The Verge

The Victrola Stream Onyx turntable wirelessly transmits audio to Sonos speakers. | Image by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Yes, it's sad that Amazon's fall Prime Day event is over, but the future - and even the present - still looks bright for deal hunters. Black Friday is just over a month away, after all, and some of the best Prime Day deals are still hanging around. Right now, for example, you can pick up the Victrola Stream Onyx turntable from Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from Victrola for a record low of $399.99 ($200 off).Save for a few differences when it comes to materials and color, the Stream Onyx is similar to the $800 Stream Carbon we tested last year. Like the Carbon, the belt-driven turntable can wirelessly transmit audio to Sonos speakers, which gives users the unique ability to stream vinyl straight to their entire Sonos system without the... Continue reading...

Even toddlers are no match for Google's new camera features. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Until August 2021, my Google Photos library was basically a wall of cat photos. Then, a small human entered the picture, and you can see a distinct dividing line in my photographic priorities: one day it was Cat, the next day, Baby.Many of the other parents I know have experienced the same phenomenon. And while cats aren't the most willing photo subjects on earth, well, have you met a toddler? They are agents of chaos. This makes for a special kind of dilemma: you must photograph Baby because they are the cutest being to ever grace the planet, but they also refuse to sit still or stop moving for even one goddamn second while you take a picture.Have you met a toddler? They are agents of chaosThis spurs you to take even more photos in... Continue reading...

The last annular eclipse in 2021 as viewed in Toronto. | Photo by Mark Blinch / Getty Images Many eyes will turn to the sky on Saturday to catch a glimpse of an extremely rare ring of fire" solar eclipse. But experts are cautioning against looking directly at the eclipse to avoid serious eye damage.An annular eclipse occurs while the Moon is near or at the farthest point in its orbit around the Earth. The Moon, which appears smaller in the sky because of this distance, passes directly in front of the Sun, creating this ring of fire" effect.People across the contiguous United States and part of Alaska should be able to see the eclipse. Most regions will only see a partial eclipse, in which only a part of the Sun is covered up by the Moon.A fuller eclipse will be viewable in parts of Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah,... Continue reading...

The discontinued Nest Secure hub (left) and the new ADT security system hub (right) show some indications of Google's influence on the design. | Images: Google / ADT It appears security company ADT is about to launch a more fitting successor to Nest Secure than the half-baked ADT Self Setup system it rolled out last year. The new system, called ADT Smart Home Security, features more polished sensor hardware, a sleeker base station with a backlit keypad (like the Nest Guard), and door window sensors that can be disarmed using an on-device button (like the Nest Detects). This was a handy feature of Nest's system for easily disarming it when your dog needed to pee at 2AM.The company hasn't announced this system, so there are no pricing details or a release date, but The Verge received a tip linking to hidden support pages on its website containing all the hardware details. Based on these, we can glean... Continue reading...

A screenshot from Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision Blizzard's free-to-play FPS game. | Image: Activision Everything you need to know about gaming's biggest acquisition yet. Continue reading...

Image: Waymo For years, developers have been working on ways for driverless cars to communicate intent to other road users, either through audio recordings or visual cues. Today, Waymo says it wants to be one of the first companies to put some of these methods into practice.The Alphabet-owned company's driverless Jaguar I-Pace vehicles will use their roof domes, which are wrapped in LED displays, to communicate messages to other road users. For now, the company is going with just two messages: for pedestrians in front of the vehicle, shifting grey and white rectangles meant to communicate that the vehicle is yielding to them, and for drivers behind the vehicle, a yellow pedestrian symbol to let them know there's a pedestrian crossing.The symbols... Continue reading...

Now that the Microsoft acquisition is complete, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, is set to leave the company after the end of this year.In an email sent to employees and published on Activision Blizzard King's website, Kotick wrote that he's excited about the future of the company under the bright green Xbox umbrella. He also wrote that in order to facilitate a smooth transition, he intends to stay on temporarily as CEO of ABK, reporting to the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer.Phil has asked me to stay on as CEO of Activision Blizzard King, reporting to him, and we have agreed that I will do that through the end of 2023," Kotick wrote. Kotick, who became CEO of Activision in 1991, stands to receive upward of $375... Continue reading...

Joe Biden visits the Cummins Power Generation Facility in Fridley, Minnesota, on Monday, April 3rd, 2023. Last year, Cummins announced Fridley would be the site of its first electrolyzer manufacturing facility in the US. | Photo by Elizabeth Flores / Star Tribune via Getty Images The Biden administration will funnel $7 billion into seven different hubs" for hydrogen production across the US. It's part of President Joe Biden's plan to transition the nation to clean energy, even though the environmental benefits of hydrogen still hinge on overhauling the way the fuel is traditionally made.Hydrogen combustion creates water vapor, unlike fossil fuels that release greenhouse gas emissions when burned. That's seen as especially valuable for cleaning up aviation, maritime shipping, and heavy industries like steel that are more difficult to run on renewable energy and batteries. The tricky part with hydrogen is cleaning up pollution from the process of making it. Most hydrogen today is made using fossil fuels, and a... Continue reading...

US President Joe Biden arrives for a ceremony at the groundbreaking of the new Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility near New Albany, Ohio, on Friday, September 9th, 2022. | Image: Gaelen Morse / Bloomberg via Getty Images Lawmakers' push to revive US chip manufacturing has triggered new concerns about pollution regulation, inadvertently subjecting semiconductor factories to federal environmental review for the first time. But while a bipartisan bill would exempt the factories to support a still-struggling American industry, some environmental advocates worry it could weaken the nation's bedrock environmental law.Since the 1990s, semiconductor manufacturing has shifted from the US to Asia. Around that time, it was becoming cheaper to build fabs and hire workers in Asia. Studies into hazardous chemicals at fabs and lawsuits over worker exposure to them in the US were also emerging.Now, a global chip shortage - and a desire to counter China's manufacturing... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is experimenting with the inclusion of a Discover Feed on its desktop homepage that shows recommended content alongside the company's traditional search box. A screenshot from MSPowerUser, which spotted the change, shows a feed that includes news headlines, a weather forecast, sports scores, and stock information for a trio of companies. The search giant previously added the Discover Feed to its US homepage on mobile devices in 2018,Google spokesperson Lara Levin confirmed the change in a statement given to The Verge, noting that it's an experiment that's currently being run in India. Any change to google.com is significant as it continues to be the world's most visited website. Image: MSPowerUser A... Continue reading...

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Microsoft's $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard has been approved by UK regulators. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has concluded that the deal can proceed after Microsoft recently restructured the deal to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft. The decision clears the way for the deal to close now that the UK regulator has given the green light.The CMA has decided to give Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) consent to acquire Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Activision) (the Parties) excluding Activision's cloud streaming rights outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) (the Merger) subject to the condition that the sale of Activision's cloud streaming rights... Continue reading...

Shadow, which offers services that let you stream a Windows PC, has disclosed a security breach that led an attacker taking some private customer data. The company is sending emails to customers notifying them that a bad actor was able to extract their first and last name, email address, date of birth, billing address, and credit card expiration date.Shadow's CEO confirmed the breach in a statement to The Verge. We were recently the victim of a highly sophisticated social engineering attack which led to the exfiltration of the database of one of our service providers, resulting in the unauthorized exposure of certain customer data," Eric Sele says. We have since then taken immediate steps to secure our systems, including reinforcing... Continue reading...

Image: James Bareham / The Verge Popular online adult film sites in Texas have published Texas Health and Human Services" disclaimers warning visitors about the unproven health risks of watching porn, reports 404 Media. The move comes after a US appeals court temporarily overturned an order blocking a Texas law that required porn sites to verify users' ages and display government health warnings.Though they don't require age verification, every Vixen Media Group site - which includes Deeper, Blacked, and Vixen - now displays factually debatable disclaimers warning that porn is potentially biologically addictive" and proven to harm human brain development." The warnings appear to users within the state of Texas.These pop-ups also claim porn increases the demand for... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge After receiving backlash from customers, Microsoft announced it has canceled plans to impose storage limits for photos in a user's OneDrive account starting on October 16th, Gizmodo reports.Starting in October, under the now-rescinded policy, photos in a user's saved photo albums and OneDrive Gallery would count against its cloud-based quota of five gigabytes. Once the new policy went into effect, users with photos surpassing the limit would no longer be able to save new OneDrive files or even receive emails in Microsoft's free Outlook email service.When it announced the changes in August, Microsoft said it would grant users a free one-year storage bonus to compensate for the inconvenience, but that didn't satisfy users.It's possible... Continue reading...

Squid Game. | Image: Netflix Just as Netflix is getting out of one business with the closure of its DVD rentals, it looks like it's getting into the physical realm in a different way. Bloomberg reports that the streamer is planning to launch new retail destinations - dubbed Netflix House - that will offer not only things to buy but also food and other experiences themed after whatever is hot on Netflix at the moment. There aren't a lot of specifics right now, such as where these permanent spaces might eventually open, but the first locations are expected to launch in the US in 2025.We've seen how much fans love to immerse themselves in the world of our movies and TV shows, and we've been thinking a lot about how we take that to the next level," Josh Simon,... Continue reading...

The $999 Google Pixel 8 Pro takes good photos with its 50-megapixel f/1.68 main sensor. | Photo by Eddie Costas / The Verge The $999 Google Pixel 8 Pro takes good photos with its 50-megapixel f/1.68 main sensor. For the most part, subjects are sharp, colors aren't too saturated, and the focus fall-off can fool you into thinking images came from a larger camera. But it's important to remember that Google is a software company that sometimes makes hardware. And for every one photo it takes, there are two AI editing tools ready to either make its hardware look better than it really is or create a scene that isn't necessarily true.In the latest episode of my YouTube series Full Frame, I set out to take 1,000 photos with the Pixel 8 Pro. From 4K, 24FPS video of fall in upstate New York to ultrawide macro shots of my eyeballs, I put this system to the test.It... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Meta is starting to roll out an edit feature and Voice Threads" for its Threads platform, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday. They're two major new features for Meta's burgeoning X-like social network - and unlike on X (formerly Twitter), you won't need to pay a subscription fee to be able to edit your posts for five minutes after they're published.Posts that are edited will have a little icon next to the timestamp showing that they've been revised. You aren't be able to see an edit history - that's one advantage X still has over Threads - and Meta spokesperson currently doesn't have plans to add one, Christine Pai tells The Verge. Post by Richard Lawler / The Verge, screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge S... Continue reading...

Photo by Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images A few weeks after announcing he intended to leave PlatinumGames, Hideki Kamiya posted a video on YouTube celebrating his first official day of unemployment. In the video, Kamiya explained what he's been up to, what his future plans are, and clarified that though he's left PlatinumGames, he's not planning on retiring anytime soon.I'm over it. I'm so over it," Kamiya said as he exited PlatinumGames' office carrying a box full of toys including an Ultraman figurine and a Bayonetta plushie.Kamiya quickly recapped his nearly 30-year history developing games starting at Capcom, working on Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Viewtiful Joe. He moved on to Clover Studio to work on Okami, before finally joining PlatinumGames directing the B... Continue reading...

GIF: Adobe Adobe is showing off a new generative fill feature, Project Fast Fill, that can easily add or remove objects in videos with the power of AI. It's one of several new, wild, experimental AI features announced today at the company's MAX conference. Project Fast Fill has the ability to swap in clothing accessories on people in motion or remove tourists from the background of a landscape pan.Fast Fill works similarly to Google's Magic Editor, where you can move around people or objects - but with video instead of just still photos. Fast Fill promises to do things the company's Project Stardust does for still photos, like change colors by just entering a text prompt. Adobe says these generative AI features are made possible by the company's... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) will let you create images right from a text prompt starting Thursday, the company announced. Microsoft has offered the ability to make images from Bing Chat using OpenAI's DALL-E model since March, so it's not too surprising to see Google follow suit.Here's how it works. If you're opted in to SGE through Google's Search Labs program, you can just type your query into the Google search bar. After you do, SGE can create a few images based on your prompt that you can pick from. The tool is powered by the Imagen family of AI models, Google spokesperson Craig Ewer tells The Verge.In a GIF, Google showed how the tool can be used to create images based on the prompt draw an image of a capybara... Continue reading...

Image: Max You don't have to look far to see the influence of French comic legend Jean Moebius" Giraud. His surreal visual style can be found everywhere from video games to animation. Sometimes it's just used as an aesthetic, but in the case of Scavengers Reign - a new animated series on Max - it's the starting-off point for one of the most imaginative and thoroughly convincing alien worlds I've ever seen. It's equal parts beautiful and brutal, and it might be the most original piece of science fiction of the year.Scavengers Reign takes place in the aftermath of a crash, when the few survivors of a ruined interstellar cargo ship find themselves scattered across an uncharted, hostile planet. The story primarily follows three groups as they attempt... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge In the past, Apple's ecosystem has been a little one size fits all" without a lot of room for personalization - however, now we're getting a lot more ringtones in iOS 17. Customizing your iPhone's alert sounds can make your device feel a little more personal and fun. And maybe - I'm just spitballing here - you can even make a funny reference to a '90s comedy starring Bill Murray in the process. Just an idea.In any case, here's how to change the sounds for your ringtone, mail, texts, and calendar alerts. For reference, this was tested out on an iPhone 11 running iOS 17.

Sony's SRS-XB100 Bluetooth speaker is still on sale for less than $50. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge We saw some good deals during Amazon's fall Prime Day event this week, but most of them have expired by now.Don't feel too disheartened, though, because Amazon is still offering a few budget-friendly deals if you know where to look. In fact, we've found a bunch of discounted gadgets, from magnetic chargers to speakers, many of which could make for great holiday gifts. Best of all, we guarantee none of them suck because we can vouch for each and every one of them.To help you better sift through Amazon's deluge of cheap tech, we've rounded up the gadgets that are still on sale for less than $50.Smart speaker and earbud deals

Illustration: The Verge Adam Aron, meme stock CEO of AMC, sent sexually explicit images in text conversations with a woman who attempted to blackmail and extort him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, as first reported by Semafor Thursday.The plot took place over several weeks of text messages between Aron and the woman, Sakoya Blackwood. Blackwood assumed several false identities, including that of a former romantic partner to Aron, to solicit explicit photos from the CEO before threatening to publicly release them unless she received $300,000.The case was first reported last July but masked Aron's identity, referring to him only as a CEO of a publicly traded company. Aron confirmed that he was the victim of the plot in a post to X, formerly Twitter,... Continue reading...

Select colors of the PowerA Enhanced Wired Controller for Xbox and PC are as low as $19.99 | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge There's arguably no better deal than one that makes a handy, low-cost item drop to a price that falls into impulse-buy territory. While big-ticket items like iPads and noise-canceling headphones may be more attention-grabbing than something like a USB-C charger, it's often those smaller items that get the most use in our day-to-day life.Saving a few bucks on some excellent and affordable tech can go a long way without breaking your budget. And if you're doing some very early holiday shopping, they can make great stocking stuffers or small gifts for any fall birthdays in your life.Sadly, there aren't a ton of leftover deals now that Amazon Prime Big Deal Days is over. But the good news is that some of the ones still lingering are small... Continue reading...

Photo illustration by Alex Parkin / The Verge AI is relatively easy, Baszucki said at Code. Working in China? That's harder. Continue reading...