The Verge

She-Hulk showing up at an event. | Disney Though Bruce Banner’s been one of the most physically powerful people running around Marvel’s movies for years at this point, that’s all about to change this summer as his cousin Jennifer Walters makes her way to MCU in Disney Plus’ She-Hulk: Attorney At Law. While both Hulks make appearances in She-Hulk’s first trailer, the show’s clearly going to be Jennifer’s to own as she embarks on her own path to heroism.She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’s first trailer introduces Jennifer (Tatiana Maslany) at a tricky point in her already complicated life. Because the world’s filled with so many villains committing super crimes, Jennifer’s legal skills put her in high demand, but she isn’t quite certain that’s the kind of force for justice she wants to... Continue reading…

The LG Wing is cleared for takeoff on Verizon’s newest 5G spectrum. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge Verizon announced this week that the LG Wing will be getting an update that will allow it to use Verizon’s newest 5G spectrum — over a year after LG left the smartphone business altogether. The LG Wing has been certified to use mid-band spectrum called C-band, an important piece of Verizon’s 5G network that delivers better-than-LTE speeds and wide-ranging signal. Verizon spokesperson George Koroneos says that the update started arriving on devices yesterday and will continue to be pushed out through the rest of the week.That’s good news if you’re one of the few people who bought an LG Wing, and really a testament to LG for making good on its promise to keep providing some support for its devices. But why is a one-and-a-half-year-old... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is laying off around 150 employees as well as dozens of contractors following a disappointing earnings report, citing “slowing revenue growth,” as first reported by Variety.A source familiar with the situation tells The Verge the cuts include at least 26 contractors working on the company’s fan-focused Tudum website, which serves as a supplement to Netflix’s content. Prior to this recent round of layoffs, Netflix cut around 25 marketing roles, including close to a dozen who worked on Tudum. The 26 workers laid off today were informed of the move in a mass email, which Netflix spokesperson Erika Masonhall said was sent by the contracting company.The streaming giant told The Verge that most employees affected by the layoffs are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is delaying moving forward on its hybrid return to work for office employees, saying in a memo seen by The Verge and (reported earlier by Bloomberg) that “we are extending the phase-in period of the pilot and maintaining two days a week in the office for the time being.” Employees who are in the current two-day-per-week pilot will have the option to once again work fully remote if they feel uncomfortable coming into the office,In the memo, the company’s COVID-19 response team says that its updates are based on monitoring local info like test positivity and hospitalization rates. The memo also asks employees to go back to wearing masks when in common areas like meeting rooms, hallways, and elevators. The Bloomberg report added... Continue reading…

Image: Blizzard The Overwatch 2 beta is now over. If you were one of the lucky handful that were able to snag an invite, congratulations. If not, don’t worry. There will likely be more opportunities to try out Overwatch 2 in the future.One of those opportunities could be revealed during an Overwatch 2 event slated for June 16th.

For $20 a month, the service provides peace of mind, but many of its features should be free Continue reading…

The new covers are available for preorder now. | Image: Sony The PlayStation 5 is getting three new console cover colors — starlight blue, galactic purple, and nova pink — on June 17th, but preorders are open on PlayStation Direct right now. All three colors are available in the US, UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Asus says the card is the quietest in its class. | Image: Asus Asus has teamed up with renowned fan manufacturer Noctua once again to make a large brown and tan graphics card that should pump out frames while staying relatively quiet. The two companies’ last collaboration was an RTX 3070, but now they’ve announced a decidedly enthusiast tier card: an RTX 3080.According to Noctua’s press release, the card features two 120mm fans and a custom heatsink, making it “the quietest air-cooled graphics card in its class.” Apart from the fancy cooling, it’s a relatively standard Asus graphics card with two BIOS profiles, a backplate, and 10GB of GDDR6X RAM. There are 3080s with 12GB of memory, but that doesn’t seem to be an option with the Noctua heatsink.The card will go on sale “starting early June 2022,”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When a gunman pulled into the parking lot at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday in a racist attack targeting a Black community, his camera was already rolling.CNN reports that a livestream on Twitch recorded from the suspect’s point of view showed shoppers in the parking lot as the alleged shooter arrived, then followed him inside as he began a rampage that killed 10 people and injured three. Twitch, popular for gaming livestreams, removed the video and suspended the user “less than two minutes after the violence started,” according to Samantha Faught, the company’s head of communications for the Americas. Just 22 people saw the attack unfold in real time online, The Washington Post reports.But millions saw the... Continue reading…

The LinkBuds S in beige. | Image: WinFuture Sony’s follow-up to the unconventional LinkBuds could be the lightest active noise cancellation (ANC) earbuds yet. According to WinFuture, the new earbuds — supposedly called the LinkBuds S — weigh just 4.8 grams each.And while the LinkBuds released earlier this year are slightly lighter, weighing in at only 4 grams per bud, the new LinkBuds S come with ANC while the LinkBuds do not. Other ANC earbuds, like the AirPods Pro (5.4 grams each), Beats Studio Buds (5.1 grams each), and Galaxy Buds Live (5.6 grams) are still all heavier than the rumored LinkBuds S. Image: WinFuture The LinkBuds S could come with adaptive sound control. In addition to ANC, WinFuture expects the LinkBuds S to have high-resolution... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images So does Elon Musk want to buy Twitter or not? This morning, the company’s prospective new owner insisted (in a tweet, of course) that the $44 billion deal he’d agreed to “cannot move forward” until he sees the proof he’s looking for about its active user numbers.With needling current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and texting former CEO Jack Dorsey having failed to hit the spot, Musk — seemingly jokingly — pulled in another recurring character from his 24 / 7 revolving circus by tweeting to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, asking them to investigate. Image: Twitter In case you’ve forgotten, the folks at the SEC are the “bastards” that Musk has previously accused of infringing upon his rights to free speech,... Continue reading…

Image: Robinhood A little over a month after Robinhood publicly released its first crypto wallet, the company has announced it’s working on a second. The new wallet will be non-custodial, giving users sole custody over the private keys necessary to control their money on the blockchain. That means users won’t be dependent on Robinhood if the system fails but will also risk losing their funds entirely if they misplace the private key.Robinhood says the new wallet will be offered as a standalone app but hopes that it will “feature the same simple and accessible design” as its main service. The wallet will offer the ability to store and trade cryptocurrencies, including many not available through the main Robinhood app with “no network fees” and will... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google announced a new initiative Tuesday aimed at securing the open-source software supply chain by curating and distributing a security-vetted collection of open-source packages to Google Cloud customers.The new service, branded Assured Open Source Software, was introduced in a blog post from the company. In the post, Andy Chang, group product manager for security and privacy at Google Cloud, pointed to some of the challenges of securing open-source software and stressed Google’s commitment to open source.“There has been an increasing awareness in the developer community, enterprises, and governments of software supply chain risks,” Chang wrote, citing last year’s major log4j vulnerability as an example. “Google continues to be one... Continue reading…

Unlike many of the games we use to test gaming laptops here at The Verge, such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption 2, CS:GO doesn’t have a built-in benchmark. But not to worry — there are third-party benchmarks you can run to see what kind of frame rates your device puts up on this first-person shooter. The one we commonly use, the FPS Benchmark by Ulletical, is free and easy to install.Here’s how to run Ulletical’s FPS Benchmark for CS:GO:

A portrait of Orion and the northern winter Milky Way on a February night in 2020. | Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Now is the best time to stargaze in the UK since 2011, according to the results of a new citizen science survey led by the countryside charity CPRE. Light pollution in the UK has dropped to its lowest levels since CPRE began its annual study more than a decade ago.Light pollution peaked in 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing) and then dipped last year as workplaces shuttered during the pandemic. Since then, CPRE says light pollution has continued to drop as more people continue to work from home and soaring energy prices in Europe push households to cut down on lighting costs.Each year, CPRE enlists the help of citizen scientists for a “Star Count.” This year, more than 2,500 participants counted the number of stars... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For Ben Heck, it started as a kindness. He was an engineer who made cool things and a veteran reached out to see if he could make him an Xbox controller that would let him play video games with one hand. Twenty years later, he’s still making controllers for people with limb differences. But he’s not the only one.In the two decades since Heck started modding Xbox controllers for accessibility purposes, a community of controller modders have sprung up. The challenge of making hardware accessible is that everyone has a different need, and often times those needs can be at odds with one another. One person may need a super sensitive joystick while another might need a joystick that responds to the most intense of inputs. Modding a... Continue reading…

The House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee’ hearing on UAPs. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The Pentagon’s new task force for tracking unidentified aerial phenomena (or UAPs) has collected roughly 400 reports, an official told Congress in an open hearing on Tuesday.The comments came from Scott Bray, the deputy director of US naval intelligence, who testified today as an expert witness in a hearing about UAPs hosted by a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee. The hearing marked the first time Congress has held a public hearing on UAPs, also known as UFOs, in more than 50 years.Bray attributed the increase in sightings to a number of factors, including the growing popularity of quadcopters and drones, updates in sensor technologies, increasing aerial clutter like mylar balloons, and a perceived decrease in stigma... Continue reading…

Skiff Mail is a new, privacy-focused alternative to Gmail. | Image: Skiff Skiff has spent the last couple of years developing a privacy-focused, collaborative document editing platform that you could most succinctly describe as “encrypted Google Docs.” Now, it’s coming for Gmail. The company is launching an email service called Skiff Mail that aims to be, well, encrypted Gmail — and eventually much more than that.Ultimately, Skiff co-founder and CEO Andrew Milich says Skiff wants to build a complete workspace, something as sweeping and broad as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. But the only way to do that is to solve email, which is, in so many ways, the core of both platforms. “It’s the most private corpus of our lives, you know?” Milich says. In an effort to keep people’s most important information safe —... Continue reading…

The modern day Chip and Dale. | Disney The film stars John Mulaney and Andy Samberg Continue reading…

Alaqua Cox as Echo. | Image: Marvel Studios / Chuck Zlotnick After making her debut in last year’s Hawkeye series, Maya Lopez / Echo will get her own show starting in 2023. The series was originally announced last year as part of a huge slate of Marvel series coming to Disney Plus — other titles include Agatha: House of Harkness and Ironheart — and today Marvel confirmed the show will be hitting the streaming service next year, though there’s no specific timeframe just yet. The company also revealed the first image of Alaqua Cox returning for the titular role and, well, she looks pretty much the same as in Hawkeye.According to Marvel, Echo will be an origin story, which will follow the character — who appeared as a deaf gang leader in Hawkeye — as “she must face her past, reconnect with her... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple retail employees in Atlanta are accusing the company of violating the National Labor Relations Act by holding captive audience meetings to counter an ongoing union drive at the site. The Communications Workers of America, which is working to organize the store, filed an unfair labor practice reporting the activity earlier today.Workers at the Cumberland Mall Apple store filed for a union election in April. They say that while they love the company, they want to have a bigger say in their compensation, benefits, and store health protocols.The Cumberland store is one of three retail locations where workers have launched official union drives. Many more are in the process of organizing.Apple hasn’t said publicly whether or not it... Continue reading…

Confession: I have stopped automatic downloads on Apple Podcasts because I am reckless with my data and have absolutely let podcast downloads eat my phone on more than one occasion. I love having back episodes of Stuff You Missed in History Class for the subway as much as the next guy, but I also need to be able to save and send my husband I Think You Should Leave GIFs at will (♫ it’s the little things you do together ♫). Anyway, point being, Apple’s new update that lets users limit downloads to five episodes at a time feels like it was tailor-made for me.Also on tap today, Spotify experiments with NFTs, highlights from the Podcast Upfronts, and how the podcast outgrew its namesake.Apple is making it easier to distribute subscription... Continue reading…

One of the more intriguing titles from Netflix’s upcoming slate of summer movies is Spiderhead, in which Chris Hemsworth stars as a pharmaceutical genius using a futuristic prison as an experimental playground.Based on a 2010 New Yorker short story by George Saunders, the film is directed by Joseph Kosinski (best-known for Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, and that Gears of War commercial) and also stars Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett as two inmates who form a connection in the aforementioned prison. If the first trailer is anything to go by, it looks like the movie will be something of a dark comedy, jumping back and forth between goofy and grim. Hemsworth looks particularly manic, even joking about how beautiful he is. Plus, there’s lots of... Continue reading…

The Cerebral app. | Image: Cerebral Mental health startup Cerebral will no longer prescribe most controlled substances, The Wall Street Journal reported.The embattled company is facing investigations from the US Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration over its prescribing practices, which, until this week, included offering prescriptions for stimulants like Adderall.Company co-founder Kyle Robertson wrote in an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that it would stop prescribing most controlled substances to new customers on Friday and transition existing patients off of the drug or out of its care by October. Cerebral will still offer drugs that treat opioid-use disorder, like Suboxone.Robertson said in the email that the company only started... Continue reading…

Image: Apple On Tuesday morning, Apple announced a new wave of accessibility features for its various computing platforms, which are set to roll out later this year as software updates for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.Apple said it will beta test Live Captions that can transcribe any audio content — FaceTime calls, video conferencing apps (with auto attribution to identify the speaker), streaming video, or in-person conversations — in English across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Google’s push for Live Caption features began around the release of Android 10 and are now available in English on the Pixel 2 and later devices, as well as “select” other Android phones and in additional languages for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. So it’s good to see... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Running a creator-owned streaming service Continue reading…

Serial 1, the electric bike company spun out of Harley-Davidson, launched its second-generation lineup of premium e-bikes — but the biggest changes will be coming to the company’s app.The updated bikes will come with a host of new software features provided by Serial 1’s new partnership with Google Cloud. The company says that Google Cloud has selected Serial 1 as its new “strategic eMobility partner,” meaning the e-bike maker will be among the first to integrate Google’s software products into its vehicles.The software-enabled e-bikes will allow owners to track their trips and collect dataThe software-enabled e-bikes will allow owners to track their trips, collect data, and “significantly improve safety and security,” Serial 1... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The products target people who think they have electromagnetic hypersensitivity Continue reading…

Image: DeviantArt DeviantArt is expanding its tool for detecting ripped-off crypto art, offering it to artists outside the platform. DeviantArt Protect, which launched last year for art posted on the site, will now be available for work that isn’t hosted there as well. Users can upload copies of art to Protect and have it matched against non-fungible token (or NFT) images minted to one of several public blockchains. If an identical or near-identical match is detected, they’ll receive an alert and can send takedown requests to major NFT markets like OpenSea.The new version of Protect will let anyone upload 10 images (totaling up to 2GB) and have them monitored for free, or users can sign up for DeviantArt’s $3.95 monthly “Core” service and monitor up to... Continue reading…

The Premium and Enhanced models add style to Ecobee’s substance Continue reading…

The new X16 can sport a Mini LED display with 512 dimming zones. | Image: Asus Asus has added a 16-inch option to its clever (and generally good) ROG Flow lineup. It’s called the Flow X16, and it seems like a 2-in-1 beast for multimedia and even some high-end gaming. While the 13.4-inch X13 and Z13 tablets could do some gaming, they weren’t capable of playing games smoothly at high settings — at least not without the pricey, powerful XG Mobile external GPU-meets-docking station. The X16, on the other hand, seems like a solid gaming laptop in its own right given that it can be configured with up to AMD’s Ryzen 9 6900HS and Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti (100W maximum graphics power). It also supports up to 64GB of fast DDR5 RAM clocked at 4,800MHz.There’s an option for a Mini LED glass-covered touchscreen that has up to... Continue reading…

The CM3 is our favorite detachable Chromebook, one that is currently just $299.99 on Amazon. | Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge If you’re shopping for a graduation gift, Asus’ Chromebook Detachable CM3 is our favorite detachable Chromebook and one of the best cheap laptops on the market. It functions as both a great tablet and a Chromebook, making it an excellent present for a graduating senior who doesn’t need a lot performance-wise. It’s a good buy that won’t totally break the bank, either, now that it’s selling at its best price of the year. Typically $369.99, the 10.5-inch tablet is on sale at Amazon with a MediaTek 8183 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage for $299.99, which is only $30 shy of the all-time low.The Chromebook comes with a unique, dual-folding kickstand, meaning your giftee can either fold the CM3 so it stands up like a laptop or... Continue reading…

Google Google officially announced its upcoming Pixel 6A phone on May 11th, 2022, and will be shipping its new line of Pixel 7 phones this coming autumn. You may be planning to upgrade as soon as the new phones are ready, or you may be simply moving from your current Android phone to a more recent model. Either way, you’ll want to be able to move your data over with confidence.Google makes it pretty simple to move from one phone to another — as soon as you start up your new phone, you will get step-by-step directions on what to do. (Note: if you have a two-factor authentication or 2FA app such as Google Authenticator on your phone, your data won’t be automatically moved — you’ll have to take a few extra steps.) If your older phone is lost or... Continue reading…

Concept art of the Tesla Semi from 2017. | Image: Tesla Five years after it was announced, Tesla has opened up reservations for its all-electric Semi truck, scheduled to go into production in 2023. On the company’s website, you can make a reservation by paying $5,000 upfront, then $15,000 within 10 days. (Spotted via InsideEVs.) A word of warning, though: the $5k is refundable, but it seems the $20k ain’t.Now, you’d be forgiven for having forgotten all about Tesla’s Semi, which was announced in 2017 with futuristic concept art and envious specs. The company says the truck will be powered by four independent motors on the rear axles, go 0-60mph in 20 seconds, and have a battery range of either 300 or 500 miles. Prices start at $150,000, and there have been a number of orders from businesses... Continue reading…

Hauls your gadgets and tools, then powers them when you arrive Continue reading…

E Ink’s recently announced flexible color display. | Image: E Ink Apple is reportedly testing the use of a color display from E Ink as an external screen for an unannounced foldable device, according to noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. “The color EPD [Electronic Paper Display] has the potential to become a mainstream solution for foldable devices’ must-have cover/second screen thanks to its excellent power-saving,” the analyst wrote in a tweet. He adds that the E Ink display is also being tested in “tablet-like applications.”Most tablet-style foldables on the market today pair a large folding inner display with a smaller outer display for quickly checking notifications. But existing devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 or the Oppo Find N use OLED panels for both. Apple’s use of an E Ink screen would... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Elon Musk has reiterated his claim that fake and spam accounts could make up more than 20 percent of Twitter’s users, saying the deal to acquire the social media company “cannot move forward” until Twitter proves the accuracy of its much lower estimate of less than 5 percent. Musk is currently in the process of buying Twitter and its estimated 226 million monetizable daily active users for $44 billion.“20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher,” the Tesla CEO tweeted in response to a report from Teslarati. “My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has updated its App Store rules to make it so subscriptions can auto-renew without your explicit permission, even if the developer has raised the monthly or annual price. Before the rule change, users would have to manually opt-into a subscription renewal if it came with a price bump; now, that won’t necessarily be the case, though you’ll still be notified about the price change before it happens. Apple says it’s making the change to help avoid the situation where users unintentionally lose access to a subscription because they missed an opt-in message.According to Apple’s Monday evening post, there are specific conditions that developers will have to follow if they want to offer what the company is calling “an auto-renewable... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The alleged gunman behind the attack in Buffalo, New York that left 10 dead and three injured on Saturday used Discord to discuss and share plans ahead of the assault, according to Bloomberg.As far back as December, the suspect is reported to have used a private server on the popular chat service to describe his intentions to carry out an attack. He later shared links to Discord logs describing his attack plan and white supremacist views, according to Bloomberg. The report says that the suspect mentioned the terrorist who attacked a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand more than 30 times and used racist slurs and extremist phrases while in the app.Discord wanted to ensure “another event like Charlottesville isn’t planned on our... Continue reading…

Miami, host city of the Bitcoin 2022 event we recently visited, doesn’t own or manage the MiamiCoin cryptocurrency, although the coin has enjoyed the support of Mayor Francis Suarez, who at one point suggested it raised “the possibility of being able to run a government without the citizens having to pay taxes.” Now Quartz reports that since launching on August 3rd, MiamiCoin’s value has dropped by as much as 95 percent.The CityCoin plan requires miners to acquire tokens on the Stacks (STX) blockchain that they can use to bid for MiamiCoin. The winning bidder receives 70 percent of their investment in MiamiCoin, while the city receives the other 30 percent in STX tokens.

The test is included in software update v40. | Image: Meta Meta has been on a multiyear push with Messenger’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) features, and it’s now starting to test E2EE messaging with its Quest VR quest headsets. With the new v40 software update, Meta is testing optional E2EE for one-on-one messages and calls in VR, according to a blog post, though it’s unclear how many people are included in the test or how to turn on the feature if you are.The test arrives alongside a bunch of other notable new features in the v40 update. There are new audio accessibility options, including the ability to tweak the audio balance of the left and right audio channels and a mono audio feature that lets you hear the same audio on the left and right speakers.You’ll also now be able to lock... Continue reading…

The new drone will be made for indoor flight. | Image: @DronesDeal via Twitter New leaks suggest that DJI is working on a new FPV (first-person view) drone that you can fly indoors (via Gizmodo). Reliable tipsters @DealsDrone and @OsitaLV have come forward with leaked images and details about a smaller, more compact drone that may be arriving between July and August.The drone, supposedly called Avata, will weigh 500 grams, which means users will have to register it with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) if they choose to fly it outside (drones that weigh more than 250 grams must be registered with the FAA). Renders from @DealsDrone show that the Avata could come with ducted propellers to help prevent any damage to the device when it (inevitably) runs into something during an indoor flight. It features a... Continue reading…

Aaron Jordan, of Buffalo, adds to a sidewalk chalk mural depicting the names of the people killed at a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, NY. Sunday, May 15, 2022 in Buffalo, NY. | Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images On May 14th, social media platforms found themselves scrambling to deal with a livestream video of a white supremacist terror attack. Yet the man who has been the nation’s loudest commentator on content moderation had nothing to say.Under Elon Musk’s view of content moderation, any restriction on speech beyond what the law proscribes is censorship. And by that standard, the video of the attack in Buffalo — however graphic — should have remained on the platform since videos of graphic violence are not illegal speech. In practice, platforms were criticized for being too slow to remove them, and Musk found no need to weigh in on the debate.The details of the Buffalo, New York shooting are widely known and still painful to report. Ten... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google hired a former Food and Drug Administration leader as its new senior director of global digital health strategy. Bakul Patel spent over a decade at the FDA and most recently was the chief digital health officer of global strategy and innovation.“I am looking forward to learning from the teams in health across Google and Alphabet and helping build a unified digital health and regulatory strategy,” he wrote in a Linkedin post Monday announcing the move.Like all big tech companies, Google has pushed further into health and healthcare over the past few years, with mixed results. Its ambitions range from mining big data for algorithms to developing disease-detecting tools to pumping wearables full of health features. But its... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge From mesh networks to lap desks, here’s how The Verge’s staffers create their workspaces Continue reading…

Double the number of tests from the first two rounds. The US Postal Service has updated its free at-home COVID-19 test webpage, indicating that citizens can now place an order for a third round of government-provided rapid tests (h / t Alexander Tin and DrAltGov on Twitter). Compared to previous rounds, you’ll be sent double the number of tests — eight instead of four.The procedure is largely the same as it was when the US launched COVIDTests.gov in January; you go to the site, fill in your name and address, and the tests will show up in your mailbox. According to the USPS, though, because you’re getting eight tests this time, they’ll be shipped in two separate packages. You’ll receive a tracking number for each.Test oftenThe order confirmation page notes that if you skipped any of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Insomniac Games, which is part of Sony’s PlayStation Studios, plans to donate $50,000 to the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), according to an internal email sent on May 13th by its CEO Ted Price, as reported by The Washington Post. Sony itself plans to match the donation for a total of $100,000, and employees of Insomniac can make donations through Sony’s PlayStation Cares program. Additionally, The Washington Post reports that Sony is working on plans to provide financial assistance to employees who may have to travel to other states to receive abortions and other reproductive care.There’s a major wrinkle to this news, though. The Washington Post reports that neither Insomniac Games nor Sony plans to publicize... Continue reading…

Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images When the US Food and Drug Administration rejected an antidepressant as a treatment for COVID-19 on Monday, it also released a 27-page memorandum explaining exactly why it wasn’t convinced the drug was effective. It’s an unusual move for the agency, which typically rejects drugs quietly without quite so much publicly available paperwork.The antidepressant fluvoxamine is a cheap, generic drug that’s been used for decades. Research shows that the drug can also block inflammation in the body. So, some researchers hoped that it could help prevent severe symptoms in patients with COVID-19, some of whom have to cope with inflammation due to overactive immune systems.Some small and preliminary studies showed that it might be able to reduce... Continue reading…

Verizon is increasing its monthly administrative fee for postpaid customers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Many Verizon customers are going to see a few extra dollars on their next phone bill. Starting in June, Verizon is raising the administrative fee it charges postpaid customers by $1.35, bringing it up to $3.30 per voice line. The fee increase only applies to voice lines — if you have a data-only line for a tablet, for example, there’s no change.In an email to The Verge, company spokesperson Adria Tomaszewski didn’t cite a specific reason for the price increase on consumer accounts:

This is not a 4090 but, rather, an old promo image for the 3090. | Image: Nvidia Did you finally find a gaming GPU within your budget now that sanity is returning to the market? Here’s a reason to keep on waiting: the Nvidia RTX 4090 might arrive as soon as mid-July (via VideoCardz).That’s the word from kopite7kimi, the leaker who correctly predicted the specifications of the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090, among other things.