The Verge

AirDrop in China is now limited to just ten minutes of wireless file-sharing for “Everyone” following its use in protests against the Chinese government. | Image: Bloomberg Apple has placed time restrictions on AirDrop wireless file-sharing across iPhones in China after the feature was used by protesters to share images opposing the Chinese government, Bloomberg reports.The “Everyone” option in Airdrop is now limited to a ten-minute window for users in China. After the ten minutes have passed, AirDrop’s device-to-device sharing will switch back to “Contacts Only,” making it harder to distribute content to strangers en masse. These new time restrictions have been introduced by Apple just weeks after the service was used to spread posters opposing president Xi Jinping.iOS 16.1.1 release notes make no mention of the new limitationsThe AirDrop restriction was included in the public release of iOS 16.1.1 on... Continue reading…

Philips Hue’s new Festavia smart string lights cost $160. | Image: Signify With pumpkins being put out to pasture and turkeys starting to gobble, it's time to think about decorating your home for the winter holidays. Be it Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or Solstice, any celebration can be glammed up with some smart lighting, and Philips Hue’s new Festavia string lights look like a good option for a little extra wow.The $159.99 string of smart lights features 250 mini color-changing smart LEDs along a 66-foot / 20-meter cord. These indoor lights are suitable for swirling around your Christmas tree, stringing up your staircase, or draping over your mantlepiece to bring a touch of holiday magic to your home. They’re available to order now at philips-hue.com. Image: Signify The Hue Festavia... Continue reading…

Calorie data can only ever be a very rough estimate. Like many other first-gen devices, the Google Pixel Watch has a lot of quirks. So far, early users have reported that the watch dramatically overreported calorie burn due to a bug. According to Android Police, the Pixel Watch team is aware of the issue and suggests rebooting the device could fix the problem. That said, it’s an apt reminder that calorie burn isn’t a reliable metric.In the Pixel Watch’s case, the bug appears to have impacted how a user’s basal metabolic rate was calculated. Basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is essentially the number of calories you burn every day simply existing. It’s calculated based on factors like your age, weight, sex, and height. If you put in the wrong data, you’re going to get the wrong calorie burn.... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge There are a number of legitimate reasons that you’d want to record a phone call. For example, when you’re talking to a medical professional about, say, test results, you may want to make sure that you got all the information right. Or if you’re interviewing somebody for an article or for a job position, you may want to be able to make sure you remember the conversation accurately. Or if an older member of your family suddenly launches into a story about one of your grandparents, it might be nice to have a record of it.Unfortunately, though, it’s become nearly impossible to record a phone call. As I explained in a previous article, federal law in the US says that you can legally record a phone conversation but only if you are taking part... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro Twitter just rolled out the new Twitter Blue with verification, and one unsaid feature is that it will let you see who is paying the $7.99 per month fee for their blue check mark.For as long as I can remember, Twitter has offered additional context about verification check marks when you click on them on someone’s profile. The old context message stated that accounts were verified because they were “notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category,” with a link to Twitter’s support page about verification. Now, clicking someone’s blue check just says that “this account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue,” also with a link to the verification support page.

What’s next for the Pixel may already be leaking. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro have barely been out for a month, and we’re already hearing rumors about Google’s next flagship phones. German mobile news site WinFuture reports two new Google devices with codenames “Husky” and “Shiba” have been referenced in publicly available source code. Both devices are apparently housing a new “Zuma” chip that could be a successor to the company’s Tensor G2 SoC (via XDA Developers).The code was analyzed by WinFuture writer Ronald Quandt, who found the doggy-nicknamed smartphones within and found that they run on Android 14. Google seems to have given it a new dessert name, too: “Upside Down Cake,” continuing the tradition of sweetly naming its Android OS versions, even though those have faded to the... Continue reading…

Image: Spotify In a blog post today, Spotify shared details of a revamped Apple Watch app that makes improvements to usability and offline playback. It also adds more visual polish with bigger album art and new animations. “You’ll be able to more easily browse and choose your favorite music and podcasts in Your Library, as well as more quickly download music to listen offline from the watch itself,” the post reads. “There’s also a new sleek design with larger artwork, animations, and added functionality—like swiping to like a song.”Unfortunately, Spotify doesn’t mention whether Apple Watch users can now download higher-quality music files; the wrist-worn version of the app has so far limited downloads to a fairly low bitrate.The post also... Continue reading…

The Ignite 3 is meant for casual users, an audience that isn’t too familiar with Polar. | Image: Polar Electro Folks who like to optimize their days might get a kick out of Polar’s latest fitness watch. The $329.95 Ignite 3 comes with a new feature that claims to predict when you’ll be at your most alert during the day based on your circadian rhythms.The new feature, dubbed SleepWise, is an extension of Polar’s existing sleep tracking. It purportedly analyzes your sleep quality, timing, and duration to determine your sleep-wake cycles. That, in turn, generates a daily report that predicts when you’ll be most alert during the day. The gist is to help users determine when’s the best time to plan a workout or block off time to focus on projects. Conversely, it’s also meant to help you visualize when might be a better window of time to take it... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge We discuss some devices and strategies that can keep your turkey hot and your temper cool. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta has announced it will lay off 11,000 employees or around 13 percent of the company’s total staff. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the news in a blog post, saying he was at fault for being overoptimistic about the company’s future growth based on a pandemic surge.“At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth,” said Zuckerberg. “Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.”The layoffs are the first broad job cuts since Meta’s founding in 2004Zuckerberg said the company... Continue reading…

Image: Playground Games Forza Horizon 5 players now have access to in-game ray tracing and DLSS or FSR upscaling support on PC. The latest series 14 “Donut Media” update arrived yesterday, and it now allows Forza Horizon 5 players to enable ray tracing in free roam areas and races at ultra or extreme settings.You’ll need a powerful PC to play with 4K extreme settings, but Playground Games has also added in Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology alongside AMD’s very latest FSR 2.2 support. Both upscaling technologies will take a 1080p image and upscale it to 4K, improving the performance in Forza Horizon 5. Image: Playground Games New ray tracing settings for Forza Horizon 5. If you have an Nvidia RTX card then DLSS support will be... Continue reading…

Wow! More stock sales | Laura Normand / The Verge Elon Musk has sold another $3.4 billion in Tesla shares, according to a series of forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. Musk has offloaded almost $20 billion in Tesla shares this year, mostly to finance his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.Musk sold $8.4 billion in shares in April and another $6.9 billion in August. After his sales in April, he tweeted, “No further TSLA sales planned after today.” Then after the sales in August, he again said that he was done selling, and that those shares were offloaded in case he had to buy Twitter — at the time, he was embroiled in a lawsuit for attempting to back out of the deal.Twitter has been struggling. Some major advertisers have paused spending on Twitter because of... Continue reading…

Your homescreen could look different with the new mode. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple is working on a brand new “Custom Accessibility Mode” for iOS, according to evidence found by 9to5Mac in the second iOS 16.2 developer beta. The company apparently says this mode offers a “customizable, streamlined way to use your iPhone and iPad,” which seems to mean you’ll be able to adjust some settings to make your iOS devices easier to use.With the new mode, “users will be able to set things like UI and larger text, apps available on the Home Screen, allowed contacts, and access to hardware buttons for when Custom Accessibility Mode is enabled,” 9to5Mac reports. In screenshots shared by the outlet, you can see how the mode enables things like much larger app icons, a big back button, and a simpler UI in the Messages app. ... Continue reading…

Nvidia’s A100 card, which is the basis for the A800 being sold in China. | Image: Nvidia Nvidia has released a cut-down version of its high-end A100 GPU as a way to get around restrictions the US government recently imposed to limit how companies can sell AI training equipment to countries like China and Russia. The card, known as the A800, should have the same massive computing capabilities as the original but can only communicate with other cards in a computing cluster at 400 gigabytes per second instead of 600Gbps. According to The Wall Street Journal, that means the A800 should be just as good for simple tasks but will be significantly less effective when it’s part of something like a supercomputer.An unnamed Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters that the card is an “alternative product to the Nvidia A100 GPU for customers... Continue reading…

Nick Barclay / The Verge Disney Plus added over 9 million subscribers in the US in the last several months, and many people in the US are opting for its bundle that includes Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus. In its earnings report on Tuesday, Disney also revealed that it added 12.1 million Disney Plus subscribers globally, making for 164 million in total, as well as 14.6 million subscribers across all its services.Christine McCarthy, the chief financial officer at Disney, said during an earnings call that 40 percent of Disney Plus subscribers have the bundle with Hulu and ESPN Plus, which its pricing makes it increasingly hard to pass up. It provides access to all services for $14.99 per month for the ad-supported versions of Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus or... Continue reading…

Mallori Johnson as Dana James. The beauty of Octavia Butler’s Kindred is how the novel frames empathy and care for others as forces powerful enough to move people through space and time. But the first trailer for FX’s upcoming series based on the book makes it seem like this take on Kindred’s going to be much more focused on scaring viewers with the horrors of time-traveling while Black.Kindred tells the story of writer Dana (Mallori Johnson) and her partner Kevin (Micah Stock), an interracial couple who’ve just moved into a new home in Los Angeles. While both Kevin and Dana are excited to begin the next chapter of their lives together in a new city, the unshakable unease Dana feels as she tries to settle in LA soon reveals itself to be much more than just a feeling.... Continue reading…