The Verge

Virtual furniture can be placed in an image of your room. | Image: Ikea Ikea is launching a new virtual design tool today that can make it easier to imagine how its furniture might look in your home. Ikea Kreativ’s Scene Scanner feature lets you scan a room using Ikea’s iOS app, erase your existing furniture, and then place virtual furniture in its place. If you don’t want to scan your own home, there are also over 50 virtual showrooms to place furniture in. Naturally, the process is designed to encourage you to order this furniture for real after browsing the virtual versions.After playing around with a pre-release version of the Ikea Kreativ Scene Scanner app developed by Ingka Group (Ikea’s largest store franchisee), I can say that the new experience is potentially very useful, even if it’s a little... Continue reading…

Image: Fitbit Fitbit is launching a new Sleep Profile feature for premium members that will categorize users as one of six animal characters, the company announced today. Users are grouped based on 10 sleep metrics — five of which are new to Fitbit.The research team wanted to give people more information about how they sleep, says Karla Gleichauf, the senior research scientist at Google who led the research for the feature. “We were also influenced by some fun things, like game design or the Harry Potter quizzes about what house you’re in,” she says. “People love to be categorized. So, we said, ‘I think this is just really fun’ — it’s another kind of identity to people.”For example: Fitbit co-founder James Park is a dolphin, Gleichauf says. People... Continue reading…

The Summit 3 in black, bicolor, and silver. | Image: Montblanc Montblanc could be the first manufacturer outside of Samsung to release a smartwatch running Wear OS 3, the latest version of Google’s wrist-worn operating system. Like its previous smartwatches, the Summit 3 launches with an eye-watering price tag, and its focus is more on being a fashion accessory than pushing the boundaries of what a smartwatch is capable of. It’ll cost €1,250 (around $1,314 USD) when it goes on sale globally on July 15th.Wear OS 3 is the most significant update to Google’s smartwatch operating system in years, but it’s only currently available on a pair of Samsung smartwatches: the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, which released last year. That means we’re yet to experience the software without... Continue reading…

What better time for this announcement than Pride Month? | Image: Google Google is adding a label to Maps that lets people identify their business as being LGBTQ-plus-owned, joining Yelp, which has a similar label. While Google Maps has had labels like LGBTQ-friendly and Transgender Safe Space for years, the company says that the new business identity attribute will help people who choose to support diverse businesses and could help queer people find nearby communities.Just like with Google’s other labels for Black-owned, Latino-owned, veteran-owned, and women-owned businesses, the LGBTQ-plus-owned label has to be added by the verified owner of the business profile. (It’s not like other Maps metadata, which can be added by community members.) The labels can show up throughout the Google Maps interface, and... Continue reading…

Brooke Minters Brooke Minters has joined The Verge as editorial director for audio, overseeing its podcast operation, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel today announced. In her new role, Minters will develop The Verge’s audio slate, launching new shows and working to grow existing shows, which include The Vergecast and Decoder with Nilay Patel. Minters began her role on June 21st. The Verge’s managing editor Alex Cranz will officially join The Verge’s decade-old flagship podcast The Vergecast as co-host; the show will also expand to two episodes a week, with the new Wednesday episode hosted by Verge editor-at-large David Pierce.“We started The Vergecast before launching The Verge itself, and our dedicated fans have always been a key part of The Verge’s... Continue reading…

Image: Twitter Twitter is partnering with Shopify on an integration that will keep a seller’s Twitter profile page updated with direct links to the products they have for sale. Shopify users who install the new Twitter add-on can connect their Twitter account with Shopify and then start building out a store on Twitter with the platform’s Shop Module.The new add-on automatically loads a merchant’s products from Shopify onto Twitter, which then appear in a carousel on the Twitter profile. Users can browse through or expand the carousel to view up to 50 products — selecting a product redirects users to the merchant’s website for purchase. Image: Twitter The integration with Shopify lets merchants sync products with Twitter. S... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is preparing to add mouse and keyboard support to its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service that streams Xbox games to TVs, PCs, mobile devices, and more. The software giant teased the addition earlier this year, and now it’s encouraging game developers to get ready for mouse and keyboard support and some big latency improvements on Xbox Cloud Gaming soon.“Xbox has been supporting keyboard and mouse for a few years now, and we’re working on adding it to streaming for PC users,” explains Morgan Brown, a software engineer on Microsoft’s Xbox game streaming team. “But you can start adding it to your game right now and your console keyboard and mouse users will appreciate it. It will light up in streaming once we’ve finished adding... Continue reading…

Maximum efficiency, major annoyance Continue reading…

The new-look Google News makes local news and custom topics easier to find. | Image: Google Google News has been given a fresh lick of paint for desktop users on its 20th birthday, with a redesign that gives more prominence to local news and personalized content.Users can now more easily customize the topics they’re shown by hitting the blue “customize” button in the right hand column (it appears just below “Picks For You”). They can also add multiple locations to the “Local News” section by hitting the settings button to the right of the Local News header.In practical terms, the biggest change is that various categories of news — like world, business, science, and health — have been moved from the left-hand side of the screen to a menu bar at the top. You can compare the before and after in the screenshots of the new... Continue reading…

It’s called Proteus | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced its “first fully autonomous mobile robot,” meant to move large carts throughout its warehouses. The robot is called Proteus, and Amazon says it can safely navigate around human employees, unlike some of its past robots that it kept separated in a caged area.Amazon says Proteus robots have “advanced safety, perception, and navigation technology,” and a (strangely silent) video shows the robots shining a green light in front of themselves as they move around. When a human steps into the beam, the robot stops moving, then resumes after the person moves away.The company has also announced several other robotic systems. One, called Cardinal, is a robotic arm that can lift and move packages weighing up to 50 pounds,... Continue reading…

The Volvo FH Fuel Cell Electric semi at a hydrogen fuel station. | Image: Volvo Volvo’s commercial trucking division is testing hydrogen fuel cell semi trucks in the hopes of getting ahead of the maturing technology. With fuel cells built by CellCentric, a joint venture between Volvo and Daimler Truck Automotive Group, Volvo claims its trucks are capable of 1,000 kilometers of range (about 621 miles) and can be refueled in under 15 minutes.Volvo Trucks has been “developing this technology for some years now,” said company president Roger Alm in a statement this week. Hydrogen fuel cells will be suitable for long-distance hauling and could work in countries with limited battery charging infrastructure, Alm said. The company started building battery-electric trucks in 2018, but they still aren’t widely in service in... Continue reading…

The company was accused of letting advertisers exclude protected groups from their campaigns. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government and Facebook parent company Meta have agreed on a settlement to clear up a lawsuit that accused the company of facilitating housing discrimination by letting advertisers specify that ads not be shown to people belonging to specific protected groups, according to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). You can read the full agreement below.The government first brought a case against Meta for algorithmic housing discrimination in 2019, though accusations about the company’s practices go back years before that. The company took some steps to address the issue, but clearly, they weren’t enough for the feds. The department says this was its first case dealing with algorithmic violations of the Fair Housing... Continue reading…

The new social tags might make it easier to find a good group. | Image: Epic Games Fortnite can be an absolute blast to play with your friends, but being matched up with random players is more hit-and-miss. In some of the randomized groups I’ve been in, coordinating any sort of effective strategy can be a challenging endeavor, particularly if some team members want to rush into battle while others would prefer to play it slow. To help you find better squadmates, Fortnite developer Epic Games is testing new social tags for profiles that let you indicate how you like to play and can be used to match you up with other like-minded players.According to a blog post, tags will include things like your favorite game modes and whether you want to use a mic or not. If you have added at least one social tag, you’ll be able to... Continue reading…

Photo by PHILIP DAVALI/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images Well, now we know where the Obamas are heading after their split with Spotify. I had a whole fancy intro before getting the news, but this is about as hot as Hot Pod gets, so let’s get into it.Obamas take their podcasts to Audible after leaving SpotifyAmazon’s Audible and the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground announced a multi-year first-look deal on Tuesday, ending the speculation of where the former first couple would take their podcasts after their deal with Spotify ends in several months.It’s a big get for Audible, which is better known for audiobooks than podcasts even as it ramps up the development deals. It is also a curious choice for the Obamas, who were reported to be frustrated by the limitations that came with... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Popular daycare and childcare communications apps are “dangerously insecure,” according to newly published research, exposing children and parents to the risk of data breaches with lax security settings and permissive or outright misleading privacy policies.The details come from a new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which published the results of a months-long research project on Tuesday.The research, conducted Alexis Hancock, EFF’s director of engineering for the Certbot project, found that popular apps like Brightwheel, HiMama, and Tadpoles lacked two-factor authentication (2FA), meaning that any malicious actor who was able to obtain a user’s password could log in remotely. Further analysis of application code... Continue reading…

The efforts are currently focused on old Priuses | Photo by Toyota/Getty Images Toyota is partnering with Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company helmed by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, to collect and recycle vehicle batteries. The plan is to take old, worn-out batteries and either refurbish them or break them down so their materials can be used to create new batteries.Redwood specifically plans on producing materials for anodes and cathodes — two major components of a battery cell. The company’s ultimate goal is to create a “closed-loop supply chain for electric vehicles,” meaning that it takes batteries from old EVs and turns them into batteries for new cars.Decades-old Priuses could end up at Redwood’s facility in NevadaWhile Toyota is currently launching its first long-range battery-electric vehicle,... Continue reading…

Image: Paramount Paramount “plans to commission” 150 international originals for its Paramount Plus streaming service by 2025, according to a press release. The company revealed details about seven of the originals on Tuesday, including content from Germany, Italy, France, and Mexico.With this major investment, Paramount is likely aiming to see the kind of traction other platforms have gotten from their own international originals. Netflix’s Squid Game is perhaps the most successful, becoming the streaming service’s biggest-ever series at launch, but its French thriller Lupin has been a hit as well. If you’re an Apple TV Plus subscriber, I’d highly recommend Pachinko, a drama about a Korean immigrant family that Apple recently renewed for a second... Continue reading…

NASA’s Space Launch System on its launchpad at KSC | Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge After three previous aborted attempts, NASA successfully fueled its new massive deep-space rocket, the Space Launch System, for the first time on Monday — completing a critical milestone ahead of the vehicle’s first flight. However, there was a shadow over the achievement. The fueling was part of an elaborate dress rehearsal that ended 20 seconds earlier than NASA had planned, and it’s unclear if the agency got all the data and practice it needed to proceed with the rocket’s debut launch.The Space Launch System, or SLS, is a key piece of NASA’s flagship Artemis program — an elaborate effort to send the first woman and the first person of color to the surface of the Moon. But first, SLS needs to actually fly, and before that can happen, N... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Some social platforms limit the number of times you can change your username, while others don’t let you do it at all. Instagram is a username free-for-all; you can alter your Instagram handle whenever you want, as many times as you want — within certain limits.There’s a difference between your username and your display name. The display name is on your profile below your avatar. It doesn’t need to be unique to you, and it can contain emoji and special characters. (And yes, it can also be changed — up to two times within 14 days.)Your username, on the other hand, appears at the top of your profile and at the end of your profile’s URL. It needs to be unique to you. It’s also subject to more restrictions: it can’t be longer than 30... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Two former Tesla employees have filed a lawsuit claiming the company violated federal law for failing to provide 60 days’ notice for a mass layoff.The lawsuit, which was filed on Sunday, follows the news that Tesla plans on laying off hourly workers, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk initially stated that the hourly workers were likely to be unaffected by the layoffs.The lawsuit was filed by John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield, both of whom worked at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, when the layoffs began in early June. The two former employees allege they were among “more than 500” Gigafactory employees who were terminated.The two former employees allege they were among “more than 500” Gigafactory employees who were terminatedAccording... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has named a new CEO of its retail arm just weeks after the previous CEO announced he would be resigning. Doug Herrington, a 17-year company vet, is set to become CEO of Amazon’s worldwide stores business, Amazon leader Andy Jassy announced in an email posted to the company’s website.Herrington has a lot of experience in Amazon’s consumer business, as noted in Jassy’s email; Herrington “joined the company in 2005 to build out our Consumables business, launched AmazonFresh in 2007, and in 2015, took on leading all of our North American Consumer business,” Jassy wrote.But he’ll have a tough road ahead, as Amazon’s growth has slowed after surging during the pandemic, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Jassy has... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is phasing out public access to a number of AI-powered facial analysis tools — including one that claims to identify a subject’s emotion from videos and pictures.Such “emotion recognition” tools have been criticized by experts. They say not only do facial expressions that are thought to be universal differ across different populations but that it is unscientific to equate external displays of emotion with internal feelings.“Companies can say whatever they want, but the data are clear,” Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University who conducted a review into the subject of AI-powered emotion recognition, told The Verge in 2019. “They can detect a scowl, but that’s not the same thing as detecting... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft, Epic Games, Meta, and 33 other companies and organizations have formed a standards group for “metaverse” tech. The Metaverse Standards Forum is supposed to foster open, interoperable standards for augmented and virtual reality, geospatial, and 3D tech.According to a press release, the Metaverse Standards Forum will focus on “pragmatic, action-based projects” like hackathons and prototyping tools for supporting common standards. It’s also interested in developing “consistent terminology” for the space — where many players can’t even agree on what a “metaverse” is. In addition to the companies above, the group’s founding members include major pre-metaverse entities like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Nvidia, Qualcomm,... Continue reading…

Save on this 75-inch Samsung TV and other hot tech today. | Image: Samsung The Verge Deals team is back in action this week, serving up some excellent savings from across the internet. If you’ve been biding your time on buying a new high-end TV, you may want to check out this day-long discount on the 75-inch model of Samsung’s QN85B Neo QLED TV, which is selling for its lowest price ever. The QN85B usually sells for $2,799.99 but is currently on sale for $2,399.99. While this QLED model may lack the unparalleled contrast and brightness control of pricier OLED models, the QN85B should deliver stellar picture quality and accurate lighting with its Mini LED technology, atop a number of other excellent features.This 4K display features a 120Hz refresh rate, and it’s HDR10 Plus-compatible, enabling excellent depth... Continue reading…

Image: GitHub Microsoft-owned GitHub is launching its Copilot AI tool today, which helps suggest lines of code to developers inside their code editor. GitHub originally teamed up with OpenAI last year to launch a preview of Copilot, and it’s generally available to all developers today.Priced at $10 per month or $100 a year, GitHub Copilot is capable of suggesting the next line of code as developers type in an integrated development environment (IDE) like Visual Studio Code, Neovim, and JetBrains IDEs. Copilot can suggest complete methods and complex algorithms alongside boilerplate code and assistance with unit testing.More than 1.2 million developers signed up to use the GitHub Copilot preview over the past 12 months, and it will remain a free... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Creators on Facebook and Instagram won’t have to share a cut of their revenue with the platforms until 2024. Meta previously said it would hold off on revenue sharing until 2023.In a post today, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a slew of monetization updates for Facebook and Instagram, including the news of the revenue-sharing extension. Creators make money on the platforms through fan subscriptions, paid events, badges, and other methods, and the companies are adding more and more ways for creators to make money in an attempt to lure them away from platforms like TikTok. With one new feature, creators on Facebook with subscribers on other platforms will be able to give those fans access to subscriber-only groups, according to the... Continue reading…

In this handout image provided by Korea Aerospace Research Institute, a space rocket Nuri (KSLV-Ⅱ) taking off from its launch pad at the Naro Space Center on June 21, 2022, in UGoheung-gun, South Korea. | Photo by Korea Aerospace Research Institute via Getty Images For the first time in its history, South Korea has successfully launched a satellite into orbit on a domestically built rocket. The Nuri rocket lifted off at 4PM local time today from the Naro Space Center in Goheung. The launch could help South Korea gain footing in the growing global space industry and potentially bolster the nation’s national defense arsenal with future spy satellites.Nuri’s payload today included a set of satellites that officials say have no military purposes. The rocket placed a 357-pound performance verification satellite into orbit about 435 miles (700 km) above our planet. The performance verification satellite is now poised to help South Korea launch more satellites. While in orbit, the satellite will test an... Continue reading…

Alex Castro / The Verge Advocacy group Coin Center is suing the US government over ‘unconstitutional financial surveillance’ Continue reading…

Max under Vecna’s thrall. | Netflix Though music played a surprisingly significant role in the first half of Netflix’s Stranger Things 4, volume 1 never actually got around to giving Eddie Munson the sick guitar that was featured in this season’s earliest trailers. In the first teaser for Stranger Things Volume 2, though, the outgoing king of Hawkins High’s Hellfire Club is finally getting his ax just in time for an epic battle in the Upside Down.Stranger Things 4 Volume 1 finally revealed the origins of Vecna, the malevolent presence that’s been menacing Hawkins for years, and established that Eleven and her friends truly are one of the only groups capable of taking the creature down as it tries to enter their world from the Upside Down. In the new trailer, everyone’s... Continue reading…

Image: Anker Fitness-focused, sporty earbuds usually come with one of two solutions for staying in your ears: they either have wing tips to help anchor them in place (as recently seen in the Sennheiser Sport buds), or there’s a wraparound ear hook a la the Powerbeats Pro. With its new Soundcore Sport X10 earbuds, Anker is opting for the latter. The $79 X10s have a bass-forward sound signature, IPX7 sweat and water resistance, and up to eight hours of continuous battery life (or 32 including case recharges). They’re available now in black or white, with a red color coming sometime later.Anker says the rotatable ear hook lets you “adjust the wearing angle to ensure the earbuds nest comfortably in place to prevent them from falling out during vigorous... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Big plans to go all-electric by 2030 Continue reading…

The phone gets a lot of use out of its light strips. | Image: Marques Brownlee We already know that Nothing’s debut smartphone, the Phone 1, will come equipped with a series of light strips on its back. But now, thanks to an in-depth video from Marques Brownlee, we have a much better idea of what they’ll actually be useful for. Brownlee’s video highlights a couple of different use cases, including having the LEDs work as a charging indicator, highlighting unread notifications, or flashing in time with ringtones.The strips, which Nothing is branding as its “glyph interface,” consist of a little over 900 individual LEDs embedded into the rear of the phone. Nothing CEO Carl Pei previously hinted in an interview with The Verge that they could serve as a modern take on the classic smartphone notification LED, but now... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is cracking down on user reviews to prevent people from leaving fake feedback on businesses’ pages. The company has updated its Community Feedback policy to address this widespread issue.While Facebook has already been taking action against potentially abusive reviews, the new policy puts these rules into writing. Facebook’s new guidelines protect against people who leave fake bad reviews as a way to get refunds or other freebies out of a business that wants to please its customers, and they’re also supposed to tackle incentivized reviews. This addresses the overly positive (and usually very vague) reviews businesses pay random users to leave on their pages. I’m guessing that this applies to any (actually real) bad reviews... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last November, Uber launched a pilot of its Uber Pool replacement, dubbed UberX Share, in Miami, Florida. Today, the company says shared rides have returned to nine cities: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, San Diego, Portland, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh. Like Lyft, Uber paused its Uber Pool service in March 2020 with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.Lyft Shared rides resumed in several cities over the last few months, and now, UberX Share is following a similar rollout. According to Uber senior vice president of mobility Andrew Macdonald, the feature will only match riders headed in the same direction and is designed to add no more than eight additional minutes to your trip’s arrival time. ... Continue reading…

A home workspace teeming with tech, toys, and the occasional cat. Gaming tech, fan collections, and cats and dogs Continue reading…

Three devices on one neat charger. | Image: Twelve South Twelve South’s latest accessory is the HiRise3, a $99.99 three-in-one charger designed to keep your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods topped up with power. It has a very similar set of features to Belkin’s Boost↑Charge Pro 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe with a more compact design, lower starting price, and a couple more caveats.Let’s get the caveats out of the way first. Although the HiRise3 only works with MagSafe-compatible iPhones, it’s not an MFi-certified MagSafe charger. iPhone 12 and 13 devices will still magnetically stick to it, and they’ll still charge — but only at 7.5W rather than the full 15W of charging that MagSafe is capable of. That doesn’t mean an iPhone will literally charge half as fast, but it’s not as speedy... Continue reading…

The PS5 is a giant console, the biggest in modern history, and a DIY YouTuber has now created a PS5 “Slim” model that’s a fraction more than the thickness of the plastic cases that house PS5 games. Matt Perks, known as DIY Perks on YouTube, has spent a considerable amount of time and effort to create a PS5 “Slim” that brings the size down from nearly four inches to just under an inch.The result is a slim copper console that contains the key PS5 components, and a rather giant external power supply and cooling solution that can be hidden away. Most of the thickness of the PS5 comes from its cooling heatsink and power supply, so DIY Perks relocated those into a long external unit to make the actual console far more attractive on top of a... Continue reading…

Behold, my beautiful ... moth orchids. | Image: The Verge Sometimes, even as a tech reporter, you can be caught out by how quickly technology improves. Case in point: it was only today that I learned that my iPhone has been offering a feature I’ve long desired — the ability to identify plants and flowers from just a photo.It’s true that various third-party apps have offered this function for years, but last time I tried them I was disappointed by their speed and accuracy. And, yes, there’s Google Lens and Snapchat Scan, but it’s always less convenient to open up an app I wouldn’t otherwise use.But, since the introduction of iOS 15 last September, Apple has offered its own version of this visual search feature. It’s called Visual Look Up, and it’s pretty damn good.It works very simply. Just... Continue reading…

A leaked image of Sony’s Inzone H9. | Image: 91Mobiles / Onleaks Sony might be ready to announce a new lineup of gaming headsets, according to a report from 91Mobiles based on information provided by OnLeaks. Rather than being specifically PlayStation-branded, like Sony’s Pulse headset, the three headsets will apparently be part of a new gaming hardware brand from Sony called “Inzone,” which could also include a pair of gaming displays.Leaked images show the three so-called H-series headsets with a similar white color scheme to the existing Pulse headset. The H3 is wired, and has a USB-C port with a physical volume dial. There’s a button marked “NC/AMB” shown in renders of the H3, which suggests it might support noise cancellation and have an ambient audio mode to allow players to hear what’s going... Continue reading…

The faster you turn the Philips Hue Tap dial switch the faster your lights brighten or dim. | Image: Signify Signify just announced a new Philips Hue Tap dial switch, portable Hue Go lamp, and fully customizable track lighting in a range of smart lighting updates today.The Hue Tap dial switch (€49/$49) is available in matte black or white and adjusts lights with a turn of the dial. The faster you turn it the faster your lights brighten or dim. It features four buttons than can control scenes in up to three rooms or zones in the home. The magnetic base allows the Tap dial to be used as a remote control.The Philips Hue Perifo track lighting is made of individual rails that let you choose the length of the track. It can be attached to the wall or ceiling, connected to internal wiring or a standard outlet, and be fitted with your choice of Hue... Continue reading…

A screenshot of Downdetector showing problems across numerous services. | Screenshot: Downdetector.com Cloudflare experienced an outage on Tuesday morning, according to its status page. Cloudflare’s technology powers numerous other sites and services across the internet, and the outage seemed to impact a range of different sites, including Discord, Shopify, Grindr, Fitbit, and Peleton, according to Downdetector. Reports of issues started at around 2:30AM ET. Cloudflare reported that it resolved the issue at 4:06AM ET.The issues were most problematic for users of Cloudflare’s own DNS lookup service. Multiple Verge staff members found they were unable to access any websites at all during the outage as a result of using Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS service. Thankfully, the fix here is simple: change your DNS configuration. I found that simply... Continue reading…

Image: Matt Kennedy / Lucasfilm Ltd. There’s a lot of big shared universes that should be easier to binge Continue reading…

Image: Aspyr Media Plenty of games have launched in an unfinished state, but it's rare to see a port of a game first released in 2004 be so buggy that people who buy it can’t actually finish it. On Twitter game developer Aspyr admitted it was aware that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II was currently impossible to finish when played on the Switch.Aspyr’s bread and butter is porting beloved games so you would think it would know better than to ship something so busted. KOTOR II launched on the Nintendo Switch June 8, 2022, and as fans have picked it up and begun to play they noted a bug made it impossible to get past a cut scene about midway through the game.As first seen by Kotaku, one fan replied to Aspyr’s official Twitter account asking if... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge There’s good news for people who find bad news about crypto to be good. Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to buy an exchange-traded fund based on shorting Bitcoin. The financial firm ProShares will debut the first ETF to let you bet against Bitcoin, and it’s set to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange when the bell opens tomorrow, June 21, under the ticker BITI.The SEC previously approved a futures Bitcoin ETF, also from ProShares, in October. It debuted alongside some of the biggest growth Bitcoin has seen. Now, cryptocurrencies have been severely struggling, with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even stablecoins all suffering major losses.What’s funny about the SEC’s approval of an ETF that can be used to short Bitcoin is that it has not... Continue reading…

The Chromecast with Google TV is one of the first devices to access this new feature. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of the big features that shipped with the Chromecast with Google TV in late-2020 was its namesake Google TV software and dashboard. Google’s latest attempt at putting its services in front of your eyeballs while watching TV was a launcher that put personalization and smart recommendations at the forefront, as long as you’re a one-person household, of course. Google TV only supported one user profile, and after later adding kid profiles so you don’t have to subject yourself to endless Baby Shark-adjacent recommendations, Google promised to support more profiles. After some long delays and a slow rollout, that feature is finally here.Google TV users should now be able to add multiple user profiles to their devices thanks to a... Continue reading…

Resident Evil 4 on the Quest store is discounted to $35.99. | Oculus Meta has kicked off a Summer Sale on Quest VR games, and there are over 60 titles on sale. It might be a good time to stock up on games for a Quest 2 headset, especially if you’ve been holding out on some popular ones like Resident Evil 4, Vader Immortal, or Superhot VR.While Meta has been testing out all kinds of new VR and mixed reality headsets, the Quest 2 remains the de facto VR headset for gaming outside of Steam and PlayStation, and the only viable standalone option on the market. Today’s sale is discounting some individual games and bundles by as much as 40 percent off, though sadly Resident Evil 4 is only discounted by 10 percent — knocking its price down to $35.99 from its usual $39.99. That’s not much, but it’s still the... Continue reading…

Columbia Pictures If at first you don’t succeed you can try again, and again, and again, and eventually you might find an audience. At least that’s what appears to have happened for Morbius. The abysmal vampire superhero film starring Jared Leto is finally number one somewhere.In a press release issued by Fandango, which acquired Vudu in 2020, the company says that Morbius was the number one title in terms of revenue on Vudu for the week of June 13th, 2022. Notably, that’s revenue, not actual streams. Vudu charges for rentals and purchases and Morbius is currently available to rent for $5.99 or purchase for $19.99.While Morbius was number one at the box office its first weekend, its second week saw a drop off of 74-percent. That’s the worst second... Continue reading…

Using tech called “Private Access Tokens.” | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When iOS 16 comes out later this fall, you may notice that you don’t have to deal with as many annoying CAPTCHAs asking you to slide a puzzle piece or distinguish between a hill and a mountain. That’s because Apple’s introducing a feature for its iPhones and Macs called Automatic Verification, which let some sites know that you’re not a bot without you actually having to do anything (via MacRumors).Apple has worked with two major content delivery networks, Fastly and Cloudflare, to develop the system. When it launches with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, sites that use either of the services to defend against spam should be able to take advantage of the system and stop showing you so many CAPTCHAs. If you’re attentive to how many sites go... Continue reading…