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Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Motorola is today announcing its latest smartphone for the US market. And while I wish it were the sleek new 2022 Razr — currently only available in China — we’re instead looking at another entry in the company’s Edge lineup. The Edge phones are designed to offer several flagship-tier features at an accessible price point. (Motorola’s Edge Plus, meanwhile, directly competes in the premium, more expensive bracket.)With the 2022 edition of the Edge, Motorola is concentrating on familiar strengths: a 144Hz OLED display, lengthy battery life, comprehensive 5G support, and camera upgrades.Priced at $499 for a limited time — Motorola won’t say how long — before an eventual jump to $599, the company describes this phone as one of its thinnest... Continue reading…

The Dell Pro Webcam WB5023 has an integrated universal mounting clip and comes with a magnetic lens cap. | Image: Dell Dell is adding a new option to its selection of webcams and hybrid work peripherals. The new Dell Pro Webcam (model WB5023) follows a similar playbook to last year’s Dell UltraSharp 4K Webcam, with a compact, barrel-shaped design and automatic cropping software to keep you centered in the frame. Though instead of 4K resolution, the Pro Webcam records and streams up to QHD 2560 x 1440 resolution. This more modest resolution helps it hit a lower price of $134.99, but thankfully Dell squeezed in a noise-reducing microphone at this price point — correcting the biggest omission from the 4K model. This new camera is available globally today. Image: Dell Hidden under the front ring of the webcam is a white LED to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than 650 Google employees have signed a petition calling on the company to extend abortion-related health benefits to contractors and better protect user privacy in the wake of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June.“We, the undersigned, recognize that all Alphabet workers, of all genders, are impacted by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and are disappointed in Alphabet’s response and influence on this ruling,” employees wrote.After the Supreme Court decision, Google’s chief people officer Fiona Cicconi told employees their health insurance would cover out-of-state medical procedures and said they could apply for relocation without justification.But the benefits do not extend to Google’s temporary, vendor, or... Continue reading…

Dell is following Microsoft’s lead. | Image: Dell Dell has announced that its new XPS 13 2-in-1, first revealed back in June, will be available for purchase starting on August 25th with a starting price of $1,099. Unlike the previous generations of XPS 13 2-in-1 models, this XPS is a Surface Pro-style tablet with a magnetic keyboard case. This will allow the device to quickly transform from a tablet to a laptop, similar to the way Apple’s iPad Pro can with the Magic Keyboard.The new design is meant for “customers who prioritize versatility like students and entrepreneurs,” and the form factor will help users “transition freely and fluidly from consumption to full productivity mode,” per Dell. Image: Dell Tablet, but XPS. This will also be Dell’s first XPS to... Continue reading…

A report from Kotaku exposes a toxic workplace culture for female staff and contractors at Nintendo of America. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo of America is investigating reports that female game testers were subject to discrimination and harassment, according to internal messages seen by Kotaku. Earlier this week, the publication published a scathing report exposing a toxic workplace culture at the company in which female staff and contractors were targeted by male colleagues.According to Kotaku, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser sent an email to employees acknowledging the claims on August 16th, the same day the report was released. In the message, Bowser stresses that the company is taking the allegations seriously, stating, “We have and will always investigate any allegations we become aware of, and we are actively investigating these most recent claims.”“... Continue reading…

The resulting blurred contact name and profile picture. | Image: Oppo Oppo is launching its ColorOS 13 update today, and has detailed the features that are on the way for its devices as they’re upgraded to its flavor of Android 13. Oppo — which like Vivo, OnePlus, and other Chinese brands is controlled by the tech giant BBK Electronics — says the update will be arriving first on the Find X5 and Find X5 Pro this month, ahead of its release on around 33 additional models in the Find, Reno, A, F, and K ranges before the end of the year.One of the smaller features worth calling out is a neat pixelation feature that’ll be available for screenshots in WhatsApp and Messenger chats. A new “Pixelate” option appears in the editing window, which can be tapped to automatically blur out the contact’s name and profile... Continue reading…

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. | Image: Sony NexusMods and ModDB, two of the biggest online sites for PC game mods, have removed a project that cut the in-game pride flags from the recently-released PC port of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. As NexusMods explained in a blog post, the mod was uploaded to its site by a brand new account with no modding history, which the site’s administrators suspect is a secondary account for one of the site’s users — a “sock puppet” account.“It was very clearly done deliberately to be a troll mod,” NexusMods writes. “The fact the user needed to make a sock puppet like a coward to upload the mod showed their intent to troll and that they knew it would not be allowed. Had they not been a coward and had they used their main account instead, we would... Continue reading…

Embracer Group has embarked on an acquisition spree today that includes Limited Run Games, Tripwire Interactive, and the IP rights to Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. There are five acquisitions in total today, alongside a sixth undisclosed deal for a company in the PC and console gaming space.The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit rights mean Embracer now has control over movies, video games, board games, merchandising, stage productions, and even theme-park rights for the Tolkien fantasy franchises. This includes Amazon’s very big and expensive take on Lord of the Rings that will debut on Prime Video on September 2nd. Embracer notes that it could even explore “additional movies based on iconic characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Gollum,... Continue reading…

No, it’s not “words.” | photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images The New York Times has made a few upgrades to its Wordle assistant WordleBot, and that includes a new recommended starting word: SLATE. Previously, it recommended CRANE, but now you might want to slate this new one into your repertoire.The NYT introduced WordleBot in April as a “daily companion” to help analyze your Wordle play, and with WordleBot 2.0, the team has made some changes. One of the bigger changes is that the bot no longer limits its analysis to the subset of five letter words that are known Wordle solutions — that is, it’s thinking more like a typical human player would. Previously, the bot could have judged you harshly for guessing a legit word that, for whatever reason, isn’t one of the possible Wordle solutions, which... Continue reading…

Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Buy now or buy later? Continue reading…

Leveling up your home theater experience Continue reading…

Nick Barclay / The Verge If you thought ad-supported Netflix would just be the regular service with some commercial breaks, then I regret to inform you you were wrong. According to language in the code of the Netflix app, discovered by developer Steve Moser and shared with Bloomberg, Netflix may limit offline downloads to the ad-free tiers of Netflix.Currently, Netflix has three tiers. For $9.99 a month, you get standard definition content and the ability to watch TV on one screen at a time. Pay $14.99 a month and you get HD and the ability to watch on two screens at a time. If you want to watch everything in UHD (with 4K and HDR), you’ll have to pay $19.99. You’ll also be able to watch on four screens at a time.It’s not really a surprise Netflix would... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The world’s biggest electric vehicle battery maker, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), and Intel are among the major companies shutting down their factories for six days in China’s Sichuan province because of a heatwave-related power shortage in the area, according to CNN and Bloomberg.The move affects factories belonging to companies like Tesla’s battery supplier CATL, Apple’s supplier Foxconn Technology, Toyota, Texas Instruments, Volkswagen, Onsemi, and more.China ordered all Sichuan factories to pause operations until August 20th to alleviate the pressure placed on the power grid after China’s worst heatwave in 60 years resulted in increased air conditioning usage. According to CNN, temperatures spiked to 104... Continue reading…

The Adidas RPT-02 SOL Bluetooth headphones. | Image: Adidas Solar-powered gadgets are nothing new — Logitech has sold keyboards you never have to plug in for over a decade now. But an audio headset where barely-there solar cells blend into the design? Until this week, we’d only ever tried one of those. Now, there are at least four.On Tuesday, Adidas announced the RPT-02 SOL, a $230 pair of self-charging Bluetooth cans with Exeger’s Powerfoyle solar cells built right into the recycled plastic headband (via Engadget). That’s the same exact solar technology as in the Urbanista Los Angeles solar-powered headphones we reviewed last year, and they also quote the same 80 hours of “reserve” battery life, even in a pitch-black room. Image: Adidas I wouldn’t know it held solar... Continue reading…

The React-R controller comes in two colors: black and white / purple. The Turtle Beach React-R is the latest controller from the gaming accessories brand, newly available in the USA today for $39.99. It’s a wired Xbox and PC controller with a detachable USB-C cable, officially licensed by Microsoft, and it mixes some of Turtle Beach’s audio chops from its headsets into an affordable gamepad.The React-R is a bit like Turtle Beach stripped down its Recon controller and gave it a slightly worse name. For $20 less than the Recon, the React-R offers nice quality face buttons, sticks, triggers, and two programmable rear buttons. Some of those buttons, particularly the shoulders, sound a bit more hollow in their clickiness — but that wasn’t something that felt especially premium on its pricier counterpart... Continue reading…

Bad vibrations. | Image: A&M Records While it’s normal for friends to judge our music tastes and take away your aux privileges, our devices usually won’t complain about our listening habits (even if we ask them to repeatedly play a song that most humans would find insufferable). However, according to a story shared by Microsoft principal software engineer Raymond Chen on his blog The Old New Thing, some Windows XP-era laptops did end up taking exception to the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” because it contained a sound that crashed their hard drives.According to Chen, an unnamed “major computer manufacturer” discovered that some of their computers were crashing when trying to play the song and that playing the song on one laptop could even crash another... Continue reading…

Image: Substack By most measures, Forever Wars should have been a Substack success story. The newsletter, which documents the war on terror, began last year after Substack cut a deal with a seasoned reporter to write on the platform, build an audience, and — if everything went well — launch a reader-supported venture that made the switch from newsroom to newsletter worth the gamble. Substack’s usual promise applied: if a writer wants to leave, they can, and it will be easy to do. And, in late July, a day after the expiration of a year-long deal, that’s what Spencer Ackerman did, moving Forever Wars to the newsletter platform Ghost as seamlessly as possible.But the switch became far messier this week when Substack barreled through its standing promise... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit’s working on a new portal to provide developers with the resources they need to create bots and other third-party tools. In a blog post, Reddit announced that it’s opening a wait list for the beta of its developer platform, allowing developers to host bots for free and reuse apps across different communities.If you’re a frequent Reddit user, you might already be familiar with some of the more popular bots on the platform, like u/RemindMeBot, which sends you a message to remind you about a certain post or comment at a specified time. There’s also a bot that provides summaries of Wikipedia pages and even one that converts videos on the platform into downloadable links.As Reddit notes, developers on the platform currently “operate... Continue reading…

Chris Welch on top of the NYC Ferry. | Photo by Andrew Marino / The Verge A couple of months ago on The Vergecast, we wanted to answer a question: which wireless earbuds should you buy to use for phone calls, Zoom meetings, or chatting with your voice assistant? So The Verge’s Chris Welch went to a noisy coffee shop in Brooklyn and hopped on a call with Vergecast co-host David Pierce to test out a bunch of wireless earbuds in a tough noise environment.The pretty clear winners of that test were the Apple AirPods Pro and the Sony LinkBuds, which had the clearest detail in the voice and took out a fair amount of background noise.But since that test, two new pairs of flagship earbuds have launched: the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and the Google Pixel Buds Pro. So, obviously, we had to put them to the test, along... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Facebook was once, believe it or not, cool.But a lot has changed since the early days of News Feed, when it was full of status updates and photos from friends. Facebook has gotten crowded with brands and pages vying for eyeballs. It has become a place where people, especially teenagers and young adults, don’t feel as comfortable sharing their lives.Now, after spending the past four years trying to fix the News Feed by making it more about friends and family, Facebook is going in the other direction: toward showing you more entertaining content from people you don’t know. This new “Discovery Engine” push is all about becoming more like TikTok, which has captured the attention of the young generation Facebook so desperately wants to win... Continue reading…

Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams. | Netflix Though Morticia and Gomez Addams’ daughter is best known for her misanthropy, the first trailer for Netflix’s upcoming comedy Wednesday from director Tim Burton’s a very useful (and promising) reminder that the morose teen’s always been a social butterfly. While the people Wednesday Addams deigns to grace with her presence might not enjoy her idea of a good time, that’s not to say that she isn’t making a good faith effort to, you know, connect with them.Wednesday’s first trailer introduces its take on Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) just as she’s being expelled from yet another one of her “normal” schools for terrorizing her fellow students — something neither her mother (Catherine Zeta-Jones) nor father (Luis Guzman) are especially surprised... Continue reading…

A good midrange phone underneath a whole lot of hype Continue reading…

Coin Crew Games I loved, loved Escape Academy. I think it’s one of the best, most interesting games of the year, an opinion that is definitely not influenced by my brain’s incessant need to “solve a puzzle, any puzzle.”I purposefully abstained from partaking in too many previews and demos in order to keep my full experience unspoiled. Then, when the game launched, I devoured it, pacing myself so I wouldn’t blow through it in one sitting. It’s just a really neat puzzle game set in a fantastical escape room school that trains teens to solve puzzles in increasingly life-threatening situations because... why not?And while I eagerly await the new content updates revealed in the game’s roadmap, I must be content with a new quality-of-life update that is... Continue reading…

These are iPhone 13 Pro phones, not the iPhone 14. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is targeting a September 7th date for its next product launch event, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company typically hosts a big event in the first part of September, and now we have a very likely date we can circle on the calendar. As with its other events that have taken place during the COVID-19 pandemic, the plan is for this event to be streamed online, Gurman reports.Apple is rumored to announce the iPhone 14 lineup at the show, which is expected to include: the base iPhone 14, a new big-screened iPhone 14, an iPhone 14 Pro, and an iPhone 14 Pro Max. The Pro phones may be getting some of the flashier upgrades, as they’re rumored to lose the notch in favor of a pill-shaped hole-punch cutout, gain an always-on... Continue reading…

Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Buy now or buy later? Continue reading…

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images Facebook won’t rush to review its decision to ban Donald Trump even if the former president announces he’s running for office again in the coming weeks, according to a new report from Politico on Tuesday.In an interview with Politico, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said that the company would maintain its January 7th, 2023, date for reaching a decision on whether to reinstate Trump’s accounts. On Wednesday, Meta confirmed to The Verge that the timetable had not changed.The news comes as Trump is expected to run for president once again in 2024 and could reportedly announce his candidacy prior to this year’s November midterm elections. An early announcement could complicate the ongoing... Continue reading…

Airbnb sent out the “test” notification early Wednesday morning. | Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images Airbnb lit up Android phones around the globe with a notification that reads: “Test dev.” The apparent blunder occurred early Wednesday morning, and judging by how many users are posting about it on Twitter, it seems like a lot of people received the accidental alert (via 9to5Google).While I personally don’t have the Airbnb app installed on my phone, my colleague Cameron Faulkner does, and he got the notification at 3:41AM ET this morning. Tapping into the notification leads to the Airbnb app but doesn’t do anything else. Screenshot: Cameron Faulkner / The Verge You might’ve received this notification if you have Airbnb installed on Android. “A push notification was sent in error to Android users of the Airbnb... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge | Photography by Brent Rose How DeskTube reinvented my home office and solved the YouTube algorithm Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge While protecting your privacy online has been a subject of interest for a while now, events in the news — for example, the chat history Facebook recently turned over to police — have brought it front and center. But how do you protect your privacy while staying in touch with friends and relatives? While there are a number of messaging apps that boast increased privacy features, sometimes you can’t persuade the people you want to keep in touch with to use them. What is your alternative? What, for example, if they insist on chatting with Facebook Messenger?Well, you can start by using end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on Messenger.Basically, end-to-end encryption means that nobody — even Facebook’s company Meta — should be able to read what... Continue reading…

You can binge a lot of Apple original shows in three months. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In addition to inching toward the season of new tech launches, we’re also approaching the release of fall TV show and movie releases. If you’re looking for an extended trial to a streaming service, Best Buy is offering a free three-month membership of Apple TV Plus. The only stipulation here is that you must be a new or returning subscriber, so it won’t automatically add three months to an existing plan.An Apple TV Plus subscription normally costs $4.99 per month, so you’re getting $14.97 of value for free. It’s much better than the usual seven-day free trial that Apple typically offers, and by activating three months now, you’re covered into November. That means you have plenty of time to catch up on shows like For All Mankind and... Continue reading…

Minimalist and productive Continue reading…

Is it a tablet? Or two phones in a trench coat? Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios The Hulk’s cousin is here to smash through the fourth wall Continue reading…

Fluid One is an app that lets you point and click at smart home devices to control them. | Image: Fluid The smart home has an interface problem, and six undergrads from Duke think they’ve solved it with a Raspberry Pi and Apple’s U1 chip. They believe most of today’s methods for controlling smart devices — voice control, fiddly apps with multiple menus, motion sensors — are cumbersome and sometimes frustrating. What the smart home needs, they say, is an intuitive control interface and automations that fire off based on where you are in your home. Basically, one app to rule it all. And they’re not wrong.Fluid One is their solution. A smart home app that leverages ultra-wideband technology in Apple’s iPhones, Fluid can control connected lighting, locks, cameras, thermostats, and more in two ways: a point-and-click control interface and... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge A common complaint you hear from electric vehicle owners is about the sorry state of public EV charging: broken chargers, janky software, busted screens. But a lot of this is anecdotal, and it can be hard to find any rigorous studies that capture the current state of EV charging in the US.JD Power surveyed 11,554 electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners from January through June 2022 for its second annual Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study. Despite big growth in the number of public EV chargers in the US, EV owners say the overall experience still sucks.The consumer research firm measured customer satisfaction with EV charging on a 1,000-point scale. According to respondents, charging at a public Level 2... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a few short years, TikTok has grown into one of the fastest-growing social networks in the world — and with the 2022 midterm election cycle heating up, the app is now preparing to take on the maddening problem of election misinformation.In a Wednesday blog post, TikTok’s head of US safety, Eric Han, outlined how the company plans to combat the threat of harmful misinformation. First, TikTok will begin rolling out its Election Center this week in order to provide authoritative voting information in the coming weeks and results from the Associated Press once they are reported. TikTok says it will link out to the Election Center through labels placed on midterm-related content, including videos posted by governments, candidates, and... Continue reading…

Image: Airbnb Airbnb is testing new “anti-party technology” in the US and Canada as it attempts to enforce a global ban on house parties it made permanent earlier this year, the company has announced. The technology is designed to automatically catch the kinds of bookings that are likely to result in unauthorized parties, by looking at factors like a guests’ review history, the age of their account, the length of the stay they’re requesting, and whether they’re booking for a weekday or weekend.The company says it’s been trialing similar technology in select areas of Australia since October 2021, where it saw a 35 percent drop in unauthorized parties. It’s also previously used a similar system in the US since July 2020 that has a more limited focus on... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Microsoft is rolling out a taskbar notification system to its Windows 11 widgets this week. While the weather widget returned to Windows 11 earlier this year, it’s largely been a static experience that displays a sunny icon when the weather is good and an umbrella icon when it’s raining and sucks to be outside. That’s all changing this week, as Microsoft is now adding live animations to this taskbar widget.All Windows 11 users will start to see these new widget notifications in the coming days and weeks, thanks to an update to the Windows Web Experience Pack that powers Microsoft’s widgets feature. The notifications appear as live animations on the taskbar weather widget, and include alerts for thunderstorms and even ticker alerts when... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Most popular period and pregnancy tracking apps don’t have strong privacy protections, according to a new analysis from researchers at Mozilla. Leaky privacy policies in health apps are always a problem, but issues that fall into this particular category are especially concerning now that abortion is illegal in many places in the United States.Period and pregnancy tracking apps collect data that could theoretically be used to prosecute people getting abortions in places where it’s illegal. Data from period tracking apps isn’t the biggest thing used to tie people to abortions right now — most often, the digital data used in those cases comes from texts, Google searches, or Facebook messages. But they’re still potential risks.“Companies... Continue reading…

The Chorus can be swiveled to find the right position for your ears. | Image: Logitech Logitech has announced the Chorus, a $99 audio accessory that aims to bolster sound quality coming out of the Meta Quest 2 VR headset. The appeal of the Chorus, as opposed to using over-ear or in-ear headphones you may already own, is that it lets you remain more present in reality with its open-back, off-ear speakers a la Valve Index.It slides onto each side of the VR headset (compatible with the stock strap or Meta’s Elite straps), and the speakers can swivel to find the right positioning for your ears. Their volume is controlled through the Quest 2’s volume rocker. It’s powered via the Quest 2’s USB-C port, though it supports USB-C passthrough, so you can keep your headset charged or connect other devices to it. L... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk’s lawyers notched a partial win this week in their Delaware Court of Chancery standoff against Twitter with a motion requesting information from 22 Twitter employees, or “custodians,” in addition to 41 others that both sides already agreed on for sharing data. Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled on the issue Monday afternoon, deciding Twitter has to “collect, review, and produce documents” from just one of the people listed: Kayvon Beykpour, the former head of consumer product at Twitter.With the October 17th trial date for Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk for trying to break up their $44 billion deal drawing closer — and Musk selling billions of dollars worth of his stock in Tesla — his lawyers are trying to find something to shore... Continue reading…

Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge If you spent Tuesday wondering why your Fitbit Charge 5 won’t sync, you’re not alone. Frustrated Charge 5 owners have taken to Reddit and Twitter to report their fitness trackers simply won’t sync in what appears to be a widespread outage. It’s the latest in a series of complaints this summer following slow Ionic recalls and messed-up blood oxygen graphs for Android users.The Verge was able to confirm that at least two of our Charge 5 devices are unable to sync on both Android and iOS despite multiple efforts. We were last able to sync a device at 10:39PM ET on Monday night. Unpairing and repairing the Charge 5 as well as force quitting the Fitbit app were unsuccessful in fixing the issue.Around 4:45PM ET, the Fitbit Support account t... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge WhatsApp’s new app on Windows no longer requires you to link your phone to send, receive, and sync messages. An update on WhatsApp’s site reveals the refreshed Windows app is out of beta and available to download on the Microsoft Store.Previously, users on Windows had to download WhatsApp’s web-based desktop app or access the messaging service from their web browsers. The new app is native to Windows, which, as WhatsApp explains, should make the app faster and more responsive.The redesigned WhatsApp has a slightly cleaner interface when compared to the previous version of the app but otherwise doesn’t look all that different. The biggest change is that you no longer need to keep your phone online to sync messages between your phone and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon warehouse staff that work at a fulfillment center outside of Albany, New York have filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the NLRB told The Verge on Tuesday. The employees, who work at Amazon’s ALB1 warehouse, have filed for a unit that would encompass around 400 workers at the facility.To file for a union petition, more than 30 percent of the proposed unit would have signed union authorization cards. The NLRB is currently ensuring that this step has been taken and expects to verify the petition in a matter of days and proceed to arranging a formal election.The Albany workers are organized with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which successfully voted to unionize at the company’s JFK8... Continue reading…

The number of Latinos who listen to podcasts on a monthly basis has declined, according to a new study. | Getty Surprise! I had a bit of a vacation detour, so I am back for a two-day stint before taking off again Thursday. The TL;DR of my trip is that Sweden is great — let’s all move there and take our four weeks of summer vacation and eat princess cake.It is a slow week in the podcast world, but Jake has kindly helped me compile some news (just kidding, he did like 75 percent of it).Also, I will be at Podcast Movement next week! Give me a shout if you’ll be there, too.Report: the number of Latino monthly podcast listeners has decreasedAfter growing substantially in 2021, the number of Latino Americans that listen to podcasts has stalled, according to a new report from Edison Research and Libsyn. However, the findings also demonstrated a... Continue reading…

American Airlines American Airlines announced Tuesday that it has placed an order for up to 20 supersonic aircraft from Boom Supersonic, with an option for an additional 40 jets. American is the second major airline to bet on the return of ultra-fast air travel in just two years.The amount of money exchanging hands was not disclosed, but American said the deposit on the 20 initial aircraft was nonrefundable. That agreement, though, is still subject to change depending on the outcome of American’s safety testing and also Boom’s ability to deliver on its promises despite never having built or flown a full-scale supersonic jet before.According to American, “Boom must meet industry-standard operating, performance and safety requirements as well as... Continue reading…

The slide-out headset stand might leave an indent in the padding but is very practical. | Image: Dell Alienware is releasing a pair of new gaming monitors, including a 25-incher with a 360Hz variable refresh rate and a 27-inch Quad HD option that can overclock to 280Hz. Both monitors sport leaner designs than the brand’s other recent offerings, with smaller bases and slide-out headset stands, giving users more desk real estate for massive desk pads and full-sized keyboards.The smaller model (AW2523HF) aesthetically does not scream gaming gear: it’s all matte black plastic with a glossy Alienware head logo and the number “25” on the back, which doesn’t light up like the 27-inch (AW2723DF) model does. The 25-inch model is equipped with a Full HD 1080p IPS screen with Vesa AdaptiveSync certification, HDR10 support, and 99 percent of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed a recent filing from Amazon (you can read it in full below), showing the internet retail giant’s requests for limits on the agency’s investigation of its business practices.According to lawyers representing Amazon, CEO Andy Jassy, former CEO Jeff Bezos, and several other employees, the overly “burdensome” investigation included serving civil investigative demands (CIDs), which Bloomberg describes as similar to subpoenas, to 20 Amazon employees at their homes. However, like Elon Musk’s ongoing squabble with the SEC, the 49-page document hits its stride while claiming FTC individual CIDs requesting testimony from Bezos and Jassy specifically served only to harass them:

Google’s Pixel 6 Pro. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Google announced on August 15th, 2022, that it would begin rolling out the Android 13 update to its portfolio of Pixel devices. As is usual with Android updates, however, this doesn’t mean that even if you have a qualifying Pixel device (a Pixel 4 or newer, basically), you’ll immediately see the update available. Google often takes a number of weeks to deliver the update to all devices out there.While there’s always the solution of using Android’s developer tools, a Mac or PC, and a USB cable to sideload the update immediately, an easier, computer-free option exists as well. If you’ve got a qualifying Pixel device and are tired of seeing the software update screen say there’s nothing new, here’s a trick to force the update to show up.S... Continue reading…