The Verge

Crystal Du / The Verge In the summer of 2017, I was stuck between high school and college and stuck between two versions of myself. There was the high school version of me, someone with a laser focus on traditional academic success, and the college version of myself, a mystery that burst with the potential to do and create outside of the box that I had formed around myself.It started with a simple DM — something along the lines of “this seems fun; you should join it also!” When I clicked the link, I saw a dizzying array of character designs laid out in tidy rows, filling the homepage of the site. It was overwhelming, not just because so many people had joined this site but also because they had shared so many stories and characters. The characters were... Continue reading…

A Ms. Pac-Man arcade cabinet. | Photo by Gado/Getty Images As Hollywood looks ever further afield for IP to turn into new film franchises, the classic arcade game Pac-Man has emerged as the next potential basis for a live-action adaptation. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is currently under development at Wayfarer (the studio behind Disney Plus’s Clouds) with assistance from Bandai Namco, based on an idea from Sonic the Hedgehog associate producer Chuck Williams.Crucially, THR is only reporting that the film is “in development,” and there’s no mention of it having been officially greenlit or entering production. But the news makes sense in an environment where studios are increasingly turning to video games for IP to mine for their upcoming projects. In recent years, plans to... Continue reading…

A white version of the Xbox Elite 2 controller. | Image: Nicholas Lugo (YouTube) Microsoft appears to be working on a new white version of the Xbox Elite 2 controller. Video of the unannounced Xbox Elite 2 controller has appeared on YouTube, sporting a white face plate and black grips. The video comes months after a white Xbox Elite 2 controller was reportedly spotted at a retailer in the US earlier this year.The brief unboxing video, uploaded to a YouTube account identified as Nicholas Lugo, includes someone claiming the unannounced white Xbox Elite 2 controller was obtained in the US. Twitter users spotted this video recently after it was posted three weeks ago. It’s not clear whether the controller was sold at a US store, or whether Microsoft is still planning to announce a white version of its Xbox Elite 2... Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Chinese smartphone maker Oppo and its sub-brand OnePlus have halted sales of smartphones in Germany after losing a patent lawsuit with Nokia.Nokia has accused the companies of using its patented technology for processing 4G and 5G signals without paying for a license, reports European patent news site Juve Patent, and won an injunction to halt sales last Friday in a German court. (For clarification: this is Nokia the Finnish telecoms giant, a massive player in European telecoms equipment. Nokia the mobile brand is owned by a separate company, also Finnish, named HMD Global.)Oppo and OnePlus have complied with this order, as evidenced by changes to their German web stores.Oppo’s site now makes no mention of hardware devices at all,... Continue reading…

Image: WhatsApp WhatsApp is rolling out a way to hide your “last seen” status from specific contacts, as well as the ability to leave a group without notifying other users.Last December, WhatsApp started hiding users’ online status from strangers by default. While this was a step in the right direction, it still allows your entire list of contacts to see whether or not you’re online. WhatsApp’s upcoming update is supposed to fix that, though, as it will let you choose which contacts can see your status. So if you don’t want someone to know that you’re ignoring their message, toggle on the setting for that user, and they’ll (hopefully) never know the difference.WhatsApp is also launching another handy feature that will let you silently leave groups.... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Burger King has just emailed thousands of customers with a blank order email receipt. The blank emails started appearing at around 12:15AM ET, leaving Burger King customers confused whether the company has been breached by a hungry hacker attempting a midnight feast, or if the emails are simply a giant whopper of a mistake.Twitter users were quick to turn to the social network in a state of confusion over the blank emails, with some even receiving two Burger King emails in an apparent double whopper of a mistake. The order emails are totally blank, and were sent by Burger King’s main promotional marketing email address. Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge Burger King’s blank order receipt. There’s no clear... Continue reading…

Image: Snap As part of Snap’s child safety efforts, Snapchat is launching a new supervision tool on Tuesday that the company says mimics how parents and teenagers interact in the real world.Snapchat’s new “Family Center” hub allows parents and guardians to keep tabs on who their teens message with on the app without disclosing what it is they’re saying to each other. Both the guardian and the child must accept the Family Center invite before the oversight tools can take effect. Once the invites are accepted, a guardian can see the entirety of their child’s friends list and a list of accounts they’ve interacted with over the last seven days and report concerning accounts to Snap’s Trust and Safety Team.“Our goal was to create a set of tools... Continue reading…

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel unveiling the company’s pair of AR glasses last year. | Photo by Snap Partner Summit 2021 - Snap Inc/Getty Images for Snap Inc Snap is in the early stages of planning layoffs, according to two people familiar with the plans.The planned cuts come after the company recently delivered disappointing earnings results and didn't forecast earnings for the third quarter — news that sent its stock price cratering to near-all-time lows. It’s currently unclear how many of Snap’s more than 6,000 employees will be laid off, as managers across the company are still planning the full scope of the cuts for their teams.Russ Caditz-Peck, a Snap spokesman, declined to comment.Snap’s business has been hurt recently on two major fronts: The first is Apple’s introduction of the “Ask App Not to Track” prompt, which an estimated majority of iPhone owners have opted “Yes” to, making... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sent a wildly inappropriate text meant for your boo to, I don’t know, your boss? Now you have some extra time to save face and delete it — well, if you’re using WhatsApp, at least.WhatsApp users now have a little over two days after sending a message to delete it instead of just one hour, the company announced today.To start using the new feature right now, open up the WhatsApp group or individual chat where you sent the message(s). Make sure to tap and hold the content you want to get rid of, click “Delete,” and then select either “Delete for everyone” or “Delete for me.”Yet before you go off on a deleting spree, be aware there’s a (slight) catch: all recipients must be updated to the most recent version of WhatsApp in order for... Continue reading…

An overhauled design prioritizes comfort over the retro looks of Sennheiser’s past Momentums Continue reading…

Thanks, I hate it. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Apple released the iOS 16 beta 5 today and with it comes the long-awaited return of battery percentage to the status bar. Unfortunately, it’s ugly as hell and unreadable to boot.Previously, battery percentage appeared to the left of the battery icon. However, Apple removed it starting with the iPhone X because there wasn’t enough space to cram it in thanks to the notch. To find out battery percentage, you currently have to swipe down to Control Center. In iOS 16, Apple’s “solved” that issue by having the figure appear within the battery icon.(If you’ve updated to the latest version of the beta and don’t see it, that’s because it’s not enabled by default. To turn it on, you have to go to the Battery menu in Settings and flip on the... Continue reading…

We are beginning to live in a world where AI can genuinely do some incredible things, and I’m not just talking about DALL-E’s ability to produce uncanny original art on command. If you’ve ever experienced a shitty Blu-ray and wished someone could just upscale the DVDs for a better transfer, there is genuinely an AI app for that sort of thing. Two, in fact!ExtremeTech managing editor Joel Hruska knows a thing or two about that, having spent the last two and a half years attempting to remaster Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager using these continually evolving tools. And this past week, he wrote a 16,000-word explainer chock full of video samples and image comparison sliders to share it all with you. It’s like a... Continue reading…

Last fall during Gamescom, Take-Two studio Firaxis Games announced a new turn-based tactical RPG from the XCOM team called Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Taking place on the “darker side of the Marvel Universe,” and pitting well-known heroes like Iron Man, Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Blade, Captain America, and Captain Marvel against Lilith, a supernatural villain, it was originally scheduled for release in March before being pushed back until October 7th.Along with reporting Q1 2023 earnings, today the publisher announced another delay without many specific details on when the game will be released. Also, the game now appears to have a split release strategy, with PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC versions due before the end of March next... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla has a new rewards program in China to encourage customers to trade in their used models for a brand new one (via electrek). From now until September 30th, Tesla vehicle owners in China who opt for the deal will receive half-off the Full Self Driving feature, 15,000km (9,320.57 miles) of Supercharging credits, and a home charger installation savings of about $1,184.Tesla enthusiast Ray4Tesla shared the news on the “Ownership Loyalty Program” last month, which prices the Full Self Driving package in the offer at CNY32,000 (or about $4,741 USD) for cars that already have at least the Enhanced Autopilot package. Considering the price of FSD is now $12,000 in the US, it would seem like a deal to get it for more than half the current... Continue reading…

BioWare BioWare games have developed a reputation for producing some of the finest player-driven romances in video games. In service to that reputation, the BioWare store is filled with all sorts of bits and bobs designed to entice players to buy things that’ll display their love for a certain character. In its latest merchandise drop, the brilliant bastards at BioWare are capitalizing on that devotion in a genius way with a “Romance bundle” dedicated to Dragon Age Origins’ cheese-loving heartthrob Grey Warden, Alistair Theirin.

Photo by Stefan Jaitner/picture alliance via Getty Images Polio is back, monkeypox isn’t slowing down, COVID-19 is still around — and now there’s more not-so-good news on the infection front: over 200 human diseases could get worse because of climate change, according to a new study.Researchers have known for a long time that the changing climate affects disease. Warmer temperatures can make regions newly hospitable to disease-carrying mosquitoes, while floods from more frequent storms can carry bacteria in their surges of water.Most research, though, only focused on a handful of threats or one disease at a time. The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, built a comprehensive map of all of the ways various climate hazards could interact with 375 documented human infectious... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Digital communication platform Twilio was hacked after a phishing campaign tricked its employees into revealing their login credentials (via TechCrunch). The company disclosed the data breach in a post on its blog, noting that only “a limited number” of customer accounts were affected by the attack. Twilio allows web services to send SMS messages and place voice calls over telephone networks and is used by companies including Uber, Twitter, and Airbnb.The hack occurred on August 4th and involved a bad actor sending SMS messages to Twilio employees that asked them to reset their password or alerted them to a change in their schedule. Each message included a link with keywords, like “Twilio,” “SSO” (single sign-on), and “Okta,” the name... Continue reading…

Evolution Championship Series / Sony Interactive The Evolution Championship Series 2022 wrapped up last night, capping a weekend full of some of the most fun I’ve ever had watching competitive video gaming. MultiVersus made its EVO debut, despite still being in open beta; some new games were teased or announced; and for a glorious moment, the Twitter gaming community (or at least my corner of it) came together to witness an incredible Street Fighter V grand finals.I started my EVO weekend watching Skullgirls 2nd Encore. I was dimly aware of the game, only knowing it was a quirky-looking fighting game with a rocky development history. I only tuned in because Dominique “SonicFox” McLean was competing, and they are a treat to watch. It’s always fun with these kinds of tournaments to... Continue reading…

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a news conference after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act at the US Capitol on August 7th, 2022. | Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images The US is tantalizingly close to passing landmark legislation that would push the country closer than ever toward national and global climate goals. Yesterday, the Senate narrowly passed a budget reconciliation bill after months of stalled negotiations that watered down some climate provisions and then nearly fell through completely. After that roller-coaster ride, we’re left with the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests $369 billion in clean energy and climate action.If the House passes the bill and Biden signs it into law — which they’re expected to do — it’ll be the most the US has ever spent in one go to tackle the climate crisis that’s driving devastating heatwaves, megafires, and hurricane seasons. While this latest iteration of... Continue reading…

Waluigi Pinball. | Image: Nintendo Nintendo is now a third of the way through its ambitious DLC plans for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the ultra-popular kart racer that was released for the then-new Nintendo Switch over five years ago. Back in March, it announced it would be releasing a total of 48 new tracks for the game over the course of six “waves,” consisting of eight tracks each.But the first wave, released back in March, felt a little basic compared to the highs of the base game, and often it was all too obvious which courses were based on content from handheld consoles or smartphone games. This wasn’t the case in the original Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, whose courses were so overhauled compared to their source material that you’d be hard pressed to tell the Game Boy Advance... Continue reading…

Image: Bored Ape Yacht Club Non-fungible token, or NFT, thefts aren’t uncommon, but they continue to be a little mind-boggling— a bizarre combination of high risk and massive financial losses. The latest high-profile target is Steven Galanis, the CEO of celebrity video platform Cameo. Galanis reported over the weekend that he’d gotten his Apple ID hacked, and as a result, he lost a variety of NFTs. Most prominently, that included a Bored Ape Yacht Club ape that he bought for nearly $320,000 in January.Galanis tweeted about the theft of Ape #9012 on Saturday, following a bot reporting the NFT being resold. Galanis originally purchased the ape for 100 Ethereum — around $319,500 at the time of purchase — and the alleged thief flipped it to a new owner for 77... Continue reading…

Focus can help you tame notifications — but not much else yet. | Image: Apple Two Fridays ago, just before I left for a week-long vacation to Florida, I went through my pretrip digital routine. I set my Slack status to “Vacationing” with a palm tree emoji and paused notifications until further notice. I turned on Gmail’s auto-responder. I deleted a bunch of apps from my phone that would only serve to distract me from poolside bliss.The last thing I did was pick up my iPhone and create a new Focus mode. Focus, in case you didn’t know, is a new-ish iOS feature designed to let you quickly switch your phone from one context to another. You can set it to shut up your work apps on the weekends, turn off notifications while you’re reading or sleeping, or only alert you to new emails from 9AM to 5PM and not a moment... Continue reading…

Intel’s new Arc Pro GPUs. | Image: Intel Intel is launching its Arc Pro series of GPUs today, designed primarily for powerful desktop workstations and laptops. The Intel Arc Pro A40 and A50 will both be available for workstations, while the A30M will be available in pro-focused laptops. All three GPUs are capable of hardware-based ray tracing and AV1 hardware acceleration — and are designed with AI tasks and creator apps like Adobe Premiere Pro in mind.The Intel Arc Pro A40 will ship in a small single-slot form factor with 3.5 teraflops of graphical power, eight ray-tracing cores, and 6GB of GDDR6 memory. Intel is targeting this GPU at slimline workstations or small form factor PCs.The larger A50 steps up to a dual-slot form factor, 4.8 teraflops of graphical power, eight... Continue reading…

Congress is poised to approve newly expanded tax credits for electric vehicles, but the rules are written in such a way as to effectively disqualify every EV that’s currently on the market today.That’s because most EVs run on lithium-ion batteries that are mostly made in China. The nation has a lock on some 76 percent of the battery market today (the US only represents 8 percent). And to get a deal passed in a deadlocked Senate, Democrats agreed to provisions that would require eligible vehicles to use batteries that are made in North America.The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which passed the Senate this weekend in a party-line vote, would require batteries to have at least 40 percent of materials sourced from North America or a... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Nvidia’s Q2 earnings won’t come out for another two weeks, but the company has dropped its preliminary numbers today and the results are not looking particularly good for its gaming business. Its gaming revenue is reported at $2.04 billion, a staggering 33.33 percent decrease from the previous year’s $3.06 billion.The shortfall mirrors other gaming hardware companies, including Logitech, which reported a 12 percent drop compared to the same quarter last year, reflecting peak pandemic changes where consumers are done investing in all kinds of home equipment for work, play, and even exercise. And gaming sales as a whole have dropped 13 percent in Q2 to $12.35 billion compared to last year, according to market research firm NPD.One... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Department of the Treasury has added the Tornado Cash crypto mixer to a list of sanctioned organizations, barring all US citizens from interacting with it and requiring that US assets belonging to Tornado Cash be reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control.The announcement was made on Monday morning by the Treasury in a press release that cited Tornado Cash’s role in laundering cryptocurrency stolen in major hacks, especially those linked to North Korean hacking groups. In March, $625 million was stolen from the blockchain behind the Axie Infinity crypto game and laundered through Tornado Cash — a heist that the FBI has attributed to the North Korea-based Lazarus Group.The dramatic move from the Treasury is the latest... Continue reading…

The 256GB and 512GB models of the M1 MacBook Air are on sale. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Start your week off right with these handpicked deals, all part of this balanced breakfast. Our inaugural discount this week sees the M1-equipped MacBook Air discounted to $849.99 at Best Buy from its usual $999.99 price. This is the best discount we’ve seen yet on the 256GB model of the M1-equipped MacBook Air, making this an excellent chance to snag this lightweight Apple laptop. If you need a model with a little more storage space, you can also get the 512GB model for $1,049.99, a discount of $200 off the regular price.It may not share the same level of performance with the newer M2-laden MacBooks, but the lightweight form factor and impressive battery life still make the M1 MacBook Air an excellent choice for a daily driver, e... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As Netflix continues to build out its portfolio of games, the streamer’s seeing less than 1 percent of its subscribers interact with them on a daily basis. According to data obtained by CNBC from app tracking group Apptopia, Netflix’s games average 1.7 million users per day, a sliver of Netflix’s 221 million subscribers globally.Apptopia found that Netflix’s games have been downloaded a total of 23.3 million times since Netflix announced a push into mobile gaming in November 2021. The streamer started with just five games, a collection that it has since expanded to over two dozen titles, including a game based on the Exploding Kittens card game, the League of Legends spinoff Hextech Mayhem, and the strategy title Into the Breach.... Continue reading…

Lucid Motors is leaning into the dark side with a new trim package called “Stealth Look.” The subdued styling option, which features a total of 35 new exterior design cues, will be available for the full range of Air electric vehicles starting this week.The changes include mirror caps, glass roof trim, and frames around the headlights and taillights. A platinum finish has been swapped with something called “dark Stealth Polished finish.” Lucid said the goal is to imbue the Air, which is the only model the company has in production, with “a darker and overtly sporting personality.”“A darker and overtly sporting personality”Stealth Look will be available as an option for Air Grand Touring Performance, Air Grand Touring, and Air... Continue reading…

Calling the Z a parts bin car is not an insult but, rather, a necessary move for this car to exist in the first place. Nissan reused a lot of parts when it put together this sports car — so why is it still so dang fun? Continue reading…

You can pull it up at any time. Sometimes it’s not obvious, especially on a new computer, how well your storage is performing. Different models of the same product can even have vastly different storage speeds, as we’ve seen on the most recent MacBook Air models. If you’re running a Mac computer, and you’re curious how well the SSD is performing, there’s a very easy benchmark you can run called the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. Here’s how to run it.How to run the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test It’s the first one on the right.

Darby Stanchfield, Jackson Robert Scott, Connor Jessup, and Emilia Jones in Locke and Key season 3. | Image: Netflix When it debuted in 2020, Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Locke and Key got off to a pretty good start. Based on the brilliant comic series from Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez, the show tells the story of the Locke family and their sprawling ancestral home in Massachusetts that also happens to be home to some very cool magical keys. The first season of the show mixed the comic’s dark family drama and fantastical premise with some high-school hijinks ripped right out of Riverdale. But with season two, a lack of a great villain and a sped-up pace took away from what made the show so interesting — namely the magic and the mystery. Now, the series is back with a third and final season that attempts to wrap things up once and for all. But... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meaningful triumphs in a broken world Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad This morning, I was idly looking through my Twitter feed and came across a thread discussing Starbucks’ recent hiring of a former Pinkerton intelligence analyst, which led to a discussion of the history of the Pinkertons as strikebreakers, which led to a 19th-century illustration of a crowd of women confronting uniformed men with guns. Curious as to the source of the illustration, I aimed my Pixel 6 phone at it and tapped on the Google Lens icon on the right side of my homepage’s Google search field.After maybe a minute, I found a series of websites that had used the illustration, including one from Wikipedia that told me that the image was of an 1884 wood engraving made from a sketch by Joseph Becker illustrating “the striking miners’... Continue reading…

Jesse Belinsky / The Verge It’s 2013, and tonight my friends and I are getting together to wish on falling stars during a meteor shower. Like many young teens meeting up with their pals, I want to show off my sense of style, so I spend a solid amount of time trying on different skirts, dresses, and accessories in order to find the cutest look. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about how comfortable the outfit will be or whether the fabric will chafe against my skin since the clothes aren’t going on my physical body but, rather, on my villager in the world of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS.In real life, I’m a tall, slightly chubby, pubescent boy with the acne and self-esteem to match. Even though I go to a fairly liberal high school and have been... Continue reading…

Joi Mann / The Verge In 2017, I moved 8,345 miles from my family — from my pink and green painted childhood bedroom in Dubai to a dorm room at USC. Overnight, my world changed. I went from my parents’ mollycoddled child to an adult that had to do their own laundry. The whiplash was heavy, and images of my old life kept echoing in my head. When I woke up to hear the birds outside my window, I half expected to hear my mom playing her Suprabhatam devotional music, loud enough to shake the floor. I’d remember late mornings in Dubai, listening to the radio after missing the school bus, sleepily ingesting the Bollywood Top 40 my parents had on in the car. After class, heading to cram school, I’d blast Mura Masa loud enough to crush my eardrums. On the way home,... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Google is striking back at Sonos with a pair of lawsuits alleging that the wireless speaker company is infringing on a number of its patents around smart speakers and voice control technology. It’s the latest volley in a back-and-forth battle over wireless speakers that has so far involved multiple lawsuits from Sonos, one lawsuit from Google, and one ruling in favor of Sonos that’s led to features being stripped from Google’s products.These new lawsuits allege infringement of seven additional patents. One lawsuit focuses on hotword detection and wireless charging, and the other revolves around how a group of speakers determines which one should respond to voice input.Google says Sonos “started an aggressive and misleading campaign... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US federal circuit court has confirmed that AI systems cannot patent inventions because they are not human beings.The ruling is the latest failure in a series of quixotic legal battles by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to copyright and patent the output of various AI software tools he’s created.In 2019, Thaler failed to copyright an image on behalf of an AI system he dubbed Creativity Machine, with that decision upheld on appeal by the US Copyright Office in 2022. In a parallel case, the US Patent Office ruled in 2020 that Thaler’s AI system DABUS could not be a legal inventor because it was not a “natural person,” with this decision then upheld by a judge in 2021. Now, the federal circuit court has, once more, confirmed this... Continue reading…

A leaked photo of the DJI Avata. | Image: @AttaccoG A leaked video has given us another look at the DJI Avata, a rumored FPV (first-person view) drone from DJI that reports suggest will be designed to be flyable indoors thanks to a compact, so-called “cinewhoop” design. The Avata follows the release of the DJI FPV, the company’s debut first-person drone released last year.The video, which was posted by reliable drone leaker @OsitaLV, appears to show the drone being piloted with DJI’s motion controller, which was previously available alongside its first FPV drone last year. The drone’s pilot is wearing a pair of FPV goggles unlike any that DJI currently has on the market, suggesting they’re the new model shown off in previous leaks. These DJI Goggles 2 look to have a similar design to its... Continue reading…

Image: LG LG is today announcing two new sets of wireless earbuds. First up are the Tone Free T90 buds, which now become the company’s flagship pair. They still have the signature bacteria-killing UVnano charging case. And like the previous Tone Free FP9, the case can also double as a Bluetooth transmitter, letting you run an aux cable to devices that might lack wireless connectivity — like a treadmill — and still use the earbuds like normal.According to LG’s press release, the noise-canceling T90s have “a new internal structure with larger drivers that helps generate deeper, more satisfying bass.” But what’s more interesting is that they support Dolby Head Tracking “across your favorite content and devices.” Here’s how LG describes that... Continue reading…

The beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II will arrive next month, with PlayStation players getting access first, followed by those on Xbox and PC. Infinity Ward shared the news at the CDL Champs (Call of Duty League Championship) tournament. As with its previous betas, the dates are separated by console and whether you preordered the game or not.The first early access beta kicks off on September 16th to 17th for PlayStation 4 and 5 players who preordered the game. This is followed by the open beta for all PlayStation players, which begins on September 18th and ends on the 20th.The crossplay beta for players who preordered the game on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC will last from September 22nd to 23rd, while the open crossplay beta for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A security vulnerability on Twitter allowed a bad actor to find out the account names associated with certain email addresses and phone numbers (and yes, that could include your secret celebrity stan accounts), Twitter confirmed on Friday. Twitter initially patched the issue in January after receiving a report through its bug bounty program, but a hacker managed to exploit the flaw before Twitter even knew about it.The vulnerability, which stemmed from an update the platform made to its code in June 2021, went unnoticed until earlier this year. This gave hackers several months to exploit the flaw, although Twitter said it “had no evidence to suggest someone had taken advantage of the vulnerability” at the time of its discovery.Last... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Around the same time Meta hiked up the price on its Quest 2 headsets, it also announced that it’s ending Quest 1 support for Population One, a popular battle-royale shooter set in virtual reality. BigBox VR, the Meta-owned developer behind the game, shared the update in a post on its blog, noting that Quest 1 owners will no longer be able to launch or play the game starting October 31st, 2022.BigBox VR says the shutdown is necessary so it can focus on developing new experiences “that will push the boundaries of multiplayer VR.” Quest 1 players can still technically play the game if they have a VR-ready PC, however. The game supports cross-buy, which makes the PC version available via Air Link and Oculus Link. This should let users play P... Continue reading…

A bridge between two charging worlds Continue reading…

New customization options in the One UI 5 beta. | Image: Samsung Samsung has officially started to roll out its One UI 5 open beta to Galaxy S22 owners in the US, Germany, and South Korea. The update comes only a few weeks ahead of Android 13’s expected release, and just a few days before Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event. Like the operating system it’s powered by, the One UI 5 beta looks like a relatively small update that adds some customization options, tweaks to notifications, as well as new accessibility and security settings.One UI 5 builds off of Android 13’s theming options by offering up to 16 preset color themes based on your wallpaper and 12 additional color options for your home screen, icons, and quick panels. It also introduces a way to stack similarly-sized widgets on top of one another... Continue reading…

The new Eve Motion Sensor is speedy and stable as long as you keep Bluetooth at bay Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re the owner of a Fitbit Versa, Versa 2, or Ionic, you’ll soon no longer be able to transfer music from your computer to your Fitbit device. In a support page spotted by 9to5Google, Fitbit says it’s discontinuing its Fitbit Connect app on October 13th, leaving you with only two ways to download music to your device: a paid subscription to either Pandora or Deezer.Fitbit Connect is a companion app for Mac and Windows computers that lets you sync fitness data between devices and transfer music to legacy Fitbit devices. Fitbit has slowly been phasing out the software in favor of its mobile app, as it no longer recommends that users download it on its setup page.But without access to Connect, there’s no way to download music to your... Continue reading…

Photo by Abigail Bassett for The Verge Toyota is offering to buy back its bZ4X electric SUV crossovers after recalling the vehicle in June, as first reported by Electrek. The recall, which Toyota issued not even two months after the bZ4X’s release, involves loose hub bolts on the wheel that could cause it to detach while driving.Toyota initially advised bZ4X owners not to drive the vehicle, and suggested that they notify their local Toyota dealer so they can pick up and store the car while they wait on a fix. The company would then provide customers with a free loaner car in return.But a letter to customers obtained by Electrek and confirmed by The Verge reveals that Toyota is also offering to throw in a few extra freebies in exchange for the inconvenience, including a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Maybe Elon Musk doesn’t want a court battle with Twitter? After having his lawyers spin up a 165-page argument about why he no longer wants to go through with his $44 billion deal to buy the platform, Musk suggested hashing things out in public — perhaps before a jury of the Tesla fans, Dogecoin hodlers, and potential Mars colonizers among his Twitter followers — to get to the bottom of Twitter’s so-called bot issue.“I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage,” Musk proclaims to all 102 million members of his forum. “Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!”