Category: Technology

My guest today is longtime friend of the show Joanna Stern. You all know Joanna: she is the former senior personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a former Decoder guest host, one of my cofounders here at The Verge, and also just one of my very closest friends.I mention that because Joanna just left that lofty perch at The Journal to start her own media company called New Things. She’s starting with her new book about AI, called I Am Not a Robot, which is out this week on May 12th. You’ll hear us reference the fact that she and I have been talking about her big move…

TikTok is preparing to roll out a paid, ad-free version of its app in the UK. The new subscription announced today will be available to users over 18 “over the coming months,” according to TikTok’s announcement, and will cost £3.99 (about $5.40) per month. In exchange for that, TikTok will remove ads from the user’s feed, and promises to not use their data for undefined “advertising purposes”.This “pay or consent” model is likely in response to the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy laws that forbid companies from harvesting personal data for advertising…

Discord is announcing the launch of Nitro Rewards today, a new program for subscribers that bundles benefits from third parties like Microsoft, Logitech, and SteelSeries, into a Nitro subscription. The main addition is that Nitro members will now get a new starter edition of Xbox Game Pass at no extra cost.Xbox Game Pass starter edition, which leaked last month, allows PC and Xbox owners to download more than 50 games, including titles like Fallout 4, Stardew Valley, and DayZ. The starter edition also includes 10 hours a month of Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming and the ability to earn up to $25 a…

A.I. has always been compared to human intelligence, but that may not be the right way to think about it. What it does well can help predict what jobs it may replace.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that two Americans were sentenced to years in prison for helping the North Korean government place fake IT workers in U.S. companies.

According to CEO Helen Gu, the biggest problem facing the industry today is not just monitoring and diagnosing where AI models go wrong, it’s diagnosing how the entire tech stack operates now that AI is a part of it.

Adobe says AI traffic to U.S. retail sites also jumped 269% in March, with visitors converting better and generating more revenue than non-AI shoppers.

Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo ($499 for students) has sent shockwaves through the PC ecosystem, and now Microsoft is responding with deals targeting students in the US. A new “Microsoft College Offer” is launching today, which will see the software giant bundle 12 months of free Microsoft 365 Premium and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with select Windows 11 PCs that have also been discounted.Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo are all participating in this Microsoft College Offer, and Microsoft is even discounting some Surface devices days after hiking the prices of its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models…

After the full movie leaked, animators mourned the chance to release their work as intended. Others feel the leak is justified in light of Paramount’s marketing blunders and association with Trump.

Nuclear startup X-energy hit the road today to sell prospective investors on its initial public offering.