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Microsoft is removing Windows 10 Home and Pro downloads from sale later this month. The downloads include license keys for Windows 10 (necessary to activate and use the download), and are being removed more than two years before Microsoft stops officially supporting Windows 10 on October 14th, 2025.Microsoft updated its Windows 10 product pages recently to note the January 31st cutoff date for sales, but it’s not clear how the company will treat similar downloads and license keys available from retailers like Amazon. We asked Microsoft to comment on Windows 10 license keys and downloads from third-party retailers, but the company only confirmed its own plans to remove its own sales.“An update was made to the Windows 10 product page to... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung TV Plus, the app that houses hundreds of free channels, could eventually make its way to other, non-Samsung TVs. That’s according to media tech reporter Janko Roettgers, who writes in his Lowpass newsletter that Samsung’s in talks to bring its streaming app to TCL TVs.Introduced in 2015, Samsung TV Plus is a free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) service that comes preinstalled on newer Samsung TVs. The service gives viewers a way to flip through a collection of channels, much like you would with a traditional TV service.Samsung TV Plus has a pretty strong slate of content for a free app, with Samsung adding popular shows like Top Gear, Law & Order Special Victims Unit, NCIS, and Chicago Fire last August. It also offers a range... Continue reading…

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Quordle, the word-solving game that emerged at the height of Wordle’s popularity, has been acquired by Merriam-Webster, as first reported by TechCrunch. The game now lives directly on Merriam-Webster’s website, rather than on its own.“I’m delighted to announce that Quordle was acquired by @MerriamWebster,” a post on Quorlde’s Twitter account reads. “I can’t think of a better home for this game. Lots of news features and fun to come, so stay tuned!”Quordle is just one of many spinoffs that tried to piggyback off of the success of Wordle, which had users posting their scores across Twitter and competing with friends to solve the word of the day with the least guesses. Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge Quordle’s... Continue reading…

Gulikit’s joystick replacements use Hall effect sensors that make them less likely to wear down. | Image: Gulikit After years of dealing with Joy-Con drift and no satisfactory answers from Nintendo, we may finally have our solution. A company called Gulikit created a set of Switch joystick replacements that promise to banish stick drift once and for all (via Gizmodo).If you’re a Switch owner, you’re probably well-acquainted with Joy-Con drift, which creates annoying false inputs even when you’re not touching the thumbsticks. It’s been a problem ever since the Switch came out and still hasn’t been fully fixed in the new OLED model (although Nintendo says it’s made some “improvements”). While you can send your Joy-Cons away for a free repair at Nintendo (or just buy a new set), the sticks will inevitably start drifting again. Image:... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The age of great third-party Twitter clients may be over. After Twitter cut off their API access and changed its rules to bar apps that compete with its own, The Iconfactory has announced that it’s discontinuing Twitterific, Fenix has been pulled from app stores, and Tapbots has posted a memorial for Tweetbot. It’s a loss for all the people who used the apps and, almost certainly, a loss for Twitter itself.As many people have pointed out over the past week, third-party clients helped make Twitter the platform it is today, innovating parts of Twitter we take for granted and, in the early days, helping form the company’s very identity. They’ve also acted as a safe haven from unwanted changes, helping to keep people tweeting when they were... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple’s working on a MacBook Air and iMac with an M3 chip built using the more efficient 3-nanometer fabrication process, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. While it’s not clear when the two upgraded devices might launch, Gurman expects the M3 chip to arrive later this year or early next year.Gurman first hinted at this in June of last year, noting that Apple’s working on an M3-equipped 13-inch MacBook Air, 15-inch MacBook Air, and a new iMac. At the time, he added that the M3 chip could appear as early as this year, but that hasn’t happened just yet.Instead, Apple included the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips with the lineup of MacBook Pros it announced earlier this month, and also added an M2 Pro chip to the Mac Mini.... Continue reading…

Image: Square Enix The development of Marvel’s Avengers is coming to a close. In a blog post, developer Crystal Dynamics announced that the game won’t receive any new updates after March 31st, with support ending on September 30th (via IGN).While you’ll still be able to play the game in both single-player and multiplayer mode, Crystal Dynamics says it “can’t guarantee that we will be able to address issues that occur” after support ends.The last — and final — balance update will take place in March, and from then on, all cosmetics, including “every Outfit, Takedown, and Nameplate” will be available for free and without the purchase of credits. Any remaining credits “will be converted into in-game resources,” Crystal Dynamics says. It also provides a... Continue reading…

Amazon’s hexagonal MK27-2 delivery drone | Image: Amazon Google’s decision to let go of 12,000 employees was only just announced on Friday, but it extended the recent trend of the “Big Tech” companies cutting jobs in previously unheard-of numbers, and now we’ve seen more reports about where those cuts happened.The Information reports that at Google, layoffs spread through nearly every group, including projects like Chrome, Search, Android, and Google Cloud. Its sources said they affected people who’d previously received “high performance reviews” and some managers making anywhere from $500K to $1 million.One area of the search and advertising giant that was “relatively unaffected,” however, was the Google Brain division run by Jeff Dean, the senior vice president of research and artificial... Continue reading…

The special-edition phone celebrates Pantone’s vibrant color of the year. There’s really no sensible argument for the viva magenta Motorola Edge 30 Fusion. It’s $799 and doesn’t include wireless charging, an IP68 rating, or a telephoto camera. You should get, like, at least two of those things for $800 in 2023. But here’s the thing: it’s fun, and fun is seriously underrated when it comes to smartphones.A lot of that fun factor has to do with the Edge 30 Fusion’s best and most obvious feature: its color. I think it’s pink, but my sources (a lot of people on Twitter) tell me that it is, in fact, red. And not just any red: viva magenta, the official 2023 Pantone Color of the Year.Pantone employs some forced alliteration when it says it “vibrates with vim and vigor.” It also apparently “galvanizes our spirit,... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge And it’s all-change over at Netflix. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Even Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, now believes that the platform put a lopsided emphasis on videos and Reels last year — and traditional photo posts were worse off because of it. In one of the answers from his weekly Q&A with users today, he acknowledged, “I think we were overfocused on video in 2022 and pushed ranking too far and basically showed too many videos and not enough photos.” Mosseri said that Instagram has since worked behind the scenes to restore a more even balance, and internal metrics show that it’s working.“Things like how often someone likes photos versus videos and how often someone comments on photos versus videos are roughly equal, which is a good sign that things are balanced,” he said. “To the degree that... Continue reading…

Humble Bundle’s Winter sale goes live today | Image: Humble Bundle Here’s your PSA to remind you that the Humble Bundle Winter Sale has started, knocking up to 90 percent off a variety of titles until February 7th. The sale features discounts on a plethora of AAA and eccentric indie games, but we’ve put together a short list of highlights that we can personally vouch for. Buying a game off the Humble Bundle store allows you to donate a portion of your purchase to the charity of your choice once you’ve set up an account.The majority of the games on sale are unlocked via your Steam account, but a handful may require an Epic Games Store or Ubisoft Connect account.

A long exposure photo shows stars in the night sky over the Santa Ruins in Trabzon, Turkey, on January 20th, 2023. | Image: Hakan Burak Altunoz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images The brightness of the night sky has risen by an average of 10 percent each year, according to new research. That’s a significantly higher number than estimates made using satellite data — which put that figure at closer to a 2 percent increase annually.In other words, light pollution — which makes sleep and many everyday tasks harder for people and other living things — has worsened at a much faster pace than expected. And just as LED lighting has become popular around the world, the satellites typically used to measure light pollution have been unable to fully track it.At the rate we now know light pollution has grown — a result of human light pollution — the brightness of the night sky doubles about every eight years. A child born... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo is planning to increase production of the Switch for the upcoming fiscal year beginning in March, according to a Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources. The news arrives on the same weekend as the company’s first big release in 2023, Fire Emblem Engage, and ahead of the long-anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which will go on sale in May.Nintendo reportedly has pinged its suppliers and assembly partners about increasing production without putting a firm number on its expectations. In November, the company had decreased its Switch sales forecast for the current year to 19 million units (down from its initial 21 million projection in May) due to ongoing component shortages, but the sources said the number... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge CNET will pause publication of stories generated using artificial intelligence “for now,” the site’s leadership told employees on a staff call Friday.The call, which lasted under an hour, was held a week after CNET came under fire for its use of AI tools on stories and one day after The Verge reported that AI tools had been in use for months, with little transparency to readers or staff. CNET hadn’t formally announced the use of AI until readers noticed a small disclosure.“We didn’t do it in secret,” CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo told the group. “We did it quietly.” CNET’s pop-up disclosure before it was rewritten last week. CNET, owned by private equity firm Red Ventures, is among several websites that... Continue reading…

Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre | Image: Netflix Part of what makes Junji Ito’s work so terrifying is how it sticks with you. The mind behind iconic horror manga like Tomie and Uzumaki takes an idea — whether it’s a schoolgirl who can’t die or a small town obsessed with spirals — and steadily pushes the concept as far it can go, usually toward some kind of disturbing body horror that forces you to look away. Before you know it, the idea has lodged itself in your brain, his carefully crafted black-and-white images flashing even after you close the book.The new Netflix anthology Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, which adapts a number of Ito’s stories into animated episodes, captures some of that terror. The ideas are still there, the horrifying imagination that can make... Continue reading…

Yesterday’s flagships are today’s bang-for-the-buck deals when you can get them for prices like this. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge It’s Friday, which means it’s time for some Frideals (sorry, not sorry). First off, the last-gen Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro have fallen to their lowest price yet. Right now, you can get the wireless earbuds for just $99.99 ($100 off) in all colors at Best Buy or in white at Amazon.Now, these buds from early 2021 may not have the lightweight, refined design and fancy 24-bit audio potential that the newer Galaxy Buds Pro 2 have, but they’re still an excellent pair of noise-canceling earbuds two years later. And as good a replacement as the newer Buds Pro are, they launched at a higher price of $229.99, making this discount on the last-gen model all the more worthwhile for anyone that wants some good buds on a budget. Read our review. ... Continue reading…

The breach went undetected for over a month before T-Mobile detected the malicious activity. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile has revealed the company’s second major breach in less than two years, admitting that a hacker was able to obtain customer data, including names, birth dates, and phone numbers, from 37 million accounts. The telecom giant said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it currently believes the attacker first retrieved data around November 25th, 2022, through one of its APIs.T-Mobile says it detected malicious activity on January 5th and that the attacker had access to the exploited API for over a month. The company says it traced the source of the malicious activity and fixed the API exploit within a day of the detection. T-Mobile says the API used by the hacker did not allow access to data that contained any social security... Continue reading…

Image: Winnebago Winnebago’s name is synonymous with vanlife, which makes its new all-electric eRV2 notable for an industry built on top of diesel engines. It’s just a prototype, but this one is fully operational and actually on the road with a fleet of customers for six months of field testing. Input from those early experiences will ultimately inform the eRV’s final design and help kick off an era of #eVanlife in the process.The eRV2 is a follow-up to the eRV concept announced last year. It’s built around the Ford E-Transit chassis with a range of 108 miles (174km) from its 68kWh battery. Yes, that’s paltry for a vehicle that will be used by adventure seekers far away from EV charging networks but fine for field testing a prototype, I guess. Winnebago... Continue reading…

The new OGL 1.2 is subject to community feedback known as playtesting, which will be addressed on or before February 17th. | Image: Wizards of the Coast In an announcement on the DnD Beyond website, Kyle Brink, executive producer of D&D, has introduced OGL 1.2, the latest version of the Dungeons and Dragons Open Gaming License. Brink highlighted that this version of the license doesn’t contain any of the ownership, royalties, and revenue reporting requirements found in the more restrictive OGL 1.1 that leaked last week.Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) — the Hasbro-owned publisher of Dungeons & Dragons — released the new draft ahead of its self-imposed deadline of Friday, January 20th. Unlike the previously leaked draft, OGL 1.2 will be subject to community feedback known as “playtesting” in the tabletop gaming community.

Microsoft is copying features from a popular third-party audio tool for Windows. In the latest test build of Windows 11, a new volume mixer can be enabled that looks a lot like EarTrumpet. The new Windows 11 feature provides quick access from the taskbar to switch audio outputs and control individual app volumes.That’s exactly what EarTrumpet was built for nearly five years ago. The awesome utility has improved audio in Windows for years, and I once called it “the Windows 10 volume control app Microsoft should have created.” How ironic.Former Microsoft engineer Dave Amenta and Microsoft MVP Rafael Rivera created EarTrumpet, and Rivera pointed out the similarities of Microsoft’s new Windows 11 feature on Twitter this week. “Oh snap.... Continue reading…

Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images Google is cutting approximately 12,000 jobs — the latest technology firm to initiate significant layoffs as inflation rises and global markets brace for a downturn.Google SEO Sundar Pichai announced the cuts in an email to staff on Friday and a blog post. The job losses constitute around 6 percent of Google’s global workforce, compared to recent layoffs at Microsoft (10,000 jobs or 5 percent of the workforce), Amazon (18,000 jobs / 6 percent), and Meta (11,000 / 13 percent). Earlier this month, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced much smaller cuts at Verily, its health-focused subsidiary, and Intrinsic, a subsidiary developing software for industrial robots.In his blog post, Pichai said the layoffs marked a moment to for the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Genesis, a crypto lending and trading conglomerate of more than 200 businesses, has filed for bankruptcy following the meltdown of the FTX exchange, the Financial Times reports. Genesis, one of FTX’s biggest lenders, had previously suspended withdrawals in November, and cut 30 percent of its staff earlier this month, BBC News reports. Genesis is part of the Digital Currency Group (DCG), which also owns cryptocurrency asset manager Greyscale and crypto-focused news outlet CoinDesk.The bankruptcy follows months of uncertainty at the crypto firm. The Financial Times reported earlier this month that Genesis owes its creditors over $3 billion, including almost a billion to the customers of the Winklevoss crypto exchange Gemini. Its Chapter... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The price of Amazon’s Music Unlimited streaming service is increasing in the US and UK from February 21st. In support pages, which we spotted via Billboard, the company says US users will now pay $10.99 per month for a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited (up from $9.99 previously), while UK listeners will now pay £10.99 (up from £9.99). The discounted student rate is also increasing from $4.99 (£4.99) to $5.99 (£5.99).According to data from market research firm Midia, Amazon Music had around 13.3 percent of the world’s music subscribers, behind Apple Music with 13.7 percent, and Spotify with 30.5 percent, as of mid-2022.“To help us bring you even more content and features, we’re updating the prices of select Amazon Music Unlimited... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Depending on where you live, the HomePod Mini and the iMac may have just gotten more expensive. The Apple Post noted that the company’s small smart speaker went from £89 to £99 in the UK, and outlets like MacRumors and 9to5Mac have reported a similar €99 to €109 jump in other European countries like Austria, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.In the UK, each pre-made iMac configuration also went up in price by £150. In France, iMac prices went up by €100 for the base model and €110 for the other models, though they stayed the same in Germany and Ireland.It’s hard to find a pattern in the increases. In New Zealand, the HomePod Mini’s price went from NZ$159.00 to NZ$179.00, while it stayed the same in neighboring Australia.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The era of Netflix password sharing will soon come to a close. Netflix has plans to enforce password-sharing rules “more broadly” toward the end of the first quarter of 2023, the company announced in its earnings report today.“While our terms of use limit use of Netflix to a household, we recognize this is a change for members who share their account more broadly,” Netflix writes. “As we roll out paid sharing, members in many countries will also have the option to pay extra if they want to share Netflix with people they don’t live with.”The company also announced that CEO Reed Hastings is stepping down after 25 years of running the company and will pass the baton to Ted Sarandos, who had already been serving as co-CEO, and Greg Peters,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has updated its developer rules to ban third-party clients, almost a week after it unceremoniously blocked the apps’ access to its platform, offering almost no explanation to what was going on (via Engadget). The new rules state that you can’t use Twitter’s API or content to “create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”The rules, updated on Thursday, make it clear what that means: “Twitter Applications” refers to the company’s “consumer facing products, services, applications, websites, web pages, platforms, and other offerings, including without limitation, those offered via https://twitter.com and Twitter’s mobile applications.” The clause banning alternative services was... Continue reading…

Apple Lisa 1 Computer, 102747605. Image copyright: Computer History Museum. | Photo illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge We’re excited to announce that The Verge is partnering with the Computer History Museum this year to explore some of the most important innovations that changed the future of technology and our relationship with it. Located in Mountain View, California, CHM does extensive work in preserving, explaining, and making the history of technology accessible to current and future generations. Its mission is to “decode technology — its computing past, digital present, and future impact on humanity” — a charge that resonates with The Verge’s own editorial mission.As part of our partnership, we’ll first be taking a closer look at Apple’s Lisa computer, whose innovative UX changed the way people relate to computers. Today, as part of its Art of... Continue reading…

A Tesla Supercharger in Virginia, where the state’s governor blocked an EV battery project because of its ties to China. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images Remember when “getting ICE’d” was a thing? A few years ago, it was not uncommon to spot internal-combustion engine (ICE) vehicles deliberately parked in electric vehicle-only spots, usually near an EV charging station, effectively blocking access to that charger. It was an extremely stupid and anti-social way for aggrieved gas-powered car owners to express contempt for these new, less-polluting vehicles.Now a bunch of Republicans are taking the concept of “getting ICE’d” to the next logical conclusion. Not content to simply obstruct a parking spot, they are instead looking to stymie the growth of EVs through ill-considered policy decisions. Their reasons are varied: some are trying to protect the oil and gas industry, while others... Continue reading…

Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, November 29th, 2022. Meta made millions last year on advertising that greenwashes fossil fuel companies and spreads disinformation about climate change, according to a new report. And outright climate denialism exploded on Twitter in 2022, according to the analysis published today by a coalition of environmental groups and researchers.They identified fossil fuel-linked entities that spent about $4 million on Facebook and Instagram ads around the time of the United Nations’ climate change conference in November. Those ads disparage the transition to clean energy that’s necessary to slow climate change, the report says, while portraying oil and gas companies as unlikely environmental champions. Meanwhile on Twitter, the hashtag #climatescam has seen a... Continue reading…

Notepad is the first built-in app to get tabs in Windows 11. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has officially started testing tabs in Notepad for Windows 11. A Microsoft employee accidentally revealed the feature was on the way over the holidays, and now tabs are showing up in an update to Notepad for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel today.The tabs support in Notepad lets you use multiple files in a single window, much like how Microsoft has implemented tabs in File Explorer in Windows 11. “There are also new keyboard shortcut keys to support managing tabs as well as some improvements to managing unsaved files, like automatically generating the file name/tab title based on content and a refreshed unsaved changes indicator,” explains Dave Grochocki, principal product manager lead at Microsoft.Notepad is the first... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp will now let you freely message yourself. The new Message Yourself feature has been gradually rolling out to WhatsApp users over the past couple of months and has appeared in the release notes for the latest app update this week. It’s not Meta’s latest AI invention but more of a digital notepad to let you send quick notes, reminders, links, and photos to yourself across multiple devices.You could also use this feature to have a full-blown conversation with yourself, but I wouldn’t recommend it. My colleague David Pierce texts himself every day to share links, notes, and reminders that are all searchable across devices. Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge If you talk to yourself in the mirror every... Continue reading…