Technology

Spotify is launching About the Song in beta today, which offers context and facts about the song you’re listening to. Premium users can scroll down to the new About the Song section for information while in the Now Playing view. At launch, it’s only available for a limited number of tracks, but there are plans to expand it.Bits of trivia and background about songs are presented as short, swipeable cards with information harvested from “third-party sources.” The text is generated using machine learning, but Spotify at least cites its sources on the About the Song cards. The company declined to say whether the feature would eventually be available to free users or when it might leave beta.About the Song is Spotify’s latest attempt to build value-added features around its core music stream...

Aura’s Aspen digital photo frame is a great Valentine’s Day gift if you want something that’s slick and sentimental, and right now it’s on sale for $199 ($30 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Aura’s online storefront. That’s the lowest we’ve seen the frame sell for since the holidays.With its paper-textured, antiglare matte display and adjustable metal stand, the 12-inch Aspen looks remarkably similar to a classic picture frame. It lets you upload and share photos from anywhere. It also has features that help photos feel more personal, like a sharp 1600 x 1200 HD LCD panel that makes images appear lifelike and can display Live Photos, as well as short 30-second video clips. You can even add text captions.There are other reasons we like Aspen, too. The frame adapts to a room’s lighting, and ...

I’ve used Alexa to manage my shopping list for years. There are plenty of great list apps out there, but the convenience of adding items by voice anywhere in my house, pulling up the list on an Echo Show in the kitchen, and having it on my phone via the Alexa app has worked well for me. Until it didn’t.Alexa Plus, combined with a redesign of the Alexa app that puts the generative AI-powered assistant front and center, has made the entire process so irritating that I’ve reluctantly switched to Apple’s Reminders app and Siri.This is not what I wanted. I have Echos all over my house, but only a couple of HomePods, and Siri insists on saying my name every time I add something to the list: “Okay, Jennifer, apples are on your list.”But at least when I pull up the list on my iPhone, it’s just ...

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here.I’m willing to bet you’ve been served an ad for Athletic Greens — also known as AG1. It’s impossible to escape them in podcasts, and it seems like almost every wellness influencer on every social media platform has done an ad for them at some point.AG1 is a greens powder containing over 70 ingredients. Most of it is freeze-dried vegetable powder blends. Basically, instead of taking a multivitamin or eating an actual vegetable, greens powders like AG1 claim to be a more convenient way to make sure you’re ge...

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! A woman named Abigail believed she was in a romantic relationship with a famous actor. The messages felt real. The voice sounded right. The video looked authentic. And the love felt personal. By the time her family realized what was happening, more than $81,000 was gone — and so was the paid-off home she planned to retire in.We spoke with Vivian Ruvalcaba on my "Beyond Connected" podcast about what happened to her mother and how quickly the scam unfolded. What began as online messages quietly escalated into financial ruin and the loss of a family home. Vivian is Abigail's daughter. She is now her mother's advocate, investigator, chief advocate and protector.Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy ReportGet my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and...

There are bold-faced tech names all over the Epstein files. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Reid Hoffman, Steven Sinofsky, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, on and on and on. These men (and they’re pretty much all men) had wildly varying degrees of interaction with Epstein, and the details matter a great deal. But so does the totality of it: you spend long enough in these files, and you start to get a sense of the way the world works for a particular kind of extremely rich and extremely powerful businessman. And it starts to feel pretty bad.On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay start the show by talking about the latest tranche of emails from the Epstein files, both what we’ve learned and the deeply strange way in which they’re being dis...

Is the long freeze on Chinese automakers selling cars in the US finally starting to thaw? China is the largest auto market in the world and now the largest car exporter, too. But high tariffs and geopolitical tensions have kept Chinese automakers away from US customers. Many of those cars are ready for primetime and are fully competitive with current offerings in the United States.Geely is among those Chinese carmakers that want to sell their cars here. It’s already sailed past one of two hurdles any of them need to clear to do that: Its Volvo Cars division already has an assembly plant in South Carolina that would let it build its cars domestically. That plant now builds the Volvo EX90 electric SUV and the Polestar 3 that shares its platform; it will add the Volvo XC60 late this year.F...

He might be dead, but it sure seems like Jeffrey Epstein won.Sure, Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking minors. Sure, he died in jail. (I am not going to wade into the debate about how.) But he subscribed to a racist, misogynist ideology that meant rich white men like him could do whatever they liked. And it seems he took measures to spread it.The latest tranche of Epstein documents made it obvious. Consider all the “contrarians” and “anti-woke” warriors who show up in the latest dump: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Larry Summers, Steve Bannon, and of course, Donald Trump. With apologies to George Carlin: It’s a big club, and the worst people are in it — because their interests are all aligned. Pushing back on social justice, it turns out, was coordinated.Being able to see their ...

A federal jury in Phoenix has found Uber to be liable for the sexual assault of one of its passengers, potentially setting a precedent for more than 3,000 similar cases consolidated in US federal court. As part of the verdict, Uber has been ordered to pay $8.5 million in damages to the victim, Jaylynn Dean, who said she was raped by her Uber driver during a ride to her hotel in November 2023.The ride-hailing giant has long argued that it cannot be held responsible for the criminal actions of drivers on its platform, having faced years of scrutiny for numerous passenger safety concerns. According to Uber’s most recent US safety report, the company received 12,522 reports of people being sexually assaulted between 2017-2022, with almost 70 percent of reports being against drivers. In a st...

After introducing AirDrop support to Pixel 10 devices last year, Google is now set to expand it to phones made by other Android partners. Eric Kay, vice president of engineering for Android, confirmed in a press briefing attended by Android Authority that “a lot more” Android devices will be able to use Quick Share to initiate AirDrop sessions with Apple devices this year.“We spent a lot of time and energy to make sure that we could build something that was compatible not only with iPhone but iPads and MacBooks,” Kay said. “Now that we’ve proven it out, we’re working with our partners to expand it into the rest of the ecosystem, and you should see some exciting announcements coming very soon.”Currently, Google’s Pixel 10 phones are the only Android devices that can use Quick Share — And...