The Verge

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Instagram looks like it's working on a longer version of Instagram Reels, allowing users to record up to 10 minutes of videos. Leaker Alessandro Paluzzi shared screenshots of two side-by-side Reels pages, one to record for three minutes - the current standard for shortform videos - and another for 10 minutes.

Image: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images The road to a world with only electric vehicles doesn't run through the US. It runs through China. In China, nearly 30 percent of all car sales are EVs. In the US, it's just 7 percent. How did China so thoroughly smoke the US when it comes to EVs?It had help from a certain American company called Tesla.In the sixth and last episode of Land of the Giants: The Tesla Shock Wave, we explore how China took the lead in global EV sales with a lot of help from the government in the form of subsidies for lithium batteries. We also examine how China used Tesla to kick-start its own homegrown EV industry - and how it has since outgrown Elon Musk's company in many ways.China has been the world's largest auto producer for almost two decades.... Continue reading...

With high-end specs and a midrange price, the OnePlus Pad is a welcome return to form. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge It's been a surprisingly good year for Android tablets, with Samsung's Galaxy Tab S9 series and the Google Pixel Tablet both having launched within the past couple of months. The OnePlus Pad also arrived earlier this year, and though it might not carry the same clout as a Google or Samsung tablet, it's a solid device that's available from OnePlus right now with a free OnePlus Stylo stylus for $429.99 ($50 off).For the money, OnePlus' first tablet packs a bit of punch. The 11.6-inch slate is less expensive than competing devices from Google, Apple, and Samsung, yet it comes with an array of high-end features, including a quad-speaker system and a pixel-dense LCD display that refreshes at up to 144Hz. It also features a 7:5 aspect ratio... Continue reading...

Illustration by Will Joel / The Verge Amazon's Kindle is a useful reading tool, especially if you tend to purchase your books through Amazon. If you have ebooks that you've purchased elsewhere, however - or have picked up off a free service such as Project Gutenberg - you need to be able to put it on your Kindle (or Kindle app).Getting a non-Amazon book onto a Kindle used to be a somewhat awkward process, involving attaching it to an email and sending it to your individual Kindle email address. However, Amazon's Send to Kindle service has improved vastly since then, and it is now a fairly simple process.But first, a note: if you're a long-term Kindle user who hasn't been paying attention to the news, you may be surprised to see ePub listed - and not Mobi. Amazon added... Continue reading...

The Garmin Venu 3S (left five models) and Venu 3 will both retail for $449.99. | Image: Garmin Garmin is launching the Venu 3 and 3S today, and there's good news for nap lovers. The company is debuting a new Sleep Coach feature that includes both personalized coaching and automatic nap detection.Nap tracking is a timely addition. Sleep is increasingly a popular focus among wearables companies. Samsung, for example, has been working hard the last two years to build out its native sleep tracking offerings, and Google also added Fitbit's Sleep Profile feature to the Pixel Watch. So it's been admittedly odd that Garmin devices haven't been able to automatically detect naps. (You'll also be able to manually log naps as well.) This is especially true since sleep - and therefore naps - is a factor when calculating recovery and... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge I thought I had malware on my main Windows 11 machine this weekend. There I was minding my own business in Chrome before tabbing back to a game and wham a pop-up appeared asking me to switch my default search engine to Microsoft Bing in Chrome. Stunningly, Microsoft now thinks it's ok to shove a pop-up in my face above my apps and games just because I dare to use Chrome instead of Microsoft Edge.This isn't a normal notification, either. It didn't appear in the notification center in Windows 11, nor is it connected to the part of Windows 11 that suggests new features to you. It's quite literally a rogue executable file that has somehow appeared in c:\windows\temp\mubstemp and is digitally signed by Microsoft.We are aware of these... Continue reading...

The Fairphone 5 with its repairable guts on show for all to see. | Image: Fairphone The Fairphone 5 is the latest sustainably produced and repairable handset from Dutch smartphone company Fairphone. Like its previous devices, the Fairphone 5 is made with ethically sourced materials by workers who are given a living wage bonus and is designed to be easy to repair with a lengthy software support period. But this year's model is specced-out much more like a modern midrange smartphone, with an OLED display, fast 30W charging, and dual 50-megapixel cameras at the rear.Fairphone is taking preorders for the Fairphone 5 starting today, and the smartphone ships on September 14th in Europe. Prices start at 699 in the eurozone or 619 in the UK. That translates to roughly $758, though Fairphone has no plans for a US release for... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Continuing the storied tradition of Google's Pixel devices being some of the most-leaked hardware ever, the as-yet-unannounced Pixel 8 Pro has popped up on a Google Store page. @Android_Setting on Twitter / X pointed out the image on a page promoting Google's subscriptions and services (Pixel Pass is not among them), showing a man taking a call on a Pixel 8 Pro in Porcelain.Sure, the device looks like the renders and images that have already leaked, including from a supposed internal Google video, but how can we be sure it's that phone in that color? In a win for accessibility, the tipster notes that the image's alt-text description removes all doubt, reading, A person takes a call on a Pixel 8 Pro phone in Porcelain."We'll zoom in... Continue reading...

The Steam Deck's biggest weakness is battery life - and yet somehow, every challenger has failed to raise that bar. The Ayaneo 2 showed us that AMD's Ryzen 6800U wasn't ready to compete; the Asus ROG Ally revealed that AMD's Z1 Extreme couldn't pull ahead if Asus insisted on matching the Steam Deck's 40 watt-hour battery pack.But Ayaneo may have an answer: it's stuffing a 75 watt-hour pack into a larger, heavier handheld called the Ayaneo Kun that - it now claims - can last nearly three and a quarter hours at 15W TDP. That's nearly double the battery and runtime you'd expect from a Steam Deck at that wattage, though it appears it wasn't captured while playing a game, exactly. Image: Ayaneo Ayaneo Kun battery... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon will offer a new $90 monthly cellphone plan called Unlimited Ultimate, announced in an update to the May blog post that announced its myPlan lineup. It offers 60GB of mobile hotspot data (double what you get with the $80 Unlimited Plus plan), 10GB of unthrottled international data, and includes access to the company's 5G Ultra Wideband network that's a mix of the company's C-band wireless signal and its faster mmWave 5G.T-Mobile similarly just introduced an expensive new "unlimited" data plan to its Go5G line with the $100 per month Go5G Next plan to complement its C-band spectrum. It offers slightly less hotspot data at 50GB but comes with Netflix Basic and Apple TV Plus and the option to upgrade your phone on a yearly... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US government just helped dismantle a massive network of computers infected with one of the world's most notorious pieces of malware. According to the FBI, a multinational effort led by the US took down Qakbot, a malware that made its way into over 700,000 computers around the globe.Hackers typically target victims with Qakbot by sending them spam emails containing malicious attachments or links. As soon as a victim downloads the attachment or clicks the link, Qakbot infects their computer, which then becomes part of a botnet - or a network of infected computers controlled remotely by hackers. From there, bad actors can install additional malware on their victims' devices, such as ransomware.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple is planning to launch a pair of updated" AirPods with USB-C during its iPhone 15 event in September, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.Rumors have been circulating for months about the possibility of Apple introducing AirPods with a USB-C-compatible charging case, but we haven't heard anything this definite until now. However, we still don't know whether the AirPods Pro will get the USB-C charging case, too, and Gurman doesn't specify.In 2022, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that Apple would introduce AirPods with a USB-C charging case sometime this year. It's also not clear whether Apple will make any significant changes to the AirPods themselves aside from the new case. Kuo said earlier this year that... Continue reading...

Image: Edie Leong for The Washington Post via Getty Images Tesla is in trouble with the federal government. Again.A newly discovered version of Autopilot that allows drivers to operate the advanced driver-assist feature without applying any torque to the steering wheel - a long sought-after feature by Tesla drivers and one used by several other automakers as well - has caught the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.In a July 26th letter (first reported by Bloomberg), NHTSA ordered Tesla to respond to a list of questions about the feature or face an escalating series of fines. The company was ordered to respond by August 25th; it's unclear whether Tesla complied.NHTSA ordered Tesla to respond to a list of questions about the feature or face an escalating series... Continue reading...

Panic / The Verge Today, Panic put on its very first game publisher showcase. The showcase was short but very sweet, featuring some of the most interesting and innovative indie games coming to PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Switch. Here are all the highlights, including a surprise announcement from the makers of Untitled Goose Game.ArcoArco comes from an international team of developers, artists, and storytellers. It's a tactical action game that pits regular people against an all-powerful corporate gang. In the reveal trailer, the diverse landscapes exude so much ecological detail rendered in pixel graphics, and the combat seems like a real-time action game. Arco is due on Steam in 2024.Thank Goodness You're HereThank Goodness You're Here, or TGYH for... Continue reading...

The iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple's next big product launch is nearly here. The company just sent invitations for an event on September 12th at 1PM ET / 10AM PT, where the company is expected to announce the iPhone 15 lineup and new Apple Watches.In the invite sent by Apple, the company says its Wonderlust" event will take place live from Apple Park. The invite also includes the Apple logo in gray, blue, and black, which may tease the color options that the iPhone 15 Pro lineup is rumored to come in. Image: Apple Apple's event invitation. The iPhone 15 lineup will probably be the star of the event. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus are expected to look a lot like the iPhone 14 but with a couple of key differences. The notch at the top of... Continue reading...

Image: Firaxis Games It seems like Steam has a new themed sale event every other week, and this week, it's Strategy Fest. As part of the sale, which started officially yesterday and lasts until 1PM ET on September 4th, you can get deals on a slew of strategy games of all stripes.Of course, you can expect all the fan favorites to be deeply discounted. Civilization VI is at a there is no real justification for not buying it" price of $5.99, or 90 percent off, while Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition is half off at $19.99.But if you're new to strategy games or strategy game-curious, those titles can be a bit overwhelming as starting points. Fortunately, Steam curated this bundle of games widely to include titles you might not think of as strategy games... Continue reading...

Image: Specialized Specialized announced the second e-bike from its resurrected Globe brand, the Haul LT, a long-tailed (the LT" in the name) cargo bike with fat tires, a sturdy aluminum frame, and a $3,500 price tag.A quick recap: in 2022, Specialized announced it was bringing back its defunct Globe logo for a lineup of heavy-duty e-bikes that could carry a ton of stuff but wouldn't break the bank. The first, the Haul ST, went on sale earlier this year and instantly won accolades for its utility, ride quality, and whimsical design.A Class 3 e-bike with a 700-watt rear-hub motor and 772-watt-hour battery, the Haul LT looks every bit the Haul ST's successor. Design-wise, the two bikes are nearly indistinguishable, aside from the extended rear rack.... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube wants to give content creators who violate its guidelines a second chance. Creators will now get the option to take an educational training course" when they receive a community guidelines warning, and in exchange, YouTube will lift that warning from their account.YouTube previously issued a lifetime warning to channels that violated its content guidelines and removed the video in question. The lifetime warning stayed on a YouTuber's account forever and preceded the strikes that a creator would receive for breaking its rules again.Under YouTube's new policies, the platform will still take down the video in violation of its rules, but it will give creators a chance to get rid of YouTube's warning by having them take a class... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When the Securities and Exchange Commission denied Grayscale its petition for a Bitcoin ETF, that action was arbitrary and capricious," an appeals court ruled today. The SEC ruling has been vacated.Last year, Grayscale applied for the approval for the fund and was denied. An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a pooled investment that is tied to a specific set of assets, which might be an index, a sector, a set of commodities, or something else. Grayscale's is something else" - Bitcoin. That could let large investors, such as pension funds, invest in Bitcoin.The SEC has previously approved ETFs that track Bitcoin futures, but not so-called spot ETFs, which directly track Bitcoin price. Grayscale wanted to convert its Bitcoin trust to... Continue reading...

Khabib Nurmagomedov has Conor McGregor in a chokehold. | Photo By Stephen McCarthy / Sportsfile via Getty Images The NFL, NBA, and UFC are looking to inject some urgency into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to have the law shut down illegal livestreams sooner. The sports organizations believe that the law needs to define more specifically how quickly a DMCA takedown notice should take effect, according to a letter they sent to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seen by TorrentFreak.DMCA was signed during the Clinton administration in 1998 and specified that takedown notices be processed expeditiously," as written in Section 512 of the act. In the letter sent to the USPTO, dated August 23rd, the NFL, NBA, and UFC urge the government to change the expeditiously" verbiage to instantaneously or near-instantaneously."When I... Continue reading...

iOS and web users of Google Photos can conceal sensitive images and videos from their feeds and other apps. | Image: Google Some updates are rolling out across Google Photos that should make it easier to secure and access your sensitive images across all of your devices. Starting today, the Locked Folder feature - which allows Android users to hide specific photos and videos behind a passcode - is coming to iOS and web users, with a new option to back up Locked Folders to access those encrypted images across multiple devices with the help of Google's cloud.The Locked Folder is a neat feature if you have any sensitive (okay, let's be real here - nude) images or videos you'd rather keep away from prying eyes. Not only do Locked Folders provide a layer of password protection but also protected files won't appear in your photo feed or other apps, which should... Continue reading...

The Making of Karateka. | Image: Digital Eclipse With The Making of Karateka, the studio continues to refine its interactive documentaries, providing a video game-native way of presenting the classics. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Auracast makes it possible to share high-quality audio with an unlimited" number of devices, and now, Samsung says it's bringing Auracast to its Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and its newest Neo QLED 8K and MicroLED TVs with a rollout starting in September. The company doesn't say if this means an unlimited number of Galaxy Buds can connect to the TVs, but it will certainly be more than the current limit of two.Samsung reminds you in a footnote in its announcement that range and physical interference will still be factors in determining how many earbuds can connect to the TV - it's still wireless data transmission, after all.Bluetooth LE Audio, which is the standard that enables Auracast, was introduced last year, bringing with it a promising... Continue reading...

Image: Marshall Marshall earbuds seem to be aimed at people who want a little more edge and to stand out from Apple's ubiquitous AirPods. The guitar amp company has already released several generations of buds, and today, it's announcing its latest pair. The $199 Motif II ANC will be available on September 12th, and they're said to offer improved noise cancellation and 10 additional hours of total battery life compared to the prior model. Marshall says you can expect six hours of continuous playback or a total of 30 hours including the charging case.The Motif II ANC are also Marshall's first buds to be LE Audio-ready. This future-proof technology delivers higher quality audio, while increasing the streaming range and improving audio sync, for a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge By the end of this month, porn will get a lot harder to watch in Texas. Instead of clicking a button or entering a date of birth to access Pornhub and other adult sites, users will need to provide photos of their official government-issued ID or use a third-party service to verify their age. It's the result of a new law passed earlier this summer intended to prevent kids from seeing porn online. But it's also part of a broad - and worrying - attempt to age-gate the internet.Texas may be the biggest state rolling out anti-porn rules, but it's not the first. In the last year alone, more than half a dozen states have passed similar legislation and even more are looking to follow suit. While these rules are focused on adult content,... Continue reading...

Snapchat users will soon able to create their own Dreams in the Memories section of the app. | Image: Snap After releasing its My AI chatbot earlier this year, Snapchat is now jumping on the AI selfie bandwagon with a new feature called Dreams.Located in the camera roll section of Snapchat called Memories, Dreams are the company's own take on the generative AI selfies that one-off apps like Lensa have already popularized. After uploading a series of real-life selfies in the app specifically for Dreams, Snapchat displays a series of eight-photo packs to choose from with themes like doppelgangers or back-to-school.The first pack of Dreams is free to make and each additional one costs $1 as an in-app purchase. Snapchat users in Australia and New Zealand are getting access to Dreams starting today, followed by access opening up to the rest of... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Grubhub's bringing Amazon's cashierless Just Walk Out technology to some colleges, the company announced today. The food delivery service will first focus on rolling out the tech to colleges, starting with Loyola University Maryland next week before expanding nationwide.The tech is capable of identifying items taken from and returned to shelves so students and staff can buy food from on-campus stores without waiting in line. After scanning a QR code in the Grubhub app, the company will automatically charge their Grubhub-linked meal plans or other stored payment methods after they leave the store.With Just Walk Out technology and Grubhub, students, faculty, and staff will find a convenient way to purchase the items they need with a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Over the last few months, Elon Musk's X, which was formerly known as Twitter, has been a bubbling cauldron of strange advertising decisions, continuous upheavals, and weird overflows of testosterone.Not that Twitter has ever been calm waters. Before Musk, Twitter was the social media world's most reliable double-edged sword. One minute, you were retweeting a funny meme account and enjoying some wholesome discussion about your current TV binge fixation, and the next, you were being buried by a harassment campaign or finding your day ruined by a thread that makes you want to throw your laptop through the window.Either way, if you're now on X or were ever on Twitter, it's a good idea to take precautions with your posting history since,... Continue reading...

Next time you zone out in a meeting, Meet can help you catch up on what you missed. | Image: Google If Google Meet's new AI tools are as good as advertised, you might never need to pay attention to another meeting again - or even show up at all. At its Cloud Next conference today, Google revealed a handful of new AI-powered features coming soon to Meet.One of the biggest new AI-enabled features is the ability for Google's Duet AI to take notes in real time: click take notes for me," and the app will capture a summary and action items as the meeting is going on. If you're late to a meeting, Google will be able to show you a mid-meeting summary so that you can catch up on what happened. During the call, you'll be able to talk privately with a Google chatbot to go over details you might have missed. And when the meeting is over, you can... Continue reading...

With SynthID, you should be able to edit a photo all you want without destroying the AI watermark. | Image: Google The Google DeepMind team has believed for years that building great generative AI tools also requires building great tools to detect what has been created by AI. There are plenty of obvious, high-stakes reasons why, says Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. Every time we talk about it and other systems, it's, What about the problem of deepfakes?'" With another contentious election season coming in 2024 in both the US and the UK, Hassabis says that building systems to identify and detect AI imagery is more important all the time.Hassabis and his team have been working on a tool for the last few years, which Google is releasing publicly today. It's called SynthID, and it's designed to essentially watermark an AI-generated image in a way... Continue reading...

Google Chat now looks more like Slack. And Teams. And everything else. | Image: Google Google is making some big changes to Google Chat, its answer to Slack and Microsoft Teams. The messaging app - aka The Product Formerly Known As Hangouts - is getting a new design, some features that will feel distinctly familiar to Slack and Teams users, and a lot of Google's new Duet AI collaboration tools. Most of the new features are rolling out later this year and early next, but they add up to a much more useful and competitive Chat platform.Duet is the flagship new feature and potentially a reason for a lot of Workspace users to start using Chat. You can use Duet to search and ask questions about all your stuff in Drive and Gmail and summarize both documents and conversations. You'll also be able to use AI-powered autocorrect in... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge General Motors is using conversational AI chatbots to handle simple OnStar calls, freeing up the service's human employees to address more complex requests, the company said Tuesday.GM offered more details about its use of AI to coincide with Google's Cloud Next conference. GM has been working hand in hand with the tech giant on a number of fronts, including Google's built-in infotainment software and OnStar.The automaker introduced its OnStar Interactive Virtual Assistant in 2022, which utilizes Google Cloud's conversational AI technologies to provide responses to common inquiries, as well as routing and navigation assistance. And GM is already planning for future uses of AI in its vehicles.GM offered more details about its use of... Continue reading...

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft has created custom limited edition Xbox consoles for years, but it's now offering up a way to customize your existing Xbox Series X console without having to buy a new one. The new Xbox Series X wraps were announced last week, with a Starfield-branded version arriving in October, followed by camo editions in November. I've been trying out the Starfield one.The Xbox Series X wrap folds down neatly into a package that's the width of the console, and when attached will cover all the sides fully with the exception of the rear. It feels very similar to Microsoft's Surface Pro keyboards: soft to touch, thin, and lightweight. The wrap fits snugly around an Xbox Series X and is held in place by velcro at the rear.

You get a choice of storage but both available models ship with a fixed 12GB of RAM. | Image: Oppo Oppo has officially unveiled the Find N3 Flip - the company's latest clamshell-style foldable smartphone - at a launch event in China. It arrives six months after sales of the Find N2 Flip predecessor began internationally, and just a month after Samsung's global launch of the Galaxy Z Flip.A global release date and price hasn't been provided for the Find N3 Flip, but Oppo claims in a press release that it'll be coming soon" to international markets. It's also unclear if Oppo will release the N3 in the US, unlike the N2 Flip.While sporting a similar clamshell design to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, Oppo's offering differs in its camera array which might give it an edge. Compared to the Z Flip 5's 12 megapixel main camera and a 12... Continue reading...