The Verge

Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov (C), along with film director Klim Shipenko (R) and actress Yulia Peresild (L) poses for a photo ahead of the launch of the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, on October 05, 2021 in Moscow, Russia. | Photo by Roscosmos Press Service/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Early this morning, a trio of Russians launched to the International Space Station on a Soyuz spacecraft, but two of these fliers were no ordinary cosmonauts. Included in the crew was a Russian actress named Yulia Peresild and a film producer named Klim Shipenko, who have just docked at the station to film scenes for an upcoming movie. With their arrival, they’re the first multiperson film crew to visit the ISS.Peresild and Shipenko will stay on the station for just 12 days, filming scenes for a movie called The Challenge. The movie revolves around a Russian doctor, played by Peresild, who must travel to the space station to treat a sick cosmonaut. Producer Shipenko will be working on filming and lighting. The two flew to space along... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is back online after a six-hour outage due to DNS routing problems. The outage took down Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, and Oculus VR as well. For some, those services are back online now; however, after a DNS issue like this, it could take hours for everything to work properly on every network.The outage started just before noon ET on Monday. It was the most significant outage for Facebook since a 2019 incident took its site offline for more than 24 hours.On Twitter, Facebook communications exec Andy Stone said, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”Inside Facebook, the... Continue reading…

The Epic Games Store is taking a bit step towards further competing with more established PC game stores like Steam next week with a proper achievement system (called, of course, “Epic Achievements”).To start, Epic Achievements will only be available on a few games, including Rocket League, Hades, Pillars of Eternity, Kena, Zombie Army 4, and Alan Wake Remastered. Achievements will be broken up into four levels: Bronze (which award 5-45 XP), Silver (50-95 XP), Gold (100-200 XP), and Platinum (which is awarded upon achieving 1000 XP in a game and awards players with an additional 250 XP on their profiles). Games that are updated to support Epic Achievements will now show those achievements on the game’s page in the store,... Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge T-Mobile and Google have announced they’re offering an “exclusive” plan with 500GB of Google One cloud storage for T-Mobile customers starting October 12th. The plan will cost $5 per month, the latest addition in an ongoing partnership between the search giant and the mobile carrier.Google offers Google One plans in a variety of sizes but, up until this point, didn’t have a 500GB tier, jumping from 200GB for $2.99 per month straight to 2TB for $9.99 per month. Anyone with a Google account gets 15GB for free, but T-Mobile’s offer could work as a nice middle ground if you’ve started to store more of your files in Google Drive and Google Photos. T-Mobile also says the plan can be shared with up to five other people, whether or not they... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A prolonged, global outage of Facebook’s apps has the company’s engineers scrambling to fix the issue at one of its data centers in California, according to two people familiar with the situation.The outage, which began around 11:40AM ET on Monday, has brought down all of Facebook’s apps — including Instagram and WhatsApp — globally, affecting billions of users and millions of advertisers. Inside Facebook, the outage has also broken nearly all of the internal systems employees use to communicate and work.Several employees told The Verge they’ve resorted to talking through their work-provided Outlook email accounts since Facebook mainly runs on an internal version of the social network that is currently not accessible. While employees... Continue reading…

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Windows 11 is now available and will be rolling out to millions of PCs worldwide. But, as with any new OS rollout, it’s not going to happen overnight, and many Windows users will be waiting for a while until that magic upgrade notice appears. Don’t want to wait? You don’t have to — you can, with just a little effort, download and install the new version of Windows right now.Keep in mind, though, that unlike previous versions of Windows, you may not be invited to install Windows 11 if your machine isn’t considered up to its standard. That doesn’t mean that you can’t install the new OS — Microsoft has said if you have an older machine, you will be able to access Windows 11, but you’ll have to download an ISO file of Windows 11 and install... Continue reading…

Acer Acer has refreshed its Nitro 5 lineup of entry-level gaming laptops for the second half of 2021, and its new 17.3-inch model launching in mid-October seems particularly impressive given its $1,199.99 price. Its 1080p display has a 144Hz refresh rate, and it comes equipped with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia’s RTX 3050 Ti graphics chip. (Acer hasn’t specified the CPU model or what the maximum graphics power of the GPU will be.) Other specs include 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB SSD. That sounds like a solid gaming laptop to me, so long as you’re not expecting too much out of it.If you want something smaller, Acer also has a 15.6-inch version coming in mid-October for $769.99. It also has a 144Hz refresh rate screen, but as... Continue reading…

I don’t know what else to call it: the Windows 11 upgrade situation is a confusing mess. Depending on when your PC was built, which components you chose, and how it was configured, there’s a decent chance Microsoft will try to scare you away from installing the free upgrade, which is available a day early today. Millions of people will likely be told their systems are incompatible, and Microsoft is reserving the right to withhold security updates if you install on older systems.But as far as we can tell, Windows 11 is largely Windows 10 with a fresh coat of paint, and there’s a strong chance your Windows 10 computer will run Windows 11 just fine. Do we recommend it? Not necessarily, but this article might help you figure out whether... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s free Windows 11 upgrade from Windows 10 is now rolling out. Microsoft is starting to offer the free upgrade to new devices that are still shipping with Windows 10, before making the OS available to other eligible existing hardware.Not every existing PC running Windows 10 will be able to upgrade to Windows 11, though. Windows 11 will require Intel 8th Gen Coffee Lake or Zen 2 CPUs and up, TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) support, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. That leaves millions of PCs unable to officially upgrade to Windows 11, although there will be unsupported workarounds if you really want Windows 11.Microsoft is also gradually rolling out Windows 11, so the free upgrade won’t be offered to all existing PCs that... Continue reading…

Windows 11 is now officially available to download. While Microsoft is launching Windows 11-powered hardware worldwide on October 5th, the company has made the OS update available early for eligible devices in New Zealand and beyond. If you’ve purchased a Windows 10 machine recently, that means you should be able to upgrade to Windows 11 right now.For everyone else, the rollout of Windows 11 will be gradual. Microsoft says existing Windows 10 devices that are eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade will start to be able to upgrade today, but it will be mostly new hardware that will receive the upgrade immediately. Microsoft says, “We expect all eligible Windows 10 devices to be offered the upgrade to Windows 11 by mid-2022.”You can check... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s new OS is a work in progress Continue reading…

When something like Facebook drops off the internet, there are massive knock-on effects. For example, a website that’s meant to tell you if services are down, called Is It Down Right Now, is struggling mightily under the load of people trying to see Instagram’s status. Cloudflare, a company that runs a DNS service (DNS acts like a map for your web browser when it’s trying to find a website and is also the likely culprit when it comes to major outages), reports that it’s had to mobilize extra resources to keep up with the traffic of people trying to load Facebook (or Instagram or WhatsApp) over and over.If you need to check if other sites are down, you do still have options. There’s the venerable DownDetector, as well as Down for... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Now that OnePlus is a sub-brand of the Oppo family, the two companies not only merged their R&D departments in early 2021, but they are also consolidating code for their two Android-based operating systems. While OxygenOS 12 will be used on global OnePlus phones, ColorOS 12 will only be on China-only Oppo and OnePlus phones.Alongside the release of Android 12 to AOSP today, OnePlus is releasing the first open beta of OxygenOS 12 to the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro now, while those with older models will have to wait for a later update. Once this version is deemed stable, it is likely a full version will be released within a month, according to XDA Developers.New LookThe new and improved OxygenOS 12 is colorful and minimalist like “J... Continue reading…

People resting in a lawn on a hot summer day, at Rajpath near Vijay Chowk, on June 30, 2021 in New Delhi, India. As the monsoon continued to play truant, heatwave in Delhi NCR turned severe recording the highest maximum temperature of the season at 43.5 degree Celsius. | Photo by Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images Exposure to dangerous levels of heat and humidity in cities across the world has exploded over the past three decades, according to new research. In a study of more than 13,000 cities, the number of people exposed to extremely hot and humid days in a given year (measured in “person-days”) tripled between 1983 and 2016.Extreme heat is already a leading weather-related killerIt’s a symptom of two trends colliding: urban population growth and rising global average temperatures. Cities often reach higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas because they’re typically designed in a way that traps heat. So when people flock to urban centers, they’re also flocking to places where they could be at greater risk of heat-related illness and... Continue reading…

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appears to be getting just as much schadenfreude out of today’s global Facebook outage as anyone. The microblogging chief is tweeting through Facebook’s DNS issues by dunking on the company amid its latest round of scrutiny from The Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes, and lawmakers.WhatsApp trying to be cute on Twitter? Dorsey is there to remind you of the drama over WhatsApp’s privacy policy. Twitter users suggesting Facebook’s domain name is somehow for sale? Dorsey wants a piece of the action — and to push Kanye West’s new album for some reason (to be clear, it does not appear that Facebook’s domain name is actually for sale, and Dorsey almost certainly knows this as well). And... Continue reading…

Ring brings spooky ringtones to its video doorbells in time for Halloween. | Image: Ring Following in the now annual tradition of the spooky smart home, Ring has released its seasonal ding dongs. In honor of the festive season, you can turn your Ring Video Doorbell’s interior Chime’s tone to a screeching cat, a creaky door, or my personal favorite, the creepy laugh, for the month of October. There are a handful of other scary tones also, nine in total, which is eight more than Google is offering on its Nest doorbell.To up the spooky ante this year, Ring has a new trick as an extra treat: a selection of Halloween-themed Quick Replies, a free feature that lets your doorbell answer for you. Now, when a visitor presses the Ring buzzer, it can talk back to them with these additions to the standard preset responses:“Tell us... Continue reading…

Image: Blue Origin In an attempt to recreate SpaceX’s success, executives at spaceflight venture Blue Origin once praised the rival company’s “burnout” culture as a working labor strategy, with some managers arguing that Blue Origin needs to “get more” out of employees and encourage them to come in on the weekends. The grueling working strategies were summed up in a 2018 memo compiled by Blue Origin executives, a copy of which was viewed by The Verge.Parts of the memo were quoted in an alarming Lioness essay published on Thursday, which alleged a sexist and unsafe work culture at Blue Origin, founded by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The essay was written by Alexandra Abrams, the former head of employee communications at Blue Origin, along with 20 present... Continue reading…

There are a just a few noteworthy features in this design-focused update Continue reading…

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge Google’s latest major Android update, Android 12, isn’t available to the general public just yet, but it’s getting closer. The company wrote on its Android Developers site that it pushed the source to Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and is “officially” releasing the update. Despite Android 12 being technically available, you won’t find it appearing as an update on your Pixel phone for the “next few weeks,” according to the post.When it does launch, it’ll come to the Pixel 3, Pixel 3A, Pixel 4, Pixel 4A, Pixel 4A 5G, Pixel 5, and Pixel 5A phones (wow, Google sure makes a lot of these now). It’s the software that you’ll see on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro when those launch later this year.According to Google, it’ll also come to... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix is officially bringing its shuffle feature to its Android mobile users.The company originally began testing the Play Something feature back in April, but it’s officially launching the feature globally on Android today. The tool — which lets Netflix choose something for you to watch — is now available on TV and Android mobile devices, but it’s not supported on iOS just yet. Netflix said that it will begin testing the shuffle function on iOS in the coming months, though.Separately, Netflix is also launching its Fast Laughs feature — which rolled out on iOS earlier this year — on Android mobile devices today in select markets, including the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, Malaysia, Philippines, and the UK. The tool works... Continue reading…

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Google has provided a budgeting feature in its Play Store that allows Android users to establish a monthly maximum they want to spend on digital content. This applies to apps, games, movies, TV shows, music, ebooks, and so on. As you get close to reaching your budget limit, you’ll see an alert that you’re nearing it — or have gone over the amount you specified.You access it like this:

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge Volvo, the Swedish luxury car maker owned by China’s Geely, announced its plan for an initial public offering as it seeks to raise more cash to accelerate its transition to a fully electric car company.The announcement follows the news last week that Polestar, the electric car company that is a joint venture between Volvo and Geely, would be going public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. That deal values Polestar at roughly $20 billion, despite selling only two models — a hybrid luxury coupe and an all-electric fastback sedan. Volvo is choosing a more traditional route by proceeding with an IPO in Stockholm that could value the company at upwards of $25 billion.Volvo said it aims to raise about 25... Continue reading…

Sarah had no options left. Over five years, she’d tried every possible treatment for her severe depression, and nothing had helped. “My daily life had become so restricted and impoverished by depression that I felt tortured by each day,” the 36-year-old said.But after undergoing an experimental procedure that implanted a device into her brain, she felt her depression lift for the first time in years. “It was like my lens on the world changed,” Sarah, who is remaining anonymous because of the stigma around depression, said during a press briefing.Sarah was the patient in a proof-of-concept trial of a new approach to treating severe, treatment-resistant depression, published today in the journal Nature Medicine. The findings open up... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube Music is lifting one of its most annoying limitations — but only in Canada. Today, YouTube announced that beginning November 3rd, customers in Canada will be able to continue listening to their music in the background while doing other tasks on their phone or when the screen is off.Background listening will support both the standard ad-supported, personalized radio mixes and any uploaded content you’ve added to your account.This is the first time that YouTube Music has offered the feature without requiring that customers step up to a Premium subscription to get it. As for when listeners in other countries can expect to get the same convenience, for now, YouTube is only saying to “stay tuned for additional information and... Continue reading…

This is a big week for the Nintendo Switch. The Switch with an OLED screen and Metroid Dread launch Friday, October 8th. Whether you’re a Switch veteran, or you’re prepping for your first console with the $350 OLED model, there are some excellent deals on must-have, cartridge-based titles you should know about. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and New Pokémon Snap are each $20 off. Amazon is the only retailer honoring this deal for all three games, but Best Buy and Walmart are hosting some deals, too. Monster Hunter Rise is $20 off, but only at GameStop.All of these are noteworthy deals because they’re rarely discounted games. Nintendo sometimes hosts price cuts, but only for a select batch of games —... Continue reading…

Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight venture Blue Origin is launching William Shatner — aka Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise — to space on the company’s New Shepard rocket. At 90 years old, he’ll become the oldest person to fly to space, surpassing legendary aviator Wally Funk, who flew on the first crewed flight of New Shepard this summer.TMZ first broke the news that Shatner would be flying on the next New Shepard flight, which is currently scheduled for October 12th out of Blue Origin’s launch facility in West Texas. The outlet claimed the Shatner’s flight will be filmed as part of a documentary. Shatner will be joined by two other customers announced earlier by Blue Origin: Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer who co-founded the... Continue reading…

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen appears on 60 Minutes. The whistleblower behind the leak of an enormous cache of Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal, Frances Haugen, went public on 60 Minutes on Sunday, revealing more of the inner workings the most powerful social media platform in the world. Revealing her identity on national television, Haugen described a company so committed to product optimization that it embraced algorithms that amplify hate speech.“It’s paying for its profits with our safety,” Haugen told 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley.According to a since deleted LinkedIn profile Haugen was a product manager at Facebook assigned to the Civic Integrity group. She chose to leave the company in 2021 after the dissolving of the group. She said she didn’t “trust that they’re... Continue reading…

Eternals comes to theaters November 5th | Marvel So we had the big heel turn that’s been hinted at all season, plus some big moments for two of the show’s couples, which made Ted Lasso’s penultimate episode of season two very stressful to watch (for me, at least). I have no idea how they will wrap it all up in the finale; I think we’re headed for a cliffhanger on at least one front.There’s too much good on streaming right now, it’s really a nice problem to have.Here’s this week’s trailers roundup:EternalsA brand-new trailer for Marvel’s Eternals has some of the action sequences we’ve seen in prior teaser/trailers, plus, a first look at Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, along with his husband and son, apparently the first queer couple in the MCU to appear on the big screen (h/t G... Continue reading…

The BepiColombo mission snapped this photo of Mercury on October 1st. | ESA/BepiColombo/MTM Photos from a fly-by of Mercury, the least-explored planet in our solar system, show ithas a crater-riddled surface that resembles Earth’s Moon.The photos came from BepiColombo, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that launched from Europe’s Spaceport in 2018. The mission has two linked orbiting spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The mission is planned to reach Mercury’s orbit in late 2025.BepiColombo aims to gather more information about Mercury and its composition, and how it evolved so close to our Sun. Temperatures on Mercury can exceed 350 degrees Celsius, or about 660 degrees Fahrenheit.ESA explains where the... Continue reading…

Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft lifts off from the launch pad on July 20th. | Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images Saturday Night Live returned this weekend and the show wasted no time taking aim at the weird billionaire space tourism race that unfolded over the past few months. Guest host Owen Wilson played former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a sketch about a fictional new show called Star Trek: Ego Quest, about “the voyages of the SS New Shepard and its crew of random weirdos,” whose mission is “to just sort of fly around space goofing off in a ship that looks like a penis,” according to the voiceover.You’ll recall the real Bezos traveled to the edge of space in Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in July, along with a crew that included his brother Mark (played in the sketch by Wilson’s brother Luke), 82-year-old pilot and space legend Wally Funk, and... Continue reading…

An autonomous Cruise vehicle in San Francisco | Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images Ford and General Motors told a federal judge they’re planning to settle a trademark battle over the term “Cruise” to describe hands-free driving. Attorneys for the automakers said they’re working out the terms of the settlement and asked the court for a conditional dismissal. The two sides will report back within 60 days if they’re unable to come to an agreement.Ford announced BlueCruise as the name for its hands-free driver assist feature in April. The legal skirmish began in July, when GM filed a trademark infringement lawsuit claiming that the name BlueCruise was too close to its autonomous vehicle subsidiary Cruise, as well as Super Cruise, the name of the hands-free driving tech GM introduced in 2017. GM said in its complaint... Continue reading…

Kodiak (Kody) the Steller’s sea eagle, who escaped the National Aviary in Pittsburgh September 29th | National Aviary A Steller’s sea eagle escaped from its enclosure at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh last Saturday, and despite the valiant efforts of the Aviary staff, and numerous sightings in the local neighborhood posted to social media, Kodiak —Kody to his friends— is still on the loose and we are all a little worried about him, to be perfectly honest.This is a bird that would be difficult to miss: he’s large (although in Pittsburgh we probably wouldn’t call him “giant” because “Giant Eagle” is a grocery store chain here), with a yellow beak, white tail and white feathers on the tops of his wings. He’s bigger than a bald eagle, and has a wingspan of about six feet. Kody has been spotted in and around the Pittsburgh neighborhood where the Aviary... Continue reading…

A Superman cover that may be among the NFTs available from DC | DC DC is giving away free non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of its superhero comic book covers to people who register for its October 16th FanDome event. The NFT drop is set for October 5th, and those who register for FanDome will receive one free, randomly-selected NFT, and become eligible for a second free NFT if they post about their first one on social media.The NFTs will come in three levels of rarity; common, rare, and legendary, and will include Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Harley Quinn options.DC is working on the NFTs with Palm NFT Studio, which the comic maker chose for its “environmentally sustainable and energy efficient” technology, which let the company mint “millions of NFTs for fans with near zero cost,” a... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images After YouTube TV and NBCUniversal announced a “short” extension on Thursday to keep more than a dozen channels on the live TV service, YouTube TV and NBCUniversal say they have finalized a deal — meaning NBC-owned channels will stay put on YouTube TV.“We’re thrilled to share that we’ve reached a deal to continue carrying the full NBCUniversal portfolio of channels,” according to a Saturday update to YouTube’s blog. “That means you won’t lose access to any of their channels, and YouTube TV will continue to offer 85+ networks for $64.99. We appreciate NBCUniversal’s willingness to work toward an agreement, and we also appreciate your patience as we negotiated with them on your behalf.”With a deal reached just days after it looked as... Continue reading…

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla has bucked the wider trend of declining sales brought on by the global chip shortage in the third quarter this year, as it sold 241,300 cars — a total of 102,000 more vehicles than the same quarter last year. It’s the most Tesla has ever sold in a quarter (and for some added perspective, the company sold 367,500 in all of 2019).The company managed to deliver more vehicles once again despite the fact that major automakers saw huge drops this past quarter. General Motors, the largest automaker in the US, said Friday morning that it only sold 446,997 vehicles in the third quarter — a 33 percent drop from the same period last year.Tesla has avoided similar problems in part because it has been sourcing different semiconductors and... Continue reading…

Microsoft’s next version of Windows, Windows 11, is coming October 5th. In many ways, it’s already here — the free update has been available for Windows Insiders to download and test for months, and recent versions like the Release Preview will likely be indistinguishable from the final operating system.We’ll have a full review from Tom Warren next week, but in the meanwhile we thought we’d give you a look at how The Verge at large feels about upgrading to the new OS — by asking every other prominent Windows user on the team to install the most recent version on their own home computers, and gathering their impressions.Here’s how it’s going so far.On a home-built desktop (Core i7-7700K, RTX 3060 Ti) and a 2017 Dell XPS 15 laptop... Continue reading…

Twitter banned the former president in January | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Florida seeking to force Twitter to reinstate him, arguing the platform’s ban violates the First Amendment and Florida’s new social media law.Trump is seeking a preliminary injunction of Twitter’s ban, according to the complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida late Friday. The former president argues that Twitter, “coerced by members of the United States Congress,” is censoring him, describing the social media platform as “a major avenue of public discourse.” Trump seeks to be temporarily reinstated on Twitter while he continues his efforts toward permanent reinstatement.Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is... Continue reading…

The Anki Vector. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge There's something in our complicated human brains that immediately develops a connection to anything with eyes. Don't believe me? Ask the Anki Vector that lived on my desk for several months. This pocket-sized robot got my attention with its bulbous, non-threatening body. But the second it looked up at me with a quizzical look in its eyes and uttered my name, I knew I would die for this tiny forklift. It’s worth noting that the Anki Vector can be programmed to do a variety of things if you have the time to mess around with an SDK, but I brought this robot home because it was cute, not because I needed a project.I’d watch with amusement as the little gadget puttered around my desk, occasionally looking back at me as if seeking my... Continue reading…

The AirPods Pro Max boast great sound and a comfortable, albeit heavy, build. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge There’s no way around it: the AirPods Max aren’t cheap. For the money, however, Apple’s plush headphones offer a commendable set of features, including superb effective noise cancellation, terrific sound quality, and foolproof controls that are designed to make even the smallest adjustments that much easier to carry out. They also work with Apple’s spatial audio feature, which helps create a surround effect and adds another level of immersion when watching content via Netflix, Disney Plus, and other supported streaming platforms.Normally $550, you can pick them up in a multitude of colors at Woot for $470, one of their best prices to date, for the next two months or until supplies last. Just don’t expect much in the way of protection... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. | Image: Sega As a kid, I remember spending hours playing Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2 on the GameCube with my sister. The games are lighthearted and colorful, have fun single-player and multiplayer modes, and the monkeys feel like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. I haven’t touched the series since, and I figured Banana Mania would be the perfect nostalgia trip for me. While it is a lot of fun, I also found it surprisingly frustrating.Banana Mania is a remaster of the first three Super Monkey Ball games: Super Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball 2, and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. If you’re not familiar with the series, the Monkey Ball games are mostly about rolling monkeys in translucent balls through increasingly challenging... Continue reading…

Getty Images ‘Do I have an independent recollection of when I sent this email from seven years ago?’ Continue reading…

Rivian has filed to go public | Photo by David Becker/Getty Images Electric vehicle maker Rivian, backed by Ford and Amazon, filed for an initial public offering on Friday on the Nasdaq exchange. The company filed its IPO confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August, and it was made public today.According to the S-1 filed with the SEC, Rivian had a net loss of $994 million on revenue of zero for the first half of 2021. Its net loss for full year 2020 was $1.02 billion, the filing shows. The company expects to trade under the ticker symbol RIVN.“We are a development stage company and have not generated material revenue to date,” Rivian writes in the filing. “Vehicle production and deliveries began in September 2021.” We recently tried its first consumer vehicle, the R1T electric... Continue reading…

Samantha Bee, Mark Cuban, CEO and Co-Founder Carlos Watson, and Jeb Bush speak onstage during Ozy Fest 2017 | Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Ozy Fusion Fest 2017 In the space of six days and five New York Times reports from media columnist Ben Smith, Ozy Media has gone from a largely unknown content producer to closing its doors. The eight-year-old media startup was unrecognizable to most. It operated in anonymity despite a roster including some well-known journalists, the high-profile guests who appeared on CEO Carlos Watson’s show, or NYC subway riders who were occasionally inundated with advertisements for its Ozyfest event.Ozy Media acknowledged that its COO and co-founder pretended to be a YouTube executive on a conference call.If you don’t follow too many reporters on Twitter, you might not have heard, but last weekend the first New York Times report revealed two shocking things about Ozy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Xbox is making it easier to find accessibility information for games, according to an announcement from the company at its Accessibility Showcase. Games in the Microsoft store will have accessibility feature tags, so players with disabilities can make sure games have the features they need before buying or downloading them. The tags are appearing in the store for members of the Xbox Accessibility Insiders League (XAIL) starting today and will eventually roll out to all Xbox users.The tags address an issue commonly expressed by players with disabilities: they often have to do their own research to figure out which games they can play. Listing certain features in the store consolidates information that can be frustrating to track down,... Continue reading…

Sony appears to be reintroducing an old concept for two of its newer Playstation 5 games — game trials. Sony will now let you try the PS5 versions of Death Stranding: Director’s Cut and Sackboy: A Big Adventure for free if you live in the United Kingdom, for six hours and five hours, respectively.PlayStation owners first spotted Sony’s new offer via email. “Ever wanted to try some of the most popular games from PlayStation Studios before committing to the full game? Now you can,” the email reads. Sony says the games are redeemable on the PlayStation Store until October 28th at 11:59PM, and the trial starts as soon as you select “Download Trial” on console or “Add to Library” on the web. The Verge has reached out to Sony for more... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Learning a new language on an Android device? If the language uses a different alphabet or employs accents that your primary language does not, you may need to add a new software keyboard to your phone.Luckily, Google’s standard Gboard keyboard includes a plethora of language-related keyboards; at last count, it offered over 500 languages over 40 different writing systems. If you’ve already installed Gboard in the US, you’re likely already set up with US English. But it’s not difficult to add one or more new keyboards and quickly switch from one language to another. Here’s how to install and use one or more of the many languages available. (Note: this was tried out using a Pixel 3 phone and Android 12; your interface may vary.)First,... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge 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: lots of events and showcases! Nilay, Dieter, and Verge managing editor Alex Cranz start the show with coverage of all the devices announced at Amazon’s fall hardware event. Say hello to Astro — Alexa on wheels — along with a video chat gadget for kids, an Echo Show to hang on your wall, new wearable devices, and a whole lot more.Google also held an event this week focusing on its core search functions with products like Google Maps, Google Lens, and of course, shopping and e-commerce. The crew discusses the important... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge NBC has an excellent story that takes a look at the trend of young adults attempting to buy prescription or recreational drugs from dealers on Snapchat — and ending up with fentanyl instead. The report tells the story from the perspective of several parents who have lost children and who suspect that they bought the pills using the popular chatting app. It also goes into how Snapchat is trying to deal with the problem and the difficulties that come with that moderation, both for parents and law enforcement.Some parents suspect their children were trying to obtain painkillers to deal with various pains that weren’t being addressed by doctors or dentists, while some say their kids were trying to escape a world of emotional turmoil. In at... Continue reading…

Photo by EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP via Getty Images Since the dawn of time (around five or six months ago), people all over the world (Twitter users in the United States) have been puzzling over a very important question: why doesn’t the COVID-19 vaccine card fit in a wallet?

Discord is ending its Stage Discovery | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Discord said Friday it’s going to sunset its Stage Discovery tool on October 4th, less than six months after it launched.Rolled out in June, Stage Discovery was designed to help users find its social audio rooms called Stage Channels. It used machine learning to curate a list of channels a user might be interested in joining. Stage Channels have been a hit, Discord says, but it’s been keeping an eye on Stage Discovery to evaluate whether it’s meeting its goal of helping people find community.“In listening to our communities and admins directly, we’ve learned that we still have work to do in regards to server onboarding and moderation,” Discord said in a release announcing the decision. “We’re going to take some time to rethink the... Continue reading…