The Verge

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Memory is a tricky thing. Some of us are great at attaching names to faces, while others (and here I raise my hand) have always had a problem with remembering names, especially when you meet someone out of context. For example, imagine the embarrassment when someone you know from work suddenly shows up at a friend’s party, and you spend the next hour trying to remember their name.As a result, I’m always looking for a way to be able to put a name with a face. One tool I sometimes use is Google Photos. For years now, the app has used steadily improving AI to put names to the faces in your photos so that you can, say, look at a photo and be reminded of the name of your best friend’s cousin, whom you met at a party five years ago. On the... Continue reading…

Amazon’s new Kindle shares many of the features that make the Kindle Paperwhite terrific, including a sharp screen and USB-C support, but for $40 less Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge On Microsoft’s eBay page, you can score big price cuts on Sonos products. This sale was picked up by Slickdeals, which pointed out that the offer code COUNTDOWN22 can be applied at checkout to save 20 percent on either the Sonos Arc soundbar in white, the Sonos Beam (white, first-generation), or the second-gen Sonos Beam in white. Deals on Sonos gear were nonexistent during Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale. And if you can’t wait until Black Friday nears, this could be a great opportunity to score the savings that you may be looking for.The $899.99 Arc will go down to $719.20 after using the offer code. If you’d rather use it on the second-gen Beam soundbar, that’ll go from $429.99 (already a $20 discount) to $343.99. Given that it has... Continue reading…

Image: Sony Sony is launching its new DualSense Edge Wireless Controller in January priced at $199.99. The “high performance” controller is fully customizable, much like Microsoft’s Xbox Elite controllers, and includes removable analog thumbsticks, rear buttons, changeable stick caps, and multiple control profiles.The DualSense Edge allows owners to change out stick caps for three types: standard, high dome, and low dome. There are also two swappable back buttons (half-dome or lever) that can be mapped to any other buttons, much like paddles found on other controllers. You can even replace the stick modules, which will be sold separately. Image: Sony Everything that’s in the carrying case for Sony’s DualSense Edge. Sony... Continue reading…

Image: Adobe / Frame.io Camera giants Red and Fujifilm are partnering with Adobe and Frame.io to connect cameras directly to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Announced today at Adobe Max 2022, specific models of Red and Fujifilm cameras will be able to natively upload images or footage directly into the Adobe Creative Cloud without requiring users to first transfer files onto a computer.Red video cameras have previously supported camera-to-cloud functionality via the use of an external video encoder, but this new collaboration will allow both the Red V-Raptor and V-Raptor XL to directly upload up to 8K RAW files into Adobe cloud from the camera, without the need for additional hardware.You’ll be able to shoot up to 8K RAW and then upload the footage as fast as your... Continue reading…

New one-click functions are coming to help speed up edits for novice and veteran Lightroom users alike. | Image: Adobe Adobe is releasing new AI features for its Lightroom suite that aim to speed up some of the more tedious parts of image editing. That includes improving masking workflows and removing unwanted elements from your images.AI masking is being upgraded with new tools such as Select People, Select Objects, and one-click Select Background. The Select People feature can automatically detect and create layer masks in high detail, even on specific areas of a subject. The face, body, skin, eyes, teeth, lips, hair, and more can be detected with a single click, eliminating the time-consuming need to carefully create your own masks and generally speeding up the image editing process. Image: Adobe Areas of a subject such as... Continue reading…

Foxconn founder Terry Gou introduces the prototype Model B. | Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images Foxconn’s chairman and CEO Liu Young-way hopes to one day be in a position to produce electric cars for Tesla as the iPhone assembler expands into transportation. Liu made the comments at the unveiling of two new Foxconn electric car prototypes — the Model B crossover and Model V pickup truck — which the contract manufacturer hopes will serve as reference designs for companies who want to outsource manufacturing of their own EVs.“Foxconn is not in the business of selling its own EV brand,” Liu said at its annual tech day, in comments reported by the Financial Times. “I hope one day we can do Tesla cars for Tesla,” he added.The company has ambitious targets for its fledgling EV business. “Based on our past records for the PC and... Continue reading…

DuckDuckGo’s new Duck Player offers a more private way for users to watch their favorite YouTube content. | Image: DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo is rolling out its web browsing app for Mac users as an open beta test. Designed for privacy, the app was announced back in April as a closed beta, but is now available for all Mac users to try before its official public launch.The desktop browser includes the same built-in protections we’ve seen already featured in DuckDuckGo’s mobile apps, combining DuckDuckGo’s search engine, defenses against third-party tracking, cookie pop-up protection, and its popular one-click data clearing ‘Fire Button.’ Image: DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo’s web browser integrates some of its most popular search engine features, such as the ‘fire’ button that clears your browsing data. Some additional features have been added to... Continue reading…

New features are available for Photoshop for iPad, as well as the desktop Photoshop application and Photoshop for web beta. | Image: Adobe / Danner Orozco Photoshop is getting some new collaboration tools and AI capabilities to help remove some of the more tedious parts of image editing. Announced at Adobe Max 2022, these new features include improvements to automated object selections, content-aware fills, file-sharing collaboration, and content crediting to ensure proper attribution of work. The new features are shipping in updated versions of Photoshop for desktop, iPad, and web (beta) rolling out today.First up, improvements to the Adobe Sensei AI mean that higher-quality object selections can be made in the desktop Photoshop app. The Object Selection tool was originally introduced back in 2020, allowing users to quickly select an object with a single click, negating the need to... Continue reading…

The Ear 1 earbuds released last year for $99. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Nothing is hiking the price of its debut Ear 1 earbuds from $99 to $149, the company’s CEO Carl Pei has announced. Citing “an increase in costs,” Pei said that the new price will come into effect on October 26th. No price changes were announced for Nothing’s more recently-announced Phone 1 smartphone.In a followup tweet, Pei justified the price increase by noting the amount of development effort that’s gone into the earbuds since their original release last year. “When we started developing it, we only had 3 engineers,” the CEO said. “A year later, we have 185. During this time, the Ear 1 has received 15 firmware and tuning updates, and is a completely different product to when we launched it.”

Looks like 4K’s back on the menu, boys. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has ended the experiment that locked the ability to watch videos in 4K behind its $11.99 a month premium membership, according to one of its official Twitter accounts (via 9to5Google). Earlier this month, the company made waves when it confirmed with a series of now-deleted tweets that some of its users were part of a test meant to explore “the feature preferences Premium & non-Premium viewers,” and asking users to provide feedback on the idea.The idea of having to pay to access higher resolution videos was a divisive one, with some users calling it a sign of the platform’s downfall, and others saying it was understandable given the cost of streaming 4K content. YouTube’s announcement that it had “fully turned off” the... Continue reading…

The 2024 Celestiq is not your typical Cadillac. The low-volume ultra-luxury Celestiq is the second EV in Cadillac’s lineup and features a host of 3D-printed parts for extensive customization Continue reading…

Two thirds of new hires in 2021 didn’t last 90 days. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last year, only a third of Amazon’s new hires stayed with the company for more than 90 days before quitting, being fired, or getting laid off, according to leaked documents obtained by Engadget. The report is the latest indication that Amazon is having serious issues retaining employees, and it reveals the company’s estimate that its attrition rate costs it almost $8 billion a year across its global consumer field operations team.The report, which is based off internal research papers, slide decks, and spreadsheets from Amazon, claims that workers are twice as likely to leave by choice, rather than because they were laid off or fired. It also says that the issue is widespread throughout the company, not just with warehouse workers; from... Continue reading…

The Fossil Gen 6 smartwatches are eligible for the upgrade to Wear OS 3 starting today. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Last week, Fossil announced the Gen 6 Wellness Edition, its first Wear OS 3 smartwatch. But starting today, the company is also beginning to roll out the Wear OS 3 update for patient owners of existing Gen 6 smartwatches. The update has a few significant omissions, but one of the more surprising ones is Google Fit — an app that was once preloaded onto nearly every Wear OS 2 smartwatch. The app is also missing from the newly launched Pixel Watch.First reported by 9to5Google, the lack of Google Fit was confirmed in an update that Fossil posted in r/WearOS. The gist is the Google Fit app hasn’t been updated to support Wear Health Services, a new system layer in Wear OS 3 that collects health data for apps in a more battery-efficient way.... Continue reading…

Destroyed houses, hotels and railway tracks pictured during ongoing cleanup efforts in the Ahr Valley region following catastrophic flash floods on August 4th, 2021, near Dernau, Germany | Photo by Thomas Lohnes / Getty Images Earthquake sensors can detect fast-moving floods barreling toward them, new research finds. That information is especially valuable to people working on early warning systems for floods, which could give people crucial time to get to safety, preventing deaths and flood damage, according to the authors of a recently published paper.Communities in Germany’s Ahr Valley experienced a devastating flood that washed away homes and killed almost 200 people in July 2021. Studying that disaster, the researchers discovered that a nearby seismometer station — intended to monitor earthquakes — detected valuable details about the flood as it was happening.“If the data stream from that station had been available and analysed as our research now... Continue reading…

Illustration by Lille Allen / The Verge Not all gadgets are meant to make life easier.Some gadgets break things, exploiting cracks in our digital systems, prying them open, and crawling inside. Most often used by penetration testers — a kind of white-hat hacker hired to test a company’s security by breaking in themselves — these gadgets serve as a kind of road map to the most common vulnerabilities in our digital world.For the most part, they’re commercialized versions of tech that already existed in a scrappier form, leaning on open-source software projects and decades of work developing attacks. But most importantly, they’re available, so if you decide you want to try out one of these attacks, the equipment is only a click away.Please use them only for good. Continue reading…

Harrison Ford will appear in the next Captain America movie. | Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images The rumors are true: Harrison Ford will be appearing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’ll be taking over the role of General Ross in the fourth Captain America movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ross was previously played by William Hurt, who died earlier this year.Ford will join Anthony Mackie in Captain America: New World Order. Mackie will reprise his role as Sam Wilson and, after the events of the Disney Plus series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Captain America. The new movie is currently scheduled to debut on May 3rd, 2024.Ford has had something of a resurgence in tentpole movie franchises over the past several years, though many of his appearances have been reprisals. He came back to play Han Solo in Star Wars:... Continue reading…

The G Cloud Gaming Handheld from Logitech has a launch price of $349.99. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Happy Monday, campers, the Verge Deals team is back in action. While we aren’t seeing quite the same amount of exciting discounts we saw during last week’s Prime sale, there are still plenty of deals to take a look at. Starting off, if you’re excited about the impending release of Logitech’s new G Cloud Gaming Handheld, today is your last chance to preorder one and save $50 off the launch price at Best Buy, Amazon, and the Microsoft Store.Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld Our review of the Logitech handheld makes it clear that cloud gaming has an awful lot of potential in this form factor, even if it isn’t a perfect device by itself. The G Cloud differs from conventional gaming handhelds like the Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck in that... Continue reading…

Sony Electronics announced new over-the-counter hearing aids. | Image: Sony Electronics Hearing aids are now available over the counter for the first time in the United States. They’re on sale at places like Walgreens and Walmart, and companies like Sony have already developed new hearing aids for this new regulatory turn.The Food and Drug Administration announced the rule change allowing over-the-counter hearing aids in August. They go into effect Monday, opening up cheaper and more accessible options to people with mild to moderate hearing loss.Prescription hearing aids can cost thousands of dollars a pair. In contrast, Walmart will offer over-the-counter hearing aids at a price point ranging from $199–$999 per pair. “Offering easy access to OTC hearing aids — something that seems quite small — is a solution that can... Continue reading…

Wargaming Sydney helped to develop gaming architecture used by online titles and MMOs such as World of Tanks. | Image: Wargaming Video game developer and publisher Riot Games has announced its acquisition of Wargaming Sydney, a gaming software development studio that’s part of Cyprus-based Wargaming, the publisher behind titles such as World of Tanks and World of Warships. Riot did not disclose the price of the purchase.Wargaming Sydney is one of the largest games studios in Australia, formed under its original name of BigWorld back in 2002. It was by Wargaming in 2012. The studio has created game development tools and other software architecture required to develop online games such as MMOs. After the acquisition by Riot, Wargaming Sydney will be renamed Riot Sydney and will assist in the development of Riot games such as Valorant and League of Legends.W... Continue reading…

Speeds are going up for many plans. | Image: Comcast Comcast is upgrading internet speeds for more than 20 million Xfinity customers, the company announced Monday. The changes, which will affect “most of our customers” across the country, according to a statement from Bill Connors, president of Xfinity for Comcast Cable, roll out beginning this week. Speeds will go up at no extra charge.Here’s which plans are impacted and how much they’re changing, per a press release:

Persona 5 Royal is just as good as you might have hoped on Nintendo Switch. | Image: Atlus The Nintendo Switch is a fantastic machine for role-playing games; it’s something Nintendo has been aware of from the very start. The hybrid nature of the Switch makes it easy to settle in for hours-long sessions on your TV or, when you have just 15 minutes to spare on the bus, tackle a mission or battle in handheld mode.More than five and a half years in, the Switch has a robust library of RPGs, both new and old. But this month, two modern classics join that collection — including Persona 5 Royal, which is just as good as you might have hoped.Everything that made Persona 5 such a hit is intactI first played through Royal in 2020 on the PS4, and to me, the Switch version feels nearly exactly the same. Everything that made Persona 5... Continue reading…

Ye at Paris Fashion Week. | Photo by Edward Berthelot/Getty Images Kanye West, the musician now known as Ye, is buying Parler, a social media platform that styles itself as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter. The acquisition was announced by Parler in a press release, which said that it has entered into an agreement in principle with Ye that’s expected to close later this year.“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” said Ye in a press statement.

The Chromecast with Google TV 4K, originally released in 2020. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Android 12 is rolling out for the 4K model of the Chromecast with Google TV, 9to5Google reports. The update for the 2020 streaming dongle follows the release of Google’s cheaper HD model last month, which shipped with Android 12 out of the box. To download the update on the 4K dongle, navigate to the profile icon at the top right of the interface, then hit Settings, System, About, and select System Update.The update doesn’t add any major new features to the two-year-old streaming dongle, but it contains a couple of new settings that should improve playback in certain situations. FlatPanelsHD reports that the biggest is a new frame rate matching feature that should cut down on judder by allowing the Chromecast to match the frame rate of... Continue reading…

Image: G4 TV Comcast is shutting down G4 after attempting to relaunch the gaming channel last year, according to a report from Deadline. The channel first appeared on linear cable back in 2002 until it met its demise as the final studio shows were axed in 2012, and it was eventually replaced by the Esquire Network.Dave Scott, the CEO of Comcast’s Spectacor division, announced the shutdown in an internal memo obtained by Deadline before it was even sent, saying that the channel has had low viewership and has not “achieved sustainable financial results.”