The Verge

Airbnb guests can soon filter pricing for accommodations to include all fees before taxes, avoiding any unexpected additional charges on the final price. | Image: Airbnb Prices on Airbnb are set to get more transparent following a planned update to the platform’s search function.Guests will soon be able to filter their search results by the total cost of the stay before taxes, which will include additional compulsory charges such as cleaning fees. The appearance of these fees separate from nightly rates has long been criticized for deceptively making accommodations appear more affordable. Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky shared the announcement on Twitter along with a video demonstrating how the planned “display total price” switch can be enabled to display the total cost of nightly rates and fees, with that price displaying on search results, map, price filter, and individual listing pages.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope is one of the many games that Target has included in its buy two, get one free deal. | Image credit: Ubisoft / Nintendo Target’s promotion that will set you up with three video games for the price of two is something that gamers shouldn’t miss. If you buy two full-price games, you’ll get a third of equal or lesser value for free. The retailer is including several physical copies of games in the deal, including recent ones like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II for PlayStation or Xbox, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope for the Nintendo Switch, Elden Ring for PlayStation and Xbox, and many more. Sadly, God of War Ragnarök isn’t included in the promotion, but other PlayStation hits are, including Gran Turismo 7 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.As we get closer to Black Friday later this month, don’t let too many of these money-saving opportunities escape you. A... Continue reading…

Telegram Premium subscribers now have access to voice-to-text transcription for video messages. | Image: Telegram Telegram has updated its app with new features and visual updates, including the addition of voice-to-text transcription for videos, separate topics in large group chats, and “Collectible Usernames.”Video messaging transcription can be accessed by tapping the “→A” button on the bottom-right of a video, but won’t be available for everyone — much like Telegram’s existing voice message transcription, the feature is restricted to Telegram Premium users. A Telegram Premium subscription costs $4.99 a month and comes with additional benefits such as faster downloads, no ads, and a larger file upload limit of 4GB. Image: Telegram No time to watch videos from your friends? Telegrams' voice-to-text transcription feature... Continue reading…

The deadline to deliver 100,000 electric vans has been pushed to 2030. Amazon’s fleet of Rivian-made electric delivery vans is growing. Since first rolling out earlier this year, the retail giant’s new zero-tailpipe emission vehicles have made more than 5 million deliveries in the US, with its fleet-size exceeding 1,000 EDVs (electric delivery vans).That’s still only a fraction of the company’s overall transportation fleet, which is comprised 30,000 Amazon-branded delivery vehicles and 20,000 branded trailers. But the electric-portion is growing, with Rivian eventually expecting to deliver 100,000 vans to the company.That’s still only a fraction of the company’s overall transportation fleetStarting in July, the EDVs first rolled out in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, San Diego, and Seattle.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s pushing back the launch of its new Blue subscription with verification until after this week’s midterm elections, according to a report from The New York Times. According to an internal memo viewed by the outlet, a manager working on the project said they’ve “made the decision to move the launch of this release to Nov. 9, after the election.”Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, announced the new $7.99 per month Twitter Blue earlier this month with perks like fewer ads, search priority, the ability to post longer videos, and the ability to pay your way to verification. Under Musk’s new rules, anyone can get a verified checkmark if they pay for Blue, sparking concern over whether users will be able to tell real accounts from fake... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After Apple issued several copyright claims, YouTube took down an archival channel containing hundreds of decades-old videos from past Apple Worldwide Developer Conferences (WWDC). Brendan Shanks, the owner of the Apple WWDC Videos channel, says his account’s been permanently disabled after receiving well over three copyright strikes — the maximum number of violations you can incur before YouTube removes your account.In screenshots of emails shared by Shanks, Apple issued a number of takedown requests against his videos, some of which dated back to the early 2000s. Shanks says he still has all the original video files and descriptions, and is currently trying to get the content over to the Internet Archive. Apple didn’t immediately... Continue reading…

Image: Riot Games This year’s edition of the League of Legends World Championship featured Lil Nas X, Jackson Wang, and some impressive technology. Continue reading…

The best deal on the best earbuds is a hard combo to beat. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge There’s no telling what another day might bring — especially if you too are glued to our coverage of a certain social media hellscape — but you can rest assured that The Verge’s deals team is always on the lookout for ways to help you save, both in the form of early Black Friday deals or whatever we can scrounge up for you on a random Saturday.And we’ve got some bangers for you this week because Sony’s WF-1000XM4 earbuds are on sale for an all-time low of around $178 at Amazon and Target until tomorrow. That’s around $100 off their regular price of $278, and much better than the typical $30 discount we see.The WF-1000XM4 frequently come up when we’re talking earbuds, namely because they’re just that good. The excellent all-rounders... Continue reading…

Image: Nissan The Specialty Equipment Market Association, or SEMA, held its annual conference in Las Vegas this week. Billed as one of the biggest car shows in the world, the event typically brings together more than 135,000 attendees in the automotive aftermarket industry to see the newest trends in vehicle repairs and modifications.And this year, EVs were a particular focus. The event featured a dedicated space for EVs, labeled “SEMA Electrified,” and according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, it was 740 percent larger compared to 2019, when it was first debuted. Several major automakers showed up with a bunch of unique EV concepts in tow. Here are some of the ones that stood out the most.Ford Image: Ford I... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard In the perfect prelude to the Overwatch League 2022 grand finals, Blizzard has revealed Overwatch 2’s newest character. Ramattra is the game’s 36th hero, and his abilities and story seem like they’ll make for the most interesting addition to the roster yet.Ramattra is the leader of Null Sector, a group of sentient robots called omnics committed to the liberation of their people by any means necessary. In Overwatch’s overarching story (yes, there is one) Null Sector is one of the biggest baddies, responsible for touching off the war between robots and humans that became the instigating event for the creation of the Overwatch task force.Ramattra is a tank like you’ve never seen before. Rather than being the kind of tank that shields... Continue reading…

Imagine: mounting your phone with magnets, and charging it at 15W at the same time. | Image: Apple A mere two years after Apple introduced MagSafe for iPhones, we're finally getting the accessory that probably should've launched with it: a magnetic car mount that's also capable of actually charging your phone. As 9to5Mac spotted, Belkin has announced its Boost Charge Pro Wireless Car Charger With MagSafe, which is available for pre-order on the Apple store.I know what some of you may be thinking: “wait, Amazon is flooded with MagSafe car chargers, and they’re nowhere even close to $100. What makes this one special?” The answer is that this one is actually MagSafe, where the rest are MagSafe compatible. That means that they use a ring of magnets to hold your phone, and standard Qi charging that can’t pump as much power into your... Continue reading…

I guess we’ll see. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter just laid off about half of its workforce, but the company’s “core moderation capabilities” are still in place, the company’s head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth said in a tweet thread Friday evening.The layoffs affected “approximately” 15 percent of Twitter’s Trust and Safety group, “with our frontline moderation staff experiencing the least impact,” according to Roth. The company restricted access to some internal tools last week for “security reasons” — Roth didn’t say exactly when, but that would put the timing around when Elon Musk took over the company — but “most” content moderators who did frontline reviews weren’t impacted, and access to those tools will be “fully restored in the coming days.”Daily volume of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth already settled with the FTC over fraudulent activity affecting MoviePass customers, and are being sued by the SEC, but now the former heads of MoviePass and its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), are facing criminal allegations of securities fraud and wire fraud.The Department of Justice announced the charges today, saying false statements made by both men defrauded investors in HMNY when the execs pretended like the company’s money-losing $9.95 “unlimited” moviegoing plan had any hope of profitability.Chris Bond, a spokesperson for Farnsworth, said in a statement emailed to The Verge that “The indictment repeats the same allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The swiftness with which Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav began canceling shows and entire movies as part of his plan to boost the company’s revenue was cause for much alarm earlier this year. As series like Infinity Train and Summer Camp Island began disappearing from HBO Max, that alarm only intensified and led many to wonder just what Zaslav hoped to gain by essentially killing off pieces of its catalog just months ahead of its fusion with Discovery Plus. But in a recent WBD earnings call, Zaslav said that he’s confident those cuts were all the right decision because none of those series were performing in a way that benefited the company.In response to a question about Warner Bros. Discovery’s free cash flow as the company... Continue reading…

Image: HBO Westworld has been canceled. The Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan show about robots and apocalypses captivated and then confused audiences and finally seemed to have forgotten what it was about entirely by the time its fourth and final season aired earlier this year. So while it’s a bummer the show is gone, it’s also not much of a surprise.HBO emailed a statement on the cancellation, saying:

The hours I have spent on this site... My taboo teenage pastime introduced me to the wide world of internet subcultures. Continue reading…

Vjeran Pavic / The Verge About half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees are now gone, with teams focused on trust and safety issues hit the hardest. Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge Continuity Camera is one of the most exciting features of macOS Ventura. It allows you — if you’re taking a call from your MacBook — to substitute an iPhone’s camera for the webcam. The feature can be a bit of a hassle to set up, but once you’ve got all the appropriate settings, it’s very easy to use.In order to use Continuity Camera, make sure your hardware and software are compatible. You can be on any Mac computer that’s running iOS Ventura. iPhone requirements get a bit more complicated — Continuity Camera technically works with an iPhone XR or later, but only the 11 and later can use certain fancier features like Center Stage and Desk View, while you need a 12 or later if you want to use Studio Light. Then, whatever phone you... Continue reading…

An artist’s impression of an asteroid lurking inside the orbits of Earth and Venus. | Image: DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/ This week, astronomers announced the discovery of three previously unknown near-Earth asteroids that had been hiding in the glare of the Sun — and one of them is a giant. At nearly a mile (1.5 kilometers) across, it is big enough to cause planet-wide destruction if it hit the Earth, though it won’t come anywhere close enough to be a threat for a hundred years or so.The search for potentially hazardous asteroids like this one has ramped up in recent years, with multiple ongoing efforts to identify and catalog large space rocks passing close by. From twilight observations from the ground to space-based telescopes peering into hard-to-see regions of the sky, these programs are focused on identifying potentially dangerous asteroids as... Continue reading…

Fully’s Jarvis Bamboo Standing Desk is discounted by 20 percent right now. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Fully is joining the growing list of retailers kicking off their Black Friday-adjacent sales. It’s having a site-wide sale this month, taking 20 percent off everything ranging from standing desks to office chairs. Fully makes some of our favorite standing desks and accessories, and any opportunity to save on these home office essentials is worth checking out. Whether you prefer a 30 x 24-inch desk topper made of bamboo or a custom desktop that doubles as a whiteboard, Fully’s work-from-home staples are worth the price. This 20 percent discount also applies to all builds, along with any accessories you’d like to order, which range from powered grommets to help keep your cables under control to a bottle opener hidden underneath your... Continue reading…

The Astro City Mini V. | Image: Limited Run Games The company has two new tiny devices, the Astro Mini City V and the Sega Genesis Mini 2, that prove there’s still a place for miniaturized classics. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is being sued in a class-action lawsuit filed by former employees laid off as part of a mass firing instigated by the company’s new owner, Elon Musk.The lawsuit alleges that the workers were not given enough notice of their firing in accordance with both the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) and California WARN Act. These acts require that companies give employees at least 60 days of advance notice before a mass firing takes place.“Look Ma I’m suing Twitter”The lawsuit was filed in an attempt to “make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed the complaint on... Continue reading…

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 on November 1, 2021, in Glasgow, United Kingdom. | Photo by Yves Herman - WPA Pool / Getty Images More than 30,000 people representing governments, businesses, and environmental and human rights groups around the world are expected to gather next week to talk shop on climate change. The occasion is the United Nations’ annual climate summit, called the 27th Conference of the Parties, or COP27, which is scheduled to take place from November 6th through 18th.Every year, the conference is billed as an opportunity for the world to come together to tackle the climate crisis. World leaders sometimes make new commitments to curb their country’s greenhouse gas emissions or pen agreements with other heads of state to transition to clean energy and funnel money into building a more resilient world. More often, advocates walk away disappointed... Continue reading…

Is this the 2022 iPad Pro, or is it last year’s model? You can’t tell, and you won’t tell when using it, either. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s iPad releases this year have been, well, lackluster to say the least. That isn’t to say the new 10th-gen iPad and the M2-equipped iPad Pro are bad products — far from it. But they either aren’t significantly better than their predecessors or have an awkward value proposition that puts them in between more compelling options in Apple’s lineup.If you’ve been planning to buy an iPad this year, this is good news because you can confidently purchase last year’s (or even older) models without really giving up much. And based on the pricing we’ve seen on older iPads recently, that can either save you a ton of money or get you a more capable model for the same price you might pay for the latest base version.Buying an older model also... Continue reading…

Cherry’s new MX Black Clear-Top switches. | Image: Cherry Cherry’s latest mechanical keyboard switch is the MX Black Clear-Top. It’s a design that’s based on a rare linear switch that was produced briefly during the 1980s for Nixdorf keyboards, leading to them being nicknamed “Nixies” by enthusiasts. The retro switches, which are effectively a variant of the linear Cherry MX Black that use a heavier spring and clear, rather than black, plastic case, have since become a highly sought after collector’s item, prized for their supposed smoothness and rich sound.How highly sought after? Well this review of the Nixie switch from ThereminGoat notes that they’ve been known to sell for $7 a switch. Considering the average keyboard has around 100 keys, that means a full set of Nixie switches could set... Continue reading…

The Substack Chat feature was designed to give content creators and writers a way to better connect with their subscribers and online community. | Image: Substack Substack has launched Substack Chat, a new discussions feature designed to provide content creators with the means to build up their own online communities outside of social media.Substack Chat allows writers, podcasters, and other creators to host conversations with their audiences, setting a topic for discussion without needing to hack together integrations with services such as Discord, Telegram, or Slack. Chat can be made available for all subscribers or restricted to those that pay for your content.Substack Chat could be an alternative community for those leaving Twitter“Chat is a community space reimagined specifically for writers and creators — it’s like having your own private social network where you make the rules,” Substack... Continue reading…

You’ll be able to accept contactless payments on your iPhone through the PayPal or Venmo iOS apps. | Image: Apple PayPal is going to make it easier for merchants in the US to take payments right on their iPhones. The company is adding support for Apple’s Tap to Pay technology into the PayPal and Venmo iOS apps, meaning merchants will be able to accept contactless credit or debit cards and mobile wallets without an external card reader (via MacRumors).Apple first announced Tap to Pay in February. Integration with PayPal and Venmo’s apps might mark a notable step up for adoption of Apple’s touchless technology and could be helpful for merchants who don’t want to rely on external readers to accept contactless payments. It will also help PayPal compete with payments rival Square, which launched support for Tap to Pay in September.Support will be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In an earnings call today, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that the merging of HBO Max and Discovery Plus was going so well that the target date for the launch of the new service would be moving from summer 2023 to spring 2023.From their user interface to their backend to their content, the two services are extraordinarily different, with HBO Max likely leading Discovery Plus in subscriptions as it had approximately 76.8 million users in April before the acquisition, and the combined services now have 94.9 million subscribers. But Zaslav’s plan has always been to merge the two services, which his team views as targeting very different markets. Early this year, a slide claiming HBO Max skewed male and Discovery Plus... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you’re paying Dish to stream live TV channels over the internet, prepare for a higher bill yet again: the company’s Sling TV streaming service is raising prices by $5 a month for the fourth time in five years. Sling Orange and Sling Blue pay TV packages will now cost $40 a month each — up from $35 previously — and you’ll pay $55 for the package with both Orange and Blue.Existing subscribers should see the price increases on the first bill they get after December 3rd; new customers will have to pay the higher rate starting today.In an official blog post, Sling TV president Gary Schanman blamed the rising cost of programming for the latest price hike, without offering further explanation. We’d probably put money on Disney having... Continue reading…

Screenshot by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Were Samsung’s jaw-dropping 49-inch Odyssey G9 and Neo G9 not enough monitor for you? Did the 55-inch swiveling cockpit that is the Odyssey Ark leave you cold? The electronics and semiconductor giant is preparing to announce an unprecedented 8K resolution version of its massive curved screen, AMD just revealed at its RDNA 3 GPU event.It’ll feature DisplayPort 2.1, but that’s the only other thing we know as of now. AMD says we’ll get more details at CES 2023 in January.While the 32:9 aspect ratio of these monitors suggests the screen won’t be a true 8K resolution — for comparison, the “5K” Odyssey G9 has a height of just 1440 pixels to go with its incredible 5,120 pixels of width — it would likely be a substantial improvement in... Continue reading…

Getty Images On Thursday, the internet-based telecom provider Vonage agreed to pay $100 million to the Federal Trade Commission to settle charges that it created an artificially burdensome process to cancel the service that included hidden termination fees.In its complaint, the FTC alleged that Vonage, an Ericsson subsidiary, made it easy for consumers to sign up for its services but far more difficult to cancel. Consumers could sign up for service in a variety of ways, including online and over the phone, but Vonage forced customers to speak with a live “retention agent” in order to cancel service.Additionally, the FTC claimed Vonage purposefully hid the cancellation number on its website, limited the hours these cancellation calls were... Continue reading…