The Verge

Image: The Verge Google's milestone" Chrome releases in the stable channel that come every four weeks will now be accompanied by weekly security updates (previously biweekly) to help close the patch gap" between fixes appearing in Canary / Beta releases and when they go out to most users.Bad actors could potentially see what changes are made in beta builds and can confirm and exploit vulnerable users before the stable channel sees an update due to the gap - a real problem for a platform with billions of users who would be vulnerable.The Google Security Blog says the new weekly updates, which will start with Chrome 116, won't change how Chrome is used or updated, and milestone releases will still arrive at the same expected timing. Previously, patch... Continue reading...

Image: Apple TV Plus Gizmodo editor-in-chief Daniel Ackerman has sued Apple and other parties over the 2023 Apple TV Plus film Tetris, alleging it rips off his 2016 book The Tetris Effect. Ackerman claims Apple, Tetris rightsholder the Tetris Company, the Tetris film's producers, and screenwriter Noah Pink copied the exact same feel, tone, approach, and scenes" from The Tetris Effect - particularly its framing of the game's release as a Cold War spy thriller."Initially reported by Reuters, Ackerman's lawsuit outlines a yearslong correspondence with the Tetris Company as he wrote The Tetris Effect. He claims that the Tetris Company was aware of his work and threatened him with legal action for trying to pursue film and TV adaptations of his own book, only... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has shortened its $1 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass trials to just 14 days instead of a month, just weeks before the release of Starfield. After running for years, the $1 trial for new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers stopped in March before returning last month after Microsoft adjusted its Xbox Game Pass pricing.The trials have typically offered new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers a month's access to the subscription services for just $1, but Microsoft has now adjusted both this week to move them to just 14 days only weeks ahead of Starfield's release on September 6th.Microsoft previously stopped its Xbox Game Pass trials because the company was evaluating different marketing promotions... Continue reading...

US President Joe Biden is greeted as he arrives at Grand Canyon National Park Airport in Grand Canyon Village, Arizona, on August 7th, 2023. | Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP via Getty Images The Biden administration announced the creation of a new national monument surrounding the Grand Canyon in the hopes of protecting it from mining and development. But that still won't stop a controversial mine from producing uranium within the monument's boundaries.Biden's designation of a new national monument is expected to protect nearly 1 million acres of land and stop new mining and development. But with mining rights already grandfathered in, the existing Pinyon Plain Mine is an exception.The mine has been at the center of a decades-long fight over the future of domestic uranium production and nuclear energy in the US. Uranium has already contaminated land and water in the Southwest, making people sick. The Havasupai Tribe and... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A cyberattack that began in August 2021 exposed the personal data of people in the United Kingdom who registered to vote between 2014 and 2022. The attack wasn't detected until October 2022, the UK Electoral Commission reported today. Attackers would have also had access to data from voters who'd opted to keep their data off public voter rolls, according to the BBC.The Electoral Commission said on X (formerly Twitter) that it waited to report the delay so it could stop the attack and assess the extent of the incident" as well as harden its systems and get in touch with the National Cyber Security Centre and the UK Information Commissioner's Office.Much of the data was already in the public domain," wrote the Electoral Commission, but... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nvidia, already the market leader in providing high-end processors for generative AI use, will release an even more powerful chip as the demand to run large AI models continues.The company announced the availability of the GH200 super chip, which Nvidia said can handle the most complex generative AI workloads, spanning large language models, recommender systems and vector databases."The GH200 will have the same GPU as the H100, currently Nvidia's most powerful and popular AI offering, but triple the memory capacity. The company said systems running on GH200 will start in the second quarter of 2024.Nvidia did not reveal the price for the GH200; the H100 line currently sells for roughly $40,000.Complex AI models require powerful... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube's homepage will now look very different if you have your watch history turned off. Instead of surfacing a page full of suggested videos, you'll mostly see nothing.The change is all part of a new viewer experience" Google announced on Tuesday. If you've switched your YouTube watch history to off and have no significant prior watch history," you won't see features that need a watch history to provide recommendations.That means you'll only see the search bar on the homepage, along with the Shorts, Subscriptions, and Library buttons. This could come as a welcome change for people who hate sifting through increasingly extreme thumbnails to find the play button, but it could also be a way to annoy users into turning the history... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Valve now sells certified refurbished" Steam Decks that cost less than if you bought the handheld gaming PC brand new. Valve promises the refurbished Decks are fully tested at Valve facilities" and offer the same 1-year warranty as a new Deck."If you want to order a refurbished Steam Deck, check out Valve's Steam page for the devices. As revealed in listings that appeared ahead of the official launch, the refurbished units offer some nice savings over the prices of new ones:

The podcast cover art for Snap Judgement. | Image: Snap Judgement This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Got a very packed issue of Hot Pod for you today. To start off, I have a scoop for you about KQED's acquisition of Snap Judgment Studios, which produces the shows Snap Judgment and Spooked. I'll also dive into why Apple Podcasts got fined by a court in Moscow. Also, Audacy held an earnings call last week but very much kept it on the down low - I'll break it down below.Finally, be sure to check out my story in The Verge about The Unwell Network, a new Gen Z-focused podcast venture by Call Her Daddy's Alex Cooper. Cooper's controversial podcast often gets criticized for being light on substance - but the show regularly beats Joe... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Valve might sell refurbished Steam Decks sometime soon. The creator of the SteamDB database tweeted Monday about certified refurbished" Steam Decks in all three storage offerings, and deals maestro Wario64 tweeted screenshots of the listings soon after (via Gizmodo). Unfortunately, as I write this, Wario64's links redirect to Steam's main landing page, and it doesn't seem like the links were accessible for very long.If Valve's refurbished Steam Decks do go on sale at the prices in Wario64's screenshots, they'll offer some nice savings over the prices of new ones:

Image: Nintendo Pokemon fans of a certain age have cause for celebration. No, the Pokemon Red / Blue games are not getting a full remake, and no, they're also not getting ported to the Switch. Instead, announced during today's Pokemon Presents event, Pokemon Stadium 2 and Pokemon Trading Card Game are coming to Nintendo Switch Online.Pokemon Trading Card Game was released on the Game Boy Color in 2000 and was the first video game-ification of Pokemon's paper trading card game (better known as Pokemon TCG). There were 226 cards in Pokemon Trading Card Game that were from the first three sets of the real-life TCG, including cards exclusive to the game. Back in the day, you could play against your friends using the Game Boy link cable. But if you wanna... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Dish Network will merge its operations with EchoStar, the satellite internet company that runs HughesNet. The merger is meant to provide more financial flexibility for Dish as it seeks to become a major competitor in the wireless service business, the co-founder and chairman of both companies, Charlie Ergen, told The Wall Street Journal. After the merger, EchoStar CEO Hamid Akhavan will serve as president and CEO, while Dish CEO Erik Carlson will make his exit.EchoStar and Dish were originally part of the same company, operating under the EchoStar name. In 2008, the company renamed itself Dish and split its satellite internet wing off under the EchoStar brand. Today's merger reunites the two, which are still each under the purview of... Continue reading...

Image: The Pokemon Company After months of leaving everyone guessing just when exactly Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's two-part DLC would finally hit the Nintendo Switch, the first half of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero finally has a release date.During today's Pokemon Presents stream, The Pokemon Company announced that The Teal Mask, the first half of Scarlet and Violet's major DLC drop, is set to debut on September 13th and will introduce a host of new gameplay features as well as multiple new pokemon. A new trailer for the DLC details how players will travel to the land of Kitakami as part of a joint school trip that coincides with a local festival celebrating the Loyal Three - Kitakami's legendary trio - and Ogerpon, a new masked legendary monster.The trailer... Continue reading...

Image: Unity / Weta Digital Unity is releasing some of the specialist 2D and 3D tools from Weta FX - the visual effects company behind Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and James Cameron's Avatar movie franchises - to artists across the wider VFX industry under a new Unity Weta tools division. Unity revealed during its Siggraph 2023 keynote that some of Weta's industry-leading compositing and character creation tools will be coming to its Unity real-time game development engine, almost two years after Unity acquired Weta's VFX division back in 2021.The Weta tools being released into public beta under the new division include add-ons for Wig 1.0 (used to create hair and fur in Autodesk Maya), Eddy 3.0 (used to process volumetric effects like smoke or fire in Nuke),... Continue reading...

The 8.3-inch iPad Mini is like a tiny version of the latest iPad Air. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge As we highlighted yesterday, a bunch of Google gadgets are currently on sale, likely in celebration of the tech giant's upcoming anniversary. Chief among these is the Pixel Tablet, which is down to $439 ($60 off) for the first time. However, although it's a good tablet, it may not be the best option if you use your tablet largely for reading or aren't heavily invested in Google's ecosystem. Instead, you might want to take a look at Apple's latest iPad Mini, which is on sale at Amazon in its base configuration with 64GB of storage and Wi-Fi for $399.99 ($100 off). That's $20 shy of its all-time low and its second-best price to date.Apple's 8.3-inch tablet is oft-considered the middle child" in Apple's lineup. It's got the smallest... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge You may have heard about this new smart home standard Matter and how it will make it easier to buy and set up connected gadgets. Not only that, but those gadgets should now work with any phone, voice assistant, or smart speaker, using any smart home platform - Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, or any other Matter-compatible option. If you got excited and went out and bought a new smart plug or smart light bulb to give this a whirl, you may have picked up one that uses Thread, one of the two wireless protocols Matter uses (the other is Wi-Fi). So, now what?While Matter is supposed to make everything about the smart home easier, there are still some growing pains, especially regarding Thread - hey, the smart... Continue reading...

One of ChargePoint's EV chargers. | Image: Getty ChargePoint, which bills itself as the world's largest and most open" charging network for electric vehicles, is announcing a series of new initiatives to improve the reliability of its 245,000-strong network of chargers. We expect these multimillion dollar investments to deliver network reliability of nearly 100 percent once fully implemented," the company writes in a press release.The announcement comes as US drivers of electric vehicles continue to have issues finding reliable places to charge their cars when away from home. One study from last year found that one in five respondents were not able to charge their vehicle after arriving at a station, with the majority blaming chargers that are malfunctioning or out of service.... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge On Monday, a California judge denied Google's request for summary judgment in a lawsuit filed by users alleging the company illegally invaded the privacy of millions of people. The people suing Google say that occurred because Google's cookies, analytics, and tools in apps continued to track internet browsing activity even after users activated Incognito mode Chrome, or other similar features like Safari's private browsing expecting a certain level of privacy. However, the truth is, as we wrote in 2018, What isn't private: private browsing mode."Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers pointed to statements in the Chrome privacy notice, Privacy Policy, Incognito Splash Screen, and Search & Browse Privately Help page about how incognito mode limits... Continue reading...

No, not that Cloud. | Image: Square Enix Sony said it was coming, and now it's here. Sony is now confirming it's launched a public beta test of PS5 cloud gaming - one that streams games to a PS5 at up to 4K resolution, according to gamers who are now receiving invitations.We didn't previously know Sony would be streaming at 4K, and that could be a big deal no matter what that 4K" actually means.

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge BrightDrop, the electric delivery spinoff of General Motors, is bringing its battery-powered delivery vans to Mexico as its next market. The company now covers all of North America after expanding to Canada last year.The first two products that will be available to customers in Mexico will be the company's Zevo 400 and Zevo 600 delivery vans. The Zevo 600 sports a 165 kWh battery pack for 250 miles of range. The Zevo 400 is smaller and nimbler - though we're still waiting for more specific specs when it starts production later this year. Customers in Mexico will be able to place orders for the vans through BrightDrop's website also starting later this year.BrightDrop EVs are built at GM's CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario, Canada,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple Music has a new station that's designed to help you find songs you might like. The app's Discovery Station will play a curated selection of music based on what you've been listening to lately but haven't added to your library or heard before, as spotted earlier by Apple Insider and 9to5Mac.While Apple hasn't officially announced the Discovery Station, it's currently live on Apple Music's mobile, desktop, and web apps for most users. You can find the option by heading to Listen Now and then looking beneath the Stations for You section. The Discovery Station works alongside the [Your name's] Station, which plays a selection of songs that you already have in your library. Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge Some... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom, a company whose name has become synonymous with video chats that have allowed many to work remotely during the pandemic, has told staffers who work within 50 miles of a company office that they'll have to come back in two days per week, according to Business Insider.We believe that a structured hybrid approach - meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams - is most effective for Zoom," Colleen Rodriguez, Zoom's head of global PR, said in a statement. As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers." The company's new hybrid work approach will roll out over August and September, The New York... Continue reading...

A nurse draws blood from two people at an American Red Cross bloodmobile in Fullerton, California, on January 20th, 2022. | Photo by Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images The American Red Cross has fully dropped its blood donor ban on men who've had sex with men (MSM) and, starting today, bases eligibility on individual risk factors, per updated FDA guidance. The nonprofit now asks blood donor hopefuls the same eligibility questions regardless of gender or sexual orientation."While the Red Cross has removed limits specific to men who have sex with men, it will require a three-month waiting period for anyone to donate blood from last anal sex contact." The Red Cross will also continue to refuse donations from people who are HIV-positive, even if their viral load is undetectable. Look at the nonprofit's full FAQ page for other disqualifying factors.The FDA's new policy was announced earlier this year,... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom doesn't train its artificial intelligence models on audio, video, or text chats from the app without customer consent," according to a Monday blog post from Zoom's chief product officer, Smita Hashim. After we first published this article, Zoom updated its terms of service with a similar statement. In her post, Hashim also writes that our customers continue to own and control their content."The company's handling of customer data for AI training has come under scrutiny after a Stack Diary article reported on March changes to the company's terms of service that appeared to give the company broad control over user data for AI work.The new sections appear to merge descriptions of Zoom's license to show the content users want to... Continue reading...

The SanDisk Extreme Pro can shrug off dust and water, at least. | Image: SanDisk If you're thinking of buying a SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, or WD MyPassport SSD, maybe just don't.My colleague Vjeran just lost 3TB of video we'd shot for The Verge because the drive is no longer readable. Screenshot by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The disk you attached was not readable by this computer." This isn't a drive he purchased many months or years ago - it's the supposedly safe replacement that Western Digital recently sent after his original wiped his data all by itself. Remember when we warned you about that?SanDisk issued a firmware fix for a variety of drives in late May, shortly after our story. They sent out Vjeran's replacement in early June. He'd just begun... Continue reading...

Movella has launched a specialized streaming app for Vtubers alongside motion-tracking hardware that's a fraction of the price of professional mocap kits. | Image: Movella Movella, a provider of professional motion capture solutions, has launched Obskur, an all-in-one platform that provides virtual streamers (also known as Vtubers") with body tracking technology that's typically reserved for industries like film and game development.There are two parts to the Obskur platform: a free OBS-like streaming application built using Unreal Engine 5 and a $1,995 Mocap Box" that provides the actual tracking hardware for controlling a virtual avatar. Inside the box, you'll find nine upper-body Movella Xsens tracking sensors - a technology that's been used in animation across movies like The Avengers, Avatar, and Black Panther - alongside a customized pair of StretchSense" gloves for tracking hand movements.V... Continue reading...

Container ships moored off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Long Beach, California, on November 16th, 2021, as a historic traffic jam started to ease. | Image: Bing Guan / Bloomberg via Getty Images Report cards are out for retailers' climate goals, specifically when it comes to tackling the pollution from their shipping. Compared to other retail giants, Ikea managed to get surprisingly high scores.With a B+ grade overall, Ikea stands out among the 17 other rated companies, which all received D or F grades. Apparently, the Swedish company has been more ambitious in its push for cleaner ships and ports, according to the coalition of environmental groups called Ship It Zero that rated the companies.Today, the ships that haul all the furniture, gadgets, and other consumer goods we buy are major sources of pollution. Maritime shipping is responsible for about as much of the world's greenhouse gas emissions as aviation. It also pumps... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The next time you want a quick gut check on whether a sentence is grammatically accurate, Google Search might have the answer. 9to5Google has spotted a grammar check" feature that will offer suggestions on whether a given phrase is grammatically accurate. For example, type the quick brown fox jump over the lazy dog" into the search engine and Google will highlight that you probably meant jumps" instead of jump."Although most people probably don't care about the grammar of their search phrases, we suspect this tool is meant to be more general purpose. If one of your sentences looks off when you type it into a messaging app for example, Google's hope seems to be that you'll give it a check with Google Search - because anything that... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is adding a way to give a thumbs-up, double thumbs-up, or thumbs-down to a show or movie while you're watching it on mobile, which could give you an easier way to teach the streaming service's algorithms about your viewing preferences.With this new change, when you tap the screen while watching something, you'll see the three different thumb buttons in addition to options you may be familiar with (like the skip forward / back buttons and changing the speed of a video). Image: Netflix The new thumb buttons will be available on Monday on iOS and later" on Android, according to spokesperson Layal Brown. (Brown had no other specifics to share" when I asked for a timeframe for the Android release.) And if you... Continue reading...

Sony Spider-Man 2 PlayStation 5 bundle and console covers | Image: Sony Preorders for Sony's upcoming limited edition Spider-Man PlayStation 5 console and some of its matching accessories are still available. The themed setup can be bought as a full bundle with a disc-equipped PS5, a digital code for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and a matching controller for $599.99. Or, if you already own a PS5, you can get the same look via replaceable covers for $64.99, while the matching DualSense controller runs $79.99.While the next installment of Insomniac's Spider-Man game series isn't due out until October 20th, all this friendly neighborhood gear is set to ship on September 1st.Where to preorder the limited edition Spider-Man 2 PS5 console bundleIf you want the whole matching package, the limited edition PlayStation... Continue reading...

Image: OpenAI OpenAI now lets you block its web crawler from scraping your site to help train GPT models.In a blog post, OpenAI said website operators can specifically disallow its GPTBot crawler on their site's Robots.txt file or block its IP address. Web pages crawled with the GPTBot user agent may potentially be used to improve future models and are filtered to remove sources that require paywall access, are known to gather personally identifiable information (PII), or have text that violates our policies," OpenAI said in the blog post. For sources that don't fit the excluded criteria, allowing GPTBot to access your site can help AI models become more accurate and improve their general capabilities and safety."Blocking the GPTBot may be the... Continue reading...

Image: Activision Surprising absolutely no one, Activision Blizzard has announced the latest Call of Duty game.Posts today from developer Sledgehammer Games and the official Call of Duty accounts confirmed Modern Warfare III (not to be confused with 2011's Modern Warfare 3, of course) will launch on November 10th.

Image: Disney The Little Mermaid is headed to Disney Plus. You can start streaming the live-action remake on the service starting on September 6th.First released in theaters in May, The Little Mermaid stars Halle Bailey as Ariel, Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, and Javier Bardem as King Triton. The movie revisits the classic tale first shown in Disney's 1989 animated film, once again following Ariel as she trades her voice for the ability to walk on land.

Lego's Wildflower Bouquet is a beautiful gift for mom, one she can easily put together herself. | Image: Lego What do you gift your mom? That's a challenging question to answer, especially given mothers - the generous, unselfish beings they can be - are not likely to spill the beans when asked.Luckily, we've done the hard work for you. With the help of The Verge staff, we've curated a list of some of the best tech gifts you can treat your mom - or any mother figure, really - to year-round. Whether it's for her birthday, Mother's Day, or Christmas, here you'll find something that caters to all kinds of budgets and interests, ranging from smartwatches and Kindles to massage guns, robot vacuums, and more. You can rest assured that these are items we can personally vouch for as well, having tested and reviewed them ourselves.Peruse this list... Continue reading...

Image: Gigabyte Gigabyte has launched a new low-profile GeForce RTX 4060 OC graphics card that's designed to fit into mini PC builds, as spotted earlier by VideoCardz. Unlike many of the other GPUs meant for compact PCs, this one comes with three fans instead of just two or one.That three-fan setup might make it a bit difficult to fit into some small form factor cases, as the card measures 182mm long. But it makes up for that with its thin 40mm height and 69mm width. Despite its slender design, the chip comes outfitted with two DisplayPort and two HDMI ports as well. It also comes with a low-profile bracket, which is a nice touch. Image: Gigabyte While it's nice that Gigabyte has made a 40-series chip specifically for low-profile... Continue reading...