The Verge

A Google Meet call. | Image: Google A trio of Google Meet features that were previously only available via Google’s business-focused Workspace plans are coming to Google One subscribers, the search giant is announcing today. These include the ability to have group calls lasting up to 24 hours in length (up from a previous limit of one hour), access to Google Meet’s background noise filtering feature, and support for recorded video calls.These features aren’t coming to every Google One plan. They’ll only be available to users who pay for 2TB of storage or more, which means paying at least $10 a month or $100 a year for a subscription. The features also aren’t rolling out to every 2TB Google One subscriber right away. Google’s announcement says they’ll be available in the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s development of a self-driving car has proven arduous and massively challenging for the company. The Information today published an extensive chronology of the project so far. It covers some familiar ground for anyone who’s been following Project Titan over the years, like a revolving door of leadership, high turnover across the team, and shifting goalposts around what Apple is even trying to accomplish with the large effort. But the report goes beyond recounting the project’s history and stumbles.The Information also reveals some interesting new details. Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief and a key executive at the company, is said to be “particularly skeptical” of Project Titan. Owing to all the setbacks and reset... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Amazon Prime Day is inching ever closer, and there’s already some momentum building with early deals. Tomorrow, July 12th, is slated as the start of the two-day sales event, but you can already take advantage of some nice discounts ahead of the official launch at 3AM ET / 12AM PT. Other retailers are also getting into the mix, so keep on the lookout for sales from the likes of Best Buy and Target, the latter of which has already begun its “Deal Days” event. While Amazon is obviously the star of its own show, it also bears mentioning that Prime Day deals are exclusive to Prime members while competing sales from other retailers are open to all.Ahead of the main event, we’re compiling the best early Prime Day deals you can get on smart... Continue reading…

BEIJING, CHINA - MAY 02: China’s space station core module ‘Tianhe’ flies over the Bell Tower on May 2nd, 2021, in Beijing, China. A Long March 5B rocket carrying the core module of China’s space station blasted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on April 29th. | Photo by Lu Lin / VCG via Getty Images What are the odds a free-falling rocket will kill one person somewhere in the world? There’s about a 10 percent chance over the next decade if current practices in the space industry stay the same, according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy.While that’s not a huge risk, the threat is significantly bigger in some parts of the world than in others. In particular, many countries in the Global South are likely to deal with a larger share of space trash even though they’re not responsible for it, according to the analysis. And it could become a bigger issue as rockets launch into space more frequently to ferry up a growing number of satellites.The threat is significantly bigger in some parts of the... Continue reading…

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration is set to evaluate an application for what would be the first over-the-counter birth control pill. French pharmaceutical company HRA Pharma said Monday that it has formally asked the FDA to authorize its contraceptive.The submission comes as the United States is grappling with a fast-changing reproductive healthcare landscape after the Supreme Court ended federal protections for abortion. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a Supreme Court opinion that the court should reconsider opinions on rights to contraception. The timing is a coincidence, Frédérique Welgryn, HRA Pharma’s chief strategic operations and innovations officer, told The New York Times. “Birth control is not a solution for abortion access,”... Continue reading…

Photo by Charles Pratt / The Verge Augmented reality, monocle style Continue reading…

A selection of the newly available emoji reactions. | Image: Meta WhatsApp users will soon have the ability to react to messages with any emoji, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced in a Facebook post. “We’re rolling out the ability to use any emoji as a reaction on WhatsApp,” the CEO wrote before listing a couple of his favorite emoji. It comes just a few short months after WhatsApp added the ability to react with a limited number of just six emoji.Like previous emoji reactions, the feature is accessible by long-pressing the message you want to react to. This opens the menu containing the previous six emoji reactions along with a new plus icon. Tapping the plus icon opens a menu containing every available emoji, ranging from standard smiley faces to recent additions like the saluting emoji and the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales We’re less than a day away from Prime Day 2022 kicking off. Those Prime member deals will begin at 3AM ET / 12AM PT on July 12th. But, as we saw last week, some companies aren’t waiting until then to begin striking prices down to the lowest that we’ve seen so far this year. For example, Google’s Pixel 6 with 128GB of storage is $100 off at Amazon and Best Buy (when you click activate later), costing $499 for the unlocked phone. It was already a stunning value at full price, but it’s truly in a class of its own for under $500. And, if you want the 256GB version, it’s $100 off, too, costing $599. Considering that the Pixel 6A will debut for $449 later this month, this might be the better deal for you.This is the first time that we’ve seen... Continue reading…

Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Microsoft is still planning to block Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default in Office apps. The software giant rolled back planned changes last week, surprising IT admins who had been preparing for Microsoft to prevent Office users from easily enabling macros in Office files downloaded from the internet. The change, designed to improve security in Office, was supposed to go live in June before Microsoft suddenly reverted the block on June 30th.“Following user feedback, we have rolled back this change temporarily while we make some additional changes to enhance usability,” explains Kellie Eickmeyer, principal product manager at Microsoft, in a blog post update. “This is a temporary change, and we are fully committed to... Continue reading…

Upnext is a dumping ground for all your content, no matter what it is. | Image: Upnext Upnext is a read-later app. No, it’s a bookmarking app. No, it’s a content-curation-social-network thing. Even Jeroen Seghers, one of the service’s co-founders, struggles to explain it. “Longer term,” he says, “I like to think about what we’re building as a knowledge browser.” But even he admits that doesn’t mean much to anyone right now. Eventually, Upnext settled on “A reader with superpowers,” which is close enough.Whatever you call it, here’s what Upnext is: it’s a place to save and interact with content from all over the internet. It handles articles and blog posts like Pocket or Instapaper but also serves as a dumping ground for all those YouTube videos you want to watch later, the podcast episodes you’ll eventually listen to, the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber and Lyft could have stepped up when public transportation fell short — but over a decade later, activists still fight for equitable service Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter lawyered up. The company reportedly hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a firm notable enough to have its own Wikipedia page, and a founding partner, Martin Lipton, credited with inventing the shareholder rights plan or “poison pill” defense that Twitter initially used to put the brakes on Musk’s attempted buyout.On Friday, Elon Musk filed a document to attempt to cancel his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. In response, Twitter chairman Bret Taylor tweeted the company would pursue legal action to close the deal as agreed upon. Wachtell Lipton’s hiring, as reported by Bloomberg, suggests Twitter is serious about arguing its case in the Delaware Court of Chancery.During an appearance at the Sun Valley Conference this weekend... Continue reading…

Kojima Productions founder Hideo Kojima. | CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images Hideo Kojima’s game studio has issued a response after fake posts circulated across social media and news outlets that misidentified Kojima as the assassin of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In a tweet, Kojima Productions says it “strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey false information” and “will consider taking legal action in some cases.”On Friday, a man shot and killed Abe during his speech at a political campaign rally. Police captured the shooter at the scene who was later identified as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami.

An Argo AI vehicle in Miami, Florida. | Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by both Ford and Volkswagen, has laid off about 150 employees, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. The move is supposed to offset a period of rapid growth, in which the company hired more employees than needed.“With incredible growth and progress made in our mission to deploy driverless vehicles, we are making prudent adjustments to our business plan to best continue on a path for success,” Argo AI said in an emailed statement obtained by Bloomberg. The Verge reached out to Argo AI with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.As noted by the WSJ, the layoffs make up about 6 percent of the Pittsburgh-based company’s 2,000-person team. Argo AI was... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A trove of internal Uber documents leaked to The Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), as well as dozens of other news outlets, outlines its strategies for global expansion — even if the company had to bend some rules. The leak, collectively dubbed the Uber Files, consists of over 124,000 documents spanning the period between 2013 and 2017.Uber has since responded to the leak in a post on its website, stating it “moved from an era of confrontation to one of collaboration” after CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took over following founder Travis Kalanick’s resignation in 2017.According to The Guardian, the leak also “shows how Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Spotify has quietly rolled out support for real-time lyrics on the Google Nest Hub, according to a report from 9to5Google. The feature, which has already been made available on iOS, Android, game consoles, desktop computers, and select smart TVs, lets you listen to music on Spotify while seeing a stream of lyrics that progresses with the song.While Spotify hasn’t formally announced the feature’s launch, a number of users — including the folks over at 9to5Google — report spotting real-time lyrics on their Nest Hub devices. As 9to5Google notes, you can access the feature by tapping the lyrics icon that appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen when you select a song. The video embedded below shows the feature in action.It’s not... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Ford is recalling certain models of the 2020 to 2022 Escape, Maverick, and Corsair due to the risk of under-hood fires (via Reuters and CNBC). The recall affects over 100,000 vehicles in the US, all of which come with a 2.5-liter hybrid / plug-in hybrid (HEV / PHEV) engine.In the case of an engine failure, Ford told The Verge that engine oil and fuel vapor could flood ignition sources, causing a possible fire beneath the hood of the car. Ford plans on adjusting affected vehicles’ under-engine shield and active grille shutter to allow for better air flow, and will start notifying owners of the recall on August 8th. According to CNBC, Ford has received 23 reports of the issue while engines are switched on, although no injuries have been... Continue reading…

Image: Nothing Nothing, the new consumer tech startup led by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, is poised to announce its debut smartphone on July 12th at an event it’s calling (brace yourselves): Nothing (event): Return to Instinct.The company hasn’t been shy about pre-announcing the Nothing Phone 1’s features ahead of its “official” launch, so we already know what it’s going to look like and many of the features it’s going to offer. Its most flashy element (literally) is a set of illuminating lightstrips on its rear, which can flash in time with the phone’s ringtones, light up to show its charging status, and more.But the key information that Nothing is yet to reveal is how much the phone will cost, when it’ll release, and where exactly it’ll be... Continue reading…

Image: IO Interactive Hitman 3’s new map, Ambrose Island, will arrive as free DLC to all players on July 26th, IO Interactive announced in its July roadmap. This marks the game’s first new map since it launched last January.Judging by the trailer, Ambrose Island looks like a dingy, tropical locale led by a rebel outcast. IO Interactive says the map is a “fully explorable sandbox location” with a “hidden cove, home to a dangerous pirate syndicate operating in the Andaman Sea and to many hidden secrets.” It’s also set to come with a slate of new targets, challenges, and rewards to unlock.

Rogers Communications provides mobile and home phone services, internet, and cable to millions of Canadians. Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications says it has restored connectivity to the “vast majority” of customers following a major outage that took down its internet, mobile, and home phone services on Friday. In an update posted to Twitter on Saturday morning, Rogers explained that some customers “may experience a delay in regaining full service” as it works to get everyone back online.Tony Staffieri, the president and CEO of Rogers, wrote a message to customers Saturday afternoon, announcing that services “have been restored” and that its network and systems “are close to fully operational.” Staffieri attributes the outage to a “network system failure following a maintenance update” that caused an issue with the company’s routers.“... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk says he’s going to boost childcare benefits at his companies as part of his mission to tackle the “underpopulation crisis” that he adamantly claims is “the biggest danger civilization faces by far.” The world’s richest man currently runs Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company — he was also about to helm Twitter until he attempted to back out of the $44 billion buyout, much to the discontent of the company’s board.“Kids are worth it if at all possible,” Musk writes. “I’m planning to increase childcare benefits at my companies significantly. Hopefully, other companies do the same.” Musk’s statement comes in response to a tweet asking about the financial implications of having several kids, a thread that Nick Cannon, w... Continue reading…

The Amazfit GTR 3 features an always-on display and more than 100 watchfaces. | Image: Amazfit We’re just days away from the official start of Amazon Prime Day, and while many discounts have already arrived, all signs point toward a swell of deals that should reach their peak on July 12th and 13th. There are many popular categories of tech expected to receive sizable sales — a few of which our deals team discussed via Twitter Spaces earlier this week — but some of the bigger categories are wearables and smart home tech. Luckily, there are already some pre-Prime Day deals in both categories that are worth your attention.First up is the GPS-equipped Amazfit GTR 3, which is down to a new low of $120.98 ($59 off) on Amazon in the gray colorway. The budget-friendly smartwatch features a round, 1.39-inch OLED display and runs Amazfit’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Buying multiplatform games used to be a simple decision for me: I’d almost always get them on the Nintendo Switch because of how easy it is to play games both on a TV or in portable mode. The Steam Deck has thrown a wrench in that decision-making process. The handheld gaming PC might be heavier, have worse battery life, and doesn’t come with an easy Switch-like dock to throw my games onto a bigger screen, but because I feel like I can bank on Steam games being available much longer into the future, I’m having to make tough choices about whether I buy games on Valve’s storefront instead of Nintendo’s.There’s one important thing I should state up front: I hadn’t owned a gaming PC of any kind until I got the Steam Deck in April. For a long... Continue reading…

Canadian telecom Rogers is suffering a major outage affecting landline phones, cellular connections, and internet connectivity throughout Canada that started early this morning. Downdetector listed thousands of reports for the issues that flooded in as people started to get up around 5AM ET and couldn’t get online.Rogers first addressed the outage in a tweet from its official support account just before 9AM ET and then went silent for a couple of hours. On Friday afternoon, the company tweeted that its technical teams are working to restore services “alongside our global technology partners, and are making progress.”Late Friday evening, Rogers CEO & President Tony Staffieri posted a letter to Canadians on the company website.

It’s on. Elon Musk has officially filed to kill his own Twitter acquisition, and Twitter is calling his bluff. They’ll see Musk in court. And while it’s only going to get messier from here, one important verdict has already been rendered by Elon Musk himself: he doesn’t have what it takes to run Twitter. And that’s a damning blow to his own central mythology.We’ll look at the specifics of Musk’s formal SEC filing in a minute, but first it’s important to remember what he’s said about the deal and why he wanted to do it in the first place. It’s not like the world forced the acquisition of a relatively small social network on the world’s richest man. (On the contrary: he forced this on Twitter.) In fact, a reasonable person would conclude... Continue reading…

“Refrain from Tweeting, Slacking, or sharing any commentary.” | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Following Elon Musk’s notice to Twitter that he wants out of his $44 billion deal to purchase the company, employees have been instructed to not publicly comment on the deal. An internal memo by Twitter’s general counsel and obtained by The Verge says that staffers should “refrain from Tweeting, Slacking, or sharing any commentary about the merger agreement.”The note, which you can read in full below, cites the fact that the merger is an ongoing legal matter. Musk’s team alleges that the company “failed or refused to provide” information about the number of bots on its platform,” and Twitter’s board has announced that it’s suing Musk to ensure that the deal goes through as originally agreed.After the news broke Friday that Musk wanted... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter’s message to Elon Musk after his attempt to bail on his $44 billion agreement to buy the company: we’ll see you in court.“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” tweeted Twitter’s chairman, Bret Taylor, less than an hour after Musk’s legal team said he wanted out of the deal in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”If you’ve been following the twists and turns of this deal, it’s not a surprise that Twitter plans to put up a fight. Soon after Musk said he would buy Twitter and take it private, he began laying the... Continue reading…

Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier | Image: Disney Plus Marvel Studios’ upcoming fourth Captain America feature — the first since Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson officially took over the mantle in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — may not yet have a name or release date, but the movie’s just picked up a director in the form of one Julius Onah.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Onah (The Cloverfield Paradox) has signed on to direct the next Captain America film that will pick up some time after Sam Wilson’s confrontation with John Walker and the Flag Smashers. Onah joins The Falcon and The Winter Soldier creator Malcolm Spellman and series staff writer Dalan Musson, who will be scripting the new film together. Currently, no other details about Captain America 4 have been released, but it’s... Continue reading…

Musk claims the company is in breach of contract. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk is officially trying to pull out of his $44 billion agreement to purchase Twitter. In a filing Friday afternoon with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk’s team claims he is terminating the deal because Twitter was in “material breach” of their agreement and had made “false and misleading” statements during negotiations.“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” Musk’s legal team writes. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”Twitter still hopes to close the deal, despite Musk’s attempted termination. Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor wrote that the company... Continue reading…

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday directing federal agencies to protect abortion access and the online privacy of patients seeking reproductive healthcare following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.The order’s primary directives prompt the Department of Health and Human Services to expand access to emergency contraception and long-acting birth control devices like IUDs. But it also calls on HHS and the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the sensitive health data of patients seeking abortions and other reproductive care.“We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican Party, to take away freedoms and our personal... Continue reading…

Image: Weber My Weber grill came with a warning: “The use and/or installation of parts on your WEBER product that are not genuine WEBER parts will void this Warranty.”That’s not cool. In fact, it’s been illegal since 1975 — and soon, Weber won’t be doing it anymore. According to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Weber Stephen Products will not only have to strike phrases like that from its warranty terms within 90 days, but it’ll have to proactively, clearly, and conspicuously tell customers via mail, email, websites, and apps that the exact opposite is true.Seriously, Weber will need to use this exact phrase: “Using third-party parts will not void this warranty.”According to the order (pdf), Weber will also need to post a... Continue reading…

Vials of insulin at a factory in France | PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP via Getty Images Insulin prices are so high that California has decided to make its own, California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Thursday. $100 million of the state’s budget will be put into the effort, which seeks to make the lifesaving drug more affordable after years of skyrocketing prices.“Nothing epitomizes market failures more than the cost of insulin,” Newsom said in a brief statement posted online, noting that patients can pay $300–$500 a month for the drug.

Music Recognition can now sync identified songs to the Shazam app and across your Apple devices Apple’s Music Recognition feature in the iPhone Control Center is now able to sync with the latest version (15.14) of the Shazam app and across Apple devices using the same Apple ID (via MacRumors). According to MacRumors, many users thought that the feature required the iOS 16 developer beta, but now it is available for iPhones that have iOS 15 installed.After announcing it would acquire Shazam in 2017, Apple debuted Music Recognition as a built-in iOS feature in 2020 with iOS 14.2. The feature allowed iPhone users to identify songs around them and in apps without downloading the Shazam app. Now, if you ask Siri or use the Music Recognition control to help find a song, you are able to store it in the Shazam app if you have it... Continue reading…

These guys! | Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images July 9th marks the ninth birthday of the BTS Army (specifically, the official announcement of its name). As Twitter celebrates the anniversary, Google has released a new street view experiment through its Arts & Culture platform in collaboration with the band. The BTS x Street Galleries exhibition brings viewers on a virtual tour of the group’s favorite artworks.Each member has curated a virtual gallery, with their selections placed in various public locations that will be highly recognizable to BTS fans. J-Hope decorated the UN General Assembly, where BTS gave an address and shot a music video last year; RM guides fans through Seoul’s Namdaemun, where BTS performed for 2021’s Global Citizen Live festival. For anyone... Continue reading…

All you need to do is change your user agent. Anyone who’s tried the Xbox Cloud Gaming beta on Linux (which is likely a small crowd, I know) may have noticed that the image quality is a little rough, even by cloud gaming standards. Now, though, community members have found a quick workaround to get better image quality, and we have an official explanation for why the hack works and why the problem exists in the first place.On Monday, Reddit user Spiritual-Ad2806 posted on the Xcloud subreddit, saying that they were able to trick the Xbox service into showing them a better quality stream on Linux by making it think it was running on Windows. Doing that is relatively simple; they used an Edge extension to change their user agent, which is essentially a string of text that tells... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is taking new steps to try and stop annoying auto warranty spam calls. If you feel like you get a lot of them, you’re not alone: the FCC thinks that more than 8 billion of those spam calls, which the agency says could be illegal, have been generated by just a few entities since at least 2018.The FCC believes the calls have been generated from an “operation” consisting of “Roy Cox, Jr., Aaron Michael Jones, their Sumco Panama companies, and international associates,” according to an FCC press release. The FCC has told some carriers to cease and desist carrying the calls and ordered all networks to “be on the lookout for this traffic.”The agency has also opened a formal case to investigate the... Continue reading…

Whether the US government thinks it’s enough is another matter. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has reportedly offered to spin off its ad auctions business, which lets companies buy advertising space on the web and in search results, into a slightly more separate company if it’ll help avoid antitrust actions, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The offer is reportedly part of multiple concessions Google has offered the US Department of Justice, as it looks to avoid further lawsuits alleging anti-competitive practices.According to the WSJ, the move would be a corporate shuffle. Rather than spinning off parts of its ad business into a completely separate company or selling them altogether, the proposal would make them a separate Alphabet company. Alphabet is the holding company for Google’s properties, such as... Continue reading…

Aerial view of a solar farm producing clean renewable energy on April 20, 2022, in Emmeloord, Netherlands. | Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal / Getty Images In the coming years, recyclers will hopefully be able to mine billions of dollars worth of materials from discarded solar panels, according to a new analysis published this week. That should ease bottlenecks in the supply chain for solar panels while also making the panels themselves more sustainable.Right now, most dead solar panels in the US just get shredded or chucked into a landfill. The economics just don’t shake out in recycling’s favor. The value you can squeeze out of a salvaged panel hasn’t been enough to make up for the cost of transporting and recycling it. That’s on track to change, according to the recent analysis by research firm Rystad Energy.Making the panels themselves more sustainableRystad expects the value of... Continue reading…

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images The NFL is working on its own direct-to-consumer streaming service, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC in an interview. Goodell didn’t specify exactly what content will be available on the service, which he called “NFL Plus,” but the league is aiming to launch it for the upcoming NFL season.“We think it’s very important to have a relationship directly with the consumer,” Goodell said. “We think we have a lot of content and a lot of ability to be able to do that. The consumers want it, so we’re very excited about what NFL Plus is going to be. But it’s really in an early stage. I think over the years you’ll see that continue to grow. And it will be an important opportunity for us to be able to speak to our fans directly. That’s an... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, the Fire Emblem: Three Houses-themed hack and slash game, is pretty damn good — I just wish I could enjoy it. Three Hopes made a bit of a splash for its debut during February’s Nintendo Direct. Fans had seen the familiar blue-red-yellow primary color scheme and hoped that the morose Dimitri, best boy Claude, and Edelgard and her merry band of fascists had come back in a sequel to one of the best Nintendo Switch games in the console’s history. Some of them rolled their eyes to see Three Hopes was not Three Houses 2 but the next in a long line of licensed hack and slash games.I was not one of those fans. I love hack and slash games. I voraciously consumed the middle handful of Dynasty Warriors and W... Continue reading…

JWST’s primary mirror on Earth before it launched | Image: NASA Today, NASA released a list of celestial targets that will be revealed next week when the agency publishes the first full-color images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. The targets include galaxies, nebulas, and a giant planet outside our Solar System.JWST is NASA’s massive new deep-space observatory, which launched on Christmas Day in 2021. Sporting a large gold-coated mirror spanning more than 21 feet across, the observatory is set to transform the field of astrophysics by collecting light from the first stars and galaxies that formed right after the Big Bang. It’s also designed to study objects throughout our Universe in unprecedented detail, giving us insight into our distant Solar System, planets outside our cosmic... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After a few delays, Verizon seems poised to actually follow through on shutting down its 3G CDMA network at the end of this year. But the carrier is still contending with a subset of customers who sat out the 4G LTE era and haven’t yet upgraded their 3G phones. So, as 2022 rolls onward, Verizon is sending those wireless subscribers a free extremely basic flip phone to prevent them from losing connectivity when the 3G network goes offline.According to its website, Verizon will provide customers with one of three phones: the Orbic Journey V, TCL’s Flip Pro, or the Nokia 2720 V Flip. The retail value for each of those devices is under $100: the Orbic is $99.99, with the other two running $79.99.Verizon says customers can opt out of the... Continue reading…

Roku’s solid Streaming Stick 4K is on sale for just $29.99 — nearly half off — at Amazon. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Finding a good show to watch after a long day of work can sometimes require too much brain power — at least if you’re as lazy as I am. That’s why a streaming device that’s simple to use, like Roku’s latest Streaming Stick 4K, can be so great. All of your streaming service apps are easily and quickly accessible in a big grid, and Roku even highlights free content that doesn’t require subscription services for those of us who are both lazy and cheap. While we wish there were support for Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C in the latest version, it does support Dolby Vision, Apple’s AirPlay 2, and both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice assistants.Regularly $49.99, Amazon and Best Buy are both currently selling it for $29.99, which is just $1 shy of... Continue reading…

A screenshot of some of the offerings on Wish If you need a $2 pair of jeans, a $1 pop-up pool for your backyard, and waterproof sheets for $0.50, Wish is the online store to find all that and more. Or at least it was.A New York Times deep dive tracks the arc of the internet’s most nonsensical shopping destination known for its array of bizarre merchandise priced impossibly low. The story paints a picture of an e-commerce juggernaut’s rapid ascent that ultimately caused its own downfall when growth was prioritized over the basic tenants that shoppers expect — products arriving in a timely fashion, for example, but also more essential things, like listings being real at all.One anecdote in the piece proves the impossibly low prices were, in fact, too good to be true — because Wish... Continue reading…

Elon Musk is out to solve a lot of problems — including population collapse. Elon Musk’s pinned tweet is from May. It’s a chart from The Wall Street Journal showing that the US fertility rate has been below the “replacement level” since the 1970s. “USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years,” was Musk’s contribution to the tweet. He’s been talking about population decline for years, actually. He’s even talked about it as one of the greatest issues facing humanity, and his solution is simple: have more kids, everybody!Say this for Musk: dude practices what he preaches. Insider reported this week that Musk had twins last November with Shivon Zilis, a star in the AI world, a longtime colleague of Musk’s at OpenAI and Tesla, and a current executive at Neuralink. The twins came to be in the... Continue reading…

Samsung SmartThings is working on more integrations with Philips Hue smart lighting. | Image; Signify Samsung is planning for deeper integration with Philips Hue lighting in its SmartThings smart home platform. The company tells The Verge that it is working on enhanced music-based experiences that leverage Hue’s smart lighting. This follows a report from SamMobile that claimed a new update to the SmartThings app would let users synchronize their Hue lights with what is playing on their TV.“In the coming months, we hope to announce more details of an expanded partnership between Samsung SmartThings and Philips Hue that will provide enhanced music experiences,” said Samantha Fein, vice president of marketing and business development for SmartThings, in a written statement provided to The Verge. “However, a few recent articles seem to have... Continue reading…

A study found the Oura Ring can detect pregnancy. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge In early May, Ben Smarr published a new study showing that the Oura smart ring can detect pregnancy before most people take a test. It was an exciting finding — earlier detection of pregnancy based on wearable devices could, he wrote in the paper, “increase the agency of pregnant individuals.”Smarr, a data scientist at the University of California, San Diego does research on wearable devices and health — including reproductive health. He’s working with Oura on other projects around pregnancy. His team is also looking to see if data from devices can detect miscarriages.Reproductive health in general — and its intersection with wearables in particular — is an often underexplored area of research. The applications were exciting. But the... Continue reading…

Verification can be a handy tool in building an audience. | Photo by Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images If you’ve spent any time on Twitter — or any social media, really — you’re likely familiar with the blue checkmark. These badges indicate verified accounts. According to Twitter, a verified account is any account of public interest that’s been authenticated by the company itself. Basically, it’s Twitter’s way of letting everyone know that you are who you say you are.It’s not hard to see why you might want a verified Twitter account. Recognizability, curtailing misinformation, building trust with an audience — these are all major reasons why individuals, public figures, and brands alike seek the blue checkmark. But while it’s clear that verification comes with some benefits, getting verified may not be a walk in the park.Twitter’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The NFT boom of the past couple years appears to be conclusively over for average consumers. For big social networks, though, it appears that the work is just getting started.The latest platform to embrace non-fungible tokens is Reddit, which on Thursday announced the arrival of “blockchain-backed collectible avatars” — unique profile pictures from artists riffing on Reddit’s “Snoo” alien mascot, giving purchasers the right to use them on and off the site. The avatars can be purchased only with fiat currency; Reddit takes a 5 percent cut of each transaction.Reddit’s announcement takes pains never to refer to these avatars as NFTsIn a sign of how badly damaged the crypto brand has become, Reddit’s announcement takes pains never to... Continue reading…