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Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge During Max Tech’s teardown of the Mac Studio, the channel’s host Max Yuryev discovers something very interesting about Apple’s new hardware: two SSD ports. This may mean that the Mac Studio’s storage is upgradeable after all.The SSD slots seem relatively easy to accessAnd there’s more good news: the SSD slots seem relatively easy to access — in the video, Yuryev removes the Studio’s rubber backing to reveal four screws connecting the bottom part of the device’s case. After removing that panel, Yuryev spots two SSD ports nestled beneath the Mac Studio’s power supply that he indicates may be accessible without taking apart the device any further (5:46).As Yuryev continues to disassemble the Studio, removing its power supply and aluminum... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The National Rifle Association (NRA) has confirmed it was the subject of a ransomware attack that took place last October, according to a report from Gizmodo.The attack brought the NRA’s network down for two weeksIn a filing to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the organization’s political action committee (PAC), explains the NRA experienced a ransomware attack on October 20th, 2021 that brought its “network offline for two weeks.” Since the NRA wasn’t “able to access email or network files until the second week of November,” the NRA failed to report nearly $2,500 worth of donations, which was the reason for the filing.Last year, a Russian cybercriminals group that goes by the name of Grief took credit for allegedly hacking the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An antitrust lawsuit filed against Amazon by District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine was thrown out in court on Friday, according to a report by The New York Times.DC Superior Court Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which accuses the e-commerce giant of anticompetitive behavior by preventing third-party sellers from offering lower prices for their products on other platforms, including their own websites. Court records viewed by the NYT didn’t indicate why Judge Puig-Lugo decided to dismiss the complaint.“We believe that the Superior Court got this wrong”“We believe that the Superior Court got this wrong, and its oral ruling did not seem to consider the detailed allegations in the... Continue reading…

Apple’s 11-inch iPad Pro packs plenty to love, including a 120Hz display and Face ID. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Ladies and gentlemen, once again, it’s the weekend — now featuring an extra hour of sunshine, whether you like it or not. On the deals front, Amazon is currently offering the 11-inch iPad Pro in its 128GB, Wi-Fi-ready configuration for $749. That’s $50 off the 2021 tablet’s regular asking price of $799, which matches the price of the 2022 10.9-inch iPad Air with 256GB of storage.The iPad Air may be the new darling of Apple’s tablet lineup, but the iPad Pro still has some extra features worth considering, since they’re the same price today. First off, it has a 120Hz refresh rate screen for smoother scrolling and gaming, Face ID for easier unlocking (the Air uses Touch ID), and a four-speaker audio setup for bigger sound when it comes to... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google is finally bringing the ability to delete the last 15 minutes of your search history to its Android app, the company confirmed to The Verge.“We’re currently rolling this feature out on the Google app for Android and expect it to be available to everyone using the app in the next few weeks,” Google spokesperson Ned Adriance said in a statement to The Verge. “We’re continuing to explore ways to bring this helpful feature to other surfaces.”The feature was first spotted by former XDA Developers editor-in-chief Mishaal Rahman, who said he was tipped about the feature seemingly rolling out, and a Verge editor has spotted the feature on their phone. To check and see if you have it, open Google’s Android app, tap your profile picture,... Continue reading…

It said its “legacy policies” were “poorly communicated.” | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Vimeo has announced that it’s making some major changes to its bandwidth policy, after several creators spoke out about how the company pulled the rug out from under them by demanding large sums of money if they wanted to keep hosting their videos on the platform. The new policies replace nebulous terms with definitive ones, and guarantee that creators will have time to prepare for changes.In a post outlining the changes, Vimeo says that its new cap for monthly bandwidth use is a flat 2TB. Previously, the policy was applied to users who were repeatedly “in the top 1% of bandwidth usage,” which Vimeo itself admits could’ve been more transparent. The company also says that it’ll alert users when they go over that 2TB limit, so you... Continue reading…

The company apparently missed the missive. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov has just put out a statement about why Brazil’s Supreme Court is now suspending the app, and the reason is incredible. In the statement, which you can read in full below or on Durov’s Telegram channel, he says it was because his company was checking the wrong email address.“It seems that we had an issue with emails going between our telegram.org corporate addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court,” Durov says, going on to explain that his company asked the court to send future takedown requests “to a dedicated email address.” But the court didn’t do that, apparently — it kept using “the old general-purpose email address,” and Telegram missed them somehow, and now it’s getting banned, unless the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered Apple and Google to help block access to the Telegram messaging app within the country, according to Reuters. The sealed order, handed down today, demands Brazil’s telecommunications agency Anatel officially suspend Telegram until it complies with local orders and pays a series of fines. The news follows accusations that Telegram has failed to prevent users from spreading disinformation as it’s become a communications hub for President Jair Bolsonaro.Brazilian authorities threatened to suspend Telegram earlier this year, saying it hadn’t responded to requests to fight false election information. Telegram responded in February by removing three channels from US-based... Continue reading…

It’s been a long journey to this election for LDJ5. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers at Amazon’s LDJ5 facility in Staten Island in New York City will be voting on whether to unionize with the Amazon Labor Union starting April 25th, according to a report from CNBC. It’s the second Staten Island Amazon warehouse to have a union election scheduled; workers at the company’s JFK8 facility — also seeking to be represented by the ALU— will begin voting on March 25th.According to CNBC, the LDJ5 vote will be in person, and the National Labor Relations Board will tally the results beginning May 2nd.It’s been a long road to this election for workers at LDJ5. The warehouse was initially included in a workers’ petition to the NLRB to hold elections at multiple Staten Island facilities, but the ALU withdrew that petition so... Continue reading…

Overwatch 2 | Image: Blizzard Last week, Blizzard revealed plans to start Overwatch 2 closed beta testing in April and attempted to open the door for user sign-ups, but its registration page crashed almost immediately under the strain. Now the developers are talking more about what to expect from the new game and have announced a date for the start of beta testing: April 26th.The delayed development of this sequel is already occurring in the shadow of scandals, lawsuits, and Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard. So far, the team has been quiet about how things are progressing, but with a date for the beta test set and plans to start season five of the Overwatch League in May using an early build of the new game, it appears that we’re going to hear... Continue reading…

Instacart is adding a fuel surcharge to defray the high price of gasoline | Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Grocery delivery platform Instacart announced Friday that it was joining the list of companies adding a temporary fuel surcharge to customers’ orders, intended to help offset higher-than-normal gas prices its driver-shoppers are paying.In a blog post on its website, the company said it would implement the $.40 per order charge “over the next month,” but not when it takes effect. The post states that “every cent of the new, temporary fuel surcharge will be passed directly onto the shopper” and that it will launch “in the coming days.” Company spokesperson Charlotte Healow said in an email to The Verge that the policy would be in effect for one month after implementation. Asked if the charge would apply to electric or hybrid vehicles as... Continue reading…

Mind the gap tube platform warning sign on a London Underground station platform on 5th March 2022 in London, United Kingdom. | photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images With gas prices painfully high, there’s a new plea coming from the international agency established to secure the globe’s oil supply: drive less to avoid a deeper energy crunch. That was the key takeaway from a 10-point plan the International Energy Agency (IEA) released today as the world nears peak oil demand season.“As a result of Russia’s appalling aggression against Ukraine, the world may well be facing its biggest oil supply shock in decades, with huge implications for our economies and societies,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a press release. “We can also take action on demand to avoid the risk of a crippling oil crunch.”“The world may well be facing its biggest oil supply shock in decade”If advanced economies —... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Microsoft may be making it more difficult to share your gameplay captures to Twitter, based on changes to Xbox Insider builds reported by Windows Central. Right now, on my Xbox Series X, I can post a screenshot or video directly to Twitter through the Xbox’s interface, but according to Windows Central, Insider builds have removed that option and instead direct you to share from your phone.Sharing Xbox captures from your phone isn’t new — I actually find it to be a pretty smooth experience. If you select a capture on your Xbox and then the option to share to mobile, your phone should pop a notification directing you right to that capture in the Xbox app so you can save and post it wherever you’d like.You might have to tweet clips from... Continue reading…

GIF: Apple Universal Control is one of the coolest software tricks that Apple has come up with in years, and it’s a perfect example of what’s possible when a company has full control both over hardware and the software that runs on those devices. There are similar concepts, like Logitech Flow, but nothing quite so polished or deeply integrated at the operating system level as Universal Control.When using Universal Control, you can use the keyboard and cursor from your Mac to control an iPad sitting beside it — and the opposite scenario also works. If you’ve got a Magic Keyboard for an iPad Pro, you can use that accessory’s keyboard and trackpad to control a Mac.To use Universal Control, your Mac needs to be running macOS 12.3 or later, while... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Microsoft says it has worked closely with Valve to get Xbox Cloud Gaming working on the Steam Deck. While Steam Deck users have been able to access the Xbox game streaming service, it wasn’t possible to use the handheld controls to play games. Microsoft has now released a beta version of Microsoft Edge for the Steam Deck that includes full support.“We worked closely with Valve and the Xbox Cloud Gaming team to bring support for Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate through Microsoft Edge Beta for the Steam Deck,” says Missy Quarry, a community manager for Microsoft Edge. “We’re particularly excited about this ourselves as we feel it can open new opportunities in the Linux gaming community.”

Humble Bundle With the war in Ukraine entering its third week, Humble Bundle is releasing a charity game bundle with all proceeds supporting relief efforts in the country. In the announcement, Humble wrote:

We here at The Verge use benchmark utilities a lot to compare computers to each other and figure out which ones are the most powerful. But that’s not their only purpose. You may also want to run them just to see how your own PC stacks up to the competition and make sure it’s running as well as it’s supposed to.One of the easiest utilities for beginners to run is Cinebench R23. This program uses your CPU to render a 3D image and evaluates how well it does that. It’s free and only takes 10 minutes to run.Here’s how to do it. Here’s what Cinebench looks like in the app store. How to Download CinebenchIf you’re using a Mac, search for Cinebench in the App Store. If you’re on Windows, you can find it in the... Continue reading…

Another win for Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge PayPal is expanding the services available to its Ukrainian users and waiving fees to help with humanitarian efforts in the country during Russia’s ongoing invasion. According to a news release, Ukrainians will be able to send and receive peer-to-peer PayPal or Xoom payments, and the company won’t apply its normal fees to either side of the transaction (h/t CNN Business).PayPal also says that it’s giving Ukrainians the ability to transfer money out of their accounts onto Mastercard and Visa cards. Citizens who have fled the country will also be able to access these features if they set up a Ukrainian PayPal account. The company says Ukrainians will be able to send and receive funds in US and Canadian dollars, as well as British pounds... Continue reading…

Halo is coming to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Not the games (which, after all, are already available on the streaming service), but Halo: The Series — the upcoming live-action Paramount Plus adaptation of the sci-fi shooter, which debuts on March 24th.And to make sure that Game Pass Ultimate subscribers don’t miss out on the latest installment in the franchise, Microsoft is offering customers a free 30-day membership to Paramount Plus starting on March 23rd (a day before the show starts) so that they can be ready to tune in when the show arrives the following day.Halo (the TV show) is technically set in a different continuity than the existing video games, books, and other Halo content that’s come before. The show takes place a new... Continue reading…

The 2022 Hummer EV was barely out of the starting gate before it got hit with its first recall. General Motors issued a recall last week for at least 10 of the electric pickup trucks after determining that there was something wrong with the software that powers the taillights. (Yep, you read that right. Cars are basically just rolling computers now.)The official cause of the problem is the “[e]mbedded software in the microcontroller in the taillamp assembly,” according to the recall notice filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.The software bug can affect one or both of the taillightsThe software bug can affect one or both of the taillights, causing them to be partially illuminated or all-the-way ineffective.... Continue reading…

Anne Hathaway as Rebekah Neumann and Jared Leto as Adam Neumann in WeCrashed. | Apple TV+ Apple’s WeWork drama is yet another podcast reborn as a TV show Continue reading…

Share part of a Twitter Spaces conversation with a clip. | Image: Twitter Twitter is testing a new feature for its Spaces audio rooms that allows a host to share a clip of recorded Spaces on their timeline. The feature is now available to “certain Hosts on iOS.” Everyone on iOS can see and listen to clips, while those on Android and the web will be able to “real soon,” according to Twitter. Clips will live on Twitter for 30 days, company spokesperson Joseph J. Nuñez said in a statement to The Verge.

Image: Dyson It’s hard to escape the Dyson Airwrap online. Beauty influencers gush about its powers all over TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. But you may want to hold off on investing in one. Dyson announced on Thursday that it’s coming out with a new version of the Airwrap later this summer — and this one will be able to curl hair in both directions. The new Airwrap with all the attachments will cost $599.If you’re unfamiliar with the original Airwrap, it’s a hair curler that relies on something called the Coanda effect instead of heat. It uses a high-pressure motor to pull the hair onto the barrel, allowing users to style their hair “with air” while reducing the risk of heat damage. If you’ve ever seen it in action, it almost looks like hair... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge In a rare move, Porsche announced that it is planning on building its own network of electric vehicle charging stations. It also announced that it aims to have 80 percent of its sales be electric vehicles by 2030.The move was outlined during the automaker’s annual meeting, in which it also revealed plans to expand its portfolio of EVs with an all-electric Macan compact SUV and 718 sports car.Porsche EV owners currently rely on third-party companies for their charging needs. The automaker, which sells the Porsche Taycan in addition to some plug-in hybrid models, has a partnership with EV charging provider Ionity, a joint venture with Ford, BMW, Daimler, and Porsche-parent company Volkswagen. But now, Porsche has expressed willingness... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel discusses the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.This week on The Vergecast, the show focuses on the reviews for the Apple products announced at last week’s “Peek Performance” event: iPhone SE, the iPad Air, the Mac Studio, and the Studio Display. Nilay, who reviewed the Studio Display, and managing editor Alex Cranz are joined by Allison Johnson, who reviewed the iPhone SE, Monica Chin, who reviewed the Mac Studio, and Dan Seifert, who reviewed the iPad Air.Each guest walks us through their reviewing process — what they found surprising, where they found restrictions, how it... Continue reading…

Image: Polyphony Digital Gran Turismo 7, one of the biggest PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games of the year so far, is back online after a 30-hour outage. A broken update resulted in longer than expected server maintenance yesterday, leaving players frustrated at the limited offline mode available in Gran Turismo 7.Much of Gran Turismo 7, including its career mode and multiplayer, was unplayable for 30 hours, and developer Polyphony Digital took more than 24 hours to provide an update on the problems after the maintenance extension. Polyphony Digital has now apologized for the problems, and the game is back online with a new and functional 1.08 update.“Immediately before the release of the 1.07 update, we discovered an issue where the game would not start... Continue reading…

It has extended server maintenance due to an issue. | Image: Sony Gran Turismo 7, one of the biggest PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 releases of the year so far, suffered through server maintenance for over a day because of an issue found with the game’s latest update. “Due to an issue found with Update 1.07, we are extending the current server maintenance period,” reads a notice on the Gran Turismo website from Thursday morning. “We will confirm the completion time as soon as possible.”On Friday morning, a 354MB 1.08 patch was released and has been downloaded by players on PS5 and PS4 systems. However, even after downloading it and waiting through a lengthy installation/copying process, the game still wouldn’t connect to its servers. We tried it on our systems and could confirm it still showed an... Continue reading…

The price of compatibility Continue reading…

Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge At last, the rocket has arrived Continue reading…

This inexpensive indoor air quality monitor can only say, not do Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The free tier of Google Stadia launched back in 2020, so access to Google’s cloud game streaming service is readily available to a wide range of people across a list of countries. If you want to try it out yourself but don’t feel like ponying-up the $69 for the official Stadia Controller, you thankfully don’t need to let that stop you.You can, of course, buy one from Google if you choose to. And if you want to play wirelessly on the Chromecast Ultra, the company’s Stadia Controller is currently your only option to do that. But on PC and mobile, the service also works wirelessly with most popular console gaming controllers, including the Xbox Series X / S controller and the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 controller. Even controllers dating... Continue reading…

Sony’s noise-cancelling WH-1000XM4 are on sale among other headphone deals We’re all about headphones in today’s deals post. Regardless of your brand of choice, we’ve found a variety of models and styles available at sizeable discounts. All of these headphones occupy a spot in our roundup of the best noise-canceling headphones, so they’re definitely worthy of your consideration.First off, we’ve got the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones. Normally, these headphones cost $348, but they’re discounted to $278 at both Amazon and Best Buy. We’ve seen this model hit a slightly lower price before, but this is the best price we’ve seen since Black Friday. The XM4 features a number of improvements over Sony’s previous over-ear, noise-canceling headphones, including multi-point Bluetooth connectivity and better noise... Continue reading…

Everything’s great, apart from the typing feel Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Last month, Allison P. Davis wrote a widely read article in New York titled “A Vibe Shift Is Coming.” In it, she posited that the third year of our pandemic would reveal an obvious, and perhaps wrenching, evolution of the culture. A vibe shift, she wrote, is “a relatively simple idea: In the culture, sometimes things change, and a once-dominant social wavelength starts to feel dated.”I have been thinking about Davis’ piece more or less ever since. In particular, I’ve been working on how to apply it to my chosen field: tech journalism, which is driven as much by social wavelengths as any other part of our culture. For some time, I had been attempting to work out which stories felt relevant in 2022 that may not have in, say, 2020. Today,... Continue reading…

Image: Withings While Withings isn’t a stranger to wrist-based sleep tracking, the company announced today that it’s adding a new diary feature to its most novel sleep monitoring gadget — the Withings Sleep mat.The mat, which is placed under a person’s mattress, automatically collects biometric sleep data like heart rate, sleep stages, and snoring. The new Sleep Diary feature allows users to combine their own observations along with the data collected from the mat. That information is then compiled into a new dashboard that aggregates sleep data over time. Users can then generate a PDF report that can be shared with doctors.According to Withings’ press release, the diary feature was developed with the input of sleep physicians and is based on medical... Continue reading…

The Galaxy A73 5G in three colors. | Image: Samsung Alongside its Galaxy A53 5G and A33 5G, Samsung also snuck out an announcement for the Galaxy A73 5G, a new top-tier phone in the midrange A-series with a high resolution 108-megapixel camera. According to the company’s press release, the Galaxy A73 5G will be available in “select markets” from April 22nd, at a price that’s yet to be announced.Although the A73 also features a slightly bigger 6.7-inch display than the A53’s 6.5-inch panel, the big spec bump here appears to be its camera. At 108-megapixels, it’s one of the highest resolution phone cameras around. It outstrips the Galaxy A53, which only has a 64-megapixel main camera, and is the same as what Samsung has included on its flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra. High megapixel counts... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than half of the images on the web are missing alt text, according to Microsoft. Image labels (alternative text) are key for many who are blind or low vision, as they provide screen readers with text to read aloud. Microsoft is now attempting to fill the gap with auto-generated alt text for images on the web.Existing screen readers currently read out “unlabeled graphic” if there’s no description of an image at all which isn’t very helpful. Microsoft Edge has now been updated to improve the screen reader experience for all of the images on the web without alt text.“When a screen reader finds an image without a label, that image can be automatically processed by machine learning (ML) algorithms to describe the image in words and... Continue reading…

Pete Davidson playing Chad as an astronaut on SNL. | Photo By: Kyle Dubiel/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson is no longer scheduled to fly on Blue Origin’s space flight later this month, the space tourism venture has announced. No reason was given for Davidson’s departure, only that the date of the launch has shifted from its original March 23rd date.“Blue Origin’s 20th flight of New Shepard has shifted to Tuesday, March 29. Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission,” Blue Origin spokesperson Sara Blask said in a statement.Davidson was scheduled to be an “honorary guest” (an inclusion designed to build hype) alongside five paying customers on Blue Origin’s fourth crewed flight. Previous guests have included Star Trek actor William Shatner, GMA anchor and former football... Continue reading…

The NLRB says Gerald Bryson’s firing is a clear case of retaliation. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is facing a lawsuit in federal court from the National Labor Relations Board. The watchdog has asked a judge to issue an injunction forcing Amazon to give labor activist Gerald Bryson his job back. Amazon fired Bryson in April 2020, in what the NLRB says is a clear case of Amazon retaliating against him for protesting unsafe working conditions at its JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, NY.According to the NLRB, the Section 10(j) injunction it’s pursuing is intended to temporarily make a situation right when the court case could take too long to fix the alleged issue. In this case, Bryson has been fighting to get his job back for almost two years, according to The New York Times. The NLRB petition (which you can read in full below)... Continue reading…

There may soon be an extra step when switching carriers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile will be adding a new layer of security to its port-out process with the addition of a PIN, according to the company. According to The T-Mo Report, which obtained an internal document, the new number transfer procedure would require users to obtain a six-digit PIN from T-Mobile’s app or site and provide it when attempting to change their number to a different provider, which could make it harder for bad actors to steal phone numbers in “SIM swapping” attacks.In a statement to The Verge, T-Mobile Media Relations confirmed the company is “putting Number Transfer PINs in place to add an additional layer of security to protect customers from unauthorized port outs. These PINs will be put in place soon.”According to The T-Mo Report,... Continue reading…

Hogwarts Legacy, the upcoming open-world Harry Potter RPG, got its first proper gameplay reveal from developer Avalanche Software ahead of its release date later this year at a special PlayStation State of Play stream that showed off 14 minutes of footage from the game.(Despite the Sony-hosted debut, Hogwarts Legacy isn’t a PlayStation exclusive and will also be released on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X / Series S in addition to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.)Players will get to create their own character, be sorted into one of the four Hogwarts houses, and take classes (although they’ll be starting Hogwarts as a late-fifth-year student, presumably to avoid a serious RPG starring an 11-year-old.)Live your own Hogwarts... Continue reading…

Image: Respawn Entertainment Respawn has opened pre-registration on Android for Apex Legends Mobile, the upcoming mobile version of the battle royale hit. If you pre-register, Respawn says you’ll be “among the first” to play the game when it launches in your region, and you’ll also get exclusive in-game items.Respawn launched Apex Legends Mobile in 10 countries last month, and while it’s unclear when it will be available in the US or more widely, the studio indicated in a press email that the game is set to launch this year. However, if you’re in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, it’s unclear if you can pre-register. On the Apex Legends Mobile website, Respawn says that “Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau will be included in the global pre-registration” (emphasis Respawn’s),... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s experiment with Snapchat-style stories is continuing, with the company further rolling out the feature to a larger group of users today. If you’ve gotten the feature, you’ll be greeted with a new banner when you launch the app encouraging you to create a story.In a statement provided to TechCrunch, TikTok noted that “Currently, we’re expanding a pilot test, which provides creators with additional formats to bring their creative ideas to life for the TikTok community,” although that doesn’t say how many users are currently included in the test or what the future rollout of the feature will look like.Adding a video or photo to a story works extremely similarly to taking a photo or video for TikTok’s standard feature, with the... Continue reading…

Photo by John Lamparski / Getty Images Spotify’s production deal with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will finally result in a podcast series this summer with the launch of Meghan’s first show.The series is long overdue. Spotify signed a deal with Harry and Meghan’s production company, Archewell Audio, in December 2020 to produce and host podcasts for the service, but it’s so far only resulted in a single one-off episode.Archewell discussed policies to “minimize the spread of misinformation”It also seemed like the deal could be on the rocks. In January, as Spotify was being scrutinized for its deal with Joe Rogan, Archewell Audio released a statement saying it had raised “concerns” to Spotify about “the all too real consequences of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform.”... Continue reading…

The ESPN app has been updated with support for Apple’s SharePlay feature, which lets you watch videos over FaceTime together with family and friends. The feature is particularly well suited for live sports, which the ESPN app (by virtue of offering built-in access to Disney’s ESPN Plus streaming service) offers a fairly considerable amount of.Once updated, users will be able to watch ESPN Plus streams, along with original ESPN video content in the app and “TV Everywhere” content within the app that users have authenticated with an additional login. As is the case with most SharePlay content, everyone that’s participating in a shared stream has to have access to the service in question — so if you’re the only one with an ESPN Plus... Continue reading…

An instructor at the Fort Leonard Wood Chemical School, who is designated as an agent handler, carries the VX nerve agent to contaminate a jeep in one of the eight chambers used for training chemical defense on April 18, 2003 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. | Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images It took less than six hours for drug-developing AI to invent 40,000 potentially lethal molecules. Researchers put AI normally used to search for helpful drugs into a kind of “bad actor” mode to show how easily it could be abused at a biological arms control conference.All the researchers had to do was tweak their methodology to seek out, rather than weed out toxicity. The AI came up with tens of thousands of new substances, some of which are similar to VX, the most potent nerve agent ever developed. Shaken, they published their findings this month in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.The paper had us at The Verge a little shookThe paper had us at The Verge a little shook, too. So, to figure out how worried we should be, The... Continue reading…

The fully stacked vehicle is about to crawl to its launchpad Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix has for years ignored the fact that many of us are mooching off our friends’ and families’ accounts. But the streaming king now appears to be reconsidering its look-the-other-way policy, a shift that comes as Netflix’s growth slows and its annual production budget for churning out new hits creeps ever higher. In other words, Netflix needs more money.The company this week announced that it’s testing a password-sharing crackdown that could curb the number of accounts mooching off account holders outside their own households. As part of this test, Netflix will soon offer users in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru the ability to add up to two additional members to their Netflix membership as sub-accounts. In Costa Rica, this will cost... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap is banning anonymous messaging features from third-party apps that integrate with its platform over concerns that they could be used for bullying and harassment. The change comes after a lawsuit last year sought to hold Snap liable for misuse of its platform linked to the death of a teenager who was being bullied on two Snapchat-connected apps. The third-party apps, Yolo and LMK, both had anonymous messaging features and were suspended by Snap shortly after the suit was filed.“While we know that most Snapchatters used these anonymous integrations in fun, engaging, and entirely appropriate ways, we believe some users might be more prone to engage in harmful behavior — such as bullying or harassment — if they have the shroud of... Continue reading…

It costs as much as three DualSense controllers, and you can’t remap rear triggers to its paddles Continue reading…