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Image: Spotify Spotify is fully separating its play and shuffle buttons — but only for Premium subscribers. Today, the company announced that it’s beginning to roll out individual buttons for the two functions, which will replace the combined play / shuffle button that’s currently at the top of playlists and artist pages. The change is expected to hit Android and iOS devices “in the coming weeks.”“This new change will allow you to choose the mode you prefer at the top of playlists and albums and listen the way you want to,” Spotify wrote on its blog. “Whether you love the joy of the unexpected with Shuffle mode, or prefer listening to tunes in order by simply pressing Play, Spotify has you covered.”Spotify’s penchant for shuffling tracks has, at... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony’s getting rid of Accolades, a PlayStation 5 feature present since the system launched, because apparently, no one uses it (via Eurogamer). In case you haven’t heard of it (which wouldn’t be all that surprising), Accolades is a way to anonymously reward other players online for being a “good sport,” “helpful,” or “welcoming,” which then appear on players’ profiles.On a PlayStation support page, Sony says Accolades will disappear this fall, and its message is actually kind of sad. “The feature hasn’t seen the level of usage we anticipated, so we are refocusing our efforts,” Sony says. “We encourage the community to continue to send positive messages to one another.” Image: Sony The number of Accolades you... Continue reading…

Photo by Roberto Baldwin for The Verge BMW issued a recall notice for a “small number” of 2022 i4 sedans and iX SUVs due to the risk of battery fires. According to the recall, the high voltage battery “may have internal damage,” which can result in an electrical short circuit.The recall only covers 83 vehicles that have been sold in the US, but BMW is advising owners not to drive them, to park them outside or away from other vehicles and structures that could catch on fire, and not to charge them. BMW dealers will replace the battery free of charge.The recall was issued after BMW became aware of “a non-US field incident involving a 2022 BMW i4 eDrive40” last April. An engineering analysis found that debris, specifically pieces of cathode, were seeping into the battery... Continue reading…

Image: Helen Sloan / HBO The entire run of HBO’s Game of Thrones TV show is now streaming on HBO Max in 4K and HDR, joining the 4K and HDR-compatible movies on the service. You can watch all eight seasons with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, making for a nice way to bide the time before the series premiere of House of the Dragon on August 21st.Only those who subscribe to HBO Max’s ad-free plan, which costs $14.99 / month or $149.99 / year, have access to the new formats. You won’t have to wait to see House of the Dragon in 4K, though — HBO says it’s debuting the Game of Thrones spinoff in 4K with support for HDR 10, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos.While Game of Thrones was already available in 4K on Blu-ray, streaming on HBO Max saves you from paying $150 or more... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Starting Monday, ordering a free “Josh for Governor” yard sign will be as easy as responding to a text message for Pennsylvania voters.The Josh Shapiro campaign’s new voter outreach program mixes voter file data and gig economy-like delivery services to create “a universe that is primed” to accept good old-fashioned yard signs. By leveraging the campaign’s texting program, volunteers in the campaign’s textbanking program will ask voters directly whether they’d like to receive a sign to support the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.Once a voter accepts, their information is sent over to the campaign, where the data is sorted into delivery routes. Then, volunteers sign up for delivery shifts and receive a route through a “delivery... Continue reading…

This morning, Disney released a new trailer for Andor, the next big Star Wars series on Disney Plus — and with it comes news that the show has been delayed by nearly a month. Andor was previously pegged for a premiere on August 31st, but the new clip says that it will debut with a “three-episode premiere September 21st.” The show is a prequel to a prequel, taking place before the events of the film Rogue One, which itself was set before the first Star Wars movie. It will once again star Diego Luna in the titular role of Cassian Andor, while the trailer also shows off the return of Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera.The news comes as the pace of Star Wars shows on Disney Plus has been ramping up. Obi-Wan Kenobi just wrapped up in June, and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge | Photography by Vjeran Pavic When we started working from home in March 2020, many of us who had not worked at home before may have begun with certain assumptions about what it would be like and what we would need. It’s now over two years later, and while we’re now able to spend time in the office, most of us are spending the majority of our working time at home.We asked The Verge staff members about what they’d learned about working at home. In response, people talked about the need to get away from the desk and to get away from work, the challenges of working in the same space with family, and various strategies for staying sane while staying in the house.Here’s what they told us.How I learned to stop worrying and love WFHOK, I’ll admit it — I’m stubborn. I... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The coronavirus pandemic is now in its third year, which means that many former commuters are now in their third year of working from home. Even folks who are back in the office a few days a week are often working from home more than they did before the pandemic started. If your Wi-Fi is flaking out, slowing to a crawl, or dropping at inopportune moments, here’s how to get it back in business, ranging from free and simple to complicated and kinda expensive.Free optionsTest your connectionYour first step is to understand the nature of the problem: is the internet bad throughout your home or just in certain areas or on certain devices? Does it cut out or slow down randomly throughout the day or only during certain activities? Is the... Continue reading…

Google Search’s timer feature in 2013 when it was first introduced. | Image: Google Until recently, one of the most convenient ways to set a timer was to simply search for one on Google. Punch in a query like “10 minute timer,” and, hey presto, you’d get a ten-minute timer. But last month, reports started to emerge that this feature had disappeared from Google without warning. Search Engine Roundtable was among the first to cover the missing timer on July 20th, citing tweets from around July 18th.Although there is no shortage of timers elsewhere on the web (or provided as stock apps on iOS and Android) Google’s built-in version was a simple, accessible alternative. And, as well as the timer, there was also a stopwatch feature built into the same widget for when you need to count up rather than down. The feature dates... Continue reading…

Business sign of a Tim Horton’s cafeteria. | Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images Tim Hortons, the Canadian fast food chain accused of using its mobile app to collect “vast amounts of sensitive location data” in violation of Canadian privacy laws, says it’s reached a proposed settlement in the resulting class action lawsuits, Vice reports. To make up for tracking users, recording their movements “every few minutes” even when the app was closed, the chain is proposing to give affected users… a free hot beverage and a free baked good worth a little under $9 CAD plus tax.Customers started receiving emails detailing the proposed settlement on Friday, and screenshots were posted to Twitter by James McLeod. “You are receiving this email in connection with a proposed settlement, subject to Court approval, of a national... Continue reading…

Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura in Star Trek. | Photo by Fotos International/Courtesy of Getty Images Nichelle Nichols, who was best known for her groundbreaking role as Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek series, died at age 89. Her son, Kyle Johnson, informed her fans in a post on Nichols’ Instagram account.“Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away,” Johnson writes. “Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Considering how intertwined music discovery is with TikTok, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if the company launched a music streaming app of its own. Well, patent filings uncovered by Insider suggest TikTok’s working on just that.TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for “TikTok Music” in May. According to the filing, the service would let users purchase, play, share, and download music. It would also allow users to create, share, and recommend playlists, comment on music, as well as livestream audio and video. ByteDance already filed for a “TikTok Music” trademark in Australia last November.ByteDance already has experience with music streaming. In 2020, ByteDance... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Just days after the Pixel 6A’s launch, Google’s rolling out an update to fix an issue preventing users from unlocking the bootloader and performing mods, according to a report from Android Police. The change is bundled within the Pixel 6A’s first update, which Google just started releasing last week.In short, a bootloader is a piece of software that loads the operating system (OS) on a device when it turns on. Gaining access to the bootloader on Android can give you full control over your OS in a process known as rooting. It also allows you to install modded versions of Android, called ROMs. While some phone-makers and carriers don’t let you unlock your device’s bootloader, Google does things differently. It lets you dive right in on... Continue reading…

Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft in MGM’s 2018 Tomb Raider. | Image: Warner Bros Tomb Raider’s movie rights are up for grabs. According to a report from TheWrap, the Amazon-owned MGM waited too long to create a sequel to its 2018 Tomb Raider film, freeing up the rights for the next Hollywood studio that wants to take a stab at creating an adaption of the long-running video game franchise.Several studios are currently engaged in a bidding war to snap up the Tomb Raider rights, TheWrap reports. And since the license come with no obligation to retain the same cast and crew, the next Tomb Raider film could be a total reboot that passes the Lara Croft baton to yet another actress.The 2018 Tomb Raider stars Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, and was met with mixed reviews that criticized its weak portrayal of the series’... Continue reading…

There’s a lot to be said for an app with one singular function, and that’s what makes the Tab app so magical. Unlike other bill splitting apps like Splitwise, which lets you split and track any type of expense, the Tab app exists to only split meal bills among a group of people. That’s it — that’s all it does.I was first introduced to the app by my friends when I lived in New York City. After many dinners and debates over who ordered an extra side of fries, who got three beers instead of two, and who just had an hors d’oeuvre in place of an entree, we were fed up with doing basic math so the five or six people at the table could each pay their fair share. Thus, we transitioned to the Tab app. Its appeal came from the ease of signing up... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Indonesian government has blocked access to a range of online services, including Steam, Epic Games, PayPal, and Yahoo after the companies failed to comply with a new requirement related to the country’s restrictive content moderation laws, as reported earlier by Reuters.In line with the rules, companies deemed “Private Electronic System Providers” must register with the government’s database to operate in the country, or otherwise face a nationwide ban. Indonesia gave companies until July 27th to comply and has since banned those that haven’t.The requirement is part of an overarching law, called MR5The requirement is part of an overarching law, called MR5, which was first introduced in 2020. As noted by Reuters, the laws give... Continue reading…

No Finder required. Apple has made macOS very good at handling drag and drops. For example, I often pull a picture right out of the Photos app or Safari and drop it into iMessage or Slack. One thing that’s always slowed me down, though, is moving around more traditional files, like PDFs or other documents.But then I learned that quite a few apps, including many of the built-in ones, have a quick shortcut to get at the file you’re viewing. Using this shortcut (which is officially called the proxy icon), you can easily do things like upload a PDF you have open in Preview to Google Drive without having to go looking for the file in Finder. Here’s how it works: GIF of someone dragging a file from Preview to a Safari window with Google Drive.... Continue reading…

Image: Liam Daniel / Netflix Netflix is suing Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the duo behind The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical over copyright infringement, as first reported by Deadline. The streaming giant filed the complaint in a Washington, DC district court just days after Barlow and Bear held a live, sold-out show dedicated to their Bridgerton-inspired album.After Bridgerton’s 2020 debut, Barlow and Bear began creating music based on the Netflix original series and promoting the endeavor on TikTok, where it quickly gained popularity. As fans requested more content, Barlow and Bear soon had enough to create a 15-song album that went on to win a Grammy in April, a first for music originating on TikTok. On July 26th, Barlow and Bear held a concert at the Kennedy... Continue reading…

A Long March 5B rocket with the Wentian lab module lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site. | Photo by Yang Guanyu/Xinhua via Getty Images China’s uncontrolled Long March 5B rocket reentered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, landing somewhere near Sarawak, the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo.The US Space Command confirmed the rocket’s reentry at 12:45PM ET, but it remains unclear where its debris landed. In a translated post on Weibo, China’s Manned Space Agency said the rocket reentered near the same area, and that most of it burned up on its way down.Uncertainty about where the rocket would land rippled across the globeOn July 24th, China used a Long March 5B rocket to launch a lab module to its unfinished Tiangong space station. Unlike most rockets, the Long March 5B thrusts its first stage into orbit when delivering its payload. This piece, which... Continue reading…

Putting essential features at your fingertips is good, actually. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Pixel 2 is an almost five-year-old phone, but it introduced a feature that I miss more and more with each passing year. It was called Active Edge, and it let you summon Google Assistant just by giving your phone a squeeze. In some ways, it’s an unusual idea. But it effectively gave you something sorely lacking on modern phones: a way to physically interact with the phone to just get something done.Looking at the sides of the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, you won’t see anything to indicate that you’re holding anything special. Sure, there’s a power button and volume rocker, but otherwise, the sides are sparse. Give the phone’s bare edges a good squeeze, though, and a subtle vibration and animation will play, as Google Assistant pops up from the... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Google’s pétanque Doodle. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Google has a delightful new multiplayer Doodle that lets you play a game of pétanque online. If you haven’t heard of pétanque — I hadn’t before writing this article — it’s a game that’s kind of like bocce ball.The goal of pétanque is to throw your ball (the boule) as close as you can to a little ball (the cochonnet) on the playing field in front of you. On your computer, you’ll “throw” the ball by clicking on the boule and dragging back with your mouse to slingshot it forward; on a phone, you’ll toss the boule with your thumb (kind of like throwing a Poké Ball in Pokémon Go). You get points for having more boules close to the cochonnet than your opponent, and whoever has the most points after three rounds wins. Google has a good... Continue reading…

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Apple Pay could finally be compatible with Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox in iOS 16. MacRumors contributor Steve Moser found that Apple Pay works with Edge and Chrome in the iOS 16 beta 4, and shared his findings on Twitter.Moser’s screenshots show a “Continue with Apple Pay” option on Apple’s checkout page when using Edge. Apple Pay only works in Safari on iOS 15 and older, preventing you from using any other browser if you want to pay with Apple Pay when shopping on the web.

Amazon’s budget-friendly Smart Thermostat packs plenty of smarts for a mere $41.99. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Amazon Prime Day is back, baby! OK, maybe not technically speaking, but so many Amazon devices are currently discounted at Best Buy and other retailers that it's giving us a major sense of deja vu. Right now, for example, you can buy Amazon’s excellent Smart Thermostat at Best Buy and Target for just $41.99 ($18 off) — a record low set during Prime Day.The budget-friendly thermostat will mesh with most decor, and can even learn and adapt to your habits like more expensive options. Be aware, however, that you can’t integrate the device with voice assistants beyond Alexa, and there are no native temperature sensors. Still, if those caveats don’t bother you, Amazon’s Smart Thermostat is a great option to consider, one that could... Continue reading…

Into the Breach Once upon a time, my smartphone doubled as my most-used gaming platform. It’s hard to believe now, but there was once a period when app stores felt like a new frontier, and game developers had a blast experimenting with a little touchscreen rectangle that you always had in your pocket. Then the economics changed. Games slowly got cheaper before eventually becoming free altogether. New releases had to decide between a dwindling audience for premium games or saddling their game with in-app purchases. Things became dire. But lately, I’ve been having fun with my phone again — and it’s due almost entirely to subscription services.I came to this realization recently when I switched from Android to an iPhone and started loading my new gadget... Continue reading…

This is the version I bought, and I love them so freakin’ much. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One truth about me as a runner is that I need my jams. No jams, no run. I have meticulously curated playlists where the bass drops are strategically timed to gas me up when I lose steam. Aside from my sneakers, my earbuds are the most important piece of running tech I own. And yet, my decade-long search for the perfect pair only just ended a few weeks ago.Behold, the beautiful, purplicious Beats Fit Pro.To understand why I’m gaga for these buds, you need to know about the headphones that didn’t make the cut. (Don’t worry, I’ll stick to the highlights and spare you a Dickensian-length novel recounting the dozens of earbuds that have failed me in my 10-year running journey.)Earbuds with superior sound — like the Bose SoundSport — are... Continue reading…

Your kid might like it, but you probably won’t Continue reading…

The XPS 13 has a new design and a whole bunch of new problems Continue reading…

It says it’s trying to make things more flexible for drivers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber says that it’s “completely reimagined the way drivers accept rides” with a feature called “upfront fares,” which shows drivers exactly how much they’ll be paid for a trip and where they’ll end up after dropping a rider off. In its announcement on Friday, the company says the change is part of its push to make driving for the rideshare service more flexible. Uber’s also planning on rolling out a feature that lets drivers see other ride requests in their area, letting them pick specific trips they’d like to do.For riders, the changes, which have been tested in select locations, could mean fewer canceled trips because a driver doesn’t actually want to go to the destination, or realizes that it won’t be a very profitable trip.A... Continue reading…

Who uses Helium? | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, Mashable reported that Helium, a crypto project praised by The New York Times earlier this year and whose parent company is backed by investment firms like Andreessen Horowitz, had been misleading people about the companies it works with. Helium advertises on its homepage that Lime, the mobility company behind those electric scooters and bikes, uses its crypto-powered mesh wireless network. The company, however, told Mashable that it hasn’t had a relationship with the company since 2019, and that it had only ever done initial testing with Helium’s tech.Now, Salesforce, whose logo appeared on Helium’s website right next to Lime’s, says that it also doesn’t use the technology. “Helium is not a Salesforce partner,” Salesforce... Continue reading…

Image: Charter Communications Inc. A jury in Texas found Charter Communications liable for $7 billion in punitive damages this week as the result of a lawsuit from the family of Betty Jo McClain Thomas, an 83-year-old woman who was stabbed to death by one of its employees in December 2019. The $7 billion is in addition to $375 million in compensatory damages the jury assigned in June.The explanation behind the staggering figure of the verdict goes well beyond the horrific crime committed. It also includes the company’s policies and responses to previous incidents of theft and an attempt to forge a document showing Thomas agreed to forced arbitration that would have limited potential damages to the amount of her last bill.localhost:62220/VewContracts.aspx ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is planning to show ads in the App Store’s Today tab and on individual app pages, according to MacRumors, 9to5Mac, and AppleInsider. The two new ad placements will expand upon the ads you can already see in the App Store’s search tab and in search results.Ads in the Today tab will appear in the larger card format used by other content in that tab, but you’ll see a small blue box with the word “Ad” inside it under the app’s name. Ads in individual app pages will appear under the “You Might Also Like” header that suggests apps related to the one you’re looking at. Like in App Store search, ads on app pages will be highlighted in blue to distinguish them from other recommendations. According to 9to5Mac, ad buyers won’t be able to... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Handing over your phone — full of photos, texts, and other personal private info — to a repair person can feel dicey. After all, the horrifying reality of having your data leaked during the repair process has actually happened to some people. SamMobile found a press release from Samsung’s Korean press site stating that the company hopes to put an end to that with a new privacy feature called Repair Mode (via Ars Technica). It’ll give technicians a limited amount of access to your phone’s innards. From the sound of it, they’ll be able to access enough to make the fix but not so much to leak your pics.This feature is coming first to Galaxy S21 phones in South Korea. The company plans to expand support to other models in the future.As... Continue reading…

As a giant panda, Meng Meng does not need to worry about corporate emails on her birthday. | Photo by Chen Jimin/China News Service via Getty Images Automated birthday emails are a constant of modern life, right up there with death, taxes, and computer updates with poor timing. Once a year, my inbox fills to the brim with reminders of just how many companies I’ve entrusted with my birthdate.But not this year. No, this year was going to be different. This year I went on a relentless unsubscribing kick, just ruthlessly clicking the unsubscribe button whenever something from a corporate mailing list came into my inbox. But I knew that some things were definitely going to still sneak through.See, companies can’t resist a birthday. It’s one of the easiest things they can do to get someone’s attention. “​​Birthday emails are one of the most effective emails you can send,” says a blog... Continue reading…

Image: Mapbox This interactive world map visualizes “a cross-verified database of notable people” to show you the most notable person in your hometown — or anywhere else you might want to look.Topi Tjukanov, a geographer and senior map designer at Mapbox, put the visualization together, which features different influential people from fields including culture, science, leadership, and sports. What someone contributes to society to be considered notable can vary, so researchers tried to narrow it down and account for biases where possible.

It takes about five seconds to set up. If you want to know what frame rates your Steam games are running at, there are many third-party programs out there to help. But if all you need is a very basic counter and you don’t care about other hardware stats, you don’t need to download any of these — you can use a feature that’s built right into Steam.Here’s how to set up Steam’s built-in FPS counter for your PC. I go with the top left, myself.

Lawmakers are blaming “three hostile foreign actors.” | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The federal courts’ document system was hit by a breach with a “startling breadth and scope” in early 2020, according to a report from Politico that cites testimony from House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler. The Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly informed the judiciary about the breach in March and told lawmakers that an investigation is ongoing. Other lawmakers, such as Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), expressed concern that the DOJ had been hiding information about the breach and was refusing to explain it to the public and Congress.Nadler reportedly said that the “system security failure” was the work of “three hostile foreign actors,” though, according to Reuters, security officials for the DOJ didn’t specify which countries... Continue reading…

It’s a mod.After the Nier: Automata community went through a good 96-ish hours of pure, high-octane gas trying to figure out if a heretofore undiscovered church was a mod or an Easter egg or an ARG put together by Yoko Taro and his merry band of weirdos, a trio of modders has come forward and admitted it was a mod.“We have been loving all the discussions and theories — it has been an amazing journey,” reads a statement from the trio. “It has been inspiring to see the community come together after so many years, it has made all the hard work well worth it.” Image: Reddit The mod represents an impressive technological advancement for the Nier: Automata modding community, which in and of itself makes the entire “hoax”... Continue reading…

Since 2013, AT&T has quietly bilked customers out of hundreds of millions of dollars with a bogus “administrative fee,” a fee it more than doubled to $1.99 a month in 2018. For a few years there, a California class-action lawsuit made it seem like AT&T might finally get taken to task. But in May, both sides told a judge they’d settle for just $14 million — meaning customers may get less than 10 percent of what they paid AT&T, while AT&T gets to keep on charging them.In June, the judge tentatively approved that settlement — and today, July 29th, we’re hearing that AT&T is texting and emailing customers a link to a currently-blank website where the settlement claim form will live.According to the settlement agreement in Vianu v. AT&T... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram might be walking back its horribly received TikTok-style redesign and cutting down on the app’s constant avalanche of recommendations, but that won’t prevent recommended content from appearing in your feed altogether. It turns out there’s a fix for that you might not be aware of; I didn’t even know it was a thing until Instagram head Adam Mosseri casually mentioned it in one of his Stories earlier this week.It’s possible to snooze recommendations and suggested posts from your main Instagram feed for 30 days. Hallelujah! And even better — it only takes a couple taps.How to snooze Instagram feed recommendations for 30 days

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Valve’s Steam Deck has been in high demand from the moment reservations went live last year, but if you’re still waiting for an order email to come through, good news: if you have a reservation, Valve says you’ll get your Steam Deck by the end of the year. And even if you make a new reservation, as of this writing, Valve says you’ll get your Steam Deck in Q4.“We’re excited to announce that we’re going to be able to fulfill demand sooner than we had estimated for everyone in the reservation queue,” Valve wrote in a blog post. “Many of the supply chain shortfalls that affect Steam Deck are gradually clearing up, and we’re continuing to ramp production, so we’re able to produce more Decks faster than ever before.”

Illustration by Ana Kova New Jersey police may have used blood samples taken from babies to investigate crimes, according to public defenders in the state.According to a lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), the practice came to light after a case in which New Jersey State Police successfully subpoenaed a testing lab for a blood sample drawn from a child. Police then performed DNA analysis on the blood sample that reportedly linked the child’s father to a crime committed more than 25 years ago.The suspect then became a client of the OPD, which alerted the office to the techniques used to identify the man. The lawsuit, filed jointly by the OPD and the New Jersey Monitor, now seeks to compel the state of New Jersey to disclose... Continue reading…

Emergency services fight fires on July 19th, 2022, in Wennington, England. A series of grass fires broke out around the British capital amid an intense heatwave. | Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images Climate change made the record-smashing heatwave in the UK last week at least 10 times more likely, new research has found. The analysis was published yesterday by the World Weather Attribution initiative, a collaboration of scientists from universities and research institutes around the globe.“In a climate unaffected by human-induced climate change, it would be virtually impossible for temperatures in the UK to reach 40°C but climate change is already making UK heatwaves more frequent, intense and long-lasting,” Mark McCarthy, science manager of the National Climate Information Centre, said in a Met Office press release.The Met Office declared, for the first time, a “Red” heat warning for “exceptional heat” in parts of England for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Bad news for the (presumably few) people out there who have relied on Amazon Drive for storing their important files in the cloud: Amazon is shutting down the service. On the plus side, you’ve got well over a year to figure out an alternative and get everything moved over.The company says Amazon Drive will no longer be supported as of December 31st, 2023. That’s when access will be completely cut off. Uploads are going away earlier and won’t be accepted as of January 31st. The Amazon Drive apps for Android and iOS will be taken down on October 31st, 2022.“We will continue to provide customers the ability to safely back up, share, and organize photos and videos with Amazon Photos,” Amazon said in an email to customers. But for all... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge In early May, the Meta executive in charge of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, shared some news: the social media app’s main feed would start looking dramatically different to some users.For those in a small test group, the feed they’d been using for a decade would be replaced with an “immersive viewing experience” containing full-screen photos and videos with many posts coming from people they weren’t following. In other words, Instagram would start to look and feel even more like TikTok, the short-form video app that Meta sees as its fiercest competition.“Let me know what you think down in the comments below,” said the ever-earnest Mosseri. And with the patience of a parent showing their child both sides of an argument, he invited Instagram... Continue reading…

Image: Analogue The world’s first video game is coming to an Analogue Pocket near you. Today, Analogue announced that it’s launching Spacewar!, a game originally designed for the PDP-1 minicomputer that predates Pong by a full decade, on the Pocket as a part of its larger strategy to bring pioneering video games into the modern era.The original Spacewar! was created in 1962 by a cadre of engineers led by Steve Russell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Using a PDP-1 minicomputer and a 1024 x 1024 pixel CRT display, Russell and his colleagues programmed a game in which two spacecraft duke it out in the gravitational well of a star. Two controllers were created for the game featuring switches for maneuvering and buttons that were designed to... Continue reading…

Fina Strazza, Riley Lai Nelet, and Camryn Jones in Paper Girls. | Image: Anjali Pinto/Prime Video The live-action adaptation plays things a little too safe Continue reading…

The Analogue Pocket. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge OS v1.1 for Analogue’s Pocket retro handheld will available in beta on Friday, and it adds features like a new reference tool to learn more about your games and save states so that you can more easily pick up a game where you left off.The reference tool, called Library, will read a game’s cartridge and then show you details about that title, including the system, developer, publisher, and even the game revision. Analogue has an even bigger vision for Library down the line: it wants it to become a “scholarly cataloging of the entirety of video game history” that you can search through. This evolved version of the Library is expected to be available in September, according to a timeline from Analogue.The save states, called Memories,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Fridays, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, editor-at-large David Pierce, and managing editor Alex Cranz discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.The show starts with the biggest news from the week — Instagram and the controversy around the changes to its app. On our Wednesday show, we discussed Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s response to criticism of the changes and overall direction to make the app feel more like its competitor TikTok. The following day, Instagram walked back its changes, with Mosseri saying “we definitely... Continue reading…

Image: Supernatural / Within Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan overruled staff advice to intervene in a Meta virtual reality studio acquisition, Bloomberg reports. Sources reportedly told Bloomberg that staff had been “recommending against” suing to block Meta’s acquisition of Within, which makes the popular VR fitness app Supernatural. The FTC voted 3 to 2 in favor of the suit earlier this week, splitting respectively along Democratic and Republican party lines.Bloomberg’s article doesn’t detail the substance of the disagreement over Meta’s Supernatural acquisition, although it does note that “each of the commissioners had the opportunity to test out Meta’s Oculus product, Within’s Supernatural, and Meta’s Beat Saber.” But the report would emphasize that... Continue reading…

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Oliver Jackson-Cohen in Surface. | Image: Apple While Apple TV Plus is probably best known for its comfort food comedies and big-budget genre swings, the streaming service has also steadily built up a lineup of very intense thrillers. The latest is Surface — not to be confused with Suspicion, Severance, or Servant, also available on the service — which takes the idea of a mystery to its most extreme conclusion. The early episodes are almost entirely made up of questions and misdirection. I can’t even tell if the show is even any good at this point — but I know I need to keep watching to find out.Surface is centered on Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who you might remember from Loki, Doctor Who, and the best episode of Black Mirror), five months removed from an accident that caused... Continue reading…