This year showed that a roguelike can be almost anything.

Read the full story at The Verge.

NSO Group, the organization behind the Pegasus spyware, has been found liable in a lawsuit brought by Meta’s WhatsApp over attacks on about 1,400 devices, as reported by The Record.

WhatsApp originally filed the suit in 2019, and investigations have found that Pegasus has been used to hack phones belonging to groups like activists, journalists, and government officials.

NSO Group is liable for charges of violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, violation of the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and breach of contract, according to today’s ruling. A trial will now move forward “only on the issue of damages.” The spyware maker has argued that it isn’t liable because Pegasus was operated by clients investigating crimes and cases of national security but the judge rejected those arguments, which could establish a precedent for other companies in the same business.

“This ruling is a huge win for privacy,” Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, says in a Threads post. “We spent five years presenting our case because we firmly believe that spyware companies could not hide behind immunity or avoid accountability for their unlawful actions. Surveillance companies should be on notice that illegal spying will not be tolerated.”

NSO Group didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Bluesky now has a specific tab for mentions in your notifications as part of the app’s just-released 1.96 update. With the mentions tab, it’s much easier to see your replies or conversations you’ve been tagged in on the platform.

Speaking of replies, update 1.96 lets you easily access settings that let you control how replies on posts appear to you. Replies can be linear, meaning they show up one post after another, or threaded, which means they will appear in indented threads (kind of like how they appear on Reddit). You can also sort replies by newest, oldest, most-liked, “hot,” and “random” (which Bluesky also calls “Poster’s Roulette”).

If you choose to set a custom domain as your username, with 1.96, Bluesky will also reserve your old .bsky.social name so that it can’t be picked up by someone else. I wish this feature had been available when I set my custom domain — when I did that, I made an alt account that’s parked on my old .bsky.social name so that it doesn’t get taken.

Bluesky saw a surge of new users in November, and although growth has slowed as of late, the platform surpassed 25 million total users last week. The company plans to launch a subscription service early next year and, at some point, its own payment platform.

And the platform has some big competition from Meta’s Threads, which seems to be doing everything it can to remind people that it can ship lots of features and that it’s much larger than Bluesky.

Thousands of delivery drivers who work for Amazon third-party contractors are now on strike, The New York Times reports. The workers are striking after “Amazon’s repeated refusal to follow the law and bargain with the thousands of Amazon workers who organized with the Teamsters,” according to a Teamsters press release.

Workers are picketing at Amazon warehouses from Atlanta, New York City, San Francisco, Southern California, and Skokie, Ill., with other Amazon Teamsters “prepared to join them,” the Teamsters say. “Teamsters local unions are also putting up primary picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide.”

The National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against Amazon earlier this year, saying that Amazon and one of its third-party contractors are joint employers of delivery drivers and that it has “a legal duty to recognize and bargain with the Teamsters Union,” per another Teamsters press release.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel shared the following statement with New York City’s WPIX and with The Verge:

For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative. The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.

Amazon employees who have organized with the Teamsters voted last week to authorize a strike.

Update, December 19th: Added that Amazon sent us a statement.

Lenovo showed off a laptop concept with a rollable display last year, and in 2025, it might release one that you can actually buy. Leaker Evan Blass just shared images of what he says is a sixth-generation Lenovo ThinkBook Plus, and based on two of the images, it has a display that extends upward to reveal more display underneath.

It seems pretty similar to the concept from 2023, which also extended upward to show more screen. In these images from Blass, Lenovo is showing how the extended screen can be used for multitasking, such as by watching a YouTube video in the lower half of the screen or having a document on hand under a PowerPoint presentation.

Image: Evan Blass

Image: Evan Blass

Blass’ leak doesn’t include any specs, so we don’t yet know many important details about this rumored laptop. But if it’s real, and it does debut at CES, it could be one of the most interesting products at the show.

Here’s a video of the 2023 concept:

We’re fairly confident Blass knows what he’s talking about when he says it’ll debut at CES in January; not only does Blass have a very long track record of accurate leaks, he tends to leak products shortly before they’re announced, and appears to have a bead on Lenovo in particular right now.

Last week, we exclusively shared Blass’s images of a new revamped Lenovo Legion Go handheld, as well as a Lenovo Legion Go S that might wind up being the company’s first SteamOS handheld. Today, Lenovo substantiated those rumors by announcing a handheld event with Valve as "special guest."

The creator of the poker roguelike Balatro, who goes by the alias LocalThunk, has been sharing some frustrations over the game’s 18-plus rating in Europe.

“Since PEGI gave us an 18-plus rating for having evil playing cards maybe I should add microtransactions / loot boxes / real gambling to lower that rating to 3-plus like EA Sports FC,” LocalThunk posted on X over the weekend.

Balatro’s 18-plus rating isn’t new. The game was originally rated 3-plus, but shortly after its February launch, PEGI bumped it up to 18-plus, as spelled out at the time by Playstack, Balatro’s publisher. The game was briefly delisted from “a number of digital stores in some countries” as a result.

According to PEGI’s page for Balatro, the rating was given because the game “features prominent gambling imagery.” PEGI also spells out the following “content specific issues”:

This game teaches — by way of images, information and gameplay — skills and knowledge that are used in poker. During gameplay, the player is rewarded with ‘chips’ for playing certain hands. The player is able to access a list of poker hand names. As the player hovers over these poker hands, the game explains what types of cards the player would need in order to play certain hands. As the game goes on, the player becomes increasingly familiar with which hands would earn more points. Because these are hands that exist in the real world, this knowledge and skill could be transferred to a real-life game of poker.

While it’s true that the game does feature poker imagery and poker hands that a player could translate into an actual game of poker, it’s worth noting that Balatro doesn’t actually have any gambling as part of playing the game. (LocalThunk has even stipulated in their will that Balatro can’t be sold or licensed to a gambling company.)

Games like EA Sports FC include in-game purchases with randomized content, which is what LocalThunk takes issue with. “I’m way more irked at the 3-plus for these games with actual gambling mechanics for children than I am about Balatro having an 18-plus rating,” he said on Sunday.

LocalThunk said Wednesday that they attempted to discuss Balatro’s rating with PEGI, but “they do not see anything wrong Balatro being rated 18-plus, nor with EA Sports FC (and similar games) having a 3-plus rating.” PEGI was “blaming EU laws, blaming storefronts, waiting for the future,” LocalThunk said.

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

So far, possible answers include aliens, an international conspiracy, secret military tests, or just planes.

2024’s drone hysteria has gone on for weeks across the East Coast, and we still have far more questions than answers. The sightings may have started in New Jersey, but reports of possible drone sightings have continued to spread.

The usual authorities haven’t helped much, with bland statements like “There continues to be no known threat to public safety,” failing to tamp down anxiety and interest. What we do know so far is that this is a perfect storm for clout-chasing politicians and that our phone cameras aren’t really up to the task of taking pictures of stuff flying around in the sky.

Meanwhile, social media-fueled misinformation has rushed to fill the information vacuum about what people are seeing. Even if, in many cases, what they’ve seen are planes, stars, meteors, or drones sent up by drone hunters to try to find the mystery drones.

We’ll keep track of the best information we can pull together right here.

You were listening, walking, and playing, and they were watching. The app recaps, best-of lists, and awards for 2024 that we can find are here.

It’s not just Spotify anymore — the Wrapped phenomenon has taken over. From music and podcasts to gaming (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam are all accounted for) and beyond, the data breakdowns of what you’ve been doing are a reminder that with so many connected devices, someone is always watching.

Once Dunkin and Shake Shack started doing roundups, the trend was cemented, and it doesn’t seem like it will turn around any time soon.

Of course, Spotify is still taking the lead. For 2024, Wrapped integrates Google’s NotebookLM to have two AI-generated podcast hosts review facts you already knew about your favorite musicians and track how your taste changed throughout the year. If you haven’t pulled up your Wrapped 2024 stats yet, here’s how you can find them.

If you have recaps to share or spot a few that we’ve missed, drop them in the comments.

Apple is no longer developing a hardware subscription service for iPhones that would let subscribers get a new iPhone every year, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman initially reported in 2022 that Apple was working on the service, and while it was apparently supposed to launch that year, the project was delayed due because of “software bugs and regulatory concerns,” Gurman says.

The end of the hardware subscription service follows Apple’s shutdown of Apple Pay Later just months after its full launch.

While the hardware subscription service apparently won’t see the light of day, Apple offers installment plans you can use to pay for an iPhone over time. The iPhone Upgrade Program spreads the payments of a loan for a new iPhone (and AppleCare Plus) over 24 months, and you can upgrade to a new phone after you pay the equivalent of 12 months. If you have an Apple Card, you can also pay for a new iPhone (and other Apple products) using Apple Card Monthly Installments.

Sony is furthering its partnership with AMD so they can create more AI-powered technology to make games look and play better — and not just on PlayStation hardware. The two companies are establishing a “deeper collaboration” to work on “Machine Learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay,” lead architect of the PS5 and PS5 Pro Mark Cerny announced on Wednesday.

The two already partner on the PS5 and PS5 Pro’s GPUs, which are based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture, and the PS5 Pro uses a feature called PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) to improve image clarity and frame rates.

Sony also released a 37-minute presentation by Cerny discussing technical aspects of the PS5 Pro and some additional information about the “multi-year” project with AMD, which is codenamed “Amethyst.” The two are vague about how, when, and where the tech resulting from Project Amethyst will be used, but general it sounds like it’s something we could see on the next PlayStation and other future hardware that AMD is a part of.

The companies have two goals with Project Amethyst, according to Cerny. “The first goal is a more ideal architecture for machine learning,” Cerny said, including something that’s particularly good at dealing with the lightweight convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for game graphics.

The second goal is to develop “a set of high-quality CNNs for graphics,” Cerny said. “Both SIE and AMD will independently have the ability to draw from this collection of network architectures and training strategies, and these components should be key in increasing the richness of game graphics as well as enabling more extensive use of ray tracing and path tracing.”

Sony and AMD don’t want this technology to be exclusive to PlayStation. “Through this technology collaboration we’re looking to support broad work and machine learning across a variety of devices,” Cerny said. That means “something that can be used broadly across PC and console and cloud,” Cerny said to IGN.

The fruits of this work seem like they’re a ways out, though: “Don’t expect some massive hardware announcement immediately coming out of this,” Cerny told Digital Foundry. And since creating a console is “roughly a four year-journey,” Cerny said during the presentation, it’s possible we might not see hardware that uses tech from Project Amethyst until the PlayStation 6. (Cerny dodged a direct question from IGN about when we should expect a potential PS6.)

If you want to read more of what Cerny said about Amethyst in his presentation, here’s the transcript of that part (which starts at around 34:32 in the video):

I have some very exciting news to share. We have begun a deeper collaboration with AMD. For the project name we’re taking a hint from AMD’s red and PlayStation’s blue. The code name is Amethyst.

With Amethyst, we’ve started on another long journey and are combining our expertise with two goals in mind.

The first goal is a more ideal architecture for machine learning. Something capable of generalized processing of neural networks but particularly good at the lightweight CNNs needed for game graphics and something focused around achieving that Holy Grail of fully-fused networks.

In going after this we’re combining the lessons AMD has learned from its multi-generation RDNA road map and SIE has learned from the custom work in PS5 Pro.

But ML use in games shouldn’t and can’t be restricted to graphics libraries. We’re also working towards a democratization of machine learning something accessible that allows direct work in AI and ML by game developers both for graphics and for gameplay.

Amethyst is not about proprietary technology for PlayStation. In fact it’s the exact opposite. Through this technology collaboration we’re looking to support broad work and machine learning across a variety of devices.

The other goal is to develop, in parallel, a set of highquality CNNs for game graphics. Both SIE and AMD will independently have the ability to draw from this collection of network architectures and training strategies, and these components should be key in increasing the richness of game graphics as well as enabling more extensive use of ray tracing and path tracing.

We’re looking forward to keeping you posted throughout what we anticipate to be a multi-year collaboration.

2024 was filled with excellent portable PC games.

Read the full story at The Verge.

The open social web still isn’t as open as we all might want, but a non-profit is being formed to try and change that. The non-profit, called A New Social, is being headed up by Ryan Barrett, the founder of Bridgy Fed, and Anuj Ahooja, an engineering leader and writer.

“We believe that a healthy ecosystem competes on innovative features, not critical mass,” A New Social says on its mission page. “The social web should be centered around people, not platforms, and artificial walls should not deny them the relationships they’ve built online.” The organization is “betting on services built on open protocols like ActivityPub and ATProto” and says it will “work directly with developers to continue ensuring competition in the open social web, with a focus on advocating for users every step of the way.”

The non-profit is still in its very early stages; Barrett and Ahooja will be “recruiting a Board of Directors, identifying cross-protocol projects, and reaching out to developers to collaborate on tools and services needed for cross-protocol community building,” according to a press release.

But they’ve already identified A New Social’s first project: Barrett’s own Bridgy Fed, which you can use to have your Bluesky posts appear on ActivityPub-based platforms like Mastodon (aka the fediverse) and vice versa. And A New Social is already talking with big players in the open social web, including Bluesky, Flipboard, Mastodon, and Meta.

“All of these platforms are making some big important promises to their users,” Ahooja says in an interview with The Verge. He points out that Threads has made promises to federate (which it is doing in baby steps), while Bluesky has promised that its end goal is decentralization. “Us sitting in the middle puts us in a place where we have to be loud when they are not keeping those promises up.” He says that Bridgy Fed is an “implementation of a larger user advocacy problem that we’re trying to solve.”

I think it’s a cool idea, but I was a touch skeptical during our interview — just before we talked, I had read about how another promising fediverse project Ahooja worked on, sub.club, would be shutting down. How can users put their faith in open social web projects like Bridgy Fed long term if those projects might just fizzle out?

Ahooja says that’s part why they’re working with platforms, not just users. “We think that top-down education is more important than anything,” he says. That’s also why they’re taking a cross-network approach, according to Barrett; individual platforms and tools will grow and shrink, but overall, decentralized social media platforms are gaining mindshare, he says. If they can help the overall space get connected and stay connected, “then that’s net positive,” he says.

Threads now has more than 100 million daily active users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Monday. It’s a notable milestone not just because it’s a big number; it’s also the first time Meta has a daily active user figure publicly.

In recent weeks, Meta has been very vocal about Threads’ growth after a lot of people flocked to Bluesky. While Bluesky tracker says that that platform currently has a little over 25 million total users, Zuckerberg shared Monday that Threads has more than 300 million monthly active users. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s clear that Threads is still much larger than Bluesky.

Threads has also ramped up its feature releases, including updates that appear to be inspired by Bluesky like custom feeds and curated collections of accounts to follow. Meta is also testing the ability to choose your own default feed, which is a much-needed change. But it’s not all good; Threads might get ads early next year.

Sub.club, which lets fediverse creators offer paid subscriptions and premium content and launched at the end of August, is already shutting down. “With regret, we will be winding down this project over the next few weeks,” the sub.club team announced last week. Creators using the service will be “fully paid,” but sub.club feeds will stop working “by the end of January.”

As I wrote when I first covered sub.club, the service seemed like an interesting way to let people on the fediverse more easily monetize their audience without having to point them toward other platforms like Patreon. But the group that built it, The BLVD, has run out of funding.

“Unfortunately we were not able to quickly achieve sufficient traction with product-market fit / adoption for sub.club, or to attract investors, partnerships, etc.,” Bart Decrem, The BLVD’s founder, tells The Verge in an email. He says more than 150 creators were on sub.club. “Still bullish on the fediverse, and the success of Bluesky is a great thing, but it does look like it will take a while to connect all the pieces.”

“As we see more users onboard to platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads and the open ecosystem grows, the need will eventually arise for a subscription service that isn’t tied to a single platform, is protocol-based, and allows for user portability,” sub.club adviser Anuj Ahooja says. “Hopefully, sub.club, or a service like it, can fill the gap at that time.”

Because of The BLVD’s lack of funding, it is pulling the plug on two other projects, too: Mammoth, an open-source iOS app for Mastodon, and moth.social, a Mastodon instance that is the companion server to Mammoth. Late in November, the Mammoth Mastodon account said that Mammoth was “now operating without funding or a paid team.”

YouTube is rolling out a way for creators to let third-party companies use their videos to train AI models. To be clear, the default setting for this is off, meaning that if you don’t want to let third-party companies scrape your videos for AI training, you don’t have to do anything. But if, for some reason, you do want to allow that — Google says that “some creators and rights holders” may want to — it’s going to be an option.

“We see this as an important first step in supporting creators and helping them realize new value for their YouTube content in the AI era,” a TeamYouTube staffer named Rob says in a support post. “As we gather feedback, we’ll continue to explore features that facilitate new forms of collaboration between creators and third-party companies, including options for authorized methods to access content.”

YouTube will be rolling out the setting in YouTube Studio “over the next few days,” and unauthorized scraping “remains prohibited,” Rob writes.

Another support page says that you’ll be able to pick and choose from a list of third-party companies that can train on your videos or you can simply allow all third-party companies to train on them. The initial list of companies includes the following, according to TechCrunch:

AI21 Labs, Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, ByteDance, Cohere, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pika Labs, Runway, Stability AI, and xAI.

YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon tells The Verge that TechCrunch’s list is accurate. “These companies were chosen because they’re building generative AI models and are likely sensible choices for a potential partnership with creators,” Malon says.

This announcement follows reports of AI models from big companies — including OpenAI, Apple, and Anthropic — being trained on content and datasets scraped from YouTube. Google itself already uses YouTube data to help train its AI tools. “As we have for many years, we use content uploaded to YouTube to improve the product experience for creators and viewers across YouTube and Google, including through machine learning and AI applications,” the company said in September, when it announced this feature was in the works. “We do this consistent with the terms that creators agree to.”

Google has announced a new AI tool called Whisk that lets you generate images using other images as prompts instead of requiring a long text prompt.

With Whisk, you can offer images to suggest what you’d like as the subject, the scene, and the style of your AI-generated image, and you can prompt Whisk with multiple images for each of those three things. (If you want, you can fill in text prompts, too.) If you don’t have images on hand, you can click a dice icon to have Google fill in some images for the prompts (though those images also appear to be AI-generated). You can also enter some text into a text box at the end of the process if you want to add extra detail about the image you’re looking for, but it’s not required.

Whisk will then generate images and a text prompt for each image. You can favorite or download the image if you’re happy with the results, or you can refine an image by entering more text into the text box or clicking the image and editing the text prompt.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

In a blog post, Google stresses that Whisk is designed to be for “rapid visual exploration, not pixel-perfect edits.” The company also says that Whisk may “miss the mark,” which is why it lets you edit the underlying prompts.

In the few minutes I’ve used the tool while writing this story, it’s been entertaining to tinker with. Images take a few seconds to generate, which is annoying, and while the images have been a little strange, everything I’ve generated has been fun to iterate on.

Google says Whisk uses the “latest” iteration of its Imagen 3 image generation model, which it announced today. Google also introduced Veo 2, the next version of its video generation model, which the company says has an understanding of “the unique language of cinematography” and hallucinates things like extra fingers “less frequently” than other models (one of those other models is probably OpenAI’s Sora). Veo 2 is coming first to Google’s VideoFX, which you can get on the Google Labs waitlist for, and it will be expanded to YouTube Shorts “other products” sometime next year.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will meet with President-elect Donald Trump for dinner on Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to The New York Times. It’s reportedly Cook’s first time meeting with Trump since the election.

During Trump’s first term, Cook established a direct relationship with the president that other tech CEOs have wanted to replicate. As Trump prepares for his second term, Cook may want to discuss potential tariffs, which could significantly affect Apple’s business.

Cook may also want to discuss the European Union’s actions against Apple; during his presidential campaign, Trump claimed that Cook called him to complain about the fines Apple faces in the European Union, with accusations of anticompetitive behavior in App Store policies and how it manages platforms like the iPhone and Mac.

Cook’s visit follows reports of Trump’s conversation with Google CEO Sundar Pichai yesterday and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos next week. Trump met with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in November.

Tech companies and leaders, including Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have also been appealing to the President-elect with $1 million donations to his inauguration fund.

OpenAI is rolling out a feature called “Projects” to ChatGPT. It’s basically a folder system that makes it easier to organize things you’re working on while using the AI chatbot.

As shown in a demo video, your list of Projects will show up in the sidebar. If you make a new project, you can do things like edit the title, set a color for the project’s icon, and add files as well as instructions to tailor how ChatGPT responds to things in that individual project. You can also add previous chats to your project to keep track of them.

The new feature seems like a pretty useful way to keep track of, for lack of a better word, your projects. During the demo video, an OpenAI employee showed examples of how they use Projects to plan for a Secret Santa gift exchange and for home maintenance. Depending on your needs, it could be a better way to work on a project than my usual method, which is dumping everything I can think of into an Apple Note.

Projects is rolling out today to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Teams users. It will come to free users “as soon as possible” and to Enterprise and Edu users “early in the new year,” according to OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil.

Projects was announced as Day 7 of OpenAI’s 12 days of “ship-mas.” Previous announcements included the release of the Sora video generator, ChatGPT’s Canvas view, and the $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription.

Nintendo is inching ever closer to its promised deadline to reveal the Switch’s successor before April 2025. But new leaks from case manufacturers appear to reveal exactly what the Nintendo’s next console could look like, and a few notable upgrades it might have over the original Switch.

We were inspired to write this article in the first place because of Dbrand’s just-announced “Killswitch 2” case. The website for the product features an in-motion render of the case and, inside, a mockup of hardware that has some key differences from the Switch and Switch OLED: the new console appears to be larger, and it has a mysterious new second button on the right Joy-Con under the Home button. Accessory leaks over the past several days have shown a similar potential design for the hardware.

It seems Dbrand is reasonably confident in its case, but we asked CEO Adam Ijaz to be sure. He says Dbrand has “actual dimensions” — not an educated guess — based on a “3D scan of the real hardware.” (When we asked how he knows that, Ijaz only said “Nice try, Nintendo.”)

Video: Dbrand

Based on Dbrand’s measurements, the next Switch (which we’ll call the Switch 2) will both be larger and taller than Nintendo’s Switch OLED, but roughly the same thickness. Nintendo’s spec sheet shows its previous handheld is 242mm wide, 102mm tall and 13.9mm thick, where Ijaz says the Switch 2 should measure 270mm wide, 116mm tall, and 14mm thick, with the console portion taking up 200mm worth of that width.

Ijaz also says the kickstand will still measure around half the console’s height at around 55mm; a diagonal measurement of the cover glass supports previous rumors that it’ll have an 8-inch screen.

Ijaz says it’s his “understanding” that Joy-Cons are “magnetically attached” with an “an ejection button” that’s on the back of the Joy-Cons near the top, and his new case takes advantage of the detachable controllers — he says the controller portions of Dbrand’s case can detach with them inside.

He doesn’t know what the second square button is under the Home button, which he says has a “C” printed on it. The left Joy-Con in Dbrand’s mockup still has a button on the left Joy-Con, which is where you’ll find the capture button on the original Switch, so it’s unclear if this “C” button now means capture or if both buttons work differently. (Nintendo originally introduced C-buttons on the Nintendo 64 controller in 1996 as a way to control a game’s camera, before gamepads introduced a second stick to let you shift perspective.)

Ijaz says the joysticks stand 6.27mm tall, and the D-pad and ABXY buttons protrude by 1.57mm, with a 180mm wide kickstand, and back triggers that extend 9.1mm.

While Dbrand does seem to know a lot about the console, Ijaz is “genuinely unsure” about its potential release date. He says that Dbrand is working toward a late March or early April release for its case, though. Ijaz also doesn’t know about Nintendo’s possible TV dock for the Switch 2, but says that Dbrand’s assumption is that “the form factor will be similar to the previous gen.” He doesn’t know if the screen will be LCD or OLED.

While it’s highly unusual for an accessory maker to publicly reveal this much about a product from a powerful, litigious company like Nintendo, it’s not surprising that Dbrand’s the one stepping up to the plate. Having beef with console makers is an intentional (and often fun!) part of its marketing strategy, and Nintendo is a frequent target — like that Zelda skin that was a middle finger to Nintendo’s lawyers, or the “(not) Animal Crossing” one.

Much of what Dbrand is showing and what Ijaz is saying lines up with a video from SwitchUp showing what it calls a Switch 2 mockup sent to them by a case manufacturer. That mockup is clearly larger than today’s existing Switch OLED, and the new Joy-Cons are clearly bigger than the old Joy-Cons. You can also see the second square button under the home button there, the larger button under the triggers that presumably ejects them from the console, and a wide kickstand similar to the one on the Switch OLED.

One other nice addition? A second USB-C port on the top of the mockup, which theoretically means you’ll be able to plug in a charging cable while you’re using it in tabletop mode; with the current Switch, the charging port on the bottom is blocked when you’re standing it up on a table.

While we’re still waiting for Nintendo to actually announce concrete details about the Switch 2, the company has shared that the console will be able to play current Switch games and it will have Nintendo Switch Online as well.

Correction, December 13th: Ijaz says he measured the Switch 2 triggers wrong; they extend 9.1mm, not 14.1mm.

Google’s NotebookLM and its podcast-like Audio Overviews have been a surprise hit this year, and today Google company is starting to roll out a big new feature: the ability to actually talk with the AI “hosts” of the overviews.

When the feature is available to you, you can try it out with new Audio Overviews. (It won’t work with old ones.) Here’s how, according to a blog post:

Create a new Audio Overview.

Tap the new Interactive mode (BETA) button.

While listening, tap “Join.” A host will call on you.

Ask your question. The hosts will respond with a personalized answer based on your sources.

After answering, they’ll resume the original Audio Overview.

The ability to actually talk with NotebookLM seems like a potentially useful way to learn more about what you’ve collected in the app. But Google cautions that it’s an “experimental feature” and that “hosts may also pause awkwardly before responding or occasionally introduce inaccuracies,” so it may not be a totally polished experience to start.

In addition to the interactive Audio Overviews, Google is introducing a new interface for NotebookLM that organizes things into three areas: a “sources” panel for your information, a “chat” panel to talk with an AI chatbot about the sources, and a “studio” panel that lets you make things like Audio Overviews and Study Guides. I think it looks nice.

GIF: Google

Google is announcing a NotebookLM subscription, too: NotebookLM Plus. The subscription will give you “five times more Audio Overviews, notebooks, and sources per notebook,” let you “customize the style and tone of your notebook responses,” let you make shared team notebooks, and will offer “additional privacy and security,” Google says. The subscription is available today for businesses, schools and universities, and organizations and enterprise customers. It will be added to Google One AI Premium in “early 2025.”

Google is also launching “Agentspace,” a platform for custom AI agents for enterprises. “Agentspace can provide conversational assistance, answer complex questions, make proactive suggestions and take actions based on your company’s unique information,” Google says. It also has connectors for apps like Microsoft SharePoint, Jira, and ServiceNow.