Tech
Nintendo Sees Record-Breaking First Quarter Profit
Nintendo's notable year, bolstered by the success of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, has paid off, exemplified in the results from the gaming giant's first-quarter financial report. Operating profit during the company's first quarter reached ¥185.4 billion ($1.3 billion USD) – a jump of 82% from this same period last year.The two contributing factors to Nintendo's staggering first quarter are the widespread success of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom game, which has now sold 18.51 million units since its debut this May, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which since its release in April, has since garnered over $1.3 billion USD at worldwide box offices. Nintendo's previous quarter one record was reached back in 2020, when the company hit a ¥144.7 b...
CASETiFY Releases New Spider-Man and Venom AirPods Max Cases
In celebration of Spider-Man Day, which just passed on August 1, CASETiFY has released new Spider-Man and Venom Airpods Max cases.In collaboration with Marvel, the new cases bring a fun way to elevate the style of the popular headphones – fit for comic book and movie lovers. Leading the charge is the silver Spider-Man case, which features a web design and the superhero's eyes. For a darker offering, the Venom case comes in black and is also complete with a web design and white eyes. Interested fans might want to act quickly as both cases are limited-edition pieces.But the Spider-Man celebration does not end with the Airpods Max cases. The lifestyle accessory brand also offered up a range of phone cases, magnetic wireless chargers, cross-body rope straps, earbud cases, iPad cases, MacBook A...
“Every single” Amazon team is working on generative AI, says CEO
/ Andy Jassy used Thursday’s earnings call to underscore just how much the company is investing in artificial intelligence. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge “Every single one” of Amazon’s businesses has “multiple generative AI initiatives going right now,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call on Thursday. The company offers infrastructure and services via AWS that can help power many generative artificial intelligence applications, which Jassy did discuss on the call, but he also stressed just how important AI is ...
Microsoft called out for “blatantly negligent” cybersecurity practices
/ The CEO of Tenable says Microsoft has engaged in a ‘repeated pattern of negligent cybersecurity practices.’ a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is facing mounting criticism in the wake of last month’s attack on Azure. In a post on LinkedIn, Amit Yoran, the CEO of the cybersecurity company Tenable, says Microsoft’s cybersecurity track record is “even worse than you think” — and he has an example to back it up. On July 12th, Microsoft disclosed a major breach targeting its Azure platform, which it traced to a Chinese hacking group known as Storm-0558....
Apple’s big services bet is paying off as iPhone sales dip
/ Services remains a highlight and keeps growing into a bigger revenue driver with over 1 billion paid subscriptions. iPhone sales dipped ahead of the iPhone 15 lineup coming in September. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge This April through June quarter is almost always Apple’s most boring financial stretch of the entire year, and today’s earnings release shows this year was no exception. The company reported revenue of $81.8 billion, down from $83 billion last year. With the new iPhone 15 series still a month and change away, last year’s...
A 1976 Apple Check Signed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak Is Up for Auction
An Apple check signed by Steve Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak is heading to auction. Dated 1976, the check marks one of Apple’s first-ever payments, with this one issued to a printed circuit board company that was likely responsible for the boards of the company’s first computers.The check was technically written prior to Apple’s launch as a company. Apple Computer, Inc was officially registered thirteen days after the March 19 check. It also predates the company’s address, which was included on later checks, as Jobs and Wozniak had yet to open their Palo Alto office out of Jobs’ parents’ garage.The historic check “No. 2” will hit the auction block in an online event hosted by Boston’s RR Auction. The auction is already open and the check will be up for bids until August 24."This tempor...
The first Bethesda games are arriving on Nvidia’s GeForce Now service
/ Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service is getting its first Bethesda games this month thanks to Microsoft’s cloud gaming agreement. a:hover]:text-black [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-e9 dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-13 dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63″>Wolfenstein: The New Order.
Google Researchers Equip AI To Transform Brain Scans Into Music
Researchers from Google joined Japan’s Osaka University to conduct a study that saw them convert brain activity into streamable music.For the effort, five volunteers underwent fMRI scans while being played music from an assortment of 500 tracks across 10 genres.Researchers then took the scans of the volunteers’ brain activity and fed them into an AI model they had built called Brain2Music. The program draws information from the scans to produce songs inspired by those the volunteers were listening to.The new AI-generated songs came from Google’s production tool, MusicLM, which is a text-to-music model that churns out tracks based on text descriptions.In the published study, the researchers described the AI music as resembling “the musical stimuli that human subjects experienced, with respe...
Three big Reddit communities are no longer focused on John Oliver
Reddit/ Tech / r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos are largely operating as they did before the protests. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Photo by Arturo Holmes / Getty Images Three of Reddit’s biggest communities are no longer focused entirely on John Oliver in a form of protest against Reddit. The subreddits had made the switch in June to push back on Reddit’s API pricing that ultimately made some popular third-party apps shut down, but now, they’re operating pretty much as they did before the protests. One of the subreddits, r/aww (which has more than 34 million subscribers), posted a ...
How Elon Musk took over Tesla using money, strong-arm tactics, and his own popularity
/ Episode two of Land of the Giants: The Tesla Shock Wave features interviews with Tesla’s co-founders, early employees, and investors to tell the story of the company’s origin. a]:text-gray-13″>If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: Getty The story of Tesla and Elon Musk can be traced back to the early 2000s, when Musk was ousted as CEO of his first company, PayPal. That incident taught Musk a crucial lesson about the importance of being in control, even when it wasn’t your ow...
Instagram is working on labels for AI generated content
/ The in-development feature highlights when a piece of content has been ‘created or edited with AI.’ a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram appears to be working on new notices that would identify when AI has played a role in creating content on its platform. App researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, who frequently discovers new Instagram features before they’re officially announced or released, has posted a screenshot of a page in the Instagram app that reads “the creator or Meta said that this content was created or edited with AI.” ...
TweetDeck’s new ‘XPro’ branding is starting to show up
Twitter – X/ Tech / But like other parts of the X rebranding, vestiges of Twitter remain. a:hover]:text-black [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-e9 dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-13 dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63″>Like other parts of the X rebrand, there’s still some work to be done.
