The Verge

Image: Google Chrome tab jockeys and bookmark hoarders, rejoice: you can now quickly swift through your whole browser mess with a new simple “@” shortcut in the address bar. Available on the latest Chrome version 108 for desktops, the feature will help simplify tasks like getting to that article tab you know you left open somewhere without needing to conduct another web search.If you’re like me, you might have a whole lot of troubleshooting articles saved as bookmarks, but when someone needs help with some specific problem, you just Google it again instead of looking for what you’ve saved. Now, you can type “@bookmarks” or just “@,” then hit the space bar and click “Search Bookmarks,” and start typing some key terms. Screenshot: The... Continue reading…

A new Alexa Shopping List widget could make those trips to the grocery store run more smoothly. | Screenshot by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Adding an item to your shopping list with just your voice is a modern convenience you quickly get used to. But the pain of wrangling the app you added it to on your smartphone while wheeling a shopping cart through a crowded store can have you yearning for simpler days — and paper.A new homescreen widget for Amazon’s Alexa’s shopping list feature makes it easier to keep an eye on your items while making a beeline for the produce aisle. The widget is available on iPhone and Android and shows your list right on your homescreen. Now the convenience of adding items to your shopping list using Alexa smart speakers doesn’t have to end when you leave the house.To install the widget, you need to have the latest Alexa app on your phone, then... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Just days ago, Elon Musk took aim at Apple’s App Store policies while dragging it into the political and culture war crosshairs, highlighting how important the storefront is to so many developers and services. Today, Apple announced it’s changing long-standing App Store policies that put tight restrictions on what developers are allowed to charge their customers, following up on a pledge made last year while settling a class-action lawsuit.At the time, developers were restricted to fewer than 100 possible price points in the App Store, which Bloomberg reports previously started at a minimum of 49 cents for subscriptions and 99 cents for apps, with a max price of $999.99. Image: Apple App Store price flexibility... Continue reading…

Photo by Eric Thayer / Getty Images Many barriers are holding up the automotive industry’s wide-scale transition to electric vehicles. Getting battery costs down, getting range up, and convincing car buyers to break up with gasoline for good are just some of the more commonly known ones. But there’s also one very powerful group that hasn’t been much help so far: the car dealers.Increasingly, car companies are giving their dealership partners an ultimatum: get on board or get out. And at least some of Ford’s dealers seem to be taking the message.At the Automotive News Congress this week, an event put on by the eponymous industry publication, Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley said that 1,920 of America’s roughly 3,000 Ford retailers have agreed to sign up for the company’s EV... Continue reading…

“Hey zombie!” | Image: Deep Silver We already knew that Dead Island 2 will let you taunt zombies with your voice with Amazon’s new Alexa Game Control technology, and during Tuesday’s Dead Island 2 showcase on Tuesday, developer Deep Silver gave us a better idea of how the feature might work in practice.In a prerecorded and staged skit (the conceit is that the people in the video are actually on the run from zombies and just so happen to find a working copy of Dead Island 2), the video showed how certain voice commands will activate certain actions in the game. “Hey zombie” gets the attention of a nearby zombie in-game. “Get me my ax” has the player draw an ax that is shooting fire for some reason. “Time to go loco” activates some kind of super mode.Those aren’t the only... Continue reading…

You’re still going to want to start saving your pennies. | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple’s long-rumored car could cost less than $100,000 when it’s finally available to buy, according to Bloomberg. But the car may have less ambitious self-driving capabilities than first planned and arrive a year later than originally expected.While the car had been reported to be a fully autonomous car like prototypes from EV startup Canoo, the current design for the car will have more conventional car features like a steering wheel and pedals, Bloomberg reports. This new version won’t be fully autonomous; instead, users will apparently only be able to activate the self-driving features on highways, closer to driver-assist options like GM’s Super Cruise and Ford’s BlueCruise. (Perhaps Apple is wary of running into the issues Tesla has... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Also, we got some new trailers for Gen V, The Witcher: Blood Origin, and the upcoming The Last of Us series. Continue reading…

Recently installed solar panels at the Defence School of Transport on September 29th, 2021, in Leconfield, England. | Photo by Christopher Furlong / Getty Images Right now, there’s “unprecedented momentum behind renewables,” the International Energy Agency says. Renewable power growth has been “turbocharged” by countries scrambling to tackle a global energy crisis spurred on by war in Ukraine, according to new analysis from the agency. Over just the next five years, as much renewable power is expected to come online globally as was added over the past two decades.Renewables will make up a whopping 90 percent of electricity capacity expansion in that five-year span, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). By 2025, renewable energy is expected to topple coal to become the world’s biggest electricity source.Solar and wind power make up the vast majority of that... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge The Federal Trade Commission is investigating multiple crypto companies over allegations of deceptive conduct, as first reported by Bloomberg on Monday.“While we can’t comment on current events in the crypto markets or the details of any ongoing investigations, we are investigating several firms for possible misconduct concerning digital assets,” an FTC spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge Tuesday. “We cannot comment on the nature of the investigations.”On top of several civil suits, the FTC is just the latest US agency to probe the crypto industry following the sudden implosion of popular trading exchange FTX last month. The Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Future Trading Commission, and... Continue reading…

The second-gen Nest Hub makes a handy bedside display. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge We’re getting well beyond Black Friday, but the deals are still coming up strong. First off, the latest Google Nest Hub has fallen to a new all-time low price of just $39 at Walmart. And in addition to being a $70 discount, this deal comes with a WiZ smart bulb for free.The second-gen Nest Hub is the most recent seven-inch smart display from Google. This little portal to the Google Assistant gives you the weather, news updates, and access to music streaming, and it makes a great digital picture frame if Google Photos is your preferred cloud photo platform. It’s also a handy smart home controller since you can use your voice to set timers, pull up videos on a Chromecast-connected TV, or turn smart lights on or off. If you snag this deal... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Good news for those who hate switching apps on their TVs: HBO is making a return to Amazon’s Prime Video Channels in the US. Customers who subscribe to Prime Video can add HBO Max for $14.99 per month and get access to all the Warner Bros. Discovery content like House of the Dragon in the same place they watch The Boys.Both Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery were reportedly in talks this summer to get their relationship rolling again. In 2020, WarnerMedia, the former AT&T-owned iteration of HBO’s parent company, launched the standalone HBO Max service that eventually replaced the previous HBO Go and Now streaming-only services. When Max went live, HBO began its attempt to transition to its new sovereign platform by removing its service... Continue reading…

Image: Crunchyroll Suzume, the next feature from the director behind Weathering With You and Your Name, is releasing internationally next April. Crunchyroll announced the news today, revealing that Makoto Shinkai’s next feature will be in theaters outside of Asia starting on April 12th (it debuted in Japan last month).Here’s the full schedule:

Image: CD Projekt Red In a video outlining Gwent’s 2023 roadmap, the developers at CD Projekt Red shared an important if sad update: no more new cards will be released post 2023 and active support for the game will be ending.The game’s final batch of 72 cards will be released in three groups in April, July, and September 2023. In the video, the developers said they’ll take time after the final batch of cards is released to monitor cards and ensure the meta is balanced before handing over balance decisions to the players themselves.“We want to give you, the Gwent community, the right tools and opportunities to drive the balance changes of the game going forward,” said one of the developers in the roadmap video. They also said that they’re working on an... Continue reading…

Perfect for the holidays. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple on Tuesday announced Apple Music Sing, a karaoke experience that will be built right into the Apple Music app. With Apple Music Sing, you’ll be able to follow along with Apple Music’s real-time lyrics and adjust the volume of the vocals so that you can better hear your singing voice. (I’ll personally be keeping the vocals up as loud as possible to hide my imperfections.)There are a few features designed to make it easier to sing with others, too. Background vocals can appear independently of main vocals, according to Apple, and there will be a duet view as well if you want to sing along with a friend. Apple will have more than 50 “dedicated companion playlists” featuring karaoke-ready songs that you can pick from. ... Continue reading…

You can use your spirit ash summons to help you in battle against other players. | Image: Bandai Namco As if there weren’t enough stuff to do already in Elden Ring, Bandai Namco announced that the open-world fantasy game is getting a multiplayer update that adds a new colosseum environment made expressly for player versus player (PvP) bloodbaths. This update will arrive on December 7th for every platform the game is on (PC, PlayStation, Xbox).While you can already engage in PvP battles across many memorable Lands Between locales, there’s nothing like a flat, circular arena to do your bidding. And in the colosseum, you’ll be able to use your spirit ash summons in battle, as you can against the game’s many bosses.The trailer above doesn’t share many details about this new colosseum, like where it is or how you’ll get there and assemble... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Polestar is offering an over-the-air (OTA) software update that boosts the electric Polestar 2’s performance by 68 horsepower. And rather than lock it behind an annual paywall as other automakers have done, the Chinese-Swedish company says it will only charge a one-time fee of $1,195.The upgrade adds 68 horsepower and 15 pound-feet of torque to the existing 408hp and 487 lb-ft of torque currently offered by the Polestar 2’s dual-motor powertrain, for a total output of 476hp and 502 lb-ft. Because the upgrade is software-based, the performance boost can be downloaded directly to the vehicle without needing to take it to a service center. The performance upgrade is only available to owners of the long-range dual-motor version of the... Continue reading…

Matt Huynh / The Verge How to Replace the Sky, a comic by Matt Hyunh.At the end of 2020, the painting software I’d used my entire professional life updated itself with a new button.Illustration of a Photoshop window, with the Sky Replacement tool selected in a menu.I made my living as a commercial illustrator, making pictures for advertising agencies, book publishers, and magazines.Illustration of a small propped-up tablet and keyboard.I usually painted with ink and brushes, but I also used drawing tablets and apps for jobs that needed flexibility for changes and a quick turnaround.Matt appears in front of the tablet.I was up-to-date with the latest tools, but I couldn’t imagine why I would need to replace the sky.The walls of an office appear around... Continue reading…

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures You’ll have to wait a bit to see Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s next project. The sci-fi film, called Mickey 17, will hit theaters on March 29th, 2024. The news was revealed via the briefest of teaser trailers, which shows star Robert Pattinson hanging around shirtless in some kind of tube.The film is based on the novel Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, which is about a “disposable employee” out on a quest to colonize an icy new world for human habitation (no word yet on where all the extra Mickeys came from). In addition to Pattinson, the film stars Steven Yeun (Nope, Okja), Naomi Ackie (The Rise of Skywalker), Toni Collette (Knives Out), and Mark Ruffalo (everything with the incredible Hulk in it). Outside of the cast, Joon-ho is also... Continue reading…

Image: Kodiak Robotics Kodiak Robotics, the autonomous truck startup, will receive $49.9 million to help the US Army develop self-driving vehicles for reconnaissance, surveillance, and other “high-risk” missions.The Mountain View, California-based company, which primarily builds self-driving systems for freight trucks, will develop the vehicles for the US Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle program. The collaboration is set to last 24 months under the agreement with the US Department of Defense, Kodiak says.The details about the types of vehicles that Kodiak says it will develop for the army are still vagueThe details about the types of vehicles that Kodiak says it will develop for the army are still vague. According to the company, “Kodiak will develop... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is starting to roll out its own custom emotes. The Twitch-like emotes, dubbed YouTube Emotes, can be used across YouTube in comment sections and during live chats, though the platform previously allowed individual streamers to offer their own reactions and emotes. YouTube’s own initial emotes are focused on gaming, but there will be more over time.You’ll now see a list of YouTube emotes when you open YouTube’s emoji picker, and they’ll appear below a channel’s own existing custom emotes. Much like Twitch’s default system-wide emotes, YouTube’s ones also have specific names for autocomplete so you quickly type “:cat-orange-whistling:” for example, and it will automatically fill a comment with an orange cat whistling. ... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google’s search results on desktop will load in a continuous scroll instead of dividing into pages, the company has announced. The move follows a similar change made on mobile in October last year, but isn’t quite an “infinite” scroll. Instead, Google will load six pages of results into a single scroll before offering users a “See more” button to show more results.Google says the change is rolling out first for English searches in the US, but judging by the rollout of the feature on mobile it seems safe to expect to see additional markets and languages added over time.

The company could be facing another labor board complaint. | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Apple illegally interrogated and made coercive statements to employees during a union drive at one of its retail stores in Atlanta, Georgia, according to a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board reported on by Bloomberg. The company was being investigated as the result of charges filed by the Communications Workers of America, which has previously claimed that the company’s actions “made a free and fair election impossible” at the location.The NLRB’s regional director “found merit” to the allegations as well as ones that Apple held captive-audience meetings, according to Kayla Blado, a spokesperson for the regulator. Apple will either have to settle the case or face the NLRB filing a complaint against it. The regulator can’t... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge After shifting iPhone production away from China, it now looks as if Apple’s got its eye on iPad production. According to CNBC, Apple is discussing producing some of its iPads in India to help diversify its supply chain.The news comes almost two years after reports emerged that Apple is considering manufacturing iPads in Vietnam, too. Apple is doing this as the company looks to move up to 30 percent of its manufacturing outside of China.Apple’s been trying to diversify its manufacturing for years amid trade wars between China and the US and rising labor costs in China. More recently, strict covid restrictions sparked countrywide protests that last month forced Apple to cut down the production of iPhone 14s there, leading to shipping... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As labor movements in the video game industry build up momentum, over 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Online Studios, former Bethesda parent company and current subsidiary of Microsoft, are in the process of organizing a union. The workers are organizing in collaboration with CODE-CWA, which has assisted in the formation of Activision Blizzard’s two unions.In a statement on Twitter, ZeniMax Workers United posted: “Today we, a majority of QA workers at ZeniMax, are proud to announce the launch of our union with [CODE-CWA]. We are the first group of workers at Microsoft to formally unionize. We are empowered to advocate for ourselves & build a future where we can thrive alongside the company.”The move comes just days after QA... Continue reading…

Image: Shein Online shopping behemoth Shein will spend $15 million on upgrades to its suppliers’ factories, the company announced today. The news follows a UK documentary report that found workers were subject to long hours and that wages were withheld, according to The Guardian.Shein says that, through an independent audit, it discovered that workers at two factories in China were working 12.5- and 13.5-hour-long days — more than is legally permitted by local law. While it’s “significantly less than claimed in the documentary,” the e-commerce giant is giving factories until the end of the year to correct the problem, Shein says.The company denied reports that wages were withheld from workers.The $15 million will be spent over the next three to... Continue reading…

Image: Krafton The world is full of mediocre video games, but occasionally there’s a game that makes me actually mad. It’s usually something I have high hopes for — a particularly creative idea or a genre I wish more developers were experimenting with. It’s often something whose priorities seem painfully and dramatically misplaced. The Callisto Protocol — a survival horror game released last week — is both.The Callisto Protocol’s design was spearheaded by Glen Schofield, the co-creator of Dead Space, one of my favorite series of all time. It shares a lot of DNA with Dead Space: both are fairly linear third-person survival horror shooters about fighting zombies in space. And as reviews have emphasized over and over, The Callisto Protocol is — by... Continue reading…

Ruth Wilson in His Dark Materials. | Image: HBO Ahead of the premiere on HBO, the cast behind the fantasy series explains why the last season is the darkest and most complex to date. Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge One of the more popular end-of-year items this year (and many of the past few years) is Spotify Wrapped, where the music service puts together a roundup of everything you listened to that year in various statistical formats, wrapped up (well, that’s what it’s called, right?) in bright, fun graphics. You can see what music categories you followed, get a playlist of your top 100 songs, see where you stand compared to others, and find out what your listening personality is. (Turns out, I’m The Replayer — “you stick with the songs you like.” I’m going to have to experiment more in 2023.)It’s easy to find Spotify Wrapped, although you have to do it using a mobile app.The simplest way is to just open your Spotify mobile app — you should... Continue reading…

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Microsoft has offered Sony a 10-year contract to make future Call of Duty games available on PlayStation if its proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition goes ahead. Microsoft president Brad Smith confirmed the deal in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today, noting that “Sony has emerged as the loudest objector” to Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion acquisition and that “it’s as excited about this deal as Blockbuster was about the rise of Netflix.”“We’ve offered Sony a 10-year contract to make each new ‘Call of Duty’ release available on PlayStation the same day it comes to Xbox,” says Smith. “We’re open to providing the same commitment to other platforms and making it legally enforceable by regulators in the US, UK, and European... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard Ramattra, the sleek and terrifying new tank coming with Overwatch 2’s second season, will be much easier to earn than the previous hero Kiriko. Aaron Keller, Overwatch 2’s game designer, stated in a brief message on Twitter that developer Blizzard is lowering the level at which Ramattra unlocks from 55 to 45.