The Verge

An Intel Core i9-13900K CPU, one of the first types identified to sometimes crash this way. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge There is no fix for Intel's crashing 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake desktop processors. If your chip isn't yet damaged, please apply motherboard BIOS updates early and often to prevent issues. If it's already damaged, your only option is to exchange it.But what if you didn't buy a chip - but, rather, an entire PC? Will PC makers have your back? Will they pass along the extra two years of warranty that Intel just theoretically granted them, or will they perhaps try to save money at your expense? Image: Intel On Tuesday, Intel confirmed it will extend its warranty by two entire years for 24 different CPUs that may be affected. We asked over a dozen desktop computer companies that last question. Some agreed to... Continue reading...

Characters from the Chapter 5: Season 3 battle pass. | Image: Epic Games Epic Games is making a major change to Fortnite's battle passes that should remove some angst if you can't buy or complete a pass before the end of a season.Fortnite's battle passes offer a bunch of exclusive in-game rewards that you can only obtain during an individual season, but that means you might miss out on rewards entirely if you can't level up enough or don't buy the pass before it expires. To help alleviate that pressure, Epic announced on Wednesday that items from future battle passes might be available for purchase in Fortnite's item shop at least 18 months after the pass expires.Epic's battle pass policy adjustment is intended in part to let people buy outfits featuring licensed crossovers, even if they miss a season's... Continue reading...

A dial can be used to select one of four charging modes on Anker's new desktop Prime Charger. | Image: Anker Anker announced several additions to the company's Prime line of chargers today, including a new desktop version that allows the power output of its six USB ports to be customized through a control dial. As a result, connected devices get exactly as much power as they need.The new $169.99 Anker Prime Charger shares 250W of power across four USB-C ports and two USB-A ports. The first USB-C port can deliver up to 140W of power, while the other three max out at 100W. The two USB-A ports deliver up to 22.5W each. Image: Anker An LCD screen shows the power output of each USB-C port. The charger offers four different power distribution modes, adjustable through a built-in control dial or Anker's mobile app.

The Chromecast is going away after more than a decade in Google's hardware portfolio, with the company phasing it out to make room for the new Google TV Streamer. In 2013, the timing was perfect for the Chromecast's success. Most TVs of that era had rudimentary entertainment apps that were often slow, so beaming content from your phone to a TV made a lot of sense.But times have changed. With the Chromecast with Google TV in 2020. Google pivoted in the opposite direction with a much more traditional, lean-back entertainment experience. Casting took a backseat to carousels of content recommendations, and native apps returned.The Google TV Streamer is designed to build on that strategy by infusing Gemini AI smarts into the software. It'll... Continue reading...

Bleached coral in the Great Barrier Reef in 2024. | Photo: Ove Hoegh-Guldberg The Great Barrier Reef and surrounding waters have reached hotter temperatures over the past decade than they have in at least 400 years because of climate change, according to new research published in the journal Nature.It's a stark warning. The survival of the Great Barrier Reef is essentially now in human hands. Corals around the world face near extinction if temperatures continue to rise with the world running primarily on fossil fuels.The reef is in danger."The reef is in danger, and if we don't divert from our current course, our generation will likely witness the demise of one of Earth's great natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef," Benjamin Henley, lead author of the research and a lecturer at the University of Melbourne... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is making views" the primary metric across all of its formats, meaning that creators will be able to track the same metric across Reels, Stories, photos, and more. The change will roll out in the coming weeks, according to a post on Instagram's creators account.

A new joint venture between three streaming leaders could create a monopoly problem in sports television, three lawmakers warn US regulators in a letter first reported by The Athletic.Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) are asking law enforcers to investigate the joint venture between Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. to create a new service, Venu Sports. The streaming service is expected to include sports networks from across the three companies' portfolios, including ESPN, FOX, and TNT. Last week, the companies announced that Venu Sports will cost $42.99 per month.In the letter to Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter and Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica... Continue reading...

Image: Roku Roku is preparing to launch a new 24/7 sports channel across its devices, apps, and on its website. Starting on August 12th, the new Roku Sports Channel will start showing sports-themed content that includes live events and original content.Joe Franzetta, who heads Roku's sports division, describes the channel as a curated always-on channel that leads our viewer through the wide variety of premium sports content available for free on The Roku Channel."The most premium" of those will be Sunday Leadoff, the live Major League Baseball games Roku got in a broadcast deal with the MLB earlier this year. But the channel will also feature live Formula E races and other sports broadcasts, including archival boxing matches, NBA G League... Continue reading...

Image: HBO House of the Dragon ended its second season with a reminder that this is all just one part of a much larger story. Continue reading...

The crimson red Apex Edition' OnePlus Open is a stunner, and the color isn't the only thing that's different about it. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney's streaming business has finally become profitable. In its Q3 earnings results released on Wednesday, the company reported making $47 million off Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus.Like other streamers, Disney has struggled with making its streaming business profitable. At the same time last year, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Hulu recorded a $512 million loss. Things started to turn around last quarter when both Disney Plus and Hulu posted a profit, but losses at ESPN Plus prevented Disney's overall streaming business from crossing the line into profitability.This was a strong quarter for Disney, driven by excellent results in our Entertainment segment both at the box office and in DTC, as we achieved profitability across our... Continue reading...

Image: AMD AMD has finally revealed the launch prices for its new range of Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs, and it's pricing them slightly lower than the Ryzen 7000 launch prices. The flagship Ryzen 9 9950X with 16 cores will be priced at $649, which is $50 less than the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X that launched nearly two years ago. The rest of the lineup are priced between $20 and $50 less than equivalent Ryzen 7000 CPUs.After a delay to the launch of its Ryzen 9000 CPUs out of an abundance of caution," the Ryzen 7 9700X ($359) and Ryzen 5 9600X ($279) will both launch on August 8th, followed by the Ryzen 9 9950X ($649) and Ryzen 9 9900X ($499) on August 15th. Image: AMD AMD's Ryzen 9000 series pricing. AMD is promising around a 16... Continue reading...

Image: Ford Ford announced today that it would be working with bike company N plus to introduce two new e-bikes inspired by the automaker's most iconic brands, the Bronco and Mustang.There's nothing new about car companies working with bike manufacturers to co-develop e-bikes in the hopes of exciting gear heads. GM, Porsche, Jeep, Polestar, and others have tried to do the same, with varying degrees of success. But Ford says its bikes will be unique insofar as they are directly tied to two of the company's most storied models.G.O.A.T. = Goes Over Any Type of Terrain"The Bronco e-bike will, of course, be very rugged and designed to handle rough terrain. The company says that the bike will come with a 750W hub motor that generates 85 Nm of torque... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit's ask me anything" posts, or AMAs, could feel more like special events than standard posts with a twist, thanks to changes that go sitewide on Thursday. While none of the updates reflect a total overhaul, they do put a new kind of emphasis on the popular Q&A sessions.Starting on Thursday, a new AMA tab will offer special options like the ability to schedule and promote an AMA in a single post. Creators of the posts can also add up to five cohosts, whose answers are tagged as such in the comments section. When the AMA is over, hosts can also add an ending note with closing thoughts, links, or final promotional info.For ordinary site users, a new RSVP option will let them get notifications so they don't miss one. Once the AMA is... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Amazon Music on Tuesday introduced Topics, a new AI-powered feature that should let you easily discover other related podcasts based on topics discussed in a particular episode.After analyzing podcast transcriptions and descriptions to identify key topics, AI, with the aid of human reviewers, generates a Topics tag button. Located beneath each episode description, clicking on any tag will produce a list of related podcast episodes to that subject.As an example, Amazon shared an Amazon Music mobile app screenshot of an episode about the effects of caffeine as a drug from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. Titled, Selects: The Duality of Caffeine," Amazon added three Topics tags underneath the product description: Caffeine," Coffee,"... Continue reading...

A small-scale model of a carbon removal facility during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Occidental Petroleum and 1PointFive Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant in Ector County, Texas, on April 28th, 2023. | Photo: Getty Images Companies are increasingly turning to newfangled ways to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as a way to hit their sustainability goals. But who's watching to make sure these tactics are working?A new project called the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI) launched today, with the goal of helping develop standards for efforts to draw down and sequester CO2. It comes as big names in tech scale-up investments in carbon dioxide removal (CDR), even though there are still concerns about whether those technologies will be able to prove themselves at commercial scale.Who's watching to make sure these tactics are working?CDR can look like many different things - building an industrial facility to filter CO2 out of the air or s... Continue reading...

More watchfaces, Garmin Pay, and GoPro are now in the Garmin Connect IQ Store. | Image: Garmin Garmin doesn't have the best third-party app store, but it's at least getting a bit better starting today. You'll now be able to make purchases in the Connect IQ Store using Garmin Pay, plus there's a handful of new watchfaces and a GoPro app.Previously, downloading apps from the Garmin Connect IQ Store could be a real pain, as there wasn't an easy way to pay for apps that weren't free. (Even free apps like Spotify could sometimes be a headache to download and install.)The other problem with Connect IQ is that there simply aren't a ton of apps compared to Google Play or Apple's App Store. And while that's still an issue, today's announcement does bring some bigger names to Connect IQ. That includes four Disney-themed watchfaces,... Continue reading...

Image: Disney The next phase of Disney's plan to make its streaming services profitable is another round of price hikes served up with more news and new playlist features.Disney is rolling out a new wave of price hikes that its subscribers will probably be none too pleased to be hit with. Beginning October 17th, individual monthly and annual plans for Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN are all going up. Monthly subscriptions to Disney Plus with ads will jump from $8 a month to $10. The monthly Disney Plus ad-free tier will increase from $14 to $16, and annual ad-free plans will rise from their previous $140 price point to $160. Hulu's ad-supported tier will rise from $8 / month and $80 / year to $10 / month and $100 / year, and monthly... Continue reading...

Photo by Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images Waymo is spreading out a little more in the two major cities in which it operates.The robotaxi company announced today that it was growing its service areas in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, as the company seeks to attract more customers to its burgeoning business.In San Francisco, Waymo's service area is extending south of the city into the San Francisco Peninsula to cover Daly City, Broadmoor, and Colma - a total of 10 additional square miles for a total of 55 square miles. The company recently got rid of its waiting list in San Francisco, opening up its 24/7 robotaxi service to anyone within the service area who has downloaded the Waymo One app. In Los Angeles, where the company's waitlist is still in effect,... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge X is suing a group of major advertisers over accusations that they held an illegal boycott" against the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, X claims Unilever, Mars, CVS, Orsted, and dozens of other brands conspired to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue" through a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) industry initiative.To join the WFA's initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), companies must agree to withhold advertising from social platforms that aren't compliant with the organization's safety standards. X alleges GARM organized an advertiser boycott of Twitter" to coerce the company into following the initiative's safety standards. The lawsuit... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Sonos Ace headphones launched with a very convenient trick called TV Audio Swap, which lets you send audio that would normally come out of the Sonos Arc soundbar to the headphones instead. Two months later, the company is enabling TV Audio Swap on its more affordable soundbars - and it's no longer limited to customers with Apple devices.The feature now works on both generations of the Sonos Beam as well as the entry-level Sonos Ray. Until now, an iPhone or iPad was required to activate TV Audio Swap, but now Android devices can do so as well. The feature itself uses a direct Wi-Fi connection to send audio from the soundbar to the headphones, but you'll need the app for setup and to toggle certain settings. Photo by... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google is done making Chromecasts. In a post on Tuesday, Google says it's ending production of Chromecast" after over a decade of selling the streaming dongles.Even though Chromecast devices will now be available while supplies last," Google says it will continue to push software and security updates to its newer devices without specifying which ones. The most recent update to the lineup was the Chromecast with Google TV released in 2022.But now, Google says technology has evolved dramatically" since the launch of the original Chromecast in 2013. We invested heavily in embedding Google Cast technology into millions of TV devices, including Android TV," Google writes. We are taking the next step in evolving how streaming TV devices... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge The Quibi story is both short and epic. In January 2020, company founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman were onstage at CES delivering an hour-long presentation on how they were about to upend the entertainment business. They'd developed new tech, signed up seemingly half the stars in Hollywood, and had raised more than a billion dollars to pull it off. By October, it was all over. Quibi was shutting down.On this episode of The Vergecast, we're once again trying out a couple of our favorite new show formats. First up is the rewatch show, which we're calling Version History. We talk through the whole story of Quibi, from its early days as NewTV to its extremely ill-timed launch and ultimate demise. Is there a world in... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google isn't waiting for its upcoming hardware event to announce the Chromecast's successor. Alongside the new, sleeker Nest Thermostat, today, the company is introducing the Google TV Streamer, a $99.99 set-top box that improves upon the Chromecast with Google TV with substantially better performance, Thread and Matter integration, and useful new features like a remote finder.Yes, there are some Gemini AI tricks thrown in, and with other hardware upgrades like a built-in ethernet jack, the Google TV Streamer seems poised to be a much better entertainment hub than its predecessor. The only downside? Since it's not a dongle anymore, you'll have to provide your own HDMI cable when it ships on September 24th.The sloped, low-profile... Continue reading...

Google Home is getting a Gemini intelligence upgrade. | Image: Google Nest While splashy chatbots may get all the attention, generative AI has real potential to make the smart home simpler and more accessible. Amazon has already announced its plans for a smarter Alexa to power your home. Now, it's Google's turn to promise that it can produce a better, smarter, more helpful Google Assistant.Ahead of its fall hardware event next week, Google announced three new Gemini intelligence-powered experiences it plans to bring to its Google Home smart home platform later this year. There's a new camera intelligence feature that generates descriptive captions for video footage from Nest cameras, a natural language input for creating Google Home routines, and a smarter Google Assistant for Nest smart speakers and displays... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Nvidia is on a mission to eliminate its legacy Control Panel and GeForce Experience apps and combine them into a single new Nvidia app. That effort started earlier this year, and a new beta update today adds display settings, RTX Video Super Resolution, RTX Video HDR sliders, and more features.The new displays section lets you adjust resolution, refresh rate, and orientation controls for connected monitors or TVs. The controls are similar to what exists inside the Settings section of Windows 10 or 11, but this now lets you adjust all your GPU settings in a single location. Image: Nvidia The new display section of the Nvidia app. Image: Nvidia Nvidia's statistics overlay is also getting... Continue reading...

Image: CNET Red Ventures is selling CNET to Ziff Davis, the digital media and internet company that owns other notable tech publications like Mashable, IGN, and Lifehacker. Ziff Davis' chief executive, Vivek Shah, confirmed the acquisition to The New York Times on Tuesday.Ironically, back in 2000, it was CNET Networks Inc. that paid $1.6 billion to acquire the then-tech-publishing-behemoth Ziff-Davis Inc. and its online services company, ZDNet. So much has happened in the last two decades in the form of divestments and realignments that today's inverted purchase isn't as ouroboric as it might seem. In 2020, Red Ventures acquired CNET along with a few other smaller properties for $500 million.While an official figure hasn't been announced, Ziff... Continue reading...