Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 129, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, come on you Gunners, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve mostly been sick, which has meant nearly a full rewatch of Parks […]
After back-to-back losses in trials grappling with its impact on teens’ mental health, Meta just settled what was supposed to be its next legal battle with Kentucky’s Breathitt County School District. Google’s YouTube, Snap, and TikTok all recently settled similar claims brought by the school district, which was seeking payment from the companies to cover […]
Maka Kids is building a streaming app for children ages zero to six featuring content designed for healthy development. The startup has now raised $3 million in seed funding to scale its platform.
Four decades on, ’80s-style science fiction adventures continue to exert their influence on modern film and TV. The idea of a group of kids teaming up to face an otherworldly threat has become a trope at this point, seen in everything from Super 8 to Stranger Things. So on one level, The Boroughs, a new […]
Google announced a new YouTube Shorts Remix feature that lets users restyle clips or even insert themselves into other people’s videos using Gemini Omni. Now, at the bottom of a YouTube Short, when you click the remix icon, you’ll see an option to “reimagine” it. Here, you can prompt Gemini to turn a video into […]
Apple TV is best known for its lineup of science fiction shows and feel-good sitcoms, but of late the streaming service has veered in a different direction. A pair of its current buzziest shows explore the world of OnlyFans creators and cam models, and they’re timed up near perfectly; just as one ends (Margo’s Got […]
When The Mandalorian first debuted on Disney Plus, it was a refreshing reminder of how fascinating Star Wars stories can be when they aren’t focused on the same handful of well-established characters. Especially in its first season, the series felt like a sign that Disney was shifting gears after disappointing fans with its last trilogy […]
Snap, YouTube, and TikTok have settled the first lawsuit of its kind, alleging that social media addiction has cost public schools massive amounts of money, according to Bloomberg. The suit, filed by the Breathitt County School District in Kentucky, claims that social media has disrupted learning and created a mental health crisis, straining budgets. The […]
YouTube is expanding its AI likeness detection program to all users over the age of 18 – meaning just about anyone can have the platform hunt for potential deepfakes of themselves. The likeness detection feature uses a selfie-style scan of a person’s face to monitor YouTube for lookalikes. If there is a match, YouTube alerts […]
This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. Netflix has been building a new internal studio called INKubator that aims to use AI to produce short-form animated content: The streamer is hiring for a wide variety of roles, […]