The Verge

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max is down to just $34.99 ($20 off) at multiple retailers right now. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The latest season of The Mandalorian may be over, but there are still plenty of other shows to look forward to, including a third season of The Witcher. The first batch of episodes will drop in late June, but you can prep yourself now with today’s deal on Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max. Right now, the streaming stick is available for its all-time low of $34.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.As far as streaming devices go, the 4K Max offers quite a bit for the price. It provides access to a terrific selection of streaming services along with support for Wi-Fi 6, Dolby Vision, HDR, HDR10 Plus, and Dolby Atmos, allowing for more immersive sound quality. Plus, it offers impressive voice capabilities via the included Alexa remote,... Continue reading…

Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images Lawyers for automaker Tesla have argued that statements by Elon Musk about the capabilities of the company’s Autopilot software can’t be trusted as they could be deepfakes, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg.Tesla presented this argument as part of its justification as to why Musk shouldn’t be interviewed under oath for a lawsuit blaming the company for the death of Apple engineer Walter Huang in a fatal crash in 2018.Huang died while driving a Tesla Model X, with attorneys for his family arguing Tesla’s driver assist software was at fault. The attorneys seek to interview Musk regarding statements he made about the safety of this software. These include an interview in 2016 in which Musk claimed that “a Model S and Model... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung’s memory chip business just had a terrible quarter, as falling demand and high inventories contributed to a 4.58 trillion won (around $3.4 billion) loss from the division, Bloomberg reports. The loss at the unit, which CNBC reports is typically its largest profit driver, contributed to Samsung’s quarterly operating profit plunging 95 percent in the quarter to 640 billion won (roughly $478 million).A few different factors contributed to Samsung’s losses at its memory chip division. Smartphone and PC makers stockpiled chips during the pandemic as a hedge against supply issues as demand boomed, but have since been left with large inventory excesses as consumer demand has dropped off amidst high inflation and broader global economic... Continue reading…

Image: Asus Sure, Asus can build a faster Steam Deck-like handheld gaming PC, but there’s no way it could compete with Valve on price, right?Guess again. The higher-end Asus ROG Ally will apparently cost just $699.99. That’s for the model with an AMD Z1 Extreme chip, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD — meaning that Asus’ 512GB handheld costs just $51 more than a 512GB Steam Deck.That’s according to data shown to The Verge by reliable gadget leaker Roland Quandt, a leaked screenshot from BestBuy provided by Wickedkhumz, and an earlier leak by SnoopyTech. The data we’ve seen leaves little room for confusion — even the product number associated with the $699.99 gadget identifies it as the Z1 Extreme model with 512GB of storage, and we’ve got a long list... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google Meet finally supports 1080p video calls — but only for paying subscribers. In an update on Wednesday, Google says it’s bringing the upgrade to select Workspace and Google One users.Additionally, you can only access 1080p video calls on the web-based version of Google Meet, and it all depends on whether your computer’s webcam actually supports the resolution. Google also notes that you’ll need additional bandwidth to send 1080p video and says that it will automatically adjust your resolution if bandwidth is “constrained.” Image: Google The feature isn’t enabled by default, but you can toggle it on by selecting the three dots in the top right corner of your video feed and then hitting Turn on HD video. Since... Continue reading…

The existing Ayaneo 2. The new 2S looks much the same. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Z1 Extreme who? Ayaneo has just confirmed it will use AMD’s similar but unannounced Ryzen 7000 U-series chips in a new batch of handheld gaming PCs — including the never-before-seen Ayaneo 2S and Ayaneo Geek 1S, the previously announced sliding keyboard Ayaneo Slide, and a new version of the Ayaneo Air Plus.What’s more, the company is now promising upgrades for its existing PCs instead of just rapidly making them obsolete — it will offer a free speaker upgrade for every Ayaneo Air and a free cooling module for every Ayaneo 2 and Ayaneo Geek that can lower its temperature by up to 12 degrees Celsius. Image: Ayaneo via Webandme (Discord) Image: Ayaneo via Webandme (Discord) The new three-pipe... Continue reading…

Image: Evan Blass via Twitter The latest leaked images of the upcoming Motorola Razr give us an even better look at the foldable’s large outer display and interface, as first spotted by 9to5Google. In a set of images posted to Twitter by reliable leaker Evan Blass (who has made his account private), you can see how the display extends from the phone’s hinge and wraps around the device’s dual cameras.The images also show off some of the different clock displays you can use and suggest that you can customize the interface’s font, layout, color, theme, and wallpaper to your liking. It seems like Motorola may add a new color option into the mix as well, with the above image showing two devices featuring a deep red hinge.Blass calls the pictured device the “Motorola... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is planning to move Microsoft 365 apps onto a single domain, cloud.microsoft. Currently, the company’s apps are scattered across a wide variety of domains, which means it can be confusing to know where to find a certain service if you don’t have it memorized or bookmarked somewhere.Seriously, Microsoft currently uses a lot of domains. Check out this word cloud from Microsoft showing just a few of the domains Microsoft customers have to sort through: Image: Microsoft Oof. But under this new system, you can instead use URLs like “outlook.cloud.microsoft” and “teams.cloud.microsoft” to get to the app you’re looking for, as shown in the below GIF from the company. Much cleaner. GIF:... Continue reading…

RIP the Halo View. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Amazon has decided to shutter its health-focused Halo division, The Verge has learned. Amazon has stopped selling its three Halo products and plans to lay off portions of the Halo team.“We have made the difficult decision to wind down the Halo program, which will result in role reductions,” Melissa Cha, Amazon’s VP of smart home and health, told staffers in an email obtained by The Verge. “More recently, Halo has faced significant headwinds, including an increasingly crowded segment and an uncertain economic environment. Although our customers love many aspects of Halo, we must prioritize resources and maximize benefits to customers and the long-term health of the business.”Cha went on to write that all Halo hardware would be... Continue reading…

Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images The damage to the launch pad went far beyond what experts were expecting. And nearby residents are left dealing with the environmental fallout. Continue reading…

Unlike prior models, the 2022 model features a matte display that dramatically reduces glare. | Image: Samsung Let’s face it: good art is rarely cheap. Thankfully, however, Samsung’s 32-inch Frame TV is currently on sale at BuyDig right now for $380 with promo code FNJ23, providing you with a more cost-effective way to outfit your living room with well-known masterpieces.This 2022 QLED panel isn’t a vast update over the prior model — it still touts a 120Hz refresh rate, HDMI 2.1 support, and compatibility with voice assistants like Amazon Alexa — but the 4K set now comes with a new anti-glare matte finish, which helps it look like a piece of actual artwork when turned off (as opposed to the hulking black box that it is). Sure, some of said art is paywalled behind a $5 monthly subscription, but if good picture quality and aesthetics are what... Continue reading…

Is Apple really good for your health? | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Here are some cursed words: “Apple Plans AI-Powered Health Coaching Service, Mood Tracker and iPad Health App.”I can see why you might say, Liz, this sounds benign and obvious. What’s the big deal? And I think about a meeting I had in 2014 with a freelance writer who was wearing three fitness trackers, inadvertently imitating Madonna’s 1980s stacked bracelets look. He asked me how I slept. I was — and am — a pretty good sleeper. I snooze heavily for seven to eight hours and wake up feeling good, sometimes even before my alarm goes off because I am (sorry) a morning person.The freelancer I’d been speaking to, perhaps obviously, had been having trouble sleeping, and as someone who was fairly devoted to optimizing his life through fitness... Continue reading…

Though you’re going to miss out on owning this excellent box art in physical form. | Image: Nintendo Are you hyped for the impending launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom but still a little miffed about it being the first $70 Nintendo Switch game? If you’re a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber, there’s something you can do about that. By buying Nintendo’s digital game vouchers, you can effectively preorder your digital copy of the new Zelda for just $49.99.Spend $100 to save up to $30 on two gamesThe Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers cost $99.98 for two, each of which is redeemable for a qualifying full-price game on the eShop. The game list includes preorders like the upcoming Zelda, Pikmin 4, and recent hits that haven’t seen many discounts yet — such as Splatoon 3. If you pay $99.98 for the two vouchers and use one to... Continue reading…

Photo by Joseph Prezioso / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Disney is suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, alleging his administration waged a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” against the company’s “protected speech.” In the lawsuit, Disney claims DeSantis “threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region, and violates its constitutional rights.”“Disney regrets that it has come to this,” the lawsuit states. “But having exhausted efforts to seek a resolution, the Company is left with no choice but to file this lawsuit to protect its cast members, guests, and local development partners from a relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint unpopular with certain State officials.”T... Continue reading…

Toad and Princess Peach. | Universal For anyone who’s been holding out hope for a subbed US release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie with performances from the film’s Japanese voice-acting cast intact, your time has finally come, but it won’t last very long.It’s not really clear when, exactly, Illumination and Universal’s Super Mario Bros. Movie will step off the other movies’ necks and let someone else have a turn at being number one at the box office. But beginning this Friday, Japanese-language screenings of the film will begin showing “for a limited time only” in select theaters in Honolulu, Los Angeles, Seattle, Toronto, New York, San Francisco, and Vancouver.

Here are some steps that can make layoffs slightly less stressful. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge There’s no sugarcoating it: getting laid off stinks. And while there’s no such thing as a “good” layoff, a bad one can absolutely be made worse if your now ex-company cuts off your access to contacts, emails, and work without warning.You probably know someone who had this happen to them. (Or perhaps you’re worried it could happen to you.) It seems heartless, but the bottom line is that companies abruptly cut off access to protect their interests. You might just want a colleague’s email to keep in touch or might want to save examples of your work to prove your worth to possible employers. To the company, however, the most important thing is to make sure disgruntled ex-employees don’t abscond with sensitive information like internal... Continue reading…

Image: Enhance Some of the most memorable games in PlayStation history have been downright strange, whether about dancing wireframe rabbits, deadly cubes, or mannequins traversing impossible architecture. These “very designer-led games,” as Mark MacDonald from Tetris Effect studio Enhance describes them, were often iconic — but they’ve also largely fallen out of favor. That’s where Humanity comes in. It’s an introspective game about a dog guiding a sea of humanity through puzzle-like mazes, and it’s as odd as it is compelling, a callback to exactly those kinds of classic PlayStation experiences.Humanity is a collaboration between Enhance — led by the legendary Tetsuya Mizuguchi, of Rez and Lumines fame — and designer Yugo Nakamura. Ahead of its launch... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix We knew a sixth season of Netflix’s Black Mirror was on the way, but now, we know a lot more about it: a new teaser trailer shared Wednesday reveals that the season will be out in June and features big actors like Aaron Paul, Kate Mara, and Salma Hayek.In a blog post, Netflix is promising that the season will be the show’s “most unpredictable” yet. The company isn’t saying why that is just yet, but a quote from Charlie Brooker, the show’s creator, sheds a bit of light on what you can look forward to.“The stories are all still tonally Black Mirror through-and-through”“Partly as a challenge, and partly to keep things fresh for both me and the viewer, I began this season by deliberately upending some of my own core assumptions about what... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is now rolling out a new update to its Phone Link app that includes iOS support for the first time. The Phone Link app now allows iPhone owners to connect to a Windows 11 PC and send and receive messages via iMessage, make and receive calls, and see their notifications on a PC or laptop.Microsoft started previewing this update earlier this year, and it’s now rolling out in 39 languages across 85 countries. Microsoft says all Windows 11 will get access to the iPhone support in Phone Link by mid-May.Phone Link works by sending messages over Bluetooth to contacts. Apple’s iOS then intercepts these messages and forces them to be sent over iMessage, much like how Apple’s operating system detects when you’re sending a message to an... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Rural customers subscribed to Verizon’s 5G network could see a jump in their speeds later this year. The telecommunications giant revealed plans during its quarterly earnings call this week to extend its C-band 5G network — which uses a radio spectrum that enables faster speeds on a wide scale — to more rural and suburban areas by December 2023.We don’t know specifically which areas the expansion will cover. During the earnings call, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg mentioned that the company’s C-band 5G coverage has so far been deployed to 70 out of the 406 available markets, mostly in urban and suburban areas. “It’s 330 markets left, we will get the C-band,” said Vestberg. He didn’t clarify how many of these markets would be covered by the... Continue reading…

Apps like Weather Fit are coming up with new ways to think about the forecast. | Image: Weather Fit Forecast Advisor might be the best-kept secret in the weather business. It’s a website, run by a company called Intellovations, that compares the accuracy of a dozen of the largest weather forecasters. You put in your ZIP code (it only works in the US), and it spits back a ranking of the services based on how correctly they predicted the weather over the last month and the last year. You might be shocked at how different the various sources are and how bad some of them are at predicting the weather.Depending on which weather app you use, this is extremely actionable information. Many third-party weather apps allow you to switch between data sources, so you can pick the one that’s most accurate near you — AccuWeather, in my case — and... Continue reading…

Is it still Time to BeReal? | Image: BeReal The ongoing collapse of Twitter has lots of folks wondering when an all-consuming new social app will rise up to take its place. This week, I want to talk about how things are going at one such upstart — and what it tells us about how new social products win and lose in 2023.That upstart is BeReal. In July of last year, the photo-sharing app had a breakout moment when frequent discussions of the app on TikTok pushed it to the top of the app store charts. Like most insurgent social networks, BeReal arrived with a novel creative constraint: a once-a-day window to post, delivered at a different time each day via push notification, that attempts to create a less performative social experience by inviting you to post your life at its most... Continue reading…

The ThinkPhone features a big 6.6-inch screen and top-notch build quality. Nine years after Lenovo purchased the Motorola brand, the first co-branded phone is hitting store shelves. The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is available in the US starting today for $699, offering a suite of productivity features designed to work with ThinkPad laptops. But don’t expect to waltz into your wireless carrier’s retail location and find it on a shelf — it’s available first to enterprise customers and then, on April 28th, becomes available unlocked via Motorola.com. That puts it out of consideration for a lot of people, and that’s too bad — in my experience, it’s shaping up to be a really nice phone.The ThinkPhone has a lot of the same stuff as a mainstream flagship phone, even though it’s priced just below the likes of the... Continue reading…

In an aerial view, Tesla cars sit parked in a lot at the Tesla factory on April 20th, 2022, in Fremont, California. | Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Tesla released its 2022 Impact Report this week, and it gives the clearest picture yet of the electric car company’s carbon footprint. Tesla disclosed numbers on its supply chain emissions for the first time, which makes its overall carbon footprint much bigger than it has reported in the past.Last year, the company only disclosed how much greenhouse gas pollution it generated from its direct operations and from customers charging their EVs. Altogether that was roughly equivalent to 2.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. But that missed the big picture since supply chain pollution — considered indirect emissions — often make up a major chunk of a company’s carbon footprint.This year, Tesla finally released data on its supply chain... Continue reading…

Illustration: Kyle Ellingson for The Verge Over the last few years, a spy’s gadgets have disappeared, and they’ve been replaced by the hacker. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard has been blocked by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). After months of analyzing 3 million Microsoft and Activision documents and more than 2,100 emails from the public, the CMA has concluded that the deal could “alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come.”Microsoft says it will appeal the decision, but it’s a blow to Microsoft’s hopes of acquiring Activision Blizzard and will likely prevent the company closing its giant deal if an appeal is unsuccessful.“Microsoft has a strong position in cloud gaming services and the evidence available to the CMA showed that... Continue reading…

Image: Onyx Onyx today announced a new tablet with an E Ink display capable of showing colors: the 10.3-inch Boox Tab Ultra C. The E Ink tablet is the first in the Tab series to feature a Kaleido 3 E Ink screen, which is the latest version of E Ink’s color electronic paper display technology. It’s still limited to 4,096 colors but allows for a higher color resolution.Don’t expect colors that are as vibrant as an iPad’s, though. The new color screen offers a sharp 300ppi resolution when you’re in black-and-white mode but drops to 150ppi when you view content in color. As a result, colors look more subtle and pastel-like, yet should still look more vivid than last year’s Onyx Boox Nova Air C’s screen. That color E Ink came equipped with a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is adding a new feature to some of its Workspace apps that will help users quickly locate commonly used tools without needing to sift through various menus and toolbars. The “enhanced tool finder” is starting to roll out across Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides today, appearing as a search bar — identified by a magnifying glass icon and a “Menus” label — at the top-left of the app’s usual toolbar.The search bar features a pill-shaped design that’s in keeping with the recent Material Design 3 overhaul. It’ll automatically offer up commonly used suggestions that vary depending on which Google Workspace app you’re using, such as “Page setup” in Docs, “Insert rows/columns” in Sheets, and “Edit theme” in Slides. Alternatively, users can... Continue reading…

Last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 4. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Ice Universe, an anonymous Twitter account with a habit of accurately leaking details about unannounced smartphones, has tweeted what they claim will be the physical dimensions of Samsung’s upcoming foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 5.Perhaps the most interesting figure is its thickness while folded, which will reportedly sit at 13.4mm. That’s notable, because the thickness of the current Z Fold 4 ranges from 14.2mm to 15.8mm, because of the hinge gap and the angle of the screens while folded. That could make the Fold 5 both thinner and flatter than its predecessor, potentially as a result of the improved “droplet”-style hinge Samsung is rumored to be using.

You can compare this summary to the actual article if you’d like. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Artifact, the recently launched news app from Instagram’s co-founders, announced a new AI feature on Tuesday that can summarize articles for you. But the best part about the feature is that it can summarize in different tones that are varying amounts of silly and surprisingly useful.If you’re on the latest version of the app, you can summarize an article you’re reading by tapping the “Aa” icon at the top of the screen and then on “Summarize.” After a moment, the summary will appear at the top of your screen in a black box. You can also ask Artifact to summarize in different tones, including “Explain Like I’m Five,” “Emoji,” “Poem,” and “Gen Z,” by tapping the three dots menu in that black box. Image: Artifact A... Continue reading…

The Hakuto-R lunar lander. | Image: Getty Images What would have been the first private Moon landing has ended in failure after Japanese startup ispace lost contact with its lunar lander, as reported earlier by The Washington Post. As the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander inched closer to the Moon’s surface, engineers found that they were no longer able to communicate with the spacecraft.“Currently, we have not confirmed communications from the lander,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during a livestream of the mission. “So we have to assume that we could not complete the landing.”

Illustration: The Verge Google’s search revenues inched upward in the first quarter of 2023 after years of rapid growth, suggesting the tech giant might be facing some difficulties with its golden goose. In an earnings release today, Google reported its “search & other” revenues were up 1.87 percent year over year (jumping from about $39.6B to $40.4B), which is much smaller growth than the 24.28 percent jump the company saw in Q1 2022 and the 30.11 percent bump in Q1 2021.Right now, search is seeing significant competition from all sides. Microsoft is trying to steal users away from Google with its AI-powered Bing chatbot, which became more widely available last month. And many people are turning to other tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to search for and learn... Continue reading…

Squid Game was a monster hit for Netflix, so it’s not surprising the platform is looking to repeat that success. | Image: Netflix After a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol yesterday, Netflix announced it’s planning to invest $2.5 billion into “the creation of Korean series, films, and unscripted shows over the next four years” — which is a fancy way of saying Netflix is about to make a crapload of K-dramas.The amount is double what Netflix has invested in K-dramas since 2016 — and it’s no surprise given the monumental success of Squid Game as well as The Glory and Physical: 100. In a statement, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company had “great confidence that the Korean creative industry will continue to tell great stories,” noting that Korean entertainment was “now at the heart of the global cultural zeitgeist.”As a second-generation... Continue reading…