The Verge

Photo by Jennifer Pattisson Tuohy The Verge Meta is pulling the plug on its Portal video calling smart displays and its two remaining unreleased smartwatch projects, my colleague Alex Heath can confirm, as the company cuts 11,000 jobs including many in tech divisions. Reuters reported earlier today that the company planned to kill off both Portal and smartwatches, citing Meta execs who spoke at a town hall meeting; we heard the same thing from other sources, so we can independently corroborate the news.Meta had already quietly decided to stop producing Portal devices for consumers in June, and had shelved the smartwatch that was furthest in development — codename “Milan,” which was reportedly set to arrive in spring 2023 for around $349 and feature two built-in cameras for video... Continue reading…

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 15: Rainn Wilson attends “Jerry & Marge Go Large” premiere during the 2022 Tribeca Festival. | Photo by Dominik Bindl/WireImage Actor Rainn Wilson (you might know him as Dwight from The Office) had a grand scheme to bring his hilarious brand of climate advocacy to Twitter this week. That plan, however, wasquickly thwarted — another victim of the name-changing drama that has flourished on the platform recently.Wilson took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce he was changing his name on social media to “Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson.” “As a cheap little stunt to help save planet Earth I’ve changed my name on Twitter, Instagram, and even on my fancy writing paper,” Wilson said in a video. He points to a memo pad with scrawled changes to his printed name, so that it reads “Acid Rainn Kills Trees Wilson.”Some 35 minutes later, Wilson tweeted, “P.S.... Continue reading…

You say you have my money? Prove it. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As FTX, formerly the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, files for bankruptcy and halts withdrawals, other exchanges are working hard to assure customers that they won’t be meeting the same fate. Binance, Crypto.com, and others have started releasing partial looks at their books, while Coinbase executives are on a media tour telling investors that it’s safe to store money with their company.The moves are meant to assure people that their money isn’t being used on other investments and is instead held one to one. In other words, the exchanges want you to know that if you deposit a Bitcoin with them, they’ll keep a Bitcoin in reserve. That’s in contrast with FTX, which reportedly loaned billions of dollars in customer... Continue reading…

Alex Spiro, leader of Elon Musk’s team of attorneys, leaves the US District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles on December 6th, 2019. | Image: APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images Elon Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro, who worked for months arguing Musk should be allowed to break his agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion, is now reassuring Twitter employees that they will not be personally liable if the company violates a 20-year FTC consent decree, according to an email obtained by The Verge.As employees have had to reckon with massive layoffs and general instability at the company, there have been fears that Twitter staffers working on security and privacy could be in some legal danger for potential violations of the decree.“It is the company’s obligation. It is the company’s burden. It is the company’s liability.”A company lawyer even suggested in Twitter’s Slack that employees investigate whistleblower... Continue reading…

Image: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images Tesla is opening up its charging system, but not in the way that helps people who own electric vehicles that aren’t Teslas.The automaker is renaming its Tesla connector the “North American Charging Standard” (NACS) and is pitting it against the current CCS combo charging standard. CCS is the agreed-upon standard that every manufacturer selling in North America has adopted for DC fast charging.In a new blog, Tesla says that its connector is “half the size, and twice as powerful” as CCS and points out that it’s “the most common charging standard” by a degree of 2 to 1. Tesla currently sells more EVs than any other manufacturer in the US, but other automakers are starting to catch up. According to the Department of Energy, there are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Omnicom, one of the world’s biggest ad firms, representing brands like McDonald’s, Apple, and PepsiCo, is recommending clients pause spending on Twitter, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge.Omnicom Media Group is recommending clients “pause activity on Twitter in the short term,” according to a note titled “Twitter - Continued Brand Safety Concerns.” The memo cites recent events in the last few days that have “potential serious implications” for brands running ads on the platform.“The risk to our clients’ brand safety has risen sharply to a level most would find unacceptable”The memo cites the deep layoffs of Twitter trust and safety teams, the resignations of high-profile executives, and the slew of “verified”... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge When it’s finally time to get a new Wi-Fi router, there’s no need to panic. Whether you’ve switched internet service providers or you’ve decided to get something snappier, snazzier, and more reliable than whatever piece of plastic your ISP handed you, upgrading your router doesn’t have to be a headache.If you have a smart home like I do, you may be dreading the thought of having to manually update every light bulb, light switch, and security camera in your home to the new network. (As of today, I have 112 devices on my network.) While typing a new password into a laptop or iPad is pretty easy, when it comes to smart home devices, you have to open each app for every smart device and go through the sometimes painful process of updating... Continue reading…

The 33-year-old Mikhail Vasiliev is currently in Canadian custody awaiting extradition to the United States. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Russian-Canadian national Mikhail Vasiliev was arrested in Canada on Wednesday over his alleged participation in the LockBit ransomware campaign, which has claimed at least 1,000 victims in the United States.Thirty-three-year-old Vasiliev is charged with “conspiracy to intentionally damage protected computers and to transmit ransom demands” and, if convicted, faces a maximum of five years in prison. Vasiliev is currently in Canadian custody awaiting extradition to the United States.Evidence for the charges was collected during two separate police raids on the suspect’s homeThe criminal complaint describes two separate police raids of his Ontario home — first in August 2022 and then again the following October. During the first search,... Continue reading…

Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images Kevin Conroy, the voice actor who was the Batman for a generation, passed away at the age of 66, The Verge has confirmed. In an email seen by The Verge, DC public relations wrote, “It is with profound sadness that I send this to you today. Kevin Conroy, the quintessential voice of Batman, a dear friend to so many of us, has passed away.”Conroy enjoyed a prolific acting career across stage and screen, but he is best known for voicing Batman, one of the most popular and captivating superheroes ever, starting with Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. He would go on to voice the Caped Crusader in many other animated series and video games, including Justice League, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Batman Beyond, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm,... Continue reading…

Image: Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images Waymo keeps (driverless) trucking along.The Alphabet division made a couple of announcements this week meant to highlight the progress — albeit incremental — of its robotaxis. The first was that, starting this week, anyone who downloads the company’s app can now hail one of Waymo’s driverless vehicles in downtown Phoenix. (The service was previously only available to the company’s “Trusted Tester” program of people from a wait list who sign nondisclosure agreements to get early access to Waymo’s vehicles in new service areas.)The second was that the California Department of Motor Vehicles approved an amendment to Waymo’s permit to include driverless vehicles, which means the company has the green light to deploy fully autonomous... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Helicopters and gliders arrive in Microsoft Flight Simulator’s 40th Anniversary Update. Developers at Asobo and Microsoft have spent a lot of time getting the details right. Continue reading…

The ROG Zephyrus G14 offers some impressive specs at an impressive price point. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Even with just two weeks left until Black Friday, our post today proves that there’s always room for more deals. We’ve rolled out a pretty healthy spread of sales today, but there’s way more to show than what we’ve featured here. To make sure you don’t miss out, make sure to check out our early Black Friday deals pages, subscribe to our newsletter, and follow @VergeDeals on Twitter (it’s really us, we swear).Our first deal today is revisiting the lowest price ever for the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop at Best Buy. This configuration of the G14 is typically priced at $1,649.99 but is currently on sale for $1,299.99, matching its best price yet. Featuring an excellent 16:10 display with a 2560 x 1600 resolution with a 120Hz refresh... Continue reading…

The original Control. | Image: Remedy Entertainment A sequel to the 2019 supernatural thriller Control is in development. Developer Remedy Entertainment confirmed the news today, saying that Control 2 would be a joint project with publisher 505 Games (which published the original Control). The sequel is currently in the “concept stage,” but Remedy says it will launch on the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.We don’t know much about the game, but the studio did share this single piece of concept art: Image: Remedy Entertainment Concept art from Control 2. Along with this message from game director Mikael Kasurinen:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter users are reporting that the option to sign up for the company’s new $7.99 subscription service, Twitter Blue, has disappeared from the platform’s iOS app just days after the service launched.You could previously subscribe to Twitter Blue from the sidebar in the iOS app (the service has yet to launch for Android users), but users this morning reported that the option has disappeared. For those for whom the link is still available, trying to sign up only returns an error message. “Thank you for your interest!” it reads. “Twitter Blue will be available in your country in the future. Please check back later.” Image: Tom Warren / The Verge Trying to sign up for Twitter Blue in the UK this morning, Friday... Continue reading…

But is it officially official this time, or will it get axed again in a few hours? Vote now! | Image: Twitter Okay, so Twitter broke its own verification system by making the blue check — previously a signal that the account had provided information about its owner’s identity — available for purchase. Yesterday, which is approximately a month ago in Elon Musk time, a solution rolled out: gray checks that indicated that the account was official. By the end of the day, those checks had been rolled back.Got all that? Great. After a great deal of impersonation, hoaxing, and other brand-unsafe behavior from the newly-purchased blue checks, the gray “official” checks are back.Brands such as Coca-Cola, Twitter, Wired, and Ars Technica have the new-old gray checks (but not @Verge, which is, we promise, our real one, unlike this impostor account). This... Continue reading…

As crypto prices have gone up, so have the number of scams. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has put out a warning that it’s seeing a rise in complaints related to cryptocurrencies and assets. As much of a shock as that may be, it’s not just concerned with straight-up fraud and scams, though those are the most common problems the agency hears about — the CFPB also says consumers have been sounding the alarm about issues with transactions going through, lost savings, and more.The bulletin is a 45-page document that analyzes the crypto-related complaints the CFPB has received from October 2018 to September 2022, showing the increasing frequency of consumers reaching out for help and providing several examples of bad behavior. In that time frame, almost 40 percent of the... Continue reading…

YouTube wants to help you do Q&As. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has a new Live Q&A feature to help you host dedicated question and answer sessions during livestreams.Here’s how it works: when you start a Q&A as a creator, your prompt shows up as a pinned message at the top of your stream’s chat, and then viewers can submit their questions. When you find a question you want to discuss, you can pin it so that it’s featured and everyone knows what you’re responding to. To move on, you can pin another question, and it will replace what’s at the top of the list. When you’re done with the Q&A session, you can go back to a standard chatroom.This dedicated Q&A tool could be a useful way for creators to have conversations directly with their audiences. Before now, they’d just have to field... Continue reading…

GIF: Tiny Circuits What is this, a television for ants? Basically yes! The TinyTV 2, a Kickstarter project from the company that brought us an even smaller Game Boy, is one of the smallest and cutest video players I’ve ever seen. While it doesn’t have a set of rabbit ears to harness the airwaves, the one-inch 216x135-pixel television is authentic in practically every other way — dials to adjust “channel” and volume, a working speaker and power button, even an infrared receiver for a tiny optional remote control (via Technabob).There’s a two-hour lithium-ion battery so you can take it on the go and a USB-C port for charging and data. It’s all powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2040 computer. And — get this — it emulates the experience of “changing channels” by... Continue reading…

A rendered version of the MK30 drone. | Image: Amazon Amazon is building a better drone that should help chart a course for the company’s Prime Air delivery service after the project was reportedly hampered by multiple malfunctions, crashes, and even fires. The new MK30 drone will go into service in 2024 and is designed to be quieter, go further, and handle the elements better, like high temperatures and light rain.The new drone has the same function and goal as its predecessor designs: fly vertically hundreds of feet into the air, autonomously maneuver and land, and deliver packages up to five pounds. The MK30 will be lighter and smaller than the current hexagonal MK27-2 drone, and it will be put through “rigorous evaluation by national aerospace authorities like the Federal Aviation... Continue reading…

Unlike Amazon’s other robots, Sparrow doesn’t need items to be boxed before it can move them. | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced a new robot, dubbed Sparrow, which the company says is its first warehouse robot that can “detect, select, and handle individual products.” The company says the machine is capable of recognizing and handling “millions of items” and that it will reduce the repetitive tasks its human workers have to do.The company’s post announcing the robot doesn’t say exactly how it plans to use Sparrow, but it’s not hard to imagine many more applications for something that can lift and move individual products in Amazon’s warehouses.“In our current research and development efforts, we are working with Sparrow to consolidate inventory before it is packaged for customers,” said Xavier Van Chau, a spokesperson for the company, “but... Continue reading…

Leica is no stranger to re-badged gadgets. | Image: Leica Leica’s at it again. As spotted by PetaPixel, the company has announced the new Leitz Phone 2, updating the Leitz Phone 1 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and a higher-resolution Type 1 camera sensor. The Phone 2 will only be sold in Japan and will cost 225,360 yen (about $1,588).Or you can buy basically the same phone — minus the red dot logo — for 189,360 yen, which is about $200 less. That would be the Aquos R7 made by Sharp — the licensee responsible for manufacturing the Leitz Phone 2.The Phone 2 (like the R7) includes a 6.6-inch OLED, a 5,000mAh battery, and a single rear camera with a massive Type 1 47-megapixel sensor. That’s an impressively large sensor, which Leica proclaims to be the “largest sensor ever in a... Continue reading…

More execs are leaving the company. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Two other top Twitter executives are leaving the company. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, and Robin Wheeler, the head of ad sales, are both out. First reported by Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton, the news was confirmed to The Verge’s Alex Heath by two people familiar with the matter. The two executives resigned, according to Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner.Both leaders had taken public-facing roles in these still-early days of Elon Musk’s Twitter ownership. Roth has repeatedly posted on Twitter to try and assuage user fears about falling moderation under Musk’s regime and despite the company’s recent mass layoffs. Wheeler directed a Twitter Space meeting this week with Musk to try and calm advertisers concerned about... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Legendary comic Chris Rock will host a live comedy special on Netflix in early 2023, the streaming service announced Thursday. This isn’t just a big deal because of who’s involved — it also marks Netflix’s first-ever global livestreamed event. Image: Netflix The success of the event could signal a significant new path for Netflix. The company has so far relied on building a massive on-demand catalog of TV shows and movies to keep people subscribed month after month, but this new event could indicate that the company is looking to add live content to its catalog of shows as well. (Perhaps live sports?) Netflix had confirmed it was looking into livestreaming earlier this year.Netflix has already hosted a live i... Continue reading…

The Razer Naga V2 Pro (left), and the Naga V2 Hyperspeed (right). | Image: Razer Today, Razer announced follow-ups to its MMO-centric modular gaming mouse with the Razer Naga V2 Hyperspeed and V2 Pro. Both models share a similar design to Razer’s older models of the Naga lineup but include some interesting changes to the hardware.Designed as the more budget-friendly option, the $99.99 Razer Naga V2 Hyperspeed still features the 12 macro buttons placed under your right thumb but also has a pair of additional buttons placed in the upper-left periphery of the mouse, directly to the left of your index finger, similar to what we saw with the Razer DeathAdder V2 X. However, unlike the Naga X, the V2 doesn’t have a swappable button panel. Image: Razer The Naga V2 Hyperspeed is battery powered and... Continue reading…

Basically rule number one of what not to do with your customers’ money. | Illustration: The Verge Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading firm Alameda Research reportedly owes his crypto exchange FTX $10 billion after taking loans funded by deposits from FTX customers, according to The Wall Street Journal.As economist Frances Coppola pointed out to the Journal, exchanges like FTX shouldn’t be investing customers’ money. “It shouldn’t be doing anything with those assets. They should literally be sitting there so people can use them,” said Coppola. That’s especially true for volatile markets like crypto, where collateral could swing in value from one day to the next.However, FTX reportedly lent over half of its customer funds to Alameda, which then used them to bet on other cryptocurrencies and help out other crypto firms struggling to weather... Continue reading…

A new search box in the Task Manager. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has started testing a new search and filtering system for the Task Manager on Windows 11. It will allow Windows users to easily search for a misbehaving app and end its process or quickly create a dump file, enable efficiency mode, and more.“This is the top feature request from our users to filter / search for processes,” explains the Windows Insider team in a blog post. “You can filter either using the binary name, PID or publisher name. The filter algorithm matches the context keyword with all possible matches and displays them on the current page.”You’ll be able to use the alt + F keyboard shortcut to jump to the filter box in the Task Manager, and results will be filtered into single or groups of processes that you can... Continue reading…

Canon’s webcam software supports 42 different camera models, including the G7X Mark III pictured here. | Image: Canon It felt like companies were offering some goodwill during the pandemic when they released free software that allowed a camera you already own to work as a webcam, but now, Canon’s looking for some of that sweet recurring subscription revenue. A new update to its EOS Webcam Utility software adds a bunch of new features, but only as part of a new Pro tier that costs $5 per month or $50 per year.Opting to pay gets you new features like streaming up to five cameras at once via USB, wireless single-camera streaming, 60fps support, finer controls for custom scene profiles, watermark insertion, control of your camera settings via the UI, and some further granular tweaks. While much of that sounds nice and may make for a better experience when... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix just released the official teaser trailer for The Witcher: Blood Origin, the prequel series starring Michelle Yeoh, and to my surprise, I thought it looked quite good. I only made it through three episodes of the first season of The Witcher before dropping it, so I wasn’t really looking forward to Blood Origin, which takes place 1,200 years before the events of the main Witcher series. But this new trailer might have swayed me to tune in.It looks like Blood Origin will be an epic and battle-filled fantasy series, and based on a few brief glimpses in the trailer, it seems Yeoh will be playing a critical role in everything going on. (I’m crossing my fingers for some awesome action scenes — I’m still in awe of Yeoh’s performance in... Continue reading…