The Verge

Spider-Gwen in Fortnite. | Image: Epic Games A new season of Fortnite is upon us, and it’s dripping with chrome. Today sees the launch of Chapter 3: Season 4 for the battle royale game, dubbed “Paradise,” and the big change this time around is a mysterious new substance. It’s called chrome, and it appears to be able to change just about everything it touches: you can splash it on walls to go right through them or splash it on yourself for temporary fire immunity and faster sprinting.Other additions this season including new locations, like a floating condo, and other points of interest that have, naturally, been infested with chrome. Sniper rifles have received a big buff, increasing both damage and headshot multipliers. There’s also a new kind of vault, which can be opened by... Continue reading…

Image: Steamforged Elden Ring’s expansive world of the Lands Between will soon be small enough to set atop your table. Steamforged Games, the company behind the board game adaptions of Dark Souls, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Resident Evil, announced that it’s working on an Elden Ring board game through Kickstarter.The game will allow one to four players to “embark on a huge and varied adventure, visiting iconic locations and crossing paths with familiar enemies and characters,” while offering dice-free combat between both bosses and minor foes. Mat Hart, the co-founder and chief creative officer at Steamforged explains that “fans should expect a dark, richly-realised tabletop world of mystery and peril, with satisfying combat and rewarding exploration.”... Continue reading…

Yes, we are going to talk about this thing today. | Image: Razer Recently, The Verge’s reviews team has been making an effort to get rid of some of the ancient products we have lying around our office. We have donated or thrown away some truly prehistoric gadgets. But there was one device that, the second I laid eyes on it, I knew I needed to rescue. It was the Razer Firefly, a seven-year-old mouse pad with a glowing RGB lightstrip around the edge. It was a beautifully silly and extra device, and I knew it was made for me.I have now been using the Razer Firefly at my desk in The Verge’s Manhattan office for several weeks. It offers 16.8 million customizable color options. It sits at my side all day, flashing purple, pink, red, yellow, blue, and everything in between. “But what does it do?” various... Continue reading…

Keanu Reeves in the 2005 film Constantine. | Screenshot: Warner Bros. John Constantine’s demonic detective work isn’t over just yet. Keanu Reeves is set to return as the titular demonologist and exorcist in a sequel to the 2005 film Constantine, according to reports from Deadline and Variety.Both outlets confirmed that Warner Bros. is working on a follow-up film, which also brings back writer Akiva Goldsman and director Francis Lawrence, who initially made his debut with Constantine, but has since gone on to helm movies like The Hunger Games and I Am Legend. Goldsman’s Weed Road Pictures will produce the film alongside J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella.Other versions of the DC comic book character Constantine have since appeared in NBC’s adaption that ran from 2014 to 2015, and, more recently, in... Continue reading…

Lee Jung-jae and Jung Woo-sung in Hunt. | Image: TIFF A huge range of movies were in Toronto this year Continue reading…

A cracked screen doesn’t mean you need to pony up for a new phone. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge You know, just because it’s new phone season doesn’t mean you actually need to buy a new phone. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the new hotness, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4’s unique experience or the iPhone 14 Pro’s quirky new dynamic island, but maybe your current phone is perfectly fine if it just gets some overdue TLC (or perhaps some DIY love).If you’ve got an older iPhone or Pixel phone with a cracked screen or rapidly depleting battery, iFixit is running a 20 percent-off sale on repairs kits through September 30th to help you bring it back up to spec yourself. This promo covers all of iFixit’s screen and battery repair kits on iPhones and Pixels as recent as last year’s iPhone 13 and Pixel 6. For example, a battery replacement... Continue reading…

The 2013 PS Vita still looks and feels surprisingly modern. Every couple of weeks, I exhume my gadget graveyard from underneath my bed. I look at my iPods, old phones, and some other stuff. Most of it doesn’t stir me anymore, but the PS Vita is another story. It’s the device that I pull out most frequently, charging it up to, well, just to feel like it’s a part of the modern world.I keep mine in a svelte Waterfield Designs soft case that cleans off fingerprints when it goes in so that it’s smudge-free when I pull it out, revealing design details that I apparently have an unshakable affinity to seeing over and over: gorgeous translucent shoulder buttons; the big (but not too big) display; and the sturdy yet elegant build quality. Almost everything going on with the look and feel of the Vita is... Continue reading…

Where’s my “always allow” option, Apple? | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge In my time using iOS 16 so far, I’ve generally been very pleased with the new features and improvements. The customizable lock screen is fun. Removing the background of images just by holding down on a picture’s subject still hasn’t gotten old. But only a few days after the new software rolled out, I’ve already found my biggest frustration: iOS now asks if it’s okay to paste an item from one app to another. Constantly. Over and over and over again.There’s got to be a better solution than this.I understand the why behind the new prompt. Your iPhone’s clipboard often contains sensitive data — passwords, personal photos, two-factor passcodes, and so on. Apps likely skim this information more often than any of us realize. And this is... Continue reading…

Image: Riot Games Lil Nas X has been the “president of League of Legends” for barely more than 24 hours, and he is already cutting up. No longer content as the Lord of Hell, Lil Nas X has relinquished his fiery crown, exchanging it for a desk in the CEO suite of Riot Games. His first executive order? Making a nude skin of Udyr. His second executive order, well... it’s going to make half the population of League players very unhappy.

Samar Haddad / The Verge We’ve all done it: sent a text message and then instantly regretted it. Whether it was a text to your parent with a spelling error that they’d never let you live down, a message with a wrong word in it (“I don’t want to come to the party!” instead of “I want to come to the party!”), or a sudden realization that you just sent your message to the wrong person — it can be embarrassing at the least and disastrous at the worst.While messaging apps like Signal, WhatsApp, and Viber all have some version of “delete for everyone,” until now, there was nothing you could do about it on iMessage except to follow it up with an “I didn’t mean that!” message.In iOS 16, Apple has introduced a feature to its iMessage chat app that allows you to unsend... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Cybersecurity alarm bells have been ringing loudly in the healthcare industry this month. The FBI warned healthcare facilities that medical devices (like patient monitors or infusion pumps) often run on outdated software that could be vulnerable to hacks. OakBend Medical Center in Texas was hit with a major ransomware attack from a gang that says it stole 1 million patient records. A report showed that patients at hospitals dealing with cyberattacks are more likely to die.The series of warnings come with a growing awareness of just how dangerous cybersecurity holes in healthcare can be. Healthcare organizations are more and more dependent on internet-connected devices to do things like track patient records and deliver medications. And... Continue reading…

Getty Images for Vox Media Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed the idea of adopting RCS messaging to put an end to the green bubbles that surround messages when iPhone users text someone on an Android device.“I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy in on that at this point,” Cook said when asked how Apple founder Steve Jobs would feel about using the RCS standard in iMessage during Vox Media’s Code 2022 event on Wednesday night. Instead, Cook said, “I would love to convert you to an iPhone.”Video of the panel is now available on YouTube, and you can watch it by clicking here or where it is embedded above, and cued up to the question at the 1 hour, 15-second mark.But the person who asked the question, Vox Media’s LiQuan Hunt, came back with a valid... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Like many other hacks, Uber’s major security breach started with a text message. Citing details provided by the alleged hacker, The New York Times reported that a fake text message tricked an Uber employee into revealing their password details, triggering a sequence of events that led to a large-scale compromise of the ridesharing company’s IT systems.Even for a company with Uber’s resources, these kinds of social engineering threats are impossible to completely defend against. It doesn’t matter how good a firm’s password policies are, whether sensitive information is properly stored or encrypted, and even whether multi-factor authentication is used — there’s always a chance that a human employee will be fooled into letting the... Continue reading…

If you want to play your original PSVR games, you’re going to have to keep your old headset around. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We finally have an answer about whether the PlayStation VR2 will be able to play games from the original PlayStation VR: no. As Twitter user Nibel spotted, the Official PlayStation Podcast asked Hideaki Nishino, a vice president of platform experience at Sony, whether the games from its last-gen virtual reality headset would run on its new one. His response? “PSVR games are not compatible with PSVR2, because PSVR2 is designed to deliver a truly next-gen VR experience.”He continued: “PSVR2 has much more advanced features like all-new controllers with haptics feedback and adaptive triggers.” He also referenced the headset’s inside-out and eye tracking as well as 3D audio. “This means developing games for PSVR2 requires a whole different... Continue reading…

The Verge Earlier this week, Google made some serious cuts to its startup incubator Area 120, cutting half of its projects, according to TechCrunch. The purpose of Area 120 was to give Google employees somewhere to experiment or chase their passion projects, with the hope that they could stumble upon the next Big Idea like Adsense, Gmail, or Google News.But as the economy has turned, it seems Google may be losing its stomach for big bets and experimentation, instead trying to focus its efforts on what makes money today (or services that it really just has to run despite the fact that they lose money, like Google Cloud). Instead of challenging employees to spend 20 percent of their time building wacky apps, CEO Sundar Pichai says the company needs... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber says there is “no evidence” that any of its users’ private information was compromised in a breach of its internal computer systems discovered Thursday. All of the company’s products, including its ride-hail and Uber Eats food delivery services, are currently “operational,” and law enforcement has been notified, Uber said in a statement this afternoon.The hack forced the company to take several of its internal systems offline, including Slack, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. Uber is continuing to investigate how a hacker, who claims to be an 18-year-old, was able to gain administrator access to the company’s internal tools.Those internal software tools were taken offline yesterday afternoon as “a precaution” and... Continue reading…

Workers install a new row of Bitcoin mining machines at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 9th, 2021. | Photo by MARK FELIX / AFP via Getty Images Crypto mining has exploded in the US over the past few years, and we’re just now starting to understand how that boom affects our infrastructure, environment, and daily life. As the US became the biggest hub for Bitcoin mining, for instance, crypto mines have revived ailing fossil fuel plants and driven up electricity bills.We finally got a clearer picture of the fallout from US crypto mining last week when the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a report on the industry’s impact on energy and climate change. The analysis estimates that the crypto industry operations in the US pump out about as much greenhouse gas pollution annually as all the diesel fuel used on the nation’s railroads, 25 to 50 million... Continue reading…

You’ll play as Hornet, who was featured in Hollow Knight. | Image: Team Cherry Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-awaited sequel to the indie action-platformer Hollow Knight, will be coming to PS5 and PS4, according to a Friday tweet from the official PlayStation Twitter account.We already knew the game was coming to Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PC, so it’s good to hear that it will be available on PlayStation, too. But for those of us who have been desperate news about a concrete release date (like me), we still don’t know that; PlayStation only confirmed that the game would be coming to its consoles, not when.

New iPhone activations have been encountering issues on open Wi-Fi networks | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge If you’ve been having trouble setting up your new iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro, you aren’t alone. According to MacRumors, the company has sent a memo saying it is a known issue in iOS 16 when attempting to activate devices on open Wi-Fi networks.Thankfully, Apple has already provided a solution in the form of its iOS 16.0.1 update. The latest update, which is only available for the iPhone 14 lineup, should resolve any activation or migration issues facing owners of the new iPhone, but users may need to update and restore their phones using a Mac or PC to fully address the issue.The iOS 16 update became available on September 12th for the iPhone 8 and newer, changing just about every app or screen of the mobile operating system. Some of... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge On Friday, Parler announced that it was entering the internet infrastructure industry in order to provide new “uncancelable” cloud services for online businesses.In a Friday press release, Parler announced that it was restructuring; the new venture, called Parlement Technologies, will provide new internet infrastructure services for businesses it says are at risk of being forced off the internet. With $16 million in new Series B funding, the company purchased Dynascale, a California-based cloud services company that touts more than $30 million in annual revenue and 50,000 square feet of data center space.“We are entering a new era as Parlement Technologies, one that goes far beyond the boundaries of a free speech social media... Continue reading…

Amazon’s 75-inch Fire TV Omni is cheaper than ever. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Want a big-screen TV to watch Monday Night Football without paying, well, typical big-screen TV prices? Right now, Amazon’s 75-inch Fire TV Omni is on sale at Best Buy for $699.99 instead of $1,099.99, which marks a new all-time low for the 4K set. Amazon’s also discounting the TV but selling it for $8 more at $708.34.Amazon’s Fire TV Omni series isn’t known for impressive picture quality — the black levels are so-so and the color accuracy isn’t great — but they do offer some nice perks, including an HDMI 2.1 eARC port. It also has built-in mics for hands-free Alexa voice commands even when the screen’s off. Unlike the smaller configurations, the 75-inch model also includes support for Dolby Vision HDR. That’s in addition to a low input... Continue reading…

Image: Valve A third-party mod that lets you play through Valve’s Half-Life 2 in room-scale virtual reality will be available in public beta starting at around noon ET. The developers, Source VR Mod Team, are offering it for free; you just need to own the base game that currently costs $9.99 (spotted thanks to TechRadar).The Steam listing for the mod is here, and it claims to be broadly compatible with wired VR headsets that include tracked motion controllers, like Valve’s Index and the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality models. Presumably, it’ll work just fine if you, like me, connect your Meta Quest 2 via a USB cable, or wirelessly, to your PC. I’m going to give it a try this weekend.The developers seem to have figured out clever... Continue reading…

YouTube Shorts is taking on TikTok with one big move: money. | Image: YouTube In its ongoing battle with TikTok for vertical video supremacy, YouTube is about to play its most valuable card. It’s getting ready to turn on aggressive monetization for Shorts, its shortform vertical video format, and promising to help millions of creators make money on the platform.Starting early next year, Shorts will be part of the YouTube Partner Program, meaning those who qualify can start getting a share of the ad money generated in Shorts. YouTube is also making it easier for creators who don’t qualify for the program to make money through tips, subscriptions, and merch sales. (The New York Times first reported the news.) The goal is to offer more and better monetization options than TikTok and potentially win over (and win... Continue reading…

A Focus mode for when things are not fine. These days, it often feels like the world is on fire. Sometimes, quite literally. In those moments, my phone morphs into an instrument of endless doomscrolling. So when Apple tweaked its Focus modes in the iOS 16 beta earlier this summer, I knew what needed to be done. I had to create a “This is Fine” mode.The grounding principle behind a This is Fine mode is the fact that sometimes, you are not fine. Even so, life doesn’t stop just because terrible things keep happening. Deadlines need to be met, bills need to be paid, dogs need walking, kids need picking up from school, and you still need to eat. But even if I understand that it’s sometimes best to ignore my Twitter feed, mustering the willpower to do so leaves my brain a pile of... Continue reading…

Amazon’s pregame coverage featured a bunch of veteran players and broadcasters. | Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images It didn’t crash! That’s the most important thing you can say about the first Thursday Night Football game aired on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon didn’t crumble like HBO Max did during the House of The Dragon premiere. It didn’t crash like CBS All Access during the 2021 Super Bowl. It even streamed better than DirecTV did five days ago. There were some reports of blocky resolution and buffering, but in general, Amazon hung in there, and it aired a football game.Watching the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers play, I got the distinct sense that “airing a football game” was Amazon’s one and only goal for the evening. There was nothing particularly innovative or new in the broadcast, from the choice of cast to the style of... Continue reading…

This year, there are four new iPhone models to choose from. | Image: Apple Apple’s iPhone 14 lineup is now in the wild, consisting of the base iPhone 14, and the faster, more capable iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. The slightly bigger iPhone 14 Plus will release in October. Each of those links will take you to either a full review or a hands-on preview. Is Apple’s A16 Bionic chip worth upgrading to? Do you want to pay more to get the Dynamic Island notch experience? Check out our reviews to see what our staff though.If you already know that you want to buy one, here are the straight details: these phones just released today, Friday, September 16th, with one exception. That’s the iPhone 14 Plus, which comes out on October 7th. If you’re thinking about buying the iPhone 14 (or, heck, all four varieties — follow... Continue reading…

The Zenbook wins in many categories — but loses badly in one Continue reading…

A queue of mourners lining up to pay their respects. | Photo by Kirsty O’Connor/PA Images via Getty Images The British have always had a reputation as a nation of queuers, but even by our standards these past few days have been a lot. As the late Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin sits in London’s Westminster Hall, thousands of people have queued up to pay their respects to the country’s longest serving monarch. To manage this miles-long line, which many have taken to simply calling The Queue, the British government has turned to platforms including Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to provide up to the minute updates.Although The Queue is currently at capacity, with the government advising new people not to join it, as of 9AM UK time this morning DCMS reported that it was 4.9 miles (nearly 8km) long , with an estimated queuing time of 14 hours.... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a law mandating additional safeguards for minors on social media. The bill, AB 2273, passed the state legislature in August, and it’s slated to go into effect on July 1st, 2024.AB 2273’s supporters pitched it as a supplement to federal online child protection laws, which apply to children under 13. The law raises the age bar to 18, and it covers web services “likely” to get underage visitors, not just those aimed at kids. These sites must assess the potential harms for children on their platform, limit data collection and sharing for these users, and attempt to estimate the age of children on the platform. A press release from Newsom’s office... Continue reading…

FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan glances at SEC Chairman Gary Gensler during a House Financial Services Committee hearing. | Photo by Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The Federal Trade Commission voted today to put gig economy companies on notice, promising to protect gig workers from unfair contracts, pay, and hours.In a 3-2 vote, Democratic FTC commissioners approved a new policy statement announcing that the agency would “use the full portfolio of laws it enforces to prevent unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive and otherwise unlawful practices affecting gig workers.”Specifically, the FTC said it would go after companies that misrepresent a worker’s potential earnings or wrongfully use artificial intelligence to evaluate worker productivity. The agency also plans to investigate the industry for evidence of wage-fixing between companies.“No matter how gig companies choose to classify them, gig... Continue reading…

I wonder if they’ll find a way to include Harrison Ford. | Image: Alcon Entertainment Amazon has officially picked up a series for Prime Video based on the hit Blade Runner movies, Deadline reports. The series is titled Blade Runner 2099, suggesting it will take place 50 years after Denis Villeneuve’s very good Blade Runner 2049. Ridley Scott, the director of the first Blade Runner, will serve as an executive producer.The company isn’t sharing Blade Runner 2099 plot details just yet, so we don’t know much about what to expect beyond the later timeline. The show will “uphold the intellect, themes, and spirit of its film predecessors,” Amazon’s Vernon Sanders said in a statement provided to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, so I’m hoping the series will keep up the neo-noir sci-fi vibe from the two films.We also... Continue reading…

The latest Apple TV 4K lets you access popular streaming platforms, as well as exclusive Apple content. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Since our original lead deal sold out, here’s another quick one for you. The 32GB Apple TV 4K is still on sale for $119.99 at Amazon, down from its original list price of $179. While the Apple TV 4K is best suited for users that live in the Apple ecosystem, there’s plenty of utility to be found in this innocuous black box. Apart from letting you stream media from platforms like Disney Plus and HBO Max, the Apple TV 4K provides an avenue to access content from Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness Plus, and Apple Music.In terms of speed, the A12 Bionic CPU gives the Apple TV 4K superior performance and responsiveness when compared to other streaming devices, including the Roku Streaming Stick 4K and Amazon Fire Stick 4K. The Apple TV 4K is also... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard Despite an earlier promise that Overwatch and Overwatch 2 would peacefully coexist, we recently learned that there can be only one. And now we have a date for when Overwatch prime goes offline: October 2nd.In an interview with Eurogamer, Overwatch commercial lead Jon Spector explained that on October 2nd, Overwatch prime will die, and for roughly 24 hours, the game will be offline to make way for Crystal Overwatch — err— Overwatch 2 on October 4th.“So that means, as a practical point, that October 2nd really is the last day to go in and play Overwatch 1,” Spector told Eurogamer.The arrival of Overwatch 2 brings with it significant and permanent changes to the game. With a little less than three weeks left, here’s a list of things... Continue reading…

You have to look real hard to spot what looks like the Dishy McFlatface terminal — it’s in the distance, just to the right of the roof’s apex. | Image: National Science Foundation After its race with OneWeb to cover the North Pole and other Arctic areas with satellite internet, SpaceX has made it to the other extreme: the National Science Foundation (or NSF) is testing out one of its Starlink terminals at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The NSF says the increased bandwidth will help scientists working on the remote continent near the South Pole.McMurdo, the most heavily populated Antarctic station, according to the NSF, with over 1,000 people living and working there during the summer, already had satellite internet, but it was rough, to say the least. Everyone at the base shares a 17 Mbps link, according to the United States Antarctic Program, which severely limits what people can do. The station actually blocks... Continue reading…

In an aerial view, a wind turbine generates electricity at the Block Island Wind Farm on July 7th, 2022, near Block Island, Rhode Island. | Photo by John Moore / Getty Images The Biden administration announced splashy new goals today aimed at positioning the US as a leader in the development of next-generation floating wind turbines. The announcement substantially expands Biden’s previous offshore wind ambitions by opening up new areas that traditional fixed-bottom turbines haven’t been able to reach.Those turbines haven’t been able to conquer depths greater than 60 meters deep, where most of the world’s usable offshore wind resources can be found. Nearly 60 percent of the US’s offshore wind resources are at those depths. That includes much of the west coast, which has lagged behind the East Coast when it comes to offshore wind development because the Pacific Ocean drops off steeply close to the California... Continue reading…

The 2024 Ford Mustang looks mostly the same on the outside, but the software got a glow-up. | Image: Ford Ford announced the 2024 Mustang yesterday — maybe the last gas-powered one? — and while the vehicle is very similar in its design and shape to the last version, the operating system looks to be all-new, with sharp new graphics and a “digital cockpit inspired by fighter jets.”It’s so new, apparently, that the company won’t tell us what software it’s running on.On paper, the 2024 Ford Mustang’s 13.2-inch central touchscreen is running on Sync 4, Ford’s operating system that also powers its current lineup, including the F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E. But videos from the reveal appear to show a user interface that looks entirely different from any Sync 4-equipped vehicle we’ve seen before.the company won’t tell us what software... Continue reading…