Alex Cranz

Last year, Batgirl, originally intended for HBO Max and then later intended for theatrical release, was shelved. Some people claimed it just sucked that bad, others claimed it was for tax reasons. While taxes likely contributed to the calculus here, new DC Studios head Peter Safran told Variety:

Right now when you subscribe to Paramount Plus you have the option to tack on Showtime for a relatively small fee, but the partnership is about to get a lot more intimate as The Hollywood Reporter says the two services are getting combined and rebranded.

Nearly the entire cast of The Next Generation returns for the final season of Picard and it looks like every single one of them appears in the final trailer. Also appearing: so many fights in space with spaceships, Seven of Nine, and actor Ed Speleers, who is apparently playing a friend of Beverly Crusher’s. The final season starts airing February 16 on Paramount Plus.

But besides spending time talking about this new way to watch the Vergecast, we talk about the new M2 Pro and Max devices from Apple, the many existential threats Google faced this week, and Elon’s latest appearance in court.

And some people, like this redditor, want to stop the burning by...liquid cooling a Steam Deck?

I sat down with Charles Pulliam-Moore to talk the first two episodes of The Last of Us, but if you want to skip possible spoilers jump straight to 22:05 where I’m joined by Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code, to talk about the unique relationship between noncompetes and Silicon Valley. Finally we wrap the episode up answering your questions—including where all the USB-C only hubs are.

The idea of HDMI is you shouldn’t have to worry about bandwidth or VRR or any other part of the alphanumeric soup that makes up the HDMI spec. You should just care about HDMI 2.0 or 2.1 or 1.4 or what have you. But as the video below explains, loopholes exist that make buying the right TV to plug all your HDMI 2.1 gadgets into pretty dang difficult.

On the Vergecast we discuss the possibility of touchscreen Macs, and what it all really means for pressing confirmation buttons, zooming in on maps, or maybe using an iPad app or two.

With Nilay roaming the wilderness of upstate New York, I talked to Alex and Dan as we imagined the possibility of Macs with OLED screens that you can touch and tried to figure out what MicroLED would do for us.