The Verge

How edited messages are supposed to look. | Image: Apple The ability to edit and unsend messages was one of the flagship features of iOS 16 announced earlier this month, but the functionality may not work well if you’re messaging anyone who’s not using the latest version of Apple’s software. The latest iOS developer beta 16 includes a messy workaround to allow newly editable iMessages to be received on iPhones without iOS 16, 9to5Mac reports. It could prove annoying for anyone in an iMessage group chat using an older iPhone or Android.Rather than simply seeing the edited version of a message, if someone running iOS 16’s second beta tries to edit an iMessage sent to a device with an older version of the software, then the latter will receive the edit as a second text, preceded by the words... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon has revealed an experimental Alexa feature that allows the AI assistant to mimic the voices of users’ dead relatives.The company demoed the feature at its annual MARS conference, showing a video in which a child asks Alexa to read a bedtime story in the voice of his dead grandmother.“As you saw in this experience, instead of Alexa’s voice reading the book, it’s the kid’s grandma’s voice,” said Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s head scientist for Alexa AI. Prasad introduced the clip by saying that adding “human attributes” to AI systems was increasingly important “in these times of the ongoing pandemic, when so many of us have lost someone we love.”“While AI can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last,”... Continue reading…

TikTok on a Vizio TV. | Image: Vizio Vizio has become the latest smart TV manufacturer to get a TikTok app, allowing owners to watch the short-form focused video platform on the big screen. It’s just the latest manufacturer to add TikTok to its TV platform, after the app came to Samsung and LG’s TVs, Android TV, and Amazon’s Fire TV platforms last year. Vizio says you’ll be able to browse TikTok’s Discover feed, or link an account to watch video content from the For You and Following feeds.The apps are arriving as TikTok is allowing users to upload longer and longer videos to its historically short-form service. In February, TikTok expanded its maximum video length to 10 minutes, at which point it probably makes sense to watch it on the big screen. That said, TikTok’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram is testing new methods for users to verify their age, including an AI tool built by a third-party company, Yoti, that estimates how old you are just by scanning your face.Officially, you have to be at least 13 years old to sign up for an Instagram account, but for years the company made little effort to enforce this rule. Until 2019, it didn’t even bother to ask new users their birthdate, let alone try to verify this information. After being raked over the coals by privacy and child safety experts, though, Instagram has introduced more and more age-verification features, as well as methods to separate younger users from adults.Users can ask friends to verify their age, or have their face scanned by AICurrently, Instagram... Continue reading…

Image: Brave Brave Search has launched a new feature that gives you a way to create or apply custom filters that change the way its results are ranked. It’s called “Goggles,” and it could potentially help uncover sources you might not find right away on traditional search engines like Google.Brave has some demos ready for users to try today, including ones that prioritize posts from smaller tech blogs and filter out posts from the 1,000 most-viewed sites on the web. There’s even a Goggle to exclude posts from Pinterest — because Brave clearly knows the frustration of trying to find an image and getting a Pinterest post with no source. Brave says these Goggles are just for demonstrative purposes, and developers can expand on or fork them. It will... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple will no longer let you use an iPad as a home hub to control HomeKit accessories starting with iOS 16, MacRumors reports. Text apparently found in iOS 16’s second developer beta by MacRumors contributing writer Steve Moser spells out the change.“A home hub is required to take advantage of features like receiving accessory notifications and allowing other people to control your home,” text in the Home app reportedly reads. “You will not be able to view shared homes until those homes are also upgraded to the latest HomeKit. iPad will no longer be supported as a home hub.”“Only Apple TV and HomePod are supported as home hubs.”If the change goes into effect as the found text suggests, it means you’ll need to use a HomePod, HomePod... Continue reading…

Farmers weed their rice fields in Rarampadende Village, Indonesia, on September 18th, 2020. | Photo by Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Can gene-editing technology CRISPR create new crops that help fight climate change as they grow? That’s what a group of researchers hopes to do with $11 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The funding will go toward efforts to enhance plants — starting with rice — and soil so that they’re better at trapping carbon dioxide. The effort, which was announced last week, is being led by the Innovative Genomics Institute, which was founded by Nobel laureate and co-inventor of CRISPR Jennifer Doudna.“[Jennifer] and I saw eye to eye on climate and how big of a problem it is in the world. And we just didn’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore,” says Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) executive director Brad Ringeisen.“We... Continue reading…

Photo by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images FedEx will soon take photos of packages at your doorstep to provide proof of delivery when they don’t require a signature.“This is something e-commerce merchants and customers have been asking for, and we are proud to be the first to announce this service will be available to residential customers,” Brie Carere, FedEx’s chief customer officer, said in a press release announcing the program today.The free service will be available for both FedEx Express and FedEx Ground delivery customers with and without a login to the FedEx Delivery Manager, the company’s free portal.The new program will obviously be a good source of protection for FedEx, and it should also help business owners whose customers report that their package hasn’t been... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook Pay has officially become Meta Pay, but his post is mainly focused on what the company hopes to build in the future — “a wallet for the metaverse.” While Meta Pay is essentially the same tool as it was before, just with Meta branding, Zuckerberg says the company is working on something that will let users manage their identities, items, and payment methods while making their way through the digital world that Meta bets will be the future.The company has hinted at these plans before — its May announcement of the Meta Pay rebranded also mentioned that it was “scoping out what a single wallet experience might look like” with regards to making payments and storing your identity and... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For the first few years of Instagram’s existence, it was a pain to hide Stories from people. You had to dig into an individual Story’s settings and select followers to hide it from. Then, if you wanted to let those followers see the next Story, you had to go into that Story’s settings and undo the block.But in 2018, Instagram launched the close friends feature, which makes it much easier to share content with a limited group. Once you’ve created a close friends list, you’ll have the option to share a Story with just that list. If you’re posting content that could be controversial, personal, or NSFW, the option can save you some stress.In case you don’t know how to add folks to your close friends list, we’ll show you how to get... Continue reading…

General Motors is bringing artificial intelligence into the vehicle inspection process.The automaker is making an undisclosed “strategic investment” in Israeli startup UVeye, which makes vehicle diagnostic systems that use sensors and AI to quickly identify damaged parts or maintenance issues. The investment in UVeye was made by GM Ventures, the automaker’s venture fund, which also has investments in a variety of other AI-themed startups.GM will sell UVeye’s technology to its dealer network to upgrade their vehicle inspection systemsAs part of the collaboration, GM will sell UVeye’s technology to its dealer network to upgrade their vehicle inspection systems. (The company’s systems are already being trialed at a small number of GM... Continue reading…

Image: eBay eBay made its biggest move yet into the world of digital collectibles with news today of the company acquiring NFT marketplace KnownOrigin. The online auction company is keeping lips sealed on the deal’s value but confirmed in the press release that the deal is closed as of June 21st.“This partnership will help us attract a new wave of NFT creators and collectors,” said KnownOrigin co-founder David Moore.KnownOrigin describes itself as “one the world’s first, and largest, NFT Marketplaces,” and it currently ranks No. 12 on all-time trading volume for Ethereum-backed NFTs at $7.8 million, according to DappRadar. Higher ranked, more popular marketplaces include OpenSea (No. 1) with an all-time trading value at $30.43 billion and... Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios Though Kamala Khan’s powers were significantly reworked for the MCU, the latest episode of Disney Plus’ Ms. Marvel series might be setting up a reveal that connects its hero and her abilities to the original Captain Marvel of Marvel’s comic books.Kamala doesn’t initially think all that much of the vintage bangle she receives in a gift package from her grandmother Sana (Samina Ahmad) in Ms. Marvel’s first episode. But when she actually puts it on, she immediately realizes that there’s much more to the heirloom than meets the eye. In addition to transporting Kamala (at least mentally) to another plane bathed in neon light, the bangle unlocks her power to generate glowing constructs made out of an unidentified energy that comes from within... Continue reading…

More or less confirmation that an AR headset is coming. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tim Cook teased that Apple’s working on an augmented reality, or AR, product in an interview with state-run outlet China Daily, telling AR fans to “stay tuned and you will see what we have to offer.” It reads as a direct hint that the company is working on some sort of headset, which has been rumored for years — unless, of course, he thinks people will actually be excited about using ARKit apps on their phones.In the clip, brought to our attention by 9to5Mac, the interviewer asks Cook what he thinks the key factors are for an AR product to be successful. Cook responds by saying that he “couldn’t be more excited” about AR, despite it being “in the very early innings” of its evolution.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is testing a new long-form blogging feature named Twitter Notes, the company confirmed in a tweet. The platform says the feature is currently available to a select group of users in the US, UK, Canada, and Ghana, and that people “in most countries” can read Notes on and off Twitter.Twitter shared how the feature will work in two separate GIFs. Users can click into the “Write” tab to start writing a Note, and can then embed the Note into their tweet when finished. Several writers have already published Notes on the platform, which appear as long-form posts that can have tweets, videos, and images mixed in.

Ewan McGregor in Obi-Wan Kenobi. | Image: Lucasfilm You may know where the story is headed, but the journey is still worth it Continue reading…

CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo left MindGeek following a report from The New Yorker. | Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagic Pornhub owner MindGeek has lost two high-level executives: CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo, as first reported by Variety. Their resignation comes shortly after The New Yorker released a scathing report detailing the holes in the company’s content moderation system, which has failed to address videos depicting underage and non-consenting individuals.Despite the timeliness of The New Yorker’s report, a spokesperson for the company told Variety that MindGeek had been planning a leadership change since earlier this year. The representative also said Antoon and Tassillo will remain shareholders in the company and that MindGeek is currently searching for their replacements. MindGeek didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request... Continue reading…

Polestar, one of the first automakers to adopt Google’s Android Automotive operating system for its electric vehicles, is now throwing a bone to all the iOS users. The company announced that its Polestar 2 electric sedan now supports Apple CarPlay, thanks to a recent over-the-air software update.People who own both a Polestar 2 and an iPhone will now be able to mirror their phone’s display on the vehicle’s 11-inch portrait-oriented touchscreen. In addition to accessing some of their apps, CarPlay users will also be able to use Siri to change music or find locations on Apple Maps.Polestar made a name for itself by establishing a direct link to Apple’s main rival, GoogleThe introduction of CarPlay support is interesting because P... Continue reading…

Image: Summer Game Fest Geoff Keighley isn’t sure what E3 is anymore. Even before COVID forced the cancellation of the in-person version of the giant video game commercial masquerading as an industry trade show three years running now, the event was already a pale, big-three-publisher-less imitation of its former self.E3 is coming back. The organizers said so in a very “for realsies this time, you guys” kind of way. But when I asked Keighley about the prospect of E3 and Summer Game Fest — affectionately known as Not-E3 or, my personal favorite, Keigh-3 — coexisting next year, he just didn’t seem convinced they would need to.“E3 said they’re coming back. Which I don’t know what that means, right?” he told me at Summer Game Fest’s new in-person component in Los... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is paying the Wikimedia Foundation to help serve up the most accurate and up-to-date information on its search engine. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group behind Wikipedia, says Google is one of the first companies to buy into its commercial Enterprise service.Launched last year, Wikimedia Enterprise allows customers (like Google) who reuse massive chunks of information from Wikimedia’s services to access its content more efficiently. Instead of relying on free data dumps and publicly available APIs (application programming interfaces) to scrape information from Wikipedia’s web pages, Wikimedia Enterprise lets customers use APIs better suited to recycling and spitting out information on a much larger scale. The service... Continue reading…

We have big news for listeners of The Vergecast, The Verge’s flagship podcast. We are now publishing twice a week — on Wednesdays and Fridays!On Fridays, it’ll be the same show you know and love, with Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz hanging out and talking about tech news. On Wednesdays, we’re going to change it up a bit, and use the show to share even more of the stories The Verge team is covering. David will be joined by The Verge’s expert staffers in a deep exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into yours.So, here is our first Wednesday edition of The Vergecast. David starts the show talking to Verge senior reporter Adi Robertson about the prototype VR headsets from... Continue reading…

The Govee DreamView G1 Pro Gaming Light is on sale for $20 off when you buy it direct from Govee. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Want to add some fun colors to your gaming space? Right now, Govee is offering its first discount on its new DreamView G1 Pro gaming lights. The camera-powered, dynamic LED kit typically retails for $179.99, but Govee is selling it for $159.99 for a limited time. These lights can match the colors displayed on your monitor while gaming, which can help create a fun and immersive experience. They also come with four preset game-match modes that deliver various effects, like a racing mode that matches fast-moving colors by splitting up the light bar into smaller color segments and moving pulsing waves of colors up and down.While these lights are also relatively easy to install, just note you’ll have to mount Govee’s camera to the top of... Continue reading…

The Apex Pro Mini Wireless. | Image: SteelSeries The SteelSeries Apex Pro Mini and Apex Pro Mini Wireless are a pair of new compact mechanical keyboards that come with adjustable switches, a feature that’s made SteelSeries’ previous full-size 2019 Apex Pro one of the most capable gaming keyboards around. The Pro Mini costs $179.99 (€219.99), while the Pro Mini Wireless costs $239.99 (€279.99).Both keyboards use SteelSeries’ new OmniPoint 2.0 switches, which are an upgraded version of the OmniPoint switches used in the original Apex Pro. Unlike traditional mechanical switches, which use metal contacts to register a keypress, these linear OmniPoint switches use magnetic hall effect sensors, meaning they can sense exactly how far a switch has been pressed. Image:... Continue reading…

Slack is upgrading its Huddles feature with video chat, multi-user screen sharing, and a per-huddle chat thread. The company announced the updates at its Frontiers conference, which for Slack is both a chance to unveil new products and to share its thoughts about the future of work. With Huddles, Slack’s vision is simple: people need more, richer ways to chat, but they don’t need more meetings.Huddles originally launched a year ago, and they’ve worked for Slack precisely because they don’t feel like meetings. The company always imagined the feature, which you can use to have a quick audio call inside Slack, as more akin to walking over to someone’s desk rather than sending them a calendar invite. They were audio-only; you couldn’t... Continue reading…

Virtual furniture can be placed in an image of your room. | Image: Ikea Ikea is launching a new virtual design tool today that can make it easier to imagine how its furniture might look in your home. Ikea Kreativ’s Scene Scanner feature lets you scan a room using Ikea’s iOS app, erase your existing furniture, and then place virtual furniture in its place. If you don’t want to scan your own home, there are also over 50 virtual showrooms to place furniture in. Naturally, the process is designed to encourage you to order this furniture for real after browsing the virtual versions.After playing around with a pre-release version of the Ikea Kreativ Scene Scanner app developed by Ingka Group (Ikea’s largest store franchisee), I can say that the new experience is potentially very useful, even if it’s a little... Continue reading…

Image: Fitbit Fitbit is launching a new Sleep Profile feature for premium members that will categorize users as one of six animal characters, the company announced today. Users are grouped based on 10 sleep metrics — five of which are new to Fitbit.The research team wanted to give people more information about how they sleep, says Karla Gleichauf, the senior research scientist at Google who led the research for the feature. “We were also influenced by some fun things, like game design or the Harry Potter quizzes about what house you’re in,” she says. “People love to be categorized. So, we said, ‘I think this is just really fun’ — it’s another kind of identity to people.”For example: Fitbit co-founder James Park is a dolphin, Gleichauf says. People... Continue reading…

The Summit 3 in black, bicolor, and silver. | Image: Montblanc Montblanc could be the first manufacturer outside of Samsung to release a smartwatch running Wear OS 3, the latest version of Google’s wrist-worn operating system. Like its previous smartwatches, the Summit 3 launches with an eye-watering price tag, and its focus is more on being a fashion accessory than pushing the boundaries of what a smartwatch is capable of. It’ll cost €1,250 (around $1,314 USD) when it goes on sale globally on July 15th.Wear OS 3 is the most significant update to Google’s smartwatch operating system in years, but it’s only currently available on a pair of Samsung smartwatches: the Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, which released last year. That means we’re yet to experience the software without... Continue reading…

What better time for this announcement than Pride Month? | Image: Google Google is adding a label to Maps that lets people identify their business as being LGBTQ-plus-owned, joining Yelp, which has a similar label. While Google Maps has had labels like LGBTQ-friendly and Transgender Safe Space for years, the company says that the new business identity attribute will help people who choose to support diverse businesses and could help queer people find nearby communities.Just like with Google’s other labels for Black-owned, Latino-owned, veteran-owned, and women-owned businesses, the LGBTQ-plus-owned label has to be added by the verified owner of the business profile. (It’s not like other Maps metadata, which can be added by community members.) The labels can show up throughout the Google Maps interface, and... Continue reading…

Brooke Minters Brooke Minters has joined The Verge as editorial director for audio, overseeing its podcast operation, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel today announced. In her new role, Minters will develop The Verge’s audio slate, launching new shows and working to grow existing shows, which include The Vergecast and Decoder with Nilay Patel. Minters began her role on June 21st. The Verge’s managing editor Alex Cranz will officially join The Verge’s decade-old flagship podcast The Vergecast as co-host; the show will also expand to two episodes a week, with the new Wednesday episode hosted by Verge editor-at-large David Pierce.“We started The Vergecast before launching The Verge itself, and our dedicated fans have always been a key part of The Verge’s... Continue reading…

Image: Twitter Twitter is partnering with Shopify on an integration that will keep a seller’s Twitter profile page updated with direct links to the products they have for sale. Shopify users who install the new Twitter add-on can connect their Twitter account with Shopify and then start building out a store on Twitter with the platform’s Shop Module.The new add-on automatically loads a merchant’s products from Shopify onto Twitter, which then appear in a carousel on the Twitter profile. Users can browse through or expand the carousel to view up to 50 products — selecting a product redirects users to the merchant’s website for purchase. Image: Twitter The integration with Shopify lets merchants sync products with Twitter. S... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is preparing to add mouse and keyboard support to its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service that streams Xbox games to TVs, PCs, mobile devices, and more. The software giant teased the addition earlier this year, and now it’s encouraging game developers to get ready for mouse and keyboard support and some big latency improvements on Xbox Cloud Gaming soon.“Xbox has been supporting keyboard and mouse for a few years now, and we’re working on adding it to streaming for PC users,” explains Morgan Brown, a software engineer on Microsoft’s Xbox game streaming team. “But you can start adding it to your game right now and your console keyboard and mouse users will appreciate it. It will light up in streaming once we’ve finished adding... Continue reading…

Maximum efficiency, major annoyance Continue reading…

The new-look Google News makes local news and custom topics easier to find. | Image: Google Google News has been given a fresh lick of paint for desktop users on its 20th birthday, with a redesign that gives more prominence to local news and personalized content.Users can now more easily customize the topics they’re shown by hitting the blue “customize” button in the right hand column (it appears just below “Picks For You”). They can also add multiple locations to the “Local News” section by hitting the settings button to the right of the Local News header.In practical terms, the biggest change is that various categories of news — like world, business, science, and health — have been moved from the left-hand side of the screen to a menu bar at the top. You can compare the before and after in the screenshots of the new... Continue reading…

It’s called Proteus | Image: Amazon Amazon has announced its “first fully autonomous mobile robot,” meant to move large carts throughout its warehouses. The robot is called Proteus, and Amazon says it can safely navigate around human employees, unlike some of its past robots that it kept separated in a caged area.Amazon says Proteus robots have “advanced safety, perception, and navigation technology,” and a (strangely silent) video shows the robots shining a green light in front of themselves as they move around. When a human steps into the beam, the robot stops moving, then resumes after the person moves away.The company has also announced several other robotic systems. One, called Cardinal, is a robotic arm that can lift and move packages weighing up to 50 pounds,... Continue reading…

The Volvo FH Fuel Cell Electric semi at a hydrogen fuel station. | Image: Volvo Volvo’s commercial trucking division is testing hydrogen fuel cell semi trucks in the hopes of getting ahead of the maturing technology. With fuel cells built by CellCentric, a joint venture between Volvo and Daimler Truck Automotive Group, Volvo claims its trucks are capable of 1,000 kilometers of range (about 621 miles) and can be refueled in under 15 minutes.Volvo Trucks has been “developing this technology for some years now,” said company president Roger Alm in a statement this week. Hydrogen fuel cells will be suitable for long-distance hauling and could work in countries with limited battery charging infrastructure, Alm said. The company started building battery-electric trucks in 2018, but they still aren’t widely in service in... Continue reading…

The company was accused of letting advertisers exclude protected groups from their campaigns. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government and Facebook parent company Meta have agreed on a settlement to clear up a lawsuit that accused the company of facilitating housing discrimination by letting advertisers specify that ads not be shown to people belonging to specific protected groups, according to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). You can read the full agreement below.The government first brought a case against Meta for algorithmic housing discrimination in 2019, though accusations about the company’s practices go back years before that. The company took some steps to address the issue, but clearly, they weren’t enough for the feds. The department says this was its first case dealing with algorithmic violations of the Fair Housing... Continue reading…

The new social tags might make it easier to find a good group. | Image: Epic Games Fortnite can be an absolute blast to play with your friends, but being matched up with random players is more hit-and-miss. In some of the randomized groups I’ve been in, coordinating any sort of effective strategy can be a challenging endeavor, particularly if some team members want to rush into battle while others would prefer to play it slow. To help you find better squadmates, Fortnite developer Epic Games is testing new social tags for profiles that let you indicate how you like to play and can be used to match you up with other like-minded players.According to a blog post, tags will include things like your favorite game modes and whether you want to use a mic or not. If you have added at least one social tag, you’ll be able to... Continue reading…

Photo by PHILIP DAVALI/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images Well, now we know where the Obamas are heading after their split with Spotify. I had a whole fancy intro before getting the news, but this is about as hot as Hot Pod gets, so let’s get into it.Obamas take their podcasts to Audible after leaving SpotifyAmazon’s Audible and the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground announced a multi-year first-look deal on Tuesday, ending the speculation of where the former first couple would take their podcasts after their deal with Spotify ends in several months.It’s a big get for Audible, which is better known for audiobooks than podcasts even as it ramps up the development deals. It is also a curious choice for the Obamas, who were reported to be frustrated by the limitations that came with... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Popular daycare and childcare communications apps are “dangerously insecure,” according to newly published research, exposing children and parents to the risk of data breaches with lax security settings and permissive or outright misleading privacy policies.The details come from a new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which published the results of a months-long research project on Tuesday.The research, conducted Alexis Hancock, EFF’s director of engineering for the Certbot project, found that popular apps like Brightwheel, HiMama, and Tadpoles lacked two-factor authentication (2FA), meaning that any malicious actor who was able to obtain a user’s password could log in remotely. Further analysis of application code... Continue reading…

The efforts are currently focused on old Priuses | Photo by Toyota/Getty Images Toyota is partnering with Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company helmed by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, to collect and recycle vehicle batteries. The plan is to take old, worn-out batteries and either refurbish them or break them down so their materials can be used to create new batteries.Redwood specifically plans on producing materials for anodes and cathodes — two major components of a battery cell. The company’s ultimate goal is to create a “closed-loop supply chain for electric vehicles,” meaning that it takes batteries from old EVs and turns them into batteries for new cars.Decades-old Priuses could end up at Redwood’s facility in NevadaWhile Toyota is currently launching its first long-range battery-electric vehicle,... Continue reading…

Image: Paramount Paramount “plans to commission” 150 international originals for its Paramount Plus streaming service by 2025, according to a press release. The company revealed details about seven of the originals on Tuesday, including content from Germany, Italy, France, and Mexico.With this major investment, Paramount is likely aiming to see the kind of traction other platforms have gotten from their own international originals. Netflix’s Squid Game is perhaps the most successful, becoming the streaming service’s biggest-ever series at launch, but its French thriller Lupin has been a hit as well. If you’re an Apple TV Plus subscriber, I’d highly recommend Pachinko, a drama about a Korean immigrant family that Apple recently renewed for a second... Continue reading…

NASA’s Space Launch System on its launchpad at KSC | Photo by Loren Grush / The Verge After three previous aborted attempts, NASA successfully fueled its new massive deep-space rocket, the Space Launch System, for the first time on Monday — completing a critical milestone ahead of the vehicle’s first flight. However, there was a shadow over the achievement. The fueling was part of an elaborate dress rehearsal that ended 20 seconds earlier than NASA had planned, and it’s unclear if the agency got all the data and practice it needed to proceed with the rocket’s debut launch.The Space Launch System, or SLS, is a key piece of NASA’s flagship Artemis program — an elaborate effort to send the first woman and the first person of color to the surface of the Moon. But first, SLS needs to actually fly, and before that can happen, N... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Some social platforms limit the number of times you can change your username, while others don’t let you do it at all. Instagram is a username free-for-all; you can alter your Instagram handle whenever you want, as many times as you want — within certain limits.There’s a difference between your username and your display name. The display name is on your profile below your avatar. It doesn’t need to be unique to you, and it can contain emoji and special characters. (And yes, it can also be changed — up to two times within 14 days.)Your username, on the other hand, appears at the top of your profile and at the end of your profile’s URL. It needs to be unique to you. It’s also subject to more restrictions: it can’t be longer than 30... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Two former Tesla employees have filed a lawsuit claiming the company violated federal law for failing to provide 60 days’ notice for a mass layoff.The lawsuit, which was filed on Sunday, follows the news that Tesla plans on laying off hourly workers, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk initially stated that the hourly workers were likely to be unaffected by the layoffs.The lawsuit was filed by John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield, both of whom worked at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, when the layoffs began in early June. The two former employees allege they were among “more than 500” Gigafactory employees who were terminated.The two former employees allege they were among “more than 500” Gigafactory employees who were terminatedAccording... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has named a new CEO of its retail arm just weeks after the previous CEO announced he would be resigning. Doug Herrington, a 17-year company vet, is set to become CEO of Amazon’s worldwide stores business, Amazon leader Andy Jassy announced in an email posted to the company’s website.Herrington has a lot of experience in Amazon’s consumer business, as noted in Jassy’s email; Herrington “joined the company in 2005 to build out our Consumables business, launched AmazonFresh in 2007, and in 2015, took on leading all of our North American Consumer business,” Jassy wrote.But he’ll have a tough road ahead, as Amazon’s growth has slowed after surging during the pandemic, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Jassy has... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is phasing out public access to a number of AI-powered facial analysis tools — including one that claims to identify a subject’s emotion from videos and pictures.Such “emotion recognition” tools have been criticized by experts. They say not only do facial expressions that are thought to be universal differ across different populations but that it is unscientific to equate external displays of emotion with internal feelings.“Companies can say whatever they want, but the data are clear,” Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University who conducted a review into the subject of AI-powered emotion recognition, told The Verge in 2019. “They can detect a scowl, but that’s not the same thing as detecting... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft, Epic Games, Meta, and 33 other companies and organizations have formed a standards group for “metaverse” tech. The Metaverse Standards Forum is supposed to foster open, interoperable standards for augmented and virtual reality, geospatial, and 3D tech.According to a press release, the Metaverse Standards Forum will focus on “pragmatic, action-based projects” like hackathons and prototyping tools for supporting common standards. It’s also interested in developing “consistent terminology” for the space — where many players can’t even agree on what a “metaverse” is. In addition to the companies above, the group’s founding members include major pre-metaverse entities like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Nvidia, Qualcomm,... Continue reading…

Save on this 75-inch Samsung TV and other hot tech today. | Image: Samsung The Verge Deals team is back in action this week, serving up some excellent savings from across the internet. If you’ve been biding your time on buying a new high-end TV, you may want to check out this day-long discount on the 75-inch model of Samsung’s QN85B Neo QLED TV, which is selling for its lowest price ever. The QN85B usually sells for $2,799.99 but is currently on sale for $2,399.99. While this QLED model may lack the unparalleled contrast and brightness control of pricier OLED models, the QN85B should deliver stellar picture quality and accurate lighting with its Mini LED technology, atop a number of other excellent features.This 4K display features a 120Hz refresh rate, and it’s HDR10 Plus-compatible, enabling excellent depth... Continue reading…