The Verge

Cyber Monday is upon us. The big finale of the busy shopping weekend will officially happen Monday. But if you’ll be busy with work or whatever else, there’s some good news today: You can get a lot of the best Cyber Monday deals early. More and more retailers have lifted the veil on their new deals earlier than ever, and we’re focused on adding them here. As you’re expecting, there are some great deals on TVs, laptops, tablets, smartwatches, video games, and much more.We’ll be doing our best to keep this post updated ahead of Cyber Monday, and we’ll be back all of next week to give you as many chances as possible to get everything on your holiday wish list.Latest dealsSony’s WF-1000XM3 wireless noise-canceling earbuds are down to... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A trade union has called on workers at an Amazon warehouse in Germany to hold their second strike in a week in an effort to disrupt Black Friday order processing, Reuters reported. Some 500 workers took part in a three-day strike that started Thursday and ended Saturday, according to trade union Verdi, with the next strike set to begin Monday night and end Tuesday night. Germany is Amazon’s second-biggest market after the US.Amazon workers at six sites across Germany struck in June to protest safety at its logistics centers, where dozens of workers had become infected with the coronavirus. Warehouse workers in Germany have struck against Amazon several times in recent years to protest workers’ pay and conditions.The strikes in Germany... Continue reading…

With a pair of next-gen video game consoles now on the market, it’s a very good time to be shopping for a new 4K TV that can best showcase their capabilities. Even if gaming isn’t your thing, Cyber Monday always bring about excellent discounts on sets from many of the top brands like Samsung, LG, Vizio, Sony, TCL, and others. Whether you’re ready to spend over $1,000 or are looking for something more on the budget side, odds are you can find something to your liking.Looking for more than just a TV? Check out our updating list of the best Cyber Monday deals you can still get right now.The best TV deals for Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 ownersThe Xbox Series X and PS5 do much more than just play games in 4K. They support HDR,... Continue reading…

Cyber Monday is upon us. The big finale of the busy shopping weekend will officially happen Monday. But if you’ll be busy with work or whatever else, there’s some good news today: You can get a lot of the best Cyber Monday deals early. More and more retailers have lifted the veil on their new deals earlier than ever, and we’re focused on adding them here. As you’re expecting, there are some great deals on TVs, laptops, tablets, smartwatches, video games, and much more.We’ll be doing our best to keep this post updated ahead of Cyber Monday, and we’ll be back all of next week to give you as many chances as possible to get everything on your holiday wish list.Latest deals Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Target is... Continue reading…

David Prowse played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy | THIERRY ZOCCOLAN/AFP via Getty Images David Prowse, the actor who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars films, has died, the Associated Press reported. He was 85.George Lucas asked Prowse to audition for Star Wars after seeing the 6-foot-6 actor in the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange. Prowse had his choice of playing Chewbacca or Vader, and opted for the latter because, as he told the BBC, “you always remember the bad guy.” Plus, he added, he didn’t fancy wearing Chewbacca’s fur suit.Prowse played Luke Skywalker’s erstwhile father in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, but famously, his voice didn’t make it into the films. He said all Vader’s lines, but the voice of James Earl Jones was later dubbed in.

Look how brave this patio lamp in Spider-Man: Miles Morales is | Doctor Curiosity As any avid gamer knows, bugs and glitches are part of the deal. Sometimes they take gameplay to a whole other level, as seems to be the case with Spider Man: Miles Morales where players unexpectedly turned into inanimate objects, including a patio space heater (there’s a probably joke there about great power and great responsibility but we’re above puns at The Verge dot com) (spoiler: we totally are not).

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’re heading off to high school or college next year (or shopping for someone who is), Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great times to start looking for the gadgets you’ll need for school. And if you’re a current student who just needs to upgrade their tech, why not take advantage of this week’s deals and sales?Here are some of the best deals that students should consider for tablets, laptops, speakers, and more. The gadgets listed here are affordable, portable, and powerful enough to help you do your best schoolwork (or relax in your downtime). For more tech sales, check out our hubs of laptop deals, phone deals, noise-canceling headphone deals, and wireless earbuds deals.TABLET DEALS Multiple “Kids Edition”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Trump administration has once again extended the deadline for ByteDance to sell video sharing platform TikTok’s business in the US, Reuters reported. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has given China-based ByteDance until December 4th to either sell or spin out its US business, according to a court filing. CFIUS reportedly granted the extension “to allow time to review a revised submission” that it recently received.President Trump said in August that TikTok and its parent company were a national security risk to the US, and issued the initial order requiring TikTok to sell its US business. Trump’s order would have blocked all US transactions with ByteDance.In September, the US Commerce Department... Continue reading…

Photo by FilmMagic/FilmMagic Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos has died, the company confirmed Saturday. Hsieh retired from the Las Vegas-based company in August, after 20 years at the helm. Under his leadership, Zappos became known for its customer service and employee-focused company culture. Hsieh wrote a best-selling autobiography titled “Delivering Happiness” that detailed his philosophy.Amazon acquired Zappos for $1.2 billion in 2009, and kept Hsieh on as CEO. He said in 2010 he had decided to sell to the e-commerce giant because Amazon recognized “the uniqueness of Zappos’s culture and Amazon’s duty to protect it. We think of Amazon as a giant consulting company that we can hire if we want—for instance, if we need help redesigning... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge We kind of loved the beans. The Galaxy Buds Live’s bean-like shape made sense! But though it originally seemed like Samsung was in on the joke — the company called them beans internally, and even printed the word on the circuitry — Samsung’s next earbuds may take a take a different tack.Today, Indonesia’s telecommunications certification authority has revealed the company has a new “Galaxy Buds Pro” set of earbuds waiting in the wings (via MySmartPrice), and SamMobile may have already revealed what to expect: a source says they’ll be a set of sealed in-ear buds with the same design as the earlier Galaxy Buds+, only now with active noise cancellation and “an improved Ambient mode” to let you hear more of your surroundings. ... Continue reading…

In early August, we learned the lovely Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey would come to Nintendo Switch, but we didn’t know exactly when. It turns out yesterday (Thanksgiving) was the day! You can now pick up The Alto Collection from the Nintendo eShop for $7.49, a temporary 25 percent launch discount over what will become its standard $9.99 price.(Check out the video above to get a pretty good sense of what the games are like; we called Alto’s Adventure “the next great iPad game” in our review way back in 2015.)Originally, you’d control Alto and his snowboarding / sandboarding friends by simply tapping the iPhone, iPad or Android touchscreen to jump and perform tricks, but the games now have full controller support as well. You’ve... Continue reading…

The Verge would greatly appreciate it if you bought a certain Samsung TV today. We make some of our money from affiliate revenue, and Black Friday in particular helps pay some of the bills! And today only, this particular TV is fifty thousand dollars off. That should make it easy for you, right?You think it’s a typo? Some pricing error, maybe a scam where you’ll owe the full amount when all’s said and done? Nope! It’s just that the 98-inch Q900 normally costs $100,000, and Samsung is making it a win-win for everyone (particularly us!) by offering it half-off.Wait, you’re telling me you don’t have $50,000 for a new TV? How are you going to afford a 98-inch 8K television with that kind of thinking? You can’t, of course: at the bargain... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Two days ago, Coinbase did something we rarely see a company do: it gave the world a heads-up that The New York Times would soon publish “a negative story” about how “several Black employees had negative experiences at Coinbase over the last few years.”Well, Nathaniel Popper’s NYT story is now here, and that description looks like the understatement of the week: twenty-three current and former employees went on the record to help produce a thoroughly damning report about systemic racial discrimination at the company. It includes passages like this:

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Update: Amazon is now fully out of stock of the AirPods Pro and is no longer accepting orders. If you’re still looking to purchase them, Best Buy and B&H Photo have marked them down to $200, a $50 savings from the regular price. Also be sure to check out our roundup of the best AirPods sales at any given time.If you are looking to buy the AirPods Pro, but have been holding off to wait for a significant price drop, your time has come — Apple’s flagship wireless earbuds are just $169 at Amazon right now.This is the lowest price we have seen on the AirPods Pro to date; normally, these wireless earbuds would set you back $249. This historically low price beats the previous best-ever price by $21.The AirPods Pro offers a more... Continue reading…

Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images At 6 billion views and just as many controversies, the YouTube superstar says he’s a “realistic role model” Continue reading…

After making a huge splash in her Twitch debut last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) plans to join the streaming platform again tonight to play Among Us with MP Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, and two other Twitch streamers. The stream, hosted by Singh, is set to begin at 7PM ET on Friday.Ocasio-Cortez’s first time playing Among Us on Twitch was a massive hit, peaking at 435,000 viewers at one point during the match on October 20th. She played with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), as well as Twitch streamers Pokimane, HasanAbi, and more, to get out the vote, with the stream becoming one of the 20 most-viewed of all time.

And I am now thoroughly spoiled Continue reading…

The “Make Amazon Pay” logo projected onto Amazon’s campus in Hyderabad, India. | Image: Make Amazon Pay campaign An international group of climate activists and Amazon warehouse workers have launched an online campaign called “Make Amazon Pay,” calling on the tech giant to provide better working conditions for its employees and to reduce its expanding carbon footprint. The protests come just as the New York Times reports that the Seattle-based company has been on a hiring spree this year, expanding its global workforce.“During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon became a trillion dollar corporation, with CEO Jeff Bezos becoming the first person in history to amass $200 billion in personal wealth,” the campaign states on its website. “Meanwhile, Amazon warehouse workers risked their lives as essential workers, and faced threats and intimidation if they... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify was down for nearly an hour today, after a widespread outage affected users in countries across Europe and beyond. The music streaming service stopped working for many at around 4:15AM ET, and Spotify rectified the issues after nearly an hour.Spotify outages are rare, and the last major one happened back in August after the company forgot to renew its TLS certificate. The service was down for an hour back then, but we’ve checked and the TLS certificate doesn’t appear to be the source of the issues this time around.

New scene support in Ikea’s Home Smart app. | Ikea Ikea has rolled out scene support in the latest Home Smart software update. Owners of Ikea Tradfri Gateways running the new 1.12.31 firmware can now configure scenes to control several Home Smart products at once, like Ikea smart lights, Sonos-compatible Symfonisk speakers, or Fyrtur blinds. The update also supports Ikea’s new Shortcut Buttons that can be dedicated to executing individual scenes, and should be available to buy shortly for less than $10 / €10.Once updated, scenes will appear in a dedicated section at the top of the Ikea Home Smart app. One scene suggested by the app is “All off,” which can be configured to turn off every Ikea light in the home while silencing every Sonos-compatible speaker. In the future, such a scene... Continue reading…

Xiaomi’s budget sub-brand Redmi has never released a smartwatch before, and its first entry turns out to be what you’d expect: a pretty uninspiring design at a pretty attractive price. The Redmi Watch just launched in China for 299 yuan, or about $45.The watch has a 1.4-inch rectangular display with curved glass, and it comes in black, white, and blue color variants. The silicone strap is available in black, white, blue, green, and pink. There’s a single button on the side of the watch, with everything else being handled by the touchscreen or the Mi Fit app on a paired smartphone. Other specs include NFC, Bluetooth 5.0, a heart rate monitor, and waterproofing up to 50m. Xiaomi claims that battery life will be good for up... Continue reading…

Surface Laptop 4 and Surface Pro 8. | cozyplanes (Twitter) Microsoft’s next Surface Pro 8 tablet and its upcoming Surface Laptop 4 have appeared in leaked images online. Twitter user cozyplanes discovered the images at what appears to be an FCC-like filing, noting that the Surface Pro 8 may ship with LTE support. Both devices will likely launch early next year, and don’t appear to feature any major updates to their design.Windows Central reports that the Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop 4 could launch as early as mid-January, with 11th Gen Intel processors and Intel’s Xe graphics support. The Surface Laptop 4 is also rumored to include AMD processor options, which will likely be a custom Microsoft chip based on AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series.

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Best Buy is offering a pair of great deals on Apple’s recently-released 10.2-inch iPad, with offers of up to $70 off. The retailer has knocked $50 off the price of the base 32GB model, which is now $280 compared to its usual asking price of $330. Meanwhile the 128GB model, which is the model we recommended most people should buy, is $70 less than its usual price of $430 at $360. It’s the lowest price we’ve seen the 128GB model sell for since its launch.Apple’s 10.2-inch iPad sits at the bottom of its tablet lineup, but it’s still very good at doing the kinds of things iPads have always done well. This year’s model comes with a faster A12 Bionic processor that means the tablet still feels fast and sprightly to use, even if its outward... Continue reading…

ROME, ITALY - AUGUST 25: Health workers wait for passengers arriving from high-risk countries to carry out rapid antigenic tests for Covid-19 at a testing station set up inside Leonardo Da Vinci airport, on August 25, 2020 in Fiumicino, Rome, Italy. The region has introduced mandatory COVID-19 tests for anyone arriving from Croatia, Greece, Spain and Malta to avoid a spike of new cases. | Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images Rome’s Fiumicino airport plans to welcome passengers from the US without requiring them to quarantine, as long as they test negative for the novel coronavirus multiple times. Fiumicino says it will be the first airport in Europe to offer the “COVID-tested flights,” creating what it calls “safe air corridors” between Italy and the US.It will test the idea out in December starting with flights from New York’s JFK airport, New Jersey’s Newark Airport, and Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport. If those flights are successful, similar flights could be made “widely available” by summer 2021, according to Fiumicino.It’s risky to rely solely on testingFiumicino says it will require passengers to take a molecular or antigenic test... Continue reading…

Black Friday deals will be launching in a big way starting tomorrow, following Thanksgiving (November 26th) in the US. Due to the pandemic, the best deals will be happening online, with fewer in-person sales for the sake of safety. Better yet, some of those great deals are already available, so you can get started on your holiday gift (or personal) shopping. With this post, we’re rounding up the best early Black Friday deals from retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Adorama, B&H Photo, Newegg, and anywhere else we find deals you should know about.Smart speaker and audio deals Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Sono’s portable Move speaker. If you are looking for a Dolby Atmos soundbar complete with... Continue reading…

Image: Balenciaga Luxury fashion company Balenciaga will debut its next clothing collection in a video game on December 6th, according to WWD. Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow is an “allegorical adventure” set in the year 2031, in which “a hero avatar advances throughout distinct zones, motivated by tasks and interactions.” As game descriptions go it’s not the most detailed — it could apply to every video game from Super Mario through to Wolfenstein — but obviously the focus here is the company’s fall 2021 collection. Input reports that the Afterworld will be playable through browsers.Like many other industries, the world of fashion has had to reckon with how to drum up excitement in a year where big in-person launches are impossible. Approaches have... Continue reading…

Photo by Alexander Kramer for The Verge Apple has asked Foxconn to move some iPad and MacBook manufacturing capacity to Vietnam, Reuters reports. The assembly lines are set to start production in the first half of next year at Foxconn’s Bac Giang province, according to Reuters’ source, who notes that Apple wants to diversify its supply chain due to the ongoing trade disputes between the US and China.Reuters’ report doesn’t state which iPad or Mac models will be assembled in Vietnam, nor what proportion of Apple’s total production will shift out of China. But these wouldn’t be the first Apple products to be assembled in Vietnam — Apple started producing AirPods Pro units there earlier this year. Apple has also used India for production of certain iPhone models for a while,... Continue reading…

Photo by Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images Disney plans to lay off around 32,000 employees, mainly in its theme parks business, in the first half of next year, the company has announced in a 10-K filing. The company says it’s making these redundancies “due to the current climate, including COVID-19 impacts.” It’s an increase of 4,000 compared to the 28,000 layoffs it initially announced back in September. The new figure includes the layoffs that were previously announced, Variety reports.Along with the layoffs, Disney said it’s considering additional measures like reducing its investments in film and TV content, halting capital spending, and furloughing more employees. Already, 37,000 of its employees were on furlough as of October 3rd, Variety notes.The announcement comes... Continue reading…

Image: Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be able to run at 60fps on all next-gen consoles thanks to an update that Ubisoft is set to release on Thursday. With the new 1.0.4 title update, Ubisoft is adding a performance mode, which will let the game adapt resolution and graphics settings to maintain 60fps while you’re playing, and a quality mode, which will max out resolution and graphics settings to maintain 30fps.Digital Foundry found that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla sometimes dips below 60fps on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (with the Series X doing so more often), and the game currently doesn’t run higher than 30fps on the Xbox Series S, so the update seems like it should be a welcome upgrade. The new update is also supposed to address... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s internet infrastructure service that is the backbone of many websites and apps, experienced a multi-hour outage on Wednesday that affected a large portion of the internet. The service has been nearly fully restored as of 4:18AM ET on Thursday morning, according to Amazon.“We have restored all traffic to Kinesis Data Streams via all endpoints and it is now operating normally. We have also resolved the error rates invoking CloudWatch APIs,” reads an update on the AWS Service Health Dashboard. “We continue to work towards full recovery for IoT SiteWise and details of the service status is below. All other services are operating normally. We have identified the root cause of the Kinesis Data Streams... Continue reading…

Photo: Netflix Netflix has settled a lawsuit over its interactive special Bandersnatch. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix announced the deal with Choose Your Own Adventure book publisher Chooseco on Monday. The settlement ends a bitter legal fight between Netflix and Chooseco, which claimed the streaming video platform had infringed its trademark.Chooseco sued Netflix in early 2019 after the release of Bandersnatch, a branching-path film about a game developer who’s obsessed with a “choose your own adventure” (but not necessarily Choose Your Own Adventure) book. Chooseco is known for aggressively defending its trademark against other companies and even small game developers, and it claimed Netflix was unlawfully using the name. Netflix... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Tesla has issued recall orders for 9,537 of its vehicles in the US, including 9,136 Model Xs from 2016 and 401 Model Ys from 2020, Reuters reports. The issues were filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Tesla intends to recall the vehicles for testing and fixes.The larger of the two orders affects 9,136 Model Xs from the 2016 model year. The NHTSA report says the cars feature cosmetic appliques that may have been applied without a primer, which could cause the trim on the roof of the car to fall off while driving at high speeds. Tesla says it will apply a retention test to the potentially affected cars and reapply primers and adhesives so the trim attaches properly.It’s not the first time roof... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re a Comcast TV and internet user, prepare for price hikes. The company is planning to increase the prices of a variety of services starting January 1st, 2021, according to Ars Technica and a document detailing the various price increases being shared on Reddit.The increases include as much as $4.50 per month added to the “Broadcast TV” fee and up to $2 per month added to the Regional Sports Network (RSN) fee, which collectively would add as much as $78 per year.In a statement to Ars Technica, a Comcast spokesperson confirmed the above fees, as well as a $3 per month increase for internet-only service and up to a $2.50 per month increase for TV boxes on the primary outlet, with a decrease of up to $2.45 per month for TV boxes... Continue reading…

Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images On October 24th, 2020, an art trafficker in Darnah, Libya posted a series of unusual ads. For sale: a Greco-Roman statue, its marble bust covered in a toga. If it looked like it belonged in a museum, that’s because it did. The seller posted photos of the piece in private Facebook groups dedicated to trafficking antiques.The black market for looted goods is flourishing on Facebook. While the company banned the sale of historical artifacts in June, many of the posts are in Arabic, and Facebook lacks the expertise to properly enforce its new policy. Photo courtesy of Athar Project When Facebook is able to identify groups that flout its guidelines, experts say the company simply deletes them, expunging crucial... Continue reading…

A slate of new emoji was announced in January. Months later, they’ve finally trickled onto most people’s phones... but in one case, it’s really more of a skitter. I’m talking about the cockroach, arguably the most shudder-inducing emoji of 2020 — and the product of a great little short story about the looming end of the world.As my colleague Jay Peters and an excellent 2019 documentary explain, anyone can submit an emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium. The proposal must convince the consortium that many people will use the emoji in a variety of ways. And for the authors of the cockroach application — Jason Li, Melissa Thermidor, and Amanda Hickman — that includes the aftermath of a nuclear war.It starts with a line from the opening... Continue reading…

Get the Surface Laptop Go at an early Black Friday discount. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Black Friday week has arrived, and that means you can pick up some Microsoft products at their lowest prices of the year. Whether you’re looking for Surface Pro tablets, Xbox accessories, Windows laptops, or PC games, you’ll find discounts left and right at the Microsoft Store and other retailers such as Best Buy.We’ve collected the best deals you can find on Microsoft products, and they’re all significantly lower-than-usual prices. We’ve also included some deals on Windows computers that are available for a good price. As more deals appear as the big day approaches, we’ll add them to this post.If you’re looking for even more Black Friday sales, be sure to check out our article rounding up all of the best deals across a variety of... Continue reading…

It’s your first (and hopefully last) Thanksgiving holiday during a pandemic, and you might be looking for some kind of outlet for your newfound stress. Well, you’re in luck: New York Times Games is streaming collaborative crosswords on Twitch right now.This collaborative take on the NYT’s online crosswords works kind of like Twitch Plays Pokémon, relying on chat inputs from viewers watching the stream. (Of course, in this case, you’re entering in crossword answers rather than picking moves in a pokémon battle.) Commands are formatted like “23d barn” meaning “the answer for 23 down is barn.” From there, the game is smart enough to select the correct boxes and fill them in. It’s designed by Sam Von Ehren, an NYT game designer.The game... Continue reading…

Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images Square Enix, the studio behind the Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Tomb Raider games, says it’ll allow most of its employees to work from home permanently. The policy comes into effect on December 1st and will see its employees designated as either “home-based” or “office-based.” In its announcement, the company says it expects around 80 percent of its employees to be designated as home-based from December.The company gives a number of reasons for making the policy permanent. These include creating a “flexible and diverse working environment,” helping employees “achieve the optimal work-life balance,” and helping to “bolster productivity.” It also hopes the policy will help it better adapt in the future, whether it’s to disasters or... Continue reading…

Watching the original Animaniacs today is probably the closest you can get to scrolling through a TikTok feed from the mid-’90s. The madcap variety show was like Looney Tunes by way of golden-age Saturday Night Live, a pre-social media era meme factory that seemed more interested in parodying show business and celebrity than actually entertaining children. (The first episode is about a dang psychiatrist to the stars!) Funny thing is, kids loved the antics of the Warner brothers and sister as they guffawed and rampaged their way across studio lots. Adults, on the other hand, were laughing at the jokes actually taking place on said studio lots — jokes full of innuendo and references meant for avid consumers of celeb gossip, alongside... Continue reading…

Image: CCAEJ / ESRI You might not see it each time you make a purchase, but online shopping takes up a lot of space in the real world. The number of warehouses built to keep e-commerce running smoothly is growing quickly, and they’re creeping closer to neighborhoods in order to meet consumers’ expectations for quick deliveries.Online shopping has changed the landscapeThese images taken by satellite show how dramatically online shopping has changed the landscape of one county in California. I grew up in this county, and I’ve seen that transformation happen in person. A lot of the stuff that Americans buy passes through here. The nearby ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle about 40 percent of all goods Americans import. Once it gets off a ship, most... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Baltimore County Public School (BCPS) system has canceled classes after an apparent ransomware attack shut down internal networks. Described by officials as “a networking issue,” the outage is affecting the schools’ email and grading systems, among others.BCPS chief of staff Mychael Dickerson confirmed on Twitter that the outage is believed to be the result of a ransomware attack. “We were the victim of a ransomware cyber attack,” he said. “Our BCPS technology team is working to address the situation.” Dickerson could only tweet the message since the BCPS website is currently down.As a result of the outage, offices have been closed for the day and students have been given the day off. “We knew it wouldn’t be a quick fix,”... Continue reading…

Last week, the streamer Félix “xQcOW” Lengyel was temporarily banned from Twitch for cheating at a GlitchCon Twitch Rivals event. It was the third time this year he’s been suspended from Twitch, and his teammates Rabia “Nightblue3” Yazbek and Lucas “Mendo” Håkansson were banned alongside him. I got in touch with Lengyel to chat about what happened, and what he’s learned from the experience.According to him, the stream sniping incident — when he and his teammates queued into a competitor’s lobby with the intent to derail their game — was a bit of banter that went too far, though Lengyel is careful to note that he’s not trying to justify what happened. “The atmosphere was really like funny, banter-y — we went to their Discord, they went... Continue reading…

On Tuesday night, SpaceX successfully launched another batch of the company’s internet-from-space Starlink satellites to orbit, using a very space-hardened Falcon 9 rocket for the job. This launch marked the rocket’s seventh flight to space and back — the first time SpaceX has flown such a seasoned vehicle to orbit.The Falcon 9 took off at 9:13PM ET from SpaceX’s launch site at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, with 60 Starlink satellites in tow. After a quick trip to space, the first stage of the Falcon 9 — the bulk of the vehicle that contains the main engines and most of the fuel — separated from the rest of the rocket and came back to Earth. It then performed one of SpaceX’s signature rocket landings, touching down on... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holoway Krales/ The Verge Over six years after it was first released, Sony suddenly created a new set of buttons for its DualShock 4 controller.The Back Button Attachment was a bizarre product, both conceptually and in terms of timing. The vaguely wing-shaped accessory had two extra buttons and an OLED panel on the back that allowed players to add new functionality to their controller. And it was released in January 2020 — just months before Sony revealed the PlayStation 5 and its feature-packed DualSense controller.Sony’s sudden interest in offering back paddles on the DualShock 4 fit with existing trends in the console world. Microsoft’s Elite controllers offered similar removable paddles, and third-party controllers with swappable parts and advanced... Continue reading…

1Password was recently updated to support macOS Big Sur In case you still don’t use a password manager, or if you’re looking to switch services, 1Password is offering an exclusive Black Friday offer to readers of The Verge until Thursday, December 3rd. You can save 50 percent each month on the cost of a family subscription (up to five people, and not restricted to a single household) to 1Password’s services, costing $2.50 per month for up to one year. After that year is up, you’ll be charged the regular $5 per month rate.Having a password manager within reach is one of those things you didn’t know you needed until you try it. That’s just one feature that 1Password provides with a subscription: letting you access your saved, secure passwords through its app on Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, or... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony on Wednesday confirmed it would have more PlayStation 5 consoles available from retailers this holiday season after what the company is calling its “biggest” launch ever.Without concrete numbers, we have no idea what that means — the company could be referring to how many consoles were actually purchased by consumers, known as sell through, or the less impressive number of consoles that are simply bought by retailers. Without context or specifics, it’s hard to say.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Pay’s old iOS app, Android app, and website are set to lose many of their payment features in January, the company has confirmed to The Verge. According to a Google support document the old apps will soon no longer be able to send or receive payments or withdraw money. Meanwhile, a notice on the Google Pay website says it’s also losing the ability to send and receive peer-to-peer payments. Google is also introducing a 1.5 percent fee when you transfer money out of Google Pay using a debit card, 9to5Google reports.The changes follow the service’s massive relaunch last week, which includes a new app and new features like the option of automatically scanning your Gmail inbox and Google Photos account for receipts to import. The new... Continue reading…

Xiaomi’s Poco sub-brand has launched its latest entry-level phone, the Poco M3. As with most other Poco phones, the M3 has an strong spec sheet for its comparatively low price.The Poco M3 has a 6.53-inch 1080p LCD screen with a waterdrop notch for the 8-megapixel selfie camera. The display is pretty basic: the chin at the bottom is quite big, the fingerprint sensor is integrated into the power button on the side rather than the screen, and the panel is only 60Hz, but it’s sharp enough and perfectly serviceable.The phone’s design certainly stands out from behind, with a large glossy camera bump emblazoned with a bright white “POCO” logo. The main camera is 48 megapixels, but the other two cameras are just 2-megapixel sensors for depth... Continue reading…

The upcoming Monster Hunter movie doesn’t exactly look like the most faithful adaptation of the games, centering as it does around a gun-toting US Army soldier played by Milla Jovovich, but that’s not stopping Capcom from engaging in some cross-promotion. Downloadable content based on the movie is coming to Monster Hunter World: Iceborne next month.You’ll be able to embark on a two-part event quest featuring the Black Diablos and Greater Rathalos, two monsters featured in the movie, and special bonus items will be available. There’s also a player skin based on Jovovich’s character Captain Artemis, which you can see in action here:

Utah Department of Public Safety Last week, a sheep-counting expedition found a mysterious monolith deep in the Utah desert, and they warned the world to stay away.This is a great opening for a science fiction story, and also the actual events of late November 2020. As local news outlet KSL TV lays out, a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter crew discovered a 10- to 12-foot steel object that they described as a “monolith.” The crew found the object installed in the canyon’s rock floor on November 18th, and they found “no obvious indication” of its source. On November 23rd, they posted photos of it to Instagram and the DPS site.“There is a significant possibility they may become stranded.”DPS has avoided saying exactly where the monolith is. “It is in a very... Continue reading…