The Verge

Don’t tell me where the Command key is. It’s wherever I want it to be. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Say you’re a Mac user who just got a fancy new keyboard, but it has a Windows layout. Or you want to use the same keyboard with both Windows and Mac machines. Or you’ve gotten used to a specific layout, and now your muscle memory is all wrong.The biggest differences between Macs and Windows PCs are in the bottom row modifier keys. Windows computers have Ctrl, Win, and Alt, whereas Macs have Control, Option, and Command. macOS automatically maps the Alt to Option and Win to Command. But Windows uses the Control key for most of the shortcuts that Macs use the Command key for, which means you have to remember to copy / paste using your pinkie on one computer and using your index finger on another. Who wants that?You could try to rewire... Continue reading…

Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge At this point, just about every car company has committed to spending the next few years adding electric and hybrid vehicles to their fleets or eventually phasing out internal combustion engines entirely.But in a new climate study released this week, EV startups Rivian and Polestar have a more dire message: electrification alone will not be enough.A new climate report from global management consulting firm Kearney commissioned by the two automakers indicates that, despite a massive rollout of new EVs and hybrids in the coming years, the global automotive industry is still “far off track” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a way that can meet targets set by the Paris agreement. And that does not even account for emissions from the... Continue reading…

Regulators believe that Stadia’s comparatively limited game library contributed to its demise and fear Microsoft could similarly limit cloud gaming competitors by purchasing Activision Blizzard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge When Google announced last year that it was closing down Stadia because the cloud gaming service hadn’t “gained enough traction,” it wasn’t abundantly clear exactly how the platform stacked up against competitors like Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming. Now, statistics shared by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) show that Stadia had a significantly smaller presence than rival services, with an estimated zero to 5 percent share of the cloud gaming market in 2022 (via 9to5Google).The CMA said that its findings are based on global information provided directly by each company. The charts don’t include actual figures, and Google has remained tight-lipped regarding how many subscribers Stadia actually had.... Continue reading…

TP-Link launches its Tapo robot vacuum line this week. | Image: TP-Link If you don’t like emptying your robot vacuum but also don’t like the idea of shelling out over $500 for an auto-empty model, TP-Link’s new budget robot vac might be for you. It doesn’t empty itself, but thanks to a large 800ml bin, the company says you only have to deal with that dusty mess twice a month.The Tapo RV10 Lite is one of the first robot vacs from the brand known for its Wi-Fi routers. And in line with TP-Link’s reputation for high-tech at low prices, it’s a seriously budget bot. The Lite features the big bin and costs $229.99, while its mopping-capable sibling, the Tapo RV10, has a smaller bin but room for a 300ml mopping reservoir on board. It costs $249.99.There’s no lidar navigation, obstacle avoidance, or mapping at... Continue reading…

The Realme GT Neo 5 in black, purple, and white. | Image: Realme This is getting ridiculous. Realme has just announced a new smartphone, the Realme GT Neo 5, that supports up to 240W fast charging. According to GSMArena, that will make it the fastest charging smartphone on the market, faster than the 210W offered by the Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition, and almost 100W faster than the 150W charging offered by OnePlus devices like the 10T. 240W is in line with the latest USB power spec announced by the USB-IF in 2021.In practical terms, we’re really hitting the point of diminishing returns with fast charging wattage this high on smartphones. Realme advertises that the GT Neo 5’s 4,600mAh battery can be charged to 100 percent in nine and a half minutes thanks to its 240W charging. That’s super fast, but... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter appears to be recovering from having technical issues that prevented people from tweeting, though problems with DMs, and accessing TweetDeck are still seemingly persisting. Downdetector reports that the problems started around 4:30PM ET, and the unfettered ability to tweet came back around an hour and a half later.The company has said it’s aware of the existing issues, and is working on fixing them.Tweets were visible during the partial outage, but several Verge staff members got a message saying that they were “over the daily limit for sending Tweets” when trying to post or retweet someone else’s post. Some Twitter users said were able to work around the error by scheduling tweets in the future.

The Verge During Sonos’ Q1 2023 earnings call, CEO Patrick Spence expressed the usual optimism about his company’s financial performance, sales momentum, and upcoming product roadmap. This man really loves the word “flywheel,” folks. But he also took clear jabs at Big Tech competitors, including Amazon, Google, and Apple, for barely putting up a fight in recent months.With Amazon rumored to be taking a hard look at its ambitions surrounding Alexa and Echo products and Google largely focused on all things Pixel, Spence said that Sonos faced no serious competition during the crucial holiday quarter. “We’ve gone through fiscal Q1, which is the height of the consumer electronics and audio season and, you know, it was... we’ve seen some of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The latest Nintendo Direct had all the big names — well, aside from Mario. But we got a fresh trailer for the next Zelda game, a surprise launch of the original Metroid Prime, a release date for Pikmin 4, and the addition of Game Boy games to the Switch Online subscription service. Plus, there were some excellent announcements for RPG nerds. Here’s everything you might have missed.A new look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the KingdomThe wait for the sequel to Breath of the Wild has been tough, but at least we have a new trailer to make things a little easier. The latest is very dramatic.Metroid Prime gets a remasterThe long-awaited remaster of the original Metroid Prime is making its way to the Switch, and it’s happening very... Continue reading…

Metroid Prime Remastered. | Image: Nintendo It’s not Metroid Prime 4, but it’s still big news for fans of intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran: the original Metroid Prime is being remastered for the Switch. Even better, the game will be launching today in the Nintendo eShop (a physical version will be available on February 22nd). The news was announced during Nintendo’s first Direct presentation of 2023.The first Prime launched two decades ago on the GameCube and was remarkable for the way it translated the moody exploration of Super Metroid into a first-person experience. It was followed by two sequels. A fourth game, the aptly named Metroid Prime 4, is in the works but was rebooted in 2019 with little information since then.The last game in the series was the 2D action title... Continue reading…

The Philadelphia Eagles mascot dances during the NFL Super Bowl LVII opening night ceremonies. Will it be dancing as happily on Sunday? | Photo by Adam Bow / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Super Bowl LVII is being played at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, at 6:30PM ET on February 12th, with the Kansas City Chiefs facing off against the Philadelphia Eagles.No matter what you use to watch it, the Super Bowl should be a fun and exciting event, whether you’re more interested in the star-studded halftime game (featuring nine-time Grammy winner Rihanna), the commercials, or — surprise! — the game itself. We’ve got the info you need about how, when, and where. And as more information becomes available about entertainers, ads, and other cool stuff, we’ll continue to bring you updates.As it did in 2020, Fox will be capturing the game in 1080p HD with HDR; the network will then upscale the feed to 4K — so if you have... Continue reading…

Photo: Blizzard The sixth season of the Overwatch League will be its biggest yet, literally. With Overwatch 2 in its first full year and finally in the hands of players worldwide, the League is making sweeping changes to accompany this new state of things.To start, the Philadelphia Fusion and the Paris Eternal are no more. Paris has “relocated” to Vegas to become the Vegas Eternal, and the Philadelphia Fusion have undergone a complete rebrand, relocating to Seoul to become the Seoul Infernal. The Paris to Vegas pipeline had been in the cards (heh) for a while, as the Eternal’s Call of Duty League sister team, the Paris Legion, had rebranded to the Vegas Legion at the end of the 2022 season.For the Fusion, while the franchise is owned by Comcast... Continue reading…

Giving you more control over your “taste profile.” | Image: Spotify Spotify is rolling out a feature that will let you tell it to ignore music in certain playlists when it’s deciding what type of music you like. The feature is called Exclude From Your Taste Profile, and the company is pitching it as a way to keep your recommendations from getting overrun by “songs and artists that don’t fit” your general listening habits.It’s easy to imagine several scenarios where this ability could be useful. Your sleep playlist could end up getting a lot of listen time but may not have the type of music or sounds you want to listen to while you’re awake. It’s a similar story with work playlists, which could be very different from your off-the-clock music tastes. (One of my co-workers commented that their lo-fi beats... Continue reading…

Image: Ramin Talaie / Getty Images Clay Bavor, Google’s vice president of its forward-looking Labs division, is leaving the company to found an AI startup, as announced in a post on Bavor’s LinkedIn on Wednesday.Longtime Verge readers may recognize Bavor as the face of many of Google’s virtual reality and augmented reality plans, including Google’s ARCore and its early VR hardware efforts. But in 2021, he was appointed to lead Google Labs, meaning his purview increased to also include things like Google’s Project Starline video chat booth and its Area 120 incubator, which was dramatically affected by Google’s recent layoffs. Bavor was also overseeing work on an in-development AR headset, my colleague Alex Heath reported in January 2022, and it’s unclear who might head up... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has launched a longer tweet feature, giving Blue subscribers in the US the ability to post up to 4,000 characters at once. If someone you follow uses the feature, the tweet in your timeline will have a “show more” button to keep it from taking up your entire screen.Currently, there are a few limitations to the feature (besides the big one that it’s behind a paywall). If your tweet is over the standard 280 characters, you can’t save it as a draft or schedule it for later. However, most other normal features should work as usual — you can add hashtags or pictures, and non-Blue subscribers will still be able to interact with the posts as normal.Blue subscribers will also be getting the ability to quote retweet and reply with 4,000... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is expanding its paid password sharing to subscribers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain starting Wednesday, the company announced in a blog post. The company had already started testing the change — in a few different forms — in some countries in Latin America. Now, Netflix is expanding its efforts ahead of a broader rollout in “the coming months.”Last week, Netflix faced pushback after notes about when and how it might block devices used beyond your household popped up on support pages for the US and other countries where the new “paid sharing” setup hasn’t rolled out yet.Netflix said that was inadvertent, and now none of the support pages have any details about restrictions on streaming to devices that aren’t on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The new AI-powered version of Bing can produce hilarious resignation letters, information on current news events, and mistakes. Continue reading…

Owen Wilson in Paint. | Image: IFC Films First, Daniel Radcliffe took on the role of Weird Al. Now, Owen Wilson is doing the same for Bob Ross — kind of. The first trailer for Paint shows Wilson playing a very Bob Ross-like character, right down to the large hair and calming asides. But the movie is technically about a fictionalized version of Ross, named Carl Nargle. The film follows Nargle’s rise to become the No. 1 cable access painter in Vermont before being faced with a young rival who threatens his place.Paint looks, naturally, goofy as hell. It channels a lot of the same ridiculous energy as Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but it’s a bit less manic, as is befitting the calming paintings of happy little trees. The movie is helmed by director Brit McAdams, and in addition... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft Edge’s new PDF viewer is powered by Adobe, and it won’t let you forget that. In an announcement on its website, Microsoft says it’s replacing Edge’s existing PDF viewer with one from Adobe Acrobat, which includes some “advanced” features that are available if you’re willing to pay for them.Microsoft markets the integration as a way to give users “a unique PDF experience” with “higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility.” While Microsoft says that these basic features will stay free and that it won’t lose any existing functionality, documents will still display “an unobtrusive Adobe brand mark.” Image: Microsoft ... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge And Biden calls for Big Tech regulation in his State of the Union. Continue reading…

A windmill and the smoke from the Doel Nuclear power plant are seen from Antwerp harbor on February 7th, 2023, in Antwerp, Belgium. | Image: Thierry Monasse / Getty Images Nearly all of the world’s new electricity supply over the next few years will come from renewable and nuclear energy, pushing out fossil fuels and curbing climate pollution from electricity, according to a new analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA).“We are close to a tipping point”Carbon pollution-free sources of energy are expected to meet more than 90 percent of new electricity demand globally through 2025. Most of that will come from renewables, including solar, wind, and hydropower. Nuclear energy is also seeing a modest resurgence, bolstering the agency’s bullishness on carbon-free power.Those gains should loosen fossil fuel’s grip on electricity generation. After peaking in 2022, carbon dioxide emissions from the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is showing off some of its plans for Android 14 in the OS’s first developer preview, which is available today. While it doesn’t tell us much about the consumer features we’ll be getting later this year, it does show Google has continued to focus on foldables, tablets, and other large-screen devices, as well as user customization.Google’s blog post announcing the preview says that Android 14 “builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors” and lists several tools that developers can use to make sure their apps run “everywhere Android runs.” The company is also updating and adding to its documentation about designing apps for large screens and foldables.This focus isn’t a surprise at... Continue reading…

The Fire TV Cube (2022) retains its tiny obelisk-like boxy form factor. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Ready for some deals to get you over the hump? The latest version of Amazon’s Fire TV Cube is selling for $124.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That saves you $15 on Amazon’s highest-end streaming device, which sports speedy performance, hands-free voice control using Amazon Alexa, and Wi-Fi 6E for less network congestion if you have a lot of devices in your home (and a 6E-capable router).The Fire TV Cube is kind of like buying an Echo smart speaker and a Fire TV streamer in one package, a decent value when you consider what you might spend on those separately. Just be aware that it’s an Amazon device, which means plenty of on-screen ads for Amazon content — and even some non-Amazon ads on the screensaver. Woof. Read our review.T... Continue reading…

Hi-Fi Rush. | Image: Tango Gameworks Director John Johanas explains how the rhythm action game was inspired by everything from Radiohead to the Dreamcast. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The first Nintendo Direct of the year is almost upon us — and it sounds like it might be a big one. While Nintendo hasn’t provided any real details, the company did say to expect “roughly 40 minutes of information” about games coming out in the first half of 2023.It’s important to note that this year is shaping up to be a big one for Nintendo. The Super Mario Bros. Movie comes out in April, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is coming to the Switch in May, and next week will see Super Nintendo World open up at Universal Studios Hollywood. We could get updates on all of those, and there’s also a possibility we’ll hear about Pikmin 4 or the long-dormant Advance Wars reboot. If we’re really lucky, maybe there’ll even be some kind of... Continue reading…

Google demoed new generative AI features that summarize search results but didn’t say when they’d be available. | Image: Google Google demoed its latest advances in AI search at a live event in Paris on Wednesday — but the features pale in comparison to Microsoft’s announcement yesterday of the “new Bing,” which the company has demoed extensively to the press and offered limited public access to.In perhaps the most interesting demo, Google showed off how it will use generative AI in the future to summarize information from the web. In the demo, the company showed a search for the question “what are the best constellations to look for while stargazing?” with an AI-generated response highlighting a few key options and how to spot them.“New generative AI features will help us organize complex information and multiple viewpoints right in search results,” said... Continue reading…

The new Immersive View will be rolled out to Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence, and Venice in the coming months. | Image: Google Immersive View is now rolling out for Google Maps in five global cities after the feature was first introduced across hundreds of notable landmarks last year. It combines billions of Street View and aerial images, allowing users to scope out neighborhoods as if they’re flying overhead and then drop down to street level for a closer look at areas of interest. The experience essentially resembles Google Earth but with Street View’s freedom to explore in more detail.Immersive View was first announced in May 2021 and expanded in September last year to cover 250 global landmarks, including Tokyo Tower and the Acropolis of Athens. Today, the feature is rolling out to cover London, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Tokyo, with the... Continue reading…

The Volvo EX90 is an electric vehicle that includes Google Maps built-in. | Image: Volvo Along with other AI-powered search upgrades, Google announced a slate of new Google Maps features for owners of electric vehicles that have the company’s navigation tool built-in. The aim is to improve the experience of finding the right EV charging station and to plan trips when charging might be necessary.Before we get to the new features, a fair warning: only a handful of EVs come with Google Maps built-in, including vehicles from Polestar, Volvo, certain General Motors vehicles, and Renault. (Honda and Ford electric vehicles with Google built-in are coming soon.) EV owners who use Google Maps on their mobile device, or through Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, will not be able to use these new features.For EV owners with Google Maps... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google announced a bunch of AI-enabled search, Maps, and Translate updates as part of its Google presents: Live from Paris event on Wednesday.While it showed off a brief demo of “Bard,” the ChatGPT-rivaling AI chatbot-style search powered by its LaMDA technology, most of the features focused on features we've already seen, like “visual search” implementations that expand Google Lens, a more immersive version of Google Maps, and a Google Translate that is better at understanding context.Of course, you can kinda, sorta mess around with Microsoft’s new ChatGPT-powered Bing already and access the already-available ChatGPT itself, which has been enough to raise a “code red” about AI features within Mountain View.Some of the features are... Continue reading…

Photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images President Joe Biden threw his support behind tougher rules regulating Silicon Valley during his Second State of the Union speech Tuesday night.The president attempted to rally bipartisan support to finally resolve a number of long-standing privacy, safety, and competition issues facing the tech industry. Over the more than hourlong address, Biden called on Congress to pass new rules protecting user data privacy and boosting competition in the tech industry.“Pass bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement”“Pass bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage,” Biden said. “It’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google, the company ubiquitous to online web searches, is set to reveal news on how it’ll use AI to help find what you’re looking for in a more “natural and intuitive” way. Google’s been using AI and machine learning models to achieve things like removing unwanted objects in your photos with Magic Eraser and building step-by-step directions in Google Maps’ Street View. And more experimentally, Google used AI to let you generate images from text and figure out scribbly doctors’ notes.Google just announced this week it’s working on a conversational AI system called Bard, which is powered by its internal LaMDA AI model. Now, based on its many years of researching AI, Google sounds like it’s ready to take on AI systems like DALL-E and, more... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Tinder now allows you to browse through profiles while staying hidden — but you’ll have to pay for it. In a post on Tinder’s newsroom, the dating app announced a new incognito mode that you can use to swipe through profiles without showing up in their recommendations feed unless you “like” them (via TechCrunch).Currently, Tinder’s algorithm surfaces your profile in other members’ recommendations, whether you swipe right or left on them. Incognito mode, on the other hand, will hide your profile from other users unless you’ve expressed interest, which should help ensure you’re profile’s viewed by the people you want to see it.The downside is that you can only access the new feature if you pay for Tinder Plus, Gold, and Platinum, which... Continue reading…

Devil Dinosaur and Moon Girl dancing together. | Disney ‘When I watched cartoons as a kid, there was a lot of serious orchestration. A lot of funk, a lot of R&B, and a lot of soul — all kinds of different styles of music. I wanted that for Moon Girl, too.’ Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Meta is adding several new features to WhatsApp status, which lets you post disappearing pictures and other media. Once the features roll out over the coming weeks, you’ll be able to react to people’s posts with an emoji, limit who can see your status, and post voice messages.According to an announcement post, the status emoji reactions work similar to how they do on Instagram; when you swipe up on the post, you get the option to choose from one of eight emoji. (The options are , , , , , , , and .)While a WhatsApp blog post calls emoji reactions the No. 1 requested feature after it launched the ability to react to messages last year, I personally feel like the Private Audience Selector is the most useful addition announced today.... Continue reading…