping Stage Manager’s promised external display support on iPadOS 16. As pointed out by 9to5Mac , Apple has included the feature with its release of the iPadOS 16.2 developer beta, which comes one day after the company launched iOS 16.1, iPadOS 16.1 , macOS 13 (aka Ventura), and tvOS 16.1. When Apple first announced Stage Manager at WWDC in June , it initially limited Stage Manager to iPads with an M1 chip, claiming older chips just don’t have enough power. While it later backtracked on this decision after facing criticism from users, it did still reserve support for external displays in Stage Manager for iPads with the M1 chip. The feature lets you hook up your iPad to an external display or Mac, giving you more room to work. Apple says it supports resolutions up to 6K and lets you open up to four apps on each screen. Image: Apple Freeform lets yo

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge WhatsApp is down in a major outage affecting the communications app. The service started experiencing issues at around 3AM ET, with users greeted with a “connecting” message. If you’re attempting to use WhatsApp web, you’ll see a “Make sure your computer has an active internet connection” error. Downdetector has more than 60,000 reports of issues with the service, and the outage appears to be affecting users globally. “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible,” says Meta spokesperson Joshua Breckman in a statement to The Verge . This is the first major WhatsApp outage since the service went down as part of a massive outage that also took down Instagram, Messenger, Oculus, and Facebook last year. That outage took nearly six hours before it was resolved and WhatsApp was back online. Meta, known as Facebook at the time, said that major o

(Image credit: Pexels/Anton) It looks like WhatsApp is down. Millions of users have been trying to send messages on the app, but rather than being sent, people are simply seeing a clock icon next to their messages. As of the morning of Tuesday, October 25, WhatsApp seems incapable of sending apps, although people can still log in and see previously sent apps. We've fired up this live blog to bring you all the latest developments, while we - and hopefully the WhatsApp team at Meta - try to figure out what's happening. Welcome to our WhatsApp is down live blog. After seeing numerous reports about WhatsApp being down, I've tried sending a message myself, and sure enough, it won't send - instead I'm getting a clock icon next to the message, which suggests the WhatsApp servers are failing. Very frustrating. Source: TechRadar

Currently, there’s no explanation for why the election’s being called off. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Amazon Labor Union has withdrawn its petition to hold an election at an Amazon fulfillment center in Moreno Valley, California, according to Kayla Blado, a spokesperson for the National Labor Relations Board. It’s a sharp-turn around for organization efforts at the facility, known as ONT8; the petition was filed on October 12th , and the NLRB had confirmed that there was a sufficient showing of interest to proceed with the election, according to The Los Angeles Times ’ Suhauna Hussain . It’s unclear why the petition was withdrawn or if it has any relation to the ALU’s recent loss in Albany, New York. The withdrawal request isn’t currently publicly available, but petitioners don’t have to tell the NLRB why they’re withdrawing, according to Blado. The union didn’t immediately respond to The Verge ’s request for comment. Had the election proceeded, an estimated 800

The final update for Chome on Windows 7 and 8.1 is scheduled to be released in early February. | Illustration: The Verge Google will release the final version of Chrome for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 sometime next year. Chrome 110, which is tentatively scheduled to be released on February 7th, 2023, will be the last version that supports the two older Microsoft operating systems, according to a Google support page ( via Android Police ). This could be a bigger deal than you might think. Despite Windows 7 first being released in 2009 and Microsoft officially ending support for it in 2020 , data suggests that the operating system is still running on a whole lot of devices: as recently as last year, that number was estimated to be at least 100 million PCs . That means a lot of people could soon be both an unsupported operating system and an unsupported web browser, which could be a significant security risk. Chrome will still work after version 110, but it won’t get any future upda

Apple’s collaboration with U2 included special edition iPods. | Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images In a new memoir, U2 frontman Bono has spilled the beans on the internal discussions that lead to two of the band’s high-profile collaborations with Apple. The first saw the band star in one of the company’s iconic iPod ads, while the second is much less fondly remembered, and involved Apple pushing the band’s newly released album into the hands of everyone with an iTunes account. The anecdotes appear in Bono’s upcoming book, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story , extracts of which have been published by The Guardian . According to Bono, the Vertigo music video came about after members of the band met with then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs in October 2004 to pitch its upcoming song “Vertigo” as the soundtrack to one of the iPod’s silhouette commercials. But with the band refusing to accept a traditional fee for its appearance, and with Jobs reluctant to pay in Apple stock, Bono was apparently th

What’s next for Florence Pugh’s character in the Marvel movies ? Whatever happens in Thunderbolts, it looks like it won’t see Yelena Belova’s arc come to an end. The Hollywood Reporter has hinted at the existence of another, currently unnamed Marvel project set to feature Florence Pugh, revealing that the actor is due to receive eight-figure sums for her appearances in Thunderbolts and another movie. "Florence Pugh, already an Oscar nominee when she appeared in Black Widow as Yelena Belova, will receive eight figures for her next two Marvel films, including leading the ensemble cast of the villain-centric Thunderbolts." Florence Pugh is one of the best-known Marvel movie stars of recent years, having risen to prominence in popular films such as Midsommar and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. She has also been at the center of fierce online chatter surrounding this year’s Don’t Worry Darling , also starring Harry Styles and Chris Pine. Pugh first appeared in the MCU in 2021’s

Thomas Hedger / The Verge Automakers tout advanced driver-assistance systems like adaptive cruise control and emergency braking as a solution to the epidemic of traffic fatalities. But what if they’re just convenience features? Car companies love to explain how their research and development efforts will lead us toward “a world with zero crashes,” as General Motors puts it. Automakers like Stellantis and Nissan , among others, tout their efforts to develop “next generation technologies to make roads safer for drivers and pedestrians alike.” With American roadway deaths now exceeding 40,000 per year — including a surge of 10.5 percent in 2021, the fastest on record — these promises sound like salvation. The companies are referring to technologies, typically known as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), that can manage aspects of the driving experience and intervene if the human behind the wheel makes a mistake. Such features include automatic emergency braking, lane keep