TheVerge

Getty Democrats are pressing Texas energy regulators to disclose how much energy crypto mining companies consume from the state’s vulnerable power grid nearly a year after it failed during an extreme winter storm. In the Wednesday letter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and six other Democrats pressed Texas grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, … Read more

Samsung’s Knox Matrix is supposed to secure your devices through “multi-layered monitoring.” | Image: Samsung Samsung’s rolling out a new way to keep smart devices secure, and it apparently involves putting them on the blockchain. At the Samsung Developer Conference today, the company announced the Samsung Knox Matrix, a not-yet-released security solution that will include … Read more

More accessories could use names that make us think of soup or cartoon beagles. | Image: SooPii Amazon Prime Early Access deals come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes they come from brands with silly names that make us chuckle like children. Case in point: the SooPii 100W four-foot USB-C cable, which is on … Read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is delivering a new ARM64 version of the Xbox app for Windows today. It means the Xbox app will run natively on Surface Pro X and other Arm-powered devices as well as Microsoft’s latest SQ3-powered Surface Pro 9, which was announced earlier today. Microsoft confirmed the new … Read more

Mobile cell towers, drones, and helicopters. | Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images On September 28th, Hurricane Ian hit southwest Florida, lashing the area with category four winds and proceeding to cross through the state and then into the Carolinas and Virginia. As someone with friends, family, and co-workers dotted … Read more

Workspaces groups together tabs and lets you share them with a single link. | Image: Microsoft Workspaces is a new feature coming to Microsoft Edge designed to make it easier to organize and share the dozens of browser tabs that you use on a daily basis. The feature has been popping up in Edge’s early … Read more

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is rebranding its built-in Office apps on Windows to Microsoft 365. While the existing app is mainly used for quick access to Office apps, this new Microsoft 365 one is designed to really leverage Microsoft’s Graph network to provide additional apps, relevant documents, and a feed of meetings and information that might … Read more

Microsoft Teams Premium. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is launching Microsoft Teams Premium today, a new offering designed to boost its chat and collaboration app with some AI-powered smart features. The biggest addition is a new meeting recap feature that essentially adds an AI virtual assistant to each meeting to share highlights and automatically capture all … Read more

Image: Microsoft As part of today’s Ignite conference, Microsoft is launching a new workplace app specifically designed to help with the challenges of hybrid working. The app is called Microsoft Places, and the company says it’s launching “soon” in beta. A screenshot of the app published by Microsoft today shows a dashboard view that tracks … Read more

If you get annoyed with the number of apps that crowd your iPhone’s homescreen, you probably welcomed a feature that originally came with iOS 14: the App Library, which gathers all of your apps into various categories and displays them on a separate page to the right of your homepages. The App Library not only … Read more

Chani and Paul gazing at something together | Image: Warner Bros. Though it’s not yet clear how Marvel’s recent release date reshuffling will impact that studio’s sprawling cinematic franchise, Warner Bros. is taking advantage of Blade being put on hold by bumping up the debut for its upcoming Dune: Part Two from director Denis Villeneuve. … Read more

Chat away on the Surface Pro 9. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft has wrapped up its 2022 Surface event, where it showed off its new Surface Laptop 5, Surface Pro 9, and Surface Studio 2 Plus. The company also showed off new accessories and software, including a Designer app powered by Dall-E 2. In case you … Read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple Music is finally arriving in the Microsoft Store today. Xbox users will be able to access it immediately, and it will also arrive on Windows next year. Both Apple Music and Apple TV will be available in preview versions soon for Windows, allowing Apple subscribers to access … Read more

The front of the Meta Quest Pro headset. | Photo by Alex Heath / The Verge One mild sunny day last week, I made my first visit to Meta’s campus in Burlingame, CA, to experience the company’s latest big swing in its efforts to build a metaverse. The centerpiece of the day, as well as … Read more

The Microsoft Audio Dock is designed to keep your desk clear from cables and remove the need for a microphone headset. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is introducing two new Teams-certified accessories to improve hybrid meeting setups: the Microsoft Audio Dock and the Microsoft Presenter Plus remote control. The Audio Dock is a pill-shaped all-in-one speakerphone … Read more

The Surface Studio 2 Plus is all about internal upgrades. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge It’s been a long time since Microsoft updated its Surface Studio line of all-in-one PCs. While rumors had suggested a Surface Studio 3 was on the way, Microsoft is debuting its Surface Studio 2 Plus today instead … Read more

The Surface Laptop 5 now comes with Thunderbolt 4. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Laptop lineup today with new Surface Laptop 5 models. While the company has offered AMD and Intel chip options for the Surface in the past, this year’s models are pure Intel with the … Read more

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Last week’s layoffs at Spotify were a jolt for the audio industry. Eleven shows were axed, and employees were blindsided by the news. The company framed it as a small change, with Spotify spokesperson Grey Munford saying that less than 5 percent of original podcast staffers were cut … Read more

Image: Square Enix Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, a battle royale spinoff of the ever-growing FFVII universe, will be shutting down next year. Square Enix confirmed that the shooter, which is available on both iOS and Android, will end service on January 11th. “Despite all our efforts to bring you regular updates with fresh … Read more

It all started when Mrwhosetheboss saw that the battery in his Galaxy Note 8 had expanded. | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Arun Maini, also known as the tech YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss, recently discovered a worrying trend. Maini was looking through his collection of more than 600 smartphones while preparing for a video about … Read more

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride / The Verge The biggest vulnerability is always the human element. It’s a truism in the security world, but we rarely dwell on what it means. You can patch a software flaw completely, but there’s no perfect fix for an accounts payable clerk who approves a phony invoice or an executive … Read more

Vincent Kilbride / The Verge One of the reasons PDFs are so popular, especially among lawyers and other legal professionals, is that they are accurate and (for the most part) unalterable versions of documents that were once only available on paper. As a result, because PDFs often hold information that we want to keep private, … Read more

Nicholas Barclay / The Verge We’re back for day two of Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale, its second Prime Day event of 2022. That means it’s the last chance to take advantage of many of these deals. Our entire team is continuing to scour Amazon’s catalog high and low to find the best tech deals … Read more

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride / The Verge Olivia* wanted to terminate her pregnancy. Having an abortion in Arizona, where she lives, was not an option. After the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, clinics there paused since the law was unclear. Olivia went online to look for options and found a hotline, … Read more

Cisco’s Room Bar (pictured) will be among the first of its devices to be Teams certified. | Image: Cisco Cisco’s video conferencing hardware will be updated to let users set Microsoft Teams as the default video conferencing software, the two companies have announced. Initially six devices will be certified to work with Teams in the … Read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel is planning substantial job cuts, likely numbering in the thousands, according to a report from Bloomberg News. The reduction in headcount is a response to declining demand for the company’s consumer chips — part of a wider downturn in the PC market. The layoffs will hit Intel’s … Read more

The Boring Company is selling a Burnt Hair fragrance for $100 a bottle. | Image: The Boring Company Ever fancied smelling like scorched keratin? Weird, but you’re the target demographic for Elon Musk’s latest product innovation: Burnt Hair cologne. Yes, you can buy it. The fragrance is the realization of a tweet Musk made back … Read more

AirConsole running on BMW’s latest curved display. | Image: BMW BMW is the latest automaker trying to get gaming to happen on vehicle infotainment screens while you’re charging or otherwise waiting around in your car. The company plans to add AirConsole, a party game service that normally runs on devices like Android TV or PC, … Read more