Senior News Editor
Richard Lawler joined The Verge as Senior News Editor in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget. He's been a tech blogger since before the word was invented, and will never log off.
Weeks after negotiations between Skydance and Paramount’s parent company, National Amusements, ended without a deal, the New York Times reports not only have they restarted, but “the two sides have reached a preliminary deal to create a new Hollywood giant.”
This follows a report from CNBC that Warner Bros. Discovery or Comcast could also be interested and Bloomberg saying Paramount might sell BET for $1.6 billion.
Updated: Added new reporting of a preliminary deal.
Google seems to have identified the “issue” locking up Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and 6A phones that were factory reset recently.
Now, there are two recommended ways shared by Google in the Pixel Phone Help forum to avoid the problem:
Leaving your device powered on and idle for 15 minutes after it has rebooted following a system update
Factory reset your device before taking the latest (June) system update.
Meta’s AI research team has a new system to create or retexture 3D objects based on a text prompt. It combines text-to-3D and text-to-texture generation models to go beyond AI-generated emoji or still images,
Their paper (pdf) claims 3D Gen’s output is “3× to 60× faster” and preferred by professional artists in comparison to alternatives.
Last week, an outage disconnected wireless customers trying to use international roaming, and now we know why,
Syniverse says the problem was not a cyberattack but a “misconfiguration” that flooded its network with a near-infinite loop of error messages. Things are finally back online, and AT&T says it will credit customers for the days — but we haven’t heard more from T-Mobile or Verizon.
Days before Boeing’s deferred prosecution agreement over 737 Max crashes would’ve expired, a door plug blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight, and the case was reopened. Now, attorneys for family members of the crash victims have been told federal prosecutors will seek a guilty plea from Boeing to resolve a criminal fraud charge, which one lawyer called “another sweetheart deal.”
The plea deal would include a $244 million fine, a three-year probation and an independent monitor appointed to oversee the company’s progress on safety and quality improvements.
[The Seattle Times]
Google Keep is one of a long list of note-taking apps we like, and if you’re using it on a “large screen Android device,” it has a new feature for you.
Expanding on the ability to open two instances of the app at once, now the platform will let you sign into separate accounts at the same time — no hacks required.
Bloomberg reports that Rain AI, which has OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as one of its backers, has hired Apple chip exec Jean-Didier Allegrucci to oversee the development of new AI processors that are supposed to reduce power consumption with “in-memory compute.”
[Allegrucci] has worked and led silicon teams across a broad range of applications, including CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, ISPs, SoCs, and many others....At Apple, he oversaw the development of more than 30 SoCs used for flagship products, including iPhones, Macs, iPads, Apple Watch, and many more.
The Information reports the reversible adhesive could be tried on one iPhone 16 and potentially every iPhone 17, replacing the stretchy pull tabs seen in every teardown.
iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens called it a “cool idea,” even if we’ll need to see how it works in practice. Here’s a demo from adhesives giant Tesa, which is also developing approaches using lasers, heat, solvents, and magnets.