The Verge

Image: Sony Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered from Insomniac Games is coming to PC on August 12th, and it’s going to come with a host of PC features like unlocked framerates, Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), and ultrawide monitor support. Insomniac Games has been working with Nixxes Software to port the game to PC, and it has included a variety of customizations you’d expect to see in a typical PC game.PC players of Spider-Man Remastered will be able to output at a variety of resolutions and use ultrawide 21:9 and 32:9 monitors. If you’ve got three monitors that make use of Nvidia’s Surround multi-monitor setup, then you’ll even be able to get Spider-Man swinging across all your monitors. Image: Sony PC specs list... Continue reading…

Alexa’s getting better at doing its thing without your input. | Image: Amazon Amazon is making a bunch of changes to the Alexa user experience, all with the same idea in mind: making the virtual assistant easier to use. The most notable is a change in how Alexa handles Routines, which developers can now create and recommend to users instead of requiring you to manually build your own automations. Alexa’s also starting to coexist with other manufacturers’ assistants, and Amazon is working to make sure that the most important commands — like “Stop!” — work no matter what wake word you’re using.Amazon made these announcements during its Alexa Live developer event, in which the company announced a slew of other new Alexa features mostly geared toward developers. They can add shopping to skills, more easily support M... Continue reading…

Amazon is counting on Matter to help fulfill its smart home ambitions. | Image: Amazon Amazon wants every smart home device to work with its Alexa ecosystem, and it says Matter is key to achieving that goal. “We really believe in ambient intelligence — an environment where your devices are woven together by artificial intelligence so they can offer far more than any device could do on its own,” Marja Koopmans, director of Alexa smart home, told The Verge in an interview.“Matter brings interoperability, and interoperability between all of those devices in the home is essential to realizing [our] vision of ambient intelligence.” The more devices can talk to each other, the more “experiences” platforms can build with them. For example, “If I leave home and I forget to turn off the lights or adjust my thermostat, Alexa will... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge DoorDash is changing its policies in a move that it says will crack down on underage alcohol orders. In addition to having users upload a photo of your ID to the app, DoorDash drivers will now have to scan your ID when they arrive at your home.DoorDash has already been testing the two-part verification process in Dallas, Detroit, Miami, Phoenix, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and Northern Virginia, but now it’s rolling out to all customers. The service previously only required you to upload an image of your ID that Dashers were supposed to check when they arrived at your home. Image: DoorDash DoorDash first piloted alcohol deliveries in California in 2016 before expanding to 20 additional states last September. In 2020,... Continue reading…

Screenshot: Tom Warren / The Verge It’s finally happening: Discord voice chats are coming to Xbox consoles. Starting today, Xbox Insiders can test this new integration, allowing you to connect to Discord calls from an Xbox One or Xbox Series S / X console. While this isn’t a Discord app for Xbox, you’ll be able to transfer calls from the mobile Discord and Xbox apps to your Xbox console and chat to your friends with your regular Xbox headset.I’ve been testing the integration today, and it shows up in both Discord mobile and the Xbox dashboard. First, you’ll head into the Parties & chat section of the Xbox dashboard and scan a QR code on your phone. This will open up the Discord mobile app, and you’ll then link up your Xbox profile to your Discord profile. Once that’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Wednesdays, editor-at-large David Pierce leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in an exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into your home.David starts today’s episode with Verge managing editor Alex Cranz and news writer Mitchell Clark to chat about what it took for Mitchell to get service from Dish’s new cellular network Project Genesis and why he was rewarded with NFTs to test the connectivity in Spokane, Washington.Later in the show, David talks with senior policy reporter Makena Kelly about VPNs and why... Continue reading…

The Nanoleaf Lines modular smart lights give a futuristic vibe to your walls. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge After Nanoleaf’s recent announcement of the new, limited edition Ultra Black Triangles to celebrate its 10th anniversary, it’s also running celebratory deals that run until July 24th. The smart home lighting company is discounting various starter kits (cleverly dubbed “smarter kits”) and various wall panel light expansion packs, with some getting discounts as hefty as 58 percent off. There’s a lot to browse on Nanoleaf’s site, but we’re highlighting the ones we feel are the best.The biggest price drop is on the Nanoleaf Shapes Mini Triangles, which are down to just $49.99 for a five-pack smarter kit at Amazon and Best Buy. These triangles may be tiny, but they’re easy to expand into much larger forms that are kind of cute.For the... Continue reading…

Discord calls in the Xbox dashboard | Image: Discord Discord and Microsoft are bringing Discord voice calls to the Xbox. The feature, available now to Xbox Insiders and coming soon to the rest of us, will allow users to connect to Discord voice chats from their Xbox, facilitating all kinds of cross-platform play shenanigans.The process of connecting your Xbox and Discord accounts and starting up a voice chat is pretty involved. First, you have to download the Xbox mobile app, as you’ll use your phone to transfer Discord calls to an Xbox. Then, you have to connect your Xbox account to your Discord one. If you’ve connected them in the past, the instructions state that you’ll need to do so again to accept the new voice permissions.Once that’s done, whenever you want to talk with your... Continue reading…

On a Tuesday in mid-March, Jennifer Lepp was precisely 80.41 percent finished writing Bring Your Beach Owl, the latest installment in her series about a detective witch in central Florida, and she was behind schedule. The color-coded, 11-column spreadsheet she keeps open on a second monitor as she writes told her just how far behind: she had three days to write 9,278 words if she was to get the book edited, formatted, promoted, uploaded to Amazon’s Kindle platform, and in the hands of eager readers who expected a new novel every nine weeks.Lepp became an author six years ago, after deciding she could no longer stomach having to spout “corporate doublespeak” to employees as companies downsized. She had spent the prior two decades working... Continue reading…

Image: Ken Pillonel After teasing modified AirPods that swap Apple’s Lightning port for a USB-C connection, Ken Pillonel, the robotics engineering student behind the USB-C iPhone, has finally released the full video that shows his entire process. And the best part is that Pillonel is making his schematics open source, meaning you, too, can accomplish such a feat (given that you have a 3D printer).Pillonel starts by sawing open the AirPods case, essentially breaking it, as they’re not designed to be taken apart. He then designs two replacement pieces to go on either side of the case, first by using an FDM 3D printer and then switching to SLA for a smoother result. The pieces he constructs snap perfectly into place in the most satisfying way possible,... Continue reading…

Image: Annapurna Interactive Annapurna Interactive’s Stray, the fantastic adventure game where you navigate through a cyberpunk-inspired world as a cat, is winning over more than just players. House cats, who typically sit idly as their owners play games, are getting engaged with the game, too. And people can’t stop tweeting about it. So, someone smarter than I am made the Twitter account @CatsWatchStray to bundle up all of that joy in one place.Compared to almost everything else happening around the globe, this is so wholesome. You just get to see cats being unabashedly invested in the game. Perhaps it’s due to the realistic animations of the in-game cat or the fact that there’s a dedicated meow button, but cats are turning Stray, a single-player game, into a... Continue reading…

Managing your Destiny 2 loot should’ve always been this easy. | Image: Alice Newcome-Beill While everyone is talking about Destiny 2’s annual summer event, Solstice of Heroes, I’m busy with an evergreen event I like to call “managing my character’s inventory.” Anyone that plays Destiny 2 regularly has almost definitely used Destiny Item Manager (DIM), a community-created tool that keeps track of your items in a browser or on your phone at one point or another.In fact, this tool has become so widely used that opening your vault in Destiny has a disclaimer that you should use DIM instead of attempting to manage your piles of loot in-game. DIM syncs with your Destiny 2 account and allows you to easily swap items between characters, assign loadouts, remotely pull stuff from the postmaster, and other quality-of-life improvements... Continue reading…

Creative constraints + Instagram angst = success Continue reading…

The 10T will have a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset and a sparkly back panel. | Image: OnePlus Pete Lau is throwing a party. As he has just announced in a community forum post, the OnePlus CEO says its upcoming 10T will launch on August 3rd with an in-person event in New York City. The 10T continues OnePlus’ tradition of performance-focused specs with a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset, which is, in theory, a cut above the regular ol’ Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the OnePlus 10 Pro. OnePlus will also take the opportunity to launch OxygenOS 13, which Lau says will come to the 10 Pro first and the 10T later this year.Qualcomm says the “Plus” version of the 8 Gen 1 offers faster performance and better battery efficiency than the non-plus chipset. It’s a pull-out-all-the-stops kind of processor, and it’s largely intended for mobile devices... Continue reading…

Endurance focuses on the game’s larger ships. | Image: Hello Games No Man’s Sky has a major new free update releasing today, developer Hello Games has announced. The new Endurance update is focused on the game’s freighters and frigates, the large ships in the game that players can use as a mobile base of operations and to complete missions. Endurance is the 20th major update for the game, which was originally released in 2016.Improvements coming with this major update include a new ship bridge that offers instant access to warping and teleportation to navigate the game’s universe. Players can also build bigger freighters featuring exterior sections, as well as with new plant growing and manufacturing features, and the ships can now analyze planets from space. New expedition- and combat-focused missions... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is only 18 but it’s slap-bang in the middle of a mid-life crisis, with user numbers declining and TikTok eating its Gen Z lunch. In response, the company is trying to push more video content from creators into users’ feeds, and is now shifting resources away from more text-focused products like its News tab and Bulletin newsletter platform.As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook exec Campbell Brown told employees about this change in priorities in a recent memo. Brown said engineering and product teams at Meta-owned Facebook would, in future, spend less time on News and Bulletin to “heighten their focus on building a more robust Creator economy.”Facebook wants its feed to look more like TikTokThis change in... Continue reading…

The tags include an e-paper display to show your flight info. | Image: Alaska Airlines Alaska Airlines says it’s becoming the first US-based airline to roll out support for electronic bag tags, small programmable devices with e-paper displays that are designed to replace the paper tags currently in use. It plans to launch the new program in phases, and it’ll initially be focused on San Jose airport in California. The airline will initially give out 2,500 of the tags for free to its frequent flyers from the airport in late 2022, TechCrunch reports, and they’ll be available to purchase by Mileage Plan members next year.Alaska Airlines intends for the tags to cut down on the amount of time its customers spend on flight admin at the airport. Rather than having to print a luggage tag in person, they can instead set up the... Continue reading…

Photo by Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images Netflix wants linear TV to die. CEO Reed Hastings has been banging the TV murder drum for more than 8 years now, and in the investor call today, he reiterated his belief, confidently saying that Netflix was in a great place because linear TV would be dead in “5 to 10 years.”Hastings is financially incentivized to say this. One of the biggest competitors for the largest streaming service on the planet is the set of totally free streaming channels that beam into any TV with an antenna, and their costlier friends on cable TV.Netflix needs linear TV to die because it needs the streaming holdouts still using linear TV. It shed a whopping 1.3 million subscribers across the US and Canada in the last three months, according to its 2022 Q2... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The electric rebirth of Scout, the classic off-road SUV brand, is getting real this week as Volkswagen names Scott Keogh as CEO of its new spinoff company. The former head of VW Group America, as initially reported by Axios, pushed for VW to start a new electric truck line after seeing a fully restored vintage Scout: “the rights to the brand were just sitting there,” Keogh said.VW acquired the Scout brand through a 2020 merger of its commercial trucking company Traton with Navistar, which the German automaker initially bought part of in 2016. In May, it was reported that VW Group is willing to pump $1 billion into the new Scout brand and set goals to sell a quarter million electric off-roaders under the name annually starting in 2026. ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Another Samsung Unpacked virtual event is right around the corner, now confirmed to take place on August 10th at 9AM ET / 6AM PT, and along with it are some incentives for the early, early birds. Samsung is offering customers in the US the chance to put in free, no-commitment reservations for its upcoming devices on its website now, well ahead of preorders — and even the devices’ announcement.Galaxy fans who reserve before the August 10th Unpacked will later receive varying tier-levels of store credit once the devices can be ordered, ranging from $30 to $200, toward Samsung’s next devices. As for what devices you’re signing up for? We can say with certainty that among the rumors, leaks, and Samsung’s own invite graphic, you can expect... Continue reading…

Yep, that’s a foldable. | Image: Samsung Samsung has provided a clear solution to the unusual puzzle it provided yesterday, confirming that its Galaxy Unpacked event will indeed take place on August 10th. The image included with the teaser also confirms that its foldables will be taking center stage, with a Galaxy Z Flip-shaped device acting as a “greater than” symbol. The event will start at 9AM ET and will be streamed on Samsung.com.Based on the cryptic hint that Samsung dropped yesterday, along with the timing of last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Fold 3 launch, it was kind of a no-brainer to assume that we’d see updated foldable phones next month. If the phone in the invitation image is actually the Z Flip 4, then rumors that the device would feature minimal updates appear... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix’s upcoming ad-supported offering won’t include all of the content you can currently watch on the streaming service, Netflix executives said during the company’s Q2 2022 earnings interview video.“Today, the vast majority of what people watch on Netflix, we can include in the ad-supported tier,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said. “There are some things that don’t — that we’re in conversation about with the studios on — but if we launched the product today, the members in the ad tier would have a great experience. We will clear some additional content, but certainly not all of it, but we don’t think it’s a material holdback to the business.”“It’s certainly a nice to have,” said CFO Spencer Neumann. “But it’s not a must-have. As... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over a decade last quarter, the company’s Q2 earnings report revealed the number of worldwide subscribers dipped by 1 million, including a drop of 1.28 million in the US and Canada alone between the end of March and the end of June. That’s better than its projection of losing 2 million worldwide, but the subscriber shortfall in the US and Canada is double the 600,000 drop it reported for Q1. Netflix now reports it has 73.28 million paid subscribers in the US and Canada and 220.67 million worldwide.This comes nearly a week after Netflix announced a partnership with Microsoft on its cheaper ad-supported tier that it expects to launch by early next year. In the letter,... Continue reading…

The map includes filters for narrowing down what type of locations you’re looking for. Instagram’s latest update aims to make it easier for users to find local businesses or attractions by adding a searchable map that lets you “discover popular local businesses near you,” according to an Instagram Story from Mark Zuckerberg. The map will show you a list of places nearby and will let you see posts about a certain place or see only certain types of business.There are a few ways to get to the map — if someone tags a place in a post or story, you can tap on the tag and hit “see location” to get to the location’s page. If you move around on the map, you’ll then be able to search the area to see what’s nearby. Navigating to the map and searching it from a story sticker. You can also search for places... Continue reading…

The owl is cute, though. | Illustration by Alex Castro/The Verge Last year, I decided to start learning Korean. It was entirely on a whim — I don’t live in Korea and have no reason I’d ever need to go there. Nonetheless, it’s been an incredibly rewarding experience, and I’ve gotten to a point where I can speak, read, and write comfortably much faster than I ever thought I could.That’s entirely due to the wealth of apps and online services out there that I’ve been able to take advantage of. Without easy access to native speakers or in-person classes, much of my early journey involved scouring the internet for resources and trying every one I could find. Here, I’m going to briefly discuss my experience with each one and whether I’d recommend it for its price.It’s important that I make a few caveats... Continue reading…

Netflix actually used this image in its announcement tweet. | Image: Netflix Sam Raimi’s incredible Spider-Man movie trilogy will be available on Netflix beginning August 1st, the company announced on Tuesday.Raimi’s trilogy is the best Spider-Man trilogy, and I won’t hear another word edgewise. I know the films aren’t objectively the best — the third one is just bad — but for many people of a certain age like me, they’re formative movies that are packed with iconic moments and legendary memes.Tobey Maguire’s Emo Peter Parker is basically a permanent internet character. One of the best parts of Spider-Man: No Way Home was when Willem Dafoe got to say perhaps his most classic Norman Osborne line. Netflix itself even used a Spider-Man meme in its announcement tweet.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Cloud and Oracle servers located in the UK struggled with cooling-related outages Tuesday as the country experienced record-breaking heat that reached as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Both companies blame temperature for the unexpected shutdowns.On its Google Cloud status page, Google notes it has experienced a “cooling related failure” in one of its UK-based data centers. “This caused a partial failure of capacity in that zone, leading to VM [virtual machine] terminations and a loss of machines for a small set of our customers,” Google states. The company adds that it has also “powered down” some of its machines to prevent any further damage.As pointed out by The Register and Bleeping Computer, Oracle has... Continue reading…

The Lego Movie. | Image: Warner Bros. Netflix plans to acquire the animation studio Animal Logic, which is known for making hits like Happy Feet and The Lego Movie, the streaming company announced on Tuesday alongside its Q2 2022 earnings.“Today, we announced that we will be acquiring leading animation studio Animal Logic, with ~800 amazing people mostly in Sydney and Vancouver, which will help us accelerate the development of our animation production capabilities and reinforces our commitment to build a world-class animation studio,” Netflix wrote in its Q2 2022 shareholder letter (pdf).The two companies are already partnering on The Magician’s Elephant (set for a 2023 release) and Ron Howard’s first animated film, The Shrinking of Treehorn. The acquisition is expected... Continue reading…

The cast of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. | Image: HBO Max/Warner Bros. Though there were quite a few real people campaigning for #TheSnyderCut’s release before Warner Bros.’ 2021 announcement, new reporting from Rolling Stone suggests that a sizable amount of the movie’s social media hype was being driven by bots and inauthentic accounts.When Warner Bros. announced last year that it planned to release an extended cut of its 2017 Justice League film, the move was seen by many as both a vindication of and capitulation to director Zack Snyder and his extremely online fandom. For years, Snyder loyalists insisted that the movement developed organically as people saw the cut Joss Whedon, who replaced Snyder as director, delivered — and found it lacking. But, according to Rolling Stone, which obtained copies of... Continue reading…

Please just tell me where my phone is. | Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge If you own a Fitbit Charge 5 and are chronically forgetful, there’s good news — according to 9to5Google and Android Police, the fitness tracker’s latest update adds an app that lets you ring your phone from your wrist. This feature has been available on some Fitbit smartwatches for a while, but it’s exciting to see it come to one of the company’s simpler devices, especially as someone who used to ping my phone several times a day back when I had an Apple Watch.Charge 5 owners should get the find my phone feature automatically when they install the 171.50 update. Instructions on how to do so can be found in this Fitbit help article. Reportedly, the option will show up when you swipe down from the top of the screen, amid other options... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New internal documents released Tuesday detail how three of Big Tech’s most prominent companies favored their own products as a means of stamping out competition. Their release comes as lawmakers push to approve stronger antitrust legislation by the end of the year.The documents were obtained by the House Judiciary Committee as part of its lengthy investigation into anticompetitive behavior from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook’s parent company Meta. The investigation wrapped up in 2020, but the newly published emails, memos, and reports provide new evidence backing the committee’s calls to advance tougher competition rules for the tech industry.“It is time for Congress to act,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), chair of the antitrust... Continue reading…

The cat from Stray. | Image: Annapurna Interactive The PlayStation Network experienced some issues on Tuesday. At the time, Sony’s PlayStation status page said that says that things like launching games, buying, downloading, and browsing games, and signing in to your account may have been impacted.The issues popped up just a few hours after the release of Stray, the futuristic adventure game starring a cat. Sony didn’t give a specific reason as to why there were problems, so I’m going to place the blame for the outage squarely on the cute kitty. The cat wreaked havoc.It’s not clear how widespread the issues were. Things seemed to work fine on my PS5, though I saw a lot of people report issues on Twitter, and there was a spike of user reports of problems on Downdetector. Maybe someone... Continue reading…

If you had your keyboard repaired, you may be eligible for some money back. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple has agreed to pay out $50 million to settle a class action lawsuit that said the company knew about flaws with the butterfly keyboard switches it built into several MacBook models (via Reuters).The keyboards, introduced with the 2015 MacBook, were notoriously unreliable; basically any sort of grime, crumb, or dust could make it so that a key stopped responding altogether or got stuck, resulting in embarrassing typos. Apple tried several fixes for the keyboards, but each new generation failed to fix the core issue, with computers impacted as recently as the 2019 MacBook Pros and Air. (A full list of the affected computers is included on the first page of the settlement, but it’s basically all of Apple’s laptops from 2015 to 2019.)... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When Facebook changed its name to Meta in October, there were a few concerns that the company was planning to dominate the nascent metaverse — but there’s one aggrieved party that’s only now going public.An installation-art company called META (or Meta.is) announced Tuesday that it will be suing Meta (or Facebook) for trademark violation, alleging that Zuckerberg’s name change violated the smaller company’s established brand.“On October 28, 2021, Facebook seized our META mark and name, which we put our blood, sweat, and tears into building for over twelve years,” reads a post on the smaller company’s site. “Today, after eight months of trying to negotiate with Facebook in good faith to no avail, we were left with no choice but to file... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The QA department at Blizzard Albany, the studio formerly known as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2’s Vicarious Visions, has become the second QA department within Activision Blizzard to organize a union.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is launching a new built-in fundraising tool called Twitch Charity to make it easier for streamers to run charity streams.Many streamers and organizations put on charity streams to help raise funds for causes they support. Right now, streamers often pledge donations, subscriptions, and Bits (Twitch’s virtual currency) received over a certain period of time to the charity of their choice. But there can be a lot to manage when hosting a charity stream — you can get an idea of what’s involved in this guide to hosting a charity stream from my former colleague Bijan Stephen.Twitch Charity is designed to simplify the fundraising process. Streamers will be able to go into “charity mode,” which activates a “Donate to Charity” button... Continue reading…

Buzz Lightyear in Lightyear. | Image: Disney / Pixar Lightyear, Disney and Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear-focused movie that hit theaters in June, will be available to stream on Disney Plus beginning August 3rd.

Google is going to test AR devices in the real world soon. | Image: Google Google is planning to test augmented reality (AR) prototypes in public beginning next month, the company announced Tuesday. Google has been exploring concepts like AR glasses that show translations in real time, but the company wants to take its ideas from the lab into the real world. The Verge previously reported that Google hopes to ship its “Project Iris” AR headset in 2024.“This will allow us to better understand how these devices can help people in their everyday lives,” Google’s Juston Payne wrote in a blog post. “And as we develop experiences like AR navigation, it will help us take factors such as weather and busy intersections into account — which can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to fully recreate indoors.”Prototypes... Continue reading…

Image: Xbox Grounded, the survival co-op that combines elements of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and A Bug’s Life, is getting an animated TV adaptation, as first reported by Deadline. Brent Friedman of Star Wars: Clone Wars will write the story, with Halo 4’s Brien Goodrich sitting in the director’s chair.Grounded was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and launched on Xbox and PC in 2020. The game amassed over 10 million players and follows a group of four friends who shrink down to the size of ants, similar to the premise of the 1989 movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. As they battle their way through a backyard teeming with the now-giant insects, they must gather resources, craft supplies, and build a base to survive.Waterproof Studios / SC... Continue reading…

Passersby walk towards an LED sign saying “18 -19 July extreme heat only travel if essential.” | Photo by Sebastian Gollnow / picture alliance via Getty Images The UK recorded temperatures rising above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in its 350 years of climate records. The searing heatwave is unprecedented in a country that’s used to much cooler summer weather and is a bellwether of more extremes to come.The heat is so bad that it’s buckled an airport runway, forcing London Luton Airport to temporarily suspend flights on Monday. Rail services across parts of the UK ground to a halt as tracks also buckled or overheated, and overhead cables failed and even caught on fire. Over 48 hours, England and Wales grappled with twice as many wildfires as it did throughout the entire month of July last year. Parched grass turned to tinder, sparking blazes that threatened... Continue reading…

Photo by Christoph Dernbach / picture alliance via Getty Images Panasonic has picked De Soto, Kansas, to build a new EV battery plant, which projects to bring up to $4 billion in investments for the state, the Kansas governor’s office said in a press release. The press release predicts the plant will create up to 4,000 jobs, plus estimates of 4,000 additional jobs with suppliers and community businesses.In April, Kansas and Oklahoma were both among the locations reportedly in the running for potential locations for Panasonic’s new battery plant. Oklahoma’s governor notably pushed lawmakers to approve a $700 million rebate package without naming which company it might benefit.In its press release, Kansas credited the passing of its Attracting Powerful Economic Expansion Act (SB 347), or APEX Act, in... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge “All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War. Some 2,500 years later, the maxim applies to the virtual battlefield as well as the physical.As the war in Ukraine rages on, researchers from Google have discovered malware from a Russian state-backed group disguised as a pro-Ukraine app. The details were revealed in a blog post published by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which specializes in tracking and exposing state-sponsored hacking.According to TAG, the Cyber Azov app — which invokes Ukraine’s far-right military unit, the Azov Regiment — was actually created by Turla, a Kremlin-backed hacking group known for compromising European and American organizations with malware. Image: Google... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Today, a Delaware court ruled that Twitter’s lawsuit against Elon Musk for attempting to back out of his acquisition of the company will be heard in October. This is a win for Twitter, which asked for a shorter timeframe than Musk.Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April but then appeared to get cold feet about the deal. Despite having waived his ability to do “due diligence,” or research on the company he was planning to acquire, he claimed that Twitter had too many bots. He then tried to terminate the agreement. In response, Twitter sued to hold him to the purchase.During oral arguments before the judge, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, Twitter claimed that Musk’s bot arguments were bad-faith attempts to back out of the... Continue reading…

Photo by Noam Galai / Getty Images for Webby Awards We’ve got a lot to dig into today, from mergers and acquisitions to breakups, both amicable and acrimonious. But first, I want to give a shout-out to my friend Karishma, who alerted me to the Desus and Mero drama blowing up on Twitter when I just wanted to bury my head in some copyright law. The second you look away is when it all goes down.How Desus and Mero brought podcast quirkiness to late-night comedyWe learned Monday night that comedy duo Desus Nice and The Kid Mero are officially over, bringing their critically acclaimed talk show on Showtime to an end. Desus & Mero was one of the very few new late-night shows to break through during the streaming era, thanks in part to the pair’s ability to successfully translate the... Continue reading…

Proposed redesigns of the Chrome icon. | Image: Google Google changed up its Chrome logo earlier this year, for the first time since 2014. The new Chrome logo has some subtle differences from before, thanks to a lack of shadows, slightly different proportions, and brighter colors. Most Chrome users might not have even noticed its introduction in Chrome 100, but Google had experimented with far more radical designs that didn’t make the cut.Some of the more striking proposals included completely different shapes for the Chrome logo or separating the colors with white borders. “In the exploratory phase, we tried all kinds of ideas; softening corners, different geometries, whether or not to separate the colors with white,” explains Thomas Messenger, a visual designer at Google. “We also tried... Continue reading…

Tekken: Bloodline | Image: Netflix Back in March, Netflix announced its Tekken TV show, and now we have a full trailer as well as a release date: August 18th. Dubbed Tekken: Bloodline, this anime adaptation follows the story of the King of Iron Fist Tournament from the perspective of Jin Kazama, as he’s trained by his grandfather Heihachi Mishima on a quest for revenge.It wasn’t the most original storyline when the games debuted in the ‘90s, but with a supernatural Ogre, corporate power battles, and genetic traits that promise incredible powers, there’s enough to make something more watchable than the movie released in 2010, which had a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.Here’s how Netflix summarizes its new show:

Walmart, Microsoft, and Best Buy all have the Series X in stock. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Having a single retailer restock the Xbox Series X is rare enough, but you can currently find the rarefied console at a trio of retailers while supplies last. Anyone still trying to get their hands on Microsoft’s monolithic console can pick one up at Best Buy, Microsoft, or Walmart for the standard retail price of $499.99.Amazon is also still offering its invite program for anyone that’s willing to wait. In addition to the standalone 1TB console, all of the retailers mentioned here are offering bundles that include games, peripherals, or Xbox Game Pass subscriptions with your purchase. Microsoft, for example, lets you bundle an additional controller with your order for a $10 discount, while Best Buy has a package that includes a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is introducing a slew of new shopping features for creators, including the ability to link storefronts and sell products directly on the platform through a partnership with Shopify.In a blog post published today, YouTube says its partnership with Shopify will allow creators to display products throughout their channels, like below videos, during livestreams, or at the end of videos. Inventory will sync with Shopify so viewers can see in real time if something is out of stock. YouTube will also give US-based creators the option to enable on-site checkout, meaning viewers can purchase products directly on the platform without leaving YouTube.In addition to the Shopify integration, YouTube says it will dedicate a section of the... Continue reading…

Screenshot: Qualcomm While Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear chips power the vast majority of current Wear OS watches, the platform itself has never really delivered. Thus far, Snapdragon Wear chips have been repurposed mobile processor designs built on outdated tech and are a big reason why Wear OS watches have been so lackluster. But today, Qualcomm is launching an overhauled wearables platform called Snapdragon W5 Plus and W5. And this time, it seems like Qualcomm means business.For starters, the company is ditching the Snapdragon Wear branding. That might seem irrelevant, but it’s more like a symbolic fresh slate. Instead, the new W5 Plus and W5 chips will be folded under the main Snapdragon umbrella. The W5 Plus is envisioned for premium smartwatches, while... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google will start allowing the developers of non-gaming apps in the European Economic Area (EEA) to offer alternate payment systems. In a blog post, Google outlines its plans to comply with the Digital Markets Act (or DMA), a piece of legislation aimed at regulating big tech.The DMA passed through the European Parliament earlier this month, but it isn’t expected to go into force until spring 2023. But Google is rolling out the changes ahead of time to make sure that its plans “serve the needs” of users.The legislation requires “gatekeepers,” or companies with a market capitalization of €74 billion or over, to follow a set of rules meant to promote competition among digital platforms. Failing to comply could lead to fines of up to 10... Continue reading…