The Verge

Image: Activision First-person shooters like Call of Duty are somewhat infamous for the toxicity of their lobbies and voice chats. Surveys have dubbed the franchise's fan base the most negative in all of gaming; a feud between two players once resulted in the summoning of a SWAT team. Activision has been trying to crack down on this behavior for years, and part of the solution might involve artificial intelligence.Activision has partnered with a company called Modulate to bring in-game voice chat moderation" to their titles. The new moderation system, using an AI technology called ToxMod, will work to identify behaviors like hate speech, discrimination, and harassment in real time.ToxMod's initial beta rollout in North America begins today. It's active... Continue reading...

Leaked by Google. | Image: Google They just... put it in the alt text. Continue reading...

The Huawei Mate 60 Pro supposedly comes with a 5G chip. | Image: Huawei Huawei released the Mate 60 Pro on Wednesday with little fanfare and some missing details - namely, the kind of chip it uses. Any mention of a chip is notably absent from the $960 phone's product pages despite mentioning better communication experience" and a more stable network connection."That information has only surfaced in unboxing videos and reviews posted online, including this one from the tech outlet Gizmochina, which says that the device comes with the Kirin 9000s to support 5G and satellite calls. This seems to be the latest version of the Kirin chipset that we last saw with the Mate 40 series devices in 2020. However, Gizmochina notes that there is very little information that can be confirmed" about whether the company... Continue reading...

Autopay with a debit card or be prepared to pay up. | Illustration: The Verge You gotta hand it to carriers: if there's a way to squeeze an extra few dollars out of their customers, they will find it. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the latest maneuver is requiring customers - current and new - to switch to a debit card or bank account withdrawal in order to receive the autopay discount on their plan. Verizon has included this requirement on plans for years, but in the past few months, AT&T and T-Mobile have quietly followed suit to cut back on how much they pay for credit card processing.The new rule goes into effect for AT&T customers on October 2nd, and as a gesture of goodwill, the company will only reduce your discount if you continue to pay with a credit card. Those who register for autopay with a... Continue reading...

The AirPods Max on one of Head Acoustics' dummy head microphones. | Image: Head Acoustics Active noise cancellation, or ANC, has come a long way since Bose launched the first consumer noise-canceling headphones - the QC1 - back in the year 2000. With ANC now firmly mainstream and available in headphones, from the ultra-budget to the high end, it's hard to know which ones make the most sense for your noise-canceling situation without going out and hearing them all.So that's what we did. The Verge hit the streets of New York City with a bunch of noise-canceling headphones, from the original Bose QC1 to the Apple AirPods Max, the Bose Noise Cancelling 700, the Bose QuietComfort 45, and the Sony WH-1000XM5 - not to mention a pair of $1,300 aviation headphones - to see how they compare and to see how far ANC has come in the past... Continue reading...

A July picture of a car dealership in Chicago, Illinois. | Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images Americans are now paying an average of $12,182 to own and operate a brand-new vehicle, or $1,015 per month, according to AAA.That's a big jump over 2022, when the average cost of owning a car was $10,728. The increase, AAA says, comes down to higher prices for new cars, increased depreciation after they're purchased, and falling used car values - as well as the auto industry's shift toward big, feature-laden vehicles at the expense of more utilitarian cars.When The Verge's Thomas Ricker covered a similar AAA report in his First Click newsletter discussing car sharing as an alternative in 2015, Americans spent just $8,698 annually for new cars.In 2015, Americans spent just $8,698 annually for new carsHalf-ton pickup trucks are the... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is raising the price of its PlayStation Plus subscription next month. The service's annual Essential plan will go from $60 to $80, the Extra plan from $100 to $135, and the Premium plan from $120 to $160. The new pricing goes into effect starting September 6th.If you're currently subscribed to PlayStation Plus, Sony says the price increase won't take effect until your next renewal date or after November 6th. However, if you make any changes to your subscription, such as upgrades, downgrades or buying additional time," you'll have to pay the new rate.Sony says the price hikes will go into effect globally and will allow the company to continue bringing high-quality games and value-added benefits" to the service. It adds that the... Continue reading...

Image: Rivian Rivian revealed the range for its new dual-motor R1T, and it surely does not disappoint.The Dual-Motor and Performance Dual-Motor R1T will have the best range in our lineup," Rivian said in a tweet, with an EPA estimated 410 miles when coupled with the company's Max battery pack and 352 miles with the large pack. That's all predicated on 21-inch wheels, which surely help propel the R1T to its full range. Range figures for the R1S SUV are still forthcoming, the company added.Rivian opened up reservations for the Dual-Motor and Performance Dual-Motor R1T back in April. Recently, the company invited a bunch of reporters out to its Normal, Illinois, factory for a test drive (which I sadly was unable to join) as well as to experience its... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Hallmark is partnering with payments platform Venmo to let people send money with physical greeting cards securely.Hallmark launched Hallmark Plus Venmo Cards as a way for relatives to send each other birthday money, for example, among other reasons.Anyone who wants to send money can choose a card from the company's Hallmark Plus Venmo line to celebrate the occasion, scan a QR code, and set the amount they want to give. Once the recipient gets the card, they must scan the code to access the money in their Venmo account.The company said this method eliminates the need to send unsecured gift cards, checks, or cash because, as Newsweek reported in 2022, those tend to get stolen.While Venmo said 78 percent of its users send money as... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Instagram looks like it's working on a longer version of Instagram Reels, allowing users to record up to 10 minutes of videos. Leaker Alessandro Paluzzi shared screenshots of two side-by-side Reels pages, one to record for three minutes - the current standard for shortform videos - and another for 10 minutes.

Image: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images The road to a world with only electric vehicles doesn't run through the US. It runs through China. In China, nearly 30 percent of all car sales are EVs. In the US, it's just 7 percent. How did China so thoroughly smoke the US when it comes to EVs?It had help from a certain American company called Tesla.In the sixth and last episode of Land of the Giants: The Tesla Shock Wave, we explore how China took the lead in global EV sales with a lot of help from the government in the form of subsidies for lithium batteries. We also examine how China used Tesla to kick-start its own homegrown EV industry - and how it has since outgrown Elon Musk's company in many ways.China has been the world's largest auto producer for almost two decades.... Continue reading...

With high-end specs and a midrange price, the OnePlus Pad is a welcome return to form. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge It's been a surprisingly good year for Android tablets, with Samsung's Galaxy Tab S9 series and the Google Pixel Tablet both having launched within the past couple of months. The OnePlus Pad also arrived earlier this year, and though it might not carry the same clout as a Google or Samsung tablet, it's a solid device that's available from OnePlus right now with a free OnePlus Stylo stylus for $429.99 ($50 off).For the money, OnePlus' first tablet packs a bit of punch. The 11.6-inch slate is less expensive than competing devices from Google, Apple, and Samsung, yet it comes with an array of high-end features, including a quad-speaker system and a pixel-dense LCD display that refreshes at up to 144Hz. It also features a 7:5 aspect ratio... Continue reading...

Illustration by Will Joel / The Verge Amazon's Kindle is a useful reading tool, especially if you tend to purchase your books through Amazon. If you have ebooks that you've purchased elsewhere, however - or have picked up off a free service such as Project Gutenberg - you need to be able to put it on your Kindle (or Kindle app).Getting a non-Amazon book onto a Kindle used to be a somewhat awkward process, involving attaching it to an email and sending it to your individual Kindle email address. However, Amazon's Send to Kindle service has improved vastly since then, and it is now a fairly simple process.But first, a note: if you're a long-term Kindle user who hasn't been paying attention to the news, you may be surprised to see ePub listed - and not Mobi. Amazon added... Continue reading...

The Garmin Venu 3S (left five models) and Venu 3 will both retail for $449.99. | Image: Garmin Garmin is launching the Venu 3 and 3S today, and there's good news for nap lovers. The company is debuting a new Sleep Coach feature that includes both personalized coaching and automatic nap detection.Nap tracking is a timely addition. Sleep is increasingly a popular focus among wearables companies. Samsung, for example, has been working hard the last two years to build out its native sleep tracking offerings, and Google also added Fitbit's Sleep Profile feature to the Pixel Watch. So it's been admittedly odd that Garmin devices haven't been able to automatically detect naps. (You'll also be able to manually log naps as well.) This is especially true since sleep - and therefore naps - is a factor when calculating recovery and... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge I thought I had malware on my main Windows 11 machine this weekend. There I was minding my own business in Chrome before tabbing back to a game and wham a pop-up appeared asking me to switch my default search engine to Microsoft Bing in Chrome. Stunningly, Microsoft now thinks it's ok to shove a pop-up in my face above my apps and games just because I dare to use Chrome instead of Microsoft Edge.This isn't a normal notification, either. It didn't appear in the notification center in Windows 11, nor is it connected to the part of Windows 11 that suggests new features to you. It's quite literally a rogue executable file that has somehow appeared in c:\windows\temp\mubstemp and is digitally signed by Microsoft.We are aware of these... Continue reading...

The Fairphone 5 with its repairable guts on show for all to see. | Image: Fairphone The Fairphone 5 is the latest sustainably produced and repairable handset from Dutch smartphone company Fairphone. Like its previous devices, the Fairphone 5 is made with ethically sourced materials by workers who are given a living wage bonus and is designed to be easy to repair with a lengthy software support period. But this year's model is specced-out much more like a modern midrange smartphone, with an OLED display, fast 30W charging, and dual 50-megapixel cameras at the rear.Fairphone is taking preorders for the Fairphone 5 starting today, and the smartphone ships on September 14th in Europe. Prices start at 699 in the eurozone or 619 in the UK. That translates to roughly $758, though Fairphone has no plans for a US release for... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Continuing the storied tradition of Google's Pixel devices being some of the most-leaked hardware ever, the as-yet-unannounced Pixel 8 Pro has popped up on a Google Store page. @Android_Setting on Twitter / X pointed out the image on a page promoting Google's subscriptions and services (Pixel Pass is not among them), showing a man taking a call on a Pixel 8 Pro in Porcelain.Sure, the device looks like the renders and images that have already leaked, including from a supposed internal Google video, but how can we be sure it's that phone in that color? In a win for accessibility, the tipster notes that the image's alt-text description removes all doubt, reading, A person takes a call on a Pixel 8 Pro phone in Porcelain."We'll zoom in... Continue reading...

The Steam Deck's biggest weakness is battery life - and yet somehow, every challenger has failed to raise that bar. The Ayaneo 2 showed us that AMD's Ryzen 6800U wasn't ready to compete; the Asus ROG Ally revealed that AMD's Z1 Extreme couldn't pull ahead if Asus insisted on matching the Steam Deck's 40 watt-hour battery pack.But Ayaneo may have an answer: it's stuffing a 75 watt-hour pack into a larger, heavier handheld called the Ayaneo Kun that - it now claims - can last nearly three and a quarter hours at 15W TDP. That's nearly double the battery and runtime you'd expect from a Steam Deck at that wattage, though it appears it wasn't captured while playing a game, exactly. Image: Ayaneo Ayaneo Kun battery... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon will offer a new $90 monthly cellphone plan called Unlimited Ultimate, announced in an update to the May blog post that announced its myPlan lineup. It offers 60GB of mobile hotspot data (double what you get with the $80 Unlimited Plus plan), 10GB of unthrottled international data, and includes access to the company's 5G Ultra Wideband network that's a mix of the company's C-band wireless signal and its faster mmWave 5G.T-Mobile similarly just introduced an expensive new "unlimited" data plan to its Go5G line with the $100 per month Go5G Next plan to complement its C-band spectrum. It offers slightly less hotspot data at 50GB but comes with Netflix Basic and Apple TV Plus and the option to upgrade your phone on a yearly... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US government just helped dismantle a massive network of computers infected with one of the world's most notorious pieces of malware. According to the FBI, a multinational effort led by the US took down Qakbot, a malware that made its way into over 700,000 computers around the globe.Hackers typically target victims with Qakbot by sending them spam emails containing malicious attachments or links. As soon as a victim downloads the attachment or clicks the link, Qakbot infects their computer, which then becomes part of a botnet - or a network of infected computers controlled remotely by hackers. From there, bad actors can install additional malware on their victims' devices, such as ransomware.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple is planning to launch a pair of updated" AirPods with USB-C during its iPhone 15 event in September, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.Rumors have been circulating for months about the possibility of Apple introducing AirPods with a USB-C-compatible charging case, but we haven't heard anything this definite until now. However, we still don't know whether the AirPods Pro will get the USB-C charging case, too, and Gurman doesn't specify.In 2022, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that Apple would introduce AirPods with a USB-C charging case sometime this year. It's also not clear whether Apple will make any significant changes to the AirPods themselves aside from the new case. Kuo said earlier this year that... Continue reading...

Image: Edie Leong for The Washington Post via Getty Images Tesla is in trouble with the federal government. Again.A newly discovered version of Autopilot that allows drivers to operate the advanced driver-assist feature without applying any torque to the steering wheel - a long sought-after feature by Tesla drivers and one used by several other automakers as well - has caught the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.In a July 26th letter (first reported by Bloomberg), NHTSA ordered Tesla to respond to a list of questions about the feature or face an escalating series of fines. The company was ordered to respond by August 25th; it's unclear whether Tesla complied.NHTSA ordered Tesla to respond to a list of questions about the feature or face an escalating series... Continue reading...

Panic / The Verge Today, Panic put on its very first game publisher showcase. The showcase was short but very sweet, featuring some of the most interesting and innovative indie games coming to PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Switch. Here are all the highlights, including a surprise announcement from the makers of Untitled Goose Game.ArcoArco comes from an international team of developers, artists, and storytellers. It's a tactical action game that pits regular people against an all-powerful corporate gang. In the reveal trailer, the diverse landscapes exude so much ecological detail rendered in pixel graphics, and the combat seems like a real-time action game. Arco is due on Steam in 2024.Thank Goodness You're HereThank Goodness You're Here, or TGYH for... Continue reading...

The iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple's next big product launch is nearly here. The company just sent invitations for an event on September 12th at 1PM ET / 10AM PT, where the company is expected to announce the iPhone 15 lineup and new Apple Watches.In the invite sent by Apple, the company says its Wonderlust" event will take place live from Apple Park. The invite also includes the Apple logo in gray, blue, and black, which may tease the color options that the iPhone 15 Pro lineup is rumored to come in. Image: Apple Apple's event invitation. The iPhone 15 lineup will probably be the star of the event. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus are expected to look a lot like the iPhone 14 but with a couple of key differences. The notch at the top of... Continue reading...

Image: Firaxis Games It seems like Steam has a new themed sale event every other week, and this week, it's Strategy Fest. As part of the sale, which started officially yesterday and lasts until 1PM ET on September 4th, you can get deals on a slew of strategy games of all stripes.Of course, you can expect all the fan favorites to be deeply discounted. Civilization VI is at a there is no real justification for not buying it" price of $5.99, or 90 percent off, while Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition is half off at $19.99.But if you're new to strategy games or strategy game-curious, those titles can be a bit overwhelming as starting points. Fortunately, Steam curated this bundle of games widely to include titles you might not think of as strategy games... Continue reading...

Image: Specialized Specialized announced the second e-bike from its resurrected Globe brand, the Haul LT, a long-tailed (the LT" in the name) cargo bike with fat tires, a sturdy aluminum frame, and a $3,500 price tag.A quick recap: in 2022, Specialized announced it was bringing back its defunct Globe logo for a lineup of heavy-duty e-bikes that could carry a ton of stuff but wouldn't break the bank. The first, the Haul ST, went on sale earlier this year and instantly won accolades for its utility, ride quality, and whimsical design.A Class 3 e-bike with a 700-watt rear-hub motor and 772-watt-hour battery, the Haul LT looks every bit the Haul ST's successor. Design-wise, the two bikes are nearly indistinguishable, aside from the extended rear rack.... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube wants to give content creators who violate its guidelines a second chance. Creators will now get the option to take an educational training course" when they receive a community guidelines warning, and in exchange, YouTube will lift that warning from their account.YouTube previously issued a lifetime warning to channels that violated its content guidelines and removed the video in question. The lifetime warning stayed on a YouTuber's account forever and preceded the strikes that a creator would receive for breaking its rules again.Under YouTube's new policies, the platform will still take down the video in violation of its rules, but it will give creators a chance to get rid of YouTube's warning by having them take a class... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When the Securities and Exchange Commission denied Grayscale its petition for a Bitcoin ETF, that action was arbitrary and capricious," an appeals court ruled today. The SEC ruling has been vacated.Last year, Grayscale applied for the approval for the fund and was denied. An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a pooled investment that is tied to a specific set of assets, which might be an index, a sector, a set of commodities, or something else. Grayscale's is something else" - Bitcoin. That could let large investors, such as pension funds, invest in Bitcoin.The SEC has previously approved ETFs that track Bitcoin futures, but not so-called spot ETFs, which directly track Bitcoin price. Grayscale wanted to convert its Bitcoin trust to... Continue reading...

Khabib Nurmagomedov has Conor McGregor in a chokehold. | Photo By Stephen McCarthy / Sportsfile via Getty Images The NFL, NBA, and UFC are looking to inject some urgency into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to have the law shut down illegal livestreams sooner. The sports organizations believe that the law needs to define more specifically how quickly a DMCA takedown notice should take effect, according to a letter they sent to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seen by TorrentFreak.DMCA was signed during the Clinton administration in 1998 and specified that takedown notices be processed expeditiously," as written in Section 512 of the act. In the letter sent to the USPTO, dated August 23rd, the NFL, NBA, and UFC urge the government to change the expeditiously" verbiage to instantaneously or near-instantaneously."When I... Continue reading...

iOS and web users of Google Photos can conceal sensitive images and videos from their feeds and other apps. | Image: Google Some updates are rolling out across Google Photos that should make it easier to secure and access your sensitive images across all of your devices. Starting today, the Locked Folder feature - which allows Android users to hide specific photos and videos behind a passcode - is coming to iOS and web users, with a new option to back up Locked Folders to access those encrypted images across multiple devices with the help of Google's cloud.The Locked Folder is a neat feature if you have any sensitive (okay, let's be real here - nude) images or videos you'd rather keep away from prying eyes. Not only do Locked Folders provide a layer of password protection but also protected files won't appear in your photo feed or other apps, which should... Continue reading...

The Making of Karateka. | Image: Digital Eclipse With The Making of Karateka, the studio continues to refine its interactive documentaries, providing a video game-native way of presenting the classics. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Auracast makes it possible to share high-quality audio with an unlimited" number of devices, and now, Samsung says it's bringing Auracast to its Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and its newest Neo QLED 8K and MicroLED TVs with a rollout starting in September. The company doesn't say if this means an unlimited number of Galaxy Buds can connect to the TVs, but it will certainly be more than the current limit of two.Samsung reminds you in a footnote in its announcement that range and physical interference will still be factors in determining how many earbuds can connect to the TV - it's still wireless data transmission, after all.Bluetooth LE Audio, which is the standard that enables Auracast, was introduced last year, bringing with it a promising... Continue reading...

Image: Marshall Marshall earbuds seem to be aimed at people who want a little more edge and to stand out from Apple's ubiquitous AirPods. The guitar amp company has already released several generations of buds, and today, it's announcing its latest pair. The $199 Motif II ANC will be available on September 12th, and they're said to offer improved noise cancellation and 10 additional hours of total battery life compared to the prior model. Marshall says you can expect six hours of continuous playback or a total of 30 hours including the charging case.The Motif II ANC are also Marshall's first buds to be LE Audio-ready. This future-proof technology delivers higher quality audio, while increasing the streaming range and improving audio sync, for a... Continue reading...