The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Sunday night, the Celsius Network, one of the largest crypto lending platforms, abruptly announced a “pause” on withdrawals and transfers, citing “extreme market conditions.” Celsius announced its halt as markets in Asia opened on Monday morning, and the price of its CEL token — worth nearly $7 a year ago — lost a third of its remaining value, falling to just 21 cents.In the hours that followed the pause, prices of other cryptocurrencies have also tumbled. CoinMarketCap’s global cryptocurrency tracker showed the total market cap of crypto assets (including stablecoins and tokens) below $1 trillion as of 8:53AM ET, falling from its peak of $3 trillion last November. Image: Coinbase The price of Bitcoin on... Continue reading…

The 2024 Chevy Blazer EV will get a proper reveal on July 18th, General Motors announced Monday. The all-electric mid-sized SUV is expected to go on sale next year, along with the electric version of the Chevy Equinox compact SUV.GM first teased electric versions of its Blazer and Equinox SUVs last year. But while the automaker has said it aims for the Equinox EV to start at $30,000, it has yet to set similar pricing expectations for the Blazer.The Equinox and Blazer are Chevy’s compact and mid-sized SUVs, respectively. The Blazer EV is also expected to make its official debut later this year, along with an SS performance model. Both vehicles will be built on GM’s Ultium battery and powertrain platform, which will serve as the... Continue reading…

The new movie will be out later this year. | Image: Lionsgate Netflix’s Knives Out sequel now has an official title and release window: you’ll be able to watch Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery this holiday season, the company announced Monday.The upcoming Knives Out installment will be directed by Rian Johnson, who helmed the first movie, and will again star Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc. The rest of the cast is shaping up to be truly awesome — it includes Dave Bautista, Madelyn Cline, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Jessica Henwick, Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, and Leslie Odom Jr., according to a short trailer released by Netflix.

Mining units at the Cormint Data Systems Bitcoin mining facility while under construction in Fort Stockton, Texas, U.S., on Friday, April 29, 2022. | Bloomberg via Getty Images Bitcoin’s value has nosedived enough to curb the cryptocurrency’s enormous energy use — and associated greenhouse gas emissions — but only if prices stay low. The price of a single Bitcoin plummeted below $24,000 today, about half of what it was worth in March. While it’s been steadily losing value for months, the sudden tumble in value over the past 24 hours brings the price below a key threshold when it comes to Bitcoin’s impact on the environment.Since Bitcoin’s price peaked at around $69,000 in November, the network’s annual electricity consumption has been estimated to be between roughly 180 and 200 terawatt-hours (TWh). That’s about the same amount of electricity used by all the data centers in the world every year.Higher prices... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Years ago, John Oliver galvanized his Last Week Tonight viewers to join in the fight for net neutrality — instigating a flood of comments that broke down the Federal Communications Commission’s website in 2014. Last night, he turned his attention to a pair of upcoming tech antitrust bills.During his Sunday night show, Oliver explained the ways large tech companies rule the internet. From Apple and Google taking huge cuts from app store sales to Amazon’s stranglehold on the online sellers’ market, Oliver outlined how the power these companies hold could stifle innovation and how lawmakers could shake up the industry.“The problem with letting a few companies control whole sectors of our economy is that it limits what is possible by... Continue reading…

Exhibition And Experience Zones at The Paris NFT Day Conference The Celsius Network, which is one of the largest crypto lenders, announced Sunday night that it was “pausing all withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts.” It has 1.7 million customers.The company’s token, CEL, is trading at 23 cents as of this writing, according to CoinMarketCap. That’s a 92 percent decrease from April 8th, when CEL was worth $3. The token was worth nearly $7 a year ago.There have been questions about Celsius Networks’ high yields, its connections to failed stablecoin Terra, and its reserves. The value of assets on its platform dropped by half to $12 billion in May, from $24 billion in December 2021. Between March and May, a billion dollars flowed out of the system, The Financial Times reported.In a June... Continue reading…

The 4K Apple TV gives you more ways to enjoy Apple services in your living room. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Even though Apple completely overlooked tvOS during its WWDC announcements last week, there’s a very good reason why you should think about getting an Apple TV 4K today. The 32 and 64GB configurations of the Apple TV 4K are discounted to $129.99 and $149.99, respectively — their best price ever at Amazon and Best Buy.In addition to providing access to Apple services like Apple Arcade and Apple Music on your TV, this compact streaming box also provides you with a way to enjoy other streaming services, like Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, and more. The 4K model of the Apple TV is also equipped with an HDMI 2.1 port, along with features like HDR, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos for an improved audio / visual experience. The included... Continue reading…

Over the month of June, the Congressional committee tasked with investigating the Capitol riot will hold a series of public hearings meant to bring public attention to the committee’s findings. The first hearing, held on the evening of June 9th, focused on police officers and participants present inside the Capitol. Subsequent hearings are expected to bring out more evidence of former President Donald Trump’s role in inciting and extending the violence.Initially organized as a protest and rally for President Trump, the “Save America” rally on January 6th, 2021, escalated into a full-scale attack on the Capitol building over the course of hours. More than 130 US Capitol police were injured in the ensuing chaos, and four responding... Continue reading…

Amazon is taking steps to get its long-delayed drone delivery project off the ground. The company announced that it would launch its inaugural drone delivery service in the town of Lockeford, California, later this year after it receives the green light from the Federal Aviation Administration.If the regulatory approval goes through, it will be a major milestone for Amazon, which has been promising some version of aerial package delivery for almost a decade. The company has had some major setbacks, including a handful of crashes, reports of alleged safety lapses, and high turnover. But today’s announcement indicates that Amazon is confident that it’s ready for primetime (no pun intended).Amazon says that later this year, Lockeford... Continue reading…

A rocket belonging to the up-and-coming Astra space company failed to deliver two of NASA’s weather-tracking satellites to space after its second stage engine shut down prematurely. Both satellites were lost as a result of the failure.Astra’s Launch Vehicle 0010 (LV0010) successfully took off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:43PM ET, but suffered an upper stage failure about 10 minutes into its flight. The launch was part of NASA’s mission to send six TROPICS satellites into space — these small, foot-long CubeSats are supposed to help NASA keep better track of developing tropical storms. CubeSats are low-cost satellites frequently built by researchers at colleges and universities.

Image: Microsoft Microsoft has spent the past two years adding flashy new productivity features to Teams, and now the company is overhauling how the fundamentals work thanks to AI. We’ve all been on a call where someone has poor room acoustics making it hard to hear them, or seen two people try to talk at the same time creating an awkward “no, you go ahead” moment. Microsoft’s new AI-powered voice quality improvements should improve or even eliminate these day-to-day annoyances.Microsoft is now using a machine learning models to improve room acoustics so you’ll no longer sound like you’re hiding in a cave. “While we have been trying our best with digital signal processing to do a really good job in Teams, we have now started using machine learning for... Continue reading…

TP-Link’s Kasa mini smart plug just got better. TP-Link has finally added HomeKit to one of its products, and it's a serious bargain. The new version of its very good mini smart plug has Apple HomeKit support and energy monitoring all for just $12.50 per plug. The Kasa Smart WiFi Plug Mini with Energy Monitoring and Apple HomeKit, EP25 is available on Amazon for $49.99 for a four-pack (a two-pack at $29.99 is coming in Q4).There are a lot of smart plugs out there but very few with energy monitoring and HomeKit compatibility, and none as cheap as $12.50 that offer both. TP-Link’s Kasa line also works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, but this is the first device with HomeKit. The company had originally promised the mini plug would get HomeKit in January 2019 but then changed its... Continue reading…

For All Mankind’s third season just started. | Image: Apple The first season of For All Mankind, the science fiction alternate history show from Battlestar Galactica creator Ron D. Moore, is now available to stream free of charge — no Apple TV Plus subscription required. The limited time promotion coincides with the release of the show’s third season, which premiered on June 10th on Apple’s video streaming service.While Ted Lasso and Severance have arguably been the biggest breakout TV show hits from Apple TV Plus, my colleague Alex Cranz would have everyone believe that For All Mankind is better than both. Here’s how she recently described it:[Warning: Season 1 spoilers ahead]

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Wikimedia Foundation is challenging a Russian court’s ruling that it violated disinformation laws in articles about the invasion of Ukraine. The organization filed its appeal last week, arguing that the articles contained “well-sourced, verified knowledge” and that Russia did not have jurisdiction over the globally operating Wikimedia Foundation.The Moscow court fined Wikimedia 5 million rubles (around $65,000) after an April ruling that covered seven Russian-language articles, including Russian Invasions of Ukraine (2022), War Crimes during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Shelling of Hospital in Mariupol, and Massacre in Bucha. The decision followed an order from Russia’s tech and communications agency Roskomnadzor, as well as the... Continue reading…

Its LaMDA system is built to make AI more conversational. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google has placed one of its engineers on paid administrative leave for allegedly breaking its confidentiality policies after he grew concerned that an AI chatbot system had achieved sentience, the Washington Post reports. The engineer, Blake Lemoine, works for Google’s Responsible AI organization, and was testing whether its LaMDA model generates discriminatory language or hate speech.The engineer’s concerns reportedly grew out of convincing responses he saw the AI system generating about its rights and the ethics of robotics. In April he shared a document with executives titled “Is LaMDA Sentient?” containing a transcript of his conversations with the AI (after being placed on leave, Lemoine published the transcript via his Medium... Continue reading…

After an early glimpse of Starfield at Microsoft’s Xbox & Bethesda showcase last year and a delay to 2023, we’re now getting a much closer look at Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years thanks to 15 minutes of gameplay. Starfield is, naturally, set in space where players will take on the role of a last group of explorers. Described as “Skyrim in space,” by game director Todd Howard, the RPG will be playable in both first- and third-person, but primarily it’s first-person.During the early stages of the gameplay, we arrive on the moon of Kreet, just one of more than 1,000 planets that players will be able to fly to and explore freely. Powered by Bethesda’s new Creation Engine 2, the first Starfield gameplay shows a player freely roaming... Continue reading…

Xbox revealed a ton of exciting news at the Xbox & Bethesda Game Showcase, ranging from a longer look at Starfield to news about Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV.For this event, Xbox only focused on games available to play within the next 12 months. So at least you won’t have to wait too long. In case you missed it, here’s a roundup of the biggest announcements and trailers.Hollow Knight: Silksong is poised to arrive within the yearHollow Knight: Silk Song, the highly-anticipated sequel to the popular Hollow Knight indie title, is set to launch on day one for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. The trailer shows off the platformer’s beautiful artwork and gameplay, but there isn’t an official release date just yet.Overwatch 2 will be free to play... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge There’s more than just Starfield Continue reading…

Joker and his friends from Persona 5. | Image: Sega Three beloved JRPGs in the Persona franchise — Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5 Royal — are coming to Xbox and PC, Microsoft announced at its Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase 2022.The first will be Persona 5 Royal, which will be available on October 21st. Currently, that game is only available on PlayStation platforms, so the upcoming Xbox and PC release marks a notable expansion for the game. If you haven’t played it before, I cannot recommend the game enough — it absolutely oozes style, and by the end of the game, you’ll really feel like you connect with the many characters you meet.Person 3 Portable originally appeared on the PSP back in 2006. Persona 4 Golden was a port of Persona 4 that originally appeared on the PS... Continue reading…

Image: Activision Blizzard Diablo IV, the next major release in Activision Blizzard’s popular dungeon-crawling series, will be available in 2023, the company announced Sunday. When it launches, it’ll be available on PC, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4, and the game will have crossplay and cross-progression across all platforms. And as with previous Diablo games there will be blood — a lot of it. Whole actual waves of blood.In addition to previously announced classes like the sorceress, barbarian, druid, and rogue, Activision Blizzard revealed the fifth playable class: Necromancer. “Fight with aggressive skeleton Warriors, fast-attacking Skirmishers, sword and board Defenders, or scythe-wielding Reapers,” the company said in a press release. “Unleash a... Continue reading…

Image: Activision Blizzard Overwatch 2 will be launching “in early access” on October 4th, Activision Blizzard announced Sunday. At least the PVP parts of it will be. And in a major change, it will be free to play — the original Overwatch was a paid title. It will be releasing on PC, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.“We can’t wait to roll out the beginning of the Overwatch 2 experience on October 4 and introduce an exciting new competitive vision, featuring amazing new content and a reimagining of the iconic heroes, maps, and gameplay that made the original game so compelling,” Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard, said in a press release. “This is the beginning of an always-on and always-evolving era for the franchise, and a recommitment... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is set to pay $118 million to settle a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit that includes around 15,500 women (via Bloomberg). As noted in the settlement’s press release, Google is also required to have an independent labor economist evaluate its hiring practices and pay equity studies.The lawsuit first emerged in 2017 after three women filed a complaint accusing the company of underpaying female workers in violation of California’s Equal Pay Act, citing a wage gap of around $17,000. The complaint also alleges Google locks women into lower career tracks, leading to less pay and lower bonuses when compared to their male counterparts. The plaintiffs won class-action status last year.Google’s treatment of workers has been the... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Squid Game is officially coming back to Netflix for season two. According to a message from director Hwang Dong-hyuk, the second season will see the return of Gi-hun and the mysterious Front Man. The note also states “the man in the suit with ddakji might be back,” and that we’ll also get introduced to Cheol-su, Young-hee’s boyfriend.“It took 12 years to bring the first season of ‘Squid Game’ to life last year. But it took 12 days for ‘Squid Game’ to become the most popular Netflix series ever,” Hwang writes. “As the writer, director, and producer of ‘Squid Game,’ a huge shout out to fans around the world. Thank you for watching and loving our show... Join us once more for a whole new round.”The renewal occurs despite the shift in... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Team Xbox is holding its Xbox & Bethesda Game Showcase today. The 95-minute event will feature the latest on games from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and other third-party studios. Naturally, it will also include a lineup of games that are coming to Xbox, PC, and Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription.Microsoft is calling it the “biggest moment of 2022” for Xbox so far, so it’s one worth tuning in to.Here’s how you can watch it:WHEN DOES THE XBOX AND BETHESDA GAMES SHOWCASE BEGIN?It’ll start at 1PM ET / 10AM PT on Sunday, June 12th.HOW CAN I WATCH THE XBOX EVENT?You can watch it at Xbox’s Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and even TikTok pages. It’s also available on Steam, China’s Bilibli, and other media outlets. The show will... Continue reading…

Do I need this data? No, but it’s nice to have Continue reading…

Photo: Columbia Pictures Spider-Man: No Way Home is making its way back to theaters on September 2nd after it broke box office records and became one of the highest-grossing films. This time around, Marvel is sprinkling in some new and extended scenes to keep things fresh.Marvel calls the revamped film “The More Fun Stuff Version,” and says it’s releasing it in celebration of Spider-Man’s 60th anniversary in comics. Oh yeah, and it’s the 20th anniversary of Toby Maguire’s debut in the very first Spider-Man movie (feel old yet?).

The Galaxy Z Flip 3. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge We got a look at what the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 could look like in a set of unofficial renders last month, but now we have leaked images of what appears to be the physical device shared by YouTuber TechTalkTV (via 9to5Google). The images match up with the earlier renders and give us a closer look at the device’s display crease, which looks almost nonexistent.One image shows the device’s display when it’s flipped open, and you can see a slight glare where the crease would typically appear. It looks hardly noticeable, but then again, it is a bit difficult to tell what the crease will look like when viewed from just one angle.You can pretty clearly see the Galaxy Z Flip 3’s crease when you tilt the phone the right way. As The Verge’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, is getting serious about entering the virtual reality (VR) space, according to a report from Protocol. A source close to the situation told the outlet that the company plans on investing “tons of money” to develop VR-related content.It looks like a large portion of ByteDance’s investment is going into hiring. As noted by Protocol, over 40 job listings have popped up for Pico, the Chinese VR headset maker ByteDance acquired last year. Most openings are for Pico Studios’ west coast-based branches in California and Washington, ranging from a head of VR game strategy to a game operation manager. Other open positions suggest an increased focus on Pico’s VR hardware, including an optical engineer and a... Continue reading…

The Sonos Roam is selling for $143.20 instead of $179.99 for a limited time. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Welcome to the weekend! We’re kicking things off today with a rare deal on the superb Sonos Roam, which remains one of the best Bluetooth speakers we’ve ever tested. Regularly $179.99, you can currently buy it from Best Buy, B&H Photo, and Sonos for just $143.20, the speaker’s best price to date. That’s less than the typical cost of the cheaper Sonos Roam SL, which is essentially the same speaker but without the built-in microphone.The pint-sized, portable speaker sounds great and comes equipped with a number of useful features, including support for Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple’s AirPlay 2. The Sonos speaker also integrates with the rest of the company’s ecosystem and comes with an IP67 dust and water resistance rating,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Telegram will soon start putting some features behind a paywall (via TechCrunch). In a post on the platform, founder Pavel Durov announced that the messaging service is launching a paid Telegram Premium subscription later this month, giving users “additional features, speed and resources.”Durov hints at some of the features coming with the subscription, including early access to new features, the ability to upload larger files, and Premium-only stickers and reactions (which were recently previewed in a beta version of the app).But Durov also makes it clear that Telegram’s existing features will stay free, and that the paid features won’t affect the experience for free users on the app. Non-subscribers will still get to look at the... Continue reading…

Drop’s black-on-white DCX keycaps installed on a Filco Majestouch 2. Earlier this year, keyboard specialist Drop announced its new lineup of DCX keycaps. But rather than focusing on making flashy, colorful designs like most aftermarket keycaps, the first three sets to use the new DCX profile are relatively understated, with simple black-and-white designs or a small selection of primary colors.That’s because the focus here is on getting the tiniest details right in the hopes that Drop’s sets might be able to compete directly with GMK’s — a German manufacturer commonly seen as the producer of some of the best-quality keycaps around. GMK produces keycaps in the “Cherry” profile (which refers to the overall shape of the keycaps) while “DCX” refers to the profile of Drop’s keycaps. I’ve had the chance to... Continue reading…

It’s changed the language users will see when they go to pay. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple announced on Friday that it once again updated its rules about how Dutch dating apps can use third-party payment systems, after the company had “productive conversations with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM).”The updated rules give developers more flexibility about which payment systems they use, change the language users see when they go to pay, and remove other restrictions that the previous rules put in place. The ACM has expressed approval of these changes, noting Apple “will meet the requirements... set under European and Dutch competition rules.”While the rules aren’t wide-reaching (again, they only apply to Dutch dating apps), they do show what Apple’s willing to do to comply with government... Continue reading…

Entergalactic. | Image: Netflix Sandman, Umbrella Academy, Resident Evil, and much more Continue reading…

The one true Duke. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have no idea who Duke Nukem even is — that’s how hard the classic video game franchise cratered a decade ago. Today, the character is mostly known as a punchline for video game vaporware jokes, about how Duke Nukem Forever spent 14 years in development hell only to become a huge flop.And yet for years now, Duke’s corporate owners have been whispering that a movie is coming, culminating in The Hollywood Reporter’s story today: Legendary Entertainment has tapped Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg to actually produce a feature film.I don’t quite know how to react! As a gamer who actually quite liked Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem II and Duke Nukem 3D, I absolutely agree that this... Continue reading…

“Instantly” is only a slight exaggeration. Capcom has launched a demo of Resident Evil Village that’s powered by Google’s Stadia cloud gaming tech, letting people test out the horror game in a browser. In a press release, Google says that the idea is to let people try out the game, no matter what device they own. The game and its demo were already available for Stadia subscribers, but now anyone can try it out for free, provided they have a supported web browser and an internet connection faster than 10 megabits a second. You don’t even need a Google account; you just navigate to the website, enter your birthday (the game’s rated M), and click the play button.As for how the demo looks... you certainly get what you pay for with the browser version. Here are a few comparison shots... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One perk most wireless carriers offer to pull you to their side is a free streaming video-on-demand subscription, but now AT&T won’t be giving HBO Max to new customers, and hasn’t replaced it with a different service either. The carrier stealthily discontinued its top-tier Unlimited Elite plan for new subscribers this week, and added a new one that doesn’t include HBO Max anymore, as reported by Next TV (via FierceWireless).The new top plan is called Unlimited Premium, which comes in at the same $85 a month for a single line. Just like with the now-grandfathered Elite plan, Premium subscribers get unlimited talk / text / data, 4K video streaming, and no slowdowns even if they use a lot of data (a promise AT&T introduced for its priciest... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla is asking its shareholders to approve a three-way stock split to help make the company’s shares cheaper for buyers.The request is included in a list of provisions Tesla is planning to bring up at its August 4, 2022 shareholder meeting, which it filed Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Tesla is framing it as way to “reset” its stock price, which has gone up dramatically in the past few years — 43.5 percent since the company’s last stock split in August 2020.“While this value appreciation has led to our employees benefiting enormously through the years, we want to make sure all employees, no matter when they join, have access to the same advantages,” the company states.Tesla is framing it as way to “reset”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Cloud developer advocate Emma Haruka Iwao has beaten her own record from three years ago for the number of digits calculated for pi. In 2019 she was able to calculate pi to its 31.4 trillionth digit, and now, using the same Google Cloud y-cruncher program Iwao was able to find pi to its 100 trillionth digit, which is zero.After starting the process in October 2021 it took the computers until March 2022 to finish. At 157 days, compared to 121 days spent figuring out a shorter number in 2019, it was going more than twice as fast. According to Iwao, she was using the same tools and techniques, but the enhanced speed is due to how the parts of Google Cloud have improved since then with 100Gbps networking, balanced Persistent Disks,... Continue reading…

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images The US will reportedly no longer require international air travelers to take a COVID test before traveling to the country. According to Reuters, the change will be effective starting Sunday morning, June 12th, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will reevaluate the decision in three months. That means people flying into the US won’t have to worry about taking a COVID test before take-off, at least until the summer travel season is over.Before the reported change, vaccinated and unvaccinated passengers had to get a test the day before they entered the US, according to the CDC’s travel requirement page. The only exceptions were children under two years old, who did not have to be tested.Airlines called on the... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix This week, Netflix unleashed a battery of announcements as a part of its Geeked Week. Contained within the flurry of reveals of The Sandman, The Umbrella Academy season 3, One Piece, and more was a handful of announcements about the platform’s slowly growing game and game-adjacent offerings.Netflix showed off a brief teaser for Cuphead season 2 ahead of its August premiere, featuring more of Ms. Chalice (voiced by Grey DeLisle), who made her brief debut at the end of the first season. Also hitting Netflix in August is the third season of DOTA: Dragon’s Blood. Tekken, the fighting game that has a fondness for throwing kids off cliffs, is also getting its own anime, Tekken: Bloodline.In advance of Sonic Origins later this June and S... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After six months of slow progress, the Senate is closer than ever to instituting new tech antitrust rules — and the industry is fighting harder than ever to bring it down.Sponsored by a bipartisan group including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO) was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in January and is poised for a full Senate vote in the coming weeks. But the bill is facing intense pushback from tech industry groups and shaping up as a major test of tech companies’ political muscle in Congress.In a joint press conference on Wednesday, the bill’s cosponsors emphasized the bill’s bipartisan support among senators. “At its core, this is about lowering... Continue reading…

Netflix Dragon Age, the D&D-inspired franchise from BioWare, is getting a brand-new six-episode anime on Netflix. Dragon Age: Absolution is a new show set in the previously unseen Tevinter Imperium.Not much is known about the show so far. It’s being produced by Red Dog Culture House and the showrunner is Mairghread Scott. She previously worked on a number of Transformers animated shows and the animated Guardians of the Galaxy show. We know it's being made in collaboration with BioWare, which last week announced the title of the next Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. As with Dreadwolf, the cast, characters, and even the plot of Absolution are unknown at this time.What we do know is it's set in the Tevinter Imperium. Tevinter is an... Continue reading…

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson (far right) and Philippe Baptiste, president of CNES, signing the Artemis Accords at the French Ambassador’s Residence in Washington. | Image: NASA/Keegan Barber On Tuesday evening, France officially signed onto NASA’s Artemis Accords — the space agency’s set of guidelines and principles for how the US and other countries should explore the Moon in the future. France’s addition, long considered a big get for the Artemis Accords, brings the total number of signatory countries to 20, strengthening the international agreement ahead of NASA’s planned return to the lunar surface this decade.When the finalized Artemis Accords were presented during the Trump administration in October 2020, NASA announced that eight countries had signed onto the document — including the United States. But there were some notable absences from that list. Two of the world’s largest space superpowers — China and Russia —... Continue reading…

Kamala Khan testing out out her limits in the field. | Image: Marvel Studios Disney Plus’ Ms. Marvel series is one of the MCU’s better recent entries, but Kamala Khan’s new live-action superpowers have been a point of contention for fans of the comics who are concerned about the show’s ability to translate the source material across mediums. Comics Ms. Marvel’s main thing is smashing stuff with her humongous fists. But her polymorphic “embiggening” powers are also a metaphor for the ways that Kamala, a Muslim-American teen born to Pakistani immigrants, moves through the world, and the creative team behind Ms. Marvel very much wanted that to be part of the show as well.In Marvel’s comics, Kamala develops the ability to morph her body into a variety of shapes in sizes, but in Ms. Marvel, she instead discovers that... Continue reading…

Hurricane Ida is seen in an image taken aboard the International Space Station in August 2021. | Image: European Space Agency via NASA NASA is gearing up to launch tiny satellites into space that will help forecasters keep a closer eye on tropical storms as they develop in a mission called TROPICS. Crucially, if the launches are successful, the satellites will mark a big advancement in our ability to watch rapidly intensifying storms.At the moment, NASA’s weather satellites can only check in on a storm every four to six hours. “So we’re missing a lot of what’s happening in the storm,” Bill Blackwell, principal investigator for the TROPICS mission and a researcher at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, said in NASA’s announcement yesterday. Image: NASA/NOAA Images taken from current weather satellites. Both the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder... Continue reading…

Meta Quest virtual reality headsets will soon offer an option for hanging out with other people in your homescreen. The v41 Quest update will add a multiuser Horizon Home space, which Meta announced last year at Connect. Horizon Home lets people put on their headsets and immediately invite other Quest users to jump into social experiences, including watching VR videos as a group. It’s a step toward a larger Horizon-branded “metaverse” that Meta has been rolling out piecemeal over the past few years.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Home’s rollout in a video with Free Solo climber Alex Honnold, offering a brief demo of the system. Zuckerberg and Honnold appear as Horizon’s traditional legless avatars and pop into a 360-degree video of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After Activision Blizzard refused to voluntarily recognize the union formed by QA testers at Raven Software — a subsidiary that works on the Call of Duty games — the testers went through the election process and voted to form a union last month. Now, Activision Blizzard’s current CEO Bobby Kotick told employees in a letter that the company recognizes the union and will “engage in good faith negotiations to enter into a collective bargaining agreement.”Getting here comes after news of layoffs late last year, followed by an employee walkout and a five-week strike. There was also the part where Activision Blizzard engaged in tactics that smelled of union busting, like suddenly converting other testers in the company to full-time jobs with... Continue reading…

Image: Dami Lee So, noted shitposter Elon Musk wants out of his Twitter deal, and he’s gotten his lawyers to write a lil letter to Twitter about it. According to the letter, Twitter is a bunch of big meanies that aren’t giving Musk the information he needs to close the transaction, specifically about bots and spam. According to the letter, this is very important for Twitter’s business model. There was a time to have this conversation, and it was during due diligence, which Musk waived. I’m very unsympathetic to both Musk and his lawyers here.Now, Bloomberg’s Matt Levine has helpfully written about how M&A law works. Basically, Musk views this letter as a pretext for ending the deal: