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Amazon’s newest Echo Dot is just one of many devices available at an all-time low. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Spring has sprung, and to celebrate that fact, Amazon naturally decided to discount a bunch of random devices mostly unrelated to the season. That’s good news for us, though. Given Mother’s Day and graduation season are just around the corner, the ongoing sale makes for a nice opportunity to pick up some of Amazon’s most popular items at a fraction of their typical list price. The promo extends to top-of-the-line streaming sticks like the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, as well as the newest Echo Dot, the entry-level Kindle, and even Amazon’s Fire TV Omni QLED. Even better, retailers like Best Buy are matching Amazon’s prices.Of course, as with any sale, not all the deals are that great, so we’ve gone ahead and vetted them to save you the... Continue reading…

Image: Walmart Walmart is planning to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network at thousands of its stores, including Sam’s Club locations. The company says it plans to have the network built by 2030 and will help make EV ownership “more accessible, reliable, convenient and affordable.”“Currently, Walmart has nearly 1,300 third-party chargers across 280 stores in partnership with third-party suppliers,” Walmart’s director of global communications – sustainability, Aman Singh, writes in an email with The Verge. This newly announced expansion has the company building a nationwide EV fast charging network on its own instead.Walmart believes it is “uniquely positioned” to build out a convenient charging solution for EV owners. The company... Continue reading…

Who could have guessed? | Illustration: Micha Huigen / The Verge All kinds of unwanted users — ransomware gangs, thieves, scammers, and North Korea — are merrily transacting in decentralized finance and even laundering funds, according to a new report from the Treasury Department. That’s because DeFi doesn’t comply with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism finance laws.Poor compliance with anti-money laundering as well as poor cybersecurity puts DeFi users at risk of theft and fraud, the Treasury says.In the US, the Bank Secrecy Act — and some other regulations — mean that financial institutions have to help the government detect money laundering. In this paper, the Treasury notes that a DeFi service might well be a financial institution under the BSA, even if it’s decentralized, and will have... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Disney has created a new “chief brand officer” role to oversee Disney’s brand across “the entire ecosystem of company touchpoints and consumer experiences,” the company announced on Thursday. Asad Ayaz, the company’s president of marketing for The Walt Disney Studios, will be taking the post and report directly to recently returned CEO Bob Iger.As part of his chief brand officer duties, Ayaz will make marketing campaigns “leveraging and synthesizing the company’s full suite of content and consumer experiences,” set “corporate synergy” and “franchise priorities” with Iger, and “lead a global consumer research and analytics function focused on Disney’s brands,” according to the press release.The new role could help Disney wrangle how... Continue reading…

The new WhiteFox Eclipse. | Image: Alpaca Keyboards The WhiteFox Eclipse is a new wireless mechanical keyboard that harks back to a classic community design. It’s based on the original WhiteFox, a project that played a big part in bringing custom keyboards into the mainstream, but with an updated set of specs and features that reflect just how much the scene has moved on since designer Matteo Spinelli hand-wired the original precursor to the WhiteFox back in 2013.Obviously, that means the Eclipse is hot-swappable, allowing its stock Gateron Yellow Linear switches to be quickly removed and replaced without the need for desoldering, and it’s gasket-mounted to give it a softer feeling as you type. It’s also wireless, with a 4,000mAh battery that manufacturer Alpaca Keyboards reckons should... Continue reading…

From controllers to microSD cards, there are all sorts of accessories you’ll need to make the most of your Switch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Nintendo Switch is now the third-bestselling console of all time, having shipped more than 120 million units since it launched in 2017. If you’re one of the millions of people that own the hybrid system, odds are you already have everything you need. However, if you’re someone who recently picked up the console or you’re currently looking to purchase one, there are a handful of accessories that will make your gaming experience far more enjoyable (and convenient).Whether you need a controller, a carrying case, or a pair of wireless headphones, we’ve rounded up the best accessories you can buy to supplement your experience gaming on the Nintendo Switch. Just note that while many of these accessories can be used with any Switch model... Continue reading…

Mini Golf FRVR for Facebook Gaming, now available during a Messenger video call. | Image: Meta Meta’s Facebook Gaming division is making Messenger video calls more interesting with a new set of free-to-play games you can now access with your friends while you chat face to face, no matter where you are. The feature comes fairly late in the post-covid lockdown world but is great for quick sessions of Words with Friends, Mini Golf FRVR, and Exploding Kittens (via Engadget).The best part of the new Messenger video call gaming feature is how accessible they are for Facebook users. All you need to do is initiate a video call with one or multiple friends, tap the group mode button in the center, select the Play icon, and then select a game in the library presented to you — no downloading or installation required.In 2018, Facebook... Continue reading…

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta’s company-wide job cuts impacted the customer service team it had just started to build, leaving influencers and group admins grappling with scammers and technical difficulties, according to a report from CNBC.CNBC says it spoke with former Meta employees and viewed documents filed with the US Department of Labor that indicate the company’s massive layoffs affected workers across Facebook and Instagram’s customer support, customer experience, and communities teams. Meta laid off 11,000 employees last November and cut an additional 10,000 workers in March.Meta announced its plans to build a customer support team last year, with Brent Harris, Meta’s vice president of governance, stating the company was “spending a bunch of time” on... Continue reading…

The Mac Mini design may be a bit old now, but it’s still pretty dang adorable for a desktop. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s brilliant M2-powered Mac Mini in its expanded configuration with 512GB of storage is selling for $689.99 at Amazon. That’s a sizable savings of $110 on the little desktop, making it an easy recommendation for anyone who needs a basic computer for their home. The M2 Mac Mini looks like most other Mac Minis, but it sports the same processor as the latest MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like those laptops, you get two Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C ports, but the Mini also provides you with two USB-A ports, an ethernet port, and an HDMI port — oh, and it’s much, much cheaper. It has the same eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU of the base configuration, but the much roomier 512GB of storage makes life more convenient before you’re forced to... Continue reading…

The Apple Lisa, 40 years later. | Illustration: The Verge The Apple Lisa was not, by nearly any definition, a hit product. Released in 1983, the ambitious but flawed machine was instantly overshadowed by Apple’s follow-up, the 1984 Macintosh — which helped cement the computer as a fixture in homes and offices worldwide.But the design language of the Lisa is the design language of modern computers. It was one of the first machines to use the metaphor of a desktop, including things like folders, icons, and application windows that mimicked sheets of paper. Apple drew inspiration from outside sources, particularly the Alto, a groundbreaking machine developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. But it iterated on the formula with obsessive user testing that adapted to first-time users’... Continue reading…

The Moto G Power 5G is a little pricier this year, but it promises some meaningful upgrades. | Image: Motorola The 2023 version of Motorola’s all-about-battery-life Moto G Power trades some of that battery life for modern conveniences. In addition to 5G, a nicer screen and more powerful processor are on offer, so Moto’s battery claims aren’t as lofty this year, and the price is higher. While last year’s 128GB model sold for $249, this year’s edition starts at $299. Still, it might make for a budget phone that’s worth buying.Along with a huge 5,000mAh battery, the Motorola Moto G Power 5G (Lord help me; that is actually the full product name) includes a MediaTek Dimensity 930 processor with 4GB of RAM. By the looks of it, that should be a serious upgrade from the 4G-only Helio G37 chip in the 2022 Moto G Power, which, by several accounts, stank.... Continue reading…

Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge In July 2022, the world watched with bated breath as Twitter sued Elon Musk. No one knew whether the deal was going to happen or whether it had all been an elaborate troll to begin with. (The two weren’t mutually exclusive, either.) Billions of dollars and the fate of a major worldwide social media network hung in the balance. The lawsuit was, in some ways, unprecedented. Legal experts found themselves besieged with all kinds of tricky questions.For example, was this the first time the poop emoji showed up in court? The answer is no. In 2018, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Emerson v. Dart in which a corrections officer, Paula Emerson, sued the county alleging workplace discrimination. While the... Continue reading…

Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge The logout button has become practically defunct. Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Minecraft Legends is a strategy spinoff of Minecraft — but it might also be the next competitive multiplayer craze. I had a chance to spend a few hours with the game last month at GDC in San Francisco, and while it seems like it has a solid campaign to dig into, I had a lot more fun with the team-based multiplayer. It’s kind of like Minecraft mashed with League of Legends and StarCraft, and in the one match I played, it involved a lot of yelling (in a good way).Legends is built on the same “bedrock” engine as the main Minecraft game, and the two look pretty much identical. You control a blocky little character running through a similarly blocky world. The difference here is what you’re doing. To get acclimated, I first played around two... Continue reading…

It’s a great time to be a Ken. | Image: Capcom The Street Fighter franchise is getting a new movie. Capcom announced on Wednesday that it’s working on the film in partnership with Legendary Entertainment, with “more news to come in the future” about the project.The new film isn’t a total surprise. On April 3rd, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Legendary acquired the film and TV rights to the series. But now we officially know there’s a new movie to look forward to at some point down the line. And while you wait, you might want to catch up on the other Street Fighter movies that have come out: the famous “but for me, it was Tuesday” meme was spoken by Raúl Juliá’s M. Bison in the 1994 Street Fighter film, for example, and there was a Chun-Li-focused movie released in 2009.

Twenty years ago, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Bill Lawrence’s Clone High ended on a cliffhanger that left all of its teenaged clones of famous historical figures flash-frozen by John Stamos on their prom night. Today, HBO Max decided to start thawing those same clones out.Ahead of its debut this spring, HBO Max just dropped the first teaser trailer for the Clone High revival, which seems like it’s going to pick right back up where the original MTV series left off.Though Gandhi won’t be coming back in the new show, all it takes is a little bit of heat from a set of blow-dryers to unfreeze the teenaged versions of Abe Lincoln (Will Forte), Joan of Arc (Nicole Sullivan), JFK (Chris Miller), and Cleopatra (Mitra Jouhari) — all of... Continue reading…