The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon employees will be required to return to the office five days per week starting on January 2nd, 2025.We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID," CEO Andy Jassy says in a memo sent to staff on Monday. Employees have been required to work from the office three days per week since May 2023, and Jassy says that if anything, the last 15 months we've been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits."Jassy says that staffers won't have to be in the office to deal with things like a sick kid or emergencies. But, before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also... Continue reading...

The marquee feature isn't here yet, but there's still a lot to appreciate in iOS 18. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge It's a weird year for iOS.Usually, the new software version arrives all at once. Not so with iOS 18. The foundational stuff has arrived, and in a normal year, things like RCS support and a redesigned control center would be more than enough. But iOS 18's headline feature, Apple Intelligence, isn't even part of this initial release, and we may not see some of its most interesting features until well into 2025. The iOS 18 rollout starts now, and it's just going to keep on rolling for the foreseeable future.iOS 18 is an ambitious update, even without Apple Intelligence in the picture. Customization options are at an all-time high, and with some tinkering, you'll be able to personalize your iPhone like never before. It's almost... Continue reading...

The Apple Watch Ultra's Modular face can display watchOS 11's Training Load feature and information from the Vitals app. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Apple has just released watchOS 11, the latest version of its smartwatch operating system, alongside iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. The update, available for the Apple Watch Series 6 and later models, will finally allow users to take rest days without breaking their activity streak and introduces FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection.Sleep apnea is a condition that can cause a person to stop breathing during sleep and can lead to an increased risk of hypertension and Type 2 diabetes if left untreated. Apple's sleep apnea detection feature, which uses the accelerometer to monitor for small wrist movements associated with sleep interruptions, was announced alongside the new Apple Watch Series 10 and is now available for both the Apple Watch Series 9... Continue reading...

Photo: Nilay Patel / The Verge Apple is rolling out iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, which will introduce a bunch of new features to the iPhone and iPad. One of the biggest changes with today's launch is the addition of RCS messaging, which should help improve communication with Android users.First announced in June, RCS messaging will finally allow iPhone and Android users to share high-res photos and videos, see typing indicators, and use read receipts. (Messages from Android users will still appear in green bubbles, though.)Some other messaging upgrades in iOS 18 include new text effects and formatting options in iMessage and the ability to schedule messages to send later. iPhone users will also be able to send messages via satellite.Additionally, iOS 18 includes new... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge What's next after the PS5 Pro? A report from Reuters focuses on Sony's plans beyond this fall's new $700 system, saying that the battle to win a contract for the chip powering a future PlayStation 6 came down to AMD vs. Intel, with others like Broadcom eliminated earlier, with AMD eventually winning out.According to Reuters, since AMD makes the chip in the PS5 and PS5 Pro, maintaining backward compatibility in a possible move was part of months" of discussions in 2022 between executives and engineers at Sony and Intel. However, Intel's bid was blocked because they couldn't agree on how much profit Intel would make from each chip it would design as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) handled the manufacturing process.Besides... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google appears to be working on a way to finally synchronize notifications across devices in its ecosystem, according to Android Authority's Mishaal Rahman, who discovered code references to a new sync across devices" option in the Android 15 beta.The snippet is apparently located under the Notifications section of Settings, nestled between sensitive notifications" and a new notification cooldown" option he spotted last week. There's no Android notification syncing feature at the moment, as Rahman notes. So if you dismiss a notification on your Android tablet, the same notification will still greet you over on your phone later. This would, I'm sure, be a welcome change for most. Screenshot: Android Authority T... Continue reading...

LG's ThinQ ON hub is at the center of its new smart home efforts. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge After years of being on the fringes of home automation, LG is now making a big play in the smart home. It has a shiny new multi-protocol hub, is opening its ThinQ platform to work with more smart home devices, and will soon allow other platforms to integrate its appliances into their ecosystems.ThinQ's shift from being solely an app to control LG appliances and electronics to becoming a competitor to smart home platforms like Samsung's SmartThings and Apple Home has been spurred by the standardization of smart home connectivity through initiatives like Thread and Matter and the rapid development of artificial intelligence.Until now, the smart home was all about the connectivity of smart devices, but with the emergence of generative... Continue reading...

Microsoft is announcing its new Copilot Pages feature today, which is designed to be a canvas for multiplayer AI collaboration." Copilot Pages lets you use Microsoft's Copilot chatbot and pull responses into a new page where they can be edited collaboratively with others.You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone's work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page," says Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at work at Microsoft. This is an entirely new work pattern - multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration."Pages starts rolling out to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers today and will be generally... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple's revised AirPods Max with USB-C are just a few days away from their launch on September 20th, but if you don't mind a Lightning port the older (nearly identical) model can be had right now for much less. That's because Best Buy seems to be clearing stock of refurbished first-gen AirPods Max, discounting them in a variety of colors for $299.99 ($250 off), which is as cheap as the flagship Apple headphones get - but the one-day deal ends late tonight at 1AM ET / 10PM PT.The AirPods Max may be nearly four years old, but they're still a great pair of noise-canceling headphones if you're deep in Apple's ecosystem and appreciate some exceptional (although, heavy) build quality. They offer excellent, balanced sound and support for some... Continue reading...

The Zildjian Alchem-E Perfect Tune Headphones come in three colorways: black, midnight (blue), and sandstorm (tan). | Image: Zildjian Zildjian, the company that's been making cymbals and other drum accessories for hundreds of years, has announced a new pair of wireless headphones. In addition to the company's iconic logo on each ear cup, the Alchem-E Perfect Tune Headphones offer a more personalized listening experience" and a special ANC mode the company claims lets musicians tune out everything except their drum kits.Being able to customize the sound profile through an equalizer in an accompanying app is a feature that's common in wireless headphones that cost as much as the $399.95 Alchem-E Perfect Tune Headphones. What Zildjian is doing differently is allowing for custom EQ settings for each ear, which could appeal to discerning musicians. I... Continue reading...

The Polaris Dawn mission was the first private spacewalk. | Image: SpaceX SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission, in which billionaire Jared Isaacman and three other crew members traveled to space in a Crew Dragon, has made headlines for including the first-ever private spacewalk. While the flight has been hailed as historic for that reason, Isaaman has said that the trip is not merely for fun but is making contributions to science as well.The research in the Polaris program, planned to be three flights, is particularly focused on human health and the effects of spaceflight on the body. The current mission will be studied by Baylor College of Medicine, with the astronauts giving blood and going through extensive biomedical testing both before and after the flight.But what sets the Polaris Dawn mission apart is its... Continue reading...

The AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation are worth springing for compared to the regular pair. Both sound good, but the ANC works surprisingly well - most of the time. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Instagram might roll out a way to share comments on other Instagram posts to Threads, according to Alessandro Paluzzi, who often reverse engineers Meta's social media apps to find coming features.Paluzzi shared an image showing that when commenting on an Instagram post, there could be a new dropdown menu that lets users choose to share the comment only to Instagram or also share on Threads."Meta has made a few moves to integrate Threads with its other platforms in the past, such as showing Threads posts on Instagram or Facebook (and, later, letting users opt out of that). The Twitter-like short-posting social network also lacks DMs of its own, but users can still receive or send messages through Instagram.The bigger effort, of... Continue reading...

Image: Nilay Patel Apple has hiked the price of its battery repair service for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. Now, it will cost $119 to get your battery replaced in either phone - a $20 jump over its older fee. The price remains the same for the standard and Plus" models, as do those for last year's phones, as MacRumors notes.The company doesn't seem to have started charging more for other battery replacements yet, but it wouldn't be unexpected. In 2022, Apple drove the cost of iPhone 14 battery service up by $30 to $99. Increases for iPad, MacBook, and older iPhone battery repairs came after that, and Apple Watches followed suit later. (One longs for the salad days of battery drama-induced $29 battery replacements!)Defective batteries are covered... Continue reading...

The new take on Flappy Bird will include alternate game modes. | Screenshot: The Flappy Bird Foundation Last week, The Flappy Bird Foundation announced a game called Flappy Bird. But while the group has been framing it as the triumphant return of a classic mobile game, Flappy Bird's original developer, Dong Nguyen isn't calling it a comeback - in fact, he says he's not involved at all.Nguyen posted as much on X (for the first time since 2017!) this morning, saying he didn't sell anything." The Flappy Bird Foundation wrote in the announcement it shared with press last week that it had acquired the rights from Gametech Holdings, LLC," which had secured the trademark from Nguyen, but it doesn't appear as though that was the result of any dealings between him and the group.

Image: Hungry Eyes Film & Television R.T. Thorne's postapocalyptic thriller frames farming and community as the keys to humanity's survival after society collapses. Continue reading...

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 52, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I swear I don't always just share absurdly expensive gadgets, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading about Chappell Roan and college football and the problem with pennies, watching Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist and Jennifer Garner's delightful AD home tour, taking copious notes on Ben Thompson's newslettering process, making surprisingly great bread with a random recipe from Reddit, and trying out Google's Pixel 9 Pro Fold.I also have for you some expensive but excellent new gadgets, a couple of great new tech podcasts, the best pause music... Continue reading...

A GameCube controller, post-mod. | Image: 8BitDo 8BitDo announced it's taking preorders for a new mod kit that lets you retrofit a wired GameCube controller with Hall effects joysticks and Bluetooth connectivity. The company is charging $25.98 for the kit, which it says is a simple, solderless mod.8BitDo has made a few of these in the past for old Nintendo controllers, including those for the N64 and earlier consoles, and now it's the GameCube's turn. The kit replaces your controller's existing PCB with a drop-in board that has Hall effects joysticks and a USB-C-rechargeable 300mAh battery attached. It also comes with a trigger pack, and 8BitDo says the battery will get 6 hours of playtime between charges. It's compatible with the Switch and Android, according to the product page.

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Courtesy of iFixit, a new teardown video of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold reveals what the repairability advocate organization's Shahram Mokhtari says is the most exciting foldable we've seen on the iFixit teardown table."iFixit offers very clear shots of the phone's internals in the video and its accompanying blog post, along with some very detailed Lumafield CT scans of the foldable. Mokhtari notes in the video that Google is offering official repair guides and replacement parts for the phone.iFixit found impressive modularity in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, including easily removable wearable parts like the USB-C port and SIM card tray, and the site praised the use of 3IP screws throughout. The repair experts were also able to pull off... Continue reading...

Not included: a desk that's a country mile wide. | Image: Samsung A running gag here at The Verge and on The Vergecast is that ever since Samsung switched to a six-day workweek for its executives, it's made some particularly wild decisions - like throwing out its own unique earbud design for glorified Apple knockoffs with light strips. And right now, Samsung will not only sell you its impressive 49-inch Odyssey OLED G9 (G95SC) 49-inch curved ultrawide gaming monitor for $1,099.99 (a discount of $700), but it's also including a second, 24-inch Odyssey G30D monitor for free (a $150 value).The deal price is being matched at Best Buy and Amazon but without the freebie second monitor. And why wouldn't you want a second baby monitor to compliment your wraparound surfboard of a main monitor?The 49-inch... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The iPhone 16 lineup has 8GB of RAM, from the base model to the 16 Pro Max, and it's all thanks to Apple Intelligence. Apple VP of hardware tech Johny Srouji confirmed as much in an interview with Geekerwan, published yesterday, that 9to5Mac spotted.Srouji explained in the interview that DRAM is one aspect" when it comes to deciding hardware characteristics needed for Apple Intelligence, saying that the feature led us to believe we need to get to 8GB." He added that the extra RAM would also help immensely" for tasks like high-end gaming on devices.Apple hadn't previously stated how much RAM the iPhone 16 line has, but MacRumors discovered references to the 8GB number in Xcode after the phones were announced. Apple, which isn't... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Disney and DirecTV are back in business with each other after a carriage dispute that has kept ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned networks off of the cable provider since the beginning of September. ESPN and other channels Disney had blocked have been restored, giving DirecTV subscribers access, once again, to Monday Night Football, college football games, and other programming from Disney's channels.As part of the deal, DirecTV will offer packages that include Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus as bundles or a la carte options. It'll also include Disney's upcoming ESPN flagship direct-to-consumer service" when it launches, for no extra cost. And DirecTV will be able to offer multiple genre-specific options - sports, entertainment, kids... Continue reading...

You can wear the NotePin or clip it almost anywhere - which is pretty much its whole appeal. | Image: Plaud Kudos to Plaud for one thing: in a year otherwise marred by high-profile failures and oh so much AI vaporware, it made an AI gadget that does exactly what it claims to do and does it pretty well. The gadget is called the NotePin, and it's a $169, pill-shaped voice recorder that can transcribe, summarize, and pull important information out of your audio. This is something current AI systems can actually do well! There's good and mature tech at every step along the pipeline here, from tiny microphones to speech-to-text transcription to natural-language processing and AI summarization. The NotePin does it well.But the reason the NotePin works is also the reason I wouldn't recommend buying one. AI voice recording is great and handy and... Continue reading...

Synergy king! | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images JD Vance's appearance at the All-In Summit was easily the most comfortable I've seen him, but then he was with the people he understands best: other VCs.The All-In podcast appearance was what business leaders refer to as a display of synergy. Cohost David Sacks' and Vance's political fortunes are tied together - if Trump wins, Sacks looks like a kingmaker and has a vice president who owes him favors and will take his calls. If Vance loses, remaining close to his real community - venture capitalists - gives him a valuable network to tap into for future campaigns.Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I've met in public life."Vance has called Sacks one of my closest confidants." (His other... Continue reading...

Image: Getty 23andMe will pay $30 million to settle a class action lawsuit over a data breach that affected more than 6.9 million customers. As part of the proposed settlement, the genetic testing site will compensate affected customers and provide them with access to a security monitoring program for three years.23andMe disclosed the data breach last October, but it didn't confirm the overall impact until December. Customers using the DNA Relatives feature may have had information like names, birth years, and ancestry information exposed through the breach. At the time, 23andMe attributed the hack to credential stuffing, a tactic that involves logging in to accounts using recycled logins exposed in previous security breaches.In January 2024, c... Continue reading...

The Anker MagGo USB-C Adapter supports both SD and microSD cards. | Image: Anker Anker's next puck-shaped accessory is an SD and microSD card reader called the MagGo USB-C Adapter that can be used with laptops, tablets, and smartphones. When connected to an iPhone 15 or 16, it can also unlock ProRes 4K recording at 60fps if the memory card supports at least 220MB/s write speeds and 256GB capacity.The MagGo USB-C Adapter - available in white, black, or teal finishes for $34.99 from Anker or Amazon - is MagSafe compatible, so it can be secured to the back of an iPhone and kept out of the way while recording video. Since it does end up blocking both of the ways an iPhone can be charged, Anker has included an additional USB-C port on the MagGo that will pass along up to 42.5W of power. Image: Anker ... Continue reading...

Image: First We Feast Netflix is looking to bolster its live offerings with some chicken wings. Bloomberg and Variety report that Netflix is in talks with BuzzFeed about streaming live versions of the popular YouTube show Hot Ones," which features famous people eating spicy wings while being interviewed by host Sean Evans. Netflix and BuzzFeed want to make a deal this month, according to Bloomberg.Netflix and BuzzFeed declined to comment.If Netflix lands the Hot Ones" deal, it would be a potentially major addition to the company's growing slate of live shows, including WWE's Monday Night Raw (which will air on the service starting next year), a three-year deal to show NFL games on Christmas Day, and a live Joe Rogan special that debuted last month.... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge It looks like the fediverse is continuing to open up. In late March, Meta's Threads introduced a beta feature that allows users from the US, Canada, or Japan to cross-post and view likes from Mastodon and, presumably, other federated social networks. In June, it added that ability to over 100 countries.While you can follow a step-by-step process to get to the Fediverse settings dialog, where you can opt in or out of sharing your Threads posts, there is now a single link that will take you right there.If you want to do it the long way around, you can still do it from the mobile app or the web version:

The Snappy grip is designed to improve the ergonomics of smartphone photography. | Image: Buddiesman The Snappy is another mobile grip accessory attempting to improve the ergonomics of smartphone photography, but it goes one step further by adding a motorized gimbal for stabilization.The Camera Control on the new iPhone 16 lineup is Apple's attempt to improve the ergonomics of smartphone photography, but it doesn't solve the problem of securely holding on to those smooth rectangular slabs while framing a shot. Similar to accessories we've seen from companies like Xiaomi, the Snappy adds the grip and buttons of a dedicated camera, plus more device compatibility with its expanding clamp.Buddiesman, a Chinese maker of tripods and heads, created the Snappy and is attempting to crowdfund the smartphone grip through Kickstarter. Full retail... Continue reading...

The Destiny 2 Nerf Ace of Spades blaster. | Image: Hasbro When Bungie and Hasbro decided to create a real-life, dart-blasting Nerf version of one of the most famous Destiny 2 guns, someone got lazy - stealing a fan artist's nine-year-old work instead of creating the Ace of Spades from scratch.To Bungie's credit, the game company has just announced it will make sure" to compensate and credit Tofu Rabbit for their incredible artwork," after a rapid investigation.As you can see in Tofu's examples below, this is an incredibly clear-cut case of copying, despite the changes that Bungie or Hasbro's artists made to the blaster.

Photo by Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images Keurig made inaccurate statements" about the recyclability of its single-use coffee pods, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company agreed to a cease and desist order and to pay a $1.5 million civil penalty to settle the charges.Corporate recycling claims can be misleadingIt's a helpful reminder that many corporate recycling claims can be misleading. Certain types of plastic are harder to recycle than others. Even if something is supposedly recyclable, it can end up in the trash if the type of plastic is not accepted by a municipal recycling program.The charges against Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. stem from its 2019 and 2020 annual reports, which said that the company tested and validate[d] that [K-Cup pods]... Continue reading...

This photo, from X user @MatthewDR via Reddit user u/boopitysmopp (since deleted), could be of Tesla's long-gestating robotaxi. | Screenshot: u/boopitysmopp, via @MatthewDR A blurry photo of a heavily camouflaged vehicle tooling around on the Warner Bros. movie studio lot surfaced last night, spurring speculation that it's the fabled Tesla robotaxi set to be revealed next month.With its canary yellow wrap and clearly manipulated shape, it's difficult to glean much about the robotaxi from just this sighting. Everything about this photo should be taken with a grain of salt, including the tires, boxy rear end, weird roof bump (lidar?), and upsetting hood indentions. All is not what it seems.According to Electrek, the photo was first posted to Reddit by u/boopitysmopp, who is said to be a lot employee at Warner Bros. (The post has since been removed, and the Reddit user has deleted their profile, so the... Continue reading...

Photo by Mathew Tsang / Getty Images A regularly updated stream of everything we see. Continue reading...

Image: Lionsgate Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating epic Megalopolis is a series of loosely connected ideas, tied together with an undercooked world and embarrassing dialogue. Continue reading...