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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…

The first passenger station in the “Vegas Loop” network of vehicle tunnels that’s being built by Elon Musk’s Boring Company was revealed Thursday. The station is situated underneath Resorts World Las Vegas, the first in what is expected to be 55 stops along 29 miles of tunnels.The Boring Company already operates a small version of this “Teslas in Tunnels” system underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, which opened in early 2021 and involves two 0.8-mile tunnels. Afterward, Musk’s startup proposed a massive citywide expansion that was eventually approved by Clark County officials last year. The system uses human-controlled Model X and Y vehicles to transport passengers, despite Musk’s previous statements about using sleds to carry... Continue reading…

You’ll be able to try out co-op very soon. | Image: 343 Industries Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries is finally going to kick off a public test of its long-awaited network campaign co-op mode in July, the developer announced Thursday (via Polygon). The studio is also planning to test the ability to replay campaign missions, which wasn’t in the game at launch.The beta for both features is targeted to take place from July 11th to July 22nd, according to a press email sent to The Verge. If you own the campaign portion of Halo Infinite or are an active Xbox Game Pass member, you can participate by signing up as a Halo Insider. On Xbox, you’ll also need the Xbox Insider app.You’ll be starting the campaign from the beginningIf you’ve already played Halo Infinite’s campaign, anything you’ve... Continue reading…

Raspberry Pi has introduced a successor to last year’s Pico, a $4 microcontroller based on the RP2040 chip the company designed itself. The new model is called the Pico W. It’s basically the same hardware, but it adds, as the name suggests, an 802.11n Wi-Fi radio, making it useful for putting together IoT projects and the like. It’s also more expensive than the standard Pico, coming in at $6.A 50 percent price jump isn’t insignificant (especially if you plan on buying a ton of these), but it’s understandable why the W version costs so much more than the original. Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton told The Verge’s Nilay Patel that adding radios to products is very expensive. “Just the radio conformance for a modern Raspberry Pi product is the... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge Warnings to delete cycle tracking apps flooded social media in the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end federal abortion protections. The data those apps contain, people feared, could be weaponized in court.As abortion starts to be criminalized in parts of the country, fears around personal data aren’t unfounded. People who seek abortions in jurisdictions where it is now banned aren’t wrong to worry that their data could be used against them. But experts say that data from period tracking apps probably isn’t the biggest risk in a post-Roe landscape. People should be more worried about more mundane data — things like search history and text messages.Even if they aren’t the primary weapons... Continue reading…

Image: EA EA announced in 2020 that a new Skate game was on the way, and on Thursday, we got our first look — well, sort of. The company debuted a trailer with what it calls “pre-pre-pre-alpha” footage of the upcoming skateboarding sequel, and even in this early form, the game looks like it has a lot of promise.The footage, unsurprisingly, mostly features skateboarding, though much of it has what’s clearly placeholder graphics and art. A later part of the video has more complete-looking graphics, and it appears this new Skate entry will continue the series’ realism. There are glimpses of a few more outlandish ideas, too, like some hilariously tall ramps and a building that looks inspired by a pachinko board. And many of the shots show a lot of... Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, companies across the tech industry rushed out messaging on where they stood. Apple said its health plan had long covered travel costs for out-of-state reproductive health care; Microsoft said it would expand its health coverage to include travel costs for abortion; Google even said it would pay for employees to relocate in light of the ruling, no questions asked.For the most part, they were quick, makeshift policies aligning these companies with the right to choose and granting benefits that supported that stance. But by and large, their responses weren’t full-throated repudiations of the Supreme Court’s ruling, let alone stands against any state that would seek to ban abortion.... Continue reading…

Comcast’s Xfinity Stream app on Apple TV | Image: Comcast Comcast’s Xfinity Stream app replaced the old Xfinity TV setup in 2017, allowing cable TV subscribers (who haven’t cut the cord yet) to pull up live channels, DVR content, and on-demand video, and now it’s available in the App Store on Apple TV boxes. Comcast and Apple announced a deal last October to make this happen, as well as an Apple TV Plus app for Comcast’s X1 platform, which launched in March for compatible cable boxes, Xfinity Flex, and XClass Smart TVs. Other platforms with the Xfinity Stream app include Roku, Amazon Fire, LG smart TVs, and Samsung smart TVs.Comcast senior VP of strategic development Michael DelCiello said in a statement that “With today’s launch of the Stream app on Apple TV, our customers now have a new... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge While several retailers are gearing up for the long July Fourth weekend with some exciting sitewide sales, there are plenty of standalone deals worth checking out ahead of Captain America’s birthday (oh, you didn’t know?). Starting off, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 is currently discounted to its lowest price ever at Amazon. The 256GB configuration of this foldable phone typically costs $1,799.99 but is currently on sale for $1,249.99. This sizeable discount extends to the 512GB configuration as well, knocking its usual $1,899.99 price tag down to a more reasonable $1,349.99 instead.The Z fold 3 proved that Samsung could make a good and durable foldable phone, particularly for multitasking on its 120Hz refresh rate display that can extend... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Pokémon Go maker Niantic has made a social app for its games — and it’s coming out very soon. The developer says that the app, called Campfire, will kick off its global rollout “in the coming days.” Campfire was originally announced in May and has been in a testing phase with Ingress players over the last few months. The initial rollout will be available for “select groups of Pokémon Go players throughout the summer,” according to the developer.The core of Campfire is a map that includes information about nearby in-game events and activities, theoretically making it easier to find folks to play with or arrange meet-ups with friends. The app includes a group and private messaging tool for your in-game friends; for Pokémon Go, for... Continue reading…

Return to Monkey Island is coming to Switch and PC in 2022. | Image: Terrible Toybox This week, we finally saw the first gameplay trailer of Return to Monkey Island, a follow-up to the first and second Monkey Island games that’s headed up by Ron Gilbert. Much of the game’s rollout has been delightful — an apparent April Fools’ joke by Gilbert about a new Monkey Island game turned out to be a real announcement. But there’s been some sour discourse following the new trailer, and on his personal blog, Gilbert said he won’t be posting about Return to Monkey Island anymore (via Eurogamer).“I’m shutting down comments,” Gilbert said in a post featuring the new trailer. “People are just being mean and I’m having to delete personal attack comments. It’s an amazing game and everyone on the team is very proud of it. Play it or... Continue reading…

Persona 4. Over the years Persona has seen a steady rise from a niche RPG series to a bonafide hit — so the next natural step is a live-action adaptation. While there’s nothing officially in the works just yet, Toru Nakahara, producer on the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movies, says that it’s something that Sega is exploring.“Atlus’ worlds are filled with high drama, cutting-edge style and compelling characters,” Nakahara told IGN. “Stories like those from the Persona franchise really resonate with our fans and we see an opportunity to expand the lore like no one has seen — or played — before.” More directly, he said that “together, Sega and Atlus, are working to bring these stories and worlds to life through new mediums and for new audiences.”T... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As early as this week, President Joe Biden plans to ask the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumer data privacy following the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a new report from Axios.Biden’s request is expected to come by way of a letter to the FTC, asking the agency to protect the privacy of women and birthing parents online. Specifically, Axios reported that Biden “will say the FTC should not tolerate unfair or deceptive practices related to reporting, surveillance, sharing or sale of personal information — including sensitive health-related information — in any state.”Soon after the Supreme Court released its ruling last week, privacy advocates and lawmakers warned that data obtained from... Continue reading…

Adding a password manually to Google’s password manager. | Image: Google Google is updating its built-in password manager for Chrome and Android as it attempts to position it as an alternative to standalone services offered by 1Password and Bitwarden, the company announced today. Most significant is the ability to manually add passwords to the service, rather than simply relying on Chrome’s offer to save credentials when you use them. There had previously been signs of this feature on Chrome on desktop, but now Google says it’s making it available across “all platforms.”The search giant also says it’s working to unify the design of the password manager between Chrome and Android with “a simplified and unified management experience” and says this includes a feature that will automatically group multiple... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Ahead of the July Fourth weekend, airlines are facing a wave of concern over flight cancellations — and new pressure from Washington to make sure they’re not leaving travelers in the lurch.Wednesday saw more than 2,000 cancellations in a single day, according to FlightAware data, with uncertainty continuing into the holiday travel season. The surge in canceled flights is particularly bad because it’s happening across all airlines, straining the system’s capacity and leaving many travelers unable to reach their destinations. A Washington Post report on Tuesday detailed the human cost of those cancellations, with travelers sleeping on airport floors or canceling trips altogether.A deeper look at the data shows cancellations really have... Continue reading…

Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl, with LauncherOne under its wing | Image: Virgin Orbit Small satellite launcher Virgin Orbit postponed its first night launch on Wednesday after finding that the temperature of its rocket propellant was “slightly out of bounds.” The company is figuring out when to move ahead with the launch in the next few days.This mission — called “Straight Up” in homage to the 1988 song by Paula Abdul — is for the US Space Force and will carry seven small satellites for the Space Test Program. It’ll be the fifth mission for Virgin Orbit and the second one since the company went public through a SPAC merger. The launch was originally set to occur out of Mojave, California, during a launch window that opened at 1AM ET, which would have marked the first launch at night for the company.

The buttons are nice, but the trade-offs are hard to ignore Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers should include the newer forms of the omicron coronavirus variant in booster shots this fall, the Food and Drug Administration recommended today.The agency said it wants vaccine manufacturers to create booster shots that include two forms of the virus — the original strain, which is what’s in current vaccines, and the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant. Those lineages have taken over as the most common form of the virus circulating in the United States. They’re highly contagious and are even better at evading the immune system than some previous versions of the virus.Vaccine manufacturers Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax have already been testing omicron-targeted versions of their vaccines, which... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung is launching its gaming hub for its 2022 smart TVs and monitors today. The hub brings together the best game streaming apps into a single location, with quick access to Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google Stadia, Utomik, Twitch, and Microsoft’s new Xbox TV app. Even Amazon Luna will be available soon, neatly integrated into the Samsung Gaming Hub UI.The gaming hub doesn’t act only as a launch point for cloud gaming, though. HDMI-connected video game consoles will feature inside the hub, alongside passthrough controller inputs so you can use a single controller instead of having to pair multiple ones. That means popular Bluetooth headsets and controllers will work across multiple apps, services, and devices through the Samsung Gaming... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has been having a tough time with spammers lately. Earlier this year, a bunch of big creators like MKBHD and Jacksepticeye made videos highlighting the seemingly endless hordes of bad actors swarming their channels who reply to other commenters with fake giveaways and other scams. YouTube has been responding to these complaints and, today, announced a few new changes to try and stem the tide.There are three new policies. First, channels will no longer be able to hide their subscriber count — a move often used by spammers to help camouflage themselves. This is because checking a channel’s subscriber count is a quick way to verify that they are who they say they are (aka Big Name Content Creator X).Second, YouTube is limiting... Continue reading…

Don’t like the strike call? Take it up with the robot. | Photo by Stephen Maturen / Getty Images Two years from now, in baseball stadiums around the US, the umpire behind home plate might be little more than a mouthpiece for a robot. Major League Baseball plans to introduce robot umpires in the 2024 season, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN this week. He framed the change as a way to speed up games, but anyone who’s watched baseball the last few years will tell you that a machine would almost certainly call balls and strikes better than the humans do.There are two ways the “Automated Ball-Strike System,” which is the technical term for these robot umpires, might be implemented. One is the fully automated version, in which the AI-powered system calls every pitch a ball or a strike and relays the call to the umpire. Or the MLB... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re looking for a way to keep your conversations over text private, it’s crucial to choose your messaging app carefully. Not all of them are end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), and others might have security holes that compromise your privacy.Simply put, E2EE means that only you (the sender) and your recipient can see the contents of your messages. This — most importantly — excludes any third parties, like your mobile carrier, internet service provider (ISP), and phone manufacturer. Some users may want this extra layer of protection to help prevent any outside snooping from the government and other organizations that may try to use your private conversations against you.All of the apps listed here are free and offer E2EE, so you can... Continue reading…

Inscryption. The slow-burn rise of the roguelike deckbuilder Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Steam Deck has a lot of buttons. There’s a D-pad, all the typical face buttons, two control sticks that also respond to capacitive touch and can be pushed down like buttons, two trackpads with haptic feedback that are also pressure-sensitive buttons, two shoulder bumpers, two analog shoulder triggers, and four buttons on the back of the device behind the grips.Somehow, they all feel like they’re exactly in the right place while you’re holding the device, and in writing the latest in our long-running Button of the Month series, you might think that I’d wax poetic about just one of them. But for me, the true magic of the Steam Deck is that any button can be the awesome button, thanks to the device’s excellent software. ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge The team at indie games studio RNG Party has always loved handheld gaming, particularly Nintendo’s quirky portable devices. So when they noticed a new handheld making waves on Twitter, one that looked a lot like a tiny yellow Game Boy, they knew they had to be a part of it. “With pretty much every major console maker now gone from this space, unless you count the Nintendo Switch, this kind of thing might only ever be possible for us once,” explains RNG’s Ben Busche. “And we didn’t want to miss out.”That device was the Playdate, a handheld from longtime Mac software developer Panic, which is defined both by its miniature stature and the crank sticking out of its side. It finally released earlier this year, and those who purchased one... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge Annemarie Rose is bent over a sheet of glass, hair tucked into a messy half ponytail, tracing the outline of a heart into its glossy surface. She breaks it apart, sands the edges, and etches a simple message across its smooth surface: spit in my mouth. “Something hot for Valentine’s Day,” the description reads on her TikTok video.Commenters go wild, a chorus of desire filling the section. “WHERE CAN I BUY,” writes one enthusiastic viewer with a grip on their caps lock. Another helpfully adds a backstory: “I NEED THIS because I got blocked for telling my crush to spit in my mouth and pull my hair so sad.” Back in the real world, a dumbfounded Annemarie watches as the numbers on her video skyrocket. Refresh. 100 new followers. Refresh.... Continue reading…

Amazon sponsors LGBTQ issues in the US, including this Pride float from NYC in 2018. | Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images Amazon has restricted search results and inventory related to LGBTQ topics in the United Arab Emirates after being pressured to do so by the government, reports The New York Times. Same-sex relationships and sex acts are illegal in the UAE, and are punishable by fines and imprisonment.A number of books related to LGBTQ topics were removed from sale in the UAE (including Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir), and search results have been hidden for more than 150 keywords. These include broad search terms like “lgbtq” and “pride,” as well as targeted queries like “transgender flag” and “chest binder for lesbians.”The Times notes that it’s not clear what penalties Amazon was threatened with by the UAE... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Developers of apps released in Apple’s South Korean App Store no longer have to use the company’s own in-app payment system, the iPhone maker has announced in a developer update. Instead, developers will be able to take payments using the third-party service providers pre-approved by Apple.The change comes in response to an amendment to South Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act passed last year, which prevents large platform holders like Apple and Google from forcing developers to use their first-party in-app payment systems. Both Apple and Google opposed the legislation, with Apple arguing that it would make it harder for its users to manage their purchases, undermine their privacy protections, and put them at risk of fraud.D... Continue reading…

I-81 in Syracuse was responsible for the displacement of hundreds of Black residents when it was built in the 1960s. | Image: Getty Images The Biden administration announced a $1 billion effort to rectify racist infrastructure decisions of the past, such as highways that were built by bulldozing Black communities.The program, which the Department of Transportation is calling “Reconnecting Communities,” will in some cases tear down highways that were built with the expressed purpose of creating physical barriers between mostly Black and minority communities. Other projects will focus on building new infrastructure, like greenways to promote cycling and walking or transit programs, like rapid bus lines to reconnect communities to urban cores.“Our focus isn’t about assigning blame. It isn’t about getting caught up in guilt or regret. It is about fixing a problem,” said... Continue reading…

Samsung employees hold up 3nm wafers at the company’s production line. | Image: Samsung Samsung has started producing 3nm chips, beating rival chip manufacturer TSMC to the more power efficient fabrication process, Bloomberg reports. TSMC’s 3nm process isn’t expected to go into mass production until the second half of 2022.Samsung says the new fabrication process is 45 percent more power efficient than its previous 5nm process, has 23 percent higher performance, and 16 percent smaller surface area. In the future, it hopes its second generation 3nm process can reduce power consumption and size by 50 percent and 35 percent respectively, and increase performance by 30 percent.The announcement is a key milestone in Samsung’s efforts to compete with TSMC, which dominates the market for contract chip production and is the... Continue reading…

Image: Substack Substack is the latest tech company to announce layoffs, with the company’s CEO Chris Best tweeting on Wednesday that he’s letting 13 workers go. According to Axios, that’s around 14 percent of Substack’s workforce. In his letter and follow-up tweets, Best cites “market conditions” as the reason behind the layoffs.He also admits that the move may be a surprise to some employees. “Not so long ago, I told you all that our plan was to grow the team and not do layoffs,” he says, also noting that the company is “still hiring for specific key roles” and has money saved. However, Best says that the company needs to change tactics, as it could be facing “an extended period” where the economy goes from bad to worse. He says that the layoffs are... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge In April, Google announced plans to join the expanding list of tech companies that work with iFixit. The repair mavens distribute parts and tools for people interested in performing DIY electronics repairs, and starting today, iFixit’s store offers genuine Google parts for a number of Pixel phones.You can order what you need to repair everything from the Pixel 2 to the latest Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well as the tools to install them and step-by-step guides to walk you through the process. (Aftermarket parts are also available if you’re looking to fix an OG Pixel or Nexus device.)

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge One thing I have come to appreciate is that cryptocurrency isn’t really very good at its killer use case: crime. Today’s example comes from North Korea, where the regime’s war chest of stolen cryptocurrency is suddenly worth a lot less than it used to be.Here’s an exceptionally funny sentence from Reuters:

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Niantic, which has been trying to replicate the massive success of Pokémon Go with other mobile AR games, is laying off 8 percent of its workforce and canceling four projects, as reported by Bloomberg.“We recently decided to stop production on some projects and reduce our workforce by about eight percent to focus on our key priorities,” Niantic VP of communications Jonny Thaw said in a statement to The Verge. “We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Niantic and we are supporting them through this difficult transition.“This means we can focus on our most important priorities, including Pokémon Go and a select set of new experiences, as well as the Lightship platform. This increased focus, as well our strong core... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Cameron Diaz is set to star alongside Jamie Foxx in a new Netflix original film, officially ending Diaz’s retirement (which some of us at The Verge apparently never got the memo on). Foxx teased the new film, titled Back in Action, in a tweet containing an audio call between him, Diaz, and Tom Brady, whose retirement from football notably lasted a whole 40 days.In a press release, Netflix doesn’t reveal much about the upcoming film other than that it’s an action-comedy directed, produced, and written by Seth Gordon, the director behind Horrible Bosses. Beau Bauman of Central Intelligence will serve as a producer, and Neighbors’ Brendan O’Brien is helping out with the script. Netflix says the premise of the film will remain “under wraps”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re an Instagram user, there’s a good chance it isn’t the only social network that you post to. The app makes it very easy to send your post to a few other social networks — including Facebook (which owns Instagram).Here’s how you do it through the iPhone app (the Android app is very similar):Connect your social networksTo share Instagram photos to other social networks, you’ll need to link those accounts.

Xiaomi says it split the $15 million development cost of the new smartphone camera sensor with Sony. | Image: Xiaomi Big-sensor cameras are a bit of a white whale for smartphone imaging engineers. Even the most capable smartphone cameras use relatively puny sensors, and efforts to bring bigger sensors to the mobile form factor have been impractical, niche, or never really materialized. Xiaomi appears to be the latest company to attempt to capture the elusive concept with its upcoming 12S Ultra flagship.According to a post on Weibo spotted by Android Authority, the phone will include a 1-inch-type sensor co-developed with Sony. That’s about 1.7 times more surface area than the 1/1.33-inch-type sensor in the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra’s main camera module. It’s also the same size sensor that’s in Sony’s $1300 Cyber-shot RX100 VII that’s more or less the... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge The chip shortage and supply chain crisis are doing more than just driving up vehicle prices — they’re also affecting quality.JD Power published its Initial Quality Study for 2022 model-year cars this week, in which it found that new vehicle quality has declined 11 percent year over year, the steepest drop ever recorded by the group.Electric vehicle manufacturers in particular are showing big drops in quality, with Polestar ranking dead last. Tesla, meanwhile, ranks seventh from the bottom, continuing its trend of shoddy manufacturing.In this year’s survey, JD Power recorded 226 problems per 100 Tesla vehicles. Combining all non-Tesla EVs, the survey says that 240 problems were reported per 100 EVs, a slight drop from 251 last year... Continue reading…

Apple and other retailers are offering awesome promotions to kick off the summer. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Celebrate our nation’s birthday the Verge Deals way, by saving on some fun tech in time for the summer instead of, you know, doomscrolling about the state of everything. The Fourth of July holiday means different things to different people, but regardless, we’re about to take you on a journey to see all the best July Fourth deals on a variety of tech from across the internet.Several retailers are celebrating the summer holiday by offering excellent discounts and promotions on their products. For instance, Belkin is offering a sitewide discount on its charging peripherals, and Apple is already offering a pair of promotions for anyone in the market for a new tablet or laptop. There’s a little something for everyone. It’s also worth noting... Continue reading…

Google’s Switch to Android app now supports all Android 12 phones. The free iOS app is designed to make it easy to switch to Android, transferring important data like your iPhone contacts and calendar entries. Google released the app earlier this year, but it was limited to its Pixel devices initially. Support for all Android 12 phones makes this a key app if you’re moving from an iPhone to a new Android device.The Switch to Android app initiates a transfer process by displaying a QR code on the iPhone, which you then scan to start transferring photos, videos, contacts, and calendar events. Data can be transferred wirelessly instead of having to connect two phones with a cable, but the cable option is faster and better suited to... Continue reading…

Climeworks announced the groundbreaking of its new Direct Air Capture plant in Iceland, called Mammoth. | Image: Climeworks Swiss climate tech company Climeworks announced yesterday that it has broken ground on its biggest facility yet for capturing carbon dioxide from the air. The new Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant, named Mammoth, will significantly scale up the company’s operations in Hellisheiði, Iceland.That’s where Climeworks built Orca, which was the largest DAC plant in the world when it came online last September. Orca can capture up to 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly equivalent to how much climate pollution 790 gas-guzzling passenger vehicles release annually. Mammoth, in comparison, can capture about nine times as much CO2 as Orca.Mammoth, in comparison, can capture about nine times as much CO2There are fewer than 20 such plants in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Ana Kova The end of federal abortion rights quickly made a common, safe medical procedure illegal in many parts of the United States and turned routine medical data into something that can be used against people suspected of having an abortion.Despite being highly sensitive, health data often isn’t as private as people might assume. There isn’t much preventing medical records from being weaponized against people seeking abortions in states where it is illegal. Even though medical records contain sensitive, personal information, most people don’t have much control over the information in them or how they are shared.Medical privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), don’t stop subpoenas or warrants for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is rewarding the most active and helpful members of its support forums with its new Community Plus program (via iClarified). The invite-only program gives these “high-level” Support Community members access to exclusive perks and experiences.Apple’s Support Community members can already earn points based on their activity, granting them access to rewards as they level up. This includes the ability to upload a custom avatar as well as participate in conference calls with the Apple Support Community team and even in-person meetups with other members. But the Community Plus program appears to take things a bit further. It applies to the “shining stars” of Apple support forums who provide the most detailed and helpful answers. Apple... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TweetDeck for Mac will shut down in just two days on July 1st. I rely on the TweetDeck app for my job as a news writer here at The Verge — I live for my alerts about big news and like being able to scroll the infinity of my Twitter columns — and I was disappointed to hear TweetDeck was going away. But if you’re looking for a replacement, you should seriously check out Tweeten. I downloaded it up a day or two after Twitter announced TweetDeck was going away, and I haven’t looked back.Tweeten is basically TweetDeck. Like Twitter’s official power user app, Tweeten lets you do things like tweet right from the client and make columns of all different kinds so that you can plug into the matrix. Seriously, just look at this Tweeten screenshot... Continue reading…

Jason Momoa as Baba Voss in the third season of See. | Apple TV Plus Just as sight is beginning to return to the world of Apple TV Plus’ See, the series is coming to an end with its upcoming third and final season.Though Baba Voss (Jason Momoa) and Queen Maghra (Hera Hilmar) were able to triumph over Baba’s brother Edo (Dave Bautista) in See’s second season finale, the war between the Trivantians and the monarchy ended with an ideological divide threatening to upend the new balance of power. After years of operating as witch hunters — killers of people like Baba and Maghra’s twin daughter Haniwa (Nesta Cooper) and son Kofun (Archie Madekwe) born with the ability to see — many of those loyal to the throne balk at Maghra’s decision to eradicate the practice.Though some of the Queen’s new Royal Guard see... Continue reading…

California is at risk of losing its “competitive edge” if it doesn’t lift a ban on the operation of autonomous semitrailer trucks on public roads, a group of 35 industry leaders said in an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom.The letter is signed by a cross section of autonomous vehicle companies, delivery and logistics firms, and automakers, including Waymo, Aurora, TuSimple, Embark, UPS, Volvo, and Uber Freight. The group urges Newsom to revisit rules prohibiting heavy-duty self-driving trucks from public testing.Vehicles that weigh more than 10,001 pounds are bannedCalifornia has permitted public testing of light-duty autonomous trucks since 2019. But vehicles that weigh more than 10,001 pounds — which include walk-in delivery... Continue reading…

Image: 1Password 1Password is trying to solve the situation where you go to log on to a website and wonder something like “did I sign in with Google, Apple, or an actual email and password combo” or “which of my five Google accounts did I use for this?” The company has announced that its password manager will let you save which single sign-on (SSO) service you used on a site, so it can automatically log you in with that same account when you return. This feature comes as big companies are gearing up a campaign against passwords as a concept.According to a blog post, the feature is currently available in the beta version of 1Password for the browser and currently supports logging in with Facebook, Google, and Apple. 1Password says it’ll add more... Continue reading…