The Verge

The Dbrand Ghost case for the iPhone 15 Pro, exploded. | Image: Dbrand Dbrand has a new $50 clear case, called the Ghost Case, for several flagship phones - including the iPhone 15 Pro phones Apple will announce today. And Dbrand says it's literally impossible" for it to turn yellow. That's a tall claim, but Dbrand insists that the matte black that frames the case makes it so. The cases will start shipping in October, but you can preorder them now.Dbrand pins the anti-yellowing feature on the two-tone design. CEO Adam Ijaz told The Verge in an email that it's a blend of materials, post-processing, and - most importantly - deliberate industrial design choices." More on this later.Dbrand describes the cases as grippy and the buttons as clicky and tactile and claims it can withstand a 10-foot drop. The... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge We're on the ground in Cupertino for the launch of Apple's next phones and watches -and the big, long-awaited change from Lightning to USB-C. Continue reading...

Image: Bethesda Nvidia is rolling out an update that will improve Starfield performance for owners of RTX 30- and 40-series cards. Nvidia says its automatic over-the-air update will enable Resizable BAR and boost Starfield performance for its latest GPUs.Today, Nvidia is releasing a Resizable BAR profile for Starfield which increases performance on GeForce RTX 40 Series and GeForce RTX 30 Series desktop and laptop GPUs," explains Andrew Burnes, technical marketer at Nvidia, in a blog post. In our testing scenario, GeForce RTX 40-series desktop GPUs see on average a 5 percent increase in performance."The over-the-air update will be applied to the existing 537.17 drivers and the new 537.34 drivers Nvidia released today. The latest drivers also... Continue reading...

Executives hold shovels during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Occidental Petroleum and 1PointFive Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant in Ector County, Texas, on April 28th, 2023. | Photo by Jordan Vonderhaar / Bloomberg via Getty Images Amazon is the latest tech giant to buy into the idea of filtering carbon dioxide out of the air as a way to combat climate change. The company is backing an oil giant, Occidental Petroleum, to help it do just that. Amazon announced today that it plans to purchase 250,000 metric tons of carbon removal from Occidental subsidiary 1PointFive.This is the latest in a stream of announcements from Big Tech companies turning to emerging carbon removal technologies to help them meet their climate goals. Sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere is one way to try to undo the damage caused by pollution companies have already created. But much of the carbon removal industry has deep ties to oil and gas. And when companies like Amazon pay to deal with their... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge In the 1980s, NASA wanted space to become a booming business - and the first six women astronauts were meant to help get it off the ground. Continue reading...

Image: Netflix As has become a near-annual tradition, Mike Flanagan's next horror series is about to drop on Netflix just in time for spooky season. The latest is called The Fall of the House of Usher, and it's based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe - and if the first trailer is anything to go by, it could also be the darkest show yet from Flanagan. The eight-episode-long series starts streaming on October 12th.Flanagan's relationship with Netflix kicked off with The Haunting of Hill House in 2020 and has since expanded with series including The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and last year's Midnight Club. In addition to being thematically similar, the shows also feature a number of recurring cast members who appear in multiple series as... Continue reading...

Drop's new tenkeyless Ctrl V2, with its high-profile case. | Image: Drop Fresh off being acquired by Corsair, Drop is overhauling its in-house mechanical keyboard lineup with the new Alt V2, Ctrl V2, and Shift V2. Like their 2018-era predecessors, the Alt V2 is a compact keyboard with a 65 percent layout, the Ctrl V2 is tenkeyless (so it doesn't have a numpad), and the Shift V2 has all the keys of a full-size keyboard but smushed into a more compact 1800 layout. There are also upgrade kits to let existing Ctrl, Alt, and Shift owners turn their keyboards into V2 models.Combined, the improvements should help bring the keyboards up to date with their modern competitors. Their PCBs now offer support for five-pin switches rather than three-pin, which means they're now compatible with the vast majority of... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is bringing its advanced logistics capabilities to businesses that don't even sell on the marketplace. In an announcement on Tuesday, the e-commerce giant says its new Supply Chain by Amazon service lets sellers ship products directly from factories - whether it's going to Amazon or not.As part of the program, Amazon will pick up, ship, and deliver products to customers from manufacturing facilities across the globe. It will also manage customs clearance, ground transportation, bulk storage, and inventory replenishment. This means sellers shouldn't have to worry about the supply chain side of their business, letting them focus solely on marketing their products and taking care of sales.

Touch ID was a blessing for lazy teens like me who couldn't be bothered to set an unlocking PIN. | Photo by Lintao Zhang / Getty Images Every phone you pick up today has a fingerprint scanner, a face scanner, an option for PINs with four, six, or more digits, and often all of them at once. Phones prompt you to set up a scan and a passcode the first time you turn them on, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't have some form of security set up.But go back just 10 years, and the story was very different. Back when our phones were still used almost entirely as phones and not teeny personal computers, most of the locking" features on mobile devices were designed more to prevent you from butt-dialing anyone than to protect your sensitive information.It wasn't until the iPhone 5S came along - 10 years ago this month - that everything changed. ... Continue reading...

Image: Intel Intel is making Thunderbolt 5 official today with promises of up to 120Gbps speeds, theoretical support for 540Hz gaming monitors, 240 watts of charging power, and much more. While the Thunderbolt 5 specification is now official, accessories and PCs won't debut with support for Thunderbolt 5 until 2024.Built on USB4 v2, Thunderbolt 5 will be compatible with previous versions of Thunderbolt and USB. While Thunderbolt 4 supported up to 40Gbps speeds, Thunderbolt 5 can transmit data at 80Gbps or up to 120Gbps in a Bandwidth Boost mode. This mode requires a high-bandwidth display; otherwise, Thunderbolt 5 supports 80Gbps bidirectional speeds. Image: Intel Thunderbolt 5 has some big bandwidth boosts. Thunderbolt 5... Continue reading...

Senator Scott Wiener on Friday, January 10th, 2020, in San Francisco, California. Wiener authored a newly passed bill that requires carbon footprint disclosures from big companies. | Photo By Liz Hafalia / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images California legislators passed a bill Monday night that would force big companies doing business in the state to disclose how much planet-heating carbon dioxide pollution they create. It will be the first mandate of its kind in the nation if it's signed into law and comes as the SEC drags its heels on a similar federal mandate.The bill, SB 253, requires the California Air Resources Board to develop rules by 2025 for companies with annual revenues over $1 billion. By 2026, the companies would have to publicly report greenhouse gas emissions that come from their operations and electricity use. Crucially, they'll also be required to disclose how much pollution is generated by their supply chains and customers by 2027.Huge climate win in... Continue reading...

Jeff Ward as Buggy the Clown. | Image: Netflix You only need to take a casual glance at the new live-action One Piece adaptation to see that Netflix went all out when it came to translating Eiichiro Oda's vision of a wild world full of pirates to the small screen. A big part of what makes the live-action One Piece work so well are the massive ship and town sets that make the show feel like it's happening out in the real world rather than on a soundstage.But when you look a little more closely at many of the places Luffy and his fellow straw hats find themselves in as the series progresses, it becomes clear that One Piece's creative team poured their hearts and souls into stuffing the show with the finest details you can imagine.Though Netflix's One Piece is very much its own... Continue reading...

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Rad Power Bikes, the largest e-bike manufacturer in North America, says that going forward, it will only produce bikes that comply with UL safety standards. The announcement comes after a series of deadly fires, mostly in New York City, were linked to malfunctioning e-bike batteries.UL Standards and Engagement (formerly Underwriter's Laboratory) is a nonprofit organization that develops safety standards for a whole host of consumer products, including e-bikes and e-scooters. (Its for-profit equivalent, UL Solutions, tests and certifies e-bikes.)Until now, these safety standards were entirely voluntary, but that could be changing after the New York City Council passed a law requiring all e-bikes sold in the city to comply with UL... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge If you've ever followed a lawsuit or criminal trial in the US, you may have come across the work of the Free Law Project. Its Recap database is one of the best ways to freely access documents typically stored in the paywalled Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. And one of its cleverest uses of Recap is the Big Cases Bot: an automated account on X / Twitter and Mastodon that checks for updates to the most important cases in US federal courts, automatically downloads the associated files to the Recap database, and posts an update linking to them.The Big Cases Bot has been an excellent resource for The Verge over the years - I check it, and so do other writers and editors. But by design, it's a general-interest feed... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is facing a threat to its core business as it turns 25. This is how it starts. Continue reading...

Did you buy any of these in your Apple ownership life? | Photo by Umar Shakir / The Verge Lightning cables will soon join the junk pile of dongles, adapters, and accessories that Apple has left behind over the years - for better or worse. Continue reading...

After releasing devices like the Nokia C32 (pictured) this year, HMD now plans to launch its own smartphone brand. | Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images HMD Global, the Finnish company best known for producing Nokia-branded smartphones, has revealed plans to launch its own line of mobile devices. On Monday, HMD Global CEO Jean-Francois Baril announced on Linkedin that the company will be expanding its portfolio with a new HMD brand that will co-exist alongside its Nokia phones and collaborations with exciting new partners" that have yet to be disclosed.It has been a great journey as HMD - the home of Nokia phones' - an exclusive position we have held for the past six years," said Baril. Now we are ready for the next step on our journey - to enter the market independently as a force to create a new world for telecommunications focused on consumer needs."HMD Global hasn't provided a... Continue reading...

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge A coalition of environmental, tech, and anti-hate speech groups sent a letter to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today demanding that the Democratic leader craft policy to address the growing impact AI could have on climate change.Companies should be required to disclose the environmental impact of developing energy-intensive AI models, the letter says. And legislation aimed at curtailing the misuse of AI should include measures to prevent disinformation about climate change from spreading with the help of AI, the coalition writes.The letter was signed by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, Greenpeace USA, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, and more than a dozen other groups.The letter was... Continue reading...

Photo by Omar Havana / Getty Images The shared electric scooter business has gone through a series of ups and downs over the last few years - mostly downs, if we're being honest - but now, one company is ready to claim the mantle of victor.Lime released a new set of financial figures that it says proves that last year's slim profits were no fluke. The company reported gross bookings of $250 million in the first half of the year, a 45 percent increase over the same period last year. And it's touting an adjusted EBITDA profitability of $27 million - the first time the company has achieved this for the first half of the year and a 45 percent margin increase over last year - and an unadjusted $20.6 million profitability.To say that Lime is feeling itself would be an... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A group of writers is suing OpenAI over claims the company illegally used their works to train its AI ChatGPT chatbot, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a lawsuit filed on Friday, Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman allege OpenAI benefits and profits from the unauthorized and illegal use" of their copyrighted content.The lawsuit is seeking class-action status and calls out ChatGPT's ability to summarize and analyze the content written by the authors, stating this is only possible" if OpenAI trained its GPT large language model on their works. It adds that these outputs are actually derivative" works that infringe on their copyrights.OpenAI's acts of copyright infringement have been... Continue reading...

Photo by Wan Shanchao / VCG via Getty Images We could soon see more lithium-ion batteries made with recycled materials thanks to a new partnership. BASF, a battery materials producer, has announced that it's teaming up with Nanotech Energy, a maker of graphene-based energy products, to produce lithium-ion batteries with recycled materials for customers in North America.While BASF will create the cathode active materials using recycled metals from a Battle Creek, Michigan facility, Nanotech will use those materials to create the lithium-ion battery cells. Making the batteries with recycled metals could decrease their CO2 footprint by around 25 percent, according to BASF.Additionally, BASF and Nanotech Energy will also work with the American Battery Technology Company (ABTC) and... Continue reading...

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Apple is holding its next big event in September to take the wraps off the iPhone 15, new Apple Watches, and more.Here, we'll go over how and when you can watch the event, along with the new product announcements we're expecting to see from Apple.When is the iPhone 15 showcase?The iPhone 15 event will take place on September 12th, 2023, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. As shown in the invite sent out by Apple, the company has named the event Wonderlust." It will take place live from Apple Park in Cupertino, California.How to watch Apple's iPhone 15 eventAs is the case with past events, Apple will likely stream the iPhone 15 showcase on its website and YouTube channel. You can also watch it from the livestream embedded at the top of this... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games has a new chief creative officer. Days after the role's previous owner, Donald Mustard, announced his retirement, Epic Games has revealed his replacement: Charlie Wen. Wen is a former concept artist and designer who's worked at Riot, Disney, Marvel, Sony, and more, and he's got some pretty sweet bonafides.From his LinkedIn:

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptops for high school and college students. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Shopping for a laptop can be stressful - doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as the choices for best laptop and best Chromebook evolve, so do students' needs. So I spoke to some experts on the subject: students themselves.My recommendations here are meant to accommodate a variety of preferences and price ranges. But they're a jumping-off point rather than an exhaustive list: every student is different. Before making a decision, you'll want to make sure you read reviews and try out devices yourself if you can. I'll do my best to keep this article up to date with items that are in stock.Best laptop... Continue reading...

By 2025, it'll be mandatory to use a Google account with Fitbit. | Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge The Fitbit to Google account migration has started. This isn't a big deal if you're new to Fitbit or are about to buy a new Fitbit / Google Pixel device. You'll be prompted at setup to log in with your Google account. But what does this mean if you're a legacy Fitbit user?Technically, you don't have to do anything until at least 2025." Google and Fitbit both say they'll give ample warning and a clear timeline before they start shutting down Fitbit account support. However, once Fitbit account support ends, using a Google account will be mandatory. That means if you don't ever want to merge your Fitbit and Google accounts, it's time to start shopping for an alternative fitness tracker.If you know that you're sticking with a Fitbit... Continue reading...

Logitech has announced the Logitech Reach, an articulating webcam intended to make for better, more interactive remote meetings, online tutoring, and livestreams. Logitech will crowdfund the camera through Indiegogo Enterprise at first, which it told The Verge in a briefing is how it will refine the design and decide on pricing. The company hasn't announced when the campaign will start, but it may price the Reach between a discounted" $299 and $399, per a survey on its site.While the articulating arm is new, the camera itself isn't; it's one of our favorites: the 1080p, 60fps $170 Logitech Streamcam. You can replace it, albeit only with another Streamcam, but at least you won't need to buy a whole new contraption if the camera breaks.... Continue reading...

The Xbox Mastercard. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is launching an Xbox credit card later this month that will be available exclusively to Xbox testers in the US. The Xbox Mastercard is a no annual fee credit card issued by Barclays, and purchases made using the card will generate points that can be redeemed on Xbox games and add-ons.With the Xbox Mastercard credit card, players can earn card points with everyday purchases to redeem on games and add-ons at xbox.com," explains Dave McCarthy, CVP of Xbox player services. The Xbox Mastercard will be available exclusively to Xbox Insiders in the 50 United States beginning on September 21, with availability to all Xbox players in the 50 United States coming in 2024."The Xbox Mastercard isn't linked to Microsoft Rewards, so it's... Continue reading...

Image: Bethesda Starfield is one of the most demanding games on PC that we've seen recently, with even the RTX 4090 paired with AMD's latest Ryzen 7800X3D just about hitting 60fps on average at 4K with all the settings maxed out. As reviewers and testers scramble to figure out why Starfield is so heavy, the experts over at Digital Foundry have discovered some obvious differences between AMD and Intel / Nvidia systems.If you're on Intel and Nvidia you're getting a bizarrely worse experience here in comparison to AMD GPUs in a way that's completely out of the norm," explains Alexander Battaglia in a detailed 32-minute tech analysis of Starfield on PC.AMD is Starfield's exclusive PC partner," with Bethesda and AMD engineers working to optimize the game... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge You may not think of it this way, but you probably hear AI voices all the time. When you're talking to Alexa or Siri, that's a model trained on human speech to be able to say almost anything. Did you ever have a celebrity give you directions on Waze? AI. And every time you watch TikTok and you hear that slightly too chipper voice speaking the captions aloud, that's AI all the way down. Heck, Apple's AI will even read you a romance novel before you go to bed.AI systems are getting good at turning text into believable speech in almost any language and almost any voice. And on this episode of The Vergecast, the first in our three-part miniseries on AI, that voice is mine. We trained a bunch of different AI bots with the sound of my voice -... Continue reading...

A screenshot from the game Borderlands 3. | Image: Gearbox Software Embracer Group is reportedly looking at selling off Gearbox Entertainment, the maker of Borderlands, as the gaming conglomerate searches for ways to make money following the collapse of a major funding deal earlier this year. Reuters reports that Embracer is already shopping the studio around but warned that a deal may not happen."This is the latest dip in the rollercoaster ride that has been Embracer's last few years. The company has pieced together an immense gaming and entertainment portfolio through a nonstop series of acquisitions, which has brought together the comics group Dark Horse, Tomb Raider maker Crystal Dynamics, and franchising rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, among other properties.Obviously, this cost a... Continue reading...

Note: This content is not displaying properly in Apple News. Please use this link instead.Apple's product events have always been more than sales pitches - they're essentially technology entertainment: presentations that run as long as feature films and make bold promises about how technology is changing and why Apple's new products are (supposedly) the ones leading the charge. The events are undeniably popular. Apple's last iPhone event, in September 2022, has 31 million views on YouTube alone.If you're here, you've certainly seen coverage of Apple's keynotes. Maybe you've tuned in live for a few of them (or a whole bunch, as all of us at The Verge have). We dug through our memories for some trivia questions to see just how well you... Continue reading...

RIP Lightning. You were proprietary, which was annoying, but you were so easy to plug in. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Lightning connector really only had two jobs: be tiny and be foolproof. Apple developed the new port for the iPhone 5, which at the time was simultaneously the largest, thinnest, and lightest iPhone the company had ever made. That made every millimeter of space and milligram of weight matter. For nearly a decade, Apple's go-to connector had been the 30-pin Dock Connector, which was positively gigantic - about four times the size of a standard Micro USB plug. The Dock Connector was also fragile and a bit fussy. You had to stick the cable in just so in order to get the little hooks on the end to attach to the port. After a decade of Dock Connector, Apple needed something better.When Apple introduced Lightning at its annual fall event... Continue reading...

A rehoming pound for preloved robot pups. | Image: Sony Sony is launching a new sustainability program to ensure that even robot dogs are for life, and not just for Christmas. Five years after releasing the ERS-1000 Aibo - a reboot of its popular line of autonomous entertainment" robot dogs from the late 90's - Sony Japan is now launching an Aibo foster parent program" to help ERS-1000 owners who have cancelled their Aibo Cloud Plan to donate the gadget to a worthy cause.According to a machine translation of the Japanese press announcement, Sony will test and repair ERS-1000 units donated to the program before providing them to medical facilities, nursing homes, and other organizations that could benefit from emotional support robots like Aibo. Sony says it plans to charge Aibo foster... Continue reading...

Surprise! More robot vacuums. iRobot launches its new j9 Plus robot vacuum line, featuring a new auto-empty dock that can refill the robot's water tank. | Image: iRobot iRobot's newest robot vacuums are smarter and more powerful, and the mopping bot can scrub your floors more deeply. At least, that's what the company is claiming as it launches its newest flagships: the $1,399 Roomba Combo j9 Plus vacuum / mop and the $899 j9 Plus vacuum. Both models are available to pre-order now at irobot.com in the US and Canada. iRobot also launched two midrange robot vacuums that can mop last week.iRobot is clearly feeling the pressure from its many, many competitors. These latest models focus on bringing more smarts, power, and scrubbing action to keep up with the likes of Ecovacs, Roborock, and Dreame, who are launching ever more fantastical home cleaning bots.The new Roomba Combo j9 Plus is the first robot... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge A WhatsApp for Android beta update (version 2.23.19.8) that came out today contains a new screen called Third-party chats, reports WABetaInfo. For now, the screen is neither functional nor accessible by users, according to WABetaInfo. But its title is a strong clue that this is likely the first step to opening Meta's encrypted messages app to cross-platform compatibility.The beta comes just days after the European Commission confirmed that WhatsApp owner Meta meets the definition of a gatekeeper" under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires communication software like WhatsApp to interoperate with third-party messaging apps by March 2024. WABetaInfo tweeted a screenshot of the screen: