The Verge

It can now find keywords, not just names. Twitter announced on Wednesday that its DM search feature has gotten a big upgrade — it can now search through the content of your conversations and return specific messages that contain whatever keyword you type in. Before you could only use it to search for people’s names or the names of group chats, but now if you want to find that one conversation you had with a friend about “chili” you can just type it into the search bar.Of course, searching for person or conversation names still works, and you can even decide whether you want to see results for people, groups, or messages — handy if the keyword you’re trying to search happens to be someone’s name.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In recent weeks, the Lapsus$ hacking group has taken credit for accessing company data from Nvidia, Samsung, Ubisoft, Okta, and even Microsoft, and according to a new Bloomberg report, an England-based teenager might be the person heading up the operation.“Four researchers investigating the hacking group Lapsus$, on behalf of companies that were attacked, said they believe the teenager is the mastermind,” Bloomberg said. However, the teenager, who apparently uses the online aliases “White” and “breachbase,” has not been accused by law enforcement, and the researchers “haven’t been able to conclusively tie him to every hack Lapsus$ has claimed,” Bloomberg said.The teenager is apparently based about five miles outside of Oxford... Continue reading…

HBO Max is rolling out its very own shuffle button for desktop. Rather than working like a “play something” button, HBO Max’s new feature will shuffle episodes. So if you know you’re in the mood to watch Friends or South Park but don’t know where to start, the button will do the work for you.HBO Max said the button is one of its most requested features. Streaming rivals like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, among others, have similarly experimented with shuffle functions on their apps. Currently, the shuffle feature is available for 45 series on HBO Max, meaning you have 45 options for mindless streaming next time you’re having trouble finding something to watch.The full list of shows supported is as follows:

Will Fortnite be able to compete with your 8AM standup? Zoom announced on Wednesday that it’s making it easier to livestream your meeting or webinar to Twitch by adding native integration with the streaming service to its app. After you connect your Zoom and Twitch accounts, you can start broadcasting your meeting with just a few clicks.Zoom says the feature is meant to “streamline the process of sharing content within” communities, which definitely sounds like it expects this to be used for things like company webinars. There are a lot of use cases I can think of for this kind of thing, though — it’d be an easy option for people who want to do a live podcast, share a sermon, or make something like a town hall meeting publicly available. Or heck, just stream your 8AM stand-up if you’re... Continue reading…

Image: Bandai Namco Elden Ring has patched an exploit on PC that hackers used to trap players in endless cycles of death. In the patch notes for update 1.03.2, game publisher Bandai Namco says it includes a fix for “a bug in multiplayer that allowed players to teleport others to incorrect map coordinates.”The exploit first emerged last week after invaders started crashing players’ games and teleporting their character to an out-of-bounds location, causing them to fall to their death over and over again upon reopening the game. While some victims were able to get themselves out of the death loop by quickly teleporting to a site of grace, others reported losing dozens of hours of gameplay. You can see the effects of the hack for yourself in a video posted by... Continue reading…

Today, NASA announced plans to develop a second human lunar lander for its Artemis program, the agency’s major spaceflight initiative to send humans back to the Moon. To build the vehicle, the space agency is calling on commercial space companies to propose concepts for landers that can take people to and from the Moon’s orbit and the lunar surface, with the goal of having them ready by 2026 or 2027 at the earliest.NASA already holds a contract with commercial partner SpaceX to develop a lunar lander for Artemis, which aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon. In 2021, the space agency awarded a sole contract to SpaceX worth $2.9 billion to develop the company’s future Starship vehicle into a lander that... Continue reading…

Oscar Isaac as Mr. Knight, one facet of Moon Knight’s personality. | Courtesy of Marvel Studios It was clear from Moon Knight’s first trailer that Steven Grant’s Britishness and vocal quirks are significant details about him that are likely to factor into how the show handles the character’s canonical struggles with dissociative identity disorder. What was less clear, though, was how the decision to depict Moon Knight as an Englishman actually came about as a result of the larger shape of the current MCU.Though the Moon Knight of Marvel’s comics was originally born and raised in Chicago before going on to become a marine-turned-costumed superhero, in Disney Plus’ upcoming Moon Knight series, Oscar Isaac stars as a slightly different version of the titular character who happens —it seems — to hail from jolly old London. When we... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is introducing a pilot to let “a small number of participating developers” offer a payment system in addition to Google Play’s. Spotify will be the first and will use both Google Play’s billing system and its own.“This pilot will help us to increase our understanding of whether and how user choice billing works for users in different countries and for developers of different sizes and categories,” Google’s Sameer Samat said in a blog post. Google plans to share more information about the program in the coming months: “This pilot is still early days and we will have more detail to share in the coming months, but our aim is to have pilot developers live with user choice billing in 2022 in key markets,” Google spokesperson Dan... Continue reading…

Wilhite after winning a Webby Lifetime Achievement award. | Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for The Webby Awards Stephen Wilhite, one of the lead inventors of the GIF, died last week from COVID at the age of 74, according to his wife, Kathaleen, who spoke to The Verge. He was surrounded by family when he passed. His obituary page notes that “even with all his accomplishments, he remained a very humble, kind, and good man.”Stephen Wilhite worked on GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, which is now used for reactions, messages, and jokes, while employed at CompuServe in the 1980s. He retired around the early 2000s and spent his time traveling, camping, and building model trains in his basement.“It’s pronounced ‘jif,’ not ‘gif’”Although GIFs are synonymous with animated internet memes these days, that wasn’t the reason Wilhite created the format.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google will no longer sell movies and TV shows from the Google Play app starting in May, the company announced (via Ars Technica). Instead, you’ll be able to get movies and shows from the Google TV app.“On Google TV, you will find the same experience you are used to on Google Play Movies & TV with the latest new releases, rentals, deals, and great recommendations for you,” according to a company support page. Content you have already purchased will be available in the Google TV app, and you can use Play credit / gift cards to buy things there if you need.Google Play will still have apps, games, and booksUltimately, this doesn’t seem like too dramatic of a shift. However, this change and Google’s decision to shut down Google Play... Continue reading…

Photo by JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images Apple’s digital car keys are arriving on the 2022 Kia Niro, 2022 Genesis G90, and the all-electric 2022 Genesis GV60. As spotted by MacRumors, Apple added a key symbol next to all three vehicles in a list on its site, indicating support for the feature.It’s not clear when Apple first updated the list or if the feature is immediately available on any of these cars. There hasn’t been an official announcement from Apple or either car company yet, so there may be more steps involved in the rollout. Kia and Genesis have reportedly been working to integrate Apple’s digital car keys since last year. Samsung has also announced a partnership with Genesis (along with Audi, Ford, and BMW) to create a phone-based digital car key of its own.A Kia... Continue reading…

Last week, AMD promised a new technology that should let you blow up your games to higher resolutions or increase their framerates without requiring the fancy machine learning hardware of Nvidia’s GPUs like Nvidia’s lauded DLSS. Now at GDC 2022, it’s revealing how the new FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 actually works — and that it’s coming to Microsoft’s Xbox game consoles too.While AMD says it can’t actually say when Xbox game developers might take advantage of FSR 2.0, it says it “will also be fully supported on Xbox and will be available in the Xbox GDK for registered developers to use in their games.” And it’s also giving the community a list of both AMD and Nvidia GPUs where you can expect FSR 2.0 to run — if... Continue reading…

Photo by The Verge Although many data plans these days are advertised as “unlimited,” most actually have a cut-off point when your data stream is going to slow radically. If you don’t want to pay the premium prices that “unlimited” plans demand, then it’s even more important that you avoid going beyond your maximum data allowance, or there will be high penalties to pay. Either way, it’s smart to monitor your data flow — not only to make sure you don’t pass your limits but also to find out if you need to rethink your current data plan.It’s not hard to do this using tools baked into current versions of Android or a third-party app. Here are a few strategies that you can try. (Note: these directions are for a Pixel 6 running Android 12. The interface of your... Continue reading…

No bookmark bar needed (though it’s still available if you’re a fan). Google has introduced a new sidebar feature to Chrome, which lets you quickly access your bookmarks and reading list while using the desktop version of the browser (via 9to5Google). Previously, the reading list’s main home was as a button on the bookmark bar, which not everyone has enabled.Clicking the side panel button, which looks like a rectangle with a shaded portion on the right side, will show or hide the panel. Once you’ve got it open, you can access the same reading list functions that were available in the old UI, including the ability to add the page you’re currently on to your list, mark items as read, or remove them. You can also switch over to the bookmarks tab to browse your saved pages. Of course, you’re... Continue reading…

© 2022 Stellantis Stellantis, the parent company of Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler, plans to build an electric vehicle battery factory in the US. The news came out of an announcement Wednesday that the automaker would invest $4.1 billion on a new battery facility in Canada, along with South Korea’s LG Energy Solution.The factory in Windsor, Ontario, will be the first of two planned battery plants to come out of the joint venture between Stellantis, which was formed last year from the merging of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group, and LG. Construction on the plant is expected to start later this year, with operations set to launch in the first quarter of 2024.A second plant will be built somewhere in the US, officials said at the event announcing the Windsor... Continue reading…

Paramount Plus Paramount Plus’ Halo show neither shocks nor awes Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft and Amazon are both appearing at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week with a simple pitch: use our cloud services to build your game. Both companies have been battling to get businesses to switch to the cloud in recent years, and now the focus is truly on game developers during a pandemic that has challenged the norms of creating games.“Every few years, the games industry undergoes a transformation — a reinvention of itself,” says Sarah Bond, corporate vice president of game creator experience and ecosystem at Microsoft. “New platforms and new technologies make way for new genres, new gameplay and new IP. Today, we’re in the midst of one of those transformative moments.”Amazon agrees. “Game developers are embracing... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge After the disclosure of a hack affecting its authentication platform, Okta has maintained that the effects of the breach were mostly contained by security protocols and reiterated that users of the service do not need to take corrective action as a result.The statements were made by David Bradbury, chief security officer at Okta, in a video call with customers and press Wednesday morning.On Monday, hacking group Lapsus$ released images demonstrating that the group had compromised Okta’s internal systems, putting thousands of businesses that rely on the authentication tool on high alert.“The sharing of these screenshots is an embarrassment for myself and the entire Okta team,” Bradbury said at the start of the call. “Today I want to... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Players experienced a number of issues with the PlayStation Network this morning, affecting the PS Store, PS Now cloud gaming services, as well as any games, apps, or features that require a network connection. While its main console services have been restored, PS Now is still listed as having issues.PlayStation’s status page currently says “some services are experiencing issues.” Its last update about PS Now came at 9:41AM ET, and there’s still no timeline for restoration.The problem didn’t seem to affect everyone, as some staffers at The Verge had PlayStation Plus errors while trying to play Elden Ring, but for others, things were working just fine. There might’ve been a regional aspect to the problem — everyone we checked in the... Continue reading…

Image: WarnerMedia Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has officially been delayed to spring 2023, according to an announcement from Rocksteady Games creative director Sefton Hill on Twitter.“We’ve made the difficult decision to delay Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League to Spring 2023,” Hill’s tweet reads. “I know a delay is frustrating but that time is going into making the best game we can. I look forward to bringing the chaos to Metropolis together. Thanks for your patience.”

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge ZTE’s probation in the US is coming to an end following a Texas judge’s ruling on Tuesday, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The Chinese telecommunications company had been under supervision by the US government since pleading guilty to illegally selling American-made equipment in Iran and North Korea in 2017. ZTE incurred a $1.2 billion fine as a result of violating US sanctions against both countries.The judge decided not to punish ZTE for alleged visa fraudAs the WSJ notes, US District Judge Ed Kinkeade decided not to punish ZTE for alleged visa fraud, which is the subject of a separate case that’s currently underway in Georgia. Last March, a ZTE researcher and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology were a... Continue reading…

You’ll be able to hold your phone to a terminal to provide your information. | Image: Apple The first state to officially roll out Apple’s digital driver’s license and state ID is Arizona, the iPhone maker announced Wednesday. “Starting today, Arizonans can add their driver’s license or state ID to Wallet, and tap their iPhone or Apple Watch to seamlessly and securely present it at select TSA security checkpoints in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport,” Apple announced in a press release.If you live in Arizona and want to add your license or ID to Wallet, you can do so right from the Wallet app. Take photos of the front and back of your license or ID, and you will “be prompted to complete a series of facial and head movements during the setup process,” according to Apple. Apple is not the one approving requests to add... Continue reading…

Ikea’s forays into connected audio continue with its new $65 Vappeby Bluetooth speaker lamp, which resembles a futuristic-looking lantern and is the first speaker to feature Spotify Tap (which had previously only been available on a variety of headphones) for one-touch access to the streaming music service.The Vappeby actually seems purpose-built to replace a camp lantern: it has a rechargeable battery, an integrated LED light, and IP65 resistance (enough for toughing it out in the occasional rainstorm, although definitely not for a dip in a pool). It even comes with a USB-C cable to charge it, although it doesn’t include a wall brick. The most novel addition is support for Spotify Tap, which is making its Bluetooth... Continue reading…

Spotify is reportedly moving live conversations to its main app. | Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify is renaming its live audio app and moving it into its main music streaming app to make it more visible, according to a report from Bloomberg. Greenroom, which Spotify launched last June, will be rebranded as Spotify Live, a place where creators can hold conversations that subscribers can listen to.At launch, a Spotify account was not required to use Greenroom, but with the product moving to the main streaming app as part of the rebranding, that’s likely to change as well. Evidence of the update, expected in the second quarter, was discovered by developer Steve Moser in Spotify’s iPhone app and confirmed by Bloomberg’s sources.Spotify launched Greenroom on iOS and Android last year as a competitor to Clubhouse. It was built on... Continue reading…

Instagram says it’s giving users more control over their feeds. | Image: Instagram Instagram announced on Wednesday that it’s adding two new modes that change how the main feed works, bringing back the much-awaited reverse-chronological view. The company calls the two new modes “Following” and “Favorites,” and says they’re designed to “give you more choice and control over what you see” while using the app (that is, let you avoid things like suggested posts and algorithmic sorting based on who and what the app thinks you like).Instagram’s description for the “Following” feed is truly something to behold: “See the latest posts from accounts that you follow, in the order they were posted.” And to that, I say yes. That’s exactly what I want every social network to be!Instagram says it’ll go on to make the main feed even... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Intel is finally on the right track again.That’s the biggest takeaway of the first year of the company’s reboot, brought on by its new CEO Pat Gelsinger when he took over the reins in early 2021. Intel has a new vision for the future: its “IDM 2.0” approach. Its introduction was exactly a year ago today. That makes today a great time to check in and see how the new Intel — which looks a lot like the old Intel — is shaping up.Intel’s past decade or so prior to its recent reinvention was a series of misplaced bets and product misses, culminating in a disastrous summer in 2020 that saw nearly everything go wrong for the company: another delay for its next major manufacturing node, departures of top executives, and the loss of one of its... Continue reading…

The Nothing OS home screen. | Image: Nothing Carl Pei wants to take on Apple’s walled garden this summer Continue reading…

Yet another notable athlete is coming to Fortnite’s battle royale. Epic Games announced that on March 26th, players will be able to snag a skin based on two-time Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim. The skin features four different color schemes — including a black-and-gold option and another where she appears encased in ice — and there are also a handful of accessories, including a giant frozen dragon to ride on.Kim joins a growing list of athletes and celebrities in Fortnite, with includes the likes of tennis star Naomi Osaka, musical duo Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, NBA legend LeBron James, and Fortnite World Cup winner Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf.Fortnite just kicked off a new season called “Resistance,” which introduces some... Continue reading…

Good execution, but its specs aren’t enough for serious gamers Continue reading…

Last year, Netflix debuted an anime spinoff set in the mech-vs.-kaiju world of Pacific Rim, and next month, the series will be coming to an end. The second and final season of Pacific Rim: The Black is coming to the streaming service on April 19th and is described as the “epic conclusion” for the story.The Black follows a pair of twins in Australia who end up utilizing a training Jaeger — those gigantic mechs from the live-action films — to fight monsters and seek the relative safety of Sydney. In an interview with The Verge last year, supervising director Hiroyuki Hayashi explained that one of the goals of the show was to show the impact of the kaiju invasion from a different perspective.“The people in Pacific Rim: The Black are... Continue reading…

Image: ApeCoin DAO Today, let’s talk about an evolution in the way that startups are being funded, and what it means for the companies working to replace the current internet with blockchain technologies.For a long while now, the basic deal in venture capital has been simple. Investors give founders money in exchange for equity in a company; they recoup that investment when the company is sold or goes public. (Or, if the company dies, not at all.)A downside of this arrangement is that companies can take a very long time to arrive at these exits. Most VC funds assume it will take 7 to 10 years to know how well their bets are paying off, and in the meantime they face risk and uncertainty.The arrival of blockchains over the past decade created a new option... Continue reading…

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite currently starts at $104.99 instead of $139.99 at multiple retailers. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The If you weren’t able to take advantage of the great discount that we saw on the new Kindle Paperwhite during Black Friday 2021, you now have a second chance. The 2021 Kindle Paperwhite is one of the best e-readers on the market, and right now, it’s also available at its best price ever. Typically selling for $139.99, you can buy the new Paperwhite in the ad-supported configuration at Amazon, GameStop, and Best Buy for $104.99. The ad-free version is also on sale at Amazon for $119.99 instead of $159.99.The battery in the latest Kindle Paperwhite can last for months, so you can enjoy reading for hours on end without having to worry about running out of battery. When you do run out, however, you can easily recharge the device thanks to its... Continue reading…

Snap will discontinue the selling of NextMind’s developer kit pictured above. | NextMind Meta, Apple, and a slew of other tech companies are building augmented reality glasses with displays that place computing on the world around you. The idea is that this type of product will one day become useful in a similar way to how smartphones transformed what computers can do. But how do you control smart glasses with a screen you can’t touch and no mouse or keyboard?It’s a big problem the industry has yet to solve, but there’s a growing consensus that some type of brain computer interface will be the answer. To that end, Snap said on Wednesday that it has acquired NextMind, the Paris-based neurotech startup behind a headband that lets the wearer control aspects of a computer — like aiming a gun in a video game or unlocking the... Continue reading…

The new Eero Pro 6E is the company’s first 6GHz Wi-Fi-compatible router. | Image: Eero Amazon-owned Eero jumped into the Wi-Fi 6E fray today with the announcement of its first Wi-Fi 6E-enabled mesh Wi-Fi system. The tri-band Eero Pro 6E router adds access to the new 6GHz Wi-Fi band, supports wireless speeds up to 1.3 Gbps, and claims coverage for over 100 devices simultaneously. The 6GHz band is touted as a spacious new Wi-Fi “traffic lane” that should enable faster speeds and less congestion across your home network.The Eero Pro 6E starts at $299 for a single router and goes up to $699 for a full three-unit mesh system. The new model brings with it a shakeup to the entire Eero line — there’s also a new dual-band Eero 6 Plus system that offers gigabit speeds at a lower price (starting at $139), and a price cut to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Artificial intelligence algorithms are everywhere in healthcare. They sort through patients’ data to predict who will develop medical conditions like heart disease or diabetes, they help doctors figure out which people in an emergency room are the sickest, and they screen medical images to find evidence of diseases. But even as AI algorithms become more important to medicine, they’re often invisible to people receiving care.Artificial intelligence tools are complicated computer programs that suck in vast amounts of data, search for patterns or trajectories, and make a prediction or recommendation to help guide a decision. Sometimes, the way algorithms process all of the information they’re taking in is a black box — inscrutable even... Continue reading…

Nintendo A very joyful game belies a kinda empty one Continue reading…

Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images The National Football League is stepping into virtual reality with the announcement of a new official VR game. It will be developed in partnership with sports technology company StatusPro, which makes use of player data for an AR training tool already used by NFL teams. The plan is for the game to become an annual series, like EA’s Madden series.There aren’t many details on the game itself, including what it’ll be called or when it’ll be available. The NFL’s press release describes it as a first-person simulation gaming title that will be released on Meta Quest and PlayStation VR. (No word on whether that means PSVR2.)“We are seeing a growing number of fans engaging with VR.”There are other VR football games already available, like... Continue reading…

Photography by Vjeran Pavic / Treatment by Alex Castro / The Verge Why DJI’s drones are a hot-button issue in the Ukraine-Russia war Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is planning to release a Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) feature for the PlayStation 5 “in the coming months.” The long-awaited VRR feature will sync the refresh rate of a display to the PS5’s graphical output, and will reduce visual artifacts, screen tearing, and frame pacing issues. You’ll even be able to use the new VRR feature with games that don’t officially support it. The news comes as Sony announced the availability of new PS5 and PS4 software updates.“Gameplay in many PS5 titles feels smoother as scenes render instantly, graphics look crisper, and input lag is reduced,” says the PlayStation team in a blog post. “Previously released PS5 games can be fully optimized for VRR through a game patch and future games may include VRR... Continue reading…

YouTube is the latest company to offer free shows TV with ads. The video giant says you’ll now be able to stream nearly 4,000 episodes of TV for free, as long as you’re also willing to watch ads during the show. Shows available include Hell’s Kitchen, Andromeda, and Heartland, and you’ll be able to watch them in the US on the web, mobile devices, and “most connected TVs via the YouTube TV app,” YouTube says in a blog post.With the new free TV shows, YouTube is taking on a number of major competitors. One is over-the-air television — by offering free TV on demand, YouTube is likely hoping that you’ll see what’s available on its platform instead of channel surfing to see what else might be on.There are already many options for streaming... Continue reading…

Malware makers have already exploited other certificates released by Lapsus$. | Image by Alex Castro / The Verge The hacking group Lapsus$, known for claiming to have hacked Nvidia, Samsung, and more, this week claimed it has even hacked Microsoft. The group posted a file that it claimed contains partial source code for Bing and Cortana in an archive holding nearly 37GB of data.On Tuesday evening, after investigating, Microsoft confirmed the group that it calls DEV-0537 compromised “a single account” and stole parts of source code for some of its products. A blog post on its security site says Microsoft investigators have been tracking the Lapsus$ group for weeks, and details some of the methods they’ve used to compromise victims’ systems. According to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), “the objective of DEV-0537 actors is to gain... Continue reading…

The company faced a much larger outage yesterday. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A few of Apple’s services experienced another outage on Tuesday, just one day after a good chunk of Apple’s services and online infrastructure were knocked offline on Monday. Apple’s system status page says that the issues with Apple Music, Podcasts, Books, and the App Store have been resolved, almost two hours after they began affecting some users.Thankfully, iMessage, iCloud, Apple Maps, and Apple TV didn’t go down like they did on Monday. During the outage, Apple also warned that there were issues with Weather, Game Center, Apple Card, and the iCloud Web Apps, saying that they may be “slow or unavailable.” Those issues are also now marked as resolved.During the outage, Apple Music worked for some Verge staff but not for others, and... Continue reading…

A Starlink terminal being used in Ukraine | Photo credit should read Nina Lyashonok/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images SpaceX’s internet-from-space program Starlink is increasing prices for both the purchase of Starlink kits and for the monthly service, according to a new email sent out to customers this afternoon reviewed by The Verge. The company says the “sole purpose of these adjustments is to keep pace with rising inflation.”Originally, opting into Starlink required a $499 upfront purchase of a starter kit with all the necessary supplies, including a user terminal, or antenna, for connecting with SpaceX’s satellites. Customers would then pay a $99 monthly charge to keep the service running. Now, the new monthly price going forward will be $110. All new orders of the Starlink kit will now cost $599, and anyone who put down a deposit for the original... Continue reading…

Imagine if the Sonos Beam had its own TV interface | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sonos is known for its whole-home audio systems and its soundbars, but now the company is hiring for a new home theater project that’s sure to give you more control from the couch. The speculation comes from the mention of a new “Home Theater OS” project being revealed in new Sonos job postings, as reported by Protocol.The most revealing job posting is perhaps the “Head of Partnerships, Home Theatre” position:

The NFL is already invested in NFTs. | Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images The National Football League will now allow teams to secure sponsorships with blockchain companies. However, it will still prohibit them from promoting specific cryptocurrencies and fan tokens, according to a report from CNBC. This reverses the NFL’s previous decision to bar teams from cryptocurrency sponsorships completely.In an internal memo viewed by CNBC, the NFL says it will permit “promotional relationships without undertaking excessive regulator or brand risk,” which won’t include stadium signage. It also maintains that “clubs will continue to be prohibited from directly promoting cryptocurrency.”Blockchain sponsorships can only last three yearsSponsorships between teams and blockchain companies can only last a maximum of three... Continue reading…

Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan is stepping down. In a blog titled “Moving Forward, with Gratitude,” Hasan says COO Sean Leow will be interim CEO and that the search for a permanent replacement is already underway.In an interview with Fast Company, Hasan says “personal reflections” and a desire to spend more time with his family informed his decision to leave Kickstarter after three years.“I am so proud of the work we’ve done together,” Hasan writes. “Leading such a passionate, skilled, and dedicated team through intense moments of change, milestone victories, and complex challenges has been a humbling and rewarding experience.”He touted the company’s successes under his leadership, including reaching $6 billion raised in pledges by 20... Continue reading…

Google doesn’t have plans to support C-Band on the Pixel 5A. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Google says it doesn’t plan to update the software for the Pixel 4a 5G, 5, or 5a to support C-band 5G in the US, despite also saying that the phones have the necessary hardware and that the functionality will work in other countries. Google hasn’t explained this decision, which it announced in a post on the Pixel support forums (h/t to Android Police for spotting that post). Google has updated its latest Pixels in the US, the 6 and 6 Pro, with C-band via a software update, but not those older phones.The post says that the earlier Pixel models “have C-band capable hardware and are enabled for operation in certain countries” but that the company does “not have any plans to support C-band operation in the US” for those earlier Pixel... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter may have just rolled back a really bad product decision, but on Tuesday, it added a very good one: you can make GIFs right from the in-app camera on iOS. The new feature could be a useful way to share short clips to your timeline without having to upload a full video.Here’s a GIF I recorded from my iPhone 12 Mini just before writing this story if you want to get an idea of how one of these GIFs looks: