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Gameloft / Disney Make way for Disney Dreamlight Valley, a new Disney-inspired life-sim that feels as if Disney adults got their hands on the Animal Crossing source code. In combination with yesterday’s formal announcement, I had the opportunity to participate in a hands-off demo to see a bit of the vision the developers at Gameloft have for the game. It’ll be difficult to resist the allure of talking about a brand new Disney game entirely in Disney song lyrics, but I’ll do my best to rein in that impulse.Hey! Clear the way in the old Bazaar. Hey you, let us through, it’s a brand-new star. Oh, come be the first on your block to meet its eyeIn addition to being a life-sim game, Disney Dreamlight Valley is a Disney adult’s ultimate isekai fantasy. In it,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A huge reason behind Sonos’ success is the company’s adaptability. Whenever a new audio streaming service comes along — and as the industry evolves and pushes new formats like lossless and Dolby Atmos spatial audio — Sonos is always right there trying to support what’s new. For voice assistants, Sonos offers both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant on its smart speakers. And the company also widely supports Apple’s AirPlay 2 across its current product lineup. That’s all on top of the whole-home audio platform that Sonos has built its brand on.But to stay so nimble and adaptable, Sonos constantly needs to be looking forward and have some sense of what’s coming down the technology pike. To help with that, Sonos recently (and very quietly)... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Snap takes another stab at hardware with a selfie drone called Pixy Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As cryptocurrency thrives, Bitcoiners seethe Continue reading…

Image: Snap It’s becoming a fundamental law of the internet: where people socialize, they must also shop. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and practically every other social network and messaging app on the planet has spent the last couple of years trying to make every pixel of your chats and pictures into a one-click purchasing possibility.Snap’s plans on this front are more ambitious than most. It’s trying to take the whole shopping experience — you see a shirt you like on a stranger, figure out what it is and where to buy it, try it on, buy it, wear it, return it because everything looks better on Ryan Reynolds than you, rinse and repeat — and funnel it through Snap’s AR camera. Through Camera Kit, most of that tech can... Continue reading…

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 and their inverted Orero-style wireless charging case. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of the best bang-for-the-buck values in the true wireless earbuds space is now even cheaper and available in the color that goes with everything. The black Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 are currently just $99.99 at Best Buy. The $50 discount on these noise-canceling earbuds makes them a no-brainer purchase if you’re an Android user looking for a great pair of earbuds on a budget. Sure, there are better-sounding options out there, like the Beats Fit Pro, but they’re twice the price. The Galaxy Buds 2 are small, affordable, and even come with a wireless charging case — something many other affordable earbuds skimp out on. Their biggest hangup may be that they don’t automatically pause when you remove them from your ear, but at this price, it... Continue reading…

Optic Gaming winning the Valorant Masters Finals in Reykjavik, Iceland. | Image: Riot Games Riot Games is making some big changes to the Valorant esports scene. The shift is due to kick off in 2023 and will include the introduction of three regional leagues representing the Americas, Europe, and Asia; previously, professional Valorant operated on a tournament structure. The changes will bring Valorant more in line with Riot’s other popular competitive game, League of Legends.It’s not clear yet which teams will participate in the new leagues, nor how they will be selected. But Riot says that “the new model will incorporate long-term partnerships with no entry fees to a select number of teams to ensure continued long-term stability for the world’s fastest-growing esport,” adding that “teams who meet the selection criteria will... Continue reading…

Image via FCC It appears Snap is working on a drone called Pixy, and the whole thing just leaked with a huge amount of details, including photos and a seemingly unfinished user manual, published by the FCC. It’s small: rulers in the photos indicate the drone is roughly 130 millimeters wide and 120 millimeters tall, which translates to approximately 5.1 inches by 4.7 inches.In a user manual, Snap characterizes the drone as “a small smart drone with a camera and camera function.” The drone itself is a rounded rectangle in Snap’s characteristic yellow hue with translucent orange propellers. There’s a knob on the top that looks to offer a bunch of different settings — it looks like a camera mode dial, right down to a traditional “landscape picture mode”... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge If you’ve just bought a new laptop, one of the first things you’re probably going to want to do is personalize how it looks. Windows has plenty of options for customizing what you see when you open up your device. You can not only select a color, photo, or slideshow for your wallpaper, but you can choose a lock screen and pick a theme.It’s simple and straightforward to do once you access your personalization settings. To do that:

Bubble. | Image: Netflix In Bubble, a new anime film on Netflix, there are plenty of the typical hallmarks of a dystopic city. The movie takes place in a version of Tokyo that’s been almost entirely abandoned, and there are lots of rusted cars, crumbling buildings, and greenery reclaiming its place amongst the urban sprawl. But there’s also a vibrancy to the city — something that was very important to director Tetsuro Araki. “We wanted to make it light and colorful because we wanted to present this dystopian landscape almost as a utopia,” he tells The Verge.The reason for that tone might have to do with Bubble’s rather unique premise. It’s not a typical end of the world story. Instead of a planet beset by war or natural disasters, in Bubble, the earth is... Continue reading…

Starfield concept art. | Image: Bethesda E3 2022 may be canceled, but it looks like we’re still getting at least one big gaming event in June. Today, Microsoft announced the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, which will take place on June 12th at 1PM ET.There aren’t many details about the event itself just yet, but the company says that it “will include everything you need to know about the diverse lineup of games coming soon to the Xbox ecosystem, including upcoming releases to Game Pass on Xbox and PC.” The teaser art, which features the Xbox logo floating among the stars, suggests we’ll see more of Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield, which is due to launch in November for Xbox and PC.Last year’s June showcase featured news like the reveal of vampire shooter Redfall, a... Continue reading…

Applied VR Virtual reality company AppliedVR is taking an innovative approach to a new trial for its chronic pain treatment. Rather than try to find a group of people with chronic back pain to sign up for the trial and not get the treatment, they’ll pull data from an existing database of chronic pain patients to use as a comparison group — a strategy that has the potential to make clinical trials more efficient.AppliedVR got Food and Drug Administration approval for its virtual reality system that treats chronic back pain back in November. Now, the company is collecting more information about how the treatment works in different groups in the real world. They’re partnering with healthcare data company Komodo Health on the trial. Komodo offers its... Continue reading…

An inexpensive phone that feels like it should cost more than $300 Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Twitter overstated the number of daily users on its service for three years straight, overcounting by up to 1.9 million users each quarter. The error was due to Twitter inadvertently counting multiple accounts as active when they were all tied to a single user, even if they weren’t all in use. These incorrect usage numbers were given for Q1 2019 through Q4 2021.This is, somehow, not the first time Twitter has done this. In 2017, Twitter also realized it had been overstating its user figures by about 1 million to 2 million users for three years. The repeat mistake was revealed today in Twitter’s earnings release for the first quarter of 2022.The updated figures aren’t exactly a game-changer: Twitter now has 229 million daily users,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The rapid rise of the Twitter account Accidentally Based surprised even the person who created it. One of many so-called gimmick accounts, Accidentally Based was started as a left-wing response to conservative meme accounts that the creator noticed tended to grow quickly. Just a month after making Accidentally Based, the account had 100,000 followers, the owner estimates, and was getting retweeted by Twitter users with hundreds of thousands of followers themselves. What began as an experiment soon proved to be a reliable way to get content in front of millions.“I figured it was worth a shot, and maybe I’d be able to have some influence on the left,” the account creator says about starting Accidentally Based. “It didn’t feel like there... Continue reading…

This lightweight is worth a look Continue reading…

More choices about the ads you see. | Image: Google Google is expanding its sensitive ad categories options, letting users limit how many ads they see about dating, pregnancy, parenting, and weight loss, and making those settings apply to more places. The feature was introduced as a way to let people see fewer ads on YouTube about potentially addictive gambling or alcoholic products, but now it seems that Google is expanding it to cover other potentially uncomfortable or traumatic subjects.Your settings will now apply to all of Google’s Display network, not just YouTube ads, according to Elijah Lawal, a spokesperson for the company. Google says the network is “a group of more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps” that advertisers can target users across.To access the feature, go... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has reportedly contacted advertising agencies to reassure them that Elon Musk’s plans for the platform won’t make it an inhospitable place for brands.Musk has promised that, under his watch, Twitter will take a maximalist approach to “free speech” — perhaps only removing content that is actively illegal. However, as experts have pointed out, this would mean easing restrictions on a variety of unpleasant but legal forms of speech: from Nazi propaganda and ISIS beheading videos to medical misinformation. This is content that corporations do not want to be associated with, even indirectly.According to an email seen by the Financial Times, Twitter has reached out to ad agencies to preempt such fears, telling them that the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a new blog post, the developers behind Call of Duty’s Ricochet anti-cheat system have outlined a new “cloaking” measure that makes legitimate players invisible to cheaters. It effectively makes it impossible for cheaters to be competitive during a match, regardless of any illicit software they might be using.“Characters, bullets, even sound from legitimate players will be undetectable to cheaters,” the blog post reads. “Legitimate players, however, can see cheaters impacted by cloaking… and can dole out in-game punishment.” The new cloaking feature is offered alongside a previous anti-cheat measure called Damage Shield, which means a cheater’s bullets won’t do any damage to other players.Although Team Ricochet is only detailing the... Continue reading…

Straw-coloured fruit bats at their daytime roosts in ‘Mushitu’ or ever-green swamp forest in April, 2014, Kasanka National Park, Zambia. | Photo credit should read Nick Garbutt/Future Publishing via Getty Images Climate change is pushing mammals into new territory, increasing the number of opportunities for viruses to jump from species to species — including humans. By 2070, if global temperatures continue to rise as predicted, there could be a total of 15,000 new cross-species “viral sharing events,” according to new research published today in the journal Nature.Of the at least 10,000 virus species in mammals capable of infecting humans, most are still only circulating among animals in the wild. The worry is that more of those viruses could eventually make the leap to humans, potentially sparking a health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.“Ultimately, this work provides us with more incontrovertible evidence that the coming decades will not... Continue reading…

Image: Sony New details have emerged about the time-limited game trials that Sony previously announced would be part of its new PlayStation Plus Premium subscription tier. According to sources speaking to Game Developer these free trials will be required for any game with a wholesale cost of $34 (€33) or above, and must be at least two hours long. They won’t be required for previously released games, or PlayStation VR titles.Game Developer’s initial report raised concerns that requiring developers to offer these time-limited trials could place a significant burden on smaller teams. However, Kotaku’s Ethan Gach reports that the PlayStation Store team will create the trials, suggesting developers shouldn’t have to put any extra work in.

The XPS 13 Plus is available in silver or graphite. Dell announced that the bold XPS 13 Plus it debuted back at CES 2022 is now available for purchase. It starts at $1,299, and while Dell didn’t detail the exact specifications for this configuration, it’ll likely get the lowest specs listed in a spec sheet shared by the company. Those include a 13.4-inch 1920 x 1200 16:10 aspect ratio display with 500 nits of peak brightness, Intel’s 12th Gen Core i5-1240P processor (28W, 12-core, 4.4GHz boost clock), 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM clocked at 5,200MHz, and a 256GB SSD.Each model includes a 60W USB-C AC adapter and features two Thunderbolt 4 ports (but no headphone jack), a Windows Hello 720p webcam, as well as a fingerprint reader embedded in the power button.there will also be a Developer Edition... Continue reading…

Boeing is still working on the next generation Air Force One (the current one is pictured here). | Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images Boeing’s CEO, Dave Calhoun, says that the company’s deal with Trump to build Air Force One was a risk the company “probably shouldn’t have taken.” The comment was made on Wednesday during a conference call to discuss the company’s Q1 results for 2022, which show that the Air Force One program went $660 million over its expected budget in the past few months. In a financial filing (PDF), Boeing reports that it’s now lost $1.1 billion on the contract.“Air Force One I’m just gonna call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation, a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn’t have taken, but we are where we are and we’re going to deliver great airplanes. And we’re gonna recognize the cost associated with it,” says Calhoun.Q... Continue reading…

Meta Mark Zuckerberg told the world last October that he was all in on the metaverse, and that the endeavor that would only get more expensive over time. Now that his company’s stock price has been hammered in recent months, he is dialing back that rhetoric.Meta will “slow the pace of some of our investments” due to “our current business growth levels,” Zuckerberg said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call Wednesday. Meta’s profits for the first quarter were $7.5 billion, down 21 percent from the year-ago period. Revenue rose 7 percent to $27.9 billion, the slowest growth rate since the company went public a decade ago. Its target expense range for 2022 was lowered by $3 billion.Make no mistake: Zuckerberg is still spending... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Twitter’s prospective new owner Elon Musk still has some restrictions on his tweets that most of us do not. They’re as a result of a 2018 settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over his infamous “funding secured” tweet about taking Tesla private. Even considering Musk’s complaints that he was coerced into taking the deal and contempt for the “bastards” at the SEC, earlier today, US District Judge Lewis Liman ruled against Musk, letting the agreement stand as originally written (via Reuters).One of the things Musk wanted — but didn’t get — was for the court to stop a subpoena from the SEC for information to determine if a tweet last fall with a poll about selling 10 percent of his stock had been vetted first, per... Continue reading…

1Password Whenever we talk about password managers, especially ones that sync their data to the cloud, there’s always discussion about whether or not your information is secure and what happens if the servers go down. The second thing is exactly what 1Password users in the US experienced earlier today, as a problem affecting 1Password.com kept mobile, desktop, and browser clients from syncing.A status page first noted the problem at 10:42AM ET and listed it as stabilized, with clients able to connect again by 2:42PM ET. During the outage, the status page noted that the issue didn’t affect any offline data stored in clients, and other domains like 1password.ca, 1password.eu, or ent.1password.com were operational.Before I knew there was an... Continue reading…

91 games and counting... | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the past year, Ubisoft has ceased online support for a list of games that has grown to 91 titles. This means that any multiplayer components associated with these games will no longer be accessible, along with any achievements or unlockables attached to the online aspect of the game. It’s worth mentioning, however, that the support for these games wasn’t cut off all at once and doesn’t necessarily impact all platforms.Many of the titles are remarkably old and no longer playable on modern hardware, with some reaching back to the Wii era. However, at the risk of aging myself, a good portion of the list reads like a rap sheet of my wasted hours in college. Some of the standouts include Tom Clancy’s Endwar, Splinter Cell, and World in... Continue reading…

The midrange Edge 30 includes a Snapdragon 778 chipset and a lower price tag than the premium 30 Pro. | Image: Motorola Motorola has announced the Edge 30, a pared-down version of its pricier Edge 30 Pro, coming to Europe for €449 (about $475) before reaching other markets in Asia and the Middle East later this year. North America is not on that list, but Motorola says the region will get another (unspecified) Edge family device later in the year.The Motorola Edge 30 offers a smaller screen and thinner build than the Edge 30 Pro — also known as the Edge Plus in North America. Its 6.5-inch 1080p OLED supports a fast 144Hz refresh rate, like the 30 Pro, but uses a Snapdragon 778 chipset that’s a step down from the 8 Gen 1 processor in the flagship. Rear cameras appear to be the same configuration of a stabilized 50-megapixel f/1.8 wide, 50-megapixel f/2.2... Continue reading…

This morning, we heard some news that would be exciting if true — that Belkin is working on what could be the very first consumer gadget with truly wireless charging, the kind that actually beams a small amount of power through the air and across a room.That’s what Wi-Charge founder and chief business officer Ori Mor told TechCrunch this morning — going so far as to claim that Belkin would launch a specific, “center-stage consumer product” with the tech later this year.But Belkin is now denying much of that report, telling The Verge that not only is there no product as of today, but the two companies also haven’t even moved to the product concept phase yet.Belkin spokesperson Jen Wei confirmed that Wi-Charge and Belkin do have a... Continue reading…

Kite Man and another Gothamite knocking back a few beers at Noonan’s. | HBO Max Between his lack of superpowers and proper fighting skills, the Kite Man of HBO Max’s Harley Quinn series is barely anyone in Gotham’s idea of a real supervillain, but that isn’t stopping him from starring in his own spinoff show.Ahead of Harley Quinn’s upcoming third season, HBO Max announced today that Kite Man (Matt Oberg) will soon also feature in Noonan’s, a new 10-episode comedy from Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker, and Dean Lorey about Gotham’s seediest dive bar. Noonan’s will focus on Kite Man as he partners up with the villainous Golden Glider to make a new name for himself in the time after Poison Ivy dumps him for Harley. In a press release about the show, Warner Bros. Animation executive vice president of alternative... Continue reading…

It’ll remove links to your address, phone number, and more. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google says it’s expanding the types of personal information that it’ll remove from search results to cover things like your physical address, phone number, and passwords. Before now, the feature mostly covered info that would let someone steal your identity or money — now, you can ask Google to stop showing certain URLs that point to info that could lead someone to your house or give them access to your accounts.According to a blog post, Google’s giving people the new options because “the internet is always evolving” and its search engine giving out your phone number or home address can be both jarring and dangerous. Here’s a list of what kinds of info Google may remove, with the new additions in bold (h/t to the Wayback Machine for m... Continue reading…

While CNN Plus already accelerated through the Go90 Scale of Doomed Streaming Services in record time, it has somehow managed to shave another two days off of its lifespan. Warner Bros. Discovery originally announced that the streaming video news service would close on April 30th, but Digital Trends reports that subscribers have received an email confirming the actual end date is April 28th.That’s confirmed by this support page, and it appears to line up so that subscriptions, which started as early as March 28th before CNN Plus launched the next day, don’t run over a month and charge anyone a second time. This seems like something executives could’ve checked before announcing the end of CNN Plus, but these are unprecedented times.The... Continue reading…

Avatar: The Way of Water is coming to theaters in December. | Image: 20th Century Fox The first Avatar sequel will be called Avatar: The Way of Water, Disney announced Wednesday at CinemaCon, perhaps the biggest indication yet that the long-delayed movie is actually going to be released on December 16th. And we might have even more potential proof soon, as the first teaser trailer is set to debut alongside Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which premieres on May 6th.Here is Disney’s synopsis of the film, which is quite vague:

Characters from the first season of Star Wars Visions. | Lucasfilm/Disney Plus In addition to being an anthology, Star Wars Visions was a brilliant testament to how refreshing and exhilarating the Star Wars franchise can still be when it dares to loosen up a bit and wander off the beaten path of its core saga. Though a second season of Visions is one of the big things fans have been hoping to hear about at this year’s Star Wars Celebration, it looks like there’s another anthology series to be on the watch for.Though we’re still a few weeks out from this year’s Celebration event, a listing of the convention’s panels went up earlier today, along with descriptions of what attendees can expect to see. In what may have been a mistake given how the page was initially pulled, one listing for a panel hosted by The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images It’s not your imagination: follower counts on Twitter really have been shifting wildly in response to news that Elon Musk had finalized a deal to acquire the platform.Data compiled by The Verge from social media statistics site Social Blade shows that in the two days since the deal was completed, influential conservative accounts have increased their follower counts at roughly ten times the average daily rate for the month leading up to the acquisition.Meanwhile, popular liberal accounts have suffered, collectively losing hundreds of thousands of followers on April 25th and 26th after a month of gains.The shifts are unlikely to be the result of changes within Twitter’s management of the platform, as the deal will not close for months... Continue reading…

Photography by Vjeran Pavic / Treatment by Alex Castro / The Verge Chinese drone maker DJI has confirmed to The Verge that it is halting all shipments of its products to both Russia and Ukraine and will no longer provide aftersales support because it’s worried about its products being used for combat purposes during Russia’s invasion.It’s the first concrete action China’s DJI has taken to address the war after Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Federov accused the company of helping Russia kill Ukrainian civilians in a roundabout fashion (by using DJI’s AeroScope drone detection system to target Ukrainian pilots on the ground, something DJI apparently never anticipated). Both countries are using DJI drones for reconnaissance, and we’ve seen reports of Ukraine turning some of them into makeshift... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Alexa can now tell you when your Ring, Google Nest, or Abode camera sees a person. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Alexa has always had aspirations to be a type of digital butler, and today, it’s getting closer to that goal. Amazon’s voice assistant can now announce when there’s a person or package at your video doorbell or security camera. If you have an Echo smart display or Fire TV, it can also show you who or what is there by automatically pulling up a live video feed. The new feature will work with video doorbells and security cameras from Ring, Google Nest, and Abode, with more brands potentially adding the ability thanks to a new API from Amazon.Amazon says that person detection announcements are rolling out now to all Ring video doorbells and cameras and will be coming soon to the Google Nest Cam Outdoor, Nest Cam Indoor, Nest Cam... Continue reading…

Image: YouTube YouTube is starting to test advertisements on Shorts, a short-form video feature the company introduced in 2020 that’s similar to what TikTok and Instagram offer.The company is specifically experimenting with app-install ads and other promotions, Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, told investors on Tuesday.“We are experiencing a slight headwind to revenue growth as Shorts viewership grows as a percentage of total YouTube time,” Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said. “We are testing monetization on shorts, and early advertiser feedback and results are encouraging.”According to Google, YouTube’s Shorts is generating 30 billion daily views, which is four times that of last year’s.Meanwhile, YouTube’s ad-revenue growth went up,... Continue reading…

Photo by: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Saturday Night Live star and almost space tourist Pete Davidson will soon star in a Peacock series based on his own life. Called Bupkis, the half-hour comedy series is described as a “heightened, fictionalized version of Pete Davidson’s real life” that “will combine grounded storytelling with absurd elements from the unfiltered and completely original worldview for which Pete is well known.” Dave Sirus and Judah Miller, who previously worked with Davidson on The King of Staten Island, will join the star as writers on the show.There isn’t much other info about Bupkis, such as when it’ll debut or how many episodes to expect. But it looks to be a notable win for the streamer, which says that “the series was acquired in a highly competitive... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft The Windows XP startup sound is forever engrained in my mind, those tinkling chimes bringing back memories of AIM, Civilization III, and endless hours spent trying to download music through Napster and Kazaa followed by endless hours spent trying to remove the viruses I accidentally downloaded through Napster and Kazaa.The sounds of Windows are as much a part of computing history as anything else you’ll find, and the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast is doing a two-part series on the history of the startup jingle. It begins before computers were even able to have startup sounds, and it traces their evolution through composers like Brian Eno and musicians like Robert Fripp and the Seattle Symphony. The first episode is out now, and it’s... Continue reading…

A 5K iMac’s panel, six speakers, three mics, and one terrible camera Continue reading…

The ultrawide lens on the Studio Display might be the limiting factor in the end. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple’s $1,599 Studio Display arrived last month with big promises about its webcam, which features a 12-megapixel sensor, an f2.4 ultra-wide lens, and the same A13 chip running the whole thing as found in the iPhone 11. Unfortunately, it shipped with buggy software that made everything look bad. Apple told us that it wasn’t “behaving as expected” and promised us a software update.That update is now here, sort of. You have to update your Mac to the public beta of macOS Monterey 12.4, which comes with a further update to the Studio Display. (Once the Studio Display is updated, the improvements are available when connected to any other Mac, though.)I updated my review unit last night, and, basically, the changes are what Apple said we’d... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony announced Monday that the PS5’s Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) feature would begin rolling out this week, and it’s already begun to show up for some people (via HDTVTest on YouTube). If your TV supports the feature, VRR can dynamically adjust the refresh rate of the screen, which can make games feel smoother to play with less tearing and hitching. While some games will be updated to support the feature, Sony also has a toggle that will apply VRR to unsupported games.If the VRR feature is available for you, you’ll be able to see it in the PS5’s Settings menu. Go to Screen and Video, Video Output, and then scroll down to the VRR section. Despite Sony saying Monday the feature would arrive with an update, there’s no update to download.... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hollywood’s depiction of dissociative disorders may be doing more harm than good Continue reading…

Part of Amazon’s facility collapsed when it was hit by a tornado. | Photo by Jason Tan/Xinhua via Getty Images Amazon won’t be fined or cited by US safety officials after a tornado caused one of its Illinois warehouses to collapse, killing six workers, according to a letter sent to Amazon on Tuesday from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (or OSHA). The regulator says that it has a few recommendations for the company after its investigation, where it interviewed workers and reviewed records and the facility’s emergency action plan.OSHA’s letter still flags a number of concerns with Amazon’s handling of the incident, including an unnecessarily convoluted process for raising the alarm. When the order to shelter in place first came through, managers had to yell to employees instead of using a megaphone since the megaphone was “locked... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s policy and legal head Vijaya Gadde is facing criticism from new owner Elon Musk and harassment from Twitter users while trying to shepherd Twitter’s moderation team into a new era. Politico reported yesterday on a team meeting where Gadde acknowledged (in the article’s words) “significant uncertainties” about the future of Twitter under Musk.Musk then replied to a tweet from conservative journalist Saagar Enjeti criticizing Gadde. Enjeti had linked to a screenshot of the story, calling Gadde Twitter’s “top censorship advocate” and claiming she “censored the Hunter Biden laptop story” by temporarily and confusingly banning links to a New York Post story about President Joe Biden’s son. “Suspending the Twitter account of a major... Continue reading…

After stints at Engadget, Gizmodo, and CNET, Sean Hollister became part of the small group that co-founded The Verge back in 2011. He has worn a lot of hats in the past decade: reviewing products, running the newsroom, training and editing new writers, putting spicy editorials on the site, starring in a few videos, liveblogging, and shaping coverage where he can. He’s currently a Senior Editor.Tell us a little about yourself. What do you like doing at The Verge?My favorite part of the job is blogging about gadgets! I try to do it every day no matter what else The Verge needs from me because I love them to death.Where did you get your desk and where in your home have you placed it?It’s in the corner of my home office, right... Continue reading…

Nintendo Your kids will love this — your arms will not Continue reading…

A Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) pictured in its enclosure at Faunia zoo park. | Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images More than one in five of the world’s reptile species are threatened with extinction, researchers have determined in a new paper that marks the culmination of more than 20 years of slow-going research. On top of facing human-caused threats to their survival, the scaled creatures have fallen victim to bias in conservation priorities.Conservationists with limited resources have had to play catch-up in their efforts to assess threats to turtles, crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and tuatara (the last in an ancient lineage of reptiles that roamed the Earth with dinosaurs). Similar comprehensive assessments for birds, mammals, and amphibians (all categorized as tetrapods, or four-limbed vertebrates) were completed over a decade ago.Why has there... Continue reading…

The Gray Man. | Image: Netflix If Netflix’s slate of summer 2022 movies is anything to go by, the streamer is continuing its trend of relying on big-name stars to push its film ambitions. Today, the company released a schedule of movies due to release between May and August, and there’s plenty of star power to be found. The list includes the likes of The Gray Man, a thriller directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, which stars Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans; Spiderhead, a sci-fi film led by Chris Hemsworth; Day Shift, where Jamie Foxx plays a vampire hunter; and a new basketball drama called Hustle, starring Adam Sandler and Queen Latifah.This list doesn’t include some of the other big-name movies coming to the service later this year, like Knives Out 2, Enola Holmes 2, and... Continue reading…