Speaking from experience, better lighting can completely change how a space feels. Over the years, I’ve filled my apartment with Govee’s color-changing lights, and they’ve made it feel calmer and more cheerful. That’s why it’s worth noting that a couple of its table lamps are on sale as part of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, including […]

Jennifer Daniel, on her “Did Someone Say Emoji?” blog:

First came Melting Face 🫠, our collective surrender to the liquid state.

Then Dotted Line Face 🫥, the visual representation of sublimation: turning from a solid into a gas just to escape a conversation.

Now, we have Distorted Face (U+1FAEA), a moment defined by tension: where you aren’t just feeling an emotion — you are being physically altered by it.

I’ll live, but it feels a tad spiteful that Apple only adds new emoji to the current-year OS updates. So this year’s 8 new emoji are in MacOS 26.4, but not MacOS 15.7.5, despite both being released this week.

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. Meta and its AI glasses hardware partner EssilorLuxottica are getting ready to launch the next generation of their Ray-Ban AI glasses. That's according to a series of FCC filings for […]

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Cohere launches Transcribe, its first voice model; the 2B-parameter, open-source speech recognition model handles tasks like notetaking and speech analysis  —  Enterprise AI company Cohere on Thursday launched its first voice model: Transcribe is an open source automatic speech recognition model …

Patience Haggin / Wall Street Journal:
The US FCC opens a comment period for a proposal to help return outsourced call center jobs to the US; critics say the plan could drive companies to automation  —  Analysts say the proposal, aimed to reduce fraud and language barriers, could drive companies toward automation