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Image: Framework Google appears to be testing a feature that would let Chromebook users set custom keyboard shortcuts throughout the OS (via Ars Technica). While it doesn’t currently work, About Chromebooks’ Kevin Tofel found a keyboard shortcut editor in the ChromeOS 111 beta that can be accessed by enabling flags with names like “enable-shortcut-customization-app” and “improved-keyboard-shortcuts.”The screen, which is accessible through the settings app, shows you the list of shortcuts that are available in different parts of the OS and apps, as well as the default keybindings for them. The experimental version lets you add alternative shortcuts, according to Tofel and Ars Technica, though they unfortunately don’t seem to work — you can set shortcuts,... Continue reading…

The cycle tracking feature has been FDA registered, complies with CE marking, and has been approved by South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. | Image: Samsung, Natural Cycles With the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 series, the company finally added temperature sensors to its smartwatches. The only thing was that the sensors didn’t really do anything when the smartwatches launched last year. But that’s about to change. Samsung is partnering with fertility app Natural Cycles to bring temperature-based period tracking to the wrist.Samsung’s press release says the feature will give users “more detailed insight” into their cycles but is a little vague on what those insights are. Advanced period tracking as well as digital fertility features come in several forms. For instance, Apple uses the temperature sensors on its Apple Watch Series 8 and Ultra to give menstruating users retrospective ovulation estimates. However, it... Continue reading…

Concept art for C-Smash VRS. | Image: Sony Cosmic Smash, a sports and puzzle game from Sega arcade systems and the Dreamcast, is being “reimagine[d]” for the PlayStation VR2, according to a Sony blog post. The new version will be called C-Smash VRS (which apparently “stands for VR and Versus”), and while it doesn’t have a release date yet, Sony has announced that it’ll be releasing a demo for the game on March 23rd.The trailer shows off what appears to be a space theme and a small slice of gameplay where someone smacks a ball toward an opponent and wall. Sega advertised the original game as a mix of “virtual reality squash” and block-smashing gameplay, similar to titles like Blasterball or Breakout. You can watch some gameplay of the original Cosmic Smash here, which... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Apple has released iOS 16.3.1, which includes “optimizations” for the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro’s Crash Detection feature that’s been criticized by some search and rescue personnel for setting off false alarms during winter activities like skiing and snowboarding. The update also includes fixes for iCloud settings and Siri requests for Find My, and Apple has released new software for tvOS, HomePods, and the Mac as well.The Crash Detection feature on new iPhones and Apple Watches is meant to alert emergency services if you’re unresponsive after a “severe car crash” and is on by default. But as people have been hitting the slopes, some officials have said that the feature’s resulted in several false reports that tie up first responders’ time... Continue reading…

Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge Ford announced a $3.5 billion electric vehicle factory in its home state of Michigan, where it will produce EV batteries with a lithium iron phosphate chemistry that it says are more durable, faster charging, and more affordable than its current lineup of EVs.Ford will develop the LFP batteries alongside China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), a global producer of EV batteries — though the automaker stressed that it will own and operate the plant outright through its wholly owned subsidiary and that the Chinese company will only provide “knowledge and services.” The construction project will generate 2,500 jobs for the region, with initial production expected to commence in 2026.Ford claims it is the first... Continue reading…

The company says its headset is six times lighter than “traditional” VR headgear. | Image: BigScreenVR Bigscreen VR’s first virtual reality headset is surprisingly small, weighing in at just 127 grams, or around 4.5 ounces. Despite its size, the wired-only and PC-only headset, called Beyond, doesn’t compromise on specs, offering OLED displays with 5120 x 2560 resolution, up to a 90Hz refresh rate, and a range of customization options.The device comes with pancake lenses, which allow the headset to have a thinner and lighter form factor with “massively improved optical clarity” when compared to other devices that use Fresnel lenses, like the Valve Index. It also features a 90-degree field of view along with built-in SteamVR tracking that’s compatible with SteamVR base stations, controllers, and accessories. The headset fully supports the... Continue reading…

Image: Deep Silver If you’ve been waiting for Dead Island 2, the zombie-fighting game that was first announced in 2014, got trapped in development hell, emerged again with a February 3rd release date in June, and then was delayed to April 28th, I have some good news: the game is actually going to come out a little bit sooner. Dead Island 2 has gone gold and will now be released a week earlier on April 21st, Deep Silver announced on Monday.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New York regulators have ordered the cryptocurrency firm Paxos to stop issuing Binance USD (BUSD) — the third largest stablecoin by market cap and pegged to the US dollar — over concerns that it can’t “safely” issue the token, as reported earlier by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.This comes as Paxos faces a potential lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the BUSD token. Sources close to the situation tell The Wall Street Journal that the agency is planning to sue the company “for violating investor protection laws.” The SEC reportedly sent a Wells Notice to Paxos — or a letter that the regulator uses to inform a company or individual of potential violations and enforcement actions.In a notice posted to the... Continue reading…

Arlo Pro 2 is among the legacy Arlo cameras affected by the newly announced policy. | Image: Netgear Security camera company Arlo is reversing course on its controversial decision to apply a retroactive end-of-life policy to many of its popular home security cameras. On Friday, Arlo CEO Matthew McRae posted a thread on Twitter, announcing that the company will not remove free storage of videos for existing customers and that it is extending the EOL dates for older cameras a further year to 2025. He also committed to sending security updates to these cameras until 2026.The end-of-life policy was due to go into effect January 1st, 2023, and removed a big selling point — seven-day free cloud storage — for many Arlo cams. McRae now says all users with the seven-day storage service will “continue to receive that service uninterrupted.” But... Continue reading…

Unofficial renders of the Xperia 1 V, | Image: OnLeaks / Green Smartphones The design of Sony’s next smartphone, rumored to be the Xperia 1 V, appears to have leaked in unofficial renders published over the weekend by OnLeaks and Green Smartphones. And true to form, the company is doing… nothing too exciting, sticking with the same design as the previous Xperia 1 IV. Squint, and it’s hard to tell the two phones apart, with their vertical camera bumps, squared off edges, and tall aspect-ratio displays.That doesn’t mean we’re expecting the Xperia 1 V to be identical to last year’s phone. Green Smartphones reports that its ultra-wide camera could be upgraded to use a 48-megapixel sensor (up from 12-megapixels), and there’s also a chance it could ship with 16GB of RAM rather than 12GB. Although the screen is... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Comcast wants Xfinity subscribers to pay up for Peacock. In a post on Twitter, the Comcast-owned NBCUniversal confirmed plans to stop offering free access to Peacock Premium to Xfinity subscribers on June 26th, 2023 (via Variety).Peacock Premium, which normally costs $4.99 per month, is an ad-supported plan that has been available to Xfinity customers at no extra cost since the service first launched in 2020. Details about the change first emerged in a post on Reddit, which an NBCUniversal representative later confirmed to Variety and The Streamable.

The RGBDeck mod just isn’t ready yet. | Image: Adam Honse / Reddit As cool as the Steam Deck looks with RGB lighting, you might not want to attempt to mod your device just yet. One Reddit user who tried the mod found that while adding the RGB LEDs doesn’t draw a significant amount of power from the battery, it can cause pretty big issues with the Steam Deck’s motherboard.The “RGBDeck” mod started making the rounds on Reddit earlier this month, with u/WUBBSY documenting the process of affixing a small microcontroller and LED strips to the device. They topped it off with a transparent backing from JSAUX, allowing the lights to shine through the case while the Steam Deck’s switched on. The end result gives the Steam Deck a nice pop of color (in a very gamer PC kind of way).

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Ford’s gearing up to announce a $3.5 billion battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, according to a report from Automotive News. In an advisory obtained by the outlet, the automaker says it will reveal the news of the factory on Monday in partnership with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), a company that creates lithium iron phosphate batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), including the Mustang Mach-E.While Ford still hasn’t confirmed any of this, the company has since announced a press conference on Monday at 1:45PM ET, where it will share its plans to “rapidly scale EVs and make them more accessible to customers.” Michigan reportedly offered $1 billion in incentives to attract the automaker’s factory, which is expected to... Continue reading…

Opera’s new tool summarizes webpages, and it apparently works on Verge articles! | Image: Opera Opera’s adding a ChatGPT-powered tool to its sidebar that generates brief summaries of webpages and articles. The feature, called “shorten,” is part of the company’s broader plans to integrate AI tools into its browser, similar to what Microsoft’s doing with Edge.As shown in a demo included in Opera’s blog post, you can activate the feature by selecting the “shorten” button to the right of the address bar. From there, a sidebar with ChatGPT will pop out from the left, which will then generate a neat, bulleted summary of the article or webpage you’re looking at.Opera’s announcement comes just days after Microsoft revealed the AI-powered Bing and Edge. While the company’s search engine will offer access to an AI chatbot that provides... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Googlers are talking all about the company’s announcement of its ChatGPT rival, Bard — and many aren’t happy with how things went. According to a report from CNBC, Google employees are calling the launch of the AI chatbot “rushed” and “botched” in posts across the company’s internal message boards, with many targeting CEO Sundar Pichai.Google announced Bard earlier this week in a bid to get ahead of Microsoft, which took the wraps off of its ChatGPT-powered Bing a day later. But when the company tweeted out a demo of Bard on Monday, several users pointed out that it contained a factual error. Meanwhile, a presenter at Google’s search event on Wednesday forgot the phone they were going to use to show off one of Bard’s features, and some... Continue reading…

Image: Wizards of the Coast I need help.I haven’t logged into Marvel Snap for about a week now — just when the new Quantumania-themed season has begun. Now what, you ask, could be powerful enough to drag me away from a game I have made my ministry since its launch?The big daddy, the OG, the original Magic: The Gathering.Magic’s latest set, Phyrexia: All Will Be One, has gotten to me in a way that defies even my expectations. I play paper Magic in casual in-person games with friends pretty regularly and have been content with that. But there’s something that’s irresistible about this set, with its horrifying flesh creatures with too many teeth, that has compelled me to play the digital version, Arena, non-friggin’-stop.This all started when I told my husband... Continue reading…

We all get tired of Bluetooth sometimes, and the IE 200s are a nice reminder of what we’ve lost by trading the headphone jack for wireless convenience and platform-specific earbud features. Continue reading…

Image: The Royal Family Jony Ive and his design firm LoveFrom designed the emblem for the coronation of King Charles III, according to a new page on the Royal Family’s website. The emblem will be used throughout the festivities surrounding the king’s coronation in May and on official coronation merchandise.“It is such an honour to be able to contribute to this remarkable national occasion, and our team is so very proud of this work,” Ive said in a statement about the emblem. “The design was inspired by King Charles’ love of the planet, nature, and his deep concern for the natural world.“The emblem speaks to the happy optimism of spring and celebrates the beginning of this new Carolean era for the United Kingdom. The gentle modesty of these natural forms... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is running ads for companies including Nokia, The Wall Street Journal, and Mailchimp alongside tweets from Holocaust deniers, according to a report by nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters for America.Media Matters reviewed five Twitter accounts belonging to neo-Nazis, antisemites, and Holocaust deniers and found that ads for prominent companies were being slotted next to tweets from the accounts. The reach of the five Twitter accounts, which include writers, a “pseudo-academic organization,” and white nationalist YouTubers, ranges from a couple thousand followers to tens of thousand.All five of the accounts are subscribed to Twitter Blue, the subscription service that’s become one of Elon Musk’s main priorities since taking... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit doesn’t seem to be too worried about the AI-powered conversational chatbots like the ones Google and Microsoft revealed this week, based on a statement the company shared with The Verge. Shifting from traditional search to ChatGPT-like bots could erase the strategy of appending “reddit” to your searches to find human-sourced information instead of SEO-optimized garbage.But Reddit believes the chatbots won’t replace actual human connection.“AI chatbot technologies are still new and something we’re exploring and keeping our eyes on,” said Reddit spokesperson Nick Singer. “Though, there will always be a need for genuine community and human connection, which can be aided by tools like this. We see chatbots being used in fun and... Continue reading…

Sony’s WH-1000XM5 noise-canceling headphones are $50 off, which is amongst the better discounts we’ve seen on them. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge With more people working from home than they used to, owning a good pair of noise-canceling headphones has become more appealing than ever. However, they can be expensive and difficult to shop for due to the range of available models, many of which cater to different lifestyles and priorities. Some are better suited for long-haul flights, for instance, while others are ideal for multitasking and marathon listening sessions.That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best deals on noise-canceling headphones. Here, you’ll find sales on all kinds of on-ear and over-ear headphones, all of which are designed to eliminate outside noise but come with their own strengths and weaknesses. And if you want to do even more research before making a... Continue reading…

A Coke-branded phone, because why not? | Image: Realme Realme knows how to lean hard into a co-branded, special edition phone, and it looks like that’s what’s happening in its latest collaboration: the Realme 10 Pro 5G Coca-Cola Edition. It’s launching in India today, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a midrange phone with flashy Coke branding.Because Realme has no chill, the theme extends all the way from the packaging to the UI. Case in point: there’s a camera mode where the shutter makes the sound of a coke opening. See if your green iPhone can do that. The phone itself features a prominent Coke logo and a couple of design touches, like red rings around the camera lenses. The customized interface includes a specially designed lock screen, charging animation, and matching app icons.... Continue reading…

Aerial view on the White Lake in Tansen, Nepal, at sunrise. | Image: Frank Bienewald / LightRocket via Getty Images It might sound counterintuitive, but empowering locals to manage forests is an excellent way to preserve them. That strategy can even bring dwindling forests roaring back, NASA Earth Observatory’s recent “image of the day” shows us.NASA published a set of maps yesterday showing the incredible recovery Nepal’s forests have made over the past several decades thanks to a plan to put nearby communities in charge of conservation. You can see thin forest cover in the early 1990s, followed by a lush resurgence by the late 2010s. Forest cover almost doubled across the country between 1992 and 2016, the satellite imagery shows.“Once communities started actively managing the forests, they grew back mainly as a result of natural regeneration,” J... Continue reading…

The Beats Fit Pros are on sale for $149.95 and should arrive in time for Valentine’s Day. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Fret not! There’s no need to kick yourself if you’ve waited until the last minute to start shopping for a Valentine’s Day gift. As it turns out, there are still plenty of tech goodies you can pick up that’ll arrive in time for the holiday. And although Amazon Prime and Best Buy TotalTech subscribers can take advantage of free two-day shipping, non-members still have time to pick up a variety of gifts, from Amazon’s latest Kindle and the new Echo Dot to the third-gen AirPods and a smart mug that can keep your drink at the perfect temp.Below, we’ve rounded up an assortment of ideas, all of which should arrive before February 14th. And hey, if you’re a true procrastinator and stumble upon this article the night before V-Day, rest assured... Continue reading…

Moon Girl and a pair of other kids dancing in a park. | Image: The Disney Channel Disney’s brilliant new Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur cartoon has smarts, style, substance, and one hell of a musical score. Continue reading…

It’s an elegant device, but the ‘awareable’ may not appeal if cultivating mindfulness isn’t your main priority. Continue reading…

GM resurrected the Hummer as a luxury electric truck with off-road aspirations. But the end result is too big for the trail — too big for anywhere, really. The fact of the matter is the Hummer EV is too extra for its own good. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is getting ready to demonstrate how its new ChatGPT-like AI will transform its Office productivity apps. After announcing and demonstrating its Prometheus Model in its new Bing search engine earlier this week, Microsoft is gearing up to show how it will expand to its core productivity apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the company is preparing to detail its productivity plans for integrating OpenAI’s language AI technology and its Prometheus Model in the coming weeks. The software giant is tentatively planning an announcement in March, highlighting how quickly Microsoft wants to reinvent search and its productivity apps through its OpenAI investments. ... Continue reading…

Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is working to bring native support for RGB PC gaming accessories to Windows 11. The Windows lighting experience will include the ability for PC gamers to configure accessories with RGB lighting without having to install third-party software.Twitter user Albacore has spotted early work for integrating this new lighting experience into Windows 11 in the latest public test builds of the operating system. Options for controlling brightness, lighting effects, speed, and colors can all be found in the settings interface of Windows 11. There’s even a feature that will match your accessories to the Windows accent color.