technology

/ It even has nice podcast-like controls. 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 Google is rolling out a new option called “Listen to this page” that can read a webpage out loud to you from within the Android Chrome browser. The feature comes with playback controls similar to those you’d find in music or podcast players, letting you pause, change the reading speed, scrub forward, or skip ahead or back by 10 seconds at a time. You can also change the voice it uses, as well as the language. The feature supports several, including English, French, German, Arabic, Hin...

/ The company is looking for other partners for AI chatbot-based ordering. 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”>Photo: Paul Weaver / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images If your local McDonald’s has been getting your order confidently wrong with an AI chatbot at the drive-thru, I have good news for you: The company is ending the program for now. The company told franchisees that it’s winding down an AI drive-thru ordering partnership with IBM “no later than Ju...

/ A new Bloomberg report suggests that Apple is resuming its pursuit of thinness across its product suite. 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 The thinness of the OLED iPad Pro is only the beginning of a renewed effort by Apple to make increasingly thin computers, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. The company plans a “significantly skinnier” iPhone 17 and is also working on shaving off some of the thickness of the MacBook Pro and the Apple Watch, he writes. It’s not the first time we’ve heard about a new, e...

/ A less-frustrating Siri is on the way this year, according to Bloomberg. 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: Apple Siri may do more than make the edges of your iPhone a glowy rainbow when iOS 18 drops this fall. Apple Intelligence features won’t be out until 2025 for anyone not testing them in beta this year, but reports suggest that Siri itself will still get natural language updates and other key features before the year is out. For instance, users will be able to type to Siri without diving into accessibility settings, and it will be more conversational, understanding you ...

/ Plus, in this week’s Installer: a music history doc you’ll love, the surprisingly great new Yahoo News app, Apple’s new Passwords app, and much more. a]:text-gray-13″>If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin [&>a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-white”>Screen share Andrew Liszewskihas long been one of my favorite bloggers on the internet. He spent years at Gizmodo writing about the weirdest, funniest, silliest, coolest stuff on the web, and I’ve definitely spent thousands of dollars on stuff just because he wrote about it. Now, Andrew works for The Verge! This was his first week, and he’s already in Slack causin...

/ The deep-space probe is now sending back data from all four of its scientific instruments. 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: NASA Voyager 1, the farthest human-made craft from the Earth, is finally sending back data from all four of its scientific instruments, NASA said this week. That means the agency is once more receiving its readings on plasma waves, magnetic fields, and space-bound particles. Now, NASA says Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles from Earth, is “conducting normal science operations” and the agency just needs to resync its timekeeping software and do ...

/ Philips also seems to be releasing a new LED lightstrip soon. 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: HueBlog.com HueBlog published leaked images earlier this week that show the lamp’s odd, fixed lampshade. It will apparently come in black or white and stand “around 33 centimetres high.” The article includes images published by the German smart home site Smartlights.de. Philips might also have a new 5-meter (about 16 feet) lightstrip called the Hue Solo on the way, as it was briefly listed by “a major American retailer” for $89.99 before being taken down, according to a story Hue...

Deals/ Tech / There’s also still time to save on Sonos speakers and a number of slick Grovemade accessories. a]:text-gray-13″>If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

/ And it doesn’t mention Nintendo at all. 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”>Screenshot: YouTube Nintendo is a gaming juggernaut today, but it wasn’t really on anyone’s radar in the United States in 1980. And what was possibly the first US commercial for hardware produced by the company — a handheld called Toss-Up, from its “Game & Watch” series — certainly didn’t help, as a newly-restored copy shows. That’s because there’s no mention of Nintendo at all, or ev...

/ An iPad, but make it a folding phone. 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″>This should fold in half. It just should.

/ The change will drastically improve communication between iPhone and Android users — but Apple barely acknowledged it. 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 Cath Virginia / The Verge Apple will finally adopt RCS in iOS 18, effectively ending a yearslong fight for feature parity between iMessage and Android. But the announcement wasn’t a celebration — you could’ve blinked and missed it. Instead of showing how RCS will make things better, Apple softly announced support for the standard and focused on all the great features coming to iMessage users — not RCS ones. Apple d...

/ “While this issue is potentially contributing to instability, it is not the root cause.” 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″>One of the affected Intel processors.