Photo by Eric Piermont / AFP via Getty Images Google and the Renault Group are expanding their four-year-old partnership to include the development of an advanced software platform for future vehicles. This “software-defined vehicle” will be built on Google’s Android Automotive operating system and send data to the company’s cloud servers for processing, the companies announced.
In 2018, Renault struck a deal with Google as part of a broader partnership between the tech giant and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, which collectively is one of the largest auto groups in the world. As part of the deal, the Alliance announced that it would adopt Google’s native car operating system, which offers built-in Assistant, Maps, and Play Store.
Renault says it is appointing Google as… Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk’s Twitter has a new rule for everyone with an account on Twitter to follow, as he announced from his own account: “any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended.” In a follow-up tweet, Musk said “Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning.”
Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022 Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022 It’s an abrupt update from the person who just a…
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Image: Riot Games This year’s edition of the League of Legends World Championship featured Lil Nas X, Jackson Wang, and some impressive technology.
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Image: Blizzard In the perfect prelude to the Overwatch League2022 grand finals, Blizzard has revealed Overwatch 2’s newest character. Ramattra is the game’s 36th hero, and his abilities and story seem like they’ll make for the most interesting addition to the roster yet.
Ramattra is the leader of Null Sector, a group of sentient robots called omnics committed to the liberation of their people by any means necessary. In Overwatch’s overarching story (yes, there is one) Null Sector is one of the biggest baddies, responsible for touching off the war between robots and humans that became the instigating event for the creation of the Overwatch task force.
Ramattra is a tank like you’ve never seen before. Rather than being the kind of tank that shields…
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Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge Twitter has notified employees that it will be “reducing our global workforce” on Friday, November 4th, according to an unsigned internal memo seen by The Verge.
The confirmation comes a week after Elon Musk became Twitter’s new owner and quickly started changing how the company operates and its product roadmap. Since then, speculation about the timing and scope of the expected layoffs has run rampant inside Twitter.
Employees will receive an email by 9AM PST on November 4th confirming whether they have been laid off or not, according to the internal memo, which also states that employee badge access to Twitter’s offices will be shut off “temporarily.”
“We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether…
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Over 40 existing Aqara devices will be Matter compatible after the Hub M2 is updated in December. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Aqara just lifted the veil on its smart home roadmap at the Matter launch event in Amsterdam. It starts with a free software update in December for the Hub M2 to make many of Aqara’s existing Zigbee devices Matter compatible. That will be followed by the release of Aqara’s first two Matter-over-Thread devices in early 2023 and a new multi-protocol hub coming sometime in the future.
Starting in December, the maker of low-cost smart home devices will issue an over-the-air update to the Aqara Hub M2 to make over 40 of Aqara’s existing Zigbee devices Matter compatible when attached to the hub. That list will eventually expand to support more than 160 of the company’s Zigbee devices. Aqara’s other hubs, including the Hub M1S/M1S Gen 2, Hub…
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Google Lens is now built into its search bar. Google has been integrating its Lens image recognition tech into several of its products for quite a while now, including Google Photos and Chrome, but now it’s putting it front and center. As 9to5Google points out, Google’s added a Lens button right to its home page, in its famous search bar. That’s a big deal, according to Rajan Patel, a vice president of engineering at Google who’s in charge of Search and Lens — as he said on Tuesday, the Google homepage doesn’t change often.
Clicking on the Lens button (a little camera in Google-y colors) prompts you to upload an image or paste a URL to one. Once you do so, you’ll be taken to a page that’s pretty familiar if you’ve ever used the Lens app or any of its other integrations.
The…
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Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Behind the scenes at the wildest tech takeover ever, where everyone knows company-shaking changes are coming — and no one knows exactly when
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Now that he owns Twitter, Elon Musk has given employees their first ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave.
The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is currently planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the…
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Laura Normand / The Verge Elon Musk ordered company-wide layoffs at Twitter on Saturday, according to a report from The New York Times. It’s unclear how many workers will be affected by the purported job cuts, but sources tell the NYT that some departments will be affected more than others.
Previous reports indicate Musk wants to cut down on Twitter’s workforce by 75 percent, although he reportedly told employees otherwise when he arrived at the company’s headquarters carrying an actual sink on Wednesday. Twitter currently has about 7,500 staff members, and as noted by the Times, some managers have been asked to come up with lists of employees to let go.
The layoffs could occur before November 1st — the same day when employees are supposed to receive their…
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