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Meta just created a moderation nightmare for its smart glasses

24 July 2026 at 20:23

Meta's smart glasses have been a PR headache for the company. Public backlash has been swift, and fierce; people are concerned about the erosion of privacy and expansion of surveillance. Some especially bad actors are using the glasses to film themselves "pranking" random strangers. Women have become unsuspecting social media content for men filming themselves hitting on them without their knowledge. When your product is being referred to as "pervert glasses," you have a problem on your hands.

On Thursday, Business Insider reported that Meta was taking the fairly extraordinary step of banning some content filmed with Meta glasses from the c …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Musician and YouTuber Hainbach on ‘Breath of the Wild’ and Swiss Army Knives

20 June 2026 at 16:20
A black and white photo of Hainbach at a table with two pieces of scientific equipment that he uses to make music.
Indulging in the “Dark Souls of synthesis.” | Image: Aleksander Stojanov / Hainbach

Stefan Paul Goetsch, better known as Hainbach, is a German experimental composer, artist, and YouTuber who is perhaps most famous for making music with laboratory equipment and scientific instruments. He describes it as being like the "Dark Souls of synthesis." Despite using "hard mode" production techniques that often rely on telephone line testing equipment and gear salvaged from nuclear testing facilities, Hainbach is also incredibly prolific, releasing six albums in 2025 alone, along with a handful of singles and EPs. His latest, Gentle Hum, is a collaboration with Ah! Kosmos (Turkish composer, Başak Günak). The album is a melancholic co …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Onion’s rebooted InfoWars is coming July 2nd

18 June 2026 at 18:00
InfoWars founder Alex Jones speaks to the media outside Waterbury Superior Court during his trial on September 21, 2022. | Getty Images

The Onion's InfoWars officially has a launch date: On July 2nd, the conspiracy network previously run by Alex Jones will return as a comedy and media platform. The reboot comes more than a year and a half after news broke that the satirical news site was working to acquire the property owned by Jones, a conspiracy theorist who notably targeted victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

"Developed with the support of the Sandy Hook families, the new InfoWars is being reimagined as a comedy and cultural platform featuring original programming, guest talent, and new comedic voices," a press release reads. "The project reflects The Onion's broa …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Photoshop and Premiere now have AI assistants

18 June 2026 at 14:00
The new AI assistant in Adobe Photoshop.
Photoshop is one of several Adobe Creative Cloud apps to receive new conversational editing capabilities. | Image: Adobe

Adobe's plan to stick AI assistants into all of its Creative Cloud suite is now fully underway, with new chatbots now rolling out to its biggest editing and design apps. As part of a public beta launching today, Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io now each have a bespoke AI Assistant that can be used to organize your work and automate app-specific tasks.

While the AI assistants are all powered by Adobe's "conversational creative agent," they work independently and operate "as a specialist" within each Creative Cloud app, according to Adobe's announcement. That means the Premiere AI assistant is fine-tuned for tasks like …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Adobe’s redesigned AI studio remembers what your creations look like

18 June 2026 at 14:00
The new Elements feature for Adobe’s Firefly AI studio.
Give your characters, objects, and backgrounds a name to easily replicate them without changing the design. | Image: Adobe

Adobe is introducing some new capabilities for its Firefly AI assistant, alongside a "reimagined" AI studio that lets you edit and generate new designs from a single interface. The new Firefly experience launching today in private beta is designed to give you "persistent context, reusable assets, and organized workflows" across your projects, according to Adobe, making it easier to go from ideation to production-ready designs without switching between apps.

This is the latest of several design overhauls to Adobe's all-in-one Firefly AI hub since it was first launched in September 2023. In addition to the UI updates, the new Firefly AI studi …

Read the full story at The Verge.

VSCO launches Studio Pro mobile photo editing app and plans $500 per year subscription

17 June 2026 at 21:43
A screenshot of the VSCO Studio Pro app

VSCO is taking on Adobe with a new Studio Pro editing app rolling out today on iOS and coming to macOS later this year, as Bloomberg reports. At launch, the app offers tools for batch editing, style matching from a reference image, and sharing images through VSCO Galleries. VSCO says more features are coming later, including support for RAW images, advanced export options, and additional advanced editing tools like adjusting image aspect ratios.

Several screenshots of the VSCO Studio Pro app

A press release says the app is made for managing high-volume editing projects, like "weddings, portraits, events, sports, school photography, and other large-scale photoshoots."

The $500 per ye …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Florida sues TikTok for allegedly violating its social media ban for kids

16 June 2026 at 15:06
TikTok logo on a black background with large pink, white, and aqua icons repeating

The state of Florida is suing TikTok over claims the company isn't complying with the state's child safety law, which bans kids under 14 from creating social media accounts, as reported earlier by Reuters. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, alleges that TikTok still allows 13-year-olds in Florida to use the platform and is "actively deceiving" parents about its risks.

TikTok is also accused of failing to require 14- and 15-year-olds to obtain parental consent before signing up to the platform, in violation of Florida's social media law. The law (HB3) initially came into force on January 1st, 2025, but a federal judge blocked it in the midst of a …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Never Post’s Mike Rugnetta on the creative process and the value of reliable power

13 June 2026 at 15:00
Headshot of Mike Rugnetta against a plain gray background.

Mike Rugnetta is a writer, podcast host, producer, audio engineer, educator, musician, sound designer, and father. In short, the man wears a lot of hats. He's the cocreator and host of the award-winning Never Post, an absolutely must-listen podcast about the internet, as well as Fun City, a TTRPG podcast where he's the GM. He's also hosted two different Crash Course series and PBS's Idea Channel.

If you're thinking that sounds like a lot, you're not wrong. It made us want to know how Mike stays focused with so much on his plate, and what tools are most indispensable to him with his hectic schedule. But, what we got was so much more than th …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Google won’t just admit it’s feeding YouTube creators to its music AI

10 June 2026 at 18:20
An image of a gavel coming down on a Google logo
A group of independent musicians is suing Google claiming it trained Lyria on their uploads. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

If you've uploaded a song to YouTube, Google almost certainly considers your video fair game for training its Lyria music AI, it just won't admit it right now.

A group of independent musicians is suing Google, claiming that it illegally used songs they uploaded to YouTube to train its Lyria 3 model. Google has filed a motion to dismiss the case, saying:

Their lawsuit is based on the unsupported hypothesis that Google trained on their specific works. Even accepting their untested allegations as fact, the Complaint cannot stand. Plaintiffs each granted YouTube, and Google - which provides the service-a broad license to use the uploaded con …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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