The Verge

NASA/Frank Michaux NASA is aiming to fly its massive, next-generation rocket, the Space Launch System, for the first time in February of 2022, a critical test flight on NASA’s journey to send people back to the Moon. However, plenty of tests still need to go well before the much-delayed vehicle can finally take flight.Confirmation of the new target date, which was rumored in August, comes a day after engineers fully stacked the Space Launch System, or SLS, inside NASA’s massive hangar at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Standing at 322 feet high, the SLS rises taller than the Statue of Liberty. On top of the stack is NASA’s Orion crew capsule, a new spacecraft that’s been developed to carry people into deep space. However, when the SLS flies for the first... Continue reading…

Blizzard Entertainment Jesse McCree, Overwatch’s cowboy hero, has been renamed Cole Cassidy.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Mobile spam calls have been a nuisance for years. I get between four and six robocalls daily, and a quick survey of friends shows that I’m not alone. Every waking day brings with it a new barrage.Robocallers have upped their game by masking their spam with local, genuine-looking phone numbers. Sometimes their nonsense is amusing — like when you get a threatening voicemail about your impending arrest over owed back taxes — but the vast majority of the time, it’s an unwelcome distraction. It’s all too easy for these scammers to wield the power of the internet and fire off countless calls with ease. And once even just a few people fall for a scam, they’ve made enough profit to cover their trivial expenses.Estimates put the number of... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google Meet hosts will soon be able to turn off participants’ microphones or cameras and prevent them from turning them back on, the company announced in a Workspace blog. The feature could be a useful way for hosts to keep noisy or rowdy attendees from continually interrupting meetings even after they have already been muted.The microphone and camera lock feature will be off by default; hosts will have to turn it on during meetings if they want to use it. If your meeting has breakout rooms, any audio and / or video locks made in the main will apply in those, too. The opposite isn’t true, though, meaning that locks applied in individual breakout rooms won’t apply to other breakout rooms or the main room. Image: Google... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Tennessee lawmakers have approved an $884 million incentive package for the “mega campus” near Memphis where Ford plans to make batteries and electric vehicles, according to the Tennessean.The money — which is coming from Tennessee’s current $2.1 billion budget surplus — is the single largest investment in the history of the state. It comes at a time when many major automakers are looking to build new facilities in the US dedicated to EVs, batteries, or other supply chain components necessary for electric vehicles.Ford itself has committed to spending more than $5 billion on the Tennessee project with South Korean battery company SK Innovation, which it calls “Blue Oval City.” Ford is also simultaneously spinning up battery factories... Continue reading…

Even though someone managed to secure early purchases of a couple of Core i9-12900K CPUs, we still didn’t have detailed information about Intel’s upcoming line of Alder Lake chips. A (now-removed, but shown below) sale page popped up on Micro Center, suggesting the chips will be available for $669.99 when they launch on November 4th. The spec sheet reveals this chip will have a 3.2GHz operating frequency, capable of 5.2GHz in Turbo Mode, with 16 cores and 30MB of L3 cache. As expected, the specs reveal it also supports DDR5 memory, PCIe Gen 5, and the Intel Z690 chipset motherboards that should go on sale at the same time.During its Architecture Day 2021 event in August, Intel promised Alder Lake chips with 16 cores using... Continue reading…

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Warning: this story contains descriptions of sexual assault that some readers may find disturbing.Ten people were killed in physical altercations and over 4,000 people were assaulted during Lyft rides from 2017-2019, the company revealed in its first-ever safety report. Also during that period, 105 people died in fatal vehicle crashes involving a Lyft car.The report was long overdue, coming at least two years after Lyft originally said that it would be published. It represents the first set of publicly available data regarding the safety of Lyft’s ride-hailing platform and how it compares to national US averages. The company is currently facing multiple lawsuits from victims of sexual assault and rape.the numbers appear to paint a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The government has successfully hacked the hacking group REvil, the entity behind the ransomware that’s been linked to leaked Apple leaks, attacks on enterprise software vendors, and more, according to a report from Reuters. The outlet’s sources tell it that the FBI, Secret Service, Cyber Command, and organizations from other countries have worked together to take the group’s operations offline this month. The group’s dark web blog, which exposed information gleaned from its targets, is also reportedly offline.Reports about the group going offline started surfacing earlier this week, with TechCrunch writing that its Tor website was no longer available on Monday. There was speculation of a hack, fueled by a forum post from one of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter bought out the email newsletter service, Revue, earlier this year, hoping to engage journalists and writers who want to share long-form content without feeling limited by Twitter’s 280 character limit. Now, the newly integrated service is getting an update.

Image: Apple For a show about an alien invasion, Invasion is decidedly lacking in aliens thus far. The latest sci-fi drama on Apple TV Plus, the series debuts with three episodes, which, theoretically, should give viewers a good sense of what to expect. Instead, those episodes oh-so-slowly introduce you to characters and stories without giving much of a hint as to how it all connects aside from the teaseist of teases. Three hours in, and I’m still not even sure what it’s about.The big hook of Invasion is that it’s a global story. The idea is that you’ll be able to see the impact of this event from a bunch of different perspectives, and at the very least, it succeeds at that (albeit with the expected American-centric viewpoint). Over the first few... Continue reading…

Photo by James Devaney/GC Images The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) says former President Donald Trump’s new social network violated a free and open-source software licensing agreement by ripping off decentralized social network Mastodon. The Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) has 30 days to comply with the terms of the license before its access is terminated — forcing it to rebuild the platform or face legal action.TMTG launched a special purpose acquisition company fundraising effort yesterday with promises to build a sweeping media empire. Its only product so far is a social network called Truth Social that appears strongly to be forked from Mastodon. While anyone can freely reuse Mastodon’s code (and groups like right-wing social network Gab have already... Continue reading…

Complete with treehouse zip line and traps Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Department of Commerce announced a new rule to prevent the sale of hacking tools to China and Russia, The Washington Post reports. The Commerce Department outlined the change in a press release on Wednesday, which requires US companies to have a license in order to sell spyware and other hacking software to countries “of national security or weapons of mass destruction concern.”The rule is complex and purposefully so. If a US company wants to export spyware to a government that poses a national security concern, the company would need a license. But if the software is specifically for cyber defense and not sold to anyone associated with the government, no license would be needed. As The Post explains, companies will need a... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.This week on The Vergecast, Verge managing editor Alex Cranz and senior reporter Alex Heath join Nilay and Dieter to discuss Facebook’s plan to rebrand the company with a new name, the products announced at Apple’s Unleashed event, and what happened at Google’s Pixel 6 event.You can listen here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.

A screenshot from Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp. | Image: Nintendo Nintendo has delayed its upcoming remaster of the first two Advance Wars games. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp had been set to release on December 3rd, but it will now be coming out sometime in spring 2022. “The game just needs a little more time for fine tuning,” Nintendo said in a tweet on Friday.The company announced the remasters of Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising at E3 2021, and Nintendo says they’re “reimagined and rebuilt from the ground up.” You can check out the board game-inspired aesthetic in the game’s debut trailer and in an E3 gameplay demo.Advance Wars is one of many recent game delays. In September, EA’s Battlefield 2042 was bumped nearly a month from October 22nd to November 19th. Last week,... Continue reading…

The 65-inch LCD version is $1,500 today. | Samsung Samsung’s The Frame doubles as both wall art and an HDR-compatible QLED TV. The television offers a decor-friendly design while also displaying customizable images when somebody’s in the room. When turned on, however, it transforms into a smart 4K TV with Alexa built in that boasts a 120Hz refresh rate to display content smoothly. Right now, you can pick it up for its lowest price yet. For a limited time, you can buy the 65-inch 2021 model for $1,500 instead of $2,000 from Amazon.Samsung lovers, you’re in luck: we’ve got another great deal for you, this time on phones. Right now, Amazon is taking $280 off of Samsung’s recently released Galaxy Z Fold 3 – which supports Samsung’s stylus, the S Pen – when you buy the 256GB version... Continue reading…

It might look good, but it doesn’t perform well Continue reading…

The button is simple, almost plain. A flat black circle, simple dye-sublimated letters, and a small LED pinprick to let you know that it’s on. “EXTRA BASS,” it declares in tall, bold capitals. For indeed, the EXTRA BASS button only does one blindingly obvious thing: it adds extra bass.The speaker in question here is a Sony XB90 Extra Bass High Power Audio System. It is a product without pretension, without guile or duplicity. It has Extra Bass in the name, and the eponymous button is a microcosm of the device, a thing that encapsulates the form and function in a neat, tidy shorthand. This is not a speaker for listening to soft sonatas of Mozart or enjoying the sonic subtleties of a rare acoustic studio recording. It is a... Continue reading…

The Verge is celebrating its 10th birthday on November 1st, so we thought this would be the perfect occasion to relaunch our online merch store! Check out the store here. We partnered with DFTBA on some new products we’re really excited about — including a special edition Verge 10-year design by artist Richard Parry — as well as some classic favorites.This is just the start for Verge merch, and we’re excited to work on even more all-new designs in the future. If there’s anything you think we should make, let us know in the comments.Now, what are you waiting for? There’s an EMAILS shirt with your name on it. (Well, not literally. But let us know if embroidery is something you’re interested in.)

The new Claude in GTA III remastered. Rockstar Games finally showed off a trailer for the remastered Grand Theft Auto trilogy, including GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas, showcasing many graphical and quality-of-life improvements made to each game.The Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition collection will launch digitally on November 11th for $59.99 (£54.99). You’ll be able to play them on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, the newer Series X/S consoles, and PC via the Rockstar Games Launcher. It’ll get a physical release on December 7th, followed by versions for iOS and Android in the first half of 2022. Rockstar Games launched a site where you can look through more details.Xbox Game Pass subscribers will get instant access to Grand... Continue reading…

Intel’s Core i9-12900K hasn’t even been officially announced yet. | Image: Seby9123 Intel hasn’t even officially announced its new Core i9-12900K processor, but it’s already been sold by a retailer. The unreleased CPU is expected to be the flagship for Intel’s new line of Alder Lake processors, offering a chance to reclaim the performance crown from AMD.A Reddit poster, spotted by Techspot, managed to purchase two Core i9-12900K processors in retail packaging from an unnamed retailer for $610 per CPU. A similar mix-up happened earlier this year, when retailers started selling Intel’s Rocket Lake CPUs nearly a month before their launch.This unreleased CPU is useless without a new motherboardThe Reddit poster has published a number of photos of the unreleased Core i9-12900K processor in its retail packaging, which... Continue reading…

Image: Elgato EpocCam, the app from streaming brand Elgato that lets you repurpose your iPhone as a webcam for your PC or Mac, has been updated with native support for Snap Lenses augmented reality filters, Elgato’s parent company Corsair has announced. The functionality comes thanks to a partnership with Snap, who already offers similar filters natively in the Snapchat app, as well as with its Snap Camera software. Now the functionality is included natively in the EpocCam app.There are a total of 15 Snap Lenses for EpocCam, which include virtual backgrounds, virtual masks, and customizable filters. “Become your digital avatar, colorize your hair, interact with animated characters, and much more,” promises Elgato’s website, which also notes that the... Continue reading…

Image: Krafton PUBG: New State, the upcoming free-to-play mobile game, will release on iOS and Android on November 11th, its publisher Krafton announced today. The game is set in the year 2051, and will offer a futuristic take on the multiplayer-focused PUBG formula with new features like weapon customization and in-game drones. New State will be available in over 200 countries and 17 languages at launch.New State is a significant launch for the PUBG series, which popularized the battle royale genre after the launch of its first title in 2017. Although New State isn’t its first mobile entry, following the launch of PUBG Mobile in 2018, it’s the first to have been made by the game’s original developer, PUBG Studios. Development of the original PUBG... Continue reading…

Apple wants you to think of its new M1 Max MacBook Pro as a beast of a machine — it actually calls it a “beast” in the ad — but the upcoming macOS Monterey, which ships alongside the new Macs, will unleash its full potential. MacRumors contributor Steve Moser discovered a new “High Power Mode” in the operating system’s recent beta release that can “optimize performance to better support resource intensive tasks,” and apparently, spin up the fan to compensate for that. Apple confirmed to MacRumors that the mode is legit.

Apple Watch Series 7 teardown | Image: iFixit In our review of the Apple Watch Series 7, Dieter Bohn called it the best smartwatch while noting the new model’s changes as “smaller iterations” year-over-year than we previously expected. Even those small improvements required some reengineering. To appreciate those efforts, the folks from iFixit teamed up with former Apple engineers to investigate the new parts and get some insight into how the changes came to be.Ex-Apple product designer Tobias is now with Instrumental. He points out in a video that by looking at the back of the display, we can see that for the Series 7, Apple removed a ribbon cable, combining touch and display signals into one cable instead of two. That helped shrink the device’s bezels, but Tobias says in a video... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter first launched Spaces in November 2020 as an attempt to eclipse Clubhouse’s success with its own version of audio-centric chatrooms — but the ability to actually host a Space was limited to Twitter users with 600 followers or more. Now, almost one year later, Twitter is finally giving all of its users the ability to host a Space, which is a privilege that arguably should’ve been granted long ago.Twitter is a bit behind on its own schedule, considering it promised that everyone would be able to start up a Space back in April. The Spaces team sent out a tweet to announce the change, noting that users on both Android and iOS will now be able to host Spaces. It also offers a GIF that briefly refreshes users on how to host a Space,... Continue reading…

Apple VideoPad 2 | Photo: Bonhams The long-lost Apple VideoPad 2 prototype is going up for auction in November as part of a History of Science and Technology auction by Bonhams, an international auction house, in Los Angeles. The VideoPad will be auctioned alongside other Apple prototypes and Steve Jobs memorabilia and is estimated to sell between $8,000 and $12,000.Developed between 1993 and 1995 with VideoPad 1 and 3 (the only two examples shown to the public), this only surviving PDA prototype was Apple’s next attempt after the Newton Message Pad. Unlike the Newton Message Pad, the fold-up screen apparently included a built-in camera for video conferencing.Despite being designed to be ahead of its time, it was canceled along with Newton OS after Jobs’ return to... Continue reading…

Microsoft is releasing a new Windows 11 update today that fixes some of the AMD CPU performance issues. AMD and Microsoft found two issues with Windows 11 on Ryzen processors at launch, with one causing L3 cache latency to triple and slowing performance by up to 15 percent in certain games. Microsoft is now fixing this particular issue with Windows 11 Build 22000.282, available to all Windows 11 users today as an optional update in Windows Update.While the last Windows 11 update made these issues worse, today’s patch should fix them for good on the L3 cache latency side. The second outstanding issue affects AMD’s preferred core technology, which shifts threads over to the fastest core on a processor. AMD says this second bug could... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The ongoing global chip shortage is going to be a problem for a lot longer, according to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who reiterated today ahead of the company’s Q3 earnings that he expects the shortage to extend until at least 2023.“We’re in the worst of it now; every quarter next year, we’ll get incrementally better, but they’re not going to have supply-demand balance until 2023,” Gelsinger told CNBC in an interview.Intel rival AMD seemed to have more optimistic expectations, with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su commenting at the 2021 Code Conference that while supply would be “likely tight” for the near future, “it’ll get better in 2022” as production capacity continues to ramp. “It gets better next year, not immediately, but it’ll gradually get... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge While Instagram and Facebook face increased scrutiny on how they manage their teenage audience, Snap is taking steps to ensure a safer experience for its youngest users by working on a set of family safety tools.In an interview this week on WSJ Tech Live (via TechCrunch), CEO Evan Spiegel spoke of his vision for allowing parents to hold their teens’ hands while the kids are navigating Snapchat. “One of the goals with the product is to open up a dialogue between parents and their children about their experiences on the app,” said Spiegel, hoping to align with parents in a time where similar platforms are negatively affecting young teens. During this interview, Spiegel also mentioned that there is an in-house parental control system in... Continue reading…

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone — better known as ConcernedApe — has announced his second game: ConcernedApe’s Haunted Chocolatier, which looks to expand on the Stardew Valley formula with a more fantastical setting and “magical haunted ghost chocolate.”“In this game, you will play as a chocolatier living in a haunted castle. In order to thrive in your new role, you will have to gather rare ingredients, make delicious chocolates, and sell them in a chocolate shop,” the game’s website explains.The new title looks similar to Stardew Valley in many respects, with Barone’s meticulous pixel art and animations (at least at this stage of development) appearing virtually identical to his previous title. Barone isn’t saying whether the new... Continue reading…

Photo by Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images Elon Musk may seem inseparable from Tesla, but on Wednesday night, the company offered the first real taste of what it might look like without its billionaire CEO.Tesla held a regularly scheduled conference call to discuss its quarterly financial results, but — as he’d previously teased — Musk did not attend. His absence took what’s normally a venue for his rants and ramblings, dismissals of Wall Street, and attacks on the press and turned it into a coherent (if scripted) presentation of the company’s recent progress.There were fewer sideshows and a more measured tone, though the executives who spoke in Musk’s place still made some contradictions. If Musk were to leave his post atop the company, it’s likely that Tesla would look and... Continue reading…

Months after we predicted that Stadia would soon become a white-label cloud-gaming service, AT&T appears to be taking Google up on the idea. AT&T is offering a free browser-based version of Batman: Arkham Knight exclusively for wireless customers that makes use of Stadia’s technology.AT&T confirmed that its new game streaming experience runs on Google Stadia’s tech (via 9to5Google). Google announced the shutdown of its internal Stadia game studio in February. While Stadia is still available and supported by Google, the studio shutdown means Google is relying on third parties to provide all the games, and it opens up the potential for Google’s partners to use the tech. AT&T is apparently the first of those partners — it... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s October update for the Xbox Series X includes the long-awaited jump to a native 4K resolution dashboard. Previously, the system software upscaled 1080p to 4K, by which enthusiasts, including several people who work for The Verge, were not totally satisfied.The improved picture quality extends across the home dashboard on the Series X (but not the Series S), as well as the My Games & Apps screen, the Xbox Guide, and “many other experiences.” Microsoft says that game art and button prompts will have “increased sharpness and improved text readability.” Microsoft provided an image for comparison, shown below, and the difference is clear.Now, you can endlessly stare at the TV in true 4K wondering what to play or watch while... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap has some things to be happy about this quarter. It crossed $1 billion in revenue for the first time, added 13 million daily users, and doubled submissions to Spotlight, its relatively new TikTok rival. But it has also ran into a serious and ballooning problem: Apple’s ad tracking changes, which have already led to millions in lost ad dollars.The company missed its revenue target by $3 million in the third quarter, largely because of Apple’s changes, Snap announced this afternoon. That’s not a huge miss on its own, but Snap expects the impact to continue next quarter and says its revenue growth will slow meaningfully as a result.“A more significant impact on our business than we had expected”“We grappled with industry changes to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge HBO Max is still growing — but the service appears to have felt the impact of its exit from Amazon Prime Channels earlier this quarter.HBO Max and HBO subscriptions collectively grew to 69.4 million internationally from 67.5 million the previous quarter, the company reported during its second-quarter earnings presentation. But its combined subscriptions to both services dropped in the US from 47 million last quarter to 45.2 million this quarter — a difference of 1.8 million subscribers.So while its total subscription numbers were up 1.9 million subscribers for the quarter (and up 12.5 million, year over year) — meaning they’re still ballooning — the combined services still saw a loss in US subscriptions. AT&T said in its earnings... Continue reading…

Matt Dougherty/KHOU The driver and passenger seats were both occupied in a Tesla Model S that crashed into a tree outside of Houston on April 17th, killing both occupants, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.The crash made news when local investigators on the scene initially reported that neither body recovered from the Telsa was behind the wheel. Mark Herman, a constable from Harris County Precinct 4, told KHOU that one of the men killed was in the front passenger seat of the car, while the other was in the back seat.“They are 100 percent certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact. They are positive,” Herman told KHOU.Federal investigators quickly swooped in to determine the accuracy of the... Continue reading…

Image: Amanda Matlovich / Netflix Netflix’s show about teens fighting demons with magical keys is back, but Locke and Key’s second season makes some big changes. The pace is faster, the tone is darker, and with that, it loses some of the magic that made the show so interesting in the first place.Things don’t start out so dark, though. At the outset of Locke and Key’s second season, things are going well for the Locke family. After dealing with the death of their father and surviving a fight with a demon in season 1, they’re able to spend the summer relaxing with friends and their keys. It’s one of the rare times in the series we see magic used for having fun; Kinsey (Emilia Jones) is relaxing inside her own head (literally), and younger brother Bodie (Jackson Robert... Continue reading…

Mythic Quest has been renewed for a third and fourth season on Apple TV Plus, Apple announced today, marking the biggest commitment yet to one of its streaming originals.The show stars Rob McElhenney (who co-created the series) as Ian Grimm, the ambitious and self-centered creative director of a popular fictional video game, along with Charlotte Nicdao as Poppy Li, the lead engineer and co-creative director who works — and often fights — with Grimm over the direction of the titular Mythic Quest game. The show’s ensemble cast also features Murray Abraham, Danny Pudi, Imani Hakim, Ashly Burch, Jessie Ennis, and David Hornsby as members of the game’s development, creative, and testing teams.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A team of Dutch forensic researchers have decrypted Tesla’s data storage system, providing access to a trove of information that could be useful in crash investigations. (The news was first reported by Reuters.)It’s no secret that Tesla records information about its customers’ driving behavior, both to improve its advanced driver assistance system, Autopilot, and also in the event of a crash, to provide to investigators.But researchers at the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) discovered that Tesla’s vehicles store far more detailed data than previously known, including speed, accelerator pedal position, steering wheel angle, and brake usage. Some of this data can be stored for up to a year, the institute said.speed, accelerator... Continue reading…

The Zephyr is apparently light enough to accompany you on a jog, assuming you want some extra attention. | Razer Razer’s Zephyr face mask is available to the public after several months of tweaking features and beta testing with Razer super fans. You can purchase it starting tonight at 11PM ET / 8PM PT from Razer.com in two configurations. The most basic kit for $99.99 includes the mask, a carrying tote, a USB-C charging cable, anti-fog spray, and three sets of replaceable N95 filters that will cover you for nine days of use. If you want more filters included with your purchase, a $149.99 version includes everything mentioned above, plus 33 sets of filters for 99 days of filtered use. You can purchase filters by themselves in sets of 10 for $29.99, which will get you 30 days of use.The Zephyr is a completely different kind of product for Razer and... Continue reading…

Razer’s new PC components. | Image: Razer Razer is expanding into PC components today with the launch of all-in-one (AIO) liquid coolers, case fans, and even platinum-rated power supplies. As you’d expect, all three include RGB lighting, a signature of Razer hardware. There’s even a PWM fan controller that will control up to eight fans and integrates into Razer’s Synapse software.The Razer Hanbo is the company’s all-in-one cooler with an addressable RGB pump cap. Razer has partnered with Asetek to create this AIO cooler, and it says the Hanbo is designed for maximum thermal performance and silent operation. The pump orientates 360 degrees, so you can place it in any case configuration. Image: Razer Razer’s Hanbo AIO comes in 240mm and 360mm radiator... Continue reading…

The middle-of-the-road Kraken 3 HyperSense is shown here. It costs $129.99 and plugs into devices via its USB-A plug. | Razer Razer has announced the Kraken V3 lineup, which has a refreshed design and new features. At the top of the offering is Razer’s wireless Kraken V3 Pro, which costs $199.99 and has built-in haptics. If wireless isn’t important to you, the Kraken V3 HyperSense for $129.99 has the same haptics feature, but with a few other tweaks. The $99.99 wired Kraken V3 doesn’t feature haptics, but it’s otherwise the same as the Kraken V3 HyperSense.Compared to the previous generation, the V3 looks less bulky and garish. Many of Razer’s headsets have skewed toward looking more like over-ear headphones, and this one’s no exception. Some of its features are borrowed from other Razer headsets. Each Kraken V3 headset has Razer’s 50mm TriForce drivers that... Continue reading…

The Pokémon Company released a new teaser trailer for Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and it’s causing a bit of concern. The 2-minute video features found footage of an unknown professor’s trek through a snowy wilderness as he attempts to document pokémon using a strange device he’s found.The professor — who will probably become the fandom’s newest zaddy because he sounds really cute — can’t contain his excitement as he stumbles on a sneeze of snorunts. But because of this man’s gleeful disregard for his own safety approaching dangerous (but oh so cute) animals in their natural habitats, it’s easy to see what happens next. The professor makes his way deep into a forest where he spots what he thinks is a zorua and zoroark. Suddenly, he’s struck... Continue reading…

Amazon workers may get a chance to vote to form a union | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers at Amazon’s warehouses in Staten Island, New York are preparing to file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on October 25th, after getting signatures on union authorization cards from more than 2,000 workers.The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) is an independent group of employees that has been trying to organize workers at four Amazon warehouses in Staten Island. It’s led by former Amazon worker Christian Smalls, who was fired in March after he helped organize a walkout at the company’s JFK8 warehouse to protest unsafe working conditions during the pandemic. Amazon has said Smalls was fired for violating safety regulations.“This is truly a remarkable historical moment for all Amazon workers all over the... Continue reading…

Photo by Shealah Craighead / The White House In his latest attempt to return to the social media spotlight, Donald Trump is now turning to a current darling of the startup world: the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.Trump announced Wednesday night that he has a new company called Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and that he would be merging this new company with a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Company (DWAC). If completed, the deal would turn Trump’s new media company into one that’s publicly traded on the Nasdaq. And it would give TMTG enough money to get a new Twitter clone off the ground called “Truth.”The surprise deal is already turning DWAC into a meme stock, and it raises a fair number of questions.Wait, what’s a SPAC?Briefly, SPACs are shell... Continue reading…

Google’s Nest Hub 2nd Gen has a Thread radio built-in that will be updated in 2022 to enable Matter support. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Google gave a glimpse into how the new smart home standard Matter might actually work in our smart homes today, and it’s looking pretty exciting. At its Google Smart Home Developer Summit, the company announced new tools to help developers build devices that work with both Google Home, the new connectivity standard Matter, and across any other Matter-complaint ecosystems. This means that, yes — one day, very soon — the (new) Nest Thermostat could work in the Apple Home app without the need for Home Assistant or other workarounds. And if those two can work together, well, anyone can.Due to arrive next year, Matter is an open smart home application protocol that promises to make smart home devices talk to each other no matter who made... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google put out a report detailing a phishing campaign directed at YouTubers, which involved around 15,000 fake accounts and over a million messages to targets. The phishing attempts were carried out by multiple hackers, and the company says it’s recovered around 4,000 accounts since late 2019. The attackers weren’t just trying to get the creators to put their password into a fake website, though — they were trying to infect their computer with malware that would steal their login cookies, which is a much more intensive attack than sending a link and waiting for someone to get sloppy with their passwords.YouTube doesn’t publicly say who was recruiting the hackers, only that they were using Russian-language forums to advertise. The... Continue reading…

Among Us is arriving on Xbox and PlayStation on December 14th. The popular social deduction game will also launch on Xbox Game Pass on the same day and be available on Xbox One, Xbox Series S / X, PS4, and PS5 consoles. The announcement comes months after Sony confirmed Among Us was coming to its PlayStation consoles this year.Just like on other platforms, Among Us will support crossplay and online multiplayer across mobile, PC, and now consoles. The only difference between the two console versions is PlayStation players will get access to exclusive Ratchet & Clank-themed cosmetics. There’s a skin and hat to make your character look like Ratchet, and a pet that looks like Clank.Among Us was a huge hit during the early stages of the... Continue reading…