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Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos via Getty Images On today's episode of Decoder, we're talking about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Chevron deference and what it means for the future of the internet.I've been covering the fight over net neutrality for almost my entire career as a tech reporter - over 15 years now. The idea is that internet service providers shouldn't be able to discriminate between what services you access on the internet: AT&T shouldn't be able to slow down X and speed up Threads, and Verizon shouldn't be able to block Zoom because it owns BlueJeans.It's pretty basic stuff, and after all this time, the Biden administration's Federal Communications Commission once again made it the law. But big telecom companies truly hate the idea that anyone would... Continue reading...

Image: Elgato Elgato is launching two new docks for its Stream Deck Plus device that can add XLR microphone support or a USB hub. The Stream Deck Plus originally launched in 2022 with the usual Stream Deck buttons, a new LCD display, and additional knobs, but these docks extend the functionality even further.The $119.99 XLR Dock slots into the rear of the Stream Deck Plus and delivers up to 75dB of gain, enough to power Shure's popular SM7B microphone. Just like Elgato's dedicated Wave XLR, it even has a headphone jack for zero latency monitoring.The XLR Dock means you only need a single USB cable routing to your laptop or PC and a single device instead of having to combine an XLR interface and Stream Deck. The knobs on the Stream Deck Plus can... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Early termination fees are a bit like heroin for Adobe," according to an Adobe executive quoted in the FTC's newly unredacted complaint against the company for allegedly hiding fees and making it too hard to cancel Creative Cloud. There is absolutely no way to kill off ETF or talk about it more obviously" in the order flow without taking a big business hit," this executive said.That's the big reveal in the unredacted complaint, which also contains previously unseen allegations that Adobe was internally aware of studies showing its order and cancellation flows were too complicated and customers were unhappy with surprise early termination fees.In a short interview, Adobe's general counsel and chief trust officer, Dana Rao, pushed... Continue reading...

Image: Google Yet another Google Pixel 9 leak has surfaced, and this time, it's in the form of marketing materials shared with 91mobiles by reliable leaker OnLeaks. The marketing images offer a detailed look at the specs and features that could come with the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, leaving us with very little we don't know about the new devices.As shown in the leaked images, the base Pixel 9 may feature a 6.3-inch display and 12GB of RAM, while the Pixel 9 Pro may come in 6.3-inch and 6.8-inch sizes with 16GB of RAM. The materials suggest that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold could arrive with an upgraded 6.3-inch display when folded and an eight-inch display when unfolded, along with 16GB of RAM. All devices are expected to come with... Continue reading...

Image: Disney / Warner Bros. Discovery The Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max streaming bundle jointly assembled by Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery is now available in the US. Prices start from $16.99 per month for an ad-supported tier (as opposed to the monthly $25.97 price to pay for each service's ad-supported tier separately), or $29.99 per month to go ad-free (versus $47.97).Some details about the Disney / Hulu / Max bundle offer were initially revealed back in May, which was followed by Comcast's announcement of a similar streaming bundle for Xfinity customers that combines Netflix, Peacock, and Apple TV Plus. Disney-owned ESPN is also set to offer a live sports streaming service with Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox later this year.If large streaming bundles like these... Continue reading...

Image: Team FOLON It'll be some time before Bethesda releases a new Fallout game, but in the meantime, some enterprising fans have taken it upon themselves to release a big expansion for Fallout 4. The long-in-development mod Fallout: London is available now to download for free via GOG and is also compatible with the Steam version of Fallout 4. There is a catch, however: you need to be using the version of the game before the recent next-gen update. (A next-gen compatible version is also in the works, though it doesn't have a date yet.)In development since 2019, the London mod introduces a new location and story to the postapocalyptic world, complete with fully voiced characters and 200 different quests. There's an estimated 90 hours of gameplay... Continue reading...

It's not so much a standalone health tracker or a smartwatch alternative as an accessory for your Galaxy Watch. Continue reading...

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images FBI director Christopher Wray said on Wednesday that the person who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump searched the web for How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?" one week before the rally shooting, as reported by the The New York Times.Investigators recovered the search from a laptop linked to 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, which refers to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald. That's a search that's obviously significant in terms of his state of mind," Wray said during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. That is the same day that it appears that he registered for the Butler rally."As reported by the NYT, Wray said Crooks visited the site of the Butler,... Continue reading...

Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Amazon's Prime Video has inked an 11-year deal that will bring NBA and WNBA games to the streaming service starting with the 2025-2026 season. Prime Video will air a total of 66 regular-season games and 20 playoff games each year. The league's new agreements also include Disney and Comcast-owned NBC Universal, which will keep some games on the linear ESPN, ABC, and NBC channels.They'll air on Disney's upcoming standalone ESPN streaming service and NBC's Peacock as well. As reported by The New York Times, all three companies have agreed to shell out billions for the rights, with Disney paying $2.62 billion annually, Comcast paying $2.45 billion, and Amazon paying $1.93 billion. Image: Amazon The deal represents a... Continue reading...

A new Nest Learning Thermostat appears to be imminent. | Image: MysteryLupin via X Leaked images posted on X by @MysteryLupin show a fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat and new temperature sensors, as well as several other thermostats: Nest E, Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd Gen). Missing from the pictures is the Nest Thermostat (2020), presumably because it's not compatible with Nest's room sensors.The new addition looks similar to the third-generation model but appears to have a more curved display while retaining the physical dial, as pointed out by 9to5Google. The display is likely a touchscreen, as with the third-generation model, and the image shows a new icon with three wavy lines.This indicates that the new thermostat is also an indoor air quality monitor, which would be a new feature for Nest... Continue reading...

A graphic representation of a laser communications relay between the International Space Station, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration spacecraft, and the Earth. | Image: NASA/Dave Ryan NASA researchers have successfully tested laser communications in space by streaming 4K video footage originating from an airplane in the sky to the International Space Station and back.The feat demonstrates that the space agency could provide live coverage of a Moon landing during the Artemis missions and bodes well for the development of optical communications that could connect humans to Mars and beyond. NASA normally uses radio waves to send data and talk between the surface to space but says that laser communications using infrared light can transmit data 10 to 100 times faster than radios. GIF: NASA Demonstration of the transmission's journey. Engineers fitted an airplane with a portable laser terminal,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Bing's new search experience puts AI-generated answers front and center while pushing traditional search results to the side. The new layout, which is rolling out for a small number of queries, fills your search results page with AI-generated summaries addressing various aspects of your question.Microsoft has shared an early look at what this search experience will look like... and it's a lot. For the query What is a spaghetti western?" Bing displays a summary explaining that it's a subgenre of western films produced by Italian filmmakers," along with a series of bullet points of the genre's key characteristics. Image: Microsoft I know that this feature isn't fully rolled out yet, but as a Bing and Edge user (we... Continue reading...

An image representing AMD's new Ryzen 9000 desktop parts. | Image: AMD AMD was set to launch its new Zen 5 processors on July 31st, including the 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X, a chip it's calling the world's most powerful desktop consumer processor." Instead, it's now announcing a one- to two-week delay out of an abundance of caution." The Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X will now launch on August 8th, while the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X will go on sale on August 15th.This is not because AMD's found any issues with the actual chips, spokesperson Stacy MacDiarmid tells The Verge. Rather, AMD discovered some of its chips didn't go through all of the proper testing procedures, and the company wants to make sure they do.Here's the full statement from AMD computing and graphics SVP Jack Huynh:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge More than 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on World of Warcraft have voted to form a union. The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild, formed with the assistance of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), is composed of employees across every department, including designers, engineers, artists, producers, and more. Together, they have formed the largest wall-to-wall union - or a union inclusive of multiple departments and disciplines - at Microsoft.This news comes less than a week after the formation of the Bethesda Game Studios union, which, at the time of the announcement, was itself the largest wall-to-wall Microsoft union.In a statement emailed to The Verge, Microsoft spokesperson Delaney Simmons wrote, We... Continue reading...

Little phone, how I miss you. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We've already heard rumblings about an iPhone Slim model taking the place of the iPhone Plus in 2025, making it the iPhone 17 Slim. Now, a new report from Apple supply chain expert Ming-Chi Kuo corroborates earlier claims, suggesting that the company's incredible shapeshifting non-Pro iPhone is about to evolve yet again.Kuo agrees it will come with a 6.6-inch screen and adds that it'll have just one rear-facing camera along with the company's beleaguered in-house 5G chip. Kuo says that the Slim model won't be a direct replacement for the Plus; instead, it represents new design trends beyond the existing iPhone lineup." That tracks with rumors that it might cost more than the $1,200 Pro Max.Apple has had one heck of a time trying to... Continue reading...

The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottomancan now be ordered with plant-based upholstery made from bamboo. | Image: Herman Miller Can you finally feel guilt-free about buying an iconic piece of furniture that starts at $6,395? For the first time in 68 years, Herman Miller is offering its Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman with a plant-based upholstery option that looks and feels like leather but is primarily made from bamboo.The plant-based fabric, called Banb, was developed by von Holzhausen and first launched back in 2020 as a durable alternative to both leather derived from animals and vegan leathers made using plastic-based materials like polyurethane. Banb is made by chopping up bamboo and extracting fibers that are spun into a yarn that can be woven into fabrics. Those fabrics are then treated with a plant-based topcoat sealant, according to von Holzhausen's... Continue reading...

Photo by Samuel Corum / Getty Images The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday letting victims of nonconsensual intimate images created by AI - or deepfakes" - sue their creators for damages.The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE) Act lets victims of sexually explicit deepfakes pursue civil remedies against those who produced or processed the image with the intent to distribute it. Victims who are identifiable in these kinds of deepfakes can receive up to $150,000 in damages under the bill and up to $250,000 if the incident was connected to actual or attempted sexual assault, stalking, or harassment" or the direct and proximate cause" of those harms. It's now up to the House to take up the bill before it can be moved to the... Continue reading...

Image: Apple / RapidSOS First responder networks are lining up to support a major new emergency feature in iOS 18: Live Video support. Now, 911 support platforms, including RapidSOS Unite and Prepared, are integrating with Apple's Emergency SOS Live Video, which was announced at WWDC in June.The new feature lets you video chat with 911 dispatchers and emergency responders, aiding them in finding you fast when you need help. Apple's Emergency SOS could already relay a voice call and send texts to responders, as well as share your location.This is all part of Apple's bigger push to add safety features in recent years, including Crash Detection, which was introduced on the iPhone 14 and newer and later added to the Apple Watch Series 8, Ultra, and the second... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Reddit is ramping up its crackdown on web crawlers. Over the past few weeks, Reddit has started blocking search engines from surfacing recent posts and comments unless the search engine pays up, according to a report from 404 Media.Right now, Google is the only mainstream search engine that shows recent results when you search for posts on Reddit using the site:reddit.com" trick, 404 Media reports. This leaves out Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other alternatives - and that's likely because Google has struck a $60 million deal that lets the company train its AI models on content from Reddit.It's a bold move for a massive website like Reddit to block some of the most popular search engines, but it's not all that surprising. Over the past year,... Continue reading...

Canadian soccer coach Bev Priestman will miss the Olympic team's opening match against New Zealand. | Photo by Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images A member of the Canadian Olympic women's soccer team was caught using a drone to spy on New Zealand's practice session on Monday. It's said to be the second drone incident" at a New Zealand practice over the past week.As a result, the Canadian Olympic Committee has announced that soccer coach Bev Priestman will not coach the Olympic team's opening match tomorrow. Two other staffers have been removed from the team and are being sent home from the games.The Canadian women's soccer team is the defending Olympic champion after winning gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021. According to TSN, the New Zealand team is currently ranked 28th. Taking Priestman's place as head coach during tomorrow's match will be the team's assistant coach, Andy... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google has updated the suspicious file warnings Chrome displays for why it might have blocked a potentially suspicious or dangerous file download to hopefully give users clearer explanations. For people who turn on the anti-phishing Enhanced protection feature, opting in to upload suspicious files for scanning in the cloud, it's also shifted to automatic scans, saying files sent for deep scans are 50 times more likely to be marked as malware.In response to widespread targeted cookie theft attacks on YouTube channels and other groups, like the Linus Tech Tips hacker takeover last year, Chrome has also added a prompt to scan encrypted archive files such as .zip files that have a password. Users will be prompted to enter the password so... Continue reading...

The Ace have an understated design that's very sleek, especially in white. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you're looking to be an early-ish adopter of some fancy headphones and you like the color white, you're in luck. The porcelain-colored Sonos Ace are on sale for $409.99 ($40 off) at Amazon.Sonos' first wireless headphones feature top-notch sound quality, noise cancellation, and a transparency mode. These features may be par for the course among its equally pricey competition, but what makes the Ace unique is its integration with the Sonos home audio ecosystem. If you're invested in Sonos speakers or soundbars, the Ace uses the Sonos app and has a nifty extra where you can instantly swap your TV audio from an Arc soundbar to the privacy of your headphones (if you're on iOS, since the feature has been delayed for Android). This... Continue reading...

Apple executives Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi have made it well known that the company has little interest in getting the iPad prepared for macOS software. During an event following Apple's 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Federighi said, We want to keep making iPad the best iPad it can be. We are not trying to create a Windows 8 PC or whatever." But that hasn't stopped Apple users from craving something more out of their iPads.Across our articles, videos, and podcasts, we see comments asking about what it would take to get macOS on their devices or asking for predictions of the day Apple will change its mind. So, we decided to try to find the answer.In this latest video from The Verge, video director Owen Grove... Continue reading...

Sunny the robot has a very expressive face. | Image: Apple The murder mystery was a chance for showrunner Katie Robbins to imagine a different kind of sci-fi vision. Continue reading...

Samsung's flagship foldable is as good as ever, but it feels anything but fresh. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is bringing a handful of new features to its Google Play store on Android today. There are new categorized Collections" that highlight content from apps you've already installed. The company's reward program is adding more prizes, including Pixel hardware. Google's Play Pass subscription service is introducing more versatile gaming capabilities. And in Japan, Google is rolling out a curated space for comics, which will let people dive into first chapter previews without needing to install third-party apps first.Taken together, these changes are intended to make Google Play an end-to-end experience that's more than a store."The company previewed some of the latest updates at a media briefing in New York City on Tuesday. Google... Continue reading...

In addition to iOS and Android mobile devices, the GameSir G8 Plus works with the Nintendo Switch. | Image: GameSir GameSir's latest mobile controller has an added bonus - it also works with the Nintendo Switch. In addition to turning iOS and Android smartphones into handheld consoles not dependent on finicky touchscreen controls, the new GameSir G8 Plus can replace the Switch's Joy-Cons with more ergonomic alternatives that will never succumb to joystick drift.Unlike many clamp-on gaming controllers for mobile devices that physically connect through a USB-C or Lightning port, the GameSir G8 Plus uses Bluetooth. That's what allows it to connect to smartphones, tablets, the Switch, and even PCs without requiring users to pick a version with a specific connector.The tradeoff is that the gamepad relies on a pair of 500mAh rechargeable batteries. That... Continue reading...

Trucks near a warehouse in San Bernardino County, California | Image: Wes Reel / The Verge The data is in, and it shows a significant rise in air pollution where e-retailers build their warehouses, and the neighborhoods hit the hardest have more people of color living in them.Warehouses have mushroomed across the US with the rise of e-commerce - creeping closer to Americans' homes and becoming more common than office buildings. They're there to store, sort, and send off packages that wind up at our doorsteps seemingly out of thin air. In reality, that flurry of activity sends fleets of trucks and delivery vehicles through communities, affecting neighborhoods closest to warehouses the most.I would argue that it's a very meaningful, impactful amount."The first nationwide study of its kind linked truck traffic from warehouses... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Years after Twitter replaced the pistol emoji with a green and orange water gun, X has decided to change it back to a regular handgun. An X employee announced the change in a post last week.The company hasn't explained the change, but it feels on brand for Elon Musk's social network. Twitter originally switched its emoji to display a water gun in 2018, following others like Google and Facebook. (Apple made the switch in 2016; Microsoft was a brief holdout.) We've embedded a screenshot of the X post so you can see the gun image. (On some devices, the actual post still shows a water gun when embedded.) Eventually, the Unicode Consortium, which decides which emoji get made in the first place, followed the platforms'... Continue reading...

Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) will finally get its moment on the Senate floor this week after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced he'd move for a procedural vote on the bill as soon as Thursday. It fulfills a promise Schumer made to parent advocates who have championed the bill, which would impose a duty of care for online platforms to mitigate certain risks to kids. But the timing means that even if KOSA passes the Senate before the week is out, the House itself will only have a week to consider the measure, since the August recess is close at hand.At a press conference Tuesday, advocates and bill sponsors urged other senators to quickly vote to pass the bill, without other amendments that could stall its progress... Continue reading...

Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images Will the Tesla robotaxi have a steering wheel or not? Elon Musk won't say.The Tesla CEO dodged several questions during an earnings call Tuesday about the status of the company's long-promised autonomous vehicle, including whether it would have traditional controls like pedals and steering wheels.It's an increasingly important question left hovering over Tesla's robotaxi plans, which have been already been delayed to allow more work on the prototype. Theoretically, a steering wheel- and pedal-less vehicle could take months, if not years, to be approved for public roads. A more traditional looking vehicle, meanwhile, could be released a lot sooner.Theoretically, a steering wheel- and pedal-less vehicle could take months, if not... Continue reading...

Image: TP-Link TP-Link has debuted the Archer BE3600, a $99 Wi-Fi 7 router that is the cheapest one we've seen released in the US so far since the first routers supporting the new standard started arriving last year.It doesn't have the new 6GHz band like its pricier cousins or even many of the Wi-Fi 6E routers already on the market, though. As a result, for many people, TP-Link's new router probably won't get you your downloads a lot faster - if at all - than would a much older router.The new tricks can mean a little throughput boost or a more stable connection than routers built to older specs in congested areas, though, thanks to the way Wi-Fi 7 handles its data streams. But without the one-two 6GHz punch of wider data channels and much more... Continue reading...

Image: Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios Beneath the dick jokes and solid X-Men cameos, Deadpool & Wolverine feels like Marvel's way of admitting how much of a mess its multiverse era has been. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google made nearly $85 billion over the past few months as revenue from its Search and cloud computing businesses soared. That's according to the quarter two earnings report released by Google's parent company, Alphabet, on Tuesday, which says Search alone raked in $48.5 billion.Meanwhile, Google's cloud division hit $10 billion for the first time while also achieving $1 billion in operating profit. During an earnings call on Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company's generative AI solutions for Cloud customers already generated billions in revenues and are being used by more than 2 million developers."We are innovating at every layer of the AI stack," Pichai says in a letter to investors. Our longstanding infrastructure... Continue reading...

Photo by Osmancan Gurdogan / Anadolu via Getty Images Tesla published its second quarter earnings report, in which the company said it earned $1.48 billion in net income on $25.5 billion in revenue. That represents a 2 percent increase year over year compared to $24.9 billion in revenue in Q2 2023 but a 45 percent drop in net income.Tesla's gross margins were in the spotlight again, as bullish investors hoped to see improvements after years of steady decline. Rampant price cutting and cooling demand as well as cheaper financing have pushed the company's once-vaunted margins to their lowest point in six years.EV penetration returned to growth"The company reported 18 percent gross margins based on generally accepted accounting practices, slightly more than the 17.4 percent reported last... Continue reading...

You won't need to stuff an AirTag inside ESR's Geo Wallet to find it. | Image: ESR With its own integrated tracking module compatible with Apple's Find My network and a traditional bifold design, ESR's Geo Wallet can be located using an iPhone if it goes missing and without the bulge of an AirTag stuffed inside.There's no shortage of wallets designed to accommodate an AirTag or credit card-sized trackers such as the Chipolo, but by using its own tracking module with a rechargeable lithium battery that's only 1.6 millimeters thick, the bifold Geo Wallet offers the same functionality with room inside for more than just a handful of cards. Image: ESR You can squeeze cash, coins, nine cards, and even a couple piece of ID in the Geo Wallet. Inside the Geo Wallet are slots for nine cards,... Continue reading...

Every Korean, Korean American, or K-pop fan you know probably has the KakaoTalk app. | Photo: Getty Images Kakao Corp. founder Kim Beom-su was arrested Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea. That might not mean much to Westerners, but the story is a bizarre tale of how a celebrated, self-made tech billionaire fell from grace... partly because he bought a scandal-ridden K-pop agency.Kim, who also goes by Brian, stands accused of manipulating SM Entertainment's stock price during a high-profile acquisition battle. Kim's chief rival in the bidding war? Hybe, the K-pop label that is best known for BTS. Prosecutors indicted Kakao's chief investment officer, Bae Jae-hyun, last year on similar charges. Kim has denied any wrongdoing.To back it up a bit, Kakao Corp. is best known for KakaoTalk, South Korea's most popular messaging app, used by roughly 47... Continue reading...