The Verge - All Posts

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Every Wednesday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where editor-at-large David Pierce is joined by The Verge’s expert staffers in a deep exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives.On today’s episode, we have a variety of stories from across The Verge. At the top of the show, David and managing editor Alex Cranz chat with health technology reporter Nicole Wetsman and senior privacy and cybersecurity reporter Corin Faife about the privacy vulnerabilities for people seeking abortions in a post-Roe United States and how people can protect their information.Later in the episode, David reports on why the internet is so bad at recommendations, with insights from executives at Yelp, Pocket, Pinterest,... Continue reading…

The NuraTrue Pro true wireless earbuds. | Image: Nura The new Bluetooth streaming codec that promises to stream CD-quality audio without any loss of audio detail, aptX Lossless, is coming to its first pair of earbuds. The NuraTrue Pro true wireless earbuds are the work of Australian audio company Nura and are currently being funded on Kickstarter with early bird prices starting at $199 and a regular retail price of $329.“These are the first earbuds to be announced with Snapdragon Sound and aptX Lossless. We’re excited to say that there will be many more Snapdragon Sound powered devices with support for aptX Lossless launching soon,” Qualcomm spokesperson Lauren Miller said in a statement. Snapdragon Sound is the name of Qualcomm’s overall audio platform, of which aptX Lossless is one... Continue reading…

The PS5 offers easy installation of an add-on SSD to expand the 1TB it has built in. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge It’s the hump day before a holiday weekend, which means it officially feels like time is moving the slowest it possibly can. There is one solution to speed things up, though: get a fast SSD for your PC or PlayStation 5.I know that sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. You don’t want to spend your precious hours waiting on slow load times for applications and games. Thankfully, the 1TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD with a heatsink will help you do just that, and it’s currently on sale for $169.99 at GameStop and Amazon. What’s more, if you’re a GameStop Pro member (which costs $14.99 per year), you get an additional discount that drops it down to $134.99 — which is the outright best price around. That extra “pro” sale is a savings of $95 off... Continue reading…

There’s more content than ever out there — and it’s harder than ever to know what to watch. | Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Why can’t the internet tell you what to read, watch, and eat? Because you’re complicated Continue reading…

Atari is 50 years old, and to celebrate, the company has partnered with the retro game experts at Digital Eclipse on a new anniversary collection that covers five decades of gaming history. It has the somewhat unwieldy title Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, but it also sounds much more involved than a typical classic game bundle. Atari 50 will feature more than 90 games — including six new titles “inspired by the classics” — from consoles like the 2600, Jaguar, and Lynx, along with archival photos, images, and even interviews.If the name Digital Eclipse sounds familiar, it’s probably because the studio has made a name for itself with thoughtful, well-executed classic game collections like the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary... Continue reading…

The SiriusXM app. | Image: Comcast Comcast subscribers can now access the SiriusXM app from their Xfinity Flex streaming device and XClass TV as well as through the Xfinity X1 hub for live TV. You can call up the app by saying “SiriusXM” to your voice remote or by searching for it within your device’s list of apps.Although Comcast gives users free access to the NBC Peacock app on X1 and Flex devices, you’ll either need to sign up for a paid SiriusXM subscription or use your existing one to use the app. SiriusXM is offering new subscribers a free three-month trial for its most expensive Streaming Platinum tier, but after that, you’ll have to pay the $10.99 / month price.The Platinum tier includes over 425 channels, with 330 for ad-free music, two exclusive Howard Stern... Continue reading…

Image: Proletariat Blizzard Entertainment has acquired its first studio in more than 15 years. In a report from VentureBeat, the company has acquired the Boston-based studio Proletariat. As a result, Proletariat’s Spellbreak, a battle royale in which you fling spells at your enemies instead of bullets, will shut down.“After more than four years of elemental magic and spell combinations, we’ve made the decision to end development of Spellbreak,” the company wrote on its website. “The servers will be shut down as of early 2023.”Proletariat was founded in 2012 and launched its first game, World Zombination, on mobile in 2015. In addition to developing traditional games, Proletariat also worked on creating Twitch-integrated games that allowed viewers to... Continue reading…

Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure as the head of the Department of Homeland Security was perhaps best known for the family separation policy at the border. The recordings of crying toddlers, the children wrapped in silver foil blankets, the detention conditions likened to “cages” — this was her legacy. Nielsen was reviled by almost everyone from the center and leftwards. Ironically, President Trump himself disliked her, in part for not being tough enough on immigration, and would eventually force her out.Nielsen would be the last legal secretary of homeland security in the Trump administration. What would follow would be a chaotic parade involving governance by tweet, a thicket of laws and regulations, incorrectly amended paperwork, and a... Continue reading…

When former President George W. Bush outlined his national strategy for homeland security, the pitch was simple: America was under attack by a “terrorist threat,” and the country needed to protect itself from an enemy that “takes many forms, has many places to hide, and is often invisible.”It was in direct response to the 9/11 attack, and yet, the specifics of that terrorist threat were surprisingly vague. The imprecision could be read as paranoia. Or, more insidiously, you could see it as a way to broaden the definition of enemy to include any and all foreigners. Suddenly, immigrants were a threat to the “homeland.” And anyone else who would voice a dissenting opinion was a danger to national security. Rereading the strategic... Continue reading…

I’m old enough to remember what it was like to fly before 9/11 — there were no TSA lines, there was no PreCheck, and there certainly wasn’t any requirement to take off your shoes. In fact, there wasn’t any TSA at all.But 9/11 radically changed the way we move through an airport. The formation of the new Department of Homeland Security and the new Transportation Security Administration led to much more rigorous and invasive security measures for travelers trying to catch their flight.This year is the 20th anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA, and I think it’s safe to say that nobody enjoys waiting in the airport security line. And in the post-9/11 world, things like PreCheck are the great innovation of the... Continue reading…

Marissa Leshnov The Abdils decided Afghanistan was no longer safe after their 14-year-old son, Abdul-Azim, was kidnapped on his way home from school. For years, the Taliban abducted children for ransom or used them as leverage in negotiating with the Afghan police. As much as it pained them to abandon their son, Fazela and Hakeem Abdil had other children — two teenage daughters — to think about. They were faced with a difficult choice: stay in an increasingly dangerous Afghanistan or leave their home forever.Up until then, things had been peaceful for the Abdils. “We had a well-arranged life. We had work, a house. Life was pretty comfortable,” Hakeem says. But conditions in Kabul had grown worse when many assumed they’d get better. In February 2020,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge Software like Aim Lab and KovaaK’s are key parts of the esports ecosystem Continue reading…

Snapchat Plus will let subscribers customize the Snapchat icon. | Snap Starting this week, Snap will begin offering an optional subscription called Snapchat Plus that unlocks exclusive and early access features.Priced at $3.99 a month, the subscription is geared toward “the people who spend most of their time communicating with their closest friends on Snap,” the company’s SVP of Product, Jacob Andreou, tells The Verge. Dubbed Snapchat Plus, it’s Snap’s first real attempt at making money outside of advertising, though Andreou says there aren’t expectations for Plus to become a “material new revenue source.”At least initially, Snapchat Plus is mostly a cosmetic upgrade. The most notable features include the ability to change the style of the app’s icon, see who rewatched a story, and pin one of your... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge Once a means of supplementing an income, making assets and tools can now be a full-time gig Continue reading…

Millie Bobby Brown at the Stranger Things season 4 premiere. | Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown will star in a new Netflix film from the Russo brothers, directors of Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War. The Electric State is a retro-futuristic sci-fi movie that follows Brown, a robotic companion, and an “eccentric drifter” as she travels through the American West in search of her brother, Netflix said in its casting announcement.Away from the involvement of Brown and the Russo brothers, the most interesting aspect of The Electric State is that it’s based on an illustrated book by Simon Stålenhag. Stålenhag is the artist behind some incredible retro futuristic illustrations, and his other books include Tales from the Loop, which Amazon recently adapted into a TV series of its own.

The audio brand’s new noise-canceling headphones can hang with the very best Continue reading…

Photo by Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/picture alliance via Getty Images Brazil’s telecoms regulator Anatel has launched a public consultation on a proposal to make USB-C chargers mandatory for all smartphones sold in the country.It’s the latest example of lawmakers and regulators turning to USB-C as a common charging standard for phones. The EU passed a law on the matter earlier this month, making USB-C mandatory for a range of electronic gadgets (including smartphones) by the end of 2024, and in the US some Democrat politicians are pushing for similar legislation.“Aware of the aforementioned movements in the international market, Anatel’s technical area evaluated the topic and presented a proposal with a similar approach for application in the Brazilian market,” said Anatel in a blog post (English... Continue reading…

1Password will now let you securely share files and documents with anyone using just a link. The password manager previously started supporting secure password sharing with links last year, and this feature is now being expanded to include documents and files that are stored in 1Password.Sharing a document or file is as easy as sharing a password from 1Password, and the recipient doesn’t need to even use 1Password to access files. You can share a file with anyone through a link, and you can set an expiry date on the link or even restrict it so people have to verify their email address with a one-time code to view the file. Image: 1Password 1Password users can share files, documents, passwords, or just sensitive... Continue reading…

Tesla has laid off nearly 200 workers, most of them tasked with labeling data to help train the company’s Autopilot AI system. The layoffs — first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by TechCrunch — are the latest job losses at Tesla after CEO Elon Musk told company execs that the firm needed to reduce its headcount by about 10 percent.The layoffs centered on Tesla’s offices in San Mateo, California, where employees were working on the company’s driver-assistance feature Autopilot. Many of those affected were reportedly hourly workers tasked with labeling training data. Such work is essential for developing AI systems but often low-skilled and low-paid. In recent years, many companies have turned to cheaper sources of labor in... Continue reading…

The new Gmail UI sets buttons for Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet on one rail. | Image: Google Google started rolling out an updated user interface for Gmail in February that pulls Meet, Chat, and Spaces closer and applies more of its Material You styling effects. Starting today, it’s becoming opt-out instead of opt-in, so your account will switch over to the new view by default pretty soon.It’s not a huge change, but as Google transitions through its current flavor-of-the-week messaging app and weaves its Workspace suite into a better competitor for Office, this puts more of a focus on the updated experiences. Image: Google The old Gmail menu, with Chat and Meet aligned below your Gmail inboxes and labels. If you can’t tell what’s different here, the updated UI collects buttons for Mail, Meet, Spaces,... Continue reading…

Image: Hyper Did you buy one of Targus / Sanho / Hyper / HyperJuice’s nifty 100W or 65W USB-C chargers with stackable passthrough AC outlets that let you theoretically scale up to loads of powerful ports? I did — and today, I’m thinking twice about whether it belongs in my bedroom.Yesterday, tipster Marc-Antoine Courteau brought it to our attention that some of these devices are failing and not always in a friendly “ports stop working” way. Numerous Kickstarter backers say their units are overheating to the degree they can melt their plastic housing. “I’m lucky I was sitting with it, smelled the melting plastic, and immediately took action,” wrote one backer named Scott.So we asked Hyper’s PR team about it and were surprised by the company’s... Continue reading…

Belkin’s 3-in-1 BoostCharge Pro Charging Stand with MagSafe | Image: Belkin Belkin’s back at it again with its funky multi-device charging stand, but this one now supports fast charging for the Apple Watch Series 7. The new BoostCharge Pro three-in-one charger offers 15W fast charging for your iPhone 12 or 13 and 5W charging for your AirPods or AirPods Pro.Just as Apple claims its special magnetic fast-charging cable can charge your Series 7 Watch from 0 to 80 percent in 45 minutes, Belkin says its device can do the same. While the charging stand is compatible with all older Watch models, too, fast charging is only available for the Series 7 (because it’s the only one that has the feature). Image: Belkin The charger looks kinda weird without any devices on it. Design-wise, there... Continue reading…

The Montblanc Summit 3 will be the first Wear OS 3 watch to run on iOS. | Image: Montblanc The forthcoming Montblanc Summit 3 will not only run Wear OS 3, but it’ll be the first smartwatch on the new unified platform to support iOS — sort of.The news — initially reported by Wareable — was confirmed to The Verge by Qualcomm spokesperson Lauren Miller. The Summit 3 isn’t the first smartwatch to be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus platform, but it is the first to launch with Wear OS 3 already installed. The fact that it also supports iOS is a significant departure from other confirmed Wear OS 3 watches. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 lineup and the forthcoming Google Pixel Watch, for example, are exclusive to Android users.Older Wear OS 2 and Samsung Tizen-powered smartwatches, while never incredibly popular with... Continue reading…

Pinterest has a new CEO — and likely a new sense of urgency. | Image: Pinterest Ben Silbermann is stepping down as Pinterest’s CEO, the company announced on Tuesday. He’ll be replaced by Bill Ready, who has spent the last couple of years as head of Commerce, Payments & Next Billion Users at Google. Silbermann isn’t leaving the company, though: he’ll be Pinterest’s executive chairman, following in the path of a number of tech CEOs who have recently gone from the daily trenches of running their company to a relatively more relaxed seat in the boardroom.“Bill’s actually going to be a better CEO than I am for this next chapter,” Silbermann told The Wall Street Journal as part of his announcement. There’s only one way to read that: the time for the product dreamer founder is out. Pinterest’s next job is to make money. A... Continue reading…

Image: Sega When Sonic Frontiers debuted the first little bits of gameplay, fans immediately drew comparisons to Breath of the Wild. It wasn’t hard to do. We were shown Sonic racing through realistic, natural-looking environments, exploring great stone artifacts that dotted the landscape. There was no timer, no counter ticking up the number of rings acquired, just Sonic and a seemingly open world.And while Sonic Frontiers’ creative officer Takashi Iizuka understood why, to some fans, the game looks like Sega’s late-hour attempt to replicate BOTW’s success, it’s actually nothing like that. “We’re starting a design perspective that is totally different from what other open-world games are,” Iizuka said to me through a translator at Summer Game Fest... Continue reading…

Emoji as far as the eye can see. In the midst of an otherwise unremarkable new build of Android’s 13 developer beta, 9to5Google uncovered something fun: our annual Android Easter egg. This year’s hidden feature builds on the colorful splash screen from Android 12, this time filling it with emoji. Like, a lot of emoji.The way it functions in the current beta version (13.3) is much like last year — start the Easter egg by going to Settings > About phone > Android version, then tap the Android version three times rapidly. This reveals an analog clock widget; move the hands to 1 o’clock (that’s 13:00 in military time — get it?), and you’ll see a colorful array of spots pop up representing Material You’s customizable color theming.Here’s where it differs from last year:... Continue reading…

Sony is attempting to reach out to more than just PS5 gamers with its new InZone brand of gaming monitors and headsets. I got my hands on them in the video embedded above if you’d rather see or hear me talk about these gadgets.Made for PC but with specs to take full advantage of the PS5, along with Xbox Series X, the $899 InZone M9 is the flagship product of the bunch. It’s a 27-inch 4K IPS gaming monitor built to match the aesthetic of the PS5 while having basically every imaginable spec that gamers may universally want, sans OLED panel, of course. It has a 144Hz refresh rate (that’s not so common to find with a 4K screen), a 1ms response time, variable refresh rate (VRR, both for consoles and with G-Sync compatibility for Nvidia... Continue reading…

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Amazon is limiting customers to three units of emergency contraceptive pills a week in response to a spike in demand after the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights, the company told CNBC.Other retailers are also limiting purchases of drugs like Plan B and Aftera — CVS and Rite Aid are likewise limiting customers to three pills per customer. The companies say there is enough supply of the drugs but that they’re trying to keep them on the shelves consistently. The drugs, often called the morning-after pill, can prevent pregnancy if taken after unprotected sex.On the Amazon website, users can only select up to a quantity of three for Plan B. But as of publication, the website shows an option to select up to 30 units of My Choice,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of the difficulties of cryptocurrency is figuring out who to believe. Case in point: the conflict between Mark Lamb, CEO of CoinFlex, and Roger “Bitcoin Jesus” Ver, an early Bitcoin investor. Lamb says Ver owes his company $47 million and is the reason the company froze customer withdrawals last week. Ver denies this and says that, in fact, CoinFlex owes him money.Well, things have gotten worseCoinFlex, an exchange, froze withdrawals on June 27th, saying that it would restart withdrawals on June 30th with one condition: CoinFlex needs to sell tokens related to a debt owed by a “certain high net worth individual.” (The company did not initially name Ver.)Eleven days ago, we pointed out a few crypto firms with problems that could... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Text discovered in iOS 16 beta code indicated that Apple plans to drop iPad home hub support in the new update, but it turns out that’s not quite the full story. According to the company, the iPad isn’t losing support for what it can already do, but it won’t get an important upgrade that will be available later.“iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 will continue to support iPad as a home hub with no loss in functionality,” Apple spokesperson Catherine Franklin said in a statement to The Verge. While that seems promising on its face, there is a big asterisk. Apple is planning to introduce a new architecture to the new Home app in iPadOS 16, and the iPad won’t be supported as a home hub with that architecture.Here’s Franklin’s full statement: “Alongside... Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge SpaceX emailed Starlink customers today asking for help in its battle against Dish Network over radio frequencies for its Starlink internet-from-space effort. Some Starlink customers received an email urging them to contact the Federal Communications Commission and members of Congress in order to support SpaceX in the ongoing dispute.“Today we ask for your support in ending a lobbying campaign that threatens to make Starlink unusable for you and the vast majority of our American customers,” the email reads in bold.“Today we ask for your support in ending a lobbying campaign that threatens to make Starlink unusable”Currently, SpaceX and Dish are squabbling over a range of radio frequencies known as the 12GHz band. SpaceX uses these... Continue reading…

You can now hover over an image to save it to your collection. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft Edge is building what seems like a mini version of Pinterest inside its browser. Its Collections window will soon start displaying a feed of recommended content based on the topics you’ve saved.As someone who has used Edge since the browser first came out, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I never really knew much about Collections (until now, at least). So if you’re anything like me, here’s a quick rundown. Collections lets you save and organize webpages, text snippets, and images you find on the web. You can make a collection for, say, recipes to house links to all your favorite meals or even one for graphic design that contains inspirational images for your future work. The new inspiration feed will serve up content... Continue reading…

Sony is at it yet again with repeat restocks. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Yesterday was a pleasant surprise on the PlayStation 5 console restock front. Sony opened up a public queue for PS5 consoles, and unlike many times before, it stayed open and viable for much longer than usual. Now, there’s another one happening right now, and you can queue up without an invite.There’s no guarantee that this one will be as easy to get into as yesterday’s, but if you have not bought a PS5 direct from Sony before, it’s worth a try. Once you get through the wait time, you should be offered up a few different options for PS5 consoles, including the regular disc-equipped system for $499, the Digital Edition for $399 (though that one seems to usually sell out the fastest), and bundle versions with Horizon Forbidden West for... Continue reading…

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. | HBO Max Rather than marrying Kite Man (hell yeah) in the season 2 finale of HBO Max’s animated Harley Quinn series, Poison Ivy came to her senses, ditched her fiancé, and finally admitted to Harley that the romantic feelings between them were mutual. After driving off into the sunset with one another, Harley and Ivy are back in the first trailer for Harley Quinn’s upcoming third season and ready to share their love with the world.Though Harley (Kaley Cuoco) and Ivy (Lake Bell) were able to escape from Kite Man’s botched wedding unscathed, at least some of Gotham’s other villains who were in attendance were captured, like Clayface (Alan Tudyk) and King Shark (Ron Funches). The new trailer finds Harley and Ivy still basking in the glow of being... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook and Instagram are removing posts from users that offer help accessing abortion pills, saying they violate a policy around pharmaceuticals.Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday, social media users have shared posts offering to mail abortion pills to people whose access to abortion has been stripped away or will be soon.But users are finding their offers quickly removed or restricted, as reported by Motherboard and the Associated Press. A test Facebook post by an AP reporter offering to mail abortion pills was removed within one minute. A test by a Verge reporter yielded similar results, with a post offering abortion pills being flagged within two minutes.The sale, gifting, and transfer of... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Facebook Groups are about to get some big changes, and if you’ve used Discord, the new approach should seem pretty darn familiar. Meta is testing a new left-aligned sidebar and channels list for Groups, and the changes are giving me some serious Discord vibes. Meta is even evoking Discord with a purple accent color.Central to the changes is a new sidebar that lists your groups with rounded square icons. Like with Discord and Slack, you’ll be able to pin groups so that they show up first on the list. Individual groups will have a new menu that seems lifted right from Discord. The menu organizes things like channels, Messenger conversations, and events one after another. Image: Meta Stop me if you’ve seen... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Waymo will deliver home goods for Wayfair using its fleet of autonomous semi-trailer trucks, the company announced Tuesday.The deliveries will take place as part of a pilot that’s being conducted by Waymo and JB Hunt Transport Services to test out self-driving trucks along certain shipping routes in Texas. One of JB Hunt’s customers is furniture and home goods giant Wayfair, which will begin sending out deliveries using Waymo’s fleet for a six-week test this July and August.a six-week test this July and AugustThe deliveries will take place in Texas, with Waymo’s Class 8 autonomous truck hauling goods along Interstate 45 between facilities in Houston and Dallas, which was the route used by Waymo and JB Hunt during the original pilot... Continue reading…

Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) in Columbia Pictures’ Ghostbusters: Afterlife | Image: CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Pandemic delays caused a wider-than-expected gap between our first peek at Ghostbusters: Afterlife and when it actually came to theaters, but Sony is setting up a tighter schedule for the follow-up. After director Jason Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan confirmed the sequel earlier this month, Sony has added it to the schedule with a planned theatrical release date of December 20th, 2023.When Ghostbusters: Afterlife eventually reached theaters in December 2021, it eventually grossed $200 million worldwide, so a sequel isn’t a big surprise, and the Ghostbuster universe is also expanding with a new animated series for Netflix that Reitman and Kenan are producing.As scheduled, that release date sets it up squarely against a pair of heavy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After months of pressure from Republicans, Google has a new plan to keep campaign emails from being marked as spam, according to new documents obtained by The Verge.Google’s plan, first reported by Axios, would allow for candidates, political party committees, and leadership political action committees to apply for a special “pilot program” that would make their messages exempt from Gmail’s spam detection systems. The idea was proposed to the Federal Elections Commission in a June 21st filing asking for the body’s approval.Google spokesperson José Castañeda confirmed in a statement Tuesday that the company made the request to the FEC. He described the program as an opportunity to “help improve inboxing rates for political bulk senders... Continue reading…

Image: Sky Mavis Ronin Bridge, the link that enables users to transfer funds to and from accounts in the “play to earn” Axie Infinity game, has reopened following a $625 million theft that took place in March. Sky Mavis, the developer group behind Axie Infinity and the Ronin blockchain that powers the game, announced that players can now use the bridge to make deposits and withdrawals.Since March, the Ronin Bridge has been closed off as Sky Mavis worked to bolster its security protocols and recover users’ funds. The attack went unnoticed for six days until a user tried to withdraw funds and couldn’t do it. In a postmortem, Sky Mavis blamed a spear-phishing attack that compromised an employee’s account, saying that person no longer works with the... Continue reading…

Image: Bored Ape Yacht Club The company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club has sued conceptual artist Ryder Ripps for selling duplicates of its Bored Ape non-fungible tokens or NFTs. The lawsuit, filed in a California court this weekend, accuses Ripps of a “calculated, intentional, and willful” scheme to damage BAYC while promoting his own copycat work.Ripps and Yuga Labs have been at odds for months, in part because of Ripps’ RR/BAYC NFT series. The series used BAYC images but connected them with a different crypto token and sold them for the equivalent of around $200 apiece, a bargain compared to the real thing, which currently sell for around $100,000 on the low end. “This is no mere monkey business. It is a deliberate effort to harm Yuga Labs at the expense of... Continue reading…

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images I hope you all had a good weekend. I certainly wasn’t huddled in a ball of anxiety about the very fabric of women’s rights in the US being stripped away, no sir.On that note, there is a lot going on in the audio world in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Podcasters are organizing, Slate is doing a stunt campaign in areas where abortion is now restricted, and Howard Stern is running for president, maybe.But first, a very special Hot Pod announcement (elegant transition, right?)Hot Pod Summit goes HollywoodBig news: we’re bringing Hot Pod Summit to Los Angeles. On November 3rd at KCRW, we’ll have a day of conversations about how the podcasting industry is being shaped by West Coast tech giants and becoming... Continue reading…

Image: Arm Arm is announcing its new flagship Immortalis GPU today, its first to include hardware-based ray tracing on mobile. As PCs and the latest Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles are all gradually moving toward impressive ray-traced visuals, Immortalis-G715 is designed to be the Arm’s first GPU to deliver the same on Android phones and tablets.Built on top of Mali, a GPU that’s used by the likes of MediaTek and Samsung, Immortalis is designed with 10–16 cores in mind and promises a boost of 15 percent over the previous generation premium Mali GPUs. Arm sees Immortalis as the start of a transition to ray tracing on mobile following its success with the 8 billion Mali GPUs that have shipped to date. Image: Arm The new... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Volkswagen sold a minority stake in its electric vehicle charging division, Electrify America, to Siemens in a deal that values the company at $2.45 billion. The two companies are jointly investing $450 million to double the number of Electrify America charging stations in the US and Canada by 2026. (The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.)The news comes amid a spike in EV sales in the US — although they still only represent a fraction of overall car sales. It also comes as the Biden administration, fueled with $5 billion in funding as part of the president’s infrastructure plan, embarks on a plan to build 500,000 EV chargers by 2030.The news comes amid a spike in EV sales in the USThat plan will rely significantly on... Continue reading…

The waterproof Kindle Paperwhite from 2018 starts at just $69.99 instead of $129.99. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Planning on bringing books to the pool or beach this summer? Get an affordable and waterproof e-reader instead. The last-gen version of Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite is available at nearly half off its usual price. Regularly $129.99, right now you can buy the ad-supported, 8GB model with a green or red backing for $69.99 instead of $129.99 from Amazon. If you want more storage, you can buy the 32GB ad-supported model for $89.99 instead of $159.99 in black or blue, both of which are new all-time low prices.The 2018 e-reader is waterproof, so you won’t need to worry if it gets wet, nor will you need to be concerned about recharging since the battery life can last weeks. It boasts a high-resolution six-inch, 300ppi panel as well as support... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge The internet has made it easier than ever for artists to get their work in front of a large audience — the trick is making that a viable career. This collection of stories explores how creatives from various disciplines are utilizing platforms like Twitch, TikTok, Etsy, and others to turn their passions into something sustainable. That could mean resurrecting centuries-old blacksmithing techniques on YouTube or building a new kind of crowdfunding platform. Or it could involve becoming an expert at designing immersive Fortnite worlds. Whatever the project, these creatives are finding ways to get paid. Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge There are a variety of different benchmarks to measure different aspects of your system Continue reading…

Persona 5. The Nintendo Switch is getting some big-name roleplaying games. At a Nintendo Direct Mini today, Nintendo revealed that Persona 5 Royal (along with its predecessors Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden) will be coming to the Switch. Persona 5 is launching on October 21st and will be preceded by Nier: Automata on October 6th. Both are seminal RPGs that originally launched in 2017; you can check out our original reviews of P5 and Automata. (Nintendo says to expect more details on Persona 3 and 4 “soon.”)The announcements were the highlights of today’s event, but there were a handful of other notable reveals and updates as well. Here’s what you may have missed:Games and demos out todayAs per usual, Nintendo didn’t just announce new... Continue reading…