The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Another major California-based video game developer is initiating a return-to-office order. According to a report from Vice, League of Legends developer Riot Games announced it will be requiring employees to return to its Los Angeles headquarters while also eliminating vaccine and masking requirements. Riot is also no longer requiring regular COVID-19 testing for employees who have not shown proof of vaccination.The Vice report spoke to several current and former Riot employees who expressed anger that the new policy would danger employees’ health. “It’s a foolish and pointless policy being done at a poor time and being handled without real guarantee of our safety,” one anonymous employee said to Vice.However, despite these concerns,... Continue reading…

It looks at data like Popular Times, images from street view, and more. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has shared how it’s using artificial intelligence, including its restaurant-calling Duplex tech, to try and keep business hours up to date on Google Maps. The company says that if it is confident enough in the AI’s prediction of what a business’s hours should be, it will update the information in Maps.In a blog post, Google outlines the various factors its AI analyzes to determine whether it should do these updates. First, it looks at when the business profile was last updated, other similar shops’ hours, and Popular Times data to decide how likely it is that the hours are incorrect. For example: if Google sees that a lot of people visit the shop when it’s supposedly closed, that may be a red flag.Google only updates hours with... Continue reading…

Companies like Amazon often use mandatory meetings to persuade workers against unionizing. | Photo by Yana Paskova / For The Washington Post via Getty Images The National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel plans to ask the board to rule that mandatory meetings about organizing are a violation of the National Labor Relations Act, a significant potential victory for labor groups. Sometimes called “captive audience” meetings, mandatory meetings are often used by company management to present anti-union rhetoric at meetings that employees are required to attend while at work.Employees trying to unionize Amazon warehouses in Bessemer, Alabama, and New York City have previously filed complaints with the NLRB claiming that the company held such meetings to try to convince workers to vote against the union efforts. The NLRB has historically allowed such meetings, but a new memo from NLRB... Continue reading…

If you’re currently a video creator or are interested in trying it out, you may want to know how well your PC can perform various tasks in Adobe Premiere Pro. One of the best ways to do that is the Puget Systems benchmark for Premiere Pro.Puget Systems is a PC manufacturer that specializes in professional workstations. They offer a number of different benchmarks for testing hardware in a variety of applications, but the Premiere Pro benchmark is the one we use the most. It will have your computer try all kinds of things, including live playback, export, GPU effects, and CPU effects, and see how it stacks up to the competition. While there are many benchmarks that try to simulate a professional video workflow, this one gathers data from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Activision Blizzard has just announced that all temporary and contingent QA workers of its Activision Publishing and Blizzard divisions are being converted to full-time employees — meaning nearly 1,100 temp game testers are getting full-time jobs with benefits. They’ll be making higher wages, too, with a new minimum hourly rate of $20.Here is a full statement from Jessica Taylor, Activision Blizzard’s vice president of corporate communications:

Follow a few quick steps to download and apply a new font to your Galaxy phone. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge One of the best things about a Samsung Galaxy phone is that it isn’t a “one size fits all” experience. Case in point: your phone’s font. If you’re not happy with the default choice, you can change it to something that’s easier to read or something that expresses your personal style a little more. After all, you probably spend hours every day checking your phone, so you should really like the font you’re looking at. Here’s how to change and adjust the font on a Samsung Galaxy phone.I used a Samsung Galaxy A53 5G running One UI 4.1 for the following steps:

TCL’s 6-Series TVs combine Mini LED panels with two HDMI 2.1 inputs for gaming. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge OLED may be the pinnacle of TV panels, but they’re still pricey — even after discounts. One very good alternative, the Mini LED-backlit TCL 6-Series with HDMI 2.1 ports, has dropped to a new low price today.TCL’s 55-inch 6-series model with Google TV is discounted to just $659.99 ($290 off) at Best Buy. Mini LED backlighting serves as a great substitute if paying OLED prices is off the table. It has excellent brightness with more control than standard LED and can maintain deeper black levels while displaying great color contrast. Sound a little familiar? It may not be quite as good as OLED, but it’s playing in the same ballpark.Plus, this TCL TV has two HDMI 2.1 ports and support for variable refresh rates up to 120Hz at 4K... Continue reading…

It’s the monitor that I’ve been waiting for Continue reading…

Chrono Cross got off to a, let’s say, difficult start. It was billed as a follow-up to Chrono Trigger, one of the most beloved role-playing games ever created, but while the two take place in the same world, there are some big differences. Chrono Trigger was created by a superteam of developers including Final Fantasy mastermind Hironobu Sakaguchi, long-time Dragon Quest steward Yuji Horii, and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. It’s frequently cited as one of the greatest games ever made. That all-star team didn’t continue on with the series, and though Chrono Cross was largely well-received at launch, its legacy never reached the same heights as its predecessor. It’s always been that weird follow-up with parallel worlds, a confusing... Continue reading…

Ariana Grande performing in Fortnite. Two of the biggest names in entertainment are coming together to create a virtual space aimed at kids, through a new partnership between Fortnite developer Epic Games and Lego. “We are excited to come together to build a space in the metaverse that’s fun, entertaining, and made for kids and families,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in a statement.Details are scarce — and the concept of a metaverse remains a murky one — but the companies say that whatever it is they end up building will be designed as a family-friendly virtual space from the beginning. “The Lego Group and Epic Games will combine their extensive experience to ensure that this next iteration of the internet is designed from the outset with the wellbeing of kids in mind,” the... Continue reading…

You like the way that dress looks but you’d rather have it in green. You want those shoes but prefer flats to heels. What if you could have drapes with the same pattern as your favorite notebook? I don’t know how to Google for these things, but Google Search product manager Belinda Zeng showed me real-world examples of each earlier this week, and the answer was always the same: take a picture, then type a single word into Google Lens.Today, Google is launching a US-only beta of the Google Lens Multisearch feature it teased last September at its Search On event, and while I’ve only seen a rough demo so far, you shouldn’t have to wait long to try it for yourself: it’s rolling out in the Google app on iOS and Android. G... Continue reading…

Corsair is announcing an updated version of its K70 mechanical keyboard today that comes with more responsive OPX optical mechanical switches. It costs $149.99, $10 more than the standard K70 released last year with more traditional Cherry mechanical switches. Aside from the switch change, the new K70 is broadly identical to last year’s model, with a detachable USB-C cable, RGB lighting, and a tenkeyless layout.The reason you might want a gaming keyboard with optical switches comes down to debounce delay, which typically affects keyboards with traditional mechanical switches. When you press a mechanical switch, there can be a brief period when its metal contacts clatter together before eventually settling, and this means the keyboard... Continue reading…

Fitbit has great sleep tracking insights. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Getting a good night’s sleep is one of the best things you can do for your health. And yet we live in the age of Netflix binges, a never-ending scroll of TikToks, and late-night video gaming marathons. But if you’re determined to build better sleeping habits, you can always try tracking your sleep.Before we dive in, a quick note: sleep tracking can be a helpful tool, but there are limitations as to what it can do. The jury is out on how accurate sleep trackers are, and you shouldn’t treat your results as an official diagnosis for any sleeping disorders, especially since these devices are not cleared by any regulatory body. Instead, you should view these devices as a means of learning about your sleep habits to help improve your sleep... Continue reading…

Image: Nvidia Cloud gaming isn’t for everyone, but it’s getting easier to tell if it’s for you because Nvidia and Google are now letting you try their virtual gaming PCs for free. Following Google’s recent announcement that any Stadia developer will be able to offer an instantly accessible free trial of their game without needing to log into a Google account, Nvidia’s GeForce Now is now pushing reduced-friction demos as well — starting with Chorus, Ghostrunner, Inscryption, Diplomacy Is Not an Option and The Riftbreaker: Prologue.Typically, you’d need to log into an Nvidia account, then log in again to a Steam, Epic Games, or Ubisoft account to play one of these demos on GeForce Now, and you’d have to search for them as well. Now, the Nvidia account... Continue reading…

Image: Apple In the vast underground office of Lumon, the megacorporation at the heart of Apple TV Plus’ thriller Severance, the computers are downright bizarre. At first they look a bit like an old Mac, but the closer you look, the more strange they become. The CRT display is somehow a touchscreen. The beautiful blue keyboard is saddled with a gigantic trackball. The goal, production designer Jeremy Hindle tells The Verge, was to design a device that doesn’t make a lot of sense, mirroring the purgatory-like world that exists only within Lumon’s basement. “The idea was that anything you could see underground doesn’t exist up top anywhere,” says Hindle. “You’ll never see that computer or that keyboard.”This article contains light spoilers for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Belarus-aligned hacking group has attempted to compromise the Facebook accounts of Ukrainian military personnel and posted videos from hacked accounts calling on the Ukrainian army to surrender, according to a new security report from Meta (the parent company of Facebook).The hacking campaign, previously labeled “Ghostwriter” by security researchers, was carried out by a group known as UNC1151, which has been linked to the Belarusian government in research conducted by Mandiant. A February security update from Meta flagged activity from the Ghostwriter operation, but since that update, the company said that the group had attempted to compromise “dozens” more accounts, although it had only been successful in a handful of cases.Where... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A voting app run by supporters of prominent Putin critic Alexei Navalny is once again available for download on Apple’s Russian App Store, The Washington Post reports, citing independent researchers and Navalny’s chief of stall Leonid Volkov. Both Apple and Google removed the app last year after the Kremlin threatened to criminally prosecute company employees in the country.The “Smart Voting” app contains over a thousand endorsements of Russian political candidates, WaPo notes, with the idea being to help citizens consolidate votes against the ruling United Russia party, which has Vladimir Putin as its de facto leader. Pressure to remove the app came ahead of Russia’s legislative election in September. WaPo reports that Google restored... Continue reading…

Axie:Origin screenshot | Image: Sky Mavis Last week Sky Mavis, the Vietnam-based company behind the crypto game Axie Infinity, revealed that a hacker stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto from its blockchain. Sky Mavis realized it had been attacked when a user could not make a withdrawal six days after the breach, and the company froze transactions on its compromised Ronin Network bridge.Now Sky Mavis has announced it’s received $150 million in investments that “will be used to ensure that all users affected by the Ronin Validator Hack will be reimbursed.” At nearly the exact same time, it’s launching a new version of the game, Axie Infinity: Origin. According to Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen, “As a team, we have made an intentional decision to focus on what lies... Continue reading…

Libra / Diem may be shut down, but “Zuck Bucks” could be coming next. | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Meta may have given up on its Diem cryptocurrency, but the company is still exploring finance products, according to a new Financial Times report. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram reportedly has a few irons in the fire, including virtual currency employees have apparently taken to calling “Zuck Bucks.”Zuck Bucks, seemingly named for Meta founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are “unlikely” to be a cryptocurrency. “Instead, Meta is leaning towards introducing in-app tokens that would be centrally controlled by the company, similar to those used in gaming apps such as the Robux currency in popular children’s game Roblox,” according to the FT. Roblox has built a huge business selling Robux, and Meta could try to emulate... Continue reading…

The wallet will have USB-C and a fingerprint reader. | Image: @JesseDorogusker on Twitter We’ve just seen a prototype of the Bitcoin hardware wallet that Jack Dorsey’s Block (the company formerly known as Square) is working on, a device to help people “safely own and manage their Bitcoin,” according to the company. Block’s hardware lead, Jesse Dorogusker, tweeted an image showing several devices on Wednesday, all seemingly including fingerprint readers and USB-C charging ports — both things Block said its hardware wallet would include in a blog post last month.Dorsey announced his company’s work on the crypto wallet in June 2021, and since then, we’ve gotten a few details on it. The company said the hardware wallet would be just one component in its crypto storage system and that it would have a corresponding mobile app for... Continue reading…

Some Cadillacs are also affected. | Photo by Clara Margais/picture alliance via Getty Images Ford and Chevrolet are reportedly halting production on their respective flagship performance cars, the Mustang and the Camaro, for a week thanks to supply chain issues (via Jalopnik). While the pauses probably won’t make it that much harder to get a muscle car, they are just the latest in a string of automotive delays caused by shortages of chips and other supplies.According to WXYZ Detroit, Ford is explicitly citing the chip shortage as the reason it’s not producing cars at its Flat Rock assembly plant where Mustangs are made. This isn’t the first time the company has struggled with supply issues — it’s had to cut back on the production of the F-150 and other vehicles multiple times, and earlier this year, it started selling Explorers... Continue reading…

A prototype of SpaceX’s Starship rocket on the launchpad at Starbase in Texas | Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images The US Army Corps of Engineers has closed a permit application for a proposed expansion of SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas — a potential snag in the company’s plans to add new launch and landing pads to the area, as well as substantially grow the site. In a letter viewed by The Verge, the Corps cited SpaceX’s failure to provide requested follow-up information about the proposed changes as a reason for closing the permit. Among other things, the Corps wanted more details about what mitigation measures the company would take to limit the loss of water and wetlands surrounding the site.SpaceX first purchased land in Boca Chica, Texas, in 2012, with the intention of creating a facility to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy... Continue reading…

A screenshot from the first Max Payne. | Image: Remedy Entertainment Remedy Entertainment is remaking Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. The company is establishing “a new development agreement” with Rockstar Games for the remakes, which will be released as a single title for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.“We were thrilled when our long-time friends at Remedy approached us about remaking the original Max Payne games,” said Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser said in a press release. “We are massive fans of the work the Remedy team has created over the years, and we can’t wait to play these new versions.”New Max Payne 1&2 ProjectThe game, which the press release refers to somewhat awkwardly as New Max Payne 1&2 Project, is “currently in the concept development stage.” No estimated release... Continue reading…

Are you ready for the Star Trek metaverse? | Image: Paramount Paramount is launching its NFT marketplace / metaverse / annoying marketing stunt that fans are already angry about with Star Trek non-fungible tokens (or NFTs.) The company partnered with Recur to create a platform called Paramount.xyz, which it says will “bring Paramount’s beloved entertainment entities, brands and characters to the metaverse.”Paramount is aping what’s worked for big NFT projects in the past; the Star Trek NFTs will depict “algorithmically-generated starships” and can be purchased at the low, low price of $250 per pack. Packs, by the way, contain a single ship — which only has around an 11 percent chance of looking like the Enterprise. You can (but absolutely should not) guarantee that you’ll get a cool ship by buying... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Creators making money using Instagram Reels say their payouts have been slashed in recent weeks and target metrics for monetization have ballooned, according to the Financial Times. Payments are down as much as 70 percent per view and videos need millions more views for creators to get paid.The Reels Play Bonus Program, announced in July, offers financial rewards to creators who post on Reels, Instagram’s TikTok-style short-form video clone. Payouts ranged from $600 to as much as $35,000 if videos hit a target view count, but creators expressed confusion over how payments and goals were determined. The bonus program is part of a promise by Meta, which owns Instagram, to pay $1 billion to creators through 2022.Creators say changes in... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple reportedly will soon provide a new Face ID repair option for iPhone X that doesn’t involve replacing the whole device (via MacRumors). The option comes after Apple’s recent shift to soon provide a TrueDepth Camera service option that can fix the face unlock feature of the 2018 iPhone XS and newer models but didn’t previously include the 2017 iPhone X.Repairing just the Face ID component can be difficult since it’s a fairly complex system involving four components: a flood illuminator (a part of the display assembly, more on that later), dot projector, “TrueDepth” front camera, and IR camera. If any of these components malfunction, you could lose the face unlock feature and have to resort to entering a password.Apple’s old method... Continue reading…

Photo By Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images It takes a special kind of asshole to promise a big cash tip to your grocery delivery worker, only to snatch it away at the last minute. But as we reported in 2020, tip-baiting is a real problem for Instacart — and the company has introduced a new policy where it claims it will protect some of those tips.Here’s the policy straight off the company’s press release:

Image: Valve The best thing about the Steam Deck has nothing to do with its specs. Rather, its carrying case is my favorite non-feature feature that vastly improves the Deck’s esteem in ways its technical capabilities haven’t yet.My first delightful surprise was the arrival of the case itself. I did not expect to get a carrying case when my Steam Deck arrived last week. For all that’s been said about the Deck’s technical performance — we wrote two reviews — there hasn’t been much discussion of the case. I therefore thought, like with a Nintendo Switch or 3DS, that cases were available but sold separately.The case is hard-shelled with a soft velvety interior and a molded form for the Deck to sit inside so it’s not bouncing around while zipped up... Continue reading…

Sarah and Helena bonding over their physical similarities. | Image: Temple Street Productions Though the original Orphan Black series seemingly brought the story of Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) and her sprawling family tree of sister clones to a close, AMC’s gearing up to return to their world with an all-new live-action series.Per The Hollywood Reporter, AMC Networks has tapped Fear The Walking Dead supervising producer Anna Fishko to write and showrun Orphan Black: Echoes, a new series set in the near future of the original. The new show, which is set to be executive produced and directed by John Fawcett, will follow the lives of a new group of women who gradually begin to realize how deeply interconnected their origins are — despite the fact that none of them know one another. Given how the original Orphan Black came to a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta won’t be holding its F8 developer conference in 2022, the company announced Wednesday.“Similar to years past, we are taking a brief break in programming and will not hold F8 in 2022 while we gear up on new initiatives that are all tailored towards the next chapter of the internet, and the next chapter of our company too: building the metaverse,” Meta’s Diego Duarte Moreira said in a blog post. “Similar to the early stages of the web, building the metaverse will be a collaborative effort at every stage — with other companies, creators and developers like you.”Connect is still on for “later this year”In lieu of F8, Moreira pointed to Meta’s “inaugural business messaging event,” dubbed Conversations, which will take place on May... Continue reading…

A decade before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, a tiny team of renegades attempted to build the modern smartphone. Nearly forgotten by history, a little startup called Handspring tried to make the future before it was ready. In Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone, Dieter Bohn talks to the visionaries at Handspring and dives into their early successes and eventual failures.Join us at the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, California, on Friday, May 6th, at 7PM PT for a screening of Springboard and a panel discussion featuring Dieter Bohn, former Handspring CEO Donna Dubinsky, and former Handspring president and COO Ed Colligan.ATTENDING IN PERSONRegistration for the free event is open now.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is adding a new “step-by-step guided tour” of privacy and security settings in Chrome to sift through the many available controls, the company announced Wednesday. The new guide will include separate pages about some settings, each containing descriptions of what happens when a feature is turned on. There will also be notes on “things to consider,” such as the fact that turning history sync on means that the URLs you visit will be saved to your Google account.You can check out the GIF below to get an idea of what the Privacy Guide will look like. Privacy Guide will “begin gradually rolling out” to all Chrome desktop users on version 100 “in the coming weeks,” according to Google’s blog post about the news. To... Continue reading…

Severance stars Adam Scott as a worker drone who surgically divides his work and home personalities | Apple Severance, the creepy Apple TV Plus drama about workers who find work-life balance by surgically altering their brains, has been renewed for a second season, the streamer announced Wednesday. The show starring Adam Scott as Mark S., a grieving widower who willingly forgets who he is for the entirety of his workday, has found an audience with its portrayal of the horrors of capitalism in a large but claustrophobic office.Mark and his coworkers Helly R. (Britt Lower), Irving (John Turturro), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Burt (a spectacularly understated Christopher Walken) are trying to figure out what exactly they’re really doing in the macrodata refinement department at Lumon Industries while avoiding trips to the dreaded Break Room.... Continue reading…

Elizabeth Holmes as Wanda Maximoff in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. | Marvel Studios Though Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ earliest trailer strongly implied that a Stephen Strange variant is going to be the movie’s big bad, the Scarlet Witch’s presence in the story and the way that WandaVision came to a close has also implied that Wanda Maximoff may have something to do with the multiverse shattering into a million pieces. While Multiverse of Madness’ newest ad spot doesn’t explicitly spell out how reality comes undone around Earth’s magical heroes, it may explain why by confirming the return of two interesting characters.Despite Wanda and Strange not having spent the most time on screen together up until this point, the new trailer establishes that the pair have quite a bit in common. For example, they... Continue reading…

A new report highlights the dangers of driving for gig companies. | Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald Isabella Lewis was driving for Lyft on a Sunday in Plano, Texas, last August when she was carjacked and killed by her passenger. As her family tried to piece together what happened, they kept receiving calls from an insurance company they didn’t recognize, but finally realized it was Lyft’s insurer, who wanted to inspect Lewis’ car in order to determine whether it would pay to fix the damaged windshield and clean up her blood.To date, however, her family says it has not had any communication from anyone with Lyft’s corporate office.“The only thing we have heard from Lyft is when they said in the Dallas newspaper that their hearts were with us,” Lewis’ sister Allyssa said in an interview with The Verge. “I wish [Lyft] had handled the... Continue reading…

A sturdy DIY keyboard with a lot of potential Continue reading…

Photo by PATRICK PLEUL / POOL / AFP via Getty Images Depends: What kind of activist investor does Musk want to be? Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Discounts don’t usually arrive quickly for the latest Apple tech, but you can enjoy a steep price cut on Apple’s latest iPad Air, which has the M1 processor and a generous 256GB of storage. It normally costs $749 for that tablet configuration, but Walmart and Amazon are selling it for $679. It’s worth noting that this price cut is limited to the space gray colorway at both retailers.In our recent review of the 2022 iPad Air, the features that make it worth buying include its fast performance, an excellent combo of speakers and display, and its all-day battery life. My colleague Dan Seifert actually recommends spending extra to get this very 256GB model, as the default 64GB just isn’t enough for how much this tablet costs.If you’re... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Biden-affiliated nonprofit group Building Back Together plans to launch its own TikTok account on Wednesday as part of the group’s latest effort to engage young people with the president’s agenda ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.The group’s account, @buildingbacktogether, plans to create content inspired by TikTok trends and features, like the green screen function, to explain President Joe Biden’s agenda to the platform’s predominantly younger user base. The organization’s staff will frequently appear on the account, along with news clips and audio featuring the president.“By launching a TikTok account, we’re building off that work with the goal of reaching the large and growing user base of this platform, including young... Continue reading…

An example of the blank box that’s now shown. | Screenshot: Twitter Twitter has made a small but significant change to how deleted tweets are shown when they’re embedded in third-party websites. Since at least the end of March the social media network has started showing a blank box on external sites when an embedded tweet has been deleted. The change was detailed in a blog post from Kevin Marks.It’s a big change from how Twitter used to handle deleted-yet-embedded tweets, when it would preserve the original unformatted text. With this recent change, that text is now gone, leaving a hole inside any story that embedded it. Screenshot: Web Archive How deleted embedded tweets used to display. Screenshot: The Verge How they display now. According to T... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is increasing the price of its music streaming service, the company has announced in a new FAQ. From May 5th, Amazon Prime subscribers will have to pay $8.99 (£8.99) a month or $89 (£89) a year for access to Music Unlimited, up from $7.99 (£7.99) and $79 (£79) respectively. The price of the single-device plan — which lets you listen to the full library but only from a single Echo or Fire TV device — is also increasing from $3.99 (£3.99) to $4.99 (£4.99) a month. If you’re not a Prime member, the price of Amazon Music Unlimited is unchanged at $9.99 (£9.99).As Engadget notes, the price change all but eliminates the discount that Amazon Prime subscribers get when paying for Amazon Music on top of their regular monthly subscription... Continue reading…

Emoji reactions appear as a third option when highlighting text. | Image: Google Google Docs is getting support for emoji reactions, allowing you to respond to text with a simple symbol rather than a fully written comment. In an announcement post, the company says the feature supports all the emoji available in the latest release, which includes gender-neutral options and sillier symbols like melting face and biting lip.A gif released by Google shows how the emoji reaction feature will appear as a third option alongside “Add Comment” and “Suggest Edits” when you highlight text. You can also type to search the emoji catalog. Google says these responses provide “a less formal alternative to comments.” Image: Google Emoji reactions in action. Emoji reactions have become a staple of modern... Continue reading…

3D printing can be a time-consuming and expensive hobby — even if you try to do it on the cheap. It feels like I’ve adjusted, replaced, or upgraded half the parts on my Ender 3 Pro. It’s been fun, but never easy.But what if a truly consumer-ready 3D printer changed that? We may be about to find out. Trusted phone charger company Anker is officially expanding beyond its Eufy smart home devices, Soundcore audio, Nebula projectors and Roav car accessories into 3D printing this year — and not in a small way. The just-revealed AnkerMake M5 looks like it could give leading brands a serious run for their money. Image: Anker Vases are a relatively fast thing to print on any FDM printer, but the M5 could make them even... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Tuesday morning, YouTube channels for some of the world’s biggest stars showered fans with strange music videos. Vevo channels for artists like Lil Nas X, Eminem, Drake, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, The Weeknd, Michael Jackson, Kanye West, and many others were affected. The channels in question have subscriber counts that add up to hundreds of millions. Before the videos disappeared, viewers saw bizarre clips of Paco Sanz, a Spanish conman sentenced to two years in jail after being convicted of fraud for lying about having terminal cancer, and rapper Lil Tjay.YouTube did not respond to requests for comment from The Verge; however, Vevo — which bills itself as “the world’s leading music video network” — did acknowledge... Continue reading…

Image: Plex Plex’s latest beta features are a modern solution to a modern problem — having to search through HBO Max, Netflix, Disney Plus, and like, three other services to find something to watch. The company announced a new “Discover” feature, which aggregates and recommends content from various streaming services and a universal watchlist that gathers everything you want to watch all in one place.The Discover screen acts like most streaming services’ homepages, giving you recommendations on what to watch next, but with the ability to show content from many different catalogs. It shouldn’t overwhelm you with selections you don’t have access to, though. There’s a setting that lets you choose only the services you have. Plex has been working for... Continue reading…

Block’s logo. | Image: Block Block, the parent company of products like Cash App and Tidal, said in an SEC filing that a former employee downloaded “certain reports” that “contained some US customer information” without permission from Cash App Investing (via Protocol).Data in the reports, which Block said were downloaded on December 10th, included “full name and brokerage account number” and for “some customers” included “brokerage portfolio value, brokerage portfolio holdings and/or stock trading activity for one trading day.” The employee, who downloaded the data after they left the company, had access to the reports “as part of their past job responsibilities,” according to Block.“The reports did not include usernames or passwords, Social Security numbers,... Continue reading…

Photo by Christian Marquardt - Pool/Getty Images Within the news of Elon Musk taking a significant ownership stake in Twitter — and the revelation that it really is working on an edit button for tweets — many people noticed a wrinkle that seemed small at first but could cause problems later.On Monday, Musk filed beneficial ownership report paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to note his ownership of 73,486,938 shares of Twitter (about 9.2 percent of its outstanding common stock and enough to make him the company’s largest individual shareholder), and the box checked on the form (pdf) indicated it was a Schedule 13G, which allows for a simple disclosure for investors who intend to remain “passive” in the company’s affairs.We don’t usually get into stock... Continue reading…

Photo by Emanuele Cremaschi / Getty Images Helbiz, a shared electric scooter and bike provider that operates in the US and Europe, failed to pay its US-based employees this past week, The Verge has learned. In an email to employees, the company’s CEO blamed “an error in our payroll system” and promised each employee a $100 bonus to make up for the snafu.“I personally apologize for this mistake and hope you know it does not reflect my knowledge of the value you all provide to the success of this company,” Helbiz CEO Salvatore Palella said in the email, which was obtained by The Verge.In an email, head of communications Matt Rosenberg confirmed the missed payroll, adding that it only affected the company’s US-based employees. Helbiz employees in other offices were paid on time,... Continue reading…