The Verge

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon and Alex Castro / The Verge When you’re stuck at home because of pandemics, bad weather, or just because you don’t feel like going out, there’s nothing more satisfying than cooking something really fantastic. Even if you’re not an experienced or enthusiastic cook, sometimes it’s really satisfying to create a new and tasty dish for you, your friends, and / or family.We asked the staff of The Verge what kinds of equipment, gadgets, and tools they use to make their kitchen adventures better tasting, easier, or just more fun. Here are some of the answers we got.Pots, pans, and cookersAir fryer Photo: GoWise GoWise air fryer. We just received a GoWise Air Fryer as a quarantine gift, and we couldn’t be happier with it! It replaces our... Continue reading…

Several smartwatches will allow you to make emergency calls. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge While smartwatches have always been able to relay notifications, the ability to make emergency calls was a big step forward in making them standalone devices.Generally, Emergency SOS features have two functions. The first is to call local emergency responders if you find yourself in a bind. For instance, if you take a nasty spill and can’t make it to the phone, your watch can call 911. The second is to relay your location to a select group of trusted contacts. For folks who want to leave their phone at home, these features can ensure that your loved ones will be able to find you if you’re injured or need help.You don’t necessarily need a cellular watch to make use of Emergency SOS. However, a cellular watch is the best option if you... Continue reading…

Shadow’s focus has historically been on cloud gaming. | Image: Shadow Shadow is adding a new subscription tier to its cloud gaming service with access to the equivalent of Nvidia and AMD’s latest generation of graphics cards for an additional $14.99 a month. The new Power Upgrade tier is an optional add-on to Shadow’s existing $29.99 subscription service, bringing the total cost to a little under $45. Alongside it, the company is announcing an expansion to more countries, a new online storage service, and a service that makes its cloud-based machines available to professional users.Unlike Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service or Google Stadia, which only let you stream their games, Shadow’s functionality is a lot broader. It essentially offers you remote access to a Windows 10 desktop in the cloud... Continue reading…

Image: Hisense Hisense’s new 4K Fire TV (50U6HF) costs $529 and has a 50-inch 60Hz display with a bezel-less design. It uses Hisense’s proprietary ULED technology — a more affordable version of QLED that Hisense says boosts color, contrast, and brightness. The TV also comes with support for Dolby Vision HDR and Quantum Dot technology for color enhancement.With Fire TV built-in, you can expect everything that typically comes with Amazon’s Fire OS, including a lineup of streaming apps and an Alexa-enabled voice remote, allowing you to call on the smart assistant to control volume, playback, and TV power, as well as search for something to watch. You can also use Alexa to control any compatible smart devices around your home.Hisense’s Amazon TV is here... Continue reading…

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge Today, let’s talk about Facebook’s latest effort to make the platform more comprehensible to outsiders — and how its findings inform our current, seemingly endless debate over whether you can have a social network and free speech, too.Start with an observation: last week, Pew Research reported that large majorities of Americans — Elon Musk, for example! — believe that social networks are censoring posts based on the political viewpoints they express. Here’s Emily A. Vogels:

The Pixel 5 in its Sorta Sage color. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge There’s been a lot of talk about new Pixel phones lately, with last week’s Google I/O showing off not just a new Pixel 6A but a brief glimpse of the upcoming Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. But Woot is showing love for some slightly older Pixels with a sale event that’ll end later today. Somehow, Woot got its hands on phones that are all still new in the box with full one-year warranties.This includes the soon-to-be-replaced Pixel 5A for $429.99, 2020’s Pixel 5 for $449.99, and 2019’s Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL for $329.99 and $349.99, respectively. Now, yes, the Pixel 5A is not that old and it’s still available for sale from Google. But who would expect that in 2022 there would still be Pixel 4 available new-in-box?Now, if you are tempted by that... Continue reading…

Ugreen Nexode is a capable and fiddly charger at a high price Continue reading…

Peep the SpatialLabs camera array at the top of the Helios 300. | Image: Acer Acer has debuted another round of new gaming laptops for 2022. This time, it’s focused on more unique entries, having gotten most of its yearly refreshes out of the way a couple of months ago. Its 15.6-inch Predator Helios 300 is getting the SpatialLabs treatment with a display that supports glasses-free, stereoscopic 3D content that includes “over 50 popular games at launch,” with a commitment to add support for new games moving forward.The description for the built-in camera on this Helios 300 is wild. Acer says that its 15.6-inch 4K panel has “a liquid crystal lenticular lens optically bonded on top of it.” Because of that, the display can toggle between 2D and 3D modes. In case you’re curious how this SpatialLabs implementation... Continue reading…

The Chromebook Tab 510 is all rubber and rugged. | Image: Acer The Acer Chromebook Tab 510, which Acer announced on Wednesday, is not a very attractive tablet. Let’s just get that out of the way right up front. But what this blocky, rubbery brick lacks in aesthetics, Acer’s hoping it makes up for with raw get-stuff-done ability, including a keyboard attachment, an integrated stylus, and an optional LTE connection — still an uncommon feature among Chromebooks.The Tab 510 is a 10.1-inch slate with a 1920 x 1200 display that runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c chipset along with up to 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. None of that qualifies the $399 device for high-end status, but the 7c does have a solid reputation for battery life, and Acer seems to imagine the device more like a rugged companion you can... Continue reading…

Contrast isn’t the luxury it once was. | Image: Acer It wasn’t too long ago that the phrase “OLED laptop” implied a luxury product. But, over the past few years, that tide has slowly begun to shift. Samsung has begun mass-producing OLED panels for more portable form factors. And while they’re still not exactly commonplace, we’ve begun to see sub-$1,000 OLED devices trickle onto shelves.But Acer made an announcement today that should make folks who want to see more affordable, accessible OLED (like myself) very excited. The Acer Swift 3 — hailed by many outlets, The Verge included, as one of the best student laptops on the market — is getting an OLED screen. This doesn’t sound like one of those cheaper FHD OLEDs you sometimes find on ultraportables, either. It’s going to have 2.8K... Continue reading…

New name, new look. I’ve reviewed quite a few Chromebooks in the past few years, but the one that has consistently topped the competition is the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. Not only is it fast with good battery life but it also sports one of the best screens and port selections you can find in the Chromebook category. But there is one complaint I’ve had about multiple Spin 713 models: they’re just kind of ugly.The Spin 714, the company’s newest premium Chromebook certified through the Intel Evo platform, looks like a similar package to the 713 in many ways. It has up to a top-notch Core i7-1260P, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. There’s an option for a high-resolution 2560 x 1600 display covering a claimed 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut.But Acer... Continue reading…

Samsung SmartThings is now testing Matter smart home devices to work with its platform. | Image: Samsung SmartThings Matter is picking up steam. Samsung has announced a Partner Early Access Program for its SmartThings smart home platform, allowing companies such as Eve Systems and Aqara to start testing their Matter-compatible devices.What’s notable here is this means there are Matter smart home devices, such as lights, locks, and sensors, out there being tested. While the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) — the organization behind Matter — has already said there are devices going through its testing, it hasn’t revealed what and by whom.Samsung SmartThings announced it’s working with Aeotec, Aqara, Eve Systems, Leedarson, Nanoleaf, Netatmo, Sengled, Wemo, WiZ, and Yale. Between them, these companies make lightbulbs, light switches, contact and... Continue reading…

The Fire 7 looks the same as ever but has some upgrades under the hood. | Image: Amazon Amazon is updating its small and inexpensive Fire 7 tablet for the first time in three years, and it’s bringing some crowd-pleasing features: the updated tablet will feature USB-C charging, better battery life, and faster performance. Amazon is, however, raising the starting price tag a tad — from $49.99 to $59.99.Amazon says that the tablet’s quad-core processor is “30 percent faster” and that it’ll have 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB. In theory, the extra memory should make it so you can load more web pages at a time, and you won’t have to wait around for apps to start back up as often when you’re switching between them. The company also says the tablet will last about 40 percent longer between charges, estimating you’ll be able to do... Continue reading…

Automated “liveness tests” used by banks and other institutions to help verify users’ identity can be easily fooled by deepfakes, demonstrates a new report.Security firm Sensity, which specializes in spotting attacks using AI-generated faces, probed the vulnerability of identity tests provided by 10 top vendors. Sensity used deepfakes to copy a target face onto an ID card to be scanned and then copied that same face onto a video stream of a would-be attacker in order to pass vendors’ liveness tests.Liveness tests generally ask someone to look into a camera on their phone or laptop, sometimes turning their head or smiling, in order to prove both that they’re a real person and to compare their appearance to their ID using facial... Continue reading…

Image: Reply All Reply All co-hosts Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi will be leaving the show next month, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. It is unclear whether or in what form the show will continue.Gimlet executives emailed staffers Wednesday morning saying “Alex and Emmanuel have both made the decision to explore opportunities outside of Gimlet, and we’ll have more info to share on the future of Reply All soon. … The decision to end this iteration of the show came from a desire of the host team to move on, and we hope that there is a future where a show about the internet that isn’t actually about the internet can be reborn in Gimlet’s library.” Dzotsi confirmed to The Verge that he and Goldman will be leaving the show.Goldman... Continue reading…

The Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro has a sophisticated design. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Last year, as Google and Samsung were upending the Android smartwatch space, Huawei also announced it was launching the Huawei Watch 3 on a new proprietary operating system called HarmonyOS 2. It then followed that up with the Huawei Watch GT 3. So it’s not a huge surprise that Huawei is back again with the Huawei Watch GT 3 Pro.Last year’s Watch 3 was a good attempt and reminded me a lot of Samsung’s Tizen smartwatches. And while I haven’t had the GT 3 Pro for very long, what I’ve seen so far continues that overall vibe. The GT 3 Pro comes in two versions: a titanium model and an all-ceramic model. The former features a 46.6mm case with a 1.4-inch OLED display while the latter is smaller at 42.9mm with a 1.3-inch display. Both also... Continue reading…

The 2022 Omen 16 comes in white or black. | Image: HP HP is announcing some very minor refreshes to its Omen 16 and Victus 15 gaming laptops. Like so many other models, the new Omen 16 ships with support for the latest Intel 12th Gen processors as well as the option to go with AMD’s Ryzen 6000 H-series CPUs. It also supports up to Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti with 150W of maximum graphics power, along with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and fast PCIe 4.0 SSDs.In terms of dimensions, this year’s Omen 16 is identical to the 2021 model down to the millimeter in terms of thickness, width, depth, and height. One notable change, however, is that its trackpad is a little wider now. Sadly, this model still features a 16:9 aspect ratio display with a large chin near the chassis hinge. And, like last year’s Omen... Continue reading…

Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images They say you can’t keep a good brand down. More accurately, you can’t stop it being opportunistically mined by business types for lingering name-recognition and nostalgia.Case in point: the pioneering peer-to-peer music-sharing-and-piracy service Napster has been bought by a consortium of companies who plan to “bring the iconic music brand to web3.” What exactly that means isn’t clear, mostly because web3 itself is such a nebulous concept. However, other web3-focused music startups have let musicians release albums and singles as NFTs, so perhaps expect something similar in Napster’s reimagined future?To dive down into the murky waters here, the lead players buying Napster are Hivemind, a “a crypto-focused investment firm dedicated... Continue reading…

Indian users of Google Messages are facing a deluge of ads within Android’s default messaging app, 9to5Google reports. Users are reporting being sent multiple ads a day, even if they enable the app’s Spam Protection feature, and blocking and reporting the offending accounts doesn’t appear to prevent ads from different companies appearing. Many of the worst offenders appear to be ads for personal loans, gambling companies, and life insurance.As 9to5Google notes, companies appear to be abusing an RCS feature designed to let businesses contact their customers with rich, interactive media. Example’s listed on Google’s site include sending customers QR-code tickets, or letting them make online orders. Instead, some accounts that Google... Continue reading…

Vivo has announced its latest flagship phone, the X80 Pro, and its most prominent new hardware feature is a larger in-display fingerprint sensor. The active area is far bigger than the small sensors found on most Android phones these days, meaning it’s easier to unlock the phone without looking at the screen to align your thumb.The scanner has several advantages beyond just being physically larger. You can register each fingertip with a single press on the screen, instead of having to lift and press it several times as with conventional phones. It works very quickly, even if your hands or the screen is wet. The larger surface area also means you can set the phone up to require two simultaneous fingerprints for an extra layer of... Continue reading…

Free for people, not businesses. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Almost five months after Google announced that it was going to make G Suite legacy free edition users start paying for their accounts, it seems to finally have a path in place that most people will be happy with. According to 9to5Google, there’s now a no-cost option that’ll let people keep using their G Suite accounts for personal use, and signing up for it won’t involve a song and dance of joining a waitlist or transferring data between accounts.In January, Google announced that free G Suite users would have to start paying for Google Workspace if they wanted to keep their accounts, after around a decade of keeping the legacy free tier around. The company said that if users didn’t decide which paid Workspace tier they wanted by May... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix has been showing movies and TV shows ahead of their public release to small groups of subscribers in the US, according to a report from Variety. Subscribers who participate in the feedback panels will watch “several upcoming movies and series over the course of about six months,” Variety says, and after they finish watching a piece of content, they’re asked to fill out a survey. The company then takes that feedback into account for potential changes ahead of a film or show’s debut.Netflix is well-known for testing many of its software features ahead of wider releases, like the Top 10 row and the “Play Something” shuffle feature, so it’s perhaps not too surprising that the company is also testing its content with small groups of... Continue reading…

Image: Disney When Disney Plus’ ad-supported plan goes live later this year, it will reportedly run ads for four minutes on movies or shows that last an hour or less, according to reports from Variety and The Wall Street Journal.As Variety points out, this would make Disney offer fewer ads per hour than some of its competitors. NBC’s Peacock runs no more than five minutes of ads for every hour of content, while HBO Max shows four minutes of ads per hour. Disney Plus’ planned number of ads even beats the Disney-owned Hulu, which runs anywhere from nine to 12 ads in one hour.As for the content of the ads themselves, the company is reportedly taking a cautious approach to maintain its family-friendly image. Disney isn’t just cutting out ads that may... Continue reading…

She-Hulk showing up at an event. | Disney Though Bruce Banner’s been one of the most physically powerful people running around Marvel’s movies for years at this point, that’s all about to change this summer as his cousin Jennifer Walters makes her way to MCU in Disney Plus’ She-Hulk: Attorney At Law. While both Hulks make appearances in She-Hulk’s first trailer, the show’s clearly going to be Jennifer’s to own as she embarks on her own path to heroism.She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’s first trailer introduces Jennifer (Tatiana Maslany) at a tricky point in her already complicated life. Because the world’s filled with so many villains committing super crimes, Jennifer’s legal skills put her in high demand, but she isn’t quite certain that’s the kind of force for justice she wants to... Continue reading…

The LG Wing is cleared for takeoff on Verizon’s newest 5G spectrum. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Verizon announced this week that the LG Wing will be getting an update that will allow it to use Verizon’s newest 5G spectrum — over a year after LG left the smartphone business altogether. The LG Wing has been certified to use mid-band spectrum called C-band, an important piece of Verizon’s 5G network that delivers better-than-LTE speeds and wide-ranging signal. Verizon spokesperson George Koroneos says that the update started arriving on devices yesterday and will continue to be pushed out through the rest of the week.That’s good news if you’re one of the few people who bought an LG Wing, and really a testament to LG for making good on its promise to keep providing some support for its devices. But why is a one-and-a-half-year-old... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is laying off around 150 employees as well as dozens of contractors following a disappointing earnings report, citing “slowing revenue growth,” as first reported by Variety.A source familiar with the situation tells The Verge the cuts include at least 26 contractors working on the company’s fan-focused Tudum website, which serves as a supplement to Netflix’s content. Prior to this recent round of layoffs, Netflix cut around 25 marketing roles, including close to a dozen who worked on Tudum. The 26 workers laid off today were informed of the move in a mass email, which Netflix spokesperson Erika Masonhall said was sent by the contracting company.The streaming giant told The Verge that most employees affected by the layoffs are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is delaying moving forward on its hybrid return to work for office employees, saying in a memo seen by The Verge and (reported earlier by Bloomberg) that “we are extending the phase-in period of the pilot and maintaining two days a week in the office for the time being.” Employees who are in the current two-day-per-week pilot will have the option to once again work fully remote if they feel uncomfortable coming into the office,In the memo, the company’s COVID-19 response team says that its updates are based on monitoring local info like test positivity and hospitalization rates. The memo also asks employees to go back to wearing masks when in common areas like meeting rooms, hallways, and elevators. The Bloomberg report added... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard The Overwatch 2 beta is now over. If you were one of the lucky handful that were able to snag an invite, congratulations. If not, don’t worry. There will likely be more opportunities to try out Overwatch 2 in the future.One of those opportunities could be revealed during an Overwatch 2 event slated for June 16th.

For $20 a month, the service provides peace of mind, but many of its features should be free Continue reading…

The new covers are available for preorder now. | Image: Sony The PlayStation 5 is getting three new console cover colors — starlight blue, galactic purple, and nova pink — on June 17th, but preorders are open on PlayStation Direct right now. All three colors are available in the US, UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Asus says the card is the quietest in its class. | Image: Asus Asus has teamed up with renowned fan manufacturer Noctua once again to make a large brown and tan graphics card that should pump out frames while staying relatively quiet. The two companies’ last collaboration was an RTX 3070, but now they’ve announced a decidedly enthusiast tier card: an RTX 3080.According to Noctua’s press release, the card features two 120mm fans and a custom heatsink, making it “the quietest air-cooled graphics card in its class.” Apart from the fancy cooling, it’s a relatively standard Asus graphics card with two BIOS profiles, a backplate, and 10GB of GDDR6X RAM. There are 3080s with 12GB of memory, but that doesn’t seem to be an option with the Noctua heatsink.The card will go on sale “starting early June 2022,”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When a gunman pulled into the parking lot at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday in a racist attack targeting a Black community, his camera was already rolling.CNN reports that a livestream on Twitch recorded from the suspect’s point of view showed shoppers in the parking lot as the alleged shooter arrived, then followed him inside as he began a rampage that killed 10 people and injured three. Twitch, popular for gaming livestreams, removed the video and suspended the user “less than two minutes after the violence started,” according to Samantha Faught, the company’s head of communications for the Americas. Just 22 people saw the attack unfold in real time online, The Washington Post reports.But millions saw the... Continue reading…

The LinkBuds S in beige. | Image: WinFuture Sony’s follow-up to the unconventional LinkBuds could be the lightest active noise cancellation (ANC) earbuds yet. According to WinFuture, the new earbuds — supposedly called the LinkBuds S — weigh just 4.8 grams each.And while the LinkBuds released earlier this year are slightly lighter, weighing in at only 4 grams per bud, the new LinkBuds S come with ANC while the LinkBuds do not. Other ANC earbuds, like the AirPods Pro (5.4 grams each), Beats Studio Buds (5.1 grams each), and Galaxy Buds Live (5.6 grams) are still all heavier than the rumored LinkBuds S. Image: WinFuture The LinkBuds S could come with adaptive sound control. In addition to ANC, WinFuture expects the LinkBuds S to have high-resolution... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images So does Elon Musk want to buy Twitter or not? This morning, the company’s prospective new owner insisted (in a tweet, of course) that the $44 billion deal he’d agreed to “cannot move forward” until he sees the proof he’s looking for about its active user numbers.With needling current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and texting former CEO Jack Dorsey having failed to hit the spot, Musk — seemingly jokingly — pulled in another recurring character from his 24 / 7 revolving circus by tweeting to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, asking them to investigate. Image: Twitter In case you’ve forgotten, the folks at the SEC are the “bastards” that Musk has previously accused of infringing upon his rights to free speech,... Continue reading…

Image: Robinhood A little over a month after Robinhood publicly released its first crypto wallet, the company has announced it’s working on a second. The new wallet will be non-custodial, giving users sole custody over the private keys necessary to control their money on the blockchain. That means users won’t be dependent on Robinhood if the system fails but will also risk losing their funds entirely if they misplace the private key.Robinhood says the new wallet will be offered as a standalone app but hopes that it will “feature the same simple and accessible design” as its main service. The wallet will offer the ability to store and trade cryptocurrencies, including many not available through the main Robinhood app with “no network fees” and will... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google announced a new initiative Tuesday aimed at securing the open-source software supply chain by curating and distributing a security-vetted collection of open-source packages to Google Cloud customers.The new service, branded Assured Open Source Software, was introduced in a blog post from the company. In the post, Andy Chang, group product manager for security and privacy at Google Cloud, pointed to some of the challenges of securing open-source software and stressed Google’s commitment to open source.“There has been an increasing awareness in the developer community, enterprises, and governments of software supply chain risks,” Chang wrote, citing last year’s major log4j vulnerability as an example. “Google continues to be one... Continue reading…

Unlike many of the games we use to test gaming laptops here at The Verge, such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption 2, CS:GO doesn’t have a built-in benchmark. But not to worry — there are third-party benchmarks you can run to see what kind of frame rates your device puts up on this first-person shooter. The one we commonly use, the FPS Benchmark by Ulletical, is free and easy to install.Here’s how to run Ulletical’s FPS Benchmark for CS:GO:

A portrait of Orion and the northern winter Milky Way on a February night in 2020. | Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Now is the best time to stargaze in the UK since 2011, according to the results of a new citizen science survey led by the countryside charity CPRE. Light pollution in the UK has dropped to its lowest levels since CPRE began its annual study more than a decade ago.Light pollution peaked in 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing) and then dipped last year as workplaces shuttered during the pandemic. Since then, CPRE says light pollution has continued to drop as more people continue to work from home and soaring energy prices in Europe push households to cut down on lighting costs.Each year, CPRE enlists the help of citizen scientists for a “Star Count.” This year, more than 2,500 participants counted the number of stars... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For Ben Heck, it started as a kindness. He was an engineer who made cool things and a veteran reached out to see if he could make him an Xbox controller that would let him play video games with one hand. Twenty years later, he’s still making controllers for people with limb differences. But he’s not the only one.In the two decades since Heck started modding Xbox controllers for accessibility purposes, a community of controller modders have sprung up. The challenge of making hardware accessible is that everyone has a different need, and often times those needs can be at odds with one another. One person may need a super sensitive joystick while another might need a joystick that responds to the most intense of inputs. Modding a... Continue reading…

The House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee’ hearing on UAPs. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The Pentagon’s new task force for tracking unidentified aerial phenomena (or UAPs) has collected roughly 400 reports, an official told Congress in an open hearing on Tuesday.The comments came from Scott Bray, the deputy director of US naval intelligence, who testified today as an expert witness in a hearing about UAPs hosted by a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee. The hearing marked the first time Congress has held a public hearing on UAPs, also known as UFOs, in more than 50 years.Bray attributed the increase in sightings to a number of factors, including the growing popularity of quadcopters and drones, updates in sensor technologies, increasing aerial clutter like mylar balloons, and a perceived decrease in stigma... Continue reading…

Skiff Mail is a new, privacy-focused alternative to Gmail. | Image: Skiff Skiff has spent the last couple of years developing a privacy-focused, collaborative document editing platform that you could most succinctly describe as “encrypted Google Docs.” Now, it’s coming for Gmail. The company is launching an email service called Skiff Mail that aims to be, well, encrypted Gmail — and eventually much more than that.Ultimately, Skiff co-founder and CEO Andrew Milich says Skiff wants to build a complete workspace, something as sweeping and broad as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. But the only way to do that is to solve email, which is, in so many ways, the core of both platforms. “It’s the most private corpus of our lives, you know?” Milich says. In an effort to keep people’s most important information safe —... Continue reading…

The modern day Chip and Dale. | Disney The film stars John Mulaney and Andy Samberg Continue reading…

Alaqua Cox as Echo. | Image: Marvel Studios / Chuck Zlotnick After making her debut in last year’s Hawkeye series, Maya Lopez / Echo will get her own show starting in 2023. The series was originally announced last year as part of a huge slate of Marvel series coming to Disney Plus — other titles include Agatha: House of Harkness and Ironheart — and today Marvel confirmed the show will be hitting the streaming service next year, though there’s no specific timeframe just yet. The company also revealed the first image of Alaqua Cox returning for the titular role and, well, she looks pretty much the same as in Hawkeye.According to Marvel, Echo will be an origin story, which will follow the character — who appeared as a deaf gang leader in Hawkeye — as “she must face her past, reconnect with her... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple retail employees in Atlanta are accusing the company of violating the National Labor Relations Act by holding captive audience meetings to counter an ongoing union drive at the site. The Communications Workers of America, which is working to organize the store, filed an unfair labor practice reporting the activity earlier today.Workers at the Cumberland Mall Apple store filed for a union election in April. They say that while they love the company, they want to have a bigger say in their compensation, benefits, and store health protocols.The Cumberland store is one of three retail locations where workers have launched official union drives. Many more are in the process of organizing.Apple hasn’t said publicly whether or not it... Continue reading…

Confession: I have stopped automatic downloads on Apple Podcasts because I am reckless with my data and have absolutely let podcast downloads eat my phone on more than one occasion. I love having back episodes of Stuff You Missed in History Class for the subway as much as the next guy, but I also need to be able to save and send my husband I Think You Should Leave GIFs at will (♫ it’s the little things you do together ♫). Anyway, point being, Apple’s new update that lets users limit downloads to five episodes at a time feels like it was tailor-made for me.Also on tap today, Spotify experiments with NFTs, highlights from the Podcast Upfronts, and how the podcast outgrew its namesake.Apple is making it easier to distribute subscription... Continue reading…

One of the more intriguing titles from Netflix’s upcoming slate of summer movies is Spiderhead, in which Chris Hemsworth stars as a pharmaceutical genius using a futuristic prison as an experimental playground.Based on a 2010 New Yorker short story by George Saunders, the film is directed by Joseph Kosinski (best-known for Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, and that Gears of War commercial) and also stars Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett as two inmates who form a connection in the aforementioned prison. If the first trailer is anything to go by, it looks like the movie will be something of a dark comedy, jumping back and forth between goofy and grim. Hemsworth looks particularly manic, even joking about how beautiful he is. Plus, there’s lots of... Continue reading…

The Cerebral app. | Image: Cerebral Mental health startup Cerebral will no longer prescribe most controlled substances, The Wall Street Journal reported.The embattled company is facing investigations from the US Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration over its prescribing practices, which, until this week, included offering prescriptions for stimulants like Adderall.Company co-founder Kyle Robertson wrote in an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that it would stop prescribing most controlled substances to new customers on Friday and transition existing patients off of the drug or out of its care by October. Cerebral will still offer drugs that treat opioid-use disorder, like Suboxone.Robertson said in the email that the company only started... Continue reading…

Image: Apple On Tuesday morning, Apple announced a new wave of accessibility features for its various computing platforms, which are set to roll out later this year as software updates for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.Apple said it will beta test Live Captions that can transcribe any audio content — FaceTime calls, video conferencing apps (with auto attribution to identify the speaker), streaming video, or in-person conversations — in English across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Google’s push for Live Caption features began around the release of Android 10 and are now available in English on the Pixel 2 and later devices, as well as “select” other Android phones and in additional languages for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. So it’s good to see... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Running a creator-owned streaming service Continue reading…

Serial 1, the electric bike company spun out of Harley-Davidson, launched its second-generation lineup of premium e-bikes — but the biggest changes will be coming to the company’s app.The updated bikes will come with a host of new software features provided by Serial 1’s new partnership with Google Cloud. The company says that Google Cloud has selected Serial 1 as its new “strategic eMobility partner,” meaning the e-bike maker will be among the first to integrate Google’s software products into its vehicles.The software-enabled e-bikes will allow owners to track their trips and collect dataThe software-enabled e-bikes will allow owners to track their trips, collect data, and “significantly improve safety and security,” Serial 1... Continue reading…