The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s first new Windows 11 widget should make it even easier to find out which games are coming to PC Game Pass. The widget is only available to Windows Insider testers for now and is supposed to provide a “window” into the service’s game library, allowing you to check out recent additions and the games leaving soon.Microsoft currently has a fairly limited selection of widgets in Windows 11, but a Game Pass widget indicates that Microsoft is trying out other applications (that aren’t so boring as the weather, a calendar, and the news). Windows 11 is supposed to support third-party widgets eventually, but adding Game Pass could be a good way to shake the widgets board up for now and might even help promote the subscription service.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge When The Verge’s Richard Lawler reported that Google was rolling out its newly stylized version of Gmail for the web, I decided I wanted to take a look as well. Since my Gmail page hadn’t yet switched over, I clicked on the cog-like Settings icon in the upper-right corner of my page and then on the link labeled Try out the new Gmail view and refreshed my page.As Richard writes, the change isn’t radical. There is a new color scheme that I rather like and a few other interface tweaks. The main change, however, is the left-hand side panel — now, the two side panels.Previously, you had a single panel that gave you access to a menu of your various Gmail categories and labels (such as the Inbox, Starred, Trash, etc.). By clicking on the... Continue reading…

Demi Lovato, OneRepublic, and Usher can now sell concert tickets through TikTok. | Photo by Xavi Torrent/Redferns Performers can reach some fans even more directly now that Ticketmaster is selling tickets inside the TikTok app. The partnership means Ticketmaster can take advantage of TikTok’s recommendation feed that helps get artists — and now their event tickets — in front of fans.Bringing Ticketmaster to TikTok makes sense, based solely on how big a role music plays on the app, but it could also indicate broader plans to delve into the industry. Last month, a report from Insider revealed that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, filed a trademark for “TikTok Music.” The filing describes it as a platform that would allow users to purchase, play, share, and download music. Image: TikTok / Ticketmaster Only “select” creators... Continue reading…

A photo of an 11-inch iPad running iPadOS 16. | Photo by David Pierce / The Verge Apple is making big changes to multitasking and collaboration in iPadOS 16, asking users and developers to get used to its ambitious new Stage Manager user interface. Now, based on anonymous sources, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that, unlike in previous years when new versions of iOS and iPadOS have come out at the same time, the company will delay the launch of iPadOS 16. That would mean we can expect new iPhone software in September as usual, followed by an iPadOS update in October.Gurman said the delay is due in part to Stage Manager, which, in our preview of iPadOS 16, The Verge’s David Pierce didn’t like very much:

For a little spare change, this logo could be all yours | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Robinhood is trading just above $10 a share as of this publication, which is about a 73 percent decrease from its price at IPO, $38. The market cap is now under $10 billion. Friends, it’s possible. The more the shares fall, the easier it is for the memestonkers to snatch. How would a bunch of retail investors seize Robinhood? Why not use a DAO?It’s time to seize the means of investingThere’s been a lot of speculation this year — especially after the first round of layoffs, when Robinhood cut 9 percent of its staff — that the app-based trading service is an attractive takeover target. Yesterday, Robinhood cut further: almost a quarter of its remaining staff, including its showy chief product officer hire they got from Google. It also r... Continue reading…

Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk. | Image: Disney She-Hulk: Attorney at Law will now be debuting one day later than previously expected and is shifting to Thursday airdates instead of the typical Wednesday premieres for Disney Plus shows. She-Hulk, starring Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, will begin streaming on August 18th, and new episodes will stream on Thursdays, Disney announced.Disney Plus shows originally aired on Fridays, but the company moved Loki to Wednesdays and, soon after, said other original series would premiere on Wednesdays as well. But She-Hulk’s shift isn’t the first time Disney has moved things around; the company changed Obi-Wan Kenobi’s premiere to a Friday but aired subsequent episodes on Wednesdays. And next month, Disney plans to debut Growing Up and Epic... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo / The Verge Whenever there’s a new Pokémon game reveal, there’s a brief but wonderful moment when the fanbase gets together to collectively hyper-fixate on one pokémon in particular. They are enamored of the ‘mon’s cuteness or weirdness, and they profess all kinds of love and affection up to and including a life-pact. For Sword and Shield, that pokémon was Yamper, the corgi ‘mon. Now for Scarlet and Violet, it’s Fidough.Humans are delightfully simple creatures. We love bread, and we love dogs. Everything about Fidough has been surgically crafted by The Pokémon Company in order to exploit humanity’s love for carbs and canines. Even the name, Fidough, is meant to make it more appealing, capitalizing on humanity’s love for bad but clever puns. (Bravo... Continue reading…

Amber Midthunder in Prey. | Image: David Bukach / 20th Century Studios Since its debut in 1987, the Predator franchise has had a, let’s say, uneven history. The premise is brilliant in its simplicity: A race of aliens who live for nothing more than a good hunt travel to Earth in search of prey. It worked particularly well for the first two films, but over the course of more sequels, spinoffs, and forays into games and comics, that high-level idea has been diluted quite a bit — which is what makes Prey so refreshing. The latest mainline Predator movie jumps backwards in time and focuses entirely on the most important part of the franchise: the hunt.This review contains spoilers for Prey.Prey is set in 1719 in the Northern Great Plains, and centers on a budding Comanche hunter named Naru (Amber Midthunder).... Continue reading…

In an aerial view, oil pumpjacks work in the Permian Basin oil field on March 12, 2022 in Crane, Texas. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Scientists and journalists are on the hunt for methane spewing out of oil and gas infrastructure in the US. The leaking methane is invisible to the naked eye, but a recent investigation by The Associated Press — with help from NASA and other researchers — helps expose the huge scale of the problem.In the Permian Basin, a major oil- and gas-producing area spread across Texas and New Mexico, they revealed hundreds of “super-emitting” sites gushing methane. Methane is the primary component of “natural gas” and is even more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. Using some neat tech, Carbon Mapper — the group of academic and nonprofit researchers working alongside NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory —... Continue reading…

Microsoft Teams on Mac. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has created a native version of its Microsoft Teams client for Macs with M1 or M2 chips. The software giant has developed a native Apple Silicon version of Microsoft Teams that should include performance benefits for Mac users with the latest M1 or M2 chips, and it’s rolling out over the coming months.“For Mac users, this means a significant boost in performance, ensuring efficient use of device resources and an optimized Teams experience even when using multiple high-resolution monitors during calls or meetings,” says Anupam Pattnaik, a member of the Microsoft Teams product marketing team, in a blog post.Teams on Apple Silicon has been a highly-requested featureThe existing version of Microsoft Teams has been running as a... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Textbook publisher Pearson suggests blockchain tech could let it take a cut of secondary textbook sales, capturing a section of the book market that’s so far escaped it. As quoted by Bloomberg, Pearson CEO Andy Bird believes non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, could help publishers make money off textbook resales, although he stopped short of describing concrete plans.“In the analog world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale,” said Bird after the company announced its latest quarterly earnings this week. “The move to digital helps diminish the secondary market, and technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through... Continue reading…

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images Even Beyoncé is not immune to the cycle of outrage. Though her critically acclaimed latest album, Renaissance, has been out for less than a week, Beyoncé is already making changes to two of her songs after being called out on social media.The singer got into a beef with Kelis for interpolating a portion of her 2003 hit “Milkshake” in “Energy” without giving her a heads-up. (Kelis is not a credited author on the song.) “I heard about this the same way everyone else did,” Kelis said in an Instagram comment. As of Wednesday, the interpolation had been removed.The song “Heated” originally included lyrics featuring the same ableist slur that got Lizzo into hot water on Twitter only a few weeks ago. On Monday, only three days after the... Continue reading…

Blizzard has canceled a World of Warcraft mobile game according to a report from Bloomberg. The game, made in collaboration with Blizzard’s Chinese publishing partner NetEase, was in development for three years before a conflict about financing terms halted the project.According to Bloomberg, the World of Warcraft mobile game was codenamed “Neptune” and was meant to be a mobile spinoff of the MMORPG.The cancellation comes at an interesting time as Blizzard makes a concerted push into the mobile market, developing original games for the platform. Back in May, the developer announced Warcraft Arclight Rumble a “mobile action strategy game,” and in June, it released Diablo Immortal, whose questionable monetization model hasn’t seemed to h... Continue reading…

Leslie Grace as Batgirl | Image: Leslie Grace (Twitter) The Batgirl movie wasn’t axed for being bad Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Twitter wants all of Tesla’s documents and communications related to Elon Musk’s bid to take over the social media company, according to a new subpoena filed August 2nd. The electric car maker is the latest company to be drawn into the increasingly sticky mess that Musk created when he first proposed — and later attempted to abandon — a plan to buy Twitter.Twitter is suing Musk in Delaware court to force him to go through with his $44 billion plan to buy the San Francisco-based company. Musk is attempting to abandon the deal, claiming Twitter violated their agreement by failing to disclose accurate information around spam accounts. Twitter argues that Musk signed a contract to buy the company, and is using spam accounts as a false... Continue reading…

The new Wemo Smart Dimmer Switch is exclusively for Apple’s HomeKit platform. Wemo, the smart home arm of Belkin, announced an updated version of its in-wall dimmer switch this week. The new Wemo Smart Dimmer with Thread ($59.99) is a wired smart switch that lets you dim and turn lights on and off remotely. It works exclusively with Apple’s HomeKit platform over Thread or Bluetooth and is available now from Belkin’s web store (and coming soon to Amazon).This HomeKit focus follows a recent trend for the company, whose last few products — the Wemo Stage Scene Controller, smart plug, and video doorbell — only work with Apple’s smart home platform. This means the new switch will use the Apple Home app exclusively (and not the Wemo app), and will work with Siri for voice control.“When Matter launches later this... Continue reading…

The OnePlus 10T in green and black. | Image: OnePlus After not releasing a OnePlus 9T last year, OnePlus’ T-series is making a return in 2022 with the OnePlus 10T, which sees its official launch today. Many of the device’s details have already been made public, so today’s news is about pricing and availability. Head over to Allison Johnson’s full review for a rundown of what the phone is like to use in practice.In the US, the phone will be available to preorder from Amazon, Best Buy, and OnePlus directly starting September 1st and will go on open sale on September 29th. Prices for the OnePlus 10T will start at $649 for the model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and increase to $749 for 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Meanwhile, Europe gets the phone slightly earlier with preorders... Continue reading…

A speedy premium midranger Continue reading…

Magnetic fridge poetry. | Image: Grace on cohost Cohost is a different vision for social networks Continue reading…

The logo for Google Duo, Meet Original, and Meet (from left to right). | Image: Google In June, Google announced that it’s bringing the features of Meet into the Duo app — and that transformation begins today. Google isn’t technically getting rid of either app; Duo’s getting rebranded as Meet with the features from both apps, and Meet’s staying Meet.Yes, it sounds pretty confusing, but by the end of this process, there will be just two apps: “Meet Original” (the standard Meet app that will eventually get phased out) and the new Meet that combines both Meet and Duo. The combined app will let you conduct both group and one-on-one calls as well as hold meetings.If you already have Duo installed, you won’t have to do anything. Last month, Google pushed a Duo update that adds the features from Meet, and today, Google’s... Continue reading…

Amazon Luna is now part of the Samsung Gaming Hub. | Image: Samsung Amazon’s game streaming service, Luna, is launching on Samsung’s 2022 smart TVs and monitors today. Luna will be part of the Samsung Gaming Hub, which includes services like Google Stadia, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now. Samsung launched the gaming hub in late June, with the Xbox TV app exclusive to Samsung’s 2022 smart TVs and monitors.Amazon Luna’s launch inside Samsung’s gaming hub means Samsung now has every popular cloud game streaming service on its latest smart TVs and monitors. “With the addition of Amazon Luna, we now offer over 1,000 games to play instantaneously on Samsung Smart TVs, making Samsung Gaming Hub the number one destination to stream games,” says Mike Lucero, Samsung’s director of product management... Continue reading…

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Every Wednesday and Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where our editors make sense of the week’s most important technology news. On Wednesdays, editor-at-large David Pierce leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in an exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into your home.Today’s show focuses on a singular theme: working from home. Or working from anywhere! David hosts The Vergecast from Miami, and talks to a bunch of experts about what it takes to successfully work away from a normal office, with tips on working from a sailboat, powering your gadgets with a solar generator, and getting internet in hard-to-reach places with Starlink.David... Continue reading…

Nintendo This morning, the Pokémon Company put out a new Pokémon showcase providing updates on the various Pokémon apps and games. The 19-minute video revealed all the fun things being added to games like Pokémon Go and Pokémon Unite as well as a new trailer for the next entries in the Pokémon series, Scarlet and Violet.Before getting to the juicy bits concerning Scarlet and Violet, The Pokémon Company shared updates for its mobile and MOBA titles. Pokémon Unite will be getting a new game mode — Pika Party — in which all ‘mon on the field are Pikachus, and Mewtwo will be making an appearance in Pokemon Café. There were also updates on Pokémon Go Fest with the finale taking place August 27th featuring the Ultra Beasts.A new trailer for Scarlet a... Continue reading…

Martin Scorsese’s vision of America plays out as a country of cops and robbers. Living in the US, you find yourself on one side or the other. Or, in the logic of his 2006 movie The Departed, “when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?”The difference, in Scorsese’s self-consciously post-9/11 gangster flick, is the movie’s obsession with the surveillance state. The Departed cribs the ludicrous setup of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs: the police have a mole in the mafia (Leonardo DiCaprio), and the mafia has a mole in the police (Matt Damon). Narrative destiny tasks them with finding the identity of their counterpart, a conceit that sets off a converging mouse hunt — or maybe, in this case, a rat hunt.Outside of being a... Continue reading…

Ash Ponders for The Verge It’s unlikely the hikers knew they were being watched. They had tried to blend in: all 11 were wearing camouflage with the intention of vanishing into the desert scrub. They were on a remote mountain trail on the outskirts of Ajo, Arizona, a former mining town of about 3,000 people just a few dozen miles north of the Mexican border. It was a warm November morning, still early enough in the day that the sun must have felt good on their skin — the air is cold up in the mountains, colder still in the dry desert winter, though the heat always finds you eventually. The sky was bright and endless, punctuated by just a few clouds. But even if the migrants looked closely, there’s no way they could have noticed the MQ-9 Predator B drone stalking... Continue reading…

Polaroid’s Hi-Print instant photo printer is selling at a new all-time low today. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Small instant photo printers can offer a unique and fun way to capture memories while traveling. Sure, they may not have the retro charm of an instant camera, but there’s some charm in being able to quickly print credit card-sized pictures while you’re on the go — you’ll just need to capture them using your smartphone. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however. After testing several instant cameras myself, I found that, unless you’ve got some photography skills and experience, it’s often easier to take sharper photos with a camera you’re familiar with (even if it’s a phone). As a result, mobile photo printers might be what you’re looking for if you want to print photos that look even better.That’s especially true of Polaroid’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hackers have targeted the Solana ecosystem, draining crypto funds from thousands of “hot” wallets connected to the internet. Such attacks are common among blockchain platforms, but the news is still significant given the praise Solana has attracted as one of the faster and cheaper ecosystems for trading digital assets.It seems hackers have been able to steal both Solana’s own cryptocurrency (SOL) and some compatible with the Solana blockchain, like the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC). As the attack is ongoing, the value of the assets stolen is not clear, but reports from independent analysts and security firms like PeckShield estimate the losses are worth as much as $8 million.Solana has struggled with security incidents in the past,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge | Photography by Vjeran Pavic Life these days can be very complicated, and many of us — I’d guess that most of us — are constantly looking for the best method to keep our lives in order. What do you need on your grocery list? When is that work project due, and who is working on it with you? A friend wants to do a movie-watching session, but is that the same day you promised your parents to help clean the garage? Which bills are due, and can you afford to pay them all? Where is that article about which masks to wear? And on and on.So we’ve asked the staff of The Verge what they use to keep track of all their appointments, tasks, projects, and workflows. And it turns out that they use a variety of different apps or some fairly old-fashioned paper-and-pen solutions —... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google is adding a label to help searchers easily find businesses that self-identify as Asian-owned. Google’s addition of business attributes that highlight identity popped up first with tags for women-led businesses in 2018. Later that year, Google added labels to distinguish veteran-owned businesses on searches and Maps.In July 2020, Google introduced its label to focus searches seeking Black-owned businesses, in September 2021, Google added a Latino-owned tag, and most recently in June, the company added LGBTQ-led businesses to the list. Asian-owned businesses will be identified by a red and orange flower.Like we’ve seen with the other tags, now searchers can easily find Asian-owned businesses through a Google search and via... Continue reading…

Super Cruise, the “hands-free” advanced driver-assist system (ADAS) from General Motors, will soon be available on a lot more roads in North America. GM announced today that, later this year, the ADAS system will be able to operate on 400,000 miles of roads, including non-divided highways — which would essentially double Super Cruise’s current coverage in the US and Canada.It represents a major expansion of Super Cruise’s capabilities at a time when US regulators are scrutinizing driver-assist features more closely and safety advocates are calling for more transparency, citing research that shows how new technology can create safety risks inadvertently.It represents a major expansion of Super Cruise’s capabilitiesLaunched in 2017... Continue reading…

It’s easy to disable if you want. If you’re an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscriber, you can make use of Apple’s iCloud Music Library. So long as you’re logged into the same iCloud account, the feature allows you to sync your music library on up to 10 Apple devices. But there are reasons you may not want your tunes synced up to the iCloud Music Library. In this article, I discuss why — and explain how you can disable it if you want.While convenient, the iCloud Music Library also has its quirks. That’s because it matches and replaces songs or albums you already have on your device with a high-quality version from the Apple Music streaming library (if available). That process can lead to messed-up metadata, missing album art, and matching to the wrong song. Users have... Continue reading…

“What is dead may never die.” Much like a White Walker in Game of Thrones, Internet Explorer joins the ranks of the undead that are determined to wreak havoc on humanity. Microsoft tamed the Internet Explorer beast in Windows 11, preventing anyone from summoning it and running its ancient code, but now one dastardly Twitter user has broken Internet Explorer’s chains and set it free to run freely on Windows 11.Internet Explorer was never supposed to work on Windows 11. Microsoft disabled IE in Windows 11, making it the first version of Windows without IE for more than 20 years. In fact, if you even try to launch Internet Explorer in Windows 11, the OS simply forces you into Microsoft Edge.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amidst a disappointing set of earnings for the last quarter, Match Group has announced it’s scaling back Tinder’s metaverse dating ambitions and scrapping plans to offer an in-app Tinder Coins currency. Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg, who became the dating app’s first female CEO just last September, is also leaving the position, parent company Match Group’s CEO Bernard Kim announced. Kim himself was named as CEO just two months ago.Nyborg previously set out ambitious plans for Tinder’s take on the metaverse (or “Tinderverse” as she called it). Tinder acquired a company called Hyperconnect last year, which focuses on video, AI, and augmented reality technology, and Nyborg later cited its avatar-based “Single Town” experience as a way Tinder’s... Continue reading…

“The Lightning is the best thing I have ever purchased,” said Chris Ashley, a resident of Maryland and a first-time electric vehicle buyer. | Image: Ford Ford says it has delivered F-150 Lightning electric truck — which is totally sold out in the US for 2022 — to customers in all 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii.It’s a nice, if not exactly important, milestone and a feather in Ford’s cap as it seeks to ramp up production and deliveries of its flagship electric vehicle. And it all happened in the span of two months, which Ford deems “lightning quick.”“lightning quick”Ford is counting on its 119 years of production and delivery expertise as well as its vast network of dealerships as it seeks to vault over its rivals in the race to get electric trucks to the most people. Trucks are among the top-selling vehicles in the country, and the F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the... Continue reading…

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo continues to struggle to hit its Switch production targets as a result of the global chip shortage, which contributed to a near 23 percent decline in console sales to 3.43 million in the three months ending June 30th, the company reported today.Sales of the standard Nintendo Switch were down 60 percent to 1.32 million units in the quarter, while sales of the Switch Lite were down nearly 50 percent to 0.59 million. The Switch OLED, which only went on sale last October, made up some of the shortfall with 1.52 million units sold. Software sales were also down by 8.6 percent to a little under 41.5 million units. The company still expects to sell 21 million consoles throughout the course of its year ending March 2023.“Production... Continue reading…

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images Blake Masters, protege to billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, has won the Arizona’s Republican nomination for US Senate late Tuesday night, the Associated Press and New York Times are reporting.Masters’ triumph over solar power executive Jim Lamon installs the Trump-endorsed candidate as the GOP’s choice to take on former NASA astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly (D) this fall. Arizona is one of a handful of toss-up races that could decide which party controls the Senate come November.Prior to Masters’ campaign announcement last summer, Politico reported that controversial tech investor Thiel funneled millions into the new Saving Arizona PAC in anticipation of his pupil’s Senate race. Thiel has donated at least $15 million to the PAC as of... Continue reading…

Some Michigan counties can’t immediately report Tuesday night’s election results due to a confusing mix of federal vote reporting guidance and AT&T’s decision to retire its 3G networks this past February.In a website alert, the Wayne County clerk’s office confirmed that 65 of Michigan’s 83 total counties “are no longer modeming unofficial election results.” Wayne County is where Detroit is located, and it’s the state’s biggest county by population, with about 1.8 million residents. It’s unclear how many are due to county officials that did not upgrade their own modems, or if this is due to U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) guidelines advising against using modems.In section 14.2-E, the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG)... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A jury has found Argishti Khudaverdyan, a former owner of a T-Mobile store, guilty of using stolen credentials to unlock “hundreds of thousands of cellphones” from August 2014 to June 2019 (via PCMag). According to a press release from the Department of Justice and an indictment filed earlier this year, Khudaverdyan made around $25 million from the scheme, which also involved bypassing carrier blocks put on lost or stolen cell phones.For years, he reportedly used several tactics to acquire the T-Mobile employee credentials needed to unlock phones, including phishing, social engineering, and even getting the carrier’s IT department to reset higher-ups’ passwords, giving him access. The DOJ says he accessed over 50 employees’ credentials,... Continue reading…

Kratos, God of Warning. | Image: War Gods Zeus of Child’s Xbox Store listing The big God of War sequel is one of the year’s most anticipated video games, and you can now play it on Xbox. Yes, that’s right, War Gods Zeus of Child, which stars Sony’s video game character Kratos and a horde of identical and generic monster baddies, is currently available for just $4.09 on the Xbox store.Oh, you thought I was talking about a different game? Nope, War Gods Zeus of Child is definitely an approved and legitimate entry in one of Sony’s most valuable franchises being sold on a competing console platform.I promise you’ll want to play it just based on the game’s description:

New owners of the historically troubled car have a decision to make. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Chevy has started offering some Bolt owners rebates of up to $6,000 as a “goodwill reimbursement” for anyone who bought one of the battery-powered EVs shortly before the company made them significantly cheaper. However, as Jalopnik points out, taking the rebate means agreeing to never sue the company for any present or future issues with the car or its battery or join any class action suits related to the Bolt.Given that Bolt had to be recalled twice following several battery fires (and the fact that the recall was expanded to include pretty much every model of the car), it may be an uncomfortable agreement for some. However, most people who were actually affected by the battery problems won’t be the ones having to decide whether to... Continue reading…

Image: Leslie Grace (Twitter) About a week ago, industry observers noticed that Comic-Con 2022 came and went without any mention of Batgirl, the Warner Bros. film shot over the winter and apparently due for release in 2023. Today, the New York Post, The Wrap, and other entertainment outlets report that despite being in the final stages of post-production, Warner Bros. and DC Films have decided not to release the movie on any platform or in theaters.The list of American unreleased films on Wikipedia is not a long one, and the flicks on it usually have a reason for being there — see the 1994 Fantastic Four effort or Netflix’s shelved Bill Cosby 77 project. The Post says this film will join them due to new Warner Bros. Discovery executive David Zaslav and new Warner... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Today, we’re learning how big AMD’s gaming business is for the very first time — and the answer is $5 billion a year. That’s how much the company earned in 2021 from the “semi-custom” chips that go into Sony’s PS5, PS4, and every modern Microsoft Xbox, in addition to its discrete GPUs you’ll find in graphics cards and high-end gaming laptops.It appears to have become quite a profitable business, too — nearly $1 billion in revenue in 2021 — and could exceed that this year: in an earnings call, CEO Lisa Su says the company typically sees its most money from game consoles in the third quarter, and it’s on track for “record semi-custom annual revenue in 2022.”In 2020, AMD actually lost $138 million on gaming... but in just one year,... Continue reading…

Saylor will take on the role of executive chairman. | Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images Bitcoin advocate Michael Saylor is stepping down as the CEO of the software company he co-founded, MicroStrategy, and will instead take on the role of executive chairman. Saylor’s belief in Bitcoin has turned the company into a holding vehicle for the cryptocurrency. The news came as the company reported its second-quarter earnings. It noted a loss of $1.062 billion, mostly due to an impairment charge of $917 million based on the value of its Bitcoin holdings, which have plunged since the price peaked in November last year.Phong Le, MicroStrategy’s current president, will take Saylor’s place as CEO. “I look forward to leading the organization for the long-term health and growth of our enterprise software and bitcoin acquisition... Continue reading…

Think carefully if you want this to be your reality. | Image: Up-Switch One of my biggest complaints about using a Nintendo Switch in handheld mode is that its screen is just too small. And unlike previous Nintendo handhelds like the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, no company has been brave enough to release a straight-up book light and magnifying glass window combo for the Switch.If you asked me how interested I’d be, then, in a Switch that had a massive 11.6-inch display, I’d count the days down until I could own what sounds like a glorious thing. (Not quite what I had in mind for a Switch Pro, but I guess Nintendo knows best.) Well, that future is here — and it has apparently been here for longer than I realized. A company called Up-Switch makes the Orion, a glorified Switch dock-meets-screen that can be... Continue reading…

“Employees from all functions will be impacted.” | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Robinhood is letting go of nearly a quarter of its staff, CEO Vlad Tenev said in a message posted to the company’s blog.“As part of a broader company reorganization into a General Manager (GM) structure, I just announced that we are reducing our headcount by approximately 23%,” Tenev wrote. “While employees from all functions will be impacted, the changes are particularly concentrated in our operations, marketing, and program management functions.”Robinhood’s chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada is also stepping down from her post as part of the restructuring, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though she’ll “remain employed in an advisory role to the CEO or his designee through January 2, 2023.”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Robinhood’s transaction-based revenue in the second quarter of 2022 fell to $202 million from $451 million in the second quarter last year, a drop of more than half. The picture of the overall revenue isn’t much better: down 44 percent to $318 million from $565 million a year ago. Yes, about a quarter of the company is getting fired.The numbers are bad, and the vibes are offHilariously, in the text of their earnings press release, they give sequential figures, noting that this quarter was better than last quarter. True, but not the point!Robinhood was the figurehead of the meme stock trading revolution, which reached public consciousness through the GameStop debacle. But as interest rates have risen and pandemic restrictions have... Continue reading…

Apple’s redesigned Home app makes it easier to control your lights, locks, and other smart home devices. | Image: Apple A new Home View and a bit of ‘jiggle mode’ make the HomeKit app more usable, but there’s still a long way to go Continue reading…

There are more customization options in the new Home app, including putting your devices into jiggle mode to rearrange them. There’s a major redesign coming to Apple’s HomeKit Home app with iOS 16 this fall. I recently previewed all the new features arriving on the smart home platform, but I wanted to do a quick tutorial on one of my favorite new features: customization.In the new Home app, the options for customizing how your smart home devices, Rooms, and Favorites appear on the screen have vastly improved. You can rearrange your Home View to put your most-used Rooms right up top or designate that your Favorites or Camera feeds be the first thing you see when you open the app.You need to be running iOS 16 to use the new Home appYou can also rearrange the individual buttons for your devices, such as lights, door locks, and shades — just like arranging... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix’s gamble on Cowboy Bebop has paid off with dividends for fans. A tweet from Wario64 has revealed a limited-edition vinyl collection of the short-lived series’ soundtrack, featuring new music from Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts.