I’ll be helping run Polygon’s streaming rig during the 8pm to 12am ET block tonight, where they will be playing a bunch of Nintendo stuff for charity, like Mario Kart and Pokémon.
The stream’s donations go to Foster Love, a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of children in foster care.
You can donate here and watch the stream on Polygon’s Twitch channel.
The Space Command didn’t rely on infrared — or batteries.
We’ve been really enjoying answering a question from The Vergecast Hotline (866-VERGE11) every week, but we get too many good voicemails to only do one every Wednesday. So on today’s episode, we answered a whole bunch with the Verge staff. Listen for answers about iPhones and Pixels, Threads and Instagram, Macs and Windows, audio codecs, security cameras, and more.
Unsurprisingly, the Vergecast crew has a lot of opinions about TV remotes, so we spent a good chunk of the most recent episode talking about what makes a good one. We also interviewed a few designers who have some experience in the world of remote controls.
You can listen here, or watch the YouTube video, which includes pictures of all the remotes we talk about.
Please let me know your favorite and least favorite TV remotes.
If you’re watching Wimbledon highlights, you can toggle on the “AI Commentary” on the Wimbledon website and app, which uses IBM’s watsonx AI platform to generate some analysis of the tournament.
Once you turn it on, a British monotone narration gives you very brief remarks during the match, adding what you would typically get from a human sports announcer. It’s a little hard to understand at times, and I am already not very knowledgeable on the “unique language of tennis” the AI was trained on. It’s not adding much for me.
I’m wondering if Paramount Plus’ Zoey 102 movie takes place in the near future because Jamie Lynn Spears’ character has some weird gadget that is just a glowing piece of glass. The device is not explained at all in the trailer. However, Zoey is FaceTiming on an iPhone while holding this Tron-looking thing.
A great digital audio workstation for the iPad with some experimental ways to make music
