Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 100, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready for a big gadget week, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about Tim Berners-Lee and stain removers and […]
Like many backpackers, I’m a sicko. I have weighed all my gear in order to maintain a spreadsheet for pack weight on every trip I’m on. I’ve spent more money than I care to think about in order to drop pounds, or even ounces. This is why I’m the proud new owner of a power […]
Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Hank Green, the cofounder of Complexly, where we make SciShow, Crash Course, and a bunch of other educational YouTube channels. I’m back in the Decoder guest host chair for another couple of episodes while Nilay is out on parental leave. Today, I’m talking with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi, […]
Vimeo is getting bought up by Bending Spoons, a European software company that has amassed a growing portfolio of businesses, including Evernote, WeTransfer, and Meetup. Bending Spoons will pay $1.38 billion to acquire the video hosting platform, and it expects to close the deal later this year. Vimeo launched in 2004 as a spinoff of […]
A new licensing standard aims to let web publishers set the terms of how AI system developers use their work. On Wednesday, major brands like Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, Quora, and People Inc. announced support for Really Simple Licensing (RSL), an open content licensing standard that enables publishers to outline how bots should pay to scrape […]
Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO of enterprise software giant Atlassian, was one of the first users of the Arc browser. Over the last several years, he has been a prolific bug reporter and feature requester. Now he’ll own the thing: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company, the New York-based startup that makes both Arc and the […]
Perplexity has just offered to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion — a bid that’s far more than the AI search startup itself is valued at, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The startup sent the unsolicited bid on Tuesday, just months after Perplexity said it would buy Chrome if the […]
Google is making it easier to see news from your favorite outlets. A new feature, called “preferred sources,” will let you choose the outlets you want to see featured the most in Search’s “top stories” section. Google’s top stories hub appears when you search for something related to a current event, and displays a bunch […]
A new website that lets you paint over a world map with other users in real-time has taken the digital illustration community by storm. Wplace is a collaborative pixel art platform that serves as a spiritual successor to Reddit’s r/Place April Fools’ Day experiments, placing time restrictions on drawing tools that motivate users to team […]
With the rise of AI writing tools, Wikipedia editors have had to deal with an onslaught of AI-generated content filled with false information and phony citations. Already, the community of Wikipedia volunteers has mobilized to fight back against AI slop, something Wikimedia Foundation product director Marshall Miller likens to a sort of “immune system” response. […]