The Verge

Love the frunk. Still not sold on the headlights. | Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge I only popped one tire, which seems like a win Continue reading…

Apple’s upcoming M2 MacBook Air comes in four color options. | Apple Apple’s upcoming MacBook Air with M2 processor finally has a shipping date. After a bit longer wait than usual, the new $1,199 laptop will begin shipping on July 15th, with preorders opening on July 8th at 8AM ET. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar announced alongside it at WWDC 2022 is already available. While that familiar-looking model was first out of the gate with the second-generation chip, this MacBook Air is offering a whole lot more that’s new, like a MagSafe charger, 1080p webcam, and a revised design with a larger, notched 13.6-inch display.Though the new MacBook Air has a lower starting price than its 13-inch Pro counterpart, it’s certainly the more colorful and unique-looking one. Unlike prior Air laptops, it shifts... Continue reading…

A lot of people liked Stranger Things 4. | Courtesy of Netflix Stranger Things 4, the most recent season of the hit show, just became the second Netflix show ever to surpass a billion hours viewed. Since the first installment of the season dropped on May 27th, viewers have spent a cumulative 1.15 billion hours watching the season’s nine episodes, including 301 million hours just this past weekend. That makes Stranger Things 4 the second most-watched Netflix season ever, after Squid Game in 2021. It was in Netflix’s Top 10 in 93 different countries this weekend, the company says. The show is so popular right now that it’s boosting the older seasons, too: all four Stranger Things seasons were in Netflix’s six most-watched shows over the weekend, with only The Umbrella Academy able to keep up.N... Continue reading…

Live shopping is big in Asia, but not so much elsewhere. | Image: TikTok TikTok may seem like an unstoppable global entertainment machine, but at least one part of the company’s offering isn’t quite taking over: TikTok is scaling back its live commerce plans in Europe and the US, the Financial Times reported, after early launches simply haven’t been successful.TikTok has been testing live shopping in the UK since late last year, starting with a multi-brand event called “On Trend” last December. But the FT reported that those shopping livestreams haven’t drawn big audiences and haven’t sparked many sales, and some of the creators involved in early TikTok Shop projects have dropped out altogether. TikTok had been planning to roll out Shop in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain by now, and was hoping to launch... Continue reading…

Apex Legends: Awakening Collection Event | Image: EA Update July 5th, 2:30PM ET: On Tuesday afternoon Respawn and EA released a new patch saying it should address the issue, and after playing a bit I can confirm it has fixed input lag with all the controllers I used on Xbox Series X.Last week, EA’s battle royale shooter Apex Legends launched a “collection event,” which is shorthand for a limited-time setup that is mostly about players buying a bunch of cosmetic items from the in-game store. The only problem is that this time, the massive update has made the game nearly unplayable for many people on consoles.Without warning, the battle royale shooter’s usually tight and responsive controls — a known quantity for Respawn Entertainment games since Titanfall and a reflection of its Call of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter announced on Tuesday that it has launched a lawsuit against the Indian government, the latest salvo in an ongoing fight over the country’s aggressive speech laws. The lawsuit comes after Twitter was ordered to remove a series of accounts and posts that violate Indian obscenity and defamation laws, as first reported by The New York Times. Twitter has now removed the posts, but is seeking judicial protection from such orders in the future.The fight started last May when India issued new IT rules for online content, shortly followed by a police raid on Twitter’s India offices. The following July, Indian regulators threatened to hold Twitter liable for any future infractions by its users.Broadly, Twitter has long argued that it... Continue reading…

Avatar’s first sequel releases later this year. | Screenshot: Avatar: The Way of Water It’s okay if you’ve lost track, but here’s a quick reminder that this year’s Avatar: The Way of Water is just the first of a potential four sequels to the 2009 sci-fi epic. And now, in a new interview with Empire, director James Cameron has given an update on where the rest of the series is headed.The most interesting detail? Cameron might not actually direct the fourth and fifth Avatar films, which were originally announced in 2013 and 2016. (Like I said, it’s okay if you’ve lost track.) “The Avatar films themselves are kind of all-consuming,” Cameron tells Empire. “I’ve got some other things I’m developing as well that are exciting. I think eventually over time – I don’t know if that’s after three or after four – I’ll want to pass the... Continue reading…

The HTC A101. | Image: HTC HTC, the once-impressive Android smartphone manufacturer, has a surprise tablet to accompany its bizarre metaverse-focused Desire 22 Pro. The new A101 is an Android tablet with a 10.1-inch display, entry-level specs, and a design that’s straight out of the middle of the last decade. The device, which we spotted via AndroidPolice, appears to have been quietly announced last month — according to the Wayback Machine — and is aimed at the African market. It follows the A100 tablet, which was launched in Russia last year to a similar non-reaction.Given that the tablet appears to be marketed solely at emerging markets, I don’t want to be too snarky about its specs or design. But it’s still just plain weird to see HTC — makers of literally the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is planning to remove Xbox 360 games from its monthly Games with Gold offer in October. The software maker has started emailing Xbox Live Gold subscribers to warn them of the change, noting that the company has “reached the limit of our ability to bring Xbox 360 games to the catalogue.”Games with Gold is a monthly benefit for subscribers of Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Microsoft hand picks free games each month, and all Xbox 360 titles are playable on the latest Xbox Series X / S consoles and Xbox One.Microsoft’s Xbox backward compatibility program briefly returned with 76 new games last year, but the company made it clear it had “reached the limit of our ability to bring new games to the catalog from the past... Continue reading…

Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images One of the strange features of American government is that an 82-year-old’s broken hip can cause a sea change in telecom policy. The 82-year-old in question is Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who had surgery after a fall on Thursday and is said to be resting comfortably. But while Leahy recuperates, he won’t be able to cast votes and Democrats won’t be able to flex their razor-thin Senate majority — which could cost the administration its last chance to institute net neutrality rules.The temporary stalemate caused by Leahy’s recovery has lots of downstream effects. The Washington Post has a good piece running down the panic over federal judicial appointments, which require confirmation from the Senate. But the same also applies to Gigi Sohn,... Continue reading…

A spider crab at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. To the best of our knowledge, this crab is innocent of any scientific crabotage. | Photo by Doug Duran/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images Studying an underwater volcano is hard enough without a spider crab getting in the way. In an absolutely delightful field dispatch, Jes Burns of Oregon Public Broadcasting tells the story of a crab, some geologists just trying to set up their equipment, and a remotely operated vehicle named Jason that, from the sound of it, is locked in seemingly eternal crustacean combat.“We expect sabotage, crab sabotage. Because there’s obviously a battle going on between Jason and the crabs at Axial Seamount,” Oregon State University volcanologist Bill Chadwick told Burns.Burns is embedded on a ship with Chadwick and other researchers, reporting on the serious scientific effort to study the Axial Seamount, an underwater volcano 300 miles off the... Continue reading…

The ROG Phone 6 Pro comes with an extra screen on the back. | Image: Asus Asus announced two new devices in its gaming-focused Republic of Gamers phone lineup, the ROG Phone 6 and the ROG Phone 6 Pro. They’re gamer phones for gamers who like to game, and the upgraded displays look pretty impressive.Both models run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, and come with up to 512GB of storage. They have 6.78-inch OLED screens, the same size as the previous ROG Phone 5S, but their 165Hz refresh rates and 720Hz touch-sampling rates are both substantial improvements over the last model. They have 6,000mAh batteries, same as previous models, and an upgraded three-camera setup. The Phone 6 will start at €999 and the 6 Pro at €1,299 — they’re set to launch in the UK and Europe first, and Asus says they’ll come to... Continue reading…

When renewable portable power is more important than emergency backup Continue reading…

Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, the Mighty Thor, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor Odinson. | Image: Marvel Studios Marvel’s fourth Thor movie is about as messy as any complicated breakup Continue reading…

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. | Image: Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, the first game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise to feature multiplayer, will see its online services shut down on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in September, its publisher Ubisoft has announced. It’s part of a collection of over a dozen games that will see their online elements discontinued that month, which means players won’t be able to play their multiplayer components, access their online features, link Ubisoft accounts in-game, or install and access downloadable content.“Closing the online services for some older games allows us to focus our resources on delivering great experiences for players who are playing newer or more popular titles,” Ubisoft’s help page reads. With Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood having... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is working on a smaller and faster Outlook Lite app for Android. The software giant has detailed the app in its Microsoft 365 roadmap, where it describes Outlook Lite as “an Android app that brings the main benefits of Outlook in a smaller app size with fast performance for low-end devices on any network.”The roadmap reveals that the Outlook Lite app will be available worldwide at some point this month. ZDNet reports that an Outlook Lite app already exists in a few countries, so Microsoft appears to be readying it for a broader release. Microsoft’s own documentation on Outlook Lite suggests the app will be limited to only Outlook, Hotmail, Live, and MSN accounts, and won’t support work or school accounts.Outlook Lite will... Continue reading…

FIFA, the international governing body of association football,* has announced it will use AI-powered cameras to help referees make offside calls at the 2022 World Cup.The semi-automated system consists of a sensor in the ball that relays its position on the field 500 times a second, and 12 tracking cameras mounted underneath the roof of stadiums, which use machine learning to track 29 points in players’ bodies.Software will combine this data to generate automated alerts when players commit offside offenses (that is: when they’re nearer to the other team’s goal than their second-last opponent and receiving the ball). Alerts will be sent to officials in a nearby control room, who will validate the decision and tell referees on the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has agreed to simplify the process of canceling Prime in Europe, meaning customers in the region will be able to end their subscription in just two clicks, the European Commission has announced. The changes, which were implemented as of July 1st, should bring to an end the “multiple pages” filled with “distracting information” and “unclear button labels” that Amazon has previously used to add friction to the cancellation process.The European Commission says the changes apply to the European Union and European Economic Area. Despite the UK having left the former as of the beginning of 2020, The Guardian reports that UK subscribers will also benefit from the two-click unsubscribe process. But when contacted for comment, a... Continue reading…

The Verge YouTube, Instagram, Discord, and Twitter moved quickly to pull social media pages that appeared to belong to Robert Crimo III, a person of interest in the Chicago suburb shooting that left six dead and dozens injured this afternoon. Under a pair of aliases, Crimo seems to have posted more than a dozen videos to YouTube and hosted a Discord channel named “SS,” which was open to the public through an invite link.Crimo’s apparent YouTube account hadn’t posted in around eight months, based on The Verge’s viewing before the account was pulled. The most recent video included concerning language and imagery that appeared to involve classrooms and stick-art depictions of people being shot. Another clip seemed to be a music video for a rap song,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge They might often be an afterthought nowadays, but in the console generations of yesteryear, game manuals were often essential reading. Compared to the scant pack-ins that come with games today, those vintage instruction manuals were on a completely different level in terms of the care and detail that went into them — and the page count was much higher, too.Now, as noted by Kotaku, a community project led by led by streamer Peebs has successfully scanned and uploaded every last English-language game manual for the Super Nintendo. You can check out the entire collection here. Peebs was motivated to assemble one central resource for manuals during an eight-year quest to play and beat every SNES game for his Twitch viewers.Perusing... Continue reading…

Image: Amazon It just got way easier and more convenient to remotely watch Amazon Prime Video’s TV shows and movies together with your friends. The service’s “Watch Party” feature has received a much needed expansion from the limited use cases where it worked before — on Fire TV devices, desktop web browsers, and the Prime Video mobile app — and it now supports non-Amazon streaming devices, smart TVs, and Xbox / PlayStation gaming consoles. TechCrunch first reported on the expansion.Watch Party allows for up to 100 people with a Prime subscription to view content at the same time. The host is able to play, pause, skip, and fast forward or rewind for the group, and everyone can chat about what they’re watching.For now, Amazon’s Watch Party feature... Continue reading…

The launcher image for Minecraft: Java Edition. | Image: Microsoft Minecraft has been updated with a tribute to the popular streamer Technoblade, whose death from cancer was announced by his family last week. The splash image for Minecraft in the game’s launcher now features a pig wearing a golden crown — a callout to Technoblade’s Minecraft character, a royal pig-man wearing a bejeweled crown.The Minecraft team tweeted on Friday that the team was ”heartbroken over the loss of Technoblade,” writing that he “brought so much joy” to the game’s community.

Amazon has launched its first “micromobility hub” in the UK with the aim to swap “thousands” of polluting delivery trucks with electric cargo bikes — and, in some cases, walking. The project is intended to help Amazon achieve its climate goals to have 50 percent of its deliveries be carbon neutral by 2030.Starting in the London borough of Hackney, the company says that it will deliver 1 million packages a year using walking and electric cargo bikes, in addition to deliveries that are made with electric vans. Delivery workers on foot and e-bikes will help displace “thousands” of traditional van trips, Amazon said.E-bikes will help displace “thousands” of traditional van tripsThe carbon neutral trips will take place within a tenth of... Continue reading…

David Crosby in 2019. | Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images Crosby, Stills & Nash are back on Spotify, five months after the supergroup abandoned the platform in protest of Joe Rogan’s spread of COVID misinformation. The group will donate streaming profits to COVID-19 charities for “at least a month,” according to Billboard.The musicians’ return to Spotify marks a quiet and relatively unglamorous end to their protest, which has largely had the effect of boosting Rogan’s subscriber numbers, if the podcaster is to be believed. Crosby, Stills & Nash originally announced back in February that they would pull their music in solidarity with sometimes-bandmate Neil Young, who kicked off a series of artist protests of Spotify when he removed his music and published an open letter criticizing the company... Continue reading…

Xiaomi’s Mi 12S Ultra | Image: Xiaomi Xiaomi is introducing a trio of new smartphones today, and one of them comes with a pretty huge new feature: a 1-inch camera sensor, which is relatively giant for a smartphone.Everything about Xiaomi’s new flagship smartphone, the Mi 12S Ultra, is big. It has a 6.73-inch OLED display, a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 system on a chip, and a camera-lens shaped bulge on that back that takes up about a third of the phone’s rear side.Inside that faux-lens are the phone’s three cameras: a 48 megapixel ultrawide, a 48 megapixel telephoto with 5x optical zoom (and “120x” digital zoom that will probably not look very good), and finally, the 50 megapixel main camera, which uses that 1-inch sensor.A few different companies have put... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Tesla’s latest software update includes a cool-sounding feature that could prevent a lot of underbody damage — and perhaps some driver damage too, Electrek reports. According to release notes, the update (2022.20) will enable Tesla vehicles to scan the road ahead of potholes and adjust the suspension to account for rough roads.Tesla owners can activate the new feature by selecting “Comfort” under the Adaptive Suspension Damping setting. But the new feature may be dependent on where the vehicle is being driven — meaning it may not be available for every pothole and road crack. “This adjustment may occur at various locations, subject to availability, as the vehicle downloads rough road map data generated by Tesla cars,” the release notes... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Riding the wave of the outdoor cooking revolution Continue reading…

Chevy’s first foray into non-fungible tokens was a non-fungible dud. The automaker netted zero bids for its first NFT during an auction last month, even though the digital drawing came with a free 2023 Corvette Z06, according to Corvette Blogger.The NFT, which depicts a lime green Corvette Z06 blasting through a cyberpunk landscape, was created by artist Nick Sullo, who goes by xsullo online. The winning bidder would have also received a unique “Minted Green” Corvette Z06, which will be the only car painted in that color, and an option code RFN, which will “forever associate” the car with the NFT auction. And the Corvette’s VIN number will be in binary because NFTs are digital and computers use binary and you get it. But... Continue reading…

Photo by Peter J Fox/Getty Images Formula One driver Zhou Guanyu likely wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for the partially closed titanium device that formed a protective layer around the cockpit of his race car. Zhou credited the protection device, known as a halo, for saving his life after a horrific crash during the first lap of Sunday’s British Grand Prix, according to CNN.“I’m ok, all clear. Halo saved me today,” Zhou tweeted Sunday, along with a selfie. “Thanks everyone for your kind messages!”Zhou was one of several drivers involved in the turn one crash, which saw his Alfa Romeo flipping over and skidding across the track before crashing into the fencing. The halo, which forms partial protection around the cockpit, prevented Zhou from sustaining serious... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge The promise of cloud gaming is that you can do it from anywhere using any device with internet access and a good enough browser (each cloud gaming service seems to have its own requirements on the browser front). You should be able to play super demanding games whether you’re on a work trip with nothing but a work laptop or at home and the main TV is being hogged — or even if you just don’t feel like sitting on the couch. But the biggest promise of cloud gaming is that, no matter where you are, if you’ve got a phone then you’ve got all your games.In practice, this is a bad idea. After spending the last few weeks rapturously using my Steam Deck near daily to play games in the cloud, I am never going to willingly attempt cloud gaming on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter Blue has finally started letting subscribers on Android customize the app’s navigation bar. The feature, which was previously available only on iOS, lets you get rid of the Spaces icon that’s smack-dab in the middle of your navigation bar (and of course, remove some of the other tabs if you want, too).With custom navigation, you can reduce the number of displayed tabs to as few as two, or keep all five that appear by default — handy if you’re tired of stretching your finger over the Spaces tab just to get to your DMs and notifications. Twitter first started testing the Spaces tab on iOS last year and rolled out the tab on Android in May, which seemed to only give more inconvenienced users a reason to sign up for the $2.99 /... Continue reading…

Hackers altered the British Army’s Twitter page to make it seem like it was associated with The Possessed NFT project. Both the British Army’s Facebook and Twitter accounts were hacked and used to promote cryptocurrency scams, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed on Sunday. It’s unclear when exactly hackers took over the two accounts, but they both appear to be back to normal now.“We are aware of a breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway,” the Ministry of Defence Press Office said on Twitter. “The Army takes information security extremely seriously and is resolving the issue.”Hackers hijacked the British Army’s Twitter page, swapping out the organization’s profile picture, bio, and cover photo to make it seem like it was associated with The Possessed NFT collection. The account sent out various retweets for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge 15 former or current Black Tesla employees are suing the company for allegedly failing to prevent racial discrimination at its Fremont, California factory (via Bloomberg). The lawsuit, which was filed in a California court last week, details workers’ claims that they were subject to racial slurs, derogatory comments, and racially-motivated harassment in the workplace.As outlined in the filing, workers allege that their colleagues frequently used the N-word and other racist or discriminatory terms like “slavery” or “plantation” to describe the factory’s work culture. In addition, Tesla allegedly left racist graffiti on bathroom walls, benches, lockers, and workstations that contained “KKK,” the N-word, and drawings of swastikas.The... Continue reading…

It’s a Backbone clone with little soul of its own Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The upcoming Apple Watch Series 8 will reportedly come with a body temperature sensor that can tell whether you’re running a fever, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Instead of giving you an exact reading, Gurman believes the watch should be able to detect a spike in body temperature, and then encourage you to talk to a doctor or use a thermometer.Gurman says the body temperature sensor still has to pass internal testing, and if it does, Apple’s expected to incorporate the feature in the Watch Series 8, as well as the rumored “rugged” smartwatch for extreme sports athletes. The upcoming entry-level Apple Watch SE likely won’t have the sensor, though.Rumors of a body temperature sensor have been floating around for... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s no mystery why Sony made a PC gaming monitor that can also work well with the PS5. The PC gaming business is simply too big to ignore, and it’s just money on the table that’s otherwise up for grabs by other monitor makers.Sony didn’t say those exact words, but it didn’t have to for me to know that it’s one of the reasons why it decided to announce two gaming monitors this week. Another reason is because Sony’s growing focus on services means that PS Plus will eventually go beyond the console. Getting its games in front of more people instead of locking them down as exclusives has, in the past few years, become a welcome change in strategy.Sony is late to this particular party, though. Nintendo’s Switch and Valve’s Steam Deck can... Continue reading…

I don’t think I’ve ever played something that blends genres quite like Neon White. Let me try to summarize the game: you play as a demon hunter who destroys baddies in heaven by using cards that serve as either guns or special movement abilities, and the goal is to get through each level as fast as you possibly can. It’s part first-person shooter, part first-person platformer, part puzzler, part card game, part time attack, and even part visual novel.I’ve struggled to come up with a better description, but in an interview, Neon White creative director Ben Esposito finally gave me one: “a really gamey game.”“It’s a really unlikely game,” he said. “It’s a really gamey game that’s full of gamey things. But the combination of elements is... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge The text that arrived at 3:51PM on Monday, March 28th, seemed innocent at first.“Mr. Steven,” it read, “I am very sorry, after our communication and understanding during this period of time, I feel that we are not suitable in some ways.”That’s odd, I thought, must be a wrong number. But who was this mysterious Mr. Steven? What was the nature of the disagreement? What the heck did Mr. Steven do to offend this person? I was intrigued — but not enough to respond.Several weeks later, I received another text, this time from someone named “Amy” asking about “a location for coffee.” A couple days after that, “Irene from Vietnam” reached out to ask if I was still living in New York. And then “Sophia” texted, calling me “Laura” and asking... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in a bid to protect its US assets from creditors in the country, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and CNBC. Representatives for the Singapore-based company made the filing in a Southern District New York court on Friday, which legally protects the US assets of insolvent foreign debtors from creditors in the US.Founded in 2012 by Kyle Davis and Su Zhu, 3AC managed about $10 billion in assets as recently as March, later sinking to $3 billion in April. Like several other crypto firms, including the lending giants Celcius and Babel Finance, 3AC’s turn in fortunes is part of the so-called crypto “winter” that’s brought down stablecoins and sent Bitcoin’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Tesla announced it had delivered 254,695 vehicles during the second quarter of 2022, about an 18 percent drop from the previous quarter. The report, which was published on Tesla’s site, signals an end to a nearly two-year-long run of record quarterly deliveries for Elon Musk’s company, which can mostly be attributed to lengthy COVID-related shutdowns of its factory in Shanghai.Tesla said the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made up 238,533 of these deliveries, while 16,162 were for the Model S and Model X vehicles. On the production side of things, Tesla said it managed to build a total of 258,580 vehicles.China has been crucial to the company’s rise to its status as one of the most valuable automakers in the world. But Tesla’s... Continue reading…

Image: Virgin Orbit Virgin Orbit launched a rocket carrying seven satellites from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port early Saturday morning at 1:49 AM ET (10:49PM local), marking the small satellite launcher’s first successful night mission. The company brought the satellites into low Earth orbit with the help of its Boeing 747 carrier aircraft called Cosmic Girl, which had the LauncherOne rocket attached beneath one of its wings.The mission, called Straight Up after a 1988 Paula Abdul song, involved seven research satellites as part of NASA’s Space Test Program. Like its previous missions, Virgin Orbit propelled the satellites into space by having Cosmic Girl carry the LauncherOne rocket 35,000 feet above the ground, giving it a headstart before the... Continue reading…

A sparse group of people brave the smoky conditions at Kings Beach, California, as the Caldor Fire burns nearby on Saturday, September 4th, 2021 | Jane Tyska / Digital First Media / East Bay Times via Getty Images After two years of Fourth of July celebrations without fireworks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the California resort community of North Lake Tahoe is ready to light up the sky again. But instead of traditional fireworks, more than 100 drones will take off for a light show choreographed to music. Like an increasing number of communities throughout the region, city planners chose fire safety and sustainability over nostalgia as California copes with a cruel megadrought.“Fireworks come with their own list of known environmental impacts—including noise pollution, impacts to the lake, and increased risk of fire at a time when the wildfire risk is already so high,” Katie Biggers, executive director of the Tahoe City Downtown Association,... Continue reading…

Image: Facebook Meta’s ending the pilot for Novi, the company’s digital wallet and the last remaining piece of its troubled cryptocurrency project, as first reported by Bloomberg. On Novi’s website, Meta says the wallet is shutting down on September 1st, 2022, and asks users to withdraw their funds “as soon as possible.”Users will lose access to their accounts come September, and will no longer be able to add money to Novi starting July 21st. If someone forgets to withdraw their remaining balance, Meta says it will “attempt to transfer” their funds to the bank account or debit card added to the service.Meta rolled out the “small pilot” of Novi to users in the US and Guatemala last October. Novi was originally built to support fast and free... Continue reading…

If you don’t tend to your algorithms, you’ll eventually hate what they show you. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For the last few years, I’ve chosen one weekend day a year to undertake what I’ve come to call a Feeds Reboot. I try to systematically go through every subscription, every follow, every algorithmically or chronologically generated thing I see on social platforms, streaming services, and news apps, and reset or at least review the way it works. I can’t recommend this enough.Every time I do a Feeds Reboot, I notice a huge uptick in how interesting and relevant I suddenly find the internet. Does it then spend the next 364 days slowly degrading back into a morass from which I will try and extricate myself next year? Yep! But I’m still making progress.The point of a Feeds Reboot is to be more intentional about the internet. It’s not the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Fourth of July weekend is here, and hopefully you get to enjoy some time together with friends and family (and lots of delicious food). The Verge Deals compiled the best deals happening in honor of America’s birthday, but today I aim to give you a smaller, fresher selection of deals that may not last through the holiday. Frequent visitors to the site might recognize one or two of them, but I’ve tried to toss in a few new deals for your perusal. Have a nice weekend.Sonos is hosting another one of its sale events on refurbished audio products (in like-new condition, and covered by a one-year warranty), running the gamut of its most affordable and pricey hardware. Starting at the low end, the Sonos Roam is selling for $139, down from... Continue reading…

TCL’s inexpensive phone offers decent performance, access to T-Mobile’s good 5G network, and not much else Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve made the decision to delete Instagram, whether because you’ve outgrown the need for a certain finsta or because its parent company Meta is courting controversy again, doing so isn’t as quick or easy as it should be. Up until recently, it couldn’t even be done from within the Instagram app.Go ahead and take a moment to make an obligatory “I’m deleting Instagram” post if you’d like. After that, you have two ways you can go about it.Deleting Instagram using the iOS or Android AppThe easiest way for iPhone users to delete Instagram is by using the app. To do so, go to your profile, tap the hamburger menu in the top right, and select Settings. Then go to Account, and scroll down to the bottom of the menu. There will be a Delete... Continue reading…

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner. | Netflix Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 finishes with a deadly bang and the glimpse of the apocalypse Continue reading…

These cards are now worth just over $1,000, well under MSRP — down from $2,570 last March. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Nvidia and AMD graphics cards are again within reach Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google says it’ll start automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, weight loss clinics, and other potentially sensitive locations from users’ location histories in the coming weeks. In a blog post on Friday, the company says that the deletion will happen “soon after” the visit, once its systems have identified that a trip was made to one of the locations. This change is happening in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the moves several states have immediately made to outlaw abortions.You can also turn off Google’s location logging altogether by following its instructions here.Google’s post, entitled “Protecting people’s privacy on health topics,” also mentions that... Continue reading…