The Verge

Image: Motional Motional, the autonomous vehicle company that is a $4 billion joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, announced the city in which it would launch its fully driverless robotaxi service in 2023, and surprise, surprise, it’s Las Vegas.Motional first began testing its autonomous vehicles in Las Vegas through a joint partnership with Lyft nearly four years ago. The testing began as a weeklong pilot between Aptiv and Lyft during the annual Consumer Electronics Show in 2018 and has since gone on to complete over 100,000 passenger trips.Motional as a joint venture was first announced in March 2020, when Hyundai said it would spend $1.6 billion to catch up to its rivals in the autonomous vehicle space. Aptiv, a technology company formerly... Continue reading…

The Nokia X100 is a T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile exclusive budge 5G phone. | HMD Global Starting November 19th, 2021, T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile will be adding another budget 5G phone to the lineup — the $252 Nokia X100 that is exclusive to T-Mobile.This addition is coming just as the holiday shopping season is ready for kickoff, and T-Mobile’s sales of other budget 5G phones from REVVL and certain OnePlus models have been limited by handset shortages, according to Wave7 Research’s September 2021 Smartphone Report.Nokia is doing its part to jump-start sales by packing the X100 with lots of surprising features, despite its small sub-$300 price tag. While it shares similar looks and the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G processor as the $300 Nokia G50, that’s where their similarities end.Unlike the G50, the X100 is... Continue reading…

Image: Mozilla Mozilla is bringing Firefox to Microsoft’s Windows store today. Firefox is one of the first third-party alternatives available in the Microsoft Store, and it’s using its own Gecko browser engine instead of Chromium alternatives like Opera or the many other alternatives that leverage Microsoft’s Edge webview.Microsoft’s new open store policies have finally made it possible for third-party browsers like Firefox to appear in the Microsoft Store. While we haven’t seen Chrome appear yet, Opera was quick to ensure its own browser is also listed in the store. Firefox is available in both the Windows 10 and Windows 11 app stores. “Previously, if you were on Windows and wanted to use Firefox, you had to download it from the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It ain’t over ‘til the podcaster sings Continue reading…

Google Maps’ dark mode on iOS. | Image: Google In August, Google announced its iOS Maps app would soon be getting a dark mode. But although the feature fully launched at the beginning of September, it arrived quietly enough that several Verge staffers hadn’t even noticed its appearance until we started receiving in-app notices. If you’ve also been in the dark, rather than the dark mode (sorry), here’s how to enable the feature.From the main Google Maps interface on iOS, tap your profile picture in the top right of the screen. Pick “Settings” from the menu, then select “Dark Mode” from the Using Maps section. Here you have three options: On, Off, and “Same as device setting” (which automatically turns dark mode on or off depending on what you have enabled at the OS level).If... Continue reading…

Image: Yelp Yelp is joining almost every other site on the internet by giving you a feed to scroll through until you can’t scroll no more. Yelp says this feature will be showing up on its users’ homepages in almost 150 US metro areas starting today, and that the feed will feature “visual content from local restaurants,” including photos from other Yelpers, posts from restaurant owners, and some popular dishes being served in your area.Yelp says in its press release that a few things could happen when you tap on one of the posts in the feed. If the post is a picture of a popular dish (which are meals that pop up a lot in the restaurant’s reviews), you’ll see more photos of it, along with some reviews so you can tell if it’s really as good as it... Continue reading…

Kids Clips uses a landscape interface to show content. | Source: Netflix This week, Netflix’s iOS app is starting a test of a new feed for kids that’s designed to show short clips taken from its library of children’s content, Bloomberg News reports. The “Kids Clips” feature uses a similar interface to TikTok or Instagram Reels in an attempt to surface child-friendly content. But while competing services are primarily formatted for viewing in portrait, Kids Clips’ videos are designed to be viewed in landscape.Kids Clips joins a similar feature Netflix launched to promote its comedy content earlier this year called “Fast Laughs.” Both features have a similar aim: to promote Netflix’s content using short clips similar to what users are already watching on social media. A screenshot of the Kids Clips interface... Continue reading…

Niantic Today let’s talk about a concept that we can all agree is well defined and no one is yet sick of talking about: the metaverse.OK, maybe you are a little tired of hearing about it. For a company often accused of being unable to do anything but copy, Facebook-now-Meta’s announcement this summer that it would pivot to the metaverse has already inspired a remarkable number of clones. As David Pierce notes at Protocol today, the tech world has recently announced “a fashion metaverse, an industrial metaverse, an entertainment metaverse, a gaming metaverse, [and] a shark metaverse.” (He forgot Match Group’s forthcoming dating metaverse, though in fairness I’m trying to forget it too.)But as oppressive as this wave of announcements can feel,... Continue reading…

Nvidia has announced a new platform for creating virtual agents named Omniverse Avatar. The platform combines a number of discrete technologies — including speech recognition, synthetic speech, facial tracking, and 3D avatar animation — which Nvidia says can be used to power a range of virtual agents.In a presentation at the company’s annual GTC conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang showed off a few demos using Omniverse Avatar tech. In one, a cute animated character in a digital kiosk talks a couple through the menu at a fast food restaurant, answering questions like which items are vegetarian. The character uses facial-tracking technology to maintain eye-contact with the customers and respond to their facial expressions. “This will be... Continue reading…

A nighttime view of the Crew Dragon capsule just before splashdown | Image: NASA A crew of four astronauts successfully returned to Earth this evening, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. Their arrival back on the planet brings an end to a more than six-month-long stay aboard the International Space Station, and it paves the way for another crew of four to launch to the ISS in the coming week.The crew includes two NASA astronauts, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency. The group launched to the space station on April 23rd atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, part of a mission called Crew-2.Their flight marks the... Continue reading…

Image: Valve We knew from the beginning that Valve’s upcoming $400 Steam Deck handheld wouldn’t play every Steam game perfectly out of the box. It runs Windows games on Linux using the Proton compatibility layer, and some of the biggest games on Steam use anti-cheat software that, historically, hasn’t worked with Proton. But on Friday, Valve revealed that this should no longer be a problem for BattlEye, one of the biggest anti-cheat vendors out there.“BattlEye on Proton integration has reached a point where all a developer needs to do is reach out BattlEye to enable it for their title. No additional work is required by the developer besides that communication,” writes Valve, adding that Mount & Blade II Bannerlord and Ark: Survival Evolved are... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google has announced an exciting new feature for its Arts and Culture app: the ability to search through thousands of paintings to find a look-alike for your pet. The company says its “Pet Portraits” feature will let you take a picture of a dog, cat, fish, bird, reptile, horse, or rabbit, and have a machine learning algorithm find pieces of art that feature a similar-looking animal. The process only takes a few seconds, and as a bonus you’ll be able to tap on the pieces of artwork to learn more about them. You can even save a video slideshow of your results.I tried out Pet Portraits on my cat, Aslan, and the results were mixed — while the app was able to generate a beautiful (okay, mostly tan) color palette based on his fur, most of the... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge AMC boss Adam Aron said today that the theater chain is exploring how it can accept Shiba Inu in addition to other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin. In addition, AMC is evidently exploring its own cryptocurrency, which would truly cement the company as king of the memestocks.That AMC appears to be flirting with the idea of accepting (another) meme currency in exchange for actual goods and services isn’t entirely surprising. AMC was effectively rescued midway through the pandemic by meme stock Reddit traders, and Aron has been leaning heavily into the company’s relationship with these shareholders ever since. Hearing about AMC’s crypto ambitions has not only come to be expected during the company’s meetings with shareholders,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Justice Department has announced the arrest and indictment of an alleged member of the REvil hacking group, linked to ransomware attacks on IT firm Kaseya, an Apple supplier, and more. According to the department, Ukrainian national Yaroslav Vasinskyi is facing extradition to the US after Polish authorities detained him in October and after the US indicted him for cybercrimes in August, as revealed by a now-unsealed court document. The arrest, along with the government seizing assets it says are linked to REvil’s operations, is another step in the fight against ransomware, which has been a growing issue for US-based companies.The DOJ also says it has seized $6.1 million in assets from the FTX crypto trading exchange, allegedly... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Hackers may have just made some big strides towards possibly jailbreaking the PlayStation 5 over the weekend, with the hacking group Fail0verflow claiming to have managed to obtain PS5 root keys allowing them to decrypt the console’s firmware.Additionally, Andy Nguyen (a security engineer at Google who’s better known under his handle, theflow0) managed to access the PS5’s debug settings menu on a retail PS5 over the weekend, too. Both exploits were spotted by Wololo.net.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you want to buy anything on Amazon.com, you’ll generally need a credit or debit card — but in 2022, the online retailer will begin accepting Venmo as well. Venmo parent company PayPal announced the news (via GeekWire) during its Q3 earnings call on Monday.We’re pretty sure that’s the first third-party payments platform Amazon has embraced in recent memory. You can’t use PayPal itself to buy things on Amazon! (Here’s a list of the payment methods Amazon does accept as of today). You might cite Amazon’s recent buy-now, pay-later partnership with Affirm, but that still requires credit. Venmo, by comparison, acts more like a bank account for some mobile users, complete with a (sometimes expensive) check-cashing feature.Details on the... Continue reading…

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images Space tourism venture Virgin Galactic says that 100 people purchased more expensive tickets to fly on the company’s suborbital spaceplane after it reopened ticket sales this August. That means that the company has roughly 700 ticket holders now for quick tourist trips to space, about 300 less than the 1,000 tickets Virgin Galactic is hoping to sell ahead of starting commercial flights of its vehicles. The company announced the news during its third-quarter earnings release out on Monday.Though Virgin Galactic still has more tickets it aims to sell, the company says the additional sales from this quarter were better than expected. “We’re selling tickets ahead of the pace we planned,” Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s CEO, said during... Continue reading…

Robinhood says more than 7 million customers affected by ‘data security incident’ | Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge Trading platform Robinhood said Monday that personal information for more than 7 million customers was accessed during a data breach on November 3rd. The company said in a news release that it does not appear that Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, or debit card numbers were exposed, and no customers have had “financial loss” due to the incident.An unauthorized third party “socially engineered a customer support employee by phone,” Robinhood said, and was able to access its customer support systems. The attacker was able to get a list of email addresses for approximately 5 million people and full names for a separate group of 2 million people. For a smaller group of about 310 people, additional personal information,... Continue reading…

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker has been delayed for two weeks, arriving December 7th instead of November 23rd. In a blog post, game director Naoki Yoshida says the delay was to ensure adequate quality assurance testing in the final days of development.Yoshida says the decision to delay the game arose from a desire to ensure Endwalker’s story was something that befit 11 years of Final Fantasy XIV’s epic storytelling.“We remained firmly resolved to adjust down to the smallest nuances and ensure our writing covers even the finest points of the vast and intricate story that has spanned these past 11 years since the original FFXIV to ensure that everyone can fully enjoy their adventure in Endwalker,” Yoshida writes. However, the time it took... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Alphabet, Google’s parent company, briefly hit a market cap of $2 trillion. The tech behemoth’s market cap is currently at a comfortable $1.98 trillion, but crept over the $2 trillion mark midday Monday, later closing out at $2,987.03 per share. Alphabet’s market cap has just about doubled from $1 trillion since January 2020.In the third quarter of 2021, Alphabet had a record quarter, earning a hefty $65.1 billion. The company reported that its revenue soared by 41 percent, while its profits jumped by almost 69 percent. Google Search saw a slight increase in profit, climbing to $37.9 billion from $35.8 billion in the previous quarter. YouTube, another Alphabet company, earned $7.2 billion in the most recent quarter.Throughout the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple will continue to accept App Store app submissions through the holidays, marking a shift from the company’s approach in the past. Typically, Apple doesn’t let developers make submissions through the App Store Connect portal for a few days around Christmas, meaning that they would have to rush to release apps or updates ahead of when many people receive new Apple devices or gift cards as holiday presents. With this change, it seems as if the App Store will hum along largely like you’re used to this holiday season.However, Apple is already suggesting that developers try to stay ahead of things during one of the busiest times of the year. “Due to anticipated high volume, plan to send time-sensitive submissions early,” Apple said in a s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, Congress passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden for his signature. But while the measure makes historic investments in roads and bridges, it also maintains a controversial new cryptocurrency tax reporting requirement that the Treasury Department could apply to miners.Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act requires brokers to report trader information on transactions of more than $10,000 to the IRS. The provision was added to the Senate version of the bill in late July after the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would offset $28 billion of infrastructure costs over the next decade.The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would offset $28... Continue reading…

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc., speaks during the Action on Forests and Land Use session at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, U.K., on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. | Robert Perry/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images Jeff Bezos’ $2 billion plan, announced last week, to plant trees and restore landscapes across Africa and the US has already raised red flags for some conservation experts and activists. Last year, after he pledged $10 billion to fight climate change, activists in the US called him out for not doing enough to cut down Amazon’s pollution or work with local communities while crafting his environmental plans. This time, he’s facing similar criticisms on a global scale.The Bezos Earth Fund announced its latest round of funding on November 1 during a high-profile United Nations climate summit taking place in Glasgow. There aren’t many details out yet, but the fund says it will funnel $1 billion towards planting trees and “revitalizing”... Continue reading…

Peloton has announced that it’s finally added a pause button for its on-demand classes for its Bike and Bike Plus devices, allowing users to temporarily pause workouts in the middle of a class and then resume them.It’s a feature that bewilderingly hasn’t been available until today — and, technically, still isn’t even available on all of Peloton’s products, as the pause button is only rolling out to its cycling bikes for now. The Tread treadmill is set to get a similar update sometime “in the future” — but for now, you’ll have to do your runs all at once.While it’s easy to joke at Peloton’s expense for the outsized deal the company is making over adding so small a feature, it is worth noting that adding a pause button to Peloton... Continue reading…

Image: Rivian Rivian says it will start taking orders for its electric delivery vans in 2022 and will deliver them to fleet customers in “early 2023,” calling into question the status of Amazon’s exclusive rights to the vehicle.The buzzy EV startup — which is slated to go public this week at a valuation of $50 billion or higher — quietly announced the details about its fleet sales plans in a new section of its website that went live Friday afternoon. It also said it will sell fleet versions of its R1T electric pickup truck and R1S electric SUV, meaning it will compete with Ford’s commercial version of the F-150 Lightning, as well as a fleet management platform called FleetOS and a charging infrastructure solution.Electric vans, plus fleet versions... Continue reading…

The “Out West” emote, which features audio of the Travis Scott song “Out West,” has been removed from the Fortnite Item Shop. In fact, the entire section of Fortnite’s Item Shop that housed the dance emote is gone. According to a report from Eurogamer, the “Daily” section of the Item Shop has disappeared with no explanation, and Epic declined to comment to The Verge.

Days after Ford started selling its first-ever electric crate motor, it already sold out (via Ford Authority). Ford just isn’t saying how many were sold.Ford caught the attention of EV and Ford enthusiasts alike when it showcased the Eluminator in an all-electric 1978 F-100. The $3,900 crate motor is the same one that powers the Mustang Mach-E GT, sporting 480 horsepower with 634 pound-feet of torque. Batteries and other components aren’t included with the motor, although Ford plans on making those parts available individually.“Demand has exceeded expectations,” a Ford spokesperson told The Verge. At this point, it remains unclear how e-crate motors were sold or if those numbers surpassed the typical sales for Ford’s gasoline-powered... Continue reading…

Niantic Niantic is releasing a platform for building what it calls “real-world metaverse” apps. Called Lightship, the platform is “built around the parts necessary to stitch together the digital and the real world,” CEO John Hanke tells me.According to Hanke, Lightship will let mobile apps identify whether a user’s camera is pointed at the sky or water, map the surfaces and depth of an environment in real time, or place a virtual object behind a physical one.Niantic is best known for creating one of the most successful mobile games ever, Pokémon Go. With Lightship, Hanke says the company is “opening the vault of tech that we’ve been using to build our products” to help others build “planet-scale AR apps.”Lightship has been in development for... Continue reading…

Clear off some room on your bookshelf because Target and Amazon are having a “buy two, get one free” sale on video games. This sale is unfortunately restricted to physical copies but includes new titles like Call of Duty: Vanguard and Guardians of the Galaxy. While we’re definitely here for the video games, it’s worth mentioning that this deal includes tons of classic and contemporary board games as well, like Exploding Kittens, Animal Crossing Monopoly, and Sushi Go!. If you’re looking to fill out your game collection, we’ve linked to the landing pages for both retailers below.“Buy two, get one free” video games: Amazon“Buy two, get one free” video games: TargetThe HyperX Cloud II Wireless is one of the best gaming headsets for... Continue reading…

The Israeli military has deployed an extensive facial recognition program to track Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to a new report by The Washington Post.Former Israeli soldiers told the Post about a smartphone technology called “Blue Wolf,” which takes photos of Palestinians and stores them in a large-scale database. Once an image is captured, Blue Wolf matches that picture to a person in its database, and as the Post describes, soldiers’ phones will then flash a specific color that signifies if that individual should be arrested, detained, or left undisturbed.“People worry about fingerprinting, but this is that several times over”The Post notes that the Israeli army has been filling up the database with... Continue reading…

Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge There are countless brands that make standing desks, but Fully makes some of the best. And now through November 30th, the day after Cyber Monday, you can get 15 percent off every item available on its online store. That includes its Jarvis standing desks and handy accessories you might want with one, like a monitor arm, powered grommet covers that give you extra plugs and USB charging ports, and more. These deals don’t completely change that these are still pricey products, but if you have a home office, you stand to level up a few rungs on the ergonomic ladder by taking advantage of these deals.If you’re looking for a real wood tabletop for your desk instead of less durable MDF material, the Jarvis standing desk with a bamboo top... Continue reading…

It’s fine, but Apple has unfinished business Continue reading…

McAfee has been acquired for $14 billion | Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Security software company McAfee is going private via a buyout from an investor group in a deal valued at more than $14 billion, the company announced Monday. Bloomberg first reported last week that a likely deal was imminent.McAfee was founded in 1987 by John McAfee and became known for its computer antivirus software. McAfee, the founder, left McAfee, the company, in 1994, and the company was acquired by Intel in 2010 for $7.68 billion. In 2014, Intel announced it was phasing out the McAfee brand name for the security software and rebranding it as “Intel Security.”Last October, the company returned to the public stock market. McAfee said in the announcement that it will continue as a “pure-play consumer cybersecurity” company after... Continue reading…

And the best Forza Horizon yet Continue reading…

Disney and IMAX have announced a collaboration that will see several Marvel movies presented in IMAX’s Expanded Aspect Ratio format on Disney Plus. 13 MCU movies in total will be upgraded to IMAX Enhanced on November 12th, including Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is making its debut on the service that day.While IMAX traditionally uses a squarer 1.43:1 format, Expanded Aspect Ratio is 1.90:1, which is relatively close to the 16:9 ratio of TVs. Marvel movies are generally presented in wider, letterboxed aspect ratios, but many of them feature some 1.90:1 sequences captured with IMAX-certified cameras for a taller picture in IMAX theaters. Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, meanwhile, were shot entirely in the format. ... Continue reading…

Elon Musk responds to US Senator Ron Wyden on his plans to tax billionaires. Is it fair that the world’s richest people pay so little in tax? That in a time of extreme inequality, those that have so much contribute so little in proportion to their vast wealth? These are the questions motivating US Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who’s been calling for new taxes on billionaires.Is it fair that the democracy I live in might have some demands of me? How can I prove that I’m super edgy and totally unfazed by the prospect of paying more tax? These are the questions apparently motivating Elon Musk, who replied to a tweet from Wyden by asking why the senator looks like he’s just orgasmed in his profile picture.

Screenshot: Metal Gear Solid 2 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater are disappearing from digital storefronts today, while Konami renews the licenses for the “historical archive footage” they contain, their publisher has announced. Although the removals are temporary, Konami’s statement doesn’t give a timeline for when the games might return to affected storefronts. “We sincerely ask for your patience and understanding as we work towards making these products available for purchase once again,” the publisher said.The removals affect various digital re-releases of the two games, which originally came out in 2001 and 2004. These include the PS3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita, and Nvidia Shield TV remasters of both games, the Nintendo 3DS... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Disney Plus is offering a pretty killer deal for streamers who may have left or have yet to try its service. For new and eligible returning subscribers, one month of Disney Plus will cost just $2.The offer is one of several promotions the service has announced as part of its anticipated Disney Plus Day event taking place November 12th. In addition to offering a month of its service to eligible users for dirt cheap, subscribers can take advantage of special perks at its parks on Disney Plus Day. The perks include early entry to parks 30 minutes before opening at the Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort, as well as free Disney PhotoPass photo downloads.On the retail front, new merch will hit ShopDisney from across Disney... Continue reading…

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in The Power of the Dog, coming to Netflix December 1st. | Netflix I have noticed this irritating thing where more and more trailers have a scene to introduce the trailer. It is already an introduction! You are wasting precious seconds telling me what I’m about to see instead of just showing me!OK end rant. I finished my (late) binge of Maid on Netflix and am now really interested to read the book. It may have been one of the most realistic descriptions of poverty I’ve ever seen, where even the smallest setback can have a devastating effect, and you’re painfully aware of every penny you earn and where it’s going to go before you even get paid. Also The Morning Show finally had a good, return-to-form episode with Ruthless Cory, Spiraling Chip, and Awful Alex each at their peak. The best scene, though,... Continue reading…

Google There’s a lot to rave about with the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, but their fingerprint scanners are not among those things. Since the Pixel 6 release in October, users have been complaining about its sluggish, unreliable fingerprint scanner that makes the phone a hassle to unlock. Google has finally responded to those complaints, and while it provided an explanation, it didn’t really offer any solid solution (via Engadget).

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon | Image: NASA / Joel Kowsky The SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station has been delayed again, this time to November 10th at 9:03PM ET, NASA said Sunday. Although NASA had originally planned to have a changing of the guard with the Crew-2 astronauts greeting the Crew-3 team before Crew-2 departed, the space agency has decided to return the Crew 2 to Earth first, pushing that mission from Sunday to Monday, November 8th at 2:05PM ET, because of weather concerns.Wednesday so far has an 80 percent chance of favorable weather for liftoff, SpaceX noted in a tweet on Sunday. If all goes to plan the craft will take off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and dock with the ISS at about 7:10PM ET on November 11th.

Elon Musk polled his Twitter followers | Photo by PATRICK PLEUL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Tesla CEO and wealthiest person in the world Elon Musk tweeted out a poll Saturday, asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10 percent of his stock in the automaker, ostensibly to pay more tax. When the poll closed Sunday afternoon, 57.9 percent of more than 3.5 million participants had voted “yes,” and 42.1 percent voted “no.”“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted Saturday. He said in a subsequent tweet that he’d abide by the results of the poll “whichever way it goes.”

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft says OneDrive users on Windows, 7, 8, or 8.1 will be unable to sync their content to the cloud starting on March 1st, 2022, according to a blog post on its Tech Community forum. OneDrive will also no longer receive updates if it’s running on a system that doesn’t have Windows 10 or Windows 11 installed.Files will still be accessible from the OneDrive app no matter what version of Windows you’re using — they’ll just no longer automatically upload to the cloud. To avoid any issues with OneDrive, Microsoft recommends upgrading to a newer version of Windows before March of next year. As for systems that aren’t able to run Windows 10 or Windows 11, Microsoft says that users can still back up their files by uploading them to the... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Earlier this month, Netflix officially got into gaming by rolling out a mobile game service for Android users. While Netflix says that it's working on an iOS version of the service, Bloomberg tech reporter Mark Gurman says that Apple’s App Store policies will prevent Netflix from making games available from its app.Apple bars third-party apps from functioning as a hub for games, which has become a point of contention with cloud gaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Google Stadia. Cloud gaming services can only get around this by offering their games through a web app, just like Facebook has already done.“Apple will need to change its rules or grant Netflix an exemption”According to Gurman’s latest Power On... Continue reading…

Forza Horizon 4 will add sign language interpreters to cut scenes in a post-launch update | Playground Games The developers of Forza Horizon 5 are planning to add on-screen sign language interpreters who would appear in a picture-in-picture display during the game’s cutscenes. The feature won’t be available when the game launches worldwide on November 9th, but Playground Games creative director Mike Brown wrote in a blog post on Xbox Wire that it would be “coming soon.”“We’re constantly listening to the community to make Forza Horizon 5 an inclusive experience for everyone to enjoy,” Brown said in a blog post on Xbox Wire. “With this in mind, the team is excited to share we are also working on American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL) support for cinematics in Forza Horizon 5.” He didn’t offer an exact release date for the... Continue reading…

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge A little over two years ago when Rivian’s all-electric vehicles were still just blueprints, American carmakers Ford and GM were itching to invest. Fast-forward to the present, and Ford wound up becoming one of Rivian’s biggest partners alongside Amazon. What most people may not realize, however, is that Ford nearly lost its spot to GM.This Wall Street Journal report describes some of the clandestine dealings in cinematic detail, and explores how Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe’s bond with Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s former president of global operations, became the foundation of Ford’s investment in the company.According to the WSJ, Hinrichs first met with Scaringe in 2018. But because Ford had just missed its earnings targets, it wasn’t ready to... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix For years, fans have been wondering just when the heck League of Legends developer Riot would make an animated series. It seemed inevitable. The studio previously created stunning animated shorts to promote everything from new characters to esports tournaments. And with an increasing focus on expanding League’s storytelling — something that’s tough to do within the confines of a team-based strategy game — a show made a whole lot of sense. Now, it’s real, with a nine-episode series called Arcane. The best part: not only is it a lot of fun, but you don’t have to know anything about League to get into it.Arcane is set (mostly) in a city called Piltover early on, which is on the verge of a big change that could impact the entirety of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Evidence is mounting that WhatsApp may be working on a Communities feature. XDA Developers first spotted the possibility in October, but now WABetaInfo has come forward with similar findings.According to WABetaInfo, the Communities feature appears to give group admins more power over groups. This includes the ability to create groups within groups, which may be similar to how channels are arranged beneath an umbrella Discord community. Photo by WABetaInfo Admins may be able to invite new users via a Community Invite Link and then start messaging other members. It’s hard to tell how exactly these chats might look right now, but WABetaInfo notes that they appear to be end-to-end encrypted.It also looks like a subtle... Continue reading…

More leaked documents suggest Facebook is aware of its problems | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook’s own internal research found 1 in 8 of its users reported compulsive social media use that interfered with their sleep, work, and relationships— what the social media platform calls “problematic use” but is more commonly known as “internet addiction,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The social media platform had a team focused on user well-being, which suggested ways to curb problematic use, some of which were put into place. But the company shut down the team in 2019, according to the WSJ.Pratiti Raychoudhury, a vice president of research for Meta, Facebook’s new parent company, writes in a blog post that the WSJ misrepresented the research (a claim the company has made about some of the other articles the WSJ has... Continue reading…

New vaccine rules have been frozen by an appeals court | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A federal appeals court on Saturday issued a stay against the Biden administration’s vaccine rules for US companies. The new rule announced Thursday requires workers at businesses with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, or submit to weekly testing. The rule requires affected companies to provide paid time for employees to get vaccinated, and to ensure any unvaccinated employees wear face masks while at work. The deadline for meeting the provisions is January 4th, 2022.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton petitioned for an emergency stay of the rule, which was to be enforced by the Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The petition was joined by attorneys general from Louisiana,... Continue reading…