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Image: Epic Games Fortnite just wrapped up its most recent large-scale live event, and it was a strange one — even by Fortnite standards. The event, dubbed “Fracture,” was meant as a sendoff for Fortnite Chapter 3, and now that it’s over, the game is down ahead of the launch of the next chapter on December 4th, which will introduce not only a new island, but characters like the witcher himself, Geralt of Rivia.Before things kicked off, players were split into groups, hanging out on tiny floating islands with little to do but watch a countdown displayed on a TV screen. (My trio of players all sat around roasting marshmallows together.) That was followed by a cutscene in which The Herald, a relatively new Fortnite character, led an attack of tornadoes, and... Continue reading…

Image: HBO HBO’s official trailer for The Last of Us shows off the dynamic between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as the two traverse a post-apocalyptic US amidst the outbreak of a mutant fungus that turns humans into zombie-like beings. It offers a much more detailed look at the dangers the two come across when compared to the previous teaser, including a brief glimpse at the infected themselves.Like the PlayStation game of the same name, the series has Joel escorting Ellie, who’s immune to the fungus, across the country in hopes of finding a cure for the outbreak. The trailer flashes between scenes of dialogues showcasing Storm Reid as Ellie’s friend Riley and Nick Offerman as Bill. At the end of the trailer, we see a swath of... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix's first full trailer for The Witcher: Blood Origin shines a spotlight on the prequel’s key characters played by Michelle Yeoh, Sophia Brown, and Laurence O’Fuarain. But it also comes with a bit of a surprise at the very end, revealing the return of Joey Batey’s Jaskier.The bard’s return doesn’t make all that much sense yet, as the series takes place 1,200 years before The Witcher, but it might have something to do with the massive monoliths included in the trailer that are “causing tears between worlds.” Towards the end of the trailer, Jaskier’s lute appears, while Minnie Driver’s Seanchai, a character described by Netflix as a “shapeshifting collector of old lore with the abilities to travel between time and worlds” asks a... Continue reading…

Nissan is just one of the auto manufacturer’s that use Sirius XM’s connected vehicle services. A vulnerability affecting Sirius XM’s connected vehicle services could’ve let hackers remotely start, unlock, locate, flash the lights, and honk the horn on cars. Sam Curry, a security engineer at Yuga Labs, worked with a group of security researchers to discover the flaw and outlined their findings in a thread on Twitter (via Gizmodo).In addition to providing a satellite radio subscription, Sirius XM also powers the telematics and infotainment systems used by a number of auto manufacturers, including Acura, BMW, Honda, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota. These systems collect a whole lot of information about your car that’s easy to overlook — and could pose potential privacy implications. Last year, a r... Continue reading…

The Kanto YU2 desktop speakers come in multiple color schemes. You also have the option between a glossy or matte finish. | Image Credit: Kanto With Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all of Cyber Week behind us, it’s time to let off the gas a little. These deals are going to be a little different. For the main pick of today’s roundup, I found a significant deal on a pair of Kanto’s YU2 minimalist desktop speakers that I own and enjoy. I was disappointed not to find any Black Friday deals on them, but thankfully, they’re available for a good price right now.Amazon, Walmart, Adorama, and Target are offering sets in multiple color schemes for $190, a big price drop from their usual $270 price. There are countless desktop speaker options, but this particular unit fits the bill for me with its low-profile design, great sound, and USB DAC. The speakers connect to each other with... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Free-speech crusader Elon Musk isn’t happy with Twitter’s years-old decision to suppress a news story about Hunter Biden’s laptop just ahead of the 2020 presidential election. So in an effort “to restore public trust” in Twitter, Musk indicated last month that he would release internal communications showing how it all went down.That arrived Friday night in the form of a lengthy and arduously slow tweet thread (it took a full two hours to complete) from journalist Matt Taibbi, who Musk appears to have leaked the documents to and coordinated for his findings to be posted to Twitter.Taibbi later deleted a tweet showing Jack Dorsey’s email addressTaibbi’s thread includes screenshots of emails between Twitter’s leadership, members of the... Continue reading…

Jeff Blackburn is departing the company. | Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage Amazon’s Jeff Blackburn, who leads the company’s media and entertainment businesses, is retiring from Amazon for a second time, according to emails from Blackburn and CEO Andy Jassy on Friday.With Blackburn’s departure, there will be some shifts in Amazon’s org chart. Mike Hopkins, who heads up Prime Video, Amazon Studios, and MGM, will report directly to Jassy. Steve Boom will add Audible, Twitch, and Amazon’s games division to his current responsibilities overseeing the company’s music and podcasting groups. He’ll also report directly to Jassy.Blackburn first retired from his job as SVP of business and corporate development in February 2021 after a year-long sabbatical but was back in his current role that May. Since his return,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is offering some users a whole $2 a month for only one teeny, tiny thing in return: that they route their traffic through an Amazon server so the company can keep track of which Amazon ads they’ve seen. It’s apparently been doing this for months.I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but you Should! Not! Do! That!The offer is part of Amazon’s Shopper Panel app, an “invitation-only” program that gives you up to $10 a month in Amazon credit for uploading receipts for purchases you made at places other than Amazon and filling out surveys. I’ll say again: even if you were willing to basically give up your privacy, which you probably shouldn’t be, why would you do it for just a few dollars? If there’s anything more personal than your... Continue reading…

Interstate 40 in Adrian, Texas. | Photo by Paul Harris / Getty Images Wind power isn’t cleaning up as much pollution as it could, especially in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, new research shows. The US’s wind energy boom has already led to billions of dollars of health benefits. But the majority of that hasn’t trickled into communities that have historically been burdened with the most air pollution, finds a study published today in the journal Science Advances. Fortunately, that could change if new wind energy projects are deployed more strategically.Over the past two decades, wind energy has grown from less than half a percent of the US electricity mix in 2002 to almost 10 percent today. By 2014, increasing amounts of wind energy had measurably improved air quality, resulting in... Continue reading…

Players at a Call of Duty League tournament. | Photo by Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images The US Army halted a planned sponsorship with Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty esports league after allegations of Activision’s workplace culture of harassment and discrimination came to light last year, according to documents obtained by Vice.The Army wasn’t the only organization taking another look at its plans with Activision at the time; sponsors, including Coca-Cola and State Farm, were also reevaluating their support of the Overwatch League. The Verge reached out to sponsors listed on the Call of Duty League and the Overwatch League websites for comment in August 2021, and as observed by Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach, our inquiry to the Army appeared in the documents as part of a broader discussion about “the brand reputation... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers at Blizzard’s Albany, New York offices — organized as GWA Albany under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) — have won their union vote, making them the publisher’s second union and the third overall union in the US video game industry. The vote was a majority decision — 14 “yes” votes out of a total possible 18 votes — marking an important step in Blizzard Albany’s unionization process that began in July of this year.“With this victory, we’re advocating for ourselves and each other because we care deeply about our work and the games we make,” said Amanda Deep, associate test analyst at Blizzard Albany, in a CWA press release celebrating the win. “Our colleagues at Raven inspired us when they announced the formation of... Continue reading…

Celsys has canceled an upcoming rollout of an AI image generator for its Clip Studio Paint app following backlash from the artist community who use it. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Japanese illustration app Clip Studio Paint has canceled the rollout of a recently announced AI image generator tool after backlash from its users. In a blog post and update to its announcement, Celsys (the company behind Clip Studio Paint) apologized to its community, saying, “We were so preoccupied with how generative AI technology could be used creatively that we lost sight of what our core users want from Clip Studio Paint as a creative tool.”Celsys announced it would be launching the “experimental image generator palette” on November 29th as part of a winter update due December 6th. The company said the feature would be based on the open-source Stable Diffusion AI model, which has been criticized by artists for its use of artists’... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Elon Musk claimed last week that “hate speech impressions” on Twitter were down by one-third since he took over the company.But the total amount of hate speech on the platform has risen during that same time period, according to research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.An average of 1,282 tweets with slurs against Black people appeared daily on Twitter before Musk took over; that number jumped to 3,876 after he bought the company. During the week of Musk’s tweet, it increased even further to 4,650 tweets a day on average.Slurs against transgender people increased 62 percent since Musk bought TwitterSlurs against transgender people increased 62 percent since Musk bought Twitter, to 5,117 tweets a day on average, the report... Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Buglewicz / Getty Images Infowars founder Alex Jones has filed for personal bankruptcy in the wake of a billion-dollar defamation penalty. As reported by Reuters this morning, Jones filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a Houston court this morning. Jones’ company, Free Speech Systems, filed its own bankruptcy petition in July.Today’s bankruptcy filing indicates that Jones has 50 to 99 creditors. That presumably includes over a dozen people who lost children at the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, which Jones claimed for years had been faked — leading to a series of defamation suits that Jones lost by default. He estimated his assets to be worth between $1 million and $10 million and his liabilities between $1 billion and $10... Continue reading…

The game features a single-player campaign, as well as a tense, one-versus-one multiplayer mode. | Image: Bethesda You’d think the best gaming deals of the year are behind us now that Black Friday is over and it’s December, but Best Buy appears to have other plans. The retailer surprised us today with a one-day deal on Deathloop for PlayStation 5 for a new all-time low of just $9.99 ($50 off). This deal is set to run until 1AM ET unless Best Buy runs out of stock before that.Deathloop was one of the most critically acclaimed games of 2021, blending roguelike, run-based gameplay with the immersive sim first-person action that Arkane is known for. While this isn’t the first discount since its release, it’s the biggest yet, so long as you aren’t counting that it’s included as a freebie for subscribers of Xbox / PC Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Extra.... Continue reading…

Lead character Jacob in The Callisto Protocol. | Image: Krafton The game, led by Dead Space creator Glen Schofield, takes an old-school approach to survival horror. And it works… except when it becomes painfully frustrating. Continue reading…

The face of the Huawei Watch Buds flips open to reveal hidden earbuds, a neat solution for folks who constantly leave their wireless earbuds at home. | Image: Huawei Central / collage by The Verge If you’d already seen any leaks of the Huawei Watch Buds on the web, then you’d be forgiven for thinking it was some fan-made concept or an early-development product destined to never see the light of day. But, in an announcement on Weibo, Huawei has not only confirmed that the Huawei Watch Buds are a genuine product, but provided a teaser video for us to get a better look (via The Register).As the name suggests, the Huawei Watch Buds are a pair of earbuds concealed within a smartwatch that looks similar to the Huawei Watch 3. Details are a little sparse so there’s no word yet on what kind of performance or battery life you can expect from either of the products, but the watch itself does appear to be running HarmonyOS.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, has been suspended from Twitter shortly after posting an image of a swastika inside the Star of David. Twitter CEO Elon Musk confirmed the suspension late on Thursday, noting that Ye had “again violated our rule against incitement to violence.”The Twitter suspension comes nearly two months after Twitter locked Ye out of his account following an anti-Semitic post. Instagram also restricted access to Ye’s account in October after he posted a screenshot showing a text message between him and rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, accusing Diddy of being controlled by Jewish people.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix currently has a relatively small group of about 2,000 subscribers who it invites to preview upcoming projects and provide feedback about them ahead of release, but that number’s about to grow significantly as the streamer looks to maximize its profits in an increasingly competitive streaming market.The Wall Street Journal reports that Netflix plans to open up its Preview Club program to “tens of thousands” more subscribers across the globe in order to glean reactions from people that might end up being used to make last-minute tweaks to the streamer’s films and movies ahead of their broader release.That’s reportedly what happened with ​​Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up after a small Netflix test audience said that they thought the... Continue reading…

With dual cameras and dual motion detection, this camera catches it all — just not fast enough Continue reading…

Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy at the 46th Annual Saturn Awards. | Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images for ABA While Mike Flanagan’s forthcoming The Fall of the House of Usher series based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe is still headed to Netflix, the Haunting of Hill House creator is getting ready to take his talents to another streaming platform that’s likely looking to beef up its horror catalog.Deadline reports that Mike Flanagan and Intrepid Pictures CEO Trevor Macy (who has also executive produced the whole of Netflix’s “Flanaverse”) have signed a new exclusive, multi-year overall TV production deal with Amazon Studios. Under the new deal, Intrepid Pictures will create new series and films for Amazon Prime similar to how the indie production house crafted series like ​​The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club for... Continue reading…

Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, wears a Balenciaga mouthguard during Paris Fashion Week. | Photo by Edward Berthelot/GC Images Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, will no longer be purchasing Parler, the platform’s parent company confirmed on Thursday.The announcement came shortly after Ye went on an antisemitic rant while appearing on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars program on Thursday. Despite the timing, Parler’s corporate owner, Parlement Technologies, claims that the two parties agreed to terminate the deal last month.“Parlement Technologies has confirmed that the company has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale of Parler. This decision was made in the interest of both parties in mid-November,” a company spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.Ye first announced his intent to purchase the social media platform in October... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge A video doorbell is a high-tech upgrade for your front door, adding visual voicemail to your doorstep and a heads-up to who’s there on your smartphone or smart display. Another fun and little-known feature of smart doorbells is the option to change up the doorbell’s ringtone.Depending on the model, you can change the sound the doorbell itself makes or the sound the electronic chime inside your house makes. For example, Nest video doorbells can use different tones at the front door, but Ring and Arlo doorbells only change the sound of the compatible digital chimes inside your house.Changing your video doorbell sounds is fun to do for the holidays — Ring and Google offer Halloween, Christmas, Hanukkah, and other holiday-themed chimes —... Continue reading…

Gerald “Jerry” Lawson is one of the overlooked founding fathers of gaming. Among the litany of recognizable names in the gaming industry, there is one that’s often left out of the conversation. Gerald “Jerry” Lawson, the engineer responsible for the development of the video game cartridge, among other outstanding achievements, is the subject of today’s Google Doodle. While his name may not get the same recognition as the likes of Carmack, Romero, or Bushnell, Lawson was an instrumental part in the growth and development of video games, long before many of these prominent upstarts would hang their shingle. Image: Google Today’s Google Doodle is an interactive celebration of Gerald “Jerry” Lawson’s contributions to gaming. A Brooklyn-born and -raised Black man, Lawson began his career... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Discord is expanding its server subscription program, allowing more creators to start charging subscription fees for premium access and perks.“Starting today, we’re expanding the availability of Server Subscriptions, allowing creators on Discord to earn money directly within their server,” wrote Discord creator product lead Derek Lang.Community servers in the US have the capability to enable subscriptions provided they meet the minimum criteria.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Coinbase has accused Apple of forcing it to remove NFT transfers from its Wallet app on iOS. On Thursday, it tweeted that Apple “blocked our last app release until we disabled the feature” because the iPhone maker wanted the blockchain fees associated with an NFT transfer to go through its in-app purchase system, giving it a 30 percent cut.According to Coinbase, it’s impossible to make that happen for a variety of reasons, with one important one being that Apple’s system doesn’t support paying in crypto.While some NFT marketplaces let you purchase the digital tokens using traditional fiat currency like the US dollar, the fees Coinbase is talking about are a different matter entirely. On blockchains like Ethereum, which many NFT... Continue reading…

It’s a slight delay — Disney previously announced the show would be coming February 2023. | Image: Disney The Mandalorian’s long-awaited third season debuts on Disney Plus on March 1st, Disney announced on Thursday. Disney had previously said it would be out in February, but it turns out that we’re getting it just a little bit later than expected.Season 2 premiered in October 2020, so it’s been some time since we’ve had new episodes of the show starring the galaxy’s favorite bounty hunter / baby alien duo. They made an appearance in a few episodes of The Book of Boba Fett, but soon, we’ll be able to see the both of them together once again.The third season comes on the heels of the excellent Andor, which had its season 1 finale air on Disney Plus. After you’re done with your Mandalorian rewatch, I highly suggest Andor; both shows have... Continue reading…

Image: Nvidia Two weeks ago, Nvidia and tech watchdog GamersNexus agreed on one thing: if your Nvidia RTX 4090 graphic card’s 12VHPWR power cable starts smoking and melting, it’s probably because you didn’t plug it in all the way. But the PCI-SIG standards body is now suggesting that Nvidia and partners should have accounted for that.GPU manufacturers “need to take all appropriate and prudent measures to ensure end user safety, including testing for the reported problem cases,” reads part of a statement from the PCI-SIG. The group also spends 49 words deflecting any blame away from itself:

Image: Disney Remember when making actors look older or younger in movies was a huge deal? The amount of postproduction work to achieve realistic results was immense back in the day, but now, researchers from Disney have revealed FRAN, a new artificial intelligence tool that can convincingly age or de-age an actor in a fraction of the time.In an academic paper, Disney Research Studios explains that FRAN (which stands for face re-aging network) is a neural network that was trained using a large database containing pairs of randomly generated synthetic faces at varying ages, which bypasses the need to otherwise find thousands of images of real people at different (documented) ages that depict the same facial expression, pose, lighting, and background.... Continue reading…

OpenAI’s latest tool / toy is an AI chatbot. | Image: OpenAI OpenAI has released a prototype general purpose chatbot that demonstrates a fascinating array of new capabilities but also shows off weaknesses familiar to the fast-moving field of text-generation AI. And you can test out the model for yourself right here.ChatGPT is adapted from OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model but trained to provide more conversational answers. While GPT-3 in its original form simply predicts what text follows any given string of words, ChatGPT tries to engage with users’ queries in a more human-like fashion. As you can see in the examples below, the results are often strikingly fluid, and ChatGPT is capable of engaging with a huge range of topics, demonstrating big improvements to chatbots seen even a few years ago.But the... Continue reading…

The weekly meeting of the EU Commission on November 30th, 2022 in Brussels, Belgium. | Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images The European Union has taken a major step toward legitimizing attempts to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Yesterday, the European Commission adopted a proposal for new rules on how to certify carbon removal, a still controversial strategy for limiting climate change.The worry is that, without the proposed rules, ineffective carbon removal projects might derail climate goals and give polluters a sham to hide behind while presenting themselves as green. So, to weed out such projects, the European Commission wants to establish a framework for certifying “high-quality” carbon removals.“Higher transparency will ensure trust from stakeholders and industry, and prevent greenwashing,” the Commission said in its announcement.“The EU is... Continue reading…

Frictional Games Frictional Games, maker of SOMA and the Amnesia series, has announced it’s working on a new entry in its roster of survival horror titles with Amnesia: The Bunker.With a release date sometime next year, Amnesia: The Bunker seems to be unlike any of its predecessors. For starters, in the game’s short announcement trailer, it looks like you’re not going to be forced to stare down unknown eldritch terrors with naught but a flashlight and thinking happy thoughts. No, you’re getting a gun. Image: Frictional Games “So anyway, I started blasting.” The arrival of guns to Amnesia will no doubt cause major discussion as the series was lauded for specifically not giving you the means to just blast your enemies to bits.... Continue reading…