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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had its eye on Twitter since well before Elon Musk bought the outfit, but now we have a better idea about what questions it’s been asking lately. Not only have the investigations continued, but the FTC has been looking into the company’s abilities to keep user data secure, the development of the Twitter Blue subscription plan, and pulling together information on the actions of the company’s new owner.As reported by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — part of the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee — revealed the requests in a new report (PDF), calling the FTC’s actions harassment and overreach.According to the... Continue reading…

Image: Toby Fox It’s time for another Xbox Game Pass refresh, which is seeing some interesting games enter the platform and some must-plays leave. You can check out the full list of games heading to Game Pass and the ones falling off on Xbox’s Game Pass website, but I thought I might call out some of them here.Civilization VICivilization VI is coming to game pass on March 16th. I know Civ VI has been out on consoles since 2019, but I am relatively new to and fascinated by the idea of PC strategy games on console. I checked out my beloved Age of Empires II on console earlier this year and found the experience a fairly seamless transition between PC and console. I’m extremely intrigued to check out Civilization VI on Xbox to see what it does differently... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google has announced its annual I/O conference will begin on May 10th. The company says it’ll be “broadcast in front of a limited live audience and is open to everyone online” and that you can register to attend today.This year, the biggest expectations revolve around all of the artificial intelligence technology Google is developing. Expect news about Bard, Google’s answer to ChatGPT, as well as other products to generate images, write code for apps, or test product prototypes. Image: Google The Google I/O 2023 landing page, which looks curiously similar to a tablet or foldable device UI. The conference is typically where we’ll get information about the next version of Android — which Google has already... Continue reading…

Photo by Albert L. Ortega / Getty Images The Star Wars production slate just got a little smaller. According to a report from Variety, a pair of upcoming Star Wars films from Marvel president Kevin Feige and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is no longer in development.We first heard about a potential Star Wars film from Feige and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy back in 2019, but sources close to the situation tell Variety it’s been shelved. The same goes for the Rogue Squadron movie Jenkins was working on, which isn’t all that surprising given its production was delayed in 2021 and pushed back again last year. In December, Jenkins expressed uncertainty about the future of the film, noting at the time she didn’t “know if it will happen or not.”Despite these setbacks, V... Continue reading…

Pedestrians walk through Charles H. Milby Park in front of a refinery in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, March 8th, 2020. | Image: Sharon Steinmann/Bloomberg via Getty Images A controversial tactic for slowing climate change is picking up steam in Texas: capturing carbon dioxide emissions from smokestacks. While that might reduce CO2 emissions heating up the planet, it could pose new problems for communities already saddled with industrial pollution.Oil giant Occidental announced late last week that it leased 55,000 acres along the Gulf Coast of Texas to build out a hub for carbon capture technologies. The idea is to capture carbon dioxide emissions from nearby chemical plants, refineries, and factories. That CO2 then travels via pipeline to underground storage sites within Occidental’s proposed hub.The prospect of these new kinds of pipelines crisscrossing through communities already has some e... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube will ease its restrictions on swearing in videos after an update it rolled out in November sparked backlash from several creators, and the company will be reviewing videos that had their monetization affected by the policy. In a video uploaded to the Creator Insider channel, the company says it reviewed the data on how the new rules were enforced and found that they “resulted in a stricter approach than we intended.” The update means that creators will still be able to make at least some money on videos, even if there’s mild swearing up front, though the restrictions remain confusing and don’t fully revert to the older rules.As a recap, late last year, the company changed its advertiser-friendly content guidelines to say that if... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge If you installed version 531.18 of Nvidia’s drivers that were released with Nvidia’s new RTX Video Super Resolution feature last week, you may have noticed the Nvidia Container app hitting your CPU for more than 10 percent at a time. Nvidia’s latest GeForce drivers have been causing high CPU usage for some PC gamers, and the company is now issuing a hotfix driver today to correct the problems.The new hotfix drivers (531.26) correct the issues, with Nvidia Container no longer hogging the CPU when logging in or when a game is closed. You can download the fixed drivers over at Nvidia’s website.It’s the second time this year that Nvidia has had to issue quick fixes for issues with its GeForce drivers. Last month, a Discord update limited... Continue reading…

Image: Pete Marovich-Pool/Getty Images Gigi Sohn has withdrawn her nomination to serve on the Federal Communications Commission, as first reported by The Washington Post Tuesday.Sohn, a former FCC official and longtime public interest advocate, was nominated as a third Democratic commissioner by President Joe Biden in October 2021. But over the last 16 months, a brutal and oftentimes bad-faith lobbying campaign has continued to block her nomination. That’s left the FCC with a 2–2 partisan split that has blocked many of Biden’s goals for the agency, including reinstating net neutrality rules.“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy”“I could not have imagined that legions of cable and media industry lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for surrogates, and dark money... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Even people who aren’t subscribed to Amazon Prime will be able to watch the football game it’s streaming on Black Friday for free. Amazon’s partnership to stream the Black Friday game, which will be played at 3PM ET on November 24th, was announced late last year, but at the time, it wasn’t clear if it would just be available to people who pay for Prime.Amazon’s press release says that the decision to stream it for free will offer “a free sample of the benefits that come with Prime membership,” which may be a hint as to why the company’s doing it. It could act as a push for NFL fans who may be on the fence about subscribing to Prime Video to access its Thursday Night Football streams, which Amazon has heavily invested in.It’s also a... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Playdate is announcing a suite of new games and a pricing update. The $179 USD handheld is going up by $20, effective April 7th, bumping the price to $199.According to Playdate’s website, the price increase is due to increased manufacturing costs. Makes sense since the price of just about everything (insulin, happily notwithstanding) is going up. Originally, the Playdate was announced at a $149 price point until parent company Panic increased the price to $179 while increasing the number of games players would get for free from 12 to 24, as well as the device’s storage capacity.If you haven’t yet gotten one and if your budget allows (and if you don’t live in one of the many countries where it isn’t available, including its... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge As part of a showcase event, Panic announced that Catalog, a game store for its Playdate handheld, would be launching today. The store is available both on the device and on the web and is described as a “boutique” storefront featuring “software curated by the team at Panic.” As part of the announcement, Panic also announced that the handheld is getting a $20 price bump and will cost $199 starting in April.It was — and still is — possible to sideload games purchased on platforms like Itch.io, but Catalog theoretically makes it easier to find the good stuff. At launch, Catalog has 16 titles, 11 of which are brand-new. Two of those games — Real Steal and Recommendation Dog!! — are being released as a free “bonus” to the season one... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Messenger will soon reunite with the Facebook app. Buried in a blog post that attempts to reassure users that Facebook’s most definitely not dying, Meta officially announced that it’s conducting a test that adds Messenger back into the Facebook app. “You’ll see us expand this testing soon,” Facebook leader Tom Alison writes in the post.Facebook and Messenger first split in 2014, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating at the time that having Messenger as a separate app allows for “a better experience.” Now, Meta’s reversing that change, and it doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Last June, The Verge’s Alex Heath reported on Meta’s plans to finally bring Messenger back into Facebook, while social media consultant Matt Navarra also spotted Meta... Continue reading…

The Ultra was great at detecting when I arrived and left a track. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Apple’s automatic track detection feature is impressively accurate and convenient, even without any calibration. Continue reading…

Image: Niantic Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go, is releasing its next big game very soon. The developer announced that the virtual pet game Peridot, which was first announced last year, will be available on both iOS and Android on May 9th. It’ll be a global launch.I had the chance to check out Peridot last summer, and that early version was an adorable mash-up of Pokémon Go’s augmented reality aspects with a Tamagotchi-style pet sim. In a blog post today, David Hollin, Peridot’s creative director, went into more detail about how the game will work when it does launch:

Sonos isn’t about to make the same mistake twice. In hindsight, its transition in 2020 to a major new software platform, S2, could’ve been communicated better and handled with more consideration for longtime customers. A few very old products were left behind, though only one speaker was affected: the first-generation Play:5. For those devices, Sonos has continued to maintain the old S1 controller app and deliver bug fixes / security patches. But the whole thing got messy and took some time for Sonos to straighten out.So with the introduction of two new speakers at the same time — a first for Sonos — some owners of existing speakers are having flashbacks to the S1 / S2 controversy and wondering if the Era 300 and 100 will mark the... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for $34.99 ($20 off) at multiple retailers today. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sad you missed out on all the good Amazon streaming device deals we saw before the Super Bowl? Turn that frown upside down, because today, they’re back on sale again — and at the perfect time, too, given that we’re just days away from the season finale of The Last of Us. Right now, Amazon, Best Buy, and Target are all selling Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max at an all-time low of $34.99 ($20 off).The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is one of our favorite streaming devices, largely because of how well it integrates with Alexa. With the included remote, you can make voice commands as specific as “turn to ESPN on Sling TV” or just “turn off the lights.” Plus, it offers access to a wide selection of streaming apps, speedy performance, and support for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is working on a TikTok-esque feature and splitting text and video posts into separate feeds, the company announced today. Video content on Reddit will be pulled into the Watch feed view, while text content will appear in the Read feed.The feeds will have a combination of posts from subreddits users are subscribed to, plus recommendations to start over the next few weeks as the company tests how users respond to the split views.Creating a feed dedicated solely to video content is like a “videofication” of the platform, Pali Bhat, Reddit’s chief product officer, said on Decoder today. Bhat says the change will allow Reddit’s 500 million monthly users to engage in the format they’re most interested in and to move between formats... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge ChatGPT is coming to Slack. The Salesforce-owned Slack announced the new AI-powered app on Tuesday that will help you craft replies to your colleagues “in seconds.”Those with access to the app can click the three-dots icon in a thread and hit “Draft reply” instead of typing out the response themselves. It’s still not clear how detailed these responses will get — or if they might get a bit wonky at times. Obviously, you can probably edit any responses to better suit the conversation, but I honestly feel that I can type up a reply in the time it takes to command ChatGPT to write one for me. Image: Slack ChatGPT for the Slack app in action. Additionally, the ChatGPT Slack bot can help you find answers “on any... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge General Motors’ next-generation Ultra Cruise driver-assist system will come equipped with lidar as well as several other high-tech sensors designed to enable hands-free driving and cover “95 percent” of driving maneuvers, the automaker announced today.In its first major update since announcing Ultra Cruise in late 2021, the automaker outlined several of the sensors that will power the driver-assist system, including cameras, short- and long-range radar, and a lidar sensor. The vehicles will also come with an all-new computer to process the data input from the sensors, which the automaker previously indicated would include Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Ride Platform.The lidar will be located inside the vehicle, behind the windshield and... Continue reading…

Giles Martin and Sonos CEO Patrick Spence | Photo illustration: The Verge They join The Vergecast to discuss Sonos’ new Era 300 and 100 speakers, the ins and outs of spatial audio, and why this is the time to get behind it. Continue reading…

Both Era speakers launch together on March 28th. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Available for preorder today and shipping March 28th, both speakers make a good first impression with new features and upgraded sound. Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge If you’re a PC gamer, then you’re probably familiar with Steam — but there’s more to Valve’s application than just launching your games. Dig a little deeper into the software, and you’ll find numerous options and features that you can take advantage of.These can change the look of Steam, make it easier to find your games, improve your Steam store recommendations, and plenty more.We’ve picked out 11 of our favorites below.Download games remotely You can manage game downloads from anywhere you can access a web browser. You don’t have to be sitting in front of your PC to install games: as long as your computer is switched on and connected to the web with the Steam client running, you can manage game... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple is releasing a new yellow colorway for the iPhone 14. Unlike last year, the new color variant won’t be available for the Pro models and will only ship with the base iPhone 14 and the 14 Plus.The new yellow adds a nice pop of color to the device that otherwise comes in black, blue, purple, white, and red. We last saw a yellow iPhone with the release of the iPhone 11 back in 2019, the successor of the yellow iPhone XR that launched in 2018. In addition to the new iPhone color, Apple also released several new spring-themed Watch band colors and silicone iPhone cases. Image: Apple Apple has released a new iPhone color every spring for a few years now, revealing an “alpine green” iPhone 13 and 13 Pro last spring,... Continue reading…

Usernames have been reserved for current Medium subscription members until March 20th. | Image: The Verge Popular publishing platform Medium is now fully embracing the Twitter alternative Mastodon by opening up its new me.dm instance to paying Medium community members. Joining the Mastodon server requires a subscription to Medium for $5 per month (or $50 per year) which enables perks on the site like ad-free browsing and offline reading. Mastodon instances are generally free to join.Medium is one of the first notable tech companies to utilize Mastodon as a premium social media experience, which is interesting given the publishing company’s historic connections with Twitter. Medium co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone also co-founded Twitter back in 2007. A great deal of Mastodon’s recent success was born out of ongoing turmoil with Twitter... Continue reading…

Uber’s app is adding walking directions inside airports to get you to the baggage claim and out the door. | Image: Uber We’ve somehow gone years without Uber holding our hands from the gate to the baggage claim area, out the door, and to an Uber pickup zone where a normal reserved Uber X ride is waiting for us. Now the company is making all of that possible: giving users full walking instructions — complete with photos — for various airports, adjusted ETA times that include walking to baggage claim, and expanding Uber Reserve options that includes booking rides up to 90 days in advance.“You’re not just getting to and from the airport, but also getting through it with less stress,” Uber’s head of product for rides, Jen You, states in a press release. Step-by-step directions from gate to baggage claim to Uber pickup are rolling out to 30 airports worldwide... Continue reading…

The LCD panel used by the 2022 iPhone SE (above) will likely be replaced by a 6.1-inch OLED from Chinese supplier BOE. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge China-based display maker BOE (Beijing Oriental Electronics) has a complicated relationship with Apple. But despite some missteps, it looks like the two companies will be working together for a while longer, at least: a new report from The Elec (spotted by MacRumors) pegs BOE as the display supplier for the rumored iPhone SE 4. This latest report comes as Apple is allegedly working on its own display tech — and trying to lessen reliance on its main display maker and rival, Samsung.Things got off to a rough start with Apple in 2020 when some of BOE’s screens for the iPhone 12 reportedly failed quality tests. Later, Apple caught BOE making unapproved changes to its iPhone 13 display design. And while BOE eventually secured a deal to make... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge If you notice that emails from salespeople or responses from customer support agents seem a bit off — or that they’ve gotten a significant bump in writing quality — you may be have AI to thank. Microsoft has announced that it’ll be introducing AI features into Dynamics 365, its set of enterprise apps for customer relationship management and resource planning.The company calls the set of features “CoPilot,” and is pitching it as a way to help businesspeople “create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actions.” That involves things like having an AI write customizable emails to customers and automatically generate meeting summaries, write a response to customer service chats and emails... Continue reading…

Outlook for Mac is now free on the App Store. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is making Outlook for Mac free to use today. Outlook is now available free in Apple’s App Store, and you no longer need a Microsoft 365 subscription or Office license to use it. It’s a surprise move that coincides with Microsoft’s push to make its Windows desktop Outlook email client more web-powered.Outlook for Mac includes support for Outlook.com accounts, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, and any email provider that has IMAP support. Microsoft redesigned its Mac email client in 2020, with a user interface that’s optimized for Apple’s latest macOS design changes. Image: Microsoft Outlook for Mac will soon support menu bar peek. Outlook for Mac is also optimized for M1 and M2 chips and has a macOS widget for... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge As Microsoft and Google butt heads over whose AI chatbot is better, that isn’t the only use for machine learning and language models. Along with rumored plans to show off more than 20 products powered by artificial intelligence during its annual I/O event this year, Google’s progressing toward its goal of building an AI language model that supports 1,000 different languages. In an update posted on Monday, Google shared more information about the Universal Speech Model (USM), a system Google describes as a “critical first step” in realizing its goals.Last November, the company announced its plans to create a language model supporting 1,000 of the world’s most-spoken languages while also revealing its USM model. Google describes USM as “a... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s website is breaking in novel new ways — and while the company managed to recover from its latest outage within a couple of hours, the story behind how it broke suggests there are likely to be similar problems in the near future.On Monday morning, Twitter users logged on to find a thicket of connected issues. Clicking on links would no longer open them; instead, users would see a mysterious error message reporting that “your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.” Images stopped loading as well. Other users reported that they could not access TweetDeck, the Twitter-owned client for professional users.Chaos took over the timeline, as users tweeted vociferously about the outage — often illustrating their... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google has started to roll out an updated UI for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides that’s meant to fit in with its Material Design 3 language. The apps still work the same way they used to, but Google writes in an announcement post that they should now be a bit more “simplified,” with less clutter and a few improvements and additions.Writing about the update when it was announced in February, my colleague Jay Peters noted that it’s similar to Gmail’s new look, which makes sense given that Google says it’s trying to “streamline core collaboration journeys across our products.” GIF: Google Easily accessible filters are a nice new feature coming with the design update. I’ll point you toward Jay’s article... Continue reading…

It’s a big screen. | Image: Samsung Samsung has announced that its Odyssey Neo G7 monitor, which it revealed earlier this year, will cost $999.99 and is available today. For the money, you’ll be getting a 43-inch 4K Mini LED display that can run at 144Hz along with Samsung’s Smart Hub software that lets you use streaming services like GeForce Now, Xbox Game Pass, and Netflix without having to connect to a computer or console.Samsung says the display has a matte coating that should help cut down on reflections and glare and that it has VESA Display HDR600 certification and FreeSync Premium Pro. The monitor also includes a healthy selection of I/O, including two HDMI 2.1 ports (one of which supports eArc), a DisplayPort 1.4 connector, and two USB 3 Type-A ports. It also... Continue reading…

Troy Baker as James in The Last of Us. | HBO Even now, The Last of Us’ Troy Baker is still learning new things about the franchise’s characters, like cannibal cultist James from episode 8, When We Are in Need. Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge German and Ukrainian police raided the homes of individuals linked to a prominent cybercrime group that stole millions from large companies and organizations over the course of several years. The authorities worked with Europol and the FBI last month to investigate the residences of members of the hacking group, which often goes by the names Indrik Spider, Double Spider, and Grief.The group notably waged a ransomware attack on the Düsseldorf University Hospital in 2020 using its DoppelPaymer ransomware. At the time, German police blamed the attack for the death of a patient who had to be transferred to another hospital due to systemwide corruption. It also carried out an attack on the UK’s National Health Service in 2017 and took... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter had some problems Monday morning — starting just before noon ET, clicking links within tweets didn’t work, and for many people, images wouldn’t load throughout their timelines. It took a little less than an hour for most parts of the site to start working again.During the partial outage, trying to click a link showed only an error message that said “your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.” People also seemed to get the error when visiting the site in Incognito mode or if they weren’t logged in.

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is getting ready to publicly test major new Windows features even earlier. While the software giant has been previewing changes to Windows for nearly a decade, a new Canary channel for Windows Insiders will allow anyone to try out “hot off the presses” builds of Windows that include major changes to the kernel, APIs, and other big parts of Windows. It feels like this new Canary channel is preparation work for Windows 12, which Intel and Microsoft have both been hinting at recently.“The new Canary Channel is going to be the place to preview platform changes that require longer-lead time before getting released to customers,” says Amanda Langowski, Microsoft’s head of the Windows Insider program, in a blog post today. “Some... Continue reading…

Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images Florida has been a hotbed of government speech regulations under Governor Ron DeSantis, who has lately even taken to saying he will control Disney’s content. So it’s not surprising to see other Republican lawmakers in the state take broader shots at the First Amendment — but I was admittedly not expecting the latest one to be a blogger registry.As covered by WFLA last week, state Senator Jason Brodeur has proposed a bill that would require “bloggers” who are compensated for writing about any Florida elected official to register with a state agency — either the Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics, depending on the post’s subject. Registered bloggers must then submit monthly reports disclosing any posts they’ve... Continue reading…