The Verge

Starlink terminals have provided essential satellite internet service to Ukraine as the Russian invasion targets Ukraine’s communications infrastructure. | Photo by Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov has announced that over 10,000 additional Starlink terminals will be sent to Ukraine in the coming months, confirming that issues regarding how to fund the country’s critical satellite internet service have been resolved.The governments of several European Union countries are ready to share payment said Fedorov (who is also Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation) in an interview with Bloomberg, affirming that “As of now all financial issues have been resolved.” Fedorov did not publicly identify which governments are contributing towards the payments but confirmed that there’s currently no contract in place and that Ukraine will need to find additional funding by spring 2023. ... Continue reading…

A close up of the Raspberry Pi logo on a Pi 3 Model B. | Photo by Olly Curtis/Future via Getty Images The twinned impacts of the pandemic and subsequent supply chain problems mean that Raspberry Pi is unlikely to update its flagship miniature computer next year, its CEO Eben Upton has said. Upton made the comments during an interview with Explaining Computers (via Ars Technica), in which he referred to 2023 as a “recovery year” for the company.“Don’t expect a Pi 5 next year. Next year is a recovery year,” the CEO said. “There’s merit, I think, in us spending a year before we look at introducing anything new, spending a year recovering from what just happened to all of us.”“Next year is a recovery year”While there have been supply chain problems across much of the technology sector, Raspberry Pi has been a particularly high profile... Continue reading…

George Hotz is moving on from his Twitter internship. | Photo by Michael Zelenko / The Verge George Hotz, known for being the first person to carrier-unlock an iPhone and jailbreaking the PS3, both under his hacker alias “geohot,” has resigned from his Twitter internship, he announced Tuesday evening on Twitter.“Appreciate the opportunity, but didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there,” he wrote. He also said it was “sad” to see his GitHub “withering.”

Image: Eufy On the last episode of “Will Anker ever tell us what’s actually going on with its security cameras rather than lying and covering its tracks,” we told you how Eufy’s customer support team is now quietly providing some of the answers to the questions that the company had publicly ignored about its smart home camera security.Now, Anker is finally taking a stab at a public explanation, in a new blog post titled “To our eufy Security Customers and Partners.” Unfortunately, it contains no apology, and doesn’t begin to address why anyone would be able to view an unencrypted stream in VLC Media Player on the other side of the country, from a supposedly always-local, always-end-to-end-encrypted camera.What it does contain is a clear... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge Besides its more obvious stated goal of reducing inflation, the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was designed to force profound changes in the electric vehicle market. The legislation revises EV tax credit rules as it seeks to build up domestic battery manufacturing so that the US doesn’t cede the supply chain to China.It’s also profoundly confusing, hinging new EV tax credits not just on where the cars are built but also where batteries are assembled and where battery materials are sourced from. These rules were all supposed to take effect on January 1st, 2023 — that’s next weekend for anyone keeping track.Now, however, it’s going to take a little longer for all of the new provisions to be in place. On Monday,... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Two men have been accused of hacking into Ring doorbells and using their cameras to livestream swatting attacks, according to the Department of Justice. Kya Christian Nelson, 21, James Thomas Andrew McCarty, 20, and unnamed others allegedly spent a week using stolen Yahoo email addresses and passwords to access video from a dozen security systems before calling the police to each residence, according to the indictment, which you can read below.The DOJ says the scheme worked like this: the alleged perpetrators would get the info for the Yahoo accounts and then figure out if the owner also had a Ring account. If they did, Nelson, McCarty, and the others would allegedly “gather information” about the people before calling the police on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge A very happy holidays to you all! The news is slow, and the food is fried. I made the best latkes of my life (of anyone’s life?) this weekend and also ate four Peter Pan jelly donuts in the span of 24 hours. It really is the most wonderful time of year.On that note, we have a modified Hot Pod schedule for the next two weeks. We’ll have a Thursday issue for HP Insiders and be off Friday. Next week, we’ll only be publishing on Wednesday. And I am not saying that I hope you don’t read any of them, but I do hope you take some well-deserved time with loved ones and away from the internet.Today, Spotify flirts with an Anchor rebrand, and Angela Merkel loves true crime. Who knew?Anchor may be getting a rebrandSpotify simply loves a user... Continue reading…

Who doesn’t like free Wi-Fly? | Photo by Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images Delta Air Lines is reportedly planning to make in-flight Wi-Fi free on a “significant portion” of its planes starting early next year, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The company has reportedly been running tests where anyone who’s a member of its free-to-join SkyMiles rewards program gets free access to the internet while in the air, but it seems as if that perk may become much more widely available soon.Delta is expected to roll out the free Wi-Fi to an increasing number of planes in its fleet throughout 2023, according to the Journal. If it does, it could solve one of the major pain points of trying to stay connected while flying: inconsistency — not in the sense that in-flight Wi-Fi can often be unreliable or... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s self-service repair program has just been expanded to include the company’s lineup of M1-powered desktop Macs. As noted by Six Colors, customers in the US can now order genuine repair parts for the iMac, Mac Mini, and Mac Studio. The Studio Display has also been added to the program.You can browse the collection of repair manuals for all of these products on Apple’s website; in fact, you must go through the manual if you want to take advantage of the self-service repair program.The program is only recommended for people comfortable with carrying out these repairs, which involve dozens of steps, require the use of advanced tools, and can be very time-consuming. If you’re not intimidated by what you see in the manuals, the cost... Continue reading…

Image: Krafton PUBG Mobile’s latest major addition isn’t a new weapon, map, or crossover but an entire music label made just for the game. The new label is called “Beat Drop,” and while that’s an admittedly clever pun, we still don’t know much about what it will actually mean for artists or players.Big live service games are increasingly using in-game music to encourage players to hop in. PUBG Mobile hosted its first virtual concert this year with the K-pop girl group Blackpink. Roblox has hosted concerts with artists like Royal Blood and Lil Nas X. Fortnite is famous for its elaborate in-game shows featuring people as big as Marshmello and Ariana Grande, and the game even lets you listen to real-world music when you hop in a car and flip on the... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard From now until January 3rd, Overwatch 2 players can get a pretty sweet (heh) Gingerbread Bastion skin for the low, low, low price of one Overwatch coin. While the skin is yet another example of the Overwatch design team really nailing it, players might find themselves balking at the price. Not because it’s so cheap but because the offer seems like a poke in the eye, given the ongoing conversation regarding the game’s new monetization system.Before Overwatch 2 took the game free to play, players had the opportunity to win new skins via loot box. And, if luck wasn’t on their side, loot boxes also spat out fair chunks of premium currency that players could use to purchase a skin outright. In Overwatch 2’s new monetization scheme, players... Continue reading…

Image: Getty Cruise is delivering on its promise to expand its robotaxi service to two new markets before the end of the year. For years, Cruise has operated its autonomous ridehail service exclusively in San Francisco. But earlier this year, the GM-backed company said it would launch in Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas, before the end of 2022.On Tuesday, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt tweeted a short video of passengers from those two cities raving about its fully driverless vehicles as proof of a promise delivered. “Folks, we are entering the golden years of AV expansion,” he added.

The award he’s holding pales in comparison to the internet clout he just got. | Photo by Marcelo Endelli / Getty Images In addition to a World Cup and a full set of other soccer (aka football) awards, Lionel Messi has taken another crown: the person with the most-liked post on Instagram. The pictures he posted after the Argentine team won the 2022 men’s World Cup have racked up almost 64 million likes. That’s enough to beat the former record-holder, a stock photo of an egg on a white background with a caption that starts, “Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram.”The egg’s record has stood since early 2019 after it beat out a post from Kylie Jenner by racking up 19 million likes. At time of writing, it has around 57 million likes.

The USPS’s “Next Generation Delivery Vehicle” built by Oshkosh | Image: USPS The United States Postal Service said that it will add 66,000 fully electric delivery vehicles to its aging and polluting fleet of trucks. The mail agency agreed to spend $9.6 billion on 106,000 “next generation delivery vehicles,” which includes $3 billion secured through the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. After 2026, USPS will only purchase EVs.It’s a significant shift from the USPS’s previous proposal, which included only 40 percent EVs out of a full order of 84,000 delivery vehicles. And that deal came after an even less climate-friendly one that would have only seen 10,019 EVs being added to the fleet. But the constant pushback from Democrats and the Biden administration, which is requiring all federal vehicle... Continue reading…

A 3M plant during the pilot installation of a PFAS purification method in Antwerp on September 27th, 2022. | Photo by Nicolas Maeterlinck / BELGA / AFP via Getty Images 3M plans to phase out “forever chemicals” over the next few years, the manufacturing giant announced today. The announcement comes as the company faces a slew of lawsuits over its toxic legacy with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or forever chemicals.Specifically, 3M says it will discontinue the use of forever chemicals in its portfolio of products and “exit all PFAS manufacturing by the end of 2025.” Currently, 3M nets around $1.3 billion in annual sales of PFAS it manufactures. The chemicals have gone into many of its most iconic products over the years, including Scotchgard fabric protector. In the 1960s, the company also worked with the Navy to develop firefighting foam using PFAS.“PFAS are critical in the... Continue reading…

Within makes popular fitness app Supernatural. | Image: Supernatural / Within Meta has delayed its acquisition of virtual reality studio Within by a month, agreeing not to close the deal until January 31st. The agreement was noted in a court filing reported on by Reuters this morning, extending a temporary restraining order agreed to in August. The news comes as the two sides face off in court over whether Meta is unlawfully monopolizing the nascent VR industry.The FTC sued Meta in July to stop the acquisition of Within, which makes the popular VR fitness service Supernatural. It argued that Meta’s acquisition reduced competition in the potential “killer app” category of fitness apps, a claim Meta denies. Meta has previously acquired several other VR studios, including the developers of Beat Saber, a game with... Continue reading…

Unlike Bane, no one cared who I was, even after I put on the mask. I channeled my inner Bane, but not a single jaded New Yorker gave Dyson’s wearable air purifier a second glance. Continue reading…

The new bilingual search function is available in India first and will display search results in both English and Hindi in certain regions. | Illustration: The Verge Google is improving how Google search presents information in two languages, alongside developing its voice search feature to understand inquiries that use a mix of languages.Search results in the knowledge graph box and some sections like “Top stories” and “People also ask” will be displayed in both English and Hindi in Hindi-speaking regions of India, regardless of which language the user used to make the search. The new bilingual search function is available in India first with plans to add Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali sometime next year. The feature is location-based, which means you may already have access to it if Google recognizes you’re located in a region of India where Hindi is a dominant language. I... Continue reading…

The 8BitDo Pro 2 is the best pro controller for the Nintendo Switch and a number of other consoles. | Image: Sam Byford If you’re in the market for a versatile controller that doesn’t cost a grip, 8BitDo currently has a couple of models on sale you might be interested in. On sale for $39.99 at Amazon and Best Buy (normally $49.99), we consider the 8BitDo Pro 2 to be the best pro controller for the Nintendo Switch, even though it performs just as well with a variety of platforms, including Windows, macOS, and mobile devices.The Pro 2 is modeled after the classic SNES controller but includes a pair of grips for enhanced comfort. It also includes an additional pair of front triggers to support modern controller layouts and two back paddles as well. All of the inputs on the Pro 2 can be remapped using the 8BitDo app. You can learn more about it in our full... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon and European Union regulators have reached an agreement over two long-running antitrust cases, the European Commission has announced, which it’s hoped will help make third-party sellers more competitive on Amazon’s marketplace. The agreement means Amazon will avoid fines that had the potential to stretch into the billions of dollars, but it has agreed to make a series of legally binding commitments that it will have to abide by for up to seven years.The commitments come in three broad parts that are consistent with those that were made public in July this year. First, Amazon has agreed not to use nonpublic data from independent sellers on its Marketplace platform to make decisions like which products to launch or what prices to... Continue reading…

Accidental Delete grants users a five-second window to restore incorrectly deleted messages. | Image: WhatsApp WhatsApp has rolled out a new feature that allows users to restore deleted messages on the platform. Accidental Delete grants users a five-second window to bring back messages, acting as a safety net for WhatsApp users to correct mistaken deletions or reselect how they want a message to be deleted.There are currently two options available for deleting messages on WhatsApp: “Delete for me” (which hides the message from yourself but keeps it visible for everyone else) and “Delete for everyone.” Previously, if a user accidentally selected “Delete for me” instead of “Delete for everyone,” there was no way to access the message and select the correct deletion option — a distressing situation if you need to remove something sensitive from a... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Tumblr is adding support for livestreaming via the video platform Livebox. The feature is being rolled out to US users on iOS and Android now, and a release for global users and the desktop site is planned for the future. More details are outlined in a blog post, which dubs the service Tumblr Live.Tumblr has supported streaming in the past, but it did so by letting people share streams from other services like YouNow and YouTube. The new option is described as a native Tumblr streaming service powered by Livebox. (Livebox is operated by the Meet Group, a subsidiary of the dating app company ParshipMeet Group.) Livebox allows users to tip streamers, and by the same token, Tumblr will let you pay creators in a virtual currency called... Continue reading…