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by Mitchell Clark on (#64RD3)
Kristen Radtke / The Verge Workers at Apple’s Penn Square store in Oklahoma City have voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, with 56 yeses, and 32 nos. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, all regular full-time and part-time employees at the store were eligible to vote, 95 in total.The election was only the second one carried out for a US Apple store. In June, workers in Maryland voted to unionize in association with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Another election was scheduled to happen in Atlanta, but the CWA called it off, claiming that the company had made a fair election “impossible” by intimidating workers.Apple has faced several complaints about anti-union... Continue reading…
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The Verge
| Link | https://www.theverge.com/ |
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| Updated | 2026-02-08 16:03 |
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by Jasmine Hicks on (#64R8X)
A burst of tweets from women who, as children, modeled for relaxer brands is one of the latest instances of the Black Twitter community finding an unexpected connection and reminiscing over a shared experience.
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by Mitchell Clark on (#64R8Y)
The company was accused of faking a video that showed its truck driving | Getty Images Trevor Milton, founder and former CEO of electric and hydrogen vehicle company Nikola, has been found guilty on three counts of fraud after a jury decided that he lied to investors to increase the startup’s stock. An indictment filed in 2021 accused the company of staging a video that purportedly showed its Nikola One semi driving under its own power, when it was actually rolling down a hill.Milton was also accused of misleading investors about where the batteries in its vehicles came from, the development process for its pickup truck, and about how far the vehicles were in development, according to Reuters. He stepped down from his role as CEO in September 2020.Milton’s charges include one count of securities fraud, and two counts of... Continue reading…
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by Chris Welch on (#64R5P)
Nick Barclay / The Verge Is Spotify’s long-delayed HiFi streaming tier finally nearing its debut? A survey served to at least one user suggests that the company hasn’t forgotten about it, and HiFi might be packaged into a new more expensive “Platinum” plan that would come with other perks.Over on Reddit, a former Spotify subscriber shared screenshots of a survey that they were recently asked to take. The questionnaire asked whether they would rejoin / switch to the service based on new plan tiers. The usual free and individual options are shown, but the survey also mentions a $19.99 Platinum tier that would carry over the standard paid benefits while adding HiFi and extra features called Studio Sound, Headphone Tuner, Audio Insights, Library Pro, and Playlist... Continue reading…
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by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on (#64PZX)
SmartThings hubs will be among the first devices to be Matter certified. | Image: Aeotec An over-the-air update coming later this month will turn Samsung’s standalone SmartThings hubs into controllers for the new smart home standard Matter. The v2 hub will control Matter devices over Wi-Fi and ethernet, while the current hub and SmartThings dongle will also act as Thread border routers. Samsung is the first company to publicly announce Matter certification.Jaeyeon Jung, Samsung Electronics corporate vice president and head of SmartThings’ mobile experience business, told The Verge in an interview that the company received its Matter certification early on Wednesday, October 12th, a week after Matter launched. Michelle Mindala-Freeman of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which oversees Matter, confirmed that it started... Continue reading…
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#64R3F)
She-Hulk having a little chat with the writers of her show in the real world. | Image: Disney Plus / Marvel Studios She-Hulk’s season one finale was a tribute to John Byrne’s fourth wall-breaking comics and a rumination on how formulaic Marvel’s live-action stories tend to be Continue reading…
by Allison Johnson on (#64R3G)
Google’s helpful iOS lock screen widgets are here. | Image: Google Google announced widgets for the new iOS 16 lock screens last month when the OS left beta and went public, but they weren’t quite ready. Now, the company has just released the last of its promised widgets, including one extremely important shortcut: a Google Maps app search for nearby coffee shops. We can all stop searching for the most useful lock screen widget because this is it.Sure, there’s other practical stuff Google’s widgets can do. There are Gmail and calendar widgets that can give you a glimpse of what’s in store for your workday and a Google Lens shortcut so you can quickly answer life’s burning questions, like “what kind of plant did I just buy?” There’s even a shortcut to Chrome’s cute little dino game, which I’ve very... Continue reading…
by Corin Faife on (#64R3H)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google announced on Wednesday morning that it has taken another step on the journey toward a passwordless future by rolling out support for passkey login to Android and Chrome. Passkeys, which let you use your phone or computer’s built-in authentication systems instead of a traditional password, have support from all the major tech companies, with Apple, Google, and Microsoft pledging to bring the feature to their OSes.Essentially, passkeys are a credential stored on a device, like your phone or computer, that confirms to a website or application that you are who you say you are (though Google is still working on the passkey API for native Android apps). You verify your identity to the device, and it can then securely log in to sites... Continue reading…
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by Justine Calma on (#64R0R)
The CF Industries fertilizer complex in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, on June 30th, 2022. | Photo by Emily Kask for The Washington Post via Getty Images A massive effort to capture the pollution causing climate change is marching forward in Louisiana, and it’s becoming a major flashpoint in the debate over how to clean up an “energy state” speckled with fossil fuel and petrochemical plants.This week, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards announced an “unprecedented” collaboration between two oil and gas giants, ExxonMobil and EnLink Midstream, and leading ammonia producer CF Industries. In what they’re calling the “largest-of-its-kind commercial agreement,” the three companies will attempt to capture 2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, transport the gas across the state, and bury it underground.Three companies will attempt to capture 2 million tons of carbon dioxide... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#64R0S)
Support will reportedly end in April 2023. | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta will be ending support for its Instant Articles format in the Facebook app next year, Axios reports. The quick-loading article format first launched in 2015, but Meta is moving away from it as part of a broader pullback from news-focused products. The company has told its media partners that in six months (or April 2023), Facebook will no longer support Instant Articles, according to Meta spokesperson Erin Miller. After support ends, news links on Facebook will take a user to a publisher’s mobile site.In recent months, Meta has been walking back some of its investments in news. The company shifted resources away from Facebook’s News tab and Bulletin newsletter product earlier this year and, just this month, said that it would be s... Continue reading…
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by Monica Chin on (#64QYD)
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge We all want everything to work just fine all the time. But sometimes they just don’t. Your Windows app slows down. You get the dreaded “this program is not responding” pop-up. Your whole computer freezes.In cases like this, the best option is often to force quit the unresponsive app. This means your computer will force the program to close, regardless of what it’s in the middle of doing or trying to do. There are several ways you can do this on a Windows PC. Here they are.
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by Tom Warren on (#64QYE)
Image: Nvidia Nvidia is pausing the launch of its upcoming 12GB RTX 4080 graphics card. After originally unveiling the 12GB RTX 4080 last month alongside a much more powerful 16GB model, Nvidia now admits it messed up with the naming. “The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it’s not named right,” says Nvidia in a blog post. “Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing.”Nvidia is now pausing the launch of the 12GB RTX 4080 model but will still go ahead and launch the 16GB version on November 16th.Criticism had been building over Nvidia’s decision to label the 12GB model as an RTX 4080, particularly when the 16GB model was so different. The RTX 4080 12GB was supposed to start at $899 and include 7,680 CUDA Cores, a 2.31GHz... Continue reading…
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by Rebecca Redelmeier on (#64QVR)
A Seabin at work in one of the Great Lakes | Image: Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup Waste capture devices collect thousands of pieces of trash in the Great Lakes each day. Can they also motivate humans to stop putting waste in the water in the first place? Continue reading…
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by Victoria Song on (#64QVS)
It took me 10 attempts to get this shot. You’ll have much better luck if you remove the straps, but even then I wouldn’t call it reliable. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Google’s official line is that the Pixel Watch does not support Qi charging or reverse charging from a phone. However, in the last few days, many users have anecdotally reported that these wireless charging methods do, in fact, work. Curious, I tried it out for myself, and I’m sorry to say that, while it does sort of work, it’s simply not reliable.First off, I decided to try charging the Pixel Watch using my Pixel 7 Pro review unit. I turned on the Battery Sharing feature, plopped the watch on the back of the phone, and it worked! For a grand total of 10 seconds. While the charging animation popped up, it never actually maintained a stable-enough connection to meaningfully charge. Sometimes I got it to work for as long as a minute, but... Continue reading…
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by Jon Porter on (#64QVT)
Google’s new mobile search results, complete with reformatted favicons, site names, and the new “Sponsored” tag. | Image: Google Google is changing how it formats search results on mobile, the company announced today. Paid results will now carry a larger “Sponsored” tag rather than the simple “Ad” tag they had before, and each website’s name is now listed at the top of each search result. The “size and shape” of each website’s favicons are also getting updated to make them easier to see. The new search results format is rolling out now on mobile, and Google says it plans to test a “similar experience” for desktop searches “soon.”In its blog post, the company explains that the new “Sponsored” tag is being introduced to ensure that “ads are clearly labeled” with a tag that’s “prominent and clear across different types of paid content.” Meanwhile, showing site names... Continue reading…
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by Adi Robertson on (#64QRV)
Apple’s Face ID has long provided biometric logins for the iPhone. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Apple’s rumored virtual and augmented reality headset will reportedly use iris scanning tech for logins and payments, according to The Information. The report, which cites two people involved in developing the headset, says the scanning is supposed to make it easier for multiple people to use the headset with their own accounts.The eye-scanning system echoes iOS tools like Apple’s fingerprint or Face ID logins, and it would take advantage of the device’s many cameras. It would also help differentiate Apple’s offering from its main competitor: the Meta Quest Pro, which the company formerly known as Facebook announced earlier this week. The Quest Pro features inward-facing cameras that can track eye and face motion, but it doesn’t (at... Continue reading…
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by Antonio G. Di Benedetto on (#64QRW)
Paramount Plus may not be the most popular streaming service, but it has lots of live soccer. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge We may still be picking ourselves up from the Prime Day hangover, but don’t fret, we’ve gotten some rest, fresh pots of coffee, and more deals. For example, you can get half off an annual subscription to Paramount Plus along with a free Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite streaming dongle. This deal makes the 12-month Essential ad-supported plan just $24.99 (normally $49.99) and the Premium mostly ad-free plan $49.99 (normally $99.99). Plus, you get that Fire TV Stick Lite, capable of streaming up to 1080p, which is a value of $29.99.This promo is based around the UEFA Champions League, which is in the midst of its group stages right now, and a one-year subscription would cover you well beyond the scheduled June 10th final in 2023. But if you’re... Continue reading…
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by Sara Merican on (#64QRX)
Park Hae-il and Tang Wei in Decision to Leave | Image: CJ ENM Park Chan-wook, the director behind Oldboy and The Handmaiden, returns with a film that’s part whodunit, part ill-fated romance Continue reading…
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by Barbara Krasnoff on (#64QRY)
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Handles, usually indicated by an @ sign in front of a name or nickname, are useful for people who want to create an identity, indicate their opinions, or make a joke — and many social networks, such as Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook, have adopted it. Now, finally, YouTube is as well — and not just for its established creators.Until recently, the only people who had YouTube handles — individual URLs that allow people to find your videos — were those who had at least 100 subscribers. The rest of us were using URLs that went something like youtube.com/user/your.handle. Now, YouTube is rolling out handles to all its users — @ names that will be used to identify you in channel pages, Shorts, and other YouTube areas.YouTube is sending out... Continue reading…
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by Chris Welch on (#64QKW)
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Microsoft introduced several new devices this week including the Surface Pro 9, Surface Laptop 5, and Surface Studio 2 Plus. They’re all fairly iterative updates; you know that’s true when Microsoft’s hype videos emphasize new colors and integrated 5G connectivity (for the Arm-powered Pro 9) as the most exciting “new” features. We finally got a release date for the helpful accessibility kit, at least.But Microsoft didn’t have anything new to share about its personal audio lineup. It’s been two years since the company announced the Surface Headphones 2. And those arrived around two years after the original pair in 2018. But the October hardware event came and went without any news of Surface Headphones 3. So if two years was the cadence... Continue reading…
by Mia Sato on (#64QHT)
Jarett Sitter / The Verge A day in the life of a 20-something on TikTok who works in tech might look something like this: start the day with free breakfast and a latte. Immediately go out for a multihour lunch break. Return to the office and wander around the spacious, light-filled space, visiting the nap room or the Harry Potter-themed meeting space. “Finish up work.” Then head out at 5PM.A LinkedIn employee’s workday includes making face masks for “a little self-care moment,” followed by eucalyptus hand towels and kombucha in the office. A Google employee’s day involves scooters, rooftop views, hanging out with a dog, and meeting up with co-workers.This is the “tech girlie” side of TikTok, where lifestyle vlogging has given rise to a cottage industry of... Continue reading…
by Ryan Broderick on (#64QHS)
Vincent Kilbride / The Verge Last month, all four major online social platforms — Meta, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok — released their plans for combating misinformation and disinformation in the weeks leading up to the 2022 US midterms.Meta will have voting alerts, real-time fact-checking in both English and Spanish, and as it did in 2020, it will also be banning “new political, electoral and social issue ads” during the week leading up to the election. Twitter is focusing on “prebunks,” proactively fact-checking content in users’ feeds based on search terms and hashtags and will have election-themed Explore pages. YouTube is rolling out information widgets on search pages for candidates. And TikTok will have curated election hashtags full of vetted information... Continue reading…
by Jon Porter on (#64QHV)
Apple’s native iOS keyboard in Dvorak layout. | Screenshot by Jon Porter / The Verge Here’s a fun iOS 16 feature that’s almost completely slipped under our radar: native support for the Dvorak keyboard layout. Ars Technica reported this week that the touch-typing optimized keyboard can now be selected in Apple’s software alongside the more traditional QWERTY, AZERTY, and QWERTZ layouts. Previously, Dvorak on iOS has only been available via an external physical keyboard, or third-party software.Although I’ve gone on the record as being a proud Dvorak user for over a decade, when it comes to touchscreen keyboards I’ve always been happy with QWERTY. The main benefit of Dvorak is the way it shares the workload equally between all of your fingers when touch-typing. It places all the vowels on the left side of the keyboard’s... Continue reading…
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by Jess Weatherbed on (#64QHW)
Valve’s latest beta Steam Deck update enables users to set longer custom startup videos on the handheld. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Valve released its latest Steam Deck beta update yesterday, which includes longer boot animations among the usual array of bug fixes and optimizations. Now, the maximum length of a boot sequence has been increased from 10 seconds to 30 seconds, opening up the possibility for users to create longer custom startups.Some users discovered they could create their own sequences prior to any native support, which as Rock Paper Shotgun reports, have ranged from nostalgic:
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by Jon Porter on (#64QEV)
A Starlink terminal in Ukraine. | Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images After providing tens of thousands of Starlink terminals to help Ukraine’s war effort, SpaceX has told the Department of Defense that it may not be able to provide future funding for the service, CNN reports. In a letter dated September 8th, the company’s director of government sales reportedly wrote that SpaceX is “not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time.”The terminals have provided essential connectivity to Ukraine during its war with Russia. Putin’s war machine has targeted Ukraine’s communications infrastructure as part of its invasion of the country, but Starlink’s satellite-based internet connectivity has provided an effective way for Ukraine’s... Continue reading…
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by Tom Warren on (#64QD5)
Image: Microsoft Microsoft is bringing GPU decompression to Windows PC games soon. After launching DirectStorage earlier this year, GPU decompression promises to be the next step in the ongoing effort to improve game load times on PCs. Microsoft says it’s “one of our most highly requested features” from game developers.GPU decompression works by offloading the work needed to decompress assets in games to the graphics card instead of the CPU. Modern games include massive amounts of assets like characters, landscapes, and objects that are all compressed to reduce the total size of a game.“Typically, decompression work is done on the CPU because compression formats have historically been optimized for CPUs only,” explains Cassie Hoef, a senior program... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#64Q3Q)
Image: Meta During Meta’s Connect conference on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg made a huge announcement: the avatars in the company’s Horizon VR app will be getting legs soon. To demonstrate this groundbreaking technical achievement, Zuckerberg’s digital avatar lifted each leg in the air, then did a jump, while Aigerim Shorman’s avatar kicked into the air.It may have all been for show. According to UploadVR editor Ian Hamilton, an unnamed Meta spokesperson said that the “the segment featured animations created from motion capture,” meant to “enable this preview of what’s to come.” To me that reads like what we saw wasn’t actually a demo of what Horizon’s legs will look like, but rather an artist’s interpretation of what Horizon’s legs may end up looking... Continue reading…
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by Alice Newcome-Beill on (#64KY0)
The cream-colored Apple Watch Series 8 is still available at Walmart for $349. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Amazon wasn’t the only one offering a deluge of deals earlier this week. If you were looking for alternative places to shop during Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale — perhaps one that didn’t require you to sign up for a premium membership — Walmart was featuring many of the same deals, dropping notable discounts on standouts like the Apple Watch Series 8 and Beats Fit Pro. While many of the sales have ended, Walmart is still offering discounts on a handful of items, none of which require a Walmart Plus membership to take advantage of.Below, we’ve rounded up a selection of the best deals you can still get from Walmart’s “Rollbacks and More” sale. Admittedly, the options are limited, but perhaps a new pair of earbuds or a smartwatch is... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#64Q16)
The Arecibo Observatory after its collapse in 2020. | Photo by RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images The National Science Foundation (NSF) won’t rebuild the massive Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico following its collapse in late 2020. The agency instead plans to build an education center focused on STEM education and outreach, according to an NSF announcement.The Arecibo Observatory was an important tool for deep-space observation and featured in films such as Contact and GoldenEye. But in August 2020, an auxiliary cable fell, with another cable failing in November. The NSF feared that others might have followed, which would have put Arecibo at risk, and said that it planned to demolish the observatory. But before that could happen, Arecibo collapsed in on itself.The unnamed new center is set to open sometime in 2023. The NSF is... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#64Q17)
The organizers have dubbed it the “T-Force Social Care Alliance.” | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers on T-Mobile’s social media customer service team, who respond to customer questions, comments, and complaints on sites like Twitter and Facebook, are trying to start a union. On Wednesday, they announced the creation of the “T-Force Social Care Alliance,” posting a letter tying their decision to pay cuts, layoffs, and management’s lack of response to employees raising concerns about those issues.The letter says that T-Mobile has cut monthly bonuses for T-Force (the carrier’s name for its social media support team), instead replacing them with “micro-raises” and an annual bonus, which the alliance claims there are very few details about. According to the letter, workers may end up with thousands of dollars less per year —... Continue reading…
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by Sheena Vasani on (#64M16)
Google’s budget-friendly Pixel 6A is still on sale for $349.99 in all three colorways. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge As expected, Target’s recent “Deal Days” event has officially come to a close. The two-day shopping event — which served as a counter to Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale — brought with it discounts on a variety of tech products, including gaming accessories, headphones, 4K TVs, and a range of other items that were on sale by as much as 50 percent off. However, just because the sale is over doesn’t mean there aren’t still deals to be had. In fact, a number of popular items are still clinging to their Prime Day prices following the event.To help you make sense of what’s still on offer, we’ve sorted through the remains of Target’s recent sales event to compile a list of the best tech deals you can still buy. The current batch of discounts... Continue reading…
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by Jay Peters on (#64PZW)
Google Fiber will soon offer some really fast internet speeds. | Image: Google Fiber Google Fiber will offer 5Gbps and 8Gbps tiers starting in early 2023 (via 9to5Google). The company is pitching these new offerings for people like creative professionals, those that regularly work “in the cloud” or with large data, and households with many people sharing the internet, according to a blog post from director of product management Amalia O’Sullivan.“5 Gig will make it easier to upload and download simultaneously, no matter the file size,” writes O’Sullivan. “And 8 Gig will make sure that everything you are doing online is happening in near real time (without jitter and with low latency).” The tiers each come with a Wi-Fi 6 router and up to two mesh extenders with professional installation, but you can use your own router... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#64PNK)
No, boss, I’m not slacking... and that’s the problem. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve had issues with Slack on Thursday, you’re not alone — for most of the day, the service’s status page has reported that “something’s not quite right” with messaging, apps, integrations, APIs, and connections. The issues, which seem to affect threads, channels, notifications and group DMs, lasted for pretty much the entire workday, starting around 9:40AM ET this morning and getting marked as resolved around 5:40PM.Here at The Verge, the problems manifested themselves differently for different people; one of my co-workers described Slack as acting “funky all morning,” noting issues with threads in particular, while another reported that their notifications weren’t showing up correctly and that threads would load at random. For... Continue reading…
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by Makena Kelly on (#64PW6)
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With only weeks until Election Day, the Republican National Committee is escalating its war over Gmail’s spam filters in what critics deem a bad-faith effort to bully Google into letting them spam user inboxes.The GOP has long complained about tech bias, but the latest fight hits the organization’s fundraising apparatus directly. In response, Google has launched a controversial program allowing campaign committees to effectively opt out of spam filters — a huge concession to mounting political pressure from Republicans. But Verge reporting shows the RNC has not taken advantage of the program and made few efforts to alter the core practices that might result in their emails being labeled as spam.A source familiar with the matter... Continue reading…
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by Allison Johnson on (#64PW7)
Personalized lock screens are so hot in 2022. | Image: Samsung Samsung’s take on Android 13, called One UI 5, is ready to come out of public beta testing “in the coming weeks,” according to a company press release issued today. Highlights include a more personalized lock screen and new modes to filter out unwanted disruptions based on your activity. Sounds an awful lot like iOS 16, and you know what? That’s fine! These are all great features on iOS, and Samsung is smart enough to copy them.One UI 5’s lock screen customization works about the same way that Apple’s does: long-press your lock screen, and you’ll see options to customize your wallpaper and clockface. There’s an option to create a wallpaper using a short video clip, too. Samsung says there are more wallpapers to choose from for your home... Continue reading…
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by Mitchell Clark on (#64PT4)
Keep my name out of your tweet. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is working on a feature that lets you control who can mention you, with the test version discovered by app researcher and engineer Jane Manchun Wong letting you block mentions completely. Twitter privacy designer Dominic Camozzi confirmed that the feature is in the works in a now-deleted tweet, and solicited feedback on it from the community.Letting Twitter users limit who can @ them would be a pretty fundamental shift in how the platform works, making it so you may not be able to reach out across the platform to a stranger to say hi or point something out to them. Of course, it could also prevent bullying or harassment campaigns and give marginalized users another tool to protect themselves.
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by Jay Peters on (#64PT5)
Although Playdots is going away, Two Dots will live on. | Image: Take-Two Take-Two is shutting down the gaming studio Playdots, the creator of puzzle games like Two Dots and the just-released Apple Arcade title Garden Tails, as first reported by Bloomberg. Due to the closure, Take-Two will cut 65 jobs beginning in January, per a New York Department of Labor notice.Take-Two confirmed the decision to shut down the studio in a statement to The Verge. Affected employees will be able to apply for other jobs at Zynga, which was recently acquired by Take-Two, and people who don’t find new roles will be eligible for severance, according to spokesperson Alan Lewis. Take-Two will continue to operate Two Dots through one of its Zynga studios, but the future of other Playdots games like Garden Tails is unclear, and Lewis... Continue reading…
by Mitchell Clark on (#64PQZ)
Just over 3,230 to go. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is getting ready to launch two test satellites for its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation, built to compete with services like SpaceX Starlink and OneWeb. In a press release on Wednesday, the company says the prototypes, charmingly named Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2, will be riding into orbit on a Vulcan Centaur rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) in early 2023.The company says the launch will let it perform tests on its satellite network technology with data from space and that the data will “help finalize design, deployment, and operational plans for our commercial satellite system.” The timeframe marks a slight delay from Amazon’s original plan; last year, the company announced it would launch the... Continue reading…
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by Cameron Faulkner on (#64KTY)
Apple’s excellent Beats Fit Pro are still available at Best Buy for $159.99, their lowest price to date. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s first Prime Early Access Sale is officially behind us, however, the two-day sales event wasn’t the only place where you could find marked-down tech products. Best Buy was also running a “Flash Sale” of its own, which saw the big-box retailer price-matching deals from Amazon’s Prime member-exclusive event throughout the duration of the 48-hour window.The promotion was intended to last through yesterday, October 12th, however, it appears a number of the anti-Prime Day discounts we saw over the last couple of days are still available online and at the retailer’s brick-and-mortar locations. Here, we’ve rounded up the best deals you can still get from Best Buy’s “Flash Sale” event, just in case you missed the shopping fanfare... Continue reading…
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by Justine Calma on (#64PR1)
When Dmitry’s boat approached the small island of Kolyuchin, which had been abandoned by humans since 1992, he was surprised to spot movement in one of the houses. Binoculars revealed polar bears — over 20 in total — exploring the ghost town. Dmitry used a low-noise drone to document the surreal experience. | Image: Dmitry Kokh via Natural History Museum As a science reporter, I chase down plenty of stories about how humans interact — often carelessly — with the environment around us. Even so, the stunning photos from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition have me shook. It puts furry faces on some of the thorny issues I cover. The images are such an intimate view of wildlife forced to navigate our unnatural world.Humans have engineered a collision course between ourselves and our wild neighbors — through urban sprawl that destroys habitats and climate change that pushes animals into new territory as the world they’ve adapted to transforms. There’s plenty to wonder at and protect in the natural world, as the wildlife photography competition shows us, too. The winning... Continue reading…
by Mia Sato on (#64PR2)
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge TikTok users will soon have a new way of highlighting their videos — and their TikTok presence — on other platforms.As part of the TikTok for developers program, the short-form video platform announced a new feature called Profile Kit today, allowing creators to easily showcase up to six TikTok videos off-platform. To begin, users will be able to integrate their TikTok profiles with Linktree, which already serves as a landing page for TikTok creators to share social links and contact information. Image: Linktree The Linktree integration shows up to six TikTok videos. Users will be able to highlight their latest or most popular clips or handpick videos they want to appear on their Linktree. Viewers,... Continue reading…
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by Victoria Song on (#64PNF)
The Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition will be the company’s first Wear OS 3 watch. | Image: Fossil Hot on the heels of the Pixel Watch, Fossil has announced it’s launching its first-ever Wear OS 3 watch — the Gen 6 Wellness Edition. It’ll also introduce a new Wellness mobile app for health and fitness tracking, but unfortunately, this watch doesn’t feature Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon W5 Plus platform. The Gen 6 Wellness Edition will retail for $299, and it’s available starting October 17th.The Gen 6 Wellness Edition looks like your typical Fossil device with its fashion smartwatch aesthetic. It’ll come in a 44mm case with a 1.28-inch always-on OLED display, as well as three color options: black, silver, or rose gold. It’ll be powered by the last-gen Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus chip with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage. That’s the... Continue reading…
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by Alice Newcome-Beill on (#64APS)
Kristen Radtke / The Verge Our fall gift guide includes plenty of ideas for enjoying the turning of the season, whether you want to admire it outside or bundled up at home. Continue reading…
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by Charles Pulliam-Moore on (#64PNG)
Image: Netflix Starting in November, Netflix will finally roll out its new ad-supported tier for just a few bucks a month, yet another sign that the onetime disruptive upstart streaming service has slowly become a cable package by another name.Netflix announced today that its new Basic with Ads tier is slated to launch on November 3rd, 2022, for $6.99 in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and the UK. In exchange for making you watch an average of four to five ads per hour that run anywhere from 15–30 seconds, Basic with Ads will give subscribers access to a large swath of Netflix’s programming but not the platform’s full catalog.A small selection of television shows and movies will not be... Continue reading…
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by Monica Chin on (#64PNH)
Some lucky shoppers will get to buy these early. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge In a recent post on the GeForce forums, an Nvidia community manager announced that the company is testing a new program called “verified priority access.” The program will give some potential shoppers the opportunity to reserve a GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card without the kerfuffle that can sometimes be required to get their hands on a new GPU.The program, as VideoCardz correctly pointed out, is a similar idea to EVGA’s Elite Priority Access system, which gave the company’s “Elite” members 24 hours of exclusive early access to its new products. Elite status didn’t cost money — users who were active in the company’s forums and Twitch streams or who had purchased and registered EVGA products recently were eligible.... Continue reading…
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by Ash Parrish on (#64PNJ)
Image: FromSoftware Elden Ring, the game that feels like it was released several years ago but was in fact launched just this February, has announced a massive update. According to Bandai Namco on the game’s website, the patch intends to “encourage more versatility in terms of gameplay” — if “encourage” also means “make you a nigh unkillable god in single player.” A lot of weapons and spells were buffed, very few things were nerfed, and it seems like it’s going to get a lot harder to kill your friends in PVP. The patch notes are indeed massive, but I’ve picked out a few highlights.Glintstone Pebble / Shard Spiral: increased attack powerThe single best offensive spell, great for chip damage and sniping enemies you don’t want anywhere near you, is getting... Continue reading…
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by Richard Lawler on (#64PJA)
Kristen Radtke / The Verge Soon, Apple Card users will be able to open a “new high-yield Savings account,” Apple says. There’s just one hitch: Apple won’t say what interest rate it’s offering.There’s also no specific timeline for when consumers can access these savings accounts.Apple has been moving into fintech with the Apple Card, which it partners with Goldman Sachs on. As one of its perks, card users get Daily Cash, Apple’s special branding on the more mundane cashback rewards, on their purchases. The promise of this “high-yield” savings account is that cardholders can have their Daily Cash deposited into it “with no fees, no minimum deposits, and no minimum balance requirements,” the company says.This isn’t the first savings account offered by a tech... Continue reading…
by Jay Peters on (#64PJB)
The game will be available on Steam and the Epic Games Store. | Image: Sony Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PC will be released on November 18th, Insomniac Games announced on Thursday. You can preorder the game now on Steam and the Epic Games Store for $49.99.Similar to Sony’s other PC ports, Miles Morales will have a number of PC-specific enhancements. Sony says the game is “fully optimized” for ultrawide monitors, with support for aspect ratios of 21:9, 32:9, and 48:9 (for “triple monitor setups”). You’ll be able to turn on ray-traced reflections and mess with different graphics quality options, and the game supports upscaling technologies like Nvidia’s DLSS 3. And if you plug in a DualSense controller, you can take advantage of controller-specific features like differing levels of trigger feedback... Continue reading…
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by Nicole Wetsman on (#64PJC)
Adderall is hard to find. | Image: Patrick Mallahan III For weeks, pharmacists around the United States have been struggling to fill prescriptions for Adderall, and on Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed the nationwide shortage.“There is not sufficient supply to continue to meet US market demand,” the agency said in a statement.In August, over 60 percent of pharmacists had trouble getting Adderall, which can treat ADHD, according to a survey from the National Community Pharmacists Association.Most of the challenges are attributed to manufacturing problems at the pharmaceutical company Teva, which produces more of the stimulant medication than any other company in the US. The company said in August that it was having delays because of labor shortages. Other companies... Continue reading…
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by Antonio G. Di Benedetto on (#64PJD)
The ZV-1F’s tiny wind screen is included with the purchase. | Image: Sony Sony has announced a new point-and-shoot camera centered on vlogging, and it is targeted at beginners with a low price point. The ZV-1F is an offshoot of its ZV-1 camera from 2020, but unlike that model, it’s not a twist on the long-running RX100 camera formula. Sony put a Zeiss-branded 20mm-equivalent f/2.0 prime lens in the new ZV-1F and paired it with a Type 1 (13.1mm x 9.8mm) 20-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor that can record 4K at up to 30 frames per second or 1080p up to 120fps for slow motion. The ZV-1F will run $499 in all black or white with a silver lens, and it’s due out in late October.While the Sony ZV-1F’s price sounds appealing for anyone looking at an affordable way to get into vlogging, there are some key omissions that... Continue reading…
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