The Verge

Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images California governor Gavin Newsom signed the Silenced No More Act on Thursday night— a historic piece of legislation, authored by state senator Connie Leyva (D-Chino), that should protect workers who speak out about harassment and discrimination even if they’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement.Pinterest whistleblower Ifeoma Ozoma began pushing the bill forward last year, after coming forward with allegations of racism against the tech company. She knew she was partially protected by the Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act, a Me Too-era law that banned NDAs in sexual harassment cases, but soon realized the bill did not provide protections for other forms of abuse.Now, that’s changing. Workers in California will be legally... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hulu’s prices are going up beginning Friday, October 8th for both its monthly and annual subscription tiers.It was initially reported in September that Hulu’s monthly cost would increase by $1 per month or $10 per year (ad-supported) to $7 monthly (ad-supported), $13 monthly (no-ads), and $70 per year, respectively. Both Hulu’s base ad-supported and ad-free monthly subscription prices are going up in price by a dollar, but neither of its live TV tiers will be impacted. (Those plans got a price increase late last year.)In a recent email to subscribers, Hulu wrote that the price hike “will be reflected in your first billing cycle on or after October 8.” Users will be charged the new price unless they cancel their subscription on or... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge One of the Nintendo Switch’s persistent flaws has been Joy-Con drift, a phenomenon where players observe false inputs when they aren’t even touching the joysticks on the controllers. Nintendo has been relatively quiet on the subject for years, and the company refused to say whether the new OLED-equipped Nintendo Switch OLED had fixed the issue. But today, the company is breaking its silence in a big way — and suggesting that Joy-Con drift may never be fully addressed.In a new Q&A about the development of the Nintendo Switch OLED, the company reveals that it has steadily been making improvements to the Joy-Cons to try and make them more reliable. The joysticks that came with 2019’s Switch Lite aren’t the same as those in the original... Continue reading…

Microsoft has agreed to have an independent third-party study the potential impact of it making its devices easier to repair and to make changes based on those findings by the end of 2022, according to Grist and the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. The agreement was made after As You Sow filed a shareholder resolution asking Microsoft to look into the potential impact that it could make by making it easier for consumers to get their devices repaired. As You Sow has withdrawn its resolution in return for Microsoft conducting the study and making parts and documentation more available to repair shops that aren’t official Microsoft service providers based on the study’s results.As You Sow calls Microsoft’s commitment “an encouraging... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday that the company is moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, where it has been building a new factory for a little more than a year.Musk said Tesla will continue to operate its electric vehicle factory in Fremont, CA, and that he even plans to try and increase production there by 50 percent. “Just to be clear, though, we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” he said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting. “So this is not a matter of Tesla leaving California.”The move means Tesla’s home will no longer be the state where its vehicles are the most popular; instead, Tesla will be headquartered in a state where it can’t legally sell its cars directly to... Continue reading…

Google in Dublin | Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images Ireland said Thursday it would join an international agreement that sets taxes on profits for multinational corporations at a minimum rate of 15 percent. This is a major shift for the country that is the European headquarters for many large US pharmaceutical companies, as well as tech firms, including Google, Apple, and Facebook.An increase from Ireland’s current 12.5 percent to 15 percent may not seem that large by itself. The so-called Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Inclusive Framework agreement, outlined in July, is actually a two-pillar plan aimed at helping end tax avoidance and making international tax rules fairer and more transparent. The OECD has estimated that a 15 percent tax rate would generate... Continue reading…

Did you take one look at our hefty Windows 11 upgrade checklist and nope right out of there? It turns out there’s a dramatically easier way to install Windows 11 on computers with older CPUs — with no need to reformat your drive, erase your files, or even burn the ISO to an external USB drive.If you’re currently seeing “This PC doesn’t currently meet Windows 11 system requirements” or “The processor isn’t currently supported for Windows 11,” there’s a Microsoft-approved registry hack that should instantly make it better.(We’ve tested this method working on a Dell XPS 15 with Core i7-7700HQ and a Microsoft Surface Go with Pentium Gold 4415Y, neither of which are on Microsoft’s compatibility list.)Here’s the whole process from start... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mozilla introduced a new suggested search result feature in the Firefox address bar as part of the 93.0 release of its browser. That’s not too surprising — Firefox Suggest, Mozilla’s feature for “surfacing relevant information and sites to help you accomplish your goals,” is similar to suggestions offered by most browsers. But as How-To Geek spotted in the company’s support pages, it also includes content from paid advertisers.“When contextual suggestions are enabled, Firefox Suggest uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind,” the support post reads. The “relevant suggestions” from “trusted partners” appear at the bottom of the usual... Continue reading…

Samsung’s latest smartwatches. | Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Samsung has brought its Samsung Internet web browser to the new Wear OS-based Galaxy Watch 4 (via 9to5Google). Browsing on a watch doesn’t sound like my ideal way to surf the web for a long period of time, but I could see how it could be useful for small tasks like checking a name or looking up a place.I don’t have a Galaxy Watch 4, so I can’t give you hands-on experience of how the Samsung Internet browser works. But based on 9to5Google’s testing, it seems like Samsung has thought of some neat tricks to make it possible to navigate the web on your wrist:

Image: Apple Foundation has been renewed for a second season on Apple TV Plus, Apple announced today, ahead of the release of the fourth episode of the first season on Friday.The renewal is a vote of confidence from Apple, as one of the flagship shows on Apple TV Plus, meant to help bring in viewers as a prestige genre show in the same way that Game of Thrones does for HBO, The Mandalorian does for Disney Plus, or The Witcher for Netflix. That said, outside of today’s press release (where Apple calls the show “a global hit” that “quickly proved to resonate with audiences”), the company hasn’t even provided vague estimates of how popular the show has been so far.“With season two, our audience will get to visit more of Asimov’s indelible characters... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google will no longer allow advertisers, publishers, and YouTube creators to monetize content that denies the existence of climate change. The company detailed the changes in a support document on Thursday.“Today, we’re announcing a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” the Google Ads team said in the document. “This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the producers behind Into the Spider-Verse and the writer-directors of The Lego Movie, are bringing their talents to Apple TV Plus. The Afterparty is a new eight-part murder-mystery comedy series created and directed by Miller, with both Lord and Miller serving as showrunners and executive producers.The new series “centers on a murder mystery at a high school reunion,” Apple says, with each episode featuring “a retelling of the same night told through a different character’s perspective, each with its own unique visual style and film genre to match the teller’s personality.”The show stars Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz, and Ilana Glazer, among several other comedy stars (and apparently Dave... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Horizon Worlds. | Image: Facebook Facebook has announced a $10 million Creator Fund to encourage people to build experiences on its Horizon VR platform, which it is now calling Horizon Worlds. Although Horizon Worlds is still in beta, the company clearly wants to get more people making content for the platform to offer more experiences that could be interesting to users.The funds will be given out “over the next year” in three main buckets:

Lyft and Tinder have partnered to offer free rides | Tinder Dating app Tinder and ride-hailing company Lyft are partnering on a new feature that lets Tinder members buy a Lyft ride for a potential date. Tinder first teased the new feature in March and is now rolling it out to its subscribers as a way to “get back to making IRL connections.”Tinder members can access the Lyft integration from a new Explore section of Tinder’s app, where they can buy a Lyft ride credit for a person they’ve matched with. The person buying the credit doesn’t get any details about the recipient's address but can set the location, time, and value of the credit they want to purchase. Then, the recipient gets a link via either a phone number or email address.Tinder calls the feature a “thoughtful gesture while... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The ambiguous finish to the Epic v. Apple trial opened a tiny crack in Apple’s control over in-app payments on the iPhone — and now, a small developer is trying to crawl through it.A company called Paddle has announced its own in-app payment system that will take a smaller cut than Apple’s system — 5 to 10 percent, instead of the 15 to 30 percent cut claimed by Apple. It’s a way around the commission fees that started the fight with Epic in the first place and likely to be the beginning of a new fight for developers.Paddle’s system is designed to take advantage of the Epic v. Apple verdict, which required Apple to allow external payment links. Prior to the verdict, an App Store rule had banned “external links, or other calls to action... Continue reading…

Image: Square Enix Eidos-Montréal and its subsidiary Eidos-Sherbrooke are switching to a four-day workweek, the game developer announced on Thursday. The Square Enix-owned company is currently working on the next big Marvel video game adaptation, Guardians of the Galaxy.“This initiative is another step towards the embodiment of the studio’s values, building a healthy, creative, and sustainable work environment for our employees,” studio head David Anfossi writes in the company’s blog. “The idea is not to condense the working hours into four days, but rather to review our ways of doing things and our quality time invested, with the aim of working better!”A 32-hour workweekEidos-Montréal says that both studios will be closed on Fridays in the next few... Continue reading…

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge The 2022 Geneva International Motor Show, slated to happen in February, has been canceled as the COVID pandemic persists and the auto industry struggles with a global chip shortage.Organizers said Thursday that there are still too many “uncertainties” related to the pandemic and the shortage for automakers to commit to the show, which usually serves as a showcase for wild supercars, concepts, and prototypes. The hope is to have “a more impactful show in 2023” with more virtual presentations.“We have pushed very hard and tried everything to reactivate the Geneva International Motor Show in 2022,” Maurice Turrettini, who runs the committee in charge of the show, said in a statement. “Despite all our efforts, we have to face the facts and... Continue reading…

Image: Sony Pictures Entertainment Sony Pictures Entertainment has released a new trailer for Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the next live-action film based on the popular horror video game franchise, ahead of the movie’s November 24th release in theaters.The movie, which is a reboot for the film side of the franchise, looks to be filled with Resident Evil hallmarks. It takes place in Raccoon City, series mainstays Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, and Chris Redfield are all featured, something about the Umbrella Corporation is apparently at the heart of the conflict, and the main characters look like they will spend some time fleeing zombies in a spooky mansion. (There’s even a part in the trailer where a zombie dog shatters a window.)Here’s the... Continue reading…

Image: Marvel Studios / Disney Plus A WandaVision spinoff series starring Kathryn Hahn is reportedly in the works for Disney Plus, Variety reports.In the show, Hahn would reprise her role as the meddling witch Agatha Harkness, with WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer serving as both writer and executive producer on the project. Variety’s report does note that the project is still in development, meaning that there’s a chance that Disney and Marvel may not actually go through with the project.Spoilers for WandaVision aheadHahn was arguably the breakout star of WandaVision. She starts the show as just Wanda and Vision’s overly inquisitive neighbor, before being fully revealed in the viral and Emmy-award winning hit song “Agatha All Along” as the witch Agatha Harkness,... Continue reading…

YouTube YouTube Rewind — the company’s annual year-end round-up of trends, creators, memes, and the most popular videos on the site — has been canceled for good, the company confirmed to TubeFilter today.

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images Plus more details about Ford’s relationship with the buzzy EV startup Continue reading…

Microsoft Microsoft is celebrating the 20th birthday of Xbox with a couple of new, translucent accessories, including a wireless controller and a wired gaming headset. They’ll launch on November 15th, 2021 — marking 20 years to the day — and preorders are available now.Starting with the controller, Microsoft says its translucent look is a callback to the see-through controllers that shipped with the original Xbox debug kits. There are splashes of the brand’s signature green on the Xbox home button, as well as around the D-pad and rear grips. Microsoft colored the components silver so they’d be easier to see through its casing. Internally, though, it’s the same model as the one that ships with the Series S and Series X consoles, with Bluetooth... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Department of Justice has created a team to investigate cryptocurrency-related crime. The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) will handle investigations of “crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors,” the agency said in a news release. Mixing and tumbling services can obscure the source of a cryptocurrency transaction, by mixing it with other funds.Cryptocurrency is “used in a wide variety of criminal activity,” including ransomware demand payments, money laundering, and for the illegal sales of drugs, weapons, and malware, the agency noted. Several high-profile ransomware cases have involved demands in cryptocurrency, including the... Continue reading…

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Ever since it was introduced in 2015, Apple CarPlay has represented a notable upgrade over the user interfaces most cars have by default, but many of our concerns about it, and Android Auto, come up due to their limitations. Newer features like dual-screen support and third-party apps like Google Maps could help, but there are still huge parts of the driving experience that exist outside of Apple’s control panel. Now, Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg that Apple’s “IronHeart” push envisions tying settings like climate controls, seat positioning, and even specific surround sound tweaks to your iPhone.This is a gap that Google has closed by cutting deals with automakers like Polestar, Ford, Honda, and GM to use Android Automotive as the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A massive security breach at Twitch has exposed a wealth of information pertaining to the website’s source code, unreleased projects, and even how much the top streamers make. As data analysts and journalists work to decipher what exactly is contained in the hundreds of gigabytes of information, others are still wondering how this happened.Such a breach seemed like it was increasingly likely to some. The Verge has spoken to multiple sources who claim that during their time at Twitch, the company valued speed and profit over the safety of its users and security of its data.This data breach, which Twitch blames on an error to a server configuration, is the latest in a series of security and moderation problems that have plagued the... Continue reading…

“Remaster” can be a nebulous term in video games, covering anything from direct ports on modern platforms to wholesale graphical overhauls. Alan Wake Remastered, which was released this week, lands somewhere in the middle and feels like an appropriate use of the term. The Xbox 360 action thriller from 2010 hasn’t been changed all that much, but Remedy and co-developer D3T have done enough to make it feel more at home on current hardware.Alan Wake isn’t exactly a lost classic. The Xbox 360 version is downloadable on Xbox One and Series consoles, and the PC version on Steam holds up pretty well at higher resolutions and frame rates. That said, it never came out for PlayStation platforms, and Remedy felt there was an opportunity to bring... Continue reading…

Apple Apple’s AirPods are no stranger to a decent deal, but they’re selling for close to their lowest price yet at Amazon and Walmart. You can pick up the set that includes a wired charging case for $109 (originally $159). These don’t have the same great sound quality or active noise cancellation found in the more costly AirPods Pro. Still, the standard AirPods might surprise you. I picked up a set a few months ago after being a holdout, and they sound good enough for casual listening, but the best feature to me is their fast and strong wireless connection.The set of AirPods that includes a wireless charging case for Qi chargers, but is otherwise the same as the set above, is down to $129 at Amazon (originally $199).Alternatively, if you... Continue reading…

The Moto G Pure (2021) is a 4G phone that shares many of the same specs as the Moto G Play, but is $10 cheaper. | Motorola Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Motorola is squeezing in one more budget-friendly phone into its 2021 Moto G lineup — the Moto G Pure.At $159.99, the Moto G Pure is the least expensive member of Motorola’s lineup, with the already-released Moto G Play only costing about $10 more at $169 (before discounts). Both the Moto G Power and the G Stylus, on the other hand, cost significantly more at $199 and $299, respectively.The biggest difference between the Moto G Pure and the G Play is in their processors. The G Pure uses the MediaTek Helio G25, while the G Play uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 chip from 2020. Based on processor comparison data from Nanoreview.net, the Snapdragon 460 is the faster and more energy-efficient... Continue reading…

The tradeoffs aren’t worth it anymore Continue reading…

A Pixel 6 handset on its rumored wireless charging stand. | Image: EVLeaks Leaked images of Google’s upcoming Pixel 6 have given us our best look yet at new features coming to the search giant’s next flagship smartphone. The images, which were leaked by Evan Blass, reveal shots of a second generation Pixel Stand wireless charger, user interface details, and camera specs, and include a mention of face unlock biometric security. They’ve arrived a little under two weeks before the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are due to be officially announced on October 19th.There’s not much in these pictures that hasn’t already leaked, but what they offer is a better look at the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro’s rumored features. The beefy new Pixel Stand, for example, is believed to support 23W fast charging according to an August leak,... Continue reading…

The Sky Glass camera looks like a Kinect. | Image: Sky Sky is resurrecting the original dream of Microsoft’s Kinect accessory next year. The British satellite broadcaster announced its new Sky Glass TVs this morning, and the company has built a separate 4K camera that includes motion controls and gestures support. It even works across games, and has a social TV sharing feature built in partnership with Microsoft.“Working with Microsoft we’re also building a fantastic feature that lets us watch TV together even if we’re miles apart,” explains Fraser Stirling, Sky’s chief product officer. “It syncs your TV with other households, with integrated video and chat on-screen, and you can choose content from the biggest channels — including Premier League matches, movies, and all your favorite... Continue reading…

Image: Anker Anker’s Soundcore brand is today refreshing its flagship true wireless earbuds with the new $169.99 Liberty 3 Pros. Both the earbuds and their slider-style charging case look very similar to the Liberty 2 Pros, though the buds are 30 percent smaller and have an “air pressure relief structure” in their wingtips for added comfort. Anker has made more significant improvements to the features they offer: the new earbuds have active noise cancellation — you’d hope for as much at this price — and the “HearID ANC” system is optimized for efficiency and comfort. Anker says it monitors outside ambient noise while also taking in-ear pressure into account, so the level of ANC automatically adapts to the environment.The dual-driver acoustic... Continue reading…

Users will be directed to an educational portal if they search for certain keywords. | Image: Snapchat Snapchat has announced a series of measures it’s taking to counter drug dealing on its platform, and to educate users about the dangers of fentanyl and other drugs. When users search for drug-related keywords like “fentanyl,” Snap says it will direct them to a new educational portal called Heads Up. It’s also ramping up actions against drug dealers on its platform, including improved in-app reporting tools and proactive detection.The announcements follow a recent investigation by NBC News into a spate of deaths involving teens and young adults who were suspected of having bought fentanyl-laced drugs through the social network. The report alleged that drug dealers are able to use Snapchat to find buyers, and that the platform isn’t... Continue reading…

Sky Glass TVs stream channels over Wi-Fi instead of satellite dishes. | Image: Sky British Satellite broadcaster Sky is moving away from the satellite dishes that have defined its TV service for decades. Sky Glass is launching today, an ambitious effort to sell television sets that stream Sky TV content over Wi-Fi directly to consumers. There’s no external box, no satellite dish, and no need for a soundbar. Sky calls the all-in-one TV “no fuss.”Although announced for the UK today, Sky has global aspirations for Glass TV “built on technology borne of the collaboration as part of the Comcast Corporation.” As such, we might be looking at the platform underpinning Comcast’s rumored XClass TVs for the US.Sky Glass TVs will be available in three sizes: 43-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch. Each 4K TV will stream Sky’s TV... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service (xCloud) is now fully powered by custom Xbox Series X hardware. Microsoft tells The Verge it recently completed the upgrade, which improves both framerates and game load times for players streaming Xbox games over the web.While Microsoft has moved Xbox Cloud Gaming to 1080p and 60fps streams in recent months, the company has yet to unlock the full potential of custom Xbox Series X hardware to deliver 4K streams. It’s not clear when this will be available, but Microsoft has been moving towards delivering Xbox Cloud Gaming beyond just mobile devices and browsers.Microsoft is currently working on a dedicated Xbox app for TVs that will allow Xbox players to stream games without a console. Standalone... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Syniverse, a telecom company that helps carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T route messages between each other and other carriers abroad, disclosed last week that it was the subject of a possible five year long hack. If the name Syniverse sounds familiar, the company was also responsible for the disappearance of a swath of Valentine’s Day text messages in 2019.The hack in question was brought to light in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Syniverse published last week. In it, Syniverse shares that in May 2021 it “became aware of unauthorized access to its operational and information technology systems by an unknown individual or organization.” The company did its due diligence notifying law enforcement and conducting an... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix’s immensely popular Squid Game is getting an edit after phone numbers shown in the series dialed real numbers, leading to what the company described as “unfortunate” prank dials.The Korean drama about a sadistic “game,” in which players find themselves with no option but to participate in a series of twisted challenges, contains visible phone numbers in multiple scenes (a phone number is also clearly visible in the Squid Game trailer).Reuters, which earlier reported the news, cited Netflix and production company Siren Pictures as saying they purposefully did not include a complete number and weren’t aware the number shown would reach a real line.Netflix confirmed to The Verge that the numbers that appear in Squid Game will be... Continue reading…

The PlayStation 3. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is making it a little bit harder to buy games digitally on the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita. Beginning October 27th, you won’t be able to use a credit card, debit card, or PayPal to purchase games or add money to your wallet on those systems, according to a support document. Instead, you’ll have to use a PlayStation Store gift card or load up the wallet tied to your account on the PlayStation Store on the web, your phone, or on a PS4 or PS5.This disappointing change is the latest in something of an ongoing story of Sony’s support for its older consoles. In March, Sony announced it would be closing the PlayStation Store for the PS3 and Vita, but it reversed that plan a few weeks later, saying it “made the wrong decision.”... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Windows 11 is officially out, but if you’ve got an AMD Ryzen processor, you might want to hold off on updating for a bit: the company is reporting that its chips might have issues with the new OS that could cause performance drops of up to 15 percent in some cases.AMD and Microsoft have found two main issues with Windows 11 on Ryzen. The first is that Windows 11 may cause L3 cache latency to triple. AMD says that the issue could cause 3–5 percent worse performance in most affected applications, while some games (AMD specifically calls out those “commonly used for eSports”) could see performance dips of 10–15 percent.Windows 11 is also having issues with AMD’s “preferred core” technology, which usually aims to shift threads over to the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple’s promised Conversation Boost feature that uses the AirPods Pro to make it easier to hear people’s voices is available now (via Macrumors). Support for the new feature was included as part of the same update that made it easier to find AirPods Pro and AirPods Max using the Find My app.Conversation Boost is included as a Custom Transparency Mode in Apple’s headphone accommodations. When the feature is enabled, the beam-forming microphones on the AirPods Pro attempt to isolate voices above any background noise and other conversations. There’s also access to sliders to modify the amplification, transparency, and tone of what you hear. If your AirPods Pro are running firmware 4A400, you can enable Conversation Boost... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Two new iPhone 13 Pro camera features that Apple promised would be coming in future software updates have shown up in the latest developer beta of iOS 15.1. Now users can record video with Apple’s ProRes codec, and there’s a switch to turn off the automatic macro mode switching (via 9to5Mac). With this release of the third beta, users have gained access to the toggles, which could indicate that the features are coming soon.In the current versions of iOS, the iPhone 13 Pro will automatically switch from the main camera to the ultrawide camera when it detects that you’re close up to a subject, enabling the close-focus macro mode. Some reviewers found the switch (which happens without much of a UI indication) jarring, and Apple said it... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is testing new prompts on iOS and Android that warn before you jump into a conversation that could get heated. In one example, there’s a prompt dropped right into a conversation in progress that says “conversations like this can be intense.” In another, which seems like it appears if you try to reply to one of those intense conversations, is titled “let’s look out for each other” and lays out three bullet points to encourage empathetic and fact-based conversations.You can get a look at the prompts in the tweet below:

What If..?’s finale debuted on Disney Plus today, and it brought some bigger multiversal mayhem with it. But fans may have already gotten the big reveal of the finale spoiled for them all the way back in August… thanks to a Hyundai Tucson commercial?Spoilers for “What If… The Watcher Broke His Oath” and What If…?’s first season below:Marvel projects are no stranger to commercials and product placement, of course, but the Hynduai commercial (part of a series of ads that the company has been doing together with Disney Plus) marks a particularly strange turn — one that mashes storytelling with advertising.The main conceit of the bulk of What If…?’s early episodes was that the series was an anthology, providing standalone tales in... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Brandon Silverman, the founder and CEO of the Facebook-owned analytics tool CrowdTangle, is leaving the company, according to an internal farewell post to colleagues posted Wednesday that was seen by The Verge.His departure comes as Facebook is under pressure to publicly share more data about the content that spreads on its service. CrowdTangle, a free tool that lets anyone track popular posts across Facebook and Instagram, is at the center of that debate. In recent years, it has been used to show that far-right personalities are regularly the most engaged-with accounts on Facebook. That irritated some Facebook executives who felt that the data being shared by CrowdTangle was incomplete, and earlier this year, the CrowdTangle team was... Continue reading…

Image: Valve Valve has posted an official teardown of its upcoming handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck. Before diving into the teardown, though, the company spends about a minute to strongly caution against taking one apart unless you’re sure you know what you’re doing.“Even though it’s your PC — or it will be once you’ve received your Steam Deck — and you have every right to open it up and do what you want, we at Valve really don’t recommend that you ever open it up,” a Valve representative said in the video. “The Steam Deck is a very tightly designed system, and the parts are chosen carefully for this product with its specific construction, so they aren’t really designed to be user-swappable.” Image: Valve The inside of a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple will require developers that offer a way to create accounts in their apps to also offer a way to delete them, starting with app submissions on January 31st, 2022, the company shared Wednesday. The account deletion requirement was originally announced alongside several other changes to Apple’s developer guidelines at WWDC 2021.Account deletion is a minor convenience, but considering how often apps require accounts and how easy it is to delete an app without ending your relationship with the company connected to it, it’s welcome. Apple’s announcement suggests only that developers “allow users to initiate deletion of their account from within the app,” so it’s possible implementations of these account deletion features could bump you... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is slowing down the release and development of some new products and features to make sure they won’t bring more scrutiny towards the company or harm children, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The “reputational reviews” come as Facebook is facing backlash from the public and policymakers after a wave of reports citing Facebook’s own research showing ways Instagram could have a negative effect on teen girls’ mental health. Facebook was also slammed in congressional hearings by whistleblower Frances Haugen, who shed more light on Facebook’s internal research, as well as its business model and algorithms.Some of Facebook’s recent public actions and statements back up the idea that it’s being extra careful right... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For weeks, Facebook has stared down mounting anxiety over a leaked internal study about the harmful effects of Instagram on teenage girls — and Tuesday night, Mark Zuckerberg finally responded to the scandal personally. In an open letter to Facebook staff, Zuckerberg scoffed at concerns raised by whistleblower Frances Haugen, doubling down on earlier Facebook claims that the report has been misinterpreted.“If we’re going to have an informed conversation about the effects of social media on young people, it’s important to start with a full picture,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’re committed to doing more research ourselves and making more research publicly available.”But for researchers who study social media, the internal study that sparked... Continue reading…

Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images Medical device company Medtronic issued an urgent recall of the remote controller for certain insulin pumps because they’re vulnerable to hacks. It’s possible for someone to copy the signals sent from the controllers to the pumps and deliver or block a dose of insulin, which could be dangerous for diabetic patients using the pumps.In the recall statement, Medtronic said that it wasn’t aware of any situations where this type of hack has occurred. The company was first made aware of the issue in 2018 after an independent cybersecurity researcher found the vulnerability and told users about the problem. That initial alert told users how to disable the remote control feature when they weren’t using it.Now, the company says people shouldn’t... Continue reading…

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft | Photo by GREGG NEWTON/AFP via Getty Images Two NASA astronauts originally slated to launch on an upcoming flight of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft have been reassigned to an upcoming SpaceX flight instead, as delays continue to push back Starliner’s next flight to space. Astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada were supposed to be among the first human passengers on Starliner during its first crewed flights in the coming years. Now, they’ll fly together on SpaceX’s fifth crewed mission to the International Space Station, which is slated to take place in the fall of 2022.Mann and Cassada were first assigned to fly on Starliner in 2018. Mann was supposed to fly on the Starliner’s first crewed test flight, along with Michael Fincke and Butch Wilmore — a critical test to prove... Continue reading…