The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon’s growth has slowed down in recent quarters after surging during the pandemic, but the company is expecting things to pick up soon. In its second quarter earnings release on Thursday, Amazon said that its net sales grew just 7 percent year over year but that they’ll go up by an estimated 13 to 17 percent in the third quarter — which will account for sales from the company’s massive Prime Day shopping extravaganza.Sales growth has been on a steady decline for more than a year at Amazon:

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge After two straight days of afternoon public restocks for the PlayStation 5, Sony is going for the three-peat. The console maker has opened up another public queue to buy PS5 consoles, and you can join in right now. Pending availability after you get through the queue, you may have the chance to buy a standard PS5 for $499.99, a Digital Edition for $399.99, or a bundle of either with a digital voucher for a download of Horizon Forbidden West for an additional $50 (which is a discount, by the way). I’d wager on the bundles having the most availability.We have seen the last two restocks from Sony remain open for a few hours, with many people having easy success buying consoles. You’ll just need to sign in with your PlayStation Network... Continue reading…

Image: Outerloop Games The Annapurna Interactive Showcase 2022 took a somewhat different approach to the video game publisher summer showcase format. Instead of a fire hose of trailers, sizzle reels, and gameplay videos, Annapurna slowed it down a bit, doing all of the above while also taking time to show off the people who are making some of the best indie games in the industry.Here are the highlights of this year’s show.Thirsty SuitorsThirsty Suitors from Outerloop Games features a skateboard-loving South Asian woman named Jala, who, after leaving behind a trail of broken hearts, must now duel the owners of those hearts while trying and failing to live up to her parents’ expectations. We get our first in-depth glimpse of gameplay, highlighting all the... Continue reading…

It’s making several changes to the Play Store. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is trying to cut down on annoying, unskippable ads in Android apps and overall bad behavior in the Play Store (via TechCrunch). The company announced wide-ranging policy changes on Wednesday that update rules across several categories to be more specific, clamping down on loopholes developers may have used to skirt existing rules.One of the changes that will impact your everyday phone usage the most is for ads. Google says its updated guidelines, which will go into effect on September 30th, help ensure “high quality experiences for users when they are using Google Play apps.” The new policy tells developers that apps can’t pop up a full-screen ad that won’t let you close it after 15 seconds. There are some exceptions — if you... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It might get cheaper and easier to buy popular tech products, like gaming consoles and graphics cards, after Congress approved $52 billion in funding for domestic semiconductor manufacturing.In a 243-187 vote on Thursday, the House passed the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act to strengthen US science and technology innovation. The bill, a Biden administration priority, includes $52 billion in subsidies to encourage chip manufacturers to build out semiconductor fabrications plants, or “fabs,” in the US.After months of negotiations between the House and Senate, Thursday’s approval resolves the looming threat of chipmakers reconsidering plans to build US plants. Earlier this month, the groundbreaking ceremony for a $20 billion Intel... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge Say goodbye to the TikTok-style feed and at least some of those recommendations Continue reading…

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images It’s been a long road for the “Build Back Better” plan — but Wednesday night, after over a year of both public and private negotiations, we finally saw a proposal that could actually clear Congress. Renamed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” the new Sen. Manchin-endorsed proposal would raise roughly $740 billion in revenue through a combination of tax increases and price negotiation — and divert $370 billion of that money to fighting climate change. If it makes it through Congress, the bill would be the largest climate spending package in US history — and with alarming heatwaves in progress all around the world, it couldn’t come at a better time.But while the sheer volume of the package is striking, it’s even more interesting where the... Continue reading…

SoulCycle woke up and chose violence with this campaign. | Image: SoulCycle, Equinox SoulCycle isn’t pulling any punches with its latest campaign that offers Peloton users free in-person classes... if they trade in their bikes. The move comes while Peloton is still dealing with excess inventory after misjudging post-quarantine demand.“We’re dead set on seeing you back with your pack, so we’re giving you the opportunity to trade in your bike for the equivalent value of in-studio classes at SoulCycle,” reads SoulCycle’s Souls Reunited campaign site.According to SoulCycle, that translates to 47 classes added directly to the user’s SoulCycle account. The offer is open to the first 100 people to trade in their bikes so long as they live in the contiguous United States. That said, there are a few other caveats. Users must... Continue reading…

John Allen, the host of hit podcast MrBallen. In each episode of MrBallen, series host John Allen appears in the center of the frame, usually wearing a plaid shirt with a couple of buttons undone and a baseball cap turned backward, and slowly talks viewers through the events of a “strange, dark, and mysterious” true crime story. Episodes with titles like “What I saw in my room still haunts me” and “Real-life ‘ghost ship’ has a SECRET,” bring in more than 40 million monthly views — a massive volume that still is not enough to put Allen in the upper echelon of YouTube influencers. But in podcasting? He’s a star.Steven Cohen, a longtime audio industry sales executive, was shocked when he dug into the stats for the podcast version of MrBallen, which launched in February. The show was... Continue reading…

Google’s premium buds have more features — without deal-breaking flaws Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images JetBlue and Spirit announced a $3.8 billion merger agreement after a previous deal between Spirit and Frontier Airlines fell apart Wednesday. The newly merged airline will be the fifth-largest in the US in a potential challenge to the dominance of the “Big Four” carriers.Spirit’s shareholders rejected the deal in favor of the more generous offer from JetBlue. The two airlines, JetBlue and Frontier, have been courting Spirit for months in the hopes of creating a bigger budget airline that could have the effect of bringing down airline ticket prices.But it’s been a rocky road to today’s announcement. In February, Frontier announced its plans to buy Spirit in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.9 billion. But JetBlue had its own designs... Continue reading…

Image: Instagram Instagram will begin asking some US users for race and ethnicity data in order to study how different groups experience the platform, the company says in a blog post published today.A random assortment of Instagram users will get a pop-up in the app that leads to a survey asking for their race and ethnicity, hosted by the research group YouGov. Answering the questions is optional, and Instagram says responses “will not limit the experiences that you have on Instagram, including impacting your reach or how people engage with your content in any way.”In a video message posted today, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said collecting the data will help the platform look for ways to improve Instagram for users.“If we’re going to make sure that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify has announced another new way to mix and match music on its service with your friends. Its new Friends Mix playlist type aims to get you out of your comfort zone with tracks that your friends have been listening to. Unlike Blend, one of its other personalized playlist types that merges a few of your recent faves with some from a pal, Friends Mix is meant to be like getting a big mixtape full of recommendations that all of your friends would give you.This new playlist type is available globally to premium Spotify subscribers and to those who use its free offering, though it’s currently limited to the iOS and desktop apps (I guess Spotify decided that Android users are friend-less). In order to actually see a Friends Mix within... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge From Elon Musk Twitter impersonators to dubious Discord chats, cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) scammers have stolen billions of dollars from investors over the last few years. But now, politicians and law enforcement are turning their attention to Apple and Google — companies that operate huge app stores — and how they review fraudulent crypto apps.In letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) asked that the companies explain their processes in reviewing and approving crypto trading and wallet apps for download on their app stores. Brown’s inquiry follows a recently released FBI report warning that 244 investors have been scammed out of $42.7 million from fraudulent... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Senator Joe Manchin has had a change of heart about electric vehicles.The West Virginia Democrat, who previously described federal tax credits for EVs as “ludicrous,” announced a surprise deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on a reconciliation package that includes $369 billion for climate and energy measures aimed at slashing carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030.The bill would allow car buyers to continue to claim the current $7,500 federal tax credit for the purchase of “clean vehicles” — the new preferred phrase describing plug-in hybrid, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, replacing the old phrase “new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicle.”It would also remove the current 200,000 vehicle cap... Continue reading…

PS-specific buttons, Xbox analog stick arrangement. Sony has enlisted accessory company Backbone to make a PlayStation-ified version of the excellent Backbone One mobile controller for iPhone that’s available now from Backbone and Best Buy. It gives off PS Vita vibes, except somehow, Sony was okay with Backbone keeping its Xbox-like analog stick arrangement. The $99.99 controller, which can be pulled open to fit iPhones as small as the 13 Mini and as big as the 13 Pro Max, comes in a new mix of white and black, just like the PS5’s DualSense controller. Sure, this is a pricier workaround than strapping one of Sony’s controllers to your phone, but it’s a more elegant-looking way to play PlayStation games via Remote Play, Sony’s mobile app that streams games from your PS4 or PS5 console.I... Continue reading…

Image: Findaway Spotify’s purchase of Findaway, a platform that allows users to create, distribute, and monetize their own audiobooks, cost it €117 million, or around $123 million USD, the company revealed today. Findaway will provide the infrastructure for what will become the third pillar of Spotify’s business. The streaming service first announced the acquisition last November.“We believe that audiobooks, in their many different forms, will be a massive opportunity,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told investors at a presentation last month. “And just as we’ve done in podcasting, expect us to play to win.”Audiobook features are coming “quite imminently”Spotify’s acquisition of Findaway is reminiscent of when it bought Anchor in 2019. Like Anchor, Findaway... Continue reading…

China’s Long March 5B rocket ahead of launch | Photo credit should read CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images Sometime this weekend, a massive booster from a Chinese rocket will begin an uncontrolled fall back to Earth from space — and because of its considerable size and weight, parts of it may survive the descent through our planet’s atmosphere and hit the ground. The chances of the rocket hitting anyone and killing them are exceedingly rare, but a similar falling Chinese rocket last year sparked major concern worldwide, which means this rocket will probably do the same.The booster is part of a Long March 5B rocket, which launched on July 24th, sending a new module into orbit for China’s growing Tiangong space station. After the giant rocket reaches space, it sheds a fairly massive part of itself: its core booster. This booster sticks around... Continue reading…

The first solid discount we’ve seen on the latest MacBook Pro | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Summer solstice has come and gone, which means that a new scholastic year is just around the corner. Thankfully, several of our top picks for laptops suited for students are currently on sale. In addition to those deals, the M2-equipped MacBook Pro just got its first significant discount at Best Buy. Normally priced at $1,499.99, the 512GB configuration of Apple’s latest model of the MacBook Pro is discounted to $1,299.99 at Best Buy, its lowest price yet. Also, the 256GB model that typically sells for $1,299.99 is down to just $1,099.99 at Best Buy.It may look the same as the older versions of the MacBook Pro — Touch Bar and all — but it houses the faster M2 processor. While the tired design and lackluster webcam may not be what every... Continue reading…

Nintendo has announced a release date — August 4th — for the next DLC courses coming to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. This second wave includes eight courses, the same as what we saw when the first wave launched in March. They’re mostly based around tracks found in previous Mario Kart games, but there’s one that’s brand new: an ice cream-themed course called Sky-High Sundae.Running down the returning tracks from previous games, there’s Kalimari Desert from the N64 version of Mario Kart, Mario Circuit 3 from the SNES, Mushroom Gorge from the Wii, Waluigi Pinball from the DS, Snow Land from the GBA, and New York Minute and Sydney Sprint, which both previously appeared in the mobile-focused title Mario Kart Tour. Nintendo’s announcement notes that... Continue reading…

Just a wee phone with massive cameras. The Zenfone 9, like last year’s 8, is that rare Android phone that prioritizes compact size rather than maximizing screen or battery size. Be still my heart! But the new story this year is the phone’s camera and stabilization system: rather than just moving a single lens element to compensate for camera shake, the entire main camera — lens, sensor, all of it — moves. It’s a unique approach to fighting some of mobile photography’s biggest enemies: low light and shaky video footage.The Zenfone 9 is small but mighty and continues the 8’s tradition of including top-tier specs in a compact phone. The screen is a 5.9-inch 1080p OLED with smooth 120Hz refresh rate, and the phone uses a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset — Qualcomm’s very latest... Continue reading…

This prototype proton exchange membrane, or PEM, fuel cell system can provide emissions-free backup power to about 10,000 data center servers. | Image: Microsoft / John Brecher Microsoft has reached a new milestone in its effort to ditch diesel in favor of cleaner energy at its data centers. The company announced today that it successfully tested a hydrogen fuel cell system powerful enough to replace a traditional diesel-powered backup generator at a large data center.As part of its plans to tackle climate change, Microsoft wants to completely quit using diesel as fuel for its backup power systems by 2030. To keep data centers running 24/7, regardless of power outages, each center is equipped with batteries that temporarily kick in until backup generators are fired up.For now, those generators run on diesel, releasing air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen fuel cells, in contrast, combine... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Comcast didn’t add any new broadband subscribers between April and June, marking the first time the company has failed to grow its high-speed internet business. Broadband figures stayed flat from Q1 at 32.2 million subscribers, the company announced in its Q2 2022 earnings release this morning.With just one exception, this is the first time Comcast hasn’t added at least 100,00 new subscribers, according to The Wall Street Journal. That exception came after the 2008 financial crisis and still resulted in 65,000 new subscribers.Comcast seems to think the flatline is just temporary. CEO Brian Roberts cites “a unique and evolving macroeconomic environment” as limiting the company’s ability to add new subscribers. The spring quarter also... Continue reading…

Why bother to design your own robots when you can just reuse what nature created?This was the thought process behind a research project from engineers at Rice University who successfully transformed dead spiders into robotic gripping claws. The scientists have dubbed their new area of research “necrobotics” and say it could create cheap, effective, and biodegradable alternatives to current robotic systems.So why spiders? Well, while humans move their limbs using pairs of antagonistic muscles, like biceps and triceps, spiders’ legs contain only a single flexor muscle that draws the leg inward. This is opposed by a hydraulic system: a chamber in the center of the spider’s body (known as a prosoma) pushes out fluid to open the leg, with... Continue reading…

A protein structure identified by AlphaFold. | Image: DeepMind DeepMind is releasing a free expanded database with its predictions of the structure of nearly every protein known to science, the company, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, announced today.DeepMind transformed science in 2020 with its AlphaFold AI software, which produces highly accurate predictions of the structures of proteins — information that can help scientists understand how they work, which can help treat diseases and develop medications. It first started publicly releasing AlphaFold’s predictions last summer through a database built in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). That initial set included 98 percent of all human proteins.Now, the database is expanding to over 200 million... Continue reading…

Photo by Zhu Haipeng/VCG via Getty Images The power demands of data centers can be staggering, with larger facilities using as much electricity as tens of thousands of homes. Now, in parts of London, those energy requirements are reportedly stopping developers from building new houses because there’s simply not enough electricity to go around.According to a report from The Financial Times, which shared letters sent to housing developers by London’s local governing body (the Greater London Authority, or GLA), the issue is affecting new developments in three west London boroughs: Ealing, Hillingdon, and Hounslow. The GLA said west London’s electricity grid was at capacity, and told one developer there may not be “sufficient electrical capacity for a new connection” until 2035.I... Continue reading…

Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al Yankovic. | Image: Roku Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a biopic about the musician starring Daniel Radcliffe, will release on November 4th on The Roku Channel, the streaming company has announced. The film will be available to stream everywhere where Roku’s free service is available, and is the latest step in the company’s push into producing original content that reportedly includes as many as 50 shows.The biopic covers the life of musician Weird Al Yankovic including his “rise to fame in the music industry to his celebrity love affairs” according to Roku. It’s being directed by Eric Appel (who most recently directed all ten episodes of Quibi show Die Hart) and is written by Appel and Weird Al himself. Alongside Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood and Rainn Wilson... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Ford, the leading automaker when it comes to making and selling specially designed vehicles for law enforcement, revealed the F-150 Lightning Pro SSV, an electric truck specially designed for law enforcement.The truck is a variant of the F-150 Lightning Pro, which is a version of Ford’s electric pickup that’s aimed specifically at commercial customers and fleet owners. Ford is pitching the F-150 Lightning Pro SSV (which stands for “Special Service Vehicle”) as an ideal fleet vehicle with all the features cops have come to rely on over the years, as well as other advantages specific to EVs, like quick acceleration and a lower total cost of ownership.an ideal fleet vehicle with all the features cops have come to rely on over the yearsA... Continue reading…

Ghost Phone. | Image: Snap Snap has launched its first in-Snapchat augmented reality game, a spooky “found phone” title called Ghost Phone. In the game, you’ll work to solve the mystery of what happened to the previous owner of a smartphone, and you’ll quickly learn that things are just a little bit... ghastly.The core of the game is using the camera on your actual smartphone to find AR ghosts that appear in your nearby surroundings. You’ll complete different types of activities to find and capture the ghosts — for one, I had to track three floating energy balls around my office to make a ghost appear. As you capture more ghosts, you’ll unlock additional things you can check out the “phone,” such as new text messages and more apps.Ghost Phone is Snap’s take on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is starting to test 1440p resolution support for its PlayStation 5 console, a highly-requested addition. Testers will get access to a new PS5 system software beta today that includes 1440p support, curated gamelists for their library, and new social features.The new 1440p video output option will allow PS5 owners to choose this resolution on compatible TVs and monitors. If games support 1440p then native 1440p output will be supported, but otherwise 4K games will benefit from improve anti-aliasing by supersampling down to the 1440p output. Image: Sony 1440p resolution on the PS5. PS5 owners with the beta software will be able to check if their HDMI-connected display supports 1440p in the screen and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A new Status feature has started appearing for some Twitter users that lets them assign one of several pre-written labels to their tweets. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the limited test in a statement given to TechCrunch, while Twitter users have been sharing screenshots of the feature in action.“For a limited time, we are testing a feature that allows you to add a status topic from a predetermined list to your Tweets to provide more context for your followers,” the Twitter spokesperson said. “So whether you are about to drop a hot Tweet thread, share your shower thoughts, or have a bad case of the Mondays, your Tweets can better convey what you are up to.”

Amazon reportedly told workers they could take unpaid time off if they felt uncomfortable coming into work. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Over two dozen Amazon workers claim the company didn’t respond appropriately to racist death threats against Black workers at its MDW2 facility in Joliet, Illinois, and retaliated against an employee who spoke out, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune (via Engadget). The 26 workers have reportedly filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).In late May, workers said they found messages reading “[n-word]s gonna die” and “fuck these [n-words] at MDW2” written on bathroom walls in the facility, according to the advocacy group Warehouse Workers for Justice. A day or two later, according to a report from local outlet Herald-News, employees learned that someone anonymously called the facility with... Continue reading…

Google’s latest Nest security cameras can stream a live feed to a Chromecast with Google TV. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Google is finally bringing an old feature to its new Nest cameras. Starting this week, you can stream the video feed from all your Nest cameras and video doorbells to your TV using a Chromecast with Google TV. Google announced the feature in a blog post on the Google Nest Community forum Wednesday morning.“What?” You ask. “Couldn’t you already do this?” Well, yes and no. It was possible to view the video feed from older Nest cameras — such as the Google Nest Doorbell (wired), the now discontinued Nest Cams, and the camera inside the Nest Hub Max — on the biggest screen in your home.But, as I noted in my review of the new Nest Cam (indoor, wired), none of Google’s newer cameras could stream to Chromecast devices. (All Nest cameras can... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you already have strong feelings about your Instagram feed increasingly showing Reels from accounts you don’t follow, just wait until next year.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will more than double the amount of content from recommended accounts people see while using Instagram and Facebook by the end of 2023. He said that such recommendations currently account for roughly 15 percent of the content on Facebook, and that the percentage is already higher on Instagram.The push, which Zuckerberg calls building the “Discovery Engine,” is a radical departure from Facebook and Instagram’s historical focus on showing posts from a user’s social graph, or list of friends. The shift is intended to compete with TikTok’s heavy use of... Continue reading…

Enjoying the outdoors, absolutely decked out in Xbox gear. | Image: Microsoft Xbox has released a clothing and accessory collection dedicated to camping. No, not the video game kind that esports organization 100 Thieves lambasted with its own clothing line — Microsoft’s is about actually getting outside and touching grass. The camper collection includes a variety of shorts, shirts, and headgear, along with things like a hammock and camping chair.Given that most people don’t usually associate gaming with going outdoors, some of the items in the lineup actually seem decent. Xbox’s camp chair looks like a clone of the design popularized by the Helinox Chair Zero (to be fair, so does pretty much every other camp chair), but electric green and twice as heavy. Given that it’s significantly cheaper than the Helinox,... Continue reading…

Photo by Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images Last week, the UK reached its highest temperature on record — 40 degrees Celsius, or more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit. On July 20th, as the record-breaking “Red Extreme” heatwave continued to linger, a Bloomberg op-ed reports officials made the decision to pay a record price of £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt to ensure electricity for South London residents — about 5,000 percent higher than its usual average price of £178 per megawatt hour.To avoid an energy short squeeze in 2021, the UK paid about £1,600 (more than $1,900) per megawatt to import energy.

Spirit has continually rejected JetBlue’s offer. Spirit and Frontier Airlines have tossed out their proposed merger agreement, leaving room for Spirit’s other suitor, JetBlue, to swoop in and score a deal, as first reported by CNBC. Shareholders were expected to reject the deal during a vote today, possibly because of JetBlue’s higher offer, according to The Washington Post.Frontier and Spirit first announced the proposed merger in February, a move that would’ve combined the two budget airlines to create the fifth largest in the US. But not everything went as planned — JetBlue countered Frontier’s initial $2.9 billion offer with an attractive all-cash $3.6 billion bid that Spirit later rejected. In May, JetBlue launched a hostile takeover of Spirit Airlines and kept attempting to s... Continue reading…

The Nintendo Switch Online NES Controller | Image: Nintendo Steam’s latest update adds support for Nintendo’s classic controllers that it makes for Nintendo Switch. While Valve’s patch notes are somewhat vague — “Added support for Nintendo Online classic controllers” — the change means Steam now supports the Switch-specific NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and Sega Genesis controllers, Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle confirmed to The Verge.If you want to pick up one of those controllers to use with Steam, you should know that you can only purchase them if you’re a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. You can grab the NES and SNES controllers right now, but the N64 and Genesis controllers are currently out of stock. Nintendo’s website doesn’t indicate when they might be available again, but when... Continue reading…

Image: AT&T For many months, AT&T has been dangling a tantalizing possibility: what if its network let you instantly try blockbuster games for free? The company started by generically bundling free six-month subscriptions to Google Stadia and then began letting its customers stream full copies of Batman: Arkham Knight and Control over the internet. Next, it hinted at something even more intriguing: a try-before-you-buy game service where you could try a game directly from a search result, buy and download a full copy once you determine you like it, and pick up right where you left off.No current cloud gaming service offers anything of the sort.But, after speaking to the man in charge of these AT&T initiatives, we’ve learned that AT&T isn’t... Continue reading…

Rivian wants to produce 25,000 vehicles by the end of the year. Electric automaker Rivian is laying off around 6 percent of its 14,000 employees, or around 800 people, Amy Mast, a spokesperson for the company, confirmed in an email. The company made the decision in part to speed up development on future versions of its electric trucks and SUVs, she said.“Today we announced the difficult decision to reduce the size of the Rivian team by approximately 6%,” Mast wrote. “This decision will help align our workforce to our key business priorities, including ramping up the consumer and commercial vehicle programs, accelerating the development of R2 and other future models, deploying our go-to-market programs and optimizing spend across the business.”This follows a report from earlier in the month that... Continue reading…

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg | Photo illustration by William Joel | Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images Facebook’s decade-long streak of nonstop revenue growth has come to end.The social network reported its first-ever yearly decline in revenue for the second quarter, announcing a 1 percent drop to $28.8 billion, and predicted that growth in the third quarter could fall even more. The overall profit for its parent company, Meta, fell 36 percent to $6.7 billion. The Reality Labs division responsible for building Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse dreams lost $2.8 billion in the quarter.While the first-ever drop in revenue growth was expected on Wall Street going into Wednesday’s earnings report, it solidifies how challenged Meta’s business has quickly become on all fronts. Apple’s “Ask app not to track” prompt on iPhones has made its ads much... Continue reading…

It’s probably good to read the privacy policy when you’re putting a camera in your home. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Arlo, Apple, Wyze, and Anker, owner of Eufy, all confirmed to CNET that they won’t give authorities access to your smart home camera’s footage unless they’re shown a warrant or court order. If you’re wondering why they’re specifying that, it’s because we’ve now learned Google and Amazon can do just the opposite: they’ll allow police to get this data without a warrant if police claim there’s been an emergency. And while Google says that it hasn't used this power, Amazon’s admitted to doing it almost a dozen times this year.Earlier this month my colleague Sean Hollister wrote about how Amazon, the company behind the smart doorbells and security systems, will indeed give police that warrantless access to customers’ footage in those... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge We’ve been tracking the progress of Google’s interface refresh for Gmail since February, and as promised, the company says it’s now becoming available for all Gmail users. The rework pulls Meet, Chat, and Spaces closer together as part of the overall experience and includes elements from Google’s Material Design 3.It’s not stopping there and says that, later this year, we should see improvements to Gmail for tablet users, better emoji support, and more accessibility features, among other upgrades. Image: Google The new Gmail UI sets buttons for Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet on one rail. If you use Gmail for work, it may have already rolled out to your account. For those who just can’t stand the change, you... Continue reading…

After insinuating that it planned to leave the International Space Station partnership after 2024, Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has told NASA that it intends to remain in the program until at least 2028, according to a report in Reuters. Roscosmos plans to stay involved with the ISS until it gets a new Russian space station up and running, with 2028 as the target date.Roscosmos caused turmoil yesterday when its newly appointed director, Yuri Borisov, told Russian President Vladimir Putin that a decision had been made to leave the ISS partnership after 2024. However, the statement was vague and did not specify when after 2024 Roscosmos planned to leave, only saying that Russia hoped to transition focus to a new space... Continue reading…

Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge Tesla made a change to its free data connectivity tier that could potentially have a big impact on the way its customers use their vehicles. The included Standard Connectivity package, which adds basic navigation features without live traffic views or satellite maps and the ability to stream music over Bluetooth, will now expire after eight years (via Electrek).Eight years is still a significant duration of time to have the included navigation and Bluetooth features, but it’s just one lessened note for potential buyers. In a time when car companies are looking for more revenue streams by imposing subscription fees to use already included features (looking at you, BMW), Tesla’s move to impose a time limit on data usage certainly weakens... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft’s security and threat intelligence teams have reportedly caught an Austrian company selling spyware based on previously unknown Windows exploits.The new details were released on Wednesday in a technical blog post from Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), published to coincide with written testimony given by the software company to a House Intelligence Committee hearing on commercial spyware and cyber surveillance.The spyware developer — officially named DSIRF but which Microsoft tracks under the codename KNOTWEED — made spyware known as Subzero that was used to target law firms, banks, and consultancy firms in the UK, Austria, and Panama, Microsoft said. Analysis from MSTIC found that exploits used by DSIRF to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge We’re still at least two years away from ditching the invasive cookies, fingerprinting, and other tech that track user information and behavior across multiple sites for advertising to using Google’s preferred Privacy Sandbox set of replacements. Google originally published its intention to phase out support for third-party tracking cookies in Chrome within two years in early 2020 — now about two and a half years (and one global pandemic) ago.In a blog post published today, Google Privacy Sandbox vice president Anthony Chavez writes, “we now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.” Regulatory pressure spurred a previous delay that pushed the window into 2023, but its current development... Continue reading…

Hello. Apple has added an edit history to iOS 16’s new iMessage editing feature in the latest developer beta released on Wednesday (via 9to5Mac). You’ll be able to check the edit history by tapping on the “Edited” text that sits below an edited message, and when you do, all of the edits will appear above the latest one. You’re also now only allowed to make five edits to an individual message.You can get an idea of what the new edit history looks like in this screenshot from a message I sent to Mitchell Clark and then edited as many times as I could: Hi, Mitchell! And if you happen to have the edit history of a friend’s message unfurled, any additional edits they make will appear as the primary one. In the below example, I... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Does it feel like deja vu all over again? It should if you track console restocks at all. After yesterday’s public queue of a PlayStation 5 restock, Sony has another one today that’s just started. You can jump on in right here and try your luck at getting a PS5 — most likely in a bundle with Horizon Forbidden West for $549.99 for the regular PS5 with a disc drive or $449.99 for a Digital Edition.If recent public queues from Sony are any indication, this one may last well over an hour now that it’s been pumping out more of these bundles. So if you’re jumping in late, be persistent. It’s not uncommon to see an estimated wait time on Sony’s site of more than an hour and yet possibly get in much sooner than that. Just be ready to log in to... Continue reading…