Technology

Lexus gave us a glimpse at the 2023 RZ 450e today: an all-electric SUV with an estimated 225-mile range and a 71.4kWh battery. The company’s first-ever electric vehicle (EV) will also come with Direct4. That’s its new all-wheel-drive system that automatically calibrates weight distribution on all four wheels, leading to “improved start-up acceleration, handling stability and low power consumption.” On the inside of the vehicle is a sleek interior with a 14-inch touchscreen and a panoramic sunroof that extends from the front seats to the back. As for a steering yoke, which my colleague Andrew Hawkins lamented about in a previous post, that’s optional. The steering yoke will be optional.Image: Lexus Lexus included an image of the yoke in its initial tease of the car, but Lexus spokesperson A...

My favorite kind of software update is the kind that unlocks secret hardware features, and the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack is the latest surprise — you’ll be able to cordlessly charge an iPhone at a faster 7.5 watts instead of the original 5 watts, once you apply firmware update 2.7 (via 9to5Mac). You can wait for an update over the air, or plug a Lightning to USB cable from the pack to a connected Mac or iPad to get the fix, and then you’re off to the races, as they say. But if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t install the update quite yet — I might wait until we hear back from Apple (or reviewers) on whether it’ll affect how warm the battery gets. You see, I bought a MagSafe Battery Pack myself last year for my iPhone mini, but I returned the pack pretty quick. As I’ve written, the Mini-MagSaf...

Barack and Michelle Obama won’t be signing a new podcast deal with Spotify, Bloomberg reports, marking a major departure for the Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground Productions. “The company is instead talking to other distributors about a deal worth tens of millions of dollars, among the most-lucrative in the podcasting business,” according to the report. Amazon’s Audible and iHeartMedia are among the “several” companies Higher Ground is in negotiations with for a new deal. Higher Ground had talked to Spotify as well, but it “declined to make an offer,” Bloomberg says. Higher Ground apparently wants to be able to make multiple shows and release them on platforms simultaneously, which would go against Spotify’s typical exclusives-based strategy. Higher Ground, Amazon, and iHeartMedia...

Lincoln, Ford’s luxury brand, says it will release four new electric vehicles by 2026, by which point 50 percent of its global sales will be EVs. The company also revealed its Lincoln Star Concept as a way to introduce the new design language that will come to define its upcoming electrified lineup. And what a concept it is! Carriage doors, a frunk that extends out like a drawer for added storage, a full-suite of sensory interior moods, and a sleek, aerodynamic profile that feels more Faraday Future than Ford. The Lincoln Star Concept is designed to be “the ultimate sanctuary” for wealthy elites who prefer to be chauffeured through the teaming megalopolises of the future. Lincoln has been mulling plans to electrify its portfolio for months Lincoln has been mulling plans to electrify its po...

Amid supply chain constraints and production delays in China, Tesla reported that it earned a $3.3 billion profit in the first quarter of 2022. Tesla turned that profit on just over $18.7 billion in revenue, the company announced. That represents an 81 percent increase year over year, compared to $10.4 billion in revenue in Q1 2021. The company logged $679 million in emission credit sales to other automakers, compared to $314 million in credit sales in Q4 2021. The company generates this revenue by selling these credits to automakers that make fewer “clean” vehicles than are required by the US government and the European Union. The credit sales have come in handy in past years, helping Tesla eke out a profit while its car-making business struggled. Last summer, the company reported that it...

Instagram is making a few new creator-focused changes to its platform, which Instagram head Adam Mosseri said are meant to “make sure that credit is going to those who deserve it.” The new stuff is made up of three changes: product tags are now available to everyone, so you can tag a product in your post; you can assign yourself to a category like “Photographer” or “Rapper” and have that category show up every time you’re tagged in a post; and Instagram is going to start more heavily promoting original content on the platform. “If you create something from scratch,” Mosseri said in a video explaining the new features, “you should get more credit than if you are re-sharing something that you found from someone else. We’re going to try and do more to try and value original content more, part...

There was one notable omission when the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 lineup launched last year: Google Assistant. As for when it would arrive, Google and Samsung have avoided giving firm dates, but there was reason to hope the digital assistant might arrive sooner than expected. Earlier today, Verizon update logs for both the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic indicated Google had arrived in an update. However, Google has told The Verge that this is not the case. “To confirm, Assistant is not rolling out to Galaxy Watch 4 and we don’t have an update on timing,” Google spokesperson Ivy Hunt told The Verge in an email. The Verizon update logs, which were first spotted by 9to5Google, refer to a software update released today. As for Google Assistant, the logs say, “If you have Google Assista...

Coinbase announced on Wednesday that its NFT marketplace is now in beta and accessible to “a small set of beta testers who’ll be invited based on their position” on its waitlist. The company is looking to take on established players in the space by adding social features, like a comment system (with upvotes and downvotes) and an algorithmic feed. Visually speaking, the screenshots Coinbase includes in its blog post look like a cross between Instagram and OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces. There are profiles where users can show off their collections (and which other people can follow) as well as a discover feed that Coinbase says will recommend NFTs to you “based on what you buy, what’s trending, who you follow, and more.” The marketplace also supports favoriting NFTs, as do Ope...

After a shooting at an Easter weekend house party at an Airbnb in Pittsburgh left two teenagers dead and another eight people with gunshot wounds, Airbnb says it plans to pursue legal action against the person who booked the party. “Airbnb strictly bans parties, and we condemn the behavior that is alleged to have prompted this criminal gun violence and the tragic loss of life,” spokesperson Ben Breit said in a statement emailed to The Verge. The booking guest has been permanently banned from the platform, he said. The party was “unauthorized,” Breit added, and was held without the knowledge or consent of the property host. The shooting happened on Easter Sunday just after 12:30AM, according to Pittsburgh police. Some 200 people were at the party in the city’s East Allegheny neighborhood, a...

In the breathless world of conservative online politics, Arsenal Media is here to help you go viral. Co-founded by gadfly meme enthusiast Benny Johnson, the firm lists clients like Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Dana Loesch and takes credit for more than doubling Donald Trump Jr.’s Facebook following. Most enticing, it seems to offer a tried-and-true playbook for making content hit it big. One slide from a pitch deck viewed by The Verge describes a “viral influencer network” as the secret to making client content take off, showing a single video being passed around by a network of friendly faces. “This organic distribution network serves as the vehicle your client needs to ensure that it reaches its intended audience,” one document promises. Much of the pitch hinges on Johnson himself, who feat...

First, a necessary disclaimer: don’t use artificial intelligence language generators to solve your ethical quandaries. Second: definitely go tell those quandaries to this AI-powered simulation of Reddit because the results are fascinating. Are You The Asshole (AYTA) is, as its name suggests, built to mimic Reddit’s r/AmITheAsshole (AITA) crowdsourced advice forum. Created by internet artists Morris Kolman and Alex Petros with funding from Digital Void, the site lets you enter a scenario and ask for advice about it — and then generates a series of feedback posts responding to your situation. The feedback does a remarkably good job of capturing the style of real human-generated responses, but with the weird, slightly alien skew that many AI language models produce. Here are its responses to ...

Meta hosted its 2022 games showcase, which was filled with games that you can expect to play on your Quest 2 virtual reality headset at some point this year. Last year’s surprise announcement was the VR port of Resident Evil 4 (which turned out to be far better than expected), but several standout titles seem like they’ll be must-play experiences when they launch. In case you missed out on the showcase, we’ve rounded up the biggest announcements below. [embedded content] Ghostbusters is coming to VR The showcase ended with Mark Zuckerberg revealing that a Ghostbusters VR game is in the works for the Quest 2. There aren’t many details (and it’s still in development under a working title) but the game will have players running their own Ghostbusters headquarters in San Francisco. “Track, bla...