The Verge

DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection dashboard. | Image: DuckDuckGo After rolling out its Email Protection service in private beta last year, DuckDuckGo has announced that it’s finally available to all users. Email Protection is a forwarding service that assigns you a free “@duck.com” email address and intercepts email trackers before they hit your personal inbox.If you need a refresher on exactly what DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service does, it lets you use either a personal or private “duck” address to shield your real email address from companies. Before the email hits your inbox, DuckDuckGo strips it of the trackers that snoop on your location when opening an email, when you opened it, and the device you used. It also breaks down how many trackers it removed, as well as which companies they were... Continue reading…

Can’t decide between buying a flat or curved monitor? Corsair thinks it might have the solution to your (admittedly, niche) woes with the Xeneon Flex 45WQHD240: a flexible OLED gaming monitor that you can literally bend by hand to switch form factors.The transforming display is possible thanks to a W-OLED panel from LG Display, which Corsair worked closely with to develop the Xeneon Flex. Interestingly, in contrast to a prototype LG Display showed off at CES last year which used motors to transform between flat and curved modes, Corsair has you manually bend its monitor into shape with a pair of handles that extend from the left and right sides of the display, as this video from YouTuber Bitwit explains. You can even adjust the... Continue reading…

Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s former security chief-turned-whistleblower. | Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images Twitter’s former security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko will testify in Congress next month after he went public with damning allegations about the social media company’s security practices and attempts to mislead regulators, the Washington Post reports. Zatko is scheduled to speak at a hearing on September 13th and is expected to address the privacy and national security concerns raised in his complaint.“Mr. Zatko’s allegations of widespread security failures and foreign state actor interference at Twitter raise serious concerns,” said the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill) and the committee top Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) in a joint statement. “If these claims are accurate, they... Continue reading…

Nick Barclay / The Verge The Ethereum Foundation has announced that September 6th will be the starting date for the system-wide transition known as the Merge. The first domino will be toppled on the 6th with the activation of the Bellatrix upgrade, which will then set the rest of the Merge process in action, with a completion date expected between September 10th and 20th.The Merge refers to the switchover of Ethereum from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake — two different methods of validating transactions on the blockchain. If you’re not particularly interested in world of crypto, then the technical differences between the two approaches are a little arcane (The Guardian has a good explainer here). But the big upshot is that the new proof-of-stake method will... Continue reading…

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Nvidia is getting ready to announce its next-gen GPU architecture, codenamed Lovelace. Ampere is the current GPU architecture that powers Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs, after Turing debuted with the first RTX cards in 2018. Nvidia is now expected to detail its Lovelace GPU architecture at GTC 2022 in September, with CEO Jensen Huang hinting at an announce during the company’s recent earnings call.“We’ll get through this over the next few months and go into next year with our new architecture,” said Huang, while discussing a slowdown in gaming GPU demand. “I look forward to telling you more about it at GTC next month.”A new GPU architecture announce doesn’t mean we’ll see RTX 40-series GPUs immediately, though. Nvidia first unveiled its... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is increasing its PS5 prices in the UK, Europe, Japan, China, Australia, Mexico, and Canada. Prices are jumping by 10 percent in Europe, 21 percent in Japan, and by around 6 percent in the UK as inflation rates impact Sony and many other companies. While Sony is increasing PS5 prices in many parts of the world, it says there won’t be a price increase in the US.“We’re seeing high global inflation rates, as well as adverse currency trends, impacting consumers and creating pressure on many industries,” explains Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. “Based on these challenging economic conditions, SIE has made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price (RRP) of PlayStation 5 in select... Continue reading…

Starlink is getting a little cheaper for some. | Image: Starlink Starlink, Elon Musk’s internet-from-space service provided by SpaceX, is notifying customers with some good news: their monthly subscriptions have been reduced in response to “local market conditions.”I received one of these notifications for my Starlink RV service that normally costs me €124 each month in the Netherlands. It says, “Effective 8/24/2022, Starlink is reducing your monthly service fee to €105.” Well, ok.The price cut is welcome at a time when everything else is getting more expensive due to inflation. “The price reduction factors in your local market conditions and is meant to reflect parity in purchasing power across our customers,” reads the announcement.The situation in the US is less clearOthers are reporting... Continue reading…

Sing me the new song of your people. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s upcoming iOS 16 update brings with it a lot of new features — things like the ability to customize your Lock Screen, edit iMessages, or copy written text from a video. But Apple’s also made an under-the-radar change to some of the iPhone’s sounds, which some of us here at The Verge noticed while using the betas.When you go to the Find My app and choose the “play sound” option for an iOS / iPadOS 16 device, you’ll now be greeted with what sounds like an electronic xylophone, instead of the pinging sound that played on iOS 15 and before. The change also applies to when you ask your Apple Watch to ping your phone for you, except the sound plays once instead of over and over. One of my co-workers described the new sound as higher... Continue reading…

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of games like Kirby and Super Smash Bros., has revealed his next big project: a YouTube channel. The gaming folk hero teased that he was working on something new earlier this week, and now you can super smash that like button and subscribe to his new channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games.As of this writing, there are three videos: one that’s all about the channel, one covering what games Sakurai has worked on (like one of the DS greats, Meteos), and one diving deep about how to use in-game pauses for certain effects (like “hit stop” moments you might see in Smash when landing a punch).Sakurai, of course, is no stranger to appearing on video; he’s been Nintendo’s primary Super Smash Bros. presenter... Continue reading…

Photo by Mike Kemp / In Pictures via Getty Images Wordle is now available in The New York Times Crossword app for both iOS and Android users. The addictive guessing game joins both The New York Times Crossword variants, Spelling Bee, and more. Users can also continue to play the game on their desktop and through the mobile website.The word-guessing game became an immediate phenomenon after it was released in October 2021. The Times then acquired Wordle from its creator Josh Wardle in January. That decision was not without complaints, as users began speculating that the game had become harder and some of their streaks were ruined. Despite complaints after its acquisition, The Times said that the game allowed The Times to see a jump in new subscribers at its earnings meeting in May and... Continue reading…

Google Play Games will allow users to play natively on their PCs | Image: Google Starting today, users in Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Australia will be able to register for the open beta for Google Play Games on their PCs. Normally, this catalog of games would be restricted to Chromebooks or other Android-enabled devices, but it will soon be available able to run natively on PCs for users in those select countries.The open beta isn’t currently available to users in other markets, even though Windows 11 users have had access to Android apps from the Amazon app store for some time. Google originally announced that it would be bringing its catalog of Android games to Windows PCs back in December of last year. Image: Google You’ll be able to sync your saves across multiple devices... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I’ve been using the Steam iOS app quite a bit since getting a Steam Deck, but every time I opened the app, I had to deal with an interface that just felt old — the overall design hadn’t been updated in a very long time. It seems Valve felt that way, too, because it’s now beta testing a new version of the app that looks dramatically different and, if you ask me, dramatically better.In a blog post, Valve mentioned the new design as one of the key new features of the app, and the improvements, at least in my brief testing on iOS, are immediately obvious. For example, the app now has a navigation bar on the bottom of the screen where you can navigate to things like the store, your news feed, and the Steam Guard section. S... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon plans to shut down Amazon Care, the virtual health service it first launched in 2019, by the end of the year. The company announced the decision to Amazon Care employees on Wednesday, The Washington Post reported.“Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term,” Amazon senior vice president of health Neil Lindsay in an email to staff shared with Fierce Healthcare. We’ve obtained the full memo and have included it at the end of this story.Amazon Care started as a service for Amazon employees based in Seattle. It paired virtual health care services with the option for an in-home... Continue reading…

The RTX 3080 Ti, one of Nvidia’s top-shelf current generation cards. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge PC sales abruptly tanked this quarter, so Nvidia, like Intel, is suddenly under the gun. What are you going to do about the billions of dollars of growth that just went up in smoke, investors tend to ask! But while that’s an annoying situation for Nvidia during today’s Q2 earnings, it’s an intriguing one for gamers like you and me — because Nvidia tried to placate those investors by revealing that exciting things may be on the way.First: discounts! Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed what we’ve suspected for months: Nvidia actually built too many gaming GPUs and is now being forced to sell them for less money. “We found ourselves with excess inventory,” says Huang. “Our strategy is to sell-in well below the current sell-through levels in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re used to getting your fill of Saturday Night Live and Law & Order on Hulu, all that’s going to change on September 19th. From then on, next-day premieres from NBC land on Peacock as part of the streaming service’s plan to consolidate NBC-branded content on its home platform.Peacock terminated its content-sharing deal with Hulu back in March to prepare for its plans to exclusively secure more of its own content. This includes shows like One Chicago, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Voice.The platform already streams next-day episodes from the NBC-owned Bravo, including The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Below Deck, Top Chef, and Southern Charm. NBC has also made one of its l... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Not only are you getting your Steam Deck by the end of the year, but you might also see your long-awaited handheld gaming PC even sooner than that — Valve has just announced that “a bunch of folks” should see their reservations moved up to Q3 instead of Q4, meaning they’ll get emailed an opportunity to purchase the $400-plus portable by the end of September, if not sooner.It shouldn’t be much longer to wait after you get that email, either: Valve doesn’t send the emails until the systems are in-hand and ready to ship. If you log into Steam, you can check your reservation here.

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Listening to the lawyers representing Elon Musk and Twitter argue over which documents need to be provided as part of legal discovery today, I began to wonder if it is possible to measure anything at all.The arguments centered on a wonky count of user numbers: mDAUs, or “monetizable daily active users.” It’s a nonstandard measure — most social media companies use daily or monthly active users — that focuses on which users can see ads. But Twitter is a nonstandard social media company!“We are allowed to question their process.”Twitter is suing Musk for abandoning a deal to buy the company for $44 billion. Part of Musk’s argument is that he was misled about the amount of spam and bots on the platform and that, therefore, the deal can’t... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you live in the US, chances are you’ve at least heard of WhatsApp, the messaging app that Meta acquired in 2014.But if you live in other parts of the world, like India, the service is more than just an app for communicating with friends and family.“WhatsApp in India is a way of life,” said Rajeev Khera, founder of food tech business Chakki Peesing, which operates outside of New Delhi.Khera is one of the millions of Indians who run businesses mainly through WhatsApp. And it’s not just businesses: roughly 400 million people in India use WhatsApp to keep in touch with relatives overseas, send money, access critical medical information, and more.

A 3D product rendering of the upcoming Sonos speaker codenamed Optimo 2, as created by The Verge | Product render by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge After spending 2022 focused on midrange products like the Ray and the rollout of its own voice service, Sonos is about to shift its attention back to upscale devices. Aside from the upcoming, delayed Sub Mini, the company is also at work on a completely new high-end speaker codenamed Optimo 2.The Verge has viewed early, work-in-progress images of Optimo 2, and it marks a substantial evolution in design compared to Sonos’ existing products, such as the Sonos One, Five, Arc, Beam, and Roam. Encased in a funky, dual-angled shell, the new device will be positioned as the best-sounding speaker that Sonos has ever produced. It includes an arsenal of drivers, including several that fire in different directions from beneath the shell between... Continue reading…

I know people are hyped for a subscription-based future of video games. But if it’s anything like a streaming service, the actual experience of having a big library is scrolling around your options and going, Hmm, I sort of remember hearing about this thing five years ago. And because the stakes are low, you try it, and more often than not, you realize why you never bothered paying to see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in theaters.Sometimes, though, a mediocre product can be gratifying, especially if you go into it with some pals.I stumbled upon Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands on Xbox Game Pass, which, from the title, I assumed was a game about doing recon, in the wildlands, in search of Tom Clancy’s ghost. Turns out I was wrong.... Continue reading…

This screen is just not meant for full-sized apps. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The Galaxy Z Flip 4 is a great little foldable held back by a too-tiny front display. It’s just hard doing much on a 1.9-inch screen. Even though Samsung tried making it a little more useful in this year’s iteration, it’s still just a little window from which you can view notifications and certain widgets, but not much more. Developer IJP addresses just this pain point with its Cover Screen OS, a free app on the Google Play Store. It’s been available for the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and got a recent update to support the Flip 4. And it works — but it’s also kind of awful for reasons outside of the developers’ control.To IJP’s credit, the app does a nice job of walking you through a somewhat involved setup process — you have to give it a lot of... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge Wi-Fi is essential in most homes these days. From streaming your entertainment and music to making it possible to work from home, we rely on Wi-Fi for many of today’s modern conveniences. But sometimes, you just need it to stop. This is particularly true for parents. I recently wrote about how I use my smart home — which runs on Wi-Fi — to help keep my family on track. A key component of that is turning off internet access to my kids’ devices.Thankfully, today’s modern Wi-Fi routers give you the power to pause using your internet service provider or router manufacturer’s smartphone app — no more need to unplug the router just to get your kid off their Xbox or type an IP address into a browser to fiddle with your daughter’s iPad... Continue reading…

California is about to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles. | Getty California is poised to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles — a far-reaching policy that is likely to reverberate throughout the rest of the country and the world.On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board will issue the new rules that were first rolled out by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2020, which would require 100 percent of new cars sold in the state to be free of carbon emissions, according to The New York Times.The rule would phase in over timeThe rule would phase in over time, with 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold by 2026 and 68 percent by 2030. California says that over 16 percent of new car sales were “zero-emission vehicles” in 2022 — up from 12.41 percent last year and 7.78 percent in 2020.

Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images The government’s financial aid website is crashing after President Joe Biden’s announcement of a federal student loan forgiveness program that cancels up to $20,000 of student loan debt for some people. According to several user reports on Twitter, Downdetector.com, and testing done by Verge staffers, people are having issues logging into StudentAid.gov or even getting the site to load at all.The plan announced on Wednesday doesn’t provide blanket loan cancellation — those with a personal income over $125,000 (or double that if they’re married and file taxes jointly) aren’t eligible for forgiveness, and people who received Pell Grants will have more debt canceled than those who didn’t. The complexity has wound up leaving a lot of people... Continue reading…

A screenshot from a video “prebunking” appeals to emotion. | Image: Inoculation Science “Prebunking” false information with short videos could nudge people to be more critical of it, suggests a new study from researchers at the University of Cambridge and Google’s Jigsaw division. The study is part of ongoing work in the field of mis- and disinformation, and it’s encouraging news for researchers hoping to improve the online information ecosystem — albeit with many caveats.The Jigsaw and Cambridge study — which also involved researchers from the University of Bristol and the University of Western Australia, Perth — is one of several attempts to “inoculate” or “prebunk” people against disinformation instead of debunking it after the fact. Published in Science Advances, it recounts the impact of a video series about common... Continue reading…

I feel like the fox will end up being a bad guy, but I really love his style. | Image: Disney There’s a new trailer out for Disney’s upcoming live-action Pinocchio movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis (the man behind Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and The Polar Express). Compared to what we’ve seen of the movie up until this point, it shows off a lot more of Benjamin Evan Ainsworth’s performance as the titular character as well as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Jiminy Cricket.Disney’s first teaser for the movie, which came out in May, mostly worked to set up the world and the story — it cut off just before Pinocchio was brought to life. In the new trailer, though, we get to see the puppet-turned-boy in action, running around the streets and talking to a fox, who appears to be the ringmaster of a circus, and a pirate. We... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook removed a Planned Parenthood of Michigan post that shared resources for medication abortions earlier this month, as first reported by the Michigan Advance.The post, shared on the organization’s Facebook page, explained what a medication abortion is, linked to an article outlining online abortion pill providers, and noted the organization was proud to offer medication abortion to patients, according to Motherboard. A Facebook alert shows the post was flagged as going against community standards, and the post was restricted so that the public would not see it.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Denuvo, an anti-cheat and DRM (digital rights management) software that has become synonymous with performance issues, is coming to Nintendo Switch games in an attempt to block users from emulating games on PC. The service claims the new software has “no impact on the gaming experience.”Denuvo’s software currently comes bundled with a number of games on PC, including Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, FIFA 22, Deathloop, and many, many more. The software has a history of affecting performance on the games it’s included with, and when its servers go down, all the games it supports go down with it. Fans even pleaded with the developers of Humankind to remove it — which the studio ended up doing.Denuvo’s implementation on the Switch is... Continue reading…

Image: Obsidian Entertainment Pentiment, the new narrative game from Microsoft’s Obsidian Entertainment that looks like medieval art come to life, will be released on Xbox and PC on November 15th. Microsoft first announced the game during its recent Xbox Showcase but, at the time, only provided an open-ended “November 2022” release window.Obsidian, which is known for games like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II and Fallout: New Vegas, describes Pentiment as a “narrative-adventure game” that takes in 16th-century Bavaria. “You will take on the role of Andreas Maler, a very clever journeyman artist who gets caught up in a series of murders and scandals that spans 25 years in the fictional town of Tassing and Kiersau Abbey,” Obsidian’s Mikey Dowling said in a... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge On Monday, Apple expanded its DIY repair program to include MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops equipped with M1 chips (including the Pro and Max). At least, in theory. The repairability experts at iFixit, who regularly dissect Apple’s gadgets, have taken a look at the new program, and their outlook is...mixed.iFixit’s Sam Goldheart writes that the new MacBook Pro guides “threw us for a loop.” The issue: the documentation “makes MacBook Pros seem less repairable” than they have been in the past.The repair manual for replacing the 14-inch MacBook Pro’s battery, for example, is a whole 162 pages long. (One of the first steps, of course, is “Read the entire manual first.”) The reason the guide is so long, it turns out, is that replacing... Continue reading…

Samar Haddad / The Verge Sure, Facebook can be a great way to connect and stay in touch with family and friends. Yet, more often than not, it’s a headache that can turn toxic thanks to the News Feed. Whether it’s fake news, envy-inducing vacation photos from a classmate you barely know, or a relative’s upsetting political post, there are just some things better left unseen. True, you could unfollow a page if you want to stop seeing those kinds of posts, but you can’t exactly unfollow your uncle or a close friend without potentially putting those relationships at risk.Thankfully, there’s a way around it. It turns out, you can customize your Facebook feed so you don’t have to see their posts without needing to unfriend anybody. There are a number of ways to do... Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios She-Hulk’s not just talking to her audience for laughs Continue reading…

Image: Starlink SpaceX and T-Mobile will host a joint event on Thursday at 8PM ET announcing plans to “increase connectivity.” SpaceX “chief engineer” Elon Musk and T-Mobile’s CEO and president Mike Sievert will be presenting at the event, which will happen at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas, where a Starship prototype was recently loaded onto the launchpad.The two companies haven’t revealed much more beyond that, though Musk is already teasing that the event will be “something special.” The livestream link is already live.

Image: PQube Games / Mojiken Studio Mojiken Studio, an Indonesian indie developer, has accused its UK publishing partner PQube Games of manipulation and exploitation related to the funding and development of its latest game, A Space for the Unbound.In a statement on Twitter, Mojiken said that PQube Games — publishers of well-known indie hits like Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and Shantae: Half-Genie Hero — leveraged Mojiken’s status as a developer in Indonesia to secure grant money from a “major console platform” reserved for helping underrepresented developers get through the financially ruinous times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mojiken then said that PQube did not disperse the funds to Mojiken and withheld information about the provenance and purpose of the money in order to... Continue reading…

The Armada 25 (left) and the slightly bigger, higher-res Armada 27 (right). | Image: HyperX HyperX is expanding into monitors with the announcement of two models designed for gamers who want a minimalist desk setup. The most unique thing about these monitors is that they each include a desk mount and versatile monitor arm, which let you customize exactly how you want to arrange the display on your desk. (Not to mention, the lack of a traditional stand means you won’t lose much desk space.) You can orient the monitor horizontally or twist it 90 degrees for a taller view.The 25-inch 1080p Armada 25 and the 27-inch QHD Armada 27 coming in September aren’t far apart in price, costing $449 and $499, respectively. Both seem like a great deal considering they include monitor arms, which typically sell for around $100 or more. Apart... Continue reading…

Wonder what clues might be in the image? | Image: Apple Apple’s next product launch event will take place on September 7th, the company announced in an invitation sent out to journalists today. At the show, Apple is expected to share details on upcoming iPhones and Apple Watches.The invite, which has the tagline “Far out,” is for an in-person event at the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple’s Cupertino campus, which would be the company’s first big product launch event to take place in the theater since the start of the pandemic. (Apple hosted an in-person event for this year’s WWDC keynote, but it took place outdoors.) The company will also be streaming the September 7th event online. Image: Jay Peters / The Verge Here’s the invite sent to journalists. The iPhone 14... Continue reading…

The Peloton Guide will be one of the devices available on Amazon. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Peloton recently dropped the news that it would cut its distribution network, shift further toward third-party logistics, and plans to shutter retail showrooms starting next year. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the company is now partnering with Amazon to sell its original Bike, the Guide, and apparel.According to CNBC, Peloton’s Amazon store will sell the Bike for $1,445, and the Guide will go for $295. (Both products were spared from price hikes introduced earlier this month.) Not included are the more expensive Bike Plus and Tread. Customers will be able to get the Bike delivered to their homes and can choose between self-assembly or having someone come and assemble it for them. Previously, buying Peloton equipment included free... Continue reading…

Lights, heatsink, action. | Image: Samsung Samsung has announced a new version of its flagship PCIe SSD, dubbed the 990 Pro. Not only does the PCIe 4.0 M.2 storage device get even closer to being as fast as it can theoretically be, but there’s also the option of getting it with a heatsink that comes complete with RGB lighting (though, if you get that version to upgrade a PlayStation 5, which requires add-on SSDs to have a heatsink, those lights will likely get lost behind a layer of textured plastic).The 990 Pro’s big selling point over its predecessor is that it’s even faster: in sequential reads and writes, it can do up to 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s, respectively, and it can achieve 1,400K random read input / output operations per second (or IOPS). That’s compared to the 980... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This summer, the SEC conducted an active review of Twitter’s user numbers in response to concerns of bot activity, as revealed in new filings made public on Wednesday. The review came in the weeks after Elon Musk raised concerns over the same user figures and suggests federal regulators took Musk’s allegations seriously.Notably, the review began more than a week before the full whistleblower report by Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, although it deals with many of the same concerns he reported to the SEC.“please disclose the methodology used in calculating these figures”“We note your estimate that the average number of false or spam accounts during fiscal 2021 continues to represent fewer than 5% of mDAU,” the commission wrote to Twitter in a... Continue reading…

Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images One of the major barriers to mass adoption of electric vehicles is cost. EVs are just way too expensive, with the average price hitting an all-time high earlier this summer of $66,000. That’s disappointing because the auto industry has always promised that prices would come down as EV battery packs became more efficient to manufacture.But even more disappointing is the rate that EV prices are increasing as compared to their gas equivalents. According to a recent analysis by car shopping database iSeeCars, electric car prices saw a year-over-year increase of 54.3 percent while gas-powered cars were up just 10.1 percent.The reason EV prices have shot up at such a staggering rate is multilayered. There’s a global chip shortage, which... Continue reading…

As The Last of Us slowly becomes Naughty Dog’s Grand Theft Auto V or Skyrim, there’s now a trailer to go with the PlayStation 5 remake of the game.The launch trailer of The Last of Us Part 1 retreads old ground covered by the 2013 and 2014 PlayStation hit with prettier, grittier graphics. We can now see individual bits of gray matter when Ellie brains a guy with an arrow, and blood splatters so detailed it’d make Dexter very, very happy.The arrival of the launch trailer neatly coincides with the first glimpse of the HBO adaptation of The Last Of Us starring Pedro Pascal, who’s quickly making a name for himself as TV’s favorite found family dad who will wreck your shit. Starring opposite Pascal’s Joel is his Game of Thrones co-star B... Continue reading…

Psilocybin is the compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms. A combination of psychedelics and therapy appears to help people with alcoholism cut down on the number of days per month they drink heavily, according to a new study. Researchers used psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, to treat patients over eight months and saw a dramatic improvement in participants’ drinking habits.Using psychedelics as treatments for alcoholism was a popular idea in the 1960s and 1970s, and studies on LSD found that it reduced alcohol misuse. But the approach went quiet in the decades after, according to an editorial published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry alongside the new study.The new research marks a “rekindling of interest,” the authors of the editorial wrote. The study included... Continue reading…

Nazi German warships scuttled in 1944 to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Soviets have emerged following droughts across Europe. | Image: Reuters Drought conditions around the world are so extreme this summer that rivers are drying up, exposing previously inaccessible or undiscovered relics. This week, the treasures include a bevy of Nazi ships, an entire lost island, and dinosaur tracks.A fleet of over 20 wrecked Nazi warships laden with explosives has been exposed near Prahovo in eastern Serbia as water levels fall in the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river. The ships had remained undisturbed on the riverbed for almost 80 years and are believed to be among hundreds that formed a flotilla between Nazi Germany and the Black Sea Fleet in 1944. When escaping from the Red Army’s advancements became impossible, the entire fleet was intentionally sunk to prevent them from falling... Continue reading…

The Stream Deck doesn’t do anything new, but it does a lot of it better. | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge I initially bought a Stream Deck for one purpose: to control the lights in my home office. There’s just one light switch in there, and that switch controls the light… and also every outlet in the room. Lights off, everything off. So that switch now has a piece of tape on it, and I bought a smart bulb and a Stream Deck so I could still control the lamp in the corner.The Stream Deck isn’t a smart home controller device, at least not the way its creators at Elgato originally conceived it. (It’s also not a Steam Deck, the game console from Valve.) They built and marketed the $150 device toward streamers (hence the name) who need to be constantly switching scenes and camera inputs, moderating a fast-moving chat, and grabbing clips to use for... Continue reading…

The Happy Ring wants to differentiate itself as a “mood” ring to help track your mental health. | Image: Happy Health Startup Happy Health is looking to give the mood ring a “smart” makeover. Instead of dubious color-changing stones, it has created the Happy Ring, which aims to alert users about their mental health using biometric sensors and artificial intelligence.The Happy Ring, which just received $60 million in funding, features a custom electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor that monitors changing stress levels in real time. Essentially, the device works by detecting when your sympathetic nervous system — the thing that regulates your fight or flight response — starts raring up.“As we start to have difficult thoughts or experience strong emotion, our brain responds to help us respond to that stimuli,” says Dustin Freckleton, a medical doctor and... Continue reading…

Can’t tell the Versa 4 or Sense 2 apart? Squint, and you might see the Sense 2’s sensor on the edges of the display. | Image: Fitbit After several leaks and a not-so-subtle teaser yesterday, Fitbit officially announced what we all knew was coming: the Sense 2, the Versa 4, and the Inspire 3. And while Fitbit is introducing new software alongside the new hardware, this update is more about incremental improvements and refining what you already know rather than launching anything revolutionary. Oh, and yes, the Sense 2 and Versa 4 have physical buttons!The $299.95 Sense 2 and $229.95 Versa 4 both have minor design tweaks. For starters, both are thinner and lighter. The button on both devices also sits higher up, as does the area where you attach straps. Meanwhile, the Sense 2 incorporates its health sensors into the device’s display using “vaporized electrodes.” That... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Following the mid-August Nintendo Direct that showed off what to expect with Splatoon 3, fans of the game speculated that Shiver, one of the faces in the new game, might identify as nonbinary. So we asked Nate Bihldorff, Nintendo’s SVP of development and publishing, who confirmed to The Verge that Shiver identifies as female. And that while Shiver’s she/her pronouns weren’t mentioned in the Direct, they are used in the game.Viewers hoping that Shiver would be a nonbinary character had some convincing clues to go off from the video showcase linked above. As The Gamer notes, the Deep Cut hype group that Shiver belongs to rocks a lot of purple, yellow, black, and white — the colors of the nonbinary flag. The publication also speculated... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Despite feeling uncannily similar to play as past installments, Splatoon 3 is packed with smart changes and updates that will likely lead to people — or at least, me — keeping the game in rotation for much longer than before. I got to play over an hour of the game’s various modes ahead of its September 9th launch, including just a few levels of the main story, a few rounds of Salmon Run (the game’s surprisingly difficult but rewarding horde mode), and Turf War (Splatoon’s take on a four-versus-four deathmatch).You’ll notice a welcome quality-of-life change right when you boot it up. Instead of being forced to sit through an intro presentation of the latest announcements for in-game activities each time you restart the game, as past S... Continue reading…

Windows 8 was released nearly 10 years ago. A former Microsoft employee has revealed what the missing Windows 8 startup sound was supposed to be. Microsoft has used unique startup sounds in Windows versions for decades, but Windows 8 ended that tradition with a silent bootup process. While startup sounds eventually returned for Windows 11, the missing Windows 8 sound has been hiding in Windows 10 and Windows 11 for years now.Jensen Harris, the former director of program management for the Windows user experience team at Microsoft, was behind the original startup sound removal in Windows 8. In a new YouTube video, Harris reveals what the missing Windows 8 sound is. (See video below.) It’s actually the same as the startup sound in Windows 10 and Windows 11, which isn’t enabled by... Continue reading…

Photo by: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Well, we didn’t know this one was coming: they’re making a film about former-mobile-titan BlackBerry, and it’s going to star Glenn Howerton of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as the company’s co-CEO, Jim Balsillie. According to The Globe and Mail, production wrapped this week, though when exactly the film will hit cinemas is unknown.The film, simply titled BlackBerry, is based on the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry, by journalists Sean Silcoff and Jacquie McNish. According to its blurb, the book focuses on “an unlikely partnership between a visionary engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard Business school grad, Jim Balsillie” — the two founders of Research in Motion (RIM), which... Continue reading…