The Verge

Activists demand “Loss and Damage” reparations at the COP27 UN Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on November 12th, 2022. | Photo by Dominika Zarzycka / NurPhoto via Getty Images Trying to save the planet looks less like a Marvel movie and more like tense climate negotiations that just wrapped up in Egypt over the weekend.Tens of thousands of delegates and activists from around the world gathered for the United Nations climate summit called COP27. It’s become more urgent than ever to figure out how to live in a much more hazardous world. And the only way to stop things from getting worse is for every country to live up to pollution-cutting commitments they made in the landmark 2015 Paris agreement. But they’ll have to overcome their own drama and in-fighting to get there.They’ll have to overcome their own drama and in-fighting to get thereThere were a few major victories and some disappointing losses at the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Facebook will enable more private settings by default for anyone under the age of 16 who signs up for the platform, the company announced on Monday. As for teens who already have accounts, Facebook will display a prompt encouraging them to use these settings, as well as a toggle that turns them on in a single tap.What Facebook’s billing as “more private” settings restricts details on an account so that only a teen’s friends can view the posts they’re tagged in, their friends list, and the pages, people, and lists they follow. They also require users to review the posts they’re tagged in and allow only friends to comment on their public posts. Image: Facebook Facebook will display a toggle that lets young users... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo The next wave of downloadable tracks for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is almost here. Nintendo announced that Wave 3 of its “Booster Course Pass DLC” will be available on December 7th, bringing eight new tracks to the racer.The tracks are split into two cups, and each one is an updated version previously found in a past Mario Kart game. The Rock Cup includes Tour London Loop (Mario Kart Tour on mobile), Boo Lake (GBA), Rock Rock Mountain (3DS), and Maple Treeway (Wii). Meanwhile, the Moon Cup includes Tour Berlin Byways (Mario Kart Tour), Peach Gardens (DS), Merry Mountain (Mario Kart Tour), and the 3DS iteration of the iconic Rainbow Road.The update is part of a huge expansion for the game, which includes a total of 48 tracks that will be... Continue reading…

The second-gen Sonos Beam and other Sonos speakers are on sale at Best Buy. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Best Buy is rolling out its Black Friday sales on Sonos soundbars in addition to its existing Black Friday sales. From now through November 28th, you can find a number of excellent Sonos speakers, all discounted to their lowest price ever. There are plenty of options when it comes to soundbars and speakers, but Sonos makes some of the best on the market, making this sale worth checking out if you’re looking for ways to upgrade your home audio.To stay in the loop regarding Black Friday sales at Best Buy and elsewhere, make sure to check out our Black Friday hub and retailer-specific roundups for a breakdown of all the best deals you can find at Walmart and Target on all of your favorite tech.Normally, the Sonos Arc soundbar is... Continue reading…

Leap seconds depend entirely on how quickly the Earth spins, which can be a nightmare for managing technology hardware infrastructures. (Pictured: the World Time Clock in Berlin.) | Photo by INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images A global panel of scientists and government representatives have voted to scrap leap seconds by 2035. The ad hoc time adjustment is occasionally inserted to account for the gradual slowdown of the Earth’s rotation and has caused headaches for numerous tech companies over the years.The leap second was introduced in 1972 as a way to adjust Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) roughly every 21 months. As these seconds are irregular and hard to predict due to the varying speed of the Earth’s rotation, they can disrupt systems that require precise timekeeping. Meta published a blog post earlier this year calling for leap seconds to be scrapped, highlighting that Reddit went down for around 40 minutes back in 2012 when a new leap second... Continue reading…

I have rarely, if ever, thought about my blood sugar. I think about sugar on occasion — the dentist demands it, and I get a headache when I eat an entire bag of Haribo dinosaur gummies.But a new spate of startups wants me, and everyone, to start thinking about our blood sugar all the time. Over the past few years, companies like Levels, January, and Nutrisense started selling programs that promise to help people start managing their blood sugar levels. They sell devices called continuous glucose monitors: small sensors that embed a tiny needle in someone’s body to track the way their blood sugar (their glucose) levels rise and fall.Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are usually used by people with Type 1 diabetes, a chronic condition... Continue reading…

LG Display’s Thin Actuator Sound Solution is just 30 percent of the weight and 10 percent of the thickness of a conventional car speaker. | Image: LG Display LG Display has developed a new “invisible” speaker technology for vehicles that uses a passport-sized vibrating panel to generate sound. It was developed with an unnamed “global audio company” and is expected to be ready for car interiors next year for installation in places like the dashboard and headliner.The south-Korean tech giant’s Thin Actuator Sound Solution is being promoted as a replacement for traditional speaker systems within cars and other vehicles. Unlike current in-car speaker systems that use heavy components like voice coils, cones, and magnets, the Thin Actuator Sound Solution uses LG Display’s film-type exciter technology to generate sound by vibrating off display panels and various materials within the vehicle, which... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla’s recalling over 321,000 vehicles over a software glitch causing the taillights on some cars to illuminate improperly (via Reuters). According to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the recall covers certain 2023 Model 3 vehicles and 2020 to 2023 Model Y vehicles.Tesla says the rear lights on one or both sides of the vehicle may “intermittently illuminate” due to an issue “that may cause false fault detections during the vehicle wake up process.” The NHTSA says this could “increase the risk of a collision” in dark conditions, but Tesla hasn’t received any reports of injuries or accidents related to this problem. Like most Tesla recalls (except this one affecting the Model 3’s seat belt buckles), the... Continue reading…

Jason David Frank originally starred as the Green Ranger. | Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images for Saban Brands Jason David Frank, an actor and mixed martial artist best known for his role as Tommy Oliver in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, has died at age 49, as first reported by TMZ (via Gizmodo). Fellow Power Rangers stars Walter Jones, Blake Foster, and Amy Jo Johnson have since confirmed his death on Instagram.Born on September 4th, 1973, Frank originally starred as the Green Ranger in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which ran from 1993 to 1996, before swapping to the White Ranger during its second season. His character popped up in other Power Ranger seasons as well, including Wild Force, Turbo, Zeo, Dino Thunder, Megaforce, and HyperForce. In 2017, Frank made a cameo in the Power Rangers reboot before making a final appearance in... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Federal law enforcement arrested and charged two Russian individuals with criminal copyright infringement over their alleged involvement with the pirated ebook Z-Library. Z-Library, which has been around since 2009, billed itself as the “world’s largest ebook library” before the US government shut down the site earlier this month.According to the Department of Justice, the pair in question, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, were arrested in Argentina at the request of the US government on November 3rd. In addition to criminal copyright infringement, the two are also facing charges of money laundering and wire fraud. The US government shut down and seized the domains associated with Z-Library at the time of their arrest, but, as... Continue reading…

Focus To-Do helped rebuild my shattered attention span | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Focusing never used to be a problem for me. I was the annoying kid who could study for eight to 10 hours at a time without complaint. That continued well into adulthood until I experienced my own series of unfortunate events. In the last four years, my parents and our 17-year-old dog all died in rapid succession from incurable neurodegenerative diseases. It didn’t help that it happened alongside a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic. And because I’m a genius, I decided to make digital media my bread and butter, an industry held together by fraying duct tape and brain worms.Needless to say, I started off 2022 as a hot mess. All that time spent doomscrolling and grieving left my focus in shambles. Things spiraled to the point where I’d... Continue reading…

Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images Donald Trump is allowed to rejoin Twitter, Elon Musk has announced. Musk justified that decision based on the results of his own personal Twitter poll. The @realDonaldTrump account and its tweets are fully visible again, just days after Trump confirmed he will run for president again in 2024.Shortly after taking control of the social network, Musk said he wouldn’t be reinstating any banned accounts until the company had set up and convened a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints.”Instead, on Friday evening, as people drifted off for the pre-Thanksgiving weekend, he decided to poll his own followers on Twitter. “Reinstate former President Trump,” he tweeted, alongside a poll with buttons to pick “Yes” or “No.”“... Continue reading…

Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune The former billionaire has been convicted and sentenced after it was revealed that her blood-testing company hadn’t achieved the breakthroughs it claimed. Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Wickr Me, the free encrypted messaging app owned by Amazon Web Services, is shutting down on December 31st, 2023. In a post on its website, Wickr says the app will stop accepting new user registrations on December 31st, 2022 before going away completely next year.AWS acquired Wickr last year and started packaging the paid version of the secure messaging app within its offerings for businesses. This version of the app, Wickr AWS, isn’t going away, and neither is Wickr Enterprise. The shutdown only affects the consumer-facing Wickr Me, which is often used by journalists, whistleblowers, and anyone looking to keep their messages away from prying eyes.However, recent reports suggest the app has become an outlet for criminals, with NBC... Continue reading…

Waymo received approval to offer rides without anyone behind the wheel in San Francisco. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Waymo can now provide driverless rides to passengers in San Francisco. On Friday, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) said it granted the Alphabet-owned Waymo a permit to participate in its driverless pilot program, which lets autonomous vehicle (AV) companies transport passengers in test AVs without anyone at the wheel.Waymo still isn’t allowed to charge for these rides, though. The state of California requires companies to obtain a series of incremental permits from both the CPUC and the Department of Motor Vehicles before they’re able to charge for driverless rides. Waymo just needs to secure the driverless deployment permit from the CPUC to fully launch its robotaxi service, as it already received clearance from the... Continue reading…

Ticketmaster had major issues with this week’s Taylor Swift concert presale. | Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic The Department of Justice is investigating Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation Entertainment over antitrust concerns, The New York Times reported Friday. Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010 but have come under scrutiny for largely dominating the live event ticket sales market. Ticketmaster has received renewed attention after it dropped the ball with Taylor Swift ticket sales this week.The DOJ has reached out to venues and “players in the ticket market” in recent months to ask about the company’s practices, according to the NYT, meaning the probe predates this week’s debacle. DOJ spokesperson Arlen Morales declined to comment.Live Nation issued a response to antitrust concerns in a post on its website and argues that its... Continue reading…

Image: Second Dinner Marvel Snap has been here for officially one full month, and in that time, it has, for better and for worse, taken over my life. I cannot get enough of playing this game, and in a short 30 days, I’ve managed to claw my way up the collection rank into the mid-700s. In that time, I’ve learned a thing or two about this little game and thought I might share some best practices. Image: Second Dinner Card poolsIs there a card you’ve encountered that’s the final missing piece for that deck you’ve been building? Have you climbed rank after rank, frustrated that your silver bullet hasn’t shown up yet? Did you know that there is an invisible tier system integrated in the collection ranks that determines which cards you get?... Continue reading…

It isn’t just the white color scheme of the DualSense that’s $20 off. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony switched on some very good holiday deals on digital video games for PS5 and PS4, as well as PS5 accessories, like the DualSense controller. I won’t list out all of the game deals available at the PlayStation Store, but here’s the best way to frame the significance of the game discounts: you can get three PS5-exclusive games, like, say, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Returnal, and Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut, for less than $100 ($30 each). That’s a far cry from the original $70 cost for just one of these titles. Newer games, like Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo 7, are a bargain at $39.89 each for the PS5 versions. And then there’s the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, which costs just $19.89.Onto the hardware, G... Continue reading…

You can score a $51 discount on Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro, but only for a limited time. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It looks like the real Black Friday deals have officially landed because Woot’s current deal on the new AirPods Pro is the best we’ve seen on the excellent true wireless earbuds to date. Right now, the retailer is selling Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro for just$197.99 instead of $249, which is the steepest discount the buds have received since launching in September. You’ll have to act fast, though. Woot’s current offer is set to expire at 1AM ET on Sunday, November 20th, but we expect these buds to sell out long before then.For the unfamiliar, the latest pair of AirPods Pro boast noticeably better noise cancellation and improved sound quality over their last-gen predecessor. They also allow you to adjust their volume by simply... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Robin Wheeler, Twitter’s head of ad sales, seems to have left the company yet again, just over a week after Elon Musk reportedly had to convince her not to resign.On Friday evening, Platformer’s Casey Newton reported that Wheeler had been fired from the company, though the details of why are currently unclear. Shortly after, Wheeler herself tweeted: “To the team and my clients….you were always my first and only priority,” followed by the salute emoji that has become a sign that you’re leaving the company. She did not immediately reply to The Verge’s request for confirmation that she had been fired. Twitter doesn’t have a communications department to take such requests.

We could live in a world with more app stores. | Photo by Stefan Etienne / The Verge Activision Blizzard and Riot Games at one point told Google they might launch their own mobile app stores, according to new documents filed in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit against the search giant. The details came to light as part of allegations about major deals signed with the two companies. Google allegedly agreed to pay Activision about $360 million over three years and Riot about $30 million for a one-year deal.In one document, Google exec Karen Aviram Beatty is reporting back from a conversation with Activision Blizzard’s now-CFO Armin Zerza one month before the two companies signed the huge deal. “If this deal falls through, [Zerza] claims that they will launch their own mobile distribution platform (partnering with another “major... Continue reading…

Samsung’s vibrant Galaxy Chromebook 2 is on sale in various configurations right now. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re looking for an affordable laptop alternative, Chromebooks are a great option to consider. Yet there are several kinds on the market these days, and it can be overwhelming to pick the right for you and your needs. Some are better suited for basic work tasks, for example, while some of the higher-end models can even rival some of the best laptops you can buy. Moreover, just because one Chromebook has more features than the other doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you or the best value for your money.That’s why we’ve curated this comprehensive list of the best Chromebook deals. Each varies in price and comes with its own strengths and weaknesses, but all of them come recommended for one reason or another. And if you’d like to do... Continue reading…

Photo via Getty Images Six years after we saw the FCC formally propose “nutrition labels” for your carrier’s potentially confusing array of plans, the agency says it’s finally happening. This week, it’s ordering US internet service providers to adopt the label format you’re looking at below — or it will, as soon as some last bureaucratic elements get worked out. Image: FCC 2022’s Broadband Facts nutrition label format. They’ve changed a bit since 2016 — now, each plan will apparently have its own label rather than ISPs trying to cram all of them into a single sheet, they don’t warn you about coverage, and apparently, ISPs will be able to point you to their network management policy legalese instead of having to ding themselves for... Continue reading…

Isabella Wei in Netflix’s 1899. | Image: Netflix We’re living in a good time for fans of puzzle box TV shows. Between the Yellowjackets plane crash, Severance’s creepy-ass office, and the big hole in Outer Range, there’s lots to occupy your fan theory group chats. Joining that ever-growing list is 1899 on Netflix — and it’s a doozy. The eight-episode-long series packs a frankly astonishing number of mysteries and twists into its runtime, making it an ideal binge. I’m still not entirely sure what, if anything, it all means, but I had a blast trying to fit the pieces together.1899 comes to us from Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, the same creative team behind another Netflix thriller, the German series Dark. 1899 is a multilingual affair. It takes place on a passenger ship during... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Matter is a new standard that promises to fix smart home interoperability — but can it deliver? Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge There’s a new effort to tackle Ethereum’s legacy of pollution, even after the cryptocurrency drastically reduced its greenhouse gas emissions this year. Ethereum software company ConsenSys launched a new initiative alongside more than a dozen tech and Web3 companies yesterday during the United Nations climate summit taking place in Egypt. The aim of the initiative, called the Ethereum Climate Platform, is to “redress and counteract” the climate pollution Ethereum left behind from its inception in 2015 until this year.In September, Ethereum completed The Merge — a highly anticipated software update that slashed the blockchain network’s electricity use by 99.988 percent. But prior to that update, Ethereum used an enormously energy-hungry... Continue reading…

Verizon Test Drive makes full use of eSIM technology by allowing potential customers to trial the service before they commit to signing up. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon has introduced a new early access program that allows you to test its network for up to 30 days. There’s no SIM card involved. Instead, it’s a showcase for eSIM technology to allow folks from other carriers to compare between services.The Verizon Test Drive program, like rival eSIM-based trial programs from T-Mobile and AT&T, is completely free but does require an unlocked and compatible phone. Ultra Wideband 5G, 5G Nationwide, and 4G LTE are available to try out in addition to 100GB of data and unlimited talk and text.The program can be used alongside your existing provider, allowing users to compare the two servicesTo get started, you need to download the My Verizon app via a QR code and follow the instructions — no credit... Continue reading…

Where did the explanation go? | Photo by Sven Hoogerhuis / BSR Agency / Getty Images Ticketmaster has taken down its explanation for why buying a ticket to Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour was an absolute disaster. The explanation, titled “The Taylor Swift Onsale Explained,” was live in two places on Ticketmaster’s website on Thursday and is now gone from both. But because the internet never forgets, you can still read it thanks to Google’s cache, and in case that fails, we’ve embedded it at the bottom of this article.In its post, Ticketmaster said that despite spending out 1.5 million invites to Verified Fans for Tuesday’s presale and putting 2 million fans on a waiting list, it saw “3.5 billion total system requests,” which the company said was four times its previous peak. Ticketmaster also shared a somewhat vague chart... Continue reading…

Except she’s made a massive bag of money from the whole thing. | Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Taylor Swift has spoken out about the boondoggle that was the Ticketmaster sale for her The Eras Tour, and it doesn’t seem like she’s saying sorry just for show. In a statement posted to her Instagram story, which you can read in full below, she says that she’s “trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward” but that she’s “not going to make excuses for anyone.”She doesn’t mince words when talking about her fans’ experiences with Ticketmaster, saying that “it really pisses me off” what people had to go through to get tickets. She also thanks her fans for wanting to come to her shows, saying they “have no idea how much that means.”In case you missed it, the millions of people trying to get tickets for the... Continue reading…

The AirPods Pro may let you boost your hearing, but that’s not enough to make it a hearing aid. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The line between hearing aids and hearables has blurred ever since over-the-counter hearing aids hit shelves last month. Case in point: a new iScience study that claims a $249 pair of AirPods Pro can sometimes perform as well as prescription hearing aids that often cost thousands more. But while AirPods may seem like an affordable hearing aid alternative, it’s not quite that simple.Researchers recruited 21 participants in the study to test how well second-gen AirPods and AirPods Pro performed compared to a premium hearing aid costing $10,000 and a basic aid costing $1,500. The participants were asked to repeat verbatim short sentences that were read to them while wearing each device. The AirPods Pro were found to be comparable to basic... Continue reading…

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s second-generation Rotom Phone might not look like a major update, but its new safety features are a lifesaving game-changer. Continue reading…