How to switch from Gemini to Google Assistant — go back to the good ol' days

Google Assistant is arguably the best digital assistant compared to the likes of Siri and Alexa. However, now that Google has been pushing to replace Google Assistant with AI-powered Gemini, the former's prowess over other virtual companions is even more evident.On my daily driver, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, my Google Assistant got swapped with the new Gemini assistant. Unfortunately, some of the things I loved to do with Google Assistant no longer works on Gemini. For example, asking, "Hey G

Image: OceanGate A former OceanGate contractor, Antonella Wilby, testified before a U.S. Coast Guard panel on Friday that the company’s Titan submarine, which imploded last year during a dive to the Titanic’s wreckage, relied on an incredibly convoluted navigation system.
As Wilby described it during the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation hearing, the Titan’s GPS-like ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning system generated data on a sub’s velocity, dep

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by STR / NurPhoto, Getty Images Cards Against Humanity sued SpaceX for allegedly trespassing on and damaging its property in Texas. The company behind the card game is asking for $15 million in damages, according to its complaint against SpaceX, filed in Texas state court on Thursday, but has also said it will “accept Twitter.com in compensation.”SpaceX has been using the “pristine vacant property” in Cameron County, Texas without

The Bio Bidet BB-1200 can be controlled using a wireless remote or through the Bemis Living app. | Image: Bemis Bemis has announced its Bio Bidet BB-1200 toilet seat is now available, allowing luxuries like unlimited warm water, a heated seat, and an air dryer to be activated using a smartphone app.
The company claims the BB-1200, which first debuted at CES 2024 last January, is “the first North American bidet toilet seat that is controlled by an app and affordably priced.” Kohler an

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any deal is described as “far from certain,” according to the paper’s unnamed sources, it would represent a tremendous fall for a company that had been the most valuable chip company in the world, based largely on its x86 processor technology that for years had triumphed over Qualcomm’s Arm c

The Echo Hub offers an easy way for the whole household to control smart home gadgets, including the tech-averse. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge In case you missed the news, Amazon recently announced a second Prime Day event for the fall. The two-day deal blitz, dubbed Prime Big Deal Days once again, will run from October 8th through the 9th, offering Prime subscribers a chance to save on all sorts of tech ahead of Black Friday. It’s still a few weeks away, but in typical f

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Twitch is changing the way it enforces its community guidelines. In an announcement posted on its website, Twitch said that it will introduce a new enforcement strategy in which strikes for certain offenses will depreciate over time, users will receive more information regarding their strikes, and users will be able to take educational courses to reduce the severity of enforcement actions. In an interview with The Verge, Rob Lewington, Twitch’s VP o

Masimo is keen to offer its expertise to Wear OS smartwatch makers for biosensing tech. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Last week, medical device maker Masimo announced new deals with Google and Qualcomm to bring its biosensing tech to Wear OS smartwatches. That’s pretty inside baseball for the wearable industry, but it takes an interesting turn when you realize Masimo is also the reason why the new Apple Watch Series 10 doesn’t have blood oxygen features in the US.From

8BitDo’s Retro Keycaps include options for both ANSI and ISO layouts. | Image: 8BitDo 8BitDo is now selling a set of keycaps featuring the same Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) inspired design as those used on the Retro Mechanical Keyboard it debuted last July. While the keyboard is now available in four styles including Commodore 64 and Famicom designs, only the NES style keycaps are currently available on their own.
The $49.99 8BitDo Retro Keycaps set includes 165 PBT keys with legend

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is planning to allow Windows 11 users to customize the Copilot key that has started shipping on new laptops and keyboards. The Copilot key is configured as default to launch Microsoft’s Copilot app on Windows 11, but the company is now testing the ability to use it to launch other apps instead.
A new beta build of Windows 11 includes the customization changes, available for testers today. “You can choose to have the Copilot key launch an app that is MSIX pa

Sadly, Theory 1 isn’t going into production. | Image: Lotus Lotus revealed its new Theory 1 electric sports car, a concept that the automaker says “embodies the future of intelligent performance vehicles.”It’s a visual aid for Lotus’ new Digital, Natural, and Analogue (DNA — get it?) design principles on which it plans to base its performance vehicles for the modern era.
Theory 1 features Lotus’ new “Lotuswear” interior that promises an immer

Illustration: Cath Virginia / The Verge A security researcher revealed a “catastrophic” vulnerability in the Arc browser that would have allowed attackers to insert arbitrary code into other users’ browser sessions with little than an easily findable user ID. The vulnerability was patched on August 26th and disclosed today in a blog post by security researcher xyz3va, as well as a statement from The Browser Company. The company says that its logs indicate no users were affected

A worker demonstrates how lithium is recovered from brine at a Standard Lithium facility in El Dorado, Arkansas, US, on Thursday, July 20, 2023. | Photo: Getty Images The US Department of Energy announced today plans to dole out more than $3 billion to over two dozen battery projects across 14 states. The money will go toward processing critical minerals, building batteries and their components, and recycling batteries. It’s part of the Biden administration’s push for more domestic m

Image: Square Enix On Friday morning, Sony released a system update for the PlayStation 5 that may help with graphical bugs and crashes reported by Final Fantasy XVI players after the last PS5 firmware update.
Sony says today’s update (version 24.06-10.01.00) simply improves “system software performance and stability” and doesn’t mention any specific fixes for the game. But a post shared on the official Final Fantasy XVI X account earlier today says it’s been releas

These can be all yours. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge We’ve got a new pair of our favorite noise-canceling headphones, and we’re giving them away to celebrate the recent relaunch — err, refresh? — of our weekly deals newsletter. All you have to do is sign up for the new and improved Verge Deals, which continues to serve as a free weekly summary of some of the best tech deals on the web.The headphones we’re gifting are none other than the Sony WH-1000XM5 (a $399

There’s three motors inside this one. | Image: Rivian Rivian is now shipping its electric trucks and SUVs with a tri-motor configuration, adding an extra power boost over the dual-motor version. The new 850 horsepower powertrain uses Rivian’s new in-house Enduro motors, with one in the front axle and two in the rear axle.
The new tri-motor setup underpins Rivian’s newly redesigned Gen 2 models, which launched earlier this year in just a dual-motor configuration.As reported by I

Anker is recalling three additional power banks, citing a manufacturing defect in their lithium-ion batteries. | Image: Anker Anker has issued a recall notice for its Anker 334 MagGo Battery (PowerCore 10K, model number A1642), Anker Power Bank (model number A1647), and Anker MagGo Power Bank (model number A1652). The company says a manufacturing defect can cause the power banks’ lithium-ion batteries to overheat and potentially cause a fire risk.
It’s the same issue that triggered a

The fifth-generation Snap Spectacles were described as “a disaster” by a developer who helped create them. | Photo by Nalani Hernandez-Melo for The Verge Snap’s latest generation of augmented reality Spectacles have been lambasted by one of the engineers that helped to create them. The glasses, revealed earlier this week, were described as “a disaster” by Sterling Crispin, a former design engineer for Snap.
“I worked on these for about a year at Snap, and I ha

Image: Maira Erlich / Bloomberg via Getty Images For more than two weeks, Brazilians have been without access to X. Brazil’s Supreme Court blocked the platform after Elon Musk failed to comply with court rulings. As X evades the ban and Musk’s companies work slowly toward a resolution, the real concern for many isn’t just the absence of social media. It’s Musk’s power play over the government as he backs Brazil’s far right.
X was banned on August 30th after mo

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Hey, folks! Every week for the past four years, the team behind Verge Deals has combed the web, looking for the best deals and discounts on the tech we love most at The Verge. We pride ourselves in having tried and tested every product we recommend — well, almost every product — and we continue to share those deals with our readers via our daily deal coverage and Verge Deals newsletter. That being said, everyone could use a little change every now and

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge The iPhone 16 is great. But it’s great in pretty much exactly the ways you’d expect it to be great — gone, it seems, are the days of big new ideas about these slabs of glass we all use all day. And that’s basically okay! But it does make you wonder: could you just train an AI to tell you everything you need to know about the new iPhone?
On this episode of The Vergecast, we find out. Joanna Stern, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal and a