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Today — 14 January 2025The Verge News

DJI Flip official: the unique bicycle spoke folding drone starts at $439

14 January 2025 at 05:00
A camera appears to be attached to four bicycle wheels containing propellers

At $439, the DJI Flip could be a good starting point for people who don’t typically buy drones at all. You can unfold it, launch it from your hand with a single button, land it on your hand again, or optionally use joysticks, all while capturing higher quality photos and video than the immediate competition.

In August, my colleague Thomas Ricker told you how DJI rival Hover had changed the game by selling a $349 flying camera that doesn’t require people to learn joysticks; with the $199 DJI Neo, DJI looked poised to muscle in on that in a big way. But the $439 Flip not only lets you launch and film basic dronies, orbits, and follow-me shots from the drone itself, it dramatically increases camera quality, flight stability, battery life (a quoted 31 minutes), and lets you launch it faster. You just won't be able to fly it FPV like some of us were hoping.

Not only is the Flip the first DJI drone to look like a Star Wars AT-AT walker or a penny-farthing bicycle when folded, it’s also the first to automatically power on when you unfold it, saving two button presses. And when you flip out each of its four spoke-filled full-coverage propeller guards — which DJI says are a first for its folding drones — they join an auto-braking, forward-facing 3D infrared sensor to protect the camera from any front impacts as well.

And while that camera isn’t quite as impressive as the 1.0-inch type found on DJI’s Osmo Pocket 3, I was impressed by my first results in good light! It’s smaller 1/1.3-inch 4K60 sensor with 4:3 aspect ratio is capable of taking 2.7K vertical video or 48 megapixel stills behind a fast f/1.7 aperture lens. Here are a couple of my unedited early flights, a drone selfie, and a photo, to give you an idea:

An aerial photo from the DJI Flip.

Frankly, the DJI Neo — which costs less than half as much — can’t come close to this level of performance; over the same lake and the same park, the Neo couldn’t even maintain a smooth level shot as the breeze blew its lighter frame around, and its images were muddy and washed out by comparison. The Flip has a three-axis gimbal to help maintain that stability. Also, pros can record in 10-bit D-Log M.

But other, pricier DJI drones could offer better performance still, plus true vertical shooting by rotating the gimbal — and it’d be hard to imagine a drone enthusiast picking the Flip instead of waiting to see what DJI’s unannounced Mini 5 might bring to the table.

“There are currently no plans to retire the Mini Series. The DJI Flip is a new entry-level drone series that will be offered alongside the DJI Neo and DJI Mini. Each of these drones are designed to meet the needs of different types of beginners,” DJI spokesperson Daisy Kong confirms to The Verge.

I am continually surprised by how large the Flip is; while it stays under the 249-gram weight limit that typically triggers government compliance standards like publicly broadcasting your location. Despite its folding arms, it doesn’t fold down smaller than a Mini so there’s no way I’m fitting it into any but the biggest cargo pants pockets I own. It’s also quite loud despite its ducted propellers — absolutely not among the quieter drones that the company sells.

And despite costing more than the $199 DJI Neo, it doesn’t support any FPV headsets to let you virtually soar like a bird.

But the Flip does cost just $439 complete with a basic RC-N3 joystick controller that lets you use your phone as a screen, plus the launch-it-from-your-hand modes; a $779 kit comes with three batteries, a carrying case, and a more capable DJI RC 2 controller with a built-in daylight visible 700-nit screen. The DJI Mini 4 Pro versions of each of same kits cost $959 and $1,099 respectively, a $320 difference.

The DJI Flip should be available to buy and ship today, from DJI’s website.

Photography and video by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Samsung announces more flexible trade-in program, no purchase required

14 January 2025 at 02:38
Samsung S23 in cream, S23 Plus in lavender, and S23 Ultra in green side by side on a table with back facing up.
The Galaxy S23 phones are the most recent in its flagship line currently eligible for trade-in. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Samsung has announced a change to its Galaxy Trade-In program that allows consumers to trade in select Galaxy smartphone models to the company year-round, without the need to make a new purchase at the same time.

The new program is set to start today in South Korea and France, with other markets to follow later in 2025. The company says that its aim is to “boost the value of Galaxy devices” in the long-term by providing “amazing savings” through the trade-in process.

There are two key changes to the program, which will be operated by insurance and repair company Likewize. The main change is the purchase requirement: before this policy shift, trade-ins to the company have required a new purchase from samsung.com or the company’s app, with the option to start a trade-in only appearing during the checkout process.

The second change is “year-round” availability. Trade-ins are already available at any time in the US and most other Western markets, but in South Korea they’ve previously been locked to specific windows — usually just after major new product launches like next week’s S25 reveal, for example.

There’s still one big limit to the scheme however: you can only trade in specific Samsung flagship phones. Right now, that’s limited to the Galaxy S20 series through to the S23, and foldables from the Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 through to the Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5. Curiously, last year’s Galaxy S24 and Z Flip/Fold 6 aren’t included, so you can’t sell anything too recent.

Yesterday — 13 January 2025The Verge News

Apple’s latest iPad Mini is down to its lowest price to date

13 January 2025 at 16:17
A photo of the iPad Mini, in portrait mode, on a table.
The seventh-gen iPad is the cheapest tablet in Apple’s current lineup to support Apple Intelligence. | Photo: David Pierce / The Verge

If you’re in the market for a highly portable tablet, Apple’s smallest tablet has fallen to its lowest price to date at multiple retailers. Right now, the latest iPad Mini is on sale at Amazon and Best Buy with Wi-Fi and 128GB of storage starting at $399 ($100 off). If you need more storage, you can also buy the step-up model with 256GB of storage for $499 ($100 off) or the 512GB variant for $699 ($100 off).

With its 8.3-inch screen and lightweight design, the latest iPad Mini is closer in size to the iPhone than any other tablet in Apple’s lineup. As a result, it’s easier to carry on the go and hold with one hand, making it an excellent option if you read a lot on your tablet. Its small size doesn’t come at the expense of performance, though. In fact, the onboard A17 Pro chip is snappier than the A14 Bionic chip found in the entry-level iPad, even if it’s not as speedy as the processors in the M4-powered iPad Pro or M2-powered Air.

Unlike the base iPad, the seventh-gen Mini supports Apple Intelligence, so you can take advantage of a host of AI-based features — such as AI-assisted summaries, Genmoji, ChatGPT, and the ability to erase unwanted objects in photos. It also supports the newer Apple Pencil Pro, along with Wi-Fi 6E and faster USB-C performance. They’re pretty iterative updates overall; however, they’re also a lot more appealing at $399 than they are at the tablet’s typical retail price of $499.

Read our iPad Mini review.

Google Messages brings back customizable contacts

13 January 2025 at 15:50
An illustration of Google’s multicolor “G” logo
Illustration: The Verge

Google is adjusting the “profile sharing” feature in its Google Messages app to allow users to set custom contact names and photos on their own devices for their stored contacts and others they send text messages. As reported by 9to5Google, a change rolled out late last year that overrode your custom names and photos with each individual’s broadcasted profile, but now you can change it back to give friends, colleagues, and family members the names and avatars that you think they should have.

The profile-sharing feature was announced in late 2023, as Google continued to push the rollout of RCS, and works similarly to Contact Posters on iPhones. Android Authority found a reference in Android code in October that Google was working to allow for customer profile photos yet again.

Google’s updated support page for profile sharing now outlines steps to set a local contact photo that replaces the one shared by your contact. To customize their name or appearance, tap on a contact name or picture of a person in a Google Messages chat, then tap their photo on the details page. From there, you can switch between their shared one or your own custom one for them.

‘Goodbye to my Chinese spy’ might be the last great TikTok trend

By: Emma Roth
13 January 2025 at 15:14
Photo illustration of Tik Tok app icon being deleted.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

TikTokers are coping with the app’s potential ban with an unusual trend: by bidding farewell to their “personal Chinese spy.” The trend, which pokes fun at security concerns surrounding the app, has users thanking their “spy” for surveilling them and filling their For You page with entertaining content, while others proclaim that they’d rather share their data directly with the Chinese government than switch to Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.

One post, which garnered more than 1.5 million likes, depicts an emotional scene from Squid Game with the caption, “Me saying goodbye to my Chinese spy on the 19th (He perfected my algorithm).” Other TikTokers are speakingand singing — in Chinese, while some pretend to be the “spies” powering individual algorithms.

“It is a great honor to spy on you for the last few years,” TikToker yanxiao1003 says in a video. “I wish you all have a great life in the future... Laura from California, you shouldn’t drink that much Coca-Cola, it’s bad for your health.”

For years, TikTok has faced scrutiny over the ties of its parent company, ByteDance, to China, with lawmakers calling it a “national security threat” and accusing the app of sending US user data to China. But now the platform’s ban is imminent, with the Supreme Court set to hand down a decision on whether to uphold the law that would either ban TikTok or force ByteDance to divest it by January 19th.

@cool_cammy

i’m gonna miss my chinese spy

♬ original sound - cool_cammy
@matcha.mix

sometimes it’s the one who’s always been in front of you that you never notice #tiktokban #invisiblestring #lovejourney #matchamix #data #china #datinglife

♬ original sound - alex
@kozylifekiki

Tiktok ban who they can have all the info they want on me to keep tiktok from getting banned #tiktokban

♬ original sound - JamieJL651

Meta is already working on Community Notes for Threads

13 January 2025 at 13:31
An image showing the Threads logo
Illustration: The Verge

Meta announced last week that it would be ditching fact-checkers in favor of X-like Community Notes, and self-describedleaker” Alessandro Paluzzi shared screenshots on Monday showing what the feature might look like in Threads.

Based on the screenshots, it appears you’ll be able to start the process of writing a Community Note from the three-dots menu on a post, which is where you can already access features like muting an account or reporting a post. Another screenshot shows that when you write a Community Note, your note will be anonymous.

A third screenshot appears to show an Instagram help center page about Community Notes that has a button to join a waitlist for the program. However, the layout of the page looks different from other live help center pages I can see right now.

Meta didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Meta said last week that it plans to “phase in Community Notes in the US first over the next couple of months” and then “improve it over the course of the year,” but it hasn’t specified exactly when the feature might be available on Threads. My colleague Alex Heath reported Sunday that Community Notes “was not on the product roadmap before this week.”

In addition to the move to Community Notes, Meta said it’s also getting rid of “a number of restrictions” on topics like immigration and gender, and phasing “civil content” back into Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Instagram boss Adam Mosseri published a video today showing how to set the amount of political content you see on Threads.

AGDQ 2025 earns $2.5 million for charity with its best event yet

13 January 2025 at 13:30
The Awesome Games Done Quick logo
Image: Games Done Quick

Awesome Games Done Quick 2025 has concluded, raising just over $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Every Games Done Quick event is worth tuning in to either live or later via VODs, but this AGDQ was uniquely fantastic, filled with runs that’ll go down as some of the best GDQ has to offer. Here are some of our favorites:

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

The great thing about the speedrunning community is that it’s often not enough to be the fastest runner of a particular game. That’s boring. For Wes, simply running New Super Mario Bros. Wii wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He had to get creative with it, deciding to master playing the game as fast as possible while playing the piano. But how can someone play a video game if both their hands are occupied, you ask? The answer is obvious: by controlling the game with your head and feet. I don’t know what inspires a human to do this kind of thing, and I don’t care. All that matters is that Wes put the depth of human ability (and multitasking) on display, and it was brain-breaking to watch.

Elden Ring bonus showcase

Speaking of incredible human talent, how about playing Elden Ring — a game known for its punishing difficulty — with a saxophone. I was looking forward to this run all week, and Dr. Doot did not disappoint, but not for the reason I expected. It’s one thing to beat the likes of Malenia, Blade of Miquella with a specially programmed aerophone. But nothing could have prepared me for every input, from landing an attack to using consumables, sounding a hilarious “doot” noise. I cried laughing it was so funny.

Super Metroid

Super Metroid is a GDQ staple, often anchoring the event’s last day in a week’s worth of programming. But lately, GDQ has gotten away from featuring a mere run of the game to instead showcase all the work the Super Metroid modding community has put into keeping this game from 1994 fresh and interesting. This four-way race of Super Metroid included a map randomizer, meaning the game’s normal layout had been shuffled around and put together in an all-new configuration.

Map randomizers for a Metroid game are uniquely dangerous because all of the abilities you need to progress are no longer laid out in a logical fashion. Samus might run into the fiery pits of Lower Norfair long before finding the heat-shielding Varia suit. And with the map randomized, it’s now way harder (and takes way longer) to find where the suit is. Now add an element of competition, and you’ve got one of the finest races in AGDQ history.

Crazy Taxi with live backing band

It used to be that if you wanted to avoid DMCA strikes for playing a game on Twitch with licensed music, you just turned the music off. But AGDQ has come up with a novel way to get around this old problem. For this run of Crazy Taxi, every song was played by a cover band that transformed AGDQ from a speedrunning video game event into an impromptu punk rock show — mini-mosh pit and all — and it ruled. I’m not gonna share any details. Just go watch it for yourself.


GDQ is a uniquely special event for more reasons than featuring cool, creative, or crazy-ass runs. In a world where cowardly corporations have decided it’s okay to call women and LGBTQ+ people slurs, and one where gamers have a unique reputation for being awful to each other for differences beyond our control, Games Done Quick has been very vocal in its support of marginalized people. Whether it be its diverse programming with Frame Fatales or Black in a Flash or the mere fact that every other donation featured a message of “Trans Rights,” which was enthusiastically read aloud and enthusiastically cheered by the live crowd.

Games Done Quick has been a shining example of how intentionally curated communities can foster acceptance and be a source of joy and goodness in a climate that needs it, and AGDQ 2025 was one of the best.

Chinese social media app RedNote tops App Store chart ahead of TikTok ban

By: Emma Roth
13 January 2025 at 13:28
An image showing the Rednote app on a phone
Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

RedNote, the Chinese social media app also known as Xiaohongshu, rose to the number one spot on the Apple App Store as a US ban closes in on TikTok. The app offers a mix of pictures, short-form videos, and text posts across “follow,” “explore,” and “nearby” feeds.

A cursory scroll through RedNote’s Explore page shows English-language posts scattered among those written in Chinese. Many American users call themselves “TikTok refugees” in videos, while others write in text posts that they’re in search of a new community because of the potential TikTok ban. Some are even asking questions to Chinese users, such as “What are some popular memes in China?”

 Screenshot: The Verge

RedNote, which launched in 2013 as a shopping-focused app, now has more than 300 million monthly active users and surpassed $1 billion in profit last year, according to Bloomberg.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over whether to uphold the law that will ban TikTok or force its China-based owner, ByteDance, to sell it to an American company. The Supreme Court has until January 19th to issue a decision.

TikTok users may be flocking to RedNote now, but the ban also implicates other Chinese-owned apps, including RedNote, WeChat, and the other apps run by ByteDance like Lemon8 and CapCut.

Nintendo’s Alarmo will be available for everyone starting in March

13 January 2025 at 12:33
A photo of Nintendo’s Alarmo alarm clock.
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Another day, another announcement from Nintendo that isn’t the next Switch. Today the company revealed that its alarm clock, Alarmo, will be available at select retailers starting this March. The announcement includes the US, UK, and Europe.

The $99 alarm clock launched late last year, but is currently only available to those with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Today’s news opens that up to the larger public. The motion-controlled device lets users turn it off simply by getting up, though in my experience, that functionality wasn’t much use if you share a bed. It also includes a number of sounds and themes based on Nintendo properties, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe through a recent update.

The news comes the same week that Nintendo is widely expected to detail its next console, which could happen on January 16th. It also follows a series of other announcements in recent months from the company. Most recently, Nintendo announced that a Lego Game Boy was in the works, which was preceded by announcements covering a museum, music service, and a test for a mysterious MMO.

eBay’s new acquisition could make it easy to buy a car from anywhere

13 January 2025 at 11:55
Illustration showing the Ebay logo.
The Verge

eBay has “signed a definitive agreement” to buy online automotive transaction platform provider Caramel to help make buying and selling vehicles on the auction site “more simple than ever.”

Caramel has a site and app that helps private parties and independent dealers sell cars by handling the paperwork, ownership transfer, financing, shipping, insurance, and more. The company has several marketplace and auction partners as well.

Although eBay has hosted listings for used car sales and auctions on the site for years, it currently leaves it to the dealer to process payment and complete any paperwork. Fees such as titling charges are also handled through the seller, and you’d have to negotiate separately over things like dealer-installed accessories.

Last month, online retail giant Amazon started its own “Autos” website for people to buy new vehicles from dealers (only Hyundai models to start). However, Amazon advertises that you can complete the transaction (including a vehicle trade-in) to completion and only need to pick up the car at the dealership.

How eBay’s process will look is still to be determined. eBay says its agreement with Caramel was signed on January 11th, and the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of this year.

Free Our Feeds wants to build a social media ecosystem ‘resistant to billionaire influence’

By: Emma Roth
13 January 2025 at 10:58
An image of the Free Our Feeds logo
Image: Free Our Feeds

Technology advocates and celebrities are backing the launch of Free Our Feeds, a campaign designed to “save social media from billionaire capture.” The project aims to raise $30 million over three years to support the development of a social media ecosystem powered by the AT Protocol, or the decentralized network powering Bluesky.

The raised funds will go toward launching a public interest foundation to support the project, while creating an “independently hosted infrastructure” giving Bluesky users, developers, and researchers access to the content and data posted “no matter what the company decides to do in the future.”

After starting as a research project under former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky became an independent company in 2021 and went on to create the AT Protocol, an open-source infrastructure that aims to create a social ecosystem with interoperable apps. Bluesky built its own social network atop the framework, raising millions in funds and attracting a growing number of users.

Despite these efforts, Free Our Feeds believes “social infrastructure run in the public interest cannot be governed by a private social media company” forever.

“Bluesky’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol, could offer a new pathway for the social web. Yet as it stands, it is still venture-capital backed,” Sherif Elsayed-Ali, the executive director at the Future of Technology Institute, said in a statement. “This important initiative aims to safeguard Bluesky’s underlying technology and put it on an independent pathway, so that the future of social media can be freed from the whims of any one company or group of billionaires.”

Free Our Feeds will be led by nine custodians — including the Mozilla Foundation’s Nabiha Syed and Mark Surman — who will oversee the project’s “major governance decisions.”

Mastodon is also moving away from the single ownership model used by social platforms like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Elon Musk’s X. On Monday, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko announced that he will transfer the ownership of the decentralized social network to a nonprofit organization because “Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.”

With Meta making drastic changes to its content moderation policy, and X’s transformation under Musk’s ownership, the Free Our Feeds project couldn’t come at a better time — even if it might take some time for its efforts to come to fruition.

Correction, January 13th: A previous version of the article misattributed a quote to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales due to an error from Free Our Feeds. The quote is from Sherif Elsayed-Ali.

Samsung is adding two new Galaxy Ring sizes

By: Wes Davis
13 January 2025 at 10:15
Cat paw sneakily reaching out to swipe the Galaxy Ring
Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Samsung is making the Galaxy Ring available to more people by adding size 14 and 15 rings to its options starting on January 22nd. With the expansion, which was rumored last month, the company says its ring sizes now run from five to 15, though it caveats that both size and color availability will vary by market.

The new sizes bring the Galaxy Ring closer to competitor Oura, which already offers its smart ring in sizes four to 15. Samsung’s announcement didn’t include details about the ring’s weight or battery life, but the current lineup’s larger size 12 and 13 rings use bigger batteries and can last an extra day versus the others.

The bigger options will be nice for those at the upper end of its size range, particularly if they’re only a half-size up. As my colleague Victoria Song wrote in her smart ring sizing guide, even if you’re able to slide the ring on, it could be hard to take it off again as your fingers swell in response to things like the food you’ve eaten or the environment you’re in.

Samsung also announced it’s going to sell its smart ring in 16 more countries, including Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Greece, and South Africa, starting on February 7th, though the exact date for each release will vary, it writes.

Mercedes-Benz’s Virtual Assistant uses Google’s conversational AI agent

13 January 2025 at 09:35
Interior of vehicle with screens across the dash and a word bubble coming from the driver’s seat saying “I’m looking for a great place to take my family for a special birthday dinner.”
Mercedes-Benz’s MBUX Virtual Assistant will use Google Gemini on the cloud. | Image: Mercedes-Benz / Google

Google Cloud’s new Automotive AI Agent platform promises to “continue conversations and reference information” throughout users’ drives, and the first car announced with it is the new Mercedes CLA. That car has the next-generation MB.OS operating system with an upgraded MBUX Virtual Assistant.

When Mercedes revealed it at CES in 2024, it didn’t say which company’s LLM it was running on. Meanwhile, the existing MBUX Voice Assistant system that could handle about 20 commands triggered with “Hey Mercedes” now includes results provided by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing, but it’s not a conversational platform. According to Mercedes, there’s a plan to roll out this upgraded system to “further models” that run the older Voice Assistant, but it didn’t specify which ones.

The new MBUX Virtual Assistant will feature four “personality traits,” including natural, predictive, personal, and empathetic. It can also ask you questions for additional clarity to get you what you need.

Google’s new AI Agent is tailor-made to automotive uses, leveraging Google Maps data to find points of interest, look up restaurant reviews for you, give you recommendations, answer follow-up questions, and more. Google says MBUX Virtual Assistant users will get access to “nearly real time” Google Maps updates. It also says it can “handle complex, multi-turn dialog.”

The agent uses Gemini and runs on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI development platform, designed to help companies build out AI experiences. “This is just the beginning of how agentic capabilities can transform the automotive industry,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated in a press release.

8BitDo’s drift-free mobile controller is on sale for the first time

13 January 2025 at 09:26
The 8BitDo Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller for Android with a smartphone attached and being played in two hands.
8BitDo’s mobile controller offers a little more grip than others we recommend. | Image: 8BitDo

While the cradle-style Backbone One is a great mobile controller we often recommend, it’s not the right choice for everyone. Thankfully, 8BitDo’s Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller is a cheaper alternative for Android users, one that’s available at Amazon in black for $39.99 ($10 off) for the first time. That’s well below the Backbone One’s $100 MSRP and its typical sale price of $69.99.

The 8BitDo Ultimate Mobile doesn’t connect via a USB-C or Lightning port like other mobile options. Instead, it uses Bluetooth for wireless compatibility with most smartphones running Android 9.0 or later. (Sorry, iPhone users!) That does mean you’ll need to recharge it occasionally, but 8BitDo says it only requires a 1.5-hour charge for 15 hours of gameplay. It can also accommodate any phone measuring between 100mm and 170mm in length.

In terms of hardware, 8BitDo’s mobile gamepad offers an Xbox-style button layout and ergonomics, with four face buttons, a clicky D-pad, dual bumpers, and drift-free Hall effect sticks and triggers that should be less prone to failure over time. It also features two rear buttons, a dedicated profile button, and turbo functionality, all of which are customizable with 8BitDo’s excellent Ultimate Software.

More Monday deals

  • If you’re looking for a massive monitor that can double as a smart TV, Samsung’s 32-inch M80D should do the trick. It’s on sale for an all-time low of $399.99 ($300 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. The newer 4K monitor supports HDR10 Plus with AI upscaling and a dialogue amplifier, and it runs Samsung’s Tizen-based OS, which lets you access video, music, and gaming apps without a separate device. It also has an integrated webcam, plus the ability to seamlessly use one keyboard and mouse between the monitor and select devices. That includes 2021 or newer Galaxy Books, and Galaxy smartphones and tablets running One UI 5.1 or later. Read our review of the 2022 model.
  • You can get the latest Amazon Echo in blue for $64.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and The Home Depot, which is only $15 more than its lowest price to date. The newest Echo is over four years old now, but it’s still a very capable smart speaker that sounds better than the fifth-gen Echo Dot. You can use it to control a wealth of compatible smart home gadgets, including both lights and smart plugs, and it can act as a range extender if you’re on an Eero mesh Wi-Fi network. It even doubles as a Zigbee hub with Matter support. Read our review.
  • The first-gen Logitech G Pro X Superlight is currently on sale at Amazon for $87.38 (about $73 off), which is about $6 more than the record low. The newer Superlight 2 offers USB-C charging and a higher resolution 32K optical sensor, but if you don’t have upwards of $150 to spend, the original is still a great mouse with slight concessions. Its 25K Hero sensor still offers more DPI range than most need, and you can keep your micro-USB cables buried in your tech drawer if you pair it with Logitech’s optional Powerplay wireless charging mat. The slightly ambidextrous gaming mouse doesn’t have a ton of bells and whistles (not even RGB!), but it’s comfortable to push around as it weighs just 63 grams.

Microsoft creates new AI engineering group led by former Meta executive

13 January 2025 at 09:13
Vector collage of the Microsoft logo among arrows and lines going up and down.
Image: The Verge

Microsoft is creating a new engineering group that’s focused on artificial intelligence. Led by former Meta engineering chief Jay Parikh, the new CoreAI – Platform and Tools division will combine Microsoft’s Dev Div and AI platform teams together, alongside some employees on the Office of the CTO team, to focus on building an AI platform and tools for both Microsoft and its customers.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined his vision for this new team in an internal memo today, using a cricket reference (his favorite sport) to note that “we’re entering the next innings of this AI platform shift” in 2025 that will “reshape all application categories.” Nadella believes that every part of the application stack will be impacted by AI, and that “thirty years of change is being compressed into three years!”

To get ready for all this change, Nadella sees the need for an “AI-first app stack” inside Microsoft that will impact how its own developers use and build AI apps and tools in the future. “In this world, Azure must become the infrastructure for AI, while we build our AI platform and developer tools — spanning Azure AI Foundry, GitHub, and VS Code — on top of it,” says Nadella. “In other words, our AI platform and tools will come together to create agents, and these agents will come together to change every SaaS application category, and building custom applications will be driven by software (i.e. “service as software”).”

Parikh will lead this new group as the executive vice president of CoreAI - Platform and Tools, after previously being instrumental to Meta’s engineering efforts for more than a decade. Microsoft announced Parikh’s hire in October, and this is the first major engineering shakeup since he joined the software giant. Parikh also reports directly to Nadella and is a member of Microsoft’s senior leadership team. He now has a number of other Microsoft executives reporting up to him in his new role, including AI platform chief Eric Boyd, deputy CTO of AI infrastructure Jason Taylor, head of Microsoft’s developer division Julia Liuson, and head of developer infrastructure Tim Bozarth.

Microsoft is essentially taking its entire developer division and ensuring it’s focused on AI. While there’s a mention of Azure AI Foundry, GitHub, and VS Code, Nadella doesn’t call out Visual Studio or .NET in his memo. That’s probably because the mission, as Nadella describes it, is for this new CoreAI team to now “build the end-to-end Copilot & AI stack for both our first-party and third-party customers to build and run AI apps and agents.”

A major data broker hack may have leaked precise location info for millions

By: Wes Davis
13 January 2025 at 08:10
Art rendering of transparent laptop in front of a wall of surveilling eyes.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Last week, major location data broker Gravy Analytics disclosed a data breach that may have resulted in the theft of precise location data for millions of people, reports TechCrunch. That appears to include data from popular mobile games like Candy Crush, as well as dating apps, pregnancy tracking apps, and more, as 404 Media wrote on Thursday, following up its report of the breach two days earlier.

Baptiste Robert, CEO of digital security company Predicta Lab, said in a series of posts Wednesday that the small sample data set published in a Russian forum contained data for “tens of millions of data points worldwide” and included “sensitive locations like the White House, Kremlin, Vatican, military bases, and more.” As TechCrunch notes, the sample alone contained more than 30 million locations.

Visualizing such a massive amount of location data is no easy task.

Google Earth Pro crashed at 500k location points, and our OSINT platform hit its limit at 1.5 million. Even if it is "just" a sample, rendering the entire dataset at once is a real challenge. pic.twitter.com/VTZGjsG79L

— Baptiste Robert (@fs0c131y) January 8, 2025

Gravy said in its disclosure to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority that it “identified unauthorized access to its AWS cloud storage environment” on January 4th. It says in the disclosure that it’s still investigating how long hackers had access to its cloud environment and whether the hack “constitutes a reportable personal data breach.” As for what or who was affected, the company writes:

Gravy Analytics is working diligently to determine the scope of the incident and the nature of the information involved. Preliminary findings indicate that an unauthorized person obtained certain files, which could contain personal data. These are currently being analyzed. If it is determined that personal data is involved, that personal data is likely associated with users of third-party services that supply this data to Gravy Analytics.

Gravy Analytics was one of two data brokers targeted last month in a proposed FTC order that forbids it from “selling, disclosing, or using sensitive location data in any product or service.” The FTC at the time wrote that its subsidiary, Venntel, collected data from apps and sold access to that data to businesses or government agencies, including the IRS, DEA, FBI, and ICE.

Adobe’s new AI tool can edit 10,000 images in one click

13 January 2025 at 06:00
A screenshot of Adobe’s Firefly Bulk Create background removal tool.
Image: Adobe

Adobe is launching new generative AI tools that can automate labor-intensive production tasks like editing large batches of images and translating video presentations. The most notable is “Firefly Bulk Create,” an app that allows users to quickly resize up to 10,000 images or replace all of their backgrounds in a single click instead of tediously editing each picture individually.

The tool was created by combining several of Adobe’s Firefly-powered APIs for developers, with the aim of making them more accessible to creatives who lack technical coding experience. Bulk Create is launching in beta today, and split into two separate tools on Adobe’s Firefly web app: “Remove Background” and “Resize.” The first is pretty self-explanatory — users can upload image files into the tool from their computer, Dropbox, or Adobe Experience Manager, and quickly remove the backgrounds.

It should work on any image, but looks especially useful for product marketers. Alongside just removing the background, users can also set the tool to replace backgrounds with a specific image or color (defined by HEX codes) to get variations of each image that are ready for further editing. The file batches can be saved as either PNG or JPEG for now, with Adobe saying that support for Photoshop PSD files will be added in the future.

Adobe’s Firefly Bulk Create, showing the options to extend backgrounds to preset platform templates. Image: Adobe
The background expansion for “Resize” might work fine for abstract images like this, but the tool seems to struggle with photographs.

The “Resize” tool presents a selection of preset options for popular ad banner sizes and platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. It uses generative AI to stretch the backgrounds of images to fit these required dimensions, but the demo I saw wasn’t particularly inspiring — there was a lot of obvious warping, with one example strangely copying and blurring wine glasses together that were in the foreground. For simple backgrounds, though, it could spare graphic designers from having to manually resize their marketing assets for each platform. While services like Canva and Adobe Express also have tools that make this easier, Bulk Create can do so in a single click.

Adobe is making some new developer APIs for Firefly Services generally available in the coming weeks that developers can use to speed up video and print production workflows. “Dubbing and Lip Sync” can translate and edit lip movement for video audio into 14 different languages, and a new InDesign tool can automatically format text and images for print and digital media using predefined templates. “Digital avatars” created using text descriptions and voice recordings will also be available in beta this month, which can be used to present videos and product explainers.

The power required to edit batches of 10,000 images is presumably expensive. Adobe says there will be a fee to use these new tools based on “consumption” — which likely means users will need to pay for a premium Adobe Firefly plan that provides generative credits that can then be “spent” on the features.

Mastodon’s CEO and creator is handing control to a new nonprofit organization

13 January 2025 at 05:15
Vector illustration showing different aspects of the Mastodon app.
Image: The Verge

Decentralized social network Mastodon has announced plans to transfer its ownership to a new nonprofit entity. Ownership of Mastodon will move away from the control of CEO Eugen Rochko, in contrast to the power exerted by other social media CEOs like Meta cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk.

“Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components to a new nonprofit organization,” Mastodon says in a blog post, “affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.”

Rochko, who founded Mastodon in 2016, will take on a new role with a focus on product strategy while ownership moves to a new not-for-profit entity based somewhere in Europe, with the exact location still to be finalized. The organization is currently headquartered in Germany, where it was a nonprofit until its charitable status was stripped last year. This move is a way of restoring Rochko’s original intent for Mastodon.

“When founder Eugen Rochko started working on Mastodon, his focus was on creating the code and conditions for the kind of social media he envisioned,” Mastodon says. “The legal setup was a means to an end, a quick fix to allow him to continue operations. From the start, he declared that Mastodon would not be for sale and would be free of the control of a single wealthy individual, and he could ensure that because he was the person in control, the only ultimate decision-maker.”

In the short term, nothing should change for users. Mastodon will continue to host the mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers and support its federated network. Routine code development and bug fixes are ongoing, though the announcement adds that “changes are definitely in the pipeline.”

“Our core mission remains the same: to create the tools and digital spaces where people can build authentic, constructive online communities free from ads, data exploitation, manipulative algorithms or corporate monopolies,” Mastodon says.

Mastodon’s announcement comes at a time when the WordPress open-source project and its cofounder have been embroiled in a months-long legal feud, and Meta’s Zuckerberg has made headlines for stripping back Facebook and Instagram’s fact-checking and content moderation before lying about it to Joe Rogan.

Nvidia flatters Trump in scathing response to Biden’s new AI chip restrictions

13 January 2025 at 05:12
Illustrations of a grid of processors seen at an angle with the middle one flipped over to show the pins and the rest shrouded in a green aura
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nvidia is cozying up to the incoming Trump administration after criticizing a new AI framework just announced by the Biden administration. The rules are meant to keep advanced chips and AI models under the control of the United States and its allies, but the President-elect will have the final decision on whether to enforce them.

If implemented, the “Interim Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion” announced today would place new limitations on how many artificial intelligence chips companies can send to different countries without making special agreements with the US government. Nvidia will be impacted the most by this, given its estimated 90 percent share of AI chips.

The new rules aim to close loopholes that would allow countries like China and Russia — which are already subject to existing semiconductor trade restrictions — to obtain or develop their own AI technology. The Biden administration wants to keep transformational AI development under the control of the US and 18 of its allies, which include the UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. All other countries will be subject to caps that restrict AI chip imports.

“In the wrong hands, powerful AI systems have the potential to exacerbate significant national security risks, including by enabling the development of weapons of mass destruction, supporting powerful offensive cyber operations, and aiding human rights abuses, such as mass surveillance,” the White House said in a statement. “Today, countries of concern actively employ AI – including US-made AI – in this way, and seek to undermine US AI leadership.”

Nvidia says that the new “AI Diffusion” restrictions threaten to derail worldwide “innovation and economic growth,” and undermine the prior Trump administration’s efforts to create a successful environment for AI development.

“In its last days in office, the Biden Administration seeks to undermine America’s leadership with a 200+ page regulatory morass, drafted in secret and without proper legislative review,” Nvidia said in a statement. “This sweeping overreach would impose bureaucratic control over how America’s leading semiconductors, computers, systems, and even software are designed and marketed globally.”

“The first Trump Administration laid the foundation for America’s current strength and success in AI, fostering an environment where US industry could compete and win on merit without compromising national security,” reads Nvidia’s statement. “Rather than mitigate any threat, the new Biden rules would only weaken America’s global competitiveness, undermining the innovation that has kept the US ahead.”

“We look forward to a return to policies that strengthen American leadership, bolster our economy and preserve our competitive edge in AI and beyond,” Nvidia says in its MAGA conclusion.

Nvidia is notably not among the list of tech companies that have donated to Trump’s inaugural fund and CEO Jensen Huang has not been invited to Mar-a-Lago. Perhaps that will change now that Nvidia has reason to court favor.

In addition to curbing AI chip exports, the rules also set security standards to control the “weights” for AI models — the unique parameters that determine how each AI model makes its predictions. Companies like Microsoft and Google that operate data centers can also apply for special government accreditations that allow them to trade AI chips with fewer restrictions, in exchange for following security standards outlined by the Biden administration.

The new data center rules aim to keep the development of the most advanced AI models within the borders of the United States and its partners. According to the New York Times, Microsoft says it could “comply fully with this rule’s high security standards and meet the technology needs of countries and customers around the world that rely on us,” in a statement attributed to Microsoft president Brad Smith.

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