The Verge

Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro is discounted to its lowest price ever. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Whether you’re trying to make the most of your summer or planning ahead for the fall semester, our deals team is always busy chasing down deals. And if you’re a college-bound student looking for a powerful machine for content creation, Apple’s latest MacBook Pro likely fits the bill (if you can afford it). Thankfully, the 14-inch MacBook Pro is currently on sale at Best Buy and B&H Photo with an eight-core M1 Pro CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $1,749 ($250 off), matching the lowest price we’ve seen for Apple’s premium laptop.In addition to providing some of the best performance and battery life we’ve seen in an Apple laptop, the 14-inch MacBook Pro offers extensive connectivity options, allowing you to use microSD cards or... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Google search engine will be banned in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, currently under Russian occupation, as reported by The Guardian.Denis Pushilin, leader of the Russia-backed separatist state Donetsk People’s Republic, posted a message on Telegram accusing Google of “promot[ing] terrorism and violence against all Russians, and especially the population of Donbas,” according to The Guardian.Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this spring, a number of social media platforms have been banned in Russia and in the occupied regions. In March, a Russian ban on Facebook and Instagram was upheld, accusing the platforms of engaging in “extremist activities” for policies that allow for... Continue reading…

Raindrop works practically everywhere, like any good bookmarking app should. | Image: Raindrop Bookmarking apps are a lost art. They were once a hot industry, where Delicious and Diigo and Wink and Furl (these are all real names, I swear!) competed to be the home for all your URLs. But those went out of style right around the time James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” dropped off the radio charts, and the whole idea of “bookmarks” never really came back in style. You have browser bookmarks; what else do you need?Here’s why you should be using a bookmarking app: because it’s the storage unit the internet needs. Seriously, think of it like you rented one of those self-storage squares, and now you have a place for all of the stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Instead of emailing yourself links or keeping 100 tabs open just in case,... Continue reading…

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 Fridays, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, editor-at-large David Pierce, and managing editor Alex Cranz discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.In today’s episode, the crew starts the show with Tesla’s quarterly earnings, which leads to a discussion of the state of electric cars in America — what models are actually available, the move from green to blue branding, and if Tesla has figured out the Cybertruck’s windshield wipers yet.

Florence Pugh as Alice Chambers in Don’t Worry Darling. | Warner Bros. In Warner Bros.’ upcoming thriller Don’t Worry Darling from director Olivia Wilde, most everything about the fictional company town of Victory seems perfectly normal from a distance — as do the handful of picture-perfect nuclear families who call the place home. But there’s something sinister about Victory that at least one of its Stepford-esque housewives is becoming aware of in Don’t Worry Darling’s new trailer.Like all of Victory’s homemakers, Alice Chambers (Florence Pugh) adores her husband Jack (Harry Styles) and delights in almost every aspect of “traditional” suburban domestic femininity like cooking, cleaning, and always having a full face of makeup. Though Alice and the other women don’t exactly know what the men of the town d... Continue reading…

Can a $30 dongle make you a better player? | Image: Razer Razer continues to stretch the limits of what gamers are willing to buy to get the edge on their opponents. Starting today, fans of the Razer Viper V2 Pro wireless gaming mouse can obtain the luxury of having a higher polling rate than the other guy with the $30 Razer HyperPolling dongle. Currently, this dongle is only compatible with the Viper V2 Pro and exists for the sole purpose of giving you an almost imperceptible edge against your competition by providing the wireless mouse with a 4000Hz polling rate. The Razer Viper V2 Pro. The polling rate of a device refers to the number of times a mouse or other peripheral relays its information to your desktop. The typical polling rate for wired or wireless peripherals is... Continue reading…

VoiceOver is Apple’s built-in screen reader for iOS. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge If you’re looking to enable screen reading on your iPhone, you don’t have to go very far. Since 2009, Apple has included a built-in screen reader called VoiceOver as part of its accessibility features to help those with visual impairments.VoiceOver essentially works by describing aloud everything that appears on your iPhone’s screen. Over the years, Apple has expanded the feature to include more detailed descriptions of people, objects, text, and other graphics. It also uses gestures and haptics to help users explore their iPhone without ever having to look at the screen itself.While this feature was developed to help blind and low-vision users, VoiceOver can also be helpful in other use cases. For instance, you can use VoiceOver with... Continue reading…

A good monitor with a great leg to stand on Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Nintendo Switch Sports is getting a free update on July 26th that will no doubt cause a rise in living room-related injuries. Soccer, one of the six sports you can play, will be getting increased motion control support allowing you to use your legs to kick your way to victory.In addition to the soccer update, volleyball will also get some new moves — slide attack and rocket serve. And for online players, Nintendo is adding a new S and Infinity rank so you can really brag about how good you are at badminton.In Nintendo Switch Sports, players use a combination of Joy-Con and motion controls to play. When bowling, you swing your arm back just as you would at the lanes, and for Chambara — the sword-fighting mini-game — you flail your arms... Continue reading…

Alex Castro / The Verge ‘My life would be a whole lot simpler right now if none of that had happened’ Continue reading…

Stray. Evolving our relationship with virtual beasts Continue reading…

After a year of teases, General Motors revealed the Cadillac Celestiq, a $300,000 ultra-luxury electric sedan that the automaker says is the most Cadillac Cadillac that ever Cadillac’d.The Celestiq is Cadillac’s first major effort to capture some of the high-end market currently dominated by the likes of Rolls-Royce and Bentley. As such, GM is heaping on the superlatives with the description of this Ultium-powered, 55-inch digital display sporting flagship EV — despite still only being the show car version of what is expected to be a production-ready vehicle out later this year. It’s “the purest expression of Cadillac” that was “inspired by the brand’s 120-year heritage,” chockablock with “handcrafted” materials and all of GM’s most... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Welcome to this week’s edition of This Week in Chancery Court! Delaware’s moment in the sun continues as the fight between Elon Musk and Twitter shifts from fiery tweets… to fiery legal filings.Here’s where we are: lawsuits. Twitter wanted to have a trial as quickly as possible. “This very public dispute harms Twitter with each passing day Musk is in breach,” Twitter said in a legal filing. (The company also reported earnings going down, and basically blamed Musk for its weak performance the last three months.) Musk’s team wanted to move the trial to next February so it could run more tests on Twitter’s firehose to figure out… something, something spam bots?Kathaleen McCormick, chancellor of the Court of Chancery — name a more iconic... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter would have earned more money over the past few months if Elon Musk hadn’t been in the picture. At least, that’s what the company says in its Q2 earnings release this morning, citing Musk as a factor in its revenue results, which fell year over year to $1.18 billion from $1.19 billion.That’s not the only reason Twitter is experiencing revenue problems. The company also cites ad industry problems — see Snap’s poor performance yesterday — and the general economic environment. But “uncertainty related to the pending acquisition of Twitter by an affiliate of Elon Musk” is the most Twitter-specific problem on the list.Ad sales are reportedly in “disarray”Musk entered into an agreement to buy Twitter in April, and he’s been trying to... Continue reading…

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images With a months-long recess on the horizon, House progressives are urging Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to act fast on two competition bills that would better equip antitrust enforcers to take on major tech firms.In a letter sent to Schumer on Friday, more than a dozen Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders urged the Senate majority leader to schedule a vote on two bills in the coming weeks.“It is time for Congress to vote on this legislation,” the lawmakers wrote. “These bills are ready for a vote and we urge you to schedule the vote on them in the next few weeks.”The bills – the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO) and Open Markets Act –were introduced on the heels of a 16-month long congressional investigation... Continue reading…

One of the magical things about near-field communication technology (NFC) is that tags don’t need a battery to communicate — you’ll never need to buy a new coin cell for your employee badge, because the badge scanner wirelessly beams enough power to the badge to verify it’s legit. Now, chipmaker Infineon wants to make the same thing happen with smart locks — ones that can be entirely powered by your phone.You can already buy fancy door locks in Europe and basic padlocks in China that do the trick, with Finland’s iLOQ claiming to have been the first to do it back in 2016. But today, Infineon is selling a new chip and offering full detailed instructions (PDF) to anyone who wants in on the idea.It’s called the NAC1080, and it’s designed... Continue reading…

It’s currently unclear what AMD hardware (pictured) might be required to use the new feature. | Image: AMD AMD looks to be on the cusp of releasing a competitor to RTX Voice, a feature for Nvidia graphics cards that cancels out background noise when you’re on a call or otherwise using your mic. That’s according to a trailer that AMD posted to its YouTube channel (apparently in error), Tom’s Hardware reports. Thankfully, a copy of the trailer was downloaded before it was deleted by Reddit user u/zenobian and uploaded to the AMD subreddit.The leaked trailer suggests that AMD’s Noise Suppression feature will work very similarly to Nvidia’s RTX Voice (which has subsequently been rolled into Nvidia’s Broadcast app). It uses “a real-time deep learning algorithm” to offer “two-way noise-reduction” that filters background noise out of both outgoing... Continue reading…

Who doesn’t want to know what it’s like to pet a giraffe? | Image: Sony Sony released a ten-minute-long trailer for The Last of Us Part 1 on Thursday, where the game’s directors talk through some of the improvements coming in the PlayStation 5 remake of Naughty Dog’s iconic game. The trailer takes plenty of opportunities to show off the improved graphics (which look as nice as they have in the leaked screenshots, but it’s not like the game was ugly on the PS3 or PS4), but the most interesting involve changes to the gameplay — Naughty Dog says that the AI for enemies and companions will be improved, that there will be some extra gameplay modes, and that the game’s cutscenes will have audio descriptions for accessibility.When it was originally released in 2013, The Last of Us’ AI was nothing special. The... Continue reading…

A cool thing about Google’s Pixel 6 series phones is their unique camera bar design. If the finish of that strip were a different color than black — specifically blue, orange, purple, or red — it would totally look kind of like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And now that you can’t unsee the resemblance, device outfitter Dbrand would like to help make your Pixel 6 device look like one of your favorite childhood heroes.With Google’s latest phone the Pixel 6a releasing next week, Dbrand decided it's a good time to revisit the sewers and launch its Teenage Mutant Ninja Pixels decals for all three phones. They match the green heroes-in-a-half-shell plus their masks, and include four camera decal strips that reflect the colors of Leonardo,... Continue reading…

It’s rolling back a change it made last week. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google says it’s rolling back its decision to remove a section from the Play Store that listed which permissions an app uses. The company had more or less replaced that info with its Data Safety section, which is supposed to give you an idea of what data apps are collecting and how that data is used.The problem, as several commentators pointed out, is that the information in the Data Safety section came from developers, whereas the app permissions section was generated by Google. By removing it, Google made it impossible for users to do a quick fact-check by comparing the two sections or to use the info from both to get a more complete picture of what an app is up to and what it has access to.In a Twitter thread on Thursday spotted by... Continue reading…

Image: thepinksauce.com TikTok is known for making small businesses go viral overnight, product recommendations that cause a specific shade of blush to sell out everywhere, and convincing thousands of people to make salmon rice bowls for lunch every day.But buzz on the platform has apparently gotten the better of some users, causing them to forget a tried-and-true rule: maybe don’t eat unidentified goo made by a stranger and shipped in plastic flat mailers during a record-breaking heatwave?

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube says it will begin removing “instructions for unsafe abortion methods” or content that “promotes false claims about abortion safety.” The company made the announcement on Twitter, saying it falls under its medical misinformation policy. It’s also adding an information panel to related videos that will offer health information about abortion from the National Library of Medicine, similar to what it’s done for vaccines and some other topics.“Starting today and ramping up over the next few weeks, we will remove content that provides instructions for unsafe abortion methods or promotes false claims about abortion safety under our medical misinformation policies,” tweeted the official YouTube account. “Like all of our policies on... Continue reading…

The resurgence of D&D in pop culture continues with an upcoming live-action film set in the fantasy universe. A new trailer for the movie — which has the slightly unwieldy name of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — kicked off San Diego Comic-Con, showing off a film that seems to jump between serious fantasy epic and lighthearted action comedy.Here’s the setup: “A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.” In addition to the trailer, we also got a glimpse at a poster for the film, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes all-in on the “dragons” part of Dungeons & Dragons.

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Snap knows it can do better. The company reported earnings results for the second quarter of 2022 this afternoon, and the numbers show a company that’s continuing to grow its users and revenue — but at a much slower rate than it used to.“Our financial results for Q2 do not reflect the scale of our ambition,” the company wrote in a note to investors. “We are not satisfied with the results we are delivering.”The message was part of a rallying cry to investors that essentially says hang tight, we’re working on it. To turn things around, Snap is promising to “recalibrate” its hiring, goals, and investments. And, in a splashier move, the company said it had signed Snap co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, the company’s CEO and CTO, to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Lyft launched its rental car service in December 2019, more than a year after Uber shut down a similar program that provided rental cars and access to bike rides and public transportation. Lyft Rentals stood out for its low starting rate of $35 a day and lack of mileage limit that also allowed renters as young as 22 years old. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports Lyft has decided to call it quits, and the company confirmed to The Verge that it laid off about 60 employees in the rental car service as well as a smaller number of people in operations.In an emailed statement, the company told The Verge it discontinued the business to instead focus on partnerships with rental car companies Sixt and Hertz. “This decision will ensure we... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google’s latest and most advanced wireless earbuds yet, the Pixel Buds Pro, won’t be on store shelves for another week. But the company has announced that its Android software is already prepared for one of the earbuds’ most convenient new features: the Pixel Buds Pro will be able to switch between devices automatically — no settings menus necessary.Much like the AirPods can hop between other Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Mac) depending on which one you’re actively using, Google’s flagship earbuds will be able to do the same across Android hardware.“Our audio switching technology builds on top of Fast Pair to use contextual information on what you’re listening to in order to switch the audio based on your actions,” Google’s Angela... Continue reading…

A woman cools herself by a water sprinkler installed in the city during the heatwave in Kraków, Poland, on July 21st, 2022. | Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images As extreme heat stifles communities around the world this week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that it has “no immediate plans” to give heatwaves names. The July 19th announcement seems to pump the brakes on growing calls to come up with a strategy for ranking and naming heatwaves around the world.In the US, heat kills more people than any other weather-related disaster. Globally, it kills 5 million people a year. But heat spells haven’t always spurred the same careful preparations people might take to, say, shelter from a major storm. The goal of naming heatwaves would be to make it easier to communicate the risks they pose to the public so that people can take measures to stay safe.In the US, heat kills more... Continue reading…

An accessibility option lets you turn the app’s sounds off. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Recently, Twitter users noticed that the app has started making a new sound — when you pull down to refresh your timeline, notifications, DMs, or pretty much anything else in the official app, there’s a robotic chirp sound that sounds like a futuristic bird or frog. The sound has been polarizing — some people have been mesmerized by it, while others hate it.Thankfully, there are a few ways to make sure you don’t hear it, which I’ll cover in this article.Set your phone to silentThe first is astoundingly simple: according to my tests, turning your phone to silent mode makes it so that the sound doesn’t play. On iPhones, that means flipping the ringer switch on the left side of the phone above the volume buttons so the switch is closer... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge It appears that a crypto Twitter user named Cobie influenced the FBI into bringing an insider trading case. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is bringing an indictment against a former Coinbase employee, who allegedly tipped his brother and his buddy about which assets were about to list on Coinbase — leading to $1.5 million in “realized and unrealized gains,” according to the indictment.This is the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency markets, says U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, in a statement.In response, he booked a one-way ticket to New DelhiIshan Wahi, the Coinbase employee who was charged, was involved in listing new crypto assets on Coinbase’s exchange. When Coinbase announces that a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Welcome to the new era of Instagram, as it shifts even further into an all-Reels, all-the-time machine to keep users’ short attention spans inside its app instead of TikTok. Other than incentivizing users to create Reels with easier templates to let you react to content and a new Dual feature that records using the front and back camera simultaneously, it has one more shortcut to a wealth of new Reels content: pretty much any video you post on Instagram.Is your account public, and did you post a video under 90 seconds? Into the Reels suggestion algorithm it goes, playing to whoever Instagram thinks will find it interesting, and it will be fully available for them to Remix and add their own spin to using the built-in content tools. ... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Fake elector Jake Hoffman has been accused of running a Turning Point Action troll farm Continue reading…

20th Century Studios It was once hard to imagine that 20th Century Studios’ more mature Marvel projects like the Deadpool movies and Logan would ever end up streaming on (a relatively kid-friendly platform like) Disney Plus. But that’s precisely what is about to happen — just in time for San Diego Comic-Con.Marvel announced today that 20th Century Studios’ Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and Logan are all following in the footsteps of Netflix’s Marvel shows and making the move to Disney Plus on July 22nd.

Image: Google Google’s more affordable and palm-friendly spin on the Pixel 6, the $449 Pixel 6A, is now available to preorder, as are the new Pixel Buds Pro. Focusing on the phone first, your preorder will ensure that you’re among the first to get the Pixel 6A on or close to launch day, which is Thursday, July 28th. Google announced the release date all the way back at its I/O conference in May, and we’ve been waiting very patiently.The same goes for the $199 Pixel Buds Pro (scroll down to see a $15 off deal), Google’s first wireless earbuds to include active noise cancellation and ship in multiple bright color options. Those are releasing the same day, and you can place a preorder right now.We have a review of the Pixel 6A right here from Allison... Continue reading…

You can change the way the Alexa voice assistant sounds on your smart speaker or smart display just by asking Alexa. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Alexa’s pleasant, feminine voice has filled the homes of millions over the past few years, but Amazon finally offered a viable choice last year when it released a masculine counterpart. Amazon was late to this. Apple and Google have offered different voices, both feminine and masculine, in their virtual assistants for years. But late or not, it’s now easy to switch up the dulcet tones of your virtual assistant.In addition to the two main Alexa voices, Amazon also has celebrity voices. Right now, you can choose between Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Melissa McCarthy. Last year, during the holiday season, Amazon added Santa Claus as a more limited “celebrity voice.” (He only answers certain holiday-related queries.)The... Continue reading…

Image: Ubisoft Ubisoft has delayed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora from a 2022 release window to sometime in 2023 or 2024, the company announced as part of its Q1 earnings on Thursday (pdf). The delay keeps up with something of a tradition for Avatar properties to get pushed.“We want to make [Avatar] a video game industry brand,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said on Thursday’s earnings call. “It is important for us that we come with something that is perfect.”The company first announced it was working on a new Avatar game in 2017, and it debuted the first trailer in 2021. It seems likely that Ubisoft’s plan was to release Frontiers of Pandora this year to coincide with the December debut of Avatar: The Way of Water, but now, we’ll be waiting until 2023... Continue reading…

The service’s Next Generation Delivery Vehicle, which is being built by Oshkosh. | Image: USPS The United States Postal Service, or USPS, has another new proposal that raises the percentage of electric vehicles it plans on purchasing to modernize its fleet (via Electrek). In a press release on Wednesday, the service said that “at least 50 percent” of its initial order for 50,000 next-generation mail trucks will be battery electric vehicles. That’s quite a change from what USPS leadership announced in February when they said that only 10 percent of the service’s new fleet would be electric.That number did get bumped up in March when the service announced it was planning an initial order including 10,019 electric trucks, just a few weeks after telling President Biden that it would continue with its plans to obtain mostly... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is rolling out a new safety tool that will allow streamers to share information on users they’ve banned from their chat. Shared Ban Info, as the new function will be known, will allow streamers to cooperate in keeping their communities safe from malicious actors.Twitch details the process on how Shared Ban Info will work here. Rolling out today, the Shared Ban Info program first requires streamers to create a sharing request. You can request to share ban info with other partners, affiliates, or mutual followers. Once that request has been accepted, when one party bans a user from their channel and that user attempts to chat in a channel that has a Shared Ban Info connection established, that user’s messages will be flagged,... Continue reading…

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19, the White House announced today. Biden is experiencing mild symptoms and has started taking Paxlovid, an antiviral treatment.The news comes amid a wave of COVID-19 infections sweeping the country, driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 variant. Biden spent part of yesterday traveling and gave a speech about the administration’s clean energy goals in Massachusetts.In the week before the positive test, NPR reports that the president had also “lingered for extended conversations, posed for pictures and gave hugs at the Congressional Picnic on the White House South Lawn.” During a four-day trip to the Middle East, he shook hands with leaders in the region and attended meetings and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Activision Blizzard employees will participate in yet another walkout today, this time over concerns about employee safety in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Organized by A Better ABK, Activision Blizzard’s internal employee rights advocacy group, the walkout will take place at four of the publisher’s North American offices: California, Texas, Minnesota, and New York, where a new QA worker’s union was just organized.“We are calling for protection of several communities of marginalized workers,” tweeted A Better ABK on July 6th as they announced the walkout. “Employees are actively facing state legislation that is putting women, LGBTQ+ employees, and their families at risk, with other vulnerable groups... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok is making it easier for users to watch videos with auto-generated captions, the company announced today, updating a feature it introduced in 2021 that had a number of shortcomings.The previous caption feature required creators to enable auto-generated captions on their video before posting, meaning the availability of captions depended on whether the video creator remembered to click a button. If a creator forgot to enable captions, there was no way to add them after publishing the post without deleting and starting over, and deaf and hard-of-hearing users regularly had to ask others to turn on closed captions. This new update adds the ability for viewers to turn on closed captions in addition to creators.

Martial arts game Sifu is on sale for $31.99 (20 percent off) as part of the PlayStation Summer Sale. If you’ve recently managed to secure a PlayStation 5, you can enjoy your new console while saving on a number of titles thanks to Sony’s Summer Sale promotion in the PlayStation Store, which lasts until August 3rd. Some highlights from the sale include PS5 and PS4 deals on the new teen-horror game The Quarry and martial arts title Sifu, both of which we don’t often see discounts on. PS4 owners can pick up the standard edition of The Quarry for $40.19 ($19.80 off), while the PS5 version is on sale for $46.89 ($23.10 off). In addition, both the PS4 and PS5 versions of Sifu, a challenging kung fu game wherein you must eliminate the martial arts masters who killed your father, are on sale for $31.99 instead of $39.99. Read our Sifu review.O... Continue reading…

Characters from the popular Neopets game | Image: Neopets A hacker claims to have stolen information from Neopets, the long-running virtual pet website, affecting 69 million users of the service.The hack was confirmed by posts from the official Neopets Twitter and Instagram accounts on July 20th, with a tweet informing the public that the company “recently became aware that customer data may have been stolen” and had hired a forensic firm to investigate. The social media posts did not give further information about the scope of the hack but suggested that all site users change their passwords as a precaution.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. | Image: Amazon Rivian’s R1T electric trucks are becoming increasingly visible across the US, and now Amazon reveals the electric delivery vans it’s buying from Rivian are ready for a nationwide rollout.Amazon says these new trucks have 360-degree visibility with exterior cameras that link to a large internal display as well as safety features like sensor detection, highway- and traffic-assist technology, adaptive cruise control, collision warnings, and automatic emergency braking. For the drivers inside them, the vans have cooled seats, doors that automatically lock and unlock, and a powered bulkhead door that opens itself when the driver reaches their destination. Image: Amazon Inside view of Rivian’s Amazon delivery van. E... Continue reading…

Today, two astronauts will be conducting a fairly standard spacewalk on the outside of the International Space Station, but the pair of spacewalkers is a bit unusual. The duo consists of cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of Russia’s Roscosmos and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency, spacefarers from two countries that do not typically conduct spacewalks together.The timing of the spacewalk comes amid strained relations between Russia and the European Union over the former’s decision to invade Ukraine. The invasion hasn’t had a significant impact on operations on the ISS, as NASA, the European Space Agency, and Roscosmos have continued to work together — in space and on Earth — to keep the space station running.... Continue reading…

Live A Live is one of the most influential games you’ve probably never played. The role-playing game originally debuted back in 1994, but it never left Japan — but nearly three decades later, it’s finally getting a global release. The game is particularly notable as the directorial debut of Takashi Tokita, who went on to direct titles like Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve. That makes Live A Live a fascinating piece of video game history — but it turns out it’s also a fascinating game.Live A Live looks a lot like a traditional Japanese RPG, albeit one with some modern upgrades, including an art style that’s very similar to newer releases from Square Enix like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy. It has turn-based combat, an epic... Continue reading…

The next generation of the upgradable ultrabook is finally here Continue reading…

Ride away on your low-emission scooter branded by your favorite big oil corp. | Image: Shell Shell, the company known for selling gasoline to fill your car, is trying to diversify with other forms of transit, like making electric scooters. That’s right, instead of driving to the red and yellow mollusk in one of the corners of your town for a fossil fuel fill-up, you can just ride with it on a battery-powered Shell Ride scooter.Shell itself isn’t the one building and selling them. Rather, the gas company licensed out its name to US-based manufacturer Lotus International last year, which then gave birth to Shell Ride-branded e-scooters and e-bikes. Lotus handles the marketing, too — including making an unboxing video of its Shell Ride SR-5S Electric Scooter that’s capable of up to 20 miles of range, up to 15mph speeds, and sells... Continue reading…

One Medical’s (pre-pandemic) picture of a visit with your subscription-provided doctor. | Image: One Medical Amazon’s two biggest acquisitions in its history have been Whole Foods ($13.7 billion) and the recently closed purchase of MGM ($8.45 billion), but now, if the deal closes, the third entry on that list will be a $3.9 billion buyout of One Medical. One Verge staffer who has been considering signing up for the company’s $199 primary care provider subscription (on top of insurance, just like any other doctor) called the company “healthcare for millennials.”Backed by Alphabet’s GV unit (formerly Google Ventures), One Medical’s pitch includes an app, 24/7 access to on-demand telehealth services over video, and guaranteed same- or next-day appointments available through more than 125 offices. Slick YouTube videos promise “reimagined” doctors’... Continue reading…