Intel is delaying the opening of its $28 billion Ohio chip plants yet again. In an update on Friday, Intel executive vice president Naga Chandrasekaran said the company now expects its first factory to begin operations between 2030 and 2031 – years later than its initial plan to kick off production in 2025.
Meanwhile, the second fabrication plant on Intel’s Ohio campus isn’t expected to open until 2032. “We are taking a prudent approach to ensure we complete the project in a financially responsible manner,” Chandrasekaran said in the post. “We will continue construction at a slower pace, while maintaining the flexibility to accelerate work and the start of operations if customer demand warrants.”
Intel’s Ohio fabrication units have been beset by delays since the very beginning. In 2022, the chipmaker postponed the groundbreaking ceremony over a lack of government funding. It later bumped the opening of its plants to 2027 or 2028.
As noted by TheColumbus Dispatch, Intel has invested $3.7 billion into its Ohio chip plants since 2022. The company says it has completed the basement level of its fab and has since started to work on the above-ground structure. Chandrasekaran added that the delay “allows us to manage our capital responsibly and adapt to the needs of our customers.”
The Verge is heading to Barcelona, Spain, for Mobile World Congress 2025. We’re fresh off CES, where we saw plenty of new gadgets, from TVs to gaming handhelds and smart glasses. But, as it says right in the name, MWC 2025 is more focused on… mobile stuff. And it’s for a global audience, which means not everything will make its way to the US.
Expect announcements from companies like Xiaomi and Nothing, the latter of which will unveil the Nothing Phone 3A, and other global phone makers. Larger firms like Samsung and Google will be there, though it’s still unclear if they’ll have news. But we’re still waiting for more details on Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge, so maybe that’ll pop up at the show.
Mobile World Congress 2025 is nearly upon us, and weâre heading to Barcelona to see what the worldâs smartphone manufacturers have to offer as they launch new devices, tease new features, and talk incessantly about AI. The show officially kicks off on March 3rd and runs to March 6th, but the first announcements should arrive on March 2nd, when Xiaomi, HMD, and Honor all have press conferences scheduled.
MWC may be a long way from its glory days when the likes of Samsung and Sony used it as the launchpad for that yearâs flagship phones, but there are still some major players expected to unveil new hardware next week â most notably, Xiaomi bringing its flagship 15 series to Europe. Nothing, HMD, and Realme are among the other companies we already know are planning to launch new phones.
Hereâs what to expect from the companies we know will have news.
Xiaomi
Itâs already been confirmed that Xiaomi is launching the 15 series on March 2nd, with the regular 15 and 15 Ultra expected to appear. The base model has been available in China since October, while the 15 Ultra was only officially revealed on February 27th.
The 15 Ultra is another photography-focused flagship, wit …
Apple customers filed a class action lawsuit against the company, alleging it misled consumers with claims that certain Apple Watches are carbon neutral. For a product to be considered carbon neutral, its manufacturer has to offset or cancel out any pollution the item generates.
Apple said in 2023 that “select case and band combinations” of its Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra 2, and Apple Watch SE would be the company’s first carbon neutral devices. The suit was filed on behalf of anyone who bought those watches. It alleges that the products were not really carbon neutral because they relied on faulty offset projects that didn’t actually reduce the company’s greenhouse gas pollution.
The lawsuit shows how difficult it is to make promises about a product’s sustainability by attempting to offset or capture the carbon dioxide emissions it generates. Many environmental advocates have instead pushed for tech companies to switch from fossil fuels to cleaner energy, and to make products that last longer and are easier to repair.
Make products that last longer and are easier to repair
The company’s carbon neutral claims were false, and the seven plaintiffs would not have purchased the Apple Watches or paid as much for them had they known that, the lawsuit alleges. “Apple’s false advertising may lead [consumers] to choose its products over genuinely sustainable alternatives,” the complaint filed in a California federal court on Wednesday says.
Apple is standing by its assertions. “We are proud of our carbon neutral products, which are the result of industry-leading innovation in clean energy and low-carbon design,” Apple spokesperson Sean Redding said in an email.
Redding says the company reduced Apple Watch emissions by more than 75 percent. The company focused on cutting pollution from materials, electricity, and transportation used to make the watches, in part by getting more of its suppliers to switch to clean energy.
To deal with the remaining pollution, Redding says Apple invests in “nature-based projects to remove hundreds of thousands of metric tons of carbon from the air.” That’s where the new lawsuit finds problems.
To offset their emissions, many companies buy carbon credits from forestry projects that represent tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide that trees and soil naturally trap. Apple primarily purchased credits from the Chyulu Hills project in Kenya and the Guinan Project in China, the suit says. It alleges that neither of the projects met a basic standard for carbon offsets, which is that they capture additional CO2 that would not otherwise have been sequestered had Apple not paid to support the project.
According to the complaint:
The Chyulu Hills Project purports to generate carbon credits by preventing deforestation on land which has been legally protected from deforestation since 1983, while the Guinan Project claims to have planted trees on “barren land” that was already heavily forested before the project began. In both cases, the carbon reductions would have occurred regardless of Apple’s involvement or the projects’ existence. And because Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are predicated on the efficacy and legitimacy of these projects, Apple’s carbon neutrality claims are false and misleading.
Apple is far from the only company to have faced accusations about carbon offset projects. Dozens of big-name brands — including airlines, retailers, banks, and more — have relied on “junk” carbon offsets to make carbon neutral claims, a 2022 Bloomberg investigation found.
This also isn’t the first time Apple’s first carbon neutral products have faced scrutiny. The company needs to be more transparent about its supply chain in order to back its carbon neutral claims, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs said in a separate report in 2023. That report found that some Apple suppliers’ emissions were growing.
A better measure of a company’s environmental impact is whether its entire carbon footprint — encompassing its operations, supply chain, and the use of its products — is shrinking. A company can purport to make a more sustainable product, but it could potentially wind up selling so many of those products that the company as a whole has a bigger carbon footprint.
So, for consumers who want to limit their own carbon footprint, they’re probably better off hanging on to their current devices for as long as they can. For its part, Apple’s carbon footprint as a company got smaller between 2021 and 2023, even without taking carbon offsets into account, according to its latest sustainability report. But Apple still churned out 16.1 million metric tons of CgO2 emissions in 2023, roughly equivalent to the emissions from 42 gas-fired power plants in a year. And while Apple hasmade some strides, there’s still a long way to go to make devices easier to repair.
Severance has always been a horror story, albeit one set in a mostly generic office. That blandness is a large part of what makes it so scary: underneath the corporate speak, drab decor, and unflattering fluorescent lighting is something very sinister. And in the showâs latest episode, it uses that energy to tap into a new, even more terrifying kind of fear.
Spoilers ahead for Severance, up to season 2, episode 7.
The episode, called âChikhai Bardo,â picks up with Mark (Adam Scott) recovering from a process called reintegration thatâs designed to reunite the two halves of his mind: the outie who lives a normal life, and the innie who is confined to the unyielding hell of the basement of tech giant Lumon Industries. Because of this, it has an almost Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind vibe to it. As Mark is passed out on his couch post-surgery, and his brain is seemingly stitching itself back together, we get flashbacks of how he met his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and how their relationship became strained after they struggled to conceive.
Gemma is better known to Severance viewers as Miss Casey, the disturbingly calm wellness director at Lumon. In the outside world, …
Amazon has been trying to make virtual assistants happen for more than a decade. Alexa is, by many definitions, wildly successful, but it has so far failed to become the kind of omnipresent, omnipotent helper the company imagines. (It has also, by all accounts, failed to become a compelling business for Amazon.) This week, though, Amazon launched the most ambitious version of Alexa yet, with new technology underneath and some big new ideas about how you might interact with AI.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk a lot about whatâs next for Alexa. David Imel â who you might know as the co-host of the Waveform podcast â joins the show to help us figure out what to make of Alexa Plus, and the whole idea that large language models can make virtual assistants both more useful and more accessible. Amazonâs description of Alexa Plus makes a lot of sense, and sounds pretty compelling, but we have reservations both about the user experience and about Amazonâs ability to actually pull this off.
Officials will be able to tell how much time is left and get haptic alerts. | Image: NHL, Apple
The Apple Watch is now the smartwatch of choice for National Hockey League officials. Apple and the NHL just announced a collaboration where on-ice officials will wear Apple Watches that are running special software to receive important in-game information.
Using the custom-built NHL Watch Comms app, on-ice refereescan view the game clock directly from their wrist. Theyâll also be able to receive haptic alerts for when NHL players leave the penalty box or when time is running out in the period. The haptic patterns for each timer are different, so as not to confuse the officials. The Apple Watches will also be synced to the NHLâs Oasis feed, a cloud system that enables player tracking, game telemetry, and other data, which will ensure that all officials receive the same information.
âWe wanted to make sure that the officials had really good awareness and were able to keep their eyes on play,â says Andres de Corral, vice president of digital services at Presidio, a tech firm that helped develop the app. âSo by enabling haptic responses, we were able to provide non-visual cues to the officials.â
Situational awareness is a major challenge for officials on the ice. On t …
It’s the end of an era. Microsoft is shutting down Skype in May and replacing it with the free version of Microsoft Teams for consumers. Existing Skype users will be able to log in to the Microsoft Teams app and have their message history, group chats, and contacts all automatically available without having to create another account, or they can choose to export their data instead. Microsoft is also phasing out support for calling domestic or international numbers.
“Skype users will be in control, they’ll have the choice,” says Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, in an interview with The Verge. “They can migrate their conversation history and their contacts out and move on if they want, or they can migrate to Teams.”
If you choose to move on and bring your Skype data with you, the exported data will include photos and conversation history. Microsoft also made a tool to easily view existing Skype chat history if you don’t want to move to Teams.
Skype will remain online until May 5th, so existing users will have around 60 days to decide whether they want to switch to Microsoft Teams or export their data. “If they do want to come to Teams then the first-run is pretty instantaneous because we’ve already done the work on the backend to restore their contacts, message history, and call logs,” says Amit Fulay, vice president of product at Microsoft.
The transition to Microsoft Teams will keep Skype group chats intact, and during the 60-day window, Microsoft will also maintain interoperability so you can message contacts on Teams and those messages will be delivered to friends still using Skype.
If you do move to Microsoft Teams, there’s one big part of Skype that’s disappearing, though. Microsoft is removing the telephony parts that allow you to call domestic or international numbers or people’s cellphones. “Part of the reason is we look at the usage and the trends, and this functionality was great at the time when voice over IP (VoIP) wasn’t available and mobile data plans were very expensive,” explains Fulay. “If we look at the future, that’s not a thing we want to be in.”
Microsoft will honor existing Skype credits, but it will no longer offer new customers access to paid Skype features that allow you to make or receive international and domestic calls. Existing Skype subscription users will be able to use their Skype credits and subscriptions inside Microsoft Teams until the end of their next renewal period. Existing Skype Number users will also need to port their number over to another provider, as Microsoft is no longer supporting this, either.
The Skype Dial Pad will be part of Teams temporarily for existing credits and subscriptions, but Microsoft isn’t going to offer calling plans to Teams consumers like it does for businesses. “The world has really moved on,” says Teper. “Probably the biggest thing is higher bandwidth and lower data plan cost, from us and others, has really driven almost all of the traffic to VoIP.”
The admission of consumers moving on from calling phone numbers from Skype is also a large part of why the service is shutting down nearly 14 years after Microsoft first acquired it for $8.5 billion. Over the last decade, services like FaceTime, Messenger, and WhatsApp have made it simple to connect with friends through messaging, calls, and video chats in a way that Microsoft struggled to compete with through Skype and its many design iterations.
This was particularly evident in the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic, when consumers flocked to Zoom instead of Skype. “The Skype userbase actually grew at the beginning of the pandemic, and has been pretty flat since,” admits Teper. “It’s not shrunk in some dramatic way. It has been relatively flat over the last few years. We hope we’ll migrate most Skype users… but we want to make sure the users know they’re in control.”
Microsoft will now be fully focused on Teams for consumers, after launching the personal version in 2020. At the time, Microsoft said it was still fully committed to Skype, but it’s been clear in recent years that the company was preparing for the eventual retirement of Skype. In December, Microsoft killed off Skype credits and phone numbers in favor of subscriptions, another sign that the end of Skype was nearing.
“Initially the vision was to have one experience across work and life… but Teams was new and that was not realistically where we were in 2020,” reveals Teper. “So we continued to invest in Skype, and about two to three years ago we started bringing in the free Teams consumer experience with the new client. We wanted to wait until the adoption was at the scale where we could be very convinced it was the right time.”
The Skype retirement won’t result in job cuts, either, at least not immediately. “There’s one team, which is Microsoft Teams and Skype. On the backend it has actually evolved to a common team,” says Teper. “There won’t be layoffs, those folks are going to be working on making things better — whether it’s fun end user features or AI innovation, it’s really about doubling down on Teams.”
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, meme coins don’t meet the requirements to be protected by federal securities law. In new guidance issued on Thursday, the SEC announced that it doesn’t view most meme coins — cryptocurrencies that originate from internet memes or cultural phenomena — as securities, and that transactions around them do not need to be registered with the commission.
The SEC said it reached this decision because the coins do not “generate a yield or convey rights to future income, profits, or assets of a business,” and therefore cannot be considered a security. Instead, the SEC describes meme coins as “more akin to collectibles” and “typically have limited or no use or functionality.”
The clarified guidance could impact crypto regulations and shield companies and individuals that create meme coins from potential litigation. The digital currencies tend to experience volatile price swings and are popularly used in “pump and dump” schemes, in which a token is artificially inflated via insider promotion to cash in on the buying frenzy.
“Meme coins typically are purchased for entertainment, social interaction, and cultural purposes, and their value is driven primarily by market demand and speculation,” said the SEC. “Given the speculative nature of meme coins, they tend to experience significant market price volatility, and often are accompanied by statements regarding their risks and lack of utility, other than for entertainment or other non-functional purposes.”
AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs is arriving next week — and its new graphics cards are aggressively priced against Nvidia’s $749 GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and $549 RTX 5070. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT ship on March 6th for $549 and $599, respectively, one day after the RTX 5070 arrives.
AMD says they both offer “4K gaming at a 1440p price,” though it’s making some unusual comparisons to do so — according to AMD, the 9070 XT is 51 percent faster on average than a four-year-old RX 6900 XT at 4K and max settings and 26 percent faster than a four-year-old RTX 3090 at the same settings, cards that filled a pricey niche two generations ago.
While leaks had suggested the pricing of AMD’s 9070 could start at $649, AMD surprised everyone today with suggested retail prices at $549 for this card — putting it head-to-head with Nvidia’s $549 RTX 5070. The $599 9700 XT could even challenge Nvidia’s $749 pricing for its RTX 5070 Ti, as long as AMD has managed to deliver performance that can challenge both of these RTX 50-series cards.
We won’t know the full answer to that until reviews for AMD’s cards appear next week as well as reviews for Nvidia’s RTX 5070. AMD is dropping some performance hints about where its 9070 series cards might fit in, though. AMD says the 9070 XT is 42 percent more potent at 4K Ultra (and 38 percent at 1440p Ultra) than AMD’s RX 7900 GRE, a card that challenged the RTX 4070 at $549 but vanished after less than a year. And it’s “just barely slightly slower” than a 7900 XTX, AMD’s 2022 flagship, we heard on a call.
The vanilla RX 9070, meanwhile, is 21 percent faster than the same 7900 GRE at 4K, suggesting it’s not far off the XT in performance: 38 percent faster than the AMD 6800 XT and 26 percent faster than the Nvidia RTX 3080, according to AMD. At 220 watts of board power, AMD’s director of graphics product management, Scott Olschewsky, says the 4nm monolithic chip is “the most efficient GPU we’ve ever built.”
Each card also offers 16GB of GDDR6 memory, DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b ports, and are PCIe 5.0 cards — not that your motherboard needs a 5.0 new slot or would necessarily benefit from one. They will use standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors.
While both the 9070 and 9070 XT have far fewer graphics compute units than the 7900 GRE (55, 64, and 80, respectively), they don’t need as many because they’re the first cards to ship with RDNA 4, which AMD says offers twice the rasterization (read: non-ray traced) graphics performance per compute unit as RDNA 2. (RDNA 3 was closer to 1.4x that of RDNA 2.)
AMD says it’s taken larger steps than that in ray tracing, too, and almost fully doubled its FP16 machine learning performance since RDNA 3, and up to 779 TOPS, though performance will differ from app to app: AMD’s only seeing 12 percent more performance in Adobe Lightroom super resolution over the 7900 GRE, as one example.
But even if you’re not playing with AI very intentionally, AMD will put that hardware to use in gaming with FSR 4, which comes with a new AI upscaling algorithm for its super resolution tech that’ll exclusively run on these RDNA 4 and newer cards.
Olschewsky says FSR 4 can increase frame rates “while looking just as good as native rendering” at 4K resolution. AMD used some images from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 — a title that averages just 53fps at 4K Ultra settings — to show more fine detail in the distant background of an image while averaging at 182fps with FSR 4 and frame generation turned on.
And while AMD didn’t share expected performance for that game without the fake frames added, it did break out the differences for a handful of other games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Ratchet & Clank:
AMD says it’ll have 30 FSR4 games at launch and over 75 by the end of the year — one obvious theme is a lot of PS5 games, making us wonder how closely the PS5 Pro’s “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution,” an AI upscaler powered by AMD hardware, might be related to it. But AMD also says FSR 3.1 games can be updated to FSR 4 “with a simple toggle.”
The new cards also have an enhanced media engine with higher image quality for gameplay recording, as the last one “did not meet quality expectations from the gamers trying to record and stream.” AMD says its Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF), its generic fake frame generation you can apply to any game yourself, is being upgraded to AFMF 2.1, with less ghosting and smearing of details.
As with any graphics card these days, the actual amount you pay will be determined by whether AMD can actually make enough of the things, and if AMD’s board partners don’t jack up the price. Olschewsky had some fighting words for Nvidia there, though: “We believe that our 9070 XT will be going toe-to-toe with what you’ve seen from the 5070 Ti that users may or may not be able to buy,” adding that the 9070 “is going to look very strong against their upcoming 5070.”
Unlike Nvidia, which warned of shortages with its new cards, he says AMD expects “strong availability at launch.”
“We are working with all of our partners to go and deliver the most competitive prices on GPUs around the world; our focus is ensuring cards hit target price points around the world. It’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen, but we’ll be working with partners as we see pricing show up.”
At the end of AMD’s event today the company also teased that its RX 9060 series cards will arrive in the second quarter to “broaden the family even further.” AMD plans to disclose more information about these cards “later,” but it certainly looks like it’s getting ready to challenge Nvidia’s unannounced RTX 5060 cards.
The shadow president paced around the stage after his speech, sunglasses on, mouth frozen in a grin, raising a chainsaw overhead to the delight of an adoring crowd as a large rectangular canvas made its way from the back of the audience toward him. He grabbed the painting, visibly thrilled. On the canvas, as onstage, he was the focal point. Beams of light emanated from his head, which the artist had superimposed over scenes from the world his real-world counterpart had promised to build: an astronaut surveying a barren red planet, a futuristic civilization complete with flying cars. In the painting, he wore a suit and tie. His real-world attire was more casual: a black blazer over a novelty T-shirt that read âIâm not procrastinating, Iâm doing side quests,â a gold chain, his signature âdark MAGAâ hat, and the aforementioned sunglasses. In the painting, he was triumphant. Onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), however, Elon Musk had appeared incoherent. Fifteen or so minutes into the interview, a reporter in the media pit turned to me and mimed smoking a joint, mouthing, âIs he high?â
Still, the audience was in his thrall. At one point, whe …
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia has joined President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) service. Gebbia, a close friend of Elon Musk and fellow billionaire, announced that he’s been tasked with “improving the slow and paper-based retirement process,” though the specifics of his involvement are unclear.
“Excited to share I’m bringing my designer brain and start-up spirit into the government,” Gebbia announced on X. “I can think of few more important ones than volunteering to improve the user experience within our government.”
Musk has complained that the current system for processing retirement applications is too slow and restrictive due to using manually checked paper records. A converted mine in Pennsylvania is currently used to store and process 400 million printed government documents, taking up 26,000 filing cabinets. The US Office of Personnel Management announced on Thursday that it had processed an entire retirement application digitally for the first time, completing the task “without printing a single piece of paper” within two days, instead of the several weeks it usually takes.
The retirement process for every federal employee involves a paper application, filing cabinets, and a mainframe in a mine.
It’s unclear if Gebbia’s role at DOGE is a paid position. Gebbia remains a significant shareholder and board member of Airbnb despite leaving his operating role at the company in 2022 — the same year he joined Tesla’s board of directors. In response to Gebbia’s DOGE appointment, some Airbnb users and hosts have posted on the rental platform’s community forums with threats to boycott the service and called for Airbnb to distance itself from the co-founder.
Gebbia attracted similar ire from the Airbnb community last month when he revealed that he had voted for Trump in the November elections. Gebbia had been a Democratic donor until 2023 and scrutinized Trump for his “heartless, cruel, and immoral” family separation policy during his previous presidency. Having professed to having a “woke-up call,” his DOGE appointment further cements his pledge to support the MAGA ethos.
The original Red Alert is going open source for the second time.
Electronic Arts (EA) is releasing the source code for four Command & Conquer titles under the open-source GPL license. The original Command & Conquer (since subtitled Tiberian Dawn) is joined by Red Alert, Renegade, and Generals, the code for all of which can now be found on EA’s GitHub page. Only the code has been open sourced, not the games’ assets and cinematics, but it will help modders and the game restoration community keep the games playable.
This isn’t actually a first for EA. Back in 2020 the company released the source code for its Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, made up of Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert. That code had already been adapted for the remaster’s engine however, while the new releases are the “fully recovered source code” of the series’ first two games, according to Luke “CCHyper” Feenan, a Command & Conquer community member who proposed and orchestrated the release together with EA.
Renegade and Generals, meanwhile, have been released under an open-source license for the first time. Renegade is a 2002 first- and third-person shooter set in the franchise’s Tiberium universe, while Generals is a 2003 strategy game that eschewed the Tiberium and Red Alert worlds for a near-future setting depicting a war between the United States, China, and the fictional Global Liberation Army. Its expansion Zero Hour is also included in the open source release.
Alongside the open sourcing, EA has also opened Steam Workshop support, and released a ‘Modding Support’ pack that includes the source XML, schema, script, shader and map files, for all the games that use the SAGE engine:
C&C Renegade
C&C Generals & Zero Hour
C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath
C&C Red Alert 3 & Uprising
C&C 4 Tiberian Twilight
That move should make it easier to create mods and maps for the games, and to share some of those creations through Steam. To cap off the announcement, EA released a 35-minute video of archival gameplay footage from the early development of Renegade and Generals:
Tri-folds are having a moment. Thereâs that impressive Huawei device, my favorite 3-in-1 Apple charger, and now this: the Zip tri-fold projector from a company called Aurzen. Itâs the most gadgety gadget Iâve tested in a long time.
The Zipâs heft, texture, and hinge stiffness evokes quality at first touch and itâs impressively bright for a compact battery-powered projector that initially costs $249.
Using it is also a joy. It connects quickly to iPhones over AirPlay and to Android devices over Miracast, Smart View, or similar using Wi-Fi Direct â no hotspot required. It then automatically focuses and aligns the image on any available flat surface including walls, t-shirts, and pillows. It works in both landscape and portrait modes and pairs with Bluetooth headsets for private audio or Bluetooth speakers for a shared experience. The built-in rechargeable battery lasts about 80 minutes in my real-world testing, but you can always plug it into a powerbank or wall jack to extend that.
Using it sucks, however, if youâre trying to stream from services like Netflix and Disney Plus or trying to watch Spotify music videos. Thatâs because all those companies protect their …
The EV4 sedan was first announced as a concept in 2023, but it’s now a real car. It comes in two versions. One has a funky rear that stretches out to look like a traditional 4-door car. The other, a “five-door” hot-hatch-looking version will primarily be for the European market, according to Kia. These aren’t going to be Kia’s most-performant EVs though, as they will be single-motor front-wheel drive vehicles with just 150kW of power and a 0-62 mph acceleration time as quick as 7.4 seconds.
The EV4 will also run on a lesser 400-volt version of the company’s E-GMP platform instead of the faster-charging 800-volt versions used in the EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and others. Kia says the system can still charge 10 to 80 percent in as little as 31 minutes.
The vehicles could shine in battery range. Kia says they’ll get up to 630km (about 391 miles) on a single charge with the larger 81.4 kWh battery option, and 430km (about 267 miles) on the smaller 58.3 kWh battery. However, those estimates are based on Europe’s more generous WLTP standards.
The EV4 still offers some of Kia’s cooler EV tech. It has a 30-inch widescreen display (really three side-by-side instrument cluster and infotainment screens) that run Kia’s latest “connected car Navigation Cockpit (ccNC) software. You get entertainment options like YouTube, Netflix, games, and more that will be available from an app store.. You can also get an AI voice assistant, Apple Watch digital key access, V2L for powering household devices, and a “Smart Cruise Control 2” advanced driver-assistance system with lane keeping.
Kia’s concept EV2, which had purportedly been spotted in camouflage last year, is supposed to be even cheaper than the EV4. The company says the mini-SUV will be its “smallest EV yet” and will have options to reconfigure seating to maximize front row space for lounging or for rear cargo. It will also have perks like removable portable speakers for tailgating.
The EV4 sedan will initially be built in Korea and will first launch there in the middle of March. The EV4 hatchback will be produced in Slovakia and will launch in Europe in the second half of 2024. The North American version of the sedan will be produced “later in the year.” The EV2, meanwhile, is coming in 2026 for Europe and other regions, although its US availability is yet to be confirmed.
Kia President Ho Sung Song announced at the event that EV4 pricing will start at 37,000 euros (about $38,500), Electrek reports. The initial run will include 160,000 units, of which 80,000 are destined to ship to North America.
With the EV4, US car buyers might soon have another affordable mass-market electric car option against the Tesla Model 3. The EV4 could fill some vacancies, too, as automakers like Volkswagen, which is no longer bringing the ID.7 stateside, re-tune their EV strategies amidst the Trump administration’s interests to eliminate electric vehicle incentives.
Meta is planning to launch a dedicated app for its AI chatbot, according to a report from CNBC. The Verge can also confirm that Meta is working on the standalone app. The new app could launch in the second quarter of this year, CNBC says, joining the growing number of standalone AI apps, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.
Meta has already brought its AI chatbot across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, but launching a standalone app could help the company reach people who don’t already use those platforms. Similar to rival chatbots, Meta AI can answer questions, generate images, edit photos, and more. It recently gained the ability to use its “memory” to provide better recommendations.
In a response to CNBC’s report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joked, “ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app.” Meta declined to comment.
Meta has ramped up its efforts to compete in the AI industry in recent months, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing plans to invest up to $65 billion to further the company’s AI ambitions. The company also plans on holding an event dedicated to AI on April 29th.
Amazon is gearing up to launch new hardware to go along with its AI-upgraded Alexa. During an interview with Bloomberg, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company has a “brand new lineup of devices that are coming in the fall that are beautiful.”
On Wednesday, Amazon revealed Alexa Plus, a more conversational version of the smart assistant that’s capable of performing a wider range of tasks, such as ordering an Uber or finding concert tickets. Amazon says “almost every” Alexa device will support Alexa Plus, save for older Echo generations. Alexa Plus will cost $19.99 per month but will be included with a subscription to Prime.
Though Jassy didn’t share any other details about the new devices, it seems like the company plans to put an even bigger focus on displays. When asked about Amazon’s next-generation hardware, Panos Panay, Amazon’s head of devices and services, told my colleague Jennifer Tuohy that, “I believe in screens. I think they matter in a massive way.”
The Cricut Maker 4 and Explore 4 crafting machines in their new seashell and sage color options. | Image: Cricut
Cricut has announced new versions of its crafting machines designed to print, cut, and emboss various materials using a collection of swappable tools. The new Cricut Maker 4 and Cricut Explore 4 are the first updates to both machines in nearly four years and offer faster cutting speeds for some materials, improved accuracy, and cheaper price tags.
The machines will be available starting on February 28th, 2025. They’ll still start at $249.99 for the Cricut Explore 4, and at $399.99 for the Cricut Maker 4, and both will be available in sage and seashell color options. The four-year-old Cricut Explore 3 sells for $319, while the Maker 3 is $439, so the cheaper price tags for the 4-series line could help make the new machines more accessible to new users. Both models come with a bundle of crafting materials to complete 10 initial projects.
The Cricut Maker 4 and Explore 4 look nearly identical to their predecessors but are up to twice as fast when cutting through materials like cardstock and vinyl, Cricut says. The speed improvements won’t be quite as dramatic when using thicker materials, but the upgrade will still appeal to crafters who sell their creations on sites like Etsy and are looking to upgrade their output.
Cricut has also introduced a new optical sensor on both models that works alongside a light that better illuminates materials, according to CNET. The upgrade should help improve cutting accuracy, no matter what the lighting conditions are in your crafting room.
Although there are differences between both machines’ capabilities, they’re mostly dependent on the types of projects you’re looking to create. The pricier Cricut Maker 4 is designed to work with over 300 different types of materials, including thicker options like leather and balsa wood, and a wider variety of cutting and embossing tools. The cheaper Cricut Explore 4 is limited to around 100 different materials, including thinner stock like vinyl, card stock, and iron-ons.
While the new machines don’t require subscriptions, the company still offers a Cricut Access subscription for users who heavily rely on pre-made designs and projects available through its Design Space app. Cricut Access also expands the number of fonts and images available through the app and includes discounts on materials.
Apple announced in a whitepaper that it plans to introduce a bunch of new child safety features, including letting parents share their kids’ age ranges with apps, refreshing the App Store’s age ratings system, and making it easier for parents to set up Child Accounts for their kids. The company says it will introduce the features “this year.”
Companies like Meta, Snap, and X have called for platforms to be responsible for verifying the ages of users at the OS or app store level. Apple also reportedly lobbied against a proposed bill in Louisiana that would have required the company to enforce age restrictions.
In the whitepaper, Apple argues that age verification “at the app marketplace level” wouldn’t be ideal, as it would require users to hand over “sensitive personally identifying information” to the company. “That’s not in the interest of user safety or privacy,” Apple says.
The age sharing system gestures in that direction without going so far as to fully verify each user’s age. With the age range feature, “parents can allow their kids to share the age range associated with their Child Accounts with app developers,” Apple says.
The age range will “be shared with developers if and only if parents decide to allow this information to be shared,” and parents will be able to disable sharing. The feature also won’t “provide kids’ actual birthdates.” Developers will be able to request the age ranges with a new API that Apple says is a “narrowly tailored, data-minimizing, privacy-protecting tool to assist app developers who can benefit from it.”
“Today’s announcement is a positive first step, however, developers can only apply these age-appropriate protections with a teen’s approval,” Meta spokesperson Jamie Radice says in a statement to The Verge. “Parents tell us they want to have the final say over the apps their teens use, and that’s why we support legislation that requires app stores to verify a child’s age and get a parent’s approval before their child downloads an app.”
As for App Store ratings will expand from four thresholds to five; the new categories will be Age 4 plus, 9 plus, 13 plus, 16 plus, and 18 plus. In their app listings, developers will be asked to highlight “whether apps contain user-generated content or advertising capabilities that can impact the presence of age-inappropriate content” and if apps have their own content controls.
Apple says that the App Store won’t show kids apps with age ratings “in the places where we feature apps on our storefront” that are higher than what their parents set on their accounts.
As for Child Accounts, Apple says that it will introduce a new setup process and let parents fix the age associated with the account if it wasn’t set up correctly.
Microsoft is releasing a native Copilot app for macOS today. Much like the Windows app, the Copilot version for Mac will provide access to the web-based version of Microsoft’s AI assistant, where you can upload images and generate images or text.
The macOS version of Copilot also includes a dark mode and a shortcut command to activate the AI assistant by using Command + Space — much like the Alt + Space on the Windows version. Microsoft is launching this new Copilot Mac app in the US, UK, and Canada today, and the iPad version is also being updated with a split screen mode.
You’ll also now be able to log into Copilot on an iPhone or iPad with an Apple ID, and upload text or PDF files to ask questions about the documents or generate a summary about them. This document summarization feature is also coming to the macOS app soon.
The launch of Copilot on macOS comes just days after Microsoft made Copilot Voice and Think Deeper free with unlimited use. Previously, both Think Deeper (powered by OpenAI’s o1 model) and Voice in Copilot had limits for free users, but Microsoft has now removed these to allow Copilot users to have extended conversations with the company’s AI assistant.
