The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When paying for porn gets complicated Continue reading…

More details on the collaboration between George R.R Martin and FromSoftware Continue reading…

Image: Twitter Twitter is beginning its rollout of Ticketed Spaces, or paid live audio rooms. The company announced yesterday that it’s “experimenting” with the feature for some iOS users. It first rolled out applications to try the product in June with the plan to eventually make it available to all interested iOS and Android users.“Know it’s taking us a little time, but we want to get this right for you,” Twitter wrote in its announcement yesterday.Hosts can charge between $1 and $999 for their ticketed rooms and can also set a room size cap for them. These test group participants will initially keep 97 percent of the money they make, after the fee Apple and Google charge for in-app purchases. But Twitter will increase its cut from 3 percent to 20... Continue reading…

Nintendo Nintendo debuted a new trailer for Metroid Dread ahead of its October 8th launch on the Switch. Whereas the E3 2021 trailer was claustrophobic, featuring the E.M.M.I robots that will stalk you throughout the game, this one shows off bigger environments, as well as other enemy types and bosses that you’ll encounter along the way. Notably, Samus goes up against a gigantic living Chozo warrior, one that appears to share a lot in common with Samus in terms of its armor and arsenal. There’s also a boss that looks a bit like Kraid from Super Metroid.Additionally, the trailer lets you get a glimpse of some new skills that Samus will pick up during the story. There are familiar ones, like the ability to do Samus’ signature screw attack, getting... Continue reading…

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole There are built-in calculator, camera, and to-do apps — but small devs can make them better Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Being original on Facebook doesn’t pay, according to its own data Continue reading…

Elon Musk has criticized fellow centibillionaire and space cowboy Jeff Bezos for filing lawsuits against the former’s aerospace company SpaceX.Earlier this month, Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin sued NASA after it lost a critical government contract to put astronauts on the Moon to SpaceX. This has had the effect of delaying SpaceX’s own work on the project. And now, this week, Amazon has urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to dismiss newly-submitted plans by SpaceX to launch another cluster of satellites to power its satellite internet service Starlink.Replying to a story about the latter complaint, Musk tweeted: “Turns out Besos [sic] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX …” ... Continue reading…

Another day, another major Microsoft vulnerability. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has warned thousands of its Azure cloud computing customers, including many Fortune 500 companies, about a vulnerability that left their data completely exposed for the last two years.A flaw in Microsoft’s Azure Cosmos DB database product left more than 3,300 Azure customers open to complete unrestricted access by attackers. The vulnerability was introduced in 2019 when Microsoft added a data visualization feature called Jupyter Notebook to Cosmos DB. The feature was turned on by default for all Cosmos DBs in February 2021.A listing of Azure Cosmos DB clients includes companies like Coca Cola, Liberty Mutual Insurance, ExxonMobil, and Walgreens, to name just a few.We were able to get access to any customer database that we... Continue reading…

I was having a good time with No More Heroes 3 until I somehow lost my save file. I don’t think it was the game’s fault, but unfortunately since it’s coming out today for the Nintendo Switch, I wasn’t able to finish it in time for a full review. I did get several hours into it, though, and it was already feeling like a worthy followup to the Wii original, which I was a big fan of back in 2007.Developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, there wasn’t anything quite like the original No More Heroes, an action game that saw video game nerd protagonist Travis Touchdown climb the ranks of the world’s deadliest assassins through a series of increasingly ridiculous boss fights. The game also featured an open-world structure where you had to perform... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A person claiming to be behind the T-Mobile data breach that exposed almost 50 million people’s info has come forward to reveal his identity and to criticize T-Mobile’s security, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. John Binns told the WSJ that he was behind the attack and provided evidence that he could access accounts associated with it, and he went into detail about how he was able to pull it off and why he did it.According to Binns, he was able to get customer (and former customer) data from T-Mobile by scanning for unprotected routers. He found one, he told the Journal, which allowed him to access a Washington state data center that stored credentials for over 100 servers. He called the carrier’s security “awful” and... Continue reading…

Data-mining firm Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future shortly before the electric vehicle startup became a publicly traded company in July, according to a previously unreported Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) document filed late last week.In addition, Faraday Future signed a commercial contract to use Palantir’s software, according to one of Palantir’s most recent SEC filings. Neither company disclosed how much Faraday Future is paying, though Palantir’s filing notes the contract will last between four and six years. Representatives for both companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Palantir says its software is meant to serve as a “central operating system” for companies that need to sift... Continue reading…

Nintendo The Switch still doesn’t have apps like Netflix or Twitch, but Nintendo decided to do us one better by announcing that Pokémon TV — the media app devoted to all things Pokémon — is now available on the console.Pokémon TV is an app that Pokémon enthusiasts can use to watch episodes of the long-running cartoon series, videos offering tips and tricks to players, and competitive Pokémon broadcasts. The app launched in 2019 on mobile and smart TVs and is now available for free on Switch.In addition to being able to watch episodes from all seven series of Pokémon shows free of charge, the Pokémon TV app is also launching a Junior category with programming geared toward younger players and fans.Twenty-five years after its debut in Japan, P... Continue reading…

Image: Streamlabs Streamlabs, the popular livestreaming software company owned by Logitech, is rolling out a “monthly tipping service” as an alternative way for streamers to earn money from their fans. Streamlabs Creator Subscriptions will offer streamers flexibility on what kinds of subscriptions they offer, and they will integrate directly into Streamlabs’ OBS software suite for streaming to Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook.Using Streamlabs Creator Subscription seems about as simple as the company’s earlier donation tools or the tipping feature that already existed on the platform. Creators can enable or disable monthly tips in settings, along with setting specific subscription prices. There’s also the option to let a viewer tip whatever amount they want... Continue reading…

Disney Disney Plus subscribers will finally be able to watch the Queen of Mean on the service at no additional cost beginning Friday.The live-action origin story of Disney’s notorious Cruella de Vil will hit the service tomorrow after debuting simultaneously in theaters and on Disney’s Premier Access platform on May 28th. Premier Access releases typically run viewers an additional $30 on top of their monthly or yearly subscription costs to be able to access the film early. But Cruella will officially join the Disney Plus library beginning this week.Emma Stone stars alongside a pack of sometimes real, sometimes CGI dogs in a spin on Disney’s animated One Hundred and One Dalmatians. This one, though, is set in 1970s London and sees Stone take... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images United Launch Alliance won’t be selling any more of its workhorse Atlas V rockets, and it has stopped buying the launch vehicle’s Russian-made rocket engines for good, the company’s chief executive told The Verge. ULA’s decision sets up the retirement of one of the US government’s most trusted launch vehicles and is expected to mark the end for Russia’s iconic — but controversial — RD-180 engine, an engineering marvel and a core source of revenue for Russia’s space program.“We’re done. They’re all sold,” CEO Tory Bruno said of ULA’s Atlas V rockets in an interview. ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has 29 Atlas V missions left before it retires sometime in the mid-2020s and transitions to its upcoming Vulcan... Continue reading…

The gunslinger character in Overwatch. | Image: Activision Blizzard Blizzard says it plans to change the name of Overwatch’s gunslinger character following the explosive sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Activision Blizzard by the state of California. The character was originally named “McCree” after Jesse McCree, a former longtime Blizzard staffer who appears to be pictured in the so-called “Cosby Suite” reported on by Kotaku.Blizzard hasn’t shared a new name for the character yet, and the studio will delay an in-game narrative arc where he played a “key part” due to the change. The company also committed to no longer naming in-game characters after real employees.

Location sign for the ‘CO2 to pipeline’ apparatus at the Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant, operated by Saudi Aramco, in Hawiyah, Saudi Arabia, on Monday, June 28, 2021. The Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant is designed to process 4.0 billion standard cubic feet per day of sweet gas as pilot project for Carbon Capture Technology (CCUS) to prove the possibility of capturing C02 and lowering emissions from such facilities. | Maya Siddiqui/Bloomberg via Getty Images Last year, a pipeline carrying compressed carbon dioxide mixed with hydrogen sulfide ruptured, engulfing the small town of Satartia, Mississippi, in a green haze, leaving many residents convulsing, confused, or unconscious. That explosion serves as a vivid warning about the risks posed by what could be the next generation of pipelines to crisscross the US, in a new investigation by HuffPost and the Climate Investigations Center.“It was almost like something you’d see in a zombie movie.”“It was almost like something you’d see in a zombie movie,” Sheriff’s Officer Terry Gann tells journalist Dan Zegart about what happened that night. Zegart pieces together the events of February 2020 through harrowing 911 calls and the voices of family... Continue reading…

Image: Nuro Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup founded by two ex-Google engineers, announced a dramatic expansion of its physical footprint. The company said it will spend $40 million on the construction of a manufacturing facility and test track for its fleet of self-driving robot vehicles. Both facilities will be located in Southern Nevada, which in recent years has become a hotbed for manufacturing and testing for the future of transportation.Nuro, which is valued at $5 billion, was founded in 2016 by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, two veterans of the Google self-driving car project that would go on to become Waymo. It is one of the few companies to be operating fully driverless vehicles — that is, vehicles without safety drivers behind the... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google has announced that Google Sheets is getting the ability to intelligently suggest formulas and functions for your spreadsheet, based on the data you're trying to analyze. For example, typing “=” into a cell below a list of numbers will pop up a box that lets you automatically add the numbers together, find their average, and more.From my admittedly simple tests, it seems to be a pretty smart system. For example, with one column of data, it suggested that I could be looking for either the sum or average of the numbers. After I chose the sum and moved down to the next cell, it only suggested finding the average for the same range of numbers, not including the sum I’d just calculated. It’s a simple thing, keeping track of what’s data... Continue reading…

We recently wrote how Panasonic maybe went a little overboard with wacky promotional images for its new SoundSlayer wearable gaming speaker. Fun, right? Here’s something less amusing: it appears that Panasonic couldn’t be bothered to take actual photos of its product on actual human beings, so it digitally inserted them into royalty-free pictures from Shutterstock and Getty Images. And then, it appears to have done something worse: stick a white man’s head on a Black man’s body, altering his skin tone to match.Let’s start with the less egregious example. Here’s Panasonic’s image of its headset blowing a gamer’s mind: Image: Panasonic If you type “nerdy gamer” into Shutterstock, it’s the very first result. ... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple has a new offer for publishers: join Apple News, and it’ll only take 15 percent out of your in-app purchases and subscriptions instead of 30. Publishers can apply to Apple’s News Partner Program to take that bargain, but they have to agree to Apple’s requirements, which naturally benefit Apple and go beyond just maintaining a channel in Apple News.The list of specific eligibility requirements to apply is short but worth sharing in full:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is taking its next step into gaming by allowing subscribers in Poland on Android to play two Stranger Things games inside the Netflix app, the company announced Thursday.“Starting today, members in Poland can try Netflix mobile gaming on Android with two games — Stranger Things 1984 and Stranger Things 3 — all as part of their membership,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement. “It’s still very, very early days and we will be working hard to deliver the best possible experience in the months ahead with our no ads, no in-app purchases approach to gaming.”You can see how it works in a tweet from Netflix’s Polish team. Available games will show up in your home feed. If you tap on a game’s icon, you can learn more about the... Continue reading…

Video still by Weston Reel for The Verge The next generation of a feature called Scan can identify similar clothes, dog breeds, plants, cars, and more Continue reading…

Arkane’s next game is part immersive sim, part captivating mystery Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TSMC is the biggest chipmaker in the world and the company responsible for the processors used by Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and even some Intel products. And its products are about to get a lot more expensive: the company plans to raise prices of its advanced chips by around 10 percent and less advanced products by about 20 percent, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.Semiconductor supply has become an increasingly important factor for major tech and automotive companies, as chips continue to be hard to come by. There are a lot of factors that go into the prices of phones, laptops, and game consoles beyond the actual bill of materials, so a 10 to 20 percent increase in processor and SOC costs may not necessarily... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge If you’re looking for a Chromebook that rises above many other models in terms of build quality, features, and performance, you should check out Best Buy’s deal on the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. It normally costs $629 to get the model that has a respectable Intel Core i5-10210U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD, but it’s $200 off that price today. It’s yours for $429. At this price, the Spin 713 is kind of in a league of its own, with a convenient 2-in-1 design, a 2K resolution display with the ideal 3:2 aspect ratio, and long-lasting battery life. Read our review.Acer recently launched a 2021 version of the Spin 713 and it features an improved 11th Gen Intel processor and Thunderbolt 4 support, but my colleague Monica Chin found... Continue reading…

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole It’s a lucrative opportunity many don’t want to take Continue reading…

It’s normal food, blitzed into a pulp, and compressed into 50 gram squares. | Image: SquarEat Slap bang in the middle of a Venn diagram with two circles labelled “sincere tech startups” and “dystopian satires that are a little on the nose” you will find SquarEat: a company that you would swear is a joke if you weren’t already familiar with how the simulation we’re all living in likes to collide fact and fiction.SquarEat was apparently born of a simple idea: what if you could eat squares? But boy oh boy does it deliver on that premise.SquarEat says it’s “created a new concept of food” (squares)The company claims to have “created a new concept of food” (squares) which it makes by blitzing ingredients and compressing them into “ready-to-eat” 50 gram packages (squares). You can buy your squares in packs of four or six and have... Continue reading…

Illustration by Claudia Chinyere Akole Generative profile picture NFTs are all the rage, but creators say it’s not just about the money Continue reading…

Capitalism is all about fairly distributing wealth based on hard work and personal merit, which is why Jeff Bezos earns in 20 seconds what the median US worker makes in a year. He’s just that much better than you!Thankfully, Jeff’s also a super sweet guy who’s totally grounded and knows how to use his wealth to help people. For example, he spent billions taking a tourist trip into space on a dick-shaped rocket which I personally found to be very chill. Sure, some people say the trip was a huge vanity project; a colossal pissing-contest between egotistical, morally blind billionaires whose pocket change could save countless human lives with just as much intrinsic value as their own, but to that I say: stop being such a bummer, dude!! ... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It was just last February that Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay was promoted to lead the company’s entire Windows software and device teams, and now he’s moving up in the world again — he’s becoming an Executive Vice President who’ll be part of the Senior Leadership Team that advises Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself, reports Bloomberg.We’ve interviewed him quite a few times over the years, and not just because he’s one of the company’s faces — as Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer, he’s had a direct hand in creating and introducing many of Microsoft’s Surface devices including the recent Surface Duo. Also, yes, he’s the one who’s perpetually pumped.From a corporate standpoint, this means Windows will have a seat at the senior... Continue reading…

James Bareham / The Verge Niantic announced Wednesday that it’s going back on at least one of its controversial gameplay changes to Pokémon Go. The company is permanently increasing the distance you can be from the real-world locations of Pokéstops and Gyms and still interact with them. The new base limit is 80 meters (262 feet), the distance Niantic introduced at the start of the pandemic.At the start of August, Niantic reverted the in-game interaction distance back to 40 meters (131 feet) in the US and New Zealand, much to the disappointment of fans who had appreciated the added accessibility benefits and COVID-19 safety the change offered. Now Niantic is promising to keep the increased distance permanently, along with other changes it’s announcing on... Continue reading…

Google’s Wear OS app for YouTube Music. | Image: Google Google has finally released a Wear OS app for YouTube Music, which could seem like welcome news for people who have been waiting for a way to play their music off Google’s streaming service after the company shut down Google Play Music on Wear OS in August 2020. But the new app comes with a few caveats.The biggest catch is that the new app only works on one of Samsung’s two new watches powered by Wear OS 3, according to Google. Those watches won’t be available until August 27th, so even if you want to try the new app right now, you won’t be able to unless you have a Galaxy Watch 4 or a Galaxy Watch 4 Classic.Even if you have a compatible watch, it sounds like the app has some frustrating limitationsIf you are lucky enough to have one... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft’s Halo-themed Xbox Series X — one of the many announcements to come out of Gamescom Opening Night Live — is set to arrive on November 15th, nearly a month before the confirmed launch of Halo Infinite on December 8th. Preorders for the $549.99, limited-edition bundle went live at the Microsoft Store and Target on Wednesday, with initial preorder stock selling out in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, if you weren’t able to snag the Infinite-ready console earlier, Walmart is giving you another chance Wednesday, August 25th, at 8:30PM ET / 5:30PM PT, according to a Walmart spokesperson who confirmed the details with CNET.Like with all next-gen console restocks, we suggest signing in to Walmart and updating your address and payment... Continue reading…

Image: Facebook A manual uploaded to the FCC gives us a look at Facebook’s experimental Project Aria AR glasses, which apparently go by the codename Gemini (via Protocol). Facebook announced Project Aria in September 2020, with a message big on vision and light on details — though it was clear that the device exists to help Facebook in its quest (no pun intended) to create a computer that sees and understands the world. Seeing the actual headset’s manual gives us a bit of an idea about how it does that.In some ways, the Gemini headset is like a real pair of glasses, though in other ways it’s very much not: it can be fitted with corrective lenses if need be, but you can’t fold the arms down or use it in a VR headset. And, of course, it’s loaded with... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images Tech companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft promised to help bolster US cybersecurity after a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday. The pledges vary by company but range from spending billions on cyber infrastructure to offering supply-chain aid and education.Wednesday’s high-profile meeting with tech CEOs comes on the heels of major cyberattacks against US government agencies and energy infrastructure like the Colonial Pipeline.“The federal government can’t meet this challenge alone”“The reality is, most of our critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, and the federal government can’t meet this challenge alone,” Biden said at Wednesday’s meeting.Apple announced that it... Continue reading…

Image: Instagram Instagram plans to more prominently feature photos and videos in search results in the future, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Wednesday. The change could show the grid of photos and videos a keyword search can pull up alongside results for accounts and hashtags, not dissimilar to how TikTok displays results.The search tweak is part of “a series of improvements designed for inspiration and discovery,” according to Mosseri. The company has used keyword search as a way to offer visual results — certain terms can pull up pages of suggested images — but Instagram’s new plan will give those more prominence. Mosseri writes that searching with a term like “space” will pull up suggested photo and video results along with traditional... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is considering creating a commission that would weigh in on global election-related issues on the platform, according to The New York Times. Facebook has talked to academics and policy experts about the commission, which The New York Times reports is expected to be announced this fall ahead of the 2022 US midterm elections.Like how the independent Oversight Board helps review content moderation appeals, it sounds as if Facebook could ask the election commission to handle some decisions about election content. That could reduce the perception that Facebook’s decisions about content are politically biased, which has been a common criticism lobbed toward the company from conservatives. However, it’s unclear if this election... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge If you’ve had an Android phone for any length of time, it’s easy to get used to living with, well, chaos. If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly adding new apps, deciding they’re okay but not great, adding another, and so on. Then, a few months later, as you’re scrolling through your app drawer, you’re surprised to see several apps that you forgot about and perhaps don’t even remember what they’re used for.In a very short time, it can become a mess. And if you’re really an app enthusiast, it can start taking up more space than you can spare.There are essentially two steps to making sense of all of those Android apps: find a way to organize them (and there are a variety of ways, depending on what you’re comfortable with) and... Continue reading…

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge Starting September 18th, Microsoft will end support for the Office and Outlook Android apps on Chrome OS and start pushing Chromebook users to its web apps instead, according to a statement it gave About Chromebooks. As recently as July 31st, Microsoft’s support documents recommended installing the Android versions of Office, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive, but now those documents say that the apps are unsupported for Chrome OS users.As About Chromebooks’ Kevin Tofel points out, though, the move to web apps makes the offline situation for Office users more complicated. While certain Office web apps, like Outlook, have a dedicated offline mode, Tofel reports not being able to open existing documents using Microsoft’s progressive web app... Continue reading…

Amazon Games’ New World. | Image: Amazon Amazon’s upcoming PC MMO, New World, is getting an open beta ahead of its September 28th release date, Amazon Games announced at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live on Wednesday. The open beta will take place from September 9th to September 12th.The public beta will give players a chance to try out the game before its official launch just a few weeks later on September 28th, even if it’s only for a few days. In addition to the open beta, Amazon Games also revealed a new trailer for the upcoming MMO showing off more of the supernatural world of New World.New World’s open beta follows a well-received closed beta and should give more people a chance to try out the game before it officially launches. The game, like others from Amazon Games, has... Continue reading…

Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, has officially been delayed until February 18th, 2022, according to a PlayStation blog post and Guerrilla Games. The game was expected to release near the end of 2021, but it was clear that timeframe was more of a target than a fixed date — the game’s page on PlayStation.com had its release date listed as “to be confirmed,” and PlayStation Studio head Hermen Hulst said during an interview that the developers thought they were “on track” for a holiday 2021 release but couldn’t be sure. He also said that part of the uncertainty was due to developers’ access to motion-capture equipment and actors during the pandemic.Sony’s PlayStation Studios, which Forbidden West’s developer... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s first custom Halo-branded Xbox Series X console will arrive on November 15th. The $549.99 console includes dark metallic paneling, gold accents, and a star pattern to match the Halo universe. It even powers on and off with custom Halo-themed sounds, and Microsoft has changed the top fan section of the Xbox Series X from a green color to blue.The console bundle will also include a custom Halo-branded controller that matches the console, and Microsoft says this will be a very limited edition that will be available for preorder from Microsoft’s site today. Microsoft’s Halo-themed Xbox Series X console. This is the first custom Xbox Series X console, but Microsoft has previously launched many custom Xbox... Continue reading…

Morgana can’t catch a break | Sega In an effort to build up excitement for Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania that’s releasing on October 5th, 2021, Sega has been plucking characters from its roster of games, past and present. Not only will Yakuza’s Kazuma Kiryu serve as an unlockable character, Morgana from Persona 5 will appear as post-launch content on November 2nd, except it’ll cost $4.99.Morgana plays a pivotal role in Persona 5, serving as the gutsy feline sidekick to the protagonist and your rag-tag team of Phantom Thieves. In Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, Morgana will collect chests instead of bananas. Sadly, there’s no mention of Persona-themed stages or music mentioned in the press release.Sega is really wringing out its IP to include characters that’ll appeal... Continue reading…

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a newly revealed tactical RPG from Firaxis Games that was just announced at Gamescom’s opening night event.The game is said to take place in the “darker side of the Marvel Universe,” and it will have players take on the role of a new hero, The Hunter (which Firaxis created with Marvel). In Midnight Suns, you’ll team up with classic heroes like Iron Man, Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Blade, Captain America, and Captain Marvel as part of the Midnight Suns superhero team to battle a supernatural foe: Lilith. There’s not much information on the actual gameplay yet — although, given Firaxis’ work on the rebooted XCOM series and the fact that Midnight Suns will be a tactical RPG, it seems like players... Continue reading…