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Image: Nothing Nothing, the new consumer tech startup led by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, is poised to announce its debut smartphone on July 12th at an event it’s calling (brace yourselves): Nothing (event): Return to Instinct.The company hasn’t been shy about pre-announcing the Nothing Phone 1’s features ahead of its “official” launch, so we already know what it’s going to look like and many of the features it’s going to offer. Its most flashy element (literally) is a set of illuminating lightstrips on its rear, which can flash in time with the phone’s ringtones, light up to show its charging status, and more.But the key information that Nothing is yet to reveal is how much the phone will cost, when it’ll release, and where exactly it’ll be... Continue reading…

Image: IO Interactive Hitman 3’s new map, Ambrose Island, will arrive as free DLC to all players on July 26th, IO Interactive announced in its July roadmap. This marks the game’s first new map since it launched last January.Judging by the trailer, Ambrose Island looks like a dingy, tropical locale led by a rebel outcast. IO Interactive says the map is a “fully explorable sandbox location” with a “hidden cove, home to a dangerous pirate syndicate operating in the Andaman Sea and to many hidden secrets.” It’s also set to come with a slate of new targets, challenges, and rewards to unlock.

Rogers Communications provides mobile and home phone services, internet, and cable to millions of Canadians. Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications says it has restored connectivity to the “vast majority” of customers following a major outage that took down its internet, mobile, and home phone services on Friday. In an update posted to Twitter on Saturday morning, Rogers explained that some customers “may experience a delay in regaining full service” as it works to get everyone back online.Tony Staffieri, the president and CEO of Rogers, wrote a message to customers Saturday afternoon, announcing that services “have been restored” and that its network and systems “are close to fully operational.” Staffieri attributes the outage to a “network system failure following a maintenance update” that caused an issue with the company’s routers.“... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk says he’s going to boost childcare benefits at his companies as part of his mission to tackle the “underpopulation crisis” that he adamantly claims is “the biggest danger civilization faces by far.” The world’s richest man currently runs Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company — he was also about to helm Twitter until he attempted to back out of the $44 billion buyout, much to the discontent of the company’s board.“Kids are worth it if at all possible,” Musk writes. “I’m planning to increase childcare benefits at my companies significantly. Hopefully, other companies do the same.” Musk’s statement comes in response to a tweet asking about the financial implications of having several kids, a thread that Nick Cannon, w... Continue reading…

The Amazfit GTR 3 features an always-on display and more than 100 watchfaces. | Image: Amazfit We’re just days away from the official start of Amazon Prime Day, and while many discounts have already arrived, all signs point toward a swell of deals that should reach their peak on July 12th and 13th. There are many popular categories of tech expected to receive sizable sales — a few of which our deals team discussed via Twitter Spaces earlier this week — but some of the bigger categories are wearables and smart home tech. Luckily, there are already some pre-Prime Day deals in both categories that are worth your attention.First up is the GPS-equipped Amazfit GTR 3, which is down to a new low of $120.98 ($59 off) on Amazon in the gray colorway. The budget-friendly smartwatch features a round, 1.39-inch OLED display and runs Amazfit’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Buying multiplatform games used to be a simple decision for me: I’d almost always get them on the Nintendo Switch because of how easy it is to play games both on a TV or in portable mode. The Steam Deck has thrown a wrench in that decision-making process. The handheld gaming PC might be heavier, have worse battery life, and doesn’t come with an easy Switch-like dock to throw my games onto a bigger screen, but because I feel like I can bank on Steam games being available much longer into the future, I’m having to make tough choices about whether I buy games on Valve’s storefront instead of Nintendo’s.There’s one important thing I should state up front: I hadn’t owned a gaming PC of any kind until I got the Steam Deck in April. For a long... Continue reading…

Canadian telecom Rogers is suffering a major outage affecting landline phones, cellular connections, and internet connectivity throughout Canada that started early this morning. Downdetector listed thousands of reports for the issues that flooded in as people started to get up around 5AM ET and couldn’t get online.Rogers first addressed the outage in a tweet from its official support account just before 9AM ET and then went silent for a couple of hours. On Friday afternoon, the company tweeted that its technical teams are working to restore services “alongside our global technology partners, and are making progress.”Late Friday evening, Rogers CEO & President Tony Staffieri posted a letter to Canadians on the company website.

It’s on. Elon Musk has officially filed to kill his own Twitter acquisition, and Twitter is calling his bluff. They’ll see Musk in court. And while it’s only going to get messier from here, one important verdict has already been rendered by Elon Musk himself: he doesn’t have what it takes to run Twitter. And that’s a damning blow to his own central mythology.We’ll look at the specifics of Musk’s formal SEC filing in a minute, but first it’s important to remember what he’s said about the deal and why he wanted to do it in the first place. It’s not like the world forced the acquisition of a relatively small social network on the world’s richest man. (On the contrary: he forced this on Twitter.) In fact, a reasonable person would conclude... Continue reading…

“Refrain from Tweeting, Slacking, or sharing any commentary.” | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Following Elon Musk’s notice to Twitter that he wants out of his $44 billion deal to purchase the company, employees have been instructed to not publicly comment on the deal. An internal memo by Twitter’s general counsel and obtained by The Verge says that staffers should “refrain from Tweeting, Slacking, or sharing any commentary about the merger agreement.”The note, which you can read in full below, cites the fact that the merger is an ongoing legal matter. Musk’s team alleges that the company “failed or refused to provide” information about the number of bots on its platform,” and Twitter’s board has announced that it’s suing Musk to ensure that the deal goes through as originally agreed.After the news broke Friday that Musk wanted... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s message to Elon Musk after his attempt to bail on his $44 billion agreement to buy the company: we’ll see you in court.“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” tweeted Twitter’s chairman, Bret Taylor, less than an hour after Musk’s legal team said he wanted out of the deal in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”If you’ve been following the twists and turns of this deal, it’s not a surprise that Twitter plans to put up a fight. Soon after Musk said he would buy Twitter and take it private, he began laying the... Continue reading…

Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier | Image: Disney Plus Marvel Studios’ upcoming fourth Captain America feature — the first since Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson officially took over the mantle in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — may not yet have a name or release date, but the movie’s just picked up a director in the form of one Julius Onah.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Onah (The Cloverfield Paradox) has signed on to direct the next Captain America film that will pick up some time after Sam Wilson’s confrontation with John Walker and the Flag Smashers. Onah joins The Falcon and The Winter Soldier creator Malcolm Spellman and series staff writer Dalan Musson, who will be scripting the new film together. Currently, no other details about Captain America 4 have been released, but it’s... Continue reading…

Musk claims the company is in breach of contract. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk is officially trying to pull out of his $44 billion agreement to purchase Twitter. In a filing Friday afternoon with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk’s team claims he is terminating the deal because Twitter was in “material breach” of their agreement and had made “false and misleading” statements during negotiations.“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” Musk’s legal team writes. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”Twitter still hopes to close the deal, despite Musk’s attempted termination. Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor wrote that the company... Continue reading…

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday directing federal agencies to protect abortion access and the online privacy of patients seeking reproductive healthcare following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.The order’s primary directives prompt the Department of Health and Human Services to expand access to emergency contraception and long-acting birth control devices like IUDs. But it also calls on HHS and the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the sensitive health data of patients seeking abortions and other reproductive care.“We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican Party, to take away freedoms and our personal... Continue reading…

Image: Weber My Weber grill came with a warning: “The use and/or installation of parts on your WEBER product that are not genuine WEBER parts will void this Warranty.”That’s not cool. In fact, it’s been illegal since 1975 — and soon, Weber won’t be doing it anymore. According to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Weber Stephen Products will not only have to strike phrases like that from its warranty terms within 90 days, but it’ll have to proactively, clearly, and conspicuously tell customers via mail, email, websites, and apps that the exact opposite is true.Seriously, Weber will need to use this exact phrase: “Using third-party parts will not void this warranty.”According to the order (pdf), Weber will also need to post a... Continue reading…

Vials of insulin at a factory in France | PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP via Getty Images Insulin prices are so high that California has decided to make its own, California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Thursday. $100 million of the state’s budget will be put into the effort, which seeks to make the lifesaving drug more affordable after years of skyrocketing prices.“Nothing epitomizes market failures more than the cost of insulin,” Newsom said in a brief statement posted online, noting that patients can pay $300–$500 a month for the drug.

Music Recognition can now sync identified songs to the Shazam app and across your Apple devices Apple’s Music Recognition feature in the iPhone Control Center is now able to sync with the latest version (15.14) of the Shazam app and across Apple devices using the same Apple ID (via MacRumors). According to MacRumors, many users thought that the feature required the iOS 16 developer beta, but now it is available for iPhones that have iOS 15 installed.After announcing it would acquire Shazam in 2017, Apple debuted Music Recognition as a built-in iOS feature in 2020 with iOS 14.2. The feature allowed iPhone users to identify songs around them and in apps without downloading the Shazam app. Now, if you ask Siri or use the Music Recognition control to help find a song, you are able to store it in the Shazam app if you have it... Continue reading…

These guys! | Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images July 9th marks the ninth birthday of the BTS Army (specifically, the official announcement of its name). As Twitter celebrates the anniversary, Google has released a new street view experiment through its Arts & Culture platform in collaboration with the band. The BTS x Street Galleries exhibition brings viewers on a virtual tour of the group’s favorite artworks.Each member has curated a virtual gallery, with their selections placed in various public locations that will be highly recognizable to BTS fans. J-Hope decorated the UN General Assembly, where BTS gave an address and shot a music video last year; RM guides fans through Seoul’s Namdaemun, where BTS performed for 2021’s Global Citizen Live festival. For anyone... Continue reading…

All you need to do is change your user agent. Anyone who’s tried the Xbox Cloud Gaming beta on Linux (which is likely a small crowd, I know) may have noticed that the image quality is a little rough, even by cloud gaming standards. Now, though, community members have found a quick workaround to get better image quality, and we have an official explanation for why the hack works and why the problem exists in the first place.On Monday, Reddit user Spiritual-Ad2806 posted on the Xcloud subreddit, saying that they were able to trick the Xbox service into showing them a better quality stream on Linux by making it think it was running on Windows. Doing that is relatively simple; they used an Edge extension to change their user agent, which is essentially a string of text that tells... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is taking new steps to try and stop annoying auto warranty spam calls. If you feel like you get a lot of them, you’re not alone: the FCC thinks that more than 8 billion of those spam calls, which the agency says could be illegal, have been generated by just a few entities since at least 2018.The FCC believes the calls have been generated from an “operation” consisting of “Roy Cox, Jr., Aaron Michael Jones, their Sumco Panama companies, and international associates,” according to an FCC press release. The FCC has told some carriers to cease and desist carrying the calls and ordered all networks to “be on the lookout for this traffic.”The agency has also opened a formal case to investigate the... Continue reading…

Whether the US government thinks it’s enough is another matter. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has reportedly offered to spin off its ad auctions business, which lets companies buy advertising space on the web and in search results, into a slightly more separate company if it’ll help avoid antitrust actions, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The offer is reportedly part of multiple concessions Google has offered the US Department of Justice, as it looks to avoid further lawsuits alleging anti-competitive practices.According to the WSJ, the move would be a corporate shuffle. Rather than spinning off parts of its ad business into a completely separate company or selling them altogether, the proposal would make them a separate Alphabet company. Alphabet is the holding company for Google’s properties, such as... Continue reading…

Aerial view of a solar farm producing clean renewable energy on April 20, 2022, in Emmeloord, Netherlands. | Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal / Getty Images In the coming years, recyclers will hopefully be able to mine billions of dollars worth of materials from discarded solar panels, according to a new analysis published this week. That should ease bottlenecks in the supply chain for solar panels while also making the panels themselves more sustainable.Right now, most dead solar panels in the US just get shredded or chucked into a landfill. The economics just don’t shake out in recycling’s favor. The value you can squeeze out of a salvaged panel hasn’t been enough to make up for the cost of transporting and recycling it. That’s on track to change, according to the recent analysis by research firm Rystad Energy.Making the panels themselves more sustainableRystad expects the value of... Continue reading…

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images The NFL is working on its own direct-to-consumer streaming service, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC in an interview. Goodell didn’t specify exactly what content will be available on the service, which he called “NFL Plus,” but the league is aiming to launch it for the upcoming NFL season.“We think it’s very important to have a relationship directly with the consumer,” Goodell said. “We think we have a lot of content and a lot of ability to be able to do that. The consumers want it, so we’re very excited about what NFL Plus is going to be. But it’s really in an early stage. I think over the years you’ll see that continue to grow. And it will be an important opportunity for us to be able to speak to our fans directly. That’s an... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, the Fire Emblem: Three Houses-themed hack and slash game, is pretty damn good — I just wish I could enjoy it. Three Hopes made a bit of a splash for its debut during February’s Nintendo Direct. Fans had seen the familiar blue-red-yellow primary color scheme and hoped that the morose Dimitri, best boy Claude, and Edelgard and her merry band of fascists had come back in a sequel to one of the best Nintendo Switch games in the console’s history. Some of them rolled their eyes to see Three Hopes was not Three Houses 2 but the next in a long line of licensed hack and slash games.I was not one of those fans. I love hack and slash games. I voraciously consumed the middle handful of Dynasty Warriors and W... Continue reading…

JWST’s primary mirror on Earth before it launched | Image: NASA Today, NASA released a list of celestial targets that will be revealed next week when the agency publishes the first full-color images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. The targets include galaxies, nebulas, and a giant planet outside our Solar System.JWST is NASA’s massive new deep-space observatory, which launched on Christmas Day in 2021. Sporting a large gold-coated mirror spanning more than 21 feet across, the observatory is set to transform the field of astrophysics by collecting light from the first stars and galaxies that formed right after the Big Bang. It’s also designed to study objects throughout our Universe in unprecedented detail, giving us insight into our distant Solar System, planets outside our cosmic... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After a few delays, Verizon seems poised to actually follow through on shutting down its 3G CDMA network at the end of this year. But the carrier is still contending with a subset of customers who sat out the 4G LTE era and haven’t yet upgraded their 3G phones. So, as 2022 rolls onward, Verizon is sending those wireless subscribers a free extremely basic flip phone to prevent them from losing connectivity when the 3G network goes offline.According to its website, Verizon will provide customers with one of three phones: the Orbic Journey V, TCL’s Flip Pro, or the Nokia 2720 V Flip. The retail value for each of those devices is under $100: the Orbic is $99.99, with the other two running $79.99.Verizon says customers can opt out of the... Continue reading…

Roku’s solid Streaming Stick 4K is on sale for just $29.99 — nearly half off — at Amazon. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Finding a good show to watch after a long day of work can sometimes require too much brain power — at least if you’re as lazy as I am. That’s why a streaming device that’s simple to use, like Roku’s latest Streaming Stick 4K, can be so great. All of your streaming service apps are easily and quickly accessible in a big grid, and Roku even highlights free content that doesn’t require subscription services for those of us who are both lazy and cheap. While we wish there were support for Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C in the latest version, it does support Dolby Vision, Apple’s AirPlay 2, and both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice assistants.Regularly $49.99, Amazon and Best Buy are both currently selling it for $29.99, which is just $1 shy of... Continue reading…

A screenshot of some of the offerings on Wish If you need a $2 pair of jeans, a $1 pop-up pool for your backyard, and waterproof sheets for $0.50, Wish is the online store to find all that and more. Or at least it was.A New York Times deep dive tracks the arc of the internet’s most nonsensical shopping destination known for its array of bizarre merchandise priced impossibly low. The story paints a picture of an e-commerce juggernaut’s rapid ascent that ultimately caused its own downfall when growth was prioritized over the basic tenants that shoppers expect — products arriving in a timely fashion, for example, but also more essential things, like listings being real at all.One anecdote in the piece proves the impossibly low prices were, in fact, too good to be true — because Wish... Continue reading…

Elon Musk is out to solve a lot of problems — including population collapse. Elon Musk’s pinned tweet is from May. It’s a chart from The Wall Street Journal showing that the US fertility rate has been below the “replacement level” since the 1970s. “USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years,” was Musk’s contribution to the tweet. He’s been talking about population decline for years, actually. He’s even talked about it as one of the greatest issues facing humanity, and his solution is simple: have more kids, everybody!Say this for Musk: dude practices what he preaches. Insider reported this week that Musk had twins last November with Shivon Zilis, a star in the AI world, a longtime colleague of Musk’s at OpenAI and Tesla, and a current executive at Neuralink. The twins came to be in the... Continue reading…

Samsung SmartThings is working on more integrations with Philips Hue smart lighting. | Image; Signify Samsung is planning for deeper integration with Philips Hue lighting in its SmartThings smart home platform. The company tells The Verge that it is working on enhanced music-based experiences that leverage Hue’s smart lighting. This follows a report from SamMobile that claimed a new update to the SmartThings app would let users synchronize their Hue lights with what is playing on their TV.“In the coming months, we hope to announce more details of an expanded partnership between Samsung SmartThings and Philips Hue that will provide enhanced music experiences,” said Samantha Fein, vice president of marketing and business development for SmartThings, in a written statement provided to The Verge. “However, a few recent articles seem to have... Continue reading…

A study found the Oura Ring can detect pregnancy. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge In early May, Ben Smarr published a new study showing that the Oura smart ring can detect pregnancy before most people take a test. It was an exciting finding — earlier detection of pregnancy based on wearable devices could, he wrote in the paper, “increase the agency of pregnant individuals.”Smarr, a data scientist at the University of California, San Diego does research on wearable devices and health — including reproductive health. He’s working with Oura on other projects around pregnancy. His team is also looking to see if data from devices can detect miscarriages.Reproductive health in general — and its intersection with wearables in particular — is an often underexplored area of research. The applications were exciting. But the... Continue reading…

Verification can be a handy tool in building an audience. | Photo by Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images If you’ve spent any time on Twitter — or any social media, really — you’re likely familiar with the blue checkmark. These badges indicate verified accounts. According to Twitter, a verified account is any account of public interest that’s been authenticated by the company itself. Basically, it’s Twitter’s way of letting everyone know that you are who you say you are.It’s not hard to see why you might want a verified Twitter account. Recognizability, curtailing misinformation, building trust with an audience — these are all major reasons why individuals, public figures, and brands alike seek the blue checkmark. But while it’s clear that verification comes with some benefits, getting verified may not be a walk in the park.Twitter’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The NFT boom of the past couple years appears to be conclusively over for average consumers. For big social networks, though, it appears that the work is just getting started.The latest platform to embrace non-fungible tokens is Reddit, which on Thursday announced the arrival of “blockchain-backed collectible avatars” — unique profile pictures from artists riffing on Reddit’s “Snoo” alien mascot, giving purchasers the right to use them on and off the site. The avatars can be purchased only with fiat currency; Reddit takes a 5 percent cut of each transaction.Reddit’s announcement takes pains never to refer to these avatars as NFTsIn a sign of how badly damaged the crypto brand has become, Reddit’s announcement takes pains never to... Continue reading…

IssueI was forced to manually shut down Chrome and reboot my computer — losing dozens of tabs.Quick fixUse Shift-Ctrl-T on a PC or Shift-Command-T on a Mac to restore tabs. You can also use History to restore complete Chrome windows, including all groups and tabs.The full storyOver the weekend, I needed to use my somewhat elderly MacBook Pro — the one I usually use for work — for a Zoom call. Unfortunately, I had been running several work projects and had two iterations of Chrome going, each with about 40 or 50 tabs. (Okay, I had a couple of other apps going as well.) As a result, when I began to run Zoom, the computer started to go on strike.I didn’t have time to start winnowing out which tabs I could easily lose or save them as... Continue reading…

Apple Apple’s 2022 MacBook Air with an updated design, M2 processor, MagSafe charging, and a slightly bigger display will soon be available for preorder, starting at $1,199. Preorders have begun, and orders placed will begin shipping Friday, July 15th. If you have a hard time preordering online for delivery (preorders don’t typically sell out, but ship dates often get pushed back very quickly), here’s a tip: try to order online right at 8AM ET on launch day, July 15th, with your order set as an in-store pickup.The release of this model follows behind the 2022 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, which had the honor of being Apple’s first laptop to debut the M2 chip. In terms of how the M2 performs, my colleague Monica Chin’s review concluded that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is rolling back a planned change to block Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default in a variety of Office apps. Announced earlier this year, Microsoft had been planning to prevent Office users from easily enabling certain content in files downloaded from the internet that include macros, in a move to improve security against malicious files. Microsoft had been testing this change ahead of a planned rollout to all Microsoft 365 users in June, but suddenly reverted the block on June 30th.BleepingComputer reports that Microsoft notified IT admins last week that it was rolling back the VBA macro block based on feedback from Office users testing the changes. “We appreciate the feedback we’ve received so far, and we’re... Continue reading…

Starlink Maritime now available. | Image: Starlink Starlink’s internet-from-space service continues expanding to new use cases with the launch of Starlink Maritime. What started in the home before expanding to stationary RVs is now available for boats on the move, at a cost of $5,000 a month. SpaceX is targeting merchant vessels, oil rigs, and wealthy owners of superyachts with the service.Starlink Maritime also requires a one-time $10,000 purchase of two ruggedized high performance Starlink dishes which ship in about two weeks, according to the US order page. By comparison, the hardware for Starlink’s Residential and RV services costs $599 and includes a single (smaller) “Dishy McFlatface” (as the dish is known to fans), with monthly subscriptions of $110 for the home service or $135... Continue reading…

Paddington is one of the hundreds of titles affected. | Screenshot: Paddington Sony is removing access to hundreds of movies and TV shows on its PlayStation Store service next month, meaning users that previously paid for titles such as Paddington and The Hunger Games will no longer be able to watch them. The shutdown affects users in Germany and Austria, according to legal notices posted on the two regional sites, and covers films produced by StudioCanal.The shutdown will come into force on August 31st, exactly one year after Sony discontinued movie and TV show purchases through its digital store. At the time Sony said that its customers will still be able to access previously purchased content. Notices posted on the PlayStation website blame “evolving license agreements with content providers” (via machine... Continue reading…

(L to R) Russian cosmonauts Sergey Korsakov, Oleg Artemyev, and Denis Matveev pose with the flag of the Luhansk People’s Republic | Image: Roscosmos Telegram On Thursday, NASA issued a statement strongly condemning the actions of three Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station, who recently posed with flags considered anti-Ukraine propaganda. In pictures posted by Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, the cosmonauts are seen holding flags of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic — two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.“NASA strongly rebukes Russia using the International Space Station for political purposes to support its war against Ukraine, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the station’s primary function among the 15 international participating countries to advance science and develop technology for peaceful... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok is facing multiple lawsuits from parents who say their children died of strangulation attempting the “blackout challenge,” after the app showed them videos of other people trying it. One suit filed against the company in June alleges that at least seven specific children died last year while attempting the challenge, which the complaint says “encourages users to choke themselves with belts, purse strings, or anything similar until passing out.” All the children who reportedly died were under 15 years old.We’re not going to get into the distressing details of the cases, but you can read the full complaint below for more background on some of the children, and how they ended up doing the challenge.The most recent lawsuit was... Continue reading…

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images Amazon Prime subscribers in the US are getting a new benefit as part of their subscription, the company has announced. Today, they’ll be able to redeem a free year of Grubhub Plus, the monthly subscription service that offers free food delivery on orders over $12 from participating restaurants. Grubhub Plus normally costs $9.99 a month.According to Amazon, free deliveries associated with Grubhub Plus are available from hundreds of thousands of restaurants across over 4,000 cities in the US. After the year is up, Grubhub will automatically start charging $9.99 a month for continued access. Existing Grubhub Plus subscribers can still make use of the promotion, which will be applied at the start of their next billing cycle. Canceling Prime... Continue reading…

Actor Johnny Depp appears in the courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia, on May 27, 2022. | Photo by Steve Helber / AFP / Getty Images Bloomberg reports a licensing deal with Netflix will provide funding for the production of Johnny Depp’s first film following the actor’s bitter defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard for describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse” in an op-ed.According to the report, Netflix is footing some of the bill for French actress / director Maiwenn Le Besco’s La Favorite, a period film centering on France’s King Louis XV (Depp) and Madame Jeanne Bécu du Barry (Le Besco), the king’s third mistress whose association with him ultimately led to her being guillotined during the French Revolution. Though neither Netflix nor Why Not Productions, the French studio behind the project, have announced La Favorite, the... Continue reading…

Red Dead Online. | Image: Rockstar Games Red Dead Online will no longer receive “major themed content updates” in part because Rockstar Games is pulling resources into the next Grand Theft Auto title, the studio said Thursday. Fans have wondered if Red Dead Online has been abandoned, and while the game isn’t being shut down, Rockstar won’t be making as much content for it moving forward.“Over the past few years, we have been steadily moving more development resources towards the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series — understanding more than ever the need to exceed players’ expectations and for this next entry to be the best it can possibly be — and as a result, we are in the process of making some changes to how we support Red Dead Online,” Rockstar wrote in a blog post.... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge GameStop has been on a wild ride ever since it reached meme stock status, and the company has recently been dabbling in Web3 technologies like NFTs and crypto. More recently, it’s also been laying off employees without much explanation. On Thursday, GameStop internally announced an unspecified number of layoffs — reportedly including some from the popular publication Game Informer — and publicly revealed that it has fired its CFO with a terse press release.GameStop CEO Matt Furlong announced the round of layoffs to staff in a memo obtained by CNBC and Kotaku. It’s completely unclear how many people are affected or in which divisions, though Furlong writes in the memo that “we’re making a number of reductions to help us keep things... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the first six months of 2022, Web3 projects have lost more than $2 billion to hacks and exploits — more than all of 2021 combined.That’s according to research from blockchain auditing and security company CertiK, which on Thursday released its quarterly Web3 security report covering Q2 of this year. The report paints a sobering picture of a cryptocurrency space still plagued by hacks, scams, and phishing schemes while also facing relatively new threats like flash loan attacks.CertiK puts particular focus on this last category of threat, which has been created by the invention of flash loans: a decentralized finance mechanism that lets borrowers access extremely large amounts of cryptocurrency for very short periods of time. If used... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images The Washington Post reports that Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is “in peril,” based on three anonymous sources who told the paper that the billionaire’s camp has “stopped engaging in certain discussions around funding” for the agreement. Musk isn’t going it alone in his attempt to buy Twitter, with others like Larry Ellison, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, the crypto exchange Binance, and the state investment firm of Qatar among those pitching in a few billion as a part of the effort.The idea that a “drastic” change of direction on the deal is close to happening is supposedly due to concerns that Twitter’s data regarding spam and bots on the platform is not verifiable. The report comes just hours... Continue reading…

Secret Service Director James Murray is retiring from his post for a new position as Snap’s chief security officer at the end of the month, Snap confirmed to The Verge on Thursday.Murray’s private sector move was first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday, shortly after the longtime protective service official’s departure from government was announced by the Secret Service in a public statement. Murray will join Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, next month and will report directly to CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel.“We’re thrilled to welcome Jim Murray to Snap and look forward to him joining our team on August 1st,” Pete Boogaard, Snap spokesperson, said in a statement to The Verge.“We’re thrilled to welcome Jim Murray to Snap”I... Continue reading…

A snapshot of Apple’s homepage from January 27th, 2007 shows the iconic iPhone clownfish wallpaper. | Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge via Wayback Machine After 15 years of the iPhone’s existence, the clownfish wallpaper from Apple’s infamous 2007 presentation is finally making its way to the devices — at least for some developers running the latest iOS 16 build. Twitter user Jack Roberts shed light on the wallpaper, sharing a screen capture of the Clownfish option under the Collections section in iOS 16 Beta 3. The tweet then gained large attention after it was retweeted by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman.The magical photo of a baby and adult clownfish living in a green anemone is the first image ever presented during Steve Jobs’ reveal of the original iPhone and its glorious-at-the-time 3.5-inch display, but oddly, Apple never shipped it as a built-in wallpaper image. The full version of... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Two fatal Tesla crashes are being examined by investigators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Reuters reported that NHTSA opened a special investigation into a recent fatal crash in California, in which a Tesla driver killed a pedestrian. And an agency spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that a crash that took place on July 6th in Florida is also under examination.The crash in Florida took place on Interstate 75, just south of Gainesville, where a Tesla vehicle smashed into the rear of a stationary tractor-trailer that was parked at a truck stop. Two people inside the Tesla, the driver and a passenger, were killed, according to Fox 35. A spokesperson for NHTSA said the agency was aware of the crash and was... Continue reading…

Photo: Bungie Did you save up a couple hundred bucks for the foam-firing Nerf version of Destiny’s legendary Gjallarhorn rocket launcher that went on preorder today? Hope you don’t live in Canada — because buyers are reporting they’re being asked for more than twice the price just to get it shipped to their door. The company says it’s working on a solution.