The Verge

Marissa Leshnov The Abdils decided Afghanistan was no longer safe after their 14-year-old son, Abdul-Azim, was kidnapped on his way home from school. For years, the Taliban abducted children for ransom or used them as leverage in negotiating with the Afghan police. As much as it pained them to abandon their son, Fazela and Hakeem Abdil had other children — two teenage daughters — to think about. They were faced with a difficult choice: stay in an increasingly dangerous Afghanistan or leave their home forever.Up until then, things had been peaceful for the Abdils. “We had a well-arranged life. We had work, a house. Life was pretty comfortable,” Hakeem says. But conditions in Kabul had grown worse when many assumed they’d get better. In February 2020,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge Software like Aim Lab and KovaaK’s are key parts of the esports ecosystem Continue reading…

Snapchat Plus will let subscribers customize the Snapchat icon. | Snap Starting this week, Snap will begin offering an optional subscription called Snapchat Plus that unlocks exclusive and early access features.Priced at $3.99 a month, the subscription is geared toward “the people who spend most of their time communicating with their closest friends on Snap,” the company’s SVP of Product, Jacob Andreou, tells The Verge. Dubbed Snapchat Plus, it’s Snap’s first real attempt at making money outside of advertising, though Andreou says there aren’t expectations for Plus to become a “material new revenue source.”At least initially, Snapchat Plus is mostly a cosmetic upgrade. The most notable features include the ability to change the style of the app’s icon, see who rewatched a story, and pin one of your... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge Once a means of supplementing an income, making assets and tools can now be a full-time gig Continue reading…

Millie Bobby Brown at the Stranger Things season 4 premiere. | Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown will star in a new Netflix film from the Russo brothers, directors of Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War. The Electric State is a retro-futuristic sci-fi movie that follows Brown, a robotic companion, and an “eccentric drifter” as she travels through the American West in search of her brother, Netflix said in its casting announcement.Away from the involvement of Brown and the Russo brothers, the most interesting aspect of The Electric State is that it’s based on an illustrated book by Simon Stålenhag. Stålenhag is the artist behind some incredible retro futuristic illustrations, and his other books include Tales from the Loop, which Amazon recently adapted into a TV series of its own.

The audio brand’s new noise-canceling headphones can hang with the very best Continue reading…

Photo by Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/picture alliance via Getty Images Brazil’s telecoms regulator Anatel has launched a public consultation on a proposal to make USB-C chargers mandatory for all smartphones sold in the country.It’s the latest example of lawmakers and regulators turning to USB-C as a common charging standard for phones. The EU passed a law on the matter earlier this month, making USB-C mandatory for a range of electronic gadgets (including smartphones) by the end of 2024, and in the US some Democrat politicians are pushing for similar legislation.“Aware of the aforementioned movements in the international market, Anatel’s technical area evaluated the topic and presented a proposal with a similar approach for application in the Brazilian market,” said Anatel in a blog post (English... Continue reading…

1Password will now let you securely share files and documents with anyone using just a link. The password manager previously started supporting secure password sharing with links last year, and this feature is now being expanded to include documents and files that are stored in 1Password.Sharing a document or file is as easy as sharing a password from 1Password, and the recipient doesn’t need to even use 1Password to access files. You can share a file with anyone through a link, and you can set an expiry date on the link or even restrict it so people have to verify their email address with a one-time code to view the file. Image: 1Password 1Password users can share files, documents, passwords, or just sensitive... Continue reading…

Tesla has laid off nearly 200 workers, most of them tasked with labeling data to help train the company’s Autopilot AI system. The layoffs — first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by TechCrunch — are the latest job losses at Tesla after CEO Elon Musk told company execs that the firm needed to reduce its headcount by about 10 percent.The layoffs centered on Tesla’s offices in San Mateo, California, where employees were working on the company’s driver-assistance feature Autopilot. Many of those affected were reportedly hourly workers tasked with labeling training data. Such work is essential for developing AI systems but often low-skilled and low-paid. In recent years, many companies have turned to cheaper sources of labor in... Continue reading…

The new Gmail UI sets buttons for Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet on one rail. | Image: Google Google started rolling out an updated user interface for Gmail in February that pulls Meet, Chat, and Spaces closer and applies more of its Material You styling effects. Starting today, it’s becoming opt-out instead of opt-in, so your account will switch over to the new view by default pretty soon.It’s not a huge change, but as Google transitions through its current flavor-of-the-week messaging app and weaves its Workspace suite into a better competitor for Office, this puts more of a focus on the updated experiences. Image: Google The old Gmail menu, with Chat and Meet aligned below your Gmail inboxes and labels. If you can’t tell what’s different here, the updated UI collects buttons for Mail, Meet, Spaces,... Continue reading…

Image: Hyper Did you buy one of Targus / Sanho / Hyper / HyperJuice’s nifty 100W or 65W USB-C chargers with stackable passthrough AC outlets that let you theoretically scale up to loads of powerful ports? I did — and today, I’m thinking twice about whether it belongs in my bedroom.Yesterday, tipster Marc-Antoine Courteau brought it to our attention that some of these devices are failing and not always in a friendly “ports stop working” way. Numerous Kickstarter backers say their units are overheating to the degree they can melt their plastic housing. “I’m lucky I was sitting with it, smelled the melting plastic, and immediately took action,” wrote one backer named Scott.So we asked Hyper’s PR team about it and were surprised by the company’s... Continue reading…

Belkin’s 3-in-1 BoostCharge Pro Charging Stand with MagSafe | Image: Belkin Belkin’s back at it again with its funky multi-device charging stand, but this one now supports fast charging for the Apple Watch Series 7. The new BoostCharge Pro three-in-one charger offers 15W fast charging for your iPhone 12 or 13 and 5W charging for your AirPods or AirPods Pro.Just as Apple claims its special magnetic fast-charging cable can charge your Series 7 Watch from 0 to 80 percent in 45 minutes, Belkin says its device can do the same. While the charging stand is compatible with all older Watch models, too, fast charging is only available for the Series 7 (because it’s the only one that has the feature). Image: Belkin The charger looks kinda weird without any devices on it. Design-wise, there... Continue reading…

The Montblanc Summit 3 will be the first Wear OS 3 watch to run on iOS. | Image: Montblanc The forthcoming Montblanc Summit 3 will not only run Wear OS 3, but it’ll be the first smartwatch on the new unified platform to support iOS — sort of.The news — initially reported by Wareable — was confirmed to The Verge by Qualcomm spokesperson Lauren Miller. The Summit 3 isn’t the first smartwatch to be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus platform, but it is the first to launch with Wear OS 3 already installed. The fact that it also supports iOS is a significant departure from other confirmed Wear OS 3 watches. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 lineup and the forthcoming Google Pixel Watch, for example, are exclusive to Android users.Older Wear OS 2 and Samsung Tizen-powered smartwatches, while never incredibly popular with... Continue reading…

Pinterest has a new CEO — and likely a new sense of urgency. | Image: Pinterest Ben Silbermann is stepping down as Pinterest’s CEO, the company announced on Tuesday. He’ll be replaced by Bill Ready, who has spent the last couple of years as head of Commerce, Payments & Next Billion Users at Google. Silbermann isn’t leaving the company, though: he’ll be Pinterest’s executive chairman, following in the path of a number of tech CEOs who have recently gone from the daily trenches of running their company to a relatively more relaxed seat in the boardroom.“Bill’s actually going to be a better CEO than I am for this next chapter,” Silbermann told The Wall Street Journal as part of his announcement. There’s only one way to read that: the time for the product dreamer founder is out. Pinterest’s next job is to make money. A... Continue reading…

Image: Sega When Sonic Frontiers debuted the first little bits of gameplay, fans immediately drew comparisons to Breath of the Wild. It wasn’t hard to do. We were shown Sonic racing through realistic, natural-looking environments, exploring great stone artifacts that dotted the landscape. There was no timer, no counter ticking up the number of rings acquired, just Sonic and a seemingly open world.And while Sonic Frontiers’ creative officer Takashi Iizuka understood why, to some fans, the game looks like Sega’s late-hour attempt to replicate BOTW’s success, it’s actually nothing like that. “We’re starting a design perspective that is totally different from what other open-world games are,” Iizuka said to me through a translator at Summer Game Fest... Continue reading…

Emoji as far as the eye can see. In the midst of an otherwise unremarkable new build of Android’s 13 developer beta, 9to5Google uncovered something fun: our annual Android Easter egg. This year’s hidden feature builds on the colorful splash screen from Android 12, this time filling it with emoji. Like, a lot of emoji.The way it functions in the current beta version (13.3) is much like last year — start the Easter egg by going to Settings > About phone > Android version, then tap the Android version three times rapidly. This reveals an analog clock widget; move the hands to 1 o’clock (that’s 13:00 in military time — get it?), and you’ll see a colorful array of spots pop up representing Material You’s customizable color theming.Here’s where it differs from last year:... Continue reading…

Sony is attempting to reach out to more than just PS5 gamers with its new InZone brand of gaming monitors and headsets. I got my hands on them in the video embedded above if you’d rather see or hear me talk about these gadgets.Made for PC but with specs to take full advantage of the PS5, along with Xbox Series X, the $899 InZone M9 is the flagship product of the bunch. It’s a 27-inch 4K IPS gaming monitor built to match the aesthetic of the PS5 while having basically every imaginable spec that gamers may universally want, sans OLED panel, of course. It has a 144Hz refresh rate (that’s not so common to find with a 4K screen), a 1ms response time, variable refresh rate (VRR, both for consoles and with G-Sync compatibility for Nvidia... Continue reading…

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Amazon is limiting customers to three units of emergency contraceptive pills a week in response to a spike in demand after the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights, the company told CNBC.Other retailers are also limiting purchases of drugs like Plan B and Aftera — CVS and Rite Aid are likewise limiting customers to three pills per customer. The companies say there is enough supply of the drugs but that they’re trying to keep them on the shelves consistently. The drugs, often called the morning-after pill, can prevent pregnancy if taken after unprotected sex.On the Amazon website, users can only select up to a quantity of three for Plan B. But as of publication, the website shows an option to select up to 30 units of My Choice,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of the difficulties of cryptocurrency is figuring out who to believe. Case in point: the conflict between Mark Lamb, CEO of CoinFlex, and Roger “Bitcoin Jesus” Ver, an early Bitcoin investor. Lamb says Ver owes his company $47 million and is the reason the company froze customer withdrawals last week. Ver denies this and says that, in fact, CoinFlex owes him money.Well, things have gotten worseCoinFlex, an exchange, froze withdrawals on June 27th, saying that it would restart withdrawals on June 30th with one condition: CoinFlex needs to sell tokens related to a debt owed by a “certain high net worth individual.” (The company did not initially name Ver.)Eleven days ago, we pointed out a few crypto firms with problems that could... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Text discovered in iOS 16 beta code indicated that Apple plans to drop iPad home hub support in the new update, but it turns out that’s not quite the full story. According to the company, the iPad isn’t losing support for what it can already do, but it won’t get an important upgrade that will be available later.“iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 will continue to support iPad as a home hub with no loss in functionality,” Apple spokesperson Catherine Franklin said in a statement to The Verge. While that seems promising on its face, there is a big asterisk. Apple is planning to introduce a new architecture to the new Home app in iPadOS 16, and the iPad won’t be supported as a home hub with that architecture.Here’s Franklin’s full statement: “Alongside... Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge SpaceX emailed Starlink customers today asking for help in its battle against Dish Network over radio frequencies for its Starlink internet-from-space effort. Some Starlink customers received an email urging them to contact the Federal Communications Commission and members of Congress in order to support SpaceX in the ongoing dispute.“Today we ask for your support in ending a lobbying campaign that threatens to make Starlink unusable for you and the vast majority of our American customers,” the email reads in bold.“Today we ask for your support in ending a lobbying campaign that threatens to make Starlink unusable”Currently, SpaceX and Dish are squabbling over a range of radio frequencies known as the 12GHz band. SpaceX uses these... Continue reading…

You can now hover over an image to save it to your collection. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft Edge is building what seems like a mini version of Pinterest inside its browser. Its Collections window will soon start displaying a feed of recommended content based on the topics you’ve saved.As someone who has used Edge since the browser first came out, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I never really knew much about Collections (until now, at least). So if you’re anything like me, here’s a quick rundown. Collections lets you save and organize webpages, text snippets, and images you find on the web. You can make a collection for, say, recipes to house links to all your favorite meals or even one for graphic design that contains inspirational images for your future work. The new inspiration feed will serve up content... Continue reading…

Sony is at it yet again with repeat restocks. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Yesterday was a pleasant surprise on the PlayStation 5 console restock front. Sony opened up a public queue for PS5 consoles, and unlike many times before, it stayed open and viable for much longer than usual. Now, there’s another one happening right now, and you can queue up without an invite.There’s no guarantee that this one will be as easy to get into as yesterday’s, but if you have not bought a PS5 direct from Sony before, it’s worth a try. Once you get through the wait time, you should be offered up a few different options for PS5 consoles, including the regular disc-equipped system for $499, the Digital Edition for $399 (though that one seems to usually sell out the fastest), and bundle versions with Horizon Forbidden West for... Continue reading…

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. | HBO Max Rather than marrying Kite Man (hell yeah) in the season 2 finale of HBO Max’s animated Harley Quinn series, Poison Ivy came to her senses, ditched her fiancé, and finally admitted to Harley that the romantic feelings between them were mutual. After driving off into the sunset with one another, Harley and Ivy are back in the first trailer for Harley Quinn’s upcoming third season and ready to share their love with the world.Though Harley (Kaley Cuoco) and Ivy (Lake Bell) were able to escape from Kite Man’s botched wedding unscathed, at least some of Gotham’s other villains who were in attendance were captured, like Clayface (Alan Tudyk) and King Shark (Ron Funches). The new trailer finds Harley and Ivy still basking in the glow of being... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook and Instagram are removing posts from users that offer help accessing abortion pills, saying they violate a policy around pharmaceuticals.Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday, social media users have shared posts offering to mail abortion pills to people whose access to abortion has been stripped away or will be soon.But users are finding their offers quickly removed or restricted, as reported by Motherboard and the Associated Press. A test Facebook post by an AP reporter offering to mail abortion pills was removed within one minute. A test by a Verge reporter yielded similar results, with a post offering abortion pills being flagged within two minutes.The sale, gifting, and transfer of... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Facebook Groups are about to get some big changes, and if you’ve used Discord, the new approach should seem pretty darn familiar. Meta is testing a new left-aligned sidebar and channels list for Groups, and the changes are giving me some serious Discord vibes. Meta is even evoking Discord with a purple accent color.Central to the changes is a new sidebar that lists your groups with rounded square icons. Like with Discord and Slack, you’ll be able to pin groups so that they show up first on the list. Individual groups will have a new menu that seems lifted right from Discord. The menu organizes things like channels, Messenger conversations, and events one after another. Image: Meta Stop me if you’ve seen... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Waymo will deliver home goods for Wayfair using its fleet of autonomous semi-trailer trucks, the company announced Tuesday.The deliveries will take place as part of a pilot that’s being conducted by Waymo and JB Hunt Transport Services to test out self-driving trucks along certain shipping routes in Texas. One of JB Hunt’s customers is furniture and home goods giant Wayfair, which will begin sending out deliveries using Waymo’s fleet for a six-week test this July and August.a six-week test this July and AugustThe deliveries will take place in Texas, with Waymo’s Class 8 autonomous truck hauling goods along Interstate 45 between facilities in Houston and Dallas, which was the route used by Waymo and JB Hunt during the original pilot... Continue reading…

Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) in Columbia Pictures’ Ghostbusters: Afterlife | Image: CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Pandemic delays caused a wider-than-expected gap between our first peek at Ghostbusters: Afterlife and when it actually came to theaters, but Sony is setting up a tighter schedule for the follow-up. After director Jason Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan confirmed the sequel earlier this month, Sony has added it to the schedule with a planned theatrical release date of December 20th, 2023.When Ghostbusters: Afterlife eventually reached theaters in December 2021, it eventually grossed $200 million worldwide, so a sequel isn’t a big surprise, and the Ghostbuster universe is also expanding with a new animated series for Netflix that Reitman and Kenan are producing.As scheduled, that release date sets it up squarely against a pair of heavy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After months of pressure from Republicans, Google has a new plan to keep campaign emails from being marked as spam, according to new documents obtained by The Verge.Google’s plan, first reported by Axios, would allow for candidates, political party committees, and leadership political action committees to apply for a special “pilot program” that would make their messages exempt from Gmail’s spam detection systems. The idea was proposed to the Federal Elections Commission in a June 21st filing asking for the body’s approval.Google spokesperson José Castañeda confirmed in a statement Tuesday that the company made the request to the FEC. He described the program as an opportunity to “help improve inboxing rates for political bulk senders... Continue reading…

Image: Sky Mavis Ronin Bridge, the link that enables users to transfer funds to and from accounts in the “play to earn” Axie Infinity game, has reopened following a $625 million theft that took place in March. Sky Mavis, the developer group behind Axie Infinity and the Ronin blockchain that powers the game, announced that players can now use the bridge to make deposits and withdrawals.Since March, the Ronin Bridge has been closed off as Sky Mavis worked to bolster its security protocols and recover users’ funds. The attack went unnoticed for six days until a user tried to withdraw funds and couldn’t do it. In a postmortem, Sky Mavis blamed a spear-phishing attack that compromised an employee’s account, saying that person no longer works with the... Continue reading…

Image: Bored Ape Yacht Club The company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club has sued conceptual artist Ryder Ripps for selling duplicates of its Bored Ape non-fungible tokens or NFTs. The lawsuit, filed in a California court this weekend, accuses Ripps of a “calculated, intentional, and willful” scheme to damage BAYC while promoting his own copycat work.Ripps and Yuga Labs have been at odds for months, in part because of Ripps’ RR/BAYC NFT series. The series used BAYC images but connected them with a different crypto token and sold them for the equivalent of around $200 apiece, a bargain compared to the real thing, which currently sell for around $100,000 on the low end. “This is no mere monkey business. It is a deliberate effort to harm Yuga Labs at the expense of... Continue reading…

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images I hope you all had a good weekend. I certainly wasn’t huddled in a ball of anxiety about the very fabric of women’s rights in the US being stripped away, no sir.On that note, there is a lot going on in the audio world in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Podcasters are organizing, Slate is doing a stunt campaign in areas where abortion is now restricted, and Howard Stern is running for president, maybe.But first, a very special Hot Pod announcement (elegant transition, right?)Hot Pod Summit goes HollywoodBig news: we’re bringing Hot Pod Summit to Los Angeles. On November 3rd at KCRW, we’ll have a day of conversations about how the podcasting industry is being shaped by West Coast tech giants and becoming... Continue reading…

Image: Arm Arm is announcing its new flagship Immortalis GPU today, its first to include hardware-based ray tracing on mobile. As PCs and the latest Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles are all gradually moving toward impressive ray-traced visuals, Immortalis-G715 is designed to be the Arm’s first GPU to deliver the same on Android phones and tablets.Built on top of Mali, a GPU that’s used by the likes of MediaTek and Samsung, Immortalis is designed with 10–16 cores in mind and promises a boost of 15 percent over the previous generation premium Mali GPUs. Arm sees Immortalis as the start of a transition to ray tracing on mobile following its success with the 8 billion Mali GPUs that have shipped to date. Image: Arm The new... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Volkswagen sold a minority stake in its electric vehicle charging division, Electrify America, to Siemens in a deal that values the company at $2.45 billion. The two companies are jointly investing $450 million to double the number of Electrify America charging stations in the US and Canada by 2026. (The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.)The news comes amid a spike in EV sales in the US — although they still only represent a fraction of overall car sales. It also comes as the Biden administration, fueled with $5 billion in funding as part of the president’s infrastructure plan, embarks on a plan to build 500,000 EV chargers by 2030.The news comes amid a spike in EV sales in the USThat plan will rely significantly on... Continue reading…

The waterproof Kindle Paperwhite from 2018 starts at just $69.99 instead of $129.99. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Planning on bringing books to the pool or beach this summer? Get an affordable and waterproof e-reader instead. The last-gen version of Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite is available at nearly half off its usual price. Regularly $129.99, right now you can buy the ad-supported, 8GB model with a green or red backing for $69.99 instead of $129.99 from Amazon. If you want more storage, you can buy the 32GB ad-supported model for $89.99 instead of $159.99 in black or blue, both of which are new all-time low prices.The 2018 e-reader is waterproof, so you won’t need to worry if it gets wet, nor will you need to be concerned about recharging since the battery life can last weeks. It boasts a high-resolution six-inch, 300ppi panel as well as support... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge The internet has made it easier than ever for artists to get their work in front of a large audience — the trick is making that a viable career. This collection of stories explores how creatives from various disciplines are utilizing platforms like Twitch, TikTok, Etsy, and others to turn their passions into something sustainable. That could mean resurrecting centuries-old blacksmithing techniques on YouTube or building a new kind of crowdfunding platform. Or it could involve becoming an expert at designing immersive Fortnite worlds. Whatever the project, these creatives are finding ways to get paid. Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge There are a variety of different benchmarks to measure different aspects of your system Continue reading…

Persona 5. The Nintendo Switch is getting some big-name roleplaying games. At a Nintendo Direct Mini today, Nintendo revealed that Persona 5 Royal (along with its predecessors Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden) will be coming to the Switch. Persona 5 is launching on October 21st and will be preceded by Nier: Automata on October 6th. Both are seminal RPGs that originally launched in 2017; you can check out our original reviews of P5 and Automata. (Nintendo says to expect more details on Persona 3 and 4 “soon.”)The announcements were the highlights of today’s event, but there were a handful of other notable reveals and updates as well. Here’s what you may have missed:Games and demos out todayAs per usual, Nintendo didn’t just announce new... Continue reading…

Courtesy of Netflix It’s taken nearly three years of work, but The Verge’s first Netflix show — The Future Of — is finally here, and the full season is now streaming on Netflix.The Future Of is an ambitious look at how everything around us might change over time, narrated by Jurnee Smollett. And it really is a show about everything: our episodes focus on subjects from cheeseburgers and dogs to skyscrapers and life after death. We did our best to envision how these things might change in our lifetimes, the near future, and then the wildest far futures we could imagine. And we did it by talking to the people working on these ideas now — and a few Verge reporters along the way. Think of it like a documentary for the future.We wanted the predictions in The... Continue reading…

Pokémon Go developer Niantic has announced yet another new game, this time with its first foray into the world of sports. It’s called NBA All World, and it’s — as you’d expect from Niantic — a location-based game that also has augmented reality elements. The developer describes it as “NBA lifestyle meets the real-world metaverse.”You might be wondering how exactly that would work. NBA All World looks a lot like Niantic’s other releases, filling up the map around you with various points of interest. The difference here is that they’re all basketball-themed instead of Pokémon-related. “We’re enveloping the world around you into a basketball universe, or what I personally like to call turning the real world into a basketball theme park,”... Continue reading…

Insta360’s new $800 One RS 1-inch 360 Edition captures 6K 360 video and 21-megapixel photos. Insta360 has announced its most expensive and powerful consumer 360 camera to date, the $800 One RS 1-inch 360 Edition. The complicated name is due to the fact that the core of this camera is the same as the core in Insta360’s ONE RS, the second edition of the company’s modular action camera that launched in April of this year. But the 1-inch 360 edition adds a larger battery attachment and dual 1-inch CMOS sensors mod. All of this is held together by a mounting bracket to create a far more capable 6K 360 camera. The One RS 1-inch 360 edition is made up of four parts: a mounting bracket, battery brick, brain, and dual 1-inch sensors mod. Insta360 began betting big on modular camera design in early 2020 with the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge A more independent approach Continue reading…

Illustration by Jarett Sitter / The Verge It’s easy to compare Comradery to Patreon. Both allow creators to collect money from subscribers, and both allow them to offer content, bonuses, and updates in return. But where Patreon is beholden to venture capital, Comradery is controlled democratically by the people who use it.“The one thing a venture capital tech company can never deliver is long-term stability,” says Ty Underwood, a developer at Comradery. When funded by investors, platforms often squeeze creators by taking increased cuts. Patreon raised its fees in 2019. In April, Etsy creators went on strike after they announced that transaction fees would be rising. According to recent Bloomberg reporting, Twitch is looking to lower its revenue share with top creators from 70... Continue reading…

A remote office taken to the extreme. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge 58 percent of US workers now have the option to work where they want at least one day a week, while 35 percent can work remotely up to five days a week, according to a new survey conducted by management consulting company McKinsey. The report concludes that flexible work arrangements implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are here to stay.“After more than two years of observing remote work and predicting that flexible working would endure after the acute phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, we view these data as a confirmation that there has been a major shift in the working world and in society itself,” reads the report.The survey found that when given the choice, 87 percent of workers embrace the opportunity to work remotely... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk just passed the 100 million follower mark on Twitter, becoming the sixth user on the platform to reach a nine-digit follower count. According to SocialBlade, Musk hit the milestone sometime between June 26th and June 27th, gaining over 150,000 followers between the two days. As of this writing, Musk now has 100,059,886 followers.Hitting the milestone is interesting for a couple of reasons. First is the obvious fact that Musk is currently in the process of buying Twitter for $44 billion, which could eventually put him in the unique position of being the only leader of a major social media network who’s actually good at using their social media network. In contrast, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page is broadly a feed of... Continue reading…

An artistic rendering of CAPSTONE in orbit around the Moon | Image: NASA Early this morning, a small NASA spacecraft about the size of a microwave embarked on the beginning of a four-month-long journey to the Moon, where it will eventually insert itself into a unique, elongated lunar orbit that no NASA mission has visited before. The spacecraft’s goal is simple: test out this particular orbit and see what it’s like. That’s because it’s the same orbit that lunar-bound astronauts could use in the coming decade.This distinctive orbit is called “near rectilinear halo orbit,” or NRHO for short. It’s a special seven-day path that spacecraft can take around the Moon, bringing vehicles relatively close to the lunar surface for one day before they swing out far from the Moon for the other six.NASA is considering... Continue reading…

Image: Airbnb In 2020, Airbnb introduced a temporary ban on house parties and events to better follow social distancing restrictions with the pandemic. Now, the company says it’s been so pleased by the outcome of the ban that it’s making it permanent and codifying its rules.“Over time, the party ban became much more than a public health measure,” said the company in a blog post. “It developed into a bedrock community policy to support our Hosts and their neighbors.”The ban prohibits “all disruptive parties and events,” with a particular focus on open-invite gatherings (those advertised on social media) and “party house” properties. Disruptive parties and events are essentially defined as those that attract complaints from neighbors. Airbnb says it... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber’s plan to electrify its driver fleet by 2030 seems to be off to a good start. The ride-hailing company announced today that over 15,000 Uber drivers have signed on to rent Tesla vehicles through its partnership with car rental company Hertz. Uber claims the deal is its “largest-ever expansion” of EVs on a mobility platform in North America and that there have already been more than 5 million Tesla rides driving over 40 million miles since the program started last year.The popularity and demand for electric vehicles are at an all-time high for consumers, especially with the increased cost of gas. The same is true for Uber drivers, who are responsible for the costs associated with refueling the vehicles no matter what it runs on.... Continue reading…

The HTC Desire 22 Pro. | Image: HTC It hasn’t released a competitive flagship device in years, but HTC’s smartphone division isn’t throwing in the towel just yet. Today it announced the HTC Desire 22 Pro, a follow-up to last year’s HTC Desire 21 Pro, and the company’s big attempt at capitalizing on the so-called metaverse. In the UK, it’s listed at £399 and will ship on August 1st.There are a couple of different aspects to the phone’s metaverse functionality. To start with, it’s designed to be the “perfect companion” to HTC’s recently announced Vive Flow VR headset and used to access Viverse, HTC’s take on the metaverse. The headset is designed to work with any Android phone, though, so it’s not entirely clear what the Desire 22 Pro offers that isn’t available elsewhere.... Continue reading…