The Verge

Photo by Erin Schaff for The Verge Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is calling on the Treasury Department to fund broadband projects in communities without access to 100Mbps upload and download speeds with the money allocated by the American Rescue Plan earlier this year.In March, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, directing the Treasury Department to distribute billions of dollars to help state and local governments amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As part of the plan, this funding can be used to expand access to high-speed broadband internet in communities that need it.However, the plan’s language suggests funding can only go to “unserved” or “underserved” communities. The Federal Communications Commission classifies communities with speeds of below... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has changed the voice on its text-to-speech feature, just weeks after an actor claiming to be the original voice filed a lawsuit claiming she never agreed to be featured in the app.The new voice has been showing up in TikToks over the past day — often in videos of people commenting on the change. It sounds a bit more energetic and upbeat, creating a very different vibe than the droll monotone of the prior voice. The feature allows TikTok users to type out text and then have it read aloud over their videos, and it’s often used as a narrator.

A vial of the Mo | Photo by Ramon Costa/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is effective in 12- to 17-year-olds, the company announced today in a press release. It plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the shot for this age group in early June.None of the teens who received two shots of the Moderna vaccine in a clinical trial developed COVID-19, and there were no safety concerns. The trial included 3,732 participants. Two-thirds got the shot, and one-third received placebo injections. There were four cases of COVID-19 in the group that received placebo injections.The vaccine was 93 percent effective against even mild forms of the disease in this group as early as 14 days after the first dose, the company said.The Moderna vaccine is currently authorized for... Continue reading…

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of many first-party Nintendo games on sale right now at GameStop. If you’re a Nintendo Switch owner, you’re probably already familiar with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It remains one of the most ambitious and charming Zelda titles to date. But like most first-party Nintendo games, it’s one that rarely receives a sizeable discount. Right now, though, you can purchase a physical edition of the beloved title at GameStop for $40, with free shipping. The popular retailer is also offering a host of other first- and third-party games at a discount as part of its ongoing Memorial Day sale, including standouts such as Persona V Strikers, Splatoon 2, and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. Now, if only Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would make the cut.If you’re more... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Arm has introduced its latest CPU and GPU designs, including its flagship Cortex-X2 and Cortex-A710 CPUs and Mali-G710 GPU. The new CPU and GPU designs aren’t just Arm’s latest chip blueprints, though; they’re also its first designs to utilize its new Armv9 architecture, its first in a decade, which means big jumps in performance, along with new security and AI features.Most consumers probably aren’t familiar with the exact Arm cores inside their phones or computers, but Arm’s designs — and particularly, its big.LITTLE configuration of combining powerful high-performance cores and battery-saving high-efficiency cores — are common to virtually every Android phone. That means the designs introduced here are effectively a preview of what... Continue reading…

Public Public, the trading and social networking app, is the next app to get into live audio. Like many apps before it, the company says it’s planning to roll out live audio features starting this week under the name Public Live. Unlike its competitors, like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, however, Public will initially program these chats with moderators it pays, meaning not just anyone can start a conversation. It’ll host about three events a week, and users will receive a push notification to join, along with a badge inside the app allowing them to hop into it. Topics might include coverage of an upcoming IPO, the day’s news, or analysis.The first chat will be between Scott Galloway, who co-hosts the Pivot podcast and is an investor in the... Continue reading…

The Arctis Prime headset alongside the Prime Wireless mouse. SteelSeries has announced the new Prime lineup of high-performance gaming accessories designed alongside esports athletes. They’ve been “designed to win championships,” but they seem fine enough for average people who just take their gaming time seriously, too. There are four new devices, including the wired Arctis Prime headset and three different Prime mice, and they all seem reasonably priced. One thing they have in common is a rather simplistic design that puts ease of use ahead of bundling in so many features that you accidentally hit the wrong button when the moment really matters. Each of these accessories is available starting today.The $99.99 Arctis Prime headset has just a mute button and a volume wheel. The left ear cup also... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi on the complicated politics of manufacturing Continue reading…

Microsoft has teamed up with Qualcomm to create a Windows on ARM-based dev kit for developers. The miniature PC will be sold at the Microsoft Store this summer, and is designed to be more affordable to encourage developers to create ARM64 apps for Snapdragon-based PCs.Until now, developers have had to purchase devices like the Surface Pro X to fully test their ARM64 apps on Windows. That’s a costly exercise for developers, particularly when the Surface Pro X retails from $999 and up. While Microsoft and Qualcomm haven’t put a price on this new dev kit, there are promises it will be more affordable than what developers can buy today. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Surface Pro X was one of only a... Continue reading…

A screenshot from Samsung’s 2017 trailer. | Image: Samsung In a new blog post, iFixit heavily criticizes Samsung’s recently announced Galaxy Upcycling program (via ArsTechnica), an initiative which the repair specialists helped launch in 2017. It’s a damning look at how the initiative morphed from its ambitious origins to a “nearly unrecognizable” final form, and completely sidelined iFixit in the process.Here’s how iFixit describes the original plan:

Image: Microsoft Microsoft Build, the company’s annual developer conference, is kicking off today, May 25th. Just like last year, the conference is happening in an online-only format rather than in-person in Seattle. The developer conference is typically where Microsoft details upcoming changes to its Windows, Office, and cloud platforms.There’ll be around 48 hours of Build content in total taking place over the next two days, kicking off with a keynote today on May 25th starting at 11AM ET. A full agenda is available over on the Microsoft Build website, featuring a mix of keynotes, technical deep dives, and breakout sessions.How do I watch Microsoft Build?You’ll need to register to attend the virtual Build conference, but doing so is free and gives... Continue reading…

People like to argue that technology is value neutral; that it’s neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but can simply be put to different uses. As a rebuttal, I’d like to direct the court’s attention to exhibit a), a video of “digital humans” rapping using AI-synthesized voices, that is intrinsically awful.Indeed, I’d argue that the video above not only disproves the whole value-neutral thing, but makes a decent case for shutting down this “technology” lark altogether and heading back to the trees before it’s too late. What I mean is: AI is posting cringe and I don’t like it.Okay, so I’m being a little harsh here and the video is obviously a joke. It’s the work of Replica, an AI startup that does interesting things with synthetic... Continue reading…

The Google Nest Hub. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Google’s long-awaited Fuchsia OS is starting to quietly roll out on its first consumer device, the first-generation Nest Hub, 9to5Google reports. Google’s work on Fuchsia OS first emerged in 2016, and the open-source operating system is notable for not being based on a Linux kernel, instead using a microkernel called Zircon. “You don’t ship a new operating system every day, but today is that day,” tweeted a Google technical lead on the Fuchsia OS project, Petr Hosek.While the rollout on the Nest Hub (which originally released as the Google Home Hub before being renamed) begins today, the whole release process will take several months. It’ll come to users in the Preview Program first, before slowly releasing more broadly. We’ve known... Continue reading…

Xinhua/Cao Yang via Getty Images Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei has reportedly urged the Chinese tech giant’s staff to turn the company into a major software force as a way to alleviate the impact of devastating US sanctions. In an internal memo viewed by Reuters, Ren says that Huawei should focus on software because the industry is “outside of US control and we will have greater independence and autonomy.”Huawei is presently unable to mass-produce much of its hardware products because of sanctions forbidding US firms from doing business with it. The company stockpiled chips and components in an attempt to mitigate the sanctions, but the reserves are limited and in some cases will be swiftly obsoleted. Huawei is also blocked from using Google apps and services on... Continue reading…

“It’s been a long time. How have you been?” J.J. Abrams has said that a movie based on Valve’s Portal is still in the works, and that a script is finally being written, according to IGN. Abrams is light on details, but says that Warner Brothers is excited about the direction the movie is going in, and that it “feels like that thing’s finally on the rails.”We originally heard about the movie all the way back in 2013, when Abrams and Gabe Newell were on stage together at the DICE Summit. At the time, Abrams apparently told Polygon that the plan was “as real as anything in Hollywood ever gets.” That was eight years ago, so it seems he was right to couch it like that. From the archives: Abrams and Newell on stage at DICE 2013 Summit, talking about movies and games.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix has dipped a toe in gaming on occasion, with perhaps the hugely-successful “choose your own adventure”-style film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch as the most prominent example. But the streaming giant may be expanding further into gaming with a new bundle for Netflix subscribers, according to several reports over the past few days.The Information had the first report on Friday, writing that Netflix wants to hire an executive to oversee new gaming efforts, and that the company is considering a bundle of games similar to Apple Arcade. (Hours later, Reuters corroborated that a gaming exec is a planned hire at Netflix.) The company has also chosen not to include ads in the games, according to The Information. But The Information also... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sure, “hot-tubbing” sounds fun, but in a court context, it’s just a judge encouraging lawyers to argue — which is how Epic v. Apple ended today. Not with a bang but with a quarrel.In honor of the trial’s final day, a raft of spare lawyers were in the gallery, representing Epic and Apple. But everyone who spoke to the judge — Epic’s Gary Bornstein and the three lawyers who handled the end of the case for Apple, Dan Swanson, Veronica Smith Moye, and Richard Doren — had their backs to the gallery the entire time.Throughout the trial, Epic’s general strategy appears to have been to stuff the record as full of evidence as possible — just in case it’s needed on the inevitable appeal. To do that, Epic sacrificed telling a coherent story.A... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor tweeted Monday that after a weekend meeting with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and “leading Bitcoin miners in North America,” the group has agreed to form a Bitcoin Mining Council, “to promote energy usage transparency [and] accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide.”Musk tweeted earlier in the day that the group “committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising.” According to Saylor, the group included representatives from Argo Blockchain, Blockcap, Core Scientific, Galaxy Digital, Hive Blockchain Technologies, Hut 8 Mining, Marathon Digital Holdings, and Riot Blockchain.

Photo Illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is a man who says what’s on his mind, even if it’ll ruffle a few feathers. And apparently the first thing on his mind, following today’s closing remarks in the Epic v. Apple trial, was chicken dinner.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A security unit within the US Commerce Department monitored Americans’ Twitter accounts for posts critical of the US Census and conducted unauthorized surveillance to gather information about US citizens and foreign visitors, according to a fact sheet released Monday by the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.The Washington Post first reported on the existence of the unit, which is called the Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS). According to the fact sheet, ITMS had its operations suspended as of May 14th, after an investigation launched in February by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) showed that the service had conducted “a variety of improper activities dating back to the... Continue reading…

Each model in Sony’s X950H series is known for its impressive color accuracy and wide viewing angles. | Image: Sony If you’re looking for a behemoth 4K TV with impressive motion handling, solid black levels, and vibrant colors right out of the box, it’s hard to go wrong with the Sony X950H series. Sony’s 75-inch HDR display is not cheap at $2,600, however, Best Buy, Amazon, and BuyDig are all currently offering the TV for $600 off the initial list price, bringing it down to $2,000. The X950H model also sports four HDMI ports, compatibility with both Alexa and Google Assistant, and a host of Android TV features. It’s one of the best deals we’ve seen on Sony’s premium LED in recent months, especially when you consider that BuyDig is throwing in a $100 Visa gift card with each purchase.We’ve gushed about the Sony WH-1000XM4 on many occasions — and why... Continue reading…

Image: Samsung The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE (Fan Edition) could be officially launching soon according to a new German product page spotted by WinFuture. The tablet appears to be a renamed version of the previously leaked “Galaxy Tab S7 Plus Lite” that first made the rounds in March 2021. The Galaxy Tab S7 FE is the first Fan Edition of one of Samsung’s tablets, a tweaked version of the earlier iPad Pro-inspired 12.4-inch Tab S7 Plus.While the Tab S7 FE shares the same 12.4-inch screen size as the older Tab S7 Plus, it appears to be using a TFT LCD display, like the 11-inch Tab S7, rather than the OLED found in the Tab S7 Plus. Another cost-saving measure is found in the processor: the Tab S7 FE has a Snapdragon 750G octa-core processor and 4GB of... Continue reading…

Are you planning to stick with Google Photos when its free unlimited storage disappears on June 1st? If you’re anything like me, you’re probably still struggling to figure out whether you can afford to procrastinate that decision a little bit longer — and today, Google has made that reckoning a little bit easier.First off, the company’s finally telling it like it is: Google will no longer pretend its compressed, lower-quality photos and videos are “High quality,” something that would have saved me a lengthy explanation just last week! (After June 1st, existing Google Pixel phone owners still get unlimited “High quality” photos, but if you’re on, say, a Samsung or iPhone instead, it’s not like there was ever a “Normal quality” photo... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Tesla Model Y was photographed in Florida sporting rooftop lidar sensors made by buzzy sensor manufacturer Luminar. The sighting caused a bit of a stir among Tesla watchers, given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s well-established disdain for the laser sensors commonly used by autonomous vehicle companies to create 3D maps of their environment.Even more notably, Tesla has reportedly entered a partnership with Luminar to use lidar for “testing and developing,” according to Bloomberg. What exactly this partnership entails we don’t know for sure — neither company is commenting. But it could point to some shortcomings in the technology Tesla is using to power its “Full Self-Driving” driver assist feature.The vehicle was spotted last week in Palm... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton has announced plans to invest $400 million in a US factory to produce its connected bikes and treadmills, located in Troy Township, Ohio — about half an hour south of Toledo. The facility, which is planned to be approximately a million square feet, is called the Peloton Output Park. Peloton hopes it will eventually lead to lower prices for its products, though its CEO John Foley admits that could take a few years to happen.Currently, Peloton mainly manufactures its fitness equipment in Taiwan, while many of its customers are in the US. This caused expensive shipping delays earlier this year as the company ran into both heightened demand and long shipping times resulting from the pandemic. The company’s factory announcement is... Continue reading…

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple is releasing its latest iOS 14.6 update today, and it’s largely focused on audio improvements. This new OS update will allow Apple Music subscribers to enable lossless audio or Dolby Atmos once it’s available next month, and it also debuts Apple Podcasts subscriptions.Podcasts users can now subscribe to content in the app for extra perks like ad-free and bonus content, as well as early access. Apple is also improving the Podcasts app with the ability to mark all episodes as played, recover old episodes, and remove downloads.iOS 14.6 includes a number of other quality-of-life improvements. If you’re an AirTag owner, iOS 14.6 includes the option to add an email address as a contact method for when the item tracker is in lost mode.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Qualcomm has announced a second-generation Snapdragon 7c Arm-powered processor that’s designed to be used inside entry-level Windows PCs and Chromebooks. The biggest change to the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 (the official name) appears to be a clock speed bump, which Anandtech reports is a jump from 2.4GHz to 2.55GHz. And like the original Snapdragon 7c, it offers integrated LTE connectivity so you can connect to cellular networks, and Qualcomm promises it will support “multi-day battery life.”The first device with the chip is set to arrive “this summer,” Qualcomm said in a press release, and Lenovo has already promised to release new devices using the 7c Gen 2 “later this year.”More chipmakers are increasingly making Arm-based chips, which... Continue reading…

Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday that bars social media companies like Twitter and Facebook from “knowingly” deplatforming politicians.The bill, SB 7072, was proposed in February, weeks after former President Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the deadly right-wing riot at the US Capitol. The law bars social media platforms from banning Floridian political candidates and authorizes the Florida Election Commission to impose fines if these candidates were to be deplatformed. The fines range from $250,000 per day for statewide office candidates and $25,000 per day for non-statewide offices.“This will lead to more speech, not less speech,” DeSantis said during a press conference at the Florida... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Police in India raided the offices of Twitter India in Delhi and Gurgaon on Monday as part of an investigation into why tweets about a so-called “toolkit” of information about the coronavirus were labeled as manipulated media, The Indian Express reported. An officer told the media outlet that police had sent a notice to Twitter demanding an explanation for the label on a ruling party member’s tweet, and that it was seeking “information Twitter has about the toolkit and why they chose to give the ‘manipulated media’ label.”Twitter declined to comment Monday. TechCrunch reported that there were no Twitter employees in the offices at the time of the raid, which occurred late Monday evening India Standard Time. Journalist Aditya Raj Kaul... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google announced last Tuesday that it developed a new artificial intelligence tool to help people identify skin conditions. Like any other symptom-checking tool, it’ll face questions over how accurately it can perform that task. But experts say it should also be scrutinized for how it influences people’s behavior: does it make them more likely to go to the doctor? Less likely?These types of symptom-checking tools — which usually clarify that they can’t diagnose health conditions but can give people a read on what might be wrong — have proliferated over the past decade. Some have millions of users and are valued at tens of millions of dollars. Dozens popped up over the past year to help people check to see if they might have COVID-19... Continue reading…

Police analyzed the palm and fingerprints in the photo to identify the suspect. | Image: Merseyside Police It’s generally a good idea to be careful about the photos you share online. Share a photo of your vaccination card, for example, and you risk revealing your full name and date of birth, which opens you up to the possibility of identity theft. But you might want to be even more careful if you’re a drug dealer involved in selling heroin and cocaine. Even an innocent picture of a block of cheese can contain enough personal information to help convict you.We’ve got the UK’s Merseyside Police to thank for the worrying revelation, the Liverpool Echo reports, after they successfully identified drug dealer Carl Stewart (39, of Gem Street, Liverpool) and convicted him of conspiracy to supply cocaine, heroin, MDMA, and ketamine with the help of a... Continue reading…

Image: Anker Anker’s GaN (gallium nitride) chargers are some of the best around, offering tiny sizes but powerful charging capabilities. Now, the company is introducing its second-generation GaN-based chargers: the Anker Nano II lineup.The new Nano II chargers use what Anker calls its “GaN II” technology, the company’s second-generation version of the gallium nitride-based components, which Anker says offer a 20 percent increase in working efficiency,” which translates to less heat and even smaller chargers than before. Image: Anker Gallium nitride is an increasingly popular replacement for silicon components in electrical devices, thanks to a wider band gap than silicon. That means it can sustain higher voltages at higher... Continue reading…

Twitter lists can be a wonderful resource: they can help you categorize different companies, track what’s happening with your friends or family, follow accounts that you enjoy, or keep up with news sources you like to follow. And being on others’ Twitter lists can help amplify your own tweets.However, occasionally, you could find yourself on a Twitter list that you’d rather not be associated with. Perhaps somebody misread one of your tweets and thought that you agreed with a certain point of view — and you don’t. Or it could happen that somebody who disagrees with you puts you on a list in order to target you for harassment.Journalist Theresa W. Carey has suggested that it’s a good idea to check your Twitter account regularly to make... Continue reading…

OLED screen movie machine Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Netflix is announcing a new week-long virtual event, “Geeked Week,” where it will share information about upcoming titles like The Witcher, The Sandman, and The Cuphead Show. During Geeked Week, you can expect to see “a wide array of exclusive news, new trailers, live art, drop-ins from your favorite stars and much more.” And fortunately, you won’t have long to wait: Geeked Week is taking place in just a couple weeks, from June 7th through the 11th.If you want a preview of what’s to come, check out Netflix’s poster below, which also mentions The Umbrella Academy, Resident Evil (unclear if this is referring to the upcoming anime or the live-action series), Sweet Tooth, and Cowboy Bebop. Image: Netflix Netflix’s... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AT&T CEO John Stankey said Monday that the company’s focus on its connectivity business in the US meant it didn’t have the global reach to grow a global streaming business with WarnerMedia, and the company decided it was “time to unleash the media assets” of WarnerMedia to Discovery.AT&T announced on May 17th that it would spin off its WarnerMedia business to merge it with TV company Discovery. The resulting entity, which has yet to be named and is still awaiting regulatory approval, will be a competitor in the cable space and for streaming content giants like Netflix and Disney; WarnerMedia owns HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, and the Warner Bros. movie studio, while Discovery has a number of channels that focus more on reality... Continue reading…

Photo by JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images Tesla has been ordered to pay 136,000 kroner ($16,000) each to thousands of customers in Norway for slowing down charging speeds, according to Nettavisen via Electrek.A 2019 software update was found to have affected the battery life in Tesla Model S vehicles manufactured between 2013 and 2015, sparking a complaint by dozens of Norwegian Tesla owners to the country’s conciliation council, according to Nettavisen. As a result, customers were reporting diminished range and slower charging speeds at the company’s Supercharger network. Tesla did not file a response, and the case was decided in the plaintiffs’ favor on April 29th.Tesla is ordered to pay each customer roughly $16,000 to settle the complaint. Nettavisen notes that this... Continue reading…

Robert McDaniel’s troubles began with a knock on the door. It was a weekday in mid-2013, as he made lunch in the crowded three-bedroom house where he lives with his grandmother and several of his adult siblings.When he went to answer the door, McDaniel discovered not one person, but a cohort of visitors: two police officers in uniform, a neighbor working with the police, and a muscular guy in shorts and a T-shirt sporting short, graying hair.Police officers weren’t a new sight for McDaniel. They often drove down his tree-lined street in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago making stops and arrests. Out of the 775 homicides tracked by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2020, 72 of them happened in Austin. That’s almost 10 percent of the... Continue reading…

After a brief teaser earlier in May, Marvel has finally revealed a full-length trailer for Eternals, set to hit theaters on November 5th. In addition to being the latest entry in the MCU, Eternals is the first film from Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao since winning Best Picture and Best Director wins for Nomadland earlier this year.The trailer doesn’t actually do much to showcase the plot of what Eternals will be about, instead focusing on the civilization-spanning scope of the superhero team and its members throughout human history.“We have watched and guided. We have helped them progress and seen them accomplish wonders,” Salma Hayek’s Ajak muses, as we see the Eternals help humanity raise crops, establish cities, and war... Continue reading…

The Block Island wind farm, from Montauk Point on Long Island, New York, on April 16th, 2021. | Photo by Mark Harrington / Newsday RM via Getty Images GE shared some new details today of a concept that might advance the development of futuristic floating wind farms. Floating turbines are engineering marvels — or nightmares, depending on how you see it — that could make massive swathes of deep ocean available to offshore wind development.Make massive swathes of deep ocean available to offshore windWhile they hold a lot of potential, the floating behemoths have so far been too costly to deploy at commercial scale. And because they’re floating, they also face a barrage of technical challenges that turbines fixed to the seabed don’t have to weather. GE hopes to solve some of those problems through advanced turbine controls that it’s developing alongside consulting firm Glosten. They’re... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon has a new deal for new and existing unlimited plan subscribers starting May 25th: up to a year of Apple Arcade or Google Play Pass, free of charge. Specifically, customers who pay for the Play More Unlimited and Get More Unlimited plans get 12 months of either app subscription service for free, while all other unlimited plans get six months. It’s worth noting that both free options are longer than the ones Apple or Google offer themselves.The $80 per month Play More plan or $90 per month Get More plan (that’s the price for a single line) also come with other benefits to sweeten the deal. Play More comes with an “unlimited” mobile hotspot with up to 15GB of 5G data, the Disney Bundle (Hulu, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus), six months of... Continue reading…

SiriusXM SiriusXM wants to reach the youth, and starting today, it’s going to do so through the cultural cachet of TikTok. Sirius, which owns Pandora and the podcasting company Stitcher, announced a new partnership with the social video app today that’ll bring TikTok-popularized music to the satellite radio provider. TikTok Radio, a new music channel, will broadcast trending sounds through the SiriusXM app, browser, and connected devices. Sirius says tuning in should sound like swiping through TikTok’s “For You” page.It’s also using the partnership to launch a new Pandora series, called TikTok Tastemakers, that’ll involve popular TikTok creators, like Bella Poarch, hosting and curating playlists with their favorite songs alongside commentary.... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Metro Exodus has become one of the first PC games to support the PS5 DualSense controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers thanks to a recent patch. Although many PC games already support the PS5 controller’s basic features, with Valve adding support for it to its Steam Input API last year, Metro Exodus now supports its advanced haptics, as well as its trigger features, which add extra resistance depending on what you’re doing in-game.Videos posted by Twitter user @mrdomino_ and VGC’s Andy Robinson show the feature in action, including showing the controller’s right trigger springing back with the recoil from various weapons. It’s nothing new compared to what we’ve seen from native PS5 games like Returnal, but it’s great to see... Continue reading…

Image: Ford Ford has revealed a version of its new F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck aimed specifically at commercial customers. It’s called the F-150 Lightning Pro, and it starts at $39,974 for a version with an estimated 230 miles of range. Extended-range versions of the truck, which are expected to get 300 miles on a full battery, will start at $49,974.Much like the retail version of the electric F-150, the Lightning Pro stands to win Ford a lot of business as long as the company executes well when the truck starts shipping in 2022. Fleets all over the country are already considering a switch to electric vehicles, either to get ahead of zero-emission guidelines at the state or federal level, or in an attempt to take advantage of what should... Continue reading…

Samsung’s Smart Monitor range is expanding. The company’s line of Tizen-powered smart computer displays now includes a 43-inch 4K M7 model as well as a 24-inch 1080p M5, marking the biggest and smallest Smart Monitors to be made available to date.Samsung introduced the Smart Monitor last year and describes it as a “do-it-all” display designed for both work and entertainment. The screens have built-in speakers and smart TV functionality through Samsung’s Tizen platform, meaning you can run video apps like Netflix directly on the device, as well as remote desktop access and productivity software like Office 365. The Smart Monitors have a remote control that works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Bixby, and there’s also wireless support... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A social media campaign by pro-Palestine activists has pushed down the ranking for Facebook’s app in Apple and Google’s app stores, NBC News reported. The activists are seeking to protest Facebook’s alleged censorship of Palestinian accounts on its platform, and are instructing people to leave Facebook’s app a one-star review.According to NBC News, Facebook is treating the situation as a high-priority issue internally; one software engineer wrote in a post on an internal Facebook message board that “users are upset with our handling of the situation,” adding that the users “have started protesting by leaving 1-star reviews.” Facebook has reached out to have the reviews removed, but so far, Apple has declined the request to remove the... Continue reading…

Trese comes to Netflix in June | Netflix Still reeling from that shocking ending to last week’s Mare of Easttown? Me too! I have literally no idea what to expect in tonight’s episode or from next week’s finale. I can’t say the same for Army of the Dead, a movie I really, really wanted to like but which felt really predictable. I found myself wishing the entire movie could have been as wild as its opening credits. Army of the Dead looks spectacular (except perhaps for the digitally-added Tig Notaro character), but could have done away with a few of the rag-tag mercenary characters and tightened things up a bit.Here are this week’s trailers:TreseThis long-awaited adaptation of the award-winning Filipino comic of the same name, Trese is the story of a woman who protects... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Securing a PS5 is not easy, and it feels like it could be. With a combination of greed and incompetence, the stores selling PS5s in the United States have transformed the process into a weirdly dramatic affair where you’re forced to join Discords and follow overly exuberant guys on Twitter in the hopes that they’ll give you a heads-up on a PS5 “drop” — a store making a big shipment of PS5s available for purchase. These stores have turned every drop into an event, when really, buying a PS5 should be as easy as buying a pepper grinder.The other day, a package was sitting in the vestibule of my apartment building. I noticed my name on the label and mentally cataloged any recent purchases I may have made or packages someone mentioned... Continue reading…

A pricey phone built to withstand the elements Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge India’s government has sent notices to social media platforms ordering them to take down content that refers to an “Indian variant” of the COVID-19 virus, Reuters reported. The letter from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent Friday was not made public, but was viewed by several news outlets.It was not clear which social media outlets received the letter, but India’s government has recently ordered Twitter to remove tweets and Facebook and Instagram to take down posts that were critical of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.“There is no such variant of COVID-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO). WHO has not associated the term ‘Indian Variant’ with the B.1.617 variant of... Continue reading…