The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google and Samsung have partnered to create Health Connect, a platform and API (application programming interface) that gives developers a toolset to sync users’ health data between Android apps and devices. This should make it easier for users to keep track of their health and fitness data across several different platforms.Once a user opts in, developers can compile their health data in an encrypted hub that’s located on a user’s device. Google says users will get full control over what kind of data they share and what apps they share it with. If more than one app is collecting the same type of data, such as steps taken, users can choose to share that data with one app over the others. Health Connect supports over 50 data types in a... Continue reading…

Tennant and Tate will star in an upcoming 2023 special. | Image: BBC David Tennant and Catherine Tate will return to Doctor Who in celebration of the long-running show’s 60th anniversary, the BBC has announced (via Gizmodo). The pair are currently filming scenes that are set to air in 2023.Tennant starred as Doctor Who’s Tenth Doctor from 2005 to 2010, while Tate played The Doctor’s companion, Donna Noble. The fan-favorite Doctor has made a reappearance in the past, with the BBC bringing back Tennant and Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) for Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special in 2013, called “The Day of the Doctor.” But now, Tennant is set to make yet another return a whole decade later.

Photo by Gloria Sin / The Verge Boost Mobile will now let you pay part of your phone bill with “blockchain-backed” Boostcoins earned through watching ads and playing games (via CNET). In a press release, the carrier says you can get BoostCoins by downloading the new BoostOne app, and then interacting with the games, ads, and Boost Mobile’s partners from within the app.But don’t get too excited just yet — one Boostcoin equals just one cent. In other words, you’ll likely have to dedicate a lot of time to the app if you want to see any significant savings. As pointed out by CNET, watching an ad lasting several seconds will earn you two Boostcoins. There’s also a Wheel of Fortune-style Spin & Win game that rewards players with anywhere from five cents to $5 in a single... Continue reading…

The back of a seventh-generation iPod Nano. | Photo: Sean O’Kane Pour one out for the iPod, the beautiful little gadget of my teenage dreams. While Apple finally discontinued the last iPod model this week, the “pod” lives on in the digital audio medium we all love and obsess over.The iPod was never really the format where the podcast flourished (that would be the smartphone), but at the time podcasts were getting started, the iPod was pretty much the only game in town. In 2004, the iPod controlled 60 percent of the total MP3 player market. It was the default option for listening to audio shows on the go, if an inelegant one.In 2004, the iPod dominated the MP3 market“It was a terrible experience,” says Leo Laporte, founder of early digital audio outlet This Week in Tech (TwiT) and host of radio... Continue reading…

The Aya Neo 2 is the successor to the Aya Neo. | Image: Aya Neo Handheld maker Aya Neo is adding the Aya Neo 2 and Aya Neo Slide to its lineup of portable PC gaming devices, both of which are set to come with an upgraded Ryzen 7 6800U chip and a Radeon 680M integrated GPU with RDNA 2 graphics, according to a report from Liliputing. The Radeon 680M iGPU is capable of pushing 3.38 teraflops, more than double the 1.6 teraflops delivered by the Steam Deck.As pointed out by Tom’s Hardware, the Ryzen 7 6800 APU (accelerated processing unit) comes with eight cores and runs on the faster Zen 3 plus architecture. It also comes with the integrated Radeon 680M iGPU, which has 12 compute units (CUs). For comparison, the Steam Deck has a quad-core AMD APU that runs on the older Zen 2 architecture and an iGPU... Continue reading…

David Harville was eBay’s former director of global resiliency. eBay’s former director of global resiliency, David Harville, pleaded guilty to taking part in a bizarre harassment campaign, which involved sending live cockroaches, spiders, a bloody pig face mask, and other strange items to a Massachusetts couple (via The Guardian). Harville is the last of seven eBay employees to plead guilty to harassing and stalking the pair.In 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged former eBay employees Harville, James Baugh, Stephanie Popp, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Stockwell, Veronica Zea, and Philip Cooke with devising a harassment campaign targeting Ina and David Steiner, the publishers behind the EcommerceBytes newsletter. The group’s scheme was meant to intimidate the Steiners over their publication’s... Continue reading…

The SteelSeries Arctis 7P Plus works with almost everything... except Xbox consoles. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge SteelSeries is running a spring sale promotion that takes up to 40 percent off some of its gaming headsets, mice, and mousepads through Monday, May 23rd. While the discounts on individual items may range, there are some great deals to be had — including some that are available at new all-time lows.The Arctis 7P Plus, for instance, is our pick for the best wireless gaming headset for PlayStation consoles, but it also works with Windows PCs, the Nintendo Switch, smartphones, and the Oculus / Meta Quest 2. While it’s on the premium side and usually retails for about $70 more than Sony’s own Pulse 3D headset, it offers great battery life, USB-C charging, an easy-to-use audio dial, rotatable ear cups that allow for easier storage, and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix may be expanding into livestreaming. According to a report from Deadline, Netflix is currently working on a livestreaming option for stand-up specials and other live content.As pointed out by Deadline, support for livestreams could open up the possibility for Netflix to air live reunions, like the one recently held by the real estate reality show Selling Sunset, as well as enable live voting for competition shows.Netflix could also use the feature to air live comedy specials. This year, Netflix held its first-ever live and in-person comedy festival, called the Netflix Is a Joke Fest. The Los Angeles-based event spanned several days and featured over 130 popular comedians, including Ali Wong, Bill Burr, Jerry Seinfeld, John... Continue reading…

The Z24m comes with a 5MP tiltable webcam. | Image: HP HP’s upcoming 23.8-inch Z24m monitor is geared toward creative professionals and comes with a webcam that tracks your movement to keep you in the frame during video calls, much like Apple’s Center stage feature in its Studio Display and some iPads (via Ars Technica). The Z24m’s 5MP tiltable webcam sits at the top of the monitor, which, as Ars Technica points out, is supposed to put its focus on you even if other people are in the background of the shot.An HP spokesperson also told Ars Technica that you can adjust the webcam’s settings to make it track you quicker. And while you can’t remove the webcam from the monitor, you can push it down to hide it from view. The Z24m also has dual noise-canceling microphones and dual speakers that... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge; Getty Images It’s official: the iPod is over. After 20 years, Apple announced this week that it was discontinuing the final product in the brand that defined music players in the mid-2000s and helped catapult Apple to mainstream success.A lot of us at The Verge have fond memories of our days spent using the music players over that two-decade run, so we decided to write some of them down to reflect not just on what a great music player it was but also what an important device it was in our lives at the time. Plus, we’ve got a lot of scars from these things getting destroyed or “going missing.”Here are our memories of buying iPods, rediscovering them, nurturing them back to life, and sometimes just losing them.I have two iPod stories: one about the... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images Tech industry trade organizations NetChoice and the Computer Communications Industry Association have appealed directly to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the Texas social media law known as HB 20. The law, which creates liability for content moderation decisions that are based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person,” could make it impossible to enforce bans on hate speech — or to even moderate platforms at all. HB 20 was successfully blocked in court late last year, and then unblocked by an appeals court on Wednesday without explanation.“Texas HB 20 strips private online businesses of their speech rights, forbids them from making constitutionally protected editorial decisions, and forces them to publish and promote... Continue reading…

It’s not this sniper rifle, but it can shoot pretty dang far. | Image: Microsoft Halo Infinite’s glitched and overpowered “tank gun” will be added back to the game’s campaign in a forthcoming update, developer 343 Industries announced Friday.The tank gun is an extremely powerful weapon — essentially a portable version of a Scorpion tank’s cannon that has unlimited ammo — and it’s been popular with speedrunners and as a way to make the game a lot easier. But even though you need to know exactly where to look to find the gun (which is invisible, by the way), Halo senior community manager John Junyszek said in April that 343 would be removing the “tank gun glitch” alongside the game’s second season, which launched May 3rd. That decision wasn’t a very popular one with the community, and it seems there’s been enough... Continue reading…

The malicious pop-up ad that appeared on several crypto sites Friday | Image: CoinGecko As if this week weren’t bad enough for many cryptocurrency owners, with stablecoins crashing and Coinbase suffering an outage at a particularly bad time, now they’ve reportedly been targeted by a new phishing attack. As reported by CoinDesk and The Block Crypto, sites including Etherscan, CoinGecko, and DexTools all warned users that they were aware of suspicious popups appearing for visitors, and advised them not to confirm any transactions based on popups.Like many recent phishing attacks, this one appeared to promise a link to the Bored Ape Yacht Club project, with an ape skull logo and a (now-disabled) nftapes.win domain. It prompted users to connect their MetaMask wallets (a software cryptocurrency wallet that enables access on... Continue reading…

Somebody at Krafton is probably doing these poses after the company’s latest earnings report. | Image: Krafton PUBG: Battlegrounds, the PC and console version of the battle royale shooter series, is making a lot of money following its switch to free-to-play in January, as revealed by developer Krafton’s latest earnings report published Friday.According to the report, on PC, sales were up 61 percent year over year to $82.3 million. On console, the sales jump was even bigger, increasing 124 percent from the previous quarter and 274 percent year over year, though Krafton didn’t put a dollar figure behind those increases. The game also saw a “nearly tripled” increase in average monthly active users from Q4 2021.PUBG: Battlegrounds was originally a paid title when it launched on Steam in early access in 2017, but the outsized financial success of... Continue reading…

Photo by: BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, is a devastating condition that’s still very poorly understood, so when new research comes out, it can feel like a very big deal — especially if that research seems to offer a way to save children’s lives. Posts on social media cheered one such new study this week, heralding the research as identifying the reason hundreds of babies die unexpectedly each year.But even though the study points in a promising direction for future research, it isn’t a panacea, experts say. “There is nothing definitive about this at all,” said Rachel Moon, a researcher studying sudden infant death syndrome at the University of Virginia, in an email to The Verge. The surge in interest around the study is understandable,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Two and a half months after our Steam Deck review, Valve has finally provided the drivers you’ll need for audio if you choose to install Windows on the gaming portable. Before today, you would have had to pair Bluetooth headphones or plug in USB-C earbuds or a dongle to get any kind of audio on Windows at all. Both the speakers and 3.5mm jack did nothing on Windows before today, and it blamed AMD for the delay.But now, this pair of new drivers should enable both of the missing audio features. It took a while for AMD and Valve to bring out the initial set of graphics, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and SD card drivers for Windows, too.Is it time to install Windows on your Deck? Nope, I definitely wouldn’t say that. While Valve keeps squashing bugs... Continue reading…

If you consider yourself a Lego fan, you’re going to want to read this story and visit this website before Tuesday, May 17th, at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. That’s because Lego is about to put its third and possibly final batch of officially unofficial sets on sale, and that’s the time you can vote with your dollars for the five fan-made creations that will become a reality.These Lego sets were designed by fans, not the Danish brickmaker itself, and Lego originally rejected each and every one. But, now, Lego’s Bricklink Designer Program will give a gorgeous 1950s diner, a working waterfall, a huge train station, a steampunk science lab, and more a second chance at official Lego stardom.The sets are pieced together and shipped by Lego itself,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal acknowledged the possibility that Elon Musk’s deal to purchase the company could fall through in a series of tweets this afternoon that sought to explain why he’s shaking up Twitter’s leadership. Agrawal said that he’s still “accountable for leading and operating” Twitter for the time being and that his recent changes are meant to “build a stronger Twitter” and help manage costs.“While I expect the deal to close, we need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what’s right for Twitter,” Agrawal said.His remarks come after Musk tweeted this morning that his $44 billion purchase of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” over concerns about spam and fake accounts. While it is entirely unclear whether Musk can... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Yik Yak, an app that acts as a local anonymous message board, makes it possible to find users’ precise locations and unique IDs, Motherboard reports. A researcher who analyzed Yik Yak data was able to access precise GPS coordinates of where posts and comments came from, accurate within 10 to 15 feet, and says he brought his findings to the company in April.First launched in 2013, Yik Yak was popular on college campuses, where it was often used to gossip, post updates, and cyberbully other students. After waning relevance and failed attempts at content moderation, the app shut down in 2017, only to rise from the dead last year. In November, the company said it had passed 2 million users.Motherboard spoke with David Teather, a computer... Continue reading…

itch.io / TTRPGs For Reproductive Rights With most large gaming companies giving either inadequate or no responses to the potential repeal of Roe v. Wade in the United States, indie tabletop RPG developers are stepping up. Today, Roll for Romance, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, in collaboration with over 200 TTRPG creators, launched TTRPGs for Reproductive Rights on itch.io.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge An Apple TV that actually competes with Roku and Amazon could be on the market by the end of the year. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a tweet, Apple would launch a new Apple TV “that improves cost structure” in the second half of 2022.It’s about damn time.Currently, Apple sells three Apple TV models. Its 4K Apple TV comes in 32GB and 64GB capacities and retails for $179 and $199, respectively. That’s a good deal for what you get from the 4K Apple TV. Apart from Nvidia’s Shield lineup, no set-top box really has the same support for a wide range of home theater standards and formats that the Apple TV 4K does. It’s the gold standard for professional home theater installers and is particularly praised for its EDID capabilities.EDID,... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and editor-at-large David Pierce discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.On Wednesday, we saw Google announce a whole bunch of products and features from their keynote live stream — from updates to the Nest Hub Max to previewing a 2023 Pixel tablet. So, on The Vergecast, we’re focusing a chunk of the show on Google’s announcements and initiatives for the coming year or so.And there’s no better way to start that conversation than with an interview with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Read the full transcript of that conversation here.After the interview, Verge deputy... Continue reading…

Image: Apollo / The Verge Four years ago, Polygon published a feature that asked what happened to video game pioneer Ban Tran, a Vietnamese woman credited with creating Wabbit, the first console game to feature a named playable female human character. After years of digging and numerous “Return To Sender” marked letters, the Video Game History Foundation finally found her.Today, the Video Game History Foundation is sharing the story of Van Mai neé Tran (who was mistakenly called Ban because of an accidental misspelling of her name in the credits) and her work in the video game industry. Mai recounts her time in the early ‘80s working for Games for Apollo, a short-lived video game company based in Texas. There, she worked on Wabbit, a game for the Atari VCS that... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is testing iPhones that swap the Lightning port for USB-C, according to a new Bloomberg report from Apple whisperer Mark Gurman. But you shouldn’t expect to see it in this year’s iPhone lineup, as the changeover wouldn’t happen until 2023 “at the earliest,” Gurman says. The report follows reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s tweets this week indicating Apple would swap to USB-C in the second half of 2023, which is presumably when that year’s iPhone lineup will be released.The switch would be a big one, though it’s not a complete surprise. Apple has already moved the iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad Mini to USB-C. And the EU revealed a proposal in September that would require many devices, including smartphones, to include USB-C ports... Continue reading…

A winning combo between HP and AMD, the Envy x360 15 is available for its lowest price ever at Best Buy today. | Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge Our collection of deals this Friday includes a variety of sales on laptops and phones. Our first contestant today is the HP Envy x360 15, which typically goes for $1,029.99 but is on sale at Best Buy for $729.99, its lowest price ever. This 2-in-1 is definitely starting to show its age but remains an excellent value for a convertible laptop.The Envy x360 is an amazing application of AMD hardware in HP’s compact and sturdy 2-in-1 form factor. The 15-inch, 1080p touchscreen display is backed up by an AMD Ryzen 5 5700U CPU and 8GB of RAM, lending it more than enough power for most productivity applications. However, even with AMD’s integrated graphics, the Envy 15 is capable of pulling its weight in the gaming space, too.In addition to a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As the Terra crisis draws on, some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world have begun to delist Terra’s UST stablecoin and its linked Luna token, citing a need to protect users from risk.Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, halted the trading of Luna and Terra on Thursday. The OKX exchange — one of the top 10 by volume — took the same action shortly afterward. The FTX exchange and other smaller exchanges continue to list and trade the Luna and UST tokens.The delistings come in response to a broader collapse in the economics of the Terra project. After the UST stablecoin fell well below its dollar peg on May 9th, an algorithmic process meant to balance the price at close to $1 triggered... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After Xbox Series X / S topped the US sales charts for game consoles in March based solely on how much money they brought in, things turned back to the usual during April, according to stats announced today by the NPD. The PS5 led April in dollar sales, aligning with what we saw as retailers seemed to have more of the consoles in stock last month than for most of 2022. It was followed by the Xbox platform and then Nintendo.However the Switch did lead the month in unit sales, and the NPD says it has now passed Sony’s PlayStation 4 in terms of lifetime sales in the US, making it the fourth highest-selling console ever, behind the PS2, Xbox 360, and Wii.The other notable hit continues to be Elden Ring, which sold enough games in April to... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Yesterday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided in favor of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a lawsuit over HB 20, a bizarre law effectively banning many apps and websites from moderating posts by Texas residents. The court granted Paxton a stay on an earlier ruling to block the law, letting HB 20 go into effect immediately while the rest of the case proceeds. The decision was handed down without explanation. But court-watchers weren’t necessarily surprised because it followed an equally bizarre hearing earlier this week — one that should alarm almost anyone who runs a website. And without intervention from another court, it’s going to put social networks that operate in Texas at legal risk.HB 20, to recap a little, bans social... Continue reading…

The Pixel Watch, Google’s first smartwatch. | Image: Google This year’s Google I/O keynote was filled with hardware announcements, which is unusual considering it’s typically a software and services-focused affair. Of these, the most exciting was the news that Google plans to return to the Android tablet market next year and that it’s also releasing its first smartwatch — the Pixel Watch — later in 2022.Google gave a couple of different reasons for its change of heart. But the most interesting of these was a comment from Google’s VP of product management Sameer Samat, who talked about the benefits a tablet device could have for the Pixel ecosystem more generally. “I think consumer expectations have changed as well over time,” Samat said. “Phone is certainly super important, but it’s also... Continue reading…

The studio behind the breakout hit Genshin Impact is back with a new game — and you can watch the first trailer right now. Called Zenless Zone Zero, the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic city called New Eridu, which has been subject to an event known as “the sub-hollow disaster.” Based on the trailer, it appears to be an action-heavy RPG with some killer music and character designs, where players will fight plenty of monsters while looking very cool.Zenless is notable in particular because it comes from Mihoyo, the Chinese studio best-known for the global smash hit Genshin Impact, which first launched in 2020 and is available across PC, mobile, and PlayStation. The two games look like they share much in common — including an... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge One of the best things about the Playdate, Panic’s quirky gaming handheld, is how it only really does one very specific thing: play video games. It’s not bogged down by other apps or features, so when you’re playing something like Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure, it’s easy to stay focused on the game. It’s refreshing to have a device so single-mindedly focused on fun — which is why I found the idea of using the little yellow console as a personal organizer so intriguing. For the past week, I’ve been doing just that, and while it’s definitely not an option for everyone, much like the Playdate itself, it manages to be both simple and straightforward.First, a few notes for context. One, it’s important to know that I have yet to find a... Continue reading…

The Peloton rower’s handle. I was not kidding when I said they were teasing the machine. | Screenshot: Peloton Peloton’s annual Homecoming event is for the fans. It’s where the fitness tech company teases new products, as well as drops new features and content. It’s also a chance for fans to take live classes taught by their favorite instructors and attend special panel discussions. This year, the big tease is that Peloton officially confirmed a connected rower is coming.Peloton’s reveal is more of a teaser and official confirmation than anything else. We don’t know the specs or when it’ll launch — just that it’s “coming soon.” In terms of design, the rower itself appears to have a similar vibe to the Peloton Tread — sleek, with a minimalist profile and a display to watch classes on. Rumors about the rower have been floating around since 2018,... Continue reading…

Of all the movies I watched at the Sundance Film Festival this year, the one that stuck with me the most is Resurrection. That’s mostly because of just how intense and unsettling the film is — and now you can get a taste of that via the first teaser trailer.Resurrection stars Rebecca Hall as a woman whose well-ordered life is upended after a former partner (Tim Roth) unexpectedly appears. In some ways, it’s a standard thriller, with pressure steadily mounting on Hall’s character until it’s almost too much to take. But what has stuck with me all this time is just how messed up the movie actually gets, particularly its horrifying finale. It’s the kind of thing that sticks with you long after the credits roll. It helps that Hall and Roth... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter shares plummeted Friday after new doubts about whether Elon Musk’s planned $44 billion acquisition of the platform would go through. The share price dropped more than 10 percent at market open, trading as much as 14 points below the nominal acquisition price of $54.20 a share.The proximate cause of the drop was a series of confusing statements from Musk, who tweeted that the deal was “temporarily on hold” pending an investigation into the total number of bot accounts on the platform. Twitter had claimed in a filing that bots compose less than 5 percent of daily active users on the platform, although many believe the real figure is higher.Musk later clarified that he was “still committed to the acquisition,” but uncertainty... Continue reading…

Of course it’s simulated. | Image: Google At the end of its I/O presentation on Wednesday, Google pulled out a “one more thing”-type surprise. In a short video, Google showed off a pair of augmented reality glasses that have one purpose — displaying audible language translations right in front of your eyeballs. In the video, Google product manager Max Spear called the capability of this prototype “subtitles for the world,” and we see family members communicating for the first time.Now hold on just a second. Like many people, we’ve used Google Translate before and largely think of it as a very impressive tool that happens to make a lot of embarrassing misfires. While we might trust it to get us directions to the bus, that’s nowhere near the same thing as trusting it to correctly... Continue reading…

She had been contracted to sell phones on Samsung.com. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On April 14th, The Verge published a story about how Samsung’s “Experts,” who answer customer chats at Samsung.com, were being pushed by both Samsung and staffing agency Ibbu to do some customer support for free. While we spoke to a dozen experts during our reporting, only one was willing to be named in the story: Jennifer Larson.The day after our story was published, Larson received an email saying that she was being temporarily suspended and that she’d get an update in a week. Over four weeks later, Ibbu told her she’d been fired.The email to Larson read, in part:

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter is “temporarily on hold” after the social network reported that false or spam accounts comprised less than 5 percent of its 226 million monetizable daily active users. The Tesla CEO, who offered to buy twitter for $44 billion, tweeted a link to a May 2nd Reuters report on Twitter’s filing, saying he wants to see the company’s calculations.“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted. However, in a follow-up tweet, he added that he’s “still committed to [the] acquisition,” suggesting that it’ll proceed after Twitter provides satisfactory information on its numbers.

Starlink’s coverage map as of May 2022. | Image: SpaceX SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink is now available in 32 countries around the world, the company has announced. Impressively, Elon Musk’s space company says it’ll ship “immediately,” contrary to earlier issues that caused customers to wait months to receive their dishes.Starlink shared a screenshot on Twitter showing the service’s availability map, which shows the service as “available” across most of Europe and North America, as well as parts of South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Much of the rest of the world, including the entire continent of Africa, is shown as “Coming Soon” with availability expected at various points in 2023.

Take Me Out Broadway Opening Night. | Photo by Bruce Glikas/Getty Images Earlier this week, someone posted cell phone videos of Tony-nominated actor Jesse L. Williams and co-star Michael Oberholtzer that were taken during a nude scene from the play they’re in, Take Me Out. Deadline reports that Second Stage Theater, where the play is performed on Broadway, had taken steps to keep cellphones out of audience members’ hands during the play, requiring the use of Yondr pouches that are supposed to lock cellphones away when someone is in a restricted area.It’s unknown whether someone unlocked the pouch (there are many videos online claiming to show how to open the bags without the patented magnet designed to open and close them) or simply smuggled a device in.

Managers have reportedly told employees that outside unions don’t know Apple or its culture. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has been coaching retail store managers on how to try and talk employees out of unionizing, according to Vice. The report says the company has sent around a document full of talking points like “an outside union that doesn’t know Apple” or its culture, or “most union contracts give preference based on seniority.” The document also encourages store leaders to “touch base” with employees about potential union activity.This comes at a time when there are union drives at several Apple retail stores — two have officially petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold union elections, and another is looking to do so. It’s been pretty clear that Apple would try to fight these efforts; the company hired anti-union lawyers, and at... Continue reading…

In case you haven’t noticed, chipmakers are in the middle of an upscaling revolution. AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are all out to prove that algorithms can trump native rendering performance. Why spend precious GPU cycles on native 4K when you can actually get a sharper, more detailed image by upscaling smaller pictures instead?It’s an argument that’s never quite convinced me, I’ll admit. But AMD’s new FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0, arriving for the first time today in an update for Deathloop, may have the potential to change that on PC. The new game patch also includes some key accessibility options — more on that later.PC Gamer now says FSR 2.0 “really looks better than native 4K,” and Hardware Unboxed has a phenomenal video showing off... Continue reading…

Tom Hiddleston in The Essex Serpent. | Image: Apple How much you enjoy The Essex Serpent, an Apple TV Plus adaptation of Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel, might depend on how much you enjoy seeing Tom Hiddleston brooding in a misty field while wearing cozy wool sweaters. For a lot of people, that will probably be enough of a hook. (It was for me.) But thankfully, the six-episode series offers a lot more than great hair blowing in the wind — it’s a tense and heartfelt exploration of grief and belief and how much those two things can mess with you. The great sweaters are just a bonus.The show primarily follows two characters. One is Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes), a recent widow and a budding natural history scholar who has quite the fixation with sea serpents. She spends her spare time researching... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Meta is continuing the Meta-fication of its brands by renaming Facebook Pay, its payment system available across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to Meta Pay. The change is set to happen “soon,” according to a blog post from Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies, and is the latest indication that the company formerly known as Facebook is all in on the metaverse.“We’re focused on enhancing the payments experiences we already provide with Facebook Pay where we’re seeing good adoption,” Kasriel wrote. “And with this, an emphasis on quality in the countries that we are already in, rather than expanding to new countries right now.” People in businesses in 160 countries use Meta’s platforms to make... Continue reading…

Microsoft / Alex Castro / The Verge This week’s episode of Paramount Plus’ Halo TV show is incredible in the strictest definition of the term. I literally cannot believe what I have witnessed.Spoilers for Halo followAre you still here?Are you sitting down?OK.In the latest episode of Halo, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 fucks. He has sex with an undercover human Covenant spy after the two have bonded over their shared magical abilities surrounding the mysterious artifacts both the humans and Covenant have been after for most of the series. Apparently, the Master Chief is such a skilled lover that Makee, the Covenant spy, is all set to renounce her allegiance to humanity’s enemies. However, a series of misunderstandings and violent interactions with the UNSC leads... Continue reading…

EcoFlow Wave portable air conditioner | Image: EcoFlow EcoFlow is taking a detour from its usual pursuit of making big-ass batteries to launch this portable air conditioner that would give campers, RV roamers, and everyone living the van life more incentive to own a few of the aforementioned batteries. The EcoFlow Wave is a portable air conditioner it’s building that claims to have “the world’s most powerful cooling and the longest run time.”As you can see, based on the environment of the gentleman pictured above, the idea is that keeping cool isn’t just for places with permanent walls or, apparently, any walls at all. Image: EcoFlow The unit weighs 38.58 lbs by itself and 55.98 lbs with the 1,008Wh add-on battery attached. Unlike some earlier EcoFlow projects, this... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro It’s been a crushing few days for the Terra project, in a week that has been unforgiving for cryptocurrency as a whole.Over the past few days, the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin, which is meant to maintain a dollar peg, uncoupled dramatically from the $1 mark and dropped to a low of less than 30 cents on May 10th. In the latest update to the saga, the beleaguered project put its entire blockchain on halt for around two hours on Thursday, freezing user funds until the blockchain was unpaused.

This flagship has some neat ideas, but it’s lacking polish Continue reading…

Roku announced on Thursday that its Ultra streaming box will include its Voice Remote Pro, which upgrades the company’s standard remote by adding more buttons, always-on listening, and a rechargeable battery. Despite the fact that Roku is including a remote that costs $30 to purchase on its own, the Ultra will stay at its original $99.99 price point.In its press release, the company says that the bundling will begin in “mid-May,” and its website already says that the Ultra comes with the Pro remote. When my colleague Chris Welch reviewed the remote last year, he liked that he had the option of giving voice commands to his Roku without having to press a button. And while he admired the fact that it no longer required AAs, it was a bit of... Continue reading…