The Verge

Spirit’s deal with Frontier will make the combined airline the fifth largest in the US. | Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Spirit Airline’s board of directors has rejected JetBlue’s bid to acquire the airline and will proceed with its existing merger agreement with Frontier, one of its ultra-low-cost competitors, Spirit announced in a press release. A deal with JetBlue has “a low probability of receiving antitrust clearance” and poses “an unacceptable level of closing risk” to its shareholders, Spirit notes.After Frontier first announced its plans to buy Spirit in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.9 billion in February, JetBlue followed up with an all-cash offer of $3.6 billion last month. The airline even offered to throw in a $200 million breakup payout in case antitrust issues prevented the deal from going through. Despite all this, Spirit still... Continue reading…

Nike’s Go FlyEase sneakers feature a bistable hinge that allows you to put them on hands-free. | Image: Nike Nike’s Go Flyease sneakers are back in stock. Normally, sneaker restocks are something you don’t expect anyone other than hypebeasts to get excited about, but it’s a bit different with Nike’s hands-free shoes. While praised for its accessible design, the $120 Go FlyEase has also been notoriously hard to find for the people who would benefit from them the most.The Go FlyEase made a splash when it was first introduced thanks to its bistable hinge. The design allows the shoe to switch between an “open” and “closed” position, making it possible for someone to simply step into the shoe without having to use their hands. The issue was Nike didn’t handle the launch well. A combination of limited availability and hype led to resale sites... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the latest phase of big plans for growth, Peacock’s collaborating with Universal Pictures to produce original movies from LeBron James, John Woo, and Will Packer.Along with reclaiming some of NBC’s most valuable shows from other platforms and having the exclusive rights to stream NBCUniversal’s movies immediately after their theatrical releases, Peacock’s big plan also includes producing a number of original films. In a press release about its upcoming projects, Peacock president Kelly Campbell emphasized that the service sees itself as a place people come to looking specifically for films, and it’s moving to meet customers’ desires.“We know people join Peacock to watch movies, so we are constantly adding more to serve fans,”... Continue reading…

Apple Chief Design Officer Jonathan Ive (L) poses for pictures with CEO Tim Cook during a launch event on September 12, 2018, in Cupertino, California | Photo by Noah Berger / AFP via Getty Images When Apple announced the Apple Watch in 2014, it did so at De Anza in Cupertino, a few miles down the road from its then-headquarters on Infinite Loop. It’s sort of a sacred site for Apple, the place Steve Jobs debuted both the original Macintosh in 1984 and the iMac in 1998. And on the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh, for the first potentially game-changing product since the death of Steve Jobs, Apple — and Jony Ive, Apple’s chief designer and Jobs’ longtime collaborator — wanted to pull out all the stops.Well, not all the stops, it turns out. And the fight over the event logistics and the $25 million price tag Ive asked for to pull it off was reportedly one of the moments that led Ive to eventually leave the company. That’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today I learned about a secret cache of Twitter DMs that’s hidden behind a privacy setting. For some people, this means uncovering a trove of important messages that they’ve missed out on, but if you’re like me, the discovery of a “hidden” inbox wasn’t all that exciting. In either case, it’s still worth checking to see if you might have any messages Twitter blocked you from viewing.As you might already know, Twitter has a few privacy settings for DMs. To adjust them, hit the DM icon on Twitter and select the settings cog in the top-right corner of the screen. There are a couple of settings you would’ve needed to have enabled to create a secret inbox in the first place, however.First, you needed to have the “Allow message requests from... Continue reading…

Today, Sony announced the full pricing and availability details for its 2022 Bravia XR lineup of TVs. The range is led by the flagship 8K Mini LED series — this is Sony’s first year making Mini LED sets — but also includes 4K Mini LED, QD-OLED, and more traditional OLED and LCD sets.Nobody expects giant-sized 8K televisions to sell for a reasonable price, and Sony’s Master Series Z95K Mini LED models come in at $6,999.99 for the 75-inch size and a penny shy of $10,000 for the 85-inch set. The Z95K series will be available to preorder this summer, but among Sony’s latest TVs, I don’t see many consumers giving them serious consideration.Next up are Sony’s first QD-OLED TVs, which utilize new panels from Samsung Display. Samsung... Continue reading…

Image: Telegram Telegram appears to be testing another way for the super popular messaging app to start bringing in revenue. Beta testers for Telegram’s iOS app noticed something new in version 8.7.2, as first spotted by Android Police: a new set of stickers and reaction emoji that you can only unlock “by subscribing to Telegram Premium.”Telegram Premium, of course, doesn’t exist yet. (And Telegram didn’t respond to The Verge’s request for comment.) But right now, users with access to Telegram’s TestFlight builds and its Test Server are able to send each other exploding-heart and flying-ghost reactions, a sticker in which that cute blobby yellow duck is just unbearably sad, and a few other new things. And it appears that, ultimately, even the... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge There’s a veritable spoil of deals happening today, and I’m excited to share some of them with you. The most impressive (and unexpected) deal is on Apple’s 2021 iPad Mini, which received a design overhaul similar to the iPad Air. Normally $499.99 for the 64GB Wi-Fi version, you can get it for just $399.99 today at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. That beats the best-ever price by nearly $50. Given that it’s such an aggressive, out-of-nowhere deal, this one might see some color options sell out quickly. And if you’re interested in more storage, the 256GB configuration is $100 off, too, costing $549.99 instead of $649.99.The 2021 iPad Mini features an 8.3-inch display and is powered by the A15 Bionic chipset. One of the big advantages that... Continue reading…

Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Square Enix is selling off its three major Western game studios along with the associated video game properties — which includes big names like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief. The studios and properties are set to be acquired by Embracer Group for an estimated $300 million; following regulatory approvals, the acquisition is set to be finalized between July and September of this year.In total, Embracer is acquiring Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal, which amounts to “1,100 employees across three studios and eight global locations.” In terms of game properties, the company will be the steward of brands including Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, and Legacy of Kain, “along with continued sales and operations of the... Continue reading…

The Adaptive-Sync-capable Asus MG279Q. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge VESA, the computer display organization behind standards like the DisplayPort interface, has a new certification program that’s designed to help customers find better variable refresh rate monitors. Unlike its previous HDR certification program, which measured things like peak brightness, the new Adaptive-Sync Display Compliance Test Specification (or Adaptive-Sync Display CTS) is designed specifically for variable refresh rate displays, looking out for glitches like flicker and dropped frames.Variable refresh rate (VRR) is a technology that allows a display to synchronize its refresh rate to the output of whatever device is plugged into it, reducing the appearance of visual artifacts, screen tearing, and frame pacing issues. When... Continue reading…

Image: Ventje Ventje is a car made for the work-from-anywhere types benefiting from the new hybrid and fully-remote workforce enabled by the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve seen one in person and the build quality is impressive. It’s a German engineered Swiss army knife of Dutch design — on wheels.Ventje starts with a new or used VW Transporter van and uses CNC precision to convert the interior into a multi-purpose space to work, lounge, cook, eat, sleep, and play. And when the weather’s good, the interior can be transformed into outdoor seating. Lift the tailgate and the surprisingly large and functional indoor kitchen becomes equally useable from the outside with drawers that open both inwards and outwards, no conversion required.The kitchen features... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As a category, mental health apps have worse privacy protections for users than most other types of apps, according to a new analysis from researchers at Mozilla. Prayer apps also had poor privacy standards, the team found.“The vast majority of mental health and prayer apps are exceptionally creepy,” Jen Caltrider, the Mozilla *Privacy Not Included guide lead, said in a statement. “They track, share, and capitalize on users’ most intimate personal thoughts and feelings, like moods, mental state, and biometric data.”In the latest iteration of the guide, the team analyzed 32 mental health and prayer apps. Of those apps, 29 were given a “privacy not included” warning label, indicating that the team had concerns about how the app managed... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization behind Wikipedia, has announced that it will no longer accept donations in cryptocurrency, as first reported by Web3 Is Going Just Great. In an update, the WMF says it “has decided to discontinue direct acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of donating.” It also says it will close its Bitpay account, preventing any future contributions in crypto.After a lengthy discussion with almost 400 members of the WMF community, the majority voted to do away with crypto contributions 234 to 94. Some of the main arguments concerned the environmental implications of Bitcoin, the risk of scams, as well as the fact that the WMF gets such a low amount of donations in cryptocurrency compared to other... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge I never thought I’d be writing about my baby’s Fisher-Price gamepad again, but here we go: a modder has turned the cheap tune-filled toy into a complete Xbox gamepad with everything you’d need to play Elden Ring. And incredibly, he did so without losing any of the Fisher-Price Game & Learn Controller’s built-in sound effects — meaning you can now pair your Malenia run with such classic kiddie hits as “1, 2, 3, 4, up goes your score!” and “Orange, purple, white and pink, green, red and blue, woohoo!”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Yuga Labs, the web3 company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, disrupted the entire Ethereum blockchain as a flood of users rushed to purchase NFTs representing virtual plots of land in its upcoming metaverse project, Otherside. A total of 55,000 Otherdeeds sold at a flat price of 305 ApeCoin, or around $5,800 at the time of purchase (via CoinTelegraph), raising about $320 million in what was considered the “largest NFT mint in history.”Otherdeeds are minted in BAYC’s native ApeCoin, but still require Ethereum for gas fees. A gas fee is the cost associated with a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. Fees typically increase as the network gets more congested because it becomes more work to process a transaction.Such a large volume of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon will no longer grant up to seven days of paid time off (PTO) for workers sick with COVID-19, the company announced in an internal memo obtained by The Verge (via CNBC). Starting Monday, Amazon will offer up to five days of unpaid, excused leave, with the option for workers to use the paid sick time they’ve accrued.Amazon initially offered 14 days of PTO at the start of the pandemic, but later shaved one week off this policy in line with the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) updated guidance. The company now says workers with “confirmed” COVID-19 cases can submit a request for paid time off per its “standard sick leave policy,” regardless of vaccination status. It will also stop giving workers excused time off when waiting for... Continue reading…

Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff | Image: Razer Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, the co-founder and former president of gaming hardware company Razer, died last week at the age of 81. Maybe you’ve never heard Krakoff’s name, but it’s possible you’ve been impacted by his far-reaching legacy.In 1999, Krakoff was behind the first-ever gaming mouse: the Razer Boomslang. Not only was it the foundation of Razer’s now-massive lineup of gaming mice, it arguably jumpstarted the entire gaming peripheral industry. Below, you can see Krakoff himself in an ad promoting the Razer Boomslang mouse in 2002 — alongside professional gamer Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, who signed a historic sponsorship deal with Razer long before the word “esports” entered the lexicon.Origin stories can be complicated, and... Continue reading…

Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff | Image: Razer Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, the co-founder and former president of gaming hardware company Razer, passed away last week at the age of 81. Maybe you’ve never heard Krakoff’s name, but it’s possible you’ve been impacted by his far-reaching legacy.In 1999, Krakoff was behind the first-ever gaming mouse: the Razer Boomslang. Not only was it the foundation of Razer’s now-massive lineup of gaming mice, it arguably jumpstarted the entire gaming peripheral industry. Below, you can see Krakoff himself in an ad promoting the Razer Boomslang mouse in 2002 — alongside professional gamer Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, who signed a historic sponsorship deal with Razer long before the word “esports” entered the lexicon.Origin stories can be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber and Lyft have both pledged to cover legal fees in case their drivers are sued under Oklahoma’s restrictive abortion bill, according to a report from CNBC. While the bill has not yet been signed into law, Republican Governor Kevin Stitt is expected to approve it within the next few days.On Friday, Oklahoma’s House passed the Heartbeat Act (SB 1503), a law that bans abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy — much earlier than many women become aware that they’re pregnant — and now awaits Governor Stitt’s signature. Like a similar anti-abortion law recently passed in Texas, Oklahoma’s bill also gives individuals the right to sue someone who “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.” This includes the clinic that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Telegram now lets users send Toncoin, the cryptocurrency built off of Telegram’s abandoned blockchain effort, directly from chats within the messaging app (via Protocol). In a post on Twitter, TON (The Open Network), announced that Telegram now supports Toncoin transactions with no fees attached.TON included a short video showing how crypto transactions work on the platform. To get started, you’ll have to add Telegram’s Wallet bot to your attachment menu, which allows you to “purchase cryptocurrency by bank card, exchange, and transfer to other wallets.”

The Pixel Watch puck is in the middle. | Photo: tagtech414 (Reddit) It sounds like Google’s upcoming Pixel Watch will be a flagship set to compete with Samsung’s latest Galaxy Watches and the Apple Watch, according to new specs leaked by 9to5Google. According to 9to5’s report, you’ll be able to get a cellular version of the wearable, and it will have a 300 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery.It wasn’t necessarily a given that there would be a cellular option for the Pixel Watch. Some lower-end smartwatches, and even some high-end fitness-focused models, are reliant on your phone for connectivity. If the rumor is accurate and there is a cellular Pixel Watch model, it reinforces the idea that Google’s probably not trying to make its watch a smaller or cheaper alternative — it wants that mass-market appeal.As... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Let’s end April with a barrage of great deals, shall we? For a limited time (Saturday only, and until stock sells out), Woot is offering solid discounts on both the standard Nintendo Switch (the non-OLED version) and the smaller, cheaper Switch Lite, and if you make your purchase through the Woot app (iOS, Android — just open the following Woot links on your phone and they will redirect), you’ll get up to $20 off. Not too shabby! Really, any price drop whatsoever on Nintendo hardware is rare, so jump on this if you’ve been considering the investment.Starting with the Switch, it normally costs $299.99, but Woot’s discount knocks $10 off, costing you $289.99. Buying it through the app is where the real discount happens, taking a little... Continue reading…

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Now that CNN has made the decision to shut down its new streaming baby CNN Plus less than a month after it went live, you might be wondering what went wrong. A report from Axios has a chart that shows the streaming service was far from reaching its projected year-end viewership goal, and would have burned through $400 million in 2022 alone to try to get there.CNN projected that the service would have two million subscribers by the end of the year, but around two weeks later, they found they’d only managed to attract 150,000 people. At first, this doesn’t sound too bad, but considering services like Disney Plus had 10 million subscribers in its first day — and that Quibi, which was similarly shut down early in life, saw 910,000 people... Continue reading…

It’s also clarifying its criteria for removing apps. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Recently, several developers complained about how Apple threatened to remove their apps from the App Store because they hadn’t been updated in a “significant amount of time.” Now, the company has responded — by issuing a press release effectively saying that nobody was downloading the apps anyways.The notice, released on Friday evening, reads in part:

Sony’s PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now services are converging in June. | Image: Sony Sony has updated its PlayStation Plus FAQ page (tucked away at the bottom here) and is clamping down further on loopholes that gave users early discounts on its upcoming PlayStation Plus Premium service. It’s also pausing the activation of PlayStation Plus and Now vouchers for current subscribers until after its new service rolls out in June, and there’s even an official conversion chart showing the value of those vouchers for its upcoming three services; PlayStation Plus Essentials, Extra, and Premium.After Sony announced its plan to restructure PlayStation Plus into a new three-tiered service to further compete with Microsoft’s and Nintendo’s services, things were slightly vague about how the conversion to the new tiers will work.... Continue reading…

Marvel Studios Director Jon Watts’ involvement in Marvel’s wildly successful Spider-Man movies from the past few years made Kevin Feige’s 2019 announcement that Watts would be helming the studio’s upcoming Fantastic Four movie make more than a bit of sense. It seems now, though, that the plans for Marvel’s First Family returning to the big screen have hit a snag.Deadline reports that Jon Watts has amicably walked away from the upcoming Fantastic Four movie out of a very understandable desire to take a well-deserved break from making superhero movies. In a public statement, Kevin Feige expressed that working with Watts on the past three Spider-Man films was a joy and that the studio would very much like to collaborate with him in the future.“We were... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images This is the end of the first week after Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout offer, and one of the strangest tech transactions ever just keeps adding new twists. A detailed report from The Wall Street Journal has peeled back a few layers on the process that began with Musk accumulating Twitter stock back in January and what that might mean when he eventually closes the deal and becomes its owner. Taken with additional information from The Verge contributing editor Casey Newton in Platformer and a new report from Reuters, the picture starts to become clearer.Reuters is adding more details to earlier reports from Bloomberg and The Washington Post about the ideas Musk pitched to bankers who will loan him some of the money he... Continue reading…

Steve Carell as General Mark Naird, John Malkovich as Dr. Adrian Mallory in Space Force. | Netflix After initially debuting in 2020 as a somewhat timely lampooning of the United States Space Force, Netflix’s Space Force workplace sitcom is being canceled. Deadline reports that Netflix has decided to scuttle the Jeff Daniels and Steve Carell-created series, likely in response to Space Force netting somewhat less-than-stellar ratings over the course of its short run. Space Force’s second season debuted this past February and followed as its characters struggled to weather a change in presidential administrations. Though Space Force’s cancellation may be a sore spot, from Netflix’s perspective, it’s likely yet another cost-saving measure the streamer ultimately felt was necessary to take as it continues to figure out its long-term... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is adding a free built-in virtual private network (VPN) service to its Edge browser in a bid to improve security and privacy, a Microsoft support page revealed.Called ”Edge Secure Network,” Microsoft is currently testing the Cloudflare-powered VPN service and says it will roll it out to the public as a part of a security upgrade.When turned on, Edge Secure Network should encrypt users’ web traffic so internet service providers can’t collect browsing information you’d rather keep private, like, say, health-related searches or just plain bizarre queries.The new feature will also let users hide their location by making it possible for them to browse the web using a virtual IP address. That also means users could access... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Six months after predicting the global chip shortage would last until at least 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is now suggesting it might be 2024 before we’re fully out of the woods.“[W]e believe the overall semiconductor shortage will now drift into 2024, from our earlier estimates in 2023, just because the shortages have now hit equipment and some of those factory ramps will be more challenged,” he told CNBC on Friday.But while that sounds a little doom-y and gloom-y, you should know that the “chip shortage” is an involved, evolving situation that doesn’t affect every kind of chip at every time. Some industries and some kinds of parts have been worse hit than others as things go on. In fact, Intel’s own chips are doing fairly well.... Continue reading…

Warner Bros. While Warner Bros.’ and Mattel Films’ upcoming Barbie movie is sure to have some level of self-awareness about its main character’s status as a real-world cultural icon, Mattel is taking a firm stance against featuring the iconic doll’s very unofficial anthem that basically everyone knows by heart.The small tease of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie that Warner Bros. shared this week — a still image of Margot Robbie all dolled up and driving a dream car — singlehandedly put the project at the back front of people’s minds as something they might actually want to see. Partially because of the bright, colorful, “fun” vibes the image gave off, a number of fans began speculating what sorts of music Barbie might feature, and Aqua’s 1997 Hit “Barbie... Continue reading…

Stray, an upcoming game where you play as a cat, will now be released in summer 2022, according to a video in an official PlayStation tweet. Last July, publisher Annapurna Interactive said Stray would be released in early 2022 on PS5, PS4, and Steam, but it seems now we’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer to play the game.What does one do in a cyberpunk cat simulator, you might ask? “Stray is a third-person cat adventure game set amidst the detailed neon-lit alleys of a decaying cybercity and the murky environments of its seedy underbelly,” developer BlueTwelve Studio says on the game’s Steam page. “Roam surroundings high and low, defend against unforeseen threats and solve the mysteries of this unwelcoming place inhabited... Continue reading…

Ubisoft Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones finally seems to be emerging from the depths of development hell. As reported by Kotaku, test footage has leaked online, showing off the biggest glimpse of the live-service pirate adventure that’s been seen since its announcement at E3 2017.In the video, a voiceover explains some of the core details of Skull and Bones. A stat called “infamy” is used to gauge how good players are at being a pirate. Players can increase their infamy via raiding ships, completing contracts, and finding hidden treasure. Higher tiers of infamy grant players access to more difficult bounties and contracts, and failure will result in the loss of some infamy.Players will start with a modest pirate ship that they can then upgrade with... Continue reading…

Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images The celebrated game director shared insight into the process of crafting Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker’s story Continue reading…

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images In its latest notice to shareholders, Thomson Reuters announced that it would align with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and conduct an independent, company-wide human rights impact assessment of its products and services, including contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).The announcement comes after years of criticism over data brokerage services provided by the Canadian media conglomerate to ICE, which uses a Thomson Reuters database service known as CLEAR to track, arrest, and deport undocumented migrants in the US. Currently, Thomson Reuters has more than $100 million in contracts with ICE and provides the immigration agency not only with raw data gathered from cellphone... Continue reading…

Mari Yamamoto as Hana | Apple Ahead of Pachinko’s season 1 finale, Apple has just renewed its adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s best-selling novel for a second season.Today, Apple announced that it’s moving forward with more of series creator Soo Hugh’s multigenerational story about a family of Korean immigrants surviving and thriving in Japan throughout the 20th century. In a press release about the renewal, Hugh was mum about what’s next for Pachinko, but she called out the show’s fandom for having been vocal about its desire for more.“Words cannot express my joy in being able to continue telling the extraordinary story of this indomitable family,” said Hugh. “I’m grateful to the amazing team at Apple and Media Res studio for believing and supporting this show, and to... Continue reading…

It isn’t the first time. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Activision Blizzard is facing another complaint to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that it’s trying to keep employees from talking about their working conditions, despite their legally protected rights to do so. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has filed an unfair labor charge against the company, alleging that it told workers “they could not discuss issues related to the sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by state of California against the company,” according to a press release from the union.According to the complaint, an employee was threatened by a manager after posting an article about the lawsuit in Slack and discussing holding Activision Blizzard accountable with other co-workers. According to... Continue reading…

A tractor drives through a giant pile of plastic bottles at the San Francisco Recycling Center April 22, 2008 in San Francisco, California. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images California will investigate whether fossil fuel companies have broken the law by perpetuating myths about plastic recycling, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced yesterday.The investigation marks a fresh attempt to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for downplaying the harm their products inflict on the planet. California will be looking into whether companies have misled consumers into thinking that recycling keeps plastic out of landfills and ecosystems — and whether they’ve broken any laws in the process.The reality is that the vast majority of plastic — more than 90 percent of all plastic ever made — never gets recycled.“Enough is enough”“Enough is enough,” Bonta said in a press release. “For more than half a century,... Continue reading…

Photo by Christian Marquardt - Pool/Getty Images Elon Musk sold around $8.4 billion worth of his shares in Tesla this week as he seeks to line up the money to buy Twitter, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. But the billionaire claims he won’t sell any more Tesla stock “after today.”Musk sold the bulk of his shares on Tuesday and Wednesday, offloading 4.4 million shares, the filings show. He sold another 5.2 million shares on Thursday, after which he tweeted, “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”Tesla’s share price plummeted 12 percent on Tuesday and has since inched up higher. The stock was up about 3.9 percent on Friday.“No further TSLA sales planned after today”On April 25th, Twitter’s board of directors accepted Musk’s offer of $54.20... Continue reading…

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 has SOS emergency features, but that doesn’t equate to having “freedom to exercise at all hours.” | Screenshot: Samsung Samsung is under fire for a recent ad depicting a woman wearing a Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Buds running alone in the middle of a city at 2AM. Critics have called the ad both “unrealistic” and “tone-deaf” in the wake of the murder of Ashling Murphy, a 23 year old who was killed while running in January in Dublin, Ireland. The ad is oblivious to the dangers of nighttime running, but that makes sense since many smartwatch makers don’t seem to understand how their limited safety features may fail runners.Samsung has since apologized for the ad, telling BBC Radio 1 that it hadn’t intended to “be insensitive to ongoing conversations around women’s safety” and that “the ‘Night Owls’ campaign was designed with a positive message in mind: to... Continue reading…

The contractors have worked on games like Mass Effect Legendary Edition. | Image: EA A group of contractors supporting EA-owned BioWare is trying to unionize. Part of the reason is because they’ll be required to return to the office, even while full-time BioWare employees who work at the same location are being offered a hybrid work from home option, two employees told The Verge.The organizing group is employed by Keywords Studios, a company that offers services like quality assurance testing and localization for game development companies. One employee expects the unit will consist of between 15 and 20 individuals.These Keywords employees are embedded directly with BioWare’s team at the company’s office in Edmonton, Canada, and have worked on titles like Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the newest Star Wars: The Old... Continue reading…

Photo by George Rose/Getty Images Sixteen states as well as several prominent climate activists sued the United States Postal Service this week over its plan to purchase 148,000 gas-guzzling delivery trucks over the next decade, alleging the agency failed to consider the environmental impact of its decision.The states accuse the USPS of only performing a “cursory environmental review to justify the decision to replace 90 percent of its delivery fleet with fossil fuel-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles, despite other available, environmentally preferable alternatives,” the lawsuit reads. “In doing so, the Postal Service failed to comply with even the most basic requirements of [National Environmental Policy Act].”The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court... Continue reading…

Good performance, iterative design Continue reading…

This is another good benchmark to run One of the games we often use to test gaming laptops and PCs here at The Verge is Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s a popular, demanding game that includes a wide range of effects and scenery, from snowy blizzards to sandy roads and dynamic gunfights. Its benchmark is easy to use and can help you see how well your PC can run demanding games and which settings it can handle.First, you need to get the game if you don’t already have it. To do that:

Image: Startup Trail My startup went public, and it only took me about 25 minutes to pull it off. I don’t remember what the company does, though I don’t think it really matters? I own 16 percent of the place, but after I made some rash decisions about a legal fight and opted to set up a local office in India, the company basically doesn’t have any cash left on hand. Users love us, though! So the future’s bright for... whatever our name is. It doesn’t matter. In a minute, I’ll start over and try something else.I’ve spent too much of my day today playing Startup Trail, a new browser game made by The Copia Institute (a think tank and the parent organization of the publication Techdirt), the startup trade group Engine, and developer Leveraged Play. The two... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge The Apple Store, located in Atlanta’s Cumberland Mall, is the first of the company’s 272 retail locations to file for a union election. Employees have written an open letter explaining what changes they are pushing for: fair compensation and transparency on alleged pay inequality within the company, a commitment to promote more BIPOC employees into leadership positions, and increased COVID-19 safety measures in stores.“We want to have a voice in our workplace,” says Elli Daniels, a retail employee and union organizer. “We are doing this because we adore Apple and we love our jobs and we want to make sure we can continue to love the company as much as we do right now. We aren’t doing this because we want to turn our backs on the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you applied for financial aid through Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in the US in early 2022, there’s a very good chance some personal information was provided to a platform that’s completely irrelevant to the process: Facebook.This report from The Markup exposed that, as early as January 2022, the US Department of Education sent data from website visitors to Facebook, potentially including information submitted on forms like first and last name, country, phone number, and email address, via the “Meta Pixel” tracking pixel — even if the person didn’t have a Facebook account. The Markup also notes that this data collection began “even before the user logged in to studentaid.gov.”It’s unknown how many students had... Continue reading…

Ingenuity captured images that shows debris from the Mars landing site featuring Perseverance’s parachute and backshell | Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech New pictures from the Ingenuity helicopter offer a fresh perspective of the wreckage left behind when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars last year, NASA said on Wednesday.Launched in 2020, the Perseverance rover successfully landed on the Red Planet in 2021, with the mission of finding ancient signs of life on Mars. The rover carried the Ingenuity helicopter onboard — an experimental project that scientists on Earth hoped would be able to see sights that the rover couldn’t.Perseverance went through a grueling process known as the seven minutes of terror to descend onto the Martian surface. As it entered the atmosphere, a heat shield helped protect the rover from the blistering heat of reentry and slowed it down dramatically. After... Continue reading…