The Verge

In the end, were we not the ones getting played? | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Come January, Google will be shutting down its Stadia cloud gaming service. In some ways, the move isn’t much of a surprise — as my colleagues have pointed out, there’s been doubt about whether Google was in it for the long haul with Stadia basically ever since it was announced in March 2019.If you’ve been listening to what the company said about the service, though, you’d be forgiven for being blindsided. Up until the very end, Google insisted there’s a wonderful future for Stadia, and that players should keep signing up for and using the service, despite rumors that it was about to go bust. Now that Stadia’s officially being shut down, let’s take a look at the times Google promised us this wouldn’t happen.October 2019 — “It is a long... Continue reading…

The chargers were designed to stack to offer up to 1600W of charging power. | Image: Hyper Hyper is officially recalling its stackable 100W and 65W GaN chargers and a 130W battery pack, following reports that all three devices can overheat and may pose a fire hazard to consumers. Recall notices for the HyperJuice Stackable GaN USB-C chargers and HyperJuice 130W USB-C battery pack have been posted on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (US CPSC) website, and the company is emailing its customers directly to ask them to return the devices in exchange for store credit.According to the CPSC, Hyper has received seven reports of its stackable GaN chargers overheating “resulting in damage to the changing units,” plus two reports of the battery pack overheating and causing “smoke, melting, and property damage.” No... Continue reading…

Soundcore Liberty 4 earbuds | Image: Soundcore Today Anker is adding a new entry to its line of Soundcore earbuds with the Liberty 4. While this set keeps the brand in the budget earbud category with a $149.99 price, they’re the first ones in this line to combine a “stick” design (as seen in the Liberty Air 2 Pro) and dual dynamic drivers that Soundcore claims “push the boundaries of sound performance, offering clarity across all frequencies for the best listening experience with all genres of music.”The Liberty Air 2 Pro made our list of the best cheap earbuds last year, and the Liberty 3 Pro managed to impress for the price when we reviewed them in February, despite ANC that could use some improvement and some extra emphasis on bass and treble under their default settings.While... Continue reading…

Image: Eufy Smart home company Eufy’s new wireless security camera, the EufyCam 3, bumps up the resolution to 4K and adds a built-in solar panel to extend the year-long battery life even further. But its best features come from the new HomeBase 3 hub the camera connects to wirelessly. This adds local processing of video to send you an alert when it spots a person, pet, or vehicle, plus facial recognition so it can tell you if it’s a stranger or a family member.Another interesting feature is the option to upgrade the storage to as much as 16 TB of local storage with a hard drive slot. Eufy says this is enough for 60 years of motion-activated video footage, and it adds the capability to record continuous video — a first for the Eufy ecosystem.The... Continue reading…

The Hubble Space Telescope | Image: NASA SpaceX and NASA have agreed to figure out whether or not a SpaceX ship could visit and potentially breathe new life into the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. They announced that they were partnering on a study that would look into whether or not that kind of mission was even possible.The study will take about six months to complete and will involve NASA and SpaceX. It also involves the Polaris Program, a private human spaceflight effort funded by billionaire Jason Isaacman. Earlier this year, Isaacman bought three flights to space on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, a series of missions he’s calling Polaris.It is not clear yet whether or not a trip to the Hubble would even require a crewIt is not clear yet whether or not a trip to the Hubble... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google had big plans for its cloud gaming service, but it never tipped the scales. Soon, Google will be shutting it down. Continue reading…

Intel’s Arc A750 arrives next month. | Image: Intel Intel surprised PC gamers earlier this week with $329 pricing for its top Arc A770 GPU, matching Nvidia’s RTX 3060 retail pricing. While it’s still difficult to find an RTX 3060 at $329, Intel is now undercutting Nvidia’s popular GPU with a $289 starting price for its A750, a card it claims should be able to trade blows with the RTX 3060.We’re still waiting on independent reviews of the Arc A750, but Intel did release 48 benchmarks last month showing that it should be able to beat or come close to Nvidia’s RTX 3060 performance in modern games. Intel tested its A750 directly against the RTX 3060 across 42 DirectX 12 titles and six Vulkan games, and the results look promising.Intel is clearly aiming for performance per dollar and budget... Continue reading…

Peloton continues to expand outside of its own marketplace. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In August, Peloton partnered with Amazon to sell its bikes and other accessories and apparel via the retailer’s website and apps. Today, Peloton announced another partnership with Dick’s Sporting Goods to sell its equipment both online and exclusively in its stores across the US. The partnership marks the first time that its equipment will be readily available for purchase in a third-party retailer’s brick-and-mortar store.The move to expand its fitness lineup to physical stores beyond the ones Peloton operates isn’t surprising. It’s continuing a plan to improve operations after a disastrous last 18 months that included layoffs, replacing founder and CEO John Foley with a new CEO, and restructuring. Last month, CEO Barry McCarthy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple’s vice president of procurement, Tony Blevins, has been fired from the company after his crude remarks in a TikTok interview went viral, according to a report from Bloomberg. Earlier this month, creator Daniel Mac posted a video where he asked Blevins what he does for a living, which showed Blevins responding: “I race cars and play golf and fondle big-breasted women. But I take weekends and major holidays off.”The video doesn’t identify Blevins by name and doesn’t reference his position at Apple, though Blevins does note that his job offers “a hell of a dental plan.” Mac’s format on TikTok mostly consists of walking up to people in expensive or luxurious cars and asking what they do for a living. As a slightly more safe for work... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission is facing mounting pressure to block Amazon’s proposed $1.65 billion purchase of iRobot, the company behind Roomba autonomous vacuums.In a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan on Thursday, a group of Democratic lawmakers argued that the proposed merger would unfairly bolster Amazon’s dominance in the smart home market by acquiring one of the company’s leading competitors. They also criticized Amazon’s data privacy and security practices following past acquisitions of companies like Ring, including data sharing partnerships with over 600 law enforcement agencies across the country.“iRobot is a powerful market incumbent, and Amazon, given its vast resources, history of producing smart vacuums… and powerful platform,... Continue reading…

Google’s text-to-speech tech is getting new voices across Android apps to improve clarity and sound more natural. | The Verge The speech engine Speech Services by Google is being upgraded to improve clarity and make text-to-speech voices in Android apps sound more natural. You can hear the difference between the old voices and the updated voices for yourself through prerecorded snippets on the Android Developers Blog.Frankly, while the voices do sound clearer, I’m skeptical about the claims it sounds more natural. It’s also still difficult to ascertain what the first sentence in these US English-language recordings actually says — is this my gun? Is this my god? Apparently it says “is this mic on?” but that was lost on me.Old New All 421 voices in 67 languages within Google’s speech engine are getting a new voice modelAll 421 voices in 67 languages... Continue reading…

Concept art from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes | Image: 20th Century Studios The next entry in the Planet of the Apes saga will start filming soon — and it has yet another very long name. Today, 20th Century Studios unveiled the first real details on Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which picks up the story years after 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes for what’s described as “an all-new chapter.” Production on the film is scheduled to start next month, with Wes Ball, best-known for the Maze Runner trilogy, serving as director.We don’t know much else about the movie, and it’s hard to glean a lot from the initial concept art (see above). But the studio did reveal some of the cast, including Owen Teague (Black Mirror and the newer It films), Freya Allen (The Witcher), and Peter Macon (The Orville). The... Continue reading…

Image: Ustwo Games / Netflix The quality of Netflix games has gone from simple, cotton candy-like fluff suitable for short bursts in a waiting room to bespoke, narrative experiences that require hours of strategic thinking. Desta: The Memories Between is the latter.Now I’m going to say some words that make sense independently but seem confusing when smashed together: Desta is a dreaming dodgeball roguelike friendship simulator. I promise you, it works.That’s the thing that enamored me of this game: those disparate words and genres, when put together, frickin’ work on a level that I simply have not seen in a mobile game, let alone one brought exclusively to mobile via Netflix — whose first crop of games included such BAFTA hopefuls like Shooting Hoops and Teeter... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An app appealing to the nostalgia of an Instagram without Reels and recommendations was pulled from the App Store just as developers say it was taking off.The OG App allows users to log in with their Instagram account and browse without ads, recommendations, and Reels — increasingly obtrusive features on Instagram that have caused widespread pushback from users. The app’s name captures the same sentiment: many users miss the old Instagram.But just a day after the app officially launched, it was pulled from the App Store on Wednesday, Engadget reports. On Twitter, the OG App creators said the app got 10,000 downloads and was climbing the rankings before it was removed.

Worlds 2021 champions Edward Gaming in Iceland. | Photo by Clive Rose/Riot Games Inc. via Getty Images The weather is cooling down, leaves are starting to change color, and PSLs are everywhere, which can only mean one thing: it’s time for the League of Legends World Championship. The annual esports tournament, better known simply as Worlds, kicks off on September 29th. Following a few years of competitions hampered by COVID-related restrictions, the 2022 edition looks to be more in keeping with the spectacle fans are used to.This year, the event is taking place across several cities in North America, starting off in Mexico City and culminating with the finals in San Francisco, where none other than Lil Nas X will be performing at the opening ceremony. As always, there are plenty of intriguing storylines, but keeping up with everything... Continue reading…

Waymo says it has created a new benchmark to measure the safety of its autonomous vehicles. | Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Waymo’s latest effort to prove that autonomous vehicles are safer than silly, accident-prone humans involves creating a virtual representation of a hyper-attentive driver and then pitting this fake person against its own AVs in a series of simulated tests to see which is better at crash avoidance.(Not to spoil it or anything, but the Waymo vehicle did better.)Improved safety has been one of the main predictions of the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry. With millions of people dying in auto crashes globally every year, AV operators are increasingly leaning on this safety case to spur regulators to pass legislation allowing more fully autonomous vehicles on the road. But while the argument seems convincing on the surface — AVs don’t get... Continue reading…

Bitcoin Mining Data Centers computers are provided energy from natural gas at Renegade Oil & Gas Company site in Elizabeth, Colorado on July 15th, 2022. | Photo by Hyoung Chang / The Denver Post The environmental and social damage Bitcoin inflicts on the world is comparable to notoriously polluting industries such as beef production and crude oil burned as gasoline, according to new a new study published today in the journal Scientific Reports. The research found that every $1 in Bitcoin market value generated an average of 35 cents in global climate damages between 2016 and 2021.For comparison, gasoline generated 41 cents, and beef production was responsible for 33 cents in damages. When it comes to both their economic value and environmental impact, Bitcoin is sometimes compared (albeit contentiously) to gold. This new study finds that the climate damages from Bitcoin were actually 8.75 times greater than gold.“When compared... Continue reading…

Photo by Edward Smith / Getty Images Mental health technology company Headspace Health is calling for researchers to submit proposals for studies on the impact of the company’s tools. The company’s products include both the meditation app Headspace and the digital therapy platform Ginger.“We see meditation as both a practice rooted in ancient history and a topic of modern science — which is why we’re just as dedicated to studying it as we are to sharing it with the world,” the company wrote on its “Science at Headspace” webpage.In the statement about the program, Headspace Health noted that research has already found benefits for mental health of both the meditation app and the therapy platform. But there’s still a lot that experts don’t know about mental health apps... Continue reading…

Entergalactic’s protagonist Jabari, who kinda sorta looks like Kid Cudi. | Netflix Netflix’s Entergalactic is a ‘television event’ that becomes way more emotionally resonant when you look at it as a companion piece to Kid Cudi’s upcoming album Continue reading…

A small example of what Melba can do. | Image: PlayerUnknown Productions Hey, remember PlayerUnknown? As in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or PUBG to your friends? Yeah, well Brendan Greene, aka PlayerUnknown, has provided details surrounding his latest gaming project, codenamed “Artemis,” which aims to be an open-source Earth-sized virtual environment supporting hundreds of thousands of players that can make or play whatever they want.Here’s the rub, though. Greene also wants users to be able to monetize what they make, essentially turning all user-generated content into NFTs. In an interview with Nathan Brown on the Hit Points newsletter, Greene mentions, “We’re building a digital place that has to have an economy, and it has to have systems at work. And I do believe you should be able to extract value from... Continue reading…

The Eero Pro 6 isn’t the latest model, but it might be all you need. It offers two 5GHz bands and one 2.4GHz band with support for dozens of devices connected simultaneously. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge After a day full of product announcements, Amazon is getting back to cutting prices on its hardware — both new-ish and old-ish. Specifically, there are some great discounts happening once again on the company’s Eero lineup of smart mesh Wi-Fi routers. These prices match the ones that we saw back in early July just before the company launched Prime Day 2022. (Little did we know Amazon was planning another big sale that’s happening soon on October 11th and 12th).If you want another chance to grab a single Eero Pro 6E for $120 off, you can get one for $179 through Eero or Amazon’s site. This is currently the company’s highest-end router that can blanket up to 2,000 square feet by itself. It also features two ethernet ports and, notably, a... Continue reading…

Image: Alfred I’ve spent the last few months testing smart door locks, and I’ve had to set up an Amazon Subscribe & Save order for all the different batteries they’ve been chewing through. Smart locks have a power problem, and smart lock manufacturer Alfred thinks it has the solution: wireless power.First announced at CES 2020, the Alfred AirCord enabled ML2 smart lock is finally a reality. Wirelessly powered by a Wi-Charge wireless power transmitter, the lock is launching today for commercial real estate developers in the United States and Canada.The ML2 is a mortise lock designed for high-end residential homes and commercial buildings. While it’s not going to work on your standard front door fitted for a deadbolt lock, Brad Cook, head of product... Continue reading…

A sample video generated by Meta’s new AI text-to-video model, Make-A-Video. The text prompt used to create the video was “a teddy bear painting a portrait.” | Image: Meta AI text-to-image generators have been making headlines in recent months, but researchers are already moving on to the next frontier: AI text-to-video generators.A team of machine learning engineers from Facebook’s parent company Meta has unveiled a new system called Make-A-Video. As the name suggests, this AI model allows users to type in a rough description of a scene, and it will generate a short video matching their text. The videos are clearly artificial, with blurred subjects and distorted animation, but still represent a significant development in the field of AI content generation.The model’s output is clearly artificial but still impressive“Generative AI research is pushing creative expression forward by giving people tools... Continue reading…

The long-awaited $429 Sub Mini doesn’t disappoint, but there are still reasons to opt for the standard Sub Continue reading…

All this fuss for a brick and mortar? | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge The whole thing smacks of ‘content’ Continue reading…

The new Outlook for Windows design. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is making its new version of Outlook for Windows available to all Office testers this week. The new Outlook for Windows app will make the desktop email client a lot more like the web version. Microsoft has been working on this redesign for months, and originally released a semi-public beta earlier this year.“Since then, we’ve received valuable feedback from Office Insiders on Beta Channel about how to create a more consistent, feature-rich experience,” explains Margie Clinton, group product manager on the Outlook team. “We’ve been listening to feedback since May and our team has been working diligently to improve the new Outlook for Windows.” Image: Microsoft Office testers can try the new Outlook for... Continue reading…

Sony is bringing another PlayStation exclusive to PC. Sackboy: A Big Adventure is set to release on PC on October 27th, according to a trailer that was posted early to Sony’s PlayStation Latin America YouTube account. Spotted by Nibel on Twitter, the trailer confirms the PC port of Sackboy: A Big Adventure will be full of improvements.4K and 120fps support is listed, alongside support for ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio monitors, Nvidia’s DLSS, and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR). These are the best improvements to Sackboy: A Big Adventure yet, following a resolution and visuals boost on the PS5 version.Sackboy is the latest in a line of PlayStation games on PCSackboy: A Big Adventure is the latest in a growing line of PlayStation exclusive... Continue reading…

Its last exclusive game of the season won’t be quite as exclusive. | Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images This Friday’s Yankees game against the Orioles will no longer be exclusively available on Amazon Prime Video, like 20 games before it: the game will also be airing on the Yankee Entertainment and Sports (YES) network, according to a tweet from the cable network. It’s a big change, and it’s something that Apple didn’t do last week, despite pleas from New York’s Attorney General.Many Yankees fans will likely want to tune in to the game, as outfielder Aaron Judge could beat a record for home runs that’s stood for over 60 years (he matched it on Wednesday after this article was originally published). But the ability to watch the Yankees on YES has been a bit contentious lately; last Friday, New York’s attorney general Letitia James called... Continue reading…

The Killswitch case keeps your Steam Deck safe and is currently available on the Dbrand site. | Photo by Alice Newcome-Beill / The Verge In high school, I’d keep my CD player from getting crushed in my bookbag by wrapping it in a wool sock. Considering that the CD player was probably the most expensive thing I owned at the time, I probably could’ve done better. This is how I felt with the first case I bought for my Steam Deck. It was definitely a step up from mismatched footwear, but I knew a device like this demands a little more respect without keeping it constantly locked away inside the case that it was packaged with.Dbrand, maker of accessories for your phone, AirPods, and even your PS5, shares this sentiment and made “Project Killswitch.” Killswitch is designed to be a better protective skin for the Steam Deck and started development shortly following Valve’s... Continue reading…

Image: Hertz Hertz and BP are joining forces to build a network of electric vehicle (EV) chargers throughout the US (via Engadget). The initiative should help support Hertz’s growing fleet of EV vehicles, as the rental car company recently announced plans to purchase a total of over 300,000 EVs from Tesla, Polestar, and GM.Details about the project are still pretty slim, and the two companies haven’t indicated how many charging stations they plan on building, how long it could take, or how much money either side is committing to the project. But we do know that Hertz is working with BP Pulse, the oil giant’s EV branch, to build out “a network of fast-charging hubs” with the goal of serving both Hertz customers and everyday EV drivers.According to a... Continue reading…

The company’s “been exploring new ways to make” the info you want easier to find. | Illustration: The Verge Google may be trying to reinvent the way we search in the future and expanding access to its impressive multisearch feature, but perhaps one of its most exciting announcements from today is a feature it’s calling “discussions and forums.” The idea is simple: whenever you do a Google search that it thinks could be an open-ended question, it’ll pop up a box full of results from “a variety of popular forums and online discussions across the web.” An example in its blog post shows results from Reddit, Quora, and Edmunds showing up when the user searches “best car for big family.”It’s more or less a meme at this point that you have to add “reddit” to a search if you want to find actually useful results instead of a page full of ads and... Continue reading…

Expect to learn more about the Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch at the next Made by Google event. | Image: Google Google will finally be sharing more about the Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch at its next Made by Google event Continue reading…

Sony is beginning to roll out PlayStation Stars. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony’s new PlayStation Stars loyalty program will launch in North and South America on October 5th, the company announced on Wednesday. The new program will let PlayStation fans earn rewards like points and digital collectibles by doing things like playing a game or earning certain trophies.Sony has also spelled out some of the finer details of the program, which broadly line up with information we’ve heard before. The service is free to join with an adult PlayStation Network account, and while players can earn some benefits if they are a PlayStation Plus member, you don’t need to subscribe to PlayStation Plus to join Stars. The “full PlayStation Stars experience” will be available via the PlayStation mobile app but not consoles to... Continue reading…

Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images Instagram says it’s permanently removed the official account for Pornhub for violating policies multiple times, Instagram’s parent company, Meta, told Motherboard.Meta claims that, over the past decade, Pornhub has repeatedly violated its terms of service regarding nudity, adult content, and sexual solicitation. However, it did not specify how exactly beyond telling the New York Post that the account recently violated rules against sexual solicitation by encouraging Instagram users to leave the social media platform and visit a porn site. Meta adds the adult entertainment company also violated guidelines concerning multiple violations of its terms.In response, Pornhub published an open letter on Twitter, calling the move unfair and... Continue reading…