Month: September 2023
Spotify could soon take on Audible with free audiobooks for subscribers
Spotify is apparently seeking to diversify its content with a new pilot program where subscribers can pick up free audiobooks. As revealed by The Wall Street Journal, the streaming platform is currently “working with some of the largest publishers in the US”, hashing out the details of how it’ll all…
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Surprise: Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki has failed to retire a fourth time
The year is 1997, and famed Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki announced plans to retire following the release of Princess Mononoke, a film that set new records at the box office for Japanese animation and revolutionized the medium. The year is 2001, and Miyazaki announced plans to retire following the release of Spirited…
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Apple’s M3 MacBooks might not arrive this year
According to a post from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, it’s looking more likely that Apple won’t launch its line of M3-powered MacBooks “before the end of this year.” While there haven’t been any solid rumors about when Apple will launch its first laptops with next-generation chips, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said…
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Donald Mustard, head of Fortnite’s story, is leaving Epic and retiring
Donald Mustard ran a successful studio that showed what the Xbox and iPhone were capable of. Then, he became the face of one of the biggest and boldest storytelling experiments in history, to borrow a phrase, with Fortnite’s massive metaverse. “I’m excited to spend time with my wife and family…
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The coolest smart home gadgets I saw in Berlin
The dust has settled on IFA 2023, Europe’s biggest tech trade show, held annually in Berlin, Germany. The Verge was on the ground at the show, which ran from September 1st to 5th, covering all the big news and gadget launches. But now that I’m back stateside, I wanted to…
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ChatGPT doesn’t want to write your Stucky fanfic
AI-generated fiction has become a subject of perpetual fascination for me. It’s the bane of some writers’ existence, yet it’s increasingly cropping up across both commercial storefronts like Amazon and noncommercial writing sites like Archive of Our Own (AO3). While some creators painstakingly train their own tools, many simply plug…
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