The Verge

Is this the 2022 iPad Pro, or is it last year’s model? You can’t tell, and you won’t tell when using it, either. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s iPad releases this year have been, well, lackluster to say the least. That isn’t to say the new 10th-gen iPad and the M2-equipped iPad Pro are bad products — far from it. But they either aren’t significantly better than their predecessors or have an awkward value proposition that puts them in between more compelling options in Apple’s lineup.If you’ve been planning to buy an iPad this year, this is good news because you can confidently purchase last year’s (or even older) models without really giving up much. And based on the pricing we’ve seen on older iPads recently, that can either save you a ton of money or get you a more capable model for the same price you might pay for the latest base version.Buying an older model also... Continue reading…

Cherry’s new MX Black Clear-Top switches. | Image: Cherry Cherry’s latest mechanical keyboard switch is the MX Black Clear-Top. It’s a design that’s based on a rare linear switch that was produced briefly during the 1980s for Nixdorf keyboards, leading to them being nicknamed “Nixies” by enthusiasts. The retro switches, which are effectively a variant of the linear Cherry MX Black that use a heavier spring and clear, rather than black, plastic case, have since become a highly sought after collector’s item, prized for their supposed smoothness and rich sound.How highly sought after? Well this review of the Nixie switch from ThereminGoat notes that they’ve been known to sell for $7 a switch. Considering the average keyboard has around 100 keys, that means a full set of Nixie switches could set... Continue reading…

The Substack Chat feature was designed to give content creators and writers a way to better connect with their subscribers and online community. | Image: Substack Substack has launched Substack Chat, a new discussions feature designed to provide content creators with the means to build up their own online communities outside of social media.Substack Chat allows writers, podcasters, and other creators to host conversations with their audiences, setting a topic for discussion without needing to hack together integrations with services such as Discord, Telegram, or Slack. Chat can be made available for all subscribers or restricted to those that pay for your content.Substack Chat could be an alternative community for those leaving Twitter“Chat is a community space reimagined specifically for writers and creators — it’s like having your own private social network where you make the rules,” Substack... Continue reading…

You’ll be able to accept contactless payments on your iPhone through the PayPal or Venmo iOS apps. | Image: Apple PayPal is going to make it easier for merchants in the US to take payments right on their iPhones. The company is adding support for Apple’s Tap to Pay technology into the PayPal and Venmo iOS apps, meaning merchants will be able to accept contactless credit or debit cards and mobile wallets without an external card reader (via MacRumors).Apple first announced Tap to Pay in February. Integration with PayPal and Venmo’s apps might mark a notable step up for adoption of Apple’s touchless technology and could be helpful for merchants who don’t want to rely on external readers to accept contactless payments. It will also help PayPal compete with payments rival Square, which launched support for Tap to Pay in September.Support will be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In an earnings call today, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that the merging of HBO Max and Discovery Plus was going so well that the target date for the launch of the new service would be moving from summer 2023 to spring 2023.From their user interface to their backend to their content, the two services are extraordinarily different, with HBO Max likely leading Discovery Plus in subscriptions as it had approximately 76.8 million users in April before the acquisition, and the combined services now have 94.9 million subscribers. But Zaslav’s plan has always been to merge the two services, which his team views as targeting very different markets. Early this year, a slide claiming HBO Max skewed male and Discovery Plus... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you’re paying Dish to stream live TV channels over the internet, prepare for a higher bill yet again: the company’s Sling TV streaming service is raising prices by $5 a month for the fourth time in five years. Sling Orange and Sling Blue pay TV packages will now cost $40 a month each — up from $35 previously — and you’ll pay $55 for the package with both Orange and Blue.Existing subscribers should see the price increases on the first bill they get after December 3rd; new customers will have to pay the higher rate starting today.In an official blog post, Sling TV president Gary Schanman blamed the rising cost of programming for the latest price hike, without offering further explanation. We’d probably put money on Disney having... Continue reading…

Screenshot by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Were Samsung’s jaw-dropping 49-inch Odyssey G9 and Neo G9 not enough monitor for you? Did the 55-inch swiveling cockpit that is the Odyssey Ark leave you cold? The electronics and semiconductor giant is preparing to announce an unprecedented 8K resolution version of its massive curved screen, AMD just revealed at its RDNA 3 GPU event.It’ll feature DisplayPort 2.1, but that’s the only other thing we know as of now. AMD says we’ll get more details at CES 2023 in January.While the 32:9 aspect ratio of these monitors suggests the screen won’t be a true 8K resolution — for comparison, the “5K” Odyssey G9 has a height of just 1440 pixels to go with its incredible 5,120 pixels of width — it would likely be a substantial improvement in... Continue reading…

Getty Images On Thursday, the internet-based telecom provider Vonage agreed to pay $100 million to the Federal Trade Commission to settle charges that it created an artificially burdensome process to cancel the service that included hidden termination fees.In its complaint, the FTC alleged that Vonage, an Ericsson subsidiary, made it easy for consumers to sign up for its services but far more difficult to cancel. Consumers could sign up for service in a variety of ways, including online and over the phone, but Vonage forced customers to speak with a live “retention agent” in order to cancel service.Additionally, the FTC claimed Vonage purposefully hid the cancellation number on its website, limited the hours these cancellation calls were... Continue reading…

The SLS rocket for the Artemis 1 mission on September 27, 2022. | Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images NASA has confirmed its next launch attempt for the Artemis I mission will be at night, with a midnight launch scheduled for the early hours of Monday, November 14th. Following a difficult few months attempting to get the Space Launch System rocket off the ground for the first time, including several wet dress rehearsals, two previous launch attempts, a tanking test, and an interruption from a hurricane, the rocket will begin rolling back out to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after midnight on Friday, November 4th.A night launch means lower visibility, and NASA representatives said they would have preferred a daylight launch. However, the team was confident that a night launch could be done safely and meet all the... Continue reading…

Photo by Jon Akira Yamamoto/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Devices that monitor blood oxygen levels in the hospital and at home need to be more carefully regulated, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel indicated at a meeting Tuesday.The devices are everywhere in healthcare settings, and people regularly purchase them for at-home use. But research over the past few decades has steadily shown that they don’t work as well for people with darker skin tones — a disparity that became even more critical during the covid pandemic. The FDA issued an alert saying that the devices have “limitations” in 2021.“We need to take appropriate steps to remove the growing uncertainty around these devices and ensure the health and safety of the public,” anesthesiologist Jesse Ehrenfeld said to the panel... Continue reading…

The PSVR2 starts at $549.99 and launches next year. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge PlayStation VR2 costs more than the most expensive PS5. I get why, but it’s still too much money.We’re on the precipice of a new era for virtual reality. Meta just launched its high-end Quest Pro, Sony will be releasing PSVR2 in February, and Apple is heavily rumored to jump into the game with its own VR / AR headset very soon. I’m finally ready to buy a VR headset, and this is the generation that it feels like I should be joining. But now that we’re finally seeing actual prices for them, I’m getting some major sticker shock. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Do I want PSVR2? Yes, but it costs so much. PSVR2’s $549.99 price is already high, but tack that on with the starting PS5 price of $399.99 and it means... Continue reading…

It’s Netflix — but with ads. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Clicking into something on Netflix’s new ads tier is a roll of the dice: you never know how many ads you might have to sit through.Netflix Basic with Ads is finally here, offering a cheaper Netflix subscription at $6.99 per month with the tradeoff that you might have to watch some ads with your movies and TV shows. I spent some time messing around with a new account on the tier on Thursday, and while the experience of using Netflix was mostly the same, what struck me was the unpredictability of how many ads I’d have to watch. Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge You probably won’t be making this face after you have to watch a third ad. Netflix says you can expect to see an “average of 4 to 5 minutes of ads per... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Recently, journalist, author of Platformer, and former Verge reporter Casey Newton tweeted something that had many readers both laughing and panicking: that entrepreneur David Sacks’ calendar at Twitter was not set to private and, as a result, was being carefully scrutinized by curious Twitter employees.

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge, Photo by Pete Marovich / Getty Images How often do the parent companies of Fox News and MSNBC team up? Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Update November 3rd, 1:25PM ET: In a note emailed to employees and posted publicly on November 3rd, Amazon svp of people experience and technology Beth Galetti announced a “pause on new incremental hires in our corporate workforce.”According to a report by Karen Weise of The New York Times, Amazon is freezing corporate hiring for its retail business for the remainder of 2022 in an effort to hedge its bets against a rough economic forecast.The hiring freeze includes all corporate and technology positions for Amazon’s retail and operations, which account for the bulk of Amazon sales. However, Amazon’s more profitable cloud computing division won’t be affected. Student hiring and field positions are also exempt from the pause, and B... Continue reading…

Amazon Ring spotlight camera. | Image: Ring The New York Police Department has joined Ring Neighbors, the neighborhood surveillance network built around Amazon’s Ring security cameras. The partnership, announced yesterday, means the NYPD will view people’s posts on Neighbors and be able to post directly to it, including requests for public help on “active police matters.”Neighbors is a Nextdoor-like extension of Ring’s security camera business, allowing residents of a neighborhood to discuss crime and safety as well as post footage from their cameras. While many law enforcement departments have joined Neighbors in recent years, this marks its adoption by America’s largest police force. (Police could separately request Ring footage for criminal investigations without the app.)... Continue reading…

An example of DALL-E’s “outpainting” function, which generates imagery outside an initial starting frame. | Image: OpenAI OpenAI is making its image generation software DALL-E much more widely available to businesses with the launch of an API in public beta. The API will make it easier for companies to add DALL-E’s text-to-image functionality to their products, giving developers simplified tools to integrate and customize the software to their liking.An early use case for the API is Microsoft’s Designer app, which uses the software to generate imagery for Office users, from PowerPoint slides to illustrations for homework. Microsoft is one of OpenAI’s major investors and unveiled the app last month.Luke Miller, a product manager at OpenAI working on the API, told The Verge that the company was excited to see the new applications developers would find for... Continue reading…

The tracker was previously used in Manchester City’s Academy. | Image: Manchester City FC Say what you like about Manchester City FC, but it’s a soccer club that loves wearable gadgets. Not only does it have a smart scarf in the works, but today, it’s launching Cityplay, a wearable performance tracker that provides training insights to folks who like to play footy in their spare time.Cityplay is a collaborative effort with Playmaker, a tech company that makes a wearable soccer tracker. Playmaker’s tech has been around for a while, and the tracker is currently used in Man City’s Academy, which trains promising young players. According to the club’s press release, Cityplay gives users scores for “critical football skills” so they can better understand how they rank on technical aspects like first touch and dribbling as well as... Continue reading…

The Hyperloop tube hosted student competitions in 2018 and 2019. | Photo by Pauline Acalin for The Verge Elon Musk’s first prototype Hyperloop tunnel is no more. Bloomberg reports that the roughly one-mile-long white steel tunnel running along Jack Northrop Avenue near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, has been removed and will be replaced with parking spaces for employees.Perhaps you’ll recall that before Musk assumed the mantle of free speech champion, he set out to circumvent “soul-destroying traffic” by building the Hyperloop, a theoretical system of tunnels that would revolutionize transportation. He also claimed to be able to dig tunnels faster and more efficiently than most current tunnel boring systems, which he rightly argued were laborious and costly.By pairing these things together, Musk said he could change the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Netflix’s more affordable Basic with Ads plan goes live today in several countries, but there’s one popular streaming platform where you won’t be able to access it on day one: it’s not supported on the Apple TV. Thankfully, this is only temporary and should be resolved in the near future.As noted by 9to5Mac, Netflix has a support page up that directly confirms as much. It simply says, “Basic with Ads isn’t supported on Apple TV,” without any details as to why that’s the case. Plenty of other AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) services are present on tvOS, and since Basic with Ads works on iPhones and iPads, this doesn’t seem to be the result of a wider spat between Apple and Netflix. A Netflix spokesperson confirmed to 9to5Mac... Continue reading…

Now you can get Netflix cheaper — but with ads. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix with ads is finally here. After resisting ads in its streaming service, the company is rolling out its Netflix Basic with Ads in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the UK, the US, and on November 10th, Spain. It costs $6.99 per month in the US.On Basic with Ads, you’ll see an “average” of four to five ads every hour, COO Greg Peters wrote in a blog post about the tier in October. Ads will be 15 or 30 seconds long, and you’ll see them before and during the things you watch, though you can’t skip or fast-forward through them. (You can pause ads.) Netflix is partnering with Microsoft as its “global advertising technology and sales partner” for the new tier.Like with the ad-free Basic tier, TV... Continue reading…

A pedestrian uses an umbrella to protect herself from the sun, at Canary Wharf, during a heatwave in London, UK, on Monday, July 18th, 2022. | Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images Europe is heating up faster than any other continent in the world, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) finds. Since 1991, temperatures in Europe have risen more than twice as fast as global average temperatures. That’s brought extreme swings in weather, from devastating floods to deadly heatwaves.The consequences are brutal, despite Europe having more resources than many other parts of the world to cope with climate change. For example, three in four people in Europe have access to early warning systems for disasters exacerbated by climate change. In comparison, the United Nations recently found that half of the world lacks adequate early warning systems.“Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and... Continue reading…

Peloton continues to spin both its wheels and numbers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is an optimist. During the company’s Q1 2023 earnings call, McCarthy said that the company was done with layoffs and that the “ship was turning,” referencing a colorful metaphor he issued during Q4 2022 earnings. Wall Street investors may disagree. Peloton’s stock price fell by about 19 percent this morning after the company announced a weaker-than-expected holiday forecast.On the product side, McCarthy noted that while customer satisfaction with the recently launched Guide was high, most people don’t know it exists. Meanwhile, the CEO heaped heavy praise on the Peloton Row, claiming that the device “reinvented the category.” He then noted that Row inventory would be constrained this year, even as demand was... Continue reading…

Drone shows have proved a popular alternative to fireworks, though not everyone is happy about their potential for advertising. | Photo by Yang Bo/China News Service via Getty Images Five hundred light-equipped drones are being launched into the sky above New York City this evening to form a giant flying advertisement for the Candy Crush mobile game. (via Gothamist).The 10-minute-long choreographed performance has been organized for the game’s 10th anniversary and will “turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet,” according to Fernanda Romano, chief marketing officer at Candy Crush.

Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is selling for just $24.99 instead of $49.99, which is a new all-time low. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Want to get a super early head start on your holiday shopping before Black Friday rolls around? Today’s deal on Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is a present that will appeal to a wide range of people, given its support for all major streaming apps. It’s also a gift that won’t hurt your wallet, either, as it’s half off at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy, selling for $24.99 instead. That’s a new all-time low on the excellent, easy-to-use device, which organizes all of your streaming service apps into one big grid so they’re quickly accessible. So long as you don’t need support for Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C, this is a terrific streaming stick with a range of other perks, too, including support for Dolby Vision, Apple’s AirPlay 2, and compatibility with... Continue reading…

The CSA is hosting an event in Amsterdam this week to celebrate the launch of the new smart home standard Matter. | Illustration: The Verge Matter was finally released last month, and now, we are getting our first look at the devices that will work with the new smart home interoperability standard. At a Matter launch event in Amsterdam hosted by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the organization announced that over 190 products are now certified or close to gaining certification in the first Matter categories. These include smart lighting, smart plugs, smart thermostats, smart shades, smart sensors, and smart locks. That’s a relatively small number in the infinite pool of smart home devices, but it's a good start.Today, the CSA announced four new device categories that are coming next, in addition to cameras, home appliances, robot vacuums, and more advanced energy... Continue reading…

The latest generation of the Eve Motion is gaining Matter support next month. Thanks to its forward planning and early adoption of Thread, smart home device maker Eve System will be among the first companies with Matter devices. It’s making a free update available to its Thread-enabled Eve Energy smart plug, Eve Door & Window sensors, and Eve Motion sensor on December 12th to support Matter. The company announced this at a Matter launch event in Amsterdam and confirmed that the rest of its Thread lineup will receive the updates over the next year. Additionally, Eve products with Matter already built in will start shipping in Q1 of 2023.Also coming in the first half of 2023 is the company’s first-ever Android app. This will mean those with Android phones can add and control Eve devices in their smart home. Until... Continue reading…

Welcome to Versus.It’s been a while, but we’re back to pitting our favorite tech and gadgets in a head-to-head battle to determine the pros and cons of each. For our first episode, we’re diving straight into the Google Pixel Watch and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5.Wear OS 3 is a work in progress, but naturally, these are the two big-name flagships you can currently buy. While Google and Samsung did join forces to create Wear OS 3, the companies have slightly different visions for how the unified platform should work. So while you’ve got two smartwatches running the same software, the experience and UI aren’t the same. Under the hood, the two watches are also running on different chips with an assortment of varying sensors.Does the... Continue reading…

Image: Connectivity Standards Alliance The smart home is entering a new phase of interoperability, and these are the first product announcements Continue reading…

Nanoleaf’s new bulbs will support Thread and Matter. | Image: Nanoleaf Nanoleaf has announced the addition of four new Matter-compatible smart bulbs and light strips to its Essentials smart lighting line. The Thread-enabled LED lights will launch in Q1 of 2023 and include a light strip and A19, GU10, and BR30 bulbs, making them some of the first to support Matter directly without a bridge.Pricing will range from $19.99 to $99.99, and all the new products will be RGBW, capable of displaying over 16 million color options, including tunable whites with color temperatures ranging from 2700–6500K. The company made the announcement at the Matter launch event in Amsterdam this week.“The bulbs and light strip will use Matter over Thread — with a Bluetooth fallback.”Matter compatibility means the lights can be... Continue reading…

Image: AMD It’s November 3rd, which means it’s RDNA 3 day. AMD is ready to unveil its next line of powerful GPUs to the world in a livestream that promises “the next generation of AMD graphics” powered by AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture. After months of teases and a Ryzen 7000 CPU launch, we’re about to see how AMD will compete with Nvidia’s RTX 40 series.Leaks have already shown at least one of the Radeon 7000 GPUs we’re expecting to see today, showing what’s likely the RX 7900 (successor to the current RX 6900). AMD has already said it won’t be using the new 12VHPWR connectors that are found on Nvidia’s RTX 40-series cards, which have caused some controversy, with owners of RTX 4090 cards reporting the power cables melting or burning. Nvidia says it’s... Continue reading…

An image of early pregnancies from five weeks (bottom left) to eight weeks (top right). The tissue has been rinsed of blood and the menstrual lining has been removed, leaving only the gestational sac. | MYA Network/Dr. Joan Fleischman, MD, MPA Most people don’t know what early pregnancy actually looks like. That complicates abortion discussions. Continue reading…

The new Amazon fashion shopping lenses allow Snapchat users to try on eyewear and then buy products via an on-screen link. | Image: Snap Snap and Amazon Fashion are partnering up to provide Snapchat users with the ability to try on branded glasses and sunglasses using augmented reality filters.Snapchat’s 363 million daily active users now have access to thousands of glasses, goggles, and sunglasses from the likes of Maui Jim, Persol, Oakley, and Costa Del Mar through the apps’ AR feature. The AR lenses don’t just overlay eyewear: in some cases, on-theme accessories are added, like knitted hats and frosted backdrops for Oakley’s line of ski sunglasses. Image: Snap Some filters on the shopping experience include additional overlays such as hats, eyelashes, and themed backgrounds. Snapchat users can find the new Amazon AR shopping lenses on the... Continue reading…

Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz CTO Markus Schäfer is energized by his visit to Silicon Valley. The executive is at the automaker’s Sunnyvale, California, research and development center to meet with his team and local tech companies.“Very, very interesting discussions were had about potential partnerships in the future,” Schäfer tells The Verge as we sit down for a chat about the future of Mercedes-Benz. The company is in the midst of a supercharged transformation into an EV platform while working to become the first automaker to have a passenger vehicle for sale in the United States with Level 3 driver-assistance technology. The system allows the driver to not pay attention to the road or control the vehicle under very select circumstances — typically... Continue reading…

The Pocket S in green, gold, and rose gold. | Image: Huawei Almost a year after Huawei announced its first clamshell foldable in the form of the P50 Pocket, it’s back with a followup. The new device is called the Huawei Pocket S, and it maintains the same foldable form-factor as the P50 with circular notification display and camera bumps on its outside. But the new phone comes with one fewer external cameras, a lower-end processor, and a lower starting price of ¥5,988 (around $818) versus ¥8,988 (around $1,228) for the P50 Pocket.That price means the Pocket S neatly undercuts its main foldable clamshell competitor, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 (which was priced at around ¥7,499, or $1,025, in China, according to Gizmochina). But continuing US sanctions against Huawei mean the Pocket S faces... Continue reading…

Image: Patreon Patreon is officially launching its own video hosting feature, nearly a year after it was first teased.The update marks a major shift in how creators on Patreon can share video content with fans. Previously, creators had to upload videos to third-party platforms like YouTube and Vimeo and then embed video players or share links with subscribers. Uploading to a third-party app had its wrinkles, however, like videos being shared outside of paying subscribers.The native and ad-free Patreon player allows creators to upload their content directly to the platform, select thumbnails for their videos, and view audience data like view count. Creators will also be able to select who can view the video without worrying whether links will be... Continue reading…