The Verge

Cisco’s Room Bar (pictured) will be among the first of its devices to be Teams certified. | Image: Cisco Cisco’s video conferencing hardware will be updated to let users set Microsoft Teams as the default video conferencing software, the two companies have announced. Initially six devices will be certified to work with Teams in the first half of next year, including the Cisco Room Bar (a combined speaker and webcam), the 55 and 75-inch versions of the Cisco Board Pro (a freestanding screen designed for video conferencing) and the Cisco Room Kit Pro.Cisco’s press release stresses that its own Webex video calling software (which it paid billions for a little over a decade ago) isn’t going anywhere. “The devices will continue to support joining Webex meetings with all the features and functionality customers enjoy today,” the release notes.... Continue reading…

The Boring Company is selling a Burnt Hair fragrance for $100 a bottle. | Image: The Boring Company Ever fancied smelling like scorched keratin? Weird, but you’re the target demographic for Elon Musk’s latest product innovation: Burnt Hair cologne. Yes, you can buy it.The fragrance is the realization of a tweet Musk made back in September and is being sold through Musk’s The Boring Company, which you might recall has sold other novelty items in the past, such as the Not-A-Flamethrower. The advertising imagery shows a red bottle with a ruby-like gemstone on top. It’s not the most imaginative design if you’ve grown up with cheap, celebrity-endorsed perfumes, but then a receptacle for the scent of burnt follicles doesn’t deserve to be elegant.

AirConsole running on BMW’s latest curved display. | Image: BMW BMW is the latest automaker trying to get gaming to happen on vehicle infotainment screens while you’re charging or otherwise waiting around in your car. The company plans to add AirConsole, a party game service that normally runs on devices like Android TV or PC, into cars equipped with the curved infotainment display at the heart of its iDrive 8 system.AirConsole delivers games over the internet, with controls handled by smartphones instead of dedicated controllers. The library of over 180 games available on the PC version aren’t exactly heavy hitters, like GoKart Go Air, Mega Monster Party, and Let’s Cook Together, which seem heavily inspired by Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Party, and Cooking Mama, respectively. Absent are any... Continue reading…

Google finally has release dates for its Workspace upgrades. | Illustration: The Verge Google has steadily upgraded Workspace throughout the pandemic, and supporting the hybrid workplace took center stage during its Google Cloud Next event this week with new tweaks like an API @ tagging that can pull info from a third-party app into your Google Doc.As its Workspace suite faces off against competition from Microsoft Teams, Slack, and even Zoom Team Chat, it announced new Google Chat features and release windows for several updates, including the addition of message threading later this month. Google Chat will also spice up its text conversations once it lets users create custom emoji later this year. GIF: Google You can create your own emoji to be alongside your usual emoji lineup in Google Chat.... Continue reading…

An image of asteroid Didymos (bottom left) and its moonlet, Dimorphos, about 2.5 minutes before the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft on Monday, September 26th, 2022. | Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL When a spacecraft slammed into an asteroid last month, it pushed it closer to its companion and sped up its orbit by about 32 minutes. It’s a huge milestone for the field of planetary defense; it establishes that it may be possible for humans to significantly change the path of a potentially hazardous asteroid — especially if we have warning that one is on the way.When the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission sent a spacecraft crashing into its surface on September 26th, telescopes on Earth and in space were watching the action. Now, initial data from those observatories have shown that DART achieved its goal. Before the impact, the asteroid Dimorphos took about 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit its much larger companion... Continue reading…

Marvel’s Multiverse Saga logo. | Image: Marvel Studios The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Multiverse Saga is still in full swing, but as tends to be the case with Marvel projects, a number of the studio’s upcoming release dates for its tentpole movies are being pushed back — some rather significantly.Disney announced today that its new Blade, Deadpool 3, Fantastic Four, and Avengers: Secret Wars features have all been delayed for reasons that the studio didn’t discuss but are interesting to wonder about. Following news that production on Blade was being put on hold, news of a delay for that film doesn’t come as a surprise. But the shuffling of so many big movies does likely mean that following the thread of the MCU’s next couple of phases might get a bit tricky. Going forward, the new release... Continue reading…

A Lufthansa Boeing 747-430 landing in Barcelona on September 30th, 2022. | Photo by Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images Airlines are selling passengers false hope that they can cancel out their flight’s negative impact on the environment, according to a new report. It probed eight of the biggest airlines in Europe and found that many of them funnel money into highly suspect carbon offset projects that might not actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions.Purchasing carbon offset credits has become a popular way for corporations to absolve themselves of responsibility for the climate-damaging pollution they produce. Airlines might offer customers the option to pay for the offset credits themselves or might have their own commitments to offset emissions from their company’s flights. The money from those credits is supposed to support renewable energy or... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Owners of Google’s Pixel Buds Pro can now take much greater control over the way the earbuds sound. Google has announced that, as of the latest firmware update, which has begun “slowly rolling out” today, you can adjust a five-band EQ to customize the audio profile. There are also six presets that are tuned by Google’s audio engineers.Any custom EQ you settle on will remain active on the Pixel Buds Pro across all your devices until you make changes again. The new firmware update also “contains controls for the left / right balance and general bug fixes and improvements,” according to Google’s support page.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Monday afternoon, as pointed out by Parker Molloy, CNN ended its big Web3 project by announcing, “we have decided that it’s time to say goodbye to the Vault by CNN.”You may have already forgotten about it, but Vault by CNN launched in the summer of 2021 as a marketplace for its own NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that would “offer collectors the opportunity to own a piece of history.” Sort of like NBA Top Shot except for media nerds instead of basketball nerds, it minted CNN reports of key events or artistic interpretations inspired by them, creating digital collectibles that owners could show off somehow or trade with others, like baseball cards. This idea apparently seemed more reasonable while cryptocurrency prices were sky-high, and... Continue reading…

The Blade production logo. | Image: Marvel Studios Though Marvel’s been hyping up its new Blade feature for quite some time, the studio’s now pumping brakes on the production as it looks for a new director and takes another crack at getting the story just right.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel has shut down production on Blade entirely in Atlanta following former director Bassam Tariq’s move to step back from the project last month. While the studio hopes to start production back up early next year after finding a new director, Marvel’s also reportedly working to “further [develop]” Blade as a whole, suggesting that there’s a significant amount of work to be done before the movie can actually get going again. While these sorts of delays tend not to bode well, Blade is in the... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard Bugs in Overwatch 2 are like a Hydra — you cut off one head, and two more appear. After login issues, problems with account merges, backlash against the game’s new SMS Protect feature, and taking down the servers twice for emergency fixes, Blizzard had to disable two heroes as bugs were leaving them horrifically (albeit hilariously) broken.

This Shark robot vacuum is only sold as a package with its self-cleaning charging station. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge If you’re in the market for a quality robot vacuum, the midrange Shark AI Ultra XL is now on sale for an all-time low price of $349.99 at Amazon. This deal saves you $300, though it’s exclusive to Prime subscribers as part of Amazon’s Prime Early Access sale event that’s going on today through tomorrow evening.This Shark robovac is a formidable challenger to various Roombas and Roborocks of the world, as it’s one of the few bots in this price range that navigates using lidar. This should make its auto-mapping feature more precise and less prone to bumping into everything than other automated vacuums. It’s also sold with an included auto-emptying station, making this deal price even more enticing. Our resident smart home expert,... Continue reading…

The low-step frame and big, chunky tires are designed for comfort and approachability. | Image: Specialized Globe, the utility e-bike brand from Specialized, finally revealed its first model today, and I’m low-key obsessed with it.Back in May, Specialized announced it was creating a new e-bike sub-brand to liberate people from the scourge of car culture. The idea was to create a lineup of practical, affordable e-bikes that can “that will focus on bringing more fun to local living while reducing the number of car, truck, and SUV trips needed for everyday transportation,” the company said.The teaser image showed a bike hidden from view by bushels of cacti loaded into dual front and rear panniers. I was intrigued because it seemed like Specialized, one of the top legacy bike brands in the US, was positioning Globe to compete with the growing... Continue reading…

Mark Zuckerberg’s avatar now has legs. | Image: Meta Meta’s Horizon avatars will be getting legs. So far, the company’s avatars have weirdly just hovered off the ground, but sometime later next year, Meta will let you add legs to your avatars on VR, mobile, and more as part of the company’s next generation of avatars.Legs are “probably the most requested feature on our roadmap,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the company’s Connect event while showing off the new avatars, which look significantly better than the avatars available now. (Imagine the improved avatar Zuckerberg showed after his current-gen avatar got memed on but in motion.) “But seriously, legs are hard, which is why other virtual reality systems don’t have them either.”According to Zuckerberg, the company started off with... Continue reading…

Image: Meta Microsoft is bringing Xbox Cloud Gaming to Meta’s Quest VR platform. The two companies announced the partnership at Meta’s Connect event on Tuesday but didn’t announce a release date.With Xbox Cloud Gaming, “You’ll be able to play 2D games with your Xbox controller projected on a massive screen on Quest,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the event’s keynote.You won’t suddenly be able to play Halo Infinite as a VR-native game, but the app could make for a more immersive experience while playing any of the hundreds of games in the vast Xbox Cloud Gaming library since you’ll be seeing your game on a big virtual screen. (And it gives you another way to play your games if someone else is hogging the living room TV.) It’s also a way... Continue reading…

Doctors rely on computer systems to deliver care. | Getty Patients at hospitals in one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States are facing delays in care due to a cyberattack. The disruption is stretching into its second week.CommonSpirit Health, which operates more than 700 healthcare sites in over 20 states, said in a statement on October 4th that it was “managing an IT security issue” and that it needed to take some systems offline — including electronic medical records. The issue was caused by a ransomware attack, a source told NBC News.Doctors rely on IT systems and electronic medical records to see patient scans, check medication, and remember details about their specific treatment plan. Without them, they’re left taking notes on paper and ferrying notes through a... Continue reading…

Image: Meta Meta announced that a new sweat-resistant face mask and controller straps for exercising in the Quest 2 will be available for purchase online starting Tuesday, October 25th. We initially covered the Active Pack exercise-ready accessories kit when it was unveiled during last year’s showcase, and we didn’t expect that it’d come so close to missing its 2022 launch window. Nevertheless, it’s almost ready to ship. The company still hasn’t announced how much it will cost.The Active Pack includes a wipeable facial interface that can likely stand up to sweat better than the plush one that comes installed by default, two wrist straps, and adjustable knuckle straps to “provide the perfect combination of comfort and control,” according to Meta. ... Continue reading…

Image: Innersloth Shhhh! During Meta Connect we were treated to some new games coming to the Meta Quest 2 VR headset, including the long-awaited VR port of the still ludicrously popular Among Us. Now, that game has a release date: Among Us VR launches on November 10th. Play with up to nine other people as you work to repair your spaceship and avoid an untimely murder at the hands of crewmates (whose VR hands look just as uncanny valley upsetting as those realistic Kirby feet.)Among Us was one of those lightning in a bottle games. Launched in 2018, the pandemic exploded the game’s popularity so much that celebrities and politicians play just as much as your 12-year-old nephew might. Innersloth has been hard at work improving the game, adding cosmetics and... Continue reading…

The new Orbi 860 looks very similar to the other models. | Image: Netgear Netgear released new Orbi mesh routers that are ready to support multi-gig fast internet speeds just as more providers start pushing gigabit-plus service. The Orbi 860 Series doesn’t have the latest Wi-FI 6E technology like the super-pricey Orbi 960 Series and other options like Google’s Nest Wifi Pro or the Eero Pro 6E, but if most of your devices don’t support the 6-GHz band, then you might not need it any time soon. What it does have — other than the 10Gb Ethernet port its 850 predecessor lacks — is Wi-Fi 6, plus four LAN ports on the router and satellites that support Gigabit networking.The 860’s third band supports dedicated backhauling that can increase your local network speeds, while the standard 2.4 and 5GHz bands keep up with... Continue reading…

The proposed law could change the way Uber, DoorDash, and Lyft treat their workers. | Photo by Carsten Koall / picture alliance via Getty Images The US Department of Labor has proposed a new regulation that could make it harder for companies like Uber and Lyft to classify gig workers as independent contractors. Under the proposed rule, gig workers could gain new benefits and protections, including minimum wage and overtime.The proposal reverses the Trump Administration’s rule that made it safer to classify gig workers as independent contractors. The DOL withdrew the regulation last year after President Joe Biden came into office, stating it was “in tension” with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 — but until today, there’s been no clear replacement.

Margot Comstock holding a conversation with Infocom designers Marc Blank and Joel Berez at the Softalk Publishing booth at Applefest 1983 | Image: Al Tommervik Margot Comstock took her winnings from a TV game show and bought a computer. It led to a magazine, which turned into a major hub for the nascent community of developers and fans of one of the most important computers in history. Continue reading…

The Verge Google is partnering with Coinbase to let customers pay for its cloud services in “select” cryptocurrencies (via CNBC). According to Coinbase and Google, crypto-based payments will become available to customers in the Web3 space early next year to start.To enable these payments, Google will use Coinbase Commerce, a tool that lets businesses receive, accept, and convert cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, USD Coin, Tether USD, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and others. As noted by CNBC, Coinbase will take a cut of transactions made through its commerce tool. Google plans on utilizing Coinbase Prime as well, an “institutional-grade” crypto trading platform primarily built for large companies, to store and trade cryptocurrencies.As part... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Icons have become a very handy way of accessing the features of your various apps — especially when you’re dealing with a lot of features on the relatively small screen of your phone. However, if you’re not yet familiar with a particular app and you are faced with a plethora of icons, most of which are not labeled, how do you know what they are and how you should be handling them?(And believe me, if you have this problem, you’re not the only one — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit a mysterious icon out of curiosity and then started yelling, “I didn’t want to do that!” at the screen....)So I’m going to go over the icons you will probably see as a viewer on your TikTok homescreen and various other screens. Keep in mind that apps... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Set a note on your calendars this Halloween — Netflix has dropped the full trailer for Wendell & Wild, a spooky upcoming animated movie co-written and produced by director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and Jordan Peele (Nope, Get Out).Peele stars alongside comedic partner Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele) as the titular characters, a pair of demon brothers who trick troubled orphan Kat Elliott (played by This Is Us star Lyric Ross) into summoning them to the land of the living, resulting in exactly the kind of mayhem you’d expect from a children’s dark horror-comedy. Selick will also direct the movie, making this his first feature film since Coraline (2009). Image: Netflix Key and Peele will play... Continue reading…

Google first announced Project Starline in May 2021. | Image: Google Google is bringing Project Starline, its next-gen 3D video chat booth, to more companies starting later this year. As part of an early access program, “enterprise partners,” including Salesforce and T-Mobile, will begin using Starline, with Google deploying units of the booth in “select partner offices” for testing, according to a blog post.Google first announced Project Starline at last year’s Google I/O. The idea is that you can sit in the booth and have a virtual conversation with another human being without squinting at a tiny Zoom window or wearing a virtual reality headset. The booth creates the effect of talking to a “real” person by capturing how you look with cameras and sensors and so it can recreate a 3D model for the person... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Everything you need to know to score the best deals possible Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge The @ symbol is about to become the most important feature in Google Docs. As Google continues to invest in making Workspace a more connected and powerful platform, it’s also opening Docs up to third-party developers in a big way. Going forward, all you’ll need to type is “@” and the name of a file or app you’re looking for, and you’ll be able to see and edit it from within Google Docs.The feature is called “smart chips” and refers to essentially embedding other apps into Google Docs. The API that makes all this work is new — Google announced it at its Cloud Next conference along with a handful of partners. Asana users will be able to manage their tasks through an embed in Docs; you’ll be able to see visual previews of Miro and Figma... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google’s Cloud Next developer event is today, and the Google Workspace team is using the opportunity to announce a number of new tools across Gmail, Docs, Meet, and the rest of the Workspace ecosystem. Google is investing more in its “smart canvas” concept for Docs, letting users embed information and apps inside a document. It’s also releasing some new Meet features with hybrid work in mind, like automatic meeting transcriptions and an AI-powered framing tool for conference room cameras that aims to keep speakers in focus at all times.Google Workspace also has a new leader: Aparna Pappu, who took the job as VP and GM of Workspace in July after Javier Soltero left the company. Pappu has been at Google since 2007, and did a long stint... Continue reading…

The mid-range iPad Air comes with Apple’s highest-end processor for the current iPad line. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Deals on some of Apple’s latest iPads can sometimes be frequent and fierce. The latest one to see a sizable discount is the 2022 iPad Air, which Amazon is selling for $519 with its base 64GB of storage and Wi-Fi connectivity. That $80 discount is part of Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale, which just kicked off this morning and has numerous discounts running through tomorrow. This one, like many others, is exclusive to Amazon Prime subscribers. Though if you don’t do Prime, Best Buy is also discounting it for $519.99.This iPad Air deal is the lowest price we’ve seen on the mid-range iPad. One of the standout features you get with this generation of Air is its M1 processor, borrowing the brains of the much pricier iPad Pros. This CPU gives... Continue reading…

The next-gen NUC Extreme PC (seen left) will still be compact, despite being significantly larger than its predecessors. | Image: Intel Intel has teased its upcoming NUC 13 Extreme PC, the latest addition to the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) family of small-form-factor computers and barebone computer kits. The PC codenamed Raptor Canyon was revealed at TwitchCon this past weekend, as reported by VideoCardz, and notably sports a significantly bigger design than its predecessor to support larger graphics cards.A teardown of the upcoming PC was carried out on the convention floor, giving us an indication of its larger size compared to previous models within Intel’s NUC range. It confirmed that Raptor Canyon can support up to a full desktop Core i9 processor and up to 64GB of DDR5 memory. 2.5 and 3-slot graphics cards are also supported, with an unnamed Nvidia GeForce RTX 30... Continue reading…

Delta Airlines will invest $60 million in Joby Aviation, a leading electric air taxi startup, to create a “home-to-airport” service using the startup’s five-seat electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the companies announced Tuesday. Delta said its investment in Joby could go as high as $200 million if the company hits certain milestones.The service, which will launch first in New York City and Los Angeles with other cities to follow, will be “mutually exclusive” across the US and UK for five years, with the option to extend that exclusivity for longer, the companies said. The home-to-airport service will exist in parallel to Joby’s currently nonexistent airport service, transporting passengers from cities to airports.... Continue reading…

A pile of unannounced Roku-branded light strips spotted by a Redditor. | Image: u/Negative_Source_7316 / Reddit Roku is about to make a big entrance into the smart home if a photo posted to Reddit and two shipping manifests spotted by ZatzNotFunny are to be believed.The unannounced lineup reportedly consists of both white and color smart bulbs, a smart light strip, a smart plug, and indoor and outdoor internet-connected security cameras. Roku also appears to be planning to launch a dedicated Roku Smart Home channel, which will presumably let users control the devices from smart TVs and streaming boxes running the company’s operating system.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, has just revealed the company’s dedicated Xbox game streaming device. Spencer published a photo of the device on Twitter, where you can see it sitting on top of his shelf in his Microsoft office space. It’s a small white box, that resembles the look of the Xbox Series S and will be dedicated to accessing Xbox games over the company’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service.Microsoft first announced it was planning an Xbox streaming device last year, and many had incorrectly assumed it would be a stick that would plug directly into a HDMI port. While Microsoft is still working on this Xbox streaming console, codenamed Keystone, it will be more of a box or puck-like device that attaches to monitors and TVs. ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge All YouTube users will soon get a new way of identifying themselves. The company announced today that @name handles will be used across the platform, a convention that’s common elsewhere on the internet but a departure for YouTube.Every YouTube user will have a unique handle that applies across the platform, from channel pages to Shorts, YouTube’s TikTok competitor. Users can use a handle to mention others in comments, video descriptions, titles, and more, which YouTube says will make it easier for creators to reach audiences and increase visibility.“We want to ensure creators can craft an identity as unique as their content, while giving viewers the confidence that they are interacting with their favorite creators,” YouTube says in... Continue reading…