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Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge The text that arrived at 3:51PM on Monday, March 28th, seemed innocent at first.“Mr. Steven,” it read, “I am very sorry, after our communication and understanding during this period of time, I feel that we are not suitable in some ways.”That’s odd, I thought, must be a wrong number. But who was this mysterious Mr. Steven? What was the nature of the disagreement? What the heck did Mr. Steven do to offend this person? I was intrigued — but not enough to respond.Several weeks later, I received another text, this time from someone named “Amy” asking about “a location for coffee.” A couple days after that, “Irene from Vietnam” reached out to ask if I was still living in New York. And then “Sophia” texted, calling me “Laura” and asking... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in a bid to protect its US assets from creditors in the country, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and CNBC. Representatives for the Singapore-based company made the filing in a Southern District New York court on Friday, which legally protects the US assets of insolvent foreign debtors from creditors in the US.Founded in 2012 by Kyle Davis and Su Zhu, 3AC managed about $10 billion in assets as recently as March, later sinking to $3 billion in April. Like several other crypto firms, including the lending giants Celcius and Babel Finance, 3AC’s turn in fortunes is part of the so-called crypto “winter” that’s brought down stablecoins and sent Bitcoin’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Tesla announced it had delivered 254,695 vehicles during the second quarter of 2022, about an 18 percent drop from the previous quarter. The report, which was published on Tesla’s site, signals an end to a nearly two-year-long run of record quarterly deliveries for Elon Musk’s company, which can mostly be attributed to lengthy COVID-related shutdowns of its factory in Shanghai.Tesla said the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made up 238,533 of these deliveries, while 16,162 were for the Model S and Model X vehicles. On the production side of things, Tesla said it managed to build a total of 258,580 vehicles.China has been crucial to the company’s rise to its status as one of the most valuable automakers in the world. But Tesla’s... Continue reading…

Image: Virgin Orbit Virgin Orbit launched a rocket carrying seven satellites from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port early Saturday morning at 1:49 AM ET (10:49PM local), marking the small satellite launcher’s first successful night mission. The company brought the satellites into low Earth orbit with the help of its Boeing 747 carrier aircraft called Cosmic Girl, which had the LauncherOne rocket attached beneath one of its wings.The mission, called Straight Up after a 1988 Paula Abdul song, involved seven research satellites as part of NASA’s Space Test Program. Like its previous missions, Virgin Orbit propelled the satellites into space by having Cosmic Girl carry the LauncherOne rocket 35,000 feet above the ground, giving it a headstart before the... Continue reading…

A sparse group of people brave the smoky conditions at Kings Beach, California, as the Caldor Fire burns nearby on Saturday, September 4th, 2021 | Jane Tyska / Digital First Media / East Bay Times via Getty Images After two years of Fourth of July celebrations without fireworks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the California resort community of North Lake Tahoe is ready to light up the sky again. But instead of traditional fireworks, more than 100 drones will take off for a light show choreographed to music. Like an increasing number of communities throughout the region, city planners chose fire safety and sustainability over nostalgia as California copes with a cruel megadrought.“Fireworks come with their own list of known environmental impacts—including noise pollution, impacts to the lake, and increased risk of fire at a time when the wildfire risk is already so high,” Katie Biggers, executive director of the Tahoe City Downtown Association,... Continue reading…

Image: Facebook Meta’s ending the pilot for Novi, the company’s digital wallet and the last remaining piece of its troubled cryptocurrency project, as first reported by Bloomberg. On Novi’s website, Meta says the wallet is shutting down on September 1st, 2022, and asks users to withdraw their funds “as soon as possible.”Users will lose access to their accounts come September, and will no longer be able to add money to Novi starting July 21st. If someone forgets to withdraw their remaining balance, Meta says it will “attempt to transfer” their funds to the bank account or debit card added to the service.Meta rolled out the “small pilot” of Novi to users in the US and Guatemala last October. Novi was originally built to support fast and free... Continue reading…

If you don’t tend to your algorithms, you’ll eventually hate what they show you. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For the last few years, I’ve chosen one weekend day a year to undertake what I’ve come to call a Feeds Reboot. I try to systematically go through every subscription, every follow, every algorithmically or chronologically generated thing I see on social platforms, streaming services, and news apps, and reset or at least review the way it works. I can’t recommend this enough.Every time I do a Feeds Reboot, I notice a huge uptick in how interesting and relevant I suddenly find the internet. Does it then spend the next 364 days slowly degrading back into a morass from which I will try and extricate myself next year? Yep! But I’m still making progress.The point of a Feeds Reboot is to be more intentional about the internet. It’s not the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Fourth of July weekend is here, and hopefully you get to enjoy some time together with friends and family (and lots of delicious food). The Verge Deals compiled the best deals happening in honor of America’s birthday, but today I aim to give you a smaller, fresher selection of deals that may not last through the holiday. Frequent visitors to the site might recognize one or two of them, but I’ve tried to toss in a few new deals for your perusal. Have a nice weekend.Sonos is hosting another one of its sale events on refurbished audio products (in like-new condition, and covered by a one-year warranty), running the gamut of its most affordable and pricey hardware. Starting at the low end, the Sonos Roam is selling for $139, down from... Continue reading…

TCL’s inexpensive phone offers decent performance, access to T-Mobile’s good 5G network, and not much else Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve made the decision to delete Instagram, whether because you’ve outgrown the need for a certain finsta or because its parent company Meta is courting controversy again, doing so isn’t as quick or easy as it should be. Up until recently, it couldn’t even be done from within the Instagram app.Go ahead and take a moment to make an obligatory “I’m deleting Instagram” post if you’d like. After that, you have two ways you can go about it.Deleting Instagram using the iOS or Android AppThe easiest way for iPhone users to delete Instagram is by using the app. To do so, go to your profile, tap the hamburger menu in the top right, and select Settings. Then go to Account, and scroll down to the bottom of the menu. There will be a Delete... Continue reading…

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner. | Netflix Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 finishes with a deadly bang and the glimpse of the apocalypse Continue reading…

These cards are now worth just over $1,000, well under MSRP — down from $2,570 last March. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Nvidia and AMD graphics cards are again within reach Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google says it’ll start automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, weight loss clinics, and other potentially sensitive locations from users’ location histories in the coming weeks. In a blog post on Friday, the company says that the deletion will happen “soon after” the visit, once its systems have identified that a trip was made to one of the locations. This change is happening in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the moves several states have immediately made to outlaw abortions.You can also turn off Google’s location logging altogether by following its instructions here.Google’s post, entitled “Protecting people’s privacy on health topics,” also mentions that... Continue reading…

Rufus 3.19 Beta has options when you start creating the bootable windows installer. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Windows 11 comes with more restrictive install requirements when compared to its predecessor, including restrictions on older processors as well as requiring an internet connection and Microsoft account. Luckily, there are workarounds that allow for upgrades to Windows 11 on unsupported CPUs, and the company isn’t blocking those circumventions. But, if you’re looking to do a clean Windows 11 install and configure the system with just a local account, you can now do that easily with a tool called Rufus.The app has been long used by IT departments to quickly create bootable Windows installers. The latest beta release, as reported by Ars Technica, now has the ability to remove the requirement of an online Microsoft account, alongside other... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government seems to be worked up about cryptocurrency scams. On Thursday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Justice all released news that they were taking some form of action against people accused of carrying out multimillion or billion-dollar schemes. One of the cases involves knock-off apes, one is the “largest fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin charged in any CFTC case,” and one involves someone nicknamed “the Cryptoqueen.” The wave of enforcement is happening against a backdrop of plummeting crypto prices.Let’s start with the CFTC — the regulator has filed an action against a company called Mirror Trading International (MTI), which was run by a South African... Continue reading…

In reaction to the announcement that the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, protestors assembled in Washington Square Park and then marched north to Union Square on June 24th, 2022, in New York City. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The end of Roe v. Wade is leaving web platforms struggling to handle moderation — and data safety — questions around newly instituted abortion bans.For years, web platforms have faced relatively little backlash for pledging to remove posts that violate US law, even if there’s debate over whether specific content meets that standard. Policies that “match the laws of the country” — Elon Musk’s initial description of his plans for Twitter — are typically code for very permissive moderation in the US, where the First Amendment has historically protected a huge swath of content. The 2018 FOSTA-SESTA carveout, a rare exception, targeted the marginalized community of sex workers and used the justification that it was fighting the rightfully... Continue reading…

The Sprint shutdown is fully underway. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The remnants of Sprint’s network have been put out to pasture. As of yesterday, Sprint’s LTE network has been retired by its new owner, T-Mobile. That’s along with Sprint’s 3G CDMA network, which was shut down earlier this year, and what remained of T-Mobile’s own 3G network, which enters retirement today. T-Mobile spokesperson Justin Paulsen confirmed to The Verge that the network shutdowns are now underway.It may come as a surprise that any part of Sprint’s network was still operational so recently. In April 2020, T-Mobile officially took ownership of the company, including all of its spectrum and network towers, which would ultimately be repurposed for 5G. Sprint’s 3G CDMA network was the first to go when T-Mobile started to shut... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is testing a new way to discover new channels that reminds me of the good old days of channel surfing on my TV. The experiment, which it calls the Channel Switcher, lets you easily flip through previews of a bunch of different streams to help you find something to watch. And perhaps best of all, you won’t see ads while using it.You can get an idea of how it works in this tweet from Twitch:

The Sims 4 High School Years will be available on July 28th. | Image: EA Later this month, clothing from the fashion marketplace Depop will be available in an expansion pack for The Sims 4 called High School Years (via Polygon). Depop describes itself as a “circular” and “community-powered” online resale site and app that allows users to buy and sell vintage clothing items, mostly at discounted rates.The expansion pack will feature Sims characters experiencing “the rollercoaster of puberty,” complete with events like prom, school pranks, and the ability to cut class. Image: Depop.com Depop seller Lapoze McTribouy’s shop Sooki Sooki Vintage. Teenage Sims now have a chance to become a fashion “Simfluencer” and earn Simoleons, the game’s in-app currency, using an app like Depop... Continue reading…

Jake Sully and Dr. Grace Augustine in the first Avatar. | Image: 20th Century Studios Though Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine ultimately died in the first Avatar film, one of the first surprising details director James Cameron shared about the film’s sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, was that Weaver was set to return as a mysterious new character. While Avatar’s story of symbiotic aliens could potentially have led to resurrecting Dr. Augustine in an imaginative way, it turns out that The Way of Water’s taking a much more surprising approach to incorporating Weaver back into the franchise.Avatar: The Way of Water’s first trailer revealed that its story would focus on the blended family that former human Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and the Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) began after the original film. Surprising as it... Continue reading…

The base model MacBook Pro is not a good buy. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The base model 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM is available to buy right now. You probably shouldn’t buy it. With more details coming out about just how slow it is compared to higher-specced versions of the M2 and even the M1 model, it's becoming increasingly clear that the cheapest 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro is a real stinker of a deal.Earlier this week, videos from Max Tech and Created Tech showed the storage in the base M2 model was slow compared to the M1 version, with 50 percent slower SSD read speeds and 30 percent slower write speeds. It’s because Apple opted to use just one 256GB NAND flash storage chip instead of two 128GB chips as found on the M1. The move, likely a cost-saving one, means none of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Electronic Arts, the unmitigated king of unforced errors, made a woefully ill-advised tweet yesterday, and the company’s Twitter mentions have not known peace since.

A Project Genesis-specific Samsung Galaxy S22 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Dish is trying something no one’s succeeded at for a very long time: build a new nationwide cell network from the ground up. The 5G service, called Project Genesis, finally went live in “over 120 cities” two weeks ago, and my colleague and I immediately signed up to test it out.From the start, we had some big questions: how fast will this new network be? Would we even be able to find Dish service? And did the company launch Genesis before it was ready just to meet its contractual obligations with the government and avoid tens of millions of dollars in fines?Given how buggy the sign-up process was, I didn’t have high hopes when I unboxed my Project Genesis-specific Samsung Galaxy S22. But after a week of testing it in Spokane,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After years of mounting pressure, TikTok provided US lawmakers with more details into how it limits Chinese access to American data in a new letter dated Thursday.In a letter addressed to nine of the app’s most prominent Republican critics, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew detailed how the company planned to separate American user data from ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company. Chew also explained TikTok’s plan to house American user data on Oracle servers, a plan first reported by BuzzFeed News last month.“We’re proud to be able to serve a global community of more than a billion people who use TikTok to creatively express themselves and be entertained,” Chew wrote in the letter first reported by The New York Times. “We know we are among... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge A case being brought in the Colorado district court of Denver County is challenging the constitutionality of a controversial keyword search warrant and potentially curbing a law enforcement practice that has implications for the criminalization of abortion.A reverse keyword search warrant is a surveillance technique that lets police start with a search term of interest and identify users who have searched it within a particular period. In concrete terms, that could mean identifying all the users who search for a specific name or address — or in a scenario that has caused anxiety recently, everyone who searches for “abortion drugs.” Proponents of the technique say they’re an important tool for identifying criminals, but civil liberties... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge PayPal is putting new limits on a feature in its payment system that allows people to receive money without paying extra fees, the company recently announced. Starting July 28th, only personal PayPal accounts will be able to get funds via Friends & Family, a transaction method intended for trusted recipients.There are two ways of sending money on PayPal: Friends & Family and Goods & Services. F&F is intended for paying your friend back for dinner, for example, or giving your kid some birthday money — you know who’s receiving the funds and what you’re paying them for. There’s typically no fee involved, but it also drops protections for issues that might come up, like refunds or scams.G&S is intended for purchases, and money sent this... Continue reading…

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge This Friday, our deals deliver some Wi-Fi gains. If you’re in the market for a fast mesh Wi-Fi router or an upgrade to your existing one, then you’ve got some discounted options from Eero right now. Amazon-owned Eero is running a pre-Prime Day sale that drops its latest and greatest models to their lowest prices until July 11th for Prime members. Will these early Prime Day deals pale in comparison to the discounts when Prime Day actually lands on the 12th and 13th? We’ll find out together soon enough, but these deals are too good not to share with you now.Let’s start with the highest-end model. The Pro 6E is the newest router from Eero, and it supports the wider 6GHz band to achieve faster speeds in supported devices. It also claims to... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, has been awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden, the White House announced Friday. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest US honor that can be given to a civilian, and it’s presented to “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” the White House said in a statement.Jobs founded Apple in April 1976, and it’s since become one of the biggest companies in the world. He helped launch many tech products that have gone on to become cultural touchstones, including the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. He died on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers won’t need to conduct new clinical trials as they develop booster shots targeting the most recent variants of the virus, a Food and Drug Administration official told Reuters. The agency will use clinical trials of variant-specific boosters developed earlier in the pandemic, manufacturing data, and animal studies to evaluate the shots.The omicron variant of the virus has developed into multiple lineages. Right now, the BA.4 and BA.5 variants are the most widespread in the United States. The FDA said Thursday that the next set of booster shots should be against those versions of the virus. But pharmaceutical companies have been testing shots targeting BA.1, an earlier omicron lineage. Early data from M... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Uber trips are getting safer, with the company reporting far fewer sexual assaults in 2019 and 2020 as compared to previous years. But the number of traffic deaths during Uber rides is rising, reflecting the increasingly dangerous conditions on US roads.Uber said 3,824 sexual assaults occurred during trips in 2019 and 2020, a 38 percent drop from the 2017–2018 report, which logged 5,981 assaults. The decrease could be related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in an 80 percent drop in Uber’s ride-hailing business during 2020. Still, Uber says the vast majority of trips, 99.9 percent, occur without a safety incident.Uber says that 20 people were killed in physical assaults in 2019 and 2020Uber says that 20 people were killed in... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Google’s Gboard keyboard app for Android is throwing a bone to people who use foldable phones (or at least, for now, to beta users of the app) with a split keyboard mode. Its aim is to make it less awkward and a little more ergonomic to type on the large, expanded screens of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 or a Microsoft Surface Duo 2.The split keyboard mode cuts the keyboard in half, putting all of the keys near the two sides of the foldable phone, much closer to where your thumbs may be naturally resting while you hold the device. And while Samsung’s keyboard app already offers this feature to Z Fold phones, some Android users prefer Gboard’s typing experience and auto-correct implementation.Android Central was first to pick up on the... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge During its WWDC event a few weeks ago, Apple announced iOS 16, highlighting a “next-generation” CarPlay experience that automakers might not be ready for any time soon. It also announced a new “fueling and driving tasks apps” feature that you will actually be able to use once the update is released.

But bigger sensors come at bigger costs Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge Customized commanders, artistic alters, and pretty proxies galore Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, ending the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, social media platforms have buzzed with anger, dismay, and offers of assistance, particularly from people in states with stronger abortion protections.But a particular type of offer has captured media attention. In viral tweets, TikToks, and screenshotted and reshared Instagram posts, people are opening their homes up to abortion patients who must travel for care.“If you choose to have an abortion, and need a place to stay, there is always a bed for you at my apartment in Portland. Free. No questions asked,” reads one tweet, liked more than 150,000 times and retweeted by more than 20,000 people.Providing lodging or... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge Luke Ross is doing what most game publishers won’t Continue reading…

A group of driverless Cruise robotaxis blocked traffic in San Francisco for hours on Tuesday evening after the cars stopped working without explanation.Details of the incident were shared on Reddit (and spotted by TechCrunch) and illustrate how driverless vehicles are still experiencing teething problems in real-life settings.Cruise, which is backed by General Motors and Honda, has been testing its technology in San Francisco since February, but only launched a commercial robotaxi service last week. The cars have no human safety driver at all but operate under certain restrictions. They only offer lifts on “select streets” between the hours of 10PM and 6AM when the weather conditions are favorable, and can drive no faster than 30mph.... Continue reading…

Technoblade posing with his YouTube creator award for surpassing 10 million subscribers. | Image: Technoblade via YouTube Technoblade, a popular Minecraft YouTuber, has died from cancer age 23.In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel titled “so long nerds” and narrated by his father, Technoblade thanked his fans and fellow streamers for their support over the years, and revealed that his real name was Alex. (He’d “accidentally” let slip he was called Dave in an earlier video.)“Hello everyone, Technoblade here. If you’re watching this, I am dead,” he says. “Thank you all for supporting my content over the years. If I had another 100 lives, I think I would choose to be Technoblade again every single time, as those were the happiest years of my life.”In the video, Technoblade apologizes for “selling out so much in the past year” by offering... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has offered to pay out $90 million to small app developers to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company’s Play store policies violated federal antitrust laws.The suit claimed that Google maintained polices that effectively forced developers to use its Google Play billing system — which for many years had a default 30 percent charge on all transactions. In July 2021, in a concession to smaller developers and in response to this suit, Google cut this fee to 15 percent for the first $1 million earned through any app.According to Hagens Berman, the law firm representing the plaintiffs in this class-action, some 48,000 small app developers in the US will be able to claim a payment from the $90 million fund. Hagens... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A former Apple lawyer who was in charge of preventing insider trading has pleaded guilty to six counts of securities fraud for insider trading, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. Gene Levoff, once the company’s former corporate secretary and director of corporate law, “misappropriated material, nonpublic information about Apple’s financial results and then executed trades involving the company’s stock” from February 2011 to April 2016, the release says. Charges against him were initially filed by the SEC as a civil complaint in 2019.Levoff also served on Apple’s Disclosure Committee, a group that looked over company earnings reports and SEC filings before they were published. Using information he was privy to, he... Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted SpaceX authorization to use its Starlink satellite internet system on vehicles in motion — including cars, trucks, boats, and aircraft. It’s a big win for SpaceX’s Starlink system, potentially opening up the service to a more diverse range of use cases and customers.SpaceX requested regulatory approval from the FCC in March of last year to allow Earth Stations in Motion (ESIM) Starlink terminals to be used in moving vehicles. To tap into the system and receive broadband internet coverage, customers must purchase a personal ground-based antenna, or user terminal, that is designed to connect with any orbiting Starlink satellites that happen to be overhead. Up until now, those... Continue reading…

The Cyber Stick | Image: Famitsu Sega may have only announced the Mega Drive Mini 2 for release in Japan so far, but there’s a pretty cool accessory for it that appears to work with PCs and can be shipped stateside. As of this writing, Amazon has the Mega Drive Mini 2 Cyber Stick controller up for preorder on its Japanese storefront, and as video game deals expert Wario64 points out (ad), the controller also ships to the US.

It started delivering the vehicles in December. | Image: General Motors Months after General Motors started delivering its first Hummer EVs, the company is reportedly only producing around 12 of the massive electric trucks a day, according to The Wall Street Journal. That’s an abysmally slow pace, even compared to how many electric trucks other automakers are making: the Journal says Ford’s producing around 150 F-150 Lightings a day, whereas Rivian’s Q1 production numbers indicate it’s making somewhere between 30 and 40 EVs a day (Rivian didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for more specific numbers).Recently, GM announced that it was raising the Hummer EV’s price by $6,250, citing “higher prices for parts, technology and logistics,” according to CNBC.Around 77,500 people have signed up for... Continue reading…

The logo of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin is seen on a symbolic “Bitcoin coin” | Photo by Silas Stein / Picture Alliance via Getty Images Bitcoin miners in New York state faced a regulatory blow today as the state denied air permits for a gas-fired power plant used to mine Bitcoin. It’s the latest step that New York has taken to crack down on crypto mining as it tries to meet its goals on climate change.The decision was made for the Greenidge Generating Station in New York’s Finger Lakes region. Bitcoin mining brought new life and renewed controversy to the embattled plant in 2020. That drew outrage from some local residents worried about how the plant could affect fish and tourism by discharging hot water into nearby Seneca Lake. At the state level, Greenidge’s revival has sparked fears that pollution from the energy-intensive process of mining Bitcoin could revive other... Continue reading…

T-Mobile wants to sign up 7 to 8 million home internet customers by 2025. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile has announced that its 5G home internet service is now available in more cities, spanning parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas. The service now covers more than 40 million homes, and earlier this spring, the company said it signed up its one-millionth customer. That’s good news in our landscape of cable internet provider monopolies, but T-Mobile has some real work to do if it plans to meet its goal of 7 to 8 million customers by 2025.Providing fixed wireless internet to a broad portion of the nation was a big selling point in T-Mobile’s case to the FCC when it argued to be allowed to acquire Sprint. The gist of the whole deal was that we’d lose one of our four wireless carriers temporarily while T-Mobile... Continue reading…

Activists including Climate Action Campaign (CAC) gather outside of the Supreme Court to show support for protecting the Clean Air Act. | Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for NRDC Update 6/30/2022: The Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental protection agency came out today, limiting the agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions. Read the ruling and dissent here, and read more about what the ruling means for climate action here. Our original article continues below.This week, the Supreme Court is expected to decide a major climate case that could determine what tools the federal government can use to cut greenhouse gas emissions.The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, started out years ago as a battle over how much authority the EPA has to force power plants to cut down their pollution — but it’s turned into a bigger fight over how much power federal agencies have to... Continue reading…

The Longview Power Plant, a coal-fired plant, stands on August 21st, 2018, in Maidsville, West Virginia. | Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images The Supreme Court just gutted a major policy tool the US might have used to tackle climate change. Its decision today on West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency essentially says that the EPA shouldn’t be allowed to determine whether the US gets its electricity from clean or dirty sources of energy.That derails previous efforts by the agency to transition the US away from fossil fuels to clean energy sources like wind and solar by regulating the power sector. With the new decision, the agency might be able to push a power plant to install technology to reduce its emissions on-site, but it can’t influence states’ decisions on where they get their energy from in the first place. To make things worse, the premise of the court’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta is warning of “serious times” and preparing for a leaner second half of 2022, according to an internal memo circulated to employees this week. The note comes from chief product officer Chris Cox and outlines the company’s priorities and challenges to its business going forward.“I have to underscore that we are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce,” Cox wrote in the memo obtained by The Verge and published in full below. “We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets.”The biggest revenue challenge comes from privacy changes affecting Meta’s ad business and macroeconomic pressures, Cox says in the memo, which was first reported... Continue reading…