Making human music in an AI world Image: Samar Haddad / The VergeGe Wang doesn’t use computers to make music the way most people use computers make music. He uses computers to make… computer music. Wang works at Stanford, as an associate professor in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He also conducts the school’s famed Laptop Orchestra, was a co-founder …

Netflix served the Tyson vs. Paul fight to 60 million households Netflix had a very big night. | Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images for NetflixNetflix peaked at “65 million concurrent streams” during the boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul last night, according to Most Valuable Promotions, the promoter for the fight. Those streams went out to 60 million households globally, the group said in a press rel…

The FTC says spam call complaints are way down since 2021 Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty ImagesComplaints about unwanted telemarketing calls have dropped for the third straight year, the Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday. Reports of such calls have fallen by over 50 percent versus 2021, according to the FTC — a decline that could be thanks in no small part to stepped-up government e…

Gabe Newell says Half-Life 2: Episode 3 didn’t happen because he was ‘stumped’ Concept art for Half-Life 2: Episode 3, from the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Documentary. | Screenshot: YouTubeUnsurprisingly, yesterday’s big Half-Life release wasn’t the sequel to Half-Life 2 or even the third Half-Life 2: Episode entry, but a 20th-anniversary update to Valve’s legendary 2004 game. And given what studio co-founder Gabe Newell…

Narwal’s Freo X Ultra, the best mopping robot available, is on sale for a new low price The Freo X Ultra packs a lot of features for the price, including the ability to automatically remop your floors when necessary. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The VergeHosting Thanksgiving dinner is fun and all, but the amount of cleaning you have to do afterward can be exhausting. The Narwal Freo X Ultra robot vacuum / mop hybrid can hel…

Here’s some cool stuff you can do with Bluesky Image: Samar Haddad / The VergeSo, you’ve finally decided to give Bluesky a shot. The social network has come a long way since the early bare-bones days of invite-only signups and recently grew past the 15 million user mark. Along the way, it’s gathered a lot of familiar posting platform features, like direct messages, pinned posts, and the abil…

NFL fans worry Netflix’s bad Tyson vs. Paul stream means it can’t handle football Getty Images for Netflix © 2024Netflix’s livestream of the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul boxing match was a mess. I’m not talking about the bout itself — although people had their qualms with that, too — it’s the livestream, which people across the internet complained was plagued by buffering, unstable, and unwatchable muddiness. That doesn’t bode we…

The Rise of the Golden Idol makes a great puzzle game even better Image: Playstack / Color Gray GamesThe Case of the Golden Idol was a rewarding series of point-and-click murder mysteries that became one of my favorite games of 2022. And while I felt there was more story to explore about the titular golden idol, I wasn’t sure if a potential sequel could live up to its clever puzzles and fascinating, slowly unf…

18 states want the SEC to stop enforcing crypto regulation In which various government bodies fight over “permissionless” assets | Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeThe US Securities and Exchange Commission wants to “unilaterally wrest regulatory authority away from the States” when it comes to crypto, according to a lawsuit from 18 states. These states want to halt the SEC’s enforcement actions,…

Half-Life 2 is getting a huge 20th anniversary update Image: ValveHalf-Life 2 is getting a major update in celebration of the classic title’s 20th anniversary. In addition to Steam Workshop support directly within the game, Valve has fixed bugs and restored some content, added new graphics settings, updated gamepad controls, and a whole lot more. You’ll also be able to get the game for free on Stea…

WhatsApp now lets you save message drafts Illustration: The VergeWhatsApp dropped the most “I can’t believe this wasn’t already there” feature this week: message drafts. Now, WhatsApp lets you know if you have unsent messages typed up in chats so you know to get back to them later. To let you know about a draft, messages you’ve started writing will show a green and bold “Draft” word fol…

ESPN is testing a generative AI avatar called ‘FACTS’ Image: ESPNESPN is testing an AI-generated avatar with the Saturday college football show SEC Nation. Dubbed FACTS, it’s going to be “…promoting education and fun around sports analytics” with information drawn from ESPN Analytics, which includes data like the Football Power Index (FPI), player and team statistics, and game schedules. We haven…

The new Mac Mini is great — now do the iPhone SE This could be so much better. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The VergeWe could argue all day about the merits of iOS versus Android, but there’s one thing the Android ecosystem offers that you definitely won’t find from Apple right now: a decent midrange phone. By “decent,” I mean something I can enthusiastically recommend. Not “Eh, if it’s liter…

Senator to Valve: what’s with all the Nazis on Steam? Image: The VergeUS Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell asking if the company intends to take measures to curtail extremist content on Steam. The letter references a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a large number of user accounts and user-created groups “that glorified antisemitic, Nazi, whit…

Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts Image: Cath Virginia / The VergeSocial network Bluesky, in a post on Friday, says that it has “no intention” of taking user content to train generative AI tools. It made the statement the same day X’s new terms of service that spell out how it can analyze user text and other information to train its generative AI tools go into effect. “A number …

The M4 MacBook Pro features a quantum dot display Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergeThe new M4 MacBook Pros that launched last month have an unadvertised change with new quantum dot displays, according to display industry analyst Ross Young and reported by 9to5Mac. Young posted on X that Apple is adopting quantum dot displays for the first time and that it’s using a version of the fil…

Disney has reportedly pulled a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur episode for telling a trans-inclusive story DisneyThough the remainder of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’s final season is set to hit the Disney Channel and Disney Plus some time next year, the studio is reportedly keeping one episode from airing because of its focus on a transgender character. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has often touched on ideas about race, class, and issues like gentri…

Google will let you make AI clip art for your documents Illustration: The VergeGoogle Workspace is rolling out a Gemini-powered AI image generator directly in Google Docs that lets you quickly whip up visuals for your writeups. Essentially, it’s a clip art maker that follows in the footsteps of Microsoft’s AI-generated art feature in its Office products. Google’s image generator in Docs is available …

Google Photos Partner Sharing is less of a snitch now Illustration: The VergeGoogle has placed some new limitations on a Google Photos feature that allows users to automatically share images and videos in their library with a partner. The update to Partner Sharing now means that users can only share photos or videos that were taken using their device’s default camera app, meaning partners are unabl…

The world’s biggest battery maker says Elon Musk’s 4680 cell ‘is going to fail’ Image: TeslaRobin Zeng, the founder of the world’s largest EV battery company, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big bet on 4680 cylindrical cell technology “is going to fail and never be successful.” Zeng, the chairman of China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), tells Reuters that when Musk visited China in April, “We had a very big debate, and…