An aircraft helping to fight wildfires that are raging across Los Angeles was struck by a civilian drone on Thursday. The collision damaged the wing of the aircraft — a CL-415 “Super Scooper” capable of scooping up 1,600 gallons of ocean water to drop onto nearby blazes — according to a statement by the LA County Fire Department posted on X, putting it out of service until it can be repaired.

Cal Fire spokesman Chris Thomas told The New York Times that grounding the aircraft will likely set back local firefighting efforts. Super Scoopers can typically refill in about five minutes. But even if it takes ten, that’s six water drops that are lost each hour according to Thomas. “So whose house is not going to get that water to protect it?” The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the Super Scooper landed safely after the drone impact, and that the incident is now under investigation.

Temporary flight restrictions have been implemented in the Los Angeles area that prohibit drones and other aircraft from flying without FAA authorization in an effort to protect firefighting efforts.

According to LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone, the drone was not assigned to help tackle the Palisades fires, and was destroyed in the collision. Marrone told the LA Times that the FBI is now planning to implement so-called “aerial armor” in the area to prevent further interference from drones.

Several people online have violated the FAA-enforced flight restrictions, posting viral drone photos and video footage across social media showing the devastation from what appears to be prohibited airspace. Fire response agencies are often forced to ground their own aircraft to avoid collisions when dummies fly drones near wildfires for online clout.

“It’s a federal crime, punishable by up to 12 months in prison, to interfere with firefighting efforts on public lands,” the FAA said in a statement. “Additionally, the FAA can impose a civil penalty of up to $75,000 against any drone pilot who interferes with wildfire suppression, law enforcement or emergency response operations. The FAA treats these violations seriously and immediately considers swift enforcement action for these offenses.”

Venu, the live sports streaming service from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, isn’t happening. In a statement on Friday, the three companies announced the decision “not to move forward with the contemplated joint venture.”

Here’s a joint statement from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery:

After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service. In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels. We are proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period.

ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery first announced Venu last year, and it was supposed to launch in the fall of 2024. But then the service hit a legal roadblock: an antitrust lawsuit from the live TV streaming service Fubo, accusing the trio of engaging in “a years-long campaign to block Fubo’s innovative sports-first streaming business” due to restrictive sports licensing agreements. Lawmakers also asked regulators to investigate Venu and its potential to become a monopoly in televised sports.

Last August, a federal judge sided with Fubo and temporarily blocked Venu’s launch. Things seemed to settle last week when Disney agreed to merge Hulu + Live TV with Fubo, leading Fubo to drop its lawsuit. However, DirecTV and EchoStar, both of which raised concerns about the launch of Venu, weren’t happy about Fubo’s decision to settle.

Fubo declined to comment.

Developing...

The new CPUs, GPUs, and laptops announced at CES this week set the tone for Windows computers in the year to come — and so far, 2025 is looking pretty promising. There are a bunch of new notebooks I’m excited to test out when they come around, many of which are gaming-focused since the launch of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series cards is ushering in an onslaught of graphics-heavy refreshes and upgrades.

There are many new laptops coming from Dell, Alienware, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, MSI, and Razer. Many may just boil down to chip bumps and slight refreshes, but there are some that are betting big on new ideas, thinness, raw power, and over-the-top accouterments. Here are the ones I’m most excited for.

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6

I’ve already written and said a lot about Lenovo’s concept-turned-buyable-product that is the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6. It’s the coolest laptop we saw. It’s our outright best in show for CES 2025. And it’s also possible when it comes time to review one later in the year that the challenges of Lenovo trying to graft software functionality for its rollable display onto Windows may be a bridge too far.

But the...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta’s popular messaging app WhatsApp is testing a new design that gives prominent space to a suite of AI chatbots. The design, currently only accessible through the app’s Android beta, adds a dedicated tab for AIs on the app’s homescreen.

WABetaInfo spotted the change, which devotes one of WhatsApp’s four tabs solely to its AI features. It includes a selection of “Popular AI characters” to talk to, along with others organized by subject matter. Other AI-powered features within WhatsApp include AI-generated images and stickers and a search tool using Meta AI.

These AI tools and chatbots aren’t new to WhatsApp, though they’re only available in the US and certain other countries, and a limited selection of languages. They’re currently accessed through the app’s primary Chats tab, but this update looks to give them more prominence.

Image: WABetaInfo

The app is also experimenting with expanding the range of AI bots by adding the option to create personalized AI characters, which WABetaInfo found in a separate beta update today. Meta already offers the ability to create custom AI bots, but only through an AI Studio on the Instagram website. Adding the option directly into an app is a significant simplification of the process.

The new AI tab replaces the existing Communities tab, though that functionality isn’t going anywhere. A previous beta version earlier this week introduced a “streamlined” version of Community creation within the Chats tab.

The WhatsApp beta is available through Google Play, though tester numbers are limited and the option to join is currently unavailable. We don’t know if or when the AI tab will be added to the app’s live build, but the change is likely to be limited only to those countries where the AI features are already available.

Fluffy robots, portable TVs, and vacuums with arms and legs. This is what we come to CES for.

Read the full story at The Verge.

At CES, the next generation of eyewear was everywhere. It’s just no one seems to agree on why we want it or what the best approach is.

It’s the second day of CES, and I’m waiting in a line to see my 10th pair of smart glasses. I honestly don’t know what to expect: I’ve seen glorified sunglasses with dubious ChatGPT clones. I’ve sidled up to several booths where the glasses were almost carbon copy clones of the pairs a booth over. I’ve seen all manner of “displays” tacked onto the lenses: some washed out, others so tedious to calibrate as to make me walk away.

So when I slipped on the Rokid Glasses, I felt my brows raise. I could see what looked like a mini desktop. I swiped the arm and a horizontal list of apps appeared. Green writing appeared in front of me a bit like a monitor in The Matrix. A Rokid staffer began speaking to me in Chinese, and despite the surrounding din, I could see a text translation of what she was saying float in front of me. After a brief conversation — she asked whether I ate lunch, she hadn’t — she prompted me to try taking a picture. The display shifted to what looked like a camera’s viewfinder. I hit the multifunction button. An animation flashed. On her phone, I saw the picture I took.

“Holy crap,” I thought. “So this is what the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses would be like with a display.” And then — “If this is possible, why doesn’t it have one yet?”

The three types of smart glasses

It seems that everyone is still trying to figure out what makes the perfect pair of smart glasses. I must have tried out 20 pairs over the course of the last week, but they all seemed to fall into one of three different buckets in how they balanced wearability and functionality.

The first bucket is the simple and stylish glasses. The more stylish and comfortable smart glasses are, the fewer features they tend to have. But for this group, that’s often a good thing.

Take the unassuming Nuance Audio. These smart glasses — made by EssilorLuxottica, Meta’s partner in making the Ray-Ban Meta eyewear — discreetly function as over-the-counter hearing aids. When you wear them, you can dampen some of the noise around you as well as amplify the voice of the person you’re speaking to. This would sound like science fiction if I hadn’t tried it myself.

But at a glance, you’d never know the Nuance Audio glasses can alter how you hear the world — and that’s precisely the point. They look like any pair of stylish glasses and come in two colors and three shapes. By “hiding” their smarts in a normal-looking pair of glasses, they’re essentially helping to reduce the discomfort some people feel when wearing visible hearing aids. It’s not flashy, but it’s a precise and clear use case.

The Chamelo glasses take a similar tack. The “smart” part of these electrochromic sunglasses can, depending on the model, change the color or tint with the swipe of a finger. Some models also have Bluetooth audio. Chamelo’s glasses aren’t new, and at CES, they weren’t suddenly adding in AI assistants, displays, or anything wild. This year’s update? Adding support for prescriptions so more people can use the device.

Neither of these glasses is trying to reinvent the wheel. They saw a simple problem worth fixing and decided to fix it. Nothing more, nothing less.

The face screens

On the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find longtime CES veterans Xreal and Vuzix.

When I arrive at Xreal’s booth, it’s jam-packed. There’s a station where people wear Xreal glasses as they “drive” in a BMW. (The car doesn’t move, but you can pretend you’re moving the wheel and tilt your head on a race course.) I don a pair of last year’s Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses while seated at a desk with only a keyboard in front of me. The Air 2 Ultra are a bit like chunky sunglasses, with miniature screens hovering beneath the lenses. From afar, they look pretty normal. Up close, you can feel their bulk — and on the face, they protrude further than looks natural.

Inside the glasses, I see football players on a football field, information popping up over their heads. The virtual display switches to a panoramic video with avatars of friends watching alongside me. In another window, I’m prompted to type in a description of a fictional creature. I pick “monstrously fat cat with unicorn wings” and lo, it appears. I can pinch and pull with my hands to make it even bigger. The more recently launched Xreal One are also here, though it admittedly gets hard to tell which pair of Xreal glasses is which while elbowing past other eager onlookers.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

When I mosey on over to Vuzix’s booth, it’s less packed, but that’s likely because folks are gawping at a bizarre karaoke contest a few booths over. I, on the other hand, am wearing a pair of the company’s latest Ultralite Pro glasses. The glasses look a bit clunkier, but when you put them on, you can see an array of rainbow lights that culminate in a 3D display. I’m looking at a picture of nature, and there’s actual depth.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’d wear glasses like these walking down the street. They look like glasses, sure, but they can also be bulky and sometimes have cords dangling for battery packs. These glasses show hints of what augmented reality is capable of — but they aren’t meant to be things you wear all day, every day.

The spyglasses

This divide between form and function isn’t new. What’s new is that there are far more smart glasses that lie somewhere in the middle. And they have some funky ideas.

Sharge’s Loomos.AI glasses, for example, look similar to the Meta glasses except they use ChatGPT and can shoot 4K photos and 1080p videos. They also add a bizarre neckband battery to account for the massive battery drain. Rayneo was back with smaller, more refined X3 Pro AR glasses. I could list dozens more, but to be frank, they were mostly iterations of the Meta glasses.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Of the myriad smart glasses I saw, three stood out: Halliday, Even Realities G1, and the Rokid Glasses. All three feature a discreet design, with a hidden green monochrome heads-up display. Halliday projects its single display from the frame by shining a green light into your eye; the other two feature microetched displays on both lenses that are nigh invisible when viewed from the front. (All three companies told me they use green light because it’s easiest on the eyes, has the best contrast, and is less likely to get washed out in bright ambient lighting.)

There are slight hardware differences between all three, but in my demos, it was clear that, philosophically, they’re much more geared toward all-day productivity. They have AI assistants, can be used as teleprompters, and offer live translation. The Rokid Glasses even have a 12MP camera for taking photos and video.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

In this vision of the smart glasses revolution, these devices are more like all-day companions that help you use your phone less. The display is something that’s only occasionally glanced at when it’s relevant and is done mostly in a productivity context. They offer more smarts than the very use-specific Chamelo and Nuance Audio glasses, but they offer more practicality (and wearability) to the average person than what Xreal and Vuzix are pursuing.

The smart glasses era

The more I talk to the people behind these products, the more it becomes clear that everyone believes smart glasses are the future. It’s also apparent that no one agrees on the best way to get to that future.

“We’ve chosen to optimize for something that is, we think, a great feature geared towards the actual use case of glasses,” says Chamelo CEO and cofounder Reid Covington. “You’re wearing them to see. You’re wearing them to block out light. A lot of the more forward-looking smart glasses have interesting features, but they’re not optimized for, you know, actual usability.”

But even among companies pursuing simpler smart glasses, function isn’t always the reason they choose more discreet or stylish designs. Smart glasses are “something that you need to feel are part of yourself,” says Davide D’Alena, global marketing director for Nuance Audio. Function is nice, but doing all the things isn’t worth it if you have to wear something hideous on your face. “For us, it’s just not enough to put out an ugly product, even if it’s working perfectly from a functional point of view. It must be something that is also a self-expression.”

Meanwhile, some longtime veterans in the space contend it isn’t a choice of form and function. It’s a split between AR and AI.

“I actually see two different directions going forward. One is AR glasses which will handle a lot of the XR content. The other one will be the AI glasses as a major kind of all-day wearable smart glasses,” says Chi Xu, Xreal founder and CEO. Xu says that everything will converge at some point — though we’ll be waiting a good while before it does. Right now, it’s a matter of every option being developed at once as companies try to figure out the best way to draw people in.

Xu isn’t wrong. While some companies like EssilorLuxottica and Chamelo are committed to one approach, others are happy to dabble. Rokid, for example, may have come out with AI-first smart glasses this year, but its array of more Xreal-like AR glasses was actually the bigger portion of its booth. Meta, apparently, is working on glasses with a display, too, targeting later this year — my colleague Alex Heath reports that the company will add its own twist to the formula by shipping a neural wristband that can be used to control them.

But for all the fragmentation, every company I spoke to said the same thing: they’ve seen renewed interest in this space within the last year and a half — and with that comes investors aplenty with deep wallets. The vast majority emphasized how rapid advancements in technology and AI have made things possible today that were impossible just two or three years ago. And every single one said that interest from the general public, not just first adopters, is also higher than in previous years.

This, they all say, proves that smart glasses are inevitable. It’s just a matter of getting everyone else to see the vision. And that’s sort of the problem. With smart glasses, you have to see it to believe it.

The company hasn’t been back in the US TV market for long, but the Z95B OLED proves that Panasonic can hang with Sony, LG, and Samsung at the very high end.

Panasonic returned to the US TV market last year, and only a matter of months later, I’ve convinced myself that its latest flagship OLED is the best TV of CES 2025. It’s an impressive resurgence for a brand that many home theater enthusiasts remember for producing superb plasma sets back when those represented the crème de la crème of display technology for the living room. After a long hiatus, Panasonic is back in the game and squaring off with Sony, LG, and Samsung in the very premium (and very pricey) TV category.

The company’s new OLED, the Z95B, will come in three sizes: 55 inches, 65 inches, and 77 inches. It uses the latest and greatest OLED panel from LG Display, which is a new four-layer tandem structure that beats out the brightness of last year’s LG G4 even without the micro-lens array technology that squeezed as much brightness as possible out of that TV. Last year’s Z95A from Panasonic also used MLA, but the new approach gets better results and is cheaper to produce.

So the panel is top tier and should be a formidable alternative to the QD-OLED display used in Samsung’s respective 2025 flagship, the S95F. OLED TVs just keep getting brighter, more vivid, and dazzling — and consumers really can’t go wrong with any of them. The Panasonic stopped me in my tracks on the show floor and looked phenomenal. I couldn’t help but stare at it for several minutes. The Z95B also offers support for gaming at up to 144Hz, so it’s a strong contender there as well, though both LG and Samsung stepped it up to 165Hz this year.

Another thing that sets the Panasonic apart is its built-in Dolby Atmos speaker array. The drivers and sound performance have been tuned by Technics, with a badge that advertises as much. I really dig the fabric sides of this TV; it’s a classy way of concealing the side-firing and upward-firing speakers.

Yes, that audio hardware results in this being a thick set by 2025 standards — especially for an OLED. Panasonic didn’t hold back in making the Z95B a hulking beast of a TV. But the good news is that many people won’t need to bother with a separate soundbar since this system will (likely) sound so good. As noted by the excellent Caleb Denison at Digital Trends, the company has also reworked the TV’s cooling system with a new heat dissipation technique that should help keep that four-layer OLED panel in tip-top shape over the long term.

But there is one glaring dilemma with Panasonic TVs: they run Amazon’s Fire TV OS. That’s rather unfortunate. It’s my least favorite TV platform among the pack, and I’d argue Amazon has crossed the line when it comes to pushing ads on customers — even if the most egregious examples can be disabled in settings. Fire TV has some good ideas here and there; the ambient mode widgets are something Google has taken note of. But I really hope that Panos Panay and the Fire TV team take a sledgehammer to this software and come back with something much sleeker, more intuitive, and worthy of a TV that’s certain to be very expensive if the Z95A is anything to go by.

Even so, I know plenty of people who mostly ignore their TV’s default software and use an Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, or some other streaming player as their preferred entertainment interface. With Samsung and LG both being very aggressive with the AI gimmicks this year, I anticipate seeing even more of that. The LG G5 will feature an LLM-powered chatbot, has an AI button on its remote, and even ships with Microsoft Copilot built in. It’s getting to be a little much, no?

To me, the “best TV” of CES comes down to what kind of home theater experience it will provide. And Panasonic is already doing an impressive job keeping pace with Sony when it comes to delivering a living room centerpiece that nails both picture and sound. I wish the Z95B (and the company’s 2025 Mini LED TVs) ran, well, any other TV operating system. But I don’t think Fire TV OS is bad enough to sink this high-end set. If you disagree, at least it’s relatively easy to just use something else most of the time.

I can’t wait to spend more time with the Z95B when it starts shipping later this year. More competition benefits everyone who’s on the lookout for a new TV. Companies like TCL and Hisense have done a great job setting new expectations of what you can get for under $1,500. And now Panasonic’s return is showing us what’s possible for those with the means to splurge on their next big upgrade.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

Tesla has officially revealed the latest version of its Model Y crossover following images leaking online that teased the EV’s redesign. Codenamed “Juniper,” the Model Y 2025 refresh is now live on Tesla’s website in China and other Asia-Pacific markets with deliveries expected to begin in March.

It’s the most significant update to the Model Y design since it first launched in 2020, which became the first EV to top global car sales last year. Notably, the new variant launching in Australia clearly shows a physical turn signal stalk, which had otherwise been replaced by capacitive buttons on recent Teslas.

The refresh comes after Tesla experienced its first year-over-year drop in sales since the company started mass-producing cars in 2012 — with CEO Elon Musk’s antagonistic behavior suspected to have contributed to the decline.

Image: Tesla

There are two specifications of the Model Y available at launch according to the Chinese website listing. The 263,500 Chinese yuan (about $35,935) rear-wheel drive edition features an estimated range of up to 593 kilometers (about 368 miles), while the 303,500 Chinese yuan (about $41,390) long-range version can supposedly reach 719 kilometers (about 446 miles). These are “estimated” ranges based on China’s CLTC driving cycle standard, however, which Electrek notes isn’t as strict as the US EPA system.

Both specs have a top speed of 201 kilometers per hour (about 124 mph), and peak charging speeds remain at 250kW. Tesla says that the tires, wheels, and suspension have been updated to provide a smoother, quieter ride, with 19- and 20-inch wheel options available on both models. The estimated vehicle ranges have been calculated using the smaller 19-inch wheel configurations. A performance version has yet to be announced.

The new Model Y otherwise features many of the same improvements as the 2023 Model 3 sedan update, including higher efficiency and performance, an eight-inch touchscreen display for rear passengers, and a quieter cabin with an ambient lighting strip running throughout. The back seats can be folded down electrically to expand the total storage capacity to 2,138 liters, and there’s a front-view camera to provide a wider field of view when using assisted driving features.

The exterior design doesn’t look terribly different from its predecessor, save for a few changes like switching the headlights and tail lights for slimmer light bars that stretch across the front and rear of the vehicle. The front and back ends have also been slightly reshaped, which “effectively improves the vehicle’s endurance, performance, and service life,” according to Tesla.

It’s unclear when we can expect the redesigned Model Y to launch in other markets like the US and Europe. Mass production of the vehicles is expected to start in Shanghai this month though, and we know that it took the Model 3 update around four months to reach the US last year.

Today Xiaomi’s subsidiary Redmi brings its affordable Note 14 series to Europe, along with the Western debut of the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. After launching in August 2024, the Qualcomm chip had to sit and watch while the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite came along two months later, drew more attention, and even launched in a Western phone first in the form of this week’s OnePlus 13. But the more affordable Snapdragon chip is now getting its dues.

There are five phones in the Note 14 line, ranging from the 4G-only Note 14 up to the Note 14 Pro Plus 5G, the only phone in the series powered by the Snapdragon silicon. The entry-level chip in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 series, the 7s Gen 3 is a 4nm chipset that’s most notable for making the jump to Arm’s v9 CPU architecture, with a 2.5GHz Cortex-A720 core at the heart of the processor. The other four phones use a variety of MediaTek chipsets.

Image: Redmi

Starting at £399/€499.90 (about $500), the Pro Plus is positioned as a natural competitor to Google’s $499 Pixel 8A, but outpaces it comfortably in most hardware specs, with improved IP68 water-resistance; up to 12GB RAM and 512GB storage; and a larger, brighter OLED display protected by Corning’s flagship-grade Gorilla Glass Victus 2. The big trade-off is on the software side, especially given that Google has guaranteed Android updates for the Pixel 8A until 2031.

The other Note 14 phones offer a gradual drop-off in specs and connectivity. The Note 14 Pro 5G shares the Pro Plus model’s display, 200-megapixel camera, and IP68 rating, but drops to a cheaper MediaTek 7300-Ultra chipset and slower charging. The regular Redmi Note 14 Pro is similar, but ditches 5G for 4G connectivity and is only IP64-rated. The Note 14 and Note 14 5G have reduced specs across the board — though the 4G model’s IP54 water-resistance still impresses for a phone that costs less than half of a Pixel 8A.

Image: Redmi

All four phones launched in China and then India late last year, but today go on sale in ten European countries, including the UK and Germany. Somewhat confusingly, the European models have altered specs from their Asian counterparts — the Pro Plus 5G has completely different cameras and battery, for example — which isn’t uncommon for Redmi.

The Redmi Note 14 series already has stiff competition from within the Xiaomi family, after the similarly priced Poco X7 and X7 Pro launched globally yesterday. Those phones lean on IP68 ratings and big batteries — 6,000mAh in the Pro — in the effort to draw budget buyers away from Google and Samsung.

After two days of dealing with wildfires that have burned thousands of acres, residents across Los Angeles County received a wildfire evacuation alert on Thursday afternoon that was a mistake. Shortly after, officials sent a follow-up alert saying that the notice was intended only for people near the Kenneth Fire in Woodland Hills.

Los Angeles County shared a message on X explaining what happened: “An evacuation order for residents near the Kenneth Fire currently burning in West Hills was mistakenly issued Countywide. This alert was only intended for residents of Calabasas and Agoura Hills.”

CBS News quotes a local official who said that the alert, which included a broken URL, was sent “due to a technical error.”

Image: The Verge

Many wildfires are burning in the LA area, and officials have confirmed at least six deaths, CNN reports. LA County has a population of nearly 10 million people, which is the “largest population of any county in the nation,” according to the county’s website.

Apple acknowledged issues with the reliability of the iPhone’s built-in alarm feature last April after a report by NBC’s Today morning show and said it was working on a fix, but some people are still having trouble. Android Authority points out this Reddit post by bryanlolwut in the r/iPhone subreddit from Wednesday with a picture of an iPhone with an Alarm set for 10:30, but the alarm goes off at 12:42 instead — the time displayed on an Apple Watch.

Late into Thursday, many Reddit users are still commenting on the thread, saying they’re having similar issues.

“My morning alarm was displaying as going off while making no sound and no haptics for 40 minutes,” said Slawek_Zupa. Another post says their alarm went off at 5PM when it was supposed to go off at 7AM.

The reports in the thread today include people still using iOS 17 and others who have updated to iOS 18 with Apple Intelligence.

Some say they’ve tried turning off Apple’s Attention Awareness Features, which can reduce the alarm volume when it goes off if the iPhone detects your face. However, it hasn’t solved the problem for many, and you lose out on features like seeing full notifications on your lock screen.

We’ve asked Apple if they’re still looking into this problem, but we have not received a response yet. Personally, I’ve also noticed my iPhone sometimes doesn’t make sounds or vibrate in the morning, but it does drop down a lifeless notification as if it did. Luckily, I’ve got a Google Pixel 8 Pro as a backup that usually gets me going, and I’m trying the Nintendo Alarmo, too, but my wife has had enough of Zelda yelling at Link to wake up.

Micro — maker of those electric bubble cars found in some European cities — has a new Microlino especially for Americans. The all-electric Microlino Spider is dubbed the “anti-pickup truck” and is meant to be a golf cart replacement. No, not for use on fairways, but at expansive resorts and so-called golf cart communities where well-heeled urbanites can retire in the relative safety of walkable villages with low-speed roads.

“Americans don’t just drive large cars. In fact, the US is the world’s biggest market for golf carts, where they’re often used for personal transport within neighborhoods,” says Wim Ouboter, founder and chair of Switzerland-based Micro. “That’s exactly why we created the Microlino Spider.”

“Consider it the antithesis to massive electric pickup trucks — not built for the 5 percent of trips where you need to haul a lot,” says Ouboter, “but for the 95 percent of trips where you are alone.”

The Microlino Spider features an open-door and roof design to make it easy to jump in and out from the sides. That’s a marked departure from the highway-legal Microlino Dolce I reviewed last year, or the slower Lite version that only requires a moped license — both of which you enter through the vehicle’s hinged face to the delight of onlookers.

For the moment, Micro is calling the Microlino Spider a “concept,” but says it’s intent on bringing the micro car to the US “as a more stylish and safer alternative to golf carts, ideal for personal errands or commuting.” It’s now gauging interest from partners such as “dealer groups, leasing companies, and other entrepreneurs interested in bringing this new vehicle category to the country.”

Unfortunately for Micro, Americans are increasingly drawn to larger and more dangerous vehicles. Just about every truck and SUV sold today is bigger than they were 20 years ago. And those behemoths make up about 80 percent of vehicles sold in the US. Experts have warned that the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the risk to pedestrians and cyclists of injury or death.

Micro’s anti-pickup truck may not solve this particular problem. But more small car options is undeniably a good thing in a society overrun by rolling land yachts.

Google is partnering with The Linux Foundation to launch an initiative meant to “fund open development and enhance projects” in the Chromium ecosystem, according to an announcement on Thursday. The fund, called Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers, is billed as a “neutral” space to support Chromium projects.

Google launched Chromium alongside its Chrome web browser in 2008. It’s the open-source infrastructure that powers Chrome and many other browsers built on it, including Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Brave.

In addition to Google, there are already several notable companies on board with the initiative, including Meta, Microsoft, and Opera. Microsoft said joining will help “provide clear and open governance that directs funds towards community-driven needs.”

Image: Google

Google also highlighted the more than 100,000 commits it made to Chromium last year, as well as its efforts to “invest heavily” into the open-source project:

Google also continues to invest heavily in the shared infrastructure of the Open Source project to ‘keep the lights on’, including having thousands of servers endlessly running millions of tests, responding to hundreds of incoming bugs per day, ensuring the important ones get fixed, and constantly investing in code health to keep the whole project maintainable.

The creation of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers initiative comes months after the US Department of Justice demanded that Google sell Chrome as part of its proposed remedies following the ruling that Google is a monopolist. In response, Google proposed eliminating exclusive deals that make Google the default search engine on web browsers like Safari and Mozilla for three years.

Even if Google is attempting to show the DOJ how much it contributes to Chromium, the creation of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers suggests the open-source project would still have backing without the company’s involvement.

I’m not saying I want to buy one. I’m just very curious to see where this is going.

Honda released one of the more interesting concepts at last year’s CES with two Honda Zero prototypes: the Saloon and the Space-Hub. It promised to come back in a year with something a little closer to production. But rather than temper those space-age design elements, Honda leaned into them. Way in.

The Honda 0 Saloon and Honda 0 SUV retain a lot of what made the concepts so weird and different — and not necessarily in an off-putting way. But it’s definitely not the electric CR-V that customers have been begging the company to make for years. In fact, Honda seems to be saying to all those people who want normie-looking EVs, “We see you. We hear you. We don’t care.”

Much has already been said about the similarities between these Honda Zero prototypes and certain iconic vehicles from the ’70s and ’80s, like the Lamborghini Countach, AMC Gremlin, Aston Martin Lagonda Shooting Brake, and (h/t Jason Torchinsky) the Brubaker Box.

My theory is that Honda is reaching for these design inspirations as a way to offset the future shock of an ultra-minimalist interior and all the marketing speak about “software-defined vehicles.” After all, Honda’s real announcement this year was the operating system it developed in-house, named after its iconic Asimo robot.

The Zero EVs mostly feel like a lot of window dressing for the actual product, which is software. What better way to draw people into listening to a TED talk about “high-performance system-on-a-chip” than to stand in front of a car that looks like it should be floating in low orbit?

Honda 0 Saloon

One of the things I noticed about the Saloon was the lack of a rear window — that rounded rectangle in the back isn’t transparent. The depth effect is very impressive, but it’s not obscuring an incognito window. It’s just the taillight.

Something else that caught my attention was the lack of sideview mirrors. Honda is using cameras instead. Drivers who want to check their blind spots will need to use two screens embedded at either end of the long piece of glass that spans the length of the dashboard. Of course, US safety regulations require regular old sideview mirrors, so this seems mostly aspirational.

Honda 0 SUV

The SUV is less “out there” than the Saloon, and that probably means we’re likely to see some version of it on US roads before the sedan. There’s definitely a rear window, and the airiness of the greenhouse seems to allude to Honda Zero’s design principles of “thin, light, and wise.”

We don’t have any specs for either vehicle, though Honda has said that its Zero EVs will draw from the automaker’s Formula 1 racing experience. The automaker is also aiming for optimum battery efficiency through its e-Axle system consisting of a motor, inverter, and gearbox that convert electric power into energy for driving. Each EV is expected to have around 300 miles of range, which translates to an 80–90kWh battery.

Other important details include an effort to consolidate electronic control units, similar to Rivian’s recently relaunched R1 vehicles. By reducing the number of components and wiring, Honda is clearly trying to limit its costs in an environment where the price of production seems to be on the rise.

Interior

The absence of anything remotely resembling a physical knob or dial inside either vehicle is a pretty good sign that automakers continue to ignore the pleas of customers to stop porting every last bit of functionality through its digital interfaces. Yes, I’m an old man yelling at clouds, but for the love of god, give me something to twist or push. Trying to adjust the heat by tapping blindly at a smooth pane of glass while careening down a highway at 75mph isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.

The yoke is... a yoke. Automakers love their steering yokes! But when it comes time to actually put something into production, they mostly retreat back to wheel shapes. The moonroof is another one of those features that suggest “thin” principles. And obviously, Honda’s promise that its Zero vehicles will come with Level 3 autonomy, also known as “hands-off, eyes-off” driving, needs a lot more explanation. What’s the handoff between autonomous system and driver look like? And how will it account for our very human tendency to zone out when we’re not actively engaged in driving?

There are a lot of questions swirling around these vehicles! Will they ever go into production? There’s a nonzero chance.

When it comes to finding a device to read ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on X. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon is moving beyond books and into the realm of writing — something that should make future Kindles function more akin to physical paper.

Below, we’ve listed each model currently available. Sometimes there isn’t a deal for one or even any of the products, but in those cases, we’ve listed the most recent sale price.

Image: Amazon

The best Kindle (2024) deals

In case you missed it, Amazon announced a new entry-level Kindle in October, one that was designed to replace the outgoing 2022 model. The latest Kindle — which starts at $109.99 — boasts a brighter 94-nit display, improved contrast levels, and slightly faster page turns. It also comes in a “matcha” green instead of “denim,” just in case you’re not a fan of the default black color. Otherwise, though, it’s nearly identical to its predecessor, with the same six-inch 300ppi screen, support for USB-C, and 16GB of base storage.

In the past, Amazon’s newest ad-supported Kindle has dropped to as low as $84.99 ($25 off) with three months of Kindle Unlimited. Right now, however, you can only buy the Kindle at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for its full retail price of $109.99.

The best Kindle Kids (2024) deals

Amazon also updated its kid-friendly Kindle in late 2024. The new Kindle Kids is identical to the standard model but comes with several accessories and provides age-appropriate content for younger readers who prefer digital books. Like the last-gen Kindle Kids, the latest model retails for $20 more than the base model, bringing the MSRP to $129.99.

In terms of add-ons, the new Kindle Kids edition consists of four items: the device, a protective case, a two-year extended replacement guarantee (in the event the device breaks), and six months of Amazon Kids Plus. The latter is the biggest selling point of the device aside from the kid-friendly patterns and lack of ads, as it allows parents to grant their child access to games, videos, and books — including those in the Percy Jackson and Harry Potter series — at no additional cost.

In the past, we’ve seen the new Kindle Kids sell for as low as $94.99 ($35 off). Right now, however, you can only buy the e-reader at its full price of $129.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.

The best Kindle Paperwhite (2024) deals

The latest Kindle Paperwhite, which launched last year, is Amazon’s 12th-gen model. Considering it’s one of the company’s higher-end configurations, it offers all the features found in the entry-level Kindle, including USB-C charging and a crisp 300ppi display. That being said, it’s noticeably faster than Amazon’s base ebook reader and features IPX8 waterproofing, a larger seven-inch display, and longer battery life.

Like other Kindles, the new Paperwhite is available in a few different configurations. There’s an ad-free Signature Edition for $199.99, which is identical to the standard model but comes with 32GB of storage, Qi wireless charging, and a backlight that will automatically adjust when needed. There’s also a Paperwhite Kids for $179.99, which comes bundled with a kid-friendly cover, a two-year extended replacement guarantee, and six months of Amazon Kids Plus.

In the past, we’ve seen the Paperwhite drop to as low as $129.99. Unfortunately, the standalone model is currently only available at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target starting at $159.99 (its full retail price). If you’re okay with purchasing a bundle, you can also grab it at Amazon with a power adapter and a black, green, or pink fabric cover for $196.97 ($20 off) or with a plant-based black, green, or pink leather cover for $202.97 ($20 off).

Read our Kindle Paperwhite (2024) review.

As for the ad-free Signature Edition, it’s available at Amazon and Best Buy right now for $199.99 — its regular retail price. You can also grab it at Amazon with a wireless charging dock and a black, green, or pink fabric cover starting at $251.97 ($25 off) or with a plant-based black, green, or pink leather cover for $257.97 ($25 off).

The best Kindle Scribe (2024) deals

Like its predecessor, the second-gen Kindle Scribe is Amazon’s biggest e-reader. It packs a 10.2-inch display with 300 dpi, along with the same great battery life for which Kindles have become known. What separates the Scribe from other Kindles, however, is that it comes with a stylus, which can be used to jot down notes or doodle in the ebook reader’s built-in notebook. With the latest Scribe, Amazon also introduced a new Active Canvas feature, so you can scribble notes directly on ebook pages, as well as a suite of AI-powered features that can summarize your notes and refine your handwriting.

The new Kindle Scribe starts at $399.99 with 16GB of storage, but right now, you can buy it at Amazon and Best Buy. for an all-time low of $324.99 ($75 off).

Read our Kindle Scribe (2024) review.

Photos by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge

The best Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition deals

In October, Amazon announced its first color e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition. Like the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, it boasts a seven-inch display with a crisp 300ppi resolution, IPX8 water resistance, wireless charging, and 32GB of storage. However, unlike the Paperwhite, the e-reader offers a color mode, which cuts the resolution in half. Thankfully, it’s still vibrant for a color E-Ink screen despite the lower resolution, rendering it particularly ideal for reading comic books and manga.

We have yet to see the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition go on sale. Right now, you can only buy the standalone e-reader at Amazon and Best Buy for its full retail price of $279.99. However, you can save some money if you buy it as a part of a bundle for $327.97 ($35 off), which nets you a wireless charging dock and plant-based leather cover in black, pink, or green. You can also buy it with a “premium” leather cover in red or black for $349.97 ($35 off).

Read our Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition review.

xAI has released an iOS app in the US for its Grok chatbot, as spotted earlier by TechCrunch. The standalone app version of the chatbot, which xAI calls a beta, can perform the same functions as the one built into X, as it can field real-time information, answer questions, and generate images.

xAI started testing Grok’s standalone iOS app in December in a handful of countries. There’s no word on when it may come to Android.

Though Grok was initially only available to X Premium subscribers, the platform started letting all users access the chatbot last month, bringing it in line with other free-to-use chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.

As pointed out by TechCrunch, it seems xAI is also working on a dedicated Grok.com website that currently has a “coming soon” message on it. After raising $6 billion in June, xAI reported another $6 billion funding round, including from “strategic investors” like Nvidia and AMD.

Following the arrival of the first Thunderbolt 5 cables last July and the first Thunderbolt 5 dock last September, it might finally be time to start upgrading your external storage to take advantage of the increased performance. It’s been a slow rollout for Thunderbolt 5 hardware following its official reveal in September 2023, but companies like Seagate, OWC, and Sabrent finally have SSDs en route supporting the new standard.

Seagate announced its new Thunderbolt 5 LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5 external drive at CES this week. The company says it will be available sometime this month in a 2TB version for $399.99 and a 4TB version for $599.99. They’ll offer read and write speeds of 6,700MB/s and 5,300MB/s, respectively.

Image: Seagate

Like previous LaCie rugged drives, the new SSD comes in a rubber enclosure in blue, black, and orange color options, helping it survive drops from heights of up to three meters. It’s also waterproof with an IP68 rating, so it can survive a complete dunking to depths of one meter.

Image: Sabrent

There are a few other choices that have been announced, too, though with varying levels of availability. Sabrent, for example, was actually one of the first companies to announce a Thunderbolt 5 SSD last August, but the SSD isn’t out yet. The Rocket XTRM 5 comes in a silicone sleeve for extra protection from falls, and the company says it can reach read and write speeds of 6,000MB/s and 5,000MB/s, respectively. It’s expected to be available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities but is still listed as only being available for preorder through Sabrent’s website.

Image: OWC

OWC announced its Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD last September. The company says the external drive is water-resistant, dust-resistant, and crushproof, and offers read speeds of over 6,000MB/s. When it was announced, OWC said the Envoy Ultra would be available in a 2TB version for $399.99 and a 4TB version for $599.99, with shipping starting in late October. The first shipments of the drives sold out, but it’s still available for preorder through OWC’s website with an expected ship date of mid-January 2025.

If you’d rather take a DIY approach, several Thunderbolt 5-compatible SSD enclosures have also been announced over the past few months.

However, despite the promised performance improvements, and the yearlong wait for hardware to finally materialize, upgrading your setup to Thunderbolt 5 might still have a few speed bumps. That’s what Mark Hachman, the senior editor of PCWorld, discovered when trying to get a Maingear ML-17 laptop, Kensington’s Thunderbolt 5 dock, OWC’s Envoy Ultra SSD, and Acer’s Nitro XV5 displays to play nice. The setup was plagued by laggy performance and slow transfer speeds.

It all still felt not quite ready for primetime, Hachman found. “When you buy (or test) bleeding-edge hardware, sometimes you’re the one that ends up with the cuts,” Hachman said.

The PC handheld space continues to grow, and the biggest of all is Acer’s new Nitro Blaze 11. As soon as I saw it announced at CES, I knew I had to try and get it in my hands, at least for the sheer curiosity of “Will this thing even fit in my hands?” The answer is yes — though kind of just barely.

I brought a Steam Deck OLED with me for a quick size and feel comparison. One of the first things I noticed is that it’s much more precarious to pick up the Blaze 11 the way I’m used to grabbing the Steam Deck: by gripping it on the top and bottom edges. My fingers just barely stretch far enough for this position. Once in hand, the 2.3-pound Blaze 11 actually feels lighter than you’d expect, making it not too unwieldy if you do most of your “portable” gaming at home on the couch like I do. (Playing it in bed may be a hazard to your face.)

While the Blaze 11 isn’t as heavy as I feared, the Steam Deck OLED’s 1.41 pounds feel like a featherweight in comparison. The Deck also feels a little more solidly built. Acer’s handheld isn’t flimsy, but it did seem cheaper.

But credit where credit’s due: playing games on such a big screen in your hands is a treat, and the kickstand felt solid for propping it up in tablet mode with detached controllers, which the Steam Deck can’t do. Acer also gets points for using Hall effect sticks and triggers.

We’ll have to wait and see how this jumbo $1,099 handheld fares when it launches in Q2 2025, as the competition heats up with the impending arrival of the Lenovo Legion Go S and the constantly leaking Nintendo Switch 2. In the meantime, here are a bunch of pictures of the Blaze 11 and the Steam Deck OLED.

Update, January 9th: Added information from Acer about the bottom pins and top-mounted sliding switch of the Blaze 11 to their respective image captions.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Xbox gamers have a growing list of options among the best Xbox controllers, but even expensive ones like the Xbox Elite Series 2 can develop stick drift and other issues.

If you’re tired of shelling out for unreliable controllers, 8Bitdo’s latest wired Xbox models with Hall effect analog sticks and triggers can offer affordable relief, as you can get them for 33 percent off right now. That includes the 8BitDo Ultimate controller, which has dropped to a record low $29.99 ($15 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and 8BitDo. The DualShock-like 8BitDo Pro 2 is also on sale at Amazon and 8BitDo starting at $29.99 (about $15 off), which is only $2 more than the lowest price to date.

8BitDo’s wired Xbox controllers have been on the market for a few years now, so even if you already have one, you may have missed the refreshed Hall effect models. The older ones have ALPS-based sticks, which are commonly used in the standard controllers that ship with major consoles. They use mechanically moving parts and sensors to read the sticks’ positioning, which can eventually degrade and cause misreads to the point that your in-game characters can move even when you’re not touching the controller.

Hall effect sticks, instead, use magnetism and the sensors don’t have moving parts, and while they aren’t completely immune to eventually getting stick drift, they should last much longer. That doesn’t mean you can’t still break a controller from excessive sweaty rounds of Marvel Rivals. The triggers on both controllers benefit from similar technology and also include dedicated vibration motors.

The 8BitDo Ultimate and 8BitDo Pro 2 offer other perks that are nice to have at this price point, too, like dual rear buttons, software-based remapping (the 8BitDo Ultimate supports on-the-fly switching between three profiles using a dedicated button), and configurable sensitivity and vibration settings. In addition to Xbox One, Series X, and Series S, you can also use the controllers on Windows PCs, Android, and iOS devices by plugging them in using the detachable USB-C cable.

Following FuboTV’s recent move to settle its antitrust lawsuit with Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over the impending launch of their Venu Sports streaming service, DirectTV and EchoStar are urging the courts to consider how other TV distributors could still be shut out of the sports streaming space.

On Monday, Fubo announced that, as part of its plan to merge with Hulu + Live TV, it would also drop its lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and WBD alleging that their collaboration on Venu Sports violated US antitrust laws. The settlement outlines how Hulu + Live TV and Fubo can create a new multichannel video programming distributor that Disney would own 70 percent of. But the lawsuit’s dismissal also lifted the injunction to halt Venu’s launch which US District Judge Margaret M. Garnett passed down last August.

Because Venu Sports now has a much more realistic chance of coming to market, DirectTV and EchoStar are voicing concerns about how Fubo’s proposed Hulu deal may exacerbate, rather than properly address, the core issue of sports streaming anticompetitiveness. In a letter to Garnett, DirectTV argued that while Venu’s venture partners have paid Fubo “to ensure cooperation from an aggrieved competitor,” they have also restored “an anticompetitive runway for the JV Defendants to control the future of the live pay TV market.”

DirectTV is just one of several non-parties that expressed “grave concerns” about the impact Venu would have on competition for sports programming, given that Venu would “offer content in a manner that [the Defendants] do not allow DirectTV or other distributors to offer to consumers,” DirectTV’s lawyers said.

In its own letter to Garnett, EchoStar’s legal team insisted that the original injunction blocked Disney, Fox, and WBD’s “scheme to monopolize the pay-TV market and, once accomplished, charge inflated prices to millions of Americans.”

“The parties’ settlement appears designed to eliminate court jurisdiction over this multifarious harm by effectuating the preliminary injunction’s expiration, rather than addressing the underlying competition issues,” EchoStar said. “Now, with the injunction undone by voluntary dismissal, DISH, Sling, and other distributors will suffer antitrust injury.”