The Verge

Heather Morgan will have to follow several conditions while awaiting trial. | Image: Razzlekhan On Monday, a judge ruled that Heather Morgan, aka Razzlekhan, should be released on bail after she and her husband were arrested for allegedly helping to launder billions of dollars worth of stolen Bitcoin. Morgan and her husband Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein were already granted bail last week by another judge, but the government got an emergency stay on the previous order, saying that the couple could potentially use millions of dollars worth of un-seized Bitcoin to flee the country.Monday’s hearing took place to review the release order and consider further prosecution and defense evidence. You can read both of the written arguments below, which largely reflect what the parties argued in court. The presiding judge decided that Morgan... Continue reading…

The Penkesu custom handheld computer | Image: Penk Chen via GitHub There aren’t a lot of ultra-portable handheld PCs anymore, outside of the GDP pocket and its gaming-focused successors. With tablets, smartphones, and even handhelds like the Steam Deck diluting the marketable needs of owning a laptop, there isn’t much space for mini laptops beyond the simple joy of owning a fun-sized version of a traditional computer.But that’s not stopping DIY-er Penk Chen from building their own handheld PC called the Penkesu — a retro-futuristic ultraportable laptop with a mechanical keyboard. It could very well have existed as a working sci-fi movie prop in the ’90s or an R&B video plot device in 2002.

Android might stream apps to your computer. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Google’s January outline revealed plans to spend 2022 trying to make the Android and Chrome OS experience match Apple’s ecosystem integrations, including a feature that would mirror a messaging app from your Android phone on your Chromebook. Thanks to 9to5Google, which did some digging in the recently-released Android 13 developer preview, we might have an early look at what that feature will look like. Image: Google Google first outlined the mirroring feature in January. Based on what 9to5Google found, it appears that Google will essentially enable streaming apps to your computer. And the feature might end up working on non-Chrome OS computers, too, as 9to5Google says it used the web app involved on both... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon says it has fixed a major outage that appeared to affect Georgia and parts of Florida. Wireless customers reported they couldn’t make calls, connect to data service, or send and receive text messages for hours.“This afternoon there was a fiber issue that caused a network disruption for some customers in Georgia,” Verizon spokesperson Karen Schulz said in a statement to The Verge. “Our engineers worked to identify the issue and service has since been restored.” Screenshot: Downdetector Outages are mainly affecting customers in Georgia. According to Down Detector, reports of connectivity problems started around 2PM ET, with issues mostly reported in Georgia. Judging by Down Detector’s data, reports of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s new proposals for dating apps in the Netherlands haven’t gone far enough to appease the country’s competition regulator, which has just announced that it’s fining the company another €5 million (around $5.6 million). It’s the fourth weekly fine levied against the company, bringing the total to €20 million (around $22.6 million), and these fines are set to continue weekly while the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) thinks Apple is failing to comply with its order.The ACM’s order, which was made public in late December, says that Apple should allow dating app developers — and only dating app developers — to use alternatives to Apple’s in-app payment system in the country. Apple first announced its intention to comply with... Continue reading…

Zoom meetings are a part of everyday life for many of us. Whether you’re a middle schooler learning remotely or an executive with back-to-back meetings, or if it’s just that your book club still meets virtually, most of us have to grapple with the video conference company at some point in our week. Having another option for joining meetings other than your computer or squinting at your smartphone is a nice bonus, and if you have an Echo Show at home, it can make a useful hands-free Zoom machine.Video calling with Zoom is currently available on the Echo Show 8 (first- and second-gen) and the Echo Show 10 (the one that rotates). Amazon has said Zoom will be coming to the Echo Show 15 later this year.The Show 10 and the second-gen 8... Continue reading…

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy says he’s not interested in a sale right now. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Last week was an eventful week for Peloton: it got a new CEO, investors unleashed their fury at outgoing CEO John Foley, 2,800 employees were fired, and then some of those employees crashed an all-hands. At the heart of the drama, a big question was whether new CEO Barry McCarthy had been brought on to get Peloton in shape for a sale as the company’s value has plunged to $8 billion from a pandemic high of $50 billion. However, in a Financial Times interview, McCarthy has officially nixed the idea for the “foreseeable future.”“If I thought it was likely that the business was going to be acquired in the foreseeable future, I can’t imagine it would be a rational act to move across the country. There are lots of other things I could be... Continue reading…

Wordle — the viral daily word guessing game that was recently bought by The New York Times — has been on a tear in the past few days. Brainteasers like “ULTRA,” “ULCER,” and “ALOFT” have appeared, frustrating players, many of whom have taken to Twitter to complain that the game’s new owners are intentionally amping up the difficulty.But while conspiracy theories abound that the rash of difficult words is a result of the New York Times Games division sitting around with devilish grins, looking to find the most difficult five-letter words in the lexicon, the truth is that The New York Times is innocent of Wordle crimes here.

If you listened in to The Vergecast a couple of weeks ago, you might remember a sidebar discussion on how Android and Windows users in the EU are prompted to choose a default search engine to comply with antitrust regulations. “Nothing in the world can make you pick Bing,” said The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel with utter certainty. He then invited Vergecast listeners who actually choose Microsoft’s search engine over Google’s to write to him: “if you're a Bing-by-choice kind of person, let me know.”If a company is going to data mine me, I might as well get something out of itAs it turns out, some of our listeners are straight-up enthusiastic Bing users. “I know you were joking but I wanted to reach out,” a listener named Jimmy... Continue reading…

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge At $59.99, Amazon’s Smart Thermostat is among the most affordable options out there that can intelligently tweak the temperature of your home and take voice commands via Alexa. But today’s deal at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy knocks $12 off of that price, and $47.99 matches the best deal we’ve seen on this smart home gadget yet. And just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s lacking in features or quality. My colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy called it “a $60 stunner” in her review, praising its clean design and smart features that live up to their promises. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you have one or more devices that recharge via USB-C, you owe it to yourself to snag a speedy charger. RavPower no... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Samsung’s new Galaxy S22 Ultra is getting a lot of buzz since it’s the reincarnation of the Note. By comparison, the regular S22 and S22 Plus are much more iterative with a design that’s similar to last year’s S21 lineup. It’s been reported that Samsung was disappointed with the sales performance of its flagship phones in 2021, and at first glance, there’s little about the S22 and S22 Plus that make them feel like must-have upgrades. They’ve got the standard mix of camera and performance enhancements, but no big wow factor.But so what? There’s something to be said for Samsung’s hardware quality and consistency. The OLED screens in Galaxy phones are always that extra little bit nicer — in terms of uniformity, brightness, and so on — than... Continue reading…

The Opera browser will allow emoji-only web addresses | Opera Web browser company Opera said Monday it will enable emoji-only based web addresses “to bring a new level of creativity to the internet.” The integration is part of a partnership with Yat, a company that sells URLs with strings of emoji in them.“It’s been almost 30 years since the world wide web launched to the public, and there hasn’t been much innovation in the weblink space: people still include .com in their URLs,” Jorgen Arnesen, executive vice president of mobile at Opera, said in a press release.Yat pages are unique domains generated when someone purchases a string of emoji (which itself is called a Yat). The owner of a Yat can create an NFT of their emoji string, and the company plans to eventually let users connect their Yats... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snapchat is introducing a new way for creators on the app to earn money. The platform is testing mid-roll ads that appear in the Stories of a small group of US creators, with a wider rollout happening in the coming months.When an ad is placed within a Snap Star’s Story, Snapchat will share the revenue with the creators. The company says the revenue share is based on a formula that takes into account metrics like posting frequency and engagement. The feature is only available to Snap Stars, who are creators or public figures with large followings that have been verified on Snapchat, indicated by a gold star.In recent years, Snapchat has added various ways for creators to monetize their presence on the app. Snapchat users already see ads... Continue reading…

Jared Isaacman (left) and the rest of the Polaris Dawn crew | Image: Polaris Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who flew to Earth orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule last year, plans to fly with SpaceX again. Today, Isaacman announced that he’s purchased three additional upcoming flights with SpaceX, a series of missions called “Polaris” that would take him deeper into space on the company’s spacecraft.Isaacman, who made his fortune through his payment processing company Shift4 Payments, made headlines last year when he bankrolled an entire SpaceX Crew Dragon passenger mission in September, dubbed Inspiration4. He filled the three remaining seats on the vehicle with other civilian astronauts, including a childhood cancer survivor, an engineer, and a professor. The quartet all trained and eventually flew to orbit... Continue reading…

Horizon Forbidden West running on a PS4. You don’t need a new console for Aloy’s latest adventure Continue reading…

Nvidia announced its RTX 3090 Ti with faster memory and better performance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January. After originally promising more information by the end of January, Nvidia has since remained silent about pricing or a release date for the RTX 3090 Ti. Now, the company is refusing to say what’s going on.“We don’t currently have more info to share on the RTX 3090 Ti, but we’ll be in touch when we do,” Nvidia spokesperson Jen Andersson recently told The Verge.Just days after Nvidia’s original announcement of the RTX 3090 Ti, TweakTown and VideoCardz reported that Nvidia had halted the production of the flagship GPU. The company had reportedly been planning to release the RTX 3090 Ti on January 27th, but... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The UK’s tax department, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), says it’s the first authority in the country to seize an NFT, BBC News reports. The seizure was made as part of a £1.4 million (roughly $1.9 million) fraud case, in which three individuals have been arrested. The authority seized £5,000 worth of crypto assets (around $6,762) alongside three NFT artworks which have yet to be valued.As cryptocurrencies have exploded in price, high profile seizures by authorities have become increasingly common. Just this month the USA’s Department of Justice seized $3.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency linked to the 2016 Bitfinex hack. But this is one of the first high profile seizures of NFTs, digital assets that attempt to serve as proof... Continue reading…

Mok Shaiz’s majordomo reads from an 80s tabletop bowling game. | Screenshot: The Book of Boba Fett Keen-eyed observers might have spotted something a little off about the digital notepad used by Mok Shaiz’s majordomo in last week’s finale of The Book of Boba Fett. As pointed out by Mike Mika on Twitter, rather than the hi-tech instrument you might expect, the prop held by actor David Pasquesi appears to be a tabletop Coleco Bowlaltronic toy from the 1980s.Boba Fett thus continues Star Wars’ proud tradition of repurposing ordinary household objects as sci-fi gadgets in its galaxy far, far away. Perhaps the most famous example crops up in Episode V, when an extra can be seen in the background of Cloud City carrying what appears to be a household ice cream maker. This being Star Wars, the background character eventually received an e... Continue reading…

Where most open world games can offer a paralyzing amount of choices, Horizon Forbidden West doesn’t feel too overwhelming Continue reading…

It’s time to return to Middle Earth: the first trailer for Amazon’s incredibly ambitious The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has finally arrived during the Super Bowl LVI, giving a first good look at the upcoming prequel series.The trailer reveal comes after a steady stream of teasers for the upcoming series, which will be set hundreds of years before the events of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings in what Tolkien referred to as “The Second Age” of Middle Earth (as opposed to his more popular books and their film adaptations, which take place during the Third Age.)Amazon’s series will be condensing some of Tolkien’s timeline from The Silmarilion, which spans thousands of years and documents key events in the history of Middle... Continue reading…

Polestar made its Super Bowl debut with a Polestar 2 commercial that aimed to set the electric car newcomer apart from traditional car companies by taking a shot at the entire concept of flashy car commercials — and at Tesla and Volkswagen, specifically.The 30-second ad, titled “No Compromises” makes a litany of claims for Polestar, promising “No epic voiceovers,” “No empty promises,” and “No hidden agendas.” More pointed claims saw Polestar take a jab at Tesla CEO Elon Musk (“No conquering Mars,”) and Volkswagen (“No dieselgate,”) over soaring shots of the company’s Polestar 2 electric sedan.Polestar is a relatively new player in the electric car space, tied closely to Volvo and (notably) offering the first car that’s entirely... Continue reading…

Coinbase just made its Super Bowl debut with a remarkable clever QR code ad that might have been too popular: the company’s “Less talk, more Bitcoin,” campaign appears to have temporarily knocked out its app following the ad airing during the broadcast

Marvel Studios The Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness teaser that played at the very end of Spider-Man: No Way Home was an unexpected surprise that, for all its flashiness, didn’t say a thing about the movie’s plot or how Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) are meant to help Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) fix the existence of all things. The movie’s latest trailer does, though.Somewhere out there in the multiverse, one of the countless variants of Stephen Strange has gone and put a dent in the multiverse that the original live-action variant now has to put right.Strange’s recent magical meddling in No Way Home probably has something to do with how the multiverse is damaged and how a seemingly evil... Continue reading…

Image by Intel Intel is investing in blockchain technology with a new chip designed to mine cryptocurrency (via Reuters). The company is focusing on sustainability, and plans on “developing the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale.”Intel’s first crypto-focused chip, which it calls a “blockchain accelerator” is set to ship later this year. Two companies have already preordered the technology, including Bitcoin mining company GRIID Infrastructures and Block, the Jack Dorsey-owned fintech company formerly known as Square.The environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining has become a huge concern“We expect that our circuit innovations will deliver a blockchain accelerator that has over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream... Continue reading…

A mosaic image of the Moon’s north pole, taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft | Image: NASA/JPL/USGS Last month, an astronomer and space tracking expert made a bit of a splash when he predicted that a piece of an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket left in space for the last seven years was going to collide with the Moon this March. But now he’s changing that prediction in a big way. While the rocket part he’s been tracking is still on a collision course with the Moon, he now believes that the vehicle is not an old Falcon 9 part, but an old Chinese rocket instead.The update comes from Bill Gray, an astronomer and asteroid tracker running Project Pluto, who has been following this doomed object since March of 2015. He says the object was first picked up by the Catalina Sky Survey, a program that uses telescopes near Tucson, Arizona to scan the... Continue reading…

Joe Burrow, the quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals, is set to face off against the Los Angeles Rams (lead by Matthew Stafford) in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California. | Photo by Scott Winters / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Super Bowl LVI is being played at the SoFi Stadium in California at 6:30PM ET on February 13th, with the Los Angeles Rams facing off against the Cincinnati Bengals.If you’re looking to watch the game, the commercials, and / or the absolutely stacked halftime show featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar, here are some of the ways you can do it. Do be warned, though — if you went out and bought a fancy new TV to watch the game, you won’t be getting the most out of it for the game, as NBC isn’t streaming it in 4K this year. (That said, the TV’s still probably great for a bunch of other things.)What time will the Super Bowl start?Kickoff is at 6:30PM ET on February 13th, which is 5:30PM CT, 4:30PM MT, and... Continue reading…

Universal Pictures Universal’s Nope from director Jordan Peele is one of the rare modern movies with this much hype around it to make it this close to its release date without the public knowing basically anything about it.Building up that sort of suspense is a huge gamble on the studio’s part that could go either way, but Nope’s first trailer certainly creates the impression that Peele’s gone and done it again — “it” here meaning “dreamed up something terrible and turned it into a work of art we’re all going to become obsessed with.”Nope’s first trailer introduces Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer’s two cattle ranching characters who spend their days working with horses on farms while dreaming of making it big as professional horse handlers for film... Continue reading…

Image: Facebook Meta has debuted its Quest 2 Super Bowl ad ahead of the big game, and it’s hard to get a grasp on how exactly it’s supposed to promote the metaverse (via Wall Street Journal). It evokes a strange mix of nostalgia — and the slight fear — associated with a childhood spent around unsettling animatronics, all while simultaneously giving off Five Nights at Freddy’s and Black Mirror vibes.The commercial opens in a Chuck E. Cheese-esque environment — so cleverly called Questy’s — with a fuzzy animatronic dog, a pink six-armed creature, and two penguins performing Simple Mind’s “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” on stage at the arcade. Soon after, a moving crew drags the lifeless bodies of the animatronic band out of the building as the location... Continue reading…

Lost Ark has comfortably passed 1 million concurrent players after just 24 hours, becoming the second most played game in Steam history by concurrent counts. The Diablo-like MMO launched yesterday in the West, after Amazon Games collaborated with Smilegate RPG to localize and translate Lost Ark and make it available in English. It has now passed concurrent records for both Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, which regularly dominate the top of Steam’s most-played games.Lost Ark is so popular right now that it has experienced server issues and there’s a queue just to start playing. SteamDB lists concurrent players of Lost Ark at 1,311,842, passing CS:GO’s record of 1,308,963 players and Dota 2’s of 1,295,114. It’s not clear... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re using Zoom on a Mac, now’s the time to make sure it’s updated to version 5.9.3. Zoom has acknowledged a bug that appears to cause the microphone on Macs running macOS Monterey to stay on even after leaving a meeting, first reported by The Register (via 9to5Mac). Screenshot: Dan Seifert The bug causes the mic indicator light on macOS Monterey to appear when Zoom isn’t in use. Users have been complaining about the issue since December, as documented in a post on Zoom’s community forum. Several users noticed that the orange recording indicator light in the Control Center appears when Zoom isn’t being used — the indicator light is a privacy feature introduced in Monterey that warns you when an application... Continue reading…

Heather Morgan, aka Razzlekhan, was arrested with her husband for allegedly laundering $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. | Image: Razzlekhan Netflix is gearing up to create a documentary series about the couple who allegedly laundered $4.5 billion worth of stolen Bitcoin (via Variety). This comes just days after Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were arrested in connection with the crimes — and not long after many of us (regrettably) became aware of Morgan’s rapping alter-ego, Razzlekhan, aka the “Crocodile of Wall Street.”The couple allegedly attempted to launder the stolen funds by buying gold and NFTsThe docuseries will be directed by Chris Smith, the executive producer behind the bizarre hit Tiger King and director of FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. Nick Bilton, whose portfolio includes a documentary about the Theranos scandal, The Inventor: Out for... Continue reading…

Wow, LG really loves robots in its product images. | Image: LG It’s Saturday, and hopefully that means you get a chance for some R-and-R-and-D: rest, relaxation, and deals. We’ve pooled together some great tech deals to help with those first two parts.When it comes to relaxing, what puts your mind at-ease more than some twitch-response PC games? If that describes you, you might like this deal on LG’s Ultragear 27-inch QHD monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution and 144Hz refresh rate. It’s $279.99 ($100 off) at Amazon. That is the lowest price to date for this IPS panel with a one millisecond response time. That combination of a high refresh rate and low response time, along with Nvidia G-Sync compatibility for combating screen tearing makes it ideal for fast-action games like first-person shooters and... Continue reading…

Fortnite fans have solved an Epic Games puzzle to reveal an Uncharted crossover coming to the game on February 17th. Tom Holland will star in Fortnite for a second time, thanks to a new skin in his portrayal as Nathan Drake in the upcoming Uncharted movie that hits theaters on February 18th. The original Nathan Drake character and Chloe Frazier will also be available in both movie and video game forms inside Fortnite.Epic Games started teasing the collaboration late on Friday with a treasure hunt website, days after leakers spotted code inside Fortnite that pointed towards an “Uncharted treasure map.” Players had to solve a 14-character password, with some creators getting clues along the way. The password, sicparvismagna, was solved in... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Forbes has announced that Binance, “one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency and blockchain infrastructure providers,” is making a $200 million investment to own a part of an “iconic business information brand.” That money is part of a $400 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) arrangement set up for Forbes to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.A defamation lawsuit and one crypto hacker/writer weren’t enough to stop this dealThe deal makes for an interesting milestone, showing how Web3 firms have reached their “let’s buy a media outlet” moment, kind of like Time Warner and AOL, or AT&T and Time Warner, or Verizon and AOL, or... you get the point.But this arrangement also brings... Continue reading…

Photo by Alex Castro / Amelia Holowaty Krales These gift ideas ran Cupid’s arrow right through us Continue reading…

Fujifilm’s Instax Square SQ1 is always a welcome gift, one that is currently selling at an all-time low. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Let’s face it: most of us have procrastinated on buying a gift for Valentine’s Day before. Thankfully, there’s still time to pick something up before Monday, February 14th, especially if you know where to look. To help you find the right gift, we’ve rounded up a few ideas that are set to arrive on time. These include deals on smart displays like Amazon’s Echo Show 8, as well as retro-inspired instant cameras, AirPods, and even a portable message gun.For those who waited until the very last minute, we’ve also included some digital gift ideas, including digital gift cards and games. And remember, if you need even more suggestions, you can always peruse our 2022 Valentine’s Day gift guide. There, you’ll find a selection of ideas spanning... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon warehouse employees who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 no longer need to wear face masks at work, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company is rolling back a mask requirement it last put back into effect during the omicron surge in December. Last year, the mask requirement was lifted between May and August and again during much of November and December until the spread of the omicron variant spurred a change.Amazon is pushing incentives for vaccinations instead of mandatesThe company also updated its rules for paid time off. Warehouse employees who have received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine by March 18th are eligible for COVID-19 related paid leave if they contract the virus, while unvaccinated employees will... Continue reading…

It sounds like your streaks should be safe. | Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images The New York Times’ version of Wordle launched Thursday, but just like most big video game launches these days, it’s been messy. While there have been reports of a few different issues, perhaps the most egregious was that some win streaks weren’t carried over from the old Wordle URLs to the Wordle URL on the Times, despite what was promised after the Times announced it was buying the popular word puzzle from creator Josh Wardle. We asked the Times what’s been going on, and spokesperson Jordan Cohen shared details about how it has been fixing things.Shortly after Thursday’s launch, the Times identified a problem affecting users’ current streak information. “For these users, their Current Streak was being reset to one after successfully... Continue reading…

UNITED STATES - NOVEMBER 28: Nuclear power plant in northern California | Photo by Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images At least some nuclear power plants in the US contain counterfeit parts that could pose significant risks, an investigation by the inspector general’s office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found. Those parts “present nuclear safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences,” says the resulting report published on February 9th.While concerns about safety and nuclear waste have vexed the nuclear power industry for decades, the new findings come amidst growing enthusiasm for nuclear energy as a carbon-free power source that can help nations meet their climate goals.The investigation was conducted after unnamed individuals alleged that “most, if not all,” nuclear plants in the US have fake or faulty parts. The... Continue reading…

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Uber and Lyft have been operating on parallel tracks for a long time. Drivers moonlight for both services, customers toggle between the two apps, and despite Lyft’s efforts to position itself as a “woke” alternative to Uber, the two companies essentially operate identical ride-sharing services in the US.Of course, there’s a lot to differentiate the two from one another. Uber is global, while Lyft only operates in North America. Uber dominates ride-sharing, taking in roughly 70 percent of US riders spending and leaving Lyft with the rest. But this week’s earnings reports revealed a much sharper divergence between the two companies than we’ve seen in the past, namely around side hustles.side hustle divergenceUber’s main side hustle is... Continue reading…

Big changes for Warzone are on the way. | Image: Activision Blizzard Activision is working on two big Call of Duty initiatives for 2022, the company announced Friday. One is a sequel to 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and the other is a “new Warzone experience,” both of which will be “designed together from the ground-up,” according to a blog post.It’s unclear if the new Warzone experience is a full-on sequel or a major update in the vein of Fortnite’s massive chapter changes, and the company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment asking for clarification. However, Activision is promising some big things. You can expect “a massive evolution of battle royale with all-new playspace and a new sandbox mode​,” the blog says, and a new engine that powers “both the new Call of Duty game release... Continue reading…

Before Disney Plus, Netflix’s Marvel TV shows were pushing the edge of MCU-adjacent content on streaming, but soon, you won’t be able to watch Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Punisher, or The Defenders on Netflix anymore.News of the pending removal surfaced earlier today at What’s on Netflix, as viewers noticed flags on the shows in the Netflix app. Spokespeople for Netflix and Disney who declined to be named publicly have confirmed to The Verge that Netflix’s license ends February 28th.Polygon points out that this shift is coming just after a few characters from the Netflix shows popped up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Charlie Cox brought his Daredevil character into Spider-Man: No Way Home, while Vincent... Continue reading…

Photo: Alcon Entertainment Blade Runner’s next act will apparently be a live-action TV series from Amazon, with original director Ridley Scott set to return as an executive producer on the project, Blade Runner 2099, Variety reports.Blade Runner 2099 will pick up 50 years in the future from the Denis Villeneuve-helmed sequel Blade Runner 2049 from 2017 and will see Silka Luisa (the showrunner on Apple TV Plus’ Shining Girls) writing and executive producing the series. Deadline adds that Scott may also direct the show himself, too.Scott had previously teased the project in a BBC interview back in November — the first public mention of the series — mentioning that the live-action show was being developed as a 10-episode series to start, with a pilot and a show... Continue reading…

NASA unveiled a mosaic of the first images captured by the revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, today. The image represents the early stages of the telescope’s 18 main mirror segments properly aligning before JWST reaches its full potential.The image is blurry, but this is actually a good starting point in the long process of adjusting JWST’s mirrors to take ultra-sharp photos of the distant Universe. The 18 points of light that appear in the image all represent the same isolated star, known as HD 84406, seen by a different primary mirror segment. Light collected from each primary mirror segment was reflected back to Webb’s secondary mirror, then measured using one of the telescope’s key imaging instruments, the Near... Continue reading…

Happy Friday. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter had some issues Friday; it wasn’t working on desktop for some people, and the problems seemed more prevalent on the West Coast. But about an hour after I first noticed problems, Twitter said things were fixed.“We’ve fixed a technical bug that was preventing timelines from loading and Tweets from posting,” the company said via its support account. “Things should be back to normal now. Sorry for the interruption!”

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images One of the many aspirations for “web3” is that you could potentially take certain messy, emotional human processes and clean them up by putting them on the blockchain. “Smart contracts” write their terms directly into code, and actions they take are both public and irreversible. Enthusiasts believe this sort of “trustless” system can enable people come together to work on projects that they otherwise might not.If you get enough of those people together to work on a project, you might have a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO. The Ethereum network, on which many DAOs run, describes them as “a safe way to collaborate with internet strangers.” Remember when thousands of people came together within days to raise $47 million in an... Continue reading…

Construction workers install a new pedestrian bridge made with recycled wind turbine blades in County Cork, Ireland. | ReWind On a former train track bed connecting the towns of Midleton and Youghal in County Cork, Ireland, workers recently excavated the rusted remains of an old railway bridge and installed a pedestrian one in its place. The bridge would have been an unremarkable milestone in the development of a new pedestrian greenway through the Irish countryside, if not for what it’s made of: recycled wind turbine blades.That makes it just the second “blade bridge” in the world. The first, installed last October in a small town in western Poland, officially opened in early January. The engineers and entrepreneurs behind these bridges are hopeful they represent the beginning of a new trend: repurposing old wind turbine blades for infrastructure projects.I... Continue reading…

Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images Major automakers are feeling the strain of the anti-vaccine mandate protests in Canada that have blocked several major bridges on the US-Canada border. Honda, Toyota, General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis have all had to cut production in Canada, the US, or both as the anti-mandate protests stretch into their third week.It is the latest supply chain disruption to affect the auto industry, which is still reeling from the semiconductor chip shortage that has slowed production and led to increased prices of both new and used vehicles.The convoy protests began in late January, after a loose affiliation of truckers banded together to drive from western Canada to the nation’s capital of Ottawa to voice opposition to COVID-19 vaccine... Continue reading…