The Verge

Image: Sega Sega has announced that it’s releasing a second edition of its Genesis Mini console in the US on October 27th. The company says this version is more powerful than the hardware released in 2019. It’ll ship with a batch of over 50 games, and this time, some of those will be Sega CD titles. (Yes, Sonic CD and Shining Force CD are among them.) The Genesis Mini 2 will be available exclusively through Amazon, where you can already place a preorder for $103.80. Amazon is also charging $21.99 for shipping; the high costs are because US buyers will be importing this from Sega of Japan.The hardware design is now based on the Sega Genesis Model 2, and you’re getting the six-button gamepad instead of the three-button gamepad that came with the... Continue reading…

Ever wanted to have an action figure of yourself? It’s been possible for the lucky few: movie stars; the occasional contest winner; and those who might be satisfied with a knockoff novelty gift rather than the real deal. But today, Hasbro is announcing that practically anyone will be able to stick their face onto a fully posable, licensed, and highly detailed Power Ranger, Ghostbuster, G.I. Joe, Star Wars, or Marvel figure this fall — thanks to a partnership with Formlabs to scan and 3D print your head before applying it to an iconic action figure body. GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge The faces look fantastic. (Well, anyone in the United States, that is — it’s limited to the US, with no current plans to... Continue reading…

Photo by Roberto Baldwin for The Verge As cars get more expensive to make and profit margins dwindle, automakers are coming up with new and loathsome ways to squeeze more money out of their customers. Subscription-based access to vehicle features, like heated seats or remote-start key fobs, are the latest attempt to charge people for things their car already came with. The question is whether customers are going to lay down and take it.Earlier this week, some media outlets noticed that BMW was selling $18-a-month subscriptions to heated seats in a number of countries, including South Korea. The German automaker had previously tried and failed to get customers to pay $80 a month for access to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto — features that are otherwise free in other... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has released Android 13’s fourth and final public beta today, giving brave users the chance to try out the upcoming update ahead of its official release. But, more importantly, the beta gives developers an early look at the changes that are on the way so they can get their apps ready.Google’s announcement post says the official release of Android 13 is “just a few weeks away.” For context, Android 12 released last October, while Android 11 released in September 2020.There’s not much in the way of big changes with this latest update (Google already reached platform stability with the previous beta), but an additional round of fine-tuning should make for a more stable experience. Features that have already appeared in previous... Continue reading…

Bandai Namco, the game publisher behind popular titles like Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Tekken, confirmed that it was the victim of a hack. According to a report from Eurogamer, the publisher says it experienced “unauthorised access” to its “internal systems” when the breach took place on July 3rd.Reports that Bandai Namco suffered an attack surfaced earlier this week. On Monday, vx-underground, a group that tracks malware source code across the web, posted a screenshot on Twitter showing that the group behind the ALPHV ransomware, also known as BlackCat, added Bandai Namco to its list of victims with the words “data soon.”“There is a possibility” customer information was compromisedWhile Bandai Namco’s statement confirms that a hack... Continue reading…

Great audio and sleek looks. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge While there are all kinds of deals going on during these consecutive days of Amazon Prime Day, a particular standout one to us is Sony’s WF-1000XM4 wireless earbuds for $198 at Amazon and Best Buy. That’s $81.99 off the regular $279.99 price for these excellent noise-canceling buds. If you’re a frequent reader of The Verge and Verge Deals, you may be familiar with these earbuds. We often track and flag when they go on notable sales, and that’s because they’re some of the best ones you can buy today — but this discount beats their usual best price by an additional $50.The WF-1000XM4 come in black or silver, and you have your choice of the two colors at this Prime Day price. In addition to the fantastic sound quality, they feature the... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge The Backbone One controller for iPhone is an awesome device. While not the first accessory to turn your phone into a little game console, of sorts, it’s the best one currently available, if you ask me. And now, as part of an Amazon Lightning Deal during Prime Day 2022, you can get one for $69.99 instead of its usual $99.99 price. The controller and its free companion software work with phones going back to the iPhone 6S, and the adapter included in the box lets even the biggest iPhones fit snugly.A few other things that I like about the Backbone One include its slick design, the 3.5mm audio passthrough port (sometimes, wired listening is the preferred option), as well as a robust app that makes using the Backbone feel like a console. It... 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 Wednesdays, editor-at-large David Pierce leads a selection of The Verge’s expert staffers in an exploration of how gadgets and software affect our lives — and which ones you should bring into your home.Last week, we put a call out to people on Twitter about our new Vergecast Hotline, a phone line we set up for anyone to leave a message about a tech-related question they may have — whether it’s how to find your next router, when Spotify HiFi is actually coming, how to track when all of your favorite shows have new episodes, or whatever — so we can answer them on The Vergecast.... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Well, that’s a bummer. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration won’t be moving forward with a proposal to let electric vehicle owners pick their own low-speed sounds, citing a lack of “supportable data.” The move was first reported by Reuters.Back in 2019, NHTSA introduced a proposed rule-making that would have allowed drivers to “select the sound they prefer from the set of sounds installed in the vehicle.” The idea was an amendment to a previous rule requiring EVs to make fake sounds at low speeds to prevent injuring pedestrians, especially people who are blind or visually impaired. But after soliciting feedback from the industry and consumer groups, the agency says it is scrapping the proposed rule.No more airhorns or... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo As fans (me, I mean me) are dancing in their living rooms to “Fly Me to the Moon (Climax)” while strapping cardboard guns to their ankles in preparation for their Bayonetta cosplay, PlatinumGames had one more announcement to make regarding the release of Bayonetta 3. For the first time ever, Bayonetta can keep her clothes on.

Image: Motorola Motorola teased its upcoming Razr in a new trailer that shows off the device’s chin-less redesign (via GSMArena). The trailer, which Motorola posted to its Weibo account, gives us brief glimpses of the third-generation device’s smoothed edges, dual camera, new hinge, and what looks like a larger exterior display that matches up with a leaked version of the device we saw in May.You can’t really make out much from the trailer, though, aside from the Motorola logo stamped on one of its edges and on the back of the device. Chen Jin, the general manager of the Lenovo Business Group in China, offered a separate look at the device at an in-person event (and with much better lighting). He posted the photos to Weibo and demonstrated what the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amanda Lopez for The Verge Meta and Ray-Bans’s Stories glasses are adding WhatsApp support, letting users make hands-free calls, send text messages, and hear messages read aloud. The addition follows the rollout of similar Facebook Messenger features last year, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says users will soon be able to directly reply to WhatsApp and Messenger messages with voice commands as well.The new features, partially leaked in April, integrate Stories more closely into the Meta ecosystem. They continue Meta’s moves toward becoming a virtual and augmented reality company as well as a social networking one. They’re also a potential stopgap following Meta’s delay of its full-fledged consumer AR glasses rollout, building out audio-focused AR with its existing... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo The official N64 controller for the Nintendo Switch has just been restocked at the Nintendo eShop. This $49.99 controller allows you to experience N64 games the way they were meant to be played — with a big gray controller that has an awkwardly placed central analog stick. This offer is exclusive to the Nintendo store and is only available to purchase if you’re a current Nintendo Switch Online subscriber (Note: you can only access the N64 games with the purchase of the Switch Online Expansion Pack).Unlike some restocks for the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, the method for purchasing this controller is very straightforward. Just sign in to your Nintendo account ahead of time, click “add to cart” and cross your fingers. Stocks of this... Continue reading…

Land of the Giants, the Vox Media Podcast Network’s award-winning narrative franchise, today launched its latest season, The Facebook / Meta Disruption. Marking a collaboration between Recode by Vox and The Verge, the seven-episode season will tell the story of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, at a pivotal moment — both for the tech giant and for the billions of people who use its products. Hosted by The Verge’s deputy editor Alex Heath and Recode senior correspondent Shirin Ghaffary, the season will feature interviews with current and former employees and executives, from Meta’s top policy executive Nick Clegg and head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart to preeminent critics and tech leaders outside the company, like whistleblower Frances... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is joining the GIF party with its new partnership with Giphy, a massive online hub where internet users upload and share GIFs. The new partnership, which will begin rolling out today, July 13th, requires that moderators of existing subreddits opt in to enable the feature. New subreddits will automatically opt in for GIFs in the comments, leaving mods the choice to opt out.Reddit users would typically post a link to a GIF on a third-party host rather than simply viewing it, but the new partnership will take away the extra step of clicking on a linked GIF to see the image or animation. Reddit had tested adding GIFs to Reddit comments previously, but they were only available to those who paid for a Powerups subscription. After... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Let’s go, witches! Nintendo, in its inexplicable but welcome habit of revealing big news with no warning at all, has announced that Bayonetta 3 finally has a launch date. On October 28th, our beautiful badass bitch with hella bundles will be back — and just in time for Halloween.This time, instead of beating on the angels of hell or the demons of heaven, Bayonetta will face a new threat that seems to come from the mortal world. She’s rejoined by her smoky-voiced ally Rodin, the smarmy but adorable Luka, and a new ally named Viola that kinda looks like a female Dante from Devil May Cry, big-ass sword and all. It seems like, in Bayonetta 3, you’ll play as more than just our favorite signature witch, as portions of the trailer show you... Continue reading…

Check me out on the leaderboard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Or: how I learned a lesson about downloading crypto software half-cocked Continue reading…

Photo By Vaughn Ridley/Sportsfile via Getty Images Few tech CEOs can claim to have steered the course of online conversation more than Ev Williams. In 1999 he co-founded Blogger, which helped to take blogging mainstream with a well designed, free tool that sold to Google four years later. In 2006 Williams and his co-founder followed with Twitter, which remains one of the most influential social networks in the world.Five years later, after a stint as Twitter CEO and much turmoil, Williams announced his next act: Medium, a publishing platform that sought to split the difference between blogs and tweets: medium-length posts, published occasionally rather than daily, that would seek to answer one question: “Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless,” Williams wrote in... Continue reading…

The Beats Fit Pro are one of the many great deals happening now. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Tracking the best noteworthy deals as they come up Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Alt text bots fill in gaps in accessibility Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge We are surrounded by a world of motion and I would like to get off of it Continue reading…

Image: Emojipedia It’s World Emoji Day on Sunday, so that means we’re getting a preview of the emoji that will eventually come to iOS and Android. While designs will vary per platform, Emojipedia has a draft list and sample images for Emoji 15.0. The Unicode Consortium only has 31 draft emoji this year that will likely be rolled out in 2022 and 2023. While the draft emoji can change between now and finalization in September, most (if not all) will make it through. Contenders include a shaking face and much-needed high five and wireless emojis.The shaking face emoji will be primarily used for shock reactions, or it could become the official earthquake emoji thanks to its vibration-like attributes. While people often use the Folded Hands emoji as a high... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok is starting to offer users a new level of control over their For You page. The company announced today that you’ll be able to specify specific words or hashtags you don’t want to see in your feeds, and the app will automatically filter them out. TikTok’s examples are fairly simple — like when you’ve finished a reno and don’t want to see DIY videos anymore or decide you don’t want to see cooking tutorials using a certain type of food or meat. But these kinds of filters could be used to much more carefully control your feed.The platform is also rolling out two new automated moderation and filtering tools. One, called Content Levels, ranks content based on “thematic maturity” and is designed to keep mature content of all types from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Welcome to our repository of only the best Amazon Prime Day 2022 deals for Prime members. What will you find in here? You’ll find big discounts on tech products that we actually like, and other Verge-y stuff that we feel comfortable recommending based on specs and price. What you won’t find are bad, also-ran deals that appear at several other times of the year. You don’t have time for that, and we don’t have time for that, either. That criteria means we’re trying to keep the list trim to make it easier to peruse.If you aren’t ready to shop Prime Day 2022 deals today, fret not, as many of them should last through Wednesday, July 13. And we’ll be updating this post throughout the big sale event, with the freshest and best deals occupying... Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images More than 500 notable people in business, education, and the nonprofit sector are calling for governors and education leaders to update K-12 curriculums to allow “every student in every school to have the opportunity to learn computer science,” according to a new letter posted publicly at https://www.ceosforcs.com/. The list of signatories includes many prominent figures in technology, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, and Meta founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.“The undersigned commit our support by collectively creating employment opportunities for computer science students in every city in the USA, and in every sector, from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Where in the world are Su Zhu and Kyle Davies? The founders of the cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) are nowhere to be found, according to officials charged with liquidating the bankrupt company (via Reuters).According to a court document filed Friday, Zhu and Davies’ whereabouts are currently unknown, and its liquidators say they have not received “any meaningful cooperation” from the two. On Tuesday, a judge granted 3AC’s liquidators full control of 3AC’s assets, preventing them from transferring any money out of their accounts.The Singapore-based 3AC filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy earlier this month, a move designed to protect foreign companies’ assets from creditors in the US. News of the bankruptcy filing... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Twitter vs. Elon Musk is moving to the courts. The social media company filed a lawsuit against the world’s richest man on Tuesday, saying that he is refusing to “honor his obligations” under their agreement and seeking to make him complete the deal. Musk is trying to exit the $44 billion acquisition deal they announced on April 25th based on his claims Twitter has failed to satisfy his requests for information about bot activity and spam on the platform.“Twitter brings this action to enjoin Musk from further breaches, to compel Musk to fulfill his legal obligations, and to compel consummation of the merger upon satisfaction of the few outstanding conditions,” Twitter writes in the lawsuit, which was filed in the Delaware Court of... Continue reading…

More checks in more places. | Image: Match Group Match Group is bringing Tinder’s free background checks to two of the other dating apps it owns: Match (formerly Match.com) and Stir, a dating site for single parents (via CNBC). The system works similar to the way it does on Tinder: people can use it to see if whoever they’re talking to or planning to meet up with has a history of “violent and harmful behavior,” as the company’s press release puts it, though there is some nuance there that we’ll talk about in a bit.When Match Group added this feature to Tinder earlier this year, there was a bit of a multi-step process to running one of the checks. The company says the process should be a bit easier on the Match service — if you’re talking to someone about meeting up, a box will pop up... Continue reading…

Photo credit should read NOAH BERGER/AFP via Getty Images Apple has ended its consulting agreement with former chief design officer Jony Ive, according to The New York Times.Ive left Apple in 2019 to start an independent design company called LoveFrom, and in a press release, Ive had said he looked forward to working with Apple “for many years to come.” Apple signed a contract at the time with Ive valued north of $100 million, though it “restricted Mr. Ive from taking on work that Apple found competitive,” The New York Times reports.But now, three years later, it seems Ive and Apple have decided to call it quits. From The New York Times:

Image: Canoo Walmart is here to throw a life preserver to ailing EV manufacturer Canoo. It’s taking the form of a very helpful order of 4,500 all-electric delivery vehicles from the big box retailer / e-commerce giant, with the potential to buy up to 10,000. Walmart and Canoo became neighbors last year when Canoo’s headquarters moved out of California and onto Walmart’s turf in Bentonville, Arkansas — but the companies did not make any public deals at the time.“We are proud to have been selected by Walmart,” said Canoo chairman and CEO Tony Aquila. Aquila says that Walmart’s size gives a strategic advantage in “today’s growing ‘need it now’ mindset,” and combined with Canoo’s American-made “lifestyle delivery vehicles,” it has a “winning algorithm... Continue reading…

Image: LG Just three months before it quit the smartphone business for good, LG insisted it had actually built — and would shortly sell — a rollable phone. But did it really make one? The only proof was a brief teaser at the top of a virtual press conference that could have totally been CG, and the phone never saw the light of day, unless you believe the rumor that the company sold a handful to its own employees in Korea. GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge Rollable unrolls. But now, for the first time, we can see a real LG rollable phone unrolling its screen in the wild (via NotebookCheck). It’s a dead ringer for the image that Korea’s Agency for Technology and Standards regulatory body revealed last March, and we see... Continue reading…

Image: Magic Leap The Magic Leap 2 headset is launching on September 30th for a starting price of $3,299. The mixed reality device is a smaller and lighter successor to the 2018 Magic Leap, and among other improvements, it features a wider field of view — but also, as expected, a higher price.Magic Leap has already distributed the Magic Leap 2 to a limited set of partners, including neurotech company SyncThink and other medical companies. In September, it will be available for general purchase in several markets, including the US (where it’s selling through retail partner Insight), Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Launches in Japan and Singapore are planned for the end of 2022.The headset comes in three... Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Tweets from former President Donald Trump inspired the violence at the US Capitol on January 6th, a former Twitter employee who worked on platform and content moderation policies told congressional investigators in testimony released on Tuesday.The employee, whose identity remains anonymous, specifically pointed to a December 19th tweet from Trump, which asked his supporters to join him in “protest” of the 2020 election results. “Be there. Will be wild,” the tweet said. According to the anonymous employee, that message was seen by many within Twitter as directly responsible for the violence that followed, which left five dead and has resulted in more than 700 arrests.“Be there. Will be wild”That impression was confirmed by testimony... Continue reading…

Photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images The New York Times will soon let you link your Wordle stats to a NYT account, a change that should fix one of the most annoying aspects about the online puzzle game.Right now, your Wordle stats don’t sync across browsers or devices, meaning that if you want to keep your streak going, you have to play the game on the same browser and the same device. With this upcoming change, though, your stats and streak will sync “across *all* the devices you play Wordle on,” the NYT said in a tweet from its Games account.You’ll be able to link your Wordle stats to a free or existing NYT account, and the option will be available “soon.” (The option wasn’t live for me yet when I checked Tuesday’s puzzle in Chrome on my laptop and in Safari on my... Continue reading…

The phone as a remote experience has just gotten much worse. Google has seemingly outdone itself when it comes to discontinuing products and experiences in a short amount of time — as 9to5Google reports, after rolling out a new interface for some older Chromecasts last winter, the company has basically made it useless. In a reply to a customer on Twitter, the company says you’re no longer able to log in to your YouTube account on older versions of the streaming puck, leaving you better off just casting from your phone (especially if you pay to see an ad-free YouTube).While choosing videos on your phone and sending them to your TV through the Chromecast was originally how the device was supposed to work, Google recently added to that experience. Last year, users got the ability to use their phones... Continue reading…

MARCOS CRUZ/NETFLIX Netflix’s Resident Evil series puts the Albert Wesker and his family in the spotlight Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A screen reader is an accessibility tool designed for people with vision impairments. It can read any text, buttons, or image descriptors aloud on a wide variety of devices, including the phones or tablets that run Android.On most Android devices, the screen reader tool is called TalkBack, and there are several ways you can enable it. On Samsung devices with software versions earlier than One UI 3.1, TalkBack is occasionally labeled as “Voice Assistant.” Despite having different names, Samsung says TalkBack and Voice Assistant offer the same functionalities.For this article, I used a Samsung Galaxy Note 9, so your experience might be slightly different depending on which type of Android device you’re using.Enable the screen reader... Continue reading…

Nintendo I am convinced that somewhere deep in the bowels of Nintendo HQ, there is a cabal of game developers in charge of strategically deploying Kirby when things get dire. I mean, how else can you explain the fact that we get not one but two cute as fuck Kirby games in the same calendar year?You can’t.Kirby is the shining light of the world, and he comes when we need him the most. He showed up in 2002 with Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland. And in 2017-2018, Nintendo must have known we were going through it because it released four games in quick succession: Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, Kirby’s Blowout Bash, Kirby Battle Royale, and Kirby Star Allies. Yes, none of these games were particularly memorable, but I choose to believe that Nintendo looked... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Once again, search and social media platforms are facing moderation challenges tied to data allegedly leaked from the president’s son’s devices.Over the weekend, users of 4Chan’s /pol/ messageboard were whipped into a frenzy of excitement by one poster claiming to have hacked into Hunter Biden’s phone. Exact details are hard to confirm, but the original poster suggests they have used a tool called iPhone Backup Extractor to recover backup copies of the contents of an iPhone and iPad belonging to Hunter Biden — possibly by compromising his iCloud account and downloading the data from the cloud.at least some of the images shared on 4Chan haven’t previously appeared anywhere else onlineThe 4Chan poster shared further instructions about... Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Elon Musk’s short-lived push to buy Twitter has made him a lot of enemies — but it’s delivering exactly what a certain set of Republican influencers want. Right-wing figures like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump Jr. have already hailed Musk’s decision to back out of the deal. For them, the goal is no longer to control Twitter but to embarrass it.“Maybe Elon never intended to buy Twitter after all,” Charlie Kirk, podcaster and CEO of Turning Point USA, said in a tweet on Friday. “Maybe he just wanted to expose it.”“Maybe he just wanted to expose it.”“Twitter has lied from [its] conception and continually about the scale, scope, depth, source and ubiquity of BOTs versus actual human users,” Bannon, former White House chief strategist... Continue reading…

You can now split your trip into segments. Whenever I plan a trip, especially a road trip that will last more than a day, I always plan more than one stop. Not only bathroom and meal breaks, but interesting attractions, public parks and nature preserves, friends who may live along the route — I like to include them all.Until recently, if I were using an iPhone, I’d skip Apple Maps in favor of Google Maps for iOS, which has had the ability to create multi-stop maps since 2016. Finally, however, in iOS 16, Apple Maps lets you plan a route with multiple stops. It’s a cinch to use. Just tap on “Add Stop,” add another destination, and then move it to wherever you want it.

Doom Eternal and its expansions are included in the deal. | Image: Bethesda The GPU shortage is over, and if you’re considering picking up one of Nvidia’s RTX 30-series graphics cards, the company is running a deal until August 1st that tosses in some Bethesda games for free.Beginning Tuesday, if you buy “a select GeForce RTX 3080, 3080 Ti, 3090, 3090 Ti desktop, laptop, or GPU” from participating retailers, you’ll get Ghostwire: Tokyo, Doom Eternal, and the Doom Eternal: Year One Pass, which includes the game’s two Ancient Gods expansions, according to Nvidia.The company seems to be a big fan of Doom Eternal. It offered a bundle last summer that included an RTX 3080 Ti, Doom Eternal, a $100 gift card to the Bethesda store, and some Doom Eternal gear — but this year’s deal applies to a larger number of cards... Continue reading…

NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI All the cosmic photos! Continue reading…

Image: Lofi Girl YouTube interrupted the beloved Lofi Girl radio channel this week over copyright notices that YouTube later called “abusive” and false. The channel’s streams, which had been running for over two years, relaunched today after being removed on July 10th. The takedown stemmed from a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) demand apparently from record label FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia. YouTube reversed the strikes soon after, but Lofi Girl used the incident to call for more rigorous controls on the notoriously exploitable system.The operator of Lofi Girl (formerly ChilledCow) tweeted a copy of the DMCA takedown notice for its two lo-fi hip-hop “beats to relax/study to” video streams on Sunday, calling the reports “false copyright strikes.”... Continue reading…

YouTube TV is the biggest thing in internet cable. | Image: YouTube When YouTube decided to build a cable TV-like product back in 2014, a big part of the goal was just to create a better relationship with Hollywood. After seven years of fighting with Viacom about widespread copyright infringement, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki wanted a way to work with networks and studios, not against them. She hired Christian Oestlien, who is now a VP of product management at YouTube, and gave him a broad mandate: “figure out what YouTube might be able to do with the larger media companies, with a focus around television.”Seven years later, YouTube TV, the company’s live cable streaming bundle, is a hit. The company announced today that 5 million people are currently either paying for or testing out YouTube TV, which... Continue reading…

An aerial view of the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 9th, 2021. The long sheds at North America’s largest Bitcoin mine look endless in the Texas sun, packed with the type of machines that have helped the US to become the new global hub for the digital currency. | Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP /AFP via Getty Images Bitcoin miners in the Lone Star State are powering down this week as a punishing heatwave stresses the power grid. Texas’ grid operator asked residents and businesses to conserve energy on Monday with “extreme hot weather driving record power demand across Texas.”Bitcoin mining companies in the state responded by turning off their machines that otherwise would have used over 1,000 megawatts of electricity, according to the Texas Blockchain Council. That freed up about 1 percent of the grid’s total capacity.“They are shutting down for several reasons but primarily because it is the right thing to do to be a good ‘grid citizen,’” Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, said to The Verge in an email. There are also... Continue reading…

With today’s announcement, Nothing’s Phone 1 is fully illuminated. Unusual back panel, usual everything else Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s a big ol’ Spotify day here at Hot Pod. The company is making moves, acquiring Wordle-inspired music trivia game Heardle, expanding its video podcast reach to new countries, and taking another hit podcast exclusive.Plus, a roundup of the best Prime Day audio deals. Let’s get into it.Spotify acquires music trivia game HeardleSpotify announced Tuesday that it has purchased Heardle, one of the many themed trivia games that cropped up in the wake of Wordle’s blockbuster success. Heardle is Spotify’s first game acquisition, and the company hopes it will play a dual role: in addition to keeping music nerds engaged, it can act as a music discovery tool. You can read all about it here.Spotify expands video podcasts to six more countriesA... Continue reading…