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Take Me Out Broadway Opening Night. | Photo by Bruce Glikas/Getty Images Earlier this week, someone posted cell phone videos of Tony-nominated actor Jesse L. Williams and co-star Michael Oberholtzer that were taken during a nude scene from the play they’re in, Take Me Out. Deadline reports that Second Stage Theater, where the play is performed on Broadway, had taken steps to keep cellphones out of audience members’ hands during the play, requiring the use of Yondr pouches that are supposed to lock cellphones away when someone is in a restricted area.It’s unknown whether someone unlocked the pouch (there are many videos online claiming to show how to open the bags without the patented magnet designed to open and close them) or simply smuggled a device in.

Managers have reportedly told employees that outside unions don’t know Apple or its culture. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has been coaching retail store managers on how to try and talk employees out of unionizing, according to Vice. The report says the company has sent around a document full of talking points like “an outside union that doesn’t know Apple” or its culture, or “most union contracts give preference based on seniority.” The document also encourages store leaders to “touch base” with employees about potential union activity.This comes at a time when there are union drives at several Apple retail stores — two have officially petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold union elections, and another is looking to do so. It’s been pretty clear that Apple would try to fight these efforts; the company hired anti-union lawyers, and at... Continue reading…

In case you haven’t noticed, chipmakers are in the middle of an upscaling revolution. AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are all out to prove that algorithms can trump native rendering performance. Why spend precious GPU cycles on native 4K when you can actually get a sharper, more detailed image by upscaling smaller pictures instead?It’s an argument that’s never quite convinced me, I’ll admit. But AMD’s new FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0, arriving for the first time today in an update for Deathloop, may have the potential to change that on PC. The new game patch also includes some key accessibility options — more on that later.PC Gamer now says FSR 2.0 “really looks better than native 4K,” and Hardware Unboxed has a phenomenal video showing off... Continue reading…

Tom Hiddleston in The Essex Serpent. | Image: Apple How much you enjoy The Essex Serpent, an Apple TV Plus adaptation of Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel, might depend on how much you enjoy seeing Tom Hiddleston brooding in a misty field while wearing cozy wool sweaters. For a lot of people, that will probably be enough of a hook. (It was for me.) But thankfully, the six-episode series offers a lot more than great hair blowing in the wind — it’s a tense and heartfelt exploration of grief and belief and how much those two things can mess with you. The great sweaters are just a bonus.The show primarily follows two characters. One is Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes), a recent widow and a budding natural history scholar who has quite the fixation with sea serpents. She spends her spare time researching... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta is continuing the Meta-fication of its brands by renaming Facebook Pay, its payment system available across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to Meta Pay. The change is set to happen “soon,” according to a blog post from Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies, and is the latest indication that the company formerly known as Facebook is all in on the metaverse.“We’re focused on enhancing the payments experiences we already provide with Facebook Pay where we’re seeing good adoption,” Kasriel wrote. “And with this, an emphasis on quality in the countries that we are already in, rather than expanding to new countries right now.” People in businesses in 160 countries use Meta’s platforms to make... Continue reading…

Microsoft / Alex Castro / The Verge This week’s episode of Paramount Plus’ Halo TV show is incredible in the strictest definition of the term. I literally cannot believe what I have witnessed.Spoilers for Halo followAre you still here?Are you sitting down?OK.In the latest episode of Halo, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 fucks. He has sex with an undercover human Covenant spy after the two have bonded over their shared magical abilities surrounding the mysterious artifacts both the humans and Covenant have been after for most of the series. Apparently, the Master Chief is such a skilled lover that Makee, the Covenant spy, is all set to renounce her allegiance to humanity’s enemies. However, a series of misunderstandings and violent interactions with the UNSC leads... Continue reading…

EcoFlow Wave portable air conditioner | Image: EcoFlow EcoFlow is taking a detour from its usual pursuit of making big-ass batteries to launch this portable air conditioner that would give campers, RV roamers, and everyone living the van life more incentive to own a few of the aforementioned batteries. The EcoFlow Wave is a portable air conditioner it’s building that claims to have “the world’s most powerful cooling and the longest run time.”As you can see, based on the environment of the gentleman pictured above, the idea is that keeping cool isn’t just for places with permanent walls or, apparently, any walls at all. Image: EcoFlow The unit weighs 38.58 lbs by itself and 55.98 lbs with the 1,008Wh add-on battery attached. Unlike some earlier EcoFlow projects, this... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro It’s been a crushing few days for the Terra project, in a week that has been unforgiving for cryptocurrency as a whole.Over the past few days, the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin, which is meant to maintain a dollar peg, uncoupled dramatically from the $1 mark and dropped to a low of less than 30 cents on May 10th. In the latest update to the saga, the beleaguered project put its entire blockchain on halt for around two hours on Thursday, freezing user funds until the blockchain was unpaused.

This flagship has some neat ideas, but it’s lacking polish Continue reading…

Roku announced on Thursday that its Ultra streaming box will include its Voice Remote Pro, which upgrades the company’s standard remote by adding more buttons, always-on listening, and a rechargeable battery. Despite the fact that Roku is including a remote that costs $30 to purchase on its own, the Ultra will stay at its original $99.99 price point.In its press release, the company says that the bundling will begin in “mid-May,” and its website already says that the Ultra comes with the Pro remote. When my colleague Chris Welch reviewed the remote last year, he liked that he had the option of giving voice commands to his Roku without having to press a button. And while he admired the fact that it no longer required AAs, it was a bit of... Continue reading…

The camera is no longer the centerpiece of Google’s phones: Tensor is. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge One of the coolest things about the Pixel A-series was that it was an inexpensive way to get the very same class-leading camera as the main Pixel models. It’s one of the reasons I bought a Pixel 3A years ago — that, and it was in stock at Best Buy with in-store pickup. It was also one of the top reasons why the Pixel A-series was our go-to recommendation for the best budget Android phone for years. Everything else about the phone — screen, processor, battery — was fine, but the camera was excellent.That streak comes to an end in the Pixel 6A. Unlike the A-series phones that came before it, the 6A doesn’t include the same camera hardware as the Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro. There’s no headphone jack either, which stinks, too. But rather than a... Continue reading…

The game first released last year on PlayStation, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store. | Image: Remedy Entertainment Alan Wake Remastered is coming to Nintendo Switch this fall, developer Remedy Entertainment announced Thursday. The game was first released for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC (via the Epic Games Store) last year. The Switch version runs “natively on the hardware,” according to a press email sent to The Verge, unlike Remedy’s cloud-streamed Switch port of Control.Remedy shared a few other Alan Wake series updates as well. When the studio announced Alan Wake 2 in December, Remedy creative director Sam Lake indicated we might hear more about the game this summer. But in a video published Thursday, he said we’re going to have to wait longer to see more of the game.“Everything [with Alan Wake 2’s development] is going really well,” Lake said. “A... Continue reading…

Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images Denis Villeneuve’s first Dune film is a sweeping epic that introduces a new take on Paul Atreides at the beginning of his path to becoming a legend, but the movie’s careful to keep a number of details and characters from Frank Herbert’s original novel shrouded in secret. It was obvious that Villeneuve was holding some things back to surprise audiences with in Legendary’s second Dune movie, and the latest bit of casting news suggests that the director knows what he’s doing.Deadline reports that Christopher Walken has signed on to Dune: Part II to portray the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV who is initially responsible for sending Paul Atreides’ father Leto to the planet Arrakis. In Herbert’s novel, House Harkonnen and the emperor are both... Continue reading…

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Coinbase users are reporting difficulty withdrawing funds, heightening fears amid a widespread crash in cryptocurrency prices.The company confirmed the issues in a tweet on Thursday. “We are aware that some customers are having issues trading and accessing accounts on Coinbase and Coinbase Pro,” the company said. “Your funds are safe, and we are actively working on the issue. We’ll provide an update here soon.”Shortly afterward, the company indicated the situation might be resolving: “We’re seeing recovery after implementing a fix, but our teams are continuing to monitor the situation.”

Image: EA Motive In a day filled with news of disappointing but not wholly unexpected postponements, it seems like the Dead Space remake is coming along nicely enough for the developers to commit to a release date. Today, in a developer livestream, the team at EA’s Motive Studio announced the remake to 2008’s survival horror smash hit will launch January 27th while also showing off the work put into giving the game a fresh coat of bloody paint.Though the livestream was plagued by several technical hiccups, it was primarily focused on the art of the Dead Space remake. The developer team outlined three pillars that underpin the game’s uniquely horrifying look and feel:

Get three months of Xbox Game Pass for free by redeeming this offer through Hulu. It's getting increasingly difficult to recommend Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription to anyone without also sounding like an absolute shill. The latest promotion to offer an accessible introduction to this awesome service comes courtesy of Hulu. Current Hulu subscribers will be able to get a free three-month subscription to PC Game Pass and can redeem this offer through July 23rd. Note that this promotion is valid only for PC Game Pass, not Game Pass Ultimate, and may only be redeemed by new Game Pass subscribers.Normally, PC Game Pass costs $9.99 a month, but there’s no obligation to continue your subscription after the promotional period expires, so this is a great chance to try out not just AAA titles but also maybe some indie hits... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Thursday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced a number of big shakeups within the company in an email to staff, including firing consumer product leader Kayvon Beykpour and head of revenue product Bruce Falck. The company is pausing most hiring and pulling back on spending in most areas, though it’s not currently planning any layoffs.It’s a strange, uneasy moment inside Twitter, as the company prepares for Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition to close later this fall. It’s not entirely clear why Agrawal made these changes now, though, or how they relate to Musk’s acquisition. Twitter’s new head of product is Jay Sullivan, an ex-Facebook director who joined in November. The company is now beginning its search for a new head of revenue... Continue reading…

The murder trial leaned on data from a Fitbit One. This week, a Connecticut jury convicted Richard Dabate of murder in the killing of his wife, Connie Dabate, after a five-week-long trial that hinged — in part — on data from her Fitbit. Richard said a man dressed in camouflage broke into their home in 2015 and shot Connie. But Connie wore a Fitbit, and data from the device showed movement for around an hour after Richard said the break-in happened.To make the case that the Fitbit data helped show Richard killed Connie, prosecutors called on Keith Diaz, an exercise physiologist and professor at Columbia University Medical Center. Diaz has done studies validating the accuracy of Fitbits and testified about their precision.Diaz often testifies as an expert witness in criminal trials. He... Continue reading…

Mark Zuckerberg demoing the Project Cambria headset, which has been blurred out to hide its appearance. | Image: Meta Mark Zuckerberg just shared a short demo video showcasing some of the capabilities of Meta’s upcoming high-end virtual reality headset, Project Cambria. While keeping the device itself cloaked, Meta highlights the upcoming headset’s ability to do high-resolution, full-color passthrough so that wearers can interact with virtual objects overlaid onto their real-life environments.The mixed reality experience is built using Meta’s Presence Platform, which was introduced last fall. Current Quest headsets are only capable of displaying passthrough content in shades of gray, but Project Cambria will have much higher resolution image sensors to make the real world look better inside the headset.Meta also posted this two-and-a-half-minute... Continue reading…

Sony’s latest noise-canceling headphones have a fresh look and iterative improvements Continue reading…

It doesn’t come as a surprise after recent leaks, but today, Sony announced its latest flagship noise-canceling headphones, the WH-1000XM5. They cost $399.99, an increase from the prior 1000XM4s, and will go on sale May 20th.Sony says it has cranked up its already-fantastic noise cancellation to new highs by adding a second processor to the new headphones. The improvements are most noticeable in “mid- to high-frequency noise,” according to the company’s press release. That includes things like everyday city street noise and human voices.The 1000XM5s have a design that’s quite different from their recent predecessors. Sony has gone for a sleeker look, switching to a stem-style slider and moving the microphones (there are now eight of... Continue reading…

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Rivian is recalling some of its R1T electric pickup trucks over faulty airbag systems, according to a notice filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The vehicle’s sensors in the front seat may not deactivate the airbag when a child occupies the front passenger seat, necessitating the recall.The recall covers 502 R1T trucks from the 2022 model year that were produced September 21st, 2021, through April 12th, 2022. It is the first recall issued by the buzzy electric vehicle company.The recall covers 502 R1T trucksIn a recall report submitted to NHTSA this week, Rivian says the “Occupant Classification System (OCS) may not deactivate the air bag when a child or child seat occupies the front passenger... Continue reading…

There’s a reason why KakaoTalk is one of the featured apps on highlighting Wear OS’ expanded reach.. | Screenshot: The Verge During yesterday's Google I/O keynote, there was a moment that stood out to me that may have been lost on a lot of folks. While giving examples of new apps featured on Wear OS 3, Google took the time to call out KakaoTalk. I won’t lie. I stood up, pointed my finger at my computer monitor, and screeched some version of “AHA! I was right!”If you already know what KakaoTalk is, you likely are Korean, Korean-American, have a ton of Korean friends, love K-pop and K-dramas, or have lived / are living in Korea. You can see where I’m going here. KakaoTalk is the number one messaging app in Korea. The easiest way I can describe it is that KakaoTalk is Korea’s version of WeChat or WhatsApp. According to Statista, more than 47 million South... Continue reading…

Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair Spotify has lost a number of top executives in the past month, but Bill Simmons is sticking around, with a plum new job, to boot. The sports talk personality is being elevated into a new role overseeing Spotify’s global sports strategy, the company announced this morning.Spotify has been building up its sports presence for the past few years, first purchasing Simmons’ sports media empire The Ringer for nearly $200 million in 2020. In 2021, the company bought sports-oriented live audio app Locker Room (now branded Spotify Live) for more than $67 million. Outside of the talk space, Spotify inked a deal in March with FC Barcelona for branded shirts for the 2022–2023 season.Sports (soccer in particular) are big for Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.... Continue reading…

Netflix The Resident Evil franchise’s Umbrella Corporation always presents itself to the public as a benevolent organization committed to creating a better future for humanity through pharmaceuticals. But the first trailer for Netflix’s upcoming live-action Resident Evil series is a reminder that every promise the Umbrella Corporation makes should also be understood as a very serious threat.Netflix’s Resident Evil from creator Andrew Dabb tells the story of how Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska) comes to be one of the last humans fighting to survive in the apocalypse after a viral cataclysm originating from Umbrella ravages the world. As the daughter of Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick), Jade has a somewhat direct connection to the event in New Raccoon... Continue reading…

Text replacement is like autocorrect that you use on purpose. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’ve spent any time typing out a message on an iPhone, you’re familiar with autocorrect and its shortcomings. We know them. We ducking hate them. But there’s a related, less well-known feature on your iPhone called text replacement that is kind of an all-purpose autocorrect. In fact, this is already enabled by default — any time you type “omw,” it will automatically change to “On my way!” before your eyes.Here’s how to set up your own shortcut phrases with text replacement:

Image: Google You can spot an Apple iPhone from 20 paces away. I bet you’d be able to tell a Samsung Galaxy from that distance, too. Yet, until last year, a Google phone didn’t have an eye-catching design language all its own.But this week, Google revealed that its most distinctive, in-your-face design element ever is here to stay. Not only did it feature on last year’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro — and will appear on the Pixel 6A this July as well — but Google has also already shown us an even bolder, harder-hitting version will jut right out of this fall’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.I’m talking, of course, about the camera bar. Image: Google The original Pixel 6 family. Compare to the Pixel 7 family at the top of this story. ... Continue reading…

Yeedi’s $450 robot vac brings 3D obstacle detection and oscillating mopping to its low-cost line Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today let’s talk about the highest-profile conflict to date between Meta and its Oversight Board, an independent organization the company established to help it navigate the most difficult questions related to policy and content moderation.Since before the board was created, it has faced criticism that it primarily serves a public-relations function for the company formerly known as Facebook. The board relies on funding from Meta, it has a contractual relationship with it governing its use of user data, and its founding members were hand-picked by the company.Aiding in the perception that it’s mostly a PR project is the fact that to date, Meta and the board have rarely been in conflict. In the first quarter of its existence, of 18... Continue reading…

The latest Apple TV 4K is on sale today for $149.99 at Amazon. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you’re an Apple fan looking for a high-end streaming device or are shopping for a good graduation gift, the latest Apple TV 4K is currently on sale in the 32GB configuration at Amazon for $149.99 ($30 off), a record low. Despite using a similar design to prior models, the 2021 edition offers significantly improved performance thanks to its A12 Bionic processor. It also offers support for Wi-Fi 6 and HDMI 2.1, and it includes a better Siri Remote that’s easier to use (and less fragile).While you can certainly buy more affordable streaming gadgets, like a Chromecast for Fire TV Stick, the Apple TV 4K offers the best overall streaming experience, especially if you’re deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem. It boasts a combination of... Continue reading…

The first image of Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy | Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration The world has been gifted the second photograph ever taken of a supermassive black hole — and this time, it’s a black hole that’s relatively close to home. Today, scientists collaborating on the massive Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project released an image of Sagittarius A*, the gargantuan black hole spinning away at the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.This celestial present comes from the same project which made quite the splash back in 2019 when they released the very first image taken of a black hole. That now iconic fuzzy orange photo showcased a supermassive black hole at the heart of a mammoth galaxy called Messier 87, or M87, which is located 55 million light-years from Earth. The groundbreaking result helped scientists... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Fun gift ideas for friends, family, and even yourself Continue reading…

The 9i gets all the right improvements and the right aspect ratio Continue reading…

Image: Bethesda Starfield, the biggest upcoming title from Microsoft-owned Bethesda, has been delayed to the first half of 2023, according to a tweet from the studio. The game was originally set to launch on November 11th, 2022, an homage to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s release date. The new space exploration game, which Bethesda has released precious few details about (and, to this date, no actual gameplay footage of), will get some extra development time, as will Redfall, the vampire co-op shooter coming from the team at Arkane that was surprise-announced last year.It’s likely that both games will be shown off in Bethesda’s upcoming games showcase on June 12th, so this early announcement is likely meant to set expectations ahead of time. Speaking of... Continue reading…

Image: Hasbro Optimus Prime is officially a Lego set, and not just in statue form — with 19 points of articulation, the Danish brickmaker has created a 1,508-piece Optimus Prime G1 action figure you can actually transform.OK, yes, you’ll still need to do that conversion yourself — it’s no walking, talking robot like the $750 self-transforming Optimus Prime we played with last year. But for $169.99 this June 1st, the Lego version is a lot more affordable and doesn’t require electricity just to stand. Image: Hasbro Speaking of which, Optimus stands 13.5 inches tall, then folds down into a 27-inch long semi truck — and comes with instructions and pieces to build his ion blaster, translucent orange Energon axe, jetpack, an Energon... Continue reading…

That’s the Studio on the right. | Image; HP HP’s ZBook Studio is widely acknowledged as one of the best workstation laptops on today’s market. Last year’s model came with a stunning OLED touchscreen, a customizable RGB keyboard, and a versatile set of features that you’ll be hard-pressed to find in too many other business lines. Most impressively, it takes the powerful specs many professionals need and crams them into a chassis that’s under four pounds.Studio fans will be happy to hear that HP has refreshed the device. The new ZBook Studio G9 can be configured up to a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or an RTX A5000. (The two are comparable in terms of raw power, but the A5000 is meant for heavier production workloads like machine learning and simulation.)HP says that ZBook Studio models... Continue reading…

OnePlus’ latest set of wireless earbuds is also the first to get its Nord branding, which the company uses for its cheaper products. The new Nord Buds are being announced today alongside teases for two new entries to OnePlus’ European Nord smartphone lineup: the Nord 2T 5G, and the Nord CE 2 Lite 5G.The Nord Buds actually have a fair amount going for them, even at $39.99. They don’t have active noise cancellation, and they only have two mics in each stem rather than three like the $99 Buds Z2, but they’re rated for the same seven hours of battery life (38 hours combined with the case), and promise the same low latency — especially when connected to a OnePlus phone with ProGaming mode on — and fast charging.The Nord Buds also have... Continue reading…

This morning, a collaboration of scientists with the Event Horizon Telescope initiative is set to unveil a “groundbreaking discovery” about our Milky Way galaxy. The team has provided little details about what they’re announcing, but the mysterious news will be livestreamed at 9AM ET.You may remember the Event Horizon Telescope team from 2019, when the group revealed the first picture ever taken of a black hole’s shadow. Back then, the team showed off an image of a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy called Messier 87, or M87. It was a massive undertaking that entailed observing the black hole for a week in April of 2017, using eight radio telescopes stationed in Chile, Hawaii, Antarctica, and elsewhere, and then... Continue reading…

The alleged design of the Galaxy Z Flip 4. | Image: OnLeaks / 91Mobiles Just hours after we got our first glimpse at the potential design of Samsung’s Z Fold 4, unofficial renders of its smaller sibling — the Z Flip 4 — have also leaked via 91Mobiles and OnLeaks. But while the next Fold might get a redesigned camera bump, the Z Flip 4’s design looks almost identical to its predecessor. Externally it still has a two-tone color scheme with a pair of cameras and small notification display, while inside there’s still a 6.7-inch foldable display with a hole-punch selfie cutout in the top middle.That’s not necessarily much of a surprise, nor is it definitely a bad thing. Samsung followed up its first Z Flip with the almost-identical Z Flip 5G just months later, so it’s already proved it’s happy to update the... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The coolest feature of the Steam Deck — bar none, if you ask me — is how the portable gaming PC lets you get the absolute most from its AMD RDNA 2 graphics and 40 watt-hour battery. As of the last update, you could lower the screen’s refresh rate to increase your effective framerate and lower latency, and you’ve been able to throttle the CPU, GPU and frame limiter since launch. The catch: even if you figured out a great combination that gave you the battery life and/or performance you crave, the Steam Deck wouldn’t save those settings per game.You’d have to memorize them, and flick the toggles appropriately, every time you switched to a different game. That changes today.Wednesday’s update now comes with per-game performance... Continue reading…

Activision Blizzard said on Twitter Wednesday that its Battle.net service was suffering from a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A little over an hour later, reported that the attacks it was monitoring have ended.In the initial tweet, sent at 7:11PM ET from the @BlizzardCS Twitter account, the company cautioned that the attack “may result in high latency and disconnections for some players.” That first tweet mentioned a singular attack, but a second one reporting that things had ended, sent at 8:29PM ET, referenced attacks — plural.

Look closely: no headphone jack. | Image: Google Google just revealed the Pixel 6A at Google I/O on Wednesday, and while it has a number of impressive specs for a midrange device, it’s missing one that the company has celebrated on its A-series line for years: a 3.5mm headphone jack.As many smartphone manufacturers have moved on from the headphone jack — a trend largely kicked off by Apple with the iPhone 7 in 2016 — its presence on the A-series line has become more and more of a distinguishing feature. Google even made a ridiculous two-minute ad celebrating the headphone jack in the Pixel 5A that parodied Apple’s elaborate design videos. That video was titled, in part, “The Circle Comes Full Circle.” Well, it seems the circle is coming full circle again, as now Google is the one set... Continue reading…

Image: Disney On an earnings call earlier today, Disney CEO Bob Chapek sounded like someone who has clear ideas of ESPN’s fully streaming future. He told analysts and investors that “when it comes time to actually pull the trigger,” he believes ESPN can create “the ultimate fan offering that will appeal to the superfan who loves sports,” and “I think there’s nobody but ESPN who could frankly pull that off.”This isn’t the first time we’ve heard a Disney exec reference the potential of ESPN streaming — former CEO Bob Iger said in 2015 that it will happen eventually but projected the possibility as more than five years out. In contrast, Chapek said Disney isn’t ready to share the specifics of its model on how long it would take to reach profitability or... Continue reading…

Pictured: probably not the future CEO of Twitter. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Jack Dorsey is trying to squash rumors that he’ll be reinstated as Twitter’s CEO once Elon Musk takes charge. On Wednesday he tweeted “nah I’ll never be CEO again” in response to someone predicting he would be returning to lead the company he co-founded, before going on to say that he doesn’t want the role.In another response, Dorsey says that “no one ultimately” should be Twitter’s CEO, perhaps referring to Bluesky, a project meant to turn Twitter into a decentralized protocol, rather than a traditional social network. Dorsey has a contentious history with the leadership role at Twitter. The company’s board fired him from his role as CEO in 2008, just two years after he helped start the company (though he stayed on the... Continue reading…

This is the front of the forthcoming Pixel Tablet | Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge Big white bezels. Matte, looks-like-plastic back. Thick profile. 2023. Android.That’s about all we know about Google’s forthcoming Pixel Tablet, which the company teased during its keynote presentation for the I/O 2022 developer conference this week. Rick Osterloh, Google’s senior vice president of devices and services and head of the Pixel program, confirmed to my colleague David Pierce that the tablet is coming to fill out the range of Pixel devices and provide a complete ecosystem in Google’s lineup.But as I saw the image of the Pixel Tablet pop up in the livestream during the keynote, I couldn’t help but react with, “That? That’s Google’s big return to tablet hardware?” The device that Google showed off brings to mind the front of... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images The controversial Texas social media law HB 20 will take effect following a ruling today from a US appeals court. The tech industry trade groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) managed to block HB 20 in court last year, but that victory has been undone by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which today granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request for a stay in NetChoice and CCIA v. Paxton. NetChoice and the CCIA were successful in blocking a similar law in Florida last year.HB 20 allows Paxton’s office or Texas residents to sue social networks that moderate based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person,” among other offenses — language that potentially makes basic moderation... Continue reading…

Struggling EV company Lordstown completed the sale of its Ohio factory to Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles Apple’s iPhone. The factory, which sold for $230 million, will now become the site of a joint venture between the two companies.The deal was originally set to close last month, but Lordstown kept pushing back the deadline. If the sale wasn’t completed before May 18th, the company would have had to pay back the $200 million that Foxconn put down as a deposit — an amount that Lordstown has said it does not have.The deal was originally set to close last month, but Lordstown kept pushing back the deadlineThe new joint venture will be called MIH EV Design LLC and will be 55 percent owned by Foxconn and 45 percent by... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Disney added 7.9 million new subscribers to its Disney Plus streaming service during the first three months of 2022, the company announced in its Q2 earnings report on Wednesday. That brings the total to around 87.6 million worldwide, excluding the 50.1 million people subscribed to Disney Plus Hotstar internationally. In the US and Canada alone, Disney Plus now has 7.1 million more subscribers than it did a year ago, with 44.4 million.The company also said that the number of subscribers for all of its streaming offerings — including Hulu and ESPN Plus — had grown to over 205 million, an increase from the 196.4 million it reported in January.That’s better news than Netflix’s had recently. Last month, the streaming company reported that... Continue reading…