A chatbot made by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has rocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store charts in the US this week, dethroning OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app. The eponymous AI assistant is powered by DeepSeek’s open-source models, which the company says can be trained at a fraction of the cost using far fewer chips than the world’s leading models. The claim has riled financial markets, sending Nvidia’s shares down over 12 percent in pre-market training,

Downloads for the app exploded shortly after DeepSeek released its new R1 reasoning model on January 20th, which is designed for solving complex problems and reportedly performs as well as OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks. R1 was built on the V3 LLM DeepSeek released in December, which the company claims is on par with GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and cost less than $6 million to develop. By contrast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said GPT-4 cost over $100 million to train.

DeepSeek also claims to have needed only about 2,000 specialized chips from Nvidia to train V3, compared to the 16,000 or more required to train leading models, according to the New York Times. These unverified claims are leading developers and investors to question the compute-intensive approach favored by the world’s leading AI companies. And if true, it means that DeepSeek engineers had to get creative in the face of trade restrictions meant to ensure US domination of AI.

Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta are investing billions into AI data centers — $500 billion alone for the Stargate Project, of which $100 billion is thought to be earmarked for Nvidia. Investors and analysts are now wondering if that’s money well spent, with Nvidia, Microsoft, and other companies with substantial stakes in maintaining the AI status quo all trending downward in pre-market trading.

We might have just gotten our best look yet at Apple’s next affordable iPhone SE, shown in both video and photographs of what’s either a real phone or a convincing dummy unit. Despite some reports that the next SE would adopt recent iPhones’ Dynamic Island design, this model appears to stick with the older notch.

Leaker Majin Bu shared a short video over the weekend that shows the new phone in bright daylight, following it up a day later with photos of both white and black versions. Like previous iPhone SE models there’s only a single rear camera, though this appears to be the first in the line to feature a USB-C port — now a requirement for the phone to be sold in the EU.

The biggest surprise is that the phone features Apple’s older notched display, rather than the Dynamic Island design that leaker Evan Blass had tipped it to include. This is hard to make out clearly in the video, but the selfie camera’s position just left of centre matches the iPhone 14’s notched setup — and besides, the leaker himself has confirmed in replies to the post that there’s a notch.

This isn’t our first look at the new SE, though it is our clearest. Sonny Dickson shared two photos of similar looking SE 4 dummy units two weeks ago that he then put on sale.

The SE 4 is rumored to switch to an OLED display, and is expected to include enough RAM to support Apple Intelligence features. Rumors point to a launch around March or April, which makes sense — the SE 3 launched in March 2022.

Retro Remake’s Taki Udon announced last night that preorders had opened for the SuperStation One, a clone of the PS One variant of the original PlayStation. The $149.99 Founders Edition preorders are sold out already, but you can still preorder the standard $225 SuperStation One for $179.99 right now, with shipping expected in “Q4 or Earlier.”

While the SuperStation One looks like a PS One — complete with ports compatible with the original PlayStation controller and memory cards — it plays more than just PlayStation 1 games. It’s a custom MiSTER field-programmable gate array (FPGA) machine, as Polygon points out. That means rather than emulating game consoles, its hardware can actually function just like those consoles, with cores ranging from the Atari 5200 and NES to the PlayStation and Sega Saturn.

Retro Remake currently offers the system in black, gray, and translucent blue. It comes with a 64GB Micro SD card and has three USB-A ports, an ethernet port, and an NFC reader that you can use to trigger specific games to load. It uses USB-C for power.

On the video side of things, the SuperStation One will have an HDMI port, along with VGA, DIN10, composite, and component ports geared for retro gaming setups. You’ll also find a 3.5mm audio jack and a digital audio port. Finally, there’s an expansion slot to support Retro Remake’s planned SuperDock accessory that adds a slot-loading disc drive, a 2280 m.2 SSD bay, and four more USB-A ports. That’s not up for preorder yet, but you can put down a $5 preorder deposit for it with an order of the SuperStation One.

This is Retro Remake’s first console, though the company plans to make more later, as Udon told Time Extension last week. The company has released other products, including a DIY kit for upgrading the Nintendo Switch Lite to an OLED display.

Whenever Netflix raises its prices — which seems to happen roughly as often as Ben Affleck falls in love with an A-list celebrity — the company always gives the same reason. It needs the extra money, you see, in order to keep investing in the kind of programming and product its 302 million subscribers demand. That’s how the standard monthly price of ad-free Netflix jumped from $7.99 to $17.99 over the course of the last 13 years, including a $2.50 jump just announced during the company’s recent earnings report. There’s still a $7.99 monthly plan, of course, but that one includes ads — and it’s a dollar more expensive than it was a week ago.

But let’s be real with each other. You want to know why Netflix keeps raising its prices? Because it can. Because Netflix won. The rest of the streaming industry is competing ferociously over a finite pool of money, dealing with carriage disputes because of dwindling subscriber numbers, and panicking over the future of TV. Netflix is the future of TV.

Over the last couple of years in particular, Netflix has gone from a solid streaming service to a practically unavoidable, virtually uncancellable part of mainstream culture. It has developed a...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 68, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you’re staying warm and sane, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Kieran Culkin and insomnia and the eBay for fancy startup stuff, finally watching The Wild Robot, thinking a lot about my shopping habits while watching The Mega-Brands That Built America, adding a bunch of Baseus retractable cables to my travel kit, playing an amazing browser-based rendition of the Atari game Pitfall!, testing out the new Spark calendar for Android, and trying to copy Babish’s delicious-looking breakfast sandwich.

I also have for you the biggest new phone in the Android world, the GPU every gamer’s going to want, an impossible test for AI tools, a clever Google alternative, and much more. It’s been a somewhat quiet week for new stuff, honestly, since it’s both post-CES doldrums and utter political chaos. But we’ve still got great stuff to talk about! Let’s do it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / cooking / downloading / building...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Live AI is neat, but the problem is knowing when (and why) you’d want to use it.

Read the full story at The Verge.

It might be time for a more unified platform.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Oracle and a group of investors that includes Microsoft are in talks to take over TikTok’s global operations, reports NPR. The deal would reportedly see ByteDance keeping a minority stake in TikTok while “the app’s algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle.” The outlet reports the White House is negotiating the deal, though President Trump has since denied he is working with Oracle.

“I have spoken to many people about TikTok and there is great interest in TikTok,” Trump said on a flight to Florida Saturday, Reuters reported. But according to the outlet, he said Oracle was not among those he’s spoken with:

“No, not with Oracle. Numerous people are talking to me, very substantial people, about buying it and I will make that decision probably over the next 30 days. Congress has given 90 days. If we can save TikTok, I think it would be a good thing.”

Others who have reportedly considered buying TikTok include Elon Musk, real estate billionaire Frank McCourt, and Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary. Trump recently said he would like Larry Ellison, who co-founded Oracle, to buy the platform.

Oracle’s server network already provides the bulk of TikTok’s backbone, and a potential deal with it could see Oracle “effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok,” according to one of NPR’s anonymous sources, who added that the agreement’s goal is to “minimize Chinese ownership.”

Microsoft’s reported involvement isn’t clear beyond that it is “engaged in the talks.” The company was also in the mix with Oracle and Walmart in a 2020 bid to take over TikTok that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had called “a poison[ed] chalice.” Walmart reportedly isn’t involved this time around “after balking at the estimated price” of the app.

News of the talks comes after President Trump issued an executive order giving TikTok and others a 75-day reprieve from any enforcement action related to the United States’ requirement that ByteDance divest from TikTok. Trump had previously floated the possibility of a “joint venture” in which the US owns 50 percent of the company.

Microsoft declined to comment on this story. We’ve also reached out to Oracle, TikTok, and the White House.

Update January 26th: Added that Microsoft declined to comment. Also added Reuters’ report that President Trump denied working with Oracle on a deal, along with additional context about other potential TikTok buyers.

Fubo has raised its English-language streaming plan prices by $5 each, with a Fubo spokesperson citing “rising costs from our programming partners,” reported The Streamable yesterday. Fubo’s Essential and Pro plans now start at $85 a month, while its Elite plan has gone up to $95 monthly.

“We only make adjustments when necessary,” a Fubo spokesperson said to The Streamable, “and we’re committed to keeping Fubo competitive while ensuring our subscribers have access to the channels, features and live events they enjoy.”

Fubo debuted its Essential plan at $80 per month in December, as The Streamable notes. While priced the same as the Pro plan and offering largely the same features, it doesn’t include regional sports networks — or the extra up-to-$16 monthly fee that comes with them.

With the rate hike, Fubo is once again more expensive than YouTube TV, which raised its subscription fee by $10 the same month. It’s also pricier than Disney’s Hulu + Live TV, which Fubo is planning to merge with.

The next generation of Nvidia GPUs is almost here.

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs are just around the corner, with the first releases — the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 — dropping on January 30th. The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 will follow that with their own releases in February, but some are already getting a sneak peek at the GPUs’ software benefits through DLSS 4.

Tom Warren’s Verge review of the $1,999 RTX 5090 indicates it’s expectedly a powerhouse, but not quite the generational leap that the RTX 4090 was over its own predecessor. That didn’t stop The Verge’s Sean Hollister from being impressed with the two-slot RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPU when he stuffed it into his aging small-form-factor PC.

Along with the 50-series GPUs comes DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, a software trick that may be just as big a story as the hardware itself. This latest version of DLSS uses AI to predictively generate frames, making it possible to run games at higher resolutions without taking the same framerate hit they would without DLSS 4 turned on. Gamers who are already trying DLSS 4 out in Cyberpunk 2077 using RTX 40-series GPUs report seeing huge improvements already.

We’ll be keeping up with all the news about Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs right here at The Verge.

Watch this space to find some great indie games.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Mobile card game Marvel Snap is coming back to app stores, starting with Google Play. That’s according to Developer Second Dinner, which announced yesterday it was starting the process of restoring the game to Google’s Android app store at 6PM PT / 3PM ET that day. The developer said in another post it expects the game to return to both Google’s and Apple’s app stores “as early as next week.”

Marvel Snap was caught up in the TikTok outage last weekend because its original publisher, Nuverse, is owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance. The game came back online for players on Monday and Second Dinner said it planned to “bring more services in-house and partner with a new publisher.” As of now, Marvel Snap is still “provided, operated, and managed by Nuverse,” according to the privacy policy on the game’s website.

An admin of the Marvel Snap Discord server also announced a set of compensation packages for players affected by the outage. As seen in screenshots posted to Reddit, that includes in-game credits, tokens, and special variants for accounts that were created in the US or that showed US activity in the 30 days prior to the outage. Non-US players will also get a “Global Gratitude Package” with similar, though fewer, benefits.

Other apps that went down last weekend, such as CapCut and Lemon8, have since come back online but still aren’t listed in the iOS and Android app stores. Although President Donald Trump has directed the US Attorney General not to enforce the US TikTok ban, it’s unclear whether he can shield Apple or Google from legal liability if they host the apps in defiance of the law.

There are a lot — and I mean a LOT — of fitness trackers out there, many of which can provide a surprising amount of insight into your health and fitness. That being said, the bare-bones Casio WS-B1000, which is currently on sale at Amazon and Walmart for an all-time low of $39.10 (about $17 off), is not exactly one of them.

At its core, the WS-B1000 is a lightweight wristwatch with some basic smarts, retro styling, and a few different color options. There’s no optical heart rate monitor or fancy-schmancy OLED display, though it does boast an onboard accelerometer for tracking your steps, up to two years of battery life on a single CR2016 coin cell battery, and Bluetooth for pairing it with your phone. Doing so lets you view a basic activity log in the Casio app while ensuring you always have the correct time on hand (a wild concept, I know).

You get some basic wristwatch functionality as well — including a stopwatch, a timer, and an alarm — but the appeal of the WS-B1000 isn’t what it offers but what it lacks. For someone like me who’s burnt out on push notifications and rarely tracks anything beyond steps, a cheap tracker with some Y2K vibes is a welcome reprieve.

Read our Casio WS-B1000 review.

Other ways to save this weekend

• Samsung held its latest Unpacked event this week, providing us with a closer look at its forthcoming slate of Galaxy phones. The iterative S25 Ultra is the most capable of the bunch thanks to its improved ultrawide camera, and if you’re looking to reserve it ahead of its February 7th release date, it’s now up for preorder at Amazon and Best Buy with a $200 gift card starting at $1,299.99. Samsung, meanwhile, is offering the 6.9-inch phone for the same price with $150 in store credit. Read our hands-on impressions.
• Now through the end of tomorrow, January 26th, Anker’s 341 USB Power Strip is available from Amazon and Anker for an all-time low of $18.69 (about $7 off). The 11-in-1 power strip isn’t going to provide a ton of surge protection, sure, but it sports a pair of wall-mounting slots, several USB ports, and a whopping eight AC outlets. Plus, it features a nifty fastener, allowing you to easily coil the 5-foot cable if you plan to take it with you on the road.
• If my colleague Antonio G. Di Benedetto’s recent experience with the GameSir G8 Plus left you envious of his big screen upgrade, you can now pick up the clamp-on mobile controller at Amazon for $65.99 ($14 off), which nearly matches its all-time low. It’s similar to 8BitDo’s first smartphone controller in that it features drift-free Hall effect sensors in the joysticks and connects over Bluetooth as opposed to USB-C; however, unlike 8BitDo’s offering, the G8 Plus supports Android and iOS, along with the Nintendo Switch.

From reading in the bath to scribbling notes in the margins, from diving into the Amazon ecosystem to avoiding it outright, there’s an e-reader for everyone.

Read the full story at The Verge.

At a glance, Lok Digital seems like another cute and clever word game, a perfect distraction to keep on your phone for idle moments. But look closer, and it’s clear something just isn’t right. Yes, it’s a game about creating words to fill out a puzzle board. Except those words aren’t actually real — and they all have special powers. Think of it like an alien take on Scrabble. It takes a while to wrap your head around, but Lok’s surreal setup makes for an excellent brain-scratching puzzler.

There is actually a story of sorts here. Lok takes place in a black-and-white fantasy realm, and your goal is to help little worm-like creatures progress through each level. The stages are grids of squares, and your goal is to turn each one black. (I have no idea how this helps the creatures move, but just stay with me here.) You turn them black by placing letters to spell out words. Completed words will black out squares, and certain words also have the ability to black out even more.

It sounds kind of weird at first, and that feeling is only exacerbated by the dictionary of words you’re working with. They are gibberish. The game eases you into this fictional language, though, slowly...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The $150 RGB laptop stand can keep any laptop cool, and on a few Razer Blade 16 gaming laptops, it can even improve 1080p performance.

Read the full story at The Verge.

“All I know is I’m good for my $80 billion.”

Rarely does a one-liner so perfectly capture the state of the moment. Here, you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying he’s “not in the details” about Stargate, the supposedly multi-hundred-billion AI infrastructure project driven by his marquee investment, OpenAI.

Nadella not being read in on the nebulous details of Stargate says a lot about how much Microsoft and OpenAI have drifted apart. Microsoft is mentioned in the Stargate press release since OpenAI’s models are still exclusive to Azure. But the most striking aspect of Stargate is not that the money isn’t there for it yet; it’s that OpenAI’s biggest backer has decided to not participate in what Sam Altman is calling “the most important project of this era.” As Nadella made clear on CNBC this week, he’s running his own, $80 billion AI infrastructure buildout and, going forward, OpenAI can get additional compute — with his blessing — elsewhere.

While it received fewer headlines this week, I found Nadella’s response to Elon Musk on X even more illuminating. In his response to Musk saying, “on the other hand, Satya definitely does have the money,” Nadella responded: “ And all...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple is making an executive change to try and improve its AI efforts and Siri. Kim Vorrath, who recently helped get the Vision Pro software out the door and has been at Apple for 36 years, has been brought over to Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning division and will serve as a “top deputy” to AI boss John Giannandrea, Bloomberg reports.

The company made a big splash about its AI / Apple Intelligence efforts at WWDC last year, but they haven’t had the same impact as things like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Apple has also been slowly rolling out what it announced, and a big Siri upgrade that lets it understand what’s happening on your screen and take action may not arrive until iOS 18.4. And the company’s AI-powered news notification summaries will be put on pause with iOS 18.3 after criticism that the summaries were incorrect.

By bringing on Vorrath, whose resume at Apple includes work on the original iPhone software group, over to the AI team, it appears Apple wants to bring more rigor to Apple’s AI development. It also indicates that Apple may see AI as a bigger deal for its future than the Vision Pro.

Bloomberg also reports that “the artificial intelligence group is focused on revamping the underlying infrastructure of Siri and improving the company’s in-house AI models” this year, per a memo from Giannandrea.

Audi has revealed a new dual-motor electric off-road vehicle concept based on the Q6 E-tron that looks ready for a snowpocalypse. The automaker built a working prototype that lifts the vehicle by 6.3 inches and widens it by 9.8 inches, giving it a stance that wouldn’t be out of place if it appeared in Truck Country, USA.

Audi’s CEO Gernot Döllner calls the “Q6 E-Tron Off-road concept” a “reinterpretation of Quattro,” which is the company’s marketing term for its all-wheel-drive models.

The extra ride height is courtesy of four bespoke portal axles integrated into the wheel hub assemblies at the front and rear that Audi says increase torque at the wheel by 50 percent. Each axle is powered by an electric motor with a combined power output of 380kW and up to 9,883 lb ft of torque at its peak. That’s up 3,245 lb ft of torque from the normal Q6 E-tron, which is Audi’s first vehicle built on Volkswagen’s modular Premium Platform Electric (PPE) platform (also used in the new A6 E-tron and Porsche Macan EV).

The vehicle is designed to climb hills as steep as 45 degrees but the company did nerf the Q6’s top speed a bit down to 108 mph. Still, no one should drive that fast anyway in a vehicle lifted this high. This also makes the Off-road concept a much more realistic one compared to more sci-fi Audi concepts like the Activesphere coupe / pickup truck combo with a mixed reality cockpit or the truly apocalyptic all-terrain “AI:Trail” that has drones for headlights.

Audi’s Q6 E-tron Offroad concept will be featured at the FAT International Ice Race in Austria on February 1st. The company will also show it in action via its social media channels.

Ever since Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter he’s claimed the company, now called X, is in “a very dire situation from a revenue standpoint.”

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that banks are preparing a coordinated move to sell off some of the $13 billion in debt they loaned Musk to finance the deal. It mentions an email sent to employees this month, also confirmed by The Verge, where the Chief Twit said, “...we’ve witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes,” but also claimed, “Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even.”

Part of the reason Bank of America, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley are holding so much of the debt is from trying to avoid selling at a loss after economic conditions changed, and Musk had an extended court battle attempting to get out of the deal. While equity investors have reportedly slashed the value of their stakes by as much as 78 percent, the Journal reports, “banks hope to sell senior debt at 90-95 cents on the dollar, while retaining more-junior holdings.”

As Musk referenced in his email, the report says the banks hope to use the narrative of Musk’s link to Donald Trump, as some unnamed investors may be interested in buying based on a belief that its financials are on the way up.

However, Musk also said that the company could become cash-flow positive “within months” nearly two years ago, and it still faces over $1 billion in annual interest payments on the loans. The platform is increasingly turning into a testing ground for his AI ambitions, as we reported earlier this month, and while X has added some features, like job listings and a new video tab, there’s little sign of the service he’d said would be able to “someone’s entire financial life” by the end of 2024.