Friday’s top tech news: 1080p but better

Today, you can ask Alexa to turn on the lights or have Siri tell you the temperature in your bedroom, and sometimes they’ll get it right. Or you may hear, “You have 15 devices named lights; which one would you like to control?” or “The current temperature in Kathmandu is 53 degrees.” But what if your voice assistant was not only always accurate but could also respond to nebulous comments like “I’ve had a rough day; what’s a good way to unwind?” with “intelligent” responses? For example, by lowering the shades, dimming the lights, adjusting the thermostat, and queuing up some goodies on Netflix?

That’s the potential of voice assistants powered by new AI language models, according to Alex Capecelatro, co-founder of the Josh.ai home automation system. Josh.ai has already started working on a prototype integration using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This proof-of-concept video shows Capecelatro asking the Josh assistant to open the shades, turn off the music, and tell him the weather (controlling three things at once is a capability Josh already has). He then goes on to use more natural voice commands for the smart home, like “I’m filming a video; it’s kind of dark in here,” to which the voice assistant responds — slightly clumsily — by turning up the lights in the room.

Since Thursday morning, Dish Network has been experiencing a major outage that’s taken down the company’s main websites, apps, and customer support systems, and employees tell The Verge it’s not clear what’s going on inside the company. The company’s Dish.com website is completely blank save for a notice apologizing for “any disruptions you may be having” while promising that “teams are working hard to restore systems as soon as possible.” The Boost Mobile and Boost Infinite sites display a similar message.

When we called each brand’s customer support lines, there were no humans on the other end — each call automatically hung up after delivering a recorded message about the outage.

Nintendo has confirmed to The Verge that it will not be attending E3 2023.

“We approach our involvement in any event on a case-by-case basis and are always considering various ways to engage with our fans,” the company said in a statement. “Since this year’s E3 show didn’t fit into our plans, we have made the decision to not participate. However, we have been and continue to be a strong supporter of the ESA and E3.”

The buzz in tech these last few weeks has been focused squarely on the language models developed and deployed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. But Meta, Facebook’s parent company, continues to do significant work in this field and is releasing a new AI language generator named LLaMA today.

LLaMA isn’t like ChatGPT or Bing; it’s not a system that anyone can talk to. Rather, it’s a research tool that Meta says it’s sharing in the hope of “democratizing access in this important, fast-changing field.” In other words: to help experts tease out the problems of AI language models, from bias and toxicity to their tendency to simply make up information.

The colorful new variants of the Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds just came out yesterday, and today, the yellow and pink models are already on sale. You can pick up a pair of “volt yellow” or “coral pink” Beats for $169.83 at Amazon, $30.12 off their regular $199.95 price. New products and colorways usually take a little longer than one day before they start seeing some discounts, but if you dig a tennis ball-like color for your electronics (the electric volt Xbox controller says hi!), then you’ve got yourself a nice deal here on something new and fresh.

Not only are the Beats Fit Pro now brighter than ever but they’re also one of our favorite pairs of Bluetooth earbuds — especially for running and fitness. They sadly lack the convenience of wireless charging in their slightly oversize USB-C charging case, but that’s made up for with excellent sound, great noise cancellation, Find My integration with Apple devices, and an impeccably secure fit in your ears. Read our review.

Today, let’s check in on Elon Musk’s Twitter, where sudden software outages and another dubious transparency effort have left the company’s remaining workers more beleaguered than usual.

On Wednesday, Twitter employees had the tech equivalent of a snow day: the company’s Slack instance was down for “routine maintenance,” they were told, and the company was implementing a deployment freeze as a result.

When you think of an electric vehicle, you likely think of the ubiquitous Tesla, making its way on a daily commute. Maybe you think of a luxury Lucid Air cutting through the air with nearly no drag on a canyon road. A handful of you might picture a Rivian R1T toddling down a smooth dirt road.

What you likely don’t think of is an EV ready to tackle the off-road rock trails with 37-inch tires, solid axles front and rear, massive articulation, and a two-speed transfer case. Thankfully, Keith and Melissa Silva of EVolve Racing have a bit of vision.

These days, Fitbit users seem to be asking each other the same question: is it me, or is the app down for everybody else, too? Between frequent server outages and a recent decision to shutter popular social features, frustrated Fitbit customers say they’re weighing their options.

Earlier this month, Google-owned Fitbit suffered a massive server outage that left users unable to sync trackers or view their data within the app or on Fitbit’s website. If it had been a one-off server outage, it’s likely users would’ve written it off as a fluke. But it extended into a second day and then a third. Then, around 1PM ET yesterday, over 1,600 users reported yet another outage, according to Downdetector. Others reported the outage to the @FitbitSupport Twitter account and in the r/Fitbit subreddit. Fitbit spokesperson Andrea Holing told The Verge that the “short outage” was quickly resolved, but for many Fitbit users, it was one outage too many.

LumaFusion, a popular video editing app for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, is now widely available on Android and ChromeOS devices following an early access beta in November last year. Comparable to other well-regarded video editors like Final Cut Pro for macOS and Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve for iPad, LumaFusion provides powerful editing features like green screen and chroma key VFX effects, a magnetic timeline, color correction tools, and more to Chromebooks and Android tablets and phones.

The app has already proved to be a hit with filmmakers and content creators on Apple hardware, winning the App Store Award for iPad App of the Year in 2021. The developer LumaTouch also claims that LumaFusion has been downloaded 1.1 million times and completed over 68 million project exports since its launch in 2016.

Yes, that’s an e-bike, despite the hidden battery and motor that’s so quiet and diminutive that nobody would expect it. It’s built by Ampler, which isn’t a household name — but should be. 

Founded in 2014, the Estonia-based company was one of the first to recognize that sleekly designed e-bikes are an ideal form of clean and convenient urban transport for young commuters at a time when bicycles with ugly bolt-on batteries were still the domain of cycling septuagenarians. Now, Ampler is back with five models of e-bikes injected with all the know-how the company has accumulated since.

The magic of United Artists’ first two Creed films lied in the way they opened up, updated, and revitalized the Rocky franchise — all while feeling true to and deeply reverent of the original Stallone pictures. Like both of its predecessors, Creed III from first-time director and star Michael B. Jordan never wants you to lose sight of what it means to come from humble beginnings or how having family in your corner can fundamentally change a person’s life. But rather than splitting its focus between two different generations of boxers and keeping Rocky himself in the picture for nostalgic diehards, Creed III taps into the spirit of the later Rocky films by turning Adonis Creed into the ultimate father figure fighting to secure his legacy.

In a movie landscape overfull of sequels purposefully (and inelegantly) designed to still work as standalone features, there’s something very refreshing about the way Creed III dives right back into the story of how Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), the unknown fighter, became Adonis Creed, the heavyweight boxing champion, and a household name the world over. After years of watching Adonis fall down, get back up, and lay his opponents out, there’s little doubt of his greatness in the boxing world, and the work he does supporting up-and-coming fighters has all but guaranteed that he’ll be remembered as a hero. 

YouTube has confirmed that it’s experimenting with a higher-quality 1080p option for Premium subscribers after some Reddit users noticed a new “1080p Premium” option in the quality settings menu. The option is currently available to “a small group of YouTube Premium subscribers,” according to Paul Pennington, a spokesperson for the company.

“1080p Premium is an enhanced bitrate version of 1080p which provides more information per pixel that results in a higher quality viewing experience,” said Pennington, adding that “there are no changes to the existing quality offerings for 1080p (HD) resolution on YouTube.” There have been concerns that YouTube is nerfing the standard 1080p mode to make the Premium version more appealing, but the statement implies that the company hasn’t made any changes.