The Verge

Image: Amazon It just got way easier and more convenient to remotely watch Amazon Prime Video’s TV shows and movies together with your friends. The service’s “Watch Party” feature has received a much needed expansion from the limited use cases where it worked before — on Fire TV devices, desktop web browsers, and the Prime Video mobile app — and it now supports non-Amazon streaming devices, smart TVs, and Xbox / PlayStation gaming consoles. TechCrunch first reported on the expansion.Watch Party allows for up to 100 people with a Prime subscription to view content at the same time. The host is able to play, pause, skip, and fast forward or rewind for the group, and everyone can chat about what they’re watching.For now, Amazon’s Watch Party feature... Continue reading…

The launcher image for Minecraft: Java Edition. | Image: Microsoft Minecraft has been updated with a tribute to the popular streamer Technoblade, whose death from cancer was announced by his family last week. The splash image for Minecraft in the game’s launcher now features a pig wearing a golden crown — a callout to Technoblade’s Minecraft character, a royal pig-man wearing a bejeweled crown.The Minecraft team tweeted on Friday that the team was ”heartbroken over the loss of Technoblade,” writing that he “brought so much joy” to the game’s community.

Amazon has launched its first “micromobility hub” in the UK with the aim to swap “thousands” of polluting delivery trucks with electric cargo bikes — and, in some cases, walking. The project is intended to help Amazon achieve its climate goals to have 50 percent of its deliveries be carbon neutral by 2030.Starting in the London borough of Hackney, the company says that it will deliver 1 million packages a year using walking and electric cargo bikes, in addition to deliveries that are made with electric vans. Delivery workers on foot and e-bikes will help displace “thousands” of traditional van trips, Amazon said.E-bikes will help displace “thousands” of traditional van tripsThe carbon neutral trips will take place within a tenth of... Continue reading…

David Crosby in 2019. | Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images Crosby, Stills & Nash are back on Spotify, five months after the supergroup abandoned the platform in protest of Joe Rogan’s spread of COVID misinformation. The group will donate streaming profits to COVID-19 charities for “at least a month,” according to Billboard.The musicians’ return to Spotify marks a quiet and relatively unglamorous end to their protest, which has largely had the effect of boosting Rogan’s subscriber numbers, if the podcaster is to be believed. Crosby, Stills & Nash originally announced back in February that they would pull their music in solidarity with sometimes-bandmate Neil Young, who kicked off a series of artist protests of Spotify when he removed his music and published an open letter criticizing the company... Continue reading…

Xiaomi’s Mi 12S Ultra | Image: Xiaomi Xiaomi is introducing a trio of new smartphones today, and one of them comes with a pretty huge new feature: a 1-inch camera sensor, which is relatively giant for a smartphone.Everything about Xiaomi’s new flagship smartphone, the Mi 12S Ultra, is big. It has a 6.73-inch OLED display, a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 system on a chip, and a camera-lens shaped bulge on that back that takes up about a third of the phone’s rear side.Inside that faux-lens are the phone’s three cameras: a 48 megapixel ultrawide, a 48 megapixel telephoto with 5x optical zoom (and “120x” digital zoom that will probably not look very good), and finally, the 50 megapixel main camera, which uses that 1-inch sensor.A few different companies have put... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Tesla’s latest software update includes a cool-sounding feature that could prevent a lot of underbody damage — and perhaps some driver damage too, Electrek reports. According to release notes, the update (2022.20) will enable Tesla vehicles to scan the road ahead of potholes and adjust the suspension to account for rough roads.Tesla owners can activate the new feature by selecting “Comfort” under the Adaptive Suspension Damping setting. But the new feature may be dependent on where the vehicle is being driven — meaning it may not be available for every pothole and road crack. “This adjustment may occur at various locations, subject to availability, as the vehicle downloads rough road map data generated by Tesla cars,” the release notes... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Riding the wave of the outdoor cooking revolution Continue reading…

Chevy’s first foray into non-fungible tokens was a non-fungible dud. The automaker netted zero bids for its first NFT during an auction last month, even though the digital drawing came with a free 2023 Corvette Z06, according to Corvette Blogger.The NFT, which depicts a lime green Corvette Z06 blasting through a cyberpunk landscape, was created by artist Nick Sullo, who goes by xsullo online. The winning bidder would have also received a unique “Minted Green” Corvette Z06, which will be the only car painted in that color, and an option code RFN, which will “forever associate” the car with the NFT auction. And the Corvette’s VIN number will be in binary because NFTs are digital and computers use binary and you get it. But... Continue reading…

Photo by Peter J Fox/Getty Images Formula One driver Zhou Guanyu likely wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for the partially closed titanium device that formed a protective layer around the cockpit of his race car. Zhou credited the protection device, known as a halo, for saving his life after a horrific crash during the first lap of Sunday’s British Grand Prix, according to CNN.“I’m ok, all clear. Halo saved me today,” Zhou tweeted Sunday, along with a selfie. “Thanks everyone for your kind messages!”Zhou was one of several drivers involved in the turn one crash, which saw his Alfa Romeo flipping over and skidding across the track before crashing into the fencing. The halo, which forms partial protection around the cockpit, prevented Zhou from sustaining serious... Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge The promise of cloud gaming is that you can do it from anywhere using any device with internet access and a good enough browser (each cloud gaming service seems to have its own requirements on the browser front). You should be able to play super demanding games whether you’re on a work trip with nothing but a work laptop or at home and the main TV is being hogged — or even if you just don’t feel like sitting on the couch. But the biggest promise of cloud gaming is that, no matter where you are, if you’ve got a phone then you’ve got all your games.In practice, this is a bad idea. After spending the last few weeks rapturously using my Steam Deck near daily to play games in the cloud, I am never going to willingly attempt cloud gaming on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter Blue has finally started letting subscribers on Android customize the app’s navigation bar. The feature, which was previously available only on iOS, lets you get rid of the Spaces icon that’s smack-dab in the middle of your navigation bar (and of course, remove some of the other tabs if you want, too).With custom navigation, you can reduce the number of displayed tabs to as few as two, or keep all five that appear by default — handy if you’re tired of stretching your finger over the Spaces tab just to get to your DMs and notifications. Twitter first started testing the Spaces tab on iOS last year and rolled out the tab on Android in May, which seemed to only give more inconvenienced users a reason to sign up for the $2.99 /... Continue reading…

Hackers altered the British Army’s Twitter page to make it seem like it was associated with The Possessed NFT project. Both the British Army’s Facebook and Twitter accounts were hacked and used to promote cryptocurrency scams, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed on Sunday. It’s unclear when exactly hackers took over the two accounts, but they both appear to be back to normal now.“We are aware of a breach of the Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and an investigation is underway,” the Ministry of Defence Press Office said on Twitter. “The Army takes information security extremely seriously and is resolving the issue.”Hackers hijacked the British Army’s Twitter page, swapping out the organization’s profile picture, bio, and cover photo to make it seem like it was associated with The Possessed NFT collection. The account sent out various retweets for... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge 15 former or current Black Tesla employees are suing the company for allegedly failing to prevent racial discrimination at its Fremont, California factory (via Bloomberg). The lawsuit, which was filed in a California court last week, details workers’ claims that they were subject to racial slurs, derogatory comments, and racially-motivated harassment in the workplace.As outlined in the filing, workers allege that their colleagues frequently used the N-word and other racist or discriminatory terms like “slavery” or “plantation” to describe the factory’s work culture. In addition, Tesla allegedly left racist graffiti on bathroom walls, benches, lockers, and workstations that contained “KKK,” the N-word, and drawings of swastikas.The... Continue reading…

It’s a Backbone clone with little soul of its own Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The upcoming Apple Watch Series 8 will reportedly come with a body temperature sensor that can tell whether you’re running a fever, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Instead of giving you an exact reading, Gurman believes the watch should be able to detect a spike in body temperature, and then encourage you to talk to a doctor or use a thermometer.Gurman says the body temperature sensor still has to pass internal testing, and if it does, Apple’s expected to incorporate the feature in the Watch Series 8, as well as the rumored “rugged” smartwatch for extreme sports athletes. The upcoming entry-level Apple Watch SE likely won’t have the sensor, though.Rumors of a body temperature sensor have been floating around for... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s no mystery why Sony made a PC gaming monitor that can also work well with the PS5. The PC gaming business is simply too big to ignore, and it’s just money on the table that’s otherwise up for grabs by other monitor makers.Sony didn’t say those exact words, but it didn’t have to for me to know that it’s one of the reasons why it decided to announce two gaming monitors this week. Another reason is because Sony’s growing focus on services means that PS Plus will eventually go beyond the console. Getting its games in front of more people instead of locking them down as exclusives has, in the past few years, become a welcome change in strategy.Sony is late to this particular party, though. Nintendo’s Switch and Valve’s Steam Deck can... Continue reading…

I don’t think I’ve ever played something that blends genres quite like Neon White. Let me try to summarize the game: you play as a demon hunter who destroys baddies in heaven by using cards that serve as either guns or special movement abilities, and the goal is to get through each level as fast as you possibly can. It’s part first-person shooter, part first-person platformer, part puzzler, part card game, part time attack, and even part visual novel.I’ve struggled to come up with a better description, but in an interview, Neon White creative director Ben Esposito finally gave me one: “a really gamey game.”“It’s a really unlikely game,” he said. “It’s a really gamey game that’s full of gamey things. But the combination of elements is... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge The text that arrived at 3:51PM on Monday, March 28th, seemed innocent at first.“Mr. Steven,” it read, “I am very sorry, after our communication and understanding during this period of time, I feel that we are not suitable in some ways.”That’s odd, I thought, must be a wrong number. But who was this mysterious Mr. Steven? What was the nature of the disagreement? What the heck did Mr. Steven do to offend this person? I was intrigued — but not enough to respond.Several weeks later, I received another text, this time from someone named “Amy” asking about “a location for coffee.” A couple days after that, “Irene from Vietnam” reached out to ask if I was still living in New York. And then “Sophia” texted, calling me “Laura” and asking... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in a bid to protect its US assets from creditors in the country, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and CNBC. Representatives for the Singapore-based company made the filing in a Southern District New York court on Friday, which legally protects the US assets of insolvent foreign debtors from creditors in the US.Founded in 2012 by Kyle Davis and Su Zhu, 3AC managed about $10 billion in assets as recently as March, later sinking to $3 billion in April. Like several other crypto firms, including the lending giants Celcius and Babel Finance, 3AC’s turn in fortunes is part of the so-called crypto “winter” that’s brought down stablecoins and sent Bitcoin’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Tesla announced it had delivered 254,695 vehicles during the second quarter of 2022, about an 18 percent drop from the previous quarter. The report, which was published on Tesla’s site, signals an end to a nearly two-year-long run of record quarterly deliveries for Elon Musk’s company, which can mostly be attributed to lengthy COVID-related shutdowns of its factory in Shanghai.Tesla said the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made up 238,533 of these deliveries, while 16,162 were for the Model S and Model X vehicles. On the production side of things, Tesla said it managed to build a total of 258,580 vehicles.China has been crucial to the company’s rise to its status as one of the most valuable automakers in the world. But Tesla’s... Continue reading…

Image: Virgin Orbit Virgin Orbit launched a rocket carrying seven satellites from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port early Saturday morning at 1:49 AM ET (10:49PM local), marking the small satellite launcher’s first successful night mission. The company brought the satellites into low Earth orbit with the help of its Boeing 747 carrier aircraft called Cosmic Girl, which had the LauncherOne rocket attached beneath one of its wings.The mission, called Straight Up after a 1988 Paula Abdul song, involved seven research satellites as part of NASA’s Space Test Program. Like its previous missions, Virgin Orbit propelled the satellites into space by having Cosmic Girl carry the LauncherOne rocket 35,000 feet above the ground, giving it a headstart before the... Continue reading…

A sparse group of people brave the smoky conditions at Kings Beach, California, as the Caldor Fire burns nearby on Saturday, September 4th, 2021 | Jane Tyska / Digital First Media / East Bay Times via Getty Images After two years of Fourth of July celebrations without fireworks during the COVID-19 pandemic, the California resort community of North Lake Tahoe is ready to light up the sky again. But instead of traditional fireworks, more than 100 drones will take off for a light show choreographed to music. Like an increasing number of communities throughout the region, city planners chose fire safety and sustainability over nostalgia as California copes with a cruel megadrought.“Fireworks come with their own list of known environmental impacts—including noise pollution, impacts to the lake, and increased risk of fire at a time when the wildfire risk is already so high,” Katie Biggers, executive director of the Tahoe City Downtown Association,... Continue reading…

Image: Facebook Meta’s ending the pilot for Novi, the company’s digital wallet and the last remaining piece of its troubled cryptocurrency project, as first reported by Bloomberg. On Novi’s website, Meta says the wallet is shutting down on September 1st, 2022, and asks users to withdraw their funds “as soon as possible.”Users will lose access to their accounts come September, and will no longer be able to add money to Novi starting July 21st. If someone forgets to withdraw their remaining balance, Meta says it will “attempt to transfer” their funds to the bank account or debit card added to the service.Meta rolled out the “small pilot” of Novi to users in the US and Guatemala last October. Novi was originally built to support fast and free... Continue reading…

If you don’t tend to your algorithms, you’ll eventually hate what they show you. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For the last few years, I’ve chosen one weekend day a year to undertake what I’ve come to call a Feeds Reboot. I try to systematically go through every subscription, every follow, every algorithmically or chronologically generated thing I see on social platforms, streaming services, and news apps, and reset or at least review the way it works. I can’t recommend this enough.Every time I do a Feeds Reboot, I notice a huge uptick in how interesting and relevant I suddenly find the internet. Does it then spend the next 364 days slowly degrading back into a morass from which I will try and extricate myself next year? Yep! But I’m still making progress.The point of a Feeds Reboot is to be more intentional about the internet. It’s not the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Fourth of July weekend is here, and hopefully you get to enjoy some time together with friends and family (and lots of delicious food). The Verge Deals compiled the best deals happening in honor of America’s birthday, but today I aim to give you a smaller, fresher selection of deals that may not last through the holiday. Frequent visitors to the site might recognize one or two of them, but I’ve tried to toss in a few new deals for your perusal. Have a nice weekend.Sonos is hosting another one of its sale events on refurbished audio products (in like-new condition, and covered by a one-year warranty), running the gamut of its most affordable and pricey hardware. Starting at the low end, the Sonos Roam is selling for $139, down from... Continue reading…

TCL’s inexpensive phone offers decent performance, access to T-Mobile’s good 5G network, and not much else Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve made the decision to delete Instagram, whether because you’ve outgrown the need for a certain finsta or because its parent company Meta is courting controversy again, doing so isn’t as quick or easy as it should be. Up until recently, it couldn’t even be done from within the Instagram app.Go ahead and take a moment to make an obligatory “I’m deleting Instagram” post if you’d like. After that, you have two ways you can go about it.Deleting Instagram using the iOS or Android AppThe easiest way for iPhone users to delete Instagram is by using the app. To do so, go to your profile, tap the hamburger menu in the top right, and select Settings. Then go to Account, and scroll down to the bottom of the menu. There will be a Delete... Continue reading…

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner. | Netflix Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 finishes with a deadly bang and the glimpse of the apocalypse Continue reading…

These cards are now worth just over $1,000, well under MSRP — down from $2,570 last March. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Nvidia and AMD graphics cards are again within reach Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google says it’ll start automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, weight loss clinics, and other potentially sensitive locations from users’ location histories in the coming weeks. In a blog post on Friday, the company says that the deletion will happen “soon after” the visit, once its systems have identified that a trip was made to one of the locations. This change is happening in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the moves several states have immediately made to outlaw abortions.You can also turn off Google’s location logging altogether by following its instructions here.Google’s post, entitled “Protecting people’s privacy on health topics,” also mentions that... Continue reading…

Rufus 3.19 Beta has options when you start creating the bootable windows installer. | Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge Windows 11 comes with more restrictive install requirements when compared to its predecessor, including restrictions on older processors as well as requiring an internet connection and Microsoft account. Luckily, there are workarounds that allow for upgrades to Windows 11 on unsupported CPUs, and the company isn’t blocking those circumventions. But, if you’re looking to do a clean Windows 11 install and configure the system with just a local account, you can now do that easily with a tool called Rufus.The app has been long used by IT departments to quickly create bootable Windows installers. The latest beta release, as reported by Ars Technica, now has the ability to remove the requirement of an online Microsoft account, alongside other... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US government seems to be worked up about cryptocurrency scams. On Thursday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Justice all released news that they were taking some form of action against people accused of carrying out multimillion or billion-dollar schemes. One of the cases involves knock-off apes, one is the “largest fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin charged in any CFTC case,” and one involves someone nicknamed “the Cryptoqueen.” The wave of enforcement is happening against a backdrop of plummeting crypto prices.Let’s start with the CFTC — the regulator has filed an action against a company called Mirror Trading International (MTI), which was run by a South African... Continue reading…

In reaction to the announcement that the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, protestors assembled in Washington Square Park and then marched north to Union Square on June 24th, 2022, in New York City. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The end of Roe v. Wade is leaving web platforms struggling to handle moderation — and data safety — questions around newly instituted abortion bans.For years, web platforms have faced relatively little backlash for pledging to remove posts that violate US law, even if there’s debate over whether specific content meets that standard. Policies that “match the laws of the country” — Elon Musk’s initial description of his plans for Twitter — are typically code for very permissive moderation in the US, where the First Amendment has historically protected a huge swath of content. The 2018 FOSTA-SESTA carveout, a rare exception, targeted the marginalized community of sex workers and used the justification that it was fighting the rightfully... Continue reading…

The Sprint shutdown is fully underway. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The remnants of Sprint’s network have been put out to pasture. As of yesterday, Sprint’s LTE network has been retired by its new owner, T-Mobile. That’s along with Sprint’s 3G CDMA network, which was shut down earlier this year, and what remained of T-Mobile’s own 3G network, which enters retirement today. T-Mobile spokesperson Justin Paulsen confirmed to The Verge that the network shutdowns are now underway.It may come as a surprise that any part of Sprint’s network was still operational so recently. In April 2020, T-Mobile officially took ownership of the company, including all of its spectrum and network towers, which would ultimately be repurposed for 5G. Sprint’s 3G CDMA network was the first to go when T-Mobile started to shut... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is testing a new way to discover new channels that reminds me of the good old days of channel surfing on my TV. The experiment, which it calls the Channel Switcher, lets you easily flip through previews of a bunch of different streams to help you find something to watch. And perhaps best of all, you won’t see ads while using it.You can get an idea of how it works in this tweet from Twitch:

The Sims 4 High School Years will be available on July 28th. | Image: EA Later this month, clothing from the fashion marketplace Depop will be available in an expansion pack for The Sims 4 called High School Years (via Polygon). Depop describes itself as a “circular” and “community-powered” online resale site and app that allows users to buy and sell vintage clothing items, mostly at discounted rates.The expansion pack will feature Sims characters experiencing “the rollercoaster of puberty,” complete with events like prom, school pranks, and the ability to cut class. Image: Depop.com Depop seller Lapoze McTribouy’s shop Sooki Sooki Vintage. Teenage Sims now have a chance to become a fashion “Simfluencer” and earn Simoleons, the game’s in-app currency, using an app like Depop... Continue reading…

Jake Sully and Dr. Grace Augustine in the first Avatar. | Image: 20th Century Studios Though Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine ultimately died in the first Avatar film, one of the first surprising details director James Cameron shared about the film’s sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, was that Weaver was set to return as a mysterious new character. While Avatar’s story of symbiotic aliens could potentially have led to resurrecting Dr. Augustine in an imaginative way, it turns out that The Way of Water’s taking a much more surprising approach to incorporating Weaver back into the franchise.Avatar: The Way of Water’s first trailer revealed that its story would focus on the blended family that former human Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and the Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) began after the original film. Surprising as it... Continue reading…

The base model MacBook Pro is not a good buy. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The base model 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM is available to buy right now. You probably shouldn’t buy it. With more details coming out about just how slow it is compared to higher-specced versions of the M2 and even the M1 model, it's becoming increasingly clear that the cheapest 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro is a real stinker of a deal.Earlier this week, videos from Max Tech and Created Tech showed the storage in the base M2 model was slow compared to the M1 version, with 50 percent slower SSD read speeds and 30 percent slower write speeds. It’s because Apple opted to use just one 256GB NAND flash storage chip instead of two 128GB chips as found on the M1. The move, likely a cost-saving one, means none of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Electronic Arts, the unmitigated king of unforced errors, made a woefully ill-advised tweet yesterday, and the company’s Twitter mentions have not known peace since.

A Project Genesis-specific Samsung Galaxy S22 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Dish is trying something no one’s succeeded at for a very long time: build a new nationwide cell network from the ground up. The 5G service, called Project Genesis, finally went live in “over 120 cities” two weeks ago, and my colleague and I immediately signed up to test it out.From the start, we had some big questions: how fast will this new network be? Would we even be able to find Dish service? And did the company launch Genesis before it was ready just to meet its contractual obligations with the government and avoid tens of millions of dollars in fines?Given how buggy the sign-up process was, I didn’t have high hopes when I unboxed my Project Genesis-specific Samsung Galaxy S22. But after a week of testing it in Spokane,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After years of mounting pressure, TikTok provided US lawmakers with more details into how it limits Chinese access to American data in a new letter dated Thursday.In a letter addressed to nine of the app’s most prominent Republican critics, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew detailed how the company planned to separate American user data from ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company. Chew also explained TikTok’s plan to house American user data on Oracle servers, a plan first reported by BuzzFeed News last month.“We’re proud to be able to serve a global community of more than a billion people who use TikTok to creatively express themselves and be entertained,” Chew wrote in the letter first reported by The New York Times. “We know we are among... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge A case being brought in the Colorado district court of Denver County is challenging the constitutionality of a controversial keyword search warrant and potentially curbing a law enforcement practice that has implications for the criminalization of abortion.A reverse keyword search warrant is a surveillance technique that lets police start with a search term of interest and identify users who have searched it within a particular period. In concrete terms, that could mean identifying all the users who search for a specific name or address — or in a scenario that has caused anxiety recently, everyone who searches for “abortion drugs.” Proponents of the technique say they’re an important tool for identifying criminals, but civil liberties... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge PayPal is putting new limits on a feature in its payment system that allows people to receive money without paying extra fees, the company recently announced. Starting July 28th, only personal PayPal accounts will be able to get funds via Friends & Family, a transaction method intended for trusted recipients.There are two ways of sending money on PayPal: Friends & Family and Goods & Services. F&F is intended for paying your friend back for dinner, for example, or giving your kid some birthday money — you know who’s receiving the funds and what you’re paying them for. There’s typically no fee involved, but it also drops protections for issues that might come up, like refunds or scams.G&S is intended for purchases, and money sent this... Continue reading…

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge This Friday, our deals deliver some Wi-Fi gains. If you’re in the market for a fast mesh Wi-Fi router or an upgrade to your existing one, then you’ve got some discounted options from Eero right now. Amazon-owned Eero is running a pre-Prime Day sale that drops its latest and greatest models to their lowest prices until July 11th for Prime members. Will these early Prime Day deals pale in comparison to the discounts when Prime Day actually lands on the 12th and 13th? We’ll find out together soon enough, but these deals are too good not to share with you now.Let’s start with the highest-end model. The Pro 6E is the newest router from Eero, and it supports the wider 6GHz band to achieve faster speeds in supported devices. It also claims to... Continue reading…

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, has been awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden, the White House announced Friday. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest US honor that can be given to a civilian, and it’s presented to “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” the White House said in a statement.Jobs founded Apple in April 1976, and it’s since become one of the biggest companies in the world. He helped launch many tech products that have gone on to become cultural touchstones, including the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. He died on... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers won’t need to conduct new clinical trials as they develop booster shots targeting the most recent variants of the virus, a Food and Drug Administration official told Reuters. The agency will use clinical trials of variant-specific boosters developed earlier in the pandemic, manufacturing data, and animal studies to evaluate the shots.The omicron variant of the virus has developed into multiple lineages. Right now, the BA.4 and BA.5 variants are the most widespread in the United States. The FDA said Thursday that the next set of booster shots should be against those versions of the virus. But pharmaceutical companies have been testing shots targeting BA.1, an earlier omicron lineage. Early data from M... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Uber trips are getting safer, with the company reporting far fewer sexual assaults in 2019 and 2020 as compared to previous years. But the number of traffic deaths during Uber rides is rising, reflecting the increasingly dangerous conditions on US roads.Uber said 3,824 sexual assaults occurred during trips in 2019 and 2020, a 38 percent drop from the 2017–2018 report, which logged 5,981 assaults. The decrease could be related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in an 80 percent drop in Uber’s ride-hailing business during 2020. Still, Uber says the vast majority of trips, 99.9 percent, occur without a safety incident.Uber says that 20 people were killed in physical assaults in 2019 and 2020Uber says that 20 people were killed in... Continue reading…

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Google’s Gboard keyboard app for Android is throwing a bone to people who use foldable phones (or at least, for now, to beta users of the app) with a split keyboard mode. Its aim is to make it less awkward and a little more ergonomic to type on the large, expanded screens of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 or a Microsoft Surface Duo 2.The split keyboard mode cuts the keyboard in half, putting all of the keys near the two sides of the foldable phone, much closer to where your thumbs may be naturally resting while you hold the device. And while Samsung’s keyboard app already offers this feature to Z Fold phones, some Android users prefer Gboard’s typing experience and auto-correct implementation.Android Central was first to pick up on the... Continue reading…