The Verge

Illustration: The Verge X giveth, and now X taketh away. The platform is eliminating the ability for Premium users to hide their blue checkmarks, according to a notification received by multiple users on Thursday. X made displaying the blue check optional last summer, and it's unclear exactly why the platform plans to remove the feature - or when.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images, The Verge Discord has shut down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi and has completely disabled their lead developers' accounts - and the company isn't answering our questions about why it went that far. Both Suyu and Sudachi began as forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th.Discord responds to and complies with all legal and valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act requests. In this instance, there was also a court ordered injunction for the takedown of these materials, and we took action in a manner consistent with the court order," reads part of a statement from Discord director of product communications Kellyn Slone to The Verge.The developers of Suyu and Sudachi only... Continue reading...

Image: Dbrand Dbrand, the phone case company known for its sassy attitude toward users and tech companies, gave $10,000 to a customer as an apology after it made a racist comment about their last name.On Tuesday, Dbrand reposted a complaint from a customer, Bhuwan Chitransh, who said that the skin they purchased for their MacBook changed color after just two months. Dbrand replied with a crude message that rhymed the customer's name with rash." Chitransh later responded, saying Dbrand's post reflects its racist perspective toward Indian customers.The following day, the company said that it had made a huge fumble." Dbrand said it apologized to Chitransh and offered him $10,000 as a gesture of goodwill." However, Dbrand didn't delete the original... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Following Paramount's move to add Showtime programming to certain Paramount Plus streaming plans, the Showtime standalone streaming platform is coming to an end.Variety reports that Showtime streaming subscribers have begun receiving notices that they will no longer be able to access the platform after April 30th. Going forward, subscribers will have to sign up for the $11.99 per month Paramount Plus with Showtime plan. Paramount Global announced its intentions to shutter the Showtime platform last year after also rebranding the traditional Showtime network as "Paramount Plus with Showtime."Though this whole renaming process has been awkward, Paramount's following through on its plan to fully subsume the Showtime brand. And while... Continue reading...

Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry.Hi, everyone - I'm starting off today with some big news to share: next week will be my last at Hot Pod and The Verge. Before coming here, all I wanted was to cover the podcasting industry, and I still can't believe I managed to get a job doing just that. Even when the news was bad (which, let's be real, was often), I was buoyed by the passion and innovation of this community. It's been a real privilege getting to know so many of you.I'll have a few more stories coming out before I leave as well as some final thoughts on the state of the industry. My colleague Jake Kastrenakes has a note below with more information about the newsletter moving forward.As... Continue reading...

The countdown to Google I/O starts now. | Image: The Verge / Android Android 15's first public beta is available to download now, provided you have a Pixel phone and a bit of a sense of adventure. It's the first consumer-facing release after two developer previews, and while we have a good idea of what to expect from Google's next mobile OS version, we'll certainly hear more at the company's annual developer conference soon enough.The blog post highlighting updates in today's release covers some pretty pedestrian stuff. Apps will scale edge to edge by default and will draw behind translucent system bars on the top and bottom of the screen, rather than around them. There's OS-level support for app archiving and unarchiving so third-party app stores can take advantage of this feature. Android 15 will also... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber has launched a new safety preferences section that gathers all of Uber's safety tools in one place and lets users schedule them to switch on automatically.Some of the safety tools you can customize include audio recording - which saves encrypted audio of the trip that Uber can use to investigate reported incidents - and PIN verification, so you can ensure you're entering the right vehicle. You can also share your live location and ride details with people you trust via ShareMyTrip, while RideCheck notifies Uber when a ride suddenly stops or goes off-course.You can choose to activate all of Uber's safety features by default for every ride or customize your settings based on time and location. For example, you can set it to turn on... Continue reading...

Executives hold shovels during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Occidental Petroleum and 1PointFive carbon removal plant in Ector County, Texas, on April 28th, 2023. | Image: Jordan Vonderhaar / Bloomberg via Getty Images Attempting to filter enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to make a significant impact on climate change would require hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending, according to a new report.The suite of technologies emerging to attempt that task all fall under an umbrella called carbon dioxide removal, or CDR. It's still risky and astronomically expensive. But there's been growing chatter about it, particularly as the US continues producing record amounts of oil and gas.According to the new report by research firm Rhodium Group, the US needs to spend roughly $100 billion a year on CDR in order to scale up to a level that would help the country meet its climate goals. A majority of that needs to come in the form of... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft is trying to entice Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 with fullscreen prompts 18 months before the end of support cutoff. Reddit user Woopinah9 spotted a notification while in the middle of working," where Microsoft thanks Windows 10 customers" for their loyalty with a full-screen message and then explains the end of support date. You might be expecting a free upgrade as part of this interruption, but unfortunately for this Reddit user, their PC can't upgrade to Windows 11, so it's more hey check out this cool thing we have! oh but you cant have it," as one Redditor puts it.While Some Windows 10 users will see this prompt and be able to upgrade to Windows 11, this Reddit user, in particular, has one of the many... Continue reading...

Image: Yoto If your kid uses this Yoto Mini speaker, take it away immediately. Yoto has recalled the popular speaker due to a charging cable issue that causes the lithium-ion battery to overheat and catch fire, posing a burn and fire risk.The recall affects the Yoto Mini speakers sold nationwide from November 2021 through April 2024. It includes 251,165 devices in the US and 19,721 in Canada with the PRPLXX00860 SKU. You can find the SKU number, along with the speaker's serial number and model name, on the base of the device. There haven't been any reported injuries. Image: US Consumer Product Safety Commission The recall affects Yoto Mini speakers with the SKU PRPLXX00860. You won't have to get rid of the entire device.... Continue reading...

Photo by Neilson Barnard / Getty Images for The Recording Academy Taylor Swift's catalog of music has returned to TikTok, just a few months after it was purged alongside other popular artists represented by Universal Music Group (UMG).In January, UMG and TikTok's licensing deal expired, and the companies took turns blaming each other for why fans would no longer be able to use UMG artists' music on the app. UMG argued that TikTok wasn't willing to pay what it wanted and that allowing AI-generated content on the app was sponsoring artist replacement" by the technology. Meanwhile, TikTok said UMG was being greedy and that it was able to come to agreements with every other label and publisher.It's not immediately clear how Swift's music has made its way back to TikTok - as Variety noted, Swift may... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony is changing up the strategy around its mainstream wireless headphones and speakers. Today, the company is announcing several new products and introducing a new brand, ULT Power Sound, to go with them. Any kind of actual name" is an improvement from years past, when Sony would typically just refer to devices by their model number. And as the branding implies, all of these new products - three speakers and one pair of headphones - focus on lively, bass-forward sound.All of them also have an ULT button that can cycle between different sound modes depending on how much bass emphasis you want. ULT1 gets you deeper, lower frequency bass," while ULT2 delivers powerful, punchy bass." And yes, apparently there's a difference between... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Apple is continuing its run of streaming sci-fi with the upcoming Dark Matter, a thriller about a man who... kidnaps himself. The first trailer looks appropriately trippy and follows a physicist played by Joel Edgerton who is abducted into an alternate version of his life." The show involves him trying to get home while navigating this new multiversal reality, which is powered by a big black box that he invented.The nine-episode-long show is based on the novel of the same name by Blake Crouch and also stars Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, and Oakes Fegley. It starts streaming on May 8th with a two-episode premiere, and subsequent episodes debut on Wednesdays after that.Dark Matter joins a growing list of... Continue reading...

The tempo restrictions effectively ban most popular Western music in the region of Chechnya, if it wasn't already restricted. | Image: Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images People partial to a shindig in the Russian republic of Chechnya are about to find their music options will be rather limited. The region is introducing a ban on tunes that don't conform to the Chechen sense of rhythm." In a statement translated by The Guardian, Chechnya's Culture Ministry announced last week, From now on all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute," effectively criminalizing anything the region considers to be too fast or too slow.The ban requires local artists to rewrite their music to comply with the restrictions by June 1st, or else they won't be allowed to perform publicly. Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible," said Chechen Culture... Continue reading...

DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo is announcing a new bundled subscription service, Privacy Pro, that offers an additional layer of privacy beyond its existing offerings. Users who pay $9.99 per month will get access to a VPN that uses the open-source WireGuard protocol, on-device personal information removal, and 24/7 identity theft restoration. While users of DuckDuckGo's private browser and/or search engine are no fans of online tracking, PrivacyPro seems geared towards the most cautious of its user-base - who are also willing to pay extra for an encrypted internet connection.DuckDuckGo's full array of offerings have long been free to use, including its browser, search engine, various plug-ins, even its email protection service. PrivacyPro is the... Continue reading...

The new protections for blurring nude images will start rolling out globally in the coming weeks. | Image: Meta Instagram is preparing to roll out a new safety feature that blurs nude images in messages, as part of efforts to protect minors on the platform from abuse and sexually exploitative scams.Announced by Meta on Thursday, the new feature - which both blurs images detected to contain nudity and discourages users from sending them - will be enabled by default for teenage Instagram users, as identified by the birthday information on their account. A notification will also encourage adult users to turn it on.These efforts follow longstanding criticism that platforms like Facebook and Instagram have caused harm to their youngest users, from harming children's mental health and body image, to knowingly platforming abusive parents and creating... Continue reading...

The new 2024 VanMoof S5 in Amsterdam where the majority of this UK-owned company still works. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Big question: can you trust the new company to build a better S5 and A5 electric bike? Continue reading...

A long list of features, but how many do you really need? Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Two former executives of the firm that recently purchased Truth Social are embroiled in a lawsuit related to the acquisition of Trump's social media company, Wired reports. The former CEO of the Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) - the special purpose acquisition company that was created to purchase the Trump Media & Technology Group - is suing his successor for allegedly hacking his private accounts as part of a coup d'etat."The details are fairly messy. Patrick Orlando, the CEO of DWAC until March 2023, claims he was ousted by Eric Swider, a Trump Media board member who was appointed CEO immediately after Orlando was fired. (Swider served as CEO until March of this year.) Orlando filed the suit against Swider through the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook rolled out the ability for Messenger users to share 4K photos back in 2017. Now, Meta has announced that users can share HD photos in the app. Confused? We were, too, so we asked about it. The short answer is that, here, HD means 4K, and now 4K photos are... more 4K?Facebook Messenger comms team representative Liz Sweeney clarified in an email to The Verge that 4K (specifically, 4,096 x 4,096 pixels per inch) shared photos were more compressed before, and how they looked was dependent on the network conditions of both the sender and receiver." Now, Sweeney says they won't be as heavily compressed, and users will have a new HD" button that enables 4K sharing. And if you don't tap the button, photos will share in 2K instead. ... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Another Apple Store is trying to unionize. This time, it's a group of 104 employees in Short Hills, New Jersey, who filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Tuesday, as reported earlier by Bloomberg.If the unionization efforts are successful, the Apple Store employees would join the Communications Workers of America - the union that represents other Apple Store employees, along with employees of AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, and more.Four other Apple Stores have moved to unionize within the past couple of years, but only the retail locations in Oklahoma City and Townson, Maryland, have successfully formed a union. These efforts haven't come without some pushback from Apple, however.Last year, the NLRB... Continue reading...

You can get a lower-end TU690T for free when you preorder Samsung's glare-free QD-OLED S95D. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Who doesn't want a free TV? If you were eyeing Samsung's new anti-glare OLED or one of the many models it announced back at CES, Samsung and Amazon are both still offering a free 65-inch TV when you preorder select 2024 models. You'll have to act quickly, though, as the ongoing buy one, get one promo ends tomorrow, April 11th.Granted, the free TV is an entry-level TU690T from 2022, which is a pretty basic 4K TV with a 60Hz panel and only two HDMI ports. But if you were already thinking of picking up the 2024 version of Samsung's OLED S95D, its artsy Frame TV, the Neo QLED 8K, or Neo QLED 4K, the TU69OT can still serve as a decent secondary TV for a spare bedroom or garage. It lacks modern features like local dimming and variable... Continue reading...

It's looking like the troubled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake has lost one of its most important assets: Yuri Lowenthal, the voice actor who played the prince, famously narrated the entirety of the original 2003 game, and is currently renowned for playing Peter Parker's Spider-Man in the excellent Insomniac games.Yesterday, Tom Henderson, currently one of the most trusted voices in gaming leaks, reported that you should forget everything you know" about the Prince of Persia remake - and revealed that Lowenthal would no longer be in the role.Ubisoft would not tell me whether he's still attached to the project; Lowenthal's agent said he can't comment because he's under an NDA. Those non-denials are not confirmation, but... Continue reading...

The Aqara Motion and Light Sensor P2 is the company's first motion sensor that doesn't require a Zigbee hub. Aqara's Thread-based Motion and Light Sensor P2 ($33.99) has been on my smart home wish list since it was announced way back in 2022 - and now, it's finally here. My home runs on motion sensors, and I've been using Aqara's Zigbee-based ones for years. They're among my favorites due to their low price, small size, simplicity, and rock-solid reliability. But they require a hub, which adds complexity and makes them harder to recommend.What makes the new P2 different is that it uses Matter-over-Thread instead of Zigbee. This means that, in theory, it will connect directly to your smart home platform of choice - Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, etc. - no Aqara Zigbee hub needed. It's also $10 cheaper than the Eve Motion ($49.95), the... Continue reading...

Art from the Monopoly mobile game produced by Marmalade Game Studio. | Image: Marmalade Game Studio / Hasbro Monopoly - a board game about forcing people into bankruptcy by buying up as much real estate as possible - does not seem like something that would make for an entertaining cinematic escape from reality, but Lionsgate plans to test that theory.Variety reports that a Monopoly movie is in the works at Lionsgate that will be produced by Margot Robbie's LuckyChap - the same outfit that backed Birds of Prey, Barbie, and Saltburn. In a statement about the new film, Lionsgate film head Adam Fogelson expressed his confidence in LuckyChap's clear point of view" on the Monopoly IP and excitement about the possibility of the game becoming another blockbuster for the production outfit.Hasbro, which also owns the rights to the Transformers IP, has... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is previewing a new Xbox Cloud Gaming interface today that includes the social features and UI you'd normally find in the Xbox dashboard. The new interface includes access to a web version of Xbox party chat, so you can use a browser to join a call with friends instead of the dedicated Xbox desktop and mobile apps.The updated web interface also includes the ability to find and manage Xbox friends, send messages, view user profiles and achievements, and even access notifications. Microsoft is testing this initially with Xbox Insiders before rolling this interface out to all Xbox Cloud Gaming users.As this new interface is part of Xbox Cloud Gaming, most of it will also be available on smart TVs and Meta's Quest VR headsets,... Continue reading...