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The unreleased device showing an apparent lock screen. | Image: eBay An apparent prototype smart speaker from defunct smartphone manufacturer Essential has popped up in an eBay listing spotted by a keen-eyed Redditor. It offers a tantalizing glimpse at what the ambitious-yet-unreleased “Essential Home” device could have been and seems to be partially functional. The listing’s photos show the device’s circular screen illuminated, with elements like its lock screen and settings menus visible. The seller is asking for $900 plus shipping for the prototype.If you have no memory of the Essential Home then we wouldn’t blame you. The smart speaker was announced in May 2017 alongside the Essential Phone, and the company told Wired that it hoped to ship both later that summer. The phone would eventually release... Continue reading…

Dami Lee Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.This week on The Vergecast, Verge managing editor Alex Cranz takes the reins with deputy editor Dan Seifert, deputy editor Liz Lopatto, and reviewer Allison Johnson to discuss Elon Musk buying a major stake in Twitter, this week’s gadget reviews, and the introduction of QD-OLED TVs and gaming monitors in the market.It was a wild week for Twitter, from Elon Musk buying 9.2 percent of Twitter and joining its board of directors to the announcement of an upcoming “edit button” for tweets. Liz explains why Elon may have wanted to buy stock in Twitter and what power he... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Blockchain apps’ great hope is facing a rocky future Continue reading…

Once you’ve overcome the not inconsiderable challenge of obtaining an Analogue Pocket, your next task is figuring out how to play the thing outside your home. It’s a beautifully designed system that you’ll want to protect, but there aren’t many case options beyond Analogue’s own, which is an awkward clear plastic box that was seemingly more intended for storage and display than on-the-go use.The best one I’ve found so far comes from WaterField Designs, the San Francisco company we’ve covered a few times in the past for its leather-clad backpacks and laptop bags. The Analogue Pocket Pouch is a simple, stylish $49 accessory that protects your console and gives you storage for a few Game Boy games. The pouch latches shut... Continue reading…

The tablet for Samsung phone owners Continue reading…

Samsung’s supersized tablet comes with big limitations Continue reading…

Elon Musk officially opened Texas Gigafactory on Thursday. | Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images Tesla opened its Austin, Texas-based Gigafactory on Thursday, a crucial step in the company’s delayed plans to begin production of its electric Cybertruck. To celebrate the opening, Tesla held an event, billed as a “Cyber Rodeo,” to which it invited 15,000 people to listen to live music, eat food, and pay homage to Elon Musk and his company.“We are really entering a new phase of Tesla’s future,” Musk told the audience. Clad in a black cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses, Musk said he was excited to begin working on Cybertruck production at last. “I can’t wait to see this baby in production, it’s going to be epic.”Along with a new version of the Cybertruck, Musk also showed off a new Roadster vehicle, which is slated to begin production... Continue reading…

Image: Apple In the age of binge-watching and television seasons that drop all at once, Severance feels unique: it’s a show you definitely don’t want to watch in one go. Despite the veneer of a banal workplace drama, Severance is an incredibly tense sci-fi horror series where that tension only builds over the course of the show’s nine episodes. Each new chapter is a chance to see something more messed up and discover the dark depths the capitalist machine is willing to sink to. You’re going to want some space in between to let it all soak in — and maybe catch your breath a little.This article contains spoilers for the first season of Severance.Severance starts out fairly slowly. The show centers on a relatively new procedure called, naturally,... Continue reading…

Image: Robinhood Robinhood’s cryptocurrency wallet, which lets users spend and trade select digital currencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum, is being made available to “all eligible customers’’ on its waitlist, the company has announced. That amounts to over two million people, although the company cautions that the wallet won’t be available in Hawaii, Nevada, or New York due to “local regulations.” The wallet was initially launched as a limited test last year.Although Robinhood has allowed customers to buy cryptocurrency on its platform, you couldn’t easily spend the cryptocurrency — it just sits in your account as a speculative asset until you decide to sell it. In contrast, Robinhood says its wallet gives customers “full access to their crypto” and... Continue reading…

At least I didn’t further my sugar addiction. Coke recently announced that it was making a limited-edition soda, called Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte. The flavor, according to the company, was “born in the metaverse” and “inspired by the playfulness of pixels, rooted in the experiences that gaming makes possible.” It’s hard to imagine better bait for The Verge, so I asked Coke if it could send me a can. And it delivered.The can for Coke Byte (as I’ll be calling it for brevity’s sake) is a fun purple color, and has a sort of retro-game aesthetic — it says “recycle me to play again” on the side, and it is adorned with cubes meant to represent pixels. I stuck it in the fridge until my wife Becky got home, and we cracked it open to finally discover what pixels taste like. ... Continue reading…

The union wants the election set aside. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (or RWDSU) has filed objections against Amazon to the National Labor Relations Board, saying that the company has again interfered with its election in Bessemer, Alabama (via CNBC).In a press release, the union alleges that the company “threatened an employee with plant closure if the Union was voted in,” barred employees from posting pro-union literature, and “engaged in surveillance and / or created the impression of surveillance of employees engaged in protected concerted activities,” among many other things. The union is asking the NLRB to schedule a hearing on its objections to determine whether the results of the second Bessemer election should be set aside and a new election held.... Continue reading…

2022 Bolt EUV in new TV spot airing today | Image: GM GM has resumed production of the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV and now has access to a supply of new battery packs that should be safe from fire hazards. This comes after the Chevrolet Bolt was recalled due to potential battery fires affecting all model years, which led to a complete production freeze on the Bolt EV and EUV vehicles since last August.“Our goal is to get back to and, quite frankly, exceed business metrics,” said Chevy’s VP of marketing Steve Majoros on a press call yesterday. The comeback plan for the Bolt includes catching up with new 2022 Bolt EV and EUV orders (2023 orders will begin in July), a new TV ad campaign coinciding with the opening day of Major League Baseball, and the “herculean task” of replacing all... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Recent Chrome OS updates have broken the camera on some Chromebooks for some users, as reported by About Chromebooks, but Google said Thursday it released a fix.Some bug reports found by About Chromebooks before the fix was available listed differing issues; one said the camera “simply does not work,” while another said the camera is “unable to focus properly.” People also reported problems across a few different updates, with at least one dating back to Chrome 97. (Chrome OS is currently on version 100.)There have been some reports of camera issues with the following devices, according to About Chromebooks:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap is launching a new Snapchat lens that can help you learn American Sign Language (ASL). It’s called ASL Alphabet Lens, and Snapchat is launching it in partnership with SignAll, a company that has built technology that can translate sign language.“Led entirely by Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing team members here at Snap called the ‘Deafengers’, the ASL Alphabet Lens teaches you to fingerspell your name, practice the ASL Alphabet, and play games that put new skills to the test,” Snap said in a blog post. Screenshots from the ASL Alphabet Lens app. You can try the lens from this link, which should open in Snapchat if you have the app on your phone. I played around for it for a few minutes and was pretty impressed. The... Continue reading…

The company isn’t letting workers organize without a fight. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is planning to object to the results of the election where workers at a New York warehouse voted to organize with the Amazon Labor Union, according to a deadline extension request the company filed with the National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB). In the document, which you can read in full below, Amazon says that it’s gathering evidence to show that the union “threatened employees to coerce them into voting yes,” “electioneered and interfered with employees waiting in line to vote,” and “threatened immigrants with the loss of benefits if they did not vote.”Amazon hasn’t yet filed its final, official objections, according to Kayla Blado, a spokesperson for the NLRB. It will have until 11:59PM ET on Friday to do so, though the... Continue reading…

Twitter rolled out its ALT badge and improved image descriptions | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter said Thursday that its ALT badge and improved image descriptions are now available globally, accessibility features that will make alt text descriptions more prominent for all users. Images that have text descriptions will get a badge that reads “alt,” and clicking on the badge will bring up the description. Twitter first announced changes were coming last month.“As promised, the ALT badge and exposed image descriptions go global today,” reads a tweet from Twitter’s Accessibility account. “Over the past month, we fixed bugs and gathered feedback from the limited release group. We’re ready. You’re ready. Let’s describe our images!”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hours after announcing it would convert over 1,000 temporary and contract QA employees to full time and provide a minimum pay of $20 per hour, Activision Blizzard is stating that Raven Software QA workers will not be part of that deal. According to a report from Bloomberg, the QA testers at Raven Software who recently organized as the Game Workers Alliance will not be able to take advantage of the new pay minimum — something Activision Blizzard failed to mention upfront when it sent the initial news to media outlets. Excluding organizing employees from company-wide benefits seems to be Activision Blizzard’s latest move against the burgeoning labor movement going on at the company.In a statement to The Verge, Activision Blizzard... Continue reading…

Image: Reddit Even though you can no longer place tiles on Reddit’s r/Place canvas, which was a revival of an April Fools’ Day experiment, the platform has given us the chance to relive the experience. The company has provided a treasure trove of data, including a recap post that goes over numbers and statistics (things like which country placed the most tiles or which subs talked about r/Place the most), alongside an entire CSV dataset for people to tinker with if they’d like.But, as someone who watched the chaos unfold by checking in every hour or so (and placed a few tiles of my own), the coolest thing Reddit posted is a three-minute-long timelapse that shows how the canvas was shaped by users over four days.Watching it evolve is like staring... Continue reading…

The crew of Ax-1 have paid their way on board Continue reading…

The radio in the 2022 Chrysler Pacifica, which includes Bluetooth. | Image: Chrysler A US appeals court has decided that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (or FCA) has a valid argument in a trademark case brought against it by the standards organization behind Bluetooth. The case being litigated could end up setting a precedent about whether automakers can buy radios that are already certified for Bluetooth or whether they will also have to pay the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) to certify the cars, too, adding cost at a time when car prices are already ballooning.The Bluetooth SIG sued the automaker — now known as Stellantis after FCA merged with Peugeot — back in 2018. At the time, it said that FCA was improperly using its trademark on cars like the Jeep Wrangler and Dodge Grand Caravan, which Bluetooth SIG hadn’t... Continue reading…

Twitter is experimenting with ‘unmentioning’ | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is experimenting with an “unmentioning” feature that will allow users to remove themselves from conversations. It’s limited to some users and only on the web version for now but looks like a very useful way to clean up your mentions.“We’re experimenting with Unmentioning—a way to help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations,” the tweet reads. The company posted a short GIF of what the feature will look like to its Twitter Safety account.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge HBO Max is promising a long-overdue fix to its busted tvOS app.Apple TV users know that HBO Max’s streaming app is subject to frequent crashing and glitches and is often overloaded during important premiere dates. In an overhaul that will continue through next week, the company billed the new app as completely redesigned with some useful new features (although Variety, which earlier reported the news, said the two apps were not too visually dissimilar).According to the company, the new app will have easier sign-in and sign-up protocols, as well as an “enhanced” homepage with a scrollable hero. The company also says the app will have an editable “My Stuff” experience so that users can better manage their Continue Watching and My List... Continue reading…

Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images There’s a new group of affluent conservatives planning to revamp the American right by investing more than $30 million into new legal, policy, and media ventures, including “influencer programs,” according to a recent report from The New York Times.The coalition, known as The Rockbridge Network, features prominent conservative billionaires like Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer. The network aims to “disrupt but advance the Republican agenda” with its new policy and media programs. According to a network brochure obtained by the Times, “The Rockbridge Network will replace the current Republican ecosystem” of activist and media organizations with “better action-oriented, more effective people and institutions.”The brochure doesn’t reveal... Continue reading…

Spotify Car Thing has added new features | Image: Spotify Spotify announced Thursday it was adding the ability to respond to phone calls and other new features to its Car Thing infotainment system. Owners of the $90 device, which went on sale in February, also will now be able to add songs and podcasts to a queue, control other media, and use voice commands.Car Thing users will be able to see incoming calls and either answer them or dismiss them right in the Car Thing interface. They’ll also be able to switch between Spotify and other media using presets, voice, or tapping its screen.Spotify says the new “add to queue” feature is one of its most-requested for Car Thing; you can do it either by voice (using the “hey Spotify” prompt), touch, or the device’s dial. You can also ask Car Thing to... Continue reading…

Sonic the hedgehog with his little satchel full of rings. Sonic’s cinematic franchise is eager to grow up Continue reading…

The fan and air intake of the direct air capture system stands at the Carbon Engineering Ltd. pilot facility in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2019. | Photo by James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty Images To get climate change under control, experts say, we’re going to have to start sucking a whole lot more planet-heating carbon dioxide out of the air. And we need to start doing it fast.Over the past decade, climate pollution has continued to grow, heating up the planet. It’s gotten to the point that not one but two major climate reports released over the past week say we’ll have to resort to a still-controversial new technology called Direct Air Capture (DAC) to keep our planet livable. Finding ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is “unavoidable,” a report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.Finding ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is “unavoidable”We already have some... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Another major California-based video game developer is initiating a return-to-office order. According to a report from Vice, League of Legends developer Riot Games announced it will be requiring employees to return to its Los Angeles headquarters while also eliminating vaccine and masking requirements. Riot is also no longer requiring regular COVID-19 testing for employees who have not shown proof of vaccination.The Vice report spoke to several current and former Riot employees who expressed anger that the new policy would danger employees’ health. “It’s a foolish and pointless policy being done at a poor time and being handled without real guarantee of our safety,” one anonymous employee said to Vice.However, despite these concerns,... Continue reading…

It looks at data like Popular Times, images from street view, and more. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has shared how it’s using artificial intelligence, including its restaurant-calling Duplex tech, to try and keep business hours up to date on Google Maps. The company says that if it is confident enough in the AI’s prediction of what a business’s hours should be, it will update the information in Maps.In a blog post, Google outlines the various factors its AI analyzes to determine whether it should do these updates. First, it looks at when the business profile was last updated, other similar shops’ hours, and Popular Times data to decide how likely it is that the hours are incorrect. For example: if Google sees that a lot of people visit the shop when it’s supposedly closed, that may be a red flag.Google only updates hours with... Continue reading…

Companies like Amazon often use mandatory meetings to persuade workers against unionizing. | Photo by Yana Paskova / For The Washington Post via Getty Images The National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel plans to ask the board to rule that mandatory meetings about organizing are a violation of the National Labor Relations Act, a significant potential victory for labor groups. Sometimes called “captive audience” meetings, mandatory meetings are often used by company management to present anti-union rhetoric at meetings that employees are required to attend while at work.Employees trying to unionize Amazon warehouses in Bessemer, Alabama, and New York City have previously filed complaints with the NLRB claiming that the company held such meetings to try to convince workers to vote against the union efforts. The NLRB has historically allowed such meetings, but a new memo from NLRB... Continue reading…

If you’re currently a video creator or are interested in trying it out, you may want to know how well your PC can perform various tasks in Adobe Premiere Pro. One of the best ways to do that is the Puget Systems benchmark for Premiere Pro.Puget Systems is a PC manufacturer that specializes in professional workstations. They offer a number of different benchmarks for testing hardware in a variety of applications, but the Premiere Pro benchmark is the one we use the most. It will have your computer try all kinds of things, including live playback, export, GPU effects, and CPU effects, and see how it stacks up to the competition. While there are many benchmarks that try to simulate a professional video workflow, this one gathers data from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Activision Blizzard has just announced that all temporary and contingent QA workers of its Activision Publishing and Blizzard divisions are being converted to full-time employees — meaning nearly 1,100 temp game testers are getting full-time jobs with benefits. They’ll be making higher wages, too, with a new minimum hourly rate of $20.Here is a full statement from Jessica Taylor, Activision Blizzard’s vice president of corporate communications:

Follow a few quick steps to download and apply a new font to your Galaxy phone. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge One of the best things about a Samsung Galaxy phone is that it isn’t a “one size fits all” experience. Case in point: your phone’s font. If you’re not happy with the default choice, you can change it to something that’s easier to read or something that expresses your personal style a little more. After all, you probably spend hours every day checking your phone, so you should really like the font you’re looking at. Here’s how to change and adjust the font on a Samsung Galaxy phone.I used a Samsung Galaxy A53 5G running One UI 4.1 for the following steps:

TCL’s 6-Series TVs combine Mini LED panels with two HDMI 2.1 inputs for gaming. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge OLED may be the pinnacle of TV panels, but they’re still pricey — even after discounts. One very good alternative, the Mini LED-backlit TCL 6-Series with HDMI 2.1 ports, has dropped to a new low price today.TCL’s 55-inch 6-series model with Google TV is discounted to just $659.99 ($290 off) at Best Buy. Mini LED backlighting serves as a great substitute if paying OLED prices is off the table. It has excellent brightness with more control than standard LED and can maintain deeper black levels while displaying great color contrast. Sound a little familiar? It may not be quite as good as OLED, but it’s playing in the same ballpark.Plus, this TCL TV has two HDMI 2.1 ports and support for variable refresh rates up to 120Hz at 4K... Continue reading…

It’s the monitor that I’ve been waiting for Continue reading…

Chrono Cross got off to a, let’s say, difficult start. It was billed as a follow-up to Chrono Trigger, one of the most beloved role-playing games ever created, but while the two take place in the same world, there are some big differences. Chrono Trigger was created by a superteam of developers including Final Fantasy mastermind Hironobu Sakaguchi, long-time Dragon Quest steward Yuji Horii, and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. It’s frequently cited as one of the greatest games ever made. That all-star team didn’t continue on with the series, and though Chrono Cross was largely well-received at launch, its legacy never reached the same heights as its predecessor. It’s always been that weird follow-up with parallel worlds, a confusing... Continue reading…

Ariana Grande performing in Fortnite. Two of the biggest names in entertainment are coming together to create a virtual space aimed at kids, through a new partnership between Fortnite developer Epic Games and Lego. “We are excited to come together to build a space in the metaverse that’s fun, entertaining, and made for kids and families,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in a statement.Details are scarce — and the concept of a metaverse remains a murky one — but the companies say that whatever it is they end up building will be designed as a family-friendly virtual space from the beginning. “The Lego Group and Epic Games will combine their extensive experience to ensure that this next iteration of the internet is designed from the outset with the wellbeing of kids in mind,” the... Continue reading…

You like the way that dress looks but you’d rather have it in green. You want those shoes but prefer flats to heels. What if you could have drapes with the same pattern as your favorite notebook? I don’t know how to Google for these things, but Google Search product manager Belinda Zeng showed me real-world examples of each earlier this week, and the answer was always the same: take a picture, then type a single word into Google Lens.Today, Google is launching a US-only beta of the Google Lens Multisearch feature it teased last September at its Search On event, and while I’ve only seen a rough demo so far, you shouldn’t have to wait long to try it for yourself: it’s rolling out in the Google app on iOS and Android. G... Continue reading…

Corsair is announcing an updated version of its K70 mechanical keyboard today that comes with more responsive OPX optical mechanical switches. It costs $149.99, $10 more than the standard K70 released last year with more traditional Cherry mechanical switches. Aside from the switch change, the new K70 is broadly identical to last year’s model, with a detachable USB-C cable, RGB lighting, and a tenkeyless layout.The reason you might want a gaming keyboard with optical switches comes down to debounce delay, which typically affects keyboards with traditional mechanical switches. When you press a mechanical switch, there can be a brief period when its metal contacts clatter together before eventually settling, and this means the keyboard... Continue reading…

Fitbit has great sleep tracking insights. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Getting a good night’s sleep is one of the best things you can do for your health. And yet we live in the age of Netflix binges, a never-ending scroll of TikToks, and late-night video gaming marathons. But if you’re determined to build better sleeping habits, you can always try tracking your sleep.Before we dive in, a quick note: sleep tracking can be a helpful tool, but there are limitations as to what it can do. The jury is out on how accurate sleep trackers are, and you shouldn’t treat your results as an official diagnosis for any sleeping disorders, especially since these devices are not cleared by any regulatory body. Instead, you should view these devices as a means of learning about your sleep habits to help improve your sleep... Continue reading…

Image: Nvidia Cloud gaming isn’t for everyone, but it’s getting easier to tell if it’s for you because Nvidia and Google are now letting you try their virtual gaming PCs for free. Following Google’s recent announcement that any Stadia developer will be able to offer an instantly accessible free trial of their game without needing to log into a Google account, Nvidia’s GeForce Now is now pushing reduced-friction demos as well — starting with Chorus, Ghostrunner, Inscryption, Diplomacy Is Not an Option and The Riftbreaker: Prologue.Typically, you’d need to log into an Nvidia account, then log in again to a Steam, Epic Games, or Ubisoft account to play one of these demos on GeForce Now, and you’d have to search for them as well. Now, the Nvidia account... Continue reading…

Image: Apple In the vast underground office of Lumon, the megacorporation at the heart of Apple TV Plus’ thriller Severance, the computers are downright bizarre. At first they look a bit like an old Mac, but the closer you look, the more strange they become. The CRT display is somehow a touchscreen. The beautiful blue keyboard is saddled with a gigantic trackball. The goal, production designer Jeremy Hindle tells The Verge, was to design a device that doesn’t make a lot of sense, mirroring the purgatory-like world that exists only within Lumon’s basement. “The idea was that anything you could see underground doesn’t exist up top anywhere,” says Hindle. “You’ll never see that computer or that keyboard.”This article contains light spoilers for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Belarus-aligned hacking group has attempted to compromise the Facebook accounts of Ukrainian military personnel and posted videos from hacked accounts calling on the Ukrainian army to surrender, according to a new security report from Meta (the parent company of Facebook).The hacking campaign, previously labeled “Ghostwriter” by security researchers, was carried out by a group known as UNC1151, which has been linked to the Belarusian government in research conducted by Mandiant. A February security update from Meta flagged activity from the Ghostwriter operation, but since that update, the company said that the group had attempted to compromise “dozens” more accounts, although it had only been successful in a handful of cases.Where... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A voting app run by supporters of prominent Putin critic Alexei Navalny is once again available for download on Apple’s Russian App Store, The Washington Post reports, citing independent researchers and Navalny’s chief of stall Leonid Volkov. Both Apple and Google removed the app last year after the Kremlin threatened to criminally prosecute company employees in the country.The “Smart Voting” app contains over a thousand endorsements of Russian political candidates, WaPo notes, with the idea being to help citizens consolidate votes against the ruling United Russia party, which has Vladimir Putin as its de facto leader. Pressure to remove the app came ahead of Russia’s legislative election in September. WaPo reports that Google restored... Continue reading…

Axie:Origin screenshot | Image: Sky Mavis Last week Sky Mavis, the Vietnam-based company behind the crypto game Axie Infinity, revealed that a hacker stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto from its blockchain. Sky Mavis realized it had been attacked when a user could not make a withdrawal six days after the breach, and the company froze transactions on its compromised Ronin Network bridge.Now Sky Mavis has announced it’s received $150 million in investments that “will be used to ensure that all users affected by the Ronin Validator Hack will be reimbursed.” At nearly the exact same time, it’s launching a new version of the game, Axie Infinity: Origin. According to Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen, “As a team, we have made an intentional decision to focus on what lies... Continue reading…

Libra / Diem may be shut down, but “Zuck Bucks” could be coming next. | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Meta may have given up on its Diem cryptocurrency, but the company is still exploring finance products, according to a new Financial Times report. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram reportedly has a few irons in the fire, including virtual currency employees have apparently taken to calling “Zuck Bucks.”Zuck Bucks, seemingly named for Meta founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are “unlikely” to be a cryptocurrency. “Instead, Meta is leaning towards introducing in-app tokens that would be centrally controlled by the company, similar to those used in gaming apps such as the Robux currency in popular children’s game Roblox,” according to the FT. Roblox has built a huge business selling Robux, and Meta could try to emulate... Continue reading…

The wallet will have USB-C and a fingerprint reader. | Image: @JesseDorogusker on Twitter We’ve just seen a prototype of the Bitcoin hardware wallet that Jack Dorsey’s Block (the company formerly known as Square) is working on, a device to help people “safely own and manage their Bitcoin,” according to the company. Block’s hardware lead, Jesse Dorogusker, tweeted an image showing several devices on Wednesday, all seemingly including fingerprint readers and USB-C charging ports — both things Block said its hardware wallet would include in a blog post last month.Dorsey announced his company’s work on the crypto wallet in June 2021, and since then, we’ve gotten a few details on it. The company said the hardware wallet would be just one component in its crypto storage system and that it would have a corresponding mobile app for... Continue reading…

Some Cadillacs are also affected. | Photo by Clara Margais/picture alliance via Getty Images Ford and Chevrolet are reportedly halting production on their respective flagship performance cars, the Mustang and the Camaro, for a week thanks to supply chain issues (via Jalopnik). While the pauses probably won’t make it that much harder to get a muscle car, they are just the latest in a string of automotive delays caused by shortages of chips and other supplies.According to WXYZ Detroit, Ford is explicitly citing the chip shortage as the reason it’s not producing cars at its Flat Rock assembly plant where Mustangs are made. This isn’t the first time the company has struggled with supply issues — it’s had to cut back on the production of the F-150 and other vehicles multiple times, and earlier this year, it started selling Explorers... Continue reading…

A prototype of SpaceX’s Starship rocket on the launchpad at Starbase in Texas | Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images The US Army Corps of Engineers has closed a permit application for a proposed expansion of SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas — a potential snag in the company’s plans to add new launch and landing pads to the area, as well as substantially grow the site. In a letter viewed by The Verge, the Corps cited SpaceX’s failure to provide requested follow-up information about the proposed changes as a reason for closing the permit. Among other things, the Corps wanted more details about what mitigation measures the company would take to limit the loss of water and wetlands surrounding the site.SpaceX first purchased land in Boca Chica, Texas, in 2012, with the intention of creating a facility to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy... Continue reading…

A screenshot from the first Max Payne. | Image: Remedy Entertainment Remedy Entertainment is remaking Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. The company is establishing “a new development agreement” with Rockstar Games for the remakes, which will be released as a single title for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.“We were thrilled when our long-time friends at Remedy approached us about remaking the original Max Payne games,” said Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser said in a press release. “We are massive fans of the work the Remedy team has created over the years, and we can’t wait to play these new versions.”New Max Payne 1&2 ProjectThe game, which the press release refers to somewhat awkwardly as New Max Payne 1&2 Project, is “currently in the concept development stage.” No estimated release... Continue reading…