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Jess Weatherbed

Jess Weatherbed

News Reporter

Jess Weatherbed is a news writer, and part of The Verge UK-based team. While passionate about the future of technology, she originally trained as a prosthetics makeup and wig-making technician, fuelled by a love of animatronics and practical movie effects.

Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews across computing, PC gaming and streaming. Additional bylines can be found at GamesRadar, PCGamer, Creative Bloq and Space.com.

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Sony sees strong gaming growth despite weaker PS5 sales.

The Japanese entertainment giant is reporting an operating profit of 279.11 billion yen ($1.9 billion) for Q1 2024, up 10 percent year-over-year.

Most of that growth comes from its music and gaming software segments, the latter of which was driven by first-party games and PlayStation Plus subscriptions. Meanwhile, Sony sold just 2.4 million PS5 console units compared to the 3 million it previously estimated.


A graph taken from Sony’s Q1 2024 earnings

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Gaming software and music streaming have more than compensated for Sony’s dwindling PS5 hardware sales.
Image: Sony
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A portfolio of Pixel leaks.

We’ve already seen several leaks for Google’s upcoming Pixel 9 lineup, but established leaker Evan Blass has now shared new images of all three handsets.

Some show the screen and size difference between the standard and XL Pixel Pro 9, while others display the colors that may be available for each model — including the bubblegum pink Pixel 9 that leaked last month.


The leaked color lineup for the Google Pixel 9

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Here’s the leaked color lineup for the Google Pixel 9...
Image: Evan Blass / Google
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YouTube is trying to make livestream ads more tolerable.

While the platform currently cuts away from live content to display video ads, YouTube is now experimenting with live mid-rolls that will instead launch and run alongside the broadcast in Picture-in-Picture mode.

That should be less disruptive for viewers, and may also dissuade them from installing adblockers to avoid paying for YouTube’s ad-free premium service — something YouTube has been cracking down on.


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Apple TV is getting link sharing.

The latest tvOS 18 beta enables Apple TV devices to share external links with nearby iPhones or iPads — getting around Apple TV’s lack of a web browser.

At the moment, the feature is only working with promotions for Apple’s Vision Pro, but 9to5Mac notes it should expand to allow users to share other content from their Apple TV right from the tvOS app.


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TikTok permanently scraps Lite Rewards in the EU.

The program, which paid users around 38 cents a day to engage with videos, was already suspended in the region after the bloc opened an investigation in April.

A separate EU Commission probe into TikTok’s allegedly addictive design, and its content moderation rules for minors remains open.