The Verge

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Twitter has permanently suspended Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account for repeatedly violating the platform’s rules on COVID-19 misinformation, as noted in a report by CNN. Since the ban only affects Greene’s personal Twitter account, @mtgreenee, she can still access and tweet from her governmental account, @RepMTG.In a statement to The Verge, Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough explains that the platform “permanently suspended” Greene’s account “for repeated violations” of the platform’s COVID-19 policies. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” she adds.Twitter implemented a five-strike system for COVID-19... Continue reading…

Samsung Samsung is adding onto its lineup of smart monitors with the 4K 32-inch M8. Like the models that are currently on sale, this new one can deliver smart TV-like functionality, including offering access to streaming apps, in addition to being able to plug into a computer like normal monitors. The company hasn’t revealed a release date or price, but the initial details we’ve learned prove that Samsung is going a few steps further with the M8 to make it even more useful to a variety of people.This smart monitor is 11.4mm-thick, which Samsung says is significantly thinner than prior models. Perhaps the most impressive feature is its magnetic and moveable SlimFit camera that can attach to the monitor for video calls. The monitor itself... Continue reading…

Samsung Samsung has announced a smaller version of its Odyssey Neo curved gaming monitor. The Odyssey Neo G8 is a 32-inch gaming monitor with the same 1000R curvature of the $2,500 49-inch Odyssey Neo G9. The R stands for radius and, compared to 1800R and 1500R curvature, which are both common in the monitor market, Samsung specializes in the 1000R curvature that’s far more, well, curvy. It makes 1800R look like a flat panel by comparison. The G8 similarly has 2,000 nits of peak brightness and promises brilliant picture quality with its Quantum Mini-LED panel.Samsung hasn’t shared a price or a release date for the Odyssey Neo G8, but it’s offering up just a few images and details until a later date. Aside from the difference in size, the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The second-generation AirPods Pro may support Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), and could even come with a case that makes a sound to help you find it, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a note to investors seen by AppleInsider and 9to5Mac.There currently isn’t an AirPods model that supports lossless audio, a form of file compression that preserves all of the data in the original audio file, resulting in higher quality sound. Each AirPods model — even the pricey AirPods Max — uses Bluetooth to deliver audio, which limits the devices to using Advanced Audio Codec (AAC), a lossy form of audio compression. Thus far, the only Apple devices that can take advantage of lossless audio on Apple Music (and elsewhere) include the iPhone,... Continue reading…

What would a Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, or Deus Ex look like if it were partly powered by the blockchain, so gamers could make money from their contributions? You may get to find out: Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has revealed that the company’s New Year’s resolution is to release “decentralized games” starting in 2022.While you won’t find any details in Masuda’s letter discussing the company’s strategy for the new year, you will find a good sense of his cautious-but-optimistic stance — not surprising, given how other game companies that recently Leeroy Jenkins’d their way into NFTs saw such immediate whiplash you could practically feel the vibrations over the internet.Here’s the most relevant section, which comes near the... Continue reading…

Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images Airbnb announced that it’s changing the way guest profiles are displayed in its app — for Oregon residents specifically. Airbnb hosts who are based in Oregon will now see a potential guest’s initials, rather than their full name, until after they’ve confirmed that guest’s booking request. The change will fully roll out by January 31st.The change aims to prevent racial discrimination among hosts, per the company’s announcement, by stopping them from gleaning a guest’s race from their name. A 2016 study found that Airbnb guests with names that sounded Black were 16 percent less likely to have bookings confirmed than guests with names that sounded white.The announcement follows a voluntary settlement agreement that Airbnb reached in... Continue reading…

Apple wants you to know that buying a $400 smartwatch could be a matter of life-and-death — and it’s brilliantly, gruesomely captured that feeling in a new TV ad.Titled “911,” the one-minute ad spot doesn’t show any of the gory details — you simply hear three phone conversations between 911 operators and people who managed to use their Apple Watch when facing seemingly imminent death: one who might drown in a sinking car, one who fell a great distance and broke his leg, and a paddleboarder who got swept out to sea.They each have a happy ending, Apple informs us: “With the help of their watch, Jason, Jim, and Amanda were rescued in minutes.” But the underlying message is brutally clear: if they didn’t have this miraculous life-saving... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge US officials have asked AT&T and Verizon to further delay new 5G deployments so that the Federal Aviation Administration can have more time to determine where they might interfere with airlines. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a letter to the CEOs of the two telecoms on Friday requesting a delay of “no more than two weeks,” according to Reuters.AT&T and Verizon had already delayed these deployments by a month over regulators’ concerns and planned to start the rollout on January 5th as a result. The two telecoms now tell Insider they are reviewing the latest request for a further delay. Buttigieg and Dickson write that, even with an additional delay, they expect 5G deployment will still... Continue reading…

Cover art for A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and other books, movies, and compositions from 1926 enter into the public domain today in the US. The works are now “free for all to copy, share, and build upon,” according to Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which tracks which copyrighted materials will become public each year.This year, the usual list of books, movies, and compositions comes with a sizable bonus: a trove of around 400,000 early sound recordings. A recent law, the 2018 Music Modernization Act, standardized how early sound recordings are handled under federal copyright law. As part of that, it set today as the date that copyright protections would end for “recordings first published... Continue reading…

Photo by HUSSEIN FALEH/AFP via Getty Images Some tens of thousands of people woke up on Christmas Day to doubled wages and a higher-than-expected bank balance after Santander did an oopsie, depositing £130 million ($176 million) into accounts held by its UK customers. Santander would now like the money back, please.The deposit mishap was the result of a mysterious “scheduling issue,” according to The Times, which first reported the story. The bank confirmed to The Verge that some payments were accidentally doubled. (Santander is characterizing it as a “technical issue.”) Those transactions included those from 2,000 businesses, as well as accidental deposits across 75,000 accounts of individuals and companies like a corporate Ebeneezer Scrooge who’d been scared into generosity.S... Continue reading…

Amelia Holowaty Krales CES has dropped the last day of its 2022 tech conference in Las Vegas, and the show will now end on January 7th, the Consumer Technology Association announced today. The shorter schedule is “an additional safety measure” in the face of a surge of COVID-19 diagnoses.Over the last two weeks, a number of large companies — including BMW, Intel, AMD, GM, Google, T-Mobile, Amazon, Microsoft and the company formerly known as Facebook — have dropped their physical presences at the conference. It’s the largest tech conference in the world, which typically pulls more than 10,000 people in each year.The CTA’s president and CEO has said the show “will and must go on.”Yesterday the US set a grim new record in COVID: the highest number of... Continue reading…

Fires continue to burn into the evening in neighborhoods on December 30, 2021 in Louisville, Colorado. | Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images Devastating fires in Colorado cap off a year of awful drought across the US. Dry conditions helped set the stage for blazes that scorched hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to evacuate just ahead of New Year’s Eve.The fires have been raging through suburbs near Denver since December 30th. Strong winds fanned the flames and knocked out power. About 6,000 acres and at least 500 homes had burned by Friday morning. But there were no casualties, which Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle called “miraculous” given the severity of the fire in a press briefing. Families had “minutes” to evacuate their homes, Governor Jared Polis said.More than two-thirds of Colorado’s land is experiencing “severe” drought, according to the US Drought... Continue reading…

U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting on Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building August 11, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Starting today, eligible US residents can apply for help with their internet bills under the new Affordable Connectivity Program. The program launched today with $14.2 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in November.Households can apply to take up to $30 a month off their internet service bill. For households on qualifying Tribal lands, the discount is up to $75 per month. The program could help to connect millions of people to the internet who haven’t had access to it at home, especially in communities that have historically faced more barriers to getting online.Almost a third of people living on Tribal lands lacked high-speed internet at home in 2017, according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission... Continue reading…

Photo by Jacob Moscovitch/Getty Images Mike Parson, Governor of Missouri, does not understand how websites work. He held a press conference earlier this week in St. Louis to once more reiterate his desire to prosecute a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist for looking at the source code of a state-run website.In October 2021 reporter Josh Renaud reported that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website source code had exposed the social security numbers of over 100,000 school teachers, administrators, and counselors. He published the story only after he’d reported the problem to the state and the vulnerability had been resolved.Parson and the DESE were apparently not grateful for the alert and immediately accused Renaud of “hacking” the DESE website. Missouri... Continue reading…

This year’s entry-level iPad is currently on sale at Amazon for $299. | Image: Apple It’s New Year’s Eve, and while that means we are very soon waving goodbye (and good riddance) to the year 2021, it just wouldn’t be special enough day without a selection of great tech deals from your friends at Verge Deals. This has certainly been a jam-packed year full of, well, chaos, but also some great gadgets and worthwhile savings that help you save some coin along the way. While we can’t wait to bring you even more in 2022, let’s not get ahead of ourselves too quickly. Below, we’ll highlight some of the best deals for you in the world of tech.Starting us off, there is no better bang-for-the-buck tablet on the market for most people than Apple’s latest base-model iPad. The 10.2-inch model mostly stands alone in terms of the... Continue reading…

As we near the end of 2021, The Verge’s art team looked back on the past year to reflect on some of our favorite pieces. Our team produced a wide range of original art: from captivating photography of the future of energy, to illustrations representing the last 10 years of The Verge for our anniversary issue, to dozens of stunning shots for our reviews, to a photo shoot of a lot of chicken wings. Below is a selection of our best photography and illustration from our reviews, special issues, gift guides, features, and more. Verge 10Illustration by Micha HuigenTo mark ten years of publishing at The Verge, we looked back on a decade of tech coverage and examined what might come next. Micha Huigen’s art distills this... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The best games you can play on the Vive, Rift, or Quest 2 Continue reading…

Foxconn’s Indian operation began assembling iPhones for Apple outside of China for the first time in 2021. Apple is sending independent auditors to investigate an iPhone assembly facility in India, after poor working and living conditions at the plant prompted workers to go on strike.The facility in southern India is operated by longtime Apple partner Foxconn. An investigation by Reuters found that women working at the plant were laboring in extremely difficult conditions, forced to sleep on the floor in crowded dorms and sharing toilets without running water. Recently, an outbreak of food poisoning left 150 individuals hospitalized, prompting workers to strike and shut down the plant on December 18th.In response, Apple says it’s put the plant on “probation” (though the company hasn’t said what this means for Foxconn or the workers who... Continue reading…

QWERTY and quirky — Blackberry’s later Android incarnations retained the famous keyboard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Dear friends, we’re gathered here today to mourn the death of that once-beloved monarch of the mobile world: BlackBerry. And, yes, I realize that this is not the first time we’ve announced the death of the company or its devices (and, for reasons I’ll explain below, it likely won’t be the last) but this is a very definite ending for legacy BlackBerry hardware.As of January 4th, any phones or tablets running BlackBerry’s own software — that’s BlackBerry 7.1 or earlier, BlackBerry 10, or its tablet operating system BlackBerry PlayBook — will “no longer reliably function,” says the company. Whether on Wi-Fi or cellular, there’ll be no guarantee you can make phone calls, send text messages, use data, establish an SMS connection, or even... Continue reading…

The test is simple. Remove your hand from the box and you die. | Image: Bauhütte Here’s something for the gamer that has everything: a tabletop hand massager that can be used to remove fatigue from your aching mitts and keep you on top form.Created by Japanese makers of gaming hardware and peripherals, Bauhütte, the device uses 15 heated air cushions to supposedly simulate the feeling of a real massage and, well, why the hell not. Bauhütte recommends you use the massager before gaming to warm up your hands; during breaks to improve circulation; and after you’ve finished to rub the stiffness out of your tired little fingers. Because you deserve it.A shiatsu mode will apparently rub your palms with firm pressure, while a “thimble” mode will pull and stretch each finger one by one. The only thing missing is a... Continue reading…

Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Image: Square Enix If you’re a PC gamer who has not already done so, you may want to open up the Epic Games Store and snag the final installment for its 15 Days of Free Games promotion. It’s especially worth your time because instead of gifting users a single title like Shenmue III or Control, the Epic Games Store is ready to cough up the entire rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy: Tomb Raider Game of the Year Edition, Rise of the Tomb Raider 20 Year Celebration, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.Trying to add the titles to your digital library earlier today was harder than it should’ve been, as continued server problems, following yesterday’s Fortnite outage, slowed down the store. It’s unclear if Epic Games is still having issues or if people... Continue reading…

Canon EOS-1D X Mark III | Image: Canon When Canon revealed the EOS-1D X Mark III in January 2020, we proclaimed that the DSLR “still isn’t dead,” but that camera will mark the end of the line for a flagship model that some pro photographers still swear by to capture everything from sporting events to wild animals.An end to the production and development timeline of the EOS-1 is estimated as “within a few years.”CanonRumors points out an interview Canon’s chairman and CEO Fujio Mitarai gave this week to the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun (via Y.M. Cinema Magazine). The piece highlight how high-end mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras have taken market share digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras previously dominated.In it, the CEO is quoted (in Japanese, which... Continue reading…

Samsung has started teasing its next flagship smartphone SoC — expected to be called the Exynos 2200 — ahead of a January 11th announcement with a tantalizing tidbit of information: the new chipset will feature a GPU powered by AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture, better known for powering the next-gen graphics on the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and AMD’s RX 6000-series graphics cards.Of course, given that the Exynos 2200 will be powering a smartphone, the new GPU won’t be magically enabling next-gen graphics on par with the most powerful consoles and gaming PCs. But it likely will enable some improvements in graphics, along with whatever other upgrade Samsung has up its sleeve for its latest flagship chip.

Image: evleaks (Twitter) It looks like Samsung’s next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S22 Ultra, will borrow more heavily from the Galaxy Note’s DNA than ever before. In fact, a newly leaked official render published by Evan Blass confirms that the phone is pretty much a Note in every way except for its name. Wider screen with more surface to write on? Check. S Pen silo? Check. Flat top and bottom? Yep. Around back is a camera array that sticks closely to the layout from the S21 Ultra.Personally, I think the S21 Ultra was one of the boldest, best-looking phones Samsung has ever produced — especially that sleek matte black version. It owned the large camera bump in a way that actually looked good. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung PCIe 5.0 SSDs have already started to get announced ahead of CES 2022, with Samsung and Adata teasing early hardware that supports the new standard. But it’s not just theoretical: Intel has released a new demo video showing off Samsung’s new PM1743 PCIe NVMe SSD in action (together with Intel’s Core i9-12900K CPU, of course) to hit data speeds over 13GB/s in the real world.

Water vapor rises from the NRG Energy Inc. WA Parish generating station in Thompsons, Texas, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. The plant was home to the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project, until it shut down in 2021 because of high costs. | Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Biden administration wants to shove more money into projects that are supposed to capture CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities before they can escape and heat up the planet. But carbon capture technologies that the Department of Energy has already supported in the name of tackling climate change have mostly fallen flat, according to a recent report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office.About $1.1 billion has flowed from the Department of Energy to carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects since 2009. Had they panned out, nine coal plants and industrial facilities would have been outfitted with devices that scrub most of the CO2 out of their emissions. Once captured, the CO2 can be sent... Continue reading…

Attendees walk through the Las Vegas Convention Center January 10, 2020 on the final day of the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) | Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images BMW has announced it will no longer be showing up in person for media events at CES 2022 — the giant electronics show that’s typically held each January in Las Vegas, attracting well over 100,000 attendees per year from around the world. It’s the latest company to at least partially bail on the show, following announcements from Intel, AMD, GM, Google, T-Mobile, Amazon, Meta, Waymo, and a large number of tech publications, including The Verge, as COVID cases rise in the US.Reports indicated BMW will show a car with color-changing paint and a “Theater Screen” for in-car cinematic experiencesA statement from BMW says, “Out of an abundance of caution, BMW will move all planned media activities at CES to a fully online program from Germany... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales The rollout of the first major update for Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro has been slow and plagued by reports of problems. Now the company says it paused releasing the December 2021 update to investigate reports of calls dropping and disconnecting.The news arrived in a post on the Google Support forums (via Droid-Life) that says a new version with all the previously announced features and a fix for the disconnection issue should be ready by late January. If you’re not having any problems, then you can keep using the new software for now, but for those afflicted by the connection issues, Google only suggests reverting and factory resetting your device as an option.

Wondercise Studio is a mish-mash of a social media network and Apple Fitness Plus. | Image: Wondercise At CES 2022, Wondercise is looking to shake up connected fitness with a series of intriguing launches, including a new stationary bike, TV app, and trackers. However, the Taiwanese company’s most intriguing launch is Wondercise Studio — a social media platform for fitness that lets anyone livestream their own class, complete with real-time metrics and performance feedback from fitness trackers.Wondercise describes Studio as a “social media platform with a fitness focus,” but the reality is it’s more of a mish-mash of every bit of fitness tech currently out there. Users can voice and video chat with each other during livestreamed classes. Anyone can host their own class, and users also “follow” other users or instructors as you would on... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge On Wednesday, New York City announced it has ordered 184 fully electric Ford Mustang Mach-Es for use by law enforcement and emergency response workers. The vehicles are set to be delivered by June 2022, as part of an $11.5 million contract that will remain in place for five years.The city said the Mach-Es would be used by the New York Police Department, New York City’s Sheriff’s Office, the Department of Correction, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Environmental Protection, and other emergency management and response departments.New York City plans to buy over 1,250 electric vehicles in 2022, transitioning all law enforcement vehicles to electric ones by 2035.“Law enforcement vehicles are the largest and most... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update December 30th, 11:48AM ET: And it appears that due to an astounding lack of defenses against bots, Amazon is already sold out, again.Sony’s latest gaming console, the PlayStation 5, is one of many gaming gadgets that are hard to find in stock right now due to mostly online-only sales. If you are trying to get your hands on one, Amazon has PS5 consoles in stock right now, while supplies last.The consoles are only available for Amazon Prime subscribers, continuing a trend of retailers restricting access to consoles for paying subscribers only. If you can’t add it to your cart, keep trying — occasionally the sites restock over a period of a few minutes. We will update this post once Amazon confirms it’s out of stock.We are... Continue reading…

I will not do this. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge I am the very person who should care about my appearance on Zoom calls. I don’t mean the state of my hair or appearance of hormonal acne on my face. I’m talking image quality. Focal length. Bokeh. I have written about and reviewed cameras and smartphones for over a decade. I use videoconferencing platforms throughout my work day. I own a nice camera that I could connect to my laptop and use for Zoom meetings. But I won’t, and I simply do not care.I know how much more flattering a longer focal length would be than my MacBook Air’s built-in wide-angle lens. I have the tools, the knowledge, and the power to employ a softly blurred background behind me. If I did, maybe I’d command more respect in meetings. My colleagues might scroll through... Continue reading…

Amelia Holowaty Krales CES, the world’s largest technology show, is pressing on, but with fewer major exhibitors appearing in-person than expected due to rising COVID-19 cases in the United States. On December 22nd, exhibitor Lenovo announced that it would “suspend all on-site activity in Las Vegas,” following announcements from T-Mobile, Amazon, Meta, and others that they’d be ditching as well and despite CES organizers’ statements that the show would go on.Intel says it will move to a “digital-first” experience with minimal on-site staffT-Mobile was the most prominent exhibitor to bail early that week. CEO Mike Sievert, one of the Consumer Electronics Show’s featured speakers, publicly announced on Tuesday that he would no longer be doing a keynote and... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Samsung wants you to know its foldables haven’t flopped. In a recent blog post, the company said it sold four times more foldable devices in 2021 than 2020. It attributes this success to the arrival of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3, which, in our own reviews, we hailed as a step toward mainstream usability thanks to their refined designs and lower prices. Samsung says sales for these two devices in their first month alone exceeded “total accumulative sales of Samsung foldable devices in 2020.”These are promising metrics for the slow ascension of foldable phones, though you should bear in mind that Samsung isn’t sharing hard sales data. Instead, it pointed to the fact that its increases were greater than predictions made by... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Make your Mac more useful and easier to use Continue reading…

Jurors are still deliberating over the fate of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of defunct biotech company Theranos. They’re deciding if she intentionally misled investors, patients, and doctors about what her company’s blood testing technology could do. Because despite big promises, the tech the company claimed to have invented... didn’t actually exist.And the technology might never be a reality — at least not in the way Holmes described it. In this episode of our three-part series on Theranos, we look at what researchers actually think is possible in the field of blood testing and what the future could look like. Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Sony’s Xperia 1 III has a few things that other flagship phones don’t, including a near-4K, 120Hz OLED display, along with plenty of high-quality manual photo and video controls, dual front-facing speakers, and a headphone jack. And yet, The Verge’s Allison Johnson couldn’t recommend it — mostly due to its high $1,300 cost. Though, today’s deal on the phone makes the price just a little more digestible. For only the second time since it launched during the summer, Sony’s unlocked Xperia 1 III smartphone has returned to its all-time low price of $1,198 at Amazon and Adorama.For context, that’s around the same price as the iPhone 12 Pro Max and even cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra with equivalent storage capacity. Best Buy also... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Some great ways to tweak your new PC Continue reading…

Tom Brady #12 of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers watches from the sidelines during the 2nd quarter of the game against the New Orleans Saints | Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images On the Sunday Night Football stage, December 19th, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers were swept for the second consecutive regular season against the Saints — a frustrating shut-out loss that had Brady spiking a poor Microsoft Surface tablet on the sideline.

Image: Canoo A vehicle at EV startup Canoo burned on August 24th after lithium-ion batteries left inside the car started a fire. The local fire department was able to extinguish the blaze and no one was injured, according to an incident report obtained by The Verge.The fire happened in the parking lot outside Canoo’s Torrance, California corporate office, which was once the startup’s headquarters — before it started calling Bentonville, Arkansas home in November.Canoo’s VP of communications Agnes Gomes-Koizumi confirmed the fire occurred after The Verge requested comment. “A small fire occurred several hours after the intentionally destructive testing of a battery module,” Gomes said in an e-mailed statement, noting the module passed the test and... Continue reading…

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images There was some bad news if you’re on winter break and hoping to play some Fortnite, as Epic Games battle royale shooter went down more than five hours on Wednesday — and this time it wasn’t to help expand the game’s lore. According to a tweet from its own status page, “Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We’ll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online.”

Sony’s WF-1000XM4, the best true wireless earbuds you can buy, are still on sale for $248. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Whether you’ve got a stack of gift cards burning a hole in your pocket or ended up with two air fryers that you don’t have room for, there are still plenty of deals to help you stretch your spending before the new year. Below we’ve outlined some of the best tech deals, sales, and promotions from a variety of retailers across a number of categories to make sure you don’t end up with two stand mixers when you didn’t even need one.Select a category

Even for Xiaomi, the 12 and 12 Pro offer huge main camera modules. | Image: Xiaomi Xiaomi is at it again — putting another fantastically huge camera on a flagship phone. This time, it’s the Xiaomi 12 Pro with a 50-megapixel main sensor and f/1.9 standard wide lens. It’s not the very biggest sensor Xiaomi has used in a phone, but the combination of a wide aperture lens and sizable imaging chip makes it... well, just look at the thing.On the technical side, it’s a Sony IMX707 chip, which Xiaomi says it’s the first to use in a mobile device. Gizmochina points out that the 707 appears to be a very light refresh of the IMX700, which makes that claim a little less exciting. Either way, it’s a large 1/1.28-inch type sensor. Sony combines its 1.22μm pixels, which are already fairly large for a mobile camera sensor, to create... Continue reading…

James Webb Space Telescope Following the revolutionary and successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, into space on Christmas day, NASA announced some unexpected news about the telescope’s future: its science mission is likely to last “significantly more” than 10 years — more than double the minimum time for the mission.Initially, JWST was projected to be operational for 5 to 10 years, but NASA’s latest analysis released today found that the telescope will likely have enough propellant to support scientific operations for even longer. According to NASA, the extra propellant is thanks to the precision of the Ariane 5 rocket that the JWST was on when it was launched into space. It is also due to the precision of the first and second mid-course... Continue reading…

A drill rig at Controlled Thermal Resources’ (CTR) Hells Kitchen Lithium and Power project in Calipatria, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. Demand for electric vehicles has shifted investments into high gear to extract lithium from geothermal wastewater around the Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley. | Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images This year, the clean energy sector finally started grappling in earnest with one of its biggest challenges: how to get enough minerals to build solar panels, wind turbines, and big batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Figuring that out will be critical for escaping fossil-fueled ecological disaster. It’ll also be crucial for policymakers and industry to move forward without throwing certain communities under the bus in the transition to clean energy.Instead of cutting through landscapes with oil and gas wells and pipelines, clean energy industries and their suppliers will open up the Earth to hunt for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper. Compared to a gas-fired power plant, an onshore wind turbine... Continue reading…

The 45mm GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 7 is down to $379, an all-time low. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If getting fit is one of your New Year’s resolutions, or if you, like me, are ending the holiday season feeling so bloated you can barely carry your own weight from all of that food (true story), today’s Apple Watch Series 7 discount couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Both sizes of the Series 7, Apple’s latest model that boasts a larger display than its predecessor, are discounted at Amazon. At the moment, the retailer is selling the 45mm, GPS-equipped model with a blue aluminum case and a blue Sport Band for $379 instead of $429.Have a smaller wrist or prefer a smaller watchface? The 41mm, GPS-only version is currently selling for $349 in select styles (normally $399), meaning there’s a way to save no matter the size you’re... Continue reading…

Bryozoans found in the habitat | Image: British Antarctic Survey A team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany has discovered a whopping 77 seafloor-dwelling species beneath an Antarctica ice shelf — a hint that this mysterious realm may be far more biologically rich than scientists realized.Little is known about the environment beneath Antarctica’s floating ice shelves, the seaward extensions of the continent’s glaciers that span 1.6 million square kilometers. It’s a harsh, cold environment shrouded in continuous darkness, and previous studies of life beneath the ice have only documented a few dozen hardy life forms.The new research, published earlier this month in Current Biology, identified more species in a single spot than had previously been documented across all the ice... Continue reading…

Francois Duhamel / Lucasfilm Ltd The Book of Boba Fett finally is giving its titular character the spotlight.The fan-favorite bounty hunter has long lurked in the margins of Star Wars’ history: his brief introduction in an animated short during the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special; and his rocketing to popularity thanks to his iconic armor (practically designed to sell action figures) despite his brief appearances in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, his shoehorned backstory in Attack of the Clones, and a half-baked arc in The Clone Wars. For all that, Fett himself has been an enigma, a blank slate of badassery that’s never been filled in.Fett has spend decades as a blank slate of badasseryBut after years of rumors of a solo film, an aborted history... Continue reading…

Tang Dehong / Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images A new Department of Energy-funded research project seeks to solve one of the biggest challenges with solar power — what to do with solar panels after they die.Solar energy is key to solving climate change, but for the technology itself to be sustainable it needs to be recyclable. Unfortunately, when a solar panel dies today, it’s likely to meet one of two fates: a shredder or a landfill.Arizona State University (ASU) researchers are hoping to change that through a new recycling process that uses chemicals to recover high-value metals and materials, like silver and silicon, making recycling more economically attractive. Earlier this month, the team received a two-year, $485,000 grant from the DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office to... Continue reading…