The Verge

It claims the company intimidated workers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers at the Cumberland Mall Apple store will no longer hold a union election in June, according to a report from Bloomberg. The Communications Workers of America (or CWA), the union attempting to organize the store, says it withdrew the request to hold an election because “Apple’s repeated violations of the National Labor Relations Act have made a free and fair election impossible.”The vote, which was scheduled to begin on June 2nd, would’ve been the first union election at a US Apple store had it gone through. Now, that title will go to a store in Maryland, barring that petition also being withdrawn. Workers at the Towson Town Center store are set to start voting in person on June 15th.The union says Apple intimidated workers and... Continue reading…

Meta’s new Privacy Policy menu | Image: Meta As it occasionally does, the company formerly known as Facebook has produced a new revision of its Terms of Service and updated its privacy policy. The old Facebook Data Policy is now Meta’s Privacy Policy, rewritten “to make it easier to understand and to reflect the latest products we offer.”With this revision, Meta “is not collecting, using or sharing your data in new ways based on this policy update and we still do not sell your information,” according to the company. Instead, this update tweaks the language and adds examples to help people understand what each segment is about.“the status quo is not good for privacy”After reading through the new policy and comparing it to the old one, this appears to hold up, for better or... Continue reading…

Blizzard Diablo Immortal is hell, literally, but playing it doesn’t have to be. Ahead of the game’s June 2nd release date, the Diablo team at Blizzard talked about some of the accessibility features they’ve built into Diablo Immortal to make hell that works for everyone.Controller support was something really important to bring to Diablo Immortal.“You will be able to play Diablo Immortal with controllers on both mobile devices and on PC,” Blizzard wrote in its accessibility blog. “Many controls — including skills, accessing chat, and more — can be remapped from the controller tab of the settings menu.”In addition to controller support, Blizzard is also sending Diablo Immortal reviewers a Razer Kishi controller that turns your phone into a... Continue reading…

Praise the servers. | Image: FromSoftware The servers for the Dark Souls series have been offline for PC players for months due to a remote code execution (RCE) exploit that could let hackers take over your computer, but developer FromSoftware is in the process of restoring the servers, according to a PC Gamer article published Friday.“We are currently in the process of restoring the online servers for the Dark Souls series on PC,” FromSoftware said to PC Gamer in an email. “We plan to restore online service for each game progressively, bringing back servers for Dark Souls 3 once we complete the necessary work to correct the problem. We will provide additional updates as soon as the restoration schedule is finalized. We want to thank all our players for your patience and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s latest Chromebook update adds a feature that tells you if your USB-C cable has limited functionality, the company announced Friday. USB-C cables can have widely varying capabilities, offering things like different charging and data transfer speeds on a cable-by-cable basis, so this new Chromebook feature seems like it could be a useful tool to help troubleshoot issues.“Eligible Chromebooks will notify you if the USB-C cable you’re using won’t support displays, or isn’t performing ideally for your laptop,” Google says in a blog post. “You’ll also get a notification if the cable you’re using doesn’t support the high performance USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 standards that your Chromebook does.” The new feature is coming first to... Continue reading…

The scale-back seems significant. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung is reportedly scaling back the number of phones it’s planning on producing in 2022, from 310 million to 280 million, according to SamMobile, which cites a report from Korean outlet Maeil Business News. In absolute terms, that’s still quite a lot of phones, but it’s a relatively sharp decrease from the company’s original goal (and from the reported number of phones it and its partners produced last year). It seems that there may be a trend of manufacturers preparing for the economy to get worse before it gets better.Reportedly, the lowered production targets will affect phones across its lineup, from low-end models to flagships. In a way, cutting the production of its less expensive phones sounds counter-intuitive — wouldn’t more... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Analogue Pocket’s long-awaited 1.1 update will finally be arriving in July, Analogue announced in a short blog post on Friday.The Analogue Pocket OS v1.1 release will include beta versions of the Library, Memories, and FPGA development features, according to the blog post. You can read more about the first two features in our article from October; the Library will be a huge historical archive about retro games, while Memories will let you capture and load save states as well as capture screenshots.It seems like the development feature will allow developers to take advantage of the Analogue’s second FPGA (field-programmable gate array). “Pocket is designed to be as easy as possible to develop and port FPGA cores to,” Analogue says on... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge The last few years have been incredibly hard for almost everyone, so now that summer is about here, it’s a good idea to step outside and decompress a bit with whatever activity suits you best — whether it’s a favorite sport, a long hike, overnight camping, bird-watching, bicycling, or just sitting on a beach and watching the waves come in.As we’ve done for the last couple of years, we asked some of our colleagues from The Verge what they were planning to take with them in their outdoor escapes. Here are some of their recommendations, including outdoor tech, camera gear, rugged footwear, and gadgets that help them take it easy.Outdoor techZMI PowerPack 20000Months predominantly spent indoors did wonders for my battery anxiety. Not... Continue reading…

Choose from Computer, Echo, Amazon or... Ziggy | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge If you’re getting tired of saying “Alexa” to get your smart speaker’s attention, or if Amazon’s voice assistant keeps thinking you’ve called on it when you haven’t, it might be time to try a new name.Perhaps you’d prefer to invoke the capabilities of the assistant with the word “Computer,” and mimic life on the Starship Enterprise from the comfort of your home. Or maybe you’re one of the parents of the 6,000 babies who were named Alexa in 2015 before the AI was a household name (a number that unsurprisingly plummeted to 1,900 by 2019).Either way, it’s simple to change the Amazon voice assistant’s wake word, and there are a few different words to choose from. Here’s a look at how you can evict Alexa in favor of a new wake word. ... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing Elon Musk’s initial disclosure that he’d taken a substantial stake in Twitter. In a letter sent last month, the SEC told Musk that he “does not appear” to have disclosed his acquisition of Twitter shares within the agency’s required 10-day window. The agency also suggested that Musk likely used the wrong form when he eventually disclosed his stake, using a document that wasn’t meant for someone who was hoping to make changes at the company being bought into.Reports have trickled out that the SEC was looking into Musk’s disclosure, but this is the first public indication of the inquiry. The letter, filed April 4th but just now made public, requests clarifications from Musk on why... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon is dealing with an incident where a hacker captured a database containing company employee data, including the full names of workers as well as their ID numbers, email addresses, and phone numbers. Motherboard reported that the database is legitimate, as the anonymous hacker contacted them last week, and they were able to verify the data by calling some of the numbers.“These employees are idiots,” the hacker told Motherboard via chat. The hacker is seeking $250,000 in exchange for not leaking the database and said they are in contact with Verizon.A Verizon spokesperson contacted Motherboard confirming the incident, saying, “A fraudster recently contacted us threatening to release readily available employee directory information... Continue reading…

Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Obi-Wan Kenobi. | Image: Matt Kennedy / Lucasfilm Ltd. A beloved hero, ferocious villains, and lots of world-building Continue reading…

A carbon dioxide warning is displayed on the grounds near equipment installed as part of the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project at the NRG Energy Inc. WA Parish generating station in Thompsons, Texas, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. | Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images Federal regulators are beginning to crack down on a new generation of pipelines that will be crucial for the Biden administration’s plans to capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide to combat climate change.The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) proposed penalties yesterday on the operator of one such pipeline that ruptured in Mississippi, sending at least 45 people to the hospital in 2020. The agency also pledged to craft new rules to prevent similar pipeline failures from happening as the US makes plans to build out a network of pipelines to transport captured CO2.A new generation of pipelinesThere are not many of these pipelines (compared to oil and gas pipelines) yet in the US, which are primarily... Continue reading…

Image: Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble hasn’t completely forgotten its lineup of Nook e-readers. Starting today, you can preorder the new Nook GlowLight 4e for $119.99. That’s about $30 more than Amazon’s cheapest Kindle and $20 cheaper than Amazon’s extremely popular Paperwhite. But, unlike Amazon’s products, there are no ads you have to pay to avoid, and you can easily sideload content.The Nook GlowLight 4e charges via USB-C and has 8GB of built-in storage, which is standard for an e-reader at this price. It also has a 6-inch 212 ppi E Ink display with illumination. That’s better than the $89.99 Amazon Kindle with its 6-inch 167 ppi display, but the Kobo Nia starts at $99.99 and has the exact same display. The Kobo Clara HD retails for the exact same as the... Continue reading…

Bose’s QuietComfort 45 are the most comfortable noise-canceling headphones and are currently available at an all-time low. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you’re planning on flying this summer, a good pair of noise-canceling headphones that can help you tune out fellow passengers like the Bose QuietComfort 45s can come in handy. Regularly $329, you can buy them right now for $279 from Amazon, Best Buy, and Bose, which matches its all-time low and is the first significant discount we’ve seen in months.These are the most comfortable noise-canceling over-ears we’ve tested, with oval ear cups that help to prevent ear fatigue while, say, on long flights. At the same time, they’re also pretty light and foldable, making them easy to carry with you and pack, and their 24-hour battery means you won’t need to worry about recharging them anytime soon. Other notable features include a useful... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge A rural Michigan man became the first person in the nation to receive a Ford F-150 Lightning, according to Bloomberg. Nicholas Schmidt, the chief technology officer of a grid optimization startup, took delivery Thursday of a silver electric truck at Richardson Ford, a dealership in the small town of Standish, Michigan.According to Bloomberg, Schmidt owns a Tesla Model 3 and put a deposit down for one of the company’s Cybertrucks and also considered purchasing a Rivian R1T truck as well. He said his wife was relieved when it was clear that the F-150 Lightning would be the first to arrive. (Schmidt has since tweeted that his Cybertruck reservation is “no longer needed.”)Ford is counting on its decades of production and delivery... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images As concerns mount about the future of Elon Musk’s buyout agreement, Twitter’s board of directors has seen an unexpected shake-up.On Wednesday, Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban failed to win support from a majority of Twitter shareholders to remain on the board for another term after two investor groups raised concerns that Durban sits on the board of too many public companies. Durban offered his resignation in the wake of the vote, but on Friday, the other board members declined to accept it, instead forging an agreement for Durban to resign from two other board seats over the course of the next year.“accepting Mr. Durban’s tendered resignation at this time is not in the best interests of the Company”In the filing, the board takes note... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony will broadcast almost half an hour of PlayStation trailers and announcements during its State of Play livestream next Thursday at 3PM PT (6PM ET), the company announced today. It’s yet to announce any specific games that are set to appear at the event but says it’ll include “exciting reveals from our third-party partners” as well as a look at “several” games in development for its upcoming virtual reality headset, the PlayStation VR2.News of the livestream follows an announcement at Sony’s investor day that it plans to have over 20 “major” titles available for the VR headset at launch (the date of which is yet to be announced). There’s currently just one confirmed game for Sony’s upcoming headset, a spinoff of the Horizon... Continue reading…

Concept art from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune bible. Spice DAO, the cryptocurrency collective that bought a script bible for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s never-made Dune adaptation, is apparently still figuring out what to make of its success. Earlier this week, the collective stopped working with a core member who posted virulently hateful messages as part of a self-described internet art project. Now, the project’s originator has suggested Spice DAO will back off its quixotic goal of creating a community-owned media powerhouse — but it’s not clear the group is actually changing any plans.Towards the end of 2021, the decentralized autonomous organization (or DAO) raised millions of dollars to purchase a rare copy of Jodorowsky’s Dune bible, then found itself with a sizable leftover treasury... Continue reading…

Chrome OS isn’t the most option-packed operating system around, but there are some things you can do to make your Chromebook’s desktop look and work the way you want.Ready?Customize your Chromebook’s wallpaperFirst, let’s tackle your desktop’s basic appearance:

The Retro 35 charger. | Image: Shargeek / Indiegogo Accessory-maker Shargeek has launched an Indiegogo to fund a 35W USB-C charger shaped like a tiny Apple Macintosh computer. The page for the Retro 35’s crowdfunding campaign is very careful not to mention the name of Apple’s classic computer, but it’s drawn some very obvious inspiration, from the beige color scheme down to the placement of the disk drive. The device is eventually set to retail for $49, with Indiegogo “early bird” pricing starting at $25.As increasing numbers of phone manufacturers have stopped shipping charging bricks with their devices, aftermarket chargers are becoming more popular. Often, these bricks offer additional ports or higher charging speeds compared to their first-party equivalents, but it’s fun to see... Continue reading…

Gucci is making its presence inside of Roblox a little more permanent. The fashion brand previously collaborated with the virtual world for more short-lived experiences, like the surreal Gucci Garden from last year, and is now releasing a more persistent space called Gucci Town. The space features a central garden that links together various areas, including a space for mini-games, a cafe, and a virtual store where players can, of course, purchase virtual Gucci gear for their Roblox avatar. (The company says the virtual outfits make use of Roblox’s new “layered clothing” tech.)Gucci says that more than 20 million players visited the garden last year, despite it only being available for two weeks, and it expects the new space to steadily... Continue reading…

Pyro and Scout face off. | Image: Valve Valve has responded to a campaign from Team Fortress 2 players who want it to fix the game’s bot infestation that has made it almost unplayable in recent years. “TF2 community, we hear you!” the company tweeted from the official Team Fortress 2 Twitter account. “We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things.”Currently, Team Fortress 2 is suffering from huge numbers of automated players on its public servers that are ruining the game for legitimate users. According to IGN, bots will post endless spam in chat, snipe other players with unflinching accuracy, and even crash servers entirely. Last year, the podcast Reply All dedicated an entire episode to the issues plaguing... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re having trouble accessing Instagram right now, you are not the only one. Reports across the internet (Downdetector, Reddit) note issues with Meta’s more-than-just-pictures app, with many people seeing screens saying they’re not logged in, blank image posts, “Welcome to Instagram” messages like they have a brand new account, or feeds that stop loading after the first few pictures. Many Verge staffers are seeing similar issues while trying to access Instagram.Just before 9PM ET, Instagram said the problems have been resolved, so the apps should be working for you again. In a statement given to The Verge, Instagram communications lead Seine Kim said “Earlier today some people were having trouble accessing Instagram. We resolved... Continue reading…

A new update introduces a new fan curve. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Valve’s latest SteamOS update is a big one for Steam Deck fans — and I am literally talking about the fan in the handheld gaming PC. One frequent complaint about the Steam Deck is its at-times loud and high-pitched fan whine even while playing lightweight games. Some, including my colleague Sean Hollister, have tried a DIY solution to fix the whine, and iFixit’s replacement Steam Deck fans are already sold out despite being on sale for less than a week.With SteamOS 3.2, though, Valve introduced a new OS-controlled fan curve that’s intended to make things better. “This means that overall it’s smarter, more responsive to what’s happening on and inside Steam Deck, and quieter — especially in low usage situations,” the company said in a... Continue reading…

It’s the standard Control / Command + C, X, and V. | Image: Google Google has announced that it’s adding the ability to use keyboard shortcuts to cut, copy, and paste files in Drive, as long as you’re using Chrome. The feature will use th— okay, hold on just a minute here. Are you really trying to tell me that we couldn’t already do this?Sure enough, when I went to Google Drive on the web and pressed Command + C on a file, then went into a folder and pressed Command + V, nothing happened. And this December 2021 archive of Drive’s list of keyboard shortcuts doesn’t say anything about the functions. Which is fine, really — it’s not like keyboard shortcuts for copy, cut, and paste have been around since the functions’ invention in the 1970s.The feature’s rolling out now, though, and Google’s post says... Continue reading…

Jodie Foster at the 74th Annual Cannes Film Festival. | Toni Anne Barson/FilmMagic Though Jodie Foster has built a name for herself leading thrillers on the silver screen, her next big project’s going to be something a bit different. Deadline reports that Foster has signed on to True Detective’s fourth season to portray Liz Danvers, a detective tasked with investigating the mysterious disappearances of six people from a research station in Ennis, Alaska. While Danvers is up for the task of figuring out where went wrong near the Tsalal Arctic Research Station, she and her partner arrive in Ennis just as the region’s long winter night and its all-encompassing darkness begin to set in.In addition to starring as Danvers, Foster will also executive produce this chapter of True Detective alongside Barry Jenkins, and the... Continue reading…

Aloy could be on her way to Netflix. Sony is continuing to go all in on turning its flagship video games into TV shows and movies — according to Variety, the company announced that it’s making a show based on Horizon Zero Dawn with Netflix at an event for investors. Sony is also working on a movie based on the Gran Turismo series, according to Deadline, but hasn’t found a distributor for it yet, and could feature Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Chappie) as its director. (I’m very curious as to what the plan for this series is — Variety just says it’ll be about “racing.”)Both projects are reported to be in “early development,” so we likely won’t be streaming them for quite a while. However, the fact that Sony’s continuing to introduce new TV and movie projects shows that the... Continue reading…

OpenSea’s new profile page. | Image: OpenSea OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, has redesigned its profile and collections pages with the goal of making the site easier to navigate and making the actual NFTs themselves the center of attention. In an announcement post on Thursday, the company says these redesigns are “just the start” of the company’s work to refine how its site works.In my opinion, OpenSea’s refreshed profile pages look a bit like Twitter and Etsy’s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. The old version could be a bit tricky to navigate at times, and it seems like the marketplace has smoothed out some of the edges.

Mando and Grogu. | Image: Lucasfilm Ltd. There’s a lot on the way Continue reading…

Disney Once upon a time, Ron Howard and George Lucas wanted to try and replicate the success of Star Wars by creating a whole new fantasy, Willow. The film came out in 1988, and while I personally have very important and fond memories of the movie, I am a rarity. The film only did okay at the box office, and any nascent plans for a sequel were put on ice.Now, 34 years later, we’re getting an entire series dedicated to Warwick Davis’ titular wizard. No longer a wizard in training, Willow now has a staff — and can apparently do magic beyond poorly turning people into a wide variety of animals. The trailer for the new show features a few returning characters, including Joanne Whalley’s Sorsha and at least one of the brownies (played by Kevin... Continue reading…

The Star Wars universe on Disney Plus continues to expand with the official reveal of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which stars Jude Law and is coming to the streaming service in 2023.Announced during Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, the series is a coming-of-age tale set in the sci-fi universe. In addition to Law, it will also star “kids,” though we don’t know who they will be just yet. It’s led by director Jon Watts and writer Chris Ford, who previously collaborated on Spider-Man: Homecoming, and produced by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. The series was teased in a Vanity Fair article last week. During today’s event, Filoni said that the show is “as much for kids as The Clone Wars.”Earlier in the event, Lucasfilm released the first... Continue reading…

Excited to see more Grogu? | Image: Lucasfilm Disney announced at Star Wars Celebration that The Mandalorian’s third season will debut in February 2023 on Disney Plus.The third season of The Mandalorian has been a long time coming — season two debuted all the way back in October 2020. Thankfully, we’ve seen Mando and Grogu a bit more recently than that, as they starred in some of the later episodes of The Book of Boba Fett, but it still feels like it’s been quite a while since the last dedicated season of The Mandalorian.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft’s long-in-the-works xCloud streaming device is going through some changes, as reported by Windows Central. The company first announced the dedicated streaming dongle in June 2021, but in a statement given to Windows Central, the company said it has pivoted from the “current iteration” of the device, which it says is codenamed Keystone.Here is Microsoft’s full statement shared with Windows Central:

Art from Star Wars: Andor shared by Disney in a trailer. | Image: Disney Disney kicked off its Star Wars Celebration event with the first look at Andor. The upcoming Disney Plus series stars Diego Luna, who is reprising his role as Cassian Andor from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The show will hit the streaming platform on August 31st.Details about the show have been relatively light, though Disney’s website describes the show as a “tense nail-biting spy thriller.” At today’s panel, it was confirmed the season will be 12 episodes long — much longer than a typical Star Wars show — and will take place five years before the events of Rogue One. “You’re not going to recognize Cassian Andor in the beginning,” Luna said during the panel. Here’s the official description:

Apple’s reportedly predicting flat demand for the iPhone 13 and 14. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple, one of the biggest tech companies on the planet, reportedly doesn’t think it’ll sell any more iPhones this year than it did last year, despite rumors that the iPhone 14 will come with some major improvements (via MacRumors). While it’s not necessarily a canary in the coal mine (or a Waffle House being closed) that the world will keep getting worse, Apple predicting that sales of its most popular product won’t grow could be a sign that the company’s relatively pessimistic about the state of things in the near future.According to Bloomberg, the company is asking its suppliers to make around 220 million iPhones, which is similar to how many it requested in 2021. This runs contrary to some analysts’ predictions, which forecasted that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images A new lawsuit on behalf of Twitter shareholders was filed against Elon Musk in federal district court in San Francisco on Wednesday night, alleging that the Tesla CEO has actively manipulated the company’s stock for personal gain.The complaint focuses on Musk’s conduct since signing the purchase agreement with Twitter’s board on April 25th, particularly his recent statement that the deal “cannot move forward” without more information about automated accounts on the platform.After signing the agreement, the complaint alleges, “Musk proceeded to make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct designed to create doubt about the deal and drive Twitter’s stock down substantially in order to create leverage that Musk hoped to use to... Continue reading…

Photo by Sylvain CORDIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Monarch butterflies might be tougher than we give them credit for. The orange beauties made a surprising comeback in Mexico this winter, environmental organizations and Mexico’s commission for natural protected areas announced this week.To avoid frigid temperatures further north, the butterflies flutter thousands of miles south from Canada and the US to spend the winter months in Mexico. This December, authorities there recorded a 35 percent rise in the monarch butterfly’s presence in Mexican forests.They face serious threatsIt’s a show of resilience for a species whose numbers have dwindled to worrying lows in the region over the past decade. They face serious threats from habitat destruction and climate change, so much so that the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla, along with other electric vehicle companies and environmental groups, asked the Biden administration to invest in charging infrastructure for electric buses, trucks, and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.The groups want the administration to allocate 10 percent of the money for electric vehicle charging in the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed last November — a pot that includes $7.5 billion — to go toward infrastructure for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, they said in a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg this week.“Most public EV charging infrastructure has been designed and built with passenger vehicles in mind,” the letter, also signed by the Environmental Law... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is highlighting how Chromebooks can work in “zero trust” corporate environments with its new Chrome Enterprise Connectors Framework. The new integration system is designed to make the Chrome browser and Chrome OS devices easier for IT departments to implement with existing security, endpoint, and authentication solutions as well as bother management solutions.Google Chrome OS exec John Solomon describes the new tools as a “plug and play” solution that lets other companies helm Chrome OS management functions like remote-wiping a Chromebook using BlackBerry Unified Endpoint Management or flagging malware downloads with Splunk. These types of management functions previously worked through the Google Admin console.Managing and... Continue reading…

The HP Envy x360 is one of our favorite 2-in-1 laptops. | Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge With Memorial Day right around the corner, many retailers are putting some awesome deals into effect early. For instance, the HP Envy x360 13 convertible laptop is currently available for $854.99 at HP instead of its usual $1,099.99 when you check out with the code 5MDSHP. This well-built 13-inch convertible laptop offers excellent productivity performance thanks to its Ryzen 7 5800U processor and even managed to surprise us with its capability in handling games with its integrated AMD Radeon graphics.The multitouch-enabled IPS display features a resolution of 1920 x 1080, and while a screen with 400 nits of brightness is far from the brightest screen available, it's more than sufficient for combating glare in brighter environments. In... Continue reading…

The flagship Xbox console occasionally dabbles in easy availability. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re on the hunt for the Xbox Series X, we may currently have a brief respite from some of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it console restocks. The flagship Xbox has never been quite as difficult to get as a PlayStation 5, but at times, it flirted with being readily available. Right now, we have one of those lulls where a couple retailers have the Xbox Series X available to order without much fuss. Costco members can get it in a bundle with an additional controller for $549.99, and anyone can freely order the standalone console for $499.99 direct from Microsoft.Like other retailers, both Microsoft and Costco have had many moments where the consoles popped up with limited availability and instantly sold out, but right now, these listings... Continue reading…

The cells were placed in a replica shoulder joint that was moved around to stimulate growth. | Image: Fisher Studios The science of tissue engineering — or growing human cells for use in medicine — is very much in its infancy, with only the simplest lab-grown cells able to be used in experimental treatments today. But researchers say a new method of tissue engineering could potentially improve the quality of this work: growing the cells on a moving robot skeleton.Typically, cells used in this sort of regenerative medicine are grown in static environments. Think: petri dishes and miniature 3D scaffolds. A few experiments in the past have shown that cells can be grown on moving structures like hinges, but these have only stretched or bent the tissue in a single direction. But researchers from the University of Oxford and robotics firm Devanthro thought... Continue reading…

You can present your card from your Apple Watch as well. | Image: MVA / Apple Apple’s Wallet app now supports Maryland state IDs and driver licenses, marking it as the second state after Arizona to gain the digital identification feature (via MacRumors). Residents of the Free State can now use their iPhone or Apple Watch at certain TSA checkpoints at participating airports, including Baltimore / Washington International and Reagan National. The iPhone won’t carry a “picture” of the card, only a means to transmit info to a receiving device — and you use biometrics to confirm the information being sent to the device.The digital IDs aren’t a replacement for physical ones, though. Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Administration (essentially, the DMV) website states that law enforcement does not accept Maryland Mobile ID,... Continue reading…

it’s $950. But at least you get a lifetime membership? | Image: Oura The Oura Ring was one of the buzziest gadgets during the pandemic. Not only did it spark a weird sleep competition between Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian, but it was also featured in the NBA’s COVID prevention plans, and there were several studies to see whether wearables could predict COVID-19. And now, there’s a Gucci version that costs an eye-watering $950.The Gucci x Oura Ring is made out of “black synthetic corundum” detailed with a braided border and an 18-karat gold Gucci G. It weighs four grams, and the band measures 0.3 inches thick. Other than the luxe design, this is basically the same as the “regular” $299 Oura Ring Generation 3. The main benefit of the Gucci version is that it comes with a lifetime membership. Starting... Continue reading…

A minor update to one of the best productivity mice on the market Continue reading…

Logitech’s new mechanical keyboard is all substance Continue reading…

If you’re on an iPhone, Apple Pay is the easiest way to get started with contactless payments. Not only is the digital wallet service free to use but it’s also already built into your phone.Apple Pay works by letting you add a digital version of a debit or credit card to the Wallet app. Once you’re set up, you can use Apple Pay to buy things online, in apps, and in person without having to carry your physical credit cards, cash, or a separate wallet. You can also use Apple Pay to send money to friends and family through the Messages app. In some cities, you can even use Apple Pay to replace a transit pass for public transportation.Generally, Apple will walk you through setting up Apple Pay when you first boot up a new gadget. But, if... Continue reading…