The Verge

Whinstone CEO Chad Harris poses for a portrait in a room with Bitcoin mining machines during a tour at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 10, 2021 | Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP /AFP via Getty Images Democratic lawmakers are pushing Bitcoin mining companies in the US to divulge how much electricity they use in an effort to assess how that will impact nearby residents and the environment. Eight members of Congress sent letters yesterday to six companies that mine Bitcoin in the US asking them about the energy and environmental impact of their operations.“Given the extraordinarily high energy usage and carbon emissions associated with Bitcoin mining, mining operations raise concerns about their impacts on the global environment, local ecosystems, and consumer electricity costs,” the letters say. The letters were signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Margaret Hassan (D-NH), and Ed... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Slack, the instant messaging app of choice for many companies, has probably become a bigger part of your life if you’re working from home. And while Slack is usually used for work, it’s also very useful for conversing with friends and family. Slack offers paid plans, but anyone can sign up for the free version and create a workspace, a virtual space where you can set up different conversations and projects.Each of those conversations and projects on Slack are called channels. These channels function like chat rooms or group chats. While there isn’t a limit to the number of channels you can make or private messages you can send in Slack, the free version will only let you see the last 10,000 messages sent in your workspace.Here’s an... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Waymo filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles to keep driverless car crash data from being made public. The autonomous vehicle operator, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, claims that such data should be considered a trade secret. The news of the lawsuit was first reported by Business Insider and later by the Los Angles Times.California’s DMV oversees the largest autonomous vehicle testing program in the country, with over 60 companies permitted to operate test vehicles on public roads. Only a handful are approved to operate fully autonomous vehicles without safety drivers at the wheel, and even fewer have been approved to deploy vehicles for commercial purposes.Waymo is seeking to keep... Continue reading…

Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images China has released its plans for space exploration over the next five years, detailing ambitious goals that include strengthening its space infrastructure and developing a next-generation spacecraft for carrying people to space. The country is also researching how it could possibly land people on the Moon in the coming years.The roadmap, detailed in a new white paper released today, would continue China’s ambitious progress in the realm of aerospace. Over the last few decades, the country has placed significant emphasis on expanding its space capabilities, increasing the frequency and scope of its launches, and pushing into new areas such as the robotic exploration of Mars. China has also mounted a long-term campaign of lunar... Continue reading…

Last weekend, it felt like everyone I knew was sending me the same link. “The Problem With NFTs,” a long video essay by the Canadian media critic Dan Olson, ricocheted around all corners of the tech world since it was uploaded on Friday. (It now has 2.6 million views and climbing.) Over 138 meticulously researched minutes, Olson traces the history of the 2008 financial crisis, the creation of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the rise of NFTs and DAOs, and reaches the conclusion that what we have taken to calling “Web3” is effectively beyond saving: the technology is too broken, and its creators too indifferent to its failures, for it to ever to live up to the promise of its most starry-eyed backers.Few of Olson’s criticisms are entirely new,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Qubit Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, has become the latest victim of a high-value theft, with hackers stealing around $80 million in cryptocurrency on Thursday.The value of cryptocurrency stolen makes this the largest hack of 2022 so far.Qubit Finance acknowledge the hack in an incident report published through Medium. According to the report, the hack occurred at around 5PM ET on the evening of January 27th.Qubit provides a service known as a “bridge” between different blockchains, effectively meaning that deposits made in one cryptocurrency can be withdrawn in another. Qubit Finance operates a bridge between Ethereum and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network.Analysis produced by CertiK, a blockchain auditing and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge | Photo by Vivian Zink/NBCUniversal via Getty Images Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.This week, it’s time for earnings reports again! The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and Tom Warren look at how profitable the big tech companies like Microsoft, Samsung, Intel, and Tesla were in Q4 of 2021. The crew discusses the surprises, the non-surprises, as well as upcoming plans for these companies for 2022 and beyond.Later in the show, Casey Newton, contributing editor and editor of Platformer, joins the show to discuss Spotify’s latest controversy regarding Joe Rogan’s podcast, leading to musician Neil Young removing his music from the platform. Will this... Continue reading…

The most important button on the original Xbox wasn’t the power button: it was the button to eject the disc tray.Conceptually, this doesn’t make sense. Of course the power button should be the most important button — it turns on (and off) the whole console. But that attitude is steeped in our understanding of modern devices, where our games and apps are far more self-contained than they were during the original Xbox’s heyday.The console’s design reflects the eject button’s priority. The disc eject button is bigger, higher up, and surrounded by an LED ring in the console’s iconic green glow, drawing even more attention to it.The reasoning here is simple: the original Xbox (like its contemporaries and predecessors) was useless without... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Now that we’re spending more time indoors, we’re finding new platforms — and new ways to use old platforms — to stay in touch, whether it’s for work or with friends. This is the case with Slack, an instant-messaging platform that functions somewhere in the space between email and text messages. Designed for quick communication, Slack became an important tool for a lot of workplaces well before everyone started working from home. But you can use it for pretty much anything: friends, group activities, clubs, or online communities.Slack has a free version and offers several paid plans. You start by setting up a workspace (which is your main area of operations and contains your network of contacts) on Slack. In your workspace, you create... Continue reading…

The game plays much better than I expected. Fortnite hasn’t been available on iOS since Apple yanked it from the App Store in August 2020, but I’ve been able to play it on my iPhone once again thanks to a closed beta on Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. While it’s not quite as seamless an experience as using a native app, this GeForce Now loophole works a lot better than I expected.With this closed beta, you’ll be playing a mobile-optimized version of the game. If you’ve tried Fortnite on iOS or Android before, the layout should feel familiar — the experience is well-designed for touch, with easy-to-navigate menus and large (though finicky) onscreen controls. This GeForce Now version also supports controllers, and I’ve played most matches with my iPhone plugged into my... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With more than 2 billion users, WhatsApp is already one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. But its largest markets are all outside of the US. Now, Facebook, the parent company of WhatsApp that recently rebranded to Meta, is hoping to change that.Starting this weekend, Meta is kicking off the first-ever US marketing push for WhatsApp, focusing on the privacy offered by the app’s encryption. The first TV ad will air Sunday during the AFC Championship Game, comparing unencrypted messages to a stranger opening your physical mail. Similar ads touting WhatsApp’s privacy will soon start appearing on billboards around the country and online.The goal of the marketing push is to get more people in the US to switch to WhatsApp by... Continue reading…

“We Love Neil” — subtle stuff. | Image: Apple Music / The Verge Earlier this week, Neil Young pulled his music from Spotify after falling out with the platform over its hosting of Joe Rogan and COVID misinformation. So now, of course, rival streamer Apple Music is courting Young and his fans, sending out tweets, playlists, and even push notifications to brand itself as “The home of Neil Young.”It’s all a bit of theatrical silliness, of course. Neil Young is a legendary songwriter, yes, but his presence or absence won’t decide the fate of this or that streaming platform. He’s no Kanye or Taylor Swift. Instead, Apple is simply indulging in the time-honored corporate tradition of inserting itself into a relevant news cycle while the going is good.The company’s not been subtle about it either. It even... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple made more money than ever during the holiday season, and its growth during 2021 has helped the company add 150 million more active devices. During an earnings call with investors last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple now has 1.8 billion active devices.That’s up from the 1.65 billion Apple reported a year ago, and the 1.5 billion active devices in January 2020. While Cook didn’t delve deeper into the device details, Apple crossed the 1 billion active iPhones milestone a year ago, after selling its billionth iPhone in 2016 and then hitting 900 million active iPhone users in 2019. Apple counts a device as active as long as it has engaged with an Apple service within the past 90 days, so the 1.8 billion number covers a... Continue reading…

Logitech’s G413 TKL. | Image: Logitech Logitech has announced a pair of new wired mechanical keyboards, G413 SE and G413 TKL. The first is a fullsize keyboard costing $79.99, and the second is a tenkeyless model, which omits the numpad for a more compact footprint and costs $69.99.The G413 SE and G413 TKL are interesting for a couple of reasons. First is that unlike many of Logitech’s other keyboards, these designs are relatively understated. The cases are a simple black-brushed aluminum-magnesium alloy with a plain Logitech G logo on the top right. Meanwhile, the keycaps use a simple black design and are made of durable PBT plastic with transparent lettering that lets the keyboard’s white backlighting shine through. Image: Logitech There’s all a... Continue reading…

A leaked render of the unannounced Pixel 6A. | Image: Steve Hemmerstoffer / 91Mobiles A Google-produced coloring book may have just offered the first official mention of the Pixel 6A, the rumored affordable followup to last year’s flagship Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, Droid-Life reports. The coloring book was sent out alongside a Nest Audio smart speaker to members of Google’s Pixel Superfans group, which was launched last year to provide a “VIP experience for Pixel lovers” including access to “limited-edition swag.”Images of the coloring book shared by Droid-Life show a variety of black and white sketches of Google devices like phones, smart displays, and security cameras in need of some color. A table-of-contents lists a “Pixel 6A,” a phone which Google has never publicly mentioned. Unfortunately, turning to pages 6 and 7... Continue reading…

Power tool batteries are some of the densest lithium-ion packs lying around your house (or construction site), but they rarely play nice with the kind of chargers and batteries that top up your laptop, phone and PC. That might be about to change — Ryobi and DeWalt are testing the waters with USB-C powered battery options, and one of them looks seriously neat.It’s easy to argue that Ryobi has taken the idea the furthest; as Gizmodo reports today, it’s the first major manufacturer to stick a USB-C charging port on the battery itself, letting you use the same charger to top up your power tool as you’d use on a laptop. Image by Ryobi But these 4V 2Ah batteries look a little bit weaksauce to me — they’re not compatible... Continue reading…

“About 53% of the regional fleet” is facing restrictions. | Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images In the lead-up to AT&T and Verizon’s rollout of their upgraded 5G C-band equipment, it seemed like the sky was falling.For years, the Federal Aviation Administration and airline organizations had voiced concerns that the upgraded cellular tech could interfere with vital safety equipment on planes, while the FCC and carriers insisted it was safe, pointing to similar rollouts in dozens of other countries. Even after several delays, there were still last-minute deals being made between carriers and regulators, with airlines banding together to warn that the activation could cause a “catastrophic disruption” to air travel and shipping. Several international airlines canceled flights to certain US airports.But just a few days after the... Continue reading…

Here it is. HP has overhauled its Elite Dragonfly with some significant changes, some of which will likely be welcome in consumer and business circles alike, and some of which may be... controversial. We got a chance to try out a prototype of the new Elite Dragonfly G3, which isn’t performance-ready but gives us an idea of what the new chassis will look and feel like.Put this next to the various Elite Dragonfly models we’ve reviewed in the past, and you won’t have trouble telling the difference. The main thing you’ll notice is the display. The Dragonfly line is finally going the way of the Spectre x360 and adopted the 3:2 aspect ratio. It’s taller than a 16:9 panel, giving you more room to multitask with less scrolling, and also leaves extra space... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple has made a regular trend of announcing record-breaking quarterly earnings, especially in the company’s fiscal Q1, which includes the holiday shopping season. And Q1 2022 has managed to top them all: Apple just reported the biggest revenue for any quarter in its history. Driven by sales of the iPhone 13 lineup and a continued rise of its services business, Apple posted $123.9 billion in revenue with earnings per share of $2.10, handily beating Wall Street expectations of $118.66 billion and $1.89, respectively. Apple recorded a profit of $34.6 billion — also a record.The iPhone enjoyed a supercharged sales quarter, no surprise given that it was a holiday period and the first full quarter of availability for the iPhone 13, 13 mini,... Continue reading…

Director’s Cut launches on March 30th. | Image: 505 Games Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be launching on PC on March 30th, publisher 505 Games announced Thursday, and people who already own the original version of the game will be able to upgrade for $9.99. The game will be available both on Steam and on the Epic Games Store, and to take advantage of the upgrade offer, you’ll have to have the original Death Stranding already installed on your PC.Director’s Cut will also be available for a $39.99 standalone purchase. If you want a cheaper way to get Director’s Cut, though, you might want to consider picking up the base version of Death Stranding during 505 Games’ current sale on Steam and the Epic Games Store and upgrading when Director’s Cut is available.Previously, the release timeline... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Comcast executives announced today that Peacock reached 24.5 million monthly active accounts in the US at the end of 2021, with more than 9 million of those being paid members. To continue growing that number, Peacock plans to double its content budget to around $3 billion in 2022 alone.This week’s figures were surprisingly transparent for a streamer that has recently held its subscriber data close to the chest — in the past, the company has declined to specify the number of its paid subscribers. Peacock’s monthly active accounts are up from the 20 million active the company last reported in July of 2021. Speaking during the earnings call for Peacock parent Comcast on Thursday, Comcast chief Brian Roberts said that the company also... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple appears to be testing a feature that will let you use Face ID to unlock the phone even when wearing a mask. The first developer beta for iOS 15.4 has a screen that asks if you want to be able to use Face ID while wearing a mask, at the cost of reduced security, according to photos from Brandon Butch on Twitter and MacRumors. Unfortunately, the feature will only be available if you’ve got a newer device according to 9to5Mac.According to pictures of the screen, Apple says that “iPhone can recognize the unique features around the eye area to authenticate” but warns that Face ID is going to be more accurate if you have it set to not work with a mask.

Commercial space company SpaceX plans to launch a whopping 52 flights in 2022, a NASA safety panel revealed today during a meeting. If successful, it would be the most launches the company has ever conducted in a single year, with its previous record last year at 31 launches.The impressive figure was given during a virtual meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, which gives guidance to the space agency on how to maintain safety within its biggest programs. “NASA and SpaceX will have to be watchful during 2022 that they’re not victims of their success,” Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and member of the panel, said during the meeting. “There’s an ambitious 52-launch manifest for SpaceX over the course of the... Continue reading…

The Offers tab launches this week. | Image: Google Google is adding an “Offers” tab to the Google Play app that’s intended to help you find deals on games and apps, the company announced Thursday. Google says the Offers tab will include things like sales on games and in-game items, rewards and bundled offers, discounts on movies and books, and apps offering free trials. The new tab launches this week with a rollout that’s “underway,” and Google says it will be available to “more people in the United States, India and Indonesia over the coming weeks, and more countries later in 2022.”The prominent placement of the Offers tab right at the bottom of the app could make it an easy place to check out whenever you check Google Play, and Google is promising that it will add new deals every day.... Continue reading…

Support for the original WyzeCam is sunsetting on February 1st, 2022. | Image: Wyze The original giant killer in the smart home camera space, the WyzeCam (v1), is saying sayonara just shy of its fifth birthday. The company emailed its customers this week to say it will no longer sell or support its original product, as the camera can’t support a necessary security update.While the WyzeCam will continue to work, Wyze warns in the email that it will no longer actively monitor or patch new security vulnerabilities for the device and that “your continued use of the WyzeCam after February 1, 2022 carries increased risk, is discouraged by Wyze, and is entirely at your own risk.”Wyze included a link to a $3 coupon toward the purchase of a new Wyze Cam in the email. It currently offers five different models on its online... Continue reading…

New emoji are on their way. | Image: Emojipedia iOS 15.4 will include a new crop of emoji, including a melting face, someone saluting, beans, and a slightly uncomfortable biting lip icon. As per usual, the new emojis and new variations of existing emojis are coming thanks to a new version of the unicode standard that dictates the standard set of pictographs that get added to our devices.iOS 15.4 is currently in beta, but when it rolls out it should include 37 new emoji, according to MacRumors, and Emojipedia put together a first look of Apple’s renditions. The specific way emoji look vary from platform to platform, though you can get a feel for what to expect from the Unicode Consortium, which is the body in charge of creating new emoji (among many other very important things).

Tesla Model 3 trying to break through the blizzard | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Online influencers have been vital to the success of many products on the market today, none more so than Tesla. Online creators are fond of showing off the car and its features, which helped spur Elon Musk into the spotlight as our first influencer CEO. But now that it’s wintertime, some influencers are noticing their Teslas aren’t faring that well in icy conditions.“Things I hate about my Tesla”One of the first things people notice about electric cars is how quiet they are due to the lack of a combustion engine. But in a TikTok trend titled “Things I hate about my Tesla” user Tesla Flex shared how it’s hard to clean ice off the front of the car since there is no heat energy coming from under the hood.Another Tesla influencer who... Continue reading…

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko (C) and fellow commissioners Kristine Svinicki (L) and George Apostolakis (R) wait for the beginning of a joint hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Clean Air and Nuclear Safety December 15, 2011 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Former heads of nuclear regulatory bodies across Europe and the US put out a statement this week voicing their opposition to nuclear energy as a climate solution.The debate over the benefits and risks of nuclear energy has been polarizing for years, but it’s escalating as world leaders work to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. On one side of the debate, some argue that renewables alone are too dependent on the weather to provide a consistent power supply. Nuclear technology, which today provides about half of America’s carbon-free electricity, can reliably back it up, they say. And new nuclear technology is unlikely to trigger disasters like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima that have frightened the public in the past,... Continue reading…

Apple first introduced Universal Control at WWDC 2021 in June. Apple’s newest developer betas for iPadOS and macOS Monterey include Universal Control, indicating the long-awaited feature might finally be released sometime in the near future. Universal Control, which Apple announced at WWDC 2021 in June, is an impressive-looking feature that lets you use a Mac’s keyboard and mouse with an iPad just by placing the iPad next to the computer. Universal Control seems to have been more ambitious than Apple anticipated, however, since it already missed a fall release estimate, is now supposed to come out this spring, and hadn’t even shown up in betas until Thursday.MacRumors reports that Universal Control is enabled by default if the iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3 betas are installed, and the... Continue reading…

Cameras, fountain pens, and a very long desk Continue reading…

The 30 V 5G is ready for all varieties of Verizon 5G. | Image: TCL When Verizon lit up its new C-band 5G spectrum earlier this month, only a handful of flagship phones were ready to use the network. Starting today, there’s a low-cost option if you’re looking to get on C-band 5G right now: the $299 TCL 30 V 5G. Announced at CES, the 30 V 5G is a Verizon exclusive (for now, at least), and it supports all of the carrier’s flavors of 5G: slower but widespread “Nationwide,” very fast but scarce mmWave, and the sweet C-band spectrum that sits in between, both in terms of coverage and speed.The TCL 30 V 5G features a big 6.67-inch 1080p screen, Snapdragon 480 5G chipset with 4GB RAM, and a 4,500mAh battery — all typical specs for a budget device. It’s one of eight new 30-series phones the company is releasing... Continue reading…

Image: Ubisoft In a move no one saw coming because not that many people were playing the game in the first place, Hyper Scape, Ubisoft’s attempt to get in on the increasingly bloated battle royale market, will be shutting down on April 28th. On Hyper Scape’s website, the announcement reads:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is making its Xbox subscriptions a little more flexible after a UK regulator raised concerns. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) “has secured undertakings with Microsoft” that will improve accidental renewals for Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.Microsoft has agreed to offer refunds to Xbox subscribers that are on recurring 12-month subscriptions and even cancel inactive memberships if customers are reminded how to stop payments and still continue not to use a membership.The CMA identified a number of concerns around Microsoft’s auto-renewing subscriptions, and the Xbox maker has agreed to address them with the following improvements:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the culmination of a two-year legal process, the former operator of dark web index site DeepDotWeb was handed a sentence of 97 months in prison for money laundering on Tuesday.The sentence was issued to Tal Prihar, an Israeli national, by a judge of the District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The judgment from the court ordered Prihar to forfeit $8.4 million in cash, along with an ASUS laptop, a black iPhone, and his accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, Kraken and OKCoin.The DeepDotWeb site started operating in 2013, operated by Prihar and another Israeli citizen Michael Phan, who is a co-defendant in the case. The site was hosted on the open internet but provided links to the .onion domains of dark web... Continue reading…

For the last seven years, a leftover piece of an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been circling the Earth on a very wide orbit, having a pretty unremarkable time. But that’s all about to change on March 4th, when this rocket piece is predicted to accidentally slam into the far side of the Moon. And according to the astronomer who first figured this out, it’s a reminder that we need to take better care of our deep space junk.The doomed component is part of a rocket that launched from Florida in February of 2015. The vehicle lofted a particularly valuable satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called DSCOVR, which monitors solar winds coming from the Sun to better predict space weather. In order to perform its job... Continue reading…

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge Understanding your broadband speeds could be just as simple as reading the nutrition label on the back of the food you buy at the grocery store as soon as the end of this year.The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to press forward on a new plan that would require internet providers, like Comcast and Verizon, to offer new labels disclosing an internet plan’s price, speed, data allowances, including introductory rates and later price hikes, as well as network management practices, like throttling, at the point of sale. This allows for greater transparency into market rates and could lead to lower prices down the line.“Access to accurate, simple-to-understand information about broadband Internet access... Continue reading…

You can buy the GoPro Hero 10 for $349.98 from GoPro today. | Image: Becca Farsace / The Verge It’s nearly the end of January, which means the holidays are sadly a month behind us. If you’re understandably already starting to crave another break, channel your wanderlust by preparing for your next vacation with this GoPro Hero 10 deal. Right now, you can take great photos and video clips on your next trip while saving big now that GoPro’s latest action camera has reached an all-time low.Typically $499.99, GoPro is selling the camera — alongside a one-year GoPro annual subscription, a 32GB SanDisk Extreme microSDHC card and free express shipping — for $349.98. The service typically costs $49.99 per year and offers unlimited cloud backup as well auto uploads, GoPro.com discounts, unlimited access to premium editing tools in the Quik... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Messenger added end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) chatting in 2016 when it was still called Facebook Messenger, and Meta was still Facebook. Now many things have changed, but the optional feature is fully rolled out to everyone, with toggles to encrypt text messages as well as group chats and calls. Meta has discussed switching to E2EE as a default, but that may not happen until next year at the earliest, as some regulators claim this would harm public safety.There are two ways Messenger users can opt in to the secure chats, either via vanish mode, by swiping up on an existing chat to enter one where messages automatically disappear when the window is closed or the original version that was introduced in 2016 as Secret Conversations. You can... Continue reading…

Image: Yang Hae-sung / Netflix Undead horror mixed with high school drama Continue reading…

Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images This story originally ran in Hot Pod, The Verge’s preeminent audio industry newsletter. You can subscribe here for more scoops, analysis, and reporting.You’ve probably seen this by now, but to catch you up if not: On Monday, Neil Young issued an ultimatum to Spotify: keep Joe Rogan or me. It can’t have both on the service.“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” he wrote in a now-deleted letter, according to Rolling Stone. The chief issue, he said, is Joe Rogan, Spotify’s star podcaster to whom it reportedly paid up to $100 million for an exclusive license to his show.Yesterday, Young made good on his word... Continue reading…

It’s not perfect, but there’s a lot to like for outdoorsy athletes Continue reading…

A Snoop Dogg experience inside The Sandbox. | The Sandbox Warner Music Group will open an outpost in virtual world The Sandbox, and it hopes music buffs will express their fandom by acquiring nearby property. In an announcement, WMG described its new home as a “combination of musical theme park and concert venue.” It will work with The Sandbox to host concerts and other “musical experiences.” But so far, it’s only discussed one specific event: a special sale of digital real estate called Land, which Sandbox users can buy “coveted” plots of in March.Concerts have become a fixture of virtual worldsThe Sandbox has previously partnered with individual artists like Snoop Dogg for experiences, but this is apparently a larger and more ambitious installation. “Warner Music has secured the equivalent... Continue reading…

More free games are on the way to add to your backlog. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of the hallmarks of the Epic Games Store is its regular offerings of free games, and the company confirmed in a blog post that it will continue give games away in 2022. Some of the games Epic has offered in the past have been quite notable, including Control, Civilization VI, and even the store-crashing Grand Theft Auto V, so it seems likely the company will make some good freebies available this year.Epic also announced that its store has more than 194 million users, up 34 million year over year. Valve hasn’t released its own year-in-review numbers for Steam, so it’s hard to directly determine how well Epic is competing, but comparing peak concurrent user counts indicates Epic still has a ways to go to catch up. Epic reported a... Continue reading…

HBO Max Have you seen this woman? Continue reading…

The S7 is the best robot vacuum that can also mop, but skip the “Rock Dock” auto-empty station Continue reading…

The Tesla Bot concept. | Image: Tesla What’s more important to Elon Musk? A hugely successful business selling critically lauded electric vehicles or the sci-fi dream of a humanoid robot that doesn’t exist outside of a slide deck?Well, if you’re familiar with Musk’s modus operandi, you won’t be surprised that Musk has declared the latter — a non-existent robot — to be Tesla’s “most important product development” in a recent earnings call. Discussing the company’s product map for the years ahead, Musk noted that the Roadster and Semi (originally set to launch in 2020) and Cybertruck (first slated for 2021) would be in production “hopefully next year” (emphasis ours) before smoothly switching gears to talk up the Tesla Bot — a humanoid robot concept unveiled by the company l... Continue reading…

A deluxe headset that should cost considerably less Continue reading…

Antitrust reform is on the horizon, and tech is spooked Continue reading…