The Verge

Image: LG CES had a pretty good year, and that extends to computer monitors, which thankfully were about more than mere ports. What’s better is that this year’s interesting, feature-packed monitors are for more than just gamers. Monitors play an even more important role during the pandemic as the centerpiece of the home office, and manufacturers have responded to that demand with designs that suit a larger audience.We got a quirky-looking, nearly-square creative- and productivity-focused monitor from LG that some people will find useful. Samsung debuted its Odyssey Ark, a 55-inch curved 4K gaming monitor that I’d feel safe floating on when the waters come. Speaking of Samsung, the company’s display division found a suitable monitor to debut its... Continue reading…

Solar panels are installed on the roofs of zero energy model homes, as seen on Thurs. May 17, 2018 in Clovis, Ca. | Photo By Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images California could soon end the perks it has been giving to residents with rooftop solar on their homes, even as it pledges to move entirely to clean electricity. While the move might seem counterintuitive, environmental advocates are divided on whether the changes will help the state meet its climate goals and benefit lower-income residents or harm both efforts.They’re split on a proposal made last month by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that would slash solar incentives for customers of investor-owned utilities, implement a new monthly fee to connect solar customers to the grid, and create a $600 million fund to help underrepresented communities gain access to solar panels and batteries. Industry and some conservation... Continue reading…

Samsung touted its plans for Matter compatibility in its pre-show keynote at CES 2022. | Screenshot by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Two years ago, on the floor of CES 2020, there was a lot of buzz about a chip — not the latest AMD or Intel announcement, but a new alliance of major tech companies that called itself Project Connected Home over IP, or CHIP for short. Its promise was to develop an open-source smart home standard that would make every connected home device work together, simply and securely, regardless of who made them. The buzz was: “That’s never gonna happen.”Fast forward to CES 2022 (yeah, we all skipped 2021) and Matter — as CHIP is now called — was the darling of the show, with a full dance card and a line of admirers that stretched to the virtual Starbucks.Practically every smart home device announcement this week had the tagline “and we announce... Continue reading…

Google has been publicly building tiny radar chips since 2015. They can tell you how well you sleep, control a smartwatch, count sheets of paper, and let you play the world’s tiniest violin. But the company’s Soli radar hasn’t necessarily had commercial success, most prominently featuring in an ill-fated Pixel phone. Now, Google has launched an open-source API standard called Ripple that could theoretically bring the tech to additional devices outside Google — perhaps even a car, as Ford is one of the participants in the new standard.Technically, Ripple is under the auspices of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the same industry body that hosts the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas each January, but there’s little question who’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has changed its PTO policy for workers forced to quarantine, as reported by CNBC and the Wall Street Journal. The policy has shrunk to one week (or 40 hours) off, down from its initial length of 14 days, which is still mentioned on an Amazon hiring page (via Engadget) but had already been shortened to ten days. Engadget’s report includes an excerpt of Amazon’s notice to employees about the change, citing the CDC’s updated recommendations that people who have tested positive for COVID should isolate for five days, as long as their symptoms are gone.Amazon isn’t alone in changing its policies along with the federal government. As Engadget points out, Walmart has also cut down the number of PTO hours employees who contract COVID... Continue reading…

Tesla is raising the price of its “full self driving” software | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company is raising the price of its “full self driving” (FSD) software to $12,000. Musk tweeted Friday that the new price, which is an increase of $2,000, will take effect January 17th for customers “only in the US.” He said the monthly subscription price of $199 for FSD would rise as the software got closer to wide release.Tesla began testing FSD in beta in October of 2020 — when it was priced at $8,000 — with a select group of customers. Tesla increased the price of FSD to $10,000 shortly after. The software does not make Tesla vehicles fully autonomous; Musk himself said during a 2019 earnings call that Teslas with FSD are “able to drive from one’s house to work, most likely without interventions. So it... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Activision Blizzard’s legal troubles just took another potential turn. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) is appealing a judge’s decision that denies it from intervening in the $18 million settlement between the game developer and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), according to a document filed Friday.Activision Blizzard and the EEOC settled a lawsuit regarding the developer’s allegedly toxic culture in September, establishing a consent decree that included Activision Blizzard creating an $18 million settlement fund to compensate employees. This case is separate from the DFEH’s lawsuit against Activision Blizzard filed in July, which is ongoing.In October, however, the DFEH filed a... Continue reading…

Roku Scott Rosenberg, a prominent Roku executive who helped launch the Roku Channel, is stepping down after nearly a decade at one of the largest streaming names in the business.Rosenberg is currently SVP and general manager of platform business at Roku, a title he’s held since 2017, according to a press release. In addition to his role in the development of the Roku Channel, which is now home to Roku’s original programming, Rosenberg created and scaled the streamer’s advertising business, Roku spokesperson Sarah Novatt confirmed to The Verge.According to the company, Rosenberg was a key player in Roku’s 2017 IPO. Other notable oversight roles listed on Rosenberg’s LinkedIn include partnerships, revenue, product, analytics, payments, and... Continue reading…

The decision will impact “roughly” a quarter of the company’s staff. | Image: Spin Spin, the e-scooter company owned by Ford, announced a major restructuring Friday where it will pull out of “nearly all open permit markets.” More specifically, Spin is beginning to exit “a few” US markets, Germany, and Portugal, and it is “projecting” to close down in Spain as soon as February.Moving forward, Spin says it will focus on “limited vendor markets,” where only a designated number of scooter companies are allowed to compete in a location, in the US, Canada, and the UK. Spin sees “double the revenue per vehicle” in limited vendor markets, according to Ben Bear, Spin’s CEO.“This decision to restructure impacts roughly a quarter of our staff”“This decision to restructure impacts roughly a quarter of our staff,” Bear said,... Continue reading…

This charger can provide a single device with 100W, even with two other devices plugged in. | Image: Satechi Satechi has announced a charger with some interesting specs: it has four USB-C ports capable of supplying 165 watts of power at once, and it will sell for $120. It’s capable of pumping out 100W of power for a single device and can even do that while charging one or two other devices, depending on the power they draw.That’s impressive, given that the 120W Anker brick we wrote about last month (which also had four ports) wasn’t capable of doing the same — it could only charge at a 60W / 30W / 20W split, where the Satechi can do 100W / 30W / 30W. It can also provide two devices with 60W and give the third 45W if you’re more into charging a few lighter-weight computers at a time — for example, maybe a 13-inch MacBook Pro, a Chromebook, and... Continue reading…

Image: Pixar Late last year, movie studios seemed set on returning to theatrical premieres for all movies for the first time since the pandemic started, but now Disney has announced a change of plans for an upcoming family flick, Pixar’s Turning Red. Instead of coming to theaters on March 11th, now it “will premiere exclusively in homes worldwide” on Disney Plus, but still on March 11th.

Meta wants Privacy Center to be the place you go to access privacy and security controls. | Image: Meta Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) has announced a new version of its Privacy Center, which it says you can use to learn about how it collects and uses data and figure out how to navigate the myriad privacy and security controls available. It says the current version of the tool will have categories covering security, sharing, collection, data use, and ads. While it seems like a good tool to have around, it does feel more like Meta is putting the onus on users to make sure its apps work for them.Meta says that this version of the Privacy Center (it’s had various things called privacy centers in the past) is currently available to “some people using Facebook on desktop” but that it “will roll it out to more people and apps in... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung Samsung is arguably leading the charge on folding phones, and even though the first Galaxy Fold got off to a rocky start, last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 were impressive devices that delivered on the promise of how handy a device with a folding screen can be. But the company isn’t stopping with those form factors; at CES 2022, it showed off a bunch of prototype folding devices that could hint at foldables to come.Take the Flex S, a multi-foldable device that can stretch all the way out to a triple-wide screen. Or the Flex G, a pocket-sized device that folds inward to protect the screen. There’s a device with a right rail that slides out to add some screen real estate. And Samsung even showed off a 17-inch folding laptop that’s... Continue reading…

Binah.ai built a blood pressure monitor into its health platform. Health platform Binah.ai announced this week that it added blood pressure monitoring to the suite of health tools available on its app, which is available through partnered businesses. The company says it can calculate blood pressure using only video of someone’s face through a smartphone or laptop camera — but experts say they need to see significantly more data from the company before they’d trust the feature.Tracking blood pressure without the usual cuff is a longstanding goal for cardiologists and tech companies — it would eliminate a step in the process and could help people monitor their blood pressure at home more easily, which could be useful for people with some heart conditions. “We designed this to replace home cuff devices,”... Continue reading…

After a long trial, former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of four out of the 11 charges brought against her, including three counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud investors in her now-defunct blood testing company. The verdict caps a journey filled with both promises and disappointments, one that ultimately led to the downfall of what could have been one of the most successful companies, and entrepreneurs, to come out of Silicon Valley in over a decade.While the verdict is a milestone in holding startup founders accountable for false promises, it actually further complicates the difference between fraud and the “fake it til you make it” mindset of many startups. The Verge’s deputy editor Liz Lopatto breaks... Continue reading…

Ikea has quietly updated its Sonos-partnered Symfonisk bookshelf speakers with a second-generation version that’s already available in the Netherlands, via Dutch tech website Tweakers.Unlike the recently revamped Symfonisk lamp, which added a brand new design, the second-gen bookshelf speakers are a more minor update: they still feature the same basic shelf-style design and compatibility with Sonos’ speaker network and Apple’s Airplay 2.Tweakers reports that Ikea’s made some internal changes, though, adding a faster processor, more memory, and lowering power consumption when in standby mode. It’s also added a longer power cable, which should be helpful for anyone trying to mount them in awkwardly wired rooms.But the biggest change... Continue reading…

The Verge Awards at CES | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The things that got us most excited, bewildered, and delighted at CES 2022 Continue reading…

Two blindfolded players tackle a game together at AGDQ 2020. | Image: Games Done Quick Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), the annual week-long speedrunning marathon for charity, kicks off on Sunday, and if this year’s schedule is anything to go by, the event promises to be another exciting event of jaw-dropping gaming.The lineup for this year has a great mix of old and new games that players will try to beat as fast as they possibly can. I’m personally excited to see Chicory: A Colorful Tale beat in 35 minutes, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart finished in just over an hour and a half, and the original Halo finished in an hour and 17 minutes on Legendary. Some of the races look like they could be great to watch, too, like the 26-minute three-way Diddy Kong Racing race. (Will they beat Wizpig? Tune in to find out.) And one of the... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Today, let’s talk about a little-discussed story that I worry could someday have big implications: the encrypted messaging app Signal’s introduction of anonymous cryptocurrency payments, and the opportunity it could create for regulators around the world who have been looking for an excuse to eliminate end-to-end encryption altogether.A year ago, Platformer was the first to report that Signal was considering adding cryptocurrency payments to the platform, and it started with MobileCoin. Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike has served as an adviser to the MobileCoin cryptocurrency, which is built on the Stellar blockchain and is designed to make payments as anonymous as cash. As Wired described it in 2017, “the idea of MobileCoin is to build a... Continue reading…

Look familiar? Asus has announced its ROG Flow Z13, which it’s touting as the “world’s most powerful gaming tablet.” Yes, you read that correctly — it’s a tablet for gaming. Not mobile gaming, but PC gaming. It’s got an RTX 3050 Ti inside, and you can hook it up to Asus’ ROG XG Mobile external GPU for even more frames.I will caveat right off the bat that we don’t have a price for this thing yet, and it doesn’t seem like the type of thing we can expect to be super affordable, especially if you tack on the XG Mobile. Asus’ last crack at this sort of form factor, the ROG Mothership, started at $5,499.But even if this ends up being a luxury product, it may be a glimpse into a form factor that will eventually make its way to a more accessible tier (as... Continue reading…

Norton Crypto promises to turn your computer’s idle time into cash. Norton is facing criticism for including a crypto miner alongside its Norton 360 security software. Activists like Cory Doctorow have claimed that the company “sneakily installs cryptomining software on your computer” and skims a commission on profits, and outlets like PC Mag, Krebs on Security, and Digital Trends have also written about users expressing frustration trying to uninstall it. While there’s more than a grain of truth to these claims, we dug into it ourselves and found they’re being blown out of proportion.Last summer, Norton very publicly announced it was adding a crypto miner to its Norton 360 security suite, pitching it as a safer alternative to trying to install complex, “unvetted” mining programs from the internet. It... Continue reading…

James Cridland / Flickr The Swiss army has banned the use of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and other foreign encrypted messaging services by army personnel, according to Associated Press reports, and instructed staff to use the Swiss-made Threema app instead. The announcement was made in a letter sent to top army staff in December, citing privacy concerns based on US authorities’ ability to access data.The original letter reportedly told army chiefs that “no other messaging service will be authorized,” although a spokesperson subsequently seemed to tone down the strength of the decree, describing it to the AP as a “recommendation.”The primary concern seems to be the ability of authorities in Washington to access data stored by companies that fall under US... Continue reading…

Time to Run launches January 10. | Image: Apple After launching Fitness Plus in December 2020, Apple has continuously added new features, including audio walks with celebrities and new workout programs for pregnant and older users. Today, it’s announcing a few more additions, with the standout being audio running experiences dubbed Time to Run.According to Apple’s press release, Time to Run can help users “become more consistent and better runners,” and each session focuses on a popular running route in a specific location. The sessions will be led by Fitness Plus trainers Emily Fayette, Jamie-Ray Hartshorne, Sam Sanchez, and Scott Carvin — they all also coach the service’s treadmill workouts. Apple will also be adding another running coach, Cory Wharton-Malcolm. Each episode will... Continue reading…

The five matching case and controller colors of the PlayStation 5. | Image: Sony Ever since the PlayStation 5 was announced, opinions regarding its design and styling have been, well, mixed. Many jokes and memes have been made about the gargantuan size of the PS5, and how its two-tone monochromatic color and stretched-out wings are reminiscent of an oversized router. Jokes aside, once Sony revealed that the white covers are user-removable, there has been a demand for replacements. Enough people instantly wanted to own a blacked-out PS5 that a small cottage industry of third-party suppliers cropped up, selling unlicensed accessories until Sony came out swinging with cease and desist letters.Sony finally came around and announced its own official replacement covers for the disc-based PS5 and the Digital Edition in... Continue reading…

The iPad mini 6 (LTE) is selling for $629.98 today. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’ve been waiting for a deal to drop on Apple’s latest iPad Mini, today is your lucky day. Discounts on the LTE- and 5G-ready version of the iPad Mini are rare, but Amazon has the 64GB model (usually $649.99) for $629.98. That is a small discount, but for context, it’s actually $1 shy of its best price we’ve seen yet for this model. The tablet, which released in 2021, is equipped with Apple’s A15 Bionic processor, a 12MP rear camera, and USB-C support. It also comes with Apple’s Center Stage feature, which allows the front-facing camera to digitally pan and zoom in during video calls. Read our review.We’ve got another Apple deal for you, but this one may help you achieve your fitness goals, if you have some. While we’ve been... Continue reading…

A BMW concept using e-ink to automatically change the paint color on a car from white to black and back again | BMW Another year of the Consumer Electronics Show has wrapped up, and it was a strange one: the weeks leading up to it were filled with cancellations due to Omicron, and as a result the show floor was virtually empty. The keynote presentations lacked the usual spectacle; the pomp was overshadowed by the circumstance.Nevertheless, I found myself surprised to realize that CES 2022 was a slightly better than average year for the show. There weren’t any industry-shaking products announced and shipping — but that almost never happens at CES, and the expectation that it should was always misguided.Instead, we saw some genuinely good improvements on technology that will actually ship, which isn’t always the case at CES. Here are just a few of my... Continue reading…

Last year’s Echo Show 10. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon has announced a couple of small quality of life improvements for different Alexa devices. Its Echo Show lineup of smart displays are getting more live video news content in the US and an easier way to navigate news channels. Meanwhile, mobile Alexa devices are also gaining the ability to share your ETA while you’re using their navigation features.The new live video content providers for Echo Show owners in the US are from People TV, ET Live, and Bloomberg TV Plus. Amazon says it has more on the way soon. These new channels, as well as the Echo Show’s existing library of live video and on demand audio news channels, can now be accessed via a new provider list that’ll be displayed at the bottom of the screen.Live content from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One compromised admin account led to two projects being scammed in a day Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you ever feel like websites have turned the simple business of rejecting tracking cookies into a labyrinthine task that involves close-reading of multiple dialog boxes, then France’s data protection agency has your back. The watchdog (CNIL) has fined Google €150 million ($170 million) and Facebook €60 million ($68 million) for making it too confusing for users to reject cookies. The companies now have three months to change their ways in France.With Facebook, CNIL notes that in order to refuse cookies, French users first have to click on a button labelled “Accept cookies” (emphasis ours). Such labelling “necessarily generates confusion,” says CNIL, leading users to believe they have no choice in the matter.With Google, the problem... Continue reading…

Image: Google This weekend, Google will release a Doodle celebrating what would have been Stephen Hawking’s 80th birthday. The two and a half minute-long video will go live in the US at midnight ET tonight (9pm PT) and includes a narration in the physicist’s own computer-generated voice (created and used with permission from his estate) outlining his work and painting a message of hope for the future.Hawking’s digital voice was one of the most recognizable characteristics of the late physicist, who used it to speak after losing his voice due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Although more advanced artificial voices were developed over the course of his lifetime, the physicist continued to use the original voice with its American accent after... Continue reading…

Microsoft is updating PowerToys this week to include a new Always On Top feature and web search functionality in its Spotlight-like launcher. Version 0.53.1 includes the two highly-requested features, alongside a long list of bug fixes and improvements to Microsoft’s 12 PowerToys tools.Always On Top, as the name implies, allows any app to always be in front of others, even if you switch focus to another window. While many apps already support this, PowerToys now ensures anything can be pinned, which is particularly useful for older apps that you might want to keep on top of others across multiple monitors. The new Always On Top PowerToy. As games typically run fullscreen and on top of other windows, the Always On... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge Video game retailer and memestock darling GameStop is making a big bet on NFTs and cryptocurrency technology. According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the company has built up an over 20-person strong team working on an online marketplace for the virtual items, which could include cosmetic skins and in-game items.The company is said to be courting game developers and publishers to list NFTs on its marketplace, and hopes to ink deals with crypto companies to develop the underlying technology and help invest in games featuring NFT and blockchain tech. In total, the WSJ reports that GameStop’s investments in crypto could stretch into the tens of millions, and involve agreements made with over a dozen other companies.A... Continue reading…

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images Amazon’s TV series based on the Fallout video games is moving into production this year. Deadline and Variety report that Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) and Graham Wagner (Silicon Valley) will be showrunners on the project; the official Fallout Twitter account retweeted Deadline’s story by way of confirmation.The Prime Video show will be executive-produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, creators of Westworld. Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard and Bethesda Softworks’ James Altman are also on board as executive producers. Nolan will direct the first episode, according to Deadline and Variety.The show was first announced in July. “Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time,” Joy and Nolan said in a statement to The... Continue reading…

OnePlus continues to lean into partner Hasselblad’s image tuning expertise and branding. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus is sharing a few more details about the upcoming OnePlus 10 Pro, this time with a focus on camera specifications. If you were hoping for lots of hardware upgrades from this second-gen partnership with Hasselblad, it looks like you’ll have to keep waiting — with the exception of a new ultrawide, these updates are primarily software-based.To recap some basic camera specs that we learned earlier this week, the OnePlus 10 will offer a triple rear camera — likely the same 48-megapixel main, 50-megapixel ultrawide, and 8-megapixel telephoto configuration as last year. There’s a 32-megapixel front-facing camera, which is a significant resolution bump from the 9 and 9 Pro’s 16-megapixel selfie camera.A notable update is the addition... Continue reading…

Amazon’s Sidewalk network is moving out of neighborhoods and into more public places. | Image: Amazon After going very quiet on its once much-touted connectivity network Sidewalk, Amazon is starting 2022 with a bang. Today it launched the Amazon Sidewalk Bridge Pro powered by Ring (doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?).This professional-grade bridge is designed to extend the low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless network into public spaces, such as city parks, state parks, city centers, universities, businesses, and other places where there aren’t likely to be a lot of Ring and Echo devices hanging out.“The long-term vision of Sidewalk is to drive proliferation of smart and connected things,” Stefano Landi, director of Amazon Sidewalk, said in an interview with The Verge. “Today, connectivity is the biggest challenge for devices.”... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge The US International Trade Commission has ruled that Google is in violation of five Sonos patents relating to smart speakers (via The New York Times). The decision affirms a judge’s ruling in August, and it’s the kind of decision that could theoretically force Google to stop importing products using the infringing technology.However, it's not yet clear whether any specific Google products will necessarily disappear from shelves, and for now it seems unlikely that will happen at all. “We do not expect any impact to our ability to import or sell our products,” Google spokesperson José Castaneda tells The Verge, pointing to how the International Trade Commission already approved Google workarounds for each of the five patents, as Bloomberg... Continue reading…

Utah Jazz Owners, Dwyane Wade and Ryan Smith sit with the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook during a preseason game between the against the Utah Jazzv and the against the Milwaukee Bucks on October 13, 2021 | Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images A proxy statement filed by Apple on Thursday revealed exactly how much one can earn after ten years of running the world’s most valuable and most profitable company, and for Tim Cook, that number is $98.7 million. While his base salary stayed at $3 million, an additional $12 million in incentives, $82 million worth of stock awards, and the money spent to cover items like security and private flights — since 2017, Apple doesn’t let its CEO fly commercial — nudged the entire thing closer to the $100 million mark. Image: Apple According to Apple, its total shareholder return “was at the 97th percentile of the companies that were included in the S&P 500 for the entire performance period” from 2018 to 2021. That’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images Former President Donald Trump’s new social network, Truth Social, will launch on iOS on February 21st, according to a listing on the App Store. (That’s Presidents Day, if you didn’t know. Subtle.) The app is being made by the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), Trump’s new media company led by former US Rep. Devin Nunes.Truth Social looks very much like a Twitter clone, based on screenshots in the App Store listing. The profile page shown in one screenshot looks almost exactly like Twitter’s, and posts appear to have icons for replies, retweets, faves, and sharing. (Truth Social describes each individual post as a “truth” in the app’s description. The retweet equivalent is apparently called a “re-truth.”)The Twitter-like design... Continue reading…

Twitter’s new “quote tweet with reaction” feature | Image: Twitter Twitter has announced that it’s testing a feature called “quote tweet with reaction,” where you can embed a copy of a tweet into a photo or video instead of just replying to it with text.Twitter says that the feature is currently being tested on iOS. If you have access to the feature, the retweet menu will have a “Quote Tweet with reaction” button. Tapping it will take you to a screen where you can take a photo or video to put the tweet on top of, or choose one from your camera roll. One of Twitter’s product leads did a reaction quote tweet to the announcement, which lets us see how the reactions will show up to users.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Rumors for Apple’s upcoming 2022 iPhone refresh are continuing to roll, with Twitter leaker DylanDKT claiming that the iPhone 14 Pro lineup will feature a pill-shaped hole-punch design for its front-facing camera, with the bulk of Apple’s Face ID hardware being placed under the display (instead of an eyesore of a notch).The report corroborates earlier rumors from well-regarded Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from late last year, which also claimed that the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max would be shifting over to a hole-punch cutout for the camera.

Photo by Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is associated with only a small change to the menstrual cycle, according to a new study using data from the birth control app Natural Cycles. The study follows widespread reports of heavier and longer periods from people who had recently been vaccinated after the start of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the United States.“This is reassuring for health and reproductive health,” says Alison Edelman, a study author and professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University. “It’s also validating in regard to patients reporting that they’d experienced something.”Longer, heavier periods were always a plausible side effect of COVID-19 vaccination. Any stress on the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that makes the Firefox web browser, announced Thursday that it would be pausing the ability to accept cryptocurrency donations following significant backlash spurred in part by a Mozilla founder, Jamie Zawinski (via Business Insider).Zawinski, who stopped working for mozilla.org in 1999, tweeted scathing criticism to a December 31st Mozilla tweet promoting that it accepted cryptocurrency donations. Mozilla began accepting bitcoin for donations in 2014.“Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters,” Zawinski said on January 3rd. (Cryptocurrencies have come under significant scrutiny for their impact on the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge E3 — one of the largest video game trade shows of the year — will once again be an online-only event this summer, the ESA has announced, citing ongoing concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic. The news, first reported by VentureBeat, marks the third year in a row that E3 will have skipped its in-person event due to the pandemic.“Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022,” the ESA commented in a statement to VentureBeat. “We are nonetheless excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.”E3 will miss a third straight year in personThe ESA had originally planned to bring back E3 as an... Continue reading…

James Davison, driver of the #15 Chevrolet races during the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race at virtual Chicago Street Course on June 02, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. | Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images One of the paid subscription services that experienced sudden growth during the pandemic has been iRacing. While real-life racing leagues were on hiatus, they used the detailed and realistic sim racing service as an esports broadcasting platform, and enough new people started playing to grow its base of racers on PC from 110,000 at the beginning of 2020 to over 200,000 today.Now iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations says it has acquired Monster Games, Inc. (MGI). That Minnesota-based studio developed the first four games under the NASCAR Heat brand and its most recent title, SRX: The Game, for play on PC and the PlayStation and Xbox consoles.A press release announcing the purchase is careful to note, “The iRacing development team will... Continue reading…

The Eargo 6 automatically adjust to a user’s environment. | Image: Eargo While a lot of health tech shown at CES is doomed to become vaporware, there’s reason to believe that 2022 is going to be a big year for hearables. Case in point: Eargo, a CES regular since 2015, is announcing the Eargo 6. The buds are the sixth iteration of the company’s smart hearing aids and feature nifty new tech that automatically adjusts sound levels on the go.Hearing aids work by converting sound picked up by a microphone into a digital signal that’s then amplified. They can also amplify certain sounds, like your voice, while also dampening background noise. Eargo’s are registered as an FDA Class II exempt device, meaning they are a medium-risk device with specialized controls.Given that this is Eargo’s sixth version of its... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge General Motors completely redesigned the compute architecture that powers its next-generation “hands-free” driving system thanks to US semiconductor company Qualcomm.The automaker’s Ultra Cruise system, which will make its debut in the 2024 Cadillac Celestiq electric sedan, will be the first advanced driver assist system (ADAS) to use Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Ride Platform. The size of “two laptops stacked together,” GM claims the new architecture will have the processing power equivalent to “several hundred” personal computers.“two laptops stacked together”GM first announced Ultra Cruise during an investor event last year, describing it as a massive leap over the company’s Super Cruise system, which allows for hands-free driving... Continue reading…

Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for Vulture Festival This story originally appeared in Hot Pod Insider, The Verge’s subscription audio industry newsletter. For more stories like this, you can subscribe here.Something’s happening at NPR, and everyone has a theory as to what. But first, the impetus. On Tuesday, All Things Considered host Audie Cornish announced she’s leaving the program after nearly a decade as its host. Her departure, which she says on Twitter is her joining many others in the “great resignation,” marks three hosts of color to leave the network in recent months. (Noel King of Morning Edition left in November for Vox Media — disclosure that Vox also owns Hot Pod — and Lulu Garcia-Navarro of Weekend Edition joined The New York Times in late September.) This also follows a... Continue reading…

Six days into 2022 and we’ve already had one of the weirdest collisions of gaming culture and the wider world. Yesterday, during Pope Francis’ weekly general audience in which he said a few prayers, made a few addresses, and casually shamed voluntarily childfree people for preferring the company of their pets to tiny, screaming humans most of us cannot possibly afford, a troupe of jugglers / acrobats / general circus folk performed to a jazzy ska-esque rendition of “Megalovania” from Toby Fox’s Undertale.

Roborock’s latest robot vacuum is getting closer to the Rosie the Robot of our dreams. | Image: Roborock The devices that will be vying for a spot in your home this year Continue reading…