State Department 'Crying Sessions' Over Trump Prove It's Time to Gut the Agency to the Studs

Update: The Strange and Unacceptable Twists in the North Carolina Supreme Court Race

Fractured Media Nominations: Trump Art Fraud, an Ursine Insurance Scam, and Celebrity Urination Habits

Image: Ford With more cars equipped with partial automation hitting the road, safety researchers are growing increasingly worried about driver attention and the potential for these systems to cause crashes. A new survey has a possible solution to the problem of wandering attention while using partial automation: let drivers adjust the steering. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted a new study that found that drivers were more likely to stay alert while using advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) when they were allowed to correct the steering without disengaging the partial automation. “These results suggest that small differences in system design can nudge drivers toward safer habits,” said IIHS president David Harkey in a... Continue reading…

Image: Humanoid Origin Humanoid Origin, the game studio founded by former BioWare general manager Casey Hudson, is shutting down operations. The closure was announced in a post on the company’s LinkedIn page. “Despite efforts to shield the studio from broader challenges in the industry, an unexpected shortfall of funding left us unable to sustain operations,” the post read. Humanoid Origin was founded by Hudson in 2021 when it was then known as Humanoid Studios. Hudson started the studio after leaving a 20-year career at BioWare where he worked as a producer and director on several of the studio’s seminal titles including Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Hudson left BioWare in 2014 for a brief stint at Microsoft Studios before returning... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google is testing out media playback straight from Android smartwatches’ built-in speakers in Wear OS 5.1, according to Android developer release notes spotted by Mishaal Rahman. That’s in addition to adding support for credential managers in the coming update, which Google revealed is based on Android 15. (Wear OS 5, which rolled out earlier this month, is based on Android 14.) Watch speaker playback will work for “devices that support media playback through the watch speaker,” Google writes, adding that users can pick the built-in speaker for apps that include the capability. It’s not clear which devices that would mean. Android smartwatches only play media over Bluetooth right now — something that was true of all Apple Watches u... Continue reading…

Deals this good rarely stick around. Black Friday and AirPods discounts go together like, well, AirPods and iPhones. We thought the latest AirPods Pro were an incredible deal at their recently discounted price of $189, but they’ve dropped even further at Amazon and Walmart, where you can now pick them up for a new low of $153.99 ($95 off). That’s less than the current price for the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, which are down to $168.99. Sure, the AirPods 4 are newer, but Apple was mostly playing catchup with their release. The second-gen AirPods Pro are still the best wireless earbuds in Apple’s lineup, even a couple of years after their initial release. Their voice call quality is fantastic and their noise cancellation performance is more effective than... Continue reading…

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge You’d think Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and its wide-reaching Supercharger network, would already know about the workings of the federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program that has dedicated $7.5 billion to building a national charging network. However, he needed Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to chime in on X yesterday to stop some Republican leaders from spreading misinformation about the program. “Please post the rebuttal,” Musk asked Buttigieg under a Donald Trump Jr. post quoting Ohio congressperson Michael Rulli, who accuses Buttigieg of “squandering billions” to build “8 EV charging stations.” Buttigieg tells Trump the post is “false.” As Buttigieg explained, the $7.5 billion is “the entire program... Continue reading…

Anthropic is adding custom styles to Claude that quickly adjust the tone and length of responses. | Image: Anthropic Anthropic is adding a new feature to its Claude AI assistant that will give users more control over how the chatbot responds to different writing tasks. The new custom styles are available to all Claude AI users, enabling anyone to train it to match their own communication style or select from preset options to quickly adjust the tone and level of detail it provides. This update aims to personalize the chatbot’s replies and make them feel more natural or appropriate for specific applications, such as writing detailed technical documents or professional emails. Three preset styles are available: Formal for “clear and polished” text, Concise for shorter and more direct responses, and Explanatory for educational replies that need to include... Continue reading…

Buying a new keyboard probably won’t make you happy. But this one is orange. | Photo by Nathan Edwards / The Verge The Omnikeys Bauer Lite, one of my favorite keyboards of the year, is down to just $95 ($25 off) this week as part of Omnitype’s ongoing Black Friday sale. I paid full price for mine earlier this year, and it was a steal. It feels great to type on, it has a great layout, it’s customizable and fun to build, and it’s colorful. What’s not to love? The Bauer Lite has a plastic case that comes in a bunch of fantastic translucent colors, from clear to atomic purple to bright blue, seafoam, coral, dark red, and my personal favorite: neon orange. This is great news if your brain, like mine, can sometimes be tricked into feeling a little happier by a jolt of fluorescent color. It comes as a barebones kit, which means you need to supply your own... Continue reading…