The Verge

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.

NASA’s Artemis I launch has already been delayed several times. | Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images NASA called off its Artemis I launch scheduled for September 27th as Tropical Storm Ian continues to intensify, potentially strengthening into a major hurricane that strikes Florida next week. The agency still hasn’t decided whether to roll back the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) but indicates it will make a final decision on Sunday.“During a meeting Saturday morning, teams decided to stand down on preparing for the Tuesday launch date to allow them to configure systems for rolling back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building,” NASA states. The agency adds that engineers “deferred a final decision about the roll to Sunday,” which... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix has a fairly full lineup of movies this holiday season, and leading the way is the sequel to Enola Holmes. At the streamer’s big Tudum event today, it revealed a new trailer for the film, which shows the budding detective starting to lay down a foundation for her crime-solving career — though naturally things don’t seem to be going so well. The sequel was first announced last year, and it sees much of the cast returning; Millie Bobby Brown plays Enola, Henry Cavill is her older brother Sherlock, and Helena Bonham Carter is their mother. Harry Bradbeer is also back to direct.According to Netflix, Enola Holmes 2 will feature “a mystery of historic proportions,” and the new trailer shows how the case will see Enola and Sherlock... Continue reading…

I wish this button would toggle to the old ANC. | Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge The active noise cancellation (ANC) in my one-week-old AirPods Max has gone soft. After updating to the latest firmware, version 4E71, I am convinced the ANC is no longer as strong or effective as it originally was out of the box. If you’re one of the folks who has experienced this frustrating issue (it’s been discussed on Reddit for months), I now understand the problem firsthand.Both my wife and I often work from home, and for a few days, my AirPods Max excellently rendered her business calls inaudible to me, banished the corgi barks emanating from under my desk to the nether realms, and audibly shut out the high-rise construction site outside my apartment window. But now, the ANC sounds like what I’d describe as a librarian’s... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix has dismissed its copyright infringement lawsuit against Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the creators behind The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical, as reported earlier by Variety and Deadline. A copy of the court filing obtained by Deadline indicates that Netflix moved to “dismiss this action with prejudice,” meaning that the streamer can’t reopen the case in the future.The duo was scheduled to respond to Netflix’s complaint on Thursday, but that never happened, and Netflix dismissed the suit on Friday. It’s unclear if they reached a settlement with the streamer, but the two ended up canceling their September 20th concert at Royal Albert Hall in London last month, where they were supposed to perform their songs alongside the BBC... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Last year, we asked the staff of The Verge to tell us about their favorite coffee and tea brewers, grinders, and other paraphernalia. It’s a year later, and so we thought we’d find out what other caffeine delivery systems are used while our journalists are powering through their days.If you’re also an enthusiast, we hope you’ll enjoy looking over some of the gadgets that we enjoy using for our daily infusions.PreparationZojirushi Micom Water Boiler & WarmerThe idea of having pre-boiled water on tap in a machine might be sacrilege to some, but I can’t imagine my life without mine, especially in the winter. I drink iced coffee year-round, so I use this for making tea, oatmeal, rice porridge, and anything else that needs hot water.T... Continue reading…

The C2 in today’s deal features one of LG’s “Evo” panels that boasts a higher brightness level than its previous-generation panel. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge At Best Buy, a host of LG electronics are seeing a discount through Saturday. This includes a few of its 2022 OLED TVs, some of which have received bigger price drops than I’ve seen occur before. Starting with the deal that’s the best value in terms of size and specs, LG’s 55-inch B2 OLED is $999.99 (originally $1,599.99). For context, Amazon is selling it for about $300 more at the time of publishing.The B2 is LG’s midrange model; it has more features than the A-series OLED, but not as many as the C2 Evo model. Even so, movie, TV show, and gaming enthusiasts should find nearly everything they’re after with the B2, including a virtually infinite contrast ratio, the deepest of black color presentation, and a 120Hz refresh rate panel. On... Continue reading…

Hey Google, bring me the sweet sounds of post-season Mariners baseball on the radio. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Friday Twitter, in case you missed it, featured an extremely dumb discourse involving cable, streaming services, the Yankees, and somehow, New York’s Attorney General. The gist is this: Aaron Judge was poised to tie (and maybe overtake?) Roger Maris’ American League record of 61 home runs in a season (he did not). The game against the Red Sox aired on Apple TV Plus rather than New York’s regional cable sports network, YES. Some people got mad about that — presumably people who own bars in New York and show baseball games — including the state Attorney General. Others rightly pointed out that watching a game on a paid cable service is in no way more accessible than watching on a free streaming app.But here’s the thing: you don’t need... Continue reading…

Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images Yankees star Aaron Judge could break a home run record at Friday’s game against the Boston Red Sox, and you’ll be able to watch the game for free through Apple TV’s Friday Night Baseball broadcast. But in tweets ahead of the game, New York Attorney General Letitia James confusingly called for the game to be brought over to New York’s local Yankee Entertainment and Sports (YES) cable network, and after slightly walking that back, called the steps to watch Apple’s broadcast “burdens.”The whole saga started with a tweet from James at 3:04PM ET.

NASA’s SLS on the pad on September 3rd, 2022 | Photo by Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel / Tribune News Service via Getty Images I’ve got good news and bad news for fans of big NASA space launches.The good news is that after repeated delays and a nail-biting test of a leaky fuel system, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) could make its big debut as soon as Tuesday. The bad news is currently named Tropical Depression Nine. It’s a developing storm in the Caribbean with the potential to become a major hurricane and a trajectory that is currently headed toward Florida.There is just a 20 percent chance that the weather on September 27th will cooperate, according to a Friday forecast from the Space Force’s 45th weather squadron, which is in charge of determining whether or not the weather is good enough to launch.This particular launch will be the start of Artemis I,... Continue reading…

One of the world’s first plants for the production of green hydrogen in Wesseling, Germany, on July 2nd, 2021. | Photo by INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images Ramping up production of hydrogen fuel is now a high priority for the Biden administration as it tries to put an end to the fossil fuel pollution causing climate change. The Department of Energy wants to produce 10 million metric tons of “clean” hydrogen by 2030, according to a draft National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap released yesterday.About 10 million metric tons of hydrogen is already produced in the US each year, but that’s mostly “gray” hydrogen made with dirty natural gas. The shift would be to pair that natural gas with controversial technologies that capture carbon dioxide emissions as well as make more hydrogen using renewable energy sources and nuclear energy.“A high priority technology for this administration”C... Continue reading…

The “NASTY!” message when you flub a note is inspired. | Image: Holy Wow Studios Trombone Champ has been the star of my timeline this week; I’m constantly running into absurd renditions of songs like “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” But in a conversation with Dan Vecchitto, the founder of Trombone Champ developer Holy Wow Studios, he brought up something I think is a major factor in the game’s success: we just don’t see a lot of comedy in gaming right now.Games have been pushing the boundaries of capital-S Serious Storytelling for some time with series like The Last of Us. Others remain popular because of their high-skill and high-stress competitive multiplayer. But we just don’t see many games that embrace their own comedy in the way that Trombone Champ does.While there are a growing number of games that are... Continue reading…

The original AirPods Pro tips (left) have denser mesh than the new second-gen tips (right). | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge In my review of the new second-generation AirPods Pro, I pointed out that the inner mesh / filter of the ear tips is slightly different than those belonging to the original earbuds. As it turns out, that’s part of why Apple advises against using first-gen tips on the new model and vice versa. As MacRumors noticed, the company has updated its support page on AirPods Pro ear tips with a new section that says “ear tips have been designed specifically for their AirPods Pro generation, to deliver the highest-fidelity audio experience.”“As a result, use the ear tips that come with your AirPods Pro. AirPods Pro (1st generation) ear tips have noticeably denser mesh than AirPods Pro (2nd generation) ear tips,” Apple’s support site reads.Could... Continue reading…

You have to admit these guys were getting old. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple plans to release new MacBook models in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a new report from DigiTimes. DigiTimes also reported last week that suppliers are “gearing up” for shipments of the upcoming products.The report corroborates a number of rumors that have surfaced over this summer and makes the prospect of an October MacBook release look increasingly likely.In June, just days after Apple dropped this year’s M2-powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, Bloomberg reported that updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models could ship by early 2023. These MacBooks are unlikely to look much different from their predecessors but are expected to include more powerful M2 Max chips with 12 CPU cores and up to 38 GPU cores.T... Continue reading…

Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images Harm reduction programs will soon be able to more easily bulk buy medication that can treat opioid overdoses, thanks to new guidance from the Food and Drug Administration. The guidance centers around naloxone, which reverses overdoses. Advocacy groups have been pushing for this change, which will make it much easier for them to distribute the lifesaving drug.Naloxone is currently a prescription drug at the federal level, even though state-level laws make it so people don’t need a prescription to obtain it. But because of the federal rules, manufacturers normally have to follow specific requirements around how they can distribute the drug. Those guidelines made it hard for harm reduction groups, which work to prevent overdoses, to get... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge If you’re lucky enough to be unboxing a new Apple Watch this week, you might be wondering how to disconnect your old one from your iPhone. Unless you plan on using two watches — it’s a thing — you’ll want to unpair it so you can hand it down to a friend or family member or sell it.It’s important to unpair your watch and not just erase it because if you don’t go through the unpair process, Apple’s Activation Lock will kick in. This is a good thing if you’ve actually lost your watch but a bad thing if you are looking to sell or pass on your watch or use it with a new iPhone.Another thing: if you’re unlucky enough to have lost your iPhone, you will still need to unpair your watch in order to pair it with your new phone. Here, we’ll go... Continue reading…

A concept version of the EQG was unveiled in 2021. | Images: Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz’s electric G-Wagen will arrive in mid-2024, the company’s chairman Ola Källenius said during a roundtable with reporters this week, according to Autoblog.Källenius also said he drove a prototype version of the electric SUV at the company’s testing facility in Graz, Austria, and came away convinced that the future of off-road adventure is electric.When Mercedes first unveiled a concept version of the electric SUV in September 2021, the company wouldn’t confirm any production plans. In fact, Källenius himself said in 2019 that he wasn’t sure whether the G-Wagen would have much of a future at all. Now it seems like an electric version of the boxy off-roader is on its way.(This isn’t entirely new information; Källenius... Continue reading…

The Roborock S7 Plus has reached a new record low. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge If you plan to catch up on cleaning this weekend, you can do so a lot faster with today’s excellent robot vacuum deal. Regularly $949.98, Amazon is selling Roborock’s S7 Plus robot vacuum for just $679.48 — an all-time low — when you apply the on-page coupon and use promo code S7PLUS4SD at checkout.Roborock’s S7 Plus is our favorite mop and robot vacuum hybrid, one that’s even capable of keeping your carpets dry by lifting up its mop to vacuum them. Other nice features include the ability to clean specific rooms and support for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, so you can make requests with your voice. Plus, the robot vacuum comes with an auto-emptying cleaning and charging station. It admittedly doesn’t have great battery life... Continue reading…

Thermae Romae Novae. | Image: Netflix Recent releases like Thermae Romae Novae, Drifting Home, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Uncle From Another World show a lot of promise for the streamer Continue reading…

Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images The French government has announced it will introduce a minimum charge for book deliveries of €3 (about $2.92) in order to help small booksellers compete with retailing giant Amazon, reports Reuters. The minimum fee will only apply to orders under €35 (about $34.12).It’s the latest measure by the French government to balance competition in the book sector and follows a decades-long tradition of protectionist laws. Since 1981, France has mandated fixed prices for books, with a maximum discount of 5 percent, and in 2010 expanded this law to cover ebooks. In 2014, the French government banned the free deliveries of books, to which Amazon responded by charging customers a single cent (€0.01) for delivery.In an effort to close this... Continue reading…

The Action button adds another layer of personalization | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The Apple Watch Ultra introduced one of the most significant design tweaks to the Apple Watch since its inception — the Action button. While every other Apple Watch has two physical controls, the Action button is a third that’s meant to help outdoor athletes pause workouts, turn on the flashlight, call for help with a siren, and more. The main logic is that, unlike touchscreens, physical buttons are immune to sweaty fingers and gloves.While it’s likely the Action button will evolve over time, at launch, it’s essentially a set of preselected shortcuts or “actions.” Your options are Workout, Stopwatch, Waypoint, Backtrack, Dive, Flashlight, and Shortcuts. Some of these actions have secondary functions dubbed “gestures.” Within each... Continue reading…

A rendering of an aerial view of CarbonCapture’s direct air capture modules. | Image: CarbonCapture A couple of climate tech startups plan to suck a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide out of the air and trap it underground in Wyoming. The goal of the new endeavor, called Project Bison, is to build a new facility capable of drawing down 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. The CO2 can then be stored deep within the Earth, keeping it out of the atmosphere, where it would have continued to heat up the planet.A Los Angeles-based company called CarbonCapture is building the facility, called a direct air capture (DAC) plant, that is expected to start operations as early as next year. It’ll start small and work up to 5 million metric tons a year. If all goes smoothly by 2030, the operation will be orders of magnitude larger... Continue reading…

Snoop Dogg performs at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2022. | Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images Apple Music will sponsor next February’s Super Bowl halftime show, replacing long-time sponsor Pepsi. In a press release, the NFL says over 120 million people watched the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in February this year, which featured performances from Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar. The New York Times reports that the NFL had been shopping the sponsorship deal around for around $50 million, though exact terms of the finalized deal were not made public.The deal comes as Apple and other streaming service operators are increasingly looking to sports as a source of growth. Apple has already inked deals to broadcast Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer games on Apple TV Plus, while rival Amazon... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Logo. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon plans to limit automatic ebook returns to cases where people have read no more than 10 percent of the book, according to the Authors Guild. The change, which follows complaints that Kindle buyers were returning titles they’d fully read to get a refund, is expected to take place by the end of the year.The Authors Guild says it reached the deal after negotiating with Amazon executives. Individual authors raised concerns about an uptick in returns earlier this year, noting that Amazon would bill them for any royalties they earned from the books. Some pinned the practice’s rise on the book community of video platform TikTok, and in a press release, the guild blamed “BookTok influencers” for encouraging people to get “free” books by... Continue reading…

When you’re in the Xbox Cloud Gaming app, the yellow Logitech button pulls up the Xbox shade as if you were playing on a console. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Yesterday, Logitech announced its $349.99 G Cloud Gaming Handheld, which is coming out in the US on October 17th (until then, it’s $50 off to preorder). Today, I got to briefly test it out. It was just a 10-minute demo, but it was long enough for me to snap a few photos, launch some apps, and see how it felt in my hands. We’ll have a full review in the coming weeks.As I arrived at the testing station, Deathloop (freshly available on Xbox Game Pass) was streaming via Wi-Fi to the handheld’s Xbox Cloud Gaming app. Sadly, it was the action-less intro sequence, but I still got to sprint and jump around. Though it wasn’t a fun killer, like all of my experiences with cloud game streaming, there was just a whiff of input lag that, at least for... Continue reading…

You can currently buy the AirPods Max for around $449 instead of $549. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge With more people working from home than they used to, owning a good pair of noise-canceling headphones has become more appealing than ever. However, they can be expensive and difficult to shop for due to the range of available models, many of which cater to different lifestyles and priorities. Some are better suited for long-haul flights, for instance, while others are ideal for multitasking and marathon listening sessions.That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best deals on noise-canceling headphones. Here, you’ll find sales on all kinds of on-ear and over-ear headphones, all of which are designed to eliminate outside noise but come with their own strengths and weaknesses. And if you want to do even more research before making a... Continue reading…

The Untitled Vince Gilligan Project is now in officially in the works. | Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TNT Apple has picked up the next show from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan. The two-season Apple TV Plus show, which Apple currently calls the “Untitled Vince Gilligan Project,” will star Rhea Seehorn, who was nominated for an Emmy for playing attorney Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul.Apple isn’t revealing much about the series just yet, but Gilligan did share a tiny hint of what we can expect. “After fifteen years, I figured it was time to take a break from writing antiheroes… and who’s more heroic than the brilliant Rhea Seehorn?” Gilligan said in a statement. “It’s long past time she had her own show, and I feel lucky to get to work on it with her.” Gilligan will be serving as showrunner and executive producer.In... Continue reading…

The DynamicSpot app gives Android users their own private island. I’ve always been on team Android, but every so often, Apple rolls out a feature that makes me just a little jealous. Thankfully, with the introduction of the divisive Dynamic Island, I didn’t have to wait very long before somebody shoehorned that sweet pill-shaped void into the Android OS. The DynamicSpot app, developed by user Jawomo, is currently available as an early access download from the Google Play Store.You can currently check out the app for free, and it allows you to adjust the position and size of the island based on where the notch lives on your particular Android device. However, adding some of the more advanced functions, like showing the island on your lock screen or tapping icons to open apps, requires an additional... Continue reading…

A baleen whale swimming in Alaska. Many species of baleen whales, like the one pictured above, spend time in the Arctic region. | Image: Planet One Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Scientists have been “eavesdropping” on whales in the Arctic using fiber-optic cables. In July, a group of scientists published a study that took a practical method usually used to monitor the cables themselves and used it to monitor the activity of baleen whales in the Arctic. The researchers say similar studies could transform how scientists collect data on marine life.Under the oceans, fiber-optic cables carry internet traffic around the world. They have also become a usual tool for scientists in the field who would like to collect and access data in real time. Notably, they can be used to detect earthquakes, including aftershocks that go undetected by traditional seismic stations. In this case, those cables were used to detect... Continue reading…

It’s not just you. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is recovering from some issues that have affected users trying to open its app on their iPhone or Android devices. Users on Reddit reported that the app was continually crashing, making it difficult for them to see any posts, and Downdetector showed that the outage lasted for under an hour, between 12:30PM and 1:30PM ET (9:30–10:30AM PT).Meta spokesperson Devi Narasimhan told The Verge: “Earlier today, a technical issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Instagram. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible, and apologize for any inconvenience.” On Twitter, the brand gave the all-clear at 2:25PM ET.

It’s not just the music that’s ridiculous in Trombone Champ. | Image: Holy Wow Studios If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, it’s recently been filled with hilarious videos of the trombone rhythm game Trombone Champ. Much of the silliness comes from players “sliding” the in-game cursor to try and hit the next note, and the resulting songs often turn out to be absolutely ridiculous.How can you not laugh at this? It’s absurd! And I love the bright-eyed Nintendo Mii-like avatars — they give the game a fun playfulness.

Electric vehicle charging stations in New York City are often inside paid parking lots. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge One of the perks of electric vehicle ownership is charging your car overnight while parked in your driveway at home. Electricity demand is usually low, so rates are fairly cheap, making it both convenient and affordable for many people. But that’s about to change as more people buy EVs and the demand for overnight charging begins to rise, according to a new study published today.The study, which was conducted by a team at Stanford University and published in Nature Energy, found that increasing EV ownership in the western US could lead to peak net electricity demand increases by up to 25 percent by 2035, the year California has said it would ban the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks.increasing EV ownership in the western US could... Continue reading…

The Nothing Ear Stick. | Image: Nothing Nothing has released its first teaser for the Ear Stick, its second pair of true wireless earbuds following last year’s Ear 1. In a series of images, the consumer tech firm has shown off the new charging case for the earbuds, which appears to use a cylindrical design almost like a tube of lipstick. The new earbuds are set to launch later this year, Nothing’s press release says.In an email, Nothing’s US PR manager Lewis Hopkins confirmed that the Ear Stick is more than just a new charging case for the company’s existing earbuds. “The Ear Stick is an entirely new product. New charging case and new bud,” Hopkins tells The Verge.