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Photo by Peter Sabok/COOLMEDIA/NurPhoto via Getty Images Panos Cosmatos, director of Mandy and Beyond the Black Rainbow, is directing and co-writing a new film alongside screenwriter Maegan Houang. The film, named Nekrokosm, has no premiere date but will be produced and released by A24 in partnership with XYZ Films. It’s billed as a “phantasmagorical fantasy nightmare” — in which “deep within a strange galaxy, two lovers are torn apart as they try to survive a malevolent invasion.”Houang has written for the excellent Starz sci-fi series Counterpart and the upcoming miniseries Shōgun, while Cosmatos is best known for the 2018 film Mandy, which pitted Nicolas Cage against a violent neo-hippie cult. (A highly memorable chainsaw duel — far from the strangest thing in the movie — was referenced... Continue reading…

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) logo seen displayed on a smartphone. | Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Come July, the EPA plans to retire the archive containing old news releases, policy changes, regulatory actions, and more. Those are important public resources, advocates say, but federal guidelines for maintaining public records still fall short when it comes to protecting digital assets.“Web services is the language of the government now, [but] we’re not treating it with the same sort of respect that we are paper documents,” says Gretchen Gehrke, one of the co-founders of a group that initially came together to prevent the Trump administration from destroying environmental data. The group, called Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), is still fighting for public access to resources like the EPA’s online archive.“We’re... Continue reading…

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge About to buy the latest Samsung phone or are you more of a Pixel person? Whether you plan to trade in your old Android phone for a discount on your new phone, sell it on eBay, give it away to a friend, or drop it off for recycling, you’re going to want to wipe it of all your data first by resetting it to factory conditions. Luckily, that’s pretty easy to do.Before you start, be aware that these instructions were tested on a Pixel 3 running Android 12, but the process for most current Android phones should be pretty much the same. Needless to say, first make sure that all of your data is transferred to your new phone, backed up, or both. Once your old phone has reset, there’s no going back.

The Samsung Jet Bot Plus and its cleaning station, rendered in a very fake home. | Image: Samsung Samsung is no stranger to attacking a product category with multiple options at different price points, and offering large discounts on those products is another of its signatures. The robot vacuum space isn’t an exception, with the Samsung Jet Bot Plus — its mid-tier option — available today for $399.99 at Best Buy and Amazon. The Jet Bot Plus offers fairly strong suction, a soft brush that’s especially good for hard surfaces, and a self-cleaning station borrowed from its pricier, AI-infused counterpart. This package usually costs $799, which is a bit much for a robot vacuum that lacks object detection, but the current discount of 50 percent makes the Jet Bot Plus more approachable.The Jet Bot Plus’ addition of a self-cleaning station... Continue reading…

Image: Fitbit Google submitted data for a new Fitbit feature that would passively monitor users’ heart rhythms to the Food and Drug Administration, the company announced today.Fitbit currently can only check for irregular heart rhythm periodically; users have to actively decide to take a reading. The new feature would run in the background and alert people if they’re showing signs of a condition called atrial fibrillation. It’d bring Fitbit’s EKG feature closer to the one on the Apple Watch, which checks the wearer’s heart rhythms on occasion and alerts them if it catches any irregularities.Fitbit launched a study in 2020 to test its passive heart rhythm technology. Nearly half a million Fitbit users participated in the study, and it flagged... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google will show the next available appointment with a health care provider directly on search, the company announced today.The company is working with MinuteClinic at CVS and other unnamed appointment schedulers during the initial rollout, which will start in the coming weeks, product manager Jackie DeJesse said during a press briefing. It will initially only be available in English. Google If someone searches for a doctor or a health provider’s office, they’ll see what types of appointments are available and the date of the earliest appointment. A “book” button will direct them to a third-party site to make an appointment.Searching for a San Francisco MinuteClinic, for example, will show an “appointments”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge City of London Police have arrested seven teenagers due to their suspected connections with a hacking group that is believed to be the recently prolific Lapsus$ group, BBC News reports.“The City of London Police has been conducting an investigation with its partners into members of a hacking group,” Detective Inspector Michael O’Sullivan of the City of London Police said in a statement to The Verge. “Seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with this investigation and have all been released under investigation. Our enquiries remain ongoing.”Lapsus$ has taken responsibility for some major security breachesLapsus$ has taken responsibility for some major security breaches at tech companies, including N... Continue reading…

Photo by Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images The United States Postal Service announced its initial order of 50,000 next-generation delivery vehicles, 10,019 of which will be battery-electric vehicles. It’s a notable number considering the agency’s resistance to calls for increasing the number of EVs in its future delivery fleet.Originally, the postal service said it would purchase 165,000 next-generation mail trucks, only 10 percent of which will be battery-electric vehicles. President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats urged the agency to increase the number of EVs, but USPS determined there was no legal reason to change its plans.Now, the postal service says it will increase its initial order of EVs from 5,000 to 10,019, determining it “makes good sense from an operational... Continue reading…

Spotify is continuing its effort to offer some transparency to musicians who are unhappy with its streaming rates. The company updated its “Loud & Clear” website today, providing a breakdown of some 2021 metrics for how artists, publishers, and rights holders actually make money off Spotify streams.As one might expect, Spotify chooses to call out here are positive improvements over 2020. Spotify paid out over $7 billion to artists, labels, and the other moving pieces of the music industry last year, up from $5 billion last year. Over 16,500 artists’ catalogs earned at least $50,000 in royalties in 2021, compared to 13,400 in 2020, and over 1,000 artists cracked $1 million from Spotify streaming for the first time (versus 870 artists... Continue reading…

Now you don’t have to enter a password when you wake up your Mac | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge When Apple introduced the ability to unlock iPhones with an Apple Watch, it was a lifesaver for anyone wearing a mask during the pandemic. But the handy feature isn’t limited to your smartphone. You can also use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac and to securely approve app requests.The feature is called Auto Unlock, and technically, it came to Macs long before Apple decided to apply it to iPhones. That said, you may not have heard of it if you’ve just bought a shiny new Apple Watch or are a recent convert to the Apple ecosystem.Prepare your MacTo get started, you’ll want to make sure all your devices are compatible. Your Mac should be a model from mid-2013 or later and running macOS Sierra at the very least. Here’s how you check to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix’s latest price hikes in the US are starting to come into effect.Subscribers may have recently been contacted by the company alerting them that the price of their plan will change starting with their next billing cycle. I was recently sent such an email letting me know that my monthly bill would go up starting March 30th, 2022 — but some Netflix users may have already seen their bill increases hit.Netflix spokesperson Kumiko Hidaka told The Verge that the price increases are rolling out to existing subscribers “over weeks,” adding that some subscribers may have already been notified and seen the changes applied.Netflix first alerted subscribers to its coming price increases in late January. The service’s basic plan now... Continue reading…

Image by Tom Warren / The Verge I’ve just spent an hour spinning the gear in Windows 11’s new Notepad app. Reddit users discovered this delightful addition to Windows 11 recently, and as a daily Notepad user I’m addicted. Not on the level of my 1990s Solitaire addiction, but I can’t seem to stop spinning this damn gear every time I open Notepad now. Spin, spin, spin.I don’t know why Microsoft added this tiny animation that most people will never discover, but I love this little Windows Easter egg. It’s not limited to Notepad either. The latest test versions of Windows 11 include a new Task Manager UI, and there’s a gear you can spin there too. That means every time I go to force crash an app in Task Manager, I’m gonna spend more time than I should spinning the little... Continue reading…

Here’s the new Dell XPS 15. Look familiar? | Image: Dell Dell has announced the 2022 models of its 15.6-inch XPS 15 and 17-inch XPS 17 laptops, and they’re available for purchase starting today. The two devices differ from their 2021 predecessors in one way only: They’re powered by Intel’s newest 12th Gen processors. Image: Dell And here’s the new XPS 17. Both models will be configurable with a Core i5-12500H (12 cores), a Core i7-12700H (14 cores), or a Core i9-12900HK (14 cores). They’ll go up to 64GB of memory and 4TB of storage and will offer options for a 3840 x 2400 touchscreen in addition to an old-school 1920 x 1200 non-touch display. The XPS 15 can also come with a 3456 x 2160 OLED touchscreenWhere the two models differ (apart from their size) is in... Continue reading…

Samsung’s new portable projector isn’t what I hoped it would be Continue reading…

A screenshot from PUBG: Battlegrounds. | Image: Krafton Krafton, the studio behind PUBG, has announced a partnership with blockchain company Solana Labs. It says the deal will see the two companies cooperate on the development, operation, design, and marketing of “blockchain- and NFT-based games and services.” Solana Labs develops the Solana blockchain, an Ethereum-competitor designed to offer fast transaction speeds at low cost.The partnership comes a little over a month after Krafton announced its intention to get into the world of blockchain gaming and said it would be working with Naver Z to build “a new Web 3.0 and non-fungible token (NFT) project aimed at building an NFT metaverse platform.”“Krafton will continuously see ways to work closely with blockchain companies”The important... Continue reading…

Working while color-coordinated Continue reading…

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Uber, longtime foe of the taxi industry, has made a deal to integrate New York City’s iconic yellow cabs in its app. The agreement, which is set to go into effect later this spring, means that roughly 14,000 taxis will be able to receive trip requests from Uber customers. (The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.)As part of the deal, the city’s licensed technology providers, Curb Mobility and Creative Mobile Technologies, will integrate their software with Uber. Yellow cabs, which can be hailed using smartphone apps owned by the two companies, will gain access to Uber’s much larger customer base, which could translate into higher trip volumes and more money for beleaguered cab drivers.New York City has been a... Continue reading…

Just a good, slab-style phone that doesn’t quite stand up to the category heavyweights Continue reading…

Here’s the E14 Flip. | Image: MSI MSI has made a number of updates to the Summit Series, its line of high-end business laptops. The Summit E14 Evo, Summit E13 Flip Evo, Summit E16 Flip Evo, and Summit E16 Flip (which is similar to the Flip Evo with a higher-resolution screen and discrete GPU options). There’s also a brand-new model, the Summit E14 Flip Evo, which is a convertible version (meaning its screen can fold backward into a tablet shape) of the Summit E14 Evo. Interestingly, the 15-inch Summit E15 does not appear to have been updated.The Summit E14 Flip would be for people who need a screen larger than that of the 13.4-inch E13 Flip Evo but don’t want to jump to a 16-inch model. It also offers a higher-resolution panel than the 13-inch convertible, maxing out at... Continue reading…

Brittani Medeiros Lyft is integrating Spin’s electric scooters into its app, with the goal of eventually featuring the scooters in all 60 cities where Spin operates in the US.The move comes amid more consolidation in the micromobility world after Berlin’s Tier Mobility acquired Spin from Ford earlier this month. Lyft, which owns Citi Bike in New York City, continues to operate its own fleet of e-scooters despite many financial headwinds.Lyft’s partnership with Spin will kick off in Nashville, followed by 13 additional markets throughout April, including Phoenix, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Providence, Raleigh / Durham, Charlotte, Fort Collins, Ann Arbor, Kansas City, and Memphis.Lyft’s partnership with Spin will kick off in... Continue reading…

The guts of a Mac Studio. | Image: iFixit iFixit has gotten its grubby mitts on Apple’s new Mac Studio computer and Studio Display, and has taken both apart to learn more about them — including how easily they can be repaired or even upgraded. The Mac Studio in particular has generated some controversy because its SSDs don’t appear to be user-upgradable, despite being fairly easy to access and remove.There’s one piece of good news from iFixit’s teardown, which is that it does appear to be possible to swap out the SSD in a Mac Studio for one of the same size in case the drive fails. But despite there being a second SSD slot accessible, it doesn’t appear to be possible to simply insert an additional second drive to easily upgrade the Studio’s storage yourself. As for whether it... Continue reading…

The OnePlus 10 Pro. | Image: OnePlus If you’ve been waiting for the OnePlus 10 Pro to launch outside of China, then you don’t have much longer to wait. The company has announced in a tweet that its latest flagship smartphone will launch globally on March 31st at 10am ET, a little over three months after it launched in China. There aren’t many new details to be revealed about the device itself, so the main news of the event will be the phones’ pricing and release date in markets like the US, Europe, and India.OnePlus announced the 10 Pro’s key specs in January ahead of its launch in China, and since then reviewers have even imported the device to get an early look at what it offers (raising some durability concerns in the process). It’s powered by Qualcomm’s flagship... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge When Google killed its Gmail alternative Inbox in 2018, it promised that several of its ideas would eventually come to Gmail. While some did arrive, most of what made Inbox a success, such as “bundles,” never did. Instead, in the following years, Google has shoehorned its entire productivity suite into Gmail to push people into using the rest of its Workspace services. And it’s about to get worse as Google gears up to roll out a major Gmail update that’s more cluttered than ever.Gmail’s evolving interface works for those invested in Google’s ecosystem, but it does little to save people from the drudgery of sifting through their messy inboxes every day. It’s easy to see why: it still dumps on you a list of emails with no real structure... Continue reading…

Last Monday, Microsoft declared that DirectStorage would usher in “a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games.” And while that now seems a little too grandiose, the developer of upcoming tech showcase game Forspoken now claims that one-second load times are legitimately in reach.Speaking at a GDC 2022 presentation about the tech embedded in the PC version of the game, Luminous Productions technical director Teppei Ono says that the Square Enix title will actually load some scenes in one second flat, provided your Windows 11 PC has a NVMe SSD capable of over 5,000MB/sec reads.That one-second load time is not the case for every scene, and he didn’t actually show us any scenes load in that amount of time — instead, we... Continue reading…

It can now find keywords, not just names. Twitter announced on Wednesday that its DM search feature has gotten a big upgrade — it can now search through the content of your conversations and return specific messages that contain whatever keyword you type in. Before you could only use it to search for people’s names or the names of group chats, but now if you want to find that one conversation you had with a friend about “chili” you can just type it into the search bar.Of course, searching for person or conversation names still works, and you can even decide whether you want to see results for people, groups, or messages — handy if the keyword you’re trying to search happens to be someone’s name.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In recent weeks, the Lapsus$ hacking group has taken credit for accessing company data from Nvidia, Samsung, Ubisoft, Okta, and even Microsoft, and according to a new Bloomberg report, an England-based teenager might be the person heading up the operation.“Four researchers investigating the hacking group Lapsus$, on behalf of companies that were attacked, said they believe the teenager is the mastermind,” Bloomberg said. However, the teenager, who apparently uses the online aliases “White” and “breachbase,” has not been accused by law enforcement, and the researchers “haven’t been able to conclusively tie him to every hack Lapsus$ has claimed,” Bloomberg said.The teenager is apparently based about five miles outside of Oxford... Continue reading…

HBO Max is rolling out its very own shuffle button for desktop. Rather than working like a “play something” button, HBO Max’s new feature will shuffle episodes. So if you know you’re in the mood to watch Friends or South Park but don’t know where to start, the button will do the work for you.HBO Max said the button is one of its most requested features. Streaming rivals like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, among others, have similarly experimented with shuffle functions on their apps. Currently, the shuffle feature is available for 45 series on HBO Max, meaning you have 45 options for mindless streaming next time you’re having trouble finding something to watch.The full list of shows supported is as follows:

Will Fortnite be able to compete with your 8AM standup? Zoom announced on Wednesday that it’s making it easier to livestream your meeting or webinar to Twitch by adding native integration with the streaming service to its app. After you connect your Zoom and Twitch accounts, you can start broadcasting your meeting with just a few clicks.Zoom says the feature is meant to “streamline the process of sharing content within” communities, which definitely sounds like it expects this to be used for things like company webinars. There are a lot of use cases I can think of for this kind of thing, though — it’d be an easy option for people who want to do a live podcast, share a sermon, or make something like a town hall meeting publicly available. Or heck, just stream your 8AM stand-up if you’re... Continue reading…

Image: Bandai Namco Elden Ring has patched an exploit on PC that hackers used to trap players in endless cycles of death. In the patch notes for update 1.03.2, game publisher Bandai Namco says it includes a fix for “a bug in multiplayer that allowed players to teleport others to incorrect map coordinates.”The exploit first emerged last week after invaders started crashing players’ games and teleporting their character to an out-of-bounds location, causing them to fall to their death over and over again upon reopening the game. While some victims were able to get themselves out of the death loop by quickly teleporting to a site of grace, others reported losing dozens of hours of gameplay. You can see the effects of the hack for yourself in a video posted by... Continue reading…

Today, NASA announced plans to develop a second human lunar lander for its Artemis program, the agency’s major spaceflight initiative to send humans back to the Moon. To build the vehicle, the space agency is calling on commercial space companies to propose concepts for landers that can take people to and from the Moon’s orbit and the lunar surface, with the goal of having them ready by 2026 or 2027 at the earliest.NASA already holds a contract with commercial partner SpaceX to develop a lunar lander for Artemis, which aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon. In 2021, the space agency awarded a sole contract to SpaceX worth $2.9 billion to develop the company’s future Starship vehicle into a lander that... Continue reading…

Oscar Isaac as Mr. Knight, one facet of Moon Knight’s personality. | Courtesy of Marvel Studios It was clear from Moon Knight’s first trailer that Steven Grant’s Britishness and vocal quirks are significant details about him that are likely to factor into how the show handles the character’s canonical struggles with dissociative identity disorder. What was less clear, though, was how the decision to depict Moon Knight as an Englishman actually came about as a result of the larger shape of the current MCU.Though the Moon Knight of Marvel’s comics was originally born and raised in Chicago before going on to become a marine-turned-costumed superhero, in Disney Plus’ upcoming Moon Knight series, Oscar Isaac stars as a slightly different version of the titular character who happens —it seems — to hail from jolly old London. When we... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is introducing a pilot to let “a small number of participating developers” offer a payment system in addition to Google Play’s. Spotify will be the first and will use both Google Play’s billing system and its own.“This pilot will help us to increase our understanding of whether and how user choice billing works for users in different countries and for developers of different sizes and categories,” Google’s Sameer Samat said in a blog post. Google plans to share more information about the program in the coming months: “This pilot is still early days and we will have more detail to share in the coming months, but our aim is to have pilot developers live with user choice billing in 2022 in key markets,” Google spokesperson Dan... Continue reading…

Wilhite after winning a Webby Lifetime Achievement award. | Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for The Webby Awards Stephen Wilhite, one of the lead inventors of the GIF, died last week from COVID at the age of 74, according to his wife, Kathaleen, who spoke to The Verge. He was surrounded by family when he passed. His obituary page notes that “even with all his accomplishments, he remained a very humble, kind, and good man.”Stephen Wilhite worked on GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, which is now used for reactions, messages, and jokes, while employed at CompuServe in the 1980s. He retired around the early 2000s and spent his time traveling, camping, and building model trains in his basement.“It’s pronounced ‘jif,’ not ‘gif’”Although GIFs are synonymous with animated internet memes these days, that wasn’t the reason Wilhite created the format.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google will no longer sell movies and TV shows from the Google Play app starting in May, the company announced (via Ars Technica). Instead, you’ll be able to get movies and shows from the Google TV app.“On Google TV, you will find the same experience you are used to on Google Play Movies & TV with the latest new releases, rentals, deals, and great recommendations for you,” according to a company support page. Content you have already purchased will be available in the Google TV app, and you can use Play credit / gift cards to buy things there if you need.Google Play will still have apps, games, and booksUltimately, this doesn’t seem like too dramatic of a shift. However, this change and Google’s decision to shut down Google Play... Continue reading…

Photo by JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images Apple’s digital car keys are arriving on the 2022 Kia Niro, 2022 Genesis G90, and the all-electric 2022 Genesis GV60. As spotted by MacRumors, Apple added a key symbol next to all three vehicles in a list on its site, indicating support for the feature.It’s not clear when Apple first updated the list or if the feature is immediately available on any of these cars. There hasn’t been an official announcement from Apple or either car company yet, so there may be more steps involved in the rollout. Kia and Genesis have reportedly been working to integrate Apple’s digital car keys since last year. Samsung has also announced a partnership with Genesis (along with Audi, Ford, and BMW) to create a phone-based digital car key of its own.A Kia... Continue reading…

Last week, AMD promised a new technology that should let you blow up your games to higher resolutions or increase their framerates without requiring the fancy machine learning hardware of Nvidia’s GPUs like Nvidia’s lauded DLSS. Now at GDC 2022, it’s revealing how the new FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 actually works — and that it’s coming to Microsoft’s Xbox game consoles too.While AMD says it can’t actually say when Xbox game developers might take advantage of FSR 2.0, it says it “will also be fully supported on Xbox and will be available in the Xbox GDK for registered developers to use in their games.” And it’s also giving the community a list of both AMD and Nvidia GPUs where you can expect FSR 2.0 to run — if... Continue reading…

Photo by The Verge Although many data plans these days are advertised as “unlimited,” most actually have a cut-off point when your data stream is going to slow radically. If you don’t want to pay the premium prices that “unlimited” plans demand, then it’s even more important that you avoid going beyond your maximum data allowance, or there will be high penalties to pay. Either way, it’s smart to monitor your data flow — not only to make sure you don’t pass your limits but also to find out if you need to rethink your current data plan.It’s not hard to do this using tools baked into current versions of Android or a third-party app. Here are a few strategies that you can try. (Note: these directions are for a Pixel 6 running Android 12. The interface of your... Continue reading…

No bookmark bar needed (though it’s still available if you’re a fan). Google has introduced a new sidebar feature to Chrome, which lets you quickly access your bookmarks and reading list while using the desktop version of the browser (via 9to5Google). Previously, the reading list’s main home was as a button on the bookmark bar, which not everyone has enabled.Clicking the side panel button, which looks like a rectangle with a shaded portion on the right side, will show or hide the panel. Once you’ve got it open, you can access the same reading list functions that were available in the old UI, including the ability to add the page you’re currently on to your list, mark items as read, or remove them. You can also switch over to the bookmarks tab to browse your saved pages. Of course, you’re... Continue reading…

© 2022 Stellantis Stellantis, the parent company of Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler, plans to build an electric vehicle battery factory in the US. The news came out of an announcement Wednesday that the automaker would invest $4.1 billion on a new battery facility in Canada, along with South Korea’s LG Energy Solution.The factory in Windsor, Ontario, will be the first of two planned battery plants to come out of the joint venture between Stellantis, which was formed last year from the merging of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group, and LG. Construction on the plant is expected to start later this year, with operations set to launch in the first quarter of 2024.A second plant will be built somewhere in the US, officials said at the event announcing the Windsor... Continue reading…

Paramount Plus Paramount Plus’ Halo show neither shocks nor awes Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft and Amazon are both appearing at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week with a simple pitch: use our cloud services to build your game. Both companies have been battling to get businesses to switch to the cloud in recent years, and now the focus is truly on game developers during a pandemic that has challenged the norms of creating games.“Every few years, the games industry undergoes a transformation — a reinvention of itself,” says Sarah Bond, corporate vice president of game creator experience and ecosystem at Microsoft. “New platforms and new technologies make way for new genres, new gameplay and new IP. Today, we’re in the midst of one of those transformative moments.”Amazon agrees. “Game developers are embracing... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge After the disclosure of a hack affecting its authentication platform, Okta has maintained that the effects of the breach were mostly contained by security protocols and reiterated that users of the service do not need to take corrective action as a result.The statements were made by David Bradbury, chief security officer at Okta, in a video call with customers and press Wednesday morning.On Monday, hacking group Lapsus$ released images demonstrating that the group had compromised Okta’s internal systems, putting thousands of businesses that rely on the authentication tool on high alert.“The sharing of these screenshots is an embarrassment for myself and the entire Okta team,” Bradbury said at the start of the call. “Today I want to... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Players experienced a number of issues with the PlayStation Network this morning, affecting the PS Store, PS Now cloud gaming services, as well as any games, apps, or features that require a network connection. While its main console services have been restored, PS Now is still listed as having issues.PlayStation’s status page currently says “some services are experiencing issues.” Its last update about PS Now came at 9:41AM ET, and there’s still no timeline for restoration.The problem didn’t seem to affect everyone, as some staffers at The Verge had PlayStation Plus errors while trying to play Elden Ring, but for others, things were working just fine. There might’ve been a regional aspect to the problem — everyone we checked in the... Continue reading…

Image: WarnerMedia Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has officially been delayed to spring 2023, according to an announcement from Rocksteady Games creative director Sefton Hill on Twitter.“We’ve made the difficult decision to delay Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League to Spring 2023,” Hill’s tweet reads. “I know a delay is frustrating but that time is going into making the best game we can. I look forward to bringing the chaos to Metropolis together. Thanks for your patience.”

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge ZTE’s probation in the US is coming to an end following a Texas judge’s ruling on Tuesday, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The Chinese telecommunications company had been under supervision by the US government since pleading guilty to illegally selling American-made equipment in Iran and North Korea in 2017. ZTE incurred a $1.2 billion fine as a result of violating US sanctions against both countries.The judge decided not to punish ZTE for alleged visa fraudAs the WSJ notes, US District Judge Ed Kinkeade decided not to punish ZTE for alleged visa fraud, which is the subject of a separate case that’s currently underway in Georgia. Last March, a ZTE researcher and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology were a... Continue reading…

You’ll be able to hold your phone to a terminal to provide your information. | Image: Apple The first state to officially roll out Apple’s digital driver’s license and state ID is Arizona, the iPhone maker announced Wednesday. “Starting today, Arizonans can add their driver’s license or state ID to Wallet, and tap their iPhone or Apple Watch to seamlessly and securely present it at select TSA security checkpoints in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport,” Apple announced in a press release.If you live in Arizona and want to add your license or ID to Wallet, you can do so right from the Wallet app. Take photos of the front and back of your license or ID, and you will “be prompted to complete a series of facial and head movements during the setup process,” according to Apple. Apple is not the one approving requests to add... Continue reading…

Ikea’s forays into connected audio continue with its new $65 Vappeby Bluetooth speaker lamp, which resembles a futuristic-looking lantern and is the first speaker to feature Spotify Tap (which had previously only been available on a variety of headphones) for one-touch access to the streaming music service.The Vappeby actually seems purpose-built to replace a camp lantern: it has a rechargeable battery, an integrated LED light, and IP65 resistance (enough for toughing it out in the occasional rainstorm, although definitely not for a dip in a pool). It even comes with a USB-C cable to charge it, although it doesn’t include a wall brick. The most novel addition is support for Spotify Tap, which is making its Bluetooth... Continue reading…

Spotify is reportedly moving live conversations to its main app. | Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify is renaming its live audio app and moving it into its main music streaming app to make it more visible, according to a report from Bloomberg. Greenroom, which Spotify launched last June, will be rebranded as Spotify Live, a place where creators can hold conversations that subscribers can listen to.At launch, a Spotify account was not required to use Greenroom, but with the product moving to the main streaming app as part of the rebranding, that’s likely to change as well. Evidence of the update, expected in the second quarter, was discovered by developer Steve Moser in Spotify’s iPhone app and confirmed by Bloomberg’s sources.Spotify launched Greenroom on iOS and Android last year as a competitor to Clubhouse. It was built on... Continue reading…