The Verge

The logo for PlayStation Now, Sony’s cloud gaming service that got folded into PS Plus. | Image: Sony Now that Google Stadia is dead and buried, it looks like Sony may seriously care about cloud gaming again. Despite a recent round of layoffs, Sony is currently hiring 22 roles related to cloud gaming tech — including one person whose job will literally be to “Develop and deliver the strategic vision for cloud game streaming at PlayStation.”“Are you a ground-breaking innovator in the cloud streaming product space? Then you likely agree that Cloud Gaming is on its way to becoming a major part of the gaming industry,” reads part of a Sony job posting for a Director of Product Management for Cloud Gaming.That person won’t be alone: Sony is also hiring five senior platform engineers, three software engineers, two technical project managers... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Ford’s factory in Oakville, Ontario, will begin its $1.3 billion ($1.8 billion CAD) transformation into an electric vehicle assembly plant in the second quarter of 2024. The retooling is expected to take six months to finish, the automaker said Tuesday.During the process, an estimated 3,000 workers will be furloughed, according to Automotive News. Ford, however, says it expects to bring back virtually all the factory workers when the plant comes back online at the end of 2024.The factory, which currently produces gas-powered Edge and Lincoln Nautilus crossovers, will be renamed the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex and will include a 407,000-square-foot battery assembly plant. The facility will use battery cells produced by Ford’s B... Continue reading…

Image: Loewe If you have a spare couple thousand dollars and love confusing people with your clothing, Loewe has something right up your alley.The Spanish luxury brand is now selling the glitchy clothing shown on the runway at Paris Fashion Week last fall under the “Pixel” capsule collection. The release includes clothing items like a baby blue hoodie, a denim skirt, and a T-shirt as well as accessories like a handbag. If you’re on a budget, the cheapest thing is a T-shirt with a blurry Loewe logo for $590. Staying true to the bit, Loewe says purchases will come in limited-edition pixelated packaging. Image: Loewe Loewe’s “pixelated top in technical knit” retails for $1,850. Image: Loewe A... Continue reading…

Google TV’s live guide is about to include over 800 free channels. | Image: Google FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channels are becoming inescapable these days and booming in popularity through their combination of familiar reruns and news programming offered at no cost. Nearly any modern smart TV you buy today will include a slew of them. Roku and Amazon (with Fire TV) are both big advocates. And now, Google is doubling down more than it already was on linear FAST content.Starting today in the United States, the company’s Google TV platform is adding a ton of additional FAST channels. Whether you’re watching from a Chromecast or a TV that runs the software, you’ll start seeing them pop up over the next few weeks.Google TV had already offered FAST content from Pluto TV, but it’s now expanding to... Continue reading…

Ana Carballosa/Netflix Jennifer Lopez has figured out how we should all be spending our Mother’s Day, and it’s apparently watching her former assassin character protect her kid and deal with lots of bad guys from her past. That’s when her new film The Mother premieres on Netflix.The film comes from writer Misha Green, who also wrote the exceptional Lovecraft Country and Underground. Joseph Fiennes and Gael García Bernal are playing the bad guys J.Lo needs to deal with, while Omari Hardwick plays the dreamy old friend who just really gets her, and Edie Falco plays the cops. Image: Ana Carballosa/Netflix Sometimes, when you’re a reformed assassin saving your kid, you need a dreamy friend who lost his shirt to help. As action films go,... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Trade Commission has levied its first fine against a company for “review hijacking” on Amazon, or the act of repurposing reviews from another product in order to deceive users. The Bountiful Company, which makes Nature’s Bounty vitamins and other supplements, is accused of artificially inflating the number of reviews and ratings its products received on Amazon.The agency claims Bountiful abused Amazon’s variations feature, which lets sellers merge products into a single listing when offering different colors, sizes, or quantities of the same item. Since these product variations share the same listing, this also means they share the same reviews and labels applied by Amazon, such as the “#1 Best Seller” or “Amazon’s Choice”... Continue reading…

Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images Uber says it will fund an e-bike buy-back program for delivery workers in New York City in a bid to get fire-prone batteries off the streets. The company also said it would support an additional fee on food deliveries to help workers afford safer options.The announcement comes amid a worrisome rise in e-bike fires in New York City that have resulted in at least a dozen deaths. Two children were killed last night in Astoria, Queens, in a fire that authorities say was the result of an exploding lithium-ion battery, according to multiple news outlets.The New York City Council recently passed legislation prohibiting the sale of uncertified e-bikes and other micromobility devices, while Mayor Eric Adams has called on the private companies... Continue reading…

Image: Media Molecule Today, Media Molecule has announced it’s terminating live support for its game creation engine, Dreams.“As we continue to evaluate and evolve our priorities for the studio and Dreams, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue live support for Dreams after 1st September, 2023,” the announcement read.Dreams isn’t shutting down entirely, so players will still be able to create things like this rendering of an English breakfast that is so realistic that it actually makes the meal look appetizing. But there won’t be any more updates to the game nor will Media Molecule continue to host community-centered events like DreamsCom or the Impy Awards.The shutdown unfortunately answers one of the questions the Dreams community has long... Continue reading…

Image: Sundance Institute One of the most shocking movies out of this year’s Sundance was Talk to Me — and now, you can finally get a glimpse of the horror flick in its first trailer. The film, which is the directorial debut of YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou, is a brutal and unrelenting take on teen horror, telling the story of an embalmed hand that lets people become inhabited by spirits after they perform a very specific ritual. The process becomes a viral phenomenon and, well, let’s just say that things don’t go so well.In my review from Sundance, I described Talk to Me as “a shockingly competent debut — and not at all what I expected from a horror movie made by YouTube stars. It may be a movie about viral videos — but the film itself is much more... Continue reading…

Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro 2-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe juices up your iPhone and your AirPods at the same time. | Image: Belkin Yes, Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe is one of our favorite models, but it may not be right for you. True, it can juice up your iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch, but if you don’t own an Apple smartwatch, it may not be worth forking out nearly $150. Instead, Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro 2-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe might be a better buy, especially because it’s hit a new all-time low. Right now, you can buy it for $69.99 ($30 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which is half the price of the 3-in-1 model.The 2-in-1 version of Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro 3-in-1 Wireless Charger can’t charge Apple’s latest smartwatches, but it’s otherwise identical and offers good value for your money. It delivers 15W MagSafe... Continue reading…

Nintendo Live 2023. | Image: Nintendo Nintendo Live is coming to the US. The game maker announced Tuesday that it will hold Nintendo Live 2023 in Seattle, Washington, this September.Like its Live event this past fall in Japan, this year’s in-person event will feature gameplay from Nintendo games, live stage performances, game tournaments, Nintendo-themed activities, and more. There isn’t any information about when exactly the event will take place this summer, but Nintendo says to stay tuned for more details.

The Fitbit-to-Google migration starts in earnest this summer. | The Verge The way you log onto Fitbit is about to change. Starting this summer, existing Fitbit users can choose to start logging in using a Google account. Meanwhile, those who don’t already have a Fitbit account will be required to use a Google Account when setting up any new devices.The news isn’t exactly a surprise. Google announced last fall that all Fitbit users would eventually have to migrate to Google accounts and that the switchover would start on a gradual, optional basis sometime in 2023. If anything, this is simply a sign that the migration process is on schedule.Google also reiterated that existing Fitbit users don’t have to make the switch immediately, just that it’ll be required “by 2025.” For users who want to get a jump... Continue reading…

View of hazy mountain ridges at sunrise from the Oconaluftee Valley Overlook in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park. | Image: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images Good news, nature lovers! Google Earth is making it easier to explore national parks with Google Maps. The updates will start to roll out this month ahead of National Park Week starting on April 22nd, the day entrance fees are waived.Until now, finding directions to a trailhead has been a crapshoot on the app. Navigating the trail itself can be even harder without a preview of the route on Maps. For national parks at least, that should start to change.The updates will start to roll out this month ahead of National Park Week starting on April 22nd, the day entrance fees are waivedWith this update, when users search for a particular trail within a national park in the US, Google Maps will show the entire route of the trail instead of... Continue reading…

The NFL is coming soon to a YouTube app near you. | Image: Adam Bow/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Football fans, start saving those pennies. YouTube just announced pricing for its new Sunday Ticket package, and access to this season’s games will cost anywhere from $249 to $489.The pricing structure is... confusing. So let’s just quickly run it down.If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, you’ll pay:

Android is rolling out automated app-archiving almost a year after Google first teased the new feature. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has started to roll out its new auto-archive tool for Android devices, designed to free up storage space without completely uninstalling applications from user devices. First teased in May last year, Google claims that the auto-archiving feature can automatically reduce the storage taken up by infrequently used apps by almost 60 percent without entirely removing the application or its associated data from a user’s device.Archived applications can be distinguished by a cloud icon overlaid on the app icon. Tapping the archived apps will re-download and fully restore them, provided the app is still available on Google Play. The feature should come in handy for those using Android devices that lack expandable storage or users who are... Continue reading…

Spike on the Mini Concept Aceman’s central OLED display. | Image: BMW / Mini Mini, the British car brand owned by German automaker BMW, has announced a new “intelligent personal assistant” called Spike, based on the English Bulldog that’s appeared in some past Mini ads. Spike will make his first major appearance at the Shanghai auto show later this month where he’ll be integrated into the cockpit of the Mini Concept Aceman. We can’t help but agree with Jalopnik, which points out that the whole announcement has very “Microsoft Clippy” vibes, or maybe LG’s Bean Bird?The plan is to eventually have Spike appear in future production cars. Carscoops reports that these future models will include the 2023 Mini Countryman, the 2024 Mini Cooper, and the Aceman Crossover SUV in 2025. It’s less clear exactly what Spike will... Continue reading…

Image: Epic Games Fortnite just keeps speeding along. As part of its most recent update, the battle royale game is adding gear from Attack on Titan that lets players zip around the island.The update, which brings the game to version 24.40, was first hinted at when the current Fortnite season debuted in March. It includes two pieces of Attack on Titan equipment: the omni-directional mobility gear, or ODM, which “will give you the ability to grapple in the air and strike opponents below,” and “arm-launched rockets” called Thunder Spears. The additions seem like they’ll be a good fit for the faster gameplay of the current season, which includes motorcycles and grindable rails. Image: Epic Games Eren Jaeger in Fortnite. Outside... Continue reading…

Snapchat Lenses inside Microsoft Teams | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has teamed up with Snap to add Snapchat Lenses to Microsoft Teams. More than 20 Snapchat Lenses are now part of the Microsoft Teams app, including ones that will place a cat on your head, a sloth on your shoulder, or virtual sunglasses on your face during video calls.Teams users don’t need to download a separate app or add-on, as Microsoft has integrated Snapchat’s AR Lenses directly into the video effects section of the Teams client. Microsoft has leveraged Snap’s Camera Kit SDK to bring these Snapchat Lenses to Teams.While Microsoft also uses Snap’s Camera Kit for its Flip education platform to add Snapchat Lenses to videos, this new Teams feature will be limited to Teams for Work users only. If you’re using the personal or... Continue reading…

Joaquin Phoenix as Beau Wassermann. | Image: A24 Director Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid amps up the comedic absurdity to tell a haunting story about coping with anxiety. Continue reading…

SpaceX’s Starship stacked on top of the Super Heavy rocket booster. | Image: SpaceX Last week, SpaceX announced it’s poised to launch the fully stacked Starship spacecraft for a first orbital flight test following a launch rehearsal this week and pending regulatory approval. Now SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is confirming it’s ready, with launch “trending towards near the end of third week of April,” Musk wrote in a tweet on Monday.Starship is SpaceX’s long-awaited flagship spacecraft that’s designed to take astronauts and payloads to deep space — including the Moon and, of course, Mars. Most importantly, the parts are designed to be reusable, and it is paired with a massive booster known as the Super Heavy to get it off the Earth’s surface.SpaceX followed that up with this five-minute all-CG reel of Starship on missions to... Continue reading…

Apple’s AirPods Max are on sale for $479.99 at Amazon and other retailers. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge With more people working from home than they used to, owning a good pair of noise-canceling headphones has become more appealing than ever. However, they can be expensive and difficult to shop for due to the range of available models, many of which cater to different lifestyles and priorities. Some are better suited for long-haul flights, for instance, while others are ideal for multitasking and marathon listening sessions.That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best deals on noise-canceling headphones. Here, you’ll find sales on all kinds of on-ear and over-ear headphones, all of which are designed to eliminate outside noise but come with their own strengths and weaknesses. And if you want to do even more research before making a... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Star Wars: The Bad Batch is coming to an end. During this year’s Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm announced that the animated series has been renewed for a third and final season that will arrive on Disney Plus in 2024.The Clone Wars spinoff follows a group of experimental clone troopers, known collectively as Clone Force 99, who became fugitives after resisting the Order 66 command that brainwashed their counterparts into viewing Jedi as traitors. The show’s second season just wrapped up last month, and the fans at the Star Wars Celebration got a first look at what’s to come with an in-room teaser trailer.

Image: Blizzard Yesterday, the first round of Overwatch League play in 2023 concluded with the league’s first-ever pro-am tournament. Seven amateur teams from the North American and EMEA regions qualified for the right to play against the professional Overwatch teams of the west.I love me some Tier 2 Overwatch (better known as Overwatch Contenders). Some of the most exciting games in all of competitive Overwatch’s history have been Contenders matches. For years now, the competitive Overwatch community has been asking for more recognition and support for the teams and the league that act as the foundation for the Overwatch League proper.Most Contenders teams are sorely under-resourced. They’re usually made up of teens and young adults who practice and... Continue reading…

A row of Bitcoin mining machines at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 9th, 2021. | Image: MARK FELIX/AFP /AFP via Getty Images Bitcoin mines in the US have had a tremendous impact on power grids, a New York Times investigation reveals. The mines — which are giant data farms — use vastly more electricity than the communities surrounding them, driving up pollution from coal and gas power plants. The crypto mines also make electricity bills more expensive for their neighbors, even as the companies profit off incentives that grid operators offer to prevent blackouts during an energy crunch.This is the most comprehensive analysis yet of Bitcoin’s impact on the environment and energy system in the US. And it comes as Democratic lawmakers press federal agencies to require crypto companies to divulge information about their operations. The Times has startling numbers... Continue reading…

Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce tough new tailpipe emission standards designed to effectively force the auto industry to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars. It’s an ambitious — and risky — move by the Biden administration to cement its climate goals by boosting the sale of electric vehicles while also ushering in the end of the era of the internal combustion engine (ICE).But it won’t be as easy as banning the sale of gas-powered cars or mandating that companies only sell vehicles with electric powertrains. Rather, the new EPA rules would set an emissions limit on the total number of new cars each automaker sells in a year. That limit would essentially ensure that two-thirds of vehicles they sold... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube’s introducing an “enhanced” 1080p HD video quality for Premium subscribers — but it’s only available on iOS for now, with the option coming to web soon. According to YouTube, the new 1080p Premium option is “an enhanced bitrate version of 1080p” that’s supposed to make things look crisper, particularly with videos heavy on detail and motion.If this all sounds familiar, it’s because YouTube started testing this feature earlier this year and had some worried that the company would nerf the existing 1080p option for nonsubscribers. Fortunately, the standard 1080p option isn’t going anywhere, not even for Premium members.You’ll still get to use the standard 1080p option on videos (even the ones with 1080p Premium). Not all videos... Continue reading…

Tesla Shanghai and Lin-gang Special Area administrators sign the project off in a ceremony. | Image: Tesla Tesla’s building a new “Megafactory” in Shanghai, the automaker announced yesterday at a signing ceremony. The facility will be designed to manufacture Tesla’s commercial Megapack battery energy storage units, with the goal of eventually producing about 10,000 systems per year, according to the automaker.Tesla currently produces its Megapack energy storage units at its Gigafactory in Nevada, where it also makes battery packs for Tesla vehicles and Tesla Energy products like the Powerwall battery. Unlike the Powerwall, which is largely designed for residential battery backup and pairs with Tesla’s solar energy offerings, the Megapack is designed for major commercial projects.The company is in the process of moving Megapack production to... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Mastodon has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Twitter’s ongoing meltdown, and since I started seriously using it late last year, it’s won me over. While I still use Twitter for monitoring news and talking to the occasional source, Mastodon is my new home for shortform posting. But Mastodon has one significant problem: it’s very annoying to find things I like.I’m not talking about “discoverability” in the sense of some tailored suggestion algorithm. I mean that by design, information on Mastodon’s many servers is diffuse and relatively obscure. Back on Twitter, I kept several columns of search terms open — some for serious topics I was covering, some for personal interests like my favorite games, all of them a potential gateway... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google has stopped pushing updates for some third-party smart displays, reflecting a broader shift away from Assistant products. On a support page spotted by 9to5Google, the company says it will no longer provide software updates for the Lenovo Smart Display, JBL Link View, and the LG Xboom AI ThinQ WK9 Smart Display.All three displays made their debut in 2018, just months after Google first announced the Smart Display platform and its own Home Hub (now called Nest Hub) as it sought to compete with Amazon’s Alexa. While Google provided some new features to these devices in the years that followed, they never received the same kind of attention it gives to its Nest Hub displays.Google’s decision to end support for its third-party... Continue reading…

The Domino’s app, now on Apple CarPlay. | Image: Domino’s Domino’s already lets you quickly order pizza at the tap of a button on your phone, but now, it’s enabling you to do it on your car’s infotainment screen via CarPlay. Announced today, the new feature puts a simplified version of the Domino’s app on your dash and lets you “Tap to Order,” which instantly signals your main store to start making your favorite order for pickup. Alternatively, you can tap “Call to Order” and talk to someone hands-free to order something else — that’s the only way you’ll be able to customize your options.“We know how frustrating it can be to wait in a [fast food] drive-thru line just to place an order,” Domino’s SVP chief digital officer Christopher Thomas-Moore states in the press release. “Domino’s app on... Continue reading…

Judge Kacsmaryk attempted to keep oral arguments for the case secret. | Photo by Moises Avila / AFP via Getty Images A Texas judge ruled on Friday that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved the abortion-facilitating pill mifepristone more than 20 years ago, just as a Washington state judge issued a directly conflicting ruling — setting up a likely Supreme Court fight and potentially threatening nationwide access to reproductive healthcare.In Texas, District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a long-awaited decision on a suit from the Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed on behalf of antiabortion medical groups and doctors against the FDA. Kacsmaryk — nominated by former President Donald Trump — ruled largely in the group’s favor. While he didn’t outright reverse the FDA’s decision, he issued a stay that’s supposed to revert mifepristone... Continue reading…

The Pixel 7A is expected to be announced at Google I/O next month. | Image: MySmartPrice / OnLeaks We’re getting closer and closer to Google I/O 2023, and it’s looking like this year’s event will come with new hardware in tow. Google is expected to announce its latest midtier phone, the Pixel 7A, at the May 10th I/O keynote. The company has a long history of sheer incompetence when it comes to containing leaks and product secrecy, and the 7A has been no exception.Now, we’re getting a look (via 9to5Google) at what appears to be Google’s official marketing renders of the phone — and they show off a new blue color option that will be available alongside black and white. It’s a muted blue and still a far cry from the “really blue” original Pixel; Google seems very hesitant to go bold on colors again, which is a shame.Worth waiting for... Continue reading…

Poe isn’t a chatbot — it’s an app for all your chatbots. | Image: Poe ChatGPT is a remarkable piece of technology and a really crappy consumer product. Load OpenAI’s revolutionary chatbot at any given time, and after a long wait, you’ll be greeted with… well, likely as not, a message saying ChatGPT is over capacity and you can’t use it anyway. It’s slow even in the best of situations, and its blocky white-and-gray interface doesn’t exactly scream high design. There’s not even a mobile app.Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of Quora, sees that as something of an opportunity. Since last summer, just before the chatbot craze swept the tech industry, Quora has been feverishly working on an app called Poe that D’Angelo says he hopes can make bots easier for everyone to use by bringing them all in one place. “We have a lot... Continue reading…

Image: Lucasfilm This is the way (for the latest updates). Continue reading…

As a steam-reheating lunchbox, it’s pricey but serviceable. But if you’re just looking for a warm meal, there are better ways to get it. Continue reading…