The Verge

A concept version of the EQG was unveiled in 2021. | Images: Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz’s electric G-Wagen will arrive in mid-2024, the company’s chairman Ola Källenius said during a roundtable with reporters this week, according to Autoblog.Källenius also said he drove a prototype version of the electric SUV at the company’s testing facility in Graz, Austria, and came away convinced that the future of off-road adventure is electric.When Mercedes first unveiled a concept version of the electric SUV in September 2021, the company wouldn’t confirm any production plans. In fact, Källenius himself said in 2019 that he wasn’t sure whether the G-Wagen would have much of a future at all. Now it seems like an electric version of the boxy off-roader is on its way.(This isn’t entirely new information; Källenius... Continue reading…

The Roborock S7 Plus has reached a new record low. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge If you plan to catch up on cleaning this weekend, you can do so a lot faster with today’s excellent robot vacuum deal. Regularly $949.98, Amazon is selling Roborock’s S7 Plus robot vacuum for just $679.48 — an all-time low — when you apply the on-page coupon and use promo code S7PLUS4SD at checkout.Roborock’s S7 Plus is our favorite mop and robot vacuum hybrid, one that’s even capable of keeping your carpets dry by lifting up its mop to vacuum them. Other nice features include the ability to clean specific rooms and support for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, so you can make requests with your voice. Plus, the robot vacuum comes with an auto-emptying cleaning and charging station. It admittedly doesn’t have great battery life... Continue reading…

Thermae Romae Novae. | Image: Netflix Recent releases like Thermae Romae Novae, Drifting Home, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Uncle From Another World show a lot of promise for the streamer Continue reading…

Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images The French government has announced it will introduce a minimum charge for book deliveries of €3 (about $2.92) in order to help small booksellers compete with retailing giant Amazon, reports Reuters. The minimum fee will only apply to orders under €35 (about $34.12).It’s the latest measure by the French government to balance competition in the book sector and follows a decades-long tradition of protectionist laws. Since 1981, France has mandated fixed prices for books, with a maximum discount of 5 percent, and in 2010 expanded this law to cover ebooks. In 2014, the French government banned the free deliveries of books, to which Amazon responded by charging customers a single cent (€0.01) for delivery.In an effort to close this... Continue reading…

The Action button adds another layer of personalization | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The Apple Watch Ultra introduced one of the most significant design tweaks to the Apple Watch since its inception — the Action button. While every other Apple Watch has two physical controls, the Action button is a third that’s meant to help outdoor athletes pause workouts, turn on the flashlight, call for help with a siren, and more. The main logic is that, unlike touchscreens, physical buttons are immune to sweaty fingers and gloves.While it’s likely the Action button will evolve over time, at launch, it’s essentially a set of preselected shortcuts or “actions.” Your options are Workout, Stopwatch, Waypoint, Backtrack, Dive, Flashlight, and Shortcuts. Some of these actions have secondary functions dubbed “gestures.” Within each... Continue reading…

A rendering of an aerial view of CarbonCapture’s direct air capture modules. | Image: CarbonCapture A couple of climate tech startups plan to suck a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide out of the air and trap it underground in Wyoming. The goal of the new endeavor, called Project Bison, is to build a new facility capable of drawing down 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. The CO2 can then be stored deep within the Earth, keeping it out of the atmosphere, where it would have continued to heat up the planet.A Los Angeles-based company called CarbonCapture is building the facility, called a direct air capture (DAC) plant, that is expected to start operations as early as next year. It’ll start small and work up to 5 million metric tons a year. If all goes smoothly by 2030, the operation will be orders of magnitude larger... Continue reading…

Snoop Dogg performs at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2022. | Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images Apple Music will sponsor next February’s Super Bowl halftime show, replacing long-time sponsor Pepsi. In a press release, the NFL says over 120 million people watched the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in February this year, which featured performances from Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar. The New York Times reports that the NFL had been shopping the sponsorship deal around for around $50 million, though exact terms of the finalized deal were not made public.The deal comes as Apple and other streaming service operators are increasingly looking to sports as a source of growth. Apple has already inked deals to broadcast Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer games on Apple TV Plus, while rival Amazon... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Logo. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon plans to limit automatic ebook returns to cases where people have read no more than 10 percent of the book, according to the Authors Guild. The change, which follows complaints that Kindle buyers were returning titles they’d fully read to get a refund, is expected to take place by the end of the year.The Authors Guild says it reached the deal after negotiating with Amazon executives. Individual authors raised concerns about an uptick in returns earlier this year, noting that Amazon would bill them for any royalties they earned from the books. Some pinned the practice’s rise on the book community of video platform TikTok, and in a press release, the guild blamed “BookTok influencers” for encouraging people to get “free” books by... Continue reading…

When you’re in the Xbox Cloud Gaming app, the yellow Logitech button pulls up the Xbox shade as if you were playing on a console. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Yesterday, Logitech announced its $349.99 G Cloud Gaming Handheld, which is coming out in the US on October 17th (until then, it’s $50 off to preorder). Today, I got to briefly test it out. It was just a 10-minute demo, but it was long enough for me to snap a few photos, launch some apps, and see how it felt in my hands. We’ll have a full review in the coming weeks.As I arrived at the testing station, Deathloop (freshly available on Xbox Game Pass) was streaming via Wi-Fi to the handheld’s Xbox Cloud Gaming app. Sadly, it was the action-less intro sequence, but I still got to sprint and jump around. Though it wasn’t a fun killer, like all of my experiences with cloud game streaming, there was just a whiff of input lag that, at least for... Continue reading…

You can currently buy the AirPods Max for around $449 instead of $549. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge With more people working from home than they used to, owning a good pair of noise-canceling headphones has become more appealing than ever. However, they can be expensive and difficult to shop for due to the range of available models, many of which cater to different lifestyles and priorities. Some are better suited for long-haul flights, for instance, while others are ideal for multitasking and marathon listening sessions.That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best deals on noise-canceling headphones. Here, you’ll find sales on all kinds of on-ear and over-ear headphones, all of which are designed to eliminate outside noise but come with their own strengths and weaknesses. And if you want to do even more research before making a... Continue reading…

The Untitled Vince Gilligan Project is now in officially in the works. | Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TNT Apple has picked up the next show from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan. The two-season Apple TV Plus show, which Apple currently calls the “Untitled Vince Gilligan Project,” will star Rhea Seehorn, who was nominated for an Emmy for playing attorney Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul.Apple isn’t revealing much about the series just yet, but Gilligan did share a tiny hint of what we can expect. “After fifteen years, I figured it was time to take a break from writing antiheroes… and who’s more heroic than the brilliant Rhea Seehorn?” Gilligan said in a statement. “It’s long past time she had her own show, and I feel lucky to get to work on it with her.” Gilligan will be serving as showrunner and executive producer.In... Continue reading…

The DynamicSpot app gives Android users their own private island. I’ve always been on team Android, but every so often, Apple rolls out a feature that makes me just a little jealous. Thankfully, with the introduction of the divisive Dynamic Island, I didn’t have to wait very long before somebody shoehorned that sweet pill-shaped void into the Android OS. The DynamicSpot app, developed by user Jawomo, is currently available as an early access download from the Google Play Store.You can currently check out the app for free, and it allows you to adjust the position and size of the island based on where the notch lives on your particular Android device. However, adding some of the more advanced functions, like showing the island on your lock screen or tapping icons to open apps, requires an additional... Continue reading…

A baleen whale swimming in Alaska. Many species of baleen whales, like the one pictured above, spend time in the Arctic region. | Image: Planet One Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Scientists have been “eavesdropping” on whales in the Arctic using fiber-optic cables. In July, a group of scientists published a study that took a practical method usually used to monitor the cables themselves and used it to monitor the activity of baleen whales in the Arctic. The researchers say similar studies could transform how scientists collect data on marine life.Under the oceans, fiber-optic cables carry internet traffic around the world. They have also become a usual tool for scientists in the field who would like to collect and access data in real time. Notably, they can be used to detect earthquakes, including aftershocks that go undetected by traditional seismic stations. In this case, those cables were used to detect... Continue reading…

It’s not just you. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is recovering from some issues that have affected users trying to open its app on their iPhone or Android devices. Users on Reddit reported that the app was continually crashing, making it difficult for them to see any posts, and Downdetector showed that the outage lasted for under an hour, between 12:30PM and 1:30PM ET (9:30–10:30AM PT).Meta spokesperson Devi Narasimhan told The Verge: “Earlier today, a technical issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Instagram. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible, and apologize for any inconvenience.” On Twitter, the brand gave the all-clear at 2:25PM ET.

It’s not just the music that’s ridiculous in Trombone Champ. | Image: Holy Wow Studios If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, it’s recently been filled with hilarious videos of the trombone rhythm game Trombone Champ. Much of the silliness comes from players “sliding” the in-game cursor to try and hit the next note, and the resulting songs often turn out to be absolutely ridiculous.How can you not laugh at this? It’s absurd! And I love the bright-eyed Nintendo Mii-like avatars — they give the game a fun playfulness.

Electric vehicle charging stations in New York City are often inside paid parking lots. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge One of the perks of electric vehicle ownership is charging your car overnight while parked in your driveway at home. Electricity demand is usually low, so rates are fairly cheap, making it both convenient and affordable for many people. But that’s about to change as more people buy EVs and the demand for overnight charging begins to rise, according to a new study published today.The study, which was conducted by a team at Stanford University and published in Nature Energy, found that increasing EV ownership in the western US could lead to peak net electricity demand increases by up to 25 percent by 2035, the year California has said it would ban the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks.increasing EV ownership in the western US could... Continue reading…

The Nothing Ear Stick. | Image: Nothing Nothing has released its first teaser for the Ear Stick, its second pair of true wireless earbuds following last year’s Ear 1. In a series of images, the consumer tech firm has shown off the new charging case for the earbuds, which appears to use a cylindrical design almost like a tube of lipstick. The new earbuds are set to launch later this year, Nothing’s press release says.In an email, Nothing’s US PR manager Lewis Hopkins confirmed that the Ear Stick is more than just a new charging case for the company’s existing earbuds. “The Ear Stick is an entirely new product. New charging case and new bud,” Hopkins tells The Verge.

Air conditioner units sit in windows of an apartment building on July 20th, 2022, in Washington, DC. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images The Senate finally voted to ratify the landmark Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which commits the US to quickly phase down the use of a certain class of refrigerants that also happens to be a super greenhouse gas.Specifically, the Kigali Amendment pushes developed countries to slash the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) — found in air conditioning, refrigerators, and fire extinguishers — by 85 percent by 2036 The plan was drafted back in 2016 by delegates from countries seeking to update the Montreal Protocol, which sought to protect and repair the ozone layer back in the 1980s. The Montreal Protocol focused on reducing the use of ozone-depleting substances called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge If you’re interested in recording audio on your MacBook, there are all kinds of ways to do it. There are a number of third-party apps that can record your voice, but macOS also offers several tools that you can use with no installation required.Before you start recording, make sure whatever mic you’re using is on, connected, and working. The MacBook’s built-in microphones can record as well, but an external microphone may offer better quality.How to record audio on a MacBook using QuickTime Player Literally all you do is click that button.

This is a digital recreation of NBA star Luka Doncic. | Image: 77x NBA star Luka Dončić is launching a digital alter ego created using Epic Games’ remarkable MetaHuman technology.This is some seriously lifelike stuff — check out the pictures below. If I didn’t already know they were showing digital versions of Dončić, I honestly might not have been able to tell. Image: 77x Image: 77x Image: 77x Image: 77x The virtual Dončić was built using Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 MetaHuman tech and “augmented with neural network technologies trained with real-world facial animations from Luka’s performance capture,” according to a press release. The alter ego, dubbed Luk.AI, will be taking over Dončić’s TikTok on Thursday, where he’ll... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The hackers who hit the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with ransomware over Labor Day weekend have now issued a ransom payment demand, according to the district superintendent.On Tuesday, superintendent Alberto Carvalho told the Los Angeles Times that a demand had been made but that the district had not responded. Carvalho declined to reveal the amount of money demanded.The extortion attempt represents an inevitable escalation in the ransomware attack — which targeted the nation’s second-largest school district just as pupils began to return after the summer break — and raises questions over what sensitive information the hackers may have been able to obtain.The extortion attempt represents an inevitable escalationThough... Continue reading…

The extension rod feature returns from the previous model. | Image: DJI DJI has just announced the latest model in its lineup of smartphone gimbals, the Osmo Mobile 6. Like its predecessors, it’s designed to stabilize videos and photos taken with phones, but it features a new wheel control to make zooming and focusing easier and a status panel to show the gimbal’s battery life at a glance.But perhaps the most interesting new feature is one that DJI is calling “Quick Launch.” It’s only available when using the gimbal with iPhones, but the idea is that the accessory can automatically generate a push notification to quickly launch the DJI camera app when it detects that a phone has been mounted. When combined with the magnetic mount introduced with the Osmo Mobile 4, it should help you get shooting quicker... Continue reading…

Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft may have redesigned its photos app last year to better match the aesthetics of Windows 11, but now it’s testing a new version with a slightly new look and a few other improvements.Perhaps the most noticeable change is a new gallery view, which offers a different way to browse through your photos. In a blog post, Microsoft’s Dave Grochocki says that the updated view is intended to simplify browsing, finding, managing, and consuming the photos you have in your collection. The new app will also offer improvements to the “Memories” feature, though Grochocki’s blog post doesn’t detail exactly what’s different. Image: Microsoft The new gallery view in Microsoft’s redesigned Photos app for Windows 11. You can... Continue reading…

At the base of the Space Launch System, repair crews work to replace a seal on September 8th, 2022. | Photo by NASA / Chad Siwik Today, NASA got its next-generation Moon rocket all tanked up with nowhere to go. Liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel were loaded into the Space Launch System (SLS) today in an hours-long test of its troublesome fueling system.It was what NASA called a “kinder, gentler” fueling procedure that was being tested after a hydrogen leak stymied the second launch attempt of the rocket and the Artemis I mission on September 3rd. The new procedures were “designed to transition temperature and pressures slowly during tanking to reduce the likelihood of leaks that could be caused by rapid changes in temperature or pressure,” NASA said in a blog post.“I am extremely encouraged by the test today,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, launch... Continue reading…

A Chromebook for the DIY-minded. | Image: Google Framework and Google have announced the new Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition. As the name implies, this is an upgradable, customizable Chromebook from the same company that put out the Framework laptop last year.User-upgradable laptops are rare enough already, but user-upgradable Chromebooks are nigh unheard of. While the size of the audience for such a device may remain to be seen, it’s certainly a step in the right direction for repairability in the laptop space as a whole. Thin and customizable. Multiple parts of the Framework are user-customizable, though it’s not clear whether every part that’s adjustable on the Windows Framework can be adjusted on the Chromebook as well. Each part has a QR code on it which,... Continue reading…

The Verge Google’s “Results about you” tool, meant to simplify the process of removing search results that contain personally identifying information, is starting to roll out to some users, according to a report from 9to5Google. Google announced the feature earlier this year during its I/O conference, saying that it’d be coming to the Google app.Google already had a way to remove search results that contained your home address, email address, or phone number, along with a host of other types of potentially dangerous or damaging information. That system wasn’t necessarily the easiest to access or use, though. If you found a search result that linked to your sensitive information, you’d have to go to a support page and fill out a form containing... Continue reading…

The company making the VM2 plans to release white- or black-colored models. | Image: Dreamware Enterprises You can find all sorts of strange tech on Indiegogo, but this fundraiser for an improved version of the virtual memory unit (VMU) for the Sega Dreamcast is one of the zanier gadgets I’ve heard about this year (via Notebookcheck). The company, Dreamware Enterprises, is in the process of developing the VM2, which it calls a “next-gen VMU for the Dreamcast.” It’s a one-to-one recreation of a niche accessory made for a failed console that it plans to release in black or white in the summer of 2023.Some of the improvements seem great, like a higher-resolution LCD screen with backlighting, microSD card storage for offloading and injecting saves, a rechargeable battery with USB-C charging, and mini-game support. It’ll ship with PC... Continue reading…

I can hear the sound in my head just by looking at the console. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge I really like my Xbox Series X. It’s a nice-looking, quiet console that puts hundreds of games at my fingertips thanks to Xbox Game Pass. But every time I turn my Xbox on, I scramble to turn down the volume so that the console’s startup sound doesn’t alert everyone in a 50-mile radius that I want to play some Fortnite.Thankfully, Microsoft is testing an Xbox software update that will let you mute the console’s startup sound, so I hopefully won’t have to worry about the sound sometime soon. The new preview update will be rolled out to Alpha ring members of the Xbox Insider program beginning on Wednesday. If you have the preview, you can mute the startup sounds by going to Settings > General > Volume & audio output > Additional options.W... Continue reading…

Here’s how to best use one of the iPhone 14’s new camera features. | Samar Haddad / The Verge One of the new camera features offered by the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro is a somewhat self-explained Action mode. It’s a feature you can enable in video mode to supercharge stabilization for very intense motion, like running behind someone and recording their workout or chasing your kid around a playground, which is its own kind of workout. It’s easy to use, but there are a couple of things to know so you can get the most out of it.I followed these steps on an iPhone 14 Pro running iOS 16.0, but they’re the same on the standard iPhone 14.How to start using Action modeGetting started with Action mode is easy:

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge A lot of people work remotely these days, which makes work apps like Slack crucial for good communication. Slack status updates provide a particularly helpful and easy way to let colleagues know you’re busy — for example, when you’re in a meeting and can’t see each other in person.You can manually update your status with a few clicks of a button, but that takes time and is easy to forget. Alternatively, you can sync your Slack status to your online calendar, and Slack will automatically update your status for you. In this article, we’ll show you how to connect it to Google Calendar, though you can sync it to other calendars like Microsoft Outlook as well.How to sync your Slack status to Google calendar from your desktop or laptop

New Surface devices are on the way. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft is holding a Surface event next month. The software giant is officially labeling the event “Microsoft Fall 2022 Event,” where it says it plans to “talk about devices.” The Microsoft event will kick off at 10AM ET on October 12th, just before Microsoft’s Ignite conference begins.Microsoft’s invite to the event includes a wallpaper-like image with watercolors and “save the date” written by what is likely a Surface Pen. The invite comes just hours after rumors of Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 devices emerged. Microsoft is reportedly planning to offer a Surface Pro 9 with the option of Arm or Intel processors, potentially meaning the end of the Surface Pro X line. Image: Microsoft Microsoft’s devices... Continue reading…

The Verge Hackers have really been targeting the gaming industry this week — and seem to have focused on companies linked to Take-Two Interactive.On Tuesday, game publisher 2K Games notified the public that an “unauthorized third party” had compromised its help desk platform and used it to send malicious links to customers. The disclosure came just one day after Rockstar confirmed that development footage from GTA VI was stolen and leaked by a hacker who had broken into its network and downloaded confidential data.There’s no sign (yet) that the 2K hack is linked to the earlier breach of Rockstar, but both Rockstar and 2K are owned by Take-Two Interactive, making it an especially damaging week for the parent company’s security record.