The Verge

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In 2007, the iPhone ushered in an era of touchscreen gadgets that caused most buttons to vanish from our phones forever. But there was one brief moment in the gray, transitory haze between buttons and touchscreens that an unlikely company tried to fuse the two together. BlackBerry split the difference by boldly asking, “What if a touchscreen was also a hardware button?”Thus was born the BlackBerry Storm, a device whose entire touchscreen doubled as a pressable button. The Storm was one of the first (and last) attempts to bridge the legacy world of physical keyboards and the modern world of touchscreens. But to understand the existence of the BlackBerry Storm and its bizarre clicking screen, we first need to go back and understand... Continue reading…

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Biden banned Russian fossil fuels, but uranium has been trickier to tackle Continue reading…

The “Highly Cited” label shown on an article’s preview image. | Image: Google Google is adding a new “highly cited” label to search results frequently sourced by other publications, the company is announcing today. Anything from local news stories, to interviews, announcements, and even press releases will be eligible for the new label being added to the search result’s preview image, so long as other websites are linking to it. More info is also being added to Search’s “rapidly evolving topics” and “About this Result” notices.The search giant’s hope is that its highly cited label will help highlight original reporting, which can include important context that’s stripped out when a story gets picked up more widely. But it should also be helpful to find press releases, where you can get information directly from... Continue reading…

This morning, space tourism venture Blue Origin will launch its fourth passenger flight to the edge of space and back — but this time, there won’t be any big name celebrities on board. Six crew members — five paying customers and one company employee — will be flying this mission, as Blue Origin transitions into regular commercial flights.Originally, SNL star and comedian Pete Davidson was supposed to be on this mission as a guest, back when the flight was supposed to take place on March 23rd. But Blue Origin wound up pushing the trip back a week, and Davidson was no longer able to participate with the new launch date. To fill his seat, Blue Origin swapped in Gary Lai, the chief architect of the New Shepard — the rocket the crew will... Continue reading…

“Don’t talk to me or my son ever again.” | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft’s latest Xbox beta software reverses a potentially controversial change to how the console shares gameplay captures to Twitter. Rather than having to use a phone to post content to the social media network, as a previous Xbox Insider build forced users to do, the update restores the ability to share it directly from the console. The change was confirmed by Microsoft’s Brad Rossetti on Twitter.Being able to use your phone to share gameplay from the Xbox is a useful feature, and is handy if you want to quickly type out a tweet to accompany your latest clip. But it’s nice to also have the option to share it directly from the console itself, for those times when you might not have your phone to hand. Thankfully, Microsoft’s... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Direct-to-customer streaming is now a focus for Disney, and today it took another step in organizing that business by announcing a new CTO for the Disney Streaming business unit that includes Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus, and Star Plus. Jeremy Doig is a tech industry veteran with several decades of experience including stints with the BBC and Microsoft, and who has worked for Google for the last 18 years. Variety reports that Doig will take over for Joe Inzerillo, who helped build Disney Plus and joined SiriusXM earlier this year. Image: Google/Weinberg-Clark Photography According to a press release announcing the hire, while there he worked on compression tech for audio and video and streaming protocols that are... Continue reading…

It’d be a big selling point for the subscription service. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge It’s starting to look like the upcoming version of TweetDeck, the power-user-focused version of the Twitter app, won’t be free. Security researcher Jane Manchun Wong has discovered a work-in-progress sign-up page for the app, which boasts that it’s a “powerful, real-time tool for people who live on Twitter” and offers an ad-free experience.While the page doesn’t explicitly say you’ll have to pay Twitter to access TweetDeck, companies don’t usually advertise “helps you avoid the thing that makes us money” as a feature of free products (even if, like the current version of TweetDeck, it is). And wouldn’t you know it, Twitter’s already got a paid subscription service that it’s trying to sell to its power users.TweetDeck is essentially... Continue reading…

Image: Wyze I just threw my Wyze home security cameras in the trash. I’m done with this company.I just learned that for the past three years, Wyze has been fully aware of a vulnerability in its home security cameras that could have let hackers look into your home over the internet — but chose to sweep it under the rug. And the security firm that found the vulnerability largely let them do it.Three yearsInstead of patching it, instead of recalling it, instead of just, you know, saying something so I could stop pointing these cameras at my kids, Wyze simply decided to discontinue the WyzeCam v1 this January without a full explanation. But on Tuesday, security research firm Bitdefender finally shed light on why Wyze stopped selling it: because... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge To help bring an end to wrangling with Dutch regulators that stretched over the last several months, today, Apple published a new version of its App Store rules that allow local dating apps to take payments through third-party processors. Until now, its proposals to comply with a December ruling mandating the change had not satisfied the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) and earned Apple 50 million euros worth of fines.Apple previously announced that it would allow dating apps to use alternative payment systems, but it imposed various conditions on how they could do so. Developers would have to submit a separate app binary for the Dutch App Store, and would have to choose between using its in-app payment system or a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple and Meta handed over user data to hackers who faked emergency data request orders typically sent by law enforcement, according to a report by Bloomberg. The slip-up happened in mid-2021, with both companies falling for the phony requests and providing information about users’ IP addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses.Law enforcement officials often request data from social platforms in connection with criminal investigations, allowing them to obtain information about the owner of a specific online account. While these requests require a subpoena or search warrant signed by a judge, emergency data requests don’t — and are intended for cases that involve life-threatening situations.Fake emergency data requests are becoming... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is rolling out a picture-in-picture mode for YouTube TV on iOS devices running iOS 15 or newer, the company announced Wednesday. YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan promised on The Vergecast that the feature was on the way, and now it’s finally here.

The new PlayStation Plus Premium subscription will have PS1 games, but it’s the most expensive tier. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony has just announced its new PlayStation Plus subscription tiers, which will be available later this year, and with the new “Extra” and “Premium” levels, you’ll get access to back catalogs of many PlayStation games. However, if you want to play classic PS3, PS2, PS1, and PSP games, you’ll have to pay for “Premium,” the most expensive option, meaning that Sony is joining Nintendo in putting some of its older games behind its highest-cost subscription.Using a subscription to access classic games isn’t new for Sony. For years, the company has offered access to PS4, PS3, and PS2 games as part of PlayStation Now, which is an entirely separate subscription service from PlayStation Plus. But instead of using the Plus shakeup to bring more... Continue reading…

It promised this change in September, 2021. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is making good on its promise to let some developers link out to their own sites from within their apps, according to an announcement from the company on Wednesday. The new rules, which go into effect today, let developers of “reader apps” (apps that are primarily meant to provide access to digital content, like Netflix, Kindle, or Spotify) link out to their sites for things like account management or creation.This should help improve the historically bad user experience for these types of apps caused by Apple’s previous rules. Previously, if you downloaded the Netflix app but didn’t have an account, Netflix wasn’t allowed to give you a link to sign up or tell you where you could go to create an account. That made apps frustrating... Continue reading…

T-Mobile may be pushing back the shutdown date for Sprint’s 3G network | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile said Wednesday that its shutdown of Sprint’s 3G network is proceeding as planned, beginning on March 31st. As part of the shutdown process, the company said in a statement emailed to The Verge, it will migrate customers over the next 60 days “to ensure they are supported and not left without connectivity, and the network will be completely turned off by no later than May 31.”Earlier reports suggested that the actual shutdown date was being pushed to May 31st, which would have been the second delay; originally, T-Mobile was going to phase out the network in January but said in October that it would extend the deadline to March 31st.As one of the conditions of the T-Mobile / Sprint merger, which closed in 2020, Dish acquired... Continue reading…

WhatsApp announced on Wednesday that it will roll out some improvements to voice messages over the coming weeks, including the ability to listen to a message while reading other chats and play messages at 1.5 or 2 times speed (yes, please, put this feature everywhere).The experience of recording messages is also improving. WhatsApp now lets you pause and resume your recording, so you don’t have to leave large gaps of silence if you’re thinking of what to say next or redo a recording if you need to have a brief conversation in real life. You’ll also be able to listen to a message before you send it to make sure you didn’t accidentally get cut off or include something you didn’t want to. Image: WhatsApp An... Continue reading…

Like its Chrome browser counterpart, Chrome OS has finally reached its 100th version. Google fully updates its operating system every four weeks or so. The new release comes with a new design for Chrome OS’s launcher meant to make it more intuitive and customizable for Chromebook users.The launcher (for Windows users, it’s the equivalent of the start menu) has a friendlier design than previous launchers have, with more rounded corners. It now opens from the side of the screen rather than the center. (This is around where the Windows start menu was for ages — it has, funnily enough, moved to the center in Windows 11).There are new options for sorting icons as well — you can manually arrange them and can organize them by name or color.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge After a short “vacation,” the Lapsus$ hacking gang is back. In a post shared through the group’s Telegram channel on Wednesday, Lapsus$ claimed to have stolen 70GB of data from Globant — an international software development firm headquartered in Luxembourg, which boasts some of the world’s largest companies as clients.Screenshots of the hacked data, originally posted by Lapsus$ and shared on Twitter by security researcher Dominic Alvieri, appeared to show folders bearing the names of a range of global businesses: among them were delivery and logistics company DHL, US cable network C-Span, and French bank BNP Paribas.Also in the list were tech giants Facebook and Apple, with the latter referred to in a folder titled “apple-health-app.”... Continue reading…

Sony’s PlayStation Plus. | Image: Sony Sony has announced a new range of PlayStation Plus subscriptions: PlayStation Plus Essential, PlayStation Plus Extra, and PlayStation Plus Premium. Prior to their official unveiling, the plans were characterized as an attempt to respond to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, offering various selections of games to download or stream as part of a single monthly subscription. But now that they’re official, the truth is a lot more complicated.Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass pitch is relatively simple. You get access to a broad array of games as part of a subscription, and Microsoft has committed to releasing its major first-party games on its subscription service the day they release. $9.99 gets you games on either Xbox or PC, or $14.99 gets you both,... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference is back as a virtual event for 2022. Much like the past two Builds, this year’s event will be hosted online from May 24th to May 26th. Microsoft hosts Build every year as an event for developers, engineers, IT professionals, students, and startups to learn the latest about Microsoft technologies, Windows, Office, and more.While it’s traditionally hosted live in Seattle, Microsoft was first forced to make the event virtual in 2020, and the pandemic has once again kept this event digital for 2022. Microsoft is making some changes, though. This year will include “market-specific content” for France, Germany, Japan, Latin America, and the UK. With repeated sessions, Microsoft already does a good... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, has threatened to fine Google over its failure to follow the country’s orders to remove certain “illegal” YouTube videos, as first reported by The Washington Post. In a translated version of its post on Telegram, the Roskomnadzor warns it may fine the tech company up to 8 million rubles (about $94,675 USD), an amount that will increase to 20 percent of Google’s annual revenue in case of a repeat offense.The Roskomnadzor alleges YouTube “promotes the distribution of false content” about what it calls the country’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, and it accuses the platform of “discrediting” the Russian army. It also says YouTube houses “extremist” content “with calls to carry out... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In a personal crisis, many people turn to an impersonal source of support: Google. Every day, the company fields searches on topics like suicide, sexual assault, and domestic abuse. But Google wants to do more to direct people to the information they need, and says new AI techniques that better parse the complexities of language are helping.Specifically, Google is integrating its latest machine learning model, MUM, into its search engine to “more accurately detect a wider range of personal crisis searches.” The company unveiled MUM at its IO conference last year, and has since used it to augment search with features that try to answer questions connected to the original search.In this case, MUM will be able to spot search queries... Continue reading…

Intel’s Arc GPUs debuted today for laptops, but the company hasn’t forgotten its highly anticipated re-entry into the world of desktop graphics cards, either: the company showed off a first look at the final Arc hardware, along with a reveal that the first GPUs will arrive this summer as a “limited edition” release.The company isn’t offering too many details on the desktop Arc cards beyond the quick glimpse of the hardware itself, although presumably, more details will arrive before the summer. The video does show that the Arc card has a dual-fan design, along with a single HDMI port and three DisplayPort ports on the side, although it’s not clear what the specifications for those ports are from appearance alone. Intel... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has been paying one of the most prominent Republican consulting firms to run a nationwide campaign to sow distrust about one of the company’s top competitors, TikTok, according to a new report from The Washington Post on Wednesday.The firm, Targeted Victory, reportedly planted op-eds and letters to the editor in major local and regional newspapers across the country. A Targeted Victory director told staff that the firm needed to “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using,” according to emails obtained by The Post.“TikTok is the real threat”News of Facebook’s decision... Continue reading…

This could be you. If you’ve just acquired a new game and you’re not sure what settings or resolution your PC can run it at without stutter and lag, a benchmark is a good way to try out various profiles before you dive in. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one title with a built-in benchmark that’s easy to run.This benchmark is also a very common test that reviewers run on laptops to put their GPUs to the test. Shadow of the Tomb Raider has ray tracing, so it’s a particularly good way to see how well a gaming rig can handle ray tracing. If you want to see how your GPU stacks up to other systems around the internet, the Tomb Raider benchmark is one of the best ways to do that.Here’s how to run it.Get the gameTo get started, you’ll need to make sure you... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft will reveal how the company is building Windows for the future of hybrid work next week. A special event, Windows Powers the Future of Hybrid Work, will take place on April 5th and feature Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. It’s expected to cover a variety of new Windows 11 features for security, productivity, and management, both in the client and cloud.So what exactly are we likely to see next week? We’ll likely get early glimpses at Microsoft’s vision for building Windows for a new world of remote work. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has emphasized how important the move to hybrid work is for Microsoft. “Hybrid work represents the biggest shift to how we work in our generation,” said Nadella... Continue reading…

The Sunrise Arc, and Earendel | NASA/ESA, B. Welch, D. Coe The most distant star — or possibly pair of stars — that astronomers have ever seen was just revealed thanks to the Hubble telescope and a massive cluster of galaxies. Far from Earth, the universe bends around the vast bulk of a galaxy cluster, creating a gravitational lens in spacetime much like the curved lens in a magnifying glass. Like a magnifying glass, it revealed something small and hidden: a star system from the early universe.The far-away star system takes the official name WHL0137-LS, but the astronomers who found it nicknamed it “Earendel” from the Old English word meaning “morning star” or “rising light.”Earendel system as we’re seeing it today was shining within just 900 million years of the Big Bang, according to the... Continue reading…

Intel’s discrete GPU revolution is finally beginning after months of previews and teasers, with the company launching its first Arc A-series GPUs for laptops today. They bring support for DirectX 12, dedicated ray-tracing hardware, and — at least for the first batch of GPUs — only around twice the power of Intel’s integrated Xe graphics.Today’s launch is just a small taste of what Intel’s full picture for Arc will look like, though: to start, the company is only launching its least powerful Arc 3 series GPUs: the A350M, which has six Xe-cores and six ray-tracing units, and the A370M with eight Xe-cores and eight ray-tracing units. Given the 25W to 50W range for power, they’re meant for ultraportable devices that intend to offer more... Continue reading…

What’s an excellent treadmill like you doing in this corporate disaster saga? Continue reading…

A driverless Waymo vehicle operating in San Francisco. | Waymo Waymo plans to start offering rides in its fully autonomous vehicles — without human safety drivers behind the wheel — in San Francisco. The Google spinoff says its driverless vehicles will only be available to employees at first but will soon grow to include members of the company’s “Trusted Tester” program.Waymo is also making big moves in Arizona. The company’s service area is finally growing to include downtown Phoenix after operating exclusively in the exurban towns of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe for nearly five years.Waymo has been running fully driverless rides without a safety driver in those towns outside of Phoenix for more than a year now. The company is one of a handful trying to launch a wide-scale commercial... Continue reading…

The big feature of the Seaboard Rise 2 is the addition of “frets” to each key, that let players feel their way across notes. | Image: Roli Music hardware startup Roli says it’s not giving up on the line of squishy Seaboard keyboards that launched its brand. Despite reports last year that the company was pivoting to focus on educational and subscription products, Roli today announced the Seaboard Rise 2 — an upgrade to the more compact model in its Seaboard range.“It’s lots of small improvements that collectively make it into a much, much better product,” Roli CEO Roland Lamb told The Verge. “In a way, this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch. It’s very, very complete.”“this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch”Upgrades to the Rise 2 include new internal engineering, a refreshed port structure, and a more durable, platinum blue chassis. The big change,... Continue reading…

COVID.gov tells you the COVID-19 risk level in your community. | Screenshot: COVID.gov The Biden administration has launched COVID.gov, a website geared toward connecting Americans with more information about COVID-19 spread, prevention, and treatment in their communities.On the front page of the site, you can enter the name of your county, and it will display the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 risk level in your community. That metric is based on hospital capacity in an area. The site also links you to more information about vaccinations, masking, and travel from the CDC. Some pages offer community-specific guidance, helping you find free N95 masks and vaccination sites near your location.You’ll also find a link to COVIDTests.gov, a site that lets you order four free COVID-19 tests through the US... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge It’s not usually affordable to add a speedy M.2 SSD to your PS5, but at Newegg, you can get the biggest discount yet on Samsung’s 1TB 980 Pro drive that has a heatsink pre-installed. It costs just $135.99 with the offer code SSBQ3Z25 applied at checkout, down from its typical $170 price that Amazon is currently selling it for. In fact, this model is cheaper right now than the version that omits the heatsink.Samsung bills this model as being PS5-ready, both in terms of supplying the required heatsink to keep the drive cool in your console and with its sequential read speeds of up to 7,000MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 5,100MB/s. While it’s true that we’ve had success using slower M.2 SSDs in a PS5, future games may require higher... Continue reading…

In response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signing ​​HB 1557 — the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — into law on Monday, Disney issued its most direct critical response to the legislation yet — the latest development in the company’s recent history of apologetically backtracking after its own financial contributions to the bill’s architects first came to light.Despite its role in the bill’s path to DeSantis’ desk, Disney said in a press release that its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that.”Though Disney’s one of the largest employers in the state of Florida, where tens of thousands of... Continue reading…

Sony’s PlayStation 5 is still one of the hottest hard-to-get items in gaming. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’ve been tracking new console restocks along with us, you may have noticed that Amazon has taken a backseat for months to the likes of Walmart and Best Buy. While the online giant has had its share of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles from time to time, availability has been infrequent and riddled with issues, particularly when it comes to adding products to your cart; Amazon lacks a proper queue system like other retailers have set up, making it more susceptible to bots.But now, Amazon is hyping a restock of the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition on Twitter, one set for today, March 30th, at 11AM ET / 8AM PT. We haven’t seen this kind of buildup from Amazon for just the Digital Edition before, so hopefully, it’s a sign that... Continue reading…

Illustration by Lyssa Park / The Verge In February, Etsy CEO Josh Silverman had good news to share with investors: sales and revenue were at an all-time high, sending Etsy stock soaring. At the same time, Silverman had less welcome news for sellers, delivered via email: transaction fees were going up, from 5 percent to 6.5 percent, or a 30 percent increase, beginning April 11th.For Kristi Cassidy, an active seller on Etsy since 2007, the fee increase was the last straw. Cassidy, who sells gothic Victorian costumes and accessories, had a happy first decade on the platform. She was able to reach a customer base eager to buy handmade products, and she grew her business selling made-to-order and custom pieces. But for the last few years, changes at Etsy that she feels hurt... Continue reading…

Mark Vande Hei on board the ISS | Image: NASA Update March 30th, 8AM ET: The Soyuz carrying Mark Vande Hei, Anton Shkaplerov, and Pyotr Dubrov touched down successfully in Kazakhstan at 7:28AM ET. Though wind in the area caused the Soyuz to tip over on its side after landing, all three crew members were extracted from the vehicle safely. After traveling to Karaganda by helicopter, Vande Hei will board a NASA jet to take him back to Houston, Texas.Original Story: Record-breaking NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is set to return to Earth from the International Space Station on early March 30th, coming back in a Russian Soyuz rocket along with two Russian cosmonauts. His scheduled journey back to the planet has been an ongoing source of strife these last few weeks, as tensions have... Continue reading…

Google’s Chrome browser has been updated to version 100, almost 14 years after it introduced the world to its clean design and all-encompassing “omnibox” in 2008. For most of its history, the search giant’s browser has gained a new version number roughly every six weeks, but last year the company switched to a four-week cycle to deliver new features more quickly. Google says the version 100 update is rolling out on stable channels now across Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.In my part of the world, turning 100 gets you a telegram from the Queen, but Chrome’s first triple-digit version has arrived with less in the way of fanfare, and more “fixes and improvements.” The biggest change is the arrival of a refreshed logo. The new design... Continue reading…

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images The National Football League is working on its own subscription streaming service for mobile devices, according to a report in The Athletic. The league is said to have briefed teams on the project at its annual meeting of owners, which has been held over the past few days in Palm Beach, Florida. The Athletic says that presentations included slides with “NFL+” branding and a hypothetical $5-a-month price point.The NFL Plus service would theoretically replace NFL Mobile, the NFL’s previous solution for distributing in-market games to phones and tablets. The NFL had a deal with Verizon and Yahoo to show some live games, but that partnership ended last year as the carrier spun off its content businesses. Verizon lost its mobile exclusivity... Continue reading…

Image: Dyson Dyson is getting into headphones in the most Dyson way possible: the Zone, a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones with air purification technology built in, thanks to a bizarre-looking magnetic face visor. It’s both the strangest and most ambitious product that the company has ever made.Today’s announcement is just an initial reveal of the Zone headphones ahead of a fall release date, and Dyson isn’t announcing specific details like price or specifications (including how much the headphones weigh or how long the battery will last) at this time.The goal of the Zone is to make living in urban spaces more comfortable by attempting to mitigate both air and noise pollution.No word on price yetThe air purification half of the... Continue reading…

Long Beach, CA, SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2020, - Thousands of new cars are stored at a logistics service yard at the port. | Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images A major shift to electric vehicles and a clean power grid in the US could save tens of thousands of lives over the next few decades, according to a new report by the American Lung Association.The drop in pollution from tailpipes and power plants would prevent up to 110,000 premature deaths by 2050, the report projects. It would also avoid 2.78 million asthma attacks and 13.4 million lost workdays. All in all, that would amount to $1.2 trillion in public health benefits.That’s assuming all new passenger cars sold in the US are EVs by 2035 and all new heavy-duty vehicles sold are electric by 2040. What’s more, those vehicles would need to be powered by a fossil fuel-free grid. But replacing the vast majority of the nation’s roughly 280... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A judge has approved Activision Blizzard’s $18 million settlement with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The two organizations had announced the settlement in September, but it is now being signed after California state regulators had tried to intervene.Activision Blizzard has been under intense scrutiny since California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a harassment lawsuit in July alleging the company fostered a culture of “constant sexual harassment.” As part of the consent decree, Activision Blizzard will establish an $18 million settlement fund which will be used to compensate victims of harassment and discrimination. Employees who have worked at the company between September 1st, 2016... Continue reading…

Its looks are undeniable. | Teenage Engineering You can finally get your hands on Teenage Engineering’s absolutely tiny and absolutely orange Computer-1 PC case again, months after it initially went on sale and sold out. If you were really hoping to buy the $195 build-it-yourself mini-ITX case, you can head over to the company’s website and add it to your cart — though before you do, it’s probably worth refreshing yourself on the Computer-1’s... particularities.When Teenage Engineering announced this case, we had some concerns. It has barely any room for a modern graphics card (even this tiny RTX 3060 is bigger than Teenage Engineering recommends), the airflow situation seemed a little suspicious, and the “think twice, bend once” warning in assembly guide made the building process... Continue reading…

Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images Lionel Messi has signed a $20 million deal with Socios to become the fan token site’s global brand ambassador, according to a report from Reuters. Messi, who plays for the Paris-Saint Germain soccer club and captains Argentina’s national team, will promote the exchange for the next three years.A source close to the situation told Reuters that the transaction will not involve cryptocurrency. When Messi transferred from Barcelona to the Paris-Saint Germain club last August, ESPN says he received a “large number” of fan tokens from Socios as a part of his signing-on fee.

The FTC says TurboTax ads claiming its tax prep software is free are misleading | Getty Images The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Tuesday that Intuit’s “ubiquitous” advertising claiming its TurboTax tax prep software is free to use is misleading, and has asked a federal court to order Intuit to stop “disseminating the deceptive claim that consumers can file their taxes for free using TurboTax.”According to the commission, the ads “some of which have consisted almost entirely of the word ‘free’ spoken repeatedly” mislead people into believing they can file their taxes for free with TurboTax. “In fact, most tax filers can’t use the company’s ‘free’ service because it is not available to millions of taxpayers, such as those who get a 1099 form for work in the gig economy, or those who earn farm income.,” the agency said in a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple Stores and authorized service providers will no longer repair iPhones that have been reported as missing through the GSMA device registry, according to an internal memo obtained by MacRumors. The company now requires repair technicians to deny users a repair if they’re notified of its missing status in the MobileGenius or GSX systems they use to service customers.The GSMA device registry is a database of device serial numbers with information about each device’s status. For example, if someone reports their phone as stolen to law enforcement, the authorities may flag the device through GSMA, which can help repair providers identify a device as missing if it ever comes into their shop.Apple’s new policy builds on its existing... Continue reading…

There are a few gotchas though. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is adding Markdown support to Google Docs on the web, letting you format your document using text shortcuts rather than keyboard ones. In a blog post announcing the feature, Google says it’s doing this through its autocorrect feature, so it will automatically format the text for you after you type it in Markdown format. For example, if you type “# Google Docs is getting more Markdown support” it’ll automatically get converted to a level one heading.Google says that Docs already supported a few Markdown autocorrections for bulleted and numbered lists, and checkboxes. It’s adding much wider support, though — you can now use Markdown to add headings, bold and italicize text (or do both), strikethrough (though it’s done using a - on... Continue reading…

Closeup of the center speaker orb. | Image: Devialet Devialet today announced the Dione, a $2,400 Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 soundbar with built-in subwoofers and a central “ORB” speaker that can rotate depending on the soundbar’s installed position (via Gizmodo). The French audio company calls it the “ultimate all-in-one soundbar” since it completely forgoes satellite speakers in favor of a virtual surround solution and has built-in subwoofers.Crammed into the three-inch-thick profile of the Dione are 17 drivers: eight of them serving as the subwoofers, another eight for full-range audio, and a center driver inside the rotatable orb. The Dione also houses a gyroscope that will automatically correct the sound orientation whether you mount the soundbar or lay it flat — no need to make that... Continue reading…

Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Apple TV Plus has announced an April 8th start date for Friday Night Baseball alongside a streaming schedule for the first half of the season. The revised 2022 season schedule was announced by Major League Baseball (MLB) earlier in March after players and team owners negotiated an end to a lockout, setting a date for the regular season to begin on April 7th.Streaming will be available for anyone with Apple TV Plus in the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. In the US and Canada, that also includes access to a 24/7 livestream with replays, highlights, and other programming. Even if you don’t pay for Apple TV Plus, it will also be available without a subscription on all hardware... Continue reading…

Verizon’s network has gotten a noticeable speed bump. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon and AT&T’s recent 5G rollout could put them in a better position to compete with T-Mobile, which has had similar tech rolled out for years, according to data from Opensignal. The company’s analysis showed that when Verizon turned on its C-band equipment in January, its average 5G speeds jumped — and where carriers have their new tech rolled out, they’re all achieving similar speeds.When looking at the average 5G download speeds for each carrier, there’s a clear bump in Verizon’s numbers after the carrier took its C-band equipment online in January. The increased speeds that were available to customers in the rollout area brought its average up by around 15 megabits per second, according to Opensignal. Despite also rolling out... Continue reading…