The Verge

Thanks for the review, I guess? Microsoft has added a new sidebar to its Edge browser with buttons that let you see information about a site, check your email, access Microsoft Office, and even strip the essential elements of a recipe out of an overly long post (via Windows Central). The new feature seems to build on the “Search in sidebar” function added to Edge in 2020, but it adds even more multitasking abilities.The sidebar includes some small but useful panes, like the one that lets you search the web and quickly read articles, or the one that includes a variety of widgets, such as a calculator, dictionary, internet speed test, and unit convertor. Some of the panes are more fully featured; the Outlook one, for example, lets you read and send emails, as well as... Continue reading…

Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP via Getty Images On Thursday, Micron announced that it would invest $15 billion to build a new semiconductor plant in Idaho — just weeks after Congress passed $52 billion in new money to boost domestic chip manufacturing.Micron’s announcement is just the latest in a series of multi-billion-dollar plans to jump on the Biden administration’s recently approved CHIPS and Science Act. Last month, Micron said it would use the act’s new subsidies to invest $40 billion into US-based memory fabs, or fabrication plants, by 2030, creating an estimated 40,000 new jobs. The new Boise plant is expected to create 17,000 new jobs, including 2,000 Micron jobs, over the next eight years.“In our future, we will make EVs, chips, fiber optics, and other critical... Continue reading…

Photo by CHRIS DELMAS / AFP via Getty Images Though House of the Dragon reportedly gave HBO its biggest premiere of all time and has already been renewed for a second season, co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik’s getting ready to exit the series for his next big thing.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sapochnik is leaving House of the Dragon just as he’s signed a new first-look development deal with HBO that will give the network priority consideration for whatever projects he starts developing next. Sapochnik will remain attached to House of the Dragon as an executive producer alongside newcomer Alan Taylor, who will also serve as an executive producer and direct episodes in the series’ second season. In a statement about his exit, Sapochnik said that it’d been an “honor and a... Continue reading…

Image: Sennheiser When it comes to getting the most immersive audio presentation from a standalone soundbar, no one has managed to outclass Sennheiser’s Ambeo. And considering that device’s sky-high $2,500 price, you’d expect it to deliver a sublime home theater experience. At IFA 2022, Sennheiser is adding to the Ambeo lineup by introducing the new Ambeo Soundbar Plus. The price is slightly lower but will likely still leave this one out of reach for many consumers. It costs $1,499.95, and preorders begin today.The Plus model is advertised as “the world’s first 7.1.4 standalone soundbar.” Sennheiser’s original Ambeo will remain for sale and is now being rebranded as the Ambeo Soundbar Max. It’s still larger than the new Plus, so the name makes sense in... Continue reading…

The Ski Inn bar and restaurant amid a heatwave on the shore of the Salton Sea on August 31st, 2022, in Bombay Beach, California. | Photo by Ariana Drehsler / Getty Images A long, brutal heatwave is expected to grip California at least through the holiday weekend, stressing the power grid. Officials are begging residents to conserve electricity in an effort to prevent outages.The state is now in its second day of a “Flex Alert” issued by the state’s power grid operator, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). Under the Flex Alert, Californians are urged to voluntarily curb their electricity use between 4PM and 9PM. That’s the time of day when the grid is under the most pressure because it’s when power demand typically rises as people come home from work, and there’s less solar energy available as the sun sets.Officials are begging residents to conserve electricityCutting down on energy use... Continue reading…

The Cine 1 looks best when projected onto an ALR screen, which Leica will also sell. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge Today, Leica — yes, the camera company — announced its first ultra-short throw (UST) laser projector at the big IFA show in Germany, capable of producing a 4K image of up to 100 inches with Dolby Atmos sound.This isn’t Leica’s first foray into digital projectors, which it once sold under the Pradovit brand. It’s also collaborated with other projector makers, including this obscure UST model from last year.The announcement was light on details, so my colleague Jon Porter chased down a demonstration of an early Cine 1 prototype at the Leica booth. Here’s what we learned from Ross Slavov, head of product management in Leica’s newly formed smart projection business unit, about the company’s current thinking about specs, pricing, and... Continue reading…

The AI-generated artwork entered by Jason Allen into the Colorado State Fair | Image: Jason Allen via Discord A game designer has sparked controversy after submitting an image created by an AI text-to-image generator to a state art competition and taking home first prize.Jason Allen entered the artwork titled “Theatre d’Opera Spatial” in the “Digital Arts / Digitally-Manipulated Photography” category of the Colorado State Fair fine arts competition but created the piece using a popular text-to-image AI generator named Midjourney.A Twitter post describing Allen’s win went viral earlier this week (and was first covered by Vice). The post elicited a strong response, with many users claiming that Allen had been deceptive in submitting the piece, particularly as most of the public is unaware of how text-to-image AI generators work. Allen, though,... Continue reading…

Image: Jabra At IFA 2022, Jabra is announcing the new $149 Elite 5 earbuds. Serving as the company’s midrange pair of buds — akin to something like the older Elite 75t — these will offer up to seven hours of continuous playback with active noise cancellation turned on. They also feature multipoint Bluetooth for two simultaneous connections, IP55 dust and water resistance, and codec support that includes aptX, AAC, and SBC.The Elite 5s contain 6mm drivers and customizable EQ. As for the design, Jabra says they’ll provide “a discreet, comfortable, and compact fit.” The earbuds share a teardrop shape that’s similar to the rest of the current Elite series and have six mics onboard for enhanced voice call performance with wind suppression. You also get... Continue reading…

Withings first teased measuring nerve health back at CES. | Image: Withings Withings has a few nifty ideas when it comes to smart scales, and for IFA 2022, it’s announced the Body Comp. What makes the Body Comp stand out is it can assess the health of your arteries and nerves in addition to “normal” body composition. Withings is also introducing a new Health Plus coaching service alongside the scale to help users meet their goals.Smart scales like the Body Comp all use BIA to send a weak current through your body to determine how much muscle, water, bone, and fat you have. (Though, you should always take these scales’ accuracy and health claims with a grain of salt.) What’s novel here is users can assess their vascular age, visceral fat, and nerve health from a single device. Visceral fat refers to the fat... Continue reading…

Image: 343 Industries 343 Industries is delaying its next season of Halo Infinite to March 2023, extending its current season that started in May to 10 months long instead of the original promised three months. While Halo Infinite players are desperate for fresh content, the long-awaited Forge beta has also now been delayed and will launch on November 8th alongside the co-op mode.Forge was originally planned for September, and it will allow Halo Infinite players to edit multiplayer levels and build new maps to share with fellow players. It was hugely popular in previous Halo games, and leaks have shown that Forge in Halo Infinite looks like it will be a lot of fun for players. 343 Industries is launching two new multiplayer maps alongside Forge on November... Continue reading…

Legal filings about clout chasing are forum drama for sophists. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge So the thing about Elon Musk is that he’s cliqued up — specifically with the so-called PayPal Mafia. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a group of influential men in Silicon Valley who all used to work at PayPal.Today, I’d like to focus our attention on a member of the PayPal Mafia: David O. Sacks, the former COO of PayPal and current venture capitalist. Sacks’ battle with Twitter over a subpoena the company issued in its lawsuit against Musk is a direct demonstration of the downside of being a made man.A Freudian would have a field day!If you’re in a group with Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, and the literal co-founders of YouTube and Yelp, you know, you’re in pretty rarified air. In fact, for a long time, it... Continue reading…

Lean, mean gaming machine | Image: Lenovo Lenovo has launched the IdeaPad 5i Chromebook — a device that looks fairly unremarkable but has a potentially standout screen. The device will be available in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in September 2022 with a starting price of €549 — US pricing and availability are still to be announced.The IdeaPad 5i is Lenovo’s first 16-inch Chromebook, and it’s a substantial one at 4.10 pounds and 0.8 inches thick. The display has a 2.5K resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and a maximum brightness of 350 nits — but what really has the Chromebook community buzzing is that it also has a 120Hz refresh rate. That means you can see up to 120 frames per second when you’re gaming (on GeForce Now or Stadia, for example). It should also make for a... Continue reading…

A video of Trump at the hearings investigating the January 6th attack on the US Capitol | Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool / Getty Images YouTube’s recommendation algorithm pushed more videos about election fraud to people who were already skeptical about the 2020 election’s legitimacy, according to a new study. There were a relatively low number of videos about election fraud, but the most skeptical YouTube users saw three times as many of them as the least skeptical users.“The more susceptible you are to these types of narratives about the election…the more you would be recommended content about that narrative,” says study author James Bisbee, who’s now a political scientist at Vanderbilt University.In the wake of his 2020 election loss, former President Donald Trump has promoted the false claim that the election was stolen, calling for a repeat election as recently... Continue reading…

A new Pokémon means, well, lots of new pokémon. And the lead-up to Pokémon Violet and Scarlet has been full of monster reveals, the most recent of which is an artist who stays up all night and is a bit of a loner.Grafaiai, as it’s called, was revealed today in a clever documentary-style video clip that really makes me want a David Attenborough narrated series all about pocket monsters. The toxic monkey pokémon is cute, of course, but as with many of its adorable contemporaries, things get pretty dark when you look at the details. Here’s the official description:

The AirPods Max are the most premium listening device offered by Apple, but don’t pay full price. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Holy hell, it’s September. A major Apple event is next week, and summer is pretty much over (except for the crippling heat, that is). Before you know it, we’ll be talking about “Techtober” and holiday shopping. Wait, before you throw your keyboard or phone at me, I’ll get to the deals.First up, you can pick up the AirPods Max in select colors (silver, pink, blue, and green) for $429, which is a cool $120 off their full price. This is the best possible price for a new pair of AirPods Max so far. They are regularly discounted to $479, so you should never pay full price, but this deal doesn’t come around all the time.While $429 is still a sizable amount for headphones, the noise-canceling AirPods Max are some of the best options around... Continue reading…

Nintendo’s Dragalia Lost is shutting down at the end of 2022. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge When games like Dragalia Lost shut down for good, what happens next? Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge Even iOS apps occasionally misbehave — they can crash, or freeze, or otherwise stop working. If you’re new to iOS or just haven’t had this happen before, you may not know how to actually quit an app (as opposed to just swiping it off your screen). Here’s how to quit an app and, if you need to, shut down your phone. (We used a phone loaded with a beta of iOS 16, but this will work with earlier versions of the OS just as well.)Quit an app

Image: TCL TCL finally made a Roku TV with excellent gaming specs. The company is in a tick-tock release pattern of sorts with its popular 6-Series TV. One year, there’s a Roku version; the next year, we get a Google TV edition, and now, the company is upgrading the Roku model again. Like previous 6-Series TVs, the latest one features Mini LED backlighting, which utilizes thousands of tiny LEDs spread across hundreds of local dimming zones to create top-notch brightness, impressive contrast, and deep black levels. This panel has up to 360 dimming zones. And it uses quantum dot color, with “a measured 100 percent color volume in the DCI-P3 Hollywood reference color space,” according to TCL.For the 2022 6-Series Roku TV, TCL is putting a big... Continue reading…

The Samsung Galaxy A23 5G in black, featuring a 120Hz adaptive display. | Image: Samsung Samsung is bringing the Galaxy A23 5G to the US today, providing fast 5G connectivity and a 120Hz full HD display for just under $300.The US release only includes a single color (black), with prices starting from $299.99 at AT&T, T-Mobile, and elsewhere. It was previously announced that this handset would also hit the Taiwanese market in blue and peach versions in addition to black.The Galaxy A23 5G comes with a 6.6-inch 1080 x 2408 LCD display with adaptive 120Hz refresh to allow for smoother scrolling and gameplay. It features a Snapdragon 695 processor and will ship with Android 12 running Samsung’s One UI 4.1. Memory is available in 4GB, 6GB or 8GB and you get a choice of either 64GB or 128GB for storage. If that isn’t sufficient,... Continue reading…

A step forward for Motorola, but not a category leader Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is now testing its highly requested Edit Tweet feature. After years of memes and jokes, editable tweets will be available to some Twitter Blue subscribers later this month. The feature is currently undergoing “internal testing” and appears to mimic Facebook in its edit style, with a linked edit history for tweets that we saw in leaks earlier this year.“Tweets will be able to be edited a few times in the 30 minutes following their publication,” according to a Twitter blog post. “Edited Tweets will appear with an icon, timestamp, and label so it’s clear to readers that the original Tweet has been modified.” Image: Twitter An edited tweet The edit label will include a complete edit history with past... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is publicly pleading for its Activision Blizzard deal to go ahead, just as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has expressed concerns. Microsoft surprised the gaming world earlier this year with its plans to acquire Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal, by far the biggest ever in gaming. Now regulators are starting to take notice.The UK’s CMA says it’s “concerned that Microsoft’s anticipated purchase of Activision Blizzard could substantially lessen competition in gaming consoles, multi-game subscription services, and cloud gaming services.” After an initial research phase, the CMA is signaling it will move to what it calls a Phase 2 investigation if Microsoft isn’t able to answer its concerns within five... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In September 2012, Apple introduced the iPhone 5 — it was bigger, faster, and more powerful than its predecessor, but perhaps the most revolutionary change was how you charged it. Onstage to introduce the new phone, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller announced that the company was switching from the 30-pin connector that had been on every iPhone to date over to a small new port called Lightning. Lightning seemed to be everything its predecessor and competitors were not: reversible, compact, and robust. Schiller called it “a modern connector for the next decade.”Fast forward to 2022, and the connector has lasted the decade Schiller promised. Every iPhone still comes with a Lightning cable, and the cable remains a reliable method for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Commission is seeking to improve phone and tablet battery life and spare parts availability. In draft proposals published this week, European regulators are planning to force phone manufacturers to supply at least 15 different parts to professional repairers for five years after a device first goes on sale. Consumers will also get guaranteed access to replacement batteries, displays, chargers, back covers, and even SIM / memory card trays for five years.The draft proposals are designed to improve repairability of smartphones and tablets and reduce their carbon footprint across Europe. The Financial Times reports that extending smartphone lifecycles by five years would be roughly the equivalent of removing 5 million cars... Continue reading…

Nvidia’s DGX A100 workstation is affected by the new restrictions. | Image: Nvidia The US government has imposed new export restrictions on high-end computers chips used to conduct AI research, citing possible military applications for the technology. Two leading manufacturers, Nvidia and AMD, have been blocked from selling certain chips to China and Russia, with the restrictions forming part of the United States’ ongoing strategy of limiting tech exports to curb the rise of rival powers.Nvidia and AMD disclosed the new restrictions on Wednesday, with Nvidia noting in a regulatory filing that the ban affects its A100 and H100 GPUs. The US government told Nvidia it wishes to “address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia.” AMD c... Continue reading…

The new Venu Sq 2 has a slightly bigger screen and nearly double the battery life. | Image: Garmin Garmin is launching two new wearables at IFA 2022. The $249.99 Venu Sq 2 is an update to its affordable GPS smartwatch line, while the $89.99 Black Panther version Vivofit Jr. 3 gets a new special edition band.The Venu Sq 2 is mostly an iterative refresh. The OLED screen is a smidge bigger at 1.4 inches. It’s also included its Health Snapshot feature, which lets users log a two-minute session that simultaneously records metrics like heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels, respiration, and stress. Both of these updates are fine, but the most significant change is that it’s nearly doubled battery life from six days to 11 days. Like the original Venu Sq, it’ll also come in a Music version that can store up to 500 songs on... Continue reading…

The Nokia X30. | Image: HMD HMD is announcing a trio of new smartphones today — the Nokia G60 5G, C31, and X30 5G — and says the X30 5G is the “most eco-friendly smartphone” it’s ever produced. The three phones are focused on Europe, and are distinct from the range of devices that HMD sells in the US.As well as being sold outright, the Nokia X30 5G will be one of a handful of phones available via HMD’s new subscription service called “Circular,” where customers can subscribe to get a handset for a monthly fee and receive incentives to use a phone for as long as possible. Circular will initially be available in the UK and Germany, but HMD says it’s planning a global launch “in the coming months.”HMD justifies its eco-friendly claims about the Nokia X30 5G with... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney is exploring a membership program in the style of Amazon Prime, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The program could offer various exclusive perks, discounts, and other enticements for subscribers to spend more money on Disney products and services. A secondary benefit would be allowing the company to collect more information on customers’ tastes and habits, improving its ability to cross-sell across its various businesses — from streaming services to theme parks to merchandise.According to the WSJ, discussion of the membership program is very much in its early stages. It’s not clear what segments of Disney’s audience it would target, how much it would cost, or when the program might launch. Internally, some... Continue reading…

Eve’s latest light switch has Thread and will work with a new Eve Android app. | Image: Eve After years as an Apple-only smart home company, Eve is finally turning to the dark other side and launching an Android app. At the IFA tech show, the company announced that its suite of smart home products – which include smart plugs, smart light strips, smart switches, and smart sensors – will get their own Android app in late 2022. Most Eve products will also become compatible with other smart home systems, including Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings.This giant shift (which we did see coming at CES, but still, we’ll have to see it to believe it) is largely down to the upcoming smart home standard Matter. Matter’s primary raison d’etre is to make more devices work with more platforms, removing the confusion and... Continue reading…

Ring Intercom adds smart doorbell capabilities to audio intercoms. | Image: Ring Smart door locks and video doorbells are great conveniences for those who live in single-family homes, but what about the millions of people who live in flats, apartments, and condos? They might also like to answer their front door from their phone — whether they’re home or not — and perhaps buzz their visitor in without getting off the couch or rushing home from the office. Ring, maker of the original video doorbell, thinks it has a solution.Ring Intercom is a DIY, retrofit device that attaches to the intercom inside your home and connects via Wi-Fi to the Ring app on your smartphone. It’s specifically designed for European apartment buildings where multiple flats (or apartments) have one entry point and only an audio intercom system... Continue reading…

Sony’s excellent autofocus capabilities come to all three rear cameras in the Xperia 5 IV. | Image: Sony Sony is renewing its “compact” phone for another season with the announcement of the Xperia 5 IV. It’s a step down from the 1 IV in size, price, and features but shares the same emphasis on parity across its camera system. That means all three of the phone’s rear cameras — standard wide, ultrawide, and telephoto — include the company’s excellent Real-time Eye AF for better portraits and are capable of super-fast burst shooting speeds even with HDR enabled. It has other flagship specs to back up its camera features, too, and comes with an equally flagship-y price: $999.The Xperia 5 IV (side note: what are they going to call next year’s phone? The 5 V?) includes a 24mm-equivalent standard wide, 16mm-equiv ultrawide, and 60mm-equiv... Continue reading…

Image: Kobo Kobo’s announced its first fully waterproof six-inch e-reader, the Kobo Clara 2E, will be available on September 22nd. However, you can preorder it now from Kobo for $129.99.Kobo says the new e-reader is also the Rakuten-owned company’s first built from over 85 percent recycled plastic, with ocean plastic accounting for 10 percent of that. These changes are a part of Kobo’s goal to offset 100 percent of the carbon emissions related to shipping its e-readers to customers. Made from FSC-certified recycled paper and printed with soy ink, its magnet-free packaging is also supposed to be more eco-friendly.On the features front, the new e-reader also differs from its predecessor, the Clara HD, in that it supports Bluetooth so you can listen... Continue reading…

It’s just another ThinkPad...or is it? I reviewed Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold, the first PC with a foldable screen, in late 2020. At the time, it was a very cool idea, but not particularly, shall we say, usable. Today, Lenovo has announced its second go at this, the “Next-generation” ThinkPad X1 Fold. I spent a few minutes with the device, and let me tell you: I am much more optimistic about this one.Much of this new X1 Fold will be familiar to fans not just of the previous X1 Fold, but of the ThinkPad line in general. The device is outfitted with the series’s standard black and red color scheme, with the staple ThinkPad X1 logo on the lid. There’s a ThinkPad-style keyboard with a trackpoint and inverted-T arrow keys. It’s well-built, sturdy, and sleek.But some changes have... Continue reading…

The issue stems from its 2021 startup purchase. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Arm is suing Qualcomm and Nuvia, a startup the chipmaker acquired in 2021, claiming that the companies violated the licenses they have to use Arm’s processor designs and architecture (via Reuters). Arm’s argument is that the licenses it gave Nuvia before it was acquired aren’t valid now that it’s under new ownership. If Arm wins its suit, Qualcomm could be forced to destroy any work it’s done with the particular licenses in question — a significant setback for its ambitions to create desktop and server chips using Nuvia’s technology.Qualcomm hasn’t been quiet about its goals, or the role that Nuvia’s acquisition plays in them. Earlier this year, Cristiano Amon, its CEO, told The Verge: “As soon as I got named CEO, I made the acquisition... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with six states, filed a lawsuit against John Shriber and Roman Zaks, owners of the room renting and roommate finder platform Roomster, for allegedly defrauding consumers, accusing them of paying people for fake reviews and listings on their site. The agency says that the “deceptive tactics” violated the FTC Act and state laws.In a complaint filed by the FTC and the attorneys general of New York, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts, the group alleges that Roomster released “tens of thousands of fake positive reviews to bolster their false claims that properties listed on their Roomster platform are real, available, and verified.” They also allege that Roomster would post... Continue reading…

Image: Jay Peters / The Verge Leakers have long suggested that 2022 iPhone models would include two notches at the top of their screens: one for the camera, and one for the FaceID system (the “hole + pill design,” as consultant Ross Young referred to it). A new leak from MacRumors, citing “an anonymous tipster,” suggests that the two notches will appear as a single pill-shaped notch when the iPhone’s display is active. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman later corroborated the report.Apple, per MacRumors’ source, intends to turn off the pixels between these two notches to create a contiguous black space.

Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta is setting up a product organization to identify and build “possible paid features” for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, according to an internal memo sent to employees last week that was obtained by The Verge.The new division is Meta’s first serious foray into building paid features across its main social apps, all three of which boast billions of users. It’s being set up after Meta’s ads business was severely hurt by Apple’s ad tracking changes on iOS and a broader pullback in digital ad spending. The group, called New Monetization Experiences, will be led by Pratiti Raychoudhury, who was previously Meta’s head of research.In an interview with The Verge, Meta’s VP of monetization overseeing the group, John Hegeman, said the... Continue reading…

The ShoeCare cleaner will take the stench out of your sneaks. | Image: LG If you’ve browsed around the Container Store looking for the perfect sneaker storage, you’re looking in the wrong places. Maybe what you really need is LG’s new Styler ShoeCase — a shoebox with a window that’s currently being displayed at IFA. The enclosure can keep your shoes safe from moisture and has filters to protect them from UV light.Oh, then you went to Ikea to get stackable shelving for all your kicks? Well, I’m happy to report that the Styler ShoeCase lets you stack up to four of these bad boys on top of each other. And each has a built-in Lazy Susan that can be rotated to show off your Jordan VII’s best angles — and hide that one scuff mark from when homie moved the chair over it.LG’s also presenting its new Styler ShoeCare... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge If you’re an organization junkie and an iPhone user, then iOS has provided you with a useful tool: the App Library, which organizes your apps in labeled groups to make them easier to find. Introduced with iOS 14, all your current apps can be found there, and any apps you download are placed there as well. (You can decide whether you want the apps to also be visible on your homescreen; we’ll tell you how later in this article.)If you haven’t paid any attention to the App Library up until now, here are some ways to begin.Automatic groupingsThe App Library appears as a separate page on your homescreen. Wherever you are on your homescreen, just keep swiping left — the App Library will be the last page you hit.It automatically organizes... Continue reading…

A screenshot of Horizon Worlds | Image: Meta Mark Zuckerberg is betting his company’s future on the metaverse — a virtual space in which people interact with each other using avatars and developing AR / VR technology — investing tens of billions of dollars in an attempt to build the platforms and hardware that capture a new generation of users. Now, the question is: will Zuckerberg’s gamble on the metaverse being the future of the internet — and his company — actually succeed?One of the biggest parts of that bet is Horizon, Meta’s software for people to socialize, work, and play in the metaverse. Think of Horizon as a blend of The Sims, Minecraft, and Roblox, with users interacting through their avatars in virtual worlds they build.“We are seeing the youngest generation spend an... Continue reading…

Samsung’s nailed the gaming aesthetic here. | Image: Samsung Samsung has announced its first OLED gaming monitor, the 34-inch Odyssey OLED G8. It’s also one of the company’s first gaming monitors we’ve seen that includes Samsung’s Gaming Hub, which lets people stream games from services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google Stadia, or Xbox Game Pass without the need for a console or PC. (The feature, which also lets you stream movies from services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and the recently upgraded Samsung TV Plus, has been available on Samsung’s Smart Monitor line, but those aren’t really built for gaming.) But while it seems like a totally reasonable display in its own right, there are a few confusing things about it, as well as some important unknowns.Let’s put those to the side for just a... Continue reading…

Image: Quantic Dream Quantic Dream, the game developers behind titles like Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain, has been acquired by the Chinese technology giant NetEase (via CNBC). In a blog post, the French game studio announced that it will continue to operate independently despite joining the company.While Quantic Dream has just a handful of games under its belt over the 25 years it’s been around, it’s currently working on a new Star Wars: Eclipse action-adventure game that’s set in the High Republic Era. The studio says the acquisition should help it expand its team and “develop several projects simultaneously.”NetEase is a China-based internet technology company with a growing division dedicated to PC, console, and mobile games. It first became a... Continue reading…

Updates for Apple’s older devices are rare but worth paying attention to. | Photo by Michael Shane / The Verge Almost a year after the last update, Apple released a new version of iOS 12 on Wednesday, meant to patch a security hole that was recently fixed in newer versions of the OS. If you’re still using an iPhone 5S or an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, it’s worth taking the time to update — Apple obviously doesn’t release security updates for its older software that often, so when it does, you know it’s a reasonably serious issue.The vulnerability fixed by iOS 12.5.6 is one that could let a malicious website run unchecked code on your phone if you open it in Safari or another browser. What’s more, Apple says it’s possible someone out in the world has tried to use this exploit. While this type of warning isn’t a reason to panic — it’s relatively common... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Rayford / Getty Images South Carolina Republican politicians distanced themselves from a widely criticized plan to outlaw offering abortion guidance online — a proposal that raised fears about internet censorship after the end of Roe v. Wade.Lawmakers introduced the proposed abortion ban in June, basing it on model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). Among other provisions, the proposal would have banned “hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service” that told people from the state how to obtain an abortion. Groups like the Knight First Amendment Institute argued that the model legislation raised serious First Amendment questions, and its introduction in South... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When a group of Etsy sellers announced in March that they would temporarily shut down their shops to protest changes on the platform, organizers made a promise: the strike was just the first step.Now, following the week-long strike and small concessions by Etsy, organizers have formed the Indie Sellers Guild, a nonprofit they hope will function as an advocacy organization for anyone who sells handmade, vintage, and craft goods online.“We are modeling ourselves after a union as much as possible, with the same goals as a more traditional union and other organized labor movements,” says Chiarra Lohr, interim secretary-treasurer of the guild who has also worked on organizing the guild and drafting the bylaws. “We are very bottom-up,... Continue reading…

Electric vehicles are very helpful for fighting climate change. But EVs need batteries, and batteries need minerals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium. The US has some of these minerals underground, and it wants to dig them up, expeditiously, so that it doesn’t have to rely as much on other countries, including China.But this is where it gets tricky. Mining operators say they can speed up the digging process, but a bunch of regulatory roadblocks stand in their way. And environmentalists and tribal groups remain extremely skeptical that all this mining can be done in a way that doesn’t ruin the land and spoil the water.27,000 commentsThis more or less summarizes the nearly 27,000 comments that the Department of the Interior has... Continue reading…