Image: Meta During Meta’s Connect conference on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg made a huge announcement: the avatars in the company’s Horizon VR app will be getting legs soon. To demonstrate this groundbreaking technical achievement, Zuckerberg’s digital avatar lifted each leg in the air, then did a jump, while Aigerim Shorman’s avatar kicked into the air. It … Read more
The Arecibo Observatory after its collapse in 2020. | Photo by RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images The National Science Foundation (NSF) won’t rebuild the massive Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico following its collapse in late 2020. The agency instead plans to build an education center focused on STEM education and outreach, according to an NSF … Read more
The organizers have dubbed it the “T-Force Social Care Alliance.” | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Workers on T-Mobile’s social media customer service team, who respond to customer questions, comments, and complaints on sites like Twitter and Facebook, are trying to start a union. On Wednesday, they announced the creation of the “T-Force … Read more
Google Fiber will soon offer some really fast internet speeds. | Image: Google Fiber Google Fiber will offer 5Gbps and 8Gbps tiers starting in early 2023 (via 9to5Google). The company is pitching these new offerings for people like creative professionals, those that regularly work “in the cloud” or with large data, and households with many … Read more
SmartThings hubs will be among the first devices to be Matter certified. | Image: Aeotec An over-the-air update coming later this month will turn Samsung’s standalone SmartThings hubs into controllers for the new smart home standard Matter. The v2 hub will control Matter devices over Wi-Fi and ethernet, while the current hub and SmartThings dongle … Read more
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With only weeks until Election Day, the Republican National Committee is escalating its war over Gmail’s spam filters in what critics deem a bad-faith effort to bully Google into letting them spam user inboxes. The GOP has long complained about tech bias, but the latest fight hits the … Read more
Personalized lock screens are so hot in 2022. | Image: Samsung Samsung’s take on Android 13, called One UI 5, is ready to come out of public beta testing “in the coming weeks,” according to a company press release issued today. Highlights include a more personalized lock screen and new modes to filter out unwanted … Read more
Keep my name out of your tweet. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter is working on a feature that lets you control who can mention you, with the test version discovered by app researcher and engineer Jane Manchun Wong letting you block mentions completely. Twitter privacy designer Dominic Camozzi confirmed that the … Read more
Although Playdots is going away, Two Dots will live on. | Image: Take-Two Take-Two is shutting down the gaming studio Playdots, the creator of puzzle games like Two Dots and the just-released Apple Arcade title Garden Tails, as first reported by Bloomberg. Due to the closure, Take-Two will cut 65 jobs beginning in January, per … Read more
Just over 3,230 to go. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is getting ready to launch two test satellites for its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation, built to compete with services like SpaceX Starlink and OneWeb. In a press release on Wednesday, the company says the prototypes, charmingly named Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2, … Read more
When Dmitry’s boat approached the small island of Kolyuchin, which had been abandoned by humans since 1992, he was surprised to spot movement in one of the houses. Binoculars revealed polar bears — over 20 in total — exploring the ghost town. Dmitry used a low-noise drone to document the surreal experience. | Image: Dmitry … Read more
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge TikTok users will soon have a new way of highlighting their videos — and their TikTok presence — on other platforms. As part of the TikTok for developers program, the short-form video platform announced a new feature called Profile Kit today, allowing creators to easily showcase up to … Read more
The Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition will be the company’s first Wear OS 3 watch. | Image: Fossil Hot on the heels of the Pixel Watch, Fossil has announced it’s launching its first-ever Wear OS 3 watch — the Gen 6 Wellness Edition. It’ll also introduce a new Wellness mobile app for health and fitness … Read more
Image: Netflix Starting in November, Netflix will finally roll out its new ad-supported tier for just a few bucks a month, yet another sign that the onetime disruptive upstart streaming service has slowly become a cable package by another name. Netflix announced today that its new Basic with Ads tier is slated to launch on … Read more
Some lucky shoppers will get to buy these early. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge In a recent post on the GeForce forums, an Nvidia community manager announced that the company is testing a new program called “verified priority access.” The program will give some potential shoppers the opportunity to reserve a GeForce … Read more
Image: FromSoftware Elden Ring, the game that feels like it was released several years ago but was in fact launched just this February, has announced a massive update. According to Bandai Namco on the game’s website, the patch intends to “encourage more versatility in terms of gameplay” — if “encourage” also means “make you a … Read more
No, boss, I’m not slacking… and that’s the problem. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve been having some issues with Slack, you’re not alone — the service’s status page reports that “something’s not quite right” with messaging, apps, integrations, APIs, and connections. The issues, which seem to affect threads, channels, notifications … Read more
Kristen Radtke / The Verge Soon, Apple Card users will be able to open a “new high-yield Savings account,” Apple says. There’s just one hitch: Apple won’t say what interest rate it’s offering. There’s also no specific timeline for when consumers can access these savings accounts. Apple has been moving into fintech with the Apple … Read more
The game will be available on Steam and the Epic Games Store. | Image: Sony Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PC will be released on November 18th, Insomniac Games announced on Thursday. You can preorder the game now on Steam and the Epic Games Store for $49.99. Similar to Sony’s other PC ports, Miles Morales … Read more
Adderall is hard to find. | Image: Patrick Mallahan III For weeks, pharmacists around the United States have been struggling to fill prescriptions for Adderall, and on Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed the nationwide shortage. “There is not sufficient supply to continue to meet US market demand,” the agency said in a statement. … Read more
The ZV-1F’s tiny wind screen is included with the purchase. | Image: Sony Sony has announced a new point-and-shoot camera centered on vlogging, and it is targeted at beginners with a low price point. The ZV-1F is an offshoot of its ZV-1 camera from 2020, but unlike that model, it’s not a twist on the … Read more
Disney Plus’ convenient feature is an excessively bright intrusion. | Screenshot: Disney Plus Disney Plus, I hate your damn Skip Intro feature, and I wish I could stop its annoying, bright, immersion-breaking icon from popping up at the start of every show. It’s assaulting my eyes every week when I sit down to watch Andor, … Read more
General view of the Etro fashion show during Metaverse Fashion Week on March 25th, 2022, hosted by Decentraland. | Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images This year, I’ve received about 70 pitches about “metaverse” activities for big brand names like Samsung and UPS in Decentraland, which, as CoinDesk reports, is nearly double the 38 user number … Read more
Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images Epic’s grand plans for competitive Fortnite never really took off following the first World Cup in 2019. But the scene could be getting a boost very soon with the first major in-person tournament in several years. The FNCS Invitational 2022 will be taking place in November at the Raleigh Convention … Read more
Eero is ditching its cheapest subscription plan. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Earlier this month, Eero announced it would be transitioning its paid subscription plans to one flat rate of $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Formerly called Eero Secure Plus, Eero Plus is now the only option for users of the mesh … Read more
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo and its staffing and recruiting partner Aston Carter have reached a settlement with a former QA employee who alleged they were fired for union activity, agreeing to pay $25,910 covering back pay, damages, and interest. According to a report in Polygon, the employee filed a complaint with … Read more
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge SoundCloud is refreshing its creator suite and plans to launch new tools to let artists connect directly with their biggest fans. The company is betting that interactivity will set it apart both from giants like Spotify and Apple Music and other distribution services like TuneCore and DistroKid, … Read more
Andrea Riseborough as Mrs.Wormwood in Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical. | Image: Netflix Netflix is all in on Roald Dahl after acquiring the rights to the legendary children’s author’s catalog last year. Now, we’re finally getting a sense of what those ambitions will look like with the first trailer for Matilda the Musical. The live-action … Read more
Amazon’s Prime Day Early Access Sale is over, but there are still plenty of great deals to check out. | Nicholas Barclay / The Verge Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale has come and gone, or so we thought. There are still plenty of solid deals to check out. The roundup that follows is a collection … Read more
Nvidia GeForce Now is increasing streaming performance within Chrome browsers to 1600p at 120fps. | Image: Nvidia While Stadia fans mourn the loss of Google’s own cloud streaming platform, Nvidia has introduced some new features to GeForce Now for Chrome users to help ease the pain. Starting today, anyone subscribed to the RTX 3080 tier … Read more