The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge After over a year in limbo, Withings finally has Food and Drug Administration clearance for its ScanWatch, which monitors for abnormal heart rhythms through an EKG feature and flags nighttime breathing issues with its blood oxygen sensor. The watch has been available for sale in Europe, but not in the United States.This is the first smartwatch to get the FDA’s signoff on both types of health features. Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung all detect blood oxygen levels, but they don’t claim they can detect any medical conditions using that information, so they didn’t need to get the agency’s clearance in order to market the devices. Withings, on the other hand, is claiming that its device can flag nighttime breathing problems through a... Continue reading…

Two display from an M1 MacBook. | Image: Hyper Hyper claims its new USB-C hubs will address one of the key frustrations with Apple’s M1 MacBooks: their inability to natively power more than one external display at a time. Both Hyper’s $129.99 “HyperDrive Dual 4K HDMI 3-in-1 USB-C Adapter” and its $199.99 “HyperDrive Dual 4K HDMI 10-in-1 USB-C Hub” have two HDMI ports, which it says can output to two 4K monitors without the need for software drivers. They’re both launching today and are available to buy direct from Hyper.Neither offers a perfect solution. Hyper notes that both hubs are only able to output a 60Hz signal to one 4K display, while the other will be limited to 30Hz. But it’s more convenient than the kinds of existing workarounds outlined in this guide from MacWorld,... Continue reading…

Astra’s 3.2 rocket taking off from Kodiak, Alaska | Image: Astra/John Kraus Small satellite launcher Astra says it has identified the culprit behind its bizarre launch failure in August, which caused the company’s rocket to hover sideways right after takeoff before briefly climbing into the sky. After implementing some design changes, Astra says it is ready to try again, with another launch attempt called LV0007 set as early as October 27th.This will be Astra’s fifth attempt to reach orbit with one of its rockets, which primarily take off from Kodiak, Alaska. The company first tried to send its vehicle to orbit for a DARPA launch challenge in March 2020 but failed to get the rocket off the ground in time to meet the competition’s deadline. The vehicle then exploded on its launchpad a few weeks later. After... Continue reading…

The Chromecast with Google TV makes it easy to play content in front of a class without occupying your laptop. | Photo by Philip Berne for The Verge The last year of lockdown and learning from home was undoubtedly the most challenging year for teachers in a generation. Now that students are returning to class, we face new challenges. Students hide behind their masks. Understaffing and last-minute changes require us to be more flexible. The transition from “going to school” in pajamas on the couch to physically going to school is exhausting, and engagement is low. Frankly, it’s quiet. Too quiet.Here are some of my favorite tools that I’ve purchased this year to overcome the COVID doldrums. If you are a teacher with some classroom funds to spend, or if you know teachers who could use a tech boost, this is what I recommend.Every time a student gives an impassioned answer and I have... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Liptak / The Verge General Motors and LG Electronics have struck a deal in which the South Korean battery maker will pay for all the costs associated with the massive Chevy Bolt recall, the companies announced.Last August, GM announced that it was recalling all Chevy Bolts made after 2017, including the new versions released earlier this year, after multiple fires in the electric vehicle’s battery packs were found to have been caused by defects in the LG Chem cells found inside.As part of the agreement, LG will reimburse GM for the “costs and expenses” associated with the recall, which the automaker estimates will “offset $1.9 billion of $2.0 billion in charges associated with the recalls.” It’s a better deal than originally expected, with GM stating... Continue reading…

Samsung has created a new 980 Pro SSD model designed for Sony’s PlayStation 5. The SSD includes a heatsink specifically designed to fit inside the M.2 SSD storage expansion slot inside the PS5. Samsung is releasing this new 980 Pro SSD model on October 29th, priced at $249.99 for the 1TB version or $449.99 for the 2TB model.The built-in heatsink is designed to keep temperatures low enough to deliver sustained speeds, with sequential read speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 5,100MB/s. Not many games take advantage of such speeds on the PS5 just yet — Samsung’s 980 Pro specs are way above the 5,500MB/s read speeds that Sony recommends.This new 980 Pro model will sit neatly inside the PS5’s M.2 SSD expansion slotS... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The senior vice president of devices and services gets into the weeds Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Truly wireless earbuds vary wildly in price, but if you’re looking to save money today, check out Woot’s deal on the first-gen Echo Buds from Amazon. These debuted in 2019 for $129, and while they’ve since been succeeded by an even better model, it’ll be hard to beat their current $40 price at Woot. This low cost is for a new set with a full one-year manufacturer warranty.The Echo Buds raised the bar in terms of what kind of sound quality you should expect from truly wireless earbuds in the $100-$120 price range. While they lack active noise cancellation like the newer model, their Bose active noise reduction tech should hush some sounds in your environment. Read our review.Super Mario 3D All-Stars for the Nintendo Switch is over 30... Continue reading…

The Nokia G300 is a 5G-enabled phone with a 6.52-inch LCD and 4,470mAH battery. | HMD Global Why should postpaid mobile customers have all the 5G fun? HMD Global, the manufacturer behind new Nokia phones, is announcing its most affordable 5G phone yet for Tracfone and Straight Talk Wireless’ prepaid customers — the Nokia G300.Like T-Mobile’s $199 REVVL V Plus 5G, the Nokia G300 doesn’t try to wow you with flagship-level specs but offers the bread-and-butter features you’ll care about at an affordable price.One of the most useful features of the G300 is its fingerprint scanner. It is integrated with the power button so that you can inconspicuously unlock your phone while pressing the same button to wake it up. Of course, you can also use your face to unlock the device.It has a reasonably large 4,470mAh battery, which Nokia... Continue reading…

Netgear launches the first quad band Wi-Fi 6E mesh system. Just when you were starting to think about upgrading to a Wi-Fi 6 router, Wi-Fi 6E is here. And it’s expensive. Netgear announced its newest entry into the 6E foray today, the Orbi Quad-B and Mesh WiFi 6E RBKE960 series. This is the first quad-band Wi-Fi 6E mesh offering, but not the first Wi-Fi 6E mesh router (the $1,200 Linksys Atlas Max 6E took that honor earlier this year). Featuring a 2.4 GHz band, two 5GHz, and a brand spanking new 6GHz band, this $1,500 system also supports four different networks out of the box, including one designed exclusively for your insecure smart home devices. And if that doesn’t get you excited, they’re also releasing a limited-edition color… black. Image: Netgear The new Orbi... Continue reading…

The Windows 11 taskbar. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge I’m not the only one who hates the new Windows 11 taskbar, and now third-party developers are coming to the rescue with apps that bring back some of the features missing in Microsoft’s latest OS.Microsoft removed basic taskbar functionality in Windows 11, like displaying the time and date on multiple monitors, moving the taskbar to the top of the screen or sides, and even small things like altering its height and having small icons. It has angered many Windows users, and most of the top feedback in Microsoft’s Windows Insider program was related to the taskbar changes before Windows 11 debuted last week.

LEONARDO can fly and walk thanks to bipedal legs and propeller arms. | Image: Caltech Aerospace Robotics and Control Lab / Science Robotics When it comes to judging how cool robots are, I deploy a simple but reliable heuristic: can I imagine this machine appearing in the Metal Gear Solid franchise? With LEONARDO, a bipedal robot with propellers for arms, I can not only imagine it, I’m pretty sure it is in MGSV. From the bubble head to the uncannily precise movements, it’s just a very cool robot, which I can also imagine being used to infiltrate mercenary basecamps.Just like a bird, LEONARDO can both walk and flyLEONARDO is a pleasingly choppy acronym for “LEgs ONboARD drOne” — the product of those linguistic geniuses in Caltech’s Aerospace Robotics and Control Lab. You may have seen an earlier iteration of the bot back in 2019 (when, amazingly, LEONARDO stood for “LEg ON... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US PC market has declined during the recent quarter, due to pandemic-related supply issues. It’s the first time the US PC market has declined since the pandemic began causing lots of people to rush out and buy new PCs over the past 18 months. Overall, Gartner and IDC analysis both suggest the worldwide PC market grew in Q3, but at a slower rate than we’ve seen during the pandemic.Gartner says “consumer and educational spending began to shift away from PCs to other priorities,” during the quarter, leading to less demand for PCs. That’s illustrated best by a 17 percent drop in Chromebook shipments, which Gartner has included in its traditional PC shipments for the first time ever this quarter. Both IDC and Gartner report 84.1 million... Continue reading…

Image: Google TV Google TV is making finding something to watch in a multiuser household a whole lot less chaotic by adding custom profiles, watchlists, and personalized Google Assistant help.Previously, Google TV supported the ability to sign into multiple Google Accounts to be able to use services with more than one account. But content suggestions, the watchlist feature, and Google Assistant functionality were all based on the activity of the primary account holder. With personalized profiles, every user’s recommendations, watchlist, and Google Assistant responses will be tailored to their own interests and activity.A Google spokesperson told The Verge that profiles will start rolling out next month on Chromecast with Google TV as well as Google TVs... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Nintendo’s Switch OLED Model is now available, and even if it’s no Switch Pro, there’s a lot to like about it. But as new owners of the console start enjoying its larger, more vibrant screen, some might also wonder whether they should pay any mind to the classic “risk” of OLED technology: burn-in.In the early days of OLED smartphones, it wasn’t uncommon to find a mistreated demo phone at a carrier or Best Buy that had a ghastly display with home screen icons or a status bar left permanently visible whenever the screen was on. Burn-in could also befall OLED TVs if they were carelessly left on a news channel (with a ticker at the bottom) for many hours.But we’ve come a long way since then.Bloomberg has reported that Samsung Display is... Continue reading…

The release also includes Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis controllers for Switch. | Image: Nintendo The Nintendo 64 games being re-released as part of the upcoming Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription will run at 60Hz, Nintendo of Europe has confirmed. The news follows concerns reported by Eurogamer that the re-released games, which include classic titles like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, would run at a reduced 50Hz in European PAL regions.The disparity is a holdover from the days of standard definition TVs which typically used the 50Hz PAL standard in Europe, but the 60Hz NTSC standard in the US. It meant that footage shown on European TVs would refresh 50 times per second, rather than 60 as in the US. This wasn’t a major issue for regular TV content (which typically ran at 30fps in the US... Continue reading…

The first generation Nest Hub, which was updated to run Fuchsia earlier this year. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Google says “it’s time” to now bring its mysterious Fuchsia operating system to “additional smart devices and other form factors” beyond smart displays, according to a number of job listings first spotted by 9to5Google. Fuchsia is Google’s newest operating system which was released earlier this year for the company’s first-generation Nest Hub.There’s been a lot of speculation about Google’s plans for Fuchsia, which unlike Android and Chrome OS doesn’t use a Linux kernel (it uses a microkernel called Zircon instead), and whose purpose is still fairly vague despite having been public for over five years. When it arrived on the Nest Hub it was more or less functionally identical to the software that preceded it. The new job listings offer... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google seems poised to announce a new subscription bundle called “Pixel Pass,” which would combine a new Pixel device with an extended warranty and premium subscriptions for several Google services. The unconfirmed bundle has been detailed in a leaked image published by Brandon Lee. It’s unclear how much Pixel Pass would cost, but the documents suggest it will be sold via Google Fi and the Google Store alongside the purchase of a Pixel device.As Lee notes, Pixel Pass appears to combine elements of Apple’s iPhone Upgrade program (which offers an iPhone via monthly subscription payments alongside an extended warranty) and its Apple One subscription services bundle. Pixel Pass could be pitched as a way to simplify access to all these... Continue reading…

A modular smartphone that (mostly) feels like a modern device Continue reading…

Instagram to introduce new features to nudge teams away from harmful content | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram will introduce new measures to nudge teenagers away from harmful content and encourage them to “take a break,” from the platform, Facebook vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg said on Sunday. Clegg made the remarks on CNN’s State of the Union show less than a week after whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before Congress about internal research that showed Instagram can have a negative effect on the mental health of young people.“We’re going to introduce something which I think will make a considerable difference, which is where our systems see that a teenagers is looking at the same content over and over again, and it’s content which may not be conducive to their well being, we will nudge them to look at other... Continue reading…

William Shatner is heading to space on October 13th | Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company Blue Origin said Sunday it will postpone the flight that is slated to fly William Shatner to space due to forecasted high winds at its launch site. The flight of the company’s New Shepard spacecraft is now scheduled for 9:30AM ET on October 13th, a day later than originally planned. It’s targeted to lift off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in Texas.A statement on Blue Origin’s website said New Shepard NS-18 has met all mission requirements, and the astronauts have started their training. “Weather is the only gating factor for the launch window,” according to the statement, which is signed with the company motto “Gradatim Ferociter” (Latin for “step by step, ferociously”).The company officially... Continue reading…

Sonequa Martin-Green stars as Captain Michael Burnham in Star Trek: Discovery | Paramount Plus Before it premiered, Jason Sudeikis described season two of Ted Lasso as the show’s Empire Strikes Back season, and sure enough, the entire season focused on fathers and sons, and after the season finale we have a pretty clear “enemy” all set up for season three. I know season two was not as universally liked as its freshman season, but Ted Lasso dug into some thorny issues about men and sports and mental health that few other shows attempt, and still managed to make me smile pretty much every week. I’ll miss this show until its return next year.I’ve also managed to binge-watch Midnight Mass on Netflix— an interesting if not quite fully-baked examination of organized religion— and am still hanging in there with The Morning Show which... Continue reading…

NBC/SNL Last week Saturday Night Live poked fun at Jeff Bezos and the billionaire space race, and this week it took aim at the senators who conducted this week’s Facebook whistleblower hearing, portraying them as mostly confused by the social media platform, and the memes they found online (or “mem-ays” as Aidy Bryant’s Ted Cruz pronounces it).Cecily Strong reprises her role as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who asks Heidi Gardner’s Frances Haugen about an Animorphs post, and Kyle Mooney as Sen. John Kennedy asks about Facebook’s algorithm: “do you have it with you now?” while proudly showing off his Jitterbug flip phone (aw).Bryant as Sen. Cruz asks whether posts that say “Ted Cruz sucks” should be flagged as misinformation, to which “Haugen”... Continue reading…

Elon Musk appeared at the Tesla Gigafactory in Germany on Saturday. The first vehicles are due to roll off the production line there by the end of 2021. | Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images Elon Musk said during an open house at Tesla’s new Gigafactory near Berlin this weekend that the company is aiming to begin production of its Model Y cars there before the end of the year. And the CEO added he’s hoping the plant will be producing between 5,000 and 10,000 vehicles weekly by the end of 2022, Bloomberg reported. But Tesla is still waiting for final approval for the plant, as local authorities evaluate its environmental impact on the area.Tesla held a “Giga-Fest” county fair style event in Gruenheide near the Gigafactory on Saturday, which included music, rides, and food trucks along with tours of the new plant for local residents. Tesla’s German Gigafactory is in the final phases of construction, after being delayed... Continue reading…

The Google Pixel 6 (top) and Pixel 6 Pro (bottom) | Google New leaks from a marketing site appear to confirm that the camera for the Pixel 6 will have a new Magic Eraser feature, and the devices will apparently get five years of Android security updates (h/t 9to5 Google)According to reliable leaker Evan Blass, the Carphone Warehouse website was showing images of Google marketing materials for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro (the images have since been taken down, but you can view the earlier versions of the Carphone Warehouse pages on the Wayback Machine here and here). Screenshots show the description for the previously leaked Magic Eraser, which will apparently be linked to Google Photos:

A test flight for Boeing’s Starliner has been pushed back to 2022 | NASA/Joel Kowsky NASA has officially pushed back the launch of its Orbital Flight-Test 2 until next year, as it continues to work on an oxidizer isolation valve issue on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, the agency announced.The agency said in a blog post that it’s continuing to assess potential launch windows for the mission: “The team currently is working toward opportunities in the first half of 2022 pending hardware readiness, the rocket manifest and space station availability,” according to the post.Steve Stitch, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, added that it was “a complex issue,” affecting parts of the spacecraft that aren’t easy to access, which has required “a methodical approach and sound engineering to effectively examine.”Boeing’s... Continue reading…

Tesla has delayed the latest rollout of its so-called “Full Self-Driving” software | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla has delayed the rollout of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta 10.2 software rollout because of last-minute concerns, CEO Elon Musk tweeted early Saturday. He apologized for the delay, saying the release would likely happen Sunday or Monday. He didn’t elaborate on what the “concerns” were.

Windows 11 has introduced a brand new Widgets panel, where you can access a variety of updated information using configurable topic boxes (what Microsoft calls information cards). It’s made up of two sections: a top section that offers widgets for weather, sports, your latest photos, and other personalized topics, and a news section that offers clickable headlines from a variety of sources.Here’s how to make the most of the current Windows 11 widgets.Access your widgetsTo access the widgets, select the Widgets icon in the taskbar (it’s the one that looks like a square divided into white and blue sections). You can also hit the Window + W keys or, if you’ve got a touchscreen, swipe from the left.You’ll probably see a variety of... Continue reading…

Perhaps not as impressive as some of the cutting-edge OLED TVs, it's tough to argue with a deal this good. The 55-inch Insignia F50 4K TV is currently available at Best Buy for $450, nearly its lowest price ever. This sizeable QLED panel features a 60Hz refresh rate and is powered by the Fire TV OS allowing for built-in Alexa voice controls. This gives the TV native access to most major streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus. The picture can be enhanced with Dolby Vision and HDR for increased depth of color, and a narrow bezel provides the TV with a sleek aesthetic.The ever-increasing size of game updates has become something of a meme by now. If you’re tired of constantly freeing up space on your PC or console,... Continue reading…

Apple is appealing the Epic Games ruling | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With potentially billions of dollars and some control over the App Store at stake, Apple has filed for an appeal of the ruling in its major trial against Epic. While Apple largely won that case (the company went so far as to call the ruling a “resounding victory”) with Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruling in favor of Apple in nine of the ten claims Epic brought against the company, it did lose in one important way: the judge found that Apple violated California’s anti-steering rules, and demanded that Apple let developers link to outside payment systems. That policy would have taken over in December, but it may be pushed out beyond that — and it seems that’s the point.As part of the appeal, Apple is asking for a stay to prevent the company... Continue reading…

Sean Penn introducing LL Cool J on Saturday Night Live. | Image: @snlhostsintro The highlight of my Friday so far has been the discovery of the @snlhostsintro Twitter account, which posts old clips of Saturday Night Live hosts introducing the musical guest. While the account isn’t new to everyone — it was created in September and already has more than 37,000 followers — I felt it was my duty to write about it because it posts some absolutely magical time capsules.Here’s a tame one to start, to give you an idea of the format: former US vice president Al Gore introducing Phish.

Photo by Ricardo Beliel/Brazil Photos/LightRocket via Getty Images Did you know you can sell land on Facebook Marketplace? No? Neither did I. Did you know people were trying to sell land in the Amazon rainforest on Marketplace? Again, neither did I! Selling land in ecological conservation areas is typically illegal and can have negative impacts on the flora, fauna, and people living there, so Facebook announced Friday that it’s changing its commerce policies to explicitly prohibit the sale of protected land on Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms.Facebook’s announcement comes after a February BBC investigation into its Marketplace that found people illegally sold large plots of land in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest on Facebook’s Craigslist alternative. The plots were frequently sold... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook says it has fixed an outage that lasted for about two hours across some of its services on Friday. The outage, which Facebook says was caused by a configuration change, impacted Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Workplace and affected people around the world.“We’re so sorry if you weren’t able to access our products during the last couple of hours,” Facebook said on Twitter. “We know how much you depend on us to communicate with one another. We fixed the issue — thanks again for your patience this week.”The outage follows a massive one on Monday, which took down Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus for nearly six hours. In an explanation posted the day after, Facebook said the backbone connecting the... Continue reading…

Image: Apple One of the best features on the Apple Watch Series 7 is its newly added fast charging system, which Apple claims is 33 percent and capable of charging the watch to about 80 percent charge in about 45 minutes. But if you want to take advantage of the fast charging, you’ll need to make sure to use the charger that comes with the Series 7, which is a brand new “Apple Watch Magnetic Fast Charger” that’s different from the old model (which doesn’t offer similar charging speeds).The old USB-C charger and the new model look identical from the outside, but only the new cable can charge the Series 7 at full speed (assuming you’ve got a USB-C charger that can put out the proper wattage, that is — Apple recommends its own 20W USB-C charger, of... Continue reading…

Nintendo’s newest hybrid console packs in a seven-inch OLED display and a few subtle enhancements. | Image: Nintendo Update October 8th, 1:21PM ET: Best Buy is the latest retailer to launch Switch OLED consoles. You can find the selection, including bundles, right here. If you’re lucky, you might still be able to find one at Amazon. We’re still waiting on Walmart, which may be gearing up to release some. We’ll update this post as the situation develops.The newest version of the immensely popular Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo Switch OLED model, is now available online. Check out Best Buy’s selection of consoles, which includes several bundles. Otherwise, you may still have luck purchasing one through Amazon.So far today, they’ve popped up at GameStop, but they quickly went out of stock. It’s the same story through Nintendo’s online shop. But now... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Apple Watch Series 7 is finally available to preorder, nearly a month after Apple announced the new smartwatch. But the launch of the Series 7 also brings the removal of the Series 6 from the company’s official Apple Watch lineup.If you want to buy a brand new Apple Watch from Apple, you now only have three options: the Series 7, which starts at $399; the still-very-good SE, which was introduced last year and starts at $279; and the years-old Series 3, which starts at $199.There are still a few ways to get a Series 6, though, and given how many features are shared between the Series 7 and the Series 6, the previous generation model could be a good option to consider if you want to save some money. Apple’s refurbished store has t... Continue reading…

A decent alarm clock on a slightly pointless smart display, it’s the new charging dock that makes this worth considering Continue reading…

The improvements are minor but worth the extra cash Continue reading…

This still is from the Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition, not the upcoming remaster. | Screenshot: GTA3 After several rumors, Rockstar Games has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas are each getting HD remasters. They’ll be released in a package called Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. The collection is coming to PC (via the Rockstar Games Launcher), PlayStation, Xbox, and, more surprisingly, the Nintendo Switch will host them, too. It will come to iOS and Android in the first half of 2022. Pricing and release date info hasn’t been shared.The company hasn’t explicitly mentioned what kind of technical improvements were made, nor has it shared any footage yet. But it says that each of the games has gotten “across-the-board upgrades including graphical improvements and modern gameplay... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / 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, Nilay and Dieter bring in Verge policy editor Russell Brandom and managing editor Alex Cranz to cover the series of unfortunate events for Facebook: the 60 Minutes whistleblower interview on Sunday, the massive Facebook outage on Monday, the whistleblower Senate hearing on Tuesday, and the fallout and response the following days.The Vergecast crew discusses whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony, how these events stood out amongst the various Facebook scandals of the past, and what could happen next with tech regulation.... Continue reading…

As the oil spill spread across Orange County, an aerial view of Laguna Beach Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. | Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Coastal communities are still reeling from a recent oil spill off Southern California that coated shorelines and marine life in black tar. Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency after a pipeline ruptured late last week, unleashing an oil slick spanning 8,320 acres on waters near some of California’s most iconic beaches. Officials are still investigating the cause of the spill but think that a cargo ship’s anchor might have snagged and tore through the pipeline, the Los Angeles Times reports.It could take months to assess and clean up some of the mess, and longer for ecosystems to recover. To learn more about what to expect, The Verge spoke with Steve Murawski, a fisheries biologist and marine ecologist at the University of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A developer who made a tool that let people automatically unfollow friends and groups on Facebook says he’s been banned permanently from the social networking site.Louis Barclay was the creator of “Unfollow Everything,” a browser extension that allowed Facebook users to essentially delete their News Feed by unfollowing all their connections at once. Facebook allows users to individually unfollow friends, groups, and pages, which removes their content from the News Feed, the algorithmically-controlled heart of Facebook. Barclay’s tool automated this process, instantly wiping users’ News Feed.As Barclay wrote of his experience using the tool in a recent article for Slate:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has launched an app for LG’s 2020 and 2021 smart TVs, the TV manufacturer has announced. The app arrived on these recent webOS 5.0 and webOS 6.0 models with a firmware update that started rolling out on October 7th, but will also be coming to older 2019 TVs “in the coming months.”The app is launching in the UK, France, and Germany, a TikTok representative confirmed to The Verge. That’s notable since TikTok’s smart TV apps for Samsung TVs, Android TV, and Fire TV have all focused on those same European countries so far. Meanwhile in the US, TikTok released a more limited “More on TikTok” app on Fire TV devices last year. We have followed up with both LG and TikTok to ask which regions the new smart TV app will be available in.C... Continue reading…

You play a note, and the software tells you whether you’re in tune. | Screenshot: Google.com Google Search now has a handy built-in tuner, letting you use the microphone on your phone or computer to tune a guitar, Android Police reports. To access the feature, which was added this week, just search for “Google tuner.” The interface is similar to the dozens of guitar tuning apps that are already available. You play a string on the guitar, and Google will detect the note you’re aiming for, and tell you to “tune up” or “tune down” as required.Like other guitar tuning apps, the effectiveness of Google’s tuner seems to depend a lot on the hardware you’re using it with. My iPhone 12 Pro (via Safari) or Windows desktop with a Blue Snowball USB microphone (via Edge) had no trouble hearing and helping me tune an unamplified electric... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge The new Nintendo Switch OLED Model doesn’t have a Pentile screen.That might not mean much to you, and it wasn’t something we were able to confirm definitively during our review process — other than to say that the screen is a huge improvement. Which it is. But there’s been speculation ever since the OLED Switch was announced that its panel might use Pentile technology, which could have had big implications for image quality. Nintendo devices don’t tend to have the best screens, after all.Pentile is a trademark owned by Samsung that refers to various subpixel matrix layouts most commonly used in OLED display panels. In casual conversation, or as casual as conversations about OLED subpixel layouts can really be, Pentile is now... Continue reading…

In a tweet earlier today, Google SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer called on Apple to support RCS, the next-generation texting standard that’s supposed to supplant SMS. He offered an “open invitation to the folks who can make this right” and said “we are here to help.” Translation: the “folks” are Apple and “we are here to help” is Google’s offer to assist Apple in implementing the new standard.RCS is finally starting to gain traction around the world. Its biggest champion has been Google, which finally landed on using it as the default texting solution for Android phones after trying every other solution. RCS is far from perfect, but it’s clearly superior to SMS (which is, of course, a low bar). After securing deals from US carriers to commit to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube has announced that its automatic livestream captions should now be available for all creators, instead of being limited to channels with more than 1,000 subscribers like they were during the feature’s initial rollout. This change, along with some future improvements the company details in its blog, should help make the platform more accessible to deaf or hard-of-hearing people.Some of those updates include making live auto captions available to 12 more languages instead of just English (including Japanese, Turkish, and Spanish), the ability to add multiple audio tracks to a video to support multiple languages (and audio descriptions for those with limited eyesight), and the expansion of the auto-translate captions feature to... Continue reading…