Photo by Ashley Carman / The Verge Spotify is now offering refunds to people who purchased its $90 Car Thing dashboard accessory. While the streaming company unceremoniously discontinued its first and only hardware product in 2022, just five months after its release, it recently announced plans to deactivate all remaining Car Things on December 4th, 2024. Users looking to get their money back will need to reach out to Spotify support and provide proof of purchase. The slight concession comes after a group of Car Thing customers filed a class action lawsuit with the Southern District of New York against Spotify over their short-lived and now doomed accessories. Car Thing was a simple external screen / remote control for the Spotify app on your phone— most attractive to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images AI search platform Perplexity is launching a new feature called Pages that will generate a customizable webpage based on user prompts. The new feature feels like a one-stop shop for making a school report since Perplexity does the research and writing for you. Pages taps Perplexity’s AI search models to find information and then creates what I can loosely call a research presentation that can be published and shared with others. In a blog post, Perplexity says it designed Pages to help educators, researchers, and “hobbyists” share their knowledge. Users type out what their report is about or what they want to know in the prompt box. They can gear the writing more toward beginners, expert readers, or a more general audience. Perplexity... Continue reading…

Image: Sony Santa Monica Studio Sony is kicking off this year’s summer gaming events with a 30-minute showcase highlighting all the games coming to PlayStation this year and beyond. Continue reading…

Image: Apple One of the most beloved series on Apple TV Plus is returning very soon. The streamer just announced that season 2 of the historical epic Pachinko will start streaming on August 23rd. Weekly episodes will air every Friday through October 11th. Based on the novel of the same name by Min Jin Lee, Pachinko follows the multigenerational story of a Korean family immigrating to Japan. While the story unfolded chronologically in the book, the show took a different approach, with a nonlinear narrative that jumped back and forth between eras. The series premiered in 2022, and the show was renewed before the first season was finished. It’s not clear exactly which parts of the story season 2 will cover, but Apple did provide a handful of first-look... Continue reading…

With two weeks to go until the 2024 Worldwide Developer Conference, leaks regarding Apple's plans for its operating systems have begun pouring out. The latest comes from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who reports that Apple will upgrade its digital assistant Siri in iOS 18 with advanced artificial intelligence that should significantly expand its capabilities. According to the report, Siri will be able to handle any command within any app. The feature will initially be limited to Apple's own apps but will support hundreds of unique commands. It sounds like if there's something you can do in an app by tapping on the screen, you'll be able to ask the AI-enhanced Siri to perform the task for you as well. More specifically, Siri should be able to open individual documents, move notes between folders, send or delete emails, open a specific publication in Apple News, email a web link to one of your contacts, and summarize a news article for you. This isn't the first time that we've heard rumors about a Siri overhaul in iOS 18. Last fall, a blog on Naver said that the company would transform Siri into a "killer AI app for accessibility across Apple's vast array of devices." The blog also predicted the revamp of Siri would be unveiled at WWDC 2024 and that it would launch alongside the iPhone 16. At first, Siri will only be able to handle one command at a time. Eventually, Apple wants to allow users to string multiple commands together, such as recording a meeting and then sending the summary of the meeting to a colleague with a single request. The report suggests this upgrade won't be ready until 2025 at the earliest, but it should be part of iOS 18. Apple has been playing catch-up with other digital assistants for years, but companies such as OpenAI and Google have now completely lapped Siri with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. Revamping Siri will help to bring Apple into the AI era, but we'll need to see it in action first to see if it's a big enough upgrade to make Siri competitive again. Don't Miss: Today’s deals: $249 iPad, Sonos speakers from $199, $495 Apple Watch Ultra, $14 charging station, more The post Apple is reportedly giving Siri an AI-based overhaul in iOS 18 appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Best Fire TV Stick deals for May 2024 Today’s deals: $3.25 smart plugs, $79 AirPods, $849 M2 MacBook Air, $329 Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones, more Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Memorial Day deals: $20 Amazon credit, $329 iPad 10, $20 TOZO earbuds, Hydro Flask, Motorola foldables, more

The liberal judicial activist group Demand Justice top-lined a letter sent to Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Wednesday demanding an ethics investigation into Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

U.S. stocks fell Thursday, led by declines in technology shares after a disappointing Salesforce forecast, while investors digested data showing the economy had grown slower than previously expected in the first quarter.

The presidential campaigns of Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump and incumbent Democrat Joe Biden are battling over the topics to be covered in their first presidential debate next month, the New York Post reported Thursday.

A verdict either way in former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York is unlikely to affect voters' opinions of him, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist national poll released Thursday.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to introduce a bill banning smartphones in schools, reports the Guardian.