The hack comes after abortion rights advocates in Montana secured enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in November.

At first glance, these AI-generated Super Mario Bros. videos are pretty impressive. The more you watch, though, the more glitches you'll see. Last month, Google's GameNGen AI model showed that generalized image diffusion techniques can be used to generate a passable, playable version of Doom. Now, researchers are using some similar techniques with a model called MarioVGG to see if an AI model can generate plausible video of Super Mario Bros. in response to user inputs. The results of the MarioVGG model—available as a pre-print paper published by the crypto-adjacent AI company Virtuals Protocol—still display a lot of apparent glitches, and it's too slow for anything approaching real-time gameplay at the moment. But the results show how even a limited model can infer some impressive physics and gameplay dynamics just from studying a bit of video and input data. The researchers hope this represents a first step toward "producing and demonstrating a reliable and controllable video game generator," or possibly even "replacing game development and game engines completely using video generation models" in the future.

He stepped away from a planned Exorcist reboot trilogy after the disappointing Believer, but the director has revealed what he had in mind for the second film.

The Hue app is also getting a substantial update, including better smart home control.

Enlarge Elon Musk's X has won its appeal on free speech grounds to block AB 587, a California law requiring social media companies to submit annual reports publicly explaining their controversial content moderation decisions. In his opinion, Ninth Circuit court of appeals judge Milan Smith reversed a district court's ruling that he said improperly rejected Musk's First Amendment argument. Smith was seemingly baffled to find that the "district court performed, essentially, no analysis on this question." According to Smith, the district court "offered no reason" for finding that AB 587 only compelled commercial speech "except for wanting" to follow "the lead of the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits,” which never dealt with "speech similar" to AB 587's required content moderation reports. Instead, Smith said, the district court seemed to take up California's invitation to invent a new category of commercial speech that did not clash with the First Amendment.

Unit 29155 of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency—a team responsible for coup attempts, assassinations, and bombings—has branched out into brazen hacking operations with targets across the world.

When Apple launched Apple Pay in 2014, at an event 10 years to the day before this year’s iPhone launch, Apple promised the feature would “change the way you pay.” The company didn’t just let you save a credit card number on your phone; it let you pay for things with a single tap by transmitting information through an NFC chip. Apple was so bullish on mobile payments that Apple Pay was even one of the key selling points for the also-just-announced Apple Watch. A decade later, Apple Pay is everywhere. You can use it to buy groceries and coffee; you can use it to ride the New York City subway or rent a Lime scooter. You can use Apple Pay and skip the whole multipage checkout process on lots of online stores. You can use it on your phone,...

New research suggests dogs can not only label objects in their heads, but can retain those labels for extended periods of time.

BMW has had some hydrogen fuel cell-powered iX5s in testing for a while, and for Art Basel 2024 this one got a new look courtesy of Es Devlin. Today, BMW announced that it will start selling vehicles with hydrogen fuel cell powertrains in 2028 alongside the battery electric, gasoline-, and diesel-powered cars and SUVs it sells today. It is working with Toyota to develop new fuel cells, targeting half the cost and 20 percent better efficiency than current-generation fuel cell stacks. But the technology should be seen as complementary to battery electric vehicles, not a replacement for them, BMW said. Earlier this morning, the automaker held a roundtable discussion with Michael Rath, BMW's vice president for hydrogen vehicles, who began by answering the main question I had been planning to ask well before any of the assembled journalists were called on. "It's a fact: battery electric vehicles are more efficient in well-to-wheel than fuel cell electric vehicles. It's absolutely true that the conversion of electricity into hydrogen and back into electricity in the car generates losses and hence is less efficient than using the electricity directly," Rath said.

The family of 70-year-old William Bryan is suing over what they say was a deadly organ mix-up.

High pressure ices near the crust are a feature of water-rich worlds.` The possibility that there is liquid water on an exoplanet’s surface usually flags it as “potentially habitable,” but the reality is that too much water might prevent life from taking hold. “On Earth, the ocean is in contact with some rock. If we have too much water, it creates high-pressure ice underneath the ocean, which separates it from the planet’s rocky interior,” said Caroline Dorn, a geophysicist at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, who led new research in exoplanet interiors. This high-pressure ice prevents minerals and chemical compounds from being exchanged between the rocks and the water. In theory, that should make the ocean barren and lifeless. But Dorn’s team argues that even exoplanets that have enough water to form such high-pressure ice can host life if the majority of the water is not stored in the surface oceans but is held much deeper in the planet’s core. The water in the core can’t sustain life—it’s not even in its molecular form there. But it means that a substantial fraction of a planet’s water isn’t on the surface, which makes the surface oceans a little more shallow and prevents high-pressure ice from forming at their bottom.

Snapchat is the app of choice for criminals targeting kids for sextortion or child sexual abuse material (CSAM), New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez alleges in a new lawsuit filed against the app’s owner, Snap. The suit accuses Snap of violating New Mexico law against unfair practices and public nuisance based on design elements like its “disappearing” messages and alleged failure to police predators. “Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear,” Torrez said in a statement. “But predators can permanently capture this content and they have created a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold, and stored indefinitely.” Torrez’s office ran an undercover...

Write right with one of our favorite notebooks, journals, and sketchbooks.

Saga #72 signals the end of one chapter, and the beginning of the end as we draw closer to its final stories.

Shortcut Labs has been openly working toward the goal of turning its smart home hubs — the Flic Hub LR and the Flic Hub Mini — into Matter controllers for quite a while, and now the company tells The Verge it has done it. On Friday, Shortcut will release an update that, according to the company, lets its devices easily act as independent hubs for Matter devices without being part of the ecosystems from companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, or Samsung. It’s a compelling idea: a way to build out a smart home without turning to one of the big tech companies and the privacy concerns and attempts at lock-in that come with that. Part of the promise of the Matter standard is that it gives users freedom of choice, but we’ve still mostly had to...

Air purifiers are great and all, but they only really do one thing, and they usually don’t look elegant doing it. SwitchBot is trying to change this by making an air purifier that also serves as a table, a wireless charger, and a light source. The device, aptly named the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table, costs $269.99 and puts a small platform atop the air purifier. You can place a Qi-compatible phone on the platform to charge it wirelessly or simply use it to set down your cup of coffee. Beneath the platform is a light that looks like it could come in handy for subtle nighttime illumination. You can choose from 10 different colors, with options for soft, moderate, and bright lighting; the light will also change color by itself — from green...

How do you convince a skeptical public that your autonomous vehicles are not only safer than human drivers but also a better way to get around? If you’re Waymo, the answer is data — and lots of it. The Alphabet-owned company revealed a new safety hub today, complete with glossy graphics and a multitude of charts that will be periodically updated, with the overarching message that its autonomous vehicles are not to be feared. The move comes as Waymo seeks to expand its footprint, win over new customers, and cement its lead in the race to deploy more driverless cars. It also comes as safety regulators have begun to take a harder look at the whole autonomous vehicle industry — including Waymo. “This matters a lot...

Nanoleaf is giving its popular smart lighting panels a major refresh. The Nanoleaf Blocks (starting at $199.99) feature edge-to-edge lighting that the company says eliminates hot spots and dark corners, bringing a smoother, more even look. The new Blocks can also be customized with pegboards, shelves, and textured light panels to bring more function to your wall art. They’re available for preorder now and ship in October. The company announced the new panels during its Nanoleaf Live event on YouTube and will show them off at the IFA tech show in Berlin this week. Nanoleaf is also adding two new features to its desktop app that work with the Blocks, as well as its entire line of smart lights, to offer more immersive lighting experiences....

“Ask Photos” is a conversational way to find specific photos in your ever-expanding image library.