The Verge

Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff | Image: Razer Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, the co-founder and former president of gaming hardware company Razer, died last week at the age of 81. Maybe you’ve never heard Krakoff’s name, but it’s possible you’ve been impacted by his far-reaching legacy.In 1999, Krakoff was behind the first-ever gaming mouse: the Razer Boomslang. Not only was it the foundation of Razer’s now-massive lineup of gaming mice, it arguably jumpstarted the entire gaming peripheral industry. Below, you can see Krakoff himself in an ad promoting the Razer Boomslang mouse in 2002 — alongside professional gamer Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, who signed a historic sponsorship deal with Razer long before the word “esports” entered the lexicon.Origin stories can be complicated, and... Continue reading…

Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff | Image: Razer Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, the co-founder and former president of gaming hardware company Razer, passed away last week at the age of 81. Maybe you’ve never heard Krakoff’s name, but it’s possible you’ve been impacted by his far-reaching legacy.In 1999, Krakoff was behind the first-ever gaming mouse: the Razer Boomslang. Not only was it the foundation of Razer’s now-massive lineup of gaming mice, it arguably jumpstarted the entire gaming peripheral industry. Below, you can see Krakoff himself in an ad promoting the Razer Boomslang mouse in 2002 — alongside professional gamer Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, who signed a historic sponsorship deal with Razer long before the word “esports” entered the lexicon.Origin stories can be... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber and Lyft have both pledged to cover legal fees in case their drivers are sued under Oklahoma’s restrictive abortion bill, according to a report from CNBC. While the bill has not yet been signed into law, Republican Governor Kevin Stitt is expected to approve it within the next few days.On Friday, Oklahoma’s House passed the Heartbeat Act (SB 1503), a law that bans abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy — much earlier than many women become aware that they’re pregnant — and now awaits Governor Stitt’s signature. Like a similar anti-abortion law recently passed in Texas, Oklahoma’s bill also gives individuals the right to sue someone who “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.” This includes the clinic that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Telegram now lets users send Toncoin, the cryptocurrency built off of Telegram’s abandoned blockchain effort, directly from chats within the messaging app (via Protocol). In a post on Twitter, TON (The Open Network), announced that Telegram now supports Toncoin transactions with no fees attached.TON included a short video showing how crypto transactions work on the platform. To get started, you’ll have to add Telegram’s Wallet bot to your attachment menu, which allows you to “purchase cryptocurrency by bank card, exchange, and transfer to other wallets.”

The Pixel Watch puck is in the middle. | Photo: tagtech414 (Reddit) It sounds like Google’s upcoming Pixel Watch will be a flagship set to compete with Samsung’s latest Galaxy Watches and the Apple Watch, according to new specs leaked by 9to5Google. According to 9to5’s report, you’ll be able to get a cellular version of the wearable, and it will have a 300 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery.It wasn’t necessarily a given that there would be a cellular option for the Pixel Watch. Some lower-end smartwatches, and even some high-end fitness-focused models, are reliant on your phone for connectivity. If the rumor is accurate and there is a cellular Pixel Watch model, it reinforces the idea that Google’s probably not trying to make its watch a smaller or cheaper alternative — it wants that mass-market appeal.As... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Let’s end April with a barrage of great deals, shall we? For a limited time (Saturday only, and until stock sells out), Woot is offering solid discounts on both the standard Nintendo Switch (the non-OLED version) and the smaller, cheaper Switch Lite, and if you make your purchase through the Woot app (iOS, Android — just open the following Woot links on your phone and they will redirect), you’ll get up to $20 off. Not too shabby! Really, any price drop whatsoever on Nintendo hardware is rare, so jump on this if you’ve been considering the investment.Starting with the Switch, it normally costs $299.99, but Woot’s discount knocks $10 off, costing you $289.99. Buying it through the app is where the real discount happens, taking a little... Continue reading…

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Now that CNN has made the decision to shut down its new streaming baby CNN Plus less than a month after it went live, you might be wondering what went wrong. A report from Axios has a chart that shows the streaming service was far from reaching its projected year-end viewership goal, and would have burned through $400 million in 2022 alone to try to get there.CNN projected that the service would have two million subscribers by the end of the year, but around two weeks later, they found they’d only managed to attract 150,000 people. At first, this doesn’t sound too bad, but considering services like Disney Plus had 10 million subscribers in its first day — and that Quibi, which was similarly shut down early in life, saw 910,000 people... Continue reading…

It’s also clarifying its criteria for removing apps. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Recently, several developers complained about how Apple threatened to remove their apps from the App Store because they hadn’t been updated in a “significant amount of time.” Now, the company has responded — by issuing a press release effectively saying that nobody was downloading the apps anyways.The notice, released on Friday evening, reads in part:

Sony’s PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now services are converging in June. | Image: Sony Sony has updated its PlayStation Plus FAQ page (tucked away at the bottom here) and is clamping down further on loopholes that gave users early discounts on its upcoming PlayStation Plus Premium service. It’s also pausing the activation of PlayStation Plus and Now vouchers for current subscribers until after its new service rolls out in June, and there’s even an official conversion chart showing the value of those vouchers for its upcoming three services; PlayStation Plus Essentials, Extra, and Premium.After Sony announced its plan to restructure PlayStation Plus into a new three-tiered service to further compete with Microsoft’s and Nintendo’s services, things were slightly vague about how the conversion to the new tiers will work.... Continue reading…

Marvel Studios Director Jon Watts’ involvement in Marvel’s wildly successful Spider-Man movies from the past few years made Kevin Feige’s 2019 announcement that Watts would be helming the studio’s upcoming Fantastic Four movie make more than a bit of sense. It seems now, though, that the plans for Marvel’s First Family returning to the big screen have hit a snag.Deadline reports that Jon Watts has amicably walked away from the upcoming Fantastic Four movie out of a very understandable desire to take a well-deserved break from making superhero movies. In a public statement, Kevin Feige expressed that working with Watts on the past three Spider-Man films was a joy and that the studio would very much like to collaborate with him in the future.“We were... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images This is the end of the first week after Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout offer, and one of the strangest tech transactions ever just keeps adding new twists. A detailed report from The Wall Street Journal has peeled back a few layers on the process that began with Musk accumulating Twitter stock back in January and what that might mean when he eventually closes the deal and becomes its owner. Taken with additional information from The Verge contributing editor Casey Newton in Platformer and a new report from Reuters, the picture starts to become clearer.Reuters is adding more details to earlier reports from Bloomberg and The Washington Post about the ideas Musk pitched to bankers who will loan him some of the money he... Continue reading…

Steve Carell as General Mark Naird, John Malkovich as Dr. Adrian Mallory in Space Force. | Netflix After initially debuting in 2020 as a somewhat timely lampooning of the United States Space Force, Netflix’s Space Force workplace sitcom is being canceled. Deadline reports that Netflix has decided to scuttle the Jeff Daniels and Steve Carell-created series, likely in response to Space Force netting somewhat less-than-stellar ratings over the course of its short run. Space Force’s second season debuted this past February and followed as its characters struggled to weather a change in presidential administrations. Though Space Force’s cancellation may be a sore spot, from Netflix’s perspective, it’s likely yet another cost-saving measure the streamer ultimately felt was necessary to take as it continues to figure out its long-term... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is adding a free built-in virtual private network (VPN) service to its Edge browser in a bid to improve security and privacy, a Microsoft support page revealed.Called ”Edge Secure Network,” Microsoft is currently testing the Cloudflare-powered VPN service and says it will roll it out to the public as a part of a security upgrade.When turned on, Edge Secure Network should encrypt users’ web traffic so internet service providers can’t collect browsing information you’d rather keep private, like, say, health-related searches or just plain bizarre queries.The new feature will also let users hide their location by making it possible for them to browse the web using a virtual IP address. That also means users could access... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Six months after predicting the global chip shortage would last until at least 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is now suggesting it might be 2024 before we’re fully out of the woods.“[W]e believe the overall semiconductor shortage will now drift into 2024, from our earlier estimates in 2023, just because the shortages have now hit equipment and some of those factory ramps will be more challenged,” he told CNBC on Friday.But while that sounds a little doom-y and gloom-y, you should know that the “chip shortage” is an involved, evolving situation that doesn’t affect every kind of chip at every time. Some industries and some kinds of parts have been worse hit than others as things go on. In fact, Intel’s own chips are doing fairly well.... Continue reading…

Warner Bros. While Warner Bros.’ and Mattel Films’ upcoming Barbie movie is sure to have some level of self-awareness about its main character’s status as a real-world cultural icon, Mattel is taking a firm stance against featuring the iconic doll’s very unofficial anthem that basically everyone knows by heart.The small tease of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie that Warner Bros. shared this week — a still image of Margot Robbie all dolled up and driving a dream car — singlehandedly put the project at the back front of people’s minds as something they might actually want to see. Partially because of the bright, colorful, “fun” vibes the image gave off, a number of fans began speculating what sorts of music Barbie might feature, and Aqua’s 1997 Hit “Barbie... Continue reading…

Stray, an upcoming game where you play as a cat, will now be released in summer 2022, according to a video in an official PlayStation tweet. Last July, publisher Annapurna Interactive said Stray would be released in early 2022 on PS5, PS4, and Steam, but it seems now we’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer to play the game.What does one do in a cyberpunk cat simulator, you might ask? “Stray is a third-person cat adventure game set amidst the detailed neon-lit alleys of a decaying cybercity and the murky environments of its seedy underbelly,” developer BlueTwelve Studio says on the game’s Steam page. “Roam surroundings high and low, defend against unforeseen threats and solve the mysteries of this unwelcoming place inhabited... Continue reading…

Ubisoft Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones finally seems to be emerging from the depths of development hell. As reported by Kotaku, test footage has leaked online, showing off the biggest glimpse of the live-service pirate adventure that’s been seen since its announcement at E3 2017.In the video, a voiceover explains some of the core details of Skull and Bones. A stat called “infamy” is used to gauge how good players are at being a pirate. Players can increase their infamy via raiding ships, completing contracts, and finding hidden treasure. Higher tiers of infamy grant players access to more difficult bounties and contracts, and failure will result in the loss of some infamy.Players will start with a modest pirate ship that they can then upgrade with... Continue reading…

Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images The celebrated game director shared insight into the process of crafting Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker’s story Continue reading…

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images In its latest notice to shareholders, Thomson Reuters announced that it would align with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and conduct an independent, company-wide human rights impact assessment of its products and services, including contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).The announcement comes after years of criticism over data brokerage services provided by the Canadian media conglomerate to ICE, which uses a Thomson Reuters database service known as CLEAR to track, arrest, and deport undocumented migrants in the US. Currently, Thomson Reuters has more than $100 million in contracts with ICE and provides the immigration agency not only with raw data gathered from cellphone... Continue reading…

Mari Yamamoto as Hana | Apple Ahead of Pachinko’s season 1 finale, Apple has just renewed its adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s best-selling novel for a second season.Today, Apple announced that it’s moving forward with more of series creator Soo Hugh’s multigenerational story about a family of Korean immigrants surviving and thriving in Japan throughout the 20th century. In a press release about the renewal, Hugh was mum about what’s next for Pachinko, but she called out the show’s fandom for having been vocal about its desire for more.“Words cannot express my joy in being able to continue telling the extraordinary story of this indomitable family,” said Hugh. “I’m grateful to the amazing team at Apple and Media Res studio for believing and supporting this show, and to... Continue reading…

It isn’t the first time. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Activision Blizzard is facing another complaint to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that it’s trying to keep employees from talking about their working conditions, despite their legally protected rights to do so. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has filed an unfair labor charge against the company, alleging that it told workers “they could not discuss issues related to the sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by state of California against the company,” according to a press release from the union.According to the complaint, an employee was threatened by a manager after posting an article about the lawsuit in Slack and discussing holding Activision Blizzard accountable with other co-workers. According to... Continue reading…

A tractor drives through a giant pile of plastic bottles at the San Francisco Recycling Center April 22, 2008 in San Francisco, California. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images California will investigate whether fossil fuel companies have broken the law by perpetuating myths about plastic recycling, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced yesterday.The investigation marks a fresh attempt to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for downplaying the harm their products inflict on the planet. California will be looking into whether companies have misled consumers into thinking that recycling keeps plastic out of landfills and ecosystems — and whether they’ve broken any laws in the process.The reality is that the vast majority of plastic — more than 90 percent of all plastic ever made — never gets recycled.“Enough is enough”“Enough is enough,” Bonta said in a press release. “For more than half a century,... Continue reading…

Photo by Christian Marquardt - Pool/Getty Images Elon Musk sold around $8.4 billion worth of his shares in Tesla this week as he seeks to line up the money to buy Twitter, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. But the billionaire claims he won’t sell any more Tesla stock “after today.”Musk sold the bulk of his shares on Tuesday and Wednesday, offloading 4.4 million shares, the filings show. He sold another 5.2 million shares on Thursday, after which he tweeted, “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”Tesla’s share price plummeted 12 percent on Tuesday and has since inched up higher. The stock was up about 3.9 percent on Friday.“No further TSLA sales planned after today”On April 25th, Twitter’s board of directors accepted Musk’s offer of $54.20... Continue reading…

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 has SOS emergency features, but that doesn’t equate to having “freedom to exercise at all hours.” | Screenshot: Samsung Samsung is under fire for a recent ad depicting a woman wearing a Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Buds running alone in the middle of a city at 2AM. Critics have called the ad both “unrealistic” and “tone-deaf” in the wake of the murder of Ashling Murphy, a 23 year old who was killed while running in January in Dublin, Ireland. The ad is oblivious to the dangers of nighttime running, but that makes sense since many smartwatch makers don’t seem to understand how their limited safety features may fail runners.Samsung has since apologized for the ad, telling BBC Radio 1 that it hadn’t intended to “be insensitive to ongoing conversations around women’s safety” and that “the ‘Night Owls’ campaign was designed with a positive message in mind: to... Continue reading…

The contractors have worked on games like Mass Effect Legendary Edition. | Image: EA A group of contractors supporting EA-owned BioWare is trying to unionize. Part of the reason is because they’ll be required to return to the office, even while full-time BioWare employees who work at the same location are being offered a hybrid work from home option, two employees told The Verge.The organizing group is employed by Keywords Studios, a company that offers services like quality assurance testing and localization for game development companies. One employee expects the unit will consist of between 15 and 20 individuals.These Keywords employees are embedded directly with BioWare’s team at the company’s office in Edmonton, Canada, and have worked on titles like Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the newest Star Wars: The Old... Continue reading…

Photo by George Rose/Getty Images Sixteen states as well as several prominent climate activists sued the United States Postal Service this week over its plan to purchase 148,000 gas-guzzling delivery trucks over the next decade, alleging the agency failed to consider the environmental impact of its decision.The states accuse the USPS of only performing a “cursory environmental review to justify the decision to replace 90 percent of its delivery fleet with fossil fuel-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles, despite other available, environmentally preferable alternatives,” the lawsuit reads. “In doing so, the Postal Service failed to comply with even the most basic requirements of [National Environmental Policy Act].”The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court... Continue reading…

Good performance, iterative design Continue reading…

This is another good benchmark to run One of the games we often use to test gaming laptops and PCs here at The Verge is Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s a popular, demanding game that includes a wide range of effects and scenery, from snowy blizzards to sandy roads and dynamic gunfights. Its benchmark is easy to use and can help you see how well your PC can run demanding games and which settings it can handle.First, you need to get the game if you don’t already have it. To do that:

Image: Startup Trail My startup went public, and it only took me about 25 minutes to pull it off. I don’t remember what the company does, though I don’t think it really matters? I own 16 percent of the place, but after I made some rash decisions about a legal fight and opted to set up a local office in India, the company basically doesn’t have any cash left on hand. Users love us, though! So the future’s bright for... whatever our name is. It doesn’t matter. In a minute, I’ll start over and try something else.I’ve spent too much of my day today playing Startup Trail, a new browser game made by The Copia Institute (a think tank and the parent organization of the publication Techdirt), the startup trade group Engine, and developer Leveraged Play. The two... Continue reading…

Kristen Radtke / The Verge The Apple Store, located in Atlanta’s Cumberland Mall, is the first of the company’s 272 retail locations to file for a union election. Employees have written an open letter explaining what changes they are pushing for: fair compensation and transparency on alleged pay inequality within the company, a commitment to promote more BIPOC employees into leadership positions, and increased COVID-19 safety measures in stores.“We want to have a voice in our workplace,” says Elli Daniels, a retail employee and union organizer. “We are doing this because we adore Apple and we love our jobs and we want to make sure we can continue to love the company as much as we do right now. We aren’t doing this because we want to turn our backs on the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you applied for financial aid through Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in the US in early 2022, there’s a very good chance some personal information was provided to a platform that’s completely irrelevant to the process: Facebook.This report from The Markup exposed that, as early as January 2022, the US Department of Education sent data from website visitors to Facebook, potentially including information submitted on forms like first and last name, country, phone number, and email address, via the “Meta Pixel” tracking pixel — even if the person didn’t have a Facebook account. The Markup also notes that this data collection began “even before the user logged in to studentaid.gov.”It’s unknown how many students had... Continue reading…

Ingenuity captured images that shows debris from the Mars landing site featuring Perseverance’s parachute and backshell | Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech New pictures from the Ingenuity helicopter offer a fresh perspective of the wreckage left behind when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars last year, NASA said on Wednesday.Launched in 2020, the Perseverance rover successfully landed on the Red Planet in 2021, with the mission of finding ancient signs of life on Mars. The rover carried the Ingenuity helicopter onboard — an experimental project that scientists on Earth hoped would be able to see sights that the rover couldn’t.Perseverance went through a grueling process known as the seven minutes of terror to descend onto the Martian surface. As it entered the atmosphere, a heat shield helped protect the rover from the blistering heat of reentry and slowed it down dramatically. After... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and editor-at-large David Pierce discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.On today’s episode, David, Nilay, and Verge deputy editor Liz Lopatto get into the implications of Twitter accepting Elon Musk’s buyout offer and talk about what they think his plans will be for the social network. They also debate what to make of all the rumors flying around that the deal won’t go through at all, even as Musk makes plans for the company’s future under his leadership.In the second half of the show, Verge senior editor Alex Heath joins to give us all the details on the Pixy, Snap’s new... Continue reading…

The Hatching monster hiding under a bed. | Image: IFC Films Animatronics designer Gustav Hoegen has worked on some of the biggest film franchises around. He’s helped bring to life the likes of the adorable mechanic Babu Frik from Rise of the Skywalker and the towering engineer from Prometheus. But some of the most stressful experiences in his career came on the set of Hatching, a Finnish body horror movie that debuted at Sundance and premieres in theaters and on-demand today. Unlike those productions, Hatching is a smaller-scale film, with only one creature to make — and Hoegen’s team was responsible for every aspect of its creation. “It’s definitely not good for the nerves doing this on your own,” he tells The Verge.Hatching tells the story of Tinja, a young girl in a seemingly picture-perfect... Continue reading…

IFC Midnight Director Hanna Bergholm’s Hatching will disturb you Continue reading…

BuyDig is currently selling the Xbox Series S with an extra controller for just $294.99. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We’ve been seeing a lot of good deals on Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox Series S console recently, but today’s BuyDig deal stands out because it comes bundled with an extra Xbox wireless controller from Microsoft in addition to the one that’s already included. You can currently nab this bundle for $294.99 instead of $363.99 when you apply promo code DIGAPRIL5 at checkout. In comparison, you can buy the console by itself with one controller included for $289.99 from Amazon, which, while a new all-time low at Amazon, isn’t even the best price we’ve seen.While the Xbox Series X is becoming more readily available these days, the Xbox Series S is an affordable alternative that retails for less than half the price. It also plays the same games as... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A few years back, I was working as a freelancer for a company that was trying to develop a US market for its rather obscure hardware products and needed a native English speaker to tweak the text on its site. Everything was going swimmingly until my second week on the job, when I went to the site — and found that I was suddenly getting weird ads flashing across my screen and had lost the ability to access my security software.I needed to get rid of whatever had invaded my system — hopefully, without the need to reset my PC (and lose more time reinstalling all of my apps and files). Here’s what I used: System Restore.System Restore is a handy feature that takes a sort of snapshot of your PC’s software, registry, and driver... Continue reading…

I feel like I’ve tested and seen this Polar watch before Continue reading…

When Jurassic World: Dominion’s last trailer was released, my colleague Chaim Gartenberg boldly argued that he wasn’t at all scared by the prospect of a dino-infested future. “Humans have things like armies and weapons and walls and cities. We’ve grown pretty good at the whole “keeping animals away from us” strategy,” he wrote. “Sure, Jurassic Park posits that a raptor could open a door — but can it eat through concrete? Can it successfully use the weird electronic swipe card that I need to get into our office building?”Dominion’s latest trailer doesn’t have an answer to these questions. But it does answer our burning follow-up about whether a raptor is clever enough to avoid being clotheslined after a quick bit of thinking by Bryce... Continue reading…

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Top Twitch streamers are voicing their anger about reported plans by the Amazon-owned platform to boost profits by cutting pay-outs in its partnerships program.As reported by Bloomberg News, Twitch is considering a number of changes to increase the revenue it collects from its most popular streamers. These include encouraging streamers to run more ads; reducing revenue share for streamers from 70 percent to 50 percent (a favorable deal only available to some of the platform’s biggest draws); and introducing a new tier system allowing streamers to graduate through different revenue splits based on set metrics.As a concession, Twitch could release partners from exclusivity clauses, letting them stream on rivals like YouTube and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Central African Republic (CAR) has become the second-ever country to adopt Bitcoin as a national currency, following El Salvador’s adoption of the cryptocurrency last year.CAR’s government says a bill to adopt Bitcoin was passed unanimously by the country’s parliament, reports Reuters and BBC News. (Though former CAR prime minister Martin Ziguele complained the bill was approved “by proclamation.”) The office of CAR president Faustin-Archange Touadera claimed the move would “improve the conditions of Central African citizens” and distinguish CAR as “of the world’s boldest and most visionary countries.”However, geopolitical analysts and financial experts are confused by motivations for the move. CAR is a landlocked nation that is... Continue reading…

One simple, clicky button. | Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge In the age of aesthetically pleasing morning routines, a cheap electric coffee maker can feel a bit dated — something to begrudgingly use at the office rather than a gadget that brings joy to your kitchen. And while I love the fancy coffee gadgets that require a manual, multi-step ritual, there’s one thing that makes me turn to a standard Mr. Coffee machine every morning: its dead-simple “brew now” button that instantly starts the process of getting caffeine into my body.The single-button operation means I don’t have to navigate the complexities of brewing temps or ratios while I’m still half-asleep. I just press it, it lights up, and the machine gurgles to life, heating up water and pushing it up a tube onto the coffee grounds I’ve... Continue reading…

An example of the banner that previously appeared when you open a dodgy file from Google Drive. | Image: Google Google’s office collaboration tools Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings will now show a warning banner when you open potentially malicious files from the web, the search giant has announced. This banner already appears when dodgy files are accessed from within Drive, as well as from suspicious links within separate Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files. The broader rollout should help protect users in a wider range of situations.Confusingly, Google’s January 20th announcement post said that the banner already appeared when opening Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings links. However, the company tells us this was a typo, and that it should instead say that the banner appears on “links from Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and... Continue reading…

The company is making some changes. | Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images Airbnb announced on Thursday that the “vast majority” of its employees will be allowed to work remotely, and won’t have to take a pay cut if they move away from the cities surrounding the company’s offices. Airbnb is implementing the change after it had “the most productive two-year period” in its history while working remotely, according to a Twitter thread from Brian Chesky, the company’s co-founder and CEO. It is worth noting, however, that it also laid off a quarter of its workforce during that time.Airbnb is also making other remote work policy changes. According to its announcement post, employees will also be able “live and work in over 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location,” as long as they keep a permanent... Continue reading…

You’ve been able to link your account to multiple computers for a while. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge WhatsApp seems to be working on a feature that would let users chat with the same account on multiple phones, or on a phone and a tablet, according to a screen found in a beta version of the app by the site WABetaInfo. The screen gives instructions for registering the device you’re using as a “companion” by scanning a code with your main phone — though currently there doesn’t appear to be an actual code to scan.A screen found in a previous beta showed that devices could be getting the ability to sync recent messages, even though they’re end-to-end encrypted. That screen, combined with the “Register Device as Companion” screen that instructs users on how to use WhatsApp on another device, adds up to compelling evidence that this feature... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Steam Deck started shipping two months ago today, and it’s gotten quite a bit better since, but this week might be the best yet — because we’re finally addressing the single biggest issue with the $400 portable PC. Yes, I’m talking about the fan.When the Deck launched, it shipped with an extremely noisy fan to cool its AMD Zen 2 and RDNA 2 silicon, and owners like me have been dealing with its volume and constant whine from day one. It ran constantly, even when I wasn’t doing anything with the system, and was always ramping up even in relatively lightweight games like Vampire Survivors. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge My Steam Deck’s fan, from Delta Electronics. Worse, it whines. Or at least some... Continue reading…

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images As part of his pitch to raise funds to acquire Twitter, Elon Musk apparently “floated” the idea of cutting jobs at Twitter to improve its bottom line, according to a Bloomberg report. “While nothing is set in stone — and Musk himself had no access to Twitter’s non-public financials at the time — he specifically mentioned job cuts” during discussions with banks, the report says. The Washington Post reported that Musk discussed making “efficiencies” at the company in the conversations with bankers, “which could include job cuts.”There are still a lot of uncertainties about what Twitter will look like under Musk’s ownership, assuming the $44 billion deal announced Monday goes through as expected. So far, the best indication of what he... Continue reading…

CEO of Snap Inc. Evan Spiegel presents at the livestreamed Snap Partner Summit 2022 | Photo by Snap, Inc./Getty Images for Snap, Inc. Snap isn’t the only social media company with smart glasses and an expanding hardware portfolio, but what’s separating its approach from Meta? While announcing Pixy, a $229 drone that takes off from your hand to capture selfies, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel spent some time explaining his decision to focus on experiences built for the real world instead of the virtual metaverse.“The reason why we don’t use that word is because it’s pretty ambiguous and hypothetical,” he told The Guardian. “Just ask a room of people how to define it, and everyone’s definition is totally different.”“Just ask a room of people how to define it, and everyone’s definition is totally different.”Spiegel also told The Verge’s Alex Heath that companies making... Continue reading…