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Instagram says it’s giving users more control over their feeds. | Image: Instagram Instagram announced on Wednesday that it’s adding two new modes that change how the main feed works, bringing back the much-awaited reverse-chronological view. The company calls the two new modes “Following” and “Favorites,” and says they’re designed to “give you more choice and control over what you see” while using the app (that is, let you avoid things like suggested posts and algorithmic sorting based on who and what the app thinks you like).Instagram’s description for the “Following” feed is truly something to behold: “See the latest posts from accounts that you follow, in the order they were posted.” And to that, I say yes. That’s exactly what I want every social network to be!Instagram says it’ll go on to make the main feed even... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Intel is finally on the right track again.That’s the biggest takeaway of the first year of the company’s reboot, brought on by its new CEO Pat Gelsinger when he took over the reins in early 2021. Intel has a new vision for the future: its “IDM 2.0” approach. Its introduction was exactly a year ago today. That makes today a great time to check in and see how the new Intel — which looks a lot like the old Intel — is shaping up.Intel’s past decade or so prior to its recent reinvention was a series of misplaced bets and product misses, culminating in a disastrous summer in 2020 that saw nearly everything go wrong for the company: another delay for its next major manufacturing node, departures of top executives, and the loss of one of its... Continue reading…

The Nothing OS home screen. | Image: Nothing Carl Pei wants to take on Apple’s walled garden this summer Continue reading…

Yet another notable athlete is coming to Fortnite’s battle royale. Epic Games announced that on March 26th, players will be able to snag a skin based on two-time Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim. The skin features four different color schemes — including a black-and-gold option and another where she appears encased in ice — and there are also a handful of accessories, including a giant frozen dragon to ride on.Kim joins a growing list of athletes and celebrities in Fortnite, with includes the likes of tennis star Naomi Osaka, musical duo Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, NBA legend LeBron James, and Fortnite World Cup winner Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf.Fortnite just kicked off a new season called “Resistance,” which introduces some... Continue reading…

Good execution, but its specs aren’t enough for serious gamers Continue reading…

Last year, Netflix debuted an anime spinoff set in the mech-vs.-kaiju world of Pacific Rim, and next month, the series will be coming to an end. The second and final season of Pacific Rim: The Black is coming to the streaming service on April 19th and is described as the “epic conclusion” for the story.The Black follows a pair of twins in Australia who end up utilizing a training Jaeger — those gigantic mechs from the live-action films — to fight monsters and seek the relative safety of Sydney. In an interview with The Verge last year, supervising director Hiroyuki Hayashi explained that one of the goals of the show was to show the impact of the kaiju invasion from a different perspective.“The people in Pacific Rim: The Black are... Continue reading…

Image: ApeCoin DAO Today, let’s talk about an evolution in the way that startups are being funded, and what it means for the companies working to replace the current internet with blockchain technologies.For a long while now, the basic deal in venture capital has been simple. Investors give founders money in exchange for equity in a company; they recoup that investment when the company is sold or goes public. (Or, if the company dies, not at all.)A downside of this arrangement is that companies can take a very long time to arrive at these exits. Most VC funds assume it will take 7 to 10 years to know how well their bets are paying off, and in the meantime they face risk and uncertainty.The arrival of blockchains over the past decade created a new option... Continue reading…

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite currently starts at $104.99 instead of $139.99 at multiple retailers. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The If you weren’t able to take advantage of the great discount that we saw on the new Kindle Paperwhite during Black Friday 2021, you now have a second chance. The 2021 Kindle Paperwhite is one of the best e-readers on the market, and right now, it’s also available at its best price ever. Typically selling for $139.99, you can buy the new Paperwhite in the ad-supported configuration at Amazon, GameStop, and Best Buy for $104.99. The ad-free version is also on sale at Amazon for $119.99 instead of $159.99.The battery in the latest Kindle Paperwhite can last for months, so you can enjoy reading for hours on end without having to worry about running out of battery. When you do run out, however, you can easily recharge the device thanks to its... Continue reading…

Snap will discontinue the selling of NextMind’s developer kit pictured above. | NextMind Meta, Apple, and a slew of other tech companies are building augmented reality glasses with displays that place computing on the world around you. The idea is that this type of product will one day become useful in a similar way to how smartphones transformed what computers can do. But how do you control smart glasses with a screen you can’t touch and no mouse or keyboard?It’s a big problem the industry has yet to solve, but there’s a growing consensus that some type of brain computer interface will be the answer. To that end, Snap said on Wednesday that it has acquired NextMind, the Paris-based neurotech startup behind a headband that lets the wearer control aspects of a computer — like aiming a gun in a video game or unlocking the... Continue reading…

The new Eero Pro 6E is the company’s first 6GHz Wi-Fi-compatible router. | Image: Eero Amazon-owned Eero jumped into the Wi-Fi 6E fray today with the announcement of its first Wi-Fi 6E-enabled mesh Wi-Fi system. The tri-band Eero Pro 6E router adds access to the new 6GHz Wi-Fi band, supports wireless speeds up to 1.3 Gbps, and claims coverage for over 100 devices simultaneously. The 6GHz band is touted as a spacious new Wi-Fi “traffic lane” that should enable faster speeds and less congestion across your home network.The Eero Pro 6E starts at $299 for a single router and goes up to $699 for a full three-unit mesh system. The new model brings with it a shakeup to the entire Eero line — there’s also a new dual-band Eero 6 Plus system that offers gigabit speeds at a lower price (starting at $139), and a price cut to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Artificial intelligence algorithms are everywhere in healthcare. They sort through patients’ data to predict who will develop medical conditions like heart disease or diabetes, they help doctors figure out which people in an emergency room are the sickest, and they screen medical images to find evidence of diseases. But even as AI algorithms become more important to medicine, they’re often invisible to people receiving care.Artificial intelligence tools are complicated computer programs that suck in vast amounts of data, search for patterns or trajectories, and make a prediction or recommendation to help guide a decision. Sometimes, the way algorithms process all of the information they’re taking in is a black box — inscrutable even... Continue reading…

Nintendo A very joyful game belies a kinda empty one Continue reading…

Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images The National Football League is stepping into virtual reality with the announcement of a new official VR game. It will be developed in partnership with sports technology company StatusPro, which makes use of player data for an AR training tool already used by NFL teams. The plan is for the game to become an annual series, like EA’s Madden series.There aren’t many details on the game itself, including what it’ll be called or when it’ll be available. The NFL’s press release describes it as a first-person simulation gaming title that will be released on Meta Quest and PlayStation VR. (No word on whether that means PSVR2.)“We are seeing a growing number of fans engaging with VR.”There are other VR football games already available, like... Continue reading…

Photography by Vjeran Pavic / Treatment by Alex Castro / The Verge Why DJI’s drones are a hot-button issue in the Ukraine-Russia war Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is planning to release a Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) feature for the PlayStation 5 “in the coming months.” The long-awaited VRR feature will sync the refresh rate of a display to the PS5’s graphical output, and will reduce visual artifacts, screen tearing, and frame pacing issues. You’ll even be able to use the new VRR feature with games that don’t officially support it. The news comes as Sony announced the availability of new PS5 and PS4 software updates.“Gameplay in many PS5 titles feels smoother as scenes render instantly, graphics look crisper, and input lag is reduced,” says the PlayStation team in a blog post. “Previously released PS5 games can be fully optimized for VRR through a game patch and future games may include VRR... Continue reading…

YouTube is the latest company to offer free shows TV with ads. The video giant says you’ll now be able to stream nearly 4,000 episodes of TV for free, as long as you’re also willing to watch ads during the show. Shows available include Hell’s Kitchen, Andromeda, and Heartland, and you’ll be able to watch them in the US on the web, mobile devices, and “most connected TVs via the YouTube TV app,” YouTube says in a blog post.With the new free TV shows, YouTube is taking on a number of major competitors. One is over-the-air television — by offering free TV on demand, YouTube is likely hoping that you’ll see what’s available on its platform instead of channel surfing to see what else might be on.There are already many options for streaming... Continue reading…

Malware makers have already exploited other certificates released by Lapsus$. | Image by Alex Castro / The Verge The hacking group Lapsus$, known for claiming to have hacked Nvidia, Samsung, and more, this week claimed it has even hacked Microsoft. The group posted a file that it claimed contains partial source code for Bing and Cortana in an archive holding nearly 37GB of data.On Tuesday evening, after investigating, Microsoft confirmed the group that it calls DEV-0537 compromised “a single account” and stole parts of source code for some of its products. A blog post on its security site says Microsoft investigators have been tracking the Lapsus$ group for weeks, and details some of the methods they’ve used to compromise victims’ systems. According to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), “the objective of DEV-0537 actors is to gain... Continue reading…

The company faced a much larger outage yesterday. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A few of Apple’s services experienced another outage on Tuesday, just one day after a good chunk of Apple’s services and online infrastructure were knocked offline on Monday. Apple’s system status page says that the issues with Apple Music, Podcasts, Books, and the App Store have been resolved, almost two hours after they began affecting some users.Thankfully, iMessage, iCloud, Apple Maps, and Apple TV didn’t go down like they did on Monday. During the outage, Apple also warned that there were issues with Weather, Game Center, Apple Card, and the iCloud Web Apps, saying that they may be “slow or unavailable.” Those issues are also now marked as resolved.During the outage, Apple Music worked for some Verge staff but not for others, and... Continue reading…

A Starlink terminal being used in Ukraine | Photo credit should read Nina Lyashonok/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images SpaceX’s internet-from-space program Starlink is increasing prices for both the purchase of Starlink kits and for the monthly service, according to a new email sent out to customers this afternoon reviewed by The Verge. The company says the “sole purpose of these adjustments is to keep pace with rising inflation.”Originally, opting into Starlink required a $499 upfront purchase of a starter kit with all the necessary supplies, including a user terminal, or antenna, for connecting with SpaceX’s satellites. Customers would then pay a $99 monthly charge to keep the service running. Now, the new monthly price going forward will be $110. All new orders of the Starlink kit will now cost $599, and anyone who put down a deposit for the original... Continue reading…

Imagine if the Sonos Beam had its own TV interface | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sonos is known for its whole-home audio systems and its soundbars, but now the company is hiring for a new home theater project that’s sure to give you more control from the couch. The speculation comes from the mention of a new “Home Theater OS” project being revealed in new Sonos job postings, as reported by Protocol.The most revealing job posting is perhaps the “Head of Partnerships, Home Theatre” position:

The NFL is already invested in NFTs. | Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images The National Football League will now allow teams to secure sponsorships with blockchain companies. However, it will still prohibit them from promoting specific cryptocurrencies and fan tokens, according to a report from CNBC. This reverses the NFL’s previous decision to bar teams from cryptocurrency sponsorships completely.In an internal memo viewed by CNBC, the NFL says it will permit “promotional relationships without undertaking excessive regulator or brand risk,” which won’t include stadium signage. It also maintains that “clubs will continue to be prohibited from directly promoting cryptocurrency.”Blockchain sponsorships can only last three yearsSponsorships between teams and blockchain companies can only last a maximum of three... Continue reading…

Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan is stepping down. In a blog titled “Moving Forward, with Gratitude,” Hasan says COO Sean Leow will be interim CEO and that the search for a permanent replacement is already underway.In an interview with Fast Company, Hasan says “personal reflections” and a desire to spend more time with his family informed his decision to leave Kickstarter after three years.“I am so proud of the work we’ve done together,” Hasan writes. “Leading such a passionate, skilled, and dedicated team through intense moments of change, milestone victories, and complex challenges has been a humbling and rewarding experience.”He touted the company’s successes under his leadership, including reaching $6 billion raised in pledges by 20... Continue reading…

Google doesn’t have plans to support C-Band on the Pixel 5A. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Google says it doesn’t plan to update the software for the Pixel 4a 5G, 5, or 5a to support C-band 5G in the US, despite also saying that the phones have the necessary hardware and that the functionality will work in other countries. Google hasn’t explained this decision, which it announced in a post on the Pixel support forums (h/t to Android Police for spotting that post). Google has updated its latest Pixels in the US, the 6 and 6 Pro, with C-band via a software update, but not those older phones.The post says that the earlier Pixel models “have C-band capable hardware and are enabled for operation in certain countries” but that the company does “not have any plans to support C-band operation in the US” for those earlier Pixel... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter may have just rolled back a really bad product decision, but on Tuesday, it added a very good one: you can make GIFs right from the in-app camera on iOS. The new feature could be a useful way to share short clips to your timeline without having to upload a full video.Here’s a GIF I recorded from my iPhone 12 Mini just before writing this story if you want to get an idea of how one of these GIFs looks:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Yuga Labs, the owner of three of the biggest NFT brands on the market, has raised $450 million in funding at a $4 billion valuation, the company announced today. The team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club plans to use the money to build a media empire around NFTs, starting with games and its own metaverse project.The team describes its metaverse project, called Otherside, as an MMORPG meant to connect the broader NFT universe. They hope to create “an interoperable world” that is “gamified” and “completely decentralized,” says Wylie Aronow, a co-founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club who goes by the pseudonym Gordon Goner. “We think the real Ready Player One experience will be player run.”The announcement comes just weeks after Yuga Labs made a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber plans to temporarily remove the ability to split fares sometime next month, as reported by Mashable. The company is “in the process of reworking how riders split fares,” Uber said in a statement shared with Mashable and also given to The Verge. “We know this is a popular feature, so rest assured that we are planning to roll out a new, improved version in the coming months.”The company also sent an email to some customers informing them of the change, though it seems the email was partially incorrect. “We are sorry to let you know that from March 21st, we are discontinuing the ‘Split fare’ feature, which allows you to share the price of a trip with other riders,” according to a screenshot of the email included in Mashable’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Okta, an authentication company used by thousands of organizations around the world, has now confirmed an attacker had access to one of its employees’ laptops for five days in January 2022 — but claims its service “has not been breached and remains fully operational.”The disclosure comes as hacking group Lapsus$ has posted screenshots to its Telegram channel claiming to be of Okta’s internal systems, including one that appears to show Okta’s Slack channels, and another with a Cloudflare interface.Any hack of Okta could have major ramifications for the companies, universities, and government agencies that depend upon Okta to authenticate user access to internal systems.But in a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Okta now says that an... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is overhauling its safety tools, improving its reporting process, and adding a new appeals portal.Over the next few weeks, Twitch will slowly roll out improved reporting tools, simplifying the process by which streamers and viewers can report content. The new process includes a search function so users can find the specific reason for their report and a suite of menus for the type of content getting flagged. The updated reporting tools will hit web first, with the mobile rollout happening at an unspecified later date.In addition to better reporting features, Twitch is also adding a new appeals portal, offering greater transparency into the appeals process. In the past, to contest a ban or suspension, a streamer would submit an... Continue reading…

Netflix has announced three more mobile games that you’ll soon be able to play on iOS or Android with a subscription to the streaming service, including the first FPS that’s available as part of its lineup.This Is A True Story is an educational role-playing game created to “share a true story of a Sub-Saharan African woman’s daily struggle to get water for her family,” according to Netflix. The game was made by developer Frosty Pop in collaboration with Charity: Water. Shatter Remastered is an updated take of the hit brick-breaking game that first released on PS3 in 2009. And in Into The Dead 2: Unleashed, a hybrid FPS / runner game, you’ll have to survive waves of zombies.This Is A True Story and Shatter Remastered will be available... Continue reading…

A screenshot from a trailer for Rolling Thunder. | Image: Roblox Last July, Roblox announced the Game Fund, a program to give developers funding and support for Roblox experiences. Timed with the Game Developers Conference this week, the company is using those funded games to showcase the range of experiences possible with its tools.There are a few parts to what Roblox is announcing on Tuesday. One is that Roblox is revealing for the first time that it’s investing $25 million as part of the Game Fund. Roblox had previously said it would be giving $500,000 minimum in each Roblox experience it selected for the Game Fund, but now we know how much will be given out in total.Roblox has already announced three games getting support from the fund — Winds of Fortune, Rolling Thunder, and neonKnights — and... Continue reading…

It all started with swimming. When Fortnite ushered in its second chapter with the dramatic implosion of the game’s original island, it also added in a seemingly small feature: players could finally swim. But since then, the shooter has slowly morphed by continually making the game faster and more mobile. It may have come as a shock to some when building — one of the defining traits of Fortnite since its inception — was removed as part of the current season (even though it’s likely a temporary change). But it’s a shift that’s been a long time coming.Ever since players could swim, developer Epic has continuously added new ways for people to get around in the game. There have been vehicles like planes and cars, zip lines and launch pads... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Lucid Motors will use Nvidia’s auto-grade computer chips in its vehicles to enable advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving features, the companies announced Tuesday. The automaker’s current and future lineup will be built on Nvidia’s end-to-end Drive Hyperion platform.Hyperion is the latest iteration of Nvidia’s Drive platform that allows automakers to customize their own driving features. And Orin is the chipmaker’s system-on-a-chip, similar to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving chip or Intel’s Mobileye EyeQ. This new hardware will form the basis for a new suite of driving features, including advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), automated parking, and autonomous driving, the companies said.Hyperion is the latest iteration of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has made a habit of stripping ads from problematic channels as a way to discourage controversial or offensive content without outright banning it. But the creators of those channels can still use their videos to promote other streams of income, like donation links and merch sales. Now, a new study shows that those options have not just allowed problematic channels to continue but may also be encouraging them to create more videos on YouTube.A new peer-reviewed study by researchers at Cornell Tech in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) found that YouTubers, including fringe creators making alt-right and anti-feminist videos, use their channels to promote their other income streams... Continue reading…

Hopping over to my next meeting as a rabbit. | Image: Zoom Zoom will let you show up to your next meeting as a rabbit, fox, dog, or another type of animal, using its new Avatars feature that replaces you with a virtual character that copies your expressions, Memoji-style. The company says this feature, which is included in the Zoom 5.10 update, will only let you become an animal at launch, but that new avatar options will be added in the future.Zoom sees this feature as useful for a lot of different scenarios — in its press release, it mentions showing up with an avatar filter on could “bring some fun to your team-building meetings” or help pediatricians seem less intimidating to young children. There’s also the idea that it could help alleviate Zoom fatigue. At least one study has indicated... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google Photos is getting a pretty significant layout change that should make it easier to find the photos and albums you’re looking for in the library and sharing tabs.The update transforms the current library tab layout from a mishmash of albums, favorites, and on-device folders to a grid or list view that you can sort through by category. Meanwhile, the Photos sharing tab will now have sections specifically for partner sharing, shared albums, and conversations. Google says the changes to the sharing tab are arriving on Android this week but are “coming soon” to iOS. Image: Google Google is introducing grid and list view layouts for its library tab. Aside from that, Photos is also getting a cool feature... Continue reading…

Google recommends testing out (slightly older) AAA games on the Chromebook, like Portal 2, The Witcher 3, and Civ V. | Image: Google Google says that an alpha version of Steam is finally available for Chrome OS users with specific machines to test, as long as they’re willing to put a beta OS on their computer. This announcement comes after the company prematurely said Valve’s PC game store was available last week before changing its tune to say it would be “coming soon.” While Google’s John Maletis, a Chrome OS VP, calls it “early days” for the software, it’s exciting that we’re finally going to get a peek at what the Steam experience will be like on Chromebooks.Google says that the alpha will only be available on “a small set of recent Chromebooks,” as it’s focused on “devices where more games can run well.” (It’s also limited to certain configurations of those... Continue reading…

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still trying to improve the way it collects and analyzes public health data, Politico reported.A March 16th email reviewed by Politico from Dan Jernigan, the CDC’s deputy director for Public Health Science and Surveillance, mentioned the Data Modernization Initiative — a plan that would include integrating state and federal data systems and giving states funding to hire staffers to work with data.The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the stark limitations of the US public health data systems: information is siloed at individual hospitals and local health departments and often takes a winding path before it gets to the federal level. Labs couldn’t send... Continue reading…

The H100 die. | Image: Nvidia Nvidia has announced a slew of AI-focused enterprise products at its annual GTC conference. They include details of its new silicon architecture, Hopper; the first datacenter GPU built using that architecture, the H100; a new Grace CPU “superchip”; and vague plans to build what the company claims will be the world’s fastest AI supercomputer, named Eos.Nvidia has benefited hugely from the AI boom of the last decade, with its GPUs proving a perfect match for popular, data-intensive deep learning methods. As the AI sector’s demand for data compute grows, says Nvidia, it wants to provide more firepower.In particular, the company stressed the popularity of a type of machine learning system known as a Transformer. This method has been... Continue reading…

Digital Domain/Marvel Studios VFX supervisor Scott Edelstein opens up about Spider-Man: No Way Home Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge One downside to Peloton’s treadmills is that they’ve lacked a pause button. Thankfully, the company announced yesterday that the latest software update brings the feature to both the Tread and Tread Plus.Tread and Tread Plus users can now tap the center of the screen to bring up the pause button. You can then hold the button to confirm. Previously, you’d have to hit the back button to exit the class or hit the manual stop button. Once you hit pause, the Tread will gradually slow down until it comes to a complete stop. At that point, you have the option of locking the Tread, or the machine will automatically lock itself after 45 seconds for safety. Your aggregate metrics, class, and progress can be paused for up to 60 minutes.It might... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple’s new Studio Display is a fascinating piece of technology, largely due to the A13 Bionic chipset that powers it — making it as powerful as an entire iPhone 11. But it turns out the internal hardware of the Studio Display is even odder: not only does the Studio Display have an A13 chipset, but it also comes with a whopping 64GB of internal memory, as spotted by Twitter user Khaos Tian.

US-based users on Instagram can now tag products in their posts. | Image: Instagram Instagram is opening its product tagging feature to all users in the US, which means you no longer need a business or creator account to tag products in your posts. Starting today, the feature will start rolling out to everyone “over the next few months.” Instagram has transformed into an app where just about everything can be shoppable, and now you can purchase the same look that your friend is wearing in their posts.The platform first rolled out product tagging in 2016 as part of its initial push into e-commerce, later supporting product tags in video posts and stories (and, eventually, Reels). As Instagram’s shopping experience continued to evolve, the platform added a native checkout feature that lets you buy products directly from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More adolescents failed to quit smoking in 2020 than in any of the previous 13 years, according to new data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 2020 was the first year the research team had data on attempts to quit e-cigarettes, and it showed that around 4 percent of adolescents unsuccessfully attempted to quit e-cigarettes.E-cigarettes have been pushed to adult smokers as an alternative to traditional, combustible cigarettes — some evidence shows they might be less dangerous, and there’s mixed evidence that they could push adults to quit smoking altogether. But the picture might be different for teens, who started vaping in droves in 2018 and are far less likely to be cigarette smokers first. The new analysis... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge I told you I was gonna sob over that new MUNA song. I didn’t lie.Now, more non-lies! Aka news!But first, here’s Jake with something to flag for you all:What happened at StitcherHi everyone, I’m excited to share with you one more story from Ashley Carman — a piece she spent months reporting out and wrapped up right before she left.The story is a deep dive into SiriusXM’s acquisition of Stitcher — how it went, where it went awry, and how it speaks to the broader podcasting landscape’s move toward consolidation and scale.Former employees at Stitcher say SiriusXM lacked a podcast strategy when they were brought onboard, felt like the company didn’t empower them to act on their expertise, and clashed over basic things like... Continue reading…

SiriusXM leapt into podcasts with a $325 million deal — insiders say it’s off to a messy start Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge If you want some of the best true wireless earbuds that Samsung has crafted yet, the Galaxy Buds Pro are selling for their lowest price yet at Walmart. You can pick them up in black, silver, or violet for $119.99, which is about $20 less than the previous low price. These offer the most amount of functionality on Samsung devices, including automatic device switching and 3D audio. But they’re still great on other Android phones and tablets.Normally $199.99, this price drop is significant because it makes them affordable enough to consider over the newer Galaxy Buds 2, which are typically on sale for about $105. Compared head to head, the Galaxy Buds Pro boast superior water and sweat resistance, better sound quality, and a more effective... Continue reading…

Dragalia Lost, one of Nintendo’s increasingly dwindling stable of mobile games for iOS and Android, is shutting down. The company announced today that the game’s main campaign will be ending in July and that it’ll cease adding new characters or content updates (outside of the main campaign) at the end of March when its final set of characters is introduced.Nintendo hasn’t said when exactly Dragalia Lost will be fully shutting down. The company only says that “after the main campaign has concluded, service for the game itself will come to a close at a later date. Further details on the end-of-service schedule will be provided in a future notification.” The announcement does note that players will still be able to summon new characters... Continue reading…

Italian luxury automaker Maserati unveiled the Grecale, a brand-new compact SUV that will come in a range of powertrains, including an all-electric version in 2023. It will be the tip of the spear in Maserati’s plan to become an EV-only brand by 2030.Last week, Maserati announced plans to launch a range of EVs bearing the brand name Folgore, which is Italian for “lightning.” One of the first vehicles to feature that nameplate will be the Grecale, a crossover SUV slotting underneath the mid-size Levante.Maserati is keeping most of the EV-relevant specs under wraps, including range, battery size, and charging time. The electric Grecale will come with a 400-volt architecture, which is similar to the one used by most EVs on the road... Continue reading…