The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing crypto company Nexo, alleging that the company misled customers by saying it was registered to sell securities and commodities and that it wasn’t approved to offer services like its “Earn Interest Product” that promised returns on deposited crypto. It’s the latest legal move in a fight between regulators and crypto companies looking to offer interest-earning accounts, often insisting that they shouldn’t be classified as securities.Seven other states — California, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington, and Vermont — are also filing “administrative actions” against the company, according to a press release from the New York AG. The release also quotes James as saying:... Continue reading…

An illustration of DART headed towards Dimorphos | NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben Update 9/26 8:08PM ET: The DART spacecraft smashed into an asteroid! Original post continues below.When NASA smashes a spacecraft into an asteroid on Monday, people on Earth will get an extremely close look at the action.NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is headed for its final destination, the surface of an asteroid called Dimorphos, which it will crash into at speeds of over 14,000 miles per hour. Researchers are hoping that the collision will change the asteroid’s orbit, speeding it up just a tiny bit.Neither Dimorphos, nor its larger companion, Didymos, pose any danger to Earth, but the experiment is designed to test whether or not a similar impact could make a difference if scientists ever discovered an asteroid... Continue reading…

Sony is once again selling a PlayStation 5 bundle today. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Still on the hunt for a next-gen PlayStation 5? Right now, Sony is selling the disc-based PlayStation 5 with a digital copy of Guerrilla Games’ excellent Horizon Forbidden West for $549.99, which is $10 less than the cost if you were to buy the two individually. The best part? You don’t even have to wait in line in order to pick one up.While we’ve been seeing Sony and other retailers offer stock for longer than usual recently, speed is still the name of the game here. We can’t suggest any hacks that will guarantee you’ll land the console today, but as detailed in our guide on how to buy a PS5, there are a few things you can do to improve your chance of securing one. For one, remember that you must log in with your PlayStation Network ID... Continue reading…

Kwon co-founded Terraform Labs whose stablecoin, TerraUSD, collapsed earlier this year. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Do Kwon, a co-founder of Terraform Labs, has insisted that he’s not on the run after the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin, but Interpol is apparently under the impression he’s a fugitive. According to South Korean publication Yonhap and The New York Times, South Korean prosecutors said that Interpol has issued a “red notice” asking for help from worldwide law enforcement to find and arrest Kwon.Interpol:

Just because you can bring a waterproof phone into the shower doesn’t mean you should. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge There’s one last place in my life where the alerts, texts, pings, and emails, emails, emails! can’t find me: the shower. It is a sacred space where I process information, brainstorm, and sometimes, as a treat, anxiety-spiral over something dumb I said 15 years ago. But it has come to my attention that some of you are violating the sanctity of Shower Thought Time by actually inviting your phones into the shower. When this came to my attention, I did some digging and discovered dozens — dozens! — of waterproof phone mounts designed for the shower. Truly, I am shocked. You guys are bringing your phones into the shower?I did a little research and polled my Verge colleagues: do you bring your phone into the shower? While it seems that most... Continue reading…

iFixit’s video details the inner workings of Apple’s new premium watch. | Image: iFixit The right-to-repair enthusiasts at iFixit have published a video providing a screw-by-screw breakdown of the Apple Watch Ultra. The entire video serves less as a review of the capabilities of the Ultra and more of an intimate examination of the tech and engineering that goes into Apple’s powerful timepiece.iFixit’s breakdown exposed some vulnerabilities in the Apple Watch Ultra, not only in terms of its repairability but also its durability. The raised lip of the Ultra, which is intended to protect the screen, only really works against side-on impacts. As the video points out, any kind of head-on collision with the screen still risks a screen replacement. Getting to the battery on the Ultra requires you to remove the screen rather than... Continue reading…

Image: Meta Meta is testing a new way to add and switch between your accounts on Instagram and Facebook by integrating its Accounts Center into the apps. The features should help make things easier for anyone who constantly bounces between various accounts on the two apps or people who have a lot of Instagram profiles to separate their Online Brand, personal life, and business.The new account switcher for Facebook and Instagram will show you all the accounts and profiles you’ve added to the Accounts Center. While Instagram has let you switch between different profiles for years, the new system lets you throw Facebook accounts in the mix, making it easier to jump over to Facebook if you need to do something on that app. It’ll also show you some... Continue reading…

Even for the midrange 256GB model, the time to wait after placing a reservation is pretty short. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge I was one of the people who rushed to put down a deposit for Valve’s Steam Deck the first moment that I could. However, I pulled out of the queue after seeing how long others were having to wait near its launch. Now, after seeing time and time again that Valve has increased production of the Deck to shorten wait times, it eventually made me rejoin the queue, if only as an experiment to see how quickly I could get to the front of the line.As it turns out, I only had to wait a month. I placed a deposit for the $529 256GB model on August 25th, and I just received my email confirmation that it was available for purchase. That wasn’t so bad. With a wait this short, there’s no reason to pay higher-than-retail costs for a Deck through sites... Continue reading…

Image: Substack Substack’s the latest company trying to resurrect Google Reader from the dead — well, in spirit at least.Nearly a decade after Google’s popular RSS feed aggregator shut down, Substack has launched a desktop RSS client alternative: Substack Reader for the web.Now, users can organize all of their Substack subscriptions in one webpage that they can view from their laptop or PC. The app also integrates with third-party RSS feeds so users can check out posts from other publications, too.The new desktop client keeps old Google Reader users in mind with familiar keyboard shortcuts, for example, yet also sports new settings like dark mode. Image: Substack Substack’s new desktop RSS client supports dark mode. S... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is testing home feeds without a shopping tab, marking a shift in how the platform treats e-commerce.Some Instagram users (including some of us here at The Verge) have noted in recent days that the shopping tab, previously on the bottom navigation bar, has been replaced with a notifications tab. Shopping, meanwhile, has been moved to a second menu, buried among options like settings and saved posts.Meta spokesperson Anne Yeh confirmed the changes as part of a limited test.“As part of our continued work to simplify your Instagram experience, we are testing a few changes to the main navigation bar at the bottom of the app with a small number of people,” Yeh says.Moving the tab is a conscious decision on the part of Instagram... Continue reading…

Thunderstorms move over Artemis I at launch pad 39-B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 27th, 2022. | Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Threatening weather will force NASA to send the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from its currently precarious position on the launchpad back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for safekeeping. The move will delay the agency’s highly anticipated launch of its Artemis I mission around the Moon.

WhatsApp users will soon be able to invite up to 32 people to a group call. | Image: WhatsApp WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature that allows users to share a direct link to a call, making it easier to stay in contact with your loved ones. The Call Links feature will start to appear on WhatsApp this week and can be accessed through a banner located at the top of the Calls tab. WhatsApp users who want to try the Call Link feature will need the latest version of the app.Mark Zuckerberg announced the feature on Facebook, saying that WhatsApp users will be able to share a link to a call with “a single tap.” The ability to share a call link with up to 32 users was teased back in April during the announcement of another upcoming feature, WhatsApp Communities.The Call Links feature will support both audio and video calls, and... Continue reading…

E3 2019 attendees check out a game at the show. | Photo by Getty Images for E3 After a year off, E3, the big gaming industry convention, is set to take place from June 13th through June 16th, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and event organizer ReedPop announced on Monday. The event will be back as an in-person show at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and there will be dedicated days for industry attendees and gaming fans to hit the show floor. E3 also plans to support digital gaming events that will take place beginning June 11th.The “E3 Business Days” will be happening from June 13th through June 15th. These days of the show will be exclusively for games industry attendees for them to network, meet up, and go hands-on with upcoming games. The “E3 Gamer Days” are set for the last two days of the... Continue reading…

The LTE-enabled Apple Watch Series 7 is currently on sale for its best price yet. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge You can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s green, red, or cream. Best Buy and Walmart are currently offering the green, red, or cream colorways of the 41mm Apple Watch Series 7 for its best price ever. The GPS and cellular-equipped configuration of the Series 7 is typically priced at $499 but is available for just $329. While Apple has everyone focused on the new Series 8, the Series 7 is still every bit the excellent Apple wearable we’ve come to expect. The Series 7 offers a larger screen than its predecessor, and it can charge faster than generations that came before it.Unless you can’t live without some of the newer features rolled out with the Series 8, like its temperature sensors for menstrual tracking, or you’re more... Continue reading…

Airlines would have to provide more transparency about all the fees you pay to fly under new proposed rules. | Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images Airlines would have to refund passengers for services they paid for that aren’t actually provided, like broken Wi-Fi, under new rules proposed by the Biden administration. Also, airlines and travel search websites would have to disclose upfront any added fees for changing or canceling your flight and for checked or carry-on baggage.The new rules are part of a slate of changes the US Department of Transportation is proposing to make flying more transparent and consumer-friendly after a particularly rocky summer travel season, in which flight cancellations spiked. The administration has previously sought stricter rules for passenger refunds, arguing that it wants to make air travel more competitive.Airlines have moved in recent years to... Continue reading…

Ancestry has an enormous genetic database. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Customers of the consumer genetics and genealogy company Ancestry will soon be able to see which side of the family any DNA matches found through the service come from. The new feature, launching this week, builds on the SideView technology the company announced in April.“We’re really excited to see what users can do with this parental matches feature,” says Caitlyn Bruns, a population geneticist at Ancestry. “I do think it will really help unlock an understanding of how you’re connected with your matches.”The feature will let users more easily see where matches fall on their family tree. Previously, people could manually place people on one side of their family as they learned more about their matches. Now, it’ll happen... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The City of London police report they’ve arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking and said he remains in custody. In a follow-up tweet the next day, the police confirmed the teen has been charged with two counts of breach of bail conditions and two counts of computer misuse. A hearing was scheduled for Saturday, but as of Monday morning, no further details have been released.Police declined to say what incident the arrest was in connection with, but many of the details line up with recent high-profile hacks. This spring, the City of London police arrested and released seven teenagers in connection with an investigation into the Lapsus$ hacking group. Today’s arrest also comes just days after two security breaches... Continue reading…

James Cameron’s Avatar nets an additional $30 million at the theater, over 13 years since its original 2009 release. | Image: 20th Century Fox The remastered rerelease of James Cameron’s Avatar is set to earn Disney an additional $30 million in global ticket sales since last week, ranking domestically in third place at the box office behind Don’t Worry Darling and The Woman King.The 4K HDR version of Avatar was rereleased to theaters in the US on Friday, September 23rd, after the original 2009 movie was quietly pulled from Disney Plus in order to encourage people back to the theater and build hype for its upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water.Avatar was rereleased to theaters to build up hype for its upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of WaterComscore estimates that the rerelease of Avatar brought in $20.5 million internationally and $10 million in the US, bringing the... Continue reading…

From left to right, top to bottom: Lady Gaga, Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Donald Trump, Plato. A fun little AI art widget named Text-to-Pokémon lets you plug in any name or description you like and (you guessed it) generate a pokémon matching your prompt.The model’s output isn’t flawless, but it’s incredibly entertaining all the same. You can try punching in the names of celebrities or politicians (see “Boris Johnson” and “Vladimir Putin” in the image above) or just general descriptions of the sort of pokémon that would tickle your personal fancy (the one below is my “skeleton priest”).(A little tip for using the tool more efficiently: make sure you select “4” from the “num_outputs” drop-down menu to get four images per prompt rather than just one.) Image: Text-to-Pokémon A “skeleton priest” pokémon... Continue reading…

Image: Night School Studio Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals has been delayed to 2023, its developer Night School Studio has announced. “To make Oxenfree II truly special and add more localizations, we’re moving our release window to 2023,” the developer’s statement reads. “Thank you for your patience, support, and understanding. We can’t wait to share the game with you. Stay tuned!”This is the second major delay to have hit the sequel to the acclaimed 2016 adventure horror game. Lost Signals was originally announced in 2021 and planned for release later that year. But just a few short months later the game’s developers announced a delay to “early 2022.” No specific reason was given for the delays beyond ensuring the game is “the experience we believe it should be.”

A Google account will be required for Fitbit by 2025, following the search giants acquisition of the health tech brand. | The Verge Following Google’s acquisition of Fitbit and its rebranding of the health tech company as ‘Fitbit by Google,’ the search giant is moving to tightly integrate its services with Fitbit’s own. A Google account will be required for “some uses” of Fitbit devices and features from 2023, with plans to have all existing Fitbit accounts migrated to Google accounts by 2025.An updated support page says that creating a new Fitbit account and activating new Fitbit devices and features will require a Google account from 2023. Existing Fitbit account holders will be able to move over to a Google account or remain with their existing Fitbit login until “at least early 2025,” at which point support for Fitbit accounts will be terminated. The FAQ states... Continue reading…

That poor Surface tablet. Microsoft Surface tablets have been taking a beating at football events these past two weekends. During the Buffalo Bills game against the Miami Dolphins this afternoon, Bills offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey took his frustration out on his tablet as the Dolphins secured a win during the final moments of the game.Dorsey’s reaction may have been warranted, although he probably could’ve chosen another outlet for his anger (like a stress ball perhaps?). The Bills had a chance to run one more play to win the game, but the team ultimately ran out of time, losing to the Dolphins 19-21. When cameras turned to the booth where he was watching the game, Dorsey ripped off his headset and tossed his hat before he picked up the tablet and started... Continue reading…

An illustration of the DART spacecraft and the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos | NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben Dimorphos is a lump of space rock so far away from Earth that we don’t even know what it looks like — and on Monday, we’re going to smash it with a spacecraft. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be traveling at more than 14,000 miles per hour when it hits the asteroid, in what has to be one of the most metal science experiments of all time.DART is a NASA effort to see if it can change an asteroid’s movement in space. It’s being billed as the world’s first “planetary defense test mission” — a test run to see if we have what it takes to avert a serious asteroid impact on Earth sometime in the future. You know, just in case.To be extremely clear, neither Dimorphos, or its larger companion Didymos, pose any threat to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket hasn’t had a very good start to the football season. For the past two weekends in a row, subscribers have struggled to get their streams to work, and this weekend is no exception.Even before today’s games started, users began complaining about numerous issues, with many saying that they can’t log into their accounts on the Sunday Ticket website or app and others having problems loading the streams. Those who were able to access the stream reported quality issues.

The Triton 500 SE is an expensive gaming laptop that doesn’t flex its hardware enough Continue reading…

Darth Vader in Disney Plus’ Obi Wan. | Image: Lucasfilm James Earl Jones has been the iconic voice of Darth Vader since the beginning of Star Wars, but at 91 years old, it seems he’s ready to have the work done for him. According to a report from Vanity Fair (via Deadline), Jones signed over the rights to his archival voice work, allowing the Ukrainian startup Respeecher to leverage AI technology and recreate the sound of his voice in Disney Plus’ Obi-Wan Kenobi.To do this, Respeecher uses sound bites to “clone” an actor’s voice, allowing a studio to record new lines without having the actor present. Matthew Wood, Skywalker Sound’s supervising sound editor, told Vanity Fair that he presented Jones with the option once he “mentioned he was looking into winding down” the role of Darth Vader.... Continue reading…

Henry Cavill and Freya Allan in The Witcher. | Image: Netflix Big names like The Witcher, Knives Out, Enola Holmes, and Bridgerton all made appearances on the livestream Continue reading…

Teyonah Parris as Yo-yo, Jamie Foxx as Slick, and John Boyega as Fontaine. | Netflix In Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi comedy feature The Cloned Tyrone from director Juel Taylor, everybody with even the slightest bit of common sense knows that Black people have plenty of reasons not to trust the government or the police stalking their neighborhoods. Some of those reasons, like police brutality and harassment, are obvious. But the real threat everyone’s facing in They Cloned Tyrone’s first trailer is a bit more hidden and insidious because it’s the sort of thing few people would be inclined to believe.They Cloned Tyrone tells the story of Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), Slick (Jamie Foxx), and Fontaine (John Boyega), three unlikely friends who are brought together by their shared discovery of a massive, secret governmental... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix At the beginning of the month Netflix gave us our first taste of the first Knives Out sequel, and at its Tudum event the streamer showed off another clip — this one focused on some very complex puzzle boxes that double as a party invite. The brief clip showed off the mixture of humor and mystery that you’d expect from another Knives Out.Glass Onion is an important movie for Netflix, and not just because it’s a centerpiece of the company’s holiday schedule. The company reportedly paid more than $400 million for two sequels to Rian Johnson’s original whodunit, and Glass Onion also features a star-studded cast including the likes of Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., David Bautista, Jessica Henwick, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, and Edward... Continue reading…

Oxenfree. | Image: Netflix Yet another beloved indie game is now available on Netflix. At its Tudum event today, Netflix announced that the supernatural thriller Oxenfree, which first launched in 2016, is now playable through its fledgling games service. The Netflix version of Oxenfree is available as a free download to Netflix subscribers on both iOS and Android, and features subtitle support for more than 30 languages.Netflix has steadily been adding excellent games like Into the Breach, Before Your Eyes, and Lucky Luna to its mobile gaming offerings, but Oxenfree is particularly notable because Netflix acquired its developer, Night School Studio, last year. Oxenfree also feels like a good fit for Netflix, with its focus on storytelling and a vibe that’ll... Continue reading…

Freya Allan as Ciri. | Netflix When Netflix announced during last year’s Tudum that a third season of The Witcher was already on the way, there was some hope that maybe, just maybe Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia would be back on our screens slaying demons in time for the upcoming holiday season. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be the case, and there’s going to be a bit of a wait, but not an especially long one.While there was no new footage from The Witcher’s third season shown at this year’s Tudum presentation, Cavill and co-stars Anya Chalotra, and Freya Allan a made brief appearances to share some teaser art and to announce that the series will return in 2023.Taken at face value, there isn’t all that much to glean from the teaser art, which features the wolf,... Continue reading…

Laurence O’Fuarain as Fjall, Sophia Brown as Éile, and Michelle Yeoh as Scian. | Netflix While the third season of Netflix’s live-action Witcher series still doesn’t have an actual premiere date, the wait for Declan de Barra and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s upcoming The Witcher: Blood Origin prequel series is almost over.Netflix’s The Witcher: Blood Origin hits Netflix on December 25th. And while we didn’t get a new trailer for the series — which tells the story of the very first witcher, long before Geralt’s iconic adventures — we did learn that Minnie Driver will be joining the cast, where she’ll star alongside the likes of Michelle Yeoh.While you wait, you can check out the very first teaser for the series right here — and a brand new poster below.