Here’s some cool stuff you can do with Bluesky

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge So, you’ve finally decided to give Bluesky a shot. The social network has come a long way since the early bare-bones days of invite-only signups and recently grew past the 15 million user mark. Along the way, it’s gathered a lot of familiar posting platform features, like direct messages,…

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18 states want the SEC to stop enforcing crypto regulation

In which various government bodies fight over “permissionless” assets | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Securities and Exchange Commission wants to “unilaterally wrest regulatory authority away from the States” when it comes to crypto, according to a lawsuit from 18 states. These states want to halt the SEC’s enforcement actions, so…

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WhatsApp now lets you save message drafts

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp dropped the most “I can’t believe this wasn’t already there” feature this week: message drafts. Now, WhatsApp lets you know if you have unsent messages typed up in chats so you know to get back to them later. To let you know about a draft, messages you’ve started writing will show…

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Half-Life 2 is getting a huge 20th anniversary update

Image: Valve Half-Life 2 is getting a major update in celebration of the classic title’s 20th anniversary. In addition to Steam Workshop support directly within the game, Valve has fixed bugs and restored some content, added new graphics settings, updated gamepad controls, and a whole lot more. You’ll also be able to get the game…

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Google will let you make AI clip art for your documents

Illustration: The Verge Google Workspace is rolling out a Gemini-powered AI image generator directly in Google Docs that lets you quickly whip up visuals for your writeups. Essentially, it’s a clip art maker that follows in the footsteps of Microsoft’s AI-generated art feature in its Office products. Google’s image generator in Docs is available to…

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ESPN is testing a generative AI avatar called ‘FACTS’

Image: ESPN ESPN is testing an AI-generated avatar with the Saturday college football show SEC Nation. Dubbed FACTS, it’s going to be “…promoting education and fun around sports analytics” with information drawn from ESPN Analytics, which includes data like the Football Power Index (FPI), player and team statistics, and game schedules. We haven’t seen the…

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Senator to Valve: what’s with all the Nazis on Steam?

Image: The Verge US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell asking if the company intends to take measures to curtail extremist content on Steam. The letter references a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a large number of user accounts and user-created groups “that glorified antisemitic, Nazi,…

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Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Social network Bluesky, in a post on Friday, says that it has “no intention” of taking user content to train generative AI tools. It made the statement shortly ahead of competitor X implementing its new terms of service that spell out how it can analyze user text and other…

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The M4 MacBook Pro features a quantum dot display

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge The new M4 MacBook Pros that launched last month have an unadvertised change with new quantum dot displays, according to display industry analyst Ross Young and reported by 9to5Mac. Young posted on X that Apple is adopting quantum dot displays for the first time and that…

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