The Verge

Image: YouTube / AI Addict Tesla has a complicated relationship with customers who pay to test the beta version of its “Full Sell Driving” software. Often, these people are diehard fans, keen to promote the company’s prowess and show off its new driver assist features. Sometimes, though, they overshare — posting videos that show exactly when and how Tesla’s software gets it wrong.When the person sharing these clips also works for Tesla, things are even more complicated. John Bernal, a former Tesla employee who reviewed the company’s FSD Beta software on his YouTube channel AI Addict says he was fired by the company last month after posting a video that showed his Tesla hitting a bollard.Bernal says he was told his YouTube channel was a “conflict of interest”As... Continue reading…

Photo by Tayfun CoÅkun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Part of the Apple Park campus in Cupertino was evacuated after first responders discovered an envelope containing a white powder substance, NBC Bay Area reports. The Santa Clara County Fire Department’s incident report shows there was a fire alarm and hazmat response at Apple’s headquarters just after noon local time.Emergency personnel since have determined that the situation is under control, and employees apparently have been allowed to go back inside, according to the publication. It’s unclear what the substance may have been.Apple told employees at Apple Park that “authorities concluded that there was no presence of hazardous materials,” according to an email obtained later in the day by The Verge. The email says that operations... Continue reading…

Spotify’s name will be featured on FC Barcelona’s jerseys for the next four seasons. | Image by FC Barcelona/Spotify Camp Nou, one of the most iconic soccer stadiums in the world, is being rebranded as Spotify Camp Nou as part of a sponsorship agreement with Spanish soccer club FC Barcelona that gives Spotify naming rights to the stadium. Spotify’s name will also appear on the jerseys of both the men’s and women’s teams for the next four seasons starting in the 2022/23 season.The deal still has to get ratified by FC Barcelona’s Extraordinary Delegate Members Assembly in a vote that will take place on April 3rd. It likely won’t have much trouble passing, however, as FC Barcelona is in a huge amount of debt and sought to sell a stake in its media production division last year.The deal is reportedly worth $310 million. It could have been worth more,... Continue reading…

These people seem really thrilled about their websites. | Image: Google Google Domains, the company’s domain registration service, is losing the beta tag after first launching more than seven years ago, Google announced Tuesday. The service is now generally available in 26 countries, and the company says it already has “millions of active registrations.”If you register with Google Domains, you can pick from more than 300 different domain endings, have access to “high performance DNS” (Google says it’s the same infrastructure it uses for itself), “around-the-clock customer support from real people,” and more. The company is also offering a 20 percent discount off “any single domain registration or transfer-in to Google Domains” for new and returning users with the code DOMAINS20.However, if you register a... Continue reading…

He provided some details, but didn’t talk specific features. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta would add NFTs to Instagram, according to Engadget and The Daily Beast. While he didn't describe exactly what that would look like, he said during a session at South By Southwest that "over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment."There have been rumblings that this was coming. Last year, Instagram lead Adam Mosseri said the team was "actively exploring NFTs" but didn't have any actual announcements. In January, we heard a report that teams at Facebook and Instagram were working on NFT integrations. The report mentioned that there was progress on features to let you use an NFT as a profile and mint NFTs on the... Continue reading…

Super73 Super73, the electric mobility company popular with YouTubers and celebrities, introduced its first electric motorcycle — though it’s just a concept for now. The company also unveiled a host of other battery-powered vehicles, including an e-bike for kids, in a dramatic expansion of its product lineup.The Super73 C1X Concept cuts a slimmer profile than most motorcycles, with 15-inch wheels and a 31-inch seat height. The 51-inch wheelbase is significantly shorter than other electric motorcycles, like Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire (58.7 inches) and Zero’s SR/F (57.1 inches). It also isn’t as fast as most two-wheelers on the road, gas or electric, with a top speed of 75mph. That still makes it one of the fastest vehicles to come out of the... Continue reading…

A discount brings the price from $20 a month to $0 a month. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon is introducing a new discount to its Fios Forward plans, which should let low-income customers get fiber internet for free when combined with discounts through the federal Affordable Connectivity Program. The free tier, which is normally $40 a month, includes 300Mbps speeds as well as a $10 discount on a Verizon Unlimited Wireless plan. Customers who need more bandwidth (and are able to pay more) can get a gigabit connection for $50 a month with the ACP discount, which also includes more benefits and a larger cell plan discount.Verizon says Fios Forward is available to people who qualify for the government’s Lifeline program. The 200Mbps tier used to cost $20 a month, according to a Wayback Machine archive from November, so... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the days since The Walt Disney Company first came under fire for giving money to the politicians behind Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, CEO Bob Chapek has apologized for initially having nothing to say, and he subsequently announced the corporation’s plans to “pause” its political donations in Florida for an undetermined amount of time. In the eyes of many of Disney’s queer employees, those steps are simply not enough, and now they’re taking action to make that point as clear as they can to the company’s leadership.In response to Disney’s actions and Chapek’s emails, a number of Disney employees are now planning to stage a week of virtual 15-minutes walkouts beginning this afternoon, culminating in a day-long walkout on March 22nd.... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Phones have become so much a part of our daily lives that it can be immediately traumatic if you suddenly can’t find your phone — whether you’ve left it in a cab, accidentally dropped it out of your pocket, or lost it under your bed. If you have an Android phone, you can use the Find My Device feature to (hopefully) locate your phone.Find My Device depends on two things being enabled: the feature itself (of course) and Google’s Location services. In addition, the phone also has to be turned on and signed in to a Google account.The Find My Device feature comes as part of the standard OS on Pixels and several other Android phones and is usually turned on by default. Be aware that some Android models may offer a different app; for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Within the last year, Microsoft not only revealed a new generation of Windows, it fully dived in by launching Windows 11 last fall, and now it’s scheduled another preview event to discuss the “exciting future” of “Hybrid Work, Powered by Windows.” Set to take place on April 5th at 11AM ET, it will feature Windows exec Panos Panay showing off Microsoft’s security, productivity, and management features, both in the client and the cloud. Image: Microsoft A Microsoft Teams interface demo showing off a remote meeting. What exactly does that include? The event page doesn’t say much and Microsoft hasn’t openly discussed the event, but we’ve seen plenty of clues about the kind of hybrid work solutions and security... Continue reading…

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced new rules for foreign broadcasting in the US. | Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission rolled out new rules requiring broadcasters to disclose when foreign governments lease time on their airwaves, an issue that has become more urgent following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.“In light of recent events, this effort — which is all about transparency — has taken on new importance,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement Tuesday. “It is essential that audiences know when a broadcast station has been compensated to air content coming from a foreign government.”While foreign governments can purchase airwave time, they cannot directly hold a broadcasting license. Tuesday’s rules force broadcasters to provide an on-air disclosure whenever a foreign government, foreign... Continue reading…

Astra’s LV0009 rocket ahead of today’s flight from Alaska. | Image: Astra Space startup Astra successfully returned to launch today, a little more than a month after its last launch failed mid-flight. Taking off from Kodiak, Alaska, Astra’s LV0009 rocket deployed the satellites it was carrying into orbit for three commercial companies, marking the company’s first successful commercial mission.There was a brief moment during the flight, however, where it seemed like today’s mission might have been a failure. Soon after reaching orbit, the vehicle was supposed to deploy the satellites it was carrying (except for one that was to remain attached to the rocket). However, Astra did not immediately receive confirmation that the payloads had deployed and ended its livestream of the flight before getting word about... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge In the latest communications setback to hit the Russian military, the Security Service of Ukraine (abbreviated as SBU) claims to have captured a hacker who was helping to provide communications services for Russian troops inside Ukrainian territory, VICE reports.The SBU shared details in a tweet and Telegram message posted at around 10AM local time (4AM ET), including pictures alleged to show the hacker and their communications system, though the reports have not been independently confirmed.According to the SBU’s Telegram post, the hacker was helping to route calls from within Russia to the mobile phones of Russian troops in Ukraine, and also sending text messages to Ukrainian security officers and civil servants proposing they... Continue reading…

Image: Polk How small can a soundbar get while still offering Dolby Atmos? According to Polk, the answer is 14.5 inches. That’s the width of the company’s new $499 MagniFi Mini AX, which supports both Atmos and DTS:X. In addition to the very compact soundbar, Polk is also including a wireless subwoofer for that price.The Sonos Beam — which itself is what I’d consider a small-ish soundbar — measures 25.63 inches wide. The MagniFi Mini AX manages to hack over 10 inches off of that, and frankly its dimensions and top-panel controls make it look more like a Bluetooth speaker than home theater gear. On the front is an OLED ticker for relaying key information like sound adjustments. Image: Polk Most soundbars dwarf an iPhone in... Continue reading…

Image: Bandai Namco Elden Ring is just so massive and its bosses are so tough that the average player will probably take over 60 hours to beat it. But speedrunners, assisted by some traditional speedrunning tricks and the game’s own open design, have somehow managed to beat the sprawling game in under 30 minutes.For a speedrunning enthusiast, the first days of a game’s release are extremely exciting. New techniques and optimizations are constantly being discovered, as boss behaviors and the runner’s own luck work with or against them, making almost every run a possible world record. While every runner is ostensibly competing against the clock, two runners have emerged in the Elden Ring speed community, each racing to post lower and lower times.Lil Aggy is... Continue reading…

Fixing a bricked Apple Watch used to require a mail-in repair. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s latest watchOS update, 8.5, now has a recovery mode that can help you restore your Apple Watch if it gets stuck on the dreaded red exclamation point screen (via 9to5Mac). The update is laid out in a support article that was updated on Monday — while the previous version of the article just recommended trying to reboot the watch, then setting up a mail-in repair with Apple support, it now describes the process of recovering your Watch at home.Apple’s article says that you’ll need an iPhone running iOS 15.4 to go through the steps. If your Watch is showing an animation of a phone and a watch being brought together, or a red exclamation point, the process to fix it is relatively simple:

Image: Microsoft Microsoft appears to be testing a new type of ad inside File Explorer on Windows 11. Microsoft MVP and Twitter user Florian Beaubois discovered an ad in the latest test build of Windows 11, prompting users to check out the Microsoft Editor. While the ads might have appeared for some Windows 11 users, Microsoft says it was a mistake.“This was an experimental banner that was not intended to be published externally and was turned off,” says Brandon LeBlanc, senior program manager for Windows, in a statement to The Verge.

Image: Microsoft Microsoft says it has improved the performance of its Xbox Cloud Gaming service on the iPhone and iPad. The cloud game streaming service, formerly known as xCloud, first launched fully on iOS and iPadOS nearly a year ago, accessible from the Safari web browser. While the web browser version isn’t as fully featured as a dedicated app, Microsoft is now improving its performance for Apple’s mobile devices despite being unable to launch a standalone xCloud app.Improvements include optimized video output on iOS devices and optimized network data transmission to speed up the responsiveness of Xbox Cloud Gaming. “You asked for a better iOS experience, and as a result, we have brought major performance improvements to all supported iPhone and... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Samsung is bringing some of the camera features that come with the flagship Galaxy S22 to older devices, the company announced on its site. The One UI 4.1 update will extend to a wide range of phones, including the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S21, Galaxy S10, Note 20, and a portion of the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip families.The features won’t trickle down to all devicesThe company details some of the features it’s handing down to older devices in a post on its Korean community forum (via Android Police). Unfortunately, not all devices will support every feature listed here, with the majority of features landing on previous-gen devices, like the Galaxy S21, Z Fold 3, and Z Flip 3.If your device supports the update, it could introduce a number of... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service didn’t stick the landing, and it’s been a rough ride since. But today, at the Google for Games Developer Summit, it feels like Stadia might be moving in a promising direction — one that gives both gamers and game developers a reason to pay attention. And the magic word is “free.” Free demos, free trials, free for developers to offer, and hopefully free of the friction that made Stadia a difficult investment to start.I want to start off with something I wrote last February, when I explained how Google had drastically reduced its Stadia ambitions from what was effectively “become a game company” to “offer a white-label service to game publishers” instead. I wrote:

Netflix Former President Barack Obama is the surprise narrator of the upcoming Netflix documentary Our Great National Parks, a five-part series looking at wildlife around the world. The series was announced last February as part of a slate of programming that Barack and Michelle Obama are producing for Netflix via their Higher Ground Productions company — although the announcement didn’t mention that the former president would serve as host and narrator.“A fish that can walk. Surfing hippos that want to catch the waves. Species found nowhere else on earth,” Obama says in the trailer for Our Great National Parks. “When humanity started to protect these wild places, we did not realize how important they would become: They’re a haven for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge You’re sitting in your office and decide to find out when your next appointment is. You pick up your phone and murmur quietly, “OK Google, when’s my next appointment?” And then, loud enough to be heard over the entire room, your Google Assistant announces, “Next up, you have an appointment with your urologist on September 3rd at 9AM.”You don’t have to hide under your desk anymore. Google has now made it possible to silence all Google Assistant voice output and only show the answers to your questions on your phone. Here’s how to set it up.First, you need to get to your Google Assistant settings. You can do it one of two ways:

David Mamet, at the Rome Film Festival in 2016. | Photo by Ernesto Ruscio / Getty Images David Mamet is known for plays like Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, films like The Spanish Prisoner and Heist, books like On Directing Film and The Wicked Son, and as of last week, a short story about a lost airplane pilot filed as a legal brief supporting social media regulation in Texas.Mamet’s amicus brief is titled “Lessons from Aerial Navigation,” and as it’s two pages long, you should really just go read it. Here’s a sample of the prose:

“I want to be the new mascot for The Verge.” Rifftrax: The Game is a new party game that’s all about creating the most crowd-pleasing text-to-voice dub to overlay B-movie footage. It’s launching for the current and previous generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles, Nintendo Switch, and on Steam (for PC and macOS) for $9.99 on May 5th. This game was made in collaboration with RiffTrax, a group of expert B-movie commentators consisting of former Mystery Science Theater 3000 stars Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy.It was developed by Wide Right Interactive, and similar to its previous game, What The Dub?!, the goal is to create the most ridiculous and clever dubs for each clip so that other players can vote on which they like best. A big part of the fun is players vote... Continue reading…

Marvel Studios Unlike her fellow Jersey teens who insist that superheroes aren’t cool, Kamala Khan, the heroine of Marvel’s upcoming Ms. Marvel series, thinks capes are the flyest thing in the world. Naturally, she wants to become one of them herself, and in Ms. Marvel’s first trailer, the young girl’s wish starts to come true.From series creator Bisha K. Ali, Ms. Marvel tells the story of how Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a diehard Carol Danvers stan, first discovers her own burgeoning superpowers and starts putting them to good use as supervillainy begins to take root in Jersey City. Similar to her comics counterpart, the MCU’s Kamala doesn’t hide the fact that she’s something of a fanfiction-writing nerd, something that few of her peers really... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Howdy, team! I’m here, on a Tuesday. And what a day to have a platform, because now I can tell you to go watch / listen to the premiere of MUNA’s new song at 11:45AM ET. May we sob together. (The teaser made the music sound somewhat upbeat, but you really never know.)EXCLUSIVE: Big $$$ in virtual podcast eventsIn-person podcast tours have shown that people are willing to pay for something beyond a pre-recorded episode. But virtual versions of those shows? In this climate of Zoom fatigue? Oh yeah, baby. In fact, they’re booming.Moment House has been live-streaming podcast recordings, called “Moments,” since March 2021, and I’m told that the company has sold 140,000 tickets over the course of the 56 that it’s hosted since then. The... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge There are few things as enjoyable as local multiplayer gaming, and nothing beats saving some coin on tech that doesn’t usually go on sale. The Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers are a prime example, costing $69.99 at Woot instead of its regular $79.99 price. Woot is running this deal until Sunday, March 20th, or until it sells out. The neon blue and red controller combo is not currently available, but the matching gray set is still for sale at this discounted price.It’s rare to get any discount on Joy-Con controllers. In many games, an individual Joy-Con is usable as a small gamepad, meaning you can play four-player local multiplayer with just these Joy-Cons and the pair that came with your Switch. What perfect timing this is, as the... Continue reading…

CEO Matt Mullenweg on why he bets big on small companies Continue reading…

A robot vacuum cleaner that can look after itself, for a hefty price Continue reading…

A rendering of Intel’s new Magdeburg fab | Image: Intel Intel has announced a massive new investment in its European manufacturing sites, with a new €17 billion “leading-edge semiconductor fab mega-site” in Germany, and a €12 billion expansion of its existing Ireland fab.The company is also building a new R&D and design hub in France, and plans to invest in additional areas in Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Spain for manufacturing, foundry services, and research. All told, Intel is planning to invest over €33 billion in its initial wave of European R&D and manufacturing, as part of a total of €80 billion invested in the EU over the next decade.Intel plans to invest €80 billion in EU manufacturing over the next decadeThe new German site will consist of two semiconductor fabs in Magdeburg,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When doing some of its own research, Intel’s security team discovered a flaw in AMD’s years-old patch against Spectre-based vulnerabilities, according to a report by Tom’s Hardware. AMD has since provided an update on its security bulletin in response, where it suggests using an alternate mitigation option and has additional advice for software developers.AMD’s years-old fix doesn’t adequately protect against SpectreSpectre is a type of security flaw affecting nearly all modern Intel and AMD processors that can give attackers access to sensitive data while remaining undetected. Last week, researchers found that Intel and Arm processors are susceptible to a new kind of Spectre v2 attack — although it’s just a proof-of-concept — called... Continue reading…

Lionsgate Entertainment The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent may achieve the highest concentration of Nicolas Cage possible in a piece of media without advanced scientific instruments. It’s a movie about Nic Cage (played by Nic Cage) teaming up with a possibly criminal fan of Nic Cage to make a movie about Nic Cage (played by Nic Cage playing Nic Cage) while occasionally yelling at and / or kissing a second, imaginary Nic Cage (played by Nic Cage run through a creepy de-aging filter). It features clips from several earlier Nic Cage movies as well as a Nic Cage memorabilia room containing a Nic Cage statue and that sequin pillow with Nic Cage on it. Nic Cage attended the film’s premiere at SXSW. So did at least one person holding a paper cutout of Nic Cage’s... Continue reading…

Xiaomi has announced the international version of the Xiaomi 12 Pro, its first global flagship phone since dropping the “Mi” branding. As with earlier phones in the Mi series like last year’s Mi 11, it’s a high-end device that seeks to beat competitors like Samsung on price-performance ratio.The design of the phone is straightforward but attractive. The grey model I’ve been testing has a matte finish on the frosted glass that’s almost impossible to mar with fingerprints. The screen is a slightly curved 6.73-inch 120Hz 1440p LTPO OLED panel that looks great. Like every other 2022 flagship, the processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. You can get 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and there’s 256GB of storage. The battery is 4,600mAh and charges at... Continue reading…

AMD’s latest desktop processor, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, has finally gotten a release date and price after being announced earlier this year at CES 2022. It’ll hit stores next month on April 20th for $449, ushering in what AMD proudly declares to be the “world’s fastest gaming processor.The new Ryzen 7 5800X3D is extremely similar to the original Ryzen 7 5800X model, with eight cores, 16 threads, and compatibility with AMD’s AM4 socket. But there’s one major difference: the Ryzen 7 5800X3D marks the debut of AMD’s 3D-stacking V-Cache technology, allowing AMD to up the L3 cache from 32MB to 96MB. The company says that the additional cache should translate to about a 15 percent boost in overall performance compared to the Ryzen 5900X (despite... Continue reading…

Volvo In the not too distant future, you’ll be able to sip coffee while your electric vehicle sips electrons. That’s because Volvo is teaming up with ChargePoint to build a network of EV chargers at Starbucks locations across five US states.The companies plan on installing 15 DC fast charging stations at Starbucks along a 1,350-mile route that stretches from Seattle to Denver. Each station will feature four plugs, making it a total of 60 chargers. And they will also bear Volvo’s branding, making it one of the few EV charging stations in the US to feature an automaker’s logo aside from Tesla’s Supercharger network.The chargers will be fully installed by the end of 2022The chargers will be fully installed by the end of 2022, the companies... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Arm is preparing to cut hundreds of employees from its global workforce after being forced to abandon its $40 billion sale to Nvidia last month. The Telegraph reports that the company’s chief executive Rene Haas told staff on Monday that between 12 and 15 percent of the company’s employees could be affected. This could translate to almost a thousand employees if, as The Guardian reports, Arm has over 6,500 employees worldwide. Arm says the majority of roles affected will be in its UK and US-based workforce.“This is going to be a tough time for everyone, so I want to be clear on why we are doing this,” Haas said in an email seen by The Telegraph. “We need to be more disciplined about our costs and where we’re investing. To stay... Continue reading…

DeepWell Digital Therapeutics Devolver Digital founder Mike Wilson is partnering with medical device expert Ryan Douglas to launch DeepWell Digital Therapeutics, a video game company that will both develop games that can treat health conditions. The company will also help outside companies identify existing games that have therapeutic value, the founders say.Video game-based tools can help with conditions like depression and ADHD, research shows. DeepWell Digital Therapeutics plans to build on those studies. “There was an amazing amount of science that had already been done,” Douglas says. “We started to recognize exactly how therapeutic these games already were.”Often, a game used as a therapy would be designed as a therapy first, with fun or engaging gameplay... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images Tesla has raised prices across its entire line-up of electric vehicles. Prices have increased by between 5 to 10 percent, with the cheapest car the company sells — the Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive — now starting at $46,990, while its top-end Model X Tri motor saw a price increase of $12,500, from $126,490 to $138,990.It’s the second price bump Tesla has implemented in less than a week, after it increased the cost of certain long-range models last Wednesday. However, today’s price raises are not only more substantial than last week’s but apply to every vehicle the company sells.Here’s how those increases play out (with old prices sourced from archived copies of Tesla’s website via Wayback Machine, dated to March 10th or more recent):

The Galaxy A33. | Image: @Evleaks Samsung’s Galaxy A33, rumored to be the most affordable of the three devices the company will announce on March 17th, has leaked in full. Evan Blass has posted a series of renders of the phone over on Twitter, while Appuals has its specs. These include a 6.4-inch 90Hz 1080p OLED display, a 5,000mAh battery, and four rear cameras. It’ll reportedly be priced at €379 in Europe, which is roughly $417 stateside.Reports suggest the Galaxy A33 will be announced alongside the Galaxy A53 and Galaxy A73 at Samsung’s “Awesome Galaxy A Event” this week. Samsung’s midrange A-series are some of its most popular devices around the world. In fact, the Samsung Galaxy A12 was the sixth best-selling phone in the world in 2021 according to Counterpoint... Continue reading…

Power cords for bitcoin mining machines are plugged into electrical outlets at a mining facility operated by Bitmain Technologies Ltd. in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, on Friday, Aug. 11, 2017. | Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images A de facto ban on Bitcoin and Ether died in the European Union Parliament today. The controversial proposal attempted to clean up pollution from the most energy-inefficient cryptocurrencies. But even though the proposal failed, cryptocurrencies are still likely to face scrutiny from policymakers as the EU tries to tackle twin climate and energy crises. Getting rid of their pollution has become a global game of whack-a-mole since China banned cryptocurrencies last year.The EU Parliament’s committee on economic and monetary affairs voted on Monday to move forward with a legislative framework for regulating digital assets. In the process, it decided to drop a proposed rule in the framework that would have prohibited people in the EU from... Continue reading…

One of many fast NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market. | Samsung 18 months ago, Microsoft revealed that one of the most important advancements in its new Xbox Series X console would be coming to PC — the ability to stream tremendous amounts of data from a blazing fast NVMe solid state drive to your GPU, instead of relying on your pesky CPU to decompress it first. The so-called “DirectStorage API” would let games load more detailed worlds, and load them more quickly than before.Now, Microsoft says the DirectStorage API has arrived. “Starting today, Windows games can ship with DirectStorage. This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games by allowing developers to more fully utilize the speed of the latest storage devices,” reads the company’s blog post. ... Continue reading…

“Facebook itself is not an innovative company,” said the former Nintendo boss. | Image: Bloomberg Reggie Fils-Aimé (who led Nintendo of America before Bowser took over) isn’t impressed with the company formerly known as Facebook, or its idea of the metaverse. He lobbed a few fireballs in Mark Zuckerberg’s direction during an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang at South by Southwest over the weekend, saying that Meta isn’t innovative and that it bought or copied almost all of its interesting ideas.Just so we’re all on the same page when discussing this concept, Fils-Amié defines the metaverse as “a digital space where you interact with your friends in a social and gaming type of environment” during his interview. (You can also read our great explainer on the idea here if you want to go deeper.) In general, Fils-Amié doesn’t seem... Continue reading…

Playing Destiny on multiple platforms? Here’s what you need to know | Image: Bungie If you’re playing Destiny 2 on more than one platform, enabling cross-save allows you to maintain your progression regardless of which platform you’re playing on, meaning you can finally move your Guardians, with all of their loot, to a different platform and freely jump between console and PC at your leisure. Here’s how to do it, whether you want to transfer your account data between a PC and console or vice-versa.First, there are a few important disclaimers to keep in mind before you go through with activating cross-save for your account:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is facing a lawsuit from a Florida restaurant chain owner that accuses the company of directing users to “unauthorized” Google-branded food ordering webpages, where it uses restaurants names “without their approval,” as first reported by Ars Technica.A copy of the lawsuit alleges Google employs “bait-and-switch” tactics by placing its “Order Online” button at the top of restaurants’ profile panels on the search engine. The large blue button redirects users to a food.google.com page where they can select items from a restaurant’s menu and then place an order through a variety of third-party services, like Postmates, DoorDash, and UberEats — not through the restaurant itself. These services take a commission from participating... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Researchers have discovered a new type of destructive wiper malware affecting computers in Ukraine, making it at least the third strain of wiper to have hit Ukrainian systems since the Russian invasion began.The malware, dubbed CaddyWiper, was found by researchers at Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET, who shared details in a tweet thread posted Monday.According to the researchers, the malware erases user data and partition information from any drives attached to a compromised machine. Sample code shared on Twitter suggests the malware corrupts files on the machine by overwriting them with null byte characters, making them unrecoverable.“We know that if the wiper works, it will effectively render the system useless,” Jean-Ian... Continue reading…

Photo by Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images Only a dozen states are regularly reporting sewage data to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, Politico reported. The system, which launched in 2020, collects data on levels of the coronavirus at sewage plants around the country. But with most states not participating, the agency isn’t able to get a clear picture of how the virus is spreading nationwide.Wastewater is a valuable public health tool for the COVID-19 pandemic because it doesn’t rely on people showing up for testing or reporting the results from tests taken at home. Levels of the virus in sewage also tend to rise before cases start to go up, so it’s an early warning sign for increased spread. Early signs of the omicron... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last week, Twitter introduced one of its worst product decisions in a while: the service would default to showing the algorithmically served Home feed while the reverse-chronological Latest feed was accessible in a separate tab. The change, which was available first on iOS and was set to arrive “soon” on Android and the web, made it more difficult to view tweets in chronological order. Following significant pushback, Twitter announced Monday that it would be reverting things to the way they used to be.“We heard you — some of you always want to see latest Tweets first,” Twitter said in a tweet on its support account. “We’ve switched the timeline back and removed the tabbed experience for now while we explore other options.”

The “Nintendo GameCube Advance” is a strange piece of internet gaming history: a fanciful render of a portable version of the GameCube that has made the rounds online since 2005. But while the render has long been dismissed as a fan-made fake, YouTuber GingerOfOz has taken matters into his own hands and built a real, functional version of the concept, as spotted by Eurogamer.Ginger didn’t just build his own real GameCube Advance, though: he also tracked down the original artist behind the 2005 mockup and got the scoop on how and why they made it in the first place. Ginger is no stranger to making slick custom Nintendo mods, like his impressive Wii Boy Color from 2020 that somehow managed to shrink an entire Wii into the... Continue reading…

The modder behind the project went all the way for the peak early 2000s aesthetic. | Image: Connor55 on MacRumors Apple is releasing cool new desktop Macs again, but people are still doing plenty of fun projects using older Apple machines. A fun example that we spotted recently (h/t Input) was this mod by someone named Connor, who took the internals of an M1 Mac Mini and put them into one of Apple’s most iconic desktops, the iMac G4.As Connor shows in a YouTube video, the G4 still has all of its original functionality after his mod — it can play DVDs from an internal drive (though they did have to swap out the original one, which connected using IDE) — and at first glance, it hasn’t been changed at all. But with the screen on, it’s obvious the computer is running the modern macOS Monterey, instead of OS X 10.5 Leopard, the last operating system... Continue reading…

Last week, a flurry of news reports worryingly claimed that Russia was threatening to strand an American astronaut on the International Space Station in direct response to sanctions placed on the country as it continues to invade neighboring Ukraine. But Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos is trying to put those fears to rest, saying that it will bring home the astronaut as planned.The NASA astronaut in question is Mark Vande Hei, who has been living on the International Space Station since April 2021. Vande Hei launched to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan, along with two cosmonauts. While living on the ISS, his stay was extended to a full year, and he is slated to return home in another Soyuz capsule on March... Continue reading…