The Verge

The Verge Disney is ending Disney Movie Club, the subscription service and online store where fans could buy Blu-ray or DVDs of films from the House of Mouse. The Digital Bits is reporting that the closure follows a new deal that Disney has signed with Sony, under which Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will take over all physical media production. The news of Disney Movie Club's shuttering was delivered to the service's 10 million US users by email, as well as the service's website on Tuesday.We've enjoyed serving you for the last 23 years, but consumer behavior and viewing preferences continue to evolve so we have made the tough decision to close Disney Movie Club," wrote Disney Movie Club in a statement viewed by The Wrap. Disney Movie Club... Continue reading...

Green Bay Packers vs. the San Francisco 49ers on January 20th, 2024. | Photo by Michael Zagaris / San Francisco 49ers / Getty Images Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery's surprise partnership to create a sports streaming platform hasn't sat well with the TV streaming service Fubo. Today, Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit against the three companies following what it calls a years-long campaign to block Fubo's innovative sports-first streaming business" at consumers' expense.Fubo CEO David Gandler said that the three companies had blocked our playbook for many years, and now they are effectively stealing it for themselves." Fubo has styled itself as a sports-focused" streaming service, but the company says restrictive licensing terms from sports networks have limited its options. It argues that unfair" bundling terms have made it pay for and distribute... Continue reading...

Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Hector H3CZ" Rodriguez, CEO of OpTic Gaming, is suing Activision Blizzard for alleged monopolistic practices regarding the publisher's Call of Duty esports league.Rodriguez - whose company owned and operated the Call of Duty League's OpTic Texas team - and now-retired OpTic player Seth Scump" Abner are seeking $680 million in damages. In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the pair claim that Activision Blizzard's unlawful 100 percent monopoly" over the league forced them into financially ruinous partnerships at the risk of being unable to compete in the League.Before the arrival of the Call of Duty League, competitive Call of Duty tournaments were hosted by independent third-party organizers and featured an open" structure whereby any team... Continue reading...

The Zenfone 10 was a little-ish phone with big ambitions. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge As phone sizes trended upward, one small device stood its ground year after year: the Asus Zenfone. That appears to be changing soon, and if you're a card-carrying member of the small phone fan club like me, then it's only appropriate to take a moment to observe its passing.Asus, to its credit, isn't keeping us waiting in suspense. The company posted a teaser for the Zenfone 11 Ultra that leaves little to the imagination: an animated graphic showing its display growing in size with text that reads, Expand your vision." Image: Asus A formal announcement is timed for March 14th, while a handful of other teaser clips tout its ultra size" and long-lasting battery life. It doesn't exactly keep you guessing. ... Continue reading...

Image: Y!Mobile Foldable phones generally aren't affordable, but maybe that's about to change? In Japan, the new ZTE Libero Flip is going on sale for just $420 - or $265 on preorder. That's a fraction of the $1,000 that Samsung charges for its latest Galaxy Z Flip, and nearly as low as the clearance-sale refurbished old Flips you can still find on Amazon and thereabouts.With a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7-series chip, the Libero Flip isn't exactly a high-end phone, but its 6.9-inch, 2790 x 1188 foldable OLED panel is slightly larger than the Samsung, and it may have a slightly larger battery at 4,310mAh vs. 3,700mAh. (Please ask your manufacturers to report those in watt-hours so we can properly compare.) Image: ZTE The ZTE Libero... Continue reading...

The Orca carbon removal and storage facility operated by Climeworks in Hellisheidi, Iceland. | Image: Arnaldur Halldorsson / Bloomberg via Getty Images The EU took a significant step toward legitimizing technologies that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by agreeing to set up a certification process.The European Council and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement today to create the first-of-its-kind certification framework for carbon removal technologies. The new climate tech has yet to prove itself at scale, but the EU is already folding it into its plan to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Net zero implies that the bloc would resort to capturing any remaining CO2 emissions that it hasn't been able to prevent, either by harnessing the natural ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide or by building technologies that filter CO2 out of the air or s... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Enforcers from the US and UK disrupted a ransomware group they say has targeted more than 2,000 victims and taken over $120 million in ransom payments. They even got the keys from seized LockBit assets to access data that was encrypted after the group's attacks, the US Department of Justice announced in a press release Tuesday.The US DOJ, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and UK National Crime Agency's Cyber Division said they managed to seize websites and servers used by LockBit to prevent them from stealing data that they allegedly use to extort victims for money.The NCA and FBI also came up with decryption strategies that they believe could help hundreds of victims globally regain access to systems that were attacked by LockBit,... Continue reading...

Image: Sean O'Kane / The Verge The Ford Mustang Mach-E just became a lot more affordable after the automaker announced a major price cut for the 2023 model year. The new adjustments will bring at least one version of the Mach-E below $40,000 for the first time.The Mustang Mach-E was the number two bestselling electric SUV in the US in 2023. But to get there, Ford had to wage a brutal price war with Tesla that is now entering its second year. The Elon Musk-run company has seen its market share in the US slip quarter over quarter, but Tesla still commands over 50 percent of the EV market.The price cuts are also a reflection of the new reality in which EV sales are not growing as fast as they were in prior yearsThe price cuts are also a reflection of the new reality... Continue reading...

Pound for pound and dollar for dollar, it's one of the best controllers you can buy. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge A sudden gout attack dictated that my long holiday weekend was full of gaming. Between fraught journeys across the high seas in Skull and Bones, I scratched my competitive itch with several rounds of Tekken 8 and Madden NFL 24. However, my game time was interrupted by a few too many dropped combos and misfires due to worsening button responsiveness in my controller.It would have felt good to exhaust my frustration by chucking the controller right through my TV, but a much less expensive (and less alarming) solution would have been to replace it with one of the official Xbox wireless controllers currently on sale. Amazon has core colors such as white, black, and red starting at $44 ($16 off). You can also pay $49 ($16 off) for blue, g... Continue reading...

There's plenty of tech still on sale for Presidents Day, from wireless earbuds to OLED TVs and everything in between. Presidents Day may be over, but it's not too late to take advantage of all the great sales we saw pop up in honor of the holiday. While some deals have expired, we're still seeing plenty of discounted tech at trusted retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, where you can find great deals on the gadgets we've tried, tested, and wholeheartedly recommend. The Roomba j7 and original Google Pixel Watch are still on sale for half off, for instance, while Apple's latest AirPods Pro with USB-C are currently matching their best price to date. We've put together a list highlighting the best deals below, all of which are still available even if the holiday is now a thing of the past.Headphone and earbud deals

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Last year was a big one for the right-to-repair movement, with California and other states passing laws that promised consumers they can fix their own stuff - or take that stuff to a third-party repair shop without breaking their warranty or their gadgets. This year, more states are considering laws to the same effect, and the tech industry appears to be more behind the effort than ever. (Some companies appear to be only begrudgingly behind it, but it's a win for the movement nonetheless.)But whenever you ask about the state of the right-to-repair fight, you tend to hear a lot of optimism and then two scary-sounding words: parts pairing. Those words, and what they mean for your ability to actually fix your stuff, are what might be... Continue reading...

John Oliver poses with his Emmy awards on January 15th, 2024. | Photo: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images HBO has long posted the main segment from new episodes of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver to YouTube on Monday to coincide with the episodes' premiere, but now you'll have to wait. John Oliver posted yesterday that HBO has decided they're going to wait until Thursday to post them to YouTube from now on," adding that he hopes HBO changes its mind.HBO confirmed the change to Variety yesterday, saying that when the show first premiered, the convenience of watching on Max did not exist," so it leaned on YouTube clips for exposure and promotion. The rep added that the company hopes fans choose to watch the entire show on Max."

The OnePlus Watch 2 sounds like a standard smartwatch. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus is making another run at a smartwatch with its Watch 2. The company claims in an announcement that the new watch will have up to 100 hours of battery life and said it will come in black and silver colors. It says it will share more at Mobile World Congress this Sunday, February 25th.The new watch has a stainless steel chassis and sapphire crystal watchface and will feature meticulous health monitoring." The 100-hour battery life claim requires what it's calling Smart Mode," which presumably is just a weird way of saying low-power mode." Image: OnePlus OnePlus wants to be an ecosystem builder." That's actually less battery life than the first OnePlus smartwatch, which made it about 10 days during T... Continue reading...

Image: Tinder In an effort to better combat catfishing, Tinder is adding an extra step to its verification process. Instead of just taking a video selfie to get a blue verification checkmark, you'll soon need to upload a photo of your driver's license or passport.Once you upload your ID, Tinder will check to see whether the picture on your ID lines up with your video selfie and the photos on your profile. Tinder will also look at the date of birth listed on your driver's license or passport to confirm your age. You should be able to use other forms of ID, as Match Group spokesperson Kayla Whaling tells The Verge that each market is different but state or government issued photo IDs will be accepted."You can still verify your profile by taking a... Continue reading...

Civil War's latest trailer shows off a whole lot of guns, tanks, and bombs. | Image: A24 A24 has dropped its second trailer for Civil War, a dystopian action movie from director Alex Garland that imagines a fractured near-future United States tearing itself apart. With a budget of $50 million, Civil War is A24's most expensive film to date.Civil War is now due to hit theaters on April 12th, two weeks ahead of its previous April 26th release date. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Nick Offerman, the movie follows a group of journalists navigating their way across the US as it descends into the second American Civil War.Just like the first trailer that was released in December 2023, the latest doesn't give us much else to go on. Portraying the US president, Offerman... Continue reading...

AI Assistant in Acrobat can recommend questions that you may have about the contents of a document and then answer those inquiries so you don't have to rummage through the file. | Image: Adobe Adobe is adding a new generative AI experience to its Acrobat PDF management software, which aims to completely transform the digital document experience" by making information in long documents easier to find and understand. Announced in Adobe's press release as AI Assistant in Acrobat," the new tool is described as a conversational engine" that can summarize files, answer questions, and recommend more based on the content, allowing users to easily chat with documents" to get the information they need. It's available in beta starting today for paying Acrobat users.The idea is that the chatbot will reduce the time-consuming tasks related to working with massive text documents - such as helping students quickly find information for... Continue reading...

The Verge Walmart is planning to acquire TV maker Vizio in a deal valued at approximately $2.3 billion. Rumors of the deal emerged last week, and now the retail giant says the acquisition is official and part of a move to boost its ad business.The acquisition of Vizio and its SmartCast Operating System (OS) would enable Walmart to connect with and serve its customers in new ways including innovative television and in-home entertainment and media experiences," says Walmart in a press release. It would also create new opportunities to help advertisers connect with customers, empowering brands with differentiated and compelling opportunities to engage at scale and to realize greater impact from their advertising spend with Walmart."Vizio has more... Continue reading...

The Forerunner 165 series knocks off $200 | Image: Garmin Garmin watches ain't cheap. While the running community loves them, they're often an investment, costing more than $500 for a midrange watch and going up from there. Which is why it's neat that the new $249.99 Forerunner 165 and $299.99 165 Music are pretty affordable by Garmin's standards.In terms of features, the 165 sits between the $200 Forerunner 55 and the $450 Forerunner 265. But for the extra $50 over the 55, the 165 series comes with a 1.2-inch OLED display instead of a transflective display, 11 days of estimated battery life, more running features, and contactless payments. The Music version also allows you to sync playlists with Spotify, Deezer, and Amazon Music.The design of the 165 is awfully similar to the 265, with... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung has detailed its expanded support for a range of audio technologies including Auracast, 360 Audio, and Auto Switch in a new blog post. None are appearing on Samsung's devices for the first time, but we now know how broadly they'll be supported across the lineup. Samsung says updates will be progressively available from the end of this month for Samsung's Galaxy Buds 2 and Buds FE, in addition to the Buds 2 Pro.Take Auracast, for example - a relatively new Bluetooth technology that allows one device to broadcast an audio stream to a theoretically unlimited number of endpoints like speakers and headphones. Last year Samsung announced support for the technology for its Galaxy Buds 2 Pro earbuds and latest high-end TVs, and it came... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Fujifilm's X100V became so wildly popular that it felt like the camera was endlessly backordered at every camera retailer around. On the secondary market, prices for the rangefinder-style mirrorless camera shot up into truly silly territory after it had a big viral moment on TikTok. The X100V was so in demand that Fujifilm could've taken the easy route for a successor and still been guaranteed to have a hit on its hands.The new model, being announced today, looks practically the same on the outside, but the X100VI includes meaningful improvements that will make it a more capable camera - in far more shooting environments - than any previous entrant in the X100 series. The flip side to those upgrades is that the price has climbed by... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This year's first Direct will take place Wednesday morning at 9AM ET, and, according to Nintendo, the 25-minute presentation will feature Switch games coming in the first half of 2024 from our publishing and development partners."We didn't need to consult the video game oracles to know a Nintendo Direct was on the way. Not only have Microsoft and PlayStation shared their upcoming release schedules, but taking a look at the dates of the last handful of Directs revealed that Nintendo is fond of the first week of February.

Getting water on phones happens to the best of us. Lucky for us, there's one household staple the internet consistently suggests will draw that liquid out and save phones: uncooked rice. But contrary to popular advice, Apple, like most people in tech support, explicitly advises against putting your wet phone in a bag of rice.Don't put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone," Apple support documents said.The support documents first spotted by Macworld are technically addressing what to do when you get the liquid detection alert on your iPhone. They're not just out to put a long lingering internet myth to bed.To that end they also suggested avoiding using an external heat... Continue reading...

Image: Wyze Wyze's problems with letting its security camera customers briefly see into other customer homes is a lot worse than we thought.Last week, co-founder David Crosby said that so far" the company had identified 14 people who were able to briefly see into a stranger's property because they were shown an image from someone else's Wyze camera. Now we're being told that number of affected customers has ballooned to 13,000.The revelation came from an email sent to customers entitled An Important Security Message from Wyze," in which the company copped to the breach and apologized, while also attempting to lay some of the blame on its web hosting provider AWS.

Image: Apple Slowly but surely, Apple TV Plus has morphed itself into arguably the premier destination for streaming science fiction. (Or at least streaming sci-fi not named Star Wars or Star Trek.) There are adaptations like Silo and Foundation; original stories like Invasion, For All Mankind, and Severance; and even a franchise spinoff with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. There's a nice range to the service's offerings - and now it's adding another flavor with the premiere of Constellation. In its first few episodes the show is dark, creepy, and will mess with your mind in a way that makes it just the thing for those already missing True Detective: Night Country.The first three episodes of Constellation premiere on February 21st, and they follow an... Continue reading...

A charging station outside of a Toyota Store in Blauvelt, New York, on February 5th, 2024. | Image: Kena Betancur / VIEWpress / Getty President Biden's administration plans to pull back on strict new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that would have forced US automakers to turn EVs into their main business by 2032. That's according to The New York Times, which wrote yesterday that industry players had moved the administration to give them more time to bring down EV costs, and for a nationwide charging infrastructure to be more fully built out.The Times writes that labor leaders pressured Biden to give them more time to extend union membership to those working in new US EV plants. As the article notes, labor union support is crucial as Biden faces re-election where he's straddling a dire climate situation and attacks from candidate and former President Donald... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge A Sunday morning report from the Financial Times says the 500 million (about $539 million USD) fine comes after regulators investigated a Spotify complaint that Apple policies prevent iPhone apps from telling users about cheaper alternatives to Apple's music service.The issue comes down to Apple's efforts to keep apps and users corraled inside its App Store payments system. Spotify complained in 2019 that Apple's policies muted competition against Apple Music, kicking off an EU investigation the next year. The EU whittled its objections down to oppose Apple's refusal to let developers even link out to their own subscription sign-ups within their apps - a policy that Apple changed in 2022 following regulatory pressure in Japan.$... Continue reading...

Illustration: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 26, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome. So psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been playing with the redesigned You.com for AI research, trying out the Phanpy Mastodon client, getting back into Zombies, Run after reading Vee Song's great story about Fantasy Hike, and reading the new lost chapter" of The Martian before probably just rereading The Martian again.I also have for you some non-earbud earbuds, a nerdy video about nerdy stuff, a new to-do list app, a new thing in ChatGPT, and much more. Let's do it.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What... Continue reading...

Not today. Update, February 18th, 12:40AM ET: The issue with Apple Pay and Chase credit cards has been resolved, according to Apple spokesperson Heather Norton, who further tells us that this was not an Apple Pay issue, and we saw no problems with our systems." (The not-so-subtle subtext there being that this was a Chase problem, of course.) That maintenance note on the status page was unrelated to this outage, she adds. Original story follows below.It appears that Apple Pay is down, particularly for Chase customers - Verge staffers have had their cards declined while trying to pay with Chase cards using Apple Pay, while using the same physical card works just fine. Several people on Threads confirmed the same issue when I asked - although... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Reddit will let an unnamed large AI company" have access to its user-generated content platform in a new licensing deal, according to Bloomberg yesterday. The deal, worth about $60 million on an annualized basis," the outlet writes, could still change as the company's plans to go public are still in the works.Until recently, most AI companies trained their data on the open web without seeking permission. But that's proven to be legally questionable, leading companies to try to get data on firmer footing. It's not known what company Reddit made the deal with, but it's quite a bit more than the $5 million annual deal OpenAI has reportedly been offering news publishers for their data. Apple has also been seeking multi-year deals with... Continue reading...

A chocolate rose vase printed on the Cocoa Press. | 3D model by lytta / print and photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge I hate to be the bearer of bad-for-the-waistline news, but yes - you can now buy a 3D printer that prints chocolate. The Cocoa Press has been in development for an entire decade. Now, it's finally here, and I'm pretty sure it's singlehandedly responsible for one of the pounds I put on over Christmas.At least it's not cheap or easy enough to tempt most people yet.

Image: Wyze Five months ago, we wrote about how your Wyze webcam might have let strangers peek into your house. Today, it happened again. Wyze cofounder David Crosby confirms that at least a dozen users were able to briefly see into a stranger's property because they were shown an image from someone else's camera.We have now identified a security issue where some users were able to see thumbnails of cameras that were not their own in the Events tab," he told The Verge.After an extended outage that Wyze says stemmed from problems with AWS, we found ten different Redditors reporting that their Wyze app showed them images they shouldn't have seen - including glimpses of a stranger's porch or in some cases, a living room. Some of the videos were from... Continue reading...

Family reunion! Usually my younger siblings wait until I'm done with work - they're in earlier time zones than I am, so they're being polite - then the group chat lights up: Splat." Splat." Splat."This is our shorthand for It's time to play Splatoon 3."I am not what you would call a gamer, but I did buy a Nintendo Switch in 2020. That's kind of when this all started. I am the oldest of five, and most of my younger siblings love video games. In the interest of bonding, I started hanging out with them on FaceTime while we played Animal Crossing together. In 2022, one of my brothers got Splatoon 3. Eventually, most of the rest of us did, too. Now four of us (and one of my brothers' significant others) play Splatoon together.I am writing this, in... Continue reading...

Image: OpenAI The US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has denied OpenAI's application to register the word GPT, which means generative pre-trained transformer, saying GPT is too general a term to register and can prevent competitors from correctly describing their products as a GPT.OpenAI argued in its application that GPT is not a descriptive word - that GPT isn't such a general term that consumers would immediately understand" what it means.The PTO wrote in its February 6th decision that it doesn't matter if consumers don't know what GPT means - because those who do use the technology understand GPT refers to a general type of software, not just OpenAI products.Since the rise of generative AI, many other AI services have added GPT to product... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Switch 2 rumor mill continues to grind. The original reporting on the Switch 2's release date pegged it for a fall 2024 release in time for the holiday rush. Now, according to sources speaking to VGC, Nintendo is telling publishers the console's release date is slated for Q1 2025.And VGC isn't the only one: a video from a Brazilian journalist and similar whispers" reported by sources speaking to Eurogamer suggest the window has been pushed to Q1 2025 as well.A release in early 2025 could see the Switch 2 (which is not the confirmed name of the console) launching at the same time of year as its predecessor, which arrived in March 2017. Two of VGC's sources confirmed that they were developing Switch 2 games planned for early 2025.T... Continue reading...

Image: Fandango Fandango has decided to completely rebrand Vudu, a streaming video service that's been around for over a decade, to Fandango at Home. We will still have the same great films, shows, deals, and bundles, plus your library will stay right where it's always been," the company said in a post on X (via 9to5Google).After many years of operation under Walmart, Vudu was purchased by Fandango in 2020. There haven't been many obvious changes to the service since then; this rebranding is easily the biggest. Fandango shut down its previous FandangoNOW service when it scooped up Vudu, so perhaps it's not a surprise that the company ultimately wanted its own name back in there. (It had already stuck Fandango" beneath Vudu in the app's logo.)Vudu... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon claims the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional" in a new legal document filed on Thursday, according to a report from The New York Times. The e-commerce giant joins the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX in making similar accusations after facing numerous labor complaints from employees.Amazon made the filing in connection with a 2023 NLRB case, which accuses Amazon of breaking labor rules by threatening and discriminating against unionizing workers at a Staten Island, NY warehouse, the NYT reports.In the filing, lawyers for Amazon argue the company hasn't violated any rules. But, as noted by the NYT, it also adds that the structure of the N.L.R.B. violates the separation of powers." In other words, Amazon is... Continue reading...

The Verge / Android Our first official glimpse of Android 15 is here. It includes a lot of under-the-hood tweaks to strengthen communication between hardware and software - and it comes at a time when Google has been tightening its working relationship with frenemy Samsung. Focusing on the platform's holistic health and working more closely with hardware partners makes a lot of sense. That's especially true if the goal is to compete with the company traditionally known for sleek hardware and software integration: Apple.The first developer preview is available starting today, with public betas arriving early this spring as Google works toward platform stability in June. A handful of the updates relate to Android's Dynamic Performance Framework that helps... Continue reading...

Image: Francois Guillot / AFP via Getty Images Remember Tommy Tallarico? The famous video game composer who claimed he created Roblox's infamous oof" sound effect, then got into a legal dispute with the game's developers asking for an unspecified amount of money for continued use of the sound effect? Eventually, the matter was settled, and ultimately, Roblox removed the sound from the game entirely.Y'know, Tommy Tallarico! The guy who claimed he was the first American to work on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise despite the fact his first Sonic credit was for Sonic and the Black Knight in 2009, a full 17 years after Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was developed and released in America.He's also guy who boasted several Guinness World Records, including one for being the person who has worked... Continue reading...

Image: Wyze Wyze owners reported this morning that they couldn't access their smart home devices and that its apps returned error messages. Users in the Wyze Discord report the problems began as early as 4AM ET, and reports of the issue popped up widely by 6AM ET, according to Down Detector.Just before 1PM ET, a number of Wyze owners reported their devices were back online.The most recent Wyze status update confirms the restoration, saying at 1:07PM ET that, Our metrics show that devices are starting to recover. We are still investigating an issue with the Events Tab and will have another update shortly with further info."A note posted at 10:24AM ET also said, We are aware of an issue with our AWS partner which has impacted device connection and... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), a tough new piece of regulation that imposes new rules around content moderation and online advertising, is about to expand to cover huge swathes of the internet. Starting tomorrow, February 17th, the rules will apply to every online platform with users in the EU, in addition to the 19 Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs) that have had to comply with the rules since last August.The expansion means the DSA's obligations will expand to cover thousands of online platforms. The Associated Press notes that this will include household names like eBay and OnlyFans, which didn't hit the 45 million monthly active user threshold in the EU for VLOP... Continue reading...

Image: Disney / Lucasfilm According to a new report from Insider Gaming, Respawn - the EA studio behind Apex Legends and Star Wars games like Jedi: Survivor - is working on a first-person game that will put players in the role of an unspecified Mandalorian bounty hunter. There aren't a lot of details on the game, which is reportedly still early in development, but the report claims that it will be fast-paced with a big focus on action and that it will not be an open-world experience.The news fits with previous announcements from the studio; in 2022, Respawn said that it was working on a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe but didn't give any details on what it would be about. The studio's Jedi series helped kick off an exciting new era for Star... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge The return window is up for the folks who bought an Apple Vision Pro on day one, and a lot of folks have said they're returning their $3,500 headset. The reasons why, and what Apple might need to do to fix them, say a lot about the state of headsets. Also saying a lot about the state of headsets? Mark Zuckerberg, who is apparently a gadget reviewer now!On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss the reaction to the Vision Pro, Zuckerberg's review, and the differing strategies for making face computers a reality. Then, we talk about some breaking news on the future of Xbox and a lot of new AI launches from Google and OpenAI. Finally, we do a lightning round of other stories in the news before getting totally derailed complaining about... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic is one step closer to opening its iOS games store in the European Union. As part of its 2023 year in review, Epic Games announced Apple has reinstated its developer account, which means it will finally be able to let users download Fortnite on iPhones again.Epic first announced plans to bring its game store and Fortnite to iOS in January, but it wasn't clear whether Apple would grant it a developer account.In 2020, Apple pulled Epic's developer account after the company began using its own in-app payment option in the iOS version of Fortnite, sparking a lengthy legal battle over whether Apple's behavior was anticompetitive. But even after the trial ended, and neither company emerged a clear winner, Apple still refused to... Continue reading...

Sony's WF-1000XM5 offer better noise cancellation and sound than the prior model. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Presidents Day is on Monday, February 19th, and many retailers are already showing their patriotism the best way they can: by discounting big-name appliances and gadgets. Jokes aside, there are actually a ton of good deals available, which we've highlighted in our larger roundup of the best Presidents Day deals. eBay's sale, in particular, is one of the more noteworthy promos. That's because now through February 19th, eBay is taking an extra 20 percent off select products - including already discounted goods like LG's brilliant C3 OLED.However, if you're not in the market for a new 4K TV, Sony's WF-1000XM5 and WH-1000XM5 are also available for some of their best prices to date at eBay (via BuyDig). The XM5 earbuds are down to their... Continue reading...