The Verge

The company says it’s changing direction. | Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Patreon is laying off 80 people, around 17 percent of its workforce, and closing offices in Dublin and Berlin. A post from CEO and co-founder Jack Conte says that the cuts are happening because the company is changing its plans after trying to rapidly grow during the pandemic. It’s reducing the size of its teams in charge of “operations, recruiting, and other internal support functions” as well as its budget for sales and marketing.The layoffs are hitting Patreon’s go-to-market, operations, finance, and people teams. Workers in the US will receive three months’ severance pay as well as two extra weeks per half year of tenure they have beyond their first year at the company. European workers get a similar deal, with three months of... Continue reading…

On November 12, 2022, The Verge will join the Chicago Humanities Festival for a full day of exploring how big tech impacts the public in a series of conversations called “The Social Mind.” The day will end with an interactive afterparty with video games provided by Bit Bash.The series begins with David Pierce (editor-at-large at The Verge) sitting down with New York Times investigative reporter and author of The Chaos Machine Max Fisher to talk about how Social Media has rewired our brains. Next up, The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath will host a discussion about the future of the feed and how the algorithms that control what we see online impact our real world. The final conversation will explore how social media is affecting the... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge The Verge is pleased to announce that Hot Pod Summit — our invite-only event for creators and leaders in the audio industry — is returning on November 3rd, 2022, at KCRW in Los Angeles. The day-long event will be hosted by Hot Pod lead writer Ariel Shapiro and will feature a rich lineup of programming on the most essential topics of the day in audio, including the booming relationship between podcasts and Hollywood.If you’re not a subscriber of Hot Pod, what are you waiting for? Sign up now to stay ahead of the curve on the future of audio with industry-leading analysis, exclusive reporting, and more.We’re proud to partner once again with the amazing team at work x work to produce the event. Hot Pod Summit is part of work x work’s On... Continue reading…

Goldeneye 007 is coming to the Switch. | Image: Rare As expected, Nintendo pulled out all the stops for its fall Direct showcase with several Twitter-shattering announcements stuffed between smaller but no less exciting news. As is usually the case, it didn’t announce everything that fans might have been expecting (ahem, any sign of life for Metroid Prime 4 or a remastered Prime trilogy), but it was a decent showing. Here are the best announcements and trailers from Direct.The sequel to Breath of the Wild has a nameThe latest game in The Legend of Zelda franchise will be subtitled Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo continues to deliver the briefest yet tantalizing trailers for this game. My colleague Jay Peters covered the news, trying to figure out what to make of what little was shown of T... Continue reading…

The Twitter logo. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s shareholders have voted to approve a proposed $44 billion acquisition by Elon Musk.Reports yesterday suggested that a wide margin of approval was expected for the vote, with the required majority reportedly locked before the Tuesday meeting. On a call, Twitter confirmed that a preliminary count shows it has enough votes to approve the deal.Musk proposed a buyout of Twitter in April. Twitter has encouraged investors to accept it since then, even as Musk has filed numerous requests to terminate the agreement. Today’s vote lets Twitter continue with a lawsuit intended to make Musk close the acquisition.The approval means that Musk and Twitter will proceed to an October trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Musk is set to... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Jackson - WPA Pool / Getty Images We’ve got a lot on the docket, so I’ll keep it brief. Today: Meghan Markle takes a break from her hit podcast during the royal mourning period, Brookings breaks down the political podcast ecosystem, and some exciting announcements about our upcoming Hot Pod Summit in LA.Hot Pod Summit LA will feature guests from Spotify, Crooked Media, Team Coco, and moreHot Pod Summit in LA is less than two months away, and we’ve been putting together a killer lineup. I am really excited about who we have so far, and I hope you will be, too! Summit headliners include:

Illustration by Emmett Mottl We’re excited to announce that The Verge is partnering with the Chicago Humanities Festival for a series of live conversations about the future of social media and how it affects human life. The Verge sessions will take place Saturday, November 12th, at the Steppenwolf theater in Chicago, starting at 2:30PM CT. Then, after the sessions, we’re gathering with attendees to party as the Steppenwolf is transformed by indie gaming collective Bit Bash. It’s going to be a blast.Our three sessions will include a variety of talks between Verge hosts and experts on some of the most pressing issues in the tech industry. Max Fisher, New York Times investigative reporter and author of The Chaos Machine, will join Verge editor-at-large David Pierce to... Continue reading…

iOS 16 brings lots of features to new and old devices — some more obvious than others. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge If you update your iPhone to iOS 16 this week, you’re going to want to spend a few minutes tweaking your settings. You definitely want to turn on haptic feedback for the keyboard, you might want the battery percentage back in your status bar, and it’s a good idea to spend some time playing around with your Focus modes.But there’s one setting that’s so useful, and so hidden, that I missed it entirely in my review of iOS 16. (Thanks to everyone who let me know!) It’s called Filter Unknown Senders. If you toggle Filter Unknown Senders on — go to Settings, Messages, and scroll down almost to the bottom to find it — you can now filter your Messages app to show you only the unread threads.The feature’s been around for a couple of years, and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s lack of internal security controls was such that the company was simply unable to detect agents of foreign intelligence services who had infiltrated the company, former security chief Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko says.Zatko made the claims in testimony given to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, in a hearing on Twitter’s data security practices.Opening questions from Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) quickly homed in on claims that Twitter faced numerous insider threats, including from employees of the Indian government. Zatko said that the Indian government was not the only national government to embed agents within the company. At least one Chinese spy was employed by Twitter, Zatko said, but the full... Continue reading…

Fermata Energy’s FE-15 bi-directional charger in a commercial use case. | Image: Nissan Nissan has approved the first bidirectional charging system for use with its all-electric Leaf vehicle in the US. The FE-15 charger by Fermata Energy, which can power buildings using the EV’s battery, charge it, and send stored energy back to the grid, is the first system of its kind to earn UL 9741 certification for bidirectional charging solutions.Back in 2012, Nissan promised its maybe soon-to-be-discontinued EV would eventually share its stored battery power back to your home or the grid during peak hours or even in emergencies. This technology is broadly known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), Vehicle-to-Home (V2H), and Vehicle-to-Load (V2L), which all can be used interchangeably to describe a system that converts EVs to a backup power... Continue reading…

Lee Jung-jae (left) and Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk (right) posing with their Emmys. | FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images Despite HBO being in a chaotic state of flux as of late, the premium cable channel dominated at this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards — an evening packed with wins that were expected and a handful of speeches that were truly moving.Mike White’s The White Lotus paved HBO’s way to dominance with a total of 10 wins at this year’s Emmys, including awards to White specifically for directing and limited-series supporting acting awards to Jennifer Coolidge and Murray Bartlett. While The White Lotus brought the statue for Outstanding Limited Series home for HBO and Succession won best drama, Euphoria’s second season emerged as a heavy hitter for the network with six wins, including a best actress in a drama award for Zendaya. Hacks also cleaned up... Continue reading…

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has yet to call a vote on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images More than a dozen smaller tech companies, including Proton and DuckDuckGo are urging lawmakers to pass comprehensive antitrust legislation “as soon as possible.” For them, passing the bill would kill two birds with one stone, allowing lawmakers to address anti-competitive conduct and privacy failures in one go.In a letter to top congressional leaders on Tuesday, executives from a dozen smaller tech companies called on lawmakers to pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, or AICO, a sweeping competition bill that would restrict dominant platforms like Google and Amazon from favoring their own services over those of their competitors. The bill would also provide new funding for antitrust regulators at the Justice Department... Continue reading…

Honda wants its motorcycle business to be carbon neutral by 2040. | Image: Honda Honda, one of the biggest names in motorcycles, announced that it will release at least 10 new electric models globally within the next three years as part of a larger strategy to become carbon neutral by 2040.The manufacturer didn’t release any details about specific models but said the aim was to reach annual sales of 1 million units within the next five years and 3.5 million units (approximately 15 percent of total sales) as of 2030.Honda is considered to be the biggest motorcycle company in the world, having sold over 300 million motorcycles since its inception. That said, shifting to electric powertrains will be no small task.Honda is considered to be the biggest motorcycle company in the worldThe move to electric may mean... Continue reading…

A line of Steam Deck prototypes displaying the evolutionary journey of the Valve handheld gaming PC. | Image: Pierre-Loup Griffais A collection of playable Steam Deck prototypes surface as part of a launch event for the gaming handheld in Asia, documenting how the design has evolved since mid-2019. Snaps of various models documenting the evolution of the handheld were shared on Twitter by Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais, a member of the Steam Deck team, following the portable PCs appearance at the Tokyo Game Show (alongside an additional not-so-portable replica).While most of the units are visually similar, all featuring dual thumbsticks and sloping front edges, for example, there are some notable differences between them. One model seen in the middle of the lineup has attracted attention thanks to its clean design and circular trackpads, reminiscent of those featured... Continue reading…

Today, The Verge’s co-founder and editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and publisher Helen Havlak unveiled an ambitious new site and design for the 10-year-old technology brand. The Verge is a destination that has sustained a loyal and robust community since its founding, and with its new site, the brand will build for the next 10 years by investing in a direct relationship with its audience. Building on a homepage that’s one of the most-visited daily destinations in technology coverage, The Verge’s new homepage will introduce the Storystream news feed, a new Twitter-like feature that will offer readers a comprehensive, curated rundown of the most important tech stories of the day — featuring expert commentary by Verge journalists; links to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge A ruling from the FDA that allows over-the-counter sales of hearing aids is widely expected to make the devices easier to obtain and (hopefully) more affordable for consumers. And now, one of tech’s most influential companies, Sony, has confirmed plans to enter the OTC hearing aid market in the United States. Its first such product is already in development.According to a press release issued this morning, Sony has formed a partnership with Denmark’s WS Audiology to co-develop hearing aid devices. “Sony and WSA will combine their respective technological and medical expertise to create solutions that will shape this new field,” the companies said. WS Audiology’s website says the company sells 5.5 million hearing aids annually.“Toward... Continue reading…

Samsung’s fourth-generation foldables are already getting a discount. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Following Apple’s “Far Out” event, where it had an impressive showing with the iPhone 14 Pro and a bunch of other gadgets, Samsung is countering with a strong right hook, offering the first-ever (and best) discounts on its fourth-generation foldable phones. Available for $999.99 at launch, the 128GB configuration of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is currently discounted to $899.99 at Amazon.The larger Z Fold 4 has also received a significant discount, lowering the $1,799.99 launch price of the 256GB model to $1,599.99. You can also find the 512GB configuration discounted to $1,719.99, down from its usual $1,919.99.It may still be a little gimmicky, but the fourth iteration of the Galaxy Z Flip is actually a pretty decent phone with solid... Continue reading…

GoldeEye 007 is back. | Image: Rare GoldenEye 007 is finally coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox. Nintendo announced today that Rare is releasing GoldenEye 007 HD on Nintendo Switch and Xbox soon as a remaster of the legendary Nintendo 64 title that first launched in 1997.The remastered game includes 4K resolution, smoother frame rates, and even split-screen local multiplayer. Rare says it will even arrive on Xbox Game Pass and Nintendo Switch Online. Nintendo is also adding Pokémon Stadium, Mario Party, Pilotwings 64, 1080° Snowboarding, and Excitebike 64 to Nintendo Switch Online. There is no announced date for the GoldenEye 007 release just yet.It’s been a long time coming after an HD remaster was supposed to launch on Xbox 360 in 2008, but licensing and rights issues... Continue reading…

Voice could be a way to detect disease. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Researchers are building a database of human voices that they’ll use to develop AI-based tools that could eventually diagnose serious diseases; they’re targeting everything from Alzheimer’s to cancer. The National Institutes of Health-funded project, announced Tuesday, is an effort to turn the human voice into something that could be used as a biomarker for disease, like blood or temperature.“What’s beautiful about voice data is that it’s probably one of the cheapest types of data that you can collect from people,” says Olivier Elemento, a professor at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and one of the lead investigators on the project. “It’s a very accessible type of information you could access from... Continue reading…

The Biden administration launched a new website — CleanEnergy.gov — aimed at helping Americans navigate the new green energy tax credits contained in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). That could especially be useful for people looking to buy a new electric vehicle but finding themselves confused by the litany of new requirements about assembly and battery materials.The $739 billion measure carries a host of tax credits and discounts on everything from EVs to solar energy to regular appliances like refrigerators, stoves, and washing machines. The new website is designed to help Americans save money on home upgrades or new purchases while also steering them toward cleaner, more efficient products.The website serves as a hub... Continue reading…

Play as this adorable fox on new platforms soon. | Image: Finji Tunic, the indie hit where you explore a mysterious world as an adorable fox adventurer, launches on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on September 27th. The news was announced during Nintendo’s September 2022 Direct.Tunic is a delightful game that I played through earlier this year. The game drops you in its world with little explanation of what’s going on — much of the world is even presented in its own made-up language. And enemies are tough, so you’ll always be on your toes while exploring the world. But over time, you’ll start to get a grasp on everything, helped by finding pieces of a wonderfully illustrated in-game instruction manual along the way.Previously, Tunic was available on Xbox, PC, and Mac, and I... Continue reading…

Nintendo Nintendo announced Fire Emblem Engage during its latest Direct showcase. The new strategy-based game will release for the Nintendo Switch on January 20th, 2023. It doesn’t seem to be a direct follow-up to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, though Nintendo is capitalizing on its popularity with an adventure that shares some similarities, including lots of battles and a free-roam mode to visit NPCs and buy new gear.It was a little tough to parse from the trailer, but the big feature in Fire Emblem Engage’s battle system seems to be the ability to equip gear that gives you the strength of past characters from the franchise’s history, which should provide some fan service for those who enjoy seeing more of its iconic characters, like Marth. Continue reading…

The Sub Mini will be available October 6th. | Image: Sonos Sonos fans have been waiting ages for a home theater subwoofer that’s cheaper than the $749 Sub, and now it’s here. After design leaks and a delayed launch, Sonos today is officially introducing the Sub Mini. It’s priced at $429, which is honestly lower than I was expecting; I figured this thing wouldn’t go for less than $499, but I’m glad to be wrong. The Sub Mini is available for preorder today and will be released on October 6th. It comes in either black or white, both featuring a matte finish.Just how “mini” is the Sub Mini? It weighs 14 pounds, less than half of the 36.3-pound Sub. It stands 12 inches tall compared to the Sub’s 15.3 inches, and the cylindrical design has a 9.1-inch diameter. Those size and heft differences mean... Continue reading…

Beautiful chassis, fast processor, great screen, and software that doesn’t keep up Continue reading…

Image: NASA Ames Research Center The Verge is now powered by Coral, and you are all beautiful fish Continue reading…

Revolutionizing the media with blog posts Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel has accidentally published the specifications for its 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors. A day after confirming an upcoming 13th Gen CPU will run at 6GHz at stock, Intel published and quickly deleted specs for its Core i5-13600K, Core i7-13700K, and Core i9-13900K CPUs.Intel posted the specs to its Canadian website (Google cached view), and Twitter users were quick to spot them. The specs reveal that the top of the line i9 13900K will have 24 cores and 32 threads, with the performance cores running at a maximum frequency of 5.4GHz. The i7 13700K will ship with 16 cores and 24 threads, with up to 5.3GHz on the performance cores. Finally, the i5 13600K comes with 14 cores and 20 threads, and a maximum frequency of 5.1GHz on the... Continue reading…

The Xperia Stream clips onto the back of Sony’s smartphone. | Image: Sony Sony has launched a smartphone cooling fan accessory that’s designed to lower the temperature of its Xperia 1 IV under intense gaming loads. The Xperia Stream also offers a selection of extra ports in addition to working as a cooling accessory. It’s available to preorder now in Japan for 23,100 yen (around $162) with shipping expected on October 14th.The aim with these kinds of accessories, which have also been produced by the likes of Asus and Razer, is to let a phone’s processor run at higher speeds for longer, by preventing the kinds of high temperatures that can lead to performance throttling. Asus has the AeroActive Cooler for its gaming-focused ROG Phone lineup, while Razer recently released an RGB cooling fan that’s designed to... Continue reading…

But doing so obviously leaves your phone unprotected. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple will let you remove the security patches installed by iOS 16’s Rapid Security Response system, which can install patches without the need to fully update your iPhone (or even without having to restart it, in some cases). According to a support document spotted by MacRumors, you can remove a Rapid Security Response update by going to Settings > General > About, then tapping on the iOS Version. From there, you’ll be presented with a “Remove Security Update” button.The document doesn’t give any examples of why you’d need to uninstall one of the patches, leaving your phone open to the vulnerability it protects against. It’s easy to imagine a few special circumstances where the feature could be useful, perhaps if one messes up some... Continue reading…

Concept art from EA and Koei Tecmo’s new game. | Image: EA EA and Koei Tecmo are partnering on a new title that they’re describing as “the next great hunting game.” When I first read that description, my thoughts jumped to Big Buck Hunter, the arcade series of hunting games where you shoot wild animals, but looking at the concept art (above), combined with who’s making it, I’m guessing this game will actually be much more like Capcom’s popular Monster Hunter series.In a press release, EA and Koei Tecmo describe this new game as an original IP that “delivers a truly AAA experience based in fantasy feudal Japan.” It will be developed by Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force, which is known for the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors “musou” action games. And a statement from an EA exec Jeff Gamon says Omega... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Samsung’s behemoth Odyssey Ark, a $3,500 55-inch curved gaming monitor, is going on sale today after a few weeks of being available for preorders. And — somewhat shockingly, given how gaming launches have gone in the past few years — you may actually be able to just walk into a store and buy one. Checking stock at our local Best Buys, several Verge staff members found that stores had one or two models available for pickup today.To be clear, I’m not saying that you should casually spend a month or two’s rent on a mini LED gaming monitor that’s the size of a decent TV. In fact, it feels a little bit wrong that it could even be that easy — there have been nine months of hype building around the Odyssey Ark since its CES 2022 debut, and... Continue reading…

The next State of Play is happening soon. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony just announced that it will be hosting a PlayStation State of Play video presentation on Tuesday at 6PM ET. The show will be about 20 minutes long and cover games coming to PS5, PS4, and PSVR2.The presentation is taking place ahead of Tokyo Game Show, which kicks off later this week. This State of Play will feature “some great updates from our amazing Japanese partners, along with a few other surprises from developers all around the world,” Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Sid Shuman said in a blog post.Tuesday promises to be a big day for video game news, as Nintendo’s next big Direct event will be taking place just a few hours earlier at 10AM ET, and Sony acknowledged the situation in a tweet replying to Nintendo’s Direct... Continue reading…

A robot car of the General Motors subsidiary Cruise is on a test drive. | Photo by Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company owned by General Motors, will launch a robotaxi service in Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas, before the end of 2022, the company’s CEO said today.The company currently operates a ride-hailing service in only one city, San Francisco, where it received permission to begin charging customers for rides earlier this year. That service took years to scale up; Cruise now says it can do the same in two new cities in 90 days.The company has done autonomous testing in Phoenix through a delivery partnership with Walmart. But it has yet to deploy any vehicles in Austin, which Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said was unprecedented.“This is something people thought may take years”“In Austin, what I’m really... Continue reading…

Photo by Kimberly White / Getty Images for TechCrunch Peloton co-founder and former CEO John Foley has resigned as executive chairman of the board, marking the latest big shakeup at the connected fitness company (via The Wall Street Journal).Things have been quite turbulent as of late for Peloton. Despite selling products and classes that are widely beloved, the company has had to cut jobs and adjust prices (both decreases and, months later, increases) this year after overextending to meet increased demand during the early part of the pandemic. In its Q4 2022 earnings report in August, the company reported a $1.2 billion operating loss, though current CEO Barry McCarthy positioned its earnings as a sign of “substantial progress.”Foley, who was Peloton’s CEO for almost 10 years, stepped... Continue reading…

Embrace the shadows. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge A little while back, my colleague Mitchell Clark and I challenged each other to use our old iPhones for the weekend — mine was an original iPhone SE, and they had an iPhone 5S. I bailed a few hours in after my wireless connection flaked out, and I watched the phone battery drop 10 percent in a matter of minutes. (Mitchell saw the challenge through.)But it wasn’t a totally futile exercise. When I looked back at the photos I took during those few fleeting hours, I noticed something I hadn’t seen much of in photos from newer phones — something I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing. That thing? Contrast. It’s been out of favor in smartphone image processing lately, but there are some easy ways to bring it back to your photos. I think... Continue reading…

Satellites are the new balloons. | Image: Alphabet Alphabet’s Loon project, which aimed to provide internet via a series of balloons, was shut down last year — but the tech associated with it has been spun off into a startup that ditches the floating platforms and aims to use lasers and the cloud to provide internet to remote places. The company inheriting the Google tech is called Aalyria, and while CNBC reports that Alphabet has a minority stake in it, it’s no longer going to be a direct subsidiary of Google’s shell company.Aalyria has two main focuses: Tightbeam, a laser communications system that uses beams of light to transmit data between base stations and endpoints, and Spacetime, the cloud-based software that’s meant to juggle constantly changing connections. Spacetime was o... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A “hard bundle” of Disney Plus and Hulu could be coming in the next few years if Disney CEO Bob Chapek has anything to say about it. Chapek spoke with the Los Angeles Times during Disney’s big fan event, D23, this past weekend. It was one of the first times he’s spoken about the company and the myriad of controversies it has reckoned with over the last two years. Most of what he said was very neutral, but then they got onto the conversation of the future of Hulu, the streaming giant currently co-owned by Comcast, and Chapek showed his cards... just a little.Disney is currently on the hook to buy out Comcast’s stake in Hulu as early as 2024. The two companies are haggling over what Hulu is actually worth — with Comcast claiming it could... Continue reading…

The Split Pad Compact will be available in light gray with yellow (as is shown here) or apricot red. Hori released the crowd-pleasing Split Pad Pro in 2019, the Joy-Con alternatives that make playing games so much more comfortable. It’s basically like using Nintendo’s Switch Pro controller in handheld mode, giving you bigger buttons, analog sticks, and cozy grips to accompany your play sessions.Now, it’s experimenting with a slightly smaller pastel-colored version called the Split Pad Compact. In the US, the Compact is releasing on October 2nd at Best Buy for $49.99 (with more retailers following later in the month), the same price as the Pro model. You’ll be able to buy it in light gray with yellow (as pictured throughout this post) or in apricot red. The Compact features textured analog sticks, which the Pro does... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge One of the cool new features in iOS 16, the latest version of Apple’s OS, is called Live Text, which allows you to quickly capture and use text from both a still photo and, now, a video as well. While Android doesn’t (yet) capture text directly from video, it does capture text from still photos using the handy Google Lens app — and with a little bit of maneuvering, you can use Lens to capture text from a video as well. It may not be quite as quick as Live Text, but it’s mostly painless and works just as well.Here’s what to do.

The Verge Google has revealed a series of new lock screen widgets for the iPhone, including one for Gmail, timed along with the release of iOS 16. A refreshed lock screen is the most obvious change to iOS in this latest update (even if it’s not a new thing for Android users), and Google’s major apps will support it, but you’ll have to wait a little while.While some developers are pushing updates to their apps today with new widgets, Google says you can expect these to arrive “in the coming weeks,” so until they’re available, we’ll walk you through the showcase. Image: Google Lockscreen widgets for several Google apps shown on iPhone screens. The Gmail lock screen widget includes several different displays with clean,... Continue reading…

Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. | Image: Roku Weird: The Al Yankovic Story opens with a shirtless Daniel Radcliffe screaming in a hospital, demanding a pencil and paper from Lin-Manuel Miranda. Things only get weirder from there. Though it may look like the life story of the titular parody singer, the movie is actually more of a parody of biopics than anything else. Much like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story lampooned the many overserious films about major musical stars, Weird does the same, only it pretends to be about a real person. After watching it, I don’t think I know anything new about Yankovic — and I definitely know a lot of things that are not remotely true. Fittingly for a guy who writes absurd lyrics over popular songs, Weird takes a popular concept — the music biopic —... Continue reading…

Blue Origin’s uncrewed NS-23 launch experiences an anomaly | Image: Blue Origin (YouTube) Blue Origin’s NS-23 uncrewed flight ended abruptly on Saturday morning after the spaceflight company aborted the mission due to an issue with the New Shepard rocket’s booster. The failure happened just as the rocket reached MaxQ, or the moment when it reaches maximum dynamic pressure.Blue Origin confirmed that the rocket suffered a booster failure on Twitter, but notes the “escape system performed as designed.” In a later update, Blue Origin adds that the “booster impacted the ground” and that there were “no reported injuries.”

Ikea’s Obegränsad record player. | Image: Ikea Ikea’s record player made in collaboration with music supergroup Swedish House Mafia is set to go on sale on October 1st. The all-black device sports an unsurprisingly minimalistic look and will cost you $159.99 once it hits Ikea’s maze-like stores.The record player is part of Ikea’s overarching Obegränsad (the Swedish word for “unlimited”) collection, which includes an equally-as-modern armchair, desk, LED work lamp, record stand, laptop stand, and shelving units, among other items. Ikea first announced the record player in June, marking the furniture maker’s second attempt at creating and selling a record player. The record player it was working on in 2018 never went on sale, but it looks like we have a much better shot of actually... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram’s attempt to take on TikTok has cost the platform millions of dollars, countless app updates, and a week-long firestorm involving the most famous people on the planet, mad about the direction it was going in. And so far, Instagram hasn’t caught up to the company it’s chasing.An internal Meta document obtained by The Wall Street Journal paints the picture of Instagram struggling to court creators as Reels engagement falls. Compared to 197.8 million hours users spend on TikTok a day, Instagram users are spending 17.6 million watching Reels — less than a tenth, according to the document titled, “Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022.” The report, published in August, said Reels engagement had fallen 13.6 percent over the last... Continue reading…