The Verge

Getty Images Federal prosecutors hit FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with four new charges Thursday as part of their criminal case against the former crypto wunderkind.The new 12-count superseding indictment adds new bank fraud and money laundering counts against Bankman-Fried as well as modified campaign finance charges. In the new document, prosecutors describe how Bankman-Fried and two unnamed defendants conspired to defraud the Federal Elections Commission by using straw donors to “evade contribution limits on individual donations to candidates to whom” the former CEO had already donated.Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators are alleged to have organized the straw donor scheme in a Signal group chat called “Donation Processing.” The chat is said... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google has announced that the Magic Eraser feature, which tried to automatically remove unwanted parts of a picture and debuted with the Pixel 6, will no longer be exclusive to phones with its custom chips. Starting on Thursday, it’s going to be rolling out to Google One subscribers who use the Google Photos app on Android or iOS as well as “all Pixel users.”Magic Eraser, as well as the “Camouflage” function that lets you desaturate potentially distracting background objects rather than erasing them from a picture completely, will come with any level of Google One plan. If you have a Pixel, you won’t have to have a plan at all to get it.Google says it’s also adding editing features like an HDR effect for videos and exclusive collage... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Workspace apps are getting a makeover. Google plans to refresh the design of Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides in the coming weeks to more closely align with its Material Design 3 design system, the company announced on Thursday.If you’re familiar with Gmail’s refreshed look, the new designs take a lot of cues from that. Google appears to be adding a few more darker hues to things like the toolbar and comments to make them stand out from the white page of a document. The “Share” button is also more rounded, a change from the rounded-corner rectangle Google currently uses for the button.You can get an idea of what the changes will look like in the image below of Google Docs. Image: Google You can get a look... Continue reading…

Image: Google When it comes to browsing entertainment, is there really a big difference between organizing content in different tabs or splitting it into totally separate pages? Google seems to think so. Today, the company is announcing some tweaks to the Google TV interface. “Movies” and “Shows” are being dropped from the main navigation bar at the top and will now be found beneath the row of your favorite streaming apps in the “For You” tab.In that spot, they’ll be joined by two new sections: Family and Español. Both are pretty self-explanatory. “With content ratings of PG or lower, it’s easy to find something the whole family can watch together,” Google says of the family page. (Kids will still be able to have their own profiles that are limited... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Podcasts are coming to YouTube Music. The streaming music service plans to add podcasts “in the near future,” YouTube’s head of podcasting, Kai Chuk, told Ariel Shapiro at Hot Pod Summit this morning. The addition will pit YouTube Music even more directly against Spotify, which has looked to podcasts — and big exclusives like Joe Rogan — as a way to retain users and grow its audience.“If someone wants to watch a podcast, we have a solution,” Chuk said. “If someone wants to listen to a podcast only, we should have a great experience for that as well.”“Our focus is on creators”YouTube Music will allow free ad-supported background listening to podcasts and offer “enhanced library tools,” Chuk said. There’ll also be a podcast badge to... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge Many of us have more than one Google account, whether it’s for work, a side hustle, or simply a backup email address — and with modern browsers now keen to manage all of our logins for us, navigating sites such as Gmail and Google Docs with multiple accounts can get complicated.It needn’t be: Google actually has a straightforward switching mechanism built into its websites and web apps that works in any browser. In addition, the browsers themselves (and especially Chrome) have features for keeping different accounts separate so you always know which one you have open.Basic account switchingWhichever browser you use, you can manage multiple Google accounts inside it.

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot history dates back at least six years, with Sydney first appearing in 2021. Continue reading…

Janelle Monáe in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. | Image: John Wilson / Netflix Later today, Netflix will be releasing a director’s commentary for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery; subscribers will be able to check it out starting at 1PM ET. This isn’t the first time Netflix has released a commentary track, but the feature is something of a dying art, with DVD and Blu-ray releases largely supplanted by streaming, where special features are much less common.When the news was first announced, writer and director Rian Johnson, who signed on to direct a pair of Knives Out sequels for Netflix, wrote: “Sorry it took a minute but it’s a good one I think.” And given the sheer number of Easter eggs and cameos in the film — including an appearance from this very website — the commentary track will likely make it worth a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is going to let thousands more creators include multi-language audio tracks with their videos. The company was already testing the feature with a small number of creators, and beginning Thursday, many more will be able to include multi-language dubs with their videos to make them accessible to broader audiences.If you want to try this feature for yourself, check out this video on MrBeast’s YouTube channel. If you click on the gear icon, you’ll see an option for “audio track,” and if you click that, you’ll see the different language options available. Videos will also default to a user’s preferred language.In its early tests, YouTube says that, as of January, “we’ve already seen over 3,500 multi-language videos uploaded in... Continue reading…

The developer used information it had gathered about a prevelant third-party cheating software to catch and punish players using it red-handed. | Image: Valve Over 40,000 Dota 2 accounts have been permanently banned in the last few weeks after they were caught red-handed using third-party software to cheat the game. In a blog post published on Tuesday, Valve revealed that it had recently patched a known issue used by third-party software to cheat in Dota while simultaneously setting a honeypot trap to catch players using the exploit.According to Valve, the cheating software gave its users an unfair advantage by accessing information used internally by the Dota client that shouldn’t be visible during gameplay. After investigating how it worked, the developer then decided to identify and remove the “bad actors” from the active Dota playerbase.

Illustration by William Joel Plus more musical features come to Snapchat, and the Dynamic Island could come to an Android phone. Continue reading…

The Fira de Barcelona convention center during last year’s Mobile World Congress. | Image: David Zorrakino/Europa Press via Getty Images In less than a week, some of the world’s biggest mobile players will be crowded into the Fira de Barcelona convention center, ready to show off their latest generation of mobile devices. In previous years, that’s meant everything from flagship smartphone announcements from Samsung and LG (RIP), smartwatches, and even the launch of the original HTC Vive.These days, however, things feel a little different. Despite the “World” in Mobile World Congress, MWC Barcelona feels increasingly focused on Europe. The global smartphone market has never been a cohesive whole, but the US and China feel more than ever like they’re diverging from everywhere else. And that’s left MWC in a weird spot.I mean, just look at what we’re expecting from Honor,... Continue reading…

A reproduction of the cover page and the second page of Zarya of the Dawn, from the US Copyright Office’s letter. | Image: Zarya of the Dawn — Kris Kashtanova / Midjourney The US Copyright Office has reconsidered the copyright protection it granted last fall to Kristina Kashtanova for her comic book Zarya of the Dawn, reports Reuters. It featured pictures created by feeding text prompts to Midjourney, an artificial intelligence image generator.According to this letter (PDF) sent to her lawyer by Robert Kasunic, the associate Register of Copyrights, the US Copyright Office has decided that Kashtanova “is the author of the Work’s text as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work’s written and visual elements.”The images themselves, however, “are not the product of human authorship,” and the registration originally granted for them has been canceled. To justify the decision, the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you typically access your Hotmail or Outlook account using the Gmail app, there’s a reason you probably haven’t seen any new emails today: Google says it’s investigating an issue it’s having syncing with Microsoft’s servers. According to Google’s status page, the company has been working to figure out what’s wrong since around noon ET, and has been in touch with Microsoft about the problem.At first glance it seems like this partial outage would be a pretty niche issue — Outlook has its own app, who’s using the Gmail one? But for many Android phones the Gmail app is the default mail client, and it encourages you to add email address from any service, not just Google’s. If you’ve gone that route, it is worth noting that Outlook itself... Continue reading…

The Verge Valve has shared a schedule of when the big sales on Steam will take place in 2023, meaning you now have some advance notice about when you should get ready to open your wallet to snap up some great deals.As established last year, there will be a major sale every season, so look forward to big spring, summer, autumn, and winter deals. There will be a handful of themed sales and events, like Puzzle Fest, Visual Novel Fest, and SHMUP Fest, which all sound very promising. And Valve is also sharing details about the next two Next Fests, where you can try a bunch of free demos of upcoming games. (If you want an idea of what a Next Fest is like, you can check out the February Next Fest, which is happening now through February 28th.)Here’s... Continue reading…

Apple’s Dynamic Island lacked third-party support at launch. That’s starting to change. | Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge Realme, a subbrand of Chinese phone maker Oppo, might be the first Android OEM to clone Apple’s Dynamic Island, a deleted tweet from a company executive and a leaked animation suggest. It comes at a time when Apple seems like it might prove that Dynamic Island is worth copying, as the mostly ornamental UI fixture is finally getting some real third-party support.This doesn’t come as a major surprise. As 9to5Google points out, Realme basically told everyone it wanted to clone Dynamic Island back in September. It appears that a feature called the “Mini Capsule” has been in the works since then. A photo in the removed tweet indeed shows a pill-shaped UI element at the top of the screen with Oppo’s SuperVOOC charging logo displayed. The... Continue reading…

Photo by Cooper Neill / Getty Images Netflix is getting into football. On Wednesday, the streaming giant announced a new sports docuseries, Quarterback, that will focus on three NFL quarterbacks: Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs (who just collected his second Super Bowl win and second Super Bowl MVP award); Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings; and Marcus Mariota of the Atlanta Falcons. The series is set to debut this summer.“For the first time ever, the NFL allowed quarterbacks to be mic’d up for every single game of a season,” Netflix wrote in a post about the series. “The upcoming show will feature behind-the-scenes access to some of the biggest moments of the season, as Mahomes set an NFL record for total offense on his way to winning the league and Super... Continue reading…

Unlike the Blade 16, the 2023 Blade 15 keeps the same aspect ratio we’ve seen on Blades past. | Image: Razer Razer has launched a new Blade 15 model refreshed with Intel’s 13th Gen processors and Nvidia’s RTX 4000 GPUs.The company announced a 16-inch Razer Blade a few weeks ago, and some assumed that it would replace the 2022 Razer Blade 15. The Blade 16 threw a number of new features into the Blade 15’s formula — most notably, a 16:10 Mini LED dual-mode display.But the Blade 15 is a much more minor upgrade from last year’s Blade 15. While the chips are new, the 2023 Blade 15 keeps the same 16:9 aspect ratio as its direct predecessor, just in case you’re one of those old-fashioned people (sorry, I said what I said) who prefers a shorter and wider screen. It’s also the same size and weight as last year’s Blade 15, which means it’s noticeably... Continue reading…

Image: NBA Top Shot NBA Top Shot developer Dapper Labs and its CEO, Roham Gharegozlou, will face a lawsuit accusing the company of selling unregistered securities in the form of its “Moments,” which are non-fungible tokens for sports fans.Despite Dappers’ lawyer’s claims that “Basketball cards are not securities. Pokémon cards are not securities. Baseball cards are not securities. Common sense says so. The law says so. And, courts say so,” Judge Victor Marrero decided to let the case go forward.As he wrote in his decision (Friel v. Dapper Labs, Inc. et al., 1:21-cv-05837-VM):

Tinder bracket fungus / hoof fungus / horse’s hoof (Fomes fomentarius) on a fallen tree trunk in Belgium. | Photo: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Here’s one more reason to love a good mushroom: one day, you might be able to make headphones, memory foam for shoes, or even aircraft exoskeletons with it. Researchers just assessed the engineering possibilities with one particularly impressive mushroom and found that it might be able to replace plastic in a whole bunch of different use cases.Using mushrooms instead of plastic could cut down on the mountains of waste humans create. Plastics made out of fossil fuels are actually really difficult to recycle and usually wind up cluttering landfills, landscapes, and waterways. Materials made with mushrooms, on the other hand, would be biodegradable and could be reused at the end of a product’s life to make more of the same stuff.The... Continue reading…

Image: Artifact Instagram’s co-founders are throwing open the doors to their new personalized news app, Artifact. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger’s new app launched last month with a waitlist, but now anyone on iOS or Android can download Artifact to try it for themselves.Despite the pedigree of Artifact’s creators, it hasn’t revolutionized the way I consume news on my phone. There’s a home tab with a feed of articles Artifact thinks I will like, and while the feed generally has stuff that I’m interested in, the app’s algorithmic sorting means I’ll often be served days-old news that I don’t care about.A “Headlines” tab offers collections of articles sorted by topics, but I don’t tend to swipe to it much. The profile tab, however, might be more... Continue reading…

Image: Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz unveiled the 2024 E-Class’ interior, and while its cabin is not a radical departure in design from existing Benzes, the new E-Class is packed full of interesting and advanced features that will influence the rest of the lineup — like a selfie camera and built-in apps for TikTok and Zoom.One of the major upgrades in the 2024 E-Class is the Superscreen, which combines the large standard central touchscreen with a second display in front of the passenger. (Unlike the EQS’s Hyperscreen, the digital gauge cluster remains a standalone display.) It looks beautiful, with slim air vents that curve around the top of the screen and a row of touch-capacitive buttons sitting below the center display.The new E-Class is packed full of... Continue reading…

Image: Mercedes-Benz AG Mercedes-Benz will add lidar sensors to “a broad range” of its vehicles by the middle of the decade, the company announced at an investor event in California on Wednesday. The laser sensors will help power the German automaker’s next-generation driver-assist system, which allows for hands-free unsupervised driving on certain highways.The lidar will be supplied by Luminar, a Florida-based company in which Mercedes owns a small investment stake. The German automaker has no plans to increase its stake in Luminar, though the lidar deal is said to be worth several billion dollars. (Mercedes owns less than 1 percent of the company.)The German automaker has no plans to increase its stake in LuminarMercedes is the latest automaker to commit... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Multiroom music (MRM) is a big selling point of Amazon’s Echo smart speakers. For a fraction of the price of some whole-home wireless audio setups (using Amazon’s inexpensive Echo speakers, including the $50 Echo Dot or the $99 Echo), you can stream music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more throughout your house or on several speakers in one room for some seriously souped-up sound. Also, new features for controlling your music with the Alexa app now make it easier to manage your multiroom-audio setup.Alexa’s MRM works with audio from various services, including Apple Music, Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Spotify, and Tidal. And since you can play multiple streams in your house at once, you can listen to a podcast downstairs... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has closed its $3.9 billion acquisition of membership-based healthcare provider One Medical, which was originally announced last summer. For the subscription (usually $199 annually but currently discounted to $144 per year), One Medical offers members an app, 24/7 access to on-demand telehealth services over video, and guaranteed same- or next-day appointments available through more than 125 offices.The FTC, which is reportedly considering leveling an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, has been investigating this deal as well as others (like iRobot) made by the company. FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar said to CNBC that the investigation into this acquisition is ongoing, and “The commission will continue to look at possible harms to... Continue reading…

Microsoft is allowing its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to share account access with up to four other people. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is expanding the availability of its Friends & Family plan for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to six additional countries following its initial pilot in Ireland and Columbia last year. The Friends & Family plan is now also available in New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, Hungary, Israel, and Sweden and allows Xbox Game Pass members to share benefits with up to four other friends or family members.Each individual on a Friends & Family membership receives their own unique access to the entire Game Pass Ultimate library across Xbox and PC, EA Play, and other benefits like exclusive member discounts. Pricing for each new region will vary and has not been publicly disclosed by Microsoft. For context, though, the plan is currently available... Continue reading…

Bing is now available as a contact in Skype. You can chat to it directly or add it to other conversations. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft evidently hasn’t been daunted by the often wild outbursts of its AI chatbot Bing and is launching the service on iOS and Android mobile apps today as well as integrating the bot into Skype and adding voice access.On mobile devices, Bing is now available on Microsoft’s Edge mobile browser and dedicated Bing app for those who have been accepted from the waitlist. The bot’s functionality is the same as on the web, which is to say that it’s somewhat muted compared to its startling debut. Voice control is also fine but a little slow, and Bing’s voice is unremarkable — female (of course) and vaguely robotic — not as convincing as recent AI voice clones.After the “new Bing” was launched two weeks ago, users quickly found the... Continue reading…

It’s like you’re actually in the ship. | Image: Hello Games No Man’s Sky is one of many titles you can play on the now-released PlayStation VR2, but the game’s virtual reality mode on all VR platforms is getting a big overhaul as part of the new 4.1 “Fractal” update, developer Hello Games announced Wednesday.One of the biggest changes with the Fractal update is that the game’s HUD and UI have been redesigned for VR. That means you’ll be able to look through your multitool’s options in a menu embedded in the multitool, for example, or look at your inventory on a wrist-mounted display.Of course, there are a handful of features that take advantage of the PS5 and the PSVR 2. You’ll see increased draw distances and denser foliage while exploring planets, and the game will use the PSVR 2’s headset... Continue reading…

Jabra’s Elite 3 wireless earbuds are on sale for $59.99 ($20 off) today. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge Cheap gadgets are often cheap because, well, they’re not the best in terms of quality. That’s not true of Jabra’s Elite 3, however, which are once again on sale for $59.99 ($20 off) at Amazon and Best Buy.As our favorite pair of wireless earbuds under $100, the Elite 3 sound terrific for the price and offer a few niceties typically reserved for more expensive earbuds. They include an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance, for instance, along with the ability to use either earbud independently. So long as you’re fine without multipoint Bluetooth support and active noise cancellation, they’re a good pair of buds that nail the basics and shouldn’t disappoint. Read our review.Gaming laptops are fun, but they’re not the most practical... Continue reading…

Ayaneo 2 review: this flashy competitor has the Steam Deck beat on specs, but you can’t play a spec sheet. Continue reading…

Álvaro Bernis / The Verge Chinese regulators have reportedly told the country’s tech giants not to offer access to AI chatbot ChatGPT over fears the tool will give “uncensored replies” to politically sensitive questions.That’s according to a report from Nikkei Asia citing “people with direct knowledge of the matter.” Nikkei says Chinese regulators told tech firms Tencent and Ant Group (a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba) to not only restrict access to the US-developed ChatGPT, but to also report to officials before launching their own rival chatbots.Such a move would fit the Chinese government’s heavy-handed approach to censorship and quick regulatory responses to new tech. Last month, for example, the country introduced new rules regarding the... Continue reading…

The feature is only available in Korean on select handsets, including the Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra (pictured). | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge AI voice clones are already being deployed in podcasts and video games, but how long until they can be harnessed directly by the general public? Probably sooner than you think, with Samsung today announcing a feature for its Bixby mobile assistant that lets users clone their voice to answer phone calls. The idea is that if someone calls you but you can’t answer aloud you can type out a response and it’ll be read in a simulacrum of your voice.Some caveats here: this feature is only currently available in Korean as the Bixby Custom Voice Creator app for a small number of Samsung handsets (the new Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra), which means we’ve been unable to test it ourselves. The voice quality might be abysmal and response time too... Continue reading…

Image: Getty Plus yet more Twitter layoffs, and Nvidia partners with Microsoft as it fights to acquire Activision Blizzard. Continue reading…

It’s early days, but WhatsApp’s 2 billion active users could be one hell of a market for independant writers. | Illustration: The Verge Would you be more likely to subscribe to a newsletter from your favorite creator if you could read it through a messaging app like WhatsApp? As noted by Wabetainfo, code in beta version 2.23.5.3 of WhatsApp Messenger for Android contains references to a new “Newsletter” feature that’s currently under development. The name could itself be a codename, but clues hidden within the code suggest that the one-to-many broadcast tool will be optional and self-contained within its own section of the WhatsApp Status tab, separate from encrypted group chats and messages.According to Wabetainfo’s findings, Newsletter will grant users full control over what they see — there’s no mention of ads (yet), nor is there any sign of algorithm-based... Continue reading…

Today, Sony is officially launching its PlayStation VR2 headset. It costs $550, and you can read our PSVR 2 review right here. But there are a few key experiences that Sony didn’t distribute to reviewers ahead of time — like a day-one patch for Gran Turismo 7 that makes almost the entire racing game playable in virtual reality.I’m beginning to think that was a mistake, because GT7 is easily one of the best things I’ve tried in this headset, and I’m saying that having never played GT7 before. I’m certain a number of gearheads will buy a PlayStation VR2 for this game alone — and quite possibly a PS5, a steering wheel, and a set of pedals to go with it.The game starts exactly the way it does on a flat screen TV. You adjust your screen... Continue reading…

This could be Motorola’s next Razr. | Image: Evan Blass Upcoming foldable flip phones from Samsung and Motorola could have much larger cover displays than the current generation, if a series of leaks about the unannounced devices are to be believed.First there’s the Galaxy Z Flip 5, which Samsung is anticipated to announce this summer. Leaker Ice Universe, who’s been a reliable source of information on unannounced Samsung devices in the past, recently tweeted to “say for sure” that Samsung’s next flip phone will have a bigger external display than the Oppo Find N2 Flip. For reference, Oppo’s flip phone has a 3.26-inch cover display, which is already substantially larger than the Z Flip 4’s 1.9-inch display.