The Verge

Photo: Mission Workshop In August 2021, we asked the staff of The Verge to tell us about their go-to laptop bags. Now, a year later, some are still using the same bags — but not all.It’s surprising how attached you can get to a bag — especially the bag that you use to carry your laptop, your sweater, your lunch, your notebook, your exercise shoes, your kids’ diapers, or any of the other stuff you need. Whether you’re heading to the office, visiting a friend, hanging in a coffee shop, going on a hike, or just sitting outdoors to read or work, having a bag that can accommodate everything on your “gotta have this” list can help you avoid a lot of aggravation.So, here’s this year’s staff picks — some old, some new. Most of the staff wrote about their backpacks,... Continue reading…

Nichelle Nichols died on July 30th, 2022 at age 89. | Photo by Araya Diaz/Getty Images for Ovation The ashes of Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek, will get sent into deep space on a rocket that memorializes her and several other Star Trek veterans (via Reuters). Nichols’ son, Kyle Johnson, donated her ashes after she died in July at age 89.Nichols’ ashes will head to space on a rocket fittingly called the Vulcan Centaur, with the memorial spaceflight company, Celestis, running the “Enterprise Flight” mission. There still isn’t a set date for the send-off, and it will likely depend on the United Launch Alliance’s ongoing development of the Vulcan rocket.During the mission, Nichols will be joined by the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As Google carries out the needlessly complex process of combining both the Meet and Duo apps, now it’s throwing a feature copied from Zoom in the mix. In an update on the Google Workspace blog, the company announced that Google Meet will soon give you the ability to unmute yourself by holding down the spacebar and to mute yourself again by releasing it.If you frequently use Zoom, this feature might sound a lot like its push-to-talk feature — and that’s because it’s essentially the same thing. Zoom obviously didn’t revolutionize this feature (we have walkie-talkies to thank for that), but it conveniently makes it available during video conferences, which comes in handy whenever you want to chime in during a meeting but don’t want to stay... Continue reading…

Yes, it looks as weird as it sounds, but it works well as a basic smart lock Continue reading…

Image: Marcos Cruz / Netflix Netflix’s Resident Evil series has been canceled a little over a month after its initial debut, according to a report from Deadline. The streamer reportedly decided against renewing the series due to lackluster ratings and viewership.Like the many other Resident Evil adaptations, Netflix’s live-action series attempts to put yet another spin on the video game franchise it’s based on. The show, which was helmed by Supernatural’s Andrew Dabb, flashes between two different timelines, centering around Umbrella executive Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick) and his two daughters (played by Tamara Smart and Siena Agudong).In our review of the series, my colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore notes that it “keeps things feeling fresh up to a point,” but... Continue reading…

There are a few companies that want to keep you connected when you’re in remote areas. | Image: SpaceX On Thursday, Elon Musk got on stage with T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert to announce that SpaceX is working with the carrier to completely eliminate cellular dead zones. The companies claim that next-generation Starlink satellites, set to launch next year, will be able to communicate directly with phones, letting you text, make calls, and potentially stream video even when there are no cell towers nearby. What’s more, Musk promised all this is possible with phones that people are using today, without consumers having to buy any extra equipment.It’s a bold proclamation from the carrier — Verizon and AT&T don’t offer anything like it. However, SpaceX and T-Mobile aren’t the only companies looking to use satellites to directly communicate with... Continue reading…

Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge Netflix is testing gamertag-style handles that users can create and publicly display when playing its selection of mobile games, as first spotted by mobile developer Steve Moser (via TechCrunch). This should let members identify and invite other users to play games based on their handles, as well as see where they rank on leaderboards.I got to experience the feature for myself after updating my Netflix app and downloading Into the Breach and Mahjong Solitaire. Netflix gave me the option to create and manage the game handle associated with my particular Netflix profile in both games. Just like creating your gamertag (or public-facing username on any other gaming platform), your game handle must be unique, which Netflix will automatically... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Google’s trying to make it easier for developers to create Android apps that connect in some way across a range of devices. In a blog post, Google explains that it’s launching a new cross-device software development kit (SDK) that contains the tools developers need to make their apps play nice across Android devices, and, eventually non-Android phones, tablets, TVs, cars, and more.The SDK is supposed to let developers do three key things with their apps: discover nearby devices, establish secure connections between devices, and host an app’s experience across multiple devices. According to Google, its cross-device SDK uses Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ultra-wideband to deliver multi-device connectivity. Image: Google G... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A leak of potential branding for Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox Game Pass family subscription suggests you’ll be able to share a subscription with friends, too. Microsoft started testing its Xbox Game Pass family plan in Ireland and Colombia earlier this month, and now Twitter leaker Aggiornamenti Lumia has spotted “Game Pass Friends & Family” branding.The leak could mean Microsoft isn’t thinking about restricting Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to sharing their benefits with just immediate family members. The current preview allows Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to pay €21.99 per month in Ireland (instead of the regular €12.99 per month) for an unnamed test plan that includes sharing subscription benefits with up to four others.... Continue reading…

Image: Apple It’s the weekend, which means that our Verge Deals team is kicking back and recharging for next week. But we have a few time-sensitive deals to pass your way in case you feel like making some additions to your repertoire of gadgets. Starting things off is the ninth-generation iPad, which is discounted to $279.99 at Best Buy, Amazon, and Target ($50 off). Target’s site says this deal will end Saturday, though we don’t currently know if that applies to the other retailers.If you just need an affordable yet relatively powerful iPad, this 2021 model is likely the one for you. It has a 10.2-inch display, and it runs on Apple’s capable yet not cutting-edge A13 Bionic chip. There isn’t much you won’t be able to do on this iPad compared to... Continue reading…

A little phone with big performance Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The plan is to make a lot of money as cheaply as possible Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were in line to give hours of depositions in response to a lawsuit over Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, but now that won’t happen — the company has reached a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs. As reported earlier by Reuters, a court filing reveals the parties have reached an agreement in principle and requested a stay of 60 days to finalize their written agreement. Without the settlement and stay, they would have been deposed before September 20th.You can read the document for yourself below, but so far, there are no details about the terms of the agreement. Meta, as the company is now known, declined to comment via a spokesperson, while lawyers for the plaintiffs... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix’s forthcoming ad-supported tier may cost between $7 and $9 per month, according to a report from Bloomberg. Depending on which plan you currently pay for, that could be a significant savings; the company currently offers plans at $9.99, $15.49, and $19.99 per month.After the company reported that it lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade, co-CEO Reed Hastings indicated in April the company was ready to consider a cheaper offering supported by advertising, despite years of spurning the idea of ads. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos confirmed the ad tier was in the works in June, and Netflix announced Microsoft as the technological partner helping to deliver ads in July.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ad-supported tier will... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta’s Vivek Sharma, the company’s VP of its Horizon social VR platform, is leaving the company, as reported by Reuters. Meta spokesperson Bryan Pope confirmed Sharma’s departure to The Verge and said that Sharma is leaving to pursue an unrelated career opportunity.Sharma’s departure is happening at a somewhat awkward time for Horizon. The metaverse is an enormous bet for Meta, with Horizon as one of its centerpieces, but the whole effort became something of a meme last week. To help promote Horizon Worlds’ launch in France and Spain, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a screenshot in Horizon that prominently featured his dead-eyed avatar, which nearly instantly became a popular joke around the internet. Zuckerberg shared concept art of a more... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Shopping features on Twitter pose content moderation risks and could be used “in a way that leads to individual or societal harm,” according to an internal memo sent to a team of Twitter employees.The memo, a portion of which was obtained by The Verge, was sent in early July to a group of Twitter employees across various teams, according to a person with knowledge of it. In the email, some existing and not-yet-released features of Twitter shopping are categorized as high risk, with the email warning that content moderation hasn’t been prioritized in shopping.First rolled out last summer, Twitter shopping allows brands to list items for sale and pin a handful of products at the top of a merchant’s profile. Unlike similar features on... Continue reading…

But source code isn’t a skeleton key. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Earlier this week, LastPass started notifying its users of a “recent security incident” where an “unauthorized party” used a compromised developer account to access parts of its password manager’s source code and “some proprietary LastPass technical information.” In a letter to its users, the company’s CEO Karim Toubba explains that its investigation hasn’t turned up evidence that any user data or encrypted passwords were accessed.Toubba continues on to explain that the company has “implemented additional enhanced security measures” after containing the breach, which it detected two weeks ago. The company wouldn’t comment on how long the breach had been going on before it was detected.Don’t panic, LastPass usersAs LastPass explains,... Continue reading…

Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told investors earlier this month that his grand vision to revitalize the company included finding a new Kevin Feige type to lead its embattled DC Films division to a new era of Marvel Studios-like success. While nothing’s been finalized yet, it seems as if the studio’s found its pick in longtime producer Dan Lin.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dan Lin — the producer behind The Lego Movie, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Netflix’s upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender series — is the top contender to replace Walter Hamada as the new head of DC Films as part of a larger corporate restructuring that would streamline the company’s internal hierarchy. Post-restructuring, a single executive — potentially Lin... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge So far, the biggest tech antitrust cases have focused on Facebook and Google — but Apple may soon be joining the pack. Politico is reporting that the Department of Justice is in the early stages of drafting an antitrust case against Apple, alleging that the company “abused its market power to stifle smaller tech companies, including app developers and competing hardware makers.”It would be the first such case against Apple by a US federal agency, although European antitrust regulators have raised similar cases over the company’s App Store fees and the iPhone’s treatment of tap-to-pay technology. The company has also fended off a number of civil cases from rival companies — most notably, the App Store challenge from Epic Games, which... Continue reading…

Rob Flaherty, White House director of digital strategy There’s only a few weeks until the midterms, and President Joe Biden is starting beef on Twitter.Earlier this week, Biden announced that the federal government would cancel up to $20,000 worth of federal student loans for millions of borrowers. While the internet’s reaction to the news was typical, the White House’s response to that reaction was not.On Thursday, the White House’s official Twitter account called out Republican lawmakers who spent the last few days criticizing the administration’s student loan forgiveness plan. In a series of tweets, the White House name-dropped Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) and Matt Gaetz (FL) for taking out business loans during the pandemic that were later forgiven by the federal... Continue reading…

Samsung made big strides with last year’s foldables in terms of durability — the Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 were the first devices in the series to offer serious water resistance and an IPX8 rating. This year’s phones aren’t a whole lot tougher, but the Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 are still something of an engineering marvel. We got a glimpse at the foldable assembly line last year, and as the newest Flip and Fold go on sale today, Samsung is giving us another peek at how the sausage is made. And it’s pretty flippin’ cool.The video — spotted by XDA Developers — mostly features the Fold 4, starting from the moment its back cover is pressed into place and ending with a look at the folding phone dunk tank. Along the way, various functions are tested,... Continue reading…

The 0ktapus phishing campaign is one of the best-executed security attacks of this scale to date. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Over 130 organizations, including Twilio, DoorDash, and Cloudflare, have been potentially compromised by hackers as part of a months-long phishing campaign nicknamed “0ktapus” by security researchers. Login credentials belonging to nearly 10,000 individuals were stolen by attackers who imitated the popular single sign-on service Okta, according to a report from cybersecurity outfit Group-IB.As Group-IB goes on to detail, the attackers used that access to pivot and attack accounts across other services. On August 15th, the secure messaging service Signal alerted users that the attackers' Twilio breach allowed them to reveal as many as 1,900 Signal accounts and confirmed they were able to register new devices to the accounts of a few,... Continue reading…

Why are you like this? Google’s plan to consolidate its communication services into Meet was supposed to (finally) make things simpler and more straightforward. It was meant to bring about some sense and order for a company that has always overthought this stuff and made it confusing — to a truly impressive degree. Earlier this month, the company rebranded its Duo video chat app as Meet and brought over Meet’s features. That left the original, to-be-phased-out Meet app with a new “Meet (Original)” name. It also made for an all-time great headline.But apparently, not all customers have been happy with Duo’s sudden identity change. With the latest update to the Meet app for Android, Google has brought back the original Duo icon and name as a separate shortcut... Continue reading…

The big changes have come with big problems. | Image: Visible Last week, Verizon’s budget-focused carrier Visible announced some sweeping changes, introducing new plans that utilize an entirely different network infrastructure. The carrier told customers that if they chose to upgrade, they’d get better roaming coverage and latency as well as extra features if they sprung for the $45 a month Visible Plus plan.Reviews among those who have successfully upgraded or signed up seem to be largely positive — most report seeing better speeds and significantly improved latency. (Though there are a few who say they don’t really notice any difference between the legacy plan and the new one.) But for many other customers, the switch has been fraught with service and customer support issues.“Just swapped the... Continue reading…

Three new Lightguide smart LED bulbs from Philips Hue appeared on Amazon.de this week. Signify looks set to release a stunning new line of light bulbs for its Philips Hue brand, as the company continues to innovate its LED-based smart lighting line. The new Lightguide line features oversized dimmable smart bulbs that come in three shapes and are designed for open lighting fixtures. These look like they could add some seriously stylish mood lighting to any setup.The new full-color and white ambiance bulbs appeared on Amazon.de this week — first spotted by Fabian over at HueBlog.com. According to him, the bulbs will start at 75 euros ($75 USD). That’s each. These bulbs are not cheap, even by Hue standards. Philips Hue Lightguide Triangle (top), Ellipse (left), and Globe... Continue reading…

Image: Sony We’re just a week out from the release of Sony’s The Last of Us remake for PS5, and on Friday, the company detailed the many accessibility options that will be available in the game.For the remake, developer Naughty Dog used the suite of accessibility features included with The Last of Us Part II as a “baseline” and built upon those, according to a blog post from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Gillen McAllister. One useful new option is audio descriptions for cutscenes, which will work with “all our localized languages,” director Matthew Gallant said in the blog.Another option that I’m particularly keen to try is feeling dialogue as haptic feedback in the DualSense controller. “That way a deaf player can feel the way a line is... Continue reading…

Free games are the perfect pairing for this digital-exclusive console. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge If you were looking for something to occupy your time this weekend, the team at The Verge Deals has got you covered. Right now, you can score a free digital game when you buy an Xbox Series S at Best Buy. Simply add an Xbox Series S to your cart for its regular price of $299.99, then head to this link to pick one of the available games that you can get for free. Some of the qualifying titles that are part of this deal include Dying Light 2: Stay Human Ultimate Edition (normally $99.99), Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Chaotic Great Edition (normally $89.99), and Forza Horizon 5 Premium Edition (normally $99.99). While the Series S doesn’t have the same power as the Series X, it’s still an excellent digital-exclusive console that’s small enough... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Fridays, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, editor-at-large David Pierce, and managing editor Alex Cranz discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.Today’s show starts with Apple announcing the date for its annual iPhone event, slated for September 7th. Apple is also expected to announce new Apple Watches at the event, so the crew discusses the various rumors of redesigns the next watches may have.Later in the show, the topic shifts to the latest news in streaming: Warner Bros. Discovery’s new streaming service may be called... Continue reading…

Paddy Considine as Viserys I Targaryen and Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra Targaryen. | Image: HBO Though House of the Dragon’s only just premiered, HBO’s already making it quite clear that the Game of Thrones prequel is here to stay, at least for a while.Today, HBO announced that Ryan Condal and George R.R. Martin’s House of the Dragon has been renewed for a second season of stories all about Westeros’ infamous family of inbred dragon riders. In a statement about the renewal, HBO executive vice president of programming Francesca Orsi sang House of the Dragon’s praises and expressed confidence in the ability of the creative team behind the show to tell compelling stories.“Our phenomenal cast and crew undertook a massive challenge and exceeded all expectations, delivering a show that has already established itself as must-see-TV,”... Continue reading…

Microbiologists with the AEGIS Sciences Corporation process Covid-19 and Monkeypox tests at its facility in Nashville, Tennessee, United States on August 04, 2022. | Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images The White House has instructed federal agencies to make publicly funded research freely available immediately after publication, ending a loophole that let journals put it behind a paywall for a year. The updated guidance will take effect by the end of 2025, and it expands rules first announced in 2013 but criticized as insufficient by President Joe Biden.The new Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo on public access was released yesterday. Individual agencies must draft new policies based on it within a year, or 180 days for larger agencies. They’ll govern the specifics of the deal, but they must implement several changes, including the following:

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo’s Switch console won’t be added to the list of price-hiked tech products impacted by inflation. The company gave a statement to Eurogamer, reiterating what company president Shuntaro Furukawa told shareholders in June, saying it had “no plans to increase the trade price of its hardware.”Here’s the full statement shared with Eurogamer:

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge The auto industry is still processing the new and confusing electric vehicle credits signed into law by President Joe Biden as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Foreign automakers, in particular, are scrambling to find some loophole through the new rules that would seem to disqualify the vast majority of their EV fleets, while others are speeding up plans to build new factories in the US.EVs built outside North America are not eligible for the $7,500 tax credit. The law also includes provisions aimed at preventing use of battery components or critical minerals derived from China, which currently controls around three-fourths of the global battery market.EVs built outside North America are not eligible for the $7,500 tax... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Crypto critics have had a very good year. Much of what they predicted has come to pass: that high-profile projects would be revealed as Ponzi schemes; that security lapses would lead to massive thefts; and that average people would be left holding the bag. Bitcoin, which was trading around $67,000 in November, is at $21,570 today; plenty of other cryptocurrencies are much worse off.As I noted here last month, though, on social networks it can feel like the crypto crash really never happened. Over the past few months, Facebook and Instagram added ways for users to showcase non-fungible tokens, and Spotify let artists use NFTs as their profile pictures.The origin of that piece was the news that Reddit, the venerable social news... Continue reading…

A $400 smartwatch for just $1,290 Continue reading…

Photo by Peerapon Boonyakiat / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech over alleged infringement of its mRNA vaccine technology patents, the company announced today.“We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Moderna chief executive officer Stéphane Bancel in a statement.Moderna said in 2020 that it would not enforce its patents during the pandemic to allow for an unhindered public health response. It’s still not planning to enforce patents in low- and middle-income countries, the company said in a statement. But it’s coming after Pfizer and BioNTech, which it said it expected to “respect its... Continue reading…

LG UltraGear OLED Gaming Monitor (45GR95QE). | Image: LG LG has announced a new 45-inch ultrawide OLED gaming monitor with a refresh rate of 240Hz. The company is calling the UltraGear 45GR95QE its “first curved OLED display with a 240Hz refresh rate,” which is notable at a time when most OLED displays (including those with flat panels) are still capped at 120Hz. The company is yet to announce pricing or a release date for the monitor, but plans to show it off at IFA in Berlin next month.Having a higher refresh rate means a display appears smoother and less juddery, and video games feel more responsive to play — especially when combined with OLED’s near-instantaneous response times. Until recently it was rare to find an OLED display with a refresh rate of over 120Hz, but that’s changed in... Continue reading…

Coming soon to an iPhone or iPad near you. | Image: Duolingo Yes, you read that headline correctly. Duolingo, the language learning app famous for the owl that haunts my dreams every night, now has a companion app to teach you (and children — but mostly you, reader) mathematics.To get the most pressing question out of the way: yes, the owl is present in the new app, which is called Duolingo Math. However, said bird appears to have been compressed into a cube of sorts. I am unsure if it continues to qualify as an owl in this new form factor. I do suppose a mascot reclassification wouldn’t be amiss here, since owls can’t do math. Come on now. This isn’t fantasyland. It took me four tries to pull this screenshot from the opening animation. You’re welcome. As someone who has... Continue reading…

Soon with satellite connectivity. | Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge Elon Musk just announced that the upcoming second-generation Starlink internet satellites include cellular antennas for connections with phones from T-Mobile in the US and potentially other operators as well.Following the event, he responded to tweets asking whether the connections will work with Tesla’s electric cars, which currently connect to AT&T’s LTE network. According to Musk, the answer is yes.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile says it’s getting rid of mobile dead zones, thanks to a new partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet, at an event hosted by T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and Elon Musk. With their “Coverage Above and Beyond” setup, mobile phones could connect to satellites and use a slice of a connection providing around 2 to 4 Megabits per second connection (total) across a given coverage area.That connection should be enough to let you text, send MMS messages, and even use “select messaging apps” whenever you have a clear view of the sky, even if there’s no traditional service available. According to a press release from T-Mobile, the “satellite-to-cellular service” will be available “everywhere in the continental US, Hawaii, parts... Continue reading…

This is the first Steam Deck, but based on Valve’s book, it sounds like there will be others. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge On Thursday, Valve released a digital “booklet” all about the Steam Deck, Steam, and the company itself. Valve says it released the book ahead of the Steam Deck’s launch in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but the book also happens to arrive on the six-month anniversary of when Valve sent the first order emails allowing people to buy their Steam Deck.The 52-page ebook is free, and if you’re at all interested in Valve or the Steam Deck, I’d recommend flipping through it. Not only are there a few pages littered with Steam Deck prototypes, but you’ll also be able to read about Valve’s ambitions for the Steam Deck in its own words.

New teenage users will be defaulted to a newsfeed that shows less sensitive content | Image: Instagram Instagram announced the platform is rolling out a feature that defaults accounts for new users under 16 years old to “Less,” the most restrictive setting for Sensitive Content Control. Teenagers already on Instagram will get push notifications “encouraging” them to opt-in to the heavier filtering on what the algorithm shows them across Search, Explore, Hashtag Pages, Reels, Feed Recommendations, and Suggested Accounts.The “Standard” setting in Instagram only lets users see some content deemed sensitive, while the “Less” option tightens the restrictions even further, and the “More” option allows users to see more sensitive content or accounts than the default settings. While users over 18 years old typically have access to “Standard,”... Continue reading…

Spreading memes and fake news to countries like Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Iran | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge While countries like Russia and China have been making headlines for years with their disinformation and propaganda campaigns on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, it turns out that the US and other Western countries have been playing the same game. A recent report (pdf) from social network analysis firm Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory has uncovered a series of operations, some covert and some less so, that aimed to “promote pro-Western narratives” in countries like Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Iran (via Gizmodo).According to the report, Twitter and Meta removed a group of accounts from their platforms earlier this month, citing their platform manipulation and coordinated inauthentic behavior rules. Analyzing the... Continue reading…

The iPhone 14 Pro is rumored to replace the notch with a pill-shaped cutout and a hole punch for a selfie cam. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is rumored to ditch the notch in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max in favor of a pill-shaped cutout and a spot for the selfie cam, and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has published a patent application that seems to show how the company could do that, according to Patently Apple (via 9to5Mac).The patent application covers several possible variants of a device that combines a camera, an infrared light emitter, and a “light folding element” that can redirect the IR light. The application describes how a light-folded projector can be used to reduce the footprint of these components, leaving more display area on the phone.The notch currently houses a lot of technology, including a selfie camera, an infrared camera, a depth... Continue reading…

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge I come to you today with good and bad news. The bad news is that small phones are dead. Apple is all but certainly killing off the iPhone Mini this year, and the smallest Android phone I’ve used all year is the 5.9-inch Asus Zenfone 9 — quite a bit larger than the 5.4-inch Mini. But that’s what passes for “small” now.Here’s the good news. We can at long last lay to rest the debate over what’s the right size for a phone because I just made up an answer: 6.1 inches. All phones henceforth shall adhere to the new, entirely reasonable standard I have invented and come with a 6.1-inch screen. Take the Google Pixel 6A and its — you guessed it — 6.1-inch screen. Next to the 6.4 and 6.7-inch Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, it’s downright tiny. It fooled me... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images After a hearing on discovery requests from lawyers representing both Elon Musk and Twitter, Judge Kathaleen McCormick gave a firm “no” to the Musk team’s “absurdly broad” request in favor of a much smaller set of information. However, Twitter must hand over some additional data relating to how it calculates the “monetizable daily active users” (mDAU) statistic and its associated bot activity estimate that Musk argues is fraudulent.Musk’s lawyers wanted “all of the data Twitter might possibly store for each of the approximately 200 million accounts included in its mDAU count every day for nearly three years,” covering trillions of data points, McCormick wrote in her ruling. “Plaintiff [Twitter] has difficulty quantifying the burden of... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge If you’ve bought an Meta (formerly known as Oculus) Quest or Quest 2 virtual reality headset in the past few years, you’ve likely had to set it up using a Facebook account. While that makes sense given that the device is made by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, there are a few potential downsides to having your Facebook account and Quest linked. For example, if your account gets banned because of something that happens on Facebook, you may lose access to the games you’ve purchased for Oculus.Thankfully, Meta recently started rolling out a new type of account that you can log in to your Oculus with, so you can decouple your Quest from your Facebook profile. They’re called Meta accounts, and it’s relatively easy to make the switch on a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that Meta’s next virtual reality headset will arrive in October. Zuckerberg made the comments on Joe Rogan’s podcast, indicating the device — almost certainly the headset codenamed “Project Cambria” — will likely launch around the company’s annual Connect event.“For the next device that’s coming out in October, there’s a few big features,” Zuckerberg said, discussing VR at the beginning of the podcast. He proceeded to describe new social options that would be enabled by eye and facial tracking. “The ability to now have kind of eye contact in virtual reality,” Zuckerberg said as part of the feature list. “Have your face be tracked so that way your avatar — it’s not just this still thing, but if you... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Ford is raising the price of the 2023 Mustang Mach-E a few weeks after doing the same to its other major EV, the F-150 Lightning.The automaker announced that it was reopening the order banks for the popular electric SUV with an adjusted MSRP (manufacturer suggested retail price) that reflects “significant material cost increases, continued strain on key supply chains, and rapidly evolving market conditions” — the same reason it gave for hiking the price on the F-150 Lightning.“Significant material cost increases”Here’s a breakdown of the new prices, with the model year 2022 price in parentheses:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Maps and Search will now explicitly label healthcare facilities that provide abortion services, TechCrunch reported. It’s another change made in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end federal protection for abortion.Searching “abortion clinics near me” will now let users see which places are confirmed to offer abortion services. If Google doesn’t have confirmation, the label will read “might not provide abortions.” If there aren’t results nearby, it’ll give an option to expand the search to farther away.The move comes after a Bloomberg report that Google Maps shows crisis pregnancy centers — which do not provide abortions and often distribute misinformation about the safe medical procedure —... Continue reading…

The Honor 70. | Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge A little under three months after it was first announced in China, Honor has launched its midrange Honor 70 smartphone in the UK. The phone is set to start at £480 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, rising to £530 for 256GB of storage. Both versions will go on general sale on September 2nd, with preorders opening tomorrow. Stay tuned for our full review next week.Compared to last year’s Honor 50, the Honor 70’s camera specs are a lot better balanced this time around. (An Honor 60 was announced in China in December but never saw a global release.) Rather than pairing an incredibly high-resolution 108-megapixel camera with three extra sensors totaling just 12-megapixels in resolution between them, the Honor 70 balances a 54-megapixel... Continue reading…