The Verge

Flipboard has been experimenting with fediverse integration for months now. | Image: Flipboard Flipboard is taking its biggest step yet into the fediverse. The company announced on Monday that it is beginning to switch its user accounts to ActivityPub, which means that everyone curating stuff on Flipboard is now doing so in a way that apps like Mastodon can see and interact with.Right now, only 25 accounts (including The Verge's) have been federated with ActivityPub, but by March Flipboard says it plans to allow anyone on the platform to open their account to the fediverse and allow any Flipboard user to follow any fediverse account from within the Flipboard app. At that point, Flipboard will essentially be an ActivityPub-based platform like Mastodon or Pixelfed but with an interface designed for reading articles instead of... Continue reading...

One-on-one mech duels in Armored Core VI are a thing of beauty - and stress. | Image: FromSoftware 2023 has been filled wall to wall with great games, but one of the low-key best is now selling for its best price. FromSoftware's Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon is available in disc form for $39.99 ($20 off) at Amazon (PS5 / Xbox / PS4), Best Buy (PS5 / Xbox / PS4), and direct from the Bandai Namco Store. The game is still fresh off its win for Best Action Game at the Keighleys, but it's not gotten many notable discounts before now.The Armored Core series has always been a bit niche, mostly appealing to mecha sickos who love battling through postapocalyptic sci-fi worlds with robots they've customized out the wazoo, and FromSoftware brought it back for 2023 with a true-to-form installment. AC6 may be from the same developer that... Continue reading...

Image: Chris Harris / Netflix Netflix is kicking off 2024 with a vision of our dystopic future. The streamer just released a new trailer for The Kitchen, which imagines a near-future version of London, complete with reckless biker gangs and lots of holographic displays to complete the cyberpunk look. The film is helmed by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya (who also serves as co-writer and co-producer) and starts streaming on January 19th, 2024.According to Netflix's description, in this version of London the gap between rich and poor has been stretched to its limits," which leads to the titular setting of the movie.

Image: Jason Fochtman / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images Southwest Airlines is facing a $140 million fine after last year's holiday meltdown left millions of passengers stranded at airports across the US. On Monday, the Department of Transportation announced it's imposing the civil penalty over numerous violations of consumer protection laws" during and after the mass cancellations.Following an investigation, the DOT found Southwest failed to provide adequate customer service assistance," stating passengers stranded at airports were met with busy signals, long queues, and dropped calls when trying to get in touch with the airline. The DOT says Southwest didn't provide timely or accurate flight status notifications to customers, either, and also failed to provide prompt refunds to... Continue reading...

Image: Beeper Following a tumultuous few weeks for Beeper, which has been trying to provide an iMessage-compatible Android app, a group of US lawmakers are pushing for the DOJ to investigate Apple for potentially anticompetitive conduct" over its attempts to disable Beeper's services. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) as well as Representatives Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Ken Buck (R-CO) said in a letter to the DOJ that Beeper's Android messaging app, Beeper Mini, was a threat to Apple's leverage by creating [a] more competitive mobile applications market, which in turn [creates] a more competitive mobile device market."In an interview with CBS News on Monday, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky and 16-year-old developer James Gill talked about... Continue reading...

The Verge / Photo Courtesy of Apple Books There are podcasts, videos, games, live performances - and then there are books, one of the oldest and still most popular ways to learn something new or escape (at least temporarily) from today's troubled world. We asked the staff of The Verge what their favorite reads were over the last year. Their answers ranged from science fiction novels to autobiographies to lessons on how to draw and an examination of the addiction of gambling.Read on, and see if there's anything here that you may want to check out during the holidays.Thar She Blows: A NovelBy Susan EmshwillerThis maybe-but-not-quite-fantasy centers on two people, a woman named Ann and her adult son Brian, who through the course of the story learn to trust their own inner... Continue reading...

The Verge / Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales This year has been a relatively quiet one for smartwatches. It makes sense. The smartwatch renaissance of 2022 was always going to be a hard act to follow, let alone top. But among the slew of iterative updates, there was one thing that kept catching my eye: the messy Googlefication of Fitbit.Basically, Google, which owns Fitbit, spent this year taking two steps forward before shooting itself in the foot and taking a step back. Every time I felt encouraged by what I was seeing, unforced errors would leave me doubting again.2023 kicked off with a massive, multiday Fitbit server outage. Shortly after, Fitbit announced it was shuttering legacy community features like Challenges, Adventures, and Groups. Google said these social features... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, may have broken the European Union's tough new Digital Services Act rules, regulators said as they announced the opening of a formal investigation today. A key concern of the investigation is the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel," the European Commission says.In a press release, the Commission said it will look at X's attempts to counter the spread of illegal content on its platform and will examine X's efforts to stop information manipulation" via its Community Notes system and other policies. It's also looking into matters beyond content moderation, including deceptive design" relating to the so-called Blue checks," advertising... Continue reading...

A dog passes a pile of destroyed items that were removed from a once flooded home as residents begin the recovery process from Hurricane Harvey August 31, 2017 in Houston, Texas. | Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images More than 16 million people in the contiguous US - roughly 5 percent of the population - live in a place with heightening flood risk and a shrinking population, according to new research. It makes the case that climate abandonment areas" are becoming a more prevalent phenomenon in the US as people avoid places particularly vulnerable to climate-related disasters.What's a climate abandonment area? It's a census block where flood risk has grown high enough to start pushing people to leave. Many of these areas lie along the Texas Gulf Coast, coastal Florida, and the mid-Atlantic.But it's by no means confined to these regions, which can get hit repeatedly by storms during the Atlantic hurricane season. Climate abandonment areas are... Continue reading...

Image: May Mobility You probably haven't heard of autonomous vehicle operator May Mobility because the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company is exceptionally good at avoiding the types of headlines generated by other AV companies.In its six years in operation, there haven't been any injuries, crashes, blocked intersections, or mass layoffs. While there have been some struggles, the company has proven to be an outlier among AV operators by continuing to raise money while others have seen their funding dry up.And now, May Mobility is ready to go fully driverless, a milestone that has the company taking stock of its successes - and looking ahead to the future.The most capital-efficient AV company that the world has ever seen"It's not robotaxis," May... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Peloton is opening up its app to third-party treadmills for running, walking, or Tread Bootcamp classes. Pelo Buddy spotted a new support page on Peloton's site announcing that the app can now record and display metrics on any treadmill that uses Bluetooth FTMS. The offer is only open to subscribers of the company's most expensive subscription workout plan, Peloton App Plus.To pair, you'll start a Tread class in the Peloton app, then tap the Connect a Bluetooth Device" option. Pick your treadmill from the list, and a green check mark lets you know when it's connected.Peloton says users can check their incline, speed, pace, and distance via the app during a class session. After the class is over, the app will also show estimated... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple announced a pilot program called contingent pricing for subscriptions" on Friday that will let App Store developers offer discounts for customers with multiple subscriptions. Developers will be able to base this on subscriptions from one developer or two different developers" as long as both subscriptions remain active, opening up the possibility of partnerships between different companies.According to 9to5Mac, the discounts can be used in App Store advertising and marketing outside of it, in addition to within the app itself.Pete Hare, an Apple engineering manager, said in a LinkedIn post that the company will handle all the eligibility checks and commerce work" and that customers can download and subscribe to apps being... Continue reading...

Illustration: William Joel / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 18, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, hello, happy holidays, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been combing this list for new board games to try, reading about the NFL's obsession with ping pong and the rise of chess influencers and the wacky history of Yahoo Pipes, watching Lupe Fiasco thoroughly explain how rap works, testing Anytype as a Notion alternative, trying to figure out how to justify buying myself a Lego Polaroid, and adding Us to all my words on Threads to welcome my European friends.I also have for you a new way to play Grand Theft Auto, some new AI-powered note-taking and journaling... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Congress has extended Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for a few more months to April 2024. According to The New York Times, the program was included in the $886 billion National Defence Authorization Act, which passed the House by a vote of 310 to 118, with support from the majority of both parties, on December 14th. FISA was due to expire on December 31st, 2023.Senator Ron Wyden wrote in a press release on December 8th that the vote to reauthorize FISA was inserted into the NDAA without a vote or debate" before the Senate authorized and passed it to the House. Now, the vote has headed to the desk of President Biden, who has called for it to be reauthorized.Section 702 empowers US intelligence agencies... Continue reading...

Opal's latest webcam makes for a nice carry-on companion, one that packs a bigger, better sensor than Opal's first offering. | Image: Opal Happy Saturday, dear readers! It's been a relatively quiet week on the deals front - well, aside from the return of Walmart's $349 Xbox Series X deal and a smattering of well-timed discounts on smart holiday string lights. Today, however, we have something completely new. Right now, Opal's Tadpole webcam for laptops is receiving its first discount to date at the Moment store, where you can pick it up for $140 ($35 off) when you use coupon code HOLIDAY20 at checkout.Unlike Opal's first webcam, the C1, the Tadpole provides a smooth experience right out of the gates. Opal's second effort features an adjustable clip that fits most laptop displays, along with a half-inch, 48-megapixel Sony IMX582 sensor, an f/1.8 lens, and the ability to... Continue reading...

Image: Epic Games Apple rules the iPhone's App Store with an iron fist - sideloading outside it is not allowed. Google lets anyone install any app on an Android phone. But guess which one of these two companies has an illegal monopoly, according to the courts?As you probably already know, Google is the one that lost its fight against Epic Games this week. It's a fight that Apple previously (mostly) won in a similar trial in 2021, beating claims that it had violated antitrust laws by charging mandatory in-app transaction fees and kicking Epic's game Fortnite off the App Store. Google tried a similar move, but in its case, a jury found it had maintained an unlawful monopoly with the Play store; a judge is scheduled to consider remedies next month.L... Continue reading...

The two women are the stars of one of the most watches shows on Netflix this year. | Image Amanda Matlovich/Netflix Stop me if you've heard this one. You're at a holiday gathering and some very offline family member starts chatting about the show Yellowstone. Pretty soon after a very online family member looks up in confusion and asks either what the show is or why they keep hearing about it when no one they know seems to watch it.But maybe it's not Yellowstone. Maybe its La Reina Del Sur, or The Glory, or maybe its Ginny & Georgia. What those three shows all have in common is they're three of the most watched shows on Netflix between January and June 2023, and if you haven't heard of them it's probably because you're part of the increasing gulf between the shows people talk about online and the ones everyone is actually watching.These new Netflix... Continue reading...

Image: Max Though there are a handful of human survivors at the core of its story, the real star of Scavengers Reign isn't a person; it's a planet. The animated series features a group of astronauts stranded on a bizarre alien world and follows them as they contend with the harsh, confusing, and downright odd environment around them. There are flying creatures that can double as gas masks and giant monkey-frogs that use psychic powers to lure in victims. Things only get weirder from there. But the fun of the show is seeing how the characters are able to use the strange plants and animals to their advantage. I think it's a universally satisfying process to watch people try to survive with limitations," says supervising director Benjy Brooke.Based... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge On Friday, two days after Threads finally started publicly testing ActivityPub integration, Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared a thread on Threads detailing the company's plans for its continued integration with the fediverse. Right now, it's possible to follow a few Threads accounts (including Mosseri's) from other platforms, but Meta has much bigger plans for Threads interoperability that Mosseri says will take the better part of a year" to realize.Here's what's in the works, according to Mosseri.

Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge Researchers found Microsoft's chatbot on Copilot provided false and misleading information about European elections.Human rights organization AlgorithmWatch said in a report that it asked Bing Chat - recently rebranded as Copilot - questions about recent elections held in Switzerland and the German states of Bavaria and Hesse. It found that one-third of its answers to election-related questions had factual errors and safeguards were not evenly applied.The group said it collected responses from Bing from August to October this year. It chose the three elections because these are the first held in Germany and Switzerland since the introduction of Bing. It also allowed the researchers to look at local contexts and compare responses in... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple has paid $25 million to settle a class action lawsuit over its Family Sharing feature, and you might be eligible for a payout, as reported by MacRumors. The settlement, which you can read about on a dedicated website, stems from a 2019 lawsuit accusing Apple of misleading users about the apps you can use Family Sharing with.Family Sharing is a perk that lets you and up to five other family members share subscriptions to Apple services, including Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple News Plus, Apple Card, and Apple Arcade. It also lets you share subscriptions to third-party apps if the developer allows it. That part is what the lawsuit takes issue with, arguing that Apple misrepresented the ability to share subscriptions to non-Apple... Continue reading...

Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you haven't enabled Bluetooth on your Stadia controller yet, you don't need to rush. Google has extended the deadline for when its controllers will no longer work wirelessly from the end of this year to December 31st, 2024, as shown on its website (via @wario64).After Google announced the discontinuation of its Stadia cloud gaming service last year, the company said it would let its controllers live on as wireless Bluetooth gamepads compatible with PCs, Macs, phones, and other systems. It also rolled out a special web-based tool in January that you can use to activate Bluetooth on your Stadia controller. Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge Google previously gave users until December 31st, 2023 to complete the... Continue reading...

Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Google will soon store Maps users' location history locally on their devices instead of in the cloud, a big change that will make it more difficult for law enforcement to access the data.Controversial geofence warrants" allow law enforcement to gather tech companies' data on mobile phones that have passed through a certain area during a specific time period. The FBI has used the warrant to collect information about a Black Lives Matters protest in Seattle as part of an investigation into attempted arson, for instance.With privacy concerns and the potential for geofence warrants to turn anyone at the scene of an alleged crime a potential suspect, Google has faced pressure for years to change the way it stores users' location history.... Continue reading...

Marc Corfmat was a teenager when he began to compete for Lego's ultimate prize: the chance to design an official set. He and his brother Nick had been building custom Lego creations ever since they were kids, sometimes in California, sometimes during vacations at their grandparents' home in La Rochelle, France. They shared their models on YouTube and posted their creations to Lego's website, but interest from the Lego world came slowly, if it came at all.Then, in 2020, the brothers started having some luck. The Lego Ideas program gives fans the chance to turn their designs into reality, offering both fame and a small fortune - 1 percent of net sales - to anyone who can convince 10,000 peers and The Lego Group that their set deserves to... Continue reading...

The Vivo X100 Pro in blue. | Image: Vivo Even in tiny smartphone cameras, lenses matter. Vivo seems to agree since lens improvements are a major emphasis on its new flagship smartphones: the Vivo X100 and Vivo X100 Pro. They launched in China first on November 13th, and now Vivo is releasing them internationally with matching 6.78-inch 120Hz OLED screens.The X100 will be available in Southeast Asian markets, including India and Indonesia, and the higher-tier X100 Pro will also be available in European markets. And no surprise - the US isn't getting either of the devices.Like the X90 Pro before it, the X100 Pro offers a 50-megapixel one-inch-type main camera - a huge sensor by smartphone standards. Vivo says it's been tuned with Optical Precision Calibration" for consistent... Continue reading...

The Verge This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Mailchimp, one of the podcast industry's best-known sponsors, recently reached out to Pineapple Street Studios about making a new show. Pineapple and Mailchimp first collaborated in 2019, producing narrative ads for Mailchimp and branded series. So given their longstanding relationship, Pineapple Street staff were shocked when management at their parent company, the radio giant Audacy, informed them at a meeting on October 3rd that the new Mailchimp contract required all work on the series to be performed by non-union workers.Many of the producers who worked on Mailchimp projects in the past, or would take on a new branded series,... Continue reading...

Alexander Skarsgard. | Photo by Marc Piasecki / WireImage Another day, another sci-fi announcement from Apple TV Plus. The streamer is continuing to expand its presence in the genre with the news that it's adapting The Murderbot Diaries novels from author Martha Wells.There's no word yet on when the show will premiere, but it'll be a 10-episode-long series and feature Alexander Skarsgard as the lead. Chris and Paul Weitz will serve as showrunners, while David S. Goyer - who helms the Apple TV Plus adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation - will be one of the executive producers.If you haven't read the books - you can check out our review right here - Apple says the adaption is about a self-hacking security android who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients.'" In... Continue reading...

Photo: Netflix No thank you for waking me up. Continue reading...

Image: Google Google is releasing a tool to help users diagnose problems with their Pixel phones. Users can launch the app by entering #*#7287#*# on the dial pad, allowing them to check whether their phone is working correctly before or after a repair.There are a bunch of diagnostic tools available within the app. While users can run a full diagnostic test to detect issues across the entire device, there are also options to run individual tests for physical defects and problems affecting the phone's display, sensors, and connectivity. The new tool is available on all Pixel phones in English. Image: Google Aside from the diagnostics app, Google is introducing redesigned repair manuals the company says are easier for technicians... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Online shopping giant Temu is suing its competitor Shein, saying the fast fashion giant is using Mafia-style" intimidation tactics on merchants.In the suit filed on Wednesday, Temu says Shein has deployed increasingly aggressive strategies to illegally interfere with Temu's business," including intimidating merchants who list their products on both platforms and issuing tens of thousands of illegitimate copyright takedowns.Temu and Shein have previously sued each otherShein recently has gone so far as to falsely imprison merchants doing business with Temu, including detaining merchant representatives in Shein's offices for many hours while Shein confiscates the merchants' electronic devices, obtains access to proprietary Temu... Continue reading...

A screenshot of Neko Atsume Purrfect. Sure, Meta's Quest VR headsets have games like Beat Saber, a VR Assassin's Creed, and access to the entire Xbox Cloud Gaming library, but starting today, you can play Neko Atsume Purrfect Kitty Collector, a VR take on the classic cat-focused mobile game Neko Atsume.The game is adorable. The cats have that same cartoony and slightly vacant look that makes them so endearing in the mobile game, and they get up to plenty of shenanigans. But because you're playing in VR, you'll also be able to do things like pet" the cats and pick them up using your controllers.I was given early access to the game ahead of today's launch, and I've messed around with it for about 30 minutes. Like with the phone version of Neko Atsume, Purrfect is not a... Continue reading...

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Cruise, the self-driving unit of General Motors, will lay off nearly a quarter of its employees, or 900 workers, after grounding its fleet in response to an incident in which a hit-and-run victim became pinned under a Cruise vehicle and then was dragged 20 feet to the side of the road.After the incident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's permit to operate driverless cars in the state. The company then grounded its entire fleet nationwide. (It had vehicles in Arizona, Texas, and Florida as well.) In response to the pause in operations, GM said it would reduce spending on Cruise and appoint its own executives to oversee the company.In response, several top executives have left the company, including... Continue reading...