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Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images The US Federal Trade Commission has ordered Harley-Davidson and generator company MWE Investments to stop voiding customer warranties over repairs, marking a new step in the FTC’s fight over right-to-repair issues.The order covers Harley-Davidson’s motorcycles and Westinghouse outdoor generators and related equipment, which is manufactured by MWE. Both companies must remove illegal terms in their warranties that discouraged customers from using third-party parts and repair services, and the warranties must inform consumers that they can make third-party repairs without affecting their coverage. They also have to proactively inform buyers of their rights and order officially authorized dealers to avoid deceiving customers about the... Continue reading…

Pools and phones don’t play well together. | Image: Australia Competition and Consumer Commission / Samsung Australia Samsung Australia has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay a $14 million (about $9.7 million USD) fine for a misleading marketing campaign, as spotted by PhoneArena. The ads in question suggested that some of its water-resistant phones could be used in pools and at beaches, which Samsung’s own website advises against.The ads ran between March 2016 and October 2018, depicting Galaxy A-series, S7-series, and S8-series phones. They’re all rated IP68, which means you can fully submerge them in water for an extended amount of time — in this case, up to 30 minutes to a depth of 1.5 meters (about five feet). But that protection only extends to freshwater — saltwater and chlorinated pool water are a different matter. I... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Juul has to remove its e-cigarettes from the market in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration announced today. The agency rejected the company’s application to sell tobacco- and menthol-flavored e-cigarettes.“We recognize these make up a significant part of the available products and many have played a disproportionate role in the rise in youth vaping,” said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in a statement.The FDA said that it rejected Juul’s application because there wasn’t enough evidence to evaluate any potential toxicological risks of Juul’s products.E-cigarette and vaping companies have to get clearance from the FDA in order for their products to be marketed and sold. The agency deferred enforcing the policy, in place... Continue reading…

Toyota issued a global recall of its 2023 bZ4X electric crossover SUV less than two months after the vehicle was released. The automaker said the hub bolts on the wheel can become loose while driving, which could cause the entire wheel to detach. Naturally, Toyota is warning owners not to drive their vehicles until the problem is fixed.The recall represents a setback for the world’s largest automaker, which has pledged to spend $17.6 billion to roll out 30 battery-electric models by 2030. The bZ4X, which began customer deliveries less than two months ago, is seen as the tip of the spear in Toyota’s belated attempt to shift to electric vehicles.Toyota says the cause of the loose hub bolts is still being investigatedToyota says the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The theme of today’s Verge Deals roundup is that, well, there is no theme. We’re just a few weeks out from Amazon’s Prime Day extravaganza, happening on July 12th and 13th, and it’s typical to see a relative calm before the storm of deals arrives. Why not kick things off today with a stellar deal on some already inexpensive true wireless earbuds? Anker’s Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro (in black) are just $99.99 at Best Buy as part of the retailer’s deal of the day. They normally cost $169.99, and normal sale prices typically sit around $130.These $100 earbuds might be exactly what you’re after if you need active noise cancellation (ANC), several ear and wing tips included in the box for a cozy custom fit, and Bluetooth multipoint support,... Continue reading…

Look, you should really just play Inscryption. | Image: Inscryption One of the best games of last year, Inscryption, has been released on Mac and Linux after previously being exclusively available for Windows PCs, its director Daniel Mullins has announced. Inscryption is a deck-building card-battling roguelike but with a fantastically dark and mysterious metanarrative that elevates it from “interesting” to “utterly engrossing.” Both my colleague Ash Parrish as well as our friends over at Polygon picked it as their game of the year for 2021.Inscryption isn’t a particularly graphically intensive game, and the system requirements listed on its Steam page aren’t very arduous. This means you shouldn’t have any issues running it on any relatively recent MacBooks, though be sure to check the specifics of your... Continue reading…

Street Fighter has been around since 1987, starting life as an arcade phenomenon before eventually selling an estimated 47 million copies across various iterations and platforms. Even still, Takayuki Nakayama believes it can reach a much larger audience. “I want to make a Street Fighter game that everyone can play, not just core fans,” he says. “I want to share the love that I have for Street Fighter with as wide of an audience as possible.”Nakayama is the game director on Street Fighter 6, which is due to launch next year. It’s a game that looks incredible in motion but also one that makes some key changes to the series’ formula in an attempt to broaden the audience, not just for Street Fighter but for fighting games in general.“I see... Continue reading…

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images At the start of the pandemic, demand for talk therapy apps skyrocketed. Prominent players, like BetterHelp and Talkspace, saw their downloads nearly double throughout the first few months of lockdown in 2020. Now, lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are demanding details on how these companies protect the privacy of their users.In letters to BetterHelp and Talkspace executives on Thursday, Warren — along with Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) — called on the mental health companies to explain how their apps collect and use data obtained from their patients. Specifically, lawmakers requested information on the apps’ relationships with online advertisers, data brokers, and social media platforms like Facebook as well... Continue reading…

The game is coming to Switch in just a few months. | Image: Hello Games The huge space exploration game No Man’s Sky will be available on the Nintendo Switch on October 7th, developer Hello Games revealed Thursday. That’s a bit later than the summer timeline announced in February, but it’s good to have a concrete date to look forward to. Physical and digital editions will be released on launch day.In No Man’s Sky, you explore a universe that’s largely procedurally generated, and the game has so far been available on more powerful platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X / S, and PC. We’ll have to wait and see exactly how well the game performs on Nintendo’s comparatively less powerful console, but Hello Games’ years-long commitment to improving the game (one update hit just last month) indicates the... Continue reading…

The Poco F4 (left) and X4 GT (right) feature rapid charging and screens with fast refresh rates. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Xiaomi has announced the Poco F4 and Poco X4 GT, offering global versions of budget-oriented devices previously released in China. The €399 (about $418) Poco F4 is mostly a rebranding of the Redmi K40S, with a Snapdragon 870 processor, an OLED screen with fast refresh rate, stabilized main camera, and fast wired charging. The performance-focused Poco X4 GT will cost €379 (about $398) includes a MediaTek Dimensity 8100 chipset, 6.6-inch 144Hz LCD, and high-capacity battery, also with fast wired charging. Simply put, they offer specs that put our current crop of midrange phones to shame — if they ever made it to the US.The Poco F4’s 870 processor is carried over from the Poco F3, and it’s a capable flagship-ish chipset with 5G support.... Continue reading…

Urban Sky, a Colorado-based company focused on collecting images and data of the Earth using small stratospheric balloons, says it is officially entering commercial operations after three years of operating partly in stealth and raising funding. The company says it is ready to start serving customers with its balloons, which can be deployed from the back of a pickup truck and ascend into the sky in just minutes.Specifically, the company offers what it calls “microballoons,” high-altitude balloons that can float to the stratosphere carrying a small payload and maintain a constant position over an area. About the size of a Volkswagen bus at launch, these balloons ultimately inflate to be the size of a small car garage in the air. That’s... Continue reading…

How edited messages are supposed to look. | Image: Apple The ability to edit and unsend messages was one of the flagship features of iOS 16 announced earlier this month, but the functionality may not work well if you’re messaging anyone who’s not using the latest version of Apple’s software. The latest iOS developer beta 16 includes a messy workaround to allow newly editable iMessages to be received on iPhones without iOS 16, 9to5Mac reports. It could prove annoying for anyone in an iMessage group chat using an older iPhone or Android.Rather than simply seeing the edited version of a message, if someone running iOS 16’s second beta tries to edit an iMessage sent to a device with an older version of the software, then the latter will receive the edit as a second text, preceded by the words... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon has revealed an experimental Alexa feature that allows the AI assistant to mimic the voices of users’ dead relatives.The company demoed the feature at its annual MARS conference, showing a video in which a child asks Alexa to read a bedtime story in the voice of his dead grandmother.“As you saw in this experience, instead of Alexa’s voice reading the book, it’s the kid’s grandma’s voice,” said Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s head scientist for Alexa AI. Prasad introduced the clip by saying that adding “human attributes” to AI systems was increasingly important “in these times of the ongoing pandemic, when so many of us have lost someone we love.”“While AI can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last,”... Continue reading…

TikTok on a Vizio TV. | Image: Vizio Vizio has become the latest smart TV manufacturer to get a TikTok app, allowing owners to watch the short-form focused video platform on the big screen. It’s just the latest manufacturer to add TikTok to its TV platform, after the app came to Samsung and LG’s TVs, Android TV, and Amazon’s Fire TV platforms last year. Vizio says you’ll be able to browse TikTok’s Discover feed, or link an account to watch video content from the For You and Following feeds.The apps are arriving as TikTok is allowing users to upload longer and longer videos to its historically short-form service. In February, TikTok expanded its maximum video length to 10 minutes, at which point it probably makes sense to watch it on the big screen. That said, TikTok’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is testing new methods for users to verify their age, including an AI tool built by a third-party company, Yoti, that estimates how old you are just by scanning your face.Officially, you have to be at least 13 years old to sign up for an Instagram account, but for years the company made little effort to enforce this rule. Until 2019, it didn’t even bother to ask new users their birthdate, let alone try to verify this information. After being raked over the coals by privacy and child safety experts, though, Instagram has introduced more and more age-verification features, as well as methods to separate younger users from adults.Users can ask friends to verify their age, or have their face scanned by AICurrently, Instagram... Continue reading…

Image: Brave Brave Search has launched a new feature that gives you a way to create or apply custom filters that change the way its results are ranked. It’s called “Goggles,” and it could potentially help uncover sources you might not find right away on traditional search engines like Google.Brave has some demos ready for users to try today, including ones that prioritize posts from smaller tech blogs and filter out posts from the 1,000 most-viewed sites on the web. There’s even a Goggle to exclude posts from Pinterest — because Brave clearly knows the frustration of trying to find an image and getting a Pinterest post with no source. Brave says these Goggles are just for demonstrative purposes, and developers can expand on or fork them. It will... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple will no longer let you use an iPad as a home hub to control HomeKit accessories starting with iOS 16, MacRumors reports. Text apparently found in iOS 16’s second developer beta by MacRumors contributing writer Steve Moser spells out the change.“A home hub is required to take advantage of features like receiving accessory notifications and allowing other people to control your home,” text in the Home app reportedly reads. “You will not be able to view shared homes until those homes are also upgraded to the latest HomeKit. iPad will no longer be supported as a home hub.”“Only Apple TV and HomePod are supported as home hubs.”If the change goes into effect as the found text suggests, it means you’ll need to use a HomePod, HomePod... Continue reading…

Farmers weed their rice fields in Rarampadende Village, Indonesia, on September 18th, 2020. | Photo by Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Can gene-editing technology CRISPR create new crops that help fight climate change as they grow? That’s what a group of researchers hopes to do with $11 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The funding will go toward efforts to enhance plants — starting with rice — and soil so that they’re better at trapping carbon dioxide. The effort, which was announced last week, is being led by the Innovative Genomics Institute, which was founded by Nobel laureate and co-inventor of CRISPR Jennifer Doudna.“[Jennifer] and I saw eye to eye on climate and how big of a problem it is in the world. And we just didn’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore,” says Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) executive director Brad Ringeisen.“We... Continue reading…

Photo by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images FedEx will soon take photos of packages at your doorstep to provide proof of delivery when they don’t require a signature.“This is something e-commerce merchants and customers have been asking for, and we are proud to be the first to announce this service will be available to residential customers,” Brie Carere, FedEx’s chief customer officer, said in a press release announcing the program today.The free service will be available for both FedEx Express and FedEx Ground delivery customers with and without a login to the FedEx Delivery Manager, the company’s free portal.The new program will obviously be a good source of protection for FedEx, and it should also help business owners whose customers report that their package hasn’t been... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook Pay has officially become Meta Pay, but his post is mainly focused on what the company hopes to build in the future — “a wallet for the metaverse.” While Meta Pay is essentially the same tool as it was before, just with Meta branding, Zuckerberg says the company is working on something that will let users manage their identities, items, and payment methods while making their way through the digital world that Meta bets will be the future.The company has hinted at these plans before — its May announcement of the Meta Pay rebranded also mentioned that it was “scoping out what a single wallet experience might look like” with regards to making payments and storing your identity and... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For the first few years of Instagram’s existence, it was a pain to hide Stories from people. You had to dig into an individual Story’s settings and select followers to hide it from. Then, if you wanted to let those followers see the next Story, you had to go into that Story’s settings and undo the block.But in 2018, Instagram launched the close friends feature, which makes it much easier to share content with a limited group. Once you’ve created a close friends list, you’ll have the option to share a Story with just that list. If you’re posting content that could be controversial, personal, or NSFW, the option can save you some stress.In case you don’t know how to add folks to your close friends list, we’ll show you how to get... Continue reading…

General Motors is bringing artificial intelligence into the vehicle inspection process.The automaker is making an undisclosed “strategic investment” in Israeli startup UVeye, which makes vehicle diagnostic systems that use sensors and AI to quickly identify damaged parts or maintenance issues. The investment in UVeye was made by GM Ventures, the automaker’s venture fund, which also has investments in a variety of other AI-themed startups.GM will sell UVeye’s technology to its dealer network to upgrade their vehicle inspection systemsAs part of the collaboration, GM will sell UVeye’s technology to its dealer network to upgrade their vehicle inspection systems. (The company’s systems are already being trialed at a small number of GM... Continue reading…

Image: eBay eBay made its biggest move yet into the world of digital collectibles with news today of the company acquiring NFT marketplace KnownOrigin. The online auction company is keeping lips sealed on the deal’s value but confirmed in the press release that the deal is closed as of June 21st.“This partnership will help us attract a new wave of NFT creators and collectors,” said KnownOrigin co-founder David Moore.KnownOrigin describes itself as “one the world’s first, and largest, NFT Marketplaces,” and it currently ranks No. 12 on all-time trading volume for Ethereum-backed NFTs at $7.8 million, according to DappRadar. Higher ranked, more popular marketplaces include OpenSea (No. 1) with an all-time trading value at $30.43 billion and... Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios Though Kamala Khan’s powers were significantly reworked for the MCU, the latest episode of Disney Plus’ Ms. Marvel series might be setting up a reveal that connects its hero and her abilities to the original Captain Marvel of Marvel’s comic books.Kamala doesn’t initially think all that much of the vintage bangle she receives in a gift package from her grandmother Sana (Samina Ahmad) in Ms. Marvel’s first episode. But when she actually puts it on, she immediately realizes that there’s much more to the heirloom than meets the eye. In addition to transporting Kamala (at least mentally) to another plane bathed in neon light, the bangle unlocks her power to generate glowing constructs made out of an unidentified energy that comes from within... Continue reading…

More or less confirmation that an AR headset is coming. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tim Cook teased that Apple’s working on an augmented reality, or AR, product in an interview with state-run outlet China Daily, telling AR fans to “stay tuned and you will see what we have to offer.” It reads as a direct hint that the company is working on some sort of headset, which has been rumored for years — unless, of course, he thinks people will actually be excited about using ARKit apps on their phones.In the clip, brought to our attention by 9to5Mac, the interviewer asks Cook what he thinks the key factors are for an AR product to be successful. Cook responds by saying that he “couldn’t be more excited” about AR, despite it being “in the very early innings” of its evolution.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is testing a new long-form blogging feature named Twitter Notes, the company confirmed in a tweet. The platform says the feature is currently available to a select group of users in the US, UK, Canada, and Ghana, and that people “in most countries” can read Notes on and off Twitter.Twitter shared how the feature will work in two separate GIFs. Users can click into the “Write” tab to start writing a Note, and can then embed the Note into their tweet when finished. Several writers have already published Notes on the platform, which appear as long-form posts that can have tweets, videos, and images mixed in.

Ewan McGregor in Obi-Wan Kenobi. | Image: Lucasfilm You may know where the story is headed, but the journey is still worth it Continue reading…

CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo left MindGeek following a report from The New Yorker. | Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagic Pornhub owner MindGeek has lost two high-level executives: CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo, as first reported by Variety. Their resignation comes shortly after The New Yorker released a scathing report detailing the holes in the company’s content moderation system, which has failed to address videos depicting underage and non-consenting individuals.Despite the timeliness of The New Yorker’s report, a spokesperson for the company told Variety that MindGeek had been planning a leadership change since earlier this year. The representative also said Antoon and Tassillo will remain shareholders in the company and that MindGeek is currently searching for their replacements. MindGeek didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request... Continue reading…

Polestar, one of the first automakers to adopt Google’s Android Automotive operating system for its electric vehicles, is now throwing a bone to all the iOS users. The company announced that its Polestar 2 electric sedan now supports Apple CarPlay, thanks to a recent over-the-air software update.People who own both a Polestar 2 and an iPhone will now be able to mirror their phone’s display on the vehicle’s 11-inch portrait-oriented touchscreen. In addition to accessing some of their apps, CarPlay users will also be able to use Siri to change music or find locations on Apple Maps.Polestar made a name for itself by establishing a direct link to Apple’s main rival, GoogleThe introduction of CarPlay support is interesting because P... Continue reading…

Image: Summer Game Fest Geoff Keighley isn’t sure what E3 is anymore. Even before COVID forced the cancellation of the in-person version of the giant video game commercial masquerading as an industry trade show three years running now, the event was already a pale, big-three-publisher-less imitation of its former self.E3 is coming back. The organizers said so in a very “for realsies this time, you guys” kind of way. But when I asked Keighley about the prospect of E3 and Summer Game Fest — affectionately known as Not-E3 or, my personal favorite, Keigh-3 — coexisting next year, he just didn’t seem convinced they would need to.“E3 said they’re coming back. Which I don’t know what that means, right?” he told me at Summer Game Fest’s new in-person component in Los... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is paying the Wikimedia Foundation to help serve up the most accurate and up-to-date information on its search engine. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group behind Wikipedia, says Google is one of the first companies to buy into its commercial Enterprise service.Launched last year, Wikimedia Enterprise allows customers (like Google) who reuse massive chunks of information from Wikimedia’s services to access its content more efficiently. Instead of relying on free data dumps and publicly available APIs (application programming interfaces) to scrape information from Wikipedia’s web pages, Wikimedia Enterprise lets customers use APIs better suited to recycling and spitting out information on a much larger scale. The service... Continue reading…

We have big news for listeners of The Vergecast, The Verge’s flagship podcast. We are now publishing twice a week — on Wednesdays and Fridays!On Fridays, it’ll be the same show you know and love, with Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz hanging out and talking about tech news. On Wednesdays, we’re going to change it up a bit, and use the show to share even more of the stories The Verge team is covering. David will be joined by The Verge’s expert staffers in a deep exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into yours.So, here is our first Wednesday edition of The Vergecast. David starts the show talking to Verge senior reporter Adi Robertson about the prototype VR headsets from... Continue reading…

The Govee DreamView G1 Pro Gaming Light is on sale for $20 off when you buy it direct from Govee. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Want to add some fun colors to your gaming space? Right now, Govee is offering its first discount on its new DreamView G1 Pro gaming lights. The camera-powered, dynamic LED kit typically retails for $179.99, but Govee is selling it for $159.99 for a limited time. These lights can match the colors displayed on your monitor while gaming, which can help create a fun and immersive experience. They also come with four preset game-match modes that deliver various effects, like a racing mode that matches fast-moving colors by splitting up the light bar into smaller color segments and moving pulsing waves of colors up and down.While these lights are also relatively easy to install, just note you’ll have to mount Govee’s camera to the top of... Continue reading…

The Apex Pro Mini Wireless. | Image: SteelSeries The SteelSeries Apex Pro Mini and Apex Pro Mini Wireless are a pair of new compact mechanical keyboards that come with adjustable switches, a feature that’s made SteelSeries’ previous full-size 2019 Apex Pro one of the most capable gaming keyboards around. The Pro Mini costs $179.99 (€219.99), while the Pro Mini Wireless costs $239.99 (€279.99).Both keyboards use SteelSeries’ new OmniPoint 2.0 switches, which are an upgraded version of the OmniPoint switches used in the original Apex Pro. Unlike traditional mechanical switches, which use metal contacts to register a keypress, these linear OmniPoint switches use magnetic hall effect sensors, meaning they can sense exactly how far a switch has been pressed. Image:... Continue reading…

Slack is upgrading its Huddles feature with video chat, multi-user screen sharing, and a per-huddle chat thread. The company announced the updates at its Frontiers conference, which for Slack is both a chance to unveil new products and to share its thoughts about the future of work. With Huddles, Slack’s vision is simple: people need more, richer ways to chat, but they don’t need more meetings.Huddles originally launched a year ago, and they’ve worked for Slack precisely because they don’t feel like meetings. The company always imagined the feature, which you can use to have a quick audio call inside Slack, as more akin to walking over to someone’s desk rather than sending them a calendar invite. They were audio-only; you couldn’t... Continue reading…

Virtual furniture can be placed in an image of your room. | Image: Ikea Ikea is launching a new virtual design tool today that can make it easier to imagine how its furniture might look in your home. Ikea Kreativ’s Scene Scanner feature lets you scan a room using Ikea’s iOS app, erase your existing furniture, and then place virtual furniture in its place. If you don’t want to scan your own home, there are also over 50 virtual showrooms to place furniture in. Naturally, the process is designed to encourage you to order this furniture for real after browsing the virtual versions.After playing around with a pre-release version of the Ikea Kreativ Scene Scanner app developed by Ingka Group (Ikea’s largest store franchisee), I can say that the new experience is potentially very useful, even if it’s a little... Continue reading…

Image: Fitbit Fitbit is launching a new Sleep Profile feature for premium members that will categorize users as one of six animal characters, the company announced today. Users are grouped based on 10 sleep metrics — five of which are new to Fitbit.The research team wanted to give people more information about how they sleep, says Karla Gleichauf, the senior research scientist at Google who led the research for the feature. “We were also influenced by some fun things, like game design or the Harry Potter quizzes about what house you’re in,” she says. “People love to be categorized. So, we said, ‘I think this is just really fun’ — it’s another kind of identity to people.”For example: Fitbit co-founder James Park is a dolphin, Gleichauf says. People... Continue reading…

The Summit 3 in black, bicolor, and silver. | Image: Montblanc Montblanc could be the first manufacturer outside of Samsung to release a smartwatch running Wear OS 3, the latest version of Google’s wrist-worn operating system. Like its previous smartwatches, the Summit 3 launches with an eye-watering price tag, and its focus is more on being a fashion accessory than pushing the boundaries of what a smartwatch is capable of. It’ll cost €1,250 (around $1,314 USD) when it goes on sale globally on July 15th.Wear OS 3 is the most significant update to Google’s smartwatch operating system in years, but it’s only currently available on a pair of Samsung smartwatches: the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, which released last year. That means we’re yet to experience the software without... Continue reading…

What better time for this announcement than Pride Month? | Image: Google Google is adding a label to Maps that lets people identify their business as being LGBTQ-plus-owned, joining Yelp, which has a similar label. While Google Maps has had labels like LGBTQ-friendly and Transgender Safe Space for years, the company says that the new business identity attribute will help people who choose to support diverse businesses and could help queer people find nearby communities.Just like with Google’s other labels for Black-owned, Latino-owned, veteran-owned, and women-owned businesses, the LGBTQ-plus-owned label has to be added by the verified owner of the business profile. (It’s not like other Maps metadata, which can be added by community members.) The labels can show up throughout the Google Maps interface, and... Continue reading…

Brooke Minters Brooke Minters has joined The Verge as editorial director for audio, overseeing its podcast operation, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel today announced. In her new role, Minters will develop The Verge’s audio slate, launching new shows and working to grow existing shows, which include The Vergecast and Decoder with Nilay Patel. Minters began her role on June 21st. The Verge’s managing editor Alex Cranz will officially join The Verge’s decade-old flagship podcast The Vergecast as co-host; the show will also expand to two episodes a week, with the new Wednesday episode hosted by Verge editor-at-large David Pierce.“We started The Vergecast before launching The Verge itself, and our dedicated fans have always been a key part of The Verge’s... Continue reading…

Image: Twitter Twitter is partnering with Shopify on an integration that will keep a seller’s Twitter profile page updated with direct links to the products they have for sale. Shopify users who install the new Twitter add-on can connect their Twitter account with Shopify and then start building out a store on Twitter with the platform’s Shop Module.The new add-on automatically loads a merchant’s products from Shopify onto Twitter, which then appear in a carousel on the Twitter profile. Users can browse through or expand the carousel to view up to 50 products — selecting a product redirects users to the merchant’s website for purchase. Image: Twitter The integration with Shopify lets merchants sync products with Twitter. S... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is preparing to add mouse and keyboard support to its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service that streams Xbox games to TVs, PCs, mobile devices, and more. The software giant teased the addition earlier this year, and now it’s encouraging game developers to get ready for mouse and keyboard support and some big latency improvements on Xbox Cloud Gaming soon.“Xbox has been supporting keyboard and mouse for a few years now, and we’re working on adding it to streaming for PC users,” explains Morgan Brown, a software engineer on Microsoft’s Xbox game streaming team. “But you can start adding it to your game right now and your console keyboard and mouse users will appreciate it. It will light up in streaming once we’ve finished adding... Continue reading…

Maximum efficiency, major annoyance Continue reading…

The new-look Google News makes local news and custom topics easier to find. | Image: Google Google News has been given a fresh lick of paint for desktop users on its 20th birthday, with a redesign that gives more prominence to local news and personalized content.Users can now more easily customize the topics they’re shown by hitting the blue “customize” button in the right hand column (it appears just below “Picks For You”). They can also add multiple locations to the “Local News” section by hitting the settings button to the right of the Local News header.In practical terms, the biggest change is that various categories of news — like world, business, science, and health — have been moved from the left-hand side of the screen to a menu bar at the top. You can compare the before and after in the screenshots of the new... Continue reading…

It’s called Proteus | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced its “first fully autonomous mobile robot,” meant to move large carts throughout its warehouses. The robot is called Proteus, and Amazon says it can safely navigate around human employees, unlike some of its past robots that it kept separated in a caged area.Amazon says Proteus robots have “advanced safety, perception, and navigation technology,” and a (strangely silent) video shows the robots shining a green light in front of themselves as they move around. When a human steps into the beam, the robot stops moving, then resumes after the person moves away.The company has also announced several other robotic systems. One, called Cardinal, is a robotic arm that can lift and move packages weighing up to 50 pounds,... Continue reading…

The Volvo FH Fuel Cell Electric semi at a hydrogen fuel station. | Image: Volvo Volvo’s commercial trucking division is testing hydrogen fuel cell semi trucks in the hopes of getting ahead of the maturing technology. With fuel cells built by CellCentric, a joint venture between Volvo and Daimler Truck Automotive Group, Volvo claims its trucks are capable of 1,000 kilometers of range (about 621 miles) and can be refueled in under 15 minutes.Volvo Trucks has been “developing this technology for some years now,” said company president Roger Alm in a statement this week. Hydrogen fuel cells will be suitable for long-distance hauling and could work in countries with limited battery charging infrastructure, Alm said. The company started building battery-electric trucks in 2018, but they still aren’t widely in service in... Continue reading…

The company was accused of letting advertisers exclude protected groups from their campaigns. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government and Facebook parent company Meta have agreed on a settlement to clear up a lawsuit that accused the company of facilitating housing discrimination by letting advertisers specify that ads not be shown to people belonging to specific protected groups, according to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). You can read the full agreement below.The government first brought a case against Meta for algorithmic housing discrimination in 2019, though accusations about the company’s practices go back years before that. The company took some steps to address the issue, but clearly, they weren’t enough for the feds. The department says this was its first case dealing with algorithmic violations of the Fair Housing... Continue reading…

The new social tags might make it easier to find a good group. | Image: Epic Games Fortnite can be an absolute blast to play with your friends, but being matched up with random players is more hit-and-miss. In some of the randomized groups I’ve been in, coordinating any sort of effective strategy can be a challenging endeavor, particularly if some team members want to rush into battle while others would prefer to play it slow. To help you find better squadmates, Fortnite developer Epic Games is testing new social tags for profiles that let you indicate how you like to play and can be used to match you up with other like-minded players.According to a blog post, tags will include things like your favorite game modes and whether you want to use a mic or not. If you have added at least one social tag, you’ll be able to... Continue reading…