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Today’s Storystream

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Another look at Threads’ Community Notes.

After sharing some screenshots of the feature earlier this month, Alessandro Paluzzi shared a couple more of the feature today.

If you want to join the Community Notes waitlist, you can do that here.


A screenshot of Alessandro Paluzzi’s screenshots of Community Notes on Threads.
Alessandro Paluzzi’s screenshots on Threads.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Orca Slicer rejects Bambu Connect: “We encourage Bambulab to reconsider their current policy.”

Bambu had originally suggested it was working with the developer of the third-party slicing tool, a stance which the developer rejected. Now, SoftFever says Orca is doing the opposite of working with Bambu, and advises Bambu owners not to upgrade their firmware.

Read all about Bambu’s controversial change, and its answers to our questions, right here.


“We advise NOT upgrading their firmware and to keep their printers in LAN-only mode for security reasons.”
“We advise NOT upgrading their firmware and to keep their printers in LAN-only mode for security reasons.”
Screenshot: Orca Slicer Discord

Matter will be better in 2025 — say the people who make it

The CSA, Thread Group, and Wi-Fi Alliance say they’re working to fix the biggest problems with the smart home standard. In this exclusive interview, I ask them how and when.

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Amazon’s push to make Prime Video profitable.

According to The Information, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was annoyed by the costs of shows like LotR: The Rings of Power and Citadel and has pushed for the video service to be profitable by the end of this year. As Netflix raises prices, Prime is promoting shows from competing services and focusing more on live sports than originals.

Amazon’s betting that sports can more reliably draw audiences to the Prime Video service than new movies and shows, significantly boosting its ad revenue, according to multiple people familiar with its strategy.


Trump’s first 100 days: all the news impacting the tech industry

President Donald Trump has promised everything from saving TikTok from a ban to rolling back Biden-era electric vehicle policies.

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Youtube
Turn this Off music on.

Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, is composing some music for the revival of an RPG called Off. You can listen to two tracks and read about Off’s influence on Undertale in an interview on the game’s website, and I’ve included one of the tracks below.


There’s a Nintendo DS inside this custom Game Boy with a second pop-up screen.

Hairo Satoh has managed to squeeze a Nintendo DS into an original Game Boy that still closely resembles the original hardware. DS games are playable thanks to an added card slot on the bottom, a second screen that pops out the top, and a touchscreen upgrade. Now just give it an 3DS autostereo screen and stubby joystick!

Correction: It was the 3DS, not the DS, that had a stubby joystick.


A short video of a modded Game Boy demonstrating its pop up screen and DS cartridge slot on the bottom.
Hairo Satoh’s modded Game Boy can play Nintendo DS games as well as Game Boy Advance cartridges.
GIF: Hairo Satoh / Threads

How Meta’s MAGA heel turn is a play for global power

Law professor Kate Klonick explains what Big Tech’s Trump appeasement is really about.

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68 percent of all iPhones are already on iOS 18.

And 76 percent of iPhone introduced in the last four years are on it, too, according to Apple’s iOS adoption stats that were spotted by 9to5Mac. The figures, from Apple, are “As measured by devices that transacted on the App Store on January 21, 2025.”


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I can’t believe I have to say this.

Please don’t buy used phones with TikTok installed. I know it’s hard to pass the time without the FYP, but it’s a massive security and privacy risk. Just scroll on your browser instead.

It’s not clear whether any of the examples in this New York Times story have actually sold, but eBay is full of listings that apparently have been purchased.


AI design is my passion.

These 10 designs are the finalists in Manchester City’s contest that tasked fans with creating future kits using AI. Not sure why mine wasn’t chosen.


Image: Puma / Manchester City
A 3D scan captured by an iPhone helped recreate a 50-year-old Atari arcade machine.

Atari’s Space Race debuted in 1973 with a limited number of arcade machines featuring a futuristic fiberglass cabinet design.

They’re now hard to come by, so the Retro Collective recreated one from scratch using a crude 3D iPhone scan of an original unit that was refined, 3D-printed, and assembled like a giant retro gaming puzzle with some added electronics.


A 3D scan of an Atari Space Race arcade cabinet being rotated back and forth.
An iPhone with a LiDAR camera was used to scan the rough geometry of an original 1973 Atari Space Race arcade cabinet.
GIF: YouTube

Here we go: The Verge now has a subscription

A lot of our site will remain free, but you can now pay to get fewer ads and unlimited access to all of our work.

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After a small hiccup, Epic has added third-party games to its mobile store.

Epic initially “ran into a few bugs” getting the games live, but now they’ve launched. Read more details in Lauren Feiner’s story.


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The Verge
Matter plans to fix your home Wi-Fi.

The Wi-Fi Alliance and Thread Group have revealed they’re working with the CSA on several solutions to make sure your Wi-Fi router plays well with your smart home devices:

These include features like IPV 6 and multicast discovery, which we want to make sure are consistent and reliable across routers ... The way routers implement their multicast discovery can be broken, and that leads to a pretty bad experience for users ... We need to make Wi-Fi work reliably for all of the IoT use cases.

I’ve experienced network issues setting up Matter devices and keeping them online, and I’m not alone. If Matter can fix Wi-Fi routers, all will be forgiven.


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An alarming Subaru security flaw revealed a year’s worth of vehicle location history.

Security researchers Sam Curry and Shubham Shah found vulnerabilities in Subaru’s Starlink web portal that allowed them to control vehicles remotely and view detailed location information dating back an entire year.

Subaru patched the flaw in November, but it’s a stark reminder of the risks that are often present as cars grow smarter and more connected each year.


This Mac Mini Kensington security lock makes sure it can’t escape.

The impressively small Mac Mini doesn’t include a slot for cable locks, so Kensington’s solution to prevent it from getting stolen from schools, offices, and other shared spaces is a new $69.95 secure steel cage.

The Kensington Security Mount for Mac Mini also doubles as a mounting solution, allowing the desktop to be installed out of sight for added security.


The Kensington Security Mount for Mac mini against a yellow background.
Kensington’s new security mount doubles as a mounting bracket if your desk is somehow too small for the new Mac mini.
Image: Kensington

Google’s Gemini is already winning the next-gen assistant wars

AI has made virtual assistants a big deal again. So far, it looks like ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa, and the rest are all chasing after Gemini.

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The Verge
Here’s another use for that Thread radio in your iPhone.

In an interview with The Verge, Vividh Siddha, director of engineering at Apple and president of Thread Group, shared another use case for the Thread radio in newer iPhones.

As well as allowing setup of a Thread device when you don’t have a Thread border router, the Thread radio in the iPhone lets you control devices when the power is out:

But the other important factor is the ability to use your accessories, and some important ones, like your front door lock when there’s a power outage. If you have no infrastructure — your Wi-Fi router is down, your Thread border router is down — and you still want the ability to get into your house or do other things that might be smart home related. Those are some use cases that it’s explicitly designed for, but it’s not limited to that. 


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Tesla is pushing an update to vehicles in China with onboard computers that can go bad.

Chinese regulators are issuing a notice about a Tesla software update for 1.2 million vehicles to fix a problem with CPUs that can short out and prevent safety equipment like the rear-view cameras from working.

Tesla issued a similar recall update earlier this month for 200,000 vehicles in the US.


Leica is celebrating another 100-year anniversary with $500 pencils.

After celebrating the 100th anniversary of its first 35mm prototype camera in 2014, Leica is now celebrating the 100th anniversary of the mass-produced version, the Leica I, with a bunch of wildly expensive merchandise.

This includes a $500 set of non-mechanical pencils created by Graf von Faber-Castell that will come in a fancy box and be limited to just 500 pieces when available in February.


The Graf von Faber-Castell for Leica: Perfect Pencil in its display box.

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Image: Leica
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mmWave tech is set to take motion sensing to the next level in the smart home.

The radar-based technology can detect movements as slight as breathing, so it won’t turn the lights out on you when you’re sitting on the couch.

Superior to PIR sensing, mmWave is seeing fast adoption, with Samsung seemingly poised to add it to its appliances. Here’s a great explainer from The Ambient on how the tech could help your smart home.


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The Verge
Don’t make me tap the “noninvasive blood glucose monitoring isn’t coming for a while” sign.

Android Authority reports that Samsung may be the first to noninvasive blood glucose monitoring in the Galaxy Watch, citing comments from Samsung senior vice president Hon Park saying the tech will be a “game-changer.”

I hate to be a wet blanket but people have been working on this tech since 1975. Here’s a report I did on why this tech is taking so long and why it probably won’t look like what you expect if / when it does arrive.