The Verge

NASA called off last week’s Artemis I launch due to Hurricane Ian. | Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images The long-anticipated launch of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket has been pushed back to mid-November after NASA waved off its September 27th launch plans in the wake of Hurricane Ian (via Space.com). The space agency announced on Friday that it’s aiming to squeeze in the Artemis I launch between November 12th and November 27th.While there was initially a slight chance that NASA’s next launch attempt could take place in October, that was ultimately scrapped after NASA decided to roll the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to shield it from the storm. NASA successfully secured the rocket on Tuesday after an hours-long trek to the VAB.Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, but weakened... Continue reading…

Alex Castro / The Verge Dish and its Sling TV streaming service lost Disney’s package of channels after the companies couldn’t come to a contract agreement (via Deadline). In an announcement on its site, Dish says the Disney Channel, ESPN, FX, Freeform, National Geographic, and some local ABC networks are no longer available on its services after its contract expired early this morning.Dish blames the dispute on Disney, claiming the company demanded a $1 billion fee increase and “walked away from the negotiation table.” The satellite provider adds that Disney wanted Dish to include ESPN, ESPN2, and local ABC channels at an added cost in packages that don’t carry them.

Braided, silicone, and leather Pixel Watch band styles. | Image: Slashleaks via OnLeaks As if the launch of the Pixel Watch hasn’t been spoiled by enough leaks already, a new set of images shared with Slashleaks by reliable leaker OnLeaks (via 9to5Google), show the smartwatch in even more detail just days ahead of Google’s launch event. This expands on what we’ve already seen in a brief ad from Google released last week, revealing an array of band styles, more watch faces, as well as some other features the watch could come with.For starters, the Pixel Watch could offer silicone band styles in black, eggshell, dark gray, and silver, as well as three braided options in orange, green, and black. It also looks like Google’s planning to offer two different leather band styles, including a sleek set in orange, black, and... Continue reading…

The Eufy Dual utilizes a second lens, aimed downward, for watching over packages. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge It’s the first of October, which means it’s officially Spooky Season. And while I’m sure all of us are excited to put up our fearsome 12-foot skeletons, there’s nothing fun about the fear of having a package stolen off your porch. A video doorbell is a good way to keep a watchful eye over your front stoop.The wired version of the Eufy Dual video doorbell is on sale at Amazon or direct from Eufy for $149.99 ($50 off). Amazon requires you to click the $50 on-page coupon, while Eufy has a coupon code of WSCP856PGC to use at checkout for the discounted price. The appeal of the Eufy is that it has two separate lenses, one for seeing who is at your door and one focused on the doorstep clearly showing any packages left there.However, the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla's Optimus robot prototype was not the only thing the company shared on Friday evening during its AI Day presentation. Autopilot director Ashok Elluswamy took the stage during Tesla's AI day to talk about how the company's Full Self Driving software has improved. He revealed that there are now 160,000 customers running the beta software, compared to 2,000 from this time last year.In total, Tesla says there have been 35 software releases of FSD. In a Q&A at the end of the presentation, Musk made another prediction — he's made a few before — that the technology would be ready for a worldwide rollout by the end of this year but acknowledged the regulatory and testing hurdles that remained before that happens. Image:... Continue reading…

Elon Musk said he expects to show off a prototype of the Tesla Bot. | Image: Tesla Update: Tesla’s Optimus robot prototype kicked off the event, check out the details we’ve heard so far.Tesla’s AI Day kicks off today, September 30th, at which Elon Musk has said he hopes to show off a working prototype of the company’s humanoid robot, Optimus. The event, which will be held at Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, will be livestreamed for the public and will start at 9:15PM ET / 6:15PM PT — a bit later in the evening than last year’s AI Day.AI Day will be livestreamed on Tesla’s website: click here to watch, or you can see the stream on YouTube.We don’t have a lot of details about what will be announced, but based on the invitation, we’re likely to hear about the “latest developments in artificial... Continue reading…

My “We Are Not For Sale” shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO David Zaslav seems to be trying to squash rumors that he wants to sell the company to the likes of Comcast. According to a report from Deadline, he told employees that “we are not for sale, absolutely, not for sale,” during a Zoom call on Wednesday attended by staff from all over the company.While he reportedly didn’t address any specific rumors, a recent report from The Hollywood Reporter seems to be the likely target of his comments. Earlier this month, the outlet suggested that “top industry execs” were “convinced” that Warner Bros. was on the brink of merging with Comcast, owners of NBCUniversal and the Peacock streaming service (and, disclosure, an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company). One... Continue reading…

Google announced the shutdown of Stadia with little warning. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge News that Google would be closing down Stadia was a big surprise for everyone, including the developers making games for the platform Continue reading…

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25211 went live on September 29th. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has finally returned the Task Manager back to its rightful home on the Windows Taskbar. Users that subscribe to the Dev Channel of Windows Insider updates will find a new option when they right-click the Taskbar after updating to Preview Build 25211, allowing them to quickly summon the Task Manager. This isn’t the only feature rolling out with the latest update, but it's definitely the most impressive. Bug fixes come with this build too, but there are some rougher spots users should be aware of. This particular update has only rolled out in the Dev Channel and shouldn’t affect Windows Insider subscribers who use the Beta Channel, or Release Preview builds of Windows.Here are the more substantial updates rolled out in Preview... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google is shutting down Stadia, its polarizing cloud gaming service, only four weeks after the company’s target audience of me, Makena Kelly, actually started using it.When Stadia was announced in 2019, Google pitched it as the future of gaming, providing a more accessible alternative to expensive PC rigs or whatever $500 next-gen console iteration was on the horizon. And when Stadia finally launched, it worked. Sure, features were missing, and connections were shaky, but suddenly I had access to a handful of games that would have previously cost me hundreds of dollars in hardware and controllers to play — a steep investment I wasn’t willing to make for games I may have only thrown on for a few hours.Despite Stadia’s obvious benefits,... Continue reading…

Anker’s Soundcore VR P10 earbuds are designed to provide lag-free audio for gaming. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Anker announced its latest wave of wireless earbuds yesterday, and the products indicate that Anker is expanding its focus beyond the usual sound quality upgrades. The company announced three pairs in all: the Soundcore Liberty 4, Soundcore Sleep A10, and Soundcore VR P10 earbuds.The new Liberty 4 earbuds do offer better sound; they’re Anker’s first “stick”-style buds to include dual drivers in each earbud. But they can also read your heart rate for fitness and wellness purposes. This functionality has been rumored for Apple’s AirPods lineup but has yet to materialize.Things didn’t end there. Anker also introduced its first-ever set of sleep earbuds, which are clearly meant to challenge Bose’s $249 Sleepbuds II and other products in... Continue reading…

In this Handout Photo provided by Swedish Coast Guard, the release of gas emanating from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea on September 28th, 2022, in At Sea. | Photo by Swedish Coast Guard via Getty Images This week, the world watched what’s likely to be the fossil fuel industry’s single largest methane release ever. An astonishing amount of methane is floating up from the now-notorious Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and rising above the surface of the Baltic Sea. It’s a pollution nightmare. It also pales in comparison to the vast amount of methane that oil and gas operations constantly release.Up to 778 million standard cubic meters of methane gas could spew from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in a worst-case scenario, according to the Danish Energy Agency. That’s equivalent to nearly a third of Denmark’s greenhouse gas emissions for the entire year of 2020.The Nord Stream disaster “is an extraordinarily huge one-time event,” says... Continue reading…

USB-C, the cable that (sometimes) does it all. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The SuperSpeed USB branding is no more thanks to a new set of guidelines currently being rolled out by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the body that manages and maintains the USB standard.It’s part of a rebranding initiative that the organization kicked off last year with the introduction of a new series of packaging, port, and cable logos. But with its latest set of branding and logo guidelines it’s going even further, simplifying its legacy branding and signaling the end of the decade-old SuperSpeed branding. If the name doesn’t ring any bells, then that’s probably because you (like most other people) simply referred to it by its USB 3 version number. Alongside it, the USB-IF is also ditching USB4 as a consumer-facing brand... Continue reading…

A bipedal robot named Cassie has set a new Guinness World Record for the 100 meter dash, clocking in a time of 24.73 seconds and an average speed of 4m/s (9mph).That’s much slower than a human, for whom record times stand at 9.58 seconds for men (set by Usain Bolt) and 10.49 seconds for women (set by Florence Griffith-Joyner). However, it’s still extremely impressive for a robot of Cassie’s design.“This may be the first bipedal robot to learn to run, but it won’t be the last,” said OSU robotics professor Jonathan Hurst in a press statement. “I think progress is going to accelerate from here.”Cassie was created by engineers at Oregon State University (OSU) and is manufactured by OSU-spinout Agility Robotics. Agility uses the bipedal... Continue reading…

Image: Zendure Zendure’s SuperBase V is the largest and most powerful portable battery yet. Not only can the 6.4kWh battery-on-wheels be expanded to 64kWh via stackable modules, it stores electrons in what the company calls the “first home energy system with semi-solid state batteries.” It can accept up to 3,000W of solar input, can be charged at a level 2 EV station, and includes external running lights, voice control, and powered wheels (because of course it does).According to Zendure, semi-solid state batteries offer 42 percent higher energy density and improved safety compared to lithium-ion phosphate (aka, LFP or LiFePO4) batteries — the current gold standard. As Professor Hobo explains it on YouTube, Zendure’s semi-solid state batteries are... Continue reading…

Image: Google I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Google Stadia, but I’m certainly going to miss it now it’s shutting down. While the writing has been on the wall for Stadia pretty much since it launched, I was one of the many (or the few as the joke goes) to be intrigued by this cloud-powered future of gaming. I paid the entry fee for a (mostly) empty stadium, but I enjoyed it anyway.It hasn’t been easy to like Stadia. The first few months of the service felt like a beta I was paying Google to test. I couldn’t initially connect the Stadia controller wirelessly to a PC or phone; the browser streaming wasn’t as high quality as the Chromecast output; and Google Assistant integration was useless.Google had also promised neat YouTube integration and... Continue reading…

In the end, were we not the ones getting played? | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Come January, Google will be shutting down its Stadia cloud gaming service. In some ways, the move isn’t much of a surprise — as my colleagues have pointed out, there’s been doubt about whether Google was in it for the long haul with Stadia basically ever since it was announced in March 2019.If you’ve been listening to what the company said about the service, though, you’d be forgiven for being blindsided. Up until the very end, Google insisted there’s a wonderful future for Stadia, and that players should keep signing up for and using the service, despite rumors that it was about to go bust. Now that Stadia’s officially being shut down, let’s take a look at the times Google promised us this wouldn’t happen.October 2019 — “It is a long... Continue reading…

The chargers were designed to stack to offer up to 1600W of charging power. | Image: Hyper Hyper is officially recalling its stackable 100W and 65W GaN chargers and a 130W battery pack, following reports that all three devices can overheat and may pose a fire hazard to consumers. Recall notices for the HyperJuice Stackable GaN USB-C chargers and HyperJuice 130W USB-C battery pack have been posted on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (US CPSC) website, and the company is emailing its customers directly to ask them to return the devices in exchange for store credit.According to the CPSC, Hyper has received seven reports of its stackable GaN chargers overheating “resulting in damage to the changing units,” plus two reports of the battery pack overheating and causing “smoke, melting, and property damage.” No... Continue reading…

Soundcore Liberty 4 earbuds | Image: Soundcore Today Anker is adding a new entry to its line of Soundcore earbuds with the Liberty 4. While this set keeps the brand in the budget earbud category with a $149.99 price, they’re the first ones in this line to combine a “stick” design (as seen in the Liberty Air 2 Pro) and dual dynamic drivers that Soundcore claims “push the boundaries of sound performance, offering clarity across all frequencies for the best listening experience with all genres of music.”The Liberty Air 2 Pro made our list of the best cheap earbuds last year, and the Liberty 3 Pro managed to impress for the price when we reviewed them in February, despite ANC that could use some improvement and some extra emphasis on bass and treble under their default settings.While... Continue reading…

Image: Eufy Smart home company Eufy’s new wireless security camera, the EufyCam 3, bumps up the resolution to 4K and adds a built-in solar panel to extend the year-long battery life even further. But its best features come from the new HomeBase 3 hub the camera connects to wirelessly. This adds local processing of video to send you an alert when it spots a person, pet, or vehicle, plus facial recognition so it can tell you if it’s a stranger or a family member.Another interesting feature is the option to upgrade the storage to as much as 16 TB of local storage with a hard drive slot. Eufy says this is enough for 60 years of motion-activated video footage, and it adds the capability to record continuous video — a first for the Eufy ecosystem.The... Continue reading…

The Hubble Space Telescope | Image: NASA SpaceX and NASA have agreed to figure out whether or not a SpaceX ship could visit and potentially breathe new life into the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. They announced that they were partnering on a study that would look into whether or not that kind of mission was even possible.The study will take about six months to complete and will involve NASA and SpaceX. It also involves the Polaris Program, a private human spaceflight effort funded by billionaire Jason Isaacman. Earlier this year, Isaacman bought three flights to space on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, a series of missions he’s calling Polaris.It is not clear yet whether or not a trip to the Hubble would even require a crewIt is not clear yet whether or not a trip to the Hubble... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google had big plans for its cloud gaming service, but it never tipped the scales. Soon, Google will be shutting it down. Continue reading…

Intel’s Arc A750 arrives next month. | Image: Intel Intel surprised PC gamers earlier this week with $329 pricing for its top Arc A770 GPU, matching Nvidia’s RTX 3060 retail pricing. While it’s still difficult to find an RTX 3060 at $329, Intel is now undercutting Nvidia’s popular GPU with a $289 starting price for its A750, a card it claims should be able to trade blows with the RTX 3060.We’re still waiting on independent reviews of the Arc A750, but Intel did release 48 benchmarks last month showing that it should be able to beat or come close to Nvidia’s RTX 3060 performance in modern games. Intel tested its A750 directly against the RTX 3060 across 42 DirectX 12 titles and six Vulkan games, and the results look promising.Intel is clearly aiming for performance per dollar and budget... Continue reading…

Peloton continues to expand outside of its own marketplace. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In August, Peloton partnered with Amazon to sell its bikes and other accessories and apparel via the retailer’s website and apps. Today, Peloton announced another partnership with Dick’s Sporting Goods to sell its equipment both online and exclusively in its stores across the US. The partnership marks the first time that its equipment will be readily available for purchase in a third-party retailer’s brick-and-mortar store.The move to expand its fitness lineup to physical stores beyond the ones Peloton operates isn’t surprising. It’s continuing a plan to improve operations after a disastrous last 18 months that included layoffs, replacing founder and CEO John Foley with a new CEO, and restructuring. Last month, CEO Barry McCarthy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple’s vice president of procurement, Tony Blevins, has been fired from the company after his crude remarks in a TikTok interview went viral, according to a report from Bloomberg. Earlier this month, creator Daniel Mac posted a video where he asked Blevins what he does for a living, which showed Blevins responding: “I race cars and play golf and fondle big-breasted women. But I take weekends and major holidays off.”The video doesn’t identify Blevins by name and doesn’t reference his position at Apple, though Blevins does note that his job offers “a hell of a dental plan.” Mac’s format on TikTok mostly consists of walking up to people in expensive or luxurious cars and asking what they do for a living. As a slightly more safe for work... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission is facing mounting pressure to block Amazon’s proposed $1.65 billion purchase of iRobot, the company behind Roomba autonomous vacuums.In a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan on Thursday, a group of Democratic lawmakers argued that the proposed merger would unfairly bolster Amazon’s dominance in the smart home market by acquiring one of the company’s leading competitors. They also criticized Amazon’s data privacy and security practices following past acquisitions of companies like Ring, including data sharing partnerships with over 600 law enforcement agencies across the country.“iRobot is a powerful market incumbent, and Amazon, given its vast resources, history of producing smart vacuums… and powerful platform,... Continue reading…

Google’s text-to-speech tech is getting new voices across Android apps to improve clarity and sound more natural. | The Verge The speech engine Speech Services by Google is being upgraded to improve clarity and make text-to-speech voices in Android apps sound more natural. You can hear the difference between the old voices and the updated voices for yourself through prerecorded snippets on the Android Developers Blog.Frankly, while the voices do sound clearer, I’m skeptical about the claims it sounds more natural. It’s also still difficult to ascertain what the first sentence in these US English-language recordings actually says — is this my gun? Is this my god? Apparently it says “is this mic on?” but that was lost on me.Old New All 421 voices in 67 languages within Google’s speech engine are getting a new voice modelAll 421 voices in 67 languages... Continue reading…

Concept art from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes | Image: 20th Century Studios The next entry in the Planet of the Apes saga will start filming soon — and it has yet another very long name. Today, 20th Century Studios unveiled the first real details on Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which picks up the story years after 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes for what’s described as “an all-new chapter.” Production on the film is scheduled to start next month, with Wes Ball, best-known for the Maze Runner trilogy, serving as director.We don’t know much else about the movie, and it’s hard to glean a lot from the initial concept art (see above). But the studio did reveal some of the cast, including Owen Teague (Black Mirror and the newer It films), Freya Allen (The Witcher), and Peter Macon (The Orville). The... Continue reading…

Image: Ustwo Games / Netflix The quality of Netflix games has gone from simple, cotton candy-like fluff suitable for short bursts in a waiting room to bespoke, narrative experiences that require hours of strategic thinking. Desta: The Memories Between is the latter.Now I’m going to say some words that make sense independently but seem confusing when smashed together: Desta is a dreaming dodgeball roguelike friendship simulator. I promise you, it works.That’s the thing that enamored me of this game: those disparate words and genres, when put together, frickin’ work on a level that I simply have not seen in a mobile game, let alone one brought exclusively to mobile via Netflix — whose first crop of games included such BAFTA hopefuls like Shooting Hoops and Teeter... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An app appealing to the nostalgia of an Instagram without Reels and recommendations was pulled from the App Store just as developers say it was taking off.The OG App allows users to log in with their Instagram account and browse without ads, recommendations, and Reels — increasingly obtrusive features on Instagram that have caused widespread pushback from users. The app’s name captures the same sentiment: many users miss the old Instagram.But just a day after the app officially launched, it was pulled from the App Store on Wednesday, Engadget reports. On Twitter, the OG App creators said the app got 10,000 downloads and was climbing the rankings before it was removed.

Worlds 2021 champions Edward Gaming in Iceland. | Photo by Clive Rose/Riot Games Inc. via Getty Images The weather is cooling down, leaves are starting to change color, and PSLs are everywhere, which can only mean one thing: it’s time for the League of Legends World Championship. The annual esports tournament, better known simply as Worlds, kicks off on September 29th. Following a few years of competitions hampered by COVID-related restrictions, the 2022 edition looks to be more in keeping with the spectacle fans are used to.This year, the event is taking place across several cities in North America, starting off in Mexico City and culminating with the finals in San Francisco, where none other than Lil Nas X will be performing at the opening ceremony. As always, there are plenty of intriguing storylines, but keeping up with everything... Continue reading…

Waymo says it has created a new benchmark to measure the safety of its autonomous vehicles. | Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Waymo’s latest effort to prove that autonomous vehicles are safer than silly, accident-prone humans involves creating a virtual representation of a hyper-attentive driver and then pitting this fake person against its own AVs in a series of simulated tests to see which is better at crash avoidance.(Not to spoil it or anything, but the Waymo vehicle did better.)Improved safety has been one of the main predictions of the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry. With millions of people dying in auto crashes globally every year, AV operators are increasingly leaning on this safety case to spur regulators to pass legislation allowing more fully autonomous vehicles on the road. But while the argument seems convincing on the surface — AVs don’t get... Continue reading…