The Verge

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the 2021 iPhone may have an always-on display similar to Apple’s Watch, and which Android phones have had for some time. Gurman wrote in his Power On newsletter that the phones will have improved battery life, a smaller notch on the screen, better video recording, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a faster A15 chip.It isn’t the first time a leak has suggested Apple is working on always-on screens for upcoming iPhones. Leaker Max Weinbach hinted earlier this year that Apple may use the same kind of low temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) panels that its Watches have on future iPhones.That’s in keeping with Bloomberg’s previous reporting that “at least one” of the four new iPhones will... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A sweeping investigation by 17 media outlets found that NSO Group’s Pegasus software was used in hacking attempts on 37 smartphones belonging to human rights activists and journalists, The Washington Post reported. The phones were on a leaked list of numbers discovered by Paris journalism nonprofit Hidden Stories and human rights group Amnesty International, according to the Post. The numbers on the list were singled out for possible surveillance by countries who are clients of NSO, the report states, which markets its spyware to governments to track potential terrorists and criminals.Pegasus can extract all of a mobile device’s data, and activate the device’s microphone to listen in on conversations surreptitiously, as The Guardian n... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook continued its pushback Saturday against President Biden’s comment that social media platforms were “killing people” with COVID-19 misinformation, in a blog post from its vice president of integrity Guy Rosen. The post states that the “facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days.”“At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,” Rosen wrote. “While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a whole of society approach to end this pandemic. And facts — not allegations — should help inform that effort.”(The post was titled “Moving Past the Finger Pointing:... Continue reading…

Photo by James Vincent / The Verge Online-only British supermarket Ocado has had to cancel some customers’ delivery orders after a Friday robot collision at one of its warehouses caused a fire, the company said.The fire at the company’s Erith warehouse east of London “appears to have been caused by the collision of three bots on the grid,” the company said in a statement on Sunday. No one was injured, and the damage was limited to less than 1 percent of its grid, according to Ocado.The grocer’s warehouses are populated with washing machine-sized robots that move products around on a grid system. The Verge’s James Vincent wrote about Ocado’s plans in a 2018 feature story. He described the process:

You’re not having deja vu. Six years after launching a line of Linux game consoles that went down as one of the biggest tech flops of the past decade, Valve is trying once again. Only this time, its Steam Machine dreams and unusual touchpads have been rolled into a 7-inch handheld PC that looks and works like a Nintendo Switch.It’s called the Steam Deck, and you can read all about its specs, extensive controls and TV docking station right here.I’m not deluding myself into thinking it’s a Switch-killer. (Even if the Steam Deck’s $399 starting price might seem close to Nintendo’s $350 Switch with OLED screen, you’re not getting Mario, Zelda and Metroid on a Steam Deck.) But having watched Valve closely over the past nine years, I don’t... Continue reading…

One of the most powerful new features in iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey, is Focus mode.At its core, a Focus mode is a more customizable version of Apple’s existing Do Not Disturb and is accessed from the same menu on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. But Focus modes are far more customizable, allowing for more granular triggers for when you’re filtering out notifications.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Since 2019, Amazon has sold nearly 400,000 hair dryers that could shock someone if they fell into a pool of water, 24,000 carbon monoxide detectors that didn’t actually detect carbon monoxide, and an unspecified number of “children’s sleepwear garments” that didn’t meet flammability requirements, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).Now, the US safety regulator wants to force Amazon to recall those products. This past week, it sued the company in a case that could be the latest to hold Amazon accountable for products offered by its third-party sellers. But here’s the thing: Amazon has already recalled these specific products. They’re no longer for sale.Amazon says, and the CPSC acknowledges, that the giant... Continue reading…

TurboTax parent company Intuit has opted out of the IRS Free File Program. | Getty Images Intuit, the parent company of tax filing software TurboTax, is exiting an IRS program that allows many Americans to file their taxes for free. The IRS partners with the Free File Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of tax software companies that offer no-cost tax filing services for the Free File program. Intuit says in a blog post on its website that part of the reason it’s leaving Free File— which is available to 2020 filers with adjusted gross income of $72,000 or less— is the “restraints” of the program.“With the Free File program surpassing its founding goals of e-file and free tax preparation, and due to the limitations of the Free File program and conflicting demands from those outside the program, we are not able to continue in the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla has started offering a monthly subscription for its Full Self Driving package for $199 per month (h/t Electrek). Tesla owners who bought the since-discontinued Enhanced Autopilot package can get the FSD subscription for $99 per month, according to Tesla’s support page. Until now the automaker had sold its FSD package for a one-time fee of $10,000, but the monthly subscription lets users test-drive (literally) the FSD features without a long-term commitment. Tesla owners can cancel their monthly FSD subscription at any time, according to the terms on the Tesla website.Only Teslas that have the FSD computer hardware 3.0 (HW3) or above plus either Basic or Enhanced Autopilot configurations are eligible to subscribe to FSD; other... Continue reading…

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images The spectacle of launching billionaires into space is the beginning of a long road ahead Continue reading…

Zoom weddings soared during the pandemic | Illustration by Grayson Blackmon Virtual weddings, one of the more endearing traditions to emerge during last year’s pandemic-related lockdowns, are no longer legal in New York now that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has lifted his April executive order. First reported by the New York Times, the order Cuomo signed was meant for a state of emergency, and he rescinded the EO effective June 25th.New York state law requires that a couple planning to wed “must state in the presence of an authorized public official or authorized member of the clergy and at least one other witness that each takes the other as his or her spouse.” So in order to keep Zoom and other virtual weddings legal, new legislation would be necessary.Zoom weddings allowed brides and grooms to keep their wedding... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge California’s legislature has voted unanimously to approve a $6 billion plan to build a statewide open access fiber network (h/t ArsTechnica). The state will provide $3.25 billion to hire a third party to build and maintain a so-called “middle-mile” network, which won’t bring internet directly from backbone infrastructure to customers, but rather to connection points, leaving the last mile to be handled by internet service providers (ISPs). The legislation provides $2 billion for last-mile infrastructure lines to connect residences and businesses to local networks.Making the middle-mile network open access will allow “non-discriminatory access to eligible entities on a technology and competitively neutral basis, regardless of whether the... Continue reading…

A good camera system and top-notch features, but it’s priced too high to recommend Continue reading…

Photo by Andrew Marino / The Verge A cornucopia of audio tech spread across two desks Continue reading…

The second-gen Google Nest Hub | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Though we’re hitting the sleepy, dog-days of summer and there aren’t any big sale events on the horizon, there are still plenty of great deals out there if you know where to look. This week we found bargains on bundles of Google’s Nest Hub and Nest Thermostat, HyperX’s excellent gaming headset, the best Chromebook you can get right now, and Amazon’s kids-focused Fire HD tablets. Check them out below.For a limited time, you can pick up a Google Nest Hub (second-gen) and a budget-friendly Nest Thermostat for $167 through BuyDig’s official storefront on eBay. If you prefer a smart speaker over a thermostat, BuyDig is also offering the same Hub model with a Google Nest Audio for $140, more than $100 off what they would cost if you were to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When you’re using WhatsApp your messages are encrypted end-to-end, which means prying eyes can’t easily see what’s in them as they travel back and forth. However, if you keep a backup stored in the cloud, authorities can use a search warrant to have Google Drive or iCloud hand over access to the data. But WABetaInfo has reported previously that WhatsApp is working on the technology to independently encrypt your backups in the cloud, and says that in the most recent beta update on Android (2.21.15.5), the system has been enabled.Opting in should keep your chat history and media securely backed up, with the significant caveat that if you forget your passcode / lose the 64-digit recovery key, then they’ll be locked away permanently — even... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Fakespot, known for its web browser extensions that try to weed out fake product reviews, suddenly no longer has an iPhone or iPad app — because Amazon sent Apple a takedown request, both Amazon and Fakespot confirm, and Apple decided to remove the app.The giant retailer says it was concerned about how a new update to the Fakespot app was “wrapping” its website without permission, and how that could be theoretically exploited to steal Amazon customer data. Fakespot founder Saoud Khalifah told The Verge that Apple abruptly removed the app today without any explanation. Apple confirms it removed the app, but disputes the circumstances.The new Fakespot app launched just over a month ago, and I can confirm it let you log in to Amazon,... Continue reading…

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The White House escalated its fight against vaccine misinformation on Friday, with President Biden directly criticizing Facebook and other platforms for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread — and consequently raising the ongoing death toll from the deadly pandemic.Asked for a message to platforms like Facebook, Biden replied, “They’re killing people ... the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of the president’s comments.The full exchange is embedded below:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Two California residents have been indicted for allegedly planning to firebomb the offices of California’s Democratic governor in Sacramento after the 2020 election, and had also discussed bombing Facebook and Twitter, federal court records show.The pair, who were indicted on conspiracy charges as well as illegal possession of firearms and explosives, were part of an anti-government militia with a strong pro-Trump agenda called the Three Percenters. The conspirators’ texts alluded that their planned actions would send a message to tech companies like Facebook and Twitter days after they banned Trump from their platforms.Texts recovered by the FBI indicated that the two men believed President Trump won the 2020 election, and that they... Continue reading…

My face when I sniff gas...perfume. | Photo: Ford, Christopher Ison So you just dropped a cool $59,000 on a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, your own sporty slice of our electric future, made by a company that only knows how to build them tough (Ford Tough, to be precise). What happens when you go to plug in your new car and you miss that telltale whiff of chemical-y gasoline smell wafting from its insides? According to Ford, you substitute it with a “premium fragrance” inspired by gasoline called “Mach-Eau.”Mach-Eau — the name does not get better the more I type it — was born from a survey conducted by Ford Europe that found that 1 in 5 drivers will miss the “smell of petrol most” when they switch to an electric car. Naturally, wanting to push more Mach-Es and F-150 Lightnings into the world, Ford settled on an... Continue reading…

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg Sometimes you want the text in your app to be smaller, so you can fit more content on a single screen. Sometimes you want it to be bigger, especially if you’ve been putting off buying those reading glasses. But until recently, if you had an iPhone, you had to pick a single text size as a standard for all your apps.Not anymore. In iOS 15, you can adjust the text size separately for each of your apps. So you can, for example, keep the text small for your email, but make it a bit larger in Twitter — or vice versa. (Thanks to @OmarShahine for the info.)

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) announced that the state plans to invest $700 million in American Rescue Plan funding to reach universal broadband connectivity by 2024. This new investment shaves four years off of the governor’s original plan to connect every household to high-speed broadband.The pandemic dramatically affected the ways in which people work and attend school — pushing many office-holders to renew efforts to ensure citizens are able to get online. According to Northam, more than 233,000 homes and businesses in Virginia are without broadband access.“Not just a luxury for some, but an essential utility for all”“It’s time to close the digital divide in our Commonwealth and treat Internet service like the 21st... Continue reading…

Steam Deck multiplayer | Image: Valve Valve officially revealed its handheld PC gaming machine only a day ago, but that was apparently enough to spread the word — when the Steam Deck went up for preorder today at 1PM ET, the demand from gamers knocked Steam for a loop as the store produced error after error. Seemingly every step produced another pitfall: two-factor authentication if you weren’t signed in, some signed-in accounts had to sign in once again, credit card checks, even a wonky response from a system that pegged long-established Steam accounts as being “too new” to participate.Other parts of Steam got flaky during the crush of preorder interest, too. The entire Steam store, Steam’s community pages, and the age gate that lets you view mature-rated titles didn’t... Continue reading…

The headline feature for Apple’s fall updates (including iOS 15, iPadOS 15, tvOS 15, and macOS Monterey) is SharePlay. It’s a new software feature on top of FaceTime that allows you to watch and listen to movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and more with friends and family while video chatting.Right now, the number of SharePlay-compatible apps is a pretty small list: the Apple TV app for movies and TV shows, the Apple Music app for music, and Apple’s Podcasts app for podcasts. The company is promising some bigger third-party partners when iOS 15 launches this fall, including HBO Max, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, TikTok, and Twitch. Some big names seem to be skipping out for now, though: most notably, Netflix and YouTube.For now, if... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Rivian has delayed the first deliveries of its long-awaited electric pickup truck again, this time until September. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe broke the news to buyers in an email sent Friday morning.The Amazon and Ford-backed EV startup originally planned to start delivering its electric pickup, the R1T, and its SUV, the R1S, in 2020. But it scuttled those plans at the beginning of the pandemic and said at the time that it would start deliveries in 2021 instead. Rivian eventually settled on starting deliveries of the R1T in June of this year, only to push that back to July, and now to September.“We know you can’t wait to get behind the wheel of your vehicle,” Scaringe wrote in the email. “Earlier this summer, we announced that... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.This week on the show, Nilay and Dieter bring back Verge managing editor Alex Cranz to discuss the announcement of Valve’s gaming handheld the Steam Deck, Netflix’s dive into gaming, Apple iPhone 13 rumors, the state of MagSafe, and, of course, the growing number of billionaires in space.You can listen to the full discussion here or in your preferred podcast player.Further reading:

Image: US Customs and Border Protection The number of counterfeit wireless earbuds seized by US border customs in 2021 has already surpassed last year’s total, according to a report from The Information. It’s a sign of how eager the makers of these knockoffs are to keep riding the sustained popularity of earbuds like Apple’s AirPods and those from Samsung, Jabra, Bose, Sony, and other companies.According to the report, “roughly 360,000 counterfeit wireless headphones” — valued at $62.2 million — were nabbed in the first nine months of fiscal 2021. That’s well above the 295,000 pairs that were confiscated during the whole of fiscal 2020. Just yesterday, US Customs and Border Protection announced a major confiscation in Cincinnati.Around 80 percent of fakes entering the US... Continue reading…

Residents at a cooling center during a heatwave in Portland, Oregon, U.S., on Monday, June 28, 2021. | Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images The heatwave that scorched the Pacific Northwest in late June resulted in an enormous surge in emergency department (ED) visits in the region, according to a new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 1,038 heat-related visits to the emergency department during the peak of the heatwave on June 28th in “region 10” — which includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. In shocking comparison, there were just nine similar ED visits in the region on the same day in 2019.The Northwest was home to a disproportionate number of emergency department visitsWhile much of the West was suffering through sweltering heat in June, the Northwest was home to a disproportionate number of emergency department visits.... Continue reading…

Kiana Madeira and Gillian Jacobs in Fear Street Part 3: 1666. | Image: Netflix In order to keep her roles straight, Fear Street star Kiana Madeira kept a big Five Star binder with her on set at most times. As part of the experimental slasher trilogy from Netflix, Madeira played two different roles across three movies, each set in a different time period. To make matters even more challenging, the schedule was incredibly compact: all three films were shot together over just a few months. So her binder served a crucial role. Inside were all three scripts, and she would write in it constantly.“Every time we finished a scene, I would make notes about how it went, how my character was feeling, how I was feeling, what I think we ended with in terms of the tone and the trajectory of the story,” she says. “My binder... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber has agreed to pay $9 million to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) after refusing to hand over data about riders and drivers who were sexually assaulted, and pay a separate $150,000 fine, according to a settlement agreement reached Thursday.The CPUC will give $5 million of that money to the California Victim Compensation Fund, and the remaining $4 million will “go to address physical and sexual violence in the passenger carrier industry,” according to The San Francisco Chronicle, which reported on the agreement Thursday. Uber will also now provide data about the assaults to the CPUC, though it will remove any potentially identifying information.The CPUC originally fined Uber $59 million in December 2020 and... Continue reading…

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge Whether you’d like to admit it or not, school is quickly approaching. And if you’re in need of a reliable laptop that won’t force you to completely deplete your savings, Chromebooks aren’t a bad way to go. The best Chromebooks deliver great value for the money, and many offer terrific performance for far less than you would pay for a more premium machine. Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 is one such device, even if the high-end convertible is one of the more expensive Chromebooks on the market right now.Currently discounted at Best Buy to $619, the 2021 model packs in 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel 11th Gen Core i5, which is more than enough processing power for most people. Moreover, it boasts a great keyboard and a brilliant 3:2... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The United States surgeon general published a report this week calling for a whole-of-society response to health misinformation, calling it a “serious threat to public health.” It took a sweeping look at a wide range of misinformation, on everything from masks to unproven drugs.But the focus of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s remarks circled back to vaccines. Daily vaccination rates have stalled out at around 500,000 shots per day, and in many pockets of the country, a majority of people aren’t getting immunized. The US is struggling to bump those numbers up.Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines spreads fast, and so do the accompanying consequences. The rapid spread of the more transmissible Delta coronavirus variant makes them... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Shaquille O’Neal and Melissa McCarthy are the latest celebrities to lend their voices to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, the company has announced. The two voices can provide weather reports, jokes, and personal stories when asked using the wake words “Hey Melissa” or “Hey Shaq.” Both voices cost $4.99 individually, and are rolling out in the US now.Amazon kicked off its celebrity Alexa voices initiative with Samuel L. Jackson in 2019, and says this Alexa voice skill was the top selling digital purchase on Amazon.com the day it was launched. In 2020, the company followed up with Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan. None of these celebrities replace Alexa’s default voice, but instead offer responses to specific requests.If you’re after a... Continue reading…

The NT68 is designed to sit on top of your laptop’s existing keyboard. | Image: Epomaker If you can’t stand to type on a Macbook’s scissor switch keyboard, let alone a butterfly model, and you don’t fancy lugging around one of the small number of laptops with a full-on mechanical keyboard built in, then Epomaker’s new wireless keyboard might be one for you. The NT68 is designed to sit on top of a MacBook or other laptop’s existing keyboard so your fingers don’t have to put up with their rubbery key switches for a single second longer than they need to.It’s not an entirely new idea (Nuphy’s NuType F1 keyboard is another recent example) but the quality and specs of Epomaker’s previous keyboards make the NT68 worthy of attention. It can be hardwired over USB-C, connected via Bluetooth to up to three devices, and its switches... Continue reading…

A phone repair store at a technology market in Shenzhen, China. | Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge Xiaomi is now the second largest smartphone vendor based on worldwide shipments in the second quarter of 2021, according to a new report from Canalys. The Chinese company captured 17 percent of global market share, according to the research firm, just behind Samsung’s 19 percent but ahead of Apple’s 14 percent.BBK’s Oppo and Vivo rounded out the list of top five vendors at 10 percent apiece. All five companies grew their shipments year on year, but what’s notable is just how much Xiaomi has managed to increase its volume — it shipped 83 percent more phones than in Q2 2020, whereas Samsung grew shipments 15 percent and Apple by just one percent.

Captions on a voice tweet. | Image: Twitter Twitter is now rolling out captions for voice tweets, the company announced Thursday. Twitter first launched voice tweets in June 2020, but they were quickly criticized at the time by accessibility advocates for not having captions.Now, when you make a voice tweet (something you can only do on the iOS app right now), captions will be automatically generated in supported languages, which are English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, French, Indonesian, Korean, and Italian.To see the captions on a tweet, you can click or tap the CC icon in the top-right corner of the voice tweet window. Captions only appear on new voice tweets, Twitter tells The Verge, so you won’t see them on older ones.Below is a screenshot of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In 2008, chipmakers Intel and AMD took two distinct paths: Intel kept manufacturing its own chips to maintain full control, while AMD decided to spin off its semiconductor business as GlobalFoundries, relying on it and other manufacturers to provide the actual silicon. Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Intel is looking to snap up AMD’s former fabs as well, in a deal that could value them at $30 billion.It’s clear from the WSJ story that the deal isn’t a sure thing, and GlobalFoundries outright denied that it was in talks with Intel. But it’s possible Intel’s negotiating with the investment firm that owns GlobalFoundries instead, as the WSJ points out. It’s also intriguing that the Journal doesn’t have a “no comment” from... Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Twitter and Square, is enough of a fan of cryptocurrency that Square’s push into the area won’t stop at releasing a hardware wallet. Instead, the company is creating a new business, to go with existing units like Tidal and Cash App, which is “focused on building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services.”

A mural in support of England footballers Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka was unveiled in Manchester. The three were targeted with racist abuse online after the Euro 2020 final. | Photo by Charlotte Tattersall/Getty Images Bukayo Saka, a player on England’s national football team said in an Instagram post Thursday that social media platforms did not do enough to prevent the racist abuse he and his teammates were subjected to after the team’s loss to Italy.“To the social media platforms @instagram @twitter @facebook I don’t want any child or adult to have to receive the hateful and hurtful messages that me Marcus and Jadon have received this week,” Saka wrote. “I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive and that is a sad reality that your powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages.”Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Saka, who are Black, were among England’s players to participate in a penalty shootout to decide the... Continue reading…

Images: Valve Valve’s surprising new Steam Deck has been officially announced, promising to let players take their whole Steam library of games on the go. But how does the handheld compare to other major consoles on the market, like the Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X / S, and the PlayStation 5?First off, let’s look at the Steam Deck’s specs. It’s powered by an AMD APU with a quad-core / eight-thread Zen 2 CPU and an AMD RDNA 2 GPU with 8 compute units, alongside 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM.There are three models available: one with 64GB of eMMC storage for $399, one with a 256GB NVMe SSD for $529, and a top-of-the-line model with 512GB of high-speed NVMe SSD storage for $649. While the base eMMC storage configuration could potentially mean slower game... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple employees say it’s harder than ever to get remote work requests approved after the company rolled out a new hybrid model that will require people to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Some employees say they will quit if Apple doesn’t change its stance.While Apple historically discouraged employees from working from home, there were one-off exceptions to the rule, and some teams were more lenient than others. Now, employees say that even those exceptions are being denied. In a company Slack channel where employees advocate for remote work, roughly 10 people said they were resigning due to the hybrid work policy or knew others who’d been forced to quit. The Slack channel currently has more than... Continue reading…

Elgato’s new Stream Deck, which is different from Valve’s Steam Deck. | Image: Elgato Elgato’s Stream Deck is a popular tool for live-streamers, letting them set shortcuts and controls they can access with the push of a button, and the company announced a new model on Thursday, the Stream Deck MK. 2. This version brings a host of welcome improvements, including a detachable stand, interchangeable faceplates, and a removable USB-C cable. You can order it right now on Elgato’s website for $149.99.While the Stream Deck MK. 2 does seem like a nice upgrade, it was announced on perhaps the worst possible day. Just a few hours ago, Valve made a huge splash by revealing its new handheld gaming console called the Steam Deck.While they’re entirely different products, there’s sure to be some confusion about the names “Stream... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is launching a new privacy feature for search that lets you instantly delete your last 15 minutes of search history on mobile, the company announced on Thursday. The new option was first revealed alongside several other search and Chrome improvements at I/O 2021 and is now rolling out to everyone.The option to delete your last 15 minutes of search history is currently only available in Google’s iOS app and is headed to Android later this year. On desktop, your options for deleting searches are limited to setting your history to auto-delete every three, 18, or 36 months (18 months is the default for new accounts), or deleting searches by hand. You can see what the new option looks like in the iOS app below: I... Continue reading…

One of the photos from this Cannes photo shoot has been widely memed. Please make it stop. | Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage Twitter said Thursday it was hearing from users who were seeing too many topic suggestions in their home timelines and was moving to remedy the situation. “We’re fixing that now, and will continue to improve Topics and find ways to show you the very best of Twitter. Things you want to see, that is,” its Support account tweeted. To its credit, Twitter has seemed more responsive to users’ complaints — or their lack of interest — of late; in addition to Thursday’s topics announcement, Twitter said this week it would kill off Fleets, its ephemeral disappearing tweets that apparently no one was using.But instead of showing us more things we want to see, I think Twitter should lean into taking away things we don’t want. I have a suggestion... Continue reading…

Steam Deck. | Photo: Valve When the beloved PlayStation Vita eventually died out, many blamed the rise of mobile gaming. “I think the PS Vita, while ahead of its time in many ways ... launched at exactly the wrong time in terms of market opportunity,” former Sony vice president of marketing John Koller told The Verge about going up against smartphones. But despite the Vita’s demise, dedicated gaming handhelds didn’t die out — in fact, the space is arguably as vibrant as ever.Valve just announced the Steam Deck, a chunky portable PC that looks like a Sega Game Gear from a parallel universe. It’s designed to let players take their Steam library of PC games on the go. Just a few hours later, preorders opened for the latest iteration of the Nintendo Switch, one that... Continue reading…

Self-driving technology startup Aurora, which was founded by the former head of Google’s autonomous vehicle program, is the latest company to announce that it’s going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC). The deal will give Aurora about $2 billion in new cash when it closes, which will help the startup in its quest to become a provider of self-driving hardware and software to companies in the trucking and ride-hailing industries.Aurora is merging with a SPAC called Reinvent Technology Partners Y that’s already listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and is run by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and investor Michael Thompson). That trio is also in the process of taking electric... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Online shoppers will eventually see another option listed next to the usual payment methods, now that Facebook Pay will expand beyond the company’s own platforms. Not long after credit card companies dropped out of its Libra cryptocurrency project, Facebook launched its payments system for use across the main site, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram. Image: Facebook Facebook Pay is coming to online shopping. Now, just like Google’s stored cards, PayPal integrations, Amazon Pay, and others, Facebook Pay is opening itself up for use in transactions with participating retailers. Shopify merchants are first in line to add the system on their sites, with others to follow after it launches in August. Interested... Continue reading…

The Facecam includes a monitor mount, but you can also mount it to a tripod with its quarter-inch thread. | Photo: Elgato Elgato has attempted to be the brand of choice for streamers and content creators who need gear to get started — even if it’s rarely the most affordable option. It makes its own LED lighting rig, multiple kinds of mounts for lights and mics, app-controlled adhesive light strips for your monitor or desk, sound-dampening pads for podcasting, a mouse pad that doubles as a green screen, and a lot more. Now, it has a $199.99 webcam to sell you.The Elgato Facecam is a 1080p webcam that can record at up to 60 frames per second. It has a Sony Starvis CMOS sensor, with an eight-element prime fixed focus lens with an f/2.4 aperture, 24mm full-frame equivalent focal length, and up to an 82-degree field of view. The company says it’s great for... Continue reading…

Photo: CNN In a new documentary, Roadrunner, about the life and tragic death of Anthony Bourdain, there are a few lines of dialogue in Bourdain’s voice that he might not have ever said out loud.Filmmaker Morgan Neville used AI technology to digitally re-create Anthony Bourdain’s voice and have the software synthesize the audio of three quotes from the late chef and television host, Neville told the New Yorker.The deepfaked voice was discovered when the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner asked how the filmmaker got a clip of Bourdain’s voice reading an email he had sent to a friend. Neville said he had contacted an AI company and supplied it with a dozen hours of Bourdain speaking.“ ... and my life is sort of shit now. You are successful, and I am... Continue reading…

Valve’s new Steam Deck. | Image: Valve Valve just announced its new handheld Steam Deck, powered by a custom Linux operating system. The 7-inch device will play the latest AAA games, and because it’s a PC, you’ll even be able to install Windows on it. That means the Steam Deck could be the perfect Xbox portable, given Microsoft’s investment in shipping all of its future Xbox Game Studios titles on PC.“Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third-party software and operating systems,” says Valve, which means this hardware isn’t locked down in the way we’re used to seeing from tech companies.The Steam Deck itself will ship with SteamOS, a custom Linux operating system that loads into the familiar Steam interface you’re used to on PC. While Linux support for gaming has been... Continue reading…