Alright, we get it. Y'all are excited about Slate. We thought the little Slate Truck was cool, but based on the number of clicks and comments on our Slate Auto articles so far, you'd like to know more. Many of you wrote in with questions and more than a few people raised some doubts.
So, we wanted to address as many of those as we could. Here's your one-stop shop for Slate answers based on your questions - plus a few of our own.
The Slate is clearly a vehicle built for everyday utility, and while it'll make for a handy machine for hauling a lot of things, big towing and heavy cargo were clearly not a top priority. Here are the key specs, compared against the four-wheel drive hybrid Ford Maverick with the 2.5-liter engine and a Ford F-150 4×2 with a 2.7-liter EcoBoost V6.
| Slate Truck | Ford Maverick | Ford F-150 | |
| Horsepower (hp) | 201 | 191 | 325 |
| Curb weight (lbs) | 3,602 | 3,674 | 4,171 |
| Max payload (lbs) | 1,433 | 1,500 | 1,775 |
| Max towing (lbs) | 1,000 | 2,000 | 8,400 |
| Bed length (ft) | 5 | 4.5 | 5.5, 6.5, or 8 |
| Bed width (max / min, in) | 50 / 54.9 | 42.6 / 53.3 | 50.6 / 66.9 |
| Seats | 2 | 5 | 5 |
It's worth noting that these Ford numbers vary widely based on configurati …
A lot of games have been released for the Playdate since it launched in 2022, as a quick browse of itch.io or the Catalog shop will attest. But still, there's something unique about the handheld's seasonal format, which just kicked off its second iteration. When it first launched, the Playdate came with 24 games from notable indie developers that were steadily released on a weekly cadence, making a perfect introduction to the little yellow device and its crank. Now, a few years later, we finally have season 2, and it's off to a solid start - and it even includes a bizarre mystery.
The new season runs for the next six weeks and totals a dozen games, two of which will drop each week. The entire collection will run you $39. To start, we have a pair of very different games. Fulcrum Defender, from FTL: Faster Than Light developer Subset Games, is sort of like a modern take on Asteroids. You control a little ship in the middle and fire guns at little squares flying toward you. The twist is that you use the crank to rotate the ship around and aim your shots. There's also something of a roguelike element, where you steadily unlock random upgrades like new weapons or a larger spread for y …
Since Google released its Veo 3 AI model last week, social media users have been having fun with its ability to quickly generate highly realistic eight-second clips complete with sound and lip-synced dialogue. TikTok's algorithm has been serving me plenty of Veo-generated videos featuring impossible challenges, fake news reports, and even surreal short narrative films, to name just a few popular archetypes.
However, among all the AI-generated video experiments spreading around, I've also noticed a surprising counter-trend on my TikTok feed. Amid all the videos of Veo-generated avatars pretending to be real people, there are now also a bunch of videos of real people pretending to be Veo-generated avatars.
I stumbled on this trend when the TikTok algorithm fed me this video topped with the extra-large caption "Google VEO 3 THIS IS 100% AI." As I watched and listened to the purported AI-generated band that appeared to be playing in the crowded corner of someone's living room, I read the caption containing the supposed prompt that had generated the clip: "a band of brothers with beards playing rock music in 6/8 with an accordion."
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Twitch is announcing a bunch of updates at TwitchCon Europe, including the ability to host a vertical livestream and an open beta test that lets creators stream at a higher quality.
The rollout of vertical streams should make livestreams easier to watch in portrait mode on your phone. Down the line, streamers won’t be forced to pick between vertical or horizontal streams; instead, Twitch will let streamers offer their streams in a dual format. The company will start testing the feature with a small amount of channels this summer and expand it later this year.
Twitch is also rolling out an open beta of “2k streaming” (which lets creators stream at 1440p) that will be available to all Twitch partners and affiliates. “Upgrading to 2k (1440p) streaming offers a noticeable step up from 1080p streaming, with richer detail, improved clarity, and better performance – whether you’re gaming, making art, or just chatting,” according to a Twitch support page. Before now, the feature had been available in a more limited beta.
The platform is introducing a way to rewind streams, too. This could be really handy if you miss something while a streamer is live or just want to go back and rewatch something. Twitch will test the feature first with a small number of viewers this summer.
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy teased the vertical streams and many other updates coming to the platform in 2025 in a letter published in February.
