The Verge

When we talk about health and tech, usually the conversation is around newer devices like wearables. But newer isn’t always better, especially for one group of researchers using an old Pixel 4 to screen for neurological diseases using just the selfie cam from the phone.The DigiHealth Lab at UC San Diego, directed by Professor Edward Wang, looks at ubiquitous technology like smartphones to figure out how they can be used to monitor our health. The idea is that, by building digital health tools that work on more common devices, they can increase access to more people — particularly people who might not be able to afford the latest smartwatch or fitness tech.We spoke with Colin Barry from the lab to tell us more about how the modified... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images An open letter to SpaceX decrying CEO Elon Musk’s recent behavior has sparked open discussion among the company’s employees in an internal chat system. Employees are being encouraged to sign onto the letter’s suggestions, either publicly or anonymously, with a signed version of the letter to be delivered to the desk of SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell.The letter, reviewed by The Verge, describes how Musk’s actions and the recent allegations of sexual harassment against him are negatively affecting SpaceX’s reputation. The document claims that employees “across the spectra of gender, ethnicity, seniority, and technical roles have collaborated on” writing the letter. It’s not known which SpaceX employees wrote the letter; the employees... Continue reading…

A photo from Players. | Image: CBS Studios The entire time I watched Players, a new Paramount Plus show about competitive League of Legends, I kept feeling like something was just a little off.Players is a mockumentary about Fugitive Gaming, a fictional team that’s a member of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), the North American wing of professional League of Legends esports. Much of the show revolves around the relationship between Creamcheese (Misha Brooks), a brash veteran who has been a star of the team since its founding, and Organizm (Da’Jour Jones), an inscrutable rookie who promises to be one of the best-ever players. (American Vandal creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault are the minds behind Players.)You may have watched a lot of sports stories... Continue reading…

Alex Castro/The Verge FuboTV will soon let you place bets on live sports. Some users will get to make wagers using real cash, while everyone can participate in free contests.Starting June 19th, all FuboTV users will be able to predict the outcome of live games. Before select games start, users will be able to choose which team they think will win. This will earn them points — not actual cash — that’ll give them a place on a leaderboard, letting them compete against friends and other FuboTV users. FuboTV calls this game Perfect Pick’ems and says it plans on launching other competitions in the future.But users in Iowa and Arizona can place bets on winning teams for real cash. If a user thinks they chose the winning pick, they can scan a QR code that appears... Continue reading…

It’s light on weight and light on price Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Tech companies operating some of the world’s biggest online platforms — including Facebook-owner Meta, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok — have signed up to a new EU rulebook for tackling online disinformation.These firms and others will have to make greater efforts to halt the spread of fake news and propaganda on their platforms, as well as share more granular data on their work with EU member states. Announcing the new “Code of Practice on disinformation,” the European Commission said that the guidelines had been shaped particularly by “lessons learnt from the COVID19 crisis and Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.”The code has been shaped by COVID misinformation and Russian propaganda“This new anti-disinformation... Continue reading…

Camo, an app that lets you use an iOS, Android, or iPadOS device as a webcam for your computer, is introducing a new feature that could be very interesting for streamers and those who take every Zoom meeting very seriously. The app now includes the ability to create overlays and add them to your video stream, letting you include info such as your social media handles or name and pronouns anywhere your video appears.Camo’s adding overlays at a very interesting time — Apple just announced a feature called Continuity Camera, which will also let you use your iPhone as a webcam for your Mac without having to install any extra software.Reincubate, the company behind Camo, says that the feature is a part of Thursday’s 1.7 update. Using the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla has raised the prices of select Model 3, Model Y, Model X, and Model S vehicles, Electrek reports. The largest price increase affects the Model X Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive version, which saw a $6,000 increase from $114,990 to $120,990, while the Model S Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive configuration increased by $5,000 from $99,990 to $104,990. Tesla’s most affordable car, the Model 3, was spared from the most severe increases.One version of the Model 3 is seeing an increase, however. The Long Range version of the Model 3 increased in price by $2,500 from $54,490 to $57,990. However the price of the most affordable Model 3 version sold online, the Rear-Wheel Drive model, is staying the same at $46,990. That was the price it rose to... Continue reading…

When I was a kid growing up in rural Yorkshire, one of the regular attractions at local fairs was a huge steam-powered organ: a baroque monstrosity of pipes, horns, and whistles that would parp out classical tunes to the delight of onlookers. I don’t know if steam organs are still a thing, but if they’ve been retired then I have the perfect replacement: the Floppotron — a mammoth “PC hardware orchestra” that plays music using only electric motors.Like a fairground organ, the Floppotron is unwieldy, massive, musically unsubtle, and a complete joy to behold. It’s the work of Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak, who’s been building various iterations of the instrument since 2011. The first Floppotron consisted of just a pair of floppy drives p... Continue reading…

Samsung’s new Wallet will keep payment cards, car keys, and cryptocurrency accounts in one place. | Image: Samsung First, there was Samsung Wallet. Then it became Samsung Pay. Now, because time is a flat circle, Samsung is bringing the Wallet app back — basically, bringing a lot of existing Samsung services into one app. And this time, there’s crypto!The new Samsung Wallet is available today, and it will take the place of the current Pay and Pass apps, which currently handle payment cards and passwords, respectively. It also integrates with SmartThings to store certain digital home and car keys.And, of course, the new Samsung Wallet integrates with the existing Samsung Blockchain Wallet app, so you can easily check the value of your cryptocurrency portfolio. Or maybe don’t. Samsung also plans to add some features it teased at its Unpacked event... Continue reading…

Amazon has held the annual event for Prime members since 2015. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon’s annual shopping event, Amazon Prime Day, will officially kick off at 3AM ET / 12AM PT on Tuesday, July 12th, and run through Wednesday, July 13th, the company announced today. We knew it was going to be July, thanks to a prior earnings call, but now Amazon Prime subscribers know when to set their clocks for.This year’s Prime Day is a few weeks later than it occurred last year, but it’s maintaining its summer timing, as opposed to during the height of the pandemic in 2020 when Amazon delayed the event until October. And if you’re in the market for toys, tech, home goods, or pretty much anything else, it may be one of the best times to save money outside of the Black Friday / Cyber Monday holiday shopping season. It’s almost a... Continue reading…

SwitchBot’s new smart door lock takes a unique approach to unlocking your door. | Image: SwitchBot SwitchBot, the company that makes tiny robotic fingers to press your switches for you, is branching further into the smart home. The new SwitchBot Lock ($99.99) sticks to your door and turns the thumb turn automatically to lock and unlock it. This is the simplest retrofit smart lock solution I’ve ever seen. SwitchBot says it can be installed in seconds since there’s no need to remove any part of your existing door lock. But it does look a bit odd.The SwitchBot Lock will be available starting June 20th at Amazon and the SwitchBot store along with two compatible keypads — the SwitchBot KeyPad ($29.99) and the SwitchBot KeyPad Touch with a fingerprint reader ($59.99). Image: SwitchBot There are two versions of the... Continue reading…

Sonos speakers pile up inside a customer’s apartment. A couple of days ago, The Verge reported on a strange glitch that caused Sonos to ship customers more items than what they ordered — and charge extra on top of that. While most customers received anywhere from two to six extra speakers, we were recently contacted by a customer who has had a much more extreme experience.As a quick recap, all of this emerged after two users contacted The Verge about this issue earlier this week and pointed us to a Reddit thread with users who had the same (or similar) experiences of ordering one or two speakers and receiving several in return. In an email sent to customers (which you can read in full in our previous report linked above), Sonos attributed the problem to a system update resulting in “some... Continue reading…

Image: The Boring Company Elon Musk’s Boring Company has received unanimous approval to expand its system of tunnels beneath downtown Las Vegas. The expansion will add stops at landmarks like the Stratosphere and Fremont Street, letting customers hop aboard a Tesla and travel from one part of the city to the next.The network of tunnels, called the Vegas Loop, is supposed to span 29 miles and have 51 stops when finished. But for now, only 1.7-mile tunnels are operational beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), turning what would be a 25-minute walk across the convention center into a two-minute ride. The system uses human-controlled Model X and Y vehicles to transport passengers, despite Musk’s previous statements about using sleds to carry cars through... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is introducing new seasonal recaps of your top artists, songs, albums, and playlists to YouTube Music, starting first with the Spring Recap. YouTube rolled out a Spotify Wrapped-style annual recap at the end of last year, but now YouTube owner Google is taking the concept further with seasonal rundowns.“Similar to the 2021 Recap, you’ll find your personalized content in the Spring Recap landing page on the YouTube Music app along with your personalized Spring Recap playlist,” YouTube product manager Ayshaw Khan wrote in a blog post. “Want to tell your friends about your favorite songs of the Spring? Easily share your Spring Recap playlist and stats by simply tapping the arrow at the bottom of your stats card.” ... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images With the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and almost every other cryptocurrency tumbling dramatically, major crypto companies like Coinbase and Crypto.com have laid off hundreds of workers in the past few days alone. But one company is on a hiring spree — just not for employees who will call out racism, transphobia, or label other kinds of workplace behavior toxic.The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, ranked in the top five globally by trade volume, announced in a blog post Wednesday that it was hiring more than 500 new staff, as long as they fit with the company’s vision of a “crypto-first culture.” Another document linked in the post outlines the fundamentals of that culture divided into sub-sections that summarize a particular vision of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon is tossing a nice upgrade to subscribers of its lower-cost 5G Start unlimited plan: beginning June 16th, the plan will include 5GB of premium mobile hotspot data at no extra cost. Right now, the plan doesn’t offer hotspot data at all, and it’s the only Verizon unlimited plan to not have it. Verizon spokesperson Ashley Colette tells The Verge it will be added automatically, meaning 5G Start subscribers shouldn’t have to make any changes on their end to use the data.You can check out all of Verizon’s unlimited plans on the company’s website. 5G Start is the most affordable at $35 per line for four lines, but you have to also sign up for paper-free billing and auto pay to get that rate. (If you have just one line, the plan costs... Continue reading…

The Callisto Protocol. | Image: Striking Distance Studios Glen Schofield talks about his next terror-filled sci-fi game Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify is reducing its new hiring by 25 percent as recession fears mount, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. It is unclear which parts of the business will be most affected.Spotify is far from the only tech company to reevaluate its staffing as the stock market tumbles. Twitter and Meta each announced some degree of hiring freeze last month, and Netflix made headlines in April for its layoffs, particularly at in-house fan site Tudum.During Spotify’s investor presentation last week, CEO Daniel Ek emphasized the company’s growth not only in subscriptions but in verticals beyond music like podcasting and, soon, audiobooks. But chief financial officer Paul Vogel did hint at the event that staffing could be affected by... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft has patched a Windows vulnerability that hackers are actively exploiting. If you own a system that uses Windows 7 and up, you’ll want to update your computer as soon as possible (via Bleeping Computer).The security flaw, called Follina (CVE-2022-30190) by researchers, lets bad actors hijack users’ computers through programs like Microsoft Word. Security researchers have been aware of the threat since late May, but Microsoft reportedly dismissed their initial findings.In an attack documented by security company Proofpoint, hackers associated with the Chinese government sent malicious Word documents to Tibetan recipients. When opened, these documents use the Follina exploit to take control of the Microsoft Support Diagnostic... Continue reading…

Photo by Elizabeth Frantz-Pool/Getty Images As the Supreme Court’s expected decision to overturn Roe v. Wade looms over Washington, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has announced sweeping legislation to ban the sale of location and health data.Warren’s Health and Location Protection Act — cosponsored by a slate of Democratic senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) — would bar “data brokers from selling or transferring location data and health data.” There are few limitations, making the bill one of the most strident proposals aimed at regulating data sales.“Data brokers profit from the location data of millions of people, posing serious risks to Americans everywhere by selling their most private information,” Warren said in a statement on Wednesday.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok redefined the idea of a social media feed — can Facebook play catch-up before it’s too late? Continue reading…

Sony has released a cool update for its free Share Factory Studio photo and video editing app on PS5 that lets you easily overlay doodles, visual filters, and more onto your saved gameplay captures called Bits. This update is meant to make it easy for beginners to share a video that has some more personality and context. But it seems to go pretty deep, offering a range of customizable effects, including filters, text, sound effects, music, voiceover, doodles, and other visual effects like stickers and camera effects.Once you save your creation to your console’s storage, you can upload it to Twitter or YouTube straight from the PS5. Or, if you have the PlayStation app on your phone or tablet, these Bits can show up in the Game Captures... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix The Umbrella Academy’s third season is its best yet Continue reading…

Neon White. | Image: Annapurna Interactive Neon White had me straining my neck with every seemingly out of reach jump — and I couldn’t get enough. Developed by Angel Matrix, a small team led by Donut County designer Ben Esposito, Neon White combines thrilling parkour action, a late ‘90s Quake-style aesthetic, and a bonkers story that’s kind of like if The Purge were set in the afterlife. It’s like speedrunning your way through heaven while making detours to learn more about angels and demons. It’s a seemingly odd combo, but it works very, very well.The premise of Neon White is actually somewhat straightforward at its core. Every so often, for a span of 10 days, God invites some of the denizens of hell up to heaven so they can help eradicate the demon population. Whoever racks up... Continue reading…

Illustration by Harry Bhalerao / The Verge Get a gift that the dad in your life will actually enjoy Continue reading…

Image: Krafton Krafton is best-known for games like PUBG and the upcoming Callisto Protocol — but today, it’s showing off something very different. The company is teasing a “virtual human” named Ana, which it says will “help establish” its Web3 ecosystem. The character was built using Unreal Engine — which itself has a tool specifically for realistic digital people — along with what Krafton describes as “hyperrealism, rigging, and deep learning.”It’s not clear exactly how Ana will fit into the loosely defined vision of a metaverse or Web3, though Krafton has flirted with NFTs and the blockchain in the past. In the meantime, it sounds like its realistic virtual human will instead attempt to become something of a celebrity. “We expect her to attract the... Continue reading…

Elden Ring’s Abductor Virgins are slightly less painful when you save money on the game. | Image: Bandai Namco The week is nearly half over, but the deals are already vast. If you have time this summer to sink your teeth into some meaty video games or tabletop games, we’ve got just the right discount for you to check out. Amazon and Target are both running a buy two, get one free sale from now until Saturday, June 18th. It’s another mix and match-style promotion, where you buy two video games, board games, movies, or even some toys and get a third of equal or lesser value for free.The current promo is a great opportunity to stock up on some excellent games that came out this year, like Elden Ring or the recently released Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and you can even throw in a modern classic you might have missed, like Sekiro: Shadows Die... Continue reading…

Tonal’s equipment sells for roughly $3,000 but also requires a $49 monthly membership. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge While hardware is a big part of connected fitness, so are the classes. The highly produced sessions led by engaging instructors can make — or break — a product, especially if there isn’t enough of a library to justify a device’s subscription. On that front, Tonal announced today that it’s opening a New York studio to expand its live class offerings and adding five new coaches to its lineup.Tonal is one of the major players in the connected fitness industry with a valuation of roughly $1.6 billion. Its $3,000 strength training system is backed by several professional athletes, including Maria Sharapova, Mike Tyson, and Drew Brees. But when The Verge initially reviewed the device in 2020, the classes were underwhelming. There was no live... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Chinese augmented reality company Nreal is launching a Steam beta on its Nreal Light and Nreal Air AR glasses, letting users stream games from a PC to a virtual big screen. The company says its beta will go live at the end of June, coinciding loosely with a June 27th hackathon designed to attract AR developers with $100,000 in cash prizes. The move could expand Nreal’s software ecosystem and offer more to do in a pair of surprisingly good — but still limited — early AR glasses.Nreal suggests the Steam beta could be finicky, admitting in a press release that it “requires a bit of setup effort and is not optimized for all Steam games.” It will join the option to stream Xbox Cloud Gaming titles through Nreal’s Nebula platform as well as a... Continue reading…

Image: DJI Mostly known for its drones, Chinese company DJI has been expanding its reach with offerings for filmmakers in recent years. Last year the company introduced its first new cinema camera, the Ronin 4D. Today, it is announcing and releasing two new gimbals and a DJI Transmission wireless system, all of which are borrowing a few neat tricks from the Ronin 4D.The RS 3 can be seen as a successor to the RSC 2 that DJI released in 2020. It is the smaller of the two newly released gimbals focused on getting you up and ready to record as quickly as possible. The new axis locking mechanism releases automatically once the gimbal is powered on, allowing you to get filming sooner. Along with new quick-release mounts, it should save you precious... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Other than running Tesla, SpaceX, and — perhaps at some point if the buyout is complete — Twitter, Elon Musk is staying busy with yet another appeal in his case against the SEC. His beef with the government agency is, as it has been for the last several years, over the 2018 settlement he agreed to after being charged with securities fraud over a tweet about taking Tesla private. In April, US District Judge Lewis Liman was not swayed by Eminem-related arguments from Elon’s lawyers and ruled to let the agreement stand as originally written.Now, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, has filed with the court to take his case to the US Court of Appeals in the hope of a different decision. The world’s richest man has argued that he was coerced into... Continue reading…

Alex Castro/The Verge It’s supposedly live in my city Continue reading…

Photo by Jeff Gritchen/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images The federal government released two new reports highlighting — for the first time — crashes and fatalities involving autonomous vehicles (AV) and vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS). Tesla reported the most crashes involving driver-assist technology, while Alphabet’s Waymo disclosed the most incidents involving its autonomous vehicles.Car and tech companies insist these technologies save lives, but more people died in auto crashes last year than in the last three decades. More data is needed to accurately determine whether these new systems are making roads safer, or simply making driving more convenient.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a standing general order last year... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A lot of people are watching short-form videos on YouTube after nearly two years of YouTube giving creators lucrative cash bonuses and expanding features to be increasingly like TikTok.1.5 billion monthly users who are logged in to an account are watching short-form videos on YouTube’s TikTok clone, the company announced today. That’s compared to around 2 billion logged-in users who visit the platform monthly as of April, according to TechCrunch.Launched in 2020, YouTube Shorts is the platform’s answer to TikTok’s ascent. Since then, Shorts have gradually made their way across the platform, including in recommendations, and the company has added additional features mimicking TikTok, like sampling. As of April, Shorts were racking up 30... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Internet Explorer is dead. Microsoft is retiring IE today after nearly 27 years. The aging web browser is being sunset in favor of Microsoft Edge, with support being officially withdrawn for IE 11 today. It’s the end of an internet era, after Microsoft initially moved away from the Internet Explorer branding with the release of Windows 10 in 2015.For consumers, not much changes. Usage of Internet Explorer has plummeted in recent years, with StatCounter showing IE has less than half a percent of overall browser market share. Microsoft has been trying to stop people from using Internet Explorer for years now, and the company previously labeled it a “compatibility solution” rather than a browser that businesses should actively be using. ... Continue reading…

Microsoft will start automatically redirecting Internet Explorer users to its Edge browser over the next few months. Internet Explorer is being retired today, and consumers or businesses still using the browser will start to see a prompt soon that will redirect them to Microsoft Edge instead.The prompt and redirect is the first step in fully removing Internet Explorer from existing PCs, and Microsoft plans to issue an update that will disable the aging browser in the future. “Eventually, Internet Explorer will be disabled permanently as part of a future Windows Update, at which point the Internet Explorer icons on their devices will be removed,” explains Sean Lyndersay, general manager of Microsoft Edge Enterprise. I... Continue reading…

They play over and over and over and over. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram Stories have been misbehaving for some users on iOS, making it so that they have to re-view all of someone’s stories before they’re able to see new ones. The issue has affected several Verge staff members since Monday, and some Reddit users have reported the same thing is happening to them. ‘On Wednesday morning, Instagram released an update for the app in the iOS App Store that seems to have resolved the issue. If you’re having issues, make sure to check for the update and see if your app is on the latest version, which 239.1. The updates notes merely say “The latest version contains bug fixes and performance improvements,” but Verge staffers and others on social media say it has brought the repeating Stories problem to an... Continue reading…

Image: Voicemod Voicemod, a popular real-time voice changer, is starting to use artificial intelligence to transform your voice into Morgan Freeman and other characters. A new Voicemod AI Voices beta is launching today, offering up eight options to transform your voice into fantasy characters, pilots, astronauts, and the actor Morgan Freeman.Voicemod has been transforming voices for years thanks to classic sound design techniques, but these new voice effects combine AI, too. The “Morgan” voice, as Voicemod calls it, is particularly impressive, allowing you to pretend to be the famous movie star or simply a polished voice actor. The new pilot voice is also a lot of fun, with sound effects that really make it sound like you’re piloting an aircraft. ... Continue reading…

Lenovo’s new Chromebook Duet 3 doesn’t work with older USI styluses. | Image: Lenovo A new report has uncovered compatibility issues with version 2.0 of the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) standard that means older USI 1.0 styluses won’t work with some newer USI 2.0 devices. ChromeUnboxed came across the problem while using Lenovo’s new Chromebook Duet 3, when it noticed that existing styluses weren’t working with the device.It seems the problem with the Chromebook Duet 3 is that its screen uses an in-cell design that combines elements of the display with a digitizer that handles stylus input. ChromeUnboxed reports that this is a more compact and cost-effective way to offer stylus input. But because support for the technology was only introduced with USI version 2.0, the Duet 3 doesn’t work with styluses made to work... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Europe’s second-highest court, the General Court, has sided with Qualcomm after it appealed a €997 million (around $1,045 million) fine from European Union regulators over payments made to Apple to use Qualcomm chips, Reuters reports. The EU issued the fine in 2018, and said payments Qualcomm had made to Apple between 2011 and 2016 to exclusively use its chips were illegal under EU antitrust rules.“This meant that no rival could effectively challenge Qualcomm in this market, no matter how good their products were,” said EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager in a statement accompanying the fine. Qualcomm was accused of shutting rival chipmaker Intel out of the market, by making it too expensive for Apple to switch suppliers.T... Continue reading…

Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME Tech billionaire Bill Gates has dismissed NFTs as “100 percent based on greater fool theory” — the financial concept that even overpriced assets can make money as long as you find a bigger idiot to sell them to.Speaking at an event on climate change hosted by TechCrunch, Gates said he preferred investing in assets with tangible outputs, like farms or factories, “or a company where they make products,” and that he held no position in cryptocurrencies or NFTs. “I’m not involved in that. I’m not long or short in any of those things,” said Gates, suggesting that he was also suspicious of assets designed to “avoid taxation or any sort of government rules.”“Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world... Continue reading…

The Keychron Q5 in gray. | Image: Keychron Keychron’s latest wired mechanical keyboard is the Q5. It uses a similar construction to the excellent Q1 and Q2 keyboards that have proceeded it, but with a larger layout that includes a numpad. It’s not a traditional full-size keyboard, but the idea with its 1800 layout (aka a 96-percent layout) is that it offers almost all of the keys a user might need while still being relatively compact.“There’s currently no stock full-metal custom 1800 layout mechanical keyboard on the market,” said Keychron COO Paul Tan. “1800 layout saves about an inch of space from a full-size keyboard, without having to remove many keys. It’s the smallest you can go, without getting rid of the number pad.” The Keychron Q5 is available as a fully-assembled... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Everyone makes mistakes, but if you mess up a fact or flub a line in a YouTube video it can be hard to correct the error. You can edit and re-upload the video, but that means losing all your comments and engagement metrics. You can add a note to the video’s description or pin a comment with the correction, but that might go unnoticed by most viewers.That’s why YouTube is introducing a new feature named “corrections” that lets creators easily add more obvious corrections. After a video has been uploaded, creators can add corrections that will appear as infocards in the top right-hand corner of a video at the relevant timestamp (but only, it seems, for the first correction in any given video). Viewers can then click on the card to expand... Continue reading…

The Nothing Phone 1. | Image: Nothing Nothing, the consumer tech startup led by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, has shown off the rear design of its debut Phone 1 smartphone. “Leaks are harder to contain nowadays and many of you have been waiting for a long time,” Pei wrote in a tweet. “So here it is.” The phone is due to be properly announced on July 12th at Nothing’s next event.The image confirms some of the design rumors that have been swirling around the phone. As Pei previously confirmed to The Verge in an interview, the phone has illuminating light strips on the rear of the phone, which appears to be made from transparent material. The arrangement of these light strips was teased by Nothing at a previous event. Interestingly, a logo can be seen on the center of the rear... Continue reading…

T-Mobile is getting creative. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile is certainly not afraid to tout its own 5G achievements, and true to form, it’s announcing another milestone today: by combining three channels of mid-band spectrum on its 5G network, the company achieved 3Gbps network speeds. This seems to be more than a stunt, too — T-Mobile says this technology will become available to customers on its network “later this year.”Those 3Gbps (or 3000Mbps) speeds are approaching mmWave territory — that’s the high-band, limited range kind of 5G that lets you download a movie in seconds. Mid-band 5G typically reaches around 200Mbps, and that’s considered very good compared to LTE — but T-Mobile is doing a little tinkering behind the scenes to boost those speeds significantly.this most recent... Continue reading…

You’ll be able to see the movie in August 2023. | Image: Sony Sony’s upcoming Gran Turismo film is apparently hitting theaters sooner than we might have expected — its scheduled for release on August 11th, 2023, according to a new report from Deadline. Neill Blomkamp is set to direct the movie, which is supposed to be based on a true story.Seriously. Here’s the official logline (aka short summary) of the movie, per Deadline: “Based on a true story, the film is the ultimate wish fulfillment tale of a teenage Gran Turismo player whose gaming skills won a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional race car driver.” That means the film likely pulls from the story of someone from the GT Academy, which let Gran Turismo pros compete to join a real-life racing team sponsored by Nissan... Continue reading…

Image: Universal Pictures Peacock is bringing Downton Abbey: A New Era to its streaming service on June 24th. The film, which was released on May 20th, will exclusively stream on the platform following its departure from theaters.New Era is the sequel to the 2019 Downton Abbey film (which Peacock currently owns the rights to stream as well) and the original series. It centers around the Crawleys and staff as part of the family embarks on a journey to a villa in France, while the others greet a movie crew that arrives at the estate. If you’re a fan of Singing in the Rain, you’ll probably have a good time.To celebrate the film’s arrival (and to help fans catch up before the film’s arrival), Peacock also added a 24/7 channel that will just air seasons 1 through 6... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is expanding its ad incentive program to include more creators and pay them more money. Earlier this year, Twitch began offering select streamers a flat, guaranteed payment in exchange for running a fixed amount of ads during a fixed number of hours. Now, Twitch is opening up the program to include more partners and is changing the way it structures payouts to pay creators more.Originally, payouts earned with the ad incentive program were calculated using a CPM model. Basically, streamers would get a flat rate for every 1,000 ads watched on their channel.“We found that a fixed CPM model wasn’t the most straightforward way to share revenue with creators,” said Mike Minton, vice president of monetization at Twitch, in an email to... Continue reading…

This is from Fallout 4, not Fallout 5. | Image: Bethesda Bethesda, which recently delayed Starfield into next year and hasn’t shown anything substantial about The Elder Scrolls 6 since announcing it in 2018, is already thinking about what comes after. In an interview with IGN, Bethesda’s Todd Howard said Bethesda Game Studios is planning on making Fallout 5... eventually.“Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while,” Howard said. There’s no indication about when we can expect Fallout 5 to be released. Given how long we’ve been waiting for Starfield and the fact that we know basically nothing about The Elder Scrolls 6 — note that Howard said the game is still in pre-production... Continue reading…