The Verge

Image: Xbox Ever since Epic Games started its battle with Apple and Google over their app store fees, playing Fortnite on your mobile device has been more difficult, if not impossible. You could try it on iPhone via Nvidia’s GeForce Now but only if you got into a closed beta. But now, Epic Games has decided to partner with the company it spurned — Microsoft — and is putting Fortnite on pretty much anything with a screen for free via the Xbox Cloud Gaming service.Fortnite is the first free-to-play title to join Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Microsoft says that all you’ll need to play (in the 26 countries where it’s available) is a Microsoft account and internet access for your iOS, iPadOS, Android, or Windows device. It works through your web browser (c... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk has secured $7.1 billion in new financing for his takeover of Twitter — which CNBC reports will include assuming the role of “temporary CEO” — with this round of funding coming from a group of sometimes high-profile outside investors. At the top of the list is Larry Ellison, with the co-founder and current CTO of Oracle committing $1 billion to the purchase.Ellison has said that he is “very close friends” with Musk, and he was added to Tesla’s board in 2018. As one of the richest people alive — a superlative he shares with Musk — and an estimated net worth of over $100 billion, the investment is relatively small change for him. Back in 2012, Ellison bought nearly the entire Hawaiian island of Lanai for around $500 million.A... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Lyft Shared rides, the ride-hail company’s carpooling service, is returning to more US cities this month. The return of carpooling comes as the company struggles to rein in its spending in response to an ongoing driver shortage and high gas prices.Lyft suspended carpooling in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to help curb the spread of the virus. About 16 months later, shared rides slowly returned to a small number of markets. And now, it’s returning to even more cities. (Uber started bringing its Uber Pool service back to cities last fall.)In May, Lyft Shared rides will return to five US cities: San Francisco, San Jose, Denver, Las Vegas, and Atlanta. The company has been operating its carpooling service in Philadelphia... Continue reading…

Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen. | HBO Though House Targaryen will still hold much power in HBO’s upcoming House of the Dragon series, the Game of Thrones prequel will also dig into the story of how the family fell from grace after years of existing in a world separate from Westeros’ other classes. In the show’s latest trailer, King Viserys Targaryen, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Prince Daemon Targaryen want nothing more than to further ensure that their family’s control over Wesreros’ other power players remains intact.But the Targaryen family’s infighting — to say nothing of the inbreeding — creates the perfect opportunity for their conniving rivals from Houses Stark, Velaryon, and Lannister to make plays for the Iron Throne and destroy the true source of the ruling... Continue reading…

Eero’s new mesh Wi-Fi router looks familiar but achieves higher speeds. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge It’s not every day that you get sizable discounts on products that just came out, but today is an exception. The new Eero Pro 6E mesh Wi-Fi router, which The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy just reviewed, is already on sale at Amazon for 15 percent off. It’s the new, top-of-the-line model from Eero, sporting a 6GHz band that eclipses gigabit speeds via Wi-Fi — at least in devices that support it. It’s also got Thread support for easier smart home integration with compatible products, and the signal from one unit can cover up to 2,000 square feet. These mesh routers also come in a two-pack to cover 4,000 square feet or a three-pack for big, multi-floored homes.That lone Eero Pro 6E router normally costs $299, but Amazon has it... Continue reading…

The Eero Pro 6E is the company’s first 6GHz-capable router Continue reading…

Josh Brolin in Outer Range. | Image: Richard Foreman/Amazon Prime Video A show about cowboys, small town drama, and one big hole Continue reading…

HoloLens showing a driver an upcoming left turn. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has officially announced a new “moving platform” feature for the HoloLens 2, which is designed to let the augmented reality headset work in places like cars. It addresses a long-standing HoloLens issue of moving environments confusing the headset’s sensors. The enhancement was developed in collaboration with Volkswagen, which has been experimenting with using the headset as a heads-up display in its vehicles.As Microsoft’s blog post explains, its augmented reality headset tracks movement using a combination of camera sensors and an inertial measurement unit (which typically includes accelerometers and gyroscopes). But in a car, the readings from these two sensors can conflict; the headset senses movement but sees a static... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Overwatch League commissioner Sean Miller shares his thoughts on what a new game will do for the League Continue reading…

Photo by Owen Grove for The Verge The Meta Quest 2 is one of those rare products that keeps getting better. Part of this has to do with the hardware, which has received several useful updates since we reviewed it in late 2020, including 120Hz refresh rate support for some games, Air Link to wirelessly connect to a gaming PC, and more. Better yet, Meta shows no signs of slowing down its cadence of updates.But almost of equal importance to the Quest 2’s long-lasting success are the interesting ways that the VR community has modified aspects of the hardware or crafted its own software with the goal of going beyond what’s usually possible in an off-the-shelf Quest 2 VR headset.In this video, I’m diving into a handful of those tips and tricks, both on a software and... Continue reading…

Sen. Chris Coons, who led Wednesday’s hearing on tech transparency, during a previous hearing in March. | Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images On Wednesday, Congress was treated to the unfamiliar spectacle of highly intelligent people, talking with nuance, about platform regulation. The occasion was a hearing, titled “Platform Transparency: Understanding the Impact of Social Media,” and it served as a chance for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider the necessity of legislation that would require big tech platforms to make themselves available for study by qualified researchers and members of the public.One such piece of legislation, the Platform Transparency and Accountability Act, was introduced in December by (an ever-so-slightly) bipartisan group of senators. One of those senators, Chris Coons of Delaware, led the Wednesday hearing; another, Sen. Amy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk is expected to take on the CEO role at Twitter in a temporary capacity after his purchase of the company closes later this year, according to CNBC reporter David Faber. Faber says Musk detailed the plans in presentations to possible funders for the takeover.Musk hasn’t publicly said what will happen to the company’s C-suite once the deal is complete, and current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal — who’s been in the role for just five months — has remained vague about his prospects of remaining on the job.With Musk’s commitments to Tesla and SpaceX, where he’s also CEO, there had been speculation from big tech observers that he would have to hand off the top role at Twitter. Now, it sounds like that may happen — but not right away.R... Continue reading…

Image: SnoopyTech (Twitter) After The Verge yesterday revealed the name of Sonos’ latest soundbar and a retailer accidentally posted images of the device, the leak floodgates have now seemingly opened. Twitter user SnoopyTech has shared a number of marketing shots of the Sonos Ray, offering a closer look at the upcoming product’s size and design.The images showcase the Ray in both black and white and offer a higher-quality peek at the soundbar’s design. Similar to the Arc and Beam, the Ray has a ton of perforated holes cut into the plastic front grill. Image: SnoopyTech (Twitter) The Sonos Ray shares design traits with the more expensive Arc and Beam. Around back is the connect button, power, optical, and ethernet — confirming The... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mark Benson, the new head of SmartThings US, on why it’s best positioned for the arrival of Matter Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On May 5th — World Password Day — we might have come one step closer to passwords being a thing of the past.In a joint effort, tech giants Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced Thursday morning that they have committed to building support for passwordless sign-in across all of the mobile, desktop, and browser platforms that they control in the coming year. Effectively, this means that passwordless authentication will come to all major device platforms in the not too distant future: Android and iOS mobile operating systems; Chrome, Edge, and Safari browsers; and the Windows and macOS desktop environments.“Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure,” said Kurt Knight, senior... Continue reading…

Believe it or not, there was no such thing as an AMD Chromebook until 2019. Also, the first ones were sluggish, and whi;e AMD’s second stab at Chromebooks was quite a bit better, they still contained rebranded CPUs whose Zen cores were years out of date. Today, AMD is putting a better foot forward — with the new Ryzen 5000 C-Series chips, including the “first 8-core high-performance x86 processor for Chromebooks.”I mean, AMD’s still not putting its best foot forward, because these APUs will still sport last-gen AMD Vega graphics rather than the newest RDNA 2 stuff you’ll find in the company’s Ryzen 6000 chips (not to mention the PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam Deck). And the new Ryzen 7 5825C, Ryzen 5 5625C, and Ryzen 3 5425C aren’t... Continue reading…

The new Spin 514 features two upward-firing speakers. | Image: Acer Acer is launching a new version of its Chromebook Spin 514 for 2022 with support for the latest AMD Ryzen 5000 C-series processors. The 14-inch 2-in-1 laptop will launch in Q3 2022 with a $579.99 starting price, which is significantly higher than the 2021 model. But the price hike might be justified if you want a faster Chromebook. Acer says that these Zen 3 processors are “performance-oriented” with AMD Radeon graphics. Speedy PCIe 3.0 NVMe storage is also built into each configuration, which trounces the slower eMMC storage used in last year’s model.The starting model of the Spin 514 has a 14-inch 1080p touchscreen, AMD’s Ryzen 3 5125C, 8GB of dual-channel LPDDR4X RAM, and 128GB of NVMe SSD storage. Prices weren’t disclosed for... Continue reading…

Image: Nvidia Nvidia kicked Google’s butt last October with a huge upgrade to its GeForce Now cloud gaming service — but only those with the company’s Shield TV streaming gadgets could experience it in glorious 4K. Today, Nvidia is fixing that by adding 4K to its native apps for Mac and Windows PC, including a newer version for Macs with Apple’s M1 chips.In addition, Nvidia’s expanding its high-refresh-rate 1080p 120Hz mode to Samsung’s flagship phones, including the Samsung Galaxy S22, S22 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Flip 3, and also the OnePlus 9 Pro. Previously, it was only available on Samsung’s S21 models, the Note 20 and S20 FE, the ASUS ROG 5 Series and the Google Pixel 6 Pro.4K is for 4K screens — mostlyBack to 4K: those new 4K60 streams are... Continue reading…

Gaze upon it. | Image: HP HP’s Dragonfly Chromebook is the most exciting Chromebook I’ve seen in a while. The device, which mixes high-end specs with premium hardware design, was announced at CES back in January. And now, HP has finally revealed the price of this thing: the consumer version of the Dragonfly Chromebook is expected to ship this summer, and it will cost — brace yourselves — $1,149.Okay, so that’s not as bad as it could’ve been. The Enterprise model of the Dragonfly is listed with an MSRP of $2,165 as of this writing, which is the highest starting price I’ve ever heard of a Chromebook having. Still, $1,149 is... a lot.For that high price, this Dragonfly device will include all kinds of high-end features. It will be the first Chromebook with Intel’s... Continue reading…

Apparent retail packaging for the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. | Image: u/Chez5160 Pictures of the apparent retail packaging for Sony’s upcoming flagship headphones, the WH-1000XM5, have leaked on Reddit, suggesting the successor to the excellent WH-1000XM4 could be just around the corner. The images appear to confirm the previously rumored design for the new headphones, which includes a thinner headband and redesigned connector with the left and right earcups.Unfortunately, the new leak calls into question a previous report from TechnikNews, which claimed that the headphones would see improved battery life when used with active noise cancellation (ANC). The retail packaging says the headphones will have a battery life of 30 hours, 10 hours less than the 40 hours that was previously reported, and the same as what the... Continue reading…

Scientists from China’s Zhejiang University have unveiled a drone swarm capable of navigating through a dense bamboo forest without human guidance.The group of 10 palm-sized drones communicate with one another to stay in formation, sharing data collected by on-board depth-sensing cameras to map their surroundings. This method means that if the path in front of one drone is blocked, it can use information collected by its neighbors to plot a new route. The researchers note that this technique can also be used by the swarm to track a human walking through the same environment. If one drone loses sight of the target, others are able to pick up the trail.In the future, write the scientists in a paper published in the journal Science... Continue reading…

Lenovo has refreshed the AIO 7, its 27-inch, 4K, all-in-one desktop PC with a screen that can rotate 90 degrees. The new AIO will not be sold in North America but will be available in “other select geographical markets.” Pricing has not been announced, but last year’s model started at $1,599.New to this model is that owners can wirelessly cast their smartphone’s screen to the 27-inch rotation monitor. (Your phone must support DLNA, AirPlay, Miracast, or LElink.) The rotating form factor has gained recent popularity in part due to the growth of vertical video formats across social media, and this feature could perhaps be attractive to creators who edit video and photos in that space. It could also be a potentially hilarious way to... Continue reading…

This is the Slim 7i Carbon. Lenovo has refreshed a number of models in its Slim line (known as Yoga Slim in some markets). A model I find interesting is the Slim 7i Carbon, one that Lenovo has subtitled “The Art of Mobility” in its press release.If that name sounds familiar, it’s because this looks to be a similar package to the AMD-powered IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon (or Yoga Slim 7 Carbon outside of North America), which made a splash upon its announcement last year as the lightest 14-inch laptop to feature an OLED screen. (It’s 2.37 pounds.) Not only did that panel have a 90Hz refresh rate but also it could reach 600 nits of brightness, which is exceptionally bright for a consumer laptop (and especially for an OLED — those tend to be on the dimmer side).With the... Continue reading…

Can replace a TV if you don’t mind an even bigger gray rectangle Continue reading…

Starlink Portability lets your take your SpaceX internet anywhere. | Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Starlink’s internet-from-SpaceX service has gone mobile with a new Portability feature. For an additional monthly fee, Starlink subscribers can now take their “dishy” anywhere on their home continent that provides active internet coverage. That opens up connectivity to remote places that will likely never be covered by 5G — a potential boon to the increasing numbers of work-from-anywhere types spawned by the COVID 19 pandemic.SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to one happy Starlink camper saying, “Starlink is awesome for RV’s, camping or any activity away from cities.”

The feature offers to automatically change a compromised password. | Image: Max Weinbach A Google Assistant feature designed to automate the time-consuming process of changing your passwords after a breach appears to be getting a wider rollout. That’s according to a tweet from leaker Max Weinbach and a report from Android Police.One of Weinbach’s screenshots shows a dialog box warning that Chrome on Android has detected that a used password appeared in a breach, and offers the option to “Change automatically.” The second includes a confirmation box, asking the user to agree to “Let Google Assistant help you change your password.”

The company apparently grew too large during the pandemic. | Image: Getty Cameo, the company that lets you pay a celebrity to record a custom message or hop on a video call with you, has announced that it’s laying off 87 people, or around a quarter of its staff, according to The Information. According to the report, employees got the news at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday.The company’s co-founder and CEO Steven Galanis says the layoffs are a “course correction” after Cameo grew massively during the pandemic. The company went “from just over 100 to nearly 400” employees during lockdown, according to Galanis’ statement to Variety. Since then, he says, “market conditions have rapidly changed.” Early in 2021, Variety reported that the company’s revenue was 4.5 times higher in 2020 than it had been in 2019.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today Google hardware boss Rick Osterloh confirmed that the company has acquired Raxium, a five-year-old startup with MicroLED technology that could be key in building a new generation of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality headsets.This adds to the evidence that Google’s next big AR move is growing closer: it previously acquired the glasses maker North in 2020, and is reportedly hiring engineers to build an augmented reality operating system. We learned in January that Google Labs is building an AR headset called “Project Iris,” under the same management as the Project Starline high-res video chat demo shown during its I/O event last year. Image: Raxium When The Information first reported Google’s Raxium... Continue reading…

But will I have to claim that as income on my taxes? Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, has agreed to pay out $141 million after it “cheated millions of low-income Americans out of free tax filing services,” in the words of New York Attorney General Letitia James. Most of that money will go to consumers that were tricked into paying for its service. This comes as the result of an agreement it made with the AG (and officials from all 50 states and DC), which will also require the company to change its marketing practices.According to the Attorney General’s press release, Intuit will owe people $30 for every year they were tricked into paying for TurboTax between 2016 and 2018. The document notes that “impacted consumers will automatically receive notices and a check by mail.”TurboTax... Continue reading…

Bluesky Bluesky, Twitter’s open-source offshoot, has released early code for a decentralized social network protocol. The system is dubbed the Authenticated Data Experiment (or ADX) and is available on GitHub for developers to test, although Bluesky emphasizes that it’s incomplete. It’s one of the most substantive windows into Bluesky’s workings since the project was conceived in 2019 and formally incorporated in early 2022.Bluesky CEO Jay Graber writes that ADX will be the start of a semi-public development process. “We’re going to take a middle path of releasing work before it’s complete, but also giving ourselves time to workshop new directions at early stages,” Graber says. The GitHub repository includes an overview of ADX’s goals and... Continue reading…

Project Gene5is lives. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Dish Network has taken a big step forward on its journey to becoming the country’s fourth wireless carrier — one that it should have taken, oh, let’s say many months ago. As reported by Axios, its 5G network, aka Project Genesis, has finally launched to paying customers in Las Vegas, graduating from the beta program that began late last year. For $30 per month it includes unlimited 5G data, talk, text, and, uh, this: “Additionally, we include a white-glove delivery experience and exclusive access to the Project Genesis app where you can earn rewards.” Rewards including... NFTs.As part of T-Mobile’s deal to buy Sprint, Dish Network has been tasked by the FCC with taking Sprint’s place as our fourth carrier. It’s taking an unconventional... Continue reading…

Starbucks Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, along with executive vice president and chief marketing officer Brady Brewer, explained to investors during their Q2 2022 earnings presentation that the coffee company will add “new concepts such as ownership and community-based membership models that we see developing in the Web 3 space.” Brewer went further, saying “Imagine acquiring a new digital collectible from Starbucks, where that product also serves as your access pass to a global Starbucks community, one with engaging content experiences and collaboration all centered around coffee.”A post on the company blog does more to explain what all of that means:

Volkswagen’s ID 4 EV. Volkswagen’s CEO, Herbert Diess, says that the company is “basically sold out on electric vehicles in Europe and in the United States” for the year, according to a report from the Financial Times. This means that anyone hoping to get an EV from VW, Audi, or any of the group’s other brands may have to wait until 2023, as the company tries to navigate the chip shortage and production issues from COVID shutdowns in China.According to the report, VW expects its backlog of orders to keep growing. It currently has plenty of people on the list waiting to get an EV and expects to add more throughout the year. But supply chain issues will make those difficult to fill. Almost every automaker has had to halt or slow down production thanks to a... Continue reading…

T-Mobile is opening up its try-before-you-buy program to home internet. | Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge T-Mobile launched its 5G home internet service around this time last year with the promise of a low $50 monthly rate, easy setup, and data speeds at least as good as traditional broadband internet. In reality, it’s kind of a mixed bag. This year, it’s hoping to tempt more people away from traditional internet providers with some new offers, starting with a 15-day trial period for the service. Customers who cancel within 15 days of starting the service will get a refund as long as they return the provided internet gateway.The company is also offering to cover early termination fees if you leave your current internet provider for T-Mobile — up to $500 by way of a prepaid Mastercard. Home internet subscribers are also now included in the... Continue reading…

The day has arrived: you can now spend $159 on a USB cable and actually feel somewhat justified! That’s because Apple’s three-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro Cable isn’t just any ol’ cord — it’s still the only Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C / USB 4 cable on the market at anywhere near its length.Want a cable that can transmit 40 gigabits per second of Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 data, up to 8K video, and 100W of USB-C PD power to a big MacBook Pro nearly 10 feet away? It’s your only game in town. Every other company that sells a Thunderbolt 4 cable — including Belkin, CalDigit, CableMatters, CTG, OWC, and Plugable — tops out at two meters (6.6 feet). Which makes those other cables roughly just half a foot longer than Apple’s previous 1.8-meter Thunderbolt... Continue reading…

The smugness remains. Clippy, the beloved(?) paperclip-shaped assistant for Microsoft Office, has made an appearance in Halo Infinite as a series of unlockable items. IGN points out that it’s not quite clear yet how to unlock the decals, but it seems likely that equipping them won’t suddenly cover your screen in a barrage of “helpful” hints and tricks (which is unfortunate for total scrubs like me).The tweet that brought the character’s appearance to our attention shows both a Clippy nameplate and gun charm, but the character shows up in a few other places, too: you can spray paint them onto the hood of your Warthog or your Spartan’s chest. Interestingly, in most places the character shows up as “Clipster.” Clippy has also gone by Clippit, but “Clipster”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok is opening up a new way for creators to make money. The company plans to start sharing a cut of revenue with top creators when their videos run alongside certain ads. The program mirrors how YouTube pays out creators, and it could lead to more significant payouts from the platform, which has yet to offer a substantial way for creators to make money.The new program, called TikTok Pulse, allows ads to be specifically run alongside “the top 4% of all videos on TikTok,” the company wrote in a blog post today. Creators and publishers with at least 100,000 followers are eligible to receive a cut of revenue when their videos are included.TikTok will share 50 percent of ad revenue from Pulse with approved creators, Sandie Hawkins,... Continue reading…

Prices on games and gear that won’t cost you an arm... we promise. The 4th of May is upon us, which means that retailers everywhere are offering discounts on all of their Star Wars-inspired wares. Everything from rugs to pet toys is available for less than MSRP today. However, we’re focusing mainly on games and tech from the Star Wars galaxy. Many of these sales last only for today, so you’ll have to move fast to take advantage of these savings.A galaxy of gamesYou can find nearly every game from the Star Wars library available for a discount today, whether you play on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch. You can even find classics like Star Wars Episode 1 Racer and Star Wars Republic Commando, but here are a few contemporary titles that we think deserve special attention.Mobile AccessoriesBoth... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sonos is preparing to introduce its own voice assistant service within the next few weeks, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. The voice functionality will let customers play and control music on Sonos’ whole-home audio platform.It will be part of a forthcoming software update set to arrive first to customers in the US on June 1st, with an international rollout to follow. Sonos Voice will serve as an alternative to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, which Sonos already supports on its smart speakers and voice-enabled soundbars. All Sonos products that run the company’s S2 software will support Sonos Voice Control.Sonos has recently posted job openings related to the “Sonos Voice Experience,” with the company saying... Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios Marvel’s Moon Knight has taken a meandering path to its big, boisterous finale. Over the first five episodes, there have been detours into the afterlife, the fractured psyche of a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder, and locales ranging from the great pyramids of Egypt to a museum gift shop in London. It’s been about as confusing and disjointed as you’d expect for a show about a mercenary possessed by the spirit of an ancient, vengeful god. After all, the show has had to explain a lot: the history behind the multiple personalities; the motivations of two competing, powerful deities; the machinations of a cult-like militant organization. There’s even a backstory for a seemingly innocuous catchphrase.If you stuck it out,... Continue reading…

Leviton’s latest smart switch doesn’t require a neutral wire. If you are in an older home and want to upgrade to smart switches, I have good news. This week, lighting control company Leviton released two smart switches that don’t require a neutral wire. The Decora Smart No-Neutral Dimmer ($49.99) and Switch ($44.99) both work with the plug-in Decora Smart Wi-Fi Bridge ($19.99). Both are compatible with Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa for smart home and voice control, as is Leviton's entire Decora Smart Wi-Fi line.Most smart light switches require a neutral wire to work. As this wiring wasn’t standard in homes until the mid-1980s many houses have limited options for upgrading to smart switches. While there are choices — the popular one being Lutron Caseta — the selection is limited in... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter hasn’t been finalized yet, but the world’s richest man is keeping busy by kicking around ideas for potential changes to the platform. His latest suggestion? Charging corporations and governments to tweet.“Ultimately, the downfall of the Freemasons was giving away their stonecutting services for nothing,” tweeted Musk. “Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users.”As is often the case with Musk, there’s no commitment to this plan: the guy’s just tweetin’. But it does fit in with what we’ve previously heard about Musk’s ideas for the platform. Reuters reported last month that, when pitching banks on his acquisition, Musk suggested he might... Continue reading…

The refreshed Model S interior and large center display. | Image: Tesla A Model S with a factory-equipped motorized, swiveling center screen has been spotted in the wild thanks to a video posted to Twitter by Larry Li. In it, Li can be seen tilting the display from center, to left, and then to right, with the tap of a button on the screen. Note that the motorized front trunk (aka, the “frunk”) seen in the video is an aftermarket modification.A swiveling center screen represents a small quality-of-life improvement for Tesla owners. Rather than the display being static, and positioned so that both the driver and passengers can see it, it can be moved for optimum visibility by the driver when operating the vehicle, or by a passenger when parked, for example.

It’s been a years-long battle between the company, organizers, and the National Labor Relations Board. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The latest on organization efforts at one of the world’s largest retailers Continue reading…

Image: Yetch Swedish inventor and YouTuber Simone Giertz (aka the “queen of shitty robots”) has revealed her latest creation: a website named after the way her last name is pronounced, “Yetch.” Giertz’s roster of inventions includes things like a toothbrushing helmet and a gnarly vegetable chopping machine. While the website doesn’t feature the “Truckla,” a Tesla Model 3 that Giertz transformed into a pickup truck, or a Lego-built photo booth for cute puppy photos, it does feature some practical accessories and items.While an all-white puzzle can sound like a pain, this one can be a funny pain for those who lose their puzzle pieces. Yetch’s “Incomplete White Puzzle” consists of 499 pieces out of a 500-piece puzzle, and since it is intentional, it... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The verge A funny thing happened in 2020: AMD won the gaming laptop for the first time ever. Until the Asus Zephyrus G14, we’d never seen a laptop with an AMD CPU and AMD GPU run circles around the competition. Since then, we’ve repeatedly seen that “AMD laptop” no longer means cheap. But now, AMD is setting its sights higher than mid-range gaming machines — it just revealed it’s building a new CPU aimed at the “pinnacle of gaming performance” with the “highest core, thread and cache ever”.The new CPU line is codenamed “Dragon Range,” and they’ll live exclusively at 55W TDP and up — enough power that they’ll “largely exist in the space where gaming laptops are plugged in the majority of the time,” says AMD director of technical marketing Robert... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A few years ago, YouTube added Live Redirects as a way for creators to hold livestreams that ended by pointing viewers to another video on their own channel for premiere events, like BTS engaging fans before showing off a new music video. Now it has adjusted Live Redirects so that live streamers on the service can bounce their audience to another livestream when they go offline. A premiere launch event for the film Top Gun: Maverick on Wednesday will be one of the first big events to take advantage of the new addition.On Twitch, this behavior is called a raid. On one hand, it’s a good way to help grow audiences and find new content, but it has also been a conduit for harassment on the platform as “hate raids” would target marginalized... Continue reading…

Image: Anker If you took one look at the first wave of modular magnetic wireless charging battery humps for the iPhone and thought, “Wake me up when they give us more than one full charge!” — then Anker may have the battery pack for you. The new Anker 633 Magnetic Battery, now available for $80 on Amazon, has twice the capacity at 10,000mAh. That’s enough to charge an iPhone 12 twice or an iPhone 13 Pro up to 1.8 times, according to Anker (via Gizmodo). Image: Anker It is not small. As you can see, attempts at fashion have gone out the window — no chic colors or fancy origami stand from Anker this time. Instead, this utilitarian battery pack boasts a traditional flip-out kickstand and what appears to be an extra USB-A port,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Employees at a third Apple retail store have announced that they’re trying to organize a vote on whether to unionize, according to a report from The Washington Post. Workers at Apple’s Towson Town Center store in Maryland say that they’ve received signatures from a majority of the employees that would likely be able to join a union, and are planning on filing with the National Labor Relations Board to schedule an election.In a letter, the organizers say their union is called the “Coalition of Organized Retail Employees” (or AppleCORE), and say they’re not trying to “go against or create conflict with” Apple management. Instead, the workers say they want to gain access to rights they currently don’t have. While they don’t specify which... Continue reading…

Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al. | Roku People might not have known what to expect when Roku first announced that it’d tapped Daniel Radcliffe to portray Weird Al Yankovic in its upcoming biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. But following the streamer’s inaugural upfront presentation this week and a new Weird trailer, there’s little question about what sort of energy director Eric Appel’s going for.At one point in Yankovic’s 1989 feature UHF, Yankovic plays a parody of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky character due to Stallone himself backing out of a planned cameo. In order to approximate Stallone’s physique for the film, Yankovic donned an oiled-up muscle suit that didn’t need to look anywhere near as convincing as it did. Though Weird’s trailer doesn’t mention UHF or Stallone... Continue reading…