The Verge

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images “It is a job that’s been an honor and a privilege, but it’s not a job that leaves a lot of time to do much else.” Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Sheryl Sandberg will step down as the COO of Meta Platforms after 14 years as its second-ranking executive, where she helped scale Facebook into the social media juggernaut it is today. Sandberg will leave her post as the company’s No. 2 leader in the fall after spending the next few months working with founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to transition her direct reports. She will retain a seat on Meta’s board.Zuckerberg called the change an “end of an era” and said that he doesn’t plan to replace Sandberg’s exact role in the company’s structure. His current chief growth officer Javier Olivan, already one of the company’s most powerful but lesser-known executives, will take over as COO in what Zuckerberg says is a “more traditional” COO... Continue reading…

An artistic rendering of astronauts wearing next-generation spacesuits on the Moon. | Image: NASA Today, NASA announced that two private companies — Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace — will develop the next-generation spacesuits that future astronauts will wear to conduct spacewalks and eventually traverse the surface of the Moon. It’s a bold new direction for spacesuit development at NASA, with the agency handing the job over to the private sector after years of struggling to develop a new suit of its own.These new spacesuits will play a critical role in NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s flagship initiative to send humans back to the lunar surface. Currently, NASA is aiming to land the first Artemis astronauts on the Moon by 2025 — a one-year delay from the 2024 deadline originally set by the Trump administration. When the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with an insider trading scheme. Chastain was arrested Wednesday morning in New York City and is expected to be presented in court later today.Chastain was publicly accused of insider trading in September and fired from his position at OpenSea — but today’s indictment marks the first criminal charges associated with the scheme.45 token purchases on 11 different occasionsWhile employed at OpenSea, Chastain was responsible for deciding which NFT collections would be featured on OpenSea’s front page, a distinction that typically made the collections skyrocket in value. The indictment describes a pattern of 45 token... Continue reading…

The Sonos Arc and other refurbished Sonos speakers are all on sale. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Everyone might be talking about the recent release of Sonos voice control or the Sonos Ray, but if Sonos’ entry-level soundbar doesn’t seem like a good fit, you can currently find discounts on a range of refurbished speakers in the Sonos catalog. Some of the current deal highlights include the Sonos Arc and Sonos Roam, which are available for $719 and $139, respectively.The Sonos Arc normally sells for $900 new, but this refurbished model is available for $719. The Arc soundbar is perfect for anyone who wants to improve their home audio setup and offers a number of quality of life features in addition to an excellent sound profile. Like other Sonos soundbars, the Arc is compatible with Apple’s AirPlay 2, supports Google Assistant and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is pulling employees off of working on major consumer-facing features like audio Spaces, communities, and newsletters and instead plans to refocus their efforts on user growth and personalization, according to Bloomberg. The changes come as a pending buyout by Elon Musk is already casting a shadow on every move the company makes — and follows just weeks after Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced a pause on most hiring and fired both the company’s consumer product leader Kayvon Beykpour and the leader on the revenue side, Bruce Falck. Bloomberg’s report reveals some of the restructuring happening within Twitter under the direction of Jay Sullivan, the new head of product and interim head of revenue.In a statement to Bloomberg, a... Continue reading…

Users in India reported that Google Messages’ RCS ads feature was being abused. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Messages users in India have reported receiving a deluge of unwanted ads in recent weeks using Rich Communication Services (RCS), and Google has employed a response strategy: turn them all off. Company spokesperson Kaori Miyake confirmed to The Verge that Google has disabled the feature in India: “We are aware that some businesses are abusing our anti-spam policies to send promotional messages to users in India. We are disabling this feature in India while we work with the industry to improve the experience for users.”The ads in question were delivered by way of RCS’ business messaging feature, which allows verified businesses to send messages to customers that go beyond a typical text, with images and interactive features. G... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard Entertainment Diablo Immortal’s announcement upset a lot of fans of the franchise who felt a mobile version of their beloved game would come at the expense of a more traditional Diablo gaming experience. After a short time with the game ahead of its release on June 2nd (though the game has been rolling out early in some regions today), I found two things to be true. The first is that Blizzard has created a game that admirably captures the look and feel of a traditional Diablo game. The second is that Immortal is also a game designed to extract the most money out of its players.From the couple hours I’ve played, the map is expansive with many different areas gated by level requirements and many places within those areas in which you can get up to all... Continue reading…

Ed Teach caressing Stede Bonnet’s cheek, as a friend. | Image: HBO Just in time for this year’s Pride Month, HBO has announced that Our Flag Means Death will return for a second season of stories about swashbuckling and love on the high seas. In a statement about Our Flag Means Death’s renewal, series creator David Jenkins expressed gratitude to the show’s fandom for its support and commitment to the unexpected romance at the center of the first season.“We felt the show was special while we were making it, but fans’ open-armed embrace of the inhabitants of the Revenge makes heading into a second season all the more sweet,” Jenkins said. “Thanks to our team at HBO Max, our invested executive producers, and our wildly enthusiastic audience for making another voyage to this world possible.”Our Flag Means... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Office is already being exploited by hackers linked to the Chinese government, according to threat analysis research from security firm Proofpoint.Details shared by Proofpoint on Twitter suggest that a hacking group labeled TA413 was using the vulnerability (named “Follina” by researchers) in malicious Word documents purported to be sent from the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government in exile based in Dharamsala, India. The TA413 group is an APT, or “advanced persistent threat,” actor believed to be linked to the Chinese government and has previously been observed targeting the Tibetan exile community.In general, Chinese hackers have a history of using software security... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge General Motors is slashing prices for the 2023 Chevy Bolt EV and Bolt EUV amid high demand for electric vehicles. While other automakers are jacking up EV prices to account for rising commodity costs, GM says it wants to send the message that “affordability has always been a priority for these vehicles.”Under the new pricing scheme, 2023 Bolt EVs with the 1LT trim will start at $26,595, which includes dealer freight charges. That’s down from the 2022 price of $32,495, reflecting an 18 percent drop. The 2LT trim, which includes leather seats, HD surround vision, and lane-change alert, starts at $29,795, a 16 percent decrease from the 2022 price of $35,695.The 2023 Bolt EUV with the LT trim starts at $28,195, also including dealer... Continue reading…

A group of Togruta. | Image: Lucasfilm While live-action announcements grabbed most of the attention during this year’s Star Wars Celebration, the event came to a close with more than a handful of new developments on the animation front that are set to broaden the Star Wars canon in the near future.Though most of the news out of this year’s Celebration was focused on stories about the adult heroes and villains who’ll be duking it out across Star Wars’ history, the conversation turned toward younglings on Friday as Michael Olson and the rest of the creative team behind Disney Plus and Disney Junior’s Young Jedi Adventures revealed some early details about the upcoming project. Set during Star Wars’ High Republic era, Young Jedi Adventures — due out in spring 2023 — will... Continue reading…

The Hyatt Powerplant at Lake Oroville during drought conditions in Oroville, California, on Monday, February 14th, 2022. | Image: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Drought is forecast to slash California’s supply of hydroelectricity in half this summer. That’s bad news for residents’ air quality and utility bills, the US Energy and Information Administration (EIA) said in its forecast. The state will likely lean on more expensive, polluting natural gas to make up for the shortfall in hydropower.Nearly 60 percent of California is currently coping with “extreme” drought or worse, according to the national drought monitor map. California’s current water woes stem from low levels of snowpack, which quenches the state’s reservoirs when it melts. In early April, when snowpack usually peaks, the water content of the state’s snowpack was 40 percent lower than the normal levels over the past 30 years. ... Continue reading…

The Roomba j7 Plus and its auto-emptying station. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge If you’re late on your spring cleaning, now is the perfect time to play catchup and save some money in the process. There are some great discounts running on Roomba smart vacuums from iRobot. These deals cover a couple of our favorite models, like the Roomba j7 and Roomba i3 EVO, both as standalone bots or with their respective auto-emptying stations. The discounts range from $100 to $200 off at a variety of retailers as well as directly from iRobot’s site, where the manufacturer indicates that the sale is running through June 18th.For those looking to get the biggest savings on the best bot, the iRobot Roomba j7 and Roomba j7 Plus are both $200 off. The standalone vacuum normally runs $599, but it’s now $399 at Amazon, Best Buy, W... Continue reading…

Connecting your phone and TV makes things like shopping on YouTube much easier. | Image: YouTube TV remotes suck, and YouTube is tired of dealing with them. “It’s very hard to type on TV with a remote,” says Brynn Evans, the head of design for YouTube on TV. “Like, the remote’s clunky, every remote’s different, there’s a million different buttons. They’re all bad.” Every app and service has tried to find ways around this, from those “activate on the web” screens that save you from typing your password to a heavy emphasis on voice search. Your Apple TV will practically beg you to type on your phone rather than with your remote. But even that’s not enough for YouTube.So YouTube’s rolling out a new feature that more closely connects your phone to your TV. (It works on Android and iOS devices, so tablets should work too.) If you sit... Continue reading…

Google TV on iOS is very similar to the Android experience. | Image: Google The Google TV app, which aggregates content recommendations from numerous streaming services and lets you create a universal watchlist of your favorites, is now available on iOS. Google says that it’ll replace the previous Google Play Movies and TV app in the App Store, so if you’ve already got that installed, you should be able to update it to the Google TV experience sometime today.The software, already available on Android, also allows you to rate what you’ve previously viewed to improve future recommendations. More important for Android TV or Chromecast with Google TV owners is that you can use the Google TV app as a remote control for those devices by tapping the remote icon.Not every major streaming service allows its content... Continue reading…

Meet is Google’s calling app of the future. | Image: Google Google announced today that it’s combining two of its video-calling apps, Duo and Meet, into a single platform. Pretty soon, there will be only Google Meet, and Google’s hoping it can be the one calling app users need for just about everything in their lives.By bringing them both together, Google’s hoping it can solve some of what ails modern communication tools. “What’s been really important is understanding how people make the choice as to what tool they’re going to use, for what purpose, in what circumstance,” says Javier Soltero, the head of Google Workspace. Our digital lives are filled with a million different chat apps, each with its own rules and norms and contact list, some for work purposes and some for personal ones. Google’s... Continue reading…

Focusrite Focusrite, the British manufacturer of audio interfaces and recording tools, is introducing a new line of devices designed for home podcast recording. The Vocaster One and Vocaster Two take the key parts of Focusrite’s popular interfaces and tailor them to amateur podcasters and other home audio creators.Focusrite’s Scarlett line of audio interfaces has been a consumer standard over the past few years for podcasters who need to plug XLR microphones into their computer (to the point where I saw one in the trailer for a movie about a podcast just last week). But even as it’s become a hit in the podcast world, Focusrite has mostly marketed itself as a company for musicians (the tagline on its website is “We believe in enriching peoples’... Continue reading…

Discord’s Star Badger video is a Star Fox parody that shows how Text Chat in Voice Channels works. | Image: Discord Discord is enabling a new dedicated text chat feature for voice channels. Users of the platform can take advantage of the new feature, aptly named Text Chat in Voice Channels, by clicking on a new chat bubble icon for the voice channel they are participating in. The feature is a welcome quality of life change, similar to the chat window in Zoom calls that many are used to in this day and age.All non-community servers have Text Chat in Voice Channels enabled by default, while servers that have community enabled (under Server Settings > Community) have a period of time to either opt in or disable it from ever going live. If no action is taken, the feature will enable automatically on all servers by June 15th. Image:... Continue reading…

At the risk of confusion: this is a GIF of a Block. | Image by Nikki Chan / GIF by The Verge On June 15th, 1987, CompuServe introduced the GIF, a way to share images — or animated sequences of images — anywhere. The incredible portability of the late Steve Wilhite’s “graphics interchange format” made it the perfect canvas for viral memes.Now, a company called Looking Glass is trying to make holograms effortlessly portable, too.“Imagine we’re in a parallel universe and every movie ever shot was shot in color, but every human being was watching in black and white,” says Looking Glass co-founder and CEO Shawn Frayne. “That’s the situation we’re in with 3D.”He says that if you add up all the CG movies, video game screenshots, 3D models, and portrait mode photos — and, yes, NFTs — there are hundreds of trillions of pieces of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Just a few months after Twitter spent $40 million to acquire TweetDeck in 2011, it launched new HTML5 apps for the browser, Windows, and Mac. Now, with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter still looming, and an edit button incoming, the web browser version will be all that’s left. Twitter shut down TweetDeck’s Windows app in 2016, versions for iOS, Android, and Adobe Air went away in 2013, and now the Mac version is set to disappear after July 1st.In a tweet, the team said the change is happening “to focus on making TweetDeck even better and testing our new Preview.” Twitter power users who use the app to monitor different feeds of information got the message via a banner notification this morning. Twitter has been publicly testing an... Continue reading…

The Ray offers fantastic voice clarity and crisp sound, but this optical-only soundbar isn’t without frustrations Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A week ago today, an 18-year-old man walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and committed the latest in our nation’s never-ending series of senseless murders. And in the aftermath of that horror — 19 children dead, two teachers dead, 18 more injured — attention once again turned to what role platforms might have played in enabling the violence.This question can feel both urgently necessary and also somehow beside the point. Necessary because people (often teenagers) are constantly being arrested after making threats on social media, and the Uvalde case shows once again why those threats must be taken more seriously.And yet it’s also clear that America’s gun violence problem will not be solved at the level of platform policy... Continue reading…

The next Pokémon adventure is launching on November 18th. Nintendo revealed the release date for Pokémon Violet and Scarlet, the next mainline entries in the series, through a new trailer today. The games were previously pegged to launch in the second half of 2022 for the Nintendo Switch. In addition to the release date, the trailer also shows off the new professors and some new pokémon, including a pair of legendaries, along with multiplayer support for up to four people.Violet and Scarlet were first announced in February and are the latest attempts to shift the series to a more open-world structure, following 2019’s Sword and Shield and this year’s prequel Arceus. Nintendo describes the new games as an adventure where players “can... Continue reading…

Photo: Buick Buick, the iconic American automaker owned by General Motors, announced a raft of major changes meant to underscore its shift to electric vehicles.The company says it will release its first EV for the North American market in 2024 and will only sell electric vehicles by the end of the decade. Its future EVs will bear the name “Electra” in a nod to the company’s past. It’s unveiling a new concept car, the Wildcat, that’s meant to tease its all-electric future. And it’s even updating its tri-shield logo, doing away with the circular design for a body-mounted horizontal display, to emphasize its “brand transformation.”Buick is the last of the four vehicle brands owned by GM to unveil its electrification plansBuick is the last of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Getting to know your colleagues can be tricky when working remotely, but Slack is adding a handful of new features to its user profiles that should make things a little more fluid.New features include the option to add name pronunciation guides (either by recording audio or adding phonetic spelling); a new pop-up user card UI that appears when you hover your mouse over someone’s name; and reorganized fields in user profiles, which have now been streamlined to three modules: Contact Info, People (where you sit in your company’s org chart), and About Me (customizable with things like languages spoken, start date, etc).Here’s what that new UI looks like, with the full user profile card on the left and the pop-up card on the right: ... Continue reading…

Amber Alerts are an important tool in helping locate abducted children. They’re authorized by law enforcement and broadcast via TVs, text messages, and other means. Now, Instagram will also push Amber Alerts into users’ feeds with the feature rolling out in the US today and set to be available in 25 total countries “in the next couple of weeks.” It shows how apps like Instagram have become basic communication infrastructure in the modern world.Adding Amber Alerts to Instagram makes sense for a few reasons. First, younger generations may well ignore text messages but scroll through Instagram with some regularity. Second, while text alerts require people to click a link to get more information and photos of the missing child, Instagram’s... Continue reading…

The Surface Laptop Go 2. | Image: Microsoft The most compact and affordable entry in Microsoft’s lineup of Surface Laptops — the Surface Laptop Go — is being updated with a newer chip as well as an “improved” webcam and thermals. The Surface Laptop Go 2 is powered by an 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor (up from 10th Gen in the previous model), with prices starting at $599.99 for a model with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.The original Surface Laptop Go was released in 2020 as Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Chromebooks. It had a lower starting price than the rest of the Surface Laptop lineup and a smaller 12.4-inch touch display that maintained Microsoft’s signature 3:2 aspect ratio (resolution sits at 1536 x 1024). Little of this has changed for its successor, which... Continue reading…

Elon Musk at this year’s Met Gala. | Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a hardline stance against his employees working from home, Electrek and Bloomberg report. In an email apparently sent to the company’s executive staff with the subject line “Remote work is no longer acceptable,” the CEO said employees must spend a minimum of 40 hours per week in the office, or else “depart Tesla.” He said this should be a “main Tesla office,” and not a “remote branch office.”Responding to a screenshot of the alleged email posted to Twitter, Musk did not deny its authenticity, and wrote that anyone who disagrees with a policy of coming into the office “should pretend to work somewhere else.” Tesla did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment, but is widely reported to have dissolved... Continue reading…

Diablo Immortal is the latest entry in the long running franchise. | Image: Activision Blizzard Activision Blizzard has confirmed Diablo Immortal won’t be launching in Belgium and the Netherlands alongside other countries on June 2nd, and has blamed the territories’ “current operating environments” for preventing the release of its new free-to-play title, Eurogamer reports. The two countries are notable for recent rulings taken against loot boxes in games, with authorities in each country arguing that they constitute a form of gambling. The cancellation was first reported by Dutch news site Tweakers.“Diablo Immortal will not be available in Belgium or the Netherlands, and will not appear on Battle.net or the Belgian and Netherlands App or Google Play Stores,” a spokesperson for the game’s publisher told Eurogamer. “This is related... Continue reading…

Image: Rimac Porsche is strengthening its ties with Rimac, an electric supercar company, by participating in a $500 million investment round for the Croatia-based startup. Porsche didn’t disclose the exact amount it invested in Rimac, except to say it was “eight figures.” And Porsche won’t have a controlling interest in Rimac, retaining its previously disclosed 20 percent equity stake in the company.Over the years, Porsche has grown closer to Rimac, buying shares in the company and setting up a joint venture to run Bugatti after Volkswagen transferred ownership to the startup. Today’s investment news is the latest indication that Porsche has a positive perception of Rimac’s future. Porsche also owns a controlling stake in Greyp, an electric... Continue reading…

The Forerunner 255 family adds a host of new racing features and multi-band GPS. | Image: Garmin Just in time for Global Running Day, Garmin is introducing two new running watches to its Forerunner lineup: the $349.99 Forerunner 255 and the $499.99 Forerunner 955. Both GPS watches sport multi-band GPS and new racing features, including a race widget. The Forerunner 955 will also come in a Solar version, which, as the name suggests, adds solar charging for even longer battery life.The Forerunner 255 is a lightweight, midrange running watch that builds on the Forerunner 245. It’ll come in two sizes. The standard Forerunner 255 will measure 46mm and weigh 49 grams, while the smaller 255S will measure 41mm and weigh 32 grams. There’ll also be a Forerunner 255 Music and 255S Music variants, which will be able to store up to 500 songs on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When the company formerly known as Facebook announced its plan to rebrand last October, it also announced a new stock ticker. At the time, execs said that after ten years as FB, its NASDAQ listing would transition to MVRS for the metaverse. However, after the investment fund listed under META vacated the symbol in January, Meta Platforms quickly confirmed that it would use META instead, while at the same time announcing its first drop in daily active users, ever. Now it has filed paperwork saying the shift will become official before the market opens on June 9th (via CNBC).Right now, people still think of Meta as the home of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, but the plan is to make it into much more than those social media mainstays.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix’s test to crack down on password sharing has reportedly left some users confused, according to a report from Rest of World. The streaming service started experimenting with password-sharing solutions in Peru, Chile, and Costa Rica in March, prompting subscribers in these markets to pay an additional fee to enable streaming for others outside their household who use the same account.When speaking to over a dozen Netflix subscribers in Peru, Rest of World found that most users weren’t formally made aware of the policy change through an email or notification sent by Netflix — not even two months out from Netflix’s initial announcement. The outlet also learned that Netflix’s level of enforcement varied from user to user, with some... Continue reading…

Press-n-go. | Image: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The first time I started a car by pressing a button, it felt too easy and convenient — like I had somehow stumbled into a tax bracket I don’t belong in. “You’re telling me,” I thought, “that I can just leave my keys in my pocket, and the car will let me get in and drive around?”The push-button ignition is one of those buttons that doesn’t really add any new functionality over the thing it’s replacing (in this case, the ignition system that has you insert and turn a key). It exists solely for the sake of convenience, a job that it excels at. You get in the car, press down on the brake pedal and a button, and you’re ready to drive. It’s barely more difficult than unlocking your phone.It’s also, for most of us, anyway, the most raw... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images A Texas law that would have banned much social media moderation is once again on hold. In a 5-4 ruling handed down today, the Supreme Court vacated an earlier decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, meaning that HB 20 — which forbids banning, demonetizing, or downranking Texas users’ posts based on “viewpoint” — will be blocked while a lawsuit over its constitutionality proceeds. A lower court had already blocked the law in 2021 before the Fifth Circuit unblocked it this May.NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), who filed suit to stop HB 20, petitioned the Supreme Court for a ruling earlier this month — responding to a surprising and unexplained ruling from the Fifth Circuit. Justice Samuel... Continue reading…

TikTok’s testing a “clear mode.” Some TikTok users have started noticing a “Clear Mode” option, which lets them watch a video without the UI overlay that usually shows things like the favorite and comment buttons and other info about the video. TikTok confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s currently testing the feature, but it’s unclear how many people have access to it.Those that are in the test group (which includes at least two Verge staffers) can access clear mode by pressing and holding on a video, then tapping the Clear Mode button on the menu that pops up. The same method can be used to exit clear mode, and there’s also a button in the bottom right corner that will return you to the standard UI. Activating clear mode is a two-step process.... Continue reading…

Dell’s 32-inch display comes with a focus on video calls. | Image: Dell Dell has finally revealed the $1,599.99 price attached to the UltraSharp 32-inch 4K video conferencing monitor it previewed at CES (via 9to5Mac). If that price sounds familiar, it’s because Apple’s 27-inch Studio Display costs almost the exact same amount — only Dell justifies the price with the monitor’s size and its camera sensor, while Apple’s sales pitch leans on that still-rare 5K resolution.The Dell monitor (U3223QZ) comes with a focus on videoconferencing, made clear by Dell’s built-in UltraSharp webcam with a 4K HDR Sony Starvis sensor that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help keep you in the frame during a call. This is a bit like Apple’s Center Stage feature used in the Studio Display and other Apple devices, a similar... Continue reading…

Illustration by Carolina Moscoso / The Verge Congratulate your graduate with one of these great gifts Continue reading…

Moses Ingram as Reva Sevander / the Third Sister. | Image: Disney Plus/Lucasfilm In response to a swift and all too predictable wave of racist backlash from Star Wars “fans” dismayed by the idea of Black people existing in space, Disney has issued a statement supporting Obi-Wan Kenobi actor Moses Ingram.Though Obi-Wan Kenobi’s first two episodes premiered only just last week, that was all the time it took for Star Wars obsessives to fixate on Ingram’s character Reva Sevander, one of the Galactic Empire’s Inquisitors tasked with exterminating the galaxy’s Jedi. On the Monday following this year’s Star Wars Celebration event, Ingram took to her personal Instagram account to share a selection from the “hundreds” of anti-Black, misogynist messages she’s received for portraying a fictional villain who does evil things.... Continue reading…

Image: Nomad There are Apple TV Siri Remote cases of all shapes and colors, with the vast majority of them providing a silicone grip and protection against those inevitable plunges from your couch cushions. But if those are a little too tacky for your taste (and remind you too much of those squishy Wii remote covers), Nomad has developed a sleek alternative: a Siri Remote case made out of American leather and — best of all — comes with a hidden AirTag pocket.The case leaves the front of the remote totally open, so it may not be the best option if you’re looking for something to protect the device from spills or falls. It makes up for that in style, though — removing the solid brown backing reveals a discreet pocket where you can place an AirTag. If... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Podcast listeners could not access many of their favorite shows for more than eight hours on Monday night and early Tuesday morning due to an outage on Megaphone, a podcast hosting platform owned by Spotify. The outage stemmed from the company’s failure to renew Megaphone’s security certificate.“Megaphone experienced a platform outage due to an issue related to our SSL certificate,” Spotify spokesperson Erin Styles said in a statement. “During the outage, clients were unable to access the Megaphone CMS and podcast listeners were unable to download podcast episodes from Megaphone-hosted publishers. Megaphone service has since been restored.”It’s a simple mistake with big ramifications. Megaphone, which inserts dynamic ads into episodes,... Continue reading…

Sega / Sonic Team Ahead of Geoff Keighley’s not-E3 but also sorta kinda E3 Summer Games Fest next week, Sonic Team has released an extremely short teaser for Sonic Frontiers.I know there’s a vocal subset of the gaming community that hates when a new, vaguely open world-looking game gets shown and the gaming press calls it “Breath of the Wild meets X,” so I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to say it looks like Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn had a baby with Sonic. (Please don’t Google “X has a baby with Sonic.”)In it, Sonic freeruns across a light-drenched, flower-strewn landscape dotted with futuristic-looking ruins. Even though several games have featured Sonic roaming in a boundary-less world, the aesthetic in Frontiers is so... Continue reading…

While we were(n’t) outside touching grass, Bo Burnham has pieced together an entire hour’s worth of outtakes and cut content from his 2021... movie / musical / comedy special / existential crisis, Inside. While a majority of The Inside Outtakes is exactly what it says on the tin (flubs, different takes, and behind-the-scenes clips from the original), there are also some new songs throughout — within the first minute, we hear a new musical piece about Jeffery Bezos, which leads into an absolute earworm of a new song that musically sounds like a downtempo version of “Problematic” and revisits the themes of depression and being stuck inside for days on end. In other words, it strikes just as much of a chord with me as the original, which... Continue reading…

Background: US President Joe Biden presents his national statement as part of the World Leaders’ Summit of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on November 1, 2021. | Photo by EVAN VUCCI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images The US is doing a pretty horrible job of following through on promises it’s made to tackle climate change, according to two separate new studies. A global ranking of countries completed by Yale and Columbia found that the US now ranks 43rd among 180 nations that Columbia and Yale evaluated in their most recent Environmental Performance Index (EPI). That’s a major plummet since the last time the researchers ranked countries in 2020, when the US was in 24th place.A major plummetWhen it comes to climate indicators alone (the evaluation also considers countries’ progress on other kinds of pollution and efforts to protect ecosystems), the US fell all the way to 101 from its previous spot at 15th place. The US’s ranking was reported by The... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge With the country still reeling from the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, officials are scrambling for more ways to stop mass shootings — and facing hard truths about how ineffective many of our existing tools really are. Digital monitoring technology has come under particular scrutiny after reporting revealed that the Uvalde school district had experimented with a service called Social Sentinel, which claims to identify and alert schools to threats based on social media conversations.It’s an increasingly common service as schools grapple with the chaos of social media, often raising serious privacy and speech concerns along the way. Systems like Social Sentinel promise to give genuine insight into the huge volume of information posted on... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Monument Valley, the picturesque puzzle game series where players must navigate maps full of optical illusions, will no longer be exclusive to mobile devices. The complete Monument Valley Panoramic Collection is set to arrive on Steam on July 12th and gives players a broader point of view that isn’t limited by the vertical orientation of phones and tablets.Ustwo, the developer behind Monument Valley, says it had to make some adjustments to account for a wider perspective, as well as for the transition from touch to mouse controls. Kirsty Keatch, a programmer at Ustwo, said in a behind-the-scenes interview that while they designed the mobile version’s touch controls for “large fingers that might occlude the rotators and draggers,” the PC... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Update 1:05PM ET, May 31st: Nintendo’s latest wave of N64 controllers has sold out. Stay tuned for a new drop in the coming days, weeks, or months. We’re admittedly not sure when that will be, but hopefully soon!The official N64 controller for the Nintendo Switch has just been restocked at the Nintendo eShop. This $49.99 controller allows you to experience N64 games the way they were meant to be played — with a big gray controller with an awkwardly placed central analog stick. This offer is exclusive to the Nintendo store and is only available to purchase if you’re a current Nintendo Switch Online subscriber (Note: you can only access the N64 games with the purchase of the Switch Online Expansion Pack).Unlike some restocks for the Xbox... Continue reading…