The Verge

Image: The Verge The next version of Microsoft's Edge web browser might end up with fewer features than before. The new Edge version 117, which is currently in beta and expected to turn stable on September 14th, according to Neowin and 9to5Google, has five features slated for removal. Those features include Math Solver, Picture Dictionary, Citations, Grammar Tools, and Kids Mode.Microsoft previously mentioned the deprecation" of these features in its last beta channel release notes on August 25th. The company said the reason is to improve end user experience and simplify the More tools menu." Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge The More Tools menu on a stable release of Microsoft Edge. As Microsoft tries to get more people... Continue reading...

AMC's logos as seen in the trailer for the second season of Dark Winds. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge A handful of AMC Plus shows, including Fear the Walking Dead and Killing Eve, will have a temporary home on Max, Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming service, starting September 1st and going through October 31st. Statements provided to multiple outlets by executives from both services' parent companies make it clear the goal of the deal is to help AMC Plus while adding more content to Max, which is good because, with the strikes in Hollywood bringing productions to a halt and the challenges AMC is facing in the cable space, both companies probably need it.This promotional arrangement with Warner Bros. Discovery is a terrific opportunity to serve up some of our most popular and critically acclaimed programming to millions of Max... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI finally released a version of ChatGPT that promises to protect business data as more companies consider using the platform but worry about privacy and security.In a blog post, OpenAI said ChatGPT Enterprise offers better security and privacy, unlimited high-speed access to GPT-4, more powerful data analysis so companies understand information much faster, and the ability to ask more complicated questions to ChatGPT.Privacy and security have been a concern for businesses who fear their data could be used to train ChatGPT and are worried that using the tool might accidentally expose sensitive customer information to AI models. OpenAI said users of ChatGPT Enterprise will have control and ownership over their data, which will not... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is once again flirting with a $35 minimum for non-Prime subscribers to qualify for free shipping. It's currently testing the increased minimum order amount, which has been set at $25 since 2017. The price actually started at $25 before Amazon raised it to $35 in 2013, then raised it again to $49 in 2016, when it began lowering it to $35 and, later, $25. (Yes, it's all very confusing.)Amazon's ongoing roller-coaster ride of pricing naturally pushes people toward its $139 per-year Prime membership - where you don't have to worry about minimum order amounts on items that qualify for free two-day shipping (or faster).CNBC's reporting indicates that the minimum order hike hasn't yet rolled out to all non-Prime accounts, and a quick... Continue reading...

Photo by Paul Hennessy / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images A new crew recently arrived at the International Space Station (ISS), ready to begin a six-month stint of life in orbit. During its stay, Crew-7 will work on scientific research, including a new suite of experiments into the effects of spaceflight on the human body over time - information that could be crucial to future crewed missions to the Moon and beyond.The crew consists of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.The launch had been scheduled for Friday, August 25th, but was delayed by around 24 hours for an extra safety review of the valves in the Dragon's environmental control and... Continue reading...

Poe is now available on the web, iOS, Android, and the Mac. | Image: The Verge Poe, the AI chatbot platform created by Quora, has added a slew of updates, including a Mac app, the ability to have multiple simultaneous conversations with the same AI bot, access to Meta's Llama 2 model, and more. It's also planning an enterprise tier so that companies can manage the platform for their employees, according to an email that was recently sent to Poe users.As my colleague David Pierce wrote in April, Poe's ambition is to be the web browser for AI chatbots. Adam D'Angelo, the CEO of Poe's parent company Quora, also sits on the board of OpenAI and thinks that the number of AI bots will keep increasing. Poe wants to be the one place where you can find them all.I think there's going to be this massive ecosystem similar... Continue reading...

An alleged image of the iPhone 15 USB-C port. | Image: Majin Bu Apple said last year it will bring USB-C to the iPhone, and now alleged pictures of the iPhone 15's USB-C port hint at light blue and green colors for Apple's new non-Pro phones, according to leaker Majin Bu (via AppleInsider). The images, which were shared on X (formerly Twitter) this morning, show three naked USB-C modules in the two colors, as well as a dark, black shade. In addition, Majin Bu shared pictures of somewhat crude mock-ups of the phone, including one with an apparently off-center hole for the USB-C port.

A rendering of Mercedes-Benz's charging hub. | Image: Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz announced its first electric vehicle DC fast charging hubs will launch in the fourth quarter of 2023, with the first station locations coming to Atlanta, Georgia; Chengdu, China; and Mannheim, Germany. The so-called Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging Network" will have 2,000 chargers installed worldwide by the end of 2024, the automaker said.At the beginning of this year, Mercedez-Benz announced it would go halfsies on spending about $1 billion with solar company MN8 Energy to build out a major worldwide charging network for electric vehicle owners. At the time, its plans included the installation of more than 2,500 DC fast chargers provided by ChargePoint at 400 hub locations in North America.Today, Mercedez-Benz says it... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, the SEC announced its first enforcement action against NFTs in a case that was settled by Impact Theory, the NFTs' issuer.The SEC said the NFTs issued by Impact Theory were unlicensed securities. The company agreed to a cease-and-desist order, paid $6.1 million in penalties, and agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in question still in its control. Impact Theory will also eliminate any royalties that it might have received from sales of those NFTs on secondary markets.It's not clear whether the enforcement action means the SEC broadly views NFTs as securities offeringsIn 2021, the company sold three tiers of NFTs that it called Founder's Keys. Impact Theory invited potential investors to view the purchase of a KeyNFT as an... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge DoorDash is launching a new answering service for restaurants that could put you on the phone with AI when ordering takeout or delivery. With the new service, restaurants can have AI field phone calls and take orders from customers, with live agents available to support customers at any time."The answering service is supposed to pick up every phone call that restaurants receive, making it easier for staff to manage takeout orders while juggling in-person customers. When someone calls in, the AI-powered service will attempt to upsell them by offering curated recommendations to complement their meal," while also offering multiple language options. Meanwhile, callers who have ordered from the restaurant before will get the chance to... Continue reading...

Image: Matt Jewell Hey, remember when Foxconn bought a bunch of buildings around Wisconsin just before an election and said it was building innovation centers" around the state in a transparent attempt to build support for the giant tax credits it was given to build an LCD factory that never arrived? Yeah, it's selling two of those buildings. The news was first reported by Wisconsin Public Radio, which got a quote from Foxconn saying that selling its Green Bay property, known as the Watermark building, will add to the vibrancy of the city's downtown." Very good.You might recall two of these buildings, in Eau Claire and Green Bay, because The Verge's Josh Dzieza went and looked in the windows months after they were purchased and noticed they were empty.... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google and Meta tend to pay their software engineers more than their peers in Big Tech, according to new data from Blind, an anonymous forum for tech employees.Apple and Microsoft, meanwhile, pay the least for entry-level engineers on average, though compensation tends to become more comparable across Big Tech for senior talent. Amazon's promotions can take longer than its peers, and its pay ranges for engineers are the widest.The data is based on self-reported compensation packages from Blind users from January of last year to this month. While public companies have to report the average annual compensation for all their employees compared to what their CEOs make, this kind of level-specific pay data is closely guarded unless you are... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge The 13-inch Apple MacBook Air with M2 is on sale for its lowest price to date, dropping to just $899 ($200 off) for the base model at Best Buy. The M2 Air starts with 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and an eight-core M2 processor, though if you prefer stepping up to the 512GB model with faster storage and a 10-core chip, that's also $200 off and selling for an all-time low of $1,199 at Best Buy.The M2 MacBook Air earned our top rank of all laptops not long after it was released in fall of 2022; at the time, it started at $1,199. It got a $100 price cut once Apple introduced the larger 15-inch version, so getting that same laptop for just $899 is a bit of a steal now. The M2 Air is an excellent everyday machine that's super thin and light... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft is reportedly dragging its feet on fixing yet another security vulnerability. This time, it's a flaw in the Skype mobile app that could let hackers obtain your IP address by opening a message with a link - no clicking required, according to a report from 404 Media.The flaw, which was uncovered by the independent security researcher Yossi, allows hackers to see a user's general location by having them open a message containing a link. While Yossi told Microsoft about the flaw earlier this month, 404 Media reports that the company only promised to issue a patch after the outlet reached out.To attest to the severity of the flaw, it doesn't seem to matter what website the link takes you to. The researcher demonstrated the flaw... Continue reading...

Image: The New York Times The New York Times' push into gaming continues as the company is widely launching its next big release: Connections. The game, which has been available in beta since June, is now rolling out basically everywhere the Times games are available. That includes the web, the NYT Games app on both iOS and Android, and soon," it will also be available in the play" tab of the main Times app alongside Wordle, sudoku, and the crossword puzzle.Connections is essentially a word-matching game. Here's the official description:

The Chandrayaan-3 rover leaves India's lander. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been posting images and videos of its lunar rover to X (formerly Twitter) after successfully soft-landing its Chandrayaan-3 lunar module on the Moon's south pole last week. The posts include footage of the rover's exit and its first several meters of driving as well as pictures from the rover itself and data from the mission's instruments.The first video of the rover, posted on Friday, shows it leaving the Chandrayaan-3 lander on a ramp and driving onto the Moon. The ISRO posted the video in a thread that also included footage from the lander approaching its landing site and kicking up dust as it touched down on the surface.

Above, a sight that will not be visible from Flannery Associates' new city. | Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Over the past five years, a company named Flannery Associates has spent $800 million scooping up land outside San Francisco - without explaining who's behind the effort or what they plan to do with the land. Now, local officials who'd been looking into the matter finally have their answer: a group of wealthy and recognizable tech leaders are behind the venture, and they're hoping to use the land to build a brand new city, according to reports from The New York Times and Bloomberg.The reports say that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Andreessen Horowitz investors Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs, and other tech leaders and investors have put money into the... Continue reading...

The ViewFinity S9 is a 27-inch 5K display. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Several months after announcing the 27-inch ViewFinity S9 desktop monitor at CES 2023, Samsung is finally circling back around with pricing and availability details. Let's get right to it: the 5K display, which is being positioned as a prosumer option meant to rival monitors from LG and Apple, will cost $1,599.99 and you can now order it directly from Samsung and other retailers including Amazon.$1,599 is the same starting MSRP as Apple's Studio Display - also a 27-inch 5K monitor. It's rumored (though not confirmed) that these two screens could be using near-identical panels if not the exact same component. A 5K display is incredibly sharp at 27 inches, but by the rest of today's standards, this display feels a bit dated: there's no... Continue reading...

Last year's Nothing Phone 1 is getting essential Glyph notifications and more. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Nothing's Phone 1 got a major OS update, bringing software parity between the company's first device and its latest Phone 2. Nothing officially announced the Nothing OS 2.0 release on Discord, letting owners of the Phone 1 know that exciting new features, enhanced customization, and improved functionality" are coming to the early adopters.As covered last week, this Nothing OS 2.0 update is based on Android 13, which is what currently ships on Nothing's latest device. Nothing also has a beta OS release that runs atop Android 14, which works on Phone 1.Nothing OS 2.0 for Phone 1 includes the monochromatic visual identity" the company has heavily leaned into for its latest device. It includes new Quick Settings widgets that let you flip... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge WhatsApp is working on a feature that will let you share original quality photos and videos. As spotted by WABetaInfo, the app now includes an option to select original quality photos or videos" in version 2.23.18.12 of the WhatsApp beta for Android.The app will treat the images and videos as documents, however. A screenshot taken by WABetaInfo shows a new option to choose from gallery" in the app's document picker, which specifically mentions the ability to send original quality photos and videos.Previously, you had to use a workaround to send original quality media by changing their file extensions to PDF or DOC, but this new feature should help you avoid that process completely. The ability to send original quality photos and... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge What if you could have a conversation with your notes? That question has consumed a corner of the internet recently, as companies like Dropbox, Box, Notion, and others have built generative AI tools that let you interact with and create new things from the data you already have in their systems.Google's version of this is called NotebookLM. It's an AI-powered research tool that is meant to help you organize and interact with your own notes. (Google originally announced it earlier this year as Project Tailwind but quickly changed the name.) Right now, it's really just a prototype, but a small team inside the company has been trying to figure out what an AI notebook might look like. Ultimately, if NotebookLM sticks around, it'll probably... Continue reading...

A Pixel Fold. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google appears to be working on a satellite SOS feature for Google Messages that would let users text emergency services from remote areas without a conventional cell signal. As spotted by developer Neil Rahmouni, early code in the Google Messages app shows work on an integration with Garmin and its emergency Garmin Response service. Google also appears to have started work on a UI for messaging emergency responders.Garmin's emergency service uses the Iridium satellite network, which Iridium says is capable of delivering a signal anywhere on Earth." There is a big catch, though, when it comes to using satellite SOS services from Garmin: it requires a $15 per month subscription on Garmin's own devices. So while this would be a great... Continue reading...

British Airways and other flights are affected during this busy bank holiday. | Photo by Urbanandsport / NurPhoto via Getty Images The UK is suffering a major disruption to air travel due to unspecific technical issues" affecting flight control computer systems. Britain's National Air Traffic Services (NATS) says it has applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety," with several airlines reporting disruptions felt at airports across the world. Hundreds of flights in and out of the UK have been delayed, according to The Guardian, with delays of up to 12 hours reported.Despite the disruption, NATS says that UK airspace is not currently closed (as of 12:40PM UK time) during this very heavily traveled bank holiday Monday. NATS provided no indication for when the issue might be resolved.

Image: Dolby Dolby Atmos is about to get a whole lot more adaptable. Today, Dolby is announcing Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, which it describes as a new feature that seamlessly pairs together a TV's sound system with accessory wireless speakers to deliver a more extensive and immersive Dolby Atmos sound experience." Since it factors your TV speakers into the equation, FlexConnect doesn't necessarily require a soundbar at the center of everything. TCL will become the first TV manufacturer to offer FlexConnect with its upcoming 2024 TV lineup, and it also plans to release a line of wireless speakers optimized to support the feature.Dolby says that FlexConnect intelligently optimizes the sound for any room layout and speaker setup, offering the freedom... Continue reading...

My 2021 iPad Pro 11-inch. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge As the third tier of Apple's connected personal computing devices, the iPad sits in an awkward place in 2023. It's a supremely capable product, there's no doubt about that. It's powerful and responsive; most of the models have beautiful screens; and its interface is friendly. But it's also incomplete and insistent on doing things the Apple-prescribed way. And even as it dominates the tablet landscape, sales of iPads have withered since 2020, as Mark Gurman noted in Bloomberg today. In short: it needs more.To be clear, I like my 2021 iPad Pro a lot. It's a nice device for reading and solid for watching TV in bed. It's also indispensable for following recipes while I'm cooking. But when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad in 2010, saying... Continue reading...

Honestly, I'd keep this grip attached at all times just for the wrist strap. Camera grips are back, baby. Continue reading...

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 3, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. Thanks to everyone who sent stuff in this week - we're starting to get the hang of how this all works, and I really hope it's fun and useful! I know I've already downloaded a terrifying number of new apps thanks to y'all.Only one housekeeping thing today: Installer now has an RSS feed! You can add this link to any RSS reader, and it should work (let me know if you run into issues). Also, Installer's new homepage has every edition ever - all two of them so far. We're still working on some cool new ways you can subscribe and contribute to Installer, but hopefully, we've got all the basics covered now.This week, I've been watching season 3... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A federal judge in California's eastern district has dismissed the Republican National Committee's (RNC) lawsuit against Google over the company's alleged discriminatory" spam filtering, according to The Washington Post.The suit complained Google intentionally sent RNC political emails to Gmail users' spam folders, and the RNC sought restitution for donations it allegedly lost as a result" of those lost emails. The RNC cited a North Carolina State University study that found Gmail was more likely to mark emails from Republican campaigns as spam. One of the study's authors spoke to the Post in May last year, saying its findings had been misrepresented. Muhammad Shahzad noted that it only tested default email settings - in tests on... Continue reading...

Linus Sebastian discusses changes coming to Linus Tech Tips. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge Linus Media Group (LMG) founder Linus Sebastian explained LMG's HR policies and how it will improve accuracy and ethics in a video posted to YouTube last night.Following a 10-day pause to evaluate its processes, Sebastian said the company held meetings with team members to dig through every misstep" and identify communication and ... teamwork challenges" that resulted in accusations of LMG's quality issues. He added that the company will no longer insist on uploading videos daily and will slow down to verify its content is accurate.Sebastian did not directly address sexual harassment allegations recently levied by a former employee, Madison Reeve. Sebastian detailed changes to its HR structure over the year, including hiring... Continue reading...

It may not feature person detection like the new model, but the third-gen Blink Outdoor is still a good security camera.for the price. | Image: Amazon As we enter the last week of August, it's time to prepare for a jam-packed fall gadget season. Many companies, including Apple, will likely release new gadgets. Shopping events like Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days and Black Friday are set to take place, and of course, we can't forget the holidays. Altogether, it amounts to a very busy season, particularly for the mail carriers who'll be delivering all your purchases - and for the porch pirates, who'll try to steal all of them.If you want to keep your packages secure, the third-gen Blink Outdoor security camera with the Sync Module 2 included is on sale starting at $49.99 ($50 off) from Amazon and Best Buy. The last-gen budget-friendly camera will help you keep tabs on your goods even... Continue reading...

But has it? | Photo by Fabian Sommer / Picture Alliance via Getty Images A year ago at Berlin's IFA tech trade show (think European CES), Verge reporter Jon Porter witnessed a Google Nest Hub control an Apple HomeKit smart plug. This lightbulb moment for the smart home" was the first public demonstration of Matter. The new smart home standard is designed to fix the biggest issue facing tech in our homes: interoperability, and witnessing two fierce competitors in the space working together was exciting. Twelve months later, on the eve of IFA 2023, we're still waiting for that lightbulb to turn on across the industry.The smart home remains fragmented. Despite being developed by the biggest names in the industry - Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and more - Matter has yet to deliver on its main promise. You... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is experimenting with a text-to-speech feature for Chrome's reading mode on desktop, as reported by Android Police. I sometimes use a similar feature in Instapaper, and in Chrome, I could see it being a useful tool to listen to articles in the browser I'm already using while I work.The feature can apparently be found in Chrome Canary, Google's bleeding edge version of Chrome, according to X user Leopeva64. If you have the feature, you can click a play button at the top of an article you're looking at in reading mode to have Google read the text. Leopeva64 also shared a link to a video showing off the feature on Reddit.

Google Keep is a simple, solid note-taking app -hopefully Google doesn't kill it. | Image: Google Good news for Android-toting Google Keep users: you're finally getting the text formatting options the app has so desperately needed for years. Google announced this week that the ability to bold, italicize, and otherwise transform text in your notes is rolling out now, and you should start to see it in the app soon. (I don't have it yet, but Mishaal Rahman and a few others actually spotted the feature ahead of its official launch, so it seems to be coming fast.)The new Keep features are more in the should have been here all along" category than they are shiny new things, but they're still a welcome addition to the app. And actually, Google has been paying an unusual amount of attention to Keep recently: users got a new homescreen... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA) has officially gone into effect. Starting on August 25th, 2023, tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more must comply with sweeping legislation that holds online platforms legally accountable for the content posted to them.Even though this new law was passed in the EU, we'll likely see far-reaching global effects as companies adjust their policies to comply. Here's what exactly the DSA does and how the EU plans on enforcing it.What is the Digital Services Act?The overarching goal of the DSA is to foster safer online environments. Under the new rules, online platforms must implement ways to prevent and remove posts containing illegal goods, services, or content while... Continue reading...

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT reference design. The lesser 7700 XT won't be available with this AMD cooler. | Image: AMD Is AMD beginning to give Nvidia a run for its money? Continue reading...

Image: Larian Studios Baldur's Gate 3's first official patch is apparently so large its patch notes exceed Steam's character limit. The patch, out now, addresses over 1,000 bugs, balancing, flow issues and much, much more." You can read the full but spoiler-heavy patch notes here, while BG3's Steam page has a truncated but redacted version of the notes here.The most prominent fix in the patch deals with height issues that arise when short-statured characters like halflings and gnomes try to romance a taller race.We're bringing back Short King Summer with better kissing contact for short races!" Listen, that's developer Larian's words, not mine. They could have been mine, but they're not. Larian Studios BG3 will now let the short... Continue reading...

Screenshots of the note-taking app Obsidian. | Image: Obsidian This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer. Sign up here.Today let's step outside the news cycle and turn our attention toward a topic I'm deeply invested in but only rarely write about: productivity platforms. For decades now, software tools have promised to make working life easier. But on one critical dimension - their ability to improve our thinking - they don't seem to be making much progress at all.Meanwhile, the arrival of generative artificial intelligence could make the tools we use more powerful than ever - or they could turn out to be just another mirage.To understand where things went wrong, I want to focus on the humble note-taking app: the... Continue reading...

The black model was on sale last week, but we all know the transparent ones are what you want. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It was a big deal when the Beats Studio Buds Plus fell to a new all-time low last week, but I think it's an even bigger deal now that all three colors are available at that price - since the coolest earbuds by far are the see-through version.You can get the Beats Studio Buds Plus in black, ivory, or transparent for $129.95 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The latter retailer lists the deal as ending tomorrow, so it's a solid bet that today is your one chance until this deal swings around again.The Studio Buds Plus may not reinvent the wheel when it comes to wireless earbuds, but they offer good sound, noise cancellation, and longer battery life than their predecessors. They may not be quite as good as Apple's latest AirPods... Continue reading...

If you're tired of all this purple, there's an easy fix. | Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge Look, no disrespect to Apple's default desktop wallpapers, but staring at the same combination of orange and yellow all day, every day, can get a bit boring. If you've long felt that your office life could use a bit of spicing up, a new wallpaper could be just the thing you need.I'm here to show you how. It only takes a few seconds, and I'll be with you every step of the way.How to change your Mac wallpaperFirst, you'll want to open System Settings. This is in the Apple menu on the top left of your screen.From there:

Image: Dropbox Dropbox said in a blog post that it's implementing a metered model on its Advanced plan in response to customers who have been using Dropbox for cryptocurrency mining, pooling storage for personal use cases," and others reselling it.Because of that, Dropbox is getting rid of its as much space as you need" offer. Customers who sign up for a Dropbox Advanced plan with three active licenses will instead receive 15TB of storage across their whole team. As for businesses currently on the plan, the company says those using less than 35TB of storage will get to keep that amount, plus an additional 5TB credit of pooled storage, for five years at no additional charge to their existing plan."Dropbox will throw in an additional 5TB of storage... Continue reading...

Downed power lines block a road as people feed chickens outside a burnt home in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, western Maui, Hawaii, on August 11th, 2023. | Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images Maui County has filed suit against Hawaiian Electric, alleging that the utility is responsible for catastrophic damages from wildfires that tore through Maui this month.The utility acted negligently by failing to power down their electrical equipment despite a National Weather Service Red Flag Warning" on August 7th, Maui County alleges. The suit says Hawaiian Electric's downed power lines, while still energized, caused the fire by igniting dry grass and brush. It also alleges that the utility failed to maintain the power grid, causing systemic failures" that sparked three blazes on August 8th. The county is suing for civil damages affecting public property.The utility acted negligently by failing to power down their electrical... Continue reading...