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Image: iFixit via YouTube We've already seen a teardown of the standard Pixel 8 model, but now iFixit has taken apart the $999 Pixel 8 Pro, offering a close look at the new temperature sensing tech that lives beneath the phone's display.iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari starts by removing the Pixel 8 Pro's screen using a heating mat, a clamp, and a pick. After disconnecting the display from the device, Mokhtari folds back the 5G mmWave antenna cable and unscrews the main frame. From there, Mokhtari attempts to remove the 5,050mAh battery by pulling at the plastic tabs beneath the component. Image: iFixit via YouTube iFixit offers a look at the Pixel 8 Pro's camera setup. However, Mokhtari runs into the same issue as PBKreviews, the YouTube... Continue reading...

How many motors have you got? | Photo by Sean O'Kane / The Verge Tesla's Cybertruck is finally nearing its first delivery event on November 30th, and yet we still don't have key details on configurations, prices, and other specifications of the unconventionally designed pickup truck.But today, we got some insight for the launch, including initial Cybertruck powertrain options and Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR), thanks to new VIN info from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).A required VIN decoder submission that Tesla and other automakers must provide to NHTSA before vehicles are delivered to customers is now available for all to see and decipher. A Verge tipster pointed us to a Cybertruck Owners Club forum post where user Throwcomputer provided an analysis of Tesla's... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge From January 2nd, 2024, Google Drive will allow downloads without requiring third-party cookies that are embedded on third-party websites," the search giant has announced.However, while we interpreted the original post as applying to all downloads from Google Drive, Google has updated its post on the Workspace Updates blog to clarify that this doesn't change anything if you're using the site directly. For anyone using Chrome with third-party cookies blocked, this workaround to manually unblock third-party cookies just for Google Drive is still required to enable downloads directly within Google's service on Google's browser for the foreseeable future.The change comes as Google prepares to (finally) disable third-party cookies by... Continue reading...

Image: SharkNinja Can you heat up a pan to 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit? That's the burning question at the center of this proposed class action lawsuit, which claims the advertising for SharkNinja's nonstick cookware violates the laws of physics and thermodynamics.While SharkNinja is the company best known for its Shark robovacs and Ninja kitchen gadget, this lawsuit takes issue with the Ninja NeverStick Premium Cookware collection, a line of pots and pans it advertises as having superior nonsticking and nonflaking qualities thanks to its manufacturing process.Instead of making its pans at a measly 900-degree temperature that other brands use, SharkNinja says it heats up the cookware to a maximum of 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That process, according to... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Washington Post reported Friday that Reddit might cut off Google and force users to log in to Reddit itself to read anything, if it can't reach deals with generative AI companies to pay for its data. Initially, Reddit seemed to deny the report. Nothing is changing," Reddit spokesperson Courtney Geesey-Dorr told The Verge, adding that the Post would soon be correcting its story.But after the Post corrected that story, only one major detail had changed - the Post no longer suggests Reddit users would need to log in. The publication now writes that if Reddit can't get AI to play ball, the company may block Google and Bing's search crawlers, which means Reddit posts wouldn't show up in search results.Reddit can survive without... Continue reading...

The Asus ROG Ally handheld PC in a Dbrand Killswitch case. | Images: Dbrand Your Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld is brilliantly white, and that will not stand: you've decided your gadgets must be black. Or... maybe you just want a rugged case that'll survive a drop or three? Either way, Dbrand thinks it's got what you need - a $60 Killswitch case like the one it makes for the Steam Deck that'll ship early next year.But wait," I will pretend to hear some of you thinking, Didn't Dbrand royally screw that up? Didn't The Verge trigger a million-dollar recall when you folks discovered it interfered with a Steam Deck fan?"Yes - but Dbrand did rapidly recall them, admitted its mistake, then shipped a replacement Killswitch 2.0 that I've been testing for months with no issue. It's still an impressively rugged,... Continue reading...

Faze Clan team winning Halo World Championship 2023. | Image: Faze Clan via X Gaming analytics and esports brand company Gamesquare, which counts Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as one of its investors, is acquiring the struggling gaming influencer group Faze Clan. The all-stock deal is worth about $17 million, Bloomberg reports, a steep drop-off from Faze's $725-million valuation at the time of its special purpose acquisition company, SPAC, merger in July of 2022.Since the SPAC made it publicly traded on the Nasdaq exchange, Faze Clan, like much of the esports industry, has struggled, with the company posting a $28.4-million loss through the first half of 2023," according to Bloomberg. Last month, Faze Clan's troubles reached an inflection point that led to the firing of CEO Lee Trink, who once compared the... Continue reading...

One of the unlockable badges basically gives you a grappling hook. | Image: Nintendo When it comes to difficulty, most games like to put you in a bucket. At the start of the experience, you have to choose whether you want to play on a hard or easy mode, and usually, over the course of the game, you can move between these as you see fit, which is good because it's hard to really know what mode is right for you at the beginning. Super Mario Bros. Wonder doesn't force you to make this decision. It doesn't have traditional difficulty settings at all. And yet, its approach to difficulty is one of the most refreshing I've ever seen - it's both subtle and powerful and as playful as the rest of the game.The most obvious form this takes is in the characters you can play as. The main cast of Mario and friends are all basically... Continue reading...

Your private web browser might have come with a side of unwanted VPN service downloads. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Brave's privacy-centric browser has been downloading VPN services to some customers' computers without their consent. Noted by Ghacks, starting in 2022, downloading Brave to a Windows PC meant you were also downloading the company's VPN service, regardless of whether you wanted it. The Firewall + VPN service is an extra paid subscription and would remain dormant unless the user subscribed to it. Still, that's not the most transparent move from a company based on transparency.The behavior is limited to the Windows version of Brave, and a post on GitHub from the company's VP of engineering details the current behavior and a plan to change it. You can check for the VPN services on your machine in the services manager on Windows - they're... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer. Sign up here.Today, let's talk about how the traditional platform justice system is seeing signs of a new reform movement. If it's successful at Discord, its backers hope that the initiative could lead to better behavior around the web.I.Discord's San Francisco campus is a tech company headquarters like many others, with its open-plan office, well stocked micro-kitchens and employees bustling in and out of over-booked conference rooms.But step through the glass doors at its entrance and it is immediately apparent that this is a place built by gamers. Arcade-style art decks the walls, various games hide in... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Chatting with someone while wearing your AirPods Pro has never been difficult: all it takes is a quick press-and-hold of the earbuds' stem to activate transparency mode, and then it's easy to hear anyone in your vicinity. But now Apple is taking things a step further and attempting to remove any and all friction from interacting with other people. This fall, the company rolled out a new feature called Conversation Awareness to the second-generation AirPods Pro.When you enable this setting, the earbuds will detect whenever you've started speaking. And once you do, the volume of your music will automatically get dialed down, and the AirPods Pro will enhance voices in front of you while reducing additional background noise," according to... Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo Even though he doesn't speak, in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Mario says more than he ever has in any game previous. Beyond his wahoos" and okey dokeys," this Mario has a real personality, facilitated by a suite of power-ups and Nintendo's meticulous attention to detail. Though we've seen a bit of this new personality in the movie, the Mario in Wonder is the most expressive I've ever seen him, reinventing a character that has largely remained a blank-ish slate for the last 30 years.Wonder's positive reviews will undoubtedly make it a staple on every game of the year ballot. As my colleague Andrew Webster wrote, Wonder manages to pull from classics like Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, while firmly updating the formula with a... Continue reading...

The mobile app isn't for everyone, but for one insomniac, Pikachu and Snorlax made a big difference. Continue reading...

X's community notes feature isn't doing much to prevent the spread. | Illustration: The Verge The vast majority of viral misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war being posted on X (formerly Twitter) is being pushed by verified users, according to a recent study by NewsGuard - a for-profit organization that rates the trustworthiness of news sites. After analyzing the 250 most-engaged X posts between October 7th and October 14th that promoted incorrect or unverified information relating to the war, researchers at NewsGuard found that verified X accounts were behind 74 percent of it.The 250 posts analyzed within the study promoted one of 10 false or unsubstantiated war narratives identified by NewsGuard, including claims that CNN had staged footage of its news crew under attack in Israel, and videos claiming to show Israeli or... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Slack is retiring its status account on X that previously shared updates about issues and outages on the platform, the company announced on Thursday. We made the decision to retire the @SlackStatus account in order to consolidate our communications around incidents and focus resources on those most widely used by our customers," Kevin Albers, VP of customer experience at Slack, said in a statement to The Verge.The account was a useful way to be notified when Slack was investigating problems, especially for those of us at The Verge who end up writing about those issues. (It was also a good account to monitor with TweetDeck - which is now called XPro and is only available to paying X Premium subscribers.) If you want to keep tabs on... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The war in Israel presents content moderation challenges for the most popular social media sites. Continue reading...

Photo by Steven Ferdman / Getty Images Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is among a group of authors suing Meta, Microsoft, and other companies over the use of their work in building AI tools.In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Huckabee and other authors including Christian writer Lysa TerKeurst allege that their books were pirated and used in datasets that trained AI models. EleutherAI, an artificial intelligence research group, is also named in the suit, as is Bloomberg.The proposed class action suit is the latest example of authors alleging tech companies used their work without permission to train generative AI models. Over the past several months, a string of popular authors including George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and Michael Chabon have sued OpenAI for copyright... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Amazon, Microsoft, and India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country's federal enforcement agency, have announced a major crackdown on tech support fraud.The CBI's post details two instances where scammers pretended they were customer support agents for two well-known multi-national companies" (Amazon and Microsoft) through pop-ups that falsely appeared to be security alerts" from the companies.Through their scheme, the scammers would get people to call a toll-free number to one of their call centers, take over a user's computer remotely, convince users of the pretense of non-existing problems," and make them pay hundreds of Dollars for unnecessary services" while impersonating as workers for Amazon and Microsoft.M... Continue reading...

Amazon's paper mailers. | Image: Amazon Amazon is fulfilling a small part of its promise to switch from using plastic bubble mailers and air pillows to all recyclable paper packaging for its shipments. The company announced that it has outfitted one facility in Euclid, Ohio, with an upgraded packaging machine that can automatically fold custom-fit boxes to wrap some products, use paper mailers for small items, and slide in paper fillers instead of plastic ones in standard boxes.Amazon's efforts to switch to nonplastic materials come after the company's promise in July to cut out plastic mailers in favor of recyclable alternatives. Non-padded paper mailers are largely not as durable as plastic ones, but Amazon says it developed paper rolls that can stretch, seal with heat,... Continue reading...

Image: OpenAI OpenAI is launching wider availability of its latest text-to-image generator. On Thursday, the company is giving ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers access to the new DALL-E 3 model that works within the ChatGPT app. OpenAI says it has prepared a safety mitigation stack for the model that makes it ready for an expanded release.DALL-E 3 was first announced last month, and OpenAI showed how it improved upon the previous DALL-E 2 by allowing users to leverage ChatGPT to write longer and more visually descriptive prompts for them to feed the image generator. DALL-E 3 was added to Bing Chat and Bing Image Generator, making Microsoft's platform the first to introduce wider public access to the model - even before ChatGPT.The advertised... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge 23andMe is investigating reports of a new data leak involving millions of user records. On Wednesday, TechCrunch reported that a hacker claims to have leaked 4 million genetic profiles belonging to people in Great Britain, along with the wealthiest people living in the U.S. and Western Europe."The hacker, who goes by Golem," is the same one that stole 1 million lines of genetic data from 23andMe earlier this month, according to TechCrunch. Golem posted this latest round of data on the hacking site BreachForums.Katie Watson, the vice president of communications at 23andMe, tells The Verge the company was made aware" that the same hacker claims to have leaked another trove of what they claim is customer information. We are currently... Continue reading...

Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Autonomous vehicle operator Cruise, which is backed by General Motors, will launch a robotaxi service in Japan by 2026. It's another sign that GM does not intend to back down from its commitment to get driverless cars in more cities as rapidly as possible.Japan would be Cruise's second international market, after Dubai. The announcement is being portrayed as a possible answer to the country's driver shortage, which has been exacerbated by Japan's aging population. Cruise currently operates robotaxis in several US cities and has said it plans to launch in 12 more in the years to come.Japan would be Cruise's second international market, after DubaiGM made the announcement alongside Honda, which has a three-year-old partnership to... Continue reading...

The OnePlus Open finds a happy medium between the Pixel Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 5 size-wise, but it's too close in price to the incumbent foldables. Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Discord is overhauling the way it moderates its platform with a new warning system and teen safety assist feature. Both are part of a round of feature additions coming to Discord in the coming months, including an in-app shop for Discord members, a new Midnight dark theme on mobile, and new ways to launch apps.The new Discord warning system has been totally revamped to be far more transparent, educating Discord users how they've broken rules and are restricted from parts of the service rather than permanently banning them. The new system gives users more room to learn from their mistakes and correct misjudgments," explains Savannah Badalich, Discord's senior director of policy, in a briefing with The Verge. We're moving away from... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Images PayPal co-founder, venture capitalist, Republican megadonor, and disputed vampire Peter Thiel may also have been an FBI informant - at least according to a new report from Insider.Insider spoke to multiple people who claim Thiel became a confidential human source" for a Los Angeles-based agent named Johnathan Buma - a term that indicates a long-running relationship with the FBI, allegedly beginning in 2021. While Thiel was once a high-profile supporter of former President Donald Trump, a subject of multiple FBI investigations, the deal is said to have excluded any information about Thiel's domestic political contacts. Insider says it focused instead on foreign contacts and Silicon Valley intrigue," potentially including foreign... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Commission is formally requesting information from Meta and TikTok on how they're handling illegal content and disinformation related to the war in Israel. The inquiry comes as part of the European Union's newly enacted Digital Services Act (DSA), which holds large online platforms legally accountable for the content posted to them.Both platforms have until October 25th to respond to the Commission's request. From there, the Commission will evaluate their responses and assess next steps."Under the terms of the DSA, the Commission can impose fines of up to 6 percent of a company's global turnover if they're in violation of the rules. The Commission can also impose fines for incorrect, incomplete or misleading information... Continue reading...

YouTube has not yet announced a release date or name for the AI voice cloning tool. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is currently developing an AI-powered tool that allows users to replicate the voice of famous musicians while recording audio, according to a new report by Bloomberg. The video streaming giant has reportedly approached music companies to obtain the rights to train its new AI tool on songs from their music catalogs. No deals have yet been signed by any major record label, but Bloomberg's sources claim that discussions between parties are currently ongoing.YouTube unveiled several new AI-powered tools for creators last month, including AI-generated photo and video backgrounds and video topic suggestions. According to Bloomberg's report, YouTube had hoped to include its new audio cloning tool among those announcements but was... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Douglass Mackey, a Twitter user who posted memes and misinformation throughout the 2016 election, was sentenced this week to seven months in prison. Mackey was originally charged in early 2021, was convicted in March of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote, and faced up to 10 years in prison.Mackey, who was known as Ricky Vaughn" on Twitter, spent the months leading up to the 2016 election posting misinformation to his more than 58,000 followers and working with other Twitter users to figure out how to swing the election in favor of Donald Trump. Most of what Vaughn and others posted was just memes, and most of the activity was free speech covered by the First Amendment.But one of Mackey's tactics crossed a different... Continue reading...

The HyperX Cloud III Wireless in all-black (left) and its Cloud II predecessor in black and red (right). | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge The HyperX Cloud III Wireless gaming headset just came out in the summer, but it hasn't gone on sale at all until very recently. The wireless headset for PC, PlayStation, and the Nintendo Switch is selling for $149.99 ($20 off) at Amazon and direct from HyperX. It may look a lot like the last-gen model, but the Cloud III Wireless has made some huge gains in the battery life department. It offers up to 120 hours of use with its 2.4GHz wireless dongle - a dongle, mind you, that also has improved range and a USB-C plug with included USB-A adapter.Overall, the Cloud III is an upgrade over the Cloud II in just about every way. Our own Sean Hollister came away impressed by it in his hands-on time with the new headset, noting that there are... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing three cryptocurrency companies - Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group (DCG) - over claims they misled investors, leading to the loss of over $1 billion. In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, James says their alleged fraudulent schemes affected over 230,000 investors.The lawsuit targets Gemini, the crypto exchange owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and its Earn program. The firm marketed Gemini Earn as a high-yield program that involved customers investing with Genesis Global Capital, which is owned by DCG. However, James alleges that Gemini knew investing with Genesis was risky and misled customers as a result.

If you're an urban-dwelling electric vehicle owner, your public charging options are often limited to slow AC chargers found in tight parking spaces that are too small for typical DC fast chargers. Now Gravity, the company that started an EV taxi fleet in New York City in 2021, designed a compact and super fast DC charging system for big dense cities that can reduce your charging time from hours to just minutes.Gravity's system includes small dispenser boxes that the company calls Distributed Energy Access Points," which can be mounted above or in front of a parking spot and deliver up to a ridiculously high 500kW of energy. That compares to DC fast charging stations from other companies, which have larger stall units and max out at... Continue reading...

Here's something to stop you from hiding your tired face in early morning meetings. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A highly requested feature, according to Google, is finally being introduced in Google Meet that allows users to apply beauty' effects during video calls. Announced in a Google Workspace update on Wednesday, portrait touch-up is currently rolling out to Google Meet on mobile devices for early adopters, with an extended rollout to remaining accounts scheduled to begin on October 28th. Google said it also plans to bring the portrait touch-up feature to Google Meet on the web by the end of 2023."There are two portrait modes available that provide different levels of complexion smoothing, under-eye lightening, and teeth whitening. Subtle" mode, as the name suggests, provides very light cosmetic adjustments, while Smoothing" mode is a... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp is beta testing the ability to send voice messages that can only be listened to once by their intended recipient, WABetaInfo reports.The feature, which is currently only available to a limited number of Android and iOS users running the beta version of the app, is reportedly accessible by tapping a small 1" icon that appears to the right of the voice note waveform when recording. After sending the voice note with the view once mode enabled, you won't be able to listen to it and the recipient can no longer listen to the voice note after dismissing it," WABetaInfo reports.The Meta-owned messaging service already has a similar View Once" feature for photos and videos that it launched in 2021, so it makes sense it would expand... Continue reading...

Solar panels, part of renovations done under the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, sit on the roof of New York City Housing Authority's Ocean Bay Apartments in New York, NY. | Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Biden administration on Thursday announced $100 million in funding to make low-income homes in the US more energy efficient and resilient to climate change. It will also start taking applications Thursday for a new credit program aimed at making it more affordable for low-income communities to install small solar and wind projects. Both programs are funded through the Inflation Reduction Act.New technologies like heat pumps and solar panels that can save energy, lower utility bills, and prevent greenhouse gas emissions often come with a hefty price tag initially. While costs tend to drop over time with greater adoption, this usually leaves low-income households last in line. These programs aim to flip that on its head by offering... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge If you use two different WhatsApp accounts, you'll soon be able to access both from just one device. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that WhatsApp is rolling out the ability to switch between accounts on Android, and you won't need to lug around an extra device or continuously log out of your account to be able to do so.This new feature should make it easier to manage your conversations across multiple accounts, like if you have one WhatsApp account for work and another for messaging friends and family members. It's rolling out in the coming weeks.Meta notes that you'll still need a separate phone number and SIM card (or a phone that accepts multi-SIM or eSIM) if you want to set up a second account. You'll also need the... Continue reading...