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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is testing home feeds without a shopping tab, marking a shift in how the platform treats e-commerce.Some Instagram users (including some of us here at The Verge) have noted in recent days that the shopping tab, previously on the bottom navigation bar, has been replaced with a notifications tab. Shopping, meanwhile, has been moved to a second menu, buried among options like settings and saved posts.Meta spokesperson Anne Yeh confirmed the changes as part of a limited test.“As part of our continued work to simplify your Instagram experience, we are testing a few changes to the main navigation bar at the bottom of the app with a small number of people,” Yeh says.Moving the tab is a conscious decision on the part of Instagram... Continue reading…

Thunderstorms move over Artemis I at launch pad 39-B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 27th, 2022. | Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Threatening weather will force NASA to send the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from its currently precarious position on the launchpad back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for safekeeping. The move will delay the agency’s highly anticipated launch of its Artemis I mission around the Moon.

WhatsApp users will soon be able to invite up to 32 people to a group call. | Image: WhatsApp WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature that allows users to share a direct link to a call, making it easier to stay in contact with your loved ones. The Call Links feature will start to appear on WhatsApp this week and can be accessed through a banner located at the top of the Calls tab. WhatsApp users who want to try the Call Link feature will need the latest version of the app.Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature on Facebook, saying that WhatsApp users will be able to share a link to a call with “a single tap.” The ability to share a call link with up to 32 users was teased back in April during the announcement of another upcoming feature, WhatsApp Communities.The Call Links feature will support both audio and video calls, and... Continue reading…

E3 2019 attendees check out a game at the show. | Photo by Getty Images for E3 After a year off, E3, the big gaming industry convention, is set to take place from June 13th through June 16th, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and event organizer ReedPop announced on Monday. The event will be back as an in-person show at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and there will be dedicated days for industry attendees and gaming fans to hit the show floor. E3 also plans to support digital gaming events that will take place beginning June 11th.The “E3 Business Days” will be happening from June 13th through June 15th. These days of the show will be exclusively for games industry attendees for them to network, meet up, and go hands-on with upcoming games. The “E3 Gamer Days” are set for the last two days of the... Continue reading…

The LTE-enabled Apple Watch Series 7 is currently on sale for its best price yet. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge You can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s green, red, or cream. Best Buy and Walmart are currently offering the green, red, or cream colorways of the 41mm Apple Watch Series 7 for its best price ever. The GPS and cellular-equipped configuration of the Series 7 is typically priced at $499 but is available for just $329. While Apple has everyone focused on the new Series 8, the Series 7 is still every bit the excellent Apple wearable we’ve come to expect. The Series 7 offers a larger screen than its predecessor, and it can charge faster than generations that came before it.Unless you can’t live without some of the newer features rolled out with the Series 8, like its temperature sensors for menstrual tracking, or you’re more... Continue reading…

Airlines would have to provide more transparency about all the fees you pay to fly under new proposed rules. | Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images Airlines would have to refund passengers for services they paid for that aren’t actually provided, like broken Wi-Fi, under new rules proposed by the Biden administration. Also, airlines and travel search websites would have to disclose upfront any added fees for changing or canceling your flight and for checked or carry-on baggage.The new rules are part of a slate of changes the US Department of Transportation is proposing to make flying more transparent and consumer-friendly after a particularly rocky summer travel season, in which flight cancellations spiked. The administration has previously sought stricter rules for passenger refunds, arguing that it wants to make air travel more competitive.Airlines have moved in recent years to... Continue reading…

Ancestry has an enormous genetic database. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Customers of the consumer genetics and genealogy company Ancestry will soon be able to see which side of the family any DNA matches found through the service come from. The new feature, launching this week, builds on the SideView technology the company announced in April.“We’re really excited to see what users can do with this parental matches feature,” says Caitlyn Bruns, a population geneticist at Ancestry. “I do think it will really help unlock an understanding of how you’re connected with your matches.”The feature will let users more easily see where matches fall on their family tree. Previously, people could manually place people on one side of their family as they learned more about their matches. Now, it’ll happen... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The City of London police report they’ve arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking and said he remains in custody. In a follow-up tweet the next day, the police confirmed the teen has been charged with two counts of breach of bail conditions and two counts of computer misuse. A hearing was scheduled for Saturday, but as of Monday morning, no further details have been released.Police declined to say what incident the arrest was in connection with, but many of the details line up with recent high-profile hacks. This spring, the City of London police arrested and released seven teenagers in connection with an investigation into the Lapsus$ hacking group. Today’s arrest also comes just days after two security breaches... Continue reading…

James Cameron’s Avatar nets an additional $30 million at the theater, over 13 years since its original 2009 release. | Image: 20th Century Fox The remastered rerelease of James Cameron’s Avatar is set to earn Disney an additional $30 million in global ticket sales since last week, ranking domestically in third place at the box office behind Don’t Worry Darling and The Woman King.The 4K HDR version of Avatar was rereleased to theaters in the US on Friday, September 23rd, after the original 2009 movie was quietly pulled from Disney Plus in order to encourage people back to the theater and build hype for its upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water.Avatar was rereleased to theaters to build up hype for its upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of WaterComscore estimates that the rerelease of Avatar brought in $20.5 million internationally and $10 million in the US, bringing the... Continue reading…

From left to right, top to bottom: Lady Gaga, Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Donald Trump, Plato. A fun little AI art widget named Text-to-Pokémon lets you plug in any name or description you like and (you guessed it) generate a pokémon matching your prompt.The model’s output isn’t flawless, but it’s incredibly entertaining all the same. You can try punching in the names of celebrities or politicians (see “Boris Johnson” and “Vladimir Putin” in the image above) or just general descriptions of the sort of pokémon that would tickle your personal fancy (the one below is my “skeleton priest”).(A little tip for using the tool more efficiently: make sure you select “4” from the “num_outputs” drop-down menu to get four images per prompt rather than just one.) Image: Text-to-Pokémon A “skeleton priest” pokémon... Continue reading…

Image: Night School Studio Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals has been delayed to 2023, its developer Night School Studio has announced. “To make Oxenfree II truly special and add more localizations, we’re moving our release window to 2023,” the developer’s statement reads. “Thank you for your patience, support, and understanding. We can’t wait to share the game with you. Stay tuned!”This is the second major delay to have hit the sequel to the acclaimed 2016 adventure horror game. Lost Signals was originally announced in 2021 and planned for release later that year. But just a few short months later the game’s developers announced a delay to “early 2022.” No specific reason was given for the delays beyond ensuring the game is “the experience we believe it should be.”

A Google account will be required for Fitbit by 2025, following the search giants acquisition of the health tech brand. | The Verge Following Google’s acquisition of Fitbit and its rebranding of the health tech company as ‘Fitbit by Google,’ the search giant is moving to tightly integrate its services with Fitbit’s own. A Google account will be required for “some uses” of Fitbit devices and features from 2023, with plans to have all existing Fitbit accounts migrated to Google accounts by 2025.An updated support page says that creating a new Fitbit account and activating new Fitbit devices and features will require a Google account from 2023. Existing Fitbit account holders will be able to move over to a Google account or remain with their existing Fitbit login until “at least early 2025,” at which point support for Fitbit accounts will be terminated. The FAQ states... Continue reading…

That poor Surface tablet. Microsoft Surface tablets have been taking a beating at football events these past two weekends. During the Buffalo Bills game against the Miami Dolphins this afternoon, Bills offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey took his frustration out on his tablet as the Dolphins secured a win during the final moments of the game.Dorsey’s reaction may have been warranted, although he probably could’ve chosen another outlet for his anger (like a stress ball perhaps?). The Bills had a chance to run one more play to win the game, but the team ultimately ran out of time, losing to the Dolphins 19-21. When cameras turned to the booth where he was watching the game, Dorsey ripped off his headset and tossed his hat before he picked up the tablet and started... Continue reading…

An illustration of the DART spacecraft and the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos | NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben Dimorphos is a lump of space rock so far away from Earth that we don’t even know what it looks like — and on Monday, we’re going to smash it with a spacecraft. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be traveling at more than 14,000 miles per hour when it hits the asteroid, in what has to be one of the most metal science experiments of all time.DART is a NASA effort to see if it can change an asteroid’s movement in space. It’s being billed as the world’s first “planetary defense test mission” — a test run to see if we have what it takes to avert a serious asteroid impact on Earth sometime in the future. You know, just in case.To be extremely clear, neither Dimorphos, or its larger companion Didymos, pose any threat to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket hasn’t had a very good start to the football season. For the past two weekends in a row, subscribers have struggled to get their streams to work, and this weekend is no exception.Even before today’s games started, users began complaining about numerous issues, with many saying that they can’t log into their accounts on the Sunday Ticket website or app and others having problems loading the streams. Those who were able to access the stream reported quality issues.

The Triton 500 SE is an expensive gaming laptop that doesn’t flex its hardware enough Continue reading…

Darth Vader in Disney Plus’ Obi Wan. | Image: Lucasfilm James Earl Jones has been the iconic voice of Darth Vader since the beginning of Star Wars, but at 91 years old, it seems he’s ready to have the work done for him. According to a report from Vanity Fair (via Deadline), Jones signed over the rights to his archival voice work, allowing the Ukrainian startup Respeecher to leverage AI technology and recreate the sound of his voice in Disney Plus’ Obi-Wan Kenobi.To do this, Respeecher uses sound bites to “clone” an actor’s voice, allowing a studio to record new lines without having the actor present. Matthew Wood, Skywalker Sound’s supervising sound editor, told Vanity Fair that he presented Jones with the option once he “mentioned he was looking into winding down” the role of Darth Vader.... Continue reading…

Henry Cavill and Freya Allan in The Witcher. | Image: Netflix Big names like The Witcher, Knives Out, Enola Holmes, and Bridgerton all made appearances on the livestream Continue reading…

Teyonah Parris as Yo-yo, Jamie Foxx as Slick, and John Boyega as Fontaine. | Netflix In Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi comedy feature The Cloned Tyrone from director Juel Taylor, everybody with even the slightest bit of common sense knows that Black people have plenty of reasons not to trust the government or the police stalking their neighborhoods. Some of those reasons, like police brutality and harassment, are obvious. But the real threat everyone’s facing in They Cloned Tyrone’s first trailer is a bit more hidden and insidious because it’s the sort of thing few people would be inclined to believe.They Cloned Tyrone tells the story of Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), Slick (Jamie Foxx), and Fontaine (John Boyega), three unlikely friends who are brought together by their shared discovery of a massive, secret governmental... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix At the beginning of the month Netflix gave us our first taste of the first Knives Out sequel, and at its Tudum event the streamer showed off another clip — this one focused on some very complex puzzle boxes that double as a party invite. The brief clip showed off the mixture of humor and mystery that you’d expect from another Knives Out.Glass Onion is an important movie for Netflix, and not just because it’s a centerpiece of the company’s holiday schedule. The company reportedly paid more than $400 million for two sequels to Rian Johnson’s original whodunit, and Glass Onion also features a star-studded cast including the likes of Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., David Bautista, Jessica Henwick, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, and Edward... Continue reading…

Oxenfree. | Image: Netflix Yet another beloved indie game is now available on Netflix. At its Tudum event today, Netflix announced that the supernatural thriller Oxenfree, which first launched in 2016, is now playable through its fledgling games service. The Netflix version of Oxenfree is available as a free download to Netflix subscribers on both iOS and Android, and features subtitle support for more than 30 languages.Netflix has steadily been adding excellent games like Into the Breach, Before Your Eyes, and Lucky Luna to its mobile gaming offerings, but Oxenfree is particularly notable because Netflix acquired its developer, Night School Studio, last year. Oxenfree also feels like a good fit for Netflix, with its focus on storytelling and a vibe that’ll... Continue reading…

Freya Allan as Ciri. | Netflix When Netflix announced during last year’s Tudum that a third season of The Witcher was already on the way, there was some hope that maybe, just maybe Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia would be back on our screens slaying demons in time for the upcoming holiday season. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be the case, and there’s going to be a bit of a wait, but not an especially long one.While there was no new footage from The Witcher’s third season shown at this year’s Tudum presentation, Cavill and co-stars Anya Chalotra, and Freya Allan a made brief appearances to share some teaser art and to announce that the series will return in 2023.Taken at face value, there isn’t all that much to glean from the teaser art, which features the wolf,... Continue reading…

Laurence O’Fuarain as Fjall, Sophia Brown as Éile, and Michelle Yeoh as Scian. | Netflix While the third season of Netflix’s live-action Witcher series still doesn’t have an actual premiere date, the wait for Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s upcoming The Witcher: Blood Origin prequel series is almost over.Netflix’s The Witcher: Blood Origin hits Netflix on December 25th. And while we didn’t get a new trailer for the series — which tells the story of the very first witcher, long before Geralt’s iconic adventures — we did learn that Minnie Driver will be joining the cast, where she’ll star alongside the likes of Michelle Yeoh.While you wait, you can check out the very first teaser for the series right here — and a brand new poster below.

NASA’s Artemis I launch has already been delayed several times. | Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images NASA called off its Artemis I launch scheduled for September 27th as Tropical Storm Ian continues to intensify, potentially strengthening into a major hurricane that strikes Florida next week. The agency still hasn’t decided whether to roll back the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) but indicates it will make a final decision on Sunday.“During a meeting Saturday morning, teams decided to stand down on preparing for the Tuesday launch date to allow them to configure systems for rolling back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building,” NASA states. The agency adds that engineers “deferred a final decision about the roll to Sunday,” which... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix has a fairly full lineup of movies this holiday season, and leading the way is the sequel to Enola Holmes. At the streamer’s big Tudum event today, it revealed a new trailer for the film, which shows the budding detective starting to lay down a foundation for her crime-solving career — though naturally things don’t seem to be going so well. The sequel was first announced last year, and it sees much of the cast returning; Millie Bobby Brown plays Enola, Henry Cavill is her older brother Sherlock, and Helena Bonham Carter is their mother. Harry Bradbeer is also back to direct.According to Netflix, Enola Holmes 2 will feature “a mystery of historic proportions,” and the new trailer shows how the case will see Enola and Sherlock... Continue reading…

I wish this button would toggle to the old ANC. | Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge The active noise cancellation (ANC) in my one-week-old AirPods Max has gone soft. After updating to the latest firmware, version 4E71, I am convinced the ANC is no longer as strong or effective as it originally was out of the box. If you’re one of the folks who has experienced this frustrating issue (it’s been discussed on Reddit for months), I now understand the problem firsthand.Both my wife and I often work from home, and for a few days, my AirPods Max excellently rendered her business calls inaudible to me, banished the corgi barks emanating from under my desk to the nether realms, and audibly shut out the high-rise construction site outside my apartment window. But now, the ANC sounds like what I’d describe as a librarian’s... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix has dismissed its copyright infringement lawsuit against Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the creators behind The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical, as reported earlier by Variety and Deadline. A copy of the court filing obtained by Deadline indicates that Netflix moved to “dismiss this action with prejudice,” meaning that the streamer can’t reopen the case in the future.The duo was scheduled to respond to Netflix’s complaint on Thursday, but that never happened, and Netflix dismissed the suit on Friday. It’s unclear if they reached a settlement with the streamer, but the two ended up canceling their September 20th concert at Royal Albert Hall in London last month, where they were supposed to perform their songs alongside the BBC... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Last year, we asked the staff of The Verge to tell us about their favorite coffee and tea brewers, grinders, and other paraphernalia. It’s a year later, and so we thought we’d find out what other caffeine delivery systems are used while our journalists are powering through their days.If you’re also an enthusiast, we hope you’ll enjoy looking over some of the gadgets that we enjoy using for our daily infusions.PreparationZojirushi Micom Water Boiler & WarmerThe idea of having pre-boiled water on tap in a machine might be sacrilege to some, but I can’t imagine my life without mine, especially in the winter. I drink iced coffee year-round, so I use this for making tea, oatmeal, rice porridge, and anything else that needs hot water.T... Continue reading…

The C2 in today’s deal features one of LG’s “Evo” panels that boasts a higher brightness level than its previous-generation panel. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge At Best Buy, a host of LG electronics are seeing a discount through Saturday. This includes a few of its 2022 OLED TVs, some of which have received bigger price drops than I’ve seen occur before. Starting with the deal that’s the best value in terms of size and specs, LG’s 55-inch B2 OLED is $999.99 (originally $1,599.99). For context, Amazon is selling it for about $300 more at the time of publishing.The B2 is LG’s midrange model; it has more features than the A-series OLED, but not as many as the C2 Evo model. Even so, movie, TV show, and gaming enthusiasts should find nearly everything they’re after with the B2, including a virtually infinite contrast ratio, the deepest of black color presentation, and a 120Hz refresh rate panel. On... Continue reading…

Hey Google, bring me the sweet sounds of post-season Mariners baseball on the radio. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Friday Twitter, in case you missed it, featured an extremely dumb discourse involving cable, streaming services, the Yankees, and somehow, New York’s Attorney General. The gist is this: Aaron Judge was poised to tie (and maybe overtake?) Roger Maris’ American League record of 61 home runs in a season (he did not). The game against the Red Sox aired on Apple TV Plus rather than New York’s regional cable sports network, YES. Some people got mad about that — presumably people who own bars in New York and show baseball games — including the state Attorney General. Others rightly pointed out that watching a game on a paid cable service is in no way more accessible than watching on a free streaming app.But here’s the thing: you don’t need... Continue reading…

Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images Yankees star Aaron Judge could break a home run record at Friday’s game against the Boston Red Sox, and you’ll be able to watch the game for free through Apple TV’s Friday Night Baseball broadcast. But in tweets ahead of the game, New York Attorney General Letitia James confusingly called for the game to be brought over to New York’s local Yankee Entertainment and Sports (YES) cable network, and after slightly walking that back, called the steps to watch Apple’s broadcast “burdens.”The whole saga started with a tweet from James at 3:04PM ET.

NASA’s SLS on the pad on September 3rd, 2022 | Photo by Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel / Tribune News Service via Getty Images I’ve got good news and bad news for fans of big NASA space launches.The good news is that after repeated delays and a nail-biting test of a leaky fuel system, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) could make its big debut as soon as Tuesday. The bad news is currently named Tropical Depression Nine. It’s a developing storm in the Caribbean with the potential to become a major hurricane and a trajectory that is currently headed toward Florida.There is just a 20 percent chance that the weather on September 27th will cooperate, according to a Friday forecast from the Space Force’s 45th weather squadron, which is in charge of determining whether or not the weather is good enough to launch.This particular launch will be the start of Artemis I,... Continue reading…

One of the world’s first plants for the production of green hydrogen in Wesseling, Germany, on July 2nd, 2021. | Photo by INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images Ramping up production of hydrogen fuel is now a high priority for the Biden administration as it tries to put an end to the fossil fuel pollution causing climate change. The Department of Energy wants to produce 10 million metric tons of “clean” hydrogen by 2030, according to a draft National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap released yesterday.About 10 million metric tons of hydrogen is already produced in the US each year, but that’s mostly “gray” hydrogen made with dirty natural gas. The shift would be to pair that natural gas with controversial technologies that capture carbon dioxide emissions as well as make more hydrogen using renewable energy sources and nuclear energy.“A high priority technology for this administration”C... Continue reading…

The “NASTY!” message when you flub a note is inspired. | Image: Holy Wow Studios Trombone Champ has been the star of my timeline this week; I’m constantly running into absurd renditions of songs like “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” But in a conversation with Dan Vecchitto, the founder of Trombone Champ developer Holy Wow Studios, he brought up something I think is a major factor in the game’s success: we just don’t see a lot of comedy in gaming right now.Games have been pushing the boundaries of capital-S Serious Storytelling for some time with series like The Last of Us. Others remain popular because of their high-skill and high-stress competitive multiplayer. But we just don’t see many games that embrace their own comedy in the way that Trombone Champ does.While there are a growing number of games that are... Continue reading…