The Verge

Photo by Elizabeth Frantz-Pool / Getty Images As the Senate Judiciary Committee inches towards passing legislation that could loosen Big Tech’s grasp on consumers, Big Tech is expectedly outraged. Both Apple and Google have written letters publicly opposing new pieces of legislation, while a coalition of smaller tech companies has voiced their support.The outcry comes in response to two pieces of proposed legislation: The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which prevents Big Tech from favoring their services over others, and the Open App Markets Act, which aims to promote competition on app stores.Apple’s senior director of government affairs, Tim Powderly, penned a letter, viewed by Bloomberg, to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL), Antitrust Subcommittee... Continue reading…

US President Joe Biden speaks with a fire victim as he tours a neighborhood destroyed by the Marshall Fire in Louisville, Colorado, January 7, 2022. - Authorities say the fast moving wildfire destroyed more than 1,000 homes | Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images Federal authorities have a new plan to protect communities across the western US from increasingly explosive infernos by fighting fire with fire. In a shift from old-school firefighting strategies that attempted to stamp out naturally occurring blazes, the USDA and Forest Service will focus on thinning out forests to minimize “mega fires.”The agencies released a 10-year strategy today that includes removing trees and using “controlled burns” to reduce the amount of vegetation that feeds flames. The plan is to treat up to 20 million more acres of national forest land than is currently managed, plus work with partners to employ the tactics on an additional 30 million acres on other federal, state, tribal, and private lands. All in all,... Continue reading…

Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images Emirates, Air India, ANA, and Japan Airlines have all announced they’re canceling some flights to the US due to this week’s rollout of C-band 5G over concerns it could potentially interfere with some instruments, particularly on Boeing 777 aircraft. This comes as cell carriers, federal agencies, airlines, and airplane manufacturers struggle to reach an agreement on policies regarding how the rollout should be handled.Emirates’ announcement is one of the clearest about what’s being canceled. The airline, described as the world’s largest operator of the Boeing 777 by Reuters, says that it’s “suspending flights to the following US destinations from 19 January 2022 until further notice,” listing Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft released an out-of-band (OOB) update yesterday to fix some Windows issues caused by last week’s monthly patching cycle on Patch Tuesday.The January 2022 updates that shipped last week included security patches and a fix for Japanese text appearance issues in Windows 11 (KB5009566) and Windows 10 (KB5009543) — along with a secret payload of issues, including unexpected restarting of Domain Controllers and VPN connections using L2TP failing.One of the major issues that came up during the week for IT admins included finding that Windows Server 2012 became stuck in a boot loop, while other versions suffered broken Windows VPN clients, and some hard drives appeared as RAW format (and unusable). Many IT Admins were forced to roll... Continue reading…

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Nearly a month after President Joe Biden first announced that Americans would be able to order rapid at-home COVID-19 tests for free from the government, the administration’s website finally went live on Tuesday. But hours after the site’s launch, users struggled to place orders to homes or apartment buildings where other tenants may have already placed an order.The extent of the problem is still unclear as of publication, but White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said, “It’s a really small percentage and USPS will be sending our statement on this shortly.”Users trying to order tests to multiple-family homes and apartments seem to be experiencing this issue the most. Once a user enters their information into the form, they’re prompted... Continue reading…

The site appears to be handling the traffic. | Image: USPS The US government’s site to claim free COVID tests, which has started accepting orders a day before it was scheduled to, is drawing in a lot of visitors — more than every other government page combined, according to the government’s own analytics site.Web traffic numbers change by the second, but at 1:32PM ET, when I ran the report to download real-time numbers for all governmental pages, COVIDTests.gov (along with its FAQ page and versions of the site in other languages) had 685,817 visitors. The visitor counts for the 3,853 other pages included in the report totaled 419,615. Traffic doesn’t seem to have dropped since then. At times, the COVIDtests.gov page had over 705,000 visitors. There have been concerns... Continue reading…

Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images On Tuesday, Democrats introduced a new bill that would ban nearly all use of digital advertising targeting on ad markets hosted by platforms like Facebook, Google, and other data brokers.The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act – sponsored by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) – prohibits digital advertisers from targeting any ads to users. It makes some small exceptions, like allowing for “broad” location-based targeting. Contextual advertising, like ads that are specifically matched to online content, would be allowed.“The ‘surveillance advertising’ business model is premised on the unseemly collection and hoarding of personal data to enable ad targeting,” Eshoo, the bill’s lead sponsor, said... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube will scale back a significant portion of YouTube Originals, which produced original content including scripted series, educational videos, and music and celebrity programming. Chief business officer for YouTube Robert Kyncl announced the changes today in a statement on Twitter.Going forward, the company will only fund originals in the YouTube Kids Fund and the Black Voices Fund, a program created in 2020 that committed $100 million to “amplify” Black creators on the platform.“With rapid growth comes new opportunities and now our investments can make a greater impact on even more creators when applied towards other initiatives, like our Creator Shorts Fund, Black Voices Fund, and Live Shopping programming to name a few,” the... Continue reading…

California prosecutors filed two felony charges against the owner of Tesla Model S for a deadly crash in 2019 that involved the vehicle’s Autopilot system, marking the first time that a Tesla owner has been criminally charged in the US in a case involving the automaker’s advanced driver assist system. The charges were first reported by the AP.According to the LA County District Attorney, the incident took place in Gardena, a suburb of LA, on December 29, 2019. Kevin George Aziz Riad, 27, was exiting a highway in his black Model S when he ran through a red light, slamming into a Honda Civic and killing two people.Riad, a limousine service driver, will now face two charges of vehicular manslaughter, according to charges filed with the... Continue reading…

AT&T says airlines “have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment.” | Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images AT&T and Verizon have announced that they will push back plans to activate some 5G towers around airports after airline operators warned that the deployment could cause “catastrophic disruption” to travel and shipping. While both carriers have an agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration to create buffer zones around 50 airports, AT&T has confirmed to The Verge that it’s halting the rollout of even more towers than originally planned, and that the decision applies to a “limited number of towers around certain airport runways.” Verizon responded to an email asking if it was planning on doing more than the agreement requires with a statement that says it’s “voluntarily decided to limit our 5G network around airports.”AT&T is... Continue reading…

As you watch the first trailer for Marvel’s Moon Knight series, a few things quickly become clear about Oscar Isaac’s take on the titular hero. The first: like his comics counterpart, this Moon Knight will grapple with having multiple personalities. The second: one of those personalities is meant to be believably British, despite his having one of the most ludicrous British accents recently captured on camera.In Marvel’s comics, Moon Knight — created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin — is both a codename and one of the alternate personalities coexisting within Marc Spector, a former Marine turned mercenary who appears to gain otherworldly abilities after dying and seemingly being resurrected by an Egyptian moon deity known as Khonshu.... Continue reading…

The PlayStation epic God of War was released to PC a mere four days ago but is currently discounted to just $37.76 at Eneba, an excellent break on the regular $49.99 price tag. This amazing reboot of the classic Sony franchise brings back Kratos in his role as the iconic God of War in a sweeping narrative bedded in the lore of Norse mythology. The RPG-inspired gameplay is made even stronger with the help of an amazing story that adds some much-needed depth to the otherwise one-dimensional diety.The Gigabyte G32QC 32-inch curved gaming monitor is currently discounted to match its lowest price ever at Newegg. Normally, this curved gaming panel costs $369.99 but has been reduced to just $299.99 when you use the promo code GNLBNA8242 at... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images With its pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft could soon add the likes of Diablo, Warcraft, and Call of Duty to its lineup of big-name franchises, which already includes everything from Halo to Minecraft to Fallout. That’s sure to move more Xbox consoles and bring more subscribers into the increasingly tempting Game Pass ecosystem. But there’s another, less obvious, part of the deal that could be just as important: it instantly gives Microsoft a huge audience in the mobile space.The biggest video games in the world are largely found on smartphones, and for the last few years, major publishers have been spending lots of money to get into the space. Just this month, Take-Two — the company behind the likes of NBA 2K and G... Continue reading…

Photo by Michael Loccisano / Getty Images Most of us check our gift card balances online (because who actually keeps those receipts that tell us how much money we have left on them?), making an apparent oversight by Google all the worse. It appears that Google inadvertently approved a prominent ad for a phony Target gift card balance checker that’s meant to steal your funds, although it has since removed the ad.A Reddit user on r/assholedesign discovered the slip-up when searching Google for “Target gift card balance” on mobile and found that the very first result is an ad, titled “Check Gift Card Balance - Target.” Only, the site isn’t Target — it’s actually a site called “bristolhirevan.” The ad’s description says it will let you check your gift card balance “immediately” and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Well, hi, everyone! You’ve got Aria. Real excited to be here with y’all.As a reminder, Ashley’s out this week, so if you have things to share, you can send ‘em my way (aria.bracci@voxmedia.com). In the meantime, I’ll share some things with you, which is my job, to share those things.P.S. Julie, if you’re reading this, tell your 10-year-old we said hey!Hot Pod Summit is almost here! We’re hosting the invite-only event on February 24th in Brooklyn, New York, as part of On Air Fest. You can see this year’s On Air Fest lineup and buy tickets here. We’ll have more to share on programming and ticketing for Hot Pod Summit in the coming weeks.EXCLUSIVE: $100K podcast fund launches for upstart showsStarting today, budding US-based... Continue reading…

Photo by Graeme Jennings-Pool/Getty Images On Tuesday, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission launched a joint effort to modernize antitrust enforcement, seeking comment on how the agencies can apply current law in cases against tech companies like Meta (parent company of Facebook) and Google.The announcement came at a joint press conference from FTC Chair Lina Khan and Justice Department Antitrust Chief Jonathan Kanter, who described the move as a wide-ranging enforcement modernization effort. While the announcement spans markets, it specifically questions how regulators should approach merger approval in digital markets, potentially setting new legal standards around data aggregation, interoperability, and market consolidation that can affect competition.“We... Continue reading…

COVIDTests.gov is now available. | Screenshot: COVIDTests.gov Last week, the White House announced COVIDTests.gov, a site that you can use to order four free at-home COVID-19 rapid antigen tests per household, and it looks like it has gone live ahead of schedule. It was initially set to start taking orders on January 19th, but it appears you can place an order for your free tests now.

The site is live, but you won’t be able to order tests until Wednesday. Update January 18th, 12:15PM ET: The site and ordering page are live now, one day earlier than expected.The White House has announced that people will be able to order free COVID-19 tests from COVIDTests.gov starting on Wednesday, January 19th. This follows a promise that the government would be setting up a website to distribute 500 million tests, which President Joe Biden announced in December.You’ll only have to put in two pieces of info to get a test shipped to you — your name and address. In its announcement, the White House said the tests will ship through the US Postal Service “within 7–12 days of ordering.” Currently, the limit is four tests per residential address.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Coinbase is partnering with Mastercard to allow card payments on its upcoming NFT marketplace. This means you’ll be able to directly purchase an NFT with fiat currency (also known as a government-issued currency, such as the USD) using your Mastercard credit or debit card, all without having to buy cryptocurrency first.The cryptocurrency exchange says it’s working with Mastercard to “classify NFTs as ‘digital goods,’” which should, in turn, make NFTs more accessible to someone who might be uncomfortable purchasing and storing cryptocurrency. Most NFT marketplaces require that you purchase cryptocurrency first, add it to a secure wallet, and then connect that wallet to the marketplace, a process that obviously isn’t as simple as your... Continue reading…

Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair Since Activision Blizzard was sued in July by the state of California for a culture of “constant sexual harassment,” among many other troubling issues, the company has been in a state of controversy. There were a pair of employee walkouts, and more than 1,500 employees signed a petition to remove CEO Bobby Kotick. An Activision Blizzard spokesperson recently told the Wall Street Journal that 37 people had exited the company, and 44 have been disciplined as part of its investigations.Kotick will continue as CEO, for nowKotick himself was the center of another WSJ report saying the publisher’s former CEO was not only aware of but participated in the company’s pervasive toxic culture. Employees called for Kotick to step down not long... Continue reading…

Noam Galai/Getty Images Today, Roku, Funny Or Die, and Tango announced that they’re partnering up to produce WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story, a biopic written by “Weird Al” Yankovic and director Eric Appel, with Daniel Radcliffe attached to star in the lead role. In a statement about the upcoming film, Yankovic spoke about how he sees WEIRD as his making good on a promise to maintain a dedicated presence in the film space over the decades.“When my last movie UHF came out in 1989, I made a solemn vow to my fans that I would release a major motion picture every 33 years, like clockwork. I’m very happy to say we’re on schedule,” Yankovic said. “I am absolutely thrilled that Daniel Radcliffe will be portraying me in the film. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Buying a TV can be a confusing ordeal, but it doesn’t need to be Continue reading…

As part of Microsoft’s plan to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the software giant has created a Microsoft Gaming division. Phil Spencer, former head of Xbox, will now lead this team as it focuses on gaming across Xbox, PC, mobile, and the cloud. It’s a big promotion for Spencer, described as the Xboss by Xbox fans.Spencer originally took over as the head of Microsoft’s Xbox division in 2014, reporting to former Windows chief Terry Myerson. In a sign of how gaming has changed at Microsoft under Spencer, he quickly moved into Microsoft’s senior leadership team in 2017, reporting directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as the corporate vice president of gaming. After more than 30 years at the company, Spencer is now CEO of... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge A new electric Microbus offers a glimpse at the future of VW Continue reading…

tl;dr papers shows AI’s potential to condense research Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service now has 25 million subscribers. That’s up from the 18 million Microsoft previously reported in January last year. The Xbox Game Pass all-you-can-eat catalog of downloadable games — or the “Netflix for video games” as it’s often described — continues to attract new subscribers as Microsoft looks to extend the service.As Microsoft’s subscriber numbers grow, so does the amount of titles available on Xbox Game Pass. In 2021, Xbox Game Pass added iconic Bethesda games, with 20 in total on the service, including Dishonored, Doom, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Wolfenstein.Microsoft announced the milestone while revealing its planned $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which will have... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft’s Chrome OS competitor, Windows 11 SE, is making its way onto a handful of laptops. After detailing Windows 11 SE in November, Microsoft’s OEM partners are now starting to make devices available globally for schools and students. Acer, Asus, Dell, Dynabook, Lenovo, HP, and JP.IK have all created Windows 11 SE laptops, with devices from Fujitsu and Positivo arriving later this year.Windows 11 SE will only be available on new low-cost devices and only for schools and education customers. It’s designed to really take on Chromebooks in education, and is optimized for Microsoft Edge, Office, and Microsoft’s cloud-based services. Windows 11 SE isn’t limited to just Microsoft apps though, with both Zoom and Chrome part of an... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Two dozen women drivers speak out about their experiences with sexual assault and harassment Continue reading…

Microsoft is acquiring Activision, the troubled publisher of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Diablo. The deal will value Activision at $68.7 billion, far in excess of the $26 billion Microsoft paid to acquire LinkedIn in 2016. It’s Microsoft’s biggest push into gaming, and the company says it will be the “third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony” once the deal closes.Microsoft plans to add many of Activision’s games to Xbox Game Pass once the deal closes. With the acquisition of Activision, Microsoft will soon publish franchises like Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush. “Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both... Continue reading…

Garmin’s new Fenix 7 series | Image: Garmin Despite being leaked to hell and back, the Garmin Fenix 7 series was a no-show at CES 2022. That’s because Garmin decided to wait until today to separately announce its revamped multisport GPS smartwatches. On top of an updated flagship Fenix 7 lineup, Garmin is also launching the Epix — a rugged outdoors smartwatch with an always-on color display.Some things with the new Fenix 7 smartwatches will be familiar to Garmin fans. There are still three sizes: the 42mm Fenix 7S, the 47mm Fenix 7, and the whopping 51mm Fenix 7X. The Fenix 7S and 7 will come in “regular” versions made of fiber-reinforced polymer, but there are also Solar Editions and Sapphire Solar Editions for all three models. Additionally, the Sapphire Solar Editions upgrade... Continue reading…

The next big update for Fortnite brings back something old and adds something new. As fans have long expected, the snow on the battle royale island has slowly melted, revealing the return of Tilted Towers, an iconic urban area that dates back to Fortnite’s first island.Elsewhere in the v19.10 update is the addition of a new kind of creature: a giant, adorable monster called a Klombo. It looks like something ripped out of How to Train Your Dragon, and developer Epic says that they’re mostly gentle and they appear to add a new way of getting around the map. “Ascend their tails to get to the blowhole on their heads, then get launched a great distance upwards to escape a tricky situation,” Epic wrote in a blog post. There’s also a new item,... Continue reading…

United Airlines was among those to issue a warning. | Photo by Daniel Karmann/picture alliance via Getty Images CEOs from major US airlines including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines have warned that the impending deployment of new 5G spectrum on Wednesday could cause “catastrophic disruption” for flights across the country starting tomorrow. The warning, which was also signed by shipping companies including UPS Airlines and FedEx Express, was issued in a letter from the CEOs seen by Reuters, which said that both commercial and cargo flights could be affected.The letter was sent to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, and White House National Economic Council director Brian Deese, Reuters... Continue reading…

The Logitech Pen doesn’t requiring pairing, thanks to its USI support. But, it won’t work on every Chromebook released. | Logitech Logitech has announced a new stylus called Pen, and it’s aimed at being the best option available for classrooms full of Chromebooks. Unlike many rubber-tipped styli, the Pen is an active stylus that supports the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) standard, effectively guaranteeing one thing: it’ll work out of the box on a number of recent Chromebooks — no pairing required.If a Chromebook is mentioned on this list, the Pen will work with it. Logitech says that more Chromebook manufacturers have been moving forward with the USI standard, so expect to see more models added to it.The Pen can recharge via a USB-C port located where you’d find the eraser on a traditional pencil, and Logitech says it can last for up to 15 days of regular... Continue reading…

Samsung has announced the Exynos 2200, its new in-house mobile processor for smartphones. It’s the first mobile system-on-a-chip to include a GPU with AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture, enabling features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing.The collaboration with AMD has been long in the making. The two companies first announced a licensing deal in 2019, then AMD confirmed last year that Samsung’s “next flagship mobile SoC” would use RDNA 2. Samsung recently teased an announcement event for the Exynos 2200 that was supposed to take place on January 11th, but it was mysteriously delayed.The Exynos 2200 is manufactured on Samsung’s 4nm EUV process. Samsung is branding this GPU as “Xclipse,” and AMD’s SVP of Radeon GPU tech David Wang... Continue reading…

In this game you put events from Wikipedia in a timeline. If you’re a history buff, or are looking for a new web game to play, Wikitrivia may be worth your time. The game’s creator, Tom Watson, describes it on his site as “Wikidata as a trivia card game,” and the tweet that brought it to our attention called it an “online clone of the card game Timeline.”Playing it is simple: it gives you a card that represents something that has a date, which is pulled from Wikidata; some examples I saw asked me to pin down when the Bastille was built, when the Foo Fighters were formed, and when the October Revolution ended (unfortunately, it was looking for a year, not a month). You then have to put the card on the correct place in the timeline. You’re allowed three mistakes, which are represented by hearts,... Continue reading…

Kushner acted as a presidential advisor in the Trump administration. | Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law who acted as a senior advisor during Trump’s time in the White House, was apparently interested in the idea of whether the federal government should make a cryptocurrency in 2018. In an email to then-US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Kushner asked if he could have a group of people “brainstorm” about the government creating its own digital currency, as revealed by a Freedom Of Information Act request from CoinDesk.While we haven’t seen the idea come to fruition, it’s interesting that someone who had a lot of status in the White House (and also acted as the director for the Office of American Innovation) was thinking about it years ago.Here’s the email in full:

Spice DAO Last year, a collective of cryptocurrency fans pooled millions of dollars to buy a copy of the story bible for director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s legendary never-made adaptation of the novel Dune. After winning a November auction, the group voted last week on a direction for the project and got promptly roasted online for allegedly not understanding what they’d bought. Their plans included an animated series inspired by Jodorowsky’s Dune, and as any good collector likely knows, buying a commemorative copy of a script or storyboard doesn’t give you the right to shoot your own version.The actual situation seems more ambiguous than some critics are suggesting. The Dune story bible’s owners, known as Spice DAO (short for “decentralized... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge 37 Activision Blizzard employees have reportedly “exited” the company since July of last year as part of the company’s attempt to crack down on issues surrounding sexual harassment, according to internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Activision Blizzard spokesperson Helaine Klasky also told the WSJ that 44 individuals were disciplined in connection with workplace misconduct allegations.Kotick reportedly didn’t want to release this information for fear of making the situation seem worseThese numbers likely include the more than 20 workers that exited the company in October, along with around 20 workers who the company reprimanded at the time. The WSJ also notes that Activision Blizzard collected around 700... Continue reading…

Mitchriz speedruns Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice while blindfolded at AGDQ 2022. | Screenshot: Games Done Quick via YouTube Games Done Quick has raised $3.4 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation at its annual video game speedrunning event, Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), the most money ever raised at a single Games Done Quick event (via IGN).The organization, which holds two flagship speedrunning events for charity every year, announced its success on Twitter. It’s the most money Games Done Quick has ever raised, and also the fastest the organization has ever reached $1 million in donations. As noted on AGDQ’s tracker, the event showcased a total of 149 speedruns and received 49,482 donations from 28,073 different people.AGDQ 2022 was livestreamed on Twitch from January 9th to January 16th and featured some of the world’s most talented speedrunners who... Continue reading…

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge Spain has announced new rules for how social media influencers and others can advertise cryptocurrency assets, Reuters reports. Starting next month, the Spanish National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) will require people and companies to notify it at least 10 days before running campaigns for crypto assets. The rules apply to influencers with more than 100,000 subscribers who are paid to promote cryptocurrency — a practice that’s drawn criticism and even lawsuits worldwide.According to Reuters, crypto advertisers will need to release the content of their upcoming campaigns to the CNMV, and they must include warnings about the risks of what they’re selling. The rules are designed to let the CNMV monitor the marketing ecosystem... Continue reading…

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker signifies the end of an era. One story, started nine years ago, has ended with a stunning and heartwarming conclusion, while the promise of a new adventure awaits on the horizon. But Endwalker doesn’t merely mark the end of the Hydaelyn / Zodiark saga. For a few diehard players, Endwalker also provides a final coda for the game Final Fantasy XIV was before it was rebooted into A Realm Reborn.The original Final Fantasy XIV Online — colloquially known as “1.0” — had a rough release. Reviews at the time said the game “lacked character, cohesion, and joy” and lamented its every feature from the UI to the storytelling. The one thing Tatjana Vejnovic remembers of 1.0 was “[h]ow un-fucking-playable it was.”“... Continue reading…

Home robots are getting smarter Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales You now interact with coworkers through a flat rectangle — let’s get you a larger, better one Continue reading…

Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images Amazon says it will continue to accept payment in the UK from Visa credit cards, reversing a decision to ban the cards that was announced last November and due to kick in this week on Wednesday, January 19th.In an email to customers, Amazon said it was “working closely on a potential solution that will enable customers to continue using their Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk.” The company did not say what the solution was or how long it might be in place, but added that “should we make any changes related to Visa credit cards, we will give you advance notice.”Visa raised interchange fees five-fold after the UK left the EUThe original decision to ban Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk arose from a dispute over payment fees levied by... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has started testing some deeper YouTube integration in its Edge browser. The latest Canary developer builds of Edge include a new “followable web” feature that lets you easily follow your favorite content creators on YouTube.Reddit user Leopeva64 spotted a new YouTube follow button that appears in the address bar of YouTube pages. Following creators will add them to a feed that’s part of the Collections feature in Edge. The feature is clearly in the early preview stages, and it doesn’t support all YouTube content creators just yet. The feed that’s created in Collections lets you see recent posts from creators that you follow. Image: Reddit (Leopeva64) The new web following feature in Edge. This... Continue reading…

Hyundai’s Genesis cars could soon get access to the feature. | Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images Hyundai and its Genesis brand are reportedly close to adding support for Apple’s digital car key feature, which lets you unlock and start compatible vehicles using the iPhone’s Wallet app, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. According to Gurman, the so-called “CarKey” feature is set to come to Hyundai’s Genesis lineup this summer.Hyundai already offers proprietary iOS apps, including MyHyundai with Bluelink and the Genesis Intelligent Assistant, which include the ability to remotely start, or unlock the doors of compatible vehicles. But adding support for Apple’s implementation of the digital key feature should make the functionality more seamless, and benefit from system-level Apple Wallet shortcuts. Hyundai’s site notes that its... Continue reading…

Details on Oppo’s upcoming flagship phone are starting to come together. Multiple leaks are suggesting it’ll be called the Find X5 Pro, with a similar design to last year’s Find X3 Pro and specs broadly in line with the new OnePlus 10 Pro, which is already available in China. (OnePlus, of course, is now treated as a sub-brand of Oppo.)The Find X3 Pro wasn’t sold in the US, but it did make its way to Europe and was one of the best phones of 2021. Renders recently released by OnLeaks show a device with a camera bump that flows into the rest of the back panel in a similar fashion to the Find X3 Pro, although the camera configuration has changed and doesn’t appear to include the previous phone’s unique ring light-equipped “microscope”... Continue reading…

Walmart’s recent trademark applications suggest that it wants to break into the metaverse. | Photo by Yichuan Cao / NurPhoto via Getty Images Walmart appears to be getting ready for a leap into the metaverse. Recent trademark applications indicate the company is looking to establish its own NFTs and cryptocurrency, according to a report from CNBC.The retail giant filed for several trademarks on December 30th, suggesting plans to start selling virtual goods, including electronics, toys, appliances, sporting equipment, apparel, home decor, and more, as noted by CNBC. There’s mention of offering customers a digital currency, as well as the opportunity to buy and sell NFTs. Meanwhile, another application details possible “physical fitness training services” and “classes in the field of health and nutrition” that could take place in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A bug in Safari 15 can leak your browsing activity, and can also reveal some of the personal information attached to your Google account, according to findings from FingerprintJS, a browser fingerprinting and fraud detection service (via 9to5Mac). The vulnerability stems from an issue with Apple’s implementation of IndexedDB, an application programming interface (API) that stores data on your browser.As explained by FingerprintJS, IndexedDB abides by the same-origin policy, which restricts one origin from interacting with data that was collected on other origins — essentially, only the website that generates data can access it. For example, if you open your email account in one tab and then open a malicious webpage in another, the... Continue reading…