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A promotional image for the Wildebeest project. | Image: Cloudflare Wildebeest is a new project from Cloudflare that’s designed to make it easier for individuals to set up and run their own Mastodon-compatible servers. It highlights one of the key strengths of Mastodon over centralized competitors like Twitter, which is that anyone can host an instance of the microblogging service that’s connected it to the wider network (aka Fediverse).“You can quickly deploy your Mastodon-compatible server on top of Cloudflare and connect it to the Fediverse in minutes,” Cloudflare’s Celso Martinho and Sven Sauleau write in a co-authored blog post. “You don’t need to worry about maintaining or protecting it from abuse or attacks; Cloudflare will do it for you automatically.”Cloudflare’s Wildebeest helps configure... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) has exonerated Tesla’s Autopilot system as the cause of a fatal and fiery Texas crash involving a Tesla Model S in 2021. Investigators for the NTSB issued their final report this week that determined the driver was operating the vehicle up until it impacted the tree and that they had been under the influence of alcohol and drugs (via Ars Technica).Here’s the probable cause as written in the NTSB’s final conclusion:

The Verge The latest Chrome beta, version 111, includes a trial for a feature that could make the browser’s picture-in-picture feature significantly more useful. Instead of being only for playing videos, Google’s looking into letting it display basically any web content in a floating window that stays on top of all your other windows.There are quite a few ways this feature, which is called Document Picture-in-Picture, could be useful. Some of Google’s examples are mostly just spins on how picture-in-picture already works, such as video players but with custom UI (such as buttons to like or dislike a video, a timeline, or captions), or a miniplayer for video conferences that let you see a grid of people and access controls to mute yourself or... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google wants to make it easier for others to make powerful mixed reality experiences with the official release of a new Google Cloud tool, Immersive Stream for XR. The tool lets you scan a QR code or click a link to access a mixed reality experience, and behind the scenes, Google Cloud GPUs will host, render, and stream those experiences to your device, according to a blog post.Google says it’s already using the technology for its new immersive view in Google Maps, which lets you look at a 3D model of certain cities overlaid with details like traffic and nearby restaurants. But the company is also highlighting other ways to use Immersive Stream for XR, like for placing virtual furniture in augmented reality (not exactly a new idea) or... Continue reading…

Ready to open up my Steam Deck. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Game recognizes game. Framework, maker of the modular Framework Laptop, is now stocking a part for the other easily repairable portable PC that’s been making headlines — Valve’s Steam Deck. You can now buy a 2TB SSD upgrade from the company, and it might be the easiest way to do so yet.See, while it’s fairly easy to replace the Steam Deck’s SSD, it’s not quite as easy to buy the right parts. The Steam Deck uses the smallest kind of modular SSD — the M.2 2230, which measures just 30mm long — and it’s only designed to fit a single-sided one, which has flash memory chips on one side. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Two M.2 2230 drives, one with an EMI shield. More importantly, M.2 2230 drives are generally... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Kraken will end its crypto staking program in the US and pay $30 million in penalties as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulator charged the company with selling unregistered securities through its “crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.” It’s been clear for a while now that the SEC was planning to clamp down on crypto yield programs. In 2021, it got into a spat with Coinbase over the exchange’s plans to launch a lending feature in the US, and last year, it (and several states) settled with BlockFi for $100 million over the company’s interest accounts.Kraken will continue to offer staking outside the US via a separate subsidiaryCoinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted concern about “rumors” the... Continue reading…

Image: 1password 1Password is announcing today that, one day soon, it will support the option to create and unlock 1Password accounts using biometric-based passkey technology, ditching the feature that is the name of its entire product.“For passkeys to be the way forward, it’s not enough for them to replace some of your passwords,” said 1Password chief product officer Steve Won. “They have to be able to replace all passwords – including the one you use to unlock 1Password.”This follows the password manager’s announcement in November last year, where it revealed customers will be able to securely log in to apps and websites through its platform using passkeys sometime in “early 2023.” 1Password has since confirmed to The Verge that users can expect... Continue reading…

Samus from Metroid Prime Remastered. | Image: Nintendo And a chaotic day for Twitter. Continue reading…

Spider-Man Noir holding on to a lit match. | Image: Sony / Marvel Studios Spider-Man Noir might not be returning in Sony’s upcoming Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequels, but apparently the hardboiled, black-and-white Marvel hero is about to make his live-action debut in a new Amazon series.Variety reports that Sony and Amazon are developing a currently untitled Spider-Man series that “will follow an older, grizzled superhero in 1930s New York City.” The new show — which is being executive produced by Oren Uziel, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Amy Pascal — will be set in its own universe and will not focus on Peter Parker. Word of the new series comes just a few weeks after Nicolas Cage — who voiced a version of Spider-Man Noir in Into the Spider-Verse — told Screen Rant that he hadn’t been asked to... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Microsoft and Google say a new era of AI-assisted search is coming. But as with any new era in tech, it comes with plenty of problems, from bullshit generation to culture wars and the end of ad revenue. Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Things aren’t looking so great for John Luther in the first trailer for Luther: The Fallen Sun. The upcoming Netflix film sees Idris Elba return as the beleaguered detective, and the new clip shows him breaking out of prison in order to solve a crime that continues to haunt him before going up against a menacing new villain played by Andy Serkis.The movie itself is a continuation of Luther the TV series, which ended in 2019 after five seasons. In addition to Elba and Serkis, it also stars Cynthia Erivo and Dermot Crowley, who reprises his role as detective superintendent Martin Schenk. It’s directed by Jamie Payne, who directed several episodes of the show, with a screenplay from series creator Neil Cross. With all of these familiar... Continue reading…

Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, two of Zootpia’s anthropomorphic animal cops. | Image: Disney Following last month’s rumblings that Disney might be gearing up for a massive round of layoffs, CEO Bob Iger confirmed during this week’s earning call that the company plans to let go of 7,000 employees in an effort to deal with our current “challenging economic environment.” Firing off swaths of workers is one way to cut costs in the short term, but as Iger looks to the future, he also sees doubling down on the studio’s massive movie franchises with sequels as its key to continued growth.Iger insisted on Wednesday that this newest chapter of Disney’s story will be defined by structural transformation meant to “improve margins and returns and better [position’] us to weather future disruption.” But the newly returned CEO also made... Continue reading…

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Nintendo Switch Online. | Image: Nintendo With the way Nintendo tends to drip-feed retro releases, it’s easy to forget that it operates an excellent subscription service for fans of classic games. It’s one that showed a lot of promise at launch, and since then, it has steadily grown into something that largely fulfills that promise. There are still some issues, but it’s affordable and convenient — and with the recent addition of Game Boy games, it now has a very impressive library with plenty of room to grow.In case you missed it, Nintendo both announced and launched Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games as part of its NSO subscription during its first Nintendo Direct of the year last night. Right now, there are nine original Game Boy titles available — including classics like M... Continue reading…

Image: Getty Redwood Materials, the electric vehicle battery recycling venture founded by the former chief technologist at Tesla, has secured a $2 billion green energy loan from the Biden administration in what clearly is a major win for the nascent operation.The loan originates from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which famously helped put Tesla on the map and more recently provided a boost for a joint venture of General Motors and LG Energy Solution to help fund the construction of a new lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is scheduled to tour Redwood’s facility in Nevada on Thursday to announce the loan.Redwood recently announced plans to build a... Continue reading…

Don’t tell me where the Command key is. It’s wherever I want it to be. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Say you’re a Mac user who just got a fancy new keyboard, but it has a Windows layout. Or you want to use the same keyboard with both Windows and Mac machines. Or you’ve gotten used to a specific layout, and now your muscle memory is all wrong.The biggest differences between Macs and Windows PCs are in the bottom row modifier keys. Windows computers have Ctrl, Win, and Alt, whereas Macs have Control, Option, and Command. macOS automatically maps the Alt to Option and Win to Command. But Windows uses the Control key for most of the shortcuts that Macs use the Command key for, which means you have to remember to copy / paste using your pinkie on one computer and using your index finger on another. Who wants that?You could try to rewire... Continue reading…

Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge At this point, just about every car company has committed to spending the next few years adding electric and hybrid vehicles to their fleets or eventually phasing out internal combustion engines entirely.But in a new climate study released this week, EV startups Rivian and Polestar have a more dire message: electrification alone will not be enough.A new climate report from global management consulting firm Kearney commissioned by the two automakers indicates that, despite a massive rollout of new EVs and hybrids in the coming years, the global automotive industry is still “far off track” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a way that can meet targets set by the Paris agreement. And that does not even account for emissions from the... Continue reading…

Regulators believe that Stadia’s comparatively limited game library contributed to its demise and fear Microsoft could similarly limit cloud gaming competitors by purchasing Activision Blizzard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge When Google announced last year that it was closing down Stadia because the cloud gaming service hadn’t “gained enough traction,” it wasn’t abundantly clear exactly how the platform stacked up against competitors like Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming. Now, statistics shared by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) show that Stadia had a significantly smaller presence than rival services, with an estimated zero to 5 percent share of the cloud gaming market in 2022 (via 9to5Google).The CMA said that its findings are based on global information provided directly by each company. The charts don’t include actual figures, and Google has remained tight-lipped regarding how many subscribers Stadia actually had.... Continue reading…

TP-Link launches its Tapo robot vacuum line this week. | Image: TP-Link If you don’t like emptying your robot vacuum but also don’t like the idea of shelling out over $500 for an auto-empty model, TP-Link’s new budget robot vac might be for you. It doesn’t empty itself, but thanks to a large 800ml bin, the company says you only have to deal with that dusty mess twice a month.The Tapo RV10 Lite is one of the first robot vacs from the brand known for its Wi-Fi routers. And in line with TP-Link’s reputation for high-tech at low prices, it’s a seriously budget bot. The Lite features the big bin and costs $229.99, while its mopping-capable sibling, the Tapo RV10, has a smaller bin but room for a 300ml mopping reservoir on board. It costs $249.99.There’s no lidar navigation, obstacle avoidance, or mapping at... Continue reading…

The Realme GT Neo 5 in black, purple, and white. | Image: Realme This is getting ridiculous. Realme has just announced a new smartphone, the Realme GT Neo 5, that supports up to 240W fast charging. According to GSMArena, that will make it the fastest charging smartphone on the market, faster than the 210W offered by the Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition, and almost 100W faster than the 150W charging offered by OnePlus devices like the 10T. 240W is in line with the latest USB power spec announced by the USB-IF in 2021.In practical terms, we’re really hitting the point of diminishing returns with fast charging wattage this high on smartphones. Realme advertises that the GT Neo 5’s 4,600mAh battery can be charged to 100 percent in nine and a half minutes thanks to its 240W charging. That’s super fast, but... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter appears to be recovering from having technical issues that prevented people from tweeting, though problems with DMs, and accessing TweetDeck are still seemingly persisting. Downdetector reports that the problems started around 4:30PM ET, and the unfettered ability to tweet came back around an hour and a half later.The company has said it’s aware of the existing issues, and is working on fixing them.Tweets were visible during the partial outage, but several Verge staff members got a message saying that they were “over the daily limit for sending Tweets” when trying to post or retweet someone else’s post. Some Twitter users said were able to work around the error by scheduling tweets in the future.

The Verge During Sonos’ Q1 2023 earnings call, CEO Patrick Spence expressed the usual optimism about his company’s financial performance, sales momentum, and upcoming product roadmap. This man really loves the word “flywheel,” folks. But he also took clear jabs at Big Tech competitors, including Amazon, Google, and Apple, for barely putting up a fight in recent months.With Amazon rumored to be taking a hard look at its ambitions surrounding Alexa and Echo products and Google largely focused on all things Pixel, Spence said that Sonos faced no serious competition during the crucial holiday quarter. “We’ve gone through fiscal Q1, which is the height of the consumer electronics and audio season and, you know, it was... we’ve seen some of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The latest Nintendo Direct had all the big names — well, aside from Mario. But we got a fresh trailer for the next Zelda game, a surprise launch of the original Metroid Prime, a release date for Pikmin 4, and the addition of Game Boy games to the Switch Online subscription service. Plus, there were some excellent announcements for RPG nerds. Here’s everything you might have missed.A new look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the KingdomThe wait for the sequel to Breath of the Wild has been tough, but at least we have a new trailer to make things a little easier. The latest is very dramatic.Metroid Prime gets a remasterThe long-awaited remaster of the original Metroid Prime is making its way to the Switch, and it’s happening very... Continue reading…

Metroid Prime Remastered. | Image: Nintendo It’s not Metroid Prime 4, but it’s still big news for fans of intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran: the original Metroid Prime is being remastered for the Switch. Even better, the game will be launching today in the Nintendo eShop (a physical version will be available on February 22nd). The news was announced during Nintendo’s first Direct presentation of 2023.The first Prime launched two decades ago on the GameCube and was remarkable for the way it translated the moody exploration of Super Metroid into a first-person experience. It was followed by two sequels. A fourth game, the aptly named Metroid Prime 4, is in the works but was rebooted in 2019 with little information since then.The last game in the series was the 2D action title... Continue reading…

The Philadelphia Eagles mascot dances during the NFL Super Bowl LVII opening night ceremonies. Will it be dancing as happily on Sunday? | Photo by Adam Bow / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Super Bowl LVII is being played at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, at 6:30PM ET on February 12th, with the Kansas City Chiefs facing off against the Philadelphia Eagles.No matter what you use to watch it, the Super Bowl should be a fun and exciting event, whether you’re more interested in the star-studded halftime game (featuring nine-time Grammy winner Rihanna), the commercials, or — surprise! — the game itself. We’ve got the info you need about how, when, and where. And as more information becomes available about entertainers, ads, and other cool stuff, we’ll continue to bring you updates.As it did in 2020, Fox will be capturing the game in 1080p HD with HDR; the network will then upscale the feed to 4K — so if you have... Continue reading…

Photo: Blizzard The sixth season of the Overwatch League will be its biggest yet, literally. With Overwatch 2 in its first full year and finally in the hands of players worldwide, the League is making sweeping changes to accompany this new state of things.To start, the Philadelphia Fusion and the Paris Eternal are no more. Paris has “relocated” to Vegas to become the Vegas Eternal, and the Philadelphia Fusion have undergone a complete rebrand, relocating to Seoul to become the Seoul Infernal. The Paris to Vegas pipeline had been in the cards (heh) for a while, as the Eternal’s Call of Duty League sister team, the Paris Legion, had rebranded to the Vegas Legion at the end of the 2022 season.For the Fusion, while the franchise is owned by Comcast... Continue reading…

Giving you more control over your “taste profile.” | Image: Spotify Spotify is rolling out a feature that will let you tell it to ignore music in certain playlists when it’s deciding what type of music you like. The feature is called Exclude From Your Taste Profile, and the company is pitching it as a way to keep your recommendations from getting overrun by “songs and artists that don’t fit” your general listening habits.It’s easy to imagine several scenarios where this ability could be useful. Your sleep playlist could end up getting a lot of listen time but may not have the type of music or sounds you want to listen to while you’re awake. It’s a similar story with work playlists, which could be very different from your off-the-clock music tastes. (One of my co-workers commented that their lo-fi beats... Continue reading…

Image: Ramin Talaie / Getty Images Clay Bavor, Google’s vice president of its forward-looking Labs division, is leaving the company to found an AI startup, as announced in a post on Bavor’s LinkedIn on Wednesday.Longtime Verge readers may recognize Bavor as the face of many of Google’s virtual reality and augmented reality plans, including Google’s ARCore and its early VR hardware efforts. But in 2021, he was appointed to lead Google Labs, meaning his purview increased to also include things like Google’s Project Starline video chat booth and its Area 120 incubator, which was dramatically affected by Google’s recent layoffs. Bavor was also overseeing work on an in-development AR headset, my colleague Alex Heath reported in January 2022, and it’s unclear who might head up... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has launched a longer tweet feature, giving Blue subscribers in the US the ability to post up to 4,000 characters at once. If someone you follow uses the feature, the tweet in your timeline will have a “show more” button to keep it from taking up your entire screen.Currently, there are a few limitations to the feature (besides the big one that it’s behind a paywall). If your tweet is over the standard 280 characters, you can’t save it as a draft or schedule it for later. However, most other normal features should work as usual — you can add hashtags or pictures, and non-Blue subscribers will still be able to interact with the posts as normal.Blue subscribers will also be getting the ability to quote retweet and reply with 4,000... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is expanding its paid password sharing to subscribers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain starting Wednesday, the company announced in a blog post. The company had already started testing the change — in a few different forms — in some countries in Latin America. Now, Netflix is expanding its efforts ahead of a broader rollout in “the coming months.”Last week, Netflix faced pushback after notes about when and how it might block devices used beyond your household popped up on support pages for the US and other countries where the new “paid sharing” setup hasn’t rolled out yet.Netflix said that was inadvertent, and now none of the support pages have any details about restrictions on streaming to devices that aren’t on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The new AI-powered version of Bing can produce hilarious resignation letters, information on current news events, and mistakes. Continue reading…

Owen Wilson in Paint. | Image: IFC Films First, Daniel Radcliffe took on the role of Weird Al. Now, Owen Wilson is doing the same for Bob Ross — kind of. The first trailer for Paint shows Wilson playing a very Bob Ross-like character, right down to the large hair and calming asides. But the movie is technically about a fictionalized version of Ross, named Carl Nargle. The film follows Nargle’s rise to become the No. 1 cable access painter in Vermont before being faced with a young rival who threatens his place.Paint looks, naturally, goofy as hell. It channels a lot of the same ridiculous energy as Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but it’s a bit less manic, as is befitting the calming paintings of happy little trees. The movie is helmed by director Brit McAdams, and in addition... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft Edge’s new PDF viewer is powered by Adobe, and it won’t let you forget that. In an announcement on its website, Microsoft says it’s replacing Edge’s existing PDF viewer with one from Adobe Acrobat, which includes some “advanced” features that are available if you’re willing to pay for them.Microsoft markets the integration as a way to give users “a unique PDF experience” with “higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility.” While Microsoft says that these basic features will stay free and that it won’t lose any existing functionality, documents will still display “an unobtrusive Adobe brand mark.” Image: Microsoft ... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge And Biden calls for Big Tech regulation in his State of the Union. Continue reading…

A windmill and the smoke from the Doel Nuclear power plant are seen from Antwerp harbor on February 7th, 2023, in Antwerp, Belgium. | Image: Thierry Monasse / Getty Images Nearly all of the world’s new electricity supply over the next few years will come from renewable and nuclear energy, pushing out fossil fuels and curbing climate pollution from electricity, according to a new analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA).“We are close to a tipping point”Carbon pollution-free sources of energy are expected to meet more than 90 percent of new electricity demand globally through 2025. Most of that will come from renewables, including solar, wind, and hydropower. Nuclear energy is also seeing a modest resurgence, bolstering the agency’s bullishness on carbon-free power.Those gains should loosen fossil fuel’s grip on electricity generation. After peaking in 2022, carbon dioxide emissions from the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is showing off some of its plans for Android 14 in the OS’s first developer preview, which is available today. While it doesn’t tell us much about the consumer features we’ll be getting later this year, it does show Google has continued to focus on foldables, tablets, and other large-screen devices, as well as user customization.Google’s blog post announcing the preview says that Android 14 “builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors” and lists several tools that developers can use to make sure their apps run “everywhere Android runs.” The company is also updating and adding to its documentation about designing apps for large screens and foldables.This focus isn’t a surprise at... Continue reading…

The Fire TV Cube (2022) retains its tiny obelisk-like boxy form factor. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Ready for some deals to get you over the hump? The latest version of Amazon’s Fire TV Cube is selling for $124.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That saves you $15 on Amazon’s highest-end streaming device, which sports speedy performance, hands-free voice control using Amazon Alexa, and Wi-Fi 6E for less network congestion if you have a lot of devices in your home (and a 6E-capable router).The Fire TV Cube is kind of like buying an Echo smart speaker and a Fire TV streamer in one package, a decent value when you consider what you might spend on those separately. Just be aware that it’s an Amazon device, which means plenty of on-screen ads for Amazon content — and even some non-Amazon ads on the screensaver. Woof. Read our review.T... Continue reading…