The Verge

Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The company formerly known as Facebook has bet big on the metaverse. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hyped the already popular term in October, when he changed the company’s name to Meta and led viewers through its dizzying vision of the future.But “the metaverse” is a much bigger — and more confusing — idea. From its origins in science fiction, it’s become a catchall for anything that mixes people’s physical and virtual lives. That includes virtual and augmented reality headsets; 3D virtual worlds like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft; and decentralized Web3 services including cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Lots of “metaverse” proponents don’t agree on a single definition for the word or on how much people are already living in it.... Continue reading…

Image: Nintendo AI wanna be the very best, like no one ever was Continue reading…

Both Govee’s newest and last-gen Immersion TV LED backlights are on sale today. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge If you’re looking to step up your TV game and make watching movies and gaming more immersive, Govee offers a range of colorful lighting kits that also make for great holiday gifts. One of its most appealing products are the Immersion TV LED backlights, which sync to whatever you’re watching on your 55-inch or 65-inch screen, making it appear as if the TV colors are bleeding out of the frame and onto your walls. Responsive LED strips like these are typically expensive, but right now Govee’s 2020 backlighting kit costs just $61 once you clip the $10 off coupon at Amazon. That’s the kit’s best price to date.Prefer not to shop at Amazon? Govee is selling this product direct for $63. There’s a newer version of these lights, which farther... Continue reading…

Alex Castro But they stand to gain a real chance at change Continue reading…

It might remind you of a vintage metal camera, but it’s all plastic Continue reading…

A selection of the devices GeForce Now streams to. | Image: Nvidia Nvidia’s GeForce Now game streaming service is getting an RTX 3080-themed upgrade in Europe. Nvidia announced the new membership tier in October, and it’s already available in the US. But, as of today, gamers in Europe can start streaming from the company’s new higher-performance servers, which offer improved resolutions, frame rates, and less latency.The RTX 3080 membership tier offers up to 1440p / 120fps gameplay through PC and Mac, or up to 4K HDR / 60fps when streamed to an Nvidia Shield TV. That’s up from 1080p at 60fps with the current Priority tier. Session lengths can also extend up to eight hours long rather than six, and Nvidia also says the tier offers lower latency. The big tradeoff is price, with the new tier costing... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update 8:50AM ET, December 2nd: Target appears to have sold out of consoles for now.Shopping for a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X these days is starting to feel like hunting for toilet paper during the early days of the pandemic. Thankfully, however, if you still haven’t been able to land one, right now Target is giving you another shot, with online ordering for in-store pickup at stores near you.Listings for the $499.99 PS5 with a disc drive went up first, followed by the $399.99 PS5 digital edition. Sales for the $499.99 Xbox Series X are live now too, but online the only option is the $34.99 All Access subscription package, as the page notes that direct purchases are in-store only. For all of these, availability will depend on your... Continue reading…

Image: Google In a new research paper, Google has detailed the tech behind its impressive Project Starline demo from this year’s I/O conference. Project Starline is essentially a 3D video chat booth that aims to replace a one-on-one 2D video conference call with an experience that feels like you’re actually sitting in front of a real human being.It sounds simple, but Google’s research paper highlights just how many challenges there are in tricking your brain into thinking there’s a real human being sitting just a few feet away from you. Obviously the image needs to be high resolution and free of distracting artifacts, but it also needs to look correct from your relative position in the booth. Audio is another challenge, as the system needs to make... Continue reading…

Tesla has quietly launched a $1,900 four-wheel ATV for kids. The Cyberquad for Kids is available to order right now from Tesla’s website, and will begin shipping in two to four weeks. The surprise announcement comes more than two year after Tesla announced a fullsize Cyberquad ATV to compliment its futuristic Cybertruck. The Cyberquad has not yet shipped.This new pint-sized Cybersquad is designed for kids 8 years old and up, and ones that have parents that can afford to buy them a $1,900 ATV. It includes a steel frame, cushioned seat, and adjustable suspension with rear disk braking. There’s even LED light bars to complete the cyberpunk aesthetics. This all-electric ATV has a top speed of 10mph, and the battery will power up to 15 miles... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is indicating to its iPhone 13 component suppliers that it may not order as many units as expected due to a drop in demand, according to a report in Bloomberg.While the company had already cut orders for the year to 80 million — down from a target of 90 million — it was reportedly planning to make up for much of the drop next year. Now, though, Apple is said to have told manufacturing partners that this may not happen and they might not see the expected boost in orders.Like almost every other technology company, Apple has been dealing with supply issues brought on by the global semiconductor shortage. CEO Tim Cook said the company’s last quarterly earnings took an estimated $6 billion hit due to the shortage as well as the... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images A federal judge has blocked a Texas law that aimed to limit large social platforms’ ability to moderate content on the grounds that it is likely to violate the First Amendment. The order, issued by a federal district court in Austin on Wednesday night, granted an injunction proposed by NetChoice and the CCIA that puts the HB 20 law on hold until the conclusion of the case.“HB 20’s prohibitions on ‘censorship’ and constraints on how social media platforms disseminate content violate the First Amendment,” determined Judge Robert Pitman in the decision. “Content moderation and curation will benefit users and the public by reducing harmful content and providing a safe, useful service,” Pitman said, explaining why the injunction was... Continue reading…

Mac notebook upgrade program marketing to apparent business partners | Image: @MaxWinebach Apple has apparently introduced a business-only program that enables members to obtain and eventually upgrade computers for a relatively low monthly fee. A tweet from writer Max Weinbach shows an image of Apple’s “New Mac Notebook Upgrade Program” promotional material that popped up for a customer with access to a business portal (via MacRumors).The credit application makes clear this is all about the Apple M1 refreshThe deal appears to be in partnership with CIT Group, a bank for business customers where this landing page for the program shares the monthly rates for different MacBook models — starting with the 13-inch MacBook Air for $30, 13-inch MacBook Pro for $39, 14-inch MacBook Pro for $60, and 16-inch MacBook Pro for $75. Apple... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An indictment from the Department of Justice suggests that the Ubiquiti hack reported in January, and subsequent whistleblower claims of a cover-up, were the work of someone who was then an employee of the company. The DOJ alleges that Nickolas Sharp, 36, was arrested on Wednesday on accusations that he used his employee credentials to download confidential data and sent anonymous demands to the company he worked for pretending to be a hacker in an attempt to get a ransom of 50 Bitcoin. You can read the full indictment below.The indictment doesn’t specifically name Ubiquiti, only referring to a “Company-1.” However, all the details line up. In January, Ubiquiti sent an email to users saying an unauthorized party had accessed its... Continue reading…

Five major publishers have sued Shopify over pirated learning materials like PDFs of ebooks and test materials, saying the e-commerce platform fails to remove listings and stores that violate the publishers’ trademarks and copyrights. The lawsuit, filed today in the US District Court for Eastern Virginia, claims statutory damages higher than $500 million.The publishers — Pearson Education, Inc., Macmillan Learning, Cengage Learning, Inc., Elsevier Inc., and McGraw Hill — say in the lawsuit that Shopify “assists and profits from the online sale of infringing copies” of the textbooks and other products. The publishers also say that Shopify has received “detailed notices virtually every week for years” that identify listings selling... Continue reading…

Sony’s new Airpeak S1 drone. | Image: Sony Sony’s $9,000 Airpeak S1 drone is now available to order, the company announced Wednesday. It’s expected to ship starting December 24th.The Airpeak S1, which was first teased in January at CES 2021, is targeted toward video professionals and is designed to be used with Sony’s mirrorless cameras. According to the drone’s product page, it has a flight time of 22 minutes without a payload and up to 12 minutes with a “heavy payload,” such as a Sony A7S Mark III camera. Sony says the Airpeak is stable in winds of up to 44.7mph, which could be useful for capturing footage in windy conditions.The $9,000 price tag comes with two pairs of propellers, a remote controller, two batteries, and a battery charger. It doesn’t include a camera or... Continue reading…

The Snapdragon G3x Handheld Gaming Developer Kit. | Image: Qualcomm Qualcomm is upping its investment in gaming with a new Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 Gaming Platform, which manufacturers can use to make Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck-like handheld gaming devices. The Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 is an Android-based platform designed to let you play Android games, stream games from a console or PC, or play games via cloud gaming services.The basis of the platform is the new G3x chip. It has an Adreno GPU, similar to Qualcomm’s existing smartphone chips, which will let you play games at up 144fps. It also supports sub-6Hz 5G, mmWave 5G, and Wi-Fi 6E for speedy networking. If you want to connect G3x-powered devices to other screens, the chip supports output to a 4K display or tethering to a mixed reality headset over a... Continue reading…

Qualcomm has announced its latest flagship chip for PCs: the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, which, as the name implies, succeeds last year’s 8cx Gen 2 model and offers some substantial jumps in performance.The 8cx Gen 3 is the first chip for Windows computers built on a 5nm process and promises up to 85 percent better CPU performance and up to 60 percent faster GPU performance compared to the 8cx Gen 2. Additionally, Qualcomm boasts that its new chip offers “60 percent greater performance per watt over the competitive x86 platform” — although the company is notably quiet on which x86 platform its comparing things to. Qualcomm also touts that the chip supports “multi-day battery life,” although again, it didn’t provide too many details. ... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon has expanded sound detection for routines, as well as made Alexa’s prescription refill skill available to Amazon Pharmacy customers. The company described the changes in its Alexa monthly roundup for November, which also includes mentions the US rollout of Conversation Mode, and that the wall-mountable Echo Show 15 will start shipping next week.Amazon first announced its plans to support custom sounds at its fall event back in September, but it doesn’t look like you’re able to program custom sounds just yet — Amazon has simply added two new sounds you can tell Alexa to recognize. With the new update, the device can listen out for the sounds of water running and appliances beeping.If you want Alexa to detect the chime of your... Continue reading…

Warner Bros. Let’s get something out of the way: this is The Verge, and if there is any movie we are going to cover the shit out of, it’s The Matrix Resurrections — even if its new trailer is long on melting / morphing faces and short on clues about the plot.The latest trailer, titled “Déjà Vu,” opens with a voiceover from Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) with a line from the first movie, when she explains that “déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.” That sentence repeats several times. We see a black cat cross Neo’s path just like in the first movie, and we see a series of screen wipes, moving between younger and older versions of characters, including Neo — in the birthing goo pod — Trinity, Morpheus (hi,... Continue reading…

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified for the second time before Congress on Wednesday. But instead of explaining Facebook’s harms, Haugen provided guidance on how to fix the problems the platform created.Specifically, House lawmakers on the Energy and Commerce Committee requested Haugen’s input on a slew of recently introduced measures to reform tech’s controversial legal liability shield under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Both Republicans and Democrats have a stake in the game, but their deep divides over what kind of online content should stay up or down has stalled any chance of pushing reforms.But House Democrats are more optimistic now than ever in their abilities to clamp down on hate speech and... Continue reading…

Block’s new logo. | Image: Block Square, a financial services company co-founded by now-former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, is changing its name to Block, the company announced Wednesday. Square has grown beyond just offering financial services — it took a majority stake in the music streaming service Tidal this year, for example — which Block is using as the justification for the new name.“The change to Block acknowledges the company’s growth,” the company said in a press release. “Since its start in 2009, the company has added Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 as businesses, and the name change creates room for further growth. Block is an overarching ecosystem of many businesses united by their purpose of economic empowerment, and serves many people—individuals, artists,... Continue reading…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiling the RTX 2060 graphics card in 2019. | Photo by Nvidia In February 2021, Nvidia committed to reissuing some of its older GPUs — namely the RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti — to give gamers a couple of low-cost options that scalpers or crypto miners (hopefully) won’t see much use for during the chip shortage. The company is following through on at least part of that promise by releasing a new variant of the RTX 2060 that has 12GB of video RAM, doubling the memory of the standard configuration originally released in 2019.Nvidia says that various models should become available starting Tuesday, December 7th. The specs for revised Founders Edition GPU are available right here. Note the slightly higher base clock speed and the slightly increased CUDA cores (2,176 versus 1,920 in the standard RTX 2060).... Continue reading…

It’s December 1st, which for Spotify users, means the annual tradition of the music streaming service’s Spotify Wrapped roundup: customized, flashy infographics of the top songs, playlists, artists, and podcast that you’ve listened to over the last year, chock-full of data, mood boards, and just a sprinkling of judgment.I, unfortunately, do not use Spotify. Instead, I pay Apple $10 per month for Apple Music, Spotify’s biggest competitor. And so while virtually everyone I know on Twitter and Instagram is spending the entirety of today putting their personal taste in music on blast, I get... a playlist of the songs that I listened to the most this year. This is fine. Spotify has been eating Apple’s lunch for years... Continue reading…

The Nokia 9 PureView was launched in 2019 with a rare five-camera system. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge HMD Global is not only reneging on its promise to bring Android 11 to the Nokia 9 PureView, but it is also dangling a discount for a new phone at customers who just found out their current devices are no longer supported.These are customers who paid between $599 and $699 for the premium Nokia 9 PureView back in 2019 after it made quite a splash with its quintuple rear camera array at World Mobile Congress that year. At the time, Nokia was even known as the best phone brand for receiving fast software updates, according to Counterpoint Research, so customers understandably might have felt they could trust Nokia and HMD Global.As one of the devices in the Android One program, the Nokia 9 PureView runs a near-stock version of Android 9... Continue reading…

Kyle Rittenhouse can rejoin Facebook if he wants, after being acquitted of murder charges in November. | Photo by Sean Krajacic - Pool/Getty Images Facebook on Wednesday removed a block on searches for the name Kyle Rittenhouse that it had put into place following his arrest for an August 2020 shooting in Wisconsin that left two people dead and a third seriously injured. Last month, a jury in Kenosha acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges.In the days following the shooting, the company removed Rittenhouse’s profile from Facebook and Instagram and blocked users from creating new profiles using his name, to prevent copycats from spreading misinformation. By the end of that week, Facebook was blocking searches for “Kyle Rittenhouse,” as well as removing expressions of praise or support for him on the platforms.“After the verdict in Kenosha we rolled back the restrictions we had in... Continue reading…

The Honor 60 series. | Image: Honor Honor, the former Huawei sub-brand that split from the Chinese tech giant last year, has announced its latest handsets for the Chinese market. The Honor 60 and Honor 60 Pro are two midrange handsets powered by Qualcomm’s recent Snapdragon 778G Plus processor, but otherwise, they’re very similar to the Honor 50 series phones released earlier this year, right down to having similar dual-ring camera bumps on the rear of each phone.A notable new feature for both new phones is support for hand gesture controls, which let you perform actions like making the “Okay” gesture or raising your hand to perform camera controls like switching between its front and back cameras, or enabling picture-in-picture mode. The phone can recognize five hand... Continue reading…

Massive tech companies like Google, Amazon, Netflix, and more have had a huge impact on the way we live our lives, and have had incredible levels of financial success. Another thing many of these companies have in common is that their founders are no longer necessarily in control; they’ve either stepped down, started sharing power with others, or in some cases possibly even been pushed out.This week alone, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO, and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff became a co-CEO. They’re not alone.

The Verizon logo can return to your living room and you’re technically still a cord-cutter ($399 Verizon Stream TV Soundbar shown) | Image: Inside Verizon YouTube Channel Verizon already sells accessories like phone cases and chargers, but in addition to electronics like digital picture frames and tablets, there are also... soundbars. Verizon announced today that it’s releasing two new soundbars with a built-in Verizon Stream TV streaming box. The $399.99 Stream TV Soundbar and $999.99 Stream TV Soundbar Pro are both built by Bang & Olufsen, with the Pro model sporting a similar housing to the even more expensive Beosound Stage, but with nine drivers inside instead of 11.The concept of a soundbar with streaming hardware hidden inside is nothing new, as Roku, JBL, and others have some options to reduce the clutter in your entertainment center.Since Verizon’s Stream TV system is a skinned Android TV... Continue reading…

Respawn Entertainment has decided to end sales of the original Titanfall game.

Windows 11’s taskbar is a giant step back in usability compared to Windows 10, and now Microsoft is starting to make improvements. A new update that’s currently being tested by Windows Insiders brings the clock and date back to the taskbar on secondary or multiple monitors. It’s a change that multiple monitor users will appreciate, as many have had to install third-party apps like ElevenClock just to get this basic functionality in Windows 11.I’ve not been shy about criticizing the changes made to the taskbar in Windows 11. I hate the new taskbar, so I’m happy to see Microsoft make this initial change. There’s still much more to be improved, and hopefully we see the return of being able to drag and drop files onto taskbar apps and the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has announced that it’s rolling out Creator Next, a single hub for all of the platform's monetization tools, and it also outlined some updates for its existing creator tools (via TechCrunch). In a post on TikTok’s newsroom, the short-form video platform explains that alongside Creator Next, it’s also widely introducing its tipping feature, which lets users send money directly to their favorite creators.This is part of TikTok’s larger efforts to retain creators and prevent them from hopping on other networks that pay creators, like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. When the platform was just a year old in 2019, users struggled to find ways to earn money natively through the app, as they had to secure deals and... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is opening up its invite-only Xbox testing rings for more console testers to get access to the very latest features. Xbox testing includes many levels, and the Alpha and Alpha Skip-Ahead rings typically include the bleeding edge of Xbox dashboard features that may not debut publicly for months.Microsoft keeps these Alpha rings invite-only, reserved for those who regularly provide feedback through other Xbox testing rings. Now, Microsoft is inviting Xbox testers to complete a survey to be considered for the Alpha or Alpha Skip-Ahead rings.“You will receive a notice on your console if you are selected to participate,” says Austin Olney, an Xbox program manager. “There are limited spots available, so completing the survey does... Continue reading…

Photovoltaic modules at a solar power plant near Golmud, Qinghai province, China, on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. | Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images 2021 is on course to break a global record for renewable energy growth, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest Renewables Market Report. That’s despite skyrocketing commodity prices, which could bog down the transition to clean energy in the future.With 290 GW in additional capacity expected to be commissioned by the end of the year, 2021 will smash the record for renewable electricity growth that was just set last year. This year’s additions even outpace a forecast that the International Energy Agency (IEA) made in the spring.“Exceptionally high growth” would be the “new normal” for renewable sources of electricity, the IEA said at the time. Solar energy, in particular, was on track to take the crown as the “new king... Continue reading…

Spotify Wrapped 2021 | Image: Spotify Spotify has released its eagerly anticipated Wrapped experience revealing the most listened to artists and albums for (most of) 2021. This year, it’s adding even more social media-friendly features that help you share your favorite music with a customized movie, aura, or playing cards. Naturally, you can share Spotify’s auto-created images on your timeline and, for the first time, directly to TikTok. It’s sure to spark discussions with friends and provide valuable marketing for Spotify that competitors like Apple and YouTube can’t seem to match.Here’s how to find your Spotify 2021 Wrapped experience. To get all of the interactive features, you’ll need to open the Spotify mobile app — it’s not available on the desktop or web version. If... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google has a bevy of new features coming soon to Android, including new widgets for YouTube Music, Google Play Books, and Google Photos; new Android Auto features; and updates for Google Assistant and Google Photos. The company detailed the new features in a blog post.The biggest car-based addition is that from today Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S21 owners will be able to use their phones as a car key with “compatible BMW vehicles” in select countries. Google announced it was working on the car key feature for Android 12 in May, specifically citing BMW as one of the manufacturers with which it would work. Google says the feature will be available “on all BMW 2020 & 2022 model year vehicles,” and that it hopes to add more... Continue reading…

General Motors announced that it will construct a new cathode factory in North America for its electric vehicle batteries. The factory, which will be built under a joint venture with South Korea’s Posco Chemical, will process cathode active material (CAM), which represents about 40 percent of the cost of an EV battery cell.Much like the rest of the auto industry, GM is racing to boost its EV offerings, vowing to spend $27 billion on the development and production of 30 new electric vehicles by 2025. To accomplish this enormous feat, the company is trying to get a stronger grasp on its supply chain, which includes battery manufacturing. The company has said it will spend over $4 billion on the construction of two battery factories in... Continue reading…

Barnes & Noble has once again remembered that it ostensibly wants to sell e-readers and has announced the Nook GlowLight 4, a $149 e-reader that offers a refreshed design, more onboard storage, and USB-C charging to the company’s lineup.The last dedicated Nook e-reader, the GlowLight 3, was announced 49 months ago (to the day) on November 1st, 2017, although Barnes & Noble did give the Nook brand a shot in the arm earlier this year with a new, Lenovo-made budget tablet.The new GlowLight 4 doesn’t appear to move the needle much compared to the 2017 model, though. The display is an identical six-inch, 300ppi e-paper display with an integrated backlight and adjustable color temperature functionality, although the company has slimmed... Continue reading…

Photo: Marvel Studios In the third episode of Hawkeye, Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) does something very unexpected: she requests a USB dongle in the midst of a battle.The highlight of the episode is a scene where Kate and her reluctant mentor, Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), are fighting their way through the Tracksuit Mafia amidst some hectic New York City traffic. While Clint drives, Kate goes through his collection of trick arrows. Most are the kind of comic book goofiness you’d expect: one arrow creates a bubbling purple foam; another becomes destructively huge. Later, though, Clint hands Kate something much less useful in a fight: an arrow with a USB-A port on the end. “God, I hope he’s got a dongle to make this useful,” Kate quips afterward. (It turns... Continue reading…

Jabra’s latest earbuds impress on voice quality but arrive without the company’s signature feature Continue reading…

All CVS Pharmacy locations in the US now offer Spoken Rx prescription labels for blind and vision-impaired patients. | Photo by Victoria Arocho/Bloomberg via Getty Images CVS Pharmacy is expanding its Spoken Rx audio prescription labels to be available in all its pharmacies, after a trial run last year. The feature, developed as part of a collaboration with the American Council of the Blind, is part of the CVS Pharmacy mobile app and can read prescription information — like dosage and directions — aloud in English or Spanish.To use the spoken labels, CVS Pharmacy patients register for a CVS account, download the smartphone app, and enroll in Spoken Rx. The patient’s future prescription labels will then be tagged with an RFID label. The enrollment process can be done over the phone or in person at a CVS pharmacy. When the patient holds the prescription bottle four inches from their smartphone, the app... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit is introducing some big changes on Wednesday by adding new real-time features. Perhaps the biggest update is that the number of upvotes, downvotes, and comments will go up or down as they happen. That could give you a more accurate idea of the popularity of a post as you’re reading it, but I could also see people hitting an upvote or downvote in response to seeing others do the same.Another change is that Reddit will show the number of people reading a post when there are five or more people looking at it. Reddit won’t just show who’s reading, though; it’s also introducing a typing indicator that will pop up when two or more users are typing a comment. And when new top-level comments come in, Reddit will show a new pill-shaped... Continue reading…

Microsoft is creating its first standalone version of Microsoft Teams for small businesses. Microsoft Teams Essentials will be priced at $4 per user per month and provide access to the core meeting features of Teams without the typical Office app bundling that requires a more expensive Microsoft 365 plan. This standalone version makes Teams even more of a Zoom competitor, as Microsoft is dropping its Slack-like channels functionality in favor of a more simplified chat interface and a focus on meetings and video calls.“It’s the first standalone offering of Microsoft Teams designed specifically with small businesses in mind,” explains Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365. “It brings together features small businesses need to serve... Continue reading…

Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at an event at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on November 5th, 2021 | Image: NASA/Taylor Mickal Today, Vice President Kamala Harris’ office released a new framework for US space policy, detailing how the Biden administration plans to approach commercial, civil, and military space activity moving forward. Called the United States Space Priorities Framework, the document keeps many of the same space priorities from the previous administration but adds a new emphasis on using space to help combat climate change and investing in STEM education.The new framework comes ahead of today’s National Space Council meeting, the first one to be held under the Biden administration. Harris, who chairs the National Space Council, will convene the policy advisory group at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, at 1:30PM ET today.T... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Match Group will pay Tinder’s co-founders and original team $441 million to settle a years-long lawsuit over allegations that Match Group purposely undervalued the startup in an effort to avoid paying out billions of dollars in equity. The settlement comes a few weeks after the trial began in the New York Supreme Court, which has included testimony from the plaintiffs, including Tinder co-founder and former CEO Sean Rad, and the defense, including IAC chairman and founder Barry Diller. (IAC owned Match Group up until last year when it spun out into its company.)The plaintiffs were originally seeking a $2 billion payout. They first filed the lawsuit in 2018, a year after Match Group merged Tinder into its dating app portfolio, resulting... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Shortly after Google rolled out the Android 12 update in October, users started noticing that they’re unable to use any of the apps in the Amazon Appstore, as reported by 9to5Google. Reports of the issue cropped up on the Amazon forum over a month ago, and there’s no timeline for a possible fix (via Liliputing).“We are aware and working to resolve an issue impacting app performance and launches for the small number of Amazon Appstore users that have upgraded to Android 12 on their mobile devices,” Amazon spokesperson Troy Edwards told The Verge. “This issue does not impact Amazon Fire Tablets or Fire TV devices.”One user, Lovingboth, describes their experience with the issue in the thread on Amazon’s forum:

The Samsung Galaxy A13 will be an AT&T exclusive starting December 3rd, 2021, before being available on T-Mobile and Samsung.com in early 2022. | Samsung With 2022 and CES just around the corner, Samsung is ready to introduce new updates to its popular and budget-friendly A-series, which has helped keep sales strong for the Korean company despite supply woes for the flagship Galaxy S21. This time around, both the Galaxy A13 5G and A03S are getting a bit more expensive while confirming some new hardware and 5G connectivity for the A13.Samsung Galaxy A13 5GUnlike the 4G-only Galaxy A12, the new A13 will be able to access 5G networks, specifically, with the sub-6GHz bands available on T-Mobile and AT&T. The A13’s 5G readiness partly explains its new $249.99 price. That’s a whopping $70 increase from its $179.99 predecessor and slightly cheaper than the $279.99 Galaxy A32 5G with similar... Continue reading…

2021 is shaping up to be the year of party games on the Switch. This year, Nintendo has released new entries in the WarioWare and Mario Party franchises, and now it’s completing the party trilogy with Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain. It’s the continuation of a series that started with Brain Age on the Nintendo DS, which, alongside the likes of Wii Sports and Wii Fit, helped solidify the company’s “blue ocean” strategy of reaching a nontraditional gaming audience. Each “Brain” game is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of digital brainteasers. The twist in the latest is that its focus is almost exclusively on multiplayer play.At its most basic, Big Brain Academy is a mini-game collection where each of the games is divided into... Continue reading…

The last-gen Apple Watch Series 6 is just $299 at Best Buy. | Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Cyber Monday may be over, but Cyber Week continues. If at any point this past weekend you missed out on an Apple Watch deal you were keeping tabs on, fret not, you can still pick up the 40mm, GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 6 for just $299 at Best Buy. That’s a $100 discount on the otherwise $399 wearable, which offers built-in sleep tracking, a blood oxygen sensor, and an always-on display. It’s a more affordable alternative to Apple’s new Series 7, with features you won’t find in the similarly priced Apple Watch SE.For new subscribers, Best Buy’s also throwing in six months free of Apple Fitness Plus, an exercise service that integrates nicely with the Apple Watch and offers fitness classes. Note, however, this deal is only... Continue reading…

Nuro, a leader in autonomous delivery vehicles, is kicking off a new service in California in partnership with 7-Eleven. The company will deliver convenience store products to customers in its autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles, which will include a safety driver behind the wheel, before eventually shifting over to its fully driverless R2 delivery vehicles.The service will only be available to residents who live in proximity to the 7-Eleven store at 1905 Latham Street in Mountain View, from 8AM–9PM, seven days a week. Customers can order items like pizza, chips, beverages, and household items through 7-Eleven’s “7NOW” delivery app, although age-restricted items, like alcohol and cigarettes, won’t be available.Orders will be delivered... Continue reading…