The Verge

Music Recognition can now sync identified songs to the Shazam app and across your Apple devices Apple’s Music Recognition feature in the iPhone Control Center is now able to sync with the latest version (15.14) of the Shazam app and across Apple devices using the same Apple ID (via MacRumors). According to MacRumors, many users thought that the feature required the iOS 16 developer beta, but now it is available for iPhones that have iOS 15 installed.After announcing it would acquire Shazam in 2017, Apple debuted Music Recognition as a built-in iOS feature in 2020 with iOS 14.2. The feature allowed iPhone users to identify songs around them and in apps without downloading the Shazam app. Now, if you ask Siri or use the Music Recognition control to help find a song, you are able to store it in the Shazam app if you have it... Continue reading…

These guys! | Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images July 9th marks the ninth birthday of the BTS Army (specifically, the official announcement of its name). As Twitter celebrates the anniversary, Google has released a new street view experiment through its Arts & Culture platform in collaboration with the band. The BTS x Street Galleries exhibition brings viewers on a virtual tour of the group’s favorite artworks.Each member has curated a virtual gallery, with their selections placed in various public locations that will be highly recognizable to BTS fans. J-Hope decorated the UN General Assembly, where BTS gave an address and shot a music video last year; RM guides fans through Seoul’s Namdaemun, where BTS performed for 2021’s Global Citizen Live festival. For anyone... Continue reading…

All you need to do is change your user agent. Anyone who’s tried the Xbox Cloud Gaming beta on Linux (which is likely a small crowd, I know) may have noticed that the image quality is a little rough, even by cloud gaming standards. Now, though, community members have found a quick workaround to get better image quality, and we have an official explanation for why the hack works and why the problem exists in the first place.On Monday, Reddit user Spiritual-Ad2806 posted on the Xcloud subreddit, saying that they were able to trick the Xbox service into showing them a better quality stream on Linux by making it think it was running on Windows. Doing that is relatively simple; they used an Edge extension to change their user agent, which is essentially a string of text that tells... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is taking new steps to try and stop annoying auto warranty spam calls. If you feel like you get a lot of them, you’re not alone: the FCC thinks that more than 8 billion of those spam calls, which the agency says could be illegal, have been generated by just a few entities since at least 2018.The FCC believes the calls have been generated from an “operation” consisting of “Roy Cox, Jr., Aaron Michael Jones, their Sumco Panama companies, and international associates,” according to an FCC press release. The FCC has told some carriers to cease and desist carrying the calls and ordered all networks to “be on the lookout for this traffic.”The agency has also opened a formal case to investigate the... Continue reading…

Whether the US government thinks it’s enough is another matter. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has reportedly offered to spin off its ad auctions business, which lets companies buy advertising space on the web and in search results, into a slightly more separate company if it’ll help avoid antitrust actions, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The offer is reportedly part of multiple concessions Google has offered the US Department of Justice, as it looks to avoid further lawsuits alleging anti-competitive practices.According to the WSJ, the move would be a corporate shuffle. Rather than spinning off parts of its ad business into a completely separate company or selling them altogether, the proposal would make them a separate Alphabet company. Alphabet is the holding company for Google’s properties, such as... Continue reading…

Aerial view of a solar farm producing clean renewable energy on April 20, 2022, in Emmeloord, Netherlands. | Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal / Getty Images In the coming years, recyclers will hopefully be able to mine billions of dollars worth of materials from discarded solar panels, according to a new analysis published this week. That should ease bottlenecks in the supply chain for solar panels while also making the panels themselves more sustainable.Right now, most dead solar panels in the US just get shredded or chucked into a landfill. The economics just don’t shake out in recycling’s favor. The value you can squeeze out of a salvaged panel hasn’t been enough to make up for the cost of transporting and recycling it. That’s on track to change, according to the recent analysis by research firm Rystad Energy.Making the panels themselves more sustainableRystad expects the value of... Continue reading…

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images The NFL is working on its own direct-to-consumer streaming service, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC in an interview. Goodell didn’t specify exactly what content will be available on the service, which he called “NFL Plus,” but the league is aiming to launch it for the upcoming NFL season.“We think it’s very important to have a relationship directly with the consumer,” Goodell said. “We think we have a lot of content and a lot of ability to be able to do that. The consumers want it, so we’re very excited about what NFL Plus is going to be. But it’s really in an early stage. I think over the years you’ll see that continue to grow. And it will be an important opportunity for us to be able to speak to our fans directly. That’s an... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, the Fire Emblem: Three Houses-themed hack and slash game, is pretty damn good — I just wish I could enjoy it. Three Hopes made a bit of a splash for its debut during February’s Nintendo Direct. Fans had seen the familiar blue-red-yellow primary color scheme and hoped that the morose Dimitri, best boy Claude, and Edelgard and her merry band of fascists had come back in a sequel to one of the best Nintendo Switch games in the console’s history. Some of them rolled their eyes to see Three Hopes was not Three Houses 2 but the next in a long line of licensed hack and slash games.I was not one of those fans. I love hack and slash games. I voraciously consumed the middle handful of Dynasty Warriors and W... Continue reading…

JWST’s primary mirror on Earth before it launched | Image: NASA Today, NASA released a list of celestial targets that will be revealed next week when the agency publishes the first full-color images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. The targets include galaxies, nebulas, and a giant planet outside our Solar System.JWST is NASA’s massive new deep-space observatory, which launched on Christmas Day in 2021. Sporting a large gold-coated mirror spanning more than 21 feet across, the observatory is set to transform the field of astrophysics by collecting light from the first stars and galaxies that formed right after the Big Bang. It’s also designed to study objects throughout our Universe in unprecedented detail, giving us insight into our distant Solar System, planets outside our cosmic... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After a few delays, Verizon seems poised to actually follow through on shutting down its 3G CDMA network at the end of this year. But the carrier is still contending with a subset of customers who sat out the 4G LTE era and haven’t yet upgraded their 3G phones. So, as 2022 rolls onward, Verizon is sending those wireless subscribers a free extremely basic flip phone to prevent them from losing connectivity when the 3G network goes offline.According to its website, Verizon will provide customers with one of three phones: the Orbic Journey V, TCL’s Flip Pro, or the Nokia 2720 V Flip. The retail value for each of those devices is under $100: the Orbic is $99.99, with the other two running $79.99.Verizon says customers can opt out of the... Continue reading…

Roku’s solid Streaming Stick 4K is on sale for just $29.99 — nearly half off — at Amazon. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Finding a good show to watch after a long day of work can sometimes require too much brain power — at least if you’re as lazy as I am. That’s why a streaming device that’s simple to use, like Roku’s latest Streaming Stick 4K, can be so great. All of your streaming service apps are easily and quickly accessible in a big grid, and Roku even highlights free content that doesn’t require subscription services for those of us who are both lazy and cheap. While we wish there were support for Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C in the latest version, it does support Dolby Vision, Apple’s AirPlay 2, and both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice assistants.Regularly $49.99, Amazon and Best Buy are both currently selling it for $29.99, which is just $1 shy of... Continue reading…

A screenshot of some of the offerings on Wish If you need a $2 pair of jeans, a $1 pop-up pool for your backyard, and waterproof sheets for $0.50, Wish is the online store to find all that and more. Or at least it was.A New York Times deep dive tracks the arc of the internet’s most nonsensical shopping destination known for its array of bizarre merchandise priced impossibly low. The story paints a picture of an e-commerce juggernaut’s rapid ascent that ultimately caused its own downfall when growth was prioritized over the basic tenants that shoppers expect — products arriving in a timely fashion, for example, but also more essential things, like listings being real at all.One anecdote in the piece proves the impossibly low prices were, in fact, too good to be true — because Wish... Continue reading…

Elon Musk is out to solve a lot of problems — including population collapse. Elon Musk’s pinned tweet is from May. It’s a chart from The Wall Street Journal showing that the US fertility rate has been below the “replacement level” since the 1970s. “USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years,” was Musk’s contribution to the tweet. He’s been talking about population decline for years, actually. He’s even talked about it as one of the greatest issues facing humanity, and his solution is simple: have more kids, everybody!Say this for Musk: dude practices what he preaches. Insider reported this week that Musk had twins last November with Shivon Zilis, a star in the AI world, a longtime colleague of Musk’s at OpenAI and Tesla, and a current executive at Neuralink. The twins came to be in the... Continue reading…

Samsung SmartThings is working on more integrations with Philips Hue smart lighting. | Image; Signify Samsung is planning for deeper integration with Philips Hue lighting in its SmartThings smart home platform. The company tells The Verge that it is working on enhanced music-based experiences that leverage Hue’s smart lighting. This follows a report from SamMobile that claimed a new update to the SmartThings app would let users synchronize their Hue lights with what is playing on their TV.“In the coming months, we hope to announce more details of an expanded partnership between Samsung SmartThings and Philips Hue that will provide enhanced music experiences,” said Samantha Fein, vice president of marketing and business development for SmartThings, in a written statement provided to The Verge. “However, a few recent articles seem to have... Continue reading…

A study found the Oura Ring can detect pregnancy. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge In early May, Ben Smarr published a new study showing that the Oura smart ring can detect pregnancy before most people take a test. It was an exciting finding — earlier detection of pregnancy based on wearable devices could, he wrote in the paper, “increase the agency of pregnant individuals.”Smarr, a data scientist at the University of California, San Diego does research on wearable devices and health — including reproductive health. He’s working with Oura on other projects around pregnancy. His team is also looking to see if data from devices can detect miscarriages.Reproductive health in general — and its intersection with wearables in particular — is an often underexplored area of research. The applications were exciting. But the... Continue reading…

Verification can be a handy tool in building an audience. | Photo by Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images If you’ve spent any time on Twitter — or any social media, really — you’re likely familiar with the blue checkmark. These badges indicate verified accounts. According to Twitter, a verified account is any account of public interest that’s been authenticated by the company itself. Basically, it’s Twitter’s way of letting everyone know that you are who you say you are.It’s not hard to see why you might want a verified Twitter account. Recognizability, curtailing misinformation, building trust with an audience — these are all major reasons why individuals, public figures, and brands alike seek the blue checkmark. But while it’s clear that verification comes with some benefits, getting verified may not be a walk in the park.Twitter’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The NFT boom of the past couple years appears to be conclusively over for average consumers. For big social networks, though, it appears that the work is just getting started.The latest platform to embrace non-fungible tokens is Reddit, which on Thursday announced the arrival of “blockchain-backed collectible avatars” — unique profile pictures from artists riffing on Reddit’s “Snoo” alien mascot, giving purchasers the right to use them on and off the site. The avatars can be purchased only with fiat currency; Reddit takes a 5 percent cut of each transaction.Reddit’s announcement takes pains never to refer to these avatars as NFTsIn a sign of how badly damaged the crypto brand has become, Reddit’s announcement takes pains never to... Continue reading…

IssueI was forced to manually shut down Chrome and reboot my computer — losing dozens of tabs.Quick fixUse Shift-Ctrl-T on a PC or Shift-Command-T on a Mac to restore tabs. You can also use History to restore complete Chrome windows, including all groups and tabs.The full storyOver the weekend, I needed to use my somewhat elderly MacBook Pro — the one I usually use for work — for a Zoom call. Unfortunately, I had been running several work projects and had two iterations of Chrome going, each with about 40 or 50 tabs. (Okay, I had a couple of other apps going as well.) As a result, when I began to run Zoom, the computer started to go on strike.I didn’t have time to start winnowing out which tabs I could easily lose or save them as... Continue reading…

Apple Apple’s 2022 MacBook Air with an updated design, M2 processor, MagSafe charging, and a slightly bigger display will soon be available for preorder, starting at $1,199. Preorders have begun, and orders placed will begin shipping Friday, July 15th. If you have a hard time preordering online for delivery (preorders don’t typically sell out, but ship dates often get pushed back very quickly), here’s a tip: try to order online right at 8AM ET on launch day, July 15th, with your order set as an in-store pickup.The release of this model follows behind the 2022 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, which had the honor of being Apple’s first laptop to debut the M2 chip. In terms of how the M2 performs, my colleague Monica Chin’s review concluded that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is rolling back a planned change to block Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default in a variety of Office apps. Announced earlier this year, Microsoft had been planning to prevent Office users from easily enabling certain content in files downloaded from the internet that include macros, in a move to improve security against malicious files. Microsoft had been testing this change ahead of a planned rollout to all Microsoft 365 users in June, but suddenly reverted the block on June 30th.BleepingComputer reports that Microsoft notified IT admins last week that it was rolling back the VBA macro block based on feedback from Office users testing the changes. “We appreciate the feedback we’ve received so far, and we’re... Continue reading…

Starlink Maritime now available. | Image: Starlink Starlink’s internet-from-space service continues expanding to new use cases with the launch of Starlink Maritime. What started in the home before expanding to stationary RVs is now available for boats on the move, at a cost of $5,000 a month. SpaceX is targeting merchant vessels, oil rigs, and wealthy owners of superyachts with the service.Starlink Maritime also requires a one-time $10,000 purchase of two ruggedized high performance Starlink dishes which ship in about two weeks, according to the US order page. By comparison, the hardware for Starlink’s Residential and RV services costs $599 and includes a single (smaller) “Dishy McFlatface” (as the dish is known to fans), with monthly subscriptions of $110 for the home service or $135... Continue reading…

Paddington is one of the hundreds of titles affected. | Screenshot: Paddington Sony is removing access to hundreds of movies and TV shows on its PlayStation Store service next month, meaning users that previously paid for titles such as Paddington and The Hunger Games will no longer be able to watch them. The shutdown affects users in Germany and Austria, according to legal notices posted on the two regional sites, and covers films produced by StudioCanal.The shutdown will come into force on August 31st, exactly one year after Sony discontinued movie and TV show purchases through its digital store. At the time Sony said that its customers will still be able to access previously purchased content. Notices posted on the PlayStation website blame “evolving license agreements with content providers” (via machine... Continue reading…

(L to R) Russian cosmonauts Sergey Korsakov, Oleg Artemyev, and Denis Matveev pose with the flag of the Luhansk People’s Republic | Image: Roscosmos Telegram On Thursday, NASA issued a statement strongly condemning the actions of three Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station, who recently posed with flags considered anti-Ukraine propaganda. In pictures posted by Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, the cosmonauts are seen holding flags of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic — two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine.“NASA strongly rebukes Russia using the International Space Station for political purposes to support its war against Ukraine, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the station’s primary function among the 15 international participating countries to advance science and develop technology for peaceful... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok is facing multiple lawsuits from parents who say their children died of strangulation attempting the “blackout challenge,” after the app showed them videos of other people trying it. One suit filed against the company in June alleges that at least seven specific children died last year while attempting the challenge, which the complaint says “encourages users to choke themselves with belts, purse strings, or anything similar until passing out.” All the children who reportedly died were under 15 years old.We’re not going to get into the distressing details of the cases, but you can read the full complaint below for more background on some of the children, and how they ended up doing the challenge.The most recent lawsuit was... Continue reading…

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images Amazon Prime subscribers in the US are getting a new benefit as part of their subscription, the company has announced. Today, they’ll be able to redeem a free year of Grubhub Plus, the monthly subscription service that offers free food delivery on orders over $12 from participating restaurants. Grubhub Plus normally costs $9.99 a month.According to Amazon, free deliveries associated with Grubhub Plus are available from hundreds of thousands of restaurants across over 4,000 cities in the US. After the year is up, Grubhub will automatically start charging $9.99 a month for continued access. Existing Grubhub Plus subscribers can still make use of the promotion, which will be applied at the start of their next billing cycle. Canceling Prime... Continue reading…

Actor Johnny Depp appears in the courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia, on May 27, 2022. | Photo by Steve Helber / AFP / Getty Images Bloomberg reports a licensing deal with Netflix will provide funding for the production of Johnny Depp’s first film following the actor’s bitter defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard for describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse” in an op-ed.According to the report, Netflix is footing some of the bill for French actress / director Maiwenn Le Besco’s La Favorite, a period film centering on France’s King Louis XV (Depp) and Madame Jeanne Bécu du Barry (Le Besco), the king’s third mistress whose association with him ultimately led to her being guillotined during the French Revolution. Though neither Netflix nor Why Not Productions, the French studio behind the project, have announced La Favorite, the... Continue reading…

Red Dead Online. | Image: Rockstar Games Red Dead Online will no longer receive “major themed content updates” in part because Rockstar Games is pulling resources into the next Grand Theft Auto title, the studio said Thursday. Fans have wondered if Red Dead Online has been abandoned, and while the game isn’t being shut down, Rockstar won’t be making as much content for it moving forward.“Over the past few years, we have been steadily moving more development resources towards the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series — understanding more than ever the need to exceed players’ expectations and for this next entry to be the best it can possibly be — and as a result, we are in the process of making some changes to how we support Red Dead Online,” Rockstar wrote in a blog post.... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge GameStop has been on a wild ride ever since it reached meme stock status, and the company has recently been dabbling in Web3 technologies like NFTs and crypto. More recently, it’s also been laying off employees without much explanation. On Thursday, GameStop internally announced an unspecified number of layoffs — reportedly including some from the popular publication Game Informer — and publicly revealed that it has fired its CFO with a terse press release.GameStop CEO Matt Furlong announced the round of layoffs to staff in a memo obtained by CNBC and Kotaku. It’s completely unclear how many people are affected or in which divisions, though Furlong writes in the memo that “we’re making a number of reductions to help us keep things... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the first six months of 2022, Web3 projects have lost more than $2 billion to hacks and exploits — more than all of 2021 combined.That’s according to research from blockchain auditing and security company CertiK, which on Thursday released its quarterly Web3 security report covering Q2 of this year. The report paints a sobering picture of a cryptocurrency space still plagued by hacks, scams, and phishing schemes while also facing relatively new threats like flash loan attacks.CertiK puts particular focus on this last category of threat, which has been created by the invention of flash loans: a decentralized finance mechanism that lets borrowers access extremely large amounts of cryptocurrency for very short periods of time. If used... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images The Washington Post reports that Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is “in peril,” based on three anonymous sources who told the paper that the billionaire’s camp has “stopped engaging in certain discussions around funding” for the agreement. Musk isn’t going it alone in his attempt to buy Twitter, with others like Larry Ellison, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, the crypto exchange Binance, and the state investment firm of Qatar among those pitching in a few billion as a part of the effort.The idea that a “drastic” change of direction on the deal is close to happening is supposedly due to concerns that Twitter’s data regarding spam and bots on the platform is not verifiable. The report comes just hours... Continue reading…

Secret Service Director James Murray is retiring from his post for a new position as Snap’s chief security officer at the end of the month, Snap confirmed to The Verge on Thursday.Murray’s private sector move was first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday, shortly after the longtime protective service official’s departure from government was announced by the Secret Service in a public statement. Murray will join Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, next month and will report directly to CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel.“We’re thrilled to welcome Jim Murray to Snap and look forward to him joining our team on August 1st,” Pete Boogaard, Snap spokesperson, said in a statement to The Verge.“We’re thrilled to welcome Jim Murray to Snap”I... Continue reading…

A snapshot of Apple’s homepage from January 27th, 2007 shows the iconic iPhone clownfish wallpaper. | Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge via Wayback Machine After 15 years of the iPhone’s existence, the clownfish wallpaper from Apple’s infamous 2007 presentation is finally making its way to the devices — at least for some developers running the latest iOS 16 build. Twitter user Jack Roberts shed light on the wallpaper, sharing a screen capture of the Clownfish option under the Collections section in iOS 16 Beta 3. The tweet then gained large attention after it was retweeted by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman.The magical photo of a baby and adult clownfish living in a green anemone is the first image ever presented during Steve Jobs’ reveal of the original iPhone and its glorious-at-the-time 3.5-inch display, but oddly, Apple never shipped it as a built-in wallpaper image. The full version of... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Two fatal Tesla crashes are being examined by investigators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Reuters reported that NHTSA opened a special investigation into a recent fatal crash in California, in which a Tesla driver killed a pedestrian. And an agency spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that a crash that took place on July 6th in Florida is also under examination.The crash in Florida took place on Interstate 75, just south of Gainesville, where a Tesla vehicle smashed into the rear of a stationary tractor-trailer that was parked at a truck stop. Two people inside the Tesla, the driver and a passenger, were killed, according to Fox 35. A spokesperson for NHTSA said the agency was aware of the crash and was... Continue reading…

Photo: Bungie Did you save up a couple hundred bucks for the foam-firing Nerf version of Destiny’s legendary Gjallarhorn rocket launcher that went on preorder today? Hope you don’t live in Canada — because buyers are reporting they’re being asked for more than twice the price just to get it shipped to their door. The company says it’s working on a solution.

Illustration by Michele Doying / The Verge Twitter told reporters on Thursday that it kicks over 1 million spam accounts off of its platform a day, according to a report from Reuters. That’s double the number CEO Parag Agrawal stated in a May Twitter thread, though the company maintains its long-held position that bots make up less than 5 percent of its active user base. The number of spam accounts and how Twitter deals with them has become a sticking point in recent months, as Elon Musk threatened to back away from his buyout of the company citing concerns the company is downplaying the scale of the problem.In May, Agrawal tweeted about spam to discuss the situation “with the benefit of data, facts, and context.” In the thread, he said the platform suspends “over half a million... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge An “erratic” pedestrian attacked a Waymo autonomous vehicle late Tuesday evening in Tempe, Arizona, smashing the windshield and injuring the safety driver, the company said. It was the latest incident of people in Arizona attacking Waymo vehicles — and occasionally their safety drivers — as the company ramps up its commercial service in the state.According to the company, a Waymo vehicle was traveling down the street in autonomous mode at 3AM on July 5th when a pedestrian ran out in front of it. The safety driver saw the pedestrian and switched the vehicle into manual mode, bringing it to a full stop before the person leaped onto the hood. The person, whom Waymo spokesperson Nick Smith described as “erratic” then punctured the... Continue reading…

Sunny Balwani, former Theranos president Ramesh Balwani, the former business partner and romantic interest of Elizabeth Holmes, defrauded investors and patients of the blood testing company Theranos, a jury found today.Balwani, who goes by Sunny, faced 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was found guilty of all counts and faces up to 20 years in prison for each count.Holmes was convicted of four counts of fraud against investors in January after a months-long trial. She was found not guilty on charges of defrauding patients.Balwani joined Theranos in 2009 as president and chief operating officer. He also supervised the company’s labs. Balwani initially met Holmes when she was 18, and they began dating after she’d already started the... Continue reading…

Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock and Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk in Marvel’s Daredevil. | Disney Plus The unexpected return of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin in Hawkeye and Charlie Cox’s Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home were both highlights in their respective stories that made clear Marvel’s plan to work those characters back into the MCU post-Netflix. While a new Daredevil series is in the works, it turns out that Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk will actually be making their next appearance in Disney Plus’ upcoming Echo show.According to The Hollywood Reporter, both Cox and D’Onofrio have signed on to reprise their roles as crime-fighting lawyer Matt Murdock / Daredevil and brutal crime lord Wilson Fisk / Kingpin for Echo, the Hawkeye spinoff centering Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox). Hawkeye’s final few episodes gradually revealed that in... Continue reading…

Ubisoft After suffering in development hell for the last few years, Skull and Bones — Ubisoft’s live-service pirate game — is finally seeing the light of day. The developer showed off new footage of the game as a part of its Ubisoft Forward event highlighting all the timbers you’ll get to shiver and buckles you’ll get to swash.Skull and Bones takes place in the waters of the Indian Ocean during what was known as the “golden age of piracy.” Players start off marooned on an island and must work to build their reputation — known as infamy — in order to become the most feared pirate on the high seas. Infamy seems to be at the core of the game. Players can engage in all kinds of activities from looting, hunting other pirates, and treasure hunting to... Continue reading…

Gif: SnoopyTech Asus accidentally leaked a promo video for its apparently upcoming Zenfone 9 on its YouTube channel, and the phone’s got some very interesting quirks and features, to borrow a phrase (via XDA, TechGoing). Perhaps the most interesting (at least for the people who could take or leave a headphone jack) is what Asus has done with the side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which the video labels as the “smart key”: it shows a creepy CGI hand swiping through a webpage by sliding its finger along the side of the phone.It’s not exactly unusual to have some sort of gesture built into the fingerprint reader — phones like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip / Fold 3 let you bring down the notification shade with a similar swipe. (And those phones are far from the... Continue reading…

A slideshow of texts are projected onto the side of the Hidden Gem during a demonstration against deep-sea mining. | Photo by Charles M. Vella/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The race is on to figure out how to protect the ocean abyss as deep-sea mining operations look to extract minerals like nickel, cobalt, and copper from the sea floor. But there’s one potential risk to the deep-sea environment that tends to fall under the radar. Not only will mining dredge up the seafloor, but it’ll also create a lot of noise that poses its own problems for marine life, according to a newly published paper in the journal Science.People have talked about mining the deep sea for minerals for decades, and that future is almost here. Driven by a need for more of the minerals used in everyday gadgets and batteries, the first efforts to raid polymetallic nodules at the bottom of the ocean for these resources could begin in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has started testing a new CoTweets feature this week with users of the social network. The CoTweets feature allows two accounts to co-author a tweet and both be tagged in a single tweet. Twitter has confirmed to The Verge that this new feature is now live for some users for a limited amount of time after the company started experimenting with the idea earlier this year.“We’re continuing to explore new ways for people to collaborate on Twitter,” explains Twitter spokesperson Joseph J. Nuñez in a statement to The Verge. “We’re testing CoTweets for a limited time to learn how people and brands may use this feature to grow and reach new audiences, and strengthen their collaborations with other accounts.”In a tweet from the Twitter... Continue reading…

Comedian Lewis Black is the latest comedian to sue streamer Pandora over publishing rights. | Photo by Paula Lobo/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Comedian Lewis Black filed suit against SiriusXM-owned audio streamer Pandora on Thursday, arguing that the company ran recordings of his performances without obtaining the copyright to his written work.It is the latest escalation in the messy fight between comedians, streamers, and the performing rights organizations that have recently stepped in to standardize spoken-word copyright in the digital age. This suit, along with several others filed against Pandora, seeks back pay for millions of dollars worth of publishing royalties and to fundamentally change the way copyright for comedy functions. If the comedians win, it could have major ramifications for Pandora, Spotify, and other audio streamers.Publishing rights for spoken-word... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales Tesla plans to open up its Supercharger network to non-Tesla electric vehicles in the US in late 2022, according to a White House memo.The company has been allowing non-Tesla EVs to use its Supercharger plugs in several cities in Europe as part of a limited pilot program but has been quiet about when US charging stations would be available to non-Tesla EV owners. A “fact sheet” published by the White House on June 28th and noticed by InsideEVs indicates that those EV owners may be able to use Superchargers as soon as the end of this year.“Later this year, Tesla will begin production of new Supercharger equipment that will enable non-Tesla EV drivers in North America to use Tesla Superchargers,” the White House states.“Tesla will... Continue reading…

Image: Bungie If you were worried that the real-life foam firing version of the infamous Gjallarhorn rocket launcher from Destiny would be disappointingly kid-sized, you can put those fears to rest: Bungie has just revealed what an actual blaster looks like — and when fans can get it. Preorders for the over 4-foot-long, 1:1 scale blaster began July 7th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET, and existing Gjallarhorn owners get dibs. If you’re looking to purchase the prop-grade Nerf LMTD blaster first, you needed to unlock it in-game in the Destiny 2 Bungie 30th Anniversary Pack before July 7th at 9AM PT before you can join the “virtual waiting room” for your purchase. So at the time we originally wrote this post, you had just over a week.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Dish says SpaceX has been lying to customers about how a plan to expand the use of certain airwaves for 5G could disrupt its Starlink internet-from-space service. SpaceX sent a “manipulated filing” to the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to prove the expanded 5G usage would lead to substantial interference, writes Dish and a group of other companies known as the 5G for 12 GHz Coalition. They write that SpaceX is conducting “a public misinformation campaign” against 5G.“This tactic, which is commonly used by Elon Musk, is not only disingenuous, but it promulgates an anti-5G narrative that is harmful to American consumers who deserve greater competition, connectivity options and innovation,” the Coalition writes in a... Continue reading…

Philips is discounting bundles of its outdoor lighting tech until July 17th. | Image: Philips Even with Amazon Prime Day 2022 right around the corner, kicking off on Tuesday, July 12th, there are lots of early Prime Day deals to check out, in and out of Amazon. One of the standouts is on Philips Hue smart lights. There’s a promotion that’ll knock 15 percent off your total when you buy two or more outdoor lights. This includes outdoor lighting strips, accent lighting, as well as other Hue essentials you may want, like the Hue outdoor sensor and Hue Bridge, the latter of which lets you easily control and coordinate your smart lights through an app. This promotion will go lights out after July 17th.If you’ve been itching to invest in a new wearable to get fit and keep closer track of your notifications, Wellbots is offering Verge... Continue reading…

Delivery service Instacart is rolling out a new Uber Pro-like incentive program for its shoppers called Cart Star. Cart Star’s tiered incentives are available in three categories: gold (for 200 points); platinum (for 1,000 points); and diamond (for 2,000 points). Shoppers earn points based on the number of orders they complete in the preceding three-month span. To maintain their place in the program, shoppers must keep an average customer rating of 4.7.The company’s highest diamond tier offers more exclusive benefits. Diamond shoppers will be able to have first access to delivery batches before stores open. They will also have access to two days of caregiving for a child, senior, or pet per quarter for the cost of $1 per hour or $10... Continue reading…

A server room at a Microsoft data center. Data centers like this have lithium-ion batteries that keep their systems running in the event of a power outage. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft says its data centers could soon provide backup power to electric grids transitioning to renewable energy. The data centers already have lithium-ion batteries on-site so that they can keep running during a power outage. Now, that backup system could also shore up grids in need of more batteries to store energy produced by growing numbers of solar panels or wind farms.That kind of energy storage is absolutely critical for any city or region trying to get its grid to run on renewables. Microsoft’s newest data center in Dublin, Ireland, due to come online next year, will be the company’s first full-scale attempt at providing that service.Energy storage is absolutely criticalUnlike coal or gas, solar and wind energy ebb and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta is introducing a new account system for its virtual reality headsets, changing a 2020 requirement that most users log in with Facebook. The new “Meta accounts” don’t require users to sign up for Facebook, and they come with a slew of other updates to Meta’s VR social interface.Meta accounts will start rolling out in August 2022 for new and existing Quest users. If you’ve been using a Facebook account with a Quest headset (including a Facebook account merged with an earlier Oculus account), you’ll need to create a Meta profile that month. If you’ve been logging in with an Oculus account, you can keep using it until January 1st, 2023, as previously promised. If you migrate your account, you’re supposed to see all the VR apps you... Continue reading…