The Verge - All Posts

The House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee’ hearing on UAPs. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The Pentagon’s new task force for tracking unidentified aerial phenomena (or UAPs) has collected roughly 400 reports, an official told Congress in an open hearing on Tuesday.The comments came from Scott Bray, the deputy director of US naval intelligence, who testified today as an expert witness in a hearing about UAPs hosted by a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee. The hearing marked the first time Congress has held a public hearing on UAPs, also known as UFOs, in more than 50 years.Bray attributed the increase in sightings to a number of factors, including the growing popularity of quadcopters and drones, updates in sensor technologies, increasing aerial clutter like mylar balloons, and a perceived decrease in stigma... Continue reading…

Skiff Mail is a new, privacy-focused alternative to Gmail. | Image: Skiff Skiff has spent the last couple of years developing a privacy-focused, collaborative document editing platform that you could most succinctly describe as “encrypted Google Docs.” Now, it’s coming for Gmail. The company is launching an email service called Skiff Mail that aims to be, well, encrypted Gmail — and eventually much more than that.Ultimately, Skiff co-founder and CEO Andrew Milich says Skiff wants to build a complete workspace, something as sweeping and broad as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. But the only way to do that is to solve email, which is, in so many ways, the core of both platforms. “It’s the most private corpus of our lives, you know?” Milich says. In an effort to keep people’s most important information safe —... Continue reading…

The modern day Chip and Dale. | Disney The film stars John Mulaney and Andy Samberg Continue reading…

Alaqua Cox as Echo. | Image: Marvel Studios / Chuck Zlotnick After making her debut in last year’s Hawkeye series, Maya Lopez / Echo will get her own show starting in 2023. The series was originally announced last year as part of a huge slate of Marvel series coming to Disney Plus — other titles include Agatha: House of Harkness and Ironheart — and today Marvel confirmed the show will be hitting the streaming service next year, though there’s no specific timeframe just yet. The company also revealed the first image of Alaqua Cox returning for the titular role and, well, she looks pretty much the same as in Hawkeye.According to Marvel, Echo will be an origin story, which will follow the character — who appeared as a deaf gang leader in Hawkeye — as “she must face her past, reconnect with her... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple retail employees in Atlanta are accusing the company of violating the National Labor Relations Act by holding captive audience meetings to counter an ongoing union drive at the site. The Communications Workers of America, which is working to organize the store, filed an unfair labor practice reporting the activity earlier today.Workers at the Cumberland Mall Apple store filed for a union election in April. They say that while they love the company, they want to have a bigger say in their compensation, benefits, and store health protocols.The Cumberland store is one of three retail locations where workers have launched official union drives. Many more are in the process of organizing.Apple hasn’t said publicly whether or not it... Continue reading…

Confession: I have stopped automatic downloads on Apple Podcasts because I am reckless with my data and have absolutely let podcast downloads eat my phone on more than one occasion. I love having back episodes of Stuff You Missed in History Class for the subway as much as the next guy, but I also need to be able to save and send my husband I Think You Should Leave GIFs at will (♫ it’s the little things you do together ♫). Anyway, point being, Apple’s new update that lets users limit downloads to five episodes at a time feels like it was tailor-made for me.Also on tap today, Spotify experiments with NFTs, highlights from the Podcast Upfronts, and how the podcast outgrew its namesake.Apple is making it easier to distribute subscription... Continue reading…

One of the more intriguing titles from Netflix’s upcoming slate of summer movies is Spiderhead, in which Chris Hemsworth stars as a pharmaceutical genius using a futuristic prison as an experimental playground.Based on a 2010 New Yorker short story by George Saunders, the film is directed by Joseph Kosinski (best-known for Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, and that Gears of War commercial) and also stars Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett as two inmates who form a connection in the aforementioned prison. If the first trailer is anything to go by, it looks like the movie will be something of a dark comedy, jumping back and forth between goofy and grim. Hemsworth looks particularly manic, even joking about how beautiful he is. Plus, there’s lots of... Continue reading…

The Cerebral app. | Image: Cerebral Mental health startup Cerebral will no longer prescribe most controlled substances, The Wall Street Journal reported.The embattled company is facing investigations from the US Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration over its prescribing practices, which, until this week, included offering prescriptions for stimulants like Adderall.Company co-founder Kyle Robertson wrote in an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that it would stop prescribing most controlled substances to new customers on Friday and transition existing patients off of the drug or out of its care by October. Cerebral will still offer drugs that treat opioid-use disorder, like Suboxone.Robertson said in the email that the company only started... Continue reading…

Image: Apple On Tuesday morning, Apple announced a new wave of accessibility features for its various computing platforms, which are set to roll out later this year as software updates for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.Apple said it will beta test Live Captions that can transcribe any audio content — FaceTime calls, video conferencing apps (with auto attribution to identify the speaker), streaming video, or in-person conversations — in English across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Google’s push for Live Caption features began around the release of Android 10 and are now available in English on the Pixel 2 and later devices, as well as “select” other Android phones and in additional languages for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. So it’s good to see... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Running a creator-owned streaming service Continue reading…

Serial 1, the electric bike company spun out of Harley-Davidson, launched its second-generation lineup of premium e-bikes — but the biggest changes will be coming to the company’s app.The updated bikes will come with a host of new software features provided by Serial 1’s new partnership with Google Cloud. The company says that Google Cloud has selected Serial 1 as its new “strategic eMobility partner,” meaning the e-bike maker will be among the first to integrate Google’s software products into its vehicles.The software-enabled e-bikes will allow owners to track their trips and collect dataThe software-enabled e-bikes will allow owners to track their trips, collect data, and “significantly improve safety and security,” Serial 1... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The products target people who think they have electromagnetic hypersensitivity Continue reading…

Image: DeviantArt DeviantArt is expanding its tool for detecting ripped-off crypto art, offering it to artists outside the platform. DeviantArt Protect, which launched last year for art posted on the site, will now be available for work that isn’t hosted there as well. Users can upload copies of art to Protect and have it matched against non-fungible token (or NFT) images minted to one of several public blockchains. If an identical or near-identical match is detected, they’ll receive an alert and can send takedown requests to major NFT markets like OpenSea.The new version of Protect will let anyone upload 10 images (totaling up to 2GB) and have them monitored for free, or users can sign up for DeviantArt’s $3.95 monthly “Core” service and monitor up to... Continue reading…

The Premium and Enhanced models add style to Ecobee’s substance Continue reading…

The new X16 can sport a Mini LED display with 512 dimming zones. | Image: Asus Asus has added a 16-inch option to its clever (and generally good) ROG Flow lineup. It’s called the Flow X16, and it seems like a 2-in-1 beast for multimedia and even some high-end gaming. While the 13.4-inch X13 and Z13 tablets could do some gaming, they weren’t capable of playing games smoothly at high settings — at least not without the pricey, powerful XG Mobile external GPU-meets-docking station. The X16, on the other hand, seems like a solid gaming laptop in its own right given that it can be configured with up to AMD’s Ryzen 9 6900HS and Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti (100W maximum graphics power). It also supports up to 64GB of fast DDR5 RAM clocked at 4,800MHz.There’s an option for a Mini LED glass-covered touchscreen that has up to... Continue reading…

The CM3 is our favorite detachable Chromebook, one that is currently just $299.99 on Amazon. | Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge If you’re shopping for a graduation gift, Asus’ Chromebook Detachable CM3 is our favorite detachable Chromebook and one of the best cheap laptops on the market. It functions as both a great tablet and a Chromebook, making it an excellent present for a graduating senior who doesn’t need a lot performance-wise. It’s a good buy that won’t totally break the bank, either, now that it’s selling at its best price of the year. Typically $369.99, the 10.5-inch tablet is on sale at Amazon with a MediaTek 8183 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage for $299.99, which is only $30 shy of the all-time low.The Chromebook comes with a unique, dual-folding kickstand, meaning your giftee can either fold the CM3 so it stands up like a laptop or... Continue reading…

Google Google officially announced its upcoming Pixel 6A phone on May 11th, 2022, and will be shipping its new line of Pixel 7 phones this coming autumn. You may be planning to upgrade as soon as the new phones are ready, or you may be simply moving from your current Android phone to a more recent model. Either way, you’ll want to be able to move your data over with confidence.Google makes it pretty simple to move from one phone to another — as soon as you start up your new phone, you will get step-by-step directions on what to do. (Note: if you have a two-factor authentication or 2FA app such as Google Authenticator on your phone, your data won’t be automatically moved — you’ll have to take a few extra steps.) If your older phone is lost or... Continue reading…

Concept art of the Tesla Semi from 2017. | Image: Tesla Five years after it was announced, Tesla has opened up reservations for its all-electric Semi truck, scheduled to go into production in 2023. On the company’s website, you can make a reservation by paying $5,000 upfront, then $15,000 within 10 days. (Spotted via InsideEVs.) A word of warning, though: the $5k is refundable, but it seems the $20k ain’t.Now, you’d be forgiven for having forgotten all about Tesla’s Semi, which was announced in 2017 with futuristic concept art and envious specs. The company says the truck will be powered by four independent motors on the rear axles, go 0-60mph in 20 seconds, and have a battery range of either 300 or 500 miles. Prices start at $150,000, and there have been a number of orders from businesses... Continue reading…

Hauls your gadgets and tools, then powers them when you arrive Continue reading…

E Ink’s recently announced flexible color display. | Image: E Ink Apple is reportedly testing the use of a color display from E Ink as an external screen for an unannounced foldable device, according to noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. “The color EPD [Electronic Paper Display] has the potential to become a mainstream solution for foldable devices’ must-have cover/second screen thanks to its excellent power-saving,” the analyst wrote in a tweet. He adds that the E Ink display is also being tested in “tablet-like applications.”Most tablet-style foldables on the market today pair a large folding inner display with a smaller outer display for quickly checking notifications. But existing devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 or the Oppo Find N use OLED panels for both. Apple’s use of an E Ink screen would... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk has reiterated his claim that fake and spam accounts could make up more than 20 percent of Twitter’s users, saying the deal to acquire the social media company “cannot move forward” until Twitter proves the accuracy of its much lower estimate of less than 5 percent. Musk is currently in the process of buying Twitter and its estimated 226 million monetizable daily active users for $44 billion.“20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher,” the Tesla CEO tweeted in response to a report from Teslarati. “My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has updated its App Store rules to make it so subscriptions can auto-renew without your explicit permission, even if the developer has raised the monthly or annual price. Before the rule change, users would have to manually opt-into a subscription renewal if it came with a price bump; now, that won’t necessarily be the case, though you’ll still be notified about the price change before it happens. Apple says it’s making the change to help avoid the situation where users unintentionally lose access to a subscription because they missed an opt-in message.According to Apple’s Monday evening post, there are specific conditions that developers will have to follow if they want to offer what the company is calling “an auto-renewable... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The alleged gunman behind the attack in Buffalo, New York that left 10 dead and three injured on Saturday used Discord to discuss and share plans ahead of the assault, according to Bloomberg.As far back as December, the suspect is reported to have used a private server on the popular chat service to describe his intentions to carry out an attack. He later shared links to Discord logs describing his attack plan and white supremacist views, according to Bloomberg. The report says that the suspect mentioned the terrorist who attacked a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand more than 30 times and used racist slurs and extremist phrases while in the app.Discord wanted to ensure “another event like Charlottesville isn’t planned on our... Continue reading…

Miami, host city of the Bitcoin 2022 event we recently visited, doesn’t own or manage the MiamiCoin cryptocurrency, although the coin has enjoyed the support of Mayor Francis Suarez, who at one point suggested it raised “the possibility of being able to run a government without the citizens having to pay taxes.” Now Quartz reports that since launching on August 3rd, MiamiCoin’s value has dropped by as much as 95 percent.The CityCoin plan requires miners to acquire tokens on the Stacks (STX) blockchain that they can use to bid for MiamiCoin. The winning bidder receives 70 percent of their investment in MiamiCoin, while the city receives the other 30 percent in STX tokens.

The test is included in software update v40. | Image: Meta Meta has been on a multiyear push with Messenger’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) features, and it’s now starting to test E2EE messaging with its Quest VR quest headsets. With the new v40 software update, Meta is testing optional E2EE for one-on-one messages and calls in VR, according to a blog post, though it’s unclear how many people are included in the test or how to turn on the feature if you are.The test arrives alongside a bunch of other notable new features in the v40 update. There are new audio accessibility options, including the ability to tweak the audio balance of the left and right audio channels and a mono audio feature that lets you hear the same audio on the left and right speakers.You’ll also now be able to lock... Continue reading…

The new drone will be made for indoor flight. | Image: @DronesDeal via Twitter New leaks suggest that DJI is working on a new FPV (first-person view) drone that you can fly indoors (via Gizmodo). Reliable tipsters @DealsDrone and @OsitaLV have come forward with leaked images and details about a smaller, more compact drone that may be arriving between July and August.The drone, supposedly called Avata, will weigh 500 grams, which means users will have to register it with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) if they choose to fly it outside (drones that weigh more than 250 grams must be registered with the FAA). Renders from @DealsDrone show that the Avata could come with ducted propellers to help prevent any damage to the device when it (inevitably) runs into something during an indoor flight. It features a... Continue reading…

Aaron Jordan, of Buffalo, adds to a sidewalk chalk mural depicting the names of the people killed at a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, NY. Sunday, May 15, 2022 in Buffalo, NY. | Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images On May 14th, social media platforms found themselves scrambling to deal with a livestream video of a white supremacist terror attack. Yet the man who has been the nation’s loudest commentator on content moderation had nothing to say.Under Elon Musk’s view of content moderation, any restriction on speech beyond what the law proscribes is censorship. And by that standard, the video of the attack in Buffalo — however graphic — should have remained on the platform since videos of graphic violence are not illegal speech. In practice, platforms were criticized for being too slow to remove them, and Musk found no need to weigh in on the debate.The details of the Buffalo, New York shooting are widely known and still painful to report. Ten... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google hired a former Food and Drug Administration leader as its new senior director of global digital health strategy. Bakul Patel spent over a decade at the FDA and most recently was the chief digital health officer of global strategy and innovation.“I am looking forward to learning from the teams in health across Google and Alphabet and helping build a unified digital health and regulatory strategy,” he wrote in a Linkedin post Monday announcing the move.Like all big tech companies, Google has pushed further into health and healthcare over the past few years, with mixed results. Its ambitions range from mining big data for algorithms to developing disease-detecting tools to pumping wearables full of health features. But its... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge From mesh networks to lap desks, here’s how The Verge’s staffers create their workspaces Continue reading…

Double the number of tests from the first two rounds. The US Postal Service has updated its free at-home COVID-19 test webpage, indicating that citizens can now place an order for a third round of government-provided rapid tests (h / t Alexander Tin and DrAltGov on Twitter). Compared to previous rounds, you’ll be sent double the number of tests — eight instead of four.The procedure is largely the same as it was when the US launched COVIDTests.gov in January; you go to the site, fill in your name and address, and the tests will show up in your mailbox. According to the USPS, though, because you’re getting eight tests this time, they’ll be shipped in two separate packages. You’ll receive a tracking number for each.Test oftenThe order confirmation page notes that if you skipped any of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Insomniac Games, which is part of Sony’s PlayStation Studios, plans to donate $50,000 to the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), according to an internal email sent on May 13th by its CEO Ted Price, as reported by The Washington Post. Sony itself plans to match the donation for a total of $100,000, and employees of Insomniac can make donations through Sony’s PlayStation Cares program. Additionally, The Washington Post reports that Sony is working on plans to provide financial assistance to employees who may have to travel to other states to receive abortions and other reproductive care.There’s a major wrinkle to this news, though. The Washington Post reports that neither Insomniac Games nor Sony plans to publicize... Continue reading…

Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images When the US Food and Drug Administration rejected an antidepressant as a treatment for COVID-19 on Monday, it also released a 27-page memorandum explaining exactly why it wasn’t convinced the drug was effective. It’s an unusual move for the agency, which typically rejects drugs quietly without quite so much publicly available paperwork.The antidepressant fluvoxamine is a cheap, generic drug that’s been used for decades. Research shows that the drug can also block inflammation in the body. So, some researchers hoped that it could help prevent severe symptoms in patients with COVID-19, some of whom have to cope with inflammation due to overactive immune systems.Some small and preliminary studies showed that it might be able to reduce... Continue reading…

Verizon is increasing its monthly administrative fee for postpaid customers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Many Verizon customers are going to see a few extra dollars on their next phone bill. Starting in June, Verizon is raising the administrative fee it charges postpaid customers by $1.35, bringing it up to $3.30 per voice line. The fee increase only applies to voice lines — if you have a data-only line for a tablet, for example, there’s no change.In an email to The Verge, company spokesperson Adria Tomaszewski didn’t cite a specific reason for the price increase on consumer accounts:

This is not a 4090 but, rather, an old promo image for the 3090. | Image: Nvidia Did you finally find a gaming GPU within your budget now that sanity is returning to the market? Here’s a reason to keep on waiting: the Nvidia RTX 4090 might arrive as soon as mid-July (via VideoCardz).That’s the word from kopite7kimi, the leaker who correctly predicted the specifications of the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090, among other things.

The change goes into effect with Fortnite’s v20.40 update. | Image: Epic Games Any Fortnite V-Bucks purchased on PlayStation will soon be available across every platform where the game is available except Nintendo Switch, developer Epic Games announced Monday. Previously, any V-Bucks you bought on a PlayStation console were locked to Sony’s platforms, but starting with the v20.40 update that will be released on Tuesday, you’ll also be able to access those V-Bucks as part of your “Shared Wallet” when you play Fortnite on Xbox, PC, Android, and cloud gaming services.Sony has been reticent to play nicely with Epic’s cross-platform ambitions for Fortnite in the past. Cross-play wasn’t available until Sony enabled it in September 2018 despite cross-play being an option for players on Xbox and Switch ahead of that time.... Continue reading…

Watch free movies and TV shows with ads on Freevee. | Image: Amazon Amazon Freevee, the ad-supported streaming service formally known as IMDb TV, now has a dedicated Apple TV app, Amazon announced Monday. Freevee was previously available on Apple TV within the Prime Video app, but now Freevee has its own app that you can download from the App Store for the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD.Freevee offers access to Amazon Studios shows like Bosch: Legacy and Pretty Hard Cases as well as other free movies and TV like Mad Men and Knives Out. Freevee recently signed a new deal with Disney that will rotate in movies like Deadpool 1 and 2, Logan, and The Post among its selections, and it has over 75 channels streaming, including an exclusive channel that only plays Kim’s Convenience. You won’t be able to pick which... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Apple is making it easier for podcasters to get their subscription shows onto its platform. Creators on select podcast distribution platforms like Acast and Libsyn will soon be able to automatically upload their premium shows onto the Apple Podcasts app instead of having to publish it episode by episode through Apple’s platform.Currently, those who offer subscription shows through the Apple Podcasters Program need to publish episodes through Apple Podcast Connect. The company says that its new Delegated Delivery system will allow creators to skip that extra step and publish shows on Apple directly from their host’s dashboard. In addition to Acast and Libsyn, the initial group of partner hosts includes Buzzsprout, Omny Studio, RSS.com,... Continue reading…

Yasmin Finney as Elle Argent in Netflix’s Heartstopper. | Image: Netflix Doctor Who’s titular Time Lord will soon go through a regeneration that leaves them looking a lot more like Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa than Jodie Whittaker, but the forthcoming Doctor won’t be the only new face to look out for as the franchise celebrates its 60th anniversary. Heartstopper’s Yasmin Finney has been cast as a mysterious character she and showrunner Russell T. Davies are only referring to as “Rose.”In a press release about Finney’s casting, Davies described life on Doctor Who as getting brighter and wilder and rhetorically pondered how there could ever be “another Rose,” referring presumably to Billie Piper’s character Rose Tyler.“You’ll find out in 2023, but it’s an absolute joy to welcome Yasmin to the Doctor Who set,”... Continue reading…

Among properties facing wildfire risk, annual likelihood of wildfire today. | Image: First Street Foundation More than half of all homes, 56 percent, in the contiguous 48 states face at least some wildfire risk in the next few decades, according to a first-of-its-kind report published today by the nonprofit research organization First Street Foundation.First Street gave each address in the continental US a rating between one to 10, with one representing close to no risk and 10 representing a 36 percent or more likelihood that a property could be caught up in a wildfire sometime during the next three decades. More than 20 million properties across the continental US are threatened by at least “moderate” wildfire risk. Those homes have up to a 6 percent chance of being in a blaze at some point over a 30-year timespan, the typical timeframe for... Continue reading…

The 15-inch MSI GS66 is the cheapest its ever been | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge The Verge Deals team is ready to lead you into the week with some excellent savings on a variety of awesome tech. Our inaugural deal of the week is the MSI GS66 Stealth gaming laptop, which is currently available at Best Buy for $1,299.99, the lowest price we’ve seen yet for this configuration that typically costs $1,499.99.The MSI GS66 Stealth is a slim yet powerful 15.6-inch laptop that weighs a little under five pounds. This laptop is powered by an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU and an Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card, both of which should provide enough power to make good use of the 1080p display’s 240Hz refresh rate.16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD round out the list of specs for this powerful laptop (here are the rest, in case you’re curious).... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the wake of the sudden collapse of TerraUSD, several other stablecoins’ values (whose values are supposedly pegged to the dollar) have started facing issues.Deus Finance’s DEI coin is currently trading at around 66 cents and has been fluctuating since Sunday, reaching a low of around 52 cents early Monday morning.Unlike other major stablecoins like USD Coin and Tether, which (allegedly) have actual dollars or assets backing them, DEI’s values are controlled by algorithms making trades. It’s not that there’s no collateral — as CoinTelegraph points out, there’s a DEUS token that you can use to get new DEI tokens and that you can receive if you redeemed DEI. Unlike with Terra, where the value of the corresponding coin crashed, the... Continue reading…

Antony Starr as Homelander. | Amazon The superpowered humans of Amazon’s The Boys are a danger in and of themselves, but it’s Vought — the immensely powerful and unscrupulous megacorporation that secretly created them — that poses the largest threat to the world. This has been obvious since the series’ very first episode, and while it’s occasionally felt like the organization might be on the brink of getting its comeuppance, a new trailer for The Boys’ upcoming third season makes clear that Vought’s nowhere near giving up.The Boys’ second season detailed how, in addition to secretly exposing children to chemicals that eventually gave rise to the world’s population of superpeople, Vought also knowingly brought on a deranged Nazi to join the Seven, its flagship team of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Department of Justice is prosecuting the operator of a payment platform that flouted economic sanctions using cryptocurrency. As reported by The Washington Post, it’s possibly the first criminal prosecution of crypto-related sanctions evasion — underscoring both the technology’s potential for getting around financial blocks and its traceability by law enforcement.District of Columbia Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui revealed the prosecution’s existence in an opinion on a still-sealed case, omitting the name of the payment platform as well as the “comprehensively sanctioned country” it dealt with. (There are five such countries: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Ukraine’s Crimea region.) The operator apparently used an exchange to... Continue reading…

An action figure of Jeff Bezos captures the oddly plasticky, unreal nature of his tweets. | Photo by Andrew Liptak / The Verge Friends, I’ve had alerts on for Jeff Bezos’ tweets for a while now, and after some consideration, I’m afraid I have to conclude that this man cannot post.I am, in fact, finding it difficult to believe how bad he is at posting. It’s astonishing. If Elon Musk’s tweets are pure lizard-brain id, Bezos’ tweets are all superego — my guy probably workshops them, which is why they’re DOA, emotionally. Even something like this, which is (I think) supposed to be loose, absolutely fails by modern Twitter standards:

Konami Last week, leaked concept art revived fans’ hopes that a new Silent Hill game was in the works. Now, a VGC report is claiming that Konami is working on several entries in the survival horror series.On May 12th, Twitter user AestheticGamer1 shared four images that were allegedly from a new entry in the Silent Hill series. Shortly after he tweeted the images, they were removed for copyright reasons, adding fuel to the speculation that they were indeed what he claimed them to be.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout first released on PC and PS4 back in August of 2020. | Image: Mediatonic The battle royale bean simulator Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is going free-to-play and finally coming to the Nintendo Switch and Xbox consoles on June 21st. The game, which first launched on PlayStation and PC, was initially set to be released on Switch and Xbox last summer, but it will finally be arriving on those platforms soon. A dedicated PS5 version of the game will be released on June 21st as well. Progression will be shared across platforms, and you’ll be able to make cross-platform parties.Developer Mediatonic, which is now owned by Fortnite maker Epic Games, revealed the move to free-to-play, the new versions, and a whole host of updates on the way for Fall Guys in a video published Monday. These changes include an upcoming... Continue reading…

Last year’s iPhone 13 Mini and iPhone 13. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple has released iOS 15.5, the latest version of its iPhone operating system. It’s short on user-facing enhancements but could help appease regulators concerned with Apple’s dominant control over in-app purchases.New iOS 15.5 features include a pair of buttons added to the Wallet app, which allows Apple Cash card users to quickly request or send money, as well as a new setting in the Apple Podcasts app that lets you place limits on the number of episodes stored in your phone. According to Apple’s release notes, the update also includes various bug fixes, including one that should improve the reliability of home automations triggered by people arriving and leaving.The full release notes read:

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is pushing back against Elon Musk’s concerns around spam and bots on the platform, saying that Musk’s suggestion to measure the problem by performing a random sampling of 100 accounts wouldn’t work. “Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5 percent,” Agrawal wrote on Twitter today. His defense comes after Musk suddenly sprinkled some doubt on his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter by tweeting that the deal was “temporarily on hold” over spam concerns.According to Musk, the hold was put in place pending details to support the service’s estimate that less than 5 percent of its measured daily active users are bots or spam accounts. Specifically who needed to be convinced,... Continue reading…

Apple People will tell you Severance or Ted Lasso are the best shows coming out of Apple TV Plus, and while they’ve certainly had excellent receptions and won a few rewards, they are not the best show on Apple TV Plus. That honor falls to For All Mankind, a science fiction alternate history from Battlestar Galactica creator Ron D. Moore.I know this is controversial to say. Everyone loves Ted Lasso’s blend of optimism and humor. They adore what Severance has to say about our work-home life balance and are curious about the baby goat room. I get it. These shows captivate you, and the first few episodes of For All Mankind absolutely pale in comparison. But the back half of the first season of For All Mankind and the entire second season of the... Continue reading…

A 3D product rendering of the upcoming Sonos Sub Mini, as created by The Verge. | Product render by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Sonos announced its most affordable soundbar to date last week. But some of the company’s loyal customers were disappointed by the lack of a less expensive subwoofer to go along with the new Sonos Ray. It felt like the perfect opportunity to announce a product that’s been rumored for months. The only subwoofer that Sonos currently sells is the $749 Sub, which costs more than both the Ray and Beam — so it’s hard to justify as an accessory at those terms.But despite no announcement last week, The Verge can confirm that Sonos is coming closer to releasing a smaller, less costly subwoofer that will be able to wirelessly pair with the Sonos Ray, Beam, and Arc. Rumors about such a device popped up a few months ago after Sonos accidentally... Continue reading…