The Verge

The Guardians of the Galaxy are back. | Image: Marvel Studios Disney just released the official trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and it looks like the movie is going to be a wild ride across the stars. One featured planet looks a lot like Earth but is filled with bipedal aliens with animal faces. The Guardians will also be going to some kind of giant fleshy spiral thing in space. I’m intrigued!James Gunn, who directed the first two movies, is at the reins again for Vol. 3 after being fired over offensive tweets and rehired less than a year later. But it seems like this will be Gunn’s last Marvel film given that he was recently appointed the new co-CEO of DC Studios. Many familiar faces from past Guardians films are returning as well, including Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, Zoe Saldaña as... Continue reading…

Image: Lucasfilm Ltd. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is coming to theaters on June 30th, 2023, according to the film’s first trailer released on Thursday. The movie will feature Harrison Ford returning for his fifth main film as the titular explorer, as well as Phoebe Waller-Bridge as his goddaughter. It’ll be scored by John Williams, which is pretty obvious from the trailer.It also seems like we’ll get to see Jones rocking his iconic hat and whip, though the latter feels decidedly outclassed. In what feels like a throwback to one of the franchise’s best scenes, we see Indy face off against a room full of goons with his whip, only to discover that they’re all armed with guns.The previous entry, 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games Epic Games’ RealityScan app, which lets you scan real-life objects and turn them into 3D models for video games or other projects, is now officially available on iOS as a free download after an initial limited beta launch in April. The app could be a handy tool to recreate objects from the world around you without having to build them on your own from scratch.To “scan” an object in the app, you take a bunch of photos of it from as many angles as you can. As you’re walking around the object and photographing it, RealityScan helpfully shows each picture you’ve taken in augmented reality, as well as a heat map of where the object needs more coverage. You’ll also be able to preview your scan right from the app to see how it looks before... Continue reading…

Monarch Tractor, an electric smart tractor company, says its first AI-powered farming vehicles, dubbed the MK-V, are rolling off the production line. It’s the Livermore, California-based startup’s first product, and it uses Nvidia’s Jetson edge AI platform to perform agricultural tasks with or without a driver behind the wheel.“The NVIDIA Jetson enables the MK-V to run low-latency, real-time AI applications while at the same time conserving energy for longer battery life and extended run time,” said Monarch Tractor CEO Praveen Penmetsa. Image: Monarch Tractor The Monarch MK-V being recharged. Each MK-V uses six of the Jetson Xavier NX system-on-modules that enable them to navigate fields using only cameras,... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge When a number that is obviously spam hits your phone, Android will almost always warn you and allow you to immediately block that number (and report it as spam). But what if a number is not immediately recognized as spam? Or what if you’re dealing with a harasser who won’t stop calling? You can still block the number quickly and easily.In this article, we’ll look at how to block numbers on both Pixel and Samsung phones. If you have a phone from another manufacturer, the method shouldn’t be too different from these.How to screen unfamiliar callsIf you’re like us, you will often get a call from an unfamiliar source that isn’t a known spam call. Is it a spam call that has slipped through? A charity looking for a donation? Or somebody... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Move over, Spotify Wrapped. My favorite music thing on the internet this week is Nintendo’s official English translation of its Splatoon 3 and Animal Crossing concert with holograms of the characters from the games.The concert, starring the musical dog K.K. Slider as a DJ and the idol superstars from Splatoon 3, originally took place at the Japan-only Nintendo Live 2022 event in October. I watched it after the fact, thanks to generous fans who had uploaded the livestreamed concert, but the characters’ subtitles were in Japanese.The music rocks. For the first half of the show, DJ K.K. plays a bunch of remixes of his songs from the Animal Crossing series that are easy to bob your head along to. Then, Deep Cut brings down the house with... Continue reading…

Optimus Primal in his beast mode. | Image: Paramount After years of Paramount’s live-action Transformers movies feeling like they were coasting on their good looks, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ first teaser trailer is here to remind everyone that Beast Wars has always been the superior chunk of the larger Transformers franchise.Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, from director Steven Caple Jr., revolves around ex-military gearhead Noah (Anthony Ramos) and museum researcher Elena (Dominique Fishback), two humans who accidentally become embroiled in yet another conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons.As tends to be the case with recent Transformers stories, neither Noah nor Elena know about the Cybertronians like Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) hiding in secret on Earth... Continue reading…

An artist’s impression of a tidal disruption event. | Image: Carl Knox – OzGrav, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Swinburne University of Technology It was an event not seen in more than a decade: a sudden flash of energy launched out from the center of a distant galaxy, bright enough to be visible from 8.5 billion light-years away. With a burst of light equivalent to more than 1,000 trillion suns, the flash was first detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a survey of the entire night sky conducted from the Palomar Observatory in California.“On Valentine’s Day this year, we found a source that was puzzling. It was just weird!” Igor Andreoni of the University of Maryland, lead author of one of two papers about the event, told The Verge. “And weird is good in science. It means it’s something you can learn from.”Within days, astronomers around the world turned their telescopes... Continue reading…

While the Pixel Watch had a decent debut, not everyone is convinced Google is serious about wearables. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Earlier this fall, Google finally launched the Pixel Watch. It wasn’t a perfect smartwatch, but it was a respectable first attempt in a category that Google notoriously neglected for years.Even so, it’s hard to shake off the idea that Google might prematurely abandon its revived wearable ambitions if it doesn’t do “well enough.” This is why the company has been quietly chugging away at Wear OS improvements in the background. The latest is a round of “holiday” Android updates that bring new Tiles, an improved Google Keep app, and Google Assistant integration for Adidas Running. GIF: Google The Google Keep update adds nicer visuals. GIF: Google Just in time for New Year’s resolutions.... Continue reading…

The Echo Show 8 is the larger and more capable version of the Show 5. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Cyber Monday is in the past, but some new and great tech deals have arrived for us to tell you all about. The flashiest one is a bundle from Amazon that pairs the latest Echo Show 8 with a free Kids Edition of the Echo Show 5 for $69.99, knocking $155 off the usual cost of buying both of these Alexa-powered smart displays.The Echo Show 8 is still our favorite smart display in Amazon’s lineup, partially because it can make Zoom calls with its built-in camera, unlike the second-gen Echo Show 5. Its display, performance, and sound quality have the advantage over the smaller option, and it offers snappy performance for the price. Read our review.The Kids Edition of the Echo Show 5 that you’ll get for free with this deal is virtually... Continue reading…

Tilda Swinton as Julie in The Eternal Daughter. | Image: A24 The first thing that you should know about The Eternal Daughter, the latest film from director Joanna Hogg, is that it’s not as spooky as the trailer makes it seem. It is indeed a ghost story, one with some unsettling moments and themes, but the scariest thing about the movie is its frighteningly realistic depiction of familial relationships and how they can be damaged by grief. The second thing you should know is that Tilda Swinton plays her own mother, and she’s incredible.The film appears to be set in the same semi-autobiographical universe as Hogg’s The Souvenir films and centers on a daughter and her elderly mother as they visit a quaint Welsh hotel. (Both characters are played by Swinton.) It’s the kind of old building that has... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Photo: Getty Images A top European Union official has said that Twitter has “huge work ahead” to get ready for the bloc’s strict new rules for online platforms. Thierry Breton, the commissioner responsible for implementing the upcoming Digital Services Act (DSA), posted a short video clip of a meeting with CEO Elon Musk, saying that he welcomed Musk’s “intent to get Twitter 2.0 ready for the DSA.”According to the Financial Times, Breton said Twitter needed to make a number of changes to meet the DSA’s requirements. It will need to “aggressively” tackle disinformation, submit to an audit, provide clear criteria about which users are at risk of being banned, and carefully consider how it lifts bans in the future. Breton posted a full “DSA Checklist,” via his... Continue reading…

Elon Musk speaking at the Neauralink 2022 event | screenshot from Neuralink At a ‘show and tell’ event on Wednesday, Elon Musk said that his brain-computer interface company, Neuralink, could implant one of its devices in someone’s head within the next six months — meaning it’s not happening this year. He also claimed that he would get the device implanted in his own head at some point in the future.During the presentation, Musk said that the company had submitted most of the paperwork needed for a human clinical trial to the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medical devices in the United States. Previously, Musk had said that he’d hoped for human trials to begin in 2020, and then 2022. Now, that’s slipped to at least 2023.Neuralink’s goal is to create a device that can be implanted in the brain,... Continue reading…

Mario and Luigi in the new Mario movie trailer. | Screenshot: The Super Mario Bros. Movie Plus production troubles for Apple’s flagship iPhones. Continue reading…

Musk seems to be cooling on a beef with Apple. | Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images After a conversation with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Elon Musk now says that Apple actually wasn’t threatening to pull Twitter from the App Store. On Monday, Musk claimed that Apple had “threatened to withhold Twitter” from the store, but according to a Wednesday afternoon tweet, Musk said it was a “misunderstanding” and that “Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.”The clarification follows a cryptic tweet earlier in the day where Musk said Cook had given him a tour of Apple’s campus. In a video, you can see a shadow of two people: Musk and someone else that resembles Cook.

If your YouTube iOS app is crashing, you’re not alone. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge YouTube says it’s working on a fix for crashes some people are experiencing while using the iOS app. It’s unclear exactly how widespread the problem is, but it does appear to be affecting quite a few users.In a tweet from its TeamYouTube account at 2:19PM ET, YouTube said that “many” are dealing with crashes, and a lot of people are reporting crashes directly to the account. DownDetector indicates there are more than 7,500 reports of problems as of this writing. I haven’t yet run into issues, but a colleague has been experiencing the crashes.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re hoping to buy an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max in time to make it a holiday gift, you probably already know that the odds are against you. The standard iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus are readily available across most Apple retail stores, but Apple’s flagship phones are much, much harder to come by.Not only are you contending with the normal holiday demand rush like any other year but also Apple just doesn’t have enough phones to go around. Covid-related lockdowns at the main iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max assembly facility have led to operations running at “significantly reduced capacity.” And worker protests at those Foxconn facilities have cut down supply even further.Maybe you don’t care about getting a new iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max... Continue reading…

Apple’s M2-powered iPad Pro is on sale for $100 off at Amazon right now. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge The problem with Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Sometimes a deal is so good, it’s gone before you can even hit the “checkout” button. Apple’s latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro was one of those devices that reached an all-time low during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but naturally, it seemed to sell out quickly. Luckily, the new Wi-Fi-enabled iPad Pro is on sale once again at Amazon in space gray with 128GB of storage for $999 ($100 off).In addition to sporting Apple’s new M2 processor, the 2022 iPad Pro supports Wi-Fi 6E, if you have the right kind of router. It also comes with a new “hover” feature exclusive to M2-powered Apple devices that detects when the second-generation Apple Pencil is a distance of 12mm or less above the screen. As a... Continue reading…

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max both have Apple’s Crash Detection feature. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple has just released iOS 16.1.2, and the company is calling out two key updates in its patch notes: “improved compatibility with wireless carriers” and “Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models.”The Crash Detection enhancements could be particularly notable, as there have been some issues with inadvertent activations since the feature launched. Crash Detection is designed to activate Emergency SOS and alert emergency services if it thinks you’ve been in a car crash, but the feature has also triggered for people safely riding rollercoasters, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Based on the vague iOS 16.1.2 patch notes, it’s unclear if the update addresses these sorts of mistaken alerts, but... Continue reading…