The Verge

Photo by Ty O’Neil/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Bird overstated the revenue it received from its shared electric scooters for at least two years, the company admitted in documents filed (PDF) with the US Securities and Exchange Commission Monday.The phantom revenue was discovered after an audit of financial statements from 2020 and 2021 in which Bird found it was counting as revenue customers’ preloaded “wallet” balances following the completion of certain scooter trips. This revenue “should not have been recorded,” the company said.As a result, Bird said that two years’ worth of financial statements “should no longer be relied upon” and that the company would be late in filing its third quarter earnings report, which was expected later today. A spokesperson for the company did... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter eliminated a large number of contract employees on Saturday, affecting anywhere from 4,400 to 5,500 workers, according to Platformer’s Casey Newton. As noted by Platformer and confirmed by other reports from Axios and CNBC, most contract employees didn’t receive any notice that they’ve been terminated and only found out after losing access to the company’s email and internal communications systems.The job cuts follow layoffs that culled about half of Twitter’s workforce and slashed 15 percent of its trust and safety team. Platformer first reported about the mass firings on Saturday night, which span both US-based and global employees working in content moderation, real estate, marketing, engineering, and other departments.T... Continue reading…

Illustration by Lille Allen / The Verge Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) told Elon Musk, “Fix your companies. Or Congress will,” after Musk snarkily replied to the senator’s concerns about fake verified accounts on Twitter, and suggested Markey’s real account “sounds like a parody.”On Friday, Markey sent out a tweet containing a link to a letter he wrote to Musk, criticizing the new $7.99 per month Blue with verification subscription. The letter cites a report from the Washington Post that details how a reporter was able to easily create a fake verified account impersonating Markey and calls on Musk to address the issue. “Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again,” Markey writes.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Crypto.com just admitted to making another very large and concerning clerical error: it mistakenly sent 320,000 in Ethereum (~$416 million USD) to another cryptocurrency exchange, called Gate.io, about three weeks ago (via Web3 Is Going Just Great). In a post on Twitter, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek says the company was supposed to send the crypto to one of its cold, or offline, wallets, but accidentally sent it to a “whitelisted” address belonging to its corporate account at Gate.io.This all unfolded after Marszalek publicly posted the company’s cold wallet addresses to provide transparency about what the exchange does with its funds. After digging into Crypto.com’s transactions, one user, Conor Grogan, points out that the exchange... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge FTX moved users’ funds to offline wallets early Saturday morning after a wave of “unauthorized transactions” drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the beleaguered cryptocurrency exchange. Ryne Miller, the general counsel at FTX US, didn’t confirm a hack, but said on Twitter that the company made the move to “mitigate damage” caused by the potential theft, as transferring funds offline, or to “cold storage,” helps prevents outsiders from gaining access to them.The millions in funds evaporated from the platform shortly after FTX filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, affecting the domestic FTX US trading platform, the global version of FTX, and Alameda Research. It’s still unclear how much is missing from the exchange, but a... Continue reading…

Image: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Republicans predicted a “red wave” that would crush any hopes of a Democratic majority this election cycle. But as the dust settles and vote counts wrap up, that prediction has shattered.While Republicans saw success in states like Florida and New York, Democrats fared better in battleground states, where polls often significantly underestimated their support. On the eve of the election, FiveThirtyEight’s poll average had Dr. Mehmet Oz ahead by just half a point, only to see him lose by 4 percent in the final tally. In Michigan, the same average put incumbent Governor Gretchen Whitmer only five points ahead of her Republican challenger; but on election day, she won by more than 10 points.Many Democratic strategists and White House... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Grogu, meet Totoro. This evening famed animation house Studio Ghibli — best-known for films like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro — confirmed its new Star Wars project, which is called Discover Zen - Grogu and Dust Bunnies and is described as a “a hand-drawn animation.” There aren’t many other details on it, but that’s not such a big deal because you’ll be able to see it for yourself very soon: it starts streaming on Disney Plus on November 12th.Studio Ghibli has been teasing the collaboration for a few days. First with a short video featuring the studio’s logo alongside Lucasfilm’s, and later with a photo depicting both The Mandalorian star Grogu and legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney CEO Bob Chapek is predicting “some staff reductions” once the company reviews its spending, according to a leaked memo published by CNBC. The company will also reportedly freeze most hiring, only bringing on new employees for “the most critical, business-driving positions.”If Disney does end up carrying out a round of layoffs, it’ll be far from the only one among the companies pushing streaming services. Dozens of workers have lost their jobs at Warner Bros. Television and HBO Max this year. Netflix has also laid off hundreds of employees this year while reporting slower subscriber growth but noted during the last earnings call that its business remains profitable, unlike its premium streaming competitors, which include Disney.... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Crypto’s no-good, very bad 2022 got even worse as FTX (along with its international platform, the independent FTX.us exchange, and Alameda Research), previously the world’s third-largest crypto exchange by volume, couldn’t come up with the money to satisfy customers’ withdrawal requests and then suffered an aborted acquisition attempt by a competitor.Now, the company is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States while announcing that founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned from his post. Seamus Hughes pointed out that the bankruptcy filing itself is now available (pdf), and it lists a total of 134 corporate entities included in today’s announcement, as well as the proposed appointment of crypto investor Stephen Neal... Continue reading…

Photo by Jennifer Pattisson Tuohy The Verge Meta is pulling the plug on its Portal video calling smart displays and its two remaining unreleased smartwatch projects, my colleague Alex Heath can confirm, as the company cuts 11,000 jobs including many in tech divisions. Reuters reported earlier today that the company planned to kill off both Portal and smartwatches, citing Meta execs who spoke at a town hall meeting; we heard the same thing from other sources, so we can independently corroborate the news.Meta had already quietly decided to stop producing Portal devices for consumers in June, and had shelved the smartwatch that was furthest in development — codename “Milan,” which was reportedly set to arrive in spring 2023 for around $349 and feature two built-in cameras for video... Continue reading…

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 15: Rainn Wilson attends “Jerry & Marge Go Large” premiere during the 2022 Tribeca Festival. | Photo by Dominik Bindl/WireImage Actor Rainn Wilson (you might know him as Dwight from The Office) had a grand scheme to bring his hilarious brand of climate advocacy to Twitter this week. That plan, however, wasquickly thwarted — another victim of the name-changing drama that has flourished on the platform recently.Wilson took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce he was changing his name on social media to “Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson.” “As a cheap little stunt to help save planet Earth I’ve changed my name on Twitter, Instagram, and even on my fancy writing paper,” Wilson said in a video. He points to a memo pad with scrawled changes to his printed name, so that it reads “Acid Rainn Kills Trees Wilson.”Some 35 minutes later, Wilson tweeted, “P.S.... Continue reading…

You say you have my money? Prove it. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As FTX, formerly the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, files for bankruptcy and halts withdrawals, other exchanges are working hard to assure customers that they won’t be meeting the same fate. Binance, Crypto.com, and others have started releasing partial looks at their books, while Coinbase executives are on a media tour telling investors that it’s safe to store money with their company.The moves are meant to assure people that their money isn’t being used on other investments and is instead held one to one. In other words, the exchanges want you to know that if you deposit a Bitcoin with them, they’ll keep a Bitcoin in reserve. That’s in contrast with FTX, which reportedly loaned billions of dollars in customer... Continue reading…

Alex Spiro, leader of Elon Musk’s team of attorneys, leaves the US District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles on December 6th, 2019. | Image: APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images Elon Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro, who worked for months arguing Musk should be allowed to break his agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion, is now reassuring Twitter employees that they will not be personally liable if the company violates a 20-year FTC consent decree, according to an email obtained by The Verge.As employees have had to reckon with massive layoffs and general instability at the company, there have been fears that Twitter staffers working on security and privacy could be in some legal danger for potential violations of the decree.“It is the company’s obligation. It is the company’s burden. It is the company’s liability.”A company lawyer even suggested in Twitter’s Slack that employees investigate whistleblower... Continue reading…

Image: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images Tesla is opening up its charging system, but not in the way that helps people who own electric vehicles that aren’t Teslas.The automaker is renaming its Tesla connector the “North American Charging Standard” (NACS) and is pitting it against the current CCS combo charging standard. CCS is the agreed-upon standard that every manufacturer selling in North America has adopted for DC fast charging.In a new blog, Tesla says that its connector is “half the size, and twice as powerful” as CCS and points out that it’s “the most common charging standard” by a degree of 2 to 1. Tesla currently sells more EVs than any other manufacturer in the US, but other automakers are starting to catch up. According to the Department of Energy, there are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Omnicom, one of the world’s biggest ad firms, representing brands like McDonald’s, Apple, and PepsiCo, is recommending clients pause spending on Twitter, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge.Omnicom Media Group is recommending clients “pause activity on Twitter in the short term,” according to a note titled “Twitter - Continued Brand Safety Concerns.” The memo cites recent events in the last few days that have “potential serious implications” for brands running ads on the platform.“The risk to our clients’ brand safety has risen sharply to a level most would find unacceptable”The memo cites the deep layoffs of Twitter trust and safety teams, the resignations of high-profile executives, and the slew of “verified”... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge When it’s finally time to get a new Wi-Fi router, there’s no need to panic. Whether you’ve switched internet service providers or you’ve decided to get something snappier, snazzier, and more reliable than whatever piece of plastic your ISP handed you, upgrading your router doesn’t have to be a headache.If you have a smart home like I do, you may be dreading the thought of having to manually update every light bulb, light switch, and security camera in your home to the new network. (As of today, I have 112 devices on my network.) While typing a new password into a laptop or iPad is pretty easy, when it comes to smart home devices, you have to open each app for every smart device and go through the sometimes painful process of updating... Continue reading…

The 33-year-old Mikhail Vasiliev is currently in Canadian custody awaiting extradition to the United States. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Russian-Canadian national Mikhail Vasiliev was arrested in Canada on Wednesday over his alleged participation in the LockBit ransomware campaign, which has claimed at least 1,000 victims in the United States.Thirty-three-year-old Vasiliev is charged with “conspiracy to intentionally damage protected computers and to transmit ransom demands” and, if convicted, faces a maximum of five years in prison. Vasiliev is currently in Canadian custody awaiting extradition to the United States.Evidence for the charges was collected during two separate police raids on the suspect’s homeThe criminal complaint describes two separate police raids of his Ontario home — first in August 2022 and then again the following October. During the first search,... Continue reading…

Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images Kevin Conroy, the voice actor who was the Batman for a generation, passed away at the age of 66, The Verge has confirmed. In an email seen by The Verge, DC public relations wrote, “It is with profound sadness that I send this to you today. Kevin Conroy, the quintessential voice of Batman, a dear friend to so many of us, has passed away.”Conroy enjoyed a prolific acting career across stage and screen, but he is best known for voicing Batman, one of the most popular and captivating superheroes ever, starting with Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. He would go on to voice the Caped Crusader in many other animated series and video games, including Justice League, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Batman Beyond, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm,... Continue reading…

Image: Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images Waymo keeps (driverless) trucking along.The Alphabet division made a couple of announcements this week meant to highlight the progress — albeit incremental — of its robotaxis. The first was that, starting this week, anyone who downloads the company’s app can now hail one of Waymo’s driverless vehicles in downtown Phoenix. (The service was previously only available to the company’s “Trusted Tester” program of people from a wait list who sign nondisclosure agreements to get early access to Waymo’s vehicles in new service areas.)The second was that the California Department of Motor Vehicles approved an amendment to Waymo’s permit to include driverless vehicles, which means the company has the green light to deploy fully autonomous... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Helicopters and gliders arrive in Microsoft Flight Simulator’s 40th Anniversary Update. Developers at Asobo and Microsoft have spent a lot of time getting the details right. Continue reading…

The ROG Zephyrus G14 offers some impressive specs at an impressive price point. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Even with just two weeks left until Black Friday, our post today proves that there’s always room for more deals. We’ve rolled out a pretty healthy spread of sales today, but there’s way more to show than what we’ve featured here. To make sure you don’t miss out, make sure to check out our early Black Friday deals pages, subscribe to our newsletter, and follow @VergeDeals on Twitter (it’s really us, we swear).Our first deal today is revisiting the lowest price ever for the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop at Best Buy. This configuration of the G14 is typically priced at $1,649.99 but is currently on sale for $1,299.99, matching its best price yet. Featuring an excellent 16:10 display with a 2560 x 1600 resolution with a 120Hz refresh... Continue reading…

The original Control. | Image: Remedy Entertainment A sequel to the 2019 supernatural thriller Control is in development. Developer Remedy Entertainment confirmed the news today, saying that Control 2 would be a joint project with publisher 505 Games (which published the original Control). The sequel is currently in the “concept stage,” but Remedy says it will launch on the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.We don’t know much about the game, but the studio did share this single piece of concept art: Image: Remedy Entertainment Concept art from Control 2. Along with this message from game director Mikael Kasurinen:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter users are reporting that the option to sign up for the company’s new $7.99 subscription service, Twitter Blue, has disappeared from the platform’s iOS app just days after the service launched.You could previously subscribe to Twitter Blue from the sidebar in the iOS app (the service has yet to launch for Android users), but users this morning reported that the option has disappeared. For those for whom the link is still available, trying to sign up only returns an error message. “Thank you for your interest!” it reads. “Twitter Blue will be available in your country in the future. Please check back later.” Image: Tom Warren / The Verge Trying to sign up for Twitter Blue in the UK this morning, Friday... Continue reading…

But is it officially official this time, or will it get axed again in a few hours? Vote now! | Image: Twitter Okay, so Twitter broke its own verification system by making the blue check — previously a signal that the account had provided information about its owner’s identity — available for purchase. Yesterday, which is approximately a month ago in Elon Musk time, a solution rolled out: gray checks that indicated that the account was official. By the end of the day, those checks had been rolled back.Got all that? Great. After a great deal of impersonation, hoaxing, and other brand-unsafe behavior from the newly-purchased blue checks, the gray “official” checks are back.Brands such as Coca-Cola, Twitter, Wired, and Ars Technica have the new-old gray checks (but not @Verge, which is, we promise, our real one, unlike this impostor account). This... Continue reading…

As crypto prices have gone up, so have the number of scams. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has put out a warning that it’s seeing a rise in complaints related to cryptocurrencies and assets. As much of a shock as that may be, it’s not just concerned with straight-up fraud and scams, though those are the most common problems the agency hears about — the CFPB also says consumers have been sounding the alarm about issues with transactions going through, lost savings, and more.The bulletin is a 45-page document that analyzes the crypto-related complaints the CFPB has received from October 2018 to September 2022, showing the increasing frequency of consumers reaching out for help and providing several examples of bad behavior. In that time frame, almost 40 percent of the... Continue reading…

YouTube wants to help you do Q&As. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has a new Live Q&A feature to help you host dedicated question and answer sessions during livestreams.Here’s how it works: when you start a Q&A as a creator, your prompt shows up as a pinned message at the top of your stream’s chat, and then viewers can submit their questions. When you find a question you want to discuss, you can pin it so that it’s featured and everyone knows what you’re responding to. To move on, you can pin another question, and it will replace what’s at the top of the list. When you’re done with the Q&A session, you can go back to a standard chatroom.This dedicated Q&A tool could be a useful way for creators to have conversations directly with their audiences. Before now, they’d just have to field... Continue reading…

GIF: Tiny Circuits What is this, a television for ants? Basically yes! The TinyTV 2, a Kickstarter project from the company that brought us an even smaller Game Boy, is one of the smallest and cutest video players I’ve ever seen. While it doesn’t have a set of rabbit ears to harness the airwaves, the one-inch 216x135-pixel television is authentic in practically every other way — dials to adjust “channel” and volume, a working speaker and power button, even an infrared receiver for a tiny optional remote control (via Technabob).There’s a two-hour lithium-ion battery so you can take it on the go and a USB-C port for charging and data. It’s all powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2040 computer. And — get this — it emulates the experience of “changing channels” by... Continue reading…

A rendered version of the MK30 drone. | Image: Amazon Amazon is building a better drone that should help chart a course for the company’s Prime Air delivery service after the project was reportedly hampered by multiple malfunctions, crashes, and even fires. The new MK30 drone will go into service in 2024 and is designed to be quieter, go further, and handle the elements better, like high temperatures and light rain.The new drone has the same function and goal as its predecessor designs: fly vertically hundreds of feet into the air, autonomously maneuver and land, and deliver packages up to five pounds. The MK30 will be lighter and smaller than the current hexagonal MK27-2 drone, and it will be put through “rigorous evaluation by national aerospace authorities like the Federal Aviation... Continue reading…

Unlike Amazon’s other robots, Sparrow doesn’t need items to be boxed before it can move them. | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced a new robot, dubbed Sparrow, which the company says is its first warehouse robot that can “detect, select, and handle individual products.” The company says the machine is capable of recognizing and handling “millions of items” and that it will reduce the repetitive tasks its human workers have to do.The company’s post announcing the robot doesn’t say exactly how it plans to use Sparrow, but it’s not hard to imagine many more applications for something that can lift and move individual products in Amazon’s warehouses.“In our current research and development efforts, we are working with Sparrow to consolidate inventory before it is packaged for customers,” said Xavier Van Chau, a spokesperson for the company, “but... Continue reading…

Leica is no stranger to re-badged gadgets. | Image: Leica Leica’s at it again. As spotted by PetaPixel, the company has announced the new Leitz Phone 2, updating the Leitz Phone 1 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and a higher-resolution Type 1 camera sensor. The Phone 2 will only be sold in Japan and will cost 225,360 yen (about $1,588).Or you can buy basically the same phone — minus the red dot logo — for 189,360 yen, which is about $200 less. That would be the Aquos R7 made by Sharp — the licensee responsible for manufacturing the Leitz Phone 2.The Phone 2 (like the R7) includes a 6.6-inch OLED, a 5,000mAh battery, and a single rear camera with a massive Type 1 47-megapixel sensor. That’s an impressively large sensor, which Leica proclaims to be the “largest sensor ever in a... Continue reading…