The Verge

The Kindle Paperwhite Kids is just like the standard model pictured above but with some kid-friendly extras. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge If you're looking for an e-reader you can safely take to the beach, right now, the latest Kindle Paperwhite Kids is on sale for $114.99 ($55 off) with 16GB of storage at Amazon and Best Buy. That's one of its better prices this year and just $4 shy of the standard, ad-free Kindle Paperwhite's all-time low price.It might seem strange to say, but the latest Kindle Paperwhite Kids is a bargain for children and adults alike. That's because, at its core, it's the Kindle Paperwhite - our favorite Amazon e-reader - just with parental controls you can turn off and no ads. Like the standard model, the kid-friendly Kindle Paperwhite offers IPX8 waterproofing, so you won't need to worry it'll break if it gets wet as you lounge by the pool. With... Continue reading...

The Medicine Cabinet feature aims to tackle more than forgetfulness when it comes to medication adherence. | Image: GoodRx There's no shortage of apps designed to remind people to take their medications. But GoodRx, an online pharmacy and telehealth app, is trying to take it a step further by launching a digital medicine cabinet." The idea is to create a one-stop shop that allows people to check price comparisons, get reminders and refills, and even earn financial rewards for taking their meds.The name of the game is to improve medication adherence - or how well you follow your doctor's orders when it comes to treatment. That includes things like regularly taking antidepressants, antibiotics, or statins to reduce cholesterol, etc. To get the best results, the pharmaceutical journal US Pharmacist says you need an adherence rate of around 80 percent. You... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony announced it has sold over 40 million PlayStation 5 consoles despite the unprecedented challenges of COVID" and supply chain issues. Unlike the press release shared when the PS5 crossed 10 million units sold as of July 2021, Sony didn't call its flagship console out as the fastest-selling console in the history of Sony Interactive Entertainment," reflecting a slower pace of sales even as supply issues ebbed.PlayStation 5 shipments have begun to ramp up this year. Sony nearly hit 40 million consoles sold earlier this year and tripled the number of consoles it shipped from January to March 2023 at 6.3 million units. At the same time last year, it shipped just 2 million PlayStation 5 consoles.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Peacock added just 2 million subscribers over the past three months, bringing the service up to 24 million subscribers in the US. That number was included in Comcast's earnings report today, which says Peacock nearly doubled its subscribers year over year.In addition to the small bump in subscribers, Peacock's revenue grew 85 percent year over year to $820 million. The service still lost $651 million, however, up from $467 million at the same time last year.Earlier this month, Comcast announced that it's raising the price of Peacock on August 17th. While the ad-supported Premium plan is going from $4.99 to $5.99 per month, the ad-free Premium Plus plan is going from $9.99 to $11.99 per month. Comcast also took away the free tier for... Continue reading...

Image: Niantic The next major release from Pokemon Go developer Niantic is launching very soon. The studio announced today that Monster Hunter Now, a collaboration with Capcom, will be available globally on September 14th, launching on both iOS and Android.The announcement was made as part of a lengthy presentation detailing more about how the game will actually work, including the weapons that'll be available at launch (sword and shield, great sword, long sword, hammer, light bowgun, and bow) and how the cycle of hunting and gearing up will play out. Monster Hunter Now also has a clever feature called paintball, where players can mark monsters they come across so they can fight them later.You can check out the full video below:The launch comes at... Continue reading...

Image: Netflix In the finale of The Witcher's third season - which also happens to be the final episode where Henry Cavill will play the lead role - our hero, Geralt of Rivia, spends most of his time in bed. This is not an exaggeration: after getting his ass thoroughly kicked in a previous episode, he's stuck recuperating in a forest, trying his best to get healthy so he can continue his quest. It's a bizarre choice that sidelines Geralt in what should, in theory, be an important moment for the series, the character, and the actor. Instead of sending Cavill out on a high note, the season just kind of... ends.It didn't have to be this way. When it debuted way back in 2019, Netflix's adaption of The Witcher proved to be a surprisingly faithful version... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The European Commission is opening a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft's bundling of its Teams software with its Office productivity suite. Slack originally filed an anti-competitive complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission in July 2020, just months after a global pandemic began and the Microsoft Teams userbase started to grow rapidly.The European Commission will now carry out an in-depth investigation into whether Microsoft may have breached EU competition rules by tying or bundling Microsoft Teams to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites.Remote communication and collaboration tools like Teams have become indispensable for many businesses in Europe," explains Margrethe Vestager, executive... Continue reading...

Slack has now acknowledged the issues and is investigating the cause. | Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Slack, the workplace chat app, experienced an outage this morning, with messages failing to send on the service. Reports began spiking on DownDetector at around 5AM ET and the service's status dashboard acknowledged the issues with a post at 5:35AM ET, noting that Users may be experiencing trouble with sending messages in Slack."But as of 6:13AM ET Slack reported that the issues had been resolved. Slack is now back up," a message read. Users may need to reload their apps to see this restoration."Slack had elevated the status to an outage" at 5:57AM ET:

Getty Images There's a new bipartisan bill to establish a new federal agency tasked with regulating online platforms.The bill, sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would create a new agency called the Digital Consumer Protection Commission that would be empowered to go after giant tech firms for a slew of anti-competitive behaviors and failing to protect consumer privacy.For years I have been trying to find ways to empower consumers against Big Tech," Graham said in a statement Thursday. I have heard too many stories from families who feel helpless in the face of Big Tech. Stories about children being bullied to the point of committing suicide. Human trafficking. Exploitation of minors. All the while the social... Continue reading...

Photo by Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has high hopes for Threads, his competitor to the company formerly known as Twitter.During Meta's second quarter earnings call with investors on Wednesday, Zuckerberg was asked multiple times about Threads and his expectations for its long-term success. He said it's a weird anomaly in the tech industry that there hasn't been an app like this for text-based convos that has reached 1 billion people," echoing previous comments he has made both on Threads itself and during a recent interview with the podcaster Lex Fridman.Threads reached 100 million signups faster than any consumer software product in history, but it's nowhere near reaching the 1-billion-user club yet. Its engagement is also estimated to have... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla is facing a new investigation with the California attorney general's office looking into safety issues with the company's Autopilot feature as well as its marketing practices, CNBC reported on Wednesday.The outlet was tipped off to the investigation by Tesla owner Greg Wester, who California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office called to ask about his August 2022 Federal Trade Commission complaint about his Tesla's phantom braking" problem and what he believed to be misleading claims around the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system.Tesla CEO Elon Musk's claims about his cars' fully driverless capabilities date back to 2016 when he said all new Tesla EVs would have the necessary hardware for it. In fact, the company has... Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Waymo is pausing its efforts to develop autonomous truck technology to refocus on ridehailing services instead. The Alphabet-owned company announced today that it will push back" the timeline on its commercial and operational efforts for trucking and will also be scaling back development in the unit. A small number of employees were laid off as a result of the decision.Waymo's trucking unit, also known as Waymo Via, sat alongside its Waymo One robotaxi division. Taken together, they represent the company's efforts to commercialize its autonomous driving technology. Now the timeline and the future of its autonomous trucks are in question.The news follows reporting earlier this year that Waymo would slightly" delay its Via timeline... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is starting to test a new Official" label that will make it easier to spot if an account is authentic. The new label will appear sitewide, meaning that it won't be up to the moderators of individual subreddits to have to verify specific accounts.Starting today, we're beginning early testing of placing a visual indicator on certain profiles to provide proof of authenticity, reduce impersonation, and increase transparency across the platform," a Reddit admin (employee) wrote in a post. This is currently only available to a *very* small (double-digit) number of profiles belonging to organizations with whom we already have existing relationships, and who are interested in engaging with redditors and communities on our platform."R... Continue reading...

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Public companies will now have to disclose cybersecurity incidents sooner, thanks to a rule adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under the new policy, the SEC will require public companies to report data breaches and hacks four business days after they are discovered.Companies will have to disclose any cybersecurity incidents on a Form 8-K filing. These publicly available documents typically inform shareholders about major changes to the company - and now they'll include a new Item 1.05 for cybersecurity incidents. The disclosure should include information on nature, scope, and timing," as well as its material impact or reasonably likely" on the company.

AWS VP Swami Sivasubramanian at the AWS Summit event. | Image: Amazon During the AWS Summit in New York on Wednesday, Amazon launched Agents for Bedrock, which will let companies build AI apps that can automatically do tasks on their own, like booking a flight for users instead of just telling them about it. AI agents are the assistant that actually gets a restaurant reservation instead of just giving suggestions on where to eat.I believe this will supercharge developers who wanted an easier way to build agents and at the same time customize the data the models read," Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data and machine learning at AWS, tells The Verge. Building agents took so much time even with how advanced generative AI is now, but we're making it so developers can access exactly the models they... Continue reading...

Image: Neopets Neopets is back in a big way. I don't mean the revamped website or even the weird bit of news where Arthur lookalike John Legend has become Neopets' first influencer. I'm talking about the games. Over 50 web browser games from the site's past have been restored via an emulator and are playable right now. The Neopets Team / Neopets.com These games' triumphant return is a part of Neopets' new era" that began when Neopets' parent company, NetDragon, allowed the site to spin off into its own fully independent company. Under this new leadership, The Neopets Team began working immediately to revive the flagging site that's been around since - brace yourself, elder millennials - 1999. The team worked on fixing bugs,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Now that Elon Musk has officially replaced Twitter's logo with an X, many of us are wondering: can he actually use it?The drastic rebranding doesn't come as much of a surprise to Musk-watchers. Musk has long touted his idea of X as an everything" app that offers audio, video, messaging, and support for digital payments. He has also founded a company called X.com before it merged with PayPal in the year 2000. While that name never resurfaced, that didn't stop Musk from incorporating the letter X into all his other brands, including SpaceX, xAI, X Corp., and now Twitter.On Sunday, Musk declared that Twitter will be rebranded as X and turned to the site's community to commission a new logo. If a good enough X logo is posted tonight,... Continue reading...

Dish's postpaid wireless plan is now on sale at Amazon. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Remember our fourth wireless carrier, Dish Network? No? That's because Dish is still trying to make its Boost brand a viable alternative to the big three US carriers. It's not going all that great, but today, the company has a new avenue to sell its services: Amazon.Boost Infinite is the company's postpaid brand, and it offers a basic $25 per month unlimited plan. It's been available since December of last year and includes 5G coverage with 30GB of premium data per month. As of today, it's available to Prime customers with some added incentives: $5 off the $25 SIM kit and $25 off your first bill.In theory, Boost Infinite will one day use Dish's own 5G network, which it's still building and testing under the Project Genesis brand.... Continue reading...

They did it. | Crude juxtaposition by Sean Hollister / The Verge This is it, friends - finally, a precision lubricant you can take anywhere. No pressurized overspray. $12.75 on Amazon for a pack of three. Where has this been all my life?(Answer: it already technically existed - but was marketed as a wacky household cleaner to remove stickers and crayon by the likes of As Seen On TV.)Anyhow, I really don't think you need me to explain a pen that delivers WD-40 exactly like a Tide To Go pen delivers stain remover any further, right?But just in case, here is a video for all you next-level pros:And some handy illustrations so you can see how it works. Do NOT apply directly to forehead. Good thinking; wrong product. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Elon Musk has wanted to build X.com into a super app for a very long time. As described by Walter Isaacson, who is writing a Musk biography, when Musk launched the online bank X.com in 1999, his original concept was to turn the website into a one-stop everything-store for all financial needs." That company would eventually be folded into what we now know as PayPal, where Musk tried (and failed) to bring back the X name.In 2023, X.com is back, intended as a replacement for Twitter with an even grander mission. In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world," Musk wrote on the social network he now owns. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we... Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony is acting quickly to make sure owners of its WH-1000XM5 headphones don't feel left behind after seeing the just-released WF-1000XM5 earbuds gain several new features. (Putting both of those products in the same sentence really hammers home the madness of Sony's product names, eh?) The company has released a firmware update for the headphones that brings them to parity with the wireless earbuds by introducing support for head-tracking spatial audio. As with the buds, you'll need a phone running Android 13 or later, and dynamic head tracking only works with compatible video apps.Better still, Sony is no longer making WH-1000XM5 owners choose between multipoint and LDAC. Once you've installed the latest update, you can listen to... Continue reading...

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. | Image: Paramount Director Jeff Rowe's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem hasn't even had a chance to test its mettle at the box office yet, but Paramount is already gearing up on a sequel and a streaming series destined for Paramount Plus.Variety reports that Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies are planning to produce a Mutant Mayhem follow-up film as well as an all-new streaming series that will serve as the connective tissue between the two movies. The 2D series - Tales of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - has already been greenlit for two seasons, produced by Nickelodeon Animation and Point Grey Pictures, and will be co-showrun and executive produced by Chris Yost and Alan Wan.Actors Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and... Continue reading...

A man walks with his donkey in the Tafilalet oasis on October 27th, 2016, near Morocco's southeastern oasis town of Erfoud, north of Er-Rissani in the Sahara Desert. The oasis is at risk of disappearing as the area is drying up due to global warming. | Photo by Fadel Senna / AFP via Getty Images Sucking planet-heating carbon dioxide of the atmosphere doesn't reverse all the effects of climate change, new research tells us. Carbon dioxide removal, as it's called, can sound like science fiction - but many companies are already counting on it to undo some of the damage caused by their pollution.Companies might try to prevent their greenhouse gas emissions altogether, or they might try to clean it up after the fact. That's why we're seeing all kinds of brands, from Microsoft to the Houston Texans, saying that they'll plant trees or invest in new technologies that are supposed to filter CO2 out of the air. But even if they're successful in trapping CO2, does it reverse the consequences of creating that pollution in the first place?N... Continue reading...

Image: DoorDash DoorDash has added Apple CarPlay syncing to its Dasher app, which delivery workers use to accept deliveries and get to your house. For workers with Apple's infotainment system software in their cars, that means they can spare their phone batteries the cruel and unusual punishment of hours of daily use in the sometimes hot, harsh environment of their car's dashboard.Dasher VP of logistics Austin Haugen says CarPlay support is one of the most highly requested features among the Dasher community," which makes sense. Phones are great for mapping and directions in cars, but they can introduce big problems when you rely on them for your job. Image: DoorDash The Dasher app with Apple CarPlay syncing in action. For... Continue reading...

The matte screen of Samsung's latest Frame TV really helps it blend into your walls as art. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung's Unpacked presentation may have brought new announcements of Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 phones, new smartwatches, and some new tablets, but one of the best Samsung deals right now is on its wall art-inspired The Frame TV from last year. Woot is currently offering a variety of Samsung Frame TV models - ranging from 32 inches to 85 inches - for exceptional prices.For example, the 55-inch Samsung Frame TV is $1,087.99 ($412 off), and the 65-inch model is $1,397.99 ($602 off). The latter is a great size for many people looking to go big, but if you want a gargantuan Frame, you can also get the 85-inch version for $2,697.99 (about $1,600 off).While The Frame may not be an OLED panel or have the lowest latency and VRR for gaming,... Continue reading...

That's certainly one way to try and draw in more advertising revenue. | Illustration: The Verge According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Twitter (now called X) started offering some advertisers in the US and UK a 50 percent discount on video ads running beside trending topics under the platform's Explore" tab earlier this week, among other discounts."The offer is timed around the Women's World Cup but also conveniently ends on July 31st - a week prior to another change to Twitter's ad policy. Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven't reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google will start highlighting apps in Google Play that offer good full-screen support on Android tablets and foldables - and shaming the ones that don't. The company announced the changes in a blog post yesterday in a clear bid to get developers on board with supporting larger screens for the OS.

Image: Glowforge Glowforge, the company that makes desktop laser cutters for a whole range of crafting projects, has revealed a new entry-level machine that's a little less pricey than its premium counterparts. Priced at $1,199, the Glowforge Aura lets you cut and engrave various materials across a compact 12-inch workspace.The Glowforge Aura comes equipped with a six-watt laser that can carve up hundreds of different materials, including fabric, leather, paper, acrylic, rubber, cardstock, paper, glass, coated metal, marble, and even chocolate. That opens up a vast number of potential crafting projects, which range from keychains and decorative signs to nightlight covers, jewelry, and a whole lot more. Image: Glowforge If you don't... Continue reading...

The new Xbox Home UI. | Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft first started testing a new Xbox Home UI nearly a year ago, and the company is now ready to deliver it to all Xbox owners. Starting today, an overhaul to the Xbox Home interface is rolling out to all Xbox Series X / S and Xbox One consoles, with more space for backgrounds and quick access to the store, search, and settings.The new Xbox Home experience will start rolling out today to a subset of all Xbox consoles," according to Ivy Krislov, senior product manager lead for Xbox experiences. This means that some customers will need to wait a few weeks to get their hands on it." Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge The new Xbox Home UI. The biggest change you'll notice immediately is a reworked UI that... Continue reading...

Image: Skip Bolen / Peacock It's pretty safe to say that 2023 has been a breakout year for video game adaptations in film and TV. From the weekly drama of The Last of Us on HBO to the family-friendly blockbuster success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, these adaptations are no longer the maligned flops they once were, which is what makes Twisted Metal on Peacock so curious. It's based on a popular PlayStation series but one that hasn't had a new entry in over a decade. And for much of the first season's runtime, it also barely has anything to do with the vehicular combat games that it's pulling from.At a time when game adaptations are striving more than ever to be faithful to their sources while also trying to thrust them into a new medium, Twisted Metal stands... Continue reading...

Image: Apple The first season of Invasion was a prelude to war with an alien species, and now, the battle is really breaking out. At least, that's sure how it looks in the new season 2 trailer for the Apple TV Plus series.While the show initially detailed the early days of an alien invasion, showcasing how events unfolded from multiple perspectives across the globe, the second season takes place 121 days after the strange, creepy creatures set down on Earth. The trailer hints at an organized counterattack from humanity, while also teasing an Arrival-style situation focused on figuring out how to communicate with the alien force.Season 2 of Invasion starts streaming on August 23rd, with the 10-episode run lasting through October 25th (new episodes... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and the mapping company TomTom have launched an initiative to take on Google Maps and Apple Maps. The four companies formed the Overture Maps Foundation last year with the goal of creating interoperable map products - and now, the group has released its first open map dataset.With this data, third-party developers can create global mapping or navigation products of their own, allowing them to go head-to-head with Google Maps and Apple Maps. According to Overture, the release includes over 59 million places of interest, along with data on buildings, transportation networks, and administrative boundaries. Image: Overture Maps Foundation Overture collected over 59 million places of interest... Continue reading...

Each tablet comes with the S Pen stylus included. | Image: Samsung During Samsung's Unpacked event today, the company announced the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 phones, but that wasn't all - it also presented a new Galaxy Tab S9 tablet lineup. The Galaxy Tab S9 starts at $799.99, while the S9 Plus and S9 Ultra start at $999.99 and $1,199.99, respectively. While they won't be available until August 11th, you can preorder them - with the Galaxy S Pen included - starting today.Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy version of Qualcomm's top-tier processor, the new tablets are expected to be faster than the Tab S8 series from 2021. The Tab S9 tablets and S Pens are now IP68-rated for dust and water resistance, which is a feature we don't often see in non-ruggedized tablets. Along with a more durable... Continue reading...

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images Lyft is exploring a sale of its bike and scooter business, which includes New York City's popular Citi Bike. The news comes several months after the struggling ridehail company laid off a third of its workforce in an effort to reduce costs.Lyft has received strong inbound interest in our bikes and scooters business," the company said in a statement. It's only logical for Lyft to listen to credible proposals and explore strategic partners and options in several forms to serve more riders in more cities."Whether Lyft strikes a partnership with an investor that infuses cash into the division or sells the business outright remains to be seen. Either way, Lyft wants the rental bikes and scooters to continue to be listed on its app so... Continue reading...

For his latest project, Ken Pillonel - the modder best known for creating an iPhone with a USB-C port - is attempting to improve the design of the charging case of Apple's AirPods Pro. The true wireless earbuds have been criticized by right-to-repair advocates for a construction that relies heavily on glue, which makes it difficult to replace components without breaking the case.I am taking on a significant project to demonstrate how one of the most popular gadgets today - Apple's AirPods Pro - could have been easily made repairable with minimal effort," Pillonel says in a press release. My primary objective is to encourage consumers to be more mindful of their choices and to motivate manufacturers to prioritize sustainability."With... Continue reading...