Gadgets that break things: our favorite hacking hardware

Illustration by Lille Allen / The Verge Not all gadgets are meant to make life easier. Some gadgets break things, exploiting cracks in our digital systems, prying them open, and crawling inside. Most often used by penetration testers — a kind of white-hat hacker hired to test a company’s security by breaking in themselves — … Read more

Netflix announces Profile Transfers — for when it forces you to finally pay up

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Netflix announced a new feature on Monday called Profile Transfer after months of testing in a few countries around the world. The feature allows users to move their “personalized recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games, and other settings” to a new account, according to the company’s press … Read more

Over-the-counter hearing aids are officially available

Sony Electronics announced new over-the-counter hearing aids. | Image: Sony Electronics Hearing aids are now available over the counter for the first time in the United States. They’re on sale at places like Walgreens and Walmart, and companies like Sony have already developed new hearing aids for this new regulatory turn. The Food and Drug … Read more

Riot Games has acquired Wargaming Sydney, part of the company behind World of Tanks

Wargaming Sydney helped to develop gaming architecture used by online titles and MMOs such as World of Tanks. | Image: Wargaming Video game developer and publisher Riot Games has announced its acquisition of Wargaming Sydney, a gaming software development studio that’s part of Cyprus-based Wargaming, the publisher behind titles such as World of Tanks and … Read more

Discord launches YouTube integration and new $2.99 Nitro Basic subscription

Image: Discord Discord is launching a Nitro Basic subscription alongside a new Activities feature that includes YouTube integration and casual games. The YouTube integration comes more than a year after the Google-owned video service forced two popular Discord music bots offline. Discord has been testing this YouTube Watch Together feature for more than a year, … Read more

Your Comcast Xfinity internet might be getting a speed boost

Speeds are going up for many plans. | Image: Comcast Comcast is upgrading internet speeds for more than 20 million Xfinity customers, the company announced Monday. The changes, which will affect “most of our customers” across the country, according to a statement from Bill Connors, president of Xfinity for Comcast Cable, roll out beginning this … Read more

The WiFi Coconut is a router’s evil twin

Wi-Fi is how most people connect to the internet most of the time — but from a security standpoint, it’s a remarkably wobbly foundation. We treat Wi-Fi connections like hardened tunnels to wherever we’re connecting on the internet, but there’s nothing inherently private about the signal. Wi-Fi is just radio, and like any radio, the … Read more

Elon Musk says Starlink will keep funding Ukraine’s government ‘for free’ despite losing money

Laura Normand / The Verge SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reversed his decision to stop funding the Starlink terminals sent to Ukraine, saying on Twitter that the company will continue to provide “free” satellite internet service to the government even if it means the company loses money. “The hell with it,” Musk writes on Twitter. “Even … Read more

The biggest news from Minecraft Live 2022

Art for the Minecraft Dungeons Halloween update. | Image: Mojang Minecraft Live is back for another year, and, just like with past livestreams, the 2022 edition had some notable developments for fans of the inescapable sandbox game. That includes a look ahead at the next major update for the main version of Minecraft as well … Read more

Meta’s Horizon Worlds VR platform is reportedly struggling to keep users

Image: Meta Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social universe set in virtual reality (VR), is reportedly struggling to gain and keep users. According to internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Horizon Worlds currently has around 200,000 monthly active users, a dip from the 300,000-user milestone Meta confirmed it hit back in February. Horizon Worlds lets … Read more