The Verge

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told employees Monday that the company would significantly slow hiring for the rest of the year after warning investors that its revenue wouldn’t grow as fast as expected.“Like many companies, we continue to face rising inflation and interest rates, supply chain shortages and labor disruptions, platform policy changes, the impact of the war in Ukraine, and more,” Spiegel wrote in a memo to employees obtained by The Verge. He went on to say that Snap expects to report revenue below the low-end of the guidance it gave investors for the current quarter. That news was also disclosed in a filing with the SEC that sent Snap’s stock price cratering to a low it hasn’t seen since mid-2020.Like its larger competitor in... Continue reading…

Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images A US appeals court says Florida’s ban on much social media moderation likely violates the First Amendment, setting up a legal showdown over social networks’ speech rights. Today, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of an earlier court order blocking Florida’s SB 7072 while a lawsuit proceeds. It directly contradicts a recent ruling over Texas’ similar moderation ban, setting up a split that the Supreme Court could step in to resolve.The Eleventh Circuit ruling focuses on whether Florida’s law — which heavily restricts suspensions, fact-checking, and content removal involving political candidates and media enterprises — plausibly violates the First Amendment. Florida’s defense of the law characterizes web platforms as... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The University of Oregon is doing a study on the effect phones have on mental health, using Google’s Health Studies app. The goal of the study is to see how people are actually using their phones and how that affects their well-being. A post on the company blog written by one of the lead researchers on the project says that the aim of the research will ultimately be able to help companies design better products and even shape policy and education in the future.According to the blog post, researchers are using the app because it can help them get a better picture of how people actually use their phones, as opposed to other studies when people are asked to track and report their own usage of apps — a method that can be less accurate than... Continue reading…

The LG C1 pairs 4K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate with FreeSync and G-Sync for an amazing gaming experience. | Image: LG Our inaugural deals post this week is full of amazing deals, many of which are currently matching their best prices to date. Both the 65-inch and 77-inch models of LG’s C1 OLED are on sale for their lowest prices ever at Amazon, for instance, with the 65-inch panel going for $1,596.99 instead of $2,499.99. Other sizes are available for a discount as well, but you’ll want to direct your attention to either the 65- or 77-inch models for the best value.While we’ve never reviewed the C1, several staff members own the 2021 model and can’t seem to shut up about it — not just because it offers excellent visual fidelity but also because of its list of excellent, gamer-centric features. In addition to 4K resolution and support for Dolby Vision —... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The Game Workers Alliance, the union of quality assurance workers at Activision subsidiary studio Raven Software, has won their union vote. The votes were tallied today and the union passed with 19 out of 22 votes with two challenged ballots. The election makes the Game Workers Alliance (GWA) the first union for Activision Blizzard and only the second formal union in US video game industry.

AT&T subscribers can try a cloud-streamed version of Control Ultimate Edition. | Image: AT&T AT&T customers can now play a cloud-streamed version of Control Ultimate Edition in their browser that uses the white-label version of Google’s Stadia technology. Customers on an AT&T postpaid plan can check out the game by visiting this link on a computer or mobile device and entering their phone number and billing zip code to jump in.Control is the second experience AT&T offers using Stadia’s tech, which Google offers under the brand Immersive Stream for Games. The first was a demo of Batman: Arkham Knight, which launched for AT&T subscribers last year, though that works only on a computer. But AT&T’s Control offering isn’t a demo — it’s the full game, the company confirmed to The Verge. And since it’s the Ultimate Edition, that means... Continue reading…

Speak to Chat works with many of Sony’s high-end headphones and earbuds. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony’s best headphones and earbuds come with a wide mix of software features. Aside from helpful tricks like adaptive sound control and EQ customization, a more recent addition has been Speak to Chat. It first debuted with the W-1000XM4 in 2020 and has since come to newer Sony products as well.Since it’s turned off by default, there’s a good chance you haven’t yet tried Speak to Chat. But it’s a very convenient feature that can help you communicate with others without having to fully disconnect from your music.What is Speak to Chat?Speak to Chat is a software feature that’s designed to help you talk to people and have brief interactions without worrying about finding and pressing buttons to activate ambient / transparency sound mode.... Continue reading…

Need to fix your Valve Steam Deck handheld gaming PC? iFixit is selling official parts for practically every piece of the console — and after accidentally putting those components up for sale on Friday, it’s now pushed most of the collection (and a large collection of repair guides) live for everyone.Unfortunately, it looks like you won’t be able to buy some of the most desirable items if you click right now. The motherboard and daughterboards are MIA (if you were hoping to build a FrankenDeck), the fan and screens are out of stock (sorry, upgraders), there aren’t any thumbsticks left, and iFixit only has a literal armful of the Steam Deck’s plastic case halves last we checked.iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens tells The Verge says that won’t be... Continue reading…

Photo by Kimberly White/Bloomberg via Getty Images Heatsinks are the default when it comes to keeping components cool on your PC and practically every other electronic device, but researchers may have found a way to chill your components without the use of these slotted hunks of metal. A report from Science Daily (via Tom’s Hardware) highlights a new, sleeker approach to cooling that involves coating the entirety of the device with poly and copper.If you aren’t familiar with heatsinks, they’re typically made of copper or aluminum, two metals that serve as thermal conductors. They often come with several metal fins that pull and spread heat away from the essential components on your device to help prevent them from overheating. The heat then gets pushed out of the system with a nearby... Continue reading…

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has sued Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. The suit alleges that Zuckerberg was “directly responsible” for creating the lax privacy rules that allowed the consulting firm to harvest user data without consent, then failing to promptly inform users and ensure the data was deleted. It follows a failed attempt to name Zuckerberg in a similar suit against Facebook itself.Racine’s fundamental accusations haven’t changed since the earlier filing last year. The suit covers an incident in which University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan collected personal information from around 270,000 Facebook users plus data from friends who hadn’t consented to the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram now has auto-generated captions, which means it can automatically transcribe any videos you watch on the app. But before you start seeing captions appear in the app, you’ll probably have to enable the feature first, and the same goes if you want to post videos with captions.Before we get started, it’s worth noting that auto-generated captions are available in 17 languages at the time of writing: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Vietnamese, Italian, German, Turkish, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Urdu, Malay, Hindi, Indonesian, and Japanese. Instagram plans on adding support for more languages in the future.Here’s how to turn captions on and off on Instagram for iPhone and Android, whether you just want to watch videos... Continue reading…

Reebok’s adaptive footwear collection is called Fit to Fit. | Image: Reebok Nike isn’t the only sneaker company thinking about accessible shoe design. Reebok announced it’s partnering with Zappos to launch its first adaptive footwear collection, called Fit to Fit. The collection features two sneakers that are designed for easy entry and exit for people with disabilities.The shoes were designed in collaboration with Zappos Adaptive — the e-commerce site’s vertical that acts as a shopping hub for accessible shoes, clothing, and accessories. The $90 Nanoflex Parafit TR are trainers that feature a mesh upper, side zipper, and heel pull tab. Meanwhile, the $65 Club MEMT Parafit are lifestyle sneakers with an extra 4E wide fit, side zipper, and leather upper. Both shoes feature high-abrasion rubber outsoles for... Continue reading…

Drew Anthony Smith The latest self-driving startup to allow its vehicles to roam the streets without a human minder is Argo AI, the startup backed by Ford and Volkswagen. Last week, the company announced that it is testing its fully driverless vehicles in Miami, Florida, and Austin, Texas. Argo employees will ride in the passenger seat of the vehicles to test out the company’s robotaxi service before it opens to the public.The announcement comes after a period of consolidation in the AV industry, leaving only a handful of well-funded companies left to push their vision of robotic cars as a solution to the auto safety crisis that has gripped the nation for decades.Argo has been testing its fourth-generation vehicles in Miami, Austin, and Washington, DC,... Continue reading…

Ethan Hunt and his allies on a boat together. | Image: Paramount Pictures After leaking online over the weekend, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s first trailer has unexpectedly arrived in a blaze of hype and death-defying stunt work.Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is a man on the run in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’s new trailer that finds the infamous Impossible Missions Force agent being pulled into another job whose outcome will shape the arc of human history. It isn’t clear what sort of MacGuffin former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) is describing to Hunt as the target of this particular mission. But its ability to “control the truth” makes it a powerful enough object that Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and Alanna... Continue reading…

The popular wedding planning website Zola, known for its online gift registries, guest list management, and wedding websites, confirmed Monday that hackers had managed to access the accounts of a number of its users and tried to initiate fraudulent cash transfers.Over the weekend, some Zola users posted on social media that linked bank accounts had been used to purchase gift cards. One tweet flagged by a Reddit user claimed to show cracked Zola accounts being resold on the black market and used to buy gift vouchers.Zola’s director of communications, Emily Forrest, told The Verge that the unauthorized account access took place through a “credential stuffing” attack, where hackers test out email and password combinations stolen from... Continue reading…

Take-Two has officially completed its $12.7 billion deal for social game developer Zynga, the two companies announced Monday. With the acquisition, Take-Two not only takes ownership of big Zynga franchises like FarmVille but also gets access to Zynga’s expertise building hugely popular free-to-play mobile games.Many notable game studios have invested heavily into mobile, and some of the biggest titles have proven to be absolutely massive revenue drivers. For example, Activision’s Call of Duty: Mobile, which launched in October 2019, recently surpassed $1.5 billion in lifetime revenue, according to Sensor Tower. And in November, Sensor Tower said Krafton’s PUBG Mobile surpassed an eye-popping $7 billion in lifetime revenue. (Tencent is... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Good news for Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 owners: the wait is over. Google Assistant is finally available for download starting today.Google Assistant for Wear OS 3 is available for download in the Google Play Store and can be launched from the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic’s app menu. However, you can also use voice commands to open Google Assistant or reprogram the watches’ home button as a shortcut.This update has been a long time coming. When Google and Samsung first announced Wear OS 3, the companies promised that the unified platform would give Samsung smartwatch users more choice in apps. Previously, Samsung’s Tizen-based smartwatches could only offer Bixby as a digital assistant. The idea was that Wear OS 3 would let consumers... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge ‘We need politics. We need public policy. We need social movements’ Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Food and Drug Administration committee will meet in mid-June to review data on COVID-19 vaccines for children six months through five years old, the agency announced Monday. If all goes as expected, it could sign off on the shots for that age group within days of that meeting.The announcement came just after Pfizer / BioNTech said in a Monday morning press release that three doses of their COVID-19 vaccine produced a strong immune response in children between six months and five years old. They plan to submit the data to the Food and Drug Administration this week.A preliminary analysis of data from the clinical trial of 1,678 children also showed that the shots were around 80 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images GameStop has launched a beta for its very own Ethereum wallet that will let users store, send, and receive both cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through their web browsers. The wallet is currently available as an extension for Google Chrome and Brave, but GameStop’s wallet website indicates it will also be available as an iPhone app in the future.After GameStop reached meme stock status last year, the company’s fan base has become largely split between two groups: gamers and investors. Those dedicated to “hodling” the stock may be in favor of GameStop’s foray into Web3, but many gamers dislike having the concept wedged into their pastime as much or more than they used to hate GameStop’s preorder policies or its insulting... Continue reading…

Instagram Sans is the new typeface you’ll see all over the app. | Image: Instagram Instagram rolled out a big “brand refresh” today, which is mostly a fancy term for freshening up some marketing materials and making big hand-wavy statements about logos. And there’s plenty of that here, too. (Can I interest you in a long digression about illuminated gradients?) But there’s also one much bigger change: Instagram created its own typeface, called Instagram Sans, that it plans to use broadly going forward both in marketing and in the app itself.Instagram Sans was inspired by Instagram’s logo, the company said, and “reflects the shape of the glyph and our commitment to simplicity and craft.” (Like I said, hand-wavy.) It’s inspired in large part by the combination of squares and circles, or as Instagram lovingly calls them,... Continue reading…

The Odyssey Neo G8 in action. | Image: Samsung Samsung’s latest high-end gaming monitor — the curved 32-inch Odyssey Neo G8 — is now available to preorder for $1,500 and will be available to purchase on June 6th, the company has announced. The news follows its reveal back at CES in January.The Odyssey Neo G8 is notable for having a 240Hz refresh rate, making it one of, if not the, fastest-refreshing 4K monitors on the market. Other features include a claimed peak brightness of 2,000 nits, support for Adaptive-Sync (which means it’ll do variable refresh rates with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs), and a curvature of 1000R. Image: Samsung Its curved display makes the monitor deep. Image: Samsung Its looks make it clear this is meant as a... Continue reading…

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven. The Upside Down is back and more brutal than ever Continue reading…

Finally, some feathered dinos are ready for their close-up Continue reading…

Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI has been ordered to delete all data belonging to UK residents by the country’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO also fined Clearview £7.5 million ($9.4 million) for failing to follow the UK’s data protection laws.It’s the fourth time Clearview has been ordered to delete national data in this way, following similar orders and fines issued in Australia, France, and Italy.Clearview claims to have scraped 20 billion images from sources like Facebook and InstagramClearview claims its facial recognition database contains some 20 billion images scraped from public sources like Facebook and Instagram. It previously sold its software to an array of... Continue reading…

Corsair, after having been a leader in the desktop space for decades, is releasing its first-ever gaming laptop. The new Voyager a1600 is an AMD powerhouse, equipped with both Ryzen 6000-series processors and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series. The device is Corsair’s first venture into mobile hardware after acquiring the enthusiast PC builder Origin in 2019.We don’t know with complete certainty what this device will look like yet since the pictures Corsair has provided us with are only renders, and we only got a brief peek during AMD’s Computex keynote. Still, take a look and one feature will likely jump out at you: there’s a touch bar. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge A closer look at an actual Corsair Voyager.... Continue reading…

Just a few years ago, you could barely find a laptop with an AMD chip. Then, they started sprouting up in a few of the best notebooks you could buy. Now, AMD says its chips will feature in 200 different laptop models in 2022 — and with the just revealed “Mendocino,” announced at Computex 2022, it’s trying to “redefine the everyday laptop” as a budget machine with decent battery life.We’ve no idea whether it’ll deliver on that notion, but what it’s promising sounds like a good start: a new series of Ryzen laptop chips that combine four last-gen Zen 2 CPU cores with the latest RDNA 2 graphics on TSMC’s 6nm process to deliver over 10 hours of battery life on a charge — all for a price between $399 and $699. That includes both Windows... Continue reading…

Yes, the lid actually looks like that. | Image: AMD This fall, AMD is planning a clean break with the past, and it thinks your need for speed might convince you to do the same. Today at Computex 2022, the company revealed the key facets of its next-generation Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs, their Zen 4 architecture, and — for the first time in five years — a brand-new kind of motherboard you’ll need to buy. While even some of the company’s oldest AM4 motherboards can be updated to support its latest Ryzen 5000-series desktop CPUs, the upcoming Ryzen 7000 requires AM5.As the company told us in January, the Ryzen 7000 are the first PC chips based on a 5nm process, and the AM5 motherboard platform is designed to support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 out of the box.AM5 = 5nm + DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 + 5GHzBut... Continue reading…

Computex is set to begin in a matter of hours. | Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images Computex is just hours away and will feature keynotes from some of the biggest names in tech, including AMD, Nvidia, and Microsoft. There will almost certainly be some exciting announcements from each brand, but since Computex takes place in Taipei, Taiwan, the keynotes don’t occur at the most convenient times (at least for those of us in North America).Microsoft and AMD’s keynotes will have you staying up into the wee hours of the morning tonight, while Nvidia’s keynote doesn’t take place until late tomorrow evening. Here’s how and when to tune into each keynote:How to watch AMD’s keynoteAMD CEO Lisa Su is set to speak in a keynote titled “AMD Advancing the High-Performance Computing Experience,” which is set to highlight AMD’s... Continue reading…

Hyundai is building facilities dedicated to manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries in Savannah, Georgia, marking Hyundai’s first EV-only plant in the US (via CNBC). The South Korean automaker will spend $5.5 billion on the new facilities and will receive an additional $1 billion investment from its suppliers.Hyundai expects production at the 2,923-acre site to begin in the first half of 2025, with construction starting in early 2023. The EV factory is set to make 300,000 vehicles per year and will add around 8,100 new jobs. Hyundai doesn’t specify which EV models will be manufactured at the plant — it only hints at a “wide range” of models hitting Georgia’s assembly lines. The company doesn’t reveal much about its... Continue reading…

Valve has confirmed that The International will take place in Singapore this October. | Photo credit should read STR/AFP via Getty Images Dota 2’s annual tournament, The International, will take place in Singapore this October. While Valve has held The International in the US, Canada, China, Germany, and Romania in the past, this is the first time the global esports competition is heading to a country in Southeast Asia.Valve teased the upcoming event in a tweet but didn’t offer any additional details besides a location and date. The tournament is known for its very generous rewards, with last’s years winning team getting a piece of the $40 million prize pool. That large sum is crowdfunded by in-game purchases made by the Dota 2 community and has only continued to increase over the years. We don't know how much is up for grabs at this year’s competition, but we likely... Continue reading…

Ellison contributed $1 billion in support of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people and co-founder of the Oracle software company, was involved in a November 2020 call to develop plans to contest the results of the US presidential election, according to a report from The Washington Post. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Fox News host Sean Hannity, Donald Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow, and True the Vote attorney James Bopp Jr., also participated in the call.As reported by the Post, details of the call surfaced in a court filing associated with a legal battle between True the Vote, a nonprofit organization that promotes baseless claims about election fraud, and Fair Fight, a voting rights organization led by Georgia politician Stacey Abrams. Last year, Fair Fight filed a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is piloting a program that has its contracted Flex drivers picking up and delivering packages from malls, as first reported by Bloomberg. The program, which Bloomberg says Amazon has been running since last year, could help Amazon fulfill orders for same-day or two-day deliveries.“This is just another way we are able to connect Amazon sellers with customers via convenient delivery options,” Amazon spokesperson Lauren Samaha said in an emailed statement to The Verge. Samaha added that only a handful of sellers are participating in the program, but didn’t specify which ones.It’s not entirely clear where Amazon is running the test, either. Drivers who spoke to Bloomberg about the program cite picking up packages from malls located... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Chinese display manufacturer Beijing Oriental Electronics (BOE) could lose out on 30 million display orders for the upcoming iPhone 14 after it reportedly altered the design of the iPhone 13’s display to increase yield rate, or the production of non-defective products, according to a report from The Elec (via 9to5Mac).Apple tasked BOE with making iPhone 13 displays last October, a short-lived deal that ended earlier this month when Apple reportedly caught BOE changing the circuit width of the iPhone 13’s display’s thin-film transistors without Apple’s knowledge. (Did they really think Apple wouldn’t notice?).This decision could continue to haunt BOE, however, as Apple may take the company off the job of making the OLED display for the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Cryptocurrency exchange FTX will soon allow for traditional stock trading alongside its crypto offerings, the company announced in a press release (via The Wall Street Journal). The functionality is currently available to a select number of users in the US, but it’s aiming to roll it out to more traders in the coming months.FTX says it will offer commission-free trading with access to “hundreds of US exchange-listed securities” including both common stocks and ETFs. It will let customers add money to their accounts through credit card deposits, ACH transfers, and wire transfers. FTX also says it’s the first exchange to let users fund their accounts with fiat-backed stablecoins, such as USDC. While the price of stablecoins isn’t... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has reached an interim agreement with Match Group, the dating app provider behind Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid, that will allow its apps to remain on the Google Play Store while offering alternate payment systems, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.Earlier this month, Match Group filed a complaint against Google, alleging the company “illegally monopolized the market for distributing apps” by requiring app developers to use Google’s billing system and then taking up to a 30 percent cut on any in-app purchases. Match Group later sought a temporary restraining order against Google, but withdrew its request on Friday after Google made some concessions.Google must make a “good faith” effort to build “additional billing... Continue reading…

The Google Nest Wifi router works standalone, in pairs, or with added remote points. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge There are many ways to get your weekend started right and, unsurprisingly, one of our favorites here at Verge Deals is with some quality tech deals. Teeing off first is the Google Nest Wifi mesh router system. Wellbots has a few different configurations of the Nest Wifi available with special discounts, including the standalone router for just $119 ($50 off when you use code 50VERGE at checkout), the router and one additional Point to extend the mesh network for $189 ($80 off with code 80VERGE), and the router plus two Points for $249 ($100 off with code 100VERGE).The important thing here is to pick the right setup for your home depending on how much space you need to cover. The Nest Wifi router by itself is rated to cover up to 2,200... Continue reading…

I’m starting to think Apple doesn’t want us to repair them Continue reading…

One of the Steam Deck’s joysticks. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge The era of fixing your own gadgets has nearly arrived, and Valve’s Steam Deck handheld gaming PC may be setting the best example yet — not only does it offer a repair-friendly design, but it now looks like almost every part will be sold separately at iFixit.This evening, the company prematurely revealed a huge collection of its promised repair parts at its website, and we were surprised to see everything down to the motherboard with the AMD Aerith chip at the heart of the Steam Deck will soon be available, admittedly for a pricey $350. Image: iFixit The Steam Deck motherboard. In fact, iFixit will even sell parts that might be considered upgrades for an existing Steam Deck — if you decide you’d rather have... Continue reading…

Boeing’s Starliner coming in for docking, as seen from the International Space Station | Image: NASA TV This evening, Boeing’s new passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, successfully docked itself to the International Space Station — demonstrating that the vehicle can potentially bring humans to the ISS in the future. It’s a crucial capability that Starliner has finally validated in space after years of delays and failures.Starliner is in the midst of a key test flight for NASA called OFT-2, for Orbital Flight Test-2. The capsule, developed by Boeing for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, was made to transport NASA’s astronauts to and from the space station. But before anyone climbs on board, NASA tasked Boeing with conducting an uncrewed flight demonstration of Starliner to show that the capsule can hit all of the major milestones... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s rumored mixed reality headset seems like the worst-kept secret in tech, and a new report about the device from The Information (its second this week) is chock full of details about the unannounced product’s turbulent development.One of the most notable parts of the story is about Apple’s decision to go with a standalone headset. At one point, Apple hadn’t yet decided whether to move forward with a more powerful VR headset that would be paired with a base station or a standalone one. While Apple’s AR / VR leader Mike Rockwell apparently preferred the version with the base station — which included a processor that eventually shipped as the M1 Ultra, according to The Information — Apple executives chose to go with the standalone... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter announced an update on Friday that should significantly improve the experience inside third-party Twitter apps: it’s giving developers far more access to its reverse chronological timeline. This update to Twitter’s recently launched API v2, the interface that developers use to get data from Twitter, is a new (and, in my opinion, encouraging) step in Twitter’s journey to better support developers.As Twitter notes in its announcement post, the new API v2 feature gives developers a way to “retrieve the most recent Tweets and Retweets posted by the authenticated user and the accounts they follow.” In other words, a developer can ask to see the data that Twitter shows you when you load up the first party app with the “Latest Tweets”... Continue reading…

Currently, the only official way to install Android apps on Windows is through Amazon’s store. It seems like Microsoft isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to the system that lets Windows 11 run Android apps: on Friday, the company announced an update that upgrades the version of Android running on your computer and helps make the apps feel more at home running on a PC. The Windows Subsystem for Android update is currently only available to test for Windows Insiders, but that’s probably a good thing for reasons we’ll touch on in just a moment.The headlining improvement is an update to the version of Android that underpins Windows’ ability to run mobile apps. The current public release seems to be using Android 11 (based on some prodding I did using developer tools), but the version that Microsoft is testing is running... Continue reading…

Image: CBS / Paramount Plus The show’s reach exceeds its grasp Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Chat has replaced Hangouts and will now display banners warning you against potential phishing and malware attacks coming from personal accounts, Google announced on Thursday. This tweak for Google Chat is the latest expansion of Google’s attempts to prevent phishing.During its 2022 I/O developer conference, Google discussed several security measures it has implemented to enhance user safety, including warnings against potential security issues and recommendations to fix them. Google also laid out other plans for security measures, like expanded two-step verification, ad customization, and more data security. Image: Google Warning labels about suspicious links in Google Chat. Google’s new warning... Continue reading…

An array of electricity producing wind turbines (aka the San Gorgonio Pass wind farm) are viewed along Interstate 10 on May 11, 2022, near Palm Springs, California. | Photo by George Rose/Getty Images Better wind forecasting can save American consumers millions of dollars a year on their collective utility bills, a new study finds. Wind energy costs have already plummeted thanks to more efficient turbines, but there’s still a major hurdle to overcome when it comes to renewable energy: intermittency. Unlike coal and gas-fired power plants, wind and solar farms can only churn out as much electricity as the weather will allow.So, accurate weather forecasts are crucial for utilities to be able to plan how much wind energy they’ll have on hand on any given day. Wind energy has grown quickly to power nearly 10 percent of the US electricity mix today. The Biden administration has a goal of reaching a carbon pollution-free energy grid by... Continue reading…

MGM In George Miller’s upcoming Three Thousand Years of Longing, the key to getting the most out of magical wishes without suffering repercussions isn’t being clever or trying to outsmart the ancient djinn that’s been trapped in a bottle for countless lifetimes. It’s stalling.Three Thousand Years of Longing — an epic fantasy based on novelist A.S. Byatt’s short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” — tells the story of Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), a solitary mythography scholar who’s almost entirely thrown herself into her work. The movie’s new trailer finds Alithea on her way to Istanbul both for a conference and a bit of shopping at a bazaar where she just so happens to purchase the bottle containing a djinn (Idris Elba).... Continue reading…

“Exit Strategies.” | Image: Netflix Over its first two seasons, Love, Death and Robots has made good on its name by offering myriad animated shorts spanning sci-fi and horror — and occasionally both at the same time. It’s been bloody and visceral but also frequently uneven. For every smart treatise about the nature of humanity, there was a gorefest that was bloody and shocking and little else. But with volume 3, we get arguably the strongest collection yet: nine genre shorts without a weak link among them.Perhaps the most impressive thing about the third season is how varied the shorts are, which range from seven to 21 minutes long. My personal favorite is “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” directed by Emily Dean, which follows an astronaut stranded on Jupiter’s moon Io. As... Continue reading…

Image: Spotify After introducing its Blend playlists last year, Spotify announced Friday that it’s expanding the feature to include K-pop artists — and yes, that includes the mega-popular boyband BTS.Spotify’s Blend playlists are an easy way for users to create shared playlists based on each user’s listening preferences. In March, the company released updates for the music discovery feature that include the ability to “blend” with up to 10 people or with musical artists. This new K-pop expansion is an example of the latter.The K-pop Blend artists include BTS, Stray Kids, ENHYPEN, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, Nmixx, and AB6IX. The feature will mix your favorite tracks with those of the aforementioned bands. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Spotify feature if it... Continue reading…

How I look at my tablet when it gets support for the latest API. | Image: Amazon Amazon’s next Fire 7 tablet will come with a new version of the company’s Fire OS operating system, called Fire OS 8 (h/t to Liliputing and AFTVNews). It’s based on Android 11, which is a pretty significant upgrade to the foundational tech currently powering Amazon’s tablets; the previous version, Fire OS 7, is based on Android 9, which was released in 2018.According to Amazon’s developer documentation, the update could bring a few new user features. For one, it brings a system-wide dark mode to the OS that developers can make their app follow. Mostly, though, it’s good for privacy and security. Along with various updates to the permissions system, the upgrade should also make it easier for Amazon to push security patches. Google isn’t... Continue reading…