Technology

Image: Canoo Days after furloughing dozens of its employees without pay, EV startup Canoo told the remainder of its staff they will be on a “mandatory unpaid break” through at least the end of the year, TechCrunch reported Friday. A company email seen by the outlet said employees would be locked out of Canoo’s systems by the end of Friday, with their benefits continuing through the end of this month. The report follows Canoo’s announcement last week that it was idling its Oklahoma factories and furloughing employees while it worked “to finalize securing the capital necessary to move forward with its operations.” As TechCrunch notes, the company reported that it had only about $700,000 left in the bank last month. Also on Friday, the company announced a 1-for-20 reverse stock split, effective December 24th. Canoo says the consolidation aims to keep its stock listed on the Nasdaq exchange and attract “a broader group of institutional and retail investors.” Canoo was founded in 2017 to sell electric vans and trucks to adventure-seeking customers but has mostly only ever made vehicles for the US government. As The Verge’s Andrew Hawkins wrote last year, analysts have warned of its risk of insolvency as it’s teetered on the edge of running out of cash since 2022. Canoo has lost a steady stream of executives since then, including all of its founders and, more recently, its CFO and general counsel.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images This year’s Prime Video streaming content was led by adaptations and spinoffs like Fallout and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Read the full story at The Verge.

A Google Nest doorbell camera. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Apple is working on a new smart doorbell camera that uses Face ID to unlock your door, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter. The camera could be released by the end of 2025 “at the soonest,” Gurman writes. The lock would work just like your iPhone, automatically unlocking your door when you or another resident looks at it. Like biometric login info on other Apple devices, the camera would be equipped with the company’s Secure Enclave chip that stores and processes Face ID information separately from the rest of the system’s hardware. Gurman writes that this device will “likely” work with existing third-party HomeKit smart locks and that the company may also partner with a smart lock company “to offer a complete system on day one.” He expects the camera will make use of Apple’s in-house “Proxima” combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth chip that’s rumored for new HomePod Mini and Apple TV devices next year. This doorbell camera joins a broader collection of rumors surrounding a renewed Apple push into the smart home that’s centered around Apple Intelligence. Those include another new smart home camera, a possible Apple-branded TV, and new smart home displays — one a simple iPad-like device that magnetically attaches to wall mounts or speaker bases, while another display sits on the end of a robotic arm attached to a larger base.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Our staff writes about the best books they read over the course of the year. Read the full story at The Verge.

Do we really need all this? | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The grid is a comfortable place to live. The app grid, I mean: the rows and rows of app icons on your iPhone’s homescreen. It’s familiar. Safe. It’s how I’ve lived with my various phones over the past decade. But at some point, it started to feel oppressive. All those icons staring at me in the face, vying for my attention. The clutter! The distracting little notification badges! The grid was a reasonable way to organize apps when I had like, ten of them. There are sixty on the iPhone I’m using now, and I set it up from scratch a few months ago. Naturally, living off-grid or in a non-traditional homescreen arrangement has been possible for much longer on Android. Google’s OS lets you keep your screen clear and just find your apps in the app drawer, which is always a swipe away. You can even replace the launcher entirely. But iOS — where every new app you download winds up on your homescreen by default — hasn’t exactly made it easy to abandon the grid. That started to change when iOS 14 added widgets, an app library, and the ability to hide apps from your homescreen — though I haven’t developed the muscle memory to use it much. Now, iOS 18 adds even more flexibility. You… Read the full story at The Verge.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 65, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready to take up all your phone’s storage space, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This is the last Installer of the year! I’m taking a couple of weeks off for the holidays, and I hope you’re getting some relaxation in too. Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed to this newsletter, emailed me your recommendations, told me I’m a lunatic about to-do lists, and generally been part of the Installerverse this year. Making this newsletter is so much fun, and I’m so thrilled to get to do it with you. Bigger and better next year! This week, I’ve been reading about Spotify’s ghost artists and Formula 1 and Mufasa and the deeply silly New York Jets, watching Hot Frosty (you can judge me, it’s fine) and re-watching 30 Rock, beating Balatro for the very first time, and trying to convince my toddler that it’s actually not fun and cool and great to wake up at 4am every day. I also have for you a nifty new smart home controller, a new app for the future of social networks, the next Sonic movie, and much more. Plus,… Read the full story at The Verge.

Illustration: The Verge In the latest version of the Files by Google app, summoning Gemini while looking at a PDF gives you the option to ask about the file, writes Android Police. You’ll need to be a Gemini Advanced subscriber to use the feature though, according to Mishaal Rahman, who reported on Friday that it had started rolling out. If you have the feature, when you summon Gemini while looking at a PDF in the Files app, you’ll see an “Ask about this PDF” button appear. Tapping that lets you ask questions about the file, the same way you might ask ChatGPT about a PDF. Google first announced this screen-aware feature during its I/O developer conference in May. Rahman posted a screenshot of what it looks like in action: Other context-aware Gemini features include the ability to ask about web pages and YouTube videos. For apps or file types without Gemini’s context-aware support, the assistant instead offers to answer questions about your screen, using a screenshot it takes when you tap “Ask about this screen.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Commerce Department has awarded Samsung and Texas Instruments with a combined over $6 billion in “direct funding under the CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication,” according to a pair of announcements published on Friday. Samsung will get the larger of the two awards at $4.745 billion. The Commerce Department says the company will use this as part of its planned $37 billion investment in Texas chip facilities that include two new “leading-edge logic fabs and an R&D fab” in Taylor, Texas, and the expansion of its plant in Austin. The company was originally slated to receive $6.4 billion. In a statement reported by Bloomberg, the company said that its “mid-to-long-term investment plan has been partially revised to optimize overall investment efficiency,” which suggests the company has dialed back its plans, according to the outlet. Texas Instruments will receive $1.61 billion to bolster the $18 billion it plans to spend on projects like constructing two wafer fabs in Texas and a third in Utah. The Commerce Department announced smaller awards this week too, including $407 million in funding for Amkor Technology, a US-based company that… Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Asus Asus has announced the Asus NUC 14 Pro AI, the first Copilot Plus-capable AI mini PC that crams an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor into a form factor resembling a black M4 Mac Mini. First introduced at IFA in September, Asus is providing a little more detail about the mini PC’s specs than it did before, but still isn’t saying it will become available or how much it will cost. The NUC 14 Pro AI will come in five CPU configurations, from the Core Ultra 5 226V processor with 16GB of integrated RAM to a Core Ultra 9 288V processor with 32GB of RAM. The company says it has up to 67 TOPS of GPU performance and 48 NPU TOPS, and that its M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x 4 slot supports 256GB to 2TB NVMe SSDs. All of that is packed into a PC that measures 130mm deep and wide and just 34mm tall; comparatively, the Mac Mini is 127mm deep and wide and 50mm tall. Here are some pictures from Asus’ website: The Asus NUC 14 Pro AI features a fingerprint sensor on top and a Copilot button on the front for speaking voice commands to Microsoft’s AI assistant. Also on the front are two USB-A ports, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a headphone jack, and a power button. Around the back, you’ll find a 2.5Gbps ethernet jack, another Thunderbolt 4 port, two more USB-A ports, and an HDMI port. For connectivity, it features Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Asus still hasn’t said when the NUC 14 Pro AI will be available, nor how much it will cost.

Stellar hardware from a controversial figure. Read the full story at The Verge.