The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth already settled with the FTC over fraudulent activity affecting MoviePass customers, and are being sued by the SEC, but now the former heads of MoviePass and its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), are facing criminal allegations of securities fraud and wire fraud.The Department of Justice announced the charges today, saying false statements made by both men defrauded investors in HMNY when the execs pretended like the company’s money-losing $9.95 “unlimited” moviegoing plan had any hope of profitability.Chris Bond, a spokesperson for Farnsworth, said in a statement emailed to The Verge that “The indictment repeats the same allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The swiftness with which Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav began canceling shows and entire movies as part of his plan to boost the company’s revenue was cause for much alarm earlier this year. As series like Infinity Train and Summer Camp Island began disappearing from HBO Max, that alarm only intensified and led many to wonder just what Zaslav hoped to gain by essentially killing off pieces of its catalog just months ahead of its fusion with Discovery Plus. But in a recent WBD earnings call, Zaslav said that he’s confident those cuts were all the right decision because none of those series were performing in a way that benefited the company.In response to a question about Warner Bros. Discovery’s free cash flow as the company... Continue reading…

Image: HBO Westworld has been canceled. The Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan show about robots and apocalypses captivated and then confused audiences and finally seemed to have forgotten what it was about entirely by the time its fourth and final season aired earlier this year. So while it’s a bummer the show is gone, it’s also not much of a surprise.HBO emailed a statement on the cancellation, saying:

The hours I have spent on this site... My taboo teenage pastime introduced me to the wide world of internet subcultures. Continue reading…

Vjeran Pavic / The Verge About half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees are now gone, with teams focused on trust and safety issues hit the hardest. Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge Continuity Camera is one of the most exciting features of macOS Ventura. It allows you — if you’re taking a call from your MacBook — to substitute an iPhone’s camera for the webcam. The feature can be a bit of a hassle to set up, but once you’ve got all the appropriate settings, it’s very easy to use.In order to use Continuity Camera, make sure your hardware and software are compatible. You can be on any Mac computer that’s running iOS Ventura. iPhone requirements get a bit more complicated — Continuity Camera technically works with an iPhone XR or later, but only the 11 and later can use certain fancier features like Center Stage and Desk View, while you need a 12 or later if you want to use Studio Light. Then, whatever phone you... Continue reading…

An artist’s impression of an asteroid lurking inside the orbits of Earth and Venus. | Image: DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/ This week, astronomers announced the discovery of three previously unknown near-Earth asteroids that had been hiding in the glare of the Sun — and one of them is a giant. At nearly a mile (1.5 kilometers) across, it is big enough to cause planet-wide destruction if it hit the Earth, though it won’t come anywhere close enough to be a threat for a hundred years or so.The search for potentially hazardous asteroids like this one has ramped up in recent years, with multiple ongoing efforts to identify and catalog large space rocks passing close by. From twilight observations from the ground to space-based telescopes peering into hard-to-see regions of the sky, these programs are focused on identifying potentially dangerous asteroids as... Continue reading…

Fully’s Jarvis Bamboo Standing Desk is discounted by 20 percent right now. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Fully is joining the growing list of retailers kicking off their Black Friday-adjacent sales. It’s having a site-wide sale this month, taking 20 percent off everything ranging from standing desks to office chairs. Fully makes some of our favorite standing desks and accessories, and any opportunity to save on these home office essentials is worth checking out. Whether you prefer a 30 x 24-inch desk topper made of bamboo or a custom desktop that doubles as a whiteboard, Fully’s work-from-home staples are worth the price. This 20 percent discount also applies to all builds, along with any accessories you’d like to order, which range from powered grommets to help keep your cables under control to a bottle opener hidden underneath your... Continue reading…

The Astro City Mini V. | Image: Limited Run Games The company has two new tiny devices, the Astro Mini City V and the Sega Genesis Mini 2, that prove there’s still a place for miniaturized classics. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is being sued in a class-action lawsuit filed by former employees laid off as part of a mass firing instigated by the company’s new owner, Elon Musk.The lawsuit alleges that the workers were not given enough notice of their firing in accordance with both the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) and California WARN Act. These acts require that companies give employees at least 60 days of advance notice before a mass firing takes place.“Look Ma I’m suing Twitter”The lawsuit was filed in an attempt to “make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed the complaint on... Continue reading…

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 on November 1, 2021, in Glasgow, United Kingdom. | Photo by Yves Herman - WPA Pool / Getty Images More than 30,000 people representing governments, businesses, and environmental and human rights groups around the world are expected to gather next week to talk shop on climate change. The occasion is the United Nations’ annual climate summit, called the 27th Conference of the Parties, or COP27, which is scheduled to take place from November 6th through 18th.Every year, the conference is billed as an opportunity for the world to come together to tackle the climate crisis. World leaders sometimes make new commitments to curb their country’s greenhouse gas emissions or pen agreements with other heads of state to transition to clean energy and funnel money into building a more resilient world. More often, advocates walk away disappointed... Continue reading…

Is this the 2022 iPad Pro, or is it last year’s model? You can’t tell, and you won’t tell when using it, either. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s iPad releases this year have been, well, lackluster to say the least. That isn’t to say the new 10th-gen iPad and the M2-equipped iPad Pro are bad products — far from it. But they either aren’t significantly better than their predecessors or have an awkward value proposition that puts them in between more compelling options in Apple’s lineup.If you’ve been planning to buy an iPad this year, this is good news because you can confidently purchase last year’s (or even older) models without really giving up much. And based on the pricing we’ve seen on older iPads recently, that can either save you a ton of money or get you a more capable model for the same price you might pay for the latest base version.Buying an older model also... Continue reading…

Cherry’s new MX Black Clear-Top switches. | Image: Cherry Cherry’s latest mechanical keyboard switch is the MX Black Clear-Top. It’s a design that’s based on a rare linear switch that was produced briefly during the 1980s for Nixdorf keyboards, leading to them being nicknamed “Nixies” by enthusiasts. The retro switches, which are effectively a variant of the linear Cherry MX Black that use a heavier spring and clear, rather than black, plastic case, have since become a highly sought after collector’s item, prized for their supposed smoothness and rich sound.How highly sought after? Well this review of the Nixie switch from ThereminGoat notes that they’ve been known to sell for $7 a switch. Considering the average keyboard has around 100 keys, that means a full set of Nixie switches could set... Continue reading…

The Substack Chat feature was designed to give content creators and writers a way to better connect with their subscribers and online community. | Image: Substack Substack has launched Substack Chat, a new discussions feature designed to provide content creators with the means to build up their own online communities outside of social media.Substack Chat allows writers, podcasters, and other creators to host conversations with their audiences, setting a topic for discussion without needing to hack together integrations with services such as Discord, Telegram, or Slack. Chat can be made available for all subscribers or restricted to those that pay for your content.Substack Chat could be an alternative community for those leaving Twitter“Chat is a community space reimagined specifically for writers and creators — it’s like having your own private social network where you make the rules,” Substack... Continue reading…

You’ll be able to accept contactless payments on your iPhone through the PayPal or Venmo iOS apps. | Image: Apple PayPal is going to make it easier for merchants in the US to take payments right on their iPhones. The company is adding support for Apple’s Tap to Pay technology into the PayPal and Venmo iOS apps, meaning merchants will be able to accept contactless credit or debit cards and mobile wallets without an external card reader (via MacRumors).Apple first announced Tap to Pay in February. Integration with PayPal and Venmo’s apps might mark a notable step up for adoption of Apple’s touchless technology and could be helpful for merchants who don’t want to rely on external readers to accept contactless payments. It will also help PayPal compete with payments rival Square, which launched support for Tap to Pay in September.Support will be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In an earnings call today, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that the merging of HBO Max and Discovery Plus was going so well that the target date for the launch of the new service would be moving from summer 2023 to spring 2023.From their user interface to their backend to their content, the two services are extraordinarily different, with HBO Max likely leading Discovery Plus in subscriptions as it had approximately 76.8 million users in April before the acquisition, and the combined services now have 94.9 million subscribers. But Zaslav’s plan has always been to merge the two services, which his team views as targeting very different markets. Early this year, a slide claiming HBO Max skewed male and Discovery Plus... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you’re paying Dish to stream live TV channels over the internet, prepare for a higher bill yet again: the company’s Sling TV streaming service is raising prices by $5 a month for the fourth time in five years. Sling Orange and Sling Blue pay TV packages will now cost $40 a month each — up from $35 previously — and you’ll pay $55 for the package with both Orange and Blue.Existing subscribers should see the price increases on the first bill they get after December 3rd; new customers will have to pay the higher rate starting today.In an official blog post, Sling TV president Gary Schanman blamed the rising cost of programming for the latest price hike, without offering further explanation. We’d probably put money on Disney having... Continue reading…

Screenshot by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Were Samsung’s jaw-dropping 49-inch Odyssey G9 and Neo G9 not enough monitor for you? Did the 55-inch swiveling cockpit that is the Odyssey Ark leave you cold? The electronics and semiconductor giant is preparing to announce an unprecedented 8K resolution version of its massive curved screen, AMD just revealed at its RDNA 3 GPU event.It’ll feature DisplayPort 2.1, but that’s the only other thing we know as of now. AMD says we’ll get more details at CES 2023 in January.While the 32:9 aspect ratio of these monitors suggests the screen won’t be a true 8K resolution — for comparison, the “5K” Odyssey G9 has a height of just 1440 pixels to go with its incredible 5,120 pixels of width — it would likely be a substantial improvement in... Continue reading…

Getty Images On Thursday, the internet-based telecom provider Vonage agreed to pay $100 million to the Federal Trade Commission to settle charges that it created an artificially burdensome process to cancel the service that included hidden termination fees.In its complaint, the FTC alleged that Vonage, an Ericsson subsidiary, made it easy for consumers to sign up for its services but far more difficult to cancel. Consumers could sign up for service in a variety of ways, including online and over the phone, but Vonage forced customers to speak with a live “retention agent” in order to cancel service.Additionally, the FTC claimed Vonage purposefully hid the cancellation number on its website, limited the hours these cancellation calls were... Continue reading…

The SLS rocket for the Artemis 1 mission on September 27, 2022. | Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images NASA has confirmed its next launch attempt for the Artemis I mission will be at night, with a midnight launch scheduled for the early hours of Monday, November 14th. Following a difficult few months attempting to get the Space Launch System rocket off the ground for the first time, including several wet dress rehearsals, two previous launch attempts, a tanking test, and an interruption from a hurricane, the rocket will begin rolling back out to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after midnight on Friday, November 4th.A night launch means lower visibility, and NASA representatives said they would have preferred a daylight launch. However, the team was confident that a night launch could be done safely and meet all the... Continue reading…

Photo by Jon Akira Yamamoto/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Devices that monitor blood oxygen levels in the hospital and at home need to be more carefully regulated, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel indicated at a meeting Tuesday.The devices are everywhere in healthcare settings, and people regularly purchase them for at-home use. But research over the past few decades has steadily shown that they don’t work as well for people with darker skin tones — a disparity that became even more critical during the covid pandemic. The FDA issued an alert saying that the devices have “limitations” in 2021.“We need to take appropriate steps to remove the growing uncertainty around these devices and ensure the health and safety of the public,” anesthesiologist Jesse Ehrenfeld said to the panel... Continue reading…

The PSVR2 starts at $549.99 and launches next year. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge PlayStation VR2 costs more than the most expensive PS5. I get why, but it’s still too much money.We’re on the precipice of a new era for virtual reality. Meta just launched its high-end Quest Pro, Sony will be releasing PSVR2 in February, and Apple is heavily rumored to jump into the game with its own VR / AR headset very soon. I’m finally ready to buy a VR headset, and this is the generation that it feels like I should be joining. But now that we’re finally seeing actual prices for them, I’m getting some major sticker shock. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Do I want PSVR2? Yes, but it costs so much. PSVR2’s $549.99 price is already high, but tack that on with the starting PS5 price of $399.99 and it means... Continue reading…

It’s Netflix — but with ads. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Clicking into something on Netflix’s new ads tier is a roll of the dice: you never know how many ads you might have to sit through.Netflix Basic with Ads is finally here, offering a cheaper Netflix subscription at $6.99 per month with the tradeoff that you might have to watch some ads with your movies and TV shows. I spent some time messing around with a new account on the tier on Thursday, and while the experience of using Netflix was mostly the same, what struck me was the unpredictability of how many ads I’d have to watch. Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge You probably won’t be making this face after you have to watch a third ad. Netflix says you can expect to see an “average of 4 to 5 minutes of ads per... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Recently, journalist, author of Platformer, and former Verge reporter Casey Newton tweeted something that had many readers both laughing and panicking: that entrepreneur David Sacks’ calendar at Twitter was not set to private and, as a result, was being carefully scrutinized by curious Twitter employees.

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge, Photo by Pete Marovich / Getty Images How often do the parent companies of Fox News and MSNBC team up? Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Update November 3rd, 1:25PM ET: In a note emailed to employees and posted publicly on November 3rd, Amazon svp of people experience and technology Beth Galetti announced a “pause on new incremental hires in our corporate workforce.”According to a report by Karen Weise of The New York Times, Amazon is freezing corporate hiring for its retail business for the remainder of 2022 in an effort to hedge its bets against a rough economic forecast.The hiring freeze includes all corporate and technology positions for Amazon’s retail and operations, which account for the bulk of Amazon sales. However, Amazon’s more profitable cloud computing division won’t be affected. Student hiring and field positions are also exempt from the pause, and B... Continue reading…

Amazon Ring spotlight camera. | Image: Ring The New York Police Department has joined Ring Neighbors, the neighborhood surveillance network built around Amazon’s Ring security cameras. The partnership, announced yesterday, means the NYPD will view people’s posts on Neighbors and be able to post directly to it, including requests for public help on “active police matters.”Neighbors is a Nextdoor-like extension of Ring’s security camera business, allowing residents of a neighborhood to discuss crime and safety as well as post footage from their cameras. While many law enforcement departments have joined Neighbors in recent years, this marks its adoption by America’s largest police force. (Police could separately request Ring footage for criminal investigations without the app.)... Continue reading…

An example of DALL-E’s “outpainting” function, which generates imagery outside an initial starting frame. | Image: OpenAI OpenAI is making its image generation software DALL-E much more widely available to businesses with the launch of an API in public beta. The API will make it easier for companies to add DALL-E’s text-to-image functionality to their products, giving developers simplified tools to integrate and customize the software to their liking.An early use case for the API is Microsoft’s Designer app, which uses the software to generate imagery for Office users, from PowerPoint slides to illustrations for homework. Microsoft is one of OpenAI’s major investors and unveiled the app last month.Luke Miller, a product manager at OpenAI working on the API, told The Verge that the company was excited to see the new applications developers would find for... Continue reading…

The tracker was previously used in Manchester City’s Academy. | Image: Manchester City FC Say what you like about Manchester City FC, but it’s a soccer club that loves wearable gadgets. Not only does it have a smart scarf in the works, but today, it’s launching Cityplay, a wearable performance tracker that provides training insights to folks who like to play footy in their spare time.Cityplay is a collaborative effort with Playmaker, a tech company that makes a wearable soccer tracker. Playmaker’s tech has been around for a while, and the tracker is currently used in Man City’s Academy, which trains promising young players. According to the club’s press release, Cityplay gives users scores for “critical football skills” so they can better understand how they rank on technical aspects like first touch and dribbling as well as... Continue reading…

The Hyperloop tube hosted student competitions in 2018 and 2019. | Photo by Pauline Acalin for The Verge Elon Musk’s first prototype Hyperloop tunnel is no more. Bloomberg reports that the roughly one-mile-long white steel tunnel running along Jack Northrop Avenue near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, has been removed and will be replaced with parking spaces for employees.Perhaps you’ll recall that before Musk assumed the mantle of free speech champion, he set out to circumvent “soul-destroying traffic” by building the Hyperloop, a theoretical system of tunnels that would revolutionize transportation. He also claimed to be able to dig tunnels faster and more efficiently than most current tunnel boring systems, which he rightly argued were laborious and costly.By pairing these things together, Musk said he could change the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Netflix’s more affordable Basic with Ads plan goes live today in several countries, but there’s one popular streaming platform where you won’t be able to access it on day one: it’s not supported on the Apple TV. Thankfully, this is only temporary and should be resolved in the near future.As noted by 9to5Mac, Netflix has a support page up that directly confirms as much. It simply says, “Basic with Ads isn’t supported on Apple TV,” without any details as to why that’s the case. Plenty of other AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) services are present on tvOS, and since Basic with Ads works on iPhones and iPads, this doesn’t seem to be the result of a wider spat between Apple and Netflix. A Netflix spokesperson confirmed to 9to5Mac... Continue reading…

Now you can get Netflix cheaper — but with ads. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix with ads is finally here. After resisting ads in its streaming service, the company is rolling out its Netflix Basic with Ads in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the UK, the US, and on November 10th, Spain. It costs $6.99 per month in the US.On Basic with Ads, you’ll see an “average” of four to five ads every hour, COO Greg Peters wrote in a blog post about the tier in October. Ads will be 15 or 30 seconds long, and you’ll see them before and during the things you watch, though you can’t skip or fast-forward through them. (You can pause ads.) Netflix is partnering with Microsoft as its “global advertising technology and sales partner” for the new tier.Like with the ad-free Basic tier, TV... Continue reading…

A pedestrian uses an umbrella to protect herself from the sun, at Canary Wharf, during a heatwave in London, UK, on Monday, July 18th, 2022. | Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images Europe is heating up faster than any other continent in the world, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) finds. Since 1991, temperatures in Europe have risen more than twice as fast as global average temperatures. That’s brought extreme swings in weather, from devastating floods to deadly heatwaves.The consequences are brutal, despite Europe having more resources than many other parts of the world to cope with climate change. For example, three in four people in Europe have access to early warning systems for disasters exacerbated by climate change. In comparison, the United Nations recently found that half of the world lacks adequate early warning systems.“Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and... Continue reading…

Peloton continues to spin both its wheels and numbers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is an optimist. During the company’s Q1 2023 earnings call, McCarthy said that the company was done with layoffs and that the “ship was turning,” referencing a colorful metaphor he issued during Q4 2022 earnings. Wall Street investors may disagree. Peloton’s stock price fell by about 19 percent this morning after the company announced a weaker-than-expected holiday forecast.On the product side, McCarthy noted that while customer satisfaction with the recently launched Guide was high, most people don’t know it exists. Meanwhile, the CEO heaped heavy praise on the Peloton Row, claiming that the device “reinvented the category.” He then noted that Row inventory would be constrained this year, even as demand was... Continue reading…

Drone shows have proved a popular alternative to fireworks, though not everyone is happy about their potential for advertising. | Photo by Yang Bo/China News Service via Getty Images Five hundred light-equipped drones are being launched into the sky above New York City this evening to form a giant flying advertisement for the Candy Crush mobile game. (via Gothamist).The 10-minute-long choreographed performance has been organized for the game’s 10th anniversary and will “turn the sky into the largest screen on the planet,” according to Fernanda Romano, chief marketing officer at Candy Crush.

Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is selling for just $24.99 instead of $49.99, which is a new all-time low. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Want to get a super early head start on your holiday shopping before Black Friday rolls around? Today’s deal on Roku’s Streaming Stick 4K is a present that will appeal to a wide range of people, given its support for all major streaming apps. It’s also a gift that won’t hurt your wallet, either, as it’s half off at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy, selling for $24.99 instead. That’s a new all-time low on the excellent, easy-to-use device, which organizes all of your streaming service apps into one big grid so they’re quickly accessible. So long as you don’t need support for Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C, this is a terrific streaming stick with a range of other perks, too, including support for Dolby Vision, Apple’s AirPlay 2, and compatibility with... Continue reading…

The CSA is hosting an event in Amsterdam this week to celebrate the launch of the new smart home standard Matter. | Illustration: The Verge Matter was finally released last month, and now, we are getting our first look at the devices that will work with the new smart home interoperability standard. At a Matter launch event in Amsterdam hosted by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the organization announced that over 190 products are now certified or close to gaining certification in the first Matter categories. These include smart lighting, smart plugs, smart thermostats, smart shades, smart sensors, and smart locks. That’s a relatively small number in the infinite pool of smart home devices, but it's a good start.Today, the CSA announced four new device categories that are coming next, in addition to cameras, home appliances, robot vacuums, and more advanced energy... Continue reading…