The Verge

Tiffany Haddish and Asante Blackk in Landscape With Invisible Hand. | Image: MGM Landscape With Invisible Hand is an alien invasion story with a twist: a species known as the Vuuv take over the planet not by force but through economics. Their advanced technology allows them to live in floating cities with the human elite, while the rest of the population scrapes by on the surface. Because of this, some new ways of making money arise - including a very intimate form of livestreaming. Because the Vuuv do not have romance like humans, they're obsessed with watching young couples broadcast their lives, tipping generously along the way.For Tiffany Haddish, who stars in the film, part of the appeal was that the premise didn't seem that far-fetched. I really love [director and writer Cory Finley] a lot, I love his work,"... Continue reading...

You really should be checking them regularly anyway, but hopefully, this helps to avoid any gross build-up. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge When was the last time you cleaned your earphones? Ideally, you're not leaving it long enough to see a sizable amount of crud building up (which is fairly unavoidable when you're regularly shoving them into your ears), but if you happen to own a pair of Google Pixel Buds or Pixel Buds Pro then don't worry - Google will soon remind you. As reported by 9to5Google, the latest version of the Pixel Buds app (version 1.0.555017123) includes a new notification that will prompt users to regularly clean and maintain their earbuds.The updated app is currently rolling out via the Google Play Store, and according to a few 9to5Google readers, some users are already starting to see the cleaning notification. Within the prompt, Google notes that... Continue reading...

Apple may need to ship the iPhone 15 with a power adapter to support the increased wattage from USB-C charging. | Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Apple is set to introduce the iPhone 15 in the next few weeks, and the device's long-rumored transition from Lightning to USB-C may provide a boost to its charging speed. According to 9to5Mac, some of the new iPhone 15 models will support charging up to 35W, compared to the 27W speeds that the current iPhone 14 Pro is limited to.Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo made similar predictions last year, claiming that Apple's supply chain indicated the company would ditch Lightning in favor of USB-C in 2023. According to Kuo, the switch would enable faster charging speeds for iPhone 15 Pro models, but the feature may only be supported via Apple-certified cables. Apple stopped bundling its iPhones with power adapters back in 2020 to try and combat... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Threads is adding reposts (aka retweets) to its reverse-chronological Following" feed, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced in a Threads post on Thursday. It's a small but nice addition to the app that makes the Following feed a bit more useful, and while Mosseri said Meta added it based on your feedback," the Following feed does still have its flaws.That's not the only repost-related update from Meta. It's also rolling out a reposts tab on your profile so that you and others can more easily find the threads that you've reposted. I don't appear to have either update yet on iOS, but I do have the reposts tab when I view my profile on the web. (I think I need to repost more.) Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge ... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The developer Relay for Reddit, of one of the remaining third-party Reddit apps for Android, detailed the potential prices for planned subscriptions for the app in a new post on Thursday. The costs of a subscription will go up based on a user's daily average number of API calls, essentially meaning that the more things a person does in the app, the more they might have to pay.In July, Reddit officially transitioned from a free to a paid API, meaning that developers would have to pay the company for accessing Reddit's data for their apps. The change forced many popular apps to shut down, but a handful of developers, including the one who makes Relay for Reddit, said they might be able to continue making their apps if they charged a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of the big promises of NFTs was that the artist who originally made them could get a cut every time their piece was resold. Unfortunately, that's not the case anymore.OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace still fully enforcing royalty fees, said today that it plans to stop the mandatory collection of resale fees for artists. Starting March 2024, those fees will essentially be tips - an optional percentage of a sale price that sellers can choose to give the original artist. If the seller doesn't want to hand over any money, that'll be their choice.The NFT ecosystem has been on a race to the bottom when it comes to fees. As the market for NFTs collapsed, marketplaces have lowered their own trading fees and stopped enforcing royalty... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Garbo, a nonprofit organization that provided background checks to users of some of Match Group's apps, is ending its partnership with the company, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. As a result, Garbo will be shutting down its consumer-facing business and Match will be pausing its background checks in the affected apps.Match Group first started offering background checks on Tinder in 2021 before rolling it out to its other dating apps, including Match and Stir, last year. The integration let users run a limited number of free background checks on a potential date using just their last name and phone number, allowing users to see public reports about violence, past arrests, convictions, and restraining orders.While it's... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is testing a new way to show star ratings for products in search results that is more difficult to parse at a glance, as reported by Android Police.Under the new system, when you're browsing search results, Amazon will show you an average star rating as a number, then a singular gold star, and then, in parentheses next to the star, what percentage of reviews are five stars.The change is a bit easier to understand in an image, so take a look at this one from Android Police: Image: Android Police Android Police says it saw this different layout in the Amazon India mobile app, on the Amazon Germany website, and on Amazon's global website when accessed from Germany.I don't like this change because it gets rid... Continue reading...

Baldur's Gate 3 has garnered accolades for its flexibility - it feels like you can ally with or betray virtually anyone, including your own party members. I've seen it compared to old-school RPGs like Planescape: Torment, play it your way" immersive sims, and of course, its source material, tabletop Dungeons & Dragons.After clocking roughly 40 hours in Faerun, there's a simultaneously delightful and maddening tension to the open-endedness of Baldur's Gate 3. On one hand, it pushes me to invest in the high stakes of its narrative, where a single misstep's personal and universal consequences can feel disastrous. On the other, my most viscerally satisfying encounters have come from abandoning perfectionism and rolling with the punches. I... Continue reading...

Image: Activision Blizzard As promised, Activision showed off the next Call of Duty today after officially announcing it earlier this month. So now, we have the first trailer for Modern Warfare III - which is a different game than Modern Warfare 3 (2011) - along with some details.The new game features a single-player campaign that, naturally, follows Modern Warfare II and introduces a new kind of mission called open combat" that Activision describes as a new innovation that empowers player decisions like never before." Players can supposedly choose different play styles - like stealth versus going in guns blazing - and the missions are designed to complement the more crafted, linear story missions Call of Duty is known for.While Call of Duty releases have been... Continue reading...

Climate activists of Extinction Rebellion wearing masks of company CEOs including X's Elon Musk take part in a demonstration in Berlin, Germany, on April 13th, 2023 | Photo by JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP via Getty Images Almost half of Environmental Twitter" has vanished from the platform now called X, new research shows. A wave of environmentally oriented" users abandoned the site after Elon Musk took over, according to a study published this week in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.The study confirms fears about how Musk's leadership might quell climate discourse and scientific research on the platform. Before he took the wheel, Twitter was an important tool for environmental researchers and activists alike.We saw that there was a vibrant community engaging in discourse around environmental topics. This then raised the question of how this community may be impacted by changes to Twitter's governance," Charlotte Chang, lead author of the... Continue reading...

Image: Acura Here's the Acura ZDX, a $60,000 premium electric vehicle with a Google-powered brain and 325 miles of range. It signals the return of the ZDX, which was discontinued over a decade ago after poor sales.The ZDX will be the second EV from Honda / Acura, after the 2024 Honda Prologue. Both vehicles are expected to start deliveries next year - though it's unclear which will come first. And like the Prologue, the ZDX will be the product of the three-year-old partnership with General Motors, with the US automaker's Ultium battery serving as a foundation.The ZDX appears to have many of the same styling and themes presented as part of the Precision concept car last year. It will also be the first model from the Honda-owned Acura to be sold... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Slack briefly experienced some major issues on Thursday. On The Verge's Slack, I found that some posts just wouldn't send in both channels and threads, and a few of my colleagues were reporting similar issues.We weren't the only ones. At one point, Downdetector showed that more than 10,000 users reported issues, but the site now says that number peaked at a bit under that. I also saw a bunch of posts about Slack problems on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.The company confirmed the issues were fixed in a 12:58PM ET message on its status page. We've restored full functionality of Slack for all impacted users. Sorry for the trouble, we appreciate your patience today." At 12:37PM ET, the company's status page had confirmed... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft has started sending media invites for a special event" in New York City next month. Mark your calendars for Thursday, September 21, 2023, for a special Microsoft event," reads the invite to members of the press. Microsoft typically holds Surface events in September or October, so it's likely we're about to see some new hardware next month.Microsoft has been rumored to be working on a Surface Go 4, Surface Laptop Studio 2, and Surface Laptop Go 3 for the fall. Windows Central recently reported that the updated Surface Laptop Studio 2 will ship with Intel's latest processors, a more powerful GPU, and an improved selection of ports. Microsoft also reportedly postponed a Surface Go 4 with an Arm processor in favor of an Intel... Continue reading...

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Apple won't make leather cases for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro, according to 9to5Mac and a couple of generally reputable leakers.It seems the rumor was first shared by DuanRui, who said, I've heard that Apple won't be releasing a Leather Case for the iPhone 15 series," in a Thursday morning post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. 9to5Mac posted its story soon after, saying that its sources are corroborating" that Apple won't release the leather cases. Another leaker, ShrimpApplePro, then quote-posted 9to5Mac's story on X, saying that they have been also hearing the same."It's unclear why Apple might be making this move, and the company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 9to5Mac speculates that Apple... Continue reading...

Samsung's original Freestyle portable projector had a ton of promise, but it really fell apart in the execution and was severely overpriced for the hardware specs on offer. Still, the blueprint was encouraging, and it seemed like just the kind of product that Samsung could nail the second time around - or so I hoped.But back at CES in January, the company showed off a barely changed revision of the Freestyle that addressed virtually none of my quibbles with the original. It was updated with Samsung's latest TV software, which meant owners would be able to access the Gaming Hub and various cloud gaming services from Xbox, Nvidia, and more. Samsung also demonstrated a neat smart edge blending" trick whereby you could combine two... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp is flipping a switch that will let users send higher-quality HD" images on the messaging platform. Sharing photos on WhatsApp just got an upgrade," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced via his Meta broadcast channel on Instagram. Now you can send in HD."The feature is rolling out worldwide over the next few weeks, so users with the feature can send higher-quality and higher-resolution images (likely still compressed from the original) from Android, iOS, or the web, and recipients on any platform will see a small icon that indicates it as such. According to Meta, support for HD videos is coming soon after.Once users get the new feature, they'll see an HD" gear icon when adding an image to a message thread, as first seen in... Continue reading...

Image: Apple Last year, Apple announced that it was working with Legendary on a streaming series that would be part of the company's Monsterverse, i.e., the revival of King Kong and Godzilla in a live-action universe. And while we still don't have a trailer or premiere date, we at least now have a first look and some details on the kaiju show.It's called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and the 10-episode series appears to take place after the 2014 Godzilla film left San Francisco in a disastrous state as well as in the 1950s following the early days of the mysterious Monarch group. In a fun twist, the show will feature a military officer named Lee Shaw across both time periods, and Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell will play Shaw at different ages. Here's... Continue reading...

Image: Rockstar Games Here's some nice if slightly boring news: Red Dead Redemption runs just fine on the Nintendo Switch. That might not be too surprising given that it's a port of a game that first released in 2010 and that the Switch has already proven capable of running large, slightly older open-world titles like The Witcher 3. But given developer Rockstar Games' recent history with rereleases, some fans are probably rightfully suspicious of this new version.I've played the first few hours of the Red Dead port on the Switch, which is out today on both Nintendo's tablet and the PS4. I've had the chance to get into one shoot-out, herd some cows, scare away chicken-stealing coyotes, break in a pair of horses, and watch plenty of cutscenes. And it feels... Continue reading...

Photo by Ashish Vaishnav/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Microsoft will allow Windows 11 users to uninstall even more built-in apps soon. The software maker has started testing a new build of Windows 11 with Canary Channel testers that includes the ability to uninstall the Camera app, the recently discontinued Cortana app, the Photos app, the People app, and the Remote Desktop (MSTSC) client.Microsoft ships a large number of these so-called inbox apps" preinstalled with Windows 11. It has been gradually allowing users to uninstall more of them, and we're getting to the point where most can be removed freely. Most of these built-in apps aren't huge, so you're not going to save lots of space by uninstalling them, but having the option to uninstall them completely should make Windows feel a... Continue reading...

The HMD Nokia G310. | Image: HMD HMD is bringing its repairable phone initiative to the US with the Nokia G310, a $186 smartphone that'll be available from T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile on August 24th. This is technically the third smartphone HMD has released with a design that makes it easier to replace commonly broken components like its battery and display, but its previous Nokia G22 and Nokia G42 were focused on European markets.As with its previous repairable phones, HMD is partnering with iFixit to supply spare parts and repair guides for the G310. The company's press release doesn't offer too many details on how exactly the phone is easy to repair, but previous repairable Nokia-branded handsets have included design features like rear cases that can be unclipped... Continue reading...

The iFixit Pixel 7A screen repair kit. | Image: iFixit DIY repairs for the Google Pixel 7A just got a lot easier as famed right-to-repair-supporting website iFixit has added official parts for Google's newest slab phone to its store. iFixit has been stocking genuine Google Pixel phone parts for over a year after it made a deal with Google that followed a recent trend by phone makers to improve the accessibility of OEM components.When we reviewed Google's more affordable flagship in May, Allison Johnson called the Pixel 7A the best midrange Android phone for most people thanks to good build quality, a great camera, and an improved 90Hz OLED display.Parts on sale at iFixit include a replacement digitizer screen ($109.99), rear plastic cover ($44.99), both rear camera modules, adhesive films... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google is adding a new feature to the next release of Chrome that will proactively alert you when an extension isn't in the Chrome Web Store, according to a post from Oliver Dunk, a developer relations engineer for Chrome extensions. The new feature, being added as part of Chrome 117, will make it easier to stay on top of extensions that have been removed by a developer, been taken down for violating the Chrome Web Store policies, or been marked as malware.Dunk says Chrome will show extensions that fall under those categories in a Safety check" section in the privacy and security part of Chrome's settings. When a user clicks Review,' they will be taken to their extensions and given the choice to either remove the extension or hide... Continue reading...

The itty-bitty 8BitDo Micro. | Image: 8BitDo 8BitDo is launching a new supersmall wireless gaming controller designed for Nintendo Switch and Android devices that could literally fit inside the palm of your hand. The company's new Micro controller, which comes in blue and green, is available to preorder on Amazon for $24.99 each and will start shipping next week.Fans of 8BitDo's excellent retro gaming controllers will probably remember the company's previous hand-cramping and ultracompact wireless controller: the Zero 2. The Micro seems to be the Zero 2's spiritual successor, increasing its button count from 12 to 16 while still staying keychain-sized and lightweight at 24.8 grams. (The Zero 2 is 20 grams, and Joy-Cons are around 50 grams comparatively.) Image:... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Roblox will let users sell full avatar bodies and standalone heads" that they create by Thursday, Roblox said in a post on its developer forums (via VentureBeat). The new line of creator-made virtual goods (something Roblox calls user-generated content, or UGC) could help more people build businesses on Roblox, which might keep them from making things for competing metaverse platforms like Meta's Horizon Worlds and Epic Games' Fortnite.There will be some limits on what users can sell. The bodies and heads must follow the company's community standards, marketplace policy, and pass proactive checks against Roblox IP," so you won't be able to sell an obvious Shrek look-alike. Bodies will need to have modesty layers built in," which is a... Continue reading...

The Bambu P1P, with optional 3D-printed panels. | Image: Bambu When owners of Bambu's extremely well-regarded 3D printers woke up on August 15th, some found their printer had gone rogue.Some woke up to failed prints. Some found a second copy of a previous print. And at least a few found their Bambu X1C or P1P had started smacking itself apart - damaging components - while trying to print a second copy atop the object they'd actually asked for.

Image: The Verge Amazon will soon start tacking on an extra fee for sellers who don't use the company's fulfillment service, according to reports from Bloomberg and CNBC. Documents viewed by the outlets indicate that Amazon will start imposing a fee on each product that merchants send out themselves.The fee will reportedly go into effect on October 1st and will apply to the sellers who are members of Amazon's Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) service. Unlike Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), the SFP program lets third-party merchants sell Prime products directly from their own warehouses instead of having Amazon handle the logistics process. That means sellers are also required to keep up with Prime's one- to two-day delivery standards and weekend shipping, CNBC... Continue reading...

Image: AP The Associated Press released guidelines around generative AI to its journalists as it and other news organizations look at ways to use the technology in news gathering.AP vice president for standards and inclusion Amanda Barrett said in a blog post the publication does not see AI as a replacement of journalists in any way" but developed guidelines for reporters and editors on how to use it.Journalists for AP can experiment with ChatGPT but are asked to exercise caution by not using the tool to create publishable content. Any result from a generative AI platform should be treated as unvetted source material" and subject to AP's existing sourcing standards. The publication said it will not allow AI to alter photos, videos, or audio... Continue reading...

A sign gives direction to a cooling center in Portland, Oregon, during another heatwave on August 14th, 2021. | Photo by MICHAEL HANSON / AFP via Getty Images Record heat is leading to more emergency room visits in the US, according to national tracking tools.July was the hottest month on record for the planet, with North American heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible' without climate change, a recent study says. That led to a 12 percent increase in emergency medical service responses to heat-related illness between July 13 and August 11, according to a new federal dashboard. But national numbers only give part of the picture.Zooming in shows how health risks ballooned in the hardest-hit regions. The situation has been especially bad this week in the Pacific Northwest. The number of emergency department (ED) visits associated with heat-related illness was 16 times higher on... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft has added a new Microsoft Teams feature to its Xbox Game Bar that lets you stream your gameplay to friends over Microsoft Teams. The new Microsoft Teams Play Together" widget is available for the Xbox Game Bar and supports streaming your entire desktop over Teams and also the ability to join video calls to see friends overlaid on top of games.Microsoft describes the new Game Bar integration for Teams as a place to hang out while watching and playing games," which sounds a lot like what people use Discord for. You'll see friends overlaid on top of a game, and up to 20 people can join a call at any one time. Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge You can choose which monitor to stream all within the Game... Continue reading...