The Verge

Image: Coachella Coachella is selling lifetime festival passes for the first time — but you have to buy an NFT to get one. The music festival today launched an NFT marketplace built by FTX US, with three collections of NFTs going on sale on February 4th.The company will auction the Coachella Keys Collection, a group of 10 NFTs that allow holders lifetime tickets to the festival. Owners of the token will get passes to Coachella every year, plus “access to Coachella-produced virtual experiences forever.” NFT purchases also include special perks at the 2022 festival like front row access and a celebrity chef dinner.That the festival is dipping into the NFT craze is perhaps unsurprising — in November, Coachella parent company AEG renamed the Staples... Continue reading…

Solar panels sit on the roof of Google headquarters in Mountain View. | Photo by Kimberly White/Corbis via Getty Images Tech companies drove a surge in corporate purchases of clean energy last year, according to a new analysis by BloombergNEF.Overall, corporations bought a record 31.1 GW of clean energy in 2021, equivalent to more than 10 percent of all new renewable energy capacity added worldwide that year. Over half of the power purchase agreements for clean energy made by corporations were signed by tech giants, including Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google.Agreements with utilities or developers to purchase enough clean power to match annual electricity use are one strategy that companies use to claim they are running their operations on 100 percent clean energy. In reality, that clean energy usually isn’t flowing directly into corporate offices... Continue reading…

Street Fighter meets Drag Race, now on Kickstarter Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google search results for domestic violence-related topics now show a box with contact information for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the tech giant and the hotline announced today.Searching terms like “domestic violence” and “boyfriend hit me” in the United States generates the box, which includes the phone number for the hotline, a direct link to the online chat services, and a direct link to place a call. “This will help survivors, especially those in crisis, get the information and connection to the 24/7 support they need quickly and with less scrolling,” said Crystal Justice, chief external affairs officer at The National Domestic Violence Hotline, in a blog post. This box appears in searches for... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images Cruise, the self-driving company backed by General Motors and Honda, announced a public waitlist for its robotaxi service in San Francisco. It’s a significant step for the company that has previously been beset by delays in its quest to get paying customers into its autonomous ride-hailing vehicles.The rides will be free to start out, as Cruise has yet to be approved to accept paid rides. The company, which has previously only allowed employees to ride in its autonomous vehicles, says it has tested the waters with a few of its first non-employee customers, including GM CEO Mary Barra, as well as a few non-employees.According to Cruise:

Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have reintroduced the EARN IT Act, a bill that would undercut Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.The EARN IT Act is described as an incentive for social media services to crack down on child sexual abuse material (or CSAM) online. While the bill’s text wasn’t immediately released, a summary indicates it’s similar to a proposal that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. That bill limited the typically broad protections that Section 230 grants “interactive computer services” against being sued over user-generated content, adding special conditions for material that runs afoul of CSAM laws.The original EARN IT Act’s sponsors touted endorsements from the... Continue reading…

Photo by Neil Godwin/Future via Getty Images Crisis Text Line has decided to stop sharing conversation data with spun-off AI company Loris.ai after facing scrutiny from data privacy experts. “During these past days, we have listened closely to our community’s concerns,” the 24/7 hotline service writes in a statement on its website. “We hear you. Crisis Text Line has had an open and public relationship with Loris AI. We understand that you don’t want Crisis Text Line to share any data with Loris, even though the data is handled securely, anonymized and scrubbed of personally identifiable information.” Loris.ai will delete any data it has received from Crisis Text Line.Politico recently reported how Crisis Text Line (which is not affiliated with the National Suicide Prevention... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge | Photo by Vivian Zink/NBCUniversal via Getty Images This story originally ran in Hot Pod, The Verge’s preeminent audio industry newsletter. You can subscribe here for more scoops, analysis, and reporting.Spotify didn’t discover Joe Rogan, and Joe Rogan didn’t create Spotify, but their union portends the future of a closed podcasting ecosystem. Up until September 2020, The Joe Rogan Experience was available through RSS feeds, YouTube, and podcast players. His content bubbled up every so often, but broadly, Rogan did his show, and the various distribution platforms let him do so without having to worry and monitor every episode — if it infringed on a policy, it could be removed, and so it went. This is the world in which Rogan stans and haters can find common ground.Rogan could have been... Continue reading…

Hot off the heels of Sony’s Bungie acquisition news, Bungie is in full teaser mode for Destiny 2: The Witch Queen. The latest Destiny 2 expansion launches on February 22nd, and it’s set to include a trio of new exotic weapons. Destiny 2 already has some incredibly unique weapons, but these three look like they will up the ante.First up is the Grand Overture, a slug launcher that charges full auto missiles at enemies. It appears to be similar to what the Scorn enemies use in Destiny 2 and will act like a machine gun with explosive projectiles (think Wardcliff) to wipe out hoards of Hive. Image: Bungie It looks like some type of machine gun. Where things really start to get interesting is the new Parasite... Continue reading…

Screenshot: It Takes Two Hazelight Studios, the indie developer behind the action-adventure game It Takes Two, is working with dj2 Entertainment to adapt the title for film and television, according to a report from Variety. Pat Casey and Josh Miller, the screenwriters behind the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, are set to adapt the game, although no studio or network has been attached to the project yet.“The potential is huge for a great adaption to film or television”“Creating the world and story in It Takes Two was so much fun for me and the team,” Hazelight founder Josef Fares told Variety. “Since it has a strong narrative with many crazy characters and just as crazy co-op action moments, the potential is huge for a great adaption to film or television.”Fares,... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Turning the ‘Great Resignation’ into good business Continue reading…

A24 Though the future of writer / director Kogonada’s After Yang is a lush, calm, near-utopia, human life finds a way to engineer its own tragedy in the movie’s first trailer.Set in a future where it’s become commonplace for people to buy sophisticated androids to take care of their organic children, After Yang tells the story of Jake (Colin Farrell), his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), and Yang, their “son” charged with watching over his younger sister. Despite all of the time that Yang’s spent with the family acting as both a caregiver and a general assistant, when he begins to malfunction, there’s some disagreement as to what they should do, seemingly because Jake and Kyra aren’t... Continue reading…

The Sonos Move can be used indoors via Wi-Fi, or connected to your devices over Bluetooth. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Sonos deals can be hard to come by, but right now, you can save a lot of money if you don’t mind buying products refurbished. Sonos is currently discounting a range of its items, including the latest generation of the Sonos One, which at $149 is $70 cheaper than its $218 retail cost when purchased new. If you want a Sonos speaker that you can use at home or portably as a powerful Bluetooth and Wi-Fi-enabled speaker, check out the Move, which costs $319 through Sonos’ refurb store (usually $399).Other highlights include the first-generation Sonos Beam soundbar. Originally $399, it’s selling for $259 instead. While it lacks the second-gen Beam’s support for Dolby Atmos, it’s still a competent soundbar that is otherwise similar to the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Super Bowl LVI matchup is now set, and with the big Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams face-off less than two weeks away, TV makers are slashing prices on many of their 2021 models in hopes of clearing out stock. Super Bowl season is often among the best times to land an unbeatable deal on the big-screen TV you’ve been eyeing for months.Whether you’re shopping at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, or elsewhere, you might not see savings quite like this until the holiday season rolls around. And with consumers generally moving towards bigger and bigger screens, we’ve highlighted some 75-inch models below — but there are also deals to be had on smaller sizes.1. LG C1The best OLED to buy right nowIt’s hard to find a better all-around... Continue reading…

Corsair’s MP600 Pro LPX can fit into the PS5, or into PC motherboards that support the M.2 2280-sized form factor. | Corsair Corsair has launched a new line of PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 SSDs made with PS5 compatibility in mind. The MP600 Pro LPX is now available in four capacities: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and a big 4TB drive. Each of these drives comes with an elegant heatsink pre-installed, making it easy to know that it’ll have thermal protection, whether you put it in a PS5 or your PC.The other key details come down to price and speed, and in both categories, Corsair is aiming to deliver a better value than Samsung does with the slightly slower, slightly pricier 980 Pro that also comes with its own heatsink. You can get Corsair’s 500GB model for $99.99, and the 1TB model isn’t too much more at $169.99. The 2TB SSD is $339.99, and the price gets a little wild with the 4TB... Continue reading…

Image: Bungie And huge virtual worlds on multiple platforms Continue reading…

Photo by Chukrut Budrul/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Tesla is disabling a self-driving feature in nearly 54,000 vehicles that can prompt cars to autonomously perform a “rolling stop” — a maneuver in which the vehicle moves slowly through a stop sign without coming to a full stop.As per a safety recall notice issued by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the consequence of this feature is that “failing to stop at a stop sign can increase the risk of a crash.”The change will be made as an over-the-air software update to Model S, X, 3, and Y vehicles using the beta version of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” driver-assist feature, release 2020.40.4.10 or newer. (Referring to such software as “self-driving” has become somewhat controversial in the car industry, with... Continue reading…

Images of Sonos’ rumored headphones from a patent application. | Image: German Patent and Trademark Office Sonos has acquired the Bluetooth audio startup T2 Software, Protocol reports, adding fuel to rumors that Sonos is developing its own headphones. T2 had been working on implementations of the new Bluetooth LE Audio standard and LC3 codec, which delivers better audio quality at lower bitrates for improved headphone battery life.A recent LinkedIn post from Sonos VP of global marketing and communications Pete Pedersen suggests that a Sonos headphone launch may be imminent. He said the company was looking for a marketing agency to help it launch “a new category” of product, “targeting a new audience/consumer segment.”A spokesperson for Sonos confirmed the acquisition to Protocol. “Occasionally, we will acquire teams, talent, and/or... Continue reading…

Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images Yahoo Japan has announced that most of its online services will cease to be accessible in the European Economic Area and the UK as of April 6th. The company’s email, credit card, and ebook services will continue to be available, but everything else is going dark.The given reason is the cost of complying with European regulations, which would include GDPR. In a statement, Yahoo Japan says it would be difficult to provide continuous service for customers in the EEA and UK, and went further in telling Japanese publication IT Media that it would be “impossible” to meet the cost of compliance and respond to the related laws.Yahoo Japan is an entirely separate entity to the American former web giant now owned by the Apollo private equity... Continue reading…

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images After multiple rebrands, congressional hearings, and several high-profile staff departures, the Meta-backed cryptocurrency known as Diem is calling it quits.The association behind Diem confirmed Monday that it sold its assets for around $200 million to Silvergate, a crypto-focused bank it was working with last year to launch a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. The decision to sell was made after it “became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead,” Diem CEO Stuart Levey said in a press release. (It’s already known that the U.S. Federal Reserve was a key opponent to Diem launching.)The sale of Diem’s assets marks the end of an effort that, in retrospect, was doomed from the start.The... Continue reading…

Sony’s deal for Bungie caps what’s been a huge month for gaming acquisitions. | Photo by STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images Sony just announced its intent to acquire Destiny maker Bungie for $3.6 billion, capping what’s been an absolutely massive month for gaming acquisitions. Take-Two kicked things off with its deal to buy Zynga for $12.7 billion, which at the time may have counted as the biggest deal in the video game industry, but Microsoft significantly one-upped that just a week later with its $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. The total value of all three acquisitions, assuming they all go through, is a staggering $85 billion.With Bungie, Sony will house the talent behind the hugely popular Destiny 2, and it seems likely the company will use Bungie’s expertise to help create similarly expansive and long-running live service titles. Sony is... Continue reading…

Hopefully this only works in park | Image: Tesla Tesla last week released its latest distraction product: a set of karaoke microphones dubbed TeslaMic for use in its vehicles (via Electrek) and works with accompanied in-car software. The accessory, which is only available in China for now, was released alongside a Chinese New Year software update that includes a companion karaoke app called Leishi KTV.The TeslaMic was available on the Chinese Tesla online shop for 1,199 CNY ($188.48 USD). We say “was” because it apparently sold out within an hour, and the listing does not currently load anymore. There are accounts of people already scalping the product for more than it’s worth:

Discord is finally rolling out the ability to connect your PlayStation Network account to the chat app, following an announcement last May that it and Sony would “bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile.” Right now, the integration is pretty limited, both in terms of what it can do and seemingly who has access to it, but it’s likely the first step for things to come later. Outside of its partnership with Sony, Discord is also working on an interesting account management feature that we’d love to see make it to everyone.Linking your accounts will let your Discord friends see what game you’re currently playing on your PlayStation, and you have the option of adding your PSN ID to your Discord... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In some more bad news for Peloton, rival Echelon Fitness has persuaded the US Patent and Trademark Office that two of Peloton’s patents related to streaming and on-demand classes aren’t actually patentable. The decision was made last week by the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board as they were found to be “obvious inventions,” according to Bloomberg Law. While it may not be the biggest blow Peloton has faced in recent months, it does raise questions about the company’s tendency to be heavy-handed with patent lawsuits.To back things up, all this came about after Peloton sued Echelon in 2019 for getting a “free ride” off its technology and thereby flooding the market with cheaper copycat imitators. If you’ve ever considered buying a... Continue reading…

Bloodborne is finally on PC — in a manner of speaking. Fans of 2015’s FromSoftware roguelike have been fervently wishing for a PC port. At long last, their prayers have been answered on the gnarled finger of a monkey’s paw with a PSX “demake” available now for free.

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Tesla’s new vehicles rolling out of the factory will include a bizarre feature designed to prevent abuse of the seat adjustment controls. The new seats will track and measure the amount of adjustments users make and will disable the controls if they detect “excessive” changes. The feature was first identified by @greentheonly, an anonymous hacker and researcher, and subsequently covered by Jalopnik.Tesla recently began installing new seat motors in some of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, in addition to the seats it gets from China’s Yangfeng and the ones it makes in-house. The new motors come from Brose, a 110-year-old German company that supplies a lot of components to the automotive industry.“seat abuse” metricsThe difference... Continue reading…

The smash online word game Wordle has been bought by The New York Times, which will integrate the daily word puzzle into The New York Times Games suite of word games, creator Josh Wardle announced today.Wordle will “initially remain free to new and existing players” once it moves over to the Times’ site, and Wardle says that he’s working with The New York Times to preserve players’ existing wins and streak data once the game heads to its new home. That said, The New York Times’ announcement leaves plenty of room for the company to decide to put Wordle behind its paywall in the future.

Netflix By the end of Disenchantment’s third season, Bean, Elfo, and Luci were all down for the count and left in places that made it seem like they might have been ready to call it quits on their journeys through Dreamland. The gang’s all back in the first trailer for Disenchantment’s fourth “part” (read: season), though, and while things have certainly gotten bad, the story’s not over yet.Disenchantment’s third season closed out on Bean (Abbi Jacobson), Luci (Eric André), and Elfo (Nat Faxon) being split up as the kingdom was coming under siege by ogres, and Bean’s mother Dagmar (Sharon Horgan) reappeared to spirit her daughter away to the underworld. Though Bean struggled with becoming Dreamland’s newly crowned queen when last we saw her, D... Continue reading…

The world’s fastest esports gaming monitors can refresh at 360Hz — that’s 360 times every second — but display panel manufacturer BOE thinks it can do better. This past week, it revealed a 27-inch prototype monitor with a 500Hz refresh rate, according to a Sina.com news report from an account dubbed OLEDIndustry (via Videocardz and Wccftech).It doesn’t use OLED, though: in what little description we have (via Google Translate), BOE is bragging that it’s made “important breakthroughs in the field of oxide semiconductor display technology” and “mass production of copper interconnect stack structures” that, combined with “high refresh rate, high resolution, low power oxide display technology,” can make this 500Hz gaming display possible.... Continue reading…

OIL PLATFORM, GULF OF MEXICO - DECEMBER 10, 2014: | Photo DigitalGlobe via Getty Images via Getty Images Fossil fuel companies’ hopes of sequestering captured greenhouse gas emissions at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico hit a snag last week when a federal court revoked a gigantic oil and gas lease sale the Biden Administration held last November. ExxonMobil was the biggest spender at the time, bidding on nearly 100 leases in shallow waters. Because the areas it bid on weren’t expected to be very lucrative for oil and gas drilling, experts speculated that ExxonMobil would use the areas for storing captured CO2.But late last week, US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras canceled leases issued during the November sale. The enormous sale, which auctioned off 80.8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, was challenged in federal court by... Continue reading…

You may be used to trying out furniture in AR. | Image: Pinterest Pinterest is adding a “Try On for Home Decor” feature to its app, letting you see furniture from stores like Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm, and Wayfair in your house through the power of augmented reality. While it’s certainly not a new idea (Pinterest itself already has a similar feature in its app for cosmetics), it could make shopping in the app a little more enjoyable — and Pinterest seems very into shopping right now.According to the company’s announcement post, you’ll be able to use its Lens camera to try out over 80,000 pieces of furniture from “shoppable Pins.” If you like what you see, you’ll be able to follow a link to the retailer’s website, where you can buy that new chaise or lamp that fits so well next to your... Continue reading…

Troy Baker will no longer be partnering with Voiceverse. | Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for ReedPOP Troy Baker, a prominent voice actor perhaps best known for playing Joel in The Last of Us, is stepping away from an NFT partnership following significant outcry. In the early hours of January 14th, Baker announced on Twitter that he would be partnering with a company called Voiceverse, which creates “Voice NFTs” that each have a “unique AI-generated voice map,” but he now says he won’t continue the partnership.In his original announcement, it seems Baker expected some backlash — perhaps he has seen some of the gaming community’s opposition to NFTs already, like what led to the removal of planned NFTs from the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl. “You can hate,” part of Baker’s tweet read. “Or you can create. What’ll it be?”O... Continue reading…

Image: Screenshot from Tianwen-1 video on China Xianhu News China’s first Mars orbiter, Tianwen-1, is showing off its journey around the Red Planet in a newly released selfie video ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year. The brief clip, released Monday by the China National Space Administration, shows a good portion of the spacecraft’s body, engines, and solar array zooming through space, with portions of Mars’ surface appearing in the background.The Tianwen-1 orbiter has been circling Mars for nearly a year now. After launching from China in July of 2020, the vehicle inserted itself into the planet’s orbit in February of 2021. The spacecraft is China’s first mission to successfully reach the Red Planet’s orbit, making the nation one of just a handful of countries to explore Mars robotically.... Continue reading…

Netflix/Legendary All Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface has really wanted deep down is to be unbothered by the outside world and left to his murderous hobbies. But the first trailer for Netflix and Legendary’s upcoming sequel makes clear that almost 50 years later, the iconic serial killer still knows no peace despite his attempts to go looking for it.What the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre lacks in terms of having a unique title, it may make up for with its premise, which directly connects it to director Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 feature of a similar name. Though most everyone living near Harlow, Texas is familiar with the story of how Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) narrowly managed to escape Leatherface’s (Mark Burnham) clutches, Texas Chainsaw... Continue reading…

Save $100 on the iPad Air | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The 2020 model of the iPad Air has been discounted to its lowest price ever. Normally, this slim tablet costs $599.99 but has been discounted to $499.99 in all colorways at Best Buy. The Verge’s Dieter Bohn praised its excellent screen and overall fast performance, calling it the “best tablet for most people” in his review. This model represents a top-to-bottom redesign over its previous iteration, bringing features like a USB-C charging port, which broadens its compatibility with accessories.Our top pick for the best Chromebook you can get, the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, is currently on sale at Best Buy for $499.99, knocking $200 off the regular price of this amazing laptop. In our review from The Verge’s own Monica Chin, she gave... Continue reading…

MLB The Show made its debut on Xbox last year, and it’s now making its way to the Nintendo Switch. MLB The Show 22 will be released on April 5th on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X / S. This is the first entry in the MLB The Show series for Nintendo’s Switch console, and it will include full cross-platform progression, cross-saves, and online multiplayer between PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch consoles.The cover athlete this year is Shohei Ohtani, who had an incredible 2021, hitting 46 home runs and 100 runs batted in. The Japanese baseball star is “the only obvious choice to grace the cover of MLB The Show 22,” says Ramone Russell, brand strategist at Sony’s San Diego studio, on the PlayStation... Continue reading…

Mark Zuckerberg’s lifelike 3D avatar | Meta Facebook parent company Meta is introducing 3D avatars to Instagram Stories and direct messages and updating the avatars in Facebook and Messenger, the company announced Monday. People in the US, Canada, and Mexico can appear as their virtual selves in stickers, feed posts, Facebook profile pictures, and more across Meta’s platforms, including its Quest VR platform. The new avatars will include new facial shapes and assistive devices like cochlear implants, hearing aids, and wheelchairs to be more inclusive of users with disabilities, Aigerim Shorman, Meta’s general manager for avatars and identity, wrote in a blog post.“Since revealing our long-term vision of the metaverse at Connect 2021, we’ve continued building out this next... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Food and Drug Administration has granted full approval to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced today. The Moderna vaccine joins the Pfizer / BioNTech shot as the second licensed vaccine against the coronavirus in the United States.This is Moderna’s first FDA-approved product in the US. “This is a momentous milestone in Moderna’s history,” said Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna, in a statement.

XKCD creator Randall Munroe has announced his latest science book: What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, which will delve into new out-of-the-box questions that Munroe attempts to answer with hard scientific facts and research.What If? 2 follows 2014’s original What If? book — which itself was borne out of an XKCD spinoff blog — that saw Munroe examine absurd questions (like whether you could build a jetpack that ran off downward-facing machine guns or if there’s enough paint to cover the entire surface of the earth) with rigorous scientific accuracy, accompanied by Munroe’s signature stick figure comics.The new volume will continue in What If?’s absurd scientific footsteps, attempting to... Continue reading…

XKCD creator Randall Munroe has announced his latest science book: What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, which will delve into new out-of-the-box questions that Munroe attempts to answer with hard scientific facts and research.What If? 2 follows 2014’s original What If? book — which itself was borne out of an XKCD spinoff blog — that saw Munroe examine absurd questions (like whether you could build a jetpack that ran off downward-facing machine guns or if there’s enough paint to cover the entire surface of the earth) with rigorous scientific accuracy, accompanied by Munroe’s signature stick figure comics.The new volume will continue in What If?’s absurd scientific footsteps, attempting to... Continue reading…

Amazon warehouse manager pleads guilty to stealing and reselling computer parts | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Charlotte, North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud after stealing and reselling merchandise from an Amazon warehouse, the Department of Justice said in a news release. Between June 2020 and September 2021, Douglas Wright, Jr., an operations manager at Amazon’s Charlotte warehouse, allegedly stole products with a total value of more than $273,000, using his access to get computer parts like internal hard drives and processors, according to the DOJ. Wright said in court on Friday that he shipped the products to his home, then sold them to a computer wholesale company in California.He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A sentencing date has not been set.Wright faces up to 20... Continue reading…

Intel claimed at CES that its new Alder Lake mobile chips would be the fastest mobile chips ever made. We’ve finally gotten to try out the flagship in this line, the 14-core Core i9-12900HK, inside MSI’s GE76 Raider gaming laptop. And it turns out that Intel was right... with some caveats.The GE76 Raider is a monster in both gaming and productivity workloads. It blew every 11th Gen gaming system I’ve ever tested out of the water. And it even beat Apple’s MacBooks in many of our benchmarks, but that comparison is a bit more... complicated.Check out the video above to see the full results of our Alder Lake testing and our impressions of how it compares to the M1 Max. For even more benchmark results, in-depth performance analysis, and... Continue reading…

The gripper is made from a specially cut kirigami sheet that folds up into a 3D enclosure. | Image: Hong et al, Nature Comm (2000) Designing robots that can handle fragile items is a big challenge for engineers. For warehouses, robots have been developed that use soft rubber fingers to grab items like fruit, but what about targets that are even more delicate? Like, say, a raw egg yolk?Well, researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated a new type of gripper that could one day help machines pick up even the most breakable items — including yolks. Inspired by the Japanese art of kirigami (like origami, but you fold and cut the paper), their gripper is made from flat sheets of material cut with parallel slits. When the ends of the sheet are pulled apart, the gripper forms itself into a 3D sphere that can be used to gently and precisely grab... Continue reading…

Image: Peloton It’s not a rower or the forthcoming Peloton Guide, but Peloton announced today that it’s releasing a new Bluetooth heart rate monitor. Unlike its existing chest strap, the Peloton Heart Rate Band is meant to be worn on a user’s forearm and features optical heart rate sensors.The Heart Rate Band will be available in small and large sizes and will cost $90. That’s a little less than double the price of its existing chest strap, which retails for $49 on Peloton’s website. It’ll also sport five LED lights that indicate which heart rate zone you’re currently training in, battery level, and Bluetooth connectivity status. It also has a rechargeable battery that gets an estimated 10 hours on a single charge.The device is meant to be an... Continue reading…

Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images Walmart doesn’t want a lack of know-how to prevent its customers from buying smart home tech, TVs, and other devices that require installation or assembly. A new partnership with in-home services provider Angi has been announced to help mount TVs, set up smart air conditioners, and complete other DIY projects around your home. Angi says over 150 “common home projects” will be available to order from nearly 4,000 Walmart stores, as well as Walmart’s website.Prices range from $49 for a simple job like furniture assembly, rising to $79 to mount a TV. Some tasks like installing new floors will require custom quotes. The service is due to launch in mid-February.Google and Ring have similar installation partnershipsAngi says that the third... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Busy season is here — but some public accountants aren’t Continue reading…

Microsoft appears to still be working on true 3D emoji for Windows after first teasing it last year and then only shipping 2D versions in Windows 11. Nando Costa, a distinguished designer at Microsoft, revealed recently that the company is still working on making Windows 11’s emoji look more 3D.On Friday, Costa authored a blog post on Microsoft’s new direction for its emoji system, detailing the company’s push towards 3D after a 2020 hackathon. Responding to a tweet from someone wanting 3D emoji in Windows 11, Costa says “We’re working on that,” with a grinning face with sweat emoji. We still don’t know when 3D emoji will appear in Windows 11, but at least Microsoft is still working on bringing its original vision to life. ... Continue reading…

The Mojo 2 can plug into devices like tablets to improve their sound. | Image: Chord British audio manufacturer Chord has announced a successor to the excellent Mojo, a battery-powered accessory that aims to improve the sound of your wired headphones or speakers when paired with your phone, laptop, tablet, or other digital media source. New features for the Mojo 2 include a USB-C input, better battery life, and new tone controls that effectively work like an equalizer to customize the sound it puts out.The Mojo 2 retails for $725 (£449), which is hardly affordable by any measure. However, if it’s as good as its predecessor, then this might be a price worth paying to accompany a pair of suitably premium wired headphones or speakers. It’s available globally starting today.The Mojo 2, like the original Mojo, is... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge LGBTQ dating app Grindr has been removed from the Apple App Store in China, and is also unavailable on popular Android app marketplaces, Bloomberg reports. The app reportedly disappeared from the iOS App Store on January 27th, although it’s unclear when it was removed from the country’s popular Android app stores — which are operated by local companies like Huawei and Tencent in the absence of the Google Play Store.The apparent removals follow the Chinese government’s announcement last week that it would be cracking down on illegal content, pornography, and “ill-natured” activities online, Bloomberg previously reported. The tightening of restrictions comes ahead of China hosting the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which are due to kick off... Continue reading…