Patreon is adding a Discord-like chat feature for creators and fans Image: PatreonBeginning today, Patreon creators who want a dedicated space to interact with fans will have a built-in option: group chats. Content creators who share their work via Patreon will be able to set up and host chat rooms for their fans to interact with each other, the company announced today. Creators can have up to four chats going a…

Charles Martinet finally explains what the hell a Mario ambassador is Image: NintendoAfter weeks of wonder (heh) and speculation, Nintendo is finally giving longtime Mario voice actor Charles Martinet a proper send-off. Nintendo released a short video featuring Martinet and Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto in which the pair take a fond look back at Martinet’s time in the role. Here’s a special video message …

Lutron finally made its smart remote look just like a regular light switch With this redesign of its popular Pico wireless remote, Lutron is transitioning its Caséta smart lighting line to a more classic look. | Image: LutronSmart lighting manufacturer Lutron is expanding its line of smart switches that don’t look like smart switches, adding a new Pico Paddle Remote ($19.99) to its Caséta smart lighting line. The wirel…

Sunday Ticket is bringing the NFL to YouTube — and YouTube to the NFL Did you ever think you’d watch Patrick Mahomes play by opening the YouTube app? | Photo by Michael Owens / Getty ImagesFor the first time in almost three decades, football fans are about to turn on NFL Sunday Ticket in a new place. Sunday Ticket, which broadcasts out-of-market games to fans willing to pay a couple hundred bucks a season to watch…

Can a $599 camera bring Polaroid back? The $599 I-2 is Polaroid’s newest camera. | Image: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergePolaroid cameras are notoriously finicky. If you buy one of the 37,000 vintage Polaroid cameras on eBay, the likelihood of it working properly is slim. And if you can get it working, the likelihood of a photo being properly exposed is even slimmer. Enter the $5…

Polaroid’s new I-2 is its most capable — and expensive — instant camera Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergePolaroid has announced a new high-end instant camera dubbed the Polaroid I-2 today. According to Polaroid, the $599.99 I-2 is the company’s most capable instant camera yet, with built-in manual controls and the sharpest new lens it’s ever produced. The I-2 boasts a three-element autofocusing lens, whic…

13 movies we can’t wait to check out at TIFF 2023 The Boy and the Heron. | Image: Studio GhibliThe festival is led by Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron, but there will be plenty more to see when things kick off in Toronto on September 7th. Continue reading…

Chrome is about to look a bit different Image: The VergeChrome on the desktop is about to get a new look. Google’s widely used browser is getting an update based on its Material You design language in the coming weeks, and in this case, that will include refreshed icons with “a focus on legibility” and new color palettes that “better complement your tabs and toolbar,” according to a b…

The Toronto International Film Festival 2023 is on A scene from Ariane Louis-Seize’s Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. | Courtesy of TIFFStay up to date with the latest from TIFF. Continue reading…

Honda adopts Tesla’s charging port for future EVs Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The VergeHonda announced today that it’s adopting Tesla’s electric vehicle charging connector for its future vehicles. The Japanese automaker was one of the holdouts to accept the competing (and winning) standard, joining the likes of Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, and Fisker. Honda is…

Nintendo Switch 2 evidence grows with rumors of developer demos Photo by James Bareham / The VergeNintendo has reportedly demonstrated the Nintendo Switch 2 behind closed doors at Gamescom last month. Eurogamer reports that some trusted developers got an early look at the Switch 2 and some tech demos of how games run on the unannounced system. There was reportedly a demo of an improved version of Zelda: Brea…

Experts link LastPass security breach to a string of crypto heists One researcher claims the number of victims who stored their crypto keys on LastPass was “simply too much to ignore.” | Illustration: Beatrice SalaSecurity experts are claiming that some of the LastPass password vaults stolen during a security breach near the end of 2022 have now been cracked open following a string of six-figure cryptocurrency …

The new Mustang Mach-E Rally is Ford’s off-roadiest performance EV yet 2024 Mustang Mach-E Rally in Grabber Yellow. | Image: FordThis new Mach-E Rally is what you’d get if you could cross Ford’s most performant Mustang Mach-E electric SUV trim, the GT, with the company’s discontinued Focus RS rally sport monster. Ford initially revealed the Mustang Mach-E Rally at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July, but is toda…

A Rube Goldberg chain of failures led to breach of Microsoft-hosted government emails Illustration: The VergeIn the first half of July, Microsoft disclosed that the Chinese hacking group Storm-0558 had gained access to emails from around 25 organizations, including agencies in the US government. Today, the company is explaining how that happened thanks to a series of internal errors while sharply underscoring just how serious a r…

YouTube is going to remove some ad controls for creators Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeYouTube is making some notable changes to the ad controls available to creators. Beginning in November, YouTube is dropping individual ad controls in YouTube Studio for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads on new videos, according to a support document from the company bylined by “Rob,” a m…

Google will soon require disclaimers for AI-generated political ads Illustration: The VergeGoogle will soon start requiring political advertisers to “prominently disclose” when they made their ads with AI, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Starting in November, Google says advertisers must include a disclosure when an election ad features “synthetic content” that depicts “realistic-looking people or events.” Tha…

Slack’s AI tool that can recap channels and threads starts testing this winter Slack AI can summarie channels and threads. | Image: SlackSlack is launching a built-in AI tool that can do things like summarize threads, recap channel highlights, and search for answers within your messages. In an update on Wednesday, Slack says it will start testing the new feature, called Slack AI, this winter. One of the features that Slack…

X’s Community Notes feature will now include videos Illustration: Alex Castro / The VergeThis might finally be the end of the hurricane street shark phenomenon. X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, updated its crowdsourced fact-checking Community Notes feature to tag videos directly and automatically populate those notes onto any matching videos. The same tagging was recently added to image…

Clubhouse reinvents itself as an audio messaging app Image: ClubhouseClubhouse is back, kinda. The app that popularized social audio rooms is reinventing itself “to be more like a messaging app” with new voice-only group chats called “chats,” as detailed in a blog post from the company. Think of a chat as something like a group Instagram story that you contribute to with your voice. You kick off a…

Apple is reportedly spending ‘millions of dollars a day’ training AI Image: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty ImagesApple is investing millions of dollars per day into artificial intelligence, according to a new report from The Information. The company is reportedly working on multiple AI models across several teams. Apple’s unit that works on conversational AI is called “Foundational Models,” per The Informati…