The Verge

Changing your default Android web browser or texting app is as easy as changing your wallpaper. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales Android provides you with countless ways to customize your phone, from the color and shape of your app icons to your preferred method of system navigation. That customizability extends to your default app for common tasks like making calls and texting. Maybe you’d prefer to use a web browser with more privacy features or swap Google Assistant out for Alexa. You’re free to download the app of your choice and set it as the default — it just takes a few steps.For reference, these are the types of apps to which you can assign new defaults:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Photography by Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images The city of Blagoveshchensk sits in the far east of Russia, some 3,500 miles from Moscow and further still from Kyiv. Across a river, the Chinese city of Heihe sprawls to the south, joined by the first Sino-Russian road bridge; beside the bridge, there’s little about the city to make the news.But the public affairs of the city are now laid bare for anyone willing to look in the form of 150GB of emails from the Blagoveshchensk City Administration published online by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets — just one of many data sets leaked to the organization since the invasion of Ukraine began.As the war in Ukraine approaches the 60-day mark, leaks from the country have been coming at an unprecedented rate. On April... Continue reading…

An example infotainment screen in the (not currently self-driving) Tesla Model 3. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Drivers in the UK will effectively be allowed to watch TV while behind the wheel of a self-driving car, under new rules announced by the country’s Department for Transport. Although drivers are currently restricted from viewing “non-driving related content” on a “television-receiving apparatus,” this rule would be waived under specific circumstances once the proposals come into force. The new rules are set to be introduced into the UK’s Highway Code over the summer, according to BBC News.The ability to watch TV comes with some restrictions. A car will need to be driving itself at the time, and the driver must be ready to take back control of the vehicle if required. Importantly, drivers will only be allowed to view content “through the... Continue reading…

BrightDrop 258.85 miles in the jump seat of one of the world’s first all-electric delivery vans Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has launched a new limited experiment that will see it promote developers’ third-party safety tools natively on its service, TechCrunch reports. The test will initially focus on apps like Block Party, Bodyguard and Moderate, which can help block harassment and other toxic content on the platform.With this experiment, select users will see these services promoted with a new prompt when they mute or block another account on Twitter. It highlights apps featured in Twitter Toolbox, a recently launched initiative that currently promotes third-party Twitter tools in an online hub. “The Twitter Toolbox offers more solutions to improve your experience on Twitter,” the prompt reads, before listing a selection of services.The experiment... Continue reading…

A phone-sized field mixer. | Image: Teenage Engineering’s TX-6 overview video Teenage Engineering, the company behind ultra-stylish synthesizers, speakers, and PC cases, has released a new audio gadget: it’s called the TX-6, and it’s a tiny (in size, not price) field mixer absolutely festooned with knobs. In addition to letting you mix together sound from six stereo inputs and output them to a computer, speaker, or both, in true Teenage Engineering fashion, the TX-6 can also act as a basic synthesizer, drum sequencer, and USB-C audio interface.We gotta talk about those knobs first though. By default they act as controls for a three-band equalizer, letting you tweak the highs, mids, and lows for each input. But a peek at Teenage Engineering’s guide reveals the tons of other things you can do with them, from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Earlier this week Netflix reported quarterly earnings results that showed its subscriber numbers dropping for the first time in a decade, but not every streamer is experiencing that kind of pullback. Even though AT&T has offloaded HBO and the rest of WarnerMedia to their new home with Discovery, it still had one more set of subscriber numbers to reveal with its own earnings report Thursday morning.The numbers showed HBO added nearly 13 million subscribers last year across both traditional HBO and HBO Max, including growth of three million in the last quarter. Now both services combine for 76.8 million subscribers worldwide, which is still dwarfed by Netflix’s 221.64 million subscribers and even the most recent Disney Plus count of 129.8... Continue reading…

Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images A former president of the United States has their pick of big problems to tackle once they leave office. Jimmy Carter worked on housing. Bill Clinton spent much of his time working to fight HIV and AIDS. Barack Obama, who has been out of office for six years, has so far led a fairly quiet post-presidency. But in recent weeks, he has begun drawing attention to an issue that advisers say has become increasingly important to him: disinformation, and the broader problems with our fractured information ecosystem.In the months after President Donald Trump was dislodged from office, what could feel at times like an all-consuming focus on disinformation in the tech and political press began to fade into the background. The shift is... Continue reading…

A picture of Valve’s official dock. | Image: Valve Valve has quietly updated the specs to its still-unreleased official dock for the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC, as reported by Review Geek. The Steam Deck tech specs page originally said the dock would have one USB-A 3.1 port, two USB-A 2.0 ports, and an Ethernet port for networking, but the page now says that all three USB-A ports will use the much faster 3.1 standard, and it now specifies that the Ethernet port will actually be a Gigabit Ethernet port.According to the Wayback Machine, Valve’s Steam Deck tech specs page listed the original specs as of February 12th, and the accompanying diagram of the dock pointed to an “Ethernet” port for networking. But by February 22nd, the specs were updated to list the three USB-A 3.1 ports. And b... Continue reading…

An activist from the Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate change group, wearing a mask depicting Jeff Bezos, takes part in a protest outside of Amazon’s headquarters in central London on November 26, 2021. | Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images A lot of companies talk green this time of year — here’s what to look for in their pledges Continue reading…

Image: Instagram A new test from Instagram could make it harder for you to see recent content in the app. Though you can now look up all sorts of recent Instagram posts centered around a particular hashtag, the test will only let you see the posts with the most likes or short videos called ‘Reels’ related to the hashtag. The company says this trial will mix “more recent and timely content” in the two groups, to see how people engage with it.When they were first introduced on Instagram, hashtags could be a fun way to highlight photo trends, but now they are mainly a way for users to get more visibility, and hence, more clicks and likes. According to Instagram, the “top posts” tab shows popular posts, while the “recent” tab shows content in the order it... Continue reading…

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge OnlyFans has “temporarily paused” Russian accounts and says it can no longer serve Russian creators. The company confirmed the change to Motherboard in a statement today.The subscription-based platform popularized by sex workers had previously allowed Russian creators to stay and continue to get paid despite economic sanctions. In February, Rolling Stone reported that Russian OnlyFans creators briefly lost access to their accounts with little warning. Shortly after, OnlyFans said it had restored access and that “accounts will have full functionalities as long as we continue to have payment methods to support them.”But, on Thursday, the company said it was taking steps to pause accounts receiving payments in Russia. In a statement to M... Continue reading…

Start lining up for the PlayStation 5 at Sony | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update April 21st, 6:33PM ET: Sony has sold out of PS5 consoles for now.A year and a half since its release, the PlayStation 5 is still extremely difficult to get your hands on. Sony has been one of the most reliable retailers when it comes to console restocks, though it usually reserves them for invite-only restocks that you have to register in advance for. This is one of the rare moments where Sony is opening up a public queue, so if you’re still in the market for this rare console, either the disc-based PS5 for $499 or the $399 PS5 Digital Edition, just go ahead and queue up via its direct store to try your luck.You don’t have to refresh the landing page once you’ve arrived in the queue — just wait it out — but we do recommend that... Continue reading…

Image: Google With all the apps that we tend to have running on our phones, it’s a constant worry as to whether the battery will be able to make it through the day — and that’s not helped when apps misfire and run power-draining features in the background. According to 9to5Google, a recent bug in Google’s Messages app on Android phones left the camera running in the background — a great way to both heat up your phone and run down your battery.The Google Messages app allows you to easily take a photo directly from the app and attach it to a chat message. According to the article in 9to5Google, the camera app would occasionally keep running, even when you did not have it on screen. (This issue was also reported happening with a Pixel 6 Pro in a Reddit... Continue reading…

But Google’s own app can still record calls. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is changing its Play Store policy to clamp down on a workaround that call recording apps were using, potentially closing the final loophole that allowed these apps to exist (via NLL-Apps on Reddit). On May 11th, a rule clarifying that “the Accessibility API is not designed and cannot be requested for remote call audio recording” will go into effect, making it so that apps won’t be able to record audio from a call.As XDA points out, Google has been playing whack-a-mole with call recording methods after it removed the official API with Android 6. In an email to The Verge, Google spokesperson Dan Jackson said the reason for the change is that call recording was an inappropriate use of the accessibility API. “Only services that are... Continue reading…

Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images Following a 23–16 Wednesday vote, Florida’s Senate passed SB 4-C, a bill designed to dismantle any and all of the state’s special tax districts that were created before 1968. Though there are over 1,800 different special tax districts in the state, given the GOP’s ongoing fight with The Walt Disney Corporation, the new bill reads very much like retaliation against the megacorporation for recently denouncing Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.In a press conference earlier this week ahead of the Florida legislature’s special session, Governor Ron DeSantis urged his fellow Republicans to support a legislative move that would dissolve Florida’s special tax districts like the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the Disney-controlled governing... Continue reading…

Asus has quietly announced two additions to its Zenbook line that are all about the screens. The new AMD-powered Zenbook 13 S joins a limited, but slowly growing lineup of 13-inch OLED laptops for folks seeking the benefits of OLED technology for a consumer-accessible price. But Asus isn’t leaving Intel behind — the company has also unveiled a new Zenbook Pro 15 Flip OLED convertible powered by 12th-Gen Core processors and Arc GPUs.The Zenbook 13 S OLED doesn’t look too different from 13-inch Zenbooks we’ve seen before. It weighs 2.2 pounds and is just over half an inch thick. It’s available in some fun colors: Ponder Blue, Aqua Celadon, Refined White, and Vestige Beige. But the most interesting thing is that the word “Asus,” famously... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is reportedly working to bring advertisements to free-to-play PlayStation games, according to a report by Insider. The ads would appear in games and are meant to give game developers a way to monetize their work and encourage them to continue building free-to-play games.The in-game ads are expected to launch by the end of the year and would appear in inconspicuous places within the game, like billboards. Players could also get rewards for watching advertisements, and the ads would be sold through a private marketplace, Insider reports. Sources told Insider that Sony hasn’t yet decided if it would take a portion of ad revenue but is considering having developers and publishers pay for consumer data.Sony did not immediately respond... Continue reading…

Psyonix Carcinization describes the evolutionary process in which a crustacean will eventually and inevitably evolve into a crab. Battle royale-ification is this process happening in video games. Rocket League, the game with the simple-yet-elegant premise of “what if soccer was soccar,” will undergo battle royale-ification with its new game mode Knockout Bash.Starting on April 27th, Knockout Bash will pit eight players in a free-for-all to be the last car driving. Knockout Bash will feature the hallmarks of a typical battle royale mode: perma-death (in this case, instead of infinite respawns, players get three KOs before a game over) and an encroaching danger zone with an ever-shrinking battle arena.Rocket League will add new actions and... Continue reading…

A 3D recreation of the upcoming Sonos soundbar. | 3D product render by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Sonos is nearing the release of a new entry-level soundbar, and you’re looking at it. Codenamed “Fury” and officially known as model S36, the new device is yet another soundbar that will join the company’s lineup beneath the $449 Beam and flagship $899 Arc.It appears that Sonos is no longer willing to cede the lower-cost soundbar market to Vizio and other competitors, as I can reveal that the new product is expected to sell for around $249. That’s substantially less expensive than any Sonos soundbar to date. It’s currently penciled in for release just a few weeks from now on June 7th.I’ve seen genuine photos of the new soundbar, and The Verge has used them to create the 3D renders for this article. It’s not an exact match but more... Continue reading…

Slowly but surely, Lego is supersizing all the most iconic vehicles you’ve ever seen in brick form — like the Back to the Future DeLorean, the Space Shuttle, and, of course, its Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series, including the legendary 7,541-piece UCS Millennium Falcon and 6,785-piece UCS AT-AT Walker. Today, Luke’s scuffed-up X-34 Landspeeder is getting the treatment in time for Star Wars Day (“May the Fourth”), and the $199, 1,890-piece set certainly looks the part. GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge, video by Lego Below you’ll find the biggest images we could nab so you can zoom in and see the details for yourself — including a lovingly detailed, exclusive C-3PO minifig that’s got a proper half-silver,... Continue reading…

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has demanded that YouTuber Trevor Jacob turn over his pilot license after he posted a video called “I Crashed My Plane,” of a crash that the agency suggests was staged, as reported by The New York Times. In the video (which you can watch here), Jacob’s plane appears to have an engine malfunction, and he jumps out of it while wearing a parachute. In a letter, the regulator told Jacob that he “demonstrated a lack of care, judgment and responsibility by choosing to jump out of an aircraft” and said that Jacob “operated this flight to purposefully cause [the plane] to crash.”Jacob posted the video in December, and it already has more than 1.7 million views. Like several members of the flying... Continue reading…

Fitness Plus users will be able to learn BTS choreography in the service starting next week. | Image: Apple When Apple Fitness Plus launched in 2020, it was not only a way to showcase the new Dance activity on the Apple Watch but also a subtle way to integrate other services like Apple Music. The fitness service has since added Artist Spotlight series with celebrated musicians, so it’s no surprise Apple is mashing all this together with Dance workouts based on mega-popular K-pop band BTS.The BTS collaboration is part of a content package for International Dance Day on April 29. Starting next week, workouts will be led by Fitness Plus trainer Ben Allen and feature choreography straight from BTS’ music videos. Some of the songs featured include hits like “Butter (feat. Megan Thee Stallion),” “Dynamite,” “Boy With Luv (feat. Halsey),” “DNA,”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update April 21st, 1:20PM ET: Best Buy’s site has sold out of PS5 consoles for now.If you’re still in the market for a PlayStation 5, Best Buy just opened up another restock of the disc-based PS5 for $499.99. This restock is live now and is available to everyone, not just TotalTech subscribers, and is still likely to sell out extremely fast.As always, to better your chances at grabbing one of these consoles, make sure to log into your Best Buy account in another browser tab while you wait in line, and make sure all your personal info, including billing and shipping addresses, are up to date. Once you’ve done that, it's simply a matter of waiting in line and playing the waiting game. Once you’ve hit the “Add to Cart” button you are... Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Meta Platforms, used her influence to bury two stories about her then-boyfriend, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, according to a bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal.The WSJ reports that, in 2016 and again in 2019, Sandberg contacted MailOnline, the online imprint of the U.K.’s Daily Mail tabloid, in an attempt to stop the outlet from reporting about a restraining order filed against Kotick by his ex-girlfriend. On both occasions, the story did not run. Now, Facebook is investigating the issue to see if Sandberg potentially violated company policy.According to sources in the WSJ report, Kotick said that Sandberg threatened the Mail in 2016, stating that any article published... Continue reading…

CNN Plus, the news network’s dedicated streaming service, is shutting down before even turning a month old. Chris Licht, the new CEO of CNN, delivered the news to his new team at an all-hands meeting on Thursday, and the service will shut down entirely on April 30th.Licht congratulated the CNN Plus team in a memo to staff announcing the shutdown and said that the decision “is not a reflection of the quality of the talent and content at CNN+, some of which will migrate to CNN’s programming or some of the company’s other networks.” The decision, he said, was about broader strategy. “In a complex streaming market, consumers want simplicity and an all-in service, which provides a better experience and more value than stand-alone offerings.”... Continue reading…

Watching the latest footage of a solar eclipse on Mars gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “out of this world.”Earlier this month, NASA’s Perseverance rover spotted one of Mars’ moons, Phobos, passing across the Sun. The 40-second eclipse was captured by the rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system. It is a partial solar eclipse because of the moon’s size. While Phobos is the larger of Mars’ two moons, it is still extremely small, measuring 17 x 14 x 11 miles in diameter. Its small size means that there can never be a total eclipse on Mars. No matter what, parts of the sun will always peek out from behind the shadows of Mars’ moons.This is not the first solar eclipse spotted from Mars. Other rovers have captured eclipses from the planet’s... Continue reading…

California’s net neutrality law remains intact | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A federal appeals court has denied a request for a rehearing on its January decision that upholds California’s net neutrality law. The 2018 law, widely considered the strongest in the US, was signed into law a year after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed the Open Internet Order. That order had established stringent net neutrality rules that prohibited internet service providers from throttling or blocking legal websites and apps, and banned ISPs from prioritizing paid content.California’s law, which finally took effect last year, also prohibits throttling and speed lanes. Wireless trade associations including the NCTA, the CTIA, and ISPs including Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T sued to block California’s law from taking... Continue reading…

Pixar/Disney Pixar and Disney’s upcoming Lightyear feature has already thrown people with the idea of it being an origin story about the “real” space ranger Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear is apparently based on. That aspect of the feature immediately raised questions about whether Toy Story’s been set in some sort futuristic universe this whole time without acknowledging it, or if the studios were dancing around Lightyear actually being an in-universe movie about Buzz.Lightyear’s latest trailer doesn’t clarify if either of those situations are the case, but it does lay out the broad strokes of the movie’s plot and reveal yet another interesting twist to its story. In the new trailer, Buzz (Chris Evans) along with his earthbound partner Alisha Hawthorne... Continue reading…

Apple’s latest iPad Air for 2022 in blue. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s latest iPad Air may be a somewhat incremental upgrade over the last-gen model, but it’s the most affordable way to get a device with the acclaimed M1 processor. Today, you can get one of these tablets with that excellent CPU for a bit less, as the 2022 iPad Air is $50 off at Best Buy. This deal encompasses both storage sizes for the Wi-Fi model and all available colors. That means the $599 64GB configuration is $549.99 and the 256GB model drops from $749 to $699.99. We saw a slightly steeper $70 discount at the beginning of this month, but that was limited to the 256GB version.The iPad Air looks a lot like the version that came out in 2020, but, in addition to its M1 guts, there’s now a Center Stage-compatible front-facing... Continue reading…

Full of improvements, but with fewer ports Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Older adults who turn to psychedelic therapies to treat psychiatric conditions like depression and PTSD are uniquely vulnerable to financial abuse, according to a STAT investigation. The substances could make people feel more emotionally connected with care providers who deliver the drugs, making them susceptible to manipulation by bad actors.The story highlights a lawsuit brought against psychedelic therapist Vicky Dulai alleging that she took more than $4 million from Holocaust survivor George Sarlo, who had turned to psychedelics to treat depression and trauma. Dulai and Sarlo met in 2002, and according to the lawsuit, she gradually took over as his personal assistant and caregiver. She had access to his bank accounts and personal... Continue reading…

Similar speckled design but with new internal hardware. Alienware has announced a release date and pricing info for its latest batch of gaming laptops. Today’s big news is that the new Dell G15, the Alienware M15 R7, and the Alienware M17 R5 are available now. Notably, each of the configurations will come equipped with AMD’s 6000-series processors (paired with Nvidia’s RTX 30-series graphics cards by default) and fast DDR5 RAM, among other impressive specs. Intel-based versions will likely release later in 2022.The most affordable option in the lineup is a 2022 iteration of the Dell G15 (pictured above), which is back in its speckled, Alienware-esque design. It starts at $899.99, equipped with a 1080p display that has a 120Hz refresh rate, AMD’s Ryzen 5 6600H six-core processor, a Nvidia RTX... Continue reading…

Video podcasts are now open to all in five markets. | Image: Spotify All creators in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand can now upload video podcasts to Spotify, the streaming service has announced. Video can be uploaded through Anchor, the podcast creation tool Spotify purchased in 2019. Video podcasts are compatible with Spotify’s podcast subscriptions feature and work with embeds. The company is also offering video-specific analytics for creators.Spotify has been gradually rolling out support for video podcasts since mid-2020, around the same time it acquired Joe Rogan’s podcast — which had long been available in video form on YouTube. Since then, Spotify has been slowly expanding the number of podcasters who are able to post their shows as videos to its service. Now, all creators in... Continue reading…

Netflix’s new Category Hub menu for smart TV interfaces | Image: Netflix Netflix is giving its TV interface a small refresh, refashioning its old row of categories into a “Category Hub” menu on the left rail that highlights genre recommendations tailored to your viewing habits.Although Netflix’s UI often seems to change every time you load it, the Categories menu generally appeared below the Popular, Trending, and Continue Watching rows. As well as listing basic genres like comedy, action, horror, and so on, it also highlights collections based on the odd holiday (like Earth Day). Now, instead of just listing these categories in the same order for everyone, the top three choices will be customized to individual users. Image: Netflix Netflix’s old Category row. Now these sections are... Continue reading…

It may not be a sequel to Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, but it’s something: the Wu-Tang Clan is coming to Fortnite with a new clothing collection. The iconic members of the hip-hop supergroup aren’t coming to the game themselves; instead, players will be able to buy Wu-Wear gear in the Fortnite item shop starting April 23rd at 8PM ET. There will be two different outfits available, along with some Wu-Tang accessories like reactive backpacks and, naturally, a Wu-Tang hands emote.You can check out the entire offering in the gallery below:Music has steadily been infiltrating Fortnite’s battle royale in different ways, from a crossover with Coachella to in-game concerts from the likes of Ariana Grande and Travis Scott. Meanwhile, real-world... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk has lined up the funding he needs for his proposed takeover of Twitter. In a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, Musk laid out his plan for the $46.5 billion worth of loans that will allow him to finance the buyout offer made on April 14th.The funding is provided through two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, in which the bank commits to offering a series of loans worth $25.5 billion. The remaining $21 billion will be covered by Musk himself.Notably, the filing does not list any equity partners to share the cash burden with Musk. The Tesla CEO already owns a 9 percent stake in Twitter, valued at roughly $2.9 billion.“The Reporting Person is seeking to negotiate a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Melissa Mathieson / The Verge Joaquin Castillejos remembers walking past goats and alpacas in a neighbor’s yard to get to his elementary school in the 2000s. That home, the goats, and alpacas are gone now. In their place is a massive warehouse. Joaquin Castillejos in his family home. Joaquin is a community organizer at the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. From above, you can see those concrete boxes closing in on Castillejos’ hometown of Bloomington, California. It’s a community that’s been a haven for many families like Castillejos’ who wanted to escape Los Angeles’ urban sprawl. In Bloomington, they found open space — plots big enough for a home, horses, and gardens to grow squash, corn, beans, chilis, and tomatoes. ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Brave announced a new feature for its browser on Tuesday: De-AMP, which automatically jumps past any page rendered with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages framework and instead takes users straight to the original website. “Where possible, De-AMP will rewrite links and URLs to prevent users from visiting AMP pages altogether,” Brave said in a blog post. “And in cases where that is not possible, Brave will watch as pages are being fetched and redirect users away from AMP pages before the page is even rendered, preventing AMP / Google code from being loaded and executed.”Brave framed De-AMP as a privacy feature and didn’t mince words about its stance toward Google’s version of the web. “In practice, AMP is harmful to users and to the Web... Continue reading…

The 2022 Moto G Stylus 5G gets a spec and price bump this time around. | Image: Motorola Motorola is introducing a new version of its Moto G Stylus 5G with a couple of nice upgrades for 2022 — and, as a result, a higher $499 price tag. The 2022 edition of the G Stylus 5G includes a 6.8-inch screen with a super smooth 120Hz refresh rate, a more powerful 600-series Snapdragon processor, a stabilized main camera, and a bunch of built-in storage. The company is also debuting its $399, budget-oriented Moto G 5G in North America. (It was introduced in Europe earlier this year.)The most noticeable update on the 2022 G Stylus 5G — not to be confused with the 4G-only Moto G Stylus — is that 120Hz display for smooth animations and scrolling. It’s a 1080p LCD panel, and it houses a 16-megapixel front-facing camera. On the back,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Melissa Mathieson / The Verge Coming back to your hometown can be an alienating experience, especially when all you find is a dead link to a long-deserted website.For nearly a decade, that was the experience of Cytonians — members of an early virtual world called Cybertown, which operated between 1995 and 2012. But since 2019, a group of former citizens has dedicated itself to resurrecting their old home. Cybertown Revival, or CTR, successfully launched a pre-alpha version of a new Cybertown earlier this year. It’s the result of hundreds of former residents rallying to rebuild the digital city, drawing on everything from former users’ blog posts to the contents of their hard drives.The original Cybertown was launched during the early days of massively multiplayer... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge When you’re running a Windows system, sometimes things just go wrong. A couple of years ago, I made the mistake of not checking to make sure my laptop was securely plugged in while Windows was undergoing a major update. The battery ran out in the middle of the update and voila! I was stuck with what I was sure was now a very expensive brick. Another time, a Windows 10 system decided that it didn’t like the latest update and began misbehaving. (It would stop responding to input one minute after it booted.)In both cases, I was able to save an otherwise unusable PC by doing a reset, which removes all (or most) of the files and apps on the hard drive and reinstalls Windows.(By the way, you have backed up your computer, right?)Resets are... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Buy With Prime initiative lets merchants offer Prime shipping benefits on their own stores. | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced a new initiative named Buy With Prime that extends the purview of its Prime subscription service beyond the bounds of Amazon.com — a significant change to its business strategy that could help it compete with fast-growing rival Shopify.Merchants who ship products using Amazon’s warehouse and delivery services (known as Fulfillment by Amazon) will be able to add Buy With Prime buttons to their sites. This will let Prime subscribers buy from these stores directly while retaining the benefits of Amazon’s subscription service. Namely: free shipping, next-day delivery, and free returns.Buy With Prime will offer extra convenience and value to Prime subscribers, but its importance to Amazon is about more than bringing... Continue reading…

The Boring Company’s plan to revolutionize transport is best summarized as “Teslas in tunnels.” | Credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images The Boring Company has raised a new round of funding worth $675 million, with Elon Musk’s grand plan to “solve traffic” with tunnels now valued at $5.675 billion.In a blog post announcing the news, the company reiterated its goals and achievements so far, drawing particular attention to its “next generation” of Prufrock tunnel-boring machines (TBMs).“Unlike traditional TBMs which require upwards of a dozen or more people to operate, Prufrock is designed to be capable of operating completely remotely and autonomously via computerized systems and requires zero people in the tunnel to operate,” said the company. “The current iteration of Prufrock, called Prufrock-2, is designed to mine at up to 1 mile/week, meaning a tunnel the length of... Continue reading…

Image: Sony Sony has pushed back the release date of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s sequel, the films’ official Twitter account has confirmed. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now scheduled for release on June 2nd, 2023, rather than October 7th this year. Sony originally said its Spider-Verse sequel would arrive on April 8th 2022.It’s not immediately clear what’s caused the most recent delay, but Across the Spider-Verse’s writer and producer Christopher Miller tweeted that it has offered the team “More time to make it great.”Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the first of two sequels Sony is planning in its animated Spider-Man film series, with the second part planned for release on March 29th, 2024. Additionally, Spider-Man... Continue reading…

Image: Google Anyone switching from an iPhone to an Android device has more to worry about than just green bubbles, they also want to bring along as much of the data from their phone as they can. While backing things up to Google Drive or plugging in a cable are solutions that Google can walk you through, now we know Google built an iOS app called Switch to Android to get the job done wirelessly.Switch to Android popped up in the App Store last week, but it’s unlisted so you’d need the link to dig it up. As TechCrunch reported, Google is starting to roll the app out to the public, but it may be a little while before you can actually use it. Google spokesperson Ivy Hunt confirmed to The Verge that the rollout should be complete in a few weeks. What... Continue reading…

Lincoln, Ford’s luxury brand, says it will release four new electric vehicles by 2026, by which point 50 percent of its global sales will be EVs. The company also revealed its Lincoln Star Concept as a way to introduce the new design language that will come to define its upcoming electrified lineup.And what a concept it is! Carriage doors, a frunk that extends out like a drawer for added storage, a full suite of sensory interior moods, and a sleek, aerodynamic profile that feels more Faraday Future than Ford. The Lincoln Star Concept is designed to be “the ultimate sanctuary” for wealthy elites who prefer to be chauffeured through the teeming megalopolises of the future.Lincoln has been mulling plans to electrify its portfolio for... Continue reading…

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images Barack and Michelle Obama won’t be signing a new podcast deal with Spotify, Bloomberg reports, marking a major departure for the Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground Productions. “The company is instead talking to other distributors about a deal worth tens of millions of dollars, among the most-lucrative in the podcasting business,” according to the report.Amazon’s Audible and iHeartMedia are among the “several” companies Higher Ground is in negotiations with for a new deal. Higher Ground had talked to Spotify as well, but it “declined to make an offer,” Bloomberg says. Higher Ground apparently wants to be able to make multiple shows and release them on platforms simultaneously, which would go against Spotify’s typical... Continue reading…

Dieter Bohn / The Verge My favorite kind of software update is the kind that unlocks secret hardware features, and the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack is the latest surprise — you’ll be able to cordlessly charge an iPhone at a faster 7.5 watts instead of the original 5 watts, once you apply firmware update 2.7 (via 9to5Mac).You can wait for an update over the air, or plug a Lightning to USB cable from the pack to a connected Mac or iPad to get the fix, and then you’re off to the races, as they say.But if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t install the update quite yet — I might wait until we hear back from Apple (or reviewers) on whether it’ll affect how warm the battery gets.You see, I bought a MagSafe Battery Pack myself last year for my iPhone mini, but I returned... Continue reading…