The Verge

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The IssueIt’s probably happened to all of us: you want to link to a really interesting factoid in a really long article — but you can’t be sure that the people reading your social network or blog entry will be able to find the factoid in all that text. You could simply take a screenshot of the factoid, but then you’re not linking to the original article, which is both bad internet etiquette and not as effective in showing your source material. Or you can take the screenshot and throw in the link, which is better but awkward. Or...Quick FixUse the Chrome browser’s Copy Link to Highlight feature. Right click on a highlighted section to see the Copy Link to Highlight option. The full storyWhen you’re a writer or... Continue reading…

GIF by Sean Hollister / content from Roddenberry Archive Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, left us a long time ago — but his archive is slowly being digitized so it can live forever. The latest batch includes an official website that lets you set foot on almost every Enterprise bridge. GIF by Sean Hollister / content from Roddenberry Archive Spoiler alert: While this story won’t spoil anything, the website in question does contain a spoiler for Star Trek: Picard.It’s not a particularly robust or mobile-friendly website at the moment, perhaps because of all the fans attempting to live out their dreams simultaneously — but if you navigate to roddenberry.x.io, click on Bridge View and then pick a ship, you might see a “Click Anywhere to Continue” message. ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Brave, the company that develops its own privacy-focused web browser and search engine, announced that it will no longer use Microsoft’s Bing search as a source for its web searches.“Every Web search result seen in Brave Search is now served by our own index,” reads a Thursday post on Brave’s company blog. “We’ve removed all search API calls to Bing.” The news comes a couple of months after Microsoft introduced some enormous price hikes for third parties using its search API. Brave’s blog post calls the price increase “unprecedented.”Brave claims that its Brave Search engine was only leveraging Bing for about 7 percent of query results. It also noted that, at Brave Search’s inception in 2021, it only used third parties for about 13... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is testing a new feature that will let you add songs to the photo carousels you post to the platform. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news on his Instagram broadcast channel, noting that it’s already available in a “few countries with more to come.”While Instagram already has a similar feature that lets you add songs to individual photos, I feel like it makes more sense to add to a carousel of pictures. Instead of listening to a music clip while looking at a single photo, you now have more time to listen to the song as you swipe through multiple photos in a carousel. Image: Instagram Here’s how it looks when you add a song to a Note. Aside from that, Zuckerberg also mentioned that Instagram is... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge ChatGPT maker OpenAI has restored access to its service in Italy, saying it has implemented changes to satisfy Italian regulators. “ChatGPT is available again to our users in Italy,” it said in a statement published by The Associated Press and also sent to The Verge. “We are excited to welcome them back, and we remain dedicated to protecting their privacy.”OpenAI said it had “addressed or clarified” the issues raised by the Italian Data Protection Authority (or GPDP) in late March. The GPDP accused ChatGPT of unlawfully collecting users’ data and failing to prevent underage users from accessing inappropriate material, leading OpenAI to block ChatGPT in the country. The company was given 20 days to address the issues, and regulators said... Continue reading…

Pedestrians walk past the front of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. headquarters office in Tokyo on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005. | Photo by Haruyoshi Yamaguchi / Bloomberg via Getty Images Mitsubishi wants to be the world’s biggest dealer of carbon removal credits. Keep in mind that the company has its hand in many of the most polluting industries out there — from producing cars to natural gas, coal, petrochemicals and plastics. And carbon credits have become a popular way for corporations to keep on polluting while claiming to fight climate change.This week, the company announced a joint venture to set up what it says is the world’s biggest portfolio of carbon removal credits. The credits represent tons of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere through a range of still contentious tactics for dealing with climate change.Carbon credits have become a popular way for corporations to keep on polluting while claiming to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is piloting new chat channels where you can hold real-time conversations with other users. The Discord-like channels will live within various subreddits, allowing you to swap between browsing through posts and chatting with other Redditors about a range of topics.While this may sound a bit like Reddit’s Live Chat feature, the platform notes that chats “will be dedicated spaces, rather than a one-off post.” As shown in the below screenshot, it looks like you can tap into different conversations embedded inside of a subreddit, with each dedicated to a specific topic, like “Tickets” or “Songwriting.” You can also access your conversations within the main Chat tab on Reddit’s bottom menu bar. Image: Reddit The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the best and easiest ways to keep your online accounts secure. It works by issuing an authentication code on your phone when somebody tries to access the account; if that person doesn’t have the code, they (or you) don’t get in. By using a 2FA app, such as Google Authenticator or Authy, you can prevent somebody from accessing your data by getting your password. (You can have a code texted to you, but that is considered far less secure due to the rise of so-called SIM hacking.)Google Authenticator lets you establish 2FA by using your phone to scan a QR code generated by the app on a separate device or by entering a key code. It’s a relatively easy process.Except there used to be a catch.... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The current AI boom, from Bing and Midjourney, relies on free access to training data, much of it scraped from the web and often protected by copyright. The use of this data has led to both criticism and lawsuits, particularly in the art world, with rights owners arguing that their work is being exploited without their permission.Some of the AI world’s biggest players, like OpenAI, have avoided scrutiny by simply refusing to detail the data used to create their software. But legislation proposed in the EU to regulate AI (the long-building and far-reaching AI Act) could force companies to disclose this information, according to reports from Reuters and Euractiv.The amendment was reportedly a late addition to the draft AI ActReuters... Continue reading…

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge A former Apple employee has been sentenced to three years in prison and must pay back over $19 million in restitution for stealing around $17 million from the tech giant through mail and wire fraud schemes. Dhirendra Prasad, 55, was originally charged in March 2022 and later pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Apple and related tax crimes back in November last year.Prasad was employed at the company between 2008 and 2018, mostly working as a buyer in Apple’s global service supply chain, purchasing parts and services from vendors. In his written plea agreement, Prasad admitted he started siphoning money from his employer around 2011 by accepting kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating invoices, and fraudulently charging Apple for goods... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix’s Sweet Tooth is Bambi meets The Last of Us. It inserts adorable animal characters into an increasingly harrowing world, where the skin of civilization is being pulled back by the nails of abnormality. This is a world unmade by a respiratory disease, while simultaneously reeling from the sudden births of hybrid children: half-human, half-animal. Amid this chaos, we meet the titular sweet tooth, Gus (Christian Convery), a half-deer boy. Raised in isolation in Yellowstone National Park, Gus found himself alone and hunted. With the help of a reluctant protector, Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), a mountain of a man carrying an equal amount of weight on his shoulders, and a terrifying teen named Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen), Gus journeys... Continue reading…

OnePlus’ first tablet brings high-end features and specs to a midrange price point. It reminds me of the OnePlus we used to know. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hackers have reportedly been breaking into AT&T-provided email addresses, and using this access to steal large quantities of cryptocurrency, TechCrunch reports. While it’s not clear how many people have been impacted, one alleged victim claims to have lost $134,000 from a Coinbase account associated with a compromised email address. Email addresses with att.net, sbcglobal.net, and bellsouth.net domain names have all reportedly been affected.The vulnerability revolves around mail keys, which are meant to allow users to log into AT&T email accounts via clients like Outlook or Thunderbird. Somehow, attackers appear to have found a way to generate these keys without the knowledge of the owner of an email account. Once they have access,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has revealed the number of active monthly users for various versions of its App Store in Europe in order to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The disclosure published on Apple legal resources site reveals that the iOS App Store has 101 million users in Europe, with the iPadOS App Store trailing behind with 23 million users. The macOS App Store has six million users and the tvOS App Store has one million.The tech giant also provided estimated figures for the watchOS App Store, Apple Books, and Podcasts paid subscriptions, which have fewer than one million monthly users in Europe.Platforms with over 45 million users are beholden to stricter regulations under Europe’s DSA rulesThe recently-enacted DSA legislation... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony says it shipped 6.3 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the three months ending March 31st 2022, bringing total sales of the console to 38.4 million, the company reported in its latest earnings release. That’s more than triple what the company shipped in the same quarter the previous year (2 million), and means the Japanese electronics giant shipped 19.1 million PS5 during fiscal 2022, beating its earlier forecast of 18 million.On the software side things were more mixed, Bloomberg notes. Revenue from game software was up overall, but units shipped fell from 70.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 68 million in the same quarter of 2022. PlayStation Network monthly active users were up slightly from 106 million to 108 million,... Continue reading…

Elden Ring tips. | Image: Valve Valve has just shipped a huge UI overhaul to Steam’s In-Game Overlay in the Steam Beta, among other fresh coats of paint. It also comes with one particularly awesome idea: a traveling notepad.Yes, you’ve probably already got a notepad app on your PC, but does yours automatically pop up the correct file that corresponds to each game you play? Can you overlay it on top of your game so it’s visible while you play? Does it automatically sync from PC to PC via the cloud? Valve says its new Notes app does all of that, and works offline too. Image: Valve It’s not the only window you can newly pin atop a game: Valve says Guides, Discussions, and the Steam web browser can all be summoned into your game with adjustable... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it will no longer post service alerts and information on Twitter, citing doubts about the platform’s reliability. It’s directing riders to its website, apps, and email or mobile alerts instead.“We’ve loved getting to know you On Here, but we don’t love not knowing if we can to communicate with you each day,” the MTA account tweeted in a thread on Thursday evening. “For the MTA, Twitter is no longer reliable for providing the consistent updates riders expect. So as of today, we’re saying goodbye to it for service alerts and information.”

Image: Bluesky Look. I know that most people aren’t on Bluesky yet, but when you get there, you should know that you won’t be posting. You’ll be skeeting.I could do some explanation of it being a portmanteau of “sky” + “posting” but I think we just hit the sicko event horizon and a bunch of shitposters logged on over the last 24 hours, including a bunch who didn’t bother with Mastodon. Anyway it’s skeeting now. Sorry if you don’t like it. Skeet, skeet, motherfucker.Also, it’s not the timeline, it’s the skyline. Dril is there. There’s been a main character incident. Quote tweets are happening but you can’t block anyone and muting doesn’t work. It’s pure PVP and no Elon Musk. Also no DMs, so you’re going to have to be horny on main.

Image: Microsoft Will the UK’s decision be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Continue reading…

“1337” seems appropriate. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Two Twitter icons joined Bluesky on Thursday. Dril was first, with AOC joining shortly after.The invite-only decentralized Twitter alternative has been gaining steam in recent days — I’ve seen a lot of people I follow on the bird-themed social network start to show up on Bluesky. But the Twitter clone might truly begin to feel like a New Twitter now that Dril (the Twitter legend who recently gave an interview as his real-life human self) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have officially joined the platform.There’s nothing on Dril’s Bluesky profile that makes it absolutely clear that it’s really him. (He hasn’t tied a domain name to his handle, for example.) Dril has posted once, but it’s an extremely not-safe-for-work post that... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Podcasts have finally started to arrive for YouTube Music users in the US. The change will allow you to tune into podcasts on the YouTube Music app, where you can gain access to on-demand, offline streams that support background listening without a Premium subscription.YouTube first announced that it was bringing podcasts to its music streaming service at The Verge’s Hot Pod Summit in February, and now it’s “gradually” rolling out to users. The YouTube Music app will now have a dedicated podcast tab where you can browse through shows that were once limited to the main YouTube app. You can also swap between the audio and video versions of a podcast while using YouTube Music.

Image: Clubhouse Clubhouse, the app that sparked a wave of audio-only features, is laying off over 50 percent of its employees. The app’s co-founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, shared the news in a memo to employees, where they emphasize a need to “reset” the company in a post-covid era.“As the world has opened up post-Covid, it’s become harder for many people to find their friends on Clubhouse and to fit long conversations into their daily lives,” the founders write. “To find its role in the world, the product needs to evolve. This requires a period of change.”In their memo, Davison and Seth say they’ve been unable to make things work with the current size of Clubhouse’s team, noting that it’s “difficult” to “communicate the strategy to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Windows 10 22H2 will be the final version of the operating system, Microsoft said in a blog post on Thursday. Moving forward, all editions of Windows 10 will be supported with monthly security updates until October 14th, 2025, when Microsoft will end support. (Some releases on the Long-Term Servicing Channel, or LTSC, will get updates past that end of support date.)Microsoft is encouraging users to now transition to Windows 11 because Windows 10 won’t be getting any new features.

Microsoft-branded keyboards will be a thing of the past. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft will no longer manufacture mice, keyboards, and webcams that are Microsoft-branded. Instead, Microsoft is now focusing on its Surface-branded PC accessories, which include mice, keyboards, pens, and more. It brings an end to the legacy of Microsoft-branded PC hardware after the company first launched its first mouse in 1983 and bundled it with Microsoft Word and Notepad.“Going forward, we are focusing on our Windows PC accessories portfolio under the Surface brand,” says Dan Laycock, senior communications manager at Microsoft, in a statement to The Verge. “We will continue to offer a range of Surface branded PC Accessories — including mice, keyboards, pens, docks, adaptive accessories, and more. Existing Microsoft branded PC... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla violated national labor laws by suppressing employees at its Orlando, Florida, service center from discussing pay and bringing up grievances on working conditions, a US labor judge ruled on Wednesday (PDF). The decision comes after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accused Tesla of instructing its employees to refrain from discussing the hiring, suspension, and termination of employees last year.Tesla has now been ordered by the judge to cease and desist from continuing to violate labor law. As pointed out in an email from NLRB press secretary Kayla Blado to The Verge, Tesla must post multi-lingual notices of the ruling around the Orlando facility in areas where it would normally post notices. The automaker will also have... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google Authenticator is getting end-to-end encryption — eventually. After security researchers criticized the company for not including it with Authenticator’s account-syncing update, Google product manager Christiaan Brand responded on Twitter by saying that the company has “plans to offer E2EE” in the future.“Right now, we believe that our current product strikes the right balance for most users and provides significant benefits over offline use,” Brand writes. “However, the option to use the app offline will remain an alternative for those who prefer to manage their backup strategy themselves.”

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is rolling out a bunch of new features for Microsoft Designer, its AI-powered graphic design tool, to streamline how users design social media posts. The platform will soon be accessible directly through the Edge web browser and has additional AI-powered creative tools to help it compete with rival graphic design services like Canva.Microsoft Designer was first unveiled in October last year and includes AI text-to-image features similar to tools like Stable Diffusion. Users can generate images using text prompts, incorporating the results into projects like invitations, greeting cards, and social media posts. Think of it as a combination of DALL-E and Adobe Express, albeit with significant limitations. Image:... Continue reading…

Image: Speedrookie (Reddit) AMD says it has resolved the voltage issues that have apparently been causing the company’s new 7000X3D series processors to randomly burn out, killing both the CPU and motherboard. The company has now distributed a BIOS firmware update to its board partners that place voltage restrictions on the AM5 socket motherboards they ran in, which should prevent the affected CPUs from operating beyond their intended limits.“We have root caused the issue and have already distributed a new [AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture] that puts measures in place on certain power rails on AM5 motherboards to prevent the CPU from operating beyond its specification limits, including a cap on SOC voltage at 1.3V,” AMD spokesperson Matthew Hurwitz... Continue reading…

FromSoftware Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon has a release date: August 23rd. To mark the announcement, FromSoftware has revealed a new trailer and a blog sharing gameplay details and more.Armored Core VI takes place on the ruined planet Rubicon that was devastated by the detonation of a volatile but highly sought energy source called coral. As an armored core pilot, your job will be to complete missions, fighting back against the other forces desperate to get their hands on the material.Through the glimpses of gameplay in the trailer, combat in Armored Core VI looks blisteringly fast with heavy mechs darting about the battlefield. According to game director Masaru Yamamura, the new assault boost feature lets mechs swiftly close the distance... Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Trutschel / Photothek via Getty Images Dropbox is laying off around 500 employees, making up about 16 percent of the company’s entire workforce. In a memo to employees, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston attributes the layoffs to a rocky economy — but also says that the cuts will allow the company to build out its AI division.“In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible,” Houston writes. “However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we’ll need even more.”

Photo by Sergei Supinsky / AFP via Getty Images Colorado has become the first US state to pass a law that gives farmers the right to repair their own equipment. Governor Jared Polis signed the bill into law on Tuesday, requiring manufacturers to provide access to the parts, software, tools, and documentation necessary for farmers or independent repair shops to fix agricultural equipment.“This is a common-sense bipartisan bill to help people avoid unnecessary delays from equipment repairs,” Governor Polis says in a statement. “Farmers and ranchers can lose precious weeks and months when equipment repairs are stalled due to long turnaround times by manufacturers and dealers. This bill will change that.”The move marks a step forward in the right-to-repair movement. It addresses a... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge General Motors announced the creation of its own open-source software protocol as a “starting point” for other automakers and developers to create better software experiences for its customers. The move comes as the auto industry scrambles to hire more software developers and programmers to help produce cars that are essentially computers on wheels.GM’s “uProtocol” is part of the automaker’s plan to “speed up software development by streamlining the creation of software that is distributed across multiple devices within vehicles as well as across the cloud and mobile,” the company said in a release.More importantly, GM says it sees this as an opportunity to work across the industry on software projects that could be beneficial to all... Continue reading…