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by Victoria Song on (#6AKWJ)
The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 is one of many Sidewalk bridges that can help extend connectivity beyond your home’s Wi-Fi. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge Last week, Amazon opened its Sidewalk protocol to third-party developers. Sidewalk is a large mesh network that draws on people’s home internet connections across the US. It’s a service that requires a lot of trust, and so far, most of the devices on it happen to be Amazon’s own products. But that’s about to change — and as a result, Sidewalk’s privacy safeguards are about to be tested at a much larger scale.No connected device is ever truly 100 percent private or secure. But so far, despite some initial concerns, Sidewalk has avoided any major privacy disasters. Here’s a rundown of how Sidewalk works, the risks it might pose to you as a user, and what we know about Amazon’s plans to defuse them.Are Amazon Sidewalk’s privacy protocols... Continue reading…
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The Verge
| Link | https://www.theverge.com/ |
| Feed | http://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml |
| Updated | 2025-12-22 20:48 |
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by Jay Peters on (#6AKM5)
Image: 343 Industries Joseph Staten, a Bungie veteran who worked on the first three Halo games and was brought on to help get Halo Infinite over the finish line, is leaving Microsoft, the company confirmed to IGN on Friday and Staten himself confirmed on Twitter.“Hey folks, I am indeed leaving Microsoft,” Staten said. “I’ll have more info to share soon, but for now, I’d just like to thank all my @Xbox colleagues for all their understanding and support as I embark on a new adventure.”
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6AKM6)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has started marking links to Substack as unsafe. If you click on a link on Twitter with substack.com in the URL, Twitter will show a separate notice warning you that “the link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe.”Don’t be alarmed — the links we’ve checked appear to be perfectly safe. This notice seems instead to be Twitter’s latest hostile move toward Substack after the email newsletter platform announced its own Twitter-like “Notes” feature on Wednesday.On Thursday, Twitter blocked people who use Substack from embedding tweets into their stories. Then, late Thursday or early Friday, Twitter started blocking engagement on tweets containing links to... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6AKM7)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is barring users from running game emulations on the Xbox Series X | S. On Thursday, Twitter user @gamr12, who’s involved with the distribution of the RetroArch emulation software on Xbox, posted the error message they received when attempting to launch emulated content.“Unable to launch this game or app,” the message reads. “The game or app you’re trying to launch violates Microsoft Store policy and is not supported.” Other users with emulation software on the Xbox Series X | S report running into the same issue.When Microsoft first launched the Xbox Series X | S in 2020, users found that they could install and run emulation software. This made it possible to play a whole range of classic titles on the Xbox Series X | S, i... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6AJCJ)
Image: The Verge Microsoft is making its DALL-E-powered AI image generator “available on desktop for Edge users around the world.” The company announced it’d be coming last month when it integrated the image generation tech into its Bing chatbot, but this move could make it available to a much wider audience.When it rolls out — I and two other Verge staffers using Edge don’t appear to have access to it yet — the “Image Creator” will live in Edge’s sidebar. Using it should be pretty simple; you type in what you want to see, and Bing will generate several images that match the prompt. Then, you can download the ones you like and use them however you need.In a Thursday blog post, Microsoft pitches the feature as a way to create “very specific” visuals... Continue reading…
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by Umar Shakir on (#6AKJD)
Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Rivian unlocked a new Dual-Motor Performance AWD option for its R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV on Thursday, and the automaker is now allowing eligible order holders with configurator access to select the new drivetrain. The news comes after Rivian announced last month that “thousands” of R1T reservation holders will be receiving invitations to configure their trucks for delivery in the next one to four months after order confirmation.The 700-horsepower Performance Dual-Motor AWD (previously known as the “enhanced” Dual-Motor) is a software-unlocked version of the standard 600-horsepower Dual-Motor that quickens its 0–60 mph acceleration from 4.5 seconds down to 3.5 seconds. The upgrade adds $5,000 to the price of the R1T, which... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6AKFZ)
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Matt Taibbi has announced that he’s leaving Twitter amid the company’s ongoing spat with newsletter platform Substack.If Taibbi’s name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, perhaps the phrase “Twitter Files” might. Using access granted by Twitter CEO and self-avowed free speech enthusiast Elon Musk, Taibbi and other journalists have shared internal Twitter information that was intended to reveal how corrupt the company’s previous leadership was. (What they actually revealed was Jack Dorsey’s personal email address and some sloppy journalism. Oops.)Twitter seems to be in a drag-out fight with Substack, blocking users from liking, replying to, or retweeting many tweets with Substack URLs and, in what appears to be an escalation, limiting how... Continue reading…
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by Monica Chin on (#6AKG0)
Photo by Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images It’s April 7th, and you know what that means? That’s right. It means that Western Digital’s cloud network has officially been down for five days.On April 2nd (this past Sunday), the data storage manufacturer announced that it was experiencing a service outage impacting a whole bunch of products, including My Cloud, My Cloud Home, My Cloud Home Duo, My Cloud OS5, SanDisk ibi, and SanDisk Ixpand Wireless Charger. The company said that it was “working to restore service” and apologized for the inconvenience.In the days that followed, we didn’t hear all that much. Western Digital issued a follow-up statement on April 3rd that said basically the exact same thing, as well as a press release clarifying that it was “implementing proactive... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6AKG1)
Illustration by The Verge This week, Twitter began restricting the promotion of links to Substack newsletters, a move that seems to fly in the face of owner Elon Musk’s vocal support of free speech on the platform. The change is a huge problem for Substack writers, who have found Twitter to be one of the best places to attract new subscribers to their newsletters.“It appears that Musk is making decisions based on his own financial interests and petty grievances — even if it makes Twitter objectively worse for users,” Judd Legum, author of Popular Information, a politics-focused newsletter with more than 240,000 subscribers, says in an email to The Verge. “If this continues, it’s hard to justify continuing to invest my time creating content on Twitter.”The ban... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6AKD5)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has agreed to pay over $3 million in fines for selling software to sanctioned entities and individuals in Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Russia from 2012 to 2019. The US Department of the Treasury says that “the majority of the apparent violations involved blocked Russian entities or persons located in the Crimea region of Ukraine” and that the company will be paying around $2.98 million to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (or OFAC) and $347,631 to the Department of Commerce. (It settled for $624,013 but will receive a credit for its agreement with the Treasury.)According to an enforcement notice from OFAC, Microsoft, Microsoft Ireland, and Microsoft Russia failed to oversee who was buying the company’s software and... Continue reading…
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by David Pierce on (#6AKD6)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge (Disclosure right up front: SB Nation is part of Vox Media, and so is The Verge; we’re all co-workers and friends. I reported this story mostly by talking to my colleagues.)SB Nation’s Twitter account has a little over 300,000 followers. Or, at least, it did last Friday. Then, suddenly, it was gone, disappeared from the internet for almost a week. When you go to the profile page, the account was replaced by an ominous message: “This account doesn’t exist.” Nobody at SB Nation knew how to get it back — and for a while, nobody at Twitter did, either.Last Friday, an SB Nation employee tried to log in to the @sbnation account. They were doing so in order to follow @cutwaterspirits, the Twitter account for Cutwater, an adult beverage... Continue reading…
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by Adi Robertson on (#6AKD7)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Artificial intelligence has... let’s say, a fraught relationship with the arts community, and transformative fandom is no exception. Many fans have embraced some tools like Character.ai bots, but plenty have also bristled at the prospect of text generators getting trained on their fanfiction; in my fandom circles, I’ve seen a few people say the prospect of an AI-created content flood discourages them from writing. And in the past week, the backlash has created an odd second-order complication: someone is rampantly accusing non-AI fan writers of being “AI-using cheaters,” and as far as I can tell, nobody quite knows why.According to posts and responses on Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr, a slew of authors have been receiving apparent spam... Continue reading…
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by Aron Garst on (#6AK9P)
Image: Epic Games The two giants are part of a race to become something akin to the YouTube of gaming. Continue reading…
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by Josh Dzieza on (#6AK9Q)
Foxconn’s dome in Wisconsin, with the “high performance computing” shipping container next to it. | Image: Nilay Patel The Foxconn land in Wisconsin may finally be used for a meaningful technology project — but not by Foxconn.Last week, the village board of Mount Pleasant voted to allow Microsoft to build a data center on land previously cleared for the Foxconn LCD fab that never arrived. Microsoft will buy the land for $50 million, some of which will be used to reimburse Foxconn for releasing its rights to the land. It does not appear that Foxconn will play any part in operating the data center itself.The announcement came days before an election in which the board incumbents narrowly defeated challengers critical of the Foxconn deal.Foxconn spokesperson Rusty Schultz declined to comment on the record, instead pointing to an unattributed statement p... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6AK9R)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Substack’s founders have responded to Twitter’s new restrictions on promoting tweets with links from the publishing platform, telling The Verge that writers’ livelihoods “should not be tied to platforms where they don’t own their relationship with their audience, and where the rules can change on a whim.”On Thursday night, Twitter users noticed that they couldn’t like, reply to, or retweet some tweets that had Substack links in them. Twitter hasn’t said why it made the change — or if the change was even intentional — but the timing is certainly suspect, given that it happened about a day after Substack announced its own Twitter-like “Notes” product.And there’s precedent for Twitter putting restrictions on links from a rival platform.... Continue reading…
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by Antonio G. Di Benedetto on (#6AK9S)
It may not be fancy-pants titanium or an Hermes edition, but that sleek steel looks much nicer than the basic aluminum. | Image: Apple Look, the Apple Watch Series 8 is a perfectly fine device. But have you considered that it’s also kind of boring? Sure, it sometimes goes on sale for as low as $329, but it’s not exactly a huge upgrade over the last-gen Series 7. Now, as a much more exciting alternative, Walmart is selling the stainless steel Apple Watch Series 7 in the 41mm cellular configuration with a Milanese Loop strap for $399 ($350 off). You can also pick up the 45mm version with LTE for $429 ($370 off).Aside from Crash Detection and a new temperature sensor for cycle tracking, the Apple Watch Series 7 is nearly on par with its newer Series 8 brethren. It’s got your usual litany of fitness, heart rate, and sleep tracking, as well as an always-on display and IP6X... Continue reading…
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by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#6AK9T)
Pictured: a business I suspect is collapsing. | Image: Substack Is there a funnier phrase in the English language than “negative revenue”?Look, I felt pretty confident Substack was doing badly when it failed to raise from VC and went to retail investors. (Hot tip: the phrase “financial inclusion” indicates that the speaker thinks you are a sucker.) And there were other signs: the uptick last year of newsletter cross-promotions and then-spokesperson Lulu Cheng Meservey’s desperate hollering for attention. (I will assume any business that hires her going forward is in deep trouble.)Signs are not the same as numbers, though, and according to a story from The Information this morning, the numbers are rough. Even I was surprised to see that Substack lit $25 million on fire in 2021. And though it had... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6AK9V)
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Sony told regulators in the UK that they were “irrational” for having sided with Microsoft in the fight over the proposed Microsoft-Activision merger. One reason: Microsoft could sabotage future Call of Duty games by making performance even slightly worse on PlayStation — because gamers are apparently so perceptive that it might make them move to Xbox.Although Sony stated previously that Microsoft’s merger with Activision Blizzard, which makes Call of Duty games, could hurt the franchise on PlayStation, the company’s latest arguments get even more specific. This time around, Sony’s saying Microsoft won’t feel the need to “make use of the advanced features in PlayStation not found in Xbox.” It even goes so far as to say that “degrading... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6AJG6)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Writers trying to embed tweets in their Substack stories are in for a rude surprise: after pasting a link to the site, a message pops up saying that “Twitter has unexpectedly restricted access to embedding tweets in Substack posts” and explaining that the company is working on a fix.After those reports surfaced, between Thursday night and Friday morning, Twitter apparently began to restrict promotion and visibility for tweets with links to Substack posts. New tweets linking directly to Substack.com can still be tweeted, but trying to retweet or like those tweets via Twitter’s website results in an error message saying, “Some actions on this Tweet have been disabled by Twitter,” while doing the same from within its apps or TweetDeck... Continue reading…
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by Justine Calma on (#6AK5S)
NASA’s new air quality monitoring instrument, TEMPO. | Image: Maxar via NASA NASA sent a powerful new instrument into space overnight to track air pollution. If all goes well, it should be able to zoom in to see how air quality changes from neighborhood to neighborhood across North America. That could fill in big data gaps that hide disparities when it comes to who has to live with the most pollution.The tool is called TEMPO, short for Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution instrument. It will keep a tab on three harmful pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, and ground-level ozone. Together, they’re key ingredients for smog.It should be able to zoom in to see how air quality changes from neighborhood to neighborhood across North AmericaThree out of eight Americans live in counties that earned F... Continue reading…
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by Rob Dubbin on (#6AK5T)
Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge Tweetbot’s sudden death, open-casket funeral, and reincarnation as a Mastodon app. Continue reading…
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#6AK1P)
Daisy Ridley in The Last Jedi. | Image: Disney / Lucasfilm Though we’re living in a golden age for Star Wars series, a new trio of big-screen projects are definitely underway that will each tell epic stories from different points in the franchise’s history.At Star Wars Celebration Europe today, Kathleen Kennedy was joined by Daisy Ridley on stage as she announced that James Mangold, Dave Filoni, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy are all set to direct three upcoming Star Wars films due out in coming years. Though no titles or premiere dates were revealed, Kennedy shared that Mangold’s film will go “back to the dawn of the Jedi” while Filoni’s film, which focuses on the New Republic, will connect directly with streaming series like Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett.Perhaps most... Continue reading…
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by Andrew Webster on (#6AK1R)
Image: Lucasfilm There’s going to be more Star Wars this summer. Lucasfilm confirmed today that the next live-action spinoff to hit Disney Plus will be Ahsoka, which will start streaming on Disney Plus in August 2023. The announcement was made during a panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023. We also got a first look at the show via a teaser trailer.Ahsoka, the character, made her first live-action appearance in season 2 of The Mandalorian after originally being introduced in the animated shows. She’s played by Rosario Dawson, who will be reprising her role for the new series. We already knew the show would debut this year, as it’s part of a pretty-packed slate for Disney Plus in 2023.And, since this is Disney, Ahsoka is just one of many series in the... Continue reading…
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by Andrew Webster on (#6AJYH)
Image: Lucasfilm The next live-action Star Wars series is coming next year. While it doesn’t have a specific premiere date just yet, at the Star Wars Celebration event in London, Lucasfilm confirmed that The Acolyte will premiere on Disney Plus in 2024.The Acolyte is a show focused on the dark side of the Force, with a cast led by Amandla Stenberg. It also features a handful of other big names like The Matrix star Carrie-Anne Moss and Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae. The rest of the cast includes Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Charlie Barnett, and Dean-Charles Chapman. Leslye Headland, the co-creator of Netflix’s Russian Doll, is serving as showrunner, director, and executive producer. The series was first announced in 2020.... Continue reading…
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by Thomas Ricker on (#6AJW7)
Samsung's chip business is killing profits. | Photo by JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images Samsung Electronics is having another bad quarter according to the company’s own preliminary estimates. This time, it’s warning that quarterly operating profit decreased 96 per cent compared to the same period last year, worse than the two-thirds plunge it suffered the three months prior. Not even robust sales of the new Galaxy S23 series could overcome a global plummet in chip demand.Semiconductor demand has waned since peak covid as everyone splurged on lockdown toys and tools. Now the global economic slowdown has caused consumers to think twice about buying that next gadget resulting in swollen chip inventories for companies like Samsung. And according to my ECON101 professor, prices will fall when there’s more supply than demand... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6AJMJ)
Image: The Verge Google has announced that WebGPU, an API that gives web apps more access to your graphics card’s capabilities, will be enabled by default in Chrome 113, which is due out in around three weeks. WebGPU will be available on Windows PCs that support Direct3D 12, macOS, and ChromeOS devices that support Vulkan.According to a blog post, WebGPU can let developers achieve the same level of graphics they can now with far less code and provides “more than three times improvements in machine learning model inferences.” That last one is a real kicker — improved machine learning performance was interesting in 2021, when the feature was added to Chrome on an experimental basis, but now that we’re in the age of generative AIs and large language... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6AJJK)
Photo by Wang Gang / VCG via Getty Images Apple will be opening its first retail store in India in Mumbai, according to a short notice on the company’s website.“Hello Mumbai,” the notice reads. “We are getting ready to welcome you aboard our first store in India. And raring to see where your creativity takes you at Apple BKC.” Apple’s website says the new store is “coming soon,” but the company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment for more details. Image: Apple Apple’s logo for its new store in Mumbai. The store will be at the Jio World Drive mall and is reportedly 22,000 square feet. You can see a few exterior pictures of the new location in this Reuters article.The Mumbai store in India isn’t a total surprise. CEO Tim Cook said in... Continue reading…
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by Sheena Vasani on (#6AJJM)
Amazon’s newest Echo Dot is just one of many devices available at an all-time low. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Spring has sprung, and to celebrate that fact, Amazon naturally decided to discount a bunch of random devices mostly unrelated to the season. That’s good news for us, though. Given Mother’s Day and graduation season are just around the corner, the ongoing sale makes for a nice opportunity to pick up some of Amazon’s most popular items at a fraction of their typical list price. The promo extends to top-of-the-line streaming sticks like the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, as well as the newest Echo Dot, the entry-level Kindle, and even Amazon’s Fire TV Omni QLED. Even better, retailers like Best Buy are matching Amazon’s prices.Of course, as with any sale, not all the deals are that great, so we’ve gone ahead and vetted them to save you the... Continue reading…
by Umar Shakir on (#6AJG7)
Image: Walmart Walmart is planning to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network at thousands of its stores, including Sam’s Club locations. The company says it plans to have the network built by 2030 and will help make EV ownership “more accessible, reliable, convenient and affordable.”“Currently, Walmart has nearly 1,300 third-party chargers across 280 stores in partnership with third-party suppliers,” Walmart’s director of global communications – sustainability, Aman Singh, writes in an email with The Verge. This newly announced expansion has the company building a nationwide EV fast charging network on its own instead.Walmart believes it is “uniquely positioned” to build out a convenient charging solution for EV owners. The company... Continue reading…
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by Justine Calma on (#6AJG8)
Global Thermostat’s kiloton-scale unit for removing carbon dioxide from the air. | Image: Global Thermostat There’s a scramble in the US to build the first generation of technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And the first American company with this kind of system, Global Thermostat, just set up shop in Colorado to prove that its CO2-sucking technology actually works.There’s been hype around Global Thermostat since it got started in 2010 as one of just three high-profile companies in the world developing this technology, called direct air capture (DAC). The idea is to filter CO2 out of the ambient air and then sell that CO2 as a product or sequester it underground to keep it from escaping into the atmosphere where it would heat up the planet.But Global Thermostat has been roiled by years of delays and internal drama. Its... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#6AJCF)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The age of Twitter bots may be over. Continue reading…
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by Elizabeth Lopatto on (#6AJCG)
Who could have guessed? | Illustration: Micha Huigen / The Verge All kinds of unwanted users — ransomware gangs, thieves, scammers, and North Korea — are merrily transacting in decentralized finance and even laundering funds, according to a new report from the Treasury Department. That’s because DeFi doesn’t comply with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism finance laws.Poor compliance with anti-money laundering as well as poor cybersecurity puts DeFi users at risk of theft and fraud, the Treasury says.In the US, the Bank Secrecy Act — and some other regulations — mean that financial institutions have to help the government detect money laundering. In this paper, the Treasury notes that a DeFi service might well be a financial institution under the BSA, even if it’s decentralized, and will have... Continue reading…
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by Victoria Song on (#6AJCH)
Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge The Wear OS 3 rollout hasn’t been the smoothest. It’s totally understandable if you decided to stick it out on Wear OS 2 until the dust settled. But last year was a good year for Android smartwatches, and there’s reason to believe that this momentum will carry forward.It’s time, my friends, to consider upgrading your older watch to Wear OS 3.At this point, the pros of Wear OS 3 are starting to outweigh the cons of its predecessor. The main reason to upgrade is third-party apps. Google’s put a lot of effort into luring back developers to the platform, and most big-name app developers (e.g., Strava, Telegram, etc.) are understandably prioritizing the new over the old. And while Google’s done a decent job to ensure its Wear OS 2 apps... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6AJCM)
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Disney has created a new “chief brand officer” role to oversee Disney’s brand across “the entire ecosystem of company touchpoints and consumer experiences,” the company announced on Thursday. Asad Ayaz, the company’s president of marketing for The Walt Disney Studios, will be taking the post and report directly to recently returned CEO Bob Iger.As part of his chief brand officer duties, Ayaz will make marketing campaigns “leveraging and synthesizing the company’s full suite of content and consumer experiences,” set “corporate synergy” and “franchise priorities” with Iger, and “lead a global consumer research and analytics function focused on Disney’s brands,” according to the press release.The new role could help Disney wrangle how... Continue reading…
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by Ash Parrish on (#6AJCN)
Image: Blizzard Entertainment I haven’t gotten emotional over an Overwatch trailer since the Overwatch 2 launch trailer. But the trailer for season 4 finally got me. Beyond teasing the season’s new skins, which feature a galactic space pirate theme, and the release of the newest hero Liveweaver, the season 4 trailer feels like it’s Overwatch returning to its narrative roots of hope, optimism, and inclusion.Overwatch, since inception, has been about an idealistic set of cosmopolitan heroes coming together to save a world in crisis. That message is in the game’s DNA with its bright colors, futuristic aesthetic, and Tracer’s signature line, “Cheers, love, the cavalry’s here.” I wouldn’t say Overwatch 2 has gotten away from that message, but it’s been de-emphasized in... Continue reading…
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by Jon Porter on (#6AJ86)
The new WhiteFox Eclipse. | Image: Alpaca Keyboards The WhiteFox Eclipse is a new wireless mechanical keyboard that harks back to a classic community design. It’s based on the original WhiteFox, a project that played a big part in bringing custom keyboards into the mainstream, but with an updated set of specs and features that reflect just how much the scene has moved on since designer Matteo Spinelli hand-wired the original precursor to the WhiteFox back in 2013.Obviously, that means the Eclipse is hot-swappable, allowing its stock Gateron Yellow Linear switches to be quickly removed and replaced without the need for desoldering, and it’s gasket-mounted to give it a softer feeling as you type. It’s also wireless, with a 4,000mAh battery that manufacturer Alpaca Keyboards reckons should... Continue reading…
by Alice Newcome-Beill on (#6AJ87)
From controllers to microSD cards, there are all sorts of accessories you’ll need to make the most of your Switch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Nintendo Switch is now the third-bestselling console of all time, having shipped more than 120 million units since it launched in 2017. If you’re one of the millions of people that own the hybrid system, odds are you already have everything you need. However, if you’re someone who recently picked up the console or you’re currently looking to purchase one, there are a handful of accessories that will make your gaming experience far more enjoyable (and convenient).Whether you need a controller, a carrying case, or a pair of wireless headphones, we’ve rounded up the best accessories you can buy to supplement your experience gaming on the Nintendo Switch. Just note that while many of these accessories can be used with any Switch model... Continue reading…
by Umar Shakir on (#6AJ88)
Mini Golf FRVR for Facebook Gaming, now available during a Messenger video call. | Image: Meta Meta’s Facebook Gaming division is making Messenger video calls more interesting with a new set of free-to-play games you can now access with your friends while you chat face to face, no matter where you are. The feature comes fairly late in the post-covid lockdown world but is great for quick sessions of Words with Friends, Mini Golf FRVR, and Exploding Kittens (via Engadget).The best part of the new Messenger video call gaming feature is how accessible they are for Facebook users. All you need to do is initiate a video call with one or multiple friends, tap the group mode button in the center, select the Play icon, and then select a game in the library presented to you — no downloading or installation required.In 2018, Facebook... Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6AJ89)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile will continue to offer free MLB.TV subscriptions to customers through 2028. In a post on its site, the carrier announced that it has extended its partnership with Major League Baseball, giving customers the chance to watch baseball games for free each season.T-Mobile has offered MLB.TV, which typically costs $149.99 per year, as a free perk for its customers for the past eight years. The service provides livestreams of out-of-market home and away games, along with access to pregame and postgame shows. While you can’t catch in-market games live, it still lets you watch them on demand after they’ve aired across a range of platforms, including iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, and PlayStation.In addition to announcing this... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#6AJ3C)
Image: Microsoft Microsoft is making its Cloud PCs more flexible thanks to a new Windows 365 Frontline option, integration into LG’s 2023 TVs, and even a new Windows 365 experience for Android devices. Windows 365 Frontline is a new offering designed for frontline, shift, and part-time workers in a bid to offer businesses more flexibility over how they purchase Cloud PC licenses.Microsoft originally put PCs in the cloud with Windows 365 nearly two years ago, allowing businesses to access Windows in a web browser. Windows 365 Frontline enters public preview today and features similar virtualized Windows 10 or Windows 11 PCs, but the crucial difference is now up to three people are able to access a machine based on a single license. That’s ideal for... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#6AJ3B)
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Discord is officially introducing its own in-app soundboard that you can use in voice channels. With the soundboard, you’ll be able to play all sorts of sounds in voice channels to have some fun or troll a friend. The feature was previously an experiment available to a limited amount of communities, but it will now be rolling out over “the coming weeks,” according to a Discord blog post.There is a catch, though: you’ll only be able to actually make sounds with Discord’s soundboard on the desktop app. If you’re on mobile, you’ll hear the sounds but can’t use the board yourself, Kellyn Slone, director of product communications, tells The Verge. That said, any official Discord soundboard is still an improvement, as you’ve previously had to... Continue reading…
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by Andrew Webster on (#6AJ3A)
Image: EA The monster hunting game gets a new cherry blossom fox just in time for spring. Continue reading…
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by Thomas Ricker on (#6ADZ2)
Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge The holiday we didn’t ask for is back, as brands like Razer and Tesla put on their silly hats for the weekend. Continue reading…
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by Emma Roth on (#6AJ3D)
Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta’s company-wide job cuts impacted the customer service team it had just started to build, leaving influencers and group admins grappling with scammers and technical difficulties, according to a report from CNBC.CNBC says it spoke with former Meta employees and viewed documents filed with the US Department of Labor that indicate the company’s massive layoffs affected workers across Facebook and Instagram’s customer support, customer experience, and communities teams. Meta laid off 11,000 employees last November and cut an additional 10,000 workers in March.Meta announced its plans to build a customer support team last year, with Brent Harris, Meta’s vice president of governance, stating the company was “spending a bunch of time” on... Continue reading…
by Antonio G. Di Benedetto on (#6AJ3E)
The Mac Mini design may be a bit old now, but it’s still pretty dang adorable for a desktop. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s brilliant M2-powered Mac Mini in its expanded configuration with 512GB of storage is selling for $689.99 at Amazon. That’s a sizable savings of $110 on the little desktop, making it an easy recommendation for anyone who needs a basic computer for their home. The M2 Mac Mini looks like most other Mac Minis, but it sports the same processor as the latest MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like those laptops, you get two Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C ports, but the Mini also provides you with two USB-A ports, an ethernet port, and an HDMI port — oh, and it’s much, much cheaper. It has the same eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU of the base configuration, but the much roomier 512GB of storage makes life more convenient before you’re forced to... Continue reading…
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by Antonio G. Di Benedetto on (#6AJ3G)
Frankly, price increases make me a little cranky. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Time is running out on preordering a Playdate with better pricing. Beginning tomorrow, Panic’s little yellow handheld will cost $199. The company announced last month that a price jump was coming on April 7th due to increased manufacturing costs, so now is your last chance to place a preorder for the current $179 price. This is actually the second price increase on the crank-equipped portable, as it initially went up from $149 to $179 before its initial launch.A preordered Playdate must be paid in full, with an estimated shipping date currently listed as late 2023 — though, you can cancel any time before it ships and get a full refund should you change your mind. The Playdate includes a season of 24 games with the purchase, and more... Continue reading…
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by Adi Robertson on (#6AJ3F)
The Apple Lisa, 40 years later. | Illustration: The Verge The Apple Lisa was not, by nearly any definition, a hit product. Released in 1983, the ambitious but flawed machine was instantly overshadowed by Apple’s follow-up, the 1984 Macintosh — which helped cement the computer as a fixture in homes and offices worldwide.But the design language of the Lisa is the design language of modern computers. It was one of the first machines to use the metaphor of a desktop, including things like folders, icons, and application windows that mimicked sheets of paper. Apple drew inspiration from outside sources, particularly the Alto, a groundbreaking machine developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. But it iterated on the formula with obsessive user testing that adapted to first-time users’... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#6AHYE)
Image: Valve Nvidia’s latency-reducing Reflex technology is coming to Counter-Strike 2. Reflex is designed to make games feel more responsive by reducing the amount of time between when you click your mouse and when you see the action on-screen. It’s all-important in competitive shooters, and up until now, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was the most played game on Steam without it.Valve and Nvidia have worked together to add Reflex to Counter-Strike 2, the upcoming replacement for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. GeForce GTX 900 series and above will be able to enable Reflex in Counter-Strike 2, and it will have the biggest impact on older GPUs, according to Nvidia. Reflex can reduce system latency by up to 35 percent in Counter-Strike 2, which... Continue reading…
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by Allison Johnson on (#6AHYD)
The Moto G Power 5G is a little pricier this year, but it promises some meaningful upgrades. | Image: Motorola The 2023 version of Motorola’s all-about-battery-life Moto G Power trades some of that battery life for modern conveniences. In addition to 5G, a nicer screen and more powerful processor are on offer, so Moto’s battery claims aren’t as lofty this year, and the price is higher. While last year’s 128GB model sold for $249, this year’s edition starts at $299. Still, it might make for a budget phone that’s worth buying.Along with a huge 5,000mAh battery, the Motorola Moto G Power 5G (Lord help me; that is actually the full product name) includes a MediaTek Dimensity 930 processor with 4GB of RAM. By the looks of it, that should be a serious upgrade from the 4G-only Helio G37 chip in the 2022 Moto G Power, which, by several accounts, stank.... Continue reading…
by Sarah Jeong on (#6AHYC)
Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge In July 2022, the world watched with bated breath as Twitter sued Elon Musk. No one knew whether the deal was going to happen or whether it had all been an elaborate troll to begin with. (The two weren’t mutually exclusive, either.) Billions of dollars and the fate of a major worldwide social media network hung in the balance. The lawsuit was, in some ways, unprecedented. Legal experts found themselves besieged with all kinds of tricky questions.For example, was this the first time the poop emoji showed up in court? The answer is no. In 2018, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Emerson v. Dart in which a corrections officer, Paula Emerson, sued the county alleging workplace discrimination. While the... Continue reading…