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Image: eBay eBay is the latest company to be hit with unfair labor complaints as this year’s hot labor summer continues amid strikes , threats of strikes , and workers all over the country organizing for better working conditions . The complaints were filed on behalf of workers at TCGplayer, a company eBay acquired in 2022 that’s known for selling and authenticating trading cards from games like Yu-Gi-Oh! , Pokémon , and Magic: The Gathering . The complaints allege that after workers at TCGplayer won their union election back in March , management of eBay and TCGplayer has refused to acknowledge the union and engaged in tactics designed to impede or delay workers’ ability to negotiate for a fair contract. “My colleagues and I haven’t had a cost-of-living... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Bz8mStQ

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale once again for its all-time low price of $24.99 ($30 off) at Best Buy and Target . It’s one of the best streaming devices you can buy , especially if you prefer one that can neatly hide behind your TV and has excellent support for voice controls. Its Fire TV operating system highlights Prime Video content a lot, and it does have some ads, but its speedy performance and Wi-Fi 6 speeds at this low price are a worthwhile tradeoff. Plus, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max has a tight integration with Amazon smart home accessories, allowing you to ask Alexa to set the mood by dimming the lights in addition to calling up apps or searches with your voice. Another notable deal on Amazon hardware is the latest Echo Show 8... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Zbv2elg

The N Edition and Fami Edition of the keyboard. | Image: 8BitDo Nintendo doesn’t make keyboards, but 8BitDo’s Retro Mechanical Keyboard might be the next best thing. The $99.99 device comes in two color schemes: an “N Edition,” which has the same gray color scheme the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) had in the West, and a red and white “Fami Edition” that draws obvious inspiration from the Japanese Famicom. Preorders open today , and the keyboard is expected to ship on August 10th. The keyboard comes with a pair of “Super Buttons” — giant red versions of the buttons found on the original NES controller. They’re programmable and come equipped with clicky Gateron Green switches that should make them feel suitably chunky to press. The Super Buttons connect to the keyboard via a 3.5mm cable, and there... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/wbzfnUt

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Microsoft has submitted a new change of circumstances document to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK, arguing its case for its proposed Activision Blizzard deal to be reconsidered for approval. The CMA first blocked Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard in April, with the regulator making it clear it had concerns over the effect Microsoft’s acquisition could have on the emerging cloud gaming market. Weeks later, the European Commission then approved the deal thanks to Microsoft’s cloud gaming agreements with Nvidia, Boosteroid, and others and a commitment to the EU to open up cloud licensing access to Xbox and Activision Blizzard games. Microsoft now argues the UK regulator should take into... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/SFDilsT

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Microsoft is making it a lot more convenient to use multiple high refresh rate monitors with Windows 11. The software giant has started testing a Windows 11 update that automatically adjusts refresh rates on multiple monitors depending on what content is being displayed, which should improve power usage and could even result in some GPUs spinning up their fans less often. “We have improved refresh rate logic to allow different refresh rates on different monitors, depending on the refresh rate for each monitor and content shown on the screen,” explains Microsoft in a Windows Insider blog from last week, spotted by Neowin . “This will help most with refresh rate-dependent multitasking, like playing a game and watching a video at the same... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/kP8JvQN

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony has started testing a new PlayStation 5 software beta that includes Dolby Atmos support, up to 8TB of M.2 SSD storage support, and a variety UI improvements. The beta is rolling out in select countries today and Sony typically makes beta features available to all PS5 consoles within a few months. The biggest addition is Dolby Atmos support. In PS5 games it looks like Sony’s 3D Audio implementation (Tempest 3D AudioTech) will be compatible with Dolby Atmos devices like sound bars, TVs, or home theater systems. Media apps like Netflix can also update their apps on PS5 soon to support Dolby Atmos audio. “Tempest 3D AudioTech specifically renders to the Dolby Atmos audio devices in use – including overhead channels – allowing for even... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/5EOJ7cC

Illustration: The Verge If your kid has been mysteriously busting through the Screen Time limits you set on their Apple device, the Wall Street Journal might know why: the publication found that a bug has been preventing certain Screen Time limits set via the Family Sharing system from saving correctly for months. Apple was supposed to fix the issue back in May, but apparently the problem has persisted. Apple’s Family Sharing system allows parents to put usage limits on their kids’ devices, with one of the key controls being the ability to monitor and limit their usage of specific apps and the device as a whole through a feature called Screen Time. The Journal reports finding that a specific setting known as Downtime, which blocks access to the entire device,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/4F0zsHE

An iPhone 14 Pro Max. | Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge Some big changes are expected to come to this year’s iPhone 15 Pro lineup — but they might come alongside a price hike, too. In Bloomberg this morning , reporter Mark Gurman confirmed a handful of details that have been floating around all year about what to expect when the next iPhone lineup is announced in just over a month. The new Pro models will both come with titanium frames, instead of stainless steel, making them stronger and lighter, according to Gurman. Their screens will also have thinner bezels, thanks to a new display technology, shrinking the size of the black border by about a third. (Earlier leaks show what that might look like .) And as previously reported, expect the mute switch to be swapped out for a customizable button... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/tWGqz0p

X is coming for every last mention of Twitter. | The Verge Last week Elon Musk announced the death of Twitter as a brand . He had the sign on the HQ taken down and replaced with a garish X , he axed the logo on the website and in the app too. Lingering longer was the “Tweet” button itself. Today the Tweet button briefly changed to Post , hinting that soon every evidence of the little blue bird and its associated twitter will scrubbed from the every place X, the company formerly known as Twitter, can touch. But that’s not why I think it’s time to retire the “tweet.” I wanted to save it . I felt that it was clearly becoming independent of the brand that had adopted it. I argued we should call all microblog posts tweets to avoid this goofy cycle of toots, skeets, threets, and now xeets. But with every... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Aa1KoSh

A 1970s-era model of the Zenith Space Command. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Space Command didn’t rely on infrared — or batteries. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/o2d7sZP

The Nook Glowlight 4e struggles to stand out, but at least it’s got buttons to turn the page. | Photo by Sheena Vasani / The Verge The company is looking to give its stores an indie bookstore vibe, but its e-readers have more of an Amazon Kindle in the early 2010s vibe. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/cuwFIry

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge D., a carpenter and Etsy seller of several years, recently sold a piece of custom, made-to-order furniture for around $150. The sale itself was business as usual for their shop — but it came with a sense of exasperation. Their earnings would be tied up for weeks while bills, rent, and expenses pile up. Since late June, Etsy has had D.’s account under restrictive settings, putting a hold on the bulk of money that’s coming in as customers place orders. In D.’s case, 75 percent of earnings from a $150 order, as an example, are being held by Etsy — in what’s known as a “payment reserve” — for anywhere between two weeks and 45 days. After Etsy fees, taxes, and other expenses are pulled from the remaining 25 percent D. has access to, they’re... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/UDh2jeJ

You can buy four AirTags for $84.99, or about $21 each. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Now we’ve reached the end of July, back-to-school season is officially upon us. If you’re starting to shop for supplies to help kick off the new school year on the right note, we curated a guide to a range of helpful gadgets . We also found a number of good deals this week that’ll help you prepare. Right now, for example, you can buy some of the best item trackers from Tile and Apple at some pretty notable prices. First off, the latest Tile Mate in black with a pack of lost and found labels for $19.99 ($10 off) from Amazon , which is an all-time low. The platform-agnostic Tile Mate will help you or your children keep track of backpacks, lunch boxes, tote bags, keys, and other belongings up to 250 feet away. That might be 150 feet less than... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ShoelqT

Image: Nintendo Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the Super Smash Bros. series, is famous for his extremely hands-on role in developing the games. But even though he’s said in the past that he’s done “too much of the work myself” on the series, in a new video, he said that he “can’t really imagine a Smash Bros. title without me.” Sakurai made the statement as part of a video on his YouTube channel about the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii. That was the first Smash Bros. title where Sakurai as a freelance director instead of as a staffer for HAL Laboratory. During the video, Sakurai pondered how Nintendo might structure a team for a potential next entry in the Smash Bros. series and his fears that there isn’t one person who... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/LWkn9F8

Image: Square Enix It’s finally time for the Final Fantasy XIV beach vacation episode! This year’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest kicked off the American leg of the global event in Las Vegas this weekend. Thousands of fans braved the absolute blistering Las Vegas heat for cosplay events, concerts, and, of course, presentations designed around everybody’s favorite critically acclaimed MMORPG. During the keynote kicking off FanFest, Square Enix revealed the game’s latest expansion, Dawntrail , with a brief introduction trailer. The trailer reintroduces us to the series’ main characters as they explore a tropical island, noted as Eorzea’s “New World.” Seems like the Scions are enjoying a much-needed break from saving all of existence , going on treasure hunts and... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/f9ngSTb

The Verge Twitter, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X, is officially rolling out its ads revenue sharing program for creators. The company had given some creators payouts earlier this month, but now, users globally who meet the eligibility criteria can apply for the program from the monetization tab in settings. To be eligible for the program, you need to be subscribed to X Blue (which appears to be the new name for Twitter Blue ) or be a Verified Organization, have “at least 15M impressions on your cumulative posts within the last 3 months,” and have at least 500 followers, according to a support document about the program . “We want the process to be as simple as possible, so all eligible X Blue and Verified Organizations subscribers are... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/PiCvrs2

Image: Intel Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was very bullish on AI during the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call — telling investors that Intel plans to “build AI into every product that we build.” Later this year, Intel will ship Meteor Lake, its first consumer chip with a built-in neural processor for machine learning tasks. (AMD recently did the same , following Apple and Qualcomm.) But while Intel previously suggested to us that only its premium new Ultra chips might have those AI coprocessors, it sounds like Gelsinger expects AI will eventually be in everything Intel sells. Gelsinger often likes to talk up the “four superpowers” or “five superpowers” of technology companies, which originally included both AI and cloud, but today, he’s suggesting that AI a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/oDdlXK0

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge At a recent House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on self-driving cars, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) kicked off her five minutes of questions for the panelists with a quick appraisal of the toaster-shaped autonomous shuttle that has puttered around her district in Gainesville, Florida, for the past three years. “It moves not very fast,” Cammack said with a grimace. “So there’s a lot of frustrations with it, I’ll say that.” That’s something that the Gainesville Autonomous Shuttle has in common with Congress: neither seems to be much in a hurry. “So there’s a lot of frustrations with it, I’ll say that” The hearing on Wednesday, entitled “Self-Driving Legislative Framework: Enhancing Safety, Improving Lives and Mobility, and Beating... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/90Xic7z

Photo by Hector Vivas / Getty Images Lionel Messi has taken MLS by storm, and that’s good news for Apple. The league partnered with Apple for a streaming service called MLS Season Pass, which kicked off this season and will continue for the next decade . And though Messi only played his first match for his new club, Inter Miami, on July 21st, it seems that viewership has already improved. While Apple did not release specific numbers, in a statement, Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr explained that the week of July 19th–26th had “the 3 most-watched matches ever on MLS Season Pass, with viewers in almost 100 countries and regions around the world. And the fans for those matches were roughly split between the MLS Season Pass English and Spanish language broadcasts.” Considering... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/V7uhqSg

Image: Getty Images So, it looks like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to be held in contempt of Congress after all — at least for now. The House Judiciary Committee was supposed to vote to hold Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress on Thursday, but chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) canceled the vote shortly before it was scheduled to take place, as first reported by Bloomberg . The vote was originally a play to get Meta to hand over additional documents as part of a committee investigation into alleged collusion with the White House to censor conservative speech. But according to a tweet from Jordan on Thursday, Meta must have provided enough new material to calm his concerns. “Based on Facebook’s newfound commitment to fully cooperate with the Committee’s... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/g4dZrKh

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge Facebook and Instagram users see wildly different political news in their feeds depending on their political beliefs, but chronological feeds won’t fix the problem with polarization, new research published Thursday suggests. The findings come from four papers produced through a partnership between Meta and more than a dozen outside academics to research the impact of Facebook and Instagram on user behavior during the 2020 election. The company supplied data from around 208 million US-based active users in aggregate, totaling nearly all of the 231 million Facebook and Instagram users nationwide at the time. Turns out, users Meta previously classified as “conservative” or “liberal” consumed wildly different political news during the the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/PSOuZWA

Image: The Verge Just when you think Elon Musk can’t get any more divisive, he’s weighed in on the light mode versus dark mode debate — and Twitter, currently undergoing a rebranding to X , is apparently going all in on the latter. Early this morning, Musk posted that “this platform will soon only have ‘dark mode’. It is better in every way.” That immediately brought about the usual responses that you might expect, with several people making the case that light text on black can be harder to read. Many are asking Twitter to preserve a light mode option even if it switches to dark mode as the default for X’s new design identity. As someone whose phone only enters dark mode in the rarest of circumstances, that seems like the right path to me. All those... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/D0t3M59

Illustration: The Verge Now that Elon Musk has officially replaced Twitter’s logo with an X, many of us are wondering: can he actually use it? The drastic rebranding doesn’t come as much of a surprise to Musk-watchers. Musk has long touted his idea of X as an “everything” app that offers audio, video, messaging, and support for digital payments. He has also founded a company called X.com before it merged with PayPal in the year 2000. While that name never resurfaced, that didn’t stop Musk from incorporating the letter X into all his other brands, including SpaceX, xAI, X Corp., and now Twitter. On Sunday, Musk declared that Twitter will be rebranded as X and turned to the site’s community to commission a new logo. “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/7h9tQiM

Image: The Verge Elon Musk has wanted to build X.com into a super app for a very long time. As described by Walter Isaacson, who is writing a Musk biography, when Musk launched the online bank X.com in 1999, his original concept was to turn the website into a “one-stop everything-store for all financial needs.” That company would eventually be folded into what we now know as PayPal, where Musk tried (and failed) to bring back the X name. In 2023, X.com is back, intended as a replacement for Twitter with an even grander mission. “In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk wrote on the social network he now owns . “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/Nk8RznP

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony is acting quickly to make sure owners of its WH-1000XM5 headphones don’t feel left behind after seeing the just-released WF-1000XM5 earbuds gain several new features. (Putting both of those products in the same sentence really hammers home the madness of Sony’s product names, eh?) The company has released a firmware update for the headphones that brings them to parity with the wireless earbuds by introducing support for head-tracking spatial audio. As with the buds, you’ll need a phone running Android 13 or later, and dynamic head tracking only works with compatible video apps. Better still, Sony is no longer making WH-1000XM5 owners choose between multipoint and LDAC. Once you’ve installed the latest update, you can listen to... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/MBLnvRQ

Look, these graphics were amazing for the year 2000, alright? | Image: Beamdog Humble has a new bundle of computer role-playing games to whet the appetite of those excited for Baldur’s Gate 3 launching next month. Starting now until August 16th, you can get up to nine PC games in the RPG Legends Humble Bundle for just $30 , which includes the following: Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition Baldur’s Gate: Faces of Good and Evil Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition Neverwinter Nights: Complete Adventures Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous MythForce (preorder) That’s a whole lot of geeky PC gaming for not too much money, and a portion of your dollars goes to the nonprofit organization Active Minds . Though, if you prefer... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/DZluTos

A man walks with his donkey in the Tafilalet oasis on October 27th, 2016, near Morocco’s southeastern oasis town of Erfoud, north of Er-Rissani in the Sahara Desert. The oasis is at risk of disappearing as the area is drying up due to global warming. | Photo by Fadel Senna / AFP via Getty Images Sucking planet-heating carbon dioxide of the atmosphere doesn’t reverse all the effects of climate change, new research tells us. Carbon dioxide removal, as it’s called, can sound like science fiction — but many companies are already counting on it to undo some of the damage caused by their pollution. Companies might try to prevent their greenhouse gas emissions altogether, or they might try to clean it up after the fact. That’s why we’re seeing all kinds of brands, from Microsoft to the Houston Texans , saying that they’ll plant trees or invest in new technologies that are supposed to filter CO2 out of the air. But even if they’re successful in trapping CO2, does it reverse the conseque

Image: ABC / Christine Bartolucci General Hospital , the longest-running American soap opera, is turning to scab writers to keep the show going amidst the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing strike . One of the show’s writers, Shannon Peace, shared the news on her Instagram account , saying, “Starting next week, the show will be penned exclusively by scab writers which is heartbreaking.” According to Peace, the show has run through all the scripts that were written before the strike began and has now employed non-union writers in order to keep the show on the air. Typically, people who cross picket lines to perform struck work are met with derision, but Peace acknowledged that the current situation is unique for soap operas. ( Disclosure: The Verge ’s editorial staff is also... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/4C7b0e1

Illustration: The Verge Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is promoting chief financial officer Ruth Porat into a new role, according to a press release about Alphabet’s Q2 earnings . As part of the newly created role of president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, Porat will oversee Alphabet’s “Other Bets” investments and work more closely with policymakers and regulators. The new role will be effective on September 1st, 2023, and the company will search for a successor as the CFO of Google and Alphabet. Porat will still report to CEO Sundar Pichai. Porat’s promotion comes at an important time for Alphabet / Google. Policymakers around the world are working on potential regulations over artificial intelligence , and it seems likely that... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/HNdsnSg

Image: The Verge Starting today, Twitter Blue members can download videos shared on X by other subscribers. That’s according to an update to an X Help Center article titled “How to share and watch videos on Twitter.” The update says all new videos will be eligible for downloads unless the poster specifically opts out. There’s also an age limit — if your “account is under the age of 18,” then downloads won’t be turned on. (Presumably, that means any person whose account says they’re under 18.) And of course, if your Twitter Blue-subscribing account is set to private, no one other than subscribers you’ve allowed to follow you can see the video, let alone download it. To opt out of having your videos be downloadable, you can do that on a per-tweet basis —... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/UM5feO9

Emma Roth / The Verge After replacing Twitter’s little blue bird with an X logo, Elon Musk is now changing it again — well, kind of. In a video Musk reposted from @DogeDesigner , Musk shows off a version of the logo with slightly thicker lines. You can see the differences between the two in the image embedded above. The new version of the logo has already made its way to Twitter’s homepage, and Musk has changed his profile picture to match. We’re still not seeing the X branding anywhere on Twitter’s mobile app, however. pic.twitter.com/dxbsqwcYv7 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2023 While the new logo is only slightly different, it looks closer to the design included in a follow-up tweet from Twitter user Sawyer Merritt, who Musk got the new logo from... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/jNkeXoB

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft just posted the fourth and final quarter of its 2023 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $56.2 billion in revenue and a net income of $20.1 billion during Q4. Revenue is up 8 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent. As expected, Windows and devices revenue has been hit hard again this quarter, but Xbox has rebounded somewhat — at least on the content side. Microsoft’s cloud, office, and server businesses continue to make up for a weaker PC market. Microsoft’s entire fiscal 2023 hasn’t been great for its Windows and devices revenue compared to fiscal 2022. Windows OEM revenue, the price that PC manufacturers pay Microsoft to put Windows on laptops and PCs, has dropped significantly for the entire fiscal... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/J4DNREO

Image: The Verge The brand-new Following feed in Meta’s Threads won’t always stick around if it’s your preferred way to use the app. The much-needed Following feed is unfortunately a bit hidden: you can make it appear by tapping the home icon at the bottom of the screen or the Threads logo at the top. Once you see it, you can switch between “Following,” which shows posts in reverse-chronological order, and “For You,” which is the algorithmically sorted feed the app has offered since launch. But a few of us at The Verge noticed that Threads will occasionally rehide the Following feed and bring you back to the For You feed after you open the app. (You can test it for yourself by force closing and reopening the app.) Unfortunately, it sounds like that’s by... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/lvsXCH0

Tab Groups live here. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge If you’re using Safari but you’re not using Tab Groups, well, it’s time to change that. Tab Groups, as the name implies, allows you to group a selection of tabs together and essentially set them aside for future use. For example, if you have a bunch of tabs you use for work and a bunch of tabs you use after work, you can cordon these tabs off into batches so that they don’t get in each other’s way. You can use your work tabs at work and, when you’re finished, swap them for your “after work” tabs with just one click. You might also have different Tab Groups for different assignments at work or different school projects. Folks who share a computer might have different Tab Groups for each user. The possibilities are endless. Here’s how... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/cHaC65q

A typical scene at ultra-fast charging stations in Europe: everything working and lots of availability. This one had a long protected walking path for the dog along the right-hand side bordering a creek. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge The Council of the EU has adopted new rules intended to make it much easier for EV owners to travel across Europe, while simultaneously helping to reduce the output of harmful greenhouse gases. The new regulation is set to benefit owners of electric cars and vans in three ways: It reduces range anxiety by expanding the EV charging infrastructure along Europe’s main highways, it makes payments “at the pump” easier, and ensures pricing and availability is clearly communicated to avoid surprises. From 2025 onward, the new regulation requires fast charging stations offering at least 150kW of power to be installed every 60km (37mi) along the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network, or (TEN-T) system of highways, the bloc’s main transport... Contin

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptops for high school and college students. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Shopping for a laptop can be stressful — doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as the choices for best laptop and best Chromebook evolve, so do students’ needs. So I spoke to some experts on the subject: students themselves. My recommendations here are meant to accommodate a variety of preferences and price ranges. But they’re a jumping-off point rather than an exhaustive list: every student is different. Before making a decision, you’ll want to make sure you read reviews and try out devices yourself if you can. I’ll do my best to keep this article up to date with items that are in stock. Best laptop... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/B73CZbN

Illustration: The Verge Watch out Bard — Bing’s AI chatbot is now available in Google Chrome and Safari. As first spotted by Windows Latest ( via 9to5Google ), you can now access the chatbot from Bing.com in both browsers. There are some limitations to using Bing Chat on Chrome and Safari, though. For one, you can only type 2,000-word prompts, as opposed to the 4,000-word limit that you get when using Bing Chat on Edge. Your conversation with the chatbot will also reset after five turns instead of 30 , and you’ll see some annoying pop-ups that prompt you to download Edge. Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge You’ll still get prompted to download Edge. In addition to a wider rollout across different browsers, Microsoft has introduced dark... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/DoRmfvb

It’s your time to shine, little guys. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge What’s old is hot again, and flip phones are so very hot right now. These phones are a far cry from the phone that you mastered T9 texting on in college. Today’s flip phones are garden-variety 2023 smartphones that happen to fold in half — plus a screen on the front cover. They’ve been making a kind of comeback over the past few years, but until now, they’ve existed in the shadows of their bigger, pricier fold-style counterparts. That’s understandable, considering that their small cover screens haven’t been good for much more than checking the weather and pressing pause on a podcast. But that’s all changing this year: in a round of updates from Motorola , Oppo , and very likely Samsung next , cover screens are getting much larger and way... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/XLzZW62

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge After 12 years, the price of Spotify Premium is increasing in the US. The subscription will now cost $10.99 a month, the company announced today . Spotify has charged $9.99 for its Premium subscription ever since its launch in the US in 2011 . “So that we can keep innovating, we are changing our Premium prices across a number of markets around the world,” the company wrote in a post announcing the increase. “These updates will help us continue to deliver value to fans and artists on our platform.” As well as increasing the price of a single Premium subscription, the cost of Duo will increase from $12.99 to $14.99, Family will increase from $15.99 to $16.99, and Student will increase from $4.99 to $5.99. According to an FAQ , existing... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/cWoRM2a

Yep, $155 million seems Kenough to me. | Image: Warner Bros. Pictures Legions of Barbie-core and biopic fans descended onto theaters this weekend for the “Barbenheimer” box office phenomenon, but one pink-plastered performance, in particular, came out on top. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has already smashed several records, raking in $155 million domestically over the weekend — the highest US opening ever for a film directed by a woman — beating the previous $153 million achieved by Anna Boden’s Captain Marvel . “The massive, overwhelming response we’ve seen out there proves what we’ve known from the beginning: that ‘Barbie’ is not only an incredibly special film, but clearly the theatrical event of the summer, if not the year,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. Pictures president of domestic distribution in a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/o1mxhV6

Image: Twitter Twitter is transforming into X, as the site’s former bird logo has now been replaced by an official new X logo. Elon Musk, who owns the transformed social media site, began signaling the change early Sunday morning with a series of tweets, starting with one that said, “and soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” Now X has replaced the Twitter logo on the web version, signaling a change to Musk’s “everything app” that he originally envisioned shortly after purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in November. The X logo will presumably replace the bird logo in mobile versions of the apps once they’re updated. References to Twitter still remain on the main web login prompt, though. S... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/R0K5IhN

This Ecobee smart thermostat alerted me to a potentially catastrophic scenario in my home while I was on vacation. But there was little I could do about it from afar. When my HVAC unit failed while I was out of town, my smart thermostat warned me, and the rest of my connected home helped me figure out what was going on. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/6FDLtps

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Sometimes you’ve just gotta break the rules and go for it. I attended Nothing’s New York City product drop last week and got my hands on the Nothing Ear 2s and the Nothing Phone 2 . Now, I’m a longtime Verizon customer, which seemed like a major hurdle for actually testing out this phone and its flashing glyphs. At one point, Nothing had mentioned “limited” support for Verizon on its website, but the company has since removed the carrier from its tech specs altogether — never a good sign. But as I’ve come to find out, as long as you’ve got an active SIM that was already in another Verizon-certified phone, you can toss that into the Nothing Phone 2 and get going without any immediate headaches. When I tried doing so, the phone’s mobile... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/NgK1E3h

Image: Paramount Star Trek: Strange New Worlds had a pair of surprise announcements at San Diego Comic-Con today. First, the show is stepping out of its weekly release schedule with a new episode tonight — a crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks will debut on Paramount Plus in a few minutes, at 7PM ET, Deadline reports. And that’s not all — the series is also getting a musical episode in early August called “Subspace Rhapsody.” Deadline points out that this is the first musical episode in Star Trek history, and the publication isn’t wrong, but the franchise has boldly gone there before... sort of. There was a Deep Space Nine episode, called “Chrysalis,” where a group of eccentric, genetically-engineered people break out into an a capella song after one... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/DvXrhCn

Image: Google Adding alt text to an image in a Google Workspace project is getting much easier after an update included the accessibility improvement. Until recently, adding alt text to images was hidden behind a right-click menu. Now, the option will show up in the “Image options” sidebar — not only that, but the option now comes with an explanation for the feature, telling users what the purpose of alt text is. Alt text is used in media and beyond to describe to people who have difficulty seeing what an image is showing, giving them access to important contextual information sighted people may take for granted. But where alt text is available in software, it’s sometimes not explained, and when people who can clearly see and read their screen are... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/iXpynwK

A Campfire Chat about Diablo IV ’s 1.1.0 update. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge Three directors working on Diablo IV held a campfire chat livestream yesterday saying they will change how they roll out patches, after an incremental verison 1.1.0 patch for the game abruptly nerfed players’ builds (via IGN ). And they promise updates like that won’t happen in the future — at least, not the way it went down this week. In the livestream, associate director Joe Piepiora, game director Joe Shely, and community chief Adam Fletcher acknowledged complaints about the patch, which massively reduced player power for some builds. Fletcher said of the reduction that, “we know it is bad, we know it is not fun,” and added, “we don’t plan on doing a patch like this ever again.” In the short term, there is at least one quick fix... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/0wstTb8

Leaked image of the PlayStation Q. | Leaked image via Imgur At least one of our questions about the Sony Project Q handheld game-streaming device has seemingly been answered by a new leaked video posted by Zuby_Tech on Twitter (via Reddit / Imgur ). In it, a basic version of Android OS running on a plastic-wrapped device shows a simple menu system and a QR code. It’s very doubtful this is what the final version of the handheld’s menu will look like, but it gives us an idea what’s running under the hood, at least. The person making the video quickly taps through the menu, then starts rolling the handheld over to show the top, back, and bottom of it. The low resolution makes it hard to tell much. You can make out what look like a set of four buttons behind the tablet portion of the device on the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/aBN9OLt

The Climate Clock in New York City’s Union Square in early July 2023. | Image: Climate Clock An ominous, 62-foot-long clock looms over New York City’s iconic Union Square, and it’s about to tick past a worrying milestone. It’s called the Climate Clock, and it counts down how much time the world has left to stop climate change from becoming exponentially worse. As anyone who’s experienced the weather lately knows, the situation is already bad. The world had its hottest week on record at the start of the month, according to preliminary data , with heatwaves still smashing local records across the Northern Hemisphere. And that’s just one way climate change is bringing on dangerous new extremes. Today, the planet is about 1.1 degrees Celsius hotter than it was before the Industrial Revolution, thanks to carbon dioxide emissions from... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ZaoIOmf

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images Twitter will “soon” implement daily limits on the number of direct messages unverified accounts will be able to send in “an effort to reduce spam,” the company announced on Friday via its Twitter Support account . In other words, to send unlimited DMs, you’ll need to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription. In its tweet, Twitter didn’t specify what the daily DM limit may be. On a support page , the company said the changes would be implemented beginning Friday. When reached for comment, Twitter’s press email didn’t auto-reply with a poop emoji ; instead, it sent an automated message promising that “we’ll get back to you soon,” a change Twitter owner Elon Musk announced on Thursday . Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge T... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/QMFV8HW

Tesla Full Self-Driving in action. | Image: Owen Grove / The Verge Tesla is starting to offer customers a one-time transfer of their purchased Full Self-Driving (FSD) software to a new vehicle, Not A Tesla App reports . Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the company would be offering it as a “one-time amnesty” during an earnings call on Wednesday, though he did not provide full details at the time. Now, official terms on Tesla’s FSD transfer offer are in the wild thanks to Twitter user @Kdahlenburg, who shared the details sent to them by the automaker yesterday. Those who would like to take advantage of shifting their FSD will need to purchase a new Tesla and take delivery between now and September 30th, 2023. Tesla says it does not guarantee delivery within the program end date and will not apply this offer... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/GMkQ3NB