The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission could soon stop cable companies from fining customers who cancel their subscriptions early. In a release on Wednesday, the FCC voted to move forward with a rule that eliminates junk fees" from cable and satellite providers.The rule, which FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel first proposed last month, tackles the fees cable and satellite providers sometimes charge when customers cancel their subscriptions before the end of a contract. In addition to doing away with early termination fees, the proposed rule would also require providers to give subscribers a prorated credit or rebate for the number of days left in their billing cycle upon cancellation. The proposed rule passed with a 3-2 vote.Consumers... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The next time you sit down to watch YouTube on your TV, you might notice fewer ads breaking up the video you're watching. That's because YouTube is making ads on TVs appear less frequently, but in exchange, you'll have to sit through longer commercials.YouTube started testing longer but less frequent ad breaks in September, and now they're launching across all TVs. The change means you'll see an updated countdown timer in the bottom-right corner of your screen that will now show how long you have left until the entire ad break ends or when you can skip. GIF: YouTube YouTube previously displayed how many ads were included in the break in the top-left corner of your screen, along with a countdown timer for each... Continue reading...

A mockup of the upcoming Rivian electric van for AT&T. | Image: AT&T Rivian finally has a second customer for its commercial electric vehicles. Today, AT&T announced it's spinning up a pilot program to switch its commercial fleets to EVs, including Rivian's commercial van and R1 platform trucks.AT&T is Rivian's first customer to purchase commercial EVs outside of the automaker's long-exclusive deal with Amazon. In 2019, Amazon agreed to purchase 100,000 delivery vans from Rivian, but the retail giant reportedly only met bare minimum orders of 10,000 units per year, adding fuel for Rivian to try and end its exclusivity agreement.AT&T's first Rivian EVs are expected to join the fleet in early 2024. However, there are no details on how many vehicles are in the initial pilot or whether there are more orders... Continue reading...

Image: Intel Intel is taking the wraps off its next generation of CPUs. During its AI Everywhere event on Thursday, Intel revealed all the details on the Core Ultra - no longer Core i" - mobile processors that will be part of its Meteor Lake lineup, promising better power efficiency and performance thanks to a new setup that splits tasks across different chiplets.Intel says its Core Ultra 7 165H chip offers an 11 percent improvement in multi-threading performance when compared to competing laptop processors, like the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, and Apple's in-house M3 chip. It also offers a 25 percent reduction in power consumption when compared to the previous Intel Core i7-1370P and has up to 79 percent lower power than... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is about to launch its grand plan to block third-party cookies in Chrome that many websites use to track your activity across the web for profit.Starting on January 4th, Google will start testing its new Tracking Protection feature that will eventually restrict website access to third-party cookies by default. It will come to a very small subset of Chrome users at the start, specifically to one percent of users globally. Afterward, Google plans to phase out the use of third-party cookies for all users in the second half of 2024.If you're randomly selected to try Tracking Protection, Google will notify you when opening Chrome on desktop or Android. If there are issues detected by Chrome while you're browsing, a prompt will appear... Continue reading...

The new Training Peaks integration lets you directly import custom workouts from the Apple Watch. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge The holiday season is arguably not for training. The major races of the year are done! Yet Apple and TrainingPeaks are getting a head start on next year's resolutions with a new integration that lets you directly import custom workouts to the watch.If you're unfamiliar with TrainingPeaks, it's an app that helps endurance athletes find training plans for their next half marathon, triathlon - you name it. If you want, it also has a coaching service that matches you up with an accredited coach to customize your plan based on your individual schedules, performance, and needs. The idea is to take some of the guesswork out of what you should be doing to prepare for an event.The integration itself is simple. It's based on a new watchOS 10... Continue reading...

Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Tax prep company H&R Block released a new conversational AI chatbot that answers taxpayer questions.AI Tax Assist, accessed through paid versions of H&R Block's DIY tax software, lets users ask questions on tax rules, possible exemptions, and other tax-related issues. It also points people to a human tax expert for more personalized advice, though the company said it is working on supporting AI-powered personalized advice as well.In a demo, the company showed how users with complicated tax filing statuses - say a gig worker - can start their tax returns. They can then ask AI Tax Assist for information like, What can I deduct as business expenses as an Uber driver?" The AI will provide a list of allowed deductions, and the user can... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Meta's Twitter competitor, Threads, is now available in the European Union, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced. Today we're opening Threads to more countries in Europe," Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads. The launch follows the service's debut in the US and over 100 other countries across the world, including the UK, in July 2023. But until now, Threads hasn't been available to the 448 million people living in the EU, and the company has even blocked EU-based users from accessing the service via VPN.To coincide with today's launch, Meta is giving users in the region the ability to browse Threads without needing a profile. Actually posting or interacting with content will still require an Instagram account, however. The move was... Continue reading...

Image: Opera Opera GX now includes a button you can hit when your embarrassing browsing session risks exposure to prying eyes. It's designed to quickly mute playback from all tabs and switch to a new window of safe content during an, ahem, unexpected drop-in or when your boss catches you watching too much Twitch when you should be glued to Excel.The new panic mode can be activated using the F12 button on a keyboard, so all you 60 percent keyboard lovers will need to bind the one function key nobody (apart from developers) uses right now. Opera lets you pick a website to designate as your safe tab, with pre-installed options for YouTube, Twitch, and Wikipedia. You can press F12 again once the coast is clear to bring back your tabs. I... Continue reading...

Image: Beeper Here we go again: After investigating reports that some users aren't getting iMessages on Beeper Mini and Beeper Cloud, Beeper says that Apple seems to be deliberately blocking" iMessages from being delivered to about five percent of Beeper Mini users. The company says that uninstalling and reinstalling the app fixes the issue and that it's working on a broader fix (though that apparently won't be in place tonight).Apple didn't immediately reply to a request for comment about Beeper's new claim, and it hasn't replied to my original request for comment, either. But given that the company has already blocked Beeper Mini before, it's not too surprising that it seems to be taking action against the app again.

Parker Ortolani / The Verge The Verge, your source for Tesla Cybertruck windshield wiper news, is unreasonably happy to potentially reveal: a Cybertruck windshield wiper replacement may cost as little as $165 for the entire arm and blade assembly, or $75 for just the wiper blade itself.That's the word from Tesla watcher Nic Cruz Patane, who, like all good windshield wiper enthusiasts, has seemingly been paging through the Tesla parts catalog for the Cybertruck but, unlike the rest of us, seemingly has access to prices for each part. We can see the same page, without prices, and it appears to be one single wiper blade after all. Screenshot via Nic Cruz Patane (Twitter/X) Twitter embeds weren't working so I took a screenshot. The... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta announced in a blog post update yesterday that it will apply an obscure Instagram setting to Threads that lets users control how much fact-checked content they see in their feed. Meta says its fact-checking is intended to address misinformation, so effectively, users will be able to decide how much they want to see controversial topics on the site.The controls have three levels: Don't reduce," Reduce," and Reduce more." While none of the choices can hide content entirely, they will affect the ranking of posts that are found to contain false or partly false information, altered content, or missing context."To get to the setting from Threads, users will need to tap the two lines in the upper-right corner from the profile tab,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge PowerPoint for the web now lets users insert videos with closed captions and subtitles into presentations, reports Windows Central. It should make presentations created in the Microsoft 365 suite more accessible to Deaf people or those hard of hearing, but the feature also offers other benefits.You can add closed captions in multiple languages, allowing users to connect with audiences worldwide, and captions also make it easier to watch videos in loud environments or quietly without disturbing people around you. It's also become a feature people expect to see as support for subtitling expands in apps like TikTok, Netflix, Zoom, and more.To embed a video and insert captions, users must first create closed caption files in the WebVTT... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge As if publishers and users didn't have enough reasons to reconsider their connections to the platform formerly known as Twitter, all outgoing links from X stopped working Wednesday afternoon. A problem with the URL redirect that captures activity before sending users on their way sent people to a simple error page saying, This page is down. I scream. You scream. We all scream... for us to fix this page. We'll stop making jokes and get things up and running soon."After about an hour or so of that happening, the problem was fixed, although we haven't seen any public acknowledgment of the issue from the @Support account, CEO Linda Yaccarino, or X owner / CTO Elon Musk.If this sounds familiar, it's because something similar happened in... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple will require law enforcement to obtain a court order before the company hands over details of customers' push notifications from now on. As Reuters reports, Apple quietly updated its guidelines for law enforcement page on Monday with language specifying that search warrants and court orders are now required for it to give up The Apple ID associated with" an Apple Push Notification Service token. The new policy follows revelations that both Apple and Google have been providing details about the notifications to governments.Apps can push" notifications to your phone so that you receive alerts, like a text message or incoming email, even when the app itself isn't open. But the process involves potentially sensitive information... Continue reading...

Image: Meta Xbox Cloud Gaming is arriving on Meta's range of VR headsets today. A beta version of the cloud gaming app is now available for the Meta Quest 2, 3, or Pro headsets, allowing you to stream hundreds of Xbox games with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, a controller, and a Quest headset.The beta app is available from the Meta Quest Store, and you'll simply need to pair a supported Bluetooth controller to start playing. You can use an Xbox controller (that supports Bluetooth), a PS4 one, or even Nintendo's Switch Pro controllers. Support for PS5 controllers is coming in the future," according to Meta. Image: Meta The Xbox Cloud Gaming app on a Quest headset. There are a variety of display sizes for an... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Threads that the platform is beginning to test making Threads posts available on Mastodon and other ActivityPub-supporting services. Zuckerberg wrote that making Threads work with the interoperable standard will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people."Joining the fediverse - the decentralized world of social media that includes Mastodon, Pixelfed, and other services that all interoperate through ActivityPub - has been on the Threads team's to-do list since the very beginning. Instagram head Adam Mosseri told The Verge in July that he believed decentralizing the platform was key to making it relevant to a new generation of creators. I think we might... Continue reading...

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro sound good, are compact, and - most importantly - purple. (Yes, they also come in white and black.) | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung's Galaxy Buds 2 Pro are once again selling for their best price of $159.99 ($70 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. The noise-canceling earbuds with 24-bit audio support are among the smaller and lighter options from the current top-flight class of wireless earbuds, making them a very comfy choice. They're also a pretty easy choice if you use Samsung devices, since, in addition to putting out some great quality sound, the Buds 2 Pro feature head tracking and spatial audio with Galaxy phones. Plus, that bora purple color option is just so fun looking.Read our review of the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro.If you live near a Target retail store, you can take advantage of a major one-day deal on Microsoft's flagship Xbox console. Target is... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla will have to skip trash day in Sweden as the country's labor groups continue to protest the company's anti-union policies. Reuters reports the country's Transport Workers' Union will refuse to pick up waste at the automaker's workshops in solidarity with Tesla autoworkers who've been on strike since October 27th.Tesla has resisted collective bargaining agreements worldwide, but Sweden's strong labor culture is continuing to test the automaker's policy.After 130 workers at Tesla repair shops walked out, the first show of solidarity came from union dockworkers who refused to unload Tesla vehicles from cargo ships in early November. Then, on November 20th, postal workers joined the effort by refusing to deliver mail to Tesla,... Continue reading...

Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal / Getty Images Tesla issued a recall notice today for 2 million vehicles in the US to address a defect" with Autopilot, the company's groundbreaking and controversial advanced driver-assist system. Safety experts say the recall will likely make Autopilot harder to misuse.Harder, but not impossible.It's progress," said Mary Missy" Cummings, a robotics expert who wrote a 2020 paper evaluating the risks of Tesla's Autopilot system, but minimal progress."Cummings said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration missed an opportunity to force the company to address concerns around Tesla owners using Autopilot on roads where it wasn't intended to work. Last week, The Washington Post published an investigation linking at least eight fatal or... Continue reading...

Image: Sega Netflix has figured out that the only thing better than having a bunch of Sonic cartoons on its platform is having a Sonic game. The streamer has announced that Sonic Mania Plus - y'know, the best Sonic game this decade - is coming to mobile via Netflix in 2024.Sonic Mania launched on console and PC in 2017 and, in 2018, was updated to Sonic Mania Plus. The upgrade to Plus added two new playable characters - Mighty and Ray - a new tutorial zone, and expanded, color-swapped levels.But the biggest addition was a new game mode called Encore mode. In this new mode, instead of Sonic and pals accumulating lives that get spent every time they find themselves on the wrong end of the drowning timer music, you accumulate party members a la the... Continue reading...

Illustration by William Joel OpenAI and Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider and Politico, signed a deal to share content on ChatGPT.The deal allows ChatGPT to pull information to user prompts from articles published on Axel Springer's publications and provide links to full stories for transparency. It will also enable Axel Springer to build with OpenAI's technology, the company said in a statement.Axel Springer owns Business Insider, Politico, and European publications Bild and Welt.The company said the partnership with OpenAI creates new financial opportunities. Julia Sommerfeld, deputy spokesperson for Axel Springer, tells The Verge ChatGPT will have access to premium paywalled articles on Business Insider but not from paid subscription... Continue reading...

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Amazon is rolling out a new feature that puts every book you've ever purchased on the site - whether it's digital, physical, or an audiobook - into a single searchable hub. The new feature, called Your Books, lets you sort through all your titles while also providing recommendations based on your previous purchases.The main Library" tab lays out your entire catalog of books, which you can search through based on various filters, such as author, genre, and series as well as some tailored to the titles you currently own, like Literature & Fiction." There's also a tab for saved books that includes every book you've ever wishlisted on Amazon. Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge You can sort through your library... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is going to help you spice up your Notes by letting you post video Notes, Meta announced on Wednesday.Notes have so far been text-based, meaning they currently function like the AIM status messages of my millennial youth. (You can even share what song you're listening to!) The addition of video gives you a little more room to be creative with your Notes, and you can add a text caption, too. But since video Notes can only be two-second loops, they probably aren't going to replace Instagram Stories anytime soon.The company is also introducing additional ways to reply to Notes from your friends, including photos, videos, audio messages, stickers, and GIFs. If you reply to a Note, your friend will see that reply as a DM. ... Continue reading...

Image: Murray Close / A24 The next film from director Alex Garland looks like quite the action-packed dystopia. A24 just released the first trailer for Civil War, which is set in a near-future version of the US that is, as you can probably guess, in the midst of a violent civil war, with forces from Texas and California making their way to the White House. It's hard to glean too many story details from the trailer, but it features a small group attempting to infiltrate a heavily fortified Washington, DC. It also features the tagline all empires fall," so you know things aren't going so well.Civil War stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, alongside Nick Offerman as the president and frequent Garland collaborator Sonoya... Continue reading...

Because Autopilot is a standard feature on new Tesla models, almost every X, S, 3, and Y (pictured) model sold within the US is impacted. | Image: Tesla Tesla is pushing software updates to over 2 million vehicles in the US - or almost every Model S, Y, X, and 3 ever sold in the country - to address a defect in the company's Autopilot system. On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a recall notice for the vehicles following a two-year investigation into a series of collisions that occurred involving Tesla vehicles using Autopilot, which comes as standard on every new Tesla.In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, the prominence and scope of the feature's controls may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse," the agency said in the recall statement, noting that this could lead to an increased risk of a collision."The notice applies to... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple has announced an expansion of its self-service repair program, allowing iPhone 15 users and owners of newer M2-powered MacBooks to repair their own devices. But perhaps more interesting is the release of Apple Diagnostics for Self Service Repair," which Apple says will help self-repairers test devices for optimal part functionality and performance, as well as identify which parts may need repair."The web-based diagnostics tool is available now in the US, and this Apple support page offers some details on how it works. You start by putting the device you're troubleshooting into diagnostics mode, enter its serial number into a secondary device, and then follow Apple's instructions to troubleshoot the broken device. Available tests... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft currently offers free access to Fortnite on its Xbox Cloud Gaming service (xCloud), but there are signs the company may offer free game streaming in exchange for ads. Microsoft Gaming CFO Tim Stuart hinted at this prospect in a Wells Fargo TMT Summit interview late last month, spotted by TweakTown.The vision I like to talk about is we have xCloud game streaming, so you can subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and you can stream hundreds of games to really any endpoint that has a browser experience," explained Stuart. For models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren't console-first, you can say, hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?'"Stuart's spitballing... Continue reading...

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - DECEMBER 11: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (C), President of the COP28 UNFCCC Climate Conference, emerges from negotiations over the wording of the Presidential draft on day eleven of the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference. | Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images What would have been a historic deal to tackle a planetary crisis slipped out of reach at the eleventh hour. Even so, climate-vulnerable countries and environmental advocates scored some key wins with clean energy after heated climate negotiations wrapped up in the United Arab Emirates, a top oil- and gas-producing country.This was the closest yet that countries have gotten to striking a global deal to phase out the use of coal, oil, and gas. But the summit was arguably still a home game for fossil fuel interests who threw their weight around the United Nations climate conference, called the 28th Conference of the Parties or COP28, where tens of thousands of delegates and activists from nearly every nation on Earth have gathered over... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The FCC announced today that it won't award Elon Musk's Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund for expanding broadband service in rural areas. The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn't able to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service" and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn't be the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars."That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink's bid last year, which led to this appeal. SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states," funded by the RDOF.The FCC is... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snapchat is getting even more generative AI features. The messaging app now lets Snapchat Plus subscribers create images based on a text prompt and send them to friends.Those who subscribe to Snapchat's $3.99 plan can use the feature by tapping the AI" button from the toolbar on the right side of the camera interface. This opens up a window where users can type a text prompt or choose from one of the premade options, like a futuristic disco" or a rocket preparing for liftoff." Image: Snap From there, Snapchat's AI will spit out an image based on the prompt, allowing users to edit it and add a message before sending it off to friends and family on the app. Snapchat is rolling out some other AI-powered perks for... Continue reading...

Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images Back at E3 2017, I had a plan. The annual convention always had a wide range of game developers in attendance, offering reporters like me the opportunity to talk to prominent folks from all over the world. I decided it would be the ideal place to chat with Japanese creatives about the then-resurgent mood surrounding the country's video game efforts. First on my list was Toshihiro Nagoshi, the infamously prickly creator of the Yakuza series. In an attempt to break the ice, I asked the stylish director where he bought his shoes. He replied, very simply - and in a very serious tone - very expensive." The only words of English he spoke during our entire conversation.Now that E3 is dead - for real this time - I can't help but think back on... Continue reading...

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Sony is investigating claims by the Rhysida ransomware group that it stole sensitive data from Insomniac Games, including personal information for the voice actor who portrayed Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2. Australian outlet Cyber Daily reported today that the group had posted some of the data as proof of the hack and is currently auctioning the full set for around $2 million worth of bitcoin.Some of the data published by Rhysida reportedly includes details about Insomniac's upcoming Wolverine game, including a screenshot and some character art that Cyber Daily wrote seems to relate to other Marvel characters" from the game. The outlet also says the data included scans of Insomniac employees' passports, as well as one for Yuri... Continue reading...

Aqara's Presence Sensor FP2 can now be used as a sleep tracker. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge The innovative Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 that debuted at CES 2023 is getting three significant new features that could make it more useful and more effective as a smart home sensor.Sleep Monitoring Mode, AI Person Detection, and People Counting are all coming to the Wi-Fi sensor, which is one of the first to use millimeter wave (mmWave) radar tech to accurately detect a person's presence even when they're sitting still, rather than relying on passive infrared motion sensing.The small puck-shaped device can now be set to monitor and analyze sleep status, real-time heart rate, and respiratory data," according to a press release from the company. Sleep monitoring is available via a firmware update (V1.2.3_0002.0059) that's rolling out... Continue reading...