The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Quest Store is offering a lot of VR games and experiences at a discount for its New Year’s sale, which lasts until January 2nd, 2022.Some of my personal favorite titles like Job Simulator, Arizona Sunshine, and Gorn have their prices slashed by up to 35 percent. Job Simulator is a place where you can do your job as horribly as you want without any real consequences, while Arizona Sunshine is a zombie shooter with a surprisingly decent story, and Gorn lets you take your anger out gladiator style, complete with mace-swinging. I find all of them to be pretty therapeutic (although they aren’t the newest games to come out for the Quest).There are also a number of themed game bundles for sale, such as the Thrilling Adventures Pack,... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update 3:11PM ET, December 28th: Best Buy has sold out of consoles for now.Microsoft’s Xbox Series X keeps coming and going, but the next-gen console remains tricky to get a hold of. We just saw it go up for sale at Costco this morning but it did not last long before it sold out. Now, after a PS5 drop earlier, another chance has sprung up at Best Buy.Right now, you can queue up for the Xbox Series X from Best Buy. The retailer is just selling the console — no bundle required — and it is open to anyone, including those who are not Best Buy Totaltech subscribers. Just click the “Add to Cart” button and be patient while you are put in a digital line. As of right now, Best Buy appears to be releasing stock in waves, meaning you may have a... Continue reading…

Samsung’s starting to roll out One UI 4 again. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Samsung is starting to roll out its Android 12-based One UI 4 update again after the company paused its original release due to reports of bugs and soft bricks from users, according to XDA Developers. The update, which is hopefully a bit more stable, should soon be available for Galaxy S21 phones (including the S21 Plus and Ultra), along with the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3.One UI 4 includes a visual redesign based on Google’s Material You design that debuted with Android 12. It also includes an updated keyboard. Despite a public beta process, Samsung’s initial release in November had some issues, and users said they were getting poor performance, saw some screen flicker, and experienced other bugs. Last week, the company reportedly... Continue reading…

Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming waving their hands during a spacewalk out of the space station core module Tianhe in August of 2021 | Photo by Tian Dingyu/Xinhua via Getty Images China filed a complaint this month with the United Nations, arguing that it had to conduct evasive maneuvers of its space station to avoid potential collisions with two of SpaceX’s internet-beaming Starlink satellites. The country is requesting that the UN’s Secretary General remind countries of their obligations under international space law, though China did not specify exactly what actions it wants to be taken.In the complaint, dated December 6th, China details two instances on July 1st, 2020 and on October 21st, 2021 when the nation had to maneuver the core module of its space station, called Tianhe, out of the way of two separate Starlink satellites. The three Chinese astronauts currently living on Tianhe had just arrived to the... Continue reading…

People walk outside the Apple Store on the Upper West Side on March 12th, 2021 in New York City. | Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images As initially reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on Monday, all of New York City’s Apple Stores joined the list of locations closing their doors to most customers amid a spike in the number of COVID-19 infections. Gurman tweeted again on Tuesday, noting the stores have updated their listings, saying they are available for “limited” walk-in services for shopping and Genius Bar tech support. Image: Apple.com Services at Apple Upper West Side Last week, Apple closed seven stores in North America in a single day as positive tests among employees rose, and MacRumors points out that even before this announcement, the Apple website listed more than 20 locations that were closed today due to the effects of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An update to Tumblr’s iOS app censors a long list of tags to comply with Apple’s strict safety guidelines. The platform explains that it’s changing iOS users’ ability to access sensitive content, affecting their experience when it comes to searching for content, scrolling through the “Stuff for You” and “Following” sections of the dashboard, and could even prevent access to blogs that are flagged. Tumblr says it has to “extend the definition of what sensitive content is” to “remain available within Apple’s App Store,” and it seems that Tumblr stretched it pretty far.Tags are what make posts searchable on Tumblr; posts with censored tags won’t appear on a users’ dashboard, nor will they show up on the platform’s search page. A Twitter... Continue reading…

Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridge will now be part of its colorful, customizable Bespoke line. | Image: Samsung The smart fridge has long been the butt of many IoT-related memes, but Samsung is betting that maybe all smart fridges needed to nab a spot in your kitchen was a more colorful look. The company will show off its newest iteration of the smart fridge at CES 2022 next week, and while it still can’t reliably determine what food you need and automatically order it so you don’t even have to think about shopping, it can be a pretty shade of blue.The Samsung Family Hub fridge is now a part of Samsung’s Bespoke appliance line. First introduced in 2021, the Bespoke range is a selection of modular, configurable appliances with a clean, modern look and customizable colors and finishes. Image: Samsung The Family Hub fridge... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update 12:59PM ET, December 28th: Best Buy has sold out of PS5s for now, but it has started selling the Xbox Series X.If you’re currently shopping for a PlayStation 5 console and have been recently striking out with restocks at Walmart, Costco, and other retailers, you have another chance right now at Best Buy. The electronics retailer just opened up a fresh batch of PlayStation 5 consoles for $499.99. Best Buy is only selling the disc-based version, however, not the Digital Edition.Be sure to log in and queue up on Best Buy’s site, with your billing and shipping info saved. Click the “Add to Cart” button on the right to jump into the waiting line, and stay calm. You don’t need to refresh the automated system, though, you may be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update 12:58PM ET, December 28th: Costco has sold out of consoles for now, but Best Buy is now offering them.The Xbox Series X console has remained hard to come by, and with the holidays looming the window to get one in time is narrowing. Many retailers have turned to charging for the chance just to buy a console via subscription-based memberships, which is a game that Costco has been playing from the beginning. The warehouse retailer has gotten its fair share of console restocks, and today it has Microsoft’s flagship console available for its members.You can order the Xbox Series X from Costco right now (or the Halo Edition, if it’s available in your area), which is only sold as a bundle with an extra controller (if you’re signed in,... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Armies, aliens, automobiles, the legendary mascot of the Xbox, and more Continue reading…

The Movano Ring is a smart ring with medical ambitions | Image: Movano The Oura Ring isn’t the only smart ring on the block anymore. For CES 2022, health tech company Movano is announcing the Movano Ring, a wearable that aims to help people affordably monitor chronic illnesses and better understand their data.The Movano Ring will measure all the basic metrics, including heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep, respiration, temperature, blood oxygen levels, steps, and calories burned. However, instead of a raw data dump, Movano says it’ll distill how your metrics relate to each other “take a more proactive approach to mitigating the risks of chronic disease.” For example, the Movano app might tell you how your exercise habits impact your sleeping patterns or HRV over time.This isn’t surprising —... Continue reading…

The OLED Shelf displaying a piece of art. | Photo by LG Display LG Display has come up with more uses for transparent screens with its innovative new concepts that will be on display at CES 2022: the OLED Shelf, Shopping Managing Showcase, Show Window, and Smart Window. The company is not to be confused with LG Electronics, as LG Display simply creates concepts that other companies can adopt and introduce to the market.Its OLED Shelf, visible at the top of this story, consists of two 55-inch transparent OLED displays mounted on top of one another, with a shelf at the very top. LG Display says it’s ideal for the living room, where it can display art, a TV show, or one on each of the two screens simultaneously. Always on Display Mode ensures that the screen can stay on all the time. If there was a... Continue reading…

The Epic Games Store is offering Control for free as part of its 15 days of free games promotion — the game is only available for free until December 27th at 11AM. To get the game, simply log in to the Epic Games Store (or create an account), navigate to Control’s game page, and then hit “Get” to add the game to your library for free.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has reportedly hired Andrea Schubert, Meta’s communications and public relations lead for its augmented reality (AR) products, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter. Schubert’s LinkedIn page indicates that she’s been working for Meta for nearly six years.“Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch”“Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch,” Gurman explains. On both Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 was one of the top-selling products. Not to mention that Meta’s Oculus app topped the App Store in the US on Christmas Day, and became... Continue reading…

Alexander Skarsgård is out for revenge in The Northman | Focus Features Hello and welcome to the final trailers roundup for 2021, I hope you have enjoyed reading (and watching) these roundups as much as I have enjoyed writing them. There were a lot of really good streaming shows and movies this year despite the persistence of the coronavirus that disrupted so much of our lives. Among my personal favorites were Loki, Succession, Ted Lasso, The Beatles: Get Back, King Richard, and Y: The Last Man (pls someone pick up this show it was just getting started!).This week’s list has Vikings, Hercule Poirot, and a look at the upcoming Showtime series about the early days of Uber.The NorthmanDirector Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse), said in an interview with EW that The Northman was “by far the hardest... Continue reading…

A Tesla Model S strapped with dynamite. | Screenshot from Pommijätkät via YouTube When faced with a repair bill that costs half of what you paid for your car, do you go through with the expensive repair, bring it to the junkyard, or sell it for parts? Finnish Tesla owner Tuomas Katainen decided to do something a little more extreme — but arguably a lot more satisfying — when faced with such a situation: he watched his car go up in flames, as noted in a report from Gizmodo.Katainen handed his 2013 Tesla Model S over to Pommijätkät, a group of explosion experts on YouTube who loves to make things go “boom,” after he was quoted $22,600 for a battery replacement. “Well when I bought that Tesla, the first 1,500km [932 miles] were nice,” Katainen recounted. “Then, error codes hit.” After Katainen brought his Tesla to a... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge New phone, new start Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge A privacy-minded roundup of apps, including a self-care penguin Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge As kids and adults alike flocked to the Nintendo eShop, eager to spend the gift cards they found in their stockings, that excitement was quickly spoiled by an eShop error screen. The annual holiday surge brought down the Nintendo Switch eShop for some yet again, according to a report from Kotaku. Service was brought back around 4:30AM ET on December 26th, a whole 24 hours later.

Death Star for scale. | Image: Park My Spaceship Park My Spaceship is the simple, extremely amusing app I didn’t know I needed. It allows you to superimpose to-scale images of notable spacecraft from sci-fi shows and movies over Google Maps. That’s it. It’s great. You can check to see if Serenity would fit in your backyard or if the Millennium Falcon could land in your neighborhood park. It’s been around since 2018, but I first encountered it this week when @CincinnatiPhil TILearned about it and shared his discoveries on Twitter.I set about placing ships around the greater Seattle area and found that the Millennium Falcon fits nicely in the fountain plaza in front of the Space Needle, which would look cool as hell. You can almost fit a Star Destroyer in Lake Union or park it on... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Many of these games play well on Series S, too Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge If you’re lucky enough to have one, that is Continue reading…

Microsoft is the latest company to drop a physical presence at CES, as the increased prevalence of COVID-19 spooks exhibitors. It joins a growing list of major companies ditching the world’s largest technology show.“After reviewing the latest data on the rapidly evolving COVID environment, Microsoft has decided not to participate in-person at CES 2022,” a company spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement. (The spokesperson declined to give their name because that’s how Microsoft prefers to announce event status changes.) Instead, the company will have a digital presence for both the Microsoft Partner Innovation Experience and Automotive Press Kit.Microsoft was a featured exhibitor at the technology conference, and is now the latest to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple must allow dating app developers to offer non-Apple payment systems for in-app purchases or face a hefty fine, according to a detailed ruling released today from the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). The regulator has been investigating the company’s App Store practices since 2019, but Reuters reports that it decided to focus on dating apps after receiving a complaint from Match Group, owners of dating services like Tinder, Match.com, and OkCupid.This decision doesn’t apply to other app categories, like games or productivity apps, in the country.“Some app providers are dependent on Apple’s App Store, and Apple takes advantage of that dependency,” writes Martijn Snoep, chairman of the board of ACM. “Apple has... Continue reading…

Photo by Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images An early-alert system designed to give people crucial seconds of warning before earthquakes lived up to its promise on Monday. It buzzed through a half a million phones ahead of a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that hit northwest California — the largest quake since the system, called ShakeAlert, rolled out across the entire state, The Guardian reported.ShakeAlert pulls information from the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) sensor network. If data from those sensors says there will be major shaking in an area, people living there get alerts through the MyShake app (if they’ve downloaded it), or through the wireless emergency alerts system on their phones. Alerts also go out to Android users through a partnership between Google, USGS,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Russian court has fined Google $98 million over its failure to remove content deemed illegal in the country. The 7.2 billion rouble fine is around eight percent of Google’s revenue in Russia, Reuters reports, and comes amid a broader push within the country to exert more control over big tech companies and the content people publish on their platforms.Google tells The Verge it will “study the court documents when they are available and then decide on next steps.” However, a Russian official cited by Bloomberg threatened “very unpleasant measures” if Google doesn’t comply with the country’s mandate to delete banned content, which includes promotion of drugs and posts by organizations the government says are extremist or terroristic,... Continue reading…

If you’re a fan of The Expanse, like me, you’re probably wondering whether its final six episodes — currently airing each Friday through January 14th — are enough to wrap up its epic story. What you’re probably not wondering: whether Amazon has buried nearly one-tenth of the show’s final season in a place you might not think to look, and can’t even find on your TV.But it’s true. The Expanse’s production company filmed an additional 25 minutes of story across five vignettes, which you can only access through Amazon’s X-Ray service by pausing the show and scrolling through otherwise hidden menus. (They’re under Bonus Content.) But I couldn’t find them on Apple TV or Google TV, and the showrunners have confirmed that’s because Amazon... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Teens and adolescents might be turning to TikTok to learn about sex when their typical sex education isn’t sufficient. But the videos on the platform aren’t screened for misinformation and don’t give teens ways to ask additional questions, notes a new analysis.Sex education offered in schools in the United States is usually inadequate — most states don’t require kids to be taught about topics like contraception, consent, and gender diversity. Information about sex, though, is spreading on TikTok, which has millions of adolescent and teen users.To evaluate the sex education information on TikTok, one author of a new study created an account as a 15-year-old, downloaded 100 videos under the #sexeducation and #healthclass hashtags, and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Put these great creators into your algorithm Continue reading…

The Verge has smashed a bunch of phones... and other things Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge With the current end-of-year promotion happening at B&H Photo, you can get the massive Samsung Odyssey G9 gaming monitor for its lowest price ever. Usually, this monitor retails for $1,599, but you can currently grab it for $999 at B&H Photo. This same discount is also available at Newegg when you check out with the promo code YEAREND3.This curved 49-inch monitor sports a 1440p resolution and a blistering 240Hz refresh rate. The display is compatible with both AMD Freesync and Nvidia G-Sync to help cut down on screen tearing and comes equipped with a pair of Display Port and USB inputs, as well as a single HDMI port. The stand thankfully supports height, tilt, and swivel adjustments, so you shouldn’t have to make use of the 100x100 VESA... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge 2021 will have been the year that Apple finally embraced lossless music streaming and prices for hi-fi listening came down at Amazon and Tidal. But the biggest subscription music service of all, Spotify, seems likely to miss its original target for launching a higher-quality streaming plan.Spotify HiFi, first announced all the way back in February, has yet to roll out despite the company’s early estimate that it would debut “later this year.” At the time, Spotify said HiFi would be available in select markets and that the company would “have more details to share soon.”Over the next 10 months, those details never came.Meanwhile, Spotify’s competitors didn’t wait around. Apple Music rolled out lossless and hi-res playback in June,... Continue reading…

See the menu. Taste the menu. | Image: Meiji University If you’ve ever thought, “This 4K HDR OLED TV is great, but I sure wish it tasted better when I licked it,” we may be getting closer to a world where that’s the case — a professor has created a device he calls “Taste the TV,” according to Reuters, and it does exactly what the name implies. Homei Miyashita says he hopes his “TTTV” will let people experience things like far-away world-class restaurants without leaving their own home, which has become an increasingly understandable desire in the past two years of the pandemic.According to a demonstration video, which you can see below, researchers blended up various foods and used sensors to “taste” them. Then, chemicals are sprayed onto a rolling plastic sheet (or a disposable tray for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Food and Drug Administration authorized a second at-home antiviral pill to treat COVID-19 on Thursday. The clearance for the drug, called molnupiravir, came a day after the agency signed off on Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral, called Paxlovid. Both drugs reduce the risk of hospitalization and death in people diagnosed with COVID-19 and at risk of having a severe case of the disease.Molnupiravir, made by pharmaceutical company Merck, is authorized for people 18 years of age and older who are at a high risk of getting seriously ill if they contract the coronavirus. It’s a higher age cutoff than Paxlovid, which is cleared for people 12 and up, because molnupiravir might affect bone and cartilage growth, the FDA said in a statement.Like... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Our staff lists their choices for the best of the year Continue reading…

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Follow the white rabbit Continue reading…

An anxiety-ridden launch that’s been decades in the making Continue reading…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is pumped. In fact, he’s super pumped, taking on the role of former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in a limited series from Showtime that debuts February 27th, 2022 and will chart the chaotic rise of the transportation startup.The show is titled Super Pumped after the best-selling non-fiction book of the same name from New York Times journalist Mike Isaac. It’s been developed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, co-creators of Billions, a series which revels in the pugnacious behavior of the super-rich. There’ll be lots of familiar material for Koppelman and Levien in Kalanick’s story, then, with the former CEO described aptly in the trailer as “the notorious bad boy of tech” (those words spoken by Uma Thurman, who’s... Continue reading…

“By the way, I’m much more than just a voice-activated timer.” | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge If you regularly use an Alexa device, you’ve probably been upsold by Amazon’s assistant at some point. Ask Alexa to carry out some basic task like setting a timer, and it will finish its response with a cheery “By the way, did you know I could [insert feature you’ve never heard of here].” As highlighted in a recent report from Bloomberg, this is because Amazon knows that users aren’t really getting stuck into the full range of Alexa’s capabilities.Bloomberg’s report is based on internal Amazon docs, and features some interesting statistics about Alexa usage. Here are the ones we found most eye-catching:

Huawei has officially announced the P50 Pocket, a clamshell-style folding smartphone that has a circular, 1-inch external display for quick access to notifications and widgets. The device launches in China today, though US sanctions (which mean Huawei can’t use key tech like Google’s Android OS) mean the P50 Pocket won’t make any impact in the West.Huawei teased the handset earlier this month with a photoshoot focused on the P50 Pocket Premium Edition that appeared in Harper’s Bazaar China. This version of the device was created with Dutch designer Iris van Herpen. It has a gold or silver finish, and a 3D pattern on the exterior surface that’s typical of van Herpen’s work, resembling feathers or leaves. The P50 Pocket... Continue reading…

Adata teases first PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs. | image: Adata Samsung and Adata are both teasing PCIe 5.0 SSDs ahead of January’s big CES event. With read/write speeds up to 14/12 GBps, this new generation of solid state storage is essentially twice as fast as the fastest PCIe 4.0 drives.Adata teased two prototypes of its first PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSDs with capacities up to 8TB. The so-called Project Nighthawk SSD is designed using a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller capable of sequential read/write speeds up to 14/12GBps, while the Project Blackbird SSD features an InnoGrit IG5666 controller for 14/10GBps read/write speeds. Adata will hopefully provide more details at CES which begins January 5th, unless COVID derails it again. Image: Samsung Samsung’s targeting enterprise... Continue reading…

Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images Over the last couple of weeks, several Apple Stores around the US have closed due to rising COVID-19 infections among staff members, and a report by Bloomberg lists seven locations in the US and Canada that have shut down operations within the last day or so. The Apple Stores listed include Dadeland and The Gardens Mall in Florida, Lenox Square in Atlanta, GA, Highland Village in Houston, TX, Summit Mall in Ohio, Pheasant Lane in New Hampshire, and Sainte-Catherine in Montreal, Canada.According to the report, shutdowns are usually called when 10 percent of the store’s staff has tested positive. These spikes are occurring as the CDC reports omicron has become the dominant strain of the virus spreading throughout the US. Apple’s response... Continue reading…

Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images The metaverse and Web3 are two trends supposedly set to revolutionize the digital world. But the richest man IRL, Elon Musk, is not keen on either. In a recent interview, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO said he couldn’t see a compelling use-case for the VR-driven metaverse, and derided Web3 — a nebulous concept in which internet services are rebuilt around blockchain and cryptocurrency — as “more marketing than reality,” adding “I don’t get it.”Musk admitted that he might just be “too old” to understand these new technologies. “Am I like one of those people who was dismissing the internet [in] ‘95 as some fad or something that’s never going to amount to anything?” he suggested, before noting that in 1995 he was very much one of the... Continue reading…

Former Huawei sub-brand Honor has teased the launch of its first foldable smartphone, the Honor V. An image shared on its Weibo and Twitter accounts teases the design of the device, showing a telltale hinge between the two halves of the device. The Weibo post says the “folding flagship is about to be released,” though no exact launch date has been announced and Honor declined to comment.Honor has been open about its desire to release a foldable for some time. As early as 2019, the company’s CEO George Zhao told CNET that he was interested in producing a foldable under the Honor brand, but expressed concerns that the device would be too expensive for Honor’s younger target market. In June this year, reports emerged that development of... Continue reading…

Image: TCL After briefly halting sales of its 6-Series and 5-Series Google TVs due to sluggish, buggy software, TCL this evening announced that the TVs are back. “Recent software updates have allowed us to make significant improvements on the stability and speed of the TCL televisions featuring Google TV,” spokesperson Rachelle Parks said by email. “With these updates, this product now represents the powerful performance that TCL and Google believe is the future of TV.”The Google TVs represent TCLs effort to take a platform agnostic approach with its TV hardware; the company is best known for its popular sets that come preloaded with Roku software, but it has also manufactured Android TV products. The 6-Series (R646) and 5-Series (R546) are the... Continue reading…

A gift card offering access to thousands of books from Amazon or Barnes and Noble is a great present for bookworms. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg So the holidays are just days away, and you’re panicking because you still haven’t found a gift yet. Perhaps the present you wanted to give simply won’t arrive in time, or maybe you’ve just been too busy — or lazy — to pick something up (no judgment there). Whatever the reason, don’t worry; thanks to the internet, procrastinators, busy bees, and even lazy folks can still buy some great digital gifts without needing to leave their house.The only problem? There are tons of digital gifts to choose from, ranging from streaming subscriptions to concert tickets, and finding the right one can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve rounded up a few gift ideas across a number of popular categories, including film and travel, so you quickly choose,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel has reportedly notified employees that anyone who remains unvaccinated will need to get the COVID-19 vaccine or submit an exemption by January 4th. Otherwise, they face being put on unpaid leave, according to The Associated Press and The Oregonian.In the December 7th memo obtained by both publications, Intel HR boss Christy Pambianchi said unvaccinated employees will need to seek an exemption or get weekly tests, even if they’re working from home. She also reportedly told employees that the company will review medical and religious exemptions up until March 15th of next year. The company initially put the January 4th vaccine deadline in place last month, but didn’t specify what would happen to unvaccinated employees if they didn’t... Continue reading…

President Biden details plans to make coronavirus tests easier to find amid the surge of the omicron variant. | Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images President Biden said today that Americans will soon be able to order free COVID tests from a government-run website, which is not yet available. “We’ll have websites where you can get them delivered to your home,” he said of the 500 million at-home tests the government is purchasing to combat the Omicron surge.Details on this website are murky, however. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today that “We will have more information as it is available including what the website looks like,” she said, adding, “We will make the website available as soon as these tests are available.“President Biden also said that his administration is working with Google to make it easier for Americans to find COVID-19 testing locations. “We’ve... Continue reading…

Mint Mobile says it will comply with the board’s decision. | Image: Mint Mobile The National Advertising Review Board has denied Mint Mobile’s appeal defending its use of the word “unlimited” in its advertising since its unlimited prepaid plan includes a high-speed data cap of 35GB per month. That’s not unusual — most unlimited plans include a cap on high-speed or “premium” data — but Mint actually slows customers down to unreasonably slow 2G speeds after 35GB. That is unusual, even in an industry that has rendered the term “unlimited” virtually meaningless, and the ad board sides with AT&T’s argument that it’s slower than a customer would reasonably expect.Carriers and MVNOs have throttled heavy data users more or less since unlimited plans made a comeback. And to be sure, the vast majority of wireless customers... Continue reading…

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is followed by reporters as he leaves a caucus meeting with Senate Democrats at the US Capitol Building on December 17th, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images The future of America’s electricity grid hangs in the balance as Democrats try to salvage their giant environmental and social spending bill. After West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin imperiled Democrats’ Build Back Better bill — which would have transformed the grid and helped stave off catastrophic climate change — environmental advocates are figuring out a plan B.The most recent version of Democrats’ environment and social spending bill included $555 billion to tackle climate change, which would have been the biggest US investment ever on the crisis. At the heart of the bill was a plan to wean the power grid off fossil fuels. But over the weekend, Manchin (who has earned millions off investments in coal) seemingly killed those plans by s... Continue reading…