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Photo by James Bareham / The Verge There are few things as enjoyable as local multiplayer gaming, and nothing beats saving some coin on tech that doesn’t usually go on sale. The Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers are a prime example, costing $69.99 at Woot instead of its regular $79.99 price. Woot is running this deal until Sunday, March 20th, or until it sells out. The neon blue and red controller combo is not currently available, but the matching gray set is still for sale at this discounted price.It’s rare to get any discount on Joy-Con controllers. In many games, an individual Joy-Con is usable as a small gamepad, meaning you can play four-player local multiplayer with just these Joy-Cons and the pair that came with your Switch. What perfect timing this is, as the... Continue reading…

CEO Matt Mullenweg on why he bets big on small companies Continue reading…

A robot vacuum cleaner that can look after itself, for a hefty price Continue reading…

A rendering of Intel’s new Magdeburg fab | Image: Intel Intel has announced a massive new investment in its European manufacturing sites, with a new €17 billion “leading-edge semiconductor fab mega-site” in Germany, and a €12 billion expansion of its existing Ireland fab.The company is also building a new R&D and design hub in France, and plans to invest in additional areas in Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Spain for manufacturing, foundry services, and research. All told, Intel is planning to invest over €33 billion in its initial wave of European R&D and manufacturing, as part of a total of €80 billion invested in the EU over the next decade.Intel plans to invest €80 billion in EU manufacturing over the next decadeThe new German site will consist of two semiconductor fabs in Magdeburg,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When doing some of its own research, Intel’s security team discovered a flaw in AMD’s years-old patch against Spectre-based vulnerabilities, according to a report by Tom’s Hardware. AMD has since provided an update on its security bulletin in response, where it suggests using an alternate mitigation option and has additional advice for software developers.AMD’s years-old fix doesn’t adequately protect against SpectreSpectre is a type of security flaw affecting nearly all modern Intel and AMD processors that can give attackers access to sensitive data while remaining undetected. Last week, researchers found that Intel and Arm processors are susceptible to a new kind of Spectre v2 attack — although it’s just a proof-of-concept — called... Continue reading…

Lionsgate Entertainment The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent may achieve the highest concentration of Nicolas Cage possible in a piece of media without advanced scientific instruments. It’s a movie about Nic Cage (played by Nic Cage) teaming up with a possibly criminal fan of Nic Cage to make a movie about Nic Cage (played by Nic Cage playing Nic Cage) while occasionally yelling at and / or kissing a second, imaginary Nic Cage (played by Nic Cage run through a creepy de-aging filter). It features clips from several earlier Nic Cage movies as well as a Nic Cage memorabilia room containing a Nic Cage statue and that sequin pillow with Nic Cage on it. Nic Cage attended the film’s premiere at SXSW. So did at least one person holding a paper cutout of Nic Cage’s... Continue reading…

Xiaomi has announced the international version of the Xiaomi 12 Pro, its first global flagship phone since dropping the “Mi” branding. As with earlier phones in the Mi series like last year’s Mi 11, it’s a high-end device that seeks to beat competitors like Samsung on price-performance ratio.The design of the phone is straightforward but attractive. The grey model I’ve been testing has a matte finish on the frosted glass that’s almost impossible to mar with fingerprints. The screen is a slightly curved 6.73-inch 120Hz 1440p LTPO OLED panel that looks great. Like every other 2022 flagship, the processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. You can get 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and there’s 256GB of storage. The battery is 4,600mAh and charges at... Continue reading…

AMD’s latest desktop processor, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, has finally gotten a release date and price after being announced earlier this year at CES 2022. It’ll hit stores next month on April 20th for $449, ushering in what AMD proudly declares to be the “world’s fastest gaming processor.The new Ryzen 7 5800X3D is extremely similar to the original Ryzen 7 5800X model, with eight cores, 16 threads, and compatibility with AMD’s AM4 socket. But there’s one major difference: the Ryzen 7 5800X3D marks the debut of AMD’s 3D-stacking V-Cache technology, allowing AMD to up the L3 cache from 32MB to 96MB. The company says that the additional cache should translate to about a 15 percent boost in overall performance compared to the Ryzen 5900X (despite... Continue reading…

Volvo In the not too distant future, you’ll be able to sip coffee while your electric vehicle sips electrons. That’s because Volvo is teaming up with ChargePoint to build a network of EV chargers at Starbucks locations across five US states.The companies plan on installing 15 DC fast charging stations at Starbucks along a 1,350-mile route that stretches from Seattle to Denver. Each station will feature four plugs, making it a total of 60 chargers. And they will also bear Volvo’s branding, making it one of the few EV charging stations in the US to feature an automaker’s logo aside from Tesla’s Supercharger network.The chargers will be fully installed by the end of 2022The chargers will be fully installed by the end of 2022, the companies... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Arm is preparing to cut hundreds of employees from its global workforce after being forced to abandon its $40 billion sale to Nvidia last month. The Telegraph reports that the company’s chief executive Rene Haas told staff on Monday that between 12 and 15 percent of the company’s employees could be affected. This could translate to almost a thousand employees if, as The Guardian reports, Arm has over 6,500 employees worldwide. Arm says the majority of roles affected will be in its UK and US-based workforce.“This is going to be a tough time for everyone, so I want to be clear on why we are doing this,” Haas said in an email seen by The Telegraph. “We need to be more disciplined about our costs and where we’re investing. To stay... Continue reading…

DeepWell Digital Therapeutics Devolver Digital founder Mike Wilson is partnering with medical device expert Ryan Douglas to launch DeepWell Digital Therapeutics, a video game company that will both develop games that can treat health conditions. The company will also help outside companies identify existing games that have therapeutic value, the founders say.Video game-based tools can help with conditions like depression and ADHD, research shows. DeepWell Digital Therapeutics plans to build on those studies. “There was an amazing amount of science that had already been done,” Douglas says. “We started to recognize exactly how therapeutic these games already were.”Often, a game used as a therapy would be designed as a therapy first, with fun or engaging gameplay... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images Tesla has raised prices across its entire line-up of electric vehicles. Prices have increased by between 5 to 10 percent, with the cheapest car the company sells — the Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive — now starting at $46,990, while its top-end Model X Tri motor saw a price increase of $12,500, from $126,490 to $138,990.It’s the second price bump Tesla has implemented in less than a week, after it increased the cost of certain long-range models last Wednesday. However, today’s price raises are not only more substantial than last week’s but apply to every vehicle the company sells.Here’s how those increases play out (with old prices sourced from archived copies of Tesla’s website via Wayback Machine, dated to March 10th or more recent):

The Galaxy A33. | Image: @Evleaks Samsung’s Galaxy A33, rumored to be the most affordable of the three devices the company will announce on March 17th, has leaked in full. Evan Blass has posted a series of renders of the phone over on Twitter, while Appuals has its specs. These include a 6.4-inch 90Hz 1080p OLED display, a 5,000mAh battery, and four rear cameras. It’ll reportedly be priced at €379 in Europe, which is roughly $417 stateside.Reports suggest the Galaxy A33 will be announced alongside the Galaxy A53 and Galaxy A73 at Samsung’s “Awesome Galaxy A Event” this week. Samsung’s midrange A-series are some of its most popular devices around the world. In fact, the Samsung Galaxy A12 was the sixth best-selling phone in the world in 2021 according to Counterpoint... Continue reading…

Power cords for bitcoin mining machines are plugged into electrical outlets at a mining facility operated by Bitmain Technologies Ltd. in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, on Friday, Aug. 11, 2017. | Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images A de facto ban on Bitcoin and Ether died in the European Union Parliament today. The controversial proposal attempted to clean up pollution from the most energy-inefficient cryptocurrencies. But even though the proposal failed, cryptocurrencies are still likely to face scrutiny from policymakers as the EU tries to tackle twin climate and energy crises. Getting rid of their pollution has become a global game of whack-a-mole since China banned cryptocurrencies last year.The EU Parliament’s committee on economic and monetary affairs voted on Monday to move forward with a legislative framework for regulating digital assets. In the process, it decided to drop a proposed rule in the framework that would have prohibited people in the EU from... Continue reading…

One of many fast NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market. | Samsung 18 months ago, Microsoft revealed that one of the most important advancements in its new Xbox Series X console would be coming to PC — the ability to stream tremendous amounts of data from a blazing fast NVMe solid state drive to your GPU, instead of relying on your pesky CPU to decompress it first. The so-called “DirectStorage API” would let games load more detailed worlds, and load them more quickly than before.Now, Microsoft says the DirectStorage API has arrived. “Starting today, Windows games can ship with DirectStorage. This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games by allowing developers to more fully utilize the speed of the latest storage devices,” reads the company’s blog post. ... Continue reading…

“Facebook itself is not an innovative company,” said the former Nintendo boss. | Image: Bloomberg Reggie Fils-Aimé (who led Nintendo of America before Bowser took over) isn’t impressed with the company formerly known as Facebook, or its idea of the metaverse. He lobbed a few fireballs in Mark Zuckerberg’s direction during an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang at South by Southwest over the weekend, saying that Meta isn’t innovative and that it bought or copied almost all of its interesting ideas.Just so we’re all on the same page when discussing this concept, Fils-Amié defines the metaverse as “a digital space where you interact with your friends in a social and gaming type of environment” during his interview. (You can also read our great explainer on the idea here if you want to go deeper.) In general, Fils-Amié doesn’t seem... Continue reading…

Playing Destiny on multiple platforms? Here’s what you need to know | Image: Bungie If you’re playing Destiny 2 on more than one platform, enabling cross-save allows you to maintain your progression regardless of which platform you’re playing on, meaning you can finally move your Guardians, with all of their loot, to a different platform and freely jump between console and PC at your leisure. Here’s how to do it, whether you want to transfer your account data between a PC and console or vice-versa.First, there are a few important disclaimers to keep in mind before you go through with activating cross-save for your account:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is facing a lawsuit from a Florida restaurant chain owner that accuses the company of directing users to “unauthorized” Google-branded food ordering webpages, where it uses restaurants names “without their approval,” as first reported by Ars Technica.A copy of the lawsuit alleges Google employs “bait-and-switch” tactics by placing its “Order Online” button at the top of restaurants’ profile panels on the search engine. The large blue button redirects users to a food.google.com page where they can select items from a restaurant’s menu and then place an order through a variety of third-party services, like Postmates, DoorDash, and UberEats — not through the restaurant itself. These services take a commission from participating... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Researchers have discovered a new type of destructive wiper malware affecting computers in Ukraine, making it at least the third strain of wiper to have hit Ukrainian systems since the Russian invasion began.The malware, dubbed CaddyWiper, was found by researchers at Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET, who shared details in a tweet thread posted Monday.According to the researchers, the malware erases user data and partition information from any drives attached to a compromised machine. Sample code shared on Twitter suggests the malware corrupts files on the machine by overwriting them with null byte characters, making them unrecoverable.“We know that if the wiper works, it will effectively render the system useless,” Jean-Ian... Continue reading…

Photo by Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images Only a dozen states are regularly reporting sewage data to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, Politico reported. The system, which launched in 2020, collects data on levels of the coronavirus at sewage plants around the country. But with most states not participating, the agency isn’t able to get a clear picture of how the virus is spreading nationwide.Wastewater is a valuable public health tool for the COVID-19 pandemic because it doesn’t rely on people showing up for testing or reporting the results from tests taken at home. Levels of the virus in sewage also tend to rise before cases start to go up, so it’s an early warning sign for increased spread. Early signs of the omicron... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last week, Twitter introduced one of its worst product decisions in a while: the service would default to showing the algorithmically served Home feed while the reverse-chronological Latest feed was accessible in a separate tab. The change, which was available first on iOS and was set to arrive “soon” on Android and the web, made it more difficult to view tweets in chronological order. Following significant pushback, Twitter announced Monday that it would be reverting things to the way they used to be.“We heard you — some of you always want to see latest Tweets first,” Twitter said in a tweet on its support account. “We’ve switched the timeline back and removed the tabbed experience for now while we explore other options.”

The “Nintendo GameCube Advance” is a strange piece of internet gaming history: a fanciful render of a portable version of the GameCube that has made the rounds online since 2005. But while the render has long been dismissed as a fan-made fake, YouTuber GingerOfOz has taken matters into his own hands and built a real, functional version of the concept, as spotted by Eurogamer.Ginger didn’t just build his own real GameCube Advance, though: he also tracked down the original artist behind the 2005 mockup and got the scoop on how and why they made it in the first place. Ginger is no stranger to making slick custom Nintendo mods, like his impressive Wii Boy Color from 2020 that somehow managed to shrink an entire Wii into the... Continue reading…

The modder behind the project went all the way for the peak early 2000s aesthetic. | Image: Connor55 on MacRumors Apple is releasing cool new desktop Macs again, but people are still doing plenty of fun projects using older Apple machines. A fun example that we spotted recently (h/t Input) was this mod by someone named Connor, who took the internals of an M1 Mac Mini and put them into one of Apple’s most iconic desktops, the iMac G4.As Connor shows in a YouTube video, the G4 still has all of its original functionality after his mod — it can play DVDs from an internal drive (though they did have to swap out the original one, which connected using IDE) — and at first glance, it hasn’t been changed at all. But with the screen on, it’s obvious the computer is running the modern macOS Monterey, instead of OS X 10.5 Leopard, the last operating system... Continue reading…

Last week, a flurry of news reports worryingly claimed that Russia was threatening to strand an American astronaut on the International Space Station in direct response to sanctions placed on the country as it continues to invade neighboring Ukraine. But Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos is trying to put those fears to rest, saying that it will bring home the astronaut as planned.The NASA astronaut in question is Mark Vande Hei, who has been living on the International Space Station since April 2021. Vande Hei launched to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan, along with two cosmonauts. While living on the ISS, his stay was extended to a full year, and he is slated to return home in another Soyuz capsule on March... Continue reading…

The iPhone 13 Mini and iPhone 13. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge iOS 15.4, the latest version of Apple’s iPhone operating system, has been released and should soon be available to download ahead of the Friday release of Apple’s new third-generation iPhone SE and green iPhone 13. The update includes big new features like the ability to use Face ID while wearing a mask, alongside smaller additions like a handful of new emoji. The new version of iOS launches alongside iPadOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3, which add support for Apple’s new Universal Control feature.Universal Control allows you to use a Mac’s keyboard and mouse to control an iPad completely wirelessly, including the ability to drag and drop files from the tablet back to a computer. Universal Control requires your Mac to be running macOS Monterey... Continue reading…

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands launches on March 25th. | Image: Gearbox Software Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a new spinoff in the popular Borderlands series, is set to launch on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on March 25th, and when it’s available, it will support crossplay for all platforms — including PlayStation.Sony has been famously resistant to crossplay, originally blocking support for it in some popular multiplayer games like Fortnite and Rocket League. While the company eventually enabled it for those two games, Borderlands 3’s crossplay update that launched in June 2021 did not include support for PlayStation.However, when Gearbox CEO and president Randy Pitchford revealed Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands’ crossplay support in a tweet on Sunday (via Kotaku), he said that PlayStation crossplay will be enabled and... Continue reading…

Apple is marketing its Studio products to the same people it marketed Pro products to — the creative types. | Image: Apple Apple has a “Pro” problem — while some products bearing the label are clearly intended for professional use (like Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and the Mac Pro), years of Apple and competitors slapping the name onto wireless earbuds and slightly fancier phones have made it hard to tell what “Pro” even means. Which is why my ears perked up when Apple used a different word to describe its new computer and monitor that clearly targeted its audience of creative professionals: “Studio.” I wondered if I was witnessing the start of a new brand for Apple.From the jump, Apple made it clear who the Mac Studio and Studio Display were for. It showed them being used by musicians, 3D artists, and developers in its presentation, and the message was... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that when the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia closes, the two companies’ streaming apps will experience a merger of their own. As noted by Variety, Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels confirmed the move when speaking at the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet, & Telecom Conference (that’s a mouthful) on Monday.This was our first real glimpse of what this new company’s content plan looks like. Wiedenfels gave a very loose roadmap for the streaming app situation post-merger. Before the two apps merge into one mega app, there will be some bundling options. (Think how Disney often bundles Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN.) Then, at some point, the two will be combined into one massive and potentially... Continue reading…

Sabrent’s new Thunderbolt 3 dock. | Image: Sabrent Sabrent has released a new Thunderbolt 3 dock, which includes up to 16TB of storage alongside a more typical array of dock ports. That storage doesn’t come cheap, however. Although the 2TB version of the docking station is listed for $499.99 on Sabrent’s site, opting for the full 16TB of storage sets you back an eye-watering $2,900.That sounds like a lot, but Sabrent’s dock is combining two computer accessories that are already relatively pricey when sold individually. One of the best-regarded Thunderbolt 3 docks on the market, Caldigit’s TS3 Plus, typically retails for between $250 and $300 and doesn’t include any extra storage. And 2TB of external storage can easily cost upwards of $200 depending on the specifications you need. ... Continue reading…

The $249.99 xScreen is a unique Xbox accessory Continue reading…

Ford announced plans to introduce seven new electric vehicles in Europe as part of a $2 billion investment. The automaker aims to sell 600,000 battery-powered vehicles on the continent by 2026, building toward a goal of all EV sales and complete carbon neutrality across its production footprint by 2035.The news comes on the heels of Ford’s announcement that it would be splitting its business into two parts: one focuses on traditional gas-powered vehicles called Ford Blue and the other on EVs and software called Ford Model e. Ford expects half of its global sales to be electric vehicles by 2030, including all of its passenger vehicles in Europe. Previously, the automaker had said it would spend $1 billion to convert a... 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 will actually go to space this month instead of just pretending to on live television. Space tourism venture Blue Origin announced the latest crew to head to the edge of space on the company’s New Shepard rocket, and as rumored, Davidson is the latest celebrity guest to join the crew’s ranks.This will be Blue Shepard’s fourth time sending a crew of people to space and back. The latest flight, set for March 23rd, will carry a group of six. On board with Davidson will be angel investor and former CEO of Party America Marty Allen, as well as husband and wife duo Marc and Sharon Hagle. Marc Hagle is the CEO of Tricor International, while Sharon Hagle founded a non-profit called SpaceKids Global, which... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Walmart is serving up another round of console restocks on this Pi Day (that’s today). The superstore giant is known for reliable console drops that don’t require buying a pricey bundle, but it does require paying for a subscription service. Once again, access to these consoles is exclusive to paying Walmart Plus members when it goes live today at 12PM ET / 9AM PT. All three major consoles will be available, including the standard PlayStation 5 equipped with a disc drive for $499, the disc-less PlayStation 5 Digital Edition for $399, and also the Xbox Series X for $499.To get your console of choice today, you’re going to need a paid Walmart Plus account, which costs $12.95 per month or $98 per year. While free trial accounts are not... Continue reading…

The Elgato Stream Deck Mini set up with Zoom controls One of my missions during the extended work-from-home transition of the past few years has been to find little ways to make the annoying parts of the experience slightly better and less annoying. Like many others, I’ve found a comfortable, ergonomic chair, set up a dedicated standing desk that is only used for work, and explored leveling up my video call quality by repurposing a mirrorless camera as a webcam.But one of the most annoying things has been using Zoom itself — namely, fumbling around for the mute / unmute and leave call buttons. In two years, I’ve not been able to memorize the keyboard shortcuts for them, and since when I’m on Zoom calls, my hands are usually off my keyboard anyways. I’m always the last one to leave the call... Continue reading…

It’s been a long time since I searched the streets for a phone booth — and it turns out to be an even more desperate experience when you’re being tailed by vicious spirits. But it’s something I found myself doing constantly while playing the first few hours of Ghostwire: Tokyo, the latest release from Tango Gameworks, the studio behind the unsettling horror series The Evil Within. While Ghostwire covers some similar ground, with lots of creepy folklore monsters lurking around, it’s also a clear shift from survival horror to action-adventure. And early on, I’m having a blast with the mix of tense firefights and horror-like exploration.As the title implies, the game takes place in modern-day Tokyo, albeit a disturbingly empty one. Thanks... Continue reading…

The new OpenRun are described by Shokz as “Aeropex with Quick Charge.” | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you do a lot of outdoor activities, be it riding a bicycle, walking, or anything else, it may be a good idea to, for safety purposes, invest in headphones that don’t completely cut you off from hearing the sounds of the world. One of the best values right now is the OpenRun from Shokz (formerly known as AfterShokz), an unconventional-looking set of headphones. Normally $129.95 at Amazon, they’re $109.95 in black, blue, grey, or red colorways.These connect and operate like regular wireless headphones. But instead of covering your ears, the OpenRun leave them, well, open and instead deliver sound through bones near your ears — and it works surprisingly well. In case you were curious, these are the successor to the AfterShokz Aeropex, a... Continue reading…

Yesterday’s iPhone, today Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Russia’s promised ban on Instagram has kicked into effect today, with the social media platform inaccessible for the vast majority of the country’s population, according to internet monitoring service GlobalCheck.The country announced plans to ban Instagram last week, in response to parent company Meta’s decision to allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been steadily restricting access to online platforms in an effort to control the flow of information about the war and has already banned Facebook and Twitter.Last Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a tweet that “This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off... Continue reading…

In the US, CD sales increased for the first time since 2004. | Image: RIAA CD sales in the US for 2021 increased for the first time in almost two decades, according to data published by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Shipments rose from 31.6 million in 2020 to 46.6 million in 2021, and revenue from the format rose from $483.2 million to $584.2 million. The RIAA’s numbers corroborate a similar report from MRC Data published earlier this year.Although CD sales are still far from their 2000 peak — when almost a billion CD albums were shipped in the US — Axios notes that the increase is another key element of the resurgence in physical music. Vinyl sales have been steadily increasing for over a decade-and-a-half now, and hit 39.7 million units in the US in 2021, bringing in $1 billion in... Continue reading…

Photo by Nora Tam/South China Morning Post via Getty Images Foxconn and other manufacturers are suspending operations in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen after authorities announced a partial lockdown due to a rise in COVID-19 cases. Businesses providing non-essential services have been ordered to close and everyone in the city of 17 million will be tested for COVID-19 following the reporting of 60 new infections on Sunday.Foxconn is the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of electronics, and the most important supplier to companies including Apple and Samsung. Many Chinese tech giants like Huawei, Tencent, and Oppo are headquartered in Shenzhen, which is situated near the border with Hong Kong. Foxconn says it’s stopping production at its Longhua and Guanlan factories until further notice, N... Continue reading…

Image by Samsung Samsung has started sending out invites for its second event of the year, which is set to air online on Thursday, March 17th, 2022 at 10AM ET. It’s called the Awesome Galaxy A Event on the invite, and it’s dedicated to the phonemaker’s midrange A-series devices, in case you couldn’t tell.The Galaxy A73 and A53 may both come with 5GIt’s rumored that Samsung will add two new phones to the lineup: the Galaxy A73 and A53. Last year, Samsung announced the Galaxy A72 and A52 at an Unpacked event held around the same time. Both phones are due for a refresh, and it’s likely that we just might get our first glimpse at this month’s event.Rumors and leaks indicate the Galaxy A73 and A53 may both come with 5G, which would be an upgrade for the... Continue reading…

The popular Vanced YouTube app is being discontinued, after a legal threat from Google. The creators of Vanced have revealed the project will be shut down in the coming days, with download links set to be removed. While the app will continue to work for anyone who currently has it installed on Android, without any future updates it’s likely to stop working at some point soon. The Vanced owners say they’ve had to discontinue the project “due to legal reasons.”Google sent the Vanced owners a cease and desist letter recently, which has forced the developers to stop distributing and developing the app. “We were asked to remove all references to ‘YouTube’, change the logo, and remove all links related to YouTube products,” says an admin from... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max may be the only models in the upcoming lineup to carry a new A16 chip, according to reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via 9to5Mac). In a tweet, Kuo indicates that the standard iPhone 14 and 14 Max will be left with the A15 chipset that comes in all models of the iPhone 13.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Ford will soon start selling and shipping some Ford Explorers without the chips that power rear air conditioning and heating controls, according to a report from Automotive News. The automaker will instead ship the missing semiconductors to dealers within one year, which they will then install in customers’ vehicles after purchase.Customers who purchase a vehicle without the rear controls will receive a price reductionFord spokesperson Said Deep told The Verge that heating and air condition will still be controllable from the front seats, and that customers who choose to purchase a vehicle without the rear controls will receive a price reduction. According to Deep, Ford is doing this as a way to bring new Explorers to customers faster,... Continue reading…

The game’s multiplayer still has an effect on me. | Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Journey turns 10 today Continue reading…

Moderators can remove viewers, report comments, and turn off comments for specific viewers during a Live. | Image by Instagram Instagram is finally letting Live creators appoint moderators during their streams. Mods will have the ability to report comments, remove viewers from the stream, as well as turn off comments for a specific viewer.

In 2008, Macworld devoted five pages to the kind of midtower Mac that Apple refused to make. | Photo by Jason Snell The myth of xMac, the midrange Mac tower that never was Continue reading…

Photo by David Graff/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images The next-generation Subaru WRX STI could be electric. In a press release shared by the automaker on Friday, Subaru says it has no plans to build a gas-powered STI based on this generation’s WRX platform.“Subaru Corporation is exploring opportunities for the next generation Subaru WRX STI, including electrification”“Subaru Corporation is exploring opportunities for the next generation Subaru WRX STI, including electrification,” the company writes. “In the meantime, a next generation internal combustion engine WRX STI will not be produced based upon the new WRX platform.”Subaru cites its efforts to meet the “regulations and requirements for greenhouse gasses (GHG), zero emissions vehicles (ZEV), and Corporate Average Fuel Economy... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Alexandre Dreyfus, the CEO and founder of fan token site Socios, has been accused of withholding payments in order to maintain the price of Chiliz (CHZ), the cryptocurrency used by the Socios community, according to a report from Off the Pitch.Fan tokens are tied to real-life sports teams, creators, or artists, and give token holders access to exclusive fan clubs where they can vote on decisions within their community. In Socios’ case, the platform centers around sports, with users buying Chiliz to purchase the fan tokens representing various teams in soccer, football, motorsports, and more.Staff members, who were also supposed to receive a portion of their salary in Chiliz, weren’t so luckyAs reported by Off the Pitch, Dreyfus... Continue reading…

The first change is always free | Photography: Vjeran Pavic It wasn’t always easy to change your PlayStation Network (PSN) account name. Actually, it wasn’t until April 2019 that Sony allowed account holders to do it at all. Now, each account is allowed to change its username once for free. Any changes after that come at a cost: $4.99 if you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, or $9.99 for everyone else.Whether you’ve outgrown your username or you simply want to change it, we’re going to walk you through the process. However, there are a couple of warnings to run through first.If you mostly play newer games (specifically, games released after April 1st, 2018), Sony says that you shouldn’t encounter many, if any, issues with the username change since those games were developed to support this... Continue reading…