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WhatsApp announced on Wednesday that it will roll out some improvements to voice messages over the coming weeks, including the ability to listen to a message while reading other chats and play messages at 1.5 or 2 times speed (yes, please, put this feature everywhere).The experience of recording messages is also improving. WhatsApp now lets you pause and resume your recording, so you don’t have to leave large gaps of silence if you’re thinking of what to say next or redo a recording if you need to have a brief conversation in real life. You’ll also be able to listen to a message before you send it to make sure you didn’t accidentally get cut off or include something you didn’t want to. Image: WhatsApp An... Continue reading…

Like its Chrome browser counterpart, Chrome OS has finally reached its 100th version. Google fully updates its operating system every four weeks or so. The new release comes with a new design for Chrome OS’s launcher meant to make it more intuitive and customizable for Chromebook users.The launcher (for Windows users, it’s the equivalent of the start menu) has a friendlier design than previous launchers have, with more rounded corners. It now opens from the side of the screen rather than the center. (This is around where the Windows start menu was for ages — it has, funnily enough, moved to the center in Windows 11).There are new options for sorting icons as well — you can manually arrange them and can organize them by name or color.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge After a short “vacation,” the Lapsus$ hacking gang is back. In a post shared through the group’s Telegram channel on Wednesday, Lapsus$ claimed to have stolen 70GB of data from Globant — an international software development firm headquartered in Luxembourg, which boasts some of the world’s largest companies as clients.Screenshots of the hacked data, originally posted by Lapsus$ and shared on Twitter by security researcher Dominic Alvieri, appeared to show folders bearing the names of a range of global businesses: among them were delivery and logistics company DHL, US cable network C-Span, and French bank BNP Paribas.Also in the list were tech giants Facebook and Apple, with the latter referred to in a folder titled “apple-health-app.”... Continue reading…

Sony’s PlayStation Plus. | Image: Sony Sony has announced a new range of PlayStation Plus subscriptions: PlayStation Plus Essential, PlayStation Plus Extra, and PlayStation Plus Premium. Prior to their official unveiling, the plans were characterized as an attempt to respond to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, offering various selections of games to download or stream as part of a single monthly subscription. But now that they’re official, the truth is a lot more complicated.Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass pitch is relatively simple. You get access to a broad array of games as part of a subscription, and Microsoft has committed to releasing its major first-party games on its subscription service the day they release. $9.99 gets you games on either Xbox or PC, or $14.99 gets you both,... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference is back as a virtual event for 2022. Much like the past two Builds, this year’s event will be hosted online from May 24th to May 26th. Microsoft hosts Build every year as an event for developers, engineers, IT professionals, students, and startups to learn the latest about Microsoft technologies, Windows, Office, and more.While it’s traditionally hosted live in Seattle, Microsoft was first forced to make the event virtual in 2020, and the pandemic has once again kept this event digital for 2022. Microsoft is making some changes, though. This year will include “market-specific content” for France, Germany, Japan, Latin America, and the UK. With repeated sessions, Microsoft already does a good... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, has threatened to fine Google over its failure to follow the country’s orders to remove certain “illegal” YouTube videos, as first reported by The Washington Post. In a translated version of its post on Telegram, the Roskomnadzor warns it may fine the tech company up to 8 million rubles (about $94,675 USD), an amount that will increase to 20 percent of Google’s annual revenue in case of a repeat offense.The Roskomnadzor alleges YouTube “promotes the distribution of false content” about what it calls the country’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, and it accuses the platform of “discrediting” the Russian army. It also says YouTube houses “extremist” content “with calls to carry out... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In a personal crisis, many people turn to an impersonal source of support: Google. Every day, the company fields searches on topics like suicide, sexual assault, and domestic abuse. But Google wants to do more to direct people to the information they need, and says new AI techniques that better parse the complexities of language are helping.Specifically, Google is integrating its latest machine learning model, MUM, into its search engine to “more accurately detect a wider range of personal crisis searches.” The company unveiled MUM at its IO conference last year, and has since used it to augment search with features that try to answer questions connected to the original search.In this case, MUM will be able to spot search queries... Continue reading…

Intel’s Arc GPUs debuted today for laptops, but the company hasn’t forgotten its highly anticipated re-entry into the world of desktop graphics cards, either: the company showed off a first look at the final Arc hardware, along with a reveal that the first GPUs will arrive this summer as a “limited edition” release.The company isn’t offering too many details on the desktop Arc cards beyond the quick glimpse of the hardware itself, although presumably, more details will arrive before the summer. The video does show that the Arc card has a dual-fan design, along with a single HDMI port and three DisplayPort ports on the side, although it’s not clear what the specifications for those ports are from appearance alone. Intel... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has been paying one of the most prominent Republican consulting firms to run a nationwide campaign to sow distrust about one of the company’s top competitors, TikTok, according to a new report from The Washington Post on Wednesday.The firm, Targeted Victory, reportedly planted op-eds and letters to the editor in major local and regional newspapers across the country. A Targeted Victory director told staff that the firm needed to “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using,” according to emails obtained by The Post.“TikTok is the real threat”News of Facebook’s decision... Continue reading…

This could be you. If you’ve just acquired a new game and you’re not sure what settings or resolution your PC can run it at without stutter and lag, a benchmark is a good way to try out various profiles before you dive in. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one title with a built-in benchmark that’s easy to run.This benchmark is also a very common test that reviewers run on laptops to put their GPUs to the test. Shadow of the Tomb Raider has ray tracing, so it’s a particularly good way to see how well a gaming rig can handle ray tracing. If you want to see how your GPU stacks up to other systems around the internet, the Tomb Raider benchmark is one of the best ways to do that.Here’s how to run it.Get the gameTo get started, you’ll need to make sure you... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft will reveal how the company is building Windows for the future of hybrid work next week. A special event, Windows Powers the Future of Hybrid Work, will take place on April 5th and feature Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. It’s expected to cover a variety of new Windows 11 features for security, productivity, and management, both in the client and cloud.So what exactly are we likely to see next week? We’ll likely get early glimpses at Microsoft’s vision for building Windows for a new world of remote work. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has emphasized how important the move to hybrid work is for Microsoft. “Hybrid work represents the biggest shift to how we work in our generation,” said Nadella... Continue reading…

The Sunrise Arc, and Earendel | NASA/ESA, B. Welch, D. Coe The most distant star — or possibly pair of stars — that astronomers have ever seen was just revealed thanks to the Hubble telescope and a massive cluster of galaxies. Far from Earth, the universe bends around the vast bulk of a galaxy cluster, creating a gravitational lens in spacetime much like the curved lens in a magnifying glass. Like a magnifying glass, it revealed something small and hidden: a star system from the early universe.The far-away star system takes the official name WHL0137-LS, but the astronomers who found it nicknamed it “Earendel” from the Old English word meaning “morning star” or “rising light.”Earendel system as we’re seeing it today was shining within just 900 million years of the Big Bang, according to the... Continue reading…

Intel’s discrete GPU revolution is finally beginning after months of previews and teasers, with the company launching its first Arc A-series GPUs for laptops today. They bring support for DirectX 12, dedicated ray-tracing hardware, and — at least for the first batch of GPUs — only around twice the power of Intel’s integrated Xe graphics.Today’s launch is just a small taste of what Intel’s full picture for Arc will look like, though: to start, the company is only launching its least powerful Arc 3 series GPUs: the A350M, which has six Xe-cores and six ray-tracing units, and the A370M with eight Xe-cores and eight ray-tracing units. Given the 25W to 50W range for power, they’re meant for ultraportable devices that intend to offer more... Continue reading…

What’s an excellent treadmill like you doing in this corporate disaster saga? Continue reading…

A driverless Waymo vehicle operating in San Francisco. | Waymo Waymo plans to start offering rides in its fully autonomous vehicles — without human safety drivers behind the wheel — in San Francisco. The Google spinoff says its driverless vehicles will only be available to employees at first but will soon grow to include members of the company’s “Trusted Tester” program.Waymo is also making big moves in Arizona. The company’s service area is finally growing to include downtown Phoenix after operating exclusively in the exurban towns of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe for nearly five years.Waymo has been running fully driverless rides without a safety driver in those towns outside of Phoenix for more than a year now. The company is one of a handful trying to launch a wide-scale commercial... Continue reading…

The big feature of the Seaboard Rise 2 is the addition of “frets” to each key, that let players feel their way across notes. | Image: Roli Music hardware startup Roli says it’s not giving up on the line of squishy Seaboard keyboards that launched its brand. Despite reports last year that the company was pivoting to focus on educational and subscription products, Roli today announced the Seaboard Rise 2 — an upgrade to the more compact model in its Seaboard range.“It’s lots of small improvements that collectively make it into a much, much better product,” Roli CEO Roland Lamb told The Verge. “In a way, this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch. It’s very, very complete.”“this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch”Upgrades to the Rise 2 include new internal engineering, a refreshed port structure, and a more durable, platinum blue chassis. The big change,... Continue reading…

COVID.gov tells you the COVID-19 risk level in your community. | Screenshot: COVID.gov The Biden administration has launched COVID.gov, a website geared toward connecting Americans with more information about COVID-19 spread, prevention, and treatment in their communities.On the front page of the site, you can enter the name of your county, and it will display the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 risk level in your community. That metric is based on hospital capacity in an area. The site also links you to more information about vaccinations, masking, and travel from the CDC. Some pages offer community-specific guidance, helping you find free N95 masks and vaccination sites near your location.You’ll also find a link to COVIDTests.gov, a site that lets you order four free COVID-19 tests through the US... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge It’s not usually affordable to add a speedy M.2 SSD to your PS5, but at Newegg, you can get the biggest discount yet on Samsung’s 1TB 980 Pro drive that has a heatsink pre-installed. It costs just $135.99 with the offer code SSBQ3Z25 applied at checkout, down from its typical $170 price that Amazon is currently selling it for. In fact, this model is cheaper right now than the version that omits the heatsink.Samsung bills this model as being PS5-ready, both in terms of supplying the required heatsink to keep the drive cool in your console and with its sequential read speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 5,100MB/s. While it’s true that we’ve had success using slower M.2 SSDs in a PS5, future games may require higher... Continue reading…

In response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signing ​​HB 1557 — the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — into law on Monday, Disney issued its most direct critical response to the legislation yet — the latest development in the company’s recent history of apologetically backtracking after its own financial contributions to the bill’s architects first came to light.Despite its role in the bill’s path to DeSantis’ desk, Disney said in a press release that its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that.”Though Disney’s one of the largest employers in the state of Florida, where tens of thousands of... Continue reading…

Sony’s PlayStation 5 is still one of the hottest hard-to-get items in gaming. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’ve been tracking new console restocks along with us, you may have noticed that Amazon has taken a backseat for months to the likes of Walmart and Best Buy. While the online giant has had its share of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles from time to time, availability has been infrequent and riddled with issues, particularly when it comes to adding products to your cart; Amazon lacks a proper queue system like other retailers have set up, making it more susceptible to bots.But now, Amazon is hyping a restock of the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition on Twitter, one set for today, March 30th, at 11AM ET / 8AM PT. We haven’t seen this kind of buildup from Amazon for just the Digital Edition before, so hopefully, it’s a sign that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Lyssa Park / The Verge In February, Etsy CEO Josh Silverman had good news to share with investors: sales and revenue were at an all-time high, sending Etsy stock soaring. At the same time, Silverman had less welcome news for sellers, delivered via email: transaction fees were going up, from 5 percent to 6.5 percent, or a 30 percent increase, beginning April 11th.For Kristi Cassidy, an active seller on Etsy since 2007, the fee increase was the last straw. Cassidy, who sells gothic Victorian costumes and accessories, had a happy first decade on the platform. She was able to reach a customer base eager to buy handmade products, and she grew her business selling made-to-order and custom pieces. But for the last few years, changes at Etsy that she feels hurt... Continue reading…

Mark Vande Hei on board the ISS | Image: NASA Update March 30th, 8AM ET: The Soyuz carrying Mark Vande Hei, Anton Shkaplerov, and Pyotr Dubrov touched down successfully in Kazakhstan at 7:28AM ET. Though wind in the area caused the Soyuz to tip over on its side after landing, all three crew members were extracted from the vehicle safely. After traveling to Karaganda by helicopter, Vande Hei will board a NASA jet to take him back to Houston, Texas.Original Story: Record-breaking NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is set to return to Earth from the International Space Station on early March 30th, coming back in a Russian Soyuz rocket along with two Russian cosmonauts. His scheduled journey back to the planet has been an ongoing source of strife these last few weeks, as tensions have... Continue reading…

Google’s Chrome browser has been updated to version 100, almost 14 years after it introduced the world to its clean design and all-encompassing “omnibox” in 2008. For most of its history, the search giant’s browser has gained a new version number roughly every six weeks, but last year the company switched to a four-week cycle to deliver new features more quickly. Google says the version 100 update is rolling out on stable channels now across Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.In my part of the world, turning 100 gets you a telegram from the Queen, but Chrome’s first triple-digit version has arrived with less in the way of fanfare, and more “fixes and improvements.” The biggest change is the arrival of a refreshed logo. The new design... Continue reading…

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images The National Football League is working on its own subscription streaming service for mobile devices, according to a report in The Athletic. The league is said to have briefed teams on the project at its annual meeting of owners, which has been held over the past few days in Palm Beach, Florida. The Athletic says that presentations included slides with “NFL+” branding and a hypothetical $5-a-month price point.The NFL Plus service would theoretically replace NFL Mobile, the NFL’s previous solution for distributing in-market games to phones and tablets. The NFL had a deal with Verizon and Yahoo to show some live games, but that partnership ended last year as the carrier spun off its content businesses. Verizon lost its mobile exclusivity... Continue reading…

Image: Dyson Dyson is getting into headphones in the most Dyson way possible: the Zone, a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones with air purification technology built in, thanks to a bizarre-looking magnetic face visor. It’s both the strangest and most ambitious product that the company has ever made.Today’s announcement is just an initial reveal of the Zone headphones ahead of a fall release date, and Dyson isn’t announcing specific details like price or specifications (including how much the headphones weigh or how long the battery will last) at this time.The goal of the Zone is to make living in urban spaces more comfortable by attempting to mitigate both air and noise pollution.No word on price yetThe air purification half of the... Continue reading…

Long Beach, CA, SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2020, - Thousands of new cars are stored at a logistics service yard at the port. | Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images A major shift to electric vehicles and a clean power grid in the US could save tens of thousands of lives over the next few decades, according to a new report by the American Lung Association.The drop in pollution from tailpipes and power plants would prevent up to 110,000 premature deaths by 2050, the report projects. It would also avoid 2.78 million asthma attacks and 13.4 million lost workdays. All in all, that would amount to $1.2 trillion in public health benefits.That’s assuming all new passenger cars sold in the US are EVs by 2035 and all new heavy-duty vehicles sold are electric by 2040. What’s more, those vehicles would need to be powered by a fossil fuel-free grid. But replacing the vast majority of the nation’s roughly 280... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A judge has approved Activision Blizzard’s $18 million settlement with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The two organizations had announced the settlement in September, but it is now being signed after California state regulators had tried to intervene.Activision Blizzard has been under intense scrutiny since California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a harassment lawsuit in July alleging the company fostered a culture of “constant sexual harassment.” As part of the consent decree, Activision Blizzard will establish an $18 million settlement fund which will be used to compensate victims of harassment and discrimination. Employees who have worked at the company between September 1st, 2016... Continue reading…

Its looks are undeniable. | Teenage Engineering You can finally get your hands on Teenage Engineering’s absolutely tiny and absolutely orange Computer-1 PC case again, months after it initially went on sale and sold out. If you were really hoping to buy the $195 build-it-yourself mini-ITX case, you can head over to the company’s website and add it to your cart — though before you do, it’s probably worth refreshing yourself on the Computer-1’s... particularities.When Teenage Engineering announced this case, we had some concerns. It has barely any room for a modern graphics card (even this tiny RTX 3060 is bigger than Teenage Engineering recommends), the airflow situation seemed a little suspicious, and the “think twice, bend once” warning in assembly guide made the building process... Continue reading…

Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images Lionel Messi has signed a $20 million deal with Socios to become the fan token site’s global brand ambassador, according to a report from Reuters. Messi, who plays for the Paris-Saint Germain soccer club and captains Argentina’s national team, will promote the exchange for the next three years.A source close to the situation told Reuters that the transaction will not involve cryptocurrency. When Messi transferred from Barcelona to the Paris-Saint Germain club last August, ESPN says he received a “large number” of fan tokens from Socios as a part of his signing-on fee.

The FTC says TurboTax ads claiming its tax prep software is free are misleading | Getty Images The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Tuesday that Intuit’s “ubiquitous” advertising claiming its TurboTax tax prep software is free to use is misleading, and has asked a federal court to order Intuit to stop “disseminating the deceptive claim that consumers can file their taxes for free using TurboTax.”According to the commission, the ads “some of which have consisted almost entirely of the word ‘free’ spoken repeatedly” mislead people into believing they can file their taxes for free with TurboTax. “In fact, most tax filers can’t use the company’s ‘free’ service because it is not available to millions of taxpayers, such as those who get a 1099 form for work in the gig economy, or those who earn farm income.,” the agency said in a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple Stores and authorized service providers will no longer repair iPhones that have been reported as missing through the GSMA device registry, according to an internal memo obtained by MacRumors. The company now requires repair technicians to deny users a repair if they’re notified of its missing status in the MobileGenius or GSX systems they use to service customers.The GSMA device registry is a database of device serial numbers with information about each device’s status. For example, if someone reports their phone as stolen to law enforcement, the authorities may flag the device through GSMA, which can help repair providers identify a device as missing if it ever comes into their shop.Apple’s new policy builds on its existing... Continue reading…

There are a few gotchas though. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is adding Markdown support to Google Docs on the web, letting you format your document using text shortcuts rather than keyboard ones. In a blog post announcing the feature, Google says it’s doing this through its autocorrect feature, so it will automatically format the text for you after you type it in Markdown format. For example, if you type “# Google Docs is getting more Markdown support” it’ll automatically get converted to a level one heading.Google says that Docs already supported a few Markdown autocorrections for bulleted and numbered lists, and checkboxes. It’s adding much wider support, though — you can now use Markdown to add headings, bold and italicize text (or do both), strikethrough (though it’s done using a - on... Continue reading…

Closeup of the center speaker orb. | Image: Devialet Devialet today announced the Dione, a $2,400 Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 soundbar with built-in subwoofers and a central “ORB” speaker that can rotate depending on the soundbar’s installed position (via Gizmodo). The French audio company calls it the “ultimate all-in-one soundbar” since it completely forgoes satellite speakers in favor of a virtual surround solution and has built-in subwoofers.Crammed into the three-inch-thick profile of the Dione are 17 drivers: eight of them serving as the subwoofers, another eight for full-range audio, and a center driver inside the rotatable orb. The Dione also houses a gyroscope that will automatically correct the sound orientation whether you mount the soundbar or lay it flat — no need to make that... Continue reading…

Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Apple TV Plus has announced an April 8th start date for Friday Night Baseball alongside a streaming schedule for the first half of the season. The revised 2022 season schedule was announced by Major League Baseball (MLB) earlier in March after players and team owners negotiated an end to a lockout, setting a date for the regular season to begin on April 7th.Streaming will be available for anyone with Apple TV Plus in the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. In the US and Canada, that also includes access to a 24/7 livestream with replays, highlights, and other programming. Even if you don’t pay for Apple TV Plus, it will also be available without a subscription on all hardware... Continue reading…

Verizon’s network has gotten a noticeable speed bump. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon and AT&T’s recent 5G rollout could put them in a better position to compete with T-Mobile, which has had similar tech rolled out for years, according to data from Opensignal. The company’s analysis showed that when Verizon turned on its C-band equipment in January, its average 5G speeds jumped — and where carriers have their new tech rolled out, they’re all achieving similar speeds.When looking at the average 5G download speeds for each carrier, there’s a clear bump in Verizon’s numbers after the carrier took its C-band equipment online in January. The increased speeds that were available to customers in the rollout area brought its average up by around 15 megabits per second, according to Opensignal. Despite also rolling out... Continue reading…

British sports car maker Lotus is jumping on the electric bandwagon with the reveal of the Eletre, a plug-in crossover SUV with design language inspired by the automaker’s Evija hypercar. The Eletre will also be the first of three new EVs that Lotus plans to roll out over the next four years, including a sports car (natch), a coupe-sedan, and another SUV.Previously called Type 132, the Eletre is the Geely-owned automaker’s second electric vehicle and will feature futuristic components like camera-only side-view mirrors and a lidar sensor affixed to the front and rear of the roof.As is befitting its sports car legacy, Lotus is emphasizing the performance capabilities of its new electric SUV. The Eletre will be able to sprint from... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Social media use is more strongly linked to bad mental health for adolescents and teenagers during years around puberty and when they’re probably about to leave home, according to a new study. Teenagers who used social media more frequently in those periods scored lower on measures of life satisfaction one year later.Many researchers say things like Instagram and TikTok probably aren’t entirely bad for all adolescents. They’re not entirely good, either, and can cause documented problems with body image, but the impact varies: for some kids at some points in time, it might help them socialize and build relationships; for others at other times, it might be a hit to their self-esteem.The challenge has been figuring out which teens are... Continue reading…

The new shortcuts give you new tools for your chats. | Image: Meta Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is introducing Slack-like shortcuts to Messenger that let you do things like send a message silently or quickly call up a GIF while you’re chatting with your friends.Two of the shortcuts are available today, March 29th, according to Meta: @everyone and /silent. @everyone will let you notify everyone in a chat, which could be useful if you want to make sure to get everyone’s attention. (On behalf of your friends’ notifications, I beg you to please use this one responsibly.) However, if you want to send a message without pinging the whole group, you’ll be able to use the /silent shortcut, Meta says.In “the coming weeks,” there will be a few more shortcuts. /pay will let you send or request money... Continue reading…

The Series 7 was the first Apple Watch to get fast charging. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge While the Apple Watch Series 7 didn’t come with longer battery life, it did offer faster charging — at least, it did until last week. Some users are now complaining the feature no longer works after updating to watchOS 8.5, according to a 9to5Mac report.Fast charging is exclusive to the Series 7. With it, Apple says the Watch’s battery can go from 0 to 80 percent in roughly 45 minutes. However, Series 7 owners on Reddit, Apple’s support forums, and MacRumors’ forum are saying their Watches are now charging at a snail’s pace. A couple of Reddit users claimed that the Watch would only charge roughly 5 percent in 15–20 minutes. Meanwhile, a user on Apple’s forum claimed the Watch only charged 5 percent in an hour. For context, Apple says... Continue reading…

Sky Mavis Roughly $625 million worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen from Ronin, the blockchain underlying popular crypto game Axie Infinity. Ronin and Axie Infinity operator Sky Mavis revealed the breach on Tuesday and froze transactions on the Ronin bridge, which allows depositing and withdrawing funds from the company’s blockchain.Sky Mavis says it’s working with law enforcement to recover 173,600 Ethereum (currently worth around $600 million) and 25.5 million USDC (a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar) from the culprit, who withdrew it from the network on March 23rd. The attack focused on the bridge to Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain, an intermediary between Axie Infinity and other cryptocurrency blockchains like Ethereum. Users could... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We kept using Valve’s handheld game console — here are answers to your burning questions Continue reading…

Elon Musk | Photo by Asa Mathat The latest court filing in Elon Musk’s battle to wrest back control of his Twitter account from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) includes a citation of the 2002 song Without Me by rapper Eminem. Yes, really (see the filing embedded below).In the song, the rapper complains that “The FCC won’t let me be or let me be me so let me see/ They tried to shut me down.” That’s a reference to a 2002 penalty the Federal Communications Commission handed out to a Colorado radio station for playing Eminem’s 2000 song The Real Slim Shady (after clutching its collective pearls for a bit, the FCC ultimately decided not to fine the radio station).In the Tuesday court filing, Musk’s lawyers just substituted “SEC” for “FCC” to make the... Continue reading…

This photo taken on April 1, 2021 shows a worker adjusting cryptocurrency mining rigs at a cryptocurrency farm in Dujiangyan in China’s southwestern Sichuan province. | Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images Greenpeace and other environmental groups launched a new campaign today to push the Bitcoin network to slash its growing greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of the campaign, dubbed “Change the code, not the climate,” is to switch up the energy-hungry process of verifying transactions and mining new Bitcoins.The cryptocurrency uses more electricity annually than global gold mining operations or the entire country of Norway, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. Burning through so much energy generates some serious greenhouse gas emissions, but campaign organizers argue that it doesn’t have to be that way. Other cryptocurrencies use just a fraction of the energy Bitcoin requires because they use a different system to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge A comprehensive look at the pricing and offerings of the console subscription services Continue reading…

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Yesterday, I wrote about receiving a spam text that bizarrely looked as though it came from my own phone number. But what initially seemed like a random, spoofed spam message is increasingly starting to look like a focused effort targeting Verizon Wireless, one of the largest telecoms in the United States. Today, the carrier confirmed it’s aware of the situation and is investigating the matter with the help of US law enforcement.“Verizon is aware that bad actors are sending spam text messages to some customers which appear to come from the customers’ own number,” Verizon spokesperson Rich Young told The Verge by email. “Our team is actively working to block these messages, and we have engaged with US law enforcement to identify and stop... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you want to verify your Google login and make it harder to access by anyone but yourself (always a good idea), one way is to use your iPhone or Android smartphone as a physical security key. While you can set up a third-party 2FA app such as Authy or even use Google’s own Authenticator, these require that you enter both your password and a code generated by the app. Google’s built-in security allows you to access your account by just hitting “Yes” or pressing your volume button after a pop-up appears on your phone. You can also use your phone as a secondary security key.Use your phone to sign inTo set this up, your computer should be running a current version of Windows 10, iOS, macOS, or Chrome OS. Before you start, make sure that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Food and Drug Administration authorized a second booster dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for people over 50 or who are immunocompromised, the agency announced Tuesday.The decision comes as the United States heads into yet another wave of infections, this time driven by an even more transmissible version of the omicron variant of the virus. The FDA said in a statement that an additional dose could bolster any waning protection from the vaccines in these groups.Once again, the FDA is leaning on data from other countries as the foundation for its decision-making around COVID-19 vaccines — in this case, data from Israel, which found a lower rate of serious illness and death in older adults who had two... Continue reading…

A screenshot of CNN Plus’ interface. | Image: CNN Plus CNN’s premium streaming service launches today. The service, CNN Plus, will debut with about a dozen weekly shows, more than a thousand hours of on-demand content, and a Reddit-like interactive tool for asking reporters and guests questions about the day’s biggest news. It’s a major bet on viewers being willing to pay not just for news but for more news — and that the CNN brand can beat out other often freely available options.CNN Plus isn’t just a digital library for coverage from its cable sibling. Available on Amazon Fire TV, Android phones and tablets, and Apple devices, the app will launch with new shows from Audie Cornish, Anderson Cooper, and Jake Tapper, among others. At its core, it’s a product for people who — god help them —... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Are NFTs the future of the music business? Continue reading…