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Received — 19 July 2026 ⏭ The Verge - All Posts

Dave Eggers told OpenAI staff that ChatGPT was ‘silencing an entire generation’

18 July 2026 at 21:54
Dave Eggers attends the "The Turning Point: To Be Destroyed" premiere. | Image: John Lamparski/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival

Last year, Sam Altman invited author Dave Eggers to give a talk to around 200 OpenAI staffers. The man has written countless novels, screenplays, pieces of journalism, started McSweeney's, and founded multiple schools and nonprofits that support writers and the arts more broadly. So one might expect he'd roll into the company's offices and offer tips on being relentlessly prolific, or how to excel in multiple fields. Instead, he apparently laced into the company. According to the Financial Times, Eggers told the staff:

"The effect of ChatGPT on educators' lives is catastrophic. Whether you intended to do it or not, you've made every teache …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google might not kneecap the Pixel 11a with an old processor

18 July 2026 at 19:25
Photo of Google Pixel 10A in front of white tiles, showing the camera from an angle
The Pixel 10a shipped with a last gen processor. | Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

Mystic Leaks suggests that the Pixel 11a will return to featuring a flagship-grade processor with the Tensor G6. Rather than the Tensor G5 found in the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro, the Pixel 10a shipped with the previous generation Tensor G4. That was a huge disappointment since, typically, the Pixel a lineup kept the modern processor, but cut corners in other places to keep costs down.

The Tensor G6 is rumored to feature the same PowerVR DXT-48-1536 GPU as the G5, but it should still be an improvement over the Mali-G715 in the Tensor G4. The big upgrade is that the G6 moves on from Samsung's Exynos modems and instead uses a MediaTek M90 modem. Tha …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google is open-sourcing its 3D emoji

18 July 2026 at 17:40
Google’s 2D blob thumbs up emoji next to a wire frame model and the new 3D model.

Now, if you want to, you can use Google's 3D emoji in your own creations. The company shared some details about how it went about designing the little pictograms and why, as part of World Emoji Day on Friday. Things you might not necessarily worry about in a 2D illustration suddenly become very important when you're talking about a 3D model. Is a smiley face a sphere? A mask? A flat disc?

In addition to offering a behind-the-scenes look at Google's design process, it also announced that it would be completely open-sourcing the emoji set:

We're handing over raw .OBJ files to the community so they can use them to build immersive VR worlds, …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Guardian’s Carter Sherman fondly remembers being terrified by Ocarina of Time

18 July 2026 at 15:30
Carter Sherman sitting on a the floor in front of a couch, instead of just on it for some reason.
Carter, there’s a couch RIGHT THERE. | Image:

Carter Sherman has been covering sex, gender, and the complex personal and national politics that accompany them for years. She was a senior reporter for Vice and has written for Elle, Ms. magazine, and Los Angeles magazine as well. Along the way, she's garnered a Scripps Howard Award, a National Press Club Journalism Award, and four Emmy nominations.

She's also the author of The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future. That book looks at how the internet and our polarized political landscape have changed sex and relationships, from school board battles over sex ed to abortion access. These days she finds herself …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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