The Verge

The “Out West” emote, which features audio of the Travis Scott song “Out West,” has been removed from the Fortnite Item Shop. In fact, the entire section of Fortnite’s Item Shop that housed the dance emote is gone. According to a report from Eurogamer, the “Daily” section of the Item Shop has disappeared with no explanation, and Epic declined to comment to The Verge.

Days after Ford started selling its first-ever electric crate motor, it already sold out (via Ford Authority). Ford just isn’t saying how many were sold.Ford caught the attention of EV and Ford enthusiasts alike when it showcased the Eluminator in an all-electric 1978 F-100. The $3,900 crate motor is the same one that powers the Mustang Mach-E GT, sporting 480 horsepower with 634 pound-feet of torque. Batteries and other components aren’t included with the motor, although Ford plans on making those parts available individually.“Demand has exceeded expectations,” a Ford spokesperson told The Verge. At this point, it remains unclear how e-crate motors were sold or if those numbers surpassed the typical sales for Ford’s gasoline-powered... Continue reading…

Niantic Niantic is releasing a platform for building what it calls “real-world metaverse” apps. Called Lightship, the platform is “built around the parts necessary to stitch together the digital and the real world,” CEO John Hanke tells me.According to Hanke, Lightship will let mobile apps identify whether a user’s camera is pointed at the sky or water, map the surfaces and depth of an environment in real time, or place a virtual object behind a physical one.Niantic is best known for creating one of the most successful mobile games ever, Pokémon Go. With Lightship, Hanke says the company is “opening the vault of tech that we’ve been using to build our products” to help others build “planet-scale AR apps.”Lightship has been in development for... Continue reading…

Clear off some room on your bookshelf because Target and Amazon are having a “buy two, get one free” sale on video games. This sale is unfortunately restricted to physical copies but includes new titles like Call of Duty: Vanguard and Guardians of the Galaxy. While we’re definitely here for the video games, it’s worth mentioning that this deal includes tons of classic and contemporary board games as well, like Exploding Kittens, Animal Crossing Monopoly, and Sushi Go!. If you’re looking to fill out your game collection, we’ve linked to the landing pages for both retailers below.“Buy two, get one free” video games: Amazon“Buy two, get one free” video games: TargetThe HyperX Cloud II Wireless is one of the best gaming headsets for... Continue reading…

The Israeli military has deployed an extensive facial recognition program to track Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to a new report by The Washington Post.Former Israeli soldiers told the Post about a smartphone technology called “Blue Wolf,” which takes photos of Palestinians and stores them in a large-scale database. Once an image is captured, Blue Wolf matches that picture to a person in its database, and as the Post describes, soldiers’ phones will then flash a specific color that signifies if that individual should be arrested, detained, or left undisturbed.“People worry about fingerprinting, but this is that several times over”The Post notes that the Israeli army has been filling up the database with... Continue reading…

Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge There are countless brands that make standing desks, but Fully makes some of the best. And now through November 30th, the day after Cyber Monday, you can get 15 percent off every item available on its online store. That includes its Jarvis standing desks and handy accessories you might want with one, like a monitor arm, powered grommet covers that give you extra plugs and USB charging ports, and more. These deals don’t completely change that these are still pricey products, but if you have a home office, you stand to level up a few rungs on the ergonomic ladder by taking advantage of these deals.If you’re looking for a real wood tabletop for your desk instead of less durable MDF material, the Jarvis standing desk with a bamboo top... Continue reading…

It’s fine, but Apple has unfinished business Continue reading…

McAfee has been acquired for $14 billion | Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Security software company McAfee is going private via a buyout from an investor group in a deal valued at more than $14 billion, the company announced Monday. Bloomberg first reported last week that a likely deal was imminent.McAfee was founded in 1987 by John McAfee and became known for its computer antivirus software. McAfee, the founder, left McAfee, the company, in 1994, and the company was acquired by Intel in 2010 for $7.68 billion. In 2014, Intel announced it was phasing out the McAfee brand name for the security software and rebranding it as “Intel Security.”Last October, the company returned to the public stock market. McAfee said in the announcement that it will continue as a “pure-play consumer cybersecurity” company after... Continue reading…

And the best Forza Horizon yet Continue reading…

Disney and IMAX have announced a collaboration that will see several Marvel movies presented in IMAX’s Expanded Aspect Ratio format on Disney Plus. 13 MCU movies in total will be upgraded to IMAX Enhanced on November 12th, including Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is making its debut on the service that day.While IMAX traditionally uses a squarer 1.43:1 format, Expanded Aspect Ratio is 1.90:1, which is relatively close to the 16:9 ratio of TVs. Marvel movies are generally presented in wider, letterboxed aspect ratios, but many of them feature some 1.90:1 sequences captured with IMAX-certified cameras for a taller picture in IMAX theaters. Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, meanwhile, were shot entirely in the format. ... Continue reading…

Elon Musk responds to US Senator Ron Wyden on his plans to tax billionaires. Is it fair that the world’s richest people pay so little in tax? That in a time of extreme inequality, those that have so much contribute so little in proportion to their vast wealth? These are the questions motivating US Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who’s been calling for new taxes on billionaires.Is it fair that the democracy I live in might have some demands of me? How can I prove that I’m super edgy and totally unfazed by the prospect of paying more tax? These are the questions apparently motivating Elon Musk, who replied to a tweet from Wyden by asking why the senator looks like he’s just orgasmed in his profile picture.

Screenshot: Metal Gear Solid 2 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater are disappearing from digital storefronts today, while Konami renews the licenses for the “historical archive footage” they contain, their publisher has announced. Although the removals are temporary, Konami’s statement doesn’t give a timeline for when the games might return to affected storefronts. “We sincerely ask for your patience and understanding as we work towards making these products available for purchase once again,” the publisher said.The removals affect various digital re-releases of the two games, which originally came out in 2001 and 2004. These include the PS3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita, and Nvidia Shield TV remasters of both games, the Nintendo 3DS... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Disney Plus is offering a pretty killer deal for streamers who may have left or have yet to try its service. For new and eligible returning subscribers, one month of Disney Plus will cost just $2.The offer is one of several promotions the service has announced as part of its anticipated Disney Plus Day event taking place November 12th. In addition to offering a month of its service to eligible users for dirt cheap, subscribers can take advantage of special perks at its parks on Disney Plus Day. The perks include early entry to parks 30 minutes before opening at the Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort, as well as free Disney PhotoPass photo downloads.On the retail front, new merch will hit ShopDisney from across Disney... Continue reading…

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in The Power of the Dog, coming to Netflix December 1st. | Netflix I have noticed this irritating thing where more and more trailers have a scene to introduce the trailer. It is already an introduction! You are wasting precious seconds telling me what I’m about to see instead of just showing me!OK end rant. I finished my (late) binge of Maid on Netflix and am now really interested to read the book. It may have been one of the most realistic descriptions of poverty I’ve ever seen, where even the smallest setback can have a devastating effect, and you’re painfully aware of every penny you earn and where it’s going to go before you even get paid. Also The Morning Show finally had a good, return-to-form episode with Ruthless Cory, Spiraling Chip, and Awful Alex each at their peak. The best scene, though,... Continue reading…

Google There’s a lot to rave about with the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, but their fingerprint scanners are not among those things. Since the Pixel 6 release in October, users have been complaining about its sluggish, unreliable fingerprint scanner that makes the phone a hassle to unlock. Google has finally responded to those complaints, and while it provided an explanation, it didn’t really offer any solid solution (via Engadget).

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon | Image: NASA / Joel Kowsky The SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station has been delayed again, this time to November 10th at 9:03PM ET, NASA said Sunday. Although NASA had originally planned to have a changing of the guard with the Crew-2 astronauts greeting the Crew-3 team before Crew-2 departed, the space agency has decided to return the Crew 2 to Earth first, pushing that mission from Sunday to Monday, November 8th at 2:05PM ET, because of weather concerns.Wednesday so far has an 80 percent chance of favorable weather for liftoff, SpaceX noted in a tweet on Sunday. If all goes to plan the craft will take off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and dock with the ISS at about 7:10PM ET on November 11th.

Elon Musk polled his Twitter followers | Photo by PATRICK PLEUL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Tesla CEO and wealthiest person in the world Elon Musk tweeted out a poll Saturday, asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10 percent of his stock in the automaker, ostensibly to pay more tax. When the poll closed Sunday afternoon, 57.9 percent of more than 3.5 million participants had voted “yes,” and 42.1 percent voted “no.”“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted Saturday. He said in a subsequent tweet that he’d abide by the results of the poll “whichever way it goes.”

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft says OneDrive users on Windows, 7, 8, or 8.1 will be unable to sync their content to the cloud starting on March 1st, 2022, according to a blog post on its Tech Community forum. OneDrive will also no longer receive updates if it’s running on a system that doesn’t have Windows 10 or Windows 11 installed.Files will still be accessible from the OneDrive app no matter what version of Windows you’re using — they’ll just no longer automatically upload to the cloud. To avoid any issues with OneDrive, Microsoft recommends upgrading to a newer version of Windows before March of next year. As for systems that aren’t able to run Windows 10 or Windows 11, Microsoft says that users can still back up their files by uploading them to the... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Earlier this month, Netflix officially got into gaming by rolling out a mobile game service for Android users. While Netflix says that it's working on an iOS version of the service, Bloomberg tech reporter Mark Gurman says that Apple’s App Store policies will prevent Netflix from making games available from its app.Apple bars third-party apps from functioning as a hub for games, which has become a point of contention with cloud gaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Google Stadia. Cloud gaming services can only get around this by offering their games through a web app, just like Facebook has already done.“Apple will need to change its rules or grant Netflix an exemption”According to Gurman’s latest Power On... Continue reading…

Forza Horizon 4 will add sign language interpreters to cut scenes in a post-launch update | Playground Games The developers of Forza Horizon 5 are planning to add on-screen sign language interpreters who would appear in a picture-in-picture display during the game’s cutscenes. The feature won’t be available when the game launches worldwide on November 9th, but Playground Games creative director Mike Brown wrote in a blog post on Xbox Wire that it would be “coming soon.”“We’re constantly listening to the community to make Forza Horizon 5 an inclusive experience for everyone to enjoy,” Brown said in a blog post on Xbox Wire. “With this in mind, the team is excited to share we are also working on American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL) support for cinematics in Forza Horizon 5.” He didn’t offer an exact release date for the... Continue reading…

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge A little over two years ago when Rivian’s all-electric vehicles were still just blueprints, American carmakers Ford and GM were itching to invest. Fast-forward to the present, and Ford wound up becoming one of Rivian’s biggest partners alongside Amazon. What most people may not realize, however, is that Ford nearly lost its spot to GM.This Wall Street Journal report describes some of the clandestine dealings in cinematic detail, and explores how Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe’s bond with Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s former president of global operations, became the foundation of Ford’s investment in the company.According to the WSJ, Hinrichs first met with Scaringe in 2018. But because Ford had just missed its earnings targets, it wasn’t ready to... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix For years, fans have been wondering just when the heck League of Legends developer Riot would make an animated series. It seemed inevitable. The studio previously created stunning animated shorts to promote everything from new characters to esports tournaments. And with an increasing focus on expanding League’s storytelling — something that’s tough to do within the confines of a team-based strategy game — a show made a whole lot of sense. Now, it’s real, with a nine-episode series called Arcane. The best part: not only is it a lot of fun, but you don’t have to know anything about League to get into it.Arcane is set (mostly) in a city called Piltover early on, which is on the verge of a big change that could impact the entirety of the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Evidence is mounting that WhatsApp may be working on a Communities feature. XDA Developers first spotted the possibility in October, but now WABetaInfo has come forward with similar findings.According to WABetaInfo, the Communities feature appears to give group admins more power over groups. This includes the ability to create groups within groups, which may be similar to how channels are arranged beneath an umbrella Discord community. Photo by WABetaInfo Admins may be able to invite new users via a Community Invite Link and then start messaging other members. It’s hard to tell how exactly these chats might look right now, but WABetaInfo notes that they appear to be end-to-end encrypted.It also looks like a subtle... Continue reading…

More leaked documents suggest Facebook is aware of its problems | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook’s own internal research found 1 in 8 of its users reported compulsive social media use that interfered with their sleep, work, and relationships— what the social media platform calls “problematic use” but is more commonly known as “internet addiction,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The social media platform had a team focused on user well-being, which suggested ways to curb problematic use, some of which were put into place. But the company shut down the team in 2019, according to the WSJ.Pratiti Raychoudhury, a vice president of research for Meta, Facebook’s new parent company, writes in a blog post that the WSJ misrepresented the research (a claim the company has made about some of the other articles the WSJ has... Continue reading…

New vaccine rules have been frozen by an appeals court | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A federal appeals court on Saturday issued a stay against the Biden administration’s vaccine rules for US companies. The new rule announced Thursday requires workers at businesses with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, or submit to weekly testing. The rule requires affected companies to provide paid time for employees to get vaccinated, and to ensure any unvaccinated employees wear face masks while at work. The deadline for meeting the provisions is January 4th, 2022.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton petitioned for an emergency stay of the rule, which was to be enforced by the Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The petition was joined by attorneys general from Louisiana,... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge As if the chip shortage didn’t make it hard enough to get our hands on graphics cards, criminals are making it a heck of a lot worse. According to a forum post by EVGA product manager Jacob Freeman, thieves made off with a whole truckload of EVGA RTX 30-Series graphics cards. The graphic cards were in transit from San Francisco to EVGA’s southern California distribution center at the time of the theft, and it remains unclear how many cards were affected.“If a user does end up acquiring a stolen card, we will address [it] on a case by case basis”If you think you may have a card that was involved in this theft, you can find out by entering your card’s serial number on EVGA’s warranty status page. You can also check by attempting to... Continue reading…

Eleven is back for Season 4 of Netflix’s Stranger Things series | Netflix Netflix tweeted Saturday that Stranger Things 4 will premiere in the summer of 2022. While not a precise release date, it’s at least something for fans of Netflix’s flagship supernatural series, who have waited through months of delays and a seemingly endless parade of mysterious teasers.A new teaser dropped Saturday as well, showing Eleven in California, adjusting to her new life and school. She writes in a letter to Mike that everything is great (even though we see her classmates being mean to her), and says she can’t wait for spring break. But of course, our girl can’t have anything nice last for too long; after a fade to black, we get some eerie music under shots of a roller rink and Eleven looking afraid, along with helicopters,... Continue reading…

Google When Google released the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, it boasted about the devices’ fast-charging capabilities. Plugging a Pixel 6 series device into its $25 30W Fast Charger — which isn’t even included in the box — is supposed to take full advantage of the phone’s fast charging speed, juicing it up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes. We all can agree that this is an impressive spec, but unfortunately, it may not be totally realistic.Android Authority put the Pixel 6’s fast charging speed to the test, and its findings suggest that Google’s spec sheet is misleading. After trying out the 30W charger with the Pixel 6, Android Authority found that the Pixel 6 doesn’t fully harness the power of the charger — instead, it only hits a maximum... Continue reading…

Jack in the Box is suing a crypto exchange it says copied its longtime mascot. Left is Moon Man, right is Jack. Restaurant chain Jack in the Box says it is suing cryptocurrency exchange FTX because it “brazenly and illegally copied or derived its ‘Moon Man’ mascot” from its established Jack mascot, and is doing damage to the Jack in the Box brand.In a lawsuit filed in federal court in the Northern District of California this week, Jack in the Box claims that FTX’s Moon Man character, aka Lou Nar, “has a spherical white head also affixed to a talking human actor, with blue-dotted eyes, a nose, and a smile,” which is “strikingly similar to Jack. Both change their facial expressions and clothing throughout ads and appearances,” the suit maintains. Moon Man, however, is a “far inferior version” of Jack, the restaurant chain argues, and is ... Continue reading…

Every year, one of the highlights of the League of Legends World Championship is the opening ceremonies. It’s been a regular chance for developer Riot to create a real-world spectacle ahead of the big game. In the past that’s meant everything from holographic musical performances to an appearance from an augmented reality K-pop group. In 2021, though, things went in a different direction.Without an audience in attendance due to COVID-19 restrictions, Riot instead went with a pre-produced series of music videos that featured gigantic real-world sets spliced with moments from the upcoming Arcane animated series. It may not have been a live performance, but it was still impressive. “This is really what feature films do, what Marvel does,”... Continue reading…

It delivers the 4K future I’ve been waiting for, but it came at a weird time Continue reading…

You can now buy an AirTag Loop for $24 from Amazon. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge iPhone owners planning on traveling or making lots of plans this holiday season may find today’s AirTag Loop deal useful. Right now at Amazon, you can buy the handy loop made specifically to carry Apple’s ultrawideband-capable Bluetooth tracker at an all-time low price of around $24 instead of $29. This deal is valid on the orange or deep navy colorways.Other colors are also on sale, but are selling for a little more. You can pick up the white or yellow variants for $26, for example. Given that AirTags lack a lanyard hole of their own (a very Apple move), you’ll need a loop to securely attach them to backpacks, keys, and other items. So, while you might be buying one a little begrudgingly, but you’ll probably be happy you have it.N... Continue reading…

Stranger Things 4 has gotten yet another mysterious teaser trailer, the latest in a series of clips promoting the upcoming fourth series of Netflix’s flagship supernatural drama.We open with a voiceover of Eleven writing a letter to Mike, looking forward to spring break when she gets to see him again. She describes how much she likes school and has made lots of friends (even though we actually see other kids being mean to her). We then get a few quick cuts of a roller rink, Eleven watching skaters and looking upset with some creepy music playing, someone shooting through windows, Joyce looking at a creepy doll, government thugs restraining Eleven, helicopters, explosions, and a dial being turned up (but we cut away before we can see if... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple hasn’t been all that vocal about its electric car project, but according to Bloomberg, the iPhone maker is hiring Tesla’s Autopilot software engineer to work on its EVs. Sources close to the matter told Bloomberg that Apple scooped up Christopher “CJ” Moore to work on its self-driving software. He’ll report to Stuart Bowers, another Tesla ex-pat who previously served as the vice president of engineering.During his time at Tesla, Moore stirred up controversy for calling CEO Elon Musk’s “full self-driving” claims exaggerated. In January, Musk stated that he was “highly confident the car will be able to drive itself with reliability in excess of human this year.” The full self-driving software, currently in beta, does not make a... Continue reading…

The Dreamverse gallery. New York City has been filled with NFTs this week. Since Monday, hundreds, if not thousands, of people have darted between talks, galleries, hangouts, parties, and other events assembled for and by the usually all-online NFT community to talk about the future of art, hype the space, and discover new and potentially soon-to-be-explosive projects. The result has been an exceptional number of hours spent in Times Square, one surprise Strokes concert, and a lot of dudes wearing crypto merch.Capping it all off was a two-part event on Thursday called Dreamverse, hosted at the expansive music venue Terminal 5. The venue is tucked in between the car dealerships and wedding dress shops that inexplicably line the western edge of Manhattan beneath... Continue reading…

The Honeywell Home T9 smart thermostat will now work with Siri and Apple HomeKit. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge The Honeywell Home T9, Resideo’s first consumer thermostat to support remote temperature sensors, has finally brought a long-promised feature to its users: HomeKit.The brand, which is licensed by Resideo and spun out of Honeywell in 2018, already has support for Apple’s smart home system in its T5 thermostat, also known as Lyric T5, but that device doesn’t have external sensors. Sensors can help make sure you’re comfortable in the room you’re in, rather than just maintaining the desired temperature where the thermostat is.As Verge editor Dan Seifert wrote in his review of the Honeywell T9, its sensors are very good and able to measure humidity in addition to temperature, something neither Nest nor Ecobee’s remote sensors can do. They... Continue reading…

The new Turnip Tracker isn’t showing today’s price. Nintendo quietly added a turnip price tracker for Animal Crossing: New Horizons to the Nintendo Switch Online app, but it’s not as useful as I was hoping. Disappointingly, the tracker doesn’t show the current turnip price on your island. Instead, it lists historical prices over the past week.To see the tracker, which is cleverly dubbed the Turnip Tracker, you’ll need to be a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. If you are, open the Nintendo Switch Online app, tap the Animal Crossing: New Horizons icon, tap the “Island Newspaper” on the list of NookLink apps, and scroll down to the bottom.Below is an image of what the tracker looks like on my iPhone 12 Mini, taken as I was writing this article. You can see it’s missing the current price... Continue reading…

Moment has a whole ecosystem of accessories that will now work with the Pixel 6, thanks to its new M(force) case. | Moment Your dangerously slippery Pixel 6 or 6 Pro just arrived, and you’re scrambling to find an available case that will protect your new baby. Whether you are a MagSafe-curious Pixel owner or recently ditched your iPhone for the Pixel but have some MagSafe accessories you don’t want to waste, Moment’s (M)Force case for Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro could be the bridge to more platform agnostic mobile accessories.As a mobile accessory maker, Moment embraces the idea that its ecosystem of lenses and mounts for content creators should be compatible with different phone brands and models. After all, each case is compatible with Moment’s catalog of accessories that shares the same mount design — just like the way camera lenses work with various camera... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The FBI is warning people of a new breed of scam involving cryptocurrency ATMs. A con artist convinces a person to put cash into a cryptocurrency ATM and send the purchased coins to the scammer using an address stored in a QR code (via CoinDesk). While the actual scamming is relatively low-tech, it’s an interesting misuse of technology and shows how criminals are using crypto to “improve” on old methods.As the agency describes it, the scammer will contact their victim and somehow convince them that they need to send money, either with promises of love, further riches, or by impersonating an actual institution like a bank or utility company. After the mark is convinced, the scammer will have them get cash (sometimes out of investment or... Continue reading…

Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge Google has quietly removed its “Your News Update” feature from Assistant, axing the algorithmically personalized audio digest in favor of the company’s existing (and more traditional) news briefings, as spotted by 9to5Google.Originally launched in 2019, Your News Update was an attempt at bringing the same kinds of algorithmic feeds that had been so successful on Facebook or other areas of Google’s products to audio news.Instead of users picking their three specific new sources (like NPR, The New York Times, or CNN), Your News Update would rely on Google’s wealth of personal data to offer far more specific and relevant news updates from a broad range of partners that Google was licensing news from.As The Verge’s Dieter Bohn pointed... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Since macOS Monterey was released, there have been several Apple users who said that installing the update bricked their computers. It was unclear what might have caused the issue until today, as Rene Ritchie reports, he has received this statement from Apple citing an issue with the firmware of its T2 security chip (via 9to5Mac).

Microsoft just launched the affordable Surface Go 3, but maybe it will reveal new hardware at an education-focused event on Tuesday. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Microsoft is hosting an event next week focused on education technology. It’s taking place November 9th at 12PM ET.Details are light, but here’s Microsoft’s description of the event:

Collector containers at the ‘Orca’ direct air capture and storage facility, operated by Climeworks AG, in Hellisheidi, Iceland, on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021. Startups Climeworks and Carbfix are working together to store carbon dioxide removed from the air deep underground to reverse some of the damage CO2 emissions are doing to the planet. | Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg via Getty Images Despite the efforts of delegates at this month’s climate summit in Glasgow, the world is still careening toward potentially catastrophic levels of global warming. Now, some countries and corporations are turning to new technologies to pull carbon out of the air.Today, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced a bold new plan to make those technologies, called carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, cost-effective and scalable with the launch of a new “Carbon Negative Shot” initiative. Through this initiative, the agency seeks to bring the cost of CDR down dramatically this decade — to less than $100 a ton — so that it can be deployed at a big enough scale to remove “gigatons,” or billions of tons, of carbon dioxide from the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update 3:50PM ET, November 5th: Walmart’s restock of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles came and went in about 40 minutes, which seems to be par for the course these days. We saw its newer queue system at play, and while the first 20 minutes seemed to count down correctly, we noticed that the queue began to hang and slow down if it did not drop entirely. While many folks have probably seen the “We are having technical issues” message that spells certain doom, hopefully some lucky ones landed their console of choice. We will continue looking out for more console restocks to give you advance notice whenever possible.It’s November, and the holiday shopping season is well upon us. Early Black Friday deals have already begun, and... Continue reading…

Microsoft has fixed several Windows 11 features failing to load after an expired certificate was discovered earlier this week. Some Windows 11 users haven’t been able to open apps like the Snipping Tool, touch keyboard, or emoji panel since a certificate expired on October 31st. Microsoft warned Windows 11 users about the problems earlier this week and has now released an out-of-band update today.The issues also affected voice typing and the getting started and tips sections of Windows 11. Microsoft started testing a patch for the problems with Beta and Release Preview testers of Windows 11 late yesterday and has now released the fix for all Windows 11 users today.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been surprised by Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I played the Nintendo Switch game regularly for the first year it was out, checking in virtually every day to see how my village was progressing. I experienced every holiday and special event and spent my evenings catching fish and tending to my gardens before bed. But, despite a handful of updates, I eventually got bored. There’s only so many sea bass you can catch before it becomes monotonous. I haven’t touched the game in eight months (as my villagers have been quick to point out), but the latest, biggest, and final update has really sucked me back into island life.Perhaps the most surprising part of this is that I haven’t even experienced the most... Continue reading…

This is the OLED Switch, not Nintendo’s next console. | Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge The Nintendo Switch with an OLED screen isn’t even a month old, but the company is already talking about some kind of successor to its wildly popular console / handheld hybrid — although vaguely.In a presentation to investors, Nintendo hints toward some of its plans in an extremely unspecific way. The company plans to “continue to expand its business around the core concept of creating unique integrated hardware-software products,” which I’m taking to mean that the company will (brace yourself) make more video games and video game hardware in the future.On the slide, which you can see for yourself on page 41 here (PDF), Nintendo also has a timeline of some of its hardware efforts and specifically includes its “next gaming system”... Continue reading…

There’s a lot to like about this intergenerational calling device, but Amazon is a bit bossy Continue reading…

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into struggling electric vehicle startup Workhorse, according to The Wall Street Journal. The probe is reportedly being led by the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which often investigates financial crimes.Workhorse is already part of an investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission that first came to light in September, when short-selling research firm Fuzzy Panda released a report accusing the EV startup of fraud. It’s the third EV startup under investigation from both agencies, following Nikola (whose founder was indicted on fraud charges earlier this year) and Lordstown Motors (which Workhorse has deep ties, too). Both of those startups came... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft 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 Vergecast, The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex Cranz, and Tom Warren discuss Microsoft’s take on the metaverse at the Ignite event this past week.In the next segment, Verge editor Chris Welch joins the show to discuss his review of the Beats Fit Pro and how they may have the AirPods Pro beat.In segment three, the crew discusses Apple senior vice president Craig Federighi’s speech at Web Summit 2021, where he spoke out against the European Commission’s proposed Digital Markets Act, which, if passed, would allow... Continue reading…