The Verge - All Posts

Amazon reportedly told workers they could take unpaid time off if they felt uncomfortable coming into work. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Over two dozen Amazon workers claim the company didn’t respond appropriately to racist death threats against Black workers at its MDW2 facility in Joliet, Illinois, and retaliated against an employee who spoke out, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune (via Engadget). The 26 workers have reportedly filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).In late May, workers said they found messages reading “[n-word]s gonna die” and “fuck these [n-words] at MDW2” written on bathroom walls in the facility, according to the advocacy group Warehouse Workers for Justice. A day or two later, according to a report from local outlet Herald-News, employees learned that someone anonymously called the facility with... Continue reading…

Google’s latest Nest security cameras can stream a live feed to a Chromecast with Google TV. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Google is finally bringing an old feature to its new Nest cameras. Starting this week, you can stream the video feed from all your Nest cameras and video doorbells to your TV using a Chromecast with Google TV. Google announced the feature in a blog post on the Google Nest Community forum Wednesday morning.“What?” You ask. “Couldn’t you already do this?” Well, yes and no. It was possible to view the video feed from older Nest cameras — such as the Google Nest Doorbell (wired), the now discontinued Nest Cams, and the camera inside the Nest Hub Max — on the biggest screen in your home.But, as I noted in my review of the new Nest Cam (indoor, wired), none of Google’s newer cameras could stream to Chromecast devices. (All Nest cameras can... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you already have strong feelings about your Instagram feed increasingly showing Reels from accounts you don’t follow, just wait until next year.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will more than double the amount of content from recommended accounts people see while using Instagram and Facebook by the end of 2023. He said that such recommendations currently account for roughly 15 percent of the content on Facebook, and that the percentage is already higher on Instagram.The push, which Zuckerberg calls building the “Discovery Engine,” is a radical departure from Facebook and Instagram’s historical focus on showing posts from a user’s social graph, or list of friends. The shift is intended to compete with TikTok’s heavy use of... Continue reading…

Enjoying the outdoors, absolutely decked out in Xbox gear. | Image: Microsoft Xbox has released a clothing and accessory collection dedicated to camping. No, not the video game kind that esports organization 100 Thieves lambasted with its own clothing line — Microsoft’s is about actually getting outside and touching grass. The camper collection includes a variety of shorts, shirts, and headgear, along with things like a hammock and camping chair.Given that most people don’t usually associate gaming with going outdoors, some of the items in the lineup actually seem decent. Xbox’s camp chair looks like a clone of the design popularized by the Helinox Chair Zero (to be fair, so does pretty much every other camp chair), but electric green and twice as heavy. Given that it’s significantly cheaper than the Helinox,... Continue reading…

Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images Last week, the UK reached its highest temperature on record — 40 degrees Celsius, or more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit. On July 20th, as the record-breaking “Red Extreme” heatwave continued to linger, a Bloomberg op-ed reports officials made the decision to pay a record price of £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt to ensure electricity for South London residents — about 5,000 percent higher than its usual average price of £178 per megawatt hour.To avoid an energy short squeeze in 2021, the UK paid about £1,600 (more than $1,900) per megawatt to import energy.

Spirit has continually rejected JetBlue’s offer. Spirit and Frontier Airlines have tossed out their proposed merger agreement, leaving room for Spirit’s other suitor, JetBlue, to swoop in and score a deal, as first reported by CNBC. Shareholders were expected to reject the deal during a vote today, possibly because of JetBlue’s higher offer, according to The Washington Post.Frontier and Spirit first announced the proposed merger in February, a move that would’ve combined the two budget airlines to create the fifth largest in the US. But not everything went as planned — JetBlue countered Frontier’s initial $2.9 billion offer with an attractive all-cash $3.6 billion bid that Spirit later rejected. In May, JetBlue launched a hostile takeover of Spirit Airlines and kept attempting to s... Continue reading…

The Nintendo Switch Online NES Controller | Image: Nintendo Steam’s latest update adds support for Nintendo’s classic controllers that it makes for Nintendo Switch. While Valve’s patch notes are somewhat vague — “Added support for Nintendo Online classic controllers” — the change means Steam now supports the Switch-specific NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and Sega Genesis controllers, Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle confirmed to The Verge.If you want to pick up one of those controllers to use with Steam, you should know that you can only purchase them if you’re a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. You can grab the NES and SNES controllers right now, but the N64 and Genesis controllers are currently out of stock. Nintendo’s website doesn’t indicate when they might be available again, but when... Continue reading…

Image: AT&T For many months, AT&T has been dangling a tantalizing possibility: what if its network let you instantly try blockbuster games for free? The company started by generically bundling free six-month subscriptions to Google Stadia and then began letting its customers stream full copies of Batman: Arkham Knight and Control over the internet. Next, it hinted at something even more intriguing: a try-before-you-buy game service where you could try a game directly from a search result, buy and download a full copy once you determine you like it, and pick up right where you left off.No current cloud gaming service offers anything of the sort.But, after speaking to the man in charge of these AT&T initiatives, we’ve learned that AT&T isn’t... Continue reading…

Rivian wants to produce 25,000 vehicles by the end of the year. Electric automaker Rivian is laying off around 6 percent of its 14,000 employees, or around 800 people, Amy Mast, a spokesperson for the company, confirmed in an email. The company made the decision in part to speed up development on future versions of its electric trucks and SUVs, she said.“Today we announced the difficult decision to reduce the size of the Rivian team by approximately 6%,” Mast wrote. “This decision will help align our workforce to our key business priorities, including ramping up the consumer and commercial vehicle programs, accelerating the development of R2 and other future models, deploying our go-to-market programs and optimizing spend across the business.”This follows a report from earlier in the month that... Continue reading…

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg | Photo illustration by William Joel | Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images Facebook’s decade-long streak of nonstop revenue growth has come to end.The social network reported its first-ever yearly decline in revenue for the second quarter, announcing a 1 percent drop to $28.8 billion, and predicted that growth in the third quarter could fall even more. The overall profit for its parent company, Meta, fell 36 percent to $6.7 billion. The Reality Labs division responsible for building Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse dreams lost $2.8 billion in the quarter.While the first-ever drop in revenue growth was expected on Wall Street going into Wednesday’s earnings report, it solidifies how challenged Meta’s business has quickly become on all fronts. Apple’s “Ask app not to track” prompt on iPhones has made its ads much... Continue reading…

It’s probably good to read the privacy policy when you’re putting a camera in your home. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Arlo, Apple, Wyze, and Anker, owner of Eufy, all confirmed to CNET that they won’t give authorities access to your smart home camera’s footage unless they’re shown a warrant or court order. If you’re wondering why they’re specifying that, it’s because we’ve now learned Google and Amazon can do just the opposite: they’ll allow police to get this data without a warrant if police claim there’s been an emergency. And while Google says that it hasn't used this power, Amazon’s admitted to doing it almost a dozen times this year.Earlier this month my colleague Sean Hollister wrote about how Amazon, the company behind the smart doorbells and security systems, will indeed give police that warrantless access to customers’ footage in those... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge We’ve been tracking the progress of Google’s interface refresh for Gmail since February, and as promised, the company says it’s now becoming available for all Gmail users. The rework pulls Meet, Chat, and Spaces closer together as part of the overall experience and includes elements from Google’s Material Design 3.It’s not stopping there and says that, later this year, we should see improvements to Gmail for tablet users, better emoji support, and more accessibility features, among other upgrades. Image: Google The new Gmail UI sets buttons for Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet on one rail. If you use Gmail for work, it may have already rolled out to your account. For those who just can’t stand the change, you... Continue reading…

After insinuating that it planned to leave the International Space Station partnership after 2024, Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has told NASA that it intends to remain in the program until at least 2028, according to a report in Reuters. Roscosmos plans to stay involved with the ISS until it gets a new Russian space station up and running, with 2028 as the target date.Roscosmos caused turmoil yesterday when its newly appointed director, Yuri Borisov, told Russian President Vladimir Putin that a decision had been made to leave the ISS partnership after 2024. However, the statement was vague and did not specify when after 2024 Roscosmos planned to leave, only saying that Russia hoped to transition focus to a new space... Continue reading…

Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge Tesla made a change to its free data connectivity tier that could potentially have a big impact on the way its customers use their vehicles. The included Standard Connectivity package, which adds basic navigation features without live traffic views or satellite maps and the ability to stream music over Bluetooth, will now expire after eight years (via Electrek).Eight years is still a significant duration of time to have the included navigation and Bluetooth features, but it’s just one lessened note for potential buyers. In a time when car companies are looking for more revenue streams by imposing subscription fees to use already included features (looking at you, BMW), Tesla’s move to impose a time limit on data usage certainly weakens... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft’s security and threat intelligence teams have reportedly caught an Austrian company selling spyware based on previously unknown Windows exploits.The new details were released on Wednesday in a technical blog post from Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), published to coincide with written testimony given by the software company to a House Intelligence Committee hearing on commercial spyware and cyber surveillance.The spyware developer — officially named DSIRF but which Microsoft tracks under the codename KNOTWEED — made spyware known as Subzero that was used to target law firms, banks, and consultancy firms in the UK, Austria, and Panama, Microsoft said. Analysis from MSTIC found that exploits used by DSIRF to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge We’re still at least two years away from ditching the invasive cookies, fingerprinting, and other tech that track user information and behavior across multiple sites for advertising to using Google’s preferred Privacy Sandbox set of replacements. Google originally published its intention to phase out support for third-party tracking cookies in Chrome within two years in early 2020 — now about two and a half years (and one global pandemic) ago.In a blog post published today, Google Privacy Sandbox vice president Anthony Chavez writes, “we now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.” Regulatory pressure spurred a previous delay that pushed the window into 2023, but its current development... Continue reading…

Hello. Apple has added an edit history to iOS 16’s new iMessage editing feature in the latest developer beta released on Wednesday (via 9to5Mac). You’ll be able to check the edit history by tapping on the “Edited” text that sits below an edited message, and when you do, all of the edits will appear above the latest one. You’re also now only allowed to make five edits to an individual message.You can get an idea of what the new edit history looks like in this screenshot from a message I sent to Mitchell Clark and then edited as many times as I could: Hi, Mitchell! And if you happen to have the edit history of a friend’s message unfurled, any additional edits they make will appear as the primary one. In the below example, I... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Does it feel like deja vu all over again? It should if you track console restocks at all. After yesterday’s public queue of a PlayStation 5 restock, Sony has another one today that’s just started. You can jump on in right here and try your luck at getting a PS5 — most likely in a bundle with Horizon Forbidden West for $549.99 for the regular PS5 with a disc drive or $449.99 for a Digital Edition.If recent public queues from Sony are any indication, this one may last well over an hour now that it’s been pumping out more of these bundles. So if you’re jumping in late, be persistent. It’s not uncommon to see an estimated wait time on Sony’s site of more than an hour and yet possibly get in much sooner than that. Just be ready to log in to... Continue reading…

Instagram showing a Timehop post in 2014. | Photo: The Verge When Facebook made a bid to buy Instagram in 2012 for a record-setting $1 billion, many people thought Mark Zuckerberg was making a mistake.But purchasing Instagram turned out to be one of the best tech acquisitions of all time, helping secure Facebook’s dominance in social media for years to come. It did that by quickly imprinting its influence on the famously simple photo-sharing app, adding new features that helped it grow to over 1 billion users.This kind of change could be controversial, even internally. Case in point: some early employees resisted getting rid of Instagram’s old requirement that every photo on the app had to be square-shaped.“It sounds so small now, but at the time, it was a sacred cow of the company,” said... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a complaint to block Meta from acquiring Within, the company behind the virtual reality fitness app Supernatural. The FTC claims Meta bought Within to absorb competition in the fitness market, where it already owned the similar app Beat Saber. The complaint follows months of speculation that regulators might intervene in Meta’s growing dominance of the consumer VR market, as well as an FTC probe reportedly opened in December of 2021.“Meta in recent years has set its sights on building, and ultimately controlling, a VR ‘metaverse,’” the FTC’s complaint says. It alleges that Meta saw fitness as a “killer app” market that would help it dominate the nascent VR medium, and Within threatened the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On the heels of Spotify’s blockbuster audio drama Batman Unburied, the company is promoting Gimlet executive Mimi O’Donnell to head of scripted fiction at the streamer, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge.Batman Unburied notably unseated The Joe Rogan Experience when it debuted in May and appears to be a turning point for the streamer. While Spotify has already bulked up on licensing deals with hosts like Rogan and Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper, Batman will likely open the door for more Hollywood series.Julie McNamara, Spotify’s head of talk studios, told staffers that O’Donnell will help produce the streamer’s next ambitious fiction programs, including an upcoming Jordan Peele project and the English adaptation of Caso... Continue reading…

Photo by Derek Davis/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images The Biden administration has new plans to get lower-income households hooked up to solar energy. The White House announced two new programs today aimed at expanding access to “community solar” projects among subsidized housing residents and households that receive federal assistance to pay their utility bills. It also launched a new rewards program for existing community solar projects.“Community solar” essentially lets many different households share the benefits of one shared solar array. The most common way this takes shape is through a subscription program. A solar company or nonprofit organization will build out a solar farm, and then households that subscribe to the program get credit back on their electricity bills for the energy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s improving Gmail’s search results, which should make it easier to find a specific contact. In a blog post, Google explains it’s rolling out “intent matching for names and email addresses,” as well as new “personalized suggestions” in Gmail.With intent matching, a machine learning tool Google uses to help you find topics related to your search, Gmail should narrow down your search results and help you find exactly what you’re looking for, whether it’s a specific contact, email, or file.As an example, Google explains that Gmail will now display email addresses and first names that match your query before showing matching last names. This should come in handy if you’re used to searching for contacts based on their first name, as... Continue reading…

Image: PlatinumGames A 45-second clip has sent the Nier: Automata community into a collective state of euphoria, confusion, conspiracy, and good-ass memery.Reddit user sadfutago uploaded a clip to the Nier: Automata subreddit containing a never-before-seen section of the Copied City.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons won’t hurt or help your mental health Video games aren’t hurting people’s mental health, and they’re not helping it. In fact, they don’t do much to move the needle at all, according to a new study of tens of thousands of gamers.For years, policymakers and public health bodies have expressed concern about the potential for video games to be addictive or harm mental health. This study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, offers one of the more comprehensive looks at the relationship between video games and well-being. It builds on previous research from the same team that also didn’t find bad effects on mental health.The research team worked with video game publishers to recruit nearly 39,000 people who played one of seven games: Animal Crossing: New... Continue reading…

Image: Spice DAO The cryptocurrency collective built around a copy of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune script bible will no longer be a collective and is trying to sell its Dune bible.Spice DAO (short for decentralized autonomous organization) recently began “Redemption Phase One,” a fundamental shift in its direction. After a series of setbacks in an ambitious plan for a crypto-powered media studio, the group is letting people who hold its $SPICE token cash out by withdrawing their money from the group’s treasury. It will change its name to “Spice Club,” a “members only group” instead of a body with a formal voting structure. And it will cut its upkeep expenses to the bare minimum, a process that includes handing off the fragile and valuable book that... Continue reading…

The Connected Scarf aims to track fans’ emotional response to matches. | Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images The sports world has generally embraced wearable technology with open arms — though it’s usually for the athletes themselves. However, English soccer club Manchester City is hoping to keep track of its fans’ biometrics, too. The club has partnered with Cisco to create a connected scarf embedded with a biosensor to “get a better understanding of the emotion at the heart of the world’s beautiful game.”The Connected Scarf features an EmotiBit sensor that basically sits on a fan’s neck. According to Manchester City’s product site, it includes a PPG sensor, accelerometer, temperature sensor, and an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor. All of these are typical sensors you’d find in a fitness tracker, and the EDA sensor was one of the marquee... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / 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 Wednesdays, editor-at-large David Pierce leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in an exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into your home.Today’s episode starts with a discussion between David and deputy editor Alex Heath about the changes coming to Facebook and Instagram and how everything is turning into TikTok.Later in the show, contributing editor Casey Newton chats with David about another social media app: BeReal. The two discuss why it’s breaking out and whether it will succeed on its own before it gets... Continue reading…

Roblox removed the “oof” noise over licensing issues. Roblox has gotten rid of the iconic “oof” sound your character makes when dying (that even I, as an adult, can find some semblance of joy in). In a thread on Twitter (via Kotaku), Roblox explains it removed the sound “due to a licensing issue” and replaced it with a new noise that, in my opinion, sounds weird as hell.Roblox has had problems with the “oof” sound before. As Kotaku points out, Intellivision founder Tommy Tallarico originally created the noise for a 2000 game called Messiah. Tallarico took issue with the fact Roblox was using the noise, and in 2020, Roblox started charging creators $1 (or 100 Robux) to include the sound in their games to settle the dispute. It’s unclear what led Roblox to remove the sound entirely, though.... Continue reading…

Drop’s selection of keycaps range from clean aesthetics to cringey Marvel collaborations. | Image: Drop Nothing livens up your desk like some colorful mechanical keyboard keycaps, and Drop’s buy one, get one deal has returned to brighten up your hump day. You can buy one base or ortholinear kit of MT3 keycaps from Drop’s selection and get a second one of equal or lesser value for free. This sale includes some returning favorites like the two-tone blue Dasher set that’s reminiscent of the keyboards in Severance. You can see them in action by our own Dan Seifert in this Verge TikTok video.This BOGO promo includes some sets we haven’t seen looped into deals before. In addition to offering a few Lord of the Rings sets (Dwarvish and Elvish), the sleek Godspeed R2 and retro 9009 sets are also in the mix. Most sets cost $120 before the... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Street View has returned to select parts of India, Google announced today at an event hosted in New Delhi and on its blog. The 360-degree street-level viewpoint debuted in the country in 2011 but was then rejected by its government in 2016 due to security concerns. The navigation feature can be particularly useful for spotting landmarks that might help you find your way around.According to Google’s blog post, this feature is rolling out in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Vadodara, Ahmednagar, and Amritsar. Google says it expects to provide Street View to 50 Indian cities by the end of 2022.Exactly how Street View is relaunching in India is the most fascinating part of this story. Instead of getting... Continue reading…

GTA V was released almost nine years ago. | Image: Rockstar Grand Theft Auto VI, the next entry in Rockstar’s blockbuster open-world franchise, will reportedly be the first to let you play as a female character in its story mode. That’s according to a new report from Bloomberg, which just published a lengthy feature on the game’s development. The report also includes new details on the game’s release, which sources suggest is likely to be at least two years away.Rockstar has reportedly made efforts to overhaul its internal culture ever since the release of its last major title, 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2, was marred by reports of poor working conditions at the studio. According to Bloomberg, morale at the company has improved significantly since then, and the development of GTA VI is being... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge A motorcyclist in Draper, Utah, was killed early Sunday morning when a Tesla driver using Autopilot slammed into the rear of his bike. It is the latest crash involving Tesla’s advanced driver-assist system to draw scrutiny from federal investigators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).The incident occurred just after 1AM Sunday on southbound Interstate 15, according to local reports. The motorcyclist, who has not been identified, was traveling southbound near the Salt Lake and Utah County lines when the Tesla approached from behind. The Utah Department of Public Safety said the Tesla driver collided with the back of the motorcycle, throwing the motorcyclist to the ground and killing him instantly.The Tesla... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is holding an in-person tech event in October, the first since the coronavirus pandemic began more than two years ago. Microsoft Ignite, an annual conference for developers and IT professionals, will take place in Seattle between October 12th and 14th, and Microsoft says “space will be limited.”The software maker is planning to open registration for Ignite in late August, and it will be free to attend virtually. Microsoft is planning in-person events in cities around the world, with a central event at the Seattle Convention Center. “The Seattle in-person experience will include highly interactive and immersive activities at the Seattle Convention Center,” explains an FAQ from Microsoft. The FAQ doesn’t cover how Microsoft... Continue reading…

HBO Max In Harley Quinn’s third season, love is in the air Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok is making it easier for researchers to delve into the data and protocols that make up the platform. In a blog post, TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas announced the company will soon grant researchers access to the framework behind the platform and its moderation system.Pappas says TikTok will soon provide access to the “public and anonymized data” on the platform so “selected researchers” can “assess content and trends or conducts tests.” The company will also give researchers a way to probe its existing moderation system, evaluate the content on TikTok, and experiment with different types of content to see what gets rejected. Later this year, researchers will have access to TikTok’s moderation tools at its transparency center, a virtual... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After weeks of mounting pressure from Democrats, Hulu will begin accepting political issue and candidate ads, according to a new report from Axios on Wednesday.Disney, a majority owner of Hulu, made the decision amid a controversy over the streaming platform’s decision to ban ads discussing abortion, gun reform, climate change, and other issues central to the Democratic Party’s midterm agenda.“After a thorough review of ad policies across its linear networks and streaming platforms over the last few months, Disney is now aligning Hulu’s political advertising policies to be consistent with the Company’s general entertainment and sports cable networks and ESPN+,” Disney said in a statement to Axios on Wednesday.“Disney is now aligning... Continue reading…

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. | Image: Netflix After some teasing on Twitter, Netflix has released the latest trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, showing a dark and beautiful rendition of the classic tale — with the gorgeous attention to detail the director is known for.We first got a glimpse at the stop-motion film through a short teaser at the beginning of the year. It stars Ewan McGregor as Cricket and David Bradley as Geppetto, with Gregory Mann in the titular role. Del Toro — best known for films like The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak, and Pan’s Labyrinth — is co-directing Pinocchio alongside Mark Gustafson, and he has previously described the movie as something of a passion project.“After years of pursuing this dream project, I found my perfect partner in Netflix,” he... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, let’s talk about a settled question that Meta has decided to re-open: what should the company do about misinformation related to COVID-19?Since the earliest days of the pandemic, Meta has sought to remove false claims about the disease from Facebook and Instagram. And for just as long, the company has faced criticism that it hasn’t done a very good job. A year ago this month, asked about the role “platforms like Facebook” played in spreading misinformation about the disease, President Biden said “they’re killing people” — though he walked his statement back a day later.Still, Biden voiced a fear that is deeply held among Meta critics: that the platform’s huge user base and algorithmic recommendations often combine to help fringe... Continue reading…

Lab-grown meat seems to be everywhere these days. Last year, cultured meat and seafood companies raised $1.38 billion in investment, and more and more startups are popping up to develop their own products. A lot of people are betting that cultured meat is part of the future of food — and we wanted to find out why.The creation of cell-based meat starts with a biopsy from an animal. From there, the cells are cultured in a lab and given the right nutrients to grow and multiply. Once there are enough cells, the batch is transferred into a bioreactor, where the cells continue to multiply until the end result is enough cells to sink your teeth into.This process takes a lot of time and resources, and according to the Good Food Institute, no... Continue reading…

The Apple Watch supports flipping watch orientation. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge When it comes to watches, southpaws often get the short end of the stick. Unless lefties buy a destro watch, they have to learn to wear watches on their dominant hand instead of the nondominant hand as recommended. But that doesn’t have to be the case with all smartwatches. Because smartwatches have touchscreens, some watch manufacturers have given lefties the option of flipping the screen orientation so it appears “upside down.” This, in turn, gives users greater control over where the watch’s buttons are, making it easier to use a device worn on the right hand.While not every smartwatch allows you to switch screen orientation, two of the biggest players — Apple and Samsung — do. For Wear OS, you currently have to use third-party apps... Continue reading…

The Car Thing in action. | Photo by Ashley Carman / The Verge Spotify has stopped manufacturing Car Thing, a dashboard accessory designed to make it easier to control the streaming service on your phone from a car. The change was quietly announced as part of the company’s latest earnings release, which notes the decision cost the company €31 million (around $32 million USD). “Reported Gross Margin was negatively impacted by our decision to stop manufacturing Car Thing,” the release reads.“Based on several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues, we have decided to stop further production of Car Thing units,” a spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch. “Existing devices will perform as intended. This initiative has unlocked helpful learnings, and we remain focused on the car... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify’s number of premium subscribers increased to 188 million in its second quarter, while its monthly active users (MAU) now sit at 433 million, the company announced in an earnings release today. That’s a year-over-year increase of 14 percent and 19 percent, respectively, and compares to the 182 million and 422 million figures it announced last quarter. The company says its growth in MAUs was its largest ever in a second quarter and exceeded its guidance.The earnings come at the end of a quarter in which Spotify’s big push into podcasts has experienced some hiccups. One of its biggest podcasts, Reply All, broadcast its final episode on June 23rd after co-hosts Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi decided to leave production company... Continue reading…

This is a picture from Independence Day’s sequel, but you get the idea. Roland Emmerich, the director behind disaster movies such as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and Moonfall, is making a “gladiatorial epic” series for NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock. The show, which will be titled Those About to Die, is based on the book of the same name by Daniel Mannix (which, incidentally, previously served as the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator). The series is set to be written by Robert Rodat, whose previous work includes Saving Private Ryan.Those About to Die is the first TV show created by Emmerich. Although he previously directed 2012 TV movie Dark Horse, the director’s career has otherwise been focused on the big screen, with a filmography packed with summer blockbusters. It sounds... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AMD accidentally leaked its Noise Suppression feature last week, and now it’s officially making it available as part of its Adrenalin software. The latest Adrenalin Edition 22.7.1 update includes AMD Noise Suppression, which will reduce background audio noise using a real-time deep learning algorithm.AMD Noise Suppression works very similarly to RTX Broadcast, allowing you to filter unwanted background noise from your own microphone or even from someone else’s device if you’re on a call. AMD has integrated its Noise Suppression feature directly into the Adrenalin interface, so you don’t need to download a separate app like Nvidia requires to use RTX Broadcast.To take advantage of AMD Noise Suppression, you’ll need a Ryzen 5000 series... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is adding “photorealistic aerial views” to almost 100 landmarks in Google Maps, the company announced on Wednesday. The views, which remind me of Apple Maps’ Flyover feature, give you an overhead look at landmarks in cities including Barcelona, London, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo, according to Google.You can get an idea of what the new aerial views look like in this GIF from the company: The aerial views are a “first step” toward launching the “immersive view” the company showed off at Google I/O, according to a blog post from Google Maps director of product Amanda Leicht Moore. Immersive view will also include indoor views and information like traffic and the weather layered on the map, Google spokesperson... Continue reading…

A OneWeb satellite on the opening day of the Story of a Satellite summer exhibition at Spaceport Cornwall on Aug 2, 2021 in Newquay, England. | Photo by Hugh Hastings/Getty Images Satellite companies OneWeb and Eutelsat have agreed to a $3.4 billion merger to create a player in global internet connections that competes with SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper. Combined, the two companies say they will tie together low Earth orbit satellites that offer faster connections with less lag and geostationary satellites that have more capacity and cover wider areas, with OneWeb continuing to operate as its own brand under Eutelsat.France-based Eutelsat provides television and internet via 36 satellites in geostationary orbits around the Earth’s equator. OneWeb, which launched its first internet-broadcasting satellites in early 2019, currently has about 428 satellites in orbit out of the 648 it plans to have as part of... Continue reading…